2040	----	Transcribed from the 1886 George Routledge and Sons edition--first edition (London Magazine) text, by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER: BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE LIFE OF A SCHOLAR. _From the "London Magazine" for September_ 1821. TO THE READER I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life: according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree useful and instructive. In _that_ hope it is that I have drawn it up; and _that_ must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honourable reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that "decent drapery" which time or indulgence to human frailty may have drawn over them; accordingly, the greater part of _our_ confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this or any part of my narrative to come before the public eye until after my death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published); and it is not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step that I have at last concluded on taking it. Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth) Humbly to express A penitential loneliness. It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it should be so: nor would I willingly in my own person manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do anything to weaken them; but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it _did_, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not of necessity imply guilt. They approach or recede from shades of that dark alliance, in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence; in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not yet _recorded_ {1} of any other man, it is no less true that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man--have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self- indulgence. Not to insist that in my case the self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure. Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of confession in consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium- eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago by computing at that time the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talents, or of eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent ---, the late Dean of ---, Lord ---, Mr. --- the philosopher, a late Under-Secretary of State (who described to me the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words as the Dean of ---, viz., "that he felt as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his stomach"), Mr. ---, and many others hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and _that_ within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts became known to me which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will mention two. (1) Three respectable London druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the number of _amateur_ opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at this time immense; and that the difficulty of distinguishing those persons to whom habit had rendered opium necessary from such as were purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This evidence respected London only. But (2)--which will possibly surprise the reader more--some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton manufacturers that their workpeople were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted That those eat now who never ate before; And those who always ate, now eat the more. Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted even by medical writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his "Essay on the Effects of Opium" (published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counteragents, &c., of this drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms ([Greek text]): "Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made common; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would take from that necessary fear and caution which should prevent their experiencing the extensive power of this drug, _for there are many properties in it, if universally known, that would habituate the use, and make it more in request with us than with Turks themselves_; the result of which knowledge," he adds, "must prove a general misfortune." In the necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur; but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions, where I shall present the reader with the _moral_ of my narrative. PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS These preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for three several reasons: 1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer, which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium Confessions--"How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a yoke of misery; voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain?"--a question which, if not somewhere plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton folly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in any case to an author's purposes. 2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which afterwards peopled the dreams of the Opium-eater. 3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a man "whose talk is of oxen" should become an opium-eater, the probability is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will dream about oxen; whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that the Opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and accordingly, that the phantasmagoria of _his_ dreams (waking or sleeping, day-dreams or night-dreams) is suitable to one who in that character Humani nihil a se alienum putat. For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the sustaining of any claim to the title of philosopher is not merely the possession of a superb intellect in its _analytic_ functions (in which part of the pretensions, however, England can for some generations show but few claimants; at least, he is not aware of any known candidate for this honour who can be styled emphatically _a subtle thinker_, with the exception of _Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, and in a narrower department of thought with the recent illustrious exception {2} of _David Ricardo_) but also on such a constitution of the _moral_ faculties as shall give him an inner eye and power of intuition for the vision and the mysteries of our human nature: _that_ constitution of faculties, in short, which (amongst all the generations of men that from the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it were, upon this planet) our English poets have possessed in the highest degree, and Scottish professors {3} in the lowest. I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with this view I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age a most painful affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had originally been caused by extremities of hunger, suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty- four) it had slumbered; for the three following years it had revived at intervals; and now, under unfavourable circumstances, from depression of spirits, it attacked me with a violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. As the youthful sufferings which first produced this derangement of the stomach were interesting in themselves, and in the circumstances that attended them, I shall here briefly retrace them. My father died when I was about seven years old, and left me to the care of four guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small; and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek fluently and without embarrassment--an accomplishment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which in my case was owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could furnish _extempore_; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, &c., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out by a dull translation of moral essays, &c. "That boy," said one of my masters, pointing the attention of a stranger to me, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you and I could address an English one." He who honoured me with this eulogy was a scholar, "and a ripe and a good one," and of all my tutors was the only one whom I loved or reverenced. Unfortunately for me (and, as I afterwards learned, to this worthy man's great indignation), I was transferred to the care, first of a blockhead, who was in a perpetual panic lest I should expose his ignorance; and finally to that of a respectable scholar at the head of a great school on an ancient foundation. This man had been appointed to his situation by --- College, Oxford, and was a sound, well-built scholar, but (like most men whom I have known from that college) coarse, clumsy, and inelegant. A miserable contrast he presented, in my eyes, to the Etonian brilliancy of my favourite master; and beside, he could not disguise from my hourly notice the poverty and meagreness of his understanding. It is a bad thing for a boy to be and to know himself far beyond his tutors, whether in knowledge or in power of mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowledge at least, not with myself only, for the two boys, who jointly with myself composed the first form, were better Grecians than the head- master, though not more elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacrifice to the Graces. When I first entered I remember that we read Sophocles; and it was a constant matter of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first form, to see our "Archididascalus" (as he loved to be called) conning our lessons before we went up, and laying a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difficulties he found in the choruses; whilst _we_ never condescended to open our books until the moment of going up, and were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his wig or some such important matter. My two class-fellows were poor, and dependent for their future prospects at the university on the recommendation of the head-master; but I, who had a small patrimonial property, the income of which was sufficient to support me at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. I made earnest representations on the subject to my guardians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more reasonable and had more knowledge of the world than the rest, lived at a distance; two of the other three resigned all their authority into the hands of the fourth; and this fourth, with whom I had to negotiate, was a worthy man in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain number of letters and personal interviews, I found that I had nothing to hope for, not even a compromise of the matter, from my guardian. Unconditional submission was what he demanded, and I prepared myself, therefore, for other measures. Summer was now coming on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birthday was fast approaching, after which day I had sworn within myself that I would no longer be numbered amongst schoolboys. Money being what I chiefly wanted, I wrote to a woman of high rank, who, though young herself, had known me from a child, and had latterly treated me with great distinction, requesting that she would "lend" me five guineas. For upwards of a week no answer came, and I was beginning to despond, when at length a servant put into my hands a double letter with a coronet on the seal. The letter was kind and obliging. The fair writer was on the sea-coast, and in that way the delay had arisen; she enclosed double of what I had asked, and good-naturedly hinted that if I should _never_ repay her, it would not absolutely ruin her. Now, then, I was prepared for my scheme. Ten guineas, added to about two which I had remaining from my pocket-money, seemed to me sufficient for an indefinite length of time; and at that happy age, if no _definite_ boundary can be assigned to one's power, the spirit of hope and pleasure makes it virtually infinite. It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what cannot often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling one), that we never do anything consciously for the last time (of things, that is, which we have long been in the habit of doing) without sadness of heart. This truth I felt deeply when I came to leave ---, a place which I did not love, and where I had not been happy. On the evening before I left --- for ever, I grieved when the ancient and lofty schoolroom resounded with the evening service, performed for the last time in my hearing; and at night, when the muster-roll of names was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first, I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who was standing by, I bowed to him, and looked earnestly in his face, thinking to myself, "He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again." I was right; I never _did_ see him again, nor ever shall. He looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather my valediction), and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could not reverence him intellectually, but he had been uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me many indulgences; and I grieved at the thought of the mortification I should inflict upon him. The morning came which was to launch me into the world, and from which my whole succeeding life has in many important points taken its colouring. I lodged in the head-master's house, and had been allowed from my first entrance the indulgence of a private room, which I used both as a sleeping-room and as a study. At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion at the ancient towers of ---, "drest in earliest light," and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a cloudless July morning. I was firm and immovable in my purpose; but yet agitated by anticipation of uncertain danger and troubles; and if I could have foreseen the hurricane and perfect hail-storm of affliction which soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. To this agitation the deep peace of the morning presented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a medicine. The silence was more profound than that of midnight; and to me the silence of a summer morning is more touching than all other silence, because, the light being broad and strong as that of noonday at other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from perfect day chiefly because man is not yet abroad; and thus the peace of nature and of the innocent creatures of God seems to be secure and deep only so long as the presence of man and his restless and unquiet spirit are not there to trouble its sanctity. I dressed myself, took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the room. For the last year and a half this room had been my "pensive citadel": here I had read and studied through all the hours of night, and though true it was that for the latter part of this time I, who was framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gaiety and happiness during the strife and fever of contention with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a boy so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed many happy hours in the midst of general dejection. I wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth, writing-table, and other familiar objects, knowing too certainly that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I write this it is eighteen years ago, and yet at this moment I see distinctly, as if it were yesterday, the lineaments and expression of the object on which I fixed my parting gaze. It was a picture of the lovely ---, which hung over the mantelpiece, the eyes and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the whole countenance so radiant with benignity and divine tranquillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my pen or my book to gather consolation from it, as a devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was yet gazing upon it the deep tones of --- clock proclaimed that it was four o'clock. I went up to the picture, kissed it, and then gently walked out and closed the door for ever! * * * * * So blended and intertwisted in this life are occasions of laughter and of tears, that I cannot yet recall without smiling an incident which occurred at that time, and which had nearly put a stop to the immediate execution of my plan. I had a trunk of immense weight, for, besides my clothes, it contained nearly all my library. The difficulty was to get this removed to a carrier's: my room was at an aerial elevation in the house, and (what was worse) the staircase which communicated with this angle of the building was accessible only by a gallery, which passed the head-master's chamber door. I was a favourite with all the servants, and knowing that any of them would screen me and act confidentially, I communicated my embarrassment to a groom of the head-master's. The groom swore he would do anything I wished, and when the time arrived went upstairs to bring the trunk down. This I feared was beyond the strength of any one man; however, the groom was a man Of Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies; and had a back as spacious as Salisbury Plain. Accordingly he persisted in bringing down the trunk alone, whilst I stood waiting at the foot of the last flight in anxiety for the event. For some time I heard him descending with slow and firm steps; but unfortunately, from his trepidation, as he drew near the dangerous quarter, within a few steps of the gallery, his foot slipped, and the mighty burden falling from his shoulders, gained such increase of impetus at each step of the descent, that on reaching the bottom it trundled, or rather leaped, right across, with the noise of twenty devils, against the very bedroom door of the Archididascalus. My first thought was that all was lost, and that my only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflection I determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine, but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous in this unhappy _contretemps_ taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears of insulted authority, I could not myself forbear joining in it; subdued to this, not so much by the unhappy _etourderie_ of the trunk, as by the effect it had upon the groom. We both expected, as a matter of course, that Dr. --- would sally, out of his room, for in general, if but a mouse stirred, he sprang out like a mastiff from his kennel. Strange to say, however, on this occasion, when the noise of laughter had ceased, no sound, or rustling even, was to be heard in the bedroom. Dr. --- had a painful complaint, which, sometimes keeping him awake, made his sleep perhaps, when it did come, the deeper. Gathering courage from the silence, the groom hoisted his burden again, and accomplished the remainder of his descent without accident. I waited until I saw the trunk placed on a wheelbarrow and on its road to the carrier's; then, "with Providence my guide," I set off on foot, carrying a small parcel with some articles of dress under my arm; a favourite English poet in one pocket, and a small 12mo volume, containing about nine plays of Euripides, in the other. It had been my intention originally to proceed to Westmoreland, both from the love I bore to that country and on other personal accounts. Accident, however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and I bent my steps towards North Wales. After wandering about for some time in Denbighshire, Merionethshire, and Carnarvonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B---. Here I might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks, for provisions were cheap at B---, from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus produce of a wide agricultural district. An accident, however, in which perhaps no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I know not whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often remarked, that the proudest class of people in England (or at any rate the class whose pride is most apparent) are the families of bishops. Noblemen and their children carry about with them, in their very titles, a sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this applies also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the English ear, adequate exponents of high birth or descent. Sackville, Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their own tale. Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their claims already established, except among those who are ignorant of the world by virtue of their own obscurity: "Not to know _them_, argues one's self unknown." Their manners take a suitable tone and colouring, and for once they find it necessary to impress a sense of their consequence upon others, they meet with a thousand occasions for moderating and tempering this sense by acts of courteous condescension. With the families of bishops it is otherwise: with them, it is all uphill work to make known their pretensions; for the proportion of the episcopal bench taken from noble families is not at any time very large, and the succession to these dignities is so rapid that the public ear seldom has time to become familiar with them, unless where they are connected with some literary reputation. Hence it is that the children of bishops carry about with them an austere and repulsive air, indicative of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort of _noli me tangere_ manner, nervously apprehensive of too familiar approach, and shrinking with the sensitiveness of a gouty man from all contact with the [Greek text]. Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual goodness of nature, will preserve a man from such weakness, but in general the truth of my representation will be acknowledged; pride, if not of deeper root in such families, appears at least more upon the surface of their manners. This spirit of manners naturally communicates itself to their domestics and other dependants. Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid or a nurse in the family of the Bishop of ---, and had but lately married away and "settled" (as such people express it) for life. In a little town like B---, merely to have lived in the bishop's family conferred some distinction; and my good landlady had rather more than her share of the pride I have noticed on that score. What "my lord" said and what "my lord" did, how useful he was in Parliament and how indispensable at Oxford, formed the daily burden of her talk. All this I bore very well, for I was too good-natured to laugh in anybody's face, and I could make an ample allowance for the garrulity of an old servant. Of necessity, however, I must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately impressed with the bishop's importance, and, perhaps to punish me for my indifference, or possibly by accident, she one day repeated to me a conversation in which I was indirectly a party concerned. She had been to the palace to pay her respects to the family, and, dinner being over, was summoned into the dining-room. In giving an account of her household economy she happened to mention that she had let her apartments. Thereupon the good bishop (it seemed) had taken occasion to caution her as to her selection of inmates, "for," said he, "you must recollect, Betty, that this place is in the high road to the Head; so that multitudes of Irish swindlers running away from their debts into England, and of English swindlers running away from their debts to the Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in their route." This advice certainly was not without reasonable grounds, but rather fitted to be stored up for Mrs. Betty's private meditations than specially reported to me. What followed, however, was somewhat worse. "Oh, my lord," answered my landlady (according to her own representation of the matter), "I really don't think this young gentleman is a swindler, because ---" "You don't _think_ me a swindler?" said I, interrupting her, in a tumult of indignation: "for the future I shall spare you the trouble of thinking about it." And without delay I prepared for my departure. Some concessions the good woman seemed disposed to make; but a harsh and contemptuous expression, which I fear that I applied to the learned dignitary himself, roused her indignation in turn, and reconciliation then became impossible. I was indeed greatly irritated at the bishop's having suggested any grounds of suspicion, however remotely, against a person whom he had never seen; and I thought of letting him know my mind in Greek, which, at the same time that it would furnish some presumption that I was no swindler, would also (I hoped) compel the bishop to reply in the same language; in which case I doubted not to make it appear that if I was not so rich as his lordship, I was a far better Grecian. Calmer thoughts, however, drove this boyish design out of my mind; for I considered that the bishop was in the right to counsel an old servant; that he could not have designed that his advice should be reported to me; and that the same coarseness of mind which had led Mrs. Betty to repeat the advice at all, might have coloured it in a way more agreeable to her own style of thinking than to the actual expressions of the worthy bishop. I left the lodgings the very same hour, and this turned out a very unfortunate occurrence for me, because, living henceforward at inns, I was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to short allowance; that is, I could allow myself only one meal a day. From the keen appetite produced by constant exercise and mountain air, acting on a youthful stomach, I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender regimen, for the single meal which I could venture to order was coffee or tea. Even this, however, was at length withdrawn; and afterwards, so long as I remained in Wales, I subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, &c., or on the casual hospitalities which I now and then received in return for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering. Sometimes I wrote letters of business for cottagers who happened to have relatives in Liverpool or in London; more often I wrote love-letters to their sweethearts for young women who had lived as servants at Shrewsbury or other towns on the English border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfaction to my humble friends, and was generally treated with hospitality; and once in particular, near the village of Llan-y-styndw (or some such name), in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards of three days by a family of young people with an affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet impaired. The family consisted at that time of four sisters and three brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for elegance and delicacy of manners. So much beauty, and so much native good breeding and refinement, I do not remember to have seen before or since in any cottage, except once or twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke English, an accomplishment not often met with in so many members of one family, especially in villages remote from the high road. Here I wrote, on my first introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of the brothers, who had served on board an English man-of-war; and, more privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both interesting-looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to discover that what they wished was that their letters should be as kind as was consistent with proper maidenly pride. I contrived so to temper my expressions as to reconcile the gratification of both feelings; and they were as much pleased with the way in which I had expressed their thoughts as (in their simplicity) they were astonished at my having so readily discovered them. The reception one meets with from the women of a family generally determines the tenor of one's whole entertainment. In this case I had discharged my confidential duties as secretary so much to the general satisfaction, perhaps also amusing them with my conversation, that I was pressed to stay with a cordiality which I had little inclination to resist. I slept with the brothers, the only unoccupied bed standing in the apartment of the young women; but in all other points they treated me with a respect not usually paid to purses as light as mine--as if my scholarship were sufficient evidence that I was of "gentle blood." Thus I lived with them for three days and great part of a fourth; and, from the undiminished kindness which they continued to show me, I believe I might have stayed with them up to this time, if their power had corresponded with their wishes. On the last morning, however, I perceived upon their countenances, as they sate at breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant communication which was at hand; and soon after, one of the brothers explained to me that their parents had gone, the day before my arrival, to an annual meeting of Methodists, held at Carnarvon, and were that day expected to return; "and if they should not be so civil as they ought to be," he begged, on the part of all the young people, that I would not take it amiss. The parents returned with churlish faces, and "_Dym Sassenach_" (_no English_) in answer to all my addresses. I saw how matters stood; and so, taking an affectionate leave of my kind and interesting young hosts, I went my way; for, though they spoke warmly to their parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner of the old people by saying it was "only their way," yet I easily understood that my talent for writing love-letters would do as little to recommend me with two grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek sapphics or alcaics; and what had been hospitality when offered to me with the gracious courtesy of my young friends, would become charity when connected with the harsh demeanour of these old people. Certainly, Mr. Shelley is right in his notions about old age: unless powerfully counteracted by all sorts of opposite agencies, it is a miserable corrupter and blighter to the genial charities of the human heart. Soon after this I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of room, to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression I might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of hunger in. I various degrees of intensity, but as bitter perhaps as ever any human being can have suffered who has survived it would not needlessly harass my reader's feelings by a detail of all that I endured; for extremities such as these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on this occasion, to say that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast- table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know of my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals, constituted my whole support. During the former part of my sufferings (that is, generally in Wales, and always for the first two months in London) I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it mainly that I did not sink under my torments. Latterly, however, when colder and more inclement weather came on, and when, from the length of my sufferings, I had begun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was no doubt fortunate for me that the same person to whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep in a large unoccupied house of which he was tenant. Unoccupied I call it, for there was no household or establishment in it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the house already contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old; but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that she had slept and lived there alone for some time before I came; and great joy the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and, from the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but alas! I could offer her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow, but with no other covering than a sort of large horseman's cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth, and for security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill I took her into my arms, so that in general she was tolerably warm, and often slept when I could not, for during the last two months of my sufferings I slept much in daytime, and was apt to fall into transient dosings at all hours. But my sleep distressed me more than my watching, for beside the tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only not so awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than what is called _dog-sleep_; so that I could hear myself moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened suddenly by my own voice; and about this time a hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, which has since returned upon me at different periods of my life--viz., a sort of twitching (I know not where, but apparently about the region of the stomach) which compelled me violently to throw out my feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from exhaustion; and from increasing weakness (as I said before) I was constantly falling asleep and constantly awaking. Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early; sometimes not till ten o'clock, sometimes not at all. He was in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I observed that he never failed to examine through a private window the appearance of those who knocked at the door before he would allow it to be opened. He breaksfasted alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more than the quantity of esculent _materiel_, which for the most part was little more than a roll or a few biscuits which he had bought on his road from the place where he had slept. Or, if he _had_ asked a party--as I once learnedly and facetiously observed to him--the several members of it must have _stood_ in the relation to each other (not _sate_ in any relation whatever) of succession, as the metaphysicians have it, and not of a coexistence; in the relation of the parts of time, and not of the parts of space. During his breakfast I generally contrived a reason for lounging in, and, with an air of as much indifference as I could assume, took up such fragments as he had left; sometimes, indeed, there were none at all. In doing this I committed no robbery except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe) now and then to send out at noon for an extra biscuit; for as to the poor child, _she_ was never admitted into his study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law writings, &c.); that room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house, being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether this child were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. ---, or only a servant, I could not ascertain; she did not herself know; but certainly she was treated altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. --- make his appearance than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c.; and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchen, &c., to the upper air until my welcome knock at night called up her little trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life during the daytime, however, I knew little but what I gathered from her own account at night, for as soon as the hours of business commenced I saw that my absence would be acceptable, and in general, therefore, I went off and sate in the parks or elsewhere until nightfall. But who and what, meantime, was the master of the house himself? Reader, he was one of those anomalous practitioners in lower departments of the law who--what shall I say?--who on prudential reasons, or from necessity, deny themselves all indulgence in the luxury of too delicate a conscience, (a periphrasis which might be abridged considerably, but _that_ I leave to the reader's taste): in many walks of life a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage; and just as people talk of "laying down" their carriages, so I suppose my friend Mr. --- had "laid down" his conscience for a time, meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as he could afford it. The inner economy of such a man's daily life would present a most strange picture, if I could allow myself to amuse the reader at his expense. Even with my limited opportunities for observing what went on, I saw many scenes of London intrigues and complex chicanery, "cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," at which I sometimes smile to this day, and at which I smiled then, in spite of my misery. My situation, however, at that time gave me little experience in my own person of any qualities in Mr. ---'s character but such as did him honour; and of his whole strange composition I must forget everything but that towards me he was obliging, and to the extent of his power, generous. That power was not, indeed, very extensive; however, in common with the rats, I sate rent free; and as Dr. Johnson has recorded that he never but once in his life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat, so let me be grateful that on that single occasion I had as large a choice of apartments in a London mansion as I could possibly desire. Except the Bluebeard room, which the poor child believed to be haunted, all others, from the attics to the cellars, were at our service; "the world was all before us," and we pitched our tent for the night in any spot we chose. This house I have already described as a large one; it stands in a conspicuous situation and in a well-known part of London. Many of my readers will have passed it, I doubt not, within a few hours of reading this. For myself, I never fail to visit it when business draws me to London; about ten o'clock this very night, August 15, 1821--being my birthday--I turned aside from my evening walk down Oxford Street, purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied by a respectable family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I observed a domestic party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay. Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence, and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child. Her, by-the- bye, in after-years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child; she was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in manners. But, thank God! even in those years I needed not the embellishments of novel accessories to conciliate my affections: plain human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, was enough for me, and I loved the child because she was my partner in wretchedness. If she is now living she is probably a mother, with children of her own; but, as I have said, I could never trace her. This I regret; but another person there was at that time whom I have since sought to trace with far deeper earnestness, and with far deeper sorrow at my failure. This person was a young woman, and one of that unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. I feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was then on familiar and friendly terms with many women in that unfortunate condition. The reader needs neither smile at this avowal nor frown; for, not to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb, "_Sine cerere_," &c., it may well be supposed that in the existing state of my purse my connection with such women could not have been an impure one. But the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature that wore a human shape; on the contrary, from my very earliest youth it has been my pride to converse familiarly, _more Socratio_, with all human beings, man, woman, and child, that chance might fling in my way; a practice which is friendly to the knowledge of human nature, to good feelings, and to that frankness of address which becomes a man who would be thought a philosopher. For a philosopher should not see with the eyes of the poor limitary creature calling himself a man of the world, and filled with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth and education, but should look upon himself as a catholic creature, and as standing in equal relation to high and low, to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. Being myself at that time of necessity a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I naturally fell in more frequently with those female peripatetics who are technically called street-walkers. Many of these women had occasionally taken my part against watchmen who wished to drive me off the steps of houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them, the one on whose account I have at all introduced this subject--yet no! let me not class the, oh! noble-minded Ann--with that order of women. Let me find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate the condition of her to whose bounty and compassion, ministering to my necessities when all the world had forsaken me, I owe it that I am at this time alive. For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps and under the shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as myself; she told me, indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year. By such questions as my interest about her prompted I had gradually drawn forth her simple history. Hers was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had reason to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had better adapted its arrangements to meet it, the power of the law might oftener be interposed to protect and to avenge. But the stream of London charity flows in a channel which, though deep and mighty, is yet noiseless and underground; not obvious or readily accessible to poor houseless wanderers; and it cannot be denied that the outside air and framework of London society is harsh, cruel, and repulsive. In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might easily have been redressed, and I urged her often and earnestly to lay her complaint before a magistrate. Friendless as she was, I assured her that she would meet with immediate attention, and that English justice, which was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply avenge her on the brutal ruffian who had plundered her little property. She promised me often that she would, but she delayed taking the steps I pointed out from time to time, for she was timid and dejected to a degree which showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; and perhaps she thought justly that the most upright judge and the most righteous tribunals could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something, however, would perhaps have been done, for it had been settled between us at length, but unhappily on the very last time but one that I was ever to see her, that in a day or two we should go together before a magistrate, and that I should speak on her behalf. This little service it was destined, however, that I should never realise. Meantime, that which she rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever have repaid her, was this:--One night, when we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt more than usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house, which to this hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble action which she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse. I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from her arms and fell backwards on the steps. From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind, that without some powerful and reviving stimulus I should either have died on the spot, or should at least have sunk to a point of exhaustion from which all reascent under my friendless circumstances would soon have become hopeless. Then it was, at this crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan companion, who had herself met with little but injuries in this world, stretched out a saving hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay, she ran off into Oxford Street, and in less time than could be imagined returned to me with a glass of port wine and spices, that acted upon my empty stomach, which at that time would have rejected all solid food, with an instantaneous power of restoration; and for this glass the generous girl without a murmur paid out of her humble purse at a time--be it remembered!--when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when she could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able to reimburse her. Oh, youthful benefactress! how often in succeeding years, standing in solitary places, and thinking of thee with grief of heart and perfect love--how often have I wished that, as in ancient times, the curse of a father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment; even so the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might have a like prerogative, might have power given to it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness of the grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness, and of final reconciliation! I do not often weep: for not only do my thoughts on subjects connected with the chief interests of man daily, nay hourly, descend a thousand fathoms "too deep for tears;" not only does the sternness of my habits of thought present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt tears--wanting of necessity to those who, being protected usually by their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would by that same levity be made incapable of resisting it on any casual access of such feelings; but also, I believe that all minds which have contemplated such objects as deeply as I have done, must, for their own protection from utter despondency, have early encouraged and cherished some tranquillising belief as to the future balances and the hieroglyphic meanings of human sufferings. On these accounts I am cheerful to this hour, and, as I have said, I do not often weep. Yet some feelings, though not deeper or more passionate, are more tender than others; and often, when I walk at this time in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight, and hear those airs played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so critically separated us for ever. How it happened the reader will understand from what remains of this introductory narration. Soon after the period of the last incident I have recorded I met in Albemarle Street a gentleman of his late Majesty's household. This gentleman had received hospitalities on different occasions from my family, and he challenged me upon the strength of my family likeness. I did not attempt any disguise; I answered his questions ingenuously, and, on his pledging his word of honour that he would not betray me to my guardians, I gave him an address to my friend the attorney's. The next day I received from him a 10 pound bank-note. The letter enclosing it was delivered with other letters of business to the attorney, but though his look and manner informed me that he suspected its contents, he gave it up to me honourably and without demur. This present, from the particular service to which it was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose which had allured me up to London, and which I had been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first day of my arrival in London to that of my final departure. In so mighty a world as London it will surprise my readers that I should not have found some means of starving off the last extremities, of penury; and it will strike them that two resources at least must have been open to me--viz., either to seek assistance from the friends of my family, or to turn my youthful talents and attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolument. As to the first course, I may observe generally, that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the chance of being reclaimed by my guardians; not doubting that whatever power the law gave them would have been enforced against me to the utmost--that is, to the extremity of forcibly restoring me to the school which I had quitted, a restoration which, as it would in my eyes have been a dishonour, even if submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in contempt and defiance of my own wishes and efforts, to have been a humiliation worse to me than death, and which would indeed have terminated in death. I was therefore shy enough of applying for assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of receiving it, at the risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue of recovering me. But as to London in particular, though doubtless my father had in his lifetime had many friends there, yet (as ten years had passed since his death) I remembered few of them even by name; and never having seen London before, except once for a few hours, I knew not the address of even those few. To this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the difficulty, but much more the paramount fear which I have mentioned, habitually indisposed me. In regard to the other mode, I now feel half inclined to join my reader in wondering that I should have overlooked it. As a corrector of Greek proofs (if in no other way) I might doubtless have gained enough for my slender wants. Such an office as this I could have discharged with an exemplary and punctual accuracy that would soon have gained me the confidence of my employers. But it must not be forgotten that, even for such an office as this, it was necessary that I should first of all have an introduction to some respectable publisher, and this I had no means of obtaining. To say the truth, however, it had never once occurred to me to think of literary labours as a source of profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of obtaining money had ever occurred to me but that of borrowing it on the strength of my future claims and expectations. This mode I sought by every avenue to compass; and amongst other persons I applied to a Jew named D--- {4} To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders (some of whom were, I believe, also Jews), I had introduced myself with an account of my expectations; which account, on examining my father's will at Doctors' Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. The person there mentioned as the second son of --- was found to have all the claims (or more than all) that I had stated; but one question still remained, which the faces of the Jews pretty significantly suggested--was _I_ that person? This doubt had never occurred to me as a possible one; I had rather feared, whenever my Jewish friends scrutinised me keenly, that I might be too well known to be that person, and that some scheme might be passing in their minds for entrapping me and selling me to my guardians. It was strange to me to find my own self _materialiter_ considered (so I expressed it, for I doated on logical accuracy of distinctions), accused, or at least suspected, of counterfeiting my own self _formaliter_ considered. However, to satisfy their scruples, I took the only course in my power. Whilst I was in Wales I had received various letters from young friends these I produced, for I carried them constantly in my pocket, being, indeed, by this time almost the only relics of my personal encumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore) which I had not in one way or other disposed of. Most of these letters were from the Earl of ---, who was at that time my chief (or rather only) confidential friend. These letters were dated from Eton. I had also some from the Marquis of ---, his father, who, though absorbed in agricultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian himself, and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs to be, still retained an affection for classical studies and for youthful scholars. He had accordingly, from the time that I was fifteen, corresponded with me; sometimes upon the great improvements which he had made or was meditating in the counties of M--- and Sl--- since I had been there, sometimes upon the merits of a Latin poet, and at other times suggesting subjects to me on which he wished me to write verses. On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends agreed to furnish me with two or three hundred pounds on my personal security, provided I could persuade the young Earl --- who was, by the way, not older than myself--to guarantee the payment on our coming of age; the Jew's final object being, as I now suppose, not the trifling profit he could expect to make by me, but the prospect of establishing a connection with my noble friend, whose immense expectations were well known to him. In pursuance of this proposal on the part of the Jew, about eight or nine days after I had received the 10 pounds, I prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly 3 pounds of the money I had given to my money-lending friend, on his alleging that the stamps must be bought, in order that the writings might be preparing whilst I was away from London. I thought in my heart that he was lying; but I did not wish to give him any excuse for charging his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I had given to my friend the attorney (who was connected with the money-lenders as their lawyer), to which, indeed, he was entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. About fifteen shillings I had employed in re-establishing (though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the remainder I gave one quarter to Ann, meaning on my return to have divided with her whatever might remain. These arrangements made, soon after six o'clock on a dark winter evening I set off, accompanied by Ann, towards Piccadilly; for it was my intention to go down as far as Salthill on the Bath or Bristol mail. Our course lay through a part of the town which has now all disappeared, so that I can no longer retrace its ancient boundaries--Swallow Street, I think it was called. Having time enough before us, however, we bore away to the left until we came into Golden Square; there, near the corner of Sherrard Street, we sat down, not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told her of my plans some time before, and I now assured her again that she should share in my good fortune, if I met with any, and that I would never forsake her as soon as I had power to protect her. This I fully intended, as much from inclination as from a sense of duty; for setting aside gratitude, which in any case must have made me her debtor for life, I loved her as affectionately as if she had been my sister; and at this moment with sevenfold tenderness, from pity at witnessing her extreme dejection. I had apparently most reason for dejection, because I was leaving the saviour of my life; yet I, considering the shock my health had received, was cheerful and full of hope. She, on the contrary, who was parting with one who had had little means of serving her, except by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by sorrow; so that, when I kissed her at our final farewell, she put her arms about my neck and wept without speaking a word. I hoped to return in a week at farthest, and I agreed with her that on the fifth night from that, and every night afterwards, she would wait for me at six o'clock near the bottom of Great Titchfield Street, which had been our customary haven, as it were, of rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the great Mediterranean of Oxford Street. This and other measures of precaution I took; one only I forgot. She had either never told me, or (as a matter of no great interest) I had forgotten her surname. It is a general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in her unhappy condition, not (as novel-reading women of higher pretensions) to style themselves _Miss Douglas_, _Miss Montague_, &c., but simply by their Christian names--_Mary_, _Jane_, _Frances_, &c. Her surname, as the surest means of tracing her hereafter, I ought now to have inquired; but the truth is, having no reason to think that our meeting could, in consequence of a short interruption, be more difficult or uncertain than it had been for so many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment adverted to it as necessary, or placed it amongst my memoranda against this parting interview; and my final anxieties being spent in comforting her with hopes, and in pressing upon her the necessity of getting some medicines for a violent cough and hoarseness with which she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too late to recall her. It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-house, and the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion {5} of this mail soon laid me asleep: it is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for some months, was on the outside of a mail-coach--a bed which at this day I find rather an uneasy one. Connected with this sleep was a little incident which served, as hundreds of others did at that time, to convince me how easily a man who has never been in any great distress may pass through life without knowing, in his own person at least, anything of the possible goodness of the human heart--or, as I must add with a sigh, of its possible vileness. So thick a curtain of _manners_ is drawn over the features and expression of men's _natures_, that to the ordinary observer the two extremities, and the infinite field of varieties which lie between them, are all confounded; the vast and multitudinous compass of their several harmonies reduced to the meagre outline of differences expressed in the gamut or alphabet of elementary sounds. The case was this: for the first four or five miles from London I annoyed my fellow-passenger on the roof by occasionally falling against him when the coach gave a lurch to his: side; and indeed, if the road had been less smooth and level than it is, I should have fallen off from weakness. Of this annoyance he complained heavily, as perhaps, in the same circumstances, most people would; he expressed his complaint, however, more morosely than the occasion seemed to warrant, and if I had parted with him at that moment I should have thought of him (if I had considered it worth while to think of him at all) as a surly and almost brutal fellow. However, I was conscious that I had given him some cause for complaint, and therefore I apologized to him, and assured him I would do what I could to avoid falling asleep for the future; and at the same time, in as few words as possible, I explained to him that I was ill and in a weak state from long suffering, and that I could not afford at that time to take an inside place. This man's manner changed, upon hearing this explanation, in an instant; and when I next woke for a minute from the noise and lights of Hounslow (for in spite of my wishes and efforts I had fallen asleep again within two minutes from the time I had spoken to him) I found that he had put his arm round me to protect me from falling off, and for the rest of my journey he behaved to me with the gentleness of a woman, so that at length I almost lay in his arms; and this was the more kind, as he could not have known that I was not going the whole way to Bath or Bristol. Unfortunately, indeed, I _did_ go rather farther than I intended, for so genial and so refreshing was my sleep, that the next time after leaving Hounslow that I fully awoke was upon the sudden pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post-office), and on inquiry I found that we had reached Maidenhead--six or seven miles, I think, ahead of Salthill. Here I alighted, and for the half-minute that the mail stopped I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from the transient glimpse I had had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to me to be a gentleman's butler, or person of that rank) to go to bed without delay. This I promised, though with no intention of doing so; and in fact I immediately set forward, or rather backward, on foot. It must then have been nearly midnight, but so slowly did I creep along that I heard a clock in a cottage strike four before I turned down the lane from Slough to Eton. The air and the sleep had both refreshed me; but I was weary nevertheless. I remember a thought (obvious enough, and which has been prettily expressed by a Roman poet) which gave me some consolation at that moment under my poverty. There had been some time before a murder committed on or near Hounslow Heath. I think I cannot be mistaken when I say that the name of the murdered person was _Steele_, and that he was the owner of a lavender plantation in that neighbourhood. Every step of my progress was bringing me nearer to the Heath, and it naturally occurred to me that I and the accused murderer, if he were that night abroad, might at every instant be unconsciously approaching each other through the darkness; in which case, said I--supposing I, instead of being (as indeed I am) little better than an outcast-- Lord of my learning, and no land beside-- were, like my friend Lord ---, heir by general repute to 70,000 pounds per annum, what a panic should I be under at this moment about my throat! Indeed, it was not likely that Lord --- should ever be in my situation. But nevertheless, the spirit of the remark remains true--that vast power and possessions make a man shamefully afraid of dying; and I am convinced that many of the most intrepid adventurers, who, by fortunately being poor, enjoy the full use of their natural courage, would, if at the very instant of going into action news were brought to them that they had unexpectedly succeeded to an estate in England of 50,000 pounds a-year, feel their dislike to bullets considerably sharpened, {6} and their efforts at perfect equanimity and self-possession proportionably difficult. So true it is, in the language of a wise man whose own experience had made him acquainted with both fortunes, that riches are better fitted To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, Than tempt her to do ought may merit praise. _Paradise Regained_. I dally with my subject because, to myself, the remembrance of these times is profoundly interesting. But my reader shall not have any further cause to complain, for I now hasten to its close. In the road between Slough and Eton I fell asleep, and just as the morning began to dawn I was awakened by the voice of a man standing over me and surveying me. I know not what he was: he was an ill-looking fellow, but not therefore of necessity an ill-meaning fellow; or, if he were, I suppose he thought that no person sleeping out-of-doors in winter could be worth robbing. In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, I beg to assure him, if he should be among my readers, that he was mistaken. After a slight remark he passed on; and I was not sorry at his disturbance, as it enabled me to pass through Eton before people were generally up. The night had been heavy and lowering, but towards the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I slipped through Eton unobserved; washed myself, and as far as possible adjusted my dress, at a little public-house in Windsor; and about eight o'clock went down towards Pote's. On my road I met some junior boys, of whom I made inquiries. An Etonian is always a gentleman; and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, they answered me civilly. My friend Lord --- was gone to the University of ---. "Ibi omnis effusus labor!" I had, however, other friends at Eton; but it is not to all that wear that name in prosperity that a man is willing to present himself in distress. On recollecting myself, however, I asked for the Earl of D---, to whom (though my acquaintance with him was not so intimate as with some others) I should not have shrunk from presenting myself under any circumstances. He was still at Eton, though I believe on the wing for Cambridge. I called, was received kindly, and asked to breakfast. Here let me stop for a moment to check my reader from any erroneous conclusions. Because I have had occasion incidentally to speak of various patrician friends, it must not be supposed that I have myself any pretension to rank and high blood. I thank God that I have not. I am the son of a plain English merchant, esteemed during his life for his great integrity, and strongly attached to literary pursuits (indeed, he was himself, anonymously, an author). If he had lived it was expected that he would have been very rich; but dying prematurely, he left no more than about 30,000 pounds amongst seven different claimants. My mother I may mention with honour, as still more highly gifted; for though unpretending to the name and honours of a _literary_ woman, I shall presume to call her (what many literary women are not) an _intellectual_ woman; and I believe that if ever her letters should be collected and published, they would be thought generally to exhibit as much strong and masculine sense, delivered in as pure "mother English," racy and fresh with idiomatic graces, as any in our language--hardly excepting those of Lady M. W. Montague. These are my honours of descent, I have no other; and I have thanked God sincerely that I have not, because, in my judgment, a station which raises a man too eminently above the level of his fellow-creatures is not the most favourable to moral or to intellectual qualities. Lord D--- placed before me a most magnificent breakfast. It was really so; but in my eyes it seemed trebly magnificent, from being the first regular meal, the first "good man's table," that I had sate down to for months. Strange to say, however, I could scarce eat anything. On the day when I first received my 10 pound bank-note I had gone to a baker's shop and bought a couple of rolls; this very shop I had two months or six weeks before surveyed with an eagerness of desire which it was almost humiliating to me to recollect. I remembered the story about Otway, and feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly. But I had no need for alarm; my appetite was quite sunk, and I became sick before I had eaten half of what I had bought. This effect from eating what approached to a meal I continued to feel for weeks; or, when I did not experience any nausea, part of what I ate was rejected, sometimes with acidity, sometimes immediately and without any acidity. On the present occasion, at Lord D-'s table, I found myself not at all better than usual, and in the midst of luxuries I had no appetite. I had, however, unfortunately, at all times a craving for wine; I explained my situation, therefore, to Lord D---, and gave him a short account of my late sufferings, at which he expressed great compassion, and called for wine. This gave me a momentary relief and pleasure; and on all occasions when I had an opportunity I never failed to drink wine, which I worshipped then as I have since worshipped opium. I am convinced, however, that this indulgence in wine contributed to strengthen my malady, for the tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk, and by a better regimen it might sooner, and perhaps effectually, have been revived. I hope that it was not from this love of wine that I lingered in the neighbourhood of my Eton friends; I persuaded myself then that it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D---, on whom I was conscious I had not sufficient claims, the particular service in quest of which I had come down to Eton. I was, however unwilling to lose my journey, and--I asked it. Lord D---, whose good nature was unbounded, and which, in regard to myself, had been measured rather by his compassion perhaps for my condition, and his knowledge of my intimacy with some of his relatives, than by an over-rigorous inquiry into the extent of my own direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, at this request. He acknowledged that he did not like to have any dealings with money-lenders, and feared lest such a transaction might come to the ears of his connexions. Moreover, he doubted whether _his_ signature, whose expectations were so much more bounded than those of ---, would avail with my unchristian friends. However, he did not wish, as it seemed, to mortify me by an absolute refusal; for after a little consideration he promised, under certain conditions which he pointed out, to give his security. Lord D--- was at this time not eighteen years of age; but I have often doubted, on recollecting since the good sense and prudence which on this occasion he mingled with so much urbanity of manner (an urbanity which in him wore the grace of youthful sincerity), whether any statesman--the oldest and the most accomplished in diplomacy--could have acquitted himself better under the same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot be addressed on such a business without surveying you with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a Saracen's head. Recomforted by this promise, which was not quite equal to the best but far above the worst that I had pictured to myself as possible, I returned in a Windsor coach to London three days after I had quitted it. And now I come to the end of my story. The Jews did not approve of Lord D---'s terms; whether they would in the end have acceded to them, and were only seeking time for making due inquiries, I know not; but many delays were made, time passed on, the small fragment of my bank-note had just melted away, and before any conclusion could have been put to the business I must have relapsed into my former state of wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at this crisis, an opening was made, almost by accident, for reconciliation with my friends; I quitted London in haste for a remote part of England; after some time I proceeded to the university, and it was not until many months had passed away that I had it in my power again to revisit the ground which had become so interesting to me, and to this day remains so, as the chief scene of my youthful sufferings. Meantime, what had become of poor Ann? For her I have reserved my concluding words. According to our agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for her every night, so long as I stayed in London, at the corner of Titchfield Street. I inquired for her of every one who was likely to know her, and during the last hours of my stay in London I put into activity every means of tracing her that my knowledge of London suggested and the limited extent of my power made possible. The street where she had lodged I knew, but not the house; and I remembered at last some account which she had given me of ill-treatment from her landlord, which made it probable that she had quitted those lodgings before we parted. She had few acquaintances; most people, besides, thought that the earnestness of my inquiries arose from motives which moved their laughter or their slight regard; and others, thinking I was in chase of a girl who had robbed me of some trifles, were naturally and excusably indisposed to give me any clue to her, if indeed they had any to give. Finally as my despairing resource, on the day I left London I put into the hands of the only person who (I was sure) must know Ann by sight, from having been in company with us once or twice, an address to ---, in ---shire, at that time the residence of my family. But to this hour I have never heard a syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles as most men meet with in this life, has been my heaviest affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must have been some time in search of each other, at the very same moment, through the mighty labyrinths of London; perhaps even within a few feet of each other--a barrier no wider than a London street often amounting in the end to a separation for eternity! During some years I hoped that she _did_ live; and I suppose that, in the literal and unrhetorical use of the word _myriad_, I may say that on my different visits to London I have looked into many, many myriads of female faces, in the hope of meeting her. I should know her again amongst a thousand, if I saw her for a moment; for though not handsome, she had a sweet expression of countenance and a peculiar and graceful carriage of the head. I sought her, I have said, in hope. So it was for years; but now I should fear to see her; and her cough, which grieved me when I parted with her, is now my consolation. I now wish to see her no longer; but think of her, more gladly, as one long since laid in the grave--in the grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen; taken away, before injuries and cruelty had blotted out and transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of ruffians had completed the ruin they had begun. [The remainder of this very interesting article will be given in the next number.--ED.] PART II From the London Magazine for October 1821. So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted step-mother! thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee; the time was come at last that I no more should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces, no more should dream and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Successors too many, to myself and Ann, have doubtless since then trodden in our footsteps, inheritors of our calamities; other orphans than Ann have sighed; tears have been shed by other children; and thou, Oxford Street, hast since doubtless echoed to the groans of innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the storm which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge of a long fair-weather--the premature sufferings which I had paid down to have been accepted as a ransom for many years to come, as a price of long immunity from sorrow; and if again I walked in London a solitary and contemplative man (as oftentimes I did), I walked for the most part in serenity and peace of mind. And although it is true that the calamities of my noviciate in London had struck root so deeply in my bodily constitution, that afterwards they shot up and flourished afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has overshadowed and darkened my latter years, yet these second assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude more confirmed, with the resources of a maturer intellect, and with alleviations from sympathising affection--how deep and tender! Thus, however, with whatsoever alleviations, years that were far asunder were bound together by subtle links of suffering derived from a common root. And herein I notice an instance of the short-sightedness of human desires, that oftentimes on moonlight nights, during my first mournful abode in London, my consolation was (if such it could be thought) to gaze from Oxford Street up every avenue in succession which pierces through the heart of Marylebone to the fields and the woods; for _that_, said I, travelling with my eyes up the long vistas which lay part in light and part in shade, "_that_ is the road to the North, and therefore to, and if I had the wings of a dove, _that_ way I would fly for comfort." Thus I said, and thus I wished, in my blindness. Yet even in that very northern region it was, even in that very valley, nay, in that very house to which my erroneous wishes pointed, that this second birth of my sufferings began, and that they again threatened to besiege the citadel of life and hope. There it was that for years I was persecuted by visions as ugly, and as ghastly phantoms as ever haunted the couch of an Orestes; and in this unhappier than he, that sleep, which comes to all as a respite and a restoration, and to him especially as a blessed {7} balm for his wounded heart and his haunted brain, visited me as my bitterest scourge. Thus blind was I in my desires; yet if a veil interposes between the dim-sightedness of man and his future calamities, the same veil hides from him their alleviations, and a grief which had not been feared is met by consolations which had not been hoped. I therefore, who participated, as it were, in the troubles of Orestes (excepting only in his agitated conscience), participated no less in all his supports. My Eumenides, like his, were at my bed-feet, and stared in upon me through the curtains; but watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sate my Electra; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou wast my Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection wouldst permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kindness and to servile {8} ministrations of tenderest affection--to wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me "sleep no more!"--not even then didst thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than Electra did of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king {9} of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face {10} in her robe. But these troubles are past; and thou wilt read records of a period so dolorous to us both as the legend of some hideous dream that can return no more. Meantime, I am again in London, and again I pace the terraces of Oxford Street by night; and oftentimes, when I am oppressed by anxieties that demand all my philosophy and the comfort of thy presence to support, and yet remember that I am separated from thee by three hundred miles and the length of three dreary months, I look up the streets that run northwards from Oxford Street, upon moonlight nights, and recollect my youthful ejaculation of anguish; and remembering that thou art sitting alone in that same valley, and mistress of that very house to which my heart turned in its blindness nineteen years ago, I think that, though blind indeed, and scattered to the winds of late, the promptings of my heart may yet have had reference to a remoter time, and may be justified if read in another meaning; and if I could allow myself to descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I should again say to myself, as I look to the North, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove--" and with how just a confidence in thy good and gracious nature might I add the other half of my early ejaculation--"And _that_ way I would fly for comfort!" THE PLEASURES OF OPIUM It is so long since I first took opium that if it had been a trifling incident in my life I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal events are not to be forgotten, and from circumstances connected with it I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following way. From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in cold water at least once a day: being suddenly seized with toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental intermission of that practice, jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite for about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets, rather to run away, if possible, from my torments, than with any distinct purpose. By accident I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound was it at that time: what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic importance attached to the minutest circumstances connected with the place and the time and the man (if man he was) that first laid open to me the Paradise of Opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless: and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My road homewards lay through Oxford Street; and near "the stately Pantheon" (as Mr. Wordsworth has obligingly called it) I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist--unconscious minister of celestial pleasures!--as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday; and when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do, and furthermore, out of my shilling returned me what seemed to be real copper halfpence, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind as the beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent down to earth on a special mission to myself. And it confirms me in this way of considering him, that when I next came up to London I sought him near the stately Pantheon, and found him not; and thus to me, who knew not his name (if indeed he had one), he seemed rather to have vanished from Oxford Street than to have removed in any bodily fashion. The reader may choose to think of him as possibly no more than a sublunary druggist; it may be so, but my faith is better--I believe him to have evanesced, {11} or evaporated. So unwillingly would I connect any mortal remembrances with that hour, and place, and creature, that first brought me acquainted with the celestial drug. Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took I took under every disadvantage. But I took it--and in an hour--oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me--in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a [Greek text] for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But if I talk in this way the reader will think I am laughing, and I can assure him that nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of _L'Allegro_: even then he speaks and thinks as becomes _Il Penseroso_. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery; and unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm nature in this respect; and with a few indulgences of that sort I shall endeavour to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed. And first, one word with respect to its bodily effects; for upon all that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right), or by professors of medicine, writing _ex cathedra_, I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce--Lies! lies! lies! I remember once, in passing a book-stall, to have caught these words from a page of some satiric author: "By this time I became convinced that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, viz., on Tuesday and Saturday, and might safely be depended upon for--the list of bankrupts." In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have been delivered to the world in regard to opium. Thus it has been repeatedly affirmed by the learned that opium is a dusky brown in colour; and this, take notice, I grant. Secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I grant, for in my time East Indian opium has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight. And thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you must--do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz., die. {12} These weighty propositions are, all and singular, true: I cannot gainsay them, and truth ever was, and will be, commendable. But in these three theorems I believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by men on the subject of opium. And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward and lecture on this matter. First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted, by all who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo perieulo_, that no quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum) _that_ might certainly intoxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? Because it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol, and not in _degree_ only incapable, but even in _kind_: it is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting and tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: the first, to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute--the second, the chronic pleasure; the one is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgement, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, the loves and the hatreds of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive, and with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections; but then, with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation there is always more or less of a maudlin character, which exposes it to the contempt of the bystander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears, no mortal knows why; and the sensual creature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings incident to opium is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that state which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart originally just and good. True it is that even wine, up to a certain point and with certain men, rather tends to exalt and to steady the intellect; I myself, who have never been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half-a-dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties--brightened and intensified the consciousness, and gave to the mind a feeling of being "ponderibus librata suis;" and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man that he is _disguised_ in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety, and it is when they are drinking (as some old gentleman says in Athenaeus), that men [Greek text]--display themselves in their true complexion of character, which surely is not disguising themselves. But still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance, and beyond a certain point it is sure to volatilise and to disperse the intellectual energies: whereas opium always seems to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal part of his nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from any disease or other remote effects of opium) feels that the divines part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity, and over all is the great light of the majestic intellect. This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member--the alpha and the omega: but then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience: whereas most of the unscientific {13} authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written expressly on the materia medica, make it evident, from the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as staggered my own incredulity; for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to him that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologized for him by suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not _prima facie_ and of necessity an absurd one; but the defence _is_. To my surprise, however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the right. "I will maintain," said he, "that I _do_ talk nonsense; and secondly, I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with any view to profit, but solely and simply, said he, solely and simply--solely and simply (repeating it three times over), because I am drunk with opium, and _that_ daily." I replied that, as to the allegation of his enemies, as it seemed to be established upon such respectable testimony, seeing that the three parties concerned all agree in it, it did not become me to question it; but the defence set up I must demur to. He proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his reasons; but it seemed to me so impolite to pursue an argument which must have presumed a man mistaken in a point belonging to his own profession, that I did not press him even when his course of argument seemed open to objection; not to mention that a man who talks nonsense, even though "with no view to profit," is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a dispute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, however, that the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to my prejudice; but still I must plead my experience, which was greater than his greatest by 7,000 drops a-day; and though it was not possible to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms of vinous intoxication, it yet struck me that he might proceed on a logical error of using the word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending it generically to all modes of nervous excitement, instead of restricting it as the expression for a specific sort of excitement connected with certain diagnostics. Some people have maintained in my hearing that they had been drunk upon green tea; and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me the other day that a patient in recovering from an illness had got drunk on a beef-steak. Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a third, which are, that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying; assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took opium at intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits. With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly opium is classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the end; but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system. This first stage of its action always lasted with me, during my noviciate, for upwards of eight hours; so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep. Turkish opium-eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But that the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to stupefy the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the question illustratively, rather than argumentatively) describe the way in which I myself often passed an opium evening in London during the period between 1804-1812. It will be seen that at least opium did not move me to seek solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state of self- involution ascribed to the Turks. I give this account at the risk of being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or visionary; but I regard _that_ little. I must desire my reader to bear in mind that I was a hard student, and at severe studies for all the rest of my time; and certainly I had a right occasionally to relaxations as well as other people. These, however, I allowed myself but seldom. The late Duke of --- used to say, "Next Friday, by the blessing of heaven, I purpose to be drunk;" and in like manner I used to fix beforehand how often within a given time, and when, I would commit a debauch of opium. This was seldom more than once in three weeks, for at that time I could not have ventured to call every day, as I did afterwards, for "_a glass of laudanum negus, warm, and without sugar_." No, as I have said, I seldom drank laudanum, at that time, more than once in three weeks: This was usually on a Tuesday or a Saturday night; my reason for which was this. In those days Grassini sang at the Opera, and her voice was delightful to me beyond all that I had ever heard. I know not what may be the state of the Opera-house now, having never been within its walls for seven or eight years, but at that time it was by much the most pleasant place of public resort in London for passing an evening. Five shillings admitted one to the gallery, which was subject to far less annoyance than the pit of the theatres; the orchestra was distinguished by its sweet and melodious grandeur from all English orchestras, the composition of which, I confess, is not acceptable to my ear, from the predominance of the clamorous instruments and the absolute tyranny of the violin. The choruses were divine to hear, and when Grassini appeared in some interlude, as she often did, and poured forth her passionate soul as Andromache at the tomb of Hector, &c., I question whether any Turk, of all that ever entered the Paradise of Opium-eaters, can have had half the pleasure I had. But, indeed, I honour the barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any pleasures approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. For music is an intellectual or a sensual pleasure according to the temperament of him who hears it. And, by-the-bye, with the exception of the fine extravaganza on that subject in "Twelfth Night," I do not recollect more than one thing said adequately on the subject of music in all literature; it is a passage in the _Religio Medici_ {14} of Sir T. Brown, and though chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value, inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects. The mistake of most people is to suppose that it is by the ear they communicate with music, and therefore that they are purely passive to its effects. But this is not so; it is by the reaction of the mind upon the notices of the ear (the _matter_ coming by the senses, the _form_ from the mind) that the pleasure is constructed, and therefore it is that people of equally good ear differ so much in this point from one another. Now, opium, by greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases, of necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate intellectual pleasure. But, says a friend, a succession of musical sounds is to me like a collection of Arabic characters; I can attach no ideas to them. Ideas! my good sir? There is no occasion for them; all that class of ideas which can be available in such a case has a language of representative feelings. But this is a subject foreign to my present purposes; it is sufficient to say that a chorus, &c., of elaborate harmony displayed before me, as in a piece of arras work, the whole of my past life--not as if recalled by an act of memory, but as if present and incarnated in the music; no longer painful to dwell upon; but the detail of its incidents removed or blended in some hazy abstraction, and its passions exalted, spiritualized, and sublimed. All this was to be had for five shillings. And over and above the music of the stage and the orchestra, I had all around me, in the intervals of the performance, the music of the Italian language talked by Italian women--for the gallery was usually crowded with Italians--and I listened with a pleasure such as that with which Weld the traveller lay and listened, in Canada, to the sweet laughter of Indian women; for the less you understand of a language, the more sensible you are to the melody or harshness of its sounds. For such a purpose, therefore, it was an advantage to me that I was a poor Italian scholar, reading it but little, and not speaking it at all, nor understanding a tenth part of what I heard spoken. These were my opera pleasures; but another pleasure I had which, as it could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled with my love of the Opera; for at that time Tuesday and Saturday were the regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be rather obscure, but I can assure the reader not at all more so than Marinus in his Life of Proclus, or many other biographers and autobiographers of fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only on a Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday night to me more than any other night? I had no labours that I rested from, no wages to receive; what needed I to care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons to hear Grassini? True, most logical reader; what you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is, that whereas different men throw their feelings into different channels, and most are apt to show their interest in the concerns of the poor chiefly by sympathy, expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses and sorrows, I at that time was disposed to express my interest by sympathising with their pleasures. The pains of poverty I had lately seen too much of, more than I wished to remember; but the pleasures of the poor, their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never become oppressive to contemplate. Now Saturday night is the season for the chief, regular, and periodic return of rest of the poor; in this point the most hostile sects unite, and acknowledge a common link of brotherhood; almost all Christendom rests from its labours. It is a rest introductory to another rest, and divided by a whole day and two nights from the renewal of toil. On this account I feel always, on a Saturday night, as though I also were released from some yoke of labour, had some wages to receive, and some luxury of repose to enjoy. For the sake, therefore, of witnessing, upon as large a scale as possible, a spectacle with which my sympathy was so entire, I used often on Saturday nights, after I had taken opium, to wander forth, without much regarding the direction or the distance, to all the markets and other parts of London to which the poor resort of a Saturday night, for laying out their wages. Many a family party, consisting of a man, his wife, and sometimes one or two of his children, have I listened to, as they stood consulting on their ways and means, or the strength of their exchequer, or the price of household articles. Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard murmurs of discontent, but far oftener expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and tranquillity. And taken generally, I must say that, in this point at least, the poor are more philosophic than the rich--that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I was glad; yet, if the contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials indiscriminately from roses and from the soot of chimneys) can overrule all feelings into compliance with the master-key. Some of these rambles led me to great distances, for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time; and sometimes in my attempts to steer homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters and confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have believed at times that I must be the first discoverer of some of these _terrae incognitae_, and doubted whether they had yet been laid down in the modern charts of London. For all this, however, I paid a heavy price in distant years, when the human face tyrannised over my dreams, and the perplexities of my steps in London came back and haunted my sleep, with the feeling of perplexities, moral and intellectual, that brought confusion to the reason, or anguish and remorse to the conscience. Thus I have shown that opium does not of necessity produce inactivity or torpor, but that, on the contrary, it often led me into markets and theatres. Yet, in candour, I will admit that markets and theatres are not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater when in the divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that state, crowds become an oppression to him; music even, too sensual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and silence, as indispensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consummation of what opium can do for human nature. I, whose disease it was to meditate too much and to observe too little, and who upon my first entrance at college was nearly falling into a deep melancholy, from brooding too much on the sufferings which I had witnessed in London, was sufficiently aware of the tendencies of my own thoughts to do all I could to counteract them. I was, indeed, like a person who, according to the old legend, had entered the cave of Trophonius; and the remedies I sought were to force myself into society, and to keep my understanding in continual activity upon matters of science. But for these remedies I should certainly have become hypochondriacally melancholy. In after years, however, when my cheerfulness was more fully re-established, I yielded to my natural inclination for a solitary life. And at that time I often fell into these reveries upon taking opium; and more than once it has happened to me, on a summer night, when I have been at an open window, in a room from which I could overlook the sea at a mile below me, and could command a view of the great town of L---, at about the same distance, that I have sate from sunset to sunrise, motionless, and without wishing to move. I shall be charged with mysticism, Behmenism, quietism, &c., but _that_ shall not alarm me. Sir H. Vane, the younger, was one of our wisest men; and let my reader see if he, in his philosophical works, be half as unmystical as I am. I say, then, that it has often struck me that the scene itself was somewhat typical of what took place in such a reverie. The town of L--- represented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife were suspended; a respite granted from the secret burthens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm; a tranquillity that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose. Oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for "the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest an assuaging balm; eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood; and to the proud man a brief oblivion for Wrongs undress'd and insults unavenged; that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses; and confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges;--thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles--beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos, and "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep" callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties and the blessed household countenances cleansed from the "dishonours of the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium! INTRODUCTION TO THE PAINS OF OPIUM Courteous, and I hope indulgent, reader (for all _my_ readers must be indulgent ones, or else I fear I shall shock them too much to count on their courtesy), having accompanied me thus far, now let me request you to move onwards for about eight years; that is to say, from 1804 (when I have said that my acquaintance with opium first began) to 1812. The years of academic life are now over and gone--almost forgotten; the student's cap no longer presses my temples; if my cap exist at all, it presses those of some youthful scholar, I trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate a lover of knowledge. My gown is by this time, I dare say, in the same condition with many thousand excellent books in the Bodleian, viz., diligently perused by certain studious moths and worms; or departed, however (which is all that I know of his fate), to that great reservoir of _somewhere_ to which all the tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, &c., have departed (not to speak of still frailer vessels, such as glasses, decanters, bed-makers, &c.), which occasional resemblances in the present generation of tea-cups, &c., remind me of having once possessed, but of whose departure and final fate I, in common with most gownsmen of either university, could give, I suspect, but an obscure and conjectural history. The persecutions of the chapel-bell, sounding its unwelcome summons to six o'clock matins, interrupts my slumbers no longer, the porter who rang it, upon whose beautiful nose (bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in retaliation so many Greek epigrams whilst I was dressing, is dead, and has ceased to disturb anybody; and I, and many others who suffered much from his tintinnabulous propensities, have now agreed to overlook his errors, and have forgiven him. Even with the bell I am now in charity; it rings, I suppose, as formerly, thrice a-day, and cruelly annoys, I doubt not, many worthy gentlemen, and disturbs their peace of mind; but as to me, in this year 1812, I regard its treacherous voice no longer (treacherous I call it, for, by some refinement of malice, it spoke in as sweet and silvery tones as if it had been inviting one to a party); its tones have no longer, indeed, power to reach me, let the wind sit as favourable as the malice of the bell itself could wish, for I am 250 miles away from it, and buried in the depth of mountains. And what am I doing among the mountains? Taking opium. Yes; but what else? Why reader, in 1812, the year we are now arrived at, as well as for some years previous, I have been chiefly studying German metaphysics in the writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, &c. And how and in what manner do I live?--in short, what class or description of men do I belong to? I am at this period--viz. in 1812--living in a cottage and with a single female servant (_honi soit qui mal y pense_), who amongst my neighbours passes by the name of my "housekeeper." And as a scholar and a man of learned education, and in that sense a gentleman, I may presume to class myself as an unworthy member of that indefinite body called _gentlemen_. Partly on the ground I have assigned perhaps, partly because from my having no visible calling or business, it is rightly judged that I must be living on my private fortune; I am so classed by my neighbours; and by the courtesy of modern England I am usually addressed on letters, &c., "Esquire," though having, I fear, in the rigorous construction of heralds, but slender pretensions to that distinguished honour; yet in popular estimation I am X. Y. Z., Esquire, but not justice of the Peace nor Custos Rotulorum. Am I married? Not yet. And I still take opium? On Saturday nights. And perhaps have taken it unblushingly ever since "the rainy Sunday," and "the stately Pantheon," and "the beatific druggist" of 1804? Even so. And how do I find my health after all this opium-eating? In short, how do I do? Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, "as well as can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say the real and simple truth, though, to satisfy the theories of medical men, I _ought_ to be ill, I never was better in my life than in the spring of 1812; and I hope sincerely that the quantity of claret, port, or "particular Madeira," which in all probability you, good reader, have taken, and design to take for every term of eight years during your natural life, may as little disorder your health as mine was disordered by the opium I had taken for eight years, between 1804 and 1812. Hence you may see again the danger of taking any medical advice from _Anastasius_; in divinity, for aught I know, or law, he may be a safe counsellor; but not in medicine. No; it is far better to consult Dr. Buchan, as I did; for I never forgot that worthy man's excellent suggestion, and I was "particularly careful not to take above five-and- twenty ounces of laudanum." To this moderation and temperate use of the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at least (_i.e_. in 1812), I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that hitherto I have been only a dilettante eater of opium; eight years' practice even, with a single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer of the year we have just quitted I have suffered much in bodily health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event being no ways related to the subject now before me, further than through the bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813 I know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative on which, as respects my own self-justification, the whole of what follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing dilemma. Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience by such a detail of my malady, or of my struggles with it, as might suffice to establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and constant suffering; or, on the other hand, by passing lightly over this critical part of my story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open to the misconstruction of having slipped, by the easy and gradual steps of self-indulging persons, from the first to the final stage of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers, from my previous acknowledgements). This is the dilemma, the first horn of which would be sufficient to toss and gore any column of patient readers, though drawn up sixteen deep and constantly relieved by fresh men; consequently that is not to be thought of. It remains, then, that I _postulale_ so much as is necessary for my purpose. And let me take as full credit for what I postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good reader, at the expense of your patience and my own. Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort. No; believe all that I ask of you--viz., that I could resist no longer; believe it liberally and as an act of grace, or else in mere prudence; for if not, then in the next edition of my Opium Confessions, revised and enlarged, I will make you believe and tremble; and _a force d'ennuyer_, by mere dint of pandiculation I will terrify all readers of mine from ever again questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to make. This, then, let me repeat, I postulate--that at the time I began to take opium daily I could not have done otherwise. Whether, indeed, afterwards I might not have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I did make might not have been carried much further, and my gradual reconquests of ground lost might not have been followed up much more energetically--these are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation; but shall I speak ingenuously? I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of an Eudaemonist; I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others; I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness, and am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. On some other matters I can agree with the gentlemen in the cotton trade {15} at Manchester in affecting the Stoic philosophy, but not in this. Here I take the liberty of an Eclectic philosopher, and I look out for some courteous and considerate sect that will condescend more to the infirm condition of an opium-eater; that are "sweet men," as Chaucer says, "to give absolution," and will show some conscience in the penances they inflict, and the efforts of abstinence they exact from poor sinners like myself. An inhuman moralist I can no more endure in my nervous state than opium that has not been boiled. At any rate, he who summons me to send out a large freight of self-denial and mortification upon any cruising voyage of moral improvement, must make it clear to my understanding that the concern is a hopeful one. At my time of life (six- and-thirty years of age) it cannot be supposed that I have much energy to spare; in fact, I find it all little enough for the intellectual labours I have on my hands, and therefore let no man expect to frighten me by a few hard words into embarking any part of it upon desperate adventures of morality. Whether desperate or not, however, the issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned, and from this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions. You understand now, reader, what I am, and you are by this time aware that no old gentleman "with a snow-white beard" will have any chance of persuading me to surrender "the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug." No; I give notice to all, whether moralists or surgeons, that whatever be their pretensions and skill in their respective lines of practice, they must not hope for any countenance from me, if they think to begin by any savage proposition for a Lent or a Ramadan of abstinence from opium. This, then, being all fully understood between us, we shall in future sail before the wind. Now then, reader, from 1813, where all this time we have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three years more. Now draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new character. If any man, poor or rich, were to say that he would tell us what had been the happiest day in his life, and the why and the wherefore, I suppose that we should all cry out--Hear him! Hear him! As to the happiest _day_, that must be very difficult for any wise man to name, because any event that could occupy so distinguished a place in a man's retrospect of his life, or be entitled to have shed a special felicity on any one day, ought to be of such an enduring character as that (accidents apart) it should have continued to shed the same felicity, or one not distinguishably less, on many years together. To the happiest _lustrum_, however, or even to the happiest _year_, it may be allowed to any man to point without discountenance from wisdom. This year, in my case, reader, was the one which we have now reached; though it stood, I confess, as a parenthesis between years of a gloomier character. It was a year of brilliant water (to speak after the manner of jewellers), set as it were, and insulated, in the gloom and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before this time descended suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from 320 grains of opium (_i.e_. eight {16} thousand drops of laudanum) per day, to forty grains, or one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black vapours that I have seen roll away from the summits of mountains, drew off in one day ([Greek text]); passed off with its murky banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded, and is floated off by a spring tide-- That moveth altogether, if it move at all. Now, then, I was again happy; I now took only 1000 drops of laudanum per day; and what was that? A latter spring had come to close up the season of youth; my brain performed its functions as healthily as ever before; I read Kant again, and again I understood him, or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around me; and if any man from Oxford or Cambridge, or from neither, had been announced to me in my unpretending cottage, I should have welcomed him with as sumptuous a reception as so poor a man could offer. Whatever else was wanting to a wise man's happiness, of laudanum I would have given him as much as he wished, and in a golden cup. And, by the way, now that I speak of giving laudanum away, I remember about this time a little incident, which I mention because, trifling as it was, the reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business a Malay could have to transact amongst English mountains I cannot conjecture; but possibly he was on his road to a seaport about forty miles distant. The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl, born and bred amongst the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort; his turban therefore confounded her not a little; and as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of her master (and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth besides perhaps a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon below, whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not immediately go down, but when I did, the group which presented itself, arranged as it was by accident, though not very elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the Opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking more like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay--his turban and loose trousers of dingy white relieved upon the dark panelling. He had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more striking picture there could not be imagined than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures and adorations. Half-hidden by the ferocious- looking Malay was a little child from a neighbouring cottage who had crept in after him, and was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing upwards at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, whilst with one hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for protection. My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being indeed confined to two words--the Arabic word for barley and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learned from _Anastasius_; and as I had neither a Malay dictionary nor even Adelung's _Mithridates_, which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad, considering that, of such languages as I possessed, Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshipped me in a most devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with my neighbours, for the Malay had no means of betraying the secret. He lay down upon the floor for about an hour, and then pursued his journey. On his departure I presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar; and the expression of his face convinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth, and, to use the schoolboy phrase, bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor creature; but what could be done? I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that if he had travelled on foot from London it must be nearly three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any human being. I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality by having him seized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol. No: there was clearly no help for it. He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious, but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convinced that he was used {17} to opium; and that I must have done him the service I designed by giving him one night of respite from the pains of wandering. This incident I have digressed to mention, because this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself, that ran "a-muck" {18} at me, and led me into a world of troubles. But to quit this episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I have said already, that on a subject so important to us all as happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man's experience or experiments, even though he were but a plough-boy, who cannot be supposed to have ploughed very deep into such an intractable soil as that of human pains and pleasures, or to have conducted his researches upon any very enlightened principles. But I who have taken happiness both in a solid and liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East India and Turkey--who have conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery, and have, for the general benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, with the poison of 8000 drops of laudanum per day (just for the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately with cancer, an English one twenty years ago with plague, and a third, I know not of what nation, with hydrophobia), I (it will be admitted) must surely know what happiness is, if anybody does. And therefore I will here lay down an analysis of happiness; and as the most interesting mode of communicating it, I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped up and involved in a picture of one evening, as I spent every evening during the intercalary year when laudanum, though taken daily, was to me no more than the elixir of pleasure. This done, I shall quit the subject of happiness altogether, and pass to a very different one--_the pains of opium_. Let there be a cottage standing in a valley, eighteen miles from any town--no spacious valley, but about two miles long by three-quarters of a mile in average width; the benefit of which provision is that all the family resident within its circuit will compose, as it were, one larger household, personally familiar to your eye, and more or less interesting to your affections. Let the mountains be real mountains, between 3,000 and 4,000 feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, not (as a witty author has it) "a cottage with a double coach-house;" let it be, in fact (for I must abide by the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls and clustering round the windows through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn--beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending with jasmine. Let it, however, _not_ be spring, nor summer, nor autumn, but winter in his sternest shape. This is a most important point in the science of happiness. And I am surprised to see people overlook it, and think it matter of congratulation that winter is going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I put up a petition annually for as much snow, hail, frost, or storm, of one kind or other, as the skies can possibly afford us. Surely everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside, candles at four o'clock, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without, And at the doors and windows seem to call, As heav'n and earth they would together mell; Yet the least entrance find they none at all; Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall. _Castle of Indolence_. All these are items in the description of a winter evening which must surely be familiar to everybody born in a high latitude. And it is evident that most of these delicacies, like ice-cream, require a very low temperature of the atmosphere to produce them; they are fruits which cannot be ripened without weather stormy or inclement in some way or other. I am not "_particular_," as people say, whether it be snow, or black frost, or wind so strong that (as Mr. --- says) "you may lean your back against it like a post." I can put up even with rain, provided it rains cats and dogs; but something of the sort I must have, and if I have it not, I think myself in a manner ill-used; for why am I called on to pay so heavily for winter, in coals and candles, and various privations that will occur even to gentlemen, if I am not to have the article good of its kind? No, a Canadian winter for my money, or a Russian one, where every man is but a co-proprietor with the north wind in the fee-simple of his own ears. Indeed, so great an epicure am I in this matter that I cannot relish a winter night fully if it be much past St. Thomas's day, and have degenerated into disgusting tendencies to vernal appearances. No, it must be divided by a thick wall of dark nights from all return of light and sunshine. From the latter weeks of October to Christmas Eve, therefore, is the period during which happiness is in season, which, in my judgment, enters the room with the tea-tray; for tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine- drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual; and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a _bellum internecinum_ against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person, who should presume to disparage it. But here, to save myself the trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white cottages, unless a good deal weather-stained; but as the reader now understands that it is a winter night, his services will not be required except for the inside of the house. Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled in my family the drawing-room; but being contrived "a double debt to pay," it is also, and more justly, termed the library, for it happens that books are the only article of property in which I am richer than my neighbours. Of these I have about five thousand, collected gradually since my eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you can into this room. Make it populous with books, and, furthermore, paint me a good fire, and furniture plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table, and (as it is clear that no creature can come to see one such a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray; and, if you know how to paint such a thing symbolically or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot--eternal _a parte ante_ and _a parte post_--for I usually drink tea from eight o'clock at night to four o'clock in the morning. And as it is very unpleasant to make tea or to pour it out for oneself, paint me a lovely young woman sitting at the table. Paint her arms like Aurora's and her smiles like Hebe's. But no, dear M., not even in jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere personal beauty, or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil. Pass then, my good painter, to something more within its power; and the next article brought forward should naturally be myself--a picture of the Opium-eater, with his "little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug" lying beside him on the table. As to the opium, I have no objection to see a picture of _that_, though I would rather see the original. You may paint it if you choose, but I apprise you that no "little" receptacle would, even in 1816, answer _my_ purpose, who was at a distance from the "stately Pantheon," and all druggists (mortal or otherwise). No, you may as well paint the real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and as much like a wine-decanter as possible. Into this you may put a quart of ruby-coloured laudanum; that, and a book of German Metaphysics placed by its side, will sufficiently attest my being in the neighbourhood. But as to myself--there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I ought to occupy the foreground of the picture; that being the hero of the piece, or (if you choose) the criminal at the bar, my body should be had into court. This seems reasonable; but why should I confess on this point to a painter? or why confess at all? If the public (into whose private ear I am confidentially whispering my confessions, and not into any painter's) should chance to have framed some agreeable picture for itself of the Opium-eater's exterior, should have ascribed to him, romantically an elegant person or a handsome face, why should I barbarously tear from it so pleasing a delusion--pleasing both to the public and to me? No; paint me, if at all, according to your own fancy, and as a painter's fancy should teem with beautiful creations, I cannot fail in that way to be a gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my condition as it stood about 1816-17, up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man, and the elements of that happiness I have endeavoured to place before you in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar's library, in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter evening. But now, farewell--a long farewell--to happiness, winter or summer! Farewell to smiles and laughter! Farewell to peace of mind! Farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep. For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these. I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes, for I have now to record THE PAINS OF OPIUM As when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. SHELLEY'S _Revolt of Islam_. Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your attention to a brief explanatory note on three points: 1. For several reasons I have not been able to compose the notes for this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. I give the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up from memory. Some of them point to their own date, some I have dated, and some are undated. Whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the natural or chronological order, I have not scrupled to do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has been omitted. I could not, without effort, constrain myself to the task of either recalling, or constructing into a regular narrative, the whole burthen of horrors which lies upon my brain. This feeling partly I plead in excuse, and partly that I am now in London, and am a helpless sort of person, who cannot even arrange his own papers without assistance; and I am separated from the hands which are wont to perform for me the offices of an amanuensis. 2. You will think perhaps that I am too confidential and communicative of my own private history. It may be so. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper. The fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to those who will be interested about me hereafter; and wishing to have some record of time, the entire history of which no one can know but myself, I do it as fully as I am able with the efforts I am now capable of making, because I know not whether I can ever find time to do it again. 3. It will occur to you often to ask, why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it? To this I must answer briefly: it might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to desist. But could not have I reduced it a drop a day, or, by adding water, have bisected or trisected a drop? A thousand drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce, and that way would certainly not have answered. But this is a common mistake of those who know nothing of opium experimentally; I appeal to those who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that after that point further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes, say many thoughtless persons, who know not what they are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and dejection for a few days. I answer, no; there is nothing like low spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits are uncommonly raised: the pulse is improved: the health is better. It is not there that the suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like dejection), accompanied by intense perspirations, and feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without more space at my command. I shall now enter _in medias res_, and shall anticipate, from a time when my opium pains might be said to be at their _acme_, an account of their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties. * * * * * My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others, because reading is an accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word "accomplishment" as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I possess; and formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this, for I had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst readers of all:--reads vilely; and Mrs. ---, who is so celebrated, can read nothing well but dramatic compositions: Milton she cannot read sufferably. People in general either read poetry without any passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and read not like scholars. Of late, if I have felt moved by anything it has been by the grand lamentations of Samson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in Paradise Regained, when read aloud by myself. A young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us: at her request and M.'s, I now and then read W-'s poems to them. (W., by-the-bye is the only poet I ever met who could read his own verses: often indeed he reads admirably.) For nearly two years I believe that I read no book, but one; and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was. The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as I have said, by snatches, and occasionally. But my proper vocation, as I well know, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, &c, were all become insupportable to me; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the labour of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one single work, to which I had presumed to give the title of an unfinished work of Spinosa's--viz., _De Emendatione Humani Intellectus_. This was now lying locked up, as by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect; and instead of reviving me as a monument of wishes at least, and aspirations, and a life of labour dedicated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a super-structure--of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility I had, for amusement, turned my attention to political economy; my understanding, which formerly had been as active and restless as a hyaena, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at all) sink into utter lethargy; and political economy offers this advantage to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an organic science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole as the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts may be detached and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostration of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my knowledge; and my understanding had been for too many years intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great masters of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the main herd of modern economists. I had been led in 1811 to look into loads of books and pamphlets on many branches of economy; and, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary debates. I saw that these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungus-heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book; and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, "Thou art the man!" Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I wondered once more: I wondered at myself that I could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading, and much more I wondered at the book. Had this profound work been really written in England during the nineteenth century? Was it possible? I supposed thinking {19} had been extinct in England. Could it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the universities of Europe and a century of thought had failed even to advance by one hair's breadth? All other writers had been crushed and overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents. Mr. Ricardo had deduced _a priori_ from the understanding itself laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on an eternal basis. Thus did one single work of a profound understanding avail to give me a pleasure and an activity which I had not known for years. It roused me even to write, or at least to dictate what M. wrote for me. It seemed to me that some important truths had escaped even "the inevitable eye" of Mr. Ricardo; and as these were for the most part of such a nature that I could express or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of economists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book; and being so brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as I was of all general exertion, I drew up my _Prolegomena to all future Systems of Political Economy_. I hope it will not be found redolent of opium; though, indeed, to most people the subject is a sufficient opiate. This exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, as the sequel showed; for I designed to publish my work. Arrangements were made at a provincial press, about eighteen miles distant, for printing it. An additional compositor was retained for some days on this account. The work was even twice advertised, and I was in a manner pledged to the fulfilment of my intention. But I had a preface to write, and a dedication, which I wished to make a splendid one, to Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite unable to accomplish all this. The arrangements were countermanded, the compositor dismissed, and my "Prolegomena" rested peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother. I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor in terms that apply more or less to every part of the four years during which I was under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might indeed be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few words to any that I received was the utmost that I could accomplish, and often _that_ not until the letter had lain weeks or even months on my writing-table. Without the aid of M. all records of bills paid or _to be_ paid must have perished, and my whole domestic economy, whatever became of Political Economy, must have gone into irretrievable confusion. I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case. It is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. The opium- eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations. He wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise. I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to the history and journal of what took place in my dreams, for these were the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering. The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of my physical economy was from the reawakening of a state of eye generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms. In some that power is simply a mechanical affection of the eye; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or to summon them; or, as a child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter, "I can tell them to go, and they go ---, but sometimes they come when I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers.--In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to me: at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before OEdipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four following facts may be mentioned as noticeable at this time: 1. That as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point--that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so that I feared to exercise this faculty; for, as Midas turned all things to gold that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye; and by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out by the fierce chemistry of my dreams into insufferable splendour that fretted my heart. 2. For this and all other changes in my dreams were accompanied by deep- seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I _had_ reascended. This I do not dwell upon; because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at last to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, cannot be approached by words. 3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night--nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience. 4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived: I could not be said to recollect them, for if I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I _recognised_ them instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe; I have indeed seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true; viz., that the dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of is in fact the mind itself of each individual. Of this at least I feel assured, that there is no such thing as _forgetting_ possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever, just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas in fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn. Having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing my dreams from those of health, I shall now cite a case illustrative of the first fact, and shall then cite any others that I remember, either in their chronological order, or any other that may give them more effect as pictures to the reader. I had been in youth, and even since, for occasional amusement, a great reader of Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other of the Roman historians; and I had often felt as most solemn and appalling sounds, and most emphatically representative of the majesty of the Roman people, the two words so often occurring in Livy--_Consul Romanus_, especially when the consul is introduced in his military character. I mean to say that the words king, sultan, regent, &c., or any other titles of those who embody in their own persons the collective majesty of a great people, had less power over my reverential feelings. I had also, though no great reader of history, made myself minutely and critically familiar with one period of English history, viz., the period of the Parliamentary War, having been attracted by the moral grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by the many interesting memoirs which survive those unquiet times. Both these parts of my lighter reading, having furnished me often with matter of reflection, now furnished me with matter for my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon the blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself, "These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and the daughters of those who met in peace, and sate at the same table, and were allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a certain day in August 1642, never smiled upon each other again, nor met but in the field of battle; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away in blood the memory of ancient friendship." The ladies danced, and looked as lovely as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This pageant would suddenly dissolve; and at a clapping of hands would be heard the heart-quaking sound _of Consul Romanus_; and immediately came "sweeping by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt round by a company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the _alalagmos_ of the Roman legions. Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's, Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his _Dreams_, and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, &c. &c., expressive of enormous power put forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further and you perceive it come to a sudden and abrupt termination without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, you suppose at least that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, but this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labours; and so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self- reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of my malady the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet I cite part of a passage which describes, as an appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep: The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city--boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, Far sinking into splendour--without end! Fabric it seem'd of diamond, and of gold, With alabaster domes, and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright In avenues disposed; there towers begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars--illumination of all gems! By earthly nature had the effect been wrought Upon the dark materials of the storm Now pacified; on them, and on the coves, And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto The vapours had receded,--taking there Their station under a cerulean sky. &c. &c. The sublime circumstance, "battlements that on their _restless_ fronts bore stars," might have been copied from my architectural dreams, for it often occurred. We hear it reported of Dryden and of Fuseli, in modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams: how much better for such a purpose to have eaten opium, which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done, except the dramatist Shadwell; and in ancient days Homer is I think rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium. To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of water: these haunted me so much that I feared (though possibly it will appear ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state or tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a metaphysical word) _objective_; and the sentient organ _project_ itself as its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physically I mean) that I used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. However, I got over this attack, though it must have been verging on something very dangerous. The waters now changed their character--from translucent lakes shining like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months, promised an abiding torment; and in fact it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces upturned to the heavens--faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries: my agitation was infinite; my mind tossed and surged with the ocean. May 1818 The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night, through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not whether others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of _castes_ that have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings that southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great _officina gentium_. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires also in which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics or brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say or have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me: Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment, and left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles; especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinese houses, with cane tables, &c. All the feet of the tables, sofas, &c., soon became instinct with life: the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke. It was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside--come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transition from the damned crocodile, and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent _human_ natures and of infancy, that in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces. June 1819 I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that the deaths of those whom we love, and indeed the contemplation of death generally, is (_caeteris paribus_) more affecting in summer than in any other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I think: first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite; the clouds, by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion stretched over our heads, are in summer more voluminous, massed and accumulated in far grander and more towering piles. Secondly, the light and the appearances of the declining and the setting sun are much more fitted to be types and characters of the Infinite. And thirdly (which is the main reason), the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the antagonist thought of death, and the wintry sterility of the grave. For it may be observed generally, that wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On these accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the thought of death when I am walking alone in the endless days of summer; and any particular death, if not more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I omit, might have been the immediate occasions of the following dream, to which, however, a predisposition must always have existed in my mind; but having been once roused it never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic varieties, which often suddenly reunited, and composed again the original dream. I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May, that it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene which could really be commanded from that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnised by the power of dreams. There were the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet; but the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was interspace far larger between them of meadows and forest lawns; the hedges were rich with white roses; and no living creature was to be seen, excepting that in the green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a little before sunrise in the same summer, when that child died. I gazed upon the well- known scene, and I said aloud (as I thought) to myself, "It yet wants much of sunrise, and it is Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which they celebrate the first fruits of resurrection. I will walk abroad; old griefs shall be forgotten to-day; for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high and stretch away to heaven; and the forest glades are as quiet as the churchyard, and with the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer." And I turned as if to open my garden gate, and immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different, but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony with the other. The scene was an Oriental one, and there also it was Easter Sunday, and very early in the morning. And at a vast distance were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great city--an image or faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood from some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone and shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman, and I looked, and it was--Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly, and I said to her at length: "So, then, I have found you at last." I waited, but she answered me not a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last, and yet again how different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamplight fell upon her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann, that to me were not polluted), her eyes were streaming with tears: the tears were now wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was at that time, but in all other points the same, and not older. Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I now gazed upon her with some awe; but suddenly her countenance grew dim, and turning to the mountains I perceived vapours rolling between us. In a moment all had vanished, thick darkness came on, and in the twinkling of an eye I was far away from mountains, and by lamplight in Oxford Street, walking again with Ann--just as we walked seventeen years before, when we were both children. As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character, from 1820. The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams--a music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like _that_, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day--a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where--somehow, I knew not how--by some beings, I knew not whom--a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, was evolving like a great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where of necessity we make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it, and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives--I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad, darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed--and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then--everlasting farewells! And with a sigh, such as the caves of Hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated--everlasting farewells! And again and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud--"I will sleep no more." But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative which has already extended to an unreasonable length. Within more spacious limits the materials which I have used might have been better unfolded, and much which I have not used might have been added with effect. Perhaps, however, enough has been given. It now remains that I should say something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally brought to a crisis. The reader is already aware (from a passage near the beginning of the introduction to the first part) that the Opium-eater has, in some way or other, "unwound almost to its final links the accursed chain which bound him." By what means? To have narrated this according to the original intention would have far exceeded the space which can now be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I should, on a maturer view of the case, have been exceedingly unwilling to injure, by any such unaffecting details, the impression of the history itself, as an appeal to the prudence and the conscience of the yet unconfirmed opium-eater--or even (though a very inferior consideration) to injure its effect as a composition. The interest of the judicious reader will not attach itself chiefly to the subject of the fascinating spells, but to the fascinating power. Not the Opium-eater, but the opium, is the true hero of the tale, and the legitimate centre on which the interest revolves. The object was to display the marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or for pain: if that is done, the action of the piece has closed. However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the contrary, will persist in asking what became of the Opium-eater, and in what state he now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is aware that opium had long ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it was solely by the tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it that it kept its hold. Yet, as other tortures, no less it may be thought, attended the non-abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was left; and _that_ might as well have been adopted which, however terrific in itself, held out a prospect of final restoration to happiness. This appears true; but good logic gave the author no strength to act upon it. However, a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis for other objects still dearer to him--and which will always be far dearer to him than his life, even now that it is again a happy one. I saw that I must die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that should be required, to die in throwing it off. How much I was at that time taking I cannot say, for the opium which I used had been purchased for me by a friend, who afterwards refused to let me pay him; so that I could not ascertain even what quantity I had used within the year. I apprehend, however, that I took it very irregularly, and that I varied from about fifty or sixty grains to 150 a day. My first task was to reduce it to forty, to thirty, and as fast as I could to twelve grains. I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_ state. Think of me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered, and much perhaps in the situation of him who has been racked, as I collect the torments of that state from the affecting account of them left by a most innocent sufferer {20} of the times of James I. Meantime, I derived no benefit from any medicine, except one prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, viz., ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical account, therefore, of my emancipation I have not much to give, and even that little, as managed by a man so ignorant of medicine as myself, would probably tend only to mislead. At all events, it would be misplaced in this situation. The moral of the narrative is addressed to the opium-eater, and therefore of necessity limited in its application. If he is taught to fear and tremble, enough has been effected. But he may say that the issue of my case is at least a proof that opium, after a seventeen years' use and an eight years' abuse of its powers, may still be renounced, and that _he_ may chance to bring to the task greater energy than I did, or that with a stronger constitution than mine he may obtain the same results with less. This may be true. I would not presume to measure the efforts of other men by my own. I heartily wish him more energy. I wish him the same success. Nevertheless, I had motives external to myself which he may unfortunately want, and these supplied me with conscientious supports which mere personal interests might fail to supply to a mind debilitated by opium. Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of diminishing the opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of physical regeneration; and I may add that ever since, at intervals, I have had a restoration of more than youthful spirits, though under the pressure of difficulties which in a less happy state of mind I should have called misfortunes. One memorial of my former condition still remains--my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton) With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms. APPENDIX From the "London Magazine" for December 1822. The interest excited by the two papers bearing this title, in our numbers for September and October 1821, will have kept our promise of a Third Part fresh in the remembrance of our readers. That we are still unable to fulfil our engagement in its original meaning will, we, are sure, be matter of regret to them as to ourselves, especially when they have perused the following affecting narrative. It was composed for the purpose of being appended to an edition of the Confessions in a separate volume, which is already before the public, and we have reprinted it entire, that our subscribers may be in possession of the whole of this extraordinary history. * * * * * The proprietors of this little work having determined on reprinting it, some explanation seems called for, to account for the non-appearance of a third part promised in the _London Magazine_ of December last; and the more so because the proprietors, under whose guarantee that promise was issued, might otherwise be implicated in the blame--little or much--attached to its non-fulfilment. This blame, in mere justice, the author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the exact amount of the guilt which he thus appropriates is a very dark question to his own judgment, and not much illuminated by any of the masters in casuistry whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one hand it seems generally agreed that a promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made; for which reason it is that we see many persons break promises without scruple that are made to a whole nation, who keep their faith religiously in all private engagements, breaches of promise towards the stronger party being committed at a man's own peril; on the other hand, the only parties interested in the promises of an author are his readers, and these it is a point of modesty in any author to believe as few as possible--or perhaps only one, in which case any promise imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking to think of. Casuistry dismissed, however, the author throws himself on the indulgent consideration of all who may conceive themselves aggrieved by his delay, in the following account of his own condition from the end of last year, when the engagement was made, up nearly to the present time. For any purpose of self-excuse it might be sufficient to say that intolerable bodily suffering had totally disabled him for almost any exertion of mind, more especially for such as demands and presupposes a pleasurable and genial state of feeling; but, as a case that may by possibility contribute a trifle to the medical history of opium, in a further stage of its action than can often have been brought under the notice of professional men, he has judged that it might be acceptable to some readers to have it described more at length. _Fiat experimentum in corpore vili_ is a just rule where there is any reasonable presumption of benefit to arise on a large scale. What the benefit may be will admit of a doubt, but there can be none as to the value of the body; for a more worthless body than his own the author is free to confess cannot be. It is his pride to believe that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human system, that hardly ever could have been meant to be seaworthy for two days under the ordinary storms and wear and tear of life; and indeed, if that were the creditable way of disposing of human bodies, he must own that he should almost be ashamed to bequeath his wretched structure to any respectable dog. But now to the case, which, for the sake of avoiding the constant recurrence of a cumbersome periphrasis, the author will take the liberty of giving in the first person. * * * * * Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium. This impression I meant to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because the very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffering necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of surveying his own case as a cool spectator, and a degree of spirits for adequately describing it which it would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking from the station of an actual sufferer; secondly, because I, who had descended from so large a quantity as 8,000 drops to so small a one (comparatively speaking) as a quantity ranging between 300 and 160 drops, might well suppose that the victory was in effect achieved. In suffering my readers, therefore, to think of me as of a reformed opium-eater, I left no impression but what I shared myself; and, as may be seen, even this impression was left to be collected from the general tone of the conclusion, and not from any specific words, which are in no instance at variance with the literal truth. In no long time after that paper was written I became sensible that the effort which remained would cost me far more energy than I had anticipated, and the necessity for making it was more apparent every month. In particular I became aware of an increasing callousness or defect of sensibility in the stomach, and this I imagined might imply a scirrhous state of that organ, either formed or forming. An eminent physician, to whose kindness I was at that time deeply indebted, informed me that such a termination of my case was not impossible, though likely to be forestalled by a different termination in the event of my continuing the use of opium. Opium therefore I resolved wholly to abjure as soon as I should find myself at liberty to bend my undivided attention and energy to this purpose. It was not, however, until the 24th of June last that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having previously settled in my own mind that I would not flinch, but would "stand up to the scratch" under any possible "punishment." I must premise that about 170 or 180 drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months; occasionally I had run up as high as 500, and once nearly to 700; in repeated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone as low as 100 drops; but had found it impossible to stand it beyond the fourth day--which, by the way, I have always found more difficult to get over than any of the preceding three. I went off under easy sail--130 drops a day for three days; on the fourth I plunged at once to 80. The misery which I now suffered "took the conceit" out of me at once, and for about a month I continued off and on about this mark; then I sunk to 60, and the next day to--none at all. This was the first day for nearly ten years that I had existed without opium. I persevered in my abstinence for ninety hours; i.e., upwards of half a week. Then I took--ask me not how much; say, ye severest, what would ye have done? Then I abstained again--then took about 25 drops then abstained; and so on. Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks of my experiment were these: enormous irritability and excitement of the whole system; the stomach in particular restored to a full feeling of vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain; unceasing restlessness night and day; sleep--I scarcely knew what it was; three hours out of the twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agitated and shallow that I heard every sound that was near me. Lower jaw constantly swelling, mouth ulcerated, and many other distressing symptoms that would be tedious to repeat; amongst which, however, I must mention one, because it had never failed to accompany any attempt to renounce opium--viz., violent sternutation. This now became exceedingly troublesome, sometimes lasting for two hours at once, and recurring at least twice or three times a day. I was not much surprised at this on recollecting what I had somewhere heard or read, that the membrane which lines the nostrils is a prolongation of that which lines the stomach; whence, I believe, are explained the inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram drinkers. The sudden restoration of its original sensibility to the stomach expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is remarkable also that during the whole period of years through which I had taken opium I had never once caught cold (as the phrase is), nor even the slightest cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, and a cough soon after. In an unfinished fragment of a letter begun about this time to--I find these words: "You ask me to write the--Do you know Beaumont and Fletcher's play of "Thierry and Theodore"? There you will see my case as to sleep; nor is it much of an exaggeration in other features. I protest to you that I have a greater influx of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts which had been frozen up for a decade of years by opium had now, according to the old fable, been thawed at once--such a multitude stream in upon me from all quarters. Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability that for one which I detain and write down fifty escape me: in spite of my weariness from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or sit for two minutes together. 'I nunc, et versus tecum meditare canoros.'" At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbouring surgeon, requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he came; and after briefly stating the case to him, I asked this question; Whether he did not think that the opium might have acted as a stimulus to the digestive organs, and that the present state of suffering in the stomach, which manifestly was the cause of the inability to sleep, might arise from indigestion? His answer was; No; on the contrary, he thought that the suffering was caused by digestion itself, which should naturally go on below the consciousness, but which from the unnatural state of the stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was become distinctly perceptible. This opinion was plausible; and the unintermitting nature of the suffering disposes me to think that it was true, for if it had been any mere _irregular_ affection of the stomach, it should naturally have intermitted occasionally, and constantly fluctuated as to degree. The intention of nature, as manifested in the healthy state, obviously is to withdraw from our notice all the vital motions, such as the circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction of the lungs, the peristaltic action of the stomach, &c., and opium, it seems, is able in this, as in other instances, to counteract her purposes. By the advice of the surgeon I tried _bitters_. For a short time these greatly mitigated the feelings under which I laboured, but about the forty-second day of the experiment the symptoms already noticed began to retire, and new ones to arise of a different and far more tormenting class; under these, but with a few intervals of remission, I have since continued to suffer. But I dismiss them undescribed for two reasons: first, because the mind revolts from retracing circumstantially any sufferings from which it is removed by too short or by no interval. To do this with minuteness enough to make the review of any use would be indeed _infandum renovare dolorem_, and possibly without a sufficient motive; for secondly, I doubt whether this latter state be anyway referable to opium--positively considered, or even negatively; that is, whether it is to be numbered amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium, or even amongst the earliest evils consequent upon a _want_ of opium in a system long deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the symptoms might be accounted for from the time of year (August), for though the summer was not a hot one, yet in any case the sum of all the heat _funded_ (if one may say so) during the previous months, added to the existing heat of that month, naturally renders August in its better half the hottest part of the year; and it so happened that--the excessive perspiration which even at Christmas attends any great reduction in the daily quantum of opium--and which in July was so violent as to oblige me to use a bath five or six times a day--had about the setting-in of the hottest season wholly retired, on which account any bad effect of the heat might be the more unmitigated. Another symptom--viz., what in my ignorance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes affecting the shoulders, &c., but more often appearing to be seated in the stomach)--seemed again less probably attributable to the opium, or the want of opium, than to the dampness of the house {21} which I inhabit, which had about this time attained its maximum, July having been, as usual, a month of incessant rain in our most rainy part of England. Under these reasons for doubting whether opium had any connexion with the latter stage of my bodily wretchedness--except, indeed, as an occasional cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and thus predisposed to any mal-influence whatever--I willingly spare my reader all description of it; let it perish to him, and would that I could as easily say let it perish to my own remembrances, that any future hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal of possible human misery! So much for the sequel of my experiment. As to the former stage, in which probably lies the experiment and its application to other cases, I must request my reader not to forget the reasons for which I have recorded it. These were two: First, a belief that I might add some trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent. In this I am aware that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of the torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the subject which besieged me whilst writing that part of my paper; which part being immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of latitude), cannot be corrected or improved. But from this account, rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may arise to the persons most interested in such a history of opium, viz., to opium- eaters in general, that it establishes, for their consolation and encouragement, the fact that opium may be renounced, and without greater sufferings than an ordinary resolution may support, and by a pretty rapid course {22} of descent. To communicate this result of my experiment was my foremost purpose. Secondly, as a purpose collateral to this, I wished to explain how it had become impossible for me to compose a Third Part in time to accompany this republication; for during the time of this experiment the proof-sheets of this reprint were sent to me from London, and such was my inability to expand or to improve them, that I could not even bear to read them over with attention enough to notice the press errors or to correct any verbal inaccuracies. These were my reasons for troubling my reader with any record, long or short, of experiments relating to so truly base a subject as my own body; and I am earnest with the reader that he will not forget them, or so far misapprehend me as to believe it possible that I would condescend to so rascally a subject for its own sake, or indeed for any less object than that of general benefit to others. Such an animal as the self-observing valetudinarian I know there is; I have met him myself occasionally, and I know that he is the worst imaginable _heautontimoroumenos_; aggravating and sustaining, by calling into distinct consciousness, every symptom that would else perhaps, under a different direction given to the thoughts, become evanescent. But as to myself, so profound is my contempt for this undignified and selfish habit, that I could as little condescend to it as I could to spend my time in watching a poor servant girl, to whom at this moment I hear some lad or other making love at the back of my house. Is it for a Transcendental Philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an occasion? Or can I, whose life is worth only eight and a half years' purchase, be supposed to have leisure for such trivial employments? However, to put this out of question, I shall say one thing, which will perhaps shock some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of his time on the phenomena of his own body without some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so far from looking upon mine with any complacency or regard, I hate it, and make it the object of my bitter ridicule and contempt; and I should not be displeased to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. And, in testification of my sincerity in saying this, I shall make the following offer. Like other men, I have particular fancies about the place of my burial; having lived chiefly in a mountainous region, I rather cleave to the conceit, that a grave in a green churchyard amongst the ancient and solitary hills will be a sublimer and more tranquil place of repose for a philosopher than any in the hideous Golgothas of London. Yet if the gentlemen of Surgeons' Hall think that any benefit can redound to their science from inspecting the appearances in the body of an opium-eater, let them speak but a word, and I will take care that mine shall be legally secured to them--i.e., as soon as I have done with it myself. Let them not hesitate to express their wishes upon any scruples of false delicacy and consideration for my feelings; I assure them they will do me too much honour by "demonstrating" on such a crazy body as mine, and it will give me pleasure to anticipate this posthumous revenge and insult inflicted upon that which has caused me so much suffering in this life. Such bequests are not common; reversionary benefits contingent upon the death of the testator are indeed dangerous to announce in many cases: of this we have a remarkable instance in the habits of a Roman prince, who used, upon any notification made to him by rich persons that they had left him a handsome estate in their wills, to express his entire satisfaction at such arrangements and his gracious acceptance of those loyal legacies; but then, if the testators neglected to give him immediate possession of the property, if they traitorously "persisted in living" (_si vivere perseverarent_, as Suetonius expresses it), he was highly provoked, and took his measures accordingly. In those times, and from one of the worst of the Caesars, we might expect such conduct; but I am sure that from English surgeons at this day I need look for no expressions of impatience, or of any other feelings but such as are answerable to that pure love of science and all its interests which induces me to make such an offer. Sept 30, 1822 FOOTNOTES {1} "Not yet _recorded_," I say; for there is one celebrated man of the present day, who, if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly exceeded me in quantity. {2} A third exception might perhaps have been added; and my reason for not adding that exception is chiefly because it was only in his juvenile efforts that the writer whom I allude to expressly addressed hints to philosophical themes; his riper powers having been all dedicated (on very excusable and very intelligible grounds, under the present direction of the popular mind in England) to criticism and the Fine Arts. This reason apart, however, I doubt whether he is not rather to be considered an acute thinker than a subtle one. It is, besides, a great drawback on his mastery over philosophical subjects that he has obviously not had the advantage of a regular scholastic education: he has not read Plato in his youth (which most likely was only his misfortune), but neither has he read Kant in his manhood (which is his fault). {3} I disclaim any allusion to _existing_ professors, of whom indeed I know only one. {4} To this same Jew, by the way, some eighteen months afterwards, I applied again on the same business; and, dating at that time from a respectable college, I was fortunate enough to gain his serious attention to my proposals. My necessities had not arisen from any extravagance or youthful levities (these my habits and the nature of my pleasures raised me far above), but simply from the vindictive malice of my guardian, who, when he found himself no longer able to prevent me from going to the university, had, as a parting token of his good nature, refused to sign an order for granting me a shilling beyond the allowance made to me at school--viz., 100 pounds per annum. Upon this sum it was in my time barely possible to have lived in college, and not possible to a man who, though above the paltry affectation of ostentatious disregard for money, and without any expensive tastes, confided nevertheless rather too much in servants, and did not delight in the petty details of minute economy. I soon, therefore, became embarrassed, and at length, after a most voluminous negotiation with the Jew (some parts of which, if I had leisure to rehearse them, would greatly amuse my readers), I was put in possession of the sum I asked for, on the "regular" terms of paying the Jew seventeen and a half per cent. by way of annuity on all the money furnished; Israel, on his part, graciously resuming no more than about ninety guineas of the said money, on account of an attorney's bill (for what services, to whom rendered, and when, whether at the siege of Jerusalem, at the building of the second Temple, or on some earlier occasion, I have not yet been able to discover). How many perches this bill measured I really forget; but I still keep it in a cabinet of natural curiosities, and some time or other I believe I shall present it to the British Museum. {5} The Bristol mail is the best appointed in the Kingdom, owing to the double advantages of an unusually good road and of an extra sum for the expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. {6} It will be objected that many men, of the highest rank and wealth, have in our own day, as well as throughout our history, been amongst the foremost in courting danger in battle. True; but this is not the case supposed; long familiarity with power has to them deadened its effect and its attractions. {7} [Greek text]. {8} [Greek text]. EURIP. Orest. {9} [Greek text]. {10} [Greek text]. The scholar will know that throughout this passage I refer to the early scenes of the Orestes; one of the most beautiful exhibitions of the domestic affections which even the dramas of Euripides can furnish. To the English reader it may be necessary to say that the situation at the opening of the drama is that of a brother attended only by his sister during the demoniacal possession of a suffering conscience (or, in the mythology of the play, haunted by the Furies), and in circumstances of immediate danger from enemies, and of desertion or cold regard from nominal friends. {11} _Evanesced_: this way of going off the stage of life appears to have been well known in the 17th century, but at that time to have been considered a peculiar privilege of blood-royal, and by no means to be allowed to druggists. For about the year 1686 a poet of rather ominous name (and who, by-the-bye, did ample justice to his name), viz., Mr. _Flat-man_, in speaking of the death of Charles II. expresses his surprise that any prince should commit so absurd an act as dying, because, says he, "Kings should disdain to die, and only _disappear_." They should _abscond_, that is, into the other world. {12} Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted; for in a pirated edition of Buchan's _Domestic Medicine_, which I once saw in the hands of a farmer's wife, who was studying it for the benefit of her health, the Doctor was made to say--"Be particularly careful never to take above five-and-twenty _ounces_ of laudanum at once;" the true reading being probably five-and-twenty _drops_, which are held equal to about one grain of crude opium. {13} Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c., who show sufficiently by their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, I must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of _Anastasius_. This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to presume him an opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him in that character, from the grievous misrepresentation which he gives of its effects at pp. 215-17 of vol. i. Upon consideration it must appear such to the author himself, for, waiving the errors I have insisted on in the text, which (and others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will himself admit that an old gentleman "with a snow-white beard," who eats "ample doses of opium," and is yet able to deliver what is meant and received as very weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, is but an indifferent evidence that opium either kills people prematurely or sends them into a madhouse. But for my part, I see into this old gentleman and his motives: the fact is, he was enamoured of "the little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug" which Anastasius carried about him; and no way of obtaining it so safe and so feasible occurred as that of frightening its owner out of his wits (which, by the bye, are none of the strongest). This commentary throws a new light upon the case, and greatly improves it as a story; for the old gentleman's speech, considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly absurd; but considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently. {14} I have not the book at this moment to consult; but I think the passage begins--"And even that tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion," &c. {15} A handsome newsroom, of which I was very politely made free in passing through Manchester by several gentlemen of that place, is called, I think, _The Porch_; whence I, who am a stranger in Manchester, inferred that the subscribers meant to profess themselves followers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that this is a mistake. {16} I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one grain of opium, which, I believe, is the common estimate. However, as both may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Teaspoons vary as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 drops; so that 8,000 drops are about eighty times a teaspoonful. The reader sees how much I kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance. {17} This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A London magistrate (Harriott's _Struggles through Life_, vol. iii. p. 391, third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying laudanum for the gout he took _forty_ drops, the next night _sixty_, and on the fifth night _eighty_, without any effect whatever; and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle; and in my projected medical treatise on opium, which I will publish provided the College of Surgeons will pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings upon this subject, I will relate it; but it is far too good a story to be published gratis. {18} See the common accounts in any Eastern traveller or voyager of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced to desperation by ill-luck at gambling. {19} The reader must remember what I here mean by _thinking_, because else this would be a very presumptuous expression. England, of late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative and combining thought; but there is a sad dearth of masculine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us that he is obliged to quit even mathematics for want of encouragement. {20} William Lithgow. His book (Travels, &c.) is ill and pedantically written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at Malaga is overpoweringly affecting. {21} In saying this I mean no disrespect to the individual house, as the reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception of one or two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have been coated with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any house in this mountainous district which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of books, I flatter myself, is conducted on just principles in this country; but for any other architecture, it is in a barbarous state, and what is worse, in a retrograde state. {22} On which last notice I would remark that mine was _too_ rapid, and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather, perhaps, it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the reader may judge for himself, and above all that the Opium-eater, who is preparing to retire from business, may have every sort of information before him, I subjoin my diary:-- First Week Second Week Drops of Laud. Drops of Laud. Mond. June 24 ... 130 Mond. July 1 ... 80 25 ... 140 2 ... 80 26 ... 130 3 ... 90 27 ... 80 4 ... 100 28 ... 80 5 ... 80 29 ... 80 6 ... 80 30 ... 80 7 ... 80 Third Week Fourth Week Mond. July 8 ... 300 Mond. July 15 ... 76 9 ... 50 16 ... 73.5 10 } 17 ... 73.5 11 } Hiatus in 18 ... 70 12 } MS. 19 ... 240 13 } 20 ... 80 14 ... 76 21 ... 350 Fifth Week Mond. July 22 ... 60 23 ... none. 24 ... none. 25 ... none. 26 ... 200 27 ... none. What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask perhaps, to such numbers as 300, 350, &c.? The _impulse_ to these relapses was mere infirmity of purpose; the _motive_, where any motive blended with this impulse, was either the principle, of "_reculer pour mieux sauter_;" (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which on awakening found itself partly accustomed to this new ration); or else it was this principle--that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be borne best which meet with a mood of anger. Now, whenever I ascended to my large dose I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have borne anything. 
43012	----	Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/opiumeatingauto00phil OPIUM EATING. An Autobiographical Sketch. by AN HABITUATE. Philadelphia. Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 624, 626 & 628 Market Street. 1876. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. J. Fagan & Son, Stereotype Founders, Philadelphia. Selheimer & Moore, Printers. 501 Chestnut Street. PREFACE. The following narration of the personal experiences of the writer is submitted to the reader at the request of numerous friends, who are of opinion that it will be interesting as well as beneficial to the public. The reader is forewarned that in the perusal of the succeeding pages, he will not find the incomparable music of De Quincey's prose, or the easy-flowing and harmonious graces of his inimitable style, as presented in the "Confessions of an English Opium Eater;" but a dull and trudging narrative of solid facts, disarrayed of all flowers of speech, and delivered by a mind, the faculties of which are bound up and baked hard by the searing properties of opium--a mind without elasticity or fertility--a mind prostrate. The only excuse for writing the book in this mental condition was, and is, that the prospect of ever being able to write under more favorable circumstances appeared too doubtful to rely upon; I felt that I had better now do the best I could, lest my mouth be sealed forever with my message undelivered. The result is before the reader in the following chapters; his charitable judgment of which I have entreated in the body of the work. The introductory part of the book, that relating to my imprisonment, is inserted for my own justification. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I. I Enter the Army.--Taken Prisoner.--Sufferings on the Road to and at Richmond.--Leave Richmond for Danville.--Our Sojourn at the Latter Place.--The Small-pox.--Removal to Andersonville 13 CHAPTER II. Entrance into Andersonville Prison.--Horrible Sights.--The Belle Islanders.--The Kind of Treatment for first few Months.--Condition of Things generally during that Time.--New Prisoners.--Inauguration of Cruel Treatment.-- Going out for Fuel and Shelter Prohibited.--Rations Diminished.--The Philosophy of Southern Prison Discipline.--Severities of Climate and Dreadful Suffering 19 CHAPTER III. The Chickamauga Men.--Personal Experiences and Sufferings.--Merchandising at Andersonville.--The Plymouth Men.--A God-send to the Old Residents.--"Popular Prices" 28 CHAPTER IV. Ravages of the Scurvy among the Chickamauga Prisoners.--Too long without Fruit and Vegetables.--The Horrors of the Scurvy.--Certain Death.--Frightful Mortality.--Fortunate Removal from Andersonville.--Arrival at Charleston, S. C.--Transferred to Florence, S. C.--Description of the latter Prison.--Shortest Rations ever Issued.--Certain Starvation on the Rations.--Efforts for more Food.-- Providential Success.--Three Days without Rations.-- Prison-Keepers Cruel and Inhuman.--Terrible Sufferings during the Winter.--Unparalleled Mortality.--Raw Rations and Insufficient Fuel.--Life under Ground.--Swamp Fever.--Taken with the Fever.--Flight from Florence.-- Wilmington.--Goldsboro'.--Hard Times of a Sick Man.-- Prison Exchange Foolery.--Back to Wilmington 34 CHAPTER V. Return to Goldsboro'.--Drunk with Fever.--Too Sick to Walk.--Left Behind.--God Bless the Ladies of Goldsboro'.--Personal Experiences.--Negotiations for a Friend.--An Improvised Hospital.--Sick unto Death.--Semi-Consciousness.--More Kindness from the Ladies of Goldsboro'.--Paroled.--Passed into our Lines near Wilmington.--At Wilmington in the Hands of the Blue Coats.--Friend Lost.--Still very Sick with Fever.-- Determined to go North.--Efforts to get North.--On board Ship.--Ho, for Annapolis.--Incidents of the Voyage.-- Annapolis.--Getting Better.--Stomach Trouble.--Sent to Baltimore.--Furloughed Home 44 CHAPTER VI. At Home.--Nothing but a Skeleton.--A good Imitation of Lazarus.--A digression upon the Subject of Sleeplessness.--A well-intended Fraud on a Hospital Nurse.--Return of Sleep.--Improvement in Health.--Stomach the only Difficulty.--A Year passes.--Stomach Worse.--Constant Headache.--Much Debilitated.--Awful Suffering.--Bodily Agony Debilitates the Mind.--Sufferings Intolerable.--Physicians and Remedies Tried without Avail.--Forlorn Hope and Last Resort.--Better.--Doubts as to Treatment.--Suspicions Confirmed.--Uncomplimentary Remarks concerning an M. D.--Uncomfortable Discoveries and Reflections 50 CHAPTER VII. The War Begins.--Struggles to Renounce Opium.--Physical Phenomena Observed in attempting to Leave Off the Drug.--Difficulty in Abjuring the Fiend.--I Fail Absolutely.--Some Difference with De Quincey regarding the Effects of Opium.--A Preliminary Foresight into the Horrors of Opium 61 CHAPTER VIII. De Quincey's Life rather than his Writings the Best Evidence of the Effect of Opium upon Him.--Disapproval of his Manner of Treatment of the Subject in His "Confessions."--From First to Last the Effect of Opium is to Produce Unhappiness.--The Difference between the Effect of the Drug taken Hypodermically and Otherwise, Explained.--The various Effects of Opium, Stimulative and Narcotic, Described.--The Effect of my First Dose at the beginning of Habit.--Remarks of De Quincey on his First Dose.--My own Remarks as to First Dose.--Difference between Opium and Liquor.--Stimulation is followed by Collapse.-- Melancholy from the Beginning.--Nervousness and Distraction of the Intellectual Powers.--Sleeplessness.--Different and Peculiar Influences of the Drug Detailed.--Pressure upon the Brain from Excessive Use of Opium.--Distress in the Epigastrium.--The Working of the Brain Impeded 70 CHAPTER IX. De Quincey _versus_ Coleridge.--Stimulation and Collapse Considered.--The Use of Opium always to be Condemned.-- Coleridge Defended.--Wretched State of the Opium Eater.--An Explanatory Remark 77 CHAPTER X. The Delusions and Miseries of the First Stages of Opium Eating 82 CHAPTER XI. Later Stages.--The Opium Appetite.--Circean Power of Opium.--As a Medicine.--Difference between Condition of Victim in Primary and Secondary Stages 91 CHAPTER XII. The Address of the Opium Eater.--How he Occupies his Time.--The Refuge of Solitude and Silence.--Indifference to Society or Company.--Disposition, Predilections, and General Conduct 96 CHAPTER XIII. On Energy and Ambition as Affected by the Opium Habit 98 CHAPTER XIV. Opium _versus_ Sleep.--Manner of Taking Opium.--Different Considerations Relating to the Habit.--A Prophetic Warning 105 CHAPTER XV. Difficulties of Writing this Book.--An Attempt to Renounce Opium in the Later Stages of the Habit Described.-- Coleridge and De Quincey.--Animadversions upon De Quincey's "Confessions" 115 CHAPTER XVI. Conclusion 129 APPENDIX. NOTE NO. 1.--Coleridge and the Critics 131 " " 2.--Coleridge and Plagiarism 132 " " 3.--A Mare's Nest 134 " " 4.--Second note on Coleridge and Plagiarism 136 " " 5.--On De Quincey's Style of Writing 138 " " 6.--Third Note on Coleridge and Plagiarism 140 OPIUM EATING. CHAPTER I. I ENTER THE ARMY.--TAKEN PRISONER.--SUFFERINGS ON THE ROAD TO AND AT RICHMOND.--LEAVE RICHMOND FOR DANVILLE.--OUR SOJOURN AT THE LATTER PLACE.--THE SMALL-POX.--REMOVAL TO ANDERSONVILLE. In the year 1861, a well and hearty boy of sixteen, I enlisted in the army as a drummer. This was my only possibility of entering the service, as I was too young to be accepted as a private soldier. Though but a drummer, I fought with a gun in all the battles in which our regiment was engaged. It generally so happened that I had no drum about the time of a battle, and being too small to carry off the wounded, and feeling that I was not fulfilling my duty to my country unless I did "the State some service," I participated in the battle of Stone River, and doing tolerably well there, when the battle of Chickamauga drew nigh, the colonel of our regiment told me, casually, that he would like to see me along; and I did not fail him. He did not command me; he had no authority to do that; it was not necessary; I would have been on hand without his referring to the matter at all, as such was my intention. As it was, I took a sick man's gun and accoutrements and marched with my company. On the first day of the battle--the 19th of September, 1863--I was captured. Not being wounded, I was taken with about five thousand other prisoners to Richmond, Va., and confined there in the tobacco-factory prisons. On the way to Richmond we had but little to eat, and suffered considerably. At Richmond, our allowance of food was so small, that during the two and one-half months we were there we became miserably weak, and suffered terribly. It is no doubt a fact, that although hard enough to bear at any time, gradual starvation sets harder upon a man at first than when he has become somewhat accustomed to it. Perhaps this is reasonable enough; the stomach and body being stronger at first, the pangs are more fierce and exhausting. After being at Richmond three weeks, we could not rise to our feet without crawling up gradually by holding to the wall. Any sudden attempt to rise usually resulted in what is called "blind staggers,"--a fearful, floating, blinding sensation in the head. Hunger is the most exasperating and maddening of all human suffering, as I do know from most wretched experience. It lengthens out time beyond all calculation, and reduces a man to nothing above a mere savage animal. It makes him a glaring, raging, ferocious brute, and were it not for the accompanying weakness and debility, it would rob him of every instinct of humanity, for the time being. One at length arrives at the conclusion, that all a reasonable being requires in this life, to make him completely happy, is enough to eat. No one that has not experienced it can understand the cruel tedium of hunger, and the eternal war that rages among one's ferocious inwards, as they struggle to devour and consume themselves; the everlasting gnaw, gnaw, as though one's stomach were populated with famished rats. It seems that hunger, long continued, sucks all the substance out of the very material of a man's stomach, and leaves it dry, hard, and serviceless; and also so contracted in size as not to answer the ends of a stomach at all. In short, constant hunger, continued for an unreasonable length of time, will utterly ruin the stomach. Although the month was November, I sold my shoes for bread, despite the weather being so cold that I was forced to rise long before daylight in the morning, and find, if possible, some warmer place in the house. We had no stoves; no heat of any kind to keep us warm was supplied by the Confederates, and up to this time no clothing or blankets had been furnished by any one. Soon after this, however,--Providence and the good women of the North be thanked,--the Sanitary Commission of the United States sent us each a suit of clothes and a blanket. Directly after the receipt of the clothing, we were removed to Danville, Va. Here we remained until the following spring. During the time we were at Danville, we suffered considerably from cold and close confinement. The small-pox also broke out among us, and attacked a great many, but in most cases in a mild form. Those afflicted had it as violently as could be expected under the circumstances, their systems being in such a depleted condition that the disease had nothing to feed on. In fear of it, and to prevent it, many were vaccinated. I was not,--and I thank Providence that I was not, as I knew some to suffer worse from vaccination than they could have done from the small-pox, even though it terminated fatally; for it did terminate fatally in the cases of vaccination, and after more suffering than could possibly have ensued from the dreaded disease itself. The vaccine virus proved to be poisonous in some cases. I knew a man whose left arm was eaten to the bone by it, the bone being visible, and the cavity, which was circular in shape, was as large in circumference as an ordinary orange. After months of excruciating pain, the man died. But sometimes vaccination did not even prevent the small-pox. A man with whom the writer bunked was vaccinated, and it "took," what would be considered immensely well, a very large scab developing upon each arm. Yet this man took the small-pox, and badly, while the writer,--to take another view of the case,--although he had not been vaccinated for about thirteen years, and yet had been exposed to the disease in almost every way, and had slept with this man while he was taking it, and after he returned from the small-pox hospital with his sores but partially healed up, remained perfectly free of it. I thought if I must have it, I must, and there was an end of the matter; there being no way of avoiding it that I could see; and I do not know but the late vaccination, while the disease was already thickly scattered about the house, increased the danger of contagion by throwing the blood into a fever of the same kind; while by leaving the blood undisturbed, if the disease was not intercepted, the chances of taking it were at least not augmented. We left Danville in April, 1864, having been confined there about five months. Although confined very closely, and our liberties few, upon the whole, Danville was the best-provided prison I was in; the rations of food being larger and more wholesome than at any other prison. It is true that the buckets of pea-soup swam with bugs, but that was a peculiarity of that savory dish at all the prisons of the South. We became accustomed to drinking the soup, bugs and all, without any compunctions of delicacy about it, and our only and sincere wish was for more of the same kind. Many a time did I pick these bugs from between my teeth without any commotion in my stomach whatever,--save of hunger. A man becomes accustomed to this way of living, and loses all sense of delicacy regarding his food. Quantity is the only question to be considered, quality being an object so unimportant as to be entirely lost sight of. We arrived at Andersonville, Ga., five days after leaving Danville. We had a very uncomfortable journey, being penned up in freight cars, seventy-five in a car, and not allowed to get out but once during the whole journey. We changed cars once on the route, and this was the only opportunity we had of stretching our limbs during the entire trip. I now ask the reader to allow me to pause a few moments to take breath and gather strength and courage for the task before me. CHAPTER II. ENTRANCE INTO ANDERSONVILLE PRISON.--HORRIBLE SIGHTS.--THE BELLE ISLANDERS.--THE KIND OF TREATMENT FOR FIRST FEW MONTHS.--CONDITION OF THINGS GENERALLY DURING THAT TIME.--NEW PRISONERS.--INAUGURATION OF CRUEL TREATMENT.--GOING OUT FOR FUEL AND SHELTER PROHIBITED.--RATIONS DIMINISHED.--THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOUTHERN PRISON DISCIPLINE.--SEVERITIES OF CLIMATE AND DREADFUL SUFFERING. Andersonville! Dread word! Dread name for cruelty, and patriots' graves, I stand paralyzed before thy horrid gates! Thou grim Leviathan of Death! I feel heart-sick as I approach thee! I feel how powerless I am to tell thy horrible story, thou monster monument of Inhumanity in the nation's history! I feel thy fangs while yet I descry thy hideous form through the mazy scope of years! I carry thy stings, and the grave alone shall hide the scars upon the marred and shattered body thou hast sacrificed, as a tree stripped of its fruit and foliage! After being counted into detachments and nineties by the commandant, the notorious Captain Wirz, we were marched into the prison. Heavens! what a sight met our gaze as we marched into that enclosure of destruction! Lying between the stockade and the dead-line, was a long line of corpses, which was necessarily one of the first objects our eyes rested upon as we entered the prison gates. There they lay, nearly naked in their rags, but the frames--but the bones and skin of men--with their upturned, wildly-ghastly, staring faces, and wide-open eyes. This was a terrible greeting indeed; and it sent a feeling of dismay to our very souls, and after that a deep sense of despair seemed to settle upon us. We had at last met death face to face. On looking around, we saw the men whose comrades these dead men had been. They all looked alike, and we could not fail to observe the resemblance between the dead and the living. These men were from Belle Island, a rebel prison, which stands unrivalled in the history of the world for cruelty to human beings. I fervently thank God that it pleased Him that I should not be confined there. These poor, wretched men, who had been there, and who preceded us at Andersonville, were the most ghastly-looking living human beings that the eye of man ever beheld. They were nothing but skin and bone. Living skeletons. In color perfectly black. They had no shelter, and smoked themselves black over their pitch-pine fires. The limited time they survived our arrival they spent in cooking, and sitting haunched up over their little fires. They died so rapidly that, before we were aware of it, not one could be seen in the camp. They became ripe for the stroke of the sickle, all of them about the same time, and their Father gathered them to His abundant harvest. From the misfortunes of these men we took some consolation, strange as it may appear. When witnessing the terrible mortality among them, we said, "Oh, it is only the Belle Islanders that are dying." As soon as we had to some extent shaken off the depressing influence exerted upon us by the knowledge of the horrible condition of the Belle Islanders, we began to encourage ourselves with the idea that our fate would not be like theirs; that we had not been on Belle Island, nor experienced the terrible sufferings from exposure and starvation which they had been subjected to, and that, therefore, the mortality could not be so great among us as it had been among them. But we reckoned without having the least conception of what possibilities there were in the future. True, we had fared much better than the Belle Island men. We had not been so exposed to the weather, and had not suffered as much from insufficient quantity of food; we had been able to keep ourselves in better sanitary condition. We were much cleaner and better off in every way, to all appearances. But, as I remarked before, we had not the least comprehension of the possibilities of the future. We had no intimation whatever of the monster of destruction that lay sleeping in our systems, and floating torpidly about in our veins. But the awful knowledge was to dawn upon us soon, and unmistakably. Scurvy--a disease so awful and so dread, that its name to a man in such a place was but another name for death--was destined to break out among us. This disease made its appearance three months after our arrival at Andersonville. Up to that time, knowing nothing of this, suspecting nothing of the kind, we enjoyed our lives better than we had any time since our capture. During the first few months of our sojourn at Andersonville, the Confederates allowed us a sufficient quantity of food to support life. We were also comparatively free and unconfined, were out of doors, had room to walk about, and could see the shady forest. This was a great relaxation from, and improvement upon, hard walls. The rebels also--as they issued us raw rations--allowed us to get wood to cook with, and for the purpose of making shelter. For a short time, then,--and it was a short time, indeed, compared to the long term of our imprisonment,--we were happier than we had been during all of our previous captivity. But no man was ever happy long in rebel prisons, and the period of our bliss was of but short duration. Not only did men die of the scurvy as fast as the snow melts in spring, but other misfortunes befell us. Or rather, these last came in the shape of Southern barbarities; but although they were barbarities in those who inflicted them, they were serious misfortunes to the Yankee prisoners. It seemed, no sooner had the spring campaigns opened, and men came pouring into the prison as though the Northern army had been captured in full, than the rebel authorities prohibited going out for wood, so that those who came in after that date could not get out for material to make shelter with. Hence, it seemed thereafter a race between the old prisoners and the new to see who would die the soonest; the new prisoners, having no shelter, dying from exposure and other severities, and the old prisoners, having shelter, dying from the scurvy. Another misfortune to us, and barbarity in the rebels, was a decrease in the quantity of food as our numbers increased. The result of this act of cruelty was, of course, to make all weaker, old and new prisoners irrespectively. But to the new prisoners I have no doubt it came the hardest. Their stomachs were not shrunken, dried, and hardened to starvation as were those of the old prisoners. Their stomachs and systems generally being in better condition, they felt the demand for food more keenly than did the half-sick-at-the-stomach and scurvy-infected veterans of the prison-pen. Being without shelter also made in them a greater demand for food. The ravages of exposure had to be repaired. Scurvy in the systems of the old prisoners had begun to make their stomachs qualmish and less desirous of food. Besides this,--and it adds yet another barbarity to the endless list,--although we were prohibited going out for wood to cook with, raw rations were in part still issued. The prison authorities undertook to issue cooked rations, and did for the most part, but part raw rations were always issued with those that were cooked. For instance, the rebels baked our bread and cooked our meat, but always issued peas raw. As a man needed every particle of food allowed him by the rebels, this went hard enough. But it went hardest with the new prisoners. We old ones, who had arrived there prior to the stoppage of going out for wood, had in some cases laid in a supply, or in others built our shelter near a stump, which, when the wood famine came on, had to pay tribute with its roots. As the wood was generally rich with pitch, being pine, and frequently pitch-pine, a little went a great way. Furthermore, necessity ruling the times, we cooked in our little quart cups, laying under a little sliver at a time. We also built a wall of clay around our little fire, to save and concentrate the heat as much as possible. But, as the new prisoners had no wood and could get none, they were forced either to trade, if possible, their raw for cooked rations or eat them as they got them--raw,--as they did frequently enough. The reason given for prohibiting going out for wood was, that some prisoners had attempted making their escape while outside. This was a correct specimen of Southern philosophy regarding the government of Yankee prisoners. To punish all for the offence of a few, where they could conveniently, was the invariable rule. Offence! as if nature as well as reason did not teach a man to make his escape from such a place, if possible. It is his right; and it is expected that he will attempt to do so at the first opportunity, in less barbarous countries. To prevent this, guards are detailed, and they have a right to shoot a man down in the attempt if they observe him, and on command he will not surrender himself; but men, like birds, are born free, and if, being imprisoned under such circumstances, an opportunity to escape presents itself, it is not only natural for a man to avail himself of it, but it is also his duty to do so. Such was the usual custom of the rebels--to punish all for the offence of a part. Having stripped the prisoners upon the battle-field, to their very shirt and pants in many cases, they sent them into their "cattle-pen," as they termed it, to perish from exposure and starvation; their hands and feet and all exposed parts blistering in the hot sun, as though roasted in fire; scorching by day in the unbearable heat, and by night chilled to the very bone with cold. Those who have not dwelt or sojourned in the South, have no idea of the peculiarities of the climate there. In the North, during the summer, we have steady warm weather both day and night, but it is not so down South. There the days are excessively hot and the nights exceedingly chilly. I admit that this is delightful, if one has a roof over his head and bed-covering, but to a man lying upon the bare ground, without either shelter or covering of any kind, and with but scanty wearing apparel, it is a great hardship. In addition to this, it rained twenty-one days in succession during our stay at Andersonville; and the new prisoners, having no shelter, had to bear it the best they could. Now, if the reader can realize the scene I have attempted to describe, I shall be satisfied. If he can, in his mind's eye, see hundreds of emaciated, haggard, and half-naked men lying about on the bare ground of an inclosed field (which is divided into two sections by a swamp, in the middle of which runs a little ditch of water), the largest number lying around the swamp and at the edge of the rising ground; if he can see these poor fellows in the morning, after a rainy night, almost buried beneath the sand and dirt which the rain has washed down from the hillside upon them, too exhausted and weak to arise,--many that never will arise again in this life, and are now breathing their last; not a soul near to give them a drink or speak to them--I say, if the reader realizes this scene in his own mind, he will catch a faint glimpse of the actual fact as it existed. Those that are still able to get up, and remain upon their feet long enough to be counted for rations, do so when the time comes, and then lie down again in the burning sun, or, if able, pass the day in wandering wearily about the camp; the only interruption being the drawing of rations. These, when drawn, are devoured with the voraciousness of a tiger. The constant exposure to the fierce rays of a Southern sun has burned their hands and feet in great scars and blisters. Covered with sand and dirt from head to foot, their poor, shrunken bodies and cadaverous, horror-striking faces are enough to soften the heart of a Caligula or a Nero; but no pity or relief comes. Day after day they must scorch in the sun; night after night must their starved bodies shiver with cold, while the pitiless rain must chill and drench with its unceasing torrents the last spark of vitality out of them. The only relief that comes is in a speedy and inevitable death. No one can last long under these conditions, and the time required to kill a man was well ascertained and wonderfully short. To endure three such terrible hardships as gradual starvation, intolerable heat, and shivering cold, day after day and night after night in unremitting succession, man was never made. How I wish every man and woman in the North could understand, and realize in their minds and hearts, the awful condition of our men at Andersonville, as in the case of the shelterless, new, and scurvy-infected old prisoners. "It _might_ frae monie a blunder free 'em, And foolish notion." It might soften their hearts to the suffering they now see around them. CHAPTER III. THE CHICKAMAUGA MEN.--PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND SUFFERINGS.--TRADE.--MERCHANDISING AT ANDERSONVILLE.--THE PLYMOUTH MEN.--A GODSEND TO THE "OLD RESIDENTS."--"POPULAR PRICES." The condition of the old prisoners at this time (say during the month of August, 1864, and about or near four months after our arrival), as far as mortality was concerned, was fully as appalling as that of the new. While the new prisoners seemed fairly dissolving before the resistless sweep of outward influences, as fatal inward difficulties carried the old ones off just as rapidly. All in the prison drew the same rations; so none had enough to eat that depended upon their rations for their entire subsistence. So we all suffered, and suffered all we could bear, and bore suffering which, unless relieved, must end in certain death--and soon enough. We were all wasting away day by day. Though all suffered, the condition of some was worse than that of others; still, as the Confederates did not issue enough food for a man to subsist on, death in a limited time was certain to overtake all of us who depended entirely upon our rations. God knows how badly we all felt, with the insufficiency of our food, the eternal tediousness of time, and the discouraging prospect of release. But I must return to that class of prisoners of which I was a representative, the "Chickamauga men;" and before I give an account of the scurvy which broke out among us, I desire to relate briefly something of my own feelings and experiences. All I wish to say in this connection is, how hunger--this gradual starvation--affected me. The scurvy broke out, I presume, in July, among our men. At this time, and for a long time past, and during the remainder of my imprisonment, I was thin, and although not very strong, stronger than most of my comrades,--for be it remembered, I was one of the _lucky_ few that lived, and not among the great majority, for they are in the South now in their graves,--I seemed to stand it better than most men, and was pointed at and remarked about accordingly; and once, when the scurvy was at its height, I got sick and was down for a day or so, my comrades exclaimed, "Ah, ha! ---- is coming down with the rest of us!" Yet my sufferings at this time were so severe, that, had we not departed from Andersonville within a few days, as we did, I would have remained there forever. Although I had, by an ever-watchful activity, both as to bodily exercise and the obtaining of one or two small Irish potatoes, kept the scurvy in abeyance, I was so permeated with it, that I could not touch a toe of my bare foot against the merest twig, without sending, as it were, an electric shock of the most excruciating pain through every bone in my body. Ten months of prison life, during nearly all of which was continued a system of slow starvation, had so absorbed and dried up my stomach, that, although I still starved daily, the coarse corn bread, half-baked as it was, ever seemed to stick in the centre of my stomach, and cause me an incessant dull pain. This pain continued until I was finally released, and afterwards. After having survived all, and gotten home, I found my stomach so contracted, that, although I was always hungry after as well as before a meal, I could eat but very little, and that distressed me greatly. In fact, it seemed that I had saved my life at the expense of my stomach. To return to the prison. I suffered continuously, and was so weak that I spent a considerable portion of each day in a kind of trance-like condition--dreaming--my thoughts floating at will, within the limits of my mental horizon, with too little sail to be in danger of drifting very far out at sea; but I must say that in this state I passed the happiest hours of my prison life, my imagination being my greatest friend, and enabling my fancy more than once to set the prisoner free. After eating in the morning, before the heat became too intense, I would start on my trip for exercise, or to make some kind of a trade for a potato, if possible. Again in the evening, after eating, I would do the same. Naked creature that I was! All that summer my clothing consisted of a shirt and a pair of drawers! I must have had some kind of a hat. I speak of trading; to allow the reader to understand what is meant, I will explain. Although all prisoners were searched, some were fortunate enough to pass the ordeal of examination, retaining their valuables successfully concealed about them; these being traded to a guard for provisions, to wit: onions, potatoes, etc., brought the produce to the inside of the prison, and being inside was exposed for sale at a heavy profit by the lucky and enterprising Yankee. In this way several stands were started. Paroled men, going out to work during the day, on coming in at night, sometimes smuggled produce into camp, which was disposed of in the same way. But trade was never very extensive until the capture of the "Plymouth men;" then it reached its greatest proportions. The Plymouth men were so called because captured at Plymouth, N. C. They composed a brigade, and had just been paid their back-pay and veteran bounty, and were on the eve of going home on their veteran furlough, when, alas! they were unfortunately captured. These men had the easiest terms of capitulation of any prisoners taken in the late war. They were allowed to retain all of their clothing and money, and consequently marched into prison under much more favorable circumstances than prisoners generally. "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good," and the appearance of the Plymouth men in the pen at Andersonville was a providential thing for many an old prisoner. The old ones knew the tricks of trade, and soon had a great part of the Plymouth men's money. The arrival of the Plymouth men was a great blessing to many who were there before them, and in fact improved the spirits of the whole camp. As I said before, trade then went up to its highest round. Stands could be seen everywhere, and the continual crowds, surging up and down the two main thoroughfares, presented an interesting and exciting scene. Another feature in the trading line was one which always manifested itself more particularly after the drawing of rations, to wit: persons having no money would trade corn-meal for bread, or peas for bread, or bread for meat, etc., to suit their varying tastes or necessities. This noise, added to that of the stand-keepers crying their wares, raised a din above which nothing else could be heard, and gave the camp the appearance of being quite a business place. Produce was very high, however; ordinary biscuits selling for twenty-five cents (green-back) apiece, and onions seventy-five cents to a dollar. Irish potatoes, the size of a pigeon's egg, were sold for twenty-five cents each, and larger ones for more in proportion. This extensive trading was bound to decline, and then finally collapse. As the produce all came from the outside, that was where the money had to go, and as soon as the supply of money was exhausted, trade of necessity had to sink. Then only remained the trading of one kind of ration for another. This extensive trading, growing out of the Plymouth money, was a very good thing for us while it lasted. Although the great majority of the prisoners reaped no advantage from it in receiving any addition to the quantity of their food, still it enlivened the camp for all, and was a _material_ blessing to hundreds,--nay, I would perhaps be nearer the truth in saying thousands. Many an old, sun-dried veteran of a long incarceration, who would have otherwise certainly died of the scurvy, by shrewdness and dickering in some way, possessed himself of a few dollars, which, judiciously invested in raw Irish potatoes, and administered to himself, arrested the further progress of the fell destroyer, and saved his life for his friends and family. Money was a very good thing to have at Andersonville. It would have purchased life in thousands of cases. CHAPTER IV. RAVAGES OF THE SCURVY AMONG THE CHICKAMAUGA PRISONERS.--TOO LONG WITHOUT FRUIT OR VEGETABLES.--THE HORRORS OF THE SCURVY.--CERTAIN DEATH.--FRIGHTFUL MORTALITY.--FORTUNATE REMOVAL FROM ANDERSONVILLE.--ARRIVAL AT CHARLESTON, S. C.--TRANSFERRED TO FLORENCE, S. C.--DESCRIPTION OF THE LATTER PRISON.--SHORTEST RATIONS EVER ISSUED.--CERTAIN STARVATION ON THE RATIONS.--EFFORTS FOR MORE FOOD; PROVIDENTIAL SUCCESS.--THREE DAYS WITHOUT RATIONS.--PRISON-KEEPERS CRUEL AND INHUMAN.--TERRIBLE SUFFERINGS DURING THE WINTER.--UNPARALLELED MORTALITY.--RAW RATIONS AND INSUFFICIENT FUEL.--LIFE UNDER GROUND.--SWAMP FEVER.--TAKEN WITH THE FEVER.--FLIGHT FROM FLORENCE.--WILMINGTON.--GOLDSBORO'.--HARD TIMES OF A SICK MAN.--PRISON EXCHANGE FOOLERY.--BACK TO WILMINGTON. I shall now attempt a description of the ravages of the scurvy among the Chickamauga prisoners. It must have been during the month of July, 1864, that this dreadful disease made its appearance,--I mean among the men with whom I was identified (the Chickamauga men); how much sooner or later it afflicted other classes of prisoners, I am unable to state. Our men seemed to be doing well at this time, having shelter, and the rations still being tolerably fair. But it was all outward show, the inside being rotten. We had lived too long without green vegetables, or acids, or fruit of any kind. The first symptoms of the scurvy appeared in the mouth, the gums becoming black, swollen, and mortified. Then in quick succession the lower limbs were involved,--large, dark spots appearing near the knee or on the calves of the legs. These spots gradually became larger and more sore and disabling; at the same time, the cords under the knees becoming so contracted as to draw the calves back against the thighs, or nearly so. The spots varied a trifle in color,--that is, as to shades,--but generally bore the same heavy, dull, dead, blackish appearance, as though the blood had congealed in one place underneath the skin, and then putrefied. It usually took the disease several months to run its course, the spots growing larger, and the whole system becoming greatly shaken; the victim, long since deprived of the power of locomotion, lies helplessly on his back, calmly awaiting his Lord's release from his terrible suffering; until, at length, the disease reaches his bowels and vital parts, when his chain is broken, his fetters fall loosely from him, and his spirit speeds its winged flight, glorious with its sudden joy, to that prisonless realm of everlasting peace. Hundreds upon hundreds lay upon their backs in this condition, the number decreasing day by day as the quota of dead was carried off. No hope for them on this side of the valley,--and well they knew it, and died like heroes. Twenty good-sized Irish potatoes would have cured any case of scurvy before it reached the vitals; but if two would have done it, they could not have been obtained, as the rebels did not issue them, and the prisoner had no money,--so he sleeps the long last sleep. So many old prisoners died of the scurvy, that scarcely any were left to tell their story. Hovel after hovel was emptied entirely, every man swept away by the relentless scourge. Oh, what a heavy charge rests against those who could have prevented, or at least mitigated, this! But the Confederates could have prevented the scurvy entirely. Their own men did not have it. However, it is not my object to criminate or stir up old animosities. I merely wish to relate some of my prison experiences, and describe their results. There are twelve thousand "Yankee" prisoners buried at Andersonville. During the month of August, 1864, when there were thirty-five thousand men incarcerated there, the number of deaths averaged one hundred per day. All the day long the dead were being carried out, and every morning a long line of corpses, which had accumulated during the night, could be seen lying at the southern gate. It seemed as though an odor of death pervaded the atmosphere of the camp. The entire prison-ground was strewn with dying men,--dying without a groan and without a mourner. It was indeed fortunate for me that Sherman's army threatened that place during the month of September, 1864, when, so nearly gone that I could scarcely walk to the depot, I was shipped, among thousands of others, to another part of the Confederacy. We went from Andersonville to Charleston. We stayed at Charleston about one month, during which time I mended a little through having a slight change of diet. From Charleston we were removed to Florence, in the same State of South Carolina. At Florence a prison was erected something similar to the stockade at Andersonville, but smaller in dimensions. It was situated in a perfect wilderness, with swampy woodland all around it. The inclosure was not by any means cleared of fallen trees and brush when we were marched into it. This was much to our advantage, as winter was coming on. We arrived there about the latter part of October. The shelter we put up,--and all were enabled to have shelter here,--though in general more substantial than at Andersonville, in many instances I could not deem very healthy. To be explicit, I refer especially to dwelling wholly under ground. Camp reports of death statistics tended to confirm this opinion. As for myself, I had good shelter all of the time, and, during the latter part of our sojourn at Florence prison, I was an occupant of one of the best houses (shanties) in it. The rations drawn at this prison were among the shortest ever issued by the rebels to Yankee prisoners. It was certain starvation to any that depended entirely upon their rations. I did not, and for that reason I am alive to relate this history. It would be too tedious now for me to undertake to relate how I succeeded in doing otherwise; let it suffice, that every faculty of my mind was concentrated upon the subject of getting more to eat than was issued to me, and that I got it by the exercise of my faculties to the utmost,--and my muscles, too. On first arriving at Florence, I got some sweet potatoes, and these eradicated the scurvy from my body, and gave me a new lease on life; and after that my sole business was to get enough to eat, for I knew the preservation of my life depended upon it. At Andersonville, by activity and the virtue of one or two potatoes, and a taste or so of something else, perhaps, I had managed to keep the scurvy down sufficiently--and that is all--for me to get away from that place with my life; and then it seemed God's providence, more than anything else, for I had so very little to assist me. But, having gotten away from there and reached Charleston, and improved a little there, and arriving at Florence, I was placed under such influences that I regained sounder footing once more. I then went to work with a determination of trying to live as long as the rebels held me in their bonds. I knew I must get more to eat than they gave me, or die. I was an old prisoner, and very thin, and much shattered and broken, and needed all the food I could get there. A pint of meal was not enough for a man to subsist upon, as was plainly demonstrated by our men dying off with prodigious rapidity. Winter was coming on, and more food was needed instead of less. The prison authorities were cruel and persecuting. Once for three days not a mouthful of rations was issued. At the end of that period a heavy increase in the per centum of dead was carried out;--though I heard poor fellows who had stood it out saying, afterwards, that they were not so hungry on the third day as on the first. Poor fellows, the reason was plain,--their stomachs on the third day had become too weak to manifest the ordinary symptoms of hunger. Hence my effort to live was not out of place; on the contrary, if I had still a lingering hope of surviving, the greatest efforts I could put forth seemed there almost mockery, and sadly inadequate to the end. In fact, though I could not bring myself to the thought of yielding and dying, I nevertheless felt that my ever getting North again alive was most "too good a thing to happen." As far as possible, I kept the subject from my mind. Winter came on at last. The weather was cold, and, after a particularly cold night, one could go into the "poor-houses" of every "thousand," and there find men stark dead in the attitude in which they had fallen backward from their scanty fires. Each "thousand" afforded a "poor-house." These were occupied by poor wretches who, in the vain hope of saving their lives by obtaining more food or making their escape, or both, had taken the oath of allegiance to the Southern Confederacy, and joined the rebel army. The Confederates found this expedient and experiment in recruiting their depleted army a failure, and turned the "galvanized Yankees" (as they were called) back into the stockade again. Having lost their local habitation, and become isolated and alienated from their former friends, who condemned their action and remained behind, being cast off and forsaken of everybody, they congregated together in these "poor-houses," which were erected for the benefit of such as they. At Charleston and at Florence we were divided, for convenience, into sections of one thousand men each. Although located in the midst of a forest, we did not draw enough wood to cook our rations, let alone to keep us warm. A day's ration of wood was about the size of an ordinary stick of oven-wood. We were also situated in a very unhealthy place, being surrounded by an immense swamp. The swamp furnished the water we drank and consumed otherwise. A disease, commonly designated the "swamp fever," broke out, seizing a majority of us, and proving fatal in many cases. The per cent. of mortality here was far higher than at Andersonville. We were under worse conditions, and suffered and died proportionately. Though in respect to shelter our condition seemed improved, this consideration was enormously outweighed and overbalanced by our much worse condition in many other regards. The longer a man was detained in rebel prisons, the weaker he became, and we seemed to have reached the culminating point and extreme end of human endurance at this time at Florence, viz., the winter of 1864 and '65. The elements of the swamp fever were in every Florence prisoner (and bound to come out some time), and were the outgrowth and effect of the water we drank, and the other conditions in which we participated in common; and I believe that, almost without an exception, every man had it,--though some not until they were safely within our lines. With regard to myself, I was attacked by it on the evening of the night we left Florence prison forever. We took our sudden departure in the month of February, 1865. We were hurried out at a terrible rate, the rebels being greatly frightened by the report that Sherman was near. Although feeling wretchedly, and burning with fever, I went along. We were marched to the railroad, and shipped aboard freight cars, the rebels cramming as many of us as they could in each car. We were so crowded we could scarcely sit or stand; yet I was so sick that I could do neither, and had to lie down upon the floor, and risk being trampled upon. Of the journey to Wilmington, N. C., I scarcely remember anything except our starting. At Wilmington, after lying upon the sand some hours, I was assisted into the cars, and we started for Goldsboro'. At the latter place we got off the cars, and were marched some distance out of town to camp. That night there was a heavy storm, and the rain poured down in torrents. We lay upon the ground with nothing but a blanket over us; and, though I was suffering from fever, I got soaking wet to the skin. Oh, dear, it is almost heart-breaking to think over those times. Almost dead, as I was, from long privations, sickness, and exhaustion, produced by trying, in my sick and weakened state, to keep along with my companions, one would think this in addition would have utterly annihilated and finished me. The next day we marched back to Goldsboro'. It being evening, and no train ready to take us on to Salisbury, whither they said we were bound, we laid ourselves down to rest and sleep. "Care-charmer, Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my anguish, and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care, return, And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-advised youth; Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torments of the night's untruth. Cease, dreams, the images of day desires, To model forth the passions of to-morrow; Never let the rising sun prove you liars, To add more grief, to aggravate my sorrow; Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain, And never wake to feel the day's disdain." DANIEL. During the night we were awakened by a loud noise and hubbub, arising from the announcement that an exchange of prisoners had been effected, and that we were going straight back to Wilmington to be turned over to our men. This we hardly dared believe. We had been deceived so often, that we could scarcely credit the report. But trains being got ready, we were put aboard and started for Wilmington, sure enough. Arrived at the city of happy deliverance, and debarked from the cars, we lay in the wind and sun all day upon the sand. Toward evening we observed a great flurry among the Confederates, and we were suddenly got together, put upon the cars, and started for Goldsboro' again; and thus ended this exchange _fiasco_. CHAPTER V. RETURN TO GOLDSBORO'.--DRUNK WITH FEVER.--TOO SICK TO WALK.--LEFT BEHIND.--GOD BLESS THE LADIES OF GOLDSBORO'.--PERSONAL EXPERIENCES.--NEGOTIATIONS FOR A FRIEND.--AN IMPROVISED HOSPITAL.--SICK UNTO DEATH.--SEMI-CONSCIOUSNESS.--MORE KINDNESS FROM THE LADIES OF GOLDSBORO'.--PAROLED.--PASSED INTO OUR LINES NEAR WILMINGTON.--AT WILMINGTON IN THE HANDS OF THE BLUE COATS.--FRIEND LOST.--STILL VERY SICK WITH FEVER.--DETERMINED TO GO NORTH.--EFFORTS TO GET NORTH.--ON BOARD SHIP.--HO FOR ANNAPOLIS!--INCIDENTS OF THE VOYAGE.--ANNAPOLIS.-GETTING BETTER.--STOMACH TROUBLE.--SENT TO BALTIMORE.--FURLOUGHED HOME. On reaching Goldsboro', after alighting from the cars, we marched out to camp again. This last time it was all I could do to walk to the camp. I was fairly blind with fever, and staggered from side to side, almost dumb and insensible from prolonged suffering and exertion in sickness. While at Wilmington the last time, and from that time on, I was far too sick to look after myself much. I reached the camp, however, and there remained until removed by other force than my own. The next morning, after coming to this camp, the lot of prisoners to which I belonged was removed to another camping-ground, some distance away. I essayed to go along, but accomplished nothing but wild staggering to and fro, and the little distance I gained I had to be carried back over. Excepting some care received by our sick from the Sisters of Charity while we were at Charleston, Goldsboro' was the first place in the South where Southern women manifested any sympathy for our deplorable condition. Here, the last time we came, the ladies of Goldsboro', though the guards strove to keep them back, burst through the lines, and came into our camp loaded with baskets of provisions, which they distributed among the sick and most needy. On being carried back to the camp, after my futile attempt to follow my comrades, I, among other sick, was loaded on a wagon and hauled to a large brick building near Goldsboro'. Here we were taken out and carried in. I had selected as a companion, on my way thither, a boy of about my own age by the name of Orlando. I promised to share my blankets with him, if he would stay with and take care of me. As he had no blanket, and I had two, one having been left with me by a man that made his escape at Macon, Ga., Orlando gladly accepted my offer, and we bunked together accordingly. Here I laid--I don't know how many days exactly, but several--sick unto death, and expecting to die momentarily. I was very low and weak. My comrade was stronger. I noticed he prayed, and as I found difficulty in praying to my satisfaction, though I did pray, _in desire to pray_, continually, I asked Orlando if he would not pray for me. He did so, and I did everything I could for him that he would do this; gave him the most of what the ladies gave me (we depended solely on the ladies of Goldsboro' for provisions), as I was so sick that I did not want food. One day, I noticed more commotion than usual in the house. Soon after, among the rest, I was carried to the cars and taken by railroad to a steamboat-landing, not many miles distant from Wilmington; here we were put on board of a boat, and placed in the hands of men bearing the uniform of the United States; and the moment which I had during all my captivity looked forward to as the happiest of my life, was one of the darkest I have ever known! At Wilmington we were put in ambulances and hauled to improvised hospitals. The city had just been taken by our army, and our authorities were not prepared for us. But thank God that we came, anyhow, though they were unprepared. I lay in a brick building several days, without knowing any one about me. In my blind and crazy fever, I had strayed away from Orlando, I think. I sometimes staggered out to houses and asked for milk, thinking that would do me great good. I saw I was not getting along very well, and did not know how soon I might die. One day, a man thrust his head in the door and cried out: "All those wishing to go North had better get ready and go down to the wharf, as a boat is going to leave to-day." This news went through me like electricity. I remarked to the head nurse that I was going. "Yes," said he, "you are a sweet-looking thing to start North." I was then one of the sickest patients in that ward. I replied, determined to make the attempt, cost what it would, "that I might as well die on the way North as die here," and started. I staggered down the streets without knowing the direction to the point I desired to reach. Weak, sick, and reduced almost to a skeleton, I was a ghastly-looking spectacle. On I stumbled, asking almost every person I met to inform me the way, and sometimes forgetting their advice a moment afterwards. I finally reached the wharf, and there sank down to rest under the blasting disappointment of being told that no boat would leave that day. I saw soon after standing near me a member of a Kentucky regiment, whom I knew. He told me where he was staying, and that it was not far from where we then were. I immediately got up, and started for the place. I was not at all particular where I stayed; one place suited me as well as another. I reached my friend's stopping-place, and was taken up on the second floor. I remained here for a couple of hours, and was then given permanent quarters higher up. Reaching the room assigned me, after resting some time, I felt the vermin attack me as I had not done for many days. I hailed it as a good omen; a sign of returning sensibility. I felt that I was getting a little better. I fell to exterminating the peculiar pests with all the strength I could command. I had not been engaged in this occupation long before a physician protruded his head into my room, and stated that there was a boat going North, and that all who were able could go. I at once spruced up my best, and told the doctor that I was ready to start. He smiled as he looked at me, but, perceiving my great anxiety to go, allowed me to undertake the voyage. When I reached the wharf, I saw so many there expecting to go, that I knew some must be left behind; that the boat could not take all of us. I knew the habit of prisoners, and that there would be a general rush when the hatchways of the boat were thrown open. So I placed myself as near one of the hatchways as possible, and when it was opened, and the rush made, the crowd of its own force lifted me from my feet and bore me into the boat. After several days of foggy weather--the month was March--we arrived at Annapolis, Md. During our voyage I could see that many of my companions were eating too much, and feared the result. As for myself, I was still too sick to eat anything. Perhaps this was fortunate for me. To have been turned into our lines with the starvation appetite, I might have killed myself by over-eating, as many others undoubtedly did. At Annapolis I was carried on a stretcher from the boat to a hospital in one of the Naval School buildings. Here I remained for a couple of weeks, and was then sent with some others to Baltimore, having recovered sufficiently to be allowed to undertake the journey. On commencing to get better at Annapolis, I found my greatest trouble was with my stomach. It seemed contracted into a space no larger than my fist, and everything I ate seemed to irritate it; and I could apparently feel the exact size of any meal I had eaten, as it lay deposited in my stomach. Everything I took into my stomach seemed to weigh like lead, and constantly bear down so hard, that it made me continually miserable and unwell. We stayed at Baltimore a few days, when our furloughs, which had been made out at Annapolis, were handed to us, and we started for home--two months' pay and our ration commutation money having been paid to us before we left Annapolis. CHAPTER VI. AT HOME.--NOTHING BUT A SKELETON.--A GOOD IMITATION OF LAZARUS.--A DIGRESSION UPON THE SUBJECT OF SLEEPLESSNESS.--A WELL-INTENDED FRAUD ON A HOSPITAL NURSE.--RETURN OF SLEEP.--IMPROVEMENT IN HEALTH.--STOMACH THE ONLY DIFFICULTY.--A YEAR PASSES.--STOMACH WORSE.--CONSTANT HEADACHE.--MUCH DEBILITATED.--AWFUL SUFFERING.--BODILY AGONY DEBILITATES THE MIND.--SUFFERINGS INTOLERABLE.--PHYSICIANS AND REMEDIES TRIED WITHOUT AVAIL.--FORLORN HOPE AND LAST RESORT.--BETTER.--DOUBTS AS TO TREATMENT.--SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED.--UNCOMPLIMENTARY REMARKS CONCERNING AN M. D.--UNCOMFORTABLE DISCOVERIES AND REFLECTIONS. On getting home and taking an inventory of myself, I found that I was but a skeleton. Sores and scars soon covered me from head to foot. Decent living was driving the corruption engendered by prison life out of my system. So much of this stuff appeared on my skin, that I cannot but think it was a very fortunate thing for me that it did come out in this way; for had it lingered in me, and waited some slower process, it seems to me I surely must have died. I began to have natural sleep at night, also. This is a feature in my experience to which I should have referred before. I cannot remember that I had any sleep at Wilmington, unless when we first arrived. I could sleep none on the trip North, and when we got to Annapolis, I told the attending physician that I had not slept for a month,--for so it seemed to me,--and that I wanted him to give me some medicine that would induce sleep. To this he objected, averring, that being tired and having a clean body and clean clothing, I would now sleep soundly. But I did not sleep at all, and the day following I was almost distracted from the loss of much-needed sleep and rest. I so informed the doctor, and he had a draught prepared for me; this sent me into a very sweet sleep the succeeding night, and I awoke the next morning much refreshed indeed. The ensuing night was sleepless again, the physician refusing to prescribe anything for me. On the following night he did, however, and I enjoyed another night's invigorating slumber and recuperative rest. With what felicity of expression and justice of observation the universal Bard bodies forth the heavenly virtues of this ever-renewing well-spring of life and health: "Innocent sleep; Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast." Since I suffered my great experience, I have had an inexpressible relish of appreciation for the peculiar sweetness, simple truth, and inspiring beauty of this rare gem of genuine poetry. I could see that the doctor thought the medicine would be hurtful to me if taken every night, and for that reason allowed me to have it only every alternate night. I felt that the sleep would, even with taking it, much more than counterbalance all evil effects that would likely arise from the medicine, and I determined to procure it if possible. It was the custom of the doctor to prescribe his medicines, and leave the prescriptions with the head nurse of each ward, who would go at a certain time to the dispensary and get them filled. In cases where the same medicines were prescribed each day, the same phials were used. The phial which had been used for me I noticed still remained after the physician had prescribed for our ward, one morning, without giving me anything, and had gone; so when the hour for going after medicine came around, I informed the head nurse that the doctor had prescribed my draught for me as a general thing; that I was to have it every night, and that he must not fail to get it for me. I startled the fellow; he looked astonished. "Why," said he, "I didn't hear him say anything about it. I guess not," etc. "Yes, he did, though; I heard him," I replied; "and I want you to get it without fail." The stratagem was successful, and the duped nurse brought the medicine regularly every day, and the result was that I slept every night, owing to the kindness of the medicine, and my health began to improve from that time; and I may say I noticed no injurious consequences or effects of the medicine. On arriving home, I told my mother of my inability to sleep. The first night on my arrival home I did not, because, arriving in the night, I could get no medicine; but the next day I spoke to my mother about the matter, as I have stated, and she procured me some medicine. This I took for a short time, when I discontinued it without any difficulty. I found that I needed it no longer. After this, for some time, my main and only trouble was with my stomach. Although I had a good appetite, and was so hungry in _my mind_ that I could not see victuals removed from the table, or scarcely a bone thrown away, without feeling pained at the loss; I could not eat very much, as my stomach seemed so diminutive that it would contain but a small quantity, and what I did take into it seemed to turn to lead within me, or rather into a pound of tenpenny nails, determined to cut and grind its way to the outside. That is, it did not sour; my food digested (slowly and painfully), but from some cause it hurt me continually. I gradually became able to eat more; grew somewhat fleshy, and looked well; but my stomach hurt me, nevertheless, _all the time_. I did not apply for a pension within a reasonable time after coming home, because my mother thought I was young, and would soon recover my health. Alas! never was prophecy so contradicted or hope so defeated. For a year I suffered from my stomach, keeping wonderfully well up in strength. At the end of a year or more, I became afflicted with constant headache, viz., about 9 o'clock A. M., the headache would come on and continue during the day. From the time I was liberated from Southern prisons (and in fact long before I was released), up to the setting in of the daily headache, I had been occasionally afflicted with it. Now, headache became one of the most direful curses. From this time forward, for a year or more, I was on the down-hill road. My stomach was much worse than ever, and my headache became worse in proportion with my stomach. My body was very much debilitated; I suffered fearfully, wretchedly. From the ravages made on my entire physical system by constant headaches, and the terrible agonies and torments of my stomach, my mind became debilitated. In my extremity, I cried to God, and asked him why He so afflicted me! My sufferings were so intolerable and continuous, that my face became the reflected image of agony. My mother, God bless her! who could not conceive the uncommon suffering I was enduring, and imagining that I might have some trouble on my mind, begged me, in alarm, not to look so pain-stricken; that persons were noticing the appalling expression of my countenance. The reader will please remember that I was making my own living, during all this time, as a clerk. I tried different physicians and remedies without avail. Nothing seemed to benefit me, and I quit trying. At last a physician in the town where I resided, in whom I had but little confidence, and who for six months past had been endeavoring to get my consent to allow him to treat my case, induced me to place myself under his professional care. None of the rest had benefited me, and he could but fail, and might do me some good. I would die if there were not a change soon, and I could but do this at the worst under his treatment. Besides, I wanted present relief from the most distracting pain. I was suffering daily torment and torture, with a body weak and wasted, and a constitution whose resisting power, before persistent and repeated assaults, had at last given way; my mind was become greatly impaired, and my spirits had sunk into a black midnight of despair. "'Tis no time now to stickle over means and remedies; let him cure me who can, or let me die if I must," I thought. Nevertheless, in going into this physician's office, I emphatically charged him not to administer to me any opium or morphia, as I had a horror of such things. I perceived that he was going to use, in my case, what was a new instrument in the practice there at that time, viz., the hypodermic syringe. "Oh, have no fear," he replied, holding up at the same time a phial of clear and colorless fluid; "this is no opium or morphia; it is one of the simplest and most harmless things in the world; but it is a secret, and no one in the town knows anything about it except myself." On this assurance, I allowed him to inject a dose into my arm. This first dose was too large, and nearly killed me or scared me to death, and I determined not to go back to him again. And I would have adhered to my determination, had he not accosted me at a hotel, about two weeks thereafter, and asked me why I had remained away; and on my telling him the reason, he entreated me to come back, saying, that as soon as he had ascertained the right dose for me, he would certainly cure me. God in heaven knows I wanted to be cured, and reasonably. I recommenced taking the injections then, and allowed him full liberty to do what he could for me. Contemporaneously with the injections, though not by prescription from this physician, but with his approval, I commenced taking carbonate of iron. This preparation of iron had been prescribed by another physician for one of my sisters, who was suffering from neuralgia, and with good results; so I thought it might probably have a beneficial effect in the case of my headache and the generally debilitated condition of my system. I took about one or two injections a week; sometimes, perhaps, I may have taken one or two more. The number was varied by the frequency or infrequency of the severer headaches. I did not go every day. I had headache every day, but only submitted to the injection when it manifested itself more severely than usual. The iron I took three times a day after meals. I thus particularly notice the iron, because it had considerable to do in forming an estimation of the results of this doctor's treatment, which I made at a certain time. I continued the hypodermical treatment, taking about the same number of injections for a couple of months, when I found myself getting better, and in a much more substantial condition of health than I had been for many a long day, or even year. I felt, indeed, better; but I observed one peculiarity in my case that was not comforting. It raised my suspicions, not having unlimited confidence in my physician. But should my suspicions turn out well founded, I argued, the great improvement in my health has justified my treatment, and I cannot see yet that I am in any danger. Let me go on a little while longer, until my health becomes permanently established, and then I will drop this doctor and his treatment. I found that the taking of my medicine had settled down into something like regularity, and when the time came around that I was restless, lacking spirit, and unable to do anything to any purpose till I had an injection. Had such not been the case, everything would have been revealed at first, and the terrible consequences averted; but, as it was, any suspicion of the effect of the medicine--that is, immediate effect or _influence_--had been forestalled in my mind by my having read, previous to this treatment, that there were other drugs of similar effect; but when I noticed the unmistakable evidences of the habit forming, I was troubled about it. My fears were confirmed some time after by my coming in upon the doctor whilst he was preparing the solution, and thus detecting him. I exclaimed: "Ah ha, doctor, you have been giving me morphia." "Yes," he replied, "a little; but the main part was _cannabis indicus_" (Indian hemp). I don't know that he ever gave me a particle of _cannabis indicus_, for I know that some time after, and from _that_ period on, he did not disguise the fact that he was giving me the unadulterated sulphate of morphia. The doctor soon found he had an elephant on his hands,--saw that I was in the habit; became tired of my regular calls for hypodermical injections, and endeavored to shake me off. After giving him fully to understand his culpability in the matter, we parted. Knowing, then, that I was simply an opium eater, I purchased my own morphia at the drug-stores, and took it per mouth instead of by a hypodermic syringe. Thus was I, as the notorious fly, invited into the parlor of the deceitful spider, and met with something like the same sad fate. Tripped up by an ignoramus who had hung about me for six months to allow him to treat my case; who had brought me medicine which I threw behind my desk, and never tasted; who had told me he had "taken a fancy to me;" who used every persuasive art within his command to get me to his office, and under his professional care, only for the purpose of giving me bare morphia by way of a syringe!--while I, well duped and deceived, gave his treatment all the credit which the iron I was taking should have received for building up my broken-down health. His treatment in _conjunction_ with the iron did me good; the morphia killed the pain, and the iron built me up; one might not have done without the other. I might have died but for the opium; but this fact does not exonerate this blundering and perjured empiricist from the charge of malpractice. He did my case, as he had done others before, and no doubt has done many since, and will go on doing until Divine Justice calls him to account, and sinks his abhorred countenance out of the sight of man. I soon realized that I had experienced all the good results to be obtained from the treatment, and that to go on longer would be injurious. So I endeavored to discontinue the morphia, but found myself in the fangs of a monster more terrible than the Hydra of Lake Lerna, and whose protean powers it is not man's to know till it is too late to escape. I discovered that the power to fight and overcome great obstacles in this life, and which had always served me in my struggles theretofore, and which I relied upon then, was the very first thing destroyed by the enemy, namely, the will. Here I was, then, an opium eater. The outward effects and injurious properties of the drug soon made themselves manifest: what was I to do? Quit it, some may say; but no one well posted upon the opium habit would use those words, so hard and feelingless. A reply like this, I think, would betray more wisdom and humanity: "Your case is wellnigh hopeless; I can give you no encouragement whatever; do your utmost to release yourself from the unhappy predicament in which you have been placed; and may God help you, for I fear you will need other help beside your own." "What then? What rests? Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it, when one cannot repent? Oh, wretched state!" CHAPTER VII. THE WAR BEGINS.--STRUGGLES TO RENOUNCE OPIUM.--PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OBSERVED IN ATTEMPTING TO LEAVE OFF THE DRUG.--DIFFICULTY IN ABJURING THE FIEND.--I FAIL ABSOLUTELY.--SOME DIFFERENCE WITH DE QUINCEY REGARDING THE EFFECTS OF OPIUM.--A PRELIMINARY FORESIGHT INTO THE HORRORS OF OPIUM. Whether to annoy the reader with the history of my repeated attempts and failures, that is the question: for that I did attempt to throw off my shackles, honestly and earnestly, I would have the reader fairly believe. Yet why traverse again step by step this sad pilgrimage; the reader has read similar experiences; then why trouble him with mine? Simply because in the lives of all persons there is some variation, one from another; and besides this, though I have taken some pains to read fully our opium literature, as I may properly term it, I must say that I have found it in a very demoralizing condition. That is, it does the reader, with reference to opium, more harm than good--and much more. I know this from experience, and it is one of the moving reasons why this personal history is written. I might tire the reader's patience over and again, by recounting my frequent attempts to throw off the accursed incubus, but shall content myself with briefly referring to such as may benefit the public, and especially those who are in danger from opium, but who as yet have not passed beyond recovery. The first attempt of any real interest I made about one year after the commencement of my unfortunate medical treatment, which resulted in fastening the habit upon me. In order that I might be as well advised in the undertaking as convenient, I called upon a veteran physician, as well as opium eater, of the place for information and counsel. One of the consequences attending previous attempts had been diarrhoea, and a general upsetting of all the gastric functions. I did not know why this was, or that it attended all cases necessarily. The physician gave me a great deal of information, which, taking it simply as a much better knowledge of my condition, rallied and cheered my spirits considerably. In referring to the diarrhoea, he said that it invariably followed; that leaving off the opium unlocked all the secretions, and the diarrhoea was a natural consequence. I was not using much morphia at this time. The quantity was indeed so small that the physician almost ridiculed the idea of my being in the habit at all. I knew better than that, however. He said it was hardly necessary to give anything to check the diarrhoea, in fact, that it was almost useless, and unless it actually became too severe, it was better to let it take its own course; that when it stopped of its own accord I would perceive that I was better. He gave me a few powders to take along, nevertheless, which I did not find it necessary to use. I stopped square off. The first day I felt meanly and sleepy, and had such an influx of remorseful and melancholy thoughts, and such a complete loss of command over myself, that I could have wept the livelong day,--I felt so crushed and broken-hearted. The second day was similar to the first, except the diarrhoea now set in. On the third day I began to feel more comfortable in some respects, the sleepy, drowsy feeling having passed away; I also had gained a little more command over my feelings, though I was still morbidly sensitive, sad, and broken in spirit, and at a word would have burst into tears. The diarrhoea was rushing off at a fearful rate; but that I did not mind much,--it was carrying away my trouble, and this was what I desired. My stomach and bowels were in an unsettled, surging, and wishy-washy condition, the gastric processes so completely disturbed that my stomach was no stomach, and felt simply like a bottomless pipe that ran straight through me. I describe these phenomena now thus particularly, not because I had not observed them in previous attempts, but because I have not described any other attempts to the reader. I intend, as I proceed with this narrative to describe the effect of morphia at the beginning, and at and up to the time of which I am now writing, and its effect years after, and the phenomena observed and suffering undergone in attempting to abandon its use in the latter years. The experienced reader will observe, from the attending phenomena which I have so far described, that I was not very deep into it at the period now referred to. Generally, during the day (to recur to the subject in hand), did my stomach feel like a straight and bottomless pipe, but when I attempted to eat or drink I felt as though it incorporated a volcano; and every time I thought of food its whirling, surging contents threatened an eruption and overflow. Everything eaten seemed perfectly insipid and tasteless, and to fall flat upon the very bottom of my bowels. The region "round about" my epigastrium was in a state of communistic insurrection and rebellion. Nothing digested during this time, or if anything, digestion was very imperfect. Nothing remained in me long enough to pass through a complete process of digestion. I did not become hungry. To eat a meal of victuals was precisely like taking a dose of physic, only much more quick in operation. I experienced constant flushes of heat and cold (hot flushes predominating), and was in a continual perspiration, all the secretions being thrown wide open. My flesh seemed stretched tightly after the third day, and at night my limbs pained me,--principally my legs below the knees. I could do, and did, nothing but stand and gaze vacantly; too nerveless and shattered to attempt any mental labor. My voice was hollow and weak, and sometimes almost inarticulate. After the fifth day my remorseful and melancholy thoughts and feelings gave way, to some extent, to more cheerful ones. I continued ten days without touching morphia, or anything of the kind. By that time my diarrhoea had ceased, and my stomach about the region of the epigastrium seemed drawn together as tightly as if tied in a knot. I had some appetite for food, though not much, and poor digestion. Everything was still quite tasteless to me. I craved something eternally which seemed absolutely necessary to make up the proper constitution of my stomach:--and of my happiness, also, I should add, for this is the whole truth. The appetite for morphia, which while I was suffering I was able to control, grew much sharper after I had reached the tenth day, and my pains and physical difficulties had subsided, as it were. This is a point which I have ever observed in my case, namely, that, while undergoing severe pain or suffering, I have had power to resist appetite and carry out my purposes against the habit, but so soon as the pain or strain upon me departed, it left me collapsed in my will and powerless. But, in the instance under consideration, while my stomach was in a disorganized condition, the appetite was not near so strong as when I regained a more natural state, when it returned with an irresistible vigor. I believe the appetite destroys the will as firmly as I do that God exists. I took a small dose of morphia, thinking I might thus stay the violent cravings of the appetite, and be thereafter clear of it. The time was in the midst of a political campaign; I was in a public office as a clerk; my employer was rendering his fealty to the party that gave him his place, and I was compelled to remain in the office and work. I was suffering in secret, my employer knowing nothing of my thraldom, and I could not work with the accursed appetite raging within me. The affinity between the brain and the stomach is most plainly demonstrated by the disease of the opium habit; the appetite feeds as much on the brain as on the stomach. I could not work; I could do nothing but look, and that in a blank and dazed way; and being compelled to work, I took a small dose, thinking that would quiet the enemy and give me peace, and that thereafter I could probably worry it through. Cruel illusion! My unhappy fate willed differently, and the peculiar effects of opium can only be learned by bitter experience. I fell prostrate as before, with this difference, that I was less hopeful. Oh, the melancholy years that have intervened between then and now! Hopeless upon a dark and boundless sea, drifting farther and farther from land! Oh, the youthful aspirations that have been wrecked by, and gone down forever in, this all-swallowing deep!--the mortifications, disappointments, and humiliations that stand out upon this black ocean of despair, and like huge and abortive figures of deformity mock me in my dreams, and taunt me in my waking hours! For I sing only the "pains" of opium; its "pleasures" I have yet to see. For that cannot be accounted a pleasure which is attended with sadness, and that stimulation will not be considered a benefit which is followed by reaction and collapse. De Quincey says that he never experienced the collapse and depression consequent upon indulgence in opium. The first doses I took, though they stimulated me to the skies, sickened me at the same time, and left me in such a collapsed condition that it required twenty-four hours to completely recover. I do admit that, when one's sensibilities have become deadened and hardened by long use of opium, when all the fervor is burnt out of one, and it no longer stimulates, or its stimulation is barely perceptible,--that then, indeed, there is not much reaction. But what eater of opium, after taking much of the drug the day previous, ever arose in the morning without feeling unutterably miserable? What would you call this, unless reaction? "The time has been, my senses would have cool'd To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir, As life were in't." And I could not even go into an unlighted room after nightfall without the most terrifying feelings of abject fear. There was not a night came during a certain period without bringing with it the most harrowing and dreadful forebodings of death before morning. I must in justice state that I was using some quinine at this time to break up a fever that was continually attacking me, and that I was then again using morphia by means of the hypodermic syringe (having been induced to adopt that mode by another person who was using it in the same way,--which I found to be much more injurious than taking it per mouth); nevertheless, it was still the opium habit, and it was that which induced the fever, and made necessary the quinine. No tongue or pen will ever describe--mine shrinks from the attempt, and the imagination of another, without suffering it all, could scarcely conceive it possible--the depth of horror in which my life was plunged at this time; the days of humiliation and anguish, nights of terror and agony, through which I dragged my wretched being. But I am anticipating other and future parts of this narration. It is my intention to disclose, as I proceed, the effects of opium from the first dose, and commencement of the habit, till it reaches its ultimate and final effects, and to describe an attempt to renounce its use at the latter stage. Still, I have thought it proper, even at this juncture, to give the reader to understand that the opium habit, from first to last, produces nothing but misery,--and that of a kind entirely without hope in this world. This I expect to prove in detail as I proceed. CHAPTER VIII. DE QUINCEY'S LIFE RATHER THAN HIS WRITINGS THE BEST EVIDENCE OF THE EFFECT OF OPIUM UPON HIM.--DISAPPROVAL OF HIS MANNER OF TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT IN HIS "CONFESSIONS."--FROM FIRST TO LAST THE EFFECT OF OPIUM IS TO PRODUCE UNHAPPINESS.--THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE EFFECT OF THE DRUG TAKEN HYPODERMICALLY AND OTHERWISE EXPLAINED.--THE VARIOUS EFFECTS OF OPIUM, STIMULATIVE AND NARCOTIC, DESCRIBED.--THE EFFECT OF MY FIRST DOSE AT BEGINNING OF HABIT.--REMARKS OF DE QUINCEY ON HIS FIRST DOSE.--MY OWN REMARKS AS TO FIRST DOSE.--DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OPIUM AND LIQUOR.--STIMULATION IS FOLLOWED BY COLLAPSE.--MELANCHOLY FROM BEGINNING.--NERVOUSNESS AND DISTRACTION OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.--SLEEPLESSNESS.--DIFFERENT AND PECULIAR INFLUENCES OF THE DRUG DETAILED.--PRESSURE UPON THE BRAIN FROM EXCESSIVE USE OF OPIUM.--DISTRESS IN THE EPIGASTRIUM.--THE WORKING OF THE BRAIN IMPEDED. The life of De Quincey, as gathered from his constant and unguarded, and therefore sincere, expressions of his wretched condition, which he made to others while living, shows the effect opium had upon him much more truthfully than do his writings. His extravagant eulogy of opium, and almost wildly-gay and lively manner of treating such a sardonically solemn subject as the effects of opium, though under the anomalous title, "The Pleasures of Opium," show the man to have been morally depraved,[1] and utterly regardless of the influence of his writings. The result of the opium habit, first, last, and always, is to bring hopeless unhappiness. I began taking opium by having it administered through a hypodermic syringe, as the reader is aware. The effect, taking it in this way, differs somewhat from that which follows taking it in the usual way. It is more pleasant, ethereal, and less gross, I may say. It had not previously been possible for me to use morphia in the usual way. I had tried it to relieve myself in a season of severe headaches, and it had given me such a distressing pain in my stomach that I dropped it as a useless remedy, and tried it no more. Taking it per hypodermic injection, it did not seem to come so directly in contact with the sensitive part of my stomach; and there was, therefore, no impediment in the way of my taking it in this manner. Although the effect of morphia taken hypodermically is more pure, and perhaps more forcible for the time being, its force is expended much more quickly than when taken in the customary way. The effect of a dose of morphia--that is, its immediate and exhilarating effect or influence--may often last but a very short time, and rarely longer than three or four hours, but the ultimate and narcotic effect does not leave the system until twenty-four hours have elapsed. This is an effect in morphia that can be relied on. In stating that the exhilarating effect may last three or four hours, I mean that it may do this in the first stages of the habit. Of course, all I have to say just now refers to the first stages. But to begin with the second dose, the first having been too heavy, and nearly burst me. The second dose happened to be the proper quantity, and had the legitimate effect. As I have not the slightest doubt that I was suffering as much, and was just as sensitive, I might (though I will not) expatiate with Mr. De Quincey to the following effect: "Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes; this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me--in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle; and peace of mind sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But, if I talk in this way, the reader will think I am laughing; and I can assure him that no one will laugh long who deals much with opium; its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion; and in his happiest state, the opium eater cannot present himself in the character of _L'Allegro_; even then he speaks and thinks as becomes _Il Penseroso_. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery; and, unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice, even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm nature in this respect; and with a few indulgences of that sort, I shall endeavor to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed." I will say, and admit, however, that this second dose of mine highly stimulated me; that I retired from the doctor's presence in an extremely sentimental condition of complacency and self-assurance, with a partly-defined feeling that the world had injured me; but that I did not care particularly; that the remainder of my life I could live alone and without it very comfortably. Opium does not intoxicate, as liquor, even at the beginning of its use; it does not deprive one of reason or judgment, but, while under its influence, it makes one more sanguine and hopeful. The next day after taking this first dose, as I may call it (though second in reality), I was physically wilted and mentally collapsed, and felt a kind of nervous headache whenever I stirred the least from perfect quietness. I was unfit to do any work, a thumping, distressing headache and mental distraction, with nothing but a shaken and nervously exhausted system to withstand it, followed quickly and overpoweringly upon the least exertion. I found myself in wretched plight, and could have exclaimed in the language of our ever-beloved poet: "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone." It was my experience straight along that for every stimulation I had a corresponding depression. I confess that the drug did stimulate me, and highly enough, but there was always an attending sickishness, and the general tenor of the stimulation was to produce melancholy rather than a healthy cheerfulness of spirit. This melancholy seemed a _relaxation_, which the mind and feelings could lay back and enjoy sometimes, but the appearance of a mortal and intruder on the scene would throw a person into a deplorable state of irritability and confusion.[2] The stimulation bred nervousness very fast, and the distraction of the intellectual forces was one of the first and worst consequences and devastations experienced. After I had come to take the drug daily, I often passed sleepless nights, the brain in uncontrollable action during the whole night. Having started it, I could not stop it at pleasure, and I was then but a novice in the art of opium taking. Yet I do not know, either, but that, had I taken it at any time during the day then, the result would have been the same, as I was still very susceptible to its influence, which, in its shattering effects on the nervous system, extended over the period of twenty-four hours. After a time, when my body became more benumbed and deadened by opium, and consequently less susceptible to its stimulating influence, I could, and did, so regulate my taking of the drug as to insure sleep at night, and the best digestion possible under the circumstances at meals. But as to sleep, I could not do this in the first stages; the effect was too powerful, and extended over too long a time. The effect of opium, the reader must bear in mind, always lasts twenty-four hours; but its higher, more refined and stimulating influence exists but a few hours, when it sinks into the soporific effect, which extends over the remainder of the time. In the advanced stages of the opium habit, the stimulating influence, if there be any at all, lasts but a few minutes. I mean, that is, the pleasurable sensation and revival of the spirits; there may be at times or always an almost imperceptible stimulation which obtains a short time after taking a dose of opium, but this is an effect entirely different from the pleasurable sensation, though it may exist with or follow it for a short time. This I may term stimulation without sensation. A person's body may be so deadened by opium that it can no longer produce sensation, but may produce slight stimulation for a short time. One may become conscious of this by an increase of power in the faculties of the brain, and in the temporary removal of the obstructions that weigh upon the brain, and which the poor opium eater so often suffers from. "Suffers from?" Days upon days my head has felt as though it were encircled by an iron helmet, which was gradually becoming more and more contracted, until it would literally crush my skull. Add to this the distress so often experienced in the region of the epigastrium (pit of the stomach), which, perhaps, more at one time than another, but which does always, impair the working of the brain for the time being, and often cuts off almost totally the use of the mind, and what is left of a man mentally is very little indeed. Yet all these miseries he must endure, and more; but of these in the proper place, for we must now return to the subject properly in hand,--the first stages of opium eating,--from which I beg the reader's pardon for having digressed too far. CHAPTER IX. DE QUINCEY VERSUS COLERIDGE.--STIMULATION AND COLLAPSE CONSIDERED.--THE USE OF OPIUM ALWAYS TO BE CONDEMNED.--COLERIDGE DEFENDED.--WRETCHED STATE OF THE OPIUM EATER.--AN EXPLANATORY REMARK. De Quincey charges Coleridge with having written many of his best things under the stimulus of opium. This may be so; he could not well write at all without being in some way affected by opium, seeing that he took it every day; but if this applied to the latter stage of opium eating (and I have reason to think it did), the little pleasurable sensation and stimulation he might well take advantage of, as at other times his condition must have been such as to interfere greatly with his writing at all to any purpose. But if this applied to the first stages, and he continued on writing after the stimulation and pleasurable sensation had subsided, his writings must have presented a very zigzag appearance; passing suddenly from the height of pleasure to the depth of misery--falling from the top round of stimulation and enjoyment to the lowest depth of dejection and debility. For it was my invariable experience during the first stages, that for every benefit received in intellectual force from stimulation, I suffered a corresponding injury or offset in the mental debility and prostration which ensued. The reaction that always followed the long strain of stimulation upon the brain, found me completely wilted and mentally exhausted. Up to the heights and down into the depths was the routine. Glorying in the skies or sweltering in the Styx. Like Sisyphus rolling his stone of punishment up the steep mountain, with which he no sooner reaches the top than away it rebounds to the bottom again, and so on eternally. In the latter stages, an opium eater cannot be blamed for taking advantage of the little pleasurable sensation which his nepenthe affords him. The enjoyment he gets lasts but a moment, and would not equal the pleasure derived by a healthy and sound man from the simple act of writing. And, as far as power gained from stimulation is concerned, the reader must remember that opium shatters, tears, and wears out the subject as it goes, and that all the benefit he could derive from stimulation, after having become an habituate, could not place his powers upon a level with what they would have been naturally had he never touched opium. De Quincey speaks of Coleridge as though the latter had denounced opium, and not given it credit for benefits conferred, when the truth is it confers no benefits. It gives, but it takes away, and the highest point stimulation can reach will not elevate a man's abilities to the plane from which they have fallen, in the latter and confirmed stages of the habit. Therefore, a man can justly and always condemn the use of opium, even while taking advantage of its best manifestations. It is he that is the loser at all times, and not it. The case I wish to make out is just this: When a man is once a confirmed opium eater, all the pleasure he can derive from opium would not equal the enjoyment a well man receives from the animal spirits alone; and all the intellectual force obtainable from stimulation can never approach that which would have been his own freely in a natural condition. Hence, to charge Coleridge with ingratitude to opium--for that is about what it amounts to--is all bosh. It ruined him for poetry, crippled him for everything, and made his life miserable. He did the best he could under the circumstances,--to continue the argument. Had he written at all times without regard to his condition, in the first stages the ravages following stimulation would have so undone his mind, that it would have fallen far short of its natural ability; and had he written from stimulation clear through reaction, his compositions would have been lop-sided things indeed. Or, had he in the advanced stages abnegated the short and only period of intellectual complacency afforded him by opium, and written only during the wretched condition which generally subsists, his productions must of necessity have been more gloomy, and less able than they are. He had to make the most of his unfortunate situation, and seize his opportunities as they presented. It was impossible to write at all times and in all conditions, and hence he disappointed the expectations of many. Yes, and who blamed him for lacking energy? Oh, ignorant men! When an opium eater, himself surrounded by the same circumstances and in the same condition as Coleridge, contemplates the results of his labors, they seem almost miraculous. And let me tell you, dear reader, they are almost my only source of hope and consolation in this my proscribed and benighted state. In life, but not living; a man, but incapable of the happiness and pleasures of man. Nothing but darkness and dejection is my lot. Cut off forever, irretrievably cut off, from almost every social enjoyment. If I have a particle of enjoyment, it is very faint and vague; dim as the filmy line that divides me from the world and those in it, and all that enjoy this life. Wretched dejection and despair are mine; my mind a "Stygian cave forlorn," which breeds "horrid shapes and shrieks and sights unholy." But it seems the peculiar province of those so happy as to escape this earthly damnation, to deride and blame for want of energy and force the poor victim--perhaps to the crime of some one else,--and nothing but black looks and condemnation from his fellow-man does he receive; he, from whom even the face of his Maker seems almost turned away, as he winds his weary pilgrimage through a chaos of unutterable woe down to his soon-forgotten grave. "Here lies one who prostituted every human gift to the use of opium," is the verdict upon a life of more suffering and more effort, perhaps, than appears in the life of one in ten thousand. For, be it known, everything accomplished by an opium eater is done in the sweat of blood, and with the load of Atlas weighing upon the spirit. But the reader must pardon me. I seem to gravitate naturally towards the results in the latter stages, to which a great part of that I have just written must apply,--especially where I speak of one having a right to denounce opium "always, even while taking advantage of its best manifestations." Before opium has injured a man, and in the very commencement of the habit, should he wilfully use the drug as a means of giving him pleasure, and brilliancy to his mind, when the requirements of the habit do not make the taking of the opium necessary, he is to blame; but let him long continue in this practice, and he will find to his sorrow that all the mental power the stimulation of opium can give him would not equal that of his natural abilities, unincumbered by the habit. CHAPTER X. THE DELUSIONS AND MISERIES OF THE FIRST STAGES OF OPIUM EATING. From the first unlucky indulgence "till he that died to-day," the habitual use of opium is attended with gloom, despondency, and unhappiness. The victim takes his first dose and feels exalted, serene, confident. His intellectual faculties are so adjusted that he needs but call and they obey; discipline and order reign. His load of care, the tedium of life, his aches and pains, and "the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes," are all lifted from his shoulders, as the sun lifts the mist-clouds from the river, and care-soothing peace in rich effulgence smiles in upon his soul. The beams pour in, the clouds disperse, and all is bright as noonday. But this calm is only that which precedes the storm. The nerves, that system of exquisite mechanism in man, have been interfered with and abused. There has been an unnatural strain; the harmony of tension has been disturbed and deranged, and now, instead of discipline and equanimity, cruel disorder and distraction rule the hour, and collapse and utter exhaustion follow. The above is the great axis around which all these following "petty consequences" revolve. They appear and disappear in their proper orbit according to the law of nature and of opium. One is here to-day, another present to-morrow, or each in turn present at different times during a day, or all of them present at once as effect follows cause. It may be impossible to remember all of these "small annexments" and "petty consequences" that participate in, and go to make up, the "boisterous ruin," but among which gloom and melancholy take a position in the front rank:--melancholy when under the influence of opium, and gloomy and dispirited when not. A sickening, death-like sensation about the heart; a self-accusing sense of having committed some wrong,--of being guilty before God; a load of fear and trembling, continually abide with and oppress the victim in the first stages;--but more especially when the influence of the drug is dying away. During the height of stimulation, these feelings are submerged to a great extent by the more generous and exciting influence of the drug that causes them; but this period forms but a short space in the total of an opium eater's existence. Great nervousness attends the subsiding of the effect of opium, and one is much torn and distracted in mind. General shakiness ensues. Unreliability of intellect or capacity, owing to the up-hill and down-dale of stimulation and its antitheton, collapse: a result of the tearing of the brain out by the roots, as it were, and the exhaustion and debility consequent. One is often weighed and found wanting, called upon and not at home, mentally. Great shame and mortification attend this consequence, as one in this nerveless, enfeebled state is morbidly sensitive. Opium usurps the function of nerve, and is nerve in the victim. Without it he is a ship without sails, an engine without steam,--loose, unscrewed, unjointed, powerless. As the effect of opium passes off, a deep feeling of gloom settles upon the heart, such as might follow suddenly and unexpectedly hearing the death-knell of a dear friend. In this condition, at times the most painful, remorseful, despairing thoughts stream in like vultures upon a carcass. One exists either in a sickening, unnatural excitement, or in a gloomy suspension and stagnation of every faculty. One state follows the other in solemn succession, as long as the habit is continued, which is generally until the victim has passed the boundaries of this "breathing world," and the gates of death are closed and forever barred behind him; or until he becomes a tough, seasoned, and dried-out opium eater, when the drug no longer has the power to stimulate him. Could one go into the habit of taking opium fully advised as to its various effects and results, he might avoid a great deal of inconvenience and suffering usually entailed upon the novice. In my own case, knowing nothing of the peculiar secondary effects of opium upon the physical system, I paid the penalty of my ignorance in continual derangements and distress in my stomach and bowels. Not knowing when or how to take it to the best advantage, constantly threw me into spells of indigestion, loss of appetite, and diarrhoea; also constipation and distress in the epigastrium. I was taking morphia for the headache, and if the intermission "in this kind" were prolonged beyond a certain time, the result was diarrhoea, and a general confounding of the entire stomachic apparatus. I did not then observe myself so closely as I have learned to do since, or I should have noticed the conjunction of circumstances that caused this derangement. Had I taken the morphia at proper intervals, this would not have occurred; but I was not aware of that fact, and did not become acquainted with it until months after, when I consulted a physician, on the eve of making an attempt to renounce the habit. Allowing too long a period of time to elapse between doses, threw me into this disorder; additional distress and inconvenience were incurred by taking the drug at the wrong time in the day, and at an improper distance from meals. As to the dose, I have nothing to say. How much better or worse I may have felt, taking a different quantity as a dose, I cannot imagine. I can only speak of what I finally observed and learned after reploughed, resowed, and rereaped experience. Allowing too long a time to elapse between doses, occasioned loss of appetite, disorganized the stomach, and prevented digestion; and taking the drug at the wrong time in the day, and at an improper distance from a meal, constipated me, and gave me distress in the epigastrium. This distress in the epigastrium was terrible on the nervous system, and rendered the mind almost impotent and powerless for the time it lasted. Likewise, taking the medicine at wrong times, would sometimes cause my food to lodge in me whilst passing through my intestines. This was one of the most potent causes of misery with which it was my unfortunate lot to be afflicted. My food would frequently be arrested in the lower bowels, where it would seem determined to abide with me forever, cutting me like a sharp-cornered stone, rendering me almost wild with nervous distress, and almost entirely dethroning my mind for the time being. It was a perfect hell-rack, and sometimes lasted for days. I could do but little during these spells, and that little not well, having no command over my nervous system. They generally left me relaxed and exhausted. A prolonged series of attacks of this kind so impaired my mind, that it required considerable time thereafter to recover. These attacks came the nearest realizing the torments of hell upon earth, complete, unabrogated, or unabridged, of anything I ever suffered. When stimulated by morphia taken by the hypodermic syringe, unless I would continue reading, with my mind concentrated, I soon got into a state of mental distraction. Loss of sleep at night comes in at about this point. This punishment for outraging the laws of nature by the use of opium began to scourge me after I had quit taking it hypodermically, and had commenced taking it daily and by the mouth.[3] Any one who has suffered much from the terrors of sleeplessness--inability to sleep at night--can understand and appreciate my condition during this time. Loss of sleep, and getting physically out of order incessantly through my ignorance of the secondary effects of opium, and from the effects thereof which no foreknowledge could have avoided, kept me in a state of mind bordering on that of Phlegyas in ancient mythology, who was punished by having an immense stone suspended over his head, which perpetually threatened to fall and crush him. I dreaded the advent of each new day, not knowing what agony or discomfiture it had in store for me. I neglected to mention in the proper place that which, perhaps, is too much of a truism to be referred to at all,--that, as far as a person's nerves and spirits are concerned, the farther away he is from a dose of opium, the better he feels in this respect, no matter what inconvenience he may undergo in others. I mean, the longer time he allows to elapse between doses, the more cheerful and less shaky he will feel. In the prostration that ensues after the relaxation of stimulation, one is truly and indeed miserable in every respect, and goes down into the very depths of despondency and gloom. The period I refer to now is, when nature has reascended from the dismal realms of "Cerberus and blackest midnight," and has recovered somewhat from the baleful and crucifying effects of opium; in fact, when the effect of the drug has passed out of the system for the time. Nature commences to assert herself, and would fully recover her wonted vigor and spirit, did not the drug-damned victim resume again the hell-invented curse. The diarrhoea and other inconveniences and disorders in the stomach and bowels that now set in, are simply the result of nature's effort to throw off the hideous fiend poisoning and destroying her very life. And just here is shown what a terrible violation of the laws of nature the habitual use of opium constitutes. Its action I can compare to nothing more justly than to that of a powerful man knocking down a delicate one as fast as he arises; or, to the tempest-tossed sea washing a mariner ashore, who no sooner rises to his feet than he is caught back by the cruel waves again, repeating the process until at last, faint and exhausted, his life is quenched in the remorseless flood; or, to the mythological fable of Tityus, who, for having the temerity to insult Diana, was cast into Tartarus: there, "Two ravenous vultures, furious for their food, Scream o'er the fiend, and riot in his blood; Incessant gore the liver in his breast; The immortal liver grows, and gives the immortal feast." Its hatred of the laws of health is undying, and is only equalled by its power and facility of destruction; its cruel, persistent, and merciless warfare on the human system, and its eternal antagonism to, and annihilation of, human happiness. CHAPTER XI. LATTER STAGES.--THE OPIUM APPETITE.--CIRCEAN POWER OF OPIUM.--AS A MEDICINE.--DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONDITION OF VICTIM IN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY STAGES. I am no physician, and not learned in physiology, therefore I cannot enter into a learned analysis of the opium appetite. Neither have I read any books upon the subject. I know nothing about the matter save from my own observation or experience. But whether I know _why this_ is true, or _that_ is _so_, or not, one fact I am entirely conscious of, and that is, that in this appetite abides the enslaving power of opium. The influences of opium in the latter stages would not have such an attraction for the habituate but that he could easily forego them; but the appetite comes in and makes him feel that he _must_ have opium if he has existence, and there is an end to all resistance. Here dwell the Circean spells of opium. Should one become accustomed to large doses, or rather a large quantity per diem, it is almost impossible to induce the mind to take less, for fear of falling to pieces, going into naught, etc. It seems in such a state that existence would be insupportable were a reduction made. An intense fear of being plunged into an abyss of darkness and despair besets the mind. Hence the opium eater goes on ever increasing until his final doom. Opium as a medicine is a grand and powerful remedy, and without a substitute, though as imperfectly understood in its complex action and far-reaching consequences by the mass of the medical profession as by the people at large. Its abstruser mysteries and remoter effects are yet to be discovered and developed by the science of physic. When the true nature of opium becomes generally known (and by the word nature I mean all the possibilities for good and evil embraced in the medical properties of the drug), the poor victim of its terrors will be taken by the hand and sympathized with by his fellow-man, instead of being ostracized from society, and treated with contempt and reprehension, as he now is. The difference between the condition of the victim in the primary, as contrasted with that in the secondary or advanced stages, consists in this: Of course, it is a self-evident proposition, from the description I have given of the effects of opium, that the longer a human being is subjected to the suffering it inflicts, the worse he will look, feel, and actually be. But to take the same man out of the advanced stages, and compare him with himself in the first stages, there will be found difference enough between the two living testimonies to the power of opium to interest the investigator, and repay him for the labor required to make the comparison. In the first stages, opium commits its ravages on the human system by expansion and explosion; in the after stages, it does its work by contraction and compression; the weary victim totters beneath a heavy load. In the first stages he has occasional periods of enjoyment; in the latter he has none; he is so benumbed by opium as to be incapable of enjoyment. Temporary manumission from positive pain or distress only brings out into stronger relief his miserable situation. He sees and feels that he is not happy; cannot be at his best; and yet his sensibilities are so impervious to all deep feeling, that it is impossible for him to give way to the luxury of weeping,--the solace of tears. His heart is as "dry" and as dead "as summer dust." The same numbness and deadness isolate him from the enjoyment of the society of his fellow-man. He has lost all capacity or capability to enjoy. He likewise has lost all interest in the things in which mankind generally take pleasure. He has lost all power to take interest in them. The world to him is a "sterile promontory," a "foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." "Man delights not him." In addition to the general deadness of the sensibilities, the buried-alive condition of the victim, he suffers daily misery and sometimes agony from the abnormal condition of the stomach and bowels produced by opium. The stomach is dry and hard,--dead as the rest of the physical man. The least variation in the dose deranges everything, and brings on a horrible indigestion. This, whether the variation be on the side of less or more; each holds in store its peculiar retribution for law violated. Too little may have some appetite (and may not), but no digestion. Too much may have a little appetite, but no digestion. In either case there may be no appetite at all. To subtract a certain quantity would be _certain_ to upset the stomach, both for appetite and digestion. To add a certain quantity, would be to so benumb the stomach as to prevent all appetite, relish, and digestion. In the one case--too little--it is a lack of strength in the stomach; in the other--too much--the organ is already satiated by opium, and desires no food. During the seasons of taking too much (that is, per day, and not per dose), that frequently assail the opium eater, and which, as I have before stated, it is almost impossible to break up, the poor unfortunate passes "a weary time," silent, passive, dead, in the day; at night deprived of natural sleep; arising in the morning in a suicidal state of mind, he lives "an unloved, solitary thing;" knowing himself to be miserable, yet dreading other evils from taking less; until at last, nature becoming exhausted, sickness, and consequent distaste for, and failure of effect in, opium come to his relief. O God! O God! believe me, reader, 'tis no chimera: I suffer daily untold misery, and some days my wretched condition is almost intolerable. The inability to take a reasonable quantity is, of course, one of the greatest misfortunes in the habit of opium eating. Jeremy Taylor says that in the regenerate person it sometimes comes to pass that the "old man" is so used to obey that, like the Gibeonites, he is willing to do inferior offices for the simple privilege of abiding in the land. Not so with the opium fiend; he thinks it better to "reign in hell than to serve in heaven;" his reign is absolute wherever he takes up his residence. "There is a medium in all things" except opium eating; there it is up hill and down dale; the poor victim is tossed about like a mariner at sea. But, speaking of mariners, his condition is more like that of the "Ancient Mariner" than is the condition of any one else like his. To him frequently in dreams, both day and night, "Slimy things _do_ crawl with legs upon the slimy sea." There was a period in my experience, now happily passed, thank heaven, when day or night I need only shut my eyes to see groups of enormous sea-monsters and serpents, with frightful heads, coiling and intercoiling about one another. You may, dear reader, whoever you are, rest assured that I indulged this privilege as seldom as possible. During that season, too, I suffered acutely from horrible dreams at night, waking in depths of gloom so appalling, so overpowered and undone, that I could not have borne it to have remained alone. Indeed, I became so afflicted with these nightmares (night horrors being the products of opium), that my wife was charged to turn me clear over and wake me up on the least evidence that I was suffering from one of them. This evidence, she said, came from me in the character of low, painful moans; I, conscious of my predicament when at the worst, always struggled with all my strength, and strained every nerve to cry out at the top of my voice:--I was perfectly powerless. I have always thought it the acme of the ridiculous to attribute to the peculiar formation of De Quincey's brain a special aptitude for dreaming magnificent dreams. Let any one, bold enough to undertake so costly an experiment, try the virtues of opium in the capacity of producing dreams, and, my word for it, he will either claim a special aptitude for dreaming himself, or, with me, give all the credit to the subtle and mighty powers of opium. CHAPTER XII. THE ADDRESS OF THE OPIUM EATER.--HOW HE OCCUPIES HIS TIME.--THE REFUGE OF SOLITUDE AND SILENCE.--INDIFFERENCE TO SOCIETY OR COMPANY.--DISPOSITION, PREDILECTIONS, AND GENERAL CONDUCT. The opium eater has but a poor address. The sources of all feeling and geniality are frozen up; he stands stiff, cold, and out of place: or in place as a piece of statuary, to be looked at, as, for instance, the statue of the god of pain, or as a specimen from the contents of Pandora's box. He is kind and sincere, but cordial he cannot be. His personal appearance is not inviting: shrunken and sallow, and with the air of a man who desires to escape and hide. Business matters and interviews of all kinds are consummated with the greatest possible despatch, and away he goes to some solitary retreat. If he is a business man, he of course must get through with the affairs of the day the best he can; as soon as through with these, he hies with speed to things congenial to his soul.[4] Books and literature are his favorite studies; they constitute his greatest and most constant enjoyment. Sitting in his chair, he alternately reads, writes, and dozes. Solitude and silence are his refuge and fortress, and his chiefest friends: companions of his own choosing. Visitors and company of all kinds are intruders. That this is so is not his fault as a man; it is the result of opium. Opium has unfitted him for the enjoyment of the society of mixed companies, and it is perhaps better that it isolates him also, which secures him from mortification to himself and grief to his friends. The disposition of the opium eater is mild and quiet, as a rule. All passion is dead,--unless the wretched irritability which comes from loss of natural sleep and other suffering caused by opium can be called passion. His general conduct is mild, simple, and child-like. All the animal is dormant, quite dead. The beautiful, the good, the free from sham, the genuine and unaffected, meet his approval. Anything that shocks by suddenness, that is obtrusive and noisy, he desires to be out of the reach of. Quiet and solitude, with those he loves within call, are his proper element. NOTE.--Among the ever-living cares and worriments that beset and afflict the much-tortured mind of the opium eater, the dread of being thrown out of employment, with consequent inability to procure opium, is not the least. And it begets a species of slavery at once abject and galling,--galling to the "better part of man," which it "cows;" and abject, in the perfect fear and sense of helplessness which it creates. The opium eater is not an attractive personage. The appearance is even worse than the reality. He looks weak and inefficient; the lack-lustre of his eye, the pallor of his face, and the _offishness_ of his general expression, are the reverse of fascinating. This he knows, and feels keenly and continually. He feels absolutely dependent, and that, were he thrown out of employment, it might be utterly impossible to obtain another situation, with his tell-tale disadvantages arrayed like open informers against him. This is a contingent and collateral consequence, dependent upon the position in life occupied by the victim; but where the party is poor, though collateral as it were, as I have above said, it is not the least among the ills that afflict the unfortunate opium eater. CHAPTER XIII. ON ENERGY AND AMBITION AS AFFECTED BY THE OPIUM HABIT. I have devoted a separate chapter to the discussion of these two qualities, because they are more directly operated upon by the curse of opium than any other of the principles in human nature. Coleridge, "though usually described as doing nothing,--'an idler,' 'a dreamer,' and by many such epithets,--sent forth works which, though they had cost him years of thought, never brought him any suitable return." So says Gillman, in his unfinished life of Coleridge. It was so common to charge Coleridge with being constitutionally idle, that he at length came to believe the crime charged to be true, and endeavored to extenuate his offence and overcome his "inbred sin." Before he became an opium eater this offence was not charged. No one then said he lacked energy or perseverance. His poetical works having been composed in his early manhood, would give the lie to this assertion, were it made. It was not until the fountain of his genius was frozen by the withering frosts of opium, that this charge had any foundation, or supposed foundation, in fact. After that time, after being ensnared in the toils of opium, I think it would be absurd to claim that a mere casual observer might not think there was some foundation for the charge that he was "doing nothing," etc. His way was obstructed by almost impassable barriers. The fangs of the destroyer left wounds which rendered it impossible for him to work with reasonable facility and success at certain times. What he did accomplish is better done than it would have been had he attempted to write when unfit. At times literary labor must have been entirely out of the question; he must have been too ill to attempt it. To write at any time required tremendous exertion of the will, and a calm resignation to bear any suffering in order to accomplish something. It is not fair to measure the result of Coleridge's labors by that of other men. As De Quincey truthfully says, "what he did in spite of opium," is the question to be considered. What was true of Coleridge holds good with all subject to the habit, the effect of opium being the same on all. Opium strikes at the very root of energy, as though it would extirpate that quality altogether. A deadly languor, the opposite of energy, an averseness to activity, pervades the whole system with paralyzing effect. Of course this state of feeling is inimical to the accomplishment of any great ambition. The ambition remains as a quality of remorse, to "prick and sting" one, but the energy to fulfil is frustrated by the enervating spells of opium. That dread inertia known only to opium eaters prevents the doing of everything save that which must be done, that cannot be avoided. The "potent poison" was never designed for man's daily use. It is not a thing which the system counteracts by long usage; it is a thing that transforms and deforms the whole physical and mental economy, and the longer its use the more complete the destruction. A man is thrown flat, and instead of a predisposition or a passion to do anything which aids one in the accomplishment of purposes, the whole human nature revolts like a pressed convict; there is no pleasure in the doing or the prospect of doing anything whatever. No warmth or glow of passion or genial feeling can be aroused. Hence the poetical faculty was annihilated in Coleridge. There is a sort of vitrifying process that chills all sensibility. A man is a stick. To expect that a man could succeed as well under these conditions, even in the little accomplished, is unreasonable. There are no genial impulses, no strength of fervor, no warmth of feeling of any kind. The man is under a load of poison; the springs of action are clogged with crushing weight. No hope of pleasure in future prospect can excite action. Whatever is done, is done in pale, cold strength of intellect. A man is placed entirely out of sympathy with his fellows or human kind. He cannot judge from his own heart what they would like or prefer. He is as completely cut off and dissevered from the body of mankind, and the interests and feelings of the same, as if he were a visitant from another sphere, and but faintly manifested here. How can he write in this condition? That exquisite feeling that teaches a writer to know when the best word tips the edges of the sensibility, lies buried under the _débris_ of dead tissue. It is a "lost art" to him. Although a man longs to do something worthy the praise of men, and although his ambition may be even higher than it otherwise would be, owing to his being able to take no pleasure in minutiæ, and having appreciation only for concrete generalities, he has such a contempt for, and so little pleasure in, the procuring processes, the details of the work, that he is overwhelmed with disgust before making an effort. No interest in anything of human production, renders him primarily unable and unfit for the details necessary to be gone through with in the achievement of any great purpose. The pangs of disappointment he feels as deeply as any one. He becomes morbidly sorrowful over his lack of success, his inability to do anything. Unlike Coleridge, but like De Quincey, he may have gotten into the power of opium while his mind was yet undeveloped and immature, thus being deprived of the possibility of enjoying that "blessed interval" which was given to Coleridge, and to which he alludes with such thankfulness. As to poetry, in Coleridge's case, the beautiful language of Keats was fulfilled: "As though a rose should shut and be a bud again." In the case of De Quincey, cruel winter came on and nipped the flower in the bud ere yet it had time to bloom, so that when it came to flower forth, in a later season, it was found that the stalk itself had been stunted in its growth, and the beauty of the flower impaired. He may have been afflicted with sickness in his early youth which prevented the development of his mind, the pain of which threw him into opium, as in my own case. He may have in this state felt the "stirrings" of genius, without the power of expression, and when at length his pain was so relieved, and his strength so increased, as to allow him to attempt something, the withering blight of opium had blasted his perceptions, exterminated his feelings, and enfeebled his intellect. Verily, the lines of Byron apply with special significance to the state of the opium eater: "We wither from our youth, we gasp away-- Sick--sick; unfound the boon--unslaked the thirst, Though to the last, in verge of our decay, Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first-- But all too late,--so we are doubly curst." If anything whatever is done, it must be done through suffering, and by herculean efforts to overcome the distaste and disgust that assail one. It is all against the tide. There is no current to move with. Everything original seems contemptible, at least of little weight; and although he can judge the works of others correctly, they excite but faint interest. But the sickening weight that overpowers one and holds him back, like the hand of a strong man, is the greatest obstacle. He might ignore his lack of interest. A man in health warms with his subject, and takes great pleasure in it. The opium eater remains passive and the same all the way along, and ends feeling that he has not done justice to his natural ability, and chafes with grief, disappointment, and despair at his confined and weakened powers. As a structure, he is riddled "from turret to foundation-stone." To expect as much from a man in this condition as from one in the healthful enjoyment of all his faculties, shocks the sense of justice,--it is "to reason most absurd." Would you expect grapes from a hyperborean iceberg?--figs from the Sahara?--palms from Siberia? Would you compare the fettered African with the roving Arabian?--the bond to the free? In sober practice, would you say to the blind, "Copy this writing?"--to the palsied, "Run you this errand,"--to the sick in bed, "Arise, and write a book?" Would you do this? You say it is ridiculous. So was it ridiculous, so was it wrong, to expect from Coleridge constant writing, and more than he accomplished. Why, the human face itself tells the story in a word. The _face_ remains, but the countenance, the expression and divine resemblance, are erased and stricken off. So the body remains, but like a blasted oak, whose hollow trunk contains no sap, and whose withered branches are barren. Coleridge did well,--he did nobly,--and left a legacy the value of which will yet be learned to man's everlasting gain. Numbered with the saints in heaven is the sweet-minded, long-suffering Coleridge. Oh, venerated shade! thy spirit living yet upon the earth has kept mine company in this sad ebb and flow of time. Thy nature, so gentle, so tender, and so true; thy heart so pure; thy whole being so perfect and so high, hath been a lighted torch to me in this my dark estate, travelling up the rugged hill of time, and rolling my stone along; hath been balm to my wounds, wine to my spirit, and hope to my o'er-freighted heart! To know thee as thou wert, my own kindred suffering tearing all prejudice away, is at least one solace ungiven the world at large. Thou hast borne thy part and won thy crown; may the humblest of thy friends join thee at last in the realms of peace! CHAPTER XIV. OPIUM VERSUS SLEEP.--MANNER OF TAKING OPIUM.--DIFFERENT CONSIDERATIONS RELATING TO THE HABIT.--A PROPHETIC WARNING. What three things does opium especially provoke? As to sleep, like drink in a certain respect, it provokes and it unprovokes;--it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance; therefore, much _opium_ may be said to be an equivocator with _sleep_; it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on (though it does not take him off); it persuades him, and disheartens him; it makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.--_Shakespeare altered._ But, of the three things that drink especially provokes, but one, and that sleep, is concurrently provoked by the extract of poppies. Still, the sleep provoked by opium is not "Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," but "death's half-brother, sleep,"--a state in which, with reference to opium eaters, "their drenched natures lie as in a death;" "_their_ breath alone showing that _they_ live;" "while death and nature do contend about them, whether they live or die."[5] The three things which opium especially provokes are,--first, sleep; second, loss of sensibility; and third, loss of sublunary happiness. Opium puts a man under an influence which must pass away before natural sleep, and in consequence rest, can supervene. Of course, if the opium eater takes an exceedingly moderate quantity of the drug, he may get rest that is refreshing,--that is, if he get any sleep at all; taking too little, defeats the whole object. But in general the opium eater arises in the morning in an inconceivably ill state of feeling. It is almost impossible to arise at all. The heart feels much affected,--and no wonder, lying all night in the embrace of poison sufficient to kill half a dozen of the strongest men. It is a most wretched condition, and the most trying. A man gets up in the morning with no sense of rest, feeling that he has been aroused long before he should have been. Before going to bed he does not feel so; it comes on after having slept about seven hours. His sense of want of rest before going to bed is not to be compared with his misery on getting up in the A. M., though he in fact shrinks from going to bed at all, so painful is the anticipation of the misery of the morning. In the case of De Quincey, it may have been that he had all the time he wished to sleep in. He may have been master of his own time to such a degree that he could go to bed when he desired, and get up when he felt like it. If this was true, he no doubt escaped the miseries others are compelled to endure, whose duties require them to arise at an early hour,--that is, at the hour at which the business portion of the world generally arise. It is most probable, not being under the regimen of fixed hours, that he was able to sleep off the effects of opium, and then get all the natural rest his system demanded before arising. If this theory of his case in this regard is the true one, he escaped a great deal of the suffering usually entailed upon the victims of the prince of narcotics. If I could lie two or three hours longer (or rather later) in the morning (which would carry me far beyond the beginning of business hours in the A. M.), I would get up feeling a great deal fresher and better. Going to bed early does not contravene or anticipate the difficulty. It is compulsory upon one to go to bed early, as it is. The proposition, boiled down, is simply this: The effect of opium lasts a specific length of time, and that must be slept by, and passed, before full relaxation sets in, and the overload of opium passes out of the system. Were I master of my own time, I think I could regulate my hours so as to avoid _this_ misery of opium: at least so modify it that it would be much more tolerable than it now is in my own case. But let us pass on to something else. It was in the year A. D. 1867 that I was misled into the habit of using morphia, and I have continued its use ever since in greater or less degree: assuming that the essential principle or foundation of all nostrums invented to cure the baneful habit is opium in one of its various forms. My practice is now to take a dose of so many grains exact weight at ten o'clock A. M., and another at four and a half o'clock P. M. At the latter dose I need not necessarily be so precise in weight. Regularity is absolutely enforced. There is no getting along otherwise. It is essential to preserve any uniformity of feeling, to secure sleep and tolerable digestion. An habituate periodically becomes bilious under the best regulations; frequently so where large quantities are taken, and the system is kept clogged with the drug. By adhering to strict regularity in weight and time, I still derive some stimulation from the drug, and when the stomach is in good condition, and free from lodgments of food, I sometimes feel a momentary touch of pleasurable sensation from the morning dose. In the afternoon there is usually too much food in my stomach for the medicine to take strong hold; often I can scarcely perceive that I have taken a dose, though usually there is a dull feeling of stimulation. By eight o'clock P. M. I begin to get drowsy, and it is best for me to get a doze at that time. I generally take a couple of dozes during the course of the evening, going to bed at ten o'clock, or about that hour. To get sleep enough is a point of the utmost importance. It is obligatory upon one to watch himself closely in this respect. The opium must to a great extent be slept off, and the system thoroughly relaxed, before refreshing sleep can be obtained. Getting up at the usual hours, compels an opium eater to arise before his sleep appears to be more than half out. He feels awful for a time, gradually becoming less wretched. The matter of sleep is one of so great importance, and so prominent a feature in the life of an opium eater, that I have treated the subject specially and at length in the beginning of this chapter. I hope the reader will pardon me for again adverting to the matter, and for what seems little less than a repetition of the same remarks. But I ask his charity on the whole work, with its repetitions and tautology, which I am too much pressed for time to avoid,--writing, as I do, by snatches and in haste. Taking a certain large quantity of opium, so binds up one's nerves that it is difficult to sleep at all. The narcotic effect then seems lost. One must relax this tension, by taking less of the drug, before he can rest easily either day or night. This effect comes from too much opium. Another effect of opium, or more properly _result_, is that after a meal,--I speak only for myself in this, however,--particularly after dinner with me, if one walks about much,--that is, immediately after he has eaten,--what he ate weighs like a chunk of lead in the stomach. I think it used to derange my stomach, and make me miserable till the next day. I avoid it now as much as possible, and very rarely am afflicted with it. Another effect,--but one, however, of which I have spoken heretofore,--I am beginning to feel very gloomy and scary at night again. Oh! I do pray God that I may escape, dodge, or ward this off in some way. There are no other earthly feelings so terrible. It is the valley and shadow of death. One seems to stand upon the verge of the grave, breathing the atmosphere of the dead. There is such a lasting intimacy with, such a constant presence in the mind of, the idea of death. All seems so dark, dreary, and so hopeless; so painfully gloomy and melancholy. A man is completely emasculated. The full development of this condition I must prevent. It shows an alarming state, and that a change in the management of the habit is imperatively required. The quantity of opium taken by old practitioners varies greatly. A reasonable quantity, after six or eight years' steady use, would be from twelve to sixteen grains morphia per twenty-four hours, I judge. They might take less, and I have known cases where much more was taken. The quantity, however, depends not so much upon the question of time as upon the temperament and general make-up of the particular victim in every respect. Leaving the question of time out, I have known the quantity to range as high as sixty grains sulphate of morphia per diem. This was awful. One can keep pretty near a certain quantity, by struggling hard and being determined to allow it to make no headway. In doing this, though, more distress and inconvenience are undergone the longer a specified quantity is adhered to. It will not supply a man and sustain him as well, as time wears on, as it did when he first adopted the dose stated. Opium seems to wear away the strength of a person just as the gradual dropping of water wears away a stone. Hence it is usually the case that, as time passes on, the dose is gradually increased. I was just speaking of a little different matter, by the by. What I meant was this,--that, through a certain course of years, the dose would increase to a certain standard, which, from that time on for a number of years, would remain about the same, and appear to be sufficient, and not need any addition. As in my own case, for instance. After a few years I arrived at the quantity of twelve grains per diem, six A. M. and six P. M. This quantity I continued to take for a number of years, with but slight variation. There is a reason for the writing of this inside history of the opium habit beyond the one people would naturally hit upon. It is this. This is an inquisitive, an experimenting, and a daring age,--an age that has a lively contempt for the constraints and timorous inactivity of ages past. Its quick-thinking and restless humanity are prying into everything. Opium will not pass by untampered with. Even at this time, it is not entirely free from vicious handling. But as yet, in any age, this included, as far as the Caucasian race is concerned, there has been no such a wresting from its legitimate sphere and proper purpose of the drug, as I have great fear there will be in years to come. Will alcohol become unpopular, then be abhorred, and then opium be substituted in its stead? Will it? This is the grave question I am now propounding. In order that I may not be thought to be speculating upon a subject not within the realms of reason or probability, I will just reinforce myself here by stating that a Senatorial committee, of which the late Mr. Charles Sumner was a member, thought it not unworthy their time and the nation's interest to investigate into this identical question. I have good reason to believe that, even at this day, the number of persons addicted to the habitual use of opium is far beyond the imagination of people generally:--even of persons who have looked into the matter somewhat, but who have never used the drug, or made its use a matter of _special_ observation for years. I have good reason to believe that even now the use of opium is carried on to such an extent, that a census of the victims would strike the country with terror and alarm. But yet this is trivial in comparison with the opium afflictions of which I prophesy; when liquor will be abandoned and opium resorted to as commonly as liquor now is. Heaven forefend! God, our Father, in mercy avert the day! It will be a time of general effeminacy, sickness, and misery,--_should it come_. "Should it come!" Ah, there is some solace in that. Let us intercept it, if possible. I believe knowledge is stronger than ignorance. To know your danger, and yet avoid it, is better than to pass it by through the mere accident of ignorance,--it is safer. Then know, that opium has charms you could not resist did you once feel their influence; that it is like the beautiful woman in Grecian mythology, ravishing to look upon, but poisonous to touch. Knowing your danger, keep out of its reach; for, no matter what its transitory influences may be, its most certain, permanent, and overshadowing results are pain and misery! Having put forth my hand to warn the world of the miseries inherent in opium, when perverted from its proper medical purpose, I now end this chapter, in order to hasten towards a conclusion of my task. CHAPTER XV. DIFFICULTIES OF WRITING THIS BOOK.--AN ATTEMPT TO RENOUNCE OPIUM IN THE LATTER STAGES OF THE HABIT DESCRIBED.--COLERIDGE AND DE QUINCEY.--ANIMADVERSIONS UPON DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS." I have promised to describe an attempt to renounce opium while the victim is in the latter stages. I will endeavor to fulfil my promise, although sick and weary of the subject, and sick and weary in body and mind. This book has been composed at irregular intervals, in moments snatched from an otherwise busy life. It must be inconsecutive and loose in composition. I beg the reader's kindest indulgence, and his consideration of the purpose I have had in view,--the benefit of my fellow-man. Oh! if I can deter but one from being drawn into the "maelstrom," as Coleridge has so aptly termed it; if I can save but one from the woe and misery I suffer daily, I shall feel well rewarded for the effort I have made to record my unhappy personal history. No fondness for detailing my grievances has had anything to do with the writing of this little work; on the contrary, I have an almost unconquerable repugnance to the subject. It is only with the greatest effort that I can compel myself to return to it. I have been wearied, and consumed with pain and misery, during the whole progress of it. Had I been master of my own time, as far as literary merit is concerned, it would have been more acceptable, although my mind is and has been, during the whole course of it, debilitated and oppressed by opium. My condition and preoccupied time precluded that object altogether. If it is found intelligible, my object, as far as literary excellence is concerned, will have been attained. But, "Begin, murderer; leave thy damnable faces, and begin!" I have not for a number of years made an effort to renounce opium. I know that my unaided efforts would prove fruitless. My constitution would no more stand the test than it would the abstinence from food. Death would follow sooner from want of opium than it would from want of food. Seventy-two hours' abstinence from opium would, I think, prove fatal in my case; and I believe that I would die by the expiration of that time. It may be impossible to conceive, without actual experience, the singular effect opium has upon the system in making itself a necessity. Being no physician, I am unable to give a technical description of that effect, but, with the reader's indulgence, I shall try, however, to describe it in my own language. When opium is not taken by the _habitué_ for twenty-four hours, his whole body commences to sag, droop, and become unjointed. The result is precisely like taking the starch out of a well-done-up shirt. The man is as limp as a dish-rag, and as lifeless. He perspires all over,--feels wet and disagreeable. To take opium now is to brace the man right up; it tightens him up like the closing of a draw-string. Such is the effect in the internal man, and it pervades thence the entire system. His mortal machine is screwed up and put in running order. The opium not taken at the expiration of the twenty-four hours, rheumatic pains in the lower limbs soon set in, gradually extending to the arms and back; these grow worse as time passes, and continue to grow worse until they become unendurable. Contemporaneously with the pain, all the secretions of the system, but more notably those of the stomach and bowels, are unloosed like the opening of a flood-gate, and an acrid and fiery diarrhoea sets in, which nothing but opium can check. All the corruption engendered and choked up there for years comes rushing forth in a foul and distempered mass. The pain and diarrhoea continue until the patient is either cured, if he has sufficient will and constitution to withstand the torture, or is compelled by his sufferings to return to opium. During the period of time endured without opium, the body is fiery hot and painfully sensitive to every touch or contact. So exquisite is the sensibility, that to touch a hair of the head or beard, is like the jagging of needles into the body. The mouth continually dreuls, and in some instances is ulcerated and sore. As to eating, it is hardly to be thought of; a mouthful satisfies. Of the suffering hardest to withstand, is the _apparent_ stationary position of time, which arises, I presume, from the rigid, intense condition, and intense sensitiveness, of the whole system, and the hopelessness of the thoughts which march like funeral processions through the mind; this, in connection with the sinking state of the spirits, and the awful aching of the heart, places a man in a predicament which no other earthly suffering can parallel. There is no prospect in life; opium has so transformed the human body, that it no longer has natural feelings; there is no expectancy, no hope, for a different future. The appetite for opium at this time is generally master of the man; it rages like the hunger of a wild beast. If a person when in this condition had any human feelings or aspirations, he might resist and go on, if of constitution sufficient; but the difficulty is, it is necessary for the poor wretch to take opium to have natural feelings, or to place any reliance upon the future. It is generally the case, at this stage, that the opium eater would wade through blood for opium. All else in the world is nothing to him without it, and for it he would exchange the world and all there is in it. He yields to the irresistible demand for his destroyer; and with a heart the depth of whose despair the plummet of hope never sounded. I fear I may have entirely failed to give the reader any idea of the vitiating power of opium in making itself a "necessary evil," and in burning out of the human system all natural feelings, hopes, and aspirations. I am unable to explain it better; that it has such power, I know but too well. An opium eater learned in medicine, physiology, and metaphysics, might explain the subject scientifically, giving reasons why this and that is so, etc.; "it is beyond my practice." After the foregoing, it may be unnecessary for me to refer to an attempt of my own, made some years ago; however, I will relate it briefly. I was but a couple of years deep in opium; nevertheless the habit was firmly fastened. The manacles were beyond the strength of my slender constitution, even then. I cannot state just how many hours I had gone without opium when the serious pains began. I had taken none that day, but I do not know at what time I had taken the last dose on the day previous. At any rate, it was in the middle of the night, and at least thirty hours after taking any opium, when the most terrible pain set in. During the most of the day I had sat in a dejected state, a prey to the most trying melancholy. Though up to that date my feelings were not so frozen but that I could weep, and I had not yet been forced, as I since have been, to cry with Hamlet, the noble Dane, "Oh! that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;" during this attempt, as during all near that time (I have since made none), weeping would come upon me in floods. It seemed as if I was the victim of a heart-rending grief,--and so I was. The consciousness of my predicament,--an opium eater,--with all the humiliations and failures caused by being so, came upon me with irresistible power. Coleridge alludes to this same period in his touching letter to Gillman, written a few days before he took up his abode with the latter. By the way, if there is any one who can read that letter without feeling his heart warm with esteem and reverence for the man that wrote it, I must acknowledge that his sensibilities are deader than mine, and that is saying a good deal. The passage referred to is as follows: "The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but, when I am alone, the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me." To recur to my own case again: the terrific pain before mentioned lasted not long; it was simply impossible for me to bear it. I had gone to bed, but was compelled to get up. The pain (seemingly in my whole body, but particularly in my head and limbs) finally became so severe that I had to run about the room; I could not bear it either standing, sitting, or lying still. After it had continued this way for some time, seeing no prospect of abatement, but certainty of growing worse, I took a small dose of opium. Oh, with what despairing thoughts I always returned to the cause of all my misery,--as to the den of "Cerberus and blackest midnight!" Jeremy Taylor, in his address to the clergy, prefacing his work on repentance, says: "For, to speak truth, men are not very apt to despair; they have ten thousand ways to flatter themselves, and they will hope in despite of all arguments to the contrary." This is "too much proved," as old Polonius would say. But if there is ever a despairing time in life, it is when an opium eater, who has been earnest and determined in his effort to quit, sees himself forced back again into the habit, and realizes that life to him must ever be "but a walking shadow;" that he must languish out his natural existence, locked a close prisoner in the arms of a grisly demon! "Oh, Christ, that ever this should be!" This refers to a period while there is yet hope and expectation; while there is confidence that health would bring happiness; while yet the victim can realize this. But though at all times, in trying to quit, the victim clutches with eagerness his nepenthe, when he sees that he cannot succeed, nevertheless, it is with an awful sensation of hopelessness that he returns to opium; there is an undercurrent of the deepest despair: this ever continues to be the case,--that is, such is _my_ experience; upon thought, I will not cast beyond that. The reason why the opium eater does not despair after getting back into the habit is, I presume, because his feelings are too much benumbed; he is too dead to feel many deep pangs that his miserable situation would otherwise inflict upon him. I mean, now, suicidal despair;--to "curse God and die." He has already, in common parlance, despaired of any happiness in his future;--in his future natural life, I mean. That is to say, he does not, like other men, expect to be happy on this or that occasion, though he works and expects more security and ease of mind on the attainment of this or that end. Still, the opium eater's sensibilities are not armor. A wound from a cruel word pierces deep and rankles. In truth, I used to have to watch myself closely, to see whether in reality my wounds had their origin in fact or imagination. Any fancied neglect or slight from the business manager lay upon my heart with sickening weight. Direct and "palpable hits" cut to the bone. During the past year or so, although I have not changed my business situation, I seem to have been treated better, and have not been so much ruffled in this respect. But the opium eater's general state of feeling, aside from pains in body and hurts in mind, is such as might be left behind by some great sorrow; an abiding gloominess of feeling is cast over his spirit. This exists in varying degrees of depth or intensity, of course:--it depends upon his condition as to opium, and the particular state of his body and mind as an opium eater. Julius C. Hare, in speaking of Coleridge, said: "His sensibilities were such as an averted look would rack, who would have stood in the presence of an earthquake unmoved." In reading an article on Tom Hood, some time ago, I observed that the author, in speaking of Hood's companions in literature, alluded to the "pale, sad face of De Quincey." Oh, that men of such transcendent powers as Coleridge and De Quincey should be stricken down by the fiend of opium! Verily, if "in struggling with misfortune lies the proof of virtue," I have not the slightest doubt that to-day these two stars in literature, their bright spirits divested of the mask of opium, shine with light ineffable in the councils of the blest! What they did is not so much, as that they accomplished it under the withering curse of opium. And yet what they have left will stand comparison with that of the best of their contemporaries, each in his particular field or fields of literature. And if "Tears and groans, and never-ceasing care, And all the pious violence of prayer," avail to redeem a man from his sins, surely Coleridge fully atoned for all the fault that could be imputed to him for taking opium. His course ought to satisfy the most exacting now, as it should have done in his own age. But prejudice! Alas! who or what is equal to it? His getting into opium was without fault upon his part. He was afflicted with rheumatism, and all who have read his life know why. A medicine, called the "Kendal Black Drop," was prescribed for rheumatism in a medical work which he had read. He obtained the medicine, and it worked wonders; his swellings went down, and his pains subsided. It was a glorious discovery, and he recommended it wherever he went. The pains would come back, however, so he kept the medicine handy. It is unnecessary to pursue the phantom any further; the ever-effectual remedy was nothing but opium, and Coleridge was into the habit before he knew what he was about. And for such a nature as Coleridge's to get out of opium, when once in it, is not among the things that happen. De Quincey took laudanum for the toothache, and afterwards continued it at intervals for the pleasure it gave him, until finally, his stomach giving way, he was precipitated into the daily use of it. Which of these men was the most to blame in getting into the habit, is not the object of these present remarks. I agree, however, with Coleridge, that De Quincey's work, entitled, "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater," tends rather to induce others into the habit, "through wantonness," than to warn them from it. Coleridge said as much in a couple of private notes, which were printed, after his death, in his "Life" by Gillman. He likewise used the following significant language in one of the said notes: "From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been free, as far as acts of my free will and intention are concerned; even to the author of that work ('Confessions of an English Opium Eater'), I pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He utterly denied it, but I fear that I had, even then, to _deter_, perhaps, not to forewarn." This raised the ire of De Quincey, who animadverted very freely upon Gillman's "Life of Coleridge," Coleridge and Gillman, in a paper entitled, "Coleridge and Opium Eating," which is, in my opinion, far more creditable to the parties attacked than to its author. In this paper he also attempts to give some excuse for writing his "Confessions," in the doing of which he makes a most startling blunder, by assuming that Milton's "Paradise Lost" is the true history of our first parents; and then, on the strength of that, proving that laudanum was known and used in Paradise! See a separate note at the end of this work, in which this unlooked for, though unmistakable, evidence and result of having too freely "eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner," is fully discussed. His excuse for writing his "Confessions" I give in his own words: "It is in the faculty of mental vision; it is in the increased power of dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original higher sensibility is found some palliation for the practice of opium eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse; and in this faculty of self-revelation is found some palliation for reporting the case to the world, which both Coleridge and his biographer have overlooked." The world had much better have remained in ignorance, if it was necessary for the "Confessions" to be written in their present spirit. But there was no necessity for calling the attention of the public to the "pleasures of opium," thereby drawing into the vortex of the habit any who might rely too much upon his statement, that he had used opium periodically for eight years, without its having become necessary as "an article of daily diet." "Wanton" is the very word that describes his "Confessions" to my mind. He has thrown a glamour of enchantment over the subject of opium, irresistibly tempting to some minds. Yet I can conceive, I think, the state of mind necessary to produce the "Confessions" as they are. De Quincey had been for a long time passing through the fiery ordeal of reducing the quantity of opium taken, preparatory to its final abandonment. The appetite must have been strong upon him. He felt free from the oppression of opium, and his spirits were good. He could only realize in his own mind the "pleasures of opium," without its "pains;" he was under the thraldom of the appetite which perverted his judgment; that is, the appetite would not allow him to give the pains their due weight, or of course they would have kicked the pleasures "higher than a kite." His mind, I say, under the influence of the appetite, dwelt upon the pleasures; he yearned towards them, and longed to indulge himself to the full. But he had given out that he was quitting opium; he dared not indecently ignore his own declarations, and the expectations of his friends, by unceremoniously suspending his efforts to quit, and plunging at once and unrestrained to his fullest depth into opium; he must prepare the way, he must break the fall; and this he did in the "Confessions." That is, this is my theory of the case. I pretend to have no direct evidence of the fact; I simply derive my opinion from the work itself, and other of his works. He therein (that is, in the "Confessions") involves as many as possible, and makes the habit "as common as any, the most vulgar thing to sense." He gave a dangerous publicity to opium that it never had before. He gave a fascination to the drug outside of its own influence; to wit, the drug, when it gets hold of one, is fascinating enough, but he gave to the _subject_ of opium allurements to those who had never yet tasted the article itself. To explain to, and inform the world of, "the marvellous power of opium in dealing with the shadowy and the dark," did not require him to run riot in his imagination, in calling up and "doing" over again his opium debaucheries. I fail utterly to perceive the part "the shadowy and the dark" play in them. [That section of De Quincey's work relating to his dreams is not here referred to; neither is there in it anything dangerous to the public that I recall.] But, lest we "crack the wind of the poor phrase, wronging it thus," we desist; there is no use in driving a question to beggary, or in searching for reasons where they never were "as thick as blackberries." Poor De Quincey, rest to his shade!--he suffered enough for all purposes. "No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode (There they alike in trembling hope repose), The bosom of his Father and his God." CHAPTER XVI. CONCLUSION. In the preceding chapter I have apparently gone out of my way to strike a blow at De Quincey's "Confessions." So I have, because it was a part of the purpose of this treatise so to do. While I seek at every opportunity to commiserate the condition of the man De Quincey, his works are public property, of which every man has a right to express his own opinion. With these remarks, I now conclude this work; hoping, trusting, praying, that it may be the means of warning others, before they _taste_ the venomous stuff, of the chasm before them; that to touch it is to tread upon "a slumbering volcano," and that, once into the crater, they are lost for life. I warn them of a reptile more subtle and more charming than the serpent itself, under whose fascination it conceals a sting so deadly, that "--no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all the simples that have virtue," can save its victims from destruction. I trust I have said nothing that can allure any one into the habit: my whole object has been, professedly and in reality, to do the contrary. Referring him, if so inclined, to some fragmentary notes on different subjects connected with opium and opium eaters in the Appendix to this work, I now respectfully bid the reader farewell. APPENDIX. NOTE No. 1.--COLERIDGE AND THE CRITICS. Coleridge was unfortunate in having lived in an age in which party spirit was bitter in the extreme, and literary criticism, either from this or other causes, was no less malignant and bitter. It seems that Coleridge claimed that the "Edinburgh Review" _employed_ the venomous Hazlitt to "run him down," in a criticism on the Lay Sermon--that Hazlitt had been employed by reason of his genius for satire, being a splenetic misanthropist, and for his known hostility to Coleridge. The "Edinburgh Review" denied that he was _employed_ for this purpose. Whether he did the job of his own volition and spontaneous motion or not, he did it, and did it well; he noted him closely to "abuse him scientifically." All this after Coleridge had received him at his house, and given him advice that proved greatly to his advantage. Hazlitt, in an essay on the poets, acknowledges and explicitly states that Coleridge roused him into a consciousness of his own powers--gave his mind its first impetus to unfolding. It is said that Coleridge encouraged him when every one did not perceive so much in the "rough diamond." Jeffrey, editor of the "Edinburgh Review," in a critique on the Christabel, took occasion to thoroughly personally abuse and villify Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. He accorded no merit whatever to the Christabel. This after he had been the recipient of Coleridge's hospitality, and had acted in a friendly manner. I copy the following from the memoir of Keats, introductory to a volume of his poetical works, edited by William B. Scott: "It is not worth while now to analyze the papers that first attracted notice to 'Blackwood's Magazine,' by calling Coleridge's 'Biographia Literaria' a most execrable performance, and the amiable, passive, lotus-eating author, a compound of egotism and malignity...." I think "respectable gentlemen" did "do things thirty years ago (now, say fifty), which they could not do now without dishonor." Thank Providence for the march of civilization, genius has now a better recognition, and knowledge and taste being more generally disseminated and cultivated, the masses of the reading people, who are now the true judges and regulators of these matters, would not brook it for a moment. In vulgar phrase, it is "played out." The genius is valued higher than the malignant hack critic. From what I read, Hazlitt died miserably as he had lived. "Sacked" by a woman beneath him in station, "and to recline upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those of his;"--now one of oblivion's ghosts. NOTE No. 2.--COLERIDGE AND PLAGIARISM. That Coleridge did borrow the _language_ of Shelling is of course indisputable. See that part of the "Biographia Literaria" which treats of the Transcendental Philosophy. But Coleridge plainly, and in a manner that cannot be mistaken, makes over to Shelling anything found in his works that resembles that author. He "regarded truth as a divine ventriloquist. He cared not from whose mouth the sounds proceeded, so that the words were audible and intelligible." He sought not to take anything from Shelling; on the contrary, he pays him a high tribute, and calls him his "predecessor though contemporary." He said he did not wish to enter into a rivalry with Shelling for what was so unequivocally his right. 'Twould be honor enough for him (Coleridge) to make the system intelligible to his countrymen. But Coleridge made over everything that resembled, or coincided with Shelling, to the latter, on condition that he should not be charged with intentional plagiarism or ungenerous concealment; this because he could not always with accuracy cite passages, or thoughts, actually derived from Shelling. He was not in a situation to do so, hence he makes this general acknowledgment and proclamation beforehand. He says, indeed, that he never was able to procure but two of Shelling's books, besides a small pamphlet against Fichte. But the reason why he could not designate citations and thoughts, is, that he and Shelling had studied in the same schools of philosophy, and had taken about the same path in their course of philosophical reading; they were both aiming at the same thing, and although Shelling has seemingly gotten ahead of Coleridge, they would most likely have arrived at about the same conclusions, had the works of each never been known to the other. In short, the ideas of the two men were so similar, that it must have been perplexingly difficult, if not impossible, for Coleridge to tell whether he derived a particular thought from Shelling, or from his own mind. NOTE No. 3.--A MARE'S NEST. In De Quincey's article entitled "Coleridge and Opium Eating," in the concluding part, after making some very just observations in relation to the peculiar temperament most liable to the seductive influences, and "the spells lying couchant in opium," he proceeds to make a very strange assertion concerning the properties of opium being known in Paradise, and--mark the bull--refers to Milton's Paradise Lost in proof! We quote as follows: "You know the Paradise Lost? And you remember from the eleventh book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already existed in Eden,--nay, that it was used medicinally by an archangel; for, after Michael had purged with 'euphrasy and rue' the eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to the mere _sight_ of the great visions about to unfold their draperies before him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against the _affliction_ of these visions, of which visions the first was death. And how? 'He from the well of life three drops instilled.' "What was their operation? 'So deep the power of these ingredients pierced, Even to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes, Sank down, and all his spirits became entranced. But him the gentle angel by the hand Soon raised.' "The second of these lines it is which betrays the presence of laudanum." The fundamental error here, and that which vitiates and renders ridiculous all that follows, is the purblind assumption that Milton's Paradise Lost is a true account of the transactions of our first parents in the garden of Eden. But it is not, and Adam had no vision of the future or of death. Even if Milton's were the true account, I would not be inclined to believe that he meant laudanum. If the archangel had power to show visions of the future he would have had power to prepare Adam for the spectacle by far other than earthly means. There was a _tree of life_ in the garden of Eden, but no well of life is recorded in sacred history. But Milton says of the archangel (as De Quincey quotes): "He from the well of life three drops instilled." A rather small dose to see visions upon; I believe the ordinary dose for an adult is from fifteen to twenty drops. However, a well of life would hardly be the designation for a well of laudanum. Milton undoubtedly derived his idea of a well of life from the tree of life spoken of in holy writ, whose fruit had the power of conferring immortality. "And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." Gen. iii. 22-24. Milton is indebted to this hint, and his own imagination, for his well of life, and the powers he ascribes to its waters; and De Quincey is indebted to his imagination solely for his idea that it was laudanum which constituted the potent waters of this imaginary well. The whole thing is simply ridiculous. Still, it has an object, which object is, taken in connection with what remains of his essay on Coleridge and opium eating, to give some excuse, or palliation, as he puts it, for writing his (De Quincey's) opium confessions. We give his own words: "It is in the faculty of mental vision, it is in the increased powers of dealing with the shadowy and the dark, that the characteristic virtue of opium lies. Now, in the original higher sensibility is found some palliation for the practice of opium eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation is found some palliation for _reporting_ the case to the world, which both Coleridge and his biographer have overlooked." The idea that laudanum was known and used in Paradise, on the authority of the Paradise Lost of Milton, is as bad as the foolish opinions of some over-wise persons that Shakespeare's Hamlet was really insane. NOTE No. 4.--SECOND NOTE ON COLERIDGE AND PLAGIARISM. De Quincey, in his essay on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, while treating of the subject of Plagiarism, several minor charges of which he had just been firing off in his blind endeavor to do Coleridge good by destroying his good name forever, admits that said minor charges amount to nothing as plagiarism; but says, that "now we come to a case of real and palpable plagiarism." The case arises in the "Biographia Literaria." De Quincey says, regarding a certain essay on the esse and the cogitare, that Coleridge had borrowed it from beginning to end from Shelling. But that before doing so, being aware of the coincidence, he remarks that he would willingly give credit to so great a man when the truth would allow him to do so, but that in this instance he had thought out the whole matter himself, before reading the works of the German philosopher. Now the truth is, Coleridge said nothing of the kind. He first warned his readers that an identity of thought or expression, would not always be evidence that the ideas were borrowed from Shelling, or that the conceptions were originally learned from him. They (Coleridge and Shelling) had taken about the same course in their philosophical studies, etc. He says: "God forbid that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Shelling for honors so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the philosophy of nature, and the most successful improver of the dynamic system," etc. He then says: "For readers in general, let whatever coincides with or resembles the doctrines of my German predecessor, though contemporary, be wholly attributed to him, provided that the absence of direct references to his works, which I could not always make with truth, as designating thoughts or citations actually derived from him, and which, with this general acknowledgment, I trust would be unnecessary, be not charged on me as intentional plagiarism or ungenerous concealment." This is what he did say, and a sufficient acknowledgment for anything borrowed from Shelling. He then says that he had been able to procure but two of Shelling's books, in addition to a small pamphlet against Fichte. The above is from the prefatory remarks to which De Quincey alludes, but his memory must have been gone on a "wool-gathering" at the time. Instead of gaining, Coleridge is the loser by adopting the _language_ of Shelling in his treatise on the transcendental philosophy in the "Biographia Literaria." Having made over to Shelling everything that resembled or coincided with the doctrines of the latter, he lost much of the most important labors of his life. He had studied metaphysics and philosophy for years, and not having "shrank from the toil of thinking," he must have evolved much original matter; being a man, as De Quincey says, of "most original genius." Shelling no doubt had gotten ahead of him in publication, but Coleridge had nevertheless undoubtedly thought out the transcendental system before meeting with the works of Shelling. He says himself emphatically, that "all the fundamental ideas were born and matured in my own mind before I ever saw a page of the German philosopher." However, Coleridge says of the whole system of philosophy--the Dynamic System, as I understand the matter--"that it is his conviction that it is no other than the system of Pythagoras and Plato revived and purified from impure mixtures." [The quotations in the above note are from memory, and though not given as exact, they carry the idea intended.] NOTE No. 5.--ON DE QUINCEY'S STYLE OF WRITING. As to De Quincey's style, I think it may be summarized about thus: Fine writing. Afflicted with ridiculous hyperbole. Too discursive. In his narrative pieces he is too rambling and digressive. I have read but one article of those classed under the title of Literary Reminiscences, namely, the one on Coleridge; it does well enough, but I have read other narrative pieces having the faults mentioned. But then his writings are nearly all of a narrative nature. However, the faults above named are not special to his narrative pieces only--they are general defects in his style. In his shorter pieces, such as his article on Wordsworth's poetry, on Shelley, and on Hazlitt, and likely some others of the same series which I have not yet read, he is interesting and sufficiently to the point. But in his essay on the works of Walter Savage Landor, is he not a little too inflated, and does he not run his ironical style into the ground? His "Confessions" I have come to regard more as a literary performance than for any benefit to mankind on the subject of opium there is in them, and as a literary performance the work was undoubtedly intended. There is more uniformity of style in it than in any of his other works of that length that I have read. He is more equable, though smooth and fluent. Still there is a break or two of humor in it that may sound harsh, though not the horrible, grisly, blood-curdling humor that he has in some of his pieces in the shape of irony. He oversteps the modesty of nature in his use of the satirical, I think. He seems hard and cruel sometimes, especially in "Coleridge and Opium Eating," when speaking of Coleridge enticing Gillman into the habit of eating opium, and other places in the same paper. In many instances I think he loses his dignity altogether and becomes very coarse; that is, slangy and common. He ever seems to think that to be smart, to be a success, to be formidable, is to be humorous. He has many brilliant flashes of intellectual humor, but it is all from the brain, and lacks the true ring that comes from the healthy overflowing of nature. He has cold, steel-like wit, that comes from the head. My recollection of his "Antigone of Sophocles," is as of a man jumping upon horseback and riding the animal to death, unless the journey's end be reached previously. There is no resting-place--on the reader goes after the idea till the end, and it is a long and barren road to travel. He (De Quincey) seems nervous--highly so; too much so to allow his reader peace and ease in reading this paper and others, and parts of other long ones, I judge. I fear the reader would fain cry out, "What, in the name of Judas Iscariot, is the man after, and when is he going to catch up to it? I am out of breath." This "Greek Tragedy" paper, as it is called elsewhere,[6] seemed lean and very wordy to me. Still, with all his faults, De Quincey was a brilliant writer, and _generally_ on the right side of questions--humane, and upholding the down-trodden whenever opportunity offered. NOTE No. 6.--THIRD NOTE ON COLERIDGE AND PLAGIARISM. De Quincey, in his article entitled "Samuel Taylor Coleridge," descants as follows: "Coleridge's essay in particular is prefaced by a few words, in which, aware of his coincidence with Shelling, he declares his willingness to acknowledge himself indebted to so great a man, in any case where the truth would allow him to do so; but, in this particular case, insisting on the impossibility that he could have borrowed arguments which he had first seen some years after he had thought out the whole hypothesis _pro pria marte_. After this, what was my astonishment, to find that the entire essay, from the first word to the last, is a _verbatim_ translation from Shelling, with no attempt in a single instance to appropriate the paper, by developing the arguments, or by diversifying the illustrations. Some other obligations to Shelling, of a slighter kind, I have met with in the 'Biographia Literaria:' but this was a barefaced plagiarism, which could in prudence have been risked only by relying too much upon the slight knowledge of German literature in this country, and especially of that section of the German literature." De Quincey goes on to say, in the way of extenuation of his charge of plagiarism against Coleridge, that Coleridge did not do this from poverty of intellect. "Not at all." He denies that flat. "There lay the wonder," he says. "He spun daily and at all hours," proceeds De Quincey, "for mere amusement of his own activities, and from the loom of his own magical brain, theories more gorgeous by far, and supported by a pomp and luxury of images such as Shelling--no, nor any German that ever breathed, not John Paul--could have emulated in his dreams." There you go again De Quincey--the demon of hyperbole again driving you to extremes; forever denouncing beyond reason or praising beyond desert. No one else ever claimed so much for Coleridge. De Quincey says Shelling was "worthy in some respects to be Coleridge's assessor." He accounts for Coleridge's borrowing on the principle of kleptomania.... "In fact reproduced in a new form, applying itself to intellectual wealth, that maniacal propensity which is sometimes well known to attack enormous proprietors and _millionnaires_ for acts of petty larceny." And cites a case of a Duke having a mania for silver spoons. This is "all bosh," and the wrong theory of Coleridge's borrowing from Shelling; and as to his loans from any one else, they were as few as those of any writer. The true theory is, that he was after truth, and had thought out as well as Shelling the doctrines promulgated by the latter. He could claim as much originality as Shelling in a system, "introduced by Bruno," and advocated by Kant, and of which he (Shelling) was only "the most successful improver." And also, that "he" (Coleridge) "regarded truth as a divine ventriloquist, he cared not from whose mouth the sounds were supposed to proceed if only the words were audible and intelligible." He borrowed the _language_ of Shelling, but that is all. But De Quincey, after all his flourish of trumpets and initiatory war-whoop, volunteers to say that "Coleridge, he most heartily believes, to have been as entirely original in all his capital pretensions, as any one man that ever has existed as--Archimedes, in ancient days, or as Shakespeare, in modern." In estimating the value of Coleridge's "robberies," their usefulness to himself, etc., De Quincey draws a parallel between them and the contents of a child's pocket. He says: "Did he" (the reader) "ever amuse himself by searching the pocket of a child--three years old, suppose--when buried in slumber, after a long summer's day of out-a-doors intense activity? I have done this; and, for the amusement of the child's mother, have analyzed the contents and drawn up a formal register of the whole. Philosophy is puzzled, conjecture and hypothesis are confounded, in the attempt to explain the law of selection which _can_ have presided in the child's labors: stones, remarkable only for weight, old rusty hinges, nails, crooked skewers stolen when the cook had turned her back, rags, broken glass, tea-cups having the bottom knocked out, and loads of similar jewels, were the prevailing articles in this _proces verbal_. Yet, doubtless, much labor had been incurred, some sense of danger, perhaps, had been faced, and the anxieties of a conscious robber endured, in order to amass this splendid treasure. Such, in value, were the robberies of Coleridge; such their usefulness to himself or anybody else; and such the circumstances of uneasiness under which he had committed them. I return to my narrative." "So much for Buckingham." Pity he wandered from his "narrative" at all. But he also says, and previous to the foregoing extract, in giving his reason for noticing the subject at all: "Dismissing, however, this subject, which I have at all noticed only that I might anticipate and (in old English) that I might _prevent_ the uncandid interpreter of its meaning."... Then it is that he goes on to state that he believes him to have been as original in his capital pretensions as any man that ever lived, as before noticed. Being such a small matter, it is "really too bad" that he should thus waste his labor of love. Had he read Coleridge more faithfully, he would have found that he had made over to Shelling everything which the reader might think resembled the doctrines of the latter. And this was, perhaps, the best, and about the only thing he could have done, for undoubtedly the ideas of the two men were so similar, having taken the same course in their philosophical studies, that it must have been perplexing, and may have been impossible, for Coleridge to tell "which was whose." Coleridge claimed, indeed, that all the main and fundamental ideas were born and matured in his own mind before he ever saw a page of the German philosopher. If Coleridge was capable of spinning from "the loom of his own magical brain theories more gorgeous by far," and "such as Shelling nor any German that ever breathed could have emulated in his dreams," it is probable that he was able to think out this bit of philosophy for himself, especially also as we have his word for it besides (which I am rejoiced to say still passes current with some men), and it is most probable that he simply adopted the language of Shelling for convenience. He disputed no claim of Shelling's, and although he had thought out the system with Shelling, what he _claimed_ can be seen in the following: "With the exception of one or two fundamental ideas, which cannot be withheld from Fichte, to Shelling we owe the completion, and the most important victories of this revolution in philosophy. To me it will be happiness and honor enough should I succeed in rendering the system itself intelligible to my countrymen," etc. Although he thought it out, he denies not that Shelling thought it out; he says in effect that Shelling, by publication, has accomplished the object sought by him (Coleridge), and all the honor and credit he will now claim will be in rendering the _system_ intelligible to his countrymen. Although Coleridge had thought out this philosophy, now, however, it is total loss to him in the minds of those who know not what was the truthfulness and dignity of his nature, as they will attribute to Shelling (and give Coleridge no credit whatever, though he may have devoted years to their development) any ideas that are expressed in the language of the German. However, after subtracting all that is expressed in the language of Shelling, he has enough left to embalm his name for ages to come; and that of a kind so unique, characteristic, and eminently original, as to afford no scope for friendship and admiration so incomprehensible as that of De Quincey, or the open attacks of the most malignant of enemies. This article of De Quincey's was not approved by Coleridge's friends and relations; on the contrary, it roused their indignation and incurred their just resentment. "Defective sensibility" is something De Quincey is forever referring to, often to "depraved sensibility." What madman would not have known he was injuring his friend by hauling into notice and retailing such stuff as this? Aggravating and augmenting it by his terse and vigorous mode of expression! The following passage from De Quincey, is enough to have brought upon himself perpetual infamy as the most traitorous of friends, and sufficient to have caused the outraged feelings of Coleridge's friends, expressed in indignation, to have persecuted him to the grave; yet it is expressed in such language as exhibits an utter unconsciousness of the injury done, of the poison administered. In fact, the assumed attitude of the writer is that of a panegyrist, while his _real_ attitude would be more truthfully compared to that of a venomous reptile, which charms its prey with beautiful visions only that its final attack may be more fatal--it is the song of the siren alluring to deadly rocks. "Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed." "Listen to this: "... I will assert finally, that having read for thirty years in the same track as Coleridge--that track in which few in any age will ever follow us, such as German metaphysicians, Latin school men, thaumaturgic Platonists, religious mystics,--and having thus discovered a large variety of trivial thefts, I do nevertheless most heartily believe him to have been as entirely original in all his capital pretensions as Archimedes in ancient days, or as Shakespeare in modern." Did any one ever before hear such an insane compound of contradictions? "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 'Tis "the juice of the cursed hebenon," set forth in a glass of highly colored wine. "No man can ever be a great enemy but under the garb of a friend. If you are a cuckold, it is your friend that makes you so, for your enemy is not admitted to your house; if you are cheated in your fortune, 'tis your friend that does it, for your enemy is not made your trustee; if your honor or good name is injured, 'tis your friend that does it still, for your enemy is not believed against you."--_Wycherly._ That De Quincey did this maliciously, I do not pretend to state; what I know of its animus I gather from the paper itself. But I can truly say, in the language of Julius Hare, "God save all honest men from such foremost admirers." Whether he wanted to injure Coleridge or not, the result is the same--he _did_ injure him. I am inclined to believe, however, that De Quincey's article was well intended by him, but from defective sensibility his judgment was corrupted; he thought the honey he would infuse into the gall would annihilate its bitterness and leave the decoction sweet. He was mistaken. After proving Coleridge to be guilty of robbery, he could not convince the ordinary mind that he was an honest man. After having declared him to be guilty of a "large variety of trivial thefts" in literature, he could not induce people generally to believe him to have been "entirely original." On De Quincey's hypothesis, Coleridge was a thief and an honest man, a plagiarist and entirely original, at one and the same instant. This, ordinary readers would naturally have some difficulty in swallowing. But De Quincey might have spared himself this undertaking, and himself and Coleridge its injurious results (as it proved to be a two-edged sword and cut both ways), by making his early reading in the "Biographia Literaria" a trifle more extensive. There he would have seen that the "real and palpable case of plagiarism" was fully met and anticipated--averted, confounded, and explained; having noticed this, he might have thought these "trivial thefts" unworthy of mention. However, as the result stands to-day, Coleridge is a classic, and those who have any interest whatever in his compositions, being persons generally of some literary acquirements and judgment, are capable of judging of the originality and genuineness of his works, as he himself pertinently remarks, "by better evidence than mere reference to dates." I subjoin a copy of the prefatory remarks to which De Quincey refers, in stating that Coleridge, "aware of his coincidence with Shelling, declares his willingness to acknowledge himself indebted to so great a man in any case where the truth would allow him to do so," etc. The reader will perceive that there is no such language in them; but he will see in them a complete refutation of the charge of plagiarism from Shelling, and an honorable acknowledgment of his indebtedness to that author. "In Shelling's 'Natur-Philosophie and System des transcendentalen Idealismus,' I first found a genial coincidence with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had yet to do. I have introduced this statement as appropriate to the narrative nature of this sketch, yet rather in reference to the work which I have announced in a preceding page than to my present subject. It would be a mere act of justice to myself, were I to warn my future readers that an identity of thought, or even similarity of phrase, will not be at all times a certain proof that the passage has been borrowed from Shelling, or that the conceptions were originally learned from him. In this instance, as in the dramatic lectures of Schlegel, to which I have before alluded, from the same motive of self-defence against the charge of plagiarism, many of the most striking resemblances, indeed all the main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my own mind before I had ever seen a single page of the German philosopher; and I might indeed affirm, with truth, before the more important works of Shelling had been written, or at least made public. Nor is this coincidence at all to be wondered at. We had studied in the same school, been disciplined by the same preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant. We had both equal obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordana Bruno; and Shelling has lately, and as of recent acquisition, avowed the same affectionate reverence for the labors of Behmen and other mystics, which I had formed at a much earlier period. The coincidence of Shelling's system with certain general ideas of Behmen, he declares to have been mere coincidence, while my obligations have been more direct. He needs to give Behmen only feelings of sympathy, while I owe him a debt of gratitude. God forbid that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into a rivalry with Shelling for the honors so unequivocally his right, not only as a great and original genius, but as the founder of the philosophy of nature, and the most successful improver of the dynamic system, which, begun by Bruno, was re-introduced (in a more philosophical form, and freed from all its impurities and visionary accompaniments) by Kant; in whom it was the native and necessary growth of his own system.... With the exception of one or two fundamental ideas which cannot be withheld from Fichte, to Shelling we owe the completion and most important victories of this revolution in philosophy. To me it will be happiness and honor enough should I succeed in rendering the system itself intelligible to my countrymen, and in the application of it to the most awful of subjects for the most important of purposes. "Whether a work is the offspring of a man's own spirit, and the product of original thinking, will be discovered by those who are its sole legitimate judges, by better evidence than the mere reference to dates. For readers in general, let whatever in this or any future work of mine that resembles or coincides with the doctrines of my German predecessor, though contemporary, be wholly attributed to him, provided, that in the absence of direct references to his books, which I could not at all times make with truth, as designating citations or thoughts actually derived from him--and which, I trust, would, after this general acknowledgment, be superfluous--be not charged on me as an ungenerous concealment or intentional plagiarism." (See "Biographia Literaria.") Either in forgetfulness or ignorance of this "general acknowledgment," which goes so far as to make over to Shelling anything and everything that may be found to resemble the doctrines of that author, the identical charge which he so honorably provides for, anticipates, and defeats, is brought against him; and by one professing to be a friend, and one of Coleridge's "foremost admirers." "Oh, shame, where is thy blush?" Now for the conclusion of this note. It is _my_ conviction that Coleridge had worked out, just as stated by him, "all the main and fundamental ideas" embraced in that part of Shelling's system which appears in the "Biographia Literaria." I believe that he had thought it out, but that the incubus of opium weighing down and poisoning the very springs of his energies with "all blasting" power, "o'ercrowed" his spirit and prevented his realizing in a palpable form, by publication, the knowledge he had accumulated. Thus Shelling got ahead of him, and being ahead, Coleridge was forestalled and estopped from developing to the world his philosophical acquirements. 'Twas thus he came to recommend Shelling's system, and when writing the fragment of transcendental philosophy that appears in the "Biographia Literaria," his and Shelling's opinions being about the same, he expressed himself in the language of the latter. He considered the subject as one in which all were interested, and the thought of "rendering the system itself intelligible to his countrymen," for their benefit, so engrossed his mind as to render him less regardful of other questions involved in the matter than he should have been. "Rest perturbed spirit." THE END. FOOTNOTES: [1] At that time. For the cause of this depravity, see theory of the "Confessions," chapter xv. [2] This was by hypodermie, and in the first stages. Taking it by mouth, it is not so _much_ disposed to run off in this way; the stimulation is less evanescent and more stationary; still, one is more or less extremely nervous in the first stages, when under the stimulation of opium, no matter how administered. [3] That is, after my rupture with the doctor; but about all that I have stated in this chapter must be referred to that period,--(to wit, ensuing after my break with the physician;)--save the remark touching the hypodermic syringe, which was interpolated and stands somewhat out of place, though intended as cumulative as to general suffering. [4] See note at end of chapter. [5] A very important incident in the life of an opium eater has been omitted here in the text, namely: the occasional recurrence of an overdose. This event is more likely to arise when one has been drawing rather heavily, than otherwise, upon his supply of opium. He gets clogged up and miserable,--and from too much; but _then_ is the very hardest time to reduce, and, instead of diminishing the quantity, he, blind in his anxious search of happiness, takes more. He apparently notices no material difference at first, and may add still to this. But the night cometh, and with the shades of night the heavy and increased volume of soporific influence descends upon his brain; frightening him into a sense of the present, at least, if ineffectual as to the past or future. He dare not surrender himself to the pressure of sleep, lest he yield to the embrace of death. And so, in this anomalous condition, he passes the hours that relieve him of his dangerous burden. Never was man so sleepy, yet never sleep so dangerous. Scarce able to resist the temptation, which his stupefaction renders more potent in disarming his faculties and vitiating his judgment to some degree, he sits upon the edge of eternity. Now giving way, now rousing up frantically, he passes a terrible night. When the benumbing effects so torpify the mind that a man no longer appreciates the danger of his situation, he tumbles off into the everlasting. No sounding drum, or "car rattling o'er the stony street," can awaken him now. No opium can hurt him. He furnishes an item for the morning papers, and an inquest for the coroner, and his affairs earthly are wound up. [6] This is a mistake; it is another paper that is entitled "Greek Tragedy." 
35270	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive.) HABITS THAT HANDICAP HABITS THAT HANDICAP _The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the Remedy_ BY CHARLES B. TOWNS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1916 Copyright, 1915, by THE CENTURY CO. _Published, August, 1915_ PREFACE It is interesting to note that a year or more ago a few deaths from bichlorid of mercury poisoning caused within a period of six months a general movement toward protective legislation. This movement was successful, and after the lapse of only a short time the public was thoroughly protected against this dangerous poison. It will be observed that the financial returns from the total sale of bichlorid of mercury tablets could be but small. Had the financial interests involved been of a magnitude comparable with those interested in the manufacture and promotion of habit-forming drugs, I have often wondered if the result would not have been less effective and as prompt. Bichlorid of mercury never threatened any large proportion of the public, and those falling victims to it merely die. Opium and its derivatives threaten the entire public, especially those who are sick and in pain, and with a fate far more terrible than death--a thraldom of misery, inefficiency, and disgrace. Lest somewhere there be found within the pages of this book remarks that may lead the reader to suppose that I unduly criticize the doctor, and therefore that I am the doctor's enemy, I feel that it behooves me to add that in the whole community he has not one admirer more whole-souled. PREFACE Some years ago, Mr. Charles B. Towns came to me with a letter from Dr. Alexander Lambert and claimed that he had a way of stopping the morphia habit. The claim seemed to me an entirely impossible statement, and I told Mr. Towns so; but at Dr. Lambert's suggestion, I promised to look into the matter. Accordingly, I visited Mr. Towns's hospital, and watched the course of treatment there at different times in the day and night. I became convinced that the withdrawal of morphine was accomplished under this treatment with vastly less suffering than that entailed by any other treatment or method I had ever seen. Subsequently, I sent Mr. Towns several patients, who easily and quickly were rid of their morphia addiction, and have now remained well for a number of years. At that time I had the impression that the treatment was largely due to the force of Mr. Towns's very vigorous and helpful personality, but when subsequently a similar institution was established near Boston, I became convinced by observation of cases treated in that hospital that Mr. Towns's personality was not an essential element in that treatment. His skill, however, in the actual management of cases, from the medical point of view, was very hard to duplicate, and Mr. Towns generously came from New York, when called upon, and showed us what was wrong in the management of cases which were not doing well. I do not hesitate to say that he knows more about the alleviation and cure of drug addictions than any doctor that I have ever seen. All the statements made in this book except those relating to tobacco I can verify from similar experiences of my own, since I have known and used Mr. Towns's method of treatment. I do not pretend to say how his treatment accomplishes the results which I have seen it accomplish, but I have yet to learn of any one who has given it a thorough trial who has obtained results differing in any considerable way from those to which Mr. Towns refers. The wider applications and generalizations of the book seem to me very instructive. The shortcomings of the medical profession, of the druggists, and those who have to do with the management of alcoholics in courts of law seem to me well substantiated by the facts. Mr. Towns's plans for legislative control of drug habits also seem to me wise and far-reaching. He is, I believe, one of the most public-spirited as well as one of the most honest and forceful men that I have ever known. I am glad to have this opportunity of expressing my faith and confidence in him and my sense of the value of the book he has written. RICHARD C. CABOT. INTRODUCTION There is only one way by means of which humanity can be relieved of the curse of drug using, and that is to adopt methods putting the entire responsibility upon the doctor. Until the present legislation was passed in New York State, no one had ever considered the doctor's responsibility; this most valuable medical asset and most terrible potential curse had been virtually without safeguard of any effective kind. Discussion of the drug problem in the press dealt wholly with those phases which make themselves manifest in the underworld or among the Chinese. I am reasonably certain that until very recently the world had heard nothing of the blameless men and women who had become drug-users as the result of illness. This seems strange, since there are in the United States more victims of the drug habit than there are of tuberculosis. It is estimated that fifteen per cent, of the practising physicians in the country are addicted to the habit, and although I think this is an exaggeration, it is nevertheless true that habit-forming drugs demand a heavy toll from the medical profession, wrecking able practitioners in health and reputation, and of course seriously endangering the public. I have elsewhere explained the fact that the medical man himself is ignorant of the length to which he can safely go in the administration of drugs to his patients. If he is ignorant of what quantity and manner of dosage constitutes a peril for the patient, is it not reasonable to suppose that similar ignorance exists in his mind with regard to his own relations with the drug habit? As a matter of fact, I know this to be the case; many physicians have come to me for help, and ninety-nine per cent. of them explained to me that their use of drugs was the direct outgrowth of their ignorance. If the man who practises medicine is unaware of what will bring about the habit, what can be expected of the medically uneducated citizen who is threatened by those in whom he has most confidence--his doctors? The wide extent of the drug habit in this country has not been apparent. The man suffering from a physical disease either shows it or makes it known; the man suffering from the drug habit presents unfamiliar and unidentified symptoms, and far from being willing to make his affliction known, through shame he tries to conceal it at all hazards. Until legislation forced the victims of drug habits by hundreds into Bellevue Hospital in New York, this great institution rarely had one as a patient. The sufferer from tuberculosis would seek this hospital, feeling that there he might find measurable relief; the drug-user shunned it, for he was doubtful of receiving aid, and above all things he dreaded deprivation without relief. No man or woman will go to any institution for relief from the drug habit where the only treatment offered is that of enforced deprivation, for he or she knows perfectly well that deprivation means death. No human longing can compare in intensity with that of the drug-user for his drug. Unrelieved, he will let nothing stand between him and it; neither hunger, nakedness, starvation, arson, theft, nor murder will keep him from the substance that he craves. Clearly humanity must be protected against such an evil. And the physician must be saved from it, for saving him will fulfil in a large measure the demand for the protection of the public. After the experience of the medical profession of New York State with the workings of the Boylan Act, it is scarcely probable that strong opposition to similar legislation will be made in other States. Even if other States delay in the enactment of right legislation, the Boylan Act may be considered not only a protective measure for the profession and the people of New York State, but it may be safely accepted as an educational pronouncement for the benefit of the medical profession everywhere. It establishes for the first time the danger-line. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE PERIL OF THE DRUG HABIT 3 II THE NEED OF ADEQUATE SPECIFIC TREATMENT FOR THE DRUG-TAKER 27 III THE DRUG-TAKER AND THE PHYSICIAN 46 IV PSYCHOLOGY AND DRUGS 61 V ALCOHOLICS 76 VI HELP FOR THE HARD DRINKER 87 VII CLASSIFICATION OF ALCOHOLICS 113 VIII THE INJURIOUSNESS OF TOBACCO 140 IX TOBACCO AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 162 X THE SANATORIUM 174 XI PREVENTIVE MEASURES FOR THE DRUG EVIL 194 XII CLASSIFICATION OF HABIT-FORMING DRUGS 215 XIII PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION 227 APPENDIX 265 HABITS THAT HANDICAP HABITS THAT HANDICAP CHAPTER I THE PERIL OF THE DRUG HABIT It is human nature to wish to ease pain and to stimulate ebbing vitality. There is no normal adult who, experiencing severe pain or sorrow or fatigue, and thoroughly appreciating the immediate action of an easily accessible opiate, is not likely in a moment of least resistance to take it. Every one who has become addicted to a drug has started out with small occasional doses, and no one has expected to fall a victim to the habit; indeed, many have been totally unaware that the medicine they were taking contained any drug whatever. Thus, the danger being one that threatens us all, it is every man's business to insist that the entire handling and sale of the drug be under as careful supervision as possible. It is not going too far to say that up to the present time most drug-takers have been unfairly treated by society. They have not been properly safeguarded from forming the habit or properly helped to overcome it. It has been criminally easy for any one to acquire the drug habit. Few physicians have recognized that it is not safe for most persons to know what will ease pain. When an opiate is necessary, it should be given only on prescription, and its presence should then be thoroughly disguised. A patient goes to a physician to be cured; consequently, when his pain disappears, he naturally believes that this is due to the treatment he has received. If the physician has used morphine in a disguised form, the patient naturally believes that the cure was effected by some unknown medicine; but if, on the other hand, he has received morphine knowingly, he realizes at once that it is this drug which is responsible for easing his pain. If he has received it hypodermically, the idea is created in his mind that a hypodermic is a necessary part of the treatment. Thus it is clear that the physician who uses his syringe without extreme urgency is greatly to be censured, for the patient who has once seen his pain blunted by the use of a hypodermic eagerly resorts to this means when the pain returns. Conservative practitioners are keenly aware of this responsibility, and some go so far as never to carry a hypodermic on their visits, though daily observation shows that the average doctor regards it as indispensable. The conservative physician employs only a very small quantity of morphine in any form. One of the busiest and most successful doctors of my acquaintance has used as little as half a grain a year, and another told me he had never gone beyond two grains. Both of these men know very well that only a small percentage of drug-takers have begun the practice in consequence of a serious ailment, and that even this small percentage might have been decreased by proper medical treatment directed at the cause rather than at its symptom, pain. An opiate, of course, never removes the cause of any physical trouble, but merely blunts the pain due to it; and it does this by tying up the functions of the body. It is perhaps a conservative estimate that only ten per cent. of the entire drug consumption in this country is applied to the purpose of blunting incurable pain. Thus ninety per cent. of the opiates used are, strictly speaking, unnecessary. In the innumerable cases that have come under my observation, seventy-five per cent. of the habitual users became such without reasonable excuse. Beginning with small occasional doses, they realized within a few weeks that they had lost self-control and could not discontinue the use of the drug. FORMING THE HABIT A very common source of this habit lies in the continued administration of an opiate in regular medical treatment without the patient's knowledge or consent, or in the persistent use of a patent medicine, or of a headache or catarrh powder that contains such a drug. The man who takes an opiate consciously or unconsciously, and receives from it a soothing or stimulating or pleasant effect, naturally turns to it again in case of the same need. The time soon arrives when the pleasurable part of the effect--if it was ever present--ceases to be obtained; and in order to get the soothing or stimulating effect, the dose must be constantly increased as tolerance increases. With those who take a drug to blunt a pain which can be removed in no other way, it is fulfilling its legitimate and supreme mission and admits of no substitute. Where it was ever physically necessary, and that necessity still continues, an opiate would seem inevitable. But the percentage of such sufferers, as I have said, is small. The rest are impelled simply by craving--that intolerable craving which arises from deprivation of the drug. But whether a man has acquired the habit knowingly or unknowingly, its action is always the same. No matter how conscientiously he wishes to discharge his affairs, the drug at once begins to loosen his sense of moral obligation, until in the end it brings about absolute irresponsibility. Avoidance and neglect of customary duties, evasion of new ones, extraordinary resourcefulness in the discovery of the line of least resistance, and finally amazing cunning and treachery--this is the inevitable history. The drug habit is no respecter of persons. I have had under my care exemplary mothers and wives who became indifferent to their families; clergymen of known sincerity and fervor who became shoplifters and forgers; shrewd, successful business men who became paupers, because the habit left them at the mercy of sharpers after mental deterioration had set in. But the immediate action of morphine by no means paralyzes the mental faculties. Though when once a man becomes addicted to the drug he is incapacitated to deal with himself, yet while he is under its brief influence his mind is sharpened and alert. Under the sway of opium a man does venturesome or immoderate things that he would never think of doing otherwise, simply because he has lost the sense of responsibility. I have had patients who took as much as sixty grains of morphine in a single dose, an overdose for about one hundred and fifty people, and about fifty grains more than the takers could possibly assimilate or needed to produce the required result--an excellent illustration of how the habit destroys all judgment and all sense of proportion. Against this appalling habit, which can be acquired easily and naturally and the result of which is always complete demoralization, there is at present no effective safeguard except that provided by nature itself, and this is effective only in certain cases. It happens that in many people opium produces nausea, and this one thing alone has saved some from the habit; for this type of user never experiences any of the temporarily soothing sensations commonly attributed to the drug. Yet this pitiful natural safeguard, while rarely operative, is more efficacious than any other that up to the present has been provided by man in his heedlessness, indifference, and greed. DANGERS OF THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE I have seen over six thousand cases of drug habit in various countries of the world. Ninety-five per cent. of the patients who have come to me taking morphine or other alkaloids of opium have taken the drug hypodermically. With few exceptions, I have found that the first knowledge of it came through the administration of a hypodermic by a physician. It is the instrument used that has shown the sufferer what was easing his pain. I consider that among those who have acquired the habit through sickness or injury this has been the chief creator of the drug habit. This statement does not apply to those who have acquired the habit through the taking of drugs otherwise. My work has been carried out almost entirely in coöperation with the physician, and I have not come in contact with the under-world drug-takers. I consider that the syringe has been the chief creator of the drug habit in this country. In 1911 I made this statement before the Ways and Means Committee of the United States Congress, then occupied with the matter of regulating the sale of habit-forming drugs, and I personally secured the act which was passed by the New York legislature in February, 1911, to restrict the sale of this instrument to buyers on a physician's prescription. Before that time all drug stores and most department stores sold hypodermic instruments to any one who had the money. A boy of fifteen could buy a syringe as easily as he could buy a jack-knife. If a physician refused to give an injection, the patient could get an instrument anywhere and use it on himself. This bill has passed only a single legislature, but I am arranging to introduce a similar bill before all the others, and hope to have the State action confirmed by a Federal bill. At present in Jersey City, or anywhere out of New York, any one may still buy the instrument. It is inconceivable that the syringe should have gone so long without being considered the chief factor in the promotion of a habit which now alarms the world, and that as yet only one state legislature should have seen fit to regulate its sale. Restricting the sale of the syringe to physicians, or to buyers on a physician's prescription, is the first step toward placing the grave responsibility for the drug habit on the shoulders of those to whom it belongs. HABIT-FORMING DRUGS IN PATENT MEDICINES The second step to be taken is to prevent by law the use of habit-forming drugs in patent and proprietary medicines which can be bought without a physician's prescription. Prior to the Pure Food and Drugs Act, created and promoted by Dr. H. W. Wiley, druggists and patent-medicine venders were able, without announcing the fact, to sell vast quantities of habit-forming drugs in compounds prepared for physical ailments. When that act came into effect, these men were obliged to specify on the label the quantities of such drugs used in these compounds, and thus the purchaser was at least enabled to know that he was handling a dangerous tool. Except in a few States, however, the sale of these compounds was in no way restricted, and hence the act cannot be said to have done much toward checking the formation of the drug habit. Indeed, it has probably worked the other way, for there is perhaps not an adult living who does not know that certain drugs will alleviate pain, and people who have pains and aches are likely to resort to an accessible and generally accredited means of alleviation. Yet the difficulties in the way of passing the Pure Food and Drugs Act are a matter of scandalous history. What, then, would be the difficulties in passing a Federal bill to restrict the sale of patent medicines containing habit-forming drugs? It is of course to the interest of every druggist to create a lasting demand for his article. There is obviously not so much profit in a medicine that cures as in one that becomes indispensable. Hence arises the great inducement, from the druggist's point of view, in soothing-syrups and the like. In this country all druggists, wholesale and retail, are organized, and the moment a bill is brought up anywhere to correct the evil in question, there is enormous pressure of business interests to secure its dismissal or satisfactory amendment. To show the essential selfishness of their position, it is only necessary to quote a few of the arguments used against me before the Congressional Ways and Means Committee when I was making a plea for the regulation of the traffic in habit-forming drugs. They claimed that registration of the quantities of opiates in proprietary medicines would entail great bother and added expense, that these drugs are usually combined with others in such a way as to result in altering their effect on the user, and that, anyway, so small an amount of these drugs is used that it cannot create a habit. Now, as a matter of fact, the combination of medicines in these remedies makes not the slightest difference in the physiological action of the drug; further, it is found that, just as with the drug itself, the dose of these compounds must be constantly increased in order to confer the same apparent benefit as in the beginning; and finally, it is well known that what creates the craving is not the quantity of the drug, but the regularity with which it is taken. A taker of one eighth of a grain of morphine three times a day would acquire the habit just as surely as a man who took three grains three times a day, provided the latter could tolerate that quantity. The average opium-smoker consuming twenty-five pills a day gets only the equivalent of about a quarter grain of morphine taken hypodermically or of a half grain taken by the mouth. A beginner could not smoke a quarter of that quantity, but still he acquires the habit. Any amount of the drug which is sufficient to alleviate pain or make the taker feel easier is sufficient to create a habit. A habit-forming drug having no curative properties whatever is put into a medicine merely for the purpose of making the taker feel easier. One wholesale house alone prepares and sells six hundred remedies containing some form of opiate. Most of the cases of the cocaine habit have been admittedly created by so-called catarrh cures, and these contain only from two to four per cent. of cocaine. In the end, the snuffer of catarrh powders comes to demand undiluted cocaine; the taker of morphine in patent medicines, once the habit is formed, must inevitably demand undiluted morphine. This easy accessibility of drugs in medicinal form is more dangerous than moralists care to admit. The reason why opium-smoking has been, up to the present, less prevalent in the United States than in China and some other countries is probably that the preparation of it and the machinery for taking it are not convenient. If opium-smoking had been generally countenanced in America, if the sale of the pure drug had been for generations permitted here, as it has been in China, if houses for its sale and preparation had been found everywhere, if its social aspects had been considered agreeable, if society had put the stamp of approval upon it, opium-smoking would be as prevalent here as it has been in China. Our human nature is essentially little different from that of the Chinese, but lack of opportunity is everywhere recognized as a great preservative of virtue. Due allowance being made for the difference of moral concepts, our standards of morality and honesty and virtue are certainly no higher than those of the Chinese. Thus, were the conditions the same in both cases, there is no reason to suppose that opium would not be smoked here as much as there; but fortunately it has not yet become thus easy, convenient, and agreeable, and consequently that particular phase of the evil has not yet reached overwhelming proportions. On the other hand, the alkaloids of opium administered hypodermically or as ingredients in many patent medicines _are_ thus convenient, and as a result this phase of the evil _has_ reached overwhelming proportions. Nor have we any cause for congratulation upon our particular form of the vice, for opium-smoking is vastly less vicious than morphine-taking. THE TRAFFIC IN OPIUM Something more is needed, however, than mere restriction of the sale of hypodermic syringes and patent medicines by any one legislature or country. All persons who handle habit-forming drugs should be made to give a strict accounting for them, otherwise the traffic can never be properly regulated. Four years ago, by special act of Congress, all importation of prepared opium and of crude opium designed for smoking purposes was prohibited. In the ample interval between the passage of the bill and its going into effect the importation of opium was simply phenomenal. By the time it went into effect the American dealers had learned the secret process of preparing opium for smoking, which had hitherto been known only in the Orient. Thereafter it was found that since responsible importing houses were still at liberty to import crude opium in any quantity for general medicinal use, the retailers could buy and were buying from importers all the crude opium they wished and preparing it themselves without having in any way to account for the use they meant to make of it, although that use had now become illegal. The result was that the smoker could get opium more easily than before, since the secret process of preparing it had become known; and having no longer to pay the enormous tax on prepared opium, he got it much cheaper. In short, the only difference was that the Government lost about one million five hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue, while the vice was greatly increased. Thus the act had worked in precisely the opposite way from the intention of the framers, and all because men are permitted to handle opium without accounting for it. Until there is such an accounting, there can be no real regulation of the opium trade. Congress has just passed a bill aiming to regulate the traffic in habit-forming drugs. I wish to go on record here as saying that this bill will not accomplish its purpose, and should be further amended to prove effective. But it will be only a matter of time when there will be amendments proposed, which, if adopted, will create legislation on this subject worth while. The history of the Opium Commission appointed by Mr. Taft is sufficient to show how any less comprehensive regulation would act. When Mr. Taft was Governor-General of the Philippines, he found that an enormous quantity of opium was being smoked by the natives and the large Chinese settlement, of whom it was estimated that fifty-five thousand were smokers. He appointed a commission headed by Bishop Brent, now stationed at Manila, who has since headed two international opium conferences, at Shanghai in 1909 and at The Hague in 1911. Mr. Taft sent the commission into the most important opium-producing countries to find out how they were dealing with the problem and what progress was being made toward decreasing the use of the drug. The nearest approach they found to a reform was the method of the Japanese in their newly acquired island of Formosa. Japan, with the most stringent regulation of the sale of opium in the world, had made it a government monopoly in Formosa, had compelled the registration of all smokers, and was gradually lessening the amount which each smoker could buy. After the exhaustive report of the commission, our Government adopted the same tactics in the Philippines. To the surprise of the officials, they found that out of the fifty-five thousand opium-smokers they could obtain a registration of only from ten to twelve thousand, which meant that the great majority were getting smuggled opium. By special act of Congress the authorities at Manila were allowed to stop the importation of opium entirely. But this, while it meant a great loss of revenue to the local government, apparently did not lessen the amount smoked. After the sale was stopped, there were virtually no voluntary applications for opium treatment, as there must have been if anybody's supply had been cut off, which conclusively showed that nobody had discontinued the habit merely because importation had been discontinued. Stopping importation, then, is a farce, unless at the same time there is rigid governmental control in those countries that produce or import the drug. And, therefore, unless there should be a coöperation of all governments, it is futile to try to regulate the traffic. As long as people can get opium, they will smuggle it. It has been demonstrated to be quite practicable for all the opium-producing countries to make the drug a government monopoly; it would be equally practicable for them to sell directly to those governments that use it for governmental distribution. The only obstacle to an international understanding is that the producing countries know very well that government regulation would materially lessen the sale of the drug. Within the borders of our own country such a system would simplify rather than complicate present conditions. We have to-day along our frontier and in our ports inspectors trying to stop the illicit traffic in opium, and the money thus spent by our Government would be more than sufficient to handle and distribute all of the drug that is needed for legitimate purposes. Any druggist could of course continue to buy all that he wished, but he would have to account for what he bought. The drug would serve only its legitimate purpose, because the druggist could sell it only on prescription. This would at once eliminate the gravest feature of the case, the indiscriminate sale of proprietary and patent medicines containing small quantities of opium. The physician would thus have to shoulder the entire responsibility for the use of any habit-forming drug. With the Government as the first distributor and the physician as the last, the whole condition of affairs would assume a brighter aspect, for it would be a simple matter to get from the physician a proper accounting for what he had dispensed. Thus the new crop of users would be small, and less than ten per cent. of the opium at present brought into this country would be sufficient to meet every legitimate need. THE HABIT-FORMING DRUGS The important habit-forming drugs are opium, cocaine, and the small, but dangerous, group of hypnotics. These last--trional, veronal, sulphonal, medinal, etc.--are chiefly coal-tar products, and are not always classified as habit-forming drugs, but they are such, and there are many reasons why the sale of them should be scrupulously regulated. The opium derivatives go under the general head of narcotics. Morphine is the chief active principle, and codeine and heroin are the chief derivatives of morphine. Codeine is one eighth the strength of morphine; heroin is three times as strong as morphine. Though the general impression is otherwise, the users of heroin acquire the habit as quickly and as easily as if they took morphine. Many cough and asthma preparations contain heroin, simply for temporary alleviation, since, like opium, it has no curative power whatever. From time to time I have had to treat cases of heroin-taking in which the victims had thought to satisfy their need for an opiate without forming a habit. In the cases where it was given by prescription, it was so given by the physician in the sincere belief that it would not create a habit. All this despite the fact that heroin is three times stronger than morphine, and despite the fact that physicians know that anything which will do the work of an opiate is an opiate. Codeine, notwithstanding the fact that it is weaker than morphine, is likewise habit-forming; yet doctors prescribe it on account of its relative mildness, even though they know that it is the cumulative effect of continued doses, and not the quantity of morphine in the dose, which results in habit. As with morphine, to use either of these drugs effectively means in the long run the necessary increase of the dose up to the limit of physical tolerance. The most harmful of all habit-forming drugs is cocaine. Nothing so quickly undermines its victim or provides so short a cut to the insane asylum. It differs from opium in two important ways. A man does not acquire a habit from cocaine in the sense that it is virtually impossible for him to leave it off without medical treatment. He can do so, although he rarely does. On withdrawal, he experiences only an intense and horrible depression, together with a physical languor which results in a sleepiness that cannot be shaken off. Opium withdrawal, on the other hand, results in sleeplessness and extreme nervous and physical disorder. In action, too, cocaine is exactly the opposite of opium, for cocaine is an extreme stimulant. Its stimulus wears off quickly and leaves a corresponding depression, but it confers half an hour of capability of intense effort. That is why bicycle-riders, prize-fighters, and race-horses are often doctored, or "doped," with cocaine. When cocaine gives out, its victim invariably resorts to alcohol for stimulus; alcoholics, however, when deprived of alcohol, generally drift into the use of morphine. The widespread use of cocaine in the comparatively short period of time since its discovery has been brought about among laymen entirely by patent-medicine preparations containing small quantities of it. These have been chiefly the so-called catarrh cures, which of course cure nothing. With only a two or four per cent. solution, they have created a craving, and in the end those who could do so have procured either stronger solutions or the plain crystal. As with the other drugs, in order to maintain the desired result the dose must be increased in proportion as tolerance increases. Wherever the sale of patent medicines has been restricted to those presenting a physician's prescription, the consumption of cocaine has at once been lessened. A man cannot afford to get a physician's prescription for a patent medicine; and even if he could, the reputable physician refuses to prescribe one that contains cocaine. When an overseer in the South will deliberately put cocaine into the rations of his negro laborers in order to get more work out of them to meet a sudden emergency, it is time to have some policy of accounting for the sale of a drug like cocaine. It is also extremely important to regulate the sale of the hypnotic coal-tar derivatives. All the group of hypnotics should be buyable only on a physician's prescription. They all disturb heart action and impoverish the blood, thereby producing neurotics. No physician, without making a careful examination, will assume the responsibility of prescribing for a man who comes to him in pain, yet a druggist does so constantly. He knows nothing of the customer's idiosyncrasy; that, for instance, an amount of veronal which would not ordinarily affect a child may create an intense nervous disorder in a particular type of adult. To the average druggist a headache is only a headache; he does not know that what will alleviate one kind of headache is exceedingly bad for another kind, and furthermore it is not his business to warn the customer that a particular means of headache alleviation may perhaps make him a nervous wreck. The patient usually has the same ignorance. In a case which was once brought to my attention, a girl swallowed nine headache powders within one hour. Had there been ten minutes' delay in summoning a doctor, she would have died; as it was, she was seriously ill for a long time. These, then, the narcotics, cocaine, and the hypnotics, are the chief habit-forming drugs. They form habits because it is necessary to increase the dose in order to continue to derive the apparent benefit obtained from them in the beginning, and because, when once the habit is set up, it cannot be terminated without such acute discomfort that virtually no one is ever cured without medical help. In drug addictions the condition of the patient is not mental, as is generally supposed, but physical. Definite medical treatment to remove the effects of the drug itself is imperative, whether the victim be suffering from the drug habit alone or from that habit in a body otherwise physically disordered. With regard to the cure of the habit, as in the case of the conditions which permit of its being acquired, it may justly be said that the victims have been unfairly treated. THE NEED OF CONTROL BY THE GOVERNMENT AND BY PHYSICIANS The prevalence of the drug habit, the magnitude of which is now startling the whole civilized and uncivilized world, can be checked only in one way--by controlling the distribution of habit-forming drugs. With the Government as the first distributor and a physician as the last, drug-taking merely as a habit would cease to be. If physicians were made accountable, they would use narcotics, hypnotics, and cocaine only when absolutely necessary. Nobody should be permitted to procure these drugs or the means of using them or any medicines containing them without a doctor's prescription. By such restriction the intense misery due to the drug habit would be decreased by nine tenths, indeed, by much more than this; for when a physician dares no longer to be content with the mere alleviation of pain, which is only nature's way of announcing the presence of some diseased condition, he will seek the more zealously to discover and remove its cause. CHAPTER II THE NEED OF ADEQUATE SPECIFIC TREATMENT FOR THE DRUG-TAKER The Internal Revenue Reports are the only index to the extent of the drug consumption in the United States. They show for years past an annual increase in the importation of opium and its derivatives and cocaine, and for last year a very marked increase over that of any preceding year. This is not due to the increase in population; our immigrants are not drug-takers. Among the thousands of drug-users that I have treated or known, I have never seen an Italian, a Hungarian, a Russian, or a Pole. Moreover, I have met with only four cases of drug-taking by Hebrews. Few Jews--except in the under-world--acquire the habit knowingly. It may become fastened upon them through the use of a medicine the danger of which they do not realize, but, once freed, they will not again come under its power. The practical sagacity of their race is their surest safeguard. What is commonly spoken of as the "American type," highly nervous, living under pressure, always going to the full limit, or beyond, is peculiarly liable to disorders that lead to the habitual use of drugs. We are all hypochondriacal by nature, prone to "take something" whenever we feel badly. Lack of opportunity alone, of knowledge of what to take and how to procure it, has saved many a person under severe physical or mental strain from recklessly resorting to drugs. Since the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, which was intended to protect the public by requiring the express statement of any dangerous ingredients in a compound, the sale of preparations containing habit-forming drugs has preceptibly increased. It seems a just inference that the information given, instead of serving as a warning to the unwary, has been chiefly effective in pointing out a dangerous path to many who otherwise would not have known where to find it. Women, it should be said, though constitutionally more liable than men to feel the need of medicines, form the lesser portion of the drug-taking class. In the beginning their addiction is due almost exclusively to a physician's prescription, except in the under-world. The habitual users of drugs in the United States come from every grade of society. Professional men of the highest responsibility and repute, laborers wearying of the dullness in a mining-camp, literary men, clergymen, newspaper men, wire-tappers, shoplifters, vagrants, and outcasts--all are among the number. Strangely assorted as they are, they become yet more strangely alike under the influence of the common habit. Shoplifting is not confined to the professional thief; it is noticeable in many a drug-user who has had every moral and worldly advantage. The major part of the habit-forming drugs used in the United States is consumed by the under-world. It would be impossible to calculate the extent of their influence. Many a record of heinous crime tells of the stimulus of a drug. But when the school-children in some of our larger cities are found to be using cocaine, and able to buy it at will, the limit of tolerance has surely been reached. THE DRUG-TAKING PHYSICIAN, NURSE, AND PHARMACIST Among the widely varying classes of drug-users, three in particular are a source of the gravest danger: the drug-taking physician, nurse, and pharmacist. To realize this, one has merely to recall that the drug-taker is a confirmed evader of responsibility; and the physician, of all men, is in a responsible position. He must not forget or break his appointments; he must realize the effects of the medicines he is prescribing; if a surgeon, his work must never be below its best. But the proportion of physicians that I have treated, or consulted with, suggests one specially grave danger. It is a characteristic of the drug-taker, no matter who he is or how he acquired the habit, on the smallest excuse to advise others to take the drug whenever pain or fatigue gives the slightest occasion for it. While he grows callous to everything else, he has an abnormal sympathy with suffering. Thus it will readily be seen that there are few more dangerous members of society than the physician who is addicted to a drug. The fact that there are not more drug-taking doctors speaks volumes for the high character of the profession. The physician has such drugs constantly at hand. The more a man knows of their insidious action and the more he handles them, the more cautious he feels himself to be, and the more confident that he can discontinue the use of them whenever he chooses. Any fear that the layman may have of them is due less to the dread of being personally overcome than to the mystery which surrounds them; but for the physician they have no such mystery. Furthermore, by the nature of his calling he is peculiarly exposed to the need of such drugs. He is often under excessive physical and nervous strain not only because he is unable to arrange his work so as to prevent periods of too great pressure upon his time and strength, but also because in a unique manner he puts his heart into it. An even greater danger, in some respects, is the drug-taking professional nurse. Whatever has been said of physicians both in the way of extenuation and of warning may be repeated of nurses. They have the same exposure to the habit, and, once addicted, are likely to exhibit signs of irresponsibility. They are more dangerous in that their opportunity for mischief is greater, since they are closer to the patient and able to thwart the doctor's orders with perfect freedom. "I have had several nurses on this drug case," a doctor once said to me, "and I find that they have all smuggled morphine to my patient." This was, no doubt, an exceptional case, but the fact remains that nurses, because of their close alliance with druggists and doctors, find it comparatively easy to purchase drugs and hypodermics at any drug store without causing the slightest suspicion or reproof. Nor should one censure them too severely for clandestine compliance with the demands of a patient. It should not be overlooked that the nurse, in being paid by the patient and not by the doctor, is ordinarily subjected to great pressure when the patient clamors for morphine. In such circumstances the protection of a physician's monopoly of the drug would be most welcome. But how much worse is the pressure when the well-intentioned nurse also is a drug-taker! The morphinist has an abnormal sympathy with those who have undergone or are undergoing experiences similar to his own, and there is no stronger bond than that which unites two morphine victims. As a matter of the most elementary precaution for all concerned, no nurse should under any conditions be allowed to buy habit-forming drugs. Another kind of drug-taker against whom physicians' distribution would be a safeguard, and the only safeguard that can be devised, is the pharmacist. The contingency of a drug-taking pharmacist, perhaps more than anything else, will bring sharply home to the average man the menace of morphine when used by a professional person. By reason of closer and more personal observation one may feel rashly confident of his ability to detect when a doctor or a nurse is "queer," but generally the patron of a drug store has no such opportunity for observation. Addiction to a drug incapacitates the pharmacist for filling prescriptions. Often the slightest deviation from a precise formula in either quantity or ingredient is of the gravest consequence, and hence the utmost care should be used to insure the scrupulousness of one on whom such responsibility rests. As long as he is accountable to no one, or even accountable to the Government only on a business basis, there can be no safety for the public. If he may sell to any purchaser other than a physician, he may always supply his own wants. But if he has to account to a physician for the entire amount of habit-forming drugs that he distributes, any leakage may quickly be detected by the man who more than any one else can be relied upon to stop such a leakage promptly and sternly. A pharmacist should be allowed to dispense habit-forming drugs only on a physician's prescription. The physician should be limited as to his authority not only for prescribing such drugs, but, as the Boylan Act provided, there must be a careful accounting on his part for all such drugs administered or given away. In other words, he must account for all such drugs which he buys for office use, and he cannot prescribe such drugs except under certain definite limitations. METHODS OF TREATMENT: "THE HOME CURE" For many years only two methods of dealing with the drug habit were known. They continue to be the only ones in general use to-day. They are the "home cure" and the sanatorium method. Neither is in any proper sense a treatment or anything more than a process of substitution and deprivation. In many of the periodicals and daily papers are carefully worded advertisements setting forth that a man may be cured of a drug habit quickly, secretly, painlessly, and inexpensively. These are written by people who thoroughly understand the mental and physical condition of the drug-taker. In almost all cases he wishes to be freed from the habit, but at the same time to avoid the disgrace of being classed with "drug-fiends"; he is unwilling that even his family or his intimates should know of his condition. He has an exaggerated sensitiveness to pain, upon which also the advertisement relies. Furthermore, attention is directed to the fact that the patient may take the alleged remedy without spending much more money than he has been spending for the drug itself, naturally a powerful appeal to a man of limited means. Moreover, the people who take these "cures" are generally those who are unable to consider the expense of leaving home. That the advertisement is very alluring to the average drug-taker is shown by the fact that in my entire practice I have encountered few patients who have not at some time or other taken a home cure. A minister wrote to me the other day begging me to cure a fellow-minister of the cure habit. His friend had had occasional attacks of renal colic, and a physician had eased their acuteness with a hypodermic. The patient of course knew what he was taking, and since he was forced to consider the cost of the physician's visits for the mere administration of the hypodermic, he naturally procured his own outfit, and in a short time was using it regularly upon himself. When he found that he could not leave off the practice he entered into correspondence with a succession of "home-cure" advertisers, whose clever use of the word "privacy" offered a hope that his condition might be concealed from his congregation. For ten years he had been undergoing the cures, and during all this time had been forced to take a regular dosage of the so-called remedies. Before the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act the ingredients of such remedies were not stated. The patient seems never to have suspected the truth--that the bottle contained the very drug he had been taking, its presence disguised by added medicines. In certain instances the makers boldly advertised that a trial bottle would be sufficient to prove clearly that the taker could not get along without using his drug. Now that the law compels a list of dangerous drugs on the label, the cures proceed admittedly by a reductive principle. The patient graduates from a number one bottle to a number two, containing less opium, and so on, until finally he is supposed to be cured. The proprietors of these cures make a great deal of capital out of the fact that the reduction is so gradual that the taker experiences no discomfort. This consideration is highly effective, for while it irresistibly appeals to the morbidly sensitive morphinist, it also makes him comprehend, as time goes on, why the process of cure is so slow. It is hardly necessary to state that the final stage is almost never reached. Almost without exception, the basis of restoration to health is the perfect elimination of the effects of the drug. It should go without saying that it is impossible to eliminate the effects of opium with opium or to find any substitute for opium that is not itself opium. At the International Opium Conference in China I exhibited seventy-six opium-cures which I had had analyzed and found to contain opium; and as a consequence of the Pure Food and Drugs Act all the American "cures" announced on their labels that they also contained it. Thus it is easy to see why the sale of these cures had always greatly increased wherever the rigid enforcement of anti-opium enactments had closed up the customary sources of habit-forming drugs. Up to the passage of the act, however, the presence of opium in the American cures was concealed, and their formulas were kept secret; and hence all of them, by the very nature of the case, were put forth either by irresponsible persons or by persons outside the pale of the profession; for one of the pledges given by a physician is that he will not patronize or employ any secret treatment, and that he will give to the profession whatever he finds to be of benefit to his fellow-men. In very rare cases these home cures have been able to relieve a man of strong will power, with the added assistance of a regimen for building up his bodily tone. But these cases have been so infrequent as to be virtually negligible, for to administer the treatment successfully demands from the patient the exercise of precisely that power of self-control the loss of which drove him to the cure in the first place. If there ever was any curative property in one of these so-called cures, a man could not be benefited unless he were under constant supervision. A treatment of this sort must, except in case of a miracle, be administered by another and under continuous medical surveillance. A man addicted to a drug, be he physician or longshoreman, in a short time becomes utterly unable to deal justly with himself, for it is the nature of the drug to destroy his sense of responsibility. THE SANATORIUM TREATMENT Besides the home cure there was, and is, the sanatorium treatment. Unlike the former, this was first established and carried on by trustworthy medical men, who depended for their support upon the patients of reputable doctors. A physician who had a morphine patient was obliged to send him to a sanatorium because there was nothing else to be done with him; elsewhere no course of treatment under constant surveillance could be given. It afforded the only opportunity of carrying the patient through the long period of gradual reduction which was then the only known treatment. Thus there was nothing optional about the matter; the physician could not recommend a home cure, and the only means of approximating systematic treatment was the sanatorium. Furthermore, those relatives and friends who knew of the patient's condition were anxious that he should go to one, since they realized the increasing awkwardness of keeping him at home. In many cases, indeed, they even went so far as to resort to means of commitment, if they failed to get his voluntary coöperation. It is due to the ease with which this type of patient can be committed that the State of Connecticut, for instance, abounds in sanatoriums. In that State, when a patient has entered one of them, he can often be detained there virtually at the pleasure of his relatives and friends. The method of treatment at most of the sanatoriums is like the home cure, except that it is under surveillance; that is, it is merely one of gradual reduction accompanied by an upbuilding of bodily tone. The morphine-taker with means and time at his disposal will stay in a sanatorium as long as he can be made comfortable. This shows that whatever reduction he has undergone is extremely slight; for gradual reduction, when it is carried to any extent, sets up a highly nervous state, together with insomnia and physical disturbance. The patient, as is often said, has an exaggerated dread of discomfort, and will not, if he can help it, endure it at all. Unless he is committed, he transfers himself to another sanatorium the moment he ceases to be made comfortable. I had one patient whose life had been a continuous round of sanatoriums. He would stay in one place until the point was reached where discomfort was in sight, and then remove to another, remaining there for a similar period, and then to another, and so on, until he had finished a long round of sanatoriums to his taste in America and Europe. Then he would begin all over again. A patient of mine who had visited eight different sanatoriums in the vicinity of New York told me that in America the sanatorium treatment of neurological patients was divided into three great schools: the "forget-it" system, the "don't-worry" system, and the "brace-up" system. Any nervous invalid who has stayed much at sanatoriums will appreciate the humor of this classification. The gravest aspect of these long stays at a sanatorium is the unavoidable colonization. Picture to yourself a group of from half a dozen to fifty morphine patients, eating together, walking together, sitting on the veranda together, day in and day out. In this group are represented many different temperaments and many different stations of life, from the gambler to the clergyman. All the more on this account is there a general and eager discussion of previous history and present situation. For where the alcoholic is quite indifferent, the morphine victim has an insatiable interest in symptoms. He has also an excessive sympathy with all who have been through the same mill with himself. Thus, in a matter where individual and isolated treatment is imperative, most sanatoriums deal with patients collectively. Furthermore, these are peculiarly a class of unfortunates who ought never to become acquainted. Whatever moral restraint the habit has left in a man is completely relaxed when he hears constant bragging of trickery and evasion and has learned to envy the cleverness and resource so exhibited. The self-respect and pride which must be the main factors in his restoration are sometimes fatally weakened. Colonization should be restricted to the hopeless cases, and to them only because it is unhappily necessary. FAILURE OF THE REDUCTION METHOD All this, moreover, is never, or almost never, to any purpose. As the uncomfortable patient will move if possible, it is naturally the business of the sanatorium to keep him from being uncomfortable. The method of reduction, therefore, is rarely carried out to the point where it would do any good, even if good were thus possible. But it is not possible. In the first place, lessening the dose is of little avail; there is as much suffering in the final deprivation of a customary quarter of a grain as of twenty grains. In the second place, it cannot be ascertained by gradual reduction whether there is any disability which makes morphine necessary, since no intelligent diagnosis can be made so long as a patient is under the influence of the smallest quantity of the drug. Obviously, the first step in taking up a case should be to discover whether any such disability is present, and, if so, whether it is one that can be corrected; otherwise it may be a waste of time to try to correct it. The true physical condition of the patient, which should be considered before a long course of treatment is undertaken, can seldom be discovered by the reduction method. The best doctors have always felt that they could not afford to lend their names to any institutions or sanatoriums except those which restricted themselves to mental cases. Yet these home cures and sanatoriums, unscientific and ineffective as they were, have offered to the victims of the drug habit the only hope they could find. The investigations begun by Mr. Taft in the Philippines extended over considerable time and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but, although furthered in every way by the whole world, they failed to discover a definite treatment for the drug habit. It was generally believed by physicians that there was no hope for the victims of it. COST OF THE DRUG HABIT It may be noted that I have not dwelt upon the expense of the habit. This consideration may be omitted from the case. To the average victim, the cost of his drugs, no matter what he may have to pay for them, seems moderate. He is buying something which he deems a vital necessity, and which, moreover, he places, if a choice be required, before food, drink, family, sleep, pleasures, tobacco--every necessity or indulgence of the ordinary man. The real cost is not to the drug-taker, but to the world. If a human life be considered merely as a thing of economic value, an estimate may perhaps be made of the total loss due to the habit. But the loss should not be reckoned in any such way. It should rather be reckoned by the great amount of moral usefulness and good that might be rendered to the world if these unfortunates could be freed from their slavery, and by the actual harm being done by them, especially by those that are now loosely classed as criminals and degenerates. The retrieving of much of the waste of humanity may be accomplished by adequate treatment of the drug habit. CHAPTER III THE DRUG-TAKER AND THE PHYSICIAN The doctor who begins to take the drug in order to whip his flagging energies into new effort finds the habit fastened on him before he realizes what has occurred. His endeavors to reduce his daily dosage fail, and he becomes thoroughly enmeshed. His acquired tolerance for the drug has brought about so great a physical change that deprivation or even reduction of dosage is intolerable. Hundreds of cases where physicians had experimented with the drug with these disastrous results have been brought to my attention. No one shows less foresight, less appreciation of the danger of tampering with drugs, than the physician himself. I am constantly amazed by the fact that any doctor will take even the slightest risk of becoming a drug-user. That many voluntarily incur the peril passes my understanding. I have seen an astonishing number of physicians who for various physical reasons other than exhaustion and the need of stimulant considered themselves eligible to experiment with drugs. It is a curious thing that, as a class, physicians and surgeons are themselves singularly averse to submitting to surgical operation, even when symptomatic indications strongly urge it. Why surgeons, in particular, should so generally dread the application of the knife in their own cases is a puzzle, for of course no class more thoroughly understands the need of surgery. I could mention many cases of this sort, but one in particular recurs to my memory. He was one of the most careful and best-informed doctors in the country, and he was not without a certain special knowledge of the peril involved in habit-forming drugs; but he suffered from a painful rectal trouble, and although he considered himself too intelligent a man to go too far with a dangerous substance, he did go too far. He had thought that he could leave drugs off whenever he desired; he found that he could not. THE PHYSICIAN WHO TAKES DRUGS It is impossible to make even an approximately accurate guess at the proportion of physicians who are drug-users. Everywhere except in New York State physicians can obtain as many drugs as they desire without publicity and without laying themselves open to any penalty whatsoever, even if their purchases are brought to official attention. No medical organization takes any cognizance of drug-taking physicians or provides any medical help for them. It is highly probable that the New York State legislation may uncover some of the drug-taking doctors in that commonwealth, though this is by no means certain, since legislation in force in only one State cannot effectively put a stop to the illegal importation of habit-forming drugs from other States and countries. Proper restrictive legislation of sufficiently wide scope would very quickly disclose every drug-taking doctor in the nation, and either force him to correct his physical condition or drive him from the profession. Proper general regulation of the traffic and consumption of habit-forming drugs will aid tremendously in freeing the medical profession from drug-takers. Until this general regulation exists no general reform will be possible. An exact accounting for every grain of habit-forming drugs which he purchases, possesses, or administers, must be demanded of every physician in the United States before this evil can be entirely abated; and this accounting among physicians will be impossible until a similar accounting is demanded of every grain imported, manufactured, and dispensed by wholesale and retail druggists. Concerning the extent of the hold which the drug habit has upon physicians I have had a rare opportunity to judge. Not only has my dealing with the drug habit been as exclusively as possible through the physician rather than through the patient, but the brevity of my treatment and the privacy that my patients are assured make it possible for many physicians who have become afflicted to come to me for relief without arousing in the mind of any one a suspicion of the real cause for their brief absence. I therefore feel that I have a firm basis for accuracy. It is the fear of disgrace which has driven hundreds of physicians from bad to worse with the drug habit: they have become apprehensive that any effort tending to their relief will uncover their position to their families, associates, or patients, and thus bring ruin; so they have drifted on from bad to worse. Many who have not taken steps in time have reached the irresponsible and hopeless stage. To the medical profession in general, as well as to the public, these men are a dreadful menace. ATTITUDE OF THE PROFESSION I, a layman, have been greatly surprised that the medical world shows so little sympathy for these unfortunates. This seems to me to be specially reprehensible, since by this neglect they imperil the public. No greater service could be rendered to mankind by the medical profession than a concerted movement of the medical organizations toward the care and relief of those among their drug-taking members who are still susceptible to help, and the exclusion from medical practice of those who have already gone too far to be reclaimed. Physicians of this class who are without means are specially entitled to sympathy and help, and this service will be of double value, for it will not only give them necessary aid, but will notably safeguard the public. No physician should be permitted to practise who is addicted to the use of habit-forming drugs or who uses alcoholic stimulants to excess; but whatever is done in regard to these men should be accomplished without publicity and without any loss of pride or standing. A doctor who has used either drugs or alcohol is much more to be pitied than blamed. The worthy practitioners--and there are many--who must resort to the use of drugs in order to enable them to practise despite some physical disability which cannot be eliminated, are no less numerous in proportion to the total number of physicians than similar cases are in relation to the total number of lawyers, merchants, or journalists, but because of the nature of their work, they are far more dangerous to the general public. It seems to me that there is in this fact--the existent, non-elimination of such perilous characters from the practice of medicine, and the obvious, very real necessity for such an elimination--a suggestion for some person of philanthropic mind. If the medical profession will not care for its own, then some one else must care for them. It occurs to me that among the people whose naturally fine impulses are leading them toward the endowment of institutions for the care of the aged maiden lady, or superannuated teachers, or others to whom fate has been unkind, there are many who might well consider this great need for the establishment of a comfortable institution in this country for the care of physicians who through no fault of their own have become unable to practise their profession with profit and efficiency. HOW THE DOCTOR BECOMES A DRUG-TAKER The doctor's yielding to the drug habit is a simple process, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred unaccompanied by any unworthy tendency toward dissipation. In another part of this book I make extensive reference to the fact that nowhere in the text-books by means of which the medical students of the world receive their education is any proper attention paid to the psychology of the drug habit. We may assume that a doctor, having lost sleep because of a difficult case, is confronted on his return to his office by another that demands immediate and skilful attention. He is tired and very likely he himself is ill. He cannot yield to his worries or illness, as he would demand one of his patients to yield. He must "brace up." He knows that in the stock of habit-forming drugs that he uses in his profession lies the material which will brace him up. He tries it; it succeeds. This doctor has begun to nibble at the habit, and he does not know his danger. He himself does not believe that one or two or a few doses will fasten that habit upon him. He finds that a certain dosage produces the necessary desired result upon the first day; he is stimulated to new efforts in behalf of his patients, and because those new efforts are the result of stimulation, they produce abnormal weariness. This exhaustion must be overcome, and the result is another dosage of the drug; and this time the dosage must be larger than the first, for both his toleration for the drug and his weariness have increased. Only a few days of such experiences are necessary to fasten the habit upon him. I have often endeavored to imagine the thrill of horror which must chill a doctor's soul when he finds that this has happened. His position is a dreadful one. He has lost control. He must tell no one, for if he tells, disgrace and the loss of his means of livelihood will be but matters of a short time. He knows nothing of any means of real relief; he cannot help himself; he is familiar with the dangers attendant on the fake cures which are widely advertised. He is confronted by a stone wall. He must either continue his dosage, thus enabling him to keep on with his practice, or he must accept ruin and defeat; and to continue his dosage is the easiest thing imaginable, for the drug has been by law intrusted to his keeping and is close at hand. Another doctor who is specially susceptible to drug addictions is the one who has been accustomed to alcoholic stimulation. Any doctor who drinks alcohol, when he finds himself beset by arduous labor involving loss of sleep, or is confronted by cases of such a complex nature that they involve a great deal of mental worry on his part, is likely to drink more than usual. Thus work and worry, the two things which make him most liable to the evil effects of any stimulation, are likely to drive him directly into over-stimulation. Over-stimulation results in super-nervous excitation. The victim finds himself unable to sleep, he finds his hand tremulous, he finds his thoughts wool-gathering when they should be concentrating with intensity upon his work. In his pocket case there is his little morphine bottle; he knows its action, and when called to see a patient while under the influence of alcoholic stimulants he attempts to steady himself by the administration of a small dosage. The result is virtually instantaneous and at first marvelously effective. He finds himself enabled to do better work than he has done for years, and more of it. The remedy seems magical; he tries it again and again. The man is lost. Such instances as these have produced the most utterly hopeless of the many cases of drug addictions among physicians with which I have come into contact. TYPES OF DRUG-USERS Specially numerous among drug victims are physicians in nose and throat work, where they make daily employment of cocaine solution. Some of the most desperate cases of drug habit that I have ever seen among physicians have come from this class, made familiar with the constant use of the drug by the necessity for continually administering it to their patients. Another physician who is specially liable is the man who suffers severe pain from a physical cause that he knows can be removed only by resorting to surgery. The average doctor will postpone a surgical operation upon himself until his condition has long passed the stage that he would consider perilous to any of his patients. While he postpones it he is suffering, and while he suffers he may be more than likely to continue his practice through reliance upon the stimulation and pain-deadening qualities of habit-forming drugs, concerning the true and insidious nature of which he usually knows no more than the average layman. There have been a few cases of physicians who have yielded unworthily to drugs and opiates as a means of dissipation. I have known some physicians, for example, who have been opium-smokers. In the United States the opium-smoker is invariably unworthy. Not long ago the New York police raided the apartment of a physician where were found thirty or forty opium-pipes and more than a hundred pounds of opium, either crude or prepared for smoking. I have known fewer than half a dozen physicians whose drug vice was purely social, however. The victims of drag habit who achieved it through a tendency toward dissipation are almost invariably denizens of the under-world; and if it were not for the fact that the contagion of their vice may spread, they might well be permitted by society to drug themselves to death as speedily as possible. We shall entirely disregard the physician who becomes addicted to the use of drugs through unworthy tendencies, and consider only the dangers to the profession and the public latent in the case of the physician who becomes addicted in the less reprehensible, but more dangerous, manner that I have indicated. Not only will such a drug addiction injure the doctor's practice and threaten his career, but it will surely constitute a threat against the welfare of his patients not included in the possibility that through it he may miss engagements, write improper prescriptions, and make mistakes of many kinds. THE DRUG-TAKING PHYSICIAN A MENACE A very serious danger lies in the psychology of drug addictions. The person who has taken a habit-forming drug for the purpose of relieving his own pain, and through it has found that relief which he sought, is almost certain to become abnormally sympathetic to the suffering of others. It is a curious fact that this doctor will be more than likely to administer the drug he uses to his patients, not with malicious, but with probably friendly, intent, and that he will feel no scruples whatsoever in acting as a go-between for drug-users in general who find themselves unable to obtain supplies easily. He will do what he can to help confirmed users to obtain their drugs, even if he makes no profit out of it. He will write prescriptions for them in evasion, if not in violation, of the law. It is a curious and tragic fact that the drug-taking doctor will spread the habit in his own family. There have been many instances in my hospital when I have had a physician and his wife as patients at the same time and on the same floor. In every one of these instances the drug addiction of a wife has been the direct result of constant association with the drug-addicted husband. No more dangerous detail exists in the psychology of drug-users than their almost invariable tolerance for the habit in others and their sympathetic willingness to promote its spread among those who suffer pain. In the under-world the drug habit never travels alone. Through it the woman who is a drug-user holds the man whom she desires; through it the male drug-taker holds the woman whose companionship he finds agreeable. It is a curious fact that while in the under-world the drug habit has become a social vice, especially in the case of cocaine, and is frequently a proof of mixed sex-relations, in the upper-world it is accompanied by a secrecy of method and sequestration of administration that characterizes no other form of vice. The difference between the psychology of the doctor's relation to the drug habit and that of the layman to it may be summed up in the statement that while the layman does not at all know what he is getting, the doctor knows what he is taking, but thinks that he can stop taking it whenever he feels ready. It is probable, therefore, that the doctor's primary danger is as great as the layman's, and it is certainly true that his secondary danger--that growing out of the fact that he has drugs and the instrument for their administration always ready to his hand--is very much greater. The unnecessary administration of habit-forming drugs to the sick must be legally prevented as far as possible. No affliction which can be added to an already existing physical trouble can compare in horror with that of a drug habit. Numbers of cases have come under my observation in which physicians have accomplished exactly this addition to the ruin of their patients' health, to the incalculable distress of the sufferers' families, and to the vast loss of society. In the recent legislation written upon the statute-books of New York State the first definite effort is made to provide against this catastrophe. CHAPTER IV PSYCHOLOGY AND DRUGS Drug habits may be classified in three groups: the first and largest is created by the doctor, the second is created by the druggist and the manufacturer of proprietary and patent medicines, and the third, and smallest, is due to the tendency of certain persons toward dissipation. The major importance of the first two groups is due to the fact that they include by far the greater number of cases, and to the pitiful fact that such victims are always innocent. Speaking generally, and happily omitting New York State from our statement, it is safe to say that the manufacturer, the druggist, and the physician are without legal restraint despite their importance as promoters of drug habits, while the comparatively unimportant drug-purveyor in the under-world is held more or less strictly in control by the police, and is subject to severe punishment by the courts in case of a conviction. With few exceptions, the part which the doctor plays in the creation of drug habits is due to lack of knowledge; but the druggist's part in the spread of this national curse is purely commercial, and may justly be designated as premeditated. He always has gone and always will go as far as is permissible toward creating markets for any of the wares that he sells. Regulation of the upper-world in regard to the distribution of habit-forming drugs will automatically regulate the under-world in its similar activities. The amount which will be smuggled by those of criminal tendencies always will be small as compared with the amount improperly distributed through channels now recognized as legitimate until all the States have passed restrictive legislation founded upon, modeled after, and coöperative with New York State's legislation; and all this must be backed and buttressed by Federal legislation of a special kind before real and general good can be accomplished in the United States. Illicit drugs rarely find their way into the possession of users who have acquired drug habits through illness or pain. So it must be admitted that most of the effort that in the past has been made toward restrictive legislation has really been devoted to the interests of the unworthy rather than to those of the worthy. Save in New York State, the man or woman with a sheep-skin--the doctor, the druggist, or the nurse--remains virtually a free-lance, permitted to create the drug habit in others or in himself or herself at will. THE DOCTOR A MEANS OF SPREADING THE DRUG HABIT The man in severe pain is immediately exposed, by the very reason of his misfortune, to the physician with a hypodermic or the druggist with a headache powder; the man who cannot sleep may at any moment be made a victim by the physician whom in confidence he consults, or by the druggist to whom he may foolishly apply for "something" which will help him to secure the necessary rest. Save in New York State, the druggist's shelves are crowded with jars and bottles holding dangerous compounds which he may dispense at will, his drawers are crowded with neat pasteboard boxes containing powders which are potent of great peril. The public will have made a long step toward real safety when it realizes that any drug which brings immediate relief from pain or which will artificially produce sleep is an exceedingly dangerous thing. The sick man's confidence in his doctor is one of the doctor's greatest assets; it has saved innumerable lives. It is of the same general nature as the mysterious mental phenomena which frequently control physical conditions, and which have been capitalized by various bodies, such as Faith Cure and Christian Science; but if this is an asset to the physician, the general public knowledge that he carries in his case or in his pocket drugs which he can use without restraint of law for the relief of pain may become a general peril. In the old days when the doctor's work was a mysterious process, operating by methods of which he alone was cognizant, this peril was less well defined; but now that the spread of education has made everybody a reader and periodical literature of the times has given even children a smattering of knowledge concerning medical matters, the nature of the means by which the doctor works his miracles is well known, and his unrestraint may become a public peril. Of one thousand patients who may consult the average physician, nine hundred and ninety-nine know perfectly well that he can stop their pain if he desires to do so. Pain is unpleasant; naturally their demands that he use his power are insistent. If he refuses, they are likely to call in another and less scrupulous physician. The medical profession is overcrowded, and perhaps the doctor needs the money. Even if he is swayed by nothing but financial need, he is likely to be tempted into the administration of pain-deadening substances when his patient urges him. There is another powerful influence which works upon the most admirable of men--the pity of the temperamental physician for the human sufferer. Most men who choose the medical profession as the avenue for their life-work have the qualities of mercy, pity, and sympathy notably developed in their psychology. This is likely to induce them to stretch points in favor of relieving suffering patients. Even when their previous experience has proved to them the danger lying in narcotics, they are likely to forget it, or to take a chance if a special emergency arises. This may be done without great peril to the patient. DANGER OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF PAIN-RELIEVING DRUGS The physician should exhaust every means known to medical science to prevent his patient from knowing what it is that eases pain when his practice makes it absolutely necessary that a substance of the sort should be administered, and this is very much less frequent than the average doctor realizes, as will be shown in another passage of this book. It is in this necessity for concealment that the great danger of using the hypodermic syringe as an administrating instrument principally lies. The moment the hypodermic syringe is taken from the doctor's or the nurse's kit, the sufferer is made aware of the means which will be used to give him ease. He remembers it, forming a respect and admiration, almost an affection, for the mere instrument, and with the most intense interest gathers such information as he may find it possible to acquire about this wonder-working little tool and the material which is its ammunition of relief. He knows absolutely that the relief which he has found is not due to medical skill, but to the potency of a special drug administered in a special way. He stops guessing as to whether he has been soothed by an opiate; he knows he has been. It is not only those of weak psychology or mental characteristics who are affected by this knowledge and who through it become drug-takers, though it is the general impression that this is the case. No impression was ever more inaccurate. The mentally strong and the morally lofty are as much averse to suffering physical pain as the mentally weak and the morally degenerate. All are in the same class when the drug has been administered until that point of tolerance is reached where its administration cannot be neglected without the indignant protest of the physical body. That this fact should be impressed upon the medical profession as a whole is one of the most needful things I know. Another hazard which the doctor runs, if he passes the point of extreme caution in the administration of drugs to patients, is the possibility, even the probability, that through such an administration he will lose control of his patients. From the moment the patient becomes cognizant of the means which the doctor has successfully used to alleviate his pain, he begins to dictate to the doctor rather than to accept dictation from him. No doctor can control a case successfully unless his judgment is accepted as the supreme law of treatment. A patient who is not susceptible to the doctor's dictation cannot be expected to get the full advantage of the doctor's skill or knowledge. If diagnosis shows that a patient requires some operation, as in certain uterine troubles, or more especially in the case of bladder affections or gall-stones,--cases in which frequently only an operation can give relief,--and if that patient is aware that even if the operation is not performed, the doctor can still ease all suffering, that patient, loath to run the risk of the surgeon's knife, horrified by the thought of hospitals and operating theaters, is likely to demand the relief which opiates offer, and refuse to risk the cure which surgical procedure alone would certainly afford. The conscientious doctor who insists upon the proper course in such a case is seriously handicapped by the presence in the medical profession of many men who are less conscientious, and who may yield more readily to the urgings of the patient. Thus the possibility of unrestricted use of habit-forming drugs by the medical profession becomes a handicap to the conscientious man and a commercial advantage to the unscrupulous practitioner. UNCONSCIOUS VICTIMS OF THE DRUG HABIT Episodes occurring continually in the course of my work add to the strength of my conviction of the physician's responsibility. For years not a week has passed which has not brought me patients with stories of the manner in which they have become victims of drug addiction through the treatment of their physicians. Lying before me as I write is a communication from a young man in Pennsylvania. He had been hurt, and through improper surgical attention a healing fracture had been left intensely painful. The attending doctor, unable to correct his imperfect work, had left with him a box of tablets to be taken when the pain became severe. Promptly and inevitably the youth achieved the drug habit. He felt disgraced, he would not tell his father, his wife, or his sister. His doctor could give him no relief. By some accident he saw an article of mine which was published in the "Century Magazine," and made a pitiful appeal to me. I have received many such communications. A pathetic letter comes to me from a woman suffering with fistula. Having achieved the morphine habit as the direct and inevitable result of taking pain-killing drugs given to her by her family physician, she now feels herself disgraced. Like many sensitive women who in this or some other way become victims of the drug habit, she is obsessed, as her letter clearly shows, with the conviction that her achievement of the habit has been a personal sin, and that her continued yielding to it puts her beyond the pale of righteousness. She writes that she finds herself incapable of going to her church for Sunday services or to prayer meetings because she feels ashamed when in the imminent presence of her Maker. Another woman, evidently animated by a similar psychological phenomenon, writes that having acquired the drug habit, although blamelessly, since it was through the administration of narcotics by her doctor, she finds it a psychological impossibility to kneel at her bedside and offer that prayer to God which it had been her nightly practice to deliver. I could multiply such instances indefinitely. It is impossible to conceive any episodes more pitiful than the cases of this sort which have been detailed to me by drug victims, doctor-made. That feeling of disgrace, that unjustified conviction of sin on the part of absolutely innocent women victims of the drug habit, is apparently among the most terrible of humanity's psychological experiences. If I had the pen of a Zola and the imagination of a Maupassant, I might properly impress the medical world with a sense of its responsibility in this matter. Without it I fear that I may fail to do so; but could I accomplish only this one thing, I should feel that my life had been of use to that humanity which I desire above all things to serve. No work could be of more importance to the world of sufferers than one which would put the use of these potentially beneficent, but, alas! often injurious, drugs upon a respectable basis, so that the man who must be given the relief which they alone can offer may no more hesitate to tell his neighbor that he is taking morphine than he now will hesitate to tell his neighbor that he is taking blue mass pills or citrate of magnesia. RESPONSIBILITY OF THE TRAINED NURSE That the medical world should ever have been so lax in its realization of its proper responsibility as to allow trained nurses to carry hypodermic syringes and to administer habit-forming drugs seems to me to be one of the most amazing things in the world. No physician who has had an extensive experience with drug addiction and who has any conscientious scruples whatsoever will fail to make sure before he leaves a nurse in charge of a patient that the attendant possesses no habit-forming drugs and is without any instrument with which they may be hypodermically administered. If such drugs are to be used, they should be kept in the physician's possession until they are used, and should be administered by means of an instrument which he carries with him. When such drugs are left, the nurse should give an accounting for every fraction of a grain. I have no desire to convey the impression that in my opinion all nurses are untrustworthy or unscrupulous, but it must be remembered of them, as it must be remembered of the doctor, that they are in the employ of the patient, that their income depends upon giving satisfaction to their employer, and that they are likely to make almost any kind of concession and resort to almost any practice in order to make comfortable and profitable assignments last as long as possible. It is impossible not to admit the truth of this statement, and it must be recognized that if it is true, a nurse is under too great a responsibility when she is in possession of a hypodermic kit, particularly if the patient knows that it is _her_ kit, _her_ hypodermic, _her_ drug, and that she will not be called to account by the physician for such drugs as she may administer. It must be rather disconcerting for a physician to reflect upon the fact that a nurse whom he has left in charge of a critical case, through greed or even through the general and admirable quality of mercy, is equipped for, and ignorantly may yield to the temptation of, resorting to a practice that may not only undo all the good his treatment has accomplished, but, in addition, may afflict the patient with suffering more terrible than any which disease could give. This element of mercy, soft-heartedness, and readiness to pity must specially be remembered in considering the relation of the trained nurse to the patient. If men are often induced to enter the medical profession because of its presence in their soul, even more frequently are women led by it to become trained nurses. The sympathetic woman is even more likely to yield to the pleadings of suffering patients than is the sympathetic male doctor. It must also be remembered that, like the doctor, the nurse is human, and neither iron-nerved nor iron-muscled. She is frequently under terrific strain, which makes her tend toward the use of stimulants of any kind. That which she can administer to herself by means of the hypodermic is closest to her hand, is easiest to take, and is least likely to be discovered. Again, too, it must be remembered that the nurse is as susceptible to pain as are the rest of us. Suffering, with the means of alleviation at her hand, and, like the doctor, ignorant of its true peril, what is more natural than that she herself should use the hypodermic for her own relief? Thus it comes about that probably a larger proportion of trained nurses than of doctors are habitual drug-users. This is not a statement which is critical of the profession, for if all mankind knew of drugs, had hypodermics, and knew how to use them, a very large proportion of the human race would resort to this quick and effective, if inevitably perilous, means of finding comfort when agony assailed them. The world does not, the world cannot, understand that while to the normal human being the worst that can come is pain, the worst pain is vastly less terrible than the horrors which at intervals inevitably afflict the habitual drug-user. Not one human being who has become a victim of a drug habit through its use for the alleviation of pain but will voluntarily cry after he has come to realization of the new affliction which possesses him, "save me from this drug habit, and I will cheerfully endure the pain which will ensue." The horror of pain is not so great as the horror of the drug habit. Another very serious reason for extreme caution on the part of the medical profession in regard to the use of habit-forming drugs is that the effect of such drugs upon a patient must almost certainly make accurate diagnosis of his case difficult or even impossible. A patient whose consciousness of pain is dulled or eliminated by the use of drugs cannot accurately describe to a physician the most important symptoms of his ailment. Without the assistance of such a description the physician is so handicapped that all the skill which he has acquired in practice and all the knowledge he has gained from study are apt to be of no avail. Indeed, in the case of habitual drug-users accurate diagnosis of any physical ailment is impossible until the effect of the drug has been so completely eliminated that not one vestige of it remains. CHAPTER V ALCOHOLICS I am not specially familiar with the statistics of insanity, but I am inclined to believe that an appreciable contribution to the total--indeed, one of its largest parts--has arisen from the improper diagnosis of drug and alcoholic cases, followed naturally by improper medical treatment. Lack of definite medical help in cases of chronic alcoholism is likely to bring about brain lesions, which eventually mean hopeless insanity. For that special reason, the chronic alcoholic has been the chief contributor to the army of the insane, and in the asylums his presence is notably frequent among the violent cases. The head of one of the greatest institutions in the United States for the care of the insane assures me that this seems to occur among women to a greater degree than with men. One of the most difficult problems of my work has been to discover ways by which the medical profession can be made to understand the really serious meaning of chronic alcoholism. Most delirium, the primary cause of which lies in alcoholism, is amenable to treatment. EFFECTS OF DEPRIVATION IN CHRONIC ALCOHOLISM It is exhaustion or lack of alcohol which first produces delirium in an alcoholic case, whether that exhaustion is due to the patient's inability to assimilate food or alcohol or whether it is due to the fact that, being under restraint, alcohol is denied him. In most cases there is no form of medication which can be successfully substituted for alcohol, and unless definite medical help is provided for the purpose of bringing about a physical change and thus avoiding delirium, no course remains safe except a long and very gradual process of reduction of alcoholic poisoning. Such a measure as this cannot be successfully applied in the wards of the general hospital, as the mere fact that alcohol was there administered, even in slowly diminishing doses, would make such a ward the chosen haven of innumerable "old stagers," who, having reached that stage of worthlessness which would make it impossible for them to obtain the narcotic elsewhere, would take the treatment for the mere sake of getting the alcohol of which it principally consists. Many friends of alcoholic subjects and many physicians in private practice have believed that they were doing the alcoholic a great service when they put him where he could not get alcohol, and helped him over the first acute stages of the period of deprivation by the administration of bromide and other sedatives. This usually means delirium first and then a "wet brain"; if the patient survives this, his next development is more than likely to be prolonged psychosis, or, in the end, permanent insanity. It is because of this that I consider the chronic alcoholic more clearly entitled to prompt and intelligent medical treatment than most other sick persons. With the alcoholic, as with the drug-taker, the first thing to be accomplished is the unpoisoning of the body. In order to accomplish this, it is first necessary to keep up the alcoholic medication, with ample sedatives, using great care lest the patient drift into that extreme nervous condition which leads to delirium. If delirium does occur, nothing but sleep can bring about an improvement in the patient's condition. This is the point of development at which physicians not properly informed in regard to such cases are likely to employ large quantities of hypnotics, and frequently this course is followed until the patient is finally "knocked out." In many instances an accumulation of hypnotics in the systems of persons thus under treatment has proved fatal. I am rather proud of my ability to state that from delirium tremens I have never lost a single case. NECESSITY OF CLASSIFICATION OF ALCOHOLICS The records show that to-day about forty per cent. of the insane in the asylums of New York State have a definite alcoholic history. In this condition lies one of the greatest opportunities ever offered to the medical profession. Even now a proper classification of the patients thus immured, and their appropriate treatment, would in many instances result in the return to the normal of those affected; proper classification and treatment at the time when the symptoms of mental disorder first appeared would have resulted in the salvation of innumerable cases. As a matter of fact, I earnestly believe that if this course was followed, the number of supposedly permanent cases of insanity arising from alcoholic and drug addictions might be decreased by seventy-five per cent. Certain general rules may be laid down. There are no circumstances in which it is advisable for a physician in private practice to attempt to handle a case of chronic alcoholism in the patient's own environment. Efforts to do this are constantly made, with the result that many needlessly die from lack of alcohol, while an even more tragic result is the unnecessary entrance, first into the psychopathic wards of our hospitals and thence into our asylums for the insane, of innumerable cases which needed intelligent treatment only for alcoholism or drug addiction. If this treatment is neglected, the incarceration of these unfortunates in asylums becomes necessary, for without question their insanity is real enough. UNSCIENTIFIC METHODS IN THE TREATMENT OF ALCOHOLISM During the summer of 1913 I visited a large hospital in Edinburgh and discussed alcoholism and its treatment with the visiting physician. "We do not have many alcoholics here," said he. "Why?" I inquired. "All our hospital work is supported by private subscription," he answered. "Then there is no place whatever in Scotland for the care of the acute alcoholic case?" "No. If an intoxicated person is locked up by the police and develops delirium, he is sent here, and we do what we can for him by the old methods." "You offer no definite medical help along special lines?" "No; we have none to offer." He showed me two cases in the general ward; one man in a strait-jacket was in the midst of delirium tremens, his face terribly suffused. He was in a pitiable state, and nothing was being done for him. "What course shall we follow?" the physician inquired. "Let me see his chart," I requested. After I examined it, it became immediately apparent that the patient's condition was due to lack of his usual drug. It was his third day in the ward. "Nothing but sleep will save him," I said, and suggested medication which was administered. In three or four minutes the patient was relaxed and taken out of the strait-jacket. I made certain suggestions regarding general stimulation for the bowels and the kidneys, and diet. On the next day I found the patient improved after twelve or fifteen hours of sleep, and wholly free from delirium. His case had now become simply a matter of recuperation. Another case had lived through several days of delirium tremens, which had been followed by a "wet brain"; the visiting physician considered this patient a fit subject for the psychopathic ward. I asked the patient questions about himself. He was sure that he had been out the night before and pointed out one of the internes as his companion during the hours of dissipation. His case was regarded at the hospital as almost certain to end in an asylum. I suggested treatment and within two days the man's mind had entirely cleared up. These instances of successful and prompt relief occasioned considerable surprise among the hospital physicians, who frankly admitted that they knew nothing to do except to keep the patients there under restraint, and, if necessary, feed them according to existing rules, to keep their bowels open and their bladders free, and hope for the best. This was an institution which is supposed to represent the best medical learning in the United Kingdom. I found similar conditions existing in the great hospitals of London, Paris, and Berlin, so that the Scotch institution is not an exception to the general European rule. Everywhere I was frankly informed that the medical staff knew of nothing to be done in alcoholic cases beyond deprivation and penalization. Nor have we been more scientifically progressive in the United States. We are following virtually the same unenlightened methods, and it has even been suggested that chronic alcoholism be added to the conditions which in the minds of some sociological thinkers justify sterilization. How important our shortcoming is may be strikingly illustrated by the statement that alcoholic patients comprise one third of all the cases admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York. THE DIFFICULTY OF TREATMENT IN SOME ALCOHOLIC CASES The alcoholic differs notably from the person addicted to drugs. A drug-taker, deprived of his drug, will experience in the early stages only acute discomfort and a natural longing for the drug of which he has been deprived. His unfavorable symptoms can always be relieved by the administration of the drug. The chronic alcoholic, however, deprived of the stimulant, often drifts into a delirium which cannot be relieved by the administration of his accustomed tipple. No more terrible spectacle can be imagined by the human mind than that of an acute case of delirium tremens; no patient needs more careful watching in order that unfavorable developments may be avoided; once delirium sets in, no type of case is medically so difficult to handle. The man who for long periods has been saturated with alcohol, and who is suddenly deprived of it, is, I think, more to be pitied than almost any one I know; yet relatives, friends, and physicians frequently follow exactly this course, and think that by so doing they are rendering the patient a kindly service. CAUSES OF INSANITY In mentioning the causes of insanity, it is, however, impossible to permit the impression to be recorded that alcohol is the only offender. My statement of the part which alcohol plays in supplying the population of our mad-houses has never been denied; but it is also true that the use of headache powders and other preparations commonly sold at our drug stores and as yet slightly or not at all restricted by law, and the use of coffee, tea, and tobacco in unrestricted quantity, also contribute their quota to the insane. A letter from the superintendent of a certain state asylum tells me that he has seen many improvements, sometimes even amounting to cures, result from ten days of fasting. That fasting really was a process of unpoisoning. In such a case the symptoms of insanity may be attributed to auto-intoxication, coming from any one of many causes, of which alcohol, tobacco, or even food improperly selected or unreasonably eaten may be one. The physician can have no means of learning just what method to pursue in any case of auto-intoxication until the patient has been unpoisoned. If any one of the great general hospitals would secure careful histories of one hundred of its patients and apply the proper methods to those who are found to have been poisoned by their habits, surprising results would be achieved. It is specially true that no intelligent mental diagnosis can be made of any patient who has had an unfavorable drug, alcoholic, or even tobacco, tea, or coffee history until he has been freed from the effects of these drugs or stimulants. The first thing that a physician must do when confronted by a case of alcoholic or drug addiction is to learn whether it is acute or chronic. If the case is chronic, the patient must not be suddenly deprived of his stimulants. CHAPTER VI HELP FOR THE HARD DRINKER The people of the world in general, and especially the people of the United States, are asking more questions about the cost of alcohol--not its cost in money, but its cost in men. These are questions which statistics cannot answer, which, indeed, can never be definitely answered; but we know enough to be assured that if answers could be given, they would be appalling. With increasing unanimity the thinkers of the whole world are saying that in alcohol is found the greatest of humanity's curses. It does no good whatever; it does incalculable harm. A dozen substitutes may be found for it in every useful purpose which it serves in medicine, mechanics, and the arts; its food value, of which much has recently been said, is not needed; and it has worked greater havoc in the aggregate than all the plagues. If not another drop of it should ever be distilled, the world would be the gainer, not the loser, through the circumstance. Yet the use of alcohol as a beverage is continually increasing. The number of its victims sums up a growing total. Sentimentalists have failed to cope with it, and the law has failed to cope with it. In combating it, the world must now find some method more effective than any it has yet employed. When we consider excessive drinkers as a class, we find that a large number of alcoholics are born with tendencies which make alcohol their natural and almost inevitable recourse. As a rule they are naturally highly nervous, or, through some systemic defect, crave abnormally the excitation which alcohol confers. For these reasons, granting favorable opportunity and no great counterbalancing check, they are foredoomed to drink to excess. Some are predisposed to alcoholism by an unstable nervous organism bequeathed to them by intemperate parents or other ancestors; others are drinkers because they do not get enough to eat, or fail, for other reasons than poverty, to be sufficiently nourished; and others, possessing just the favorable type of physique, become alcoholics through worry or grief. All these kinds of people are victims of a habit which, properly speaking, they did not initiate, and of which, therefore, censure must be very largely tempered. Yet they are generally treated as though they had perversely brought about their own disease, a course not more reasonable than the punishment of people for developing nephritis or cancer. The demand for a more effective as well as a more logical treatment of alcoholism has even greater urgency than comes out of this injustice. Much of our best material falls victim to this disease. By general admission the alcoholic often possesses many qualities of mind and temperament which the world admires and pronounces of the utmost value when rightly developed. Even the careless weakling who drinks to excess is proverbially likely to be generous, magnanimous, warmly impulsive, even quixotic. The finest sensibilities, the most delicate perceptions, and the most enthusiastic temperaments--from all of which qualities great constructive results may be expected--are notably the most exposed to alcoholism. A far greater number of its victims than the offhand moralist is inclined to concede have admirable sturdiness of will and dogged persistence. With less, perhaps, they would not have become excessive drinkers. They are alcoholics because with the help of stimulants they have habitually forced themselves to overwork, to bear burdens of responsibility beyond their normal strength, or to overcome physical obstacles, like poor health, eye-strain, and insufficient nourishment. The man who drinks is not necessarily depraved; but under the influence of stimulant he is very likely to drift into associations and environments which will lower his standards until he becomes irresponsible, unadmirable, or even criminal. ARE ALCOHOLICS GETTING A FAIR CHANCE? It is perhaps not going too far to say that most alcoholics have not been given a fair chance by their bodies, their temperaments, or the actual conditions of their lives. The question is, Are they getting a fair chance from society--society whose experience has demonstrated that it must in some way protect itself from them? At present the only public recognition of the alcoholic is manifested through some form of penalization. He loses his employment, he is excluded from respectable society, in extreme cases he is taken into court and subjected to reprimand, fine, or imprisonment. Nothing is done to bring about his reform except as the moral weight of the non-remedial punishment may arouse him to his peril and set his own will at work. Instances where this occurs are rare, because the crisis always comes when, through the influence which alcohol has wrought upon him, his brain has been befogged and his will weakened. Society does virtually nothing to awaken that will or to assist its operation. The man whose drinking has so disarranged him physically or mentally that he is obviously ill is, it is true, taken to the alcoholic ward of some hospital, but even there no effort is made to treat the definite disease of alcoholism. For example, Bellevue and Kings County hospitals, where New York's two "alcoholic wards" exist, are institutions devoted specially to the treatment of emergency cases. As a matter of course, the alcoholics taken to them are merely "sobered up." As soon as they are sobered and have achieved sufficient steadiness of nerve to make their discharge possible, they are turned out again into the liquor-ridden city, with their craving for the alcohol which has just mastered them no weaker, with their resolution to resist its urging no whit stronger, than they were before the crisis in their alcoholic history engulfed them. There is as yet no public institution in New York City where a man, either as a paying or as a charity patient, may go for medical treatment designed to alleviate the craving for liquor; no organized charity makes provision for the medical treatment of the alcoholic. Only three States in the Union attempt to provide more competently than New York State does for this class of unfortunates. The provision they make progressively treats men convicted of drunkenness in the courts with surveillance, threat, colonization, and finally perpetual exclusion from society. Massachusetts has a colony for inebriates, New York is developing one, and Iowa has had one for several years. This, then, is at present the treatment accorded by the public to the victims of this serious disease. There are no clinics devoted to the study of alcoholism, although it is the ailment of probably one third of the sick people in the world to-day. Those who feel disposed to question this statement will be convinced that it is reasonable if they but make a count of the private sanatoriums dealing exclusively with alcoholics in and near New York, and, indeed, dotting and surrounding all our large cities. Connecticut, New Jersey, and Illinois will show a startling number. And it must also be remembered that many of the cases of disease other than inebriety treated in all public hospitals have histories more or less alcoholic, and that the insane asylums are crowded with those gone mad through drink. It is the demand of common sense, not of sentiment alone, that this situation should be altered. Provision never has been made really to help even the man who, having lost control, is anxious to regain it. Inquire of the United Charities in New York and of similar organizations in other cities, and you will learn that they are doing most intelligent work in the treatment of tuberculosis, but that alcoholism is getting only condemnation and punishment, not curative methods; yet there probably are forty alcoholics to every consumptive. Neglect is almost universal, and where that charge cannot be brought, there the errors are incredible and continual. Many are charitable toward the drunkard, giving him their dimes when he begs for them, and thus promoting his inebriety; but society as a whole ignores him until he forces its attention through his helplessness or often through some sin, which might be more rightly charged to alcohol rather than to any natural criminal tendency in the man's nature. ALCOHOLICS SHOULD BE TREATED AS INVALIDS The physician, as things are, can do little with the sufferer from any ailment if his system at the time is impregnated with alcohol, for the alcohol may very likely prove an antidote to the medicines, or, if it does not, may prevent the patient from taking them. An alcoholic does not keep engagements; he cannot be expected to take doses as prescribed by his physician. An alcoholic who is also ill of something else is doubly ill, but he usually gets treatment only for his secondary illness. No man who has lost control through stimulants is well, and until he has been definitely treated, he cannot be expected to act normally. The world does not yet know how to deal with him. Sequestration as it is usually practised--trips round Cape Horn, weeks spent in the woods where liquor cannot be obtained--will never do it. Not only must the physical yearning be eliminated, but the mental willingness to drink must be destroyed before reform can be accomplished. It is at this point that the sentimentalists are wont to fail. A promise made by one in whom the craving for the stimulant exists cannot properly be considered binding, for such a one is not responsible for what he promises. If body proves stronger than the mind in such a battle, he is merely an unfortunate, not really a liar or a weakling. The world's loss through alcohol has been incalculable. No community ever existed which could afford to relinquish the services of all its citizens who drink to excess or even of those who frequently get drunk. Yet society has continually maintained that when encountering the alcoholic it has crime, not disease, to deal with. Hence the crudely ineffective idea of penalization as a preventive. In general the nearest approach which has been made toward physiological treatment--beyond, of course, the mere "sobering up" in an occasional hospital of patients made delirious by drink--has not been through medicine, but regimen, and this regimen has invariably included sudden enforced abstinence. This remedy is worse than the disease. It rarely helps and sometimes kills. I have seen many men who had been pronounced insane after they had been deprived of alcoholic beverages, without proper treatment, but whose minds became perfectly clear as the result of the definite medical care their cases really required. Numbers of far from hopeless alcoholics are yearly being sent to our insane asylums, where there is little chance of their recovery, I think. Furthermore, by merely depriving an alcoholic of alcohol without eliminating his desire for it, we are likely to force him into something worse. Thus the attempt to enforce abstinence upon the man who wants to drink is not only ineffective, but destructive. In making this statement I do not wish to be understood as being opposed to the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages; indeed, I should favor the most drastic restrictions prohibiting the sale of alcohol. If there was never another ounce of alcohol manufactured, the world would be none the loser either medicinally or commercially. My reason for making this statement is that prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages has been largely defeated because there have not been the proper safeguards thrown about the manufacture and sale of drug-store concoctions that can be had in any quantity as substitutes for alcoholic stimulants; and I think the most drastic legislation that could possibly be created on this subject should be enacted and enforced against the druggists selling over their counters such concoctions. The late Dr. Ashbel P. Grinnell, for seventeen years dean of the Vermont Medical College, studied this phase of the subject, gathering interesting statistics. After Vermont's adoption of prohibitory legislation, he sent out to wholesale and retail drug stores, general stores, and groceries that carried drugs as a part of their stock a letter in which were inclosed blanks calling for specific information concerning the sale of habit-forming drugs. Such was his personal standing in the State that he received responses from all but two or three of those whom he addressed, and these indicated that such sales had swelled rapidly until they indicated a daily consumption equal to one and one half grains of opium or its alkaloids for every man, woman, and child in the State. This vast increase in the use of dangerous drugs he attributed solely to the prohibition of the sale of liquor. Thus it must be argued that the attempt to enforce abstinence upon the man who wants to drink is not only ineffective, but destructive. Society may thus save itself from a few drunkards, but is likely to get lunatics or "drug-fiends" in their places. REFORM CANNOT BE ATTAINED BY PUNISHMENT At the foundation of the present treatment of the alcoholic is usually the idea that threatening with punishment can be effective. Actual experience and the slightest examination prove this to be preposterous. Many a man who drinks when he knows he should not, does so because he cannot control himself, and he who has lost his self-control is obviously irresponsible. A threat, or the remembrance of a threat, cannot restrain him. A man who had committed a crime while drunk, but whose whole career had otherwise been reputable, was sentenced to life imprisonment. After he had served six years his friends presented so strong a case to the governor that he was pardoned, but with the warning that if he took one drink he might be returned to prison to complete his sentence. An excellent illustration of the slight influence of fear upon the alcoholic is furnished by the fact that within a very short time he was arrested for public drunkenness. Punishment breeds rebellion, and when you make a man rebellious you are most unlikely to reform him. Punishment has never yet cured a disease. The inflamed brain not only carries grudges, but is almost sure to intensify them. If a man is discharged from his employment or arrested at a time when he is in the abnormal alcoholic state, the effect on him cannot be reformatory; it must be to arouse his resentment, not his repentance. The employer who discharges a good man from his position because of drunkenness not only fails to deal intelligently with the man or with the subject, but may very likely be committing a crime against society by robbing it of a useful citizen and at the same time forcing a useless one upon it. A man taken to court for drunkenness should with great care be properly classified. It should be determined whether he is an habitual drunkard, an occasional drunkard, or an accidental drunkard. There may be hope for the occasional drunkard, there is invariably hope for the accidental drunkard. If one of these is found to have employment at the time of his arrest, great care should be exercised not to let the fact that he has been arrested prejudice his employer against him, and as far as possible he should be spared humiliation. Nothing will more quickly unfit a man for anything worth while than humiliation. To punish such a man with a prison term will help no one. Neither should he be sent back to his liberty without some recognition of the fact that he has been drunk and irresponsible. Any police officer, and more especially any police-court reporter, will testify that almost every man who, having been arrested for drunkenness, is discharged from custody without penalty, for one reason or another, social position, political importance, or previous good character record, will find a saloon within two blocks of the court and take a drink on the way home. He will probably not get drunk,--the impression made by his arrest will remain too strong to permit that,--but he will take a drink. And that and other drinks will help time drive from his mind the memory of the arrest, the cell, the court. And what is true of him who has been arrested and discharged is also true of him who has been arrested and imprisoned. Punishment fails utterly to "reform" the alcoholic. Nor is colonization more effective, except for the hopeless cases. It means segregation. A man once said to me: "I want to be helped, but not at the cost of compulsory association with others seeking help. I know that to be thrown into unavoidable contact with those worse than myself would hopelessly degrade me. I should not be willing to risk that, no matter how much good the treatment might do me." Colonization of the occasional alcoholic stamps him only a little less deeply than his stripes are sure to stamp the criminal who is sent to prison, and its effects upon him and his family are not more desirable than they would be if the process made exactly that of him. He is likely to be barred from employment after his discharge from the colony, and thus find it impossible to reëstablish himself. Moreover, during the period of sequestration it is difficult to devise a plan for the care of the wives and children of those sent into seclusion. At a time when nothing in the way of betterment can be expected of him unless he regains confidence in himself, such treatment does not strengthen, but cripples, a man's spirit. Surveillance after his return will work on his imagination, cowing him into morbidness, until that alone will first weaken his will and then break it down. Too great emphasis, therefore, cannot be placed upon the viciousness of colonization for any but the first of the three classes into which I have said that all men charged in court with drunkenness should be carefully separated. Colonization of the hopeless is advisable only because such men, before they have descended to that stage, have cost their friends and society all that it is advisable to spend on them. If the man who is worth while is to be saved, it must be without the application to him of the brand. So much for the existing public methods of dealing with the alcoholic. The most usual private method is for a man's family or friends, when he has lost control, to send him to some place where he can "get a grip on himself." But he often does not receive in such a place, any more than in the hospital or prison, that specialized treatment which can make that regained grip effective. General treatment, accompanied by a gradual withdrawal of stimulant, will restore his bodily strength, with the result, in nine cases out of ten, that when he emerges from the seclusion he is able to drink more than he was before he was sequestered, and will be sure to come to grief more quickly. In most cases his craving and need for stimulant are in no degree decreased, and in consequence he will frequently relapse while going to the railway station on the homeward journey. An even graver danger is that, while still in full possession of the alcoholic habit, he will in addition contract the hypodermic habit, and any drug habit developed in the alcoholic is the most difficult of cases to deal with successfully. If he does relapse, his friends will almost surely hold him blameworthy and impatiently abandon him as hopeless, believing everything to have been done which can be done. In reality nothing at all useful has been done to help him. He is a sick man, and no attack whatever has been made on his disease. COMPLETE MENTAL CHANGE MUST PRECEDE REFORM This brings us to the kernel of the matter. No man who has become addicted to the use of alcohol can possibly abandon it unless he has first undergone a complete mental change, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this alteration of the mental state will not come until he has experienced a physical revolution. The reason for this is simple. Excessive use of alcohol really deteriorates body and brain tissue, and tissue degeneration transforms for the worse the entire physical and mental make-up of a man. The confirmed alcoholic is in the state which, save in rare instances, nothing short of specialized medical treatment can correct. Mere general building up of bodily tone is as ineffective with alcoholics as is enforced deprivation or punishment. I emphasize this point particularly because many men are afraid to take any treatment for alcoholism lest through it they lose their standing with themselves or with their neighbors. Self-respect must be protected at every stage of the struggle as the patient's only hope. My purpose here is to show that the only chance of reforming most alcoholics lies in giving them opportunity through this physiological change to reëstablish confidence in themselves. In setting about the business of treating an alcoholic, the first step is to realize that he is in an abnormal mental state. To moralize or to appeal in the name of sentiment to a warped and twisted mind is, I believe, sheer waste of time. To the man who has lost control, it must be first restored before he can be put to thinking. You cannot expect the distorted alcoholic brain to be honest with you or with itself. I cannot emphasize too strongly the harm that may come out of simply depriving the chronic alcoholic of his stimulant. I know that there are many relatives and friends and even physicians who, out of pure desperation, feel that they have accomplished much when they are able to put a man where he is unable to get his drink, irrespective of the amount which he has been accustomed to take. I consider the chronic alcoholic one of the most important cases in medicine to deal with successfully. Strange as it may seem to the layman,--and it is just as strange to the physician,--to such a case there is absolutely no other form of artificial stimulants that will take the place of alcohol, and when a patient is deprived of his accustomed stimulant, within twenty-four hours he begins to drift into delirium tremens, which means that the patient is a very sick man, and unless he is properly treated, will, if he lives through the active period of delirium, drift into a "wet brain," or, in other words, alcoholic insanity; and even if the patient survives the latter illness, a large percentage of such cases prove in the end to be hopelessly insane, and about eighty per cent. of the delirium tremens cases that do not get proper medical help die. It is a very serious matter dealing with the chronic alcoholic. Something definite must be done for such a case; deprivation is impossible; simple reduction is sometimes a failure; nothing short of definite medical, hospital work will unpoison this sick man and avoid the complications of delirium, "wet brain," or possible hopeless insanity. The second step is to give the patient that definite medical treatment which will correct his physical condition. Once this change has been effected, you have a man whose system is no longer crying out for liquor, with every nerve a-quiver for it, every tissue thirsting for it. There have been reforms from alcoholism which were not preceded by this physiological change, but they have been rare. The physiological metamorphosis may be accomplished from without, by means of treatment, without assistance from the patient other than mere acquiescence. The mental change can be assisted from without; it cannot be accomplished or maintained by any one except the patient. Despite himself a man may be successfully treated for other ailments, but not for alcoholism. By an intelligent subsequent attitude friends or physicians may help to restore self-confidence, but that is all they can do. After the desire for it has once been eliminated, the patient cannot afford to take any alcohol whatever, and after a proper change of mental attitude he will not wish to. From alcohol he must abstain altogether, even in illness. Let no recovered alcoholic risk relapse because alcohol seems to his physician to be desirable as a medicine. Indeed, the most extreme care should be exercised to avoid medicines containing alcohol even in small percentages, and this will bar most of the proprietary remedies. When he is hungry, let the recovered alcoholic eat; when he is weary, let him be sure to rest; when he feels ill, let him be sure to consult without delay a competent physician. None of these conditions indicates a necessity for alcohol. Thus the man who is not hopeless may be saved. Society owes every alcoholic a fair opportunity to reform; it may be questioned if it owes him repeated opportunities. Many alcoholics never have been and probably never could be useful citizens. Waste of money and emotion on them is lamentable to contemplate; the sums at present thus hopelessly thrown away would aggregate enough really to restore every alcoholic actually curable. Sentimentalists do not like to admit the limitations of useful help, but those limitations do exist, and we should reckon with them. If we do, the man really curable will have all the better chance. A TEST OF THE WORTHY It is possible to discriminate between the curable and the incurable by the simplest of expedients. Usually the question, What is this man willing to do in return for help? will, with its answer, also supply the answer to the inquiry as to his future. No man of sufficient mental fiber to make helping him of any actual value is willing to accept charity. Even if he finds himself at the moment unable to repay the debt involved, he will be anxious to make it a future obligation. My fifteen years of experience have proved to me that the sense of personal obligation is of great moment in this matter. Even when it becomes necessary for a relative, employer, or friend to assist a patient by the payment of his bills, it should be regarded a part of the treatment to consider this a loan, which must be repaid, and not a gift. It follows, sadly enough, that the most hopeless alcoholic is the rich young man to whom financial obligations incurred for treatment mean nothing whatsoever, and to whom responsible employment is unknown. Indeed, it seems well-nigh impossible to reform the vagrant rich. The man who thinks that giving up his alcohol is primarily a privation, although he may admit the definite necessity of this privation, is not likely to reform permanently; but there is hope for that one who declares without apology that drinking is a bad business and that he wishes to be helped to stop it. I cannot say with too great emphasis that self-respecting pride is the main hope of the alcoholic. It must not be overlooked, however, that it is the pride of the curable alcoholic which makes him difficult to reach. To try to help such a man when it is too late is a pitiably usual experience, for not until it is too late does the pride of such a man allow him to apply for help. The man who says, "I will not drink to-day," and finds himself compelled to; who promises himself, but cannot keep his promise, is the man who most deserves help, and is most likely to yield some sort of good return on an investment made in him. Indeed, it is the rare alcoholic, curable or incurable, who of his own initiative submits himself to treatment. Friends must assist; but while the importance of such friendly service cannot be overestimated, it must be of the right kind or it will be worse than useless. Friends of alcoholics too often either sentimentalize or bully when they go about the task of helping, or they allow too little time for the accomplishment of the reform. Successful business men are specially likely to act childishly when dealing with the mighty problem of assisting alcoholics to their feet. They are likely to affirm that there is no excuse for any man who yields to drink. If they have given help before, they are prone to call attention to the fact that their beneficiary has not recompensed their kindness by reforming, and declare, for instance, that they will pay his board another week, but that will be the end of their endeavor. This spirit--and it is the usual spirit--can accomplish nothing; and the money spent in this and other ill-considered and half-hearted efforts to save men has not decreased, but has increased, the dissipation it has sought to stop. Even relatives and intimate friends are likely to become weary of a case which shipment to some private institution, deportation to a ranch, or embarkation on a sailing-vessel for a long voyage has failed permanently to help. Such treatment works no reforms, or almost none. Until the cause of drinking is removed, travel from one place to another in an effort to obtain reform by breaking up old associations will be of no avail, but will, instead, repeat the experience of the old woman in the fairy-tale who was bothered by a goblin. When she uprooted herself from her old home and sought another, the goblin, hidden in a churn, went with her. It was the old woman, not the cottage, he was haunting; it is the man, not his environment, in which the alcoholic habit finds its stronghold. When a patient by intelligent treatment has been put into a receptive state of mind, he should be told to look up his old associates and to them declare himself upon the liquor question. If they are friends, they will congratulate him; if they are not, he will have gained by making certain of it. And there is very little danger that, after he has seen them, he will wish again to make intimates of them; that after, in his sober senses, he has examined the surroundings which they frequent, he will be willing to return to them. Being himself normal, he will wish for normal men as friends; being far more fastidious than he was when he was alcoholic, the old haunts will fill him with disgust. This declaration of himself the man must himself make. Good friends may help him otherwise, and chiefly by refraining from the slightest thing which may by any chance tend to decrease his self-respect and his confidence in his own power to stay reclaimed. What a man needs is a new mind on the subject. CHAPTER VII CLASSIFICATION OF ALCOHOLICS Alcoholics are more easily classified than drug-takers. With few exceptions, alcohol-users have their beginnings in social drinking. Not a few women and boys have had their first taste of alcohol, and may even have acquired a definite alcoholic habit, through the small quantities administered as stimulants by physicians; but in a general way it is as easy and just to absolve the physician from responsibility in the matter of alcoholism as it is easy and just to put a heavy responsibility upon him in the case of the use of drugs. THE DEMAND FOR STIMULANTS In these days all mankind searches for exhilaration. The instinctive demand for it is an inevitable result of the artificial social system which we have built up. We work beyond our strength, and naturally feel the need of stimulants; we play beyond our strength, and as naturally need whips for our vitiated energies. The greatest social disaster of all the ages occurred when first alcoholic stimulation, which is only one step in advance of alcoholic intoxication and narcotization, found its place as an adjunct of good-fellowship. All humanity turns in one way or another to artificial stimulants, and while alcohol and narcotics are the worst among these, we cannot slur the fact that many who would shun these agents as they would a pestilence, turn freely to milder, but not altogether harmless, stimulants, such as tea, coffee, and tobacco. I do not purpose to go into a long dissertation upon the chemical peculiarities of alcohol; I do not purpose to discuss the value or peril of alcohol as food; there are plenty of published chapters telling exactly what alcohol is. I feel that it is my mission to do none of these things, but to endeavor to reveal to the student the most effective way of dealing with a patient who has drifted into a definite alcoholic addiction. THE MAN WHO CANNOT BE SAVED It seems impossible to arouse any enthusiasm or sympathy for the human derelict whose natural weakness is inevitably such that one taste of alcohol means a gallon, and final wreck and ruin. The human cipher, plus alcohol or minus alcohol, it matters not which, means nothing. It may be true that alcohol subtracted from nothing leaves nothing, but it is certain that alcohol added to nothing may mean a peril to society and a serious charge upon it. A man who has achieved nothing up to the point where he has become addicted to excessive alcoholism will rarely repay the trouble involved in an effort to preserve him from his folly, although of course his preservation from it might be of general social service as a means of saving the public money that otherwise might be expended in the reparation of the work of his destructive tendencies, besides the public expense involved in police, court, and prison economy that prevents him from the opportunity of indulgence. But thousands of decent men annually yield to alcohol, and are wrecked by it. The decent and potentially valuable citizen who through overwork, worry, sickness, sorrow, or even through a mistaken conception of social amenities or duties, drifts into excessive alcoholism is a victim of our imperfect social system, and repays remedial effort. Furthermore, such a man is invariably savable if he himself applies for salvation, assists with his own will in its application to his case, and pays his own money for the cure. The proportion of the cases that can be saved among the general run of alcoholics who are sufficiently prosperous or have sufficiently prosperous friends to make them likely to come under my direct observation amounts to about one quarter of the whole. It will be observed that this claim for alcoholics is far below the claim which I have made for drug-users. Where it is found that a case of excessive alcoholism has grown out of a lack of a normal sense of responsibility, where excessive alcoholism has reached the point at which deterioration of the moral nature has set in, or where social and financial entanglements already have resulted, a problem is presented which is complicated and even very doubtful. In such a case far more than definite medical treatment must be resorted to before a complete restoration of the unfortunate to social usefulness can be hoped for. The naturally irresponsible person or the person already led into irresponsibility by alcoholism may be regarded as an almost hopeless proposition. This is peculiarly the case where no financial obligation can be imposed upon the patient as a part of the treatment. The very poor for whose treatment some one else must pay, and the very rich to whom the sum paid for treatment is a matter of no moment, are almost equally hopeless. My long experience has taught me that the man who does not feel a financial responsibility for that which is done for him is usually the least promising of all the cases brought to me. I have found it necessary to regard as a definite part of my treatment the imposition of a monetary obligation. If, for example, the employee of a person or a corporation is sent to me for relief from alcoholic tendencies by his employer or employers, I invariably refuse to accept the case unless it is agreed that the sum paid for the patient's treatment shall be held against him as an obligation to be repaid as soon as possible to those who have advanced it. Even the man who is curable will fail in a psychological realization of the misfortune into which he has actually fallen through alcoholic indulgence unless he himself must pay the fiddler. In the case of a working-man who is brought to me for treatment by his employers, I make a minimum charge as a rule, but only on the condition that with all due speed it is deducted from his pay-envelop. In the case of men of a higher order, as professional employees, heads of departments, etc., I insist in a general way upon following the same line of procedure. I cannot too strongly emphasize my absolute conviction that it is invariably a waste of money and time for an employer or an employing company to attempt to help alcoholics by means of free medical treatments. No good will come from this in the long run, as it never will prove to be worth while. Thus we may classify very rich, utterly poor, and irresponsible inebriates as among the hopeless. From every moral, social, and economic point of view the hopeless inebriate is a liability to the world at large. Throw him in the sieve of respectability, and soon or late he will always prove small enough to slip through the meshes. COLONIZATION OF ALCOHOLICS Among such cases will be found fit subjects for colonization, and these are the only ones who should be treated in this way. No greater social mistake is possible than the colonization and segregation, either in sanatoriums or inebriate farms, of other than utterly hopeless alcoholic cases. The next greatest mistake undoubtedly is society's failure to segregate those who are utterly beyond the pale of hope. These men and women will be less of a burden to their friends and the community after segregation; their segregated existence will not constitute a threat against society of the present and future generations. It is my opinion that these people, men and women, rich and poor, should be sterilized and put at work. It is possible that this plan, if properly carried out, might develop some institutional effort worth while. That at present practised means a waste of time and money. It should be borne in mind that deprivation never yet removed the underlying cause of the desire for alcohol, no matter over how long a period this deprivation may have extended, nor has it ever removed the desire itself. These things can be brought about only by the elimination of the poison from the victim's system. All alcoholics, no matter whether they are preferred risks or hopeless cases, whether they are to be returned to society or isolated and sterilized, should be unpoisoned. SUCCESS OF THE SPECIFIC TREATMENT The first exhaustive test of this treatment for alcoholism was made at Bellevue Hospital, and its results were announced in a pamphlet published by Dr. Alexander Lambert. The hospital in which the work was carried on was without ideal facilities; overcrowded wards and an insufficiency of nurses were among the many handicaps. That the results were more hopeful than anything theretofore accomplished is indicated by the following extracts from articles by Dr. Lambert: RESULTS I am often asked as to the success of this treatment and the percentage of patients who remain free from their addiction. This varies enormously with the individual patients and one can only judge from one's experience. My personal experience is that 11 per cent. of the morphinists and 12 per cent. of the alcoholists return for treatment. Doubling this percentage it still gives us 75 per cent. as remaining free from addiction. Of these a very high percentage are known to have stayed free. SCOPE OF THE TREATMENT This treatment is not offered as a cure of morphinism or as a cure of delirium tremens or chronic alcoholism, as I said in the first article. It will, however, obliterate the terrible craving that these patients suffer when, unaided, they endeavor to get off their drugs or are made to go through the slow withdrawal without some medication to ease them. Compared with the old methods of either slow withdrawal or rapid withdrawal, it is infinitely superior. Deprivation of a drug is in no way equivalent to elimination of that drug from the body. Deprivation causes suffering; elimination relieves it. But neither this combination of drugs nor any other combination known to man can prevent persons, after they are free from their addiction--be it alcohol or morphin--from going out and repoisoning themselves by taking again the drug which has poisoned them and led them on to their habitual intoxication. There are many more morphinists who have unconsciously fallen under the spell of the habit through no fault of their own, than can be said of alcoholists. To any one who has ever tried to break off a patient by the old withdrawal methods when they were taking goodly amounts of the drug, and has struggled to keep them free from it after they have ceased taking it, the difference in the picture when undergoing the treatment by this new method is most striking. With this treatment most patients do not suffer more than a bearable amount of discomfort of hot flashes, slight pains, and the discomfort of their cathartics. When properly administered, this is the full extent of suffering with the majority of patients. Some do not go as far as this, a few suffer more. But when improperly administered, they can suffer as much by this method as by any other. No test more exacting than the one made at Bellevue Hospital could be devised. Most of the cases appearing for treatment in the wards of that institution are of the most advanced type, for the nature of the New York hospital system may be said in a general way to select for Bellevue the least hopeful patients coming from the least hopeful classes of society. If, therefore, anything approaching permanent relief was secured for as many as twenty out of every one hundred cases, an extraordinary efficiency was indicated. Of course the intelligent reader will understand that no man with reason can claim for any treatment the power permanently to divorce from alcohol a man who does not wish to be divorced from it. To take a man whose system has reached that degree of craving for alcohol that he would sign away his right to salvation in exchange for a drink after a brief period of deprivation, if he could not otherwise obtain the alcohol, and to unpoison him so that he feels no necessity or even the slightest desire for a drink or for any stimulant, is to accomplish a great deal of good. It means that his nervous system has been restored to something nearly normal, and that he has been given a chance. The man who has not had this help from outside can do nothing for himself; but having been cleared of alcoholic poison, he is brought into a mental state wherein he finds it possible to estimate reasonably the harm which alcohol has done him. The patient is then in a mental state that enables his relatives and friends to deal with him without being forced to estimate and allow for alcoholic abnormalities in his processes of thought. He is in a physical state that, although it apparently may be worse than that in which the alcohol had placed him, is nevertheless one that will enable his physician to work with him intelligently. Such an achievement seems a perfect piece of medical work of its kind. Properly carried out, my treatment will accomplish exactly this in every instance. It will accomplish it within five days and very likely within three days. I have never known it to require a period of more than seven. When this treatment is properly provided for throughout the country, it will be found that neither large nor costly institutions will be necessary. The stay of every patient is so brief that in the average community a small institution containing only a few beds will be found sufficiently large to meet all local needs. THE HABITUAL DRUNKARD IS NOT A CRIMINAL Legislation restrictive of the sale and use of habit-forming drugs is in reality a dangerous experiment until other legislation that provides for the medical help of those who would thus be deprived has first been written upon our statute-books. I am inclined to think that many of the failures which strew the paths of experimentalists in anti-alcohol movements have been due to a lack of similar foresight. The man who is penalized for drunkenness will usually get drunk again the moment he finds himself at liberty to do so; and this will not be due to any natural depravity upon his part, but, rather, to an almost inevitable result of the bodily craving that thrills his every fiber and for the relief of which nothing whatever has been provided. We shall never make any serious progress in dealing with the most serious evils of alcoholism until we waken to the folly of treating the hard and habitual drinker as a criminal, exacting from him penalties and inflicting upon him disgrace. In every instance the passage of restrictive legislation should be accompanied by the passage of remedial legislation; for provision for the relief of suffering caused by prohibitory laws must be provided. The courts should carefully consider the facilities at the disposition of the communities in which they labor, and in imposing sentences they should be careful not to overtax them. It would be better for a community to keep a victim upon a steady diet of alcohol for weeks while he was waiting for a bed in a curative institution than to risk causing the man's death or insanity by depriving him of his alcohol until the means for relieving his system's acute demand for it were at hand. By following a similar plan, it will be found that the evil of habit-forming drugs can be exterminated in the United States. Whether alcoholism, which is a social vice, ever can be similarly exterminated by like methods I do not know; but I am convinced that an intelligent pursuit of such a policy would do more to accomplish the desired results than ever has been done by other means. HOW SOCIETY TREATS THE VICTIM OF ALCOHOL The care of the inebriate who already comes under the law, and who by his habits forces his way into the state and municipal hospitals, forms one of the great burdens upon society of the present day. It should be regarded as one of the most important problems of modern medicine. No other class of the sick includes so great a number of individual cases. We find, for example, the almost incredible fact staring us in the face that more than one third of all the patients admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York City are sent there by alcohol, while less than two per cent. are sent there by habit-forming drugs. I am casting no reflection upon this or any other institution when I say that there and elsewhere little understanding is shown in dealing with these cases. As a matter of fact, no intelligence is anywhere shown in this matter. The policeman who finds a drunken man or woman on his beat arrests the unfortunate with as much wrath and probably as much brutality as he would show a burglar or a murderer; the committing magistrate before whom the victim is taken treats him or her precisely as he would treat a criminal; in the various penal institutions to which this man or woman is committed the idea upon which their whole treatment is based is that of punishment. It seems to me that the imperfections of this system might most easily be corrected by the committing magistrates. It is the largest problem which confronts these officials; therefore they might very well afford the time necessary to study it carefully. Concerted action by this group of the judiciary might accomplish worthy results almost immediately. As matters are at present organized, the committing magistrate may do any one of four things with an inebriate who has been brought before him: he can release him without penalty, he can put him on probation, he can fine him, he can imprison him. I have yet to discover any one capable of telling me why measures of this sort can possibly be expected to have a beneficial effect upon a person who through over-indulgence has set up in his system a demand for alcohol. I have no wish to appear publicly as the critic of our petit judiciary, but no class of men is less informed upon this subject--the one subject upon which they should be best informed--than the committing magistrates not only of the United States, but of every other country in the world. A year or two ago I made a somewhat comprehensive European tour, and studied carefully the methods of dealing with inebriety. Nowhere did I find the faintest indication of a tendency for real intelligence in regard to the matter. We insist upon special education for the professors of our colleges; yet the influence of a committing magistrate upon the human life that is brought under his direct sphere of influence may be greater even than that of a college professor or a college student, and of our committing magistrate we make no educational demand whatsoever, and have never established even a minimum standard of intelligent information for our petit bench. It is my belief that expert sociological knowledge should be required of every man considered for the important post of committing magistrate. RESPONSIBILITY OF THE MAGISTRATE The fact that in New York State a colony for inebriates has been established by law makes this special knowledge more necessary there than it was before. Wherever such institutions have been founded, and the courts may contribute to their population by commitment, an unintelligent magistrate finds it within his power not rarely, but every day, to do more harm during one session of his court than he is likely to find it within the scope of his intelligence to do good during the course of a year's sitting. I find it impossible to be otherwise than bitterly pessimistic in regard to the work our courts are doing with alcoholics. Under the New York law, a man taken for the first time before a magistrate and charged with alcoholism must either be fined or told that if he again appears charged with that offense, he will be subject to commitment to the inebriate farm for a period of not less than three months. By this procedure not one thing has been accomplished toward the salvation of the man. If he is not committed, but is only threatened and ordered to report weekly or oftener to the probation officer or the court itself, the greatest of all damage has been done, since the man's pride has been depreciated. After definite medical treatment has been administered to an inebriate, the only other thing that can be done is to make an intelligent appeal to his pride. In this appeal is included at least one half the possibilities of his salvation. Nowhere save in a few instances in New York City is the alcoholic case treated with medical intelligence, and nowhere in the world is the balance of the necessary treatment--the right appeal to pride--carried out with any degree of common sense. I find one system of special horror in this treatment of inebriates--committing a man for three months, then for six months, and then for twelve. No more certain means could be devised to increase the harm done by alcohol to the community. Not only does this course fail to help the man in any measure whatsoever, but it increases the unspeakable harm which his misfortune must inflict upon his family. In most instances such a commitment not only means the man's separation from his means of livelihood for the period of its duration, but his discharge from it as the result of this utterly inefficient and legally inflicted disgrace. The whole effort of society in dealing with the alcoholic should be to prevent those things which at present are the very ones which it accomplishes--mental depression, loss of pride, disgrace, and loss of social position. I am inclined to think that as the world grows older it will be more and more convinced of the inefficiency of punishment, and more and more aware of the necessity of reform through helpfulness. It seems obvious that penalization, probationary influences, or colonization must be utterly useless in removing from a man's physical system the craving for alcohol. Therefore it is equally obvious that their only successful mission must be to remove the victim of drink from contact with society for the length of time during which his sentence is operative. The man who is in all probability incurable is not put permanently out of harm's way by these means, or placed where he can do no harm; the man who has good stuff in him but who has through chance used drugs to excess upon one or more occasion is offered by these methods nothing in the nature of a fair show toward regaining his usefulness. I see the possibility of many serious results in New York's board of inebriety plan. These, I think, have their beginning principally in the fact that nothing along the line of classification has been devised or, as far as I know, has been even suggested. If its work were made efficient by means of the adoption of a plan of classification, this board really might become a great boon to society. Suppose that instead of penalizing the man who has been taken before it for inebriety, the board, after intelligent and detailed investigation has shown that the man is probably curable, should provide for him the necessary definite medical treatment to relieve his system from the ill effects of alcohol, and then should bring him into contact with psychological and analytical minds capable of enforcing upon him a realization of the terrible meaning of alcoholism. Without having affected the man's pride it would send him back to his family and his task with a cool brain and a new point of view. Would not this be a vastly better way of dealing with him than those which are at present followed? There is no reason why some small charge should not be enforced against such beneficiaries of an enlightened public intelligence who might be found able to meet it. This would accomplish two things: it would reduce the public expense of the system and it would add very greatly to the mental impression left upon the mind of the person for whose benefits the State was working. Furthermore, if a magistrate had once formed the habit of feeling personal interest in individual cases probably his first act after a man had appeared before him would be to send for the accused's employer and make the truth of the situation clear to him. The mere fact that a man has once been intoxicated should not justify his discharge from employment in which at normal times he is useful and efficient. Both for his sake and for his employer's, efforts should be made toward reform; for it is not infrequently the case that the man who has lost control through drink is in normal conditions the best man in the office, factory, or workshop. That is one of the chief tragedies of the problem of alcohol. There is no subject upon which society more sadly needs enlightenment. In this educational process it is probable that the magistrate will be the largest factor. He must realize that he is not society's instrument of vengeance, but society's instrument of helpfulness. It should be his aim not to punish, but to protect and preserve. He must realize that scientific knowledge of the problems which confront him is as necessary to his real efficiency as scientific knowledge is to the analytical chemist. The heart of a conscientious magistrate should thrill with a special sympathy, should be aware of a great responsibility, whenever there appears for judgment in his court a man who for the first time has lost control of himself through drink. To mar this man forever is an easy task; to make him may be difficult, but it is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility. The hard drinker who for the first time is haled into court as the consequence of intoxication never is willing to concede either to himself or to others that he needs help. His soul revolts before the mere thought that he has more than temporarily, even momentarily, lost control. He is likely to deny that he has developed a craving for alcohol, and emphatically and indignantly to assert that his drunkenness has been merely incidental to the social spirit, an accident, and in general a thing of no primary importance. The thought that without help there is even a possibility that he may drift from bad to worse is abhorrent to him, and is indignantly repudiated. He will cheerfully admit that many other men of his acquaintance have fallen victims to the effects of alcohol, but he will vehemently deny the possibility of a similar fall on his own part. The magistrate who thoroughly understands all the details of the alcoholic's psychology, and who is sufficiently adroit of mind and speech to take advantage of this understanding, giving the culprit who has been brought before him every benefit of a carefully and intelligently organized knowledge of alcoholism, could not fail to be one of the most useful of society's servants and safeguards. The man or woman taken before a magistrate as the result of alcoholic over-indulgence offers a peculiarly perplexing problem. Society has placed itself in a highly inconsistent position as regards its relation to alcohol. It permits a man to pay it for the privilege to sell alcohol to any one who asks for it, the only restriction being that he may not sell it to a person who already has "had too much." This leaves the decision as to a customer's needs and capacity, as well as perils, to be rendered by the man behind the bar. Thus to an extent we intrust daily the destinies of an appreciable proportion of our public to a class of men who certainly have done little to earn general confidence. In nearly every State, if not in all, laws exist imposing penalties upon the dealer in alcohol who sells drink to a person who is already in a state of intoxication; but a careful study of the records of our courts would fail to reveal any large number of liquor dealers who have been charged with this offense, while it is obvious that most persons found upon the public streets or elsewhere in a state of intoxication must have had alcohol served to them at a time when they had already "had enough." As a matter of fact, the intelligent mind cannot fail to realize that the man who has "had enough" invariably has had too much. This is only one of many reflections which must occur to the inquiring mind occupying itself with this problem. We have made innumerable laws dealing with, and fondly supposed to control, the sale of alcoholic beverages, but as a matter of fact only one sort of law has ever been devised which possibly could control it, and that law provides for absolute prohibition. THE NEED OF AN ORGANIZED EFFORT TO HELP THE ALCOHOLIC If the world wishes to be relieved in any measure from the human waste attributable to alcohol, the time must speedily arrive when municipalities will recognize it as their duty to provide definite medical help for every man who wishes to be freed from the craving for alcohol, and who cannot afford to pay for treatment. It must be recognized that it is society's duty to hold out this helping hand to every man who has a job and is in danger of losing it through the trap which society itself has set for his feet by authorizing, and thereby encouraging, the sale of alcoholic intoxicants. Notwithstanding the presence in our social fabric of innumerable charitable bodies, churches, religious societies, and other groups of people who mean well and work hard to aid the unfortunates, it is a fact that nowhere in the United States or, as far as I know, anywhere else is there a single organization which is effectually working along definite and intelligent lines for the preservation of the endangered man who is still curable. No mother, wife, employer, or magistrate can effectively reason with a man whose brain is befogged by alcohol, for that man cannot reason with himself. Tears, threats of imprisonment, and loss of position do not have upon him their normal reaction. He is a sick man whose mental and physical condition is abnormal; it must be made normal before anything real can be done toward his assistance. There is but one way out of the sad muddle in which alcohol has plunged certain branches of our judiciary. In every city must be established emergency hospital wards to which committing magistrates may send persons with excessive alcoholic or drug histories. Treatment in these emergency wards will be neither difficult nor costly. Once this has been done, the patient may be returned to court, where his clarified brain will greatly assist the magistrate in deciding upon the proper course for his assistance and the protection of society. The commitment of the alcoholic to an ordinary penal institution is a perilous expedient. The experiences which various authorities connected with the Department of Correction in the City of New York have had with drug and alcohol smugglers indicate a condition that exists more or less generally in penal institutions throughout the country. The drug-user or alcoholic who has been locked up in a prison is in no way relieved of his craving for the substance which is harming him, and his efforts to obtain it will be desperate. The class of men who surround him as prison guards is not of a high type. If he has money, they will get it from him if they can; and if he has friends outside, especially if they themselves be drug or liquor addicts, they will attempt to smuggle to him what he craves. Inasmuch as it is much easier to smuggle drugs into a prison than it is alcohol, many alcoholics have been changed in prison to drug-takers, and after this change the metamorphosis for the mere drunkard into an actual criminal has often occurred. The administration of a definite medical treatment should therefore be regarded as imperative in all cases of drug addiction, and in most cases of alcoholic addiction that appear in our prisons. In the cases of alcoholic addictions, imprisonment should end, in the case of first offenders, with the completion of the treatment and the restoration of the subject's mind to normal. I cannot too strongly or too frequently reiterate the statement that there is no more desperate illness than chronic alcoholism. Purification from the physical demand for alcohol at the place of commitment of men taken before the courts upon the charge of intoxication might save the public from a greater burden than any other available medical process. Drunkenness cannot rightfully be considered as a crime as long as society sanctions the sale of alcohol and profits by it; therefore the punishment of alcoholics as criminals is an intolerable injustice. That it is also an economic waste is as clearly apparent. CHAPTER VIII THE INJURIOUSNESS OF TOBACCO When tobacco was first introduced into Europe the use of it was everywhere regarded as an injurious habit, and on this account for a while it made slow progress. It is no less injurious now than it ever was,--we have simply grown used to it,--and it was only when people became used to its injuriousness that the habit began to make great strides. We find nowadays that smokers as well as non-smokers are suspicious of any form of tobacco-taking to which they have not become used. Smokers who for the first time meet chewers or snuffers or those who "dip" tobacco, as in the South, are affected unpleasantly. Smokers keep on finding chewers disgusting, and smokers of pipes and cigars frequently object to the odor of cigarettes. Nothing more strikingly illustrates how addicted people may become to a habit than the smoking and chewing of the traditional Southern gentleman of the old school, whom any other personal uncleanliness would have horrified. Young men most fastidious about their apparel seem quite unaware that it is saturated with the smell of tobacco. The odor of a cigarette is probably as offensive to some of those who do not smoke as any other smell under heaven. Yet such is the power of habit that we tolerate all these things. If we could begin all over again, we should find the same general objection to smoking that existed in Europe when the habit first began. Our chief need, then, is a new mind on the subject. How can we get it? The circumstance of my giving up smoking eighteen years ago may have some slight significance in this connection. I was smoking hard, and began to have a vague feeling that it was hurting me. I had been playing whist at a late hour in my room at a hotel, and when I finally went to bed I could not sleep for a long while. I awoke with a bad taste and a parched mouth in a room heavy with stale smoke and unsightly with cigar-butts lying everywhere. Suddenly a disgust for the whole habit seized me, and I broke off at once and completely. After a week or so, when the first feeling of seediness and uneasiness and depression had worn away, I found my appetite and concentration and initiative increasing. You will observe that it was not until I began to regard smoking as harmful that I saw it was also filthy. I had a new mind on the subject. I am trying to give my readers a new mind on the subject, and if they have not come to suspect the evil of smoking, they will naturally ask me to prove that it is harmful. Let us begin at the bottom. Does it do any one any physical good? Arguments in favor of tobacco for any physical reason are baseless. It does not aid digestion, preserve the teeth, or disinfect, and it is not a remedy for anything. The good it does--and no habit can become general, of course, unless it does apparent good--can only be mental. Let me admit at once that smoking confers mental satisfaction. It seems to give one companionship when one has none, something to do when one is bored, keeps one from feeling hungry when one is hungry, and blunts the edge of hardship and worry. This sums up the agreeable results of tobacco. There are one or two more specialized agreeable results which I exclude at this moment because they are only temporary. The results I mention--let me admit at once--are real, and both immediate and apparent. On the other hand, the injurious results, after one has become inured to tobacco poison, are both unapparent and delayed. THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF TOBACCO As to the physiological and toxic effects of tobacco there is much difference of opinion. Everybody knows that the first chew or the first smoke is apt to create nausea; and that no matter how long a man has been smoking, a little lump of the tar which has collected in his pipe will sicken him. Nicotine is in itself highly toxic, but is very volatile and is absorbed only from the portion of the cigar or cigarette held in the mouth. The products of combustion of tobacco are chemical substances which are also toxic, and nausea naturally stops the smoker before symptoms of acute poisoning result. One must look, then, for symptoms of _slow_ poisoning. The popular belief that tobacco stunts growth is supported by the fact that non-smokers observed for four years at Yale and Amherst increased more in weight, height, chest-girth, and lung capacity than smokers did in the same period. Every athlete knows that it hurts the wind; that is, injures the ability of the heart to respond quickly to extra work. It also affects the precision of eye and hand. A great billiard-player who does not smoke once assured me that he felt sure of winning when his opponent was a smoker. A tennis-player began to smoke at the age of twenty-one, and found that men whom he had before beaten with ease could now beat him. Sharp-shooters and riflemen know that their shooting is more accurate when they do not smoke. But you may say: "The athletes and billiard-players and the rest are experts. I am an average man, making average use of my faculties. Besides, I am not contending that excessive smoking isn't injurious, and I will even concede that the limit of excess varies with the man. But is it not true that harmful results of average smoking for the average man are rare?" In answer, let me on my side admit that they are--the _apparent_ harmful results. We are, however, very ignorant of the effect of small, continued doses of the various tobacco poisons. All drugs comparatively harmless, such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, produce a highly injurious effect when taken in repeated small doses. Just what effect the use of tobacco engenders we cannot absolutely know, but no physician doubts that smoking may be a factor in almost any disease from which his patient is suffering. There can be, for instance, no question that smoke simply as smoke irritates the mucous membrane of the bronchial tubes and renders them more susceptible to infections; by irritating the mucous membrane of the nose and throat it tends to produce catarrh and therefore catarrhal deafness. It would therefore seem fair to state that the man who does not use tobacco is less susceptible to disease and contagion, and recovers more quickly from a serious illness or operation. From this we should expect to find that tobacco shows most in later life, when vitality is ebbing and the machinery of the body is beginning to wear. It is in his middle age that a man begins to feel the harm. In short, though we know only the precise or immediate effect of nicotine and only _some_ of the _morbid processes_ which excessive smoking may produce, it is likely that the worst aspect of tobacco is something that we do not know very much about--its tendency to reduce a man's general vigor. The dominant characteristic of tobacco is the fact that it heightens blood-pressure. The irritant action by which it does this sometimes leads to still more harmful results. Its second action is narcotic: it lessens the connection between nerve-centers and the outside world. These two actions account for all the good and all the bad effects of tobacco. As a narcotic, it temporarily abolishes anxiety and discomfort by making the smoker care less about what is happening to him. But it is a well-known law of medicine that all the drugs which in the beginning lessen nerve-action increase it in the end. Thus smoking finally causes apprehension, hyper-excitability, and muscular unrest. Here this inevitable law seems to give contradictory results. Every physician knows that an enormous amount of insomnia is relieved by smoking, even if it is at the expense of laziness the next day; at the same time every physician knows that most excessive smokers are troubled with insomnia. CIGARETTES In using tobacco we take the poison into the tissues. The chewer and the snuffer get the effect through the tissue with which the tobacco comes in contact. The cigarette-smoker almost invariably inhales, and he gets the most harm merely because the bronchial mucous membrane absorbs the poison most rapidly. The tobacco itself is no more harmful than it is in a pipe or a cigar. Indeed, it is often less so in the cheaper grades, for, being less pure, it contains less nicotine. Furthermore, the tobacco is generally drier in a cigarette, and for that reason the combustion is better, for the products of the combustion of dry and damp tobacco are not the same. But since it is a little difficult to inhale a pipe or a cigar without choking, the smoke products of a pipe or cigar are usually absorbed only by the mouth, nose, and throat, whereas the inhaled smoke of the cigarette is absorbed by the entire area of windpipe and bronchial tubes. If you wish to see how much poison you inhale, try the old experiment of puffing cigarette smoke through a handkerchief, and then, having inhaled the same amount of smoke, blow it out again through another portion of the same handkerchief. The difference in the discoloration will be found to be very marked. You will _note_ that in the second case there is hardly any stain on the handkerchief: the stain is on your windpipe and bronchial tubes. If a man inhales a pipe or a cigar, he gets more injury simply because he gets stronger tobacco; but a man never inhales a pipe or a cigar unless he is a smoker of long standing or unless he has begun with cigarettes. Besides allowing one to inhale, a cigarette engenders more muscular unrest than any other kind of smoke. Because of its shortness, cheapness, and convenience, one lights a cigarette, throws it away, and then lights another. This spasmodic process, constantly repeated, increases the smoker's restlessness while at the same time satisfying it with a feeling that he is _doing something_. Yet despite the fact that cigarette-smoking is the worst form of tobacco addiction, virtually all boys who smoke start with cigarettes. It is generally believed that in the immature the moderate use of tobacco stunts the normal growth of the body and mind, and causes various nervous disturbances, especially of the heart--disturbances which it causes in later life only when smoking has become excessive. That is to say, though a boy's stomach grows tolerant of nicotine to the extent of taking it without protest, the rest of the body keeps on protesting. Furthermore, many business men will tell you that tobacco damages a boy's usefulness in his work. This is necessarily so, since anything which lowers vitality creates some kind of incompetence. For the same reason the boy who smokes excessively not only is unable to work vigorously, but he does not wish to work at all. This result, apparent during growth, is only less apparent after growth, when other causes may step in to neutralize it. Tobacco, in bringing about a depreciation of the nerve-cells, brings, together with physical results like insomnia, lowered vitality, and restlessness, their moral counterparts, like irritability, lack of concentration, desire to avoid responsibility and to travel the road of least resistance. If there were some instrument to determine it, in my opinion there would be seen a difference of fifteen per cent. in the general efficiency of smokers and non-smokers. The time is already at hand when smokers will be barred out of positions which demand quick thought and action. Already tobacco is forbidden during working hours in the United States Steel Corporation. Many men were prejudiced against smoking until they went to college. There they found themselves "out of it" because they did not smoke. More than that, they found that the smoke of social gatherings irritated their eyes and throat, and they thought that smoking might keep them from finding other people's smoke annoying. A man who had left off smoking told me that at the first "smoker" he attended afterward he found the air offensive and his eyes smarting intolerably, although when he had been helping to create the clouds in which they were sitting he had not noticed it at all. These two experiences are common. For this reason, the social inducements to smoking are considerably greater than those to drinking. The man who refuses to drink may feel as much "out of it" as the man who refuses to smoke, but he has ordinarily, and in the presence of gentlemen, no other penalty to pay. He undergoes no discomfort in spending the evening in a roomful of drinkers, and he can manage to find things to drink that will have for them the semblance of good-fellowship. It is the social features that attend the acquiring and the leaving-off the habit which make smoking difficult to attack. In its present state, even if a boy were thoroughly familiarized in school with the harm tobacco would do him, he would still be seduced by the social side of it.[1] When a habit fosters or traditionally accompanies social intercourse, it is all the harder to uproot. What grounded opium so strongly in China was its social side. The Chinese lacked social occupation, and it was not the custom of the country for a man to find it with his friends and family, though no people are more socially inclined. Smoking opium became their chief social activity; they gathered together in the one heated room of the house to gossip over their pipes. We smoke tobacco as the Chinese smoke opium, "for company" and in company. Thus one must provide strong reasons to make a man give it up. He will not do so because it costs him something; he expects to pay for his pleasures. When a man has actually gone to pieces, it is comparatively easy to convince him that he ought to give up what is hurting him; but the average man has not been excessive enough for that, and has never brought himself to the point of serious conscious injury. Even a physician cannot with any certainty tell the average moderate smoker whether tobacco is hurting him. Consequently, if one would make this man stop smoking, especially when he sees that leaving off has caused some people more apparent discomfort than all their smoking did, one's only chance is to make him change his mental attitude. I hope to assist in doing this by calling attention to the fact that tobacco not only prepares the way for physical diseases of all kinds, as any physician will tell you, but also, as long investigation has shown me, for alcoholism and for drug-taking. TOBACCO, ALCOHOL, AND OPIUM The relation of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, and alcohol and opium is a very close one. For years I have been dealing with alcoholism and morphinism, have gone into their every phase and aspect, have kept careful and minute details of between six and seven thousand cases, and I have never seen a case, except occasionally with women, which did not have a history of excessive tobacco. It is true that my observations are restricted to cases which need medical help,--the neurotic temperaments,--but I am prepared to say that for the phlegmatic man, for the man temperamentally moderate, for the outdoor laborer, whose physical exercise tends to counteract the effect of the tobacco and the alcohol he uses--in short, for all men, tobacco is an unfavorable factor which predisposes to worse habits. A boy always starts smoking before he starts drinking. If he is disposed to drink, that disposition will be increased by smoking, because the action of tobacco makes it normal for him to feel the need of stimulation. He is likely to go to alcohol to soothe the muscular unrest, to blunt the irritation, he has received from tobacco. From alcohol he goes to morphine for the same reason. The nervous condition due to excessive drinking is allayed by morphine, just as the nervous condition due to excessive smoking is allayed by alcohol. Morphine is the legitimate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes, drink, opium, is the logical and regular series. The man predisposed to alcohol by the inheritance of a nervous temperament will, if he uses tobacco at all, almost invariably use it to excess; and this excess creates a restlessness for which alcohol is the natural antidote. The experience of any type of man is that if he takes a drink when he feels he has smoked too much, he finds he can at once begin smoking all over again. For that reason, the two go together, and the neurotic type of man too often combines the two. Tobacco thus develops the necessity for alcohol. It is very significant that in dealing with alcoholism no real reform can be expected if the patient does not give up tobacco. Again, most men who have ever used alcohol to excess, if restricted voluntarily or involuntarily, will use tobacco to excess. This excess in tobacco produces a narcotic effect which temporarily blunts the craving for alcohol. Another way of saying the same thing is that when smokers are drunk they no longer care to smoke, a fact that is a matter of common observation. This means that there is a nervous condition produced alike by alcohol and tobacco. When a man gets it from drinking, he does not keep on trying to get it from smoking. As well as reacting upon each other, the two habits keep each other going. It is not altogether by haphazard association that saloons also sell cigars; they sell them for the same reason that they give away pretzels--to make a man buy more drinks. This relationship between tobacco and alcoholism is not understood by the public. It has been absolutely demonstrated that the continued use of tobacco is a tremendous handicap upon the man who is endeavoring to free himself from the habit of alcoholic indulgence. Only a man of the strongest character will persist in abstaining from alcohol unless he also abstains from tobacco, even after he has undergone the most intelligent medical treatment. In the system of a man already disposed toward alcoholic stimulation, no one thing will prove so positive a factor toward creating the sense of need as the use of tobacco. Physiological action of tobacco is to create muscular (motor) unrest. Most habitual smokers consume every day more than enough tobacco to carry them far beyond the point where its stimulating effect ends and its narcotic effect begins. Where this habitually occurs, the definitely toxic effect is notable, and this results in a demand for that stimulation which the tobacco itself once furnished, but now does not. Here is an evil effect of tobacco that is rarely understood and almost never admitted. OPIUM AND CIGARETTES IN CHINA Current history affords us a striking proof of the closeness of the relation between tobacco and opium. I have spent a good deal of time in the Orient in the interest of those who were trying to subdue the opium evil, and I may add that there is in China to-day a flourishing American tobacco concern which has grown rich out of the sale of cigarettes. With the extremely cheap Chinese labor, the concern was able to sell twenty cigarettes for a cent of our money. Up to the beginning of this enterprise (about 1900), the Chinese had never used tobacco except in pipes, and in very minute quantities in rolling their own crude cigarettes. The concern was sending salesmen and demonstrators throughout the country to show the people how to smoke cigarettes. Now it is estimated that one half of the cigarette consumption of the world is in China. In trying to lessen the opium evil, in which they have to a considerable extent succeeded, the Chinese are merely substituting the cigarette evil. It is well known to the confirmed opium-smoker that he needs less opium if he smokes cigarettes. _The Chinese to-day are spending twice as much money for tobacco as for opium._ I once said to a Chinese public man: "I can help you to get rid of the opium habit because you have found that you _must_ get rid of it, but I cannot help you to get rid of the evil you are substituting for it, for not even America has yet found out that she _must_ get rid of it. Your cure, I fear, is worse than your disease; and _our_ disease has no cure--until we change our mental attitude." If any one thinks that China is the gainer by substituting the one drug habit for the other, I beg leave to differ with him. The opium-smoker smokes in private with other smokers, and is thus not offensive to other people. He is not injuring non-smokers, or arousing the curiosity of boys, or polluting the atmosphere, or creating a craving in others. In the West the opium habit is generally condemned because the West is able to look with a new and unbiased mind on a drug habit that is not its own. I consider that cigarette-smoking is the greatest vice devastating humanity to-day, because it is doing more than any other vice to deteriorate the race. LIKE ACTION OF THE THREE HABITS The more you compare smoking and drinking and drugging, the more resemblances you see. Opium, like tobacco and alcohol, ceases to stimulate the moment the effect of it is felt: it then becomes a narcotic. The history of the three as a resort in an emergency is precisely the same. At the time when the average man feels that he needs his faculties most, he will, if addicted to any of the three, deliberately seek stimulation from it. He does not intend to go on long enough to get the narcotic effect, since that would be clearly defeating his own aims; he means to stop with the stimulant and sedative effect, but that he is unable to do. The inhaler of tobacco gets his effect in precisely the same way that the opium-smoker gets his--the rapid absorption by the tissues of the bronchial tubes. It may be news to the average man to hear that the man who smokes opium moderately suffers no more physical deterioration than the man who inhales tobacco moderately. The excessive smoker of cigarettes experiences the same mental and physical disturbance when deprived of them that the opium-smoker experiences when deprived of opium. The medical treatment necessary to bring about a physiological change in order to destroy the craving is the same. The effect of giving up the habit is the same--cessation of similar physical and nervous and mental disturbances, gain in bodily weight and energy, and a desire for physical exercise. A like comparison, item for item, may be made with alcohol, but it is the similarity with opium which I wish particularly to emphasize here. TOBACCO AND MORAL SENSITIVENESS Morphine, as is very well known, will distort the moral sense of the best person on earth; it is part of the action of the drug. Since the way morphine gets its narcotic effect is very similar to the way tobacco gets its effect, one would naturally suppose that tobacco would produce in a milder degree something of the same moral distortion. This may seem a startling conclusion, but change your mental attitude and observe. Have not smokers undergone a noticeable moral deterioration in at least one particular? They have a callous indifference to the rights of others. This happens with all habitual indulgence, of course, but is it not carried more generally to an extreme with tobacco than with anything else? Few men quarrel with a hostess who does not offer them drinks, but all habitual smokers expect that, regardless of her own desires, she will let them smoke after dinner. "We gave up the fight against tobacco in our drawing-rooms long ago," said a famous London hostess. "We found it was a case of no smoke, no men." Respectable men in New York City who would not dream of deliberately breaking any other law carry cigars and cigarettes into the subway despite the fact that it is forbidden and that it is vitally necessary to keep the air there as pure as possible. A gentleman is more annoyed at being forced to consult another's preference about not smoking than about anything else that could arise in social intercourse, and is often at small pains to conceal his impatience with old-fashioned people who believe they have rights which should be respected. On all sides the attitude seems to be, "What right has any one to object to my smoking?" The matter is really on just the _opposite_ basis, "What right has any one to smoke when other people object to it?" If a man _must_ get drunk, we say he shall get drunk where he is a nuisance only to himself and to others of the same mind. If a man feels the need of interlarding his conversation with obscenity and grossness, we say he may not compel us to listen to him. But a smoker may with impunity pollute the air, offend the nostrils, and generally make himself a nuisance to everybody in his neighborhood who does not practise his particular vice. Is this not a kind of moral obtuseness? Change your mental attitude and consider. The action of a narcotic produces a peculiar cunning and resource in concealment; it develops, when occasion arises, the desire to deceive and, whether occasion arises or not, the desire to shift obligation and evade direct responsibility. Tobacco does this more mildly than opium, and it does so more appreciably with boys than with men; but, as with opium, it is part of the narcotic effect in all cases. Let it always be remembered that if a man smokes and inhales tobacco excessively he is narcotizing himself more than when he smokes opium moderately. CHAPTER IX TOBACCO AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE Never yet has tobacco done any good to a man. Its direct effect has been harmful to millions, and indirectly it has harmed many other millions by setting up a systematic demand for stimulants. Of all the widely used products of nature, tobacco finds the least excuse in real necessity. Virtually the only medical use to which the active principle of tobacco (nicotine) can be put is the production of nausea, and there are many other drugs that can be used with much better effect for that purpose. If one will study the pharmacopoeia, he will find that, next to prussic acid, nicotine is rated as the most powerful known poison, and is not credited with a single curative property. From a medical point of view it is valueless. The social standing of the man who took it from the tepees of the North American Indians to England is mainly responsible for its taking root there, for the acquisition of the tobacco habit is a painful process. Nature's revolt against it is much more instinctive than her revolt against alcohol. Furthermore, like any other form of poison, its effects are most immediate and evident upon the young and weak; for they are easier to poison than the mature and strong. THE FULL EFFECT OF THE TOBACCO HABIT IS NOT YET APPARENT To one who has made a careful study of the effects of tobacco the prospect for the future is not encouraging. The habit was already widespread before the extensive manufacture, or even knowledge, of cigarettes was introduced into the United States, and this later form of smoking, which is easily the most obnoxious and harmful of all, has not yet had time to disclose its full power for injury. For it is in the inhaling of tobacco that the smoker receives his greatest injury, and the habit of inhalation is peculiar to the cigarette-smoker. While there are smokers of cigars and pipes who inhale their smoke, it will almost always be found upon investigation that they acquired the habit of inhalation through smoking cigarettes. The average man with a cigarette history gets no pleasure out of smoke which he does not inhale. Even if a cigarette is made of the best tobacco, undrugged, and wrapped in the purest of rice-paper, the mere fact that the smoke is almost invariably inhaled suffices to make cigarette-smoking the most harmful form of the tobacco habit. Inhalation is harmful because it not only exposes the absorbent tissues of the mouth and upper throat to the smoke, but thrusts the smoke throughout the throat, lungs, and nose, all of which are lined with a specially sensitive membrane of great absorptive capacity. Thus from the smoke of the cigarette the system takes up many times as much poison as it takes up from the uninhaled smoke of the pipe or cigar. Indeed, it may be added that the purer and higher the grade of the tobacco, the more harmful it is to the smoker, for the more will it tempt him into inhalation. Another danger of certain brands of cigarettes, principally the costly imported and specially flavored brands, is that to the extraordinary dangers of nicotine-poisoning found in all cigarettes are added in these higher grades the perils of their flavoring materials, from which even so dangerous a drug as opium is not always absent. I believe that the evil effects of tobacco will be much more apparent in the next generation than they are in this; for forty years ago, when I was a boy, the lad who decided to begin to smoke knew nothing of cigarettes, and had only the pipe and the cheap cigar to choose between, forms so overpowering that they frequently discouraged him at the start. Thus many were undoubtedly saved from the tobacco habit; but now, with mild cigarettes upon the market, at very low prices, and in most States found on sale in every candy store, the situation has perils undreamed of at that earlier period. It is noteworthy that cigarettes are "doped" expressly to allay nausea, which is the normal effect of tobacco-smoking upon the uninured human system, and at the same time to quiet that motor unrest which is the first symptom to follow the introduction of nicotine into the human system. The narcotic effect of the adulterant drugs is therefore to ease the smoker's first pang and to make him more quickly the victim of the tobacco habit. The smoker of cigarettes gets his narcotic by precisely the same mechanical process through which the opium-smoker gets his. The opium-smoker would find it far too long and expensive a process to obtain the desired effect from opium by taking it into his stomach; but by burning a very much smaller quantity of the drug and bringing it into contact with the sensitive absorbent tissues of the throat and nose, he obtains the narcotic effect that his system craves. THE USE OF TOBACCO DESTROYS MORAL DISCIPLINE I am convinced that the use of cigarettes is responsible for the undoing of seventy-five per cent. of the boys who go wrong. Few boys wait until they are mature and their resistance is at its maximum before they begin the use of tobacco. It would be remarkable if they did wait, for their fathers and their older brothers are constantly blowing smoke into their faces. Even where restrictive laws exist, minors find no difficulty in obtaining cigarettes, so that children of the age that is most easily harmed by the use of tobacco now habitually indulge in its most harmful form. There is another unfortunate effect of the use of tobacco by boys. When they begin to smoke, they do so against the wishes and usually against the orders of their parents. This means broken discipline and deception. The boy who endeavors to conceal the fact that he smokes is started along a path that is even more harmful than tobacco. He has to invent excuses for being absent from home, and to explain away the odor of tobacco that is sure to cling to him; and when a boy begins to lie about these things, he will lie about others. So far as truth goes, the bars are down. Furthermore, he has to spend more money. Unless he is one of those unfortunate youths who are not held to a moderate weekly allowance, too often he will resort to dishonest means to obtain the money to satisfy his newly acquired taste. And that is not all. Boys who spend their time in smoking go where they will find other lads also engaged in the forbidden habit. They find congenial groups in pool-rooms, where they learn to gamble, and in the back rooms of saloons, where they learn to drink. The step from the pool-room or the saloon to other gambling-places and to drinking-places frequented by the unworthy of both sexes is an easy one. Thus the boy whose first wrong-doing was the smoking of cigarettes against the wishes of his parents soon becomes the target for all manner of immoral influences. In these days of advanced sociological study, when the mind of the world is set upon efficiency, it is astonishing that so little attention has been given to the effect of tobacco upon the young. To mankind at the present time nothing in the world is so important as the conservation of the boy. Humanity might well make any sacrifice conceivable in order to keep its boys clean. Keeping boys clean means keeping girls clean, and whatever keeps boys and girls clean purifies humanity as a whole. In other words, the boy is the most important thing in the world, and his cleanliness the most vital issue. Setting aside entirely the deleterious effect of nicotine upon his physical system, early smoking, which usually means the cigarette, is the most harmful single influence that is at present working against his welfare. We can appreciate the terrific total harm which tobacco does to youth, however, only when we add the psychological harm and the physical harm together. Everything considered, the question is an appalling one. THE TEMPTATION TO USE TOBACCO It is impossible to blame most boys very severely for yielding to the smoke-temptation; therefore it becomes a difficult matter to blame them for the wrong-doing which tends to follow it. Their error is only the continuation of a similar error that their fathers have made before them and now tacitly encourage. It is difficult to make any lad believe that he need not be a fool because his father is one. Yet in most cases to save a boy from the demonstrable ills of tobacco-using entails just this course of reasoning. Orators and essayists from the beginning of time have found a stumbling-block in preaching to their followers virtues they admire and value, but do not themselves possess. The father who forbids his son to smoke because it is harmful and expensive, while his own person reeks with it, is not likely to impress the lad very vividly with either the force or the honesty of his argument. More than one parent has found himself abashed in such circumstances by a son with logic and intelligence. For such a parent there is only one really honest course--to admit to his son that he himself has been a fool, but that he does not wish his son to follow in his footsteps. THE NECESSITY OF EDUCATION CONCERNING THE DANGER OF TOBACCO There is no question in my mind that this matter of tobacco should be made the basis of a very thorough educational campaign among the youth of the United States. The shocking spread of the tobacco habit among the women of American cities indicates, moreover, need for extending this instruction to girls as well. If cleanliness of body is next to godliness, then cleanliness of mind is godliness, and cleanliness of mind, real cleanliness, is impossible while ignorance exists. Nothing in education is more generally neglected than the enlightenment of the young--an enlightenment which can come only from the mouths of elders who are themselves clean--as to the deadly nature of alcohol, habit-forming drugs, and tobacco. I should very much dislike to send a young and impressionable son for instruction in any subject to any teacher, male or female, who used cigarettes. Thousands upon thousands of parents in this country feel as I do on this subject; but while they realize the danger which might result from the influence of a teacher who smokes, they utterly neglect the far more dangerous and powerful influence of a father who smokes. To my mind, however, it is essential that parents should seriously consider the personal character of the men to whom they intrust the education of their boys. But the use of tobacco reaches far beyond the home circle and the schools and even pollutes the atmosphere of the church itself. There are few clergymen in the United States who do not use tobacco, and so a clean father who rears a clean son is under the tragic necessity of urging his attendance at a dirty church, and later on sending him to be a student in a dirty college, for the simple reason that there are no clean ones. Society seems to have been viciously organized for the destruction of the boy, in whom lies its chief hope of preservation and improvement. The boy who keeps clean does so against tremendous odds, to which frequently his father, his school-teacher, and his clergyman are the chief contributors. A dozen times during every day of his life he is subjected to the third degree of temptation, and twice out of three times this ordeal is thrust upon him by the very persons who really should do most to safeguard and protect him. And now that society has set its sanction upon the use of tobacco by the women of the nation, he is confronted with the further peril of a mother who smokes. It seems to me that this tobacco question detracts enormously from that very vivid hope we might feel for the rising generation, which is also handicapped with alcohol and drugs. TOBACCO ADDICTION MORE DANGEROUS THAN DRUG HABIT OR ALCOHOLISM I have no desire to moralize upon the subject of tobacco. I am not a moralist, but a practical student of cause and effect, urging the elimination of bad causes so that bad effects may be eliminated in turn. A very wide experience in studying the result of the use of narcotics has convinced me that the total harm done by tobacco is greater than that done by alcohol or drugs. Nothing else at the present time is contributing so surely to the degeneration of mankind as tobacco, because, while its damage is less immediately acute than that done by alcohol or habit-forming drugs, it is, aside from its own evil effects, a tremendous contributory factor to the use of both. There is nothing to be said in its favor save that it gives pleasure, and this argument has no more force in the case of tobacco than in the case of opium. Any man who uses tobacco poisons himself, and the very openness and permissibility of the vice serve to make the process of self-poisoning dangerous to the public as well. To sum up, the tobacco habit is useless and harmful to the man who yields to it; it is malodorous and filthy, and therefore an infringement upon the rights and comforts of others. Its relation to alcohol is direct and intimate. When an alcoholic comes to me for treatment, I do not regard my chances of success with him as good unless I can make him see that to abandon smoking is a necessary step in his treatment. My deductions concerning the intimate relationship between the use of tobacco and liquors are the result of years of observation and study. And if it is true that no man whose system is alcoholic is fit to be the father of a child, it is no less true that the habitual smoker is also unworthy to be a guardian of his kind. The alcoholic fiend almost invariably becomes the parent of children provided with defective nervous systems, of children as definitely deformed nervously as they would be physically if born with club-feet or hare-lips. CHAPTER X THE SANATORIUM There is no class of patients in the world to whom the physician, and especially the physician who conducts a sanatorium, can offer so good an excuse for long-continued treatment as to those addicted to the use of drugs. It is certain that the person who makes a weekly charge to such patients is rarely honest with them or tries to shorten their stay. Several years ago I freely and without reservation gave all the details of my treatment to the medical world, and though many institutions have endeavored to install it as a part of their own curative policy, most have failed. The failure may be attributed principally, if not wholly, to the fact that few have also adopted the necessary principle of a fixed charge, without regard to the length of time the patient is under treatment. The weekly charge, with its attendant temptation to keep the patient as long as possible, has invariably defeated all possibilities of success. There is also a class of institutions in which the "cure" for the drug habit consists in the administration of the drug itself in a disguised form. In such surroundings a patient will contentedly stay indefinitely, for the chains of his habit bind him to the spot. The very fact that he wishes to stay may be accepted as a proof that he has not been benefited by it. For the man who has been freed from a drug habit desires a normal life in the world; indeed, only his reëntrance into its turmoil and bustle can set him surely on his feet. The average sanatorium, accustomed to the time-honored and thoroughly established system of making its patients comfortable,--in other words, pampering and coddling them,--finds it difficult, if not impossible, to conform in every detail to the necessities of a system like mine. Even if the institution is equipped with every possible facility, it is highly probable that the physicians in charge may be mentally unfitted to the work. Inured by every detail of their training to methods that make a successful treatment of drugs impossible, they find themselves incapable of changing when confronted by specific cases that demand a radically different treatment. The institutions themselves are equally inadaptable. The sanatorium, it must be remembered, is really a boarding-house or hotel, and the business of boarding-house or hotel, whether it presents an epicurean or "sanitary" bill of fare, or whether its staff is supplemented by trained nurses and physicians or not, remains a boarding-house or hotel. Its main province is to keep its paying guests and to make them comfortable. The whole sanatorium situation so far as it relates to the "cure" of those addicted to the use of drugs and alcohol may be summed up in a few words. The average sanatorium is merely a small colony of drug-users. No one can deny that. Now, no man who has been freed from his desire for drugs and no one who is being made uncomfortable by deprivation will remain in such surroundings for any length of time. The natural conclusion is that such institutions are not accomplishing what they have promised to be able to accomplish. The inmates are still drug-users. This is not true of American institutions alone. Within a few months I have had as an eleven-day inmate of my own institution a very wealthy man who has made three European journeys to find relief from the drug habit, on each journey going the rounds of six or eight celebrated institutions, and taking the treatment of each without result. Successful treatment is brief treatment, and no establishment operating upon a system of a weekly charge to patients will make an earnest effort to release these patients as soon as possible. In their desire to make their patients comfortable, and so prolong their stay, their usual quantity of drugs is supplied to them, though of course in some disguised form. There is no other way of accomplishing this. Moreover, so long as a patient is thus kept comfortable, he is unable to describe his symptoms, for he does not feel them. The drug, therefore, hides exactly those details of a man's condition that it is essential for the attending physician to know. In a normal man the presence of pain is always a guide for a physician, but in a drugged case this is always absent. The constant drugging that conceals the symptoms of organic ailment may permit one of comparative insignificance at the time a patient entered a sanatorium to become incurable before he leaves. Thus the result of his stay may mean in the end a serious or even fatal deterioration. And the prolonged stay becomes a means, intentional or unintentional, of mulcting the patient or his friends of money. The sum annually spent in the United States upon useless sanatorium treatment must certainly amount to millions. I have had patients come to me from such institutions to which they had paid sums as large as $10,000. Wealthy people are specially likely to become victims of this form of rapacity, and a mere glance at some of the receipted bills that I have seen in their possession is enough to stagger a modest financial imagination. The ingenuity with which a sanatorium manager devises "extras" is worthy of the name of genius. And the physically incurable patient is often retained in the sanatorium till his money or the money of his friends is exhausted in a needless sacrifice to greed. THE PHYSICIAN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD THE DRUG-USER It is also necessary to direct attention to some of the errors of the general medical practitioner who deals with cases of this sort. It is not unnatural for a doctor to hesitate at the thought of surrendering his patient into strange hands. There may be unselfish as well as purely mercenary reasons for this hesitation. The doctor may hope that he himself can aid the sufferer, and may therefore endeavor to administer this treatment either in the patient's home or possibly in his own residence or private hospital. The patient is likely to be as much inclined to this course as the doctor, for the doctor is his friend and confidant, and he dislikes intensely the idea of revealing what he regards as the shameful secret of his enslaved soul to strangers' ears. Treatment in the doctor's or the patient's own environment must of necessity be an expensive matter, but if the patient can afford it, he is likely to desire it. This is most natural, especially if the patient is one of the tens of thousands who have tried the treatment offered by a sanatorium and found it not only valueless, but horrifying. There are, too, many patients who from sheer lack of funds naturally desire a home administration of the treatment as a means of saving expense. Of course many of the most worthy cases are to be found among people of moderate or small means. The drug habit is itself impoverishing. Even so I find myself irresistibly impelled to advise against any attempt to treat such cases in their own environment, or in any environment improvised by a local doctor. This I do only because I have known so many cases of utter failure, so many cases where the sufferer's final hope has been destroyed by such experiments. PRIVATE ADMINISTRATION OF TREATMENT NOT SUCCESSFUL The friendship existing between a physician and his patient must often disarm the former and incapacitate him for the strict dealing that is required in a treatment like mine. The mere fact that in caring for a friend or one of his regular patients the doctor feels unwilling to exact a definite charge in advance is a certain handicap here, as is also the fact that each patient needs continual watching, and no doctor can afford to devote his entire time and constant medical attention to one patient. The average doctor in private practice, moreover, finds it impossible to secure upon demand nurses of sufficient moral responsibility and medical assistants of sufficient technical training to coöperate with him in the work. Above all, I find that only when the patient is on premises other than his own, in unfamiliar surroundings where he is subject to a strict and inviolable discipline, can the best results be obtained. The doctor who administers this treatment, if he is to win, must have every advantage. Hospital surroundings, unfamiliar nurses, and strange assistant doctors are of great value; but payment in advance may be regarded as the most effective means for inducing the patient to complete the necessary course. An amazing number of people have come to me who have confessed that while they have from time to time tried other treatments, they have never completed one of them. Others come in a skeptical frame of mind. I can mention one such who had been three times to Europe, each time on the advice of the very doctor who, as the patient was aware, had been responsible for his forming the habit. No physician in private practice should ever attempt to relieve a patient from a drug habit in a manner incidental to the conduct of his practice, though it is nevertheless true that the temptation for doctors to attempt this are extraordinary. A patient who becomes aware that his physician knows of a treatment which will bring relief is likely to bring to bear upon the physician every possible pressure in the effort to induce him to administer it. The doctor must be liberal indeed who, having made such an attempt and failed to achieve good results with it, will acknowledge that he was mistaken at the start. THE NECESSITY OF A FIXED CHARGE FOR TREATMENT The advantage of a definite charge, paid in advance, was a discovery that I made early in my work. With a large proportion of my patients it would otherwise have been impossible for me to obtain the definite medical result which has characterized my work. It is quite impossible to make an intelligently satisfactory mental or physical diagnosis of any patient brought to me until he has been entirely freed from the drug which he has been taking. As soon as this has been fully accomplished, it is possible to consider the case carefully. It is also necessary to make an invariable rule that no person entering my institution for treatment shall be permitted to come into contact with any other person who is there for treatment, for there can be nothing psychologically worse than the discussion of symptoms and the exchange of experiences among people under treatment. It is also a rule that in the institution physicians employed in the establishment shall not become intimate with the patients or spend with them any time not necessarily devoted to professional investigation and attendance. Nurses also must be as businesslike as possible in all their relationships with patients, and must do as little hand-holding and sympathizing as possible even in the cases of ultra-nervous women patients. It is a principle of the average sanatorium to encourage the "sympathetic" nurse. Wittingly or unwittingly, the old-time sanatorium made a practice of manufacturing habitual sanatorium inmates. The most hopeless cases I have ever seen have been those who have become inured to wearing sanatorium stripes. Such will never change their tailor till their pocket-book becomes empty. Another detail of my treatment not easily compassed in the average sanatorium is to consider every case as an individual case, to be dealt with individually. In private practice this is often overlooked, and to this I also attribute many failures in treatment. The individuality of every case must be borne in mind not only throughout the treatment itself, but afterward, during the period of recuperation. The case itself is sure to indicate in some measure the further treatment which should be followed in the period immediately succeeding the patient's discharge from my institution, and very frequently indicates, in fact, the necessity for consultation with other specialists and for a surgical operation. After the patient has been relieved of drugs comes the time to begin the necessary physical upbuilding by means of exercise. Although I may have seemed to condemn the sanatorium, I must add now that some institutions are specially qualified to assist in this building-up process. Some health-building institutions that devote their entire attention to strengthening their patients by means of physical exercise are doing wonderfully good work. The fact that my methods in treating these cases have prevented me, and will prevent me, from becoming directly or indirectly interested in any institution other than my own, in New York City, gives me a freedom in offering advice to patients concerning what they should do after they have left my care that I should not feel if my institution were operated upon the old-time keep-them-as-long-as-you-can plan. I find it possible to suggest physical exercise and even professional training to those who especially need it with entire disinterestedness, just as I find it possible to suggest to some an investigation of some religious influence. It must be laid down as an axiom that the patient must have a mental as well as a physical change before the treatment can accomplish all the good of which it is capable. Such a mental change is highly improbable in the comfortable surroundings of the average sanatorium. No man or woman ever achieved it by sitting on a pleasant veranda in an easy-chair exchanging tales of symptoms with other invalids. THE REASON FOR THE FIXED CHARGE The principal consideration which has influenced me in shaping my policy of a definite charge and limiting the length of stay of my patients has been the fact that I find it impossible when the effect of the drug has been perfectly eliminated to hold most of the patients under restraint. The man who has won freedom from his habit feels sure of himself; he desires to get away, and he is not afraid to go out into the world, where it may be possible for him to get the drug again. He will not yield to the temptation to get it, partly because he will not want it, and partly because he knows the horror of the habit and does not wish to become involved in it again. As a matter of fact, one of the hardest tasks I have is that of inducing people to stay as long with us as we think necessary, although their prolonged stay means no additional payment to us and no additional expense to them. That is one of the principal arguments against colonization; and it is as much an argument against the average municipal or state institution as it is against the average sanatorium. The theory of colonization in this matter is all wrong. The question of a definite charge has as much influence on my own attitude as on that of the patient. From the fact that I know when a patient enters my house that I can get no further money from him or her beyond the advance payment I gain a distinct advantage. I do not feel it necessary to cater to my patient's whims, nor do I feel it necessary to sacrifice any portion of the necessary routine of the treatment because the patient may be rich or influential and may make extraordinary demands upon me. All that I have to do is to go ahead along those lines which I know are effective and which will gain results. The effect of this system is equally admirable upon the members of my medical staff, for our efforts are devoted not to keeping the patient as long as possible for the purpose of increasing revenue but to getting rid of him as quickly as possible, so that the profit will be relatively large. That it is to his advantage as well as to mine to see that the treatment is complete and effective before the patient leaves is obvious. These methods take into consideration my own and my patient's psychology. A man who deals with this type of patient needs every advantage which he can get, for invariably he is dealing with abnormalities. PHYSICAL DEFECTS REVEALED BY TREATMENT The treatment itself is certain to uncover these abnormalities, revealing whether or not they are due to physical causes. It becomes very quickly evident if there is any real physical reason why a patient is not eligible for treatment, as in the case of an incurable and painful physical ailment. No matter how careful and frank a patient's statements may be or how elaborate the diagnosis that his physician has transmitted to me, no matter how elaborately careful are the preliminary examinations made by my own physician, it is not until the drug has been entirely eliminated that we find it possible to make a really intelligent diagnosis. The symptoms of disease, however, are sure to appear before the first part of the treatment is completed. It is a standard policy of my hospital at once to inform a patient who has proved to be physically ineligible, and to return to him his fee. This method of procedure has made us careful before accepting patients to study their histories, for, naturally, we do not wish to do even preliminary work and then return the fee in full. We accept no patient for treatment until we are provided with a careful and detailed history of his case, and it is upon a large collection of such histories that I have based many of the theories embodied in the subject matter of this book. It is especially these detailed histories which have enabled me to fix with some accuracy of judgment the circumstances leading up to the formation of most drug habits. In our invariable practice of returning the fee and discharging the patient whom we find ineligible for treatment we have surely taken a step in advance. There is scarcely an institution of this sort in the United States to which a patient might write, "I am taking drugs," without receiving in reply the invitation, "Come to us, and we will treat you," implying that they will give the treatment whether or not an examination of the patient shows that he is one who can benefit from it. THE DUTY OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION The victim of drugs, whether he is rich or poor, old or young, good or bad, deserves the public sympathy in a measure scarcely equaled by any other class. These folk are sick folk in every way I can possibly think of. I am attempting to see to it that they are protected by every safeguard from being victimized. It is my hope that through continual and untiring education I may force the state medical institutions throughout the country to assume their rightful responsibility in providing proper care for drug victims who have slight means or none. I purpose to work toward the awakening of the medical profession to its responsibility not only in regard to the growth of new crops of drug-users, but to the care and relief or sequestration from medical practice of those among its own members whose condition warrants action. Perhaps this last step should be the first one to be taken. I have given it much thought, and can see only one way out of the veritably infernal tangle in which the medical profession has enmeshed itself. That would involve a conference between delegates from the medical societies of the various States to form a plan whereby the medical profession as a whole or in groups might establish and support an institution or a number of institutions. These should be backed by the most eminent and conscientious men in the profession. They should be managed by men fully competent, and should be open not only to physicians who need treatment and are unable to pay for it at a private institution, but to all patients, in the certainty that there they will receive the proper treatment, properly administered, and at a reasonable charge. I purpose furthermore that every institution under private management in the United States shall by law be held responsible for its methods of treatment. LEGISLATION TO REGULATE SANATORIUMS There should be the most drastic legislation compelling all physicians and institutions accepting this class of patients for treatment to report periodically to the board of health which has jurisdiction in their district whenever, after a three weeks' medical supervision, they still require the administration of habit-forming drugs. It is only reasonable that any institution accepting a patient for this treatment, and failing to secure favorable results within a period of twenty-one days, should report the case to the authorities, giving detailed reasons for the failure of the patient to respond to treatment. The general adoption of this rule of procedure would mean that a class of unfortunates who have never had any protection from any source would be immediately provided with definite medical help. An accompanying provision would insist that patients who for physical reasons are found to be ineligible for treatment--unable, that is, to exist in comfort without regular doses of their drug--will be relieved of all sense of disgrace arising from this necessity, and will be preserved from victimization, and will find it possible to get the drug without difficulty and at reasonable prices, if necessary, from the boards of health themselves. If this plan accomplished nothing more than to prevent the operation of medical fraud against sufferers for a period longer than three weeks, it would even then have accomplished an extraordinary good. I have in my present hospital only fifty beds, and as a rule I receive and discharge about four patients a day. Were my institution operated along the colonization lines which are common in the United States, the volume of business which I handle in a year, running well above a thousand patients, would require not fifty, but at least five hundred beds, and rooms in proportion. This statement of the exact situation in my own institution may possibly explain existing conditions in some others. It must not be understood that I attribute all the efforts at colonizing drug-users to unworthy motives. Much of it has been due to the complete ignorance of the medical profession in regard to this form of affliction. Finding itself unable intelligently to cope with conditions, it seeks the line of least resistance and adopts the colonizing sanatorium, with all its evils, as the best plan that can be found. When I first took up this work I went for information and assistance not to the humble members of the medical profession, but to the most eminent men whom I could find. Even these men invariably admitted their ignorance of the nature of the drug habit and the means for its relief. I was told by some of the best-known neurologists in the world that out of thousands of patients whom they and their confrères had sent to the best-known and most conscientiously operated institutions in the country not one had really been helped. They assured me that if I had found something which would give actual and material aid in any degree to even five per cent. of the drug victims who were sent to me for treatment, I would be doing more than any man had ever done before. CHAPTER XI PREVENTIVE MEASURES FOR THE DRUG EVIL Early in my investigations into the proper facilities for the medical treatment of drug-users it became apparent that this could not be properly carried out in the patient's own environment, in a general hospital where new facilities had not been introduced, or in the usual sanatorium. It became necessary for me then to outline some system by which the medical profession might properly take up the work and to suggest some basis on which the medical men of various States might combine in an effort to remove the treatment of these sufferers from the hands of the irresponsible. Some, if not the majority, of the worthiest subjects of the drug habit are people who cannot pay large sums or travel long distances in their search for relief. It seemed clear, therefore, that state institutions should be equipped with facilities and knowledge for dealing with this affliction. THE NEED FOR PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION At the present time there is in existence no clinic or other practical place of demonstration where a doctor can get competent instruction in this important branch of medical work. I hope the time will come when it may be possible for me to offer to the medical profession a clinic where the professional student may prepare for this line of effort as effectively as he may now prepare himself for any special work, like nose and throat diseases. This can come about only through some arrangement in which I have no financial interest. SKEPTICISM OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION I am fully aware that I must first overcome a strong undercurrent of skepticism among the members of the medical profession. The efficacy of the treatment must be proved. Even among the best-informed physicians it is a popular belief that the treatment which I announce as simple is really an impossibility. No matter what the doctor has hoped that he might do, he has been told by text-books and articles in medical periodicals that it cannot be done. This fallacious teaching must be counteracted before much can be accomplished, and in the progress of the work many traditions of the profession must be violated. Before he can hope to accomplish anything of importance in the administration of my method of treatment, the physician must understand that the length of time a drug-user has been taking the drug, the quantity that he has taken, and the manner of its administration are matters of no consequence. Short histories and small amounts, long histories and large amounts, are all one when it comes to the administration of this treatment. I went to Dr. Richard C. Cabot of Boston with a letter of introduction from Dr. Alexander Lambert of New York, whom he knew well and admired. He listened to my statement of the facts which I have just set forth. "I have heard what you say, but I shall not believe it until it has been demonstrated to me," he declared. I demonstrated it, and convinced him. A similar skepticism remains general throughout the medical profession. The experience that the medical profession has already had in New York State as the result of prohibitive legislation indicates the many problems that arise immediately after the drug is put beyond the reach of those who have acquired the habit. It is only natural that the unscrupulous should seek to take advantage of the opportunities created by this situation. Without proper treatment, an habitual drug-user cannot endure the agony of deprivation until a definite physiological change has occurred; so that unless the medical profession is informed of this fact, and the community at large is provided with facilities for the administration of the required treatment, it is almost inevitable that restrictive measures will be followed immediately by the victimization of the unfortunate by the unscrupulous. One detail of the peril to society which may accrue from a general cessation of the drug traffic without the provision of proper facilities for the care of those who have been its victims is that those who are accustomed to drugs, on being suddenly deprived of them, almost invariably turn to alcohol for stimulation and, without being the least relieved of the drug habit, with abnormal speed become alcoholics. Modern society presents few spectacles of suffering more acute than that endured by the drunken drug-fiend. Few persons, moreover, are so dangerous to its welfare. MEDICAL ETHICS Constantly I must lay emphasis upon the responsibility of the physician in regard to drug habits. This phase of the subject must be an ever-recurring one, because the whole unpleasant situation has grown out of medical ignorance. While treatment for drug-users is at last making headway, for a long time experimentation had no chance save with a small number of broad-minded and bright-minded doctors who were able to shake off the shackles that held the less intelligent members of their profession. When I made public the formulas of my treatment, I did not understand this phase of medical ethics. I assumed that certain dangers might arise from the probable activities of the omnipresent medical faker, who without any genuine effort to administer my treatment properly would advertise it widely, and thus victimize the innocent. I also assumed that the medical profession would eagerly grasp the idea, put the treatment into operation, to their own benefit and that of the world at large, and by the very beneficence of their work far more than offset the harm the charlatans would do. Both of these assumptions proved incorrect. The fakers avoided even counterfeiting my treatment, because the articles which had announced it in the medical and lay press had made its brevity clear to the public; they did not care to promote any treatment in which their victims would be justified in demanding immediate relief. From that real peril the community was thus saved. But the general indifference of the medical profession was equally surprising and at first somewhat discouraging. I have since decided, however, that this was perhaps fortunate; for as the work develops, it becomes more and more apparent that it is a strictly hospital treatment, and cannot often be successfully administered in the environment of the home or in the regular course of a general practitioner's daily work. In another part of this book I shall have more to say about the medical buzzards who, working outside of medical ethics and in defiance of the usually admirable spirit of the profession as a whole, without regard to financial or ethical honesty, indulge in whatever practices seem to promise them the greatest profit. How dangerous these men are not only to the patient, but to the profession has many times been illustrated. Various medical discoveries imported from abroad or achieved and announced by eminent American medical men have brought flocks of unscrupulous practitioners to New York, not with the progressive desire to study and honestly apply these new theories for the benefit of their patients, but with the idea of learning barely enough about them to enable them to offer credulous sufferers cheap and worthless counterfeits at exorbitant rates. Where secret methods have been heralded, they have bid against one another frantically to secure locality privileges, working to this end with all the fierce competitive enthusiasm shown by eager commercialists seeking county rights to a practical and popular patent flat-iron. It is my earnest hope that the wave of reform which has begun in New York State, and which undoubtedly will carry new and effective drug legislation into every State of the Union before it loses its forward impulse, may not revitalize these unworthy schemers. It was partly the hope of preventing this evil that led to the writing of this book. The progress of intelligent legislation will fill the land with much suffering from the tortures of drug deprivation. Therefore events have placed a solemn obligation upon the medical profession to satisfy itself of the efficacy of my treatment, even though a new organization for that purpose should be necessary. After the profession is assured of the value of the treatment, many should achieve competence in its administration. Then it will become a matter of duty to see that every community is provided with facilities and a staff of experts sufficient to meet the special needs that may arise there. If such an organization should be formed, I should be glad to devote my services to it. THE AUTHOR'S EXPERIENCE WITH THE DRUG HABIT My opportunities for observation in this field have extended over fourteen years of constant study. They have included investigations in the Orient and Europe as well as in the United States, and have dealt with patients of every class. Early in my work I found it difficult to secure subjects, and presently saw that I could do so only by personally searching the under-world for them. It was a complicated task, full of unexpected problems. As I could not engage salaried people for the carrying out of the details of the treatment, it became necessary for me to do everything except the medical work, and to assume all except the medical responsibility. But what I at first deemed a hardship proved in the end to be an advantage, for if I had had plenty of money with which to carry on my work, I should never have mastered its details. It may be that the need for making the work strictly self-supporting from the start led to one of my first important psychological discoveries: that any person worth saving is either able to pay a reasonable amount for treatment or can make the price of it a deferred obligation of such a character that it will certainly be met. The experience from which this and other statements in this book have been deduced is not an experience gained from casual or even regular daily calls of a few minutes or a few hours upon the patients under treatment, but is due to years in which I have frequently spent twenty-two hours out of every twenty-four in the same building with them, and subject to their constant call. After having proved the efficacy of treatment at home it seemed advisable to make a journey to the Orient, where drug habits were notoriously more common than elsewhere. It was the desire to study them at first hand and literally by wholesale which led me to China, where I opened three hospitals, and in the course of eleven months supervised the treatment for the opium habit of over four thousand Chinese. During this period I treated all who presented themselves, the ages of those to whom relief was given ranging from eighteen to seventy-six. Among the four thousand patients not one fatality occurred, although many of them were extreme cases, and I was able to obtain the assistance of only one foreign physician who could be considered responsible. The rest of the work was done by untrained Chinese boys, who administered the capsules at stated hours, and not one of whom was capable of intelligently counting a patient's pulse. I have said that not one fatality occurred. It is pleasant for me to add that during the whole fourteen years of my practice, although I have had thousands under treatment, many of them in exceedingly bad physical condition at the time the treatment was begun, with their drug symptoms complicated by various and serious physical ailments and often accented by alcoholism, only four cases have died. SUCCESSFUL ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE CURE OF DRUG-USERS A new precedent has been established with cases of this character in the course of my hospital experience. For the first time the treatment has been reduced to a definite hospital system, during which the resident physician is never divorced from his patient, and in the course of which complete and elaborate bedside histories and charts are kept. I have in my possession at the present moment the complete bedside notes of every patient to whom my treatment has ever been administered. I call attention to this fact because it shows that the work has not been hit or miss, but has been as carefully systematized and made as highly scientific as it has been possible to make it. A second precedent has been set, as is proved by the fact that within a brief time any case of drug or alcoholic habit that is not complicated by physical disabilities due to other causes can be successfully treated in a few days without heroic methods and without risk. This has at once proved the fallacy of old methods. It has demonstrated how false, for instance, is the principle of colonization. As I have said, drug cases should never be colonized, and among alcoholics only the absolutely hopeless inebriate should be subjected to this method of treatment. With the latter, of course, there is no chance of real relief, so that here colonization offers a means of relieving society of all of the burden upon the police which the inebriate's freedom necessarily implies, and from a large part of the economic burden which his existence entails upon the community. MAKING SANATORIUM CONVICTS For drug-users colonization is the worst possible treatment that can be followed. From what I know of the conduct of the average sanatorium at this time in the United States, I feel absolutely certain that no person could possibly be helped if sent there, and I am convinced that definite and virtually incalculable harm would be the almost inevitable result of following such a course. Drug-users, as well as alcoholics, who are sent officially or otherwise to institutions of this character become what are called "sanatorium convicts." These cases are virtually hopeless, and are little less pitiable than that of the "lifer" in a prison. There are in the United States many people of the better class who through no fault of their own have became afflicted with the drug-habit, and who have drifted from bad to worse until a sanatorium has been the only recourse left. Treatment for drug and alcoholic habits and treatment tending toward the recuperation of the patient cannot be carried out together with one patient or even simultaneously with several patients in the same institution. An understanding of this fact has placed me in an advantageous position for giving advice about whatever remains to be done when a patient is ready to leave my hospital. I have always worked in the closest and most perfect harmony with physicians who have sent cases to me and have never permitted any of the doctors employed in my institution to visit a patient who has left my care. On the other hand, no physician who has brought a patient to my hospital has ever been divorced from him as a result of his stay with us. ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS POSSIBLE AFTER TREATMENT Physical revelations which follow the unpoisoning of patients frequently startle the patients themselves as well as the physicians who have their well-being in charge for long periods. Nor are the mental revelations less astonishing. There have been many cases, after the unpoisoning was complete, in which a man or woman has been found to be as seriously ailing mentally as others have been found ailing physically. Drugs and alcohol, especially drugs, have frequently been responsible for extraordinary mental and moral twists. But it must be maintained that the use of drug or liquor is usually the result rather than the cause of such conditions. There are many cases in which no type of medical help will bring about satisfactory permanent results, though other victims, after the elimination of alcohol or narcotics, quickly take their places as useful and admirable members of society. The problem confronting the physiologist after a patient has been relieved of a drug or drink habit is comparatively simple. If this relief makes diagnosis possible and reveals the existence of an unsuspected, but curable, ailment, the course to follow is obvious. With the psychologist the problem is frequently far more complicated. The useless citizen who becomes a drug- or drink-user will remain a useless citizen after the drug or drink habit has been eliminated. To this class belong most of those who readily relapse into their old habits after their systems have been thoroughly cleared of the physiological demand for the substance of their habit. Thus perhaps the most important query the psychologist interested in this work must ask after the treatment of a patient is, What is left of value, and what can be done with it? It is a curious fact that usually more is left in the case of a poor than in the case of a rich patient. No one is so hopeless as the vagrant rich. No man will ever make a reputation in work of this character who deals wholly or even principally with people to whom money has no value. UNPOISONING THE USER IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP My work has brought me to the conclusion that few physicians seem able accurately to classify their own patients. Even the specialist in psychology, who should be able to weigh all the details of men's mental and moral as well as physical being, seems likely to go astray when he considers a psychology that has been affected either by drink or drugs. Many physicians seem to be imbued with the idea that after a patient has once been through the process of treatment for a drug or drink habit he will be entirely made over; but the fact is that the elimination of drugs or drink from a degenerate will not eliminate degeneracy. Nothing, in fact, will eliminate it except stopping the breeding of degenerates. In my work I have found it necessary sometimes to seek advice from as many as half a dozen physical and psychological specialists in connection with one case. While instances have been very numerous in which several specialists have been really required for the welfare of the patient, the need had been so thoroughly concealed by the patient's drug habit that it was not apparent until the effect of the drugs was thoroughly eliminated. NECESSITY FOR CAREFUL PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY In most instances expert treatment for the mental condition after drug or drink elimination is as essential as expert attention from the doctor of medicine, and if success is to be achieved, must be regarded as an entirely separate task. Habitual users of drugs or drink are literally human derelicts. The symptoms of their true condition are submerged, and to clear them of their concealed weaknesses it is necessary to lift them like a barnacle-ridden hulk into the dry-dock for investigation and repair. I regard as a preferred risk among the victims of the drug habits those who have acquired it through the administration of a narcotic by physicians in time of pain or illness. Such a case, if treated before too great a deterioration has taken place, may be considered almost certain of relief, provided no other ailment discloses itself. On the other hand, where the drug habit is the direct or indirect result of alcoholic dissipation or sexual excesses, or is a social vice, the case is extra-hazardous. Here the lack of moral standards and the loss of pride are serious handicaps. These matters are of extreme importance to the physician who is considering the care or treatment of cases of a drug habit. That he should classify his subjects of investigation, recognizing the hopeful ones and admitting the hopeless to be hopeless, is essential to successful work. He must know the material with which he has to work; familiarity with his material is as necessary to him as it is to the carpenter. Many cases have been brought to us that we have declined to accept because we could hope to accomplish nothing with them. Not long after I began my work I tried to help a man against my better judgment; I felt reasonably sure that he lacked the worthy qualities that would make him cling to and appreciate whatever advantages the treatment might afford. My estimate of his character proved to be correct; the man relapsed, and became a traveling liability on me, a reproach against my institution and my treatment. THE HOPELESS CASE I have already said that the idle rich to whom money has no value cannot usually be classed among hopeful subjects for treatment. The same may be said of those for whom others take financial responsibility, paying the cost of their treatment. If such cases do not already belong in the human scrap-heap, this mistaken kindness is very likely to place them there. However, I believe that those among this class who have become public charges and refuse to work should be forced to do so by state or municipal authority. Society or their own families should not bear the burden of their useless existence. They should be segregated in some place where they will be physically comfortable, where they may be made industrious and useful, and where a separation of the sexes will prevent the increase of their worthless kind. My judgment is that the man or woman who through the vagaries of his or her own disposition has once been forced to wear the stripes of disgrace is likely to employ the same tailor during the rest of his or her life. Such persons will become permanent boarders at one or another of the places provided for the seclusion of the worthless. It is well that where they are first sequestrated there they should be permanently kept. Through this course alone society will be spared the periodical havoc they will be sure to work during their intervals of freedom. IMPERSONAL RELATIONS BETWEEN PHYSICIAN AND PATIENT NECESSARY Certain dangers inevitably arise where an intimacy exists between doctor and patient, since few physicians are morally so constituted that they will order a prosperous patient to do this or that or find another physician. In other words, instances have not been uncommon where the toleration of physicians for unfortunate practices among their patients has had its basis, and perhaps one not entirely inexcusable in these days of high pressure from professional competition, in self-interest. Social relations also have often led physicians to tolerate practices that they knew to be harmful to their patients and to the community. A patient who is a member of an influential club or a fashionable church is likely to be an asset of exceptional value to the physician whom he patronizes, for he is likely to recommend him to his friends. Good business management on the physician's part leads him to keep such a patient good natured and comfortable, and to keep him comfortable means, among other things, to keep him free from pain. Where the patient suffers from an incurable malady, the use of drugs is not only excusable, but commendable; but instances are all too frequent where the malady is not incurable, but only puzzling and beyond the average practitioner's power of diagnosis, so that he covers up his ignorance by the administration of pain-deadening substances. Patients who invariably and promptly pay their bills are sometimes in a position where they can tell a doctor what to do; whereas it should be the doctor's unalterable resolution to retain the upper hand. Instances of this kind are far less grave in connection with the use of alcohol than in connection with the use of drugs; the physician may be said almost never to play any part in the establishment of an alcoholic habit among his patients, while he has surely played a most important part in the spread of drug habits. CHAPTER XII CLASSIFICATION OF HABIT-FORMING DRUGS Opium is the basis of almost all the habit-forming drugs. There is no other drug known to the pharmacist that has a similar action or can be used as a substitute when a definite tolerance of it has been established. The chemists have given us more than twenty different salts or alkaloids of opium in various forms and under as many different trade names, and I regret to say that they are busy working in their laboratories to put upon the market injurious drugs under various supposedly harmless disguises, but intended in the end only to deceive. MORPHINE Morphine is the active principle of opium, and until a few years ago only crude opium or morphine was used for medical requirements. Morphine is intrinsically far worse than opium itself, for opium has certain properties which partly counteract the effect of the morphine that it contains. But morphine is not only the active principle, but the actively evil principle, of the drug. The user of morphine always retains his faculties. He is usually capable of intelligent conversation. Unlike the alcoholic's brain, his is not inflamed. It is impossible for the physician intelligently to discuss his symptoms with an alcoholic; with a victim of drugs, on the other hand, he can thresh out every detail of the case. Later codeine was placed upon the market, supposedly an innocent alkaloid of opium, non-habit-forming, but still capable of eliminating pain and suffering due to illness or injury. After taking up this work, my investigations soon led me to realize that it was not the quantity of the drug taken which produced the drug habit, but the regularity of the dosage. I also found from my clinical comparisons that codeine has only one eighth the strength of morphine, yet in the end just as surely a producer of the drug habit similar to that of morphine itself. HEROIN At this writing the most harmful form of opiate with which we have to deal is heroin. This preparation of morphine was first put upon the market by German chemists about fifteen years ago, the word "heroin" being nothing more than a trade name. It was first used in cough mixtures, and was widely discussed in the medical and pharmaceutical press, where it was claimed that all the harm of morphine had virtually been eliminated in this product, which, without having the depressing effect of morphine, at the same time preserved its stimulating effect. A great number of physicians themselves have acquired the habit of taking opiates in this form, believing at the outset that they were not harmful drugs. My investigations soon showed me that heroin is three times as strong as morphine in its action, and for that reason its use sets up definite tolerance more quickly than any other form of opiate. For the same reason it shows more quickly a deleterious effect upon the human system, the mental, moral and physical deterioration of its takers being more marked than in the case of any other form of opiate. Until the Federal Pure Food Law was passed we did not know that many of the well-known, advertised medical preparations contained quantities of various salts or alkaloids of opium. The unsuspecting users of patent medicine were making themselves confirmed drug-users unwittingly, and did not realize how necessary the habit had become to them until for one reason or another they had been deprived of their usual daily dosage. The reader may imagine my surprise when, although a layman, I found that the physician, to whom we had looked for guidance in administering and prescribing these drugs, knew nothing about them beyond their physiological action; that their medical training both in college and in clinics had left them in virtual ignorance of the whole question. The physician freely prescribed or administered these various drugs, while laymen were able to buy over the counters of druggists prescriptions containing definite quantities of them. Unknowingly, the doctor and the druggist were creating great numbers of drug-fiends. Physicians do not yet know over how long a period such drugs can be administered in regular daily dosage without setting up a tolerance, after which the patient cannot be deprived of the drug. If the public had been better advised on this subject, it would have been able to protect itself, and would have been more careful about what it took. COCAINE Outside the opium group, there is at present only one other drug that must be considered as habit-forming, and that is cocaine. The prostitution of this drug from its proper uses is absolutely inexcusable. It was first used medicinally about thirty years ago, and as an anesthetic only. Its administration upon the nose by specialists in that field of surgery soon established the fact that it not only deadened tissue, but set up a certain stimulation which for the time being made one feel abnormally strong or mentally active. This was the beginning of its common use in the shape of so-called catarrh cures. Only a small quantity--from five to ten per cent.--was used. The tissue of the nose is very susceptible to the action of drugs. When it is applied in this way, the circulation takes up the drug as quickly as if taken hypodermically. Unscrupulous chemists and physicians have unloaded upon the world a drug which is beneficial when taken medicinally, but one that has reaped a harvest of irresponsible victims, in which murder, all forms of crime, and mental and moral degeneracy have conspicuously figured, and all for financial gain. The habit was first generally spread through the medium of catarrh-cures. Cocaine contracts and deadens the tissue with which it comes in contact, and thus, as in the case of catarrh, relieves the patient from discomfort, making him feel, indeed, as if there were no nose on his face. Its effect, however, lasts only from twenty to thirty minutes. This is one of the reasons why the cocaine habit is so easily formed. A man taking any powerful stimulant is sure to feel a corresponding depression when the effect of that stimulant has died away, and it then becomes necessary for him to take more of the drug in order to buoy himself up and restore himself to the point of normality. It is among cocaine-users, therefore, not a yearning for any abnormally pleasurable sensation which sends them back again and again to their dosage, but merely their desire to be measurably restored to the comfort which is natural to the normal state. It must be apparent, however, that as soon as it has become necessary for any one to resort to the use of a drug in order to rise to the normal there has been a marked depreciation, physical or mental, and probably both. This explains the fact that many criminals are found to be cocaine-users. No drug so quickly brings about a mental and physical deterioration. It is virtually certain to be a short cut to one of two public institutions, the prison or the madhouse. It will send the average person to the prison first because it is an expensive drug, and the craving for it is more than likely to exhaust his financial resources and then drive him to theft. It is the most expensive of all drug habits. I have known victims who habitually used one hundred and twenty grains a day, at a cost of about seventy dollars a week. This undoubtedly explains the great number who have been made criminals by using cocaine. One who uses it thereby diminishes his earning capacity; while, on the other hand, one who must have it must have money, and much of it. It may be that this matter of cost explains why the under-world has suddenly taken up heroin instead of cocaine. The former is much cheaper. HYPNOTICS While I have only touched upon the opium group and cocaine, I wish to put myself on record now as saying that there is no class of drugs so sure in the end to bring about a deterioration of the physical being as the frequent use of the hypnotic group, or coal-tar products, the sleep-producers. I have never seen more pitiable cases than those who have come to me after they had been taking regularly, during a considerable period, some cure for sleeplessness. This habit not only produces an extreme neurotic condition, but changes the entire temperament of a person. It will turn the most beautiful character into an extreme case of moral degeneracy. Insomnia, headaches, and such ailments spring from a disorganized physical condition. Trying to alleviate them by the use of powerful drugs does not remove the cause, but compounds the physical disabilities which produce these unfortunate physical results. Some day I hope to see as stringent a legal regulation of the sale of these drugs, used for this common purpose, as there now is of opium and its products and cocaine. SLEEPING-POWDERS, OR HYPNOTICS The time cannot be far distant when both Federal and State governments will recognize the danger that lies in the unrestricted sale by druggists and the uncurbed administration by physicians of sleeping-powders, or hypnotics. It cannot be denied by any one who is thoroughly familiar with the subject of habit-forming drugs that in such substances may lie a peril comparable to that inherent in cocaine and opium compounds. Hypnotics of many varieties can be obtained at any drug store in the United States without a doctor's certificate. The sale of bromides is absolutely unrestricted. The many and varied coal-tar products, of which veronal is the leader, with trional, suphonal, medinal, as close followers, and the numerous proprietary remedies, such as somnose, neuronidia, bromidia, Peacock's bromides, etc., may be mentioned as preparations which are widely advertised and openly and energetically sold, and all of which are definitely dangerous. COAL-TAR PRODUCTS Preparations for headaches and neuralgia are notably dangerous. There can be no doubt of the necessity for legal restriction of the sale of anti-kamnia, phenalgin, orangeine, Koehler's headache remedy, shac, all coal-tar products notable for their production of anemia and depression, and undoubtedly responsible for the presence of many men and women in the mad-houses of the land. The chemist whose genius is responsible for the introduction of caffeine to overcome the depressing effect of some of the other component parts of these preparations has put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of the manufacturing druggists and has saddled the world with a great and unnecessary weight of physical and mental degeneration. THE PERIL OF THE DRUG-STORE Not least among these preparations that have most importantly contributed to the tragic army of drug-users in the United States have been various diarrhea remedies and other bowel correctives containing a large amount of straight opium. Morphine, opium, and heroin appear in many cough-mixtures in habit-forming quantities and are offered for sale everywhere save in New York State, where recent legislation somewhat restricts the traffic. Indeed, in every State except New York there are few druggists who do not make up and sell preparations of their own containing codeine, morphine, heroin, or some of the derivatives of opium. No druggist has a right to prescribe any of these powerful drugs. The American public has fallen into the bad habit of trusting the druggist when it should go to the physician. A dozen times every day in the experience of the average American druggist a customer enters who says, "I want something to make me sleep," or, "I want something to cure my headache." Without hesitation, and without blame, for with him the custom has probably been unconsciously built up, the druggist reaches to his shelf and dispenses preparations in which the utmost peril lurks--preparations containing ingredients which should be sold only on the prescription of a physician. Under the present law, as I think it exists in every State, druggists cannot prescribe, but they can advise customers to purchase advertised preparations and those which they themselves compound. Only a very powerful drug can stop a headache as quickly and completely as Americans have come to demand. The preparation must be strong enough to deaden disordered nerves, and being chosen because it will be generally effective, not selectively effective, as in the case of a remedy chosen after an intelligent diagnosis has revealed the nature of the trouble to be treated, it is virtually certain to have no curative qualities whatever. Hundreds of deaths have resulted from unwisely experimenting with such preparations. Most of us have peculiar idiosyncrasies with regard to certain drugs. I have seen patients who could not take so much as two grains of veronal or trional without flushing, itching, and similar symptoms. With such people large doses might bring about serious results and even death. CHAPTER XIII PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION The common idea that one who is struggling with a drug or alcohol habit needs sympathy and psychological encouragement is totally at variance with the facts. No one has ever accomplished anything worth while by holding the hand of an alcoholic, and any one who is endeavoring to help a case of this sort will find himself instantly and seriously handicapped if he puts himself in intimate personal relationship with his patient. Social intercourse in any degree should be tabooed. The physician should never take a meal with any of his patients, or visit a theater with them, or take a drive with them. I have never made a friend of one of my patients, although among them have been many whom I should be glad to number among my friends; and no man would go further to help them than I. Personally, I have never been an excessive alcoholic. It is an interesting fact that many men endeavoring to deal with people of this class use as a bait the statement that they themselves have been victims. Their usual claim is that they first cured themselves, and then took up the work of curing others. I remember a meeting of social-service workers in Boston that I was invited to address. I made a statement to this effect in the course of my talk and greatly offended a previous speaker who had emitted the usual professional patter concerning his original self-cure. I was quite willing to compare with him the results of our methods of treatment, but had no opportunity so to do. HEREDITARY TENDENCIES TOWARD ADDICTION AN IMPOSSIBILITY It is absolutely essential that the man who wishes to help another who has lost control must first accurately understand not only his mental imperfection, if there is any, but his general psychological state. The line between sobriety and drunkenness in the man who has once lost control is almost indistinguishable; it is impossible when talking with him to be sure whether you are talking with the normal mind or with the alcoholic mind. Having once made certain that it is the normal mind to which you are presenting your arguments, your next necessary step is to strip away every mental reservation. Thousands of men who have honestly desired to leave off alcohol have been prevented from doing so by their own secretiveness; it is this mental reservation which has been responsible for many of the failures of my treatment. While the absolute inheritance of a craving for alcohol is, in my experience, a rare thing--so rare as to seem almost negligible, there is no doubt, on the other hand, that many men and women inherit imperfect nervous systems. An imperfect nervous system, if it knew the reason for its own imperfections, might naturally crave alcohol; but inasmuch as such an imperfect system is not naturally accompanied by this instinctive knowledge, the theory of hereditary alcoholic craving must be set aside as untenable. I absolutely deny, therefore, the possibility of such hereditary tendencies. I know that by so doing I may cause acute mental discomfort to those who have made of heredity an excuse for their errors not only to their friends, but in their own minds. The old cloak of heredity has been worn to tatters and must be discarded. Who among us cannot follow up the branches of his family-tree and find somewhere upon one side or the other a person of alcoholic tendencies? In ninety families out of a hundred any one who looks can find such an excuse for his own weakness. In thousands of instances physicians have taken seriously such excuses offered by their patients, but the doctor who listens to his patient's babble of heredity is sure to be misled, and the patient who believes this too commonly accepted theory robs himself of his strongest weapon against alcohol--his own conviction of his personal responsibility and power for self-help. ALCOHOLISM AS A DISEASE We hear much sympathetic talk of the "disease of alcoholism." This is only in a sense true. It is not a case of helpless chance, for the difficulty has been manufactured and developed by man himself. The alcoholic, mentally weakened by the reaction of the stimulant, is of all people most likely to exhibit that most striking evidence of weakness--a craving for sympathy rather than for blame. Habitual alcoholics continually plead for sympathy with mothers, fathers, wives, and friends; and too often they are granted not only pity, but, what is worse, toleration. The sanatorium promoters and proprietors of fake cures continually harp on alcoholism as a disease; and even a few scientists, who should know better, have been misled into an acceptance of this theory. Doctors should be the first to knock from under their patients the psychologically harmful props of the heredity theories. The first thing a physician must do when dealing with an alcoholic is to cut every string of excuse which lies between him and his habit. He must leave nothing of this sort to which the drinker may cling. Sickness, worry, unhappy circumstances of whatever sort must immediately be eliminated as excuses for alcoholic indulgence. If they are not, the patient, although he may gain for a time the mastery over his habit, will presently be certain to find an excuse in his own mind to justify a return to it. Then will come a new downfall. There must be no reservations either in the attitude of the doctor or his patient or in the mental attitude of the patient toward himself. MENTAL ATTITUDE A VITAL CONSIDERATION The possibilities of medical help for the alcoholic have been exhausted when the patient has been freed from the effect of the stimulant and put in a physical condition wherein he feels no inclination toward more alcohol. Great psychological assistance may accompany this definite medical treatment when the patient's physical craving for alcohol has once been eliminated if the physician brings him into a mental state which gives him confidence in his own ability to keep away from stimulants in the future. I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact that no cure exists, or ever will exist, for alcoholism. Its effects may be eliminated, and the victim's physical condition become so greatly improved that weakness will not make him yearn for stimulation; but this does not constitute a cure. Nothing except a man's own mind, whether the treatment extends over six weeks, six months, or six years, can ever relieve him of the danger of a relapse into alcoholism. In most cases a definite medical treatment is the intelligent beginning of help, but no medical treatment, no matter how successful, can compass that victory which a man must win by means of his own determination. THE CHRONIC ALCOHOLIC The physician still regards such cases only from the point of view of physical hazard. It is my opinion that in alcoholic cases the physical hazard is the matter of least importance, and that the world at large has devoted altogether too much effort to its endeavors to preserve chronic alcoholics, just as it has devoted far too little effort to rescue the victims of drugs. It is my opinion that among alcoholics, no matter how worthy they may have been before they lost control, not more than twenty-five per cent. of those whose addiction has become chronic are curable; that is to say, promise any reward whatever for salvage work. The world must remember that the inflamed brain leads to everything on earth which is not worth while, and therefore that the man whose brain has for any considerable period of time been in this condition must have enormously deteriorated. It must also be remembered that at least one half of the world's chronic alcoholics have syphilitic histories. The alcoholic is usually susceptible to the advances of any woman whatsoever, and as a rule devotes less than the normal attention to his own wife. To set out to reclaim a chronic alcoholic is, therefore, to set out to reform a man who has been weakened morally and mentally as well as physically. In dealing with such people, were the matter left entirely to me, drastic measures would be taken. It is my belief that the hopeless inebriate should be unsexed, not because of the danger that, if left sexually normal, he might transmit his alcoholic tendencies by heredity to his offspring, but because he is a liability at best, and to leave him normal adds to his potentiality for waste and evil. Children born of alcoholic-tainted parentage are not specially likely, I think, to yield to alcoholic and tobacco tendencies; but they are apt to lack vitality and mental stamina, so that the probability of their making worthy records is small. If we go one step beyond syphilis and consider other venereal diseases, we shall undoubtedly discover that not twenty-five, but ninety, per cent. of chronic alcoholics, excluding women, have been victims of gonorrhoea. I am told that modern science is recognizing this disease, which was once regarded as of slight importance, an inevitable experience of youth, and something to be accepted and regarded lightly, as an ailment of nearly as vicious an influence upon the race as is syphilis. Therefore I have become convinced that the salvage of alcoholic derelicts is of vastly less importance than prevention at the outset. This principle is being more and more generally recognized throughout the world; it stands behind sanitation and all preventive medicine, and it will before long be recognized in connection with the problem of alcohol. Thus the battle against alcohol will become, as the battle against tuberculosis has become, a campaign of education. It is my belief that every community should have an institution in which hopeless inebriates may be kept away from their cups and away from sexual association. There they should be put at useful occupations; full advantage should be taken of whatever productive capacity alcohol may have left in them; and they should be maintained in a state as happy as their capabilities may permit until they mercifully die. Their segregation would not prevent hereditary drunkenness, for there is, as I have said, no such thing as an hereditary drunkard, but it would prevent the transmission of imperfect nervous systems, and depleted intellect and will power. SELF-CONFIDENCE NECESSARY Involved in helping these cases, my investigations have shown me that when once it is determined on reasonable evidence that a man is curable, the first effort should be devoted to reëstablishing his confidence in himself. He should be "given a new mind" upon the subject of drink and general self-indulgence. It does little good to free a man from alcohol if his mental state is so poor that he will celebrate this boon by again making himself a voluntary victim of the habit. It is for this reason that I have found the least hopeful work in reclamation to be that which is conducted among the idle rich. The alcoholic idle poor are virtually hopeless; the alcoholic idle rich are absolutely hopeless. To the reform of the drunkard mental and physical occupation and some sense of moral responsibility are imperative. It is because of these things that I have deliberately and persistently refused to use the word "cure" in connection with my treatment. A man cannot be cured of alcoholism. He can be given medical aid which will restore his self-control. The ordinary methods in vogue for the reclamation of alcoholics are pitifully futile. The greatest mistake of all is that workers never finish with those whom they are endeavoring to help. One must finish with the alcoholic promptly and conclusively. I have found that alcoholics taking treatment at my hospital must understand that I do not wish to hear from them after they have left my care; that I do not wish to know if they have yielded to new madnesses and relapsed into alcoholism. It is specially important for an alcoholic to learn that at a certain point society will have had enough of him. Fathers must break with alcoholic sons and daughters, mothers must break with alcoholic children, wives and husbands must be freed from alcoholic mates, charitable institutions must be rid of alcoholic derelicts. Society itself must be rid of this waste material, after it has ascertained that their cases are hopeless and has provided comfortable sequestration for them. THE DRUNKARD WHO CAN BE SAVED Now let us turn to the vast army of people who are worth while, but who, nevertheless, have, through mistakes common to our society, become victims of the alcoholic habit. It would almost seem that the incurables among alcoholics have received more consideration from the kindly minded, and even from the scientifically inclined, than have the curables. The curable among alcoholics are intense and pitiable sufferers. They have never had real help. They have been penalized. The poor among them have been colonized in harmful state institutions by the public authorities; the rich among them have been placed in equally harmful private institutions by their relatives and friends. The alcoholic who is punished by incarceration in a cell is harmed, not helped, by it; the man who, on the mythical chance of reform is shunted off to a state establishment, or who is sent by prosperous friends to board at some expensive sanatorium, stands to lose, not gain, by his experience. These methods merely beg the question. They recognize the drunkard as a liability and put him out of sight; they do nothing toward his real regeneration. The inebriates' farm is based on the same utter misconception as the fashionable sanatorium to which the rich man's son may be committed. An intelligent handling of this subject would close or entirely reform ninety-nine per cent. of the public institutions devoted to the care of inebriates, and would depopulate one half of the sanatoriums between the Atlantic and the Pacific. To put a poor man to sober up on a farm where the State will pay his board and expect him not to become an active menace to society as soon as the period of his sequestration comes to an end is no more foolish than to put the rich man's son into a private institution where he will be petted, coddled, and retained at the highest rates as long as possible, and from which he will be eventually permitted to return to his old haunts freed from the immediate physical discomforts of his past alcoholism and therefore provided with a fresh capacity for strong drink and rejuvenated powers for evil-doing. Placing a drunken young man in a sanatorium where some one will pay his board while he lives in utter idleness is certain not to correct, but to complete, the evil work which has been started in him; and thus in many cases the very means adopted by friends and parents for the benefit of those they love are likely to increase rather than to decrease their ultimate tendency toward dissipation. Nothing can be much more pitiful than the spectacle of a youngster led into an alcoholic addiction through the influence of older men. I am by no means accepting the theory of hereditary drunkenness when I say that many young drunkards are only faithfully following their fathers' footsteps, and cannot be justly blamed for their error. Too often it is true that they literally find themselves unable to catch up with their fathers in alcoholic exploits, because their constitutions, depleted by vicious parental habits, prove too weak to stand the pace. Even where boys are not unfortunately influenced by vicious examples offered by their parents, there are circumstances of our modern life that are likely to work havoc with the rising generation. The youth who up to his twenty-first birthday has been permitted to "have his own way" is not likely to have formed the habit of traveling in a very good way; nor will he be likely to change it for a better one when it is proved to him and to his friends and to society that it is bad; for habits form early. Association with thousands of those who have gone wrong has proved many social facts to me, one of which I mention here despite its apparent irrelevance. The boy who has never known the value of money, on whom the responsibilities of life have never been impressed, is as seriously uneducated as he would be if lack of common schooling had left him illiterate. CHAPTER XIV RELATION OF DRUGS AND ALCOHOL TO INSANITY The habitual drug-taker and the confirmed alcoholic are puzzles that baffle the alienist. The man with the "wet brain" is a contradiction of all the rules of normality. In many criminal trials men have been adjudged insane who were merely in abnormal states due to the habitual use of drugs or alcohol, of which, without proper treatment, they have been suddenly deprived. In one of the largest hospitals in the United States I once ran across an old woman crooning while she rocked an imaginary baby. She had been formally and legally adjudged insane by the State's experts. As a matter of fact, she was suffering only from an hallucination due to alcoholic deprivation. I suggested definite medical treatment for this case when I discovered that she was about to be transferred from the alcoholic ward to the insane pavilion. In two days after the administration of this treatment she had lost all her hallucinations, and on the third day was dismissed from the institution. Not long ago I observed a similar case in a foreign hospital. It is my belief that commitments for insanity in the United States might be decreased by one third if in every case where insanity was suspected, but where an alcoholic or drug history could be traced, the patient should be subjected to the necessary medical treatment before the final commitment was made. The sudden deprivation of drugs and alcohol which follows the imprisonment of alcoholics and drug-users upon disorderly or criminal charges has produced thousands of cases of apparent insanity sufficiently marked for the subjects to be placed in insane asylums. There, as in the prison, no intelligent note is made of their condition, nor is any proper treatment applied, the result being that they become really insane--insane and hopeless. If we had any means of securing accurate knowledge of the number of such incurable maniacs who are now confined in our asylums, we should find in it a startling evidence of the lack of knowledge on the part of the medical world of what deprivation means to the habitual victim of drugs or alcohol. GENERAL IGNORANCE OF THE RELATION OF ADDICTION TO INSANITY The necessity for educating the public in regard to the very definite relation between alcoholism and insanity should no longer be overlooked. There lies a public peril of unappreciated magnitude in the fact that mere deprivation, the only method so far followed, has been, and if it is not corrected, will continue to be, one of the principal feeders of our insane asylums. Alcoholism will lead to insanity eventually even without deprivation. The case is somewhat different with drug victims. Ordinarily they will not become insane unless deprived of their drug, although in the final stages of the habit they are likely to become incompetent and subject to certain hallucinations, imagining the existence of plots against them, suspecting unfairness on every hand, taking easy offense, exhibiting, in fact, a general distorted mental condition. It is true, indeed, that in some instances the drug victim who is deprived of his drug may become definitely insane, but death is the more frequent result. I have before me a clipping from a newspaper published in Columbus, Ohio. There, after the enforcement of restrictive legislation, the authorities found it necessary to ask the governor for some special procedure which would authorize them to supply drug victims with their drugs until proper medical treatment was provided. This did not relate to those victims who had come exclusively from the under-world, but referred specially to those habitual drug-users whose habits had been acquired through illness. It can scarcely be expected that restrictive legislation will entirely prevent the sale and use of drugs in the under-world any more than restrictive legislation has been able to prevent the practice of burglary or any other type of crime or lawlessness. It is highly probable that the under-world will always be able to get its drugs; but it is nevertheless true that the passage of restrictive legislation and the enforcement of such laws will tend to prevent the descent of many into the criminal class. Even this is comparatively unimportant. Those who suffer most are those who have been given the habit by physicians. These are honest drug-users, and to them at this writing no helping hand is anywhere held out save in New York State. I have been somewhat disgusted--I am sure that is the word I wish to use--by the continual outpouring of sympathy and constant manifestations of anxiety on the part of good people in regard to the under-world, when these same good people regard with indifference or classify as criminal the involuntary victim toward whom the most intense and understanding sympathy should be extended. MENTAL ATTITUDE OF THE DRUG-TAKER AND THE ALCOHOLIC The victim of drugs psychologically differs very materially from the victim of drink. Until his trouble has reached an acute stage, the alcoholic feels little interest in any of the methods advertised as remedial for alcoholism. Many men deny to their friends and even to themselves that they are alcoholics until they have reached a point akin to hopelessness in their friends' eyes and their own. The drug-user, on the other hand, knows that he is a victim as soon as he becomes one; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he is immediately filled with an intense longing to be relieved of his habit. Thousands of alcoholics will defend their vice. A library might be filled with books, fictional and other, glorifying alcohol and the good-fellowship and conviviality that it is supposed to promote. One might search a long time for a victim of any drug habit who would speak with affection of the material which has enthralled him. No poet has ever written any song glorifying morphine. There is no drug-user in the world who would not hail with joy any opportunity that might lead to his relief. The drug-victim investigates every hint of hope with eager interest, reading, intelligently questioning, experimenting. He shrinks from publicity with a horror that is backed by an acute consciousness of his condition, while the victim of alcohol becomes so mentally distorted or deadened that he takes no thought of consequences, cares nothing for publicity, and finds himself unable to avoid public exhibitions of a kind that put him into the hands of the police. Public hospitals do not tempt the drug-user for, having investigated them, he knows that they are not competent to give him real relief. EXPEDIENTS OF DRUG-TAKERS Nothing but really enforced restrictive legislation, fashioned after the model of the present New York State law, will bring to light the drug-victims in any community. The New York law uncovered thousands of them, and within two weeks forced Bellevue and other hospitals to devote many beds to sufferers from drug-deprivation. Similar restrictive legislation would uncover every sufferer from drugs in the country and thus accomplish more good than could be achieved by any other similarly simple means. No man on earth is more pitiably affected than the drug-taker; no suffering is more intense than his when deprived of his drug. The fact that rather than undergo such suffering men and women will resort to the most desperate expedients has been proved a thousand times. When confronted by the terrible prospect of deprivation, they invented plans worthy of the mental agility of the most famous fictionist. Drugs were smuggled into prison hidden in the heels of visitors' shoes. One wife who knew the agony her husband must endure if deprived of his regular morphine dosage took to him clean linen which was admitted to the prison without question, but which, as an accident revealed, had been "starched" with morphine. Another ingenious wife or sweetheart devised the expedient of sending in to a prisoner oranges from which the juice had been cleverly extracted and which had been filled hypodermically with a morphine solution. If there is no length to which a drug victim will not go rather than find himself deprived of his drug, there is no length to which he will not go in order to obtain relief from a habit the existence of which fills him with horror. This has often been illustrated in the course of my practice, but perhaps never more strikingly than when I learned of the experiences of a certain judge in Jacksonville, Florida. This far-sighted, merciful, and progressive jurist had come in contact with one or more pitiable cases of the drug habit to which he wished to give relief. He communicated with me, and I was very glad to coöperate in aiding with definite medical relief several drug-victims taken before him. This procedure was commented upon in the public press, and presently the judge found himself importuned for help by those who had committed no crime, but expressed themselves as quite willing to be sent to prison as the only way in which they could get the treatment that was being administered under his auspices. DRUG-TAKING MORE OFTEN THE CAUSE THAN THE RESULT OF CRIMINALITY A careful study of the histories of drug-takers who upon one charge or another find themselves caught in the meshes of the law will reveal that in most cases, or at least in many cases, the drug habit has led to crime rather than the reverse. If an efficient treatment for the drug habit were established in a prison almost anywhere in the United States where such a treatment did not elsewhere exist, it would result, I am sure, in the actual commission of crimes by a certain number of people willing to endure the misery and disgrace of incarceration for the mere sake of securing treatment for their affliction. Any drug-user will tell you that no punishment recorded in the course of human history, no torture visualized by the most inventive imagination, can compare with the unspeakable agony of deprivation. FALLACY OF IMPRISONING DRUG-TAKERS That imprisonment should rarely, if ever, result in freeing a person from the drug habit can mean only one thing: that drugs are obtainable in every prison. Guards and other employees in such institutions are of a low class, for men and women of a high type are unlikely to seek such employment. I fear that this fact will prove one of the most serious stumbling-blocks in the path of those who are endeavoring to make a success of inebriety-farm experiments. In the first place, they will not be able to find men of a high type anxious to serve in the subordinate positions provided at such places; and in the second place, even if such men can be found, they will be unlikely to obtain positions because persons of an inferior type will be certain to be pushed forward by political influence. Such places would be used as means wherewith to pay political debts, and this would be more or less complacently tolerated, because society has always underrated and still underrates the terrific complications of the task of working for the reclamation of, or even caring for, the down-and-out. Such work is not employment for the saloon-keeper, the ward heeler, or the ex-prize-fighter, and of such is the personnel of most prison staffs made up. The reclamation of the alcoholic wreck means far more than physical rehabilitation. It means moral and psychological regeneration, and such work can be done only by people of understanding and delicate sensibility. The alcoholic from the city who has been perhaps an office employee or a professional man and who is sent to an inebriate farm will find there nothing curative save deprivation. Even if outdoor work will harden his muscles, it must be admitted that the surroundings in which this is accomplished may well ossify his brain. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DRUG HABIT Nothing could more clearly indicate the popular ignorance concerning the drug habit than the general belief that it is usually accompanied by moral deterioration. Where the habit is an accompaniment of life in the under-world, moral deterioration of course exists, though this is due rather to the under-world than to the drug habit. In the thousands of histories where the habit has been acquired by the administration of drugs by physicians it results in moral deterioration no more than drinking tea does. As a matter of fact, that portion of society which holds a drug victim blamable is woefully mistaken and inhumanely unmerciful, the truth being that the man or woman who is not taking drugs is lucky. THE NECESSITY OF DEFINITE MEDICAL TREATMENT IN DEALING WITH ANY FORM OF ADDICTION It is impossible for me to conclude this book without discussing further the question of treatment for those afflicted with habits or addictions. My taking up this work in 1901 was due almost entirely to an investigation into the methods employed to restore those who had lost control through the use of habit-forming drugs, whether they had acquired the habit through dissipation or from the administration of the drug by a physician on account of illness or injury. At that time such cases were supposed to be hopelessly incurable, and the victims only drifted from bad to worse until they had been accounted for either in a mad-house or in the morgue. I found, on making inquiries from some of the leading medical men who had been dealing with the various types of mental and nervous diseases, that they were virtually unable to name any case of a confirmed drug-user who had been permanently benefited by institutional or any other means of treatment. This was very difficult to understand, particularly in the case of drug-users who had acquired the habit through the administration of the drug by a physician, and who earnestly desired to be freed from the habit. It seemed incredible that a skilled physician could not eliminate the craving or desire for the drug, or restore these unfortunates to the point where their systems would not demand or feel the need of it. I soon found out why this was so. My investigation showed me that the drug habit is a mental as well as a physical condition; that the physiological action of an opiate is to tie up the functions, resulting in a deterioration of the vital organs when the victim has taken the drug sufficiently long to set up a definite tolerance. The medical world had apparently been unable or had not attempted to bring about a definite physiological change, and to place such patients where they would not crave drugs and where their systems would not demand them. To my further surprise, I found that the medical world had been depending entirely on deprivation as a means of treating such cases. They would immediately send patients to an institution where they were put under surveillance and guarded by attendants, or they would attempt by gradual reduction of the dosage to eliminate the habit. CURE BY DEPRIVATION IMPOSSIBLE This investigation led me into some very interesting discoveries. I found that old, confirmed subjects of the drug habit were sent to such institutions. Where they were taking large daily doses of opiates the institutions were able to reduce these people, when there was no underlying physical disability, within a few weeks or a few months, according to the temperament of the patient, to a very small daily dosage, often as low as one half or one eighth of a grain a day. When they had reached this dosage it was often found absolutely impossible to limit them further. In some cases where the patient was confined and finally deprived of the drug entirely I found that when he had reached this minimum dosage he would suffer just as much physical discomfort in the end as if he had been suddenly deprived of a very much larger quantity of the drug taken daily. This led up to the further interesting fact that even where patients were finally deprived of the drug and lived through the horrible suffering inevitably accompanying the deprivation, although they outlived the tremendous depression and lassitude which followed, and for long periods of weeks and months after that time had the best of care and attention until they showed marked improvement in their physical condition, nevertheless, with too few exceptions, they never lost the desire for the drug. Always the need of some stimulant returned, and on the slightest excuse or opportunity they were taking their drug again. My investigation finally proved to me that deprivation did not remove the cause of the drug habit, because it did not remove the physical craving for the drug. No matter how long a period the deprivation had been, the needed physical and mental change had never taken place. EFFICACY OF THE AUTHOR'S TREATMENT During the first two years of my work, after finding in various ways patients from the under-world to use as subjects for demonstration, I was finally able to treat any case of drug habit which came to me unless it was complicated by underlying physical disability. After a period of from three to four days these patients would not feel the slightest craving or desire for any form of opiate, whether their addiction had been cocaine, alcoholic stimulants, or tobacco. When the efficacy of this treatment was assured, it began to attract the attention of some of the best-known medical men in the country--men who were interested in this line of study. They followed carefully the medical administration of the new treatment of these cases. It was only a matter of time before the value of the work was thoroughly established and became a medical fact. After hundreds of definite clinical histories had been recorded, the formula was publicly announced, first, at the International Opium Conference at Shanghai in 1909, and a month later to the medical world. Since the complete information concerning my work has been given to the medical profession, and after all these years of study and investigation and medical comment, I have never yet had from any physician an entirely satisfactory explanation as to why or how we were able successfully to unpoison these cases in this short period. At present this treatment is, so far as I know, the only one known to medical science that will bring about this definite physiological change. The intelligent beginning of help in these cases is to unpoison the patient, put him physically on his feet, where he does not want drugs or drink, and where he does not feel the slightest desire or craving for them, and has no dread of ever drifting into these habits again. When you have brought about this definite physical change, you are invariably able to get a definite mental change. You cannot hope to get the mental change until you have first cleared the system of poison, for in this state the patient is in a most responsive condition to deal with. If physical building up, change of environment, change of surroundings in any way whatever are necessary, they can then be taken up intelligently. LEGISLATIVE EFFORTS The knowledge I gained from dealing medically with those afflicted with habits and addictions led me to take up personally the movement to bring about definite legislation with a view to subordinating as much as possible the traffic and consumption of drugs to legitimate medical needs; and to put an end to the criminal negligence by which such drugs have been permitted to be imported, manufactured, and distributed. In contact with the afflicted of this class, I discovered the laxity with which drugs were dealt in, and began in 1912 to try and bring about some restrictive legislation with regard to the evil before the New York legislature. I had first found that in the medical use of the drug the principal evil had sprung from the knowledge of what would ease pain, and that the principal means used for this purpose was the hypodermic syringe. At that time there was no restriction placed upon the sale of this instrument; it could be bought in any drug store just as easily as a package of chewing-gum. The department stores that carried drug supplies advertised hypodermic outfits as low as twenty-five cents. A physician's instrument permitted to be manufactured and sold in this way! Through the bill which was introduced in the New York legislature in 1912, for the first time in the history of the medical world it became possible to purchase this instrument only on a physician's prescription. In 1913 I was the author of a drastic law regulating the sale of habit-forming drugs in New York State, but because of severe pressure brought by physicians and druggists, I was unable to put it through. In 1914 I tried again, and after a hard fight I was able to have enacted a bill, which was introduced by Senator John J. Boylan, and which bears his name. For the first time there was put upon the statute-books of a State real restrictive drug legislation. Other States are taking up this matter, and, as the intention was, the New York bill has been the means of establishing a legislative precedent. I regret very much that the aim and purpose of Federal legislation has been largely defeated by the powerful drug interests, but I predict that it is only a matter of time before public sentiment will defeat this powerful drug lobby, as it has always defeated other lobbies of a similar kind, and that the country will be largely freed from the illegal habit-forming drug traffic. Until there is some international understanding between the countries that produce these drugs and the countries that consume them, we shall have to submit to more or less smuggling of these drugs into our country. Smuggled goods rarely, if ever, find their way into channels for legitimate medical needs, and for that reason it is only the under-world that would be affected by their use and abuse. It is only a matter of time before the commissioners of health for the various States will be given authority enabling them to issue rules and regulations governing the health of the people that will wipe out the quacks and charlatan venders of all common advertised fake medicine cures. THE NEED FOR REGULATING THE ADMINISTRATION OF DRUGS I have been told that to require a consultation of physicians before the administration of a habit-forming drug would put upon the patient a financial burden which he should not be asked to bear. No fallacy could be more complete. There is in the United States to-day not one victim of the drug habit who, knowing as he does the intense suffering it entails, would not rather have given up ten years of his life and been forced to put a mortgage on his soul than to have had this habit fastened on him. Money? Money is nothing! The cost of a consultation is a small price to pay for the possible difference between life-long thralldom and free manhood or womanhood. And let me add in regard to the physician who objects to the legal establishment of a danger-point in drug administration that the physician who feels big enough to accept personally the responsibility of creating a drug habit is too small to be intrusted with that power. PERCENTAGE OF THOSE TO WHOM THE PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION OF DRUGS IS A NECESSITY The percentage of sick people to whom the administration of habit-forming drugs is a necessity for the preservation of life or comfort is smaller than is generally supposed even by the medical profession. When I was drafting my restrictive bill to be introduced into the New York legislature, I was asked by my lawyer to enumerate those physical troubles which demanded the constant use of habit-forming drugs. I found this to be impossible. I have known many instances in which to deprive of drugs patients suffering incurable illness would have been little less than criminal. This alone enabled them to live in comparative comfort. I have known of many cases of drug habit which have grown out of the administration of morphine for recurring troubles, such as renal colic. Such a disorder as this, however, should never give rise to a drug habit, because those suffering from it are subject to such brief periods of pain that a physician could administer the necessary drug without their knowledge. I have had many cases of women who, acquiring the habit through the administration of drugs at the time of their monthly periods, became habitual users, although each recurrence of the pain lasted only three or four days. When this problem is thoroughly understood, such cases will be impossible, for legislation will not only prevent the layman from securing habit-forming drugs, but will prevent the doctor from the indiscriminate administration of them. Of course the general reader may think this book merely a clever advertisement. In it I state that it is wrong to stop the use of morphine and alcohol unless the victims can be treated for the habit, and next I condemn doctors and sanatoriums for their useless methods of treatment, while lauding my own. Naturally, my reader may assume that my only motive is the selfish one of money. Well, one may suppose what he likes, but the truth is that I urge every city and State to establish places that will drive me out of business. I urge physicians to take up this treatment and cure their own colleagues. I have no secrets. My methods have been published, and I am now devoting most of my time to legislative work from which I do not profit a cent. APPENDIX THE RELATION OF ALCOHOL TO DISEASE BY ALEXANDER LAMBERT, M.D. Visiting Physician to Bellevue Hospital; Professor of Clinical Medicine, Cornell University Author of "Hope for the Victims of Narcotics" In the simple heading of the subject-matter of this article there are contained such possibilities of facts and fancies, truths and errors, and wide differences of opinion, that it seems wise to define not only its meaning, but some of the words themselves. What is disease? To many people it is a definite, concrete thing which seizes one in its clutches, holds one captive or possesses one for a second time, and then if overcome releases its grip and one is free and in good health again. But disease is not an entity, even though some agents, as bacteria, are living organisms. It is the lack of some processes which these agents overcome, and others which they set in motion, as manifested by disturbances of various functions of different organs in the body that make up some of our diseases. Our bodies are often in a state of delicate equilibrium, and if some one gland fails to secrete, or secretes too abundantly, the resulting condition may become a disease. As health is a harmonious relationship between the various functions of different parts of the body, so disease is a disturbance of this harmony. The question of the relation of alcohol to disease becomes a question as to whether or not this narcotic if taken into the body can react on the various tissues and organs of the body to such a degree as to disturb the equilibrium of health. And, furthermore, can this disturbance of healthy equilibrium be permanent and the body acquire a lasting diseased condition? HOW IT AFFECTS DIFFERENT MEN Alcohol is classed here as a narcotic and not a stimulant, because we shall see later that alcohol is rather a paralyzer of functions, even when it seems to stimulate, than a producer of increased output from any organ. The time honored idea that alcohol is a stimulant and that, if used in moderation, it is a tonic, is so ingrained in the average mind that it is with the greatest difficulty that men can be made to realize that even in what seems moderate doses it may injure them. This is especially true as one sees men who all their lives have indulged moderately in alcoholic beverages from which seemingly no harm has resulted. The truth, perhaps, is best summed up by the old adage that what is one man's meat is another man's poison, and there is no question that the effects of alcohol in small or moderate doses is vastly different from its effects in large doses, or in long continued, excessive use. Different human beings react differently to similar amounts of alcohol, and conversely, identical amounts of alcohol will affect different individuals in different ways, even when it poisons all of them. For instance, if alcohol sets different processes in motion which bring about damage to the individual, we find that in some persons it has injured the heart and arteries, in others it has affected the liver or stomach, leaving the brain and nervous tissues free from damage, while in still others the body in general seems to be untouched and the brain and nervous tissues suffer the injuries. It is not uncommon to see a man who has partaken freely of alcoholic beverages all his life with neither he nor his friends conscious that his intellect has suffered or deteriorated thereby, to find suddenly that his circulatory and digestive systems are seriously and permanently damaged. On the other hand, many a drunkard has become a burden to his family and the community, with his personality deteriorated, his intellect rendered useless, while his circulation and digestion remain unimpaired, and he lives long years a nuisance and a burden to his environment. Since I have made the distinction between moderation and excess in the use of alcohol, it will be well to define what is regarded as excess, and what moderation, in order that the effects of both may be considered. Physiologic excess, it seems to me, has been best defined by a brilliant Frenchman named Duclaux, who says that any one has drunken alcohol to excess who one hour after he has taken it is conscious in any way of having done so. If after a drink of any alcoholic beverage has been taken, wine, whiskey, or whatever it may be, an hour later we feel ourselves flushed, tongue loosened, or if we are heavy and drowsy, or, if we find our natural reserve slightly in abeyance, if the judgment is not as sternly accurate as before partaking of the beverage, if the imagination is unusually active and close consecutive reasoning not as easy as before, if we think we do our work much better, but next morning realize we haven't accomplished quite as much or done it as well as we expected, then we have shown a physiologic excessive intake of alcohol, and an amount which if continued will produce damage somewhere in the body. Moderation in the use of alcohol means that it be taken in amounts of which one remains unconscious. This may seem a narrow and hard line to draw, and may seem to confine the amount of alcohol that may be consumed to much less than many people wish to indulge in. How much in actual amount this should be with any given individual depends upon that individual alone, and no one can be a law to any other individual than himself. If a man be engaged in severe manual labor or muscular exercise, he can consume more alcohol without detriment than when leading a sedentary life, although the character of the work that he will do may not be as good as if no alcohol were taken. THE MODERATE USE OF ALCOHOL The above definition, however, must suffice. We must fix some standard between moderation and excess, and the more accurately we define moderation, the more narrowly do we confine it. Judge by the above standard, alcohol taken in moderate doses does not seem more than to stimulate the digestive processes of the stomach, increase the flow of blood through the heart, increase the circulation in the periphery and skin, dilate the capillaries, and make it easier for the circulation to complete its cycles. When absorbed into the body in such doses, it can act as a food, and, in fact, as much as is burnt up by the body does act as a food, although it differs from other foods in that it is never stored up. It can replace in energy-giving properties sugars or fats, and being burnt up by the body can give out the equivalent of sugar and fat in muscular energy, and heat generated and given out by the body. Its effect is similar to that obtained by sugar and fats which are taken up by the body when needed and in the amounts requisite to the body at the moment, and it seems to be treated as far as can be seen as other foods for fuel. But it is not an economical fuel because the human organism does not perform its work as well as when there is no alcohol in the ration. Simultaneously when being consumed as food it is exerting its drug action. In this process it is the more easily available, and thus the sugar and fats are stored up while the alcohol is burnt up; it spares the fat consumption, often causing an increase of bodily weight through the putting on of fat. To those who are accustomed to its use, it seems also to spare the protein consumption of the body, but to those unaccustomed to its use it has the opposite effect, increasing the destructive breaking down of proteins. DANGER SIGNALS UNHEEDED Moderate indulgence in alcoholic beverages adds to the pleasures of existence with a great many men, and while it seems to increase their pleasures and broaden the extent of their mental experiences, it cannot be said to increase their powers of accurate mental activity, though it temporarily increases the imaginative flow of ideas. It relieves the feeling of both body and mental fatigue for the time being, an effect which may be an advantage or may be a distinct disadvantage, for fatigue is Nature's warning when to stop, and if we dull ourselves to this feeling and leave the warning unheeded, we may easily go on to harmful excesses of overwork and overexertion. It is doubtful if the moderate drinking of alcohol, as we have defined moderation, sets in motion processes which may so disturb the equilibrium of the body as to cause disease. Broadly speaking, the excessive use of alcohol injures the body in two ways. It injures the functional cells of the different organs for alcohol is distinctly a cellular poison, and it further disturbs the nutrition of the organs by its injurious action on the blood vessels which supply nutrition to the various parts of the body. Whether to replace the destroyed cells or as a result of the congestion there is also an increase in the connective tissue framework of the various organs. The action of alcohol on the circulation is one of the earliest effects which is shown after it is taken into the body. The flushing of the skin is a beginning paralysis of the minute capillary blood vessels. If habitually indulged in, the effect is a continuous dilatation of the vessels, although it seems for a while in the early stages that there is a toning up of the circulation. Yet excessive indulgence brings with it always a lowering of the blood pressure and finally the chronic congestions in the internal viscera. The action of the heart at first is to make it beat fuller and stronger, but if continued, the effect is also one of paralysis of its muscle and a diminution of the output of work done, and finally it is a paralyzer of the heart's action. In some persons, through its injury to the cardiac blood vessels and intrinsic muscle of the heart, it sets in motion those morbid processes which result in angina pectoris. Beginning with the stomach, we find that when alcohol is taken in excess it not only disturbs the processes of digestion that are then going on, if it is taken in greater amount than five per cent. of the stomach content, but it also acts directly on the mucous membrane, producing an irritant action. We have formed here a chronic congestion of the mucous membrane which produces swollen cells, and the digestive glands of the stomach produce an excess of mucus which interferes with digestion, and the resulting congestion interferes with the gastric secretions. It ends in producing a swollen, inflamed mucous membrane, often with hemorrhages. These processes may go on to an atrophic form of gastritis, in which the mucous membrane may be so atrophied that it is unable to secret sufficient gastric juice. The acid of the gastric juice, combining with certain substances in the intestine, is one of the stimulants which causes the production of the pancreatic secretion. The pancreas not alone digests the meats and other proteids, but it changes starch into sugar, and also has a fat splitting ferment. Thus we see that pancreatic digestion is a most important function, and does much more in the digestive work than the stomach. When therefore the acids of the gastric juice are lacking, there is an insufficient stimulus to the pancreas to pour out its complex juices and complete digestion. THE ATTACK UPON THE LIVER Alcohol is so rapidly absorbed from the stomach and the upper intestine, that it does not as a rule produce much change in the small intestines. The absorption of the digested food from the intestinal tract by alcoholics when recovering from a debauch is greater than normal, provided they have ceased from their alcohol. The absorbing powers of the intestine remain a long time, and is the reason that so many alcoholics appear so well nourished. The acids of the gastric juice also stimulate the excretion of bile from the liver, and combining with the same ferment, the secretion, being taken up by the blood, stimulates the liver to an increased secretion of bile. If therefore one has so injured the stomach with the taking of alcohol that the mucous membrane is unable to secrete a proper gastric juice, it is readily seen that the proper stimulation to the liver and the pancreas are lacking, and the equilibrium of the entire digestive process of the body is upset. The blood from all the intestines goes directly to the liver, the circulation of this organ being so arranged that the blood must filter through and bathe the liver cells before it is gathered into a central vein and returns into the general circulation. In fact the liver is the great chemical laboratory of the body, and the complex processes that go on there are as yet but little understood. The processes which I have described as generally characteristic of alcohol are seen to a very marked extent in the liver. There is a chronic congestion, and there is very frequently various forms of degeneration in the hepatic cells, and in many cases an increase in the connective tissue to such an extent as to cause the disease known as cirrhosis of the liver. Alcohol may also under certain circumstances produce such excessive fatty degeneration in the liver, as in itself to be a menace to existence, for if the liver ceases to do its proper work, the whole minute nutritive chemistry, the metabolism of the body, breaks to pieces. The liver stands an enormous amount of use and abuse, and it is one of the last organs to give way under great strain, but when its functional processes do break down, the existence of the individual is not much further prolonged. The liver can consume and break down a certain amount of alcohol, but when more is poured into it than it can assimilate, some of it must go through into the general circulation and over the body, flowing to the brain and poisoning this organ, and the other nervous tissues. The action of alcohol on the nervous tissues constitutes, in the eyes of the majority, the main injury that alcohol does to a human being. Certain it is that the action of alcohol on the brain does more to distort and pervert a man's relationship with his environment than any other action which alcohol has on the body. It is through the poison of this organ that the personality of the individual is so changed and so poisoned that a degeneration of the individual in character and morals is brought about. It is here, too, that the widest differences of tolerance and intolerance to alcohol are shown. Some men may consume enormous quantities and their mental balance apparently remain intact. Other individuals cannot take a single glass of wine without being distinctly affected by it, or rendered unmistakably drunken. The gross injuries found in the brain of those dying from the effects of alcohol are partly due to the effect of alcohol on the circulation and the injury to the blood vessels, thus diminishing the nutrition of the brain and injuring the brain tissue itself, and besides, as we have seen in other viscera, to the increase in connective tissue. It is not necessary here to go into the details of the minute formation of the cells, how each cell is formed of a cell body and many branches, as one may conceive, growing like a tree or bush with the many branches stretching out and touching other branches of related and adjacent cells. When these dendrites or branches are in contact, there is an interrelationship between the processes of the two cells. Alcohol causes a retraction of the tiny branches one from another and the cells are dissociated, so that the mental processes become dissociated from each other, and the cells themselves degenerate and are unable to carry on their functions; thus we see the functions of memory and of the reproduction of images by memory prevented, the inability of the mind to reason, through the inability of the mind to call up former experiences, feelings and ideas, and a weakening of the power of each cell to take in impressions. Every person who drinks alcohol to excess will not show every form of mental deterioration that may be produced by excessive indulgence, and the degree of deterioration in intelligence which goes to make up the sum total of mentality varies greatly in different individuals. All who drink alcohol to excess, however, show some diminution in their judgment. Judgment means the power of recalling various memories of perceptions through the senses, which have come in from the outside world, memories of ideas, memories of emotions, and all the complicated association of ideas that these bring up, and in the recalling of them weigh each one with the other and judge of the value between them. This also means reasoning and decision for action. This power of reasoning and judging is weakened in the alcoholic, and in any brain long poisoned by alcohol it is an impossibility to exercise it. Memory itself is also weakened. There is excessive forgetfulness of the recent past, and in some cases of advanced alcoholism there is absolute forgetfulness of wide gaps of years; a man may be unable to remember anything from the last five minutes back for twenty years, and then remember back to childhood. The memories of childhood are more easily stamped on the brain than are those of adult life, both because it takes less to impress a child, and because there is not the complexity of ideas crowding into the brain, nor the complexity of association of ideas to be recorded. Therefore memories of childhood make a deeper impress and last longer, and so the complex memories of the adult are the first to be forgotten in the alcoholic, and those of childhood remain. EFFECT UPON MEMORY AND JUDGMENT Besides the absolute forgetfulness, there is another form of forgetfulness in the alcoholic which often produces a ludicrous result. This is a perversion of memory. The person may be in a perfectly strange place and meet strangers, and yet be convinced that he has seen the place and met the strangers before, and greet them as old friends. This feeling of having been there before occurs in normal, healthy people, and may be simply the expression of momentary fatigue, or proceed from some unknown cause; but it is grossly exaggerated in the alcoholic, and cannot as easily be straightened out as in the normal mind. The imaginative faculties of the mind are at first heightened by alcohol, and this often produces bright, witty remarks in those who have taken enough alcohol to have their imaginations stimulated and their judgment slightly inhibited, so that their ideas crowd readily to their minds and their tongues are loosened. Often, however, they say things which though bright and witty had better be left unsaid, and this is an indication of the beginning paralysis of their judgment. The imaginative faculties, however, are not constructively increased by alcohol, and it does not conduce to reproduction and creative ability, which requires memory and constructive thought. In this connection Kraeplin's experiments have shown that alcohol makes easy the liberation of movements from the cortical areas of the brain, that is, the transformation of ideas and memories of movements into deeds, but no real mental power is given; for while a man may feel that he is doing things better with than without alcohol, as a matter of fact he is not doing them so well. This sense of self-approbation is very characteristic of the alcoholic. His judgment is gone, not only in regard to his mental processes, but very essentially regarding himself, and it may be truly said that while alcohol shrinks the judgment, it swells the self-conceit. This abnormally good opinion of his diminished abilities renders the alcoholic exceedingly complacent; he is persuaded that at any time he can give up drinking if he chooses, and he is unable to appreciate the rapid deterioration of his intellect. One cannot separate the will of an individual from his personality, and the weak-willed individuals, while they may possess many other agreeable characteristics, are lacking in the progressive force which strong characters possess. Alcohol weakens the will, causes the personality itself to deteriorate, and there is a lack of initiative; there is the ever ready specious explanation why nothing is ever done; there is a boastful conceited estimation of what can be done. With the judgment perverted the alcoholic cannot act at the proper time in the right way, no matter how much he may be willing to admit the necessity for correct action, and on the other hand he is equally powerless to prevent wrong action on his part, especially when such action has anything to do with a further indulgence in his alcohol. The emotional side of the personality shows the same deterioration from the higher to the lower, as do the other intellectual processes. It is the same story that the last to come are the first to go, and the first to come are the last to go. All emotions of refinement, those of the esthetic development, disappear the earliest. The sense of affection and moral responsibility, duty to family and friends deteriorate and vanish. There is nothing left but the consideration of what affects the self, and an alcoholic is the most studied, selfish soul that exists. The remaining emotions of anger, fear and nutritional reaction for food and drink remain to the last, as these are the most primitive of the emotions. With the weak will preventing action, and with the loss of memory and inability for continuity of thought, we find the emotion of fear predominating to a very noticeable extent. This is true whether the alcoholic be delirious or not, for in all forms of alcoholic delirium, fear is a very predominant symptom. In some forms of delirium tremens, the intensity of the fear is a fair criterion of the degree of the poisoning. The various senses of sight, hearing and taste are dulled, because the cells producing the mental perceptions are equally poisoned with the rest of the mind. WEAKENING THE MORAL FIBER With the inaccuracy of sense perception and loss of memory and diminished judgment, one cannot be surprised to find that alcoholics are notoriously inaccurate, unreliable and untruthful. They cannot tell the truth even with assistance. But often what is credited to them as untruthfulness is mere inability to perceive things accurately, to remember accurately, and therefore to state things accurately. With the deterioration of the personality, that is, of the will, one would naturally expect that the deterioration of morals would go hand in hand. One cannot remain moral or virtuous without sufficient will to do so, and without sufficient will to make a struggle for self-control, and this is so in the case of a mind poisoned by alcohol. I do not claim that lack of morals is a disease, but moral development has appeared late in the development of the race, and such racial development is expressed by the individual. With the deteriorated mentality of the alcoholic, we must expect that the characteristics of late development will be the first to go, and for this reason we must realize that alcoholism naturally tends to immorality and crime. As a matter of fact, it is claimed that fifty per cent. of the crimes in France and forty-one per cent. in Germany are due to alcoholism, and no doubt in England and America the percentage is equally high. As might be expected, the offenses are principally those of disregard of the rights of others, contempt of law and order, assault, disturbances of domestic peace and robbery, and to all these crimes the habitual drunkard is particularly prone. But it is not my purpose to discuss the effect of alcohol in any way except as it pertains to the human body, nor to go into the reasons why men so poison their bodies as to bring about these deleterious results. The deterioration that we have been considering, when occurring in the mind, would naturally cause one to infer that insanity must also be common in those who are addicted to alcohol, and such is indeed the case. In New York State alone I believe it can be safely said that fully ten per cent. of the women and thirty per cent. of the men confined in the state asylums are there through forms of insanity caused by alcohol. It will not profit us to go into the various forms of alcoholic insanity, but when we realize that one-third of the men in the insane asylums to-day in New York are there because of excessive indulgence in alcohol, and also that the State spends annually over six million dollars to care for them, we realize both the terrible ravages that alcoholic poison has made on the mentality of men and the enormous cost that it entails upon the community. As to the alcohol circulating in the blood, there is an endeavor naturally to get rid of it as with all poisons, and the kidneys in this endeavor show the same processes that are elsewhere seen, of destruction of the specific cells, congestion, and increased connective tissue growth. Whether it is that these cells are destroyed in an endeavor to eliminate various substances for which they are not fitted and break down under the strain, or whether they are directly poisoned by the alcohol itself, the resultant factors are those best understood in the lay mind as acute and chronic Bright's disease. Whether or not alcohol produces these various processes in the kidneys which result in these diseased conditions, there is no question but that certain of these diseased conditions appear more frequently in alcoholics than in others. Besides the destructive processes about which we have been speaking in the various viscera, there are certain results of alcohol that may be said to affect the general condition of the individual. By this I mean the general resistance to bacterial infection, the resistance to injury to the body, and the ability to repair such injuries. Alcohol diminishes the power of the body to resist bacterial infection. The alcoholic is more prone to acquire bacterial diseases, and when these are acquired he is infinitely less able to resist them. In Bellevue Hospital in 1904 there were 1,001 patients with lobar pneumonia. Of these, 667 gave a history of alcoholism; 334 were non-alcoholics, which means that there were twice as many alcoholics suffering from this disease as non-alcoholics. Among the alcoholics the mortality was fifty per cent., and among the non-alcoholics, 23.9 per cent. Here again the mortality among the alcoholics was more than double that which prevailed among those who had not taken this narcotic. The same is true of other infectious diseases. When injuries occur to the body, such as broken legs or arms, there is a very wide difference in the picture produced in those who have drunk to excess, and those who have been sober. The shock produced in these instances is greater in the weakened nervous system of the alcoholic, and among those who have habitually taken alcohol there is a very great tendency after broken bones to develop delirium tremens, and when this occurs in these patients, the outlook is always very grave. A broken leg or arm does not bring with it any such danger to those who have led sober lives. The process of recovery from disease and accident, owing to the deteriorated nervous system and the poisoned circulatory system, is much slower in alcoholics than in others. WEAK WILLS INHERITED Unfortunately, the injury which alcohol does, and the processes of deterioration which it sets on foot, do not end with the individual. Alcohol poisons and injures the germ cells of both sexes, and the offspring of those addicted to its use may inherit a weakened and injured nervous system. The taste for alcohol, the craving, so called, is not inherited. This idea that, because a man has an alcoholic father or mother, he inherits the taste for alcohol, is a superstition that has been used by the weak as an excuse both for overindulgence in alcohol, and as a further excuse why no attempt should be made to check their indulgence. What is inherited is a weak, unstable intellect and personality, prone to excesses in all things, one that is weak-willed and weak in resistance to temptation, and one more easily affected by alcohol than the ordinary normal individual. There is also often inherited a lack of moral perception and moral sense, causing the individual to do things which make one doubt his sanity; yet he can not be called insane, but really wanders in the border line between mad and bad, which is often worse than insanity itself. Alcoholic inheritance does not stop at instability of the nervous system or weakness of the personality, and one is rather staggered to realize the high percentage of imbecile, epileptic and weak-minded children that may be born to alcoholic parents. A detailed study of the imbecile school-children throughout all Switzerland showed that fifty per cent. of them were born in the days nine months after the periods of greatest alcoholic indulgence, such as the New Year, the Carnival, and the grape harvest, and that the births of the other half of the imbeciles were evenly scattered through the remaining thirty-eight weeks of the year. It has been shown that in France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland, from twenty-eight to seventy per cent. of the epileptics in some of the institutions were the descendants of alcoholics. Demme, in comparing the results of the health and death rates between ten alcoholic families and ten non-alcoholic families, found that in the alcoholic families out of fifty-seven children, twenty-five were still-born or died in the first month of life; twenty-two were designated as sick, and ten as healthy--while in the non-alcoholic families, five were still-born or died early, six were sick, and fifty were healthy. Thus only 17.5 per cent. in the alcoholic families were healthy, while eighty-two per cent. in the non-alcoholic families were healthy, and only eighteen per cent. not healthy. The percentages, therefore, were almost exactly reversed. These statistics mean that not alone may the chronic alcoholic bequeath his poisoned nervous system to posterity, but from the statistics in Switzerland of the imbecile children, we must realize that even a temporary debauch may leave a curse upon the innocent child; they also mean that alcohol produces those processes in the individual which tend to the degeneration of the race, and tend after a few generations to extinction, and thus does Nature benefit the race by turning a curse into a blessing through the extinction of the degenerate. Footnote: [1] I have heard of a New Yorker who gave up his attendance as a member of the executive committee of a prominent and very useful reform association because, though an occasional smoker, he could not endure the tobacco-laden atmosphere of the room where the committee met. To this day his associates probably think him a very lukewarm worker in the cause! Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Punctuation has been corrected without note. The following misprints have been corrected: "merly" corrected to "merely" (page 156) "dangerout" corrected to "dangerous" (page 199) "coedine" corrected to "codeine" (page 216) Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. 
44043	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE TRUTH ABOUT OPIUM. BEING A _REFUTATION OF THE FALLACIES OF THE ANTI-OPIUM SOCIETY AND A DEFENCE OF THE INDO-CHINA OPIUM TRADE_. BY WILLIAM H. BRERETON, LATE OF HONG KONG. "_Let truth and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?_"--JOHN MILTON. _SECOND EDITION._ LONDON: W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. PUBLISHERS TO THE INDIA OFFICE. 1883. (_All rights reserved._) LONDON: PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In the preface to my first edition I expressed a hope that these lectures, however imperfect, would prove in some degree instrumental towards breaking up the Anti-Opium confederacy, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that my anticipations have not been altogether disappointed. The lectures were well received by the public and the press, and struck the Anti-Opium Society and its versatile Secretary, the Rev. Mr. Storrs Turner, with such consternation that, in the language of people in difficulties, "business was discontinued until further notice." Mr. Storrs Turner,--the motive power which kept the Anti-Opium machine working,--who had hitherto been so active, aggressive, and demonstrative--a very Mercutio in volubility and fertility of resource,--became suddenly silent, mute as the harp on Tara's walls. He who once was resonant as the lion, like Bottom the Weaver, moderated his tone, and roared from thenceforth "gently as any sucking dove." Until the delivery of my lectures, no lark at early morn was half so lively or jubilant. Letters to the newspapers, articles in magazines, improvised lectures and speeches, flew from him like chaff from the winnowing-machine. Heaven help the unlucky individual who had the temerity to differ from him on the opium question, for Mr. Storrs Turner would, as the phrase goes, "come down upon him sharp." This kind of light skirmishing suited him exactly; it kept alive public interest in the Anti-Opium delusion, and no doubt brought grist to the mill, without committing him to anything in particular, or calling for any extraordinary draft upon his imagination or resources. He had only to reiterate loud enough the cuckoo cry that his deluded followers had so long recognised as the pæan of victory. But when my lectures were delivered, and it was announced that they would be published, "a change came o'er the spirit of his dream." Having for so many years had practically all the field to himself, it had never occurred to him that another and more competent witness from China, where all these imaginary evils from opium smoking were alleged to be taking place,--who had had better opportunities of learning the truth about opium than he could possibly have had, and who had turned those opportunities to good account,--should appear and refute his fallacies. This was a _dénouement_ that neither he nor his Society was prepared for, and dismay and silence prevailed in consequence in the enemy's camp. And the tents were all silent,--the banners unflown,-- The lances unlifted,--the trumpet unblown. My lectures were delivered in February, 1882. The Rev. Mr. Storrs Turner attended them and corresponded with me upon the subject. In those lectures I criticized his book and pointed out its misleading features and inaccuracies; but, recognizing the force of Sir John Falstaff's maxim, that "the better part of valour is discretion," he never attempted to controvert my case, nor justify himself or the Anti-Opium Society, who for so many years had made such noise in the world. It was only in October, 1882,--eight months after my lectures had been delivered,--after an article appeared in the _London and China Telegraph_, commenting on the collapse of the Anti-Opium Society,--that Mr. Storrs Turner, like Munchausen's remarkable hunting-horn, gave utterance to a few feeble notes, to the effect that his Society was still alive; for he well knew that all that I had stated in those lectures I could prove to the hilt,--aye, ten times over. But if Mr. Storrs Turner has declined the contest, an acolyte of his, Mr. B. Broomhall,--who appears to be the Secretary of the Inland China Mission, and one of the "Executive Committee" of the Anti-Opium Society,--comes upon the scene like King Hamlet's ghost, declaring that he "could a tale unfold, whose lightest breath would harrow up your souls, freeze the hot blood, and make each particular hair to stand on end." Plagiarising, if not pirating, my title, with a colourable addition of the word "Smoking," he produces, in November 1882, a compilation entitled "The Truth about Opium-_Smoking_," rather a thick pamphlet, made up of excerpts from all the writings and speeches, good, bad, and indifferent, that have been published and delivered within the last thirty years on the Anti-Opium side of the question, with some critical matter of his own, from all of which it appears most conclusively that he, Mr. B. Broomhall, is perfectly innocent of the subject he undertakes to enlighten the world upon. I think I see through this gentleman and his objects pretty well. With respect to the authors of these writings and speeches, I may say at once that I hold them in as much respect as Mr. B. Broomhall does himself. Some of them are very eminent men, who, apart from this opium delusion, are ornaments to their country, and all, I have no doubt, are men of spotless honour and integrity; but what, after all, does that prove? Why, simply the _bona fides_ of these gentlemen, which no one ever questioned, and nothing more;--that in writing those pamphlets and articles they honestly believed they were giving utterance to facts and recording circumstances which were true, and which it was for the good of society should be widely known. The good and just man is as liable to be deceived as he who is less perfect,--indeed, more so, for his very amiability and guilelessness of heart allay suspicion and make him an easier prey to the designing and unscrupulous. Not one of those gentlemen, save Sir Rutherford Alcock, and one or two others, whose opinions are coincident, in fact, with my own, have had any actual personal knowledge of the facts they write about, and such a statement as the following might well be printed in the front of each of their books or writings, viz.: "I have read certain books and articles in newspapers, and heard speeches upon the opium question, which I believe to be true, and on such assumption the following pages are my views upon the subject." To prove to my readers the utterly unreliable and deceptive character of Mr. Broomhall's compilation, it is only necessary to refer to one passage, which will be found at page 122, where it is gravely put forward THAT THE INDIAN MUTINY WAS BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE INDO-CHINA OPIUM TRADE! After that, Tenterden Steeple and the Goodwin Sands will hardly seem so disconnected as has been hitherto commonly supposed. But then the book is illustrated; there are the pictures copied from the _Graphic_. There is the poppy, and there is the opium pipe. Of course Mr. B. Broomhall knows all about opium smoking,--or the illustrations would not be there. Mr. Crummles, with his "splendid tub and real pump," could not have done better. As to Mr. B. Broomhall's remarks respecting my book I have very little to say; there is nothing in them. Like Mr. Storrs Turner, he has found it a poser, and has said very little respecting it. When your opponent gets the worst of an argument, if he does not honestly acknowledge his discomfiture, he generally follows one of two courses--either he loses his temper and takes to scolding, or he suddenly discovers something wonderfully funny in your arguments which no one else was able to detect. Mr. B. Broomhall eschews the former, but adopts the latter course. He selects a paragraph or two, and says, "That is ludicrous," but he never condescends to enlighten his readers as to where the fun lies, or in what the drollery consists. But, although Mr. B. Broomhall makes light of my book, he has thought proper to imitate its title. He evidently thought there was nothing ludicrous in _that_. This was very "smart," but smartness is a quality not much appreciated on this side of the Atlantic. As my book had dealt a heavy blow to the Anti-Opium Society, and a cheap edition might prove still more damaging, an opposition book, with a similar title, might so confuse the public as to be mistaken for mine. Imitation has been said to be the sincerest flattery, but I dislike adulation even when administered by the Anti-Opium Society. This gentleman and his compilation bring very forcibly to my mind the profound Mr. Pott, of the _Eatanswill Gazette_, who, having written a series of recondite articles on _Chinese Metaphysics_, brought his lucubrations to the notice of his friend, Mr. Pickwick. That gentleman ventured to remark that the subject seemed an abstruse one. "Very true," returned Mr. Pott, with a smile of intellectual superiority, "but I crammed for it--I read up the subject in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. I looked for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China under the letter C, and combined the information." This seems to be the sort of process by which Mr. B. Broomhall has arrived at his knowledge on the opium question, and with similar results. I do not wish to be too hard upon this gentleman, who, after all, may have been only a cat's-paw in the matter--for it must not be forgotten that there is Mr. Storrs Turner in the background; but he himself, on reflection, must, I think, admit that it was going a little too far to introduce into his compilation a parody--which some might call a vulgar parody--on one of the verses of Bishop Heber's very beautiful and world-renowned Missionary Hymn. I will not give my readers the "elegant extract," but they can find it for themselves at page 117. I have in this edition amplified the matter and given extracts from the Reports of Mr. William Donald Spence, Her Majesty's Consul at Ichang, and Mr. E. Colborne Baber's _Travels and Researches in Western China_, which throw a flood of light upon the opium question. I have also quoted from a very valuable work of Don Sinibaldo de Mas, an accomplished Chinese scholar, formerly Spanish Minister to the Court of Peking, published in Paris in 1858, which in itself is a complete vindication of the opium policy of Her Majesty's Government in India and China, and an able refutation of the unfounded views of the Anti-Opium Society; and I believe this edition of _The Truth about Opium_ will be found a very complete defence of the Indo-China opium trade. _30th January 1883._ PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. The following lectures were given in pursuance of a determination I came to some six years ago in Hong Kong, viz. that if I lived to return to England I should take some steps, either by public lectures or by the publication of a book, to expose the mischievous fallacies disseminated by the "Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade." About that time nearly every mail brought out newspapers to China containing reports of meetings held in England condemnatory of the Indo-China opium trade, at which resolutions were made containing the grossest mis-statements and exaggerations as to opium-smoking, and also the most unfounded charges against all parties engaged in the opium trade, showing clearly, to my mind, that not one of the speakers at those meetings really understood the subject he spoke about so fluently. I have now, happily, been able to carry out my intention. Unfortunately, I was deprived of the opportunity of delivering these lectures in Exeter Hall, which was not only more central than St. James's Hall, but where I could have selected a more convenient hour for the purpose than the only time the Secretary of the latter Company could place at my disposal, the reason being that the Committee of Exeter Hall refused to allow me its use for the purpose of refuting the false and untenable allegations of the Anti-Opium Society, an act of intolerance which I think I am justified in exposing. I trust, however, that any drawback on this account will be compensated for by the publication of the lectures. I am well aware that this volume has many imperfections, but there is one respect in which I cannot reproach myself with having erred, and that is, in having overstepped the bounds of truth. I have the satisfaction of knowing that all I have stated in the lectures is substantially true and correct, and with such a consciousness I entertain a confident hope that they will prove in a humble way instrumental towards breaking up the Anti-Opium confederacy, the objects of which are as undeserving of support as they have proved mischievous in their tendency. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. Objects of the Lectures.--Lectures based upon principle and not upon grounds of expediency.--Lecturer's knowledge of the Opium question derived from actual acquaintance with the facts, acquired during nearly fifteen years' residence in Hong Kong.--Opium smoking as practised by the Chinese perfectly innocuous, beneficial rather than injurious.--Opinion of Dr. Ayres.--Charges made by the Anti-Opium Society and its supporters false and unfounded.--Alleged knowledge of the members and supporters of the Anti-Opium Society founded on hearsay evidence of the worst and most untrustworthy character.--Lecturer not acting in the interests of the British merchants in China, nor of any other party or person.--Has no personal interest in the Opium question, and is actuated only by a desire to dispel the false and mischievous delusions spread abroad in England by the Anti-Opium Society.--British and other foreign residents in China hold opposite views to those disseminated by the Anti-Opium people.--British merchants as a body have no interest in the trade.--China a great Empire as large as Europe, with a much greater population.--Country and people of China described.--Impossible to demoralize and debase such a people.--Opium smoking a general custom throughout the eighteen provinces of China.-- Reasons for the prolonged existence of the Anti-Opium Society.--False charges of the Anti-Opium Society respecting the Indo-China Opium trade more fully formulated.--Petition to the House of Commons of the Protestant Missionaries at Peking.--Refusal to sign it of the Rev. F. Galpin.--If half those charges were true the British residents in China would be the first to raise their voices against the Opium trade.--Official Yellow Book published by Sir Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, negatives the allegations of the members of the Anti-Opium Society and the Protestant Missionaries.--Roman Catholic Missionaries make no complaint against the Indo-China Opium trade.--Allegations of the Anti-Opium Society that British trade with China has suffered from the alleged forcing of Opium upon China untrue.--Friendly relations between the British merchants in China and the Chinese people.--Englishmen more esteemed by the Chinese than any other nation.--Hong Kong described.-- Government of China described.--Hong Kong the head-quarters of the Indo-China Opium trade, Chinese residing there have better means of procuring the drug than elsewhere--no sufferers from Opium smoking found there.--Exposure by Dr. Ayres, the Colonial Surgeon of Hong Kong, of the fallacy that Opium smoking, although indulged in for years, cannot be dropped without injury to the system.--Fallacy of comparing the Chinese with the savages of Central Africa by the Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society exposed.--Archdeacon Gray, a resident for twenty years at Canton, silent, in his recent work on China and her people, as to the alleged iniquity of the Indo-China Opium trade.--Character of the Chinese as described by various authors.--Chinese a frugal and abstemious people.-- Opium smoking less injurious than beer or tobacco.--Charges of the Anti-Opium Society based upon fallacies; those fallacies detailed.-- Alleged objections of the Chinese to receive the Gospel on account of the Indo-China Opium trade the merest subterfuge, and utterly absurd and untenable.--The opinion of the late John Crawfurd, Esq., F.R.S., formerly Governor of the Straits Settlements.--His Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent countries. Pages 1-49 LECTURE II. Hearsay testimony upon which charges of the Anti-Opium Society founded explained.--Chinese a polite people and treat Missionaries courteously, but despise Christianity, and will not tell Missionaries the truth about Opium.--Respectable Chinese would become an object of scorn and disgrace to their fellow-countrymen if they embraced Christianity.--Professing Chinese Christians in most cases impostors.--Heathen Chinese as a rule more trustworthy than so-called Christian converts.--Missionary clergymen in China have not the confidence of the Chinese people, and draw their information as to Opium smoking from polluted sources.--Difference between Missionary clergymen in China and the clergymen of all denominations in England as regards knowledge of the people they live amongst.--Missionaries in China wholly responsible for the imposture prevailing in England as to Opium smoking in China.--Although the Chinese are a spirit-drinking people, they never drink to excess.--Drunkenness unknown amongst Chinese.--Chinese-American treaty a sham as regards Opium.--Sir J. H. Pease, M.P., duped by the "bogus" clause as to Opium.--His speech on the Opium question in 1881.--Chinese smoke Opium wherever they go.--As much Opium imported into China now as before the sham treaty.--Opium a luxury which only the well-to-do can freely indulge in.--Explanation of the means by which unfounded statements respecting Opium are propagated.--Apologue by way of example.--Proof of the state of things explained by the apologue furnished by the Rev. Storrs Turner and Dr. Ayres.--First fallacy, that the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has been recently introduced there, presumably by British agency, and the second fallacy, that Opium smoking in China is now and always has been confined to a small per-centage of the population, but which, owing to the importation into the country of Indian Opium, is rapidly increasing, refuted and the truth fully stated.--Testimony of Mr. W. Donald Spence and Mr. E. Colborne Baber, and Sir Rutherford Alcock. Pages 50-100 LECTURE III. Third and fifth fallacies upon which the members of the Anti-Opium Society and its supporters are misled.--Opium eating and Opium smoking contrasted with spirit drinking.--Valuable curative properties of Opium.--Spirit drinking produces organic and incurable diseases, is a fruitful cause of insanity, and leads to ruin and destruction.--The like effects admittedly not due to Opium.--Opium eating and Opium smoking totally distinct.-- Whatever the effects of Opium eating, Opium smoking perfectly innocuous.-- Anti-Opium advocates cunningly try to mix the two together.--Disingenuous conduct in this respect of the Rev. Storrs Turner--Mr. Turner so great an enthusiast as not to be able to see the difference.--Testimony of Dr. Eatwell as to the use of Opium.--Difference between Opium eating and Opium smoking explained in the case of tobacco smoking.--Tobacco taken internally a deadly poison, harmless when smoked.--Medical testimony as to the poisonous quality of tobacco and its alkaloid, nicotine.--Opium a valuable medicine, without any known substitute.--Anti-Tobacco Smoking Society, once formed the same as the Anti-Opium Society, put down by the common sense of the community, the like fate awaits the Anti-Opium Society.--Testimony of Dr. Sir George Birdwood, Surgeon-General Moore, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Dr. Ayres, and W. Brend, M.R.C.S., as to Opium.--Small quantity of Indian Opium imported into China.--Enormous amount of spirits consumed in the United Kingdom.--Anti-Opium Society blind to the latter, energetic as to the former a purely sentimental grievance.--Fallacy of Anti-Opium Society that supply creates demand refuted and exposed.-- Remaining fallacies refuted.--Effects of suppression of Indo-China Opium trade.--Missionaries detested in China.--Indian Opium welcomed.--Saying of Prince Kung.--Treaty of Tientsin explained and defended.--Erroneous notions of the Protestant Missionaries as to that treaty.--Abused by Missionaries, yet the treaty the Missionaries only charter.--Testimony of H. N. Lay and Lawrence Olyphant.--Spurious copy of De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater," published by Anti-Opium people.-- Testimony of Don Sinibaldo de Mas, formerly Spanish Minister in China, a powerful defence of the Indo-China Opium trade.--Policy of the Indian Government as regards Opium wisest and best.--Alleged proposal of Lord Lawrence to alter that policy.--Fallacy involved in such proposal exposed.--Abrogation of Indo-Opium trade injurious if not destructive to the spread of the Gospel in China.--False charge of smuggling by British merchants in China exposed and refuted.--Un-English policy of the Anti-Opium Society exposed.--Recapitulation.--Benevolence of the British public.--Necessity for seeing that it is not diverted into worthless channels.--Anti-Opium Society, mischievous, presenting a melancholy record of energies wasted, talents misapplied, wealth uselessly squandered, charity perverted, and philanthropy run mad.--Society should be dissolved and its funds transferred to Missionaries.--Missionaries should not mix up Christianity and Opium.--Missionaries defended and encouraged. Pages 101-174 APPENDIX. Official Letter of Francis Bulkeley Johnson, Esq., of the firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co., of Hong Kong and China, Chairman of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce, to Charles Magniac, Esq., M.P., the President of the London Chamber of Commerce, respecting the charge of smuggling against the British merchants in China, and giving particulars of the Indo-China Opium trade. Pages 177-183 THE TRUTH ABOUT OPIUM. LECTURE I. The object of these lectures is to tell you what I know about opium smoking in China--a very important subject, involving the retention or loss of more than seven millions sterling to the revenue of India, and what is far more precious, the character and reputation of this great country. With respect to the former, I would simply observe that I do not intend to deal with the question on mere grounds of expediency, strong as such grounds unquestionably are, for, if I believed that one-half of what is asserted by the "ANGLO-ORIENTAL SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE OPIUM TRADE," as to the alleged baneful effects of opium smoking upon the Chinese, were true, I should be the first to raise my humble voice against the traffic, even though it involved the loss, not of seven millions sterling, but of seventy times seven. But it is because I know that these statements and all the grave charges made by the supporters of that society, and repeated from day to day, against the Government of India and the Government of this country, and also against the British merchants of China, to be not only gross exaggerations but absolutely untrue--mere shadowy figments, phantasies, and delusions--that I come forward to draw aside the curtain, and show you that behind these charges there is no substance. Were my knowledge of the opium question derived merely from books and pamphlets, articles in the newspapers, and ordinary gossip, I would not venture to trespass upon your time and attention, because in that respect you have at your disposal the same means of information as I have myself. But I come before you with considerable personal experience, and special knowledge of the subject, having lived and practised as a solicitor for nearly fifteen years in Hong Kong, where I had daily experience, not only of the custom and effects of opium smoking, but also of the trade in opium in both its crude and prepared state. I had there the honour of being solicitor to the leading British and other foreign firms, as well as to the Chinese, from the wealthy merchant to the humble coolie; so that during the whole of that period down to the present time I have had intimate relations in China with foreigners and natives, especially with those engaged in the opium trade. Under these circumstances I had daily intercourse with the people from whom the best and most trustworthy information on the subject of opium and opium smoking could be obtained, and my experience is that opium smoking, as practised by the Chinese, is perfectly innocuous. This is a fact so patent that it forces itself upon the attention of every intelligent resident in China who has given ordinary attention to the subject. The whole question at issue is involved in this one point, for if I show you that opium smoking in China is as harmless, if, indeed, not more so, as beer drinking in England, as I promise you I shall do most conclusively, then _cadit quæstio_, there is nothing further in dispute; the Indo-Chinese opium trade will then stand out--as I say it does--free from objection upon moral, political, and social grounds, and the occupation of the Anti-Opium agitators, like Othello's, will be gone. It is true that the opponents of the Indo-Chinese opium trade interlard their case with political matters wholly beside the question; this they do to make that question look a bigger one than it really is, so as to throw dust in the eyes of the public and impose upon weak minds. For instance, they drag in the miscalled "Opium War" and ring the changes upon it. That war, whether justifiable or not, cannot affect the points at issue. It is an accomplished fact, and it is idle now to introduce it into the present opium question. And though I shall be obliged to go pretty fully into the whole controversy, I ask you to keep your minds steadily fixed upon the real question, which is briefly this: Is opium smoking, as practised in China, detrimental to health and morals, and if so, does the Indo-Chinese opium trade contribute to these results? I may now at the outset assure you that I do not give expression to my views in the interests of the merchants of China, whether native or foreign, or on behalf of any party whatsoever; nor do I come before you with any personal object, because neither directly nor indirectly have I any pecuniary or personal concern in the opium question, nor, indeed, in any commercial matter in Hong Kong or China. I simply find that unfounded delusions have taken possession of the public mind upon the subject, which have had most mischievous consequences, and are still working much evil. These I wish to dispel, if I can. Furthermore, I have delivered and published these lectures at my own cost, unaided by any other person, so, I think, under these circumstances, that I have some right to be regarded as an impartial witness. I am aware of no subject, involving only simple matters of fact, and outside the region of party politics, upon which so much discussion has been expended, and about which such widely different opinions are prevalent, as this opium question. On the one side, it is said that, for selfish purposes, we have forced and are still forcing opium upon the people of China; that the Indian Government, with the acquiescence and support of the Imperial Government, cultivates the drug for the purpose of adding seven or eight millions sterling to its revenue, and, with full knowledge of its alleged baneful consequences to the natives of China, exports it to that country. A further charge, moreover, is brought against the British merchants, that they participate in this trade for gain, or, as it is put by the Rev. Mr. Storrs Turner, formerly a missionary clergyman at Hong Kong, but now and for many years the active and energetic Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society, to enable them to make "princely fortunes." That is the favourite expression of Mr. Turner, who finds, no doubt, that it takes with certain small sections of the public, readier to believe evil of their own countrymen than of the people of other countries, under the belief, perhaps, that in doing so they best display the purity and disinterestedness of their conduct. The Anti-Opium Society and its supporters assert as an incontestable fact that opium smoking is fatal, not only to the body but to the soul; meaning, I suppose, that the custom is destructive to the physical, and demoralising to the moral nature of its votaries, and that the opium traffic is regarded by the people of China with such horror that it prevents the natives from receiving the Gospel from those who help to supply them with this drug, viz., the British people. It is alleged that the use of opium demoralises the Chinese, that it ruins and saps the manhood of the whole nation, with a host of concomitant evils, to which I shall by and by refer more particularly, the whole involving the utmost turpitude, the greatest guilt and the worst depravity on the part of England and the English Government, and still more especially on that of the Indian Government and the British merchants in China. Here I may observe, in passing, that if the objection to opium on the part of the Chinese is so strong, it is rather remarkable that they should not only greedily purchase all the Indian opium we can send them, but cultivate the drug to an enormous extent in their own country. The Anti-Opium Society and its supporters further say that opium culture and opium smoking are of comparatively recent origin in China; and although they do not directly allege that we have introduced those practices, there is throughout all their writings and speeches "a fond desire, a pleasing hope" that the readers or hearers of their books and speeches will form that opinion for themselves. I should tell you that those who hold directly contrary views consist of all the British residents in China, with the exception of some of the Protestant missionaries (of whom I desire to speak with respect), comprising the British merchants, their numerous assistants (an educated and most intelligent body), professional men, traders of all classes, and also all the other foreign merchants and residents in the country--German, American, and others, for there are many nationalities to be met with in China, who with the British form one harmonious community. Take all these men, differing in nationality and religious persuasions as they do, and I venture to say that you will not find one per cent. of them who will not tell you that the views put forward by these missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society are utterly preposterous, false, and unreal--who will not declare that opium smoking in China is a harmless if not an absolutely beneficial practice; that it produces no decadence in mind or body, and that the allegations as to its demoralising effects are simply untrue. Those who have taken a special interest in the subject know that the poppy is indigenous to China, as it is to the rest of Asia, that opium smoking is and has been a universal custom throughout China, probably for more than a thousand years; that this custom is not confined to a few, but is general amongst the adult male population; limited only, in fact, by the means of procuring the drug. That is my experience also; it is corroborated by others, and therefore I may assert it as a fact. I have used the adjective "Protestant" because, although there are a great number of Roman Catholic and some Greek missionaries in China, no complaint against the opium trade has ever to my knowledge been made by one of these missionaries. Now, why is this belief so prevalent? Because those foreign residents daily mix with the Chinese, know their habits and customs, hear them talk, sell to them, and buy from them, and being aware, as they all are, of the controversy going on here about opium, and the strenuous efforts that are being made in this country to prevent the Indian Government from allowing opium to be imported into China, they take a greater interest in the subject, and examine the question more carefully than they otherwise might. They, I say, being on the ground and knowing the very people who smoke opium and who have smoked it for years, without injury or decay to their bodily or mental health, have irresistibly come to the same conclusion as I have. For myself, I may say that I have taken a very great interest in the subject, particularly during the past five or six years. I have tried in vain to find out those pitiable victims of opium smoking who have been so much spoken of in books, in newspapers, and on public platforms. Day after day I have gone through the most populous parts of Hong Kong, which is a large city, having about one hundred and fifty thousand Chinese inhabitants--in both the wealthiest and poorest quarters. I have daily had in my office Chinese of all classes, seeing them, speaking to them, interrogating them upon different subjects, and I have never found amongst them any of these miserable victims to opium smoking. On the contrary, more acute, knowing, and intelligent people than these very opium smokers I have rarely met with. Now, Hong Kong may be said to be, and is, in fact, the headquarters in China of the opium trade. It is there that all the opium coming from India and Persia is first brought. It is, in fact, the entrepôt or depôt from which all other parts of China are supplied with the drug. Furthermore, it is the port whence "prepared opium," the condition in which the drug is smoked, is mostly manufactured and exported to the Chinese in all other parts of the world, for wherever he goes, the Chinaman, if he can afford it, must have his opium-pipe. Moreover, the Chinese of Hong Kong get much better wages and make larger profits in their trades and businesses than they could obtain in their own country; and can, therefore, better afford to enjoy the luxury of the pipe than their own countrymen in China. So that if opium smoking produced the evil consequences alleged, Hong Kong is unquestionably the place where those consequences would be found in their fullest force. They are not to be found there in the slightest degree. One fact is worth a thousand theories, and this I give you as one which I challenge Mr. Storrs Turner or any other advocate of the Anti-Opium Society to disprove. I will now show you how I am corroborated. I have a witness on the subject whose testimony is simply irrefragable. Dr. Philip B. C. Ayres, the learned and efficient Colonial Surgeon, and Inspector of Hospitals of Hong Kong, confirms my statement in the strongest possible manner. That gentleman has held the important office I have mentioned for about ten years. Previous to taking up his appointment at Hong Kong he had been on the Medical Staff of India, where he had made opium and opium eating--for the drug is not smoked in India--a special study. In Hong Kong he has had abundant opportunities of studying the effects of opium smoking and making himself thoroughly acquainted with the wonderful drug, such opportunities, indeed, as few other medical men have ever had. It is part of his daily duties to inspect the Civil Hospital of Hong Kong,--a splendid institution open to all nationalities, and conducted by able medical men,--the Gaol, the Chinese Hospital, called the Tung Wah, which is under exclusive Chinese management, and all other medical institutions in the Colony. Thus a wide field of observation is presented to him. I may add here that Dr. Ayres is the only European physician who has succeeded in removing the prejudice among the better class of the Chinese against European doctors and in obtaining a large native practice. This fact speaks volumes as to his general abilities as well as to his professional attainments and his means of acquainting himself with the social life of the Chinese. In his annual Report presented to the Government of Hong Kong for the year 1881, a copy of which, I believe, is now, or ought to be, in the pigeon-holes of the Colonial Office in Downing Street, there is the following passage:-- I have come to the conclusion that opium smoking _is a luxury of a very harmless description_, and that the only trouble arising from its indulgence is a waste of money that should be applied to necessaries. Eight mace is equivalent to an ounce and twenty-nine grains, a quantity of opium sufficient to poison a hundred men, smoked by one man in a day, and this he has been doing for twenty years: that is to say, he has consumed in smoke in that time about one thousand pounds sterling, and for this indulgence he has to deny himself and his family many absolute necessaries. The list of admissions contains thirty-five opium smokers, and the amount smoked between them daily was eighty-four mace and a half, or seven dollars worth of opium. The result of my observations this year is only to confirm all I said on the subject of opium smoking in my report for 1880. Again, Dr. Ayres has published from time to time in the "_Friend of China_," the organ of the Anti-Opium Society, various interesting papers on medical subjects. This is what he says in an article which will be found at length at p. 217 of vol. 3 of that journal:-- My opinion of it is that it [opium smoking] may become a habit, _but that that habit is not necessarily an increasing one_. Nine out of twelve men smoke a certain number of pipes a day, just as a tobacco smoker would, or as a wine or beer drinker might drink his two or three glasses a day, without desiring more. _I think the excessive opium smoker is in a greater minority than the excessive spirit drinker or tobacco smoker._ In my experience, the habit does no physical harm in moderation.... I do not wish to defend the practice of opium smoking, but in the face of the rash opinions and exaggerated statements in respect of this vice, it is only right to record that no China resident believes in the terrible frequency of the dull, sodden-witted, debilitated opium smoker met with in print, nor have I found many Europeans who believe they ever get the better of their opium-smoking compradores in matters of business. Let Mr. Storrs Turner refute this, if he can. If he cannot, what becomes of his book[1] published in 1876, which may be called the gospel of the Anti-Opium Society, with which I shall make you better acquainted by and by. And what should become of the Anti-Opium Society itself, which has wasted on its chimerical projects hundreds of thousands of pounds--the contributions of the benevolent British public, which might have been spent in alleviating the misery and distress in this vast metropolis, or been otherwise usefully applied. The Government of Hong Kong, for the purposes of revenue, has farmed out the privilege or monopoly of preparing this opium and selling it within the colony, and I dare say you will be surprised to hear that the amount paid by the present opium monopolist for the privilege amounts to about forty thousand pounds sterling a year. To elucidate this, I should tell you, that opium as imported from India, Persia, and other places is in a crude or unprepared state. In this condition it is made up in hard round balls, each about the size of a Dutch cheese, but darker in colour. To render it fit for smoking it has to be stripped of its outer covering, shredded, and boiled with water until it becomes a semi-fluid glutinous substance resembling treacle in colour and consistence. In this state it is known as "prepared opium." As such it is put up into small tins or canisters, hermetically sealed, so that it can be exported to any part of the world. Now, I have been the professional adviser of the opium farmer for at least ten years, and from him and his assistants I have had excellent opportunities of learning the truth about opium. I have thus been able to get behind the scenes, and so have had such opportunities of acquainting myself with the subject as few other Europeans have possessed. I knew the late opium farmer, whom I might call a personal friend, intimately from the time of my first arrival in China. When I call him the opium farmer I mean the ostensible one, for the opium monopoly has always, in fact, been held by a syndicate. My friend was the principal in whose name the license was made out, and who dealt with the wholesale merchants, carried on all arrangements with the Government of the Colony, and chiefly managed the prepared opium business. I knew him so intimately and had so many professional dealings with him, irrespective of opium, that I had constant opportunities of becoming acquainted with all the mysteries of the opium trade. Now the conclusion to which my own personal experience has led me I have told you of before, and I have never met anyone who has lived in China, save the missionaries, whose experience differed from mine. I have tried to find the victims of the so-called dreadful drug, but I have never yet succeeded. Many people in this country, I dare say, owing to the false and exaggerated stories which have been disseminated by the advocates of the Anti-Opium Society, think that if they went to Hong Kong they would see swarms of wretched creatures, wan and wasted, leaning upon crutches, the victims of opium smoking. If they went to the colony they would be greatly disappointed, for no such people are to be met with. On the contrary, all the Chinese they would see there are strong, healthy, intelligent-looking people, and, mark my words, well able to take care of themselves. I don't suppose there were five per cent. of my Chinese clients who did not, to a greater or less extent, smoke opium. I have known numbers, certainly not less than five or six hundred persons in all, who have smoked opium from their earliest days--young men, middle-aged men, and men of advanced years, who have been opium smokers all their lives, some of them probably excessive smokers, but I have never observed any symptoms of decay in one of them. I recall to mind one old man in particular, whom I remember for more than fifteen years; he is now alive and well; when I last saw him, about two years ago, he was looking as healthy and strong as he was ten years before. He is not only in good bodily health, but of most extraordinary intellectual vigour, one of the most crafty old gentlemen, indeed, that I have ever met; no keener man of business you could find, or one who would try harder to get the better of you if he could. The only signs of opium smoking about him are his discoloured teeth, by which an excessive smoker can always be detected, for immoderate opium smoking has the same effect, though in a less degree, as the similar use of tobacco, the excessive smoking of which, as I shall by and by show you, is the more injurious practice of the two. The Chinese, as a rule, have extremely white teeth--the effect, perhaps, of their simple diet, and their generally abstemious habits. They are proud of their teeth, which they brush two or three times a day, so that there is no difficulty in distinguishing heavy smokers from those who smoke in moderation. It is easy to compare the one with the other, and I may state that although the former be not often met with, he will be found to be not a whit inferior to the other in wit or sharpness. The old gentleman I have referred to, like many others of his countrymen, will settle himself down of an evening, when the business of the day is over, and enjoy his opium pipe for two or three hours at a stretch, yet, notwithstanding this terrible excess, as the Anti-Opium people would say, he continues strong and well. Nay, more, he has two sons of middle age, healthy, active men, who indulge in the pipe quite as regularly as their aged father. I have known many others like these men, but have never seen or heard of any weakness or decay arising from the practice. Now, I have told you that the British merchants in China hold the same views as I do upon the opium question. But it may be said that the merchants are interested persons, and in point of fact Mr. Storrs Turner says as much in his book. And, of course, he would have it inferred that what _they_ allege or think on the subject should not have any weight, because they are the very persons in whose interest this so-called iniquitous traffic is being carried on, and that, therefore, they would not say anything likely to dry up their fountain of profit. I only wish for the sake of my fellow-countrymen that all these declarations about princely fortunes were true. Hills look green afar off, but when you approach them they are often found as arid as the desert; and, unfortunately, like Macbeth's air-drawn dagger, these splendid visions are not "sensible to feeling as to sight," but simply _princely fortunes_ of the mind "proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." Mr. Turner mentions in his book one eminent firm in particular, the oldest and probably the greatest in China or the far East, a firm respected throughout the whole mercantile world, whose public spirit, boundless charity, and general benevolence are proverbial, whom he stigmatizes as "opium merchants," and who are, of course, making the imaginary "princely fortune" by opium. Now if that gentleman had taken the least trouble to inquire before he launched his book upon the world, he would have found that the firm he refers to in such terms had had little or nothing to do with opium for at least twenty years. That is not, perhaps, a matter of much importance. If he had taken the trouble to make further inquiry, he could have had no difficulty in ascertaining, what I tell him now as a fact, and one within my own personal knowledge, that the only merchants in China who are making large profits out of opium are just two or three firms, who, by the undulations and fluctuations inseparable from commerce, have got the bulk of the trade into their hands, and that all the other British merchants throughout China, and all the foreign merchants, Germans, Americans, and others, have really little or nothing to do with the opium trade at all. Of course, merchants now and then will have to execute orders for opium for a constituent who may require a chest or two of the drug, but that is only in the course of business, and is not attended with any profit to speak of. And I am perfectly sure that if it were possible to put a stop to this opium traffic, which is said to be the source of so much profit to many, that, saving the two or three firms I have mentioned, the suppression of the trade would make no difference to the other firms. This gross blunder of Mr. Storrs Turner is characteristic of the general inaccuracy of his book. Before casting odium upon an eminent firm common decency, if not prudence, to say nothing of good taste, should have induced him to make careful inquiries upon the subject. This, it is clear, he has not done, and, as if to make matters worse, although his book appeared so long ago as 1876, in an article published in the "Nineteenth Century" for February 1882, he has again gratuitously referred to this firm in terms as unjustifiable as they are absolutely unfounded. He couples the firm with another house now dissolved, and says, "they were legally smugglers, but the sin sat lightly upon their consciences." Very pretty this for a minister of the Gospel and the Secretary of the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. The statement, even if true, was wholly unnecessary for the professed object of the writer, and why he made it is best known to himself. This is the gentleman by whose persistent efforts those fallacious and mischievous views upon the opium question have during the past eight years been mainly forced upon the public, and to whom the prolonged existence of that most mischievous organization, the Anti-Opium Society, is due. He is the Frankenstein who has created the monster that has deceived and scared so many excellent people. I will show you that this monster is but a poor bogey after all, with just as much form and substance as that with which Mrs. Shelley affrights her readers in her clever romance. On the other hand, do not let it be thought, as I believe has been said by some enthusiasts, that it is owing to the British merchants in China having discovered that opium is an unclean thing, and to their having washed their hands of all participation in the traffic, that the trade has fallen into the hands of a few, who of course would, by parity of reasoning, be set down as very unscrupulous people. That is a fallacy, and, what is more, it is an untruth. I do not believe there is a British firm, or a firm of any other nationality, in China, which would not, if the opportunity presented itself, become to-morrow "opium merchants," as Mr. Turner expresses it, if they thought the trade would prove a source of profit, because they hold, with me, that the opium traffic is a perfectly proper and legitimate one, quite as much so as traffic in tobacco, wine, or beer; and a thousand times less objectionable than the trade in ardent spirits. Before proceeding further, it is important that I should bring to your notice some particulars about China and its people. It is actually necessary to do so, to enable you to grasp the facts and see your way well before you. Although the opium question ought to be a simple one, yet, owing to the sophistries and misrepresentations of the Anti-Opium Society, and in particular of its Secretary and living spirit, Mr. Storrs Turner, a wide field is opened to us across which it will be necessary to lead you to chase the phantom off the plain. The public here are very apt to think of China as if it were a country like Italy, France, or England. They never dream for a moment of the immense empire which China actually is. Perhaps if they did, and could take in the whole situation, they would be slower to believe the extraordinary stories which are spread about our _forcing_ opium upon the Chinese, and, by doing so, demoralizing the nation. We forget, as we grow old, much that we have learned in our youth, especially geography, and I daresay many a schoolboy could enlighten myself and others upon that particular branch of education. China, it must be remembered, is a country which cannot be compared with France, Spain, or England, for it is a vast empire, as large as Europe, with a population some fifty or sixty millions greater. Now, what a stupendous feat to be able to storm, as it were, that enormous empire, and for a handful of British merchants to succeed in forcing opium upon, and, by doing so, debasing the whole of this wonderful people. Yet this is what is alleged by the anti-opium philanthropists and by Mr. Storrs Turner, who is their priest and prophet, and so his enthusiastic disciples believe, to whom I would merely say,--"Great is thy faith." These plain facts are not brought forward by the Anti-opium people. The public are addressed and pleas are put forward for their support on the ground that we are dealing with a country of the like extent as our own, inhabited by a primitive semi-civilized people. No greater fallacy, no more downright untruth could be put forward. The Chinese are not only a civilized but an educated people. Until quite recently there were more people in the British Islands, in proportion to their population, who could neither read nor write than in China. It must be borne in mind that the empire of China comprises eighteen provinces, quite large enough to form eighteen separate kingdoms. I am speaking now of China Proper, and am leaving out Thibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria, immense countries to the West, North-West, and North of China, and also the vast possessions of China in Central Asia, all forming part of that great empire. Many of these eighteen provinces are larger than Great Britain; one of them is equal in extent to France. Although there is in one sense a language common to the whole country, yet not only has each province a dialect of its own, different from that of the others, but it has, so to speak, innumerable sub-dialects. Dialect, perhaps, is hardly the correct word; it is more than a dialect, for not only each province, but each district or county, has a dialect, differing so essentially from each other that the people of one province, or one district, can, in most instances, no more make themselves colloquially understood by those of another than a Frenchman could make himself intelligible to an Englishman, if neither knew the language of the other. You will often find people living in villages not more than fifteen or twenty miles apart who cannot converse with one another. I have seen in my own office a man belonging to the province of Kwang-tung, in the south of China, unable to speak in Chinese to a native of the adjoining province of Fuh-kien. In this case the native villages of these two were not more than ten miles apart, and the only medium of conversation was the barbarous jargon in which Europeans and Chinese carry on their dealings, called "pidgin English"--a species of broken English of the most ridiculous kind. Now, when you take into account that each province differs in language from each other--for that is really what the case practically comes to--that they have separate dialects in each province, and also, to a certain extent, different customs and certain prejudices, I ask you, does it not appear a gigantic, if not an impossible, task for England, a small and distant country, to be able to demoralize, debase, and corrupt the people of each of these eighteen provinces? Yet that is really the allegation of the Anti-Opium Society against their own country, this small and distant England! I have said that there are customs peculiar to each of these provinces, but there are others common to all; one of them is opium smoking; another, I am sorry to say, is hatred and contempt of foreigners. They one and all agree in regarding foreigners as an inferior race, whose customs, language, and religion they despise. Among the common people every foreigner, of whatsoever nationality, is called "Fan-Qui," or "foreign devil." The designation of foreigners amongst the better classes of people is "outer barbarian." No better instance could I give you than this to show the strong prejudice held by the whole nation against foreigners. "Fan-Qui" is still the term used by the lower orders to denote foreigners, even in the British colony of Hong Kong. To remedy this state of things, at the time of the making of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858 (which is the existing treaty between the two nations), Lord Elgin, the author of the treaty, had very properly a stipulation inserted that the term "outer barbarian" should no longer be applied to British subjects. Now, when you take into account that not only are these three hundred and sixty millions of people spread over an enormous empire, having a prejudice common to all parts alike against foreigners, as well as their own prejudices against each other, forming eighteen separate provinces or kingdoms, speaking different languages, is it reasonable to suppose that they would, so to speak, simultaneously adopt the practice of opium smoking when introduced by the despised foreigner? If these people still despise our customs, as they do our religion, as they do everything, in fact, belonging to us, how can it be said that we are forcing this foreign drug upon them to their destruction? I have already mentioned that the custom of opium smoking is common to all the people of these eighteen provinces. Whether they live in the valleys or on the hills they smoke opium. Now Mr. Turner is a great enemy of opium smoking; he is its determined opponent, and I do not think I wrong him--I certainly do not mean to do so--when I describe him as a person strongly prejudiced against the practice. The best, the wisest, and ablest among us have prejudices, and it is casting no stigma upon that gentleman to say that he has his. When I make you better acquainted with his book, which I shall soon do, you will, I think, agree with me on this point. When people have those strong prepossessions they are prone not to judge facts fairly; they see things, in short, through a false medium. That which to an ordinary person appears plain and clear enough, to one under the influence of prejudice stands out in different colours, and is passed over as untrue or misleading; sometimes, however, the plain truth will leak out, in spite of prejudice. It is laid down by legal text writers that truth is natural to the human mind, that the first impulse of a man if interrogated upon a point is to tell the truth, and that it is only when he has had time to consider, that he is inclined to swerve from it. Now in this book of Mr. Turner's, at p. 13, he confirms my statement. This is what he says. I need not read to you the previous part, because the context does not alter the sense of my quotation. He is arguing against the allegation of pro-opium people that opium has a beneficial result in counteracting the effects of malaria and ague, and he says:-- These curious arguments are two. First, that the universal predilection of the Chinese for opium is owing to the malarious character of the country; secondly, that the use of opium is a wholesome corrective to the unwholesome, even putrid, food which the Chinese consume. The reply to the first is that the country over which opium is smoked is in area about the size of Europe, and includes, perhaps, an equal variety of sites, soils, and climates, great plains level as our own fen district, and mountainous regions like the Highlands of Scotland. Ague is almost unknown in many of the provinces--_yet everywhere, in all climates and all soils, in every variety of condition and circumstance throughout that vast empire, the Chinese smoke opium_. Now that is the testimony of the Rev. Storrs Turner, the most strenuous and, as I believe, the ablest advocate against the Indo-China opium trade. But then he adds:-- But nowhere do they all smoke opium. The smokers are but a per-centage greater or smaller in any place. Well, nobody ever said they all did smoke opium. Females, as a rule, do not smoke, and children don't smoke. It is only the grown men, and those who can afford to buy the drug, who smoke it. China, for its extent and its vast and industrious population, is still a poor country. Although its natural resources are considerable, the great bulk of the people are in poor circumstances. It is only those above the very poor who can afford to smoke opium occasionally, and only well-to-do people who are able to do so habitually. Opium smoking is, in fact, a luxury in which, every Chinaman who can afford it indulges more or less, just as English people who have sufficient means drink tea, wine, and beer, or smoke tobacco. The effects of opium smoking are no more injurious than are those articles, in daily use in England, nor is its use more enslaving. On the contrary, from my own observation, I feel persuaded that those who habitually drink wine or spirits are far more liable to abuse and become enslaved to the habit than the smoker of opium. This, as you are now aware, is confirmed by the great authority of Dr. Ayres. Yet Mr. Storrs Turner, in the face of that most damaging admission, and his disciples would have the British public believe that by supplying the Chinese with a small quantity of opium, which is used and grown largely in almost every province, district, and village of China, we are demoralizing and degrading the whole people. Now, if this practice of opium smoking has existed, and does exist, throughout these eighteen provinces, over this large and mighty empire, as Mr. Storrs Turner admits, can it be urged for a moment that England has had anything to do with it more than that Englishmen, in common with other foreigners, have imported for the last forty or forty-five years a quantity of the drug very much less than that actually grown in China itself? I say she has not. I say that opium smoking has existed for a thousand years or more, and that its use by the natives of China is simply limited by the extent of their purchasing power. But how is it that such divergent opinions can exist between Englishmen living in China and certain Englishmen here at home? My answer is, that the former, the English residents in China, derive their knowledge on the subject from actual experience formed from personal intercourse with the natives, from seeing with their own eyes, and hearing with their own ears; whilst people in England obtain their information from hearsay only. Hearsay testimony is their sole guide; and, as I shall show you by and by, this hearsay evidence is of the worst and most unreliable kind. But still the question remains why this should be so; why is it that among the educated and intelligent people of England, in an age when newspapers are universal, and books of travel cheap and plentiful, that such an extraordinary difference of opinion should exist? I will now give you the explanation of these opposite views. The first is this:--China is ten thousand miles away. If that country were as near to us as the Continent of Europe, to which it is equal in extent, the people of England, including all these Anti-Opium advocates, would be of the same mind as their countrymen in China. The field of the imposture would then be so close to us that the delusion could no longer be sustained--if, indeed, under such circumstances it could ever have existence--it would be seen through at once. If it were sought to prove that we were corrupting and demoralizing the whole of the natives of the Continent by selling them spirits, beer, or opium, and if the persons who did so were to pity, patronize, and caress those people as if they were an inferior race, and but semi-civilized, as the anti-opium people do with the Chinese,--the persons who attempted to act in such an extraordinary manner would be scoffed at as visionaries, if not downright fools; yet the parallel is complete. Indeed, taking into account the existing prejudices of the Chinese against foreigners, the sound sense of the people of China and their frugal and abstemious habits, there should be less difficulty in effecting such wonderful results in Europe than in China. Perhaps, however, the best illustration of this is that afforded by the present agitation here in England, under the leadership of Sir Wilfrid Lawson against the liquor traffic. The evils of intemperance, unlike those alleged against opium smoking, are real evils, and are admitted to be so by all. Everyone is agreed upon this point; yet a large portion of our revenue, amounting to some twenty-six millions sterling, is derived from taxes upon spirits, wine, and beer, the abuse of which produces these evils. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is as determined a foe to the Indo-China opium trade as he is to the liquor traffic. Why does he not apply the same rule to the one as to the other? Why does he ask the Government to forego the eight millions derived from opium in India, and not demand the abrogation of these spirit, wine, and beer duties which are derived from so wicked a source here in England? He and his Anti-Opium friends would, if they could, prohibit the cultivation and exportation of opium in India, why do not he and his fellow teetotallers call upon the country to prohibit the manufacture of alcoholic liquors? Some few months ago an Anti-Opium meeting took place at, I think, Newcastle, attended by Sir Wilfrid Lawson. In the course of a facetious speech the Honourable Baronet, becoming serious, made quite light of this ridiculously small sum of eight millions sterling derived from the opium trade, and declared that he who did not believe that a substitute for it could be found was a "moral atheist"--whatever that may mean. Why does he not call upon the Government to forego the sum of twenty-six millions derived from alcohol, which is not more to England, if indeed so much, as the eight millions are to India, and declare that any person who said we could not find a substitute was a "moral atheist"? I answer thus: because the one concerns matters here at home with which he and the rest of the public are well acquainted, whilst the other relates to affairs ten thousand miles away, about which he and they know little or nothing. Sir Wilfrid and his followers very well know that if they advocated the abolition of the duties on spirits, wine, and beer, they would be simply scoffed at by the public as fools and visionaries, and that, on the other hand, if they required all our distilleries and breweries and all public-houses to be closed, they would be treated as downright lunatics; but it is quite different as regards India and China. With matters in those countries these enthusiastic gentlemen can and do disport themselves very much as they please, oblivious to the plainest facts. The second is this:--There is, here in England, that powerful association, "_The Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade_," whose sole object is to attain the end which its name imports, the abolition of the Indo-China opium trade, on the alleged ground that it is demoralizing and ruining the natives of China. That Society, I deeply regret to say, is supported by some of the most influential people in England--noblemen, archbishops, and other dignitaries of the Church, clergymen of all denominations, people justly and deservedly commanding the respect of their fellows--but who, on this opium question, simply know little or nothing, who implicitly believe all that is told to them by the agents of that Society, but otherwise have no knowledge of the facts. When it is taken into account that this body has immense funds at its command, that it has the support of a large part of what is known as the "religious world," and that the Society has branches and agencies ramified throughout the whole country, the reader will not fail to perceive how this extraordinary hallucination, these false and unfounded delusions respecting opium smoking, have got possession of the public mind. In former times we have had associations formed for the purpose of carrying out great public objects and of disseminating knowledge necessary for the country to comprehend those objects; but you will find that for the most part these societies have dealt with acknowledged and existing facts. For instance, there was the "Anti-Corn Law League." The purposes of that league were understood by everyone; the main facts were admitted because they existed here in England and were patent to all. It was only a matter of opinion between two great political parties whether they should be dealt with in one particular way or not. That league was formed for a great national object; but the Anti-Opium Society of which I am speaking has been got up to carry out the opinions of a few individuals, most respectable, I admit, but at the same time most enthusiastic--I may say, indeed, fanatical--holding views the most incorrect and delusive upon a subject with which they are most imperfectly acquainted. Meantime, this Society, through its ubiquitous and indefatigable Secretary, who may be called the "Head Centre" of the confederacy, and its other agents, is for ever on the alert. Let any gentleman who has bad experience of opium smoking, whether in India or China, write to the newspapers; let him read a paper at a meeting of any of our scientific bodies disputing the alleged facts of the opium-phobists, and he is marked out as a prey. Sir Rutherford Alcock, whose high character, thorough knowledge of China, and great abilities are well known, with a view of putting the opium question before the public in a correct and proper light, published an able and, indeed, unanswerable article in the "Nineteenth Century" for December 1881 ("Opium and Common Sense"), when Mr. Storrs Turner plunged into print with a counter article in the number for February 1882 of the same Review ("Opium and England's Duty"), to which I have already alluded. This article purports to be an answer to the former one, but it is nothing of the kind, for it is a mere _rechauffé_ of his book, and wholly fails in its alleged purpose. Again Sir Rutherford Alcock, with the same laudable object, early in 1882, read an able and interesting paper on the opium question before the Society of Arts. It was listened to by many scientific gentlemen and others. Sir Rutherford knows the truth about opium, and he told it in his paper. The Rev. Storrs Turner was there; he knew the damaging revelations which Sir Rutherford Alcock had made, and so much afraid was he of the effects of the fusillade, that to rally his dismayed followers he improvised a meeting of his most devoted disciples two or three days afterwards at the Aquarium. I venture to say there was not a pro-opium advocate present at his meeting I do not think the meeting was ever advertised--I certainly saw no advertisement of it in the newspapers--and Mr. Turner, on that occasion, exhorted his followers to hold fast to the true faith, refuting in the way, no doubt most satisfactory to himself and his audience, the facts, figures, and arguments of Sir Rutherford. So it is with articles and letters in the newspapers. Many gentlemen well-informed upon the opium question have published letters dealing with this question on the pro-opium side; whereupon Mr. Turner and other anti-opium advocates at once pounce down upon them, and repeat the same old stale exploded stories about demoralization and what not. But latterly, and since the first edition of these lectures was published, Mr. Turner has preferred to carry on the anti-opium agitation more quietly, for I think I have thrown cold water upon the zeal of him and his friends. His plan now is to get together in private conclave a few medical gentlemen and others whose opinions he has first made sure of; certain resolutions are then produced ready cut and dry, which are passed with acclamation and inserted in the newspapers. This sort of thing deceives nobody but the infatuated dupes of the Anti-Opium Society, for whose edification they are principally intended; just as the American orator, though speaking to empty benches in Congress, made what his constituents at Bunkum considered a capital speech. All these anti-opium articles, speeches, and resolutions are based upon the same model. They assume certain statements as existing and acknowledged facts which have never been proved to be such, and then proceed to draw deductions from those alleged facts. This style of argument can scarcely be praised for its fairness; it certainly places those who hold contrary views, and who object to employing similar tactics, at a disadvantage. This is especially remarkable in Mr. Storrs Turner's article in the "Nineteenth Century." There the writer, taking all his facts for granted, plunges at once _in medias res_, and proceeds to enlighten his readers with all the confidence of the pedagogue who, strong in his axioms and postulates, explains to his admiring pupils the mysteries of the "Asses' Bridge." The English people have hitherto had little or no knowledge of the opium question, save what they hear through the Anti-Opium Society, in whose teaching some of them put faith, if only for the reason that they are mostly clergymen and others of high character. And here I may observe that, supposing the pro-opium advocates, or perhaps I should more correctly say the general public, had a counter society to disseminate their opinions, that they had organised a committee with command of ample funds, and had officers to carry out their views, this Anglo-Oriental Society would be strangled in three months; for fiction, however speciously represented, cannot hold its own against fact. There is an old saying that "what is everybody's business is nobody's business," and so it has been with the pro-opium side of the question. The foreign merchants in China, as a body, have no interest in the Indo-China opium trade. They would not care if the trade were to be suppressed to-morrow, and therefore they take no active part in opposing the Anti-Opium Society. The general public also take little or no interest in the matter, and it is really only those who are actuated by a sense of duty, or who, like myself, have followed the question, and who, from practical acquaintance and a thorough research into all its bearings, take more than ordinary interest in the subject, who think of refuting the monstrous misrepresentations of the anti-opium people. Therefore it is that the other side have had practically the whole field to themselves. Upon the like conditions any imposture could for a time be successfully carried on. The days of the anti-opium agitation are, however, happily drawing to a close. A flood of light from various sources has within the past year been thrown upon the subject. The unwholesome mists of ignorance, prejudice, and fanaticism are clearing away, and the truth about opium is becoming visible at last. And here I would observe that in using the word "imposture" I do not mean to impugn the motives of any of the good and benevolent people who support this Society. I speak of the thing, not of those who have created or are supporting it. I have before slightly touched upon the charges brought against the British Government and the British nation respecting opium. I will formulate them more particularly now; as the subject cannot, I think, be thoroughly understood unless I do so. I have read Mr. Storrs Turner's book and his reply to Sir R. Alcock, very carefully; I have read anti-opium speeches delivered in London, Manchester, Leeds, and London upon the subject; they all come to the same thing--one is a repetition of the other. As I understand the matter, this is what the charges of the Anti-Opium Society amount to. It is alleged that opium smoking, once commenced, cannot be laid aside, that it poisons the blood, reduces the nervous and muscular powers, so that strong men under the use of opium speedily become debilitated and unfit for labour; that opium smoking paralyses the mind as well as the body, and produces imbecility, or at least mental weakness; that it so demoralises the people using it, that it converts honest and industrious men from being useful members of society into lazy, dishonest scoundrels; that it saps the manhood and preys like a cankerworm upon the vitals of the Chinese people, injuring the commonwealth and threatening even the existence of the nation if the custom of opium smoking be not stopped, which, it is alleged, can be effected only by the supply of opium from India being discontinued. It is urged, in fact, that the sale of Indian opium to the Chinese is a crime not only against the people of China but against humanity; that much, if not all, of the misery and crime prevalent throughout China are due, either directly or indirectly, to the use of opium; and for all these fearful results England is held responsible. It is further said, that the sale of British opium to the Chinese interferes with legitimate commerce, creating, it is alleged, so much bitterness in the native mind against the English nation, that the Chinese refuse to buy our goods. And, above all, it is contended that the Indo-China opium trade impedes the progress of Christianity, the Chinese refusing to accept the Gospel from a people who have such terrible crimes to answer for as the introduction of Indian opium into China. Since the days of Judge Jeffereys never was there such a terrible indictment, nor one so utterly unfounded as happily it is. In fact, all the objections that in old times were made against negro slavery have been brought forward against this harmless and perfectly justifiable Indo-China opium trade. Indeed Mr. Storrs Turner, in his article in the "Nineteenth Century," coolly places the two in the same category, and modestly proposes that the revenue from opium should be discontinued, and that England should compensate the Indian Government for the loss, just as she did the slave owners. It is astonishing how liberal your political philanthropist can be in the disposal of other people's money. Well, I had always thought that the Government of India, for the past sixty years at least, had been actuated by one great and prominent object--the amelioration, the happiness, and prosperity of the teaming millions committed to its care, and I think so still. I have always believed that the Imperial Government, no matter which party was from time to time in power, had the prosperity, honour, and dignity of their country at heart, and were influenced by a sincere desire towards all the world to be just and fear not, and to diffuse as much happiness as possible amongst our own people, and all other nations and races with whom we became associated all over the world, and I remain of that opinion still. Some fifty years ago we washed the stain of slavery from our hands, performing that great act of justice from a pure sense of duty, without any outside pressure, and also without shedding a drop of blood. This act was unique, for at the time slavery existed in every country, and had so existed for thousands of years. We know that, thirty years later, a similar achievement cost a kindred nation a long and bloody war, and an aggregate money expenditure far exceeding our own national debt--the growth of centuries. That feat of ours showed what the mind and heart of this great nation then were, and I do not believe that we have since degenerated. Since then we have spent many millions of money in sweeping slavery from the seas and in endeavouring to put an end to that accursed evil throughout the world. In doing this our pecuniary loss has been the least of our sacrifices. We have spent more than money. We have lost in the struggle the lives of some of the best and noblest of England's sons. These are acts worthy of a great nation; compared with them the objects of the Anti-Opium Society sink into utter insignificance. The sublime and the ridiculous could not be brought more vividly face to face. For the last fifty years there has been one feeling predominant in the minds of the people of England, and that is a manly, generous anxiety to protect the weak against the strong all over the world. Yet these foul and untenable charges against England are now spread broadcast by this Society, whose only warrant for doing so are the statements made to them by a handful of fanatical missionary clergymen, whose unfounded and fantastic views are accepted as so much dogma which it would be heresy to doubt. Why, if we were guilty of but half the wickedness attributed to us, it would not require this Anti-Opium Society to cry it down; the nation would rise as one man to crush it for ever. There is not a British merchant in China who would not raise his voice against it, aye, though he was making that princely fortune which Mr. Turner refers to in his book; for let me assure you that your fellow-countrymen in China, who are but sojourners in that land, as they all hope to end their days at home, have as warm a love for their country and as keen a sense of their country's honour and dignity as any set of Englishmen residing here at home, however high their station and great their wealth. To prove to you, if indeed further proof is necessary, that I have not overstated the case as regards the extreme views of the missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society, I will give you their latest production. It comes from the fountain-head, and takes the form of a petition of "the Ministers of the Gospel in China" to the House of Commons. This petition was prepared by the Missionaries of Peking, and is a gem in its way. It would never do to put the reader off with a mere extract, so I give it _in extenso_. It was drawn up and sent round for signature during the past summer, and appeared in the Shanghai and Hong Kong newspapers. This is the document:-- _To the Honourable_ THE BRITISH HOUSE OF COMMONS. The petition of the undersigned Missionaries of the Gospel in China humbly sheweth: That the opium traffic is a great evil to China, and that the baneful effects of opium smoking cannot be easily overrated. It enslaves its victim, squanders his substance, destroys his health, weakens his mental powers, lessens his self-esteem, deadens his conscience, unfits him for his duties, and leads to his steady descent, morally, socially, and physically. That by the insertion in the British Treaty with China of the clause legalizing the trade in opium, and also by the direct connection of the British Government in India with the production of opium for the market, Great Britain is in no small degree rendered responsible for the dire evil opium is working in this country. That the use of the drug is spreading rapidly in China, and that, therefore, the possibility of coping successfully with the evil is becoming more hopeless every day. In 1834 the foreign import was twelve thousand chests; in 1850 it was thirty-four thousand chests; in 1870 it was ninety-five thousand chests; in 1880 it was ninety-seven thousand chests. _To this must be added the native growth, which, in the last decade, has increased enormously, and now at least equals, and according to some authorities doubles, the foreign import._ That while the clause legalizing the opium traffic remains in the British Treaty, the Chinese Government do not feel free to deal with the evil with the energy and thoroughness the case demands, and declare their inability to check it effectively. That the opium traffic is the source of much misunderstanding, suspicion, and dislike on the part of the Chinese towards foreigners, and especially towards the English. That the opium trade, by the ill name it has given to foreign commerce, and by the heavy drain of silver it occasions, amounting, at present, to about thirteen million pounds sterling annually, has greatly retarded trade in foreign manufactures, and general commerce must continue to suffer while the traffic lasts. That the connection of the British Government with the trade in this pernicious drug excites a prejudice against us as Christian missionaries, and seriously hinders our work. It strikes the people as a glaring inconsistency, that while the British nation offers them the beneficent teaching of the Gospel, it should at the same time bring to their shores, in enormous quantities, a drug which degrades and ruins them. That the traffic in opium is wholly indefensible on moral grounds, and that the direct connection of a Christian Government with such a trade is deeply to be deplored. That any doubt as to whether China is able to put a stop to opium production, and the practice of opium smoking in and throughout her dominions should not prevent your Honourable House from performing what is plainly a moral duty. Your petitioners, therefore, humbly pray that your Honourable House will early consider this question with the utmost care, take measures to remove from the British Treaty with China the clause legalizing the opium trade, and restrict the growth of the poppy in India within the narrowest possible limits. Your Honourable House will thus leave China free to deal with the gigantic evil which is eating out her strength, and creates hindrance to legitimate commerce and the spread of the Christian religion in this country. We also implore your Honourable House so to legislate as to prevent opium from becoming as great a scourge to the native races of India and Burmah as it is to the Chinese; for our knowledge of the evil done to the Chinese leads us to feel the most justifiable alarm at the thought that other races should be brought to suffer like them from the curse of opium. We believe that, in so doing, your Honourable House will receive the blessing of those that are ready to perish, the praise of all good men, and the approval of Almighty God. And your petitioners will ever pray. The thoughts that occurred to me after reading this petition were these:--First it struck me that the missionaries, like the unfortunate Bourbons, "had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing." I thought next of the wonderful solicitude shown by these missionaries for the mercantile interest. "By the ill name the opium trade has given to foreign commerce," they say, "the trade in foreign manufactures and general commerce has been retarded, and must continue to suffer while the opium traffic lasts." Well, it is remarkable that this complaint is not made by the people whose interests are alleged to have so suffered, but by missionary clergymen, who ought to know little or nothing upon the subject; they are not merchants, and associate very little with mercantile men, either native or foreign, and certainly, if they minded their own business, could not possibly have that knowledge of mercantile affairs with which they appear to be so familiar. The persons who ought to know whether foreign manufactures or foreign trade have fallen off owing to the opium traffic, are the foreign merchants resident in China, whose especial duty it is to look after those interests, yet these gentlemen, strange to say, have made no complaint of the kind. Those merchants are directly concerned in foreign manufactures and general commerce either as principals or as agents for absent principals in England and elsewhere; they, in fact, exclusively manage foreign trade in China. There is a chamber of commerce in Hong Kong and another in Shanghai, whose members are all keen men of business, actively alive to their own and their constituents' interests, and in constant communication with similar mercantile bodies at home; moreover, there are excellent daily papers published in both these places, where such grievances, if they existed, could be freely ventilated; yet the missionaries of the Gospel in Peking would have the House of Commons and the world believe that the foreign merchants in China, who are always wide-awake, are blind to their own interests and slumbering at their posts. Now why have not these merchants ever complained that commerce has suffered from the opium traffic? Why, simply because there is no foundation in fact for such complaint. I am afraid that with the missionaries who make this most unfounded statement the "wish was father to the thought." Every man ought to know his own business best, and you will generally find that when a stranger professes great interest in your affairs, and presses upon you gratuitous advice upon the subject, he is not really actuated by a desire to promote your interests, but has some other and totally different object in view. So it is with these missionary gentlemen at Peking. There is just one other point connected with this remarkable Petition to which I would call attention. Evidently feeling the ground slipping from under their feet, the framers, adding another string to their bow, extend their sympathies beyond China, and take British Burmah under their patronage. Indeed, it seems to me that these missionary clergymen of Peking would, if they could, not only supersede the Viceroy of India in his management of the Indian Empire, but even Her Majesty the Queen and her immediate Government. I should here, however, in justice to the entire missionary body, say, that _all_ of them are not so deluded as their brethren at Peking. There is one bright, particular star, at least, which shines through the Egyptian darkness that enshrouds the rest. The Reverend F. Galpin, of the English Methodist Free Church, is a respected missionary clergyman at Ningpo, an important port on the east coast of China. He, unlike most of his brethren at other places in that country, when asked to sign this curious petition, very properly declined to do so. All honour to Mr. Galpin. He was not afflicted with the midsummer madness of his brethren at Peking. Were all the Protestant missionaries in China like him, we should not have heard of these absurd and monstrous stories respecting the Indo-China opium trade, and there would, perhaps, be larger and better results from the missionary's labours. This is the manly, sensible, and dignified reply of Mr. Galpin:-- The REV. J. EDKINS and others, Peking. SIR,--I beg to acknowledge receipt of a copy of your circular, dated June 24th, with form of petition to the British House of Commons against the importation of Indian opium, and also to express my sympathy with the spirit and motives that have suggested the petition; but, at the same time, I must also express disapproval of the proposed petition, and disbelief of many of the statements contained therein. Looking at Christianity in the broad and true sense, as a great regenerating force breathing its beneficent spirit upon and promoting the welfare of all, of course the excessive use or abuse of opium, and every other thing, is a serious hindrance to its happy progress. _But this is a very different position from that of supposing that the present apparent slow progress of mission-work in China is to be attributed to the importation of Indian opium._ China is a world in itself, and the influence of Christian missions has hitherto reached but a handful of the people, for there are many serious obstacles to its progress besides opium. Then, again, I beg to express my hearty dissent from the idea presented in the petition, that the Chinese people or Government are really anxious to remove the abuse of opium. The remedy has always been, as it is now, in their own hands. Neither do I believe that if the importation of Indian opium ceased at once, the Chinese Government would set about destroying a very fruitful means of revenue. On the contrary, I feel sure that the growth of Chinese opium would be increased forthwith. I therefore beg to return the petition in its present form, with the suggestion that Christian missionaries had better direct their attention to, and use their influence upon, Chinese. Yours truly, F. GALPIN, _English Methodist Free Church_. Ningpo, 15th July. No doubt these most estimable and respectable but infatuated gentlemen suppose that their petition will have some weight with the Legislature. I believe and hope it will, but not exactly of the kind expected; for I shall be surprised indeed, if it be not treated as it deserves, _i.e._ as a downright contempt of the House of Commons; for it seems to me to be an insult to the common sense not only of the House in its collective capacity, but of every individual member. In saying this I am far from attributing to these missionary clergymen a wilful intention to state what they knew to be untrue, nor to insult or mislead the Legislature, for I am assured that one and all of them would be incapable of so doing. I am sure they thoroughly believe every word they have stated to be true; but then it must be remembered that the effect upon the public mind and the injury done to society by the publication of fallacious and untrue statements, are in no way lessened because their authors suppose those statements to be, in fact, true and correct. I have shown you that Mr. Turner admits that opium smoking is common all over China. But, he says, the Chinese do not all smoke. In his book he affirms that it is only in recent years that opium has been grown in China. This is the passage, it occurs at page 2:--"Indigenous in Asia, the first abode of the human species, the poppy has long been cultivated in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and _recently_ in China and Manchuria. It is well known in our gardens, grows wild in some parts of England, and is cultivated in Surrey for the supply of poppy heads to the London market. From the time of Hippocrates to the present day _it has been the physician's invaluable ally in his struggles against disease and death_." This is about the most remarkable statement I have ever read. The greater includes the less, and if the poppy is indigenous to Asia it is, of course, indigenous also to China and Manchuria, which with the other dominions of China comprise fully one-fourth of the entire Asiatic continent. This, indeed, Mr. Storrs Turner does not deny in terms, but it is plain he wished his readers to believe that the poppy was _not_ indigenous to those countries, and was only recently introduced there. The passage involves that sort of fallacy which Lord Palmerston termed "a distinction without a difference." As to the poppy being indigenous to the whole of Asia and notably to the most fertile parts of it, _e.g._ China and Manchuria, there can be no doubt, and therefore no difference, but the distinction is that it is only of late years that it has been _cultivated_ in those countries. The poppy may grow wild over a continent, but be cultivated only in a part. I will show you by-and-by, upon excellent authority and by the strongest grounds for inference, that the poppy is not only indigenous to China, but has been cultivated there for various purposes other than for medical ones and for smoking, certainly for two thousand, and probably for four or five thousand years. An ordinary reader, especially one not familiar with the geography of Asia, would conclude from this passage in Mr. Turner's book that China and Manchuria were not in Asia at all, but that of late years the poppy had been introduced into those countries from that continent. Thus much for the Gospel of the Anti-opiumists. I now confront Mr. Storrs Turner with another book, which everyone must admit is of greater authority than his. It is a book published towards the close of 1881 by a high official of the Chinese Government, then Mr. but now Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, a man who knows China and the Chinese better, perhaps, than any living European. That gentleman tells a very different tale about opium to what the Anti-Opium Society has hitherto regaled the world with. This book is an official one, issued from the Statistical Department of the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs at Shanghai for the use and guidance of the Chinese Government. It stands upon a very different footing to the volume published by Mr. Turner, the paid secretary and strenuous advocate of the Anti-Opium Society. Sir Robert Hart has entire control over the revenue of China as far as regards foreign trade. At every treaty port open to foreign vessels there is a foreign Commissioner of Customs, and Sir Robert Hart is the supreme head of these commissioners. He is a man deservedly trusted and respected by the Chinese Government; a man of learning and talents, and I need hardly add of the very highest character, and, I believe, he is one of the most accomplished Chinese scholars that could be found. He says that opium has been grown in China from a remote period, and was smoked there before a particle of foreign opium ever came into the country. This is the passage from his--the now famous yellow-book:-- In addition to the foreign drug there is also the native product. Reliable statistics cannot be obtained respecting the total quantity produced. Ichang, the port nearest to Szechwan, the province which is generally believed to be the chief producer and chief consumer of native opium, estimates the total production of native opium at twenty-five thousand chests annually; while another port, Ningpo, far away on the coast, estimates it at two hundred and sixty-five thousand. Treating all such replies as merely so many guesses, there are, it is to be remarked, two statements which may be taken as facts in this connection: the one is that, so far as we know to-day, the native opium produced does not exceed the foreign import in quantity; _and the other that native opium was known, produced, and used long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast_. So much for Mr. Storrs Turner's bold assertion that it is only recently that opium has been cultivated in China; the obvious inference which he wished the reader to draw from it being that it was the importation of the Indian drug into China that induced the natives to plant opium there. Now, with respect to that most unfounded charge of the Chinese disliking the English for introducing opium into their country, and British commerce declining in consequence, I assure you that all that is simply moonshine. These statements are not merely false assumptions, they are simply untrue. No one who has had any experience of China and its people, does not know perfectly well, that of the whole foreign trade with China the British do at least four-fifths; not only have we the lion's share of the trade, but it is an unquestionable fact that of all the nations who have made treaties and had dealings with China, the British are and have been for many years the most respected by the Chinese people. It is, I say, an indisputable fact, that notwithstanding all our past troubles about smuggling and our wars with China, which Mr. Turner is so fond of dilating upon, that at this day, by high and low, rich and poor, from the mandarin to the humble coolie, England is held in higher regard than any other nation. If trade with China has in any way declined, the fact is traceable to other and different causes, which it is not my province to enter upon. Now, why are England and Englishmen thought so well of by the Chinese? It is simply because the British merchants and British people in China have acted towards the Chinese, with whom they have been brought into contact, with honour and rectitude--because in their intercourse with the natives they have been kind, considerate, and obliging--because, instead of resenting the old rude and overbearing manners of the Chinese officials and others, they have returned good for evil, and shown by their conciliatory bearing, and gentlemanly and straightforward conduct, that the British people are not the barbarians they had been taught to believe. By such means the British residents in China have gone far to break down the barrier of prejudice towards foreigners behind which the people of that country had hedged themselves, thus preparing the way for the labours of the missionaries and making, in fact, missionary work possible. If further proof were wanting that the British are held in high estimation by the people and the Government of China, it will be found in the fact, that our own countryman, Sir Robert Hart, who before entering the service of the Chinese Government had been in the diplomatic service of his own country, now occupies the high and honourable position of Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, and is, I may add, the trusted counsellor of the Government of China. It is not very long since the Governor of Canton paid a visit to the Governor of Hong Kong; such an act of courtesy to Her Majesty's representative on the part of so great a Chinese magnate was until then, I believe, unprecedented. The constant exclamation of the great mandarin as he was being driven through the streets of Hong Kong was--"What a wonderful place! What a wonderful place!" in allusion to the fine buildings, the wide and clean streets,--a strong contrast to those of Canton--and the dense and busy population around him. And yet more recently, that is during the summer of 1882, a greater personage still paid an official visit to the Hon. W. H. Marsh, who during the absence of Sir George Bowen, the Governor, worthily administers the affairs of the colony--I refer to the present viceroy of the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi, commonly called the "two Kwangs," an official only next in importance to His Excellency Li Hung Chang, the Governor of Petchili. Do you think we should have such a state of things if we were demoralizing and ruining the people of China, as is alleged by the Anti-Opium Society, or if, indeed, the Chinese people or Government had any real grievance against us. Upon this point I cannot refrain from mentioning an incident that occurred soon after I arrived in China. A respectable Chinaman asked me to prepare his will. He gave me for the purpose, written instructions in Chinese characters, which I had translated. On reading the translation I found his instructions very clearly drawn up, but what was gratifying to me, and what is pertinent to my subject, was the following passage, with which he commenced them:--"Having," said he, "under the just and merciful laws administered by the English Government of Hong Kong, amassed in commerce considerable wealth, I now, feeling myself in failing health, wish to make a distribution of the same." There are thousands like that Chinaman in Hong Kong, and also in Shanghai, and in all the treaty ports of China. In speaking as this man did, he was only giving expression to the feelings of all his countrymen who have had dealings with the English in China. Are such feelings on the part of these Chinese consistent with the consciousness that we are enriching ourselves by ruining the health and morals of their countrymen, as is most wrongfully put forward by the Anti-Opium Society and its allies the Protestant missionaries? No; they bespeak perfect confidence, respect, and gratitude towards us; for oppressed and plundered as the Chinese have been by their own officials, there is no other people on the face of the earth who more thoroughly appreciate justice and equity in the administration of public affairs; thus it is that they respect the British rule, which they have found by experience to be the embodiment of both. There are very few, perhaps, in this country who know what Hong Kong really is. It is now a flourishing and beautiful city, standing upon a site which, but the other day, was a barren rock. Commerce with its civilising influence has transformed it into a "thing of beauty," "an emerald gem of the _eastern_ world." Forty years ago, the English Government sent out a commissioner to report upon the capabilities of the place for a town or settlement. He sent home word that there was just room there for _one_ house. He little dreamt that upon that barren inhospitable spot within a few years would be realised the poet's dream when he wrote:-- Oh, had we some bright little isle of our own In a blue summer ocean far off alone, Where a leaf never dies, midst the still blooming bowers, And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers. He little thought that on that very site there would soon be many thousands of houses, some of them palatial buildings, including many Christian churches and some heathen temples, for liberty of conscience reigns there supreme; with a Chinese population of over one hundred and fifty thousand. These people are all doing well. Some of them are wealthy merchants; many of them are shop-keepers; others are artificers; and a very large number of them are labourers or coolies. There is no pauperism in the colony. The people there are all well-to-do, or able to live comfortably, and, what is more, they are all happy and contented. A comparatively small body of police preserves the peace of the colony; for, thanks to a succession of wise and able governors, local crime has been reduced to a minimum; serious offences are very rare amongst the regular inhabitants. It is the criminal classes from the mainland which really give trouble, for Hong Kong labours under the disadvantage of being close to two large cities on the Pearl River--Canton and Fatchan, notorious for piratical and other criminal classes. You might send a child from one end of the town to the other without fear of molestation. Indeed, the natives themselves are the very best police; for, take the Chinese all round, they are the most orderly and law-abiding people in the world. They respect the British Government as much as the British people do themselves. They bring their families to Hong Kong, settle down there, and make themselves perfectly at home, finding more security and happiness there than they ever could attain in their own country; because in Hong Kong there is and has always been perfect equality before the law for every man, irrespective of race, colour, or nationality. The life and property of every man there is secure. This is not the case in China. These are the fruits of commerce which brings peace and plenty in its train, which sweeps aside the dust of ignorance, fanaticism, and superstition--which has reclaimed the deserts of Australia and North America, and spread flourishing cities there, where law and order, truth and justice, peace and happiness, religion and piety are established. These are the achievements of British merchants who have won for our Sovereign the Imperial diadem she wears, and made their country the mistress of the world. These are the people who have done all this, and better still, made the name of England honoured and respected throughout the whole world, and sent the Gospel into every land. Yet those very men Mr. Storrs Turner and other anti-opium fanatics would cover with obloquy, because, forsooth, some British merchants have been concerned in this perfectly justifiable Indo-Chinese opium trade. Mr. Turner in his book speaks of the Chinese Government as a paternal Government, which, the moment it finds any practices on foot injurious to the people, at once takes steps to put them down. I tell you, as a fact, that a more corrupt Government,[2] so far at least as the Judges and high Mandarins downwards are concerned, never existed in the whole world. There is no such thing as justice to be had without paying for it; if it is not a misnomer to say so, for this so-called justice is bought and sold every day. Corruption pervades the whole official class. I could detail facts as to the punishment of the innocent and the escape of the guilty, which came under my own observation, that would make one's flesh creep. This is why the Chinese of Hong Kong respect so much the British Government, whose rule is just and equitable. Now there is another point which I wish more particularly to impress upon you, it is this: Anyone hearing of the alleged dreadful effects upon the Chinese of opium smoking, and our wicked conduct in forcing the drug upon them, and making them buy it whether they wish to do so or not, would think that these Chinese were a simple, unsophisticated people, something like the natives of Madagascar,--a people lately rescued from barbarism by missionaries; that they were a weak race, without mental stamina or strength of mind--a soft simple, easily-persuaded race. These are some more of the erroneous views which the Anti-Opium Society tries to impress upon the public mind, and which its Secretary, Mr. Storrs Turner, in particular, artfully endeavours to inculcate. To prove that this is so, I have only to read you a passage from his work. But before doing so, let me assure you that there is not a more astute, active-minded, and knowing race of people under the sun than the Chinese. For craft and subtlety I will back one of them against any European. At page 3 you will read:-- More opium is consumed in China than in all the rest of the world, and nearly the whole of the opium imported into China is shipped from Calcutta and Bombay. The East and the West, England, India, and China, act and re-act upon each other through the medium of poppy-juice. Simple mention of the relations which these three great countries bear to the drug is enough to show that a very grave question is involved in the trade. England is the grower, manufacturer, and seller; India furnishes the farm and the factory; China is buyer and consumer. The question which obviously arises is this, Is it morally justifiable and politically expedient for the English nation to continue the production and sale of a drug so deleterious to its consumers? Before, however, we enter upon a consideration of this question, we must explain how it has come to pass that the British nation has got into this unseemly position. Otherwise, the fact that the British Government is actually implicated in such a trade may well appear incredible. If, for instance, any minister could be shameless enough to suggest that England should embark on a vast scale into the business of distillers, and with national funds, by servants of Government, under inspection and control of Parliament, _produce and export annually ten or twenty millions' worth of gin and whisky to intoxicate the populous tribes of Central Africa, he would be greeted by a general outcry of indignation. Yet the very thing which we scout as an imagination, we consent to as a reality._ We are maintaining our Indian Empire by our profits as wholesale dealers in an article which, to say the best of it, is as bad as gin. Now, is that a fair parallel? Is it honest or just to place the civilized, wise, and educated Chinese in the same category with the barbarous natives of Central Africa? This, I assure you is but a fair specimen of the misleading character of Mr. Turner's book and an example of the teaching by which people are made the dupes of the Anti-Opium Society. This is the language which Mr. Storrs Turner applies to his country and countrymen to gratify himself and his fanatical followers. China, though a heathen, is a civilized nation. The civilization of the Chinese does not date from yesterday. When England was inhabited by painted savages, China was a civilized and flourishing Empire. When ancient Greece was struggling into existence, China was a settled nation, with a religion and with laws and literature dating back to a period lost in the mist of ages. When Alexander, miscalled the Great, fancied he had conquered the world, and sighed that there was no other country to subdue, the mighty Empire of China, with its teeming millions, and a civilization far superior, taken altogether, to any that he had yet known, was a flourishing nation, and happily far away from the assaults of him and his conquering force. Five thousand years ago, as the Rev. Dr. Legge, the Professor of Chinese at Oxford, tells us, the Chinese believed in one God and had, in fact, a theology and a system of ethics known now as Confucianism, certainly superior to that of Greece or Rome. They had then and still have a written language of their own, in which the works of their sages and philosophers are recorded. There are books extant in that language for more than three thousand years ago. In a learned and very interesting book, written by Dr. Legge, entitled "The Religions of China," it is shown that the Chinese, not only of to-day, but of five thousand years ago, were a great nation. Was it then, I again ask, honest or fair of the Rev. Storrs Turner, who is himself no mean Chinese scholar, to mislead his readers by making use of so forced and inapplicable a comparison? Can there, in fact, be any analogy whatever between the Indo-China opium trade, even supposing that the smoking of the drug were as deleterious to the system as is alleged, and sending whisky from England to the savages of Central Africa? No man could have known better than Mr. Turner that his simile was false and misleading, for he has lived in China for many years. An ordinary person reading that gentleman's book would swallow this simile as one precisely in point, and end by feeling horrified at the iniquities we were perpetrating in China, which is, no doubt, the exact result that he looked for. I recently met a lady with whom I had been in correspondence for some time on professional business. In the course of conversation we happened to speak about opium, and the moment the subject was mentioned she turned up her eyes in horror and declared that she was ashamed of her country for the wrong it was inflicting upon the natives of China. Mr. Turner's wonderful parallel between the civilized Chinese and the African savages had plainly produced its desired effect upon her. I very soon, however, undeceived her on the point, as I have since had the pleasure of doing with many others labouring under the like delusions. I am sorry to say that it is with the gentler sex that our Anti-Opium fanatics make their most profitable converts. I honour those ladies for their fond delusion, which shows that their hearts are better than their heads; that their good intentions run in advance of them, and make them ready victims. Well, well, I trust their charity will soon be diverted into worthier channels. Unfortunately, the minds of many in England have become imbued with the same erroneous belief, which is entirely owing to the mischievous teaching of the Anti-Opium Society, and to the powerful machinery that this Society has available for disseminating its doctrines. I am sorry, indeed, to have to allude thus to Mr. Storrs Turner and his book, for I respect him as a clergyman, a scholar, and a gentleman; but I cannot avoid doing so, for certain it is that if you mean to refute Mahomedanism you cannot spare Mahomed or the Alkoran. I have already told you something as to the character of the Chinese generally. I will now mention from authority some more specific characteristics of these people, because it is really important that you should thoroughly understand what manner of men these Chinese are, for that is a matter going to the root of the whole question. If I show you, as I believe I shall be able to do most conclusively, that the Chinese are as intelligent and as well able to take care of themselves as we are, with far more craft and subtlety than we possess, you will, I think, be slow to believe that they are silly enough to allow us to poison them with opium, as it is alleged we are doing. A stranger mixture of good and evil could hardly be met with than you will find in the Chinese--crafty, over-reaching, mendacious beyond belief, double-dealing, distrustful, and suspicious even of their own relations and personal friends; self-opinionated, vain, conceited, arrogant, hypocritical, and deceitful. That is the character that I give you of them; but it is the worst side of their nature, for they have many redeeming qualities. I will now place before you their character from another and a more competent authority. The Venble. John Gray, D.D., was, until recently, for about twenty-five years, Archdeacon of Hong Kong, but during the greater part, if not the whole of that time, he was the respected and faithful incumbent of the English Church at Canton, where he resided. Now Dr. Gray, who is still in the prime of life, is a learned and able man; a keen observer of human nature; a sound, solid, sensible Churchman, and so highly esteemed for his excellent qualities, that I do not think any Englishman who ever lived in China has left a more honoured name behind him than he has. He mixed a great deal amongst the Chinese as well as amongst his own countrymen. He also travelled much in China, and there really could not be found a more competent authority as to the character of the Chinese people; and indeed as to all matters connected with China. In 1878 he published a valuable and trustworthy book.[3] It is not the production of a person who has merely made a flying visit to China; but it is the work of an old and sagacious English resident in that country, a profound thinker and observer, of a man who has studied deeply and made himself thoroughly acquainted with his subject. He says, at p. 15, vol. i.:-- Of the moral character of the people, who have multiplied until they are "as the sands upon the sea-shore," it is very difficult to speak justly. The moral character of the Chinese is a book written in strange letters, which are more complex and difficult for one of another race, religion, and language to decipher than their own singularly compounded word-symbols. In the same individual virtues and vices apparently incompatible are placed side by side--meekness, gentleness, docility, industry, contentment, cheerfulness, obedience to superiors, dutifulness to parents, and reverence to the aged, are, in one and the same person, the companions of insincerity, lying, flattery, treachery, cruelty, jealousy, ingratitude, and distrust of others. This is the character which an English clergyman and scholar gives of the Chinese. Dr. Gray was not a missionary, and it is to the missionary clergymen generally that the extraordinary and delusive statements respecting opium which I am combating are due; the reason for which I shall by and by give you. I hold these missionary gentlemen in the very highest respect. In their missionary labours they have my complete sympathy, and no person can possibly value them as such more than I do, nor be more ready than I am to bear testimony to the ability, piety, industry, and energy which they have always displayed. But they are not infallible, and when they forsake or neglect their sacred functions, and enter the arena of politics; when they cast aside the surplice and enter the lists as political gladiators, they are liable to meet with opponents who will accept their challenge and controvert their views, and have no right to complain if they now and then receive hard knocks in the encounter. They are enthusiastic in their sacred calling; but that fact, whilst it does them honour, shows that their extraordinary assertions as to the opium trade should be received with caution, if not distrust. They are the men who are responsible for the unfounded views which have got abroad on this question. Now, is it not significant that Dr. Gray, whom the people of Canton esteemed and respected more than any European who has lived amongst them, except, perhaps, the late Sir Brooke Robertson (who was more Chinese than the Chinese themselves), should have said nothing against opium in that valuable and exhaustive work of his? Is it not passing strange that this shrewd observer of men and manners, this intelligent English clergyman, who has passed all these years at Canton, which, next to Hong Kong is the great emporium of opium in the south of China, should be silent upon the alleged iniquities that his countrymen are committing in that country? Dr. Gray is a patriotic English gentleman. Can you suppose for a moment, that if we were demoralizing and ruining the people of the great city of Canton, and above all, that we were impeding the progress of the Gospel in China, that his voice would not be heard thundering against the iniquity? Dr. Gray is an earnest and eloquent preacher as well as an accomplished writer; yet his voice has been silent on this alleged national crime. Is it to be thought that, if there were any truth in the outcry spread abroad by Mr. Storrs Turner and the Anti-Opium Society, he would have omitted to have enlarged upon the wickedness of the opium trade when writing this book upon China and the manners and customs of the Chinese? Is it not remarkable that he has said not a word about that wickedness, and that all these alleged evils arising from the trade are only conspicuous in his book by their absence? And here I would ask, is not the silence of Dr. Gray on this important opium question, under all the circumstances, just as eloquent a protest against the anti-opium agitation, as if he had given a whole chapter in his book denouncing the imposture? But to return to the character of the Chinese. Dr. Wells Williams, a missionary clergyman of the highest character, who, being a missionary, I need hardly say, does not hold the views that I do, has written another admirable book upon China.[4] In it he has described the Chinese character very fully. He first tells us, at page 2 of the second volume, what one, Tien Kishi--a popular essayist--thinks of foreigners. "I felicitate myself," he says, "that I was born in China, and constantly think how different it would have been with me if I had been born beyond the seas in some remote part of the earth, where the people, far removed from the converting maxims of the ancient kings and ignorant of the domestic relations, are clothed with the leaves of plants, eat wood, dwell in the wilderness, and live in the holes of the earth. Though born in the world in such a condition, I should not have been different from the beasts of the field. But now, happily, I have been born in the 'Middle Kingdom.' I have a house to live in, have food and drink and elegant furniture, have clothing and caps and infinite blessings--truly the highest felicity is mine." That is still the opinion of every Chinaman respecting foreigners, save those at Hong Kong, Shanghai, and the other treaty ports of China who, having intermixed with foreigners, have found that their preconceived notions respecting them were untrue, but they are but a handful, a drop in the ocean; yet these are the people who, it is said, at our bidding and instigation, are ruining their prospects and their health by smoking our opium. Dr. Williams further says of them, at page 96 of the same volume:-- More ineradicable than the sins of the flesh is the falsity of the Chinese and its attendant sin of base ingratitude. Their disregard of truth has, perhaps, done more to lower their character in the eyes of Christendom than any other fault. They feel no shame at being detected in a lie, though they have not gone quite so far as to know when they do lie, nor do they fear any punishment from the gods for it. Every resident among them and all travellers declaim against their mendacity. I shall give you by-and-by instances--actual facts known to myself, to prove that every word Dr. Williams has said is true; and further, that the Chinese will indulge in falsehood, not merely for gain or to carry out some corrupt purpose, but for the mere pleasure of romancing, or to gratify and oblige a friend. Dr. Williams then goes on to moralize, and admits that the Chinese have a great many virtues as well as a great many very foul vices. Unquestionably they have a great many virtues, aye, and virtues of sterling character, and amongst these are commercial honour and probity. For commercial instincts and habits I place them next to the British. In their affection for their parents, their attachment to the family homestead, their veneration for the aged and the virtuous, they surpass every other nation. These are not the class of men to allow themselves to be befooled with opium. Another virtue they possess, and it is one very pertinent to the subject of this lecture, is abstemiousness; they are positively the most frugal, self-denying, and abstemious people on the face of the earth. Not only are the Chinese abstemious in their use of opium, but also as regards alcoholic liquors. It is not, I think, generally known that there is a species of spirit manufactured, and extensively used throughout China, commonly called by foreigners "sam-shu." It is very cheap, and there is no duty upon it in Hong Kong, nor is there any, I believe, in their own country. I suppose a pint bottle of it can be bought for a penny. It is a sort of whisky distilled from rice. The Chinese use it habitually, especially after meals, and I do not think there is a single foreign resident of Hong Kong, or any of the Treaty Ports, who does not know this fact. The practice in China is, for the servants of Europeans to go early to market each morning and bring home the provisions and other household necessaries required for the day's use. I have seen, in the case of my own servants, the bottle of sam-shu brought home morning after morning as regularly as their ordinary daily food. Yet I never saw one of my servants drunk or under the influence of liquor. What is more than that, although sam-shu is so very cheap and plentiful, and is used throughout the whole of Hong Kong, I never saw a Chinaman drunk, nor ever knew of one being brought up before the magistrate for intemperance. I cannot say the same thing of my own countrymen. Does not that form the strongest possible evidence that the Chinese are an extremely steady and abstemious race? Yet these are the people whom Mr. Storrs Turner would put in the same category as the savages of Africa? Well, then, is it likely that a people so abstemious in respect of spirit drinking would indulge to excess in opium, especially if the drug has the intoxicating and destructive qualities ascribed to it by the missionaries? The Chinese, I have also said, are a very frugal people. Six dollars, or about twenty-four shillings of our money, per month are considered splendid wages by a coolie. On two dollars a month he can live comfortably. He sends, perhaps, every month, one or two dollars to his parents or wife in his native village; for generally a Chinaman, be he never so poor, has a wife, it being there a duty, if not an article of religion, for the males, to marry young. The remainder they hoard for a rainy day. Now, I say again, if the Chinese are such abstemious and frugal people, and that they are so is unquestionable, does not the same rule apply to opium as to spirits? The truth of the matter is, that it is a very inconsiderable number of those who smoke opium who indulge in it to any considerable extent--probably about one in five thousand. When a Chinaman's day's work is over, and he feels fatigued or weary, he will, if he can afford it, take a whiff or two of the opium pipe, seldom more. If a friend drops in he will offer him a pipe, just as we would invite a friend to have a glass of sherry or a cigar. This use of the opium pipe does good rather than harm. Those who indulge in it take their meals and sleep none the worse. The use of the pipe, indeed, wiles them from spirit drinking and other vicious habits. My own belief is that opium smoking exercises a beneficial influence upon those who habitually practise it, far more so than the indulgence in tobacco, which is simply a poisonous weed, having no curative properties whatever. I have seen here in England many a youth tremble and become completely unhinged by excessive smoking, so terrible is the effect of the unwholesome narcotic on the nervous system when it is indulged in to excess; indeed I have heard it often said that excessive indulgence in tobacco frequently produces softening of the brain: such a result has never proceeded from opium smoking. I have stated in my programme of these lectures that the views put forward by the "Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade" were based upon fallacies and false assumptions, which account for the many converts the advocates of that Society have made. I have now to tell you what these fallacies and false assumptions are. In fact, these explain pretty clearly how it has come to pass that so many otherwise sensible, good, and benevolent people have been led astray on the opium question. The first of these fallacies is, _that the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has been recently introduced there, presumably by British agency_. The truth being that the poppy is indigenous to China, as it admittedly is to Asia generally, and has been used in China for various purposes for thousands of years. The second is, _that opium smoking in China is now and always has been confined to a small per-centage of the population, but which, owing to the introduction into the country of Indian opium, is rapidly increasing_. The fact being that the custom is, and for many centuries has been, general among the male adults throughout China, its use being limited only by the ability to procure the drug. The third is, _that opium smoking is injurious to the system, more so than spirit drinking_. The truth being that the former is not only harmless but beneficial to the system, unless when practised to an inordinate extent, which is wholly exceptional; whilst spirit drinking ruins the health, degrades the character, incites its victims to acts of violence, and destroys the prospects of everyone who indulges to excess in the practice. The fourth is, _that the supply of opium regulates the demand, and not the demand the supply_. When I come to consider this in detail, I think I shall rather surprise you by the statements in support of this extraordinary theory put forward by Mr. Storrs Turner in this wonderful book of his. The use of so utterly untenable a proposition shows to what extremes fanatical enthusiasts will resort in support of the hobby they are riding to death; how desperate men, when advocating a hopeless cause, will grasp at shadows to support their theories. When such persons wish a certain state of things to be true and existing, they never stop to scrutinize the arguments they use in support of them. If Mr. Storrs Turner had not opium on the brain to an alarming extent, and was writing by the light of reason and common sense, he would no more dream of putting forward such a theory than he would entertain the faintest hope of finding any person silly enough to believe in the doctrine. The fifth fallacy is, _that opium smoking and opium eating are equally hurtful_. The fact being that there is the widest difference in the world between the two practices, as I shall hereafter conclusively prove to you. Upon this point, I may tell you, that Mr. Storrs Turner, in the appendix to his book, gives numerous extracts from evidence taken on various occasions as to opium _eating_, which has no relevancy to opium smoking; not that I am even disposed to admit that even opium eating in moderation is a baneful practice, the medical evidence on the subject being at present very conflicting. And here I may appropriately say, that although an overdose of opium may cause death, the mere _smoking_ of the drug in any quantity will not do so. No case of poisoning by opium smoking has ever been reported or heard of; such a thing, in fact, is a physical impossibility. I daresay this may surprise some people, but it is, nevertheless, an irrefragable fact. The sixth is, _that all, or nearly all, who smoke opium are either inordinate smokers or are necessarily in the way of becoming so, and that once the custom has been commenced it cannot be dropped; but the victim to it is compelled to go on smoking the drug to his ultimate destruction_. That, I shall show you, upon the best evidence, is altogether untrue, thousands of Chinese having been to my knowledge habitual and occasional opium smokers, who showed no ill effects whatever from the practice, which, by the way, is far more easily discontinued than the use of alcoholic liquors. The seventh is, _that the Chinese Government is, or ever was, anxious to put a stop to the custom, or even to check the use, of opium amongst the people of China_. This is one of the most ridiculous and unfounded notions that ever entered the mind of man. There is a saying that "none are so blind as those who will not see," and here, I shall show you, is the strongest proof of the adage. The eighth is, _that the British merchants in China are making large fortunes by opium_. The fact being that the Indo-China trade is profitable to a very few merchants only, whilst the British merchants as a body have no interest in the trade whatever. This is a pet fallacy of Mr. Storrs Turner, and he has shown throughout his book, and notably in his article in the "Nineteenth Century," a determination to make the most of it. He has evidently persuaded himself that some large English firms have made enormous fortunes by the drug, and he seems to have made up his mind never to forgive the enormity. The ninth is, _that the discontinuance of the supply of opium from British India would stop, or effectually check, the practice of opium smoking in China_. The fact being that the suppression of the present Indo-China opium trade, if indeed it were possible to suppress it, would have precisely the contrary effect. I shall prove to you clearly, that if the Indo-China opium trade, as at present carried on, were put an end to, such an impetus would be given to the importation of opium into China as would enormously add to the consumption of the drug, and that then British and other merchants who have now no dealings in opium, would in such case become largely engaged in the trade; whilst opium smuggling, the cause of so much strife and unpleasantness in past times, would again become general upon the coast of China. The tenth is, _that the opposition of Chinese officials to the introduction of opium into China arose from moral causes_. The fact being, as every sane man acquainted with China knows, that the true reason for such opposition was a desire to protect and promote the culture of native opium to keep out the foreign drug, and thus prevent the bullion payable for the latter from leaving the country. Last, but by no means least, is the fallacy and fond delusion, _that the introduction of Indian opium into China has arrested and is impeding the progress of Christianity in that country, and that if the trade were discontinued, the Chinese, or large numbers of them, would embrace the Gospel_. The fact being, that opium smoking has had nothing whatever to do with the propagation of Christianity in China, any more than rice or Manchester goods, as I confidently undertake to show you when I come to deal more fully with this outrageous fallacy. I will only now observe that it is a remarkable fact, that while China is covered with a network of Roman Catholic missionaries, some of whom I had the pleasure of knowing quite intimately, I have never heard of a similar complaint having been made by any of them, but, on the contrary, have always known them to speak triumphantly of their great success in their missionary labours; but then it must be remembered that these Roman Catholic missionaries, greatly to their credit, throw their whole soul into their work, and devote their whole time to their missionary labours, never mixing in politics or interfering with matters of State. These are the figments which have got hold of the Anti-Opium mind, from which has sprung the monstrosity put forward by the Anti-Opium Society. I shall, in future lectures, return to these fallacies, and dispose of each in turn. I will close this lecture by giving you the testimony of a very high and entirely impartial authority as to the innocuous effects of opium, which strongly confirms all that I have already stated. The late John Crawfurd, F.R.S., was a _savant_ of high reputation in England, throughout the East, and, I believe, in Europe. He was the contemporary and intimate friend of the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, the eminent surgeon. Mr. Crawfurd had, previous to 1856, been Governor of the three settlements of Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. He resided for a great number of years in the far East, studying there the country and people; he visited Siam, Java, Borneo, and the Phillipine Islands, making himself thoroughly acquainted with those places, the Malay peninsula, and various other countries in the Indian Ocean and China Sea. In 1820 he published, in London, "A History of the Indian Archipelago" (then comparatively but seldom visited by, and less known to, Europeans), a work, I understand, of considerable merit. Thirty-six years afterwards, that is, in the year 1856, having during the interval spent seven years in travelling through India and otherwise making himself perfectly acquainted with his subject, he published "A Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent Countries." The book was brought out in London by the well-known firm of Bradbury and Evans, and I have it now before me. It was lent to me by a friend since the first edition of these lectures was published. It is an interesting and valuable volume, affording abundant evidence of the learning, research, vast information and talents, and the studious and energetic character of the writer. The book was published many years before this wonderful confederation "The Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade" sprang into existence, and, indeed, before there was any considerable controversy upon the opium question. The opinions of this eminent man on the subject of opium should, therefore, be viewed as wholly unbiassed, for it is certain that he had no selfish ends to gratify. Turning to the word "Opium" at page 313, we find the following:-- Opium is at present largely consumed in the Malayan Islands, in China, in the Indo-Chinese countries, and in a few parts of Hindustan, much in the same way in which wine, ardent spirits, malt liquor, and cider are consumed in Europe. Its deleterious character has been much insisted on, but generally, by parties _who have had no experience of its effects_. Like any other narcotic or stimulant, the habitual use of it is amenable to abuse, and as being more seductive than other stimulants, perhaps more so; but this is certainly the utmost that can be safely charged to it. Thousands consume it without any pernicious result, as thousands do wine and spirits, without any evil consequence. I know of no person of long experience and competent judgment who has not come to this common-sense conclusion. Dr. Oxley, a physician and a naturalist of eminence, and who has had a longer experience than any other man of Singapore, where there is the highest rate of consumption of the drug, gives the following opinion:--"The inordinate use, or rather abuse, of the drug most decidedly does bring on early decrepitude, loss of appetite, and a morbid state of all the secretions; but I have seen a man who had used the drug for fifty years in moderation, without any evil effects; and one man I recollect in Malacca who had so used it was upwards of eighty. Several in the habit of smoking it have assured me that, in moderation, it neither impaired the functions nor shortened life; at the same time fully admitting the deleterious effects of too much." There is not a word of this that would not be equally true of the use and abuse of ardent spirit, wine, and, perhaps, even tobacco. The historian of Sumatra, whose experience and good sense cannot be questioned, came early to the very same conclusion. The superior curative virtues of opium over any other stimulant are undeniable, and the question of its superiority over ardent spirits appears to me to have been for ever set at rest by the high authority of my friend Sir Benjamin Brodie. "The effect of opium, when taken into the stomach," says this distinguished philosopher, "is not to stimulate but to soothe the nervous system. It may be otherwise in some instances, but these are rare exceptions to the general rule. The opium eater is, in a passive state, satisfied with his own dreamy condition while under the influence of the drug. He is useless but not mischievous. It is quite otherwise with alcoholic liquors."--"Psychological Inquiries," p. 248. It may be worth while to show what is really the relative consumption in those countries in which its use is alleged to be most pernicious. In the British Settlement of Singapore, owing to the high rate of wages, and the prevalence of a Chinese population, the consumption is at the rate of about three hundred and thirty grains, or adult doses, a year for each person. In Java, where the Chinese do not compose above one in a hundred of the population, and where wages are comparatively low, it does not exceed forty grains. Even in China itself, where the consumption is supposed to be so large, it is no more than one hundred and forty grains, chiefly _owing to the poverty of the people, to whom it is for the most part inaccessible_. It must not be forgotten, that some of the deleterious qualities of opium are considerably abated, in all the countries in question, by the manner in which it is prepared for use, _which consists in reducing it to a kind of morphine and inhaling its fumes in this state_. Moreover, everywhere consumption is restricted by heavy taxation. The opium of India pays, in the first instance, a tax which amounts to three millions sterling. The same opium in Singapore, with a population of sixty thousand, pays another impost of thirty thousand pounds; and, in Java, with a population of ten millions, one of eight hundred thousand pounds. _Not the use, then, but the abuse, of opium is prejudicial to health_; but in this respect it does not materially differ from wine, distilled spirits, malt liquor, or hemp juice. There may be shades of difference in the abuse of all these commodities, but they are not easily determined, and, perhaps, hardly worth attempting to appreciate. There is nothing mysterious about the intoxication produced by ordinary stimulants, because we are familiar with it; but it is otherwise with that resulting from opium, to which we are strangers. We have generally only our imaginations to guide us with the last, and we associate it with deeds of desperation and murder; _the disposition to commit which, were the drug ever had recourse to on such occasions, which it never is, it would surely allay and not stimulate_. LECTURE II. I closed my first lecture with a list of fallacies, upon which the objections to the Indo-China opium trade, and the charges brought against England in relation to that trade, are founded, stating that I should return to them and dispose of each separately. I also said in the earlier part of my lecture, that the extraordinary hallucinations which had taken hold of the public mind, with respect to opium smoking in China, arose, amongst other causes, from the fact that the public had formed their opinions from hearsay evidence, and that of the very worst and most untrustworthy kind. I say untrustworthy because hearsay evidence, although in general inadmissible in our law courts, may be in some cases very good and reliable evidence. As this point goes to the root of all these fallacies and false assertions, and the delusions based upon them, I wish to show you why hearsay evidence is, in this case, of the worst and most unreliable kind. In the first instance, I would refer you to the general character of the Chinese for mendacity and deceit, admitted by all writers upon the subject of China and the Chinese, and supported by the general opinion of Europeans who have dwelt amongst them. Now, I am far from saying that every Chinaman is necessarily a liar, or habitually tells untruths for corrupt purposes. The point is, rather, that the Chinese do not understand truth in the sense that we do. The evidence of Chinese witnesses in courts of justice is notorious for its untrustworthy character. The judges are not generally contented with the direct and cross-examination to which witnesses are ordinarily subjected by counsel, but frequently themselves put them under a searching examination, and generally require more evidence in the case of Chinese than they would if Europeans were alone concerned. From my acquaintance of the Chinese I can say that they are a very good-natured people, especially when good-nature does not cost them much; but they are also a very vindictive people, as, I suppose, most heathen nations are. I have known cases where, to gratify private malice, or to obtain some object, the reason for which would be hard for us to appreciate, a Chinaman has got up a charge without foundation in fact, but supported by false witnesses, who were so well drilled and had so thoroughly rehearsed their parts that it was hard to doubt, and almost impossible to disprove, the accusation. By such means innocent men have been condemned and sentenced to severe punishments, or been unjustly compelled to pay large sums of money. I have, on the other hand, known cases which, according to the evidence brought before me, appeared perfectly clear and good in law; but on taking each witness quietly into my own office, and going through his evidence, the whole fabric would tumble down like a pack of cards; so that, although my client's case might still be intrinsically good, the witnesses he brought in support of it knew nothing about it beyond what they had heard from others. It would turn out that they had been told this by one person, that by another, and so on, throughout the series of witnesses, not one of them would have any actual knowledge of the alleged facts. In cases like these there would probably be no corrupt motive whatever. While upon this point I may allude to another peculiar phase in the Chinese character. They are so addicted to falsehood that they will embellish truth, even in cases where they have the facts on their own side. On such occasions they like to add to their story a fringe of falsehood, thinking, perhaps, that by doing so, they will make the truth stand out in brighter colours and appear more favourable in the eyes of the Court and the Jury. Another Chinese peculiarity is the following:--If you put leading questions to a Chinaman upon any particular subject, that is to say, if you interrogate him upon a point, and by your mode of doing so induce him to think that you are desirous of getting one particular kind of answer, he gives you that answer accordingly, out of mere good-nature. In these instances his imagination is wonderfully fertile. The moment he finds his replies afford pleasure, and that there is an object in view, he will give his questioner as much information of this kind as he likes. Not only is this the case with the common people, corresponding to the working or the labouring classes here, but the habit really pervades the highest ranks of Chinese society. It is mentioned in Dr. Williams's work, how the Chinese as a people think it no shame in being detected in a falsehood. It is very hard to understand, especially for an Englishman, such moral obtuseness. We are so accustomed to consider truth in the first place, and to look upon perjury and falsehood with abhorrence, that it may seem almost like romancing to gravely assure you of these facts. If I relate a few short anecdotes which are absolutely true, and in which I was personally concerned, I may put the matter more clearly before you. A Chinese merchant, now in Hong Kong, once instructed me to prosecute a claim against a ship-master for short delivery of cargo, and from the documents he gave me, and the witnesses he produced, I had no hesitation in pronouncing his case a good one, although I knew the man was untruthful. When we came into court, knowing my client's proclivities, my only fear was that he would not be content with simply telling the truth, but would so embellish it with falsehood that the judge would not believe his story. I therefore not only cautioned him myself in "pidgin English," but instructed my Chinese clerk and interpreter to do so also. My last words to him on going into court were, "Now mind you talkee true. Suppose you talkee true you win your case. Suppose you talkee lie you losee." The man went into the witness-box, and I am bound to say that on that occasion he did tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, but I could plainly see by his manner and bearing that the task was a most irksome one. When he left the box, after cross-examination, I felt greatly relieved. The defendant, who, I am glad to say, was not an Englishman, although he commanded a British ship, told falsehood after falsehood. There could be no doubt about this, and the judge, Mr. Snowden, the present Puisne Judge of Hong Kong, at last ordered him to leave the box, and gave judgment for my client. Notwithstanding this satisfactory result, I saw that the plaintiff was still dissatisfied. I left the court and he followed me out. He still seemed discontented, and had the air of an injured man. When we got clear of the court he actually assailed me for having closed his mouth and deprived him of the luxury of telling untruths. "What for," said he, "you say my no talkee lie? that man have talkee plenty lie." I replied, "Oh, that man have losee; you have won." But with anger in his countenance, he walked sullenly away. Now I will tell you another--and a totally different case. The judge on this occasion was the late Sir John Smale, Chief Justice of Hong Kong. It was an action brought by a Chinese merchant, carrying on business in Cochin China, against his agent in Hong Kong, a countryman of his, who had not accounted for goods consigned to him for sale. The plaintiff put his case in my hands. When it came into court the defendant was supported by witnesses who seemed to have no connection whatever with the subject-matter of the suit. They, however, swore most recklessly. In cross-examination one of the witnesses completely broke down. The Chief Justice then stopped the case, and characterized the defendant's conduct "as the grossest attempt at fraud he had ever met with since he had come to China," and, under the special powers he possessed, sent the false witness to gaol for six weeks. The person so punished for perjury proved to be what we would call a Master of Arts. He was, in fact, an expectant mandarin, ranking very high in China. I should tell you that in that country there is no regular hereditary nobility, nor any aristocracy save the mandarin or official class. The fact is, and in view of Mr. Storrs Turner's comparison of the Chinese with the savages of Central Africa, I may here mention it, that in China--where these simple, innocent "aborigines," as it suits the anti-opium advocates to treat them, flourish--education is the sole criterion of rank and precedence. They have a competitive system there, which is undoubtedly the oldest in the world. This man, as I said, was a Master of Arts, and would, in regular course, have been appointed to an important official post and taken rank as a mandarin. He was, I believe, at the time of his sentence, one of the regular examiners at the competitive examinations of young men seeking for employment in the Civil Service of the Empire. When the case ended, I dismissed it from my mind. But, to my great surprise, six or seven of the leading Chinamen of Hong Kong waited upon me on the following day, and implored of me to get this man out of gaol. They declared that the whole Chinese community of Hong Kong felt degraded at having one of their superior order, a learned Master of Arts, consigned to a foreign prison. They assured me that this was the greatest indignity that could have been offered to the Chinese people. I replied that the fact of the prisoner being a man of education only aggravated his offence, that he had deliberately perjured himself in order to cheat my client, and that the foreign community considered his punishment far too lenient, for had he been a foreigner he would have got a far more severe punishment. But they could not see the matter in that light, and went away dissatisfied. They afterwards presented a petition to the Governor, praying for the man's release, but without success. My object in narrating this to you is to show the utter contempt which the Chinese, not only of the lower orders, but of the better class, have for the truth. I could supplement these cases by many others, all showing that the Chinese do not regard the difference between truth and falsehood in the sense that we do. To illustrate more clearly what I have told you, I will read to you a short passage from a leading article in the "China Mail," a daily newspaper published in Hong Kong. The date of the paper is the 3rd of October 1881. The editor is a gentleman who has been out there for twenty years; he is a man of considerable ability and knows the Chinese character perfectly, and I may also mention that he is a near relative of Mr. Storrs Turner. This is what he says:-- The question of the reliability of Chinese witnesses is one which is continually presenting itself to all who have anything to do with judicial proceedings in this colony, and as jurors are usually saddled with the responsibility of deciding how far such evidence is to be credited in most serious cases, the subject is one which appeals to a large body of residents. An eminent local authority, some time since, gave it as his opinion that he did not think a Chinese witness could give accurate evidence, even if the precise truth would best suit his purpose. This is doubtless true to some extent, and it bears directly on one phase of the discussion, viz. that of reliableness, so far as strict accuracy of detail is concerned. But a witness may be regarded as the witness of truth although he fails in that extremely precise or accurate narration of facts and details which goes so far to strengthen truthful testimony. What is meant here by reliability of witnesses, however, is their desire to tell what they _believe_ to be the truth. It has been somewhere said, by one of authority on Chinese matters, that it is not particularly surprising that the Chinese, as a people, are so widely known as economisers of the truth, when their system of government is carefully considered. For a Chinaman, life assumes so many phases, in which a good round lie becomes a valuable commodity, that the only surprise remaining is, that he is ever known to tell the truth. That is exactly what I have already said. It would occupy too much time to read the rest of the article, which is ably written, but the portion I have quoted tends to show the unreliability of Chinese witnesses, even in a solemn Court of Justice. Now, I think, I have shown you that our Celestial friends present rather an unpromising raw material from which to extract the truth. Yet these are the men from whom the missionaries derive their information as to those wonderful consequences from opium smoking which, the more greedily swallowed, are the more liberally supplied, thus affording an illustration of Mr. Storrs Turner's extraordinary theory of supply and demand, of which I shall have to speak more by and by. Having exhibited to you the well of truth from which credible evidence is sought to be obtained, I have now to turn to the other side of the question and describe the character and competence of those who draw their facts from that source, and from whom the general public have mainly derived their knowledge of opium and opium smoking. As regards the missionaries, I have stated already that I hold them in the very highest respect, and they are well deserving of it, and, indeed, of the consideration of the whole community. Were I to state anything to their prejudice or disadvantage, further than what I assert as to their fallacious views and unjustifiable conduct on the opium question, I should certainly be speaking without warrant; for a more respectable, hard-working, or conscientious body of gentlemen it would be difficult to find. Perhaps they are the hardest worked and worst paid class of any foreigners in China. They have a work to perform, the difficulty of which is but partially understood in this country; that is, the task of converting to Christianity these heathen people, who think Confucianism and the other religions engrafted upon it which they follow, and which seem to suit their temperament, immeasurably superior to ours; who point to our prophets and sages as men of yesterday, and look with comparative contempt upon our literature, laws, and customs. The real difficulty of the situation lies in these facts; believe me, that it is as absurd as it is untrue to say that opium has had anything to do with the slow progress of Christianity in China. Missionary clergymen in China are really not the best men to get at the facts of the opium question. If a foreigner, here in England, were to ask me in which quarter he would be likely to obtain the best information regarding the manners and customs of the English people, I should certainly advise him to get introductions to some of our working clergy of all denominations, because they are the people's trusted friends and advisers, sharing in their joys and sympathizing in their sorrows, their wants and necessities. They are educated and matter-of-fact men, just the class of persons to afford sound and accurate information as to the country and people. This, I believe, will be generally admitted. The same rule would not apply to our missionary clergymen in China; for they, unlike our clergy at home, are not the trusted friends and advisers of the Chinese people, and, knowing really very little of the inner life of the people, cannot be said to sympathize in their wants and necessities. No doubt there have been some admirable books written on China by missionary clergymen, such as the "Middle Kingdom," from which I have already quoted, and Dr. Doolittle's work; but everyone who has lived long in China takes all their statements on every point affecting their missionary labours, and upon many other matters also, _cum grano_. So far as the manners and customs of the Chinese can be understood from their outdoor life, literature, and laws, they are competent judges enough; but as they are not admitted into Chinese society, and do not possess the confidence of the people, they cannot be accepted as authorities on the inner social life of the natives, so far as regards opium-smoking. They have not at all the same status as regards the Chinese that English clergymen have in respect to their own countrymen here in England; and if a friend were to put such a question to me respecting China and the Chinese, the last people I would refer him to for information would be the missionary clergymen. These missionary gentlemen, if they were at home in England, would, no doubt, have their livings and vicarages, and would take their place with the regular clergy of the country. But in China things are totally different. There the people not only despise them, but laugh at the creed they are trying to teach. The simplicity of the Gospel is too cold for them. Teeming with the marvellous as their own religions do, no other creed seems acceptable to them that does not deal in startling miracles and offer a continuous supply of supernatural feats. Anyone who reads Dr. Legge's book, on the religions of China, will see this at once. The Chinese have an accepted belief three or four thousand years older than Christianity, and they are well aware of the fact. Despising Europeans, as they do, and looking upon themselves as a superior race, it is not likely that the Chinese will take missionary clergymen into their confidence, or afford them any trustworthy information about private or personal matters. In short, there is no cordiality between the Chinese and the missionaries. Still our Chinese friends are a very polite people, and no doubt they are and will continue to be outwardly very civil to missionaries, and, although they may consider them impudent intruders, will give courteous answers to their questions; but it does not follow that they will give _true_ answers. A respectable Chinaman, such as a merchant, a shopkeeper, or an artizan, would consider himself disgraced among his own community if it were known that he had embraced Christianity, or even entertained the thought of doing so. I do not think that, long as I was in China, I had a single regular Chinese client who was a Christian. All my native clients--merchants, shopkeepers, clerks, artizans, and coolies, and I have had professional dealings with thousands of them--were heathens. In very rare instances Chinese professing Christianity will be found holding respectable positions; but, I regret to say, I do not believe that any of such people are sincere. I had myself a clerk in my office for about twelve years; he was a young man educated at St. Paul's College, in Hong Kong. The College is now closed, but when in existence the pupils there got an excellent education, and were also well clothed and fed. They were not only taught Chinese, as is the case in Chinese schools, but also to read and speak English well. When he went to the school he was not more than seven or eight years old, and left it probably when he was fourteen or fifteen. He was an excellent clerk, a highly intelligent young fellow, and wrote and spoke English well. Now, if ever there were a case where a lad might be expected to be a sincere convert this was the one. He had been strictly brought up as a Christian, went to church, and read the Bible regularly, and, indeed, was far more kindly treated in the College than English lads are in many schools in this country. Even that boy was not a sincere convert. When about eighteen years of age he got married, as is the custom with the youth of China. On informing me of his intention, he asked me to procure from the Superintendent of Police the privilege of having "fire crackers" at his wedding, a heathen custom, supposed to drive away evil spirits. I reminded him that I had always believed him a Christian; when he said, "Oh! it's a Chinese custom." However, I got him the privilege. But instead of being solemnized in the church, which he had been in the habit of attending when a pupil in St. Paul's College, according to the rites of the Church of England, his marriage ceremony was celebrated in Chinese fashion, a primitive proceeding, and certainly heathen in its form. He never went near the church at all. A few days afterwards I remarked to him that he had not been married in the church. He laughed, and said, "that as he and his wife were Chinese they could only be married according to Chinese custom." Let me give another story in point. I knew a man in Hong Kong who, owing to the difficulty of finding suitable natives who understood English, was for a long time the only Chinese on the jury list. He spoke English fairly well. He was educated at a school presided over by the late Rev. Dr. Morrison, the learned sinologue, who had lived in Hong Kong before my time. His school was an excellent one, and had turned out some very good scholars. I have seen this man go into the jury-box, and often too, into the witness-box, and take the Bible in his hand and kiss it ostentatiously. I used to think he was a sincere Christian, and was glad to see so respectable a Chinaman (for he held a responsible position in a bank) acknowledge in public that he was a Christian. But that man, I afterwards discovered from the best possible authority, was at heart a heathen; he always had idols, or, as we call them, "Josses," in his house. He also was a Christian in name, and nothing more. There was another man educated in Dr. Morrison's school. Dr. Legge knew him very well, and was a sort of patron of his. I suppose it is pretty well known that polygamy is a custom in China, and that it is quite an exception for a Chinese in any decent position there not to have three, four, or more wives; the more he has the greater his consequence among his countrymen. This man, as a matter of fact, had three wives, and when his so-called first wife died, he was in a great fright lest Dr. Legge should discover that he had two more wives, for it is customary that the other wives should attend the funeral of the first as mourners. Now these are the sort of converts, for the most part, to be met with in China. As a rule, they are far less honest and more untruthful than their heathen countrymen, and many Europeans in consequence will not take converts into their service. In proof of this statement I will here give you an extract from a very able article which appeared in the "Hong Kong Daily Press," an old and well conducted newspaper, of the 31st October 1882. This is it:-- They [the missionaries] secure some adherence to the Christian religion, no doubt, but what is the value of the Christianity? It possesses, so far as we have been able to judge, neither stamina nor backbone. Foreigners at Hong Kong, and at the Treaty Ports, fight shy of Christian servants, a very general impression existing that they are less reliable than their heathen fellows; and with regard to the Christians in their own villages and towns, there is always a suspicion of interested motives. Are these Chinese converts the class of the Chinese from which truth is to be gleaned? Is the testimony of such people of the slightest value? Yet these are the persons from whom the missionaries derive their knowledge of opium smoking and its alleged baneful effects. I venture to say that among all the so-called Christian converts in China you will not find five per cent. who are really sincere--all the rest profess Christianity to obtain some personal advantage. These so-called converts are generally people from the humblest classes, because, as I have mentioned, people of the better class, such as merchants, shopkeepers, and tradesmen, not only consider their own religion superior to the Christian's creed, but they would be ashamed to adopt Christianity, as they would thus be disgraced and make themselves appear ridiculous in the eyes of their neighbours; and they are a people peculiarly sensitive to ridicule. I will not say that there are not some true converts to be found among Chinese congregations; if there are none, the missionary clergymen are certainly not to blame, for they are indefatigable in their exertions to make converts, proving also by their blameless lives the sincerity of their professions. As I have said, the difficulty attending their efforts is enormous. It must be remembered that in China we are not teaching Christianity to the poor African, or the semi-civilised native of Madagascar or the Fiji Islands; but that we are dealing with civilized men, who consider their own country and literature, customs and religion, far superior to those of England or of any other country in the world. The Chinese are so convinced of this, that the very coolies in the streets consider themselves the superiors of the foreign ladies and gentlemen that pass, or whom, perhaps, they are carrying in their sedan chairs. I hold the missionaries altogether responsible for the hallucination that has taken possession of the public mind on the opium question. With the Bible they revere in their hands, they think the Chinese should eagerly embrace the doctrine it inculcates, and, unable to account for their failure, they readily accept the subterfuge offered by certain Chinese for not accepting Christianity or attending to their teaching. They feel that it is, or may be, expected of them in this country, that they should have large congregations of native proselytes, such as, I believe, the missionaries have in Madagascar, and in like places, forgetting that no parallel can be drawn between such races and the Chinese. The Protestant missionary clergymen in China are, not unnaturally, anxious to account for their supposed failure in that large and heathen country. They would not be human if they were not. The better class of Chinese, as I have said, will not listen to a missionary, or argue with him. They do not want to hear lectures on Christianity, and grow impatient at any disparaging remark about their own religion. They simply say, "We have a religion that is better than yours, and we mean to stick to it." The missionaries, however, think they ought to have better success. They are, no doubt, indefatigable in their labours, and as they do not meet with the results that ought, they consider, to follow from their labours, and as their sanguine minds cling to any semblance of excuse for their shortcomings, they accept the stale and miserable subterfuge, to the use of which their converts are prompted by the Mandarins, that the Indo-China opium trade is vicious, and that before Christianity is accepted by the country, the trade in question must be abolished. This transparent evasion of the Chinese appears to me to bear too strong a family likeness to the famous "confidence trick," with which the police reports now and then make us acquainted, to be entertained for a moment. The Chinese, knowing the weakness of the missionaries, play upon it; and one of the best instances I can give you that they are successful is this:--They tell them that the Chinese Government objects to the opium trade upon moral grounds; but it never occurs to the missionaries to retort and say, "If so, why does your Government not prevent the cultivation of opium throughout China? In the provinces of Yunnan and Szechuen, and all over the Empire, indeed, enormous crops of opium are raised every year; why does not your Government, knowing, as you say, that the effects of opium are so fatal, put a stop to the growth of the deleterious drug?" This question would prove rather a difficult one to answer, though the Mandarins, skilful casuists as they are, would no doubt invent some specious one which might impose upon their interrogators. The mental vision of our missionary friends is so limited to one side only of the question, that even here they might be taken in by the astute natives. It is only of late that the Chinese Government has taken up the moral objection, and the reason, I believe, it has done so is because it has found out the weak side of the missionaries, probably through _The Friend of China_, published at Shanghai. When it is taken into account that of late years the average quantity of Indian opium imported into China is about one hundred thousand chests, each of which, for all practical purposes, may be called a hundredweight, and that the price of each of these chests landed in China is about seven hundred dollars, and that the whole works up to something like sixteen millions sterling, the strong objection of the Mandarin classes to allow such a large amount of specie to leave the country becomes intelligible. Rapacious plunderers as they are, they see their prey escaping them before their very eyes, and are powerless to snatch it back. These sixteen millions, they think, would be all fair game for "squeezing" if we could only keep them at home. For although China is an immense empire, with great natural resources, it is still a poor country as regards the precious metals. No doubt an economist would tell these Mandarins: "It is true we sell you all this opium, but then we give you back again all the money you pay for it, with a great deal more besides, for the purchase of your tea and silk." But a Mandarin would only laugh at such an argument. "Ah," he would say, "you must have tea and silk in any case; you can't do without them. We want to get hold of your silver and give you none of ours in return." That is the true cause, or one of the true causes, of the objection of the Government of China to the importation into that country of Indian opium. The missionaries, or at all events the greater number of them, have adopted the view, that if they could only put a stop to the importation of Indian opium into China the evangelization of the country would be a question of time only; and in one sense, indeed, this would be true; but the time would not be near, but very distant. The Chinese have a keen sense of humour, and if the British would allow themselves to be cajoled by the specious arguments with which the religious world here is constantly regaled about the opium question, so far as to put a stop to the traffic, such a feeling of contempt for English common sense, and in consequence for the religion of Englishmen, would ensue, that the spread of the Gospel in China would be greatly retarded indeed. The truth about opium is so clear to those who trust to the evidence of their senses, and who look at facts from a plain common sense point of view, that they cannot for a moment see that there is any connection whatever between opium and Christianity. It seems to me that those gentlemen who adopt the anti-opium doctrine, and scatter it abroad, are only comparable to the monomaniac, who, sane upon every subject but one, is thoroughly daft upon that. No better example of this can I give you than by referring to a speech made by a gentleman deservedly respected by the community, whom I have always considered as one of the hardest-headed men sitting in the House of Commons, possessing sound common sense upon all subjects save that of opium. I refer to Sir J. W. Pease, the Member for South Durham. In the year 1881 the usual anti-opium debate came on in the House of Commons. Sir J. W. Pease delivered a speech on the occasion denunciatory of the Indo-China trade, in the course of which he referred to the treaty recently made between China and America, one of the clauses of which provides that American ships shall not import opium into China, and that no Chinaman shall be allowed to import opium into America, where there is a large Chinese population, especially in San Francisco. The treaty relates to other matters, and this clause is, so to speak, interpolated into it, for a purpose I shall now explain. It was intended to appear as a sort of _quid pro quo_, for whilst America, in fact, gave up nothing, though she affected to do so, she obtained some commercial advantages by the treaty. This is the clause:-- The Governments of China and of the United States mutually agree and undertake that Chinese subjects shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports of the United States; and citizens of the United States shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the open ports of China. This absolute prohibition, which extends to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either Power, to foreign vessels employed by them or to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either Power, and employed by other persons for transportation of opium, shall be enforced by appropriate legislation on the part of China and the United States, and the benefits of the favoured claims in existing treaties shall not be claimed by the citizens or subjects of either Power as against the provisions of this article. I happened to be weather-bound in Rome when I first read, in a Hong Kong paper, that amusing and deceptive treaty, which was made in 1880. Knowing thoroughly the situation, and all the facts connected with the Indo-China opium trade, I undertake to assure you that so far, at least, as regards this opium clause, that treaty was simply a farce. With the single exception of a line of mail packet steamers between Hong Kong and San Francisco, America has few or no steamers trading in the China seas. She has protected her mercantile marine so well that she has now very little occasion for exercising her protection. She has no vessels trading between India and China, and never has had any, and, as a matter of fact, no American ships carry one ounce of opium between India or China, or to the port of Hong Kong, or have carried it for many years, if, indeed, any American vessel has ever done so. Nor is there, indeed, at present the slightest probability that her ships will ever convey opium between India and China. America, in fact, might, with as much self-denial, have undertaken not to carry coals to Newcastle as Indian opium to China. There are regular lines of British steamers plying between the ports of Bombay, Calcutta, and Hong Kong, by which all Indian opium for the China trade is carried direct to its destination. I declare that anything more absurd, deceptive, and dishonest never formed the subject of an international treaty. The whole affair was so utterly false and misleading that the first thing I did after reading the treaty was to cut it out from the newspaper and forward it, with an explanatory letter, to the "Times," the usual refuge of the aggrieved Briton. This deceptive clause was intended simply to mislead the simple, benevolent, good-natured John Bull, already, as the framers of the treaty no doubt supposed, half-crazed on the anti-opium movement. A better specimen of American smartness and Chinese astuteness could hardly be conceived than this crafty and fallacious clause. America has no opium to sell or import, and can, therefore, afford to be extremely generous on the point. It is just possible, however, that at a future day opium may be produced in the South-Western States, in which case the American Government--I will not say the American people, for I hold _them_ in great respect--will endeavour to wriggle out of this precious treaty, just as they are now trying to do as regards the Panama convention with this country, when the possibility that gave rise to it is likely to become a reality. The stipulation that Chinese subjects should not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports of the United States is of course absolute nonsense. If the American Government had really intended to prohibit opium from being imported from China, or elsewhere, into their country they should not have confined the prohibition to Chinese subjects, but have extended it to all nationalities; in fact, to have made opium, save for medical purposes, contraband. To explain this point more clearly, you will remember what I have mentioned before, that the exclusive right to manufacture crude opium into the form used for smoking, called in China "prepared opium," is farmed out. The present farmer pays the Government of Hong Kong two hundred and five thousand dollars, or forty thousand pounds a year for the monopoly. The reason why he pays so large a sum for this privilege is because of the facilities it affords him for exporting it to other places, and not merely to get the exclusive right of preparing and selling the drug in Hong Kong, for if that were all the benefit to be derived from the monopoly he would not give so large a rent for it. The greater source of profit arises from the circumstance that the Chinese must have the beloved stimulant wherever they roam. If you go to Australia, the Philippine Islands, the Straits, Borneo, or the town of Saigon in French Cochin China, or wherever else dollars are to be made, you will find Chinese in abundance. Go to the South Seas, go to the Sandwich or the Fiji Islands, you will discover the Chinese happy and prosperous, and you will always see in their houses the opium pipe. The advantage of having the exclusive privilege in Hong Kong of preparing and selling opium consists in this, that it is the terminus of an American line of steamers which ply between that port and San Francisco. It is also the port from which British lines of steamers run to Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. These packets always take with them consignments of prepared opium ready for smoking, because at these places there are large and well-to-do Chinese communities who can afford to indulge in the national luxury of opium smoking. I have already told you that I was for about ten years solicitor for that opium firm, and I happen to know a great deal about the prepared opium trade through that medium. The Chinese in California, where there is an immense number of those people, do not consume less, I should say, in the course of a year than one hundred thousand pounds worth of prepared opium. As is the case in Hong Kong, the Chinese have better means to buy the drug there than they would have at home. They get high wages, keep shops, are excellent tradesmen, and can live and make money where a European would starve. They are all, in fact, well-to-do, and wherever a Chinaman has the money he must have his opium pipe. Therefore the privilege of supplying the Chinese in California, Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, and in the South Sea Islands, where are large China colonies, is enjoyed by the opium farmer of Hong Kong, because he has the means of shipping the drug by steamers direct to those places, thus out-distancing all other competitors. This trade, notwithstanding that wonderful treaty, is still going on, and not one ounce of opium less than was shipped before its ratification is now being carried to San Francisco, and in American bottoms too, for the treaty only says that no _Chinaman_ shall import opium into America; there is no prohibition against Americans or Europeans doing so. What the opium farmer now does, if indeed he has not always done so, is to get an American or other merchant in Hong Kong to ship the drug for him in his own name, handing him, the opium farmer, the bill of lading. The opium is accordingly shipped in the name of Brown, Jones, or Robinson, and on its arrival at San Francisco the opium farmer's consignee takes possession of it, and it is distributed by him among his countrymen in that flourishing city. If Sir J. W. Pease were not an enthusiast, ready to swallow without hesitation everything which seems to tell against the opium traffic, and to disbelieve everything said or written on the other side of the question, he would have seen through all this as a matter of course. This is what he said about the treaty in the speech I have referred to, having first delivered a philippic on the enormities and terrible wickedness of the traffic:-- Only last year a treaty was entered into between the United States and China, and one of the articles of that treaty distinctly stated that the opium trade was forbidden, and that no American ship should become an opium trader--a fact which showed that the Chinese authorities were honest in their expressed desire to put an end to the trade. Sir J. W. Pease is the most confiding of men; to my mind the treaty should be construed in a very different sense. Sometimes, when we want to convey our sentiments to another, we do so indirectly. There is a very well understood method of attaining that object. Instead of opening your mind to Mr. Jones, who is the object of your intended edification, you will in Mr. Jones's presence address your remarks to Mr. Brown; but in reality, although you are speaking to the latter, you are speaking at the former. Now the whole object of this precious article of the treaty was to play a similar piece of finesse. Both nations well understood what they were about; they were simply trying to hoodwink and make fools of John Bull by putting into the treaty this false and hypocritical clause, which, as between themselves, each party well knew meant nothing to the other. Here is Sir J. W. Pease, a sensible and astute man of business, with his eyes open, yet, blinded by his good nature and anti-opium prejudice, falling into the trap set for him, and allowing himself to be deceived by this transparent piece of humbug, and quoting in the House of Commons this "bogus" treaty as evidence that the Indo-China opium trade is so infamous that the American Government intended, so far as they were concerned, to put a stop to it, and that the Chinese Government wish to abolish it on moral grounds. I give you this as an example of the lengths to which otherwise sensible gentlemen will go when smitten with opium-phobia, and how oblivious they become under such circumstances to actual facts. Imagine how his Excellency Li Hung Chang, that very able Chinese statesman, and those smart American diplomatists who have thus posed as anti-opium philanthropists, must have enjoyed the fun of being able to so completely bamboozle an English member of Sir J. W. Pease's reputation! Now, although I have exposed this Americo-Chinese juggle, I am far from meaning to cast the slightest imputation upon Sir J. W. Pease, whose personal character I in common with the whole country hold in the very highest respect. I am well assured that in bringing forward his motion in the House of Commons he was actuated by a sense of duty, and the very purest motives, and that in referring to the treaty in question he fully believed in its _bona fides_; upon this point I am at one with his warmest admirers. No one deservedly stands higher as a philanthropist and Christian gentleman, and, save as regards this opium delusion, no man has ever made a nobler use of an ample fortune than he. I may speak in the same terms of the venerable and universally-respected nobleman who is the president of the Anti-Opium Society, whose whole life has been devoted to the welfare of his fellow men, especially those who stood most in need of his help. I referred in the first edition of this lecture to a Most Reverend Prelate, honoured and beloved both by his own countrymen, and, I believe, the whole Christian world, who is also, I deeply deplore, a believer in the anti-opium delusion, but in doing so nothing was farther from my intentions than to lay aside for a moment the respect that was due to him as a man and a high dignitary of the church. I revere and honour him and admire his great and noble qualities as much as any man living. Born and brought up as I have been in the Church of England, and sincerely attached to its doctrine and teaching, having near and dear relatives, too, ministers of that church, the last thing I would be capable of doing is to harbour an unkind thought, or utter a disrespectful word, against any of her clergy, much less one of her most honoured prelates. These three good and upright men are, I am sorry to say, but types of a great many other most estimable people, many of them ornaments to their country, who through the purity and overflowing goodness of their hearts, have been dragged into the vortex of delusion set afloat by the Anti-Opium Society--who allow themselves to be cajoled and victimised--led by the nose, in fact, by anti-opium fanatics, who, cunning as the madman and perfectly regardless of the means they resort to in the prosecution of what they consider right, bring to their aid the zeal of the missionary and the power for mischief which superior education and mis-directed talents confer. This is what rouses one's indignation and compels me to pursue the unpleasant task of discrediting and otherwise painfully referring to men whom, apart from this wretched opium delusion, I honour and respect. Upon this point I cannot refrain from referring to a gentleman of high standing, who had formerly been in China, and really ought to have known better. That gentleman went so far as to write a letter to the "Times," in which he said that out of one hundred missionaries in China there was not one who would receive a convert into his church until he had made a vow against opium smoking. Bearing in mind that all these so-called converts made by these one hundred missionaries belong for the most part to the very poor, if not to the dregs of the people, I should think no missionary clergyman would find much difficulty in obtaining such a pledge. He has only to ask and to have. If a clergyman in a very poor neighbourhood in the East End of London proposed to his congregation that they should promise never to drink champagne, he would receive such a pledge without difficulty from one and all; but if any kind person were afterwards to give them a banquet of roast beef and plum-pudding, with plenty of champagne to wash those good things down, I am afraid their vow would be found to be very elastic. So it is with the congregations of these missionary clergymen; there is not an individual amongst them who would refuse to enjoy the opium pipe if he got the chance, however much they might declaim against the practice to please the missionary. Opium, as the missionaries must well know, is a luxury that can only be indulged in by those who have the means of paying for it. Now, while twopence or threepence may appear to us a very insignificant sum, such will not be the opinion of a very poor person. Threepence will purchase a loaf of bread. So it is with the Chinese, especially those residing in their own territory. There is only one class of coin current in China. It is known by Europeans as "cash." Ten should equal a cent, or a halfpenny, but owing to the inferiority of the metal they are made of, twelve or thirteen usually go to make one cent of English money, so that ten cents, or fivepence of our money, would be about one hundred and thirty cash. A poor Chinaman possessing that sum would think that he had got hold of quite a pocketful of money, and so it would prove, so far as regards a little rice or salt fish, which forms part of most Chinamen's daily food; but were he so foolish as to indulge in opium, a few whiffs of the pipe would soon swallow up the whole. And then there arises the difficulty of getting the cash, so that it is really only people having command of a fair amount of money who can afford to indulge, habitually at all events, in the luxury of the pipe. Now with respect to the alleged evil effects of opium smoking, you will constantly hear stories from missionary sources of wretched people, the slaves of the opium pipe, crawling to the medical officers of missionary hospitals, who are to a certain extent missionaries themselves, and asking to be cured of the terrible consequences of their indulgence in opium smoking. The medical officer at each of these missionary institutions, a victim himself, in most cases, to the delusions set afloat, accepts their story, pities the men, and takes them into the hospital; and, believing that if they do not get a moderate indulgence in opium smoking they will pine away and die, the good, easy man, full of kindness and simplicity, gives them a liberal allowance, which his patients are delighted to get. Knowing the bent of mind of the confiding doctor, they fill him with all kinds of falsehoods as to the evils attendant upon opium smoking in general, which he swallows without a particle of doubt. The truth, however, is that those men who go with such tales to the medical missionary are in most, if not all, cases simply impostors, generally broken-down thieves, sneaks, and scoundrels--the very scum of the people. No longer having energy even to steal, they are driven off by their old associates, to starve or die in a gaol. These men are the craftiest, the meanest, and the most unscrupulous on the face of the globe. They well know all that the missionaries think about opium smoking, and, like the accommodating Mr. Jingle, they have a hundred stories of the same kind ready to pour into the ears of their kind-hearted benefactors, who become in turn their victims. Much merriment, I have no doubt, these scamps indulge in amongst themselves at the good doctor's expense; for the Chinese are not deficient in humour, and have a keen sense of the ludicrous. These people crawl to one of the hospitals; the doctor is delighted with their stories, for they confirm all he has written home or published, perhaps in _The Friend of China_. He communicates with the missionary; their stories are sent home, and the patients get for three or four weeks excellent food and comforts, including plenty of opium, before they are turned out as cured. The lepers have been cleansed and made whole, but only to enable them to prey once more upon the industrious community. I may here observe that there are no missionary hospitals in Hong Kong, and so we never hear of those wonderful stories happening in that place, yet, if such stories were true, it is there that the strongest corroboration of them should be found, for, although there is no missionary hospital in the colony, there is the large and well-managed civil hospital, as also the Chinese Tung-Wah Hospital, both of which are subject to the inspection of Dr. Ayres. Such are the tales, and such the authors who have caused much of this clamour about opium smoking. There is scarcely a particle of truth in any one of those stories. No man can indulge in opium to such an extent as to harm himself unless he possesses a fair income, and if such a person became ill from over-indulgence, he would not go to a foreign hospital, but would send for a doctor to treat him at his own house. It is only the broken-down pauper, thief, or beggar, who, in his last extremity, seeks admission to the hospital. Dr. Ayres was the first to expose this imposture. On arriving at Hong Kong he found it had been the custom there to allow such of the prisoners in the gaol as were heavy smokers a modicum of prepared opium daily,--it having been supposed by his predecessors that without it such prisoners would pine away and die. Dr. Ayres, however, knew better; and he at once put an end to the custom. He would not allow one grain of opium or other stimulant to be given to any prisoner, however advanced a smoker he might be. The result was that the hitherto pampered prisoners moaned and groaned, pretending, no doubt, to be very ill; but after a little time they got quite well. The Doctor has published his experiences on this subject in the _Friend of China_. These persons know what pleases the missionaries, and so they detail to them all kinds of horrible stories respecting opium smoking, which, as I have before stated, are pure inventions. Trust a Chinaman to invent a plausible tale when it suits his purpose to do so. The missionaries do not smoke opium themselves, and have, therefore, no means of refuting the falsehoods thus related to them, or of testing their accuracy. They simply believe all these stories, and send them on to head-quarters in London, to be retailed by eloquent tongues at Exeter Hall and elsewhere. I have no doubt that every mail brings home numbers of apparently highly authenticated tales of this kind, every one of which is baseless. Thanks to the modern excursion agents, and to the present facilities for travelling, gentlemen can easily take a trip to China, and if any of them happen to have opium on the brain, they will take letters of introduction to missionary clergymen. On their arrival at Hong Kong they will perhaps be shown over the Tung-Wah hospital, where they see a number of wretched objects labouring under all kinds of diseases; they will go away fully impressed with the belief that all the patients shown to them are victims of opium smoking. They are then taken to an opium shop, or as the missionaries like to call it, an "opium den"--though why an opium-smoking shop should be so termed, and a dram shop in London called a "gin palace," I cannot understand--and are there shown half a dozen dirty-looking men, mostly thieves and blackguards, all smoking opium, and as they are quiet and motionless, they come to the conclusion that they are all in a dying state, having but a few days more to live. If they knew the facts, they would find perhaps that the very men they were commiserating were just then quietly planning a burglary or some piratical expedition for that very night. These kind of travellers go out to China with preconceived notions, and are quite prepared to believe anything and everything, however absurd or monstrous, about opium smoking. They will spend two days at Hong Kong, three at Canton, two or three at Shanghai. They will take copious notes at these places, omitting nothing, however incredible or absurd, that is told them, and return home with a full conviction that they have "done China," when in reality they have only done themselves, and that, too, most completely. If they have the _cacoethes scribendi_ strong upon them, they will probably write a book upon the subject; and so the miserable delusion is kept up. 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in't. Mr. Turner, in his volume, gives what he calls "a little apologue," with the object of showing how the Indian Government injures China by supplying it with opium. If you will allow me, I will give you a short one, too. Let us suppose a young gentleman, well brought up, and a member of that excellent institution, the "Young Men's Christian Association," where he has heard the most eloquent speeches on the wickedness of this country in permitting the Indo-Chinese opium trade, and thus encouraging opium smoking--for your anti-opium agitator thinks it the height of virtue and propriety to drag his country through the mire on every occasion that presents itself. Let us call him Mr. Howard; it is a good name, and was once owned by a most benevolent man. He makes up his mind to go out to China and to see for himself the whole iniquity; for, despite his strong faith in his clerical mentors at Exeter Hall, he can hardly believe that his own countrymen could really be the perpetrators of such dreadful wickedness as he has been told. He takes a letter of introduction to a missionary gentleman at Hong Kong, and another to a mercantile firm there. He expects, on his arrival, to see the streets crowded with the wretched-looking victims of the opium-pipe, crawling onwards towards their graves, whilst the merchant who is making his princely fortune by this terrible opium trade drives by in his curricle, looking complacently at his victims, just as a slave-owner of old might be expected to have gazed at his gangs of serfs wending their way to their scene of toil. Not seeing any but active, healthy-looking people, he concludes that the miserable creatures he is looking out for are in hospital, or lying up in their own houses. He calls upon Messrs. Thompson and Co., the mercantile firm to which he is accredited, and is well received by one of the partners, who invites him to stop at his house during his stay in Hong Kong--for our fellow-countrymen in China are the most hospitable people in the world. Mr. Howard declines, as he intends putting up at Mr. Jenkins's, his missionary friend. The great subject on his mind is opium, so he comes to the point at once, and asks, "Is there much opium smoked in the colony?" "Oh, plenty," answers Mr. Thompson; "two or three thousand chests arrive here every week." "Do you sell much?" Mr. Howard asks. "No; we haven't done anything in it these many years," is the response. "Do many people smoke?" continues Howard, following up his subject. "Oh, yes: every Chinaman smokes." "But where are all the people who are suffering from opium smoking?" again asks the inquirer, determined to get at the facts. "Ha, ha, ha!" laughs Mr. Thompson, but that gentleman is writing letters for the mail, and has not much time at his disposal. "Here, Compradore," he says, addressing a Chinese who has been settling an account with one of the assistants, "this gentleman wants to know all about opium smoking." The Compradore is the agent who conducts mercantile transactions between the foreign firms and the Chinese; he resides on his master's premises, and is usually an intelligent and keen man of business, and, I may also add, an inveterate opium smoker. The two try to make themselves understood. Mr. Howard repeats the same questions to the Compradore that he had just put to Mr. Thompson, and receives similar replies. Disappointed and surprised, Howard calls with his letter of introduction upon the missionary, to whom he tells what he has heard from Messrs. Thompson & Co. "Ah," says the missionary, "they wouldn't give you any information there; they are in the opium trade themselves." But Mr. Howard tells him that Thompson had assured him that they had not been in the trade for years. "Ah," returns the missionary, "you must not believe what _he_ says. His firm is making a princely fortune by opium." "But where are the smokers?" asks Howard. "Oh, I will show them to you." He then calls Achun his "boy." "This gentleman," he says to the latter, "wants to know about opium smoking. Take him to the Tung-Wah and to an opium shop, you savee?" "Yes, my savee" (meaning "I understand"), returns Achun, who is, of course, a devout convert, but who, notwithstanding, often in private indulges in the iniquity of the pipe. On they go to the Tung-Wah, which is the Chinese hospital before referred to, where he is shown some ghastly-looking men, all either smoking the "vile drug" or having opium pipes beside them. Two or three are shivering with ague; another is in the last stage of dropsy; another is in consumption, and so on. They are all pitiable-looking objects, wasted, dirty, and ragged. Poor Mr. Howard shrinks away in horror. "Are all these men dying from opium smoking?" he asks of his guide. "Yes, ebely one; two, tlee more day dey all die. Oh! velly bad! olla men dat smokee dat ting die," says the person questioned, well knowing that what he has said is false, and that the poor creatures before him are only honest, decent coolies in the last stages of disease, who until they entered the hospital may never have had an opium pipe in their mouths. "Their poverty and not their will consented." They had been admitted but a few days before to the Tung-Wah, where the Chinese doctor in charge had prescribed for them opium smoking as a remedy for their sickness and a relief for their pains. Poor Mr. Howard leaves the hospital bitterly reflecting upon the wickedness of the world and of his own countrymen in particular. As for Mr. Thompson, he is set down for a false deceitful man, a disgrace to his country, who should be made an example of. He and his guide then proceed to the opium shop. I shall, however, proceed there before them, and describe the place and its occupants. Opposite to the entrance door are two well-dressed men, their clothes quite new, their heads well shaven, and having attached to them long and splendid queues. These men are lying on their sides, vis-à-vis, with their heads slightly raised, smoking away. If it were not for their villainous countenances they might pass for respectable shopkeepers. They are two thieves, who have just committed a burglary in a European house, from which they carried off three or four hundred pounds' worth of jewellery, and they are now indulging in their favourite luxury on the proceeds. They have also exchanged their rags for new clothes, got shaved and trimmed, as Mr. Howard sees them. Now, wherever an extreme opium smoker is met, he will in general be found to be one of the criminal classes. In this shop there are three other men smoking. They are stalwart fellows, but dirty-looking, as they have just finished coaling a steamer, and are begrimed with coal dust. As the daily expenses of a steamer are considerable, it is a great object with sea captains to get their vessels coaled as quickly as possible, so that they may not be delayed in port. The men employed upon this work are usually paid by the job, and probably each will receive half-a-dollar for his share. They work with extraordinary vigour, and by the time they have finished they are often much distressed, and are inclined to lie down; their hearts, perhaps, are beating irregularly, and their whole frame unhinged. Being flush of money, for half-a-dollar, or two shillings, is quite a round sum for them, they have decided to go to the opium shop, and, by having a quiet whiff or two, bring the action of their hearts into rhythm, and restore themselves to their ordinary state. These poor coolies are honest fellows enough. They work hard, and are peaceful, unoffending creatures. Hundreds of them are to be seen hard at work every day in Hong Kong. The interior of the opium shop is as described when Mr. Howard enters with the missionary's servant. The moment the two well-dressed thieves see them, their guilty consciences make them conclude that the one is a European, and the other a Chinese detective in search of them. They close their eyes and pretend to be in profound slumber. They are really in deadly fear of apprehension, for escape seems impossible. Mr. Howard asks his guide who they are. "Oh, dese plaupa good men numba one; dey come dis side to smokee. To-day dey smokee one pipe; to-mollow dey come and smokee two, tlee pipe; next dey five, six; den dey get sik and die. Oh, opium pipe veely bad; dat pipe kill plenty men." "You say they are good, respectable men?" says Mr. Howard. "Yes, good plaupa men; numba one Chinee genlman." "Oh, is not this a terrible thing?" says Mr. Howard, compressing his lips, breathing heavily, and vowing to bear witness, on his return to London, to all the villainy he fancies he has seen. The three men begrimed with coal-dust, although they appear only to be semi-conscious, are in reality taking the measure of Mr. Howard, and enjoying a quiet laugh at his expense. One exclaims, referring to his chimney-pot hat, "Ah ya! what a funny thing that Fan-Qui has got on his head!" The other replies, "It's to keep the sun away." "How funny!" retorts the first speaker, "we wear hats to keep our heads warm; they wear hats to keep their heads cool." "Oh," returns the other speaker, "the Fan-Qui have such soft heads that if they did not keep the sun off the little brains they have would melt away; and they would die, or become idiots."[5] Mr. Howard, seeing them in their dirty condition, concludes that they are some of the wretched victims of opium smoking, in the last stage of disease, and leaves with his conductor, pitying them from the depths of his heart; his pity, however, is as nothing compared to the contempt with which these supposed victims to the opium pipe regard him and his chimney-pot hat. As he leaves he asks his guide, "Does the keeper of the opium shop expect a gratuity?" "Oh," returns the other, "supposee you pay him one dolla, he say, tankee you." Mr. Howard accordingly gives a dollar to the man, who looks more surprised than grateful, and he leaves the shop, satisfied that he has at last seen the true effects of opium smoking in China. He returns to the missionary, to whom he relates the horrors he has seen, makes copious notes of them, and vows to enlighten his countrymen at home upon the subject. As for his guide Achun, this person loses no time in returning to the opium shop, where he compels the keeper of it to share with him the dollar he has just received, and, having so easily earned two shillings, he quietly reclines on one of the couches and takes a whiff or two of the pipe, the more enjoyable because it is forbidden fruit. Thus the benevolent British public is befooled by these ridiculous stories about opium. Now as Achun is a representative character, many like him being in the service of missionaries and other foreigners throughout China, I will give you a further specimen of the way such persons cheat and delude their masters. Achun, in whom Mr. Jenkins, the missionary, places implicit confidence, has of late been much exercised as to his "vails," for Chinese servants are quite as much alive to the perquisites of their office as Jeames, John Thomas, or any others of our domestics here in England. Indeed, I may safely lay it down as a rule that, like cabmen, domestic servants will be found the same all over the world, "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin," and no sooner have you engaged your Chinese "boy" than his mind is at once set working as to the amount of drawbacks, clippings, and parings over and above his wages he may safely count upon in his new place. Achun is dissatisfied with the commission or drawback allowed him by Chook Aloong, the shopkeeper or compradore, who supplies Mr. Jenkins's family with provisions and other household necessaries; he is allowed only ten per cent. of the monthly bill, and he considers that in all fairness he should get double that amount. Thus impressed, he makes energetic remonstrances on the subject to Chook Aloong, who is firm and will give no more than ten per cent. Achun is equal to the occasion. Now Mr. Jenkins and his family are simple and frugal in their dietary, but there are some articles of food they insist upon having of the best kind, in consequence of which their compradore sends them those articles and, indeed, all others of unobjectionable quality. Eggs which are not absolutely fresh, and meat, though it be game, if in the slightest degree "up," they will have none of. Achun well knows all this, and he has determined to have Chook Aloong displaced. Having himself a partiality for eggs, he begins operations by daily appropriating to his own use some of those fresh eggs and substituting stale ones in their stead. In the like manner, instead of letting the family have the beef, mutton, and fowls nice and fresh as they are delivered, he holds them over until the bloom of freshness has departed. This state of affairs occasions some commotion in the family circle. The boy is sent for and shown that the eggs are bad and the meat "high"; he expresses great concern, and declares that he will forthwith call upon the compradore and compel him to make good the damage already done, and supply proper provisions in future. Mr. Jenkins, though angry, is not implacable, and is willing to believe that some mishap has occurred; for how could his old and trusted compradore treat him so badly? His hopes are, however, disappointed, for again and yet again the meat is bad, and, worse still, the eggs are--well, not fresh. The climax is reached one morning when poor Mr. Jenkins, in breaking his egg, finds, not the usual bright yellow yolk and spotless albumen within, but a young chick almost fledged. Horror and disgust seize him, the old Adam over-masters him for a moment, and, full of wrath, he roars for the boy. Achun appears the very picture of innocence, when Mr. Jenkins, ashamed of his outburst of wrath and now quite calm explains the _contretemps_. He has even in the reaction regained some of his good humour. "Look here, Achun," he says, showing the chick, "this is too bad, you know. Supposee I wanchee egg,--can catchee him; supposee I wanchee chicken--can catchee chicken. No wanchee egg and chicken alla same together." Achun perceives the joke, and knowing his master's weakness, says, "Oh, ho, massa, velly good, dat belong numba one. 'No wanchee egg and chicken alla same togedda,'" continues the cunning rascal, repeating his master's words, "Oh velly funny, velly good, massa, ho! ho! ho!" Mr. Jenkins is pleased at the mild flattery of his boy, who has now advanced a step or two in his estimation. "Oh, massa, dat man, Chook Aloong, velly bad man," continues Achun when his merriment had subsided. "Him smokee too much opium pipe; he no mind his pidgin plaupa, he smokee alla day." "Oh! ho! is that the way?" asks the missionary, a new light dawning for the first time upon him. "And so Chook Aloong is an opium smoker?" "Ye-s," replies Achun, prolonging the word. "Too much opium, plenty opium. More betta you get anoda compado sah--some good plaupa man dat no smokee." "Very well, Achun," says Mr. Jenkins with a sigh. "It is plain I must get somebody else. Find me out some other man, and, mind, he must not smoke opium." "Hab got, massa," returns the boy delighted with his success. "Hab got velly good man, him numba one good compado"; and in walks the person indicated, who has been listening outside all the time. "This belong Sam Afoong, him do all ting plaupa," the fact being that this very Sam Afoong is the greatest cheat in the whole market. "Oh, you're the man," says Mr. Jenkins. "I hope you don't use opium." "Oh no, sah," returns the other, who is in fact an inveterate smoker, "my neba smokee; dat opium pipe velly bad. It hab kill my fadda, my six bludda, my----." But here he is stopped by a signal from Achun, who saw that his friend, in familiar parlance, was "laying it on too thickly." Sam Afoong vows to supply the best of good things, and does so, and the Jenkins family are no longer troubled with bad provisions; but had the lady of the establishment gone through the formality of weighing every joint of meat that her new compradore supplied, she would have found that every pound was short of two or three ounces, for thus Sam Afoong recouped himself for the large per-centage bestowed on Achun. To prove that the missionaries are deceived in the way I have described I will refer you to a passage in Mr. Storrs Turner's own book, where even he admits that one of his own converts, who had assured him that he never smoked, and no doubt had pledged himself never to do so, was found regaling himself with the iniquity. At p. 32 Mr. Turner says, "I have caught a man smoking who had only half an hour before denied to me that he was a smoker, and condemned the habit." Yet such are the men from whom the missionaries derive their information about opium smoking. For further proof of this I will quote again from Dr. Ayres' article, in _The Friend of China_. This is what he says:-- At the Tung Wah Hospital the stranger may at any time see the most dreadful and ghastly-looking objects in the last stages of scrofula and phthisis smoking opium, who had never previously in all their lives been able to afford the expense of a pipe a day, yet the European visitor leaves the establishment attributing to the abuse of opium effects which further inquiry would have satisfied him were due to the diseases for which the patients were in hospital. From what I have seen there, there is no doubt that the advanced consumptive patient does experience considerable temporary relief to his difficult breathing by smoking a pipe of opium, though it is a very poor quality of drug that is given to patients at the Tung Wah Hospital. Thus, as I have shown, it has come to pass that whilst the missionary clergymen, owing to their sacred calling and their unquestionably high character, are accepted in England as the most reliable witnesses and entitled to the greatest credit, they are really the men who are the very worst informed upon the opium question which they profess to understand so thoroughly. They are, in fact, the victims of their own delusions. But saddest fact of all, these missionary gentlemen, with the best intentions and in the devout belief that by carrying on this anti-opium agitation they are helping to remove an obstacle to the dissemination of the Gospel in China, are of necessity by so doing obliged to neglect more or less the very Gospel work they are really so desirous to spread, leaving the missionary field open to their Roman Catholic rivals. The information placed before the public here in England upon the opium question, tainted as it is at the very fountain head, is sent forward from hand to hand, meeting in its filtrations from China to this country with impurity after impurity, until it reaches the form of the miserable trash retailed at Exeter Hall, or by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society. It is an accepted adage that "a story loses nothing by the carriage." The maxim becomes, more strongly pointed when it is remembered that the opium tales partake so much of the marvellous, and that the various transmitters of those accounts are, in almost every instance, fanatical believers in the supposed wickedness of the Indo-Chinese opium trade. I am quite sure that out of every thousand people who believe in the anti-opium delusion, you will not find two who have ever set their foot in China, or know anything with respect to the alleged evils they denounce, except from the unreliable sources I have mentioned. Such people, as a rule, are by far the most violent and uncompromising opponents of the Indo-Chinese opium trade. The people I describe generally speak with such an air of authority on the question, that an ordinary person would suppose they had personally witnessed all the evils they describe. If you ask one of them in what part of China he has lived, or when and where he has seen the horrors he speaks of, he will jauntily tell you, "Oh, I have heard Mr. A. or the Rev. Mr. B. explain the whole villainy at Exeter Hall." Another will say he has read Mr. Storrs Turner's great work upon opium smoking, with which I have already made you somewhat acquainted. When General Choke rebuked Martin Chuzzlewit for denying that the Queen lived in the Tower of London when she was at the Court of St. James, Martin inquired if the speaker had ever lived in England. "In writing I have, not otherwise," responded the General, adding, "We air a reading people here, Sir; you will meet with much information among us that will surprise you Sir." Just so. These anti-opium enthusiasts have been in China in writing, and understand the opium question upon paper only--a few months in Hong Kong or Canton, freed from missionary influence, would soon disillusionize them. I remember hearing a story once of a most estimable gentleman who had the misfortune to be the defendant in an action for breach of promise. The plaintiff's counsel, who had a fluent tongue and a fertile imagination, painted him in such dreadful colours, and so belaboured him for his alleged heartless conduct towards the lady that the gentleman so denounced, persuaded for the moment that he was really guilty, rushed out of court, exclaiming, "I never thought I was so terrible a villain before." That is just the kind of feeling that first comes over one upon hearing of those opium-smoking horrors; for it must not be forgotten that the indictment of the Anti-Opium Society, and of its secretary Mr. Storrs Turner in particular, not only includes the Imperial Government, and the Government of India, during the past forty years, but all the British merchants connected with the Chinese trade, and, indeed, the entire British nation. Before proceeding to deal with the fallacies I have enumerated, it is necessary that I should again address a few words to you on the subject of evidence, so as to enable you to discriminate between the value of the various witnesses who have attempted to enlighten public opinion on the subject before us. I dislike very much to trouble the reader with dry professional matters, but, under the circumstances, I cannot avoid doing so. It is a rule of law which will, I think, commend itself to the common sense of everybody, that the evidence to be adduced on a trial should be the best that the nature of the case is susceptible of, rather than evidence of a subsidiary or secondary nature, unless, indeed, no better be forthcoming. In determining matters of fact, the best witnesses would be held to be those who have become acquainted with those facts in the course of their ordinary employment, or in the performance of their professional duties, rather than mere amateurs or volunteers, whose knowledge is derived from accident or casual observation only. For illustration, let us suppose the case of a collision at sea between two steamers, A and B,--that previous to and at the time of the collision, besides the usual officers and seamen in charge of A, there were on deck the steward of the vessel and a passenger. Now, the best witnesses on board of A as to the catastrophe would not be the two latter, although they saw the whole occurrence, but the men who were in actual charge of the navigation of the ship, viz. the look-out man in the bows--whose duty it would be to watch for rocks or shoals, or any ship or vessel ahead, and to give immediate notice to the officer of the watch and the man at the wheel of the presence of such object;--the officer of the watch, usually stationed on the bridge;--and the man at the wheel. Why? Because, it being the peculiar duty of the first two men to look out for and avoid striking on rocks or shoals, or coming into collision with any other vessel, and the duty of the third man not only to keep a look out but to steer as directed by the officer on the bridge, they necessarily paid more attention to, and had their intellects better sharpened in respect to such matters than the others, who had no such duty cast upon them. The next best witnesses would be the other seamen during whose watch the accident occurred, their duty being generally to attend to the management of the ship, her sails and cordage, and obey the orders of the officer of the watch, but who, not having immediate connection with the steering and course of the vessel, would not be expected to have the same accurate knowledge of the circumstances that led to and occurred up to the time of the collision as the first three. The least valuable witnesses would be the steward and the passenger, for the reasons already mentioned. Applying these rules to the question now before us, it follows that the testimony of such a man as Dr. Ayres--some of which I have given you already--and of others which I shall lay before you, should have far greater weight and be more reliable than that of ordinary persons having no special knowledge or experience of opium or its effects, nor any opportunity of obtaining such knowledge, much less any duty cast upon them to acquire it, _e.g._ missionaries and other persons unconnected with native and foreign merchants, and having no duties to perform which would bring them into constant intercourse with the Chinese community. The first of these fallacies which have so much tended to warp the understanding of these Anti-Opium people is this: "That the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has been recently introduced there, presumably by British agency." With this let us take the second fallacy, viz.: "That opium smoking in China is now and has always been confined to a small per-centage of the population, but which, owing to the introduction of Indian opium, is constantly increasing." Here I would first inquire--what is the poppy? To this question one person would say, It is the plant that produces that deadly drug, morphia. Another would answer, It is the herb from which laudanum is made; and a third would say, It is the plant which supplies opium, smoked so much in China and eaten so largely in India. These answers would all be correct enough, so far as they go; but they would not be complete, for there are many other uses to which the poppy is applied besides all these. That valuable plant produces not only opium, but an oil used for lighting and for edible purposes, the Chinese using the oil to mollify their daily rice and other food, mixing it also very commonly with another and richer quality of oil. The seeds, when the oil is expressed, are given to cattle, or allowed to rot and form manure. If the oil is not expressed, the seeds can be worked up into cakes. From the capsules medicine is made, and lastly, the stalks and leaves when burnt produce potash. Mr. William Donald Spence, one of Her Majesty's Consuls in China, to whose valuable "Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang, and the Opium-culture in the Provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan," I shall presently introduce you, knows all this as matter of fact, and, indeed, I am mainly indebted to him for the information I now give you. It is admitted by Mr. Storrs Turner that the poppy is indigenous to China, and when it is remembered that the people of that country are and have been for thousands of years the most civilized in Asia,--that agriculture is considered the most honourable industry in the country, as evidenced by the annual practice of the Emperor to turn over the earth with the plough at the beginning of Spring,--that the Chinese are skilled husbandmen, and of most frugal and thrifty habits, it becomes a matter of irresistible inference that those people must have known that most useful plant, the poppy, and must have cultivated it for economic purposes long before opium was known in Europe. Sir Robert Hart, in his Yellow Book, says "that native opium was known, produced, and used _long before_ any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast." Compare that with the misleading passage at page 2 of Mr. Storrs Turner's book, where he says "that the poppy had long been cultivated in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, India, and _recently_ in China and Manchuria," and ask yourselves what credit you can give to that gentleman as a trustworthy guide on the subject of opium. Here is Sir Robert Hart, a great Chinese authority, practically admitting that three or four hundred years ago at the least native opium was grown and produced in China, and Mr. Storrs Turner, in this fallacious statement of his, trying to induce his readers to infer that the drug was only recently produced in that Empire! The reader can choose between these authorities for himself. Now the fact is, that in very ancient Chinese works mention is made of the poppy. In the "History of the Later Han Dynasty" (A.D. 25-220), the brilliant colour of the poppy blossom, of the charms of the juice, and the strengthening qualities of the seeds of the plant, formed the themes of Chinese poets as far back as a thousand years, and probably much farther. The poet Yung T'aou, of the T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618-907), celebrates the beauty of the flower. The poet Soo Cheh (A.D. 1039-1112), dwells, in an ode, on the curative and invigorating effects of the poppy seeds and juice, and another poet, Soo Sung, of the same period, praises the beauty of the plant, which he speaks of as being grown everywhere in China. I am not a Chinese scholar, but I have high authority for these statements. You will thus clearly perceive that opium is a native plant, that its various uses have for many centuries been known to the Chinese, and that the British are in no way responsible for the introduction of opium into China, much less for the practice of smoking the drug. I have mentioned Mr. W. Donald Spence as one of Her Majesty's Consuls in China. Now, every foreign resident in that country knows who and what those consular gentlemen are; but I do not think the public here in England are equally well informed upon the subject, because it is only natural that they should confound them with the ordinary British Consuls at the European and American ports; but that would be a very great mistake, for the two sets of Consuls form quite distinct and separate bodies. The Consuls at the latter ports are no doubt highly respectable gentlemen, often indeed, men who have distinguished themselves in science and literature, or in the army or navy, but still they are simply commercial agents of the British Government, and no more, having little or no diplomatic or other duties to discharge. The Consular Service of China stands upon a totally different footing. In this country Her Majesty's Consuls are not only commercial agents, but are trained diplomatists, entering the service in the first instance as cadets, after passing most difficult competitive examinations. They are always Chinese scholars, many of them holding high rank as such. The Consuls have very important diplomatic duties to discharge, and have also magisterial duties to perform towards their countrymen in China, all of which demand qualities of a high order, and which only superior education and careful training enable them to discharge. England has acquired by treaty ex-territorial rights, as regards her own subjects, in the ports of China thrown open to her commerce, known as "Treaty ports," the most important of which are the exclusive right to hear and determine all civil and criminal cases against British subjects. These onerous and important duties are performed by Her Majesty's Consuls at those ports. These gentlemen, indeed, have more power in many respects than is possessed by the Queen's Ambassadors and Ministers Plenipotentiary at the various Courts in Europe. They have, in fact, all the powers now vested in the Judges of Her Majesty's High Court of Judicature here in England, as well as the powers possessed by the Judges of the Admiralty, Probate, and Bankruptcy Courts. Further, and in addition to all these multifarious duties, they are Her Majesty's special commercial agents at these treaty ports, with the usual jurisdiction over British ships, their officers, and crew. It is, therefore, a matter of the first necessity that the persons in whom such tremendous powers are placed should not only be gentlemen of the very highest characters and assured abilities, but men of superior education specially trained to fill these important positions and discharge the varied and onerous duties appertaining to them. Such are the present British Consuls in China, and such they have been in the past. There is not, I believe, in this or any other country, a more highly-educated, intelligent, and efficient body of men to be found. If any proof of these high qualities is required, it will be furnished in the fact that notwithstanding the difficult, delicate, and onerous duties cast upon them, no instance of their abuse of these powers has ever occurred. I certainly know of none. I am only here stating, I assure you, what is actually true. It has, indeed, always been to me a marvel that no complaints--no political entanglements, no troubles--have arisen from the abnormal state of things arising out of our commercial and political relations with China, and the extraordinary and exceptional powers necessarily entrusted to our Consular Agents in that Empire in consequence. We can now look back, after a quarter of a century of experience, and congratulate ourselves that all our complicated machinery has worked so well, that no clouds obscure the vista, and that our present position in China is one of serenity and sunshine; that we stand upon the very best terms with the Chinese Government from the central authority at Peking to all its ramifications throughout the vast empire. Nothing, in fact, blurs the landscape, save the miserable opium phantom created by our own countrymen, the missionaries, and magnified to a monster of large dimensions by the "Chinese jugglers," who here in England keep the machinery of the Anti-Opium Society in motion. These happy results are due to Her Majesty's Diplomatic and Consular Service in China, controlled by Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in England. And here I cannot but remind you of that distinguished veteran statesman Sir Rutherford Alcock, formerly Her Majesty's Minister to the Court of Peking, to whose wise and far-seeing policy much of the present happy relations with China is due. There is not an English resident in China who cannot bear testimony to the splendid talents and genuine patriotism which has marked his career in that vast and interesting country. There is no greater authority living upon Anglo-Chinese affairs than he, especially as regards the period of the famous treaty of Tientsin, some of whose testimony on these points I will lay before you. After a long and honourable career he is now in England enjoying his well-earned repose, and is, happily, a powerful living witness to the fallacies I am now trying to efface. Now, one of the ablest and most accomplished men at present in the Diplomatic and Consular Service of China is Mr. W. Donald Spence, Her Majesty's Consul at Ichang, a port on the Yangtze, to whom I have before shortly referred. This gentleman, in the year 1881, paid a visit to Chungking, the commercial capital of Szechuan in Western China. Whilst there he availed himself of the opportunity to make inquiries and investigations into the commercial products of that immense province, and especially into the cultivation of native opium, the extent and condition of opium culture in Western China, and the attitude respecting it of the Chinese Government, and on the effect of opium smoking on the people of those provinces where it appears that habit is all but universal. It was his especial duty to make these investigations. No better proof could be produced as to the abilities of this gentleman than this valuable document on the subject presented by him to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which Mr. Spence, in his covering letter to Lord Granville modestly styles "his Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang for the Year 1881." If anyone will read the whole of this Report--and it will well repay careful perusal--he will pronounce it, I think, one of the ablest and most admirable State papers that have ever been penned. In giving you some extracts from it I will, therefore, ask you to treat the author of it, not as a mere hireling, having an interest in certain matters which it is desirable to place in a particular light, as the agents of the Anti-Opium Society would, no doubt, have you believe, but as the honest statement of an upright, high-minded, honourable English gentleman, of superior talents and a cultivated mind, who values truth above everything, who can have no other object in the matter but to do what is honest, just, and right, and who on this question of opium smoking tells the truth and nothing but the truth to Her Majesty's Minister. This is what he says as to the cultivation of the poppy in Szechuan:-- Of all the products of Szechuan, the most important nowadays is native opium. In September last year it was my fortune to be sent on the public service to the commercial metropolis of Szechuan, Chungking. I was four months in the province. In the course of that time I visited parts of the great opium country, questioned many people regarding opium culture, consumption, and export, and carefully noted the observations and conclusions on these subjects come to by Mr. Colborne Baber and Mr. E. H. Parker during their official residence there, with a view to giving, as far as possible, exact information in my Trade Report on a matter of great commercial, and no little political, interest at the present moment. The cultivation of the poppy is carried on in every district of Szechuan except those on the west frontier, but most of all in the Prefectures of Chungking Fu and Kweichow Fu. In all the districts of Chungking Fu, south of the Yang-tsze, and in some of the districts of Kweichow Fu, north of that river, it is the principal crop, and, in parts, the only winter crop for scores upon scores of square miles. The headquarters of the trade are at the city of Fuchow, in the first of these prefectures, and, in a considerably less degree, at Fengtu, a district city in Kweichow Fu. Baron Richthofen, writing in 1872, says that the poppy then was cultivated only on hill slopes of an inferior soil, but one sees it now on land of all kinds, both hill and valley. Baron Richthofen himself anticipates this change when he says:--"The Government may at some time or other reduce the very heavy restrictions, and if Szechuan opium then should be able to command its present price at Hankow, the consequence would be an immediate increase in the area planted with the poppy." Since he wrote, the area given to the poppy has much increased, though not from the cause alleged. Being a winter crop, it does not interfere with rice, the food staple of the people, displacing only subsidiary crops, such as wheat, beans, and the like. When it is planted in paddy and bottom lands, which nowadays is often the case, it is gathered in time to allow rice or some other crop to follow. It can hardly be said of Szechuan that the cultivation of opium seriously interferes with food supplies. The supply of rice remains the same, and the opium produced, less the value of the crops it replaces, is so much additional wealth to the province. I shall presently show that opium is a more remunerative crop than its only possible substitutes, beans or wheat, and no per-centage of the opium crop being due to the landlord, its cultivation has been greatly stimulated in consequence. Of late years, however, in the districts I have named as being in winter one vast poppy-field, owners of land have become alive to the value to occupiers of the opium crop, and have stipulated for a share of it in addition to their share of the summer crop. Rents, in fact, where opium is in universal cultivation, have practically doubled. Before leaving the subject of tenure, I may add that, in the event of non-payment of rent from causes other than deficient harvests, the landlord helps himself to the deposit in his hands. In bad years remissions are willingly made by the Government to owners of the land-tax, and by owners to occupiers of the rent-produce. Now you will remember that this very province of Szechuan, where such extensive cultivation of the poppy is carried on, is the largest and most distant of all the provinces of China; it is one of the westernmost of the eighteen provinces of the empire, being bordered on the west by Thibet. Until quite recently Szechuan was about as accessible to Englishmen as Moscow was fifty years ago, a _terra incognita_, in fact, to Europeans, so that it cannot be pretended for one moment that the introduction into China of Indian opium has had anything to do with the cultivation of the drug there. Indian opium could hardly ever have found its way into the province, which is not less than one thousand two hundred miles from the sea. It is only since the opening of the port of Ichang in the adjoining province of Hupeh, which took place in April 1877, that the district has become at all accessible. But let us return to Mr. W. Donald Spence. This is another extract from his report:-- The poppy is now grown on all kinds of land, hill slopes, terraced fields, paddy and bottom lands in the valleys. Since 1872, when Baron Richthofen visited the province, a great change has taken place in this respect, for it appears to have been cultivated then on hill lands only. All the country people whom I asked were agreed that opium is most profitably grown on good land with liberal manuring. In India it is best grown on rich soil near villages where manure can be easily obtained, and the Szechuan cultivator has found this out for himself. Poppy cultivation, as practised in Szechuan, is very simple. As soon as the summer crop is reaped the land is ploughed and cleaned, roots and weeds are heaped and burnt, and the ashes scattered over the ground; dressings of night soil are liberally given. The seeds are sown in December, in drills a foot and a half apart. In January, when the plants are a few inches high, the rows are thinned and earthed up so as to leave a free passage between each: the plants are then left to take care of themselves, the earth round them being occasionally stirred up and kept clear of weeds. In March and April, according to situation, the poppy blooms. In the low grounds the white poppy is by far the most common, but red and purple are also grown. As the capsules form and fill, dressings of liquid manure are given. In April and May the capsules are slit and the juice extracted. The raw juice evaporates into the crude opium of commerce increasing in value as it decreases in weight. Mr. Spence then goes on to compare the value of the wheat with the opium crop, showing that the cultivation of the latter is just twice as profitable as the former. Space will not allow me to give you full extracts on this subject, but, as some portion of it is germane to this part of my lecture, I give a short extract on the point:-- It must be remembered, too, that every single part of the poppy plant has a market value. The capsules, after the juice has been extracted, are sold to druggists, and made into medicine; oil is expressed from the seeds, and largely used for lighting and adulterating edible oils; the oil-cake left in the oil-press is good manure, as are also the leaves; and the stalks are burnt for potash. Against these advantages opium is subject to a rent, and requires, for profitable cultivation, plenty of manure; whereas wheat, when followed by a summer crop, pays little or no rent, and gets, in general, no manure. Into the relative profits of opium and wheat both Mr. Baber and Mr. Parker have gone very carefully, and their results correspond, in the main, with my own observations. I will now give you a short account of opium-culture in the province of Yunnan, a more inaccessible part of China still perhaps than Szechuan. Mr. E. Colborne Baber, like Mr. Spence, belongs to the diplomatic service, and is now the secretary of the British Legation at Peking. All that I have stated as to Mr. Spence applies alike to him. He is a gentleman in whom the most implicit confidence should be placed. In 1877 he travelled through Western Szechuan, having, in his own words, on the morning of the 8th July in that year, passed the western gate of Ch'ung-Ch'ung "full of the pleasurable anticipations which precede a plunge into the unknown." Having finished his journey through Szechuan, he struck into Yunnan, following the route of Mr. Grosvenor's mission. He has recounted his adventures in a most valuable and interesting book, written in such a pleasing and graphic style, that the reader, when looking at it for reference only, is irresistibly compelled to read further. His book has been published by the Royal Geographical Society, and is well worthy of general perusal. It is one of the few readable books of travel to be met with nowadays. There is very little respecting opium culture in the volume, but what there is upon the subject is very much to the point. This is what he says:-- Of the sole agricultural export, opium, we can speak with some certainty. We were astounded at the extent of the poppy cultivation both in Szechuan and Yunnan. We first heard of it on the boundary line between Hupah and Szechuan, in a cottage which appears in an illustration given in the work of Captain Blakiston, the highest cottage on the right of the sketch. A few miles south of this spot the most valuable variety of native opium is produced. In ascending the river, wherever cultivation existed we found numerous fields of poppy. Even the sandy banks were often planted with it down to the water's edge: but it was not until we began our land journey in Yunnan that we fairly realised the enormous extent of its production. With some fear of being discredited, but at the same time with a consciousness that I am under-estimating-the production, I estimate that the poppy-fields constitute a third of the whole cultivation of Yunnan. We saw the gradual process of its growth, from the appearance of the young spikelets above ground in January, or earlier, to the full luxuriance of the red, white, and purple flowers, which were already falling in May. In that month the farmers were trying the juice, but we did not see the harvest gathered. We walked some hundreds of miles through poppies; we breakfasted among poppies; we shot wild ducks in the poppies. Even wretched little hovels in the mountains were generally attended by a poppy patch. The ducks, called locally "opium ducks," which frequently supplied us with a meal, do really appear, as affirmed by the natives, to stupefy themselves by feeding on the narcotic vegetable. We could walk openly up to within twenty yards of them, and even then they rose very languidly. We are not, however, compelled to believe, with the natives, that the flesh of these birds is so impregnated with laudanum as to exercise a soporific influence on the consumer. They are found in great numbers in the plain of Tung-ch'uan, in Northern Yunnan, and turn out to be the _Tadorna vulpanser_. In the same district, and in no other, we met with the _Grus cinerea_, an imposing bird, which is also a frequenter of opium-fields. The poppy appeared to us to thrive in every kind of soil, from the low sandy borders of the Yang-tyu to the rocky heights of Western Yunnan; but it seemed more at home, or at any rate was more abundant, in the marshy valleys near Yung-ch'uan, at an elevation of seven thousand and sixty feet (seven thousand one hundred and fifty feet according to Garnier). I am not concerned here with the projects or prospects of the Society for the Abolition of Opium: _if, however, they desire to give the strongest impetus to its growth in Yunnan, let them by all means discourage its production in India_. Now I have given you some very important evidence upon the two fallacies before us; but perhaps, after all, the best testimony upon the subject is that of Mr. Turner himself. He says, at page 13 of his book:-- "Everywhere, in all climates, on every soil, in every variety and condition of circumstances throughout that vast empire, the Chinese smoke opium, but nowhere do they all smoke. The smokers are but a per-centage, greater or smaller in different places." I quite agree with him on this point. But here the question arises, where is the drug procured which is smoked in every part of the eighteen provinces of this vast Empire, equal in extent to Europe? Surely not from abroad, because that great China authority, Sir Robert Hart, tells us in his Yellow Book that all the Indian and Persian opium imported into China is sufficient only to supply one third of one per cent. of the population with a small portion annually of the drug. Not from India, because there are many provinces in China--and a province there means a territory as large as Great Britain--into which a particle of the Indian drug has seldom or never been introduced. Whence, then, comes the great bulk of the drug to satisfy all these smokers? Surely it must be from Chinese soil, from the opium fields surrounding their own homes, which are to be seen in every province of the Empire. Let us now return to the Yellow-book of Sir Robert Hart, to which I have referred in the former lecture, and which seems to me to afford all the evidence on this subject that is really wanted. It is admitted on both sides that opium smoking is more or less prevalent throughout every province of China, on every soil, whether in the valleys or on the hills and mountains. Sir Robert Hart sent out a circular to the foreign Commissioners of Customs at all the Treaty Ports in China, Hainan, and Formosa,--two large islands lying respectively off the south and south-east coast of China,--and the returns show that there are many opium-smoking shops in each of these Treaty Ports, and that the gross quantity of Indian and other foreign opium imported into China is about one hundred thousand chests. Those returns also reveal the fact that in almost every case foreign opium is used for mixing with the native drug, which is of inferior quality and, there can be no doubt, invariably adulterated; that a large amount of native opium is grown and sold; and that the custom of opium smoking is more or less universal. Suppose we take the case of Canton, as being a very large city. We may find, perhaps, two or three hundred opium shops there, but the people who attend them are not the better class of Chinese. They are exactly the same class of people who frequent the drinking shops of London and other large cities in England. The respectable, well-to-do people in Canton, who can afford to keep the drug in their own houses, would not enter an opium shop any more than a respectable person here would frequent a public-house. If a stranger in London looked into the public-houses and saw men and women drinking there, he would come to a false conclusion if he thought that none but such people drank beer, spirits, or wine. We know that in almost every private house here there is more or less liquor of all kinds kept and consumed. The drinking shops furnish a mere indication of the amount of alcoholic liquors drunk in a town. It is exactly the same with the opium shops. They show the prevalence of the custom throughout the country. If you find two hundred opium shops in Canton, and I am sure there are not fewer there, you may be not less certain that opium is smoked in the great majority of private and business houses in Canton. It is the same in all the Treaty Ports. The opium-smoking shops in China may be counted by hundreds and thousands, because China is as large as Europe, and more populous. Sir Robert Hart's Report, although to a certain extent an anti-opium one, is in this and other respects very valuable, and forms in itself a complete answer to the false and unfounded allegations of the Anti-Opium Society. It is not likely that he would exaggerate the amount of opium grown or smoked in China; the inference, indeed, would be that he, as an official of the Chinese Government, would do just the contrary. There are a great many other important ports in China besides the twenty ports with which foreigners are not allowed to trade, and from which, indeed, they are rigidly excluded; and in the interior of the country there are immense and numerous cities and towns, large, thriving and densely populated, where the opium pipe is used as freely as the tobacco pipe is with us. The provinces in which opium is most grown are Szechuan and Yun-Nan, two of the largest of the eighteen provinces constituting China proper. They are the two great western provinces; but it is also grown in the eastern and central provinces, in fact, more or less, all over the country. Though there are no certain statistics, there cannot be a doubt that opium smoking is more prevalent in the interior provinces than on the coast, because it is there that the most opium is grown, and it is but reasonable to infer that where opium is largely cultivated, especially in a country like China, having no railroads, and few ordinary roads, there you will find it to be most cheap and abundant, and therefore most consumed. Upon this point I would refer to a most authoritative work by the late lamented Captain Gill, R.E.,[6] whose barbarous murder the whole country deplored. At page 235 of vol. ii. Captain Gill says:-- As we had such vague ideas of the distance before us we were anxious to make an early start, but we were now in Yunnan, the province of China in which there is more opium smoked than in any other, and in which it is proportionately difficult to move the people in the morning. There is a Chinese proverb to the effect that there is an opium pipe in every house in the province of Kweichow, but one in every room in Yunnan, which means that men and women smoke opium universally. That is the report of a man who was not only a sagacious and close observer of all that he saw in his interesting journey, but who was wholly impartial and disinterested on the subject of opium smoking. Sir Robert Hart does not purport to give in this book correct returns of the quantity of opium smoked or imported, much less of the quantity grown in China. The replies of his subordinates at the different ports, many of them seven hundred or a thousand miles apart, all concur in speaking of the great difficulties they had in getting any figures at all. They are, therefore, not to be taken as absolutely trustworthy, and Sir Robert candidly admits that they are mere approximations. Before I had seen his book I had made a calculation of the probable number of opium smokers in China, on the assumption that the population of China proper was three hundred and sixty millions, and that the custom was universal, limited only by the means of procuring the drug; and I arrived at the conclusion that there were in China three millions of habitual smokers, and about the same number of occasional smokers. Mr. Lennox Simpson, Commissioner at Chefoo, in reply to Sir Robert Hart's circular, says, at page 13 of the Yellow Book: Much difficulty has been experienced in eliciting answers to the various questions put to the native opium shops and others, all viewing with suspicion any inquiries made, evidently fearing that some prohibition is about to be put on the trade, or that their interests are in some way to suffer. _Hence some of the figures given in the return can scarcely be considered reliable, although every pains has been taken to collect information._ These commissioners are all gentlemen of good standing and education, and they have a great many subordinates under them, so that they possess means of collecting information such as no foreigner, not engaged in the public service of China, could possibly command. Mr. Francis W. White, the Commissioner at Hankow, replied: Owing to the entire absence of all reliable figures, the amount of opium put down as produced within the province and within the empire yearly, must be taken as approximate only. I have been careful to collect information from various sources, and this has been as carefully compared and verified as means will allow. Mr. Holwell, the Commissioner at Kiukiang, wrote: The total quantity of unprepared native opium, said to be produced yearly in the province of Kiangsi, I find it next to impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty. Native testimony differs. I will point out by-and-by the reason why these returns are so unreliable. The most extraordinary of them all are the returns of Mr. E. B. Drew, the Commissioner at Ningpo, and Mr. H. Edgar, the Commissioner at Ichang. The former estimates the entire quantity of native opium grown and consumed in China at two hundred and sixty-five thousand chests, the latter at only twenty-five thousand--less than a tenth of Mr. Drew's estimate. In the face of all these discrepancies, Sir Robert Hart takes an arbitrary figure, and says, in effect, there is at least as much opium produced in China itself as is imported into China. With the knowledge I have of the Chinese and the opium trade generally, from the calculations I have made, and by the light thrown upon the question by Sir Robert Hart's Yellow Book, and the Reports of Messrs. Spence and Baber and others, I am induced to come to the conclusion that two hundred and sixty-five thousand chests is much nearer the mark than a hundred thousand chests. The reason the Chinese opium dealers have been so reticent in affording information to the Commissioners of Customs at these Treaty Ports is, that they are afraid to do so, fearing if they gave correct information, they might in so doing furnish to the Mandarins reasons for "squeezing" them, or for placing taxes and other restrictions on their trade; for the Government officials in China, from the highest to the lowest, are, as I have before said, the most corrupt, cruel, and unscrupulous body of men in the whole world. Mr. Storrs Turner has told us that the Chinese Government is a paternal one, exercising a fatherly care of its people, and always exhorting them to virtue. Nothing can be more fallacious than this. Theoretically, there is much that is good in the system of government in China, but practically it is quite the reverse. There is little sympathy between the supreme Government and the great body of the people. The Emperor, his family, and immediate suite, are all Tartars, quite another race from the Chinese, differing totally in customs, manners, dress, and social habits. The Governors or Viceroys are pretty much absolute sovereigns within their own provinces. Each has under him a host of officials, commonly known as Mandarins, who are generally the most rapacious and corrupt of men; their salaries, in most cases, are purely nominal, for they are expected to pay themselves, which they well understand how to do. Their system of taxation is irregular and incomplete, and the process of squeezing is openly followed all over the country. There is nothing a Chinese dreads so much as disclosing his pecuniary means, or, indeed, any information that might furnish a clue to them. If he admitted that he cultivated fifty acres of opium, or bought a hundred pikuls of opium in a year, his means and his profits could be arrived at by a simple process of arithmetic, and although he might feel sure that, so far as Sir Robert Hart and the foreign Commissioners under him were concerned, no wrong need be apprehended, yet he is so distrustful and suspicious, that he would fear lest the facts should reach the ears of the higher Chinese officials through the native subordinates in the Commissioners' Offices. A Chinaman, therefore, will never tell the amount or value of his property, or the profits he is making by his business. He fears being plundered; that is the simple fact. I know a respectable man in Hong Kong, the possessor of considerable house property there, a man who would be called wealthy even in England. Some years ago, when at Canton, where he had a house, a Mandarin suddenly arrested and put him into prison. What a Chinese prison is you will find in Dr. Gray's book. It is not the place where a paternal Government ought to house the worst of criminals, or even a wild beast. The man had committed no crime, and had done nothing whatever to warrant this treatment; in vain he asked what he had been imprisoned for, and demanded to be confronted with his accusers, if there were any. His gaolers shrugged their shoulders and gave him no answer. He was kept there for two or three months. Ultimately he received a hint, which he recognized as an official intimation, that unless he came down handsomely, as the phrase is, and that speedily, he would lose his head. He took the hint, made the best bargain he could, and ultimately had to pay seventy thousand dollars, or about fourteen thousand pounds, for his release. There never was any accusation brought against him. I knew another man, living at Swatow, who had made a great deal of money in trade. He bought a large piece of foreshore at that place, which he reclaimed and turned into profitable land. A military Mandarin living there thought him a fair object for a squeeze; the same process was gone through as in the case I have before mentioned; but this man, not having the same wisdom as the other, held fast to his dollars. The result was that a false charge of kidnapping, alleged to have been committed twenty years before, was brought against him, and he was taken out and beheaded. That is the way money is raised by the governors and their subordinates in China. So much for Mr. Turner's benign and paternal Government. There is no regular Income Tax in China, but there is a Property Tax levied in the way I have mentioned. The Chinese authorities will let a man go on making money for many years, and when they think he has accumulated sufficient wealth for their purpose, they pounce down upon him and demand as much as they think they can extort. That is the reason the Chinese opium dealers are so reticent when inquiries are made concerning opium. If the Commissioners at the Treaty Ports had got fair returns, I have no doubt that it is not a hundred thousand pikuls of native opium that Sir Robert Hart would have estimated as the quantity of opium grown in China, but probably four or five times that amount. Here, again, I must quote from Mr. Spence's report. Nothing can possibly show better the prevalence of opium smoking in the provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan and Hupah, they being about equal in extent to France, Spain, and Portugal. This is what he says on the prevalence of opium smoking in those provinces:-- Before giving an estimate of the amount of opium produced in Szechuan, I must refer, in explanation of the large figures I shall be obliged to use, to the extraordinary prevalence of the habit of opium smoking in Western Hupei, in Szechuan, and in Yunnan. It prevails to an extent undreamt of in other parts of China. The Roman Catholic missionaries, who are stationed all over Szechuan to the number of nearly one hundred, and who, living amongst the people, have opportunities of observation denied to travellers, estimate that one-tenth of the whole male adult population of the province smoke opium. Mr. Parker, after travelling all over the thickly-settled parts of the province, estimates the proportion of smokers thus:-- Per cent. Labourers and small farmers 10 Small shopkeepers 20 Hawkers, soldiers 30 Merchants, gentry 80 Officials and their staffs 90 Actors, prostitutes, thieves, vagabonds 95 I agree with Mr. Parker that the proportion of smokers varies in different classes according to their means and leisure, but I feel sure his estimate of the per-centage amongst the labouring classes is much too low. One of the most numerous class of labourers in China is the coolie class, day labourers who live by picking up odd jobs, turning their hands to any kind of unskilled work that may be offered. Certainly more than half of them smoke. Of the labouring classes who are not "coolies," as a whole this much may be said--they only have money at stated intervals; and when out of a gang of forty or fifty workmen or sailors only four or five smoke opium, it does not mean that only ten per cent. are smokers. In all probability half of the whole gang squandered their wages the day they got the money, and have nothing left to buy opium or anything else until the job or voyage for which they have been engaged is finished. For example, of my junk crew on my voyage to Chungking, only four smoked opium regularly, but seven others who had spent all their wages before we started smoked whenever I gave them a few cash. The total abstinence of a British sailor at sea for months on end proves nothing; it is what he will do when he has ten pounds in his pocket, and is in a street with fifteen public-houses, that decides his sobriety. So of workmen in the west of China, a large number smoke opium when they have money, and do the best they can when they have none. Whatever be the exact per-centage of the opium smokers in Szechuan in the whole population, it is many times larger than in the east. Now, after all this absolutely irrefutable testimony, many might think it unnecessary to go further. They little know, however, how strong a hold fanaticism takes of the human mind; they little think how difficult it is to eradicate a fascinating LIE from the mind, once its glittering meretricious form has got hold of it and supplanted wholesome truth. I have, therefore, to deal not only with those whose minds are as a sheet of white paper, but with those in whom the fallacious seeds that beget error and fanaticism have been sown and taken firm root. I will now give you an extract from Sir Rutherford Alcock's paper, which is deserving of careful study:-- I may say here, that although most of the staple arguments and misleading opinions on opium and its disastrous effects come from the missionaries in China, whose good faith I do not question, there is no stronger protest against exaggerated and sensational statements on record than has been supplied by one of their number, the late Dr. Medhurst, of whom it has been truly said, he was "one of the most able, experienced, zealous missionaries in China." Opposed in principle to the opium trade in all its aspects, his statements will be readily accepted as unimpeachable evidence. The following remark appears in an official paper, forwarded to the Chief Superintendent of Trade of Hong Kong in 1855. Alluding to a speech of an American missionary who had visited England, and was reported to have told the British public "that the smokers of the contraband article have increased from eight to fifteen millions, yielding an annual death harvest of more than a million," and further characterizing the traffic as "staining the British name in China with the deepest disgrace," Dr. Medhurst observes, "_such statements do great harm; they produce a fictitious and groundless excitement in the minds of the religious and philanthropic public at home, while they steel against all reasonable and moderate representations the minds of the political and mercantile body abroad. The estimate given has not even the semblance of truth; it is an outrageous exaggeration._" And yet in a memorial presented to Lord Clarendon by two distinguished and justly respected noblemen, the Earls of Shaftesbury and Chichester, on the extent of the opium trade in 1855, these, and still more "outrageous exaggerations" appear with the authority of their names. Lord Shaftesbury officializes the estimate that twenty millions of Chinese are opium smokers, and assumes that of this number one-tenth, that is, two millions, die yearly, and states it as "an appalling fact." Appalling, indeed! But what if it be a mere figment of the imagination, and absolutely devoid, as Dr. Medhurst says, of a semblance of truth? This is the way the benevolent British public have been cajoled and misled for the last twenty years, or more, by opium-phobists. No wonder that the Anti-Opium Society can raise fifty thousand pounds so easily, for the British public is a benevolent one, and will subscribe its gold readily where what they believe a proper object presents itself. Sad, indeed it is, that in the present case its munificence represents, not merely so much money lost, but vast sums recklessly squandered in a mischievous agitation, that whilst it tends to sap and ruin one of the loveliest of all virtues--that charity that endureth long and is kind--paralyses missionary labour, prejudices the trade and revenue of our great Indian Empire, and defames our country in the eyes of the whole world. Sad, sad also to see that venerated nobleman, Lord Shaftesbury, after his long and honourable career, and so many other good and eminent men, made the victims of such miserable delusions. I think it is now clear, both from the testimony I have adduced, and from Mr. Turner's own admission, that the poppy is not only indigenous to China, but that it has been cultivated there from time immemorial, and that opium is smoked generally throughout China, the only limit to its use being the means of procuring the drug. LECTURE III. In my last lecture I dealt with the fallacy that the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has recently been introduced there presumably by British agency, and that opium smoking in China was confined to a small percentage of the people, which had been steadily increasing since the introduction into China of Indian opium. I now proceed to discuss fallacy number 3, which is, that "_opium smoking is injurious to the system, more so than spirit drinking_." I think I shall be able to show most clearly that exactly the reverse is the case. With this it will be convenient to take fallacy number 5, which is a kindred one, namely, that "_opium smoking and opium eating are equally hurtful_." This fallacy lies at the root of the opium controversy, for it alone has enabled the Anti-Opium agitators to give plausibility to their teaching and to obtain some hold, as they lately had, upon the public mind. There is, in truth, about as much difference in the two practices as there is between drinking, say, a pint of ardent spirits and bathing the surface of one's body with the same stimulant. Before proceeding further, it may be stated that opium is admitted by physicians in all countries to be an invaluable medicine, for which there is no known substitute. Mr. Storrs Turner says that from the time of Hippocrates to the present day it has been the physician's invaluable ally in his struggles against disease and death. Pereira thus describes the drug:-- Opium is undoubtedly the most important and valuable remedy of the whole Materia Medica. For other medicines we have one or more substitutes, but for opium none,--at least in the large majority of cases in which its peculiar and beneficial influence is required. Its good effects are not, as is the case with some valuable medicines, remote and contingent, but they are immediate, direct, and obvious, and its operation is not attended with pain or discomfort. Furthermore it is applied, and with the greatest success, to the relief of maladies of everyday occurrence, some of which are attended with acute human suffering. This is the description given of opium in Dr. Quain's _Dictionary of Medicine_ recently published:-- Opium and morphia naturally stand first and still hold their place as our most potent and reliable narcotics, all the more valuable because almost alone in their class they are also endowed with powerful anodyne action, in virtue of which they may relieve pain without causing sleep. Valuable as it is in all forms of insomnia, opium is especially indicated in typhus fever and other acute disorders, when delirium and prolonged wakefulness seem to endanger life. The principal drawback to opium is the digestive disturbance following its use, and the fact that, as toleration is very rapidly established, gradually increasing doses are needed to check the counteracting influence of habit. The Anti-Opium Society and their followers allege that dram-drinking is not only less baneful than opium-smoking, but they say that the latter practice so injures the constitution, and has such extraordinary attractions for those who indulge in it, that it is impossible to get rid of the habit, and that, in effect, whilst drunkards can be reformed, opium smokers cannot. This is absolutely untrue. The reverse is much nearer the mark. The effect upon the system of constant spirit drinking, leaving actual drunkenness and its consequences aside, is that it produces organic changes in the system, by acting upon what medical men call the "microscopic tissues," of which the whole human frame is made up; also poisoning the blood, which then, instead of being a healthy fluid coursing freely through the frame and invigorating the entire system, flows sluggishly, producing organic changes in the blood vessels, inducing various diseases according to the constitution and tendencies of the individual. Three of the most usual diseases to which the habitual dram drinker is subject are liver disease, fatty degeneration of the heart, and paralysis. There is not a medical student of three months' experience who could not, if you entered a dissecting-room, point you out a "drunkard's liver." The moment he sees that object he knows at once that the wretched being to whom it belonged had, by continued indulgence in alcohol, ruined his constitution and health, and brought himself to an untimely end. There is another serious consequence arising from habitual drinking. Not only does the habit irreparably ruin the general health so that cure is impossible, but it induces insanity, and I believe I am not beyond the mark in stating that fifty per cent. at the least of the lunatics in our various asylums throughout the country have become insane from over-indulgence in alcohol. Dr. Pereira, in his celebrated _Materia Medica_, states that out of one hundred and ten cases occurring in male patients admitted into the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum in 1840, no fewer than thirty-one were ascribed to intemperance, while thirty-four were referred to combined causes of which intemperance was stated to be one; and yet Mr. Turner and his disciples say that spirit drinking is a lesser vice than opium smoking! I need not remind you of the consequences to others besides the actual victims to spirit drinking, for that is unfortunately told too eloquently and but too vividly brought before us every day in the public newspapers. You will find that those acts of violence, those unfortunate cases that make one shudder to read, happening daily in this country--kicking wives, sometimes to death, beating and otherwise ill-using helpless children, violently attacking unoffending people in the streets--all are the results, more or less, of spirit drinking. Even the missionaries admit that opium smoking does not produce any of these evils. As I have said before, truth is natural to the human mind, and will reveal itself, even where it is not directly relevant to the purpose. Mr. Turner does not venture to dispute this in his book, and I would call your attention to the passage. He says on page 33:-- Even between drunkenness and opium smoking there are perceptible distinctions. We must allow that opium smoking is a much more pacific and polite vice. The opium sot does not quarrel with his mate nor kick his wife to death; he is quiet and harmless enough while the spirit of the drug possesses him. That is all true so far as the fact goes, but if an insinuation is intended that the Chinaman gets violent after the effect of the drug has passed away, there is no foundation for it in fact. The Chinaman takes opium just because he likes it, and knowing it will act at once as a pleasing sedative and a harmless stimulant. A man who is working hard all day in a tropical climate, whether at bodily or mental work, finds, towards the close of the day, his nervous system in an unsettled state, and looks for a stimulant, and the most harmless and most effectual one he can find is the opium pipe. When opium and opium smoking are better understood--and I believe the subject is now but imperfectly known by most medical men in this country--I feel convinced that the faculty will largely prescribe opium smoking, not merely as a substitute for dram drinking, but as a curative agency, that in many cases will be found invaluable. In this I am borne out by an eminent medical authority, to whom I shall refer by-and-by. The regular and habitual opium smoker is seldom or never found to indulge in spirits at all. Stimulants of all kinds are so freely taken here that people never look upon them as a poison; but in point of fact they are a terrible poison, and a very active one, too. Another medical work of very great authority is that by Dr. Taylor.[7] It has always received the greatest attention in courts of law; and it is also held in the highest estimation by the medical profession. At page 315, under the head of "Poisoning by Alcohol," he says:-- The stomach has been found intensely congested or inflamed, the mucous membrane presenting in one case a bright red, and in another a dark red-brown colour. When death has taken place rapidly, there may be a peculiar odour of spirits in the contents; but this will not be perceived if the quantity taken was small, or many hours have elapsed before the inspection is made. The brain and its membranes are found congested, and in some instances there is effusion of blood or serum beneath the inner membrane. In a case observed by Dr. Geoghegan, in which a pint of spirits had been taken and proved fatal in eight hours, black extravasation was found on the mucous membrane of the stomach; but no trace of alcohol could be detected in the contents. The action of a strong alcoholic liquid on the mucous membrane of the stomach so closely resembles the effect produced by arsenic and other irritants, as easily to give rise to the suspicion of mineral irritant poisoning. A drawing in the museum collection of Guy's Hospital furnishes a good illustration of the local action of alcohol. The whole of the mucous membrane of the stomach is highly corrugated and is of a deep brownish-red colour. _Of all the liquids affecting the brain this has the most powerful action on the stomach._ A case of alcoholic poisoning of a child, æt. seven, referred to me by Mr. Jackaman, coroner for Ipswich, in July 1863, will serve to show the correctness of this remark. A girl was found at four o'clock in the morning lying perfectly insensible on the floor. She had had access to some brandy, which she had swallowed from a quartern measure, found near her empty. She had spoken to her mother only ten minutes before, so that the symptoms must have come on very rapidly. She was seen by Mr. Adams four hours afterwards. She was then quite insensible, in a state of profound coma, the skin cold, and covered with a clammy perspiration. There had been slight vomiting. The child died in twelve hours, without recovering consciousness, from the time at which she was first found. So far Dr. Taylor, a most competent authority on the subject, as showing what a poison alcohol is. Now alcohol, as I have before mentioned, effects an organic change in the system, which opium, if smoked, or even if eaten does not; and when spirits are indulged in to a very considerable extent, the disease produced is absolutely incurable, because it is impossible for any medical skill to give a man new tissues, new blood, a new stomach, or a new liver, where the whole substance and material of all has undergone a complete and ruinous change. Now, the case as regards opium is totally different, because, no matter how much one may indulge in opium, whether in eating or smoking, the effects produced are always curable. This is so as regards opium eating; in respect to the infinitely less exciting practice of opium _smoking_, the rule applies with very much greater force. A man may smoke opium inordinately until, from want of appetite and impaired digestion, he seems sinking into the grave; he is, however, only labouring under functional derangement, which is always curable. The use of opium in any form produces no organic change in the system whatever. Excessive eating or smoking opium may impair the appetite and digestion, but that will be all. I have very competent medical authority for saying this. This fact places opium and alcohol in two entirely different categories. The one, if eaten in moderation, is, I believe, harmless, if not beneficial; while, as to the smoking of the drug, it is absolutely innocuous;--but if alcohol be freely though not inordinately used, it will prove, sooner or later, destructive to the system, acting upon the frame as a slow poison, which must eventually end, as experience shows, in ruin and death. De Quincey tells us in his _Confessions_ that he ate opium with impunity for eighteen years, and that it was only after eight years _abuse_ of opium eating that he suffered in any way from the practice. I will now give you another extract from Dr. Pereira's book. At page 446, under the heading "Consequences of Habitual Drunkenness," he says:-- The continued use of spirituous liquors gives rise to various morbid conditions of system, a few only of the most remarkable of which can be here referred to. One of these is the disease known by the various names of _delirium tremens_, _d. potatorum_, _oinomapria_, &c., and which is characterized by delirium, tremor of the extremities, wakefulness, and great frequency of pulse. The delirium is of a peculiar kind. It usually consists in the imagined presence of objects which the patient is anxious to seize or avoid. Its pathology is not understood. It is sometimes, but not constantly, connected with or dependent on an inflammatory condition of the brain, or its membranes. Sometimes it is more allied to nervous fever. Opium has been found an important agent in relieving it. Insanity is another disease produced by the immoderate and habitual use of spirituous liquors. Now I do not think that, much as they have abused opium smoking, any of the Anti-Opium writers have ever alleged insanity to be an effect or concomitant of opium smoking. It must therefore be taken as generally admitted that opium smoking, or even opium eating, does not produce insanity. We have, then, this undisputed fact, viz. _that insanity and acts of violence do not result from opium smoking, whilst they are unquestionably produced by spirit drinking_. I had recently some conversation on the subject of opium with a medical friend who has been in large practice in London, for twenty years. I had previously spoken to him frequently on the same subject, and he has been kind enough to give me his views in a very interesting and concise manner. This opinion, I may tell you, is not paid for, or prepared merely to support a particular purpose, as in the case of trials in the law courts. It is purely spontaneous. We all know that professional men, whether doctors, lawyers, surveyors, and others, are all more or less prone to take the views of the party requiring their services, and they, accordingly, will give opinions more or less coinciding with those views. It does not, however, follow that the persons doing so are guilty of any moral wrong, or that they write or state what they do not believe to be true; on the contrary, they have a complete faith in the statements they make. The natural bent of the mind is to lean towards the views urged by one's patient or client; and thus two physicians or lawyers of the highest standing and character will be found to hold different opinions. But this statement with which I have been furnished stands on an entirely different footing. There can have been no bias in the mind of the writer; it is simply the result of study and experience. I have the most perfect confidence in this gentleman's opinions. He is Mr. William Brend, M.R.C.S. He says:-- There is no organic disease traceable to the use of opium, either directly or indirectly, and whether used in moderate quantities or even in great excess. In other words, _there is no special disease associated with opium_. Functional disorder, more or less, may be, and no doubt is, induced by the improper or unnecessary use of opium; but this is only what may be said of any other cause of deranged health, such as gluttony, bad air, mental anxiety.... However great the functional disorder produced by opium, even when carried to great excess, may be, the whole effect passes off, and the bodily system is restored in a little while to a state of complete health, if the habit be discontinued. Alcohol, when taken in moderation, unquestionably benefits a certain number of individuals, but there are others whose systems will not tolerate the smallest quantities; it acts upon them like a poison. But in the case of all persons when alcohol is taken in excess disease is sooner or later produced; that disease consists of organic changes induced in the blood-vessels of the entire system, more especially the minute blood-vessels called the capillaries; these become dilated, and consequently weakened in their coats, and eventually paralyzed, so that they cannot contract upon the blood. The result of this is stagnation, leading to further changes still, such as fatty degeneration of all the organs; for it must be remembered that alcohol circulates with the blood, and thus finds its way into the remotest tissues. The special diseases referrable to alcohol, besides this general fatty degeneration, are the disease of the liver called "cirrhosis," and very frequently "Bright's disease of the kidneys." Here, then, we have a great and important difference between opium and alcohol. The second great difference grows out of the first. It is this:--I have said that if alcohol be taken in excess for a certain length of time, depending to some extent upon the susceptibility of the individual, organic change, that is disease, is inevitable; but the saddest part of it is that it is real disease, not merely functional disorder; so that if those who have yielded to that excess can be persuaded to abandon alcohol entirely the mischief induced must remain. The progress of further evil may be staved off, but the system can never again be restored to perfect health. _The demon_ has taken a grip which can never be entirely unloosed. Herein there is the second great difference between the use of opium and of alcohol in excess. If what I have said of opium eating be true, common sense will draw the inference that opium smoking must be comparatively innocuous, for used in this way, a very small quantity indeed of the active constituents find their entrance into the system. Its influence, like tobacco, is exerted entirely upon the nervous system, and when that influence has passed off it leaves (as also in the case of tobacco) a greater or less craving for its repetition; but as organic disease is not the result, I see no reason why opium smoking in moderation necessarily degrades the individual more than does the smoking of tobacco. Here I will give you another extract from Mr. Storrs Turner's book, which tells against his case very strongly indeed. How he came to insert it I can only understand on the principle I have already mentioned, that truth is inherent to the human mind and will reveal itself occasionally even though it has to struggle through a mountain of prejudice and of warped understanding. This is it, from the evidence of Dr. Eatwell, First Assistant Opium Examiner in the Bengal service; it will be found on page 233:-- Having passed three years in China, I may be allowed to state the results of my observation, and I can affirm thus far, that the effects of the abuse of the drug do not come very frequently under observation, and that when cases do occur, the habit is frequently found to have been induced by the presence of some painful chronic disease, to escape from the sufferings of which the patient has fled to this resource. That this is not always the case, however, I am perfectly ready to admit, and there are doubtless many who indulge in the habit to a pernicious extent, led by the same morbid impulses which induce men to become drunkards in even the most civilised countries; but these cases do not, at all events, come before the public eye. It requires no laborious search in civilized England to discover evidences of the pernicious effects of the abuse of alcoholic liquors; our open and thronged gin-palaces, and our streets afford abundant testimony on the subject; but in China this open evidence of the evil effects of opium is at least wanting. As regards the effects of the habitual use of the drug on the mass of the people, I must affirm that no injurious results are visible. The people generally are a muscular and well-formed race, the labouring portion being capable of great and prolonged exertion under a fierce sun, in an unhealthy climate. Their disposition is cheerful and peaceable, and quarrels and brawls are rarely heard amongst even the lower orders; whilst in general intelligence they rank deservedly high amongst Orientals. I will, therefore, conclude with observing, that the proofs are still wanting to show that the moderate use of opium produces more pernicious effects upon the constitution than does the moderate use of spirituous liquors; whilst, at the same time, it is certain that the consequences of the abuse of the former are less appalling in their effect upon the victim, and less disastrous to society at large, than are consequences of the abuse of the latter. Could any evidence against the allegations of the Anti-Opium Society be stronger than this? Have I not now a right to say, "Out of the mouth of thine own witness I convict thee!" My own observation goes to show that opium smoking is far more fascinating than opium eating, and that the opium smoker never relapses into the opium eater. Opium eating, as I think I have already stated, is unknown in China. I think these statements put the question as regards opium smoking, opium eating, and spirit drinking in a very different light to what the advocates of the Anti-Opium Society throw upon the subject. The latter talk of the importation of Indian opium into China as the origin of the custom of smoking the drug, or, at the least, that it has made the natives smoke more than they otherwise would have done. There is no truth in such representations. Let us take the year 1880, for instance, and adopting the figures given by Sir Robert Hart, and concurred in by the British merchants, which I take to be quite correct, that the amount of opium imported into China from India was in that year one hundred thousand chests, each chest weighing a pikul, which would amount to about six thousand tons. Distribute those six thousand tons over the whole of China, which, as I have before so often said, is as large as Europe, and with a population amounting to three hundred and sixty millions, and you will find it gives such a trifling annual amount to each person, that Sir Robert Hart cannot mark from its use any damage to the finances of the State, the wealth of its people, or the growth of its population. In the United Kingdom, where we have less than a tenth of the population of China, there were two hundred thousand tons of alcohol--whisky, gin, brandy--and one thousand and ninety millions four hundred and forty-four thousand seven hundred and sixteen gallons of wine and beer consumed in that year. If all these spirits, wine, and beer were mixed up so as to form one vast lake--one huge "devil's punch-bowl"--there would be sufficient liquor for the whole population of the United Kingdom to swim in at one time. But if the tears of all the broken-hearted wives, widows, and orphans that flowed from the use of the accursed mixture were collected, they would produce such a sea of sorrow, such an ocean of misery as never before was presented to the world. Yet philanthropists and Christian people in this country give all their time, energies, and a great deal of their money to put down this purely sentimental grievance in China, and shut their eyes to the terrible evils thundering at their own doors! The whole purpose of Mr. Storrs Turner's book, and of the Anti-Opium Society, is to write down opium smoking in China, with the ultimate view of suppressing the Indo-China opium trade; and no man living is better aware than Mr. Turner that opium eating is not a practice with the Chinese; indeed, I doubt if it is known in China at all. Yet, knowing all this, he puts forward the outrageous theory that opium smoking and opium eating are equally injurious; it therefore becomes a matter of the first importance that the great difference between these two practices should be clearly shown. In the appendix to Mr. Turner's book there is a mass of evidence, of which a large portion is quite beside the question, for it applies exclusively to opium eating--a practice, I assert and will clearly show, is totally different from, and a thousand times more trying to the constitution than opium smoking. Dr. Ayres says that opium smokers can smoke in one day as much opium as would, if eaten, poison one hundred men, and Dr. Ayres is a very great authority on the subject; for not only has he a large practice among the better classes of Chinese, all of whom are, more or less, opium smokers, but his daily duties bring him into contact with the criminal classes, who are most prone to excessive sensual indulgence of this kind. This is what Dr. Ayres says upon the subject in his article in the _Friend of China_:-- As regards opium smoking, no prisoner who confessed to be an opium smoker has been allowed a single grain in the gaol. Neither has he had any stimulant as a substitute, and I do not find there has been any evil consequence in breaking off this habit at once, nor that any precaution has been necessary, further than a closer attention to the general health. Several very good specimens of opium smokers have come under observation; one was the case of a man whose daily consumption had been two ounces a day for nineteen years, and who was allowed neither opium nor gin, nor was he given any narcotic or stimulant. For the first few days he suffered from want of sleep, but soon was in fair health, and expressed himself much pleased at having got rid of the habit.... In my experience, the habit does no physical harm in moderation. In the greatest case of excess just mentioned at the gaol, a better-nourished or developed man for his size it would be difficult to see. So far as regards opium _eating_, the best medical authorities are divided as to whether opium eating or drinking in moderation is injurious to the system at all. In any case, opium eating is not the question before us, nor the subject of these lectures, which is opium smoking in China. Mr. Storrs Turner gives, in his appendix, at page 240, extracts from some statements of Lieut.-Col. James Todd, who says:-- This pernicious plant (the poppy) has robbed the Rajpoot of half his virtues, and while it obscures these it heightens his vices, giving to his natural bravery a character of insane ferocity, and to the countenance which would otherwise beam with intelligence an air of imbecility. That entirely relates to the _eating_ of the drug by the Rajpoots of India, and has no connection or analogy to opium smoking by the Chinese. There is another quotation on the same page from Dr. Oppenheim, given in Pereira's _Materia Medica_ as follows:-- The habitual _opium eater_ is instantly recognised by his appearance: a total attenuation of body, a withered, yellow countenance, a lame gait, &c. And so on. This, as you see, applies to opium eating only. There are many other instances of the effects of such use of opium given in the appendix, which, after these two quotations, it is useless to further repeat. Indeed, so far as relevancy to his subject goes, Mr. Storrs Turner might just as well have introduced into his book medical or other testimony as to the effects of gluttony or spirit drinking. It suits his purpose, however, to mix up the two practices, so as to confuse and mislead his readers. Dr. Oppenheim's statement, by the way, is completely refuted by Dr. Sir George Birdwood, a distinguished physician, whose long residence in Bombay,--where there is a Chinese colony, most, if not all, of whom are habitual smokers of the drug,--and whose thorough acquaintance with the effects of opium eating and opium smoking, entitle his testimony to the very highest consideration. Again, at p. 8 of Mr. Turner's volume, reference is made to De Quincey's book on opium eating, intituled, "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater." Could anything be more disingenuous than this? De Quincey was an opium eater, not an opium smoker. Here is the passage from Mr. Turner's book to which I have referred:-- Those "Confessions," which are not confessions, but an _apologia pro vitâ suâ_, an elaborate essay to whitewash his reputation and varnish over the smirching blot of a self-indulgent habit by a glitter of a fascinating literary style. Now did anyone ever hear of such an extraordinary explanation of De Quincey's motives in publishing that volume? De Quincey, he says, in effect, was ashamed of the practice of opium eating, and wrote the book as an excuse for his conduct, so horrible, disgraceful, and debasing, according to Mr. Storrs Turner, is--not opium eating, observe you, but--opium smoking. How fallacious are such arguments I think I shall make apparent to the most simple mind. If a man has the misfortune to have contracted a disgraceful habit, such, for instance, as over-indulgence in spirit drinking, the very last thing he would think of doing is to publish a book upon the subject, and thus acquaint the whole world with his infirmity. Yet this is what Mr. Turner alleges against De Quincey. But, in point of fact, he is altogether wrong in supposing that De Quincey was ashamed of opium eating; if he had been, he unquestionably would not have written his book, which, by the way, is one of the most fascinating volumes in our literature. Previous to the publication of it, probably there were not half a dozen people who knew that he, De Quincey, was an opium eater, and in the preface to the work, he says, "that his self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt." I know Mr. Turner to be a gentleman utterly incapable of wilfully acting disingenuously, much less of stating intentionally what he knew to be untrue; but he is so blinded by prejudice, his naturally clear intellect is so warped and distorted, and his faculties and reasoning powers are so perverted, by this opium question, and his duties towards the Anti-Opium Society, that he either does not see the difference between the two things,--opium smoking and opium eating,--or, aware of that difference, thinks himself justified in classing them together, as they both proceed from opium, and thus he would persuade himself and his readers that they are equally baneful. But in this book of his he takes De Quincey, the opium eater, who confesses to having eaten three hundred and twenty grains a day, and compares him with an opium-smoking Chinaman who smoked one hundred and eighty grains a day; the difference between eating three hundred and twenty grains and smoking one hundred and eighty grains a day being about as a thousand is to one, in fact, in such case it would be simply the difference between life and death; and yet Mr. Storrs Turner would strive to mix up the two practices, so that the incautious reader might infer that the effects of the one were as injurious as those of the other. Such is the class of arguments with which the Anti-Opium Society and its credulous supporters have been satisfied, and upon which the whole religious world, the country, and the legislature are called upon to come to the rescue of injured humanity, and abolish this Indo-China opium trade. Now, as De Quincey is on the _tapis_, I cannot refrain from exposing a very disgraceful piece of deception which has been practised upon the public by some of the agents or supporters of the Anti-Opium Society since the first edition of my Lectures appeared. This work of De Quincey, as I have intimated, is a very entertaining book; it is the first of a series of fourteen volumes by the same author, published in 1880 by the eminent firm of Adam and Charles Black, of Edinburgh; the price of each volume is two shillings, which is very moderate indeed, taking the character and quality of the letterpress, the paper, and general "get up" into account, for, as for the copyright, it has expired. Although Mr. Storrs Turner has mis-described the book as a penitential effort on the part of De Quincey, I am afraid that the effect of its perusal on most readers would be to induce them rather to become opium eaters than repel them from the practice, as will be manifest from an extract which I shall shortly give the reader. The truth is, De Quincey, who knew human nature very well, lived by his pen, and was actuated more by the desire to amuse than reform his readers--for, say as you will, a well presented comedy will be always more popular with the multitude than a tragedy, however skilfully performed. Now, I am far from impugning the main features of our author's "confessions," but in saying that in writing this very fascinating and original book he went extensively into the picturesque, and drew largely on his imagination, no person who will afford himself the pleasure of reading the book can, I think, deny. Now, some very zealous agent or advocate of the Anti-Opium Society, fearing that the effect of this work of De Quincey's--brought as it has been into notice in connection with this controversy by Mr. Turner's and my own book--might be to induce the reading public to think that opium, after all, was not so terrible a drug as the Anti-Opium agitators represent, has set himself to the ignoble task of so garbling the work, and importing into it other matter of his own, as to represent opium eating as the most terrible, fearful, and demoralizing practice in the world, and then printing the concoction and flooding the country with the impudent travesty at the very moderate charge of one penny. All the entertaining and diverting passages have been suppressed, and some wretched stuff inserted. It is called on the title page "The Confessions of an Opium Eater; the famous work by Thomas De Quincey. Copyright edition." The whole is nothing more than a burlesque--and a very bad one indeed--of the real volume. In the first place, there is a lie upon the face of it, as the copyright has expired, and it is not in any respect a copy of the original; and secondly, it barely contains one-sixth of the matter of the actual volume, and has "counterfeit" stamped upon every page. It was exposed at the various book-stalls of Messrs. W. H. Smith and Son, in London, and, I believe, also throughout the country. I myself bought two copies at the Charing Cross station a few months ago, but I believe the delectable piece of literary forgery has since been withdrawn. I daresay, however, it has, to a great extent, answered its purpose, _i.e._ to poison the minds of its readers on the Opium question, by making it appear that opium is a terrible poison, and that the smoking of it is more injurious than the excessive indulgence in alcohol. This "pious fraud" has done a grievous wrong to the memory of a great English author, Thomas De Quincey--whose pure and classic English adorns our language--and also an injury to the general public who have advanced their money for the penny lie upon false pretences. The whole affair is just as defensible a proceeding as that of some tenth-rate dauber who, having copied (?) a masterpiece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, or some other great master of the English school, had the miserable caricature oleographed, and flooded the country with the imposture, in the hope of inducing the public to believe that true copies of the originals were offered to them. But these Anti-Opium fanatics do not stick at trifles, and, in their insane desire to make right appear wrong, do not hesitate to defame the dead and vilify the living. I have mentioned this incident to show my readers the unscrupulous efforts these people will resort to in order to impose their fictions upon the public. Now, leaving De Quincey and his book for the present, let us see what Dr. Ayres says upon the difference between opium eating and opium smoking. In his article in _The Friend of China_, from which I have already quoted, he says:-- I have conducted my observations with much interest, as the effects of opium eating are well known to me by many years' experience in India, and I have been surprised to find the opium smoker differs so much from the opium eater. _I am inclined to the belief that in the popular mind the two have got confused together. Opium smoking bears no comparison with opium eating._ The latter is a terrible vice, most difficult to cure, and showing rapidly very marked constitutional effects in the consumer. Dr. Ayres was quite right, the two have got mixed up together, thanks to Mr. Storrs Turner and his confrères. To further explain the difference between opium eating and opium smoking, let us take the familiar instance of tobacco smoking. It is not, I think, generally known that tobacco, taken internally, is a violent and almost instantaneous poison. A very small quantity of it admitted into the stomach produces speedy death, and it is a wonder to some medical men that its use has not been made available by assassins for their foul and deadly purposes. Tobacco has no medicinal properties; it is simply known to chemists and physicians as a poison. Its alkaloid, or active principle, is nicotine, a poison of so deadly and instantaneous a nature as to rank with aconite, strychnine, and prussic acid. Of the four, indeed, it takes the lead. In Taylor's "Medical Jurisprudence," to which I have already referred, it is laid down at page 321, under the head of "Poisoning by Tobacco":-- The effects which this substance produces when taken in a large dose, either in the form of powder or infusion, are well marked. The symptoms are faintness, nausea, vomiting, giddiness, delirium, loss of power in the limbs, general relaxation of the muscular system, trembling, complete prostration of strength, coldness of the surface with cold clammy perspiration, convulsive movements, paralysis and death. In some cases there is purging, with violent pain in the abdomen; in others there is rather a sense of sinking or depression in the region of the heart, passing into syncope, or creating a sense of impending dissolution. With the above-mentioned symptoms there is dilatation of the pupils, dimness of sight with confusion of ideas, a small, weak, and scarcely-perceptible pulse, and difficulty of breathing. Poisoning by tobacco has not often risen to medico-legal discussion. This is the more remarkable as it is an easily accessible substance, and the possession of it would not, as in the case of other poisons, excite surprise or suspicion. In June, 1854, a man was charged with the death of an infant, of ten weeks, by poisoning it with tobacco. He placed a quantity of tobacco in the mouth of the infant, with the view, as he stated, of making it sleep. The infant was completely narcotized, and died on the second day.... Tobacco owes its poisonous properties to the presence of a liquid volatile alkaloid, _nicotina_. Whilst under the head "Nicotine," on the same page, he says:-- This is a deadly poison, and, like prussic acid, it destroys life in small doses with great rapidity. I found that a rabbit was killed by a single drop in three minutes and a half. In fifteen seconds the animal lost all power of standing, was violently convulsed in its fore and hind legs, and its back was arched convulsively. In Dr. Ure's "Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines," it is laid down, at page 250, under the head of "Nicotine":-- This alkaloid is the active principle of the tobacco plant.... Nicotine is a most powerful poison, one drop put on the tongue of a large dog being sufficient to kill it in two or three minutes. So much for tobacco and its alkaloid as deadly poisons; yet we all know that, unless indulged in to an inordinate extent, tobacco smoking is a perfectly harmless practice, almost universally indulged in; the exception now being to find a man, young or old, gentle or simple, who is not a tobacco smoker. Most of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, poets, statesmen, and mathematicians smoke it, and in most cases, I believe, with advantage. Indulged in moderately, it does no injury to the constitution, but I should rather say its effects are curative and beneficial; you will rarely find a heavy tobacco smoker a drunkard or even a spirit drinker. Yet this plant, which gives comfort and delight to millions of people, is a deadly poison if taken internally in even a minute quantity in its natural or manufactured state. So it is with opium; the habitual eating of it may be injurious, but the smoking is not only innocuous, but positively beneficial to the system. It is a complete preservative against dram drinking and drunkenness, for whilst it produces similar but far more agreeable effects on the nervous system than wine, it does not, like alcohol, poison the blood, destroy the health, and lead to ruin, disgrace, and death. Of course, opium-smoking, like every other luxury--tea, wine, spirits, beer, tobacco--may be abused, but the few who indulge excessively are infinitesimally small as compared with the many who abuse the use of alcoholic liquors. As to opium eating, an overdose produces death, but the opium smoker can indulge in his luxury from, morning till night without any apparent injury. It is plain, therefore, that opium smoking and opium eating cannot be classed in the same category at all, but stand apart quite separately and distinctly. I may here again appropriately refer to Sir Wilfrid Lawson's speech at the Anti-Opium meeting at Newcastle. In the course of his remarks, the speaker referred with some humour to an Anti-Tobacco-smoking Society, a once active organization. At a meeting of this body held at Carlisle, it appears that the chief orator,--an energetic person, with wonderful powers of imagination and a fluent tongue, quite another Mr. Storrs Turner--having exhausted his power of vituperation in denouncing the Virginian weed and its terrible effects upon its votaries, alleged in particular that tobacco smoking tended to shorten human life, but here he was interrupted by one of the audience, a jovial middle-aged north countryman, who said, "I don't know that Mr. Lecturer, for my father smoked till he was eighty!" "Ah!" exclaimed the other, quite equal, as he thought, to the occasion, "your father's case was an exceptional one; he was an unusually strong, healthy man. Anyone who sees you, his hale, hearty son, must know that. Had he not been a tobacco smoker he would have lived much longer." "I don't know that either," returned the countryman, "for he is alive and well and still smokes tobacco." Now had Sir Wilfrid delivered that speech at a meeting formed to protest against the theories of the Anti-Tobacco Society, he would assuredly have scored; but, as matters stood, I must claim his speech as one made in favour of my views upon the opium question; for, to use a famous formula, I would say to the honourable baronet, "Would you be surprised to hear that I can produce to you, not only an aged father and son who are opium smokers, but a father, son, and grandson all living who follow that practice, and have done so all their lives without injury to health?" But enjoyable as tobacco smoking may be, I contend that, to the Asiatic at least, opium smoking is not only a more agreeable but also a far more beneficial practice. Tobacco has no curative properties, but is simply a poison; opium is the most valuable medicine known; where all other sedatives fail its powers are prominent. As an anodyne no other medicine can equal it. There is one property peculiar to opium, that is that it is non-volatilizable, or nearly so. If a piece of opium is put on a red-hot plate, it will not volatilize; that is, it will not disappear in the form of vapour, which by chemical means can be preserved in order to resume or retain its original character. But it will be destroyed by combustion; the heat will consume it in the same manner as it would destroy a piece of sugar or any other non-volatilizable body; whereas a substance that is volatilizable, like sulphur, on being subjected to the same process, instead of being destroyed, is simply given out in vapour, and by proper means may be caught again and reformed in the shape of sulphur. So when you place opium into a pipe and put the pellet to the lamp, the effect of the combustion is to destroy the active property of the opium; the smoker takes the smoke thrown off into his mouth, which he expels either through the mouth or nostrils. The only way, therefore, he can get any of the active property of the opium into his system is by smoking it like tobacco. Now tobacco, on the contrary, is volatilizable, but the poison is so volatile, and escapes so freely through the bowl of the pipe in the shape of vapour, and is so rapidly expelled from the mouth, that no harm is produced by the process of smoking the deadly poison, the natural recuperative power of the frame neutralizing the effects of the noisome vapour. The difference between opium and tobacco smoking appears to be this:--In the one case you take into your mouth the mere smoke of a valuable aromatic drug, which, when passed into the stomach in proper quantities as a medicine, has powerful curative properties, the smoke when expelled leaving no substance behind it, but in its passage exerting a pleasant and perfectly harmless stimulating effect upon the nerves. In the case of tobacco, the fumes with the volatilized substance of a foul and poisonous weed having no curative properties whatever, and having the most loathsome and offensive smell to those who have not gone through the pain and misery necessary to accustom themselves to them, is taken into the mouth. Nicotine, the alkaloid of tobacco, is simply a deadly and rapid poison, useful only to the assassin. Morphia, the alkaloid of opium, is only poisonous when taken in an excessive quantity; whether used internally or injected under the skin, it is the most wonderful anodyne and sedative known. I fully believe that, when medical men come to study opium and opium smoking more fully, it will become the established opinion of the faculty that opium smoking is not only perfectly harmless, but that it is most beneficial, so that it may ultimately not only put down spirit drinking, but perhaps supersede, to a great extent, tobacco. But few medical men in this country have as yet made opium a special study. They only know its use and properties as described in the British Pharmacopeia; many even of those who have practised in the parts of India where the drug is eaten do not, it seems, as yet fully understand all its properties. Dr. Ayres himself admits that he was astonished after his arrival in Hong Kong to find the great difference between the effects of smoking and eating the drug. I may here remind my readers that we have, or had once, an Anti-Tobacco-smoking Society, just as there is now an Anti-Opium-smoking Society. The former had so many living evidences of the absurdities alleged by its supporters against the use of tobacco, that the agitation was laughed down and has either died a natural death or has only a moribund and spasmodic existence; but had the place where the alleged enormity of tobacco smoking was practised been Africa, I think the Society would have died a much harder death, or at all events shown more vitality. The Anti-Opium Society would have shared the same fate long ago were it not that the scene of all the alleged evils is China, ten thousand miles away, and the witnesses against their absurd allegations live the same distance from us. But still, believe me, the Anti-Opium Society's days are numbered: it is doomed, and, like the Anti-Tobacco craze, will be numbered soon amongst the things that were. I flatter myself that in the delivery and publication of these lectures I have given the agitation a heavy blow and great discouragement. I had some time ago the advantage of reading a very interesting and remarkable letter in the "Times" by Sir George Birdwood, to whom I have already referred; he has had more than fourteen years' experience in India as a medical man, and has made the opium question a special study. I think his testimony is worth a great deal more than that of any layman, however learned or talented; the one has both theoretical and practical knowledge of his subject, the other at best is only a theorist. Believe me, the Roman poet knew human nature well when he said, "Trust the man who has experience of facts." The paper, which is a learned and interesting one, is too long to read, but here is an extract from it:-- My readers can judge for themselves from the authorities I have indicated; but the opinion I have come to from them and my own experience is, that opium is used in Asia in a similar way to alcohol in Europe, and that, considering the natural craving and popular inclination for, and the ecclesiastical toleration of it and its general beneficial effects, and the absence of any resulting evil, there is just as much justification for the habitual use of opium in moderation as for the moderate use of alcohol, and indeed far more. Sir Benjamin Brodie is always quoted as the most distinguished professional opponent of the dietetical use of opium; but what are his words (_Psychological Enquiries_, p. 248):--"The effect of opium when taken into the stomach is not to stimulate, but to soothe the nervous system. It may be otherwise in some instances, but these are rare exceptions to the general rule. The opium eater is in a passive state, satisfied with his own dreamy condition while under the influence of the drug. He is useless but not mischievous. It is quite otherwise with alcoholic liquors." Opium smoking, which is the Chinese form of using the drug--for which the Indian Government is specially held responsible--is, to say the least in its favour, an infinitely milder indulgence. As already mentioned, I hold it to be absolutely harmless. I do not place it simply in the same category with even tobacco smoking, for tobacco smoking may, in itself, if carried into excess, be injurious, particularly to young people under twenty-five; but I mean that opium smoking in itself is as harmless as smoking willow-bark or inhaling the smoke of a peat-fire or vapour of boiling water.... I have not seen Surgeon-General Moore's recent paper on opium in the _Indian Medical Gazette_, but I gather from a notice of it quoted from the _Calcutta Englishman_, in the _Homeward Mail_ of the 14th of November last, that it supplies a most exhaustive and able vindication of the perfect morality of the revenue derived by the Indian Government from the manufacture and sale of opium to the Chinese. He quotes from Dr. Ayres, of Hong Kong: "No China resident believes in the terrible frequency of the dull, sodden-witted, debilitated opium smoker met with in print;" and from Consul Lay:--"In China the spendthrift, the man of lewd habits, the drunkard, and a large assortment of bad characters, slide into the opium smoker; hence the drug seems chargeable with all the vices of the country." Mr. Gregory, Her Majesty's Consul at Swatow, says Dr. Moore never saw a single case of opium intoxication, though living for months and travelling for hundreds of miles among opium smokers. Dr. Moore directly confirms my own statement of the Chinese having been great drunkards of alcohol before they took to smoking opium. I find also a remarkable collection of folk-lore (_Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio_, by Herbert A. Giles), evidence in almost every chapter of the universal drinking habits of the Chinese before the introduction of opium among them, notwithstanding that the use of alcohol is opposed to the cardinal precepts of Buddhism. What Dr. Moore says of the freedom of opium smokers from bronchial thoracic diseases is deserving of the deepest consideration. I find that, on the other hand, the Chinese converts to Christianity suffer greatly from consumption. The missionaries will not allow them to smoke, and, as they also forbid their marrying while young, after the wise custom, founded on an experience of thousands of years of their country, they fall into those depraved, filthy habits, of which consumption is everywhere the inexorable witness and scourge. When spitting of blood comes on, the opium pipe is its sole alleviation. Now Dr. Birdwood is not only well informed upon the opium question, but is certainly one of the ablest opponents of the Anti-Opium agitation who has yet appeared. His letters in the "Times" created quite a sensation, and so alarmed Mr. Storrs Turner that he left no means untried to neutralize their effects. At this point a bright idea occurred to him. Finding that there was a general consensus of opinion against him amongst English medical men and other competent authorities that the outcry against opium was groundless, he hit upon the brilliant expedient of discrediting them all, by the assertion that Englishmen are so prejudiced that they are not to be believed. This is what he says on the subject in his famous article in the _Nineteenth Century_ having in a previous passage imagined a case in which China was the plaintiff and Great Britain the defendant:-- The baneful effects of the opium vice are established by universal experience. One may apply to it the theological maxim _Quod semper quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_. Two considerations will show that the opposition of a few dissentient voices does not detract from the general conclusion. Most of these are quite clear on the point that opium is bad for everybody but Chinese. They would be horrified at the suggestion that opium should be freely used in England and approve the efforts or supposed efforts of the Indian Government to keep it out of the way of the natives of India. On another point these dissentients are all alike; _every one of them is prejudiced in favour of the defendant in the case before us. They are all Englishmen._ No French or German medical man, no single Chinese authority has been quoted to testify to the innocence of opium. Some of these apologists are opium merchants, who aver that the drug by which they make their wealth is a boon and a blessing to China; or it is a gentleman employed in the India Office who considers opium smoking as safe as "twiddling one's thumbs." Could the force of folly or fanaticism go further than that? All Englishmen are prejudiced. I wonder, did it ever occur to Mr. Storrs Turner that _he_, being an Englishman, might be a little prejudiced also--on the other side of the question. Yes; Dr. Ayres, Dr. Eatwell, Surgeon-General Moore, Dr. Birdwood, and a host of other eminent medical men standing in the front rank of their profession, Sir Rutherford Alcock, Mr. Colborne Baber, Mr. W. Donald Spence, and others are not to be believed--because they are Englishmen! Were they Germans or Frenchmen, they would, of course, be entitled to the fullest credence. Like the priest and prophet of Crete, Mr. Storrs Turner holds that all his countrymen are liars.[8] But, stay, do I not remember that gentleman's holding a select conference of English medical men, about October 1882, when certain resolutions were drawn up condemnatory of opium? Surely, yes. The invitations were issued by the Earl of Shaftesbury. I should like to ask Mr. Storrs Turner were the medical and other gentlemen then present Englishmen or foreigners? If I do not greatly err they were _all_ Englishmen. Does Mr. Storrs Turner consider those gentlemen worthy of credit? I rather think he does: so that Mr. Turner's creed runs thus: "Englishmen are to be believed so long as they agree with me on the opium question. When they differ from me on that subject they are not to be believed at all." Mr. Turner is fond of treating his readers to theological maxims. I will now give him a legal one which, I think, is applicable to his case. It runs thus, translated into plain English: "_He is not to be heard who alleges things contrary to each other_." Of course, the reader has seen that Mr. Turner's sneer at "the gentleman employed in the India Office," is at Sir George Birdwood, whose pungent articles in the _Times_ have inflicted such damage on his cause, and whose efforts in the interests of common sense and truth he would wish to suppress. As Mr. Turner's tastes are exotic, I will furnish him now with some _foreign_ testimony that may perhaps astonish him. For many years previous to 1858, Don Sinibaldo de Mas had been the Envoy-Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Court of Spain at Pekin. That nobleman had travelled much in China, India, Java, Borneo, and Malacca, having learned the Chinese language the better to enable him to utilize his travels in those places. In 1858 he published a book[9] in the French language on China and the Chinese, making special reference to the opium question, to which he has devoted one very interesting chapter exclusively. The book was brought out in Paris, and has never, that I am aware of, been translated into English. Now about the last person from whom one would expect to obtain testimony of the kind is a Spaniard. Yet so it is. This book of Don Sinibaldo de Mas is, indeed, one of the most powerful vindications of British policy in India and China that has yet been written. I hardly think even Mr. Storrs Turner can accuse this gentleman of partiality, or object to his testimony as being influenced by personal motives. This is part of what he says on the subject:-- I may say, in the first instance, that personally neither as a private individual nor as a public functionary have I ever been in the slightest degree interested in this (opium) trade, for be it noted that Spanish vessels have never imported into China a single chest of opium. I consequently approach this subject with complete impartiality. I have known the Chinese at Calcutta, Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Manila, and in many parts of their own country, where I acquired a sufficient knowlege of the Chinese language to enable me to converse with the natives and make myself fully acquainted with the opium question, which I believe I understand, and may be considered thoroughly unbiassed in my opinions. Opium has been preached against and denounced as a veritable poison, and it has been looked upon as a crime in those who have made the drug an object of commerce or gain. A memorial embodying those views, signed by many missionaries and supported by the Earl of Chichester, was presented to Queen Victoria. A meeting was also held in London, composed of philanthropic gentlemen, presided over by the Earl of Shaftesbury, when a petition to the Queen embodying the same object was drawn up; this document I shall refer to more particularly later on. Lastly, some members of the House of Lords and Commons spoke against the sale of opium. On the other hand, Christian merchants established in China, many men of eminence, such as Sir J. F. Davis and others of the highest respectability, have maintained that the smoking of this drug has less deletorious effects than the use of fermented liquors. I will endeavour to explain this question in all good faith and impartiality. In the maritime towns of India, Malacca, Java, the Philippines, Borneo, and Sooloo the Chinese are at liberty to smoke opium where and when they please, and can buy it cheaper than they can in Canton or Shanghai, not to mention the inland towns: yet it is a well-known fact that in all these countries, notwithstanding their unwholesome climates, the opium-smoking Chinese are remarkably healthy and strong. These very opium smokers are employed as farm labourers, masons, and porters, enduring great fatigue and performing the most arduous labours; they have acquired such an excellent reputation as colonists that efforts have been made during the last few years to induce them to settle in Lima and Cuba. The percentage of deaths amongst these people does not exceed the usual rate, and I must confess that having known numbers of Chinese emigrants in the various countries I have mentioned, I have never heard of a single death or of any serious illness having been caused by opium smoking. It was only on my first arrival in China that I was made aware of the dire effects this narcotic is said to produce, and that the vapour inhaled by opium smokers was designated a poison; _I must add that in none of the different parts of China which I have visited has it come to my knowledge that death has resulted from opium smoking_. Having asked several natives whom I thought worthy of credence whether they had ever heard of a death having occurred from the habit, they answered me that it might have happened to a very inordinate smoker, but only in the event of his being suddenly deprived of the indulgence. One Chinaman related how he had witnessed such a case. He had known an inveterate opium smoker who had become extremely poor, and was found insensible and almost lifeless; some good-natured person passing by puffed some fumes of opium into his mouth, which immediately seemed to revive him, and enabled him shortly to smoke a pipe himself, which most effectually recalled him to life. I admit that opium is in itself a poison, but let me ask what changes does not fire produce in the various substances which it consumes? I should like to know what does Mr. Storrs Turner think of that. Here is a highly-educated Spanish gentleman, speaking Chinese well, living amongst the natives, studying their habits, especially as regards their use of the opium pipe, declaring that the practice is innocuous. Now, supposing that instead of smoking opium these Chinese in Malacca, Java, Borneo, and the Philippines were addicted to the habitual use of spirits, wine, or even beer, instead of opium, can any intelligent being suppose for a moment that they would be the patient, strong, healthy, hard-working people that Don Sinibaldo De Mas found them, and which they still are? Let us refer to Mr. W. Donald Spence's testimony as to the _effects_ of opium. I quote again from his Report of the trade of Ichang for 1881:-- As to the effect of this habit on the people, amongst whom it is so widespread, there is but one opinion. Baron Richthofen, the most experienced traveller who ever visited Szechuan, after noticing the extraordinary prevalence of the habit, says:--"In no other province except Hunan did I find the effects of the use of opium so little perceptible as in Szechuan." Mr. Colborne Baber, who knows more of the province and its people than any living Englishman, says: _Nowhere in China are the people so well off, or so hardy, and nowhere do they smoke so much opium_. To these names of weight I add my own short experience. I found the people of Szechuan stout, able-bodied men, better housed, clad, and fed, and healthier looking than the Chinese of the Lower Yang-tsze. I did not see amongst them more emaciated faces and wasted forms than disease causes in all lands. People with slow wasting diseases such as consumption are, if they smoke opium, apt to be classed amongst the "ruined victims" of hasty observers, and amongst the cases of combined debility and opium smoking I saw, some were, by their own account, _pseudo_-victims of this type. There were some, too, whose health was completely sapped by smoking combined with other forms of sensual excess. And no doubt there were others weakened by excessive smoking simply, for excess in all things has its penalty. But the general health and well-being of the Szechuan community is remarkable; to their capacity for work and endurance of hardship, as well as to the material comforts of life they surround themselves with, all travellers bear enthusiastic testimony. Now, allow me to ask the reader, can he suppose for a moment that if the people of Szechuan were prone to spirits, or even to beer drinking, in the same way as they are given to opium smoking, should we have the same results? Would those people be "so well off and so hardy," so stout, able-bodied, and so much "better housed, clad, and fed, and healthier looking than the Chinese of the Lower Yang-tsze?" I think not. What, then, is the fair conclusion to draw from such a state of things? Why, only that opium smoking is a harmless if not a beneficial practice, unless when indulged in to an inordinate extent, which, it is now plain, is entirely exceptional. I think I am not far from the truth in saying that for one excessive opium smoker to be met with in China you will find in this country a hundred cases, at the least, of excessive indulgence in alcohol--the effects of this being incurable, whilst it is quite otherwise as regards excessive indulgence in opium. The inference, then, I think, is that so far as regards any evil effects from opium smoking, they are out of the range of practical politics and should be relegated to the region of sentiment alone. I will now give you a passage from a valuable work by the learned Dr. J. L. W. Thudichum, Lecturer to St. George's Hospital,[10] which will throw a good deal of light upon this part of my subject. At pp. 88 and 89 of the second volume he says:-- The medical uses of opium have been so well known through all historical times that it is a matter for surprise to find that they are not better appreciated in the present day. In this, as in many other matters, we are in fact only gradually emerging from the condition of those dark times during which, amongst many good things, the knowledge of opium, for example, was lost.... These and other considerations led me to look about for a more convenient mode of producing the effects of morphia without its inconveniences or even dangers. I know from the experiments of Descharmes and Benard (_Compt. Rend._, 40, 34) that in opium-smoking a portion of the morphia is volatilized and undecomposed, and I therefore experimentalized with the pyrolytic vapours of opium, first upon myself, then upon others; and when I had made myself fully acquainted with the Chinese method of using the drug, I came to the conviction that here one of the most interesting therapeutical problems had been solved in the most ingenious and at the same time in the most safe manner. I held in my hand a power well-known and used largely by Eastern races, yet its use neglected, ignored, denounced, and despised by the entire Western world. In other and non-professional words, Dr. Thudichum has found opium smoking not only harmless but a valuable curative practice. As to Chinese evidence on this question I could, had I thought proper, have adduced the testimony of some really trustworthy Chinese merchants and traders, which would have fully borne out all that I have stated as to the innocuous effects of opium smoking. I have refrained from doing so, because such evidence, however strong and reliable, would, I feel assured, be impugned as untrustworthy by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society and missionaries, who on their part would, no doubt, in the best faith and with good intentions, I admit, bring out counter testimony of so-called Christian converts and other natives of a wholly unreliable character. One of these persons, called Kwong Ki Chiu, styling himself "late a member of the Chinese Educational Commission in the United States," has written, or purported to have written, from Hartford, in Connecticut, a letter on this question to the _London and China Telegraph_. The statements in this document are exaggerated, misleading, and, in many respects, actually untrue. I doubt very much if the letter was ever, in fact, written by a Chinaman at all, and suspect it was produced either here in London by some agent or advocate of the Anti-Opium Society and forwarded to Mr. Kwong Ki Chiu for signature, or that it was written by some American missionary. At any rate, it is plain that the writer has no real knowledge of the subject of his letter. To prove this is so it is only necessary to refer to one passage, in which the writer proceeds to show that opium is to a beginner more alluring than tobacco or spirits. He says:-- There is this also to be said as to the difference between the two stimulants: opium is much the more stimulating, and therefore more dangerous. It is also much more agreeable and fascinating. Not every person likes the taste of liquor; the flavour of tobacco is agreeable to very few persons at first: _but everyone, of whatever nationality, finds the fragrance of the smoking opium agreeable and tempting, so that I have no doubt that if opium shops were opened in London as in China, the habit would soon become prevalent even among Englishmen_. Now this is not true. Every foreigner who has lived in China knows it to be quite the opposite. During my long residence in Hong Kong I have never known a single instance of an Englishman, or any other foreigner, being an opium smoker, although I have met with many who had smoked a few pipes by way of experiment. All have assured me that the vapour was nauseous, and produced no pleasurable sensations whatever. The fact that Europeans dislike the fumes of opium, and never indulge in the opium pipe, shows that Mr. Kwong Ki Chiu, who has doubtless been since his childhood under missionary tutelage, and therefore interdicted from the use of the drug, knows nothing reliable upon the subject he writes about so glibly. At a proper time and place, I should be prepared to treat Mr. Storrs Turner to such native testimony upon this subject as would make him open his eyes very wide and put him and his disciples to confusion and flight. Let me now give you an extract from a despatch of Sir Henry Pottinger, formerly Her Majesty's Governor-General and Minister Plenipotentiary in China, written by him some fifty years ago to the Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. It is very important, showing, as it does, the pains that have been taken by Her Majesty's Government at home and her representatives in China so long ago to ascertain if there were any truth in the theory that opium smoking was injurious to the health and morals of the Chinese:-- I cannot admit in any manner the idea adopted by many persons that the introduction of opium into China is a source of unmitigated evil of every kind and a cause of misery. Personally, I have been unable to discover a single case of this kind, although, I admit that, when abused opium may become most hurtful. Besides, the same remark applies to every kind of enjoyment when carried to excess; but from personal observations, since my arrival in China, from information taken upon all points, and lastly, from what the Mandarins themselves say, I am convinced that the demoralization and ruin which some persons attribute to the use of opium, arise more likely from imperfect knowledge of the subject and exaggeration, and that not one-hundredth part of the evil arises in China from opium smoking, which one sees daily arising in England as well as in India from the use of ardent spirits so largely taken in excess in those countries. I may now appropriately give you the promised extract from De Quincey's _Confessions_. I recommend it to the notice of Sir Wilfrid Lawson. The distinction which he draws between alcoholic intoxication and the excitement produced by opium eating is instructive and entertaining. He says:-- Two of these tendencies I will mention as diagnostic, or characteristic and inseparable marks of ordinary alcoholic intoxication, but which no excess in the use of opium ever develops. One is the loss of self-command, in relation to all one's acts and purposes, which steals gradually (though with varying degrees of speed) over _all_ persons indiscriminately when indulging in wine or distilled liquors beyond a certain limit. The tongue and other organs become unmanageable: the intoxicated man speaks inarticulately; and, with regard to certain words, makes efforts ludicrously earnest yet oftentimes unavailing, to utter them. The eyes are bewildered, and see double; grasping too little, and too much. The hand aims awry. The legs stumble and lose their power of _concurrent_ action. To this result _all_ people tend, though by varying rates of acceleration. Secondly, as another characteristic, it may be noticed that, in alcoholic intoxication, the movement is always along a kind of arch; the drinker rises through continual ascents to a summit or _apex_, from which he descends through corresponding steps of declension. There is a crowning point in the movement upwards, which once attained cannot be renewed; and it is the blind, unconscious, but always unsuccessful effort of the obstinate drinker to restore this supreme altitude of enjoyment which tempts him into excesses that become dangerous. After reaching this _acme_ of genial pleasure, it is a mere necessity of the case to sink through corresponding stages of collapse. Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that they had been drunk upon green tea; and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other day, that a patient, in recovering from an illness, had got drunk on a beef-steak. All turns, in fact, upon a rigorous definition of intoxication. Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium, I shall notice briefly a second and a third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal as well as mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying; assuring my reader, that for ten years, during which I took opium, not regularly, but intermittingly, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits. With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany, the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the end; but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system. This first stage of its action always lasted with me, during my novitiate, for upwards of eight hours; so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself, if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose, as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep. First, then, it is not so much affirmed, as taken for granted, by all who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo periculo_, that no quantity of opium ever did, or could, intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum), _that_ might certainly intoxicate, if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? Because it contains so much proof spirits of wine, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol; and not in _degree_ only incapable, but even in _kind_; it is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always rapidly mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which as rapidly it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: the first, to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute, the second of chronic, pleasure; the one is a flickering flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this--that, whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium sustains and reinforces it. Wine unsettles the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive; and, with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections; but, then, with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation, there is always more or less of a maudlin and a transitory character, which exposes it to the contempt of the bystander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears--no mortal knows why; and the animal nature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings incident to opium is no febrile access, no fugitive paroxysm; it is a healthy restoration to that state which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any deep-seated irritation from pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart originally just and good. True it is, that even wine, up to a certain point, and with certain men, rather tends to exalt and to steady the intellect; I myself, who have never been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half-a-dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties, brightened and intensified the consciousness, and gave to the mind a feeling of being "ponderibus librata suis," and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is _disguised_ in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety, and exceedingly disguised; and it is when they are drinking that men display themselves in their true complexion of character; which surely is not disguising themselves. But still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance; and, beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatilise and to disperse the intellectual energies; whereas opium always seems to compose what had been agitated and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him simply _as_ such, and assume that he is in a normal state of health) feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount--that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity; and high over all the great light of the majestic intellect. This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium, of which church I acknowledge myself to be the Pope (consequently infallible), and self-appointed _legate à latere_ to all degrees of latitude and longitude. But then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience, whereas most of the unscientific authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written professionally on the _materia medica_, make it evident, by the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I have now dealt with fallacies 1, 2, 3, and 5. The fourth Mr. Turner gravely states in his book--and I am perfectly sure it is accepted as seriously by his fellowers, _that the supply of opium regulates the demand, and not the demand the supply_. He says at pp. 152, 153:-- Defenders of the [opium] policy vainly strive to shelter it behind the ordinary operation of the trade laws of demand and supply. The operation of these economic laws does not divest of responsibility those who set them in motion at either end; for though it would be absurd to speak of supply as alone creative of demand, _there is no question but that an abundant and constantly sustained supply increases demand whenever the article is not one of absolute necessity_. When silk came by caravans across Central Asia, and a single robe was worth its weight in gold in Europe, the shining fabric was reserved for emperors and nobles, and no demand could be said to exist for it among common people, whereas now the abundant supply creates a demand among all classes but the very poorest. The maid-servant who covets a silk dress may be literally said to have had the demand _created_ in her case, by the ample supply of the material which places it constantly before her eyes and renders it impossible for her to obtain it. Only a few years ago there was no demand for newspapers amongst multitudes who are now daily or weekly purchasers of them. In this case the supply of penny and halfpenny journals may be fairly said to have almost alone created the demand. Such illustrations might be indefinitely multiplied. After that it may be said that the Birmingham jewellers and Manchester merchants have only to send out to China any amount they please of their wares, and they will find a ready market, the more the merrier. All their goods will be taken off their hands; they will only have to take care that the prices shall not be too exorbitant, for otherwise, as in the case of the maid-servant, though the Chinese working classes may have helped to _create_ the demand, they would be unable to avail themselves of the supply. If that doctrine were sound, a mercantile firm could create as extensive a trade as it desired, and that, too, in any part of the world. Instead of sending out fifty thousand pounds worth this year, as it did last, it would have only to export ten times the amount, and still the demand would continue. The fact is, as every man well knows who is not blinded by enthusiasm and looks at the subject by the light of cool reason and common sense, that the effect of sending to China or elsewhere an excessive quantity of merchandise, even though such merchandise were in request there, would have the effect of glutting the market. It is only where the demand exists, and the desire to possess the article, or where the people want a particular class of thing, that the goods can be readily and profitably disposed of. I am sure that if we sent double the quantity of opium that we do to China, or, indeed, three times the amount, it would be readily bought up by the natives, because there is a great demand there for Indian opium, owing to its superior strength and better flavour. And it must be remembered that China is a vast empire, and that the natives cannot get as much of the Indian drug as they want. I had an opportunity recently of speaking to a German gentleman established here in London, who has been many years in the opium trade generally, who has made opium quite a study, tasting and smelling it, as wine merchants do their wine, and he declares that Indian opium has a perfume and aroma that is not found in the Chinese or Persian drug, and that, in fact, the smell of the one is comparatively agreeable, while that of the others is offensive. This, I believe, is one of the reasons for the Chinese liking Indian opium. For my own part I must say, that much as I dislike the odour of tobacco, I have a greater aversion still to the effluvium of opium in any form or shape, and I think this is also the case with all Europeans. In fact, opium smoking is a practice peculiar to China. Nothing proves this so completely as the correspondence between Sir Robert Hart and his various Sub-Commissioners of Customs, as set out in the Yellow-Book to which I have so often referred. These Commissioners say that the Indian drug is almost invariably used to mix with the Chinese article to flavour and make it, so to speak, the more palatable. The proposition which Mr. Storrs Turner lays down is simply preposterous, and cannot for a moment be sustained. I do not wish to utter an offensive word towards that gentleman personally, whose talents and energy are unquestionable, and whom I hold in great esteem. Upon any subject but opium he would be incapable of writing anything but sound sense, but having opium on the brain, he starts theories that are wholly unsustainable, which, I am sorry to say, his devoted followers accept as gospel. But to return to the theory that supply creates the demand. By way of illustration, Mr. Turner goes on to show that, previous to the removal of the duty on newspapers, there were very few in the country, but that the moment the duty was taken off, they multiplied, which he considers proof that in this case the supply created the demand. That is most fallacious. The demand for newspapers always existed, but, unfortunately, owing to the oppressive taxes upon knowledge to which the press in former times was subjected, the supply was limited. In those days even a weekly newspaper was a great undertaking. An enterprising man in a country town might start such a paper, but after a lingering existence it was almost sure to die, not for want of readers, but because it was so heavily taxed that readers could not afford to buy it, the price then being necessarily high. First there was a penny duty on each copy of the newspaper. Next there was a duty of so much the pound upon the raw material, which had to be paid before it left the mill; and then there was a further duty upon every advertisement; so that the unfortunate newspaper proprietor was met with exactions on every side. A copy, even though an old one, of the _Times_, or of any of the London morning papers, was in former days eagerly sought for. In his "Deserted Village," Goldsmith, describing the village ale-house, says:-- Where village statesmen talked with wit profound, And news much older than their ale went round. And one can imagine an eager group in that ale-house trying to get a glimpse of a London newspaper over the shoulders of the privileged holder. But when these oppressive duties were removed, a different state of things prevailed. The cost of starting and manufacturing a newspaper was reduced to about one-fifth of what it was formerly. Every considerable town had its daily and its weekly newspaper, because the demand had always existed, whilst, owing to these prohibitive taxes, there was no supply. The craving for news had always been present, and the moment these prohibitive duties were struck off, the ambitious editor, or proprietor, saw his opportunity and started a paper, not because the supply would create a demand, but because he knew the demand already existed, and he printed just as many as he thought he would find readers for, and no more. Had he printed more than was required the excess would have lain on his hands as so much waste paper. But according to Mr. Turner's theory, the more newspapers he printed the more he would have sold! It will at once be recognised that this theory of supply and demand is simply absurd. If it could be shown to hold water for a moment, China, and other countries also, would be inundated with articles that never were seen there before. There would be no reason why China should not be largely supplied with ladies' bonnets and satin shoes, which, we know, might lie there for a thousand years and never be used. I have brought before you this notable theory of Mr. Storrs Turner's, to show you the utterly worthless kind of arguments with which the British public have been supplied, in order to support the silly, unfounded, and most mischievous agitation against the Indo-China opium trade. The next fallacy is number six, namely: _that all, or nearly all, who smoke opium are either inordinate smokers or necessarily in the way of becoming so; and that once the custom has been commenced it cannot be dropped, and that the consumption daily increases_. That is not so at all. It is altogether exceptional to find an inordinate opium smoker; my reasons for saying so I have already given. I am supported in those views by every English resident in China, amongst them by Dr. Ayres, whose authority is simply unquestionable, and whose opinion on the point I have set out at page 7. I have known hundreds of men who were in the daily habit of smoking opium after business hours, and they never showed any decadence whatever. Opium smoking is never practised during business hours, except by very aged people or the criminal classes. This is an absolute fact. The Chinese are too wise and thrifty to while away their time in such luxurious practices during working hours. The opium pipe, as a rule, is indulged in more moderately than wine or cigars are with us, the Chinese being so extremely abstemious in their habits. I never saw any such instances of over-indulgence as Mr. Turner alleges, and I could get hundreds of European witnesses out in China and here in London who would depose to the same fact. Frequently have I compared the small shop-keeping and working people of China with the same classes here at home as regards sobriety, industry, and frugality, and always, I regret to say, in favour of the Chinese. It is absolutely untrue, as put forward by the Anti-Opium Society and their secretary, Mr. Turner, that opium is so fascinating that, once a man begins to use it, he cannot leave it off; natives will smoke it, on and off, for two or three days, and not smoke it again for a week or more; but the truth is, the habit is a pleasant and beneficial one, and few who can afford it desire to discontinue smoking. The fact undoubtedly is, that if opium smoking were productive of the terrible results that the missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society allege, China would not be the densely-populated country that it now actually is. China could not have held its own as it has done so long and so successfully had all the people been addicted to such a vice as dram drinking. The true way to look at this aspect of the case is to suppose for a moment that, instead of being "opium sots," as Mr. Storrs Turner puts it, the Chinese, "everywhere in China, in all climates and all soils, in every variety of condition and circumstance throughout the vast Empire," to adopt that gentleman's own language, drank spirits freely. Should we then have the Chinese the hard-working, industrious, thrifty, frugal people that we find them? I trow not. Intemperance carries with it the destruction of its votaries, but no baneful consequences attend opium smoking. Some thirty years ago, as Sir Rutherford Alcock tells us, an American missionary declared that there were twenty millions of opium smokers in China--all, no doubt, induced to that immorality by the British Government and people--and that two millions were dying annually from the effects of the vice! This monstrous tale was implicitly believed in by Lords Shaftesbury and Chichester. Yet we now have a Chinese official, Sir Robert Hart, deliberately telling the Government of China, in his official Yellow Book, that there are but two millions of smokers in the whole Empire; that Indian opium supplies but a moderate quantity of the drug to but half of that number; and that neither the health, wealth, nor prosperity of the people suffers in consequence. This is what Don Sinibaldo de Mas says upon the subject:-- The most extraordinary of the advocates of the opium trade is the Earl of Shaftesbury, President of the Committee organized in London for the suppression of the traffic. I have not the slightest doubt as to the _bona fides_ and excellent heart of the noble lord. There is something grand and generous in entering the lists for the welfare and protection of a distant and foreign nation, and manfully fighting for it against the interests of one's own country and one's native land. I sincerely admire men of such mettle and the country which can produce them, but I regret that Lord Shaftesbury did not act with greater caution, and that before entering upon this question he had not studied it more carefully; especially do I regret that he did not adopt a more moderate and dignified tone in the expression of his opinions. Had he done so, he would have saved himself from the reproach of having lent his name and sanction to a document disfigured by statistical errors, some of which are opposed to common sense, and also of having given gratuitous and undeserved insults to others who differed from his opinions. He argues in his statement to the Queen's Government that opium smoking annually kills two millions of people in China. How is it possible that the noble Earl could for a moment imagine that every year so many human beings voluntarily commit suicide! Two millions of adults who destroy themselves to enjoy a pleasure! Does it not strike His Lordship how absurd is such an antithesis as pleasure and death? Can he believe that human nature in China is different to what it is in Europe? Is it logical to give publicity to such strange assertions without adducing the slightest proofs. If we inquire into the accusations brought forward against the merchants and growers of opium, we find the same discrepancy and the same injustice. It is a mistake to imagine that the English alone trade in opium, for all foreigners alike, especially the Americans, introduce and sell it. Lord Shaftesbury, in speaking of the value of the opium imported into China, says that the merchants "rob" the Chinese. I scarcely know which is the funnier, the idea expressed by the noble Earl, or the way in which he expresses it. I can assure His Lordship that amongst the merchants who make opium their business there are men of the highest integrity, perfect and most accomplished gentlemen, who not only are incapable of "stealing" anything, but who are equal to any living men in noble sentiments, justice, and practical benevolence; I need only mention one man, and do so because he is not now living. I refer to the late Mr. Launcelot Dent, who, during a most trying and critical time when this question first arose, was considered one of the most interested men in the opium trade.... Everyone who has been in China knows the generosity and the charity for which Mr. Launcelot Dent was renowned. Having on one occasion travelled from India to Europe with him, I saw many of his good deeds, but will only mention one, so as not to wander too far from my subject. A Catholic missionary was amongst the steerage passengers; Mr. Dent having seen this, without saying a word to any person on the subject, took a berth for him in the first cabin and paid the difference, begging me to ask him to take possession. The missionary expressed much gratitude, but said that as he had not a sufficient change of linen he would not feel at home in the state room, especially as there were lady passengers. Mr. Dent understood the difficulty, and having casually heard that the clergymen intended to proceed to Jerusalem, begged of him to accept the sum which the saloon cabin would have cost,[11] which the poor missionary accepted with heartfelt thanks. I should like to know what Mr. Storrs Turner thinks of that. He objects to British testimony, except when it coincides with his own views. There is the evidence of a Spanish nobleman, a scholar, a traveller, and an accomplished diplomatist, for him! I am afraid he will find the foreign testimony quite as unpalatable as the home article. This Mr. Launcelot Dent, by the way, was a member of the eminent firm of Dent and Co.--since dissolved--which, Mr. Turner says, in his article in the _Nineteenth Century_, were "legally smugglers." The next fallacy, number seven, is _that the Chinese Government is, or ever was, anxious to put a stop to or check the use of opium amongst the people of China_. That is one of the accepted propositions or dogmas of the Anti-Opium people. There is another fallacy, number ten, which I will dispose of at the same time. It is _that the opposition of the Chinese officials to the introduction of opium into China arose from moral causes_. There never was anything more fallacious or more distinctly untrue than that the Chinese Government is, or ever was, anxious to put a stop to the trade upon moral grounds. The sole object of the Government of China in objecting to the importation of Indian opium into the country, as I have stated already, and as everybody except the infatuated votaries of the Anti-Opium Society believes, was to protect the native drug, to prevent bullion from leaving the country, and generally to exclude foreign goods. This Don Sinibaldo de Mas points out in his book written some five and twenty years ago. If the Chinese Government really wanted to put a stop to or check the use of opium, they would begin by doing so themselves. They would first stop the cultivation of the poppy in their own country. We have it on the high authority of Sir Robert Hart, that the drug was grown and used in China long before foreigners introduced any there. The Chinese are emphatically a law-abiding people, and if the Chinese Government really wished to put a stop to the opium culture, they could do so without any difficulty, just as our Government has put down tobacco culture in the United Kingdom. I suppose that in Cornwall and Devon, and in some parts of Ireland--the golden vein, for instance--tobacco could be grown most profitably. It could be cultivated also in the Isle of Wight, and in many other parts of the country. Why, then, is it not grown here? Simply because it is illegal to do so, and the Government is strong enough to enforce the law. If a farmer in Ireland or in England were to sow tobacco, the fact would be soon discovered, and it would be summarily stopped. The same thing could be done with even greater facility in China. Why, then, does not the Government of China suppress the cultivation of the poppy there? Simply because it does not desire to do so, because it derives a large revenue from opium, both native and foreign, and because the smoking of the drug is an ancient custom amongst the people, known by long experience to be harmless, if not beneficial. If it were possible to put down opium smoking in China, the people would assuredly resort to sam-shu, already so abundant and cheap, and that would indeed cause China's decadence: for then we should have the working classes there indulging in spirits, when the quarrellings, outrages, and kicking of wives to death--which Mr. Turner admits are never the result of opium smoking--would ensue. I only wish we could turn our drunkards into opium smokers. If the change would only save those wretched wives and their helpless children from ill-treatment by their husbands and fathers, we should have secured one valuable end. No Government will attempt to interfere with the fixed habits of the people, especially where those habits have existed many centuries, if not thousands of years, and where they are known to be not injurious to themselves or the safety and stability of the State, and to be, in fact, harmless. We have it from Sir Robert Hart's book, that as far as can be ascertained, the probability is that there is about the same quantity of the drug grown in China as is imported into it. That is admittedly a mere approximation, and Sir Robert Hart gives no data for it, save the returns of his Sub-Commissioners, each of which differs from the other, and which he admits are not reliable. The information upon which these Commissioners made up their returns is simply the gossip collected by them at the Treaty Ports of China: no doubt the best, and, indeed, the only, information which they could procure. But with the light thrown upon the subject by Messrs. Baber and Spence, and numerous other independent authorities, no one can doubt that there is at least three times the quantity produced in China that is imported from abroad. Both the Customs and Consular reports on trade in China for the year 1880 as well as 1881 bear testimony to the ever-increasing production of opium in the northern and western provinces of China, and missionaries and others who have recently made journeys in the interior report the poppy crops to be much larger than before the Imperial decree purporting to prohibit its cultivation. The report of the Customs' Assistant-in-charge at Ichang for 1880 shows that the average annual import of the Indian drug at that port does not exceed ten pikuls, while the native production in the Ichang Prefecture is estimated to be over one thousand pikuls per annum. Mr. W. Donald Spence, in his report on trade for 1880, gives an estimate of the total crop of opium raised in Western China in 1880, which is as follows:--Western Hupeh, two thousand pikuls; Eastern Szechuan, forty-five thousand pikuls; Yunnan, forty-thousand pikuls; and Kweichow, ten thousand pikuls; giving a total of ninety-seven thousand pikuls--as much, in fact, for these districts as the whole amount of Indian opium imported into China for that year. What his report for 1881 is I have already shown you. This, it must be borne in mind, is the production of Western China only. In Shantung, Chihli, the inland provinces, and Manchuria it is extensively grown, and in all the other provinces smaller quantities of the drug are produced. That nothing is being done to check this widespread cultivation of the poppy is notorious. Messrs. Soltan and Stevenson, who passed through Yunnan last year on their way from Bhamo to Chingkiang, described the country as resembling "a sea of poppy"; and Mr. Spence tells us that in 1880 and 1881 a greater breadth of land was sown with poppies in Western Hupeh than in the previous years. In Manchuria, which is a large territory forming part of the empire to the north-east of China, and in the northern provinces of China proper, there was also a general increase in the area under poppy cultivation. No efforts, in fact, are being made to stop it. On this subject Mr. Spence, in his report for 1880, remarks:-- In Western Hupeh there has been no interference with opium farmers or opium cultivation by the officials, nor, as far as I have been able to ascertain, by any of the authorities of the provinces named in this report. In Yunnan it receives direct official encouragement, and in all the cultivation is free. Its production is regarded as a fertile source of revenue to the exchequer, of pelf to officials and smugglers, of profit to farmers and merchants, and of pleasure to all. Nearly everybody smokes, and nearly everybody smuggles it about the country when he can; and in this matter there is no difference between rich and poor, lettered and unlettered, governing and governed. After this testimony, which is corroborated in the strongest manner by many other and equally disinterested persons, who can pretend to say that the Chinese Government has any real desire to put down the poppy cultivation? Let us now see what Don Sinibaldo de Mas has to say upon this point. Having gone into the history of the Indo-Chinese opium trade, and shown that the sole object of the Chinese Government in objecting to that trade was to prevent bullion from leaving the country, he says:-- It is totally wrong to suppose that the Mandarins are anxious to prevent the introduction of opium into the country. Many of these Mandarins smoke it; most of them, if not all, accept presents and close their eyes at opium smuggling. With the exception of the famous Lin-tsi-su and a few others who reside at Court, all the others, and I think even Ki-Ying himself, have profited by this illegal traffic. Sir I. F. Davis when in China as Minister Plenipotentiary frequently called Ki-Ying's attention to the smuggling that was being carried on under the connivance and encouragement of rural officials. I referred in my last lecture to a valuable paper read by Sir Rutherford Alcock at a recent meeting of the Society of Arts. Everybody knows this gentleman's abilities and his high character, which afford the most perfect assurance that he would be incapable of asserting anything that he did not know from his own experience, or from unquestionable sources, to be true. He speaks also with authority. He may be taken to be, therefore, a perfectly unbiassed witness. He has no personal interest in the question, and there is no reason why he should state anything but what is perfectly accurate. He says, in the paper I have mentioned:-- Whatever may have been the motive or true cause, about which there hangs considerable doubt, it is certain that neither in the first edicts of 1793-6, nor as late as 1832-4, when several Imperial edicts were issued against the introduction of opium from abroad, no reference whatever is made to the _moral ground_ of prohibition, so ostentatiously paraded in later issues, and notably in Li Hung Chang's letter to the Anglo-Opium Society last July. The reasons exclusively put forward in the first of these edicts (in 1793) were that "It wasted the time and property of the people of the Inner Land, leading them to exchange their silver and commodities for the vile dirt of the foreigner." And as late as 1836, when memorials were presented to the Emperor, showing the connection of the opium trade with the exportation of sycee, they generally regarded the question in a political and financial character, rather than a moral light; and certainly, in several edicts issued between 1836 and 1839, when Lin made his grand _coup_, there is little, if any, reference to the evils of opium smoking, but very clear language as to the exportation of bullion. When we reflect that this "vile dirt," as I will presently show, was being extensively cultivated in the provinces of China, and largely consumed by his own subjects, we may be permitted to question whether the balance of trade turned by the large importation of opium, and the leakage of the sycee silver, so emphatically and angrily pointed to in after years, was not the leading motive for the prohibition of the foreign drug. We have it on authority, that "From the commencement of the commercial intercourse down to 1828-29 the balance of trade had always been in favour of the Chinese, and great quantities of bullion accumulated in China. Since that date the balance of trade had been in the opposite direction, and bullion began to flow out of China. As silver became more scarce, it naturally rose in value, and the copper currency of the realm (and the only one), already depreciated by means of over-issues and mixture of foreign coin of an inferior standard, appeared to suffer depreciation when compared with its nominal equivalent in sycee; and the effects of this change fell heavily upon a large and important class of Government officers, and ultimately upon the revenue itself. Memorials were presented to the Emperor on the subject, and the export of sycee was prohibited." How, after that, it can be said for a moment that the Chinese Government was actuated by moral considerations, or was really anxious to put down opium smoking or opium culture, I cannot conceive. The truth is, and it is so palpable that it really seems to me to require no advocacy whatever, that the Government, as Sir Rutherford Alcock and Don Sinibaldo so strongly put it, does not like to see so much bullion leaving the country. Now, Sir Rutherford Alcock, unlike the missionaries and the agents of the Anti-Opium Society, has acquired his knowledge of opium and the opium trade in the regular course of his ordinary duties, and has necessarily, therefore, acquired an authentic knowledge of the subject. His testimony, like that of Messrs. Spence, Baber, and a host of other unimpeachable witnesses, comes under the head of the "best evidence." But it is said of Sir Rutherford by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society, with the view of discrediting his testimony, that he has changed his opinions; that formerly he was opposed to the trade which he now defends. I do not believe there is any solid truth in this assertion; but if there is, what does the fact prove? Why, simply nothing at all. Show me the public man who during the past forty or fifty years has not altered or modified his opinions more or less. Sir Robert Peel, one of the greatest of modern statesmen, when he was past sixty years of age, changed the opinions he had held all his life upon free trade. Was he right or wrong in doing so? If Sir Rutherford Alcock had at an earlier period of his life held different opinions to those he now holds on the Indo-Chinese opium trade, it is not unreasonable that on a closer study of the subject, and by the strong light that has been thrown upon it within the past ten or fifteen years, he should have modified or even altogether changed his opinions. This is, again, another instance of the desperate efforts of the Anti-Opium advocates to hold their ground and maintain their unfounded and untenable theories. The Government of China have always been protectionists in the strictest sense of the term. Their idea has been that China can support itself; that the people can provide themselves with everything they want, and need nothing from abroad. They will sell the foreigner as much of their produce as he wishes to buy, and cheerfully take his gold in exchange, but they will not buy from him if they can help doing so. This is the real end they are aiming at; but they would not be at all so persistent, or put their case so much forward as they do, were it not for the attitude taken up by the missionaries and that most mischievous, intermeddling, un-English confederacy the Anti-Opium Society, as revealed to them by _The Friend of China_. The Government of China have in their employment Chinese clerks and interpreters who are excellent English scholars. These men explain everything about the objects of the Anti-Opium Society, and, whilst the Mandarins laugh at the absurdities put forward by that association, they are still quite ready to accept the Society as their ally. Hence Li Hung Chang's letter to Mr. Storrs Turner, mentioned in Sir Rutherford Alcock's paper; one would almost fancy that this letter had been written for Li by Mr. Storrs Turner himself. No one knew better than Li Hung Chang that this letter was one tissue of hypocrisy and mendacity. But, stay, there is one part of it that is certainly true. Li says to Mr. Turner: "_Your Society has long been known to me and many of my countrymen_." There can be no doubt of the fact. Whilst despising Mr. Storrs Turner and his Society, and cordially hating him and his fellow missionaries, Li Hung Chang and his friends play into their hands and humour them in this matter to the top of their bent. Their real object is to get rid of the Indian opium if they can; or, if they cannot, to have a higher duty fixed upon it, so as to reduce its supply; or, at all events, to augment their own revenues by the higher duty. As matters stand at present, the Chinese Government obtains a net revenue of over two million pounds sterling from the Indian drug, and they derive, perhaps, half that amount from the duty on the home-grown article. They have revenue cruisers constantly watching to put down opium smuggling, and they adopt other rigid steps to prevent the practice; but it is still carried on to a considerable extent, not by Englishmen or other foreigners, mark you, but by their own countrymen. Very great misconception, I may here say, prevails upon this point artfully spread abroad by agents here of the Anti-Opium Society, but I shall sweep this away before I close. The Chinese Government is quite willing to perpetuate the Indo-China opium trade if it can only get the duty raised to suit its purpose. Therein lies their whole object. Mr. Turner speaks about the paternal character of the Chinese Government. In the _Peking Gazette_--which is in some respects analogous to the _London Gazette_--Imperial decrees are from time to time published. Amongst others, there will appear proclamations addressed to the people, warning them to abstain from this and that evil practice. But they have not the least effect, nor is it expected that they will have effect. They are mere shams, and are not heeded; yet they please the people. These proclamations or injunctions are never seriously intended, and Mr. Turner knows this perfectly well. Dr. Wells Williams mentions in his book that two thousand years before Christ the manufacture of spirits was forbidden in China; yet the trade still flourishes there. Spirits are still drunk in moderation throughout China, just as opium is smoked. Sir R. Hart says that "Native opium was known, produced, and used long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast." Mr. Watters, one of Her Majesty's Consuls in China, states that the poppy is largely cultivated throughout Western China; Mr. Colborne Baber, who has travelled through nearly the whole of China, not only confirms Mr. Watters' statement, but says that from his own experience one-third of the province of Yunnan is under opium culture. Mr. W. Donald Spence and a host of others thoroughly well informed upon the question also give the strongest corroborative testimony. Now, in the face of the statements of such witnesses as these, can you credit for a moment Mr. Storrs Turner when he says--believing only what he wishes to be true, but having no data whatever for his statements--that it is only recently that opium has been cultivated in China? Of all the existing nations of Asia, the only one that can now be described as civilized is China; and this is the country where Mr. Turner, because it suits his purpose, tells us that this invaluable drug has been only _recently_ known. China may be said to be the garden of Asia. Opium has been grown throughout the fertile plains of that immense continent for thousands of years, and is it likely that the oldest and most civilized of all Asiatic nations would be the last to introduce into their country the culture of that drug to whose curative properties Mr. Storrs Turner bears such strong testimony in the opening chapter of his book? The only reason that gentleman could have had for making such a statement is simply, as I have already intimated, to induce his readers to believe that the Chinese would not have cultivated the drug, nor have used it for smoking, were it not for the importation of Indian opium into China. Upon this part of my subject, I may mention that a book has been written by a very learned man, Dr. W. A. P. Martin, President of the Tungwen College at Peking, who shows that China was the cradle of Alchemy, which was known there five hundred years before it was ever heard of in Europe. Are these a people likely to be ignorant of this indispensable medicine, as Mr. Turner characterizes it, or to neglect its cultivation throughout their fertile country? I may add that all, or nearly all, the medicines of the British Pharmacopoeia, and a great many more also, have been known to the Chinese for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The eighth fallacy is, _that the British merchants in China are making large fortunes by opium_. I have already, I think, pretty well disposed of this, and I need not say much more upon the subject now. One of the great points of the Anti-Opium Society and its supporters seems to be that the British merchants are birds of prey, a set of rapacious and ravenous creatures, without the feelings of humanity in their breasts, who have gone out to China to make princely fortunes, after the manner of that apochryphal youth who, on his departure from the paternal roof, is said to have received this admonition from his canny sire, "Mak money, ma boy--honestly if you can--but mak money"; that thus animated the British merchant arrives in China like a hawk amid a flock of pigeons, and helps himself to one of those princely acquisitions, which, to Mr. Storrs Turner, seem to be as plentiful as blackberries in the flowery land, and who, after having helped to demoralise and ruin the nation, gracefully returns home to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. The best answer to this is the amicable relations that now exist and have always existed between the natives and these merchants. The British merchants, as a body, have no interest in the opium trade; nor are any of them engaged in smuggling or in any practices detrimental to the natives of China. In point of education, thorough mercantile knowledge, strict integrity, and sound practical Christianity, these gentlemen are second to no other body of men in the British Empire. Another fallacy, or false assumption, number nine, which the advocates of the Anti-Opium Society are fond of propagating, and which is as fully believed in by themselves as by their deluded followers, is--_that the discontinuance of the supply of opium from India would stop or check the practice of opium smoking_. They fully believe that if they could only succeed in suppressing the Indo-China opium trade they would deal such a death-blow to this ancient custom, which prevails more or less over the eighteen provinces of the Chinese empire, that we should in a very short time hear of there being no opium smoking at all in China! That is as great a delusion as was ever indulged in. Imagine a person saying that if we ceased to ship beer, stout, and whiskey to Denmark, France, or Italy, we should check the consumption of brandy or other alcoholic liquors throughout Europe, and you have a pretty fair parallel to this assumption. Suppose it were possible to stop the supply of opium from British India, and that such stoppage had in fact taken place, the result would be that the Chinese would increase the cultivation of the poppy in their own country still more than they have already done, and the Indian drug known as "Malwa opium" would still continue to be imported into China, for the British Government, even if desirous to do so, could not prohibit its manufacture and exportation. The Portuguese, who were the first to import Indian opium into China, would cultivate the drug, not only in their Indian possession of Goa, but in Africa, where they have colonies. Further, they would encourage its increased cultivation in the native states of India, which produce the Malwa opium, and which, as I have just said, we could not prevent. A great stimulus would also be given to the cultivation of Persian opium. Hear, how I am borne out by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, an authentic and thoroughly impartial witness. This is what he says, in his very valuable book:-- It is another fallacy to say that if the East India Company were to prohibit the cultivation of opium in her territories that the article would disappear from China altogether. The poppy grows freely between the equator and latitudes 30° to 40°; it is produced in large quantities in Java, the Phillipines, Borneo, Egypt, and other places, as well as in China itself, where for many years past some thousands of chests are annually produced. It may be that the opium grown at Java has perhaps a different taste from that grown at Malwa and Benares, and may seem to be of inferior quality, but the consumers would soon become accustomed to that, and would probably prefer the former to the latter. Persons who are in the habit of smoking Havanna dislike Manilla cigars, and those who generally smoke Manillas prefer them to Havannas. At present opium is not exported from other countries because Indian Opium is so cheap. What, then, may I ask, is the reproach constantly hurled at the East India Company? That it derives an annual income by the culture of opium of at least three millions of pounds sterling. Should the Company prohibit the culture of the drug in order to allow other nations to derive the emoluments arising from it? I who have travelled in both upper and lower India, and know something of the country, am persuaded that the people there are already over-taxed, and to demand from them a substituted tax for those three millions would be a very serious matter indeed. And for whom pray would this sacrifice be made? To reduce the quantity of opium smoked in China? Most assuredly not; for the Chinese would still smoke just as much. This sacrifice on the part of England would only benefit those countries which would take up the cultivation of opium in order to supply the Chinese markets from which the Indian drug had been withdrawn. And what fault can be found with the merchants? Is it not the Chinese who ask for opium, and who buy it of their own free will, although not a single foreigner, either by example or precept, encourages them to do so. Is it not the Chinese who go out of their ports to the "Receiving Ships" to fetch it? Is the Chinese nation composed of children, or of savages who do not know right from wrong? Ought, for instance, the Queen of England to undertake to redress Chinese habits, or let us say vices, and to reform her Custom-house administration by watching the Chinese Coast? By what right could the English Government or any other Government do such things? If that is not what is wished, what is? Against whom and against what is all this outcry? It is said that the receiving ships are anchored at the mouth of rivers, that British war-ships anchor alongside of them, and that the consuls know this. That is quite true. The consuls admit all this--in fact, they often send their despatches by these very opium ships to Hong Kong. How many times has it happened that the consuls have had discussions with the Chinese governors respecting these receiving ships? They say, "We do not protect these ships; why do you not drive them away?" All this, I repeat, is notorious, and it is to be regretted that it is so; because, under proper legal authorisation, opium might be introduced into the Chinese Empire with such great advantage to the Imperial treasury.... It cannot be expected that the English Government through its naval commanders should prevent its subjects from carrying on a remunerative commerce, whilst Americans, Dutchmen, Danes, Swedes, and Portuguese would continue to carry on the trade with increased profit through the withdrawal of the English. Were the supply of opium from British India discontinued we should have a class of merchants who would form syndicates to buy up all the opium that could be found, and Macao would become the great depôt for Persian, Javanese, and Malwa opium for the China market, so that we should have probably four times the quantity of the foreign drug shipped to China that is now imported into that country, and thus the alleged evils of opium smoking in China would be intensified. By a stupid though well-meaning policy, that ultimate demoralisation, degradation, and ruin which the Anti-Opium Society allege is now being wrought upon the natives of China by the existing Indo-China opium trade would be enormously accelerated, whilst England and English missionaries would only earn the contempt of the Chinese nation and the ridicule of the whole world. I have shown you that the Government of China is not sincere in its professed desire to put down opium smoking; for if it was we should never have had the poppy grown so extensively as it is at present all over the empire. The evidence of Sir Robert Hart alone upon this point puts the matter beyond the question of a doubt. How, in the face of that gentleman's book, this Anti-Opium agitation can continue I really cannot understand. He is an officer of the Chinese Government, and he would be the last man to publish anything damaging to the Government or people of China. Here have these Anti-Opium agitators been forty years in the wilderness without making any progress, but only getting deeper into the quagmire of error and delusion. Even now, although defeated at all points, they persist, as I shall show by and by, in obstructing public business in the House of Commons by again ventilating their unfounded theories. As matters stand, this book of Sir Robert Hart's must show to every impartial mind that the teaching of the Anti-Opium Society, from its formation to the present time, has been fallacious, misleading, and mischievous. Yet, in the face of this most damaging official Yellow-Book, we are still calmly and seriously told from many platforms, by dignitaries of the highest position in the Church, and by clergymen of all denominations, that we are demoralising and ruining the whole nation, because we send the Chinese a comparatively small quantity of pure and unadulterated opium, which is beneficial rather than injurious to them. But what does Sir Robert Hart, with all his official information, say? That all this opium, amounting to about six thousand tons annually, is consumed in moderation by one million of smokers, or one-third of one per cent. of the whole population of China, estimating the number of people at three hundred millions only. The missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society, in the face of facts which directly contradict them, say that the Chinese Government has a horror of opium; but they never tell us that that Government has a horror of themselves. What was the celebrated saying of Prince Kung to the British Ambassador? "Take away your opium and your missionaries," said he. Now the Chinese Government does not hate opium; it derives a very large revenue from the drug at present, and it is only anxious to increase the amount. I have very little doubt that Prince Kung, and all the other Imperial magnates, including Li Hung Chang, that strictest of moralists, revel in the very Indian drug they affect so to abhor. But they do detest the missionaries most cordially; so do the whole educated people of the empire, and so do Chinamen generally. None know this better than the missionaries themselves. That disgraceful book, written by a Mandarin, called "A Death-blow to Corrupt Practices," which was, by the aid of his brother Mandarins, extensively circulated throughout China, but too plainly proves the fact. That infamous volume was aimed at the whole missionary body in China, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant; it attributed the foulest crimes, the most disgraceful and disgusting practices to the missionaries. It was, in fact, the precursor of the fearful Tientsin massacre; yet the missionaries tell us that if we will only discontinue the Indo-China opium trade the millennium will arrive. I may here observe that if opium was the terrible thing, and was productive of so much misery to its votaries, as the Protestant missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society would have us believe, it seems strange that no mention of opium or opium smoking appears in this book. If half the outcry raised against the Indo-Chinese opium trade were true, here was an excellent opportunity for the writer to have inveighed against the wickedness of foreigners in introducing the horrible drug into the country. If the Gospel is objected to because of this Indian opium, what a fine occasion for the author to have enlarged upon the iniquity. If the Chinese mind had been in any way impressed with the evils proceeding from opium smoking, can it be supposed for a moment that the author of this book, an educated Mandarin--one of the _literati_, in fact--would have omitted the opportunity of denouncing the missionaries and foreigners generally for introducing the terrible drug into the country and making profit by the vices and misery of the Chinese people? Does not the entire omission of opium from this book prove most eloquently that there is no real truth in the outcry raised by these missionaries against the opium trade? The real fact, believe me, is this, the Chinese dislike and distrust the missionaries not because opium is an evil but because they hate and despise Christianity. From the Anti-Opium Society one never hears anything about the removal of the missionaries; it is all "take away your opium." I am perfectly sure that, if we agreed to exclude our missionaries from China, the Government of that country would unhesitatingly admit Indian opium into the country duty free. No greater proof can be adduced of this than the zeal and persistency with which the Chinese Government recently and successfully prosecuted the celebrated Wu Shi Shan case, which was in the nature of an action of ejectment against a Protestant missionary body at Foochow. The late Mr. French, the Judge of Her Majesty's Supreme Court for China and Japan, tried the case, the hearing of which occupied nearly two months. It cost the Chinese Government about one hundred thousand dollars, or twenty thousand pounds; they were well satisfied with the result, although the land they recovered was not worth a tenth of the money. It is declared by Mr. Turner and the other advocates of the Anti-Opium Society that we have treated the Chinese with great harshness; that we have extorted the Treaty of Tientsin from them, and bullied them into legalizing the admission of opium into the empire; that we began by smuggling opium into China, and ended by quarrelling with the Chinese. It must not be forgotten, on the other hand, how the Chinese have treated us. For more than a century before we introduced opium into China, and began, as it is said, to quarrel with the Chinese, we had been buying their teas and silks, and paying for them in hard cash. During all that time we were treated by the Mandarins with the greatest indignity. Our representatives and our people were insulted, often maltreated, and sometimes murdered. As to opium smuggling, about which so much is sought to be made by the Anti-Opium people, there is one point that the writers and speakers upon the subject seem to have forgotten. In the first place, I think I will show you that smuggling, in the proper sense of the term, has never, in fact, been carried on in China by Englishmen--or, indeed, by other foreigners--at all. But even admitting, for argument's sake, that smuggling in its ordinary acceptation did, in fact, exist, how does the matter stand? It has been for centuries the recognized international law of the civilized world that one nation is not bound to take cognizance of the revenue laws of another. This principle has been carried out in past times with the greatest strictness. For instance, there was once a very large contraband trade done between England and France. When brandy was heavily taxed, and when it was thought more of than it is now, smuggling it into England was a very profitable business. It was the same as regards silks, lace, and a great many other articles before free trade became the law of this country. Our Government knew this very well, but they never dreamt for a moment of sending a remonstrance to the French Government upon the subject. Had they done so, the latter would probably have replied: "We cannot prevent our people from doing this. We give them no encouragement whatever. We have enough to do to prevent your people from smuggling English goods into our country, and you must do your best on your side to prevent our subjects from introducing French goods into yours." For I suppose our people, carrying out the principle of reciprocity, had some contraband dealings with French contrabandists on their own account. That was the law for centuries, and it is so still. But of late years what is called "the comity of nations" has become more understood, and there is a better spirit spreading between different states on this subject, although, as I have said, the law is still the same. If our Government knew that there was now an organized system of smuggling carried on here with France, they would, I dare say, try to put a stop to the practice, and would, at the least, give such information to the Government of France as would put their revenue officers on their guard, and I am sure that the French Government would act in the same way towards us. That would be due to the better feeling that has arisen between the two countries within the last forty years. The moment, therefore, it was found that there was a considerable demand in China for Indian opium, British and other vessels brought the article to China; and there can be no doubt that they met with great encouragement from the Chinese officials, but they got no assistance from us. The opium shippers carried on the trade at their own risk. All this has been very clearly shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas. There was no actual smuggling on the part of the owners of these vessels. The Chinese openly came on board and bought and took away the opium, "squaring" matters, so to speak, with the Mandarins. These so-called smugglers belonged to all nationalities. There were Americans, Portuguese, and Germans, as well as English, engaged in it. According to the international law of European countries, the Chinese Government ought, under the circumstances, to have had a proper preventive service, and so put down the smuggling. But, instead of this, the practice was openly encouraged by the Chinese officials, some of them Mandarins of high position. Now and then an explosion would occur; angry remonstrances would be addressed to the British Government, and bad feeling between the two nations would be engendered, the Chinese all along treating us as barbarians, using the most insulting language towards us, and subjecting our people, whenever opportunity offered, to the greatest indignities. The missionaries have ignored all this. They appear to have satisfied themselves so completely that we forced this trade upon the Chinese that they have lost sight both of fact and reason. The very existence of an opium-smuggling trade with China shows that the article smuggled was in very great demand in that country. People never illegally take into a country an article that is not greatly in request there. They will not risk their lives and property unless they know large profits are to be acquired by the venture, and such profits can only be made upon articles in great demand. It was because there was found to be a demand for Indian opium that this so-called contraband trade sprang up. This furnishes the strongest proof that the Chinese valued the opium highly, and that it was on their invitation that the drug was introduced. There is, I believe, a considerable contraband trade now carried on in tobacco between Germany and Cuba and England, just because the article is in demand here, and there is a very high duty upon it. The fact is, that if the arguments of the Anti-Opium people are properly weighed, they will be found, almost without exception, to cut both ways, and with far greater force against their own side. Now with respect to smuggling, it is right that I should clear up the misconception that seems to prevail upon the subject. Whatever may have been the practice previous to the Treaty of Nankin, which was signed on the 29th of August 1842, and ratified on the 26th of June 1843--forty years ago, I say it advisedly, and challenge contradiction, that _no smuggling or quasi smuggling, or any practice resembling smuggling, has been carried on in China by any British subject_ since the signing of that treaty. Although no mention is made of opium in that convention, it is an indisputable fact that from the time of the making of it until the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, Indian opium was freely allowed into the country at an _ad valorem_ duty. This is shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, in his book, and also by Sir Rutherford Alcock, in his valuable paper. No doubt the Chinese themselves have since then smuggled opium into their country, and are doing so still. They are, in truth, inveterate smugglers, and it has been found impossible for the British authorities of Hong Kong to prevent the practice. For the past thirty years laws have from time to time been passed in the colony with the object of checking the practice, which have not been wholly unsuccessful; for instance, some twenty-five years ago an Ordinance was passed prohibiting junks from leaving the harbour between sunset, and, I think, 6 a.m. on the following morning, and compelling every outward-bound junk to leave at the harbour master's office a copy of the "Manifest" before starting, and I have known many prosecutions for breach of this Ordinance. Still smuggling by Chinamen goes on more or less, but not now, I think, to any large extent. As for any connivance or participation in the practice by the British authorities or the British people, and, indeed, I may say the same for all foreigners in China, there is none whatever. I am fully borne out in this statement by the _Friend of China_, which you will remember is the organ of the Anti-Opium Society. It would appear that Sir John Pope Hennessy, lately Governor of Hong Kong, made a speech last autumn at Nottingham, on the occasion of the meeting of the Social Science Congress, in the course of which he made some allusion to smuggling by the British community of Hong Kong. I have not myself read the speech, but collect this from the statement of the journal in question, which I shall now read to you. This is the passage:-- The present governor of Hong Kong is extremely unpopular with the British community under his jurisdiction. Into the occasion and merit of the feud we do not pretend to enter, but in reproducing the Governor's condemnation of the Colony it is only fair to note the fact of the existing hostility between governor and governed. _We are sorry, too, that Sir John did not state that these desperate smugglers are of Chinese race. So far as we know there is no ground for inculpating a single Englishman in Hong Kong in these nefarious proceedings; the English merchant sells his opium to Chinese purchasers, and there his connection with the traffic ceases._ So much for the delusion as to smuggling by British subjects in China. As for the "Hoppo" of Canton, who farms from the Chinese Government the revenue of the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi, and whose object it is to squeeze as much as he can from the mercantile community of these provinces during his term of office, he has a fleet of fast English-built steam cruisers, heavily armed, ostensibly to put down smuggling, but really to cripple the commerce of the port of Hong Kong, they keep the harbour blockaded by this fleet of armed cruisers to prey upon the native craft coming to and sailing from the colony. Wild with wrath at the prosperity of Hong Kong, the Hoppo and his cruisers lose no opportunity of oppressing the native junks resorting to the place. All those vessels they think should go to Canton to swell the Hoppo's income. Many Chinese merchants have put cases of oppression of the kind in my hands, where those armed cruisers simply played the part of pirates, seizing unoffending junks, taking them to Canton, and confiscating junk and cargo; but I regret to say that only in a very few cases have I been able to obtain redress. This state of things has been going on for the past fifteen or twenty years, and should be put down by the British Government. So far as respects the Chinese authorities, and the junk owners, and native merchants, it is simply legalised robbery; whilst as regards the British Government and people of the colony, foreigners as well as natives, it is a system of insult and outrage--a very serious injury, and a glaring breach of international law, which no European Government would tolerate in another. I mention this to show how forbearing and long-suffering the Government of Hong Kong and the Imperial Government have been towards China during the continuance of this most nefarious and unjustifiable state of things. This is in truth a very serious matter. When Sir Henry Elliott took possession of Hong Kong in 1841 on behalf of the Queen, he invited by proclamation the Chinese people to settle in the place, promising them protection for their lives and property, upon the faith of which the natives took their families and property to the colony. But how can it be said now that their property is protected when this piratical fleet, like a bird of prey, hovers round the colony, pouncing down upon the native craft going to or leaving the port? To close this part of my subject, I may say in short, that the charges brought by the Anti-Opium Society against the importation of Indian opium into China are exactly on a par with the objections of a Society established in France for the purpose of prohibiting the importation into England of cognac, on the grounds that that spirit intoxicated, demoralised, and ruined the English people. If any set of men in France were fanatical and insane enough to set forth such views, they would be laughed down at once. The answer to the objection to the brandy trade would be, "That the English people manufacture and drink plenty of gin and whisky, and if they, the French, discontinued sending them brandy the English would simply manufacture and drink more spirits of their own production." No two cases could be more alike. Before proceeding to the last of the fallacies by which the opponents of the Indo-Chinese opium trade have been so long deluding society, I wish to refer to the statements made by Mr. Storrs Turner in his book, and by the advocates of the Anti-Opium trade, respecting the Treaty of Tientsin. It is alleged that Lord Elgin, who bore the highest character as a statesman and Christian gentleman, extorted the treaty from the Chinese, and forced them to include opium in the schedule to that treaty. Mr. Turner, at p. 95 of his book, typifies the conduct of England thus:-- The strong man knocks down the weak one, sets his foot upon his chest and demands:--"Will you give me the liberty to knock at your front door and supply your children with poison _ad libitum_?" The weak man gasps out from under the crushing pressure--"I will, I will; anything you please." And the strong man goes home rejoicing that he is no longer under the unpleasant necessity of carrying on a surreptitious back-door trade. This metaphor is really absurd, and has no application whatever. Were a man so infamous as to act in the manner stated, it would be a matter of little concern to him whether his poison entered by the front or the back door, so long as he got paid for the article. The fact is, as I have stated, that since the Treaty of Nankin, in 1842, opium has been openly allowed in the country without any difficulty or objection. If there is any point in this metaphor of Mr. Storrs Turner's at all, it applies not to the insertion of opium in the tariff, but to the clause in the treaty as to the admission of missionaries into China, for that was really the bitter pill the Chinese swallowed. In 1858, when the Treaty of Tientsin was being drawn up, the tariff upon British goods had to be settled. The Chinese Commissioners, not only as a matter of course, and without any pressure whatever, proposed to put down opium in the schedule at the present fixed duty of thirty taels a pikul, but actually insisted upon doing so. There was no necessity for using pressure at all, and none in fact was used. It was included in the tariff just like other goods. Mr. H. N. Lay, who jointly with Sir Thomas Wade, Her Majesty's present minister at Pekin, was Chinese Secretary to Lord Elgin's special mission, and who then, I believe, filled the important post in the Chinese service now occupied by Sir Robert Hart, expresses his opinion on the subject as follows:-- Statements have been advanced of late, with more or less of precision, to the effect that the legalisation of the opium trade was wrung from Chinese fears. At the recent meeting in Birmingham Lord Elgin is credited, in so many words, with having "extorted" at Tientsin the legalisation of the article in question. There is no truth whatever in the allegation, and I do not think, in fairness to Lord Elgin's memory, or in justice to all concerned, that I ought to observe silence any longer. Jointly with Sir Thomas Wade, our present minister in China, I was Chinese Secretary to Lord Elgin's special mission. All the negotiations at Tientsin passed through me. Not one word upon either side was ever said about opium from first to last. The revision of the tariff, and the adjustment of all questions affecting our trade, was designedly left for after deliberation and arrangement, and it was agreed that for that purpose the Chinese High Commissioners should meet Lord Elgin at Shanghai in the following winter. The Treaty of Tientsin was signed on the 26th of June 1858; the first was withdrawn, and Lord Elgin turned the interval to account by visiting Japan and concluding a treaty there. In the meantime the preparation of the tariff devolved upon me, at the desire no less of the Chinese than of Lord Elgin. _When I came to "Opium" I inquired what course they proposed to take in respect to it. The answer was, "We have resolved to put it into the tariff as Yang Yoh_ (foreign medicine)." This represents with strict accuracy the amount of the "extortion" resorted to. And I may add that the tariff as prepared by me, although it comprises some 300 articles of import and export, _was adopted by the Chinese Commissioners without a single alteration_, which would hardly have been the case had the tariff contained aught objectionable to them. Five months after the signature of the Treaty of Tientsin, long subsequently to the removal of all pressure, the Chinese High Commissioners, the signatories of the treaty, came down to Shanghai in accordance with the arrangement made, and after conference with their colleagues, and due consideration, signed with Lord Elgin the tariff as prepared, along with other commercial articles which had been drawn up in concert with the subordinate members of the Commission who had been charged with that duty. _The Chinese Government admitted opium as a legal article of import, not under constraint, but of their own free will deliberately._ Now Mr. H. N. Lay is a gentleman whose testimony is altogether unimpeachable, and this is his statement. He explains the whole transaction, and it is substantially and diametrically contrary to the allegations of Mr. Turner and the Anti-Opium Society. His account of the matter has the greater force, because I believe he is rather anti-opium in his views than the opposite, and at the time of the treaty he was in the service of the Chinese Government. The truth is, that we never should have had the Chinese urging us to increase the duty had they not been supported by the Anti-Opium Society. Mr. Laurence Oliphant was Lord Elgin's secretary at the time of the Tientsin Treaty. This is what he says on the subject:-- As a great deal of misconception prevails in the public mind upon this subject, I would beg to confirm what Mr. Lay has said as to the views of the Chinese Government in the matter. I was appointed in 1858 Commissioner for the settlement of the trade and tariff regulations with China; and during my absence with Lord Elgin in Japan, Mr. Lay was charged to consider the details with the subordinate Chinese officials named for the purpose. On my return to Shanghai I went through the tariff elaborated by these gentlemen with the Commissioner appointed by the Chinese Government. When we came to the article "opium," _I informed the Commissioner that I had received instructions from Lord Elgin not to insist on the insertion of the drug in the tariff, should the Chinese Government wish to omit it. This he declined to do. I then proposed that the duty should be increased beyond the figure suggested in the tariff; but to this he objected, on the ground that it would increase the inducements to smuggling._ I trust that the delusion that the opium trade now existing with China was "extorted" from that country by the British Ambassador may be finally dispelled. But Mr. Storrs Turner will doubtless still say, "Oh! these gentlemen are Englishmen; you cannot believe them." I do not think, however, this kind of objection will have much weight with my readers or the country at large. And now, as I am on the political side of the question, I will say a few words on the Indian aspect of the case. The Government of India is charged by Mr. Storrs Turner and the Anti-Opium people generally with descending to the position of opium manufacturers and merchants, and quotes an alleged proposal of the late Lord Lawrence to drop the traffic, leaving the cultivation and exportation of the drug to private enterprise, and recouping itself from loss by placing a heavy export duty on the article. If Lord Lawrence ever proposed such an arrangement, which I doubt very much, I hardly think he could have carefully considered the question. No doubt, in an abstract point of view, it is contrary to sound policy for the Government of a country to carry on mercantile business, much less to take into its own hands a monopoly of any trade, yet the thing has been done for a great number of years, and is still practised by some continental Governments without the existence of any special reason for so doing. The Indo-China opium trade, however, is an entirely exceptional one. When an exceptional state of things has to be dealt with, corresponding measures must be resorted to. The opium industry in India is an ancient one; and the exportation of this drug to China began under the Portuguese, several centuries ago. Were the Government of India to adopt the alleged proposals of Lord Lawrence, the result would be that a much larger quantity of opium than is now produced in India would be turned out, so that not only would the alleged evils now complained of by the missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society be intensified, but the Government of India would find its revenue greatly increased by its export duty on the drug. This is very conclusively shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, a most competent authority, who has studied the question deeply and can have no possible object but the revelation of the truth. There are numerous objections to throwing open the Indian trade. As matters now stand, the Government of India annually makes advances to the opium growers, to enable them to produce the drug. These advances are made at a low or nominal rate of interest. Let the Government once drop the monopoly and throw open the trade, and then the small farmers--and they form perhaps seventy-five per cent. of the whole, whether they cultivate the poppy or any other crop--would be at the mercy of the usurers, who are the curse of India. Thus the poor cultivator, instead of paying the Government two or three per cent. interest for the advance, would have to pay perhaps five times that amount, with a bill for law costs; and a much larger bill staring him in the future, in case he should be so unfortunate as not to be up to time with his payments. The usurers or Márwáris as I believe they are called, would in such cases profit by the fruits of the soil instead of the growers. As to the morality of the proposed change, I do not see what could be gained by such an arrangement. If it is wrong to derive a revenue from opium by direct, it is equally wrong to do so by indirect means. Before closing this part of the subject, there is another point I wish to say a few words upon. It is put forward by Mr. Turner in his book, with great plausibility, and is, no doubt, accepted by his disciples as fact, that every acre of land put under opium cultivation displaces so much rice, the one being a poison, the other the staff of life. This is perfectly fallacious; wherever rice is grown in China--and I fancy it is the same in India--there are two crops taken in the year. Rice is cultivated during the spring and summer months (that is, the rainy season), for the grain only grows where there is abundance of water. The poppy thrives only in the dry season, that is, during the latter part of the autumn and the winter, when the rice crops have been saved. The poppy requires a rich soil, so that before planting it the farmers have to manure the ground well; then, when the poppy crop has been secured, the land is in good heart for rice, and so the rotation goes on. This I stated in the first edition of this lecture; since then Mr. Spence's Report for 1881 has appeared which fully confirms my view. Thus much for the accuracy of this statement of Mr. Storrs Turner. I come now to the last of the fallacies, follies, and fantasies, upon which the huge superstructure of delusion put forward for so many years by the Anti-Opium Society has been built. At once the least sustainable, it is the one which carries the most weight with the supporters of that Society, for it furnishes the _raison d'être_ of their whole action. It is _that the introduction of Indian opium into China has arrested the progress of Christianity in that country, and that if the trade were discontinued the Chinese would accept the Gospel_. No greater mistake, nor more unfounded delusion than this could be indulged in; indeed, it seems to me something very like a profanation to mix up the Indo-China opium trade with the spread of the Gospel in the Empire of China. If the objection to embrace Christianity because we send opium to that country has ever, in fact, been made by natives, that objection was a subterfuge only. The Chinese are an acute and crafty race; when they desire to attain an object, they seldom attempt to do so by direct means, but rather seek to gain their ends indirectly. They despise and hate Christianity, although they will not tell you so, much less will they argue with you, or enter into controversy upon the subject. They will rather try to get rid of it by a side-wind. They are a very polite and courteous people, and understand this style of tactics very well. I have no doubt whatever that if the British trade in opium were suppressed to-morrow, and that no British merchant dealt any longer in the drug, or sent a particle of it into China, and if a missionary were to go before the Chinese and say, "We can now show clean hands, our Government has stopped the opium trade," and then were to open his book and begin talking to them of Christianity, he would only be met with derisive laughter. "This man," they would say, "thinks that because the English have ceased to sell us opium we should all become Christians. If they sold us no more rice or broadcloth, we suppose they would say that we should become Mahomedans." Knowing the cunning and keen sense of humour of the people, I have no doubt they would use another argument also. There is a story told of a Scotch clergyman who rebuked one of his congregation for not being quite so moderate in his potations as he ought to be. "It's a' vera weel," returned the other, who had reason to know that the minister did not always practise what he preached, "but do ye ken how they swept the streets o' Jerusalem?" The clergyman was obliged to own his ignorance, when Sandy replied, "Weel, then, it was just this, every man kept his ain door clean." And I can well fancy in the case I have supposed, an equally shrewd Chinaman saying to the missionary, "What for you want to make us follow your religion? Your religion vely bad one. You have plenty men drink too muchee sam-shu, get drunk and fight, and beat their wives and children. Chinaman no get drunk. Chinaman no beat or kill his wife. Too muchee sam-shu vely bad. Drink vely bad for Inglismen; what for you don't go home and teach them to be soba, plaupa men?" Believe me, the Chinese know our little peccadilloes and are very well informed respecting our doings here at home. We send but six thousand tons of opium annually to China, which, according to Sir Robert Hart, who ought to be a reliable authority on the subject, inflicts no appreciable injury upon the health, wealth, or extension of the population of that vast empire. The truth is, that the alleged objection of the Chinese against Christianity amounts simply to this: because some of our people do what is wrong, and we are not as a nation faultless in morals, we should not ask them to change their religion for ours. Perfection is not to be attained by any nation or the professors of any creed. If we had the ability, and were foolish enough to stop the exportation of Indian opium to China, the natives of the country would find some other reason for clinging to their own creeds and rejecting Christianity. They could, and doubtless would, point to the fearful plague of intemperance prevailing amongst us; they could also refer to the great number of distilleries and breweries in the United Kingdom, to our Newgate Calendar, and to the records of the Divorce Court. In short, they would say, "You do not practise what you preach. What do you mean, then, by trying to make Christians of us?" The same doctrine has been used over and over again even in Christian countries, and it is lamentable to see educated and intelligent men becoming victims to such a delusive mode of reasoning. This sad hallucination on the part of the missionary clergymen is the origin of the mischievous and very stupid agitation going on against the Indo-China opium trade, but now rapidly, I believe and hope, coming to an end. A few years ago I paid a short visit to Japan. Whilst I was at Tokio, the capital, a lecture was given there by an educated Japanese gentleman, who spoke English well and fluently. He introduced religion into his lecture, and considered the question why the Japanese did not embrace Christianity. "Our minds," said he, "are like blank paper; we are ready to receive any religion that is good, we are not bigoted to our own, but we object to Christianity because we do not consider it a good religion, because we see that Christians do not reverence old age, and because they are so licentious, and so brutal to the coolies." But these reasons are again merely subterfuges. The Japanese do not smoke opium, and the very same objection they urge against Christianity might also be used by the Chinese. The Oriental mind is very much the same, whether Chinese, Japanese, or Indian. Upon religious or political questions they well know how to shift their ground. As to the Chinese embracing Christianity, I trust the day will come when they will do so. They would then be the most powerful nation in the whole world, and probably become our own best teachers on religion and morals; but at present I see no immediate hope of their conversion. I say this in view of the stand taken by the Protestant missionaries on this opium question. Nothing, in my opinion, is more calculated to impede the progress of missionary work than this most absurd and unfounded delusion. The reason given by the missionaries for the apparently small success which has hitherto attended their efforts, is that the so-called iniquitous traffic in opium has been the one stumbling block in their way. Put a stop to this villanous trade, they say, and the Gospel will flourish like a green bay-tree. This sort of argument takes with the missionaries themselves and with religious people generally, and thus converts to the anti-opium policy are made. Yet all these statements rest, I can assure you, on an entirely fallacious foundation. We are not dealing with a savage but with a civilized people. You may change a nation's religion, but you cannot alter its customs, and if China were evangelised to-morrow the Chinese would still continue opium smokers. The Reverend Mr. Galpin has hit the nail on the head when he said in his letter to the missionaries of Peking:-- Looking at Christianity in the broad and true sense, as a great regenerating force breathing its beneficent spirit upon and promoting the welfare of all, of course the excessive use or abuse of opium and every other thing, is a serious hindrance to its happy progress. But this is a very different position from that of supposing that the present apparently slow progress of mission-work in China is to be attributed to the importation of Indian opium. China is a world in itself, and the influence of Christian missions has hitherto reached but a handful of the people, for there are many serious obstacles to its progress besides opium. As before mentioned, the Roman Catholic missionaries have never complained that their missionary labours were impeded by the opium trade. I had the honour of being Solicitor at Hong Kong to a wealthy and important religious community of that persuasion which has missionary stations all over China, Formosa, and Tonquin, and might call the head of the order a personal friend, yet I never heard a complaint of the kind from him or any of his clergy. I was on very intimate terms with a Roman Catholic gentleman who was in the confidence of the Catholic Bishop at Hong Kong, and the Roman Catholic community generally, and I have had conversations with him on missionary matters. He has never uttered such a complaint, but, on the contrary, has always spoken of the success which attended the Roman Catholic missions throughout China. In this connection it should not be forgotten that the Chinese treat all foreigners alike; they know no distinction between them--English, French, German, Spanish, Americans, Portuguese, are to them one people. The victims of the Tientsin massacre were, with the exception, I think, of a Russian gentleman, a community of French nuns. The petition to the House of Commons set out in my first letter emanated from the Protestant missionaries alone, and it has not, I am well assured, been signed by a single Roman Catholic missionary. It is plain, therefore, that this alleged obstacle to the spread of the Gospel in China by the English and American missionaries is a monster of their own creation, and has no real existence. Bishop Burden, of Hong Kong, the missionary bishop for South China, who, although no authority on the opium question, ought, on this point at all events, to be well informed, estimates the number of Protestant converts in China at forty thousand, and of Roman Catholics at one million. The disparity is great, but then it should not be forgotten that Roman Catholic missions in China date from a period probably two centuries earlier than Protestant missions. If out of these forty thousand converts I allow five per cent., or two thousand, to be really sincere and able to give a reason for the faith that is in them, I believe that I am not underrating the precise number of true and _bona fide_ converts which these missionaries have made. But knowing this as I do, it is very far from my intention to cast blame upon the missionaries in consequence. To those who understand the difficulties those devoted men have to contend with in the progress of their labours, the wonder is not that they have done so little, but that they have achieved so much. Upon this point, I would say again, I am very far from attributing any blame to our missionaries, save in so far as they have allowed themselves to be cajoled by certain Chinese and others as to opium smoking. No one is more sensible of their piety, learning, zeal, and industry; and a very sad task it has been to me to impugn their conduct and controvert their views as I have done. A good cause, however, cannot and ought not to be promoted by falsehood; for such this Anti-Opium delusion amounts to, and nothing more, and there can be no hope for more solid results from the missionary field until it is swept from the missionaries' path. Two thousand sincere converts after all is, in my belief, a great and encouraging result, considering the tremendous obstacles our missionaries have to encounter in overcoming in the first instance the prejudice of the Chinese against foreigners, and then in displacing in their minds the idolatrous and sensuous creed that has taken such firm root there, and become, so to speak, engrained in the Chinese nature, and implanting in its stead the truths of the Gospel. Each of these two thousand converts will prove, I am well assured, like the grain of mustard seed that will fructify and in time bring forth much fruit. But it must not be forgotten that China, in the terse and apposite words of the Rev. Mr. Galpin, is "a world in itself," containing as it does about a fourth of the whole human race. The custom of opium smoking has existed in the Empire of China from time immemorial. You might as well try to reverse the course of Niagara as to wean the Chinese from the use of their favourite drug. As to the Treaty of Tientsin, it is unfair and ungrateful of the missionaries to speak of it as they do. It did no more than reduce to a formal settlement a state of things that had been for several years tacitly acquiesced in and agreed to by the Chinese and British authorities and people. That treaty was prepared with the greatest deliberation by an eminent statesman who was singularly remarkable for his humanity and benevolence, assisted by able subordinates who were in no way deficient in those qualities. The missionaries seem to forget that this very Treaty of Tientsin, which they so denounce, is the charter by which they have now a footing in China, with liberty to preach the Gospel there. They would have no _locus standi_ in China but for this sorely abused treaty. There is a special clause in it drawn up by Lord Elgin himself, providing that we should be at liberty to propagate Christianity in the country. That treaty is the missionaries' protection. It is to it they would now appeal if molested by the Mandarins or people of China. They cry it down for one purpose, and rely upon it for another. I may here not inappropriately observe that the missionaries of Peking seem to have been under a misapprehension as to the nature of this treaty. From their petition to the House of Commons it would appear that they were under the impression that some special clause legalizing the importation of opium into China was introduced into it under pressure from the British Government; but that was a mistake. There is no "clause" whatever in the treaty on the subject of opium. The only place that the word "opium" appears is in the schedule, where it is set down amongst other dutiable articles, such as pepper and nutmegs, exactly as stated by Mr. H. N. Lay. It is plain, then, that these missionary gentlemen had not a copy of the Treaty of Tientsin before them when they drew up their petition, and I doubt very much if any of them ever read the treaty at all. They appear to have got the delusion so strongly into their heads that the legalization of opium was wrung from the Chinese Government that it seems they thought it quite unnecessary to read the treaty and took everything for granted. I have now, I think, shown and fully refuted the fallacies which within the past thirty years have crept into the minds of the opponents of the Indo-China opium trade, dimming the faculties, blinding the reason, warping the judgment, ministering to the prejudices, deluding the senses, gratifying the feelings, until these fallacies have become so interwoven and welded together as to form and culminate into one CONCRETE PLAUSIBLE, FASCINATING, DEFAMATORY LIE! A cruel, false, and treacherous lie, that misleads alike its votaries and its victims, and that, too, in the names of religion and charity.--A lie circumstantial,--so highly genteel and respectable,--so sentimental and pious,--so sleek and unctuous,--so caressed and flattered,--so bravely dressed, and so beflounced and trimmed with the trappings of truth, that even those who have bedecked the jade fail to see the imposture they have created, so that the tawdry quean struts along receiving homage as she goes, whilst plain honest TRUTH in her russet gown wends her way unnoticed.--I have shown that this Anti-Opium scare is a sham, a mockery, a delusion--a glittering piece of counterfeit coin, which I have broken to pieces and proved to you that, for all its silvery surface, there is nothing but base metal beneath. Let me now recapitulate. I have, I think, made it irrefutably clear-- 1. That the Chinese are a civilized people, very abstemious in their habits, especially as regards the use of opium, spirits, and stimulants of all kinds. 2. That there is and can be no analogy or comparison whatever between opium eating and opium smoking, as each stands separate and apart from the other, differing totally in the mode of use and their effects, and that opium eating is not a Chinese custom. 3. That an overdose of opium, like an excessive draught of spirits, is poisonous and produces immediate death. 4. That opium smoking is a harmless and perfectly innocuous practice, unless immoderately indulged in, which rarely happens, as seldom, indeed, as over-indulgence in tea or tobacco in England. 5. That even when immoderately indulged, any depressing effects resulting from opium smoking are removed simply by discontinuing the use of the drug for a short period. 6. That no death from opium smoking, whether indulged in moderately or excessively, has ever occurred, and that death from such cause is a physical impossibility. 7. That opium smoking is a custom far less enslaving and more easily discontinued than dram drinking or even tobacco smoking. 8. That opium smoking is a luxury which can only be indulged in by those who are well-to-do and is wholly out of the reach of the poor, and, save in Western China and certain other districts, where the poppy is very extensively cultivated and opium comparatively cheap, beyond the means of the working classes. 9. That opium smoking is a universal custom throughout the whole of the immense empire of China, just as tea, wine, or beer drinking is with the people of the United Kingdom, its use being limited only by the ability of the people to procure the drug. 10. That it is admitted by Sir Robert Hart, a high official of the Chinese Government, that the greatest quantity of Indian opium of late years imported into China is only sufficient to supply about one million of people with a modicum of the drug, and that, in his own words, "neither the finances of the State, nor the wealth of the people, nor the growth of its population," can be specially damaged by a luxury which only draws from five-pence to eleven-pence a-piece from the pockets of those who enjoy it, and which is indulged in by a comparatively small number of the Chinese people. 11. That the poppy is extensively cultivated in all the provinces of China proper as well as in Manchuria, and that there is probably three or four times as much native drug produced annually in China as is imported from abroad. 12. That in the western parts of China, where the poppy is more extensively cultivated and opium more generally smoked than in other parts of the empire, no decadence whatever is produced in the mental or bodily health, or the wealth, industry, and prosperity of the people, but on the contrary, that these very people are peculiarly strong and vigorous. 13. That the Chinese Government is not, and never was, sincere in its professed desire to put down the practice of opium smoking in the empire, which is evidenced by the fact that the poppy is largely cultivated throughout the country, and that a revenue is derived by the Government from the native drug. 14. That Hong Kong being the great depôt of Indian opium and the place where the drug is most largely prepared for smoking purposes, and where also the native population (about three-fourths of whom are adult males) are in good circumstances, and therefore better able to indulge in opium smoking than their countrymen in the mainland of China, is the place where the alleged evils of opium smoking, if they existed, would be found in their worst form, yet that _those evils are unknown there_. 15. That the outcry, got up and disseminated for so many years past in England against the Indo-China opium trade has not, and never had, any substantial foundation; that such outcry has arisen from the complaints, of the Protestant missionaries in China, which also are equally baseless, those missionaries having been simply made dupes of by certain designing and mendacious natives for purposes of their own, or of the Government of China. 16. That opium was inserted into the Schedule to the Treaty of Tientsin at the express desire and request of the Chinese authorities; that Lord Elgin wished and proposed to those authorities by his Secretary, Mr. Laurence Oliphant, to place a higher duty than thirty taels on the drug, but that the Chinese officials declined to do so, fearing that, if the duty were raised, an impetus would be given to smuggling. 17. That the career of the Anti-Opium Society has been signalized by a continuous series of mistakes and blunders--commencing with the monstrous figment (the invention of an American missionary) that there were twenty millions of opium smokers in China supplied by the Indian drug, and that _two millions of these smokers died annually from the practice_,--and that the Anti-Opium confederacy is only kept alive by the continued reiteration of exploded fallacies, sophistries, and mis-statements of the same nature. 18. That the British merchants connected with China in the past and the present were and are wholly free from the stigmas cast upon them by the Anti-Opium Society, anent smuggling and the opium trade;[12] that, so far from having acted wrongfully towards China and the Chinese, their conduct towards both has been, and still is, emphatically characterized by honour and rectitude, and by uniform courtesy and kindness; and that those merchants, have deserved well of their country. 19. That the Anti-Opium Society, from its formation to the present time, has wrought nothing but mischief, crippling by its pragmatical efforts the action of Her Majesty's Government, both here and in India and China, abstracting by its mis-statements enormous sums of money from the charitable and benevolent, and squandering that money in the propagation of unfounded theories and injurious reflections against our fellow-countrymen in China; and that the public should withdraw their confidence from the Society, and cease to supply it with one farthing more. 20. That, save in respect of the blockade of Hong Kong by the armed cruisers of the Hoppo or Revenue Farmer of the provinces of the two Kwangs, which inflict great and bitter hardship upon the Chinese merchants of Hong Kong and the junk owners who trade to that place, the British nation, by its Government and people, has amply redeemed the promises made to the people of China by Her Majesty's representative, Sir Henry Elliott, on taking over Hong Kong, which is amply verified by the flourishing state of that Colony, and its large, thriving, and contented Chinese population. 21. That, whilst it is desirable to maintain the most amicable and cordial relations with the Government of China and its various viceroyalties, that most unjustifiable blockade by the Hoppo or Revenue Farmer of Canton should be promptly suppressed; a matter which has only to be taken in hand by Her Majesty's Consul at Canton, supported, if necessary, by the British Minister at Peking, and firmly but courteously pressed upon the Viceroy of the two Kwangs, who cannot but acknowledge the gross injustice and cruel wrong inflicted on Hong Kong and its native merchants by those cruisers, and who has the power and only wants the will to let right be done. In the course of these lectures I have spoken of some of the vices of the Chinese, and of our own also. The people of England have, however, many virtues, the growth of centuries; one of these is a broad and liberal charity, that pours forth a continuous stream of benevolence over the whole world. It is a virtue that pervades all classes, from our honoured Queen to the humblest of her subjects. It is not without a swelling heart that one can walk through the streets of London and see the noble charitable institutions surrounding him upon all sides, such as hospitals, convalescent institutions, homes for aged and infirm people, educational institutes, and such like, _supported by voluntary contributions_--living evidences of the charity and benevolence of our people in the past and present. Yet these splendid monuments but faintly testify to the flow of munificence perpetually running its course around us. Observe how liberally the public respond to the appeals made to it almost daily. Look at the case of the persecution of the Jews in Russia, the famine in the North of China, the distress and troubles in Ireland. Then, again, there is the charity "that lets not the left hand know what the right hand doeth," of which the world sees nothing, but which is known to go on unceasingly, and which probably is the most liberal of all. The history of the world, so far as I am aware, does not record a parallel to this in any other nation or people. With such an active and unceasing charity going on amongst us, we should take care that this beneficent stream is not diverted into worthless channels, for that would be a matter concerning the whole public. Now, though I hold in respect all the officers and supporters of the Anti-Opium Society, who are actuated, I admit, by the best motives, and whose characters for benevolence and good faith I do not question, I cannot forbear from repeating that their crusade against the Indo-China opium trade is as unjustifiable as it is mischievous, and is well calculated to produce the results I have deprecated. It encourages the Chinese Government to make untenable demands upon us, under false pretences, and it is an unwarranted interference with an industry, wholly unobjectionable on any but sentimental grounds, affording subsistence to millions of our fellow-subjects in India. It aims, also, at cutting off some eight or ten millions sterling from the revenue of that vast dependency, now expended in ameliorating the condition of its dense population. Furthermore, it offers to useful and legitimate legislation an opposition and obstruction of the worst kind, seeing that it obtrudes upon the Legislature its unfounded and exploded theories, to the displacement or delay of really useful measures. I say that the Anti-Opium Society, in the course of its agitation for the abolition of this Indo-China opium trade, is vilifying its countrymen and blackening this country in the eyes of the whole world, so that the foreigner can convict us out of our own mouths, and jibe at us for hypocrisy and turpitude we are wholly innocent of, and for crimes we have never committed.[13] I say that the history of this Society presents nothing but a dreary record of energies wasted, talents misapplied, wealth uselessly squandered, charity perverted, and philanthropy run mad. The members of this Society never think, perhaps, of the mischief they have done and are doing. Here has our Government been trying for the past seven or eight years to agree upon a revised commercial treaty with the Government of China, and here also, side by side, is an irresponsible political body doing its utmost to cripple, paralyse, and defeat our Government in its efforts, taking up, in fact, a downright hostile attitude to the action of the Imperial and Indian Governments, by carrying on an unauthorized unofficial correspondence with Li Hung Chang, the Prime Minister, and the most influential public man in China, who is a master of the arts of diplomacy, and who is doing his utmost to get the better of us if he can in the matter of the Chefoo Convention. Here, I say, is this society putting forward Li's audacious and misleading letter to its secretary, Mr. Storrs Turner, as an embodiment of truth and justice. Is this patriotic or proper on the part of this Anti-Opium Society? Should that body, instead of setting itself up as a junto, with a quasi-official standing, having a monopoly of all the virtues, be allowed by the Government to carry on its mischievous organization any longer? I think not. I believe there is no other country in the world--not even America, where liberty has run to seed--where such an intermeddling, anti-national and mischievous confederacy would be permitted to exist. Instead of trying to thwart Her Majesty's Government, as it is doing, it should be the duty of its members, of every Englishman interested in China, and, indeed, of the whole country, to strengthen as far as possible the hands of the Government in its endeavour to bring the pending negotiations for a commercial treaty with China to a successful close. Yet what are the present plans of this pragmatical body? In its latest publication, a compilation of the most fallacious and misleading matter, bearing a title meanly plagiarized from this book, it is announced that the following motion stands upon the Order Book of the House of Commons, and is intended to be moved in the Session for 1883, viz:-- That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that in the event of negotiations taking place between the Governments of Her Majesty and China, having reference to the duties levied on opium under the Treaty of Tientsin, the Government of Her Majesty will be pleased to intimate to the Government of China that in any such revision of that treaty _the Government of China will be met as that of an independent State, having the full right to arrange its own import duties as may be deemed expedient_. What a modest proposition! The Queen's Ministers, it appears, cannot be trusted in their negotiations with the Government of China, and Her Majesty in consequence is to be asked to ignore her constitutional advisers, and personally inform the Chinese Minister that his Government shall be treated as an independent state, and so forth. In fact, this proposal is tantamount to a vote, _pro tanto_ at least, of want of confidence in the Government, which, I have little doubt, would be rejected by an overwhelming majority of both sides of the House. I only hope it will be pressed to a division, as the result, I believe, will show to the country in an unmistakable manner, once and for all, the utter insignificance of the Anti-Opium confederacy as a political body, the falsity and mischief of its teaching, and prove the knell of its existence. If motions like this were to be passed, it would be impossible to carry on Her Majesty's Government. The matter is really too absurd to be seriously dealt with by Parliament, and I bring it before my readers more for the purpose of showing the downright folly, infatuation and fanaticism which characterize this Anti-Opium confederation than for any other purpose. To these political philanthropists and amateur statesmen I would recommend these lines, which seem to me to meet their case exactly:-- "No narrow bigot he, his reasoned view Thy interest, England, ranks with thine, Peru; War at our doors, he sees no danger nigh, But heaves for all alike the impartial sigh; A steady patron of the world alone, The friend of every country--save his own." Of the missionaries themselves, beyond this opium craze that has unfortunately possessed them, I have nothing to say except to their credit. A more conscientious and deserving body of men this world has never produced; under hardships, troubles, and unspeakable difficulties, they have sped their way with courage and cheerfulness, undeterred by dangers, great privations and hardships which nothing but their strong faith and unflagging zeal in their sacred mission could have enabled them to surmount. Of their ultimate success I entertain, perhaps, as little doubt as they do themselves; but on this opium question the "zeal of their house hath eaten them up," and they have unconsciously been playing the game of the crafty heathen. Let them pursue their good cause, and not allow themselves to be cajoled by their bitterest enemies; above all, let them keep clear of politics. No clergyman ever improves by intermeddling in such matters, but, on the contrary, by doing so he invariably becomes a bad politician and a worse priest. Let these vast sums, subscribed for the promotion of a chimera, be transferred to the missionaries' fund, so as to improve the lot of these missionaries and give them a little more comfort in the hostile climate and the bitter fight that is before them. "The labourer is worthy of his hire," and it is starving the missionary work not to pay its servants liberally, I should say most liberally. With respect to the Rev. Mr. Storrs Turner, whose name I have so often mentioned, and whose writings I have so frequently animadverted upon, I had the pleasure of knowing him in China. No worthier or better gentleman, and no more able and zealous missionary clergyman ever set foot there. In referring to him and his writings as I have done, nothing was further from my thoughts than to impute to him for a moment an unworthy motive. He is in the first rank of the missionary clergymen who stood the brunt of the battle, and is deserving of praise and honour. As yet the missionaries have been like husbandmen tilling an unkindly soil, trying to produce wholesome fruit where only gross weeds grew before; and although small apparently has been the fruit as yet, the unfriendly soil has shown signs of yielding, and I feel assured that the day will come when their labours shall be rewarded with a plenteous harvest. I have now told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on the opium question; certainly such has been my intention. In doing so I am afraid I may have given pain to many good and excellent people; I know that I have given pain to myself. I can only repeat that I have never intended to impute a wrongful or unworthy motive to any of them. Those who are and have been engaged in the Anti-Opium agitation are, I admit, influenced by the best motives. I have myself throughout been solely actuated by a desire to remove the unfounded delusions that have got possession of these worthy people, which have done great injustice to our fellow-countrymen in China, as well as to the benevolent British public, which has kept this Anti-Opium Society provided with the funds that have enabled them to carry on their operations, to the embarrassment of the administration of our great Indian Entire. Personally, I say again, that I have no interest whatever in the matter, nor have I any leaning towards the interests of any of the merchants now engaged in the opium trade. My hands in this matter are absolutely clean. In the preface to the first edition of these lectures I have explained how and why I came to deliver them; that is my explanation without any mental reservation whatsoever. I have, I admit, a very strong feeling upon the subject, but so also have those who differ from me; and I would ask those most excellent and honourable people to remember that there are two sides to most questions,--to imagine, if they can, that there are other persons, totally opposed to their views, who are quite as honest in their convictions as they are themselves,--to look upon me as one of those persons, and to measure my feelings by the strength of their own. I say this because I have heard that a rumour to the effect of my being in some way personally interested in the Indo-China opium trade has been circulated. If such is the case, this rumour has no foundation in fact. I cannot prevent the dissemination of such reports; but they are, I repeat, utterly groundless. Honest in my purpose, I can afford to treat them with unconcern, and can justly add, whilst far from setting myself up as better than my neighbours, that-- "I am arm'd so strong in honesty, That they pass me by as the idle wind, Which I respect not." APPENDIX. APPENDIX. _Being an Official Letter from the Hon. Francis Bulkeley Johnson, of the firm of Jardine, Matheson, & Co., Chairman of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce, to Charles Magniac, Esq., M.P., President of the London Chamber of Commerce._ Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong, 22nd November, 1882. SIR,--The attention of the Committee of this Chamber has been called to certain statements recently made in the United Kingdom regarding this Colony, on what must unfortunately appear to the public mind to be competent authority, but which are nevertheless unwarranted and misleading. The statements referred to are, in the opinion of the Committee, calculated not only to affect injuriously the reputation of the Colony, but to damage its interests by prejudicing the policy of the Home Government and the Imperial Parliament, when dealing with the settlement of questions arising out of the close political and commercial relations which the Island of Hong Kong from its juxta-position must necessarily hold with the Empire of China. The Committee offers no apology for addressing you on this subject as it ventures to believe that the promotion of British Commercial enterprise abroad in all legitimate channels is one of the objects the London Chamber of Commerce has in view, and, to that end, it is clearly desirable that a true appreciation should prevail, not only among the members of your influential Committee, but throughout the United Kingdom, as to the position and character of British trade and traders in the Colonies and foreign countries. In the course of an address on the Repression of Crime delivered at the Social Science Congress, recently held in Nottingham, Sir John Pope Hennessy, Governor of this Colony, now on leave of absence in England, is reported to have said--I quote from the _Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express_, of the 22nd September:--"In the little Colony under my government one million sterling changes hands every month in the article of opium. But, with commercial activity and profits, there comes an increase of crime from opium, from its consumption, and from its smuggling. Hong Kong wages a chronic opium war on a small scale with China. A desperate class of men, the opium smugglers make the Colony the base of their operations--they purchase cannon and ammunition there, they fit out heavily armed junks and engage, within sight of the island, in naval battles with the revenue cruisers of the Emperor of China. Sometimes the Emperor's revenue officers are killed, sometimes the smugglers. Not unfrequently wounded men of both sides are brought into the Colony. All this gives rise to a class of crimes difficult for the Governor to repress, difficult on account of the influence of those who profit by it, whether they are local traders or the financiers of a Viceroy." The picture thus sensationally drawn is one which, from its great exaggerations, gives an untrue representation of the state of things prevailing in these waters, and cannot fail to lead to the formation of wholly incorrect inferences as to the relations existing between the population of this island, for the most part law-abiding and pursuing honest and industrious callings, and the authorities of the neighbouring mainland. Sir John Hennessy states that opium, to the extent of a million sterling, _changes hands_ in this Colony every month, and this assertion as to the magnitude of the trade was obviously made in order to show the vast and wide-spread interests involved in it, and the influential protection therefore likely to be afforded to a traffic which the general tenour of the remarks just quoted cannot fail to lead ordinary readers to suppose is to a very large extent, if not mainly, contraband. Your Committee will be able to judge from the following facts how far the injurious imputation, thus plausibly insinuated, if not directly stated, is to be justified by the actual position of affairs. The import of opium from India and Persia to Hong Kong and _the whole of China_, for the year 1881 was-- Of Malwa, from Bombay 35,729 chests. Bengal, from Calcutta 44,124 " From Persia 6,763 " ------ Total 86,616 chests. of an approximate value of £10,000,000 sterling. With some slight and unimportant exceptions the whole of this opium, the trade in which it is worthy of note is now practically monopolized by British Indian firms, passes through this harbour, but by far the larger proportion of it can only be classed under the head of Hong Kong trade in the sense in which the traffic through the Suez Canal can be considered as Egyptian trade. About one half of the quantity of opium I have named as the entire import, is immediately sent on either in the original foreign vessels conveying it here, or by other vessels, also foreign, to Shanghai, where it is entered regularly at the Custom House under official foreign superintendence. Of the remainder, about one half, that is to say, one quarter of the whole, is shipped by foreign vessels to other treaty ports open to foreign trade, where it is duly entered at the Customs. The local trade proper of the Colony, whether for shipment to Macao or Canton by foreign and native vessels, or in native bottoms, to non-treaty ports,--_i.e._ to ports and places with which foreign vessels cannot trade,--for consumption on the island, and for re-export in a prepared state to California and Australia, or for smuggling purposes, embraces therefore about one fourth of the entire export to China from India and Persia, or say, in quantity about 21,000 chests of an approximate value of £2,500,000, or about £200,000 per month instead of £1,000,000 per month as asserted by Governor Hennessy. There being no Custom House at this port, it is impossible to obtain thoroughly accurate statistics as to the disposition of the 21,000 chests of opium which form the local trade of the Colony. As regards the local consumption and export in a prepared state, it may be estimated that from 2,500 to 5,000 chests are boiled in the Colony every year, leaving a balance of 16,000 to 18,500 chests to be accounted for. To suppose that this quantity is taken into China by smugglers would be to disregard all the known conditions of the trade and the fact that the preventive service of the Chinese Empire is probably in point of espionage the most carefully organized one in the world. On every road, in every village bordering on a river or waterway, at every port, village, and fishing station along the coast, there is a watchful Customs Station rendering it very difficult for a boat of the smallest size to touch the shore without being overhauled and made to pay levies purporting to be imperial or local dues. To what extent such dues are honestly levied and declared, there is no means of ascertaining. The Customs Stations are believed to be farmed out by the provincial authorities to officials who pay for their appointments, and although a service thus organized would be considered as a demoralized one and its system unreservedly condemned according to Western ideas, it is probable that the receipts of perquisites, and the partial remission of duties by Customs officials who farm the revenue, is a _quasi_ recognized practice acquiesced in by all classes throughout the Empire. With this system, however, the Colony and merchants of Hong Kong have no concern, and for its results they are in no way responsible. As the vast majority of the junks which leave the mainland with produce or arrive there with imports, undoubtedly obtain from the local Custom Houses port clearances and bills of entry, the large trade, whether in opium or other goods, carried on between this port and places on the coast in native bottoms, being thus subjected to the ordinary fiscal dues levied on the China coast according to the practice of the Empire, is for the most part a strictly legal one. Smuggling between this island and the mainland in goods other than opium scarcely exists, as an evasion of the low _ad valorem_ duty of five per cent. which is payable on entry at the treaty ports, and is probably the maximum similarly leviable at other ports, would not compensate for the heavy charges which must be incurred by transit over unusual routes even if the ubiquitous Customs officials could be avoided. Opium, owing to its portable character, the facility with which it can be hidden beneath water without serious deterioration, and the high duty imposed upon it, is more readily and profitably smuggled, but the returns which have been received through the Native Custom House at Canton make it nearly certain that the quantity which evades the payment of duty, either at the treaty ports or the ports and places not open to foreign trade, is not greater than 2,000 to 3,000 chests per annum. (See Parliamentary Papers--China No. 2, 1880.) And the quantity thus estimated to be smuggled is not conveyed, as alleged by Governor Hennessy, in junks heavily armed for the purpose, fighting their way to the mainland through the revenue cruisers, but is concealed, a few balls at a time, about the persons, and in the luggage of Chinese passengers by the steamers plying between this port and Canton, and other places on the coast, or in ordinary trading junks and fishing boats of unpretentious character, or fast pulling boats propelled by a number of rowers, or by various devices such as are practised by the persons who evade the duties on tobacco in the United Kingdom. That the revenue cruisers which surround this island keep up an effective blockade which prevents the smuggling of opium on a much larger scale than at present takes place, is probably true, and it is also true that Chinese junks and boats in the estuary of the Canton river, which do not promptly submit to be overhauled by the cruisers, are chased and brought to for examination, if necessary, by being fired upon. The propinquity, however, of this island to the mainland, so far from being a cause of injury to the Chinese Customs Revenue, operates most advantageously for the collection of fiscal levies upon the foreign trade of the southern coast of the Empire. Were the island situated at a greater distance from the mainland than it is, or did not exist in its present conditions as a free port under a foreign government, the difficulties which would be placed in the way of the Chinese authorities, when engaged in checking smuggling in opium, would be much greater than they now are. Opium in that case would probably be shipped in native vessels from more distant depôts, such as Singapore, Saigon or the French mediatized territory of Tonquin, to Chinese ports and places, and it would be impossible for the revenue cruisers to watch the entire line of their own coast as effectively as they are now able to blockade this island in which the trade is centred and controlled. There is, therefore, no ground for Governor Hennessy's statement that this Colony is engaged in chronic war with the neighbouring mainland, or for his implied imputation that the course of its trade is injurious to the Chinese fiscal revenue. On the contrary, the facts of the case show that the physical conditions of the island of Hong Kong not only afford the ready means by which the Chinese Government is enabled to protect its legitimate revenue, but also unfortunately place it in the power of the authorities of the province of Quangtung to surcharge the trade in foreign goods, carried on in native vessels between Hong Kong and the southern ports of China, with additional taxation in excess of that authorized by the foreign treaties. With the view to make a representation to H.M. Government in support of which it may hereafter be necessary to invite the good offices of your Committee, this Chamber is now engaged in an investigation into the facts, so far as they can be ascertained, relating to this alleged surcharge of duties upon the Colonial trade for the collection of which, as well as for the prevention of an illicit traffic in opium, there is reason to believe the blockade of this island by Chinese revenue cruisers is maintained. So much as regards the general conditions of the trade of the Colony which evidence the grave misrepresentations contained in the Nottingham address, but in order to show conclusively, by official returns on matters of fact, the groundlessness of the specific accusation made by Sir John Pope Hennessy, your attention is invited to the annexed copies of correspondence, with its enclosures, between the Colonial Government and the Committee of this Chamber. In response to the request of the Committee, the Acting Colonial Secretary under the direction of His Excellency the Administrator has furnished the Chamber with the following documents, viz.:-- 1. Extracts from a Report by the Colonial Treasurer and Registrar General upon the Opium Trade of the Colony. 2. Return from the Harbour Master, showing the character of the native vessels engaged in Opium Smuggling and the number of cases of alleged smuggling brought before the Marine Court since April 1877. 3. Return from the Captain Superintendent of Police, showing the total number of attacks and seizures made by Customs Revenue Cruisers in the neighbourhood of the Colony and reported to the Police since 1st January 1877. The Colonial Treasurer's Report on the Opium Trade for 1876, confirms the figures of the approximate estimate made by this Chamber from independent sources and given above, as to the probable quantity of opium smuggled into China from this Colony. The Harbour Master's Return shows that there is no special class of vessels fitted out in the Colony and heavily armed for the purpose of opium smuggling, as alleged by Governor Hennessy, and in the five cases cited in the report which comprise the whole number brought before the Marine Court in the course of five years, it will be seen that the quantity of opium found in the vessels charged with being engaged in illicit trade was so inconsiderable, as to make it obvious that the concealment of opium took place in each case in an ordinary trading junk. It is also clear from this Return that nothing is known in the Harbour Master's Department of the armed organization for the purpose of opium smuggling which is stated by Governor Hennessy to carry on a chronic war with the Empire of China. The return from the Captain Superintendent of Police dealing with the entire number of cases reported to the police authorities during the years 1878 to 1882 (inclusive) of seizures by Chinese Revenue cruisers and affrays between the cruisers and native vessels on the neighbouring China coast, is instructive. The number of cases is 23, but of these only 6 are reported to be connected with the opium trade and the value of the opium seized varies from $3 in one case to the maximum amount in another of $800, showing, in confirmation of the Report by the Harbour Master to a similar effect, the comparatively unimportant character of the opium smuggling which prevails in these waters, and the absurdity of the allegation that there is a large contraband trade conducted in heavily armed junks fitted for the purpose in this harbour. The remaining 17 cases of seizures by revenue cruisers during five years do not appear by the returns to have been connected with opium; 7 of them were salt junks, 1 sulphur and saltpetre, 3 general cargo, and 2 sugar. In 4 cases the particulars of cargoes are not stated. The return shows the number of casualties with fatal results reported to the police as having occurred in affrays between native vessels and the revenue cruisers during the period of five years under review. Such casualties have been 8 in number, but not one of them appears to have had any connection with opium smuggling, or to have arisen out of any case of contraband trading with which this Colony was concerned. In August 1878, a fisherman on the Hong Kong shore was accidentally killed by a shot fired by a revenue cruiser when pursuing a junk ultimately seized for some breach of Chinese regulations with general cargo on board. In May 1879, three men of a revenue cruiser were killed in an affray with a junk carrying salt. As salt is not produced or prepared in this island, this affray was not generated in the Colony or within Colonial waters. The preparation of salt in China is conducted as a very strict monopoly by means of Government licenses, and trade in it other than by duly authorized persons is contraband. Serious affrays between salt smugglers and revenue officers are well known to be common throughout the Empire, they are frequently alluded to in the _Peking Gazette_, and in the case referred to in the Police Report, the junk must have been passing from one part of the territory of China to another part outside of British waters. On 28th November 1881, a man was killed in a boat which was conveying two gentlemen of this Colony who were returning from a shooting expedition on the mainland. Passing by a Customs Station on the Chinese side of the channel the boat was ordered to heave to; not doing so promptly, musket shots were fired at it and one of the crew was most unfortunately killed. In this case there appears to have been no smuggling attempted. In April this year a man was killed on board a rowing boat in the narrow channel separating Hong Kong from the mainland, and in June last two men were killed outside British waters in a trading junk carrying sulphur and saltpetre, which are contraband articles of trade in China. In neither case does it appear that opium was concerned. With reference, therefore, to Sir John Pope Hennessy's allegations, which were to the following effect:-- _a._--That this island is the base of operations for a class of desperate men who carry on a large contraband trade in opium with China; _b._--That for the purpose of carrying on that trade, junks heavily armed with cannon are fitted out here and wage a chronic war with the neighbouring Empire; _c._--That these junks engage, within sight of the island, in naval battles with the Chinese Revenue cruisers resulting in large loss of life on both sides; The facts are:-- _a._--There is no large contraband trade in opium carried on between this Colony and the China coast. On the contrary, the opium smuggled, considering the extent of the trade, is inconsiderable, and for the most part is carried into China in small quantities, portable and easily concealed, just as parcels of tobacco are smuggled into the United Kingdom. _b._--That within the knowledge of the Harbour Master and the Colonial police authorities no armed junks have been fitted out in this harbour during the last five years for the purpose of opium smuggling. Smuggling of opium, when attempted at all otherwise than by passengers in the various steamers trading to the coast of China, is carried on in ordinary trading junks or in rowing boats dependent for success in their illicit trade upon their swiftness and small size. _c._--No such contests as those referred to in allegation _c_ have taken place within the last five years, and no loss of life in connection with opium smuggling during the same period has come under the notice of the police. Any serious affrays attended with loss of life which have occurred in the neighbourhood of this Colony between native vessels and revenue cruisers, have been in connection with contraband traffic in other articles on the adjacent China coast with which, so far as is known, this Colony has had no concern. The only instance reported by the police in which revenue officers have been injured, was the case of the salt junk referred to above and shown to be a purely Chinese affair. It may be added that on goods other than opium there is very little, if any, illicit trade carried on between the Colony and the mainland, and that no allegation has ever been made that foreigners are engaged directly or indirectly in smuggling of any kind. In conclusion, the Committee cannot refrain from expressing regret that Sir John Pope Hennessy having had the fullest opportunities, as Governor of this island for five years, of obtaining accurate information with regard to occurrences taking place and the state of affairs prevailing here during his term of office, should have been led to make statements, unfounded in fact and misleading in the inferences they are calculated to raise, which could not fail to damage the character of the Colony, the legitimate interests of which it might justly have been expected he would have been most anxious to defend. Copies of this letter will be sent through His Excellency the Administrator to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, and to the various Chambers of Commerce in the United Kingdom.--I am, Sir, your most obedient Servant, (Signed) F. BULKELEY JOHNSON, _Chairman_. Charles Magniac, Esq., M.P., President of the London Chamber of Commerce, London. LONDON: PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. FOOTNOTES: [1] "British Opium Policy, and its Results to India and China." [2] The loose control possessed by the Emperor over his officials was well described by one of the most trusted ministers of the great Emperor Keen Lung. He said to one of the Jesuit missionaries at Pekin, that "the Emperor himself cannot put a stop to the evils that exist in the service. To displace those officials who have misbehaved themselves, he may send others, but instead of removing the evil they generally commit greater exactions than their predecessors. The Emperor is assured that all is well, whilst affairs are at their worst and the people are oppressed." [3] "China: a History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People." [4] "The Middle Kingdom." A Survey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, &c., of the Chinese Empire, and its Inhabitants. [5] As a matter of fact the skull of a Chinaman is fully double the thickness of that of a European. [6] "The River of Golden Sand; the Narrative of a Journey through China and Eastern Thibet to Burmah," by Capt. William Gill, R.E. [7] "The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence," by Alfred Swaine Taylor, M.D., F.R.S. [8] I have a distant recollection of a syllogism with which schoolboys once used to exercise the minds of their juniors, which ran, I think, thus:-- Epimenides said all Cretans were liars, Epimenides himself was a Cretan, Therefore Epimenides was a liar,--therefore he was not a liar. [9] "L'Angleterre, la Chine, et l'Inde." I am indebted for a transcript of the chapter in question to Mr. H. Henry Sultzberger, Merchant, of No. 10 Cannon Street, City, who has taken such an interest in the opium question that he had the chapter printed at his own expense; and also to M. d'Audlan, a teacher of modern languages, for a translation of it. [10] "Annals of Chemical Medicine, including the Application of Chemistry to Physiology, Pathology, Therapeutics, Pharmacy, Toxicology and Hygiene." [11] In those days about £100 sterling.--W. H. B. [12] The unfounded charge of smuggling by British merchants and foreigners in Hong Kong has been completely refuted by the Honourable Francis Bulkeley Johnson, the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce of the Colony, in a very able letter to Charles Magniac, Esq., M.P., the President of the London Chamber of Commerce. This letter, which reached me just before going to press, will be found set out _in extenso_ by way of Appendix. It is full of valuable and interesting information on the Indo-China opium trade, and is well worthy of careful study. [13] In a recent number of the _Temps_, England was flouted with playing a humanitarian, hypocritical part towards Tunis, whilst we oppressed the natives of China by forcing them to smoke opium, in order to augment the revenue of the Indian Government. 
6881	----	THE NOTE BOOK OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY. CONTENTS. THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE LITERARY HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY MILTON _vs._ SOUTHEY AND LANDOR FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER ON SUICIDE SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE ENGLISH DICTIONARIES DRYDEN'S HEXASTICH POPE'S RETORT UPON ADDISON THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS. A SEQUEL TO 'MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS.' [1] [1854.] It is impossible to conciliate readers of so saturnine and gloomy a class, that they cannot enter with genial sympathy into any gaiety whatever, but, least of all, when the gaiety trespasses a little into the province of the extravagant. In such a case, not to sympathize is not to understand; and the playfulness, which is not relished, becomes flat and insipid, or absolutely without meaning. Fortunately, after all such churls have withdrawn from my audience in high displeasure, there remains a large majority who are loud in acknowledging the amusement which they have derived from a former paper of mine, 'On Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts;' at the same time proving the sincerity of their praise by one hesitating expression of censure. Repeatedly they have suggested to me, that perhaps the extravagance, though clearly intentional, and forming one element in the general gaiety of the conception, went too far. I am not myself of that opinion; and I beg to remind these friendly censors, that it is amongst the direct purposes and efforts of this _bagatelle_ to graze the brink of horror, and of all that would in actual realization be most repulsive. The very excess of the extravagance, in fact, by suggesting to the reader continually the mere aeriality of the entire speculation, furnishes the surest means of disenchanting him from the horror which might else gather upon his feelings. Let me remind such objectors, once for all, of Dean Swift's proposal for turning to account the supernumerary infants of the three kingdoms, which, in those days, both at Dublin and at London, were provided for in foundling hospitals, by cooking and eating them. This was an extravaganza, though really bolder and more coarsely practical than mine, which did not provoke any reproaches even to a dignitary of the supreme Irish church; its own monstrosity was its excuse; mere extravagance was felt to license and accredit the little _jeu d'esprit_, precisely as the blank impossibilities of Lilliput, of Laputa, of the Yahoos, &c., had licensed those. If, therefore, any man thinks it worth his while to tilt against so mere a foam-bubble of gaiety as this lecture on the aesthetics of murder, I shelter myself for the moment under the Telamonian shield of the Dean. But, in reality, my own little paper may plead a privileged excuse for its extravagance, such as is altogether wanting to the Dean's. Nobody can pretend, for a moment, on behalf of the Dean, that there is any ordinary and natural tendency in human thoughts, which could ever turn to infants as articles of diet; under any conceivable circumstances, this would be felt as the most aggravated form of cannibalism--cannibalism applying itself to the most defenceless part of the species. But, on the other hand, the tendency to a critical or aesthetic valuation of fires and murders is universal. If you are summoned to the spectacle of a great fire, undoubtedly the first impulse is--to assist in putting it out. But that field of exertion is very limited, and is soon filled by regular professional people, trained and equipped for the service. In the case of a fire which is operating upon _private_ property, pity for a neighbor's calamity checks us at first in treating the affair as a scenic spectacle. But perhaps the fire may be confined to public buildings. And in any case, after we have paid our tribute of regret to the affair, considered as a calamity, inevitably, and without restraint, we go on to consider it as a stage spectacle. Exclamations of--How grand! How magnificent! arise in a sort of rapture from the crowd. For instance, when Drury Lane was burned down in the first decennium of this century, the falling in of the roof was signalized by a mimic suicide of the protecting Apollo that surmounted and crested the centre of this roof. The god was stationary with his lyre, and seemed looking down upon the fiery ruins that were so rapidly approaching him. Suddenly the supporting timbers below him gave way; a convulsive heave of the billowing flames seemed for a moment to raise the statue; and then, as if on some impulse of despair, the presiding deity appeared not to fall, but to throw himself into the fiery deluge, for he went down head foremost; and in all respects, the descent had the air of a voluntary act. What followed? From every one of the bridges over the river, and from other open areas which commanded the spectacle, there arose a sustained uproar of admiration and sympathy. Some few years before this event, a prodigious fire occurred at Liverpool; the _Goree_, a vast pile of warehouses close to one of the docks, was burned to the ground. The huge edifice, eight or nine stories high, and laden with most combustible goods, many thousand bales of cotton, wheat and oats in thousands of quarters, tar, turpentine, rum, gunpowder, &c., continued through many hours of darkness to feed this tremendous fire. To aggravate the calamity, it blew a regular gale of wind; luckily for the shipping, it blew inland, that is, to the east; and all the way down to Warrington, eighteen miles distant to the eastward, the whole air was illuminated by flakes of cotton, often saturated with rum, and by what seemed absolute worlds of blazing sparks, that lighted up all the upper chambers of the air. All the cattle lying abroad in the fields through a breadth of eighteen miles, were thrown into terror and agitation. Men, of course, read in this hurrying overhead of scintillating and blazing vortices, the annunciation of some gigantic calamity going on in Liverpool; and the lamentation on that account was universal. But that mood of public sympathy did not at all interfere to suppress or even to check the momentary bursts of rapturous admiration, as this arrowy sleet of many-colored fire rode on the wings of hurricane, alternately through open depths of air, or through dark clouds overhead. Precisely the same treatment is applied to murders. After the first tribute of sorrow to those who have perished, but, at all events, after the personal interests have been tranquillized by time, inevitably the scenical features (what aesthetically may be called the comparative _advantages_) of the several murders are reviewed and valued. One murder is compared with another; and the circumstances of superiority, as, for example, in the incidence and effects of surprise, of mystery, &c., are collated and appraised. I, therefore, for _my_ extravagance, claim an inevitable and perpetual ground in the spontaneous tendencies of the human mind when left to itself. But no one will pretend that any corresponding plea can be advanced on behalf of Swift. In this important distinction between myself and the Dean, lies one reason which prompted the present writing. A second purpose of this paper is, to make the reader acquainted circumstantially with three memorable cases of murder, which long ago the voice of amateurs has crowned with laurel, but especially with the two earliest of the three, viz., the immortal Williams' murders of 1812. The act and the actor are each separately in the highest degree interesting; and, as forty-two years have elapsed since 1812, it cannot be supposed that either is known circumstantially to the men of the current generation. Never, throughout the annals of universal Christendom, has there indeed been any act of one solitary insulated individual, armed with power so appalling over the hearts of men, as that exterminating murder, by which, during the winter of 1812, John Williams in one hour, smote two houses with emptiness, exterminated all but two entire households, and asserted his own supremacy above all the children of Cain. It would be absolutely impossible adequately to describe the frenzy of feelings which, throughout the next fortnight, mastered the popular heart; the mere delirium of indignant horror in some, the mere delirium of panic in others. For twelve succeeding days, under some groundless notion that the unknown murderer had quitted London, the panic which had convulsed the mighty metropolis diffused itself all over the island. I was myself at that time nearly three hundred miles from London; but there, and everywhere, the panic was indescribable. One lady, my next neighbor, whom personally I knew, living at the moment, during the absence of her husband, with a few servants in a very solitary house, never rested until she had placed eighteen doors (so she told me, and, indeed, satisfied me by ocular proof), each secured by ponderous bolts, and bars, and chains, between her own bedroom and any intruder of human build. To reach her, even in her drawing-room, was like going, as a flag of truce, into a beleaguered fortress; at every sixth step one was stopped by a sort of portcullis. The panic was not confined to the rich; women in the humblest ranks more than once died upon the spot, from the shock attending some suspicious attempts at intrusion upon the part of vagrants, meditating probably nothing worse than a robbery, but whom the poor women, misled by the London newspapers, had fancied to be the dreadful London murderer. Meantime, this solitary artist, that rested in the centre of London, self-supported by his own conscious grandeur, as a domestic Attila, or 'scourge of God;' this man, that walked in darkness, and relied upon murder (as afterwards transpired) for bread, for clothes, for promotion in life, was silently preparing an effectual answer to the public journals; and on the twelfth day after his inaugural murder, he advertised his presence in London, and published to all men the absurdity of ascribing to _him_ any ruralizing propensities, by striking a second blow, and accomplishing a second family extermination. Somewhat lightened was the _provincial_ panic by this proof that the murderer had not condescended to sneak into the country, or to abandon for a moment, under any motive of caution or fear, the great metropolitan _castra stativa_ of gigantic crime, seated for ever on the Thames. In fact, the great artist disdained a provincial reputation; and he must have felt, as a case of ludicrous disproportion, the contrast between a country town or village, on the one hand, and, on the other, a work more lasting than brass--a [Greek: _chtaema es aei_]--a murder such in quality as any murder that _he_ would condescend to own for a work turned out from his own _studio_. Coleridge, whom I saw some months after these terrific murders, told me, that, for _his_ part, though at the time resident in London, he had not shared in the prevailing panic; _him_ they effected only as a philosopher, and threw him into a profound reverie upon the tremendous power which is laid open in a moment to any man who can reconcile himself to the abjuration of all conscientious restraints, if, at the same time, thoroughly without fear. Not sharing in the public panic, however, Coleridge did not consider that panic at all unreasonable; for, as he said most truly in that vast metropolis there are many thousands of households, composed exclusively of women and children; many other thousands there are who necessarily confide their safety, in the long evenings, to the discretion of a young servant girl; and if she suffers herself to be beguiled by the pretence of a message from her mother, sister, or sweetheart, into opening the door, there, in one second of time, goes to wreck the security of the house. However, at that time, and for many months afterwards, the practice of steadily putting the chain upon the door before it was opened prevailed generally, and for a long time served as a record of that deep impression left upon London by Mr. Williams. Southey, I may add, entered deeply into the public feeling on this occasion, and said to me, within a week or two of the first murder, that it was a private event of that order which rose to the dignity of a national event. [2] But now, having prepared the reader to appreciate on its true scale this dreadful tissue of murder (which as a record belonging to an era that is now left forty-two years behind us, not one person in four of this generation can be expected to know correctly), let me pass to the circumstantial details of the affair. Yet, first of all, one word as to the local scene of the murders. Ratcliffe Highway is a public thoroughfare in a most chaotic quarter of eastern or nautical London; and at this time (viz., in 1812), when no adequate police existed except the _detective_ police of Bow Street, admirable for its own peculiar purposes, but utterly incommensurate to the general service of the capital, it was a most dangerous quarter. Every third man at the least might be set down as a foreigner. Lascars, Chinese, Moors, Negroes, were met at every step. And apart from the manifold ruffianism, shrouded impenetrably under the mixed hats and turbans of men whose past was untraceable to any European eye, it is well known that the navy (especially, in time of war, the commercial navy) of Christendom is the sure receptacle of all the murderers and ruffians whose crimes have given them a motive for withdrawing themselves for a season from the public eye. It is true, that few of this class are qualified to act as 'able' seamen: but at all times, and especially during war, only a small proportion (or _nucleus_) of each ship's company consists of such men: the large majority being mere untutored landsmen. John Williams, however, who had been occasionally rated as a seaman on board of various Indiamen, &c., was probably a very accomplished seaman. Pretty generally, in fact, he was a ready and adroit man, fertile in resources under all sudden difficulties, and most flexibly adapting himself to all varieties of social life. Williams was a man of middle stature (five feet seven and a-half, to five feet eight inches high), slenderly built, rather thin, but wiry, tolerably muscular, and clear of all superfluous flesh. A lady, who saw him under examination (I think at the Thames Police Office), assured me that his hair was of the most extraordinary and vivid color, viz., bright yellow, something between an orange and lemon color. Williams had been in India; chiefly in Bengal and Madras: but he had also been upon the Indus. Now, it is notorious that, in the Punjaub, horses of a high caste are often painted--crimson, blue, green, purple; and it struck me that Williams might, for some casual purpose of disguise, have taken a hint from this practice of Scinde and Lahore, so that the color might not have been natural. In other respects, his appearance was natural enough; and, judging by a plaster cast of him, which I purchased in London, I should say mean, as regarded his facial structure. One fact, however, was striking, and fell in with the impression of his natural tiger character, that his face wore at all times a bloodless ghastly pallor. 'You might imagine,' said my informant, 'that in his veins circulated not red life- blood, such as could kindle into the blush of shame, of wrath, of pity-- but a green sap that welled from no human heart.' His eyes seemed frozen and glazed, as if their light were all converged upon some victim lurking in the far background. So far his appearance might have repelled; but, on the other hand, the concurrent testimony of many witnesses, and also the silent testimony of facts, showed that the oiliness and snaky insinuation of his demeanor counteracted the repulsiveness of his ghastly face, and amongst inexperienced young women won for him a very favorable reception. In particular, one gentle-mannered girl, whom Williams had undoubtedly designed to murder, gave in evidence--that once, when sitting alone with her, he had said, 'Now, Miss R., supposing that I should appear about midnight at your bedside, armed with a carving knife, what would you say?' To which the confiding girl had, replied, 'Oh, Mr. Williams, if it was anybody else, I should be frightened. But, as soon as I heard _your_ voice, I should be tranquil.' Poor girl! had this outline sketch of Mr. Williams been filled in and realized, she would have seen something in the corpse-like face, and heard something in the sinister voice, that would have unsettled her tranquillity for ever. But nothing short of such dreadful experiences could avail to unmask Mr. John Williams. Into this perilous region it was that, on a Saturday night in December, Mr. Williams, whom we suppose to have long since made his _coup d'essai_, forced his way through the crowded streets, bound on business. To say, was to do. And this night he had said to himself secretly, that he would execute a design which he had already sketched, and which, when finished, was destined on the following day to strike consternation into 'all that mighty heart' of London, from centre to circumference. It was afterwards remembered that he had quitted his lodgings on this dark errand about eleven o'clock P. M.; not that he meant to begin so soon: but he needed to reconnoitre. He carried his tools closely buttoned up under his loose roomy coat. It was in harmony with the general subtlety of his character, and his polished hatred of brutality, that by universal agreement his manners were distinguished for exquisite suavity: the tiger's heart was masked by the most insinuating and snaky refinement. All his acquaintances afterwards described his dissimulation as so ready and so perfect, that if, in making his way through the streets, always so crowded on a Saturday night in neighborhoods so poor, he had accidentally jostled any person, he would (as they were all satisfied) have stopped to offer the most gentlemanly apologies: with his devilish heart brooding over the most hellish of purposes, he would yet have paused to express a benign hope that the huge mallet, buttoned up under his elegant surtout, with a view to the little business that awaited him about ninety minutes further on, had not inflicted any pain on the stranger with whom he had come into collision. Titian, I believe, but certainly Rubens, and perhaps Vandyke, made it a rule never to practise his art but in full dress--point ruffles, bag wig, and diamond-hilted sword; and Mr. Williams, there is reason to believe, when he went out for a grand compound massacre (in another sense, one might have applied to it the Oxford phrase of _going out as Grand Compounder_), always assumed black silk stockings and pumps; nor would he on any account have degraded his position as an artist by wearing a morning gown. In his second great performance, it was particularly noticed and recorded by the one sole trembling man, who under killing agonies of fear was compelled (as the reader will find) from a secret stand to become the solitary spectator of his atrocities, that Mr. Williams wore a long blue frock, of the very finest cloth, and richly lined with silk. Amongst the anecdotes which circulated about him, it was also said at the time, that Mr. Williams employed the first of dentists, and also the first of chiropodists. On no account would he patronize any second-rate skill. And beyond a doubt, in that perilous little branch of business which was practised by himself, he might be regarded as the most aristocratic and fastidious of artists. But who meantime was the victim, to whose abode he was hurrying? For surely he never could be so indiscreet as to be sailing about on a roving cruise in search of some chance person to murder? Oh, no: he had suited himself with a victim some time before, viz., an old and very intimate friend. For he seems to have laid it down as a maxim--that the best person to murder was a friend; and, in default of a friend, which is an article one cannot always command, an acquaintance: because, in either case, on first approaching his subject, suspicion would be disarmed: whereas a stranger might take alarm, and find in the very countenance of his murderer elect a warning summons to place himself on guard. However, in the present ease, his destined victim was supposed to unite both characters: originally he had been a friend; but subsequently, on good cause arising, he had become an enemy. Or more probably, as others said, the feelings had long since languished which gave life to either relation of friendship or of enmity. Marr was the name of that unhappy man, who (whether in the character of friend or enemy) had been selected for the subject of this present Saturday night's performance. And the story current at that time about the connection between Williams and Marr, having (whether true or not true) never been contradicted upon authority, was, that they sailed in the same Indiaman to Calcutta; that they had quarrelled when at sea; but another version of the story said--no: they had quarrelled after returning from sea; and the subject of their quarrel was Mrs. Marr, a very pretty young woman, for whose favor they had been rival candidates, and at one time with most bitter enmity towards each other. Some circumstances give a color of probability to this story. Otherwise it has sometimes happened, on occasion of a murder not sufficiently accounted for, that, from pure goodness of heart intolerant of a mere sordid motive for a striking murder, some person has forged, and the public has accredited, a story representing the murderer as having moved under some loftier excitement: and in this case the public, too much shocked at the idea of Williams having on the single motive of gain consummated so complex a tragedy, welcomed the tale which represented him as governed by deadly malice, growing out of the more impassioned and noble rivalry for the favor of a woman. The case remains in some degree doubtful; but, certainly, the probability is, that Mrs. Marr had been the true cause, the _causa teterrima_, of the feud between the men. Meantime, the minutes are numbered, the sands of the hour-glass are running out, that measure the duration of this feud upon earth. This night it shall cease. To-morrow is the day which in England they call Sunday, which in Scotland they call by the Judaic name of 'Sabbath.' To both nations, under different names, the day has the same functions; to both it is a day of rest. For thee also, Marr, it shall be a day of rest; so is it written; thou, too, young Marr, shalt find rest--thou, and thy household, and the stranger that is within thy gates. But that rest must be in the world which lies beyond the grave. On this side the grave ye have all slept your final sleep. The night was one of exceeding darkness; and in this humble quarter of London, whatever the night happened to be, light or dark, quiet or stormy, all shops were kept open on Saturday nights until twelve o'clock, at the least, and many for half an hour longer. There was no rigorous and pedantic Jewish superstition about the exact limits of Sunday. At the very worst, the Sunday stretched over from one o'clock, A. M. of one day, up to eight o'clock A. M. of the next, making a clear circuit of thirty-one hours. This, surely, was long enough. Marr, on this particular Saturday night, would be content if it were even shorter, provided it would come more quickly, for he has been toiling through sixteen hours behind his counter. Marr's position in life was this: he kept a little hosier's shop, and had invested in his stock and the fittings of his shop about 180 pounds. Like all men engaged in trade, he suffered some anxieties. He was a new beginner; but, already, bad debts had alarmed him; and bills were coming to maturity that were not likely to be met by commensurate sales. Yet, constitutionally, he was a sanguine hoper. At this time he was a stout, fresh-colored young man of twenty-seven; in some slight degree uneasy from his commercial prospects, but still cheerful, and anticipating--(how vainly!)--that for this night, and the next night, at least, he will rest his wearied head and his cares upon the faithful bosom of his sweet lovely young wife. The household of Marr, consisting of five persons, is as follows: First, there is himself, who, if he should happen to be ruined, in a limited commercial sense, has energy enough to jump up again, like a pyramid of fire, and soar high above ruin many times repeated. Yes, poor Marr, so it might be, if thou wert left to thy native energies unmolested; but even now there stands on the other side of the street one born of hell, who puts his peremptory negative on all these flattering prospects. Second in the list of his household, stands his pretty and amiable wife, who is happy after the fashion of youthful wives, for she is only twenty-two, and anxious (if at all) only on account of her darling infant. For, thirdly, there is in a cradle, not quite nine feet below the street, viz., in a warm, cosy kitchen, and rocked at intervals by the young mother, a baby eight months old. Nineteen months have Marr and herself been married; and this is their first-born child. Grieve not for this child, that it must keep the deep rest of Sunday in some other world; for wherefore should an orphan, steeped to the lips in poverty, when once bereaved of father and mother, linger upon an alien and murderous earth? Fourthly, there is a stoutish boy, an apprentice, say thirteen years old; a Devonshire boy, with handsome features, such as most Devonshire youths have; [3] satisfied with his place; not overworked; treated kindly, and aware that he was treated kindly, by his master and mistress. Fifthly, and lastly, bringing up the rear of this quiet household, is a servant girl, a grown-up young woman; and she, being particularly kind-hearted, occupied (as often happens in families of humble pretensions as to rank) a sort of sisterly place in her relation to her mistress. A great democratic change is at this very time (1854), and has been for twenty years, passing over British society. Multitudes of persons are becoming ashamed of saying, 'my master,' or 'my mistress:' the term now in the slow process of superseding it is, 'my employer.' Now, in the United States, such an expression of democratic hauteur, though disagreeable as a needless proclamation of independence which nobody is disputing, leaves, however, no lasting bad effect. For the domestic 'helps' are pretty generally in a state of transition so sure and so rapid to the headship of domestic establishments belonging to themselves, that in effect they are but ignoring, for the present moment, a relation which would at any rate dissolve itself in a year or two. But in England, where no such resources exist of everlasting surplus lands, the tendency of the change is painful. It carries with it a sullen and a coarse expression of immunity from a yoke which was in any case a light one, and often a benign one. In some other place I will illustrate my meaning. Here, apparently, in Mrs. Marr's service, the principle concerned illustrated itself practically. Mary, the female servant, felt a sincere and unaffected respect for a mistress whom she saw so steadily occupied with her domestic duties, and who, though so young, and invested with some slight authority, never exerted it capriciously, or even showed it at all conspiciously. According to the testimony of all the neighbors, she treated her mistress with a shade of unobtrusive respect on the one hand, and yet was eager to relieve her, whenever that was possible, from the weight of her maternal duties, with the cheerful voluntary service of a sister. To this young woman it was, that, suddenly, within three or four minutes of midnight, Marr called aloud from the head of the stairs--directing her to go out and purchase some oysters for the family supper. Upon what slender accidents hang oftentimes solemn lifelong results! Marr occupied in the concerns of his shop, Mrs. Marr occupied with some little ailment and restlessness of her baby, had both forgotten the affair of supper; the time was now narrowing every moment, as regarded any variety of choice; and oysters were perhaps ordered as the likeliest article to be had at all, after twelve o'clock should have struck. And yet, upon this trivial circumstance depended Mary's life. Had she been sent abroad for supper at the ordinary time of ten or eleven o'clock, it is almost certain that she, the solitary member of the household who escaped from the exterminating tragedy, would _not_ have escaped; too surely she would have shared the general fate. It had now become necessary to be quick. Hastily, therefore, receiving money from Marr with a basket in her hand, but unbonneted, Mary tripped out of the shop. It became afterwards, on recollection, a heart-chilling remembrance to herself--that, precisely as she emerged from the shop-door, she noticed, on the opposite side of the street, by the light of the lamps, a man's figure; stationary at the instant, but in the next instant slowly moving. This was Williams; as a little incident, either just before or just after (at present it is impossible to say which), sufficiently proved. Now, when one considers the inevitable hurry and trepidation of Mary under the circumstances stated, time barely sufficing for any chance of executing her errand, it becomes evident that she must have connected some deep feeling of mysterious uneasiness with the movements of this unknown man; else, assuredly, she would not have found her attention disposable for such a case. Thus far, she herself threw some little light upon what it might be that, semi- consciously, was then passing through her mind; she said, that, notwithstanding the darkness, which would not permit her to trace the man's features, or to ascertain the exact direction of his eyes, it yet struck her, that from his carriage when in motion, and from the apparent inclination of his person, he must be looking at No. 29. The little incident which I have alluded to as confirming Mary's belief was, that, at some period not very far from midnight, the watchman had specially noticed this stranger; he had observed him continually peeping into the window of Marr's shop; and had thought this act, connected with the man's appearance, so suspicious, that he stepped into Marr's shop, and communicated what he had seen. This fact he afterwards stated before the magistrates; and he added, that subsequently, viz., a few minutes after twelve (eight or ten minutes, probably, after the departure of Mary), he (the watchman), when re-entering upon his ordinary half-hourly beat, was requested by Marr to assist him in closing the shutters. Here they had a final communication with each other; and the watchman mentioned to Marr that the mysterious stranger had now apparently taken himself off; for that he had not been visible since the first communication made to Marr by the watchman. There is little doubt that Williams had observed the watchman's visit to Marr, and had thus had his attention seasonably drawn to the indiscretion of his own demeanor; so that the warning, given unavailingly to Marr, had been turned to account by Williams. There can be still less doubt, that the bloodhound had commenced his work within one minute of the watchman's assisting Marr to put up his shutters. And on the following consideration:--that which prevented Williams from commencing even earlier, was the exposure of the shop's whole interior to the gaze of street passengers. It was indispensable that the shutters should be accurately closed before Williams could safely get to work. But, as soon as ever this preliminary precaution had been completed, once having secured that concealment from the public eye it then became of still greater importance not to lose a moment by delay, than previously it had been not to hazard any thing by precipitance. For all depended upon going in before Marr should have locked the door. On any other mode of effecting an entrance (as, for instance, by waiting for the return of Mary, and making his entrance simultaneously with her), it will be seen that Williams must have forfeited that particular advantage which mute facts, when read into their true construction, will soon show the reader that he must have employed. Williams waited, of necessity, for the sound of the watchman's retreating steps; waited, perhaps, for thirty seconds; but when that danger was past, the next danger was, lest Marr should lock the door; one turn of the key, and the murderer would have been locked out. In, therefore, he bolted, and by a dexterous movement of his left hand, no doubt, turned the key, without letting Marr perceive this fatal stratagem. It is really wonderful and most interesting to pursue the successive steps of this monster, and to notice the absolute certainty with which the silent hieroglyphics of the case betray to us the whole process and movements of the bloody drama, not less surely and fully than if we had been ourselves hidden in Marr's shop, or had looked down from the heavens of mercy upon this hell-kite, that knew not what mercy meant. That he had concealed from Marr his trick, secret and rapid, upon the lock, is evident; because else, Marr would instantly have taken the alarm, especially after what the watchman had communicated. But it will soon be seen that Marr had _not_ been alarmed. In reality, towards the full success of Williams, it was important, in the last degree, to intercept and forestall any yell or shout of agony from Marr. Such an outcry, and in a situation so slenderly fenced off from the street, viz., by walls the very thinnest, makes itself heard outside pretty nearly as well as if it were uttered in the street. Such an outcry it was indispensable to stifle. It _was_ stifled; and the reader will soon understand _how_. Meantime, at this point, let us leave the murderer alone with his victims. For fifty minutes let him work his pleasure. The front-door, as we know, is now fastened against all help. Help there is none. Let us, therefore, in vision, attach ourselves to Mary; and, when all is over, let us come back with _her_, again raise the curtain, and read the dreadful record of all that has passed in her absence. The poor girl, uneasy in her mind to an extent that she could but half understand, roamed up and down in search of an oyster shop; and finding none that was still open, within any circuit that her ordinary experience had made her acquainted with, she fancied it best to try the chances of some remoter district. Lights she saw gleaming or twinkling at a distance, that still tempted her onwards; and thus, amongst unknown streets poorly lighted, [4] and on a night of peculiar darkness, and in a region of London where ferocious tumults were continually turning her out of what seemed to be the direct course, naturally she got bewildered. The purpose with which she started, had by this time become hopeless. Nothing remained for her now but to retrace her steps. But this was difficult; for she was afraid to ask directions from chance passengers, whose appearance the darkness prevented her from reconnoitring. At length by his lantern she recognized a watchman; through him she was guided into the right road; and in ten minutes more, she found herself back at the door of No. 29, in Ratcliffe Highway. But by this time she felt satisfied that she must have been absent for fifty or sixty minutes; indeed, she had heard, at a distance, the cry of _past one o'clock_, which, commencing a few seconds after one, lasted intermittingly for ten or thirteen minutes. In the tumult of agonizing thoughts that very soon surprised her, naturally it became hard for her to recall distinctly the whole succession of doubts, and jealousies, and shadowy misgivings that soon opened upon her. But, so far as could be collected, she had not in the first moment of reaching home noticed anything decisively alarming. In very many cities bells are the main instruments for communicating between the street and the interior of houses: but in London knockers prevail. At Marr's there was both a knocker and a bell. Mary rang, and at the same time very gently knocked. She had no fear of disturbing her master or mistress; _them_ she made sure of finding still up. Her anxiety was for the baby, who being disturbed, might again rob her mistress of a night's rest. And she well knew that, with three people all anxiously awaiting her return, and by this time, perhaps, seriously uneasy at her delay, the least audible whisper from herself would in a moment bring one of them to the door. Yet how is this? To her astonishment, but with the astonishment came creeping over her an icy horror, no stir nor murmur was heard ascending from the kitchen. At this moment came back upon her, with shuddering anguish, the indistinct image of the stranger in the loose dark coat, whom she had seen stealing along under the shadowy lamp-light, and too certainly watching her master's motions: keenly she now reproached herself that, under whatever stress of hurry, she had not acquainted Mr. Marr with the suspicious appearances. Poor girl! she did not then know that, if this communication could have availed to put Marr upon his guard, it had reached him from another quarter; so that her own omission, which had in reality arisen under her hurry to execute her master's commission, could not be charged with any bad consequences. But all such reflections this way or that were swallowed up at this point in over-mastering panic. That her double summons _could_ have been unnoticed--this solitary fact in one moment made a revelation of horror. One person might have fallen asleep, but two--but three--_that_ was a mere impossibility. And even supposing all three together with the baby locked in sleep, still how unaccountable was this utter--utter silence! Most naturally at this moment something like hysterical horror overshadowed the poor girl, and now at last she rang the bell with the violence that belongs to sickening terror. This done, she paused: self-command enough she still retained, though fast and fast it was slipping away from her, to bethink herself--that, if any overwhelming accident _had_ compelled both Marr and his apprentice-boy to leave the house in order to summon surgical aid from opposite quarters--a thing barely supposable--still, even in that case Mrs. Marr and her infant would be left; and some murmuring reply, under any extremity, would be elicited from the poor mother. To pause, therefore, to impose stern silence upon herself, so as to leave room for the possible answer to this final appeal, became a duty of spasmodic effort. Listen, therefore, poor trembling heart; listen, and for twenty seconds be still as death. Still as death she was: and during that dreadful stillness, when she hushed her breath that she might listen, occurred an incident of killing fear, that to her dying day would never cease to renew its echoes in her ear. She, Mary, the poor trembling girl, checking and overruling herself by a final effort, that she might leave full opening for her dear young mistress's answer to her own last frantic appeal, heard at last and most distinctly a sound within the house. Yes, now beyond a doubt there is coming an answer to her summons. What was it? On the stairs, not the stairs that led downwards to the kitchen, but the stairs that led upwards to the single story of bed-chambers above, was heard a creaking sound. Next was heard most distinctly a footfall: one, two, three, four, five stairs were slowly and distinctly descended. Then the dreadful footsteps were heard advancing along the little narrow passage to the door. The steps--oh heavens! _whose_ steps?--have paused at the door. The very breathing can be heard of that dreadful being, who has silenced all breathing except his own in the house. There is but a door between him and Mary. What is he doing on the other side of the door? A cautious step, a stealthy step it was that came down the stairs, then paced along the little narrow passage--narrow as a coffin--till at last the step pauses at the door. How hard the fellow breathes! He, the solitary murderer, is on one side the door; Mary is on the other side. Now, suppose that he should suddenly open the door, and that incautiously in the dark Mary should rush in, and find herself in the arms of the murderer. Thus far the case is a possible one--that to a certainty, had this little trick been tried immediately upon Mary's return, it would have succeeded; had the door been opened suddenly upon her first tingle-tingle, headlong she would have tumbled in, and perished. But now Mary is upon her guard. The unknown murderer and she have both their lips upon the door, listening, breathing hard; but luckily they are on different sides of the door; and upon the least indication of unlocking or unlatching, she would have recoiled into the asylum of general darkness. What was the murderer's meaning in coming along the passage to the front door? The meaning was this: separately, as an individual, Mary was worth nothing at all to him. But, considered as a member of a household, she had this value, viz., that she, if caught and murdered, perfected and rounded the desolation of the house. The case being reported, as reported it would be all over Christendom, led the imagination captive. The whole covey of victims was thus netted; the household ruin was thus full and orbicular; and in that proportion the tendency of men and women, flutter as they might, would be helplessly and hopelessly to sink into the all-conquering hands of the mighty murderer. He had but to say--my testimonials are dated from No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway, and the poor vanquished imagination sank powerless before the fascinating rattlesnake eye of the murderer. There is not a doubt that the motive of the murderer for standing on the inner side of Marr's front-door, whilst Mary stood on the outside, was--a hope that, if he quietly opened the door, whisperingly counterfeiting Marr's voice, and saying, What made you stay so long? possibly she might have been inveigled. He was wrong; the time was past for that; Mary was now maniacally awake; she began now to ring the bell and to ply the knocker with unintermitting violence. And the natural consequence was, that the next door neighbor, who had recently gone to bed and instantly fallen asleep, was roused; and by the incessant violence of the ringing and the knocking, which now obeyed a delirious and uncontrollable impulse in Mary, he became sensible that some very dreadful event must be at the root of so clamorous an uproar. To rise, to throw up the sash, to demand angrily the cause of this unseasonable tumult, was the work of a moment. The poor girl remained sufficiently mistress of herself rapidly to explain the circumstance of her own absence for an hour; her belief that Mr. and Mrs. Marr's family had all been murdered in the interval; and that at this very moment the murderer was in the house. The person to whom she addressed this statement was a pawnbroker; and a thoroughly brave man he must have been; for it was a perilous undertaking, merely as a trial of physical strength, singly to face a mysterious assassin, who had apparently signalized his prowess by a triumph so comprehensive. But, again, for the imagination it required an effort of self-conquest to rush headlong into the presence of one invested with a cloud of mystery, whose nation, age, motives, were all alike unknown. Rarely on any field of battle has a soldier been called upon to face so complex a danger. For if the entire family of his neighbor Marr had been exterminated, were this indeed true, such a scale of bloodshed would seem to argue that there must have been two persons as the perpetrators; or if one singly had accomplished such a ruin, in that case how colossal must have been his audacity! probably, also, his skill and animal power! Moreover, the unknown enemy (whether single or double) would, doubtless, be elaborately armed. Yet, under all these disadvantages, did this fearless man rush at once to the field of butchery in his neighbor's house. Waiting only to draw on his trousers, and to arm himself with the kitchen poker, he went down into his own little back-yard. On this mode of approach, he would have a chance of intercepting the murderer; whereas from the front there would be no such chance; and there would also be considerable delay in the process of breaking open the door. A brick wall, nine or ten feet high, divided his own back premises from those of Marr. Over this he vaulted; and at the moment when he was recalling himself to the necessity of going back for a candle, he suddenly perceived a feeble ray of light already glimmering on some part of Marr's premises. Marr's back-door stood wide open. Probably the murderer had passed through it one half minute before. Rapidly the brave man passed onwards to the shop, and there beheld the carnage of the night stretched out on the floor, and the narrow premises so floated with gore, that it was hardly possible to escape the pollution of blood in picking out a path to the front-door. In the lock of the door still remained the key which had given to the unknown murderer so fatal an advantage over his victims. By this time, the heart- shaking news involved in the outcries of Mary (to whom it occurred that by possibility some one out of so many victims might still be within the reach of medical aid, but that all would depend upon speed) had availed, even at that late hour, to gather a small mob about the house. The pawnbroker threw open the door. One or two watchmen headed the crowd; but the soul-harrowing spectacle checked them, and impressed sudden silence upon their voices, previously so loud. The tragic drama read aloud its own history, and the succession of its several steps--few and summary. The murderer was as yet altogether unknown; not even suspected. But there were reasons for thinking that he must have been a person familiarly known to Marr. He had entered the shop by opening the door after it had been closed by Marr. But it was justly argued--that, after the caution conveyed to Marr by the watchman, the appearance of any stranger in the shop at that hour, and in so dangerous a neighborhood, and entering by so irregular and suspicious a course, (_i.e._, walking in after the door had been closed, and after the closing of the shutters had cut off all open communication with the street), would naturally have roused Marr to an attitude of vigilance and self-defence. Any indication, therefore, that Marr had _not_ been so roused, would argue to a certainty that _something_ had occurred to neutralize this alarm, and fatally to disarm the prudent jealousies of Marr. But this 'something' could only have lain in one simple fact, viz., that the person of the murderer was familiarly known to Marr as that of an ordinary and unsuspected acquaintance. This being presupposed as the key to all the rest, the whole course and evolution of the subsequent drama becomes clear as daylight. The murderer, it is evident, had opened gently, and again closed behind him with equal gentleness, the street-door. He had then advanced to the little counter, all the while exchanging the ordinary salutation of an old acquaintance with the unsuspecting Marr. Having reached the counter, he would then ask Marr for a pair of unbleached cotton socks. In a shop so small as Marr's, there could be no great latitude of choice for disposing of the different commodities. The arrangement of these had no doubt become familiar to the murderer; and he had already ascertained that, in order to reach down the particular parcel wanted at present, Marr would find it requisite to face round to the rear, and, at the same moment, to raise his eyes and his hands to a level eighteen inches above his own head. This movement placed him in the most disadvantageous possible position with regard to the murderer, who now, at the instant when Marr's hands and eyes were embarrassed, and the back of his head fully exposed, suddenly from below his large surtout, had unslung a heavy ship-carpenter's mallet, and, with one solitary blow, had so thoroughly stunned his victim, as to leave him incapable of resistance. The whole position of Marr told its own tale. He had collapsed naturally behind the counter, with his hands so occupied as to confirm the whole outline of the affair as I have here suggested it. Probable enough it is that the very first blow, the first indication of treachery that reached Marr, would also be the last blow as regarded the abolition of consciousness. The murderer's plan and _rationale_ of murder started systematically from this infliction of apoplexy, or at least of a stunning sufficient to insure a long loss of consciousness. This opening step placed the murderer at his ease. But still, as returning sense might constantly have led to the fullest exposures, it was his settled practice, by way of consummation, to cut the throat. To one invariable type all the murders on this occasion conformed: the skull was first shattered; this step secured the murderer from instant retaliation; and then, by way of locking up all into eternal silence, uniformly the throat was cut. The rest of the circumstances, as self-revealed, were these. The fall of Marr might, probably enough, cause a dull, confused sound of a scuffle, and the more so, as it could not now be confounded with any street uproar--the shop-door being shut. It is more probable, however, that the signal for the alarm passing down to the kitchen, would arise when the murderer proceeded to cut Marr's throat. The very confined situation behind the counter would render it impossible, under the critical hurry of the case, to expose the throat broadly; the horrid scene would proceed by partial and interrupted cuts; deep groans would arise; and then would come the rush up-stairs. Against this, as the only dangerous stage in the transaction, the murderer would have specially prepared. Mrs. Marr and the apprentice-boy, both young and active, would make, of course, for the street door; had Mary been at home, and three persons at once had combined to distract the purposes of the murderer, it is barely possible that one of them would have succeeded in reaching the street. But the dreadful swing of the heavy mallet intercepted both the boy and his mistress before they could reach the door. Each of them lay stretched out on the centre of the shop floor; and the very moment that this disabling was accomplished, the accursed hound was down upon their throats with his razor. The fact is, that, in the mere blindness of pity for poor Marr, on hearing his groans, Mrs. Marr had lost sight of her obvious policy; she and the boy ought to have made for the back door; the alarm would thus have been given in the open air; which, of itself, was a great point; and several means of distracting the murderer's attention offered upon that course, which the extreme limitation of the shop denied to them upon the other. Vain would be all attempts to convey the horror which thrilled the gathering spectators of this piteous tragedy. It was known to the crowd that one person had, by some accident, escaped the general massacre: but she was now speechless, and probably delirious; so that, in compassion for her pitiable situation, one female neighbor had carried her away, and put her to bed. Hence it had happened, for a longer space of time than could else have been possible, that no person present was sufficiently acquainted with the Marrs to be aware of the little infant; for the bold pawnbroker had gone off to make a communication to the coroner; and another neighbor to lodge some evidence which he thought urgent at a neighboring police-office. Suddenly some person appeared amongst the crowd who was aware that the murdered parents had a young infant; this would be found either below-stairs, or in one of the bedrooms above. Immediately a stream of people poured down into the kitchen, where at once they saw the cradle--but with the bedclothes in a state of indescribable confusion. On disentangling these, pools of blood became visible; and the next ominous sign was, that the hood of the cradle had been smashed to pieces. It became evident that the wretch had found himself doubly embarrassed-- first, by the arched hood at the head of the cradle, which, accordingly, he had beat into a ruin with his mallet, and secondly, by the gathering of the blankets and pillows about the baby's head. The free play of his blows had thus been baffled. And he had therefore finished the scene by applying his razor to the throat of the little innocent; after which, with no apparent purpose, as though he had become confused by the spectacle of his own atrocities, he had busied himself in piling the clothes elaborately over the child's corpse. This incident undeniably gave the character of a vindictive proceeding to the whole affair, and so far confirmed the current rumor that the quarrel between Williams and Marr had originated in rivalship. One writer, indeed, alleged that the murderer might have found it necessary for his own safety to extinguish the crying of the child; but it was justly replied, that a child only eight months old could not have cried under any sense of the tragedy proceeding, but simply in its ordinary way for the absence of its mother; and such a cry, even if audible at all out of the house, must have been precisely what the neighbors were hearing constantly, so that it could have drawn no special attention, nor suggested any reasonable alarm to the murderer. No one incident, indeed, throughout the whole tissue of atrocities, so much envenomed the popular fury against the unknown ruffian, as this useless butchery of the infant. Naturally, on the Sunday morning that dawned four or five hours later, the case was too full of horror not to diffuse itself in all directions; but I have no reason to think that it crept into any one of the numerous Sunday papers. In the regular course, any ordinary occurrence, not occurring, or not transpiring until fifteen minutes after 1 A. M. on a Sunday morning, would first reach the public ear through the Monday editions of the Sunday papers, and the regular morning papers of the Monday. But, if such were the course pursued on this occasion, never can there have been a more signal oversight. For it is certain, that to have met the public demand for details on the Sunday, which might so easily have been done by cancelling a couple of dull columns, and substituting a circumstantial narrative, for which the pawnbroker and the watchman could have furnished the materials, would have made a small fortune. By proper handbills dispersed through all quarters of the infinite metropolis, two hundred and fifty thousand extra copies might have been sold; that is, by any journal that should have collected _exclusive_ materials, meeting the public excitement, everywhere stirred to the centre by flying rumors, and everywhere burning for ampler information. On the Sunday se'ennight (Sunday the _octave_ from the event), took place the funeral of the Marrs; in the first coffin was placed Marr; in the second Mrs. Marr, and the baby in her arms; in the third the apprentice boy. They were buried side by side; and thirty thousand laboring people followed the funeral procession, with horror and grief written in their countenances. As yet no whisper was astir that indicated, even conjecturally, the hideous author of these ruins--this patron of grave-diggers. Had as much been known on this Sunday of the funeral concerning that person as became known universally six days later, the people would have gone right from the churchyard to the murderer's lodgings, and (brooking no delay) would have torn him limb from limb. As yet, however, in mere default of any object on whom reasonable suspicion could settle, the public wrath was compelled to suspend itself. Else, far indeed from showing any tendency to subside, the public emotion strengthened every day conspicuously, as the reverberation of the shock began to travel back from the provinces to the capital. On every great road in the kingdom, continual arrests were made of vagrants and 'trampers,' who could give no satisfactory account of themselves, or whose appearance in any respect answered to the imperfect description of Williams furnished by the watchman. With this mighty tide of pity and indignation pointing backwards to the dreadful past, there mingled also in the thoughts of reflecting persons an under-current of fearful expectation for the immediate future. 'The earthquake,' to quote a fragment from a striking passage in Wordsworth-- 'The earthquake is not satisfied at once.' All perils, specially malignant, are recurrent. A murderer, who is such by passion and by a wolfish craving for bloodshed as a mode of unnatural luxury, cannot relapse into _inertia_. Such a man, even more than the Alpine chamois hunter, comes to crave the dangers and the hairbreadth escapes of his trade, as a condiment for seasoning the insipid monotonies of daily life. But, apart from the hellish instincts that might too surely be relied on for renewed atrocities, it was clear that the murderer of the Marrs, wheresoever lurking, must be a needy man; and a needy man of that class least likely to seek or to find resources in honorable modes of industry; for which, equally by haughty disgust and by disuse of the appropriate habits, men of violence are specially disqualified. Were it, therefore, merely for a livelihood, the murderer whom all hearts were yearning to decipher, might be expected to make his resurrection on some stage of horror, after a reasonable interval. Even in the Marr murder, granting that it had been governed chiefly by cruel and vindictive impulses, it was still clear that the desire of booty had co-operated with such feelings. Equally clear it was that this desire must have been disappointed: excepting the trivial sum reserved by Marr for the week's expenditure, the murderer found, doubtless, little or nothing that he could turn to account. Two guineas, perhaps, would be the outside of what he had obtained in the way of booty. A week or so would see the end of that. The conviction, therefore, of all people was, that in a month or two, when the fever of excitement might a little have cooled down, or have been superseded by other topics of fresher interest, so that the newborn vigilance of household life would have had time to relax, some new murder, equally appalling, might be counted upon. Such was the public expectation. Let the reader then figure to himself the pure frenzy of horror when in this hush of expectation, looking, indeed, and waiting for the unknown arm to strike once more, but not believing that any audacity could be equal to such an attempt as yet, whilst all eyes were watching, suddenly, on the twelfth night from the Marr murder, a second case of the same mysterious nature, a murder on the same exterminating plan was perpetrated in the very same neighborhood. It was on the Thursday next but one succeeding to the Marr murder that this second atrocity took place; and many people thought at the time, that in its dramatic features of thrilling interest, this second case even went beyond the first. The family which suffered in this instance was that of a Mr. Williamson; and the house was situated, if not absolutely _in_ Ratcliffe Highway, at any rate immediately round the corner of some secondary street, running at right angles to this public thoroughfare, Mr. Williamson was a well-known and respectable man, long settled in that district; he was supposed to be rich; and more with a view to the employment furnished by such a calling, than with much anxiety for further accumulations, he kept a sort of tavern; which, in this respect, might be considered on an old patriarchal footing--that, although people of considerable property resorted to the house in the evenings, no kind of anxious separation was maintained between them and the other visitors from the class of artisans or common laborers. Anybody who conducted himself with propriety was free to take a seat, and call for any liquor that he might prefer. And thus the society was pretty miscellaneous; in part stationary, but in some proportion fluctuating. The household consisted of the following five persons:--1. Mr. Williamson, its head, who was an old man above seventy, and was well fitted for his situation, being civil, and not at all morose, but, at the same time, firm in maintaining order; 2. Mrs. Williamson, his wife, about ten years younger than himself; 3. a little grand-daughter, about nine years old; 4. a housemaid, who was nearly forty years old; 5. a young journeyman, aged about twenty-six, belonging to some manufacturing establishment (of what class I have forgotten); neither do I remember of what nation he was. It was the established rule at Mr. Williamson's, that, exactly as the clock struck eleven, all the company, without favor or exception, moved off. That was one of the customs by which, in so stormy a district, Mr. Williamson had found it possible to keep his house free from brawls. On the present Thursday night everything had gone on as usual, except for one slight shadow of suspicion, which had caught the attention of more persons than one. Perhaps at a less agitating time it would hardly have been noticed; but now, when the first question and the last in all social meetings turned upon the Marrs, and their unknown murderer, it was a circumstance naturally fitted to cause some uneasiness, that a stranger, of sinister appearance, in a wide surtout, had flitted in and out of the room at intervals during the evening; had sometimes retired from the light into obscure corners; and, by more than one person, had been observed stealing into the private passages of the house. It was presumed in general, that the man must be known to Williamson. And in some slight degree, as an occasional customer of the house, it is not impossible that he _was_. But afterwards, this repulsive stranger, with his cadaverous ghastliness, extraordinary hair, and glazed eyes, showing himself intermittingly through the hours from 8 to 11 P.M., revolved upon the memory of all who had steadily observed him with something of the same freezing effect as belongs to the two assassins in 'Macbeth,' who present themselves reeking from the murder of Banquo, and gleaming dimly, with dreadful faces, from the misty background, athwart the pomps of the regal banquet. Meantime the clock struck eleven; the company broke up; the door of entrance was nearly closed; and at this moment of general dispersion the situation of the five inmates left upon the premises was precisely this: the three elders, viz., Williamson, his wife, and his female servant, were all occupied on the ground floor--Williamson himself was drawing ale, porter, &c., for those neighbors, in whose favor the house-door had been left ajar, until the hour of twelve should strike; Mrs. Williamson and her servant were moving to and fro between the back-kitchen and a little parlor; the little grand-daughter, whose sleeping-room was on the _first_ floor (which term in London means always the floor raised by one flight of stairs above the level of the street), had been fast asleep since nine o'clock; lastly, the journeyman artisan had retired to rest for some time. He was a regular lodger in the house; and his bedroom was on the second floor. For some time he had been undressed, and had lain down in bed. Being, as a working man, bound to habits of early rising, he was naturally anxious to fall asleep as soon as possible. But, on this particular night, his uneasiness, arising from the recent murders at No. 29, rose to a paroxysm of nervous excitement which kept him awake. It is possible, that from somebody he had heard of the suspicious-looking stranger, or might even personally observed him slinking about. But, were it otherwise, he was aware of several circumstances dangerously affecting this house; for instance, the ruffianism of this whole neighborhood, and the disagreeable fact that the Marrs had lived within a few doors of this very house, which again argued that the murderer also lived at no great distance. These were matters of _general_ alarm. But there were others peculiar to this house; in particular, the notoriety of Williamson's opulence; the belief, whether well or ill founded, that he accumulated, in desks and drawers, the money continually flowing into his hands; and lastly, the danger so ostentatiously courted by that habit of leaving the house-door ajar through one entire hour--and that hour loaded with extra danger, by the well-advertised assurance that no collision need be feared with chance convivial visiters, since all such people were banished at eleven. A regulation, which had hitherto operated beneficially for the character and comfort of the house, now, on the contrary, under altered circumstances, became a positive proclamation of exposure and defencelessness, through one entire period of an hour. Williamson himself, it was said generally, being a large unwieldy man, past seventy, and signally inactive, ought, in prudence, to make the locking of his door coincident with the dismissal of his evening party. Upon these and other grounds of alarm (particularly this, that Mrs. Williamson was reported to possess a considerable quantity of plate), the journeyman was musing painfully, and the time might be within twenty-eight or twenty-five minutes of twelve, when all at once, with a crash, proclaiming some hand of hideous violence, the house-door was suddenly shut and locked. Here, then, beyond all doubt, was the diabolic man, clothed in mystery, from No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway. Yes, that dreadful being, who for twelve days had employed all thoughts and all tongues, was now, too certainly, in this defenceless house, and would, in a few minutes, be face to face with every one of its inmates. A question still lingered in the public mind--whether at Marr's there might not have been _two_ men at work. If so, there would be two at present; and one of the two would be immediately disposable for the up-stairs work; since no danger could obviously be more immediately fatal to such an attack than any alarm given from an upper window to the passengers in the street. Through one half-minute the poor panic-stricken man sat up motionless in bed. But then he rose, his first movement being towards the door of his room. Not for any purpose of securing it against intrusion--too well he knew that there was no fastening of any sort--neither lock, nor bolt; nor was there any such moveable furniture in the room as might have availed to barricade the door, even if time could be counted on for such an attempt. It was no effect of prudence, merely the fascination of killing fear it was, that drove him to open the door. One step brought him to the head of the stairs: he lowered his head over the balustrade in order to listen; and at that moment ascended, from the little parlor, this agonizing cry from the woman-servant, 'Lord Jesus Christ! we shall all be murdered!' What a Medusa's head must have lurked in those dreadful bloodless features, and those glazed rigid eyes, that seemed rightfully belonging to a corpse, when one glance at them sufficed to proclaim a death-warrant. Three separate death-struggles were by this time over; and the poor petrified journeyman, quite unconscious of what he was doing, in blind, passive, self-surrender to panic, absolutely descended both flights of stairs. Infinite terror inspired him with the same impulse as might have been inspired by headlong courage. In his shirt, and upon old decaying stairs, that at times creaked under his feet, he continued to descend, until he had reached the lowest step but four. The situation was tremendous beyond any that is on record. A sneeze, a cough, almost a breathing, and the young man would be a corpse, without a chance or a struggle for his life. The murderer was at that time in the little parlor --the door of which parlor faced you in descending the stairs; and this door stood ajar; indeed, much more considerably open than what is understood by the term 'ajar.' Of that quadrant, or 90 degrees, which the door would describe in swinging so far open as to stand at right angles to the lobby, or to itself, in a closed position, 55 degrees at the least were exposed. Consequently, two out of three corpses were exposed to the young man's gaze. Where was the third? And the murderer--where was he? As to the murderer, he was walking rapidly backwards and forwards in the parlor, audible but not visible at first, being engaged with something or other in that part of the room which the door still concealed. What the something might be, the sound soon explained; he was applying keys tentatively to a cupboard, a closet, and a scrutoire, in the hidden part of the room. Very soon, however, he came into view; but, fortunately for the young man, at this critical moment, the murderer's purpose too entirely absorbed him to allow of his throwing a glance to the staircase, on which else the white figure of the journeyman, standing in motionless horror, would have been detected in one instant, and seasoned for the grave in the second. As to the third corpse, the missing corpse, viz., Mr. Williamson's, _that_ is in the cellar; and how its local position can be accounted for, remains a separate question much discussed at the time, but never satisfactorily cleared up. Meantime, that Williamson was dead, became evident to the young man; since else he would have been heard stirring or groaning. Three friends, therefore, out of four, whom the young man had parted with forty minutes ago, were now extinguished; remained, therefore, 40 per cent. (a large per centage for Williams to leave); remained, in fact, himself and his pretty young friend, the little grand-daughter, whose childish innocence was still slumbering without fear for herself, or grief for her aged grand-parents. If _they_ are gone for ever, happily one friend (for such he will prove himself, indeed, if from such a danger he can save this child) is pretty near to her. But alas! he is still nearer to a murderer. At this moment he is unnerved for any exertion whatever; he has changed into a pillar of ice; for the objects before him, separated by just thirteen feet, are these:--The housemaid had been caught by the murderer on her knees; she was kneeling before the fire-grate, which she had been polishing with black lead. That part of her task was finished; and she had passed on to another task, viz., the filling of the grate with wood and coals, not for kindling at this moment, but so as to have it ready for kindling on the next day. The appearances all showed that she must have been engaged in this labor at the very moment when the murderer entered; and perhaps the succession of the incidents arranged itself as follows:--From the awful ejaculation and loud outcry to Christ, as overheard by the journeyman, it was clear that then first she had been alarmed; yet this was at least one and a-half or even two minutes after the door-slamming. Consequently the alarm which had so fearfully and seasonably alarmed the young man, must, in some unaccountable way, have been misinterpreted by the two women. It was said, at the time, that Mrs. Williamson labored under some dulness of hearing; and it was conjectured that the servant, having her ears filled with the noise of her own scrubbing, and her head half under the grate, might have confounded it with the street noises, or else might have imputed this violent closure to some mischievous boys. But, howsoever explained, the fact was evident, that, until the words of appeal to Christ, the servant had noticed nothing suspicious, nothing which interrupted her labors. If so, it followed that neither had Mrs. Williamson noticed anything; for, in that case, she would have communicated her own alarm to the servant, since both were in the same small room. Apparently the course of things after the murderer had entered the room was this:--Mrs. Williamson had probably not seen him, from the accident of standing with her back to the door. Her, therefore, before he was himself observed at all, he had stunned and prostrated by a shattering blow on the back of her head; this blow, inflicted by a crow-bar, had smashed in the hinder part of the skull. She fell; and by the noise of her fall (for all was the work of a moment) had first roused the attention of the servant; who then uttered the cry which had reached the young man; but before she could repeat it, the murderer had descended with his uplifted instrument upon _her_ head, crushing the skull inwards upon the brain. Both the women were irrecoverably destroyed, so that further outrages were needless; and, moreover, the murderer was conscious of the imminent danger from delay; and yet, in spite of his hurry, so fully did he appreciate the fatal consequences to himself, if any of his victims should so far revive into consciousness as to make circumstantial depositions, that, by way of making this impossible, he had proceeded instantly to cut the throats of each. All this tallied with the appearances as now presenting themselves. Mrs. Williamson had fallen backwards with her head to the door; the servant, from her kneeling posture, had been incapable of rising, and had presented her head passively to blows; after which, the miscreant had but to bend her head backwards so as to expose her throat, and the murder was finished. It is remarkable that the young artisan, paralyzed as he had been by fear, and evidently fascinated for a time so as to walk right towards the lion's mouth, yet found himself able to notice everything important. The reader must suppose him at this point watching the murderer whilst hanging over the body of Mrs. Williamson, and whilst renewing his search for certain important keys. Doubtless it was an anxious situation for the murderer; for, unless he speedily found the keys wanted, all this hideous tragedy would end in nothing but a prodigious increase of the public horror, in tenfold precautions therefore, and redoubled obstacles interposed between himself and his future game. Nay, there was even a nearer interest at stake; his own immediate safety might, by a probable accident, be compromised. Most of those who came to the house for liquor were giddy girls or children, who, on finding this house closed, would go off carelessly to some other; but, let any thoughtful woman or man come to the door now, a full quarter of an hour before the established time of closing, in that case suspicion would arise too powerful to be checked. There would be a sudden alarm given; after which, mere luck would decide the event. For it is a remarkable fact, and one that illustrates the singular inconsistency of this villain, who, being often so superfluously subtle, was in other directions so reckless and improvident, that at this very moment, standing amongst corpses that had deluged the little parlor with blood, Williams must have been in considerable doubt whether he had any sure means of egress. There were windows, he knew, to the back; but upon what ground they opened, he seems to have had no certain information; and in a neighborhood so dangerous, the windows of the lower story would not improbably be nailed down; those in the upper might be free, but then came the necessity of a leap too formidable. From all this, however, the sole practical inference was to hurry forward with the trial of further keys, and to detect the hidden treasure. This it was, this intense absorption in one overmastering pursuit, that dulled the murderer's perceptions as to all around him; otherwise, he must have heard the breathing of the young man, which to himself at times became fearfully audible. As the murderer stood once more over the body of Mrs. Williamson, and searched her pockets more narrowly, he pulled out various clusters of keys, one of which dropping, gave a harsh gingling sound upon the floor. At this time it was that the secret witness, from his secret stand, noticed the fact of Williams's surtout being lined with silk of the finest quality. One other fact he noticed, which eventually became more immediately important than many stronger circumstances of incrimination; this was, that the shoes of the murderer, apparently new, and bought, probably, with poor Marr's money, creaked as he walked, harshly and frequently. With the new clusters of keys, the murderer walked off to the hidden section of the parlor. And here, at last, was suggested to the journeyman the sudden opening for an escape. Some minutes would be lost to a certainty trying all these keys; and subsequently in searching the drawers, supposing that the keys answered--or in violently forcing them, supposing that they did _not_. He might thus count upon a brief interval of leisure, whilst the rattling of the keys might obscure to the murderer the creaking of the stairs under the re-ascending journeyman. His plan was now formed: on regaining his bedroom, he placed the bed against the door by way of a transient retardation to the enemy, that might give him a short warning, and in the worst extremity, might give him a chance for life by means of a desperate leap. This change made as quietly as possible, he tore the sheets, pillow-cases, and blankets into broad ribbons; and after plaiting them into ropes, spliced the different lengths together. But at the very first he descries this ugly addition to his labors. Where shall he look for any staple, hook, bar, or other fixture, from which his rope, when twisted, may safely depend? Measured from the window-_sill_--_i.e._, the lowest part of the window architrave--there count but twenty-two or twenty-three feet to the ground. Of this length ten or twelve feet may be looked upon as cancelled, because to that extent he might drop without danger. So much being deducted, there would remain, say, a dozen feet of rope to prepare. But, unhappily, there is no stout iron fixture anywhere about his window. The nearest, indeed the sole fixture of that sort, is not near to the window at all; it is a spike fixed (for no reason at all that is apparent) in the bed-tester; now, the bed being shifted, the spike is shifted; and its distance from the window, having been always four feet, is now seven. Seven entire feet, therefore, must be added to that which would have sufficed if measured from the window. But courage! God, by the proverb of all nations in Christendom, helps those that help themselves. This our young man thankfully acknowledges; he reads already, in the very fact of any spike at all being found where hitherto it has been useless, an earnest of providential aid. Were it only for himself that he worked, he could not feel himself meritoriously employed; but this is not so; in deep sincerity, he is now agitated for the poor child, whom he knows and loves; every minute, he feels, brings ruin nearer to _her_; and, as he passed her door, his first thought had been to take her out of bed in his arms, and to carry her where she might share his chances. But, on consideration, he felt that this sudden awaking of her, and the impossibility of even whispering any explanation, would cause her to cry audibly; and the inevitable indiscretion of one would be fatal to the two. As the Alpine avalanches, when suspended above the traveller's head, oftentimes (we are told) come down through the stirring of the air by a simple whisper, precisely on such a tenure of a whisper was now suspended the murderous malice of the man below. No; there is but one way to save the child; towards _her_ deliverance, the first step is through his own. And he has made an excellent beginning; for the spike, which too fearfully he had expected to see torn away by any strain upon the half-carious wood, stands firmly when tried against the pressure of his own weight. He has rapidly fastened on to it three lengths of his new rope, measuring eleven feet. He plaits it roughly; so that only three feet have been lost in the intertwisting; he has spliced on a second length equal to the first; so that, already, sixteen feet are ready to throw out of the window; and thus, let the worst come to the worst, it will not be absolute ruin to swarm down the rope so far as it will reach, and then to drop boldly. All this has been accomplished in about six minutes; and the hot contest between above and below is steadily but fervently proceeding. Murderer is working hard in the parlor; journeyman is working hard in the bedroom. Miscreant is getting on famously down-stairs; one batch of bank-notes he has already bagged; and is hard upon the scent of a second. He has also sprung a covey of golden coins. Sovereigns as yet were not; but guineas at this period fetched thirty shillings a-piece; and he has worked his way into a little quarry of these. Murderer is almost joyous; and if any creature is still living in this house, as shrewdly he suspects, and very soon means to know, with that creature he would be happy, before cutting the creature's throat, to drink a glass of something. Instead of the glass, might he not make a present to the poor creature of its throat? Oh no! impossible! Throats are a sort of thing that he never makes presents of; business-- business must be attended to. Really the two men, considered simply as men of business, are both meritorious. Like chorus and semi-chorus, strophe and antistrophe, they work each against the other. Pull journeyman, pull murderer! Pull baker, pull devil! As regards the journeyman, he is now safe. To his sixteen feet, of which seven are neutralized by the distance of the bed, he has at last added six feet more, which will be short of reaching the ground by perhaps ten feet--a trifle which man or boy may drop without injury. All is safe, therefore, for him: which is more than one can be sure of for miscreant in the parlor. Miscreant, however, takes it coolly enough: the reason being, that, with all his cleverness, for once in his life miscreant has been over-reached. The reader and I know, but miscreant does not in the least suspect, a little fact of some importance, viz., that just now through a space of full three minutes he has been overlooked and studied by one, who (though reading in a dreadful book, and suffering under mortal panic) took accurate notes of so much as his limited opportunities allowed him to see, and will assuredly report the creaking shoes and the silk-mounted surtout in quarters where such little facts will tell very little to his advantage. But, although it is true that Mr. Williams, unaware of the journeyman's having 'assisted' at the examination of Mrs. Williamson's pockets, could not connect any anxiety with that person's subsequent proceedings', nor specially, therefore, with his having embarked in the rope-weaving line, assuredly he knew of reasons enough for not loitering. And yet he _did_ loiter. Reading his acts by the light of such mute traces as he left behind him, the police became aware that latterly he must have loitered. And the reason which governed him is striking; because at once it records--that murder was not pursued by him simply as a means to an end, but also as an end for itself. Mr. Williams had now been upon the premises for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes; and in that space of time he had dispatched, in a style satisfactory to himself, a considerable amount of business. He had done, in commercial language, 'a good stroke of business.' Upon two floors, viz., the cellar-floor and the ground-floor, he has 'accounted for' all the population. But there remained at least two floors more; and it now occurred to Mr. Williams that, although the landlord's somewhat chilling manner had shut him out from any familiar knowledge of the household arrangements, too probably on one or other of those floors there must be some throats. As to plunder, he has already bagged the whole. And it was next to impossible that any arrear the most trivial should still remain for a gleaner. But the throats--the throats--there it was that arrears and gleanings might perhaps be counted on. And thus it appeared that, in his wolfish thirst for blood, Mr. Williams put to hazard the whole fruits of his night's work, and his life into the bargain. At this moment, if the murderer knew all, could he see the open window above stairs ready for the descent of the journeyman, could he witness the life- and-death rapidity with which that journeyman is working, could he guess at the almighty uproar which within ninety seconds will be maddening the population of this populous district--no picture of a maniac in flight of panic or in pursuit of vengeance would adequately represent the agony of haste with which he would himself be hurrying to the street-door for final evasion. That mode of escape was still free. Even at this moment, there yet remained time sufficient for a successful flight, and, therefore, for the following revolution in the romance of his own abominable life. He had in his pockets above a hundred pounds of booty; means, therefore, for a full disguise. This very night, if he will shave off his yellow hair, and blacken his eyebrows, buying, when morning light returns, a dark-colored wig, and clothes such as may co-operate in personating the character of a grave professional man, he may elude all suspicions of impertinent policemen; may sail by any one of a hundred vessels bound for any port along the huge line of sea-board (stretching through twenty-four hundred miles) of the American United States; may enjoy fifty years for leisurely repentance; and may even die in the odor of sanctity. On the other hand, if he prefer active life, it is not impossible that, with _his_ subtlety, hardihood, and unscrupulousness, in a land where the simple process of naturalization converts the alien at once into a child of the family, he might rise to the president's chair; might have a statue at his death; and afterwards a life in three volumes quarto, with no hint glancing towards No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway. But all depends on the next ninety seconds. Within that time there is a sharp turn to be taken; there is a wrong turn, and a right turn. Should his better angel guide him to the right one, all may yet go well as regards this world's prosperity. But behold! in two minutes from this point we shall see him take the wrong one: and then Nemesis will be at his heels with ruin perfect and sudden. Meantime, if the murderer allows himself to loiter, the ropemaker overhead does _not_. Well he knows that the poor child's fate is on the edge of a razor: for all turns upon the alarm being raised before the murderer reaches her bedside. And at this very moment, whilst desperate agitation is nearly paralyzing his fingers, he hears the sullen stealthy step of the murderer creeping up through the darkness. It had been the expectation of the journeyman (founded on the clamorous uproar with which the street-door was slammed) that Williams, when disposable for his up-stairs work, would come racing at a long jubilant gallop, and with a tiger roar; and perhaps, on his natural instincts, he would have done so. But this mode of approach, which was of dreadful effect when applied to a case of surprise, became dangerous in the case of people who might by this time have been placed fully upon their guard. The step which he had heard was on the staircase--but upon which stair? He fancied upon the lowest: and in a movement so slow and cautious, even this might make all the difference; yet might it not have been the tenth, twelfth, or fourteenth stair? Never, perhaps, in this world did any man feel his own responsibility so cruelly loaded and strained, as at this moment did the poor journeyman on behalf of the slumbering child. Lose but two seconds, through awkwardness or through the self-counteractions of panic, and for _her_ the total difference arose between life and death. Still there is a hope: and nothing can so frightfully expound the hellish nature of him whose baleful shadow, to speak astrologically, at this moment darkens the house of life, than the simple expression of the ground on which this hope rested. The journeyman felt sure that the murderer would not be satisfied to kill the poor child whilst unconscious. This would be to defeat his whole purpose in murdering her at all. To an epicure in murder such as Williams, it would be taking away the very sting of the enjoyment, if the poor child should be suffered to drink off the bitter cup of death without fully apprehending the misery of the situation. But this luckily would require time: the double confusion of mind, first, from being roused up at so unusual an hour, and, secondly, from the horror of the occasion when explained to her, would at first produce fainting, or some mode of insensibility or distraction, such as must occupy a considerable time. The logic of the case, in short, all rested upon the _ultra_ fiendishness of Williams. Were he likely to be content with the mere fact of the child's death, apart from the process and leisurely expansion of its mental agony--in that case there would be no hope. But, because our present murderer is fastidiously finical in his exactions--a sort of martinet in the scenical grouping and draping of the circumstances in his murders--therefore it is that hope becomes reasonable, since all such refinements of preparation demand time. Murders of mere necessity Williams was obliged to hurry; but, in a murder of pure voluptuousness, entirely disinterested, where no hostile witness was to be removed, no extra booty to be gained, and no revenge to be gratified, it is clear that to hurry would be altogether to ruin. If this child, therefore, is to be saved, it will be on pure aesthetical considerations. [5] But all considerations whatever are at this moment suddenly cut short. A second step is heard on the stairs, but still stealthy and cautious; a third--and then the child's doom seems fixed. But just at that. moment all is ready. The window is wide open; the rope is swinging free; the journeyman has launched himself; and already he is in the first stage of his descent. Simply by the weight of his person he descended, and by the resistance of his hands he retarded the descent. The danger was, that the rope should run too smoothly through his hands, and that by too rapid an acceleration of pace he should come violently to the ground. Happily he was able to resist the descending impetus: the knots of the splicings furnished a succession of retardations. But the rope proved shorter by four or five feet than he had calculated: ten or eleven feet from the ground he hung suspended in the air; speechless for the present, through long-continued agitation; and not daring to drop boldly on the rough carriage pavement, lest he should fracture his legs. But the night was not dark, as it had been on occasion of the Marr murders. And yet, for purposes of criminal police, it was by accident worse than the darkest night that ever hid a murder or baffled a pursuit. London, from east to west, was covered with a deep pall (rising from the river) of universal fog. Hence it happened, that for twenty or thirty seconds the young man hanging in the air was not observed. His white shirt at length attracted notice. Three or four people ran up, and received him in their arms, all anticipating some dreadful annunciation. To what house did he belong? Even _that_ was not instantly apparent; but he pointed with his finger to Williamson's door, and said in a half-choking whisper--'_Marr's murderer, now at work!_' All explained itself in a moment: the silent language of the fact made its own eloquent revelation. The mysterious exterminator of No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway had visited another house; and, behold! one man only had escaped through the air, and in his night-dress, to tell the tale. Superstitiously, there was something to check the pursuit of this unintelligible criminal. Morally, and in the interests of vindictive justice, there was everything to rouse, quicken, and sustain it. Yes, Marr's murderer--the man of mystery--was again at work; at this moment perhaps extinguishing some lamp of life, and not at any remote place, but here--in the very house which the listeners to this dreadful announcement were actually touching. The chaos and blind uproar of the scene which followed, measured by the crowded reports in the journals of many subsequent days, and in one feature of that case, has never to my knowledge had its parallel; or, if a parallel, only in one case--what followed, I mean, on the acquittal of the seven bishops at Westminster in 1688. At present there was more than passionate enthusiasm. The frenzied movement of mixed horror and exultation--the ululation of vengeance which ascended instantaneously from the individual street, and then by a sublime sort of magnetic contagion from all the adjacent streets, can be adequately expressed only by a rapturous passage in Shelley:-- 'The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying Upon the wings of fear:--From his dull madness The starveling waked, and died in joy: the dying, Among the corpses in stark agony lying, Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope Closed their faint eyes: from house to house replying With loud acclaim the living shook heaven's cope, And fill'd the startled earth with echoes.' [6] There was something, indeed, half inexplicable in the instantaneous interpretation of the gathering shout according to its true meaning. In fact, the deadly roar of vengeance, and its sublime unity, _could_ point in this district only to the one demon whose idea had brooded and tyrannized, for twelve days, over the general heart: every door, every window in the neighborhood, flew open as if at a word of command; multitudes, without waiting for the regular means of egress, leaped down at once from the windows on the lower story; sick men rose from their beds; in one instance, as if expressly to verify the image of Shelley (in v. 4, 5, 6, 7), a man whose death had been looked for through some days, and who actually _did_ die on the following day, rose, armed himself with a sword, and descended in his shirt into the street. The chance was a good one, and the mob were made aware of it, for catching the wolfish dog in the high noon and carnival of his bloody revels--in the very centre of his own shambles. For a moment the mob was self-baffled by its own numbers and its own fury. But even that fury felt the call for self-control. It was evident that the massy street-door must be driven in, since there was no longer any living person to co-operate with their efforts from within, excepting only a female child. Crowbars dexterously applied in one minute threw the door out of hangings, and the people entered like a torrent. It may be guessed with what fret and irritation to their consuming fury, a signal of pause and absolute silence was made by a person of local importance. In the hope of receiving some useful communication, the mob became silent. 'Now listen,' said the man of authority, 'and we shall learn whether he is above-stairs or below.' Immediately a noise was heard as if of some one forcing windows, and clearly the sound came from a bedroom above. Yes, the fact was apparent that the murderer was even yet in the house: he had been caught in a trap. Not having made himself familiar with the details of Williamson's house, to all appearance he had suddenly become a prisoner in one of the upper rooms. Towards this the crowd now rushed impetuously. The door, however, was found to be slightly fastened; and, at the moment when this was forced, a loud crash of the window, both glass and frame, announced that the wretch had made his escape. He had leaped down; and several persons in the crowd, who burned with the general fury, leaped after him. These persons had not troubled themselves about the nature of the ground; but now, on making an examination of it with torches, they reported it to be an inclined plane, or embankment of clay, very wet and adhesive. The prints of the man's footsteps were deeply impressed upon the clay, and therefore easily traced up to the summit of the embankment; but it was perceived at once that pursuit would be useless, from the density of the mist. Two feet ahead of you, a man was entirely withdrawn from your power of identification; and, on overtaking him, you could not venture to challenge him as the same whom you had lost sight of. Never, through the course of a whole century, could there be a night expected more propitious to an escaping criminal: means of disguise Williams now had in excess; and the dens were innumerable in the neighborhood of the river that could have sheltered him for years from troublesome inquiries. But favors are thrown away upon the reckless and the thankless. That night, when the turning-point offered itself for his whole future career, Williams took the wrong turn; for, out of mere indolence, he took the turn to his old lodgings--that place which, in all England, he had just now the most reason to shun. Meantime the crowd had thoroughly searched the premises of Williamson. The first inquiry was for the young grand-daughter. Williams, it was evident, had gone into her room: but in this room apparently it was that the sudden uproar in the streets had surprised him; after which his undivided attention had been directed to the windows, since through these only any retreat had been left open to him. Even this retreat he owed only to the fog and to the hurry of the moment, and to the difficulty of approaching the premises by the rear. The little girl was naturally agitated by the influx of strangers at that hour; but otherwise, through the humane precautions of the neighbors, she was preserved from all knowledge of the dreadful events that had occurred whilst she herself was sleeping. Her poor old grandfather was still missing, until the crowd descended into the cellar; he was then found lying prostrate on the cellar floor: apparently he had been thrown down from the top of the cellar stairs, and with so much violence, that one leg was broken. After he had been thus disabled, Williams had gone down to him, and cut his throat. There was much discussion at the time, in some of the public journals, upon the possibility of reconciling these incidents with other circumstantialities of the case, supposing that only one man had been concerned in the affair. That there _was_ only one man concerned, seems to be certain. One only was seen or heard at Marr's: one only, and beyond all doubt the same man, was seen by the young journeyman in Mrs. Williamson's parlor; and one only was traced by his footmarks on the clay embankment. Apparently the course which he had pursued was this: he had introduced himself to Williamson by ordering some beer. This order would oblige the old man to go down into the cellar; Williams would wait until he had reached it, and would then 'slam' and lock the street-door in the violent way described. Williamson would come up in agitation upon hearing this violence. The murderer, aware that he would do so, met him, no doubt, at the head of the cellar stairs, and threw him down; after which he would go down to consummate the murder in his ordinary way. All this would occupy a minute, or a minute and a half; and in that way the interval would be accounted for that elapsed between the alarming sound of the street-door as heard by the journeyman, and the lamentable outcry of the female servant. It is evident also, that the reason why no cry whatsoever had been heard from the lips of Mrs. Williamson, is due to the positions of the parties as I have sketched them. Coming behind Mrs. Williamson, unseen therefore, and from her deafness unheard, the murderer would inflict entire abolition of consciousness while she was yet unaware of his presence. But with the servant, who had unavoidably witnessed the attack upon her mistress, the murderer could not obtain the same fulness of advantage; and _she_ therefore had time for making an agonizing ejaculation. It has been mentioned, that the murderer of the Marrs was not for nearly a fortnight so much as suspected; meaning that, previously to the Williamson murder, no vestige of any ground for suspicion in any direction whatever had occurred either to the general public or to the police. But there were two very limited exceptions to this state of absolute ignorance. Some of the magistrates had in their possession something which, when closely examined, offered a very probable means for tracing the criminal. But as yet they had _not_ traced him. Until the Friday morning next after the destruction of the Williamsons, they had not published the important fact, that upon the ship-carpenter's mallet (with which, as regarded the stunning or disabling process, the murders had been achieved) were inscribed the letters 'J. P.' This mallet had, by a strange oversight on the part of the murderer, been left behind in Marr's shop; and it is an interesting fact, therefore, that, had the villain been intercepted by the brave pawnbroker, he would have been met virtually disarmed. This public notification was made officially on the Friday, viz., on the thirteenth day after the first murder. And it was instantly followed (as will be seen) by a most important result. Meantime, within the secrecy of one single bedroom in all London, it is a fact that Williams had been whisperingly the object of very deep suspicion from the very first--that is, within that same hour which witnessed the Marr tragedy. And singular it is, that the suspicion was due entirely to his own folly. Williams lodged, in company with other men of various nations, at a public-house. In a large dormitory there were arranged five or six beds; these were occupied by artisans, generally of respectable character. One or two Englishmen there were, one or two Scotchmen, three or four Germans, and Williams, whose birth-place was not certainly known. On the fatal Saturday night, about half-past one o'clock, when Williams returned from his dreadful labors, he found the English and Scotch party asleep, but the Germans awake: one of them was sitting up with a lighted candle in his hands, and reading aloud to the other two. Upon this, Williams said, in an angry and very peremptory tone, 'Oh, put that candle out; put it out directly; we shall all be burned in our beds.' Had the British party in the room been awake, Mr. Williams would have roused a mutinous protest against this arrogant mandate. But Germans are generally mild and facile in their tempers; so the light was complaisantly extinguished. Yet, as there were no curtains, it struck the Germans that the danger was really none at all; for bed-clothes, massed upon each other, will no more burn than the leaves of a closed book. Privately, therefore, the Germans drew an inference, that Mr. Williams must have had some urgent motive for withdrawing his own person and dress from observation. What this motive might be, the next day's news diffused all over London, and of course at this house, not two furlongs from Marr's shop, made awfully evident; and, as may well be supposed, the suspicion was communicated to the other members of the dormitory. All of them, however, were aware of the legal danger attaching, under English law, to insinuations against a man, even if true, which might not admit of proof. In reality, had Williams used the most obvious precautions, had he simply walked down to the Thames (not a stone's-throw distant), and flung two of his implements into the river, no conclusive proof could have been adduced against him. And he might have realized the scheme of Courvoisier (the murderer of Lord William Russell) --viz., have sought each separate month's support in a separate well- concerted murder. The party in the dormitory, meantime, were satisfied themselves, but waited for evidences that might satisfy others. No sooner, therefore, had the official notice been published as to the initials J. P. on the mallet, than every man in the house recognized at once the well- known initials of an honest Norwegian ship-carpenter, John Petersen, who had worked in the English dockyards until the present year; but, having occasion to revisit his native land, had left his box of tools in the garrets of this inn. These garrets were now searched. Petersen's tool- chest was found, but wanting the mallet; and, on further examination, another overwhelming discovery was made. The surgeon, who examined the corpses at Williamson's, had given it as his opinion that the throats were not cut by means of a razor, but of some implement differently shaped. It was now remembered that Williams had recently borrowed a large French knife of peculiar construction; and accordingly, from a heap of old lumber and rags, there was soon extricated a waistcoat, which the whole house could swear to as recently worn by Williams. In this waistcoat, and glued by gore to the lining of its pockets, was found the French knife. Next, it was matter of notoriety to everybody in the inn, that Williams ordinarily wore at present a pair of creaking shoes, and a brown surtout lined with silk. Many other presumptions seemed scarcely called for. Williams was immediately apprehended, and briefly examined. This was on the Friday. On the Saturday morning (viz., fourteen days from the Marr murders) he was again brought up. The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming; Williams watched its course, but said very little. At the close, he was fully committed for trial at the next sessions; and it is needless to say, that, on his road to prison, he was pursued by mobs so fierce, that, under ordinary circumstances, there would have been small hope of escaping summary vengeance. But upon this occasion a powerful escort had been provided; so that he was safely lodged in jail. In this particular jail at this time, the regulation was, that at five o'clock, P. M. all the prisoners on the criminal side should be finally locked up for the night, and without candles. For fourteen hours (that is, until seven o'clock on the next morning) they were left unvisited, and in total darkness. Time, therefore, Williams had for committing suicide. The means in other respects were small. One iron bar there was, meant (if I remember) for the suspension of a lamp; upon this he had hanged himself by his braces. At what hour was uncertain: some people fancied at midnight. And in that case, precisely at the hour when, fourteen days before, he had been spreading horror and desolation through the quiet family of poor Marr, now was he forced into drinking of the same cup, presented to his lips by the same accursed hands. * * * * * The case of the M'Keans, which has been specially alluded to, merits also a slight rehearsal for the dreadful picturesqueness of some two or three amongst its circumstances. The scene of this murder was at a rustic inn, some few miles (I think) from Manchester; and the advantageous situation of this inn it was, out of which arose the two fold temptations of the case. Generally speaking, an inn argues, of course, a close cincture of neighbors--as the original motive for opening such an establishment. But, in this case, the house individually was solitary, so that no interruption was to be looked for from any persons living within reach of screams; and yet, on the other hand, the circumjacent vicinity was eminently populous; as one consequence of which, a benefit club had established its weekly rendezvous in this inn, and left the peculiar accumulations in their club- room, under the custody of the landlord. This fund arose often to a considerable amount, fifty or seventy pounds, before it was transferred to the hands of a banker. Here, therefore, was a treasure worth some little risk, and a situation that promised next to none. These attractive circumstances had, by accident, become accurately known to one or both of the two M'Keans; and, unfortunately, at a moment of overwhelming misfortune to themselves. They were hawkers; and, until lately, had borne most respectable characters: but some mercantile crash had overtaken them with utter ruin, in which their joint capital had been swallowed up to the last shilling. This sudden prostration had made them desperate: their own little property had been swallowed up in a large _social_ catastrophe, and society at large they looked upon as accountable to them for a robbery. In preying, therefore, upon society, they considered themselves as pursuing a wild natural justice of retaliation. The money aimed at did certainly assume the character of public money, being the product of many separate subscriptions. They forgot, however, that in the murderous acts, which too certainly they meditated as preliminaries to the robbery, they could plead no such imaginary social precedent. In dealing with a family that seemed almost helpless, if all went smoothly, they relied entirely upon their own bodily strength. They were stout young men, twenty-eight to thirty-two years old; somewhat undersized as to height; but squarely built, deep- chested, broad-shouldered, and so beautifully formed, as regarded the symmetry of their limbs and their articulations, that, after their execution, the bodies were privately exhibited by the surgeons of the Manchester Infirmary, as objects of statuesque interest. On the other hand, the household which they proposed to attack consisted of the following four persons:--1. the landlord, a stoutish farmer--but _him_ they intended to disable by a trick then newly introduced amongst robbers, and termed _hocussing_, _i.e._, clandestinely drugging the liquor of the victim with laudanum; 2. the landlord's wife; 3. a young servant woman; 4. a boy, twelve or fourteen years old. The danger was, that out of four persons, scattered by possibility over a house which had two separate exits, one at least might escape, and by better acquaintance with the adjacent paths, might succeed in giving an alarm to some of the houses a furlong distant. Their final resolution was, to be guided by circumstances as to the mode of conducting the affair; and yet, as it seemed essential to success that they should assume the air of strangers to each other, it was necessary that they should preconcert some general outline of their plan; since it would on this scheme be impossible, without awaking violent suspicions, to make any communications under the eyes of the family. This outline included, at the least, one murder: so much was settled; but, otherwise, their subsequent proceedings make it evident that they wished to have as little bloodshed as was consistent with their final object. On the appointed day, they presented themselves separately at the rustic inn, and at different hours. One came as early as four o'clock in the afternoon; the other not until half-past seven. They saluted each other distantly and shyly; and, though occasionally exchanging a few words in the character of strangers, did not seem disposed to any familiar intercourse. With the landlord, however, on his return about eight o'clock from Manchester, one of the brothers entered into a lively conversation; invited him to take a tumbler of punch; and, at a moment when the landlord's absence from the room allowed it, poured into the punch a spoonful of laudanum. Some time after this, the clock struck ten; upon which the elder M'Kean, professing to be weary, asked to be shown up to his bedroom: for each brother, immediately on arriving, had engaged a bed. On this, the poor servant girl had presented herself with a bed-candle to light him upstairs. At this critical moment the family were distributed thus:--the landlord, stupefied with the horrid narcotic which he had drunk, had retired to a private room adjoining the public room, for the purpose of reclining upon a sofa: and he, luckily for his own safety, was looked upon as entirely incapacitated for action. The landlady was occupied with her husband. And thus the younger M'Kean was left alone in the public room. He rose, therefore, softly, and placed himself at the foot of the stairs which his brother had just ascended, so as to be sure of intercepting any fugitive from the bedroom above. Into that room the elder M'Kean was ushered by the servant, who pointed to two beds--one of which was already half occupied by the boy, and the other empty: in these, she intimated that the two strangers must dispose of themselves for the night, according to any arrangement that they might agree upon. Saying this, she presented him with the candle, which he in a moment placed upon the table; and, intercepting her retreat from the room threw his arm round her neck with a gesture as though he meant to kiss her. This was evidently what she herself anticipated, and endeavored to prevent. Her horror may be imagined, when she felt the perfidious hand that clasped her neck armed with a razor, and violently cutting her throat. She was hardly able to utter one scream, before she sank powerless upon the floor. This dreadful spectacle was witnessed by the boy, who was not asleep, but had presence of mind enough instantly to close his eyes. The murderer advanced hastily to the bed, and anxiously examined the expression of the boy's features: satisfied he was not, and he then placed his hand upon the boy's heart, in order to judge by its beatings whether he were agitated or not. This was a dreadful trial: and no doubt the counterfeit sleep would immediately have been detected, when suddenly a dreadful spectacle drew off the attention of the murderer. Solemnly, and in ghostly silence, uprose in her dying delirium the murdered girl; she stood upright, she walked steadily for a moment or two, she bent her steps towards the door. The murderer turned away to pursue her; and at that moment the boy, feeling that his one solitary chance was to fly while this scene was in progress, bounded out of bed. On the landing at the head of the stairs was one murderer, at the foot of the stairs was the other: who could believe that the boy had the shadow of a chance for escaping? And yet, in the most natural way, he surmounted all hindrances. In the boy's horror, he laid his left hand on the balustrade, and took a flying leap over it, which landed him at the bottom of the stairs, without having touched a single stair. He had thus effectually passed one of the murderers: the other, it is true, was still to be passed; and this would have been impossible but for a sudden accident. The landlady had been alarmed by the faint scream of the young woman; had hurried from her private room to the girl's assistance; but at the foot of the stairs had been intercepted by the younger brother, and was at this moment struggling with _him_. The confusion of this life-and- death conflict had allowed the boy to whirl past them. Luckily he took a turn into a kitchen, out of which was a back-door, fastened by a single bolt, that ran freely at a touch; and through this door he rushed into the open fields. But at this moment the elder brother was set free for pursuit by the death of the poor girl. There is no doubt, that in her delirium the image moving through her thoughts was that of the club, which met once a- week. She fancied it no doubt sitting; and to this room, for help and for safety she staggered along; she entered it, and within the doorway once more she dropped down, and instantly expired. Her murderer, who had followed her closely, now saw himself set at liberty for the pursuit of the boy. At this critical moment, all was at stake; unless the boy were caught, the enterprise was ruined. He passed his brother, therefore, and the landlady without pausing, and rushed through the open door into the fields. By a single second, perhaps, he was too late. The boy was keenly aware, that if he continued in sight, he would have no chance of escaping from a powerful young man. He made, therefore, at once for a ditch, into which he tumbled headlong. Had the murderer ventured to make a leisurely examination of the nearest ditch, he would easily have found the boy--made so conspicuous by his white shirt. But he lost all heart, upon failing at once to arrest the boy's flight. And every succeeding second made his despair the greater. If the boy had really effected his escape to the neighboring farm-house, a party of men might be gathered within five minutes; and already it might have become difficult for himself and his brother, unacquainted with the field paths, to evade being intercepted. Nothing remained, therefore, but to summon his brother away. Thus it happened that the landlady, though mangled, escaped with life, and eventually recovered. The landlord owed his safety to the stupefying potion. And the baffled murderers had the misery of knowing that their dreadful crime had been altogether profitless. The road, indeed, was now open to the club-room; and, probably, forty seconds would have sufficed to carry off the box of treasure, which afterwards might have been burst open and pillaged at leisure. But the fear of intercepting enemies was too strongly upon them; and they fled rapidly by a road which carried them actually within six feet of the lurking boy. That night they passed through Manchester. When daylight returned, they slept in a thicket twenty miles distant from the scene of their guilty attempt. On the second and third nights, they pursued their march on foot, resting again during the day. About sunrise on the fourth morning, they were entering some village near Kirby Lonsdale, in Westmoreland. They must have designedly quitted the direct line of route; for their object was Ayrshire, of which county they were natives; and the regular road would have led them through Shap, Penrith, Carlisle. Probably they were seeking to elude the persecution of the stage-coaches, which, for the last thirty hours, had been scattering at all the inns and road-side _cabarets_ hand-bills describing their persons and dress. It happened (perhaps through design) that on this fourth morning they had separated, so as to enter the village ten minutes apart from each other. They were exhausted and footsore. In this condition it was easy to stop them. A blacksmith had silently reconnoitred them, and compared their appearance with the description of the hand-bills. They were then easily overtaken, and separately arrested. Their trial and condemnation speedily followed at Lancaster; and in those days it followed, of course, that they were executed. Otherwise their case fell so far within the sheltering limits of what would _now_ be regarded as extenuating circumstances--that, whilst a murder more or less was not to repel them from their object, very evidently they were anxious to economize the bloodshed as much as possible. Immeasurable, therefore, was the interval which divided them from the monster Williams. They perished on the scaffold: Williams, as I have said, by his own hand; and, in obedience to the law as it then stood, he was buried in the centre of a _quadrivium_, or conflux of four roads (in this case four streets), with a stake driven through his heart. And over him drives for ever the uproar of unresting London! FOOTNOTES [1] See 'Miscellaneous Essays,' p. 17. [2] I am not sure whether Southey held at this time his appointment to the editorship of the 'Edinburgh Annual Register.' If he did, no doubt in the domestic section of that chronicle will be found an excellent account of the whole. [3] An artist told me in this year, 1812, that having accidentally seen a native Devonshire regiment (either volunteers or militia), nine hundred strong, marching past a station at which he had posted himself, he did not observe a dozen men that would not have been described in common parlance as 'good looking.' [4] I do not remember, chronologically, the history of gas-lights. But in London, long after Mr. Winsor had shown the value of gas-lighting, and its applicability to street purposes, various districts were prevented, for many years, from resorting to the new system, in consequence of old contracts with oil-dealers, subsisting through long terms of years. [5] Let the reader, who is disposed to regard as exaggerated or romantic the pure fiendishness imputed to Williams, recollect that, except for the luxurious purpose of basking and revelling in the anguish of dying despair, he had no motive at all, small or great, for attempting the murder of this young girl. She had seen nothing, heard nothing--was fast asleep, and her door was closed; so that, as a witness against him, he knew that she was as useless as any one of the three corpses. And yet he _was_ making preparations for her murder, when the alarm in the street interrupted him. [6] 'Revolt of Islam,' canto xii. [7] See his bitter letters to Lady Suffolk. THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE. It is sometimes said, that a religious messenger from God does not come amongst men for the sake of teaching truths in science, or of correcting errors in science. Most justly is this said: but often in terms far too feeble. For generally these terms are such as to imply, that, although no direct and imperative function of his mission, it was yet open to him, as a permissible function--that, although not pressing with the force of an obligation upon the missionary, it was yet at his discretion--if not to correct other men's errors, yet at least in his own person to speak with scientific precision. I contend that it was _not_. I contend, that to have uttered the truths of astronomy, of geology, &c., at the era of new- born Christianity, was not only _below_ and _beside_ the purposes of a religion, but would have been _against_ them. Even upon errors of a far more important class than errors in science can ever be--superstitions, for instance, that degraded the very idea of God; prejudices and false usages, that laid waste human happiness (such as slavery, and many hundreds of other abuses that might be mentioned), the rule evidently acted upon by the Founder of Christianity was this--Given the purification of the well-head, once assumed that the fountains of truth are cleansed, all these derivative currents of evil will cleanse themselves. As a general rule, the branches of error were disregarded, and the roots only attacked. If, then, so lofty a station was taken with regard even to such errors as really _had_ moral and spiritual relations, how much more with regard to the comparative trifles (as in the ultimate relations of human nature they are) of merely human science! But, for my part, I go further, and assert, that upon three reasons it was impossible for any messenger from God (or offering himself in that character) to have descended into the communication of truth merely scientific, or economic, or worldly. And the three reasons are these:--_First_, Because such a descent would have degraded his mission, by lowering it to the base level of a collusion with human curiosity, or (in the most favorable case) of a collusion with petty and transitory interests. _Secondly_, Because it would have ruined his mission, by disturbing its free agency, and misdirecting its energies, in two separate modes: first, by destroying the spiritual _auctoritas_ (the prestige and consideration) of the missionary; secondly, by vitiating the spiritual atmosphere of his audience--that is, corrupting and misdirecting the character of their thoughts and expectations. He that in the early days of Christianity should have proclaimed the true theory of the solar system, or that by any chance word or allusion should then, in a condition of man so little prepared to receive such truths, have asserted or assumed the daily motion of the earth on its own axis, or its annual motion round the sun, would have found himself entangled at once and irretrievably in the following unmanageable consequences:--First of all, and instantaneously, he would have been roused to the alarming fact, that, by this dreadful indiscretion he himself, the professed deliverer of a new and spiritual religion, had in a moment untuned the spirituality of his audience. He would find that he had awakened within them the passion of curiosity--the most unspiritual of passions, and of curiosity in a fierce polemic shape. The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would be, instantly to recant. Already by this one may estimate the evil, when such would be its readiest palliation. For in what condition would the reputation of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an intellectual guide, when his first act must be to recant--and to recant what to the whole body of his hearers would wear the character of a lunatic proposition. Such considerations might possibly induce him _not_ to recant. But in that case the consequences are far worse. Having once allowed himself to sanction what his hearers regard as the most monstrous of paradoxes, he has no liberty of retreat open to him. He must stand to the promises of his own acts. Uttering the first truth of a science, he is pledged to the second; taking the main step, he is committed to all which follow. He is thrown at once upon the endless controversies which science in every stage provokes, and in none more than in the earliest. Starting, besides, from the authority of a divine mission, he could not (as others might) have the privilege of selecting arbitrarily or partially. If upon one science, then upon all; if upon science, then upon art; if upon art and science, then upon _every_ branch of social economy his reformations and advances are equally due--due as to all, if due as to any. To move in one direction, is constructively to undertake for all. Without power to retreat, he has thus thrown the intellectual interests of his followers into a channel utterly alien to the purposes of a spiritual mission. The spiritual mission, therefore, the purpose for which only the religious teacher was sent, has now perished altogether--overlaid and confounded by the merely scientific wranglings to which his own inconsiderate precipitance has opened the door. But suppose at this point that the teacher, aware at length of the mischief which he has caused, and seeing that the fatal error of uttering one solitary novel truth upon a matter of mere science is by inevitable consequence to throw him upon a road leading altogether away from the proper field of his mission, takes the laudable course of confessing his error, and of attempting a return into his proper spiritual province. This may be his best course; yet, after all, it will not retrieve his lost ground. He returns with a character confessedly damaged. His very excuse rests upon the blindness and shortsightedness which forbade his anticipating the true and natural consequences. Neither will his own account of the case be generally accepted. He will not be supposed to retreat from further controversy, as inconsistent with spiritual purposes, but because he finds himself unequal to the dispute. And, in the very best case, he is, by his own acknowledgment, tainted with human infirmity. He has been ruined for a servant of inspiration; and how? By a process, let it be remembered, of which all the steps are inevitable under the same agency: that is, in the case of any primitive Christian teacher having attempted to speak the language of scientific truth in dealing with the phenomena of astronomy, geology, or of any merely human knowledge. Now, thirdly and lastly, in order to try the question in an extreme form, let it be supposed that, aided by powers of working miracles, some early apostle of Christianity should actually have succeeded in carrying through the Copernican system of astronomy, as an article of blind belief, sixteen centuries before the progress of man's intellect had qualified him for naturally developing that system. What, in such a case, would be the true estimate and valuation of the achievement? Simply this, that he had thus succeeded in cancelling and counteracting a determinate scheme of divine discipline and training for man. Wherefore did God give to man the powers for contending with scientific difficulties? Wherefore did he lay a secret train of continual occasions, that should rise, by relays, through scores of generations, for provoking and developing those activities in man's intellect, if, after all, he is to send a messenger of his own, more than human, to intercept and strangle all these great purposes? This is to mistake the very meaning and purposes of a revelation. A revelation is not made for the purpose of showing to indolent men that which, by faculties already given to them, they may show to themselves; no: but for the purpose of showing _that_ which the moral darkness of man will not, without supernatural light, allow him to perceive. With disdain, therefore, must every thoughtful person regard the notion, that God could wilfully interfere with his own plans, by accrediting ambassadors to reveal astronomy, or any other science, which he has commanded men, by qualifying men, to reveal for themselves. Even as regards astronomy--a science so nearly allying itself to religion by the loftiness and by the purity of its contemplations--Scripture is nowhere the _parent_ of any doctrine, nor so much as the silent sanctioner of any doctrine. It is made impossible for Scripture to teach falsely, by the simple fact that Scripture, on such subjects, will not condescend to teach at all. The Bible adopts the erroneous language of men (which at any rate it must do, in order to make itself understood), not by way of sanctioning a theory, but by way of using a fact. The Bible, for instance, _uses_ (postulates) the phenomena of day and night, of summer and winter; and, in relation to their causes, speaks by the same popular and inaccurate language which is current for ordinary purposes, even amongst the most scientific of astronomers. For the man of science, equally with the populace, talks of the sun as rising and setting, as having finished half his day's journey, &c., and, without pedantry, could not in many cases talk otherwise. But the results, which are all that concern Scripture, are equally true, whether accounted for by one hypothesis which is philosophically just, or by another which is popular and erring. Now, on the other hand, in geology and cosmology, the case is stronger. _Here_ there is no opening for a compliance even with a _language_ that is erroneous; for no language at all is current upon subjects that have never engaged the popular attention. _Here_, where there is no such stream of apparent phenomena running counter (as in astronomy there is) to the real phenomena, neither is there any popular language opposed to the scientific. The whole are abtruse speculations, even as regards their objects, nor dreamed of as possibilities, either in their true aspects or their false aspects, till modern times. The Scriptures, therefore, nowhere allude to such sciences, either as taking the shape of histories, applied to processes current and in movement, or as taking the shape of theories applied to processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic cosmogony, indeed, gives the succession of natural births; and probably the general outline of such a succession will be more and more confirmed as geology advances. But as to the time, the duration, of this successive evolution, it is the idlest of notions that the Scriptures either have, or could have, condescended to human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the drama of this world. Genesis would no more have indulged so mean a passion with respect to the mysterious inauguration of the world, than the Apocalypse with respect to its mysterious close. 'Yet the six _days_ of Moses!' Days! But is it possible that human folly should go the length of understanding by the Mosaical _day_, the mysterious _day_ of that awful agency which moulded the heavens and the heavenly host, no more than the ordinary _nychthemeron_ or cycle of twenty-four hours? The period implied in a _day_, when used in relation to the inaugural manifestation of creative power in that vast drama which introduces God to man in the character of a demiurgus or creator of the world, indicated one stage amongst six; involving probably many millions of years. The silliest of nurses, in her nursery babble, could hardly suppose that the mighty process began on a Monday morning, and ended on Saturday night. If we are seriously to study the value and scriptural acceptation of scriptural words and phrases, I presume that our first business will be to collate the use of these words in one part of Scripture, with their use in other parts, holding the same spiritual relations. The creation, for instance, does not belong to the earthly or merely historical records, but to the spiritual records of the Bible; to the same category, therefore, as the prophetic sections of the Bible. Now, in those, and in the Psalms, how do we understand the word _day_? Is any man so little versed in biblical language as not to know, that (except in the merely historical parts of the Jewish records) every section of time has a secret and separate acceptation in the Scriptures? Does an aeon, though a Grecian word, bear scripturally (either in Daniel or in St. John) any sense known to Grecian ears? Do the seventy _weeks_ of the prophet mean weeks in the sense of human calendars? Already the Psalms (xc.), already St. Peter (2d Epist.), warn us of a peculiar sense attached to the word _day_ in divine ears. And who of the innumerable interpreters understands the twelve hundred and sixty days in Daniel, or his two thousand and odd days, to mean, by possibility, periods of twenty-four hours? Surely the theme of Moses was as mystical, and as much entitled to the benefit of mystical language, as that of the prophets. The sum of this matter is this:--God, by a Hebrew prophet, is sublimely described as _the Revealer_; and, in variation of his own expression, the same prophet describes him as the Being 'that knoweth the darkness.' Under no idea can the relations of God to man be more grandly expressed. But of what is he the revealer? Not surely of those things which he has enabled man to reveal for himself, but of those things which, were it not through special light from heaven, must eternally remain sealed up in inaccessible darkness. On this principle we should all laugh at a revealed cookery. But essentially the same ridicule, not more, and not less, applies to a revealed astronomy, or a revealed geology. As a fact, there _is_ no such astronomy or geology: as a possibility, by the _a priori_ argument which I have used (viz., that a revelation on such fields would counteract _other_ machineries of providence), there _can_ be no such astronomy or geology in the Bible. Consequently there _is_ none. Consequently there can be no schism or feud upon _these_ subjects between the Bible and the philosophies outside. SCHLOSSER'S LITERARY HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In the person of this Mr. Schlosser is exemplified a common abuse, not confined to literature. An artist from the Italian opera of London and Paris, making a professional excursion to our provinces, is received according to the tariff of the metropolis; no one being bold enough to dispute decisions coming down from the courts above. In that particular case there is seldom any reason to complain--since really out of Germany and Italy there is no city, if you except Paris and London, possessing _materials_, in that field of art, for the composition of an audience large enough to act as a court of revision. It would be presumption in the provincial audience, so slightly trained to good music and dancing, if it should affect to reverse a judgment ratified in the supreme capital. The result, therefore, is practically just, if the original verdict was just; what was right from the first cannot be made wrong by iteration. Yet, even in such a case, there is something not satisfactory to a delicate sense of equity; for the artist returns from the tour as if from some new and independent triumph, whereas, all is but the reverberation of an old one; it seems a new access of sunlight, whereas it is but a reflex illumination from satellites. In literature the corresponding case is worse. An author, passing by means of translation before a foreign people, ought _de jure_ to find himself before a new tribunal; but _de facto_, he does not. Like the opera artist, but not with the same propriety, he comes before a court that never interferes to disturb a judgment, but only to re-affirm it. And he returns to his native country, quartering in his armorial bearings these new trophies, as though won by new trials, when, in fact, they are due to servile ratifications of old ones. When Sue, or Balzac, Hugo, or George Sand, comes before an English audience--the opportunity is invariably lost for estimating them at a new angle of sight. All who dislike them lay them aside--whilst those only apply themselves seriously to their study, who are predisposed to the particular key of feeling, through which originally these authors had prospered. And thus a new set of judges, that might usefully have modified the narrow views of the old ones, fall by mere _inertia_ into the humble character of echoes and sounding-boards to swell the uproar of the original mob. In this way is thrown away the opportunity, not only of applying corrections to false national tastes, but oftentimes even to the unfair accidents of _luck_ that befall books. For it is well known to all who watch literature with vigilance, that books and authors have their fortunes, which travel upon a far different scale of proportions from those that measure their merits. Not even the caprice or the folly of the reading public is required to account for this. Very often, indeed, the whole difference between an extensive circulation for one book, and none at all for another of about equal merit, belongs to no particular blindness in men, but to the simple fact, that the one _has_, whilst the other has _not_, been brought effectually under the eyes of the public. By far the greater part of books are lost, not because they are rejected, but because they are never introduced. In any proper sense of the word, very few books are published. Technically they are published; which means, that for six or ten times they are _advertised_, but they are not made known to _attentive_ ears, or to ears _prepared_ for attention. And amongst the causes which account for this difference in the fortune of books, although there are many, we may reckon, as foremost, _personal_ accidents of position in the authors. For instance, with us in England it will do a bad book no _ultimate_ service, that it is written by a lord, or a bishop, or a privy counsellor, or a member of Parliament--though, undoubtedly, it will do an _instant_ service--it will sell an edition or so. This being the case, it being certain that no rank will reprieve a bad writer from _final_ condemnation, the sycophantic glorifier of the public fancies his idol justified; but not so. A bad book, it is true, will not be saved by advantages of position in the author; but a book moderately good will be extravagantly aided by such advantages. Lectures on _Christianity_, that happened to be respectably written and delivered, had prodigious success in my young days, because, also, they happened to be lectures of a prelate; three times the ability would not have procured them any attention had they been the lectures of an obscure curate. Yet on the other hand, it is but justice to say, that, if written with three times _less_ ability, lawn-sleeves would not have given them buoyancy, but, on the contrary, they would have sunk the bishop irrecoverably; whilst the curate, favored by obscurity, would have survived for another chance. So again, and indeed, more than so, as to poetry. Lord Carlisle, of the last generation, wrote tolerable verses. They were better than Lord Roscommon's, which, for one hundred and fifty years, the judicious public has allowed the booksellers to incorporate, along with other refuse of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, into the costly collections of the 'British Poets.' And really, if you _will_ insist on odious comparisons, they were not so very much below the verses of an amiable prime minister known to us all. Yet, because they wanted vital _stamina_, not only they fell, but, in falling, they caused the earl to reel much more than any commoner would have done. Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord Carlisle, viz., Lord Byron, because he brought real genius and power to the effort, found a vast auxiliary advantage in a peerage and a very ancient descent. On these double wings he soared into a region of public interest, far higher than ever he _would_ have reached by poetic power alone. Not only all his rubbish--which in quantity is great--passed for jewels, but also what _are_ incontestably jewels have been, and will be, valued at a far higher rate than if they had been raised from less aristocratic mines. So fatal for mediocrity, so gracious for real power, is any adventitious distinction from birth, station, or circumstances of brilliant notoriety. In reality, the public, our never-sufficiently-to-be- respected mother, is the most unutterable sycophant that ever the clouds dropped their rheum upon. She is always ready for jacobinical scoffs at a man for being a lord, if he happens to fail; she is always ready for toadying a lord, if he happens to make a hit. Ah, dear sycophantic old lady, I kiss your sycophantic hands, and wish heartily that I were a duke for your sake! It would be a mistake to fancy that this tendency to confound real merit and its accidents of position is at all peculiar to us or to our age. Dr. Sacheverell, by embarking his small capital of talent on the springtide of a furious political collision, brought back an ampler return for his little investment than ever did Wickliffe or Luther. Such was his popularity in the heart of love and the heart of hatred, that he would have been assassinated by the Whigs, on his triumphal progresses through England, had he not been canonized by the Tories. He was a dead man if he had not been suddenly gilt and lacquered as an idol. Neither is the case peculiar at all to England. Ronge, the _ci-devant_ Romish priest (whose name pronounce as you would the English word _wrong_, supposing that it had for a second syllable the final _a_ of 'sopha,' _i.e._, _Wronguh_), has been found a wrong-headed man by _all_ parties, and in a venial degree is, perhaps, a stupid man; but he moves about with more _eclat_ by far than the ablest man in Germany. And, in days of old, the man that burned down a miracle of beauty, viz., the temple of Ephesus, protesting, with tears in his eyes, that he had no other way of getting himself a name, _has_ got it in spite of us all. He's booked for a ride down all history, whether you and I like it or not. Every pocket dictionary knows that Erostratus was that scamp. So of Martin, the man that parboiled, or par- roasted York Minster some ten or twelve years back; that fellow will float down to posterity with the annals of the glorious cathedral: he will 'Pursue the triumph and partake the gale,' whilst the founders and benefactors of the Minster are practically forgotten. These incendiaries, in short, are as well known as Ephesus or York; but not one of us can tell, without humming and hawing, who it was that rebuilt the Ephesian wonder of the world, or that repaired the time- honored Minster. Equally in literature, not the weight of service done, or the power exerted, is sometimes considered chiefly--either of these must be very conspicuous before it will be considered at all--but the splendor, or the notoriety, or the absurdity, or even the scandalousness of the circumstances [1] surrounding the author. Schlosser must have benefitted in some such adventitious way before he ever _could_ have risen to his German celebrity. What was it that raised him to his momentary distinction? Was it something very wicked that he did, or something very brilliant that he said? I should rather conjecture that it must have been something inconceivably absurd which he proposed. Any one of the three achievements stands good in Germany for a reputation. But, however it were that Mr. Schlosser first gained his reputation, mark what now follows. On the wings of this equivocal reputation he flies abroad to Paris and London. There he thrives, not by any approving experience or knowledge of his works, but through blind faith in his original German public. And back he flies afterwards to Germany, as if carrying with him new and independent testimonies to his merit, and from two nations that are directly concerned in his violent judgments; whereas (which is the simple truth) he carries back a careless reverberation of his first German character, from those who have far too much to read for declining aid from vicarious criticism when it will spare that effort to themselves. Thus it is that German critics become audacious and libellous. Kohl, Von Raumer, Dr. Carus, physician to the King of Saxony, by means of introductory letters floating them into circles far above any they had seen in homely Germany, are qualified by our own negligence and indulgence for mounting a European tribunal, from which they pronounce malicious edicts against ourselves. Sentinels present arms to Von Raumer at Windsor, because he rides in a carriage of Queen Adelaide's; and Von Raumer immediately conceives himself the Chancellor of all Christendom, keeper of the conscience to universal Europe, upon all questions of art, manners, politics, or any conceivable intellectual relations of England. Schlosser meditates the same career. But have I any right to quote Schlosser's words from an English translation? I do so only because this happens to be at hand, and the German not. German books are still rare in this country, though more (by one thousand to one) than they were thirty years ago. But I have a full right to rely on the English of Mr. Davison. 'I hold in my hand,' as gentlemen so often say at public meetings, 'a certificate from Herr Schlosser, that to quote Mr. Davison is to quote _him_.' The English translation is one which Mr. Schlosser '_durchgelesen hat, und fur deren genauigkeit und richtigkeit er burgt_ [has read through, and for the accuracy and propriety of which he pledges himself]. Mr. Schossler was so anxious for the spiritual welfare of us poor islanders, that he not only read it through, but he has even _aufmerksam durchgelesen_ it [read it through wide awake] _und gepruft_ [and carefully examined it]; nay, he has done all this in company with the translator. 'Oh ye Athenians! how hard do I labor to earn your applause!' And, as the result of such herculean labors, a second time he makes himself surety for its precision; '_er burgt also dafur wie fur seine eigne arbeit_' [he guarantees it accordingly as he would his own workmanship]. Were it not for this unlimited certificate, I should have sent for the book to Germany. As it is, I need not wait; and all complaints on this score I defy, above all from Herr Schlosser. [2] In dealing with an author so desultory as Mr. Schlosser, the critic has a right to an _extra_ allowance of desultoriness for his own share; so excuse me, reader, for rushing at once _in medias res_. Of Swift, Mr. Schlosser selects for notice three works--the 'Drapier's Letters,' 'Gulliver's Travels,' and the 'Tale of a Tub.' With respect to the first, as it is a necessity of Mr. S. to be forever wrong in his substratum of facts, he adopts the old erroneous account of Wood's contract as to the copper coinage, and of the imaginary wrong which it inflicted on Ireland. Of all Swift's villainies for the sake of popularity, and still more for the sake of wielding this popularity vindictively, none is so scandalous as this. In any new life of Swift the case must be stated _de novo_. Even Sir Walter Scott is not impartial; and for the same reason as now forces me to blink it, viz., the difficulty of presenting the details in a readable shape. 'Gulliver's Travels' Schlosser strangely considers 'spun out to an intolerable extent.' Many evil things might be said of Gulliver; but not this. The captain is anything but tedious. And, indeed, it becomes a question of mere mensuration, that can be settled in a moment. A year or two since I had in my hands a pocket edition, comprehending all the four parts of the worthy skipper's adventures within a single volume of 420 pages. Some part of the space was also wasted on notes, often very idle. Now the 1st part contains _two_ separate voyages (Lilliput and Blefuscu), the 2d, _one_, the 3d, _five_, and the 4th, _one_; so that, in all, this active navigator, who has enriched geography, I hope, with something of a higher quality than your old muffs that thought much of doubling Cape Horn, here gives us _nine_ great discoveries, far more surprising than the pretended discoveries of Sinbad (which are known to be fabulous), averaging _quam proxime_, forty- seven small 16mo pages each. Oh you unconscionable German, built round in your own country with circumvallations of impregnable 4tos, oftentimes dark and dull as Avernus--that you will have the face to describe dear excellent Captain Lemuel Gulliver of Redriff, and subsequently of Newark, that 'darling of children and men,' as tedious. It is exactly because he is _not_ tedious, because he does not shoot into German foliosity, that Schlosser finds him '_intolerable_.' I have justly transferred to Gulliver's use the words originally applied by the poet to the robin- redbreast, for it is remarkable that _Gulliver_ and the _Arabian Nights_ are amongst the few books where children and men find themselves meeting and jostling each other. This was the case from its first publication, just one hundred and twenty years since. 'It was received,' says Dr. Johnson, 'with such avidity, that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could be made--it was read by the high and the low, the learned and the illiterate. Criticism was lost in wonder. Now, on the contrary, Schlosser wonders not at all, but simply criticises; which we could bear, if the criticism were even ingenious. Whereas, he utterly misunderstands Swift, and is a malicious calumniator of the captain who, luckily, roaming in Sherwood, and thinking, often with a sigh, of his little nurse, [3] Glumdalclitch, would trouble himself slightly about what Heidelberg might say in the next century. There is but one example on our earth of a novel received with such indiscriminate applause as 'Gulliver;' and _that_ was 'Don Quixote.' Many have been welcomed joyfully by a class --these two by a people. Now, could that have happened had it been characterized by dulness? Of all faults, it could least have had _that_. As to the 'Tale of a Tub,' Schlosser is in such Cimmerian vapors that no system of bellows could blow open a shaft or tube through which he might gain a glimpse of the English truth and daylight. It is useless talking to such a man on such a subject. I consign him to the attentions of some patriotic Irishman. Schlosser, however, is right in a graver reflection which he makes upon the prevailing philosophy of Swift, viz., that 'all his views were directed towards what was _immediately_ beneficial, which is the characteristic of savages.' This is undeniable. The meanness of Swift's nature, and his rigid incapacity for dealing with the grandeurs of the human spirit, with religion, with poetry, or even with science, when it rose above the mercenary practical, is absolutely appalling. His own _yahoo_ is not a more abominable one-sided degradation of humanity, than is he himself under this aspect. And, perhaps, it places this incapacity of his in its strongest light, when we recur to the fact of his _astonishment_ at a religious princess refusing to confer a bishoprick upon one that had treated the Trinity, and all the profoundest mysteries of Christianity, not with mere scepticism, or casual sneer, but with set pompous merriment and farcical buffoonery. This dignitary of the church, Dean of the most conspicuous cathedral in Ireland, had, in full canonicals, made himself into a regular mountebank, for the sake of giving fuller effect, by the force of contrast, to the silliest of jests directed against all that was most inalienable from Christianity. Ridiculing such things, could he, in any just sense, be thought a Christian? But, as Schlosser justly remarks, even ridiculing the peculiarities of Luther and Calvin as he _did_ ridicule them, Swift could not be thought other than constitutionally incapable of religion. Even a Pagan philosopher, if made to understand the case, would be incapable of scoffing at any _form_, natural or casual, simple or distorted, which might be assumed by the most solemn of problems--problems that rest with the weight of worlds upon the human spirit-- 'Fix'd fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute.' the destiny of man, or the relations of man to God. Anger, therefore, Swift _might_ feel, and he felt it [7] to the end of his most wretched life; but what reasonable ground had a man of sense for _astonishment_-- that a princess, who (according to her knowledge) was sincerely pious, should decline to place such a man upon an Episcopal throne? This argues, beyond a doubt, that Swift was in that state of constitutional irreligion, irreligion from a vulgar temperament, which imputes to everybody else its own plebeian feelings. People differed, he fancied, not by more and less religion, but by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it seemed to him scandalous that a princess, who must, of course, in her heart regard (in common with himself) all mysteries as solemn masques and mummeries, should pretend in a case of downright serious business, to pump up, out of dry conventional hoaxes, any solid objection to a man of his shining merit. '_The Trinity_,' for instance, _that_ he viewed as the password, which the knowing ones gave in answer to the challenge of the sentinel; but, as soon as it had obtained admission for the party within the gates of the camp, it was rightly dismissed to oblivion or to laughter. No case so much illustrates Swift's essential irreligion; since, if he had shared in ordinary human feelings on such subjects, not only he could not have been surprised at his own exclusion from the bench of bishops, _after_ such ribaldries, but originally he would have abstained from them as inevitable bars to clerical promotion, even upon principles of public decorum. As to the _style_ of Swift, Mr. Schlosser shows himself without sensibility in his objections, as the often hackneyed English reader shows himself without philosophic knowledge of style in his applause. Schlosser thinks the style of Gulliver 'somewhat dull.' This shows Schlosser's presumption in speaking upon a point where he wanted, 1st, original delicacy of tact; and, 2dly, familiar knowledge of English. Gulliver's style is _purposely_ touched slightly with that dulness of circumstantiality which besets the excellent, but 'somewhat dull' race of men--old sea captains. Yet it wears only an aerial tint of dulness; the felicity of this coloring in Swift's management is, that it never goes the length of wearying, but only of giving a comic air of downright Wapping and Rotherhithe verisimilitude. All men grow dull, and ought to be dull, that live under a solemn sense of eternal danger, one inch only of plank (often worm-eaten) between themselves and the grave; and, also, that see for ever one wilderness of waters--sublime, but (like the wilderness on shore) monotonous. All sublime people, being monotonous, have a tendency to be dull, and sublime things also. Milton and Aeschylus, the sublimest of men, are crossed at times by a shade of dulness. It is their weak side. But as to a sea captain, a regular nor'-nor'-wester, and sou'-sou'-easter, he ought to be kicked out of the room if he is _not_ dull. It is not 'ship-shape,' or barely tolerable, that he should be otherwise. Yet, after all, considering what I have stated about Captain Gulliver's nine voyages crowding into one pocket volume, he cannot really have much abused his professional license for being dull. Indeed, one has to look out an excuse for his being so little dull; which excuse is found in the fact that he had studied three years at a learned university. Captain Gulliver, though a sailor, I would have you to know, was a gownsman of Cambridge: so says Swift, who knew more about the Captain than anybody now-a-days. Cantabs are all horsemen, _ergo_, Gulliver was fit for any thing, from the _wooden shoon_ of Cambridge up to the Horse Marines. Now, on the other hand, you, common-place reader, that (as an old tradition) believe Swift's style to be a model of excellence, hereafter I shall say a word to you, drawn from deeper principles. At present I content myself with these three propositions, which overthrow if you can;-- 1. That the merit, which justly you ascribe to Swift, is _vernacularity_; he never forgets his mother-tongue in exotic forms, unless we may call Irish exotic; for Hibernicisms he certainly has. This merit, however, is exhibited--not, as _you_ fancy, in a graceful artlessness, but in a coarse inartificiality. To be artless, and to be inartificial, are very different things; as different as being natural and being gross; as different as being simple and being homely. 2. That whatever, meantime, be the particular sort of excellence, or the value of the excellence, in the style of Swift, he had it in common with multitudes beside of that age. De Foe wrote a style for all the world the same as to kind and degree of excellence, only pure from Hibernicisms. So did every honest skipper [Dampier was something more] who had occasion to record his voyages in this world of storms. So did many a hundred of religious writers. And what wonder should there be in this, when the main qualification for such a style was plain good sense, natural feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in putting together the clockwork of sentences, so as to avoid mechanical awkwardness of construction, but above all the advantage of a _subject_, such in its nature as instinctively to reject ornament, lest it should draw off attention from itself? Such subjects are common; but grand impassioned subjects insist upon a different treatment; and _there_ it is that the true difficulties of style commence. 3. [Which partly is suggested by the last remark.] That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any time had the pleasure of conversing upon the subject of style (and pardon me for saying that men of the most sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., poetry and style, to talk _most_ like blockheads), have invariably regarded Swift's style not as if _relatively_ good [_i.e. given_ a proper subject], but as if _absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter what the subject. Now, my friend, suppose the case, that the Dean had been required to write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal apostrophe to Death, or to many passages that I will select in Sir Thomas Brown's 'Religio Medici,' and his 'Urn-burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural sections of his 'Holy Living and Dying,' do you know what would have happened? Are you aware what sort of ridiculous figure your poor bald Jonathan would have cut? About the same that would be cut by a forlorn scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of Belshazzar the king, before a thousand of his lords. Schlosser, after saying any thing right and true (and he really did say the true thing about Swift's _essential_ irreligion), usually becomes exhausted, like a boa-constrictor after eating his half-yearly dinner. The boa gathers himself up, it is to be hoped for a long fit of dyspepsy, in which the horns and hoofs that he has swallowed may chance to avenge the poor goat that owned them. Schlosser, on the other hand, retires into a corner, for the purpose of obstinately talking nonsense, until the gong sounds again for a slight refection of sense. Accordingly he likens Swift, before he has done with him, to whom? I might safely allow the reader three years for guessing, if the greatest of wagers were depending between us. He likens him to Kotzebue, in the first place. How faithful the resemblance! How exactly Swift reminds you of Count Benyowski in Siberia, and of Mrs. Haller moping her eyes in the 'Stranger!' One really is puzzled to say, according to the negro's logic, whether Mrs. Haller is more like the Dean of St. Patrick's, or the Dean more like Mrs. Haller. Anyhow, the likeness is prodigious, if it is not quite reciprocal. The other _terminus_ of the comparison is Wieland. Now there _is_ some shadow of a resemblance there. For Wieland had a touch of the comico-cynical in his nature; and it is notorious that he was often called the German Voltaire, which argues some tiger-monkey grin that traversed his features at intervals. Wieland's malice, however, was far more playful and genial than Swift's; something of this is shown in his romance of 'Idris,' and oftentimes in his prose. But what the world knows Wieland by is his 'Oberon.' Now in this gay, musical romance of Sir Huon and his enchanted horn, with its gleams of voluptuousness, is there a possibility that any suggestion of a scowling face like Swift's should cross the festal scenes? From Swift the scene changes to Addison and Steele. Steele is of less importance; for, though a man of greater intellectual activity [4] than Addison, he had far less of genius. So I turn him out, as one would turn out upon a heath a ram that had missed his way into one's tulip preserve; requesting him to fight for himself against Schlosser, or others that may molest him. But, so far as concerns Addison, I am happy to support the character of Schlosser for consistency, by assuring the reader that, of all the monstrosities uttered by any man upon Addison, and of all the monstrosities uttered by Schlosser upon any man, a thing which he says about Addison is the worst. But this I reserve for a climax at the end. Schlosser really puts his best leg foremost at starting, and one thinks he's going to mend; for he catches a truth, viz., the following--that all the brilliances of the Queen Anne period (which so many inconsiderate people have called the Augustan age of our literature) 'point to this-- that the reading public wished to be entertained, not roused to think; to be gently moved, not deeply excited.' Undoubtedly what strikes a man in Addison, or _will_ strike him when indicated, is the coyness and timidity, almost the girlish shame, which he betrays in the presence of all the elementary majesties belonging to impassioned or idealized nature. Like one bred in crowded cities, when first left alone in forests or amongst mountains, he is frightened at their silence, their solitude, their magnitude of form, or their frowning glooms. It has been remarked by others that Addison and his companions never rise to the idea of addressing the 'nation' or the 'people;' it is always the 'town.' Even their audience was conceived of by _them_ under a limited form. Yet for this they had some excuse in the state of facts. A man would like at this moment to assume that Europe and Asia were listening to him; and as some few copies of his book do really go to Paris and Naples, some to Calcutta, there is a sort of legal fiction that such an assumption is steadily taking root. Yet, unhappily, that ugly barrier of languages interferes. Schamyl, the Circassian chief, though much of a savage, is not so wanting in taste and discernment as to be backward in reading any book of yours or mine. Doubtless he yearns to read it. But then, you see, that infernal _Tchirkass_ language steps between our book, the darling, and _him_, the discerning reader. Now, just such a barrier existed for the Spectator in the travelling arrangements of England. The very few old heavies that had begun to creep along three or four main roads, depended so much on wind and weather, their chances of foundering were so uncalculated, their periods of revolution were so cometary and uncertain, that no body of scientific observations had yet been collected to warrant a prudent man in risking a heavy bale of goods; and, on the whole, even for York, Norwich, or Winchester, a consignment of '_Specs_' was not quite a safe spec. Still, I could have told the Spectator who was anxious to make money, where he might have been sure of a distant sale, though returns would have been slow, viz., at Oxford and Cambridge. We know from Milton that old Hobson delivered his parcels pretty regularly eighty years before 1710. And, one generation before _that_, it is plain, by the interesting (though somewhat Jacobinical) letters [5] of Joseph Mede, the commenter on the Apocalypse, that news and politics of one kind or other (and scandal of _every_ kind) found out for themselves a sort of contraband lungs to breathe through between London and Cambridge; not quite so regular in their _systole_ and _diastole_ as the tides of ebb and flood, but better than nothing. If you consigned a packet into the proper hands on the 1st of May, 'as sure as death' to speak _Scottice_, it would be delivered within sixty miles of the capital before mid-summer. Still there were delays; and these forced a man into carving his world out of London. That excuses the word _town_. Inexcusable, however, were many other forms of expression in those days, which argued cowardly feelings. One would like to see a searching investigation into the state of society in Anne's days--its extreme artificiality, its sheepish reserve upon all the impassioned grandeurs, its shameless outrages upon all the decencies of human nature. Certain it is, that Addison (because everybody) was in that meanest of conditions which blushes at any expression of sympathy with the lovely, the noble, or the impassioned. The wretches were ashamed of their own nature, and perhaps with reason; for in their own denaturalized hearts they read only a degraded nature. Addison, in particular, shrank from every bold and every profound expression as from an offence against good taste. He durst not for his life have used the word 'passion' except in the vulgar sense of an angry paroxysm. He durst as soon have danced a hornpipe on the top of the 'monument' as have talked of a 'rapturous emotion.' What _would_ he have said? Why, 'sentiments that were of a nature to prove agreeable after an unusual rate.' In their odious verses, the creatures of that age talk of love as something that 'burns' them. You suppose at first that they are discoursing of tallow candles, though you cannot imagine by what impertinence they address _you_, that are no tallow-chandler, upon such painful subjects. And, when they apostrophize the woman of their heart (for you are to understand that they pretend to such an organ), they beseech her to 'ease their pain.' Can human meanness descend lower? As if the man, being ill from pleurisy, therefore had a right to take a lady for one of the dressers in an hospital, whose duty it would be to fix a burgundy-pitch plaster between his shoulders. Ah, the monsters! Then to read of their Phillises and Strephons, and Chloes, and Corydons--names that, by their very non-reality amongst names of flesh and blood, proclaim the fantasticalness of the life with which they are poetically connected-- it throws me into such convulsions of rage, that I move to the window, and (without thinking what I am about) throwing it up, calling, '_Police! police!_' What's _that_ for? What can the police do in the business? Why, certainly nothing. What I meant in my dream was, perhaps [but one forgets _what_ one meant upon recovering one's temper], that the police should take Strephon and Corydon into custody, whom I fancied at the other end of the room. And really the justifiable fury, that arises upon recalling such abominable attempts at bucolic sentiments in such abominable language, sometimes transports me into a luxurious vision sinking back through one hundred and thirty years, in which I see Addison, Phillips, both John and Ambrose, Tickell, Fickell, Budgell, and Cudgell, with many others beside, all cudgelled in a round robin, none claiming precedency of another, none able to shrink from his own dividend, until a voice seems to recall me to milder thoughts by saying, 'But surely, my friend, you never could wish to see Addison cudgelled? Let Strephon and Corydon be cudgelled without end, if the police can show any warrant for doing it But Addison was a man of great genius.' True, he was so. I recollect it suddenly, and will back out of any angry things that I have been misled into saying by Schlosser, who, by-the-bye, was right, after all, for a wonder. But now I will turn my whole fury in vengeance upon Schlosser. And, looking round for a stone to throw at him, I observe this. Addison could not be so entirely careless of exciting the public to think and feel, as Schlosser pretends, when he took so much pains to inoculate that public with a sense of the Miltonic grandeur. The 'Paradise Lost' had then been published barely forty years, which was nothing in an age without reviews; the editions were still scanty; and though no Addison could eventually promote, for the instant he quickened, the circulation. If I recollect, Tonson's accurate revision of the text followed immediately upon Addison's papers. And it is certain that Addison [6] must have diffused the knowledge of Milton upon the continent, from signs that soon followed. But does not this prove that I myself have been in the wrong as well as Schlosser? No: that's impossible. Schlosser's always in the wrong; but it's the next thing to an impossibility that I should be detected in an error: philosophically speaking, it is supposed to involve a contradiction. 'But surely I said the very same thing as Schlosser by assenting to what he said.' Maybe I did: but then I have time to make a distinction, because my article is not yet finished; we are only at page six or seven; whereas Schlosser can't make any distinction now, because his book's printed; and his list of _errata_ (which is shocking though he does not confess to the thousandth part), is actually published. My distinction is--that, though Addison generally hated the impassioned, and shrank from it as from a fearful thing, yet this was when it combined with forms of life and fleshy realities (as in dramatic works), but not when it combined with elder forms of eternal abstractions. Hence, he did not read, and did not like Shakspeare; the music was here too rapid and life-like: but he sympathized profoundly with the solemn cathedral chanting of Milton. An appeal to his sympathies which exacted quick changes in those sympathies he could not meet, but a more stationary _key_ of solemnity he _could_. Indeed, this difference is illustrated daily. A long list can be cited of passages in Shakspeare, which have been solemnly denounced by many eminent men (all blockheads) as ridiculous: and if a man _does_ find a passage in a tragedy that displeases him, it is sure to seem ludicrous: witness the indecent exposures of themselves made by Voltaire, La Harpe, and many billions beside of bilious people. Whereas, of all the shameful people (equally billions and not less bilious) that have presumed to quarrel with Milton, not one has thought him ludicrous, but only dull and somnolent. In 'Lear' and in 'Hamlet,' as in a human face agitated by passion, are many things that tremble on the brink of the ludicrous to an observer endowed with small range of sympathy or intellect. But no man ever found the starry heavens ludicrous, though many find them dull, and prefer a near view of a brandy flask. So in the solemn wheelings of the Miltonic movement, Addison could find a sincere delight. But the sublimities of earthly misery and of human frenzy were for him a book sealed. Beside all which, Milton, renewed the types of Grecian beauty as to _form_, whilst Shakspeare, without designing at all to contradict these types, did so, in effect, by his fidelity to a new nature, radiating from a Gothic centre. In the midst, however, of much just feeling, which one could only wish a little deeper, in the Addisonian papers on 'Paradise Lost,' there are some gross blunders of criticism, as there are in Dr. Johnson, and from the self-same cause--an understanding suddenly palsied from defective passion, A feeble capacity of passion must, upon a question of passion, constitute a feeble range of intellect. But, after all, the worst thing uttered by Addison in these papers is, not _against_ Milton, but meant to be complimentary. Towards enhancing the splendor of the great poem, he tells us that it is a Grecian palace as to amplitude, symmetry, and architectural skill: but being in the English language, it is to be regarded as if built in brick; whereas, had it been so happy as to be written in Greek, then it would have been a palace built in Parian marble. Indeed! that's smart--'that's handsome, I calculate.' Yet, before a man undertakes to sell his mother-tongue, as old pewter trucked against gold, he should be quite sure of his own metallurgic skill; because else, the gold may happen to be copper, and the pewter to be silver. Are you quite sure, my Addison, that you have understood the powers of this language which you toss away so lightly, as an old tea-kettle? Is it a ruled case that you have exhausted its resources? Nobody doubts your grace in a certain line of composition, but it is only one line among many, and it is far from being amongst the highest. It is dangerous, without examination, to sell even old kettles; misers conceal old stockings filled with guineas in old tea-kettles; and we all know that Aladdin's servant, by exchanging an old lamp for a new one, caused an Iliad of calamities: his master's palace jumped from Bagdad to some place on the road to Ashantee; Mrs. Aladdin and the piccaninies were carried off as inside passengers; and Aladdin himself only escaped being lagged, for a rogue and a conjuror, by a flying jump after his palace. Now, mark the folly of man. Most of the people I am going to mention subscribed, generally, to the supreme excellence of Milton; but each wished for a little change to be made-- which, and which only was wanted to perfection. Dr. Johnson, though he pretended to be satisfied with the 'Paradise Lost,' even in what he regarded as the undress of blank verse, still secretly wished it in rhyme. That's No. 1. Addison, though quite content with it in English, still could have wished it in Greek. That's No. 2. Bentley, though admiring the blind old poet in the highest degree, still observed, smilingly, that after all he _was_ blind; he, therefore, slashing Dick, could have wished that the great man had always been surrounded by honest people; but, as that was not to be, he could have wished that his amanuensis has been hanged; but, as that also had become impossible, he could wish to do execution upon him in effigy, by sinking, burning, and destroying his handywork--upon which basis of posthumous justice, he proceeded to amputate all the finest passages in the poem. Slashing Dick was No. 3. Payne Knight was a severer man even than slashing Dick; he professed to look upon the first book of 'Paradise Lost' as the finest thing that earth had to show; but, for that very reason, he could have wished, by your leave, to see the other eleven books sawed off, and sent overboard; because, though tolerable perhaps in another situation, they really were a national disgrace, when standing behind that unrivalled portico of book 1. There goes No. 4. Then came a fellow, whose name was either not on his title page, or I have forgotten it, that pronounced the poem to be laudable, and full of good materials; but still he could have wished that the materials had been put together in a more workmanlike manner; which kind office he set about himself. He made a general clearance of all lumber: the expression of every thought he entirely re-cast: and he fitted up the metre with beautiful patent rhymes; not, I believe, out of any consideration for Dr. Johnson's comfort, but on principles of mere abstract decency: as it was, the poem seemed naked, and yet was not ashamed. There went No. 5. _Him_ succeeded a droller fellow than any of the rest. A French book-seller had caused a prose French translation to be made of the 'Paradise Lost,' without particularly noticing its English origin, or at least not in the title page. Our friend, No. 6, getting hold of this as an original French romance, translated it back into English prose, as a satisfactory novel for the season. His little mistake was at length discovered, and communicated to him with shouts of laughter; on which, after considerable kicking and plunging (for a man cannot but turn restive when he finds that he has not only got the wrong sow by the ear, but actually sold the sow to a bookseller), the poor translator was tamed into sulkiness; in which state ho observed that he could have wished his own work, being evidently so much superior to the earliest form of the romance, might be admitted by the courtesy of England to take the precedency as the original 'Paradise Lost,' and to supersede the very rude performance of 'Milton, Mr. John.' [7] Schlosser makes the astounding assertion, that a compliment of Boileau to Addison, and a pure compliment of ceremony upon Addison's early Latin verses, was (_credite posteri!_) the making of Addison in England. Understand, Schlosser, that Addison's Latin verses were never heard of by England, until long after his English prose had fixed the public attention upon him; his Latin reputation was a slight reaction from his English reputation: and, secondly, understand that Boileau had at no time any such authority in England as to _make_ anybody's reputation; he had first of all to make his own. A sure proof of this is, that Boileau's name was first published to London, by Prior's burlesque of what the Frenchman had called an ode. This gasconading ode celebrated the passage of the Rhine in 1672, and the capture of that famous fortress called _Skink_ ('le fameux fort de'), by Louis XIV., known to London at the time of Prior's parody by the name of 'Louis Baboon.' [8] _That_ was not likely to recommend Master Boileau to any of the allies against the said Baboon, had it ever been heard of out of France. Nor was it likely to make him popular in England, that his name was first mentioned amongst shouts of laughter and mockery. It is another argument of the slight notoriety possessed by Boileau in England--that no attempt was ever made to translate even his satires, epistles, or 'Lutrin,' except by booksellers' hacks; and that no such version ever took the slightest root amongst ourselves, from Addison's day to this very summer of 1847. Boileau was essentially, and in two senses, viz., both as to mind and as to influence, _un homme borne_. Addison's 'Blenheim' is poor enough; one might think it a translation from some German original of those times. Gottsched's aunt, or Bodmer's wet- nurse, might have written it; but still no fibs even as to 'Blenheim.' His 'enemies' did not say this thing against 'Blenheim' 'aloud,' nor his friends that thing against it 'softly.' And why? Because at that time (1704-5) he had made no particular enemies, nor any particular friends; unless by friends you mean his Whig patrons, and by enemies his tailor and co. As to 'Cato,' Schlosser, as usual, wanders in the shadow of ancient night. The English 'people,' it seems, so 'extravagantly applauded' this wretched drama, that you might suppose them to have 'altogether changed their nature,' and to have forgotten Shakspeare. That man must have forgotten Shakspeare, indeed, and from _ramollissement_ of the brain, who could admire 'Cato.' 'But,' says Schlosser, 'it was only a 'fashion;' and the English soon repented.' The English could not repent of a crime which they had never committed. Cato was not popular for a moment, nor tolerated for a moment, upon any literary ground, or as a work of art. It was an apple of temptation and strife thrown by the goddess of faction between two infuriated parties. 'Cato,' coming from a man without Parliamentary connections, would have dropped lifeless to the ground. The Whigs have always affected a special love and favor for popular counsels: they have never ceased to give themselves the best of characters as regards public freedom. The Tories, as contradistinguished to the Jacobites, knowing that without _their_ aid, the Revolution could not have been carried, most justly contended that the national liberties had been at least as much indebted to themselves. When, therefore, the Whigs put forth _their_ man Cato to mouth speeches about liberty, as exclusively _their_ pet, and about patriotism and all that sort of thing, saying insultingly to the Tories, 'How do you like _that_? Does _that_ sting?' 'Sting, indeed!' replied the Tories; 'not at all; it's quite refreshing to us, that the Whigs have not utterly disowned such sentiments, which, by their public acts, we really thought they _had_.' And, accordingly, as the popular anecdote tells us, a Tory leader, Lord Bolingbroke, sent for Booth who performed Cato, and presented him (_populo spectante_) with fifty guineas 'for defending so well the cause of the people against a perpetual dictator.' In which words, observe, Lord Bolingbroke at once asserted the cause of his own party, and launched a sarcasm against a great individual opponent, viz., Marlborough. Now, Mr. Schlosser, I have mended your harness: all right ahead; so drive on once more. But, oh Castor and Pollux, whither--in what direction is it, that the man is driving us? Positively, Schlosser, you must stop and let _me_ get out. I'll go no further with such a drunken coachman. Many another absurd thing I was going to have noticed, such as his utter perversion of what Mandeville said about Addison (viz., by suppressing one word, and misapprehending all the rest). Such, again, as his point-blank misstatement of Addison's infirmity in his official character, which was _not_ that 'he could not prepare despatches in a good style,' but diametrically the opposite case--that he insisted too much on style, to the serious retardation of public business. But all these things are as nothing to what Schlosser says elsewhere. He actually describes Addison, on the whole, as a 'dull prosaist,' and the patron of pedantry! Addison, the man of all that ever lived most hostile even to what was good in pedantry, to its tendencies towards the profound in erudition and the non- popular; Addison, the champion of all that is easy, natural, superficial, a pedant and a master of pedantry! Get down, Schlosser, this moment; or let _me_ get out. Pope, by far the most important writer, English or Continental, of his own age, is treated with more extensive ignorance by Mr. Schlosser than any other, and (excepting Addison) with more ambitious injustice. A false abstract is given, or a false impression, of any one amongst his brilliant works, that is noticed at all; and a false sneer, a sneer irrelevant to the case, at any work dismissed by name as unworthy of notice. The three works, selected as the gems of Pope's collection, are the 'Essay on Criticism,' the 'Rape of the Lock,' and the 'Essay on Man.' On the first, which (with Dr. Johnson's leave) is the feeblest and least interesting of Pope's writings, being substantially a mere versification, like a metrical multiplication-table, of common-places the most mouldy with which criticism has baited its rat-traps; since nothing is said worth answering, it is sufficient to answer nothing. The 'Rape of the Lock' is treated with the same delicate sensibility that we might have looked for in Brennus, if consulted on the picturesque, or in Attila the Hun, if adjured to decide aesthetically, between two rival cameos. Attila is said (though no doubt falsely) to have described himself as not properly a man so much as the Divine wrath incarnate. This would be fine in a melodrama, with Bengal lights burning on the stage. But, if ever he said such a naughty thing, he forgot to tell us what it was that had made him angry; by what _title_ did _he_ come into alliance with the Divine wrath, which was not likely to consult a savage? And why did his wrath hurry, by forced marches, to the Adriatic? Now so much do people differ in opinion, that, to us, who look at him through a telescope from an eminence, fourteen centuries distant, he takes the shape rather of a Mahratta trooper, painfully gathering _chout_, or a cateran levying black-mail, or a decent tax-gatherer with an inkhorn at his button-hole, and supported by a select party of constabulary friends. The very natural instinct which Attila always showed for following the trail of the wealthiest footsteps, seems to argue a most commercial coolness in the dispensation of his wrath. Mr. Schlosser burns with the wrath of Attila against all aristocracies, and especially that of England. He governs his fury, also, with an Attila discretion in many cases; but not here. Imagine this Hun coming down, sword in hand, upon Pope and his Rosicrucian light troops, levying _chout_ upon Sir Plume, and fluttering the dove-cot of the Sylphs. Pope's 'duty it was,' says this demoniac, to 'scourge the follies of good society,' and also 'to break with the aristocracy.' No, surely? something short of a total rupture would have satisfied the claims of duty? Possibly; but it would not have satisfied Schlosser. And Pope's guilt consists in having made his poem an idol or succession of pictures representing the gayer aspects of society as it really was, and supported by a comic interest of the mock-heroic derived from a playful machinery, instead of converting it into a bloody satire. Pope, however, did not shrink from such assaults on the aristocracy, if these made any part of his duties. Such assaults he made twice at least too often for his own peace, and perhaps for his credit at this day. It is useless, however, to talk of the poem as a work of art, with one who sees none of its exquisite graces, and can imagine his countryman Zacharia equal to a competition with Pope. But this it may be right to add, that the 'Rape of the Lock' was not borrowed from the 'Lutrin' of Boileau. That was impossible. Neither was it suggested by the 'Lutrin.' The story in Herodotus of the wars between cranes and pigmies, or the _Batrachomyomachia_ (so absurdly ascribed to Homer) might have suggested the idea more naturally. Both these, there is proof that Pope had read: there is none that he had read the 'Lutrin,' nor did he read French with ease to himself. The 'Lutrin,' meantime, is as much below the 'Rape of the Lock' in brilliancy of treatment, as it is dissimilar in plan or the quality of its pictures. The 'Essay on Man' is a more thorny subject. When a man finds himself attacked and defended from all quarters, and on all varieties of principle, he is bewildered. Friends are as dangerous as enemies. He must not defy a bristling enemy, if he cares for repose; he must not disown a zealous defender, though making concessions on his own behalf not agreeable to himself; he must not explain away ugly phrases in one direction, or perhaps he is recanting the very words of his 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' who cannot safely be taxed with having first led him into temptation; he must not explain them away in another direction, or he runs full tilt into the wrath of mother Church--who will soon bring him to his senses by penance. Long lents, and no lampreys allowed, would soon cauterize the proud flesh of heretical ethics. Pope did wisely, situated as he was, in a decorous nation, and closely connected, upon principles of fidelity under political suffering, with the Roman Catholics, to say little in his own defence. That defence, and any reversionary cudgelling which it might entail upon the Quixote undertaker, he left--meekly but also slyly, humbly but cunningly--to those whom he professed to regard as greater philosophers than himself. All parties found their account in the affair. Pope slept in peace; several pugnacious gentlemen up and down Europe expectorated much fiery wrath in dusting each other's jackets; and Warburton, the attorney, finally earned his bishoprick in the service of whitewashing a writer, who was aghast at finding himself first trampled on as a deist, and then exalted as a defender of the faith. Meantime, Mr. Schlosser mistakes Pope's courtesy, when he supposes his acknowledgments to Lord Bolingbroke sincere in their whole extent. Of Pope's 'Homer' Schlosser think fit to say, amongst other evil things, which it really _does_ deserve (though hardly in comparison with the German 'Homer' of the ear-splitting Voss), 'that Pope pocketed the subscription of the "Odyssey," and left the work to be done by his understrappers.' Don't tell fibs, Schlosser. Never do _that_ any more. True it is, and disgraceful enough, that Pope (like modern contractors for a railway or a loan) let off to sub-contractors several portions of the undertaking. He was perhaps not illiberal in the terms of his contracts. At least I know of people now-a-days (much better artists) that would execute such contracts, and enter into any penalties for keeping time at thirty per cent. less. But _navies_ and billbrokers, that are in excess now, then were scarce. Still the affair, though not mercenary, was illiberal in a higher sense of art; and no anecdote shows more pointedly Pope's sense of the mechanic fashion, in which his own previous share of the Homeric labor had been executed. It was disgraceful enough, and needs no exaggeration. Let it, therefore, be reported truly: Pope personally translated one-half of the 'Odyssey'--a dozen books he turned out of his own oven: and, if you add the _Batrachomyomachia_, his dozen was a baker's dozen. The journeyman did the other twelve; were regularly paid; regularly turned off when the job was out of hand; and never once had to 'strike for wages.' How much beer was allowed, I cannot say. This is the truth of the matter. So no more fibbing, Schlosser, if you please. But there remains behind all these labors of Pope, the 'Dunciad,' which is by far his greatest. I shall not, within the narrow bounds assigned to me, enter upon a theme so exacting; for, in this instance, I should have to fight not against Schlosser only, but against Dr. Johnson, who has thoroughly misrepresented the nature of the 'Dunciad,' and, consequently, could not measure its merits. Neither he, nor Schlosser, in fact, ever read more than a few passages of this admirable poem. But the villany is too great for a brief exposure. One thing only I will notice of Schlosser's misrepresentations. He asserts (not when directly speaking of Pope, but afterwards, under the head of Voltaire) that the French author's trivial and random _Temple de Gout_ 'shows the superiority in this species of poetry to have been greatly on the side of the Frenchman.' Let's hear a reason, though but a Schlosser reason, for this opinion: know, then, all men whom it concerns, that 'the Englishman's satire only hit such people as would never have been known without his mention of them, whilst Voltaire selected those who were still called great, and their respective schools.' Pope's men, it seems, never _had_ been famous--Voltaire's might cease to be so, but as yet they had _not_ ceased; as yet they commanded interest. Now mark how I will put three bullets into that plank, riddle it so that the leak shall not be stopped by all the old hats in Heidelberg, and Schlosser will have to swim for his life. First, he is forgetting that, by his own previous confession, Voltaire, not less than Pope, had 'immortalized a great many _insignificant_ persons;' consequently, had it been any fault to do so, each alike was caught in that fault; and insignificant as the people might be, if they _could_ be 'immortalized,' then we have Schlosser himself confessing to the possibility that poetic splendor should create a secondary interest where originally there had been none. Secondly, the question of merit does not arise from the object of the archer, but from the style of his archery. Not the choice of victims, but the execution done is what counts. Even for continued failures it would plead advantageously, much more for continued and brilliant successes, that Pope fired at an object offering no sufficient breadth of mark. Thirdly, it is the grossest of blunders to say that Pope's objects of satire were obscure by comparison with Voltaire's. True, the Frenchman's example of a scholar, viz., the French Salmasius, was most accomplished. But so was the Englishman's scholar, viz., the English Bentley. Each was absolutely without a rival in his own day. But the day of Bentley was the very day of Pope. Pope's man had not even faded; whereas the day of Salmasius, as respected Voltaire had gone by for more than half a century. As to Dacier, '_which_ Dacier, Bezonian?' The husband was a passable scholar--but madame was a poor sneaking fellow, fit only for the usher of a boarding- school. All this, however, argues Schlosser's two-fold ignorance--first, of English authors; second, of the 'Dunciad;'--else he would have known that even Dennis, mad John Dennis, was a much cleverer man than most of those alluded to by Voltaire. Cibber, though slightly a coxcomb, was born a brilliant man. Aaron Hill was so lustrous, that even Pope's venom fell off spontaneously, like rain from the plumage of a pheasant, leaving him to 'mount far upwards with the swans of Thanes'--and, finally, let it not be forgotten, that Samuel Clarke Burnet, of the Charterhouse, and Sir Isaac Newton, did not wholly escape tasting the knout; if _that_ rather impeaches the equity, and sometimes the judgment of Pope, at least it contributes to show the groundlessness of Schlosser's objection--that the population of the Dunciad, the characters that filled its stage, were inconsiderable. FOX AND BURKE. It is, or it _would_ be, if Mr. Schlosser were himself more interesting, luxurious to pursue his ignorance as to facts, and the craziness of his judgment as to the valuation of minds, throughout his comparison of Burke with Fox. The force of antithesis brings out into a feeble life of meaning, what, in its own insulation, had been languishing mortally into nonsense. The darkness of his 'Burke' becomes _visible_ darkness under the glimmering that steals upon it from the desperate commonplaces of this 'Fox.' Fox is painted exactly as he _would_ have been painted fifty years ago by any pet subaltern of the Whig club, enjoying free pasture in Devonshire House. The practised reader knows well what is coming. Fox is 'formed after the model of the ancients'--Fox is 'simple'--Fox is 'natural'--Fox is 'chaste'--Fox is 'forcible;' why yes, in a sense, Fox is even 'forcible:' but then, to feel that he was so, you must have _heard_ him; whereas, for forty years he has been silent. We of 1847, that can only _read_ him, hearing Fox described as _forcible_, are disposed to recollect Shakspeare's Mr. Feeble amongst Falstaff's recruits, who also is described as _forcible_, viz., as the 'most forcible Feeble.' And, perhaps, a better description could not be devised for Fox himself--so feeble was he in matter, so forcible in manner; so powerful for instant effect, so impotent for posterity. In the Pythian fury of his gestures--in his screaming voice--in his directness of purpose, Fox would now remind you of some demon steam-engine on a railroad, some Fire-king or Salmoneus, that had counterfeited, because he could not steal, Jove's thunderbolts; hissing, bubbling, snorting, fuming; demoniac gas, you think--gas from Acheron must feed that dreadful system of convulsions. But pump out the imaginary gas, and, behold! it is ditch-water. Fox, as Mr. Schlosser rightly thinks, was all of a piece--simple in his manners, simple in his style, simple in his thoughts. No waters in _him_ turbid with new crystalizations; everywhere the eye can see to the bottom. No music in _him_ dark with Cassandra meanings. Fox, indeed, disturb decent gentlemen by 'allusions to all the sciences, from the integral calculus and metaphysics to navigation!' Fox would have seen you hanged first. Burke, on the other hand, did all that, and other wickedness besides, which fills an 8vo page in Schlosser; and Schlosser crowns his enormities by charging him, the said Burke (p. 99), with '_wearisome tediousness_.' Among my own acquaintances are several old women, who think on this point precisely as Schlosser thinks; and they go further, for they even charge Burke with 'tedious wearisomeness.' Oh, sorrowful woe, and also woeful sorrow, when an Edmund Burke arises, like a _cheeta_ or hunting leopard coupled in a tiger-chase with a German poodle. To think, in a merciful spirit, of the jungle--barely to contemplate, in a temper of humanity, the incomprehensible cane-thickets, dark and bristly, into which that bloody _cheeta_ will drag that unoffending poodle! But surely the least philosophic of readers, who hates philosophy 'as toad or asp,' must yet be aware, that, where new growths are not germinating, it is no sort of praise to be free from the throes of growth. Where expansion is hopeless, it is little glory to have escaped distortion. Nor is it any blame that the rich fermentation of grapes should disturb the transparency of their golden fluids. Fox had nothing new to tell us, nor did he hold a position amongst men that required or would even have allowed him to tell anything new. He was helmsman to a party; what he had to do, though seeming to _give_ orders, was simply to repeat _their_ orders--'Port your helm,' said the party; 'Port it is,' replied the helmsman.--But Burke was no steersman; he was the Orpheus that sailed with the Argonauts; he was their _seer_, seeing more in his visions than he always understood himself; he was their watcher through the hours of night; he was their astrological interpreter. Who complains of a prophet for being a little darker of speech than a post-office directory? or of him that reads the stars for being sometimes perplexed? But, even as to facts, Schlosser is always blundering. Post-office directories would be of no use to _him;_ nor link-boys; nor blazing tar-barrels. He wanders in a fog such as sits upon the banks of Cocytus. He fancies that Burke, in his lifetime, was _popular_. Of course, it is so natural to be popular by means of '_wearisome tediousness_,' that Schlosser, above all people, should credit such a tale. Burke has been dead just fifty years, come next autumn. I remember the time from this accident--that my own nearest relative stepped on a day of October, 1797, into that same suite of rooms at Bath (North Parade) from which, six hours before, the great man had been carried out to die at Beaconsfield. It is, therefore, you see, fifty years. Now, ever since then, his _collective_ works have been growing in bulk by the incorporation of juvenile essays (such as his 'European Settlements,' his 'Essay on the Sublime,' on 'Lord Bolingbroke,' &c.) or (as more recently) by the posthumous publication of his MSS; [9] and yet, ever since then, in spite of growing age and growing bulk, are more in demand. At this time, half a century after his last sigh, Burke _is_ popular; a thing, let me tell you, Schlosser, which never happened before to a writer steeped to his lips in _personal_ politics. What a tilth of intellectual lava must that man have interfused amongst the refuse and scoria of such mouldering party rubbish, to force up a new verdure and laughing harvests, annually increasing for new generations! Popular he _is_ now, but popular he was not in his own generation. And how could Schlosser have the face to say that he was? Did he never hear the notorious anecdote, that at one period Burke obtained the _sobriquet_ of 'dinner-bell?' And why? Not as one who invited men to a banquet by his gorgeous eloquence, but as one that gave a signal to shoals in the House of Commons, for seeking refuge in a _literal_ dinner from the oppression of his philosophy. This was, perhaps, in part a scoff of his opponents. Yet there must have been some foundation for the scoff, since, at an earlier stage of Burke's career, Goldsmith had independently said, that this great orator --------'went on refining, And thought of convincing, whilst _they_ thought of dining.' I blame neither party. It ought not to be expected of any _popular_ body that it should be patient of abstractions amongst the intensities of party-strife, and the immediate necessities of voting. No deliberative body would less have tolerated such philosophic exorbitations from public business than the _agora_ of Athens, or the Roman senate. So far the error was in Burke, not in the House of Commons. Yet, also, on the other side, it must be remembered, that an intellect of Burke's combining power and enormous compass, could not, from necessity of nature, abstain from such speculations. For a man to reach a remote posterity, it is sometimes necessary that he should throw his voice over to them in a vast arch--it must sweep a parabola--which, therefore, rises high above the heads of those next to him, and is heard by the bystanders but indistinctly, like bees swarming in the upper air before they settle on the spot fit for hiving. See, therefore, the immeasurableness of misconception. Of all public men, that stand confessedly in the first rank as to splendor of intellect, Burke was the _least_ popular at the time when our blind friend Schlosser assumes him to have run off with the lion's share of popularity. Fox, on the other hand, as the leader of opposition, was at that time a household term of love or reproach, from one end of the island to the other. To the very children playing in the streets, Pitt and Fox, throughout Burke's generation, were pretty nearly as broad distinctions, and as much a war- cry, as English and French, Roman and Punic. Now, however, all this is altered. As regards the relations between the two Whigs whom Schlosser so steadfastly delighteth to misrepresent, 'Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer' for that intellectual potentate, Edmund Burke, the man whose true mode of power has never yet been truly investigated; whilst Charles Fox is known only as an echo is known, and for any real _effect_ of intellect upon this generation, for anything but the 'whistling of a name,' the Fox of 1780-1807 sleeps where the carols of the larks are sleeping, that gladdened the spring-tides of those years--sleeps with the roses that glorified the beauty of their summers. [10] JUNIUS Schlosser talks of Junius, who is to him, as to many people, more than entirely the enigma of an enigma, Hermes Trismegistus, or the mediaeval Prester John. Not only are most people unable to solve the enigma, but they have no idea of what it is that they are to solve. I have to inform Schlosser that there are three separate questions about Junius, of which he has evidently no distinct knowledge, and cannot, therefore, have many chances to spare for settling them. The three questions are these:--A. Who _was_ Junius? B. What was it that armed Junius with a power so unaccountable at this day over the public mind? C. Why, having actually exercised this power, and gained under his masque far more than he ever hoped to gain, did this Junius not come forward _in his own person_, when all the legal danger had long passed away, to claim a distinction that for _him_ (among the vainest of men) must have been more precious than his heart's blood? The two questions, B and C, I have examined in past times, and I will not here repeat my explanations further than to say, with respect to the last, that the reason for the author not claiming his own property was this, because he _dared_ not; because it would have been _infamy_ for him to avow himself as Junius; because it would have revealed a crime and published a crime in his own earlier life, for which many a man is transported in our days, and for less than which many a man has been in past days hanged, broken on the wheel, burned, gibbeted, or impaled. To say that he watched and listened at his master's key-holes, is nothing. It was not key-holes only that he made free with, but keys; he tampered with his master's seals; he committed larcenies; not, like a brave man, risking his life on the highway, but petty larcenies--larcenies in a dwelling-house--larcenies under the opportunities of a confidential situation--crimes which formerly, in the days of Junius, our bloody code never pardoned in villains of low degree. Junius was in the situation of Lord Byron's Lara, or, because Lara is a plagiarism, of Harriet Lee's Kraitzrer. But this man, because he had money, friends, and talents, instead of going to prison, took himself off for a jaunt to the continent. From the continent, in full security and in possession of the _otium cum dignitate_, he negotiated with the government, whom he had alarmed by publishing the secrets which he had stolen. He succeeded. He sold himself to great advantage. Bought and sold he was; and of course it is understood that, if you buy a knave, and expressly in consideration of his knaveries, you secretly undertake not to hang him. 'Honor bright!' Lord Barrington might certainly have indicted Junius at the Old Bailey, and had a reason for wishing to do so; but George III., who was a party to the negotiation, and all his ministers, would have said, with fits of laughter--'Oh, come now, my lord, you must _not_ do that. For, since we have bargained for a price to send him out as a member of council to Bengal, you see clearly that we could not possibly hang him _before_ we had fulfilled our bargain. Then it is true we might hang him after he comes back. But, since the man (being a clever man) has a fair chance in the interim of rising to be Governor-General, we put it to your candor, Lord Barrington, whether it would be for the public service to hang his excellency?' In fact, he might probably have been Governor-General, had his bad temper not overmastered him. Had he not quarrelled so viciously with Mr. Hastings, it is ten to one that he might, by playing his cards well, have succeeded him. As it was, after enjoying an enormous salary, he returned to England--not Governor-General, certainly, but still in no fear of being hanged. Instead of hanging him, on second thoughts, Government gave him a red ribbon. He represented a borough in Parliament. He was an authority upon Indian affairs. He was caressed by the Whig party. He sat at good men's tables. He gave for toasts--_Joseph Surface_ sentiments at dinner parties-- 'The man that betrays' [something or other]--'the man that sneaks into' [other men's portfolios, perhaps]--'is'--ay, _what_ is he? Why he is, perhaps, a Knight of the Bath, has a sumptuous mansion in St. James's Square, dies full of years and honor, has a pompous funeral, and fears only some such epitaph as this--'Here lies, in a red ribbon, the man who built a great prosperity on the basis of a great knavery.' I complain heavily of Mr. Taylor, the very able unmasker of Junius, for blinking the whole questions B and C. He it is that has settled the question A, so that it will never be re-opened by a man of sense. A man who doubts, after _really_ reading Mr. Taylor's work, is not only a blockhead, but an irreclaimable blockhead. It is true that several men, among them Lord Brougham, whom Schlosser (though hating him, and kicking him) cites, still profess scepticism. But the reason is evident: they have not _read_ the book, they have only heard of it. They are unacquainted with the strongest arguments, and even with the nature of the evidence. [11] Lord Brougham, indeed, is generally reputed to have reviewed Mr. Taylor's book. _That_ may be: it is probable enough: what I am denying is not at all that Lord Brougham _reviewed_ Mr. Taylor, but that Lord Brougham _read_ Mr. Taylor. And there is not much wonder in _that_, when we see professed writers on the subject--bulky writers--writers of Answers and Refutations, dispensing with the whole of Mr. Taylor's book, single paragraphs of which would have forced them to cancel their own. The possibility of scepticism, after really _reading_ Mr. Taylor's book, would be the strongest exemplification upon record of Sancho's proverbial reproach, that a man 'wanted better bread than was made of wheat--' would be the old case renewed from the scholastic grumblers 'that some men do not know when they are answered.' They have got their _quietus_, and they still continue to 'maunder' on with objections long since disposed of. In fact, it is not too strong a thing to say--and Chief Justice Dallas _did_ say something like it--that if Mr. Taylor is not right, if Sir Philip Francis is _not_ Junius, then was no man ever yet hanged on sufficient evidence. Even confession is no absolute proof. Even confessing to a crime, the man may be mad. Well, but at least seeing is believing: if the court sees a man commit an assault, will not _that_ suffice? Not at all: ocular delusions on the largest scale are common. What's a court? Lawyers have no better eyes than other people. Their physics are often out of repair, and whole cities have been known to see things that could have no existence. Now, all other evidence is held to be short of this blank seeing or blank confessing. But I am not at all sure of _that_. Circumstantial evidence, that multiplies indefinitely its points of _internexus_ with known admitted facts, is more impressive than direct testimony. If you detect a fellow with a large sheet of lead that by many (to wit seventy) salient angles, that by tedious (to wit thirty) reentrant angles, fits into and owns its sisterly relationship to all that is left of the lead upon your roof--this tight fit will weigh more with a jury than even if my lord chief justice should jump into the witness-box, swearing that, with judicial eyes, he saw the vagabond cutting the lead whilst he himself sat at breakfast; or even than if the vagabond should protest before this honorable court that he _did_ cut the lead, in order that he (the said vagabond) might have hot rolls and coffee as well as my lord, the witness. If Mr. Taylor's body of evidence does _not_ hold water, then is there no evidence extant upon any question, judicial or not judicial, that _will_. But I blame Mr. Taylor heavily for throwing away the whole argument applicable to B and C; not as any debt that rested particularly upon _him_ to public justice; but as a debt to the integrity of his own book. That book is now a fragment; admirable as regards A; but (by omitting B and C) not sweeping the whole area of the problem. There yet remains, therefore, the dissatisfaction which is always likely to arise-- not from the smallest _allegatio falsi_, but from the large _suppressio veri_. B, which, on any other solution than the one I have proposed, is perfectly unintelligible, now becomes plain enough. To imagine a heavy, coarse, hard-working government, seriously affected by such a bauble as _they_ would consider performances on the tight rope of style, is mere midsummer madness. 'Hold your absurd tongue,' would any of the ministers have said to a friend descanting on Junius as a powerful artist of style-- 'do you dream, dotard, that this baby's rattle is the thing that keeps us from sleeping? Our eyes are fixed on something else: that fellow, whoever he is, knows what he ought _not_ to know; he has had his hand in some of our pockets: he's a good locksmith, is that Junius; and before he reaches Tyburn, who knows what amount of mischief he may do to self and partners?' The rumor that ministers were themselves alarmed (which was the naked truth) travelled downwards; but the _why_ did not travel; and the innumerable blockheads of lower circles, not understanding the real cause of fear, sought a false one in the supposed thunderbolts of the rhetoric. Opera-house thunderbolts they were: and strange it is, that grave men should fancy newspapers, teeming (as they have always done) with _Publicolas_, with _Catos_, with _Algernon Sidneys_, able by such trivial small shot to gain a moment's attention from the potentates of Downing Street. Those who have despatches to write, councils to attend, and votes of the Commons to manage, think little of Junius Brutus. A Junius Brutus, that dares not sign by his own honest name, is presumably skulking from his creditors. A Timoleon, who hints at assassination in a newspaper, one may take it for granted, is a manufacturer of begging letters. And it is a conceivable case that a twenty pound note, enclosed to Timoleon's address, through the newspaper office, might go far to soothe that great patriot's feelings, and even to turn aside his avenging dagger. These sort of people were not the sort to frighten a British Ministry. One laughs at the probable conversation between an old hunting squire coming up to comfort the First Lord of the Treasury, on the rumor that he was panic-struck. 'What, surely, my dear old friend, you're not afraid of Timoleon?' First Lord.--'Yes, I am.' C. Gent.--'What, afraid of an anonymous fellow in the papers?' F. L.--'Yes, dreadfully.' C. Gent.--'Why, I always understood that these people were a sort of shams--living in Grub Street--or where was it that Pope used to tell us they lived? Surely you're not afraid of Timoleon, because some people think he's a patriot?' F. L.--'No, not at all; but I am afraid because some people think he's a housebreaker!' In that character only could Timoleon become formidable to a Cabinet Minister; and in some such character must our friend, Junius Brutus, have made himself alarming to Government. From the moment that B is properly explained, it throws light upon C. The Government was alarmed--not at such moonshine as patriotism, or at a soap-bubble of rhetoric--but because treachery was lurking amongst their own households: and, if the thing went on, the consequences might be appalling. But this domestic treachery, which accounts for B, accounts at the same time for C. The very same treachery that frightened its objects at the time by the consequences it might breed, would frighten its author afterwards from claiming its literary honors by the remembrances it might awaken. The mysterious disclosures of official secrets, which had once roused so much consternation within a limited circle, and (like the French affair of the diamond necklace) had sunk into neglect only when all clue seemed lost for _perfectly_ unravelling its would revive in all its interest when a discovery came before the public, viz., a claim on the part of Francis to have written the famous letters, which must at the same time point a strong light upon the true origin of the treacherous disclosures. Some astonishment had always existed as to Francis--how he rose so suddenly into rank and station: some astonishment always existed as to Junius, how he should so suddenly have fallen asleep as a writer in the journals. The coincidence of this sudden and unaccountable silence with the sudden and unaccountable Indian appointment of Francis; the extraordinary familiarity of Junius, which had _not altogether escaped notice_, with the secrets of one particular office, viz., the War Office; the sudden recollection, sure to flash upon all who remembered Francis, if again he should become revived into suspicion, that he had held a situation of trust in that particular War Office; all these little recollections would begin to take up their places in a connected story: _this_ and _that_, laid together, would become clear as day-light; and to the keen eyes of still surviving enemies--Horne Tooke, 'little Chamier,' Ellis, the Fitzroy, Russell, and Murray houses--the whole progress and catastrophe of the scoundrelism, the perfidy and the profits of the perfidy, would soon become as intelligible as any tale of midnight burglary from without, in concert with a wicked butler within, that was ever sifted by judge and jury at the Old Bailey, or critically reviewed by Mr. John Ketch at Tyburn. Francis was the man. Francis was the wicked butler within, whom Pharaoh ought to have hanged, but whom he clothed in royal apparel, and mounted upon a horse that carried him to a curule chair of honor. So far his burglary prospered. But, as generally happens in such cases, this prosperous crime subsequently avenged itself. By a just retribution, the success of Junius, in two senses so monstrously exaggerated--exaggerated by a romantic over-estimate of its intellectual power through an error of the public, not admitted to the secret--and equally exaggerated as to its political power by the government in the hush-money for its future suppression, became the heaviest curse of the successful criminal. This criminal thirsted for literary distinction above all other distinction, with a childish eagerness, as for the _amrecta_ cup of immortality. And, behold! there the brilliant bauble lay, glittering in the sands of a solitude, unclaimed by any man; disputed with him (if he chose to claim it) by nobody; and yet for his life he durst not touch it. He stood--he knew that he stood--in the situation of a murderer who has dropt an inestimable jewel upon the murdered body in the death-struggle with his victim. The jewel is his! Nobody will deny it. He may have it for asking. But to ask is his death-warrant. 'Oh yes!' would be the answer, 'here's your jewel, wrapt up safely in tissue paper. But here's another lot that goes along with it--no bidder can take them apart--viz. a halter, also wrapt up in tissue paper.' Francis, in relation to Junius, was in that exact predicament. 'You are Junius? You are that famous man who has been missing since 1772? And you can prove it? God bless me! sir; what a long time you've been sleeping: every body's gone to bed. Well, then, you are an exceedingly clever fellow, that have had the luck to be thought ten times more clever than really you were. And also, you are the greatest scoundrel that at this hour rests in Europe unhanged!'--Francis died, and made no sign. Peace of mind he had parted with for a peacock's feather, which feather, living or dying, he durst not mount in the plumage of his cap. FOOTNOTES [1] Even Pope, with all his natural and reasonable interest in aristocratic society, could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest in _his_ mouth became twice a jest in a lord's. But still he failed to perceive what I am here contending for, that if the jest happened to miss fire, through the misfortune of bursting its barrel, the consequences would be far worse for the lord than the commoner. There _is_, you see, a blind sort of compensation. [2] Mr. Schlosser, who speaks English, who has read rather too much English for any good that he has turned it to, and who ought to have a keen eye for the English version of his own book, after so much reading and study of it, has, however, overlooked several manifest errors. I do not mean to tax Mr. Davison with, general inaccuracy. On the contrary, he seems wary, and in most cases successful as a dealer with the peculiarities of the German. But several cases of error I detect without needing the original: they tell their own story. And one of these I here notice, not only for its own importance, but out of love to Schlosser, and by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter--not altogether as a bad shilling, but as a light one. At p. 5 of vol. 2, in a foot-note, which is speaking of Kant, we read of his _attempt to introduce the notion of negative greatness into Philosophy. Negative greatness!_ What strange bird may _that_ be? Is it the _ornithorynchus paradoxus_? Mr. Schlosser was not wide awake _there_. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic idea of _negative quantities_. It is one of Kant's grandest gleams into hidden truth. Were it only for the merits of this most masterly essay in reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a _negative quantity_ [so generally misunderstood as a _negation_ of quantity, and which even Sir Isaac Newton misconstrued as regarded its metaphysics], great would have been the service rendered to logic by Kant. But there is a greater. From this little _brochure_ I am satisfied was derived originally the German regeneration of the Dynamic philosophy, its expansion through the idea of polarity, indifference, &c. Oh, Mr. Schlosser, you had not _gepruft_ p. 5 of vol. 2. You skipped the notes. [3] '_Little nurse_:'--the word _Glumdalclitch_, in Brobdingnagian, absolutely _means little nurse_, and nothing else. It may seem odd that the captain should call any nurse of Brobdingnag, however kind to him, by such an epithet as _little_; and the reader may fancy that Sherwood forest had put it into his head, where Robin Hood always called his right hand man 'Little John,' not _although_, but expressly _because_ John stood seven feet high in his stockings. But the truth is--that Glumdalclitch _was_ little; and literally so; she was only nine years old, and (says the captain) 'little of her age,' being barely forty feet high. She had time to grow certainly, but as she had so much to do before she could overtake other women, it is probable that she would turn out what, in Westmoreland, they call a, _little stiffenger_--very little, if at all, higher than a common English church steeple. [4.] '_Activity_,'--It is some sign of this, as well as of the more thoroughly English taste in literature which distinguished Steele, that hardly twice throughout the 'Spectator' is Shakspeare quoted or alluded to by Addison. Even these quotations he had from the theatre, or the breath of popular talk. Generally, if you see a line from Shakspeare, it is safe to bet largely that the paper is Steele's; sometimes, indeed, of casual contributors; but, almost to a certainty, _not_ a paper of Addison's. Another mark of Steele's superiority in vigor of intellect is, that much oftener in _him_ than in other contributors strong thoughts came forward; harsh and disproportioned, perhaps, to the case, and never harmoniously developed with the genial grace of Addison, but original, and pregnant with promise and suggestion. [5] 'Letters of Joseph Mede,' published more than twenty years ago by Sir Henry Ellis. [6] It is an idea of many people, and erroneously sanctioned by Wordsworth, that Lord Somers gave a powerful lift to the 'Paradise Lost.' He was a subscriber to the sixth edition, the first that had plates; but this was some years before the Revolution of 1688, and when he was simply Mr. Somers, a barrister, with no effectual power of patronage. [7] '_Milton, Mr. John_:'--Dr. Johnson expressed his wrath, in an amusing way, at some bookseller's hack who, when employed to make an index, introduced Milton's name among the M's, under the civil title of-- 'Milton, Mr. John.' [8] '_Louis Baboon_:'--As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions the most obvious to anything in the rear of our own time, needs explanation. _Louis Baboon_ is Swift's jesting name for _Louis Bourbon_, _i.e._, Louis XIV. [9] 'Of his MSS.:'--And, if all that I have heard be true, much has somebody to answer for, that so little has been yet published. The two executors of Burke were Dr. Lawrence, of Doctors' Commons, a well-known M. P. in forgotten days, and Windham, a man too like Burke in elasticity of mind ever to be spoken of in connection with forgotten things. Which of them was to blame, I know not. But Mr. R. Sharpe, M. P., twenty-five years ago, well known as _River_ Sharpe, from the [Greek: _aperantologia_] of his conversation, used to say, that one or both of the executors had offered _him_ (the river) a huge travelling trunk, perhaps an Imperial or a Salisbury boot (equal to the wardrobe of a family), filled with Burke's MSS., on the simple condition of editing them with proper annotations. An Oxford man, and also the celebrated Mr. Christian Curwen, then member for Cumberland, made, in my hearing, the same report. The Oxford man, in particular, being questioned as to the probable amount of MS., deposed, that he could not speak upon oath to the cubical contents; but this he could say, that, having stripped up his coat sleeve, he had endeavored, by such poor machinery as nature had allowed him, to take the soundings of the trunk, but apparently there were none; with his middle finger he could find no bottom; for it was stopped by a dense stratum of MS.; below which, you know, other strata might lie _ad infinitum_. For anything proved to the contrary, the trunk might be bottomless. [10] A man in Fox's situation is sure, whilst living, to draw after him trains of sycophants; and it is the evil necessity of newspapers the most independent, that they _must_ swell the mob of sycophants. The public compels them to exaggerate the true proportions of such people as we see every hour in our own day. Those who, for the moment, modify, or _may_ modify the national condition, become preposterous idols in the eyes of the gaping public; but with the sad necessity of being too utterly trodden under foot after they are shelved, unless they live in men's memory by something better than speeches in Parliament. Having the usual fate, Fox was complimented, _whilst living_, on his knowledge of Homeric Greek, which was a jest: he knew neither more nor less of Homer, than, fortunately, most English gentlemen of his rank; quite enough that is to read the 'Iliad' with unaffected pleasure, far too little to revise the text of any three lines, without making himself ridiculous. The excessive slenderness of his general literature, English and French, may be seen in the letters published by his Secretary, Trotter. But his fragment of a History, published by Lord Holland, at two guineas, and currently sold for two shillings (not two _pence_, or else I have been defrauded of 1s. 10d.), most of all proclaims the tenuity of his knowledge. He looks upon Malcolm Laing as a huge oracle; and, having read even less than Hume, a thing not very easy, with great _naivete_, cannot guess where Hume picked up his facts. [11] Even in Dr. Francis's Translation of Select Speeches from Demosthenes, which Lord Brougham naturally used a little in his own labors on that theme, there may be traced several peculiarities of diction that startle us in Junius. Sir P. had them from his father. And Lord Brougham ought not to have overlooked them. The same thing may be seen in the notes to Dr. Francis's translation of Horace. These points, though not _independently_ of much importance, become far more so in combination with others. The reply made to me once by a publisher of some eminence upon this question, was the best fitted to lower Mr. Taylor's investigation with a _stranger_ to the long history of the dispute. 'I feel,' he said, 'the impregnability of the case made out by Mr. Taylor. But the misfortune is, that I have seen so many previous impregnable cases made out for other claimants.' Ay, that _would_ be unfortunate. But the misfortune for this repartee was, that I, for whose use it was intended, not being in the predicament of a _stranger_ to the dispute, having seen every page of the pleadings, knew all (except Mr. Taylor's) to be false in their statements; after which their arguments signified nothing. THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES, AS REPRESENTED ON THE EDINBURGH STAGE. Every thing in our days is new. _Roads_, for instance, which, being formerly 'of the earth earthy,' and therefore perishable, are now iron, and next door to being immortal; _tragedies_, which are so entirely new, that neither we nor our fathers, through eighteen hundred and ninety odd years, gone by, since Caesar did our little island the honor to sit upon its skirts, have ever seen the like to this 'Antigone;' and, finally, even more new are _readers_, who, being once an obedient race of men, most humble and deferential in the presence of a Greek scholar, are now become intractably mutinous; keep their hats on whilst he is addressing them; and listen to him or not, as he seems to talk sense or nonsense. Some there are, however, who look upon all these new things as being intensely old. Yet, surely the railroads are new? No; not at all. Talus, the iron man in Spenser, who continually ran round the island of Crete, administering gentle warning and correction to offenders, by flooring them with an iron flail, was a very ancient personage in Greek fable; and the received opinion is, that he must have been a Cretan railroad, called The Great Circular Coast-Line, that carried my lords the judges on their circuits of jail-delivery. The 'Antigone,' again, that wears the freshness of morning dew, and is so fresh and dewy in the beautiful person of Miss Faucit, had really begun to look faded on the Athenian stage, and even 'of a certain age,' about the death of Pericles, whose meridian year was the year 444 before Christ. Lastly, these modern _readers_, that are so obstinately rebellious to the once Papal authority of Greek, they--No; on consideration, they _are_ new. Antiquity produced many monsters, but none like _them_. The truth is, that this vast multiplication of readers, within the last twenty-five years, has changed the prevailing character of readers. The minority has become the overwhelming majority: the quantity has disturbed the quality. Formerly, out of every five readers, at least four were, in some degree, classical scholars: or, if _that_ would be saying too much, if two of the four had 'small Latin and less Greek,' they were generally connected with those who had more, or at the worst, who had much reverence for Latin, and more reverence for Greek. If they did not all share in the services of the temple, all, at least, shared in the superstition. But, now-a-days, the readers come chiefly from a class of busy people who care very little for ancestral crazes. Latin they have heard of, and some of them know it as a good sort of industrious language, that even, in modern times, has turned out many useful books, astronomical, medical, philosophical, and (as Mrs. Malaprop observes) diabolical; but, as to Greek, they think of it as of an ancient mummy: you spend an infinity of time in unswathing it from its old dusty wrappers, and, when you have come to the end, what do you find for your pains? A woman's face, or a baby's, that certainly is not the better for being three thousand years old; and perhaps a few ears of wheat, stolen from Pharaoh's granary; which wheat, when sown [1] in Norfolk or Mid-Lothian, reaped, thrashed, ground, baked, and hunted through all sorts of tortures, yields a breakfast roll that (as a Scottish baker observed to me) is 'not just _that_ bad.' Certainly not: not exactly '_that_ bad;' not worse than the worst of our own; but still, much fitter for Pharaoh's breakfast-table than for ours. I, for my own part, stand upon an isthmus, connecting me, at one terminus, with the rebels against Greek, and, at the other, with those against whom they are in rebellion. On the one hand, it seems shocking to me, who am steeped to the lips in antique prejudices, that Greek, in unlimited quantities, should not secure a limited privilege of talking nonsense. Is all reverence extinct for old, and ivy-mantled, and worm-eaten things? Surely, if your own grandmother lectures on morals, which perhaps now and then she does, she will command that reverence from you, by means of her grandmotherhood, which by means of her ethics she might _not_. To be a good Grecian, is now to be a faded potentate; a sort of phantom Mogul, sitting at Delhi, with an English sepoy bestriding his shoulders. Matched against the master of _ologies_, in our days, the most accomplished of Grecians is becoming what the 'master of sentences' had become long since, in competition with the political economist. Yet, be assured, reader, that all the 'ologies' hitherto christened oology, ichthyology, ornithology, conchology, palaeodontology, &c., do not furnish such mines of labor as does the Greek language when thoroughly searched. The 'Mithridates' of Adelung, improved by the commentaries of Vater and of subsequent authors, numbers up about four thousand languages and jargons on our polyglot earth; not including the chuckling of poultry, nor caterwauling, nor barking, howling, braying, lowing, nor other respectable and ancient dialects, that perhaps have their elegant and their vulgar varieties, as well as prouder forms of communication. But my impression is, that the Greek, taken by itself, this one exquisite language, considered as a quarry of _intellectual_ labor, has more work in it, is more truly a _piece de resistance_, than all the remaining three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, with caterwauling thrown into the bargain. So far I side with the Grecian, and think that he ought to be honored with a little genuflexion. Yet, on the other hand, the finest sound on this earth, and which rises like an orchestra above all the uproars of earth, and the Babels of earthly languages, is truth--absolute truth; and the hatefulest is conscious falsehood. Now, there _is_ falsehood, nay (which seems strange), even sycophancy, in the old undistinguishing homage to all that is called classical. Yet why should men be sycophants in cases where they _must_ be disinterested? Sycophancy grows out of fear, or out of mercenary self-interest. But what can there exist of either pointing to an old Greek poet? Cannot a man give his free opinion upon Homer, without fearing to be waylaid by his ghost? But it is not _that_ which startles him from publishing the secret demur which his heart prompts, upon hearing false praises of a Greek poet, or praises which, if not false, are extravagant. What he fears, is the scorn of his contemporaries. Let once a party have formed itself considerable enough to protect a man from the charge of presumption in throwing off the yoke of _servile_ allegiance to all that is called classical,--let it be a party ever so small numerically, and the rebels will soon be many. What a man fears is, to affront the whole storm of indignation, real and affected, in his own solitary person. 'Goth!' 'Vandal!' he hears from every side. Break that storm by dividing it, and he will face its anger. 'Let me be a Goth,' he mutters to himself, 'but let me not dishonor myself by affecting an enthusiasm which my heart rejects!' Ever since the restoration of letters there has been a cabal, an academic interest, a factious league amongst universities, and learned bodies, and individual scholars, for exalting as something superterrestrial, and quite unapproachable by moderns, the monuments of Greek literature. France, in the time of Louis XIV., England, in the latter part of that time; in fact, each country as it grew polished at some cost of strength, carried this craze to a dangerous excess--dangerous as all things false are dangerous, and depressing to the aspirations of genius. Boileau, for instance, and Addison, though neither [2] of them accomplished in scholarship, nor either of them extensively read in _any_ department of the classic literature, speak every where of the classics as having notoriously, and by the general confession of polished nations, carried the functions of poetry and eloquence to that sort of faultless beauty which probably does _really_ exist in the Greek sculpture. There are few things perfect in this world of frailty. Even lightning is sometimes a failure: Niagara has horrible faults; and Mont Blanc might be improved by a century of chiselling from judicious artists. Such are the works of blind elements, which (poor things!) cannot improve by experience. As to man who _does_, the sculpture of the Greeks in their marbles and sometimes in their gems, seems the only act of _his_ workmanship which has hit the bull's eye in the target at which we are all aiming. Not so, with permission from Messrs. Boileau and Addison, the Greek literature. The faults in this are often conspicuous; nor are they likely to be hidden for the coming century, as they have been for the three last. The idolatry will be shaken: as _idols_, some of the classic models are destined to totter: and I foresee, without gifts of prophecy, that many laborers will soon be in this field--many idoloclasts, who will expose the signs of disease, which zealots had interpreted as power; and of weakness, which is not the less real because scholars had fancied it health, nor the less injurious to the total effect because it was inevitable under the accidents of the Grecian position. Meantime, I repeat, that to disparage any thing whatever, or to turn the eye upon blemishes, is no part of my present purpose. Nor could it be: since the one sole section of the Greek literature, as to which I profess myself an enthusiast, happens to be the tragic drama; and here, only, I myself am liable to be challenged as an idolater. As regards the Antigone in particular, so profoundly do I feel the impassioned beauty of her situation in connection with her character, that long ago, in a work of my own (yet unpublished), having occasion (by way of overture introducing one of the sections) to cite before the reader's eye the chief pomps of the Grecian theatre, after invoking 'the magnificent witch' Medea, I call up Antigone to this shadowy stage by the apostrophe, Holy heathen, daughter of God, before God was known, [3] flower from Paradise after Paradise was closed; that quitting all things for which flesh languishes, safety and honor, a palace and a home, didst make thyself a houseless pariah, lest the poor pariah king, thy outcast father, should want a hand to lead him in his darkness, or a voice to whisper comfort in his misery; angel, that badst depart for ever the glories of thy own bridal day, lest he that had shared thy nursery in childhood, should want the honors of a funeral; idolatrous, yet Christian Lady, that in the spirit of martyrdom trodst alone the yawning billows of the grave, flying from earthly hopes, lest everlasting despair should settle upon the grave of thy brother,' &c. In fact, though all the groupings, and what I would call permanent attitudes of the Grecian stage, are majestic, there is none that, to my mind, towers into such affecting grandeur, as this final revelation, through Antigone herself, and through her own dreadful death, of the tremendous wo that destiny had suspended over her house. If therefore my business had been chiefly with the individual drama, I should have found little room for any sentiment but that of profound admiration. But my present business is different: it concerns the Greek drama generally, and the attempt to revive it; and its object is to elucidate, rather than to praise or to blame. To explain this better, I will describe two things:--1st, The sort of audience that I suppose myself to be addressing; and, 2dly, As growing out of _that_, the particular quality of the explanations which I wish to make. 1st, As to the audience: in order to excuse the tone (which occasionally I may be obliged to assume) of one speaking as from a station of knowledge, to others having no knowledge, I beg it to be understood, that I take that station deliberately, on no conceit of superiority to my readers, but as a companion adapting my services to the wants of those who need them. I am not addressing those already familiar with the Greek drama, but those who frankly confess, and (according to their conjectural appreciation of it) who regret their non-familiarity with that drama. It is a thing well known to publishers, through remarkable results, and is now showing itself on a scale continually widening, that a new literary public has arisen, very different from any which existed at the beginning of this century. The aristocracy of the land have always been, in a moderate degree, literary; less, however, in connection with the _current_ literature, than with literature generally--past as well as present. And this is a tendency naturally favored and strengthened in _them_, by the fine collections of books, carried forward through successive generations, which are so often found as a sort of hereditary foundation in the country mansions of our nobility. But a class of readers, prodigiously more extensive, has formed itself within the commercial orders of our great cities and manufacturing districts. These orders range through a large scale. The highest classes amongst them were always literary. But the interest of literature has now swept downwards through a vast compass of descents: and this large body, though the busiest in the nation, yet, by having under their undisturbed command such leisure time as they have _at all_ under their command, are eventually able to read more than those even who seem to have nothing else but leisure. In justice, however, to the nobility of our land, it should be remembered, that their stations in society, and their wealth, their territorial duties, and their various public duties in London, as at court, at public meetings, in parliament, &c., bring crowded claims upon their time; whilst even sacrifices of time to the graceful courtesies of life, are in reference to _their_ stations, a sort of secondary duties. These allowances made, it still remains true that the busier classes are the main reading classes; whilst from their immense numbers, they are becoming effectually the body that will more and more impress upon the moving literature its main impulse and direction. One other feature of difference there is amongst this commercial class of readers: amongst the aristocracy all are thoroughly educated, excepting those who go at an early age into the army; of the commercial body, none receive an elaborate, and what is meant by a liberal education, except those standing by their connections in the richest classes. Thus it happens that, amongst those who have not inherited but achieved their stations, many men of fine and powerful understandings, accomplished in manners, and admirably informed, not having had the benefits when young of a regular classical education, find (upon any accident bringing up such subjects) a deficiency which they do not find on other subjects. They are too honorable to undervalue advantages, which they feel to be considerable, simply because they were denied to themselves. They regret their loss. And yet it seems hardly worth while, on a simple prospect of contingencies that may never be realized, to undertake an entirely new course of study for redressing this loss. But they would be glad to avail themselves of any useful information not exacting study. These are the persons, this is the class, to which I address my remarks on the 'Antigone;' and out of _their_ particular situation, suggesting upon all elevated subjects a corresponding tone of liberal curiosity, will arise the particular nature and direction of these remarks. Accordingly, I presume, secondly, that this curiosity will take the following course:--these persons will naturally wish to know, at starting, what there is _differentially_ interesting in a Grecian tragedy, as contrasted with one of Shakspeare's or of Schiller's: in what respect, and by what agencies, a Greek tragedy affects us, or is meant to affect us, otherwise than as _they_ do; and how far the Antigone of Sophocles was judiciously chosen as the particular medium for conveying to British minds a first impression, and a representative impression, of Greek tragedy. So far, in relation to the ends proposed, and the means selected. Finally, these persons will be curious to know the issue of such an experiment. Let the purposes and the means have been bad or good, what was the actual success? And not merely success, in the sense of the momentary acceptance by half a dozen audiences, whom the mere decencies of justice must have compelled to acknowledge the manager's trouble and expense on their behalf; but what was the degree of satisfaction felt by students of the Athenian [4] tragedy, in relation to their long-cherished ideal? Did the representation succeed in realizing, for a moment, the awful pageant of the Athenian stage? Did Tragedy, in Milton's immortal expression, ------come sweeping by In sceptred pall? Or was the whole, though successful in relation to the thing attempted, a failure in relation to what ought to have been attempted? Such are the questions to be answered. * * * * * The first elementary idea of a Greek tragedy, is to be sought in a serious Italian opera. The Greek dialogue is represented by the recitative, and the tumultuous lyrical parts assigned chiefly, though not exclusively, to the chorus on the Greek stage, are represented by the impassioned airs, duos, trios, choruses, &c. on the Italian. And there, at the very outset, occurs a question which lies at the threshold of a Fine Art,--that is of _any_ Fine Art: for had the views of Addison upon the Italian opera had the least foundation in truth, there could have been no room or opening for any mode of imitation except such as belongs to a _mechanic_ art. The reason for at all connecting Addison with this case is, that _he_ chiefly was the person occupied in assailing the Italian opera; and this hostility arose, probably, in his want of sensibility to good (that is, to Italian) music. But whatever might be his motive for the hostility, the single argument by which he supported it was this,--that a hero ought not to sing upon the stage, because no hero known to history ever summoned a garrison in a song, or changed a battery in a semichorus. In this argument lies an ignorance of the very first principle concern in _every_ Fine Art. In all alike, more or less directly, the object is to reproduce in mind some great effect, through the agency of _idem in alio_. The _idem_, the same impression, is to be restored; but _in alio_, in a different material,--by means of some different instrument. For instance, on the Roman stage there was an art, now entirely lost, of narrating, and, in part of dramatically representing an impassioned tale, by means of dancing, of musical accompaniment in the orchestra, and of elaborate pantomime in the performer. _Saltavit Hypermnestram_, he danced (that is, he represented by dancing and pantomime the story of) Hypermnestra. Now, suppose a man to object, that young ladies, when saving their youthful husbands at midnight from assassination, could not be capable of waltzing or quadrilling, how wide is this of the whole problem! This is still seeking for the _mechanic_ imitation, some imitation founded in the very fact; whereas the object is to seek the imitation in the sameness of the impression drawn from a different, or even from an impossible fact. If a man, taking a hint from the Roman 'Saltatio' (_saltavit Andromachen_), should say that he would 'whistle Waterloo,' that is, by whistling connected with pantomime, would express the passion and the changes of Waterloo, it would be monstrous to refuse him his postulate on the pretence that 'people did not whistle at Waterloo.' Precisely so: neither are most people made of marble, but of a material as different as can well be imagined, viz. of elastic flesh, with warm blood coursing along its tubes; and yet, for all _that_, a sculptor will draw tears from you, by exhibiting, in pure statuary marble, on a sepulchral monument, two young children with their little heads on a pillow, sleeping in each other's arms; whereas, if he had presented them in wax-work, which yet is far more like to flesh, you would have felt little more pathos in the scene than if they had been shown baked in gilt gingerbread. He has expressed the _idem_, the identical thing expressed in the real children; the sleep that masks death, the rest, the peace, the purity, the innocence; but _in alio_, in a substance the most different; rigid, non-elastic, and as unlike to flesh, if tried by touch, or eye, or by experience of life, as can well be imagined. So of the whistling. It is the very worst objection in the world to say, that the strife of Waterloo did not reveal itself through whistling: undoubtedly it did not; but that is the very ground of the man's art. He will reproduce the fury and the movement as to the only point which concerns you, viz. the effect, upon your own sympathies, through a language that seems without any relation to it: he will set before you what _was_ at Waterloo through that which was _not_ at Waterloo. Whereas any direct factual imitation, resting upon painted figures drest up in regimentals, and worked by watchwork through the whole movements of the battle, would have been no art whatsoever in the sense of a Fine Art, but a base _mechanic_ mimicry. This principle of the _idem in alio_, so widely diffused through all the higher revelations of art, it is peculiarly requisite to bear in mind when looking at Grecian tragedy, because no form of human composition employs it in so much complexity. How confounding it would have been to Addison, if somebody had told him, that, substantially, he had himself committed the offence (as he fancied it) which he charged so bitterly upon the Italian opera; and that, if the opera had gone farther upon that road than himself, the Greek tragedy, which he presumed to be so prodigiously exalted beyond modern approaches, had gone farther even than the opera. Addison himself, when writing a tragedy, made this violation (as he would have said) of nature, made this concession (as _I_ should say) to a higher nature, that he compelled his characters to talk in metre. It is true this metre was the common iambic, which (as Aristotle remarks) is the most natural and spontaneous of all metres; and, for a sufficient reason, in all languages. Certainly; but Aristotle never meant to say that it was natural for a gentleman in a passion to talk threescore and ten iambics _consecutively_: a chance line might escape him once and away; as we know that Tacitus opened one of his works by a regular dactylic hexameter in full curl, without ever discovering it to his dying day (a fact which is clear from his never having corrected it); and this being a very artificial metre, _a fortiori_ Tacitus might have slipped into a simple iambic. But that was an accident, whilst Addison had deliberately and uniformly made his characters talk in verse. According to the common and false meaning [which was his own meaning] of the word nature, he had as undeniably violated the principle of the _natural_, by this metrical dialogue, as the Italian opera by musical dialogue. If it is hard and trying for men to sing their emotions, not less so it must be to deliver them in verse. But, if this were shocking, how much more shocking would it have seemed to Addison, had he been introduced to parts which really exist in the Grecian drama? Even Sophocles, who, of the three tragic poets surviving from the wrecks of the Athenian stage, is reputed the supreme _artist_ [5] if not the most impassioned poet, with what horror he would have overwhelmed Addison, when read by the light of those principles which he had himself so scornfully applied to the opera! In the very monsoon of his raving misery, from calamities as sudden as they were irredeemable, a king is introduced, not only conversing, but conversing in metre; not only in metre, but in the most elaborate of choral metres; not only under the torture of these lyric difficulties, but also chanting; not only chanting, but also in all probability dancing. What do you think of _that_, Mr. Addison? There is, in fact, a scale of graduated ascents in these artifices for unrealizing the effects of dramatic situations: 1. We may see, even in novels and prose comedies, a keen attention paid to the inspiriting and _dressing_ of the dialogue: it is meant to be life- like, but still it is a little raised, pointed, colored, and idealized. 2. In comedy of a higher and more poetic cast, we find the dialogue _metrical_. 3. In comedy or in tragedy alike, which is meant to be still further removed from ordinary life, we find the dialogue fettered not only by metre, but by _rhyme_. We need not go to Dryden, and others, of our own middle stage, or to the French stage for this: even in Shakspeare, as for example, in parts of Romeo and Juliet (and for no capricious purpose), we may see effects sought from the use of rhyme. There is another illustration of the idealizing effect to be obtained from a particular treatment of the dialogue, seen in the Hamlet of Shakspeare. In that drama there arises a necessity for exhibiting a play within a play. This interior drama is to be further removed from the spectator than the principal drama; it is a deep below a deep; and, to produce that effect, the poet relies chiefly upon the stiffening the dialogue, and removing it still farther, than the general dialogue of the _including_ or _outside_ drama, from the standard of ordinary life. 4. We find, superadded to these artifices for idealizing the situations, even music of an intermitting character, sometimes less, sometimes more impassioned--recitatives, airs, choruses. Here we have reached the Italian opera. 5. And, finally, besides all these resources of art, we find dancing introduced; but dancing of a solemn, mystical, and symbolic character. Here, at last, we have reached the Greek tragedy. Probably the best exemplification of a Grecian tragedy that ever _will_ be given to a modern reader is found in the Samson Agonistes of Milton. Now, in the choral or lyric parts of this fine drama, Samson not only talks, 1st, metrically ( as he does every where, and in the most level parts of the scenic business), but, 2d, in very intricate metres, and, 3d, occasionally in _rhymed_ metres (though the rhymes are too sparingly and too capriciously scattered by Milton), and, 4th, _singing_ or chanting these metres (for, as the chorus sang, it was impossible that _he_ could be allowed to talk in his ordinary voice, else he would have put them out, and ruined the music). Finally, 5th, I am satisfied that Milton meant him to _dance_. The office of the _chorus_ was imperfectly defined upon the Greek stage. They are generally understood to be the _moralizers_ of the scene. But this is liable to exceptions. Some of them have been known to do very bad things on the stage, and to come within a trifle of felony: as to misprision of felony, if there _is_ such a crime, a Greek chorus thinks nothing of it. But that is no business of mine. What I was going to say is, that, as the chorus sometimes intermingles too much in the action, so the actors sometimes intermingle in the business of the chorus. Now, when you are at Rome, you must do as they do at Rome. And that the actor, who mixed with the chorus, was compelled to sing, is a clear case; for _his_ part in the choral ode is always in the nature of an echo, or answer, or like an _antiphony_ in cathedral services. But nothing could be more absurd than that one of these antiphonies should be sung, and another said. That he was also compelled to dance, I am satisfied. The chorus only _sometimes_ moralized, but it _always_ danced: and any actor, mingling with the chorus, must dance also. A little incident occurs to my remembrance, from the Moscow expedition of 1812, which may here be used as an illustration: One day King Murat, flourishing his plumage as usual, made a gesture of invitation to some squadrons of cavalry that they should charge the enemy: upon which the cavalry advanced, but maliciously contrived to envelope the king of dandies, before he had time to execute his ordinary manoeuvre of riding off to the left and becoming a spectator of their prowess. The cavalry resolved that his majesty should for once ride down at their head to the melee, and taste what fighting was like; and he, finding that the thing must be, though horribly vexed, made a merit of his necessity, and afterwards pretended that he liked it very much. Sometimes, in the darkness, in default of other misanthropic visions, the wickedness of this cavalry, their _mechancete_, causes me to laugh immoderately. Now I conceive that any interloper into the Greek chorus must have danced when _they_ danced, or he would have been swept away by their impetus: _nolens volens_, he must have rode along with the orchestral charge, he must have rode on the crest of the choral billows, or he would have been rode down by their impassioned sweep. Samson, and Oedipus, and others, must have danced, if they sang; and they certainly _did_ sing, by notoriously intermingling in the choral business.[6] 'But now,' says the plain English reader, 'what was the object of all these elaborate devices? And how came it that the English tragedy, which surely is as good as the Greek,' (and at this point a devil of defiance whispers to him, like the quarrelsome servant of the Capulets or the Montagus, 'say _better_,') 'that the English tragedy contented itself with fewer of these artful resources than the Athenian?' I reply, that the object of all these things was--to unrealize the scene. The English drama, by its metrical dress, and by other arts more disguised, unrealized itself, liberated itself from the oppression of life in its ordinary standards, up to a certain height. Why it did not rise still higher, and why the Grecian _did_, I will endeavor to explain. It was not that the English tragedy was less impassioned; on the contrary, it was far more so; the Greek being awful rather than impassioned; but the passion of each is in a different key. It is not again that the Greek drama sought a lower object than the English: it sought a different object. It is not imparity, but disparity, that divides the two magnificent theatres. Suffer me, reader, at this point, to borrow from my-self, and do not betray me to the authorities that rule in this journal, if you happen to know [which is not likely] that I am taking an idea from a paper which years ago I wrote for an eminent literary journal. As I have no copy of that paper before me, it is impossible that I should save myself any labor of writing. The words at any rate I must invent afresh: and, as to the idea, you never _can_ be such a churlish man as, by insisting on a new one, in effect to insist upon my writing a false one. In the following paragraph, therefore, I give the substance of a thought suggested by myself some years ago. That kind of feeling, which broods over the Grecian tragedy, and to court which feeling the tragic poets of Greece naturally spread all their canvas, was more nearly allied to the atmosphere of death than that of life. This expresses rudely the character of awe and religious horror investing the Greek theatre. But to my own feeling the different principle of passion which governs the Grecian conception of tragedy, as compared with the English, is best conveyed by saying that the Grecian is a breathing from the world of sculpture, the English a breathing from the world of painting. What we read in sculpture is not absolutely death, but still less is it the fulness of life. We read there the abstraction of a life that reposes, the sublimity of a life that aspires, the solemnity of a life that is thrown to an infinite distance. This last is the feature of sculpture which seems most characteristic: the form which presides in the most commanding groups, 'is not dead but sleepeth:' true, but it is the sleep of a life sequestrated, solemn, liberated from the bonds of space and time, and (as to both alike) thrown (I repeat the words) to a distance which is infinite. It affects us profoundly, but not by agitation. Now, on the other hand, the breathing life--life kindling, trembling, palpitating--that life which speaks to us in painting, this is also the life that speaks to us in English tragedy. Into an English tragedy even festivals of joy may enter; marriages, and baptisms, or commemorations of national trophies: which, or any thing _like_ which, is incompatible with the very being of the Greek. In that tragedy what uniformity of gloom; in the English what light alternating with depths of darkness! The Greek, how mournful; the English, how tumultuous! Even the catastrophes how different! In the Greek we see a breathless waiting for a doom that cannot be evaded; a waiting, as it were, for the last shock of an earthquake, or the inexorable rising of a deluge: in the English it is like a midnight of shipwreck, from which up to the last and till the final ruin comes, there still survives the sort of hope that clings to human energies. Connected with this original awfulness of the Greek tragedy, and possibly in part its cause, or at least lending strength to its cause, we may next remark the grand dimensions of the ancient theatres. Every citizen had a right to accommodation. _There_ at once was a pledge of grandeur. Out of this original standard grew the magnificence of many a future amphitheatre, circus, hippodrome. Had the original theatre been merely a speculation of private interest, then, exactly as demand arose, a corresponding supply would have provided for it through its ordinary vulgar channels; and this supply would have taken place through rival theatres. But the crushing exaction of 'room for _every_ citizen,' put an end to that process of subdivision. Drury Lane, as I read (or think that I read) thirty years ago, allowed sitting room for three thousand eight hundred people. Multiply _that_ by ten; imagine thirty-eight thousand instead of thirty-eight hundred, and then you have an idea of the Athenian theatre. [7] Next, out of that grandeur in the architectural proportions arose, as by necessity, other grandeurs. You are aware of the _cothurnus_, or buskin, which raised the actor's heel by two and a half inches; and you think that this must have caused a deformity in the general figure as incommensurate to this height. Not at all. The flowing dress of Greece healed all _that_. But, besides the _cothurnus_, you have heard of the mask. So far as it was fitted to swell the intonations of the voice, you are of opinion that this mask would be a happy contrivance; for what, you say, could a common human voice avail against the vast radiation from the actor's centre of more than three myriads? If, indeed (like the Homeric Stentor), an actor spoke in point of loudness, (Greek Text), as much as other fifty, then he might become audible to the assembled Athenians without aid. But this being impossible, art must be invoked; and well if the mask, together with contrivances of another class, could correct it. Yet if it could, still you think that this mask would bring along with it an overbalancing evil. For the expression, the fluctuating expression, of the features, the play of the muscles, the music of the eye and of the lips,--aids to acting that, in our times, have given immortality to scores, whither would those have vanished? Reader, it mortifies me that all which I said to you upon the peculiar and separate grandeur investing the Greek theatre is forgotten. For, you must consider, that where a theatre is built for receiving upwards of thirty thousand spectators, the curve described by what in modern times you would call the tiers of boxes, must be so vast as to make the ordinary scale of human features almost ridiculous by disproportion. Seat yourself at this day in the amphitheatre at Verona, and judge for yourself. In an amphitheatre, the stage, or properly the arena, occupying, in fact, the place of our modern pit, was much nearer than in a scenic theatre to the surrounding spectators. Allow for this, and placing some adult in a station expressing the distance of the Athenian stage, then judge by his appearance if the delicate pencilling of Grecian features could have told at the Grecian distance. But even if it could, then I say that this circumstantiality would have been hostile to the general tendencies (as already indicated) of the Grecian drama. The sweeping movement of the Attic tragedy _ought_ not to admit of interruption from _distinct_ human features; the expression of an eye, the loveliness of a smile, _ought_ to be lost amongst effects so colossal. The mask aggrandized the features: even so far it acted favorably. Then figure to yourself this mask presenting an idealized face of the noblest Grecian outline, moulded by some skilful artist _Phidiaca manu_, so as to have the effect of a marble bust; this accorded with the aspiring _cothurnus_; and the motionless character impressed upon the features, the marble tranquillity, would (I contend) suit the solemn processional character of Athenian tragedy, far better than the most expressive and flexible countenance on its natural scale. 'Yes,' you say, on considering the character of the Greek drama, 'generally it might; in forty-nine cases suppose out of fifty: but what shall be done in the fiftieth, where some dreadful discovery or _anagnorisis_ (_i.e._ recognition of identity) takes place within the compass of a single line or two; as, for instance, in the Oedipus Tyrannus, at the moment when Oedipus by a final question of his own, extorts his first fatal discovery, viz. that he had been himself unconsciously the murderer of Laius?' True, he has no reason as yet to suspect that Laius was his own father; which discovery, when made further on, will draw with it another still more dreadful, viz. that by this parricide he had opened his road to a throne, and to a marriage with his father's widow, who was also his own natural mother. He does not yet know the worst: and to have killed an arrogant prince, would not in those days have seemed a very deep offence: but then he believes that the pestilence had been sent as a secret vengeance for this assassination, which is thus invested with a mysterious character of horror. Just at this point, Jocasta, his mother and his wife, says, [8] on witnessing the sudden revulsion of feeling in his face, 'I shudder, oh king, when looking on thy countenance.' Now, in what way could this passing spasm of horror be reconciled with the unchanging expression in the marble-looking mask? This, and similar cases to this, must surely be felt to argue a defect in the scenic apparatus. But I say, no: first, Because the general indistinctiveness from distance is a benefit that applies equally to the fugitive changes of the features and to their permanent expression. You need not regret the loss through _absence_, of an appearance that would equally, though present, have been lost through _distance_. Secondly, The Greek actor had always the resource, under such difficulties, of averting his face a resource sanctioned in similar cases by the greatest of the Greek painters. Thirdly, The voluminous draperies of the scenic dresses, and generally of the Greek costume, made it an easy thing to muffle the features altogether by a gesture most natural to sudden horror. Fourthly, We must consider that there were no stage lights: but, on the contrary that the general light of day was specially mitigated for that particular part of the theatre; just as various architectural devices were employed to swell the volume of sound. Finally. I repeat my sincere opinion, that the general indistinctness of the expression was, on principles of taste, an advantage, as harmonizing with the stately and sullen monotony of the Greek tragedy. Grandeur in the attitudes, in the gestures, in the groups, in the processions--all this was indispensable: but, on so vast a scale as the mighty cartoons of the Greek stage, an Attic artist as little regarded the details of physiognomy, as a great architect would regard, on the frontispiece of a temple, the miniature enrichments that might be suitable in a drawing-room. With these views upon the Grecian theatre, and other views that it might oppress the reader to dwell upon in this place, suddenly in December last an opportunity dawned--a golden opportunity, gleaming for a moment amongst thick clouds of impossibility that had gathered through three-and-twenty centuries--for seeing a Grecian tragedy presented on a British stage, and with the nearest approach possible to the beauty of those Athenian pomps which Sophocles, which Phidias, which Pericles created, beautified, promoted. I protest, when seeing the Edinburgh theatre's _programme_, that a note dated from the Vatican would not have startled me more, though sealed with the seal of the fisherman, and requesting the favor of my company to take coffee with the Pope. Nay, less: for channels there were through which I might have compassed a presentation to his Holiness; but the daughter of Oedipus, the holy Antigone, could I have hoped to see her 'in the flesh?' This tragedy in an English version, [9] and with German music, had first been placed before the eyes and ears of our countrymen at Convent Garden during the winter of 1844--5. It was said to have succeeded. And soon after a report sprang up, from nobody knew where, that Mr. Murray meant to reproduce it in Edinburgh. What more natural? Connected so nearly with the noblest house of scenic artists that ever shook the hearts of nations, nobler than ever raised undying echoes amidst the mighty walls of Athens, of Rome, of Paris, of London,--himself a man of talents almost unparalleled for versatility,-- why should not Mr. Murray, always so liberal in an age so ungrateful to _his_ profession, have sacrificed something to this occasion? He, that sacrifices so much, why not sacrifice to the grandeur of the Antique? I was then in Edinburgh, or in its neighborhood; and one morning, at a casual assembly of some literary friends, present Professor Wilson, Messrs. J. F., C. N., L. C., and others, advocates, scholars, lovers of classical literature, we proposed two resolutions, of which the first was, that the news was too good to be true. That passed _nem. con._; and the second resolution was _nearly_ passing, viz. that a judgment would certainly fall upon Mr. Murray, had a second report proved true, viz. that not the Antigone, but a burlesque on the Antigone, was what he meditated to introduce. This turned out false; [l0] the original report was suddenly revived eight or ten months after. Immediately on the heels of the promise the execution followed; and on the last (which I believe was the seventh) representation of the Antigone, I prepared myself to attend. It had been generally reported as characteristic of myself, that in respect to all coaches, steamboats, railroads, wedding-parties, baptisms, and so forth, there was a fatal necessity of my being a trifle too late. Some malicious fairy, not invited to my own baptism, was supposed to have endowed me with this infirmity. It occurred to me that for once in my life I would show the scandalousness of such a belief by being a trifle too soon, say, three minutes. And no name more lovely for inaugurating such a change, no memory with which I could more willingly connect any reformation, than thine, dear, noble Antigone! Accordingly, because a certain man (whose name is down in my pocket-book for no good) had told me that the doors of the theatre opened at half-past six, whereas, in fact, they opened at seven, there was I, if you please, freezing in the little colonnade of the theatre precisely as it wanted six-and-a-half minutes to seven,--six-and-a-half minutes observe too soon. Upon which this son of absurdity coolly remarked, that, if he had not set me half-an-hour forward, by my own showing, I should have been twenty-three-and-a-half minutes too late. What sophistry! But thus it happened (namely, through the wickedness of this man), that, upon entering the theatre, I found myself like Alexander Selkirk, in a frightful solitude, or like a single family of Arabs gathering at sunset about a solitary coffee-pot in the boundless desert. Was there an echo raised? it was from my own steps. Did any body cough? it was too evidently myself. I was the audience; I was the public. And, if any accident happened to the theatre, such as being burned down, Mr. Murray would certainly lay the blame upon me. My business meantime, as a critic, was--to find out the most malicious seat, _i.e._ the seat from which all things would take the most unfavorable aspect. I could not suit myself in this respect; however bad a situation might seem, I still fancied some other as promising to be worse. And I was not sorry when an audience, by mustering in strength through all parts of the house, began to divide my responsibility as to burning down the building, and, at the same time, to limit the caprices of my distracted choice. At last, and precisely at half-past seven, the curtain drew up; a thing not strictly correct on a Grecian stage. But in theatres, as in other places, one must forget and forgive. Then the music began, of which in a moment. The overture slipped out at one ear, as it entered the other, which, with submission to Mr. Mendelssohn, is a proof that it must be horribly bad; for, if ever there lived a man that in music can neither forget nor forgive, that man is myself. Whatever is very good never perishes from my remembrance,--that is, sounds in my ears by intervals for ever,--and for whatever is bad, I consign the author, in my wrath, to his own conscience, and to the tortures of his own discords. The most villanous things, however, have one merit; they are transitory as the best things; and _that_ was true of the overture: it perished. Then, suddenly, --oh, heavens! what a revelation of beauty!--forth stepped, walking in brightness, the most faultless of Grecian marbles, Miss Helen Faucit as Antigone. What perfection of Athenian sculpture! the noble figure, the lovely arms, the fluent drapery! What an unveiling of the ideal statuesque! Is it Hebe? is it Aurora? is it a goddess that moves before us? Perfect she is in form; perfect in attitude; 'Beautiful exceedingly, Like a ladie from a far countrie.' Here was the redeeming jewel of the performance. It flattered one's patriotic feelings, to see this noble young countrywoman realizing so exquisitely, and restoring to our imaginations, the noblest of Grecian girls. We critics, dispersed through the house, in the very teeth of duty and conscience, all at one moment unanimously fell in love with Miss Faucit. We felt in our remorse, and did not pretend to deny, that our duty was--to be savage. But when was the voice of duty listened to in the first uproars of passion? One thing I regretted, viz. that from the indistinctness of my sight for distant faces, I could not accurately discriminate Miss Faucit's features; but I was told by my next neighbor that they were as true to the antique as her figure. Miss Faucit's voice is fine and impassioned, being deep for a female voice; but in this organ lay also the only blemish of her personation. In her last scene, which is injudiciously managed by the Greek poet,--too long by much, and perhaps misconceived in the modern way of understanding it,--her voice grew too husky to execute the cadences of the intonations: yet, even in this scene, her fall to the ground, under the burden of her farewell anguish, was in a high degree sculpturesque through the whole succession of its stages. Antigone in the written drama, and still more in the personated drama, draws all thoughts so entirely to herself, as to leave little leisure for examining the other parts; and, under such circumstances, the first impulse of a critic's mind is, that he ought to massacre all the rest indiscriminately; it being clearly his duty to presume every thing bad which he is not unwillingly forced to confess good, or concerning which he retains no distinct recollection. But I, after the first glory of Antigone's _avatar_ had subsided, applied myself to consider the general 'setting' of this Theban jewel. Creon, whom the Greek tragic poets take delight in describing as a villain, has very little more to do (until his own turn comes for grieving), than to tell Antigone, by minute-guns, that die she must. 'Well, uncle, don't say that so often,' is the answer which, secretly, the audience whispers to Antigone. Our uncle grows tedious; and one wishes at last that he himself could be 'put up the spout.' Mr. Glover, from the sepulchral depth of his voice, gave effect to the odious Creontic menaces; and, in the final lamentations over the dead body of Haemon, being a man of considerable intellectual power, Mr. Glover drew the part into a prominence which it is the fault of Sophocles to have authorized in that situation; for the closing sympathies of the spectator ought not to be diverted, for a moment, from Antigone. But the chorus, how did _they_ play their part? Mainly _their_ part must have always depended on the character of the music: even at Athens, that must have been very much the case, and at Edinburgh altogether, because dancing on the Edinburgh stage there was none. How came _that_ about? For the very word, 'orchestral,' suggests to a Greek ear _dancing_, as the leading element in the choral functions. Was it because dancing with us is never used mystically and symbolically never used in our religious services? Still it would have been possible to invent solemn and intricate dances, that might have appeared abundantly significant, if expounded by impassioned music. But that music of Mendelssohn!--like it I cannot. Say not that Mendelssohn is a great composer. He _is_ so. But here he was voluntarily abandoning the resources of his own genius, and the support of his divine art, in quest of a chimera: that is, in quest of a thing called Greek music, which for _us_ seems far more irrecoverable than the 'Greek fire.' I myself, from an early date, was a student of this subject. I read book after book upon it; and each successive book sank me lower into darkness, until I had so vastly improved in ignorance, that I could myself have written a quarto upon it, which all the world should not have found it possible to understand. It should have taken three men to construe one sentence. I confess, however, to not having yet seen the writings upon this impracticable theme of Colonel Perronet Thompson. To write experimental music for choruses that are to support the else meagre outline of a Greek tragedy, will not do. Let experiments be tried upon worthless subjects; and if this of Mendelssohn's be Greek music, the sooner it takes itself off the better. Sophocles will be delivered from an incubus, and we from an affliction of the auditory nerves. It strikes me that I see the source of this music. We, that were learning German some thirty years ago, must remember the noise made at that time about Mendelssohn, the Platonic philosopher. And why? Was there any thing particular in 'Der Phaedon,' on the immortality of the soul? Not at all; it left us quite as mortal as it found us; and it has long since been found mortal itself. Its venerable remains are still to be met with in many worm-eaten trunks, pasted on the lids of which I have myself perused a matter of thirty pages, except for a part that had been too closely perused by worms. But the key to all the popularity of the Platonic Mendelssohn, is to be sought in the whimsical nature of German liberality, which, in those days, forced Jews into paying toll at the gates of cities, under the title of 'swine,' but caressed their infidel philosophers. Now, in this category of Jew and infidel, stood the author of 'Phaedon.' He was certainly liable to toll as a hog; but, on the other hand, he was much admired as one who despised the Pentateuch. Now _that_ Mendelssohn, whose learned labors lined our trunks, was the father of _this_ Mendelssohn, whose Greek music afflicts our ears. Naturally, then, it strikes me, that as 'papa' Mendelssohn attended the synagogue to save appearances, the filial Mendelssohn would also attend it. I likewise attended the synagogue now and then at Liverpool, and elsewhere. We all three have been cruising in the same latitudes; and, trusting to my own remembrances, I should pronounce that Mendelssohn has stolen his Greek music from the synagogue. There was, in the first chorus of the 'Antigone,' one sublime ascent (and once repeated) that rang to heaven: it might have entered into the music of Jubal's lyre, or have glorified the timbrel of Miriam. All the rest, tried by the deep standard of my own feeling, that clamors for the impassioned in music, even as the daughter of the horse-leech says, 'Give, give,' is as much without meaning as most of the Hebrew chanting that I heard at the Liverpool synagogue. I advise Mr. Murray, in the event of his ever reviving the 'Antigone,' to make the chorus sing the Hundredth Psalm, rather than Mendelssohn's music; or, which would be better still, to import from Lancashire the Handel chorus- singers. But then, again, whatever change in the music were made, so as to 'better the condition' of the poor audience, something should really be done to 'better the condition' of the poor chorus. Think of these worthy men, in their white and skyblue liveries, kept standing the whole evening; no seats allowed, no dancing; no tobacco; nothing to console them but Antigone's beauty; and all this in our climate, latitude fifty-five degrees, 30th of December, and Fahrenheit groping about, I don't pretend to know where, but clearly on his road down to the wine cellar. Mr. Murray, I am perfectly sure, is too liberal to have grudged the expense, if he could have found any classic precedent for treating the chorus to a barrel of ale. Ale, he may object, is an unclassical tipple; but perhaps not. Xenophon, the most Attic of prose writers, mentions pointedly in his _Anabasis_, that the Ten Thousand, when retreating through snowy mountains, and in circumstances very like our General Elphinstone's retreat from Cabul, came upon a considerable stock of bottled ale. To be sure, the poor ignorant man calls it _barley wine_, [Greek: _oitos chrithinos_:] but the flavor was found so perfectly classical that not one man of the ten thousand, not even the Attic bee himself, is reported to have left any protest against it, or indeed to have left much of the ale. But stop: perhaps I am intruding upon other men's space. Speaking, therefore, now finally to the principal question, How far did this memorable experiment succeed? I reply, that, in the sense of realizing all that the joint revivers proposed to realize, it succeeded; and failed only where these revivers had themselves failed to comprehend the magnificent tendencies of Greek tragedy, or where the limitations of our theatres, arising out of our habits and social differences, had made it impossible to succeed. In London, I believe that there are nearly thirty theatres, and many more, if every place of amusement (not bearing the technical name of _theatre_) were included. All these must be united to compose a building such as that which received the vast audiences, and consequently the vast spectacles, of some ancient cities. And yet, from a great mistake in our London and Edinburgh attempts to imitate the stage of the Greek theatres, little use was made of such advantages as really _were_ at our disposal. The possible depth of the Edinburgh stage was not laid open. Instead of a regal hall in Thebes, I protest I took it for the boudoir of Antigone. It was painted in light colors, an error which was abominable, though possibly meant by the artist (but quite unnecessarily) as a proper ground for relieving the sumptuous dresses of the leading performers. The doors of entrance and exit were most unhappily managed. As to the dresses, those of Creon, of his queen, and of the two loyal sisters, were good: chaste, and yet princely. The dress of the chorus was as bad as bad as could be: a few surplices borrowed from Episcopal chapels, or rather the ornamented _albes_, &c. from any rich Roman Catholic establishment, would have been more effective. The _Coryphaeus_ himself seemed, to my eyes, no better than a railway laborer, fresh from tunnelling or boring, and wearing a _blouse_ to hide his working dress. These ill- used men ought to 'strike' for better clothes, in case Antigone should again revisit the glimpses of an Edinburgh moon; and at the same time they might mutter a hint about the ale. But the great hindrances to a perfect restoration of a Greek tragedy, lie in peculiarities of our theatres that cannot be removed, because bound up with their purposes. I suppose that Salisbury Plain would seem too vast a theatre: but at least a cathedral would be required in dimensions, York Minster or Cologne. Lamp-light gives to us some advantages which the ancients had not. But much art would be required to train and organize the lights and the masses of superincumbent gloom, that should be such as to allow no calculation of the dimensions overhead. Aboriginal night should brood over the scene, and the sweeping movements of the scenic groups: bodily expression should be given to the obscure feeling of that dark power which moved in ancient tragedy: and we should be made to know why it is that, with the one exception of the _Persae_, founded on the second Persian invasion, [11] in which Aeschylus, the author, was personally a combatant, and therefore a _contemporary_, not one of the thirty-four Greek tragedies surviving, but recedes into the dusky shades of the heroic, or even fabulous times. A failure, therefore, I think the 'Antigone,' in relation to an object that for us is unattainable; but a failure worth more than many ordinary successes. We are all deeply indebted to Mr. Murray's liberality, in two senses; to his liberal interest in the noblest section of ancient literature, and to his liberal disregard of expense. To have seen a Grecian play is a great remembrance. To have seen Miss Helen Faucit's Antigone, were _that_ all, with her bust, [Greek: _os agalmatos_] [12] and her uplifted arm 'pleading against unjust tribunals,' is worth--what is it worth? Worth the money? How mean a thought! To see _Helen_, to see Helen of Greece, was the chief prayer of Marlow's Dr. Faustus; the chief gift which he exacted from the fiend. To see Helen of Greece? Dr. Faustus, we _have_ seen her: Mr. Murray is the Mephistopheles that showed her to us. It was cheap at the price of a journey to Siberia, and is the next best thing to having seen Waterloo at sunset on the 18th of June, 1815. [13] FOOTNOTES [1] '_When sown_;' as it has been repeatedly; a fact which some readers may not be aware of. [2] Boileau, it is true, translated Longinus. But there goes little Greek to _that_. It is in dealing with Attic Greek, and Attic _poets_, that a man can manifest his Grecian skill. [3] 'Before God was known;'--i.e. known in Greece. [4] At times, I say pointedly, the _Athenian_ rather than the _Grecian_ tragedy, in order to keep the reader's attention awake to a remark made by Paterculus,--viz. That although Greece coquettishly welcomed homage to herself, as generally concerned in the Greek literature, in reality Athens only had any original share in the drama, or in the oratory of Greece. [5] '_The supreme artist_:'--It is chiefly by comparison with Euripides, that Sophocles is usually crowned with the laurels of _art_. But there is some danger of doing wrong to the truth in too blindly adhering to these old rulings of critical courts. The judgments would sometimes be reversed, if the pleadings were before us. There were blockheads in those days. Undoubtedly it is past denying that Euripides at times betrays marks of carelessness in the structure of his plots, as if writing too much in a hurry: the original cast of the fable is sometimes not happy, and the evolution or disentangling is too precipitate. It is easy to see that he would have remoulded them in a revised edition, or _diaskeue [Greek.]_ On the other hand, I remember nothing in the Greek drama more worthy of a great artist than parts in his Phoenissae. Neither is he the effeminately tender, or merely pathetic poet that some people imagine. He was able to sweep _all_ the chords of the impassioned spirit. But the whole of this subject is in arrear: it is in fact _res integra_, almost unbroken ground. [6] I see a possible screw loose at this point: if _you_ see it, reader, have the goodness to hold your tongue. [7] '_Athenian Theatre_:'--Many corrections remain to be made. Athens, in her bloom, was about as big as Calcutta, which contained, forty years ago, more than half a million of people; or as Naples, which (being long rated at three hundred thousand), is now known to contain at least two hundred thousand more. The well known census of Demetrius Phalereus gave twenty- one thousand citizens. Multiply this by 5, or 4-3/4, and you have their families. Add ten thousand, multiplied by 4-1/2, for the _Inquilini_. Then add four hundred thousand for the slaves: total, about five hundred and fifty thousand. But upon the fluctuations of the Athenian population there is much room for speculation. And, quaere, was not the population of Athens greater two centuries before Demetrius, in the days of Pericles? [8] Having no Sophocles at hand, I quote from memory, not pretending therefore to exactness: but the sense is what I state. [9] _Whose_ version, I do not know. But one unaccountable error was forced on one's notice. _Thebes_, which, by Milton and by every scholar is made a monosyllable, is here made a dissyllable. But _Thebez_, the dissyllable, is a _Syrian_ city. It is true that Causabon deduces from a Syriac word meaning a case or enclosure (a _theca_), the name of Thebes, whether Boeotian or Egyptian. It is probable, therefore, that Thebes the hundred-gated of Upper Egypt, Thebes the seven-gated of Greece, and Thebes of Syria, had all one origin as regards the name. But this matters not; it is the _English_ name that we are concerned with. [10] '_False_:' or rather inaccurate. The burlesque was not on the Antigone, but on the Medea of Euripides; and very amusing. [11] But in this instance, perhaps, distance of space, combined with the unrivalled grandeur of the war, was felt to equiponderate the distance of time, Susa, the Persian capital, being fourteen hundred miles from Athens. [12] _[Greek: Sterna th'os agalmatos], her bosom as the bosom of a statue_; an expression of Euripides, and applied, I think, to Polyxena at the moment of her sacrifice on the tomb of Achilles, as the bride that was being married to him at the moment of his death. [13] Amongst the questions which occurred to me as requiring an answer, in connection with this revival, was one with regard to the comparative fitness of the Antigone for giving a representative idea of the Greek stage. I am of opinion that it was the worst choice which could have been made; and for the very reason which no doubt governed that choice, viz.-- because the austerity of the tragic passion is disfigured by a love episode. Rousseau in his letter to D'Alembert upon his article _Geneve_, in the French Encyclopedie, asks,--'_Qui est-ce qui doute que, sur nos theatres, la meilleure piece de Sophocle ne tombat tout-a-plat?_' And his reason (as collected from other passages) is--because an interest derived from the passion of sexual love can rarely be found on the Greek stage, and yet cannot be dispensed with on that of Paris. But why was it so rare on the Greek stage? Not from accident, but because it did not harmonize with the principle of that stage, and its vast overhanging gloom. It is the great infirmity of the French, and connected constitutionally with the gayety of their temperament, that they cannot sympathize with this terrific mode of grandeur. We can. And for _us_ the choice should have been more purely and severely Grecian; whilst the slenderness of the plot in any Greek tragedy, would require a far more effective support from tumultuous movement in the chorus. Even the French are not uniformly insensible to this Grecian grandeur. I remember that Voltaire, amongst many just remarks on the Electra of Sophocles, mixed with others that are _not_ just, bitterly condemns this demand for a love fable on the French stage, and illustrates its extravagance by the French tragedy on the same subject, of Crebillon. He (in default of any more suitable resource) has actually made Electra, whose character on the Greek stage is painfully vindictive, in love with an imaginary son of Aegisthus, her father's murderer. Something should also have been said of Mrs. Leigh Murray's Ismene, which was very effective in supporting and in relieving the magnificent impression of Antigone. I ought also to have added a note on the scenic mask, and the common notion (not authorized, I am satisfied, by the practice in the _supreme_ era of Pericles), that it exhibited a Janus face, the windward side expressing grief or horror, the leeward expressing tranquillity. Believe it not, reader. But on this and other points, it will be better to speak circumstantially, in a separate paper on the Greek drama, as a majestic but very exclusive and almost, if one may say so, bigoted form of the scenic art. THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. [1] It sounds like the tolling of funeral bells, as the annunciation is made of one death after another amongst those who supported our canopy of empire through the last most memorable generation. The eldest of the Wellesleys is gone: he is gathered to his fathers; and here we have his life circumstantially written. Who, and of what origin are the Wellesleys? There is an impression current amongst the public, or there _was_ an impression, that the true name of the Wellesley family is Wesley. This is a case very much resembling some of those imagined by the old scholastic logicians, where it was impossible either to deny or to affirm: saying _yes_, or saying _no_, equally you told a falsehood. The facts are these: the family was originally English; and in England, at the earliest era, there is no doubt at all that its name was De Welles leigh, which was pronounced in the eldest times just as it is now, viz. as a dissyllable, [2] the first syllable sounding exactly like the cathedral city _Wells_, in Somersetshire, and the second like _lea_, (a field lying fallow.) It is plain enough, from various records, that the true historical _genesis_ of the name, was precisely through that composition of words, which here, for the moment, I had imagined merely to illustrate its pronunciation. Lands in the diocese of Bath and Wells lying by the pleasant river Perret, and almost up to the gates of Bristol, constituted the earliest possessions of the De Wellesleighs. They, seven centuries before Assay, and Waterloo, were 'seised' of certain rich _leas_ belonging to _Wells_. And from these Saxon elements of the name, some have supposed the Wellesleys a Saxon race. They could not possibly have better blood: but still the thing does not follow from the premises. Neither does it follow from the _de_ that they were Norman. The first De Wellesley known to history, the very tip-top man of the pedigree, is Avenant de Wellesleigh. About a hundred years nearer to our own times, viz. in 1239, came Michael de Wellesleigh; of whom the important fact is recorded, that he was the father of Wellerand de Wellesley. And what did young Mr. Wellerand perform in this wicked world, that the proud muse of history should condescend to notice his rather singular name? Reader, he was--'killed:' that is all; and in company with Sir Robert de Percival; which again argues his Somersetshire descent: for the family of Lord Egmont, the head of all Percivals, ever was, and ever will be, in Somersetshire. But _how_ was he killed? The time _when_, viz. 1303, the place _where_, are known: but the manner _how_, is not exactly stated; it was in skirmish with rascally Irish 'kernes,' fellows that (when presented at the font of Christ for baptism) had their right arms covered up from the baptismal waters, in order that, still remaining consecrated to the devil, those arms might inflict a devilish blow. Such a blow, with such an unbaptized arm, the Irish villain struck; and there was an end of Wellerand de Wellesleigh. Strange that history should make an end of a man, before it had made a beginning of him. These, however, are the _facts_; which, in writing a romance about Sir Wellerand and Sir Percival, I shall have great pleasure in falsifying. But how, says the too curious reader, did the De Wellesleighs find themselves amongst Irish kernes? Had these scamps the presumption to invade Somersetshire? Did they dare to intrude into Wells? Not at all: but the pugnacious De Wellesleys had dared to intrude into Ireland. Some say in the train of Henry II. Some say--but no matter: _there_ they were: and _there_ they stuck like limpets. They soon engrafted themselves into the county of Kildare; from which, by means of a fortunate marriage, they leaped into the county of Meath; and in that county, as if to refute the pretended mutability of human things, they have roosted ever since. There was once a famous copy of verses floating about Europe, which asserted that, whilst other princes were destined to fight for thrones, Austria--the handsome house of Hapsburgh--should obtain them by marriage: 'Pugnabunt alii: tu, felix Austria, nube.' So of the Wellesleys: Sir Wellerand took quite the wrong way: not cudgelling, but courting, was the correct way for succeeding in Kildare. Two great estates, by two separate marriages, the De Wellesleighs obtained in Kildare; and, by a third marriage in a third generation, they obtained in the county of Meath, Castle Dengan (otherwise Dangan) with lordships as plentiful as blackberries. Castle Dangan came to them in the year of our Lord, 1411, _i.e._ before Agincourt: and, in Castle Dangan did Field- marshal, the man of Waterloo, draw his first breath, shed his first tears, and perpetrate his earliest trespasses. That is what one might call a pretty long spell for one family: four hundred and thirty-five years has Castle Dangan furnished a nursery for the Wellesley piccaninnies. Amongst the lordships attached to Castle Dangan was _Mornington_, which more than three centuries afterwards supplied an earldom for the grandfather of Waterloo. Any further memorabilia of the Castle Dangan family are not recorded, except that in 1485 (which sure was the year of Bosworth field?) they began to omit the _de_ and to write themselves Wellesley _tout court_. From indolence, I presume: for a certain lady Di. le Fl., whom once I knew, a Howard by birth, of the house of Suffolk, told me as her reason for omitting the _Le_, that it caused her too much additional trouble. So far the evidence seems in favor of Wellesley and against Wesley. But, on the other hand, during the last three centuries the Wellesleys wrote the name Wesley. They, however, were only the _maternal_ ancestors of the present Wellesleys. Garret Wellesley, the last male heir of the direct line, in the year 1745, left his whole estate to one of the Cowleys, a Staffordshire family who had emigrated to Ireland in Queen Elizabeth's time, but who were, however, descended from the Wellesleys. This Cowley or Colley, taking, in 1745, the name of Wesley, received from George II. the title of Earl Mornington: and Colley's grandson, the Marquess Wellesley of our age, was recorded in the Irish peerage as _Wesley_, Earl of Mornington; was uniformly so described up to the end of the eighteenth century; and even Arthur of Waterloo, whom most of us Europeans know pretty well, on going to India a little before his brother, was thus introduced by Lord Cornwallis to Sir John Shore (Lord Teignmouth, the Governor-general), 'Dear sir, I beg leave to introduce to you Colonel Wesley, who is a lieutenant-colonel of my regiment. He is a sensible man, and a good officer.' Posterity, for _we_ are posterity in respect of Lord Cornwallis, have been very much of _his_ opinion. Colonel Wesley really _is_ a sensible man; and the sensible man, soon after his arrival in Bengal, under the instigation of his brother, resumed the old name of Wellesley. In reality, the name of Wesley was merely the abbreviation of indolence, as Chumley for Cholmondeley, Pomfret for Pontefract, Cicester for Cirencester; or, in Scotland, Marchbanks for Majoribanks, Chatorow for the Duke of Hamilton's French title of Chatelherault. I remember myself, in childhood, to have met a niece of John Wesley the Proto-Methodist, who always spoke of the, second Lord Mornington (author of the well-known glees) as a cousin, and as intimately connected with her brother the great _foudroyant_ performer on the organ. Southey, in his Life of John Wesley, tells us that Charles Wesley, the brother of John, and father of the great organist, had the offer from Garret Wellesley of those same estates which eventually were left to Richard Cowley. This argues a recognition of near consanguinity. Why the offer was declined, is not distinctly explained. But if it had been accepted, Southey thinks that then we should have had no storming of Seringapatam, no Waterloo, and no Arminian Methodists. All that is not quite clear. Tippoo was booked for a desperate British vengeance by his own desperate enmity to our name, though no Lord Wellesley had been Governor-General. Napoleon, by the same fury of hatred to us, was booked for the same fate, though the scene of it might not have been Waterloo. And, as to John Wesley, why should he not have made the same schism with the English Church, because his brother Charles had become unexpectedly rich? The Marquess Wellesley was of the same standing, as to age, or nearly so, as Mr. Pitt; though he outlived Pitt by almost forty years. Born in 1760, three or four months before the accession of George III., he was sent to Eton, at the age of eleven; and from Eton, in his eighteenth year, he was sent to Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated as a nobleman. He then bore the courtesy title of Viscount Wellesley; but in 1781, when he had reached his twenty-first year, he was summoned away from Oxford by the death of his father, the second Earl of Mornington. It is interesting, at this moment, to look back on the family group of children collected at Dangan Castle. The young earl was within a month of his majority: his younger brothers and sisters were, William Wellesley Pole (since dead, under the title of Lord Maryborough), then aged eighteen; Anne, since married to Henry, son of Lord Southampton, aged thirteen; Arthur, aged twelve; Gerald Valerian, now in the church, aged ten; Mary Elizabeth (since Lady Culling Smith), aged nine; Henry, since Lord Cowley, and British ambassador to Spain, France, &c. aged eight. The new Lord Mornington showed his conscientious nature, by assuming his father's debts, and by superintending the education of his brothers. He had distinguished himself at Oxford as a scholar; but he returned thither no more, and took no degree. As Earl of Mornington, he sat in the Irish House of Lords; but not being a British peer, he was able to sit also in the English House of Commons; and of this opening for a more national career, he availed himself at the age of twenty-four. Except that he favored the claims of the Irish Catholics, his policy was pretty uniformly that of Mr. Pitt. He supported that minister throughout the contests on the French Revolution; and a little earlier, on the Regency question. This came forward in 1788, on occasion of the first insanity which attacked George III. The reader, who is likely to have been born since that era, will perhaps not be acquainted with the constitutional question then at issue. It was this: Mr. Fox held that, upon any incapacity arising in the sovereign, the regency would then settle (_ipso facto_ of that incapacity) upon the Prince of Wales; overlooking altogether the case in which there should _be_ no Prince of Wales, and the case in which such a Prince might be as incapable, from youth, of exercising the powers attached to the office, as his father from disease. Mr. Pitt denied that a Prince of Wales simply _as_ such, and apart from any moral fitness which he might possess, had more title to the office of regent than any lamp-lighter or scavenger. It was the province of Parliament exclusively to legislate for the particular case. The practical decision of the question was not called for, from the accident of the king's sudden recovery: but in Ireland, from the independence asserted by the two houses of the British council, the question grew still more complex. The Lord Lieutenant refused to transmit their address, [3] and Lord Mornington supported him powerfully in his refusal. Ten years after this hot collision of parties, Lord Mornington was appointed Governor-General of India, and now first he entered upon a stage worthy of his powers. I cannot myself agree with Mr. Pearce, that 'the wisdom of his policy is now universally recognized;' because the same false views of our Indian position, which at that time caused his splendid services to be slighted in many quarters, still preponderates. All administrations alike have been intensely ignorant of Indian politics; and for the natural reason, that the business of home politics leaves them no disposable energies for affairs so distant, and with which each man's chance of any durable connection is so exceedingly small. What Lord Mornington did was this: he looked our prospects in the face. Two great enemies were then looming upon the horizon, both ignorant of our real resources, and both deluded by our imperfect use of such resources, as, even in a previous war, we had possessed. One of these enemies was Tippoo, the Sultan of Mysore: him, by the crushing energy of his arrangements, Lord Mornington was able utterly to destroy, and to distribute his dominions with equity and moderation, yet so as to prevent any new coalition arising in that quarter against the British power. There is a portrait of Tippoo, of this very ger, in the second volume of Mr. Pearce's work, which expresses sufficiently the unparalleled ferocity of his nature; and it is guaranteed, by its origin, as authentic. Tippoo, from the personal interest investing him, has more fixed the attention of Europe than a much more formidable enemy: that enemy was the Mahratta confederacy, chiefly existing in the persons of the Peishwah, of Scindia, of Holkar, and the Rajah of Berar. Had these four princes been less profoundly ignorant, had they been less inveterately treacherous, they would have cost us the only dreadful struggle which in India we have stood. As it was, Lord Mornington's government reduced and crippled the Maharattas to such an extent, that in 1817, Lord Hastings found it possible to crush them for ever. Three services of a profounder nature, Lord Wellesley was enabled to do for India; first, to pave the way for the propagation of Christianity,--mighty service, stretching to the clouds, and which, in the hour of death, must have given him consolation; secondly, to enter upon the abolition of such Hindoo superstitions as are most shocking to humanity, particularly the practice of Suttee, and the barbarous exposure of dying persons, or of first-born infants at Sangor on the Ganges; finally, to promote an enlarged system of education, which (if his splendid scheme had been adopted) would have diffused its benefits all over India. It ought also to be mentioned that the expedition by way of the Red Sea against the French in Egypt, was so entirely of his suggestion and his preparation, that, to the great dishonor of Messrs. Pitt and Dundas, whose administration was the worst, as a _war_ administration, thus ever misapplied, or non-applied, the resources of a mighty empire, it languished for eighteen months purely through _their_ neglect. In 1805, having staid about seven years in India, Lord Mornington was recalled, was created Marquess of Wellesley, was sent, in 1821, as Viceroy to Ireland, where there was little to do; having previously, in 1809, been sent Ambassador to the Spanish Cortes, where there was an affinity to do, but no means of doing it. The last great political act of Lord Wellesley, was the smashing of the Peel ministry in 1834 viz. by the famous resolution (which he personally drew up) for appropriating to general education in Ireland any surplus arising from the revenues of the Irish Church. Full of honors, he retired from public life at the age of seventy- five, and, for seven years more of life, dedicated his time to such literary pursuits as he had found most interesting in early youth. Mr. Pearce, who is so capable of writing vigorously and sagaciously, has too much allowed himself to rely upon public journals. For example, he reprints the whole of the attorney-general's official information against eleven obscure persons, who, from the gallery of the Dublin theatre, did 'wickedly, riotously, and routously' hiss, groan, insult, and assault (to say nothing of their having caused and procured to be hissed, groaned, &c.) the Marquess Wellesley, Lord-Lieutenant General, and General Governor of Ireland. This document covers more than nine pages; and, after all, omits the only fact of the least consequence, viz., that several missiles were thrown by the rioters into the vice-regal box, and amongst them a quart-bottle, which barely missed his excellency's temples. Considering the impetus acquired by the descent from the gallery, there is little doubt that such a weapon would have killed Lord Wellesley on the spot. In default however, of this weighty fact, the attorney-general favors us with memorializing the very best piece of doggerel that I remember to have read; viz., that upon divers, to wit, three thousand papers, the rioters had wickedly and maliciously written and printed, besides, observe, _causing_ to be written and printed, 'No Popery,' as also the following traitorous couplet-- 'The Protestants want Talbot, As the Papists have _got all but_;' Meaning 'all but' that which they got some years later by means of the Clare election. Yet if, in some instances like this, Mr. Pearce has too largely drawn upon official papers, which he should rather have abstracted and condensed, on the other hand, his work has a specific value in bringing forward private documents, to which his opportunities have gained him a confidential access. Two portraits of Lord Wellesley, one in middle life, and one in old age, from a sketch by the Comte d'Orsay, are felicitously executed. Something remains to be said of Lord Wellesley as a literary man; and towards such a judgment Mr. Pearce has contributed some very pleasing materials. As a public speaker, Lord Wellesley had that degree of brilliancy and effectual vigor, which might have been expected in a man of great talents, possessing much native sensibility to the charms of style, but not led by any personal accidents of life into a separate cultivation of oratory, or into any profound investigation of its duties and its powers on the arena of a British senate. There is less call for speaking of Lord Wellesley in this character, where he did not seek for any eminent distinction, than in the more general character of an elegant _litterateur_, which furnished to him much of his recreation in all stages of his life, and much of his consolation in the last. It is interesting to see this accomplished nobleman, in advanced age, when other resources were one by one decaying, and the lights of life were successively fading into darkness, still cheering his languid hours by the culture of classical literature, and in his eighty-second year drawing solace from those same pursuits which had given grace and distinction to his twentieth. One or two remarks I will make upon Lord Wellesley's verses--Greek as well as Latin. The Latin lines upon Chantrey's success at Holkham in killing two woodcocks at the first shot, which subsequently he sculptured in marble and presented to Lord Leicester, are perhaps the most felicitous amongst the whole. Masquerading, in Lord Wellesley's verses, as Praxiteles, who could not well be represented with a Manon having a percussion lock, Chantrey is armed with a bow and arrows: 'En! trajecit aves una sagitta duas.' In the Greek translation of _Parthenopaeus_, there are as few faults as could reasonably be expected. But, first, one word as to the original Latin poem: to whom does it belong? It is traced first to Lord Grenville, who received it from his tutor (afterwards Bishop of London), who had taken it as an anonymous poem from the 'Censor's book;' and with very little probability, it is doubtfully assigned to 'Lewis of the War Office,' meaning, no doubt, the father of Monk Lewis. By this anxiety in tracing its pedigree, the reader is led to exaggerate the pretensions of the little poem; these are inconsiderable: and there is a conspicuous fault, which it is worth while noticing, because it is one peculiarly besetting those who write modern verses with the help of a gradus, viz. that the Pentameter is often a mere reverberation of the preceding Hexameter. Thus, for instance-- 'Parthenios inter saltus non amplius erro, Non repeto Dryadum pascua laeta choris;' and so of others, where the second line is but a variation of the first. Even Ovid, with all his fertility, and partly in consequence of his fertility, too often commits this fault. Where indeed the thought is effectually varied, so that the second line acts as a musical _minor_, succeeding to the _major_, in the first, there may happen to arise a peculiar beauty. But I speak of the ordinary case, where the second is merely the rebound of the first, presenting the same thought in a diluted form. This is the commonest resource of feeble thinking, and is also a standing temptation or snare for feeble thinking. Lord Wellesley, however, is not answerable for these faults in the original, which indeed he notices slightly as 'repetitions;' and his own Greek version is spirited and good. There, are, however, some mistakes. The second line is altogether faulty; [Greek: _Choria Mainaliph pant erateina theph Achnumenos leipon_] does not express the sense intended. Construed correctly, this clause of the sentence would mean--'_I, sorrowfully leaving all places gracious to the Maenalian god_:' but _that_ is not what Lord Wellesley designed: '_I leaving the woods of Cyllene, and the snowy summits of Pholoe, places that are all of them dear to Pan_'--_that_ is what was meant: that is to say, not _leaving all places dear to Pan_, far from it; but _leaving a few places, every one of which is dear to Pan_. In the line beginning [Greek: _Kan eth uph aelikias_] where the meaning is--_and if as yet, by reason of my immature age_, there is a metrical error; and [Greek: _aelikia_] will not express immaturity of age. I doubt whether in the next line, [Greek: _Maed alkae thalloi gounasin aeitheos_] [Greek: _gounasin_] could convey the meaning without the preposition [Greek: _eth_]. And in [Greek: _Spherchomai ou kaleousi theoi._] _I hasten whither the gods summon me_--[Greek: _ou_] is not the right word. It is, however, almost impossible to write Greek verses which shall be liable to no verbal objections; and the fluent movement of these verses sufficiently argues the off-hand ease with which Lord Wellesley must have _read_ Greek, writing it so elegantly and with so little of apparent constraint. Meantime the most interesting (from its circumstances) of Lord Wellesley's verses, is one to which his own English interpretation of it has done less than justice. It is a Latin epitaph on the daughter (an only child) of Lord and Lady Brougham. She died, and (as was generally known at the time) of an organic affection disturbing the action of the heart, at the early age of eighteen. And the peculiar interest of the case lies in the suppression by this pious daughter (so far as it was possible) of her own bodily anguish, in order to beguile the mental anguish of her parents. The Latin epitaph is this: 'Blanda anima, e cunis heu! longo exercita morbo, Inter maternas heu lachrymasque patris, Quas risu lenire tuo jucunda solebas, Et levis, et proprii vix memor ipsa mali; I, pete calestes, ubi nulla est cura, recessus: Et tibi sit nullo mista dolore quies!' The English version is this: 'Doom'd to long suffering from earliest years, Amidst your parents' grief and pain alone Cheerful and gay, you smiled to soothe their tears; And in _their_ agonies forgot your own. Go, gentle spirit; and among the blest From grief and pain eternal be thy rest!' In the Latin, the phrase _e cunis_ does not express _from your cradle upwards_. The second line is faulty in the opposition of _maternas_ to _patris_. And in the fourth line _levis_ conveys a false meaning: _levis_ must mean either _physically light_, _i.e._ not heavy, which is not the sense, or else _tainted with levity_, which is still less the sense. What Lord Wellesley wished to say--was _light-hearted_: this he has _not_ said: but neither is it easy to say it in good Latin. I complain, however, of the whole as not bringing out Lord Wellesley's own feeling--which feeling is partly expressed in his verses, and partly in his accompanying prose note on Miss Brougham's mournful destiny ('her life was a continual illness') contrasted with her fortitude, her innocent gaiety, and the pious motives with which she supported this gaiety to the last. Not as a direct version, but as filling up the outline of Lord Wellesley, sufficiently indicated by himself, I propose this:-- 'Child, that for thirteen years hast fought with pain, Prompted by joy and depth of natural love,-- Rest now at God's command: oh! not in vain His angel ofttimes watch'd thee,--oft, above All pangs, that else had dimm'd thy parents' eyes, Saw thy young heart victoriously rise. Rise now for ever, self-forgetting child, Rise to those choirs, where love like thine is blest, From pains of flesh--from filial tears assoil'd, Love which God's hand shall crown with God's own rest.' FOOTNOTES [1] Memoirs and Correspondence. [2] '_As a dissyllable_:'--just as the _Annesley_ family, of which Lord Valentia is the present head, do not pronounce their name trisyllabically (as strangers often suppose), but as the two syllables _Anns lea_, accent on the first. [3] Which adopted neither view; for by _offering_ the regency of Ireland to the Prince of Wales, they negatived Mr. Fox's view, who held it to be the Prince's by inherent right; and, on the other hand, they still more openly opposed Mr. Pitt. MILTON _VERSUS_ SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. This conversation is doubly interesting: interesting by its subject, interesting by its interlocutors; for the subject is Milton, whilst the interlocutors are _Southey_ and _Landor_. If a British gentleman, when taking his pleasure in his well-armed yacht, descries, in some foreign waters, a noble vessel, from the Thames or the Clyde, riding peaceably at anchor--and soon after, two smart-looking clippers, with rakish masts, bearing down upon her in company--he slackens sail: his suspicions are slightly raised; they have not shown their teeth as yet, and perhaps all is right; but there can be no harm in looking a little closer; and, assuredly, if he finds any mischief in the wind against his countryman, he will show _his_ teeth also; and, please the wind, will take up such a position as to rake both of these pirates by turns. The two dialogists are introduced walking out after breakfast, 'each his Milton in his pocket;' and says Southey, 'Let us collect all the graver faults we can lay our hands upon, without a too minute and troublesome research;'--just so; there would be danger in _that_--help might put off from shore;--'not,' says he, 'in the spirit of Johnson, but in our own.' Johnson we may suppose, is some old ruffian well known upon that coast; and '_faults_' may be a flash term for what the Americans call 'notions.' A part of the cargo it clearly is; and one is not surprised to hear Landor, whilst assenting to the general plan of attack, suggesting in a whisper 'that they should abase their eyes in reverence to so great a man, without absolutely closing them;' which I take to mean--that, without trusting entirely to their boarders, or absolutely closing their ports, they should depress their guns and fire down into the hold, in respect of the vessel attacked standing so high out of the water. After such plain speaking, nobody can wonder much at the junior pirate (Landor) muttering, 'It will be difficult for us always to refrain.' Of course it will: _refraining_ was no part of the business, I should fancy, taught by that same buccaneer, Johnson. There is mischief, you see, reader, singing in the air--'miching malhecho'--and it is our business to watch it. But, before coming to the main attack, I must suffer myself to be detained for a few moments by what Mr. L. premises upon the 'moral' of any great fable, and the relation which it bears, or _should_ bear, to the solution of such a fable. Philosophic criticism is so far improved, that, at this day, few people, who have reflected at all upon such subjects, but are agreed as to one point: viz., that in metaphysical language the moral of an epos or a drama should be _immanent_, not _transient_; or, otherwise, that it should be vitally distributed through the whole organization of the tree, not gathered or secreted into a sort of red berry or _racemus_, pendent at the end of its boughs. This view Mr. Landor himself takes, as a general view; but, strange to say, by some Landorian perverseness, where there occurs a memorable exception to this rule (as in the 'Paradise Lost'), in that case he insists upon the rule in its rigor-- the rule, and nothing _but_ the rule. Where, on the contrary, the rule does really and obviously take effect (as in the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'), there he insists upon an exceptional case. There _is_ a moral, in _his_ opinion, hanging like a tassel of gold bullion from the 'Iliad;'--and what is it? Something so fantastic, that I decline to repeat it. As well might he have said, that the moral of 'Othello' was--'_Try Warren's Blacking!_' There is no moral, little or big, foul or fair, to the 'Iliad.' Up to the 17th book, the moral might seem dimly to be this--'Gentlemen, keep the peace: you see what comes of quarrelling.' But _there_ this moral ceases; --there is now a break of guage: the narrow guage takes place after this; whilst up to this point, the broad guage--viz., the wrath of Achilles, growing out of his turn-up with Agamemnon--had carried us smoothly along without need to shift our luggage. There is no more quarrelling after Book 17, how then can there be any more moral from quarrelling? If you insist on _my_ telling _you_ what is the moral of the 'Iliad,' I insist upon _your_ telling _me_ what is the moral of a rattlesnake or the moral of a Niagara. I suppose the moral is--that you must get out of their way, if you mean to moralize much longer. The going-up (or anabasis) of the Greeks against Troy, was a _fact;_ and a pretty dense fact; and, by accident, the very first in which all Greece had a common interest. It was a joint-stock concern--a representative expedition--whereas, previously there had been none; for even the Argonautic expedition, which is rather of the darkest, implied no confederation except amongst individuals. How could it? For the Argo is supposed to have measured only twenty-seven tons: how she would have been classed at Lloyd's is hard to say, but certainly not as A 1. There was no state-cabin; everybody, demi-gods and all, pigged in the steerage amongst beans and bacon. Greece was naturally proud of having crossed the herring-pond, small as it was, in search of an entrenched enemy; proud also of having licked him 'into Almighty smash;' this was sufficient; or if an impertinent moralist sought for something more, doubtless the moral must have lain in the booty. A peach is the moral of a peach, and moral enough; but if a man _will_ have something better--a moral within a moral--why, there is the peach-stone, and its kernel, out of which he may make ratafia, which seems to be the ultimate morality that _can_ be extracted from a peach. Mr. Archdeacon Williams, indeed, of the Edinburgh Academy, has published an _octavo_ opinion upon the case, which asserts that the moral of the Trojan war was (to borrow a phrase from children) _tit for tat_. It was a case of retaliation for crimes against Hellas, committed by Troy in an earlier generation. It may be so; Nemesis knows best. But this moral, if it concerns the total expedition to the Troad, cannot concern the 'Iliad,' which does not take up matters from so early a period, nor go on to the final catastrophe of Ilium. Now, as to the 'Paradise Lost,' it happens that there is--whether there ought to be or not--a pure golden moral, distinctly announced, separately contemplated, and the very weightiest ever uttered by man or realized by fable. It is a moral rather for the drama of a world than for a human poem. And this moral is made the more prominent and memorable by the grandeur of its annunciation. The jewel is not more splendid in itself than in its setting. Excepting the well-known passage on Athenian oratory in the 'Paradise Regained,' there is none even in Milton where the metrical pomp is made so effectually to aid the pomp of the sentiment. Hearken to the way in which a roll of dactyles is made to settle, like the swell of the advancing tide, into the long thunder of billows breaking for leagues against the shore: 'That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence.'-- Hear what a motion, what a tumult, is given by the dactylic close to each of the introductory lines! And how massily is the whole locked up into the peace of heaven, as the aerial arch of a viaduct is locked up into tranquil stability by its key-stone, through the deep spondaic close, 'And justify the ways of God to man.' That is the moral of the Miltonic epos; and as much grander than any other moral _formally_ illustrated by poets, as heaven is higher than earth. But the most singular moral, which Mr. Landor anywhere discovers, is in his own poem of '_Gebir_.' Whether he still adheres to it, does not appear from the present edition. But I remember distinctly, in the original edition, a Preface (now withdrawn) in which he made his acknowledgments to some book read at a Welsh Inn for the outline of the story; and as to the moral, he declared it to be an exposition of that most mysterious offence, _Over-Colonization_. Much I mused, in my youthful simplicity, upon this criminal novelty. What might it be? Could I, by mistake, have committed it myself? Was it a felony, or a misdemeanor?--liable to transportation, or only to fine and imprisonment? Neither in the Decemviral Tables, nor in the Code of Justinian, nor the maritime Code of Oleron, nor in the Canon Law, nor the Code Napoleon, nor our own Statutes at large, nor in Jeremy Bentham, had I read of such a crime as a possibility. Undoubtedly the vermin, locally called _Squatters_, [1] both in the wilds of America and Australia, who pre- occupy other men's estates, have latterly illustrated the logical possibility of such an offence; but they were quite unknown at the era of Gebir. Even Dalica, who knew as much wickedness as most people, would have stared at this unheard of villany, and have asked, as eagerly as _I_ did--'What is it now? Let's have a shy at it in Egypt.' I, indeed, knew a case, but Dalica did _not_, of shocking over-colonization. It was the case, which even yet occurs on out-of-the-way roads, where a man, unjustly big, mounts into the inside of a stage-coach already sufficiently crowded. In streets and squares, where men could give him a wide berth, they had tolerated the injustice of his person; but now, in a chamber so confined, the length and breadth of his wickedness shines revealed to every eye. And if the coach should upset, which it would not be the less likely to do for having _him_ on board, somebody or other (perhaps myself) must lie beneath this monster, like Enceladus under Mount Etna, calling upon Jove to come quickly with a few thunderbolts and destroy both man and mountain, both _succubus_ and _incubus_, if no other relief offered. Meantime, the only case of over-colonization notorious to all Europe, is that which some German traveller (Riedesel, I think) has reported so eagerly, in ridicule of our supposed English credulity; viz.--the case of the foreign swindler, who advertised that he would get into a quart bottle, filled Drury Lane, pocketed the admission money, and decamped, protesting (in his adieus to the spectators) that' it lacerated his heart to disappoint so many noble islanders; but that on his next visit he would make full reparation by getting into a vinegar cruet.' Now, here certainly was a case of over- colonization, not perpetrated, but meditated. Yet, when one examines this case, the crime consisted by no means in doing it, but in _not_ doing it; by no means in getting into the bottle, but in _not_ getting into it. The foreign contractor would have been probably a very unhappy man, had he fulfilled his contract by over-colonizing the bottle, but he would have been decidedly a more virtuous man. He would have redeemed his pledge; and, if he had even died in the bottle, we should have honored him as a '_vir bonus, cum mala fortuna compositus_;' as a man of honor matched in single duel with calamity, and also as the best of conjurers. Over- colonization, therefore, except in the one case of the stage-coach, is apparently no crime; and the offence of King Gebir, in my eyes, remains a mystery to this day. What next solicits notice is in the nature of a digression: it is a kind of parenthesis on Wordsworth. '_Landor._--When it was a matter of wonder how Keats, who was ignorant of Greek, could have written his "Hyperion," Shelley, whom envy never touched, gave as a reason--"because he _was_ a Greek." Wordsworth, being asked his opinion of the same poem, called it, scoffingly, "a pretty piece of paganism;" yet he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote--and beautiful ones they are--reverts to the powerful influence of the "pagan creed."' Here are nine lines exactly in the original type. Now, nine tailors are ranked, by great masters of algebra, as = one man; such is the received equation; or, as it is expressed, with more liveliness, in an old English drama, by a man who meets and quarrels with eighteen tailors--'Come, hang it! I'll fight you _both_.' But, whatever be the algebraic ratio of tailors to men, it is clear that nine Landorian lines are not always equal to the delivery of one accurate truth, or to a successful conflict with three or four signal errors. Firstly--Shelley's reason, if it ever was assigned, is irrelevant as regards any question that must have been intended. It could not have been meant to ask--Why was the 'Hyperion' so Grecian in its spirit? for it is anything but Grecian. We should praise it falsely to call it so; for the feeble, though elegant, mythology of Greece was incapable of breeding anything so deep as the mysterious portents that, in the 'Hyperion,' run before and accompany the passing away of divine immemorial dynasties. Nothing can be more impressive than the picture of Saturn in his palsy of affliction, and of the mighty goddess his grand-daughter, or than the secret signs of coming woe in the palace of Hyperion. These things grew from darker creeds than Greece had ever known since the elder traditions of Prometheus--creeds that sent down their sounding plummets into far deeper wells within the human spirit. What had been meant, by the question proposed to Shelley, was no doubt-- How so young a man as Keats, not having had the advantage of a regular classical education, could have been so much at home in the details of the _elder_ mythology? Tooke's 'Pantheon' might have been obtained by favor of any English schoolboy, and Dumoustier's '_Lettres a Emile sur la Mythologie_' by favor of very many young ladies; but these, according to my recollection of them, would hardly have sufficed. Spence's '_Polymetis_,' however, might have been had by favor of any good library; and the '_Bibliotheca_' of Apollodorus, who is the cock of the walk on this subject, might have been read by favor of a Latin translation, supposing Keats really unequal to the easy Greek text. There is no wonder in the case; nor, if there had been, would Shelley's kind remark have solved it. The _treatment_ of the facts must, in any case, have been due to Keats's genius, so as to be the same whether he had studied Greek or not: the _facts_, apart from the treatment, must in any case have been had from a book. Secondly--Let Mr. Landor rely upon it --that Wordsworth never said the thing ascribed to him here as any formal judgment, or what Scottish law would call _deliverance_, upon the 'Hyperion.' As to what he might have said incidentally and collaterally; the meaning of words is so entirely affected by their position in a conversation--what followed, what went before--that five words dislocated from their context never would be received as evidence in the Queen's Bench. The court which, of all others, least strictly weighs its rules of evidence, is the female tea-table; yet even that tribunal would require the deponent to strengthen his evidence, if he had only five detached words to produce. Wordsworth is a very proud man as he has good reason to be; and perhaps it was I myself, who once said in print of him--that it is not the correct way of speaking, to say that Wordsworth is as proud as Lucifer; but, inversely, to say of Lucifer that some people have conceived him to be as proud as Wordsworth. But, if proud, Wordsworth is not haughty, is not ostentatious, is not anxious for display, is not arrogant, and, least of all, is he capable of descending to envy. Who or what is it that _he_ should be envious of? Does anybody suppose that Wordsworth would be jealous of Archimedes if he now walked upon earth, or Michael Angelo, or Milton? Nature does not repeat herself. Be assured she will never make a second Wordsworth. Any of us would be jealous of his own duplicate; and, if I had a _doppelganger_, who went about personating me, copying me, and pirating me, philosopher as I am, I might (if the Court of Chancery would not grant an injunction against him) be so far carried away by jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder upon his carcass; and no great matter as regards HIM. But it would be a sad thing for _me_ to find myself hanged; and for what, I beseech you? for murdering a sham, that was either nobody at all, or oneself repeated once too often. But if you show to Wordsworth a man as great as himself, still that great man will not be much _like_ Wordsworth--the great man will not be Wordsworth's _doppelganger_. If not _impar_ (as you say) he will be _dispar_; and why, then, should Wordsworth be jealous of him, unless he is jealous of the sun, and of Abd el Kader, and of Mr. Waghorn--all of whom carry off a great deal of any spare admiration which Europe has to dispose of. But suddenly it strikes me that we are all proud, every man of us; and I daresay with some reason for it, 'be the same more or less.' For I never came to know any man in my whole life intimately, who could not do something or other better than anybody else. The only man amongst us that is thoroughly free from pride, that you may at all seasons rely on as a pattern of humility, is the pickpocket. That man is so admirable in his temper, and so used to pocketing anything whatever which Providence sends in his way, that he will even pocket a kicking, or anything in that line of favors which you are pleased to bestow. The smallest donations are by him thankfully received, provided only that you, whilst half-blind with anger in kicking him round a figure of eight, like a dexterous skater, will but allow _him_ (which is no more than fair) to have a second 'shy' at your pretty Indian pocket-handkerchief, so as to convince you, on cooler reflection, that he does not _always_ miss. Thirdly--Mr. Landor leaves it doubtful what verses those are of Wordsworth's which celebrate the power 'of the Pagan creed;' whether that sonnet in which Wordsworth wishes to exchange for glimpses of human life, _then and in those circumstances_, 'forlorn,' the sight '----Of Proteus coming from the sea, And hear old Triton wind his wreathed horn;' whether this, or the passage on the Greek mythology in 'The Excursion.' Whichever he means, I am the last man to deny that it is beautiful, and especially if he means the latter. But it is no presumption to deny firmly Mr. Landor's assertion, that these are 'the best verses Wordsworth ever wrote.' Bless the man! 'There are a thousand such elsewhere, As worthy of your wonder:'-- Elsewhere, I mean, in Wordsworth's poems. In reality it is _impossible_ that these should be the best; for even if, in the executive part, they were so, which is not the case, the very nature of the thought, of the feeling, and of the relation, which binds it to the general theme, and the nature of that theme itself, forbid the possibility of merits so high. The whole movement of the feeling is fanciful: it neither appeals to what is deepest in human sensibilities, nor is meant to do so. The result, indeed, serves only to show Mr. Landor's slender acquaintance with Wordsworth. And what is worse than being slenderly acquainted, he is erroneously acquainted even with these two short breathings from the Wordsworthian shell. He mistakes the logic. Wordsworth does not celebrate any power at all in Paganism. Old Triton indeed! he's little better, in respect of the terrific, than a mail-coach guard, nor half as good, if you allow the guard his official seat, a coal-black night, lamps blazing back upon his royal scarlet, and his blunderbuss correctly slung. Triton would not stay, I engage, for a second look at the old Portsmouth mail, as once I knew it. But, alas! better things than ever stood on Triton's pins are now as little able to stand up for themselves, or to startle the silent fields in darkness, with the sudden flash of their glory--gone before it had fall come--as Triton is to play the Freyschutz chorus on his humbug of a horn. But the logic of Wordsworth is this--not that the Greek mythology is potent; on the contrary, that it is weaker than cowslip tea, and would not agitate the nerves of a hen sparrow; but that, weak as it is--nay, by means of that very weakness--it does but the better serve to measure the weakness of something which _he_ thinks yet weaker--viz. the death-like torpor of London society in 1808, benumbed by conventional apathy and worldliness-- 'Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.' This seems a digression from Milton, who is properly the subject of this colloquy. But, luckily, it is not one of _my_ sins. Mr. Landor is lord within the house of his own book; he pays all accounts whatever; and readers that have either a bill, or bill of exceptions, to tender against the concern, must draw upon _him_. To Milton he returns upon a very dangerous topic indeed--viz. the structure of his blank verse. I know of none that is so trying to a wary man's nerves. You might as well tax Mozart with harshness in the divinest passages of 'Don Giovanni,' as Milton with any such offence against metrical science. Be assured, it is yourself that do not read with understanding, not Milton that by possibility can be found deaf to the demands of perfect harmony. You are tempted, after walking round a line threescore times, to exclaim at last-- 'Well, if the Fiend himself should rise up before me at this very moment, in this very study of mine, and say that no screw was loose in that line, then would I reply--'Sir, with submission, you are----.' 'What!' suppose the Fiend suddenly to demand in thunder; 'what am I?' 'Horribly wrong,' you wish exceedingly to say; but, recollecting that some people are choleric in argument, you confine yourself to the polite answer-'That, with deference to his better education, you conceive him to lie;'--that's a bad word to drop your voice upon in talking with a fiend, and you hasten to add--'under a slight, a _very_ slight mistake.' Ay, you might venture on that opinion with a fiend. But how if an angel should undertake the case? And angelic was the ear of Milton. Many are the _prima facie_ anomalous lines in Milton; many are the suspicious lines, which in many a book I have seen many a critic peering into, with eyes made up for mischief, yet with a misgiving that all was not quite safe, very much like an old raven looking down a marrow-bone. In fact, such is the metrical skill of the man, and such the perfection of his metrical sensibility, that, on any attempt to take liberties with a passage of his, you feel as when coming, in a forest, upon what seems a dead lion; perhaps he may _not_ be dead, but only sleeping; nay, perhaps he may _not_ be sleeping, but only shamming. And you have a jealousy, as to Milton, even in the most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that, after all, there may be a plot in it. You may be put down with shame by some man reading the line otherwise, reading it with a different emphasis, a different caesura, or perhaps a different suspension of the voice, so as to bring out a new and self-justifying effect. It must be added, that, in reviewing Milton's metre, it is quite necessary to have such books as 'Nare's English Orthoepy' (_in a late edition_), and others of that class, lying on the table; because the accentuation of Milton's age was, in many words, entirely different from ours. And Mr. Landor is not free from some suspicion of inattention as to this point. Over and above his accentual difference, the practice of our elder dramatists in the resolution of the final _tion_ (which now is uniformly pronounced _shon_), will be found exceedingly important to the appreciation of a writer's verse. Contribution, which now is necessarily pronounced as a word of four syllables, would then, in verse, have five, being read into con-tri-bu-ce-on. Many readers will recollect another word, which for years brought John Kemble into hot water with the pit of Drury Lane. It was the plural of the word ache. This is generally made a dissyllable by the Elizabethan dramatists; it occurs in the 'Tempest.' Prospero says-- 'I'll fill thy bones with aches.' What follows, which I do not remember _literatim_, is such metrically as to _require_ two syllables for aches. But how, then, was this to be pronounced? Kemble thought _akies_ would sound ludicrous; _aitches_ therefore he called it: and always the pit howled like a famished _menagerie_, as they did also when he chose (and he constantly chose) to pronounce _beard_ like _bird_. Many of these niceties must be known, before a critic can ever allow _himself_ to believe that he is right in _obelizing_, or in marking with so much as a ? any verse whatever of Milton's. And there are some of these niceties, I am satisfied, not even yet fully investigated. It is, however, to be borne in mind, after all allowances and provisional reservations have been made that Bentley's hypothesis (injudiciously as it was managed by that great scholar) has really a truth of fact to stand upon. Not only must Milton have composed his three greatest poems, the two 'Paradises, and the 'Samson,' in a state of blindness--but subsequently, in the correction of the proofs, he must have suffered still more from this conflict with darkness and, consequently, from this dependence upon careless readers. This is Bentley's case: as lawyers say: 'My lord, that is my case.' It is possible enough to write correctly in the dark, as I myself often do, when losing or missing my lucifers--which, like some elder lucifers, are always rebelliously straying into place where they _can_ have no business. But it is quite impossible to _correct a proof_ in the dark. At least, if there _is_ such an art, it must be a section of the black art. Bentley gained from Pope that admirable epithet of _slashing, ['the ribbalds--from slashing Bentley down to piddling Theobalds_,' i.e. _Tibbulds_ as it was pronounced], altogether from his edition of the 'Paradise Lost.' This the doctor founded on his own hypothesis as to the advantage taken of Milton's blindness; and corresponding was the havoc which he made of the text. In fact, on the really just allegation that Milton must have used the services of an amanuensis; and the plausible one that this amanuensis, being often weary of his task, would be likely to neglect punctilious accuracy; and the most improbable allegation that this weary person would also be very conceited, and add much rubbish of his own; Bentley resigned himself luxuriously, without the whisper of a scruple, to his own sense of what was or was not poetic, which sense happened to be that of the adder for music. The deaf adder heareth not though the musician charm ever so wisely. No scholarship, which so far beyond other men Bentley had, could gain him the imaginative sensibility which, in a degree so far beyond average men, he wanted. Consequently, the world never before beheld such a scene of massacre as his 'Paradise Lost' exhibited. He laid himself down to his work of extermination like the brawniest of reapers going in steadily with his sickle, coat stripped off, and shirt sleeves tucked up, to deal with an acre of barley. One duty, and no other, rested upon _his_ conscience; one voice he heard--Slash away, and hew down the rotten growths of this abominable amanuensis. The carnage was like that after a pitched battle. The very finest passages in every book of the poem were marked by italics, as dedicated to fire and slaughter. 'Slashing Dick' went through the whole forest, like a woodman marking with white paint the giant trees that must all come down in a month or so. And one naturally reverts to a passage in the poem itself, where God the Father is supposed to say to his Filial assessor on the heavenly throne, when marking the desolating progress of Sin and Death,-- 'See with what havoc these fell dogs advance To ravage this fair world.' But still this inhuman extravagance of Bentley, in following out his hypothesis, does not exonerate _us_ from bearing in mind so much truth as that hypothesis really must have had, from the pitiable difficulties of the great poet's situation. My own opinion, therefore, upon the line, for instance, from 'Paradise Regained,' which Mr. Landor appears to have indicated for the reader's amazement, viz.:-- 'As well might recommend _Such solitude before choicest society_,' is--that it escaped revision from some accident calling off the ear of Milton whilst in the act of having the proof read to him. Mr. Landor silently prints it in italics, without assigning his objection; but, of course that objection must be--that the line has one foot too much. It is an Alexandrine, such as Dryden scattered so profusely, without asking himself why; but which Milton never tolerates except in the choruses of the Samson. '_Not difficult, if thou hearken to me_'-- is one of the lines which Mr. Landor thinks that 'no authority will reconcile' to our ears. I think otherwise. The caesura is meant to fall not with the comma after _difficult _, but after _thou_; and there is a most effective and grand suspension intended. It is Satan who speaks-- Satan in the wilderness; and he marks, as he wishes to mark, the tremendous opposition of attitude between the two parties to the temptation. 'Not difficult if thou----' there let the reader pause, as if pulling up suddenly four horses in harness, and throwing them on their haunches--not difficult if thou (in some mysterious sense the son of God); and then, as with a burst of thunder, again giving the reins to your _quadriga_, '----hearken to me:' that is, to me, that am the Prince of the Air, and able to perform all my promises for those that hearken to any temptations. Two lines are cited under the same ban of irreconcilability to our ears, but on a very different plea. The first of these lines is-- '_Launcelot, or Pellias, or Pellinore;_' The other _'Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus._' The reader will readily suppose that both are objected to as 'roll-calls of proper names.' Now, it is very true that nothing is more offensive to the mind than the practice of mechanically packing into metrical successions, as if packing a portmanteau, names without meaning or significance to the feelings. No man ever carried that atrocity so far as Boileau, a fact of which Mr. Landor is well aware; and slight is the sanction or excuse that can be drawn from _him_. But it must not be forgotten that Virgil, so scrupulous in finish of composition, committed this fault. I remember a passage ending '----Noemonaque Prytaninque;' but, having no Virgil within reach, I cannot at this moment quote it accurately. Homer, with more excuse, however, from the rudeness of his age, is a deadly offender in this way. But the cases from Milton are very different. Milton was incapable of the Homeric or Virgilian blemish. The objection to such rolling musketry of names is, that unless interspersed with epithets, or broken into irregular groups by brief circumstances of parentage, country, or romantic incident, they stand audaciously perking up their heads like lots in a catalogue, arrow-headed palisades, or young larches in a nursery ground, all occupying the same space, all drawn up in line, all mere iterations of each other. But in '_Quintius, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,_' though certainly not a good line _when insulated_ (better, however, in its connection with the entire succession of which it forms part), the apology is, that the massy weight of the separate characters enables them to stand like granite pillars or pyramids, proud of their self-supporting independency. Mr. Landor makes one correction by a simple improvement in the punctuation, which has a very fine effect. Rarely has so large a result been distributed through a sentence by so slight a change. It is in the 'Samson.' Samson says, speaking of himself (as elsewhere) with that profound pathos, which to all hearts invests Milton's own situation in the days of his old age, when he was composing that drama-- 'Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him _Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves._' Thus it is usually printed; that is, without a comma in the latter line; but, says Landor, 'there ought to be commas after _eyeless_, after _Gaza_, after _mill_.' And why? because thus 'the grief of Samson is aggravated at every member of the sentence.' He (like Milton) was--1. blind; 2. in a city of triumphant enemies; 3. working for daily bread; 4. herding with slaves; Samson literally, and Milton with those whom politically he regarded as such. Mr. Landor is perfectly wrong, I must take the liberty of saying, when he demurs to the line in Paradise Regained: '_From that placid aspect and meek regard,_' on the ground that; '_meek regard_ conveys no new idea to _placid aspect_.' But _aspect_ is the countenance of Christ when passive to the gaze of others: _regard_ is the same countenance in active contemplation of those others whom he loves or pities. The _placid aspect_ expresses, therefore, the divine rest; the _meek regard_ expresses the divine benignity: the one is the self-absorption of the total Godhead, the other the eternal emanation of the Filial Godhead. 'By what ingenuity,' says Landor, 'can we erect into a verse-- "_In the bosom of bliss, and light of light?_'" Now really it is by my watch exactly three minutes too late for _him_ to make that objection. The court cannot receive it now; for the line just this moment cited, the ink being hardly yet dry, is of the same identical structure. The usual iambic flow is disturbed in both lines by the very same ripple, viz., a trochee in the second foot, _placid_ in the one line, _bosom_ in the other. They are a sort of _snags_, such as lie in the current of the Mississippi. _There_, they do nothing but mischief. Here, when the lines are read in their entire _nexus_, the disturbance stretches forwards and backwards with good effect on the music. Besides, if it did _not_, one is willing to take a _snag_ from Milton, but one does not altogether like being _snagged_ by the Mississippi. One sees no particular reason for bearing it, if one only knew how to be revenged on a river. But, of these metrical skirmishes, though full of importance to the impassioned text of a great poet (for mysterious is the life that connects all modes of passion with rhythmus), let us suppose the casual reader to have had enough. And now at closing for the sake of change, let us treat him to a harlequin trick upon another theme. Did the reader ever happen to see a sheriff's officer arresting an honest gentleman, who was doing no manner of harm to gentle or simple, and immediately afterwards a second sheriff's officer arresting the first--by which means that second officer merits for himself a place in history; for at the same moment he liberates a deserving creature (since an arrested officer cannot possibly bag his prisoner), and he also avenges the insult put upon that worthy man? Perhaps the reader did _not_ ever see such a sight; and, growing personal, he asks _me_, in return, if _I_ ever saw it. To say the truth, I never _did_; except once, in a too-flattering dream; and though I applauded so loudly as even to waken myself, and shouted '_encore_,' yet all went for nothing; and I am still waiting for that splendid exemplification of retributive justice. But why? Why should it be a spectacle so uncommon? For surely those official arresters of men must want arresting at times as well as better people. At least, however, _en attendant_ one may luxuriate in the vision of such a thing; and the reader shall now see such a vision rehearsed. He shall see Mr. Landor arresting Milton--Milton, of all men!-- for a flaw in his Roman erudition; and then he shall see me instantly stepping up, tapping Mr. Landor on the shoulder, and saying, 'Officer, you're wanted;' whilst to Milton I say, touching my hat, 'Now, sir, be off; run for your life, whilst I hold his man in custody, lest he should fasten on you again.' What Milton had said, speaking of the '_watchful_ cherubim,' was-- 'Four faces each Had, _like a double Janus_;' Upon which Southey--but, of course, Landor, ventriloquizing through Southey--says, 'Better left this to the imagination: double Januses are queer figures.' Not at all. On the contrary, they became so common, that finally there were no other. Rome, in her days of childhood, contented herself with a two-faced Janus; but, about the time of the first or second Caesar, a very ancient statue of Janus was exhumed, which had four faces. Ever afterwards, this sacred resurgent statue became the model for any possible Janus that could show himself in good company. The _quadrifrons Janus_ was now the orthodox Janus; and it would have been as much a sacrilege to rob him of any single face as to rob a king's statue [2] of its horse. One thing may recall this to Mr. Landor's memory. I think it was Nero, but certainly it was one of the first six Caesars, that built, or that finished, a magnificent temple to Janus; and each face was so managed as to point down an avenue leading to a separate market-place. Now, that there were _four_ market-places, I will make oath before any Justice of the Peace. One was called the _Forum Julium_, one the _Forum Augustum_, a third the _Forum Transitorium_: what the fourth was called is best known to itself, for really I forget. But if anybody says that perhaps it was called the _Forum Landorium_, I am not the man to object; for few names have deserved such an honor more, whether from those that then looked forward into futurity with one face, or from our posterity that will look back into the vanishing past with another. FOOTNOTES [1] _Squatters_:--They are a sort of self-elected warming-pans. What we in England mean by the political term '_warming-pans_,' are men who occupy, by consent, some official place, or Parliamentary seat, until the proper claimant is old enough in law to assume his rights. When the true man comes to bed, the warming-pan respectfully turns out. But these ultra-marine warming-pans _wouldn't_ turn out. They showed fight, and wouldn't hear of the true man, even as a bed-fellow. [2] _A king's statue_:--Till very lately the etiquette of Europe was, that none but royal persons could have equestrian statues. Lord Hopetoun, the reader will object, is allowed to have a horse, in St. Andrew's Square, Edinburgh. True, but observe that he is not allowed to mount him. The first person, so far as I remember, that, not being royal, has, in our island, seated himself comfortably in the saddle, is the Duke of Wellington. FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. I am myself, and always have been, a member of the Church of England, and am grieved to hear the many attacks against the Church [frequently most illiberal attacks], which not so much religion as political rancor gives birth to in every third journal that I take up. This I say to acquit myself of all dishonorable feelings, such as I would abhor to co-operate with, in bringing a very heavy charge against that great body in its literary capacity. Whosoever has reflected on the history of the English constitution--must be aware that the most important stage of its development lies within the reign of Charles I. It is true that the judicial execution of that prince has been allowed by many persons to vitiate all that was done by the heroic parliament of November, 1640: and the ordinary histories of England assume as a matter of course that the whole period of parliamentary history through those times is to be regarded as a period of confusion. Our constitution, say they, was formed in 1688-9. Meantime it is evident to any reflecting man that the revolution simply re-affirmed the principles developed in the strife between the two great parties which had arisen in the reign of James I., and had ripened and come to issue with each other in the reign of his son. Our constitution was not a birth of a single instant, as they would represent it, but a gradual growth and development through a long tract of time. In particular the doctrine of the king's vicarious responsibility in the person of his ministers, which first gave a sane and salutary meaning to the doctrine of the king's personal irresponsibility ['The king can do no wrong'], arose undeniably between 1640 and 1648. This doctrine is the main pillar of our constitution, and perhaps the finest discovery that was ever made in the theory of government. Hitherto the doctrine _that the King can do no wrong_ had been used not to protect the indispensable sanctity of the king's constitutional character, but to protect the wrong. Used in this way, it was a maxim of Oriental despotism, and fit only for a nation where law had no empire. Many of the illustrious patriots of the Great Parliament saw this; and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so fatal to the just liberties of the people. But some of them fell into the opposite error of supposing that this abolition could be effected only by the direct negation of it; _their_ maxim accordingly was--'The king _can_ do wrong,' _i.e._ is responsible in his own person. In this great error even the illustrious wife of Colonel Hutchinson participated; [1] and accordingly she taxes those of her own party who scrupled to accede to the new maxim, and still adhered to the old one, with unconscientious dealing. But she misapprehended their meaning, and failed to see where they laid the emphasis: the emphasis was not laid, as it was by the royal party, on the words 'can do no _wrong_'--but on 'The king:' that is, wrong may be done; and in the king's name; but it cannot be the king who did it [the king cannot constitutionally be supposed the person who did it]. By this exquisite political refinement, the old tyrannical maxim was disarmed of its sting; and the entire redress of all wrong, so indispensable to the popular liberty, was brought into perfect reconciliation with the entire inviolability of the sovereign, which is no less indispensable to the popular liberty. There is moreover a double wisdom in the new sense: for not only is one object [the redress of wrong] secured in conjunction with another object [the king's inviolability] hitherto held irreconcilable,-- but even with a view to the first object alone a much more effectual means is applied, because one which leads to no schism in the state, than could have been applied by the blank negation of the maxim; _i.e._ by lodging the responsibility exactly where the executive power [_ergo_ the power of resisting this responsibility] was lodged. Here then is one example in illustration of my thesis--that the English constitution was in a great measure gradually evolved in the contest between the different parties in the reign of Charles I. Now, if this be so, it follows that for constitutional history no period is so important as that: and indeed, though it is true that the Revolution is the great era for the constitutional historian, because he there first finds the constitution fully developed as the 'bright consummate _flower_,' and what is equally important he there first finds the principles of our constitution _ratified_ by a competent authority,--yet, to trace the _root_ and growth of the constitution, the three reigns immediately preceding are still more properly the objects of his study. In proportion then as the reign of Charles I. is Important to the history of our constitution, in that proportion are those to be taxed with the most dangerous of all possible falsifications of our history, who have misrepresented either the facts or the principles of those times. Now I affirm that the clergy of the Church of England have been in a perpetual conspiracy since the era of the restoration to misrepresent both. As an illustration of what I mean I refer to the common edition of Hudibras by Dr. Grey: for the proof I might refer to some thousands of books. Dr. Grey's is a disgusting case: for he swallowed with the most anile credulity every story, the most extravagant that the malice of those times could invent against either the Presbyterians or the Independents: and for this I suppose amongst other deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by Warburton. But, amongst hundreds of illustrations more respectable than Dr. Grey's I will refer the reader to a work of our own days, the Ecclesiastical Biography [in part a republication of Walton's Lives] edited by the present master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who is held in the highest esteem wherever he is known, and is I am persuaded perfectly conscientious and as impartial as in such a case it is possible for a high churchman to be. Yet so it is that there is scarcely one of the notes having any political reference to the period of 1640-1660, which is not disfigured by unjust prejudices: and the amount of the moral which the learned editor grounds upon the documents before him--is this, that the young student is to cherish the deepest abhorrence and contempt of all who had any share on the parliamentary side in the 'confusions' of the period from 1640 to 1660: that is to say of men to whose immortal exertions it was owing that the very revolution of 1688, which Dr. W. will be the first to applaud, found us with any such stock of political principles or feelings as could make a beneficial revolution possible. Where, let me ask, would have been the willingness of some Tories to construe the flight of James II. into a virtual act of abdication, or to consider even the most formal act of abdication binding against the king,-had not the great struggle of Charles's days gradually substituted in the minds of all parties a rational veneration of the king's _office_ for the old superstition in behalf of the king's _person_, which would have protected him from the effects of any acts however solemnly performed which affected injuriously either his own interests or the liberties of his people. Tempora mutantur: _nos et mutamur in illis_. Those whom we find in fierce opposition to the popular party about 1640 we find still in the same personal opposition fifty years after, but an opposition resting on far different principles: insensibly the principles of their antagonists had reached even them: and a courtier of 1689 was willing to concede more than a patriot of 1630 would have ventured to ask. Let me not be understood to mean that true patriotism is at all more shown in supporting the rights of the people than those of the king: as soon as both are defined and limited, the last are as indispensable to the integrity of the constitution--as the first: and popular freedom itself would suffer as much, though indirectly, from an invasion of Caesar's rights--as by a more direct attack on itself. But in the 17th century the rights of the people were as yet _not_ defined: throughout that century they were gradually defining themselves--and, as happiness to all great practical interests, defining themselves through a course of fierce and bloody contests. For the kingly rights are almost inevitably carried too high in ages of imperfect civilization: and the well-known laws of Henry the Seventh, by which he either broke or gradually sapped the power of the aristocracy, had still more extravagantly exalted them. On this account it is just to look upon democratic or popular politics as identical in the 17th century with patriotic politics. In later periods, the democrat and the patriot have sometimes been in direct opposition to each other: at that period they were inevitably in conjunction. All this, however, is in general overlooked by those who either write English history or comment upon it. Most writers _of_ or _upon_ English history proceed either upon servile principles, or upon no principles: and a good _Spirit of English History_, that is, a history which should abstract the tendencies and main results [as to laws, manners, and constitution] from every age of English history, is a work which I hardly hope to see executed. For it would require the concurrence of some philosophy, with a great deal of impartiality. How idly do we say, in speaking of the events of our own time which affect our party feelings,--'We stand too near to these events for an impartial estimate: we must leave them to the judgment of posterity!' For it is a fact that of the many books of memoirs written by persons who were not merely contemporary with the great civil war, but actors and even leaders in its principal scenes--there is hardly one which does not exhibit a more impartial picture of that great drama than the histories written at his day. The historian of Popery does not display half so much zealotry and passionate prejudice in speaking of the many events which have affected the power and splendor of the Papal See for the last thirty years, and under his own eyes, as he does when speaking of a reformer who lived three centuries ago--of a translator of the Bible into a vernacular tongue who lived nearly five centuries ago--of an Anti-pope--of a Charlemagne or a Gregory the Great still further removed from himself. The recent events he looks upon as accidental and unessential: but in the great enemies, or great founders of the Romish temporal power, and in the history of their actions and their motives, he feels that the whole principle of the Romish cause and its pretensions are at stake. Pretty much under the same feeling have modern writers written with a rancorous party spirit of the political struggles in the 17th century: here they fancy that they can detect the _incunabula_ of the revolutionary spirit: here some have been so sharpsighted as to read the features of pure jacobinism: and others [2] have gone so far as to assert that all the atrocities of the French revolution had their direct parallelisms in acts done or countenanced by the virtuous and august Senate of England in 1640! Strange distortion of the understanding which can thus find a brotherly resemblance between two great historical events, which of all that ever were put on record stand off from each other in most irreconcilable enmity: the one originating, as Mr. Coleridge has observed, in excess of principle; the other in the utter defect of all moral principle whatever; and the progress of each being answerable to its origin! Yet so it is. And not a memoir-writer of that age is reprinted in this, but we have a preface from some red-hot Anti- jacobin warning us with much vapid common-place from the mischiefs and eventual anarchy of too rash a spirit of reform as displayed in the French revolution--_not_ by the example of that French revolution, but by that of our own in the age of Charles I. The following passage from the Introduction to Sir William Waller's Vindication published in 1793, may serve as a fair instance: 'He' (Sir W. Waller) 'was, indeed, at length sensible of the misery which he had contributed to bring on his country;' (by the way, it is a suspicious circumstance--that Sir William [3] first became sensible that his country was miserable, when he became sensible that he himself was not likely to be again employed; and became fully convinced of it, when his party lost their ascendancy:) 'he was convinced, by fatal experience, that anarchy was a bad step towards a perfect government; that the subversion of every establishment was no safe foundation for a permanent and regular constitution: he found that pretences of reform were held up by the designing to dazzle the eyes of the unwary, &c.; he found in short that reformation, by popular insurrection, must end in the destruction and cannot tend to the formation of a regular Government.' After a good deal more of this well-meaning cant, the Introduction concludes with the following sentence:--the writer is addressing the reformers of 1793, amongst whom--'both leaders and followers,' he says, 'may together reflect--that, upon speculative and visionary reformers,' (_i.e._ those of 1640) 'the severest punishment which God in his vengeance ever yet inflicted--was to curse them with the complete gratification of their own inordinate desires.' I quote this passage--not as containing any thing singular, but for the very reason that it is _not_ singular: it expresses in fact the universal opinion: notwithstanding which I am happy to say that it is false. What 'complete gratification of their own desires' was ever granted to the 'reformers' in question? On the contrary, it is well known (and no book illustrates that particular fact so well as Sir William Waller's) that as early as 1647 the army had too effectually subverted the just relations between itself and parliament--not to have suggested fearful anticipations to all discerning patriots of that unhappy issue which did in reality blight their prospects. And, when I speak of an 'unhappy issue,' I would be understood only of the immediate issue: for the remote issue was--the revolution of 1688, as I have already asserted. Neither is it true that even the immediate issue was 'unhappy' to any extent which can justify the ordinary language in which it is described. Here again is a world of delusions. We hear of 'anarchy,' of 'confusions,' of 'proscriptions,' of 'bloody and ferocious tyranny.' All is romance; there was no anarchy; no confusions; no proscriptions; no tyranny in the sense designed. The sequestrations, forfeitures, and punishments of all sorts which were inflicted by the conquering party on their antagonists--went on by due course of law; and the summary justice of courts martial was not resorted to in England: except for the short term of the two wars, and the brief intermediate campaign of 1648, the country was in a very tranquil state. Nobody was punished without an open trial; and all trials proceeded in the regular course, according to the ancient forms, and in the regular courts of justice. And as to 'tyranny,' which is meant chiefly of the acts of Cromwell's government, it should be remembered that the Protectorate lasted not a quarter of the period in question (1640-1660); a fact which is constantly forgotten even by very eminent writers, who speak as though Cromwell had drawn his sword in January 1649--cut off the king's head-- instantly mounted his throne--and continued to play the tyrant for the whole remaining period of his life (nearly ten years). Secondly, as to the _kind_ of tyranny which Cromwell exercised, the misconception is ludicrous: continental writers have a notion, well justified by the language of English writers, that Cromwell was a ferocious savage who built his palace of human skulls and desolated his country. Meantime, he was simply a strong-minded--rough-built Englishman, with a character thoroughly English, and exceedingly good-natured. Gray valued himself upon his critical knowledge of English history: yet how thoughtlessly does he express the abstract of Cromwell's life in the line on the village Cromwell--'Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood!' How was Cromwell guilty of his country's blood? What blood did he cause to be shed? A great deal was shed no doubt in the wars (though less, by the way, than is imagined): but in those Cromwell was but a servant of the parliament: and no one will allege that he had any hand in causing a single war. After he attained the sovereign power, no more domestic wars arose: and as to a few persons who were executed for plots and conspiracies against his person, they were condemned upon evidence openly given and by due course of law. With respect to the general character of his government, it is evident that in the unsettled and revolutionary state of things which follows a civil war some critical cases will arise to demand an occasional 'vigor beyond the law'--such as the Roman government allowed of in the dictatorial power. But in general, Cromwell's government was limited by law: and no reign in that century, prior to the revolution, furnishes fewer instances of attempts to tamper with the laws --to overrule them--to twist them to private interpretations--or to dispense with them. As to his major-generals of counties, who figure in most histories of England as so many _Ali Pachas_ that impaled a few prisoners every morning before breakfast--or rather as so many ogres that ate up good Christian men, women and children alive, they were disagreeable people who were disliked much in the same way as our commissioners of the income-tax were disliked in the memory of us all; and heartily they would have laughed at the romantic and bloody masquerade in which they are made to figure in the English histories. What then was the 'tyranny' of Cromwell's government, which is confessedly complained of even in those days? The word 'tyranny' was then applied not so much to the mode in which his power was administered (except by the prejudiced)--as to its origin. However mercifully a man may reign,--yet, if he have no right to reign at all, we may in one sense call him a tyrant; his power not being justly derived, and resting upon an unlawful (_i.e._ a military) basis. As a usurper, and one who had diverted the current of a grand national movement to selfish and personal objects, Cromwell was and will be called a tyrant; but not in the more obvious sense of the word. Such are the misleading statements which disfigure the History of England in its most important chapter. They mislead by more than a simple error of fact: those, which I have noticed last, involve a moral anachronism; for they convey images of cruelty and barbarism such as could not co-exist with the national civilization at that time; and whosoever has not corrected this false picture by an acquaintance with the English literature of that age, must necessarily image to himself a state of society as rude and uncultured as that which prevailed during the wars of York and Lancaster--_i.e._ about two centuries earlier. But those, with which I introduced this article, are still worse; because they involve an erroneous view of constitutional history, and a most comprehensive act of ingratitude: the great men of the Long Parliament paid a heavy price for their efforts to purchase for their descendants a barrier to irresponsible power and security from the anarchy of undefined regal prerogative: in these efforts most of them made shipwreck of their own tranquillity and peace; that such sacrifices were made unavailingly (as it must have seemed to themselves), and that few of them lived to see the 'good old cause' finally triumphant, does not cancel their claims upon our gratitude--but rather strengthen them by the degree in which it aggravated the difficulty of bearing such sacrifices with patience. But whence come these falsifications of history? I believe, from two causes; first (as I have already said) from the erroneous tone impressed upon the national history by the irritated spirit of the clergy of the established church: to the religious zealotry of those times--the church was the object of especial attack; and its members were naturally exposed to heavy sufferings: hence their successors are indisposed to find my good in a cause which could lead to such a result. It is their manifest right to sympathize with their own order in that day; and in such a case it is almost their duty to be incapable of an entire impartiality. Meantime they have carried this much too far: the literature of England must always be in a considerable proportion lodged in their hands; and the extensive means thus placed at their disposal for injuriously coloring that important part of history they have used with no modesty or forbearance. There is not a page of the national history even in its local subdivisions which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue of their wounded remembrances: hardly a town in England, which stood a siege for the king or the parliament, but has some printed memorial of its constancy and its sufferings; and in nine cases out of ten the editor is a clergyman of the established church, who has contrived to deepen 'the sorrow of the time' by the harshness of his commentary. Surely it is high time that the wounds of the 17th century should close; that history should take a more commanding and philosophic station; and that brotherly charity should now lead us to a saner view of constitutional politics; or a saner view of politics to a more comprehensive charity. The other cause of this falsification springs out of a selfishness which has less claim to any indulgence--viz. the timidity with which the English Whigs of former days and the party to whom They [4] succeeded, constantly shrank from acknowledging any alliance with the great men of the Long Parliament under the nervous horror of being confounded with the regicides of 1649. It was of such urgent importance to them, for any command over the public support, that they should acquit themselves of an sentiment of lurking toleration for regicide, with which their enemies never failed to load them, that no mode of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest of his party, thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer a puny insult to the memory of General Ludlow; hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless irreverence as the Whigs; though it is true that some few Whigs, more however in their literary than in their political character, have stepped forward in his vindication. At this moment I recollect a passage in the writings of a modern Whig bishop--in which, for the sake of creating a charge of falsehood against Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage in the _Defensio pro Pop. Anglicano_: and, if that bishop were not dead, I would here take the liberty of rapping his knuckles--were it only for breaking Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud against the Long Parliament,--it was a passage in a very pleasing work of this day (_Ecclesiastical Biography_) which suggested to me the whole of what I have now written. Its learned editor, who is incapable of uncandid feelings except in what concerns the interests of his order, has adopted the usual tone in regard to the men of 1640 throughout his otherwise valuable annotations: and somewhere or other (in the Life of Hammond, according to my remembrance) he has made a statement to this effect--That the custom prevalent among children in that age of asking their parents' blessing was probably first brought into disuse by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversity of prejudice more unreasonable? The unamiable side of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century was unquestionably its religious bigotry; which, however, had its ground in a real fervor of religious feeling and a real strength of religious principle somewhat exceeding the ordinary standard of the 19th century. But, however palliated, their bigotry is not to be denied; it was often offensive from its excess; and ludicrous in its direction. Many harmless customs, many ceremonies and rituals that had a high positive value, their frantic intolerance quarrelled with: and for my part I heartily join in the sentiment of Charles II.--applying it as he did, but a good deal more extensively, that their religion 'was not a religion for a gentleman:' indeed all sectarianism, but especially that which has a modern origin-- arising and growing up within our own memories, unsupported by a grand traditional history of persecutions--conflicts--and martyrdoms, lurking moreover in blind alleys, holes, corners, and tabernacles, must appear spurious and mean in the eyes of him who has been bred up in the grand classic forms of the Church of England or the Church of Rome. But, because the bigotry of the Puritans was excessive and revolting, is _that_ a reason for fastening upon them all the stray evils of omission or commission for which no distinct fathers can be found? The learned editor does not pretend that there is any positive evidence, or presumption even, for imputing to the Puritans a dislike to the custom in question: but, because he thinks it a good custom, his inference is that nobody could have abolished it but the Puritans. Now who does not see that, if this had been amongst the usages discountenanced by the Puritans, it would on that account have been the more pertinaciously maintained by their enemies in church and state? Or, even if this usage were of a nature to be prohibited by authority, as the public use of the liturgy--organs--surplices, &c., who does not see that with regard to _that_ as well as to other Puritanical innovations there would have been a reflux of zeal in the restoration of the king which would have established them in more strength than ever? But it is evident to the unprejudiced that the usage in question gradually went out in submission to the altered spirit of the times. It was one feature of a general system of manners, fitted by its piety and simplicity for a pious and simple age, and which therefore even the 17th century had already outgrown. It is not to be inferred that filial affection and reverence have decayed amongst us, because they no longer express themselves in the same way. In an age of imperfect culture, all passions and emotions are in a more elementary state--'speak a plainer language'--and express themselves _externally_: in such an age the frame and constitution of society is more picturesque; the modes of life rest more undisguisedly upon the basis of the absolute and original relation of things: the son is considered in his sonship, the father in his fatherhood: and the manners take an appropriate coloring. Up to the middle of the 17th century there were many families in which the children never presumed to sit down in their parents' presence. But with us, in an age of more complete intellectual culture, a thick disguise is spread over the naked foundations of human life; and the instincts of good taste banish from good company the expression of all the profounder emotions. A son therefore, who should kneel down in this age to ask his papa's blessing on leaving town for Brighton or Bath--would be felt by himself to be making a theatrical display of filial duty, such as would be painful to him in proportion as his feelings were sincere. All this would have been evident to the learned editor in any case but one which regarded the Puritans: they were at any rate to be molested: in default of any graver matter, a mere fanciful grievance is searched out. Still, however, nothing was effected; fanciful or real, the grievance must be connected with the Puritans: here lies the offence, there lies the Puritans: it would be very agreeable to find some means of connecting the one with the other: but how shall this be done? Why, in default of all other means, the learned editor _assumes_ the connection. He leaves the reader with an impression that the Puritans are chargeable with a serious wound to the manners of the nation in a point affecting the most awful of the household charities: and he fails to perceive that for this whole charge his sole ground is-- that it would be very agreeable to him if he had a ground. Such is the power of the _esprit de corps_ to palliate and recommend as colorable the very weakest logic to a man of acknowledged learning and talent!--In conclusion I must again disclaim any want of veneration and entire affection for the Established Church: the very prejudices and injustice, with which I tax the English clergy, have a generous origin: but it is right to point the attention of historical students to their strength and the effect which they have had. They have been indulged to excess; they have disfigured the grandest page in English history; they have hid the true descent and tradition of our constitutional history; and, by impressing upon the literature of the country a false conception of the patriotic party in and out of Parliament, they have stood in the way of a great work,--a work which, according to my ideal of it, would be the most useful that could just now be dedicated to the English public--viz. _a philosophic record of the revolutions of English History_. The English Constitution, as proclaimed and ratified in 1688-9, is in its kind, the noblest work of the human mind working in conjunction with Time, and what in such a case we may allowably call Providence. Of this _chef d'oeuvre_ of human wisdom it were desirable that we should have a proportionable history: for such a history the great positive qualification would be a philosophic mind: the great negative qualification would be this [which to the established clergy may now be recommended as a fit subject for their magnanimity]; viz. complete conquest over those prejudices which have hitherto discolored the greatest era of patriotic virtue by contemplating the great men of that era under their least happy aspect--namely, in relation to the Established Church. Now that I am on the subject of English History, I will notice one of the thousand mis-statements of Hume's which becomes a memorable one from the stress which he has laid upon it, and from the manner and situation in which he has introduced it. Standing in the current of a narrative, it would have merited a silent correction in an unpretending note: but it occupies a much more assuming station; for it is introduced in a philosophical essay; and being relied on for a particular purpose with the most unqualified confidence, and being alleged in opposition to the very highest authority [viz. the authority of an eminent person contemporary with the fact] it must be looked on as involving a peremptory defiance to all succeeding critics who might hesitate between the authority of Mr. Hume at the distance of a century from the facts and Sir William Temple speaking to them as a matter within his personal recollections. Sir William Temple had represented himself as urging in a conversation with Charles II., the hopelessness of any attempt on the part of an English king to make himself a despotic and absolute monarch, except indeed through the affections of his people. [5] This general thesis he had supported by a variety of arguments; and, amongst the rest, he had described himself as urging this--that even Cromwell had been unable to establish himself in unlimited power, though supported by a military force of _eighty thousand men_. Upon this Hume calls the reader's attention to the extreme improbability which there must beforehand appear to be in supposing that Sir W. Temple,--speaking of so recent a case, with so much official knowledge of that case at his command, uncontradicted moreover by the king whose side in the argument gave him an interest in contradicting Sir William's statement, and whose means of information were paramount to those of all others,--could under these circumstances be mistaken. Doubtless, the reader will reply to Mr. Hume, the improbability _is_ extreme, and scarcely to be invalidated by any possible authority--which, at best, must terminate in leaving an equilibrium of opposing evidence. And yet, says Mr. Hume, Sir William was unquestionably wrong, and grossly wrong: Cromwell never had an army at all approaching to the number of eighty thousand. Now here is a sufficient proof that Hume had never read Lord Clarendon's account of his own life: this book is not so common as his 'History of the Rebellion;' and Hume had either not met with it, or had neglected it. For, in the early part of this work, Lord Clarendon, speaking of the army which was assembled on Blackheath to welcome the return of Charles II., says that it amounted to fifty thousand men: and, when it is remembered that this army was exclusive of the troops in garrison--of the forces left by Monk in the North--and above all of the entire army in Ireland,--it cannot be doubted that the whole would amount to the number stated by Sir William Temple. Indeed Charles II. himself, in the year 1678 [_i.e._ about four years after this conversation] as Sir W. Temple elsewhere tells us, 'in six weeks' time raised an army of twenty thousand men, the completest--and in all appearance the bravest troops that could be any where seen, and might have raised many more; and it was confessed by all the Foreign Ministers that no king in Christendom could have made and completed such a levy as this appeared in such a time.' William III. again, about eleven years afterwards, raised twenty- three regiments with the same ease and in the same space of six weeks. It may be objected indeed to such cases, as in fact it _was_ objected to the case of William III. by Howlett in his sensible Examination of Dr. Price's Essay on the Population of England, that, in an age when manufactures were so little extended, it could ever have been difficult to make such a levy of men--provided there were funds for paying and equipping them. But, considering the extraordinary funds which were disposable for this purpose in Ireland, &c. during the period of Cromwell's Protectorate, we may very safely allow the combined authority of Sir William Temple--of the king--and of that very prime minister who disbanded Cromwell's army, to outweigh the single authority of Hume at the distance of a century from the facts. Upon any question of fact, indeed, Hume's authority is none at all. FOOTNOTES. [1] This is remarked by her editor and descendant Julius Hutchinson, who adds some words to this effect--'that _if_ the patriot of that day were the inventors of the maxim [_The king can do no wrong_], we are much indebted to them.' The patriots certainly did not invent the maxim, for they found it already current: but they gave it its new and constitutional sense. I refer to the book, however, as I do to almost all books in these notes, from memory; writing most of them in situations where I have no access to books. By the way, Charles I., who used the maxim in the most odious sense, furnished the most colorable excuse for his own execution. He constantly maintained the irresponsibility of his ministers: but, if that were conceded, it would then follow that the king must be made responsible in his own person:--and that construction led of necessity to his trial and death. [2] Amongst these Mr. D'Israeli in one of the latter volumes of his 'Curiosities of Literature' has dedicated a chapter or so to a formal proof of this proposition. A reader who is familiar with the history of that age comes to the chapter with a previous indignation, knowing what sort of proof he has to expect. This indignation is not likely to be mitigated by what he will there find. Because some one madman, fool, or scoundrel makes a monstrous proposal--which dies of itself unsupported, and is in violent contrast to all the acts and the temper of those times, --this is to sully the character of the parliament and three-fourths of the people of England. If this proposal had grown out of the spirit of the age, that spirit would have produced many more proposals of the same character and acts corresponding to them. Yet upon this one infamous proposal, and two or three scandalous anecdotes from the libels of the day, does the whole onus of Mr. D'Israeli's parallel depend. _Tantamne rem tam negligenter?_--in the general character of an Englishman I have a right to complain that so heavy an attack upon the honor of England and her most virtuous patriots in her most virtuous age should be made with so much levity: a charge so solemn in its matter should have been prosecuted with a proportionate solemnity of manner. Mr. D'Israeli refers with just applause to the opinions of Mr. Coleridge: I wish that he would have allowed a little more weight to the striking passage in which that gentleman contrasts the French revolution with the English revolution of 1640-8. However, the general tone of honor and upright principle, which marks Mr. D'Israeli's' work, encourages me and others to hope that he will cancel the chapter--and not persist in wounding the honor of a great people for the sake of a parallelism, which--even if it were true--is a thousand times too slight and feebly supported to satisfy the most accommodating reader. [3] Sir William and his cousin Sir Hardress Waller, were both remarkable men. Sir Hardress had no conscience at all; Sir William a very scrupulous one; which, however, he was for ever tampering with--and generally succeeded in reducing into compliance with his immediate interest. He was, however, an accomplished gentleman: and as a man of talents worthy of the highest admiration. [4] Until after the year 1688, I do not remember ever to have found the term Whig applied except to the religious characteristics of that party: whatever reference it might have to their political distinctions was only secondary and by implication. [5] Sir William had quoted to Charles a saying from Gourville (a Frenchman whom the king esteemed, and whom Sir William himself considered the only foreigner he had ever known that understood England) to this effect: 'That a king of England who will be the man of his people, is the greatest king in the world; but, if he will be something more, by G-- he is nothing at all.' A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER. He was a man of very extraordinary genius. He has generally been treated by those who have spoken of him in print as a madman. But this is a mistake and must have been founded chiefly on the titles of his books. He was a man of fervid mind and of sublime aspirations: but he was no madman; or, if he was, then I say that it is so far desirable to be a madman. In 1798 or 1799, when I must have been about thirteen years old, Walking Stewart was in Bath--where my family at that time resided. He frequented the pump-room, and I believe all public places--walking up and down, and dispersing his philosophic opinions to the right and the left, like a Grecian philosopher. The first time I saw him was at a concert in the Upper Rooms; he was pointed out to me by one of my party as a very eccentric man who had walked over the habitable globe. I remember that Madame Mara was at that moment singing: and Walking Stewart, who was a true lover of music (as I afterwards came to know), was hanging upon her notes like a bee upon a jessamine flower. His countenance was striking, and expressed the union of benignity with philosophic habits of thought. In such health had his pedestrian exercises preserved him, connected with his abstemious mode of living, that though he must at that time have been considerably above forty, he did not look older than twenty-eight; at least the face which remained upon my recollection for some years was that of a young man. Nearly ten years afterwards I became acquainted with him. During the interval I had picked up one of his works in Bristol,--viz. his _Travels to discover the Source of Moral Motion_, the second volume of which is entitled _The Apocalypse of Nature_. I had been greatly impressed by the sound and original views which in the first volume he had taken of the national characters throughout Europe. In particular he was the first, and so far as I know the only writer who had noticed the profound error of ascribing a phlegmatic character to the English nation. 'English phlegm' is the constant expression of authors when contrasting the English with the French. Now the truth is, that, beyond that of all other nations, it has a substratum of profound passion: and, if we are to recur to the old doctrine of temperaments, the English character must be classed not under the _phlegmatic_ but under the _melancholic_ temperament; and the French under the _sanguine_. The character of a nation may be judged of in this particular by examining its idiomatic language. The French, in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings, have appropriated all the phrases of passion to the service of trivial and ordinary life: and hence they have no language of passion for the service of poetry or of occasions really demanding it: for it has been already enfeebled by continual association with cases of an unimpassioned order. But a character of deeper passion has a perpetual standard in itself, by which as by an instinct it tries all cases, and rejects the language of passion as disproportionate and ludicrous where it is not fully justified. 'Ah Heavens!' or 'Oh my God!' are exclamations with us so exclusively reserved for cases of profound interest,--that on hearing a woman even (i.e. a person of the sex most easily excited) utter such words, we look round expecting to see her child in some situation of danger. But, in France, 'Ciel!' and 'Oh mon Dieu!' are uttered by every woman if a mouse does but run across the floor. The ignorant and the thoughtless, however, will continue to class the English character under the phlegmatic temperament, whilst the philosopher will perceive that it is the exact polar antithesis to a phlegmatic character. In this conclusion, though otherwise expressed and illustrated, Walking Stewart's view of the English character will be found to terminate: and his opinion is especially valuable--first and chiefly, because he was a philosopher; secondly, because his acquaintance with man civilized and uncivilized, under all national distinctions, was absolutely unrivalled. Meantime, this and others of his opinions were expressed in language that if literally construed would often appear insane or absurd. The truth is, his long intercourse with foreign nations had given something of a hybrid tincture to his diction; in some of his works, for instance, he uses the French word _helas!_ uniformly for the English _alas!_ and apparently with no consciousness of his mistake. He had also this singularity about him --that he was everlastingly metaphysicizing against metaphysics. To me, who was buried in metaphysical reveries from my earliest days, this was not likely to be an attraction any more than the vicious structure of his diction was likely to please my scholarlike taste. All grounds of disgust, however, gave way before my sense of his powerful merits; and, as I have said, I sought his acquaintance. Coming up to London from Oxford about 1807 or 1808 I made inquiries about him; and found that he usually read the papers at a coffee-room in Piccadilly: understanding that he was poor, it struck me that he might not wish to receive visits at his lodgings, and therefore I sought him at the coffee-room. Here I took the liberty of introducing myself to him. He received me courteously, and invited me to his rooms--which at that time were in Sherrard-street, Golden-square--a street already memorable to me. I was much struck with the eloquence of his conversation; and afterwards I found that Mr. Wordsworth, himself the most eloquent of men in conversation, had been equally struck when he had met him at Paris between the years 1790 and 1792, during the early storms of the French revolution. In Sherrard-street I visited him repeatedly, and took notes of the conversations I had with him on various subjects. These I must have somewhere or other; and I wish I could introduce them here, as they would interest the reader. Occasionally in these conversations, as in his books, he introduced a few notices of his private history: in particular I remember his telling me that in the East Indies he had been a prisoner of Hyder's: that he had escaped with some difficulty; and that, in the service of one of the native princes as secretary or interpreter, he had accumulated a small fortune. This must have been too small, I fear, at that time to allow him even a philosopher's comforts: for some part of it, invested in the French funds, had been confiscated. I was grieved to see a man of so much ability, of gentlemanly manners, and refined habits, and with the infirmity of deafness, suffering under such obvious privations; and I once took the liberty, on a fit occasion presenting itself, of requesting that he would allow me to send him some books which he had been casually regretting that he did not possess; for I was at that time in the hey-day of my worldly prosperity. This offer, however, he declined with firmness and dignity, though not unkindly. And I now mention it, because I have seen him charged in print with a selfish regard to his own pecuniary interest. On the contrary, he appeared to me a very liberal and generous man: and I well remember that, whilst he refused to accept of any thing from me, he compelled me to receive as presents all the books which he published during my acquaintance with him: two of these, corrected with his own hand, viz. the Lyre of Apollo and the Sophiometer, I have lately found amongst other books left in London; and others he forwarded to me in Westmoreland. In 1809 I saw him often: in the spring of that year, I happened to be in London; and Mr. Wordsworth's tract on the Convention of Cintra being at that time in the printer's hands, I superintended the publication of it; and, at Mr. Wordsworth's request, I added a long note on Spanish affairs which is printed in the Appendix. The opinions I expressed in this note on the Spanish character at that time much calumniated, on the retreat to Corunna then fresh in the public mind, above all, the contempt I expressed for the superstition in respect to the French military prowess which was then universal and at its height, and which gave way in fact only to the campaigns of 1814 and 1815, fell in, as it happened, with Mr. Stewart's political creed in those points where at that time it met with most opposition. In 1812 it was, I think, that I saw him for the last time: and by the way, on the day of my parting with him, I had an amusing proof in my own experience of that sort of ubiquity ascribed to him by a witty writer in the London Magazine: I met him and shook hands with him under Somerset-house, telling him that I should leave town that evening for Westmoreland. Thence I went by the very shortest road (_i.e._ through Moor-street, Soho--for I am learned in many quarters of London) towards a point which necessarily led me through Tottenham-court-road: I stopped nowhere, and walked fast: yet so it was that in Tottenham-court-road I was not overtaken by (_that_ was comprehensible), but overtook, Walking Stewart. Certainly, as the above writer alleges, there must have been three Walking Stewarts in London. He seemed no ways surprised at this himself, but explained to me that somewhere or other in the neighborhood of Tottenham-court-road there was a little theatre, at which there was dancing and occasionally good singing, between which and a neighboring coffee-house he sometimes divided his evenings. Singing, it seems, he could hear in spite of his deafness. In this street I took my final leave of him; it turned out such; and, anticipating at the time that it would be so, I looked after his white hat at the moment it was disappearing and exclaimed--'Farewell, thou half- crazy and most eloquent man! I shall never see thy face again.' I did not intend, at that moment, to visit London again for some years: as it happened, I was there for a short time in 1814: and then I heard, to my great satisfaction, that Walking Stewart had recovered a considerable sum (about 14,000 pounds I believe) from the East India Company; and from the abstract given in the London Magazine of the Memoir by his relation, I have since learned that he applied this money most wisely to the purchase of an annuity, and that he 'persisted in living' too long for the peace of an annuity office. So fare all companies East and West, and all annuity offices, that stand opposed in interest to philosophers! In 1814, however, to my great regret, I did not see him; for I was then taking a great deal of opium, and never could contrive to issue to the light of day soon enough for a morning call upon a philosopher of such early hours; and in the evening I concluded that he would be generally abroad, from what he had formerly communicated to me of his own habits. It seems, however, that he afterwards held _conversaziones_ at his own rooms; and did not stir out to theatres quite so much. From a brother of mine, who at one time occupied rooms in the same house with him, I learned that in other respects he did not deviate in his prosperity from the philosophic tenor of his former life. He abated nothing of his peripatetic exercises; and repaired duly in the morning, as he had done in former years, to St. James's Park,--where he sate in contemplative ease amongst the cows, inhaling their balmy breath and pursuing his philosophic reveries. He had also purchased an organ, or more than one, with which he solaced his solitude and beguiled himself of uneasy thoughts if he ever had any. The works of Walking Stewart must be read with some indulgence; the titles are generally too lofty and pretending and somewhat extravagant; the composition is lax and unprecise, as I have before said; and the doctrines are occasionally very bold, incautiously stated, and too hardy and high- toned for the nervous effeminacy of many modern moralists. But Walking Stewart was a man who thought nobly of human nature: he wrote therefore at times in the spirit and with the indignation of an ancient prophet against the oppressors and destroyers of the time. In particular I remember that in one or more of the pamphlets which I received from him at Grasmere he expressed himself in such terms on the subject of Tyrannicide (distinguishing the cases in which it was and was not lawful) as seemed to Mr. Wordsworth and myself every way worthy of a philosopher; but, from the way in which that subject was treated in the House of Commons, where it was at that time occasionally introduced, it was plain that his doctrine was not fitted for the luxurious and relaxed morals of the age. Like all men who think nobly of human nature, Walking Stewart thought of it hopefully. In some respects his hopes were wisely grounded; in others they rested too much upon certain metaphysical speculations which are untenable, and which satisfied himself only because his researches in that track had been purely self-originated and self-disciplined. He relied upon his own native strength of mind; but in questions, which the wisdom and philosophy of every age building successively upon each other have not been able to settle, no mind, however strong, is entitled to build wholly upon itself. In many things he shocked the religious sense--especially as it exists in unphilosophic minds; he held a sort of rude and unscientific Spinosism; and he expressed it coarsely and in the way most likely to give offence. And indeed there can be no stronger proof of the utter obscurity in which his works have slumbered than that they should all have escaped prosecution. He also allowed himself to look too lightly and indulgently on the afflicting spectacle of female prostitution as it exists in London and in all great cities. This was the only point on which I was disposed to quarrel with him; for I could not but view it as a greater reproach to human nature than the slave-trade or any sight of wretchedness that the sun looks down upon. I often told him so; and that I was at a loss to guess how a philosopher could allow himself to view it simply as part of the equipage of civil life, and as reasonably making part of the establishment and furniture of a great city as police-offices, lamp- lighting, or newspapers. Waiving however this one instance of something like compliance with the brutal spirit of the world, on all other subjects he was eminently unworldly, child-like, simple-minded, and upright. He would flatter no man: even when addressing nations, it is almost laughable to see how invariably he prefaces his counsels with such plain truths uttered in a manner so offensive as must have defeated his purpose if it had otherwise any chance of being accomplished. For instance, in addressing America, he begins thus:--'People of America! since your separation from the mother-country your moral character has degenerated in the energy of thought and sense; produced by the absence of your association and intercourse with British officers and merchants: you have no moral discernment to distinguish between the protective power of England and the destructive power of France.' And his letter to the Irish nation opens in this agreeable and conciliatory manner:--'People of Ireland! I address you as a true philosopher of nature, foreseeing the perpetual misery your irreflective character and total absence of moral discernment are preparing for' &c. The second sentence begins thus--'You are sacrilegiously arresting the arm of your parent kingdom fighting the cause of man and nature, when the triumph of the fiend of French police- terror would be your own instant extirpation--.' And the letter closes thus:--'I see but one awful alternative--that Ireland will be a perpetual moral volcano, threatening the destruction of the world, if the education and instruction of thought and sense shall not be able to generate the faculty of moral discernment among a very numerous class of the population, who detest the civic calm as sailors the natural calm--and make civic rights on which they cannot reason a pretext for feuds which they delight in.' As he spoke freely and boldly to others, so he spoke loftily of himself: at p. 313, of 'The Harp of Apollo,' on making a comparison of himself with Socrates (in which he naturally gives the preference to himself) he styles 'The Harp,' &c., 'this unparalleled work of human energy.' At p. 315, he calls it 'this stupendous work;' and lower down on the same page he says--'I was turned out of school at the age of fifteen for a dunce or blockhead, because I would not stuff into my memory all the nonsense of erudition and learning; and if future ages should discover the unparalleled energies of genius in this work, it will prove my most important doctrine--that the powers of the human mind must be developed in the education of thought and sense in the study of moral opinion, not arts and science.' Again, at p. 225 of his Sophiometer, he says:--'The paramount thought that dwells in my mind incessantly is a question I put to myself--whether, in the event of my personal dissolution by death, I have communicated all the discoveries my unique mind possesses in the great master-science of man and nature.' In the next page he determines that he _has_, with the exception of one truth,--viz. 'the latent energy, physical and moral, of human nature as existing in the British people.' But here he was surely accusing himself without ground: for to my knowledge he has not failed in any one of his numerous works to insist upon this theme at least a billion of times. Another instance of his magnificent self-estimation is--that in the title pages of several of his works he announces himself as 'John Stewart, the only man of nature [1] that ever appeared in the world.' By this time I am afraid the reader begins to suspect that he was crazy: and certainly, when I consider every thing, he must have been crazy when the wind was at NNE; for who but Walking Stewart ever dated his books by a computation drawn--not from the creation, not from the flood, not from Nabonassar, or _ab urbe condita_, not from the Hegira--but from themselves, from their own day of publication, as constituting the one great era in the history of man by the side of which all other eras were frivolous and impertinent? Thus, in a work of his given to me in 1812 and probably published in that year, I find him incidentally recording of himself that he was at that time 'arrived at the age of sixty-three, with a firm state of health acquired by temperance, and a peace of mind almost independent of the vices of mankind--because my knowledge of life has enabled me to place my happiness beyond the reach or contact of other men's follies and passions, by avoiding all family connections, and all ambitious pursuits of profit, fame, or power.' On reading this passage I was anxious to ascertain its date; but this, on turning to the title page, I found thus mysteriously expressed: 'in the 7000th year of Astronomical History, and the first day of Intellectual Life or Moral World, from the era of this work.' Another slight indication of craziness appeared in a notion which obstinately haunted his mind that all the kings and rulers of the earth would confederate in every age against his works, and would hunt them out for extermination as keenly as Herod did the innocents in Bethlehem. On this consideration, fearing that they might be intercepted by the long arms of these wicked princes before they could reach that remote Stewartian man or his precursor to whom they were mainly addressed, he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a copy or copies of each work properly secured from damp, &c. at a depth of seven or eight feet below the surface of the earth; and on their death-beds to communicate the knowledge of this fact to some confidential friends, who in their turn were to send down the tradition to some discreet persons of the next generation; and thus, if the truth was not to be dispersed for many ages, yet the knowledge that here and there the truth lay buried on this and that continent, in secret spots on Mount Caucasus--in the sands of Biledulgerid--and in hiding- places amongst the forests of America, and was to rise again in some distant age and to vegetate and fructify for the universal benefit of man,--this knowledge at least was to be whispered down from generation to generation; and, in defiance of a myriad of kings crusading against him, Walking Stewart was to stretch out the influence of his writings through a long series of [Greek: _lampadophoroi_] to that child of nature whom he saw dimly through a vista of many centuries. If this were madness, it seemed to me a somewhat sublime madness: and I assured him of my co- operation against the kings, promising that I would bury 'The Harp of Apollo' in my own orchard in Grasmere at the foot of Mount Fairfield; that I would bury 'The Apocalypse of Nature' in one of the coves of Helvellyn, and several other works in several other places best known to myself. He accepted my offer with gratitude; but he then made known to me that he relied on my assistance for a still more important service--which was this: in the lapse of that vast number of ages which would probably intervene between the present period and the period at which his works would have reached their destination, he feared that the English language might itself have mouldered away. 'No!' I said, '_that_ was not probable: considering its extensive diffusion, and that it was now transplanted into all the continents of our planet, I would back the English language against any other on earth.' His own persuasion however was, that the Latin was destined to survive all other languages; it was to be the eternal as well as the universal language; and his desire was that I would translate his works, or some part of them, into that language. [2] This I promised; and I seriously designed at some leisure hour to translate into Latin a selection of passages which should embody an abstract of his philosophy. This would have been doing a service to all those who might wish to see a digest of his peculiar opinions cleared from the perplexities of his peculiar diction and brought into a narrow compass from the great number of volumes through which they are at present dispersed. However, like many another plan of mine, it went unexecuted. On the whole, if Walking Stewart were at all crazy, he was so in a way which did not affect his natural genius and eloquence--but rather exalted them. The old maxim, indeed, that 'Great wits to madness sure are near allied,' the maxim of Dryden and the popular maxim, I have heard disputed by Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Wordsworth, who maintain that mad people are the dullest and most wearisome of all people. As a body, I believe they are so. But I must dissent from the authority of Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth so far as to distinguish. Where madness is connected, as it often is, with some miserable derangement of the stomach, liver, &c. and attacks the principle of pleasurable life, which is manifestly seated in the central organs of the body (i.e. in the stomach and the apparatus connected with it), there it cannot but lead to perpetual suffering and distraction of thought; and there the patient will be often tedious and incoherent. People who have not suffered from any great disturbance in those organs are little aware how indispensable to the process of thinking are the momentary influxes of pleasurable feeling from the regular goings on of life in its primary function; in fact, until the pleasure is withdrawn or obscured, most people are not aware that they _have_ any pleasure from the due action of the great central machinery of the system: proceeding in uninterrupted continuance, the pleasure as much escapes the consciousness as the act of respiration: a child, in the happiest state of its existence, does not _know_ that it is happy. And generally whatsoever is the level state of the hourly feeling is never put down by the unthinking (_i.e._ by 99 out of 100) to the account of happiness: it is never put down with the positive sign, as equal to + x; but simply as = 0. And men first become aware that it _was_ a positive quantity, when they have lost it (_i.e._ fallen into--x). Meantime the genial pleasure from the vital processes, though not represented to the consciousness, is _immanent_ in every act--impulse--motion--word--and thought: and a philosopher sees that the idiots are in a state of pleasure, though they cannot see it themselves. Now I say that, where this principle of pleasure is not attached, madness is often little more than an enthusiasm highly exalted; the animal spirits are exuberant and in excess; and the madman becomes, if he be otherwise a man of ability and information, all the better as a companion. I have met with several such madmen; and I appeal to my brilliant friend, Professor W----, who is not a man to tolerate dulness in any quarter, and is himself the ideal of a delightful companion, whether he ever met a more amusing person than that madman who took a post-chaise with us from ---- to Carlisle, long years ago, when he and I were hastening with the speed of fugitive felons to catch the Edinburgh mail. His fancy and his extravagance, and his furious attacks on Sir Isaac Newton, like Plato's suppers, refreshed us not only for that day but whenever they recurred to us; and we were both grieved when we heard some time afterwards from a Cambridge man that he had met our clever friend in a stage coach under the care of a brutal keeper.---- Such a madness, if any, was the madness of Walking Stewart: his health was perfect; his spirits as light and ebullient as the spirits of a bird in spring-time; and his mind unagitated by painful thoughts, and at peace with itself. Hence, if he was not an amusing companion, it was because the philosophic direction of his thoughts made him something more. Of anecdotes and matters of fact he was not communicative: of all that he had seen in the vast compass of his travels he never availed himself in conversation. I do not remember at this moment that he ever once alluded to his own travels in his intercourse with me except for the purpose of weighing down by a statement grounded on his own great personal experience an opposite statement of many hasty and misjudging travellers which he thought injurious to human nature: the statement was this, that in all his countless rencontres with uncivilized tribes, he had never met with any so ferocious and brutal as to attack an unarmed and defenceless man who was able to make them understand that he threw himself upon their hospitality and forbearance. On the whole, Walking Stewart was a sublime visionary: he had seen and suffered much amongst men; yet not too much, or so as to dull the genial tone of his sympathy with the sufferings of others. His mind was a mirror of the sentient universe.--The whole mighty vision that had fleeted before his eyes in this world,--the armies of Hyder-Ali and his son with oriental and barbaric pageantry,--the civic grandeur of England, the great deserts of Asia and America,--the vast capitals of Europe,--London with its eternal agitations, the ceaseless ebb and flow of its 'mighty heart,'-- Paris shaken by the fierce torments of revolutionary convulsions, the silence of Lapland, and the solitary forests of Canada, with the swarming life of the torrid zone, together with innumerable recollections of individual joy and sorrow, that he had participated by sympathy--lay like a map beneath him, as if eternally co-present to his view; so that, in the contemplation of the prodigious whole, he had no leisure to separate the parts, or occupy his mind with details. Hence came the monotony which the frivolous and the desultory would have found in his conversation. I, however, who am perhaps the person best qualified to speak of him, must pronounce him to have been a man of great genius; and, with reference to his conversation, of great eloquence. That these were not better known and acknowledged was owing to two disadvantages; one grounded in his imperfect education, the other in the peculiar structure of his mind. The first was this: like the late Mr. Shelley he had a fine vague enthusiasm and lofty aspirations in connection with human nature generally and its hopes; and like him he strove to give steadiness, a uniform direction, and an intelligible purpose to these feelings, by fitting to them a scheme of philosophical opinions. But unfortunately the philosophic system of both was so far from supporting their own views and the cravings of their own enthusiasm, that, as in some points it was baseless, incoherent, or unintelligible, so in others it tended to moral results, from which, if they had foreseen them, they would have been themselves the first to shrink as contradictory to the very purposes in which their system had originated. Hence, in maintaining their own system they both found themselves painfully entangled at times with tenets pernicious and degrading to human nature. These were the inevitable consequences of the [Greek: _proton pheudos_] in their speculations; but were naturally charged upon them by those who looked carelessly into their books as opinions which not only for the sake of consistency they thought themselves bound to endure, but to which they gave the full weight of their sanction and patronage as to so many moving principles in their system. The other disadvantage under which Walking Stewart labored, was this: he was a man of genius, but not a man of talents; at least his genius was out of all proportion to his talents, and wanted an organ as it were for manifesting itself; so that his most original thoughts were delivered in a crude state--imperfect, obscure, half developed, and not producible to a popular audience. He was aware of this himself; and, though he claims everywhere the faculty of profound intuition into human nature, yet with equal candor he accuses himself of asinine stupidity, dulness, and want of talent. He was a disproportioned intellect, and so far a monster: and he must be added to the long list of original-minded men who have been looked down upon with pity and contempt by commonplace men of talent, whose powers of mind--though a thousand times inferior-- were yet more manageable, and ran in channels more suited to common uses and common understandings. FOOTNOTES [1] In Bath, he was surnamed 'the Child of Nature;'--which arose from his contrasting on every occasion the existing man of our present experience with the ideal or Stewartian man that might be expected to emerge in some myriads of ages; to which latter man he gave the name of the Child of Nature. [2] I was not aware until the moment of writing this passage that Walking Stewart had publicly made this request three years after making it to myself: opening the 'Harp of Apollo,' I have just now accidentally stumbled on the following passage, 'This Stupendous work is destined, I fear, to meet a worse fate than the Aloe, which as soon as it blossoms loses its stalk. This first blossom of reason is threatened with the loss of both its stalk and its soil: for, if the revolutionary tyrant should triumph, he would destroy all the English books and energies of thought. I conjure my readers to translate this work into Latin, and to bury it in the ground, communicating on their death-beds only its place of concealment to men of nature.' From the title page of this work, by the way, I learn that 'the 7000th year of Astronomical History' is taken from the Chinese tables, and coincides (as I had supposed) with the year 1812 of our computation. ON SUICIDE. It is a remarkable proof of the inaccuracy with which most men read--that Donne's _Biathanatos_ has been supposed to countenance Suicide; and those who reverence his name have thought themselves obliged to apologize for it by urging, that it was written before he entered the church. But Donne's purpose in this treatise was a pious one: many authors had charged the martyrs of the Christian church with Suicide--on the principle that if I put myself in the way of a mad bull, knowing that he will kill me--I am as much chargeable with an act of self-destruction as if I fling myself into a river. Several casuists had extended this principle even to the case of Jesus Christ: one instance of which, in a modern author, the reader may see noticed and condemned by Kant, in his _Religion innerhalb die gronzen der blossen Vernunft_; and another of much earlier date (as far back as the 13th century, I think), in a commoner book--Voltaire's notes on the little treatise of Beccaria, _Dei delitti e delle pene_. These statements tended to one of two results: either they unsanctified the characters of those who founded and nursed the Christian church; or they sanctified suicide. By way of meeting them, Donne wrote his book: and as the whole argument of his opponents turned upon a false definition of suicide (not explicitly stated, but assumed), he endeavored to reconstitute the notion of what is essential to create an act of suicide. Simply to kill a man is not murder: _prima facie_, therefore, there is some sort of presumption that simply for a man to kill himself--may not always be so: there is such a thing as simple homicide distinct from murder: there may, therefore, possibly be such a thing as self-homicide distinct from self-murder. There _may_ be a ground for such a distinction, _ex analogia_. But, secondly, on examination, _is_ there any ground for such a distinction? Donne affirms that there is; and, reviewing several eminent cases of spontaneous martyrdom, he endeavors to show that acts so motived and so circumstantiated will not come within the notion of suicide properly defined. Meantime, may not this tend to the encouragement of suicide in general, and without discrimination of its species? No: Donne's arguments have no prospective reference or application; they are purely retrospective. The circumstances necessary to create an act of mere self- homicide can rarely concur, except in a state of disordered society, and during the _cardinal_ revolutions of human history: where, however, they _do_ concur, there it will not be suicide. In fact, this is the natural and practical judgment of us all. We do not all agree on the particular cases which will justify self-destruction: but we all feel and involuntarily acknowledge (_implicitly_ acknowledge in our admiration, though not explicitly in our words or in our principles), that there _are_ such cases. There is no man, who in his heart would not reverence a woman that chose to die rather than to be dishonored: and, if we do not say, that it is her duty to do so, _that_ is because the moralist must condescend to the weakness and infirmities of human nature: mean and ignoble natures must not be taxed up to the level of noble ones. Again, with regard to the other sex, corporal punishment is its peculiar and _sexual_ degradation; and if ever the distinction of Donne can be applied safely to any case, it will be to the case of him who chooses to die rather than to submit to that ignominy. _At present_, however, there is but a dim and very confined sense, even amongst enlightened men (as we may see by the debates of Parliament), of the injury which is done to human nature by giving legal sanction to such brutalizing acts; and therefore most men, in seeking to escape it, would be merely shrinking from a _personal_ dishonor. Corporal punishment is usually argued with a single reference to the case of him who suffers it; and _so_ argued, God knows that it is worthy of all abhorrence: but the weightiest argument against it--is the foul indignity which is offered to our common nature lodged in the person of him on whom it is inflicted. _His_ nature is _our_ nature: and, supposing it possible that _he_ were so far degraded as to be unsusceptible of any influences but those which address him through the brutal part of his nature, yet for the sake of ourselves--No! not merely for ourselves, or for the human race now existing, but for the sake of human nature, which trancends all existing participators of that nature-- we should remember that the evil of corporal punishment is not to be measured by the poor transitory criminal, whose memory and offence are soon to perish: these, in the sum of things, are as nothing: the injury which can be done him, and the injury which he can do, have so momentary an existence that they may be safely neglected: but the abiding injury is to the most august interest which for the mind of man can have any existence,--viz. to his own nature: to raise and dignify which, I am persuaded, is the first--last--and holiest command [1] which the conscience imposes on the philosophic moralist. In countries, where the traveller has the pain of seeing human creatures performing the labors of brutes, [2]--surely the sorrow which the spectacle moves, if a wise sorrow, will not be chiefly directed to the poor degraded individual--too deeply degraded, probably, to be sensible of his own degradation, but to the reflection that man's nature is thus exhibited in a state of miserable abasement; and, what is worst of all, abasement proceeding from man himself. Now, whenever this view of corporal punishment becomes general (as inevitably it will, under the influence of advancing civilization), I say, that Donne's principle will then become applicable to this case, and it will be the duty of a man to die rather than to suffer his own nature to be dishonored in that way. But so long as a man is not fully sensible of the dishonor, to him the dishonor, except as a personal one, does not wholly exist. In general, whenever a paramount interest of human nature is at stake, a suicide which maintains that interest is self-homicide: but, for a personal interest, it becomes self-murder. And into this principle Donne's may be resolved. * * * * * A doubt has been raised--whether brute animals ever commit suicide: to me it is obvious that they do not, and cannot. Some years ago, however, there was a case reported in all the newspapers of an old ram who committed suicide (as it was alleged) in the presence of many witnesses. Not having any pistols or razors, he ran for a short distance, in order to aid the impetus of his descent, and leaped over a precipice, at the foot of which he was dashed to pieces. His motive to the 'rash act,' as the papers called it, was supposed to be mere taedium vitae. But, for my part, I doubted the accuracy of the report. Not long after a case occurred in Westmoreland which strengthened my doubts. A fine young blood horse, who could have no possible reason for making away with himself, unless it were the high price of oats at that time, was found one morning dead in his field. The case was certainly a suspicious one: for he was lying by the side of a stone-wall, the upper part of which wall his skull had fractured, and which had returned the compliment by fracturing his skull. It was argued, therefore, that in default of ponds, &c. he had deliberately hammered with his head against the wall; this, at first, seemed the only solution; and he was generally pronounced _felo de se_. However, a day or two brought the truth to light. The field lay upon the side of a hill: and, from a mountain which rose above it, a shepherd had witnessed the whole catastrophe, and gave evidence which vindicated the character of the horse. The day had been very windy; and the young creature being in high spirits, and, caring evidently as little for the corn question as for the bullion question, had raced about in all directions; and at length, descending too steep a part of the field, had been unable to check himself, and was projected by the impetus of his own descent like a battering ram against the wall. Of human suicides, the most affecting I have ever seen recorded is one which I met with in a German book: the most calm and deliberate is the following, which is _said_ to have occurred at Keswick, in Cumberland: but I must acknowledge, that I never had an opportunity, whilst staying at Keswick, of verifying the statement. A young man of studious turn, who is said to have resided near Penrith, was anxious to qualify himself for entering the church, or for any other mode of life which might secure to him a reasonable portion of literary leisure. His family, however, thought that under the circumstances of his situation he would have a better chance for success in life as a tradesman; and they took the necessary steps for placing him as an apprentice at some shopkeeper's in Penrith. This he looked upon as an indignity, to which he was determined in no case to submit. And accordingly, when he had ascertained that all opposition to the choice of his friends was useless, he walked over to the mountainous district of Keswick (about sixteen miles distant)--looked about him in order to select his ground--cooly walked up Lattrig (a dependency of Skiddaw)--made a pillow of sods--laid himself down with his face looking up to the sky--and in that posture was found dead, with the appearance of having died tranquilly. FOOTNOTES [1] On which account, I am the more struck by the ignoble argument of those statesmen who have contended in the House of Commons that such and such classes of men in this nation are not accessible to any loftier influences. Supposing that there were any truth in this assertion, which is a libel not on this nation only, but on man in general,--surely it is the duty of lawgivers not to perpetuate by their institutions the evil which they find, but to presume and gradually to create a better spirit. [2] Of which degradation, let it never be forgotten that France but thirty years ago presented as shocking cases as any country, even where slavery is tolerated. An eye-witness to the fact, who has since published it in print, told me, that in France, before the revolution, he had repeatedly seen a woman yoked with an ass to the plough; and the brutal ploughman applying his whip indifferently to either. English people, to whom I have occasionally mentioned this as an exponent of the hollow refinement of manners in France, have uniformly exclaimed--'_That_ is more than I can believe;' and have taken it for granted that I had my information from some prejudiced Englishman. But who was my informer? A Frenchman, reader, --M. Simond; and though now by adoption an American citizen, yet still French in his heart and in all his prejudices. SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE. It is asserted that this is the age of Superficial Knowledge; and amongst the proofs of this assertion we find Encyclopaedias and other popular abstracts of knowledge particularly insisted on. But in this notion and its alleged proofs there is equal error--wherever there is much diffusion of knowledge, there must be a good deal of superficiality: prodigious _extension_ implies a due proportion of weak _intension_; a sea-like expansion of knowledge will cover large shallows as well as large depths. But in that quarter in which it is superficially cultivated the intellect of this age is properly opposed in any just comparison to an intellect without any culture at all:--leaving the deep soils out of the comparison, the shallow ones of the present day would in any preceding one have been barren wastes. Of this our modern encyclopedias are the best proof. For whom are they designed, and by whom used?--By those who in a former age would have gone to the fountain heads? No, but by those who in any age preceding the present would have drunk at no waters at all. Encyclopedias are the growth of the last hundred years; not because those who were formerly students of higher learning have descended, but because those who were below encyclopaedias have ascended. The greatness of the ascent is marked by the style in which the more recent encyclopaedias are executed: at first they were mere abstracts of existing books--well or ill executed: at present they contain many _original_ articles of great merit. As in the periodical literature of the age, so in the encyclopaedias it has become a matter of ambition with the publishers to retain the most eminent writers in each several department. And hence it is that our encyclopaedias now display one characteristic of this age--the very opposite of superficiality (and which on other grounds we are well assured of)--viz. its tendency in science, no less than in other applications of industry, to extreme subdivision. In all the employments which are dependent in any degree upon the political economy of nations, this tendency is too obvious to have been overlooked. Accordingly it has long been noticed for congratulation in manufactures and the useful arts-- and for censure in the learned professions. We have now, it is alleged, no great and comprehensive lawyers like Coke: and the study of medicine is subdividing itself into a distinct ministry (as it were) not merely upon the several organs of the body (oculists, aurists, dentists, cheiropodists, &c.) but almost upon the several diseases of the same organ: one man is distinguished for the treatment of liver complaints of one class--a second for those of another class; one man for asthma-- another for phthisis; and so on. As to the law, the evil (if it be one) lies in the complex state of society which of necessity makes the laws complex: law itself is become unwieldy and beyond the grasp of one man's term of life and possible range of experience: and will never again come within them. With respect to medicine, the case is no evil but a great benefit--so long as the subdividing principle does not descend too low to allow of a perpetual re-ascent into the generalizing principle (the [Greek: _to_] commune) which secures the unity of the science. In ancient times all the evil of such a subdivision was no doubt realized in Egypt: for there a distinct body of professors took charge of each organ of the body, not (as we may be assured) from any progress of the science outgrowing the time and attention of the general professor, but simply from an ignorance of the organic structure of the human body and the reciprocal action of the whole upon each part and the parts upon the whole; an ignorance of the same kind which has led sailors seriously (and not merely, as may sometimes have happened, by way of joke) to reserve one ulcerated leg to their own management, whilst the other was given up to the management of the surgeon. With respect to law and medicine then, the difference between ourselves and our ancestors is not subjective but objective; not, _i.e._ in our faculties who study them, but in the things themselves which are the objects of study: not we (the students) are grown less, but they (the studies) are grown bigger;--and that our ancestors did not subdivide as much as we do--was something of their luck, but no part of their merit. Simply as subdividers therefore to the extent which now prevails, we are less superficial than any former age. In all parts of science the same principle of subdivision holds: here therefore, no less than in those parts of knowledge which are the subjects of distinct civil professions, we are of necessity more profound than our ancestors; but, for the same reason, less comprehensive than they. Is it better to be a profound student, or a comprehensive one? In some degree this must depend upon the direction of the studies: but generally, I think, it is better for the interests of knowledge that the scholar should aim at profundity, and better for the interests of the individual that he should aim at comprehensiveness. A due balance and equilibrium of the mind is but preserved by a large and multiform knowledge: but knowledge itself is but served by an exclusive (or at least paramount) dedication of one mind to one science. The first proposition is perhaps unconditionally true: but the second with some limitations. There are such people as Leibnitzes on this earth; and their office seems not that of planets--to revolve within the limits of one system, but that of comets (according to the theory of some speculators)--to connect different systems together. No doubt there is much truth in this: a few Leibnitzes in every age would be of much use: but neither are many men fitted by nature for the part of Leibnitz; nor would the aspect of knowledge be better, if they were. We should then have a state of Grecian life amongst us in which every man individually would attain in a moderate degree all the purposes of the sane understanding,--but in which all the purposes of the sane understanding would be but moderately attained. What I mean is this:--let all the objects of the understanding in civil life or in science be represented by the letters of the alphabet; in Grecian life each man would separately go through all the letters in a tolerable way; whereas at present each letter is served by a distinct body of men. Consequently the Grecian individual is superior to the modern; but the Grecian whole is inferior: for the whole is made up of the individuals; and the Grecian individual repeats himself. Whereas in modern life the whole derives its superiority from the very circumstances which constitute the inferiority of the parts; for modern life is _cast_ dramatically: and the difference is as between an army consisting of soldiers who should each individually be competent to go through the duties of a dragoon--of a hussar--of a sharp-shooter--of an artillery-man--of a pioneer, &c. and an army on its present composition, where the very inferiority of the soldier as an individual--his inferiority in compass and versatility of power and knowledge--is the very ground from which the army derives its superiority as a whole, viz. because it is the condition of the possibility of a total surrender of the individual to one exclusive pursuit. In science therefore, and (to speak more generally) in the whole evolution of the human faculties, no less than in Political Economy, the progress of society brings with it a necessity of sacrificing the ideal of what is excellent for the individual, to the ideal of what is excellent for the whole. We need therefore not trouble ourselves (except as a speculative question) with the comparison of the two states; because, as a practical question, it is precluded by the overruling tendencies of the age--which no man could counteract except in his own single case, _i.e._ by refusing to adapt himself as a part to the whole, and thus foregoing the advantages of either one state or the other. [1] FOOTNOTE [1] The latter part of what is here said coincides, in a way which is rather remarkable, with a passage in an interesting work of Schiller's which I have since read, (_on the Aesthetic Education of Men_, in a series of letters: vid. letter the 6th.) 'With us in order to obtain the representative _word_ (as it were) of the total species, we must spell it out by the help of a series of individuals. So that on a survey of society as it actually exists, one might suppose that the faculties of the mind do really in actual experience show themselves in as separate a form, and in as much insulation, as psychology is forced to exhibit them in its analysis. And thus we see not only individuals, but whole classes of men, unfolding only one part of the germs which are laid in them by the hand of nature. In saying this I am fully aware of the advantages which the human species of modern ages has, when considered as a unity, over the best of antiquity: but the comparison should begin with the individuals: and then let me ask where is the modern individual that would have the presumption to step forward against the Athenian individual--man to man, and to contend for the prize of human excellence? The polypus nature of the Grecian republics, in which every individual enjoyed a separate life, and if it were necessary could become a whole, has now given place to an artificial watch-work, where many lifeless parts combine to form a mechanic whole. The state and the church, laws and manners, are now torn asunder: labor is divided from enjoyment, the means from the end, the exertion from the reward. Chained for ever to a little individual fraction of the whole, man himself is moulded into a fraction; and, with the monotonous whirling of the wheel which he turns everlastingly in his ear, he never develops the harmony of his being; and, instead of imaging the totality of human nature, becomes a bare abstract of his business or the science which he cultivates. The dead letter takes the place of the living understanding; and a practised memory becomes a surer guide than genius and sensibility. Doubtless the power of genius, as we all know, will not fetter itself within the limits of its occupation; but talents of mediocrity are all exhausted in the monotony of the employment allotted to them; and that man must have no common head who brings with him the geniality of his powers unstripped of their freshness by the ungenial labors of life to the cultivation of the genial.' After insisting at some length on this wise, Schiller passes to the other side of the contemplation, and proceeds thus:--'It suited my immediate purpose to point out the injuries of this condition of the species, without displaying the compensations by which nature has balanced them. But I will now readily acknowledge--that, little as this practical condition may suit the interests of the individual, yet the species could in no other way have been progressive. Partial exercise of the faculties (literally "_one-sidedness_ in the exercise of the faculties") leads the individual undoubtedly into error, but the species into truth. In no other way than by concentrating the whole energy of our spirit, and by converging our whole being, so to speak, into a single faculty, can we put wings as it were to the individual faculty and carry it by this artificial flight far beyond the limits within which nature has else doomed it to walk. Just as certain as it is that all human beings could never, by clubbing their visual powers together, have arrived at the power of seeing what the telescope discovers to the astronomer; just so certain it is that the human intellect would never have arrived at an analysis of the infinite or a _Critical Analysis of the Pure Reason_ (the principal work of Kant), unless individuals had dismembered (as it were) and insulated this or that specific faculty, and had thus armed their intellectual sight by the keenest abstraction and by the submersion of the other powers of their nature. Extraordinary men are formed then by energetic and over-excited spasms as it were in the individual faculties; though it is true that the equable exercise of all the faculties in harmony with each other can alone make happy and perfect men.' After this statement, from which it should seem that in the progress of society nature has made it necessary for man to sacrifice _his own_ happiness to the attainment of _her_ ends in the development of his species, Schiller goes on to inquire whether this evil result cannot be remedied; and whether 'the totality of our nature, which art has destroyed, might not be re-established by a higher art,'--but this, as leading to a discussion beyond the limits of my own, I omit. ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. It has already, I believe, been said more than once in print that one condition of a good dictionary would be to exhibit the _history_ of each word; that is, to record the exact succession of its meanings. But the philosophic reason for this has not been given; which reason, by the way, settles a question often agitated, viz. whether the true meaning of a word be best ascertained from its etymology, or from its present use and acceptation. Mr. Coleridge says, 'the best explanation of a word is often that which is suggested by its derivation' (I give the substance of his words from memory). Others allege that we have nothing to do with the primitive meaning of the word; that the question is--what does it mean now? and they appeal, as the sole authority they acknowledge, to the received-- Usus, penes quem est jus et norma loquendi. In what degree each party is right, may be judged from this consideration --that no word can ever deviate from its first meaning _per saltum_: each successive stage of meaning must always have been determined by that which preceded. And on this one law depends the whole philosophy of the case: for it thus appears that the original and primitive sense of the word will contain virtually all which can ever afterwards arise: as in the _evolution_-theory of generation, the whole series of births is represented as involved in the first parent. Now, if the evolution of successive meanings has gone on rightly, _i.e._ by simply lapsing through a series of close affinities, there can be no reason for recurring to the primitive meaning of the word: but, if it can be shown that the evolution has been faulty, _i.e._ that the chain of true affinities has ever been broken through ignorance, then we have a right to reform the word, and to appeal from the usage ill-instructed to a usage better- instructed. Whether we ought to exercise this right, will depend on a consideration which I will afterwards notice. Meantime I will first give a few instances of faulty evolution. 1. _Implicit_. This word is now used in a most ignorant way; and from its misuse it has come to be a word wholly useless: for it is now never coupled, I think, with any other substantive than these two--faith and confidence: a poor domain indeed to have sunk to from its original wide range of territory. Moreover, when we say, _implicit faith_, or _implicit confidence_, we do not thereby indicate any specific _kind_ of faith and confidence differing from other faith or other confidence: but it is a vague rhetorical word which expresses a great _degree_ of faith and confidence; a faith that is unquestioning, a confidence that is unlimited; _i.e._ in fact, a faith that _is_ a faith, a confidence that _is_ a confidence. Such a use of the word ought to be abandoned to women: doubtless, when sitting in a bower in the month of May, it is pleasant to hear from a lovely mouth--'I put implicit confidence in your honor:' but, though pretty and becoming to such a mouth, it is very unfitting to the mouth of a scholar: and I will be bold to affirm that no man, who had ever acquired a scholar's knowledge of the English language, has used the word in that lax and unmeaning way. The history of the word is this.-- _Implicit_ (from the Latin _implicitus_, involved in, folded up) was always used originally, and still is so by scholars, as the direct antithete of explicit (from the Latin _explicitus_, evolved, unfolded): and the use of both may be thus illustrated. _Q._ 'Did Mr. A. ever say that he would marry Miss B.?'--_A._ 'No; not explicitly (_i.e._ in so many words); but he did implicitly--by showing great displeasure if she received attentions from any other man; by asking her repeatedly to select furniture for his house; by consulting her on his own plans of life.' _Q._ 'Did Epicurus maintain any doctrines such as are here ascribed to him?'--_A._ 'Perhaps not explicitly, either in words or by any other mode of direct sanction: on the contrary, I believe he denied them-- and disclaimed them with vehemence: but he maintained them implicitly: for they are involved in other acknowledged doctrines of his, and may be deduced from them by the fairest and most irresistible logic.' _Q._ 'Why did you complain of the man? Had he expressed any contempt for your opinion?'--_A._ 'Yes, he had: not explicit contempt, I admit; for he never opened his stupid mouth; but implicitly he expressed the utmost that he could: for, when I had spoken two hours against the old newspaper, and in favor of the new one, he went instantly and put his name down as a subscriber to the old one.' _Q._ 'Did Mr.---- approve of that gentleman's conduct and way of life?'-- _A._ 'I don't know that I ever heard him speak about it: but he seemed to give it his implicit approbation by allowing both his sons to associate with him when the complaints ran highest against him.' These instances may serve to illustrate the original use of the word; which use has been retained from the sixteenth century down to our own days by an uninterrupted chain of writers. In the eighteenth century this use was indeed nearly effaced but still in the first half of that century it was retained by Saunderson the Cambridge professor of mathematics (see his Algebra, &c.), with three or four others, and in the latter half by a man to whom Saunderson had some resemblance in spring and elasticity of understanding, viz. by Edmund Burke. Since his day I know of no writers who have avoided the slang and unmeaning use of the word, excepting Messrs. Coleridge and Wordsworth; both of whom (but especially the last) have been remarkably attentive to the scholar-like [1] use of words, and to the history of their own language. Thus much for the primitive use of the word _implicit_. Now, with regard to the history of its transition into its present use, it is briefly this; and it will appear at once, that it has arisen through ignorance. When it was objected to a papist that his church exacted an assent to a great body of traditions and doctrines to which it was impossible that the great majority could be qualified, either as respected time--or knowledge--or culture of the understanding, to give any reasonable assent,--the answer was: 'Yes; but that sort of assent is not required of a poor uneducated man; all that he has to do--is to believe in the church: he is to have faith in _her_ faith: by that act he adopts for his own whatsoever the church believes, though he may never have hoard of it even: his faith is implicit, _i.e._ involved and wrapped up in the faith of the church, which faith he firmly believes to be the true faith upon the conviction he has that the church is preserved from all possibility of erring by the spirit of God.' [2] Now, as this sort of believing by proxy or implicit belief (in which the belief was not _immediate_ in the thing proposed to the belief, but in the authority of another person who believed in that thing and thus _mediately_ in the thing itself) was constantly attacked by the learned assailants of popery,--it naturally happened that many unlearned readers of these protestant polemics caught at a phrase which was so much bandied between the two parties: the spirit of the context sufficiently explained to them that it was used by protestants as a term of reproach, and indicated a faith that was an erroneous faith by being too easy--too submissive--and too passive: but the particular mode of this erroneousness they seldom came to understand, as learned writers naturally employed the term without explanation, presuming it to be known to those whom they addressed. Hence these ignorant readers caught at the last _result_ of the phrase 'implicit faith' rightly, truly supposing it to imply a resigned and unquestioning faith; but they missed the whole immediate cause of meaning by which only the word 'implicit' could ever have been entitled to express that result. I have allowed myself to say so much on this word 'implicit,' because the history of the mode by which its true meaning was lost applies almost to all other corrupted words--_mutatis mutandis_: and the amount of it may be collected into this formula,--that the _result_ of the word is apprehended and retained, but the _schematismus_ by which that result was ever reached is lost. This is the brief theory of all corruption of words. The word _schematismus_ I have unwillingly used, because no other expresses my meaning. So great and extensive a doctrine however lurks in this word, that I defer the explanation of it to a separate article. Meantime a passable sense of the word will occur to every body who reads Greek. I now go on to a few more instances of words that have forfeited their original meaning through the ignorance of those who used them. '_Punctual._' This word is now confined to the meagre denoting of accuracy in respect to time--fidelity to the precise moment of an appointment. But originally it was just as often, and just as reasonably, applied to space as to time; 'I cannot punctually determine the origin of the Danube; but I know in general the district in which it rises, and that its fountain is near that of the Rhine.' Not only, however, was it applied to time and space, but it had a large and very elegant figurative use. Thus in the History of the Royal Society by Sprat (an author who was finical and nice in his use of words)--I remember a sentence to this effect: 'the Society gave punctual directions for the conducting of experiments;' _i.e._ directions which descended to the minutiae and lowest details. Again in the once popular romance of Parismus Prince of Bohemia--'She' (I forget who) 'made a punctual relation of the whole matter;' _i.e._ a relation which was perfectly circumstantial and true to the minutest features of the case. FOOTNOTES [1] Among the most shocking of the unscholarlike barbarisms, now prevalent, I must notice the use of the word '_nice_' in an objective instead of a subjective sense: '_nice_' does not and cannot express a quality of the object, but merely a quality of the subject: yet we hear daily of 'a very nice letter'--'a nice young lady,' &c., meaning a letter or a young lady that it is pleasant to contemplate: but 'a nice young lady'--means a fastidious young lady; and 'a nice letter' ought to mean a letter that is very delicate in its rating and in the choice of its company. [2] Thus Milton, who (in common with his contemporaries) always uses the word accurately, speaks of Ezekiel 'swallowing his implicit roll of knowledge'--_i.e._ coming to the knowledge of many truths not separately and in detail, but by the act of arriving at some one master truth which involved all the rest.--So again, if any man or government were to suppress a book, that man or government might justly be reproached as the implicit destroyer of all the wisdom and virtue that might have been the remote products of that book. DRYDEN'S HEXASTICH. It is a remarkable fact, that the very finest epigram in the English language happens also to be the worst. _Epigram_ I call it in the austere Greek sense; which thus far resembled our modern idea of an epigram, that something pointed and allied to wit was demanded in the management of the leading thought at its close, but otherwise nothing tending towards the comic or the ludicrous. The epigram I speak of is the well-known one of Dryden dedicated to the glorification of Milton. It is irreproachable as regards its severe brevity. Not one word is there that could be spared; nor could the wit of man have cast the movement of the thought into a better mould. There are three couplets. In the first couplet we are reminded of the fact that this earth had, in three different stages of its development, given birth to a trinity of transcendent poets; meaning narrative poets, or, even more narrowly, epic poets. The duty thrown upon the second couplet is to characterize these three poets, and to value them against each other, but in such terms as that, whilst nothing less than the very highest praise should be assigned to the two elder poets in this trinity--the Greek and the Roman-- nevertheless, by some dexterous artifice, a higher praise than the highest should suddenly unmask itself, and drop, as it were, like a diadem from the clouds upon the brows of their English competitor. In the kind of expectation raised, and in the extreme difficulty of adequately meeting this expectation, there was pretty much the same challenge offered to Dryden as was offered, somewhere about the same time, to a British ambassador when dining with his political antagonists. One of these--the ambassador of France--had proposed to drink his master, Louis XIV., under the character of the sun, who dispensed life and light to the whole political system. To this there was no objection; and immediately, by way of intercepting any further draughts upon the rest of the solar system, the Dutch ambassador rose, and proposed the health of their high mightinesses the Seven United States, as the moon and six [1] planets, who gave light in the absence of the sun. The two foreign ambassadors, Monsieur and Mynheer, secretly enjoyed the mortification of their English brother, who seemed to be thus left in a state of bankruptcy, 'no funds' being available for retaliation, or so they fancied. But suddenly our British representative toasted _his_ master as Joshua, the son of Nun, that made the sun and moon stand still. All had seemed lost for England, when in an instant of time both her antagonists were checkmated. Dryden assumed something of the same position. He gave away the supreme jewels in his exchequer; apparently nothing remained behind; all was exhausted. To Homer he gave A; to Virgil he gave B; and, behold! after these were given away, there remained nothing at all that would not have been a secondary praise. But, in a moment of time, by giving A _and_ B to Milton, at one sling of his victorious arm he raised him above Homer by the whole extent of B, and above Virgil by the whole extent of A. This felicitous evasion of the embarrassment is accomplished in the second couplet; and, finally, the third couplet winds up with graceful effect, by making a _resume_, or recapitulation of the logic concerned in the distribution of prizes just announced. Nature, he says, had it not in her power to provide a third prize separate from the first and second; her resource was, to join the first and second in combination: 'To make a third, she joined the former two.' Such is the abstract of this famous epigram; and, judged simply by the outline and tendency of the thought, it merits all the vast popularity which it has earned. But in the meantime, it is radically vicious as regards the filling in of this outline; for the particular quality in which Homer is accredited with the pre-eminence, viz., _loftiness of thought_, happens to be a mere variety of expression for that quality, viz. _majesty_, in which the pre-eminence is awarded to Virgil. Homer excels Virgil in the very point in which lies Virgil's superiority to Homer; and that synthesis, by means of which a great triumph is reserved to Milton, becomes obviously impossible, when it is perceived that the supposed analytic elements of this synthesis are blank reiterations of each other. Exceedingly striking it is, that a thought should have prospered for one hundred and seventy years, which, on the slightest steadiness of examination, turns out to be no thought at all, but mere blank vacuity. There is, however, this justification of the case, that the mould, the set of channels, into which the metal of the thought is meant to run, really _has_ the felicity which it appears to have: the form is perfect; and it is merely in the _matter_, in the accidental filling up of the mould, that a fault has been committed. Had the Virgilian point of excellence been _loveliness_ instead of _majesty_, or any word whatever suggesting the common antithesis of sublimity and beauty; or had it been power on the one side, matched against grace on the other, the true lurking tendency of the thought would have been developed, and the sub-conscious purpose of the epigram would have fulfilled itself to the letter. _N.B._--It is not meant that _loftiness of thought_ and _majesty_ are expressions so entirely interchangeable, as that no shades of difference could be suggested; it is enough that these 'shades' are not substantial enough, or broad enough, to support the weight of opposition which the epigram assigns to them. _Grace_ and _elegance_, for instance, are far from being in all relations synonymous; but they are so to the full extent of any purposes concerned in this epigram. Nevertheless, it is probable enough that Dryden had moving in his thoughts a relation of the word _majesty_, which, if developed, would have done justice to his meaning. It was, perhaps, the decorum and sustained dignity of the _composition_--the workmanship apart from the native grandeur of the materials--the majestic style of the artistic treatment as distinguished from the original creative power--which Dryden, the translator of the Roman poet, familiar therefore with his weakness and with his strength, meant in this place to predicate as characteristically observable in Virgil. FOOTNOTE [1] '_Six planets_;'--No more had then been discovered. POPE'S RETORT UPON ADDISON. There is nothing extraordinary, or that could merit a special notice, in a simple case of oversight, or in a blunder, though emanating from the greatest of poets. But such a case challenges and forces our attention, when we know that the particular passage in which it occurs was wrought and burnished with excessive pains; or (which in this case is also known) when that particular passage is pushed into singular prominence as having obtained a singular success. In no part of his poetic mission did Pope so fascinate the gaze of his contemporaries as in his functions of satirist; which functions, in his latter years, absorbed all other functions. And one reason, I believe, why it was that the interest about Pope decayed so rapidly after his death (an accident somewhere noticed by Wordsworth), must be sought in the fact, that the most stinging of his personal allusions, by which he had given salt to his later writings, were continually losing their edge, and sometimes their intelligibility, as Pope's own contemporary generation was dying off. Pope alleges it as a palliation of his satiric malice, that it had been forced from him in the way of retaliation; forgetting that such a plea wilfully abjures the grandest justification of a satirist, viz., the deliberate assumption of the character as something corresponding to the prophet's mission amongst the Hebrews. It is no longer the _facit indignatio versum_. Pope's satire, where even it was most effective, was personal and vindictive, and upon that argument alone could not he philosophic. Foremost in the order of his fulminations stood, and yet stands, the bloody castigation by which, according to his own pretence, he warned and menaced (but by which, in simple truth, he executed judgment upon) his false friend, Addison. To say that this drew vast rounds of applause upon its author, and frightened its object into deep silence for the rest of his life, like the _Quos ego_ of angry Neptune, sufficiently argues that the verses must have ploughed as deeply as the Russian knout. Vitriol could not scorch more fiercely. And yet the whole passage rests upon a blunder; and the blunder is so broad and palpable, that it implies instant forgetfulness both in the writer and the reader. The idea which furnishes the basis of the passage is this: that the conduct ascribed to Addison is in its own nature so despicable, as to extort laughter by its primary impulse; but that this laughter changes into weeping, when we come to understand that the person concerned in this delinquency is Addison. The change, the transfiguration, in our mood of contemplating the offence, is charged upon the discovery which we are supposed to make as to the person of the offender; that which by its baseness had been simply comic when imputed to some corresponding author, passes into a tragic _coup-de-theatre_, when it is suddenly traced back to a man of original genius. The whole, therefore, of this effect is made to depend upon the sudden scenical transition from a supposed petty criminal to one of high distinction. And, meantime, no such stage effect had been possible, since the knowledge that a man of genius was the offender had been what we started with from the beginning. 'Our laughter is changed to tears,' says Pope, 'as soon as we discover that the base act had a noble author.' And, behold! the initial feature in the whole description of the case is, that the libeller was one whom 'true genius fired:' 'Peace to all such! But were there one whose mind True genius fires,' &c. Before the offence is described, the perpetrator is already characterized as a man of genius: and, _in spite of that knowledge_, we laugh. But suddenly our mood changes, and we weep, but why? I beseech you. Simply because we have ascertained the author to be a man of genius. 'Who would not laugh, if such a man there be? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?' The sole reason for weeping is something that we knew already before we began to laugh. It would not be right in logic, in fact, it would be a mis-classification, if I should cite as at all belonging to the same group several passages in Milton that come very near to Irish bulls, by virtue of distorted language. One reason against such a classification would lie precisely in that fact--viz., that the assimilation to the category of bulls lurks in the verbal expression, and not (as in Pope's case) amongst the conditions of the thought. And a second reason would lie in the strange circumstance, that Milton had not fallen into this snare of diction through any carelessness or oversight, but with his eyes wide open, deliberately avowing his error as a special elegance; repeating it; and well aware of splendid Grecian authority for his error, if anybody should be bold enough to call it an error. Every reader must be aware of the case-- 'Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve'-- which makes Adam one of his own sons, Eve one of her own daughters. This, however, is authorized by Grecian usage in the severest writers. Neither can it be alleged that these might be bold poetic expressions, harmonizing with the Grecian idiom; for Poppo has illustrated this singular form of expression in a prose-writer, as philosophic and austere as Thucydides; a form which (as it offends against logic) must offend equally in all languages. Some beauty must have been described in the idiom, such as atoned for its solecism: for Milton recurs to the same idiom, and under the same entire freedom of choice, elsewhere; particularly in this instance, which has not been pointed out: 'And never,' says Satan to the abhorred phantoms of Sin and Death, when crossing his path, 'And never saw till now Sight more detestable than him and thee.' Now, therefore, it seems, he _had_ seen a sight more detestable than this very sight. He now looked upon something more hateful than X Y Z. What was it? It was X Y Z. But the authority of Milton, backed by that of insolent Greece, would prove an overmatch for the logic of centuries. And I withdraw, therefore, from the rash attempt to quarrel with this sort of bull, involving itself in the verbal expression. But the following, which lies rooted in the mere facts and incidents, is certainly the most extraordinary _practical_ bull [1] that all literature can furnish. And a stranger thing, perhaps, than the oversight itself lies in this--that not any critic throughout Europe, two only excepted, but has failed to detect a blunder so memorable. All the rampant audacity of Bentley--'slashing Bentley'--all the jealous malignity of Dr. Johnson--who hated Milton without disguise as a republican, but secretly and under a mask _would_ at any rate have hated him from jealousy of his scholarship--had not availed to sharpen these practised and these interested eyes into the detection of an oversight which argues a sudden Lethean forgetfulness on the part of Milton; and in many generations of readers, however alive and awake with malice, a corresponding forgetfulness not less astonishing. Two readers only I have ever heard of that escaped this lethargic inattention; one of which two is myself; and I ascribe my success partly to good luck, but partly to some merit on my own part in having cultivated a habit of systematically accurate reading. If I read at all, I make it a duty to read truly and faithfully. I profess allegiance for the time to the man whom I undertake to study; and I am as loyal to all the engagements involved in such a contract, as if I had come under a _sacramentum militare_. So it was that, whilst yet a boy, I came to perceive, with a wonder not yet exhausted, that unaccountable blunder which Milton has committed in the main narrative on which the epic fable of the 'Paradise Lost' turns as its hinges. And many a year afterwards I found that Paul Richter, whose vigilance nothing escaped, who carried with him through life 'the eye of the hawk, and the fire therein,' had not failed to make the same discovery. It is this: The archangel Satan has designs upon man; he meditates his ruin; and it is known that he does. Specially to counteract these designs, and for no other purpose whatever, a choir of angelic police is stationed at the gates of Paradise, having (I repeat) one sole commission, viz., to keep watch and ward over the threatened safety of the newly created human pair. Even at the very first this duty is neglected so thoroughly, that Satan gains access without challenge or suspicion. That is awful: for, ask yourself, reader, how a constable or an inspector of police would be received who had been stationed at No. 6, on a secret information, and spent the night in making love at No. 15. Through the regular surveillance at the gates, Satan passes without objection; and he is first of all detected by a purely accidental collision during the rounds of the junior angels. The result of this collision, and of the examination which follows, is what no reader can ever forget--so unspeakable is the grandeur of that scene between the two hostile archangels, when the _Fiend_ (so named at the moment under the fine machinery used by Milton for exalting or depressing the ideas of his nature) finally takes his flight as an incarnation of darkness, 'And fled Murmuring; and with him fled the shades of night. The darkness flying with him, naturally we have the feeling that he _is_ the darkness, and that all darkness has some essential relation to Satan. But now, having thus witnessed his terrific expulsion, naturally we ask what was the sequel. Four books, however, are interposed before we reach the answer to that question. This is the reason that we fail to remark the extraordinary oversight of Milton. Dislocated from its immediate plan in the succession of incidents, that sequel eludes our notice, which else and in its natural place would have shocked us beyond measure. The simple abstract of the whole story is, that Satan, being ejected, and sternly charged under Almighty menaces not to intrude upon the young Paradise of God, 'rides with darkness' for exactly one week, and, having digested his wrath rather than his fears on the octave of his solemn banishment, without demur, or doubt, or tremor, back he plunges into the very centre of Eden. On a Friday, suppose, he is expelled through the main entrance: on the Friday following he re-enters upon the forbidden premises through a clandestine entrance. The upshot is, that the heavenly police suffer, in the first place, the one sole enemy, who was or could be the object of their vigilance, to pass without inquest or suspicion; thus they _inaugurate_ their task; secondly, by the merest accident (no thanks to their fidelity) they detect him, and with awful adjurations sentence him to perpetual banishment; but, thirdly, on his immediate return, in utter contempt of their sentence, they ignore him altogether, and apparently act upon Dogberry's direction, that, upon meeting a thief, the police may suspect him to be no true man; and, with such manner of men, the less they meddle or make, the more it will be for their honesty. FOOTNOTE. [1] It is strange, or rather it is _not_ strange, considering the feebleness of that lady in such a field, that Miss Edgeworth always fancied herself to have caught Milton in a bull, under circumstances which, whilst leaving the shadow of a bull, effectually disown the substance. 'And in the lowest deep a lower deep still opens to devour me.' This is the passage denounced by Miss Edgeworth. 'If it was already the lowest deep,' said the fair lady, 'how the deuce (no, perhaps it might be _I_ that said '_how the deuce_') could it open into a lower deep?' Yes, how could it? In carpentry, it is clear to my mind that it could _not_. But, in cases of deep imaginative feeling, no phenomenon is more natural than precisely this never-ending growth of one colossal grandeur chasing and surmounting another, or of abysses that swallowed up abysses. Persecutions of this class oftentimes are amongst the symptoms of fever, and amongst the inevitable spontaneities of nature. Other people I have known who were inclined to class amongst bulls Milton's all-famous expression of '_darkness visible_,' whereas it is not even a bold or daring expression; it describes a pure optical experience of very common occurrence. There are two separate darknesses or obscurities: first, that obscurity _by_ which you see dimly; and secondly, that obscurity _which_ you see. The first is the atmosphere through which vision is performed, and, therefore, part of the _subjective_ conditions essential to the act of seeing. The second is the _object_ of your sight. In a glass-house at night illuminated by a sullen fire in one corner, but else dark, you see the darkness massed in the rear as a black object. _That_ is the 'visible darkness.' And on the other hand, the murky atmosphere between you and the distant rear is not the object, but the medium, through or athwart which you descry the black masses. The first darkness is _subjective_ darkness; that is, a darkness in your own eye, and entangled with your very faculty of vision. The second darkness is perfectly different: it is _objective_ darkness; that is to say, not any darkness which affects or modifies your faculty of seeing either for better or worse; but a darkness which is the _object_ of your vision; a darkness which you see projected from yourself as a massy volume of blackness, and projected, possibly, to a vast distance. 
7293	----	Proofreading Team THE OPIUM HABIT, WITH SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE REMEDY. "After my death, I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified narrative of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful example."--COLERIDGE. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION A SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO ABANDON OPIUM DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER" OPIUM REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE WILLIAM BLAIR OPIUM AND ALCOHOL COMPARED INSANITY AND SUICIDE FROM AN ATTEMPT TO ABANDON MORPHINE A MORPHINE HABIT OVERCOME ROBERT HALL--JOHN RANDOLPH--WILLIAM WILBERFORCE WHAT SHALL THEY DO TO BE SAVED? OUTLINES OF THE OPIUM-CURE INTRODUCTION. This volume has been compiled chiefly for the benefit of opium-eaters. Its subject is one indeed which might be made alike attractive to medical men who have a fancy for books that are professional only in an accidental way; to general readers who would like to see gathered into a single volume the scattered records of the consequences attendant upon the indulgence of a pernicious habit; and to moralists and philanthropists to whom its sad stories of infirmity and suffering might be suggestive of new themes and new objects upon which to bestow their reflections or their sympathies. But for none of these classes of readers has the book been prepared. In strictness of language little medical information is communicated by it. Incidentally, indeed, facts are stated which a thoughtful physician may easily turn to professional account. The literary man will naturally feel how much more attractive the book might have been made had these separate and sometimes disjoined threads of mournful personal histories been woven into a more coherent whole; but the book has not been made for literary men. The philanthropist, whether a theoretical or a practical one, will find in its pages little preaching after his particular vein, either upon the vice or the danger of opium-eating. Possibly, as he peruses these various records, he may do much preaching for himself, but he will not find a great deal furnished to his hand, always excepting the rather inopportune reflections of Mr. Joseph Cottle over the case of his unhappy friend Coleridge. The book has been compiled for opium-eaters, and to their notice it is urgently commended. Sufferers from protracted and apparently hopeless disorders profit little by scientific information as to the nature of their complaints, yet they listen with profound interest to the experience of fellow-sufferers, even when this experience is unprofessionally and unconnectedly told. Medical empirics understand this and profit by it. In place of the general statements of the educated practitioner of medicine, the empiric encourages the drooping hopes of his patient by narrating in detail the minute particulars of analagous cases in which his skill has brought relief. Before the victim of opium-eating is prepared for the services of an intelligent physician he requires some stimulus to rouse him to the possibility of recovery. It is not the _dicta_ of the medical man, but the experience of the relieved patient, that the opium-eater, desiring--nobody but he knows how ardently--to enter again into the world of hope, needs, to quicken his paralyzed will in the direction of one tremendous effort for escape from the thick night that blackens around him. The confirmed opium-eater is habitually hopeless. His attempts at reformation have been repeated again and again; his failures have been as frequent as his attempts. He sees nothing before him but irremediable ruin. Under such circumstances of helpless depression, the following narratives from fellow-sufferers and fellow-victims will appeal to whatever remains of his hopeful nature, with the assurance that others who have suffered even as he has suffered, and who have struggled as he has struggled, and have failed again and again as he has failed, have at length escaped the destruction which in his own case he has regarded as inevitable. The number of confirmed opium-eaters in the United States is large, not less, judging from the testimony of druggists in all parts of the country as well as from other sources, than eighty to a hundred thousand. The reader may ask who make up this unfortunate class, and under what circumstances did they become enthralled by such a habit? Neither the business nor the laboring classes of the country contribute very largely to the number. Professional and literary men, persons suffering from protracted nervous disorders, women obliged by their necessities to work beyond their strength, prostitutes, and, in brief, all classes whose business or whose vices make special demands upon the nervous system, are those who for the most part compose the fraternity of opium-eaters. The events of the last few years have unquestionably added greatly to their number. Maimed and shattered survivors from a hundred battle-fields, diseased and disabled soldiers released from hostile prisons, anguished and hopeless wives and mothers, made so by the slaughter of those who were dearest to them, have found, many of them, temporary relief from their sufferings in opium. There are two temperaments in respect to this drug. With persons whom opium violently constricts, or in whom it excites nausea, there is little danger that its use will degenerate into a habit. Those, however, over whose nerves it spreads only a delightful calm, whose feelings it tranquillizes, and in whom it produces an habitual state of reverie, are those who should be upon their guard lest the drug to which in suffering they owe so much should become in time the direst of curses. Persons of the first description need little caution, for they are rarely injured by opium. Those of the latter class, who have already become enslaved by the habit, will find many things in these pages that are in harmony with their own experience; other things they will doubtless find of which they have had no experience. Many of the particular effects of opium differ according to the different constitutions of those who use it. In De Quincey it exhibited its power in gorgeous dreams in consequence of some special tendency in that direction in De Quincey's temperament, and not because dreaming is by any means an invariable attendant upon opium-eating. Different races also seem to be differently affected by its use. It seldom, perhaps never, intoxicates the European; it seems habitually to intoxicate the Oriental. It does not generally distort the person of the English or American opium-eater; in the East it is represented as frequently producing this effect. It is doubtful whether a sufficient number of cases of excess in opium-eating or of recovery from the habit have yet been recorded, or whether such as have been recorded have been so collated as to warrant a positive statement as to all the phenomena attendant upon its use or its abandonment. A competent medical man, uniting a thorough knowledge of his profession with educated habits of generalizing specific facts under such laws--affecting the nervous, digestive, or secretory system--as are recognized by medical science, might render good service to humanity by teaching us properly to discriminate in such cases between what is uniform and what is accidental. In the absence, however, of such instruction, these imperfect, and in some cases fragmentary, records of the experience of opium-eaters are given, chiefly in the language of the sufferers themselves, that the opium-eating reader may compare case with case, and deduce from such comparison the lesson of the entire practicability of his own release from what has been the burden and the curse of his existence. The entire object of the compilation will have been attained, if the narratives given in these pages shall be found to serve the double purpose of indicating to the beginner in opium-eating the hazardous path he is treading, and of awakening in the confirmed victim of the habit the hope that he may be released from the frightful thraldom which has so long held him, infirm in body, imbecile in will, despairing in the present, and full of direful foreboding for the future. In giving the subjoined narratives of the experience of opium-eaters, the compiler has been sorely tempted to weave them into a more coherent and connected story; but he has been restrained by the conviction that the thousands of opium-eaters, whose relief has been his main object in preparing the volume, will be more benefited by allowing each sufferer to tell his own story than by any attempt on his part to generalize the multifarious and often discordant phenomena attendant upon the disuse of opium. As yet the medical profession are by no means agreed as to the character or proper treatment of the opium disease. While medical science remains in this state, it would be impertinent in any but a professional person to attempt much more than a statement of his own case, with such general advice as would naturally occur to any intelligent sufferer. Very recently indeed, some suggestions for the more successful treatment of the habit have been discussed both by eminent medical men and by distinguished philanthropists. Could an Institution for this purpose be established, the chief difficulty in the way of the redemption of unhappy thousands would be obviated. The general outline of such a plan will be found at the close of the volume. It seems eminently deserving the profound consideration of all who devote themselves to the promotion of public morals or the alleviation of individual suffering. THE OPIUM HABIT. A SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO ABANDON OPIUM. In the personal history of many, perhaps of most, men, some particular event or series of events, some special concurrence of circumstances, or some peculiarity of habit or thought, has been so unmistakably interwoven and identified with their general experience of life as to leave no doubt in the mind of any one of the decisive influence which such causes have exerted. Unexaggerated narrations of marked cases of this kind, while adding something to our knowledge of the marvellous diversities of temptation and trial, of success and disappointment which make up the story of human life, are not without a direct value, as furnishing suggestions or cautions to those who may be placed in like circumstances or assailed by like temptations. The only apology which seems to be needed for calling the attention of the reader to the details which follow of a violent but successful struggle with the most inveterate of all habits, is to be found in the hope which the writer indulges, that while contributing something to the current amount of knowledge as to the horrors attending the habitual use of opium, the story may not fail to encourage some who now regard themselves as hopeless victims of its power to a strenuous and even desperate effort for recovery. Possibly the narrative may also not be without use to those who are now merely in danger of becoming enslaved by opium, but who may be wise enough to profit in time by the experience of another. A man who has eaten much more than half a hundredweight of opium, equivalent to more than a hogshead of laudanum, who has taken enough of this poison to destroy many thousand human lives, and whose uninterrupted use of it continued for nearly fifteen years, ought to be able to say something as to the good and the evil there is in the habit. It forms, however, no part of my purpose to do this, nor to enter into any detailed statement of the circumstances under which the habit was formed. I neither wish to diminish my own sense of the evil of such want of firmness as characterizes all who allow themselves to be betrayed into the use of a drug which possesses such power of tyrannizing over the most resolute will, nor to withdraw the attention of the reader from the direct lesson this record is designed to convey, by saying any thing that shall seem to challenge his sympathy or forestall his censures. It may, however, be of service to other opium-eaters for me to State briefly, that while endowed in most respects with uncommon vigor of any tendency to despondency or hypochondria, an unusual nervous sensibilitv, together with a constitutional tendency to a disordered condition of the digestive organs, strongly predisposed me to accept the fascination of the opium habit. The difficulty, early in life, of retaining food of any kind upon the stomach was soon followed by vagrant shooting pains over the body, which at a later day assumed a permanant chronic form. After other remedies had failed, the eminent physician under whose advice I was acting recommended opium. I have no doubt he acted both wisely and professionally in the prescription he ordered, but where is the patient who has learned the secret of substituting luxurious enjoyment in place of acute pain by day and restless hours by night, that can be trusted to take a correct measure of his own necessities? The result was as might have been anticipated: opium after a few months' use became indispensable. With the full consciousness that such was the case, came the resolution to break off the habit This was accomplished after an effort no more earnest than is within the power of almost any one to make. A recurrence of suffering more than usually severe led to a recourse to the same remedy, but in largely increased quantities. After a year or two's use the habit was a second time broken by another effort much more protracted and obstinate than the first. Nights made weary and days uncomfortable by pain once more suggested the same unhappy refuge, and after a struggle against the supposed necessity, which I now regard as half-hearted and cowardly, the habit was resumed, and owing to the peculiarly unfavorable state of the weather at the time, the quantity of opium necessary to alleviate pain and secure sleep was greater than ever. The habit of relying upon large doses is easily established; and, once formed, the daily quantity is not easily reduced. All persons who have long been accustomed to Opium are aware that there is a _maximum_ beyond which no increase in quantity does much in the further alleviation of pain or in promoting increased pleasurable excitement. This maximum in my own case was eighty grains, or two thousand drops of laudanum, which was soon attained, and was continued, with occasional exceptions, sometimes dropping below and sometimes largely rising above this amount, down to the period when the habit was finally abandoned. I will not speak of the repeated efforts that were made during these long years to relinquish the drug. They all failed, either through the want of sufficient firmness of purpose, or from the absence of sufficient bodily health to undergo the suffering incident to the effort, or from unfavorable circumstances of occupation or situation which gave me no adequate leisure to insure their success. At length resolve upon a final effort to emancipate myself from the habit. For two or three years previous to this time my general health had been gradually improving. Neuralgic disturbance was of less frequent occurrence and was less intense, the stomach retained its food, and, what was of more consequence, the difficulty of securing a reasonable amount of sleep had for the most part passed away. Instead of a succession of wakeful nights any serioious interruption of habitual rest occurred at infrequent intervals, and was usually limited to a single night. In addition to these hopeful indications in encouragement of a vigorous effort to abandon the habit, there were on the other hand certain warnings which could not safely be neglected. The stomach began to complain,--as well it might after so many years unnatural service,--that the daily task of disposing of a large mass of noxious matter constantly cumulating its deadly assaults upon the natural processes of life was getting to be beyond its powers. The pulse had become increasingly languid, while the aversion to labor of any kind seemed to be settling down into a chronic and hopeless infirmity. Some circumstances connected with my own situation pointed also to the appropriateness of the present time for an effort which I knew by the experience of others would make a heavy demand upon all one's fortitude, even when these circumstances were most propitious. At this period my time was wholly at my own disposal. My family was a small one, and I was sure of every accessory support I might need from them to tide me over what I hoped would prove only a temporary, though it might be a severe, struggle. The house I occupied was fortunately so situated that no outcry of pain, nor any extorted eccentricity of conduct, consequent upon the effort I proposed to make, could be observed by neighbors or by-passers. A few days before the task was commenced, and while on a visit to the capital of a neighboring State in company with a party of gentlemen from Baltimore, I had ventured upon reducing by one-quarter the customary daily allowance of eighty grains. Under the excitement of such an occasion I continued the experiment for a second day with no other perceptible effect than a restless indisposition to remain long in the same position. This, however, was a mere experiment, a prelude to the determined struggle I was resolved upon making, and to which I had been incited chiefly through the encouragement suggested by the success of De Quincey. There is a page in the "Confessions" of this author which I have no doubt has, been perused with intense interest by hundreds of opium-eaters. It is the page which gives in a tabular form the gradual progress he made in diminishing the daily quantity of laudanum to which he had long been accustomed. I had read and re-read with great care all that he had seen fit to record respecting his own triumph over the habit. I knew that he had made use of opium irregularly and at considerable intervals from the year 1804 to 1812, and that during this time opium had not become a daily necessity; that in the year 1813 he had become a confirmed opium-eater, "of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions;" that in the year 1821 he had published his "Confessions," in which, while leading the unobservant reader to think that he had mastered the habit, he had in truth only so far succeeded as to reduce his daily allowance from a quantity varying from fifty or sixty to one hundred and fifty grains, down to one varying from seven to twelve grains; that in the year 1822 an appendix was added to the "Confessions" which contained a tabular statement of his further progress toward an absolute abandonment of the drug, and indicating his gradual descent, day by day, for thirty-five days, when the reader is naturally led to suppose that the experiment was triumphantly closed by his entire disuse of opium. I had failed, however, to observe that a few pages preceding this detailed statement the writer had given a faint intimation that the experiment had been a more protracted one than was indicated by the table. I had also failed to notice the fact that no real progress had been made during the first four weeks of the attempt: the average quantity of laudanum daily consumed for the first week being one hundred and three drops; of the second, eighty-four drops; of the third, one hundred and forty-two drops; and of the fourth, one hundred and thirty-eight drops; and that in the fifth week the self-denial of more than three days had been rewarded with the indulgence of three hundred drops on the fourth. A careful comparison of this kind, showing that in an entire month the average of the first week had been but one hundred and three drops, while the average of the last had been one hundred and thirty-eight drops, and that in the fifth week a frantic effort to abstain wholly for three days had obliged him to use on the fourth more than double the quantity to which of late he had been accustomed, would have prevented the incautious conclusion, suggested by his table, that De Quincey made use of laudanum but on two occasions after the expiration of the fourth week. Whatever may have been the length of time taken by De Quincey "in unwinding to its last link the chain which bound" him, it is certain we have no means of knowing it from any thing he has recorded. Be it shorter or longer, his failure to state definitely the entire time employed in his experiment occasioned me much and needless suffering. I thought that if another could descend, without the experience of greater misery than De Quincey records, from one hundred and thirty drops of laudanum, equivalent to about five grains of opium, to nothing, in thirty-four or five days, and in this brief period abandon a habit of more than nine years' growth, a more resolved will might achieve the same result in the same number of days, though the starting-point in respect to aggregate quantity and to length of use was much greater. The object, therefore, to be accomplished in my own case was to part company forever with opium in thirty-five days, cost what suffering it might. On the 26th of November, in a half-desperate, half-despondent temper of mind, I commenced the long-descending _gradus_ which I had rapidly ascended so many years before. During this entire period the quantity consumed had been pretty uniformly eighty grains of best Turkey opium daily. Occasional attempts to diminish the quantity, but of no long continuance, and occasional overindulgence during protracted bad weather, furnished the only exceptions to the general uniformity of the habit. The experiment was commenced by a reduction the first day from eighty grains to sixty, with no very marked change of sensations; the second day the allowance was fifty grains, with an observable tendency toward restlessness, and a general uneasiness; the third day a further reduction of ten grains had diminished the usual allowance by one-half, but with a perceptible increase in the sense of physical discomfort. The mental emotions, however, were entirely jubilant The prevailing feeling was one of hopeful exultation. The necessity for eighty grains daily had been reduced to a necessity for only forty, and, therefore, one-half of the dreaded task seemed accomplished. It was a great triumph, and the remaining forty grains were a mere _bagatelle_, to be disposed of with the same serene self-control that the first had been. A weight of brooding melancholy was lifted from the spirits: the world wore a happier look. The only drawback to this beatific state of mind was a marked indisposition to remain quiet, and a restless aversion to giving attention to the most necessary duties. Two days more and I had come down to twenty-five grains. Matters now began to look a good deal more serious. Only fifteen of the last forty grains had been dispensed with; but this gain had cost a furious conflict. A strange compression and constriction of the stomach, sharp pains like the stab of a knife beneath the shoulder-blades, perpetual restlessness, an apparent prolongation of time, so much so that it seemed the day would never come to a close, an incapacity of fixing the attention upon any subject whatever, wandering pains over the whole body, the jaw, whenever moved, making a loud noise, constant iritability of mind and increased sensibility to cold, with alternations of hot flushes, were some of the phenomena which manifested themselves at this stage of the process. The mental elations of the first three days had become changed by the fifth into a state of high nervous excitement; so that while on the whole there was a prevailing hopefulness of temper, and even some remaining buoyancy of spirits, arising chiefly from the certainty that already the quantity consumed had been reduced by more than two-thirds, the conviction had, nevertheless, greatly deepened, that the task was like to prove a much more serious one than I had anticipated. Whether it was possible at present to carry the descent much further had become a grave question. The next day, however, a reduction of five grains was somehow attained; but it was a hard fight to hold my own within this limit of twenty grains. From this stage commenced the really intolerable part of the experience of an opium-eater retiring from service. During a single week, three-quarters of the daily allowance had been relinquished, and in this fact, at least, there was some ground for exultation. If what had been gained could only be secured beyond any peradventure of relapse, so far a positive success would be achieved. Had the experiment stopped here for a time until the system had become in some measure accustomed to its new habits, possibly the misery I subsequently underwent might some of it have been spared me. However this may be, I had not the patience of mind necessary for a protracted experiment. What I did must be done at once; if I would win I must fight for it, and must find the incentive to courage in the conscious desperation of the contest. From the point I had now reached until opium was wholly abandoned, that is, for a month or more, my condition may be described by the single phrase, intolerable and almost unalleviated wretchedness. Not for a waking moment during this time was the body free from acute pain; even in sleep, if that may be called sleep which much of it was little else than a state of diminished consciousness, the sense of suffering underwent little remission. What added to the aggravation of the case, was the profound conviction that no further effort of resolution was possible, and that every counteracting influence of this kind had been already wound up to its highest tension. I might hold my own; to do anything more I thought impossible. Before the month had come to an end, however, I had a good deal enlarged my conceptions of the possible resources of the will when driven into a tight corner. The only person outside of my family to whom I had confided the purpose in which I was engaged was a gentleman with whom I had some slight business relations, and who I knew would honor any demands I might make in the way of money. I had assured him that by New Year's Day I should have taken opium for the last time, and that any extravagance of expenditure would not probably last beyond that date. Upon this assurance, but confessedly having little or no faith in it, he asked me to dine with him on the auspicious occasion. So uncomfortable had my condition and feelings become in the rapid descent from eighty grains to twenty in less than a week, that I determined for the future to diminish the quantity by only a single grain daily, until the habit was finally mastered. In the twenty-nine days which now remained to the first of January, the nine days more than were needed, at the proposed rate of diminution, would, I thought, be sufficient to meet any emergency which might arise from occasional lapses of firmness in adhering to my self-imposed task, and more especially for the difficulties of the final struggle--difficulties I believe to be almost invariably incident to any strife which human nature is called upon to make in overcoming not merely an obstinate habit but the fascination of a long-entranced imagination. Up to this time I had taken the opium as I had always been accustomed to do, in a single dose on awaking in the morning. I now, however, divided the daily allowance into two portions, and after a day or two into four, and then into single grains. The chief advantage which followed this subdivision of the dose was a certain relief to the mind, which for a few days had become fully aware of the power which misery possesses of lengthening out the time intervening between one alleviation and another, and which shrank from the weary continuance of an entire day's painful and unrelieved abstinence from the accustomed indulgence. The first three days from the commencement of this grain by grain descent was marked by obviously increased impatience with any thing like contradiction or opposition, by an absolute aversion to reading, and by a very humiliating sense of the fact that the _vis vitae_ had somehow become pretty thoroughly eliminated from both mind and body. Still, when night came, as with long-drawn steps it did come, there was the consciousness that something had been gained, and that this daily gain, small as it was, was worth all it had cost. The tenth day of the experiment had reduced my allowance to sixteen grains. The effect of this rapid diminution of quantity was now made apparent by additional symptoms. The first tears extorted by pain since childhood were forced out as by some glandular weakness. Restlessness, both of body and mind, had become extreme, and was accompanied with a hideous and almost maniacal irritability, often so plainly without cause as sometimes to provoke a smile from those who were about me. For a few days a partial alleviation from too minute attention to the pains of the experiment were found in vigorous horseback exercise. The friend to whose serviceableness in pecuniary matters I have already alluded, offered me the use of a saddle-horse. The larger of the two animals which I found in his Stable was much too heroic in appearance for me in my state of exhaustion to venture upon. Besides this, his Roman nose and severe gravity of aspect somehow reminded me, whenever I entered his stall, of the late Judge ----, to whose Lectures on the Constitution I had listened in my youth, and in my then condition of moral humiliation I felt the impropriety of putting the saddle on an animal connected with such respectable associations. No such scruples interfered with the use of the other animal, which was kept chiefly, I believe, for servile purposes. He was small and mean-looking--his foretop and mane in a hopeless tangle, with hay-seed on his eyelids, and damp straws scattered promiscuously around his body. Inconsiderable as this animal was, both in size and action, he was almost too much for me, in the weak state to which I was now reduced. This much, however, I owe him; disreputable-looking as he was, he was still a something upon whidi my mind could rest as a point of diversion from myself--a something outside of my own miseries. At this time the sense of physical exhaustion had become so great that it required an effort to perform the most common act. The business of dressing was a serious tax upon the energies. To put on a coat, or draw on a boot, was no light labor, and was succeeded by such a feeling of prostration as required the morning before I could master sufficient energy to venture upon the needed exercise. The distance to my friend's stable was trifling. Sometimes I would find there the negro man to whose care the horses were entrusted, but more frequently he was absent. A feeling of humiliation at being seen by any one at a loss how to mount a horse of so diminutive proportions, would triumph over the sense of bodily weakness whenever he was present to bridle and saddle him. Whenever he was not at hand the task of getting the saddle on the pony's back was a long and arduous one. As for lifting it from its hook and throwing it to its place, I could as easily have thrown the horse itself over the stable. The only way in which it could be effected was by first pushing the saddle from its hook, checking its fall to the floor by the hand, and then resting till the violent action of the heart had somewhat abated; next, with occasional failures, to throw it over the edge of the low manger; then an interval of panting rest. Shortening the halter so far as to bring the pony's head close to the manger, next enabled me easily to push him into a line nearly parallel with it, leaving me barely space enough to pass between. By lengthening the stirrup strap I was enabled to get it across his neck, and by much pulling, finally haul the saddle to its proper place. By a kind of desperation of will I commonly succeeded, though by no means always. Sometimes the mortification and rage at a failure so contemptible assured success on a second trial, with apparently less expenditure of exertion than at first. Occasionally, however, I was forced to call for assistance from sheer exhaustion. The bridling was comparatively an easy matter; with his head so closely tied to the manger little scope was left for dodging. In the irritable condition I was now in, the most trifling opposition made me angry, and anger gave me strength; and in this sudden vigor of mind the issue of our daily struggle was, I believe, with a single exception, on my side. When I led him into the yard, the insignificance of his appearance, in contrast with the labor it had cost me to get him there, was enough to make any one laugh, excepting perhaps a person suffering the punishment I was then undergoing. Mounting the animal called for a final struggle of determination with weakness. A stone next the fence was the chief reliance in this emergency. It placed me nearly on a level with the stirrup, while the fence enabled me to steady myself with my hand and counteract the tremulousness of the knees, which made mounting so difficult. On one occasion, however, my dread of being observed induced me to make too great an effort. Hearing some one approach, I attempted to raise myself in the stirrup without the aid of stone or fence, but it was more than I could manage. Hardly had I succeeded in raising myself from the ground when my extreme feebleness was manifest, and I fell prostrate upon my back. With the help of the colored woman, the astonished witness of my fall, I finally succeeded in getting upon the horse. Once seated, however, I felt like another person. The vigorous application of a whip, heartily repeated for a few strokes, would arouse the pony into a sullen canter, out of which he would drop with a demonstrative suddenness that made it difficult to keep my seat. In this way considerable relief was obtained for several days from the exasperations produced by the long continuance of pain. After about a fortnight's use of the animal, and when I had learned to be content with half a dozen grains of opium daily, I found myself too weak and helpless to venture on his back, and thus our acquaintance terminated. As this is the first, and probably the last appearance of my equine friend in print, I may as well say that he was sold a short time afterward in the Fifth Street Horse Market, for the sum of forty-three dollars. This is but a meagre price, but the horse had not then become historical. For the week I was dropping from sixteen grains to nine the addition of new symptoms was slight, but the aggravation of the pain previously endured was marked. The feeling of bodily and mental wretchedness was perpetual, while the tedium of life and occasional vague wishes that it might somehow come to an end were not infrequent. The chief difficulty was to while away the hours of day-light. My rest at night had indeed become imperfect and broken, but still it was a kind of sleep for several hours, though neither very refreshing nor very sound. Those who were about me say that I was in constant motion, but of this I was unconscious. I only recollect that wakening was a welcome relief from the troubled activity of my thoughts. After my morning's ride I usually walked slowly and hesitatingly to the city, but as this occupied only an hour the remaining time hung wearily upon my hands. I could not read--I could hardly sit for five consecutive minutes. Many suffering hours I passed daily either in a large public library or in the book-stores of the city, listlessly turning over the leaves of a book and occasionally reading a few lines, but too impatient to finish, a page, and rarely apprehending what I was reading. The entire mental energies seemed to be exhausted in the one consideration--how not to give in to the tumult of pain from which I was suffering. Up to this time I had from boyhood made a free use of tobacco. The struggle with opium in which I was now so seriously engaged had repeatedly suggested the propriety of including the former also in the contest. While the severity of the struggle would, I supposed, be enhanced, the self-respect and self-reliance, the opposition and even obduracy of the will would, I hoped, be enough increased as not seriously to hazard the one great object of leaving off opium forevcr. Still I dreaded the experiment of adding a feather's weight to the sufferings I was then enduring. An accidental circumstance, however, determined me upon making the trial; but to my surprise, no inconvenience certainly, and scarce a consciousness of the deprivation accompanied it. The opium suffering was so overwhelming that any minor want was aimost inappreciable. The next day brought me down to nine grains of Opium. It was now the sixteenth day of December, and I had still fifteen days remaining before the New Year would, as I had resolved, bring me to the complete relinquishment of the drug. The three days which succeeded the disuse of tobacco caused no apparent intensification of the suffering I had been experiencing. On the fourth day, however, and for the fortnight which succeeded, the agony of pain was inexpressibly dreadful, except for the transient intervals when the effects of the opium were felt. For a few days I had been driven to the alternative of using brandy or increasing the dose of opium. I resorted to the former as the least of the two evils. In the condition I was now in it caused no perceptible exhilaration. It did however deaden pain, and made endurance possible. Especially it helped the weary nights to pass away. At this time an entirely new series of phenomena presented themselves. The alleviation caused by brandy was of short continuance. After a few days' use, sleep for any duration, with or without stimulants, was an impossibility. The sense of exhausting pain was unremitted day and night. The irritability both of mind and body was frightful. A perpetual stretching of the joints followed, as though the body had been upon the rack, while acute pains shot through the limbs, only sufficiently intermitting to give place to a sensation of nerveless helplessness. Impatience of a state of rest seemed now to have become chronic, and the only relief I found was in constant though a very uncertain kind of walking which daily threatened to come to an end from general debility. Each morning I would lounge around the house as long as I could make any pretext for doing so, and then ride to the city, for at this time the mud was too deep to think of walking. Once on the pavements, I would wander around the streets in a weary way for two or three hours, frequently resting in some shop or store wherever I could find a seat, and only anxious to get through another long, never-ending day. The disuse of tobacco, together with the consequences of the diminished use of opium, had now induced a furious appetite. Dining early at a restaurant of rather a superior character, where bread, crackers, pickles, etc., were kept on the table in much larger quantities than it was supposed possible for one individual to need, my hunger had become so extreme that I consumed not only all for which I had specially called, but usually every thing else upon the table, leaving little for the waiter to remove except empty dishes and his own very apparent astonishment. This, it should be understood, was a surreptitious meal, as my own dinner-hour was four o'clock, at which time I was as ready to do it justice as though innocent of all food since a heavy breakfast. The hours intervening between this first and second dinner it was difficult to pass away. The ability to read even a newspaper paragraph had ceased for a number of days. From habit, indeed, I continued daily to wander into several of the city book-stores and into the public library, but the only use I was able to make of their facilities consisted in sitting, but with frequent change of chairs, and looking listlessly around me. The one prevailing feeling now was to get through, somehow or anyhow, the experiment I was suffering under. Early in the trial my misgivings as to the result had been frequent; but after the struggle had become thoroughly an earnest one, a kind of cast-iron determination made me sure of a final triumph. The more the agony of pain seemed intolerable, the more seemed to deepen the certainty of my conviction that I should conquer. I thought at times that I could not survive such wretchedness, but no other alternative for many days presented itself to my mind but that of leaving off opium or dying. I recall, indeed, a momentary exception, but the relaxed resolution lasted only as the lightning-flash lasts, though like the lightning it irradiated for a brilliant instant the tumult that was raging within me. For several days previous to this transient weakness the weather had been heavy and lowering, rain falling irregularly, alternating with a heavy Scottish mist. During one of the last days of this protracted storm my old nervous difficulty returned in redoubled strength. Commencing in the shoulder, with its hot needles it crept over the neck and speedily spread its myriad fingers of fire over the nerves that gird the ear, now drawing their burning threads and now vibrating the tense agony of these filaments of sensation. By a leap it next mastered the nerves that surround the eye, driving its forked lightning through each delicate avenue into the brain itself, and confusing and confounding every power of thought and of will. This is neuralgia--such neuralgia as sometimes drives sober men in the agony of their distress into drunkenness, and good men into blasphemy. While suffering under a paroxysm of this kind, rendered all the more difficult to endure from the exhausted state of the body--in doubt even, at intervals, whether my mind was still under my own control--an impulse of almost suicidal despair suggested the thought, "Go back to opium; you can not stand this." The temptation endured but for a moment, "No, I have suffered too much, and I can not go back. I had rather die;" and from that moment the possibility of resuming the habit passed from my mind forever. It was at night, however, that the suffering from this change of habit became most unendurable. While the day-light lasted it was possible to go out-of-doors, to sit in the sunlight, to walk, to do something to divert attention from the exhausted and shattered body; but when darkness fell, and these resources failed, nothing remained except a patient endurance with which to combat the strange torment. The only disposition toward sleep was now limited to the early evening. Double dinners, together with the disuse of tobacco, began at this time to induce a fullness of habit in spite of bodily pain. In addition to this, the liver was seriously affected--which seems to be a concomitant of the rapid disuse of opium--and a tendency to heavy drowsiness resulted, as usually happens when this organ is disordered. As early as six or seven o'clock an unnatural heaviness would oppress the senses, shutting out the material world, but not serving wholly to extinguish the consciousness of pain, and which commonly lasted for an hour or two. For no longer period could sleep be induced upon any terms. During these wretched weeks the moments seemed to prolong themselves into hours, and the hours into almost endless durations of time. The monotonous sound of the ticking clock often became unendurable. The calmness of its endlessly-repeated beats was in jarring discord with my own tumultuous sensations. At times it seemed to utter articulate sounds. "Ret-ri-bu-tion" I recollect as being a not uncommon burden of its song. As the racked body, and the mind, possibly beginning to be diseased, became intolerant of the odious sound, the motion of the clock was sometimes stopped, but the silence which succeeded was even worse to the disordered imagination than the voices which had preceded it. With the eyes closed in harmony with the deadly stillness, all created nature seemed annihilated, except my single, suffering self, lying in the midst of a boundless void. If the eyes were opened, the visible world would return, but peopled with sights and sounds that made the misty vastness less intolerable. There appeared to be nothing in these sensations at all approaching the phenomena exhibited in delirium tremens. On the contrary, the mind was always and perfectly aware, except for the instant, of the unreal nature of these deceptions and illusions. A single case will sufficiently illustrate the nature of some of these apparitions. In the absence of sleep, and while engaged as was not unusual at this period in the perpetration of doggerel verse, the irritation of the stomach became intolerable. The sensation seemed similar to what. I had read of the final gnawings of hunger in persons dying of starvation; a new vitality appeared to be imparted to the organ, revealing to the consciousness a capacity for suffering previously unsuspected. In the earlier stages, this feeling, which did not exhibit itself till somewhat late in the process of leaving off opium, was marked by an insatiable craving for stimulus of some sort, and a craving which would hardly take denial. While suffering in this way intolerably on one occasion, and after having attempted in vain to find some possible alleviation suggested in the pages of De Quincey, which lay near me, I threw myself back on the bed with the old resolution to fight it out. Almost immediately an animal like a weasel in shape, but with the neck of a crane and covered with brilliant plumage, appeared to spring from my breast to the floor. A venerable Dutch market-woman, of whom I had been in the habit of purchasing celery, seemed to intervene between me and the animal, begging me not to look at it, and covering it with her apron. Just as I was about to remonstrate against her interference, something seemed to give way in the chest and the violence of the pain suddenly abated. It may aid the reader to form some adequate notion of the dreary length to which these nights drew themselves along, to mention that on one occasion, wearied out and disgusted with such illusions, I resolved neither to look at the clock nor open my eyes for the next two hours. It then wanted ten minutes to one; at ten minutes to three my compact with myself would close. For what seemed thousands upon thousands of times I listened to the clock's steady ticking. I heard it repeat with murderous iteration, "Ret-ri-bu-tion," varied occasionally, under some new access of pain, with other utterances. Though ordinarily so little endowed with the poetic gift as never to have attempted to write a line of verse, yet at this time, and for a few days previous, I had experienced a strange development of the rhythmical faculty, and on this particular occasion I made verses, such as they were, with incredible ease and rapidity. I remember being greatly troubled by the necessity for a popular national hymn, and manufactured several with extempore rapidity. Had their merit at all corresponded with the frightful facility with which they were composed, they would have won universal popularity. Unfortunately, the effusions were never written down, and can not, therefore, be added to that immense mass of trash which demonstrates the still possible advent of a true American _Marseillaise_. With these tasks accomplished, and with a suspicion that the allotted hours must have long expired, I would yet remind myself that I was in a condition to exaggerate the lapse of time; and then, to give myself every assurance of fidelity to my purpose, I would start off on a new term of endurance. I seemed to myself to have borne the penance for hours, to have made myself a shining example of what a resolute will can do under circumstances the most inauspicious. At length, when certain that the time must have much more than expired, and with no little elation over the happy result of the experiment, I looked up to the clock and found it to be just three minutes past one! Little as the mind had really accomplished, the sense of its activity in these few minutes had been tremendous. Measuring time by the conscious succession of ideas may, if I may say it parenthetically, be no more than the same infirmity of our limited human faculties which just now is leading so many men of science, consciously or unconsciously, to recognize in Nature co-ordinate gods, self-subsisting and independent of the ever-living and all-present God. During the five days in which I was descending from the use of six grains of opium to two, the indications of the changes going on in the system were these: The gnawing sensation in the stomach continued and increased; the plethoric feeling was unabated, the pulse slow and heavy, usually beating about forty-seven or forty-eight pulsations to the minute; the blood of the whole system seemed to be driven to the extremities of the body; my face had become greatly flushed; the fingers were grown to the size of thumbs, while they, together with the palms of the hands and the breast, parted with their cuticle in long strips. The lower extremities had become hard, as through the agency of some compressed fluid. A prickling sensation over the body, as if surcharged with electricity, and accompanied with an apparent flow of some hot liquid down the muscles of the arms and legs, exhibited itself at this time. A constant perspiration of icy coldness along the spine had also become a conspicuous element in this strange aggregation of suffering. The nails of the fingers were yellow and dead-looking, like those of a corpse; a kind of glistening leprous scales formed over the hands; a constant tremulousncss pervaded the whole system, while separate small vibrations of the fibres on the back of the hand were plainly visible to the eye. To these symptoms should be added a dimness of sight often so considerable as to prevent the recognition of objects even at a short distance. With an experience of which this is only a brief outline, Christmas Day found me using but two grains of opium. Seven days still remained to me before I was to be brought by my pledge to myself to the last use of the drug. For several days previous to this I had abandoned my bed, through apprehension of falling whenever partial sleep left the tumbling and tossing body exempt from the control of the will, and had betaken myself to a low couch made up before the fire, with a second bed on the floor by its side. The necessity for such precaution was repeatedly indicated, but through the kindest care of those whose solicitude never ceased, and who added inexpressibly to this kindness by controlling as far as possible every appearance of solicitude, no injury resulted. Under the accumulated agony of this part of the trial I began to fear that my mind might give way. I was conscious of occasional fury of temper under very slight provocation. An expressman had charged me what was really an extortionate sum for bringing out a carriage from the city. I can laugh now over the absurd way in which I attacked him, not so much I am sure to save the overcharge as to get rid on so legitimate an object of my accumulated irritability. After nearly an hour's angry dispute, in which I watched successfully and with a malicious ingenuity for any opening through which I could enrage him, and for doing which I am certain he would forgive me if he had known how much I was suffering, he at last gave up the contest by exclaiming, "For heaven's sake give me any thing you please--only let me go!" I had not only saved my money, but felt myself greatly refreshed at finding there was so much life left in me. It should have been stated before, that when the daily allowance had been reduced to six grains that quantity was divided into twelve pills, and that as this was diminished the size of the pills became gradually smaller till each of them only represented an eighth of a grain. As the daily amount of opium became smaller, although its general effect on the system was necessarily diminished, the conscious relief obtained from each of its fractional parts was for a few minutes more apparent than when these sub-divisions were first made. In this way it was possible so to time the effect as to throw their brief anodyne relief upon the dinner-hour or any other time when it might be convenient to have the agony of the struggle a little alleviated. While I am not desirous of going into needless detail respecting all the particular phenomena of the process through which I was now passing, it may yet give the reader a more definite idea of the extremely nervous state to which I was reduced, if I mention that so nearly incapable had my hand become of holding a pen, that whenever it was absolutely necessary for me to write a few lines I could only manage it by taking the pen in one quivering hand, then grasp it with the other to give it a little steadiness, watching for an interval in the nervous twitching of the arm and hand, and then, making an uncertain dash at the paper, scrawl a word or two at long intervals. In this way I continued for several weeks to prepare the few brief notes I was obliged to write. My signature at this period I regard with some curiosity and more pride. It is certainly better than that of Guido Faux, affixed to his examination after torture, though it is hardly equal to the signature of Stephen Hopkins to the Declaration of Independence. Christmas Day found me in a deplorable condition. No symptom of dissolving nature seemed alleviated; indeed the aggravation of the previous ones, especially of the already unendurable irritation of the stomach, was very obvious. In addition to this, the protracted wakefulness at night began to tell upon the brain, and I resolved to make my case known to a physician. I should have done this long before, but I had been deterred by two things--a long-settled conviction that all recovery from such habits must be essentially the patient's own resolute act, and my misfortune in never having found among my medical friends any one who had made the opium disease a special study, or who knew very much about it. The weather was excessively disagreeable, the heavens, about forty feet off, distilling the finest and most penetrating kind of moisture, while the limestone soil under the influence of the long rain had made walking almost impossible. With frantic impatience I waited until an omnibus made its appearance long after it was due, but crowded outside and in. The only unoccupied spot was the step of the carriage. How in my enfeebled condition I could hold on to this jolting standing-place for half an hour was a mystery I could not divine. With many misgivings I mounted the step, and by rousing all my energies contrived for a few minutes to retain my foot-hold. My knees seemed repeatedly ready to give way beneath me, my sight became dim, and my brain was in a whirl; but I still held on. I would gladly have left the omnibus, but I was certain that I should fall if I removed my hands from the frame-work of the door by which I was holding on. At length, a middle-aged Irish woman who had been observing me said, "You look very pale, Sir; I am afraid you are sick. You must take my seat." I thanked her, but told her I feared I had not strength enough to step inside. Two men helped me in, and a few minutes afterward an humble woman was kneeling in her wet clothing in the Church of St. ----, not the less penetrated, I trust, with the divine spirit of that commemorative day by her self-denying kindness to a stranger in his extremity. When the paved sidewalk was at last reached I started, after a few minutes' rest, in search of a physician. Purposely selecting the least-frequented streets, in dread of falling if obliged to turn from a direct course, as might be necessary in a crowded thoroughfare, I walked down to the office of the medical man whom I wished to consult; but when I arrived it seemed to me that my case was beyond human aid, and I walked on. I can, perhaps, find no better place than this in which to call the distinct attention of opium-eaters who may be induced to start out on their own reformation, to the all-important fact that no part of the body will be found so little affected by the rapid disuse of opium as the muscles used in walking. I am no physiologist, and do not pretend to explain it, but it is a most fortunate circumstance that in the general chaos and disorder of the rest of the system, the ability to walk, on which so much of the possibility of recovery rests, is by far the least affected of all the physical powers. During the morning, however, my wretchedness drove me again to the office of the same physician. He listened courteously to my statement; said it was a very serious case, but outside of any reliable observation of his own, and recommended me to consult a physician of eminence residing in quite a different part of the city. He also expressed the hope, though I thought in no very confident tone, that I might be successful, and pretending to shut the door, watched my receding footsteps till I turned a distant corner. I now pass the house of the other physician to whom I was recommended to apply, several times every week, and I often moralize over the apprehension and anxieties with which I then viewed the two or three steps which led to his dwelling. When I arrived opposite his house I stopped and calculated the chances of mounting these steps without falling. I first rested my hand upon the wall and then endeavored to lift my feet upon the second step, but I had not the strength for such an exertion. I thought of crawling to the door, but this was hardly a decorous exhibition for the most fashionable street of the city, filled just then with gayly-dressed ladies. Why I did not ask some gentleman to aid me I can not now recall. I only recollect waiting for several minutes in blank dismay over the seeming impossibility of ever entering the door before me. Finally I went to the curbstone and walked as rapidly and steadily as possible to the lower step, and summoning all my energies made a plunge upward and fortunately caught the door-knob. The physician was at dinner, which gave me some time to recover myself from the agitation into which I had been thrown. After I had narrated my case with special reference to the suspicion of internal inflammation and its possible effect upon the brain, he assured me that no danger of the kind needs to be anticipated. He hoped I might succeed in my purpose, but thought it doubtful. An uncle of his own, a clergyman of some reputation, had died in making the effort. However, if I would take care of my own resolution, he would answer for my continued sanity. He prescribed some preparation of valerian and red pepper, I think, which I used for a week with little appreciable benefit. Finding no great relief from this prescription, or from those of other medical men whom for a few days about this time I consulted, and feeling a constant craving for something bitter, I at last prescribed for myself. Passing a store where liquor was sold, my eye accidentally rested upon a placard in the window which read "Stoughton's Bitters." This preparation gave me momentary relief, and the only appreciable relief I found in medicine during the experiment. The nights now began to bring new apprehensions. A constant dread haunted my mind, in spite of the physician's assurances, that my brain might give way from the excitement under which I labored. I was especially afraid of some sudden paroxysm of mania, under the influence of which I might do myself unpremeditated injury. I never feared any settled purpose of self-injury, but I had become nervously apprehensive of possible wayward and maniacal impulses which might result in acts of violence. My previous business had frequently detained me in the city till a late hour, sometimes as late as midnight. A part of the road that led to my house was quite solitary, with here and there a dwelling or store of the lowest kind. A railroad in process of construction had drawn to particular points on the road small collections of hovels, many of which were whisky-shops, and past these noisy drinking-places it was considered hazardous to walk alone at a late hour. In consequence of the bad reputation of this neighborhood I had purchased a large pistol which I kept ready for an emergency. Now, however, this pistol began to rest heavily upon my mind. The situation of my house was peculiarly favorable for the designs of any marauder. Directly back of it a solitary ravine extended for half a mile or more until it opened upon a populous suburb of the city. This suburb was largely occupied by persons engaged in navigation, or connected with boat-building, or by day-laborers, representing among them many nationalities. The winter of which I am writing was one of unusual stagnation in business and a hard one for the poor to get over. In the nervously susceptible state of my mind at this time, this ravine became a serious discomfort. When the stillness of night settled within and around the house, the rustling of leaves and the distant foot-falls in the ravine became distinctly audible. By some fancy of Judge ----, who built it, the house had no less than seven outside entrances. At intervals I would hear burglars at one of the doors, then at another, nearer or more remote: the prying of levers, the sound of boring, the stealthy footsteps, the carefully-raised window, the heavy breathing of an intruder. Then came the appalling sense of some strange presence, where no outward indication of such presence could be perceived, followed by gliding shaddos revealed by the occasional flicker of the waning fire. Illusions of this nature served to keep the blood at feverheat during the hours of darkness. Night after night the pistol was placed beneath the pillow in readiness for these ghostly intruders. A few days, however, brought other apprehensions worse than those of thieves and burglars. The uncontrollable exasperation of the temper obliged me at length to draw the charge from the pistol, through fear of yielding to some sudden impulse of despair. I had also put out of reach my razors, a hammer, and whatever else might serve as an impromptu means of violence. I remember the grim satisfaction with which I looked upon the brass ornaments of the bedroom fire-place, and reflected that, if worse came to worst, I was not wholly without a resource with which to end my sufferings. For nearly a fortnight previously I had refrained from shaving, dreading I scarce knew what. The day succeeding Christmas I rode to the city and walked the length of innumerable by-streets as my weakness would allow. When too exhausted to walk further, and looking for some place of rest, I observed a barber's sign suspended over a basement room. Fortunately the barber stood in the door-way and helped me to descend the half-dozen stone steps which led to his shop. I told the man to cut my hair, shave me, and shampoo my head. As he began his manipulations it seemed as though every separate hair was endowed with an intense vitality. It was impossible to refrain from mingled screams and groans as I repeatedly caught his arm and obliged him to desist. Luckily the barher was a man of sense, and by his extreme gentleness contrived in the course of an hour to calm down my excitement. When he had finished his work the sense of relief and refreshment was astonishing. In this barber-shop I learned for the first time in what the perfection of earthly happiness consists. The sudden cessation of protracted and severe pain brings with it so exquisite a sense of enjoyment that I do not believe that successful ambition, or requited love, or the gratification of the wildest wishes for wealth, has a happiness to bestow at all comparable to the calm, contented, all-satisfying happiness that comes from a remission of intolerable pain. For the first time in a month I felt an emotion that could be called positively pleasant. As I left the shop I needed no assistance in reaching the sidewalk, and waiked the streets for an hour or two with something of an assured step. Among other indications of the change taking place at this time in the system was the increased freezing perspiration perpetually going on, especially down the spine. This sense of dampness and icy coldness has now continued for many months, and for nearly a year was accompanied with a heavy cold. During the opium-eating years I do not remember to have been affected at all in this latter way; but a severe cold at this time settled upon the lungs, one indication of which was frequent sternutation, consequent apparently upon the inflammation of the mucous membrane. In the entire week from Christmas to New Year's the progress in abandonment of opium was but a single grain. I am sure there was no want of resolution at this trying time. Day by day I exhausted all my resources in the vain endeavor to get on with half, three-quarters, even seven-eighths of a grain; but moans and groans, and biting the tongue till the blood came, as it repeatedly did, would not carry me over the twenty-four hours without the full grain. It seemed as if tortured nature would collapse under any further effort to bring the matter to a final issue. Brandy and bitters after a few day's use had been abandoned, under the apprehension that they were connected with the tendency to internal inflammation which I have noticed as possibly affecting the brain. For a day or two I resorted to ale, but a disagreeable sweetness about it induced the substitution of Schenck beer, a weak kind of _lager_. This I found satisfied the craving for a bitter liquid, and it became for two or three weeks my chief drink. I should have mentioned that the day subsequent to the disuse of tobacco I had also given up tea and coffee, partly from a disposition to test the strength of my resolution, and partly from the belief that they might have some connection with a constant sensation in the mouth as if salivated with mercury. I soon learned that the real difficulty lay in the liver, and that this organ is powerfully affected in persons abandoning the long-continued use of opium. Had I known this fact at an earlier day it would have been of service in teaching me to control the diseased longing for rich and highly-seasoned food which had now become a passion. Eat as much as I would, however, the sense of hunger never left me; and this diseased craving, in ignorance of its injurious effects, was gratified in a way that might have taxed unimpaired powers of digestion. At length the long-anticipated New Year's Day, on which I was to be emancipated forever from the tyranny of opium, arrived. For five weeks of such steady suffering as the wealth of all the world would not induce me to encounter a second time, I had kept my eye steadily fixed upon this day as the beginning of a new life. This was also the day on which I was to dine with my friend. As the dinner-hour approached it became evident that no opium meant no dinner, and a little later, that dinner or no dinner the opium was still a necessity. A half grain I thought might carry me through the day, but in this I was mistaken. As I lay upon my friend's sofa, suffering from a strange medley of hunger, pain, and weakness, it seemed that years must elapse before the system could regain its tone or the bodily sensations become at all endurable. Soon after dinner I felt obliged to take another half-grain. My humiliation in failing to triumph when and how I had resolved to do, was excessive. In spite of the strongest resolutions, I was still an opium-eater. I somehow felt that after all I had gone through I ought, to have succeeded. I was in no mood to speculate about the causes of the failure; it was enough to know that I had failed, and what was worse, that apparently nothing whatever had been gained in the last four days. While I certainly felt no temptation to give in, I thought it possible that some of the functions of the body, from the long use of opium, might have completely lost their powers of normal action, and that I should be obliged to continue a very moderate use of the drug during the remainder of my life. I saw, in dismal perspective, that small fractional part of the opium of years which was now represented by a single grain, looming up in endless distance, not unlike that puzzling metaphysical necessity in the perpetual subdivision of a unit, which, carried as far as it may be, always leaves a final half undisposed of. But in this I did myself injustice. I had really gained much in these few days, and the proof of it lay in the use of but half a grain on the day which succeeded New Year's. The third day of January, greatly to my surprise, a quarter-grain I found carried me through the twenty-four hours with apparently some slight remission of suffering. As I now look back upon it, the worst of the experiment lay in the three weeks intervening between the 10th and the 31st of December. So far as mere pain of body was concerned, there was little to choose between the agony of one day and another; but the apprehension that insanity might set in, certainly aggravated the distress of the later stages of the trial. When a man knows that he is practicing self-control to the very utmost, and holding himself up steadily to his work in spite of the gravest discouragements, the consciousness that a large vacuum is being gradually formed in his brain is not exhilarating. The next day--to me a very memorable one--the fourth of January, I sat for most of the day rocking backward and forward on a sofa or a chair, speaking occasionally a few words in a low sepulchral voice, but with the one bitter feeling, penetrating my whole nature, that come what would, on that day _I would not_. When the clock struck twelve at midnight, and I knew that for the first time in many years I had lived for an entire day without opium, it excited no surprise or exultation. The capacity for an emotion of any kind was exhausted. I seemed as little capable of a sentiment as a man well could be, this side of his winding-sheet. I knew, of course, that in these forty days save one, I had worked out the problem, How to leave off opium, and that I had apparently attained a final deliverance: but it was several weeks before I appreciated with any confidence the completion of the task I had undertaken. Although the opium habit was broken, it was only to leave me in a condition of much feebleness and suffering. I could not sleep, I could not sit quietly, I could not lie in any one posture for many minutes together. The nervous system was thoroughly deranged. Weak as I had become, I felt a continual desire to walk. The weather was unfavorable, but I managed to get several miles of exercise almost daily. But this relief was limited to four or five hours at most, and left the remainder of the day a weary weight upon my hands. The aversion to reading had become such that some months elapsed before I took up a book with any pleasure. Even the daily papers were more than I could well fix my attention upon, except in the briefest and most cursory way. Within a week, however, the sense of acute pain rapidly diminished, but the irritability, impatience, and incapacity to do any thing long remained unrelieved. The disordered liver became apparently more disordered with the progress of time, producing such effects upon the bowels as may with more fitness be told a physician than recorded here. The tonsils of the throat were swollen, the throat itself inflamed, while the chest was penetrated with what seemed like pulsations of prickly heat. There was also a sense of fullness in the muscles of the arms and legs which seemed to be permeated, if I may so express it, with heated electricity. The general condition of the nervous system will be sufficiently indicated by the statement that it was between three or four months before I could hold a pen with any degree of steadiness. Meantime, singular as it may seem, the appearance of health and vigor had astonishingly increased. I had gained more than twenty pounds in weight, partly, I suppose, the result of leaving off opium and tobacco, and partly the consequence of the insatiable appetite with which I was constantly followed. Within a month after the close of the opium strife, I was repeatedly congratulated upon my healthy, vigorous condition. Few men in the entire city bore about them more of the appearance of perfect health, and fewer still were probably in such a state of exhausted vitality. During the time I was leaving off opium I had labored under the impression that the habit once mastered, a speedy restoration to health would follow. I was by no means prepared, therefore, for the almost inappreciable gain in the weeks which succeeded, and in some anxiety consulted a number of physicians, who each suggested in a timid way the trial, some of strychnine, some of valerian, some of lupuline, hyoscyamus, ignatia, belladonna, and what not. I do not know that I derived the slightest benefit from any of these prescriptions, or from any other therapeutic agency, unless I except the good effects for a few days of bitters, and of cold shower-baths from a tank in which ice was floating. The most judicious of the medical gentlemen whose aid I invoked, was, I think, the one who replied to my inquiry for his bill, "What for? I have done you no good, and have learned more from you than you have from me." This constitutes the entire history of my medical experience, and is mentioned as being the only, and a very small adjunct to the great remedy--patient, persistent, obstinate endurance. So exceeding slow has been the process toward the restoration of a natural condition of the system, that writing now, at the expiration of more than a year since opium was finally abandoned, it seems to me very uncertain when, if ever, this result will be reached. Between four and five months elapsed before I was at all capable of commanding my attention or controlling the nervous impatience of mind and body. I then assented to a proposal which involved the necessity of a good deal of steady work, in the hope that constant occupation would divert the attention from the nervousness under which I suffered and would restore the self-reliance which had so long failed me. It was a foolish experiment, and might have proved a fatal one. The business I had undertaken required a clear head and average health, and I had neither. The sleep was short and imperfect, rarely exceeding two or three hours. The chest was in a constant heat and very sore, while the previous bilious difficulties seemed in no way overcome. The mouth was parched, the tongue swollen, and a low fever seemed to have taken entire possession of the system, with special and peculiar exasperations in the muscles of the arms and legs. The difficulty of thinking to any purpose was only equalled by the reluctance with which I could bring myself to the task of holding a pen. For a few weeks, however, the necessity of not wholly disgracing myself forced me on after a poor fashion; but at the end of two months I was a used-up man. I would sit for hours looking listlessly upon a sheet of paper, helpless of originating an idea upon the commonest of subjects, and with a prevailing sensation of owning a large emptiness in the brain, which seemed chiefly filled with a stupid wonder when all this would end. More than an entire year has now passed, in which I have done little else than to put the preceding details into shape from brief memoranda made at the time of the experiment. While the physical agony ceased almost immediately after the opium was abandoned, the irritation of the system still continues. I do not know how better to describe my present state than by the use of language which professional men may regard as neither scientific nor accurate, but which will express, I hope, to unprofessional readers the idea I wish to convey, when I say that the entire system seems to me not merely to have been poisoned, but saturated with poison. Had some virus been transfused into the blood, which carried with it to every nerve of sensation a sense of painful, exasperating unnaturalness, the feeling would not, I imagine, be unlike what I am endeavoring to indicate. ADDENDA.--At the time of writing the preceding narrative I had supposed that the entire story was told, and that the intelligent reader, should this record ever see the light, would naturally infer, as I myself imagined would be the case, that the unnatural condition of the body would soon become changed into a state of average health. In this I was mistaken. So tenacious and obstinate in its hold upon its victim is the opium disease, that even after the lapse of ten years its poisonous agency is still felt. Without some reference to these remoter consequences of the hasty abandonment of confirmed habits of opium-eating, the chief object of this narrative as a guide to others (who will certainly need all the information on the subject that can be given them) would fail of being secured. While unquestionably the heaviest part of the suffering resulting from such a change of habit belongs to the few weeks in which the patient is abandoning opium, it ought not to be concealed that this brief period by no means comprises the limit within which he will find himself obliged to maintain the most rigid watch over himself, lest the feeling of desperation which at times assaults him from the hope of immediate physical restoration disappointed and indefinitely postponed, should drive him back to his old habits. Indeed, with some temperaments, the greatest danger of a relapse comes in, not during the process of abandonment, but after the habit has been broken. Great bodily pain serves only to rouse up some natures to a more earnest strife, and, as their sufferings become more intense, the determination not to yield gains an unnatural strength. The mind is vindicating itself as the master of the body. While in this state, tortures and the fagot are powerless to extort groans or confessions from the racked or half-consumed martyr. Many a sufferer has borne the agony of the boots or the thumb-screw without flinching, whose courage has given way under the less painful but more unendurable punishment of prolonged imprisonment. In the one case all a man's powers of resistance are roused; he feels that his manhood is at stake, and he endures as men will endure when they see that the question how far they are their own masters, is at issue. There are, I think, a great number of men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they were unquestionably willing to die. In the same way a man will for a time endure even frightful suffering in relinquishing a pernicious habit, while he may fail to hold up his determination against the assaults of the apparently never-ending irritation, discomfort, pain, and sleeplessness which may be counted on as being, sometimes at least, among the remoter consequences of the struggle in which he has engaged. I wish it, however, distinctly understood that I do not suppose that the experience of others whose use of opium had been similar to my own, would necessarily correspond to mine in all or even in many respects. Opium is the Proteus of medicine, and science has not yet succeeded in tearing away the many masks it wears, nor in tracing the marvellously diversified aspects it is capable of assuming. Among many cases of the relinquishment of opium with which I have been made acquainted, nothing is more perplexing than the difference of the specific consequences, as they are exhibited in persons of different temperaments and habits. For such differences I do not pretend to account. That is the business of the thoroughly educated physician, and no unprofessional man, however wide his personal experience, has the right to dogmatize or even to express with much confidence settled opinions upon the subject. My object will be fully attained if I succeed in giving a just and truthful impression of the more marked final consequences of the hasty disuse of opium in this single case, leaving it to medical men to explain the complicated relations of an opium-saturated constitution to the free and healthy functions of life. In my own case, the most marked among the later consequences of the disease of opium, some of which remain to the present time and seem to be permanently engrafted upon the constitution, have been these: 1. Pressure upon the muscles of the limbs and in the extremities, sometimes as of electricity apparently accumulated there under a strong mechanical force. 2. A disordered condition of the liver, exhibiting itself in the variety of uncomfortable modes in which that organ, when acting irregularly, is accustomed to assert its grievances. 3. A sensitive condition of the stomach, rejecting many kinds of food which are regarded by medical men as simple and easy of digestion. 4. Acute shooting pains, confined to no one part of the body. 5. An unnatural sensitiveness to cold. 6. Frequent cold perspiration in parts of the body. 7. A tendency to impatience and irritability of temper, with paroxysms of excitement wholly foreign to the natural disposition. 8. Deficiency and irregularity of sleep. 9. Occasional prostration of strength. 10. Inaptitude for steady exertion. I mention without hesitancy these consequences of the abandonment of opium, from the belief that any person really in earnest in his desire to relinquish the habit will be more likely to persevere by knowing at the start exactly what obstacles he may meet in his progress toward perfect recovery, than by having it gradually revealed to him, and that at times when his body and mind are both enfeebled by what he has passed through. With a single exception, the dismost serious one I have been obliged to encounter. Whether it is one of the specific effects of the disuse of opium, or only one of the many general results of a disordered constitution, I do not know. I can only say in my own case, that after the lapse of years, this particular difficulty is not wholly overcome. This electric condition, so to call it, still continues a serious annoyance. But when it occurs, the pain is of less duration, and gradually, but very slowly, is of diminished frequency. Violent exercise will sometimes relieve it; a long walk has often the same effect. The use of stimulants brings alleviation for a time, but there seems to be no permanent remedy except in the perfect restoration of the system by time from this effect of the wear and tear of opium upon the nerves. Irregularity in the action of the liver, while singularly marked in the earlier stages of the experiment, and continuing for years to make its agency manifestly felt, is in a considerable degree checked and controlled by a judicious use of calomel. The condition of the digestive organs is less impaired than I should have supposed possible, judging from the experience of others. A moderate degree of attention to the quality of what is eaten, with proper care to avoid what is not easily digested, with the exercise of habitual self-control in respect to quantity, suffices to prevent, for the most part, all unendurable feelings of discomfort in this part of the system. Whether the habitually febrile condition of the mouth, and the swollen state of the tongue, is referable to a disturbed action of the stomach or of the liver I can not say. It is certain that none of the effects of opium-eating are more marked or more obstinately tenacious in their hold upon the system than these. I barely advert to the frequent impossibility of retaining some kinds of food upon the stomach, which has been one unpleasant part of my experience, because I doubt whether this return of a difficulty which began in childhood has any necessary connection with the use of opium. For many years before I knew any thing of the drug I had been a daily sufferer from this cause. Indeed the use of opium seemed to control this tendency, and it was only when the remedy was abandoned that the old annoyance returned. For a few months the stomach rejected every kind of food; but in less than a year, and subsequently to the present time, this has been of only occasional ocurrence. I am also at a loss how far to connect the disuse of opium with the lancinating pains which have troubled me since the time to which I refer. These pains began long before I had recourse to opium, they did not cease their frequent attacks while opium was used, nor have they failed to make their potency felt since opium was abandoned. While it is not improbable that the neuralgic difficulties of my childhood might have remained to the present time, even if I had never made use of opium, I think that the experience of all who have undergone the trial shows that similar pains are invariably attendant upon the disuse of opium. How long their presence might be protracted with persons not antecedently troubled in this way, is a question I can not answer. I infer from what little has been recorded, and from what I have learned in other ways, that the reforming opium-eater must make up his mind to a protracted encounter with this great enemy to his peace. That the struggle of others with this difficulty will be prolonged as mine has been I do not believe, unless they have been subjected for a lifetime to pains connected with disorder in the nervous system. The unnatural sensitiveness to cold to which I have alluded is rather a discomfort than any thing else. It merely makes a higher temperature necessary for enjoyment, but in no other respect can it be regarded as deserving special mention. With the thermometer standing at 80° to 85° the sensation of agreeable warmth is perfect; with the mercury at 70° or even higher, there is a good deal of the feeling that the bones are inadequately protected by the flesh, that the clothing is too limited in quantity, and in winter that the coal-dealer is hardly doing you justice. The cold perspiration down the spine, which was so marked a sensation during the worst of the trial, has not yet wholly left the system, but is greatly limited in the extent of surface it affects and in the frequency of its return. The tendency to impatience and irritability of temper to which I have adverted is by far the most humiliating of the effects resulting from the abandonment of opium. Men differ very widely both in their liability to these excesses of temper as well as in their power to control them; but under the aggravations which necessarily attend an entire change of habit, this natural tendency, whether it be small or great, to hastiness of mind is greatly increased. So long as the disturbing causes remain, whether these be the state of the liver or the stomach, or a want of sufficient sleep, or the excited condition of the nervous system, the patient will find himself called upon for the exercise of all his self-control to keep in check his exaggerated sensibility to the daily annoyances of life. Intimately connected with the preceding is the frequent recurrence of sleepless nights, which seem invariably to attend upon the abandonment of the habit. Possibly some part of this state of agitated wakefulness may pertain to the natural temperament of the patient, but this tendency is greatly aggravated by the condition of the nerves, so thoroughly shattered by the violent struggle to oblige the system to dispense with the soothing influence of the drug upon which it has so long relied. Whatever method others may have found to counteract this infirmity, I have been able as yet to find no remedy for it. Especially are those nights made long and weary which _precede_ any long continuance of wet weather. A moist condition of the atmosphere still serves the double purpose of setting in play the nervous sensibilities, and, as a concomitant or a consequence, of greatly disturbing, if not destroying sleep. In connection with this matter something should be said on the subject of dreaming, to which De Quincey has given so marked a prominence in his "Confessions" and "Suspiris de Profundis." In my own case, neither when beginning the use of opium, nor while making use of it in the largest quantities and after the habit had long been established, nor while engaged in the painful process of relinquishing it, nor at any time subsequently, have I had any experience worth narrating of the influence of the drug over the dreaming faculty. On the contrary, I doubt whether many men of mature age know so little of this peculiar state of mind as myself. The conditions in this respect, imposed by my own peculiarities of constitution, have been either no sleep sufficiently sound as to interfere with the consciousness of what was passing, or mere restlessness, or sleep so profound as to leave behind it no trace of the mind's activity. While it is therefore certain that this exaggeration of the dreaming faculty is not necessarily connected with the use of opium, but is rather to be referred to some peculiarity of temperament or organization in De Quincey himself, I find myself in turn at a loss to know how far to regard other phenomena to which I have previously alluded as the natural and necessary consequences of opium, or how far they may be owing to peculiarities of constitution in myself. Opium-eaters have said but little on the subject. The medical profession, so far as I have conversed with them, and I have consulted with some of the most eminent, are not generally well informed on any thing beyond the specific effects of the drug as witnessed in ordinary medication. In the absence of sufficient authority, it may be safer to say that the remoter consequences of the disuse of opium consist in a general disorder and derangement of the nervous system, exhibiting itself in such particular symptoms as are most accordant with the temperament, constitutional weaknesses, and personal idiosyncrasies of the patient. That some considerable suffering must be regarded as unavoidable seems to be placed beyond question from the nature of the trial to which the body has been subjected, as well as from what little has been said on the subject by those who have relinquished the habit. I close this brief reference to the remoter consequences of the habits of the opium-eater by calling the attention of the reader to the physical weakness with consequent inaptitude for continuous exertion which forms a part of my own experience. Unable as I am to refer it to any _immediate_ cause, frequent and sudden prostration of strength occurs, accompanied by slight dizziness, impaired sight, and a sense of overwhelming weakness, though never going to the extent of absolute faintness. Its recurrence seems to be governed by no rule. It sometimes comes with great frequency, and sometimes weeks will elapse without a return. Neither the state of the weather, nor any particular condition of the body, appears to call it out. It sometimes is relieved by a glass of water, by the entrance of a stranger, by the very slightest excitement, and it sometimes resists the strongest stimulants and every other attempt to combat it. I can record nothing else respecting this visitant except that its presence is always accompanied with a singular sensation in the stomach, and that the entire nervous system is affected by its attack. The inaptitude for steady exertion is not merely the consequence of this occasional feeling of exhaustion, but is for a time the inevitable result of the accumulated pain and weakness to which his system, not yet restored to health, is still subject. This impatience of continued application to work, which is common to all opium-eaters, and which does not cease with the abandonment of the habit, seems to result in the first case from some specific relation between the drug and the meditative faculties, promoting a state of habitual reverie and day-dreaming, utterly indisposing the opium-user for any occupation which will disturb the calm current of his thoughts, and in the other, proceeding from the direct disorder of the nervous organization itself. Strange as it may seem, the very thought of exertion will often waken in the reforming opium-eater acute nervous pains, which cease only as the purpose is abandoned. In other cases, where there is no special nervous suffering at the time, work is easy and pleasant even beyond what is natural. One effect of opium upon the _mind_ deserves to be mentioned; its influence upon the faculty of memory. The logical memory, De Quincey says, seems in no way to be weakened by its use, but rather the contrary. His own devotion to the abstract principles of political economy; the character of Coleridge's literary labors between the years 1804-16, when his use of opium was most inordinate; together with the cast of mind of many other well-known opium-eaters, confirms this suggestion of De Quincey. His further statement that the memory of dates, isolated events, and particular facts, is greatly weakened by opium, is confirmed by my own experience. However physiologists may explain this fact, a knowledge of it may not be without its use to those who desire to be made thoroughly acquainted with all the consequences of the opium habit. If to these discomforts be added a prevailing tendency to a febrile condition of body, together with permanent disorder in portions of the secretory system, the catalogue of annoyances with which the long-reformed opium-eater may have to contend is completed. This statement is not made to exaggerate the suffering consequent upon the disuse of opium, but is made on the ground that a full apprehension of what the patient may be called upon to go through will best enable him to make up his mind to one resolute, unflinching effort for the redemption of himself from his bad habits. So far as the body is concerned, there is much in my experience which induces me to give a general assent to the opinion expressed by a medical man of great reputation whom I repeatedly consulted in reference to the discouraging slowness of my own restoration to perfect health. "I can not see," he said, "that your constitution has been permanently injured; but you were a great many years getting into this state, and I think it will take nearly as many to get you out of it." It may not be amiss to add that those opium-eaters whose circumstances exempt them from harassing cares, who meet only with kindness and sympathy from friends, and who have resources for enjoyment within themselves, have in respect to these subsequent inconveniences greatly the advantage of those whose position and circumstances are less fortunate. These free and almost confidential personal statements have been made, not without doing some violence to that instinctive sense of propriety which prompts men to shrink from giving publicity to their weaknesses and from the vanity of seeming to imply that their individual experience of life is of special value to others. Leaving undecided the question whether under any circumstances a departure from the general rule of good sense and good taste in such matters is justifiable, I have, nevertheless, done what I could to give to opium-eaters a truthful statement of the consequences that may ensue from their abandonment of the habit. The path toward perfect recovery is certainly a weary one to travel; but in all these long years, with nervous sensibilities unnaturally active, in much pain of body, through innumerable sleepless nights, with hope deferred and the expectation of complete restoration indefinitely prolonged, I have never lost faith in the final triumph of a patient and persistent resolution. Many men seem to know little of the wonderful power which simple endurance has, in determining every conflict between good and evil. The triumph which is achieved in a single day is a triumph hardly worth the having; but when all impatience, unreasonableness, weaknesses and vanities have been burned out of our natures by the heat of suffering; when the resolution never falters to endure patiently whatever may come in the endeavor to measure one's own case justly, and exactly as it is; and when time has been allowed to exert its legitimate influence in calming whatever has been disturbed and correcting whatever has been prejudiced, a conscious strength is developed far beyond what is natural to men possessed only of ordinary powers of endurance. It is chiefly through patient waiting that the confirmed victim of opium can look for relief. All who have made heroic efforts to this end, and yet have failed in their attempt, have done so through the absence of adequate confidence in the efficacy of time to bring them relief. The _one_ lesson, however, which the reforming opium-eater must learn is, never to relinquish any gain, however slight, which he may make upon his bad habit. Patience will bring him relief at last, and though he may and will find his progress continually thwarted and himself often tempted to give over the contest in despair, he may be sure that year by year he is steadily advancing to the perfect recovery of all that he has lost. The opium-eater will not regard as amiss some few suggestions as to the mode in which his habit may most easily be abandoned. The best advice that can be given--the _only_ advice that will ever be given by an opium-eater--is, never to begin the habit. The objection at once occurs, both to the medical man and to the patient suffering from extreme nervous disorder, What remedy then shall be given in those numerous cases in which the protracted use of opium, laudanum, or morphine is found necessary? The obvious answer is, that no medical man ever intends to give this drug in such quantities or for so long a time as to establish in the patient a confirmed habit. The frequent, if not the usual history of confirmed opium-eaters is this: A physician prescribes opium as an anodyne, and the patient finds from its use the relief which was anticipated. Very frequently he finds not merely that his pain has been relieved, but that with this relief has been associated a feeling of positive, perhaps of extreme enjoyment. A recurrence of the same pain infallibly suggests a recurrence to the same remedy. The advice of the medical man is not invoked, because the patient knows that morphine or laudanum was the simple remedy that proved so efficacious before, and this he can procure as well without as with the direction of his physician. He becomes his own doctor, prescribes the same remedy the medical man has prescribed, and charges nothing for his advice. The resort to this pleasant medication after no long time becomes habitual, and the patient finds that the remedy, whose use he had supposed was sanctioned by his physician, has become his tyrant. If patients exhibited the same reluctance to the administration of opium that they do to drugs that are nauseous, if the collateral effects of the former were no more pleasurable than lobelia or castor oil, nothing more could be said against self-medication in one case than the other. Opium-eaters are made such, not by the physician's prescription of opium to patients in whose cases its use is indispensable, but by their not giving together with such prescriptions emphatic and earnest caution that the remedy is not to be taken except when specially ordered, in consequence of the hazard that a habit may be formed which it will be difficult to break. Patients to whom it is regularly administered are not at first generally aware how easily this habit is acquired, nor with what difficulty it is relinquished, especially by persons of nervous temperament and enfeebled health. The number of cases, I suspect, is small in which the use of opium has become a necessity, where the direction of a physician may not be pleaded as justifying its original employment. The object I have in view is not, however, so much to make suggestions to medical men as it is to awaken in the victims of opium the feeling that they can master the tyrant by such acts of resolution, patience, and self-control as most men are fully capable of exhibiting. Certain conditions, however, seem to be the almost indispensable preliminaries to success in relinquishing opium by those who have been _long_ habituated to its use. The first and most important of these is a firm conviction on the part of the patient that the task can be accomplished. Without this he can do nothing. The narratives given in this volume show its entire practicability. In addition to this, it should be remembered that these experiments were most of them made in the absence of any sufficient guidance, from the experience of others, as to the method and alleviations with which the task can be accomplished. A second condition necessary to success, is sufficient physical health, with sufficient firmness of character to undergo, as a matter of course, the inevitable suffering of the body, and to resist the equally inevitable temptation to the mind to give up the strife under some paroxysm of impatience, or in some moment of dark despondency. With a very moderate share of vigor of constitution, and with a will, capable under other circumstances of strenuous and sustained exertion, there is no occasion to anticipate a failure here. Even in cases of impaired health, and with a diminished capacity for resolute endeavor, success is, I believe, attainable, provided sufficient time be taken for the trial. A further condition lies in the attempt being made under the most favorable circumstances in respect to absolute leisure from business of every kind. That nothing can be accomplished by persons whose time is not at their own command, by a graduated effort protracted through many months, I do not say, for I do not believe it; but any speedy relinquishment of opium--that is, within a month or two--seems to me to be wholly impossible, except to those who are so situated that they can give up their whole time and attention to the effort. This effort should be made with the advice and under the eye of an intelligent physician. So far as I have had opportunity to know, the profession generally is not well informed on the subject. In my own case I certainly found no one who seemed familiar with the phenomena pertaining to the relinquishment of opium, or whose suggestions indicated even in cases where the physician has had no experience whatever in this class of disorders, he can, if a well-educated man, bring his medical knowledge and medical reasoning to bear upon the various states, both of body and mind, which the varying sufferings of the patient may make known to him. Were there, indeed, no professional helps to be secured by such consultation, it is still of infinite service to the patient to know some one to whom he can frequently impart the history of his struggle and the progress he is making. Such confidence may do much to encourage the patient, and no one is so proper a person in whom to repose this confidence as an intelligent physician. The amount of time which should be devoted to the experiment must depend very greatly upon these considerations--the constitution of the patient, the length of time which has elapsed since the habit was formed, and the quantity habitually taken. When the habit is of recent date, and the daily dose has not been large--say not more than ten or twelve grains--if the patient has average health, his emancipation from the evil may be attained in a comparatively short period, though not without many sharp pangs and many wakeful nights which will call for the exercise of all his resolution. The question will naturally suggest itself to others, as it has often done to myself, whether a less sudden relinquishment of opium would not be preferable as being attended with less present and less subsequent suffering. Numerous cases have come under my notice where a very gradual reduction was attempted, but which resulted in failure. Only two exceptions are known to me: in one of these the patient, himself a physician, effected his release by a graduated reduction extending through five months. The other is the case of Dr. S., a physician of eminence in Connecticut many years ago. This gentleman had made so free use of opium to counteract a tendency to consumption that the habit became established. After several years, and at the suggestion of his wife, he made a resolution to abandon it, engaging to take no opium except as it passed through her hands, but with the understanding that the process of relinquishment was to be slow and gradual. His allowance at this time was understood to be from twenty to thirty grains of crude opium daily. At the end of two years the habit was abandoned, with no very serious suffering during the time, and so far as his daughter was informed, with no subsequent inconvenience to himself. He lived many years after his disuse of opium, in the active discharge of the duties of his profession, and died at last in the ninetieth year of his age. The hazard of this course, however, consists in the possibility, not to say with some temperaments the probability, that somewhere in the course of so very gradual a descent the same influences which led originally to the use of opium may recur, with no counteracting influence derived from the excitement of the mind produced by the earnestness of the struggle. With some constitutions I have no doubt that a process even so slow as that of Dr. S.'s might be successful, but I suspect, with most men, that some mood of excited feeling, and some conscious sense of conflict, will be found necessary, in order to bring them up resolutely to the work of self-emancipation. On the other hand, I am satisfied that my own descent was too rapid. Had the experiment of between five and six weeks been protracted to twice that time, much of the immediate suffering, and probably more of that which soon followed, might have been prevented. As in the constitution of every person there is a limit beyond which further indulgence in any pernicious habit results in chronic derangement, so also there seems to be a limit in the discontinuance of accustomed indulgence, going beyond which is sure to result in some increased physical disorder. In the cure of _delirium tremens_, the first step of the physician is to stimulate. With more moderate drinkers abrupt cessation from the use of stimulants is the only sure remedy. In the first instance the nervous system is too violently agitated to dispense entirely with the accustomed habit; in the second, the nerves are presumed to be able to bear the temporary strain imposed upon them by the condition of the stomach and other organs. But with opium the case is otherwise. Insanity, I think, would be the general result of an attempt immediately to relinquish the habit by those who have long indulged it. The most the opium-eater can do is to diminish his allowance as rapidly as is safe. For the same reason that no sensible physician would direct the confinement of a patient and the absolute disuse of opium with the certainty that mania would result, so it would be equally ill advised to recommend a diminution so rapid as necessarily to call out the most serious disorder and derangement of all the bodily functions, especially if these could be made more endurable by being spread over a longer period. In one respect the opium-eater has greatly the advantage over those addicted to other bad habits. Those who have used distilled or fermented drinks, tobacco, and sometimes coffee and tea in excess, experience for a time a strong and definite craving for the wonted indulgence. This is never the case with the opium-eater; he has no specific desire whatever for the drug. The only difficulty he has to encounter is the agony of pain--for no other word adequately expresses the suffering he endures--conjoined with a general desire for relief. Yet in the very _acme_ of his punishment he will be sensible of no craving for opium at all like the craving of the drunkard for spirits. As De Quincey justly represents it, the feeling is more that of a person under actual torture, aching for relief, though with no care from what source that relief comes. So far from there being any particular desire for opium, there ensues very speedily, I suspect, after the attempt to abandon it is begun, and long before the necessity for its use has ceased, and even while the suffering from its partial disuse is most unendurable, a feeling in reference to the drug itself not far removed from disgust. The only occasion that I have had of late years to make use of opium or any of its preparations, was within a twelvemonth after it had been laid aside. A morbid feeling had long troubled me with the suggestion that should a necessity ever arise for the medical use of opium, I might be precipitated back into the habit. I was not sorry, therefore, when the necessity for its use occurred, that I might test the correctness of my apprehension. To my surprise, not only was no desire for a second trial of its virtues awakened, but the very effort to swallow the pill was accompanied with a feeling akin to loathing. The final decision of the question, How long a time should be allowed for the final relinquishment of the drug? must, I imagine, be left to a wider experience than has yet been recorded. The general strength of the constitution, the force of the will, the degree of nervous sensibility, together with the external circumstances of one's life, have all much to do with its proper explication. The general directions I should be disposed to suggest for the observance of the confirmed opium-eater would be something as follows: 1. To diminish the daily allowance as rapidly as possible to one-half. A fortnight's time should effect this without serious suffering, or any thing more than the slight irritation and some other inconveniences that will be found quite endurable to one who is in earnest in his purpose. 2. For the first week, if the previous habit has been to take the daily dose in a single portion, or even in two portions, morning and night, it will be found advisable to divide the diminished quantity into four parts. Thus, if eighty grains has been the customary quantity taken, four pills of fifteen grains each, taken at regular intervals, say one at eight and one at twelve o'clock in the morning, and one at four and one at eight in the evening, will be found nearly equal in their effect to the eighty grains taken at once in the morning. A further diminution of two grains a day, or of half a grain in each of these four daily portions, will within the week reduce the quantity taken to fifty grains, and this without much difficulty, and with positive gain in respect to elasticity of spirits, arising, in part, from the newly-awakened hope of ultimate success. A second week should suffice for a reduction to forty grains. It will probably be better to divide the slightly diminished daily allowance into five portions, to be taken at intervals of two hours from rising in the morning till the daily quantity is consumed. With such a graduated scale of descent, it will be found at the end of two weeks that one-half of the original quantity of opium has been abandoned, and that, with so little pain of body, and so much gain to the general health and spirits, that the completion of the task will seem to the patient ridiculously easy. He will soon learn, however, that he has not found out all the truth. In the third week a further gain of ten grains can the more easily be made by still further dividing the daily portion into an increased number of parts, say ten. The feeling of restlessness and irritability by this time will have become somewhat annoying, and the actual struggle will be seen to have commenced. It will doubtless require at this point some persistence of character to bear up against the increased impatience, both of body and spirit, which marks this stage of the descent. The feelings will endeavor to palm off upon the judgment a variety of reasons why, for a time, a larger quantity should be taken; but this is merely the effect of the diminished amount of the stimulant. Sleep will probably be found to be of short continuance as well as a good deal broken. Reading has ceased to interest, and a fidgety, fault-finding temper not unlikely has begun to exhibit itself. At this point, I am satisfied, most opium-eaters who have endeavored in vain to renounce the habit, have broken down. Their resolution has failed them not because they were unable to stand much greater punishment than had yet been inflicted, but because they yielded to the impression that some other time would prove more opportune for the final experiment. Under this delusion they have foolishly thrown away the benefit of their past self-control, with the certainty that should the trial be again made, they would once more be assailed by a similar temptation. But if this stage of the process has been safely passed, the next--that of reducing the daily quantity from thirty grains to twenty-five, still dividing the day's allowance into ten portions--would probably have added little aggravation to the uncomfortable feeling which already existed, but not without some conscious addition, on the other hand, to their enjoyment from the partially successful result of the experiment. Thus in four weeks a very substantial gain, by the reduction of the needed quantity from eighty grains to twenty-five, would have been attained. If the patient should find it necessary to stop at this point for a week, a fortnight, or even longer, no great harm would necessarily result; it would only postpone by so much his ultimate triumph. He should never forget, however, that the one indispensable condition of success is this: _Never under any circumstances to give up what has been once gained_. If in any manner the patient has been able to get through the day with the use of only twenty-five grains, it is certain that he can get through the next, and the next, and the subsequent day with the same amount, with the further certainty that the habit of being content with this minimum quantity will soon begin to be established, and that speedily a further advance may be made in the direction of an entire disuse. Whenever the patient finds his condition to be somewhat more endurable, whether the time be longer or shorter, he should make a still further reduction, say to one-quarter of his original dose. If this abatement of quantity be spread over the entire week the aggravation of his discomfort will not be great, while the elation of his spirits over what he has already accomplished will go far in enabling him to bear the degree of pain which necessarily pertains to the stage of the experiment which he has now reached. The caution, however, must be borne continually in mind that under no circumstances and on no pretext must the patient entertain the idea that any part of that which he has gained can he surrendered. Better for him to be years in the accomplishment of his deliverance than to recede a step from any advantage he may have secured. If he persists, he will in a few days, or at the longest in a few weeks, find his condition as to bodily pain endurable if nothing more. There may not, probably will not be any very appreciable gain from day to day. The excited sufferer, judging from his feelings alone, may think that he has made no progress whatever; but if after the lapse of a week he will contrast his command of temper, or his ability to fix his attention upon a subject, as evinced at the beginning and end of this period, he can hardly fail to see that there has been a real if not a very marked advance in his status. Such a person has no right to expect, after years of uninterrupted indulgence, that the most obstinate of all habits can be relinquished with ease, or that he can escape the penalty which is wisely and kindly attached to all departures from the natural or supernatural laws which govern the world. It should be enough for him to know that there is no habit of mind or of body which may not be overcome, and that the process of overcoming, in its infinite variety of forms, is that out of which almost all that is good in character or conduct grows, and that the amount of this good is usually measured by the struggle which has been found necessary to ensure success. Considerations of this nature, however, are of too general a character to be of much service to one enduring the misery of the reforming opium-eater. He has now arrived at a point where he is obliged to ask himself when and how the contest is to end. He has succeeded in abandoning three-quarters of the opium to which he has so long been accustomed. A few weeks have enabled him to accomplish this much. He endures, indeed, great discomfort by day and by night; but hope has been re-awakened; his mind has recovered greater activity than it has known for years; and, on the whole, he feels that he has been greatly the gainer from the contest. Let me repeat, that the main thing for the patient at this point of his trial is not to forego the advantage he has already attained--"not to go back." If he can only hold his own he has so far triumphed, and it is only a question of time when the triumph shall be made complete. _When_ this shall be effected _he_ must decide. The rapidity of his further progress must be determined by what he himself is conscious he has the strength, physical and moral, to endure. With some natures any very sudden descent is impossible; with others, whatever is done must be done continuously and rapidly or is not done at all. The one temperament can not stand up against the assaults of a fierce attack, the other loses courage except when the fight is at the hottest. For the former ample time must be given or he surrenders; the latter will succumb if any interval is allowed for repose. It is, therefore, difficult to suggest from this point downward any rule which shall apply equally to temperaments essentially unlike. I think, however, that the suggestion to divide the daily allowance, whether the descent be a slow or a rapid one, into numerous small parts to be taken at equal intervals of time, will be found to facilitate the success of the attempt in the case of both. The chief value of such subdivision probably consists in its throwing the aggregate influence of the day's opium nearer the hour of bed-time, when it is most needed, than to an earlier hour, when its soporific power is less felt. In addition to this, the importance to the excited and irritated patient of being able to look forward during the long-protracted hours to frequent, even if slight, alleviations of his pain, should not be left out of the account. In general it may be said that whenever the patient feels that he can safely, that is, without danger of failing in his resolution, adventure upon a further diminution of the quantity, an additional amount, smaller or greater according to circumstances, should be deducted till the point is reached where the suffering becomes unendurable; then after a delay of few or many days, as may be needed to make him somewhat habituated to the diminished allowance, a still further reduction should be made, and so on for such time as the peculiarities of different constitutions and circumstances may make necessary, till the quantity daily required has become so small, say a grain or two, that by still more minute subdivisions, and by dropping one of them daily, the final victory is achieved. I have not ventured to say in how short a time confirmed habits of opium-eating may be abandoned. In my own case it was thirty-nine days, but with my present experience I should greatly prefer to extend the time to at least sixty days; and this chiefly with reference to the violent effects upon the constitution produced by the suddenness of the change of habit. Some constitutions may possibly require less time and some probably, more. While I regard the abandonment of the first three-quarters of the accustomed allowance as being a much easier task than the last quarter, and one which can be accomplished with comparative impunity in a brief period, I would allow at least twice the time for the experiment of dispensing with the last quarter; unless, indeed, I should be apprehensive that my resolution might break down through the absence of the excitement which is unquestionably afforded by the feeling that you are engaged in a deadly but doubtful conflict. So far, also, as can be inferred from cases subsequently narrated in this volume, the probability of success would seem to be enhanced by devoting a longer time to the trial. It can not, however, be too often repeated, that however slow or however rapid the pace may be, the rule to be rigidly observed is this: Never to increase the minimum dose that has once been attained. This is the only rule of safety, and by adhering to it, persons in infirm health, or with weakened powers of resolution, will ultimately succeed in their efforts. I subjoin my own record of the quantity of opium daily consumed, for the possible encouragement of such opium-eaters as may be disposed to make trial of their own resources in the endurance of bodily and mental distress. Saturday, Nov. 25....80 grains, = 2000 drops of laudanum. Sunday, " 26....60 " 1500 " " Monday, " 27....50 " 1250 " " Tuesday, " 28....40 " 1000 " " Wednesday, " 29....30 " 750 " " Thursday, " 30....25 " 625 " " Friday, Dec. 1....20 " 500 " " --- ----- Average of 1st week....44 " 1089 " " Saturday, Dec. 2.....19 grains, = 475 drops of laudanum. Sunday, " 3.....18 " 450 " " Monday, " 4.....17 " 425 " " Tuesday, " 5.....16 " 400 " " Wednesday, " 6.....15 " 375 " " Thursday, " 7.....15 " 375 " " Friday, " 8.....15 " 375 " " ---- ---- Average of 2d week.....16.43" 411 " " Saturday, Dec. 9.....14 grains, = 350 drops of laudanum. Sunday, " 10.....13 " 325 " " Monday, " 11.....13 " 325 " " Tuesday, " 12.....12 " 300 " " Wednesday, " 13.....12 " 300 " " Thursday, " 14.....11 " 275 " " Friday, " 15.....10 " 250 " " ---- ---- Average of 3d week.....12.14" 304 " " Saturday, Dec.16..... 9 grains, = 225 drops of laudanum. Sunday, " 17..... 8 " 200 " " Monday, " 18..... 8 " 200 " " Tuesday, " 19..... 7 " 175 " " Wednesday, " 20..... 6 " 150 " " Thursday, " 21..... 5 " 125 " " Friday, " 22..... 4 " 100 " " ---- ---- Average of 4th week.....6.71" 168 " " Saturday, Dec.23..... 3 grains, = 75 drops of laudanum. Sunday, " 24..... 3 " 75 " " Monday, " 25..... 2 " 50 " " Tuesday, " 26..... 2 " 50 " " Wednesday, " 27..... 2 " 50 " " Thursday, " 28..... 2 " 50 " " Friday, " 29..... 1 " 25 " " ---- ---- Average of 5th week.....2.14" 54 " " Saturday, Dec.30..... 1 grain, = 25 drops of laudanum. Sunday, " 31..... 1 " 25 " " Monday, Jan. 1..... 1 " 25 " " Tuesday, " 2.....1/2 " 12 " " Wednesday, " 3.....1/4 " 6 " " ---- ---- Average of 6th week....0.75 " 18 " " The fourth and fifth weeks I found to be immeasurably the most difficult to manage. By the sixth week the system had become somewhat accustomed to the denial of the long-used stimulant. At any rate, though no abatement of the previous wretchedness was apparent, it certainly seemed less difficult to endure it. It is at this stage of the process that I regard the advice and encouragement of a physician as most important. He may not indeed be able to do much in direct alleviation of the pain incident to the abandonment of opium, for I suspect that little reliance can be placed upon the medicines ordinarily recommended. The system has become accustomed to the stimulant to an exorbitant degree; the suffering is consequent upon the effort to accustom the system to get on without it. Other kinds of stimulants, like spirits or wine, will afford a slight relief for a few days, especially if taken in sufficiently large quantities to induce sleep. It is the sedative qualities of the opium that are chiefly missed, for as to excitement the patient has quite as much of it as he can bear. For this reason malt liquors are preferable to distilled spirits--they stupefy more than they excite. But to malt liquors this serious objection exists, they tend powerfully to aggravate all disorders of the liver. This tendency the reforming opium-eater can not afford to overlook, for no one effect of the experiment is more distressing than the marvellous and unhealthy activity given to this organ by the process through which he is passing. The testimony of all opium-eaters on this point is uniform. For months and even years this organ in those who have relinquished the drug remains disordered. When in its worst state, the use of something bitter, the more bitter the better, is exceedingly grateful. The difficulty lies in finding any thing that has a properly bitter taste. Aloes, nux vomica, colocynth, quassia, have a flavor that is much more sweet than bitter. These serious annoyances from the condition of the liver, as well as those arising from the state of the stomach and some of the other organs, may be somewhat mitigated by the skill of an intelligent medical man, who, even if he happens to know little about the habit of opium-eating, should know much as to the proper regimen to be observed in cases where these organs are disordered. In respect to food it seems impossible to lay down any general rule. De Quincey advises beefsteak, not too much cooked, and stale bread as the chief diet, and doubtless this was the best diet for him. Yet it is not the less true that "what is one man's meat is another man's poison," and food that is absolutely harmless to one may disorder the entire digestion of another. Roast pork, mince pies, and cheese do not, I believe, rank high with the Faculty for ease of digestion, yet I have found them comparatively innoxious, while poultry, milk, oysters, fish, some kinds of vegetables, and even dry toast have caused me serious inconvenience. The appetite of the recovering opium-eater will probably be voracious and not at all discriminating during the earlier stages of his experiment, and will continue unimpaired even when the stomach begins to be fastidious as to what it will receive. Probably no safer rule can be given than to limit the quantity eaten as far as practicable, and to use only such food as in each particular case is found to be most easy of digestion. Too much prominence can not be given to bodily exercise as intimately connected with the recovery of the patient. Without this it seems to me doubtful whether a person could withstand the extreme irritation of his nervous system. In his worst state he can not sit still; he must be moving. The complication of springs in the famous Kilmansegge leg, is nothing compared with the necesity for motion which is developed in the limbs of the recovering opium-eater. Whatever his health, whatever his spirits, whatever the weather, walk he must. Ten miles before breakfast will be found a moderate allowance for many months after the habit has been subdued. A patient who could afford to give up three months of his time after the opium had been entirely discarded, to the perfect recovery of his health, could probably turn it to no better account than by stretching out on a pedestrian excursion of a thousand miles and back. This would be at the rate of nearly twenty-six miles a day, allowing Sunday as a day of rest. This advice is seriously given for the consideration of those who can command the time for such a thorough process of restoration. Nor should any weight be given to the objection that the body is in too enfeebled a state to make it safe to venture upon such an experiment. Account for it as physiologists may, it is certain that the debilitating effects of leaving off opium much more rapidly pass away from the lower extremities than from the rest of the body. At no time subsequent to my mastery of opium have I found any difficulty in accomplishing the longest walks; on the contrary they have been taken with entire ease and pleasure. Yet to this day, any considerable exercise of the other muscles is attended with extreme debility. In the absence of facilities for walking, gymnastic exercise is not wholly without benefit, and if this exercise is followed by a cold bath, some portion of the insupportable languor will be removed. Walking, however, is the great panacea, nor can it well be taken in excess. So important is this element in the restorative process that it may well be doubted whether without its aid a confirmed opium-eater could be restored to health. It is useless for any person to think that he can break off even the least inveterate of his habits without effort, or the more obstinate ones without a struggle. Wine, spirits, tobacco, after years of habitual use, require a degree of resolution which is sometimes found to be beyond the resources of the will. Much more does opium, whose hold upon the system is vastly more tenacious than all these combined, call for a resolute determination prepared to meet all the possible consequences that pertain to a complete and perfect mastery of the habit. It should be remembered, however, that the experience here recorded is that resulting from years of large and uninterrupted use of opium. The entire system had necessarily conformed itself to the artificial habit. For years the proper action of the nervous, muscular, digestive, and secretory system had been impeded and forced in an unnatural direction. In time all the vital functions had conformed as far as possible to the necessity imposed upon them. Scarce a function of the body that had not been daily drilled into a highly artificial adaptation to the conditions imposed upon the system by the use of opium. Nature, indeed, for a time rebels and resists the attempt to impose unnatural habitudes upon her action; but there is a limit to her resistance, and she is then found to possess a marvellous power of reconciling the processes of life with the disturbance and disorder of almost the entire human organization. This power of adaptation, while it unquestionably lures on to the continued indulgence of all kinds of bad habits, is, on the other hand, the only hope and assurance the sufferer from such causes can have of ultimate recovery from his danger. If it requires years to establish bad habits in the animal economy, why should we expect that they can be wholly eradicated except by a reversal, in these respects, of the entire current of the life, or without allowing a commensurate time for that perfect restoration of the disordered functions which is expected? If this view of the case is not encouraging to the veteran consumer of opium, it certainly is not without its suggestive utility to that larger class whose use of opium has been comparatively limited both in time and quantity. Fortunately, much the greater number of opium-eaters take the drug in small quantities or have made use of it for only a limited period. In their case the process of recovery is relatively easy; the functions of their physical organization still act for the most part in a normal way; they have to retrace comparatively few steps and for comparatively a short time. Even to the inveterate consumer of the drug it has been made manifest that he may emancipate himself from his bondage if he will manfully accept the conditions upon which alone he can accomplish it. In the worst conceivable cases it is at least a choice between evils; if he abandons opium, he may count upon much suffering of body, many sleepless nights, a disordered nervous system, and at times great prostration of strength. If he continues the habit, there remains, as long as life lasts, the irresolute will, the bodily languor, the ever-present sense of hopeless, helpless ruin. The opium-eater must take his choice between the two. On the one hand is hope, continually brightening in the future--on the other is the inconceivable wretchedness of one from whom hope has forever fled. DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER." Under this title an article appeared in the "London Magazine" for December, 1821, which attracted very general attention from its literary merit and the novelty of its revelations. So considerable was the interest excited in these "Confessions" that the article was speedily republished in book form both in London and this country. The reading public outside of the medical profession were thus for the first time made generally acquainted with the tremendous potency of a drug whose fascinations have since become almost as well known to the inhabitants of England and America as to the people of India or China. The general properties of the drug had of course been familiar to intelligent men from the days of Vasco de Gama, but how easily the habit of using it could be acquired, and with what difficulty when acquired it could be left off, were subjects respecting which great obscurity rested on the minds even of medical men. Such parts only of these "Confessions" as have relation to De Quincey's habits as an opium-eater, have been selected for republication; such extracts from his other writings are added as embody his entire experience of opium so far as he has given it to the world. * * * * * I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period of my life. According to my application of it, I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree useful and instructive. In _that_ hope it is that I have drawn it up, and _that_ must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honorable reserve which for the most part restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Guilt and misery shrink by a natural instinct from public notice: they court privacy and solitude; and, even in the choice of a grave, will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the church-yard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing--in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth-- 'Humbly to express A penitential loneliness.' It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all that it should be so; nor would I willingly, in my own person, manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do any thing to weaken them. But on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast over-balance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not, of necessity, imply guilt. They approach or recede from the shades of that dark alliance in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offense; in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life has been on the whole the life of a philosopher; from my birth I was made an intellectual creature; and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my school-boy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not yet _recorded_ [Footnote: "Not yet _recorded_," I say; for there is one celebrated man of the present day [Coleridge] who, if all be true which is reported of him, has greatly exceeded me in quantity.] of any other man, it is no less true that I have struggled against this fascinating enthrallment with a religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man--have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist that, in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure. Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and, if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of confession, in consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium-eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago, by computing at that time the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talent, or of eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent -----, the late Dean of -----; Lord -----; Mr. -----, the philosopher; a late under-secretary of state (who described to me the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words of the Dean of -----, viz., "that he felt as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his stomach"); Mr. -----; and many others, hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts became known to me which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will mention two: 1. Three respectable London druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the number of _amateur_ opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at this time immense; and that the difficulty of distinguishing these persons, to whom habit had rendered opium necessary, from such as were purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This evidence respected London only. But, 2, (which will possibly surprise the reader more,) some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton manufacturers that their work-people were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterward descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted "That those eat now who never ate before; And those who always ate, now eat the more." I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and have suffered very unjustly in the opinion of my acquaintance, from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but, so long as I took it with this view, I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age a most painful affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had originally been caused by the extremities of hunger suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen to twenty-four) it had slumbered; for the three following years it had revived at intervals; and now, under unfavorable circumstances, from depression of spirits, it attacked me with a violence that yielded to no remedies but opium. It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling incident in my life I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal events are not to be forgotten; and, from circumstances connected with it, I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in the following way: From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my head in cold water at least once a day. Being suddenly seized with toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental intermission of that practice; jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin of cold water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any respite for about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets; rather to run away, if possible, from my torments than with any distinct purpose. By accident I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound it was at that time! what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances! It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. My road homeward lay through Oxford Street, and near the "Pantheon" I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist (unconscious minister of celestial pleasures!), as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday, and when I asked for the tincture of opium he gave it to me as any other man might do; and furthermore, out of my shilling returned to me what seemed to be a real copper half-penny, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind as a beatific vision of an immortal druggist sent down to earth on a special mission to myself. Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took, I took under every disadvantage. But I took it; and in an hour--O heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes--this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a _phaomakon nepenfes_, for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered. Happiness might now be bought for a penny and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But if I talk in this way the reader will think I am laughing, and I can assure him that nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium. Its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the opium-eater can not present himself in the character of _L'Allegro_; even then he speaks and thinks as becomes _Il Penseroso_. And first one word with respect to its bodily effects; for upon all that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right) or by professors of medicine, writing _ex cathedra_, I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce--Lies! lies! lies! I do by no means deny that some truths have been delivered to the world in regard to opium: thus it has been repeatedly affirmed by the learned that opium is a dusky brown in color, and this, take notice, I grant; secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I grant--for in my time East India opium has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight; and thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you must do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz., die. These weighty propositions are, all and singular, true; I can not gainsay them; and truth ever was and will be commendable. But in these three theorems I believe we have exhausted the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by man on the subject of opium. And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further discoveries, stand aside and allow me to come forward and lecture on this matter. First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted by all who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo periculo_, that no quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium, commonly called laudanum, _that_ might certainly intoxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? because it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol; and not in _degree_ only incapable, but even in _kind_; it is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting and tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours; the first, to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute, the second of chronic, pleasure; the one is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces among them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possesion; opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive; and, with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections; but then with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation there is always more or less of a maudlin character which exposes it to the contempt of the by-stander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears--no mortal knows why--and the sensual creature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings, incident to opium, is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that state which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with the impulse of a heart originally just and good. Wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance, and beyond a certain point it is sure to volatilize and to dispence the intellectual energies; whereas opium always seens to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is, inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity; and over all is the great light of the majestic intellect. This is the doctrine of the true Church on the subject of opium: of which Church I acknowledge myself to be the only member--the alpha and omega; but then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience, whereas most of the unscientific authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written expressly on the _materia medica_, make it evident from the horror they express of it that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its intoxicating power such as staggered my own incredulity; for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologized for him by suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not _prima facie_, and of necessity an absurd one; but the defense _is_. To my surprise, however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the right. "I will maintain," said he, "that I _do_ talk nonsense; and secondly, I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with any view to profit, but solely and simply," said he, "solely and simply--solely and simply," repeating it three times over, "because I am drunk with opium; and that daily." I confess, that the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may seem a weighty one to my prejudice; but still I must plead my experience, which was greater than his greatest by seven thousand drops a day; and though it was not possible to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms of vinous intoxication, yet it struck me that he might proceed on a logical error of using the word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending it generically to all modes of nervous excitement, instead of restricting it as the expression for a specific sort of excitement connected with certain diagnostics. Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that they had been drunk upon green tea; and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me the other day that a patient in recovering from an illness had got drunk on a beefsteak. Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying; assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took opium at intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits. With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the end, but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system. This first stage of its action always lasted with me, during my novitiate, for upward of eight hours, so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep. Thus I have shown that opium does not, of necessity, produce inactivity or torpor. On the contrary it often led me into markets and theatres. Yet, in candor, I will admit that markets and theatres are not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater when in the divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that state crowds become an oppression to him; music, even, too sensual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and silence as indispensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consummation of what opium can do for human nature. Courteous, and I hope indulgent reader, having accompanied me thus far, now let me request you to move onward for about eight years; that is to say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance with opium first began) to 1812. And what am I doing? Taking opium. Yes, but what else? Why, reader, in 1812, the year we are now arrived at, as well as for some years previous, I have been chiefly studying German metaphysics, in the writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, etc. And I still take opium? On Saturday nights. And, perhaps, have taken it unblushingly ever since "the rainy Sunday," and "the Pantheon," and "the beatific druggist" of 1804? Even so. And how do I find my health after all this opium-eating? in short, how do I do? Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, "as well as can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say the real and simple truth (it must not be forgotten that hitherto I thought, to satisfy the theories of medical men, I ought to be ill), I was never better in my life than in the spring of 1812; and I hope sincerely that the quantity of claret, port, or "particular Madeira," which in all probability you, good reader, have taken and design to take for every term of eight years during your natural life, may as little disorder your health as mine was disordered by opium I had taken for the eight years between 1804 and 1812. To this moderation and temperate use of the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet at least (that is, in 1812) I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same time I have been only a _dilettante_ eater of opium; eight years' practice even, with the single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient to make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer of the year we have just quitted I had suffered much in bodily health from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event, being no ways related to the subject now before me further than through bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813 I know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative on which, as respects my own self-justification, the whole of what follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing dilemma. Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience by such a detail of my malady and of my struggles with it as might suffice to establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and constant suffering, or, on the other hand, by passing lightly over this critical part of my story, I must forego the benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of the reader, and must lay myself open to the misconstruction of having slipped by the easy and gradual steps of self-indulging persons from the first to the final state of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which there will be a lurking predisposition in most readers from my previous acknowledgments). Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort. No; believe all that I ask of you, viz., that I could resist no longer. Whether, indeed, afterward, I might not have succeeded in breaking off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which I _did_ make might not have been carried much further, and my gradual re-conquests of ground lost might not have been followed up much more energetically, these are questions which I must decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation; but--shall I speak ingenuously?--I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of an Eudæmonist; I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others; I can not face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness; and am little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. The issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned; and from this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions. Now then, reader, from 1813, where all this time we have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three years more. Now draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new character. This year which we have now reached, stood, I confess, as a parenthesis between years of a gloomier character. It was a year of brilliant water (to speak after the manner of jewellers), set, as it were, and insulated in the gloom and cloudy melancholy of opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before this time descended suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from three hundred and twenty grains of opium (that is, eight [Footnote: I here reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one grain of opium, which I believe is the common estimate. However, as both may be considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much in strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Tea-spoons vary as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about one hundred drops--so that eight thousand drops are about eighty times a tea-spoonful.] thousand drops of laudanum) per day to forty grains, or one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black vapors that I have seen roll away from the summits of mountains, drew off in one day; passed off with its murky banners as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded and is floated off by a spring tide-- "That moveth altogether, if it move at all." Now, then, I was again happy. I now took only one thousand drops of laudanum per day--and what was that? A latter spring had come to close up the season of youth. My brain performed its functions as healthily as ever before. I read Kant again, and again I understood him, or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around me. And, by the way, I remember about this time a little incident, which I mention because trifling as it was the reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business a Malay could have to transact among English mountains I can not conjecture, but possibly he was on his road to a sea-port about forty miles distant. The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl born and bred among the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort. His turban, therefore, confounded her not a little; and as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of her master (and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of all the languages of the earth, besides perhaps a few of the lunar ones), came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon below whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not immediately go down, but when I did the group which presented itself--arranged as it was by accident--though not very elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking more like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay, his turban and loose trowsers of dingy white relieved upon the dark panelling. He had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more striking picture there could not be imagined than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures, and adorations. Half hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay was a little child from a neighboring cottage, who had crept in after him and was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing upward at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, while with one hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for protection. My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being, indeed, confined to two words--the Arabic word for barley and the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learned from Anastasius--and as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's "Mithridates," which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad; considering that of such language as I possessed, the Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshiped me in a devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with my neighbors, for the Malay had no means of betraying the secret He lay down upon the floor for about an hour and then pursued his journey. On his departure I presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar, and the expression of his face convinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth, and (in the school-boy phrase) bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor creature. But what could be done? I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that if he had travelled on foot from London it must be nearly three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any human being. I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality by having him seized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol. No; there was clearly no help for it. He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious; but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convinced that he was used [Footnote: This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A London magistrate (Harriot's "Struggles through Life," vol. iii. p. 391, third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying laudanum for the gout, he took FORTY drops, the next night SIXTY, and on the fifth night EIGHTY, without any effect whatever, and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriot's case into a trifle.] to opium, and that I must have done him the service I designed by giving him one night of respite from the pains of wandering. This incident I have digressed to mention because this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterward upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself, that ran "a-muck" [Footnote: See the common accounts, in any Eastern traveller or voyager, of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium or are reduced to desperation by ill luck at gambling.] at me, and led me into a world of troubles. And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my condition as it stood about 1816-1817, up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man. But now farewell, a long farewell to happiness, winter or summer! farewell to smiles and laughter! farewell to peace of mind! farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep! For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these. I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes, for I have now to record _the pains of opium._ Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your attention to a brief explanatory note on three points: 1. For several reasons I have not been able to compose the notes for this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. I give the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up from memory. Some of them point to their own date, some I have dated, and some are undated. Whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the natural or chronological order I have not scrupled to do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has been omitted. I could not, without effort, constrain myself to the task of either recalling or constructing into a regular narrative the whole burden of horrors which lies upon my brain. This feeling partly I plead in excuse, and partly that I am now in London, and am a helpless sort of person who can not even arrange his own papers without assistance, and I am separated from the hands which are wont to perform for me the offices of an amanuensis. 2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential and communicative of my own private history. It may be so. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud and follow my own humors than much to consider who is listening to me; and if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper. The fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to those who will be interested about me hereafter; and wishing to have some record of a time, the entire history of which no one can know but myself, I do it as fully as I am able with the efforts I am now capable of making because I know not whether I can ever find time to do it again. 3. It will occur to you often to ask, Why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it? To this I must answer briefly--it might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it can not be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg me to desist. But could not I have reduced it a drop a day, or by adding water have bisected or trisected a drop? A thousand drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce, and that would certainly not have answered. But this is a common mistake of those who know nothing of opium experimentally. I appeal to those who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that after that point further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes, say many thoughtless persons, who know not what they are talking of, you will suffer a little low spirits and dejection for a few days. I answer, no; there is nothing like low spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits are uncommonly raised, the pulse is improved, the health is better. It is not there that the suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like dejection), accompanied by intense perspirations, and feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without more space at my command. I shall now enter "_in medias res_" and shall anticipate, from a time when my opium pains might be said to be at their _acme_, an account of their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties. My studies have now been long interrupted. I can not read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance; yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others, because reading is an accomplishment of mine--and in the slang use of the word _accomplishment_, as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the only one I possess--and formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this, for I had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Of late, if I have felt moved by any thing in books, it has been by the grand lamentations of Sampson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in "Paradise Regained," when read aloud by myself. For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one; and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to mention what that was. The sublimer and more passionate poets I still read, as I have said, by snatches and occasionally, but my proper vocation, as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part, analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, etc., were all become insupportable to me; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly delight; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the labor of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms, and fruits to the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one single work, to which I had presumed to give the title of an unfinished work of Spinoza's, viz., "_De Emendatione Humani Intelectus_." This was now lying locked up, as by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect; and, instead of surviving me as a monument of wishes at least, and aspirations, and a life of labor dedicated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a superstructure, of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility I had for amusement turned my attention to political economy. In 1819 a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book; and, recurring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, "Thou art the man!" Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I wondered once more: I wondered at myself that I could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading; and much more I wondered at the book. Thus did one simple work of profound understanding avail to give me a pleasure and an activity which I had not known for years--it roused me even to write, or at least to dictate what M. wrote for me. It seemed to me that some important truths had escaped even "the inevitable eye" of Mr. Ricardo; and as these were for the most part of such a nature that I could express or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of economists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book; and being so brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as I was of all general exertion, I drew up my "Prolegomena to all Future Systems of Political Economy." I hope it will not be found redolent of opium; though, indeed, to most people, the subject itself is a sufficient opiate. This exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, as the sequel showed; for I designed to publish my work. Arrangements were made at a provincial press about eighteen miles distant for printing it. An additional compositor was retained for some days on this account. The work was even twice advertised, and I was, in a manner, pledged to the fulfillment of my intention. But I had a preface to write, and a dedication--which I wished to make a splendid one--to Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite unable to accomplish all this. The arrangements were countermanded, the compositor dismissed, and my "Prolegomena" rested peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother. I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor in terms that apply, more or less, to every part of the four years during which I was under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few words to any that I received was the utmost that I could accomplish, and often _that_ not until the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on my writing-table. Without the aid of M. all records of bills paid, or _to be_ paid, must have perished, and my whole domestic economy--whatever became of Political Economy--must have gone into irretrievable confusion. I shall not afterward allude to this part of the case. It is one, however, which the opium-eater will find in the end as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations; he wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and can not even attempt to rise. I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to the history and journal of what took place in my dreams; for these were the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering. The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of my physical economy was from the re-awaking of a state of eye generally incident to childhood or exalted states of irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms. In some that power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or summon them; or as a child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter, "I can tell them to go, and they go; but sometimes they come when I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to me. At night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stones drawn from times before �dipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendor. And the four following facts may be mentioned as noticeable at this time: I. That as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point--that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so that I feared to exercise this faculty. II. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had re-ascended. This I do not dwell upon, because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles--amounting at last to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency--can not be approached by words. III. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time. I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience. IV. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived. I could not be said to recollect them, for if I had been told of them when waking I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience; but placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I _recognized_ them instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe. I have, indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true, viz., that the dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of is in fact the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as _forgetting_ possible to the mind. A thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever--just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas in fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring day-light shall have withdrawn. And now came a tremendous change, which unfolding itself slowly like a scroll through many months, promised an abiding torment; and, in fact, it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human face had often mixed in my dreams--but not despotically, nor with any special power of tormenting--but now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens; faces, imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upward by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries: my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed, and surged with the ocean. _May_, 1818.--The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night, through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Bramah through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles, and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud. I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment and left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinese houses with cane tables, etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon became instinct with life. The abominable head of the crocodile and his leering eyes looked out at me multiplied into a thousand repetitions, and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear every thing when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke. It was broad noon, and my children were standing hand in hand at my bedside, come to show me their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transition from the damned crocodile and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams to the sight of innocent _human_ natures and of infancy, that in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces. It now remains that I should say something of the way in which this conflict of horrors was finally brought to its crisis. The reader is already aware that the opium-eater has, in some way or other, "unwound, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which bound him." By what means? To have narrated this according to the original intention would have far exceeded the space which can now be allowed. It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I should on a maturer view of the case have been exceedingly unwilling to injure by any such unaffecting details the impression of the history itself as an appeal to the prudence and the conscience of the yet unconfirmed opium-eater, or even (though a very inferior consideration) to injure its effect as a composition. The interest of the judicious reader will not attach itself chiefly to the subject of the fascinating spells, but to the fascinating power. Not the opium-eater, but the opium is the true hero of the tale, and the legitimate centre on which the interest revolves. The object was to display the marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or for pain. If that is done, the action of the piece has closed. However, as some people in spite of all laws to the contrary will persist in asking what became of the opium-eater, and in what state he now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is aware that opium had long ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it was solely by the tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it that it kept its hold. Yet as other tortures, no less it may be thought, attended the non-abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was left; and _that_ might as well have been adopted, which, however terrific in itself, held out a prospect of final restoration to happiness. This appears true; but good logic gave the author no strength to act upon it. However, a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis for other objects still dearer to him, and which will always be far dearer to him than his life, even now that it is again a happy one. I saw that I must die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that should be required, to die in throwing it off. How much I was at that time taking I can not say; for the opium which I used had been purchased for me by a friend who afterward refused to let me pay him, so that I could not ascertain even what quantity I had used within a year. I apprehend, however, that I took it very irregularly, and that I varied from about fifty or sixty grains to one hundred and fifty a day. My first task was to reduce it to forty, to thirty, and, as fast as I could, to twelve grains. I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_ state. Think of me as of one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered; and much, perhaps, in the situation of him who has been racked, as I collect the torments of that state from the affecting account of them left by a most innocent sufferer [William Lithgow] of the time of James I. Meantime I derived no benefit from any medicine except one prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, viz., ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical account, therefore, of my emancipation I have not much to give, and even that little, as managed by a man so ignorant of medicine as myself, would probably tend only to mislead. At all events it would be misplaced in this situation. The moral of the narrative is addressed to the opium-eater, and therefore of necessity limited in its application. If he is taught to fear and tremble, enough has been effected. But he may say that the issue of my case is at least a proof that opium, after a seventeen years' use and an eight years' abuse of its powers, may still be renounced; and that he may chance to bring to the task greater energy than I did, or that with a stronger constitution than mine he may obtain the same results with less. This may be true. I would not presume to measure the efforts of other men by my own. I heartily wish him more energy; I wish him the same success. Nevertheless, I had motives external to myself which he may unfortunately want, and these supplied me with conscientious supports which mere personal interests might fail to supply to a mind debilitated by opium. Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of diminishing the opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of physical regeneration, and I may add that ever since, at intervals, I have had a restoration of more than youthful spirits, though under the pressure of difficulties, which in a less happy state of mind I should have called misfortunes. One memorial of my former condition still remains: my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is tumultuous, and like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still, in the tremendous line of Milton-- "With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms." The preceding narrative was written by De Quincey in the summer of 1821. In December of the next year a further record of his experience was published in the form of the following _Appendix._ Those who have read the "Confessions" will have closed them with the impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium. This impression I meant to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because the very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffering necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of surveying his own case as a cool spectator, and a degree of spirits for adequately describing it which it would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking from the station of an actual sufferer; secondly, because I, who had descended from so large a quantity as eight thousand drops to so small a one, comparatively speaking, as a quantity ranging between three hundred and one hundred and sixty drops, might well suppose that the victory was in effect achieved. In suffering my readers, therefore, to think of me as of a reformed opium-eater, I left no impression but what I shared myself, and, as may be seen, even this impression was left to be collected from the general tone of the conclusion and not from any specific words, which are in no instance at variance with the literal truth. In no long time after that paper was written I became sensible that the effort which remained would cost me far more energy than I had anticipated, and the necessity for making it was more apparent every month. In particular I became aware of an increasing callousness or defect of sensibility in the stomach, and this I imagined might imply a scirrhous state of that organ either formed or forming. An eminent physician, to whose kindness I was at that time deeply indebted, informed me that such a termination of my case was not impossible, though likely to be forestalled by a different termination in the event of my continuing the use of opium. Opium, therefore, I resolved wholly to abjure as soon as I should find myself at liberty to bend my undivided attention and energy to this purpose. It was not, however, until the 24th of June last that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having previously settled in my own mind that I would not flinch, but would "stand up to the scratch" under any possible "punishment." I must premise that about one hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months. Occasionally I had run up as high as five hundred, and once nearly to seven hundred. In repeated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone as low as one hundred drops, but had found it impossible to stand it beyond the fourth day, which, by the way, I have always found more difficult to get over than any of the preceding three. I went off under easy sail--one hundred and thirty drops a day for three days; on the fourth I plunged at once to eighty. The misery which I now suffered "took the conceit" out of me at once, and for about a month I continued off and on about this mark; then I sunk to sixty, and the next day to--none at all. This was the first day for nearly ten years that I had existed without opium. I persevered in my abstinence for ninety hours; that is, upward of half a week. Then I took--ask me not how much; say, ye severest, what would ye have done? Then I abstained again; then took about twenty-five drops; then abstained; and so on. Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks of the experiment were these enormous irritability and excitement of the whole system--the stomach, in particular, restored to a full feeling of vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain; unceasing restlessness night and day; sleep--I scarcely knew what it was--three hours out of the twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agitated and shallow that I heard every sound that was near me; lower jaw constantly swelling; mouth ulcerated; and many other distressing symptoms that would be tedious to repeat, among which, however, I must mention one because it had never failed to accompany any attempt to renounce opium, viz., violent sternutation. This now became exceedingly troublesome; sometimes lasting for two hours at once, and recurring at least twice or three times a day. I was not much surprised at this, on recollecting what I had somewhere heard or read, that the membrane which lines the nostrils is a prolongation of that which lines the stomach, whence I believe are explained the inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram-drinkers. The sudden restoration of its original sensibility to the stomach expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is remarkable, also, that during the whole period of years through which I had taken opium I had never once caught cold--as the phrase is--nor even the slightest cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, and a cough soon after. In an unfinished fragment of a letter begun about this time to ----, I find these words: "You ask me to write the ---- ----. Do you know Beaumont and Fletcher's play of 'Thierry and Theodoret?' There you will see my case as to sleep; nor is it much of an exaggeration in other features. I protest to you that I have a greater influx of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts which had been frozen up for a decade of years by opium, had now, according to the old fable, been thawed at once, such a multitude stream in upon me from all quarters. Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability, that for one which I detain and write down fifty escape me. In spite of my weariness from suffering and want of sleep I can not stand still or sit for two minutes together. _'I nunc, et versus tecum meditare canoros.'"_ At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighboring surgeon, requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he came, and after briefly stating the case to him I asked this question: Whether he did not think that the opium might have acted as a stimulus to the digestive organs, and that the present state of suffering in the stomach--which manifestly was the cause of the inability to sleep--might arise from indigestion? His answer was, No: on the contrary, he thought that the suffering was caused by digestion itself, which should naturally go on below the consciousness, but which, from the unnatural state of the stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was become distinctly perceptible. This opinion was plausible, and the unintermitting nature of the suffering disposes me to think that it was true; for if it had been any mere _irregular_ affection of the stomach it should naturally have intermitted occasionally, and constantly fluctuated as to degree. The intention of Nature, as manifested in the healthy state, obviously is to withdraw from our notice all the vital motions--such as the circulation of the blood, the expansion and contraction of the lungs, the peristaltic action of the stomach, etc.--and opium, it seems, is able in this as in other instances to counteract her purposes. By the advice of the surgeon I tried _bitters_. For a short time these greatly mitigated the feelings under which I labored, but about the forty-second day of the experiment the symptoms already noticed began to retire and new ones to arise of a different and far more tormenting class. Under these, but with a few intervals of remission, I have since continued to suffer; but I dismiss them undescribed tracing circumstantially any sufferings from which it is removed by too short or by no interval. To do this with minuteness enough to make the review of any use would be indeed "_infandum renovare dolorem_," and possibly without a sufficient motive; for, secondly, I doubt whether this latter state be any way referable to opium, positively considered, or even negatively; that is, whether it is to be numbered among the last evils from the direct action of opium or even among the earliest evils consequent upon a _want_ of opium in a system long deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the symptoms might be accounted for from the time of year (August); for, though the summer was not a hot one, yet in any case the sum of all the heat _funded_ (if one may say so) during the previous months, added to the existing heat of that month, naturally renders August in its better half the hottest part of the year; and it so happened that the excessive perspiration which even at Christmas attends any great reduction in the daily quantum of opium, and which in July was so violent as to oblige me to use a bath five or six times a day, had about the setting in of the hottest season wholly retired, on which account any bad effect of the heat might be the more unmitigated. Another symptom, viz., what in my ignorance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes affecting the shoulders, etc., but more often appearing to be seated in the stomach), seemed again less probably attributable to the opium or the want of opium than to the dampness of the house which I inhabit, which had about that time attained its maximum, July having been as usual a month of incessant rain in our most rainy part of England. Under these reasons for doubting whether opium had any connection with the latter stage of my bodily wretchedness--except indeed as an occasional cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and thus predisposed to any mal-influence whatever--I willingly spare my reader all description of it. Let it perish to him; and would that I could as easily say, let it perish to my own remembrances, that any future hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal of possible human misery! So much for the sequel of my experiment As to the former stage, in which properly lies the experiment and its application to other cases, I must request my reader not to forget the reason for which I have recorded it. This was a belief that I might add some trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent. In this I am aware that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of the torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the subject which besieged me while writing that part of my paper; which part being immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of latitude), can not be corrected or improved. But from this account, rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may arise to the persons most interested in such a history of opium--viz., to opium-eaters in general--that it establishes for their consolation and encouragement the fact that opium may be renounced without greater sufferings than an ordinary resolution may support, and by a pretty rapid course of descent. On which last notice I would remark that mine was _too_ rapid, and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather perhaps it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the reader may judge for himself, and above all that the opium-eater who is preparing to retire from business may have every sort of information before him, I subjoin my diary. FIRST WEEK Drops of Laud. Monday, June 24....... 130 Tuesday, " 25....... 140 Wednesday, " 26....... 130 Thursday, " 27....... 80 Friday, " 28....... 80 Saturday, " 29....... 80 Sunday, " 30....... 80 SECOND WEEK Drops of Laud. Monday, July 1........ 80 Tuesday, " 2........ 80 Wednesday, " 3........ 90 Thursday, " 4........ 100 Friday " 5........ 80 Saturday, " 6........ 80 Sunday, " 7........ 80 THIRD WEEK Drops of Laud. Monday, July 8........ 300 Tuesday, " 9........ 50 Wednesday, " 10 Thursday, " 11 Hiatus in Friday, " 12 MS Saturday, " 13 Sunday, " 14....... 76 FOURTH WEEK Drops of Laud. Monday, July 15....... 76 Tuesday, " 16....... 73-1/2 Wednesday, " 17....... 73-1/2 Thursday, " 18....... 70 Friday, " 19....... 240 Saturday, " 20....... 80 Sunday, " 21....... 350 FIFTH WEEK Drops of Laud. Monday, July 22....... 60 Tuesday, " 23.......none. Wednesday, " 24.......none. Thursday, " 25.......none. Saturday, " 27.......none. Friday, " 26....... 200 What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps, to such numbers as 300, 350, etc.? The _impulse_ to these relapses was mere infirmity of purpose; the _motive_, where any motive blended with the impulse, was either the principle of "_reculer pour mieux sauter_" (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which on awaking found itself partly accustomed to this new ration), or else it was this principle--that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be borne best which meet with a mood of anger. Now whenever I ascended to any large dose I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have borne any thing. The narrative part of De Quincey's "Confessions" by no means exhausts the story of his suffering as recorded by himself. Scattered through his miscellaneous papers are to be found frequent references to the opium habit and its protracted hold upon the system long after the drug itself had been discarded. The succeeding extracts from his "Literary Reminiscences" will throw light upon his bodily and mental condition in the years immediately following his opium struggle: "I was ill at that time and for years after--ill from the effects of opium upon the liver, and one primary indication of any illness felt in that organ is peculiar depression of spirits. Hence arose a singular effect of reciprocal action in maintaining a state of dejection. From the original physical depression caused by the derangement of the liver arose a sympathetic depression of the mind, disposing me to believe that I never _could_ extricate myself; and from this belief arose, by reaction, a thousand-fold increase of the physical depression. I began to view my unhappy London life--a life of literary toils odious to my heart--as a permanent state of exile from my Westmoreland home. My three eldest children, at that time in the most interesting stages of childhood and infancy, were in Westmoreland, and so powerful was my feeling (derived merely from a deranged liver) of some long, never-ending separation from my family, that at length, in pure weakness of mind, I was obliged to relinquish my daily walks in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens from the misery of seeing children in multitudes that too forcibly recalled my own. "Meantime it is very true that the labors I had to face would not even to myself, in a state of good bodily health, have appeared alarming. _Myself_, I say, for in any state of health I do not write with rapidity. Under the influence, however, of opium, when it reaches its maximum in diseasing the liver and deranging the digestive functions, all exertion whatever is revolting in excess. Intellectual exertion above all is connected habitually, when performed under opium influence, with a sense of disgust the most profound for the subject (no matter what) which detains the thoughts; all that morning freshness of animal spirits, which under ordinary circumstances consumes, as it were, and swallows up the interval between one's self and one's distant object, all that dewy freshness is exhaled and burned off by the parching effects of opium on the animal economy. "I was, besides, and had been for some time engaged in the task of unthreading the labyrinth by which I had reached, unawares, my present state of slavery to opium. I was descending the mighty ladder, stretching to the clouds as it seemed, by which I had imperceptibly attained my giddy altitude--that point from which it had seemed equally impossible to go forward or backward. To wean myself from opium I had resolved inexorably, and finally I accomplished my vow. But the transition state was the worst state of all to support. All the pains of martyrdom were there; all the ravages in the economy of the great central organ, the stomach, which had been wrought by opium; the sickening disgust which attended each separate respiration; and the rooted depravation of the appetite and the digestion--all these must be weathered for months upon months, and without stimulus (however false and treacherous) which, for some part of each day, the old doses of laudanum would have supplied. These doses were to be continually diminished, and under this difficult dilemma: If, as some people advised, the diminution were made by so trifling a quantity as to be imperceptible, in that case the duration of the process was interminable and hopeless--thirty years would not have sufficed to carry it through. On the other hand, if twenty-five to fifty drops were withdrawn on each day (that is, from one to two grains of opium), inevitably within three, four, or five days the deduction began to tell grievously, and the effect was to restore the craving for opium more keenly than ever. There was the collision of both evils--that from the laudanum and that from the want of laudanum. The last was a state of distress perpetually increasing, the other was one which did not sensibly diminish--no, not for a long period of months. Irregular motions, impressed by a potent agent upon the blood and other processes of life, are slow to subside; they maintain themselves long after the exciting cause has been partially or even wholly withdrawn; and, in my case, they did not perfectly subside into the motion of tranquil health for several years. From all this it will be easy to understand the _fact_--though after all impossible, without a similar experience, to understand the _amount_--of my suffering and despondency in the daily task upon which circumstances had thrown me at this period--the task of writing and producing something for the journals, _invita Minerva_. Over and above the principal operation of my suffering state, as felt in the enormous difficulty with which it loaded every act of exertion, there was another secondary effect which always followed as a reaction from the first. And that this was no accident or peculiarity attached to my individual temperament, I may presume from the circumstance that Mr. Coleridge experienced the very same sensations, in the same situation, throughout his literary life, and has often noticed it to me with surprise and vexation. The sensation was that of powerful disgust with any subject upon which he had occupied his thoughts or had exerted his powers of composition for any length of time, and an equal disgust with the result of his exertions--powerful abhorrence, I may call it, absolute loathing of all that he had produced. "In after years Coleridge assured me that he never could read any thing he had written without a sense of overpowering disgust. Reverting to my own case, which was pretty nearly the same as this, there was, however, this difference--that at times, when I had slept at more regular hours for several nights consecutively, and had armed myself by a sudden increase of the opium for a few days running, I recovered at times a remarkable glow of jovial spirits. In some such artificial respites, it was, from my usual state of distress, and purchased at a heavy price of subsequent suffering, that I wrote the greater part of the opium 'Confessions' in the autumn of 1821. "These circumstances I mention to account for my having written any thing in a happy or genial state of mind, when I was in a general state so opposite, by my own description, to every thing like enjoyment. That description, as a _general_ one, states most truly the unhappy condition, and the somewhat extraordinary condition of feeling to which opium had brought me. I, like Mr. Coleridge, could not endure what I had written for some time after I had written it. I also shrunk from treating any subject which I had much considered; but more, I believe, as recoiling from the intricacy and the elaborateness which had been made known to me in the course of considering it, and on account of the difficulty or the toilsomeness which might be fairly presumed from the mere fact that I _had_ long considered it, or could have found it necessary to do so, than from any blind mechanical feeling inevitably associated (as in Coleridge it was) with a second survey of the same subject. One other effect there was from the opium, and I believe it had some place in Coleridge's list of morbid affections caused by opium, and of disturbances extended even to the intellect, which was, that the judgment was for a time grievously impaired, sometimes even totally abolished, as applied to any thing I had recently written. Fresh from the labor of composition, I believe, indeed, that almost every man, unless he has had a very long and close experience in the practice of writing, finds himself a little dazzled and bewildered in computing the effect, as it will appear to neutral eyes, of what he has produced. But the incapacitation which I speak of here as due to opium, is of another kind and another degree. It is mere childish helplessness, or senile paralysis, of the judgment, which distresses the man in attempting to grasp the upshot and the total effect (the _tout ensemble_) of what he has himself so recently produced. There is the same imbecility in attempting to hold things steadily together, and to bring them under a comprehensive or unifying act of the judging faculty, as there is in the efforts of a drunken man to follow a chain of reasoning. Opium is said to have some _specific_ effect of debilitation upon the memory: [Footnote: The technical memory, or that which depends upon purely arbitrary links of connection, and therefore more upon a _nisus_ or separate activity of the mind--that memory, for instance, which recalls names--is undoubtedly affected, and most powerfully, by opium. On the other hand, the _logical_ memory, or that which recalls facts that are connected by fixed relations, and where A being given, B must go before or after--historical memory, for instance--is not much affected by opium.] that is, not merely the general one which might be supposed to accompany its morbid effects upon the bodily system, but some other, more direct, subtle, and exclusive; and this, of whatever nature, may possibly extend to the faculty of judging. Such, however, over and above the more known and more obvious ill effects upon fhe spirits and the health, were some of the stronger and more subtle effects of opium in disturbing the intellectual system as well as the animal, the functions of the will also no less than those of the intellect, from which both Coleridge and myself were suffering at the period to which I now refer (1821-25); evils which found their fullest exemplification in the very act upon which circumstances had now thrown me as the _sine qua non_ of my extrication from difficulties-- viz., the act of literary composition. This necessity--the fact of its being my one sole resource for the present, and the established experience which I now had of the peculiar embarrassments and counteracting forces which I should find in opium, but still more in the train of consequences left behind by past opium--strongly co-operated with the mere physical despondency arising out of the liver: and the state of partial unhappiness, among other outward indications, expressed itself by one mark, which some people are apt greatly to misapprehend--as if it were some result of a sentimental turn of feeling--I mean perpetual sighs. But medical men must very well know that a certain state of the liver, _mechanically_ and without any co-operation of the will, expresses itself in sighs. I was much too firm-minded and too reasonable to murmur or complain. I certainly suffered deeply, as one who finds himself a banished man from all that he loves, and who had not the consolations of hope, but feared too profoundly that all my efforts--efforts poisoned so sadly by opium--might be unavailing for the end. "In 1824 I had come up to London upon an errand--in itself sufficiently vexatious--of fighting against pecuniary embarrassments by literary labors; but, as always happened hitherto, with very imperfect success, from the miserable thwartings I incurred through the deranged state of the liver. My zeal was great and my application was unintermitting, but spirits radically vitiated, chiefly through the direct mechanical depression caused by one important organ deranged; and secondly, by a reflex effect of depression, through my own thoughts in estimating my prospects, together with the aggravation of my case by the inevitable exile from my own mountain home--all this reduced the value of my exertion in a deplorable way. It was rare, indeed, that I could satisfy my own judgment even tolerably with the quality of any article I produced; and my power to make sustained exertions drooped in a way I could not control, every other hour of the day; insomuch that, what with parts to be cancelled, and what with whole days of torpor and pure defect of power to produce any thing at all, very often it turned out that all my labors were barely sufficient (sometimes not sufficient) to meet the current expenses of my residence in London. Gloomy indeed was my state of mind at that period, for though I made prodigious efforts to recover my health, yet all availed me not, and a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then undertook. One canopy of murky clouds brooded forever upon my spirits, which were in one uniformly low key of cheerless despondency." De Quincey has given his views pretty freely as to the regimen to be observed by reforming opium-eaters, in a paper on "The Temperance Movement" which is specially worthy of attention. "My own experience had never travelled in that course which could much instruct me in the miseries from wine or in the resources for struggling with it. I had repeatedly been obliged, indeed, to lay it aside altogether; but in this I never found room for more than seven or ten days' struggle: excesses I had never practiced in the use of wine: simply the habit of using it, and the collateral habits formed by excessive use of opium, had produced no difficulty at all in resigning it even on an hour's notice. From opium I derive my right of offering hints at all upon the subject of abstinence in other forms. But the modes of suffering from the evil, and the separate modes of suffering from the effort of self-conquest, together with errors of judgment incident to such states of transitional torment, are all nearly allied, practically analogous as regards the remedies, even if characteristically distinguished to the inner consciousness. I make no scruple, therefore, of speaking as from a station of high experience and of most watchful attention, which never remitted even under sufferings that were at times absolutely frantic. Once for all, however, in cases deeply rooted no advances ought ever to be made but by small stages; for the effect, which is insensible at first, by the tenth, twelfth, or fifteenth day generally accumulates unendurably under any bolder deduction. Certain it is, that by an error of this nature at the outset, most natural to human impatience under exquisite suffering, too generally the triai is abruptly brought to an end through the crisis of a passionate relapse. "Another object, and one to which the gladiator matched in single duel with intemperance must direct a religious vigilance, is the digestibility of his food. It must be digestible not only by its original qualities, but also by its culinary preparation. "The whole process and elaborate machinery of digestion are felt to be mean and humiliating when viewed in relation to our mere animal economy. But they rise into dignity and assert their own supreme importance when they are studied from another station, viz., in relation to the intellect and temper. No man dares _then_ to despise them; it is then seen that these functions of the human system form the essential basis upon which the strength and health of our higher nature repose; and that upon these functions, chiefly, the general happiness of life is dependent. All the rules of prudence or gifts of experience that life can accumulate, will never do as much for human comfort and welfare as would be done by a stricter attention, and a wiser science, directed to the digestive system. In this attention lies the key to any perfect restoration for the victim of intemperance. The sheet-anchor for the storm-beaten sufferer who is laboring to recover a haven of rest from the agonies of intemperance, and who has had the fortitude to abjure the poison which ruined, but which also for brief intervals offered him his only consolation, lies, beyond all doubt, in a most anxious regard to every thing connected with this supreme function of our animal economy. By how much the organs of digestion are feebler, by so much is it the more indispensable that solid and animal food should be adopted. A robust stomach may be equal to the trying task of supporting a fluid such as tea for breakfast; but for a feeble stomach, and still worse for a stomach _enfeebled_ by bad habits, broiled beef or something equally solid and animal, but not too much subjected to the action of fire, is the only tolerable diet. This indeed is the capital rule for a sufferer from habitual intoxication, who must inevitably labor under an impaired digestion: that as little as possible he should use of any liquid diet, and as little as possible of vegetable diet. Beef and a little bread (at the least sixty hours old) compose the privileged bill of fare for his breakfast. Errors of digestion, either from impaired powers or from powers not so much enfeebled as deranged, is the one immeasurable source both of disease and of secret wretchedness to the human race. Next, after the most vigorous attention, and a scientific attention, to the digestive system, in power of operation, stands _exercise_. For myself, under the ravages of opium, I have found walking the most beneficial exercise; besides that, it requires no previous notice or preparation of any kind; and this is a capital advantage in a state of drooping energies, or of impatient and unresting agitation. I may mention, as possibly an accident of my individual temperament, but possibly, also, no accident at all, that the relief obtained by walking was always most sensibly brought home to my consciousness, when some part of it (at least a mile and a half) had been performed before breakfast. In this there soon ceased to be any difficulty; for, while under the full oppression of opium it was impossible for me to rise at any hour that could, by the most indulgent courtesy, be described as within the pale of morning, no sooner had there been established any considerable relief from this oppression than the tendency was in the opposite direction--the difficulty became continually greater of sleeping even to a reasonable hour. Having once accomplished the feat of walking at 9 A.M., I backed in a space of seven or eight months to eight o'clock, to seven, to six, five, four, three; until at this point a metaphysical fear fell upon me that I was actually backing into 'yesterday,' and should soon have no sleep at all. Below three, however, I did not descend; and, for a couple of years, three and a half hours' sleep was all that I could obtain in the twenty-four hours. From this no particular suffering arose, except the nervous impatience of lying in bed for one moment after awaking. Consequently the habit of walking before breakfast became at length troublesome no longer as a most odious duty, but on the contrary, as a temptation that could hardly be resisted on the wettest mornings. As to the quantity of the exercise, I found that six miles a day formed the _minimum_ which would support permanently a particular standard of animal spirits, evidenced to myself by certain apparent symptoms. I averaged about nine and a half miles a day, but ascended on particular days to fifteen or sixteen, and more rarely to twenty-three or twenty-four; a quantity which did not produce fatigue: on the contrary it spread a sense of improvement through almost the whole week that followed; but usually, in the night immediately succeeding to such an exertion, I lost much of my sleep--a privation that under the circumstances explained, deterred me from trying the experiment too often. For one or two years I accomplished more than I have here claimed, viz., from six to seven thousand miles in the twelve months. "A necessity more painful to me by far than that of taking continued exercise arose out of a cause which applies perhaps with the same intensity only to opium cases, but must also apply in some degree to all cases of debilitation from morbid stimulation of the nerves, whether by means of wine, or opium, or distilled liquors. In travelling on the outside of mails during my youthful days, I made the discovery that opium, after an hour or so, diffuses a warmth deeper and far more permanent than could be had from any other known source. I mention this to explain in some measure the awful passion of cold which for some years haunted the inverse process of laying aside the opium. It was a perfect frenzy of misery; cold was a sensation which then first, as a mode of torment, seemed to have been revealed. In the months of July and August, and not at all the less during the very middle watch of the day, I sat in the closest proximity to a blazing fire: cloaks, blankets, counterpanes, hearth-rugs, horse-cloths, were piled upon my shoulders, but with hardly a glimmering of relief. "At night, and after taking coffee, I felt a little warmer, and could sometimes afford to smile at the resemblance of my own case to that of Harry Gile. Meantime, the external phenomenon by which the cold expressed itself was a sense (but with little reality) of eternal freezing perspiration. From this I was never free; and at length, from finding one general ablution sufficient for one day, I was thrown upon the irritating necessity of repeating it more frequently than would seem credible if stated. At this time I used always hot water, and a thought occurred to me very seriously that it would be best to live constantly, and perhaps to sleep, in a bath. What caused me to renounce this plan was an accident that compelled me for one day to use cold water. This, first of all, communicated any lasting warmth; so that ever afterward I used none _but_ cold water. Now to live in a cold bath in our climate, and in my own state of preternatural sensibility to cold, was not an idea to dally with. I wish to mention, however, for the information of other sufferers in the same way, one change in the mode of applying the water which led to a considerable and a sudden improvement in the condition of my feelings. I had endeavored in vain to procure a child's battledore, as an easy means (when clothed with sponge) of reaching the interspace between the shoulders. In default of a battledore, therefore, my necessity threw my experiment upon a long hair-brush; and this, eventually, proved of much greater service than any sponge or any battledore, for the friction of the brush caused an irritation on the surface of the skin, which, more than any thing else, has gradually diminished the once continual misery of unrelenting frost, although even yet it renews itself most distressingly at uncertain intervals. "I counsel the patient not to make the mistake of supposing that his amendment will necessarily proceed continuously or by equal increments, because this, which is a common notion, will certainly lead to dangerous disappointments. How frequently I have heard people encouraging a self-reformer by such language as this: 'When you have got over the fourth day of abstinence, which suppose to be Sunday, then Monday will find you a trifle better; Tuesday better still--though still it should be only a trifle--and so on. You may at least rely on never going back, you may assure yourself of having seen the worst, and the positive improvements, if trifles separately, must soon gather into a sensible magnitude.' This may be true in a case of short standing, but as a general rule it is perilously delusive. On the contrary, the line of progress, if exhibited in a geometrical construction, would describe an ascending path upon the whole, but with frequent retrocessions into descending curves, which, compared with the point of ascent that had been previously gained and so vexatiously interrupted, would sometimes seem deeper than the original point of starting. This mortifying tendency I can report from experience, many times repeated, with regard to opium, and so unaccountably, as regarded all the previous grounds of expectation, that I am compelled to suppose it a tendency inherent in the very nature of all self-restorations for animal systems. "I counsel the patient frequently to call back before his thoughts--when suffering sorrowful collapses that seem unmerited by any thing done or neglected--that such, and far worse perhaps, must have been his experience, and with no reversion of hope behind, had he persisted in his intemperate indulgences; _these_ also suffer their own collapses, and (so far as things not co-present can be compared) by many degrees more shocking to the genial instincts. I exhort him to believe that no movement on his own part, not the smallest conceivable, toward the restoration of his healthy state, can by possibility perish. Nothing in this direction is finally lost; but often it disappears and hides itself; suddenly, however, to re-appear, and in unexpected strength, and much more hopefully, because such minute elements of improvement, by re-appearing at a remoter stage, show themselves to have combined with other elements of the same kind, so that equally by their gathering tendency and their duration through intervals of apparent darkness, and below the current of what seemed absolute interruption, they argue themselves to be settled in the system. There is no good gift that does not come from God. Almost his greatest is health, with the peace which it inherits, and man must reap _this_ on the same terms as he was told to reap God's earliest gift, the fruits of the earth, viz., 'in the sweat of his brow,' through labor, often through sorrow, through disappointment, but still through imperishable perseverance, and hoping under clouds when all hope seemed darkened. "But it seems to me important not to omit this particular caution: The patient will be naturally anxious, as he goes on, frequently to test the amount of his advance, and its rate, if that were possible; but this he will see no mode of doing except through tentative balancings of his feelings, and generally of the moral atmosphere around him, as to pleasure and hope, against the corresponding states so far as he can recall them from his periods of intemperance. But these comparisons I warn him are fallacious when made in this way. The two states are incommensurable on any plan of _direct_ comparison. Some common measure must be found, and _out of himself_; some positive fact that will not bend to his own delusive feeling at the moment; as, for instance, in what degree he finds tolerable what heretofore was _not_ so--the effort of writing letters, or transacting business, or undertaking a journey, or overtaking the arrears of labor, that had been once thrown off to a distance. If in these things he finds himself improved, by tests that can not be disputed, he may safely disregard any sceptical whispers from a wayward sensibility which can not yet, perhaps, have recovered its normal health, however much improved. His inner feelings may not yet point steadily to the truth, though they may vibrate in that direction. Besides, it is certain that sometimes very manifest advances, such as any medical man would perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages of agitation and discomfort. A far worse condition might happen to be less agitated, and so far more bearable. Now when a man is positively suffering discomfort, when he is below the line of pleasurable feeling, he is no proper judge of his own condition, which he neither will nor can appreciate. Toothache extorts more groans than dropsy." Little is definitely known to the public of De Quincey's opium habits subsequent to the publication in the year 1822 of the Appendix to the "Confessions." In the "Life of Professor Wilson," by his daughter, Mrs. Gordon, a letter from De Quincey, under date of February, 1824, is given, which says: "As to myself--though I have written not as one who labors under much depression of mind--the fact is, I _do_ so. At this time calamity presses upon me with a heavy hand. I am quite free of opium, but it has left the liver, which is the Achilles heel of almost every human fabric, subject to affections which are tremendous for the weight of wretchedness attached to them. To fence with these with the one hand, and with the other to maintain the war with the wretched business of hack author, with all its horrible degradations, is more than I am able to bear. At this moment I have not a place to hide my head in. Something I meditate--I know not what--_'Itaque e conspectu omnium abiit_.' With a good publisher and leisure to premeditate what I write, I might yet liberate myself; after which, having paid everybody, I would slink into some dark comer, educate my children, and show my face in the world no more." To the statement of De Quincey that he was then free of opium, Mrs. Gordon adds in a note: "To the very last he asserted this, but the habit, although modified, was never abandoned." Referring to a protracted visit made by him in the year 1829-30 to Professor Wilson, Mrs. Gordon says: "His tastes were very simple, though a little troublesome, at least to the servant who prepared his repast. Coffee, boiled rice and milk, and a piece of mutton from the loin were the materials that invariably formed his diet. The cook, who had an audience with him daily, received her instructions in silent awe, quite overpowered by his manner, for had he been addressing a duchess he could scarcely have spoken with more deference. He would couch his request in such terms as these: 'Owing to dyspepsia affecting my system, and the possibility of any additional disarrangement of the stomach taking place, consequences incalculably distressing would arise, so much so indeed as to increase nervous irritation, and prevent me from attending to matters of overwhelming importance, if you do not remember to cut the mutton in a diagonal rather than in a longitudinal form.' But these little meals were not the only indulgences that, when not properly attended to, brought trouble to Mr. De Quincey. Regularity in doses of opium was even of greater consequence. An ounce of laudanum per diem prostrated animal life in the early part of the day. It was no unfrequent sight to find him in his room, lying upon the rug in front of the fire, his head resting upon a book, his arms crossed over his breast, plunged in profound slumber. For several hours he would lie in this state, until the effects of the torpor had passed away. The time when he was most brilliant was generally toward the early morning hours; and then, more than once, in order to show him off, my father arranged his supper-parties so that, sitting till three or four in the morning, he brought Mr. De Quincey to that point at which in charm and power of conversation he was so truly wonderful." * * * * * In the "Suspiris de Profundis" of De Quincey, written in the year 1845, we have his own final record of the last chapter of his opium history. He says: "In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work--in 1822, as a separate volume--appeared the 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.' At the close of this little work the reader was instructed to believe, and _truly_ instructed, that I had mastered the tyranny of opium. The fact is, that _twice_ I mastered it, and by efforts even more prodigious in the second of these cases than in the first. But one error I committed in both. I did not connect with the abstinence from opium, so trying to the fortitude under _any_ circumstances, that enormity of exercise which (as I have since learned) is the one sole resource for making it endurable. I overlooked, in those days, the one _sine qua non_ for making the triumph permanent. Twice I sank, twice I rose again. A third time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned (the oversight as to exercise), partly from other causes, on which it avails not now to trouble the reader. I could moralize if I chose; and perhaps _he_ will moralize whether I choose it or not. But in the mean time neither of us is acquainted properly with the circumstances of the case; I, from natural bias of judgment, not altogether acquainted; and he (with his permission) not at all. "During this third prostration before the dark idol, and after some years, new and monstrous phenomena began slowly to arise. For a time these were neglected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as I knew of. But when I could no longer conceal from myself that these dreadful symptoms were moving forward forever, by a pace steadily, solemnly, and equably increasing, I endeavored, with some feeling of panic, for a third time to retrace my steps. But I had not reversed my motions for many weeks before I became profoundly aware that this was impossible. Or, in the imagery of my dreams, which translated every thing into their own language, I saw through vast avenues of gloom those towering gates of ingress, which hitherto had always seemed to stand open, now at last barred against my retreat, and hung with funeral crape. "The sentiment which attends the sudden revelation that _all is lost!_ silently is gathered up into the heart; it is too deep for gestures or for words; and no part of it passes to the outside. Were the ruin conditional, or were it in any point doubtful, it would be natural to utter ejaculations, and to seek sympathy. But where the ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy can not be consolation, and counsel can not be hope, this is otherwise. The voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the spirit of man flies back upon its own centre. I, at least, upon seeing those awful gates closed and hung with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, spoke not, nor started, nor groaned. One profound sigh ascended from my heart, and I was silent for days." [Footnote: Mr. De Quincey died at Edinburgh, Dec. 8, 1859.] OPIUM REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE. Soon after the death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a retired book-seller of Bristol by the name of Joseph Cottle felt called upon to make public what he knew or could gather respecting the opium habits of the philosopher and poet. His first publication was made in the year 1837, and was entitled "Recollections of Coleridge." Ten years later he elaborated this publication into "The Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey." From the pages of the latter, from Gilman's "Life of Coleridge," from the poet's own correspondence, and from the miscellaneous writings of De Quincey, the following record has been chiefly compiled. From these sources the reader can obtain a pretty accurate knowledge of the circumstances under which Coleridge became an opium-eater; of the struggles he made to emancipate himself from the habit, and of the intellectual ruin which opium entailed upon one of the most marvellous-minded men the world has produced. It seems certain that Coleridge became familiar with opium as early at least as the year 1796, though it is probable that its use did not become habitual till about 1802 or 1803. From this period to the year 1814, his consumption of laudanum appears to have been enormous. The efforts he made at self-reformation immediately previous to his admission in 1816 into the family of Dr. Gilman, were unsuccessful; and while the quantity of laudanum to which he had been so long accustomed, was subsequently reduced to a small daily allowance, the opium _habit_ ceased only with his life. In justice to his memory, and in part mitigation of the censures of many of his personal friends, as well as to enable the reader to judge of the circumstances under which this distinguished man fell into his ruinous habit, the following extracts from his own letters and from other sources are given, nearly in chronological order, that it may be seen how far, from his childhood to his grave, Coleridge's constitutional infirmities furnish a partial apology for his excesses. Under date of Nov. 5, 1796, he writes to a friend: "I wanted such a letter as yours, for I am very unwell. On Wednesday night I was seized with an intolerable pain from my temple to the tip of my right shoulder, including my right eye, cheek, jaw, and that side of the throat. I was nearly frantic, and ran about the house almost naked, endeavoring by every means to excite sensation in different parts of my body, and so to weaken the enemy by creating a diversion. It continued from one in the morning till half-past five, and left me pale and faint. It came on fitfully, but not so violently, several times on Thursday, and began severer threats toward night; but I took between sixty and seventy drops of laudanum, and sopped the Cerberus just as his mouth began to open. On Friday it only niggled, as if the chief had departed, as from a conquered place, and merely left a small garrison behind, or as if he had evacuated the Corsica, and a few straggling pains only remained. But this morning he returned in full force, and his name is Legion. Giant-fiend of a hundred hands, with a shower of arrowy death-pangs he transpierced me; and then he became a Wolf, and lay gnawing my bones! I am not mad, most noble Festus! but in sober sadness I have suffered this day more bodily pain than I had before a conception of. My right cheek has certainly been placed with admirable exactness under the focus of some invisible burning-glass, which concentrated all the rays of a Tartarean sun. My medical attendant decides it to be altogether nervous, and that it originates either in severe application or excessive anxiety. My beloved Poole, in excessive anxiety I believe it might originate. I have a blister under my right ear, and I take twenty-five drops of laudanum every five hours, the ease and spirits gained by which have enabled me to write to you this flighty but not exaggerating account." About the same time he writes to another friend, "A devil, a very devil, has got possession of my left temple, eye, cheek, jaw, throat, and shoulder. I can not see you this evening. I write in agony." Frequent reference is made in Coleridge's correspondence to his sufferings, from rheumatic or neuralgic affections, and the following letter, written in 1797, may possibly explain their origin: "I had asked my mother one evening to cut my cheese entire, so that I might toast it. This was no easy matter, it being a _crumbly_ cheese. My mother, however, did it. I went into the garden for something or other, and in the mean time my brother Frank minced my cheese, to 'disappoint the favorite.' I returned, saw the exploit, and in an agony of passion flew at Frank. He pretended to have been seriously hurt by my blow, flung himself on the ground, and there lay with outstretched limbs. I hung over him mourning and in a great fright; he leaped up, and with a horse-laugh gave me a severe blow in the face. I seized a knife and was running at him, when my mother came in and took me by the arm. I expected a flogging, and struggling from her I ran away to a little hill or slope, at the bottom of which the Otter flows, about a mile from Ottery. There I stayed. My rage died away, but my obstinancy vanquished my fears, and taking out a shilling book, which had at the end morning and evening prayers, I very devoutly repeated them--thinking at the same time, with a gloomy inward satisfaction, how miserable my mother must be!.... It grew dark and I fell asleep. It was toward the end of October, and it proved a stormy night. I felt the cold in my sleep, and dreamed that I was pulling the blanket over me, and actually pulled over me a dry thorn-bush which lay on the ground near me. In my sleep I had rolled from the top of the hill till within three yards of the river, which flowed by the unfenced edge of the bottom. I awoke several times, and finding myself wet, and cold, and stiff, closed my eyes again that I might forget it. "In the mean time my mother waited about half an hour, expecting my return when the _sulks_ had evaporated. I not returning, she sent into the church-yard and round the town. Not found! Several men and all the boys were sent out to ramble about and seek me. In vain! My mother was almost distracted, and at ten o'clock at night I was _cried_ by the crier in Ottery and in two villages near it, with a reward offered for me. No one went to bed; indeed I believe half the town were up all the night. To return to myself. About five in the morning, or a little after, I was broad awake and attempted to get up and walk, but I could not move. I saw the shepherds and workmen at a distance and cried, but so faintly that it was impossible to hear me thirty yards off, and there I might have lain and died--for I was now almost given over, the pond and even the river near which I was lying having been dragged--but providentially Sir Stafford Northcote, who had been out all night, resolved to make one other trial, and came so near that he heard me crying. He carried me in his arms for nearly a quarter of a mile, when we met my father and Sir Stafford Northcote's servants. I remember and never shall forget my father's face as he looked upon me while I lay in the servant's arms--so calm, and the tears stealing down his face, for I was the child of his old age. My mother, as you may suppose, was outrageous with joy. Meantime in rushed a young lady, crying out, 'I hope you'll whip him, Mr. Coleridge.' This woman still lives at Ottery, and neither philosophy nor religion has been able to conquer the antipathy which I feel toward her whenever I see her. I was put to bed and recovered in a day or so; but I was certainly injured, for I was weakly and subject to ague for many years after." The next year he writes to two other friends: "I have been confined to my bed for some days through a fever occasioned by the stump of a tooth which baffled chirurgical efforts to eject, and which by affecting my eye affected my stomach, and through that my whole frame. I am better, but still weak in consequence of such long sleeplessness and wearying pains; weak, very weak. "I have even now returned from a little excursion that I have taken for the confirmation of my health, which has suffered a rude assault from the anguish of the stump of a tooth which had baffled the attempts of our surgeon here, and which confined' me to my bed. I suffered much from the disease, and more from the doctor. Rather than again put my mouth into his hands, I would put my hands into a lion's mouth." His nephew says of him: "He was naturally of a joyous temperament, and in one amusement, swimming, he excelled and took singular delight. Indeed he believed, and probably with truth, that his health was singularly injured by his excess in bathing, coupled with such tricks as swimming across the New River in his clothes, and drying them on his back, and the like." In the biography of the poet by his friend Dr. Gilman, in whose family he resided for the last twenty years of his life, the subjoined statements are found: "From his own account, as well as from Lamb and others who knew him when at school, he must have been a delicate and suffering boy. His principal ailments he owed much to the state of his stomach, which was at that time so delicate that when compelled to go to a large closet containing shoes, to pick out a pair easy to his feet, which were always tender, the smell from the number in this place used to make him so sick that I have often seen him shudder, even in late life, when he gave an account of it. "'Conceive,' says Coleridge, 'what I must have been at fourteen. I was in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner and read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's Island, finding a mountain of plum-cake, and eating a room for myself, and then eating it into the shapes of tables and chairs--hunger and fancy!' "Full half the time from seventeen to eighteen was passed in the sick-ward of Christ's Hospital, afflicted with jaundice and rheumatic fever. From these indiscretions and their consequences may be dated all his bodily sufferings in future life--in short, rheumatism sadly afflicting him, while the remedies only slightly alleviated his sufferings, without hope of a permanent cure. Medical men are too often called upon to witness the effects of acute rheumatism in the young subject. In some the attack is on the heart, and its consequences are immediate; in others it leaves behind bodily suffering, which may indeed be palliated, but terminates only in a lingering dissolution. "In early life he was remarkably joyous. Nature had blessed him with a buoyancy of spirits, and even when suffering he deceived the partial observer. "At this time (while a soldier) he frequently complained of a pain at the pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally prevented his stooping, and in consequence he could never arrive at the power of bending his body to rub the heels of his horse. During the latter part of his life he became nearly crippled by the rheumatism." Under date of July 24, 1800, Coleridge writes: "I have been more unwell than I have ever been since I left school. For many days was forced to keep my bed, and when released from that incarceration I suffered most grievously from a brace of swollen eyelids and a head into which, on the least agitation, the blood was felt as rushing in and flowing back again, like the raking of the tide on a coast of loose stones." In January, 1803, he says: "I write with difficulty, with all the fingers but one of my right hand very much swollen. Before I was half up the _Kirkstone mountain_, the storm had wetted me through and through. In spite of the wet and the cold I should have had some pleasure in it, but for two vexations; first, an almost intolerable pain came into my right eye, a smarting and burning pain; and secondly, in consequence of riding with such cold water under my seat, extremely uneasy and burdensome feelings attacked my groin, so that, what with the pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I had no enjoyment at all! "I went on to Grasmere. I was not at all unwell when I arrived there, though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the matter with it, either to the sight of others or to my own feelings, but I had a bad night with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye; and waking often in the dark, I thought it was the effect of mere recollection, but it appeared in the morning that my right eye was bloodshot and the lid swollen. That morning, however, I walked home, and before I reached Keswick my eye was quite well, but _I felt unwell all over_. Yesterday I continued unusually unwell all over me till eight o'clock in the evening. I took no _laudanum or opium_, but at eight o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness and aching of my limbs, I took two large tea-spoons full of ether in a wine-glass of camphorated gum-water, and a third tea-spoon full at ten o'clock, and I received complete relief, my body calmed, my sleep placid; but when I awoke in the morning my right hand, with three of the fingers, were swollen and inflamed. The swelling in the hand is gone down, and of two of the fingers somewhat abated, but the middle finger is still twice its natural size, so that I write with difficulty." A few days later, he writes to the same friend: "On Monday night I had an attack in my stomach and right side, which in pain, and the length of its continuance, appeared to me by far the severest I ever had. About one o'clock the pain passed out of my stomach, like lightning from a cloud, into the extremities of my right foot. My toe swelled and throbbed, and I was in a state of delicious ease which the pain in my toe did not seem at all to interfere with. On Wednesday I was well, and after dinner wrapped myself up warm and walked to Lodore. "The walk appears to have done me good, but I had a wretched night: shocking pains in my head, occiput, and teeth, and found in the morning that I had two bloodshot eyes. But almost immediately after the receipt and perusal of your letter the pains left me, and I am bettered to this hour; and am now indeed as well as usual saving that my left eye is very much bloodshot. It is a sort of duty with me to be particular respecting parts that relate to my health. I have retained a good sound appetite through the whole of it, without any craving after exhilarants or narcotics, and I have got well as in a moment. Rapid recovery is constitutional with me; but the former circumstances I can with certainty refer to the system of diet, abstinence of vegetables, wine, spirits, and beer, which I have adopted by your advice." The same year he writes to a friend suffering from a chronic disorder, and records the trial of Bang--"the powder of the leaves of a kind of hemp that grows in the hot climates. It is prepared, and I believe used, in all parts of the east, from Morocco to China. In Europe it is found to act very differently on different constitutions. Some it elevates in the extreme; others it renders torpid, and scarcely observant of any evil that may befall them. In Barbary it is always taken, if it can be procured, by criminals condemned to suffer amputation, and it is said to enable those miserables to bear the rough operations of an unfeeling executioner more than we Europeans can the keen knife of our most skillful chirurgeons: "We will have a fair trial of Bang. Do bring down some of the Hyoscyamine pills, and I will give a fair trial to Opium, Henbane, and Nepenthe. By the bye, I always considered Homer's account of the Nepenthe as a _Banging_ lie." In September, 1803, he gives a gloomy account of his condition. It seems probable that at this time his use of opium must have become habitual: "For five months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have taken the paper with the intention to write to you many times, but it has been one blank feeling--one blank idealess feeling. I had nothing to say--could say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very dreams make known to me. I will not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my health. When I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking, I can keep the fiend at arm's-length, but the night is my Hell! sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four I fall asleep, struggling to lie awake, and my frequent night-screams have almost made me a nuisance in my own house. Dreams with me are no shadows, but the very calamities of my life. "In the hope of drawing the gout, if gout it should be, into my feet, I walked, previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 263 miles in eight days, with no unpleasant fatigue. My head is equally strong; but acid or not acid, gout or not gout, something there is in my stomach. "To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an _Epitaph_, which I composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying. To the best of my recollection I have not altered a word: "'Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming, Who died as he had always lived, a dreaming; Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within, Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn'" In the beginning of the next year, 1804, the state of his health is thus indicated: "I stayed at Grasmere (Mr. Wordsworth's) a month--three-fourths of the time bedridden--and deeply do I feel the enthusiastic kindness of Wordsworth's wife and sister, who sat up by me, one or the other, in order to awaken me at the first symptoms of distressful feeling; and even when they went to rest, continued often and often to weep and watch for me even in their dreams. "Though my right hand is so much swollen that I can scarcely keep my pen steady between my thumb and finger, yet my stomach is easy and my breathing comfortable, and I am eager to hope all good things of my health. That gained, I have a cheering and I trust prideless confidence that I shall make an active and perseverant use of the faculties and requirements that have been entrusted to my keeping, and a fair trial of their height, depth, and width." A few days later he writes to a friend who was suffering like himself: "Have you ever thought of trying large doses of opium, a hot climate, keeping your body open by grapes, and the fruits of the climate? Is it possible that by drinking freely you might at last produce the gout, and that a violent pain and inflammation in the extremities might produce new trains of motion and feeling in your stomach, and the organs connected with the stomach, known and unknown? I know by a little what your sufferings are, and that to shut the eyes and stop up the ears is to give one's self up to storm and darkness, and the lurid forms and horrors of a dream." In reference to these statements regarding Coleridge's physical condition, Cottle remarks: "I can testify that, during the four or five years in which Mr. C. resided in or near Bristol, no young man could enjoy more robust health. Dr. Carlyon also verbally stated that Mr. C., both at Cambridge and at Gottingen, 'possessed sound health.' From these premises the conclusion is fair that Mr. Coleridge's unhappy use of narcotics, which commenced thus early, was the true cause of all his maladies, his languor, his acute and chronic pains, his indigestion, his swellings, the disturbances of his general corporeal system, his sleepless nights, and his terrific dreams." Scattered through Dr. Gilman's "Life of Coleridge" are indications of this kind: "In 1804, his rheumatic sufferings increasing, he determined on a change of climate, and went in May to Malta. He seemed at this time, in addition to his rheumatism, to have been oppressed in his breathing, which oppression crept on him, imperceptibly to himself, without suspicion of its cause. Yet so obvious was it that it was noticed by others 'as laborious;' and continuing to increase, though with little apparent advancement, at length terminated in death. "At first he remarked that he was relieved by the climate of Malta, but afterward speaks of his limbs 'as lifeless tools,' and of the violent pain in his bowels, which neither opium, ether, nor peppermint, separately or combined, could relieve. "Coleridge _began_ the use of opium from bodily pain (rheumatism), and for the same reason _continued_ it, till he had acquired a habit too difficult uder his own management to control. To him it was the thorn in the flesh, which will be seen in the following note found in his pocket-book: 'I have never loved evil for its own sake; no! nor ever sought pleasure for its own sake, but only as the means of escaping from pains that coiled around my mental powers as a serpent around the body and wings of an eagle! My sole sensuality was _not_ to be in pain.'" Little is known of Coleridge's opium habits during his residence at Malta. On his return to England in 1807, he wrote to Mr. Cottle: "On my return to Bristol, whenever that may be, I will certainly give you the right hand of old fellowship; but, alas! you will find me the wretched wreck of what you knew me, rolling, rudderless. My health is extremely bad. Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me a mere trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of wretchedness--achings in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness that makes action to any available purpose almost impossible--and worst of all the sense of blighted utility, regrets, not remorseless. But enough; yea, more than enough, if these things produce or deepen the conviction of the utter powerlessness of ourselves, and that we either perish or find aid from something that passes understanding." A period of seven years here intervenes, during which no light is thrown upon the opium life of Coleridge. The following extract from a letter written by him during this period, sufficiently indicates, however, both his consciousness of his great powers and his remorse for their imperfect use: "As to the letter you propose to write to a man who is unworthy even of a rebuke from you, I might most unfeignedly object to some parts of it from a pang of conscience forbidding me to allow, even from a dear friend, words of admiration which are inapplicable in exact proportion to the power given to me of having deserved them if I had done my duty. "It is not of comparative utility I speak; for as to what has been actually done, and in relation to useful effects produced--whether on the minds of individuals or of the public--I dare boldly stand forward, and (let every man have his own, and that be counted mine which but for and through me would not have existed) will challenge the proudest of my literary contemporaries to compare proofs with me of usefulness in the excitement of reflection, and the diffusion of original or forgotten yet necessary and important truths and knowledge; and this is not the less true because I have suffered others to reap all the advantages. But, O dear friend, this consciousness, raised by insult of enemies and alienated friends, stands me in little stead to my own soul--in how little, then, before the all-righteous Judge! who, requiring back the talents he had entrusted, will, if the mercies of Christ do not intervene, not demand of me what I have done, but why I did not do more; why, with powers above so many, I had sunk in many things below most!" In 1814 he returned to Bristol, and here the painful narrative of Mr. Cottle comes in: "Is it expedient, is it lawful, to give publicity to Mr. Coleridge's practice of inordinately taking opium; which to a certain extent, at one part of his life, inflicted on a heart naturally cheerful the stings of conscience, and sometimes almost the horrors of despair? "In the year 1814, all this, I am afflicted to say, applied to Mr. Coleridge. Once Mr. Coleridge expressed to me, with indescribable emotion, the joy he should feel if he could collect around him all who were 'beginning to tamper with the lulling but fatal draught,' so that he might proclaim as with a trumpet, 'the worse than death that opium entailed.' "When it is considered, also, how many men of high mental endowments have shrouded their lustre by a passion for this stimulus, would it not be a criminal concession to unauthorized feelings to allow so impressive an exhibition of this subtle species of intemperance to escape from public notice? In the exhibition here made, the inexperienced in future may learn a memorable lesson, and be taught to shrink from opium as they would from a scorpion, which, before it destroys, invariably expels peace from the mind, and excites the worst species of conflict--that of setting a man at war with himself. "I had often spoken to Hannah More of S. T. Coleridge, and proceeded with him one morning to Barley Wood, her residence, eleven miles from Bristol. The interview was mutually agreeable, nor was there any lack of conversation; but I was struck with something singular in Mr. Coleridge's eye. I expressed to a friend, the next day, my concern at having beheld him during his visit to Hannah More so extremely paralytic, his hands shaking to an alarming degree, so that he could not take a glass of wine without spilling it, though one hand supported the other! 'That,' said he, 'arises from the immoderate quantity of OPIUM he takes.' "It is remarkable that this was the first time the melancholy fact of Mr. Coleridge's excessive indulgence in opium had come to my knowledge. It astonished and afflicted me. Now the cause of his ailments became manifest. On this subject Mr. C. may have been communicative to others, but to me he was silent. "I ruminated long upon this subject with indescribable sorrow; and having ascertained from others not only the existence of the evil but its extent, I determined to write to Mr. Coleridge. I addressed him the following letter, under the full impression that it was a case of 'life and death,' and that if some strong effort were not made to arouse him from his insensibility, speedy destruction must inevitably follow. "'BRISTOL, April 25,1814. "'DEAR COLERIDGE:--I am conscious of being influenced by the purest motives in addressing to you the following letter. Permit me to remind you that I am the oldest friend you have in Bristol, that I was such when my friendship was of more consequence to you than it is at present, and that at that time you were neither insensible of my kindnesses nor backward to acknowledge them. I bring these things to your remembrance to impress on your mind that it is still a _friend_ who is writing to you; one who ever has been such, and who is now going to give you the most decisive evidence of his sincerity. "'When I think of Coleridge I wish to recall the image of him such as he appeared in past years; now, how has the baneful use of opium thrown a dark cloud over you and your prospects! I would not say any thing needlessly harsh or unkind, but I must be _faithful_. It is the irresistible voice of conscience. Others may still flatter you, and hang upon your words, but I have another, though a less gracious duty to perform. I see a brother sinning a sin unto death, and shall I not warn him? I see him perhaps on the borders of eternity; in effect, despising his Maker's law, and yet indifferent to his perilous state! "'In recalling what the expectations concerning you once were, and the excellency with which seven years ago you wrote and spoke on religious truth, my heart bleeds to see how you are now fallen, and thus to notice how many exhilarating hopes are almost blasted by your present habits. This is said, not to wound, but to arouse you to reflection. "'I know full well the evidences of the pernicious drug! You can not be unconscious of the effects, though you may wish to forget the cause. All around you behold the wild eye, the sallow countenance, the tottering step, the trembling hand, the disordered frame! and yet will you not be awakened to a sense of your danger, and I must add, your guilt? Is it a small thing, that one of the finest of human understandings should be lost? That your talents should be buried? That most of the influences to be derived from your present example should be in direct opposition to right and virtue? It is true you still talk of religion, and profess the warmest admiration of the Church and her doctrines, in which it would not be lawful to doubt your sincerity; but can you be unaware that by your unguarded and inconsistent conduct you are furnishing arguments to the infidel; giving occasion for the enemy to blaspheme; and (among those who imperfectly know you) throwing suspicion over your religious profession? Is not the great test in some measure against you, "By their fruits ye shall know them?" Are there never any calm moments, when you impartially judge of your own actions by their consequences? "'Not to reflect on you-not to give you a moment's _needless_ pain, but in the spirit of friendship, suffer me to bring to your recollection some of the sad effects of your undeniable intemperance. "'I know you have a correct love of honest independence, without which there can be no true nobility of mind; and yet for opium you will sell this treasure, and expose yourself to the liability of arrest by some "dirty fellow" to whom you choose to be indebted for "ten pounds!" You had, and still have, an acute sense of moral right and wrong, but is not the feeling sometimes overpowered by self-indulgence? Permit me to remind you that you are not more suffering in your mind than you are in your body, while you are squandering largely your money in the purchase of opium, which, in the strictest equity, should receive a _different direction_. "I will not again refer to the mournful effects produced on your own health from this indulgence in opium, by which you have undermined your strong constitution; but I must notice the injurious consequences which this passion for the narcotic drug has on your literary efforts. What you have already done, excellent as it is, is considered by your friends and the world as the bloom, the mere promise of the harvest. Will you suffer the fatal draught, which is ever accompanied by sloth, to rob you of your fame, and, what to you is a higher motive, of your power of doing good; of giving fragrance to your memory, among the worthies of future years, when you are numbered with the dead? "'And now let me conjure you, alike by the voice of friendship and the duty you owe yourself and family; above all, by the reverence you feel for the cause of Christianity; by the fear of God and the awfulness of eternity, to renounce from this moment opium and spirits as your bane! Frustrate not the great end of your existence. Exert the ample abilities which God has given you, as a faithful steward. So will you secure your rightful pre-eminence among the sons of genius; recover your cheerfulness, your health--I trust it is not too late--become reconciled to yourself; and, through the merits of that Saviour in whom you profess to trust, obtain at last the approbation of your Maker, My dear Coleridge, be wise before it be too late. I do hope to see you a renovated man; and that you will still burst your inglorious fetters and justify the best hopes of your friends. "'Excuse the freedom with which I write. If at the first moment it should offend, on reflection you will approve at least of the motive, and perhaps, in a better state of mind, thank and bless me. If all the good which I have prayed for should not be effected by this letter, I have at least dis charged an imperious sense of duty. I wish my manner were less exceptionable, as I do that the advice through the blessing of the Almighty might prove effectual. The tear which bedims my eye is an evidence of the sincerity with which I subscribe myself your affectionate friend, "'JOSEPH CUTTLE.' "The following is Mr. Coleridge's reply: "'April 26,1814. "'You have poured oil in the raw and festering wound of an old friend's conscience Cottle, but it is _oil of vitriol!_ I but barely glanced at the middle of the first page of your letter, and have seen no more of it-not from resentment, God forbid! but from the state of my bodily and mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted human fortitude to let in a new visitor of affliction. "'The object of my present reply is to state the case just as it is--first, that for ten years the anguish of my spirit has been indescribable, the sense of my danger staring, but the consciousness of my GUILT worse--far worse than all! I have prayed, with drops of agony on my brow; trembling not only before the justice of my Maker, but even before the mercy of my Redeemer. "I gave thee so many talents, what hast thou done with them?" Secondly, overwhelmed as I am with a sense of my direful infirmity, I have never attempted to disguise or conceal the cause. On the contrary, not only to friends have I stated the whole case with tears and the very bitterness of shame, but in two instances I have warned young men--mere acquaintances, who had spoken of having taken laudanum--of the direful consequences, by an awful exposition of its tremendous effects on myself. "'Thirdly, though before God I can not lift up my eyelids, and only do not despair of his mercy because to despair would be adding crime to crime, yet to my fellow-men I may say that I was seduced into the ACCURSED habit ignorantly. I had been almost bedridden for many months with swellings in my knees. In a medical journal I unhappily met with an account of a cure performed in a similar case, or what appeared to me so, by rubbing in of laudanum, at the same time taking a given dose internally. It acted like a charm, like a miracle! I recovered the use of my limbs, of my appetite, of my spirits, and this continued for near a fortnight. At length the unusual stimulus subsided, the complaint returned--the supposed remedy was recurred to--but I can not go through the dreary history. "'Suffice it to say that effects were produced which acted on me by terror and cowardice of pain and sudden death, not (so help me God!) by any temptation of pleasure, or expectation or desire of exciting pleasurable senstations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment, the direful moment arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such falling abroad as it were of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison I exclaimed in agony, which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, "I am too poor to hazard this!" Had I but a few hundred pounds--but £200--half to send to Mrs. Coleridge, and half to place myself in a private mad-house, where I could procure nothing but what a physician thought proper, and where a medical attendant could be constantly with me for two or three months (in less than that time life or death would be determined), then there might be hope. Now there is none!! O God! how willingly would I place myself under Dr. Fox in his establishment; for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter impotence of the volition and not of the intellectual faculties. You bid me rouse myself. Go bid a man paralytic in both arms to rub them briskly together and that will cure him. "Alas!" he would reply, "that I can not move my arms is my complaint and my mysery." May God bless you, and your affectionate but most afflicted S. T. COLERIDGE.' "On receiving this full and mournful disclosure I felt the deepest compassion for Mr. C.'s state, and sent him a letter to which I received the following reply: "'O, dear friend! I have too much to be forgiven to feel any difficulty in forgiving the cruellest enemy that ever trampled on me: and you I have only to _thank!_ You have no conception of the dreadful hell of my mind, and conscience, and body. You bid me pray. Oh, I do pray inwardly to be able to pray; but indeed to pray, to pray with a faith to which a blessing is promised, this is the reward of faith, this is the gift of God to the elect. Oh! if to feel how infinitely worthless I am, how poor a wretch, with just free-will enough to be deserving of wrath and of my own contempt, and of none to merit a moment's peace, can make a part of a Christian's creed--so far I am a Christian, S. T. C.' "'April 26, 1814. "At this time Mr. Coleridge was indeed in a pitiable condition. His passion for opium had so completely subdued his _will_ that he seemed carried away, without resistance, by an overwhelming flood. The impression was fixed on his mind that he should inevitably die unless he were placed under _constraint_, and that constraint he thought could be alone effected in an asylum. Dr. Fox, who presided over an establishment of this description in the neighborhood of Bristol, appeared to Mr. C. the individual to whose subjection he would most like to submit. This idea still impressing his imagination, he addressed to me the following letter: "'DEAR COTTLE:--I have resolved to place myself in any situation in which I can remain for a month or two as a child, wholly in the power of others. But, alas! I have no money. Will you invite Mr. Hood, a most dear and affectionate friend to worthless me, and Mr. Le Breton, my old school-fellow and likewise a most affectionate friend, and Mr. Wade, who will return in a few days; desire them to call on you, any evening after seven o'clock that they can make convenient, and consult with them whether any thing of this kind can be done. Do you know Dr. Fox? Affectionately, "'S. T. C.' "I _did_ know the late Dr. Fox, who was an opulent and liberal-minded man, and if I had applied to him, or any friend had so done, I can not doubt but that he would instantly have received Mr. Coleridge gratuitously; but nothing could have induced me to make the application but that extreme case which did not then appear fully to exist. "The years 1814 and 1815 were the darkest periods in Mr. Coleridge's life. However painful the detail, it is presumed that the reader would desire a knowledge of the undisguised truth. This can not be obtained without introducing the following letters of Mr. Southey, received from him after having sent him copies of the letters which passed between Mr. Coleridge and myself. "'KESWICK, April, 1814. "'MY DEAR COTTLE:--You may imagine with what feelings I have read your correspondence with Coleridge. Shocking as his letters are, perhaps the most mournful thing they discover is, that while acknowledging the guilt of the habit he imputes it still to morbid bodily causes, whereas after every possible allowance is made for these, every person who has witnessed his habits knows that for the greater, infinitely the greater part, inclination and indulgence are its motives. "'It seems dreadful to say this, with his expressions before me, but it is so, and I know it to be so from my own observation, and that of all with whom he has lived. The Morgans, with great difficulty and perseverance, _did_ break him of the habit at a time when his ordinary consumption of laudanum was from _two quarts a week to a pint a day!_ He suffered dreadfully during the first abstinence, so much so as to say it was better for him to die than to endure his present feelings. Mrs. Morgan resolutely replied, it was indeed better that he should die than that he should continue to live as he had been living. It angered him at the time, but the effort was persevered in. "'To what, then, was the relapse owing? I believe to this cause--that no use was made of renewed health and spirits; that time passed on in idleness, till the lapse of time brought with it a sense of neglected duties, and then relief was again sought for _a self-accusing mind_ in bodily feelings, which, when the stimulus ceased to act, added only to the load of self-accusation. This, Cottle, is an insanity which none but the soul's Physician can cure. Unquestionably, restraint would do as much for him as it did when the Morgans tried it, but I do not see the slightest reason for believing it would be more permanent. This, too, I ought to say, that all the medical men to whom Coleridge has made his confession have uniformly ascribed the evil not to bodily disease but indulgence. The restraint which alone could effectually cure is that which no person can impose upon him. Could he be compelled to a certain quantity of labor every day for his family, the pleasure of having done it would make his heart glad, and the sane mind would make the body whole. "'His great object should be to get out a play, and appropriate the whole produce to the support of his son Hartley at college. Three months' pleasurable exertion would effect this. Of some such fit of industry I by no means despair; of any thing more than fits I am afraid I do. But this of course I shall never say to him. From me he shall never hear aught but cheerful encouragement and the language of hope.' "After anxious consideration I thought the only effectual way of benefiting Mr. Coleridge would be to renew the project of an annuity, by raising for him among his friends one hundred, or, if possible, one hundred and fifty pounds a year, purposing through a committee of three to pay for his comfortable board and all necessaries, but not of giving him the disposition of any part till it was hoped the correction of his bad habits and the establishment of his better principles might qualify him for receiving it for his own distribution. It was difficult to believe that his subjection to _opium_ could much longer resist the stings of his own conscience and the solicitations of his friends, as well as the pecuniary destitution to which his _opium habits_ had reduced him. The proposed object was named to Mr. C., who reluctantly gave his consent. "I now drew up a letter, intending to send a copy to all Mr. Coleridge's old and steady friends (several of whom approved of the design), but before any commencement was made I transmitted a copy of my proposed letter to Mr. Southey to obtain his sanction. The following is his reply: "'April 17th, 1814. "'DEAR COTTLE:--I have seldom in the course of my life felt it so difficult to answer a letter as on the present occasion. There is, however, no alternative. I must sincerely express what I think, and be thankful I am writing to one who knows me thoroughly. "'Of sorrow and humiliation I will say nothing. No part of Coleridge's embarrassment arises from his wife and children, except that he has insured his life for a thousand pounds, and pays the annual premium. He never writes to them, and never opens a letter from them. "'In truth, Cottle, his embarrassments and his miseries of body and mind all arise from one accursed cause--excess in _opium_, of which he habitually takes more than was ever known to be taken by any person before him. The Morgans, with great effort, succeeded in making him leave it off for a time, and he recovered in consequence _health_ and _spirits_. He has now taken to it again. Of this indeed I was too sure before I heard from you--that his looks bore testimony to it. Perhaps you are not aware of the costliness of this drug. In the quantity which C. takes, it would consume _more_ than the whole which you propose to raise. A frightful consumption of _spirits_ is added. In this way bodily ailments are produced, and the wonder is that he is still alive. "'Nothing is wanting to make him easy in circumstances and happy in himself but to leave off opium, and to direct a certain portion of his time to the discharge of _his duties.'_ "During my illness at this time, Mr. Coleridge sent my sister the following letter, and the succeeding one to myself: "'13th May, 1814. "'DEAR MADAM:--I am uneasy to know how my friend, J. Cottle, goes on. The walk I took last Monday to inquire in person proved too much for my strength, and shortly after my return I was in such a swooning way that I was directed to go to bed, and orders were given that no one should interrupt me. Indeed I can not be sufficiently grateful for the skill with which _the surgeon treats me._ But it must be a slow, and occasionally an interrupted progress, after a sad retrogress of nearly twelve years.' "'Friday, 27th May, 1814. "'MY DEAR COTTLE:--I feel, with an intensity unfathomable by words, my utter nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness, in and for myself. I have learned what a sin is against an infinite, imperishable being, such as is the soul of man. "'I have had more than a glimpse of what is meant by death and outer darkness, and the worm that dieth not--and that all the _hell_ of the reprobate, is no more inconsistent with the love of God, than the blindness of one who has occasioned loathsome and guilty diseases to eat out his eyes is inconsistent with the light of the sun. But the consolations, at least the sensible sweetness of hope, I do not possess. On the contrary, the temptation which I have constantly to fight up against, is a fear that if _annihilation_ and the _possibility_ of _heaven_ were offered to my choice, I should choose the former. "'Mr. Eden gave you a too flattering account of me. It is true I am restored, as much beyond my expectations almost as my deserts; but I am exceedingly weak. I need for myself solace and refocillation of animal spirits, instead of being in a condition of offering it to others.' "The serious expenditure of money resulting from Mr. C.'s consumption of opium was the least evil, though very great, and must have absorbed all the produce of Mr. C.'s lectures and all the liberalities of his friends. It is painful to record such circumstances as the following, but the picture would be incomplete without it. "Mr. Coleridge, in a late letter, with something it is feared, if not of duplicity, of self-deception, extols the skill of his surgeon in having gradually lessened his consumption of laudanum, it was understood, to twenty drops a day. With this diminution the habit was considered as subdued, at which result no one appeared to rejoice more than Mr. Coleridge himself. The reader will be surprised to learn that, notwithstanding this flattering exterior, Mr. C., while apparently submitting to the directions of his medical adviser, was secretly indulging in his usual overwhelming quanties of opium! Heedless of his health and every honorable consideration, he contrived to obtain surreptitiously the fatal drug, and thus to baffle the hopes of his warmest friends. "Mr. Coleridge had resided at this time for several months with his kind friend Mr. Josiah Wade, of Bristol, who in his solicitude for his benefit had procured for him, so long as it was deemed necessary, the professional assistance stated above. The surgeon on taking leave, after the cure had been _effected_, well knowing the expedients to which opium patients would often recur to obtain their proscribed draughts--at least till the habit of temperance was fully established--cautioned Mr. W. to prevent Mr. Coleridge by all possible means from obtaining that by stealth from which he was openly debarred. It reflects great credit on Mr. Wade's humanity that, to prevent all access to opium, and thus if possible to rescue his friend from destruction, he engaged a respectable old decayed tradesman constantly to attend Mr. C, and, to make that which was sure, doubly certain, placed him even in his bedroom; and this man always accompanied him whenever he went out. To such surveillance Mr. Coleridge cheerfully acceded, in order to show the promptitude with which he seconded the efforts of his friends. It has been stated that every precaution was unavailing. By some unknown means and dexterous contrivances Mr. C. afterward confessed that he still obtained his usual lulling potions. "As an example, among others of a similar nature, one ingenious expedient to which he resorted to cheat the doctor he thus disclosed to Mr. Wade, from whom I received it. He said, in passing along the quay where the ships were moored, he noticed by a side glance a druggist's shop, probably an old resort, and standing near the door he looked toward the ships, and pointing to one at some distance he said to his attendant, 'I think that's an American.' 'Oh, no, that I am sure it is not,' said the man. 'I think it is,' replied Mr. C.' I wish you would step over and ask, and bring me the particulars.' The man accordingly went; when as soon as his back was turned Mr. C. stepped into the shop, had his portly bottle filled with laudanum, which he always carried in his pocket, and then expeditiously placed himself in the spot where he was left. The man now returned with the particulars, beginning, 'I told you, Sir, it was not an American, but I have learned all about her.' 'As I am mistaken, never mind the rest,' said Mr. C, and walked on. "A common impression prevailed on the minds of his friends that it was a desperate case that paralyzed all their efforts; that to assist Mr. C. with money, which under favorable circumstances would have been most promptly advanced, would now only enlarge his capacity to obtain the opium which was consuming him. We at length learned that Mr. Coleridge was gone to reside with his friend Mr. John Morgan, in a small house, at Calne, in Wiltshire. So gloomy were our apprehensions, that even the death of Mr. C. was mournfully expected at no distant period, for his actions at this time were, we feared, all indirectly of a suicidal description. "In a letter dated October 27, 1814, Mr. Southey thus writes: "'Can you tell me any thing of Coleridge? We know that he is with the Morgans at Calne. What is to become of him? He may find men who will give him board and lodging for the sake of his conversation, but who will pay his other expenses? He leaves his family to chance and charity. With good feelings, good principles, as far as the understanding is concerned, and an intellect as clear and as powerful as was ever vouchsafed to man, he is the slave of degrading sensuality, and sacrifices every thing to it. The case is equally deplorable and monstrous.'" The intimacy between Coleridge and Cottle seems about this period to have entirely ceased. After the death of Coleridge, Mr. Cottle prepared his "Recollections" of his friend, but was restrained from its publication by considerations of propriety, until the following letter was placed in his hands by the gentleman to whom it was addressed, with permission to use it: "BRISTOL, June 26, 1814. "DEAR SIR:--For I am unworthy to call any good man friend--much less you, whose hospitality and love I have abused; accept, however, my entreaties for your forgiveness and your prayers. "Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years has been attempting to beat off pain by a constant recurrence to the vice that reproduces it. Conceive a spirit in hell employed in tracing out for others the road to that heaven from which his crimes exclude him! In short, conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as tolerable a notion of my state as it is possible for a good man to have. "I used to think the text in St. James, that 'he who offended in one point, offends in all,' very harsh, but I now feel the awful, the tremendous truth of it. In the one crime of OPIUM, what crime have I not made myself guilty of? Ingratitude to my Maker! and to my benefactors, injustice! _and unnatural cruelty to my poor children!_--self-contempt for my repeated promise--breach, nay, too often, actual falsehood. "After my death, I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified narration of my wretchedness and of its guilty cause may be made public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful example. "May God Almighty bless you, and have mercy on your still affectionate, and in his heart grateful, "S. T. COLERIDGE. "JOSIAH WADE, ESQ." "It appears that in the spring of 1816 Mr. Coleridge left Mr. Morgan's house at Calne, and in a desolate state of mind repaired to London; when the belief remaining strong on his mind that his opium habits would never be effectually subdued till he had subjected himself to medical restraint, he called on Dr. Adams, an eminent physician, and disclosed to him the whole of his painful circumstances, stating what he conceived to be his only remedy. The doctor, being a humane man, sympathized with his patient, and knowing a medical gentleman who resided three or four miles from town, who would be likely to undertake the charge, he addressed the following letter to Mr. Gilman: "'HATTON GARDEN, April 9,1816. "'DEAR SIR:--A very learned, but in one respect an unfortunate gentleman, has applied to me on a singular occasion. He has for several years been in the habit of taking large quantities of opium. For some time past he has been in vain endeavoring to break himself off it. It is apprehended his friends are not firm enough, from a dread lest he should suffer by suddenly leaving it off, though he is conscious of the contrary, and has proposed to me to submit himself to any regimen, however severe. With this view he wishes to fix himself in the house of some medical gentleman, who will have courage to refuse him any laudanum, and under whose assistance, should he be the worse for it, he may be relieved. As he is desirous of retirement and a garden, I could think of none so readily as yourself. Be so good as to inform me whether such a proposal is absolutely inconsistent with your family arrangements. I should not have proposed it, but on account of the great importance of the character as a literary man. His communicative temper will make his society very interesting as well as useful. Have the goodness to favor me with an immediate answer; and believe me, dear Sir, your faithful humble servant, "'JOSEPH ADAMS.'" Mr. Gilman, in his "Life of Coleridge," says: "I had seen the writer of this letter but twice in my life, and had no intention of receiving an inmate into my house. I however determined on seeing Dr. Adams, for whether the person referred to had taken opium from choice or necessity, to me Dr. Adams informed me that the patient had been warned of the danger of discontinuing opium by several eminent medical men, who at the same time represented the frightful consequences that would most probably ensue. I had heard of the failure of Mr. Wilberforce's case under an eminent physician at Bath, in addition to which the doctor gave me an account of several others within his own knowledge. After some further conversation it was agreed that Dr. Adams should drive Coleridge to Highgate the following evening. On the following evening came Coleridge _himself_, and alone. Coleridge proposed to come the following evening, but he first informed me of the painful opinion which he had received concerning his case, especially from one medical man of celebrity. The tale was sad, and the opinion given unprofessional and cruel, sufficient to have deterred most men so afflicted from making the attempt Coleridge was contemplating, and in which his whole soul was so deeply and so earnestly engaged. My situation was new, and there was something affecting in the thought that one of such amiable manners, and at the same time so highly gifted, should seek comfort and medical aid in our quiet home. Deeply interested, I began to reflect seriously on the duties imposed upon me, and with anxiety to expect the approaching day. It brought me the following letter: "'MY DEAR SIR:.... And now of myself. My ever-wakeful reason and the keenness of my moral feelings will secure you from all unpleasant circumstances Connected with me save only one, viz., the evasion of a specific madness. You will never _hear_ any thing but truth from me. Prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, with regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting one. No sixty hours have yet passed without my having taken laudanum, though for the last week comparatively trifling doses. I have full belief that your anxiety need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the first week I shall not, I must not, be permitted to leave your house unless with you. Delicately or indelicately, this must be done, and both the servants and the assistant must receive absolute commands from you. The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but when I am alone the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the _first time_ a soothing confidence it will prove) I should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself only that will love and honor you; every friend I have (and, thank God! in spite of this wretched vice I have many and warm ones, who were friends of my youth and have never deserted me) will thank you with reverence.'" Dr. Gilman's admiration of Coleridge's talents and respect for his character soon became so enthusiastic that the remainder of the poet's life was made comfortable by his care and under his roof. After the death of Coleridge the first volume of a biography was published by Dr. G., but has never been completed. We are therefore left in ignorance of the process by which his addiction to opium was reduced to the small daily allowance which he used during the later years of his life. It seems from the following letter addressed to Dr. Gilman more than six years after he was received as a member of his household, that the conflict with the habit was still going on. "I am still too much under the cloud of past misgivings--too much of the stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-crash still remain--to permit me to anticipate others than by wishes and prayers." Coleridge wrote but little respecting his own infirmity. Ten years after his domestication in the family of Dr. Gilman he made the following memorandum: "I wrote a few stanzas twenty years ago--soon after my eyes had been opened to the true nature of the habit into which I had been ignorantly deluded by the seeming magic effects of opium in the sudden removal of a supposed rheumatic affection, attended with swellings in my knees and palpitations of the heart, and pains all over me, by which I had been bedridden for nearly six months. Unhappily, among my neighbor's and landlord's books was a large parcel of medical reviews and magazines. I had always a fondness (a common case, but most mischievous turn with reading men who are at all dyspeptic) for dabbling in medical writings; and in one of these reviews I met a case which I fancied very like my own, in which a cure had been affected by the Kendal Black Drop. In an evil hour I procured it. It worked miracles. The swellings disappeared, the pains vanished; I was all alive; and all around me being as ignorant as myself, nothing could exceed my triumph. I talked of nothing else, prescribed the newly-discovered panacea for all complaints, and carried a bottle about with me, not to lose any opportunity of administering 'instant relief and speedy cure' to all complainers, stranger or friend, gentle or simple. Need I say that my own apparent convalescence was of no long continuance? But what then? the remedy was at hand and infallible. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and how I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to which I was drawing just when the current was already beyond my strength to stem. God knows that from that moment I was the victim of pain and terror, nor had I at any time taken the flattering poison as a stimulus, or for any craving after pleasurable sensation. I needed none--and oh! with what unutterable sorrow did I read the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' in which the writer with morbid vanity makes a boast of what was my misfortune, for he had been faithfully and with an agony of zeal warned of the gulf, and yet willfully struck into the current! Heaven be merciful to him! "Even under the direful yoke of the necessity of daily poisoning by narcotics, it is somewhat less horrible through the knowledge that it was not from any craving for pleasurable animal excitement, but from pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and (alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes) from terror and utter perplexity and infirmity--sinful infirmity, indeed, but yet not a willful sinfulness--that I brought my neck under it. Oh, may the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, show mercy on the author of the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' if, as I have too strong reason to believe, his book has been the occasion of seducing others into this withering vice through wantonness. From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been free as far as acts of my freewill and intention are concerned; even to the author of that work I pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He utterly denied it, but I fear that I had even then to _deter_, perhaps not to forewarn." Referring to the character of Coleridge's disorder, Dr. Gilman says: "He had much bodily suffering. The _cause_ of this was the organic change slowly and gradually taking place in the structure of the heart itself. But it was so masked by other sufferings, though at times creating despondency, and was so generally overpowered by the excitement of animated conversation, as to leave its real cause undiscovered." [Footnote: "_My heart, or some part_ about it, seems breaking, as if a weight were suspended from it that stretches it. Such is the _bodily feeling_ as far as I can express it by words."--_Coleridge's letter to Morgan_.] In a volume entitled "Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. C.," written by an intimate friend, we find the following declaration from Coleridge himself: "My conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I quitted Cambridge no human being was more indifferent to the pleasures of the table than myself, or less needed any stimulation to my spirits; and that, by a most unhappy quackery, after having been almost bedrid for near six months with swollen knees, and other distressing symptoms of disordered digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form of ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was _seduced_ into the use of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly and exultingly, as one who had discovered, and was never weary of recommending, a grand panacea, and saw not the truth till my _body_ had contracted a habit and a necessity; and that, even to the latest, my responsibility is for cowardice and defect of fortitude, not for the least craving after gratification or pleasurable sensation of any sort, but for yielding to pain, terror, and haunting bewilderment. But this I say to _man_ only, who knows only what has been yielded, not what has been resisted; before God I have but one voice--Mercy! mercy! woe is me. "Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may not pass such another night as the last. While I am awake and retain my reasoning powers the pang is gnawing, but I am, except for a fitful moment or two, tranquil; it is the howling wilderness of sleep that I dread." (July 31, 1820.) From this _bodily_ slavery (for it was _bodily_) to a baneful drug he was never _entirely_ free, though the quantity was so greatly reduced as not materially to affect his health or spirits. A good deal that is known respecting Coleridge's opium habits is derived from the published papers of De Quincey, whose opportunities for becoming fully informed on the subject are beyond question: "I now gathered that procrastination in excess was, or had become, a marked feature in Coleridge's daily life. Nobody who knew him ever thought of depending on any appointment he might make. Spite of his uniformly honorable intentions, nobody attached any weight to his assurances _in re futura_. Those who asked him to dinner, or any other party, as a matter of course sent a carriage for him, and went personally or by proxy to fetch him; and as to letters, unless the address was in some female hand that commanded his affectionate esteem, he tossed them all into one general _dead-letter bureau_, and rarely, I believe, opened them at all. But all this, which I heard now for the first time and with much concern, was fully explained, for already he was under the full dominion of opium, as he himself revealed to me--with a deep expression of horror at the hideous bondage--in a private walk of some length which I took with him about sunset. "At night he entered into a spontaneous explanation of this unhappy overclouding of his life, on occasion of my saying accidentally that a toothache had obliged me to take a few drops of laudanum. At what time or on what motive he had commenced the use of opium he did not say, but the peculiar emphasis of horror with which he warned me against forming a habit of the same kind, impressed upon my mind a feeling that he never hoped to liberate himself from the bondage. "For some succeeding years he did certainly appear to me released from that load of despondency which oppressed him on my first introduction. Grave, indeed, he continued to be, and at times absorbed in gloom; nor did I ever see him in a state of perfectly natural cheerfulness. But as he strove in vain for many years to wean himself from his captivity to opium, a healthy state of spirits could not be much expected. Perhaps, indeed, where the liver and other organs had for so long a period in life been subject to a continual morbid stimulation, it may be impossible for the system ever to recover a natural action. Torpor, I suppose, must result from continued artificial excitement, and perhaps upon a scale of corresponding duration. Life, in such a case, may not offer a field of sufficient extent for unthreading the fatal links that have been wound about the machinery of health and have crippled its natural play. "One or two words on Coleridge as an opium-eater. We have not often read a sentence falling from a wise man with astonishment so profound as that particular one in a letter of Coleridge to Mr. Gilman, which speaks of the effort to wean one's self from opium as a trivial task. There are, we believe, several such passages, but we refer to that one in particular which assumes that a single 'week' will suffice for the whole process of so mighty a revolution. Is indeed Leviathan so tamed? In that case the quarantine of the opium-eater might be finished within Coleridge's time and with Coleridge's romantic ease. But mark the contradictions of this extraordinary man. He speaks of opium excess, his own excess, we mean--the excess of twenty-five years--as a thing to be laid aside easily and forever within seven days; and yet, on the other hand, he describes it pathetically, sometimes with a frantic pathos, as the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight which had desolated his life. "This shocking contradiction we need not press. All will see _that_. But some will ask, was Mr. Coleridge right in either view? Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion (viz., that the opium of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn), when a child could know that he was wrong, was he even altogether right, secondly, in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been withered by opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to happiness and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that therefore, as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the _steady_ habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but it develops preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power. "Let us ask any man who holds that not Coleridge himself but the world as interested in Coleridge's usefulness has suffered by his addiction to opium, whether he is aware of the way in which opium affected Coleridge; and secondly, whether he is aware of the actual contributions to literature--how large they were--which Coleridge made _in spite_ of opium. All who are intimate with Coleridge must remember the fits of genial animation which were created continually in his manner and in his buoyancy of thought by a recent or an _extra_ dose of the omnipotent drug. A lady, who knew nothing experimentally of opium, once told us that she 'could tell when Mr. Coleridge had taken too much opium by his shining countenance.' She was right. We know that mark of opium excesses well, and the cause of it, or at least we believe the cause to lie in the quickening of the insensible perspiration which accumulates and glistens on the face. Be that as it may, a criterion it was that could not deceive us as to the condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in that condition he made his most effective intellectual displays. It is true that he might not be happy under this fiery animation, and we believe that he was not. Nobody is happy under laudanum except for a very short term of years. But in what way did that operate upon his exertions as a writer? We are of opinion that it killed Coleridge as a poet, but proportionably it roused and stung by misery his metaphysical instincts into more spasmodic life. Poetry can flourish only in the atmosphere of happiness, but subtle and perplexed investigation of difficult problems are among the commonest resources for beguiling the sense of misery. It is urged, however, that even on his philosophic speculations opium operated unfavorably in one respect, by often causing him to leave them unfinished. This is true. Whenever Coleridge (being highly charged or saturated with opium) had written with distempered vigor upon any question, there occurred, soon after, a recoil of intense disgust, not from his own paper only but even from the subject. All opium-eaters are tainted with the infirmity of leaving works unfinished and suffering reactions of disgust. But Coleridge taxed himself with that infirmity in verse before he could at all have commenced opium-eating. Besides, it is too much assumed by Coleridge and by his biographer that to leave off opium was of course to regain juvenile health. But all opium-eaters make the mistake of supposing every pain or irritation which they suffer to be the product of opium; whereas a wise man will say, 'Suppose you do leave off opium, that will not deliver you from the load of years (say sixty-three) which you carry on your back.' "It is singular, as respects Coleridge, that Mr. Gilman never says one word upon the event of the great Highgate experiment for leaving off laudanum, though Coleridge came to Mr. Gilman for no other purpose; and in a week this vast creation of new earth, sea, and all that in them is, was to have been accomplished. We _rayther_ think, as Bayley junior observes, 'that the explosion must have hung fire.' "He [Mr. Gilman] has very improperly published some intemperate passages from Coleridge's letters, which ought to have been considered confidential unless Coleridge had left them for publication, charging upon the author of the 'Opium Confessions' a reckless disregard of the temptations which in that work he was scattering abroad among men. We complain, also, that Coleridge raises a distinction, perfectly perplexing to us, between himself and the author of the 'Opium Confessions' upon the question--why they severally began the practice of opium-eating. In himself it seems this motive was to relieve pain, whereas the Confessor was surreptitiously seeking for pleasure. Ay, indeed! where did he learn _that_? We have no copy of the 'Confessions' here, so we can not quote chapter and verse, but we distinctly remember that toothache is recorded in that book as the particular occasion which first introduced the author to the knowledge of opium. Whether afterward, having been thus initiated by the demon of pain, the opium Confessor did not apply powers thus discovered to purposes of mere pleasure, is a question for himself, and the same question applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then? This is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our part, we are slow to believe that ever any man did or could learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain ruby-colored elixir there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. True it is that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne (for instance, hospital patients) who have not afterward courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence in _them._ There are in fact two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug--those which are and those which are not preconformed to its power; those which genially expand to its temptations, and those which frostily exclude them. Not in the energies of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous organization, lies the dread arbitration of--Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield, or strengthened constitutionally to resist. Most of those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium have practically no sense at all; for the initial fascination is for _these_ effectually defeated by the sickness which Nature has associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other class whose nervous sensibilities vibrate to their profoundest depths under the first touch of the angelic poison, opium is the Amreeta cup of beatitude. Now in the original higher sensibility is found some palliation for the _practice_ of opium-eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse. "Originally his sufferings, and the death within him of all hope--the palsy, as it were, of that which is the life of life and the heart within the heart--came from opium. But two things I must add--one to explain Coleridge's case, and the other to bring it within the indulgent allowance of equitable judges. _First_, the sufferings from morbid derangement, originally produced by opium, had very possibly lost that simple character, and had themselves reacted in producing secondary states of disease and irritation, not any longer dependent upon the opium, so as to disappear with its disuse; hence a more than mortal discouragement to accomplish this disuse when the pains of self-sacrifice were balanced by no gleams of restorative feeling. Yet, _secondly_, Coleridge did make prodigious efforts to deliver himself from this thraldom; and he went so far at one time In Bristol, to my knowledge, as to hire a man for the express purpose, and armed with a power of resolutely interposing between himself and the door of any druggist's shop. It is true that an authority derived only from Coleridge's will could not be valid against Coleridge's own counter-determination: he could resume as easily as he could delegate the power. But the scheme did not entirely fail. A man shrinks from exposing to another that infirmity of will which he might else have but a feeble motive for disguising to himself; and the delegated man, the external conscience as it were of Coleridge, though destined in the final resort, if matters came to absolute rupture--and to an obstinate duel, as it were, between himself and his principal--in that extremity to give way, yet might have long protracted the struggle before coming to that sort of _dignus vindice nodus;_ and, in fact, I know upon absolute proof that before reaching that crisis the man showed fight; and faithful to his trust, and comprehending the reasons for it, he declared that if he must yield he would 'know the reason why.' "His inducement to such a step [his visit to Malta] must have been merely a desire to see the most interesting regions of the Mediterranean, under the shelter and advantageous introduction of an official station. It was, however, an unfortunate chapter of his life; for being necessarily thrown a good deal upon his own resources in the narrow society of a garrison, he there confirmed and cherished, if he did not there form, his habit of taking opium in large quantities. I am the last person in the world to press conclusions harshly or uncandidly against Coleridge, but I believe it to be notorious that he first began the use of opium not as a relief from any bodily pains or nervous irritations--for his constitution was strong and excellent--but as a source of luxurious sensation. It is a great misfortune, at least it is a great peril, to have tasted the enchanted cup of youthful rapture incident to the poetic temperament. That standard of high-wrought sensibility once made known experimentally, it is rare to see a submission afterward to the sobrieties of daily life. Coleridge, to speak in the words of Cervantes, wanted better bread than was made of wheat; and when youthful blood no longer sustained the riot of his animal spirits, he endeavored to excite them by artificial stimulants. "Coleridge was at one time living uncomfortably enough at the _Courier_ office in the Strand. In such a situation, annoyed by the sound of feet passing his chamber-door continually to the printing-room of this great establishment, and with no gentle ministrations of female hands to sustain his cheerfulness, naturally enough his spirits flagged, and he took more than ordinary doses of opium. Thus unhappily situated, he sank more than ever under the dominion of opium, so that at two o'clock, when he should have been in attendance at the Royal Institute, he was too often unable to rise from bed. His appearance was generally that of a person struggling with pain and overmastering illness. His lips were baked with feverish heat and often black in color, and in spite of the water which he continued drinking through the whole course of his lecture, he often seemed to labor under an almost paralytic inability to raise the upper jaw from the lower. "But apparently he was not happy himself. The accursed drug poisoned all natural pleasure at its sources; he burrowed continually deeper into scholastic subtleties and metaphysical abstraction; and, like that class described by Seneca in the luxurious Rome of his days, he lived chiefly by candle-light. At two or three o'clock in the afternoon he would make his first appearance. Through the silence of the night, when all other lights had long disappeared, in the quiet cottage of Grassmere _his_ lamp might be seen invariably by the belated traveller as he descended the long steep from Dun-mail-raise, and at five or six o'clock in the morning, when man was going forth to his labor, this insulated son of reveries was retiring to bed." Those who were nearest and dearest to Coleridge by affection and biood have left on record their sentiments respecting him in the following language. His nephew says: "Coleridge was a student all his life. He was very rarely indeed idle in the common sense of the term, but he was consitutionally indolent, averse from continuous exertion externally directed, and consequently the victim of a procrastinating habit, the occasion of innumerable distresses to himself and of endless solicitude to his friends, and which materially impaired though it could not destroy the operation and influence of his wonderful abilities. Hence also the fits of deep melancholy which from time to time seized his whole soul, during which he seemed an imprisoned man without hope of liberty." His daughter remarks: "Mr. De Quincey mistook a constitution that had vigor in it for a vigorous constitution. His body was originally full of life, but it was full of death also from the first. There was in him a slow poison which gradually leavened the whole lump, and by which his muscular frame was prematurely slackened and stupefied. Mr. Stuart says that his letters are 'one continued flow of complaint of ill health and incapacity from ill health.' This is true of all his letters (all the _sets_ of them) which have come under my eye, even those written before he went to Malta, where his opium habits were confirmed. If my father sought more from opium than the mere absence of pain, I feel assured that it was not luxurious sensations or the glowing phantasmagoria of passive dreams, but that the power of the medicine might keep down the agitations of his nervous system, released for a time at least from the tyranny of ailments which by a spell of wretchedness fix the thoughts upon themselves, perpetually throwing them inward as into a stifling gulf." Miss Coleridge thus expresses the views of her father's family in respect to Mr. Cottle's publications: "I take this opportunity of expressing my sense of many kind acts and much friendly conduct of Mr. Cottle toward my father, by whom he was ever remembered with respect and affection. If I still regard with any disapproval his publication of letters exposing his friend's unhappy bondage to opium, and consequent embarrassments and deep distress of mind, it is not that I would have wished a broad influencive fact, in the history of one whose peculiar gifts had made him in some degree an object of public interest, to be finally concealed, supposing it to be attested, as this has been, by clear, unambiguous documents. I agree with Mr. Cottle in thinking that he himself would have desired, even to the last, that whatever benefit the world might obtain by the knowledge of his sufferings from opium--the calamity which the unregulated use of this drug had been to him and into which he first fell ignorantly and innocently (not, as Mr. De Quincey has said, to restore the 'riot of his animal spirits' when 'youthful blood no longer sustained it,' but as a relief from bodily pain and nervous irritation) that others might avoid the rack on which so great a part of his happiness for so long a time was wrecked. Such a wish indeed he once strongly expressed, but I believe myself to be speaking equally in his spirit when I say that all such considerations of advantage to the public should be subordinated to the prior claims of private and natural interests. I should never think the public good a sufficient apology for publishing the secret history of any man or woman whatever, who had connections remaining upon earth; but if I were possessed of private notices respecting one in whom the world takes an interest, I should think it right to place them in the hands of his nearest relations, leaving it to them to deal with such documents as a sense of what is due to the public and what belongs to openness and honesty may demand." The nephew of Coleridge, in the Preface to the "Table Talk," says: "A time will come when Coleridge's life may be written without wounding the feeling or gratifying the malice of any one; and then, among other misrepresentations, that as to the origin of his recourse to opium will be made manifest; and the tale of his long and passionate struggle with and final victory over the habit will form one of the brightest as well as most interesting traits of the moral and religious being of this humble, this exalted Christian. "Coleridge--blessings on his gentle memory!--Coleridge was a frail mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his unique powers; sensibilities that an averted look would rack; a heart which would have beaten calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. He shrank from mere uneasiness like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of his death-attack like a martyr. Sinned against a thousand times more than sinning, he himself suffered an almost lifelong punishment for his errors, while the world at large has the unwithering fruits of his labors, his genius, and his sacrifice." WILLIAM BLAIR. The following narrative of a case of confirmed opium-eating was communicated to the editor of the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, in the year 1842, by Dr. B. W. M'Cready of New York, accompanied by the following statement: Poor Blair, whose account of himself I send you, was brought to the City Hospital by a Baptist clergyman in 1835, at which time I was Resident Physician of the establishment. His wretched habit had at that time reduced him to a state of deplorable destitution, and he came to the hospital as much for the sake of a temporary asylum as to endeavor to wean himself from the vice which had brought him to such a condition. When he entered it was with the proviso that he should be allowed a certain quantity of opium per day, the amount of which was slowly but steadily decreased. The dose he commenced with was eighty grains; and this quantity he would roll into a large bolus, of a size apparently too great for an ordinary person to swallow, and take without any appearance of effort. Until he had swallowed his ordinary stimulus he appeared languid, nervous, and dejected. He at all times had a very pale and unhealthy look, and his spirits were irregular; although it would be difficult to separate the effects produced by the enormous quantity of opium to which he had been accustomed from the feelings caused in a proud and intellectual man by the utter and irretrievable ruin which he had brought upon himself. Finding him possessed of great information and uncommon ability, I furnished him with books and writing materials, and extended to him many privileges not enjoyed by the ordinary patients in the wards. Observing that he--as is common with most men of a proud disposition who have not met with the success in the world which they deem due to their merits--had paid great attention to his own feelings, I was desirous of having an account written by himself of the effects which opium had produced upon his system. On my making the request he furnished me with the memoir of himself now in your possession. His health at this time was very much impaired. I had been in the habit of giving him orders upon the apothecary for his daily quantum of opium, but when the dose had been reduced to sixteen grains I found that he had counterfeited the little tickets I gave him and thus often obtained treble and quadruple the quantity allowed. After this, of course, although I felt profoundly sorry for the man, the intercourse between us was only that presented by my duty. Shortly afterward he disappeared from the hospital late at night. I have since met him several times in the streets; but for the last three or four years I have neither seen nor heard of him. With his habits it is scarcely probable that he still survives. Poor fellow! He furnishes another melancholy instance of the utter inefficiency of mere learning or intelligence in preserving a man from the most vicious and degrading abuses. He had neither religion nor moral principle; and that kind of gentlemanly feeling which from association he did possess, only made him feel more sensibly the degradation from which it could not preserve him. BLAIR'S NARRATIVE. Before I state the result of my experience as an opium-eater, it will perhaps not be uninteresting, and it certainly will conduce to the clearer understanding of such statement, if I give a slight and brief sketch of my habits and history previous to my first indulgence in the infernal drug which has embittered my existence for seven most weary years. The death of my father when I was little more than twelve months old made it necessary that I should receive only such an education as would qualify me to pursue some business in my native town of Birmingham; and in all probability I shoule at this moment be entering orders or making out invoices in that great emporium had I not at a very early age evinced an absorbing passion for reading, which the free access to a tolerably large library enabled me to indulge, until it had grown to be a confirmed habit of mind, which, when the attention of my friends was called to the subject, had become too strong to be broken through; and with the usual foolish family vanity they determined to indulge a taste so early and decidedly developed, in the expectation, I verily believe, of some day catching a reflected beam from the fame and glory which I was to win by my genius; for by that mystical name was the mere musty talent of a _nelluo librorum_ called. The consequence was that I was sent when eight years of age to a public school. I had however before this tormented my elder brother with ceaseless importunity until he had consented to teach me Latin, and by secretly poring over my sister's books I had contrived to gain a tolerable book-knowledge of French. From that hour my fate was decided. I applied with unwearied devotion to the study of the classics--the only branch of education attended to in the school--and I even considered it a favor to be allowed to translate, write exercises and themes, and to compose Latin verses for the more idle of my school-fellows. At the same time I devoured all books of whatever description which came in my way--poems, novels, history, metaphysics, or works of science--with an indiscriminating appetite, which has proved very injurious to me through life. I drank as eagerly of the muddy and stagnant pool of literature as of the pure and sparkling fountain glowing in the many-hued sunlight of genius. After two years had been spent in this manner I was removed to another school, the principal of which, although a fair mathematician, was a wretched classical scholar. In fact I frequently construed passages of Virgil, which I had not previously looked at, when he himself was forced to refer to Davidson for assistance. I stayed with him, however, two years, during which time I spent all the money I could get in purchasing Greek and Hebrew books, of which languages I learned the rudiments and obtained considerable knowledge without any instruction. After a year's residence at the house of my brother-in-law, which I passed in studying Italian and Persian, the Bishop of Litchfield's examining chaplain, to whom I had been introduced in terms of the most hyperbolical praise, prevailed on his Diocesan and the Earl of Calthorpe to share the expense of my further education. In consequence of this unexpected good fortune I was now placed under the care of the Rev. Thomas Fry, rector of the village of Emberton in Buckinghamshire, a clergyman of great piety and profound learning, with whom I remained about fifteen months, pursuing the study of languages with increased ardor. During the whole of that period I never allowed myself more than four hours' sleep; and still unsatisfied, I very generally spent the whole night, twice a week, in the insane pursuit of those avenues to distinction to which alone my ambition was confined. I took no exercise, and the income allowed me was so small that I could not afford a meat dinner more than once a week, and at the same time set apart the half of that allowance for the purchase of books, which I had determined to do. I smoked incessantly; for I now required some stimulus, as my health was much injured by my unrelaxing industry. My digestion was greatly impaired, and the constitution of iron which Nature had given me threatened to break down ere long under the effects of the systematic neglect with which I treated its repeated warnings. I suffered from constant headache; my total inactivity caused the digestive organs to become torpid; and the unnutritious nature of the food which I allowed myself would not supply me with the strength which my assiduous labor required. My nerves were dreadfully shaken, and at the age of fourteen I exhibited the external symptoms of old age. I was feeble and emaciated; and had this mode of life continued twelve months longer, I must have sank under it. I had during these fifteen months thought and read much on the subject of revealed religion, and had devoted a considerable portion of my time to an examination of the evidences advanced by the advocates of Christianity, which resulted in a reluctant conviction of their utter weakness and inability. No sooner was I aware that so complete a change of opinion had taken place, than I wrote to my patron, stating the fact and explaining the process by which I had arrived at such a conclusion. The reply I received was a peremptory order to return to my mother's house immediately; and on arriving there, the first time I had entered it for some years, I was met by the information that I had nothing more to expect from the countenance of those who had supplied me with the means of prosecuting my studies to "so bad a purpose." I was so irritated by what I considered the unjustifiable harshness of this decision, that at the moment I wrote a haughty and angry letter to one of the parties, which of course widened the breach and made the separation between us eternal. What was I now to do? I was unfit for any business, both by habit, inclination, and constitution. My health was ruined, and hopeless poverty stared me in the face; when a distinguished solicitor in my native town, who by the way has since become celebrated in the political world, offered to receive me as a clerk. I at once accepted the offer; but knowing that in my then condition it was impossible for me to perform the duties required of me, I decided on TAKING OPIUM! The strange confessions of De Quincey had long been a favorite with me. The first part of it had in fact been given me both as a model in English composition and also as an exercise to be rendered into Patavinian Latin. The latter part, the "Miseries of Opium," I had most unaccountably always neglected to read. Again and again, when my increasing debility had threatened to bring my studies to an abrupt conclusion, I had meditated this experiment, but an undefinable and shadowy fear had as often stayed my hand. But now that I knew that unless I could by artificial stimuli obtain a sudden increase of strength I must STARVE, I no longer hesitated. I was desperate; I believed that something horrible would result from it; though my imagination, most vivid, could not conjure up visions of horror half so terrific as the fearful reality. I knew that for every hour of comparative ease and comfort its treacherous alliance might confer upon me _now_, I must endure days of bodily suffering; but I did not, could not conceive the mental hell into whose fierce, corroding fires I was about to plunge. All that occurred during the first day is imperishably engraved upon my memory. It was about a week previous to the day appointed for my debut in my new character as an attorney's clerk; and when I arose, I was depressed in mind, and a racking pain to which I had lately been subject, was maddening me. I could scarcely manage to crawl into the breakfast-room. I had previously procured a drachm of opium, and I took two grains with my coffee. It did not produce any change in my feelings. I took two more--still without effect; and by six o'clock in the evening I had taken ten grains. While I was sitting at tea I felt a strange sensation, totally unlike any thing I had ever felt before; a gradual _creeping thrill_, which in a few minutes occupied every part of my body, lulling to sleep the before-mentioned racking pain, producing a pleasing glow from head to foot, and inducing a sensation of dreamy exhilaration (if the phrase be intelligible to others as it is to me), similar in nature but not in degree to the drowsiness caused by wine, though not inclining me to sleep; in fact so far from it that I longed to engage in some active exercise--to sing or leap. I then resolved to go to the theatre--the last place I should the day before have dreamed of visiting; for the sight of cheerfulness in others made me doubly gloomy. I went, and so vividly did I feel my vitality--for in this state of delicious exhilaration even mere excitement seemed absolute Elysium--that I could not resist the temptation to break out in the strangest vagaries, until my companions thought me deranged. As I ran up the stairs I rushed after and flung back every one who was above me. I escaped numberless beatings solely through the interference of my friends. After I had become seated a few minutes, the nature of the excitement was changed, and a "waking sleep" succeeded. The actors on the stage vanished; the stage itself lost its ideality; and before my entranced sight magnificent halls stretched out in endless succession, with gallery above gallery, while the roof was blazing with gems like stars whose rays alone illumined the whole building, which was thronged with strange, gigantic figures--like the wild possessors of a lost globe, such as Lord Byron has described in "Cain" as beheld by the fratricide, when, guided by Lucifer, he wandered among the shadowy existences of those worlds which had been destroyed to make way for our pigmy earth. I will not attempt further to describe the magnificent vision which a little pill of "brown gum" had conjured up from the realm of ideal being. No words that I can command would do justice to its Titanian splendor and immensity. At midnight I was roused from my dreamy abstraction; and on my return home the blood in my veins seemed to "run lightning," and I knocked down (for I had the strength of a giant at that moment) the first watchman I met. Of course there was a row, and for some minutes a battle-royal raged in New Street, the principal thoroughfare of the town, between my party and the "Charlies," who, although greatly superior in numbers, were sadly "milled," for we were all somewhat scientific bruisers--that sublime art or science having been cultivated with great assiduity at the public school through which I had, as was customary, fought my way. I reached home at two in the morning with a pair of "Oxford spectacles" which confined me to the house for a week. I slept disturbedly, haunted by terrific dreams, and oppressed by the nightmare and her nine-fold, and awoke with a dreadful headache; stiff in every joint, and with deadly sickness of the stomach which lasted for two or three days; my throat contracted and parched, my tongue furred, my eyes bloodshot, and the whole surface of my body burning hot. I did not have recourse to opium again for three days; for the strength it had excited did not till then fail me. When partially recovered from the nausea the first dose had caused, my spirits were good, though not exuberant, but I could eat nothing and was annoyed by an insatiable thirst. I went to the office, and for six months performed the services required of me without lassitude or depression of spirits, though never again did I experience the same delicious sensations as on that memorable night which is an "oasis in the desert" of my subsequent existence; life I can not call it, for the "_vivida vis animi et corporis_" was extinct. In the seventh month my misery commenced. Burning heat, attended with constant thirst, then began to torment me from morning till night; my skin became scurfy; the skin of my feet and hands peeled off; my tongue was always furred; a feeling of contraction in the bowels was continual; my eyes were strained and discolored, and I had unceasing headache. But internal and external heat was the pervading feeling and appearance. My digestion became still weaker, and my incessant costiveness was painful in the extreme. The reader must not however imagine that all these symptoms appeared suddenly and at once; they came on gradually, though with frightful rapidity, until I became a "_morborum moles_," as a Roman physician whose lucubrations I met with and perused with great amusement some years since in a little country ale-house poetically expresses it. I could not sleep for hours after I had lain down, and consequently was unable to rise in time to attend the office in the morning, though as yet no visions of horror haunted my slumbers. Mr. P., my employer, bore with this for some months; but at length his patience was wearied, and I was informed that I must attend at nine in the morning. I could not; for even if I rose at seven, after two or three hours unhealthy and fitful sleep, I was unable to walk or exert myself in any way for at least two hours. I was at this time taking laudanum, and had no appetite for any thing but coffee and acid fruits. I could and did drink great quantities of ale, though it would not, as nothing would, quench my thirst. Matters continued in this state for fifteen months, during which time the only comfortable hours I spent were in the evening, when freed from the duties of the office I sat down to study, which it is rather singular I was able to do with as strong zest and as unwearied application as ever; as will appear when I mention that in those fifteen months I read through in the evenings the whole of Cicero, Tacitus, the Corpus P�tarurn (Latinorum), Boëthius, Scriptores Historiæ Augustinæ, Homer, Corpus Græcarum Tragediarum, a great part of Plato, and a large mass of philological works. In fact, in the evening I generally felt comparatively well, not being troubled with many of the above symptoms. These evenings were the very happiest of my life. I had ample means for the purchase of books, for I lived very cheap on bread, ale, and coffee, and I had access to a library containing all the Latin classics--Valpy's edition in one hundred and fifty volumes, octavo, a magnificent publication--and about fifteen thousand other books. Toward the end of the year 1829 I established at my own expense, and edited myself, a magazine (there was not one in a town as large and populous as New York!) by which I lost a considerable sum; though the pleasure I derived from my monthly labors amply compensated me. In December of that year my previous sufferings became light in comparison with those which now seized upon me, never completely to leave me again. One night, after taking about fifty grains of opium, I sat down in my arm-chair to read the confession of a Russian who had murdered his brother because he was the chosen of her whom both loved. It was recorded by a French priest who visited him in his last moments, and was powerfully and eloquently written. I dozed while reading it; and immediately I was present in the prison-cell of the fratricide. I saw his ghastly and death-dewed features; his despairing yet defying look; the gloomy and impenetrable dungeon; the dying lamp, which seemed but to render darkness visible; and the horror-struck yet pitying expression of the priest's countenance; but there I lost my identity. Though I was the recipient of these impressions, yet I was not myself separately and distinctively existent and sentient; but my entity was confounded with that of not only the two figures before me, but of the inanimate objects surrounding them. This state of compound existence I can no further describe. While in this state I composed the "Fratricide's Death," or rather it composed itself and forced itself upon my memory without any activity or volition on my part. And here again another phenomenon presented itself. The images reflected (if the expression be allowable) in the verses rose bodily and with perfect distinctness before me, simultaneously with their verbal representations; and when I roused myself (I had not been _sleeping_, but was only _abstracted_) all remained clear and distinct in my memory. From that night for six months, darkness always brought the most horrible fancies, and opticular and auricular or acoustical delusions of a frightful nature, so vivid and real that instead of a blessing, sleep became a curse, and the hours of darkness became hours which seemed days of misery. For many consecutive nights I dared not undress myself nor put out the light, lest the moment I lay down some _"monstrum horrendum, informfe, ingens"_ should blast my sight with his hellish aspect! I had a double sense of sight and sound; one real, the other visionary; both equally strong and apparently real; so that while I distinctly heard imaginary footsteps ascending the stairs, the door opening and my curtains drawn, I at the same time as plainly heard any actual sound in or outside the house, and could not remark the slightest difference between them; and while I _saw_ an imaginary assassin standing by my bed, bending over me with a lamp in one hand and a dagger in the other, I could see any real tangible object which the degree of light which might be then in the room made visible. Though these visionary fears and imaginary objects had presented themselves to me every night for months, yet I never could convince myself of their non-existence; and every fresh appearance caused suffering of as intense and as deadly horror as on the first night! So great was the confusion of the real with the unreal that I nearly became a convert to Bishop Berkeley's non-reality doctrines. My health was also rapidly becoming worse; and before I had taken my opium in the morning I had become unable to move hand or foot, and of course could not rise from my bed until I had received strength from the "damnable dirt." I could not attend the office at all in the morning, and was forced to throw up my articles, and, as the only chance left me of gaining a livelihood, turn to writing for magazines for support. I left B. and proceeded to London, where I engaged with Charles Knight to supply the chapters on the use of elephants in the wars of the ancients for the "History of Elephants," then preparing for publication in the series of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge. For this purpose I obtained permission to use the library of the British Museum for six months, and again devoted myself with renewed ardor to my favorite studies. "But what a falling off was there!" My memory was impaired, and in reading I was conscious of a confusion of mind which prevented my clearly comprehending the full meaning of what I read. Some organ appeared to be defective. My judgment too was weakened, and I was frequently guilty of the most absurd actions, which at the time I considered wise and prudent. THe strong common sense which I had at one time boasted of, deserted me. I lived in a dreamy, imaginative state which completely disqualified me for managing my own affairs. I spent large sums of money in a day, and then starved for a month; and all this while the "_chateux en Espagne_," which once only afforded me an idle amusement, now usurped the place of the realities of life and led me into many errors, and even unjustifiable acts of immorality, which lowered me in the estimation of my acquaintances and friends, who saw the effect but never dreamed the cause. Even those who knew I was an opium-eater, not being aware of the effect which the habitual use of it produced, attributed my mad conduct to either want of principle or aberration of intellect, and I thus lost several of my best friends and temporarily alienated many others. After a month or two passed in this employment I regained a portion of strength sufficient to enable me to obtain a livelihood by reporting, on my own account, in the courts of law in Westminster, any cause which I judged of importance enough to afford a reasonable chance of selling again; and by supplying reviews and occasional original articles to the periodicals, the _Monthly_, the _New Monthly, Metropolitan_, etc. My health continued to improve, probably in consequence of my indulging in higher living, and taking much more exercise than I had done for two or three years; as I had no need of buying books, having the use of at least five hundred thousand volumes in the Museum. I was at last fortunate enough to obtain the office of Parliamentary reporter to a morning paper, which produced about three hundred pounds a year; but after working on an average fourteen or fifteen hours a day for a few months, I was obliged to resign the situation and again depend for support on the irregular employment I had before been engaged in, and for which I was now alone fit. My constitution now appeared to have completely sunk under the destroying influence of the immense quantity of opium I had for some months taken--two hundred, two hundred and fifty, and three hundred grains a day. I was frequently obliged to repeat the dose several times a day, as my stomach had become so weak that the opium would not remain upon it; and I was besides afflicted with continual vomiting after having eaten any thing. I really believed that I could not last much longer. Tic-douloureux was also added to my other suffering; constant headache, occasional spasms, heart-burn, pains in the legs and back, and a general irritability of the nerves, which would not allow me to remain above a few minutes in the same position. My temper became soured and morose. I was careless of every thing, and drank to excess in the hope of thus supplying the place of the stimulus which had lost its power. At length I was compelled to keep my bed by a violent attack of pleurisy, which has since seized me about the same time every year. My digestion was so thoroughly ruined that I was frequently almost maddened by the sufferings which indigestion occasioned. I could not sleep, though I was no longer troubled with visions, which had left me about three months. At last I became so ill that I was forced to leave London and visit my mother in Kenilworth, where I stayed; writing occasionally, and instructing a few pupils in Greek and Hebrew. I was also now compelled to sell my library, which contained several Arabic and Persian MSS., a complete collection of Latin authors, nearly a complete one of Greek, and a large collection of Hebrew and Rabbinic works, which I had obtained at a great expense and with great trouble. All went. The only relics of it I was able to retain were the "Corpus Poetarum, Graecarum et Latinorum," and I have never since been able to collect another library. Idleness, good living, and constant exercise revived me; but with returning strength my nocturnal visitors returned, and again my nights were made dreadful. I was terrified through visions similar to those which had so alarmed me at first, and I was obliged to drink deeply at night to enable me to sleep at all. In this state I continued till June, 1833, when I determined once more to return to London, and I left Kenilworth without informing any one of my intention the night before. The curate of the parish called at my lodging to inform me that he had obtained the gift of six hundred pounds to enable me to reside at Oxford until I could graduate. Had I stayed twenty-four hours longer I should not now be living in hopeless poverty in a foreign country; but pursuing, under more favorable auspices than ever brightened my path before, those studies which supported and cheered me in poverty and illness, and with a fair prospect of obtaining that learned fame for which I had longed so ardently from my boyhood, and in the vain endeavor to obtain which I had sacrificed my health and denied myself not only the pleasures and luxuries but even the necessaries of life. I had while at the office in B. entered my name on the books of Brazen-nose College, Oxford, and resided there one term, not being able to afford the expense attendant on a longer residence. Thus it has been with me through life. Fortune has again and again thrown the means of success in my way, but they have always been like the waters of Tantalus--alluring but to escape from my grasp the moment I approached to seize them. I remained in London only a few days, and then proceeded to Amsterdam, where I stayed a week, and then went to Paris. After completely exhausting my stock of money I was compelled to walk back to Calais, which I did with little inconvenience, as I found that money was unnecessary; the only difficulty I met with being how to escape from the overflowing hospitality I everywhere experienced from rich and poor. My health was much improved when I arrived in town, and I immediately proceeded on foot to Birmingham, where I engaged with Dr. Palmer, a celebrated physician, to supply the Greek and Latin synonyms and correct the press for a dictionary of the terms used by the French in medicine, which he was preparing. The pay I received was so very small that I was again reduced to the poorest and most meagre diet, and an attack of pleurisy produced such a state of debility that I was compelled to leave Birmingham and return to my mother's house in Kenilworth. I had now firmly resolved to free myself from my fatal habit; and the very day I reached home I began to diminish the quantity I was then taking by one grain per day. I received the most careful attention, and every thing was done that could add to my comfort and alleviate the sufferings I must inevitably undergo. Until I had arrived at seventeen and a half grains a day I experienced but little uneasiness, and my digestive organs acquired or regained strength very rapidly. All constipation had vanished. My skin became moist and more healthy, and my spirits instead of being depressed became equable and cheerful. No visions haunted my sleep. I could not sleep, however, more than two or three hours at a time, and from about 3 A.M. until 8--when I took my opium--I was restless and troubled with a gnawing, twitching sensation in the stomach. From seventeen grains downward my torment (for by that word alone can I characterize the pangs I endured) commenced. I could not rest, either lying, sitting, or standing. I was compelled to change my position every moment, and the only thing that relieved me was walking about the country. My sight became weak and dim; the gnawing at my stomach was perpetual, resembling the sensation caused by ravenous hunger; but food, though I ate voraciously, would not relieve me. I also felt a sinking in the stomach, and such a pain in the back that I could not straighten myself up. A dull, constant, aching pain took possession of the calves of my legs, and there was a continual jerking motion of the nerves from head to foot. My head ached, my intellect was terribly weakened and confused, and I could not think, talk, read, nor write. To sleep was impossible, until by walking from morning till night I had so thoroughly tired myself that pain could not keep me awake, although I was so weak that walking was misery to me. And yet under all these _dèsagrèmens_ I did not feel dejected in spirit; although I became unable to walk, and used to lie on the floor and roll about in agony for hours together. I should certainly have taken opium again if the chemist had not, by my mother's instructions, refused to sell it. I became worse every day, and it was not till I had entirely left off the drug--two months nearly--that any alleviation of my suffering was perceptible. I gradually but very slowly recovered my strength both of mind and body, though it was long before I could read or write, or even converse. My appetite was too good; for though while an opium-eater I could not endure to taste the smallest morsel of fat, I now could eat at dinner a pound of bacon which had not a hair's-breadth of lean in it. Previously to my arrival in Kenilworth an intimate friend of mine had been ruined--reduced at once from affluence to utter penury by the villainy of his partner, to whom he had entrusted the whole of his business, and who had committed two forgeries for which he was sentenced to transportation for life. In consequence of this event, my friend, who was a little older than myself and had been about twelve months married, determined to leave his young wife and child and seek to rebuild his broken fortunes in Canada. When he informed me that such was his plan I resolved to accompany him, and immediately commenced preparations for my voyage. I was not however ready, not having been able so soon to collect the sum necessary, when he was obliged to leave, and as I could not have him for my companion, I altered my course and took my passage for New York, in the vain expectation of obtaining a better income here, where the ground was comparatively unoccupied, than in London, where there were hundreds of men as well qualified as myself, dependent on literature for their support. I need not add how lamentably I was disappointed. The first inquiries I made were met by advice to endeavor to obtain a livelihood by some other profession than authorship. I could get no employment as a reporter, and the applications I addressed to the editors of several of the daily newspapers received no answer. My prospects appeared as gloomy as they could well be, and my spirits sunk beneath the pressure of the anxious cares which now weighed so heavily upon me. I was alone in a strange country, without an acquaintance into whose ear I might pour the gathering bitterness of my blighted hopes. I was also much distressed by the intense heat of July, which kept me from morning till night in a state much like that occasioned by a vapor bath. I was so melancholy and hopeless that I really found it necessary to have recourse to brandy or opium. I preferred the latter, although to ascertain the difference, merely as a philosophical experiment, I took rather copious draughts of the former also. But observe; I did not intend ever again to become the slave of opium. I merely proposed to take three or four grains a day until I should procure some literary engagement, and until the weather became more cool. All my efforts to obtain such engagement were in vain; and I should undoubtedly have sunk into hopeless despondency had not a gentleman (to whom I had brought an order for a small sum of money, twice the amount of which he had insisted on my taking), perceiving how injuriously I was affected by my repeated disappointments, offered me two hundred dollars to write "Passages from the Life of an Opium-eater," in two volumes. I gladly accepted this disinterested offer, but before I had written more than two or three sheets I became disgusted with the subject. I attempted to proceed, but found that my former facility in composition had deserted me; that, in fact, I could not write. I now discovered that the attempt to leave off opium again would be one of doubtful result. I had increased my quantum to forty grains. I again became careless and inert, and I believe that the short time that had elapsed since I had broken the habit in England had not been sufficient to allow my system to free itself from the poison which had been so long undermining its powers. I could not at once leave it off; and in truth I was not very anxious to do so, as it enabled me to forget the difficulties of the situation in which I had placed myself; while I knew that with regained freedom the cares and troubles which had caused me again to flee to my destroyer for relief, would press upon my mind with redoubled weight. I remained in Brooklyn until November. Since then, I have resided in the city, in great poverty, frequently unable to procure a dinner, as the few dollars I received from time to time scarcely sufficed to supply me with opium. Whether I shall now be able to leave off opium, God only knows! OPIUM AND ALCOHOL COMPARED. The manuscript of the narrative which follows was placed in the hands of the compiler by a physician of Philadelphia who for many years had shown great kindness to its writer, in the endeavor to cure him of his pernicious habits. The writer seems from childhood to have been cursed with an excessive sensibility, and an unusual constitutional craving for excitement, coupled with an infirm and unreliable will. The habit of daily dependence upon alcohol appears to have been established for years before the use of opium was commenced; and the latter was begun chiefly for the purpose of substituting the excitement of the drug in place of the excitement furnished by brandy and wine. That any human being can permanently substitute the daily use of the one in place of the daily use of the other is more than doubtful. Attempts of this kind are not unfrequently made, but the result is uniformly the same--a double tyranny is established which no amount of resolution is sufficient to conquer. This fact is so forcibly illustrated in this autobiography, that although it is chiefly a story of suffering from the use of alcoholic stimulants, its insertion here may serve as a caution to that class of persons, not inconsiderable in number, who are tempted to substitute one ruinous habit in place of another. I am inclined to think I must have been born, if not literally with a propensity to _stimulus_, at least with a susceptibility to fall readily into the use of it; for my ancestors, so far as I know, all used alcohol, though none of them, I believe, died drunkards. One of my earliest recollections is that of seeing the tumbler of sling occasionally partaken of by the elders of the family, even before breakfast, and of myself with the other children being sometimes gratified with a spoonful of the beverage or the sugar at the bottom. Paregoric, too--combining two of the most dangerous of all substances, alcohol and opium--was a favorite medicine of my excellent mother, and in all the little ailments of childhood was freely administered. So highly thought she of it that on my leaving home at fifteen for Cambridge University she put a large vial of it in my trunk, with the injunction to take of it, if ever sick. In my young days I saw alcohol used everywhere. How in those days any body failed of the drunkard's grave seems hardly less than miraculous. How I myself escaped becoming inebriate for more than twenty-five years, is with my organization, a deep mystery. I can remember, when quite young, occasionally drinking--as I saw every body else do, boys as well as men, and even women--and I recollect also being two or three times overcome with liquor, to my infinite horror and shame not less than bodily suffering. At fifteen, as I said, I entered Harvard University, perfectly free from the _habit_ of drinking as from all other bad habits. Here too, as everywhere before, I saw alcohol flowing copiously, the most prevalent kind being wine. On Exhibition and Commencement Days, every student honored with a "part" was accustomed at his room to make his friends and acquaintances free of the cake-basket and especially of the wine-cup. A good deal of wine and punch too was drank at the private "Blows" (so called) of the students, at the meetings of their various clubs, at their military musterings, and other like occasions. At all such times there was more or less intoxication. I can remember being a good deal disordered with wine two or three times during my four college years, and I have no doubt I was considerably affected by it more times than these; still scholastic ambition, somewhat diligent habits of study, straitened means, and the want of any special inclination for artificial stimulus carried me through college without my having contracted any habit of drinking or having grown to depend at all upon stimulants. But deteriorating causes had been at work, and though the volcano had not burst forth as yet, the material had been silently gathering through these four seemingly peaceful years. In the winter of my sixteenth or seventeenth year, after suffering several days from severe toothache, I was induced by my landlady, a pipe-smoker, to try tobacco as a remedy. The result of this trial, which proved effectual, was that partly from the old notion that tobacco was a teeth- preservative, and partly, I suppose, because the taste was hereditary, I fell at once into the habit of tobacco-chewing, which I continued without intermission for eleven years. In this abominable practice I exercised no moderation: indeed in any practice of this kind it has seemed constitutional with me to go to excess, and unnatural to pursue a middle course. None at all or too much was the alternative exacted by my organization. By consequence, the perpetual, unmeasured waste of saliva induced by using such immoderate quantities of this weed must speedily have exhausted a constitution not endowed with unusual vital energies. As it was I must have received deep injury. I often felt faintness and languor, though I did not or would not admit what now I have no doubt of--that this vegetable was in fault. At nineteen, graduating at Cambridge, I took and kept for the three following years an academy in a near neighboring town. Here I soon began to suffer (what I now suppose) the ill effects of the false education and false living (the tobacco-chewing, physical inertness, mental partialness, and the rest) of long foregoing years. I began to suffer greatly from gloom and depression of spirits. Short fits of morbid gayety and long stretches of dullness and darkness made up the present, while the future looked almost wholly black. I had indeed been afflicted so long as I could remember with seasons of low spirits, but _these_ glooms, for depth and long continuance, transcended any thing I had ever experienced before. On festive occasions, at which I was often present, I was accustomed to take a glass or half-glass of wine with and like the rest; but other than this, I used no stimulus and never had thought of keeping any at my lodgings. In fact, so little was I _seasoned_ in this way that half a glass of ordinary wine was enough to elevate my spirits many degrees above their usual pitch. I know not why it never occurred to me to use habitually what I found occasionally to be such a relief. A few months after commencing school I attended with a party of friends the celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The orator was exceedingly eloquent; the occasion one of great enthusiasm; and what with my intense previous excitement of mind, what with my unseasoned brain, and what with the universal example of the wise and good about me, I took so much wine at the public dinner as to be completely intoxicated, and was only able after three or four hours of sleep to attend the Pilgrim Ball. My shame, remorse, and horror on this occasion was so far salutary that without any special resolution I was for a long time after, a total abstinent. In fact this monitory influence lasted with more or less force for six or seven years. But the gloom and depression before spoken of came to a crisis. About a year after my leaving college I broke down with a severe attack of dyspepsia. A weight pressing continually on my chest, palpitation of the heart, sleeplessness by night, or dreams that robbed sleep of all repose, debility, languor, and increased gloom--such are some of the symptoms that hung oppressively upon me for more than a year. Under these circumstances I took a physician's advice. By his orders I swallowed I know not how many bottles of bitters. Whether from their effect or from Nature's curative power in despite of them, my ailments at last mostly disappeared; but to this very hour I have been more or less subject to the same physical inertness and unexcitability, low spirits, and many like symptoms. No unexperienced person can imagine what a life it is to be thus physically but half alive. The temptation is incessant to raise by artificial helps the physical tone, in order thus to attain activity and energy of mind. My only wonder is that I did not sooner resort to what would at least give temporary relief to the depression and torpor from which I suffered so much and so long. After keeping school three years, being the last of the three a member of the Cambridge Divinity School, I passed two years at that school and was licensed to preach. My life there was the same false, unnatural one it had been in college--much study and no bodily exercise, a few faculties active and the greater number exercised scarce at all. All this while, with the exception of tobacco, I used no stimulants except on rare occasions, and then always in moderation. In August, 1829, I was licensed as a preacher by the Boston Ministerial Association. In the December following I was ordained a minister at Lynn, Mass. In May, 1830, I was married, and in the succeeding autumn became a housekeeper. Immediately on becoming an ordained clergyman I procured one or two demijohns of wine as a preparative for hospitality to my clerical brethren and to visitants generally. Such was the custom universally, and in various ways I was given to understand that I too must adopt it. Keeping wine at home now for the first time, I tasted it doubtless oftener than ever before, though still not habitually or with any approach to excess. Furthermore, a member of my family, in debilitated health and a dyspeptic, was ordered by the family physician, one of the most distinguished of the Boston Faculty, to take brandy and water with dinner as a tonic. A demijohn of brandy therefore took its place in the closet beside the demijohn of wine already there, and on the daily dinner-table was set a decanter of this liquid fire. For myself I had as already intimated never perfectly recovered from my ancient dyspeptic attack, nor was my present way of life very favorable to health. To replenish this waste, a good deal of bodily exercise was needed, but of such exercise I took scarce any at all. It was then no uncommon thing for a minister to sit down on Saturday evenings with a pot of green tea as strong as lye, or of coffee black as ink, and a box of cigars beside him--drinking at the one and puffing at the other all or most of the night through--and under the excitement of these nerve-rasping substances trace rapidly on paper the words which next day were to thrill or melt his listeners. A final cup of tea or coffee, extra strong, and a last cigar before entering the pulpit, gave him that fervor and unction of manner so indispensable to eloquence. His theme, perhaps, was intemperance; and with nerves tingling from the action of liquids which no swine will drink, and of the plant which no swine will eat, he would portray most vividly the terrible ruin wrought by intoxicating drink. Do not believe, however, that in all this he was dishonest or hypocritical; he was merely self-ignorant--blind to the fact that in condemning the alcoholic inebriate he was by every word condemning himself as well. This ignorance, however, could not obviate the effects of such hideous outrage on the physical laws. I have dwelt on these points partly for their intrinsic truth and importance, and partly as hearing upon and explaining my own case. In ill health, languid and restless from the causes pertaining to my then condition, I found in brandy or wine a temporary relief for that languor and sedative for that restlessness. When necessitated to write, and the mind was dull because the body was sluggish, instead of seeking the needed life in tea and coffee and tobacco-smoking, I found it more readily in brandy or wine. In short, I began somewhat to depend on these stimulants for the excitement I required for my work. I hardly need say I dreamed of neither wrong nor danger in so doing, and it was yet a good while before a case of intoxication awoke me from this false security. Thus three years passed, at the close of which I removed to Brookline for the health of a friend apparently declining in consumption. Just before leaving I cast away the tobacco which I had used largely for ten or eleven years. The struggle was a hard one, and the faintness and uneasy cravings which long tormented me operated, I think, as a temptation to replace the lost stimulus by increased quantities of alcoholic stimulus. Under these circumstances I went to Brookline in the beginning of February, 1833, and for three or four months I shut myself up as sole attendant and nurse of a sick friend, apparently dying. I had no external employment compelling my attention; there were no outward objects to call me off from my infirmities and uneasy sensations. I was alone with all these--alone with sickness and coining death--alone with a gloomy present and a clouded future--and the bottle stood near, promising relief. It is not very strange that I resorted oftener than before to its treacherous comfort, and became more than ever accustomed to depend upon it. I believe, however, that only once during these months was I positively overcome by it, and I was very ready to cheat myself into the belief that other causes were in fault besides, and as much as alcohol. The ensuing summer I spent partly in Cambridge and partly in travelling with the invalid who still survived; and with health considerably improved I continued stimulus, though I think in rather less quantities than in the winter preceding. Once, however, I was badly intoxicated with port wine, and so ill as greatly to alarm my friends and induce them to call in a physician, who administered a powerful emetic. Whether or not he understood the nature of my ailment I never knew. My friends I think did not, and I was very willing to cheat myself into the belief that the wine thus affected me because I was ill from other causes. At the close of August of this year I went to Brooklyn, New York, to preach for a few Sundays to a handful of persons who had just united to attempt forming a new religious society. I remained through the winter following. A society was gathered; I was installed over it, and there continued till the summer of 1837. These four years were to me tremendous years. They seem to me, in looking back, like a long, sick, feverish dream. Even now I can hardly but shudder at the remembrance of glooms of midnight blackness and sufferings that mock all endeavors at description: for it absolutely appears to me on the review that not for one week of these four years was I a free, healthful, sober, man; not one week but I was rent by a fierce conflict between "the law of the members and the law of the mind." How it was I executed the amount I did, of intellectual labor--how it was I accomplished the results I did, Is to me an impenetrable mystery. I began to address in a hired school-house a handful of persons, having most of them but a slight mutual acquaintance, and in my farewell discourse I addressed a fair-sized, closely-united congregation assembled in their own conveniently-spacious church, with the organization and all the customary belongings of the oldest worshiping societies. Not one Sunday of that time was I disenabled by my fatal habits to perform the customary offices; but I did not understand my condition in any thing like its reality as now I look back upon it. My actual state was known to but very few in its entireness--I may say to absolutely none of those I daily companied with--and I did at the close of that period receive an honorable dismissal at my own request, a request made for reasons distinct from this; nor between myself and people, or any of them, was there ever a word exchanged on this subject from first to last. "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction." I shall not attempt going through these years in detail. I went to Brooklyn with the habit of depending on alcohol to a considerable extent for physical tone and mental excitement, though not with the _habit_ of losing my balance thereby. It was some time after establishing myself in New York before I became at all awake to my condition. At considerable intervals I had two or three attacks of convulsionary fits. My physician gave them some name--I hardly remember what--but he did not specify the cause. I now understand them to have been intoxication fits. I suspected then that alcohol had some connection with them, and I was so far aroused to this and other evils of my way of life that I attempted total abstinence. But besides a host of uneasy sensations, I at once experienced such a lack of bodily strength and of mental life and activity that to think or write, or apply myself to my tasks generally, I found impossible. After making several abortive attempts of this kind, I tried at last the substitution of laudanum for alcohol. It was a most fatal move! for the final result was a bondage of which previously I had not even a conception. At first, however, I seemed as though lifted out of the pit into Paradise. Instead of the feverish, tumultuous excitement of alcohol, I experienced a calm, equable, thrilling enjoyment. My whole being was exalted from its previous turmoil and perturbation and heat, to dwell in a region of serenity and peace and quiet bliss. But alas for the reverse side of the picture! The total prostration, the depth of depression, the more than infantile feebleness following the reaction of this excitement--the multitude of uneasy, uncomfortable, often bewildering sensations pertaining to the habit, are such as can not be conveyed to one inexperienced in the matter. But any one may decide that the presence and incorporation with the system, in large quantities, of a poison which is so deadly a foe to life and all life's movements can not be without very marked and baneful results. The fact is that there is not one out of the thousand various functions of the body which is not deranged and turned away by this cause, and the movements of the mind and heart are from sympathy hardly less morbid. Whether such a state must not be one of sufferings many, and often frightful, every one may judge. But worse even than this followed. It was not very long before the opium nearly lost its power to excite and enliven, though it still kept an inexorable clutch on every fibre of my frame, and I was compelled to take it daily to keep the very current of life flowing. To make my condition worse still, while obliged to use opium daily to prolong even this existence--gloomy and apathetic as it was--I found that in order to think or work with any thing of vigor I absolutely required, every now and then, some excitement which opium now would not give. I tried, therefore, strong tea and coffee and tobacco-smoking. But all these were not enough, and I found there was nothing for me but to try alcohol again; so that the upshot of my experiment of substituting opium for alcohol was, that I got opium, alcohol, tea, coffee, and tobacco-smoking fastened upon me all at once and all in excessive quantities; and the consequence of using alcohol was that no caution I could employ would secure me from occasional intoxication. Such was my physical derangement that I never could be certain beforehand of the degree of effect which alcoholic stimulus would exert upon me, and the same quantity which at one time would produce only the excitement I sought, would under other physical conditions completely overcome me. During my last two years in Brooklyn I made several attempts to break away from opium and other stimulus, and each time made considerable progress. But the same circumstances yet existed that originally led to the evil, and in fact others of the same class had been superadded, while the whole operated with aggravated force, so that I found or thought it impossible to achieve my freedom without disclosing my state, and thus, as I supposed, setting the seal to my own temporal ruin. Once and again, therefore, I went back to my dungeon. It may here be remarked that the sedentary man has extraordinary difficulties to contend with in such a case. His occupation being lonely, and demanding no bodily exertion, he has little or nothing to draw off, _perforce_, his attention from the innumerable aches and tormenting sensations which beset him, sometimes for months without cessation, in going through the extricating process. To sit still and endure long-protracted torment demands a resolution compared with which the courage that carries one into a battle-field is a paltry thing. But this bondage so galling, this position so false in all ways, and so severely condemned alike by conscience and honor, determined me at last to attempt my freedom at the cost even of life, if need be. I broke up housekeeping, sent my family away, and commenced the struggle. I had a bad cold at the time, besides a complication of various cares and distresses which probably increased the severity of the trial. Violent brain-fever came on, accompanied with universal inflammation and a host of sensations for which I never could find any name. It seemed as if my arteries and veins ran with boiling water instead of blood, and as the current circulated through the brain I felt as if it actually boiled up against and tossed the skull at the top of my head, as you have seen the water in a tea-kettle rattling the lid. My hearing was affected in a thousand strange ways: I heard a swimming noise which went monotonously on for weeks without cessation. The ocean, with all its varieties of sound, was forever in my hearing. Sometimes I heard the long billowy swell of the sea after a hard blow; again I could hear the sharp, fuming collision of waves in a storm; and then for hours I would listen to the solemn, continuous roar, intermitted with the booming, splashing wash of the tempest-roused surge upon the beach. Almost incessantly, too, I heard whisper ing, sharp and hissing, on every side--outside and inside of my room--and the whisperers I imagined were all saying hard things of myself. Meantime my mind was under tremendous excitement, and all its faculties, especially the imagination, were preternaturally active, vivid, and rapid-working. Such was my mental excitement and bodily irritation that for ten days and nights I slept hardly at all, nor enjoyed one moment's release from pain. That I was thoroughly in earnest in what I had undertaken will appear from the fact that all this time I had in a drawer within reach a bottle of laudanum, which I knew would in a few moments give me ease and sleep. Yet thus agonized and half delirious, I notwithstanding left it untouched. I was mostly confined to the house about four weeks. The inflammation gradually subsiding left me as weak as a child--so morbidly sensitive that tears flowed on the slightest occasion, and with my whole frame pervaded by a dull, incessant ache. To these symptoms were added coldness of the extremities, an obstinate determination of blood to the head, which swelled the vessels of the face and brain almost to bursting, susceptibility to fatigue on the least exertion, physical or mental, and so great a confusion and wandering of thought that it was only by a violent effort that my mind could be brought to act continuously or with the least vigor. As soon as I was able to go abroad I joined my family in the neighborhood of Boston, in the hope of benefiting by change of scene. Remaining here for several months without much improvement of health, I felt called on for various reasons to resign my charge in New York. Thus left with a family and very slender resources, I was compelled, feeble as I was, to bestir myself for their and my own support. No employment offered itself but that of my profession, and unfit, therefore, as I felt myself, body and mind, for this, I saw no alternative but to preach as occasion presented. It was a most cruel necessity, for without some artificial aid I was unable even to stand through the pulpit services. As a choice of evils I used wine and brandy; for the terrors of opium were still too recent. In the closing part of December, 1837, I went to the city of Washington to preach for six or seven Sundays. The same necessity, real or supposed, of stimulating, followed me through the six weeks of my stay there. One day at the close of this period, feeling unusually ill and languid, I sent a servant out for a bottle of brandy. I remember pouring out and drinking a single glass of it, and this is the last and whole of my recollection for two days. I awoke and was told I had been exceedingly ill. I must have been very badly intoxicated, though how or why I was so, I know not to this day. So soon as I could hold up my head I went by invitation to Baltimore, and stayed there some three weeks with a college friend. While there I learned from various sources that I was at last palpably and generally exposed and disgraced. I relinquished my profession at once both in reality and name, deeming this the least I could do in the circumstances. About the middle of March, 1838, with shattered, miserable health, overwhelmed with regret and shame and remorse, and the future palled with funereal black, I set out for the residence of relatives in Vermont. Here I remained two and a quarter years, studying law with my sister's husband, who was an attorney and counsellor. For several months I used no stimulus except tobacco, which in the desperate restlessness of the previous summer I had again began to chew after four years' interruption. I of course was weak and languid from this great abstraction of stimulus, coupled with the effects of the severe illness I had undergone. This debility rendered more severe the endurance of other evils of my condition. No wonder that under such wear and tear my nervous system should have become shattered. I was attacked with tic-douloureux. Though suffering severely, old recollections gave me such dread of anodyne and tonic medicines--which I thought it most likely would be administered--that I delayed for some time seeking medical advice. Pain, however, at last drove me to it, and from two physicians I received a prescription of morphlne and quinine. I knew that morphine was a preparation of opium, but supposing it a preparation leaving out the stimulating and retaining only the sedative properties of the drug, I imagined it less dangerous than crude opium. With this opinion--with excruciating pain on one side and on the other relief in the physicians' prescription-- it is not very strange I chose relief. I used the morphine until apparently the neuralgic affection was cured. On attempting then to lay it aside I found the habit of stimulating again fastened upon me. Once more I found myself neither more nor less than a bond slave to opium to all intents and purposes. With my existing physical debility, with a pressing host of perplexities and tribulations, and with my appalling remembrances of the former struggle, I could not summon resolution and perseverance enough to achieve a second emancipation. So regulating the quantity as well as I could, I waited in hope of some more auspicious season for the attempt. In the latter part of June, 1840, I went to New York city to complete my third year of legal study. I was at the time weak in body and low-spirited, and my debility was increased by the extraordinary heat of the weather. I was disappointed too in several arrangements on which I had reckoned. The result of all this was a want of physical and moral energy which precluded the attempt at emancipation from opium which I had purposed to make on my arrival; and worse than this, I found myself rapidly getting into the way of adding brandy to opium to procure the desired amount of excitement, as had formerly been the case. I came to the conclusion that I could not achieve my freedom alone, but must have help. I had no home, and after casting about I could devise no better scheme than to enter the Insane Hospital at Bloomingdale. I accordingly went there and stayed thirteen weeks. I found on arriving, that neither myself nor the friends I had advised with had understood the conditions of a residence in that Institution; for to their disappointment and mine I was locked into the lunatic ward and at total abandonment of stimulus, in a state of intense nervous excitement, I was for several days, especially during nights, kept on the very verge of frenzy by the mutterings and gibberings, the howlings and horrid execrations of the mad creatures, my neighbors. Without occupation for mind or body--with all things disturbing about me--with deeply depressing remembrances, and the future showing black as midnight--I remained here three months, and it is marvellous that these causes alone did not utterly destroy me. But to fill up the measure, I was attacked with fever and ague, which kept me burning and freezing, shaking and aching, for several weeks, and reduced me to such a degree of feebleness that I kept my bed most of the time. Thus I left the Institution more shattered physically than when I entered--so shattered that it was full two years before I regained my customary measure of bodily strength. It being now the first of December, 1840, I entered a law office in Wall Street, where I remained till the following July. For some months I enjoyed a glimpse of sunshine and had the hope of being established in business by my employer. But in the spring of 1841 his business fell off so largely that he dismissed three clerks who were there on my entering, and counselled me to seek some more promising sphere. Thus I was again afloat, knowing not whither to turn, and so discouraged as to care little what became of me. One thing only seemed stable and permanent, and that was the temptation to seek a temporary exhilaration in my depression, and a brief oblivion of my troubles, in alcohol. By another change, in the fore part of July, 1841, I entered Judge Allen's office in Worcester, Mass., and continuing there until March, 1842, was formally admitted to the Bar and commissioned as Justice of the Peace for Essex County. My life in Worcester was pretty regular, though I was not perfectly abstinent, nor did I escape being once or twice overcome. In March, 1842, I went to Lynn, Mass., as editor of the _Essex County Washingtonian_. Here was the spot where, technically speaking, I had first entered life, and it was teeming with a thousand memories, now most painful and sad. Much as I had known before of mental suffering, I can remember none more intense than I experienced the first few months of my return to Lynn. At times I felt as if any thing were preferable to what I endured, and that to procure relief by any means whatever was perfectly justifiable, on the ground of that necessity which is above all laws. I therefore used morphine, first occasionally and at last habitually, and sometimes, though rarely, brandy. Some six months after settling in Lynn, being one day in Boston on, business, I was oppressed with deadly nausea, for which after trying two or three glasses of plain soda-water as a remedy, I tried a glass of brandy with the soda. I was made intoxicated by the means and badly so. I was perplexed as to what I ought to do under the circumstances, but by the advice of two Washingtonians, one of them the general agent of my paper, I still continued at my post of editor. In the following winter I was up as one of three candidates for Congress from Essex County. In addition to the usual butting a candidate gets on such occasions--being the third, whose votes prevented a choice of either the other two candidates--I was exposed to a raking fire from the two great political parties. Out of old truths twisted and exaggerated out of all identity, and new lies coined for the occasion, a world of falsity as to my character and habits was bandied about; and although a caucus sitting in examination two long successive evenings pronounced the charges against me slanderous and wicked, and published a hand-bill to that effect, yet the proprietor of my paper, moved by a power behind the throne, chose that my connection with the paper should terminate. For some time previous, I had been getting interested in the Association doctrines of Fourier. I now became one of the editors of a monthly magazine devoted in part to the advocacy of these doctrines, which after issuing three numbers was compelled to stop for want of support. I then in September, 1843, went forth on a tour through Massachusetts to lecture on the subject. I thus spent five months, visiting twenty towns and delivering some ninety gratuitous lectures. During this time I used morphine habitually, and occasionally, though rarely, took brandy. I took enough, however, of the latter to partly intoxicate me three or four times, and sufficiently often to prevent the reputation of being intemperate from ever dying away. Sick and tired out with an existence so false and wretched, I determined again to achieve emancipation at whatever cost, and by the help of Providence, and the kind co-operation of inestimable friends, I succeeded. I suffered severely, but far less than might have been supposed. Cold water, under God, was the great instrument of my cure. Drinking copiously of it, and lying some hours per day swathed in a sheet dipped in it, for about one month, I found the painful symptoms mostly gone; and three or four months of rest completed the restoration of my strength. And thus, after years of pain and sufferings in every kind, and errors many and great, I find myself, by God's blessing, free and healthy, and with a youthful life and feeling of which the very memory was almost extinct. Within a few months from the time this autobiography closes, the writer again relapsed into the use of opium, and was received as a patient into the New York Hospital. While there he furnished the editor of the _Medical Times_, then on duty at the Hospital, with a brief history of his case, substantially agreeing with what has already been given. A portion of the paper is occupied with a comparison of the effects of opium and alcohol on the system, and is valuable as being the experience of one who was eminently familiar with both: The difference between opium and alcohol in their effects on body and mind, is (judging from my own experience) very great. Alcohol, pushed to a certain extent, overthrows the balance of the faculties, and brings out some one or more into undue prominence and activity; and (sad indeed) these are most commonly our inferior and perhaps lowest faculties. A man who, sober, is a demi-god, is, when drunk, below even a beast. With opium (_me judice_) it is the reverse. Opium takes a man's mind where it finds it, and lifts it _en masse_ on to a far higher platform of existence, the faculties all retaining their former relative positions--that is, taking the mind as it is, it intensifies and exalts all its capacities of thought and susceptibilities of emotion. Not even this, however, extravagant as it may sound, conveys the whole truth. Opium weakens or utterly paralyzes the lower propensities, while it invigorates and elevates the superior faculties, both intellectual and affectional. The opium-eater is without sexual appetite; anger, envy, malice, and the entire hell-brood claiming kin to these, seem dead within him, or at least asleep; while gentleness, kindness, benevolence, together with a sort of sentimental religionism, constitute his habitual frame of mind. If a man has a poetical gift, opium almost irresistibly stirs it into utterance. If his vocation be to write, it matters not how profound, how difficult, how knotty the theme to be handled, opium imparts a before unknown power of dealing with such a theme; and after completing his task a man reads his own composition with utter amazement at its depth, its grasp, its beauty, and force of expression, and wonders whence came the thoughts that stand on the page before him. If called to speak in public, opium gives him a copiousness of thought, a fluency of utterance, a fruitfulness of illustration, and a penetrating, thrilling eloquence, which often astounds and overmasters himself, not less than it kindles, melts, and sways the audience he addresses. I might dilate largely on this topic, but space and strength are alike lacking. Taking up his personal story where his "Autobiography" leaves it, and where, as he imagined, hydropathic treatment had effected a cure, the writer explains how he became for the third time an opium-eater: The time came at last when I must work, be the consequences what they would, and work, too, with my brain, my only implement; and that time found my brain impotent from a yet uninvigorated nervous system. If I would work, I must stimulate; and morphine, bad as it was, was better than alcohol. I took morphine once more, and lectured on literary topics for some months with triumphant success. While so lecturing in a country town, I was solicited to take a parish in the neighborhood. I did so, and there continued two years and a quarter, performing in that time as much literary labor as ever in three times the interval in any prior period of my life. In short, I had three happy, intellectually-vigorous, outpouring years, with bodily health uniformly sound and complete with the exceptions hereafter to be mentioned. And yet, through those years I never used less than a quarter of an ounce of morphine per week, and sometimes more. I attribute my retaining so much health, in spite of the morphine, to the rigorous salubrity of my habits, bodily and mental, in other respects. Once, and often twice a day, the year round, I laved the whole person in cold water with soap; I slept with open window the year through excepting stormy winter nights; I laid upon a hard bed, guiltless of feathers; I used a simple diet; and finally, I cherished all gentle and kindly, while rigidly excluding from my mind all bitter and perturbing, feelings. But not to dilate further on mere narrative, let me say that I have continued to use opium, for the most part habitually, from my last assumption of it up to the period of my admission into this Hospital. A year since, however, I dropped morphine, and have since used the opium pill in its stead, sometimes taking an ounce per week, but generally not overpassing a half ounce per week. And here I may make the general remark, proved true from my own experience, that for all the desirable effects opium is about the same as an ounce or any larger quantity of said gum, and nearly the same as a quarter-ounce of morphine or more--that is, half an ounce of opium stimulates and braces me at least nearly if not entirely as much as I can be stimulated and braced by this drug. All that is taken over this tends rather to clog, to stupefy, to nauseate, than to stimulate. Another point in my own experience is, that in a few weeks only, after commencing or recommencing the use of opium, I always reached the full amount which, as a habit, I ever used--that is, either a half-ounce of opium or a quarter-ounce of morphine. I never went on increasing the dose in order to get the required amount of stimulation, but at one or the other of these two points I would remain for years successively. A third remark I would make is, that it is only for the first few weeks after commencing the use of opium that one feels palpably and distinctly the thrilling of the nerves, the sensation of being stimulated and raised above the previously existing physical tone, for which the drug was first taken. All the effects produced after that by the opium, are to keep the body at that level of sensation in which one feels positively alive and capable to act, without being impeded or weighed down by physical languor and impotence. Such languor and impotence one feels from abstaining merely a few hours beyond the wonted time of taking the dose. It is not pleasure, then, that drives onward the confirmed opium-eater, but a necessity scarce less resistible than that Fate to which the pagan mythology subjected gods not less than men. Let me now, before closing, attempt briefly to describe the effects of opium upon the body and mind of the user, as also the principal sensations accompanying the breaking of the habit. The opium-eater is prevailingly disinclined to, and in some sort incapacitated for, bodily exertion or locomotion. A considerable part of the time he feels something like a sense, not very distinctly defined, of bodily fatigue; and to sit continuously in a rocking or an easy chair, or to recline on a sofa or bed, is his preference above all modes of disposing of himself. To walk up a flight of stairs often palpably tires the legs, and makes him pant almost as much as a well person does after pretty rapid motion. His lungs manifestly are somehow obstructed, and do not play with perfect freedom. His liver too is torpid, or else but partially active; for if using laudanum or the opium pill, he is constantly more or less costive, the faeces being hard and painful to expel; and if using morphone, though he may have a daily movement, yet the faeces are dry and harder than in health. One other morbid physical symptom I remember to have experienced for a considerable time while using a quarter of an ounce of morphine per week, and this was an annoying palpitation of the heart. I was once told, too, by a keen observer, who knew my habit, that my color was apt to change frequently from red to pale. These are substantially all the physical peculiarities I experienced during my opium-using years. It is still true, however, that the years of my using opium (or, in perfect strictness, morphine) were as healthy as any, if not the very healthiest, of the years of my life. But what of the effects of opium-eating on the mind? The one great injury it works, is (I think) to the will, that force whereby a man executes the work he was sent here to do, and breasts and overcomes the obstacles and difficulties he is appointed to encounter, and bears himself unflinchingly amid the tempests of calamity and sorrow which pertain to the mortal lot. Hardihood, manliness, resolution, enterprise, ambition, whatever the original degree of these qualities, become grievously debilitated if not wholly extinct. Reverie, the perusal of poetry and fiction, becomes the darling occupation, of the opium-user, and he hates every call that summons him from it. Give him an intellectual task to accomplish; place him in a position where a mental, effort is to be made; and, most probably, he will acquit him with unusual brilliancy and power, supposing his native ability to be good. But he can not or will not seek and find for himself such work and such position. He feels helpless, and incompetent to stir about and hold himself upright amid the jostling, competitive throngs that crowd the world's paths, and there seek life's prizes by performing life's duties and executing its requisitions. Solitude, with his books, his dreams and imaginings, and the excited sensibilities that lead to no external action, constitute his chosen world and favorite life. In one word, he is a species of maniac; since, I believe, his views, his feelings, and his desires in relation to most things are peculiar, eccentric, and unlike those of other men, or of himself in a state of soundness. There is, however, as complete a "method in his madness" as in the sanity of other men. He is in a different sphere from other men, and in that sphere he is sane. The first symptoms attendant on breaking off the habit, coming on some hours after omitting the wonted dose, are a constant propensity to yawn, gape, and stretch, together with somewhat of languor, and a general uneasiness. Time passes, and there follows a sensation as if the stomach was drawn together or compressed, as if with a slight degree of cramp, coupled with a total extinction of appetite; the mouth and throat become dry and irritated; there is an incessant disposition to clear the throat by "hemming" and swallowing, and there is a tickling in the nose which necessitates frequent sneezing, sometimes a dozen or even twenty times in succession. As the hours go on, shudders run through the frame, with alternate fever heats and icy chills, hot sweats and cold clammy sweats, while a dull, incessant ache pervades the bones, especially at the joints, alternated by an occasional sharp, intolerable pang, like tic-douloureux. Then follow a host of indescribable sensations, as of burning, tinglings, and twitchings, seeming to run along just beneath the surface of the skin over the whole body, and so strange are these sensations that one is prompted to scream, and strike the wall, the bed, or himself, to vary them. By this time the liver commences a most energetic action, and a violent diarrhea sets in. The discharges are not watery or mucous, but, save in thinness, not very unlike healthy stools for the most part. Not long, however, after the commencement of the diarrhea, so copious is the effusion of bile from the liver, that one will sometimes pass, for a dozen stools in succession, what seems to be merely a blackish bile, without a particle of fæces mingled with it. But this lasts not many days, and is followed by the thin, not altogether unhealthy-looking discharges above mentioned, repeated often an incredible number of times per day. Whether from the quality of these discharges, or from whatever cause, the interior surface of the bowels feels intolerably hot, as though excoriated, and it seems as if boiling water or aqua fortis running through the intestines would scarce torture one more than these stools. In fact, all the internal surfaces of the body are in this same burning, raw-feeling state. The brain, too, is in a highly excited, irritable condition; the head sometimes aching and throbbing, as though it must burst into fragments, and a humming, washing, simmering noise going on incessantly for days together. Of course there can be no sleep, and one will go on for ten days and nights consecutively without one moment's loss of intensest consciousness, so far as he can judge! Strange to say, notwithstanding this excessive irritation of the entire system, one feels so feeble and strengthless that he can scarce drag one foot after the other, and to walk a few rods, or up a flight of stairs, is so terribly fatiguing that one must needs sit down and pant. (Let it be noted, that these symptoms belong to the case where one is simply deprived at once and wholly of opium without any medical help, unless the use of cold water be considered such.) These symptoms (unaided by medicine) last, with gradual abatements of virulence, from twenty to thirty days, and then mostly die away. Not well and right, however, does one feel, even then. Though for the most part free from pain, he is yet physically weak, and all corporeal exertion is a distressing effort. He must needs sleep, too, enormously, going to bed often at sunset in a July day, and sleeping log-like until six or seven next morning, and then sleeping with like soundness two or three hours after dinner. How long it would be before the recovery of his complete original strength and natural physical tone, personal experience does not enable me to say. His condition, both in itself and as relates to others, is meanwhile most strange and anomalous. He looks, probably, better than ever in his life before. In sufficiently full flesh, with ruddy cheeks and skin clear as a healthy child's, the beholder would pronounce him in the height of health and vigor, and would glow with indignation at seeing him loitering about day after day, doing little save sleep, in a world where so much work needs to be done. And yet he feels all but impotent for enterprise, or any active physical efforts; for there is scarce enough nervous force in him to move his frame to a lingering walk, and sometimes it seems as if the nervous fibres were actually pulled out, and he must move, if at all, by pure force of volition. Most singular too, the while, is the state of his mind. His power of thought is keen, bright, and fertile beyond example, and his imagination swarms with pictures of beauty, while his sensitiveness to impressions and emotions of every kind is so excessively keen that the tears spring to his eyes on the slightest occasion. He is a child in sensibility, while a youth in the vividness, and a man in the grasp, the piercingness and the copiousness of his thoughts. He can not write down his thoughts, for his arm and hand are unnerved; but in conversation or before an audience he can utter himself as if filled with the breath of inspiration itself. INSANITY AND SUICIDE FROM AN ATTEMPT TO ABANDON MORPHINE. The account which follows is abridged from advance proof-sheets of a narrative, written for separate publication, by Dr. L. Barnes, of Delaware, Ohio, by whose courtesy a portion of his article appears in these pages. In the afternoon of Saturday, January 25th, 1868, Rev. G. W. Brush, of Delaware, a clergyman of estimable character and more than respectable talents, was found to have committed suicide. Sixteen or seventeen years previous to this fatal act, morphine had been prescribed to Mr. Brush for occasional disorder in the bowels and for a dormant cancer of the tongue. But something else which had not been prescribed--an unrelenting necessity to go on as he had begun--was also developed in his nature, which in time bore its matured and inevitable fruit. Mr. Brush made his case known for the first time to Dr. Barnes in November, 1866, when his habitual consumption of morphine varied from twelve to fifteen grains daily, with an occasional use of double this quantity. At this time, in the language of Dr. Barnes, he appeared greatly depressed, mourned over his life as a failure, and said he had been tempted to end it. He had once made a serious effort to abandon the habit, but the effect was so prostrating, and diarrhea, pouring like a flood, had borne him so near the gates of death, that he was compelled to resume the drug in order to save his life. But he was determined to make another attempt, and wished my professional services against the consequences which he well knew must follow. He entered upon the trial, reducing rapidly the amount of his morphine. I called on him in the course of two or three days, according to appointment, and found him wan and haggard, weak and almost wild with suffering. His hands, lips, and voice trembled. He tottered on his legs; and, though sweating profusely, he hovered about the fire to keep warm. Day followed day, while he still suffered and endured. On one occasion, as I entered, he had been writing, and read me his production. It was an account of the effects produced by morphine, the giving way of nerves, softening of the muscles, the depression, nightmare in the day-time, visions, horrid shapes; how the victim is sometimes engulfed in a flood of waters, while faces in all imaginary varieties of distortion, grin from the waves, and terrible eyes gleam forth from their depths. About this time, business which he thought could not be transacted in his suffering condition unexpectedly demanded his attention, and the attempt was abandoned. The year 1867 passed with him amid depression, shame, and remorse. He called on me perhaps a hundred times at my office, and seldom left without referring in some way to what he considered his degradation. He repeatedly inquired if I thought it of any use for him to try going on any longer in his ministerial work. Once he came with a brighter face than usual, saying he had concluded to try it one year more, and if he could not succeed----. Then what? I inquired as he paused. A dark cloud spreading over his brow was his only answer, and he lapsed into despondency. This despondency appears to be the legitimate effect of opium. This fact was strikingly manifest in the case of Mr. Brush, for his natural disposition, from childhood up, had been usually kind, cheerful, and good; nor had he any dyspeptic or bilious tendencies to worry and sour him. Few men have ever been physically so well organized, or socially and religiously so well situated for the enjoyment of a prosperous and happy life. He came to me, finally, on the first day of January, 1868, saying his people had kindly granted him leave of absence for a few weeks, which he would devote to the work of overcoming his enemy, if such a thing were possible. He could not live in his bondage. His wretched life, with its terrible end, was forever staring him in the face. He asked me if I would receive him at my house, and take care of him during the struggle, as I had once consented to do. I said I would if he would consent to let the people know why he was there. He looked very sad as he answered that it would not do. He must undertake the battle at home. He then took from his pocket some papers of morphine, which he had caused to be weighed in doses diminishing at the rate of half a grain each, beginning with six grains for the first day, five and a half for the next, and so on, down. This was a sudden falling off of nearly two-thirds from his ordinary allowance. He gave me all but the two largest powders, which he reserved for an absence of two days at Columbus. He proposed going away for the purpose of coming home sick, in which condition he well knew he should be at that time. I was to call at his house on the evening of his return, to render such assistance as his condition might demand. I went at the time appointed and found him again shattered, trembling, sweating, and hovering about the fire. He said he had slept none, was suffering much, and that his knees especially were aching badly. He called pleadingly for the amount of morphine prepared for that day, as he had not taken it. It was given, and then he conversed freely for an hour or so. The next evening he proposed to reduce his morphine by two grains instead of half a grain, but was in a hurry for the quantity he was to have. In the course of over two days more he came down to about two grains for the whole day. But one evening, when I found him apparently much relieved from suffering, and he saw my look of wonder and doubt, he confessed having broken over the rules by taking an additional dose of about three grains on his own responsibility. He said his diarrhea had returned, the medicine left to check it was gone, he hated to send for me, and so had done it. He was full of remorse, declaring that if I should now abandon him, he would not blame me. I told him I should stick to him as long as he would let me; that he was doing a great work, such as few men ever succeeded in--a work for two worlds, this one and the next--and that he must not give it up. I continued to spend the evenings with him for about two weeks. The morphine was reduced to something like one grain a day, his appetite returned, and he began to sleep pretty well at night. His nerves became steady, and his diarrhea was controlled without serious difficulty. Energy and strength returned so rapidly that in about two weeks he was ready to resume his work. He said to his wife that the awful weight was all gone--all gone. He expressed his gratitude to me in the most glowing terms. He was triumphant at the idea of having conquered with so much less suffering than he expected. Alas! I knew his danger, and saw with sorrow that his returning confidence was removing him from under my control while yet the enemy remained in the field. His last visit to me was on Friday, January 17th. He wanted diarrhea medicine enough to last till the next Tuesday, when he would call again and report. I felt uneasy about him, and went to hear him preach on the intervening Sunday evening. I saw by his flushed and embarrassed manner that he was falling back, and have since learned that after service he confessed to his wife, who was watching his condition with keen eyes, that he had taken about three grains to strengthen him for the occasion. Poor man! He doubtless thought he could stop there. Tuesday came, but he came not to my office. Wednesday, and he came not. Then I was called away from home and did not return until late Saturday night. The first news which greeted me on arriving was, that he was no more. He had been buying morphine at the drug-store during the week, and had reached nearly his former quantity. He had wandered about, uncertain, forlorn, desolate. On Friday he had tried to borrow a gun to shoot rats, had come across the way to my office, which was found closed, and then tried again to borrow the gun. He told his wife that dreadful load had come back. Saturday his Quarterly Meeting commenced. He was to preach in the afternoon. He was exceedingly kind and helpful to his family at dinner-time, as he had been all day. The people were assembling at the church, not far off. He went to the barn, suspended a rope from a beam overhead, as he stood upon the manger. It was not quite long enough. He lengthened it with his pocket-handkerchief, looped it around his neck, put his hands in his pockets, and leaped off. He was gone forever. He had failed in his last attempt to break away from the benumbing power of opium, and in his desperation had sought freedom in death. Let no man judge him, and least of all those who are strangers to the fascinating and infernal strength of his enemy. You may call it a grave mistake, a dreadful blunder, a doleful insanity, but do not assume to put him beyond the reach of mercy, or to decide that his lamentable end was not the iron door through which he may have passed to the city of the golden streets. A newspaper account of the death of Mr. Brush having fallen under the notice of a morphine sufferer in Wisconsin, the latter addressed a letter to Dr. Barnes, in which he gives his own remarkable experience in the immediate and absolute abandonment of the habit. The writer is represented as being about fifty years of age, temperate in his general habits, and though not possessed of great vigor of constitution, as having been through life a hard-working man. His use of morphine began in the year 1861, under a medical prescription for the relief of general debility; but without any knowledge on his part of the character of the remedy he was using. After six months habituation, the attempt to relinquish it proved a failure. For the first two years, morphine appeared to benefit him. At the expiration of this time his daily allowance had become three grains, which quantity was rarely exceeded during the four subsequent years of his bondage. After narrating the mental and physical suffering he underwent in these years, he says: April 17, 1867, found me a poor, wasted, miserable, six years' morphine-eater; health all gone; unable to do any sort of business; desiring nothing but death to close my sufferings. Then I made up my mind to stop the use of morphine all at once. I had previously attempted to break off by degrees, but I was beaten at that game every time. It is utterly impossible to taper off by less and less, unless some one is over the patient watching every motion. I say it understandingly--the will of no man is strong enough to handle the poison for himself. He will make a virtue out of necessity, and for this time will over-take. So I resolved to quit at once and forever. I arranged my business as far as I could, under the idea that I should die in the attempt. The first forty-eight hours I slept most of the time, waking somewhat often, however, and then dropping asleep, while a sort of nervous twitching would come and go. But the next day found me wide awake. And--shall I tell you?--there was no more sleep for me until sixty-five days had passed. No, not one single moment for sixty-five days and nights. I was fully awake--never slept one moment! The second day my suffering was intense. Every nerve seemed to be on a rampage. Every faculty, mental and physical, appeared to be striving to see how much suffering I could stand. The third day my bowels began to empty, and a river of old f�tid matter ran away. It seemed that I was passing off in corruption. This continued for nearly four long, suffering weeks. I never checked it, but let Nature take her course. During the first four weeks of the fight there was extreme pain in every part of my body. It seemed to me that I should burn up. This worse than death sensation never left me a single hour for the first thirty-five days. It seemed at times as though my bones would burst open: a sort of nerve fire seemed to be shut up in them which must be let out. I was able to walk out, and if necessary could walk a mile or more. The fifty-sixth day of suffering without sleep found me at a Water Cure. Warm baths, sometimes with battery, then packs, then sitz baths, for ten more long, suffering days and nights--but sleep never came to me and pain never left me. On the sixty-fifth day of the fight I felt perfectly easy. All my pains were gone. I went to my room and slept nearly four hours. For ten minutes after waking I never stirred a limb or muscle, fearing it would bring back the pains. But a happier man never woke from sleep. I saw that I was delivered from the prison-house of death. I telegraphed to my family that sleep had come. To niy dying-hour I shall ever remember that eventful day. But it was only the glimmering of light. Gradually and slowly sleep came to be my companion again. And even yet it has not fully come. Until within the last twenty days when I awoke, every nerve, every emotion was awake all at once. It is now the tenth month since I quit morphine. Then my weight was only one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Now it is one hundred and ninety. I am the happiest man on the earth, I am redeemed from one of the lowest hells in all worlds. In a subsequent letter to Dr. Barnes the writer says: "My health still improves. There is one peculiarity about my will-power; it is so vacillating, not reliable and firm as before. Still I feel that it will come back." The following declaration, which Dr. Barnes embodies in his article, is deserving the careful consideration both of physicians and philanthropists. He says: "Calling to mind what has come to my knowledge during a long and extensive medical practice, the conclusion is, that I have known of more deaths from the use of opium, in some of its forms, than from all the forms of alcoholic drinks." A MORPHINE HABIT OVERCOME. The following record of a successful endeavor to overcome a morphine habit of several years' growth is abbreviated, by permission of the publishers, from _Lippincott's Magazine_ for April, 1868. The absence of the writer in Europe precludes any more definite statement than can be inferred from the narrative itself as to the length of time during which the habit remained uninterrupted. This is a matter of regret, as the _time-element_, in the view of the compiler, enters so largely into the question of the probable recovery of an opium sufferer. Morphine appears certainly to have been taken daily in very large quantities for at least five years after the writer's habit became established. * * * * * Since De Quincey gave to the world his famous "Confessions," people have been content to regard opium-eating as a strangely fascinating or as a strangely horrible vice. England, and, as I have recently learned, in this country also. It should be well understood that no man _continues_ an opium-eater from choice; he sooner or later becomes the veriest slave; and it is the object of this paper, originally intended for a friend's hand only, to deter intending neophytes--to warn them from submitting themselves to a yoke which will bow them to the earth. In the hope that it may subserve the good proposed, I venture to give a short account of the experiences of one who still feels in his tissues the yet slowly-smouldering fire of the furnace through which he has passed. I first took opium, in the form of laudanum, nearly ten years ago, for insomnia, or sleeplessness, brought on by overwork at a European university. It seemed as if my tissues lapped up the drug and revelled in the new and strange delight which had opened up to them. All that winter I took doses of from ten to thirty drops every Friday night, there being but few classes on Saturday of any consequence, so that I had the full, uninterrupted effect of the drug. Then I could set to work with unparalleled energy. Thought upon thought flowed to me in never-ending waves. I had a mad striving after intellectual distinction, and felt I would pay any price for it. I generally felt, on the Sunday, my lids slightly heavy, but with a sense pervading me of one who had been taking champagne. I never, however, during this whole winter, took more than one dose a week, varying from thirty to sixty drops. Toward the close of the session I one day deferred the dose till Sunday evening. On the Monday following, in the afternoon, I was in one of the class-rooms listening to the lecturer on Belles-lettres and Rhetoric. One hundred and more young men sat, on that Monday afternoon, listening to his silvery voice as he read extracts from Falconer's "Shipwreck," while the splendid conceptions of the poem, and the opium to boot, taken on the Sunday evening before, were all doing their work on an imaginative young man of nineteen. My blood seemed to make music in my vessels as it seemed to come more highly oxygenized singing to my brain, and tingled fresher and warmer into the capillaries of the entire surface, leaping and bubbling like a mountain-brook after a shower. I knew not at first what it could be, but I felt as if I could have bounded to the desk and taken the place of the professor. For a while, I say, I could not realize the cause. At last, as with a lightning flash, it came. Yes! It was the opium. And at that moment, then and there was signed the bond which was destined to go far to wither all my fairest hopes; to undermine, while seeming to build up, my highest aspirations; to bring disunion between me and those near and dear to me; to frustrate all my plans, and, while "keeping the word of promise to the ear," ever breaking it to my hope. As I trace these very characters, I am suffering from the remote consequences, in a moral point of view, of having set my hand and seal to that bond. For two years longer that I remained at college I continued to take laudanum three times a week, and I could, at the end of this period, take two drachms (120 drops) at each dose. All this time my appetite, though not actually destroyed, as it now is, was capricious in the extreme, though I did not lose flesh, at least not markedly so. On the other hand, my capability for mental exertion all through this period was something incredible; and let me say here that one of the most fascinating effects of the drug in the case of an intellectual and educated man is the sense it imparts of what might be termed intellectual daring: add to this the endowments of a strong frame, high animal spirits, and on such an one, opium is the ladder that seems to lead to the gates of heaven. But alas for him when at its topmost rung! After obtaining my degree I gradually eased off the use of the drug for about three months with but little trouble. I was waiting for an appointment in India. At the end of the period named I sailed for my destination, and had almost forgotten the taste of opium; but I found that I was only respited, not redeemed. Two months after I had entered upon my duties, and found myself quietly among my books, the bond was renewed. After two months, in which I passed from laudanum to crude opium, I finally settled on the alkaloid _morphia_, as being the most powerful of all the preparations of opium. I began with half a grain twice a day, and for the six months ending the last day of September of the just expired year, my daily quantum was sixty grains--half taken the instant I awoke, the other half at six o'clock in the evening; and I could no more have avoided putting into my body this daily supply than I could have walked over a burning ploughshare without scorching my feet. For the first year, five grains, or even two and a half, would suffice for a couple of days; that is to say, there was no craving of the system for it during its deprivation for this space. At the end of this period there would be a sense of depression amounting to little beyond uneasiness. But soon four hours' deprivation of the drug gave rise to a physical and mental prostration that no pen can adequately depict, no language convey: a horror unspeakable, a woe unutterable takes possession of the entire being; a clammy perspiration bedews the surface, the eye is stony and hard, the noise pointed, as in the hippocratic face preceding dissolution, the hands uncertain, the mind restless, the heart as ashes, the "bones marrowless." To the opium-consumer, when deprived of this stimulant, there is nothing that life can bestow, not a blessing that man can receive, which would not come to him unheeded, undesired, and be a curse to him. There is but one all-absorbing want, one engrossing desire--his whole being has but one tongue--that tongue syllables but one word--_morphia_. And oh! the vain, vain attempt to break this bondage, the labor worse than useless--a minnow struggling to break the toils that bind a Triton! I pass over all the horrible physical accompaniments that accumulate after some hours' deprivation of the drug when it has long been indulged in, it being borne in mind that it occurs sooner or later according to the constitution it contends against. Suffice it to say that the tongue feels like a copper bolt, and one seems to carry one's alimentary canal in the brain; that is to say, one is perpetually reminded that there is such a canal from the constant sense of pain and uneasiness, whereas the perfection of functional performance is obtained when the mind is unconscious of its operation. The slightest mental or physical exertion is a matter of absolute impossibility. The winding of a watch I have regarded as a task of magnitude when not under the opium influence, and I was no more capable of controlling, under this condition, the cravings of the system for its pabulum, by any exertion of the will, than I, or any one else, could control the dilatation and contraction of the pupils of the eye under the varying conditions of light and darkness. A time arrives when the will is killed absolutely and literally, and at this period you might, with as much reason, tell a man to will not to die under a mortal disease as to resist the call that his whole being makes, in spite of him, for the pabulum on which it has so long been depending for carrying on its work. When you can with reason ask a man to aerate his lungs with his head submerged in water--when you can expect him to control the movements of his limb while you apply an electric current to its motor nerve--then, but not till then, speak to a confirmed opium-eater of "exerting his will;" reproach him with want of "determination," and complacently say to him, "Cast it from you and bear the torture for a time." Tell him, too, at the same time, to "do without atmospheric air, to regulate the reflex action of his nervous system and control the pulsations of his heart." Tell the Ethiopian to change his skin, but do not mock the misery and increase the agony of a man who has taken opium for years by talking to him of "will." Let it be understood that after a certain time (varying, of course, according to the capability of physical resistance, mode of life, etc., of the individual) the craving for opium is beyond the domain of the will. So intolerant is the system under a protracted deprivation, that I know of two suicides resulting therefrom. They were cases of Chinese who were under confinement. They were baffled on one occasion in carrying out a previously-successful device for obtaining the drug. The awful mystery of death which they rashly solved had no terrors for them equal to a life without opium, and the morning found them hanging in their cells, glad to get "anywhere, anywhere out of the world." I have seen another tear his hair, dig his nails into his flesh, and, with a ghastly look of despair and a face from which all hope had fled, and which looked like a bit of shrivelled yellow parchment, implore for it as if for more than life. But to return to myself. I attained a daily dose of forty grains, and on more than one occasion I have consumed sixty. It became my bane and antidote; with it I was an _unnatural_--without it, less than man. Food, for months previous to the time of my attaining to such a dose as sixty grains, became literally loathsome; its sight would sicken me; my muscles, hitherto firm and well defined, began to diminish in bulk and to lose their contour; my face looked like a hatchet covered with yellow ochre: and this is the best and truest comparison I can institute. It was sharp, foreshortened and indescribably yellow. I had then been taking _morphia_ for nearly two years, but only reached and sustained the maximum doses for the six months already indicated. Finally, even the sixty grains brought no perceptible increase to the vitality of which the body seemed deprived during its abstinence. It stimulated me to not one-tenth of the degree to which a quarter of a grain had done at the commencement. Still, I had to keep storing it up in me, trying to extract vivacity, energy, life itself, from that which was killing me; and grudgingly it gave it. I tried hard to free myself, tried again and again; but I never could at any time sustain the struggle for more than four days at the utmost. At the end of that time I had to yield to my tormentor--yield, broken, baffled, and dismayed--yield to go through the whole struggle over again; forced to poison myself--forced with my own hand to shut the door against hope. With an almost superhuman effort I roused myself to the determination of doing something, of making one last effort, and, if I failed, to look my fate in the face. What, thought I, was to be the end of all the hopes I once cherished, and which were cherished of and for me by others? of what avail all the learning I had stored up, all the aspirations I nourished?--all being buried in a grave dug by my own hand, and laid aside like funeral trappings, out of sight and memory. I will not detail my struggles nor speak of the hope which I had to sustain me, and which shone upon me whenever the face of my Maker seemed turned away. Let it suffice that I fought a desperate fight. Again and again I recoiled, baffled and disheartened; but one aim led me on, and I have come out of the _melée_ bruised and broken it may be, but conquering. One month I waged the fight, and I have now been nearly two without looking at the drug. Before, four hours was the longest interval I could endure. Now I am free and the demon is behind me. I must not fail to add that the advantage of a naturally sound and preternaturally vigorous constitution, and (except in the use of opium) one carefully guarded against any of the causes which impart a vicious state of system and so render it incapable of recuperative effort, was my main-stay, and acted the part of a bower-anchor in restoring my general system. This, and a long sea-voyage, aided efforts which would have been otherwise fruitless. On the other hand, let us not too rashly cast a stone at the opium-eater and think of him as a being unworthy of sympathy. If he is not to be envied--as, God knows, he is not--let him not be too much contemned. I do not now refer to the miserable and grovelling Chinese, who are fed on it almost from the cradle, but to the ordinary cases of educated and intellectual men in this country and in Europe; and I assert that, could there be a realization of all the aspirations, all the longings after the pure, the good and noble that fill the mind and pervade the heart of a cultivated and refined man who takes to this drug, he would be indeed the paragon of animals. And I go further and say that, given a man of cultivated mind, high moral sentiment, and a keen sense of intellectual enjoyment, blended with strong imaginative powers, and just in proportion as he is so endowed will the difficulty be greater in weaning himself from it. I mean, of course, before the will is killed. When that takes place he is of necessity as powerless as any other victim, and his craving for it is as automatic as in the case of any other opium slave. What he becomes then, I have attempted to describe, and in doing so have suppressed much in consideration of the feelings of those who read. This it is to be an opium-eater; and the boldest may well quail at the picture, drawn not by the hand of fancy, but by one who has supped of its horrors to the full, and who has found that the staff on which he leaned has proven a spear which has well-nigh pierced him to the heart. Let no man believe he will escape: the bond matures at last. ROBERT HALL--JOHN RANDOLPH--WM. WILBERFORCE, The compiler has hesitated as to the propriety of calling attention to the opium-habits of these eminent men, both because little instruction is afforded by the meagre information that is accessible to him respecting their use of opium, and because he apprehends their example may be pleaded in extenuation of the habit. Yet they were confirmed opium-eaters, and remained such to the day of their death; and a reference to their cases may not be without its lesson to that large class of men eminent in public or professional life, who already are, or are in danger of becoming, victims of the opium tyranny, as well as to that larger class who find in undiscriminating denunciations of bad habits, a cheap method of exhibiting a cheap philanthropy. ROBERT HALL. With the single exception of Richard Baxter, no clergyman of eminence on record appears to have suffered so acutely or for so long a period from nervous disorders as this eloquent divine. So little, unfortunately, is known of the nature of his disorder, that it would be unjust to express any opinion as to the urgency of the temptation which drove him to the enormous consumption of opium in which he indulged. His biography by Olinthus Gregory sufficiently indicates the severity as well as the early manifestation of his painful disorder. "At about six years of age he was placed at a day-school about four miles from his father's residence. At first he walked to school in the morning and home again in the evening. But the severe pain in his back, from which he suffered so much through life, had even then begun to distress him; so that he was often obliged to lie down upon the road; and sometimes his brother and his other school-fellows carried him in turn. "Sir James Macintosh described Mr. Hall, when in his twentieth year, as attracting notice by a most ingenuous and intelligent countenance, by the liveliness of his manners, and by such indications of mental activity as could not be misinterpreted. His appearance was that of health, yet not of robust health, and he suffered from paroxysms of pain, during which he would roll about on the carpet in the utmost agony; but no sooner had the pain subsided than he would resume his part in conversation with as much cheerfulness and vivacity as before he had been thus interrupted. "At that period, though he was strong and active, he often suffered extremely from the pain to which I have before adverted, and which was his sad companion through life. On entering his room to commence our reading, I could at once tell whether or not his night had been refreshing; for if it had, I found him at the table, the books to be studied ready, and a vacant chair set for me. If his night had been restless, and the pain still continued, I found him lying on the sofa, or more frequently upon three chairs, on which he could obtain an easier position. At such seasons, scarcely ever did a complaint issue from his lips; but inviting me to take the sofa, our reading commenced. They, however, who knew Mr. Hall can conjecture how often, if he became interested, he would raise himself from the chairs, utter a few animated expressions, and then resume the favorite reclining posture. Sometimes, when he was suffering more than usual, he proposed a walk in the fields, where, with the appropriate book as our companion, we could pursue the subject. If _he_ was the preceptor, as was commonly the case in these peripatetic lectures, he soon lost the sense of pain, and it was difficult to say whether the body or the mind were brought most upon the stretch in keeping up with him. "During the early months of the year 1803, the pain in Mr. Hall's back increased both in intenseness and continuity, depriving him almost always of refreshing sleep, and depressing his spirits to an unusual degree. "Often has he been known to sit close at his reading, or yet more intently engaged in abstract thought, for more than twelve hours in the day; so that when his friends have called upon him, in the hope of drawing him from his solitude, they have found him in such a state of nervous excitement as led them to unite their efforts in persuading him to take some mild narcotic and retire to rest. The painful result may be anticipated. This noble mind lost its equilibrium. "Throughout the whole of Mr. Hall's residence at Leicester, he suffered much from his constitutional complaint; and neither his habit of smoking nor that of taking laudanum seemed effectually to alleviate his sufferings. It was truly surprising that this constant, severe pain, and the means adopted to mitigate it, did not in any measure diminish his mental energy. "In 1812 he took from fifty to one hundred drops every night. Before 1826 the quantity had increased to one thousand drops. "Mr. Hall commonly retired to rest a little before eleven o'clock; but after his first sleep, which lasted about two hours, he quitted his bed to obtain an easier position on the floor or upon three chairs, and would then employ himself in reading the book on which he had been engaged during the day. Sometimes, indeed often, the laudanum, large as the doses had become, did not sufficiently neutralize his pain to remove the necessity for again quitting his bed. For more than twenty years he had not been able to pass a whole night in bed. When this is borne in mind it is truly surprising that he wrote and published so much; nay, that he did not sink into dotage before he was fifty years of age. "Early on the Sunday morning (Mr. Addington says) being requested to see him, I found him in a condition of extreme suffering and distress. The pain in his back had been uncommonly severe during the whole night, and compelled him to multiply at very short intervals the doses of his anodyne, until he had taken no less than 125 grains of solid opium, equal to more than 3000 drops, or nearly four ounces of laudanum!! This was the only instance in which I had ever seen him at all overcome by the soporific quality of the medicine; and it was even then hard to determine whether the effect was owing so much to the quantity administered as to the unusual circumstance of its not having proved, even for a short time, an effectual antagonist to the pain it was expected to relieve. "The opium having failed to assuage his pain, he was compelled to remain in the horizontal posture; but while in this situation a violent attack in his chest took place, which in its turn rendered an upright position of the body no less indispensable. The struggle that ensued between these opposing and alike urgent demands became most appalling, and it was difficult to imagine that he could survive it, especially as from the extreme prostration of vital energy, the remedy by which the latter of these affections had often been mitigated-- viz., bleeding--could not be resorted to. Powerful stimulants, such as brandy, opium, ether, and ammonia, were the only resources, and in about an hour from my arrival we had the satisfaction of finding him greatly relieved." The following references to the opium habits of Hall are found in "Gilfillan's Literary Portraits." "Owing to a pain in his spine, he was obliged to swallow daily great quantities of ether and laudanum, not to speak of his favorite potion, tea. This had the effect of keeping him strung up always to the highest pitch; and, while never intoxicated, he was everlastingly excited. Had he been a feeble man in body and mind the regimen would have totally unnerved him. As it was, it added greatly to the natural brilliance of his conversational powers, although sometimes it appears to have irritated his temper, and to have provoked ebullitions of passion, and hasty, unguarded statements. "A gentleman in Bradford described to us a day he once spent there with Hall. It was a day of much enjoyment and excitement. At the close of it Hall felt exceedingly exhausted, and on retiring to rest asked the landlady for a wine-glass half full of brandy. 'Now,' he says, 'I am about to take as much laudanum as would kill all this company; for if I don't, I won't sleep one moment.' He filled the glass with strong laudanum, went to bed, and enjoyed a refreshing rest." JOHN RANDOLPH. The eccentricities of no man in America who has been at all conspicuous in public life approach the eccentricities of the late John Randolph of Roanoke. Diseased from his birth, with a temperament of the most excitable kind, he seems during the greater part of his days to have lived only just without the bounds of confirmed insanity. His constitutional infirmities were peculiarly the infirmities that find relief in opium; and it has generally been understood that his addiction to the habit was of many years' continuance and lasted to his death. I have been assured by a Virginia gentleman that when, in one of his last days, he directed his servant to write upon a card for his inspection the word "REMORSE," Randolph was understood to have in mind his excessive use of opium. His biographer, Mr. Hugh Garland, however, has given apparently as little prominence to his habit in this respect as was consistent with any mention of it whatever. The letters which follow contain nearly all the information that we can gather from this source. Under date of February, 1817, Randolph says: "The worst night that I have had since my indisposition commenced. It was, I believe, a case of _croup_ combined with the affection of the liver and the lungs. Nor was it unlike tetanus, since the muscles of the neck and back were rigid, and the jaw locked. I never expected, when the clock struck two, to hear the bell again. Fortunately, as I found myself going, I dispatched a servant (about one) to the apothecary for an ounce of laudanum. Some of this, poured down my throat, through my teeth, restored me to something like life. I was quite delirious, but had method in my madness; for they tell me I ordered Juba to load my gun and to shoot the first 'doctor' that should enter the room; adding, 'they are only mustard-seed, and will serve just to sting him.' Last night I was again very sick; but the anodyne relieved me. I am now persuaded that I might have saved myself a great deal of suffering by the moderate use of opium." Under date of March of the same year he writes to a friend: "No mitigation of my worst symptoms took place until the third day of my journey, when I threw physic to the dogs, and instead of opium, etc., I drank, in defiance of my physician's prescription, copiously of cold spring water, and ate plentifully of ice. Since that change of regimen my strength has increased astonishingly, and I have even gained some flesh, or rather skin." In a letter to Dr. Brockenbrough, dated May 30, 1828: "I write again to tell you that extremity of suffering has driven me to the use of what I have had a horror all my life--I mean opium--and I have derived more relief from it than I could have anticipated. I took it to mitigate severe pain, and to check the diarrhea. It has done both; but to my surprise it has had an equally good effect upon my cough, which now does not disturb me in the night, and the diarrhea seldom until toward day-break, and then not over two or three times before breakfast, instead of two or three-and-thirty times. His biographer, speaking of the state of his health in the autumn of 1831, says, "Mr. Randolph made no secret of his use of opium at this time: 'I live by if not upon opium,' said he to a friend. He had been driven to it as an alleviation of a pain to which few mortals were doomed. He could not now dispense with its use. 'I am fast sinking,' said he, 'into an opium-eating sot, but, please God! I will shake off the incubus yet before I die; for whatever difference of opinion may exist on the subject of suicide, there can be none as to _rushing into the presence of our Creator_ in a state of drunkenness, whether produced by opium or brandy.' To the deleterious influence of that poisonous drug may be traced many of the aberrations of mind and of conduct so much regretted by his friends during the ensuing winter and spring. But he was by no means under its constant influence." WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. So little is known, beyond what appears in the following brief notices, of the opium habits of this distinguished philanthropist, that their citation here would be of little service to opium-eaters, except as they tend to show that the regular use of the drug in small quantities may sometimes be continued for many years without apparent injury to the health, while the same difficulty in abandoning it is experienced as attends its disuse by those whose moderation has been less marked. The son of Wilberforce, in the "Life" of his distinguished father, says: "His returning health was in a great measure the effect of a proper use of opium, a remedy to which even Dr. Pitcairne's judgment could scarcely make him have recourse; yet it was to this medicine that he now owed his life, as well as the comparative vigor of his later years. So sparing was he always in its use, that as a stimulant he never knew its power, and as a remedy for his specific weakness he had not to increase its quantity during the last twenty years he lived. 'If I take,' he would often say,'but a single glass of wine, I can feel its effect, but I never know when I have taken my dose of opium by my feelings.' Its intermission was too soon perceived by the recurrence of disorder." In a letter from Dr. Gilman, already quoted in the "Reminiscences of Coleridge," he says, speaking of the difficulty of leaving off opium, "I had heard of the failure of Mr. Wilberforce's case under an eminent physician of Bath," etc. A HALF CENTURY'S USE OF OPIUM. The case of Wilberforce, however, is thrown into the shade by that of a gentleman now living in New York, whose use of opium has been much more protracted than that of the British philanthropist, and who affirms that opium, instead of weakening his powers of mind or body in any respect, has, on the contrary, been of eminent service to both. The compiler would have been glad, in the general interests of humanity, to omit any reference to this case; but it is a legitimate part of the story he has undertaken to tell; and however this isolated exception to the ordinary results of the opium habit may be perverted as a snare and delusion to others, it can not honestly remain untold. In the compiler's interview with this gentleman, now in the one hundred and third year of his age, he was impressed with the evidences of a physical and mental vigor, and a high moral tone, which is rarely found in men upon whom rests the weight of even eighty years. Whatever may be thought of the convictions of the compiler, as to the enormity of the injury inflicted upon society from the habitual and increasing use of opium, he can not reconcile it to his sense of fairness to omit distinct reference to this most anomalous case. The gentleman in question was born in England in the year 1766, and received his first commission in the army in 1786. Serving his country in almost every military station in the world where the martial drum of England is heard--in India, at the Cape, in the Canadas, on guard over Napoleon at St. Helena--he illustrates, as almost a solitary exception, the fact that a use of opium for half a century, varying in quantity from forty grains daily to many times this amount, does not _inevitably_ impair bodily health, mental vigor, or the higher qualities of the moral nature. The use of opium was commenced by this gentleman in the year 1816, as a relief for a severe attack of rheumatism, and has been continued to the present time, with the exception of a very brief period when an eminent physician of Berlin, at the suggestion of the late Chevalier Bunsen, the Prussian Embassador to Great Britain, endeavored to break up the habit. In this effort he was unsuccessful, and the case remains as a striking illustration of the weakness of that physiological reasoning which would deduce certain phenomena as the invariable consequences of a violation of the fundamental laws of health. Until the chemistry of the living body is better understood, medical science seems obliged to accept many anomalies which it can not explain. About all that can be said of such exceptional cases is this: In the great conflagrations which at times devastate large cities, some huge mass of solid masonry is occasionally seen in the midst of the wide-spread ruin, looking down upon prostrate columns, broken capitals, shattered walls, and the cinders and ashes of a general desolation. The solitary tower unquestionably stands; but its chief utility lies in this,--that it serves as a striking monument of the appalling and wide-spread destruction to which it is the sole and conspicuous exception. WHAT SHALL THEY DO TO BE SAVED? Most of the preceding pages were already prepared for the press, when the attention of the compiler was attracted by a very remarkable article in _Harper's Magazine_ for August, 1867, entitled, "What Shall They Do to be Saved?" The graphic vividness of the story, as well as the profound insight and wide experience with which it was written, led me to solicit from the unknown author the addition of it to the pages of my own book. It proved to be from the pen of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, already recognized by the public as a writer of eminence, both in science and letters. The permission being freely accorded, I was still further moved to ask that he would give me a statement of the method pursued by him in dealing with the class to which it refers. The letter following his article was his response to my request. It will be seen to contain an outline of his views upon the subject to which he has devoted some years of study and practice, and is especially valuable as embodying the germ of a plan by which, according to his growing conviction, the opium-eater can alone be saved. As the conclusions of a writer who seems to the compiler to be singularly intelligent and definite in his knowledge of this most interesting and difficult field of disease and treatment, it needs no further recommendation to the attention of the reader. Since the publication of his August article, a multitude of letters received from all portions of the country, asking his advice and assistance in such cases as this book describes, has left a profound conviction upon his mind of the most crying need of the establishment of an institution where opium-eaters can be treated specially. In this view of the urgent necessities of the case, the compiler most heartily and earnestly concurs. * * * * * I have just returned from forty-eight hours' friendly and professional attendance at a bedside where I would fain place every young person in this country for a single hour before the Responsibilities of Life have become the sentinels and Habit the jailer of his Will. My patient was a gentleman of forty, who for several years of his youth occasionally used opium, and for the last eight has habitually taken it. During these eight years he has made at least three efforts to leave it off, in each instance diminishing his dose gradually for a month before its entire abandonment, and in the most successful one holding the enemy at bay for but a single summer. In two cases he had no respite of agony from the moment he dropped till he resumed it. In the third case, a short period of comparative repose succeeded the first fiery battle, but in the midst of felicitations on his victory he was attacked by the most agonizing hemicranial headaches (resulting from what I now fear to have been already permanent disorganization of the stomach), and went back to his nepenthe in a state of almost suicidal despair, only after the torture had continued for weeks without a moment's mitigation. He had first learned its seductions, as happens with the vast majority of Anglo-Saxon opium-eaters, through a medical prescription. An attack of inflamed cornea was treated with caustic applications, and the pain assuaged by internal doses of M'Munn's Elixir. When my friend came out of his dark room and bandages at the end of a month he had consumed twenty ounces of this preparation, whose probable distinction from the tincture known as laudanum I point out below in the note. [Footnote: Mr. Frank A. Schlitz has kindly made for me a special analysis of M'Munn's Elixir, which seems to prove that the process of its preparation amounts to more than the _denarcotization_ of opium, which is spoken of on the wrapper of each vial. As nearly as can be ascertained, M'Munn's Elixir is simply an aqueous infusion of opium--procured by the ordinary maceration--and preserved from decomposing by the subsequent addition of a small portion of alcohol. _Narcotin_ being absolutely insoluble in water is eliminated as the circular says. This fact alone would not account for the difference between its action and that of laudanum. This is explained by the fact that all the other alkaloids possess diverse rates of solubility in water, and exist in M'Munn's Elixir in very different relative proportions from those which they bear to each other in the alcoholic tincture called laudanum.] Here it may not be superfluous to say that the former preparation has all the essential properties of the latter, save certain of the constipatory and stupefying tendencies which, by a private process known to the assigns of the inventor, have been so masked or removed that it possesses in many cases an availableness which the practitioner can not despise, though compelled by the secrecy of its formula to rank it among quack medicines. The amount of it which my friend had taken during his month's eclipse represents an ounce of dry gum opium--in rough measurement a piece as large as a French billiard ball. I thus particularize because he had never previously been addicted to the drug; had inherited a sound constitution, and differed from any other fresh subject only in the intensity of his nervous temperament. I wish to emphasize the fact that the system of a mere neophyte, with nothing to neutralize the effects of the drug save the absorbency, so to speak, of the pain for which it was given, could so rapidly adapt itself to them as to demand an increase of the dose in such an alarming ratio. There are certain men to whom opium is as fire to tow, and my friend was one of these. On the first of October he sensibly perceived the trifling dose of fifty drops; on the first of November he was taking, without increased sensation, an ounce vial of "M'Munn" daily. From that time--totally ignorant of the terrible trap which lay grinning under the bait he dabbled with--he continued to take opium at short intervals for several years. When by the physician's orders he abandoned "M'Munn," on the subsidence of the eye-difficulty, his symptoms were uneasy rather than distressing, and disappeared after a few days' oppression at the pit of the stomach and a few nights' troubled dreaming. But he had not forgotten the sweet dissolving views at midnight, the great executive achievements at noonday, the heavenly sense of a self-reliance which dare go anywhere, say any thing, attempt any thing in the world. He had not forgotten the nonchalance under slight, the serenity in pain, the apathy to sorrow, which for one month set him calm as Boodh in the temple-splendors of his darkened room. He had not forgotten that the only perfect _peace_ he had ever experienced was there, and he remembered that peace as something which seemed to blend all the assuaged passion and confirmed dignity of old age with that energy of high emprise which thrills the nerves of manhood. He had tasted as many sources of earthly pleasure as any man I ever knew; but the ecstasies of form and color, wine, Eros, music, perfume, all the luxuries of surrounding which wealth could purchase or high-breeding appreciate, were as nothing to him in comparison with the memory of that time on which his family threw away their sympathy when they called it his "month of _suffering."_ Accordingly, without much more instinct of concealment than if it were an occasional tendency to some slight convivial excess, he had resort to M'Munn, in ounce doses, whenever the world went wrong with him. If he had a headache or a toothache; if the weather depressed him; if he had a certain "stint" of work to do without the sense of native vigor to accomplish it; if he was perplexed and wished to clear his head of passion; if anxieties kept him awake; if irregularities disturbed his digestion--he had always one refuge certain. No fateful contingency could pursue him inside M'Munn's enchanted circle. He was a young and wealthy bachelor, living the life of a refined _bon vivant;_ an insatiable traveller, surrounded by flatterers, and without a single friend who loved him enough to warn him of his danger excepting those who, like himself, were too ignorant to know it. After three years of dalliance he became an habitual user of opium, and had been one for eight years when I was first called to him. By the time that the daily habit fastened itself he had learned of other opiate preparations than M'Munn's, and finding a certain insufficiency characterize that tincture as he increased the size of the dose, had recourse to laudanum, which contains the full native vigor of the drug unmodified. This nauseated him. He had the same experience with gum opium, opium pills, and opium powder; so that he was driven to that form of exhibition which sooner or later naturally strikes almost every opium-eater as the most portable, energetic, and instantaneous--morphia or one of its salts. My friend usually kept the simple alkaloid in a paper, and dissolved it as he needed it in clear water, sometimes substituting an equivalent of "_Magendie's Solution_," which contains sixteen grains of the salt diffused through an ounce of water by the addition of a few drops of sulphuric acid. When I first saw him he had reached a daily dose of twelve grains of sulphate of morphia, and on occasions of high excitement had increased his dose without exaggerating the sensible effect to nearly twenty. The twelve which formed his habitual _per diem_ were divided into two equal doses, one taken immediately after rising, the other just about sundown. As yet he had not begun to feel the worst physical effects which sooner or later visit the opium-eater. His digestion seemed unimpaired so long as he took his morphia regularly; he was sallow and somewhat haggard, but thus far no distressing biliary symptoms had manifested themselves; his sleep was always dreamy, and he woke at short intervals during the night, but invariably slept again at once, and had so adjusted himself to the habit as to show no signs of suffering from wakefulness; his hand was steady; his muscular system easily exhausted, but by no means what one would call feeble. As he himself told me, he had come to the conclusion to emancipate himself because opium eating was a horrible mental bondage. The physical power of the drug over him he not only realized when attempting its abondonment. Its spiritual thraldom was his hourly misery. He was connected by blood and marriage with several of the best families in the land. Money had not been stinted in his education, and his capabilities were as great as his advantages. He was one of the bravest, fairest, most generous natures I ever came in contact with; was versatile as a Yankee Crichton; had ridden his own horse in a trotting match and beaten Bill Woodruff; had carried his own little 30-ton schooner from the Chesapeake to the Golden Gate through the Straits of Magellan; had swum with the Navigators' Islanders, shot buffalo, hunted chamois, and lunched on mangosteens at Penang. Through all his wanderings the loftiest sense of what was heroic in human nature and divine in its purified form, the monitions of a most tender conscience, and the echoes of that Puritan education which above all other schemes of training makes human responsibility terrible, had gone with him like his tissue. He saw the good and great things within reach of a fulfilled manhood, and of a sudden waked up to feel that they could on earth never be his. He was naturally very truthful, and, although the invariable tendency of opium-eaters is to extirpate this quality, could not flatter himself. Other minds around him responded to a sudden call as his own did not. Every day the need of energy took him more by surprise. The image-graving and project-building characteristic of opium, which comes on with a sense of genial radiation from the epigastrium about a quarter of an hour after the dose, had not yet so entirely disappeared from its effect on him, as it always does at a later stage of the indulgence. But instead of being an instigation to the delightful reveries which ensued on his earlier doses, this peculiarity was now an executioner's knout in the hands of Remorse. He was daily and nightly haunted by plans and pictures whose feverish unreal beauty he remembered having seen through a hundred times. Those Fata Morgana plans, should he again waste on them the effort of construction? The result had been a chaos of aimless, ineffectual days. Those pictures, why were they brought again to mock him? Were they not horrible impossibilities? Were they not, through the paralysis of his executive faculties, mere startling likenesses of Disappointment? In his opium dreams he had seen his own ships on the sea; commerce bustling in his warehouse; money overflowing in his bank; babies crowing on his knee; a wife nestling at his breast; a basso voice of tremendous natural power and depth scientifically cultivated to its utmost power of pleasing artists or friends; a country estate on the Hudson, or at Newport, with emerald lawns sloping down to the amber river or the leek-green sea; the political and social influence of a great landholder. How pleasurably he had once perceived all these possible joys and powers! How undeludedly he now saw their impossible execution! So, coming to me, he told me that his object in trying to leave off opium was to escape from these horrible ghosts of a life's unfulfilled promise. Only when he tried to abandon opium did he realize the physical hold the drug had on him. Its spiritual thraldom was his hourly misery. For three months I tried to treat him in his own house, here in the city. A practitioner of any experience need not be told with what success. I could reduce him to a dose of half a grain of sulphate of morphia a day, keep him there one week, and making a morning call at the expiration of that time discover that some nocturnal nervous paroxysm had necessitated either a return to five grains or a use of brandy (which, though no drinker, he tried to substitute) sufficient to demand a much larger dose of opium in its reaction. He had lost most of his near connections, and not for one hour could any hired attendant have withstood his appeal, or that marvellous ingenuity by which, without appeal, the opium-eater obtains the drug which, to him, is like oxygen to the normal man. This ingenuity manifests itself in subterfuges of a complicated construction and artistic plausibility which might have puzzled Richelieu; but it is really nothing to wonder at when we recollect the law of nature by which any extreme agony, so long as it continues remediable, sharpens and concentrates all a man's faculties upon the one single object of procuring the remedy. If my house is on fire, I run to the hydrant by a mere automatic operation of my nerves. If my leg is caught in the bight of a paying-out hawser, my whole brain focuses at once on that single thought, "_an axe."_ If I am enduring the agony which opium alone can cause and cure, every faculty of my mind is called to the aid of the tortured body which wants it. When a man has used opium for a long time the condition of brain supervening on his deprivation of the drug for a period of twenty-four hours is such as very frequently to render him suicidal. Cottle tells us how Coleridge one day took a walk along Bristol wharves, and sent his attendent down the pier to inquire the name of a vessel, while he slipped into a druggist's on the quay and bought a quart of laudanum; but in no fibre of his nature could Cottle conceive the awful sense of a force despotizing it over his will, a degradation descending on his manhood, which Coleridge felt as he concentrated on that one single cry of his animal nature and the laudanum which it spoke for, all the faculties of construction and insight which had created the "Ancient Mariner" and the "Aids to Reflection." Likewise I suppose there are very few people who could patiently regard the fact that one of the very purest and bravest souls I ever knew had become so demoralized by the perseverance of disease and suffering as to deal like a lawyer with his best friends, and shuffle to the very edge of falsehood, when his nature clamored for opium. I was particular to tell him whenever I detected any evasion (an occasion on which his shame and remorse were terrible to witness) that _I,_ personally, had none the less respect for him. I knew he was dominated, and in no sense more responsible for breaking his resolution than he would have been had he vowed to hold his finger in the gas-blaze until it burned off. In this latter case the mere translation of chemical decomposition into pain, and round the automatic nerve-arc into involuntary motion, would have drawn his finger out of the blaze, as it did in the cases of Mutius Scaevola and Cranmer, if they ever attempted the feat credited them by tradition. In his case the abandonment of opium brought on an agony which took his actions entirely out of voluntary control, eclipsing the higher ideals and heroisms of his imagination at once, and reducing him to that automatic condition in which the nervous system issues and enforces only those edicts which are counselled by pure animal self-preservation. Whatever may have been the patient's responsibility in _beginning_ the use of narcotics or stimulants (and I usually find, in the case of opium-eaters, that its degree has been very small indeed, therapeutic use often fixing the habit forever before a patient has convalesced far enough even to know what he is taking) habituation invariably tends to reduce the man to the _automatic_ plane, in which the will returns wholly to the tutelage of sensation and emotion, as it was in infancy; while all the Intellectual, save _Memory,_ and the most noble and imperishable among the Moral faculties may survive this disorganization for years, standing erect above the remainder of a personality defrauded of its completion to show what a great and beautiful house might have been built on such strong and shapely pillars. Inebriates have been repeatedly known to risk imminent death if they could not reach their liquor in any other way. The grasp with which liquor holds a man when it turns on him, even after he has abused it for a lifetime, compared with the ascendency possessed by opium over the unfortunate habituated to it for but a single year, is as the clutch of an angry woman to the embrace of Victor Hugo's _Pieuvre._ A patient whom, after habitual use of opium for ten years, I met when he had spent eight years more in reducing his daily dose to half a grain of morphia, with a view to its eventual complete abandonment, once spoke to me in these words: "God seems to help a man in getting out of every difficulty but opium. There you have to _claw_ your way out over red-hot coals on your hands and knees, and drag yourself by main strength through the burning dungeon-bars." This statement does not exaggerate the feeling of many another opium-eater whom I have known. Now, _such_ a man is a proper subject, not for _reproof_, but for _medical treatment_. The problem of his case need embarrass nobody. It is as purely physical as one of small-pox. When this truth is as widely understood among the laity as it is known by physicians, some progress may be made in staying the frightful ravages of opium among the present generation. Now, indeed, it is a difficult thing to prevent relatives from exacerbating the disorder and the pain of a patient, who, from their uninformed stand-point, seems as sane and responsible as themselves, by reproaches at which they would shudder, as at any other cruelty, could they be brought to realize that their friend is suffering under a disease of the very machinery of volition; and no more to be judged harshly for his acts than a wound for suppurating or the bowels for continuing the peristaltic motion. Finding--as in common with all physicians I have found so many times before--that no control of the case could be obtained while the patient stayed at home, and deeply renewing my often-experienced regret that the science and Christian charity of this country have perfected no scheme by which either inebriates or opium-eaters may be properly treated in a special institution of their own, I was at length reluctantly compelled to send my friend to an ordinary water-cure at some distance from town. The cause of my reluctance was not the prospect of a too liberal use of water, for by arrangement with the heads of the establishment I was able to control that as I chose; moreover, an employment of the hot-bath in what would ordinarily be excess is absolutely necessary as a sedative throughout the first week of the struggle. I have had several patients whom during this period I plunged into water at 110° Fahrenheit as often as fifteen times in a single day--each bath lasting as long as the patient experienced relief. In some cases this Elysium coming after the rack has been the only period for a month in which the sufferer had any thing resembling a doze. My reluctance arose from the necessity of sending a patient in such an advanced stage of the opium disease so far away from me that I must rely on reports written by people without my eyes, for keeping personally _au courant_ with the case; that I must consult and prescribe by letter, subject to the execution of my plans by men, who, though excellent and careful, were ignorant of my theories of treatment, and had never made this particular disease a specialty. I accordingly sent Mr. A. away to the water-cure, all friendless and alone to fight the final battle of his life against tougher odds than he had ever before encountered. At no time in my life have I realized with greater bitterness the helplessness of a practitioner who has no institution of his own to take such cases to than when I shook his poor, dry, sallow hand and bade him good-bye at the station. As I said in the beginning, I am just home from seeing the result. Mr. A. has fared as special cases always do in places where there is no special provision for them. To speak plainly, he had been badly neglected; and that, undoubtedly, without the slightest intention on the part of the heads of the house to do other than their duty. Six weeks ago I heard from the first physician that my friend was entirely free from opium, and, though still suffering, was steadily on the mend. I had no further news from him till I was called to his bedside by a note which said he feared he was dying, pencilled in a hand as tremulously illegible as the confession of Guy Fawkes. I was with him by the earliest train I could take, after arranging with a neighbor for my practice, and found him in a condition which led him to say, as I myself said at the commencement of this article; "Would to God that every young person could stand for a single hour by this bedside before Life's Responsibilities have become the sentinels and Habit the jailer of the Will!" I had not been intelligently informed respecting the progress of his case. He had been better at no time when I was told he was so, though his freedom from opium had been of even longer duration than I was advised. _For ninety days he had been without opium in any form_. The scope of so un-technical an article leaves no room to detail what had been done for him as alleviation. His prostration had been so great that he could not correspond with me himself until the moment of his absolute extremity; and only after repeated entreaties to telegraph to myself and his family had been refused on the ground that his condition was not critical, he managed to get off the poor scrawl which brought me to his side. For the ninety days he had been going without opium he had known nothing like proper sleep. I desire to be understood with mathematical literalness. There had been periods when he had been _semi-conscious;_ when the outline of things in his room grew vaguer and for five minutes he had a dull sensation of not knowing where he was. This temporary numbness was the only state which in all that time simulated sleep. From the hour he first refused his craving, and went to the battle-field of bed, he had endured such agony as I believe no man but the opium-eater has ever known. I am led to believe that the records of fatal lesion, mechanical childbirth, cancerous affection, the stake itself, contain no greater torture than a confirmed opium-eater experiences in getting free. Popularly this suffering is supposed to be purely intellectual--but nothing can be wider of the truth. Its intellectual part is bad enough, but the physical symptoms are appalling beyond representation. The look on the face of the opium sufferer is indeed one of such keen mental anguish that outsiders may well be excused for supposing that is all. I shall never forget till my dying-day that awful Chinese face which actually made me rein my horse at the door of the opium _hong_ where it appeared, after a night's debauch, at six o'clock one morning when I was riding in the outskirts of a Pacific city. It spoke of such a nameless horror in its owner's soul that I made the sign for a pipe and proposed, in "_pigeon English_" to furnish the necessary coin. The Chinaman sank down on the steps of the _hong_, like a man hearing medicine proposed to him when he was gangrened from head to foot, and made a gesture, palms downward, toward the ground, as one who said, "It has done its last for me--I am paying the matured bills of penalty." The man had exhausted all that opium could give him; and now, flattery past, the strong one kept his goods in peace. When the most powerful alleviative known to medical science has bestowed the last Judas kiss which is necessary to emasculate its victim, and, sure of the prey, substitutes stabbing for blandishment, what alleviative, stronger than the strongest, shall soothe such doom? I may give chloroform. I always do in the _dénouement_ of bad cases--ether--nitrous oxyd. In employing the first two agents I secure rest, but I induce death nine cases out of ten. Nothing is better known to medical men than the intolerance of the system to chloroform or ether after opium. Nitrous oxyd I am still experimenting with, but its simple undiffused form is too powerful an agent to use with a patient who for many days must be hourly treated for persevering pain. So the opium-eater is left as entirely without anæsthetic as the usual practice leaves him without therapeutic means. Both here and abroad opium-eaters have discovered the fact that, in an inveterate case, where opium fails to act on the brain through the exhausted tissues of the stomach, bichlorid of mercury in combination with the dose behaves like a _mordant_ in the presence of a dye, and, so to speak, _precipitates_ opium upon the calloused surfaces of the mucous and nervous layers. This expedient soon exhausts itself in a death from colliquative diarrhea, produced partly by the final decompositions of tissue which the poisonously antiseptic property of opium has all along improperly stored away; partly by the definite corrosions of the new addition to the dose. But in no case is there any relief to a desperate case of opium-eating save death. Remembering that Chinaman's face, I can not wonder at the popular notion regarding the abandonment of opium. Men say it is a mental pain; because spiritual woe is the expression of the sufferer's countenance. And so it is, but this woe is underlain by the keenest brute suffering. Let me sketch the opium-eater's experience on the rugged road upward. Let us suppose him a resolute man, who means to be free, and with that intent has reduced to a hundred drops the daily dose which for several years had amounted to an ounce of laudanum. I am not supposing an extreme case. An ounce of laudanum is a small _per diem_ for any man who has taken his regular rations of the drug for a twelvemonth. In the majority of cases I have found an old _habitué's_ daily portion to exceed three, or the equivalent of that dose in crude opium or morphia; making seventy-two grains of the gum or twelve of its most essential alkaloid. In one most interesting case I found a man who having begun on the first of January with one half a grain of sulphate of morphia for disease, at the end of March was, to all appearance, as hopeless an opium-eater as ever lived, taking thirty-two grains of the salt per day in the form of _Magendie's Solution_. This, however, was an unusual case. According to my experience the average opium-eater reaches twelve grains of morphia in ten years, and may live after that to treble the amount: the worst case I ever knew attaining a dose of ninety grains, or one and a half of the drachm vials ordinarily sold. I am happy, in passing, to add that for more than two years both the extreme cases just mentioned have been entirely cured. If the opium-eater has been in the habit of dividing his daily dose he begins to feel some uneasiness within an hour after his first deprivation, but it amounts to nothing more than an indefinite restlessness. In any case his first well-marked opium torments occur early after he has been without the drug for twenty-four hours. At the expiration of that time he begins to feel a peculiar _corded_ and _tympanic_ tightness about the epigastrium. A feverish condition of the brain, which sometimes amounts to absolute _phantasia_, now ensues, marked off into periods of increasing excitement by a heavy sleep, which, after each interval, grows fuller of tremendous dreams, and breaks up with a more intensely irritable waking. I have held a man's hand while he lay dreaming about the thirty-sixth hour of his struggle. His eyes were closed for less than a minute by the watch, but he awoke in a horrible agony of fear from what seemed to have been a year-long siege of some colossal and demoniac Vicksburg. After the opium-eater has been for forty-eight hours without his solace this heavy sleep entirely disappears. While it stays it never lasts over half an hour at a time, and is so broken by the crash of stupendous visions as not to amount to proper slumber. During its period of continuance the opium-eater woos its approaches with an agony which shows his instinct of the coming weeks of sleeplessness. It never _rests_ him in any valid sense. It is a congestive decomposition rather than any normal reconstruction of the brain. He wakes out of it each time with a heart more palpitating; in a perspiration more profuse; with a greater uncertainty of sense and will; with a more confused memory; in an intenser agony of body and horror of hopelessness. Every nerve in the entire frame now suddenly awakes with such a spasm of revivification that no parallel agony to that of the opium-eater at this stage can be adduced, unless it be that of the drowned person resuscitated by artificial means. Nor does this parallel fully represent the suffering, for the man resuscitated from drowning re-oxydizes all _his_ surplus carbon in a few minutes of intense torture, while the anguish which burns away that carbon and other matter, properly effete, stored away in the tissues by opium, must last for hours, days, and weeks. Who is sufficient for this long, _long_ pull? From the hour this pain begins to manifest itself it continues (in any average case of a year's previous habituation to the drug) for at least a week without one second's lull or exhaustion. A man may catch himself dozing between spasms of tic-douloureux or toothache; he never doubts whether he is awake one instant in the first week after dropping his opium. One patient whom I found years ago at a water-cure followed the watchman all night on crutches through his tour of inspection around the establishment. Other people, after walking a long time, shift from chair to chair in their rooms, talking to any body who may happen to be present in a low-voiced suicidal manner, which inexperience finds absolutely blood-freezing. Later such rock to and fro, moaning with agony, for hours at a time, but saying nothing. Still others go to their beds at once, and lie writhing there until the struggle is entirely decided. I have learned that this last class is generally the most hopeful. The period during which this pain is to continue depends upon two elements. 1st. How long has the patient habitually taken opium? 2d. How much constitutional strength remains to throw it off? "How much has he taken in the aggregate?" is practically not an equivalent of the first question. I have found an absolutely incurable opium-eater who had never used more than ten grains of morphia _per diem;_ but he had been taking it habitually for a dozen years. In another case the patient had for six months repeated before each meal the ten-grain dose which served the other all day; but he was a man whose pluck under pain equalled that of a woman's, and after a fortnight's anguish of such horror that one could scarcely witness it without being moved to tears, came out into perfect freedom. The former patient, although he had never in any one day experienced such powerful effects from opium as the latter, had used the drug so long that every part of his system had reconstructed itself to meet the abnormal conditions, and must go through a second process of reconstruction, without any anodyne to mask the pain resulting from its decomposition, before it could again tolerate existence of the normal kind. If opium were not an anodyne the terrible structural changes which it works would cause no surprise; it would be _felt_ eating out its victim's life like so much nitric acid. During the early part of the opium-eater's career these structural changes go on with a rapidity which partly accounts for the vast disengagements of nervous force, the exhilaration, the endurance of effort, which characterize this stage, later to be substituted by utter nervous apathy. By the time the substitution occurs something has taken place throughout the physical structure which may be rudely likened to the final equilibrium of a neutral salt after the effervescence between an acid and an alkali. So to speak, the tissues have now combined with their full equivalent of all the poisonous alkaloids in opium. Further use of it produces no new disengagements of nervous force; the victim may double, quadruple his dose, but he might as well expect further ebullition by adding more aqua-fortis to a satisfied nitrate as to develop with opium exhilarating currents in a tissue whose combination with that drug have already reached their chemical limit. [Footnote: I say "chemical" because so much it is possible to know experimentally; and the very interesting examination of such higher forces as constantly seem to intrude in any nervous disturbance would here involve the discussion of a theoretical "vital principle"--something apart from and between the soul and physical activities--which scientific men are universally abandoning.] The opium-eater now only continues his habit to preserve the terrible static condition to which it has reduced him, and to prevent that yet more terrible dynamic condition into which he comes with every disturbance of equilibrium; a condition of energetic and agonizing dissolutions which must last until every fibre of wrongly-changed tissue is burned up and healthily replaced. Though I have called the early reactions of opium rapid, they are necessarily much less so than those produced by a simple chemical agent. No drug approaches it in the possession of _cumulative_ characteristics; its dependence on the time element must therefore be always carefully considered in treating a case. This fact leads us to understand the other element in the question, how long the torments of the opium-fighter must continue. Having ascertained the chronology of his case, we must say, "Given this period of subjection, has the patient enough constitutional vigor left to endure the period of reconstruction which must correspond to it?" [Footnote: Not correspond day by day. At that rate a reforming opium-eater (I use the principle in the _physical_ sense, for very few opium-eaters are more to blame than any other sick persons) must pay a "shent per shent" which no constitution could survive. The correspondence is simply proportional.] I am naturally sanguine, and began my study of opium-eaters with the belief that none of them were hopeless. Experience has taught me that there is a point beyond which any constitution--especially one so abnormally sensitive as the opium-eater's--can not endure keen physical suffering without death from spinal exhaustion. I once heard the eminent Dr. Stevens say that he made it a rule never to attempt a surgical operation if it must consume more than an hour. Similarly, I have come to the conclusion never to amputate a man from his opium-self if the agony must last longer than three months. Uneasiness, corresponding to the irritations of dressing a stump--may continue a year longer; a few victims of the habit outlive a certain opium-prurience, which has also its analogue in the occasional titillation of a healed wound--these are comparatively tolerable; but, if we expect to save a patient's life, we must not protract an agony which so absolutely interferes with normal sleep as that of the opium-eater's for longer than three months in the case of any constitution I have thus far encountered. Usually as early as the third day after its abandonment (unless the constituion has become so impaired by long habituation that there will probably be no vital reaction) opium begins to show its dissolutions from the tissue by a profuse and increasingly acrid bilious diarrhea, which must not be checked if diagnosis has revealed sufficient constitutional vigor to justify any attempt at abandonment of the drug. Hemorrhoids may result; they must be topically treated; mild astringents may be used when the tendency seems getting out of eventual control; bland foods must be given as often as the usually fastidious appetite will tolerate them; the only tonic must be beef-tea--diffusible stimulus invariably increasing the agony, whether in the form of ale, wine, or spirits. Short of threatened collapse, the bowels must not be retarded. There is nothing in the faintest degree resembling a substitute for opium, but from time to time various alleviatives, which can not be discussed in an untechnical article, may be administered with benefit. The spontaneous termination of the diarrhea will indicate that the effete matters we must remove have been mainly eliminated, and that we may shortly look for a marked mitigation of the pain, followed by conditions of great debility but increasingly favorable to the process of reconstruction. That process, yet more than the alleviate, demands a book rather than an article. I have intentionally deferred any description of the agony of the opium struggle, as a _sensation_, until I returned from depicting general symptoms, to relate the particular case which is my text. The sufferings of the patient, from whom I have just returned, are so comprehensive as almost to be exhaustively typical. When simple nervous excitement had for two days alternated with the already mentioned intervals of delirious slumber, a dull, aching sensation began manifesting itself between his shoulders and in the region of the loins. Appetite for food had been failing since the first denial of that for opium. The most intense gastric irritability now appeared in the form of an aggravation of the tympanic tightness, corrosive acid ructations, heart-burn, water-brash, and a peculiar sensation, as painful as it is indescribable, of _self-consciousness_ in the whole upper part of the digestive canal. The best idea of this last symptom may be found by supposing all the nerves of involuntary motion which supply that tract with vitality, suddenly to be gifted with the exquisite sensitiveness to their own processes which is produced by its correlative object in some organ of special sense--the whole organism assimilating itself to a retina or a finger-tip. Sleep now disappeared. This initiated an entire month during which the patient had not one moment of even partial unconciousness. In less than a week from the beginning the symptoms indicated a most obstinate chronic gastritis. There was a perpetual sense of corrosion at the pit of the stomach very like that which characterizes the fatal operation of arsenic. There was less action of the liver than usually indicates a salvable case, and no irritation of the lowest intestines. _Pari passu_ with the gastritic suffering, the neuralgic pain spread down the extremities from an apparent centre between the kidneys, through the trunk, from another line near the left margin of the liver, and through the whole medullary substance of the brain itself. Although I was so unfortunate as not to be beside him during this stage, I can still infallibly draw on my whole experience for information regarding the intensity of this pain. _Tic-douloureux_ most nearly resembles it in character. Like that agonizing affection, it has periods of exacerbation; unlike it, it has no intervals of continuous repose. Like _tic-douloureux_, its sensation is a curiously fluctuating one, as if pain had been _fluidized_ and poured in trickling streams through the tubules of nerve tissue which are affected by it; but, unlike that, it affects every tubule in the human body--not a single diseased locality. Charles Reade chaffs the doctors very wittily in "Hard Cash" on their _penchant_ for the word "_hyperaesthesia,"_ but nothing else exactly defines that exaggeration of nervous sensibility which I have invariably seen in opium-eaters. Some of them were hurt by an abrupt slight touch, and cried out at the jar of a heavy footstep like a patient with acute rheumatism. Some developed sensitiveness with the progress of expurgating the poison, until their very hair and nails felt sore, and the whole surface of the skin suffered from cold air or water like the lips of a wound. After all, utterly unable to convey an idea of the _kind_ of suffering, I must content myself by repeating, of its extent, that no prolonged pain of any kind known to science can equal it. The totality of the experience is only conceivable by adding this physical torture to a mental anguish which even the Oriental pencil of De Quincey has but feebly painted; an anguish which slays the will, yet leaves the soul conscious of its murder; which utterly blots out hope, and either paralyzes the reasoning faculties which might suggest encouragements, or deadens the emotional nature to them as thoroughly as if they were not perceived; an anguish, which sometimes includes just, but always a vast amount of _unjust_ self-reproach, winch brings every failure and inconsistency, every misfortune or sin of a man's life as clearly before his face as on the day he was first mortified or degraded by it--before his face, not in one terrible dream, which is once for all over with sunrise, but as haunting ghosts, made out by the feverish eyes of the soul down to the minutest detail of ghastliness, and never leaving the side of the rack on which he lies for a moment of dark or day-light, till sleep, at the end of a month, first drops out of heaven on his agony. A third element in the suffering must briefly be mentioned. It results directly from the others. It is that exhaustion of nervous power which invariably ensues on protracted pain of mind or body. It proceeds beyond reaction to collapse in a hopeless case; it stops this side of that in a salvable one. On reaching his room I found my friend bolstered upright in bed, with a small two-legged crutch at hand to prop his head on when he became weary of the perpendicular position. This had been his attitude for fifty days. Whether from its impeding his circulation, the distribution of his nervous currents, or both, the prostrate posture invariably brought on cessation of the heart--and the sense of intolerable strangling. His note told me he was dying of heart disease, but, as I expected, I found that malady merely simulated by nervous symptoms, and the trouble purely functional. His food was arrow-root or sago, and beef-tea. Of the vegetable preparation he took perhaps half a dozen table-spoonfuls daily; of the animal variable quantities, averaging half a pint per diem. This, though small, was far from the minimum of nutriment upon which life has been supported through the most critical periods. Indeed, I have known three patients tided over stages of disease otherwise desperately typhoid by _beef-tea baths_, in which the proportion of _ozmazone_ was just perceptible, and the sole absorbing agency was a faint activity left in the pores of the skin. But these patients had suffered no absolute disorganization. The practitioner had to encounter a swift specific poison, not to make over tissues abnormally misconstructed by its long insidious action. On examination I discovered facts which I had often feared, but never before absolutely recognized, in my friend's case. The stomach itself, in its most irreproducible tissue, had undergone a partial but permanent disorganization. The substance of the organ itself had been altered in a way for which science knows no remedy. Hereafter, then, it can only be rechanged by that ultimate decomposition which men call death. Over the opium-eater's coffin at least, thank God! a wife and a sister can stop weeping and say, "He's free." I called to my friend's bedside a consultation of three physicians and the most nearly related survivor of his family. I laid the case before them; assisted them to a full _prognosis_; and invited their views. I spent two nights with my friend. I have said that during the first month of trial he had not a moment of even partial unconsciousness. Since that time there had been perhaps ten occasions a day, when for a period from one minute in length to five, his poor, pain-wrinkled forehead sank on his crutch, his eyes fell shut, and to outsiders he seemed asleep. But that which appeared sleep was internally to him only one stupendous succession of horrors which confusedly succeeded each other for apparent eternities of being, and ended with some nameless catastrophe of woe or wickedness, in a waking more fearful than the state volcanically ruptured by it. During the nights I sat by him these occasional relaxations, as I learned, reached their maximum length, my familiar presence acting as a sedative, but from each of them he woke bathed in perspiration from sole to crown; shivering under alternate flushes of chill and fever; mentally confused to a degree which for half an hour rendered every object in the room unnatural and terrible to him; with a nervous jerk, which threw him quite out of bed, although in his waking state two men were requisite to move him; and with a cry of agony as loud as any under amputation. The result of our consultation was a unanimous agreement not to press the case further. Physicians have no business to consider the speculative question, whether death without opium is preferable to life with it. They are called to keep people on the earth. We were convinced that to deprive the patient longer of opium would be to kill him. This we had no right to do without his consent. He did not consent, and I gave him five grains of morphia [Footnote: To the younger men of the profession rather than to the public generally I need here to say that this dose is not as excessive as it would naturally appear to be in the case of a man who had used no form of opium for ninety days. When you have to resume the drug, go cautiously. But you will generally find the amount of it required to produce the sedative effects in any case which returns to opium, after abandonment of a long habitation, _startlingly large_, and _slow in its effects_.] between 8 and 12 o'clock on the morning of the day I had to return here. He was obliged to eat a few mouthfuls of sago before the alkaloid could act upon his nervous system. I need only point out the significance of this indication. The shallower-lying nervous fibres of the stomach had become definitely paralyzed, and such _digestion_ as could be perfected under these circumstances was the only method of getting the stimulant in contact with any excitable nerve-substance. In other words, mere absorbent and assimulative tissue was all of him which for the purpose of receiving opium partially survived disorganization of the superficial nerves. Of that surviving tissue, one mucous patch was irredeemably gone. (This particular fact was the one which cessation from opium more distinctly unmasked.) At noon he had become tolerably comfortable; before I left (7 P.M.) he had enjoyed a single half-hour of something like normal slumber. He will have to take opium all his life. Further struggle is suicide. Death will probably occur at any rate not from an attack of what we usually consider disease, but from the disintegrating effects on tissue of the habit itself. So, whatever he may do, his organs march to death. He will have to continue the habit which kills him only because abandoning it kills him sooner; for self-murder has dropped out of the purview of the moral faculties and become a mere animal question of time. The only way left him to preserve his intellectual faculties intact is to keep his future daily dose at the tolerable minimum. Henceforth all his dreams of entire liberty must be relegated to the world to come. He may be valuable as a monitor, but in the executive uses of this mighty modern world henceforth he can never share. Could the immortal soul find itself in a more inextricable, a more _grisly_ complication? In publishing his case I am not violating that Hippocratic vow which protects the relations of patient and adviser; for, as I dropped my friend's wasted hand and stepped to the threshold, he repeated a request he had often made to me, saying: "It is almost like Dives asking for a messenger to his brethren; but tell them, tell _all young men,_ what it is, 'that they come not into this torment.'" Already perhaps--by the mere statement of the case--I might be considered to have fulfilled my promise. But since monition often consists as much in enlightenment as intimidation, let me be pardoned for briefly presenting a few considerations regarding the action of opium upon the human system while living, and the peculiar methods by which the drug encompasses its death. WHAT IS OPIUM? It is the most complicated drug in the Pharmacopoeia. Though apparently a simple gummy paste, it possesses a constitution which analysis reveals to contain no less than 25 elements, each one of them a compound by itself, and many of them among the most complex compounds known to modern chemistry. Let me concisely mention these by classes. First, at least three earthy salts-the sulphates of lime, alumina, and potassa. Second, two organic and one simpler acid--acetic (absolute vinegar), meconic (one of the most powerful irritants which can be applied to the intestines through the bile), and sulphuric. All these exist uncombined in the gum, and free to work their will on the mucous tissues. A green extractive matter, which comes in all vegetal bodies developed under sunlight, next deserves a place by itself, because it is one of the few organic bodies of which no rational analysis has ever been pretended. Though we can not state the constitution of this chlorophyl, we know that, except by turning acid in the stomach, it remains inert on the human system, as one might imagine would happen if he swallowed a bunch of green grass. _Lignin_, with which it is always associated, is mere woody fibre, and has no direct physical action. In no instance has any stomach been found to _digest_ it save an insect's--some naturalists thinking that certain beetles make their horny wing-cases of that. I believe one man did think he had discovered a solvent for it in the gastric juice of the beaver, but that view is not widely entertained. So far as it exists in opium it can only act as a foreign substance and a mechanical irritant to the human bowels. Next come two inert, indigestible, and very similar gummy bodies, _mucilagin and bassorine_. Sugar, a powerfully active volatile principle, and a fixed oil (probably allied to turpentine) are the only other invariable constituents of opium belonging to the great organic group of the hydro-carbons. I now come to a group by far the most important of all. Almost without exception the vegetable poisons belong to what are called the "nitrogenous alkaloids." Strychnia, brucia, ignatia, calabarin, woovarin, atropin, digitalin, and many others, including all whose effect is most tremendous upon the human system, are in this group. Not without insight did the early discoverers call nitrogen _azote_, "the foe to life." It so habitually exists in the things our body finds most deadly that the tests for it are always the first which occur to a chemist in the presence of any new organic poison. The nitrogenous alkaloids owe the first part of their name to the fact of containing this element; the second part to that of their usually making neutral salts with acids, like an alkaline base. The general reader may sometimes have asked himself why these alkaloids are diversely written--as, e.g., sometimes "_morphia,_" and sometimes "_morphine,_" The chemists who regard them as alkalies write them in the one way, those who consider them neutrals, in the other. Of these nitrogenous alkaloids, even the nuts of the tree, which furnishes the most powerful, _swift_ poison of the world, contains but three--the above-named strychnia, brucia, and ignatia--principles shared in common with its pathological congener, the St. Ignatius bean. Opium may be found to contain _twelve_ of them; but as one of these (cotarnin) may be a product of distillation, and the other (pseudo-morphia) seems only an occasional constituent, I treat them as ten in number--rationally to be arranged under three heads. First, those whose action is merely acrid--so far as known expending themselves upon the mucous coats. (_Pseudo-morphia_ when it occurs belongs to these.) So do _porphyroxin; narcein_; probably _papaverin_ also; while _meconin_, whose acrid properties in contact with animal tissue are similar to that of meconic acid, forms the last of the group. The second head comprises but a single alkaloid, variously called paramorphta or thebain. (It may interest amateur chemists to know that its difference from strycchnia consists only in having two less equivalents of hydrogen and six of carbon--especially when they know how closely its physical effects follow its atomic constitution.) A dose of one grain has produced tetanic spasms. Its chief action appears to be upon the spinal nerves, and there is reason to suppose it a poison of the same kind as nux vomica without the concentration of that agent. How singular it seems to find a poison of this totally distinct class--bad enough to set up the reputation of any one drug by itself--in company with the remaining principles whose effect we usually associate with opium and see clearest in the ruin of its victim! The remainder, five in number, are the opium alkaloids, which act generally upon the whole system, but particularly, in their immediate phenomena, upon the brain. I mention them in the ascending order of their nervine power; narcotin; codein; opianin; metamorphia, and morphia. The first of these the poppy shares in common with many other narcotic plants--tobacco the most conspicuous among the number. In its anti-periodic effects on the human system it has been found similar to quinia, and it is an undoubted narcotic poison acting on the nerves of organic life, though, compared with its associates in the drug, comparatively innocent. The remaining four act very much like morphia, differing only in the size of the dose in which they prove efficient. Most perfectly fresh constitutions feel a grain of morphia powerfully; metamorphia is soporific in half-grain doses; [Footnote: American Journal of Pharmacy, September, 1861.] opianin in its physical effects closely approximates morphia; codein is about one-fifth as powerful; a new subject may not get sleep short of six grains; its main action is expended on the sympathetic system. It does not seem to congest the brain as morphia does; but its action on the biliary system is probably little less deadly than that of the more powerful narcotic. Looking at the marvellous complexity of opium we might be led to the _apriori_ supposition that its versatility of action on the human system must be equally marvellous. Miserably for the opium-eater, fortunately for the young person who may be dissuaded from following in his footsteps, we are left in no doubt of this matter by the conclusions of experience. In practical action opium affects as large an area of nervous surface, attacks it with as much intensity, and changes it in as many ways as its complexity would lead us to expect. I have pointed out the existence in opium of a convulsive poison congeneric with brucia. The other chief active alkaloids, five in number, are those which specially possess the cumulative property. Poisons of the strychnia and hydro-cyanic acid classes (including this just mentioned opium alkaloid, thebain) are swifter agents; but this perilous opium quintette sings to every sense a lulling song from which it may not awake for years, but wakes a slave. Every day that a man uses opium these cumulative alkaloids get a subtler hold on him. Even a physician addicted to the practice has no conception how their influence piles up. At length some terrible dawn rouses him out of a bad sleep into a worse consciousness. Though the most untechnical man, he must already know the disorder which has taken place in his moral nature and his will. For a knowledge of his physical condition he must resort to his medical man, and what, when the case is ten years old, must a practitioner tell the patient in any average case? "Sir, the chances are entirely against you, and the possession of a powerfully enduring constitution, if you have it, forms a decided offset in your favor." He then makes a thorough examination of him by ear, touch, conversation. If enough constitution responds to the call, he advises an immediate entrance upon the hard road of abnegation. If the practitioner finds the case hopeless he must tell the patient so, in something like these words: "You have either suffered a disorganization of irreproducible membranes, or you have deposited so much improper material in your tissue that your life is not consistent with the protracted pain of removing it. "One by one you have paralyzed all the excretory functions of the body. Opium, aiming at all those functions for their death, first attacked the kidneys, and with your experimental doses you experienced a slight access of _dysouria_. As you went on, the same action, progressively paralytic to organic life, involved the liver. Flatulence, distress at the epigastrium, irregularity of bowels, indicated a spasmodic performance of the liver's work which showed it to be under high nervous excitement. Your mouth became dry through a cessation of the salivary discharge. Your lachrymal duct was parched, and your eye grew to have an _arid_ look in addition to the dullness produced by opiate contraction of the pupil. "All this time you continued to absorb an agent which directly acts for what by a paradox may be called fatal conservation of the tissues. Whether through its complexly combined nitrogen, carbon, or both, the drug has interposed itself between your very personal substance and those oxidations by which alone its life can be maintained. It has slowed the fires of your whole system. It has not only interposed but in part it has substituted itself; so that along with much effete matter of the body stored away there always exists a certain undecomposed quantity of the agent which sustains this morbid conservation. [Footnote: I frequently use what hydropaths call "a pack" to relieve opium distress, and with great benefit. After an hour and a half of perspiration, the patient being taken out of his swaddlings, I have found in the water which was used to wash out his sheet enough opium to have intoxicated a fresh subject. This patient had not used opium for a fortnight.] "When this combination became established, you began losing your appetite because no substitution of fresh matter was required by your body for tissue wrongly conserved. The progressive derangement of your liver manifested itself in increased sallowness of face and cornea; the organ was working on an inadequate vital supply because the organic nervous system was becoming paralyzed; the veins were not strained of that which is the bowels' proper purgative and the blood's dire poison. You had sealed up all but a single excretory passage--the pores of the skin. Perhaps when you had opium first given you you were told that its intent was the promotion of perspiration but did not know the _rationale._ The only way in which opium promotes perspiration is by shutting up all the other excretory processes of the body, and throwing the entire labor of that function upon the pores. (When the skin gives out the opium-eater is shut up like an entirely choked chimney, and often dies in delirium of blood- poisoning.) "For a while--the first six years, perhaps--your skin sustained the work which should have been shared by the other organs--not in natural sweat, but violent perspiration, which showed the excess of its action. Then your palms became gradually hornier--your whole body yellower--at the same time that your muscular system grew tremulous through progressively failing nervous supply. "About this time you may have had some temporary gastric disturbance, accompanied with indescribable distress, loathing at food, and nausea. This indicated that the mucous lining of the stomach had been partially removed by the corrosions of the drug, or that nervous power had suddenly come to a stand-still, which demanded an increase of stimulus. "Since that time you have been taking your daily dose only to preserve the _status in quo_. The condition both of your nervous system and your stomach indicate that you must always take some anodyne to avoid torture, and _your_ only anodyne is opium. "The rest of your life must be spent in keeping comfortable, not in being happy." Opium-eaters enjoy a strange immunity from other disease. They are not liable to be attacked by miasma in malarious countries; epidemics or contagions where they exist. They almost always survive to die of their opium itself. And an opium death is usually in one of these two manners: The opium-eater either dies in collapse through nervous exhaustion (with the blood-poisoning and delirium above-mentioned), sometimes after an overdose, but oftener seeming to occur spontaneously, or in the midst of physical or mental agony as great and irrelievable as men suffer in hopeful abandonment of the drug, and with a colliquative diarrhea, by which--in a continual fiery, acrid discharge--the system relieves itself during a final fortnight of the effete matters which have been accumulating for years. Either of these ends is terrible enough. Let us draw a curtain over their details. Opium is a corrosion and paralysis of all the noblest forms of life. The man who voluntarily addicts himself to it would commit in cutting his throat a suicide only swifter and less ignoble. The habit is gaining fearful ground among our professional men, the operatives in our mills, our weary sewing-wormen, our fagged clerks, our disappointed wives, our former liquor-drunkards, our very day-laborers, who a generation ago took gin. All our classes from the highest to the lowest are yearly increasing their consumption of the drug. The terrible demands especially in this country made on modern brains by our feverish competitive life, constitute hourly temptations to some form of the sweet, deadly sedative. Many a professional man of my acquaintance who twenty years ago was content with his _tri-diurnal_ "whisky," ten years ago, drop by drop, began taking stronger "laudanum cock-tails," until he became what he is now--an habitual opium-eater. I have tried to show what he will be. If this article shall deter any from an imitation of his example or excite an interest in the question--"_What he shall do to be saved?_"--I am content. NOTE.--The patient whose sorrowful case suggested this article died just as the magazine was issued. His unassisted struggle had been too long protracted after abandonment of the drug was evidently hopeless, and his resumption of opium came too late to permit of his rallying from his exhaustion. OUTLINES OF THE OPIUM-CURE. No. 1 Livingston Place, Stuyvesant Square, April 25, 1868. MY DEAR SIR:--In accordance with your request, I sketch the brief outline of my plan for the treatment of opium-eaters, premising that it pretends much less to novelty than to such value as belongs to generalizations made from large experience by sincere interest and careful study in the light of science and common sense. That experience having shown me how impracticable in the large majority of cases is any cure of a long-established opium habit while the patient continues his daily avocations and remains at home, [Footnote: In my article upon opium-eating, entitled, "What Shall They Do to be Saved?" published in _Harper's Magazine_ for the month of August, 1867, and hereto prefixed, I have referred to this impracticability in fuller detail. It arises from the fact that in his own house a man can not isolate himself from the hourly hearing of matters for which he feels responsible, yet to which he can give no adequate attention without his accustomed stimulus; that his best friends are apt to upbraid him for a weakness which is not crime but disease, and that the control of him by those whom he has habitually directed, however well-judged, seems always an harassment.] I shall simplify my sketch by supposing that one great object of my life is already attained, and that an institution for the treatment of the disease is already in successful operation. Starting at this fictitious _datum_, I shall carry from his arrival under our care until his discharge a healthy, happy, and useful member of society, a gentleman whom for convenience we will name Mr. Edgerton. Our institution is called not an "Asylum," nor a "Retreat," nor by any of those names which savor of restraint and espionage--not even a "Home," as spelled with a capital H--but simply by the name of the spot upon which it is erected--to wit, "Lord's Island." It is erected on an island because in the more serious cases a certain degree of watchfulness will always be necessary. On the main-land this watchfulness must be exercised by attendants with the aid of fences, bolts, and bars. On an island the patient whose case has gone beyond self-control will be under the Divine Vigilance, with more or less miles of deep water as the barrier between him and the poison by which he is imperilled. For this reason, and because whatever good is accomplished on it for a class which beyond all other sufferers claim heavenly mercy will be directly of the Lord himself, our island is called "Lord's Island." Here our patient will feel none of the irksome tutelage which in an asylum meets him at every step--thrusting itself before his eyes beyond any power of repulsion, and challenging him to efforts for its evasion which are noxious whether they succeed or not; defeating the purpose of his salvation when they do, irritating him when they do not, and keeping his mind in a state of perpetual morbid concentration upon his exceptional condition among mankind in either case. Here he has all the liberty which is enjoyed by the doctors and nurses--save that he can not get at the medicine-chest. Mr. Edgerton arrives at Lord's Island at 2 P.M. of a summer's day, having crossed by our half-hourly sail-boat, row-boat, or tug, from the railroad station on the main-land. If he is very much debilitated, either by his disease or fatigue, he has full opportunity to rest and refresh himself before a word is spoken to him professionally. If a friend accompanies him, he is invited to remain until Mr. Edgerton feels himself thoroughly at home in his new quarters. After becoming fully rested, Mr. Edgerton is invited to state his case. The head physician must be particular to assure him that every word he utters will be regarded as in the solemnest professional confidence. Mr. Edgerton is made to feel that no syllable of his disclosures will ever be repeated, under any circumstances, even to the most intimate of his friends or the most nearly related of his family. This conviction upon his part is in the highest degree essential. Opium makes the best memory treacherous, and, sad as it may be to confess it, the most truthful nature, in matters relating to the habit at least, untrustworthy. Often, I am satisfied, the opium-eater, during periods of protracted effort or great excitement, takes doses of the drug which he does not recollect an hour afterward, and may, practically without knowing it, overrun his supposed weekly dose twenty-five per cent. I often meet persons addicted to the habit who, I have every reason to believe, honestly think they are using twelve grains of morphia daily, yet are found on close watching to take eighteen or twenty. Again, the opium-eater who by nature would scorn a lie as profoundly as the boy Washington, is sometimes so thoroughly changed by his habit that the truth seems a matter of the most trifling consequence to him, and his assertion upon any subject whatever becomes quite valueless. Occasionally this arises from an entire _bouleversement_ of the veracious sense--similar to certain perversions of the insane mind, and then other faculties of his nature are liable to share in the alteration. If the man was previously to the highest degree merciful and sympathizing, he may become stolid to human suffering as any infant who laughs at its mother's funeral, not from wickedness of disposition but absence of the faculty which appreciates woe, and I doubt not that this change goes far to explain the ghastly unfeelingness of many a Turkish and Chinese despot whose ingeniously cruel tortures we shudder to read of scarcely more than the placidity with which he sees them inflicted. If he was originally so sensitive to the boundaries between Meum and Tuum that the least invasion of another's property hurt him more than any loss of his own, this delicate sense may become blunted until he commits larceny as shamelessly as a goat would browse through a gardener's pickets, or a child of two years old help himself to a neighbor's sugar-plums. This, too, quite innocently, and with the excuse of as true a Kleptomania as was ever established in the records of medical jurisprudence. I knew a man who had denied himself all but the bare necessaries of life to discharge debts into which another's fraud had plunged him, and whose sense of honor was so keen that when afflicted with chronic dyspepsia the morbid conscientiousness which is not an unusual mental symptom of that malady took the form of hunting up the owner of every pin he picked up from the floor, nor could he shake off a sense of criminality till he had found somebody who had lost one and restored it to him--yet on being prescribed opium for his complaint, his nature, under its operation, suffered such an entire inversion that the libraries, and on several occasions even the pocket-books of his friends were not safe from him, his larcenies comprising some of the most valuable volumes on the shelf and sums varying between two and twenty dollars in the porte-monnaie. "The Book-Hunter" writing of De Quincey, as you will recollect, under the _sobriquet_ of "Papaverius," describes the perfectly child-like absence of all proprietary distinctions which prevailed in that wonderful man's mind during his later years as regarded the books of his acquaintance, and the innocent way in which he abstracted any volume which he wanted or tore out and carried away with him the particular leaves he wished for reference. In many cases where the moral sense has suffered no such general _bouleversement_, the tendency which opium superinduces to look at every thing from the most sanguine point of view--the vague, dreamy habit of thought and the inability to deal with hard facts or fixed quantities--make it necessary to take an opium-eater's assertions upon any subject with a certain degree of allowance--to translate them, as it were, into the accurate expressions of literal life; but even where this necessity docs not exist, in cases sometimes though rarely met with, where opium has been long used without tinging any of life's common facts with uncertainty, an opium-eater can scarcely even be relied on for the exact truth concerning his own habit. He may be trusted without hesitation upon every other subject, but on this he almost always speaks evasively, and though about any thing else he would cut his hand off rather than say the thing that is not, will sometimes tell a downright falsehood. In most cases he has been led to this course by witnessing the agony or suffering the reproach with which the knowledge of his habit is received by his friends. He lies either in mercy to them or because the pangs which their rebuke inflicts would become still more intolerable if they knew the extent of his error. It is therefore always proper that the opium-eater should find in his physician a confidant who will not violate his secret even to parent or wife. The closer the relation and the dearer the love, the greater will be the likelihood that the optum-eater has shrunk from revealing the full extent of his burden to the friend in question, and the greater will be the temptation to deceive the doctor unless the patient be made to feel that his revelation is as sacred as the secrets of the bridal-chamber. I solicit from the friend who accompanied Mr. Edgerton the thoroughest statement which he can give me of the case, _ab extra_. Such a statement is of great value--for the inroads which the habit has made upon the system are often visible to an outsider only. Furthermore, a friend may give me many circumstances connected with the inception of the case: family predispositions and inherited tendencies; causes contributing to the formation of the habit, such as domestic or business misfortune, prior bad habits of other kinds, illnesses suffered, and a variety of other agencies concerning which the patient might hesitate or forget to speak for himself. Then I make Mr. Edgerton the proffer of that inviolable confidence which I have mentioned, and having won his perfect faith in me, obtain the very fullest history of his case which can be elicited by searching, but most kindly and sympathizing cross-examination. The two statements I collate and enter for my future guidance in a private record. Let us suppose an average hopeful case. I find that my patient is about thirty years of age--of the energetic yet at the same time delicate and sensitive nervous organization which is peculiarly susceptible to the effects of opium, from which it draws the vast majority of its victims, and in which it makes its most relentless havoc; with a front brain considerably beyond the average in size and development. My patient's general health, apart from the inevitable disturbances of the drug, has always been fair, and his constitufion, under the same limitations, is a vigorous one. His habit, as in nine cases out of every ten, dates from the medical prescription of opium for the relief of violent pain or the cure of obstinate illness. He was not aware of the drug then administered to him, or at any rate of the peril attending its use, and his malady was so long protracted that opium had established itself as a necessary condition of comfortable existence before he realized that it possessed the slightest hold upon him. When the prescription was discontinued he suffered so much distress that he voluntarily resumed it, without consulting his physician, or, if he did consult him, receiving no further warning as to his danger than that "he had better leave off as soon as practicable." Or else, on leaving off his use of opium, the symptoms for which it had originally been administered returned with more or less severity, and under the idea that they indicated a relapse instead of being one of the characteristic actions of the drug itself, he resumed the dose. It gradually lost its power; little by little he was compelled to increase it; and having begun with 1/3 grain powders of which he took three per diem, he is now taking 18 grains of morphia per diem at the end of five years from his first dose. If I find him tolerably vigorous on his arrival, as will be the case when he has come to Lord's Island after calm deliberation and the conviction not that he _must_, but on all accounts _had better_ abandon the habit, I leave him to recover from the fatigues of his journey and get acquainted with his surroundings before I begin any treatment of his case. If, however, as sometimes occurs, he reaches us in desperate plight, having been so far injured by his habit as to show unequivocal signs of an opium-poisoning which threatens fatal results; if, as in several cases known to me, he has summoned all his remaining vitality to get to a place of refuge, being overtaken either by that terrible _coma_ which often terminates the case of the opium-eater in the same fashion that persons new to the narcotic are killed by an overdose, or by that only less terrible opium-delirium belonging to the same general class as mania potu--then his case admits of not a moment's delay. Opium-eaters differ so widely--every new case furnishing some marked idiosyncrasy which may demand an entirely different management and list of remedies from those required by the last one--that for any general scheme of treatment a week's study of the patient will be necessary. During that week our attitude will be simply tentative and expectant, and at its close the proper fidelity and vigilance will have authorized us in making out something like a permanent schedule for the patient's upward march, though even then we must be prepared, like skillful generals, to meet new emergencies, take unforeseen steps, even throw overboard old theories, at any stage of his progress. In no disease is there such infinite variety as in that of opio-mania, in none must the interrogation of nature be more humbly deferent and faithfully attentive; in none do slight differences of temperament, previous habits, and circumstances necessitate such wide variation in the remedies to be used. Notice, by way of illustration, the fact that one opium-eater under my care was powerfully affected and greatly benefited by the prescription of _one drachm_ of the fluid extract of _cannabis indica_, while another, in temperament, history, tendencies, and all but a few apparently trifling particulars almost identical, not only received no benefit but actually experienced no perceptible effect whatever from the absolutely colossal dose of _four fluid ounces_. [Footnote: I am aware how incredible this statement will seem to those who have never had any extensive experience of the behavior of this remarkably variable drug, and get their notion of its action from the absurd directions on the label of every pound vial I have seen sent forth by our manufacturing pharmaceutists. "Ten to twenty drops at a dose," they say, "cautiously increased." Cannabis should always be used with caution, but ten or even twenty drops must be inert in all but the rarest cases, and I have given an ounce per diem with beneficial effect. But four ounces of the best extract (Hance & Griffith's) producing literally no effect of any kind on an entirely fresh subject, is a phenomenon that I must have needed eye-witness to imagine possible.] I may add that in the latter case, _bromide of potassium_ was administered with the happiest result--in fact as nearly approaching in its efficiency the character of a succedaneum as any remedy I ever used to alleviate the tortures of opium, while in the former no result attended its administration salutary or otherwise. The vast diversity of operation exhibited in different patients by the drug _scutellaria_ is still another illustration of the careful study of idiosyncrasies requisite for a successful treatment of the opium disease. But when the case comes into our hands at a desperate period there are many means of instant alleviation which may anticipate without interfering with future treatment based on study. Mr. Edgerton, though by no means a man of ruined constitution, has brought himself temporarily into a critical place by the fatigues and anxieties of harassing business, by exceptional overwork which kept him at his desk or in his shop until inordinately late hours; even, let me say, by going for entire nights without sleep and neglecting his regular meals day after day for a period of several weeks; performing and enduring all this by the support of extra doses of opium. Perhaps, finding the stimulus to which he has become accustomed too slow in its operation, he has violated his usual custom of abstinence from alcoholic drinks and reinforced his opium with more or less frequent potations of whisky. This is no fancy sketch, Our overtasked commercial men frequently go on what might with propriety be called "a business spree," in which for a month at a time, whether using stimulants or not, they plunge into as mad a vortex with as thorough a recklessness as those of the periodical inebriate; finding out in the long run that the fascinations of speculation, and the spring and fall trade, bring as dire destruction to soul and body as those of the bowl and the laudanum vial. During times of great financial pressure or under the screws of preparation for some great professional effort, the moderate opium-eater finds that he must inevitably increase his dose. When he adds liquor to it (and this addition to an old opium-eater is often as necessary as liquor alone would have been before he used opium at all) he is indeed burning his candle at both ends. Mr. Edgerton reached the commencement of his period of extra exertion with as sound a constitution--in as comfortable condition of general health--as is enjoyed by any man habituated to opium for four or five years; and such cases are frequently found among men who appear to enjoy life pretty well, attend to their business with as much regularity as ever, and show no trace of the ravages wrought by their insidious foe to any but the expert student. After six weeks of exciting labor and solicitude, during which his sleep and his rations were always delayed till exhaustion overpowered him, and then cut down below half the normal standard, he wakes one morning from a slumber heavy as death into a state of the most awful vigilance his mind can conceive of. He even doubts for some moments whether he shall ever sleep again, and in the agony of that strange, wild suspicion, a cold sweat breaks out over him from head to foot. Waking from the most utter unconsciousness possible to a wide-awake state like having the top of one's skull suddenly lifted off by some surgeon Asmodeus, and the noonday sun poured into every cranny of his brain, he suffers a shock compared with which any galvanic battery, not fatal, gives but a gentle tap. The suddenness of the transition--no gentle fading out of half-remembered dreams, no slow lifting of lids, no pleasant uncertainty of time and place gradually replacing itself by dawning outlines of familiar chair and window frame and cornice--the leap from absolute nonentity into a glaring, staring world--for a moment almost unsettles Mr. Edgerton's reason. Then the fear for his sanity passes and a strange horror of approaching death takes its room. His pulse at the instant of waking throbs like a trip-hammer; an instant more and it intermits. Then it begins again at the old pace. He snatches up his watch from the bureau with a trembling hand and counts--the beat is 130 a minute. Again it stops; again it begins; but now little by little growing faster and threadier until it runs so swiftly yet so thinly as to feel under his finger like some continuous strand of gossamer drawn through the artery. His feet and hands grow deadly cold. He seems to feel his blood trickling feebly back to his heart from every portion of his body. He catches a hurried look at the glass--he sees a dreadful spectre with bistre rings around the eyelids, an ashen face, leaden lips, and great, mournful, hollow, desolate eyes. Then his pulse stops altogether; his lungs cease their involuntary action; and with a sense of inconceivable terror paralyzing the very effort he now feels it vital to make, he puts them under voluntary control and makes each separate inspiration by an effort as conscious as working a bellows. I doubt not that many men have died just at this place through absolute lack of will to continue such effort. Then the metaphorical paralysis of fear is seconded by the simulation of a literal one, extending through the limbs of one side or both; the sufferer reels, feeling one foot fail him--tries to revolve one arm like a windmill, that he may restore his circulation, and that arm for some instants hangs powerless. Presently, with one tremendous concentration of will, his brain shouts down an order to the rebellious member--it stirs with sullen reluctance--it moves an inch--and then it breaks from the prison of its waking nightmare. Summoning his entire array of vital forces, our patient leaps, and smites his breast, kicks, whirls his arms, and little by little feels his heart tick again. By the time a feeble and sickly but regular pulse is re-established he has gone through enough agony to punish the worst enemy, my dear Sir, that you or I ever had. The vague, overpowering fear of death which during such an attack afflicts even the man who by grace or nature is at all other times most exempt from it is one of this period's most terrible symptoms. This passes with the return of breath and circulation. But the clammy sweat continues--pouring from every point of the surface--saturating the garments next the skin as if they had been dipped in a tub of water. Presently our patient begins to suffer an intolerable thirst, and runs to the ice-pitcher to quench it. In vain. He can not retain a mouthful. The instant it is swallowed it seems to strike a trap and is rejected with one jerk. He seeks the sedative which up to this hour has allayed his worst gastric irritations. Now, if never before, opium in every form produces nausea. Laudanum instantly follows the example of the water, and even a dry dose of morphia, swallowed with no moisture but saliva, casts itself back after agonizing retchings. To liquor his rebellious stomach proves yet more intolerant--food is almost as irritating as liquor. In a horror he discovers that even pounded ice will not stay down--and he is parching like Dives. His anguish becomes nearly suicidal as the fact stares him in the face that he has come to the place where he can not take opium any more--though to be without it is hell--that food, drink, medicine, are all denied him. A merciful, death-like apathy ensues. He lies down, and with his brain full of delirious visions, appalling, grotesque, meaningless, beautiful, torturing by turns, still manages to catch an occasional minute of unconsciousness. He hears his name called--tries to rise and answer--but his voice faints in his throat and he falls back upon his bed. Friends enter his bed-chamber--in an agony of alarm rouse him--lift him to his feet--but he has not the strength of an infant, and he falls again. In this condition he may continue for a day or two, then sink into absolute coma, and die of nervous exhaustion, or his constitution may rally as the effects of the last overdose pass off, and the man, after a fortnight's utter prostration, come gradually back to such a state of tolerable health and comfort as he enjoyed before he overtaxed himself. Mr. Edgerton is brought to Lord's Island in the condition I have described, living near enough to be transported on mattresses in carriage and boat. A few hurried questions put to his friends reveal that although his condition is alarming it is by no means necessarily fatal; being one of those in which the habit is of such comparatively short standing, and the constitution still so vigorous, that even at home he might come up again by natural reactions. He is immediately undressed and put to bed, with hot bricks and blankets at the extremities, and the galvanic battery is judiciously administered by placing both feet in contact with a copper plate constituting the negative electrode, while the operator grasps the positive in one hand, and having wetted the fingers of the other, follows the spine downward, exerting gentle pressure with them as he goes. "Judiciously," I say, because there is a vast deal of injudicious use of the battery. In many cases, for instance, a powerful and spasmodic current is used to the absolute injury of the patient, where the greatest benefit might be secured by an even one so light as scarcely to be perceptible. But I can only mention the battery. Its application is by itself a science, and demands a book. The practitioner who treats opium patients needs that science as much as any one interested in whatsoever branch of nervous therapeutics. The battery in the hands of a scientific man is one of our most powerful adjuncts throughout every stage of treatment, both of opium-eating and its sequelae. Paralysis following the habit, and persistent long after its abandonment, I have cured by it when all other means failed. Here, however, we have only room to indicate the weapons in our armory. If Mr. Edgerton's digestive apparatus is still as intolerant as at the commencement of the attack which hurried him to Lord's Island, we may hope for a marked mitigation of this symptom, in the use of the battery by passing a mild current transversely through him in the region of the solar plexus. As soon as it is possible for his stomach to retain any thing we administer a bolus of _capsicum_, compounded of five grains of the powder with any simple addition like mucilage and and liquorice to make it a coherent mass. The remaining nausea and irritability will in great likelihood be speedily relieved as by magic, and with these will disappear some of the most distressing cerebral symptoms--the horror and frenzy or comatose apathy among them. In few cases will a patient reach the Island in time for the advantageous use of _belladonna_. That is a direct antidote--exerting its function in antagonism to the earlier toxical effects of the opium. In cases where a single overdose has worked the difficulty and produced the coma which Mr. Edgerton's now resembles, it may be given to an old _habitué_ of the drug with as good advantage as to a person whose overdose is his first experience of opium. It is of especial value where the absorbents have carried the excess beyond the reach of an emetic, any time, indeed, within fifteen or twenty hours after the overdose, when sulphate of zinc and the stomach-pump have failed to bring the poison. If our patient on the Island has taken his overdose so recently, and it seems still worth while to act by antidote, we shall be obliged to get over the difficulty presented by his stomach's lack of retention by administering our belladonna in the form of _atropin_ in solution as a hypodermic injection. The many eminent researches of late made in this interesting method of administering remedies, and the practitioner's own judgment, must guide him as to the proportions of his dose--whether one-fortieth grain, one-twentieth, or larger. Of this operation, with opium-eaters, I have seen several most successful instances. In all probability, however, there will be a better field in such cases as Mr. Edgerton's for the use of nux vomlca than of belladonna. Where the prostration is so great as to call for the most immediate action to avoid a syncope from which there shall be no rallying, it will be unwise to await the soothing action of the battery, capsicum, or any other means preparatory to giving nux votnica by the mouth. _Strychnia_ in solution (it is needless to say with what caution) must be administered like the atropin, subcutaneously, or else nux vomica tincture in the form of the ordinary enema in about the same dose as it would be given by the mouth. The former method in wise hands is the better, both as the speedier, and, considering the opiate torpidity of the intestines, by far the more certain. In cases where the stomach tolerates fluid, as our ability to await the action of the battery and capsicum have now enabled us to find Mr. Edgerton's, we may give from fifteen to twenty drops of the ordinary pharmaceutical tincture of nux vomica in a table-spoonful of water. In the course of ten minutes we find a decided improvement in the pulse of the patient; he experiences great relief from his feelings of apprehension and distress about the epigastrium; and the most powerful tonic known to science begins dispatching its irresistible behests to every fibre of the organic life. That painful as well as agitating _subsultus_--that involuntary twitching and cramp in the muscles of the limbs and abdomen which often characterizes this form of the opium malady, by degrees gets lulled as under a charm, and it may not even be necessary to repeat the dose in two and a half hours to remove it so entirely that the patient gets ten or fifteen minutes of refreshing sleep. The earliest symptoms of this species of attack sometimes indicate such prostration as make any bath of the ordinary kind unsafe; yet rare indeed are the cases (not one in a hundred I should say) where there is any danger of further depressing the nervous system (of course the great thing to guard against) by putting a patient like Mr. Edgerton into a _Russian bath_. I need not enlarge upon the value of this most admirable appliance--all the most enlightened men of the medical profession know it and esteem it as it deserves, though its use in rheumatic affections and cutaneous diseases has hitherto received more study than in the class of maladies where its employment is perhaps the most beneficial of all--the nervous. Pre-eminently valuable is it in the treatment of delirium tremens and in every stage of the opiomania. As your book is for the purpose of the public rather than professional men, I may perhaps properly say a few words about this bath by way of description. We have one, as a matter of course, at Lord's Island. A room forty-five feet long and twenty broad, with a vaulted ceiling twenty feet high at the crown, is provided along each of its two longer sides with a series of marble slabs rising in three tiers from eighteen inches above the floor to a couple of feet below the ceiling. The idea may be gained more accurately by supposing three steps of a giant staircase mounting from an aisle three feet wide through the middle of the room, back and upward to the parallel cornice. The level surface of each of these steps is sufficiently wide to accommodate a man stretched on his back, and the upright portion of each step is an iron grating. Under the series of steps on both sides runs a system of sinuous iron pipes pierced with minute holes, and connected by stop-cocks with a boiler out of sight. The steps occupy in length twenty-five feet of the room, and its entire breadth except the narrow aisle between the is occupied by a tank sunk beneath the floor, sixteen feet square by four and a half deep, filled with water kept throughout the year at a uniform temperature of about 70° F., and by the gallery which runs round the railing of the tank on the floor level. About the sides of the gallery are arranged hot and cold water-pipes with faucets and hose connections, the hose being terminated by a spray apparatus similar to the nose of a watering-pot. Opening off the gallery at the end furthest from the steps is a small closet fitted up with ascending, descending, and horizontal shower apparatus, by means of perforated plates connecting with the water-pipes by faucets set in floor, walls, and ceiling. After the battery, the capsicum, and the nux, if Mr. Edgerton can retain it, we feed him by slow tea-spoonfuls from one-half to a whole cup of the most concentrated beef-tea--prepared after Lieblg's recipe or another which I have usually found better relished, and as that, where food must be administered to fastidious stomachs, is half the battle, which I prefer. (I will give it hereafter.) Should his stomach reject it thus administered, it must be given as an enema. Its place in the plan of all enlightened medical treatment is too lofty to need my insisting on. We must rely on it at Lord's Island every step of our way. It will not have been within our patient's system five minutes before the pulse shows it, nor ten before he feels from head to foot as if he had taken some powerful and generous stimulant. It is always wise to give beef-tea, even just before a bath of any kind, and it is never well to enter the Russian bath on an empty stomach. Having taken his beef-tea, Mr. Edgerton is carried or propelled in a wheel-chair by attendants to the Russian bathroom. Having stripped in an anteroom, upon entering the vaulted chamber he finds himself in an atmosphere of steam at 120° F., which fills the apartment, even obscures the skylights, yet to his surprise does not impede his respiration or produce any unpleasant sense of fullness in the head. He is now stretched on his back upon one of the lowest slabs, where the atmosphere is coolest and the vapor least dense; a large wet sponge is put under his occiput for a pillow, and another sponge in a pail of cool water placed by his side with which he, or in case of too extreme debility his attendants, may from time to time bathe and cool the rest of his head. As soon as he has become accustomed to the heat and moisture, a sensation of pleasant languor steals over him; all remains of his nausea and other gastric distress vanish; his nervous system grows more and more placid; his clammy skin is bedewed by a profuse and warm natural perspiration. Perhaps, as in cases of extreme debility and where the nerves have suffered tension from protracted pain, he even falls into a pleasant sleep. He is allowed to lie quietly on this lower slab for about fifteen minutes. An attendant then lathers him from head to foot with a perfumed cake of soap and gives him a gentle but thorough scrubbing with an oval brush like that in use among hostlers--finishing the operation by vigorously shampooing, Oriental fashion, each separate joint of his whole body, with a result of exquisite relief not exaggerated by Eastern travellers as applicable to well people and quite beyond expression when its subject is the poor, long-tortured frame of a sick opium-eater. The process over, the patient is taken to the gallery and stood up before the hose apparatus above-mentioned. One hand of the attendant directs over his body a fine spray of steam and the other follows it up and down with a spray of cool water (either of which by combining and graduating appropriate faucets may be made as warm as you like), producing a fine glow and reaction of the whole surface. The up, down, and lateral showers are then administered, after which the patient is sent to plunge into the tank, and if able to swim, a stroke or two. Emerging, rosy as Aphrodite, and with a sense of vigor he can hardly believe, he again lies down on the slab-this time taking the next higher tier, and in about ten minutes more, mounting, if so disposed, to the highest, where the perspiration rolls from him in rivulets, and with it as makes him feel like a new being. Finally, in about an hour from the time he entered the bath-room he is treated to one last plunge in the tank and carried back to the anteroom. The thermometer there marks but 70° F., or half a hundred degrees cooler than the steam from which he has just emerged; still his blood has been set in such healthful circulation, and during the last hour he has absorbed such an amount of caloric, that the change seems a very pleasant one, and his skin has been so toned that he runs not the slightest risk (even were he the frailest person with pulmonary disease) of catching cold. Singular as it may seem, the first case of such a result has yet to be recorded. This is all the more remarkable when we consider that instead of being immediately wrapped up after his vigorous drying with furzy bath-towels, he is kept naked for five minutes longer during a further process of hand-rubbing and shampooing by an attendant. The shampooing takes place as he lies prostrate on a couch and thus gives his debility all the advantage of rest and passive exercise at the same time. Whether we explain it upon the yet unsettled hypotheses of friction, the suppling which the patient gets in this part of the process from the hands of a strong, faithful, cheerful-minded and hale-bodied servant is one of the most valuable means which can be relied upon for the relief of opium suffering at any stage whatever. After coming from the anteroom our patient who entered more dead than alive may feel vigor that he would like to give his recovered powers play in walking back to his room, but it is best not to humor him by letting him draw on his first deposit. He should be tenderly wheeled back as he came--put to bed, and if it does not revolt his appetite, fed slowly as before another cup of beef-tea. After that he will probably fall into a refreshing slumber from which he is on no account to be roused, but suffered to wake himself. On his waking another cup of beef-tea should be given him, and no other medicine, unless his pulse becomes alarming and he shows signs of return to the original sinking condition in which we found him--when the nux may be repeated. It is now improbable, after the happy change described has taken place in him, that he will succumb to the acute attack of opium-poisoning which led him to us. Alarming as it appears, it is seldom dangerous or persistent. The patient who has not constitutional strength to rally at once, goes down rapidly and dies in a few days, while he who rallies once gets well, _pro hâc vice_, without much medical treatment save that which was promptly given at the critical moment, or treatment of any kind but nourishing food, rest, baths, and vigilant, tender nursing. As soon as the chronic appetite calls for its habitual dose, and the stomach receives it without revenging its grudge against the recent excesses, the patient may be considered out of danger as far as the acute attack is concerned. Here I will be asked (as I am constantly out of the book), why not begin the abandonment of the drug as soon as this acute attack is over? When the terrible and immediate peril has been staved off by such a mere hair's-breadth, why listen again to "the chronic appetite" which "calls for its habitual dose?" Surely, now that the patient has gone for forty-eight hours or more without that dose, would it not be better never to return to it? Must he begin his former career again and afterward have all the same ground to go over? I answer that he will not have the same ground. That which he has just traversed was the ground separating between an excess and his normal life--and he is in reality in a worse condition to try the experiment of instant abandonment than he was before the struggle. It is a very different thing to cure a man of acute from curing him of chronic opium-poisoning; and my own large experience, together with that of all the most experienced, the soundest and most skillful men that I have ever known as successful practitioners among these cases, points to the unanimous conclusion that it is not safe, either to mind or body, to make the abrupt transition required of an old opium-eater who must give up his drug _in toto_ and at once, especially after such an acute attack as that just described. He would be very likely to die of exhaustion, to endure an amount of agony which would permanently enfeeble his mind, or to commit suicide as his only way of escape from it, if we cut him short from the equivalent of 15 or 20 grains of sulphate of morphia after having used the drug for five years. The most terrible case of opium-eating which I ever saw instantly cu short was one where the patient used 33 grains of morphia per diem, but he had used it for less than a year, and possessed a constitution whose physical grit and mental pluck anybody would pronounce exceptional, though even that did not save him from the tortures which endangered his reason. I am always in favor of a man's "breaking off short" if he can. I believe that the majority of people who have used the drug less than a year can, but the number who are able to do it after that diminish in geometric ratio with every month of habituation. I therefore permit Mr. Edgerton, as soon as his stomach will bear it, to return to the use of opium. But before giving him his dose I make the stipulation that from this moment he shall deal as frankly with me as he does with his own consciousness--that we shall have no opium secrets apart. In advanced cases, where opium has been used long enough to break down the will and the sense of moral accountability, I may feel it wise to ask of the friend who accompanies my patient that he go through the baggage and clothes of the latter before leaving him, and report to me that no form of opium is contained in them. But in most cases I prefer to rely entirely upon the good understanding established between my patient and myself for my guarantee that no opiate is smuggled into the institution, and upon my own daily examination of the patient to determine whether this guarantee is kept inviolate. To an expert reader of opium cases it will soon become apparent whether in any given case a patient is taking more than the amount prescribed--and after total abandonment is resolved upon, the question whether the patient is taking opium at all may be decided by a tyro. In the case of Mr. Edgerton, who has voluntarily come to ask our help on the way upward, I proceed by a system of complete mutual confidence. I tell him that I am sure he feels even more deeply than myself the necessity of abandoning the drug. I promise him that he shall never be pushed beyond the limits of endurance, and ask only that he will allow any dose he may take to pass through my hands. I request that if he has brought any form of opium with him he will give it to me, and we enter into a stipulation that he will come to me for any opiate or other alleviative which he may desire. I bind myself never to upbraid or censure him--never to reveal to a living soul any confidence soever which he may repose in me--and then I ask him to name me the average dose upon which, before his late acute attack, he has managed to keep comfortable--rather, I should say, before the overwork and consequent opiate excess which brought it on. During his terrible six weeks of high-pressure, he tells me, he reached a per diem as high as 25, on one occasion even 30 grains; but for a year previous he had never taken more than the equivalent of 18 grains of morphia a day. This, then, shall furnish our starting-point. Whether he has previously adopted the same method or not, I divide this amount into three or more doses to be taken at regular intervals during the day. I say "the equivalent of 18 grains of morphia," because although the majorify of _habitués_ use that principle of opium as their favorite form, there are some who after many years' use of the drug still adhere to crude gum opium or laudanum. The portability and ease of exhibition which belong to morphia--the fact that it fails to sicken some persons in whom any other opiate produces violent nausea--its usual certainty, rapidity, and uniformity of action, and the ability which it possesses to produce the characteristic effects of the narcotic after other preparations have become comparatively inert, make it the most general form in use among opium-eaters of long standing. Still, bearing in mind the wonderful complexity of opium (_vide_ "What Shall They Do to be Saved?") and the equally marvellous diversity in the manner in which it affects different people, we can not wonder at the fact that some of its victims require for their desired effect either the crude drug or other preparations containing its principles entire. Morphia is by far the most important of these principles, and more nearly than any one stands typical of them all. Still, it is easy to conceive how certain constitutions may respond more sympathetically to the complex agent of Nature's compounding than to any one of its constituents. [Footnote: In some cases, especially of shorter standing, codeia may be used as the form of opiate to diminish on. In any case its employment is worth trying, for it possesses much of the pain-controlling efficiency of opium and morphia, with less of their congestive action upon the brain. Practically it may be treated in such an experiment as the equivalent of opium; not that it at all represents all the drug's operations, but that where crude opium has been the form in use, codeia may be substituted grain for grain. Some patiets find it quite valueless as a substitute, but there is always a chance of its proving adequate. When tried, the best form is a solution similar to Magendie's, but replacing one grain of morphia by six of codeia.] We may therefore find it necessary to carry on our reformatory process upan laudanum or M'Munn's Elixir, but by far the larger number of cases will do better by being put instantly upon a regimen of Magendie's Solution of Morphia. The formula for this preparation is: Rx Morph. Sulph. . . . . . . . . . . . grs. xvi. Aqua Destill. . . . . . . . . . . . ounce j Elix. Vitrioli. . . . . . . . . . . quant. suff. Mr. Edgerton has used 18 grains of morphia per diem. His equivalent in Magendie's Solution will be 9 fluid drachms. This amount I divide into three equal doses--one to be administered after each meal. By administering them after meals I give nutrition the start of narcotism, prevent the violent action possessed by stimulants and opiates on the naked stomach, and secure a slower, more uniform distribution of the effects throughout the day. The position of the third dcse after the 6 o'clock meal of the day is particularly counselled by the fact that opium is only secondarily a narcotic, its sedative effects following as a reaction upon its stimulant, and the third dose accordingly begins to act soporifically just about bed-time, when this action is especially required. I keep a glass for each of my patients, upon which their "high-water mark" is indicated by a slip of paper gummed on the outside. When Mr. Edgerton, pursuant to our stipulation, comes to me for his dose, I drop into the glass before his eyes a shot about the size of a small pea--then fill the glass with Magendie's Solution up to the mark indicated. (This shot varies in each case with the rapidity of diminution I think safe to adopt. In some cases it is a buckshot or a small pistol bullet.) Every day a new shot goes in--and if he bears that rate of progress I may even drop one into the glass with each alternate dose. Midway between the doses of morphia I give Mr. E. a powder of bromide of potassium, amounting to 30 or even 40 grains at a time, and an average of about 100 grains per day. The value of this remedy has been a matter of much controversy--some practitioners lauding it to the skies as one of the most powerful agents of control in all disorders of the nervous system, others pronouncing it entirely inert. Where it has proved the latter it has probably been given in too small doses or not persevered in for a sufficient length of time. (The timidity with which it is often prescribed may be seen in the fact that one of the principal druggists on Broadway lately warned a person to whom I had given a prescription for 30 grain doses that he was running a very dangerous risk in taking such a quantity!) Its operation is so entirely different from that of the vegetable narcotics that people looking for their instantaneous sedative effect can not fail to be disappointed. It is very slowly cumulative in its action, seeming to act upon the nervous system by a gradual constitutional change rather thin any special impetus in a given direction. Because that is its _modus operandi_, I begin to give it thus early; and it is of peculiar value now, not only as making the daily diminution of the opium more tolerable, but as preparing the system for the time when the drug is to be abandoned altogether and the hardest part of the tug comes. In Mr. Edgerton's case the gradual descent to 1/2 grain per diem, when we leave off the opium entirely, consumes let us say a period of one month. It is not to be expected that this period will pass without considerable discomfort and some absolute suffering, for the nervous system can not be dealt with artfully enough to hide from it the fact that it is losing its main support. It is the nature of that system not even to rest content with the continuation of the same dose. It grows daily less susceptible to opium and more clamorous of increase. When the dose does not even remain _in statu quo_ but suffers steady diminutions however small, the nerves can not fail to begin revenging themselves. Still, this period may be made very tolerable by keeping the mind diverted in every pleasant occupation possible, such as I shall presently refer to as abounding on our Island. Our physical treatment for the month is especially directed to the establishment of such healthy nutrition and circulation as shall provide the nervous system with a liberal capital to for at least the first ten days or fortnight after the complete abandonment of opium. The patient's digestion must be carefully attended to, and kept as vigorous as is consistent with the still continued use of the drug. Beef-tea, lamb-broth with rice, all the more concentrated forms of nutriment, are to be given him, in small quantities at a time, as frequently as his appetite will permit; and if progressive gastric irritability does not develop itself as the diminution of the narcotic proceeds, he is to have generous diet of all kinds. We must pay particular attention to the excretory functions--getting them as nearly as possible in complete working order for the extra task they have presently to fulfill when the barriers are entirely withdrawn and the long pent-up effete matters of the body come rushing forth at every channel. The bowels must be trained to perfect regularity, and the skin roused to the greatest activity of which it is capable. Exercise, carried to the extent of healthy fatigue, but rigorously kept short of exhaustion, may be secured in our bowling-alley, gymnasium, and that system of light gymnastics perfected by Dio Lewis--a system combining amusement with improvement to a remarkable degree, as being a regular drill in which at certain regular hours all those patients, both ladies and gentlemen, who are able to leave their rooms, join under the command of a skillful leader to the sound of music. This system has an advantage, even for well people, with its bars, poles, ropes, dumb-bells, etc., inasmuch as it secures the uniform development, on sound anatomical and physiological principles, of every muscle in the human body, instead of aiming at the hypertrophy of an isolated set. I do not mean by this to deny the value of the old style gymnasium, our Island will possess as good a one as any athlete could desire. Horseback riding will form another admirable means of effecting our purpose, especially where the patient suffers from more than the usual opiate torpidity of the liver. We shall have room enough if not for an extended ride at least for a mile track around the Island, and a stud, however unlikely to set John Hunter looking to his laurels, capable of affording choice between a trotter and a cantering animal. During the summer there will be ample opportunity for those who love horticulture to take exercise in the flower and vegetable garden attached to the institution, and such as wished might be assigned little plots of ground whose management and produce should exclusively belong to them. Looking for a moment from the therapeutics to the economics of the matter, I can see no reason why the house might not rely largely upon itself for at least its summer vegetables and its fruit--if the poorer patients were permitted to pay part of their dues, when they so elected and the exertion was not too much for them, by taking care of the grounds. Another admirable means of exercise will be found in rowing. Our Island must have a good substantial boat-house, containing a good-sized barge for excursions and several pleasure-boats pulling two or three pair of sculls each; perhaps, eventually, a pair of racing-boats for such of our guests as were well enough to manage a club. Bath-houses for the convenience of those who love a plunge or a swim will be indispensable--affording facilities for a species of summer exercise which nothing can replace. In winter and summer the bath must be our principal reliance for promoting that vigorous action of the excretory system which with healthy nutrition is our great aim in treating the patient. Quackery has to so great an extent monopolized the therapeutic use of water, and so much arrant nonsense has been talked in that pure element's name, that we are in danger of overlooking its wonderful value as a curative means. It is one of the most powerful agents at the command of the practitioner, and should no more he trifled with than arsenic or opium. Used by a blundering, shallow-pated empiric it may be worse than useless--may do, as in many cases it has done, incalculable mischief to a patient. In the hands of a clear-sighted, experienced, scientific man, who administers it according to well-known laws of physiology and therapeutics, it is an inestimable remedy, often capable of accomplishing cures without the assistance of any other medicine, and, indeed, where all other has failed. Many of the forms in which it is applied at water-cures well deserve adoption by the more scientific practitioner. Among these the pack occupies a front rank. During Mr. Edgerton's month of diminution we use this with him daily. Its sedative effect, when given about three and a half P.M., just after the second dose of bromide of potassium, is exceedingly happy-seeming, as I have heard a patient remark, "to smooth all the fur down the right way"--removing entirely the excessive nervous irritability of the opium-craving, and often affording the patient his only hour of unbroken sleep during the twenty-four. Its tendency to promote perspiration makes it a most effective means for restoring the activity of the opium-eater's skin, and this benefit will be still further increased if it be followed by sponging down the body with strong brine at a temperature as low as the patient can healthily react from, concluding the operation with a vigorous hand-rubbing administered by the attendant until the skin shines. This same salt sponge is a most invigorating bath to be taken immediately on rising. Another excellent bath in use at water-cures, of value both for its tonic and sedative properties, is "_the dripping sheet_," in which a sheet like that used in the pack, of strong muslin and ample size, is immersed in a pail of fresh water at about 70° F., and, without wringing, spread around the standing patient so as to envelop him from neck to feet, the attendant rubbing him energetically with hands outside it for several minutes till he is all aglow. In cases where great oppression is felt at the epigastrium--that _corded_ sensation so much complained of by opium-eaters during their earlier period of abandonment, and that peculiar self-consciousness of the stomach which follows in the track of awakening organic vitality--the greatest relief may be expected from "_hot fomentations_," This is the well-known "hot and wet external application" of the regular practice, and consists of a many-folded square of flannel wrung out of water as hot as the skin can bear, and laid over the pit of the stomach, with renewals as often as the temperature perceptibly falls. The symptom of cerebral congestion--a chronic sense of fullness in the head--is often very simply alleviated by placing the patient in "_a sitz_" or hip-bath, with the water varying from 70° to 90° F, _Enemata_ will constantly be found of service where the torpidity of the bowels is extreme. Not only so, but in cases where the liver is beginning to re-assert itself, and its tremendous overaction sends down such a supply of bile as to provoke inversion of the pylorus, an enema may often act sympathetically beyond that portion of the intestine actually reached by it, and change the direction of the intestinal movement, so as to convert the deadly nausea excited by the presence of bile in the stomach into a harmless diarrhea which at once removes the cause of the suffering. Of the value of foot-baths I need not speak, and to the hot full-bath I must now make reference as the most indispensable agent in ameliorating the sufferings of one who has completely abandoned the drug. When Mr. Edgerton's dose has reached as low an ebb as 1/2 grain of morphia he abandons the drug entirely. In my _Harper's Magazine_ article I have fully depicted the sufferings which now ensue--as fully, at least, as they can be depicted on paper--though that at the best must he a mere bird's-eye view. During the period of diminution he has endured considerable uneasiness and distress, but these have been trifling to compare with the suffering which he must endure for the first few days and nights, at least, after total abandonment. Universal experience testifies that although the previous period of diminution greatly shortens and softens the sufferings to be endured after giving up opium altogether, the descent from 1/2 grain of morphia to none at all must involve a few days at least of severe suffering, which nothing borne during the diminution at all foreshadows. In my _Harper's_ article I have said: "An employment of the hot bath in what would ordinarily be excess is absolutely necessary as a sedative throughout the first week of the struggle. I have had several patients whom during this period I plunged into water at [Footnote: On some occasions, by repealed additions from the hot faucet as the temperature of the water in the bath-tub fell, I have raised the bath as high as 120° F. without causing any inconvenience to the patient. Most bath-tubs--all in our own city houses--are too capacious, and too broad for their depth. To prevent cooling by evaporation the tub should be just the width of a broad pair of shoulders and about two feet deep.] 110° F. as often as fifteen times in a single day--each bath lasting as long as the patient experienced relief." Science and experience have thus far revealed no other way of making tolerable the agonizing pain which Mr. Edgerton now endures. This pain is quite inconceivable by the ordinary mind. It can not be described, and the only hint by which an outsider can be let into something like an inkling of it is the supposition (which I have elsewhere used) that pain has become _fluidized_, and is throbbing through the arteries like a column of quicksilver undergoing rhythmical movement. If the arteries were rigid glass tubes, and the pain quicksilver indeed, there could not be a more striking impression of ebb and flow every second against some stout elastic diaphragm whose percussion seems the pain which is felt. This is especially the case along the course of the sciatic nerve and all its branches, where the pulse of pain is so agonizing that the sufferer can not keep his legs still for an instant. There is occasionally severe pain of this kind in the arms also, but this is very rare. The suffering which usually accompanies that of the legs is a maddening frontal headache, and a dull perpetual ache through the region of the kidneys, described as a sensation of "breaking in two at the waist;" nausea, burning, and constriction about the epigastrium, and intense sensitiveness of the liver--besides general nervous and mental distress which has neither representative nor parallel. All these symptoms are instantaneously met and for the time being counteracted by the hot-bath. When the patient gets tired of it, and it temporarily loses its efficiency from this cause, great advantage may be gained by substituting either the Russian bath or the common box vapor-bath, with an aperture in the top to stick the head out of, and a close-fitting collar of soft rubber to prevent the escape of the steam. I must here refer to another means of alleviation, concerning which I can not bear the witness of personal experience, but which has been highly recommended to me. Even this brief sketch of treatment would be imperfect without at least a mention of it, and if it possesses all the value claimed for it by persons of judgment who have reported it to me, it will form an indispensable part of our apparatus on Lord's Island. This is an air-tight iron box of strongly-riveted boiler plates, with a bottom and top fifteen feet square and sides ten feet high; thick plate-glass bull's-eyes in each side sufficiently large to light the interior as clearly as an ordinary room; and a cast-iron door, six feet in height, shutting with a rubber-lined flange, so that all its joints are as air-tight as the rest of the box. Inside of the box, in the centre, stands a table, suitable for reading, writing, draughts, cards, chess, or games of any similiar kind, with comfortable chairs arranged around it corresponding in number to the people who for an hour or two could comfortably occupy the room. In one side of the box is a circular aperture connecting with an iron tube, which in its turn is joined to a powerful condensing air-pump outside, and on the other side is a pressure gauge with its index inside the box. Sufferers from severe neuralgic pain being admitted, the air-tight door is shut; they seat themselves, and the condensing pump is set in motion by an engine until the gauge within indicates a pressure of any amount desired. I am told that the severest cases of neuralgia have found instantaneous and thorough relief by the addition of six or eight atmospheres to the usual pressure of air upon the surface of the body. There is no reason why the condensation might not be continued to twenty or more, the increased density causing no uneasiness to those within the box, the same equilibrium between internal and outward pressure that exists everywhere in the air being maintained here. Persons who have made trial of this apparatus speak of the cessation of their pain as something magical; say they can feel it leaving them with every stroke of the pump; and although as yet we may not be able to offer a scientific explanation of the relief afforded, we can not fail to see its applicability to the case of the reforming opium-eater. If it does all that is claimed for it, it probably acts both mechanically and chemically--the pressure, even though imperceptible from its even distribution, affecting the body like the shampooing, kneading action of an attendant's hand, and the vastly increased volume of oxygen which it affords to the lungs and pores accelerating those processes of vital decomposition by which the causes of many a pain, but especially that of our patient, are to be removed. The shampooing just referred to, and previously mentioned as forming one process in the Russian bath, is another means of relief constantly in use while the patient is going through his terrible struggle. Our attendants upon Lord's Island are picked men. We do not proceed on the principle in such favor among most of our public institutions, asylums, water-cures, and the like, of procuring the very cheapest servants we can get, and thinking it an economical triumph to chuckle over if [Footnote: This is all that the "canny" business men who compose the managing boards of some of the first asylums in this country permit the heads of the institutions to offer those who must for twenty-three hours of the twenty-four be responsible for the moral, and physical well-being of a class of patients (the insane) who require, above all others, wisdom, tact, benevolence, courage, fidelity, and the highest virtues and capacities in those who attend them.] we can manage our patients with the aid of subordinates at twenty dollars a month. We know that in the long run it will pre-eminently _pay_ to engage the best people, and we pay the wages which such deserve--wages such as will ensure their quality. Our attendants are selected from the strongest, healthiest, best-tempered, most cheerful-minded, kindest-hearted, most industrious and faithful men and women we can find--people not afraid of work and indefatigable in it--people who understand that no office they can perform for the sick is degrading or menial, and who will not object, when the patient needs it, to lift him like a haby and rub him vigorously with their hands for an hour at a time. This rubbing our patient often finds the most heavenly relief, not only right after a bath, but at any hour of the day or night. There is, therefore, no hour of either during which Mr. Edgerton can not procure this means of relief from some servant upon duty. Applied to the back and legs especially, it is a sovereign soother for both the opium-eater's acute pain and that malaise which is only less terrible. In very severe cases it may be necessary to rub the patient for many consecutive hours, and in such cases It may be necessary either to assign an attendant to the patient's sole care, or, better yet, to have several attendants relieve each other in the manual labor. If the patient could afford and desired it, I should approve of his having his own private servant during the worst of the struggle to perform this labor for him, with the distinct understanding, however, that he was to be private only in the sense of devoting himself to this patient solely, and to receive all his orders from the head of the institution. The expense of such an arrangement would be trifling compared with the amount and intensity of agony which it would save, and in a case of no longer standing than Mr. Edgerton's need last only through the first fortnight or so after abandoning the drug. Another most important means of alleviation is the galvanic bath. House's patent is an excellent apparatus for the purpose; convenient in shape and size, comfortable, not easily deranged, affording a variety of simple and combined currents, adjustable so as to pass the current either through the whole body or along almost any nervous tract where it is especially wanted for the relief of local suffering like that of the opium sciatica, and manageable by any intelligent child who has ever watched attentively while it was getting put into operation. Many a sufferer who seems quite a discouraging subject under the dry method of administering galvanism responds to it at once transmitted through a bath, and in any case this is a no less beneficial than delightful way of using it. The skin is so much better a conductor when wet, and the distribution by water so uniform, that in most cases it may be pronounced the best way. The Turkish bath I have seen used with excellent result during the earlier days of suffering. It will seem almost incredible to any one who has taken a Turkish bath for other purposes, and knows the tax which it seemed to inflict upon his nervous system for the first few minutes after entering the heated chamber and till profuse perspiration came to his relief, when I say that I have seen a man brought to the bath in that almost dying state of prostration some pages back described as belonging to the acute attack of opiomania, at once subjected to the temperature of 130° F., and in ten minutes after to thirty degrees higher, not only without rapidly sinking into fatal collapse, but with a result of almost immediate and steady improvement. To my own great surprise his pulse began getting fuller, slower, steadier, and in every way more normal from the moment that the attendant laid him down upon his slab. When he came in he was obliged to be carried in the arms of his friends like an infant; his pulse one minute was 140, the next 40-60, or entirely imperceptible, and when fastest alarmingly thready; his countenance was corpse-like, he breathed nine or ten times a minute, and his general prostration so utter that he could scarcely speak even in a whisper. He stayed in the bath an hour and a quarter, in a streaming perspiration for the last forty minutes, and much of the time sleeping sweetly. He came out walking easily without assistance, and in the cool anteroom fell asleep again upon the lounge, not to wake for an hour longer. This one bath entirely broke up the attack. He kept on improving, and with the aid of beef-tea was well enough to go to business in a week. The value of the bath in treating Mr. Edgerton at present will he greatest when he suffers most severely from acute neuralgic pains in the legs and back, especially if the efficiency of the hot full-baths and vapors seem temporarily suspended through frequent use. His own feelings are the best criterion of its worth at any given time. It operates very differently on different people and in different conditions of the system. To some persons it is less debilitating than the use of hot water, and others, myself among the number, find it so excessively disagreeable from the apoplectic sensation it produces in their heads, and the difficulty of breathing which they suffer from it, that nothing but a discovery that it was the only means in their particular case of relieving sufferings like those of opium would induce them to enter it. Many persons profess to like it as well as the Russian (which, singularly enough, in no case have I ever known to produce the disagreeable feeling in head or lungs), and it certainly ranks with the foremost alleviatives of the opium suffering--the agonizing rythmical neuralgia of which I have spoken usually becoming magically lulled within two minutes from the time of entering the first heated chamber, and ceasing altogether as soon as the perspiration becomes thoroughly established. At Lord's Island our Turkish bath-room will immediately adjoin our Russian, and the temperature being supported by pipes from the same boiler which furnishes vapor to the other, will be no heavy addition to our expense in the way of apparatus. I don't know whether it is necessary to tell any body that the Turkish bath is merely an exposure of the naked body (with a wet turban around the head) to a dry heat varying from 110º F. to a temperature hot enough, to cook an egg hard--followed by ablutions and shampooings somewhat similar to those of the Russian bath. As it is our aim to _cure_ the opium-eater by bringing to bear upon his most complicated of all difficulties every means which has proved effectual in the treatment of any one of its particulars, however caused in other instances, we ask no questions of any appliance regarding its nativity, but take from the empiric whatever he has stumbled on of value as freely as the worthiest discoveries of the philosopher from him. There have been various attempts to erect into a _pathy_ every one of the applications we have already mentioned, and I shall close this brief outline of our therapeutic apparatus at Lord's Island with one more valuable method of relief and cure whose enthusiastic discoverers (or rather adapters) have outraged etymology worse than the regular practice by trying to build on their one good thing an entire system under the title of "Motorpathy." [Footnote: I see that some scholar has lately got hold of them and forced them to respect philological canons by kicking the mongrel out of their dictionary and calling themselves _Kinesipathists_, instead of the other Graeco-Latin barbarism.] The "_Movement Cure_" contains some very good ideas, which, like many of the Hydropathists', ought to be taken up by Science, in whose hands and their proper place they can do fine service. As we have found in the case of shampooing, a great deal of the suffering of any part can be taken out by giving it something else to do. A portion of the good done by rubbing an aching leg is no doubt accomplished by setting the nerve at work upon the sensations of pressure and of heat and so diverting it from that of pain, but another portion is probably due to the fact of motions producing changes, in the nature of mechanical and chemical decompositions, in the substance of the tissue; thus by a well known physiological law summoning a concentration of the nervous forces to the particular part. Nature is thus accelerated in her action there, and as that action is always toward cure (so long as life and hope exist), the nerves of the part are reinforced to act sanely. To be weak is to be miserable--to be strong is to be free from pain--thus the nerve's returning vigor eliminates its suffering. The fresh blood that is pumped into the part by motion brings about another set of ameliorating changes of more especial importance where the pain is caused by a local lesion instead of rather being sympathetic with the whole systematic debility. Whatever be our theory, the tenet that motion relieves pain, as a tenet, is as old as the "_back- straightening_" process used in some shires by the British turnip-hoers who on coming to the end of their rows lie down and let the rest of the women in the field walk over their toil-bent spine and cramped dorsal muscles, while as a fact it is as old as pain itself. On Lord's Island, therefore, we have a room fitted up with apparatus intended to give passive exercise to every part of the body which the pain of abandoning opium is especially likely to attack. Mr. Edgerton is suffering extremely, about the close of the third day after his last 1/2 grain dose of morphia, from the agonizing rythmical neuralgia of which I have spoken, throbbing from the loins to the feet; and although with good effect we have given him galvanism, shampooing, baths of several kinds, and a number of internal remedies, still, wishing to keep each of these appliances fresh in its potency, we make a change this time to the "movement-room." He is stripped to his shirt, dressing-gown, and drawers, and laid on his back along a comfortable stuffed-leather settee, running quite through whose bottom are a number of holes about four by three and a half inches. These holes are occupied by loose-fitting pistons which play vertically up through the cushion--lying level with it when at rest, and when in motion projecting about two inches above it at the height of their stroke. Motion is secured to them by crank connection with a light shaft running beneath the settee, revolved by a band-wheel, which in its turn connects by a belt with the small engine outside the building, by which all the drudgery of the house is performed. Mr. Edgerton is adjusted over the holes so that, in coming up, the pistons, which are covered with stuffed leather pads, strike him alternately on each side of the spine, from about the region of the kidneys to just beneath the shoulder-blade. The shifting of a lever throws the machine into gear, and for the next five minutes, or as long as he experiences relief, the artificial fists pummel and knead him at any rate of speed desired, according to the adjustment of a brake. This process over, if he still feels pain in the lower extremities, his foot is buckled upon an iron sole which oscillates in any direction according to its method of connection with the power, from side to side, so as to twist the leg about forty-five degrees each way, up and down, to imitate the trotting of the foot, or with a motion which combines several. A variety of other apparatus gives play to other muscles; but I have said enough to show the idea of its _modus operandi_. The passive exercise thus afforded is an admirable substitute for that active kind which in his first few days of deprivation the intensity of his agony often incapacitates him from taking. I have seen men at this period almost bent double from mere pain, and hobbling when they attempted to walk like subjects of inflammatory rheumatism. Their debility also is often so great as to prevent exercise, especially when the characteristic diarrhea has been for some days in operation, though different people differ astonishingly in this respect. I knew one case where an opium-eater of three years' habituation to the drug endured in its abandonment every conceivable distress without suffering from debility at all, as may be inferred from the fact that as his only way of making life tolerable he took a walk of twelve miles every morning while going through his trial. The majority, however, suffer not only pain but prostration of the most distressing character--a combination as terrible as can be conceived, since the former will not let the victim remain in one position for a single minute, and the latter takes away all his own control of his motion, so that he seems a mere helpless, buffeted mass of agony--an involuntary devil-possessed, devil-driven body, consciousness at its keenest, will at its deepest imbecility--almost fainting with fatigue, unable to limp across the room on legs which seem dislocated in every joint and broken in a thousand places, yet unable to stop tossing from side to side, and writhing like a trodden worm all night, all day, perhaps for weeks. "Oh!" I have heard the patient say, "would to God this made me _tired!_ healthily tired, so that I could fall into a minute's doze!" The apparatus I have just been describing meets this want. Sometimes while the leather and iron fists are pegging away and pummelling him at their hardest, he falls asleep on the machine! It has done for him all that he had not the strength to do for himself--tired him healthily. The remedies I have mentioned are capable of indefinite combinations. The head of an institution like Lord's Island will want them all, although any one given case may not require all of them. In the hands of a thoroughly scientific, skillful man, they form an armory of means with which such an amount of good can be done as beggars our imagination. Combined with the most faithful attention to the patient's diet--the establishment of healthful nutrition, so that as fast as those abnormal matters which have been clogging the system get cleared away by Nature's relentless processes of decomposition, fresh material may be soundly built up into the system to replace the strength which the fatal stimulant feigned--combined with vigilant, tender, patient nursing--the means described are probably, in many cases, adequate of themselves to restore any opium-eater who is salvable at all. Still, brief as this sketch is, and so far from making any pretensions to be an exhaustive treatise for the guidance of the profession, I should fail of presenting even a fair outline of the treatment which an unusually wide experience with opium-eaters has convinced me to be the true one, did I not add to the above a few words regarding the medicinal agents which are of value during the month of peculiar trial through which Mr. Edgerton is now passing. It is scarcely necessary to premise that no such thing as a succedaneum for opium is comprehended in the list of these agents. Any drug which would so nearly accomplish for the opium-eater what opium accomplishes that he would not miss the latter, must be nowise preferable to opium itself. Such a drug must be able to prevent the decompositions which cause the suffering; to continue that semi-paralysis of the organic functions in which opium's greatest fascination exists, a paralysis leaving the cerebral man free to exhaust all the vitality of the system in pleasant feelings, lofty imaginings, and aerial dreams, without a protest from the gauglionic man who lies a mere stupefied beggar without any share in the funds of the partnership wherewith to carry on the business of the stomach and bowels and heart, the kidneys and lungs and liver. It must be a drug that can prevent the re-awakening ol the nutritive and excretory processes--for it is these whose waking, seeing how late in the day it is, clamoring at the confusion in which they find affairs and at the immense quantity of behind-hand work suddenly thrown on them, together with that re-sharpening of long-dulled sensation by which the clamor comes into consciousness loud as the world must be to a totally deaf man suddenly presented with his hearing, which constitute the series of phenomena which we call pain. No! there is no such thing as a substitute for opium, save--more opium or death. And I do not know that I need say "_or_." Still, there are many alleviatives by which the suffering may be rendered more endurable--by which now and then our patient may be helped to catch a few moments of that heavenly unconsciousness which makes the nervous system stronger to fight the battle out to its blessed end--by which processes of Nature may be slowed when they get too fiery-forceful for human courage to endure, or accelerated when the pull seems likely to be such a long one as to kill or drive mad through sheer exhaustion. I have spoken of bromide of potassium. This in connection with the pack may in many cases wisely be continued throughout the whole progress of the case, and often hastens the restoration of general nervous equilibrium by many days, removing to a very pereptible degree that _hyperaesthesia_, that exaggerated sensation of all the natural processes normally unconscious, which continues to rob the sufferer of sleep long after acute pain is lulled. The greatest variety of opinions prevails upon the subject of cannabis and scutellaria. The principal objection to the cannabis lies in two facts. First, it is very difficult to obtain any two consecutive specimens of the same strength, even from the same manufacturer. Second, in its gum state it is exceedingly slow of digestion, and unlike opium not seeming to affect the system at all by direct absorption through the walls of the stomach, it is very slow in its action; the dose you give at 4 P.M. may not manifest itself till 9 or even midnight, and even then may still move so sluggishly that you get from it only a prolonged, dull, unpleasant effect instead of a rapid, favorable, and well-defined one. If it is given in the form of a fluid extract or tincture, its operation can be more definitely measured and counted on, but the amount of alcohol required to dissolve it is sufficient often to complicate its effects very prejudicially, while in any case the immense proportion of inert rubbish, gum, green extractive, woody fibre, and earthy residuum is so great as to be a severe tax on the digestive apparatus--often seriously to derange the stomach of the well man who uses it, and much more the exquisitely sensitive organ of the opium-eater, I might add a third objection-the fact that its effects vary so wonderfully in different people--but the physician can soon get over that by making his patient's constitution in the course of a few experiments with the drug the subject of his careful study. Both its lack of uniformity and its difficulty of exhibition may be nullified by using the active principle. It has been one of the _opprobria medicinæ_ that in a drug known to possess such wonderful properties so little advance has been made toward the isolation of the alkaloid or resinoid on which it depends for its potency. I have for years been endeavoring to interest some of our great manufacturing pharmaceutists in the attainment of a form--condensed, uniform, and portable--which should stand to cannabis in the same relation which morphia bears to opium. I believe that, in collaboration with my friend Dr. Frank A. Schlitz (a young German chemist of remarkable ability and with a brilliant professional career before him), I have at last attained this desideratum. I have no room or right here to dwell upon this interesting discovery further than to say that we have obtained a substance we suppose to bear the analogy desired and to deserve the title of _Cannabin_. If further examination shall establish our result, we have in the form of grayish-white acicular crystals a substance which stands to cannabis in nearly the same proportional relation of potency as niorphia to opium, and this most powerful remedy can be given as easily and certainly as any in the pharmacopoeia. If we are successful we shall ere long present it to the medical profession. With all the objections that prejudice cannabis now, I have still witnessed repeated proofs of its great value in lulling pain and procuring sleep, when all other means had failed with the reforming opium-eater, in doses of from one drachm to five of fluid extract or tincture (in some rare cases even larger), administered twice a day. Like opium it is only secondarily a soporific, and to produce this effect it should be given three or four hours before the intended bed-time. Then the earliest effect will be a cerebral stimulus, sufficient to divert the mind from the body's sufferings during day-light, and the reaction will come on in time to produce slumber of a more peaceful and refreshing character--more nearly like normal sleep in a strong, energetic constitution fatigued by healthy exertion, than that invoked by any drug I know of. It may sometimes be necessary, when the pain has become so maddening and been so protracted, to save the brain from the delirium of exhaustion (or even as I have known to happen, _death_) by procuring sleep for half an hour at any cost save that of a return. The most interesting patient and noble man whose sufferings compose the text and prompted the writing of my _Harper's Magazine_ article, died just as it was going to press through the exhaustion of a brain that had no true sleep for months. To avoid such a termination, sleep must be had at any cost, and even the danger attending chloroform or ether must be risked, though I need not point out the necessity of pre-eminent wisdom, and the constant personal presence and watchfulness of symptoms, in the physician during the time that the anaesthetic is inhaled. Of ether as much as three or four ounces may be inhaled during a single evening without much danger, if the precaution of alternating the inspirations from a saturated handkerchief with those of pure atmospheric air be carefully attended to. Chloroform is much more risky, and almost always tends to derange the stomach for several days after its use, still its action is certain in some cases where ether fails even to obscure sensation, and must be resorted to. A single ounce per evening, inhaled with rather longer intervals between whiffs, need not be a perilous dose, and in my experience has often conferred magical relief. Nitrous oxide is too transient to be of much use, but to the extent of twenty or thirty gallons may be used with pleasant effect and about five minutes of alleviation. Very different from these powerful agents is the humble, much-neglected _scutellaria_. It has been repeatedly pronounced inert, but is beyond all question a minor sedative of charmingly soothing properties, giving sleep, as I have sometimes witnessed, out of the very midst of intolerable rythmical neuralgic suffering--in one case the first sleep the patient had enjoyed since leaving off opium. It may be given with impunity in much larger doses, but on those constitutions with which it has any effect at all a table-spoonful is usually efficacious about ten minutes after its exhibition in the form of fluid extract. Lupulin, valerian, valerianate of zinc, and hyoscyamus (or with a much less tendency to derange the stomach, _hyoscyamin_ in 1/10 grain doses) all have their value in the less violent cases or toward the close of the struggle. Capsicum, in the five grain doses earlier mentioned, may often be relied on to counteract the tendency to frightful dreams arising from the exquisitely irritable state of the stomach in which the opium-habit leaves its victims. Our object with Mr. Edgerton during the month of struggle has been to assist Nature in eliminating the obsolete matters of the system by all the excretory passages as preparative to the rebuilding of his system on a healthy plan by new material. During most of the time he has suffered from a profuse and weakening diarrhea, but this we have not checked nor retarded, because it was Nature's indispensable condition precedent to the new man. His perspiration has been profuse, and that we have assisted for the same reason by every means in our power--all our baths and rubbings, our galvanism and medicine so far as used, have favored to the utmost the activity of his skin. Our repeated hot-baths have greatly relaxed him; he may have come to the end of his month so weak that he could not walk a quarter of a mile if his life depended on it. No matter. This, however alarming at first sight, is good practice. The more rapidly he has become relaxed, the further and the further we have banished pain, from whose presence a state of _tension_ is inseparable. We have not injured him. It is astonishing to any one accustomed to dealing only with the prostration of ordinary disease to see to what an extremity the opium-eater will bear to be reduced--what an extent of muscular debility he will even thrive under. If we look at him closely, we will see through all his pallor a healthy texture of skin--in all his languor a _soundness_ of vital operation which stands to his account for more valid strength, than if he could lift all the weights of Dr. Winship. Unless the opium-disease is complicated with some serious organic difficulty it is safe to carry on the process of relaxation as long as it relieves pain until the patient has just enough strength left to lift his eyelids. We have kept him up with the constant, faithful administration of beef-tea--half a tea-cupful, by slow sips, every hour or hour and a half that he was awake during day or night, but never rousing him for any purpose whatever if he showed any inclination to sleep. The nurse who does that when an opium-eater is going through his struggle should be discharged without warning. Sleep for ten minutes any time during this month is worth to nutrition alone more than a week's feeding. At the end of the month Mr. Edgerton can sleep with tolerable soundness for half an hour--even an hour at a time, and the sum of all his dozes amount to about four hours out of the twenty-four. He is still nervous, though the painful tigerish restlessness is gone. The pangs of his opium-neuralgia are also gone--or re-appear at long intervals, and much mitigated, to stay but a few minutes. He is in every respect on the upward grade. When his sleep becomes decidedly better, so that most of his night, despite frequent wakings, is consumed in it, he enters on an entirely different stage of his treatment. We stop pulling him down. We begin toning him up. To the description of this process I need devote but little room. It consists in a gradual cooling of the temperature of his baths--a substitution of the more bracing and invigorating for one after another of the relaxing and soothing forms of treatment. The hot full-bath is discontinued almost entirely, and we replace it by the use of a couple of pailfuls of water at 65-75, doused over the patient; or "the flow," in which the water spreads through a fan-shaped faucet like a funnel with its sides smashed flat and falls over his shoulders; or the salt sponge--all followed by vigorous towel and hand-rubbing until the skin is in a healthy glow. The pack we still employ, wringing the sheet out of water as near the natural temperature as he can comfortably and at once react from. It is an admirable means of equalizing the circulation of our patient and soothing his remaining nervous irritability. We encourage his being in the open air and sunshine as much as is compatible with the season and the weather, and favor his taking exercise in every unexhausting way possible. His appetite will by this time take care of his nutrition with-out much nursing, but we must listen to its caprices and provide it with every thing it thinks it would like. Our sedative medicines may in all likelihood be safely discontinued, and very little indeed of any kind be given him save tonics. In my experience, and that of all others to whom I have recommended them, the very best and most universally to be relied on at this stage are quinine, nux vomica tincture, and pyro-phosphate of iron, together with last, but most important of all, our invaluable stand-by, beef-tea. This may be made more palatable to the fastidious palate which has become palled by a steady month or two of it, by a few whole cloves and shreds of onion, but most people relish its delicious meaty flavor quite as well when it is simply made by chopping lean rump into pieces the size of dice, covering them with cold water in the proportion of about three pints to two pounds, letting the whole stand a couple of hours to soak in a saucepan, then drawing it forward upon the range, where it will gently simmer for ten minutes, and salting and pouring it out just as it comes up to a brisk boil. If the meat be just slightly browned on both sides (not broiled through, remember) before being chopped, the flavor of the tea is to many tastes still more exquisite. Beef-tea should be on the range, ready for patients in our house who need it, at all hours of the day and night, and all the year round. The whole cookery of our establishment must be of the very best. There is no greater mistake than that existing in most sanitary institutions-- stinting in the larder and the kitchen. The best meats, the most skillful, delicate cookery, the freshest of vegetables and fruit, the ability to tempt the capricious palate by all sorts of savory little made dishes--these should always characterize the table of a place where food has to do so much as with us in replacing the fatal supports of the narcotics and stimuli. It will be noticed that neither here nor in my mention of tonics have I referred to alcoholic stimulants. The omission has been intentional. My entire experience has gone to prove that the use of alcohol in any form with opium-eaters undergoing cure is worse than useless, almost invariably redoubling their suffering from loss of opium, and frequently rendering the craving for a return to their curse an incontrollable agony. I therefore leave it entirely out, alike of my pharmacop�ia and my bill of fare. A few final words about the attractions of the Island. Besides the amusements earlier mentioned, I propose that our perfected scheme shall contain every thing necessary to make the social life in-doors a delightful refuge, to all far enough advanced to take pleasure in society, from the dejection and introversion peculiarly characteristic of opium's revenges. This comprehends a suite of parlors where ladies and gentlemen can meet in the evening on just the same refined and pleasant terms that belong to an elegant home elsewhere; furnished with piano to dance to, play, or sing with; first-class pictures as fast as our own funds, aided by donations and bequests, can procure them for us--but bare wall or handsome paper or fresco rather than any daub to fill a panel; fine engravings in portfolios; cosy open fire-places; unblemished taste in furniture and carpets; in fine, an air of the highest ideal of a private family's handsomest assembling-room. I propose a billiard-room with a couple of tables--so neatly kept that both ladies and gentlemen can meet there to enjoy the game, a reading-room with the best papers and magazines and a good library, both to be enjoyed by guests of either sex; a smoking and card-room for the gentlemen. I propose to have our engine before mentioned do the work of taking our invalids up and down stairs by a lift, like those in use in some of our best hoteis, so that the highest rooms may be practically as near the baths, the dining and social apartments, and as eligible as any of the lower ones. And if feasible, I suggest that some at least of the rooms be arranged in small suites or pairs, so as to admit of a well daughter, son, sister, parent, wife, or brother coming to stay with any invalid who needs their loving presence and nursing. I have thus given as clear an outline as I can of my idea what such an institution as we have so often talked over ought to be, and described a method of treatment which has been successful wherever I have had the opportunity even to approach its realization. For its perfect realization an institution especially devoted to the noble work is a _sine qua non_. If the publication of this letter shall call to our aid in its establishment, by awakening to a sense of its necessity, any of our vigorous, public-spirited countrymen, I am sure we may live to see it flourishing on a sound basis and doing an incalculable amount of good which shall make mankind wonder how so many generations ever lived without it since opium began to scourge the world. I shall then, too, be even more indebted to you than I am now for the courtesy which has afforded so large a space in your book to Your Friend, FITZ HUGH LUDLOW. 
5433	----	WITHOUT A HOME E. P. ROE ILLUSTRATED PREFACE Just ten years ago I took my first hesitating and dubious steps toward authorship. My reception on the part of the public has been so much kinder than I expected, and the audience that has listened to my stories with each successive autumn has been so steadfast and loyal, that I can scarcely be blamed for entertaining a warm and growing regard for these unseen, unknown friends. Toward indifferent strangers we maintain a natural reticence, but as acquaintance ripens into friendship there is a mutual impulse toward an exchange of confidences. In the many kind letters received I have gratefully recognized this impulse in my readers, and am tempted by their interest to be a little garrulous concerning my literary life, the causes which led to it, and the methods of my work. Those who are indifferent can easily skip these preliminary pages, and those who are learning to care a little for the personality of him who has come to them so often with the kindling of the autumn fires may find some satisfaction in learning why he comes, and the motive, the spirit with which, in a sense, he ventures to be present at their hearths. One of the advantages of authorship is criticism; and I have never had reason to complain of its absence. My only regret is that I have not been able to make better use of it. I admit that both the praise and blame have been rather bewildering, but this confusion is undoubtedly due to a lack of the critical faculty. With one acute gentleman, however, who remarked that it "was difficult to account for the popularity of Mr. Roe's books," I am in hearty accord. I fully share in his surprise and perplexity. It may be that we at last have an instance of an effect without a cause. Ten years ago I had never written a line of a story, and had scarcely entertained the thought of constructing one. The burning of Chicago impressed me powerfully, and obedient to an impulse I spent several days among its smoking ruins. As a result, my first novel, "Barriers Burned Away," gradually took possession of my mind. I did not manufacture the story at all, for it grew as naturally as do the plants--weeds, some may suggest--on my farm. In the intervals of a busy and practical life, and also when I ought to have been sleeping, my imagination, unspurred, and almost undirected, spun the warp and woof of the tale, and wove them together. At first I supposed it would be but a brief story, which might speedily find its way into my own waste-basket, and I was on the point of burning it more than once. One wintry afternoon I read the few chapters then written to a friend in whose literary taste I had much confidence, and had her verdict been adverse they probably would have perished as surely as a callow germ exposed to the bitter storm then raging without. I am not sure, however, but that the impulse to write would have carried me forward, and that I would have found ample return for all the labor in the free play of my fancy, even though editors and publishers scoffed at the result. On a subsequent winter afternoon the incipient story passed through another peril. In the office of "The New York Evangelist" I read the first eight chapters of my blotted manuscript to Dr. Field and his associate editor, Mr. J. H. Dey. This fragment was all that then existed, and as I stumbled through my rather blind chirography I often looked askance at the glowing grate, fearing lest my friends in kindness would suggest that I should drop the crude production on the coals, where it could do neither me nor any one else further harm, and then go out into the world once more clothed in my right mind. A heavy responsibility rests on the gentlemen named, for they asked me to leave the manuscript for serial issue. From that hour I suppose I should date the beginning of my life of authorship. The story grew from eight into fifty-two chapters, and ran just one year in the paper, my manuscript often being ready but a few pages in advance of publication. I wrote no outline for my guidance; I merely let the characters do as they pleased, and work out their own destiny. I had no preparation for my work beyond a careful study of the topography of Chicago and the incidents of the fire. For nearly a year my chief recreation was to dwell apart among the shadows created by my fancy, and I wrote when and where I could--on steamboats and railroad cars, as well as in my study. In spite of my fears the serial found readers, and at last I obtained a publisher. When the book appeared I suppose I looked upon it much as a young father looks upon his first child. His interest in it is intense, but he knows well that its future is very doubtful. It appears to me, however, that the true impulse toward authorship does not arise from a desire to please any one, but rather from a strong consciousness of something definite to say, whether people will listen or not. I can honestly assert that I have never manufactured a novel, and should I do so I am sure it would be so wooden and lifeless that no one would read it. My stories have come with scarcely any volition on my part, and their characters control me. If I should move them about like images they would be but images. In every book they often acted in a manner just the opposite from that which I had planned. Moreover, there are unwritten stories in my mind, the characters of which are becoming almost as real as the people I meet daily. While composing narratives I forget everything and live in an ideal world, which nevertheless is real for the time. The fortunes of the characters affect me deeply, and I truly believe that only as I feel strongly will the reader be interested. A book, like a bullet, can go only as far as the projecting force carries it. The final tests of all literary and art work are an intelligent public and time. We may hope, dream, and claim what we please, but these two tribunals will settle all values; therefore the only thing for an author or artist to do is to express his own individuality clearly and honestly, and submit patiently and deferentially to these tests. In nature the lichen has its place as truly as the oak. I will say but a few words in regard to the story contained in this volume. It was announced two years ago, but I found that I could not complete it satisfactorily. In its present form it has been almost wholly recast, and much broadened in its scope. It touches upon several modern and very difficult problems. I have not in the remotest degree attempted to solve them, but rather have sought to direct attention to them. In our society public opinion is exceedingly powerful. It is the torrent that sweeps away obstructing evils. The cleansing tide is composed originally of many rills and streamlets, and it is my hope that this volume may add a little to that which at last is irresistible. I can say with sincerity that I have made my studies carefully and patiently, and when dealing with practical phases of city life I have evolved very little from my own inner consciousness. I have visited scores of typical tenements; I have sat day after day on the bench with the police judges, and have visited the station-houses repeatedly. There are few large retail shops that I have not entered many times, and I have conversed with both the employers and employes. It is a shameful fact that, in the face of a plain statute forbidding the barbarous regulation, saleswomen are still compelled to stand continuously in many of the stores. On the intensely hot day when our murdered President was brought from Washington to the sea-side, I found many girls standing wearily and uselessly because of this inhuman rule. There was no provision for their occasional rest. Not for a thousand dollars would I have incurred the risk and torture of standing through that sultry day. There are plenty of shops in the city which are now managed on the principles of humanity, and such patronage should be given to these and withdrawn from the others as would teach the proprietors that women are entitled to a little of the consideration that is so justly associated with the work of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Mr. Bergh deserves praise for protecting even a cat from cruelty; but all the cats in the city unitedly could not suffer as much as the slight growing girl who must stand during a long hot day. I trust the reader will note carefully the Appendix at the close of this book. It will soon be discovered that the modern opium or morphia habit has a large place in this volume. While I have tried to avoid the style of a medical treatise, which would be in poor taste in a work of fiction, I have carefully consulted the best medical works and authorities on the subject, and I have conversed with many opium slaves in all stages of the habit. I am sure I am right in fearing that in the morphia hunger and consumption one of the greatest evils of the future is looming darkly above the horizon of society. Warnings against this poison of body and soul cannot be too solemn or too strong. So many have aided me in the collection of my material that any mention of names may appear almost invidious; but as the reader will naturally think that the varied phases of the opium habit are remote from my experience, I will say that I have been guided in my words by trustworthy physicians like Drs. E. P. Fowler, of New York; Louis Seaman, chief of staff at the Charity Hospital; Wm. H. Vail, and many others. I have also read such parts of my MS. as touched on this subject to Dr. H. K. Kane, the author of two works on the morphia habit. This novel appeared as a serial in the "Congregationalist" of Boston, and my acknowledgments are due to the editors and publishers of this journal for their confidence in taking the story before it was written and for their uniform courtesy. I can truly say that I have bestowed more labor on this book than upon any which have preceded it; for the favor accorded me by the public imposes the strongest obligation to be conscientious in my work. CONTENTS I. ONE GIRL'S IDEAL OF LIFE II. WEAKNESS III. CONFIDENTIAL IV. "PITILESS WAVES" V. THE RUDIMENTS OF A MAN VI. ROGER DISCOVERS A NEW TYPE VII. COMPARISONS VIII. CHANGES IX. NEITHER BOY NOR MAN X. A COUNCIL XI. A SHADOW XII. VIEWLESS FETTERS XIII. A SCENE BENEATH THE HEMLOCKS XIV. THE OLD MANSION XV. "WELCOME HOME" XVI. BELLE AND MILDRED XVII. BELLE LAUNCHES HERSELF XVIII. "I BELIEVE IN YOU" XIX. BELLE JARS THE "SYSTEM" XX. SEVERAL QUIET FORCES AT WORK XXI. "HE'S A MAN" XXII. SKILLED LABOR XXIII. THE OLD ASTRONOMER XXIV. ROGER REAPPEARS XXV. THE DARK SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS XXVI. WAXING AND WANING MANHOOD XXVII. A SLAVE XXVIII. NEW YORK'S HUMANITY XXIX. THE BEATITUDES OF OPIUM XXX. THE SECRET VICE REVEALED XXXI. AN OPIUM MANIAC'S CHRISTMAS XXXII. A BLACK CONSPIRACY XXXIII. MILDRED IN A PRISON CELL XXXIV. "A WISE JUDGE" XXXV. "I AM SO PERPLEXED" XXXVI. A WOMAN'S HEART XXXVII. STRONG TEMPTATION XXXVIII. NO "DARK CORNERS" XXXIX. "HOME, SWEET HOME" XL. NEIGHBORS XLI. GLINTS OF SUNSHINE XLII. HOPES GIVEN AND SLAIN XLIII. WAS BELLE MURDERED XLIV. THE FINAL CONSOLATIONS OF OPIUM XLV. MOTHER AND SON XLVI. A FATAL ERROR XLVII. LIGHT AT EVENTIDE XLVIII. "GOOD ANGEL OF GOD" XLIX. HOME APPENDIX WITHOUT A HOME CHAPTER I ONE GIRL'S IDEAL OF LIFE It was an attractive picture that Martin Jocelyn looked upon through the open doorway of his parlor. His lively daughter Belle had invited half a score of her schoolmates to spend the evening, and a few privileged brothers had been permitted to come also. The young people were naturally selecting those dances which had some of the characteristics of a romp, for they were at an age when motion means enjoyment. Miss Belle, eager and mettlesome, stood waiting for music that could scarcely be lighter or more devoid of moral quality than her own immature heart. Life, at that time, had for her but one great desideratum--fun; and with her especial favorites about her, with a careful selection of "nice brothers," canvassed with many pros and cons over neglected French exercises, she had the promise of plenty of it for a long evening, and her dark eyes glowed and cheeks flamed at the prospect. Impatiently tapping the floor with her foot, she looked toward her sister, who was seated at the piano. Mildred Jocelyn knew that all were waiting for her; she instinctively felt the impatience she did not see, and yet could not resist listening to some honeyed nonsense that her "friend" was saying. Ostensibly, Vinton Arnold was at her side to turn the leaves of the music, but in reality to feast his eyes on beauty which daily bound him in stronger chains of fascination. Her head drooped under his words, but only as the flowers bend under the dew and rain that give them life. His passing compliment was a trifle, but it seemed like the delicate touch to which the subtle electric current responds. From a credulous, joyous heart a crimson tide welled up into her face and neck; she could not repress a smile, though she bowed her head in girlish shame to hide it. Then, as if the light, gay music before her had become the natural expression of her mood, she struck into it with a brilliancy and life that gave even Belle content. Arnold saw the pleasure his remark had given, and surmised the reason why the effect was so much greater than the apparent cause. For a moment an answering glow lighted up his pale face, and then, as if remembering something, he sighed deeply; but in the merry life which now filled the apartments a sigh stood little chance of recognition. The sigh of the master of the house, however, was so deep and his face so clouded with care and anxiety as he turned from it all, that his wife, who at that moment met him, was compelled to note that something was amiss. "Martin, what is it?" she asked. He looked for a moment into her troubled blue eyes, and noted how fair, delicate, and girlish she still appeared in her evening dress. He knew also that the delicacy and refinement of feature were but the reflex of her nature, and, for the first time in his life, he wished that she were a strong, coarse woman. "No matter, Fanny, to-night. See that the youngsters have a good time," and he passed hastily out. "He's worrying about those stupid business matters again," she said, and the thought seemed to give much relief. Business matters were masculine, and she was essentially feminine. Her world was as far removed from finance as her laces from the iron in which her husband dealt. A little boy of four years of age and a little girl of six, whose tiny form was draped in such gossamer-like fabrics that she seemed more fairy-like than human, were pulling at her dress, eager to enter the mirth-resounding parlors, but afraid to leave her sheltering wing. Mrs. Jocelyn watched the scene from the doorway, where her husband had stood, without his sigh. Her motherly heart sympathized with Belle's abounding life and fun, and her maternal pride was assured by the budding promise of a beauty which would shine pre-eminent when the school-girl should become a belle in very truth. But her eyes rested on Mildred with wistful tenderness. Her own experience enabled her to interpret her daughter's manner, and to understand the ebb and flow of feeling whose cause, as yet, was scarcely recognized by the young girl. The geniality of Mrs. Jocelyn's smile might well assure Vinton Arnold that she welcomed his presence at her daughter's side, and yet, for some reason, the frank, cordial greeting in the lady's eyes and manner made him sigh again. He evidently harbored a memory or a thought that did not accord with the scene or the occasion. Whatever it was it did not prevent him from enjoying to the utmost the pleasure he ever found in the presence of Mildred. In contrast with Belle she had her mother's fairness and delicacy of feature, and her blue eyes were not designed to express the exultation and pride of one of society's flattered favorites. Indeed it was already evident that a glance from Arnold was worth more than the world's homage. And yet it was comically pathetic--as it ever is--to see how the girl tried to hide the "abundance of her heart." "Millie is myself right over again," thought Mrs. Jocelyn; "hardly in society before in a fair way to be out of it. Beaux in general have few attractions for her. Belle, however, will lead the young men a chase. If I'm any judge, Mr. Arnold's symptoms are becoming serious. He's just the one of all the world for Millie, and could give her the home which her style of beauty requires--a home in which not a common or coarse thing would be visible, but all as dainty as herself. How I would like to furnish her house! But Martin always thinks he's so poor." Mrs. Jocelyn soon left the parlor to complete her arrangements for an elegant little supper, and she complacently felt that, whatever might be the tribulations of the great iron firm down town, her small domain was serene with present happiness and bright with promise. While the vigorous appetites of the growing boys and girls were disposing of the supper, Arnold and Mildred rather neglected their plates, finding ambrosia in each other's eyes, words, and even intonations. Now that they had the deserted parlor to themselves, Mildred seemed under less constraint. "It was very nice of you," she said, "to come and help me entertain Belle's friends, especially when they are all so young." "Yes," he replied. "I am a happy monument of self-sacrifice." "But not a brazen one," she added quickly. "No, nor a bronze one, either," he said, and a sudden gloom gathered in his large dark eyes. She had always admired the pallor of his face. "It set off his superb brown eyes and heavy mustache so finely," she was accustomed to say. But this evening for some reason she wished that there was a little more bronze on his cheek and decision in his manner. His aristocratic pallor was a trifle too great, and he seemed a little frail to satisfy even her ideal of manhood. She said, in gentle solicitude, "You do not look well this spring. I fear you are not very strong." He glanced at her quickly, but in her kindly blue eyes and in every line of her lovely face he saw only friendly regard--perhaps more, for her features were not designed for disguises. After a moment he replied, with a quiet bitterness which both pained and mystified her: "You are right. I am not strong." "But summer is near," she resumed earnestly. "You will soon go to the country, and will bring back this fall bronze in plenty, and the strength of bronze. Mother says we shall go to Saratoga. That is one of your favorite haunts, I believe, so I shall have the pleasure, perhaps, of drinking 'your very good health' some bright morning before breakfast. Which is your favorite spring?" "I do not know. I will decide after I have learned your choice." "That's an amiable weakness. I think I shall like Saratoga. The great hotels contain all one wishes for amusement. Then everything about town is so nice, pretty, and sociable. The shops, also, are fine. Too often we have spent our summers in places that were a trifle dreary. Mountains oppress me with a sense of littleness, and their wildness frightens me. The ocean is worse still. The moment I am alone with it, such a lonely, desolate feeling creeps over me--oh, I can't tell you! I fear you think I am silly and frivolous. You think I ought to be inspired by the shaggy mountains and wild waves and all that. Well, you may think so--I won't tell fibs. I don't think mother is frivolous, and she feels as I do. We are from the South, and like things that are warm, bright, and sociable. The ocean always seemed to me so large and cold and pitiless--to care so little for those in its power." "In that respect it's like the world, or rather the people in it--" "Oh, no, no!" she interrupted eagerly; "it is to the world of people I am glad to escape from these solitudes of nature. As I said, the latter, with their vastness, power, and, worse than all, their indifference, oppress me, and make me shiver with a vague dread. I once saw a ship beaten to pieces by the waves in a storm. It was on the coast near where we were spending the summer. Some of the people on the vessel were drowned, and their cries ring in my ears to this day. Oh, it was piteous to see them reaching out their hands, but the great merciless waves would not stop a moment, even when a little time would have given the lifeboats a chance to save the poor creatures. The breakers just struck and pounded the ship until it broke into pieces, and then tossed the lifeless body and broken wood on the shore as if one were of no more value than the other. I can't think of it without shuddering, and I've hated the sea ever since, and never wish to go near it again." "You have unconsciously described this Christian city," said Arnold, with a short laugh. "What a cynic you are to-night! You condemn all the world, and find fault even with yourself--a rare thing in cynics, I imagine. As a rule they are right, and the universe wrong." "I have not found any fault with you," he said, in a tone that caused her long eyelashes to veil the pleasure she could not wholly conceal. "I hope the self-constraint imposed by your courtesy is not too severe for comfort. I also understand the little fiction of excepting present company. But I cannot help remembering that I am a wee bit of the world and very worldly; that is, I am very fond of the world and all its pretty follies. I like nice people much better than savage mountains and heartless waves." "And yet you are not what I should call a society girl, Miss Millie." "I'm glad you think so. I've no wish to win that character. Fashionable society seems to me like the sea, as restless and unreasoning, always on the go, and yet never going anywhere. I know lots of girls who go here and there and do this and that with the monotony with which the waves roll in and out. Half the time they act contrary to their wishes and feelings, but they imagine it the thing to do, and they do it till they are tired and bored half to death." "What, then, is your ideal of life?" Her head drooped a little lower, and the tell-tale color would come as she replied hesitatingly, and with a slight deprecatory laugh: "Well, I can't say I've thought it out very definitely. Plenty of real friends seem to me better than the world's stare, even though there's a trace of admiration in it Then, again, you men so monopolize the world that there is not much left for us poor women to do; but I have imagined that to create a lovely home, and to gather in it all the beauty within one's reach, and just the people one best liked, would be a very congenial life-work for some women. That is what mother is doing for us, and she seems very happy and contented--much more so than those ladies who seek their pleasures beyond their homes. You see I use my eyes, Mr. Arnold, even if I am not antiquated enough to be wise." His look had grown so wistful and intent that she could not meet it, but averted her face as she spoke. Suddenly he sprang up, and took her hand with a pressure all too strong for the "friend" she called him, as he said: "Miss Millie, you are one of a thousand. Good-night." For a few moments she sat where he left her. What did he mean? Had she revealed her heart too plainly? His manner surely had been unmistakable, and no woman could have doubted the language of his eyes. "But some constraint," she sighed, "ties his tongue." The more she thought it over, however--and what young girl does not live over such interviews a hundred times--the more convinced she became that her favorite among the many who sought her favor gave as much to her as she to him; and she was shrewd enough to understand that the nearer two people exchange evenly in these matters the better it is for both. Her last thought that night was, "To make a home for him would be happiness indeed. How much life promises me!" CHAPTER II WEAKNESS Vinton Arnold's walk down Fifth Avenue was so rapid as to indicate strong perturbation. At last he entered a large house of square, heavy architecture, a creation evidently of solid wealth in the earlier days of the thoroughfare's history. There was something in his step as he crossed the marble hall to the hat-rack and then went up the stairway that caused his mother to pass quickly from her sitting-room that she might intercept him. After a moment's scrutiny she said, in a low, hard tone: "You have spent the evening with Miss Jocelyn again." He made no reply. "Are you a man of honor?" His pallid face crimsoned instantly, and his hands clenched with repressed feeling, but he still remained silent. Neither did he appear to have the power to meet his mother's cold, penetrating glance. "It would seem," she resumed, in the same quiet, incisive tone, "that my former suggestions have been unheeded. I fear that I must speak more plainly. You will please come with me for a few moments." With evident reluctance he followed her to a small apartment, furnished richly, but with the taste and elegance of a past generation. He had become very pale again, but his face wore the impress of pain and irresolution rather than of sullen defiance or of manly independence. The hardness of the gold that had been accumulating in the family for generations had seemingly permeated the mother's heart, for the expression of her son's face softened neither her tone nor manner. And yet not for a moment could she be made to think of herself as cruel, or even stern. She was simply firm and sensible in the performance of her duty. She was but maintaining the traditional policy of the family, and was conscious that society would thoroughly approve of her course. Chief of all, she sincerely believed that she was promoting her son's welfare, but she had not Mrs. Jocelyn's gentle ways of manifesting solicitude. After a moment of oppressive silence, she began: "Perhaps I can best present this issue in its true light by again asking, Are you a man of honor?" "Is it dishonorable," answered her son irritably, "to love a pure, good girl?" "No," said his mother, in the same quiet, measured voice; "but it may be very great folly and a useless waste. It is dishonorable, however, to inspire false hopes in a girl's heart, no matter who she is. It is weak and dishonorable to hover around a pretty face like a poor moth that singes its wings." In sudden, passionate appeal, he exclaimed, "If I can win Miss Jocelyn, why cannot I marry her? She is as good as she is beautiful. If you knew her as I do you would be proud to call her your daughter. They live very prettily, even elegantly--" By a simple, deprecatory gesture Mrs. Arnold made her son feel that it was useless to add another word. "Vinton," she said, "a little reason in these matters is better than an indefinite amount of sentimental nonsense. You are now old enough to be swayed by reason, and not to fume and fret after the impossible like a child. Neither your father nor I have acted hastily in this matter. It was a great trial to discover that you had allowed your fancy to become entangled below the circle in which it is your privilege to move, and I am thankful that my other children have been more considerate. In a quiet, unobtrusive way we have taken pains to learn all about the Jocelyns. They are comparative strangers in the city. Mr. Jocelyn is merely a junior partner in a large iron firm, and from all your father says I fear he has lived too elegantly for his means. That matter will soon be tested, however, for his firm is in trouble and will probably have to suspend. With your health, and in the face of the fierce competition in this city, are you able to marry and support a penniless girl? If, on the contrary, you propose to support a wife on the property that now belongs to your father and myself, our wishes should have some weight. I tell you frankly that our means, though large, are not sufficient to make you all independent and maintain the style to which you have been accustomed. With your frail health and need of exemption from care and toil, you must marry wealth. Your father is well satisfied that whoever allies himself to this Jocelyn family may soon have them all on his hands to support. We decline the risk of burdening ourselves with these unknown, uncongenial people. Is there anything unreasonable in that? Because you are fascinated by a pretty face, of which there are thousands in this city, must we be forced into intimate associations with people that are wholly distasteful to us? This would be a poor return for having shielded you so carefully through years of ill health and feebleness." The young man's head drooped lower and lower as his mother spoke, and his whole air was one of utter despondency. She waited for his reply, but for a few moments he did not speak. Suddenly he looked up, with a reckless, characteristic laugh, and said: "The Spartans were right in destroying the feeble children. Since I am under such obligations, I cannot resist your logic, and I admit that it would be poor taste on my part to ask you to support for me a wife not of your choosing." "'Good taste' at least should have prevented such a remark. You can choose for yourself from a score of fine girls of your own station in rank and wealth." "Pardon me, but I would rather not inflict my weakness on any of the score." "But you would inflict it on one weak in social position and without any means of support." "She is the one girl that I have met with who seemed both gentle and strong, and whose tastes harmonize with my own. But you don't know her, and never will. You have only learned external facts about the Jocelyns, and out of your prejudices have created a family of underbred people that does not exist. Their crime of comparative poverty I cannot dispute. I have not made the prudential inquiries which you and father have gone into so carefully. But your logic is inexorable. As you suggest, I could not earn enough myself to provide a wife with hairpins. The slight considerations of happiness, and the fact that Miss Jocelyn might aid me in becoming something more than a shadow among men, are not to be urged against the solid reasons you have named." "Young people always give a tragic aspect to these crude passing fancies. I have known 'blighted happiness' to bud and blossom again so often that you must pardon me if I act rather on the ground of experience and good sense. An unsuitable alliance may bring brief gratification and pleasure, but never happiness, never lasting and solid content." "Well, mother, I am not strong enough to argue with you, either in the abstract or as to these 'wise saws' which so mangle my wretched self," and with the air of one exhausted and defeated he languidly went to his room. Mrs. Arnold frowned as she muttered, "He makes no promise to cease visiting the girl." After a moment she added, even more bitterly, "I doubt whether he could keep such a promise; therefore my will must supply his lack of decision;" and she certainly appeared capable of making good this deficiency in several human atoms. If she could have imparted some of her firmness and resolution to Martin Jocelyn, they would have been among the most useful gifts a man ever received. As the stanchness of a ship is tested by the storm, so a crisis in his experience was approaching which would test his courage, his fortitude, and the general soundness of his manhood. Alas! the test would find him wanting. That night, for the first time in his life, he came home with a step a trifle unsteady. Innocent Mrs. Jocelyn did not note that anything was amiss. She was busy putting her home into its usual pretty order after the breezy, gusty evening always occasioned by one of Belle's informal companies. She observed that her husband had recovered more than his wonted cheerfulness, and seemed indeed as gay as Belle herself. Lounging on a sofa, he laughed at his wife and petted her more than usual, assuring her that her step was as light, and that she still looked as young and pretty as any of the girls who had tripped through the parlors that evening. The trusting, happy wife grew so rosy with pleasure, and her tread was so elastic from maternal pride and exultation at the prospects of her daughters, that his compliments seemed scarcely exaggerated. "Never fear, Nan," he said, in a gush of feeling; "I'll take care of you whatever happens," and the glad smile she turned upon him proved that she doubted his words no more than her own existence. They were eminently proper words for a husband to address to his wife, but the circumstances under which they were uttered made them maudlin sentiment rather than a manly pledge. As spoken, they were so ominous that the loving woman might well have trembled and lost her girlish flush. But even through the lurid hopes and vague prospects created by dangerous stimulants, Mr. Jocelyn saw, dimly, the spectre of coming trouble, and he added: "But, Nan, we must economize--we really must." "Foolish man!" laughed his wife; "always preaching economy, but never practicing it." "Would to God I had millions to lavish on you!" he exclaimed, with tears of mawkish feeling and honest affection mingled as they never should in a true man's eyes. "Lavish your love, Martin," replied the wife, "and I'll be content." That night she laid her head upon her pillow without misgiving. Mrs. Jocelyn was the daughter of a Southern planter, and in her early home had been accustomed to a condition of chronic financial embarrassment and easy-going, careless abundance. The war had swept away her father and brothers with the last remnant of the mortgaged property. Young Jocelyn's antecedents had been somewhat similar, and they had married much as the birds pair, without knowing very definitely where or how the home nest would be constructed. He, however, had secured a good education, and was endowed with fair business capacities. He was thus enabled for a brief time before the war to provide a comfortable support in a Southern city for his wife and little daughter Mildred, and the fact that he was a gentleman by birth and breeding gave him better social advantages than mere wealth could have obtained. At the beginning of the struggle he was given a commission in the Confederate army, but with the exception of a few slight scratches and many hardships escaped unharmed. After the conflict was over, the ex-officer came to the North, against which he had so bravely and zealously fought, and was pleased to find that there was no prejudice worth naming against him on this account. His good record enabled him to obtain a position in a large iron warehouse, and in consideration of his ability to control a certain amount of Southern trade he was eventually given an interest in the business. This apparent advancement induced him to believe that he might safely rent, in one of the many cross-streets up town, the pretty home in which we find him. The fact that their expenses had always a little more than kept pace with their income did not trouble Mrs. Jocelyn, for she had been accustomed to an annual deficit from childhood. Some way had always been provided, and she had a sort of blind faith that some way always would be. Mr. Jocelyn also had fallen into rather soldier-like ways, and after being so free with Confederate scrip, with difficulty learned the value of paper money of a different color. Moreover, in addition to a certain lack of foresight and frugal prudence, bred by army life and Southern open-heartedness, he cherished a secret habit which rendered a wise, steadily maintained policy of thrift wellnigh impossible. About two years before the opening of our story he had been the victim of a painful disease, the evil effects of which did not speedily pass away. For several weeks of this period, to quiet the pain, he was given morphia powders; their effects were so agreeable that they were not discontinued after the physician ceased to prescribe them. The subtle stimulant not only banished the lingering traces of suffering, but enabled him to resume the routine of business with comparative ease much sooner than he had expected. Thus he gradually drifted into the habitual use of morphia, taking it as a panacea for every ill. Had he a toothache, a rheumatic or neuralgic twinge, the drug quieted the pain. Was he despondent from any cause, or annoyed by some untoward event, a small white powder soon brought hopefulness and serenity. When emergencies occurred which promised to tax his mental and physical powers, opium appeared to give a clearness and elasticity of mind and a bodily vigor that was almost magical, and he availed himself of the deceptive potency more and more often. The morbid craving which the drug inevitably engenders at last demanded a daily supply. For months he employed it in moderate quantities, using it as thousands do quinine, wine, or other stimulants, without giving much thought to the matter, sincerely intending, however, to shake off the habit as soon as he felt a little stronger and was more free from business cares. Still, as the employment of the stimulant grew into a habit, he became somewhat ashamed of it, and maintained his indulgence with increasing secrecy--a characteristic rarely absent from this vice. Thus it can be understood that his mind had ceased to possess the natural poise which would enable him to manage his affairs in accordance with some wisely matured system of expenditure. In times of depression he would demand the most rigid economy, and again he would seem careless and indifferent and preoccupied. This financial vacillation was precisely what his wife had been accustomed to in her early home, and she thoughtlessly took her way without much regard to it. He also had little power of saying No to his gentle wife, and an appealing look from her blue eyes would settle every question of economy the wrong way. Next year they would be more prudent; at present, however, there were some things that it would be very nice to have or to do. But, alas, Mrs. Jocelyn had decided that, for Mildred's sake, the coming summer must be spent at Saratoga. In vain her husband had told her that he did not see how it was possible. She would reply, "Now, Martin, be reasonable. You know Mr. Arnold spends his summers there. Would you spoil Millie's chances of making one of the best matches in the city?" He would shrug his shoulders and wonder where the money was to come from. Meanwhile he knew that his partners were anxious. They had been strong, and had endured the evil times for years without wavering, but now were compelled to obtain a credit more and more extended, in the hope of tiding themselves over the long period of depression. This increasing business stagnation occasioned a deepening anxiety to her husband and a larger resort to his sustaining stimulant. While he had no sense of danger worth naming, he grew somewhat worried by his dependence on the drug, and it was his honest purpose to gradually abandon it as soon as the financial pressure lifted and he could breathe freely in the safety of renewed commercial prosperity. Thus the weeks and months slipped by, finding him more completely involved in the films of an evil web, and more intent than ever upon hiding the fact from every one, especially his wife and children. He had returned on the evening of Belle's company, with fears for the worst. The scene in his pretty and happy home, in contrast with the bitter experiences that might be near at hand, so oppressed him with foreboding and trouble that he went out and weakly sought temporary respite and courage in a larger amount of morphia than he had ever yet taken. While off his guard from the resulting exaltation, he met a business acquaintance and was led by him to indulge in wine also, with the results already narrated. CHAPTER III CONFIDENTIAL Martin Jocelyn awoke with a shiver. He did not remember that he had been dreaming, but a dull pain in his head and a foreboding of heart had at last so asserted themselves as to banish the unconsciousness of sleep. His prospects had even a more sombre hue than the cold gray of the morning. All the false prismatic colors of the previous evening had faded, and no serene, steady light had taken their place. The forced elation was followed--as is ever the case--by a deeper despondency. The face of his sleeping wife was so peaceful, so expressive of her utter unconsciousness of impending disaster, that he could not endure its sight. He felt himself to be in no condition to meet her waking eyes and explain the cause of his fears. A sense of shame that he had been so weak the evening before also oppressed him, and he yielded to the impulse to gain a day before meeting her trusting or questioning gaze. Something might occur which would give a better aspect to his affairs, and at any rate, if the worst must come, he could explain with better grace in the evening than in his present wretched mood, that would prove too sharp a contrast with his recent gayety. He therefore dressed silently and hastily, and left a note saying that a business engagement required his early departure. "She will have at least one more serene day before the storm," he muttered. "Now wasn't that kind and thoughtful of papa to let us all sleep late after the company!" said Mrs. Jocelyn to Mildred. "He went away, too, without his breakfast," and in her gentle solicitude she scarcely ate any herself. But weakly hiding trouble for a day was not kindness. The wife and daughter, who should have helped to take in sail in preparation for the threatened storm, were left unconscious of its approach. They might have noticed that Mr. Jocelyn had been more than usually anxious throughout the spring, but they knew so little of business and its risks, that they did not realize their danger. "Men always worry about their affairs," said Mrs. Jocelyn. "It's a way they have." Mr. Arnold's visits and manner were much more congenial topics, and as a result of the entire confidence existing between mother and daughter, they dwelt at length on these subjects. "Mamma," said Mildred, "you must not breathe of it to a soul--not even to papa yet. It would hurt me cruelly to have it known that I think so much of one who has not spoken plainly--that is, in words. I should be blind indeed if I did not understand the language of his eyes, his tones, and manner. And yet, and yet--mamma, it isn't wrong for me to love--to think so much of him before he speaks, is it? Dearly as I--well, not for the world would I seem or even be more forward than a girl should. I fear his people are too proud and rich to recognize us; and--and--he says so little about them. I can never talk to him or any one without making many references to you and papa. I have thought that he even avoided speaking of his family." "We have not yet been made acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Arnold," said Mrs. Jocelyn meditatively. "It is true we attend the same church, and it was there that Vinton saw you, and was led to seek an introduction. I'm sure we have not angled for him in any indelicate way. You met him in the mission school and in other ways, as did the other young ladies of the church. He seemed to single you out, and asked permission to call. He has been very gentlemanly, but you equally have been the self-respecting lady. I do not think you have once overstepped the line of a proper reserve. It isn't your nature to do such a thing, if I do say it. She is a silly girl who ever does, for men don't like it, and I don't blame them. Your father was a great hunter in the South, Millie, and he has often said since that I was the shyest game he ever followed. But," she added, with a low, sweet laugh, "how I did want to be caught! I can see now," she continued, with a dreamy look back into the past, "that it was just the way to be caught, for if I had turned in pursuit of him he would have run away in good earnest. There are some girls who have set their caps for your handsome Mr. Arnold who don't know this. I am glad to say, however, that you take the course you do, not because you know better, but because you ARE better--because you have not lost in city life the shy, pure nature of the wild flowers that were your early playmates. Vinton Arnold is the man to discover and appreciate this truth, and you have lost nothing by compelling him to seek you in your own home, or by being so reserved when abroad." While her mother's words greatly reassured Mildred, her fair face still retained its look of anxious perplexity. "I have rarely met Mrs. Arnold and her daughters," she said; "but even in a passing moment, it seemed as if they tried to inform me by their manner that I did not belong to their world. Perhaps they were only oblivious--I don't know." "I think that is all," said Mrs. Jocelyn musingly. "We have attended their church only since we came up town. They sit on the further side, in a very expensive pew, while papa thinks we can afford only a side seat near the door. It is evident that they are proud people, but in the matter of birth and good breeding, my dear, I am sure we are their equals. Even when poorer than we are now we were welcomed to the best society of the South. Have no fears, darling. When they come to know YOU they will be as proud of you as I am." "Oh, mother, what a sweet prophetess you are! The life you suggest is so beautiful, and I do not think I could live without beauty. He is so handsome and refined, and his taste is so perfect that every association he awakens is refined and high-toned. It seems as if my--as if he might take out of my future all that is hard and coarse--all that I shrink from even in thought. But, mamma, I wish he were a wee bit stronger. His hands are almost as white and small as mine; and then sometimes he is so very pale." "Well, Millie, we can't have everything. City life and luxury are hard on young men. It would be better for them if they tramped the woods more with a gun, as your father did. There was a time when papa could walk his thirty miles a day and ride fifty. But manly qualities may be those of the mind as well as of muscle. I gather from what Mr. Arnold says that his health never has been very good; but you are the one of all the world to pet him, and take care of him. Most of the fashionable girls of his set would want to go here and there all the time, and would wear him out with their restlessness. You would be happier at home." "Indeed I would, mamma. Home, and heaven, are words that to me are near akin." "I'm glad you are in such a fair way to win the home, but not heaven I trust for a long time yet. Let us think of the home first. While I would not for the world wish you to do a thing which the strictest womanly delicacy did not permit, there are some things which we can do that are very proper indeed. Mr. Arnold has an eye for beauty as well as yourself, and he is accustomed to see ladies well dressed. He noticed your toilet last night as well as your face, and his big brown eyes informed me that he thought it very pretty. I intend that you shall appear as well as the best of them at Saratoga, and what we cannot afford in expensive fabrics we must make up in skill and taste. Luckily, men don't know much about the cost of material. They see the general effect only. A lady is to them a finished picture, and they never think of inventorying the frame, canvas, and colors as a woman does. For quarter of the money I'll make you appear better than his sisters. So get your things, and we'll begin shopping at once, for such nice work requires time." They were soon in the temples of fashion on Broadway, bent upon carrying out their guileless conspiracy. Nevertheless their seemingly innocent and harmless action was wretched folly. They did not know that it raised one more barrier between them and all they sought and hoped, for they were spending the little money that might save them from sudden and utter poverty. CHAPTER IV "PITILESS WAVES" A deeper shadow than that of the night fell upon Mildred Jocelyn's home after the return of her father. Feeling that there should be no more blind drifting toward he knew not what, he had employed all the means within his power to inform himself of the firm's prospects, and learned that there was almost a certainty of speedy failure. He was so depressed and gloomy when he sat down to dinner that his wife had not the heart to tell him of her schemes to secure his daughter's happiness, or of the gossamer-like fabrics she had bought, out of which she hoped to construct a web that would more surely entangle Mr. Arnold. Even her sanguine spirit was chilled and filled with misgivings by her husband's manner. Mildred, too, was speedily made to feel that only a very serious cause could banish her father's wonted good-humor and render him so silent. Belle and the little ones maintained the light talk which usually enlivened the meal, but a sad constraint rested on the others. At last Mr. Jocelyn said, abruptly, "Fanny, I wish to see you alone," and she followed him to their room with a face that grew pale with a vague dread. What could have happened? "Fanny," he said sadly, "our firm is in trouble. I have hoped and have tried to believe that we should pull through, but now that I have looked at the matter squarely I see no chance for us, and from the words and bearing of my partners I imagine they have about given up hope themselves." "Oh, come, Martin, look on the bright side. You always take such gloomy views of things. They'll pull through, never fear; and if they don't, you will soon obtain a better position. A man of your ability should be at the head of a firm. YOU would make money, no matter what the times were." "Unfortunately, Fanny, your sanguine hopes and absurd opinion of my abilities do not change in the least the hard facts in the case. If the firm fails, I am out of employment, and hundreds of as good--yes, better men than I, are looking vainly for almost any kind of work. The thought that we have laid up nothing in all these years cuts me to the very quick. One thing is now certain. Not a dollar must be spent, hereafter, except for food, and that of the least costly kind, until I see our way more clearly." "Can't we go to Saratoga?" faltered Mrs. Jocelyn. "Certainly not. If all were well I should have had to borrow money and anticipate my income in order to spend even a few weeks there, unless you went to a cheap boarding-house. If things turn out as I fear, I could not borrow a dollar. I scarcely see how we are to live anywhere, much less at a Saratoga hotel. Fanny, can't you understand my situation? Suppose my income stops, how much ahead have we to live upon?" Mrs. Jocelyn sank into a chair and sobbed, "Oh that I had known this before! See there!" The bed was covered with dress goods and the airy nothings that enhance a girl's beauty. The husband understood their meaning too well, and he muttered something like an oath. At last he said, in a hard tone, "Well, after buying all this frippery, how much money have you left?" "Oh, Martin," sobbed his wife, "don't speak to me in that tone. Indeed I did not know we were in real danger. You seemed in such good spirits last evening, and Mr. Arnold showed so much feeling for Millie, that my heart has been as light as a feather all day. I wouldn't have bought these things if I had only known--if I had realized it all." Mr. Jocelyn now uttered an unmistakable anathema on his folly. "The money you had this morning is gone, then?" "Yes." "How much has been charged?" "Don't ask me." He was so angry--with himself more than his wife--and so cast down that he could not trust himself to speak again. With a gesture, more expressive than any words, he turned on his heel and left the room and the house. For hours he walked the streets in the wretched turmoil of a sensitive, yet weak nature. He was not one who could calmly meet an emergency and manfully do his best, suffering patiently meanwhile the ills that could not be averted. He could lead a cavalry charge into any kind of danger, but he could not stand still under fire. The temptation to repeat his folly of the previous evening was very strong, but it had cost him so dearly that he swore a great oath that at least he would not touch liquor again; but he could not refrain from lifting himself in some degree out of his deep dejection, by a recourse to the stimulant upon which he had so long been dependent. At last, jaded and sober indeed, he returned to a home whose very beauty and comfort now became the chief means of his torture. In the meantime Mildred and her mother sat by the pretty fabrics that had the bright hues of their morning hopes, and they looked at each other with tears and dismay. If the silk and lawn should turn into crape, it would seem so in accordance with their feelings as scarcely to excite surprise. Each queried vainly, "What now will be the future?" The golden prospect of the day had become dark and chaotic, and in strong reaction a vague sense of impending disaster so oppressed them that they scarcely spoke. Deep in Mildred's heart, however, born of woman's trust, was the sustaining hope that her friend, Vinton Arnold, would be true to her whatever might happen. Poor Mrs. Jocelyn's best hope was, that the financial storm would blow over without fulfilling their fears. She had often known her father to be half desperate, and then there was patched up some kind of arrangement which enabled them to go on again in their old way. Still, even with her unbusiness-like habits of thought and meagre knowledge of the world, she could not see how they could maintain themselves if her husband's income should suddenly cease, and he be unable to find a like position. She longed for his return, but when he came he gave her no comfort. "Don't speak to me," he said; "I can tell you nothing that you do not already know. The events of the next few weeks will make all plain enough." The logic of events did convince even Mrs. Jocelyn that making no provision for a "rainy day" is sad policy. The storm did not blow over, although it blew steadily and strongly. The firm soon failed, but Mr. Jocelyn received a small sum out of the assets, which prevented immediate want. Mildred's course promised to justify Arnold's belief that she could be strong as well as gentle, for she insisted that every article obtained on credit should be taken back to the shops. Her mother shrank from the task, so she went herself and plainly stated their circumstances. It was a bitter experience for the poor child--far more painful than she had anticipated. She could not believe that the affable people who waited on her so smilingly a few days before would appear so different; but even those who were most inclined to be harsh, and to feel aggrieved at their small loss in cutting the material returned, were softened as she said, gently and almost humbly: "Since we could not pay for it we felt that it would be more honorable to bring it back in as good condition as when received." In every instance, however, in which the goods had been paid for, she found that she could effect no exchange for the money, except at such reduced rates that she might as well give them away. Even Mrs. Jocelyn saw the need of immediate changes. One of their two servants was dismissed. Belle pouted over the rigid economy, now enforced all too late. Mildred cried over it in secret, but made heroic efforts to be cheerful in the presence of her father and mother; but each day, with a deeper chill at heart, she asked herself a thousand times, "Why does not Mr. Arnold come to see me?" Vinton Arnold was in even greater distress. He had to endure not only the pain of a repressed affection, but also a galling and humiliating sense of unmanly weakness. He, of course, learned of the failure, and his father soon after took pains to say significantly that one of the members of the iron firm had told him that Mr. Jocelyn had nothing to fall back upon. Therefore Arnold knew that the girl he loved must be in sore trouble. And yet, how could he go to her? What could he say or do that would not make him appear contemptible in her eyes? But to remain away in her hour of misfortune seemed such a manifestation of heartless indifference, such a mean example of the world's tendency to pass by on the other side, that he grew haggard and ghost-like in his self-reproach and self-contempt. At last his parents began to insist that his health required a change of air, and suggested a mountain resort or a trip abroad, and he was conscious of no power to resist the quiet will with which any plan decided upon would be carried out. He felt that he must see Mildred once more, although what he would say to her he could not tell. While there had been no conscious and definite purpose on the part of his parents, they nevertheless had trained him to helplessness in mind and body. His will was as relaxed as his muscles. Instead of wise, patient effort to develop a feeble constitution and to educate his mind by systematic courses of study, he had been treated as an exotic all his days. And yet it had been care without tenderness, or much manifestation of affection. Hot a thing had been done to develop self-respect or self-reliance. Even more than most girls, he was made to feel himself dependent on his parents. He had studied but little; he had read much, but in a desultory way. Of business and of men's prompt, keen ways he was lamentably ignorant for one of his years, and the consciousness of this made him shrink from the companionship of his own sex, and begat a reticence whose chief cause was timidity. His parents' wealth had been nothing but a curse, and they would learn eventually that while they could shield his person from the roughnesses of the world they could not protect his mind and heart from those experiences which ever demand manly strength and principle. As a result of their costly system, there were few more pitiable objects in the city than Vinton Arnold as he stole under the cover of night to visit the girl who was hoping--though more faintly after every day of waiting--that she might find in him sustaining strength and love in her misfortunes. But when she saw his white, haggard face and nervous, timid manner, she was almost shocked, and exclaimed, with impulsive sympathy, "Mr. Arnold, you have been ill. I have done you wrong." He did not quite understand her, and was indiscreet enough to repeat, "You have done me wrong, Miss Millie?" "Pardon me. Perhaps you do not know that we are in deep trouble. My father's firm has failed, and we shall have to give up our home. Indeed, I hardly know what we shall do. When in trouble, one's thoughts naturally turn to one's friends. I thought perhaps you would come to see me," and two tears that she could not repress in her eyes. "Oh, that I were a man!" groaned Arnold, mentally, and never had human cruelty inflicted a keener pang than did Mildred's sorrowful face and the gentle reproach implied in her words. "I--I have been ill," he said hesitatingly. "Miss Millie," he added impulsively, "you can never know how deeply I feel for you." She lifted her eyes questioningly to his face, and its expression was again unmistakable. For a moment she lost control of her overburdened heart, and bowing her face in her hands gave way to the strong tide of her feelings. "Oh!" she sobbed, "I have been so anxious and fearful about the future. People have come here out of curiosity, and others have acted as if they did not care what became of us, if they only obtained the money we owed them. I did not think that those who were so smiling and friendly a short time since could be so harsh and indifferent. A thousand times I have thought of that poor ship that I saw the waves beat to pieces, and it has seemed as if it might be our fate. I suppose I am morbid, and that some way will be provided, but SOME way is not A way." Instead of coming to her side and promising all that his heart prompted, the miserable constraint of his position led him to turn from grief that he was no longer able to witness. He went to the window, and, bowing his head against the sash, looked out into the darkness. She regarded him with wonder as she slowly wiped her eyes. "Mr. Arnold," she faltered, "I hope you will forgive me for my weakness, and also for inflicting our troubles on you." He turned and came slowly toward her. She saw that he trembled and almost tottered as he walked, and that his face had become ashen. The hand he gave her seemed like ice to her warm, throbbing palm. But never could she forget his expression--the blending of self-contempt, pitiable weakness, and dejection. "Miss Mildred," he said slowly, "there is no use in disguises. We had better both recognize the truth at once. At least it will be better for you, for then you may find a friend more worthy of the name. Can you not see what I am--a broken reed? The vine could better sustain a falling tree than I the one I loved, even though, like the vine, my heart clung to that one as its sole support. You suffer; I am in torment. You are sad; I despair. You associate strength and help with manhood, and you are right. You do not know that the weakest thing in the world is a weak, helpless man. I am only strong to suffer. I can do nothing; I am nothing. It would be impossible for me to explain how helpless and dependent I am--you could not understand it. My whole heart went out to you, for you seemed both gentle and strong. The hope would grow in my soul that you might be merciful to me when you came to know me as I am. Good-by, Millie Jocelyn. You will find a friend strong and helpful as well as kind. As for me, my best hope is to die." He bowed his head upon the hand he did not venture to kiss, and then almost fled from the house. Mildred was too much overcome by surprise and feeling to make any attempt to detain him. He had virtually acknowledged his love for her, but never in her wildest fancy had she imagined so dreary and sad a revelation. Mrs. Jocelyn, perplexed by Mr. Arnold's abrupt departure, came in hastily, and Mildred told her, with many tears, all that had been said. Even her mother's gentle nature could not prevent harsh condemnation of the young man. "So he could do nothing better than get up this little melodrama, and then hasten back to his elegant home," she said, with a darkening frown. Mildred shook her head and said, musingly, "I understand him better than you do, mamma, and I pity him from the depths of my heart." "I think it's all plain enough," said Mrs. Jocelyn, in a tone that was hard and unnatural in her. "His rich parents tell him that he must not think of marrying a poor girl, and he is the most dutiful of sons." "You did not hear his words, mamma--you did not see him. Oh, if he should die! He looked like death itself," and she gave way to such an agony of grief that her mother was alarmed on her behalf, and wept, entreated, and soothed by turns until at last the poor child crept away with throbbing temples to a long night of pain and sleeplessness. The wound was one that she must hide in her own heart; her pallor and languor for several days proved how deep it had been. But the truth that he loved her--the belief that he could never give to another what he had given to her--had a secret and sustaining power. Hope is a hardy plant in the hearts of the young. Though the future was dark, it still had its possibilities of good. Womanlike, she thought more of his trouble than of her own, and that which most depressed her was the fear that his health might give way utterly. "I can bear anything better than his death," she said to herself a thousand times. She made no tragic promises of constancy, nor did she indulge in very much sentimental dreaming. She simply recognized the truth that she loved him--that her whole woman's heart yearned in tenderness over him as one that was crippled and helpless. She saw that he was unable to stand alone and act for himself, and with a sensitive pride all her own she shrank from even the thought of forcing herself on the proud, rich family that had forbidden the alliance. Moreover, she was a good-hearted, Christian girl, and perceived clearly that it was no time for her to mope of droop. Even on the miserable day which followed the interview that so sorely wounded her, she made pathetic attempts to be cheerful and helpful, and as time passed she rallied slowly into strength and patience. The father's apparent efforts to keep up under his misfortune were also a great incentive to earnest effort on her part. More than once she said in substance to her mother, "Papa is so often hopeful, serene, and even cheerful, that we ought to try and show a like spirit. Even when despondency does master him, and he becomes sad and irritable, he makes so brave an effort that he soon overcomes his wretched mood and quietly looks on the brighter side. We ought to follow his example." It would have been infinitely better had he followed theirs, and found in prayer, faith, and manly courage the serenity and fortitude that were but the brief, deceptive, and dangerous effects of a fatal poison. It was decided that the family should spend the summer at some quiet farmhouse where the board would be very inexpensive, and that Mr. Jocelyn, in the meantime, should remain in the city in order to avail himself of any opening that he might discover. After a day or two of search in the country, he found a place that he thought would answer, and the family prepared as quickly as possible for what seemed to them like a journey to Siberia. Mildred's farewell to her own private apartment was full of touching pathos. This room was the outward expression not merely of a refined taste, but of some of the deepest feelings and characteristics of her nature. In its furniture and adornment it was as dainty as her own delicate beauty. She had been allowed to fit it up as she wished, and had lavished upon it the greater part of her spending money. She had also bestowed upon it much thought, and the skilful work of her own hands had eked out to a marvellous extent the limited sums that her father had been able to give her. The result was a prettiness and light, airy grace which did not suggest the resting-place of an ordinary flesh-and-blood girl, but of one in whom the spiritual and the love of the beautiful were the ruling forces of life. It is surprising how character impresses itself on one's surroundings. Mrs. Arnold's elegant home was a correct expression of herself. Stately, formal, slightly rigid, decidedly cold, it suggested to the visitor that he would receive the courtesy to which his social position entitled him, and nothing more. It was the result of an exact and logical mind, and could no more unbend into a little comfortable disorder than the lady herself. She bestowed upon its costly appointments the scrupulous care which she gave to her children, and her manner was much the same in each instance. She was justly called a strong character, but she made herself felt after the fashion of an artist with his hammer and chisel. Carved work is cold and rigid at best. Mildred had not as yet impressed people as a strong character. On the contrary, she had seemed peculiarly gentle and yielding. Vinton Arnold, however, in his deep need had instinctively half guessed the truth, for her influence was like that of a warm day in spring, undemonstrative, not self-asserting, but most powerful. The tongue-tied could speak in her presence; the diffident found in her a kindly sympathy which gave confidence; men were peculiarly drawn toward her because she was so essentially womanly without being silly. Although as sprightly and fond of fun as most young girls of her age, they recognized that she was perfectly truthful and loyal to all that men--even bad men--most honor in a woman. They always had a good time in her society, and yet felt the better and purer for it. Life blossomed and grew bright about her from some innate influence that she exerted unconsciously. After all there was no mystery about it. She had her faults like others, but at heart she was genuinely good and unselfish. The gentle mother had taught her woman's best graces of speech and manner; nature had endowed her with beauty, and to that the world always renders homage. There are thousands of very pretty girls who have no love for beauty save their own, which they do their best to spoil by self-homage. To Mildred, on the contrary, the beautiful was as essential as her daily food, and she excelled in all the dainty handicrafts by which women can make a home attractive. Therefore her own little sanctum had developed like an exquisite flower, and had become, as we have said, an expression of herself. An auctioneer, in dismantling her apartment, would not have found much more to sell than if he had pulled a rose to pieces, but left intact it was as full of beauty and fragrance as the flower itself. And yet her own hands must destroy it, and in a brief time she must exchange its airy loveliness for a bare room in a farmhouse. After that the future was as vague as it was clouded. The pretty trifles were taken down and packed away, with tears, as if she were laying them in graves. CHAPTER V THE RUDIMENTS OF A MAN "Mother, I hain't no unison with it at all," said Farmer Atwood, leaning on the breakfast table and holding aloft a knife and fork--formidable implements in his hands, but now unemployed through perturbation of mind. "I hain't no unison with it--this havin' fine city folk right in the family. 'Twill be pretty nigh as bad as visiting one's rich relations. I had a week of that once, but, thank the Lord, I hain't been so afflicted since. I've seen 'em up at the hotel and riding by too often not to know 'em. They are half conceit and half fine feathers, and that doesn't leave many qualities as are suited to a farmhouse. Roger and me will have to be--what was it that lecturin' professor called it--'deodorized' every mornin' after feedin' and cleanin' the critters. We'll have to put on our go-to-meetin's, instead of sittin' down in our shirt-sleeves comfortable like. I hain't no unison with it, and it's been a-growing on me ever since that city chap persuaded you into being cook and chambermaid for his family." And Farmer Atwood's knife and fork came down into the dish of ham with an onslaught that would have appalled a Jew. "The governor is right, mother," said the young man referred to as Roger. "We shall all be in strait-jackets for the summer." The speaker could not have been much more than twenty years old, although in form he appeared a full-grown man. As he stood wiping his hands on a towel that hung in a corner of the large kitchen, which, except on state occasions, also served as dining and sitting-room, it might be noted that he was above medium height, broad-shouldered, and strongly built. When he crossed the room his coarse working dress could not disguise the fact that he had a fine figure and an easy bearing of the rustic, rough-and-ready style. He had been out in the tall, dew-drenched grass, and therefore had tucked the lower part of his trousers in his boot tops, and, like his father, dispensed with his coat in the warm June morning. As he drew a chair noisily across the floor and sat down at the table, it was evident that he had a good though undeveloped face. His upper lip was deeply shadowed by a coming event, to which he looked forward with no little pride, and his well-tanned cheeks could not hide a faint glow of youthful color. One felt at a glance that his varying expressions could scarcely fail to reveal all that the young man was now or could ever become, for his face suggested a nature peculiarly frank and rather matter-of-fact, or at least unawakened. The traits of careless good-nature and self-confidence were now most apparent. He had always been regarded as a clever boy at home, and his rustic gallantry was well received by the farmers' daughters in the neighborhood. What better proofs that he was about right could a young fellow ask? He was on such good terms with himself and the world that even the event which his father so deprecated did not much disturb his easy-going assurance. He doubted, in his thoughts, whether the city girls would "turn up their noses" at him, and if they did, they might, for all that he cared, for there were plenty of rural beauties with whom he could console himself. But, like his father, he felt that the careless undress and freedom of their farm life would be criticised by the new-comers. He proposed, however, to make as little change as possible in his habits and dress, and to teach the Jocelyns that country people had "as good a right to their ways as city people to theirs." Therefore the threatened invasion did not in the least prevent him from making havoc in the substantial breakfast that Mrs. Atwood and her daughter Susan put on the table in a haphazard manner, taking it from the adjacent stove as fast as it was ready. A stolid-looking hired man sat opposite to Roger, and shovelled in his food with his knife, with a monotonous assiduity that suggested a laborer filling a coal-bin. He seemed oblivious to everything save the breakfast, and with the exception of heaping his plate from time to time he was ignored by the family. The men-folk were quite well along with their meal before Mrs. Atwood and Susan, flushed with their labors about the stove, were ready to sit down. They were accustomed to hear the farmer grumble, and, having carried their point, were in no haste to reply or to fight over a battle that had been won already. Roger led to a slight resumption of hostilities, however, by a disposition--well-nigh universal in brothers--to tease. "Sue," he said, "will soon be wanting to get some feathers like those of the fine birds that will light in our door-yard this evening." "That's it," snarled the farmer; "what little you make will soon be on your backs or streamin' away in ribbons." "Well," said Mrs. Atwood, a little sharply, "it's quite proper that we should have something on our backs, and if we earn the money to put it there ourselves, I don't see why you should complain; as for ribbons, Sue has as good right to 'em as Roger to a span-new buggy that ain't good for anything but taking girls out in." "What made you have the seat so narrow, Roger?" asked Sue; "you couldn't squeeze three people in to save your life." "I'm content with one girl at a time," replied Roger, with a complacent shrug. "And the same girl only one time, too, from what I hear. You've taken out all there are in Forestville haven't you?" "Haven't got quite around yet. And then some prudent mothers do think the seat a trifle narrow, and the ones I'd like to take out most can't go. But there's plenty that can." "And one is as good as another," added his sister, maliciously, "If she will only talk nonsense, and let you hold her from falling out when you whisk over the thank-e-ma'ams." "I didn't have to go from home to learn that most girls talk nonsense," laughed Roger. "By the way, how did you learn about the thank-e-ma'ams? I didn't teach you." "No, indeed! Sisters may fall out for all that brothers care." "That depends on whose sisters they are," said Roger, rising. "I now perceive that mine has been well taken care of." "You think other young men have your pert ways," retorted Sue, reddening. "My friends have manners." "Oh, I see. They let you fall out, and then politely pick you up." "Come, you are both in danger of falling out now," said the mother reprovingly. Roger went off whistling to his work, and the hired man lumbered after him. "Father," said Mrs. Atwood, "who'll go down to the river for the trunks?" "Well, I s'pose I'll have to," grumbled Mr. Atwood. "Roger don't want to, and Jotham can do more work in the cornfield than me." "I'm glad you're so sensible. Riding down to the river and back will be a good bit easier than hoeing corn all day. The stage will be along about five, I guess, and I'll get supper for 'em in the sittin'-room, so you can eat in your shirt-sleeves, if that'll quiet your mind." With the aspect of a November day Mr. Atwood got out the great farm-wagon and jogged down to the landing on the Hudson, which was so distant as to insure his absence for several hours. It was a busy day for Mrs. Atwood and Susan. Fresh bread and cake were to be baked, and the rooms "tidied up" once more. A pitcher that had lost its handle was filled with old-fashioned roses that persisted in blooming in a grass-choked flower-bed. This was placed in the room designed for Mrs. Jocelyn and the children, while the one flower vase, left unbroken from the days of Roger's boyish carelessness, adorned the smaller apartment that Mildred and Belle were to occupy, and this was about the only element of elegance or beauty that Susan was able to impart part to the bare little room. Even to the country girl, to whom the term "decorative art" was but a vague phrase, the place seemed meagre and hard in its outlines, and she instinctively felt that it would appear far more so to its occupants. "But it's the best we can afford," she sighed; "and at the prices they'll pay us they shouldn't complain." Still the day was full of pleasurable excitement and anticipation to the young girl. She was aware that her mother's tasks and her own would be greatly increased, but on the other hand the monotony of the farm-house life would be broken, and in the more distant future she saw a vista of new gowns, a jaunty winter hat with a feather, and other like conditions of unalloyed happiness. Susan had dwelt thus far in one of life's secluded valleys, and if she lost much because her horizon was narrow she was shielded from far more. Her fresh, full face had a certain pleasant, wholesome aspect, like the fields about her home in June, as she bustled about, preparing for the "city folks" whom her father so dreaded. Roger's buggy was not yet paid for. It was the one great extravagance that Mr. Atwood had permitted for many a year. As usual, his wife had led him into it, he growling and protesting, but unable to resist her peculiar persistency. Roger was approaching man's estate, and something must be done to signalize so momentous an event. A light buggy was the goal of ambition to the young men in the vicinity, and Roger felt that he could never be a man without one. He also recognized it as the best means of securing a wife to his mind, for courting on a moonlit, shadowy road was far more satisfactory than in the bosom of the young woman's family. Not that he was bent on matrimony, but rather on several years of agreeable preparation for it, proposing to make tentative acquaintances, both numerous and miscellaneous. In his impatience to secure this four-wheeled compendium of happiness he had mortgaged his future, and had promised his father to plant and cultivate larger areas. The shrewd farmer therefore had no prospect of being out of pocket, for the young man was keeping his word. The acres of the cornfield were nearly double those of the previous year, and on them Roger spent the long hot day in vigorous labor in preference to the easy task of going to the river for the luggage. Dusty and weary, but in excellent spirits over the large space that he and the hired man had "hilled up," he went whistling home through the long shadows of the June evening. The farm wagon stood in the door-yard piled with trunks. The front entrance of the house--rarely used by the family--was open, and as he came up the lane a young girl emerged from it, and leaned for a few moments against the outer pillar of the little porch, unconscious of the picture she made. A climbing rose was in bloom just over her head, and her cheeks, flushed with heat and fatigue, vied with them in color. She had exchanged her travelling-dress for one of light muslin, and entwined in her hair a few buds from the bush that covered the porch. If Roger was not gifted with a vivid imagination he nevertheless saw things very accurately, and before he reached the head of the lane admitted to himself that the old "front steps" had never been so graced before. He had seen many a rustic beauty standing there when his sister had company, but the city girl impressed him with a difference which he then could not understand. He was inclined to resent this undefined superiority, and he muttered, "Father's right. They are birds of too fine a feather for our nest." He had to pass near her in order to reach the kitchen door, or else make a detour which his pride would not permit. Indeed, the youth plodded leisurely along with his hoe on his shoulder, and scrupled not to scrutinize the vision on the porch with the most matter-of-fact minuteness. "What makes her so 'down in the mouth'?" he queried. "She doesn't fancy us barbarians, I suppose, and Forestville to her is a howling wilderness. Like enough she'll take me for an Indian." Mildred's eyes were fixed on a great shaggy mountain in the west, that was all the more dark and forbidding in its own deep shadow. She did not see it, however, for her mind was dwelling on gloomier shadows than the mountain cast. As he passed he caught her attention, and stepping toward him a little impatiently, she said, "I suppose you belong to the premises?" He made an awkward attempt at a bow, and said stiffly, "I'm one of the Atwood chattels." The answer was not such as she expected, and she gave him a scrutinizing glance. "Surely, if I have ever seen a laborer, he's one," she thought, as with woman's quickness she inventoried his coarse, weather-stained straw hat, blue cotton shirt crossed by suspenders mended with strings, shapeless trousers, once black, but now of the color of the dusty cornfield, and shoes such as she had never seen on the avenue. Even if Roger's face had not been discolored by perspiration and browned by exposure, its contrast with the visage that memory kept before her but too constantly would not have been pleasing. Nothing in his appearance deterred her from saying briefly, "I wish you would bring those trunks to our rooms. We have already waited for them some little time, and Mr. Atwood said that his man would attend to them when he came home from his work." "That's all right, but I'm not his man, and with another stiff bow he passed on. "Roger," called Mrs. Atwood from the kitchen door, "where's Jotham?" "Bringing home the cows." "The ladies want their trunks," continued his mother, in a sharp, worried tone. "I wish you men-folks would see to 'em right away. Why couldn't you quit work a little earlier to-night?" Roger made no reply, but proceeded deliberately to help himself to a wash-basin and water. "Look here, Roger," said his mother, in a tone she seldom used, "if those trunks are not where they belong in ten minutes, Susan and I'll take 'em up ourselves." "That would be a pretty story to go out," added his sister. "Little use your buggy would be to you then, for no nice girl would ride with you." "Come, come, what's the use of such a bother!" said the young man irritably. "Mother knows that I'd carry the trunks up on Bald-Top before I'd let her touch them. That's the way it will always be with these city people, I suppose. Everybody must jump and run the moment they speak. Father's right, and we'll have to give up our old free-and-easy life and become porters and waiting-maids." "I've heard enough of that talk," said Mrs. Atwood emphatically. "Your father's been like a drizzling northeaster all day. Now I give you men-folks fair warning. If you want any supper you must wake up and give me something better than grumbling. I'm too hot and tired now to argue over something that's been settled once for all." The "warning" had the desired effect, for Mrs. Atwood was the recognized head of the commissary department, and, as such, could touch the secret springs of motives that are rarely resisted. The open kitchen windows were so near that Mildred could not help overhearing this family jar, and it added greatly to her depression. She felt that they had not only lost their own home, but were also banishing the home feeling from another family. She did but scant justice to Mrs. Atwood's abundant supper, and went to her room at last with that most disagreeable of all impressions--the sense of being an intruder. The tired children were soon at rest, for their time of sleepless trouble was far distant. Belle's pretty head drooped also with the roses over the porch as the late twilight deepened. To her and the little people the day had been rich in novelty, and the country was a wonderland of many and varied delights. In the eyes of children the Garden of Eden survives from age to age. Alas! the tendency to leave it survives also, and to those who remain, regions of beauty and mystery too often become angular farms and acres. Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred still more clearly illustrated the truth that the same world wears a different aspect as the conditions of life vary. They were going out into the wilderness. The river was a shining pathway, whose beauty was a mockery, for it led away from all that they loved best. The farmhouse was a place of exile, and its occupants a strange, uncouth people with whom they felt that they would have nothing in common. Mrs. Jocelyn merely looked forward to weeks of weary waiting until she could again join her husband, to whom in his despondency her heart clung with a remorseful tenderness. She now almost wished that they had lived on bread and water, and so had provided against this evil day of long separation and dreary uncertainty. Now that she could no longer rest in her old belief that there would be "some way" of tiding over every financial crisis, she became a prey to forebodings equally vague that there might be no way. That HER HUSBAND could spend day after day seeking employment, offering, too, to take positions far inferior to the one he had lost, was a truth that at first bewildered and then disheartened her beyond measure. She felt that they must, indeed, have fallen on evil times when his services went a-begging. To Mildred the present was dark, and the future most unpromising; but deep in her heart nestled the sustaining thought that she was not unloved, not forgotten. The will of others, not his own, kept her lover from her side. His weaknesses were of a nature that awakened her pity rather than contempt. If he had been a Hercules physically and a Bacon intellectually, but conceited, domineering, untruthful, and of the male flirt genus--from such weaknesses she would have shrunk with intense repugnance. Her friends thought her peculiarly gentle in disposition. They did not know--and she herself might rarely recognize the truth--that she was also very strong; her strength on its human side consisted in a simple, unswerving fidelity to her womanly nature and sense of right; on the Divine side, God's word was to her a verity. She daily said "Our Father" as a little child. Has the world yet discovered a purer or loftier philosophy? CHAPTER VI ROGER DISCOVERS A NEW TYPE Young Atwood rose with a very definite purpose on the following morning. For his mother's sake he would be civil to their boarders, but nothing more. He would learn just what they had a right to expect in view of their business relations, and having performed all that was "nominated in the bond," would treat them with such an off-hand independence that they would soon become aware that he, Roger Atwood, was an entity that could exist without their admiring approval. He meant that they should learn that the country was quite as large as the city, and that the rural peculiarities of Forestville were as legitimate as those which he associated with them, and especially with the young lady who had mistaken him for the hired man. Therefore after his morning work in the barnyard he stalked to the house with the same manner and toilet as on the previous day. But there were no haughty citizens to be toned down. They were all sleeping late from the fatigues of their journey, and Mrs. Atwood said she would give the "men-folks their breakfast at the usual hour, because a hungry man and a cross bear were nigh of kin." The meal at first was a comparatively silent one, but Roger noted with a contemptuous glance that his sister's hair was arranged more neatly than he had seen it since the previous Sunday, and that her calico dress, collar, and cuffs were scrupulously clean. "Expecting company?" he asked maliciously. She understood him and flushed resentfully. "If you wish to go around looking like a scarecrow, that's no reason why I should," she said. "The corn is too large for the crows to pull now, so if I were you I would touch myself up a little. I don't wonder that Miss Jocelyn mistook you for Jotham." "It's well," retorted Roger, with some irritation, "that your Miss Jocelyn has no grown brothers here, or you would come down to breakfast in kid gloves. I suppose, however, that they have insisted on a tidy and respectful waitress. Will you please inform me, mother, what my regulation costume must be when my services are required? Jotham and I should have a suit of livery, with two more brass buttons on my coat to show that I belong to the family." "I think that a little more of the manner and appearance of a gentleman would show your relationship better than any amount of brass," remarked his mother quietly. Roger was almost through his breakfast, and so, at no great loss, could assume the injured part. Therefore with a dignity that was somewhat in marked contrast with his rather unkempt appearance he rose and stalked off to the cornfield again. "Umph," remarked Mr. Atwood sententiously, as he rose and followed his son. This apparently vague utterance had for his wife a definite and extended meaning. She looked annoyed and flurried, and was in no mood for the labors of preparing a second breakfast. "The men-folks had better not roil me up too much," she said to her daughter. "If your father had said No! out and out, I wouldn't have brought strangers into his home. But he kinder wanted me to have their money without the bother of having them around. Now one thing is settled--he must either help me make it pleasant for these people, or else tell them to leave this very day." "And how about Roger?" asked Susan, still under the influence of pique. "Oh, Roger is young and foolish. He's a-growing yet," and the mother's severe aspect relaxed. He was her only boy. Mr. Atwood, brought face to face with the alternative presented by his practical wife, succumbed with tolerable grace. In truth, having had his grumble out, he was not so very averse to the arrangement. He was much like old Gruff, their watch-dog, that was a redoubtable growler, but had never been known to bite any one. He therefore installed himself as his wife's out-of-door ally and assistant commissary, proposing also to take the boarders out to drive if they would pay enough to make it worth the while. As for Roger, he resolved to remain a farmer and revolve in his old orbit. Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred were listless and depressed, and time hung heavily on their hands. They were in that condition of waiting and uncertainty which renders cheerful or systematic occupation wellnigh impossible. They daily hoped that a letter would come assuring them that Mr. Jocelyn had secured a position that would change all their future for the better, but the letters received recorded futile efforts only, and often despondency; but occasionally there would come a letter full of vague, sanguine hopes that first produced elation and then perplexity that nothing came of them. His wife found his dejection contagious. If she had been with him she would have made strenuous efforts to cheer and inspirit, but without an unselfish woman's strongest motive for action she brooded and drooped. Belle's irrepressible vivacity and the children's wild delight over the wonders of the fields and farmyard jarred upon her sore heart painfully. She patiently tried to take care of them, but in thought and feeling she could not enter into their life as had been her custom. Belle was too young and giddy for responsibility, and Mildred had many a weary chase after the little explorers. In spite of his clearly defined policy of indifference, Roger found himself watching her on such occasions with a growing interest. It was evident to him that she did not in the slightest degree resent his daily declaration of independence; indeed, he saw that she scarcely gave him any thoughts whatever--that he was to her no more than heavy-footed Jotham. "She does not even consider me worth snubbing," he thought, with much dissatisfaction, about a week subsequent to their arrival. In vain, after the labors of the day, he dressed in his best suit and sported a flaming necktie; in vain he dashed away in his buggy, and, a little later, dashed by again with a rural belle at his side. He found himself unable to impress the city girl as he desired, or to awaken in her a sense of his importance. And yet he already began to feel, in a vague way, that she was not so distant TO him, as distant FROM him. Belle soon formed his acquaintance, asking innumerable questions and not a few favors, and she found him more good-natured than she had been led to expect. At last, to her great delight, he took her with him in his wagon to the post-office. The lively girl interested and amused him, but he felt himself immeasurably older than she. With a tendency common to very young men, he was more interested in the elder sister, who in character and the maturity that comes from experience was certainly far beyond him. Belle he understood, but Mildred was a mystery, and she had also the advantage of being a very beautiful one. As time passed and no definite assurances came from her father, the young girl was conscious of a growing dissatisfaction with the idle, weary waiting to which she and her mother were condemned. She felt that it might have been better for them all to have remained in the city, in spite of the summer heat, than thus to be separated. She believed that she might have found something to do which would have aided in their support, and she understood more clearly than her mother that their slender means were diminishing fast. That she could do anything at a country farmhouse to assist her father seemed very doubtful, but she felt the necessity of employment more strongly each day, not only for the sake of the money it might bring, but also as an antidote to a growing tendency to brood over her deep disappointment. She soon began to recognize that such self-indulgence would unfit her for a struggle that might be extended and severe, and was not long in coming to the conclusion that she must make the best of her life as it was and would be. Days and weeks had slipped by and had seen her looking regretfully back at the past, which was receding like the shores of a loved country to an exile. Since the prospect of returning to it was so slight, it would be best to turn her thoughts and such faint hope as she could cherish toward the vague and unpromising future. At any rate she must so occupy herself as to have no time for morbid self-communings. Her first resource was the homely life and interests of those with whom she dwelt. Thus far she had regarded them as uncongenial strangers, and had contented herself with mere politeness toward them. In her sad preoccupation she had taken little note of their characters or domestic life, and her mother had kept herself even more secluded. Indeed the poor lady felt that it was hardly right to smile in view of her husband's absence and misfortune, and she often chided Belle for her levity; but Belle's life was like an over-full fountain in spring-time, and could not be repressed. In her deep abstraction Mildred had seen, but had scarcely noted, certain changes in the farmhouse that would have interested and pleased her had her mind been at rest. Almost unconsciously she had revealed her love of that which is pretty and inviting; therefore Susan, not content with being neat, was inclined to brighten her costume by an occasional ribbon, and to suggest comparisons between her fresh and youthful bloom and an opening flower that she would fasten in her hair as the summer day declined. So far from resenting this imitation of her own habits and tastes, Mildred at last recognized the young girl's awakening perceptions of womanly grace with much satisfaction. Even poor Mrs. Atwood exhibited a tendency to emerge from her chronic and rather forlorn condition of household drudge. For years she had known and thought of little else save sordid work, early and late. The income from the small farm permitted no extra help except on rare occasions, and then was obtained under protest from her husband, who parted with a dollar as he would with a refractory tooth. His strong and persistent will had impressed itself on his family, and their home life had been meagre and uninviting; the freedom and ease that he and Roger were so loath to lose, consisting chiefly in careless dress and a disregard of the little refinements and courtesies of life. It was with some self-reproach that Mildred admitted that for nearly a month she had practically ignored these people, and that she was becoming selfish in her trouble; and yet, not so much from a sense of duty, as from a kindling zest in life, she began to take an interest in them and their ways. She was still far too young for her spirit to lose its spring, even under a continuous weight of misfortune. Her nature was not morbid, but sunny and wholesome, and when with the children and Belle unexpected smiles would brighten her face like glints of sunshine here and there on a cloudy day. Deep as had been her wounds, she found that there were moments when she half forgot their pain, and an instinct of self-preservation taught her that it would be best to forget them as far as possible. When the thought of trying to refine the somewhat rude household in which she dwelt occurred to her, she discovered that the work was already well begun, for the chief condition of success was present--the disposition to do as she would like. The Atwoods soon surmised that the family was in trouble of some kind, and were able to distinguish between pride of caste and a sorrowful preoccupation. It was scarcely in Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred's nature to speak otherwise than gently and kindly, and so without trying they disarmed their hosts and won their sympathy. Notwithstanding their dejection and lassitude, they maintained the habits of their lives, and unwittingly gave Mrs. Atwood and her daughter a vague impression that neatness, attractiveness, and order were as essential as good morals. At first Roger had dressed more roughly than ever, in order to assert his right to his old ways, but as Mildred did not protest even by a glance, he next took pains to show her that he had "good clothes" if he chose to wear them. This fact she also accepted without the faintest interest, and so at last he was rather nonplussed. He was not accustomed to being politely ignored, and since he felt a growing interest in this new type of girl, he had an increasing desire to make her aware of his existence. "Hang it all," he would mutter, "I'm no more to her than Jotham and the other farm animals. What can a fellow do to make her look at him as if she saw him? She's very kind and polite and all that; she'd as soon hurt the brindle cow as me, but this fact is not very flattering. However, I'll find you out, my lady, and you too shall learn that the one whom you now regard as an object merely has a will and a way of his own." Therefore it may be guessed that in Roger Mildred might discover more docility and plastic readiness than she desired. Only old Mr. Atwood and Jotham seemed incorrigible material; but she did not despair even of them, and resolved to set about reclaiming this family from barbarism at once. CHAPTER VII COMPARISONS "Mrs. Atwood," said Mildred one Saturday evening, "I'll go with you to church to-morrow if you'll let me. Belle has been once, and it will be my turn to-morrow." "Oh, certainly, miss; you will go with Roger in the buggy, I s'pose, like Miss Belle." "If you please, I'd rather go with you." "Really, miss, the roads have been muddy of late, and the wagon isn't very nice." "I would rather go with you," pleaded Mildred, with an appeal in her blue eyes that few resisted. "Father," said Mrs. Atwood, as soon as her husband came in, "Miss Jocelyn wishes to go with us to meeting to-morrow. Can't you or Roger tidy up the wagon a bit? 'Tain't fit for her to ride in." "There'tis again--more time spent in fixing up and fussing than in looking after the main chance. You are all gettin' too fine for plain farmin' people." "I don't see why plain farming people need enjoy mud more'n other folks. You ought to be ashamed to ask your wife and daughter to ride in such a wagon." "I don't know why I should be more ashamed to-morrow than on any other Sunday, and you was never ashamed before. Your boarders don't seem inclined to take any rides and pay for them, so I don't see why I should fix up any more'n usual. Anyhow, it's too late now; Jotham's gone home, I'm too tired, and Roger's dressed to go out. Why can't she go with Roger?" "She says she'd rather go with us, and if you men-folk let her ride in that wagon I hope the minister will give you a scorching sermon"--and she turned toward her son, who, dressed in his rural finery, was finishing an early supper, To her surprise he, from whom she expected no aid, gave her a significant nod and put his finger on his lips. He had already decided upon one bold stratagem, in the hope of opening Mildred's eyes, and if this failed his mother's words suggested another line of policy. "Sue," he said, with affected carelessness, "I may bring Amelia Stone to spend part of the evening with you." "Amelia Stone isn't my style, if the young men do say she's the prettiest girl in town." "If you don't treat her well she'll think you're jealous," said Roger, and with this artful stroke he departed to carry out his experiment. "I'll teach my city lady that I'm not a clodhopper that other girls won't look at," he thought as he drove away. Everything went according to his mind, for Amelia broke an engagement in order to come with him, and was very friendly. The young fellow thought that Mildred must see that he was not a person to be politely ignored when so handsome a girl was flattering in her favors. Susan would not be thought jealous for the world, and so was rather effusive over Miss Stone. She also imbibed the idea that it might be a good chance to make Mildred aware that they knew some nice, stylish people; therefore, as the rural beauty mounted the steps of the porch she introduced her to Mildred and Belle. Roger meanwhile stood near, and critically compared the two, girls. They certainly represented two very different types, and he might have brought a score of his acquaintances that would have been more to Mildred's taste than the florid beauty whose confidence was boldness, and who had inventoried her own pronounced charms more often than had any of her admirers. One girl was a lily, with a character like a delicate, elusive fragrance; the other, a tulip, very striking, especially at a distance. The one no more asserted herself than did the summer evening; the manner of the other the same as button-holed all present, and demanded attention. Her restless black eyes openly sought admiration, and would speedily sparkle with anger and malice should their request be unrewarded. Roger was quick enough to feel Mildred's superiority, although he could scarcely account for it, and he soon experienced so strong a revulsion of feeling toward his unconscious ally that he would have taken her home again with a sense of relief. "If Miss Jocelyn thinks that's the style of girl that takes with me, I might as well have remained a scarecrow. Amelia Stone seems loud as a brass band beside her," and his gallantries perceptibly diminished. True to her nature, Amelia assumed toward him what she imagined were very pretty airs of proprietorship. Eoger knew well that her manner would have been the same toward the youth with whom, from a sudden caprice, she had broken her engagement for the evening. Her habitual coquetry nevertheless unwittingly carried out his original programme with a success that made him grind his teeth with rage, for he supposed that Mildred would gain the idea that they were congenial spirits drawn together by strong affinities. And she, half divining his vexation, shrewdly increased it by pretending to associate him with the transparent coquette, while at the same time manifesting disapproval of her by a fine reserve. Amelia felt herself scanned quietly, coldly, and half curiously, as if she belonged to some strange and hitherto unknown type, and her vivacious egotism began to fail her. She was much relieved therefore when Mildred excused herself and went to her room, for careless, light-hearted, and somewhat giddy Belle imposed no restraint. Roger, however, did not recover himself, for he saw that he had made a false step in his effort to win recognition from Mildred, and he waited impatiently until his companion should suggest returning. This she soon did, and they rode toward her home with a mutual sense of dissatisfaction. At last Amelia broke out, "I think she's absurdly proud!" "Who?" Eoger asked demurely. "You know who well enough. I thank my stars we have no city folks putting on airs around our house. I suppose you think her perfection. You looked as if you did." "I'm not acquainted with her," he said quietly. "Not acquainted! Darsn't you speak to her high mightiness then?" "Oh, yes, I can speak to her when there is occasion, but that does not make one acquainted. I don't understand her." "I do, perfectly. She thinks herself a wonderful deal better than you or me." "Perhaps she is," he admitted. "Well! that's a nice speech to make to ME! I was a fool to break my engagement and go with you." "All right," responded Eoger, with satirical good-nature, as he assisted her to alight; "we'll both know better next time." She would not speak to Mm again, but he escorted her to her door, and bowed in parting with mocking politeness. Instead of inviting him in, as was her custom, she closed the door with a sharpness that spoke volumes. "I don't believe Miss Jocelyn ever banged a door like that in her life," he muttered with a smile as he hastened homeward. Hearing unusual sounds in the farmyard before retiring, Mildred peeped out from under her curtain. The moonlight revealed that Roger was washing the wagon with a vigor that made her laugh, and she thought, "After what I have seen this evening, I think I can civilize him." CHAPTER VIII CHANGES Bent upon carrying out her project of introducing among the Atwoods a more gracious and genial family life, and lured by the fresh coolness of the summer morning, Mildred left her room earlier than usual. Mrs. Atwood, whose one indulgence was a longer sleep on the day of rest, came down not very long after and began bustling about the kitchen. Hitherto their meals had been served to the Jocelyns in the sitting-room, the farmer and his family eating as before in the kitchen. Mildred felt that they had no right to impose this extra labor on Mrs. Atwood, especially on the Sabbath, and she also thought it would do her mother good to be roused from the listless apathy into which she was sinking. These were her chief motives, but she knew that at no other place could people be taught the refinements of life more effectually than at the table, and it was her plan to bring about the changes she desired, without appearing to be the conscious cause. "Mrs. Atwood," she said, "why can we not all take our breakfast together in the sitting-room this morning? I have noticed that your hired man is absent on Sundays"--her zeal for reform would not induce her to sit down with Jotham--"and I can see no reason why you should have the task to-day of preparing two meals. Of course, if this is not agreeable to you let there be no change, but do not put yourself to the extra trouble on our account." "Well, now, miss, you are very kind, and to tell you the truth, I was thinking of this very thing, but we don't wish to intrude." "Intrude, Mrs. Atwood!" exclaimed Mildred, assuming surprise. "I don't understand you, and shall now feel hurt if we do not take our meals together to-day." "It's very good of you to think of us, and Susan and me will have a more restful day." Mildred gave her one of her rare smiles, which Mrs. Atwood said "lighted up the old kitchen like a ray of sunshine," and then went to prepare her mother and sister for the change. Belle was pleased, as she ever was with novelty. "Millie," she cried, "you shall sit next to that great animal, Jotham, and if you don't take care he'll eat you unawares." "Jotham is not here to-day, and I'll have him fed in the kitchen hereafter." "Have you become mistress of the farmhouse? Has Roger made proposals? Won't it be fun to hear Mr. Atwood grumble! There is nothing I enjoy more than to hear him grumble and old Gruff growl. They must be chips off the same block." Mrs. Jocelyn shrank from seeing and speaking to any one, bat was much too unselfish to impose extra tasks on Mrs. Atwood. Susan soon came down to assist her mother, and was delighted at the prospect of taking her meals in the sitting-room, feeling that it was a decided social promotion. Moreover, like all young girls, she longed for companionship, and believed that Mildred would now be more approachable. By and by Roger came from the barnyard in his working-clothes, and seeing no preparations for breakfast in the kitchen, exclaimed: "So we heathen must sit down to the second table to-day." "Yes, if you wish. Susan and me are going to take our breakfast in the sitting-room with Mrs. Jocelyn and her family." "Am I not invited?" he asked a little anxiously. "There's no need of any invitation. You have as much right there as I have, only I would not come in looking like that." "They won't like it--this new arrangement." "It seems to me that you have grown very considerate of what they like," put in Susan. "Miss Jocelyn proposed it herself," Mrs. Atwood said, "and if you and father would fix up a little and come in quietly and naturally it would save a deal of trouble. If I can't get a little rest on Sunday I'll wear out." Roger waited to hear no more, and went hastily to his room. Mr. Atwood was more intractable. He distinguished the Sabbath from the rest of the week, by making the most of his larger leisure to grumble. "I'm in no state to sit down with those people," he growled, after the change and the reasons for it had been explained to him. "I'm glad you feel so," his wife replied; "but your old clothes have not yet grown fast to you; you can soon fix yourself up, and you might as well dress before breakfast as after it." He was perverse, however, and would make no greater concession to the unwelcome innovation than to put on his coat. Mildred smiled mentally when she saw him lowering at the head of the table, but an icicle could no more continue freezing in the sun than he maintain his surly mood before her genial, quiet greeting. It suggested courtesy so irresistibly, and yet so unobtrusively, that he already repented his lack of it. Still, not for the world would he have made any one aware of his compunctions. Mrs. Atwood and Susan had their doubts about Roger, fearing that he would rebel absolutely and compel a return to their former habits. They were all scarcely seated, however, before he appeared, a little flushed from his hasty toilet and the thought of meeting one who had been cold and disapproving toward the belle of Forestville, but Mildred said "good-morning" so affably and naturally that he was made quite at ease, and Mrs. Jocelyn, who had seemed unapproachable, smiled upon him so kindly that he was inclined to believe her almost as pretty as her daughter. As for Belle and the children, he already felt well acquainted with them. Mrs. Atwood and Susan looked at each other significantly, for Roger was dressed in his best and disposed to do his best. Mildred saw the glance, and felt that the young fellow deserved some reward, so she began talking to him in such a matter-of-course way that before he was aware he was responding with a freedom that surprised all the family, and none more than himself. Mildred was compelled to admit that the "young barbarian," as she had characterized him in her thoughts, possessed, in the item of intelligence, much good raw material. He not only had ideas, but also the power of expressing them, with freshness and vivacity. She did not give herself sufficient credit for the effects that pleased her, or understand that it was her good breeding and good will that banished his tongue-tied embarrassment. The most powerful influences are usually the most subtle, and Roger found, as had Vinton Arnold and others, that for some cause Mildred evoked the best there was in him. Poor Mrs. Jocelyn did not have very much to say. Her depression was too deep to be thrown off appreciably, but she replied to Mrs. Atwood's remarks with her wonted gentleness. Belle's spirits soon passed all bounds, and one of her wild sallies provoked a grim smile from even Mr. Atwood, and she exulted over the fact all day. In brief, the ice seemed quite broken between the family and the "boarders." The old farmer could scarcely believe his eyes when he went out to harness the horses to the three-seated wagon, for it was neat and clean, with buffalo robes spread over the seats. "Well," he ejaculated, "what's a-coming over this here family, anyway? I'm about all that's left of the old rusty times, and rusty enough I feel, with everybody and everything so fixed up. I s'pose I'll have to stand it Sundays, and the day'll be harder to git through than ever. To-morrow I'll be back in the kitchen again, and can eat my victuals without Miss Jocelyn looking on and saying to herself, 'He ain't nice; he don't look pretty'; and then a-showin' me by the most delicate little ways how I ought to perform. She's got Roger under her thumb or he wouldn't have cleaned up this wagon in the middle of the night, for all I know, but I'm too old and set to be made over by a girl." Thus grumbling and mumbling to himself, Mr. Atwood prepared to take his family to the white, tree-shadowed meeting-house, at which he seldom failed to appear, for the not very devotional reason that it helped him to get through the day. Like the crab-apple tree in the orchard, he was a child of the soil, and savored too much of his source. Roger was of finer metal, and while possessing his father's shrewdness, hard common-sense and disposition to hit the world between the eyes if it displeased him, his nature was ready at slight incentive, to throw off all coarseness and vulgarity. The greater number of forceful American citizens are recruited from the ranks of just such young men--strong, comparatively poor, somewhat rude in mind and person at the start, but of such good material that they are capable of a fine finish. Roger had grown naturally, and healthily, thus far. He had surpassed the average boy on the play-ground, and had fallen slightly below him in the school-house, but more from indifference and self-assurance than lack of ability. Even his father's narrow thrift could not complain of his work when he would work, but while a little fellow he was inclined to independence, and persisted in having a goodly share of his time for the boyish sports in their season, and for all the books of travel and adventure he could lay his hands upon. In spite of scoldings and whippings he had sturdily held his own, and at last his father had discovered that Roger could be led much better than driven, and that by getting him interested, and by making little agreements, like that concerning the buggy, the best of the bargain could always be obtained, for the youth would then work with a will and carry out his verbal contracts in a large, good-natured way. Therefore Mildred's belief that he was good raw material for her humanizing little experiment had a better foundation than she knew. Indeed, without in the least intending it, she might awaken a spirit that would assert itself in ways as yet undreamed of by either of them. The causes which start men upon their careers are often seemingly the most slight and causal. Mildred meant nothing more than to find a brief and kindly-natured pastime in softening the hard lives and in rounding the sharp angles of the Atwood family, and Roger merely came in for his share of her attention. Flesh and spirit, however, are not wood and stone, and she might learn in deep surprise that her light aesthetic touches, while producing pleasing changes in externals, had also awakened some of the profoundest motives and forces that give shape and color to life. In smiling ignorance of such possibilities, she said to him as she came out on the porch dressed for church, "You have given your mother and me also a pleasant surprise, and we shall enjoy our ride to church far more, not only because the wagon is nice and clean, but also because of your thoughtfulness of our pleasure. The wagon looked so inviting from our windows that I have induced my mother to go, and to take the children. I think they will keep still. We will sit near the door, and I can take them out if they get tired." Her words were very simple, but she spoke them with a quiet grace all her own, while pulling her glove over a hand that seemed too small and white for any of the severer tasks of life. As she stood there in her pretty summer costume, a delicate bloom in her cheeks relieving the transparent fairness of her complexion, she seemed to him, as Amelia Stone had said, perfect indeed--and the young girl could not suppress a smile at the almost boyish frankness of his admiration. "You gave me a pleasant surprise, also," he said, flushing deeply. "I?" with a questioning glance. "Yes. You have brought about a pleasant change, and made breakfast something more than eating. You have made me feel that I might be less nigh of kin to Jotham than I feared." "I shall imitate your frankness," she replied, laughing; "you are not near so nigh of kin to him as I feared." "I have not forgotten that you thought me identical with him," he could not forbear saying. "I did not mean to hurt your feelings," she answered, with deepening color. "Oh, you were not to blame in the least," he said good-naturedly. "I deserved it." "You must remember, too," she continued, deprecatingly, "that I am a city girl, and not acquainted with country ways, and so have charity." Then she added earnestly, "We do not want to put a constraint on your family life, or make home seem less homelike to you all." Mrs. Jocelyn with Belle and the children were descending the stairs. "I misunderstood you, Miss Jocelyn," said Roger, with a penitent look, and he hastily strode away. "I've disarmed him," thought Mildred, with a half smile. She had, a little too completely. Belle claimed her old place with Roger, and their light wagon was soon lost in the windings of the road. "Millie," whispered Belle, as the former joined her at church, "what could you have said to Roger to make him effervesce so remarkably? I had to remind him that it was Sunday half a dozen times." "What a great boy he is!" answered Mildred. "The idea of my teaching him sobriety seemed to amuse him amazingly." "And no wonder. You are both giddy children." "Until to-day, when you have turned his head, he has been very aged in manner. Please let him alone hereafter; he is my property." "Keep him wholly," and the amused look did not pass from Mildred's face until service began. Dinner was even a greater success than breakfast. Mrs. Jocelyn had become better acquainted with Mrs. Atwood during the drive, and they were beginning to exchange housekeeping opinions with considerable freedom, each feeling that she could learn from the other. Fearing justly that a long period of poverty might be before them, Mrs. Jocelyn was awakening to the need of acquiring some of Mrs. Atwood's power of making a little go a great way, and the thought of thus becoming able to do something to assist her absent husband gave her more animation than she had yet shown in her exile. Mildred ventured to fill her vase with some hardy flowers that persisted in blooming under neglect, and to place it on the table, and she was greatly amused to see its effect on Roger and Mr. Atwood. The latter stared at it and then at his wife. "Will any one take some of the flowers?" he asked at last, in ponderous pleasantry. "I think we all had better take some, father," said Roger. "I would not have believed that so little a thing could have made so great a difference." "Well, what is the difference?" "I don't know as I can express it, but it suggests that a great deal might be enjoyed that one could not put in his mouth or his pocket." "Mr. Roger," cried Belle, "you are coming on famously. I didn't know that you were inclined, hitherto, to put everything you liked in your mouth or pocket. What escapes some people may have had." "I never said I liked you," retorted the youth, with a touch of the broad repartee with which he was accustomed to hold his own among the girls in the country. "No, but if I saw that you liked some one else I might be alarmed"--and she looked mischievously toward Mildred. For reasons inexplicable to himself, he fell into a sudden confusion at this sally. With a warning glance at the incorrigible Belle, whose vital elements were frolic and nonsense, Mildred began talking to Mr. Atwood about the great hotel a few miles distant. "Would you like to go there?" asked Roger after a little. "No," she said; "I have not the slightest wish to go there." Indeed there was nothing that she shrank from more than the chance of meeting those who had known her in the city. Later in the day Susan said to her mother, with much satisfaction, "She's not stuck up at all, and we might have found it out before. I can't go back to the kitchen and live in our old haphazard way. I can see now that it wasn't nice at all." "We'll see," said the politic Mrs. Atwood. "We mustn't drive father too fast." Roger felt that at last he was getting acquainted, and he looked forward to the long summer evening with much hope. But nothing happened as he expected, for Mildred was silent and preoccupied at supper, and Mrs. Jocelyn appeared to have relapsed into her old depression. Instead of going out in his buggy to spend the evening with one of his many favorites, as had been his custom, he took a book and sat down under a tree near the porch, so that he might join Mildred if she gave him any encouragement to do so. Belle found him taciturn and far removed from his gay mood of the morning, and so at last left him in peace. Sue was entertaining a rural admirer in the parlor, which was rarely used except on such momentous occasions, and all was propitious for a quiet talk with the object of his kindling interest. His heart beat quickly as he saw her appear on the porch with her hat and shawl, but instead of noticing him she went rapidly by with bowed head and climbed an eminence near the house, from which there was an extended view to the southward. He felt, as well as saw, that she wished to be alone, that he was not in her thoughts, that she was still as distant from him as he had ever imagined her to be. The shadows deepened, the evening grew dusky, the stars came out, and yet she did not return. For a long time he could see her outline as she sat on the hill top, and then it faded. He knew she was in trouble, and found a vague pleasure in watching with her, in remaining within call should she be frightened, knowing, however, that there was little danger of this in quiet Forestville. Still, the illusion that he was in some sense her protector pleased him in his sentimental mood, and in after years he often recalled this first faint foreshadowing of his lot. Could he have seen the poor girl, when at last, conscious of solitude and darkness, she gave way to the passionate grief that, for her mother's sake, she had so long repressed, he would have felt that she was distant indeed--far removed by experiences of which he as yet knew nothing. She had been gazing southward, toward the city in which her father was vainly seeking a foothold on the steep incline up which the unfortunate must struggle, and in fancy she saw him lonely, dejected, and deprived of the family life of which he was so fond. Her sympathy for him was as deep as her strong affection. But in spite of her will her thoughts would recur to the beautiful dream which had been shattered in that distant city. Not a word had she heard from Arnold since leaving it, and her heart so misgave her concerning the future that she threw herself on the sod, sobbing bitterly, and almost wishing that she were beneath it and at rest. In the deep abstraction of her grief she had scarcely noted the lapse of time, nor where she was, and the moon had risen when she again glided by Roger, her step and bearing suggesting lassitude and dejection. Soon after he entered the sitting-room, where he found his mother with a troubled look on her face. "Roger," she said, "I feel sorry for these people. When I went upstairs a while ago I heard Mrs. Jocelyn crying in her room, and coming down with the lamp I met the young lady on the stairs, and her eyes were very red. It's certain they are in deep trouble. What can it be? It's queer Mr. Jocelyn doesn't come to see them. I hope they are all right." "Mother," he burst out impetuously, "they are all right--she is, anyway," and he went abruptly to his room. "Well," remarked the bewildered woman sententiously, "there never were such goings on in the old house before." An event momentous to her had indeed taken place--Roger's boyish days were over. CHAPTER IX NEITHER BOY NOR MAN The two following weeks passed uneventfully at the farmhouse, but silent forces were at work that were as quiet and effective as those of Nature, who makes her vital changes without ever being observed in the act. In respect to the domestic arrangements Mrs. Atwood effected a sensible compromise. She gave the men-folk an early breakfast in the kitchen, so that they might go to their work as usual, and her boarders were thus not compelled to rise at an unaccustomed hour. She and Susan afterward sat down with them, and Mr. Atwood and Roger joined them at dinner and supper. On the Monday following the scenes described in the last chapter, Mildred and Mrs. Jocelyn were listless and unable to recover even the semblance of cheerfulness, for a letter from Mr. Jocelyn informed them that he was making very little headway, and that some agencies which he accepted yielded but a scanty income. Mildred chafed more bitterly than ever over her position of idle waiting, and even grew irritable under it. More than once Roger heard her speak to Belle and the children with a sharpness and impatience which proved her not angelic. This did not greatly disturb him, for he neither "wanted to be an angel" nor wished to have much to do with uncomfortable perfection. A human, spirited girl was quite to his taste, and he was quick-witted enough to see that unrest and anxiety were the causes of her temper. Poor Mrs. Jocelyn was too gentle for irritation, and only grew more despondent than ever at hope deferred. "Millie," she said, "I have dreadful forebodings, and can never forgive myself that I did not think night and day how to save instead of how to spend. What should we do if we had no money at all?" "Belle and I must go to work," said Mildred, with a resolute face, "and it's a shame we are not at work now." "What can you do when your father can do so little?" "Other poor people live; so can we. I can't stand this wretched waiting and separation much longer," and she wrote as much to her father. In the hope of obtaining a response favorable to her wishes she became more cheerful. Every day increased her resolution to put an end to their suspense, and to accept their lot with such fortitude as they could command. One morning she found Mr. and Mrs. Atwood preparing to go to the nearest market town with butter, eggs, and other farm produce. She readily obtained permission to accompany them, and made some mysterious purchases. From this time onward Roger observed that she was much in her room, and that she went out more for exercise than from the motive of getting through with the weary, idle hours. For some reason she also gained such an influence over thoughtless Belle that the latter took tolerably good care of little Fred and Minnie, as the children were familiarly called. While she maintained toward him her polite and friendly manner, he saw that he was forgotten, and that it had not entered her mind that he could ever do anything for her or be anything more to her than at the present time. But every hour she gained a stronger hold upon his sympathy, and occasionally, when she thought herself unobserved, he saw a troubled and almost fearful look come into her eyes, as if something were present to her imagination that inspired the strongest dread. At such times he was mastered by impulses of self-sacrifice that would have seemed very absurd if put into plain words. He kept his thoughts, however, to himself, and with an instinctive reticence sought to disguise even from his mother the feelings that were so new, and so full of delicious pain. That he was becoming quite different from the careless, self-satisfied young fellow that he had been hitherto was apparent to all, and after his outburst on Sunday evening his mother half guessed the cause. But he misled her to some extent, and Susan altogether, by saying, "I've had a falling-out with Amelia Stone." "Well, she's the last girl in the world that I'd mope about if I were a man," was his sister's emphatic reply. "You're not a man; besides I'm not moping. I'm only cutting my wisdom teeth. I want to do something in the world, and I'm thinking about it." "He's a-growing," said his mother with a smile, and on this theory she usually explained all of her son's vagaries. He still further misled his unsophisticated sister by making no special effort to seek Mildred's society. After one or two rather futile attempts he saw that he would alienate the sad-hearted girl by obtrusive advances, and he contented himself by trying to understand her, in the hope that at some future time he might learn to approach her more acceptably. The thought that she would soon leave the farmhouse depressed him greatly. She had suggested to him a new and wholly different life from that which he had led hitherto, and he felt within himself no power or inclination to go on with his old ways. These thoughts he also brooded over in silence, and let himself drift in a current which seemed irresistible. During this period he was under the influence of neither apathy nor dejection. On the contrary, his mind was surging with half-formed plans, crude purposes, and ambitious dreams. His horizon lifted from the farm and Forestville until there seemed space for a notable career. His soul kindled at the thought of winning a position that would raise him to Mildred's side. So far from fearing to burn his ships, and strike out unsupported, the impulse grew strong to make the attempt at any cost. He was sure that his father would not listen to the project, and that he would be wholly unaided, but riot many days passed before the thought of such obstacles ceased to influence him. "I'll take my way through the world, and cut my own swath," he muttered a hundred times as he swung the scythe under the July sun. Moreover, he had a growing belief in his power to climb the heights of success. His favorite books of travel and adventure that he had devoured in boyhood made almost anything seem possible, and the various biographies that the village library furnished revealed grand careers in the face of enormous obstacles. His mind was awaking like a young giant eager for achievement. Even after the toil of long, hot days he took up his old school-books in the solitude of his room, and found that he could review them with the ease with which he would read a story. "I've got some brains as well as muscle," he would mutter, exultantly. "The time shall come when Mildred Jocelyn won't mistake me for Jotham." Poor Mr. Atwood would have been in consternation had he known what was passing in his son's mind; and Mildred even less pleased, for after all it was she who had inspired the thoughts which were transforming him from a simple country youth into an ambitious, venturesome man. He knew of but one way to please her, but he made the most of that, and worked quietly but assiduously whenever he could without exciting his father's opposition. After the day's tasks were over the time was his own. He began by cutting all the weeds and grass in the door-yard and around the house. Palings that had disappeared from the fence were replaced, and all were whitewashed. Mrs. Atwood and Susan were greatly pleased at the changes, but thought it politic not to say much about them; one evening, however, his father began to banter him, remarking that Roger must be intending to "bring home a wife some fine morning." The young fellow reddened resentfully, and brusquely retorted that they "had lived in their old slovenly way long enough. People might well think they were going to the bad." This practical view somewhat reconciled his father to the new ideas, and suggested that Roger was not so daft as he feared. A little time after he was led to believe his son to be shrewder than himself. Needing some money, he took a note to the bank with much misgiving, but was agreeably surprised when one of the officers said affably, "I think we can accommodate you, Mr. Atwood. I was by your place the other day, and it is so improved that I scarcely knew it. Thrift and credit go together." But Mildred doubted whether thrift and policy were the only motives which had led to Roger's unwonted action, and believed rather that he had awakened to a perception of the value and attractiveness of those things which hitherto he had not appreciated. This, in a sense, was already true, but had she known to what extent she was in his thoughts she would not have smiled so complacently when, on the Saturday morning after the completion of his other labors, she noted that the weed-choked flower-borders along the walk had been cleaned and neatly rounded up, and the walk itself put in perfect order. "The flower-beds remind me of himself," she thought, as from time to time she glanced at them through her open window. "They contain a good deal of vacant space, and suggest what might be there rather than what is. Would to heaven, though, that Mr. Arnold had more of his muscle and decision. If Vinton were only different, how different all the future might be! But I fear, I fear. We have not enough money to last all summer if we remain here, and father writes so discouragingly. Thank God, I'm no longer idle, whether anything comes of my work or not," and the delicate piece of fancy work grew rapidly in her deft hands. Toward evening she started out for a walk, but uttered an exclamation of surprise as she saw the flower-borders were bright with verbenas, heliotrope, geraniums, and other bedding plants. Roger's buggy stood near, containing two large empty boxes, and he was just raking the beds smooth once more in order to finish his task. "Why, Mr. Atwood!" she cried, "it has long seemed to me that a good fairy was at work around the house, but this is a master-stroke." "If you are pleased I am well repaid," he replied, the color deepening on his sunburned cheeks. "If I am pleased?" she repeated in surprise, and with a faint answering color. "Why, all will be pleased, especially your mother and Susan." "No doubt, but I thought these would look more like what you have been accustomed to." "Really, Mr. Atwood, I hope you have not put yourself to all this trouble on my account." "I have not put myself to any trouble. But you are in trouble, Miss Jocelyn, and perhaps these flowers may enliven you a little." "I did not expect such kindness, such thoughtfulness. I do not see that I am entitled to so much consideration," she said hesitatingly, at the same time fixing on him a penetrating glance. Although he was much embarrassed, his clear black eyes met hers without wavering, and he asked, after a moment: "Could you not accept it if it were given freely?" "I scarcely understand you," she replied in some perplexity. "Nor do I understand you, Miss Jocelyn. I wish I did, for then I might do more for you." "No, Mr. Atwood," she answered gravely, "you do not understand me. Experience has made me immeasurably older than you are." "Very possibly," he admitted, with a short, embarrassed laugh. "My former self-assurance and complacency are all gone." "Self-reliance and self-restraint are better than self-assurance," she remarked with a smile. "Miss Jocelyn," he began, with something like impetuosity, "I would give all the world if I could become your friend. You could do so much for me." "Mr. Atwood," said Mildred, with a laugh that was mixed with annoyance, "you are imposed upon by your fancy, and are imagining absurd things, I fear. But you are good-hearted and I shall be a little frank with you. We are in trouble. Business reverses have overtaken my father, and we are poor, and may be much poorer. I may be a working-woman the rest of my days; so, for Heaven's sake, do not make a heroine out of me. That would be too cruel a satire on my prosaic lot." "You do not understand me at all, and perhaps I scarcely understand myself. If you think my head is filled with sentimental nonsense, time will prove you mistaken. I have a will of my own, I can assure you, and a way of seeing what is to be seen. I have seen a great deal since I've known you. A new and larger world has been revealed to me, and I mean to do something in it worthy of a man. I can never go on with my old life, and I will not," he continued, almost passionately. "I was an animal. I was a conceited fool. I'm very crude and unformed now, and may seem to you very ridiculous; but crudity is not absurdity, undeveloped strength is not weakness. An awakening mind may be very awkward, but give me time and you will not be ashamed of my friendship." He had ceased leaning against a tree that grew near the roadway, and at some distance from the house. In his strong feeling he forgot his embarrassment, and assumed an attitude so full of unconscious power that he inspired a dawning of respect; for, while he seemed a little beside himself, there was a method in his madness which suggested that she, as well as the young man, might eventually discover that he was not of common clay and predestined to be commonplace. But she said, in all sincerity, "Mr. Atwood, I'm sure I wish you twice the success you crave in life, and I've no reason to think you overrate your power to achieve it; but you greatly overrate me. It would be no condescension on my part to give you my friendship; and no doubt if you attain much of the success you covet you will be ready enough to forget my existence. What induces you to think that a simple girl like me can help you? It seems to me that you are vague and visionary, which perhaps is natural, since you say you are just awaking," she concluded, with a little smiling sarcasm. "You are unjust both to yourself and to me," he replied firmly, "and I think I can prove it. If I shall ever have any power in the world it will be in seeing clearly what is before me. I have seldom been away from this country town, and yet as soon as I saw you with a mind free from prejudice I recognized your superiority. I brought the belle of Forestville and placed her by your side, and I could think of nothing but brazen instruments until I left her loudness at her father's door. I would not go near her again if there were not another woman in the world. I saw at a glance that she was earthenware beside you." Mildred now could not forbear laughing openly. "If you lose your illusions so rapidly," she said, "my turn will come soon, and I shall be china beside some fine specimen of majolica." "You may laugh at me, but you will one day find I am sincere, and not altogether a fool." "Oh, I'm ready to admit that, even now. But you are altogether mistaken in thinking I can help you. Indeed I scarcely see how I can help myself. It is a very poor proof of your keen discernment to associate me with your kindling ambition." "Then why had you the power to kindle it? Why do I think my best thoughts in your presence? Why do I speak to you now as I never dreamed I could speak? You are giving purpose and direction to my life, whether you wish it or not, whether you care or not. You may always be indifferent to the fact, still it was your hand that wakened me. I admit I'm rather dazed as yet. You may think I'm talking to you with the frankness--perhaps the rashness--of a boy, since you are 'immeasurably older,' but the time is not very distant when I shall take my course with the strength and resolution of a man." "I should be sorry to be the very innocent cause of leading you into thorny paths. I truly think you will find more happiness here in your quiet country life." His only answer was an impatient gesture. "Perhaps," she resumed, "if you knew more of the world you would fear it more. I'm sure I fear it, and with good reason." "I do not fear the world at all," he replied. "I would fear to lose your esteem and respect far more, and, distant as you are from me, I shall yet win them both." "Mr. Atwood, I suppose I have as much vanity as most girls, but you make me blush. You are indeed dazed, for you appear to take me for a melodramatic heroine." "Pardon me, I do not. I've been to the theatre occasionally, but you are not at all theatrical. You are not like the heroines of the novels I've read, and I suppose I've read too many of them." "I fear you have," she remarked dryly. "Pray, then, What am I like?" "And I may seem to you a hero of the dime style; but wait, don't decide yet. What are you like? You are gentle, like your mother. You are exceedingly fond of all that's pretty and refined, so much so that you tried to introduce a little grace into our meagre, angular farmhouse life--" "Thanks for your aid," interrupted Mildred, laughing. "I must admit that you have good eyes." "You shrink," he resumed, "from all that's ugly, vulgar, or coarse in life. You are an unhappy exile in our plain home." "All which goes to prove what an ordinary and unheroic nature I have. You will soar far beyond me, Mr. Atwood, for you have portrayed a very weak character--one that is in love with the niceties of life, with mere prettiness." "You are still laughing at me, but I'm in earnest; and if you mean what, you say, you understand yourself less than you do me. Why will you not go to the hotel occasionally? Because with all your gentleness you are too proud to run the slightest risk of patronage and pity from those who knew you in your more fortunate days. Why do you remain in your little hot room so much of the time? I don't know; but if you will permit a guess, you are working. Every day you grow less content to sit still in helpless weakness. You are far braver than I, for I do not fear the world in the least; but, no matter how much you feared it, you would do your best to the last, and never yield to anything in it that was low, base, or mean. Oh, you are very gentle, very delicate, and you will be misunderstood; but you have the strongest strength there is--a kind of strength that will carry you through everything, though it cost you dear." "And what may that be?" she asked, looking at him now in genuine wonder. "I can't explain exactly what I mean. It is something I've seen in mother, plain and simple as she is. It's a kind of enduring steadfastness; it's a patient faithfulness. I should know just where to find mother, and just what to expect from her, under all possible circumstances. I should never expect to see you very different from what you are, no matter what happened. You often have the same look or expression that she has; and it means to me that you would do the best you could, although discouraged and almost hopeless. Very few soldiers will fight when they know the battle is going against them. You would, as long as you could move a finger." "Mr. Atwood, what has put all this into your head? This seems very strange language from you." "It is not so strange as it seems. It comes from the gift on which I base my hope of success in life. I see clearly and vividly what is before me, and draw my conclusions. If I see the antlers of a stag above some bushes, it is not necessary to see the whole animal to know he is there, and what kind of a creature he is. I'm not a scholar, Miss Jocelyn, but you must not think I do not know anything because I work in the corn or the hayfield all day. We have long winters up here, and I've studied some and read a great deal more. There are but few books in the village library that I have not read more or less thoroughly, and some of them many times. Because I was a careless, conceited fellow a few weeks since, it does not follow that I'm an ignoramus." Mildred was decidedly puzzled. She could not account for the change in him; and she did not like to think of that to which his words and feelings pointed. He asked for friendship, but she strongly doubted whether such a placid regard would long satisfy him. Her chief impulse was to escape, for the bare thought of words of love from him or any one except Vinton Arnold was intensely repugnant. As she glanced around, seeking in what direction she might take her flight, she saw a gentleman coming rapidly toward the house. After a second's hesitation she rushed toward him, crying, "Papa, papa, you are welcome!" CHAPTER X A COUNCIL Roger saw Miss Jocelyn rush into the arms of a tall, florid gentleman, whose dark eyes grew moist at the almost passionate warmth of his daughter's greeting. To Mildred her father's unexpected coming was thrice welcome, for in addition to her peculiarly strong affection for him, his presence ended an interview not at all agreeable, and promised relief from further unwelcome attentions on the part of Roger. Almost in the moment of meeting, she resolved to persuade him that his family would be happier with him in the city. This had been her feeling from the first, but now she was wholly bent on leaving the farm-house; for with her larger experience and womanly intuition she read in Roger's frank and still half-boyish face the foreshadowing of an unwelcome regard which she understood better than he did. While his manner for a few weeks past, and especially his words during their recent interview, made it clear that he was not the rough, awkward rustic she had first imagined him to be, he still seemed very crude and angular. In spite of her love for Vinton Arnold, which had not abated in the least, he had ceased to be her ideal man. Nevertheless, his refined elegance, his quiet self-restraint, his knowledge of the niceties and proprieties of the world to which she felt she belonged by right, did combine to produce an ideal in her mind of which she was but half conscious, and beside which Roger appeared in a repulsive light. She shrank with instinctive distaste from his very strength and vehemence, and feared that she would never be safe from interviews like the one just described, and from awkward, half-concealed gallantries. Even the flowers he had set out became odious, for they represented a sentiment the very thought of which inspired aversion. A coquette can soon destroy the strong instinct of sacredness and exclusiveness with which an unperverted girl guards her heart from all save the one who seems to have the divine right and unexplained power to pass all barriers. Even while fancy free, unwelcome advances are resented almost as wrongs and intrusions by the natural woman; but after a real, or even an ideal image has taken possession of the heart and imagination, repugnance is often the sole reward of other unfortunate suitors, and this dislike usually will be felt and manifested in a proportion corresponding with the obtrusiveness of the attentions, their sincerity, and the want of tact with which they are offered. To that degree, therefore, that Roger was in earnest, Mildred shrank from him, and she feared that he would not--indeed, from his antecedents could not--know how to hide his emotions. His words had so startled her that, in her surprise and annoyance, she imagined him in a condition of semi-ambitious and semi-amative ebullition, and she dreaded to think what strange irruptions might ensue. It would have been the impulse of many to make the immature youth a source of transient amusement, but with a sensitive delicacy she shrank from him altogether, and wished to get away as soon as possible. Pressing upon her was the sad, practical question of a thwarted and impoverished life--impoverished to her in the dreariest sense--and it was intolerable that one who seemed so remote from her sphere should come and ask that, from her bruised and empty heart, she should give all sorts of melodramatic sentiment in response to his crude, ambitious impulses, which were yet as blind as the mythical god himself. Had she seen that Roger meant friendship only when he asked for friendship, she would not have been so prejudiced against him; but the fact that this "great boy" was half consciously extending his hand for a gift which now she could not bestow on the best and greatest, since it was gone from her beyond recall, appeared grotesque, and such a disagreeable outcome of her changed fortunes that she was almost tempted to hate him. There are some questions on which women scarcely reason--they only feel intensely. Mildred, therefore, was heartily glad that Roger did not wait to be introduced to her father, and that he kept himself aloof from the reunited family during the evening. She also was pleased that they were not joined by the Atwoods at the supper-table. That this considerate delicacy was due to the "young barbarian's" suggestion she did not dream, but gave good-hearted but not very sensitive Mrs. Atwood all the credit. As for poor Roger, his quick insight, his power to guess something of people's thoughts and feelings from the expression of their faces, brought but little present comfort or promise for the future. "I made a bad impression at the start," he muttered, "and it will be long before she loses it, if she ever does. She shrinks from me as from something coarse and rough. She feels that I don't belong to her world at all. In fact, her father's fine bearing, his erect, elegant carriage make me feel as if I were but a country lout in very truth." The reception given to Mr. Jocelyn satisfied Mrs. Atwood thoroughly that his prolonged absence did not result from any alienation from his family. They overwhelmed him with caresses, and either Fred or Minnie could scarcely be kept out of his arms a moment. "Fanny," he said to his wife, "I almost made a vow that I would not come here until I had secured a position that would give you all the comforts of life, if not at once its luxuries; but such positions are occupied, and when one becomes vacant they are filled by relatives of the firm, or by those who have stronger claims than I can present. Still my friends are working for me, and I have the prospect of employment where the compensation will be small at first, but if I can draw a considerable Southern trade it will be increased rapidly." And yet he sighed while revealing this hopeful outlook, and Mildred noticed that he sighed more than once during the evening, in spite of the torrent of affectionate welcome which almost swept him away. After Belle and the younger children were sleeping, the husband and wife with Mildred talked late over their prospects. Mr. Jocelyn suggested that they should remain in the country, and even that they should rent a small cottage in Forestville or elsewhere, but his gentle wife soon proved that on some occasions she could be decided. "No, Martin," she said, with the quiet emphasis which reveals a purpose not to be combated, "one thing is settled--there must be no more separation. I have suffered too much during these last few weeks ever to listen again to such an arrangement. Now that you are with us once more, I learn that the ache in my heart was caused not so much by losses and the prospect of poverty as by loneliness and the feeling that you were left to struggle by yourself. It's my place to be with you, and I am willing to live anywhere and in any way. I can see that I might have aided you in providing against this evil time, but it seems now that I thought only of what we wanted for each day as it came, and the trouble was that we all got just what we wanted. Here is the result. Oh, I've thought it over through long sleepless nights till my heart ached with a pain that I hope none of you will ever know. But to sit idly here and wait while you are trying to retrieve my folly is a greater punishment than I can endure. Give me something to do which will be of help to you, and I will do it gladly, even though it be in two attic rooms." "Mamma's right," added Mildred earnestly. "Papa, you must find a place for us in New York--a place within our means. Let us begin life right this time, and I believe God will bless and prosper us. It won't be many days before Belle and I will find something to do." Mr. Jocelyn sighed more deeply than ever, and, indeed, appeared so overcome for a few moments that he could not speak. At last he faltered, "I have all of a Southern man's pride, and it's more bitter than death to me that my wife and daughters must work for their bread." "Papa," exclaimed Mildred, "would it not be infinitely more bitter to us all to eat the bread of charity? I shall pretend to no unnatural heroism, nor say I like toil and poverty. On the contrary, I think I shrink from such things more than most girls do. But I don't propose to sit down and wring my hands. I can put them to a better use. We must just put away all talk of pride and sentiment, and remember only our poverty and self-respect. As Christian and sensible people we are bound to accept of our life and make the best of it. You and mother both know how much this change has cost me," she concluded, with a few half-stifled sobs, "and if I am willing to enter on a cheerful, patient effort to make the best of life as it is, I think all the rest might, too. If we give way to despondency we are lost. Let us be together again, and pull together as one." "The idea of Nan and the children coming back to the city in August!" said Mr. Jocelyn dejectedly. "You don't either of you realize what you are talking about. We should have to go into a tenement-house." "Martin, I do realize it," replied his wife earnestly. "The country is doing me no good--indeed I'm failing in health. Nothing does us good when we are unhappy and anxious. Find me two rooms in a tenement-house if we cannot afford more, and let us be together as soon as possible." "Well," said Mr. Jocelyn, after a long breath, "with such a wife and such children to work for a man ought to be able to do great things; but it's much the same as it was in the army--if one lost his place in the ranks he was hustled about in everybody's way, and if weak and disabled he was left to his fate. The world goes right on and over you if you don't stand aside. I know you've suffered, Nan, and you know that if I had my wish you would never have a care or a pain; but God knows I suffered too. After you all were gone and my duties to my former partners ceased, I began to learn from experience how difficult it is in these cursed times to get a foothold, and I became almost sleepless from anxiety. Then set in that villanous neuralgia, which always strikes a man when he's down,' and for a week or more it seemed that I should almost lose my reason. "Oh, Martin, Martin!" his wife exclaimed reproachfully, "and you did not let us know!" "Why should I? It would only have added to your burden, and would not have helped me. I was glad you knew nothing about it." "This is another proof that we must be together," said his wife, her eyes filling with tears. "How did you come to get better?" "Oh, the doctor gave me something that made me sleep, and I seldom have neuralgia now." "Come, papa," cried Mildred, as she put her arms around his neck and leaned her face against his, "there are thousands worse off than we are, and thousands more have retrieved far worse disasters. Now take courage; we'll all stand by you, and we'll all help you. We will one day have a prettier home than ever, and it will be all our own, so that no one can drive us from it;" and with hope springing up in her heart she tried to inspire hope and courage in theirs. "Oh, Millie," he said, taking her on his lap, "when you coax and pet one you are irresistible. We WILL begin again, and win back all and more than we have lost." Then, partly to amuse her father and mother, but more for the purpose of hastening their departure, Mildred told them of Roger's peculiar mood, and her conscience smote her a little as she caricatured rather than characterized the youth. Mrs. Jocelyn, in her kindliness, took his part, and said, "Millie, you are satirical and unjust I'm sure he's a well-meaning young man." "The dear little mother!" cried Mildred, laughing; "when she can't think of anything else good to say of a person, she assures us that he is 'well-meaning.' Life may bring me many misfortunes, but I shall never marry what mamma calls 'a well-meaning man.'" "But, Millie, I'm sure he's been very good and kind to us all, and he's kind to his mother and sister, and he seems steady--" "Well, mamma, admitting it all, what follows?" asked Mildred. "It follows that we had better go away," said Mrs. Jocelyn, with her low, sweet laugh, that had been rarely heard of late; "but I don't like you to be unjust to the young fellow. After all, he's not so very much to blame, Millie," she added, with a little nod. "If I were he I fear I might be in the same fix." "Oh, papa, now we must go; for if mamma's sympathies are once aroused in behalf of this 'steady, well-meaning young man'--there! I will talk no more nonsense to-night, although I often find nonsense a sort of life preserver that keeps me from sinking. I admit, mamma, that I have been unjust to Mr. Atwood. He's far more clever than I ever imagined him to be, but he's so different"--she finished the sentence with a little repellent gesture that her mother well understood. They were all comforted, and far more hopeful from their frank interchange of thought and feeling, and both father and mother breathed a fervent "God bless you, Millie," as they separated, long past midnight. "God will bless us," said the young girl, "if we will just simply try to do what is right and best every day. The blessing will come on doing, not waiting." She had not been in her room very long before hearing the crunching of gravel under the wheels of Roger's buggy. With a smile she thought, "He must have found a more sympathizing ear and heart than mine to have remained out so late." CHAPTER XI A SHADOW "Mrs. Atwood," said Mildred the next morning, "I want to thank you for your kindness in giving us our supper alone with papa the first evening of his arrival; but you need not put yourself to any extra trouble to-day." "Roger is the one to thank," replied Mrs. Atwood. "He's grown so different, so considerate like, that I scarcely know him any more than I do the old place he's so fixed up. He says he's going to paint the house after the summer work slacks off. I don't see what's come over him, but I like the change very much." Mildred flushed slightly, but said, with some constraint, "Please thank him then from papa and mamma, but do not let us make you further trouble. We shall all return to the city soon, and then you will have easier times every way." "I'm sorry to hear that, Miss Jocelyn, for we shall miss you all very much. You've done us good in more ways than one." Roger did not appear at breakfast. "A young horse strayed from the pasture, and Roger is out looking for him," his mother explained when Mrs. Jocelyn asked after him. Although not a member of any church, Mr. Jocelyn had great respect for his wife and daughter's faith, and accompanied them to service that morning very readily. Roger appeared in time to take Belle, as usual, but she found him so taciturn and preoccupied that she whispered to Mildred, "You've spoiled him for me. He sits staring like an owl in the sunlight, and seeing just about as much. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to make him so glum. I intend to have a dozen beaux, and to keep them all jolly." Mildred was obliged to admit to herself that the young fellow was very undemonstrative at dinner, and that he did not exhibit the rusticity that she half hoped to see. She gained the impression that he was observing her father very closely, and that no remark of his escaped him. "He has the eyes of a lynx," she thought, with a frown. Still, apart from a certain annoyance at his deep interest in her and all relating to her, she was rather pleased at the impression which such a man as her father must make on one so unsophisticated. Mr. Jocelyn was a finished man of the world, and his large experience left its impress on all that he said and did. Although a little courtly in manner, he was so kindly and frank in nature that his superiority was not at all oppressive, and with true Southern bonhomie he made the farmer's family quite at ease, leading them to speak freely of their rural affairs. Susan soon lost all sense of restraint and began to banter her brother. "You must have had a very affecting time in making up with Amelia Stone to have stayed out so late," she remarked sotto voce. "I've not seen Amelia Stone since the evening she was here," he answered dryly. "Indeed! what other charmer then tied you to her apron-strings so tightly? You are very fickle." "Now you've hit it," he answered, with a slight flush. "I was so undecided that I drove by every door, and was not tied at all." Belle "made eyes" at Mildred, as much as to say, "It's you who are distracting him." "Next time," Sue continued, "I think it would be well to make up your mind before Sunday morning." "My mind is made up," replied Roger--Belle looked at Mildred with an expression of horror, to her intense annoyance--"I shall trouble no one," he added, quietly. Belle now gave such a great sigh of relief that he turned upon her too swift a glance to leave time for disguise. He smiled a little bitterly, and then began talking in an off-hand way to Mr. Jocelyn about the hotel a few miles distant, saying that it had filled up very rapidly of late. As they rose from the table he remarked, hesitatingly, "My horse and wagon are at your service this afternoon or evening if you would like to take a drive." Mr. Jocelyn was about to accept, but Mildred trod significantly on his foot. Therefore he thanked Roger cordially, and said he would spend a quiet day with his family. "I don't wish to be under the slightest obligations to him," explained Mildred when they were alone; "and Belle," she warned, "you must stop your nonsense at once. I won't endure another trace of it." "Oh, indeed! I didn't know you were so touchy about him," cried the girl. "Is it for his sake or your own that you are so careful? You're stupid not to let him amuse you, since you've spoiled him for me." Her sister made no reply, but gave the giddy child a glance that quieted her at once. When Mildred was aroused her power over others was difficult to explain, for, gentle as she was, her will at times seemed irresistible. Roger did not need to be told in so many words that his overtures of "friendship" had been practically declined. Her tones, her polite but distant manner revealed the truth clearly. He was sorely wounded, but, so far from being disheartened, his purpose to win her recognition was only intensified. "I can at least compel her respect and prove myself her equal," he thought, and instead of lounging or sleeping away the afternoon, as had been his custom, he took a book and read steadily for several hours. At last he left his room to aid his father in the evening labors of the farm-yard, and in doing so would have to pass near Mr. Jocelyn, who, with his family, was seated under a wide-spreading tree. The gentleman evidently was in a very genial mood; he was caressing his children, flattering his wife and Mildred, and rallying Belle after her own frolicsome humor. Roger thought, as he looked at them a few moments through the kitchen window, that he had never seen a happier family, and with a sigh wished that it was his privilege to join them without being thought an intruder. Mildred's reserve, however, formed an impassable barrier, and he was hastening by with downcast eyes, when, to his surprise and the young girl's evident astonishment, Mr. Jocelyn arose and said, "Ah, Mr. Atwood, we're glad to see you. Won't you join our little party? I want to thank you again for offering me your horse and carriage, but I assure you that a quiet hour like this with one's family after long separation is happiness enough. Still, as a Southern man, I appreciate courtesy, and am always ready to respond to it in like spirit. Moreover, it gives me peculiar pleasure to see a Northern man developing traits which, if they were general, would make the two great sections of our land one in truth as well as in name." Roger gave Mildred a quick, questioning glance, and saw that she was regarding her father with much perplexity. "Mr. Jocelyn," he said quietly, "the little courtesy of which you speak has cost me nothing, and if it had it would not be worth the words you bestow upon it." "I do not think of the act itself so much as the spirit, the disposition it indicates," resumed Mr. Jocelyn in a manner that was courtly and pronounced, but otherwise natural and quiet enough. "I do not judge superficially, but look past apparent trifles to the character they suggest. Moreover, my wife informs me that you have been very polite to her, and very kind to Belle and the children, whom you have often taken out to drive without any compensation whatever. Since you will not make a business matter of such things, I wish to repay you in the coin which gentleman can always receive--that of friendly acknowledgments." "Then please consider me amply repaid," and with a smile and a bow he was about to retire. "Do not hasten away, sir," Mr. Jocelyn began again. "On this, day of rest your duties cannot be pressing. I want to assure you further of the pleasure I have in finding a young man who, so far from being rendered callous and material by hard and rather homely work, is alive to all refining influences. The changes in this place for the better since I was here, and those pretty flowers yonder, all prove that you have an eye for the beautiful as well as the practical. My daughter Mildred also informs me that you are cherishing hopes and ambitions that will eventually enlarge your sphere of life and take you out into the great world." Hitherto Roger's eyes had been fixed keenly and unwaveringly on Mr. Jocelyn's urbane countenance, as if he would detect the cause of such unlooked-for words, but at the mention of Mildred's name his brow and even neck was suffused. "She must have spoken of me kindly," he thought, "or her father would not be so friendly." But when a swift glance around revealed that Mrs. Jocelyn was looking at her husband in perplexity, that Mildred was not even trying to conceal her vexation and amazement, and that Belle had stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to prevent laughter, a spark of anger glittered in his eyes. His first thought was that Mr. Jocelyn was indulging in unexpected irony at his expense, and the ready youth whose social habits had inured him to much chaffing was able to reply, although a little stiffly and awkwardly, "I suppose most young men have ambitious hopes of doing something in the world, and yet that does not prevent mine from seeming absurd. At any rate, it's clear that I had better reveal them hereafter by deeds rather than words," and with a very slight bow he strode away, but not so quickly that he failed to hear Mildred's voice in the exclamation, "Oh, papa! how could you?" and then followed a paroxysm of laughter from Belle. Roger was deeply incensed, for he believed that Mr. Jocelyn and Belle were deliberately ridiculing him. That Mildred had repeated his conversation was evident, but her manner showed that she did not expect his words to be used against him so openly, and that she had no part in the cruel sport. The worst he could charge against her was exclusive pride; and he did Mrs. Jocelyn the justice to see that she was pained by the whole affair. His face grew rigid as he finished his work and he muttered, "They shall see that my pride is equal to theirs: I won't go out of my way a hair-breadth for them," and he walked in to supper as if he were at home and had an absolute right to be there. He had been at the table but a few moments, however, before the aspect of the Jocelyn family began to puzzle him exceedingly. Belle appeared as if she had been crying; Mrs. Jocelyn looked perplexed and worried, and in Mildred's eyes there were anxiety and trouble. Mr. Jocelyn had not lost his serenity in the least, but his aspect now was grave, and his manner more courtly than ever. He did not seem inclined to say very much, however, and had an abstracted, dreamy look as if his thoughts were far away. When he did speak, Roger thought that Mildred looked apprehensive, as if fearing that he might again say something embarrassing, but his words were quiet and measured, betraying no excitement. The expression of his face, however, seemed unnatural to Roger's close yet furtive scrutiny. An hour before his eyes had been bright and dilated, and his countenance full of animation; now all the light and cheerfulness were fading, and the man seemed to grow older and graver by moments. Was the dusky pallor stealing across his features caused by the shadows of evening? Roger thought not, but a resentful glance from Mildred warned him to curb his curiosity. He was curious, but not in a vulgar or prying way, and his anger was all gone. He was sure that something was amiss with Mr. Jocelyn, and that his family also was disturbed and anxious. There had been none of the incoherency and excitement of a man who had drank too much, but only a slight exaggeration of the genial traits manifested at the dinner-table followed by a quietude and abstraction that were not natural. Mental aberrations, even though slight and temporary, are instinctively felt by those who are sound and normal in mind. Still Roger would have charged Mr. Jocelyn's words and manner to the peculiarities of a stranger, had not his family been perplexed and troubled also. "There's something wrong about him," he said to himself as he rose from the table; "he lacks balance, or he's not well. I half believe that the time will come when that young girl will be the stay and support of the whole family. You cannot prevent my friendliness, Miss Jocelyn, any more than you can stop the sun from shining, and some day it will melt all your reserve and coldness." He took his volume of history out on the sward near the porch, resolving to see the end of the domestic drama. His mother had told him during the day that their "boarders" would soon depart. He had made no response whatever, but his sinking spirits revealed to him that in some way his life had become involved with that of the girl now so distant and repellent. He did not turn many leaves, but he sat with the book in his lap until long after nightfall. The domestic drama apparently had a very prosaic ending. Mr. Jocelyn and his family returned for a time to their seats under the trees, but all except the little children were apparently under some constraint. The latter soon grew sleepy, and Mrs. Jocelyn took them in to bed. Belle was not long in following them, darting an ireful glance at Roger in passing, to which he responded by a rather mocking smile. "We were having a lovely time till you came, you old marplot," she muttered under her breath. Mr. Jocelyn grew more and more quiet until his head sank on his breast, and it was with difficulty that Mildred aroused him sufficiently to urge his retiring. At last he took his daughter's arm and entered the house as if in a dream. The young girl's face was downcast and averted. As they passed between the youth and the still glowing west they cast a faint shadow upon him. Though by no means imaginative, he noted the shadow and thought about it. It seemed that it still rested on him after they were gone, and that it might never pass away. His was not a dreamy, fanciful nature, that could create a score of improbable contingencies, but his shrewd, strong sense was quick to recognize traces of weakness and untrustworthiness in those he met, and the impression grew upon him that Mr. Jocelyn was not a well-balanced man. "If he fails her, I will not," he murmured. Then with a short laugh he continued, "How is it that I am ready to admit such a far-reaching claim from one who repels and dislikes me? I don't know, and I don't care. She has waked me up; she has the power of calling into action every faculty I have. Already, I scarcely know myself. I never lived before, and I feel that I can become a man--perhaps a great man--if I follow this impulse, and I shall follow it." Soon all were sleeping, and mother and daughter were alone. "Mamma," said Mildred, in a low, troubled tone, "it seemed to me that papa acted very strangely this afternoon and evening. Can he be well?" "Oh, Millie," cried the loving, anxious wife, "I fear he is not well at all; and no wonder, when we think of the long strain he has been under. Haven't you noticed that his appetite is very poor? to-night he scarcely ate a mouthful. He has just been trying to keep up ever since he came, and this afternoon he made unusual effort; reaction of course followed, and at last he was so weary and troubled that he could not hide his feelings from us." "I suppose you take the right view," said Mildred hesitatingly, "but papa has not seemed the same this afternoon as at other times when tired and worried. His gayety was a little extravagant, and so it might naturally be if it were forced. But I can't understand his speaking to young Mr. Atwood as he did. Papa never showed such a lack of tact or delicacy before. I would not dare tell him things if he spoke of them afterward so inopportunely. I felt as if I could sink into the ground. And when Belle--who can't help seeing everything in a ridiculous light--began to laugh he turned and spoke to her as he has never spoken to any of us before, And yet he did not seem angry, but his gravity was more oppressive than any amount of natural anger." "Well, Millie, your father is very kind-hearted, and, like all Southern men, very sensitive to kindness and courtesy. I suppose he thought that you and Belle had not treated Roger well, and that he ought to make amends. The real explanation is that he is overstrained and unhappy, and so cannot act like himself." "I do hope he is not going to be ill," faltered Mildred. "Such a strange lethargy came over him after you left us. Oh, the day is ending horribly, and it leaves a weight of foreboding on my mind. I wish we could get away tomorrow, for I feel that Roger Atwood is watching us, and that nothing escapes him. I know that papa's manner seemed strange to him as well as to us, and I almost hate him for his obtrusive and prying interest. Why can't he see that he's nothing to us, nor we to him, and let us alone?" She often recalled these words in after years. The wife went to her room and found that her husband was sleeping quietly. Returning, she said, more cheerily, "I think papa will be like himself after a good night's sleep, and there's every promise now that he'll get it; so don't look on the dark side, Millie, nor worry about that young man. He don't mean to be obtrusive, and I must say that I think he behaves very well considering. With troubles like ours, why think of such a transient annoyance? If I only knew just how I could help your father I would not think about much else." It would have been well indeed if she could have known, for she would have taken from his pocketbook a small syringe and a bottle of Magendie's solution of morphia; she would have entreated him upon her knees, she would have bound him by the strongest oaths to die rather than to use it again. The secret of all that was peculiar and unnatural in his conduct can be explained by the fact that early in the afternoon he went apart for a moment, and with a little innocent-looking instrument injected into his arm the amount of the fatal drug which he believed he could enjoy without betraying himself. CHAPTER XII VIEWLESS FETTERS Although Mr. Jocelyn had retired so early and slept heavily until an hour that at the farmhouse was late, the reader knows that his sleep was not the natural repose which brings freshness and elasticity. His wife and Mildred, however, did not know this, and his languor, continued drowsiness, and depression, which even much effort could not disguise, confirmed their dread of an impending illness. He saw their anxiety, and took advantage of their fears to hide his weakness. "Yes," he sighed, in response to their gentle solicitude as he pushed away his almost untasted breakfast, "I suppose my health has been impaired by worry of mind and the heat in town. I'm better, though, than I have been. I don't see how you are going to endure the city." They both assured him, however, that they would not even consider any other arrangement except that already agreed upon, and urged that he should return to town that very day, his wife adding that just as soon as he had secured rooms within their means she would join him and prepare them for the family. "Oh, Nan," he again said dejectedly, "it's a cruel fate which compels me to take you to a tenement-house in August." "It would be far more cruel to leave me here," his wife answered earnestly. "I could be happy anywhere if you were your old natural self once more. Millie and I can both see that struggling alone and brooding by yourself over your troubles is not good for you," and her gentle but determined purpose carried the day. Mr. Jocelyn was then directed to a somewhat distant field, where he found Roger, who readily agreed to take him to the steamboat landing in the afternoon. Lifting his eyes from his work a few moments afterward, the young man saw that his visitor, instead of returning to the house, had sat down under a clump of trees and had buried his face in his hands. "There's a screw loose about that man," he muttered. "He's too uneven. Yesterday at dinner he was the most perfect gentleman ever I saw; in the afternoon he had a fit of pompous hilarity and condescension; then came abstraction, as if his mind had stepped out for a time; and now, after twelve hours of sleep, instead of feeling like a lark, he looks as though he might attend his own funeral before night, and walks as if his feet were lead. He mopes there under the trees when he has but a few more hours with his family. If I had such a wife and such a daughter as he has, I'd cut a swath for them, no matter what stood in the way." But Roger's censure was slight compared with that which Mr. Jocelyn visited upon himself; and in order to understand his feelings and conduct, it will be necessary to relate some experiences which occurred after the departure of his family to the country. Throughout the entire winter he had been under a severe strain of business anxiety, and then had come the culminating scenes of failure, loss of income, and enforced and unhappy separation. His natural depression had been so increased by the meagre prospect of finding employment which would yield his family an adequate support, that even his increased and more frequent indulgence in his morphia powders failed to give sufficient hopefulness and courage, while at the same time they began to produce some serious disorders in his system. There is a class of diseases which rarely fails to attack one whose system is reduced and enfeebled, and neuralgia began to bind across his forehead a daily pressure of pain that at last became intolerable. Ordinary remedies not giving speedy relief, his physician injected into his arm a few drops of the solution of morphia. Thus far he had never used the drug in solution hypodermically, and he was much surprised by the agreeable effects of a very much smaller quantity than he had been accustomed to use on any one occasion, and his morphia hunger--already firmly established--immediately suggested that the little syringe might become a far more potent agent than the powders. Therefore he induced the physician to give him an order for the instrument, and to explain more fully the methods of its use, saying that attacks of neuralgia were generally rather obstinate in his case, and that he had neither the time nor the means to seek his services very often. The physician's few words of warning made but slight impression upon the infatuated man at the time. Mr. Jocelyn remembered only that he had an intolerable pain in his head and a heavy weight upon his heart. Many a time during the long civil war he had smilingly led charges wherein the chances of death were greater than those of life, but neither then nor since had he ever displayed any great aptitude for quiet endurance and self-control. Now every day was precious, and he felt he could not give himself up to pain and patient waiting until the disease could be conquered in a slow, legitimate way, when by a wound no more than a pin-prick he could obtain courage, happiness, and prospects illimitable. Having obtained the syringe and a vial of the solution of morphia, he injected into his arm a much larger quantity than the physician would have dreamed of employing. Not only did the unendurable anguish pass away within a few brief moments, but the world was transfigured; life's grim outlook became full of the richest promise, and discouragement and dread vanished utterly. So far from fearing that he could not provide for his family, he was sure that he could win for them abundance and luxury. A dozen avenues to fortune opened before him, and he felt that his only task was to choose, believing that in some indefinite yet easily discerned way he would achieve more than falls to the lot of most men to accomplish. Instead of a long, sleepless night like those which had preceded, his waking dreams ended in quiet and equally pleasant visions--then oblivion, which did not pass away until the morning sun was shining. But with the new day came a new access of pain and gloom, and the aid of the magic little instrument was invoked once more. Again within a few moments the potent drug produced a tranquil elysium and a transformed world of grand possibilities. With a vigor which seemed boundless, and hopes which repeated disappointments could not dampen, he continued his quest for employment until in the declining day his spirits and energy ebbed as strangely as they had risen in the morning, and after another night of dreams and stupor he awoke in torture. The powerful stimulant enabled him to repeat the experiences of the previous day, and for two or three weeks he lived in the fatal but fascinating opium paradise, gradually increasing the amount of morphia that his system, dulled by habit, demanded. In the meantime, by the lavish use of quinine he gradually banished his neuralgia with its attendant pain. It is well known to those familiar with the character of opium that its effects are greatly enhanced at first by any decided change in the method of its use; also that its most powerful and immediate influences can be produced solely by the hypodermic needle, since by means of it the stimulant is introduced at once into the system. When taken in powders, the glow, the serenity, and exaltation come on more slowly, and more gradually pass away, causing alternations of mood far less noticeable than those produced by immediate injection of the poison. Therefore it was not at all strange that Mr. Jocelyn's family should remain in complete ignorance of the habit which was enslaving him, or that his behavior failed to excite the faintest suspicion of the threatening influences at work. There is no vice so secret as that of the opium slave's, none that is in its earlier stages more easily and generally concealed from those who are nearest and dearest. The changes produced in Mr. Jocelyn were very gradual, and seeing him daily even his loving wife did not note them. During the period of unnatural exaltation that has been described he had accepted agencies which promised thousands if he could sell millions of dollars' worth of goods, and after the subtle morphia had infused itself through his system nothing seemed easier; but dreams are not realities, and after grand hopes unfulfilled, and futile efforts, he would sink into a despondency from which nothing could lift him save the little syringe that he carried hidden next to his heart. As its magic never failed him, he went on for a time, blind to the consequences. At last he began to grow more alarmed than ever before at the ascendency of the drug and his dependence upon it, but when he tried to discontinue its use he found that he had been living so long under the influence of a powerful stimulant that without it he sank like a stone. Then came the usual compromise of all weak souls--he would gradually decrease the amount and then the frequency of its use; but, as is generally the case, he put off the beginning of sturdy self-denial until the morrow, and almost every day he poisoned his system with that which also poisoned and demoralized his soul. He dimly saw his danger, but did not realize it. With the fatuity of all self-indulgent natures he thought the day would come when, with better prospects and health renewed, he would throw away the spell which bound him and become a free man, but day after day passed and he did not; his appetite began to flag and his energy also; he would sit dreaming for hours when he might have been at work. At best his agencies would give him but a scanty revenue, although pushed with extraordinary skill and vigor. As it was, they yielded him little more than personal support, and he began to entertain the hope that if he could only obtain regular employment he could then resume his old regular habits. Therefore he had agreed to accept a position which was little more than a foothold, and yet if he would go to work with a determined and patient industry he might, by means of it, win more than he had lost. Could he do this? The Sunday he had just spent with his family had awakened him as never before to a sense of his bondage. Even with the society of those he loved to enliven and sustain he had felt that he could not get through the day without the help of the stimulant upon which he had grown so dependent. While at church it was not the clergyman's voice he heard, but a low yet imperious and incessant cry for opium. As he rode home, smiling upon his wife and children, and looking at the beautiful and diversified country, between them and the landscape he ever saw a little brass instrument gauged at four or five times the amount that the physician had at first inserted in his arm. At the dinner table he had spoken courteously and well on many subjects, and yet ever uppermost in his mind was one constant thought--opium. The little diabolical thing itself seemed alive in his pocket, and made its faint yet potent solicitation against his heart. At last he had muttered, "I will just take a little of the cursed stuff, and then I must begin to break myself in dead earnest." The reader knows what followed. Moreover, he was led to fear that the alternations of mood caused by injections of morphia would be so great that they could not fail to excite remark. Although the new day brought every motive which can influence a man, Mr. Jocelyn found the path to freedom so steep and difficult that the ascent seemed well-nigh impossible. His muscles were relaxed, his whole frame so weary and limp that he even dreaded the effort required to return to the house where his family was waiting for him. But the physical oppression was nothing to that which weighed upon his mind. The sense of misery and discouragement was paralyzing, and he was fairly appalled by his lack of energy. And yet he felt his need of power and resolution as keenly as he realized his feebleness. He knew that he had appeared unnatural to his wife and children, and that while they now ascribed his behavior to the long strain he had been under, their loving and charitable blindness could not last if he often exhibited before them such variable moods and conditions. Therefore he felt that he must overcome the habit before they were together permanently, for to permit them to discover his vile weakness in this time of their great need would be a mortal wound to his pride. All his manhood revolted at the bare thought. Their trust, their love, their dependence and unrepining courage in meeting poverty and privation with him imposed the strongest and most sacred of obligations, and his high sense of honor--which hitherto had been his religion--made failure to meet these obligations the most awful disaster that could overwhelm him. The means of escaping from his wretchedness and dejection--from the horrible lassitude of body and soul--could be grasped in a moment, and the temptation to use them and become within a few minutes a strong, sanguine, courageous man was almost irresistible; but he knew well that such an abrupt change from the heavy, dull-eyed condition in which they had seen him at the breakfast table could not fail to arouse suspicion; and should they once discern his crime--for crime he now regarded it--he feared his self-respect would be so destroyed that he would never have the pride and strength for the struggle now clearly foreseen; therefore, with the instinct of self-preservation, and from the impulse of all his native and long-fostered Southern pride, he resolved that they must never know his degradation. He must rally his shattered forces, spend the few hours before his departure with his family in a way to lull all fears and surmises; then when away by himself he would tug at his chain until he broke it. Summoning the whole strength of his will he returned to the house, and succeeded fairly well. Could he break his chain? The coming pages of this book will reveal his struggle and its termination. Alas! it is no fancy sketch, but a record of human experience that is becoming sadly frequent. The hunger for opium had grown upon Mr. Jocelyn by its almost constant use for nearly two years. During weeks of pain he had almost lived upon the drug, saturating his system with it. It had come to him like an angel of light, lifting him on buoyant pinions out of suffering and despondency, but the light was fading from the wings and brow of this strong spirit, and it was already seen to be an angel of darkness. At this time Mr. Jocelyn might have escaped from his thraldom, but would he? The world is full of people who are proud and self-respecting in the extreme, who are honorable and virtuous, good and kindly at heart, but whose wills are nerveless, though they may go safely through life without suspecting the truth; but if they fall under the influence of an evil habit--if they pass under this mightiest and darkest of all spells, opium hunger--they may learn their weakness in despair. Mr. Jocelyn, however, had no thought of despair; he was only surprised, humiliated, and somewhat alarmed; he was satisfied that he must drift no longer, and in perfect sincerity resolved to make the most of his brief separation from his family, hoping that with a physician's advice he could speedily overcome his morbid craving and distressing need. He left the farmhouse with the resolution that he would never touch the drug again, believing that before a week expired the horrible depression, both mental and physical, would so far pass away as to excite no further suspicion. For an hour he rode at Roger's side, rigid, taciturn, and pale; for except when heated by exercise his wonted ruddy color was passing away from the effects of the poison. Roger drove around to the large hotel, which was not much out of their way, and said, "Mr. Jocelyn, will you please take the lines a few moments? I have an errand here, but it won't keep me long." Having transacted his business he stood in the office door watching a young man who sauntered toward him. The stranger was almost as tall as himself, but much slighter. While his carriage was easy and graceful, it was marked by an air of lassitude and weariness, and his step lacked firmness. A heavy mustache relieved his face from effeminacy, but his large, dark eyes were dull and apathetic. Suddenly they lighted up with recognition; he hesitated, and then hastily advanced toward Mr. Jocelyn, but his steps were speedily checked, for the moment the gentleman recognized him he bowed very coldly and turned haughtily away. The young man flushed deeply, stood still a moment in irresolution, and then with a swift glance into Roger's interested face turned and quickly disappeared. Before Roger could resume his place in the wagon the proprietor of the hotel came out and called him back; something had been forgotten. This interruption was fatal to Mr. Jocelyn's good resolutions. Vinton Arnold, who had won his daughter's affection, but who seemingly had not the manhood to be faithful in her adversity, was the one whom he had repulsed, and the thought of his wealth and luxury, while he was on his way to seek a home in a tenement for his beautiful child, so maddened him that he drove recklessly to an adjacent shed, which shielded him from observation, snatched out his fatal syringe, and in a moment the poison was diffusing itself through all his system. He had returned again before Roger, who had been detained some moments, reappeared, but now his heavy eyes were bright and fiery, and his tongue unloosed. "Did you see that young man to whom I refused to speak?" he asked as they drove away. "Yes." "Well, he's a white-livered scoundrel. He's a type of your Northern gentlemen. A Southern man would starve rather than act so pusillanimously. Of course I'm not going to talk of family secrets, or say anything not befitting a high-toned gentleman, but I taught that snob how a man of honor regards his cowardice and cold-bloodedness. He was one of our fair-weather friends, who promptly disappeared when the sky clouded. Here he is, dawdling around a high-priced hotel, while I'm on my way to seek rooms in a tenement for those to whom he is not worthy to speak; but the time shall come, and speedily, too, when even on the base plane of money--the sole claim of his proud family for consideration--we shall meet him and scorn him as his superiors. I have plans, business prospects--" and he launched forth into such a vague, wild statement of his projects that Eoger looked at him in silent amazement, half doubting his sanity. In his haste Mr. Jocelyn had not carefully gauged his syringe, and the over-amount of morphia thrown into his system so stimulated him that his words appeared exceedingly irrational to the young man, whose judgment was based on unusual shrewdness and common-sense. He was greatly puzzled by the sudden change in his companion. It was evident that he had not been drinking, for his breath was untainted and his utterance was natural. But his face was flushed, and he seemed possessed by a strange, unbalanced mental exaltation which led him to speak as no sensible man ought in any circumstances, and certainly not to a stranger. Roger therefore interrupted him saying, "I shall respect your confidence, Mr. Jocelyn, and will never repeat what you have said. Please let me suggest, however, that it would be wise not to speak so frankly to others, since they might take advantage of you." "Please let me assure YOU," resumed Mr. Jocelyn, with the most impressive dignity, "that I am a man of the world, and that I have seen a great deal of the world. I can read men as you would read a book. If you were not trustworthy I should know it at a glance. Did you not see how I treated that young jackanapes? His wealth and elegance did not impose upon me in the least. You are trustworthy. You have a large, aspiring mind, and yet you know your station; you would not dream of presuming. What does it signify that we are poor for the moment? True Southern blood is in our veins, and I have a dozen plans for securing large wealth. When that day comes I shall remember those who basely turned their backs on us in our brief obscurity;" and thus he rambled on, while Roger listened coldly and in silence. "There is method is his madness," he said to himself; "he is not so daft but that he hints broadly I must keep my station and not be 'presuming.' His proud daughter hints as much still more plainly. Well, we'll see whose dreams find the larger fulfilment--his or mine." By the time they reached the landing the sun was low in the west, and his companion had become comparatively silent, dreamy, and abstracted. Half an hour later Roger went on board of the boat with some solicitude to see how he was faring. Mr. Jocelyn started out of what appeared a deep reverie as Roger addressed him, and said, after a moment's thought, "Please say to my family that you left me well, and safely on my way," and with a quiet and rather distant bow he resumed his absorbing thoughts. The steamer moved away, but instead of returning directly home Roger went back to the hotel. Even amid the hallucinations of opium the father had too much instinctive delicacy to mention Mildred's name or to make any reference to Arnold's intentions; but the quick-witted fellow gained the impression that the elegant young stranger had been a welcome and favored suitor in the past better days, and he had a consuming wish to see and study the kind of man that he surmised had been pleasing to Mildred. As he rode along, pity for the girl took the place of resentment. "Not our plain little farmhouse, but the fashionable hotel, is the place where she would feel the most at home," he thought. "And yet she is going to a tenement-house! There, too, she'll stay, I fear, for all that her father will ever do for her. If he's not off his balance, I never saw a man that was." CHAPTER XIII A SCENE BENEATH THE HEMLOCKS Roger sat out on the dusky piazza of the hotel, looking into the large parlor through open windows which came to the floor, bent on making the most of such glimpses as he could obtain of the world to which he felt that Mildred belonged by right. He saw clearly that she would appear well and at home amid such surroundings. A young and elegantly dressed woman crossed the wide apartment, and he muttered, "Your carriage is very fine and fashionable, no doubt, but Miss Jocelyn would have added grace and nature to your regulation gait." He watched the groups at the card-tables with a curious interest, and the bobbing heads of gossiping dowagers and matrons; he compared the remarkable "make up," as he phrased it, of some of them with the unredeemed plainness of his mother's Sunday gown. "Neither the one nor the other is in good taste," he thought. "Mrs. Jocelyn dresses as I intend my mother shall some day." He coolly criticised a score or more of young men and women who were chatting, promenading, flitting through the open windows out upon the piazza and back again into the light, as a small stringed orchestra struck into a lively galop or the latest waltz. He saw a general mustering of the younger guests, even down to the boys and girls, for the lancers, and followed one and another that caught his eye through the mazy intricacies, making little gestures of disgust at those who seemed outre and peculiar in manner and appearance, and regarding with the closest observation such as exhibited a happy mean between a certain rusticity and awkwardness with which he was well acquainted, and a conventional artificiality which was to him all the more unnatural and absurd because his perception was not dulled by familiarity with society's passing whims. The young stranger whom Mr. Jocelyn had repulsed, and who was the real object of his quest, did not appear among the pleasure-seekers, nor could he discover him on the piazza, in the billiard-room, or in other places of resort. At last in much disappointment he returned to his seat, from which he commanded a view of the parlor; and scarcely had he done so before the one he sought mounted the steps near him as if returning from a stroll in the hotel grounds, threw away his cigar, and entered an open window with the same graceful, listless saunter witnessed in the afternoon. He crossed the wide apartment with as much ease and nonchalance as if it had been empty, and sat down on a sofa by a somewhat stout and very elegantly apparelled gentlewoman. Roger never thought of accounting for the intensity of his interest in this stranger--the young rarely analyze their feelings--but, obedient to an impulse to learn this man's power to win the favor of one so unapproachable by himself, he scanned with keenest scrutiny everything in his appearance and manner, and sought eagerly to gauge his character. He felt instinctively that the "cold-blooded snob," as Mr. Jocelyn had characterized him, was of the very opposite type to his own. His graceful saunter, which, nevertheless, possessed a certain quiet dignity, suggested a burdensome leisure and an utter lack of purpose to go anywhere or do anything. He dropped on the sofa rather than sat down. The lady at his side spoke rather decidedly to him, and he answered briefly without even looking at her. By and by she spoke again, more energetically; he then slowly arose, approached a young woman sitting near, who in response to something he said sprang up with alacrity, and they glided away in the waltz with an ease and grace scarcely equalled by the others upon the floor. After a few moments they circled around very near Roger's post of observation, and he was able to scan both the features and expression of the man whom he felt inclined to hate. But he was disarmed and perplexed, for the stranger showed no more pleasure or animation than would a fallen leaf that was swept here and there by varying eddies of wind. He kept time and step with perfect accuracy, but evidently from such complete familiarity with the form that he gave it not a thought. He danced as easily as a bird flies, avoiding the others without appearing to notice them. No color came from the exercise, no light kindled in his face. His expression was not blase or cynical, but weary and dejected; the melancholy in his large brown eyes was all the more striking from contrast with the music, the lighted room, and an amusement suggesting gayety. Pale, utterly unresponsive to the brilliant and mirthful scenes, he glided ghost-like here and there, and before very long seated his companion by the elderly woman whose urgency had led to his automaton-like performance. Then with a slight bow he passed through a window near and disappeared. The two lades spoke together for a few moments and seemed annoyed, and Roger now noted such a resemblance between them as to suggest that they were mother and daughter. He had seen sufficient to satisfy him, and he went away muttering, "There isn't enough of him to hate; he's but the shadow of a man. She fancy him! I couldn't have believed it; I can't account for it, unless he's very gifted in mind or very different when with her. This must be true, and he would be a mummy indeed if she couldn't wake him up." Roger rode home, however, ill at ease. "He hasn't forgotten her if he has given her up on account of her poverty," he thought. "He could see as well as I that there was no one there who could compare with her; but he mopes instead of trying to win her. If he can dance, why can't he work? I've no reason to complain, however, and I thank my stars that I have muscle and a will. In the meantime I shall come up here and study your tricks of manner, my elegant nonentity. I believe in force. Force moves the world and carries a man through it; but I now see that it should be well-managed and well-mannered force. Miss Jocelyn compares me with you, and I seem to her uncouth, unfinished, and crude in the extreme. Litheness and grace need not take an atom from my strength, and the time shall come when I will not fear comparisons. I'll win her yet with your own weapons." Roger's dreams proved that his sympathies with the melancholy stranger were not very deep, and that his idea of the survival of the fittest was the survival of the strongest. His human nature at that time was of the old Saxon type, that went directly for what it wanted, without much thought or sentiment for those weak enough to lose. Although it was rather late before he reached home, he found his mother, Mrs. Jocelyn, and Mildred waiting for him in the sitting-room. "What kept you so?" Mrs. Atwood exclaimed. "I stopped a while at the hotel on my return," he replied. "Did my husband send any message?" Mrs. Jocelyn asked, with a solicitude she could not disguise. "He told me to say that I had left him well, and safely on his way to the city." "Did--did he seem well when you left him?" the anxious wife persisted. "Quite as well as he did yesterday, I think," was the reply. "Mr. Atwood," said Mildred, in a tone that startled him a little, and he saw she was looking at him as if she would read his thoughts, "did my father truly appear well when you parted from him?" Roger's eyes fell before hers, but he replied firmly, "I left him sitting quietly on the steamboat's deck, and when I asked him if he had any message for his family, he said the words I have just repeated. He seemed naturally depressed at leaving you all. If he were not well he did not say anything about it;" and with a bow he passed up to his room. "Mother," said Mildred, when they were alone, "was it mere diffidence, or why was it, that he could not look me in the eyes? I wonder if he is concealing anything. It was in the afternoon and evening that papa was unlike himself yesterday. I wish I really knew whether or not that young man is hiding anything, for I have an impression that he is." "Oh, it was diffidence, Millie. He would have no motive in hiding the truth from us. I can see that he is both fascinated by you and afraid of you--poor fellow!" "A few weeks in the cornfield and a few smiles from the girls hereabouts will banish all his nonsense concerning me. I don't give him a thought except that his absurd feelings annoy me. Oh, mamma, you understand me. What he would like to offer is such a grotesque parody on that which I hoped for, on what I imagined I possessed, that it makes me sick. Oh, oh!" she sobbed, "I must give it all up. Mr. Arnold acts as if I were dead: and practically I am to him, although he may sigh and mope a little, perhaps. There, I'm wronging him; I know I wrong him. How can I forget his white, deathlike face and look of mortal pain. Oh that he had this young fellow's muscle and courage! I do not care for his money; I would be content with him in one bare room. But as it is I fear, I fear;" and the poor child buried her face in her mother's lap, and cried away some of her weight of foreboding. "Millie, darling," faltered her mother, "God knows I'd shield your heart with my own if I could, but I don't know how to help you. You are too much like me. Your love is your life, and you can't stop loving just because it would be wise and thrifty to do so. I think of you almost as much as I do of Martin, and I daily pray the merciful Saviour, who was 'tempted in all points like as we are,' to sustain and comfort you. I don't see how I can help you in any other way, for my own heart shows me just how you suffer." "There, little mother," said Mildred, raising her head and wiping her eyes, "I've had my cry, and feel the better for it. I'm going to help you and papa and be brave. I'm glad I'm like you. I'm glad I'm a true Southern girl, and that I can love as you loved; and I would despise myself if I could invest my heart and reinvest it like so much stock. Such a woman is cold-blooded and unnatural, and you are the dearest little mother and wife that ever breathed." "Oh, Millie, Millie, if I had only foreseen and guarded against this evil day!" "Come, dear mamma, don't always be blaming yourself for what you did not foresee. You are eager to do your best now, and that is all God or man can ask of us. These clouds will pass away some time, and then the sunshine will be all the brighter." The next few days of waiting and uncertainty were a severer ordeal to Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred than ever. Mr. Jocelyn, bent on gaining time, kept putting them off. His new duties upon which he had entered, he wrote, left him only the evening hours for his quest of rooms, and he had not succeeded in finding any that were suitable. Thus they expected something definite by every mail, but each day brought renewed disappointment. At last Mildred wrote that she would come down herself if he did not decide upon something at once. The morning after this letter was despatched the young girl took her work out under some wide-boughed hemlocks that stood beside the quiet country road, along which a farmer occasionally jogged to the village beyond, but which at that hour was usually quite deserted. Fred and Minnie were with her, and amused themselves by building little log huts with the dry sticks thickly scattered around. To Roger, who was cradling oats in an adjacent field, they made a picture which would always repeat itself whenever he passed that clump of hemlocks; and, as he cut his way down the long slope toward them, under the midsummer sun, he paused a second after each stroke to look with wistful gaze at one now rarely absent from his mental vision. She was too sad and preoccupied to give him a thought, or even to note who the reaper was. From her shady retreat she could see him and other men at work here and there, and she only envied their definite and fairly rewarded toil, and their simple yet assured home-life, while she was working so blindly, and facing, in the meantime, a world of uncertainty. Roger had been very unobtrusive since her father's departure, and she half consciously gave him credit for this when she thought about him at all, which was but seldom. He had imagined that she had grown less distant and reserved, and once or twice, when he had shown some little kindness to the children, she had smiled upon him. He was a hunter of no mean repute in that region, and was famous for his skill in following shy and scarce game. He had resolved to bring the principles of his woodcraft to bear upon Mildred, and to make his future approaches so cautiously as not to alarm her in the least; therefore he won the children's favor more thoroughly than ever, but not in an officious way. He found Belle moping the evening after her father's departure, and he gave her a swift drive in his buggy, which little attention completely disarmed the warm-hearted girl and became the basis of a fast-ripening friendship. "You need not put on such distant airs," she had said to Mildred; "he never mentions your name any more." But when he asked Mrs. Jocelyn to take a drive with him she had declined very kindly, for she feared that he might speak to her of her daughter in an embarrassing way. Over Belle, Mildred had little control in such matters, but as far as she and her mother were concerned she determined that he should have no encouragement whatever; for, although he made no further efforts either to shun or obtain her society, and had become quite as reserved as herself, he unconsciously, yet very clearly, revealed his state of mind to her womanly intuition. "There is one thing queer about Roger Atwood," said Belle, joining her sister under the hemlocks; "he now scarcely ever speaks of himself. I suppose he thinks I'd be silly enough to go and tell everything as you did." "What do you talk about then?" asked Mildred, with a half smile. "Oh, you are a little curious, are you? perhaps a little jealous, too, that he was so very easily cured of his admiration for you. If it were any secret, I wouldn't tell you. We talk about what we see, and it seems to me he sees everything. If a bird flies across the road he will point out its peculiarities, and he knows so much about the trees and bushes and wild flowers and the little creatures in the woods, how they live, and all that. He says a man's a fool that doesn't see all that's going on around him. Sometimes he makes me ache from laughing over his funny descriptions of the queer characters that live about here. Bat what interests me most is his accounts of the people at the hotel. Ob, I do wish mother would let me go there with him some evening! He is there nearly every night, and it's as good as a play to hear him take off the affected, snobbish ones. He has caught the English drawl and the 'yeh know' of some young fellows to perfection." "He IS a queer fellow," mused Mildred. "I wonder what he goes there for?" "Oh, Roger Atwood is no fool, I can tell you. He knows country society in perfection, and he would not be long in understanding Fifth Avenue noodledom just as well. He detects sham people and sham ways as quickly as you could, and delights in ridiculing them. He says there's a ghost of a man up there which interests him exceedingly, but that it is such an extremely well-behaved, good-mannered ghost that it is tolerated without remark, and that is all he will say about it, although I have often questioned him. I can't think who or what he means." Mildred looked up with a sudden access of interest, and then became silent and abstracted. "Since the children are quiet here," continued Belle, "I'll go back to the house and finish a story in which the hero and heroine are sentimental geese and blind as bats. They misunderstand each other so foolishly that I'd like to bob their empty heads together," and away she went, humming a gay song, with as little thought for the morrow as the birds in the fields around her. While Roger paused a moment to wipe the perspiration from his brow, the rustling of the grain ceased, and he heard the footfalls of a horse in the adjacent road. With a start he saw riding by the stranger who had been the object of his continued scrutiny at the hotel. The young men restrained to a walk the rather restless horse he bestrode, and seemed musing deeply under the shadow of a broad-brimmed Panama hat. He took no notice of Roger, and passing slowly on entered the shadow of the hemlocks, when an exclamation caused him to raise his head. A second later he sprang from his horse, threw the bridle over the limb of a tree, and seized Mildred's hand with an eagerness which proved that she had indeed the power to "wake him up." Roger was too distant to see just how she greeted her unlooked-for friend of other days, but thought she appeared so startled that she leaned against a tree for support. He saw, however, that the "ghost of a man" was now flesh and blood in his earnestness, and that he retained her hand in both of his own while speaking rapidly. Before very long, however, the horse became so impatient that he suddenly jerked his bridle loose, wheeled, and came galloping up the road toward Roger, who, after a moment's hesitation, cleared the low stone wall at a bound and stood in the road awaiting him. Mildred's companion made a gesture of annoyance, and then said, with a shrug, "Let the beast go. I'm well content to remain here." When they saw Roger's purpose, however, they stood watching for the outcome of his effort. As Arnold--for he it was--saw the horse, with broken and flying reins, thundering apparently right upon the motionless form of a man, he exclaimed, "By Jove! but that's a brave fellow." The vicious brute soon seemed so nearly upon the rash youth that Mildred gave a slight scream of terror, but a second later she saw him spring lightly aside, catch one of the flying reins, hold on for a few yards, half dragged, half running, and then the animal yielded to a master. A cloud of dust obscured them momentarily; then the country-bred athlete vaulted lightly into the saddle and came trotting sharply toward them, riding like a centaur. She was enraged at herself that her face should grow scarlet under his brief glance from one to the other, but without a word he sprang lightly down and began to fasten the horse securely to a tree--an act scarcely necessary, for the animal appeared completely subdued. "By Jove! my man, that was neatly done," said Arnold. "Here's a bank-note for your trouble." "The fact that I've caught your horse does not prove me a hostler," Roger replied brusquely, without looking at the speaker. Arnold now recognized the young man whom he had seen with Mr. Jocelyn, and also at the hotel several times subsequently. He had learned his name, and therefore began, "Oh, I beg pardon; this is Mr. Atwood;" but before he could say more a covered barouche came rapidly down the hill from the opposite direction, turned with the angle of the road, and passed into the shade of the hemlocks. Arnold had become very pale the moment he saw it, and in its occupant Roger recognized the woman whom he had seen at the hotel, and whom he had learned to be the mother of the listless dancer. A brief glance showed him that Mildred knew her also. The lady sharply ordered her coachman to stop, and after a brief but freezing look into Mildred's hot face she said, in a meaning tone, "Vinton, I will esteem it a favor if you will accompany me on my drive." "I will join you presently," he said irresolutely. "I will wait politely then until you have concluded your interview," the gentlewoman remarked coldly, leaning back in her carriage. Her look, tone, and action stung Mildred to the very quick. Gentle and retiring usually, she was capable of a very decided and even an aggressive course under great provocation. For a moment her warm Southern blood boiled at Mrs. Arnold's implication that she was so eager to capture her wealthy son that it was not prudent to leave them alone together a moment. With decision and the dignity of conscious innocence she said, "Good-morning, Mr. Arnold"; then taking little Minnie's hand and calling Fred she led the way toward the house. It happened that the only path of egress led her by the carriage, and the manner in which its occupant ignored her presence was so intolerable in its injustice that she paused, and, fixing her clear, indignant eyes on the flushed, proud face before her, asked, in tones never forgotten by those who heard them, "Mrs. Arnold, wherein have I wronged you or yours?" The lady was silent and a little embarrassed. "I know, and you might know," Mildred continued, "if you chose, that you cannot charge me with one unwomanly act, but your look and manner toward me are both unwomanly and unchristian. You insult me in my poverty and misfortune. Without the shadow of right or reason, you cruelly wound one who was wounded already;" and she was about to pass on. "Mother, as you are a woman, do not let her go without a word of respect and kindness," cried her son, in a hoarse, stifled voice. "Miss Jocelyn," began Mrs. Arnold in a constrained tone, "I mean you no disrespect. Nevertheless--" "Nevertheless!" exclaimed Arnold, wrought to frenzy. "Great God! are you going to qualify that grudging sentence?" He struck his hand to his forehead, reeled, and fell prone upon the earth. In a moment Mildred knelt beside him, and Roger saw that she loved him with her whole strong, womanly soul. "Bring water, bring brandy; mother will give it to you," she said to him in a low voice, and he dashed off to obey. Mrs. Arnold hastily descended from the carriage and felt her son's pulse with much solicitude. "He has only fainted," she said. "He is apt to have such attacks when overwrought. It's a part of his disease. Miss Jocelyn, you see he is a reed that must be supported, not leaned upon," she added, looking straight into the young girl's troubled eyes. "I mean you kindness as truly as I mean kindness to him. He will soon be better. He has often been in this condition ever since he was a child. With this knowledge you will understand me better. Thomas"--to the coach-man--"lift him into the carriage. He will soon revive," she continued to Mildred, "and at the hotel he shall have the best of care. Believe me, I feel for you both, but I know what is right and best." The coachman did as he was directed, and they drove rapidly away. Mildred put her hand to her side, and then, with pale and downcast face, led the wondering children toward the house. She soon met. Roger returning, and running like a deer. "They have taken him away," she said briefly, without looking up. "Please care for his horse and accept my thanks," and then she hastened to her room and did not appear again that day. He complied with her request, then went back to his work, and the grain fell as if the reaper were Death himself. Mrs. Arnold's course was not so harsh and rude as it seemed, and can readily be explained on the theory by which she governed her feelings and actions toward her son. An obscure weakness in the functions of his heart had rendered him subject to fainting turns from early childhood. Physicians had always cautioned against over-exertion and over-excitement of any kind; therefore he had not been sent to school like the other children, or permitted to indulge in the sports natural to his age. Having been constantly cautioned, curbed, and repressed, he grew into a timid, self-distrustful, irresolute man, and yet was keenly sensible of the defects that separated him from other men. No one ever longed for independence more earnestly than he; few were less able to achieve it. His mother, having shielded him so many years from himself as well as from adverse influences from without, had formed the habit of surveillance. Exaggerating his weakness and dependence, his unfitness to compete with other men in active pursuits, she had almost ignored his manhood. The rest of the family naturally took their tone from her, regarding him as an invalid, and treating him as one. Chafing with secret and increasing bitterness over his misfortune and anomalous position, he grew more and more silent and reserved, dwelling apart in a world created from a literature that was not of the best or most wholesome character. As long as he lived a quiet, monotonous life that accorded with the caution enjoined by physicians, he gave his mother little solicitude, for the woman of the world, versed in all the proprieties of her station, had no comprehension of the sensitive spirit that had been repressed equally with his physical nature. That he should become cold toward her, and cynical toward her world of wealth and fashion, was to her but a proof that his character was defective also, and led to the fear that his "absurd notions" might occasion trouble. His intimacy with the Jocelyns threatened to justify her forebodings, and, while knowing nothing of Mildred personally, she was naturally inclined to the belief that she, like many others, would be glad to escape poverty by allying herself to an old and wealthy family, and she regarded her son as weak enough to become a ready victim. Nevertheless he was of age, and if he should enter into a formal engagement it might be no easy matter to break it or escape the consequences. Therefore she determined at all hazards to prevent such a consummation, and thus far had succeeded. She was greatly angered that, in spite of her precautions and injunctions, he had again met Mildred, and she resolved to end the interview at once, even at the cost of being thought rude and harsh, for if left to themselves that summer day they might realize all her fears. At the same time she proposed to manifest her disapproval so decidedly that if the young woman still sought to enter her family, it would be by a sort of violence; and she also was not unmindful of the fact that, with the exception of an apparent laborer and her coachman, only the parties interested were the witnesses of her tactics. Therefore she had looked at Mildred as coldly and haughtily as only a proud woman can, with the result already narrated. Although compelled to admit that the girl was not what she had imagined her to be, she was none the less bent on preventing further complications, and resolved to take her son elsewhere as soon as he had sufficiently recovered. The next morning Mildred left her seclusion, and her aspect was pale and resolute, but no reference was made to the events uppermost in the minds of those aware of them. Even the children and Belle had been so cautioned that they were reticent. In the evening, however, as Roger was raking the flower-beds over to prevent the weeds from starting, Mildred came out, and joining him said, a little bitterly, "Well, what did your microscopic vision reveal to you yesterday morning?" "A brave, proud girl, for whom I have the deepest respect," he replied, looking directly into her eyes. "Was that all?" "No, indeed." "Well, what else?" she persisted, in a tone quite unlike her usual accent. "I saw the merest shadow of a man and the ghost of a woman who must weigh nearly two hundred." She flushed hotly as she said, "You pride yourself on your keen perceptions, but the truth is you are blind," and she was turning angrily away when he answered, "Time will show how blind I am," and then he went on quietly with his work. "Oh, how I detest that man!" she muttered, as she went up to her favorite haunt on the hilltop looking toward the south. "Why did he, of all others, have to be present with his prying eyes at the odious scene? He must know now how I feel toward Vinton Arnold, and yet he has so little sense and delicacy that he expresses contempt for him to my face. Brute strength may be his ideal of manhood, but it's not mine; and he knows so little of women that he thinks I ought to despise one who is simply unfortunate, and through no fault of his own. Poor, poor Vinton! Brief as were the moments before we were interrupted, he had time to assure me that life had become a burden because of our separation, and yet he said that he had no right to see me, no right to send me a line, no right to add his weakness to my other misfortunes. Time shall at least show one thing--that I can be patient and true. That proud, cold woman has no control over me, and as long as he is faithful I shall be." CHAPTER XIV THE OLD MANSION Mildred's letter to her father brought a request that she should join him at once and choose between two sets of rooms, of which he had the refusal. She insisted upon going, for she was eager to leave a place that had become hateful to her. She greatly wished to hear of Arnold's welfare before her departure, but would not make any effort to do so. To her surprise, however, Roger handed her a note the following morning. She knew the handwriting well, and asked, "How do you happen to have this, Mr. Atwood?" "I supposed you would wish to hear from your friend, and so went up to the hotel. As soon as Mr. Arnold saw me he asked me to give you that letter." Mildred bit her lip. Was it an officious or a friendly act? She was beginning to doubt whether she had fully gauged the character of this young farmer, but of one thing she was instinctively certain--his motive was personal, and sprung from an interest in her which was now more repugnant than ever. Whether this instance was an obtrusive meddling in her affairs, or an act well meant, but unwarranted by their relations, she could not tell. However it might be, she wished the letter had come by any other hands than his. She gravely thanked him, and added, "Mr. Atwood, please do not feel called upon to do anything further for me unless requested." He grew pale and his lips tightened, for her words and manner hurt him. His act had been in truth very generous and self-effacing, but he merely bowed in seeming acquiescence, and turned away. Arnold's letter ran as follows: "The memory of that scene yesterday will oppress me forever. Nothing could have happened that would more clearly convince you that I am unworthy of your thought. And yet it will be a life-long agony to know that I am unworthy. When I tell you that I love and honor you above all other women it is but a poor compensation, I fear, for all that I have made you suffer. My mother has KINDLY (?) informed me that she told you how feeble I am, and I proved her words true. I feel that the best service I can render you is to say, Forget me wholly; and yet you can never know what such words cost me. _I_ shall never forget, unless death is forgetting. If I had the strength to be of any help to you at all, I would break away at once and take the consequences; but I have been an invalid all my life, and why I still continue to live I scarcely know. If, however, there should ever be a time when one so weak as I am can aid you, give me this one shadowy hope that you will come to me. VINTON ARNOLD." This was Mildred's reply: "It is not in my nature to forget, therefore I cannot. It is not my wish to forget, therefore I will not. You will find me ever the same. MILDRED JOCELYN." Roger would have taken her reply to the hotel that very night, so great was her power over him, but for his sake, as well as her own, she wished to teach him once for all that their ways were apart. She dreaded from what he had said that he would follow her to the city and renew the unwelcome association of his life with hers. Therefore she engaged heavy, blundering Jotham to deliver the note, giving him a dollar from her slender purse as a reward. He lost the note where it was never found, and stolidly concealed the fact lest he should lose the dollar. The little characteristic missive fell to the earth somewhere like a seed that drops into an unkindly soil and perishes. Roger only knew that stupid Jotham had been preferred as her messenger. She made no secret of the fact, but gave the note to the laborer when he came in to his nooning the following day. She knew Roger was watching her from the front porch, and as she turned toward him she saw she had wounded him so deeply that she had some compunctions; but he avoided meeting her, nor did she find a chance to speak to him again. When, an hour later, she was ready to depart with Mr. Atwood for the distant landing, Roger was not to be found. Her conscience smote her a little, but she felt that it would be the best for him in the future, and would probably end his nonsense about leaving home and winning fame out in the world. She had a warm, genuine good-will for Mrs. Atwood and Susan, and even for poor, grumbling Mr. Atwood, at whose meagre, shrivelled life she often wondered; and it would be a source of much pain to her if she became even the blameless cause of Roger's leaving home in the absurd hope of eventually becoming great and rich, and then appearing to her in her poverty, like a prince in fairy lore. "Nothing but the most vigorous snubbing will bring him to his senses," she thought, and she now believed that he would soon subside into his old life, and be none the worse for the summer's episode. Therefore, after embracing her mother again and again in her room, she bade Mrs. Atwood and Susan good-by very kindly, and they saw her depart with genuine regret. For Roger there was nothing more than the quiet remark to Mrs. Atwood, "Please say good-by for me to your son." Belle and the children accompanied her to the landing, and were in great glee over the long drive. Mildred's spirits rose also. She had learned most emphatically that she was not dead to her lover, and she thought her words, brief as they were, would cheer and sustain him and suggest hope for the future. Although she was a little sorry for Roger, she was glad to think that his dark, searching eyes would no longer follow her, nor she be compelled from day to day to recognize a curbed but ever-present and unwelcome regard. His feeling toward her seemed like something pent up, yet growing, and she was always fearing it might burst forth. In his mastery of the horse he had shown himself so strong and fearless that, not sure of his self-restraint, she dreaded lest in some unguarded moment he might vehemently plead for her love. The very thought of this made her shudder and shrink, and the belief that she would probably never see him again gave decided relief. Chief of all, she was glad that her weary waiting and uncertainty were over. She was now on her way to seek independence and a home. However humble the latter, it would be a place from which could be excluded all strange and prying looks. When together and alone again, their sorrows and weaknesses could be hidden or seen only with the eyes of love. The ten days or more that had elapsed since Mr. Jocelyn's departure had made him doubtful whether he could hide his weakness or overcome it very readily. He believed he was gaining ground since he was able to reduce the amount of morphia taken, but in order to keep up he had to employ the stimulant more frequently. By this method he hoped never so to lose self-control as to excite suspicion, and also gradually to wean himself from the drug altogether. Of the two he would rather meet Mildred than his wife; the latter must be kept in ignorance, since to destroy her absolute trust was to be destroyed. Mildred would more quickly suspect his fault than would her mother, and if he could hide his failing from her he surely could from his wife, until complete mastery left nothing to be concealed. That day of liberty always seemed but a little in advance. He surely had the will and the strength to give up a mere drug. He who had led charges amid the smoke and thunder of a hundred cannon, and had warded off sabre-thrusts from muscular, resolute hands, was not going to be pricked to death by a little syringe in his own hand. His very thraldom to the habit seemed an improbable, grotesque dream, which some morning would dissipate, but as a matter of experience each morning brought such a profound sinking and "goneness" that his will-power shrivelled like a paper barricade before the scorching intensity of his desire. After the stimulant began its work, however, all things seemed possible, and nothing more so than his power to abandon the drug when he should fully decide upon the act. On the morning of Mildred's arrival, having lifted himself out of his chronic dejection by the lever of opium, he went to meet her with the genuine gladness of a proud, loving father asserting itself like a ray of June light struggling through noxious vapors. She was delighted to find him apparently so well. His walk and the heat had brought color to his face, the drug had bestowed animation and confidence, while his heart gave an honest, loving welcome without the aid of any stimulant. They rode uptown together as happily and hopefully as if the nearly empty car were their own carriage, and they were seeking a home in Fifth Avenue instead of a tenement-house; but the hope and happiness of one was based on youth, love, faith, courage, and inexperience, and of the other on a lurid cloud that would darken steadily except as renewed gleams were shot through it by a light that was infernal. Any kindly man or woman would have smiled appreciatively to see the handsome father and beautiful daughter apparently as absorbed in each other's plans and interests as a young couple seeking the home in which their future life would centre. Who would dream that on this sunny morning, and in a prosaic street-car, the actors of a sad, sad tragedy were on their way to its unsuspected scenes? Who would dream that Mildred and her father, of all others, were the actors? "Millie," said Mr. Jocelyn, "I fear the place to which I shall at first take you may shock you a little. It's an old Revolutionary mansion, gray and rather dilapidated, but it reminded me of some of our residences in the South; and, although perhaps no better--perhaps not so good--it is still quite unlike the stereotyped tenement-house abomination prevailing in this city. This ancient abode of colonial wealth took my fancy. It suggested our own changed fortunes by its fall to its present uses. And yet the carving around and above the doors and windows, much of which still remains, and the lofty ceilings all remind one of past better days that can never return to the poor house, but which we must bring back as soon as possible. I shall never be content or happy, Millie, until I have placed my dear ones in the sphere to which they really belong; but for the present I do not see how we can pay rent for anything much better than rooms in the old mansion. As far as I can learn, the people who live in it are poor, but quiet and respectable." Her father's opium-tinged description caught Mildred's fancy also, but when she saw the building her heart sank at the prospect. To her a tenement-house was as yet a vague, untested reality, and the one before her was indeed old and dilapidated, gray and haggard with more than a century's age. The mansion having been built to face the river, its front was not upon the street, but toward the west. Around its base the mortar was crumbling away, revealing its mingled brick and stone foundation. The hip-roof of weather-beaten shingles still remained, and was surmounted by a wide-railed and wooden platform used by the occupants of the dwelling for the drying of clothes, etc. "It makes me think of an old, dying, moss-draped white oak standing in the midst of trees of younger and different growth," said Mr. Jocelyn, as he and Mildred scanned the gable-end of the house. Then they entered by two or three stone steps a narrow passage, ascended a forlorn wooden stairway, covered overhead by a few boards nailed lengthwise, and so reached a small landing, where once had been a stately porch or wide veranda, looking no doubt over a broad sweep of lawn and the shining river. The high-arched doorway was still intact, with elaborately carved but now defaced woodwork, which, rising from the sill on either side, was continued in various old-fashioned designs until it culminated over a large square window in the second story. Generations had watched the sunsets from that window, but now high brick walls threw it in shadow much of the day. A quaint brass knocker which gentlemen--long since dust--had approached wearing laced three-cornered hats, velvet short-clothes, and silver buckles, and upon which they had rapped announcement of their social claims, still hung on the rest from which they had lifted it. It was not often used at present, for people entered without knocking, and the wide hall within was in a sense but a continuation of the street; also the winding stairway, with its ancient rail, which started out on one side and wound up to another square hallway. To each of these open spaces the several families had equal rights. The lower hall had originally extended through the whole depth of the building to a rear doorway, equally old-fashioned but less elaborately ornamented, but now a partition crossed the raised circle on the ceiling from which had once hung an ancient candelabrum. Upon each hallway opened four suites of two rooms each, and thus the old mansion usually sheltered twelve families instead of one. The doors were high, and surmounted by quaint and worm-eaten carved work. These halls seemed very dark and close to Mildred, who had just come out of the sunlight and from the country, but they were cool and spacious. They were shown by the janitor to a room over twenty feet square on the second story, whose former occupants had left the souvenir of unlimited dirt. "They was dissipated, and we don't let sich stay in the buildin'," said the man. "That's one thing in favor of the place, papa," poor Mildred remarked, and at the moment it seemed to her about the only thing, for the old house was evidently going down hill so fast that it seemed to her as if it might carry its occupants with it. Still, on further inspection, the room was found to be so large and airy and the ceiling so high that it might be made the abode of health and comfort. Opening into the large apartment was another about eight feet by twelve, and this was all. Mildred drew a long breath. Could the whole domestic life of the family be carried on in those two rooms? "I never realized how thousands of people live," she sighed. "It will only be for a little while, Millie," whispered her father. The young girl shrank and shivered even in the summer morning at the ordeal of crowded life, with only intervening doorways and thin partitions between them and all sorts of unknown neighbors. "Suppose, papa, we look at the other rooms of which you have the refusal," she faltered. Even in his false buoyancy he could not suppress a sigh as he saw that Mildred, in spite of her determination to make the best of everything, had not imagined what a tenement-house was. "We will be back in an hour or more," he whispered to the janitor, for he believed the other rooms would appear still more repulsive. And so they did, for when Mildred had climbed up three stairways in a five-story, narrow house, which even at that hour was filled with a babel of sounds, the old mansion seemed a refuge, and when she had glanced around the narrow room and two dark closets of bedrooms, she shuddered and said, "Papa, can we really afford nothing better?" "Honestly, Millie, we cannot for the present. My income is exceedingly small, although it will soon be increased, no doubt. But if we pay too much for rooms we shall have nothing to live upon while waiting for better times. These rooms are fourteen dollars a month. Those in the old mansion are only eight, and the two rooms there give more chance for comfort than do these three." "Oh, yes, yes," cried Mildred, "I could not live here at all. Let us go back." While returning, her father showed her apartments in other tenements for which rents of ten to sixteen dollars were charged, and she saw that she would not obtain any more in space and light than for half the money in the old house, which had been built when that part of the island was open country. "Forgive me, papa," she said, smiling, "that I shivered a little at the first plunge. We will go to the old house and stay there until we can do better. It was once evidently a beautiful home, and I believe that within it we can make a happy home, if we will. These other tenements were never homes, and I don't see how they ever could be. They are angular, patent, human packing-boxes, which mock at the very idea of home coziness and privacy. They were never built for homes, they were built to rent. In the old house I noticed that a blank wall near will prevent people staring into our windows, and the space has not been so cut up but that we can keep ourselves somewhat secluded." Next to a quiet way of earning money, Mildred coveted seclusion beyond everything else. There was one deep hope that fed her life. Her father would work his way up into affluence, and she again could welcome Vinton Arnold to her own parlor. Happiness would bring him better health, and the time would come when he could choose and act as his heart dictated. With woman's pathetic fortitude and patience she would hope and wait for that day. But not for the world must his proud mother know to what straits they were driven, and she meant that the old house should become a hiding-place as well as a home. Therefore the rooms in the old mansion were taken. A stout, cheery Englishwoman, who with her plump, red arms was fighting life's battle for herself and a brood of little ones, was engaged to clean up and prepare for the furniture. Mildred was eager to get settled, and her father, having ordered such household goods as they required to be sent from their place of storage the following day, repaired to his place of business. "Now, miss," said sensible Mrs. Wheaton, "I don't vant to do hany more than yer vants done, but hif I was you I'd give hall these 'ere vails a coat hof lime. Vitevash is 'olesome, yer know, and sweetens heverything; hit'll kind o' take haway the nasty taste those drunken people left." "Please whitewash, then, and use plenty of lime. If you can sweeten these rooms, do so by all means, but I fear that result is beyond your brush or any other." "You've seen better days, miss, and I 'ave meself; but yer mustn't be down'arted, yer know. See 'ow the sunshine comes in, and ven hit falls hon a carpet, a little furniture, and yer hown people, these 'ere rooms vill soon grow 'omelike, and yer'll come back to 'em hafteryer day's vork's hover gladly henough. I s'pose yer'll vork, since you've come hamong people who must vork hearly and late." "Yes, indeed, we'll work--that is all we ask for." "And hit's time I vas ha bout mine hinstead hof gossiping 'ere. Yer'll soon see 'ow spick and span I'll make heverything." With a despatch, deftness, and strength that to Mildred seemed wonderful, she bought the lime, made the wash, and soon dark stains and smoky patches of wall and ceiling grew white under her strong, sweeping strokes. It was not in the girl's nature, nor in accordance with her present scheme of life, to be an idle spectator, and from her travelling-bag she soon transformed herself into as charming a house-cleaner as ever waged war against that chief enemy of life and health--dirt. Her round, white arms, bared almost to the shoulder, seemed designed as a sculptor's model rather than to wield the brush with which she scoured the paint and woodwork; but she thought not of sculpture except in the remote and figurative way of querying, with mind far absent from her work, how best she could carve their humble fortunes out of the unpromising material of the present and the near future. CHAPTER XV "WELCOME HOME" Mildred felt that she had become a working-woman in very truth as she cleaned the dingy closets, vindictively prying into corners and crevices that had been unmolested by generations of tenants, and the rich color produced by summer heat and unwonted exertion deepened at the thought, "What would Vinton Arnold, what would his mother think if they saw me now? The latter would undoubtedly remark," she murmured, in bitterness of spirit, "that I had at last found my true sphere, and was engaged in befitting tasks; but should I lose in his eyes?" Indeed she would not, either in his eyes or in those of any other man capable of appreciating womanly grace. Genuine beauty is a rare and wonderful gift, and, like genius, triumphs over adverse circumstances, and is often enhanced by them. Even prosaic Mrs. Wheaton was compelled to pause from time to time to admire the slender, supple form whose perfect outlines were revealed by the stooping, twisting, and reaching required by the nature of the labor. But the varying expressions of her face, revealing a mind as active as the busy hands, were a richer study. The impact of her brush was vigorous, and with looks of aversion and disgust she would cleanse away the grimy stains as if they were an essential part of the moral as well as gross material life of the former occupants. To a refined nature association forms no slight element in the constitution of a home; and horrible conjectures concerning repulsive indications of the vulgar people who once kennelled where others would live decently and purely are among the manifold miseries of tenement life. In spite of all her will-power, Mildred shuddered, and shrank from even this remote contact with a phase of humanity peculiarly revolting to her, and the protest of her innate delicacy would often appear strongly upon her face. "The worst of it is," she muttered, "that soap and water cannot blot out thoughts of the people who were here before us." But thoughts of other people, some of whom were very dear to her, brought varying expressions, and once she smiled and said to herself, "Roger Atwood now thinks, no doubt, that in me he has seen another 'ghost of a woman,' weighing a little less than 'two hundred.' Of all my little affairs of that nature, his was the most preposterous and absurd. That one human being should expect and seek from another what is so impossible to give produces a certain half-humorous irritation that is indescribable." Stout Mrs. Wheaton's mind and fancy were not so busy as her hands, and when twelve o'clock came she knew the hour, although carrying no watch. She had interrupted Mildred's musings from time to time, but had received rather absent replies, for the actual inception of a life of toil occasioned many thoughts. When, however, the practical woman remarked, "I've a hinside 'int that hit's time we took a bite together," Mildred awakened to an honest and hungry approval of the suggestion. "I don't like to intrude upon you, Mrs. Wheaton," she said. "Isn't there some place near where I can go?" "Hindeed there his--right down to my room, hif ye're not habove my company. I can brew yer has good a cup o' tea has hany cook in the land, and we'll find somethin' nourishin' to go vith hit." "Mrs. Wheaton, you are a genuine friend. I'm so glad you were here and willing to help me, for you make me feel safer and more hopeful. You seem brave and not afraid of being poor, and I want to learn your courage. So far from being above your company, I am very grateful for it, and I shall try to repay your kindness with like neighborly return when I can; but when it comes to actual expense you must let me pay my way. How is it you are so brave and cheery when, as you say, you are alone with several children to support?" "I'll tell yer vhile we heat hour dinner; so lock the door and come vith me." Mrs. Wheaton's room was plain, indeed, but neat and homelike. A variegated and much-patched carpet covered part of the floor, which was bare around the ample cooking-stove, whereon a wholesome dinner soon smoked with appetizing odors. Her daughter, a young girl about twelve years of age, assisted in the preparations, and then went to call the other children, who were playing on the sidewalk. '"Ow is it I'm so brave and cheery?" Mrs. Wheaton at last answered with a sunshiny smile. "I've a stout pair hof harms, I've a stout body, and I've a downright belief that the Lord means veil by me and mine. I'm try in' to do my best, and hit's 'is biziness to take care hof the rest. Hand 'E 'as so far. I've been a bit 'ungry meself now and then, but the children halways 'ad enough. So I vork and trust and lose no time and strength ha-vorrying. Things'll all come hout right some day; and I've no time to be doin' the Lord's vork bin carryin' the burden hon my shoulders, hif they are broad. 'Ere's the children; now sit right down vith hus, and velcome. Since we're neighbors we'll be neighborly and friendly like; and before yer know hit, yer'll be snug and comfortable hin your hown rooms, and yer can be jist as 'appy bin 'em has hever yer vas him yer life. Bein' poor and 'aving to vork hain't the vorst troubles in the vorld." The good woman's stout, cheery spirit and homely faith were just the tonics that Mildred needed, and they were all the more effective because combined with the exhilarating tea and wholesome food. Therefore instead of a weary and depressing day, in which body and spirit acted and reacted on each other until the evening brought shadows deeper than the night, her courage and cheerfulness grew with the hours of sustained and healthful toil, and when her father appeared at six o'clock her smile warmed his heart. At the cost of no slight effort he had so reduced his doses of morphia that neither she nor any one could have detected anything unnatural in his manner. He praised their work unstintedly, and thanked Mrs. Wheaton for her kindness with such warm Southern frankness that her eyes grew moist with gratification. Indeed the rooms had grown so clean and wholesome that Mr. Jocelyn said that they looked homelike already. Mrs. Wheaton assured Mildred that if she would be content, she could be made quite comfortable on a lounge in her large living-room, and the young girl won her heart completely by saying that she would rather stay with her than go to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Her words were sincere, for in accordance with her nature her heart was already drawn toward the place which gave even promise of a home, and the hearty kindness received there made her shrink from the strange, indifferent world without. Her father asked her to resume her travelling dress, and then by a street-car they soon reached a quiet restaurant near Central Park, from which the outlook was upon trees and shrubbery. The people of New York are singularly fortunate in their ability to reach, at slight expense of money and time, many places where the air is pure, and the sense of beauty can find abundant gratification. Mildred felt that only extreme poverty could rob them in summer of many simple yet genuine pleasures. When, after their frugal supper, she and her father strolled through a path winding around a miniature lake on which swans were floating, she believed that one of her chief fears might be unfounded. Her love of beauty need not be stifled, since there was so much, even in the crowded town, which could be seen without cost. "Papa," she said, "our lives will not be meagre and colorless unless we make them so. Every tree and shrub--indeed every leaf upon them and every ripple on the water--seems beautiful to me this evening. I do not fear working hard if we can often have these inexpensive pleasures. The thing in poverty that has most troubled me was the fear that one's nature might become blunted, callous, and unresponsive. A starved soul and heart seem to me infinitely worse than a starved body. Thank God, this beautiful place is as free to us now as ever, and I think we enjoy it more than many of those people in yonder carriages. Then at the cost of a few pennies we can get many a breezy outlook, and fill our lungs with fresh air on the ferryboats. So don't let us be downhearted, papa, and mope while we are waiting for better days. Each day may bring us something that we can enjoy with honest zest." "God bless you, Millie," replied her father. "We'll try to do just as you suggest." Nevertheless he sighed deeply. She was free; he was a slave. In the depths of the placid lake the graceful swans, the pretty wooded shores, were faithfully reflected. In Mildred's clear blue eyes the truth of her words, the goodness and sincerity of her heart, were revealed with equal certainty. His eyes were downcast and fixed on an abyss which no soul has ever fathomed. "Great God!" he murmured, "I must escape; I shall--I WILL escape;" but while Mildred stepped into a florist's shop to purchase a blooming plant for Mrs. Wheaton, he furtively took from his pocket a small paper of white-looking powder--just the amount which experience had taught him he could take and not betray himself. As a result she was delighted to find him genial and wakeful until they parted rather late in the old mansion wherein, she jestingly said, she proposed to build their nest, like a barn-swallow, the following day. After a brief consultation with Mrs. Wheaton the next morning Mildred told her father to send for the rest of the family at once, and that she would be ready for them. The household goods arrived promptly from their place of storage, and she was positively happy while transforming the bare rooms into a home that every hour grew more inviting. They had retained, when giving up their house in the spring, more furniture than was sufficient for the limited space they would now occupy, and Mildred had enough material and taste to banish the impression of poverty almost wholly from their two rooms. She had the good sense, also, to make the question of appearances always secondary to that of comfort, and rigorously excluded what was bulky and unnecessary. "I don't like crowded rooms," she said, "and mamma must have just as little to care for and tax her strength as possible." One side of the large room was partitioned off as a sleeping apartment for her father, mother, and the two children, and was made private by curtains of dark, inexpensive material. The remainder and larger part facing the east was to be kitchen, dining and living room. Mrs. Wheaton did the heavy work, and looked on in delighted wonder as the young girl, with a gift peculiarly her own, gave an air of grace and homelike coziness to every part. Hers was a true woman's touch in woman's undisputed realm, and her father, with strange alternations of sighs and smiles, assisted her after his return from business. Gas had never been introduced in the old house, and so two pretty shaded lamps were bought. One stood on the lofty, old-fashioned mantel, which was so high that Mildred could pass under it without stooping, and the other on the table that was to serve for many uses. "If we should put a crane in the fireplace," Mr. Jocelyn dreamily mused, "I could imagine that we were at my old home in the South;" but she had said they could not afford that amount of sentiment, and therefore a stove was obtained of the same model that shrewd Mrs. Wheaton had found so well adapted to varied uses. After two busy days their task was wellnigh completed, and Mildred slept in her own little room, which she was to share with Belle, and her weariness, and the sense that the resting-place was hers by honest right, brought dreamless and refreshing sleep. For the sake of "auld lang syne," her father kindled a fire on the hearth, and sat brooding over it, looking regretfully back into the past, and with distrustful eyes toward the future. The dark commercial outlook filled that future with many uncertain elements; and yet, alas! he felt that he himself was becoming the chief element of uncertainty in the problem of their coming life. There were times when he could distinguish between his real prospects and his vague opium dreams, but this power of correct judgment was passing from him. When not under the influence of the drug everything looked dull, leaden, and hopeless. Thus he alternated between utter dejection, for which there would have been no cause were he in his normal condition, and sanguine hopes and expectations that were still more baseless. He had not gone to a physician and made known his condition, as he had intended while on his brief visit to the country; his pride had revolted at such a confession of weakness, and he felt that surely he would have sufficient strength of mind to break the spell unaided. But, so far from breaking it, every day had increased its power. The effects of opium and the strength of the habit, as is the case with other stimulants, vary with the temperament and constitution of the victims. A few can use it with comparative moderation and with no great detriment for a long time, especially if they allow considerable intervals to elapse between the periods of indulgence, but they eventually sink into as horrible a thraldom as that which degrades the least cautious. Upon far more the drug promptly fastens its deathly grip, and too often when they awaken to their danger they find themselves almost powerless. Still if they would then seek a physician's advice and resolutely cease using the poison in any form, they would regain their physical and mental tone within a comparatively brief time. I am glad to believe that some do stop at this period and escape. Their sufferings for a time must be severe, and yet they are nothing compared with the tortures awaiting them if they do not abstain. The majority, however, temporize and attempt a gradual reformation. There is not a ray of hope or the faintest prospect of cure for those who at this stage adopt half-way measures. They soon learn that they cannot maintain the moderation which they have resolved upon. A healthful man of good habits may be said to be at par. One indulgence in opium lifts him far above par, but in the inevitable reaction he sinks below it, and wronged nature will not rally at once; therefore she is hastened and spurred by the stimulant, and the man rises above par again, yet not quite so high as before, and he sinks lower in the reaction. With this process often repeated the system soon begins to lose its elasticity; the man sinks lower and more heavily every time; the amount of the drug that once produced a delightful exhilaration soon scarcely brings him up to par, and he must steadily strengthen the fatal leverage until at last even a deadly dose cannot lift him into any condition like his old exhilaration or serenity. There are a vast number of men and women who ought never to take stimulants at all. They had better die than to begin to use them habitually, and even to touch them is hazardous. There is slumbering in their natures a predisposition toward their excessive use which a slight indulgence may kindle into a consuming, clamorous desire. Opium had apparently found something peculiarly congenial in Mr. Jocelyn's temperament and constitution, and at first it had rewarded him with experiences more delightful than most of its votaries enjoy. But it is not very long content to remain a servant, and in many instances very speedily becomes the most terrible of masters. He had already reached such an advanced stage of dependence upon it that its withdrawal would now leave him weak, helpless, and almost distracted for a time. It would probably cost him his situation; his weakness would be revealed to his family and to the world, and the knowledge of it might prevent his obtaining employment elsewhere; therefore he felt that he must hide the vice and fight it to its death in absolute secrecy. Under the terrible necromancy of his sin the wife from whom he had scarcely concealed a thought in preceding years was the one whom he most feared. As yet the habit was a sin, because he had the power to overcome it if he would simply resolve to do right regardless of the consequences; and these would be slight indeed compared with the results of further indulgence. He had better lose his situation a hundred times; he had better see his family faint from hunger for weeks together, should such an ordeal be an essential part of his struggle for freedom, for only by such an unfaltering effort could he regain the solid ground on which enduring happiness and prosperity could be built. As it was, he was rapidly approaching a point where his habit would become a terrible and uncontrollable disease, for which he would still be morally responsible--a responsibility, however, in which, before the bar of true justice, the physician who first gave the drug without adequate caution would deeply share. He felt his danger as he sat cowering over the dying fire; even with its warmth added to that of the summer night he shivered at his peril, but he did not appreciate it in any proper sense. He resolved again, as he often had before, that each day should witness increasing progress, then feeling that he MUST sleep he bared his arm and sent enough of Magendie's solution into his system to produce such rest as opium bestows. To her surprise Mildred found the awakening of her father a difficult task the following morning. The boat on which his wife and children were to arrive was probably already at the wharf, and she had thought he would be up with the sun to meet them, but he seemed oppressed with an untimely stupor. When at last he appeared he explained that the fire on the hearth had induced a fit of brooding over the past and future, and that he had sat up late. "Here's a cup of coffee, papa," she said briskly, "and it will wake you up. I'll have breakfast ready for you all by the time you can return, and I'm so eager to see mamma that I could fly to her." Mortified that he should even appear dilatory at such a time, he hastened away, but he was far beyond such a mild stimulant as coffee. Even now, when events were occurring which would naturally sustain from their deep personal interest, he found himself reduced to an almost complete dependence on an unnatural support. Before sleeping he had appealed to his dread master, and his first waking moments brought a renewed act of homage. Opium was becoming his god, his religion. Already it stood between him and his wife and children. It was steadily undermining his character, and if not abandoned would soon leave but the hollow semblance of a man. As the steamboat arrived in the night, Mrs. Jocelyn had no sense of disappointment at not being met, and through Mildred's persistency it was still early when her husband appeared. His greeting was so affectionate, and he appeared so well after his hasty walk, that the old glad, hopeful look came into her eyes. To Belle and the children, coming back to the city was like coming home as in former years, only a little earlier. The farm had grown to be somewhat of an old story, and Belle had long since voted it dull. "Well, Nan, we've come down to two rooms in very truth, and in an old, old house, too, that will remind you of some of the oldest in the South," and he drew such a humorous and forlorn picture of their future abode that his wife felt that he had indeed taken her at her word, and that they would scarcely have a place to lay their heads, much less to live in any proper sense; and when she stopped before the quaint and decrepit house without any front door; when she followed her husband up the forlorn stairway to what seemed a side entrance with its most dismal outlook, she believed that the time for fortitude had come, in bitter truth. The hall was dark to her sun-blinded eyes, as it had been to Mildred's, yet not so dark but that she saw doors open and felt herself scanned with an unblushing curiosity by slattern-looking women, her near neighbors, and the thought that they were so very near made her shiver. As for Belle, she did not take pains to hide her disgust. With a sinking heart and faltering courage the poor gentlewoman mounted the winding stairs, but before she reached the top there was a rush from an open doorway, and Mildred clasped her in close embrace. "Welcome home!" she cried, in her clear, sweet, girlish voice. "Home, Millie! what a mockery that word is in this strange, strange place!" she half whispered, half sobbed in her daughter's ear. "Courage, mamma. We promised papa we'd ask nothing better than he could afford," Mildred murmured. "Don't let him see tears--he has already put Fred down and is turning to welcome you to the best home he can offer." Had the rooms been cells only, with but a pallet of straw upon the floors, Mrs. Jocelyn would have responded to that appeal, and she stepped forward resolved to smile and appear pleased with everything, no matter how stifled she might feel for want of space, air, and light. But when she crossed the threshold into the spacious, sun-lighted room, and looked up at the high ceiling and across its wide area; when she had glanced around and seen on every side the results of the strong spells laid upon stout Mrs. Wheaton by Mildred's domestic magic, and the dainty touches with which the solid work had been supplemented, her face lighted up with a sweet surprise. "Oh, OH, how much better this is than you led me to expect! Is all this really ours? Can we afford so large a room? Here are the dear old things, too, with which I first went to housekeeping." Then stepping to her husband's aide she put her arm around his neck as she looked into his eyes and said, "Martin, this is home. Thank God, it is home-like after all. With you and the children around me I can be more than content--I can be very happy in this place. I feared that we might be too crowded, and that the children might suffer." "Of course you didn't think of yourself, Nan. Millie's the good fairy to thank for all this. The way she and another female divinity have conjured in these rooms the last three days is a matter wholly beyond the masculine mind." "Father did a great deal, too, and did it much better than you could expect from a man. But, come, I'm mistress of this small fraction of the venerable mansion till after breakfast, and then, mamma, I'll put the baton of rule in your hands. I've burned my fingers and spoiled my complexion over the stove, and I don't intend that a cold breakfast shall be the result." "Millie," cried Belle, rushing out of the second room, which she had inspected in her lightning-like way before greeting her sister, "our room is lovely. You are a gem, an onyx, a fickle wild rose. It's all splendid--a perpetual picnic place, to which we'll bring our own provisions and cook 'em our own way. No boss biddies in this establishment. It's ever so much better than I expected after you once get here; but as the hymn goes, 'How dark and dismal is the way!'" It was with difficulty that the children, wild over the novelty of it all, could be settled quietly at the table. It was the family's first meal in a tenement-house. The father's eye grew moist as he looked around his board and said, deep in his heart, "Never did a sweeter, fairer group grace a table in this house, although it has stood more than a century. If for their sakes I cannot be a man--" "Martin," began his wife, her delicate features flushing a little, "before we partake of this our first meal I want you all to join me in your hearts while I say from the depths of mine, God bless our home." An hour later, as he went down-town, Mr. Jocelyn finished his sentence. "If for the sake of such a wife and such children I cannot stop, I'm damned." CHAPTER XVI BELLE AND MILDRED The cosmopolitan bachelor living in apartments knows far more of Sanscrit than of a domestic woman's feelings as she explores the place she must call her home. It may be a palace or it may be but two rooms in a decaying tenement, but the same wistful, intent look will reveal one of the deepest needs of her nature. Eve wept not so much for the loss of Eden as for the loss of home--the familiar place whose homeliest objects had become dear from association. The restless woman who has no home-hunger, no strong instinct to make a place which shall be a refuge for herself and those she loves, is not the woman God created. She is the product of a sinister evolution; she is akin to the birds that will not build nests, but take possession of those already constructed, ousting the rightful occupants. Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred were unperverted; they were womanly in every fibre, and the interest with which they planned, consulted, and dwelt upon each detail of their small household economy is beyond my power to interpret. They could have made the stateliest mansion in the city homelike; they did impart to their two poor rooms the essential elements of a home. It was a place which no one could enter without involuntary respect for the occupants, although aware of nothing concerning them except their poverty. "Mrs. Atwood and Susan actually cried when we came to go," Mrs. Jocelyn remarked as they were all busy together, "and even old Mr. Atwood was wonderfully good for him. He and Roger put a great many harvest apples and vegetables in a large box, and Mrs. Atwood added a jar of her nice butter, some eggs, and a pair of chickens. I told them that we must begin life again in a very humble way, and they just overflowed with sympathy and kindness, and I could scarcely induce them to take any money for the last week we were there. It was funny to see old Mr. Atwood: he wanted the money dreadfully--any one could see that, for a dollar is dear to his heart--but he also wanted to be generous like his wife, and to show his strong good-will. They sent heaps of love to you, Millie, and cordially invited us to visit them next summer; they also offered to board us again for just as little as they could afford. Even Jotham appeared to have something on his mind, for he was as helpful as an elephant, and stood around, and stood around, but at last went off muttering to himself." "Millie," said Belle indignantly, "I think you treated Roger shamefully. After we returned from seeing you off, mamma and I went mooning up to that hill of yours looking toward the south, because you and papa were in that direction. Suddenly we came upon Roger sitting there with his face buried in his hands. 'Are you ill?' mamma asked, as if his trouble might have been a stomach-ache. He started up and looked white in the moonlight. 'She was cruel,' he said passionately; 'I only asked for friendship. I would have given my life for her, but she treated Jotham better than she did me, and she thinks I'm no better than he is--that I'm one of the farm animals.' 'Mr. Atwood,' mamma began, 'she did not mean to be cruel'--he interrupted her with an impatient gesture. 'The end hasn't come yet,' he muttered and stalked away." Mildred sat down with a little perplexed frown upon her face. "I'm sure I meant him only kindness," she said; "why will he be so absurd?" "You had a queer way of showing your kindness," snapped Belle. "What would you have me to do? Encourage him to leave home, and all sorts of folly?" "You can't prevent his leaving home. Mark my words, he'll soon be in this city, and he'll make his way too. He's a good deal more of a man than your lily-fingered Mr. Arnold, and if he wants to be friendly to me and take me out sometimes, I won't have him snubbed. Of course all my old friends will cut me dead." "Oh, if he will transfer his devotion to you, Belle, I'll be as friendly as you wish. "No, you've spoiled him for me or any one else. He's fool enough to think there's not another girl in the world but Mildred Jocelyn, and he'll get you if you don't look out, for he has the most resolute look that I ever saw in any one's eyes. The day before we came away something happened that took away my breath. A man brought a young horse which he said no one could manage. Roger went out and looked into the beast's eyes, and the vicious thing bit at him and struck at him with his forefoot. Then as he tried to stroke his back he kicked up with both hind feet. Oh, he was a very Satan of a horse, and they had a rope around his head that would have held a ship. Roger went and got what he called a curb-bit, and almost in a twinkling he had slipped it on the horse, and without a moment's hesitation he sprang upon his bare back. The horse then reared so that I thought he'd fall over backward on Roger. Mamma fairly looked faint--it was right after dinner--Susan and the children were crying, his father and mother, and even the owner of the horse, were calling to him to get off, but he merely pulled one rein sharply, and down the horse came on his four feet again. Instead of looking frightened he was coolly fastening the rope so as to have it out of the way. After letting the ugly beast rear and plunge and kick around in the road a few minutes, Roger turned his head toward a stone wall that separated the road from a large pasture field that was full of cows, and he went over the fence with a flying leap, at which we all screamed and shouted again. Then away they went round and round that field, the cows, with their tails in the air, careering about also, as much excited as we were. At last, when the horse found he couldn't throw him, he lay down and rolled. Roger was off in a second, and then sat on the beast's head for a while so he couldn't get up when he wanted to. At last he let the brute get up again, but he was no sooner on his feet than Roger was on his back, and away they went again till the horse was all in a foam, and Roger could guide him easily with one hand. He then leaped the tamed creature back into the road, and came trotting quietly to the kitchen door. Springing lightly down, and with one arm over the panting horse's neck, he said quietly, 'Sue, bring me two or three lumps of sugar.' The horse ate them out of his hand, and then followed him around like a spaniel. His owner was perfectly carried away; 'Jerusalem!' he exclaimed, 'I've never seen the beat of that. I offered you twenty-five dollars if you would break him, and I'll make it thirty if at the end of a month you'll train him to saddle and harness. He wasn't worth a rap till you took him in hand.' 'It's a bargain,' said Roger coolly, and then he whispered to me, 'That will buy me a pile of books.' That's the kind of a man that I believe in," concluded Belle, nodding her head emphatically, "and I want you to understand that Roger Atwood and I are very good friends." Mildred meditatively bit her lip, and her cheeks had flushed with excitement at Belle's story, but she would make no comment upon it in words. "What does he want with so many books?" she asked, after a moment. "You'll see before you are gray." "Indeed! has he taken you into his confidence, also?" "That's my affair. I believe in him, and so will you some day. He already knows more Latin than you do." "That's not saying a great deal," replied Mildred, with a short, vexed laugh. "How came he to know Latin?" "He studied it at school as you did. The fact is, you are so prejudiced you know nothing about him. He's strong and brave, and he'll do what he attempts." "He'll find that I am strong, too, in my way," said Mildred coldly. "He said something that hurt me more than I hurt him, and all I ask of him is to leave me alone. I wish him well, and all that, but we are not congenial. Complete success in his wild ambition wouldn't make any difference. He ought to remain at home and take care of his own people." "Well, I'm glad he's coming to New York, and I hope for my sake you'll treat him politely." "Oh, certainly for YOUR sake, Belle. Let us all stick to that." "Belle's a mere child," said Mrs. Jocelyn, with her low laugh. "I'm sixteen years old, I thank you; that is, I shall be soon; and I know a real man from the ghost of one." "Belle," cried Mildred, in a tone she rarely used, "I will neither permit nor pardon any such allusions." "Come, girls," expostulated their mother, "our nest is too small for any disagreements, and we have a great deal too much to do for such useless discussions. I'm sorry with Millie that Roger is bent on leaving home, for I think his parents need him, and he could do well in the country. The city is too crowded already." "He'll make his way through the crowd," persisted Belle. "Does his father or mother know of his plans?" "Well, to tell the truth, I don't know very much about his plans. He talks little concerning himself, but when he took me out to drive the day after Millie left, he said he had decided to come to New York and get an education, and that if I'd let him know where we lived he'd come and see me occasionally. I said, 'What will they do at home without you?' and he replied, 'I can do more for them away from home by and by than here.' Now, mamma, you'll let him come to see me, won't you?" "Certainly, Belle. I'll be reasonable in this respect. I know young people need company and recreation. My only aim has ever been to secure you and Millie good company, and I hope your love for me, Belle, will lead you to shun any other. As we are now situated you must be very, very cautious in making new acquaintances. Young Mr. Atwood is a good, honest-hearted fellow, and I think Millie is a little prejudiced against him." "Very well, mamma, I'll be all smiles so long as he devotes himself to Belle; but he must stop there most emphatically." Thus with busy tongues and busier hands they talked of the past and the future while they unpacked and stowed away their belongings with almost the same economy of space that is practiced on shipboard. Mrs. Wheaton was introduced, and she at once became a fast ally of Mrs. Jocelyn as well as of Mildred. "I 'ope yer'll halways remember yer 'ave a neighbor that's 'andy and villing," she said, as she courtesied herself out. "Hit's too bad," she muttered, on her way back to her room, "that she's 'ad to come down to this, for she's a born lady; she's has much a lady as hany 'oo howned this 'ouse a 'undred years hago." Thus their life began in the old mansion, and from its humble shelter they looked abroad to see what they could obtain from the great indifferent world without. "Belle and I must not be idle an hour longer than we can help," said Mildred resolutely, on the following day; "and the only thing is to find what it would be best to do. I am going out to try to sell the work I did in the country, and see if I cannot get orders for more of the same kind. My great hope is that I can work at home. I wish I knew enough to be a teacher, but like all the rest I know a little of everything, and not much of anything. Fancy work will be my forte, if I can only sell it. I do hope I shan't meet any one I know," and heavily veiled she took her way with her dainty fabrics toward the region of fashionable shops. Those, however, who were willing to buy offered her so little that she was discouraged, and she finally left the articles at a store whose proprietor was willing to receive them on commission. "You must not calculate on speedy sale," the lady in charge remarked. "People are very generally out of town yet, and will be for some time. Your work is pretty, however, and will sell, I think, later on, although in these hard times useful articles are chiefly in demand." "Please do your best for me," said Mildred appealingly, "and please let me know what you think will sell. I'm willing to do any kind of work I can that will bring the money we need." After receiving some suggestions she bought more material, and then sat down to work in the hope that the returning citizens would purchase her articles so liberally that she could do her share toward the family's support. She did not shrink from labor, but with the false pride so general she did shrink morbidly from meeting those who knew her in the past, and from their learning where and how she lived. She was wholly bent on seclusion until their fortunes were greatly mended, fondly hoping that her father would rally such a constituency from his Southern acquaintance that he would soon command a fine salary. And the expectation was not an unreasonable one, had Mr. Jocelyn been able to work with persistent energy for a few years. The South was impoverished, and while a remunerative trade might be built up from it, patient and exceedingly aggressive labor would be required to secure such a result. It is the curse of opium, however, to paralyze energy, and to render all effort fitful and uncertain. He should have written scores of letters daily, and attended to each commission with the utmost promptness and care, but there were times when the writing of a single letter was a burden, and too often it was vague and pointless like the condition of his mind when it was written. Mildred did not dream of this, and his employers felt that they must give him time before expecting very much return for his effort. Since he attended to routine duties fairly well there was no cause for complaint, although something in his manner often puzzled them a little. It was Mildred's belief that renewed prosperity would soon enable them to live in a way entitling them to recognition in the society to which Arnold belonged. If thus much could be accomplished she felt that he own and her lover's faithfulness would accomplish the rest. They were both young, and could afford to wait. "The world brings changes for the better sometimes," she thought, as she plied her needle, "as well as for the worse; and no matter what his proud mother thinks, I'm sure I could take better care of him than she can. Whether they know it or not, the course of his family toward him is one of cold-blooded cruelty and repression. If he could live in a genial, sunny atmosphere of freedom, affection, and respect, his manhood would assert itself, he would grow stronger, and might do as much in his way as Roger Atwood ever can in his. He has a fine mind and a brilliant imagination; but he is chilled, imbittered, and fettered by being constantly reminded of his weakness and dependence; and now positive unhappiness is added to his other misfortunes, although I think my little note will do him no harm"--she dreamed that it might be carried next to his heart instead of mouldering where the faithless Jotham had dropped it. "I shall not punish him for his family's harsh pride, from which he suffers even more than I do. Turn, turn, fortune's wheel! We are down now, but that only proves that we must soon come up again. Being poor and living in a tenement isn't so dreadful as I feared, and we can stand it for a while. As stout Mrs. Wheaton says, 'There's vorse troubles hin the vorld.' Now that we know and have faced the worst we can turn our hopes and thoughts toward the best." Poor child! It was well the future was veiled. The mode of Belle's activity was a problem, but that incipient young woman practically decided it herself. She was outspoken in her preference. "I don't want to work cooped up at home," she said. "I'd go wild if I had to sit and stitch all day. School half killed me, although there was always some excitement to be had in breaking the rules." "Naughty Belle!" cried her mother. "Never naughty when you coax, mamma. I'd have been a saint if they'd only taken your tactics with me, but they didn't know enough, thank fortune, so I had my fun. If they had only looked at me as you do, and put me on my honor, and appealed to my better feelings and all that, and laughed with me and at me now and then, I'd been fool enough to have kept every rule. You always knew, mamma, just how to get me right under your thumb, in spite of myself." "I hope I may always keep you there, my darling, in spite of this great evil world, out into which you wish to go. It is not under my thumb, Belle, but under my protecting wing that I wish to keep you." "Dear little mother," faltered the warm-hearted girl, her eyes filling with tears, "don't you see I've grown to be too big a chicken to be kept under your wing? I must go out and pick for myself, and bring home a nice morsel now and then for the little mother, too. Yes, I admit that I want to go out into the world. I want to be where everything is bright and moving. It's my nature, and what's the use of fighting nature? You and Millie can sit here like two doves billing and cooing all day. I must use my wings. I'd die in a cage, even though the cage was home. But never fear, I'll come back to it every night, and love it in my way just as much as you do in yours. You must put me in a store, mamma, where there are crowds of people going and coming. They won't do me any more harm than when I used to meet them in the streets, but they'll amuse me. My eyes and hands will be busy, and I won't die from moping. I've no more education than a kitten, but shop-girls are not expected to know the dead languages, and I can talk my own fast enough." "Indeed you can!" cried Mildred. "But, Belle," said her mother, who was strongly inclined toward Mildred's idea of seclusion until fortune's wheel HAD turned, "how will you like to have it known in after years that you were a shopgirl?" "Yes," added Mildred, "you may have to wait on some whom you invited to your little company last spring. I wish you could find something to do that would be quiet and secluded." "Oh, nonsense!" cried Belle impatiently. "We can't hide like bears that go into hollow trees and suck their paws for half a dozen years, more or less"--Belle's zoological ideas were startling rather than accurate--"I don't want to hide and cower. Why should we? We've done nothing we need be ashamed of. Father's been unfortunate; so have hundreds and thousands of other men in these hard times. Roger showed me an estimate, cut from a newspaper, of how many had failed during the last two or three years--why, it was an army of men. We ain't alone in our troubles, and Roger said that those who cut old acquaintances because they had been unfortunate were contemptible snobs, and the sooner they were found out the better; and I want to find out my score or two of very dear friends who have eaten ice-cream at our house. I hope I may have a chance to wait on 'em. I'll do it with the air of a princess," she concluded, assuming a preternatural dignity, "and if they put on airs I'll raise the price of the goods, and tell them that since they are so much above other people they ought to pay double price for everything. I don't believe they'll all turn up their noses at me," she added, after a moment, her face becoming wistful and gentle in its expression as she recalled some favorites whose whispered confidences and vows of eternal friendship seemed too recent to be meaningless and empty. The poor child would soon learn that, although school-girls' vows are rarely false, they are usually as fragile and transient as harebells. She had dropped into a different world, and the old one would fade like a receding star. She would soon find her that her only choice must be to make new associations and friendships and find new pleasures; and this her mercurial, frank, and fearless nature would incline her to do very promptly. With Mildred it was different. The old life was almost essential to her, and it contained everything that her heart most craved. Her courage was not Belle's natural and uncalculating intrepidity. She would go wherever duty required her presence, she would sacrifice herself for those she loved, and she was capable of martyrdom for a faith about as free from doctrinal abstractions as the simple allegiance of the sisters of Bethany to the Christ who "loved" them. Notwithstanding the truth of all this, it has already been shown that she was a very human girl. Brave and resolute she could be, but she would tremble and escape if possible. Especially would she shrink from anything tending to wound her womanly delicacy and a certain trace of sensitive Southern pride. Above all things she shrank from that which threatened her love. This was now her life, and its absorbing power colored all her thoughts and plans. Both conscience and reason, however, convinced her that Belle was right, and that the only chance for the vigorous, growing girl was some phase of active life. With her very limited attainments, standing behind a counter seemed the only opening that the family would consider, and it was eventually agreed upon, after a very reluctant consent from her father. CHAPTER XVII BELLE LAUNCHES HERSELF Only the least of Belle's difficulties were past when she obtained consent to stand behind a counter. With her mother she made many a weary expedition through the hot streets, and was laughed at in some instances for even imagining that employment could be obtained at the dullest season of the year. As soon as their errand was made known they were met by a brief and often a curt negative. Mrs. Jocelyn would soon have been discouraged, but Belle's black eyes only snapped with irritation at their poor success. "Give up?" she cried. "No, not if I have to work for nothing to get a chance. Giving up isn't my style, at least not till I'm tired of a thing; besides it's a luxury poor people can't indulge in." Mrs. Jocelyn felt that the necessity which compelled this quest was a bitter one, and her heart daily grew sorer that she had not resolutely saved part of every dollar earned by her husband in the old prosperous times. As she saw the poor young creatures standing wearily, and often idly and listlessly, through the long summer days, as her woman's eyes detected in the faces of many the impress of the pain they tried to conceal but could never forget, she half guessed that few laborers in the great city won their bread more hardly than these slender girls, doomed in most instances never to know a vigorous and perfected womanhood. "Belle, my child, how can you stand during these long, hot days? It's providential that we can't find any place." "Well, mamma, I'm not very well up in the ways of Providence. I fear the dull season has more to do with it. Nevertheless I'm going to make a situation if I can't find one." She had in her mind a shop on Sixth Avenue, which had the appearance of a certain "go and life," as she phrased it. "There's a strong-willed, wide-awake man back of that establishment," she had said to herself more than once, "and if I could get at him I believe he'd give me work, but the hateful old foreman stands in the way like a dragon". She and her mother had been curtly informed by this well-dressed "dragon," which parted its hair like a woman, that "there was no use in bothering the proprietor; he never added to his help in August--the idea was absurd." One morning after Mrs. Jocelyn had about given up the hope of obtaining a place until the autumn trade revived--as far as it would revive in those languid years--Belle started out alone, heavily veiled, and with her purpose also veiled from her mother and Mildred. She went straight to the shop on Sixth Avenue that had taken her fancy, and walked up to the obnoxious foreman without a trace of hesitation. "I wish to see Mr. Schriven," she said, in a quiet, decisive manner. "He is very busy, madam, and does not like to be disturbed. I will attend to anything you wish." "Thank you; then please direct me to the proprietor's office without delay." After a moment's hesitation the man complied. This veiled presence had the appearance of a gentlewoman and was decided in manner. Therefore he led the way to a small private office, and said, "A lady, sir, who insists on seeing you," and then discreetly closed the door and departed. The man of business allowed his pen to glide to the end of his sentence before turning to greet his visitor. Belle in the meantime had advanced to a point from which she could look directly into his face, for, child though she was, she understood that it was her difficult task first to obtain a hearing, and then to disarm his anger at her intrusion. Aware, however, that she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by the adventure, her natural fearlessness and quickness of tongue carried her through. She had already guessed that an appeal for employment, even the most pitiful, would meet with a flat, prompt refusal, therefore she had resolved on different tactics. At last the man lifted his head in his quick, imperious way, asking, as he turned toward her, "What is your business with me, madam?" "I like your store very much," Belle remarked quietly. Mr. Schriven now really glanced at her, and he found her brilliant black eyes and fair flushed face such pleasing objects of contemplation that he was content to look for a moment while he puzzled a little over the unexpected apparition. He then smiled satirically and said, "What follows from so momentous a fact?" "It follows that I would rather be employed here than in other stores that I do not like so well. My mother and I have visited nearly every one, and I like yours best." "Well, this IS cool. You and your mother were refused employment at this season at all the others, were you not?" "Yes, sir." "And my foreman declined your services here, also, did he not?" "Yes, sir, but I was sure that if I saw you I should obtain my wish. There's a life and snap about this place that I didn't see elsewhere, and therefore I knew a live man, and not a machine, was back of it, and that if I could see and talk with him he'd give me a chance." "You are exceedingly flattering," said the man, with another satirical smile. "Has it not occurred to you that your course is just tinged with assurance?" "Have I said or done anything unbecoming a lady?" asked Belle indignantly. Mr. Schriven laughed good-naturedly, for Belle's snapping eyes and brusque ways were beginning to interest him. "Oh, I forgot that you American working-women are all ladies. I am told that you speak of certain of your number as 'scrub-ladies' and 'washer-ladies.'" "You may call me a shop-girl, sir, as soon as I am in your employ." "And why not now?" "Because I'm not yet a shop-girl, and never have been one. I've often bought goods with my mother in this very store, and I come from as good blood as there is in the South. A few months ago my social position was as good as yours, and now that we have been unfortunate and I must work, I see no presumption in asking you to your face for honest work." "Not at all, my dear young lady," resumed Mr. Schriven, still maintaining his half-amused, half-ironical manner, "but I must inform you that I cannot afford to employ my social equals as shop-girls." "When I enter your employ of my own free will," responded Belle promptly, "I the same as promise to obey all the rules and regulations of your establishment, and I'll do it, too. What's more, I'll sell so many goods in dull times and all times that you can well afford to make a place for me if you have none. One thing is certain--I'm going to get work, and my work will repay those who employ me a hundred times." "Well, you are an odd fish," Mr. Schriven ejaculated; "I beg your pardon, you are not yet in my employ--you are an eccentric young lady, and a very young one, too, to be making your way in the world in this irresistible style. You mean what you say, that if employed you will put on no airs and conform to rules?" "I mean just what I say." Mr. Schriven fell into a foxy fit of musing, and there rose before his mind the pale face and dragged, weary, listless look of a girl now standing at the ribbon counter. "She'll break down when hard work begins again," he thought; "she's giving way now with nothing much to do. To be sure she has been here a long time, and has done her best and all that, but her day is past, and here's plenty of young flesh and blood to fill her place. This one is rather young, but she's smart as a whip--she's full of mettle and is fresh and healthy-looking. It won't do to have pale girls around, for it gives cursed busybodies a chance to rant about women standing all day. (Out of the corner of his eye he measured Belle from head to foot.) She can stand, and stand it, too, for a long while. She's compact and stout. She's built right for the business." At last he said, aloud, "In case I should so far depart from my usual custom and make a place for you, as you suggest, what do you propose to charge for the services you rate so highly?" "What you choose to give." "Well," was the laughing answer, "there's method in your madness. Take that pen and write what I dictate." Belle wrote a few sentences in a dashing, but sufficiently legible hand. "You will have to practice a little, and aim at distinctness and clearness. That's more than style in business," Mr. Schriven continued deliberately, for the young creature was so delightfully fresh and original that he began to regard her as an agreeable episode in the dull August day. "I'll make a place for you, as you say, if you will come for three dollars a week and comply with the rules. You are to do just as you are bid by those having charge of your department, and you had better keep on their right side. You are not to come to me again, remember, unless I send for you," he concluded, with his characteristic smile; "an event that you must not look forward to, for I assure you such interviews are rare in my experience. Come next Monday at seven if you agree to these conditions." "I agree, and I thank you," the girl promptly answered, her brilliant eyes glowing with triumph, for thoughts like these were in her mind: "How I can crow over mamma and Millie, who said this very morning there was no use in trying! Won't it be delicious to hand papa enough money to pay the rent for a month!" No wonder the child's face was radiant. The thoughts of her employer were of quite a different character. He gave her a look of bold admiration, and said familiarly, "By Jupiter, but you are a daisy!" Belle's manner changed instantly. He caught a swift, indignant flash in her dark eyes, and then she laid her hand on the door-knob and said, with the utmost deference and distance of manner, "I will try to attend to the duties of my station in a way that will cause no complaint. Good morning, sir." "Wait a moment," and Mr. Schriven touched a bell, and immediately the foreman appeared. "Give this girl a place next Monday at the ribbon counter," he said, in the quick staccato tones of one who is absolute and saves time even in the utterance of words. "I also wish to see you two hours hence." The man bowed, as if all were a matter of course, but when he was alone with Belle he said sharply, "You think you got ahead of me." He would indeed have been the most malicious of dragons had not Belle's smiling face and frank words disarmed him. "I did get ahead of you, and you know it, but you are too much of a man to hold a grudge against a poor girl who has her bread to earn. Now that I am under your charge I promise that I'll do my best to please you." "Very well, then; we'll see. I'll have my eye on you, and don't you forget it." Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred laughed, sighed, and shook their heads over Belle's humorous account of her morning's adventure. They praised her motive, they congratulated her on her success, but her mother said earnestly, "My dear little girl, don't get bold and unwomanly. We had all better starve than come to that. It would wound me to the heart if your manner should ever cause any one to think of you otherwise than as the pure-hearted, innocent girl that you are. But alas! Belle, the world is too ready to think evil. You don't know it yet at all." She knew it better than they thought. There was one phase of her interview with Mr. Schriven that she had not revealed, well knowing that her gentle mother would be inexorable in her decision that the shop must not even be entered again. The girl was rapidly acquiring a certain shrewd hardihood. She was not given to sentiment, and was too young to suffer deeply from regret for the past. Indeed she turned buoyantly toward the future, while at the same time she recognized that life had now become a keen battle among others in like condition. "I don't intend to starve," she said to herself, "nor to bite off my own nose because the world is not just what mother and Millie think it ought to be. Papa would be inclined to break that man's head if I told him what he said and how he looked. But what would come of it? Papa would go to jail and we into the street. Unless papa can get up in the world again very fast, Millie and I shall find that we have got to take care of ourselves and hold our tongues. I hadn't been around with mamma one day before I learned that much. Mamma and Millie were never made to be working-women. They are over-refined and high-toned, but I can't afford too much of that kind of thing on three dollars a week. I'm a 'shop lady'--that's the kind of lady I'm to be--and I must come right down to what secures success without any nonsense." In justice it should be said that Belle's practical acceptance of the situation looked forward to no compromise with evil; but she had seen that she must come in contact with the world as it existed, and that she must resolutely face the temptations incident to her lot rather than vainly seek to escape from them. Alas! her young eyes had only caught a faint glimpse of the influences that would assail her untrained, half-developed moral nature. Body and soul would be taxed to the utmost in the life upon which she was entering. On the Sunday following Mr. Jocelyn slept so late that none of the family went to church. Indeed, since their old relations were broken up they scarcely knew where to go, and Mildred no more felt that she could return to the fashionable temple in which Mrs. Arnold worshipped than present herself at the elegant mansion on Fifth Avenue. The family spent the after part of the day in one of the most secluded nooks they could find in Central Park, and Mildred often looked back upon those hours as among the brightest in the shrouded past. Mr. Jocelyn gauged his essential stimulant so well that he was geniality itself; Belle was more exuberant than usual; Fred and Minnie rejoiced once more in flowers and trees and space to run. Mrs. Jocelyn's low, sweet laugh was heard again and again, for those who made her life were all around her, and they seemed happier than they had been for many a long, weary day. For a brief time at least the sun shone brightly through a rift in the clouds gathering around them. Beyond the fact that Belle had found a place, little was said to Mr. Jocelyn, for the subject seemed very painful to him, and the young girl started off Monday morning in high spirits. The foreman met her in a curt, business-like way, and assigned her to her place, saying that the girl in charge of the goods would tell her about the marks, prices, etc. This girl and her companions received Belle very coldly, nor did they thaw out before her sunshine. As a matter both of duty and interest the young woman upon whom the task devolved explained all that was essential in a harsh, constrained voice, and the others ignored the newcomer during business hours. Belle paid no attention to them, but gave her whole mind to the details of her work, making rapid progress. "I'll have time for them by and by," she muttered, "and can manage them all the better when I know as much as they do." She saw, too, that the foreman had his eye upon her and her companions, so she assumed the utmost humility and docility, but persisted in being told and retold all she wished to know. Since she observed that it was the foreman's eye and not good-will which constrained the cold, unsympathetic instruction received, she made no scruple in taxing the giver to the utmost. When at last they went to the room in which they ate their lunch, the girls treated her as if she were a leper; but just to spite them she continued as serene as a May morning, either acting as if she did not see them or treating them as if they were the most charming young women she had ever met. She saw with delight that her course aggravated them and yet gave no cause for complaint. As soon as permitted she hastened home, and was glad to lie down all the evening from sheer fatigue, but she made light of her weariness, concealed the treatment she had received from the girls, and the dejection it was beginning to occasion in spite of her courage; she even made the little home group laugh by her droll accounts of the day. Then they all petted and praised and made so much of her that her spirits rose to their usual height, and she said confidently, as she went to a long night's rest, "Don't you worry, little mother; I didn't expect to get broken in to my work without a backache." The next day it was just the same, but Belle knew now what to charge for the ribbons, or, if she was not sure, the others were obliged, under the eye of the inexorable foreman--who for some reason gave this counter a great deal of attention--to tell her correctly, so she began to lie in wait for customers. Some came to her of their own accord, and they smiled back into her eager, smiling face. In two or three instances her intent black eyes and manner seemed to attract attention and arrest the steps of those who had no intention of stopping. One case was so marked that the alert foreman drew near to note the result. An elderly lady, whose eye Belle had apparently caught by a look of such vivacity and interest that the woman almost felt that she had been spoken to, came to the girl, saying, "Well, my child, what have you that is pretty to-day?" "Just what will please you, madam." "YOU please me, whether your ribbons will or not. It's pleasant for a customer to be looked at as if she were not a nuisance," she added significantly, and in a tone that Belle's companions, with their cold, impassive faces, could not fail to hear. "You may pick out something nice for one of my little granddaughters." Dimpling with smiles and pleasure, Belle obeyed. Feeling that the eye of the arbiter of their fates was upon them, the young women near might have been statues in their rigid attitudes. Only the hot blood mounting to their faces betrayed their anger. There was evidently something wrong at the ribbon counter--something repressed, a smouldering and increasing indignation, a suggestion of rebellion. So the foreman evidently thought, from his frequent appearances; so the floor-walker clearly surmised, for with imperious glances and words he held each one sternly to her duty. Belle was smiling and working in the midst of a gathering storm, and she was becoming conscious of it. So far from cowering, her indignation was fast rising, and there was an ominous glow kindling in her dark eyes. Their seemingly unwarranted hostility and jealousy were beginning to incense her. She believed she had as much right there as they had, and she resolved to maintain her right. Catching an ireful glance from the girl in charge of the counter, she returned it with interest. Even this spark came very near kindling the repressed fires into an open flame, regardless of consequences. The bread of these girls was at stake, but women are not calculating when their feelings are deeply disturbed. At last, just as the wretched afternoon was ending, and preparations to close were in progress, a pale, thin girl, with a strange and rather reckless look, came in, and, sitting down before Belle, fixed her gaunt eyes upon her. "So you were heartless enough to take my place away from me?" she said slowly, after a moment. "I don't know what you mean," answered Belle indignantly. "Yes, you do know what she means, you little black snake in the grass," whispered one of the girls in her ear while pretending to put a box upon the shelf. Belle whirled upon her with such a vivid and instantaneous flash of anger that the girl stepped back precipitately and dropped the box. Just at this moment Mr. Schriven, in the act of departure, came out of his office and witnessed the whole scene. He stopped and smiled broadly. The foreman had informed him from time to time of the little "comedy" progressing at the ribbon counter, and the two potentates felt quite indebted to Belle for a sensation in the dullest of dull seasons, especially at the girl's conduct was wholly in the line of their wishes, regulations, and interests. "She's as plucky as a terrier," the echo of his chief had said, "and the time will come when she'll sell more goods than any two girls in the store. You made a ten-strike in effecting that exchange." It was rich sport for them to see her fiery spirit arousing and yet defying the intense and ill-concealed hostility of her companions--a hostility, too, that was extending beyond the ribbon counter, and had been manifesting itself by whispering, significant nods, and black looks toward the poor child all the afternoon; but so far from shrinking before this concentration of ill-will Belle had only grown more indignant, more openly resentful, and unable to maintain her resolute and tantalizing serenity. Feeling that it would compromise his dignity and authority even to appear to notice what was going forward, Mr. Schriven wrapped himself in his greatness and passed down the shop, sweeping the excited group--that was restrained for the moment by his presence--with a cold, nonchalant glance, from which, however, nothing escaped. When in the street his characteristic smile reappeared. "By the Lord Harry!" he muttered, "if she isn't the gamiest bit of flesh and blood that I've seen in a long time! She's worth looking after." Since his eye and restraining presence, however, were now absent from the store, there would have been no small tumult at the ribbon counter had not Belle by her straight-forward, fearless manner brought things to a speedy issue. There were now no customers in the shop, and the discipline of the day was practically over, therefore the girl on whom Belle had turned so passionately, having reached a safe distance, said, outspokenly, "I'll say it now, so all can hear, even if I lose my place for it. You are a mean, p'ismis little black snake in the grass. We all know how you got this girl out of the place she's had for years, and I want you to understand that if you stay you'll have a hot time of it." "And I want you to understand that if I've a right to stay, I WILL stay," cried Belle, in a ringing voice. "I'm not afraid of you, nor a thousand like you. Either you're all cats to treat a young girl as you've treated me the last two days, or else there's something that I don't understand. But I' m going to understand it here and now. You hold your tongue, and let this girl speak who says I've taken her place. She's the one I'm to deal with. But first let me say how I got this place--I asked for it. That's the whole story, and I didn't know I was taking it from any one else." Belle's courageous and truth-stamped manner began to create a diversion in her favor, and all near listened with her to what the dismissed girl might say. The latter did not in the least respond to Belle's energy, but after a long, weary sigh she began, without raising her head from her hand as she sat leaning on the counter, "Whether you're right or wrong, I'm too badly used up to quarrel with you or to answer in any such gunpowdery fashion. I'm dead beat, but I thought I'd like to come in and see you all once more, and my old place, and who was standing in it. You are at the beginning, my pert one. If I was as young and strong as you I wouldn't come and stand here." "How is your mother?" asked the girl in charge of the counter. "She's dying, starving," was the reply, in the same dreary, apathetic tone, and black looks were again directed toward Belle. She heeded them not, however. For a moment her eyes dilated with horror, then she sprang to the girl, and taking her hands exclaimed, "Good God! What do you mean? Let me go home with you." The girl looked at her steadfastly, and then said, "Yes, come home with me. That's the best way to understand it all." "We'll bring your mother something by and by," said two or three of the girls as the poor creature rose slowly to follow Belle, who was ready instantly, and whose course compelled a suspension of judgment on the part of those even the most prejudiced against her. CHAPTER XVIII "I BELIEVE IN YOU" "Come," cried Belle impatiently, as they made their way down Sixth Avenue, which was crowded at that hour; "why do you walk so slowly? If my mother was as badly off as you say yours is, I'd fly to her." "No, you wouldn't, if you had scarcely eaten anything for two days." "What!" Belle exclaimed, stopping short and looking at her companion to see if she were in earnest. Something in her expression caused the impulsive child to seize her hand and drag her into a bakery near. Then snatching out her little purse she thrust it into the girl's hands and said, "Here, take all I have and buy what you like best." But instead of buying anything, the stranger looked wistfully into the excited and deeply sympathetic face, and said slowly, "I don't believe you're bad after all." "Oh, I'm bad enough--bad as most girls of my age," said the innocent girl recklessly, "but I'm not bad enough to keep back a penny if I knew any one was hungry. Stop looking at me and buy what you like, or else let me do it. Take home some of this jelly-cake to your mother. That would tempt my appetite if it ever needed any tempting. I half believe you are shamming all this, you act so queer." "Come with me," said the girl, for the people in the store were looking at them curiously. When in the street she continued, "You are not bad. What is your name?" "Belle Jocelyn." "My name is Clara Bute. I AM hungry. I'm faint for food, but may it choke me if I eat any before I take something home to mother! Cake is not what either of us need, although it made me ravenous to see it. You haven't much money here, Belle, and small as the sum is, I don't know when I can repay it." "Oh, stop that kind of talk," cried Belle; "you'll drive me wild. Let us get what your mother DOES want and take it to her without another word." They purchased bread and milk, a little tea, a bit of beef, a bundle of kindling-wood, and then Belle's slender funds gave out. With these they turned into a side street and soon reached a tall tenement. "Oh," sighed Clara, "how can I climb those dreadful stairs! We live at the top." "Drink some of the milk," said Belle kindly, "and then let me carry everything." "I guess I'll have to or I'll never get up at all." Slowly and painfully she mounted flight after flight, sitting down at last and resting after each ascent. "I didn't--realize--I was so weak," she panted. "Tell me your room," said Belle, "and I'll come back and help you." "It's the--last one--back--top floor. I've given out." Belle left her sitting on the stairs and soon reached the door, which had been left slightly ajar for air, for the evening was sultry. She pushed it open with her foot, since her hands were so full, and with her eyes fixed on the articles she was carrying so as to drop nothing, she crossed the small room to a table and put them down before looking around. "There's some--mistake," said a very low, hollow voice. Belle was almost transfixed by eyes as black as her own, gleaming out of cavernous sockets and from the most emaciated face she had ever seen. It seemed as if the dead were speaking to her. At any rate, if the woman were not dead she soon would be, and the thought flashed through Belle's mind that she would be the cause of her death, since she had taken her daughter's place and robbed them of sustenance. She who had been ready to face a whole shopful of hostile people with undaunted eyes was seized with a remorseful panic, and ran sobbing down to Clara, crying, "Oh, do come--let me carry you"; and this she half did in her excitement. "Give your mother something to make her better right away. Let me help you--tell me what to do." Clara went to her mother and kissed her tenderly, whispering, "Courage, momsy, I've got something nice for you." Then she turned and said, "You are too excited, Belle. I'll do everything, and make the little we have go a great way. You would waste things. I know just what to do, only give me time," and she soaked some of the bread in the milk and began feeding her mother, who swallowed with great difficulty. "I'll take no more--till--I see you--eat something," gasped the poor woman. "Who gave you all this? Who's that?" pointing feebly at Belle. "I'm the girl that took Clara's place," Belle began, with a fresh burst of sobs. "I didn't know I was doing it, and now I'll never forgive myself." Clara looked at her wonderingly as she explained: "The foreman said you asked Mr. Schriven to make a place for you, but I don't believe you meant that he should 'sack' me to do it. Why, you are nothing but a great, warm-hearted child. The girls said you were 'knowing,' and could 'play as deep a game as the next one,' and that the foreman about the same as owned it to them. It's all his doing and his master's. They both care more for a yard of ribbon than for a girl, body and soul." "Well," said Belle, with bitter emphasis, "I'll never work for them again--never, never." "Don't say that," resumed Clara, after coaxing her mother to take a little more nourishment, and then sitting down to eat something herself. "If you are poor you must do the best you can. Now that I know you I'd rather you had my place than any one else, for"--she gave a swift glance at her mother's closed eyes, and then whispered in Belle's ear--"I couldn't keep it much longer. For the last two weeks it has seemed I'd drop on the floor where you stood to-day, and every night I've had harder work to climb these stairs. Oh, Lord! I wish mother and I could both stay here now till we're carried down together feet foremost." "Don't talk that way," pleaded Belle, beginning to cry again. "We'll all do for you now, and you both will get better." "Who's 'we all'? Would you mind telling me a little about who you are, and how you came to get my place?" Belle's brief sketch of herself, her history, and how the recent events had come about, was very simple, but strong and original, and left no doubt in her listener's mind. "My gracious!" Clara cried, as the room darkened, "your folks'll be wild about you. I've nothing to offer you but your own, and I've kept you talking when you must have been tired and hungry, but you are so full of life that you put a bit of life in me. It's ages since I felt as you do, and I'll never feel so again. Now run home with your mind at rest. You have done us more good than you have harm, and you never meant us any harm at all." "Indeed I did not," cried Belle, "but I'm not through with you yet. I'll bring Millie back with me and a lot of things," and she darted away. The inmates of the two rooms at the Old Mansion were, indeed, anxious over Belle's prolonged absence. Her father had gone to the shop; Mrs. Wheaton, with her apron thrown over her head, was on the sidewalk with Mildred, peering up and down through the dusk, when the half-breathless girl appeared. Her story was soon told, and Mrs. Wheaton was taken into their confidence. From trembling apprehension on Belle's behalf, kind Mrs. Jocelyn was soon deep in sympathy for the poor woman and her daughter, and offered to go herself and look after them, but Mildred and Mrs. Wheaton took the matter into their own hands, and Belle, after gulping down a hasty supper, was eager to return as guide. Mr. Jocelyn, who had returned from the closed store on a run, had so far recovered from his panic concerning his child that he said he would bring a physician from the dispensary, and, taking the number, went to do his part for those who had become "neighbors unto them." A woman on the same floor offered to look after Mrs. Wheaton's children for an hour or two, and the two sisters and the stout English woman, carrying everything they could think of to make the poor creatures comfortable, and much that they could ill spare, started on their errand of mercy. It never occurred to them that they were engaged in a charity or doing a good deed. They were simply following the impulses of their hearts to help those of whose sore need they had just learned. Mildred panted a little under her load before she reached the top of those long, dark stairs. "I could never get to heaven this way," muttered Belle, upon whom the day of fatigue and excitement was beginning to tell. "It's up, up, up, till you feel like pitching the man who built these steps head first down 'em all. It's Belle, Clara," she said, after a brief knock at the door; then entering, she added, "I told you I'd come back soon with help for you." "I'm sorry I've nothing to make a light with," Clara answered; "the moon has been so bright of late that we did without light, and then I got all out of money. We either had to pay the rent or go into the street, unless some one took us in. Besides, mother was too sick to be moved." "I've brought two candles," said Mrs. Wheaton. "They're heasier managed hon a 'ot night," and she soon had one burning on the table and another on the mantel. "I vant to see vat's to be done," she continued, "because I must give yer a 'arty lift him a jiffy and be back to my children hagain." Then going to the sick woman she took her hand and felt her pulse. "'Ow do yer find yerself, mum?" she asked. "Oh, I'm much--better--I shall--get well now," the poor soul gasped, under the strange hallucination of that disease which, although incurable, ever promises speedy health to its victims. "That's a splendid; that's the way to talk," cried Belle, who had been oppressed with the fear that the woman would die, and that she in some sense would be to blame. "Clara, this is sister Millie that I told you about," and that was all the introduction the two girls ever had. "Vy didn't you send yer mother to a 'ospital?" Mrs. Wheaton asked, joining the girls at the table. "Don't say 'hospital' so mother can hear you. The very word would kill her now, for there's nothing on earth she dreads more than that they'll separate us and send her to a hospital. I've sometimes thought it would have been best, and then it seemed it would kill her at once, she was so opposed to it. That we might keep together and to buy her delicacies I've parted with nearly everything in the room, as you see," and it was bare indeed. A bed from which the element of comfort had long since departed, two rickety chairs, a pine table, a rusty stove, and a few dishes and cooking utensils were about all there was left. With eyes slowly dilating Mildred took in the bleak truth, but said only a few gentle words and was very busy. She lifted Mrs. Bute's head, while Clara gave her a little bread soaked in wine, and then aided Mrs. Wheaton in making the room and bed a little more like what they should be by means of the articles they had brought. Clara wonderingly saw that her little closet was stocked with supplies for days to come. Her mother's preternaturally brilliant eyes followed every movement, also, with a dumb but eager questioning. Tired Belle in the meantime had drawn a chair to the table, and with her head resting on her arms had dropped asleep in a moment. "Why should your sister work in a store if you're not poor?" Clara asked Mildred. "You can't be poor and spare all these things." "Yes, we're poor, but not so poor as you are," said Mildred simply. "Belle touched our hearts in your behalf, and we see you need a little neighborly help." "Well, I was never so mistaken in any one in my life," Clara exclaimed, looking at the sleeping girl, with a remorseful gush of tears. "There isn't a bad streak in her." At this moment the door opened, and two girls, who had been Clara's companions at the shop, appeared with a few meagre parcels. Before asking them in she pulled them back in the hall and there were a few moments of eager whispering. Then they all came in and looked at Belle, and Clara stooped down and kissed her lightly, at which the girl smiled and murmured, "Dear little mother--always brooding over her chicks." "She thinks she's home," explained Mildred, with moist eyes. "This is her sister," said Clara, "and this lady is a friend of theirs. I know they've robbed themselves, they've brought so much." "Vun's honly ter come to Hameriker ter be a lady," chuckled Mrs. Wheaton under her breath. "We won't wake your sister," said one of the girls. "She's tired, and no wonder. We haven't treated her right at the store, but we wasn't to blame, for we didn't know her at all. Please tell her that we'll give her a different reception to-morrow," and after another season of whispering in the hall they departed, leaving the simple offerings gleaned from their poverty. Mr. Jocelyn and the physician soon appeared, and after a brief examination the latter called Mr. Jocelyn aside and said, "Her pulse indicates that she may die at any hour. There is no use in trying to do anything, for the end has come. It has probably been hastened by lack of proper food, but it's too late now to give much, for there is no power of assimilation." "You had better tell the poor girl the truth, then," said Mr. Jocelyn. Clara was called, and heard the verdict with a short, convulsive sob, then was her weary, quiet self again, "I feared it was so," was all she said. She now became aware that Mildred stood beside her with an encircling and sustaining arm. "Don't," she whispered; "don't be too kind or I'll break down utterly, and I don't want to before mother. She don't know--she never will believe she can die, and I don't want her to know. I'll have time enough to cry after she's gone." "I feel I must stay vith yer to-night," warm-hearted Mrs. Wheaton began; "and if Miss Jocelyn vill look hafter my children I vill." "No, Mrs. Wheaton," said Mildred decidedly, "I'm going to stay. You ought to be with your children. Don't tell Belle, papa, and take the poor child home. Clara and I can now do all that can be done. Please don't say anything against it, for I know I'm right," she pleaded earnestly in answer to her father's look of remonstrance. "Very well, then, I'll return and stay with you," he said. The physician's eyes dwelt on Mildred's pale face in strong admiration as he gave her a few directions. "That's right, Millie, make her well for mercy's sake or I'll have the horrors," Belle whispered as she kissed her sister good-night. Soon Clara and Mildred were alone watching the gasping, fitful sleeper. "After all that's been done--for me--to-night I'll--surely get well," she had murmured, and she closed her eyes without an apparent doubt of recovery. Mildred furtively expiorea the now dimly lighted room. "Merciful Heaven," she sighed, "shall we ever come to this?" Clara's eyes were fixed on her mother's face with pathetic intensity, watching the glimmer of that mysterious thing we call life, that flickered more and more faintly. The difference between the wasted form, with its feeble animation, and what it must soon become would seem slight, but to the daughter it would be wide indeed. Love could still answer love, even though it was by a sign, a glance, a whisper only; but when to the poor girl it would be said of her mother, "She's gone," dim and fading as the presence had been, manifested chiefly by the burdens it imposed, its absence would bring the depths of desolation and sorrow. Going the poor creature evidently was, and whither? The child she was leaving knew little of what was bright and pleasant in this world, and nothing of the next. "Miss Jocelyn," she began hesitatingly. "Don't call me Miss Jocelyn; I'm a working-girl like yourself." "Millie, then, as Belle said?" "Yes." "Millie, do you believe in a heaven?" "Yes." "What is it like?" "I don't know very well. It's described to us under every grand and beautiful image the world affords. I think we'll find it what we best need to make us happy." "Oh, then it would be rest for mother and me," the girl sighed wearily. "It's surely rest," Mildred replied quickly, "for I remember a place in the Bible where it says, 'There remaineth a rest for the people of God.'" "That's it," said Clara with some bitterness; "it's always the people of God. What remains for such as we, who have always been so busy fighting the wolf that we've thought little of God or church?" "You've been no poorer, Clara, than Christ was all His life, and were He on earth now as He was once, I'd bring Him here to your room. He'd come, too, for He lived among just such people as we are, and never once refused to help them in their troubles or their sins." "Once--once," cried Clara, with a gush of tears. "Where is He now?" "Here with us. I know it, for we need Him. Our need is our strongest claim--one that He never refused. I have entreated Him in your behalf and your mother's, and do you ask Him also to put heaven at the end of this dark and often thorny path which most of us must tread in this world." "Oh, Millie, Millie, I'm ignorant as a heathen. I did have a Bible, but I sold even that to buy wine to save mother's life. I might better have been thinking of saving her soul. She's too sick to be talked to now, but surely she ought to find at least a heaven of rest. You could never understand the life she's led. She hasn't lived--she's just been dragged through the world. She was born in a tenement-house. The little play she ever had was on sidewalks and in the gutters; she's scarcely ever seen the country. Almost before she knew how to play she began to work. When she was only seventeen a coarse, bad man married her. How it ever came about I never could understand. I don't believe he knew anything more of love than a pig; for he lived like one and died like one, only he didn't die soon enough. It seems horrible that I should speak in this way of my father, and yet why should I not, when he was a horror to me ever since I can remember? Instead of taking care of mother, she had to take care of him. He'd take the pittance she had wrung from the washtub for drink, and then come back to repay her for it with blows and curses. I guess we must have lived in fifty tenements, for we were always behind with the rent and so had to move here and there, wherever we could get a place to put our heads in. Queer places some of them were, I can tell you--mere rat-holes. They served one purpose, though--they finished off the children. To all mother's miseries and endless work was added the anguish of child-bearing. They were miserable, puny, fretful little imps, that were poisoned off by the bad air in which we lived, and our bad food--that is, when we had any--after they had made all the trouble they could. I had the care of most of them, and my life became a burden before I was seven years old. I used to get so tired and faint that I was half glad when they died. At last, when mother became so used up that she really couldn't work any more, father did for us the one good act that I know anything about--he went off on a big spree that finished him. Mother and I have clung together ever since. We've often been hungry, but we've never been separated a night. What a long night is coming now, in which the doctor says we shall be parted!" and the poor girl crouched on the floor where her mother could not see her should she open her eyes, and sobbed convulsively. Mildred did not try to comfort her with words, but only with caresses. Christ proved centuries ago that the sympathetic touch is healing. "Oh, Millie, I seem to feel the gentle stroke of your hand on my heart as well as on my brow, and it makes the pain easier to bear. It makes me feel as if the coarse, brutal life through which I've come did not separate me from one so good and different as you are; for though you may be poor, you are as much of a lady as any I've ever waited on at the store. And then to look at your father and to think of mine. I learned to hate men even when a child, for nearly all I ever knew either abused me or tempted me; but, Millie, you need not fear to touch me. I never sold myself, though I've been faint with hunger. I'm ignorant, and my heart's been full of bitterness, but I'm an honest girl." "Poor, poor Clara!" said Mildred brokenly, "my heart aches for you as I think of all you've suffered." The girl sprang up, seized the candle, and held it to Mildred's face. "My God," she whispered, "you are crying over my troubles." Then she looked steadfastly into the tearful blue eyes and beautiful face of her new friend for a moment, and said, "Millie, I'll believe any faith YOU'LL teach me, for _I_ BELIEVE IN YOU." CHAPTER XIX BELLE JARS THE "SYSTEM" Some orthodox divines would have given Clara a version of the story of life quite different from that which she received from Mildred. Many divines, not orthodox, would have made the divergence much wider. The poor girl, so bruised in spirit and broken in heart, was not ready for a system of theology or for the doctrine of evolution; and if any one had begun to teach the inherent nobleness and self-correcting power of humanity, she would have shown him the door, feeble as she was. But when Mildred assured her that if Christ were in the city, as He had been in Capernaum, He would climb the steep, dark stairs to her attic room and say to her, "Daughter, be of good comfort"--when she was told that Holy Writ declared that He was the "same yesterday, to-day, and forever"--her heart became tender and contrite, and therefore ready for a Presence that is still "seeking that which was lost." Men may create philosophies, they may turn the Gospel itself into a cold abstraction, but the practical truth remains that the Christ who saves, comforts, and lifts the intolerable burden of sorrow or of sin, comes now as of old--comes as a living, loving, personal presence, human in sympathy, divine in power. As Mildred had said, our need and our consciousness of it form our strongest claim upon Him and the best preparation for Him. Clara was proving the truth of her words. Life could never be to her again merely a bitter, sullen struggle for bread. A great hope was dawning, and though but a few rays yet quivered through the darkness, they were the earnest of a fuller light. Before midnight Mr. Jocelyn joined the watchers, and seated himself unobtrusively in a dusky corner of the room. Clara crouched on the floor beside her mother, her head resting on the bed, and her hand clasping the thin fingers of the dying woman. She insisted on doing everything the poor creature required, which was but little, for it seemed that life would waver out almost imperceptibly. Mildred sat at the foot of the bed, where her father could see her pure profile in the gloom. To his opium-kindled imagination it seemed to have a radiance of its own, and to grow more and more luminous until, in its beauty and light, it became like the countenance of an accusing angel; then it began to recede until it appeared infinitely far away. "Millie," he called, in deep apprehension. "What is it, papa?" she asked, springing to his side and putting her hand on his shoulder. "Oh!" he said, shudderingly. "I had such a bad dream! You seemed fading away from me, till I could no longer see your face. It was so horribly real!" She came and sat beside him, and held his hand in both of hers. "That's right," he remarked; "now my dreams will be pleasant." "You didn't seem to be asleep, papa," said the girl, in some surprise; "indeed, you seemed looking at me fixedly." "Then I must have been asleep with my eyes open," he answered with a trace of embarrassment. "Poor papa, you are tired, and it's very, very kind of you to come and stay with me, but I wasn't afraid. Clara says it's a respectable house, and the people, though very poor, are quiet and well behaved. Now that you have seen that we are safe, please go home and rest," and she coaxed until he complied, more from fear that he would betray himself than from any other motive. In the deep hush that falls on even a great city before the early life of the next day begins, Mrs. Bute opened her eyes and called, "Clara!" "Right here, momsy, dear, holding your hand." "It's strange--I can't see you--I feel so much better, too--sort of rested. It does--seem now--as if I--might get--a little rest. Don't wake me--child--to give me--anything--and rest yourself." She smiled faintly as she closed her eyes, and very soon Clara could never wake her again. Mildred took the head of the orphan into her lap, and the poor girl at last sobbed herself to sleep. We will not attempt to follow Mildred's thoughts as she tried to keep up through the long hours. The murmured words, "I would watch more patiently over Vinton Arnold, did not his proud mother stand between us," suggests the character of some of them. At last, when she was faint from weariness, she heard steps coming up the stairs, and her mother entered, followed by Mrs. Wheaton. "My dear, brave child, this is too much for you. I'd rather it had been myself a thousand times," Mrs. Jocelyn exclaimed. "It's all right, mamma, but the sight of you and good Mrs. Wheaton is more welcome than I can tell you, for I was getting very lonely and tired." "I'll stay now hand tend ter heverything," said Mrs. Wheaton, with a stout, cheery kindness that could not be disguised even in her whisper; but Clara awoke with a start and said, "What is it, momsy?" Then she sprang up, and after a brief glance at her mother threw herself with a long, low cry on the lifeless form. "Leave hall ter me," said Mrs. Wheaton decidedly, "hand take Miss Jocelyn 'ome, for this'll be too much for 'er." "Ah, mamma dear," sobbed Mildred, "my heart would be broken indeed if that were you." "Millie, if you love me, come home at once," Mrs. Jocelyn urged. It was quite light when they gained the street, and after reaching home Mildred was given a warm cup of tea, and left to sleep until late in the day. While she slept, however, there occurred some rather stirring scenes. Belle, too, slept rather late, but a portentous gloom came into her eyes when told that Mrs. Bute was dead. She did not say very much, but her young face grew older and very resolute while she hastily ate her breakfast. Then she carried something nice to Clara, and found that Mrs. Wheaton had left, a neighbor from the tall tenement having taken her place. Belle looked at the bereaved girl with half-fearful eyes as if she expected reproaches, and when Clara kissed her in greeting she said "Don't" so sharply as to excite surprise. "Belle," said Clara gently, "mother's at rest." "That's more than I am," muttered the girl. "Oh, Clara, I didn't mean to bring all this trouble on you. That man just caught me in a trap." "Belle, Belle! why do you blame yourself for all this? It would have come just the same, and probably just as soon, and if it hadn't been for you I'd been alone, with no friends and no hope." "Oh, don't talk to me!" Belle cried; "your mother might have been alive if I hadn't taken your place. I want to see her." Clara turned back the covering, and the young girl looked at the dead face with a stern, frowning brow. "Starved!" she muttered. "I understand why they all looked so black at me now; but why couldn't some one have told me? He shall know the truth for once; he's more to blame than I," and she abruptly departed. Very little later the foreman of the shop on Sixth Avenue was astonished to see her passing hastily toward the private office, regardless of the looks of surprise and interest turned toward her on every side, for the events of the night had been very generally whispered around. "Mr. Schriven's engaged," he said sharply. "What do you want? Why are you not in your place?" "I am in my place, but you are not. Stand aside, for I will see Mr. Schriven at once." "I tell you some one is with him." "I don't care if the king's with him," and darting on one side she reached the office door, and knocked so sharply that the ireful potentate within sprang up himself to see who the inconsiderate intruder was. "Oh, it's you," he said, half inclined to laugh in spite of his anger. "I thought I said that, if I employed you, you were not to come to my office again unless I sent for you?" "I'm not in your employ." "Indeed! How's that?" he asked very sharply. "That is just what I've come to explain," was the unflinching reply. "By-by," remarked Mr. Schriven's visitor maliciously; "I see you are to be interviewed." "Very briefly, I assure you. Good-morning. Now, miss, I give you about one minute to transact your business with me, then the cashier will pay you for two days' work." "No, sir, he will not. Do you think I'd take money stained with blood?" "What do you mean? What kind of a girl are you anyway?" "I'm an honest girl; I believe in God and the devil--I believe in them both too well to have anything more to do with you unless you can prove you didn't know any more than I did. You think to frighten me with black looks, but I've just come from a greater presence than yours--the presence of one who'll soon be your master--Death, and death for which you are responsible." "Good God! what do you mean?" "What did you mean by turning off without a word a poor girl--one who for years had done her best for you? What did you mean by making a place for me in that way? Her mother died last night--starved--and I'd have you know that I'd have starved before I'd have taken her place had I known what I know now. Go look at your work at the top of a tenement-house! There's more flesh on your arm than on that dead woman's body, and the poor girl herself hadn't eaten anything for two days when she came here last night. She'd have died, too, if sister Millie hadn't stayed with her last night. I hope you didn't know any more than I did. If you did you've got to settle with God and the devil before you're through with this kind of business." The man was frightened, for he had meant no deliberate cruelty. He was only practicing the sound political economy of obtaining the most for the least, but in the words and stern face of the child he saw how his act must appear to a mind unwarped by interest and unhardened by selfish years. Moreover, he could not bluster in the presence of death, and the thought that his greed had caused it chilled his heart with a sudden dread. He caught at the extenuation her words suggested, and said gravely, "You are right; I did not know. I would send food from my own table rather than any one should go hungry. I knew nothing about this girl, and no one has told me of her need until this moment. A man at the head of a great business cannot look after details. The best he can do is to manage his business on business principles. To prove that I'm sincere, I'll take the girl back again at her old wages, although I do not need her." The man lied in giving a false impression. It was true that he did not single out individuals as objects of intentional cruelty, but his system was hard and remorseless, and crushed like the wheels of Juggernaut, and he purposely shut his eyes to all questions and consequences save those of profit and loss. When compelled to face, through Belle's eyes, an instance of the practical outcome of his system, he shuddered and trembled, for the moment, and was inclined to ease his conscience by a little ostentatious kindness, especially as the facts in the case bade fair to become known. Men who, unlike Belle, have little fear of God or the devil, do fear public opinion. The girl interpreted him, however, after her own warm, guileless heart, and in strong revulsion of feeling said, tearfully, "Please forgive me, sir, for speaking as I have. I've done you wrong, and I acknowledge it frankly, but I was almost beside myself. We didn't either of us mean them any harm." The man could not repress a smile at Belle's association of herself with him in the guilt of the affair. In fact, he rather liked the idea, for it made his own part seem quite venial after all--an error of ignorance like that of the child's--so he said kindly, "Indeed, we did not, and now we'll make amends. You go and see what is needed and let me know, and to-morrow, if you wish, you can take your own place and not any one's else. You are a smart, good-hearted girl, and by and by I can give you better wages." "I did you wrong, sir," repeated Belle remorsefully, "and now that you will take Clara back, I'd work for you almost for nothing. When and where shall I come?" she added humbly; "I don't wish to seem rude any more." "Come to my house this evening," and he gave her his number. "I beg your pardon for what I said. Good-by, sir," and with tearful eyes and downcast face she went to the street, without a glance on either side. The man sat for a few moments with a heavily contracting brow. At last he stretched out his hand and sighed, "I'd give all there is in this store if my heart was like that girl's, but here I am at this hour engaged in a transaction which is the devil's own bargain, and with a firm that can't help itself because it is in my power. Hang it all! business is business; I'll lose a cool thousand unless I carry it through as I've begun." He seized his pen and carried it through. Belle, attended by her father, was not in the least abashed by the elegance of Mr. Schriven's parlor, as he had rather hoped she would be, but he was much impressed by Mr. Jocelyn's fine appearance and courtly bearing. "No wonder the girl's course has been peculiar," he thought. "She comes from no common stock. If I've ever seen a Southern gentleman, her father's one, and her plump little body is full of hot Southern blood. She's a thoroughbred, and that accounts for her smartness and fearlessness. Where other girls would whine and toady to your face, and be sly and catlike behind your back, she'd look you in the eyes and say all she meant point-blank. I'm glad indeed things are taking their present course, for these people could make any man trouble," and he treated his guests very suavely. Belle soon told her story in a straightforward manner. One of her generous projects was to have a rather grand funeral, with all the girls in the shop attending in a procession. "What a child she is!" thought Mr. Schriven, with difficulty repressing a laugh, but he proceeded very gravely to induce the girl to take his own practical view. "In the first place, my child," he said, "that woman died of consumption--she didn't starve at all." "I think she died the sooner," Belle faltered. "Possibly. If so, she was the sooner out of her misery. At any rate we are not to blame, since, as you have said, we didn't know. Now a funeral, such as you suggest, would be very costly, and would do no one any good. It would scarcely be in good taste, for, considering the poor woman's circumstances, it would be ostentatious." "Belle, Mr. Schriven is right," said her father, in a tone of quiet authority. "Let us rather consider the need of the daughter," Mr. Schriven resumed. "You say she is worn and weak from watching and work. A quarter of the money that a funeral would cost would give her two or three weeks in the country. And now," he concluded impressively--his conscience needed a little soothing, and his purse was plethoric with the thousand dollars wrung from those who had the misfortune to be in his power--"I will pay her board at some quiet farmhouse for three weeks, and then she'll come back fresh and strong to her old place." Belle's eyes filled with tears of gladness. "You are right, sir, and you are very kind and generous. I know just the place for her to go--the people we've been with all summer. They are kind, and will do everything for her, and take away her strange feeling at once. Oh, I'm so glad it's all ending so much better than I feared! I thought this morning I could never be happy again, but you've made all seem so different and hopeful. I thank you, sir, over and over, and I'll do my best now at the store, and be respectful to every one." The man was touched. The warm, reflected glow of the girl's heart softened for a moment his own icy organ, and his eyes grew moist momentarily. "You are a good child," he said. "Here are thirty-five dollars for your friend, for you've been a friend to her indeed. Most girls would have let them starve for all they cared. Now send the girl off to the country, and as soon as I can I'll raise your wages to five dollars. I'd do it now, only the others would talk and say it wasn't customary to pay beginners so highly. Mr. Jocelyn, I congratulate you on the possession of such a daughter, and I sincerely hope you may soon retrieve your fortunes and regain the position to which I see that you both naturally belong," and he bowed them out with a politeness and respect that were not by any means assumed. Belle almost danced home by her father's side, so great was the rebound of her depressed feelings. Thirty-five dollars! How much that would do for poor Clara! Millie would help her make up her mourning, and she would have nothing to pay for but the material. She would write to Mrs. Atwood that very night, and to Roger, telling him he must be kind to Clara, and take her out to drive. Her heart fairly bubbled over with plans and projects for the girl whose "place she had taken." The poor child had scarcely begun her letter to Mrs. Atwood before her head drooped, and Mildred said, "Tell me what to say, Belle, and I'll write it all. You've done you part to-day, and done it well." "That's good of you, Millie. When I get sleepy it's no use to try to do anything. I'd go to sleep if the house was on fire. But you won't write to Roger, I'm afraid." "No. If he must be written to, you must do that." "Well, I will to-morrow. He'll do Clara more good than all the rest." Our story passes hastily over the scenes that followed. A brief service was held over Mrs. Bute's remains by a city missionary, known to Mrs. Wheaton, who was present with Mrs. Jocelyn, Belle, and Mildred. Three or four neighbors from the tenement lent chairs and came in also. The girls at the ribbon counter clubbed together and sent an anchor of white flowers, and at the hour of the funeral they looked grave and were quiet in manner, thus taking part in the solemnity in the only way they could. In due time the city department upon which the duty devolved sent the "dead wagon"; the morsel of human clay was returned to its kindred dust in "Potter's Field," a public cemetery on Hart's Island, in which are interred all who die in the city and whose friends are unable to pay for a grave or a burial plot. Clara, however, had not the pain of seeing her mother placed in the repulsive red box furnished by the department, for Mr. Jocelyn sent a plain but tasteful coffin, with the woman's age and name inscribed upon it. Mrs. Wheaton went with the girl to the grave, and then brought her to her own little nook in the old mansion, for Clara had said she had no relatives she knew anything about except a few on her father's side, and she had rather go to a station-house than to them. "Don't talk habout station 'ouses till yer can see vat I kin do for yer," the good woman had said in her hearty way, and she did play the good Samaritan so well, and poured the "oil and wine" of kindness into the poor creature's wounds so effectually, that she began to change for the better daily. Mildred redeemed Belle's promise, and between them all they soon fitted Clara for her trip to the country. By the time Mrs. Atwood's reply reached Mildred, and Roger's hearty answer came back in response to Belle's characteristic note, she was ready to go. "There's a man's hand for you," cried Belle exultantly as she exhibited Roger's bold chirography. "It's a hand that can be depended upon, strong and ready." Mildred smiled as she replied, "You're welcome to it, Belle." "You needn't smile so placidly," she retorted, with an ominous nod. "We are not through with Roger Atwood yet." Perhaps quotations from two letters written by Clara to Mildred and Belle, and received a week later, will form a satisfactory ending to this chapter. Clara had been taught to read and write in the public schools of the city, and but little more. In later years she had occasionally found opportunity to attend some of the night schools established for those whose only leisure came after the busy day was over, and so had learned to use her pen with tolerable correctness. In waiting upon the educated people who frequented the shop she had caught, with the aptness of an American girl, a very fair power of expressing herself in speech. Writing a letter, however, was a formidable affair, in which she had scarcely any experience. Her missives, therefore, were very simple, and somewhat defective in outward form, but they suggested some interesting facts. "DEAR MILLIE (ran the first): I'm very sad and hapy. The Countrys like heven. All are so kind. Even the dog dosen't grole at me, and Mr. Roger says that's queer for he groles at everybody. I feel so much better, I don't know myself. I feel like takin depe breths of air all the time and I never tasted such milk. Every glass puts life in me. If I can get work up here I'll never go back to town and stand all day again. The girls up here have a chance to live--they haven't any chance at all in a store. The strongest will brake down and then they are good for nothing. I wish Belle could do something else. I wish thousands would go in the country and do work that would make us look like Susan. Mrs. Atwood thinks she can find me a place with kind people, where I'll be treted almost like one of the family. Anyway I've had enough of standing and bad air and starving and I don't see why working in a farmhouse ain't just as ladylike as wating on folks with the floorwalker awatchin you like a slave driver. Standing all day is deth to most girls and about the hardest deth they can die. I feel as if I could live to be a hundred up here. "Millie, dear, I read the Bible you gave me and I pray for you and Belle every night and morning and He answers. I know it. I love you very much and I've good reason. Good by. CLARA BUTE." Her letter to Belle was more descriptive of her daily life, of the kindness she received on every hand. One brief extract from it will suffice: "I've got well acquainted with Roger," she wrote. "He's easy to get acquainted with. Now I think of it though he says little or nothing about himself but he leads me to talk and tell about you all in a way that surprises me. If his interest was prying I'm sure I wouldn't have told him anything. I know well now it isn't. Does Millie know how he feels toward her? I saw it all last night. I was telling him about my past life and how poor and forlorn we had been and how I had told Millie all about it and then how Millie had just treted me as if I were as good as she was. As I talked he became so white I thought he'd faint. Suddenly he burst out despairingly, 'I hoped she was proud but she isn't--I could overcome pride. But what can I do when I'm just detested? There, I've made a fool of myself,' he said savagelike after a moment, and he hurried away. For the last two days he's been so quiet and looked so stern and sad that his family don't know what to make of him, but I know what's the matter, and I feel sorry for him, for he seems to me more like a man than any of the young fellows I've seen in town. Don't tell Millie for I don't want to even seem to meddle." But Belle had no gift of reticence, and she not only showed her sister the letter, but overwhelmed her with reproaches for her "heartless treatment of Roger." As a natural result Mildred was only more irritated and prejudiced against the young man than ever. "You are all absurdly unreasonable," she cried. "What have I ever done to make him turn white or red, or to 'burst out despairingly,' and all that kind of sentimental nonsense? Because he is lackadaisical and is experiencing strange, vague emotions, must I be afflicted in like manner? Must I break faith with one I do love and do violence to my own feelings, just because this farmer wants me to? You know what's the matter with him--Clara saw at a glance--and the course I'm taking is the only way to cure him. All his talk about friendship is transparent folly. If I took your advice it would make him only more and more infatuated; and now I haven't it on my conscience that I gave him one bit of encouragement. I'm sorry for him, of course. I shall be more sorry for his mother and sister if he is guilty of the folly of leaving home. If, instead of doing his duty by them, he comes mooning after me here, when he knows it is of no use, I shall lose my respect for him utterly." There seemed so much downright common-sense in this view of the affair that even Belle found no words in reply. Her reason took Mildred's part, but her warm little heart led her to shake her head ominously at her sister, and then sleepily she sought the rest her long, tiresome day required. CHAPTER XX SEVERAL QUIET FORCES AT WORK. Precipitous ascents and descents do not constitute the greater part of life's journey. In the experience of very many they occur more or less frequently, but they conduct to long intervals where the way is comparatively level, although it may be flinty, rough, and hedged with thorns. More often the upward trend or the decline of our paths is so slight as not to be noticed as we pass on, but at the end of years we can know well whether we are gaining or losing. The Jocelyns, in common with thousands of others, had made a swift descent from a position of comparative affluence to one of real, though not repulsive, poverty. There was nothing, however, in their fall that cast a shadow upon them in the eyes of the world except as the unfortunate are always "under a cloud" to the common herd that moves together in droves only where the sunlight of prosperity fails. If Mr. Jocelyn could regain his former position, or a better one, there had been nothing in his brief obscurity that would prevent his wife and daughters from stepping back into their old social place, with all its privileges and opportunities. The reader knows, however, that his prospects were becoming more and more dubious--that each day added a rivet to the chain that an evil habit was forging. His family did not even suspect this, although the impression was growing upon them that his health was becoming impaired. They were beginning to accommodate themselves to life at its present level, and the sense of its strangeness was passing slowly away. This was especially true of Belle and the children, upon whom the past had but a comparatively slight hold. Mildred, from her nature and tastes, felt the change more keenly than any of the others, and she could never forget that it raised a most formidable barrier against her dearest hopes. Mrs. Jocelyn also suffered greatly from the privations of her present lot, and her delicate organization was scarcely equal to the tasks and burdens it imposed. As far as possible she sought to perform the domestic duties that were more suited to the stout, red arms of those accustomed to such labors. It seemed essential that Mildred and Belle should give their strength to supplementing their father's small income, for a time at least, though all were living in hope that this necessity would soon pass away. The family was American, and Southern at that, in the idea that bread-winning was not woman's natural province, but only one of the direful penalties of extreme poverty. The working-woman of the South belonged to a totally different class from that in which Mr. and Mrs. Jocelyn had their origin, and prejudices die hard, even among people who are intelligent, and, in most respects, admirable. To Mrs. Jocelyn and her daughters work was infinitely preferable to dependence, but it was nevertheless menial and undignified because of its almost involuntary and hereditary association with a race of bond-servants. He is superficial indeed in his estimate of character who thinks that people can change their views and feelings in response to a brief demonstration of the essential dignity of labor, especially after generations of accumulating pride of caste have been giving the mind a different bent. Moreover, this family of Southern origin had not seen in the city of New York very much confirmation of the boasted Northern ideas of labor. Social status depended too much on the number of servants that people kept and the style in which they lived. Poverty had brought them a more sudden and complete loss of recognition than would have been possible in the South--a loss which they would not have felt so greatly had they wealthy connections in town through whom they might have retained, in part at least, their old relations with people of their own station. As it was, they found themselves almost wholly isolated. Mrs. Jocelyn did not regret this so much for herself, since her family was about all the society she craved; moreover in her girlhood she had been accustomed to rather remote plantation life, with its long intervals of absence of society. Mr. Jocelyn's business took him out among men even more than he relished, for his secret indulgence predisposed to solitude and quiet. He was living most of the time in an unreal world, and inevitable contact with his actual life and surroundings brought him increasing distress. With Belle and Mildred it was different. At their age society and recreation were as essential as air and light. Many are exceedingly uncharitable toward working-girls because they are often found in places of resort that are, without doubt, objectionable and dangerous. The fact is ignored that these places are sought from a natural and entirely wholesome desire for change and enjoyment, which are as needful to physical and moral health as sunlight to a plant. They forget that these normal cravings of the young in their own families find many and safe means of gratification which are practically denied to the tenement population. If, instead of harsh judgments, they would provide for the poor places of cheap and innocent resort; if, instead of sighing over innate depravity, they would expend thought and effort in bringing sunshine into the experiences of those whose lives are deeply shadowed by the inevitable circumstances of their lot, they would do far more to exemplify the spirit of Him who has done so much to fill the world with light, flowers, and music. Mildred began to brood and grow morbid in her monotonous work and seclusion; and irrepressible Belle, to whom shop life was becoming an old, weary story, was looking around for "pastures new." Her nature was much too forceful for anything like stagnation. The world is full of such natures, and we cannot build a dike of "thou shalt nots" around them; for sooner or later they will overleap the barriers, and as likely on the wrong side as on the right. Those who would save and bless the world can accomplish far more by making safe channels than by building embankments, since almost as many are ruined by undue and unwise repression as by equally unwise and idiotic indulgence. If Mr. Jocelyn had been himself he might have provided much innocent and healthful recreation for his family; but usually he was so dreamy and stupid in the evening that he was left to doze quietly in his chair. His family ascribed his condition to weariness and reaction from his long strain of anxiety; and opium had already so far produced its legitimate results that he connived at their delusion if he did not confirm it by actual assertion. It is one of the diabolical qualities of this habit that it soon weakens and at last destroys all truth and honor in the soul, eating them out with a corrosive power difficult to explain. For the first week or two Belle was glad to rest in the evenings from the intolerable weariness caused by standing all day, but the adaptability of the human frame is wonderful, and many at last become accustomed, and, in some sense, inured to that which was torture at first. Belle was naturally strong and vigorous, and her compact, healthful organism endured the cruel demand made upon it far better than the majority of her companions. Nature had endowed her with a very large appetite for fun. For a time her employment, with its novelty, new associations, and small excitements, furnished this, but now her duties were fading into prosaic work, and the child was looking around for something enlivening. Where in the great city could she find it? Before their poverty came there were a score of pretty homes like her own in which she could visit schoolmates; her church and Sabbath-school ties brought her into relation with many of her own age; and either in her own home or in those of her friends she took part in breezy little festivities that gave full and healthful scope to her buoyant nature. She was not over-fastidious now, but when occasionally she went home with some of her companions at the shop, she returned dissatisfied. The small quarters in which the girls lived rendered little confidential chats--so dear to girls--impossible, and she was brought at once into close contact with strange and often repulsive people. It seemed that the street furnished the only privacy possible, except as she brought girls to her own abode. Her mother and sister were very considerate in this respect, and welcomed all of her acquaintances who appeared like good, well-meaning girls; and Mildred would either give up her share of their little room for the time, or else take part in their talk in such a genial way as to make the visitors at home as far as they could be with one in whom they recognized their superior. Their light talk and shop gossip were often exceedingly tiresome to Mildred, but she felt that Belle needed every safeguard within their power to furnish. And this privilege of welcoming the best companions her circumstances permitted was of great help to Belle, and, for a time, prevented her restless spirit from longing for something more decided in the way of amusement. Of necessity, however, anything so quiet could not last; but where could the girl find pleasures more highly colored? Occasionally she would coax or scold her father into taking her out somewhere, but this occurred less and less frequently, for she was made to feel that his health required absolute rest when his business permitted it. If she had had kind brothers the case would have been greatly simplified, but thousands of working-girls have no brothers, no male companions save those acquaintances that it is their good or, more often, their evil fortune to make. Without a brother, a relative, or a friend deserving the name, how is a young girl, restricted to a boarding-house or a tenement, to find safe recreation? Where can she go for it on the great majority of the evenings of the year? Books and papers offer a resource to many, and Mildred availed herself of them to her injury. After sitting still much of the day she needed greater activity in the evening. Belle was not fond of reading, as multitudes on the fashionable avenues are not. The well-to-do have many other resources--what chances had she? To assert that working-girls ought to crave profitable reading and just the proper amount of hygienic exercise daring their leisure, and nothing more, is to be like the engineer who said that a river ought to have been half as wide as it was, and then he could build a bridge across it. The problem must be solved as it exists. To a certain extent this need of change and cheerful recreation is supplied in connection with some of the mission chapels, and the effort is good and most commendable as far as it goes; but as yet the family had formed no church relations. Mildred, Belle, and occasionally Mrs. Jocelyn had attended Sabbath service in the neighborhood. They shrank, however, so morbidly from recognition that they had no acquaintances and had formed no ties. They had a prejudice against mission chapels, and were not yet willing to identify themselves openly with their poor neighbors. As yet they had incurred no hostility on this account, for their kindly ways and friendliness to poor Clara had won the goodwill and sympathy of all in the old mansion. But the differences between the Jocelyns and their neighbors were too great for any real assimilation, and thus, as we have said, they were thrown mainly on their own resources. Mrs. Wheaton was their nearest approach to a friend, and very helpful she was to them in many ways, especially in relieving Mrs. Jocelyn, for a very small compensation, from her heavier tasks. The good woman, however, felt even more truly than they that they had too little in common for intimacy. There is one amusement always open to working-girls if they are at all attractive--the street flirtation. To their honor it can be said that comparatively few of the entire number indulge in this dangerous pastime from an improper motive, the majority meaning no more harm or evil than their more fortunate sisters who can enjoy the society of young men in well-appointed parlors. In most instances this street acquaintance, although unhedged by safe restrictions, is by no means indiscriminate. The young men are brothers or friends of companions, or they are employed in the same establishment, or else reside in the neighborhood, so that usually something is known of their characters and antecedents, and the desire to become friendly is similar to that influencing the young people of country neighborhoods. As a rule these young people have few opportunities of meeting save in the streets and places of public resort. The conditions of life in a great city, however, differ too widely from those of a village or country town, where every one is well known and public opinion is quick and powerful in its restraints. Social circles are too loosely organized in a city; their members from necessity are generally to little known to each other; there are too many of both sexes ready to take advantage of the innocent and unwary, and their opportunities of escape from all penalty invite the crimes suggested by their evil natures. Belle had been often warned, and she had so much affection for her mother and so much pride that she did not fall readily into indiscretions; nor would she in the future respond, without considerable self-restraint, to the frequent advances which she never failed to recognize, however distant she might appear, and she would not have possessed a woman's nature had she been indifferent to admiring glances and the overtures of those who would gladly form her acquaintance. Still it must be admitted that her good resolutions were fast weakening in this direction. Mildred's dangers were quite different from those which assailed Belle, and yet they were very grave ones. Her mind and heart were preoccupied. She was protected from even the desire of perilous associations and pleasures by the delicacy and refinement of her nature and her Christian principle. She shrank from social contact with the ruder world by which she was now surrounded; she felt and lived like one in exile, and her hope was to return to her native land. In the meantime she was growing pale, languid, morbid, and, occasionally, even irritable, from the lack of proper exercise and change. She was not discouraged as yet, but the day of deliverance seemed to grow more distant. Her father apparently was declining in energy and health, and his income was very small. She worked long hours over her fancy work, but the prices paid for it at the shops were so small that she felt with a growing despondency it was but a precarious means of support. Their first month in the old mansion was drawing to a close, and they had been compelled to draw slightly on the small sum of ready money still remaining after paying for their summer's board. They still had a few articles in storage, having retained them in hope of moving, at no distant time, into more commodious quarters. In their desire for economy they also fell into the very common error of buying salt fish and meat, and other articles of food that were cheap and easily prepared rather than nutritious, and Belle was inclined to make her lunch on pastry and cake instead of food. In teaching them a better way Mrs. Wheaton proved herself a very useful friend. "Vat yer vant is sumthink that makes blood an' stands by von," she had said; "an' this 'ere salt, dry stuff an' light baker's bread and tea and coffee don't do this hat hall. They's good henough as relishes an' trimmins an' roundins hoff, but they hain't got the nourishin' in 'em that vorking people vants. Buy hoat meal an' corn meal--make good bread of yer hown. Buy good but cheap chunks of beef an' mutton an' wegetables, an' make stews an' meat pies an' rich soups, an' say yer prayers hagainst hall trashy things as hain't vorth the trouble of heatin'. Heggs, too, ven ther're plenty, hare fust-rate, an' milk is better than so much tea an' coffee, heven if the milkman do spill it in the brook an' pick it hout hagain before we get it. Vorkin' hon tea an' coffee is like keepin' the 'orse hagoin' on a vip hinstead of hoats." Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred were sensible enough to take her advice, and although Belle complained at first over the more simple and wholesome diet, she soon felt so much the better for it that she made no further trouble. As had been the case at the farmhouse, Mildred at last awakened to the evils of a depressed and sedentary life, and felt that she must look around for objects of interest. She began to spend more time with Mrs. Wheaton, and found considerable amusement in her homely common-sense. The good woman was all the more companionable for the reason that she never presumed on a coarse familiarity or indulged in a prying interest. Mildred also aided the Wheaton children in their lessons, and gave more time to her own little brother and sister, taking them out to walk in the cool of the day, and giving much thought, while she plied her needle, to various little expedients that would keep them content to remain away from the street and the rude children that often made the old house resound with boisterous sport. Mrs. Wheaton's children were in the main well behaved, and there was much visiting back and forth among the little people of the two families, but here the line was drawn, and generally with very good reason. After all, perhaps, the chief horror of tenement life to a family like the Jocelyns consisted in the fact that just outside their door were hordes of prowling little savages ignorant in the main of civilization, but prematurely enlightened as to its vices. To prevent the inevitable contamination which would result from indiscriminate association, and to interest Fred and Minnie in their daily lessons, was the constant effort of both Mildred and Mrs. Jocelyn. And yet, as at the farmhouse, Mildred's conscience began to reproach her for keeping too much aloof from the people who dwelt with her in the old mansion. It was not necessary to make companions of them in order to do them some good, and in aiding them to bear their burdens she might in part forget her own. Mrs. Wheaton's hearty kindness permeated the house like an atmosphere, and from her Mildred learned the character and circumstances of each family quite correctly. "I can get hon with 'em hall hexcept a hold daft German on the top floor, oos a bit crazy hover the 'evens, but don't stand much chance of hever gettin' hup hinto 'em. You've hoften seen 'im a-lookin' at the stars an' things on the roof. 'E 'alf starves 'is family to buy books an' maps an' a telescope. 'E 'ates me cos I tried to talk religion to 'im vonce ven 'e vas sick, an' cos I told 'im 'e 'ad no bizness to take his death a'cold on the roof o' vinter nights; an 'ven 'e vonce gets a grudge hagainst yer 'e never lets hup." Mildred had already become more interested in this old man than in any other of her neighbors except Mrs. Wheaton, but had found him utterly unapproachable. Not infrequently she spent part of the hot evenings on the platform built over the old hip-roof, and had invariably seen him there on cloudless nights studying the skies with a telescope that appeared to be by no means a toy instrument; but he always took possession of the far end of the platform, and was so savage when any one approached thyt even Belle was afraid of him. His wife, for a wonder, was a slattern German, and she spoke English very imperfectly. With her several small children she lived in a chaotic way, keeping up a perpetual whining and fault-fnding, half under her breath from fear of her irascible husband, that was like a "continual dropping on a very rainy day." Every now and then, Mrs. Wheaton said, he would suddenly emerge from his abstraction and break out against her in a volley of harsh, guttural German oaths that were "henough to make von's 'air riz." Therefore it very naturally happened that Mildred had become acquainted with all the other families before she had even spoken to Mr. or Mrs. Ulph. On the other inmates of the mansion her influence soon began to be felt; for almost unconsciously she exercised her rare and subtle power of introducing a finer element into the lives of those who were growing sordid and material. She had presented several families with a small house-plant, and suggested that they try to develop slips from others that she sedulously tended in her own window. In two or three instances she aided untidy and discouraged women to make their rooms more attractive. The fact, also, that the Jocelyns had made their two apartments, that were little if any better than the others, so very inviting had much weight, and there sprang up quite an emulation among some of the simple folk in making the most of their limited resources. "Instead of scolding your husbands for going out and perhaps taking a glass too much, try and keep them home by making the living-room homelike," she had said on several occasions to complaining wives who had paved the way by their confidential murmurings. "Have some extra dish that they like for supper--they will spend more if they go out--then be a little smiling and chatty, and tell them to light their pipes and stay with you, for you are a bit lonesome. If they will have their mug of beer, coax them to take it here at home. Try to put a few shillings in the savings bank every week, and talk over little plans of saving more. If you can only make your husbands feel that they are getting ahead a little, it will have a great influence in steadying them and keeping them out of bad company." Mildred had a genius for everything relating to domestic life, and an almost unbounded belief in good home influences. Although she rarely talked religion directly to the people whom she was trying to benefit--she was much too diffident and self-depreciative for this--her regular attendance at some place of worship on the Sabbath and her course toward poor Mrs. Bute and her daughter had given the impression that she was a very religious girl, and that her motives were Christian in character. People's instincts are quick in discerning the hidden springs of action; and her influence was all the more effective because she gave them the fruits of faith rather than stems of exhortation or which they were required to develop fruit of their own. Much good fruit was eventually produced, but more through her example, her spring-like influence, than from any formal instruction. CHAPTER XXI "HE'S A MAN" Mrs. Wheaton, although she had the good taste to ask few questions, was much puzzled over the Jocelyns. Mr. Jocelyn's state of health seemed to her very peculiar, and her shrewd, unprejudiced mind was approaching Roger's conclusion, that he was a little "off." With an insight common to sound, thrifty people, she saw that the outlook for this family was dubious. She believed that the father would become less and less of a reliance, that Mrs. Jocelyn was too delicate to cope with a lower and grimmer phase of poverty, which she feared they could not escape. When alone she often shook her head in foreboding over Belle's brilliant black eyes, being aware from long experience among the poor how dangerous are such attractions, especially when possessed by an impulsive and unbalanced child. She even sighed more deeply and often over Mildred, for she knew well that more truly than any of the house-plants in the window the young girl who cared for them was an exotic that might fade and die in the changed and unfavorable conditions of her present and prospective life. The little children, too, were losing the brown and ruddy hues they had acquired on the Atwood farm, and very naturally chafed over their many and unwonted restrictions. Nor did the city missionary whom she had called in to attend Mrs. Bute's funeral illumine the Jocelyn problem for the good woman. He was an excellent man, but lamentably deficient in tact, being prone to exhort on the subject of religion in season, and especially out of season, and in much the same way on all occasions. Since the funeral he had called two or three times, and had mildly and rather vaguely harangued Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred. Instead of echoing his pious platitudes with murmurs of assent and approval, they had been very polite, and also very reticent and distant; and Mr. Woolling--that was his name--had said in confidence to Mrs. Wheaton that "they might be good people, but he fearing they were not yet altogether 'in the light.' They seemed a little cold toward the good cause, and were not inclined to talk freely of their spiritual experiences and relations. Probably it was because they were not altogether orthodox in their views." It would seem that this worthy person had taken literally the promise of his Master, "I will make you fishers of men." for he was quite content to be a fisher. Let us hope that occasionally, as by a miracle, his lenient Master enabled him to catch some well-disposed sinner; but as a rule his mannerism, his set phrases, his utter lack of magnetism and appreciation of the various shades of character with which he was dealing, repelled even those who respected his motive and mission. Sensitive, sad-hearted women like Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred could no more open their hearts to him than to a benevolent and impersonal board of trustees sitting around a green baize table. That detestable class, however, who thrive on opening their hearts and dilating on their spiritual experiences, could talk to him, as he would say, in a "most edifying and godly manner," and through him, in consequence, reap all the pecuniary advantages within his power to bestow. It is not the blatant and plausible poor who suffer, but those who hide their poverty and will starve rather than trade on their faith; and too often Christian and charitable organizations prove they are not the "children of this world" by employing agents so lacking in fitness for the work that a commercial firm, following a like policy, would soon compass its own failure. The Church deserves slight progress if it fails to send its best and most gifted men and women among the poor and vicious. Mr. Woolling was a sincere well-meaning man, but he no more knew how to catch men with a Christ-like magnetism and guile than how to render one of Beethoven's symphonies; and he was so constituted that he could never learn. It was an open question whether he did not do more harm than good; and those who employed him might and ought to have known the fact. Fortunately for the Jocelyns, there were other workers in that part of the vineyard, and Mrs. Wheaton had said to herself more than once, "Ven my young lady comes 'ome she'll git 'old of these 'ere people and make things better for 'em." One day, about the middle of September, there was a light knock at the door of the large living-room that had been made so inviting. Mildred opened it and admitted a young woman, who appeared not very much older than herself, and who she saw at a glance was of her own class in respect to refinement and cultivation. Although entire strangers, the eyes of the two girls met in woman's intuitive recognition. "This is Miss Jocelyn, I think," said the visitor in an accent that to the poor girl sounded like her native tongue, so long unheard. "You are correct," replied Mildred, with exploring eyes and a quiet and distant manner. "Will you please be seated," she added after a moment, as the young lady evidently wished to enter. It was in the afternoon, and the room had its usual pretty order at that hour. Fred and Minnie were seated by Mrs. Jocelyn, who was giving them their daily lesson from an illustrated primer; and they, with their mother, turned questioning eyes on the unexpected guest, who won their good-will almost instantly by a sunshiny smile. Then turning to Mildred she began, with a quiet, well-bred ease which made her visit seem perfectly natural, "We are now strangers, but I trust we shall not remain such very long. Indeed, I am already sure that you can help me very much." (This asking help instead of offering it was certainly adroit policy.) "I am a Christian worker in this district. My name is Alice Wetheridge. I am well acquainted with Mrs. Wheaton, and the little she has told me about you has made me wish to know you well; and I trust you will meet me with the spirit in which I come--that of honest friendliness and respect. I shall be just as frank with you as you wish, and I know you have just as much right to your feelings and views as I have to mine. It is our plan of work to co-work cordially, asking each one to choose her own place and kind of effort. I have been around among some of my families in this house, and, if you will permit me to say it, I have seen your influence, and I think it is most Christian and womanly. You can scarcely blame me, then, if I hope to find in you a congenial fellow-worker." These remarks contained no hint of poverty or inferiority, and might have been made to Mildred in her old home. The sweet, low voice in which they were spoken was soothing and winning, while her visitor's gaze was direct and sincere. Mildred smiled with a little answering friendliness as she said, "Please do not expect much from me. I fear I shall disappoint you." "I shall not expect anything more than your own feelings prompt and your own conscience can warrant. I and some friends have classes at a mission chapel not far from here, and all I ask at first is that you and Mrs. Jocelyn attend service at the chapel and see how you like us and how you like our minister." "Is--is his name Mr. Woolling?" faltered Mildred. A slight, evanescent smile flitted across the visitor's face. "No," she said, "that is not his name. Our minister has just returned from Europe, where he has taken a well-deserved vacation. I, too, have only come in town within the last few days, otherwise I do not think you would have escaped us so long," she concluded, with a bright smile, but after a moment she added earnestly, "Please do not think that we shall try to force upon you associations that may not be pleasant. We only ask that you come and judge for yourselves." "What you ask is certainly reasonable," said Mildred thoughtfully, and with an inquiring glance at her mother. "I agree with you, Millie," her mother added with gentle emphasis, for she had been observing their visitor closely; "and I think we both appreciate Miss Wetheridge's motive in calling upon us, and can respond in like spirit." "I thank you," was the cordial reply. "On this card is written my address and where to find our chapel, the hours of service, etc. Please ask for me next Sabbath afternoon, and I will sit you, so you won't feel strange, you know. After the service is over we will remain a few moments, and I will introduce you to our minister. As I said at first, if you don't like us or our ways you must not feel in the least trammelled. However that may be, I trust you will let me come and see you sometimes. It was my duty to call upon you because you were in my district; but now it will be a pleasure to which I hope you will let me look forward." "You will be welcome," said Mildred smilingly. "I can at least promise so much." Miss Wetheridge had slipped off her glove while talking, and in parting she gave a warm, friendly palm to those she wished to win. She had intended only a smiling leave-taking of the children, but they looked so pretty, and were regarding her with such an expression of shy, pleased interest, that she acted on her impulse and kissed them both. "I don't often meet such kissable children," she said, with a bright flush, "and I couldn't resist the temptation." The room seemed lighter the rest of the day for her visit. If she had kissed the children out of policy Mrs. Jocelyn would have been resentfully aware of the fact; but they were "kissable" children, and no one knew it better than the fond mother, who was won completely by the spontaneity of the act. "Millie, I think I'd go to her church, even if Mr. Woolling were the minister," she said, with her sweet laugh. "Soft-hearted little mother!" cried Mildred gayly; "if people only knew it, you have one very vulnerable side. That was a master-stroke on the part of Miss Wetheridge." "She didn't mean it as such, and if some good people had kissed the children I'd have washed their faces as soon as they had gone. The visit has done YOU good, too, Millie." "Well, I admit it has. It was nice to see and hear one of our own people, and to feel that we were not separated by an impassable gulf. To tell the truth, I feel the need of something outside of this old house. I am beginning to mope and brood. I fear it will be some time before the way opens back to our former life, and one grows sickly if one lives too long in the shade. I COULD work with such a girl as that, for she wouldn't humiliate me. See, her card shows that she lives on Fifth Avenue. If SHE can work in a mission chapel, I can, especially since she is willing to touch me with her glove off," she concluded, with a significant smile. As the evening grew shadowy Mildred took the children out for their walk, and, prompted by considerable curiosity, she led the way to Fifth Avenue, and passed the door on which was inscribed the number printed on Miss Wetheridge's card. The mansion was as stately and gave as much evidence of wealth as Mrs. Arnold's home. At this moment a handsome carriage drew up to the sidewalk, and Mildred, turning, blushed vividly as she met the eyes of her new acquaintance, who, accompanied by a fashionably-attired young man, had evidently been out to drive. Mildred felt that she had no right to claim recognition, for a young woman making mission calls in her "district" and the same young lady on Fifth Avenue with her finance, very probably, might be, and often are, two very distinct persons. The girl was about to pass on with downcast eyes and a hot face, feeling that her curiosity had been well punished. But she had not taken three steps before a pleasant voice said at her side, "Miss Jocelyn, what have I done that you won't speak to me? This is my home, and I hope you will come and see me some time." Mildred looked at the speaker searchingly for a moment, and then said, in a low tone and with tearful eyes, "May you never exchange a home like this, Miss Wetheridge, for one like mine." "Should it be my fortune to do so--and why may it not?--I hope I may accept of my lot with your courage, Miss Jocelyn, and give to my humbler home the same impress of womanly refinement that you have imparted to yours. Believe me, I respected you and your mother thoroughly the moment I crossed your threshold." "I will do whatever you wish me to do," was her relevant, although seemingly irrelevant, reply. "That's a very big promise," said Miss Wetheridge vivaciously; "we will shake hands to bind the compact," and her attendant raised his hat as politely as he would to any of his companion's friends. Mildred went home with the feeling that the leaden monotony of her life was broken. The hand of genuine Christian sympathy, not charity or patronage, had been reached across the chasm of her poverty, and by it she justly hoped that she might be led into new relations that would bring light and color into her shadowed experience. With her mother and Belle she went to the chapel on the following Sunday afternoon, and found her new friend on the watch for them. The building was plain but substantial, and the audience-room large and cheerful looking. Mr. Woolling was, in truth, not the type of the tall, rugged-featured man who sat on the platform pulpit, and Mildred, at first, was not prepossessed in his favor, but as he rose and began to speak she felt the magnetism of a large heart and brain; and when he began to preach she found herself yielding to the power of manly Christian thought, expressed in honest Saxon words devoid of any trace of affectation, scholasticism, and set phraseology. He spoke as any sensible, practical man would speak concerning a subject in which he believed thoroughly and was deeply interested, and he never once gave the impression that he was "delivering a sermon" which was foreordained to be delivered at that hour. It was a message rather than a sermon, a sincere effort to make the people understand just what God wished them to know concerning the truth under consideration, and especially what they were to do in view of it. The young girl soon reached the conclusion that the religion taught in this chapel was not something fashioned to suit the world, but a controlling principle that brought the rich and poor together in their obedience to Him whose perfect life will ever be the law of the Christian Church. The attention of even mercurial Belle was obtained and held, and at the close of the address she whispered, "Millie, that man talks right to one, and not fifty miles over your head. I'll come here every Sunday if you will." After the benediction the Rev. Mr. Wentworth came down from the pulpit--not in a bustling, favor-currying style, but with a grave, kindly manner--to speak to those who wished to see him. When he at last reached Mildred, she felt him looking at her in a way that proved he was not scattering his friendly words as a handful of coin is thrown promiscuously to the poor. He was giving thought to her character and need; he was exercising his invaluable but lamentably rare gift of tact in judging how he should address these "new people" of whom Miss Wetheridge had spoken. His words were few and simple, but he made Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred feel that his interest in them was not official, but genuine, Christian, and appreciative. Belle very naturally shrank into the background. Her acquaintance with clergymen was not extensive, nor would it, I fear, ever have been increased by any efforts of her own; therefore it was with some trepidation that she saw Mr. Wentworth giving her an occasional side glance while talking to her mother. She was about to bow very formally when introduced, but a smile broke over the man's rugged features like a glow of sunshine, as he held out his hand and said, "Miss Belle, I know you and I would be good friends if we had a chance." The girl's impulsive nature responded as if touched by an electric spark, and with her usual directness the words in her mind were spoken. "I like you already," she said. "The liking is mutual then," was Mr. Wentworth's laughing reply; "I'm coming to see you." "But, sir," stammered the honest child, "I'm not good like my sister." The clergyman now laughed heartily. "All the more reason I should come," he said. "Well, then, please come in the evening, for I wouldn't miss your visit for the world." "I certainly shall," and he named an evening early in the week; "and now," he resumed, "my friend Miss Wetheridge here has informed me of the conditions on which you have visited our chapel. We propose to carry them out in good faith, and not put any constraint upon you beyond a cordial invitation to cast your lot with us. It's a great thing to have a church home. You need not feel that you must decide at once, but come again and again, and perhaps by and by you will have a home feeling here." "I'm coming whether the rest do or not," Belle remarked emphatically, and Mr. Wentworth gave her a humorous look which completed the conquest of her heart. "Miss Wetheridge knows that my decision was already made," said Mildred quietly, with an intelligent glance toward her friend; "and if there is any very, very simple work that I can do, I shall feel it a privilege to do the best I can." She never forgot his responsive look of honest friendliness as he answered, "The simplest work you do in that spirit will be blessed. Miss Wetheridge, I hope you will soon find some more people like Mrs. Jocelyn and her daughters. Good-by now for a short time," and a moment later Mildred saw him talking just as kindly, but differently, to a very shabby-looking man. Mr. Wentworth was also a "fisher of men," but he fished intelligently, and caught them. Belle could hardly wait until she was in the street before exclaiming, "He isn't a bit like our old minister. Why--why--he's a man." CHAPTER XXII SKILLED LABOR Miss Wetheridge's visit bade fair to occasion important changes for the better in Mildred's prospects. From Mrs. Wheaton the young lady had learned of her protegee's long hours of ill-repaid toil. She was eager to gain Mildred's confidence to an extent that would warrant some good advice, and after another call early in the week she induced the girl to come and see her and to open her heart fully in the privacy thus secured. Of course there was one secret jealously guarded, and the reader can well understand that Vinton Arnold's name was not mentioned, and the disagreeable episode of Roger Atwood was not deemed worth speaking of. He was now but a fast-fading memory, for even Belle rarely recalled him. That the Jocelyns did not belong to the ordinary ranks of the poor, and that Mildred was not a commonplace girl, was apparent to Miss Wetheridge from the first; and it was her design to persuade her friend to abandon the overcrowded and ill-paid divisions of labor for something more in accordance with her cultivation and ability. Mildred soon proved that her education was too general and superficial to admit of teaching except in the primary departments, and as the schools were now in session it might be many months before any opening would occur. With a mingled sigh and laugh she said, "The one thing I know how to do I shall probably never do--I could make a home, and I could be perfectly happy in taking care of it." "Pardon me!" cried Miss Wetheridge roguishly, "that seems to me your inevitable fate, sooner or later. We are only counselling together how best to fill up the interval. My friend almost made me jealous by the way he talked about you the other evening." A faint color stole into Mildred's face. "All that's past, I fear," she said with low, sad emphasis, "and I would never marry merely for the sake of a home. My future is that of a working-woman unless papa can regain his former means. Even then I should not like to live an idle life. So the question is, What kind of work shall I do? How can I do the most for the family, for I am troubled about papa's health, and mamma is not strong." Her warm-hearted friend's eyes grew moist as she looked intently and understandingly into the clouded and beautiful face. In one of her pretty impulses that often broke through her polite restraint she exclaimed, "Millie, you are a true woman. Please pardon my familiarity, but I can't tell you how much you interest me, how I respect you, and--and--how much I like you." "Nor can I tell you," responded Mildred earnestly, "how much hope and comfort you have already brought me." "Come," said Miss Wetheridge cheerily, "we will go down to the rooms of the Young Women's Christian Association at once. We may get light there. The thing for you to do is to master thoroughly one or more of the higher forms of labor that are as yet uncrowded. That is what I would do." While she was preparing for the street she observed Mildred's eyes resting wistfully on an upright piano that formed part of the beautiful furniture of her private sanctum. "You are recognizing an old friend and would like to renew your acquaintance," she said smilingly. "Won't you play while I am changing my dress?" "Perhaps I can best thank you in that way," answered Mildred, availing herself of the permission with a pleasure she could not disguise. "I admit that the loss of my piano has been one of my greatest deprivations." Miss Wetheridge's sleeping-apartment opened into her sitting-room, and, with the door open, it was the same as if they were still together. The promise of thanks was well kept as the exquisite notes of Mendelssohn's "Hope" and "Consolation" filled the rooms with music that is as simple and enduring as the genuine feeling of a good heart. "I now understand how truly you lost a friend and companion in your piano," said Miss Wetheridge, "and I want you to come over here and play whenever you feel like it, whether I am at home or not." Mildred smiled, but made no reply. She could accept kindness and help from one who gave them as did Miss Wetheridge, but she was too proud and sensitive to enter upon an intimacy that must of necessity be so one-sided in its favors and advantages, and she instinctively felt that such wide differences in condition would lead to mutual embarrassments that her enthusiastic friend could not foresee. It was becoming her fixed resolve to accept her lot, with all that it involved, and no amount of encouragement could induce her to renew associations that could be enjoyed now only through a certain phase of charity, however the fact might be disguised. But she would rather reveal her purpose by the retiring and even tenor of her way than by any explanations of her feelings. Thus it came about in the future that Miss Wetheridge made three calls, at least, to one that she received, and that in spite of all she could do Mildred shrank from often meeting other members of her family. But this sturdy self-respect on the part of the young girl--this resolute purpose not to enter a social circle where she would at least fear patronage and surprise at her presence--increased her friend's respect in the secrecy of her heart. Mildred at once became a member of the Young Women's Association, and its library and reading-room promised to become a continued means of pleasure and help. From among the several phases of skilled labor taught under the auspices of the Association, she decided to choose the highest--that of stenography--if her father thought he could support the family without much help for a few months. She was already very rapid and correct in her penmanship, and if she could become expert in taking shorthand notes she was assured that she could find abundant and highly remunerative scope for her skill, and under circumstances, too, that would not involve unpleasant publicity. She thought very favorably, also, of the suggestion that she should join the bookkeeping class. With her fine mental capacity and previous education Miss Wetheridge believed that Mildred could so far master these two arts as to be sure of an independence, and her kind friend proposed to use no little influence in finding opportunities for their exercise. Mildred, naturally, lost no time in explaining her projects to her father, and it so happened that she spoke at a moment of peculiar exhilaration on his part. "If it would give you pleasure," he said, "to learn these two accomplishments, you may do so, of course, but I foresee no probability of your ever putting them to use. I now have prospects," etc., etc. Soon after, he was in a deep sleep. She looked at him with troubled eyes, and promptly entered on her studies the following day, working with the assiduity of one who feels that the knowledge may be needed before it can be acquired. Belle was in quite a flutter of excitement on the evening named for Mr. Wentworth's visit, and the genial clergyman would have laughed again could he have heard one of her reasons for welcoming him. "He is so deliciously homely," she said, "I like to look at him." He came at the hour appointed, and his visit was truly a "spiritual" one, if enlivened spirits, more hopeful hearts, and a richer belief in their Divine Father's goodwill toward them all were the legitimate result of a spiritual visit. Mr. Jocelyn, in expectancy of the guest, had carefully prepared himself in guilty secrecy, and appeared unusually well, but he was the only one who sighed deeply after the good man's departure. Rising from the depths of his soul through his false exhilaration was a low, threatening voice, saying, "That man is true; you are a sham, and your hollowness will become known." Indeed, Mr. Wentworth went away with a vague impression that there was something unreal or unsound about Mr. Jocelyn, and he began to share Mrs. Wheaton's painful forebodings for the family. Belle enjoyed the visit greatly, for the minister was an apostle of a very sunny gospel, and she was then ready for no other. Moreover, the healthful, unwarped man delighted in the girl's frolicsome youth, and no more tried to repress her vivacity than he would the bubble and sparkle of a spring. Indeed he was sensible enough to know that, as the spring keeps pure by flowing and sparkling into the light, so her nature would stand a far better chance of remaining untainted if given abundant yet innocent scope. His genial words had weight with her, but her quick intuition of his sympathy, his sense of humor, which was as genuine as her own, had far more weight, and their eyes rarely met without responsive smiles. There was nothing trivial, however, in their interplay of mirthfulness--nothing that would prevent the child from coming to him should her heart become burdened with sin or sorrow. She was assigned to Miss Wetheridge's class, and soon became warmly attached to her teacher. Mildred, to her great surprise, was asked to take a class of rude-looking, half-grown boys. In answer to her look of dismay, Mr. Wentworth only said smilingly, "Try it; trust my judgment; you can do more with those boys than I can." "Were it not for my promise to Miss Wetheridge, I shouldn't even dare think of such a thing," she replied; "but I now feel bound to attempt it, although I hope you will soon give me some very, very little girls." "In complying you show a high sense of honor, Miss Jocelyn. I will relieve you after a time, if you wish me to," and the student of human nature walked away with a peculiar smile. "When I was a harum-scarum boy," he muttered, "a girl with such a face could almost make me worship her. I don't believe boys have changed." She was shrewd enough not to let the class see that she was afraid; and being only boys, they saw merely what was apparent--that they had the prettiest teacher in the room. Her beauty and refinement impressed them vaguely, yet powerfully; the incipient man within them yielded its involuntary homage, and she appealed to their masculine traits as only a woman of tact can, making them feel that it would be not only wrong but ungallant and unmannerly to take advantage of her. They all speedily succumbed except one, whose rude home associations and incorrigible disposition rendered futile her appeals. After two or three Sabbaths the other boys became so incensed that he should disgrace the class that after school they lured him into an alleyway and were administering a well-deserved castigation, when Mildred, who was passing, rescued him. His fear induced him to yield to her invitation to accompany her home; and her kindness, to which he knew he was not entitled, combined with the wholesome effect of the pummelling received from the boys, led him to unite in making the class--once known as "the Incorrigibles"--the best behaved in the school. Everything apparently now promised well for the Jocelyns. Their mistaken policy of seclusion and shrinking from contact with the world during their impoverishment had given way to kindly Christian influences, and they were forming the best associations their lot permitted. All might have gone to their ultimate advantage had it not been for the hidden element of weakness so well known to the reader, but as yet unsuspected by the family. If Mr. Jocelyn had been able to put forth the efforts of a sound and rational man, he could, with the aid of his daughters, even in those times of depression, have passed safely through the trials of sudden poverty, and eventually--having learned wisdom from the past experience--he could have regained a better and more stable financial position than the one lost. Thus far he had been able to maintain considerable self-control, and by daily experience knew just about how much morphia he could take without betraying himself. His family had become accustomed to its effects, and ascribed them to the peculiar state of his health. Loving eyes are often the most blind, and that which is seen daily ceases to seem strange. Beyond their natural solicitude over his failing appetite, his unwholesome complexion, and his loss of flesh, they had no misgivings. His decline was so very gradual that there was nothing to startle them. Every day they hoped to see a change for the better, and sought to bring it about by preparing such dainty dishes as were within their means to catch his capricious appetite, and by keeping all their little perplexities and worriments to themselves, so that he might have unbroken rest when free from business. He recognized their unselfish and considerate devotion, and it added to the horrible depression into which he sank more and more deeply the moment he passed from under the influence of the fatal drug. He was living over an abyss, and that which kept him from its depths was deepening and widening it daily. He still had the vague hope that at some time and in some way he could escape; but days and weeks were passing, bringing no change for the better, no honest, patient effort to regain the solid ground of safety. He was drifting down, and when at times he became conscious of the truth, a larger dose of morphia was his one method of benumbing the terror that seemed groping for his heart with a death-cold hand. Mildred soon began to make rapid progress in her studies, and grew hopeful over the fact. If her father would give her the chance she could make a place for herself among skilled workers within a year, and be able, if there were need, to provide for the entire family. Great and prolonged destitution rarely occurs, even in a crowded city, unless there is much sickness or some destructive vice. Wise economy, patient and well-directed effort, as a rule, secure comfort and independence, if not affluence; but continued illness, disaster, and especially sin, often bring with them a train of evils difficult to describe. Mildred found time between her lessons to aid her mother and also to do a little fancy work, for which, through the aid of Miss Wetheridge, she found private customers who were willing to pay its worth. Thus the month of October was passing rapidly and rather hopefully away. They received letters from Clara Bute occasionally, wherein she expressed herself well content with the country and the situation Mrs. Atwood had obtained for her. "I'm getting as plump and rosy as Susan," she wrote, "and I'm not coming back to town. Going up and down those tenement stairs tired me more than all the work I do here. Still, I work hard, I can tell you; but it's all sorts of work, with plenty of good air and good food to do it on. I'm treated better than I ever was before--just like one of the family, and there's a young farmer who takes me out to ride sometimes, and he acts and talks like a man." Whether this attentive friend were Roger or a new acquaintance she did not say. For some reason a reticence in regard to the former characterized her letters. CHAPTER XXIII THE OLD ASTRONOMER One Saturday night Mildred was awakened from time to time by the wailing of a child. The sounds came from the rooms of the Ulphs, which were directly overhead, and by morning she was convinced that there was a case of serious illness in the German family. Led by her sympathies, and also by the hope of thawing the reserve of the eccentric old astronomer, she resolved to go and ask if she could be of any help. In response to her light knock a shock-headed, unkempt boy opened the door and revealed a state of chaos that might well have driven mad any student of the heavenly bodies with their orderly ways. There seemed to be one place for everything--the middle of the floor--and about everything was in this one place. In the midst of a desolation anything but picturesque, Mrs. Ulph sat before the fire with a little moaning baby upon her lap. "I heard your child crying in the night," said Mildred gently, "and as we are neighbors I thought I would come up and see if I could help you." The woman stared a moment and then asked, "You Miss Schoslin?" "Yes, and I hope you will let me do something, for I fear you've been up all night and must be very tired." "I'm shust dead; not von vink of schleep haf I had all der night. He shust cry und cry, and vat I do I don't know. I fear he die. Der fader gone for der doctor, but he die 'fore dey gets here. Schee, he getten gold now." Truly enough, the child's extremities were growing chill indeed, and the peculiar pinched look and ashen color which is so often the precursor of death was apparent. "Let me call my mother," cried Mildred, in much alarm. "She knows about children." Mrs. Jocelyn soon became convinced from the mother's account that the child's disease was cholera infantum, and some previous experience with her own children taught her just what to do. Before very long the little one gave evidence of a change for the better. After the crisis of danger was past, and while her mother and Mrs. Ulph were working over the infant, Mildred began quietly to put the room into something like order, and to dress the other children that were in various transition stages between rags and nakedness. As the German woman emerged from a semi-paralyzed condition of alarm over her child she began to talk and complain as usual. "It vas von shudgment on der fader," she said querulously. "He care more for der schpots on der sun dan for his schilder. For der last veek it's all peen schpots on der sun, notting put schpots. Vat goot dey do us? Dare's peen light to vork py, put efry minit he schtop vork to run to der roof und see dem schpots vot he says on der sun. He says dere ish--vat you call him--pig virl-a-rounds up dere dat vould plow all der beoples off der earth in von vink, und ven I tells him dat he ish von pig virl-a-round himself, runnin' und runnin', und lettin' der vork schstand, den von of der schpots come outen on him und I dink he plow my hed offen." By and by she began again: "If it ish not schpots it ish someding else. Von year he feel vorse dan if I die pegose vat you call a gomet did not gome ven he said it vould gome. He near look his eyes outen for it, und he go efry morning 'fore preakfast for der bapers to get vord of dat gomet. I dought we all schtarve 'fore he got done mit dot gomet, and ven he give oup all hope of him, he feel vorse dan he vould if dis schild die. He vas so pad to me as if I eat der gomet oup, and we had not mooch else to eat till he sure der gomet gone to der duyvil. It might haf been vorse if der gomet come; vat he done den der goot Lord only know--he go off mit it if he gould. He tink notting of sittin' oup mit a gomet, put he get der schpots on him ven I ask to nurse der schild in der night." Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred paid little attention to her plaints; and the former, having done what she could, returned to her own family cares. Mildred took the little sick boy in her arms, saying that she would hold him while Mrs. Ulph prepared breakfast. It was at this stage of affairs that the door opened, and the pinched and grizzled visage of Mr. Ulph appeared, followed by the burly form of a German physician whom he had insisted on finding. The former stopped short and stared at Mildred, in grim hesitation whether he should resent an intrusion or acknowledge a kindness. His wife explained rapidly in German, with a deferential manner, but in a sub-acidulous tone. "I do not wish to intrude, but only to help as a neighbor should," Mildred began, during a lull between Mrs. Ulph's shrill notes. "I fear your little boy was very ill when I first came--indeed my mother thought he was dying. She knows, I think, for my little brother nearly died of an attack like this." Beyond her explanation of Mildred's presence he seemingly had given no heed to his wife's words, but now he started and exclaimed, "Mein Gott! Vat you say? Die?" and he turned with intense anxiety to the doctor, who without ceremony began to investigate the case, asking the mother questions and receiving answers that Mildred did not understand. The woman evidently claimed all the credit she deserved for her care of the patient in the night, and suggested that Mr. Ulph had been very oblivious until the child seemed sinking, for the old man grew excessively impatient during the interrogations. As if unconscious of Mildred's ignorance of their language, he said earnestly to her, "I did not know--I vould gif my life for der schild--der boor leedle poy--I no dink dat he vas so sick," and his eager words and manner convinced Mildred that his wife misrepresented him, and that his interest in the mystery of the comet's fate would be slight compared with that which centred in his son. The phlegmatic physician continued his investigations with true German thoroughness and deliberation. It was well that the child's worst symptoms had been relieved before he came, for he seemed bent on having the whole history of the case down to the latest moment before he extended his heavy hand to the aid of nature, and he questioned Mildred as minutely as he had Mrs. Ulph, while she, unlike the former, did not take any credit to herself. If the doctor was a little slow, he was sure, for he said something emphatically to the father, who in turn seized Mildred's hand, exclaiming, with explosive energy, "Gott pless you! Gott pless you!" "But it was mamma who did everything," protested the young girl. "Yah, I know, I know; put who prought mamma? Who listen ven der boor leetle poy gry in der night? Who gome in der morning? Mine paby vould haf been ded if you haf not gome. Gott pless you; Gott pless your moder. I vant to dank her mooch." The grateful father had called down God's blessings so lavishly that Mildred very naturally said, "You have more reason to thank God than any one else, Mr. Ulph, for no doubt it was His blessing on our efforts that has made your child better. The disease is such a dangerous one that the best human skill is often in vain." The physician shrugged his shoulders and looked significantly at Mr. Ulph, whose visage wrinkled into an odd grimace. "You may dink vat you please and say vat you please, Miss Schoslin. Men dink different off dese dinks vrom vomans. I haf a vay off saying Gott pless beoples ven I feels goot dowards 'em, put I means 'em no harm. Vat you American beoples somedimes say--dank my schtars? Dat will do shust so vell for me. It vas dis vay: der schild vas seek; you und your moder gome, und you make gauses und dere are der evvects. I perlieve in gause und evvect, und you vas a very goot gause." "We certainly should be very poor neighbors had we not come and done all we could, and with your permission mother and I will help your wife to-day so she can get some rest." "I dank you vrom mine heart. You make me dink off der heafenly podies--you make order put no noise. I vill do for you vatefer you vish und pe honest." Mildred now believed that she had gained the key to the old German's character, and such a hold upon his feelings that he would eventually permit her to become his companion in his star-gazing on the roof. Denied so much of the beauty she craved on the earth, she believed that she could find in an intelligent study of the skies a pleasure that would prove an antidote for the depressing circumstances of her lot. She had often longed with intense curiosity to look through his telescope, and to penetrate some of the bright mysteries that glittered above her with such tantalizing suggestion. She was adroit, however, and determined that the invitation should come unsolicited from him, so that his suspicions and cynical nature could give no sinister interpretation to her kindness. The physician evidently shared in Mr. Ulph's estimate of the mother of the child, for he explained to Mildred how the remedies he left should be used. She and Mrs. Jocelyn acted as nurse most of the day, and the patient improved steadily. After her return from the chapel in the afternoon, Mildred found the old German smoking his pipe in quite a placid mood, and she skilfully led him to talk on his favorite theme. He soon became so interested and so confidential that he unlocked a small, closet-like room and showed her his treasures--the telescope and other instruments, Argelander's maps, and many books written by the most eminent authorities. "I haf gone mitout mine dinner many und many der day to puy dese. Mine pody schtays in dis hole in dis old house, put mit dese vat I gather since ven I vas young, I go to heafen every night. Hah, hah, hah! dot Engleesh voman on der virst vloor dink she know a petter vay off going to heafen; und she dalk her reeleegious schargou to me, ven she know notting at all put vat der briests dell her. If dey dell her de moon von pig green scheese she swar it ish so; put dese dings dell der druf, und der great laws vork on for efer no matter vat voolish beoples perlieve. It vas all law und vorce, und it vould be von pig muddle in der heafens if it vas all vat der briests say." Mildred was in a dilemma, for she felt that she could not be silent under his outspoken scepticism, and yet if she revealed her mind she doubted whether there would be any result except the alienation of the man whose friendship she was bent on securing. After a moment's hesitation she saw but one honorable course, and so said firmly, "Mr. Ulph, I believe you are an honest man, but I want you to think of me as an honest girl, also. If I wanted to know about astronomy--and I do want to know very much--I would come to you. If I wanted to know about some other things I would go to my minister. I believe in law as truly as you do, but I believe God made the laws--that they are simply His will. If I respect your unbelief, you must respect my faith--that is fair; and I think you are one who would deal fairly and do justice to all. Mrs. Wheaton knows little of astronomy and many other things, no doubt, but she has known how to be a very kind, good neighbor to us, and her religion is mine." The old German stared at her a moment, then scratched his head as he replied, half apologetically and half pityingly, "You vas notting put a leedle schild, put you haf a goot heart. You vas honest, und you schtands oop vor your vriends, und I likes dot. You may perlieve all der vables you vish; und I vill dells you more vables apout der schtars dat ish shust so goot und shust so old." "But you will tell me the truth about them, too, won't you?" pleaded Mildred, with a smile that would have thawed a colder nature than Mr. Ulph's. "I want to learn a wee bit of what you know. I have so little that is bright and pretty in my life now that I just long to catch some glimpses of what you see in the skies. Perhaps I could help you by writing down your observations. I would ask questions only when you said I might." "Veil, now, dot's a good idea. Mine eyes vas getten old, und you vas young, put it von't last; you vas a young ding, und girls vas vlighty and vant--vat you call him?--peaux und vrolics ven der nights vas goot and glear." "Try me," said Mildred, with a little emphatic nod. "Veil, you don't seem likes von silly girl, und I vill dry you; put you moost pe very schteady und batient, und but down shust vhat I say. Von leedle schlip, und I vas all vrong in mine vigures. Von preadth off hair down here ish oh--so vide oop dere. Und now, gome, I tells you apout der schpots--der sun schpots," and with many odd gesticulations and contortions of his quaint visage he described the terrific cyclones that were sweeping over the surface of the sun at that time, and whose corresponding perturbations in the astronomer's mind had so exasperated his wife. She and the sick child were now sleeping, and the other children, warned by the threatening finger of the father, played quietly in a corner. It was an odd place to conjure up images of whirling storms of fire so appallingly vast that the great earth, if dropped into one of them, would be fused instantly like a lump of ore in a blast furnace; but the grotesque little man was so earnest, so uncouth, yet forcible, in his suggestions as he whirled his arms around to indicate the vast, resistless sweep of the unimaginable forces working their wild will millions of miles away, that their truth and reality grew painfully vivid to the young girl, and she trembled and shuddered. The roar of the wildest storm, he told her, and the bellowing of mountainous waves combined, would be but a murmur compared with the far-reaching thunder of a sun hurricane as it swept along hundreds of times faster than clouds are ever driven by an earthly tornado. There was nothing in her nature which led her to share in his almost fierce delight in the far-away disturbances, and he suddenly stopped and said kindly, "Vy I vrighten you mit sooch pig gommotions? You shust von leedle schild off a voman; und I likes you pegause you haf prain so you see und know vat I say. You see him too mooch, und so you dremble. Dot's goot. If you vas silly you vould giggle. Der schpots ish a goot way offen, und vill nefer virl you away; und next dime I dells you someding schmooth und britty." Mildred was glad to hasten through the gathering dusk to her own natural and homelike abode, for the old man's strong descriptions and vivid manner had oppressed her with a vague terror, and it was a long time before she could escape from the spell of his words. Indeed they followed her into her dreams, and in one of these dreadful visions she imagined herself shot by the old astronomer through his telescope straight into the centre of a "sun schpot." Whom should she find there in her uncurbed imagination but Roger Atwood? He seemed to be standing still, and he coolly remarked that "a man had no business to be whirled about by any force in the universe." She, however, was carried millions of miles away--a fact she did not so much regret, even in her dream, since he was left behind. CHAPTER XXIV ROGER REAPPEARS Roger Atwood had entered Mildred's mind as a part of a grotesque dream, but he had no place in her waking thoughts. With Vinton Arnold, however, it was very different, and scarcely an hour passed that she was not wondering where he was, and again questioning his prolonged silence. Often her heart beat quick as she imagined she caught a glimpse of him in the street; and it must be admitted that she looked for him constantly, although she took pains never to pass his residence. Could he be ill, or was he patiently waiting like herself, secure in her good faith? She longed to see him, even though unseen herself, and one Sunday early in November she yielded to her strong desire to look upon one in reality who had become an abiding presence in her mind. She believed that from a certain part of the gallery in the church they both had attended in former days she could look down upon the Arnold pew. If he were not ill she felt quite sure he would be in his old place. It was almost with a sense of guilty intrusion that she crossed the threshold of her old church-home and stole to the thinly occupied gallery. She saw familiar faces, but shrank from recognition in almost trembling apprehension, scarcely feeling secure behind her thick veil. The place, once so familiar, now seemed as strange as if it belonged to another world; and in a certain sense she felt that it was part of a world with which she would never willingly identify herself again. It was a place where fashion was supreme, and not the spirit of Christ, not even the spirit of a broad, honest, and earnest humanity. The florid architecture, the high-priced and elegantly upholstered pews, sparsely occupied by people who never wished to be crowded under any possible circumstances, and preferred not to touch each other except in a rather distant and conventional way, the elaborately ritualistic service, and the cold, superficial religious philosophy taught, were all as far removed from the divine Son of Mary as the tinsel scenery of a stage differs from a natural landscape. Mildred's deep and sorrowful experience made its unreality painfully apparent and unsatisfactory. She resolved, however, to try to give the sacred words that would be uttered their true meaning; and, in fact, her sincere devotion was like a simple flower blooming by the edge of a glacier. She felt that the human love she brought there and sought to gratify was pure and unselfish, and that in no sense could it be a desecration of the place and hour. To a nature like hers, her half-pitying love for one so unfortunate as Vinton Arnold was almost as sacred as her faith, and therefore she had no scruple in watching for his appearance. Her quest was unrewarded, however, for no one entered the pew except Mr. Arnold and one of his daughters. The absence of Mrs. Arnold and the invalid son filled her with forebodings and the memory of the past; the influence of the place combined with her fears was so depressing that by the time the service ended her tears were falling fast behind her veil. With natural apprehension that her emotion might be observed she looked hastily around, and, with a start, encountered the eyes of Roger Atwood. Her tears seemed to freeze on her cheeks, and she half shuddered in strong revulsion of feeling. She had come to see the man she loved; after months of patient waiting she had at last so far yielded to the cravings of her heart as to seek but a glimpse of one who fed her dearest earthly hope; but his place is vacant. In his stead she finds, almost at her side, one whom she hoped never to see again; and she knew he was offering through his dark eyes a regard loathed in her inmost soul. She was oppressed with a sudden, superstitious fear that she could not escape him--that he was endowed with such a remorseless will and persistence that by some strange necessity she might yield in spite of herself. Belle's words, "He'll win you yet," seemed like a direful prophecy. How it could ever be fulfilled she could not imagine; but his mere presence caused a flutter of fear, and the consciousness that she was followed by a man pre-eminently gifted with that subtle power before which most obstacles crumble made her shiver with an undefined dread. She believed her veil had been no protection--that he had seen her emotion and divined its cause, indeed that nothing could escape his eyes. She also felt sure that he had come to the city to carry out the projects which he had vaguely outlined to her, and that henceforth she could never be sure, when away from home, that his searching eyes were not upon her. However well-intentioned his motive might be, to her it would be an odious system of espionage. There was but one way in which she could resent it--by a cold and steadily maintained indifference, and she left the church without any sign of recognition, feeling that her lowered veil should have taught him that she was shunning observation, and that he had no right to watch her. She went home not only greatly depressed, but incensed, for it was the same to her as if she had been intruded upon at a moment of sacred privacy, and coldly scrutinized while she was giving way to feelings that she would hide from all the world. That he could not know this, and that it was no great breach of delicacy for a young man to sit in the same church with a lady of his acquaintance, and even to regard her with sympathy, she did not consider. She was in no mood to do him justice, and circumstances had imbued her mind with intense prejudice. She was by no means perfect, nor above yielding to very unjust prejudices when tempted to them by so unwelcome an interest as that entertained by Roger Atwood. "What's the matter, Millie?" her mother asked, following her into her room where Belle was writing a letter to Clara Bute. Mildred concluded to tell all, for she feared Roger might soon appear and occasion awkward explanations, so she said, "I felt, this morning, like having a glimpse of our old church and life. I suppose it was very weak and foolish and I was well punished, for toward the end of the service I was thinking over old times, and it all very naturally brought some tears. I looked around, and who, of all others, should be watching me but Roger Atwood!" Belle sprang up and clapped her hands with a ringing laugh. "That's capital," she cried. "Didn't I tell you, Millie, you couldn't escape him? You might just as well give in first as last." "Belle," said Mildred, in strong irritation, "that kind of talk is unpardonable. I won't endure it, and if such nonsense is to be indulged in Roger Atwood cannot come here. I shall at least have one refuge, and will not be persecuted in my own home." "Belle," added Mrs. Jocelyn gravely, "since Mildred feels as she does, you must respect her feelings. It would be indelicate and unwomanly to do otherwise." "There, Millie, I didn't mean anything," Belle said, soothingly. "Besides I want Roger to come and see us, for he can be jolly good company if he has a mind to; and I believe he will come this afternoon or evening. For my sake you must all treat him well, for I want some one to talk to once in a while--some one that mamma will say is a 'good, well-meaning young man.' The Atwoods have all been so kind to us that we must treat him well. It would be mean not to do so. No doubt he's all alone in the city, too, and will be lonely." "There is no need of his being in the city at all," Mildred protested. "I've no patience with his leaving those who need him so much. I think of them, and am sure they feel badly about it, and likely enough are blaming me, when, if I had my way, he'd live and die in sight of his own chimney smoke." "Millie, you are unreasonable," retorted Belle. "Why hasn't Roger Atwood as good a right to seek his fortune out in the world as other young men? Papa didn't stay on the old plantation, although they all wanted him to. What's more, he has as good a right to like you as you have to dislike him. I may as well say it as think it." It was difficult to refute Belle's hard common-sense, and her sister could only protest, "Well, he has no right to be stealthily watching me, nor to persecute me with unwelcome attentions." "Leave it all to me, Millie," said her mother gently. "I will manage it so that Belle can have his society occasionally, and we show our goodwill toward those who have been kind to us. At the same time I think I can shield you from anything disagreeable. He is pretty quick to take a hint; and you can soon show him by your manner that you wish him well, and that is all. He'll soon get over his half-boyish preference, or at least learn to hide it. You give to his feelings more importance than they deserve." "I suppose I do," Mildred replied musingly, "but he makes upon me the queer impression that he will never leave me alone--that I can never wholly shake him off, and that he will appear like a ghost when I least expect it." Belle smiled significantly. "There, you might as well speak plainly as look in that way," Mildred concluded irritably. "I foresee how it will be, but must submit and endure as best I can, I suppose." Belle's anticipation proved correct, for just as they were nearly ready to start for the chapel Eoger appeared, and was a little awkward from diffidence and doubt as to his reception. Mrs. Jocelyn's kindness and Belle's warm greeting somewhat reassured him, and atoned for Mildred's rather constrained politeness. While answering the many and natural questions about those whom he had left in Forestville, he regained his self-possession and was able to hold his own against Belle's sallies. "You have come to the city to stay?" she asked, point-blank. "Yes," he said briefly, and that was the only reference he made to himself. She soon began vivaciously, "You must go with us to church and Sunday-school. Here you are, an innocent and unprotected youth in this great wicked city, and we must get you under good influence at once." "That is my wish," he replied, looking her laughingly in the face, "and that is why I came to see you. If you have a class and will take me into it, I will accept all the theology you teach me." "Mr. Wentworth's hair would rise at the idea of my teaching theology or anything; but I'll look after you, and if you get any fast ways I'll make you sorry. No, I'm only a scholar. Millie has a class of the worst boys in school, and if--" A warning glance here checked her. "Well, then, can't I join your class?" "Oh, no, we are all girls, and you'll make us so bashful we wouldn't dare say anything." "I think Mr. Atwood had better go with us to the chapel, accepting the conditions on which we first attended," suggested Mrs. Jocelyn. "If he is pleased, as we were, he can then act accordingly." "Yes, come," cried Belle, who had resumed at once her old companionable and mirthful relations with Roger. "I'll go with you, so you won't feel strange or afraid. I want you to understand," she continued, as they passed down the quaint old hallway, "that we belong to the aristocracy. Since this is the oldest house in town, we surely should be regarded as one of the old families." "By what magic were you able to make so inviting a home in such a place?" he asked. "Oh, that's Millie's work," she replied. "I might have known that," he said, and a sudden shadow crossed his face. Quickly as it passed away, she saw it. "Yes," she resumed in a low, earnest tone--for she had no scruple in fanning the flame of his love which she more than half believed might yet be rewarded--"Millie is one of a million. She will be our main dependence, I fear. She is so strong and sensible." "Is--is not Mr. Jocelyn well?" he asked apprehensively. "I fear he isn't well at all," she answered with some despondency. "He is sleeping now; he always rests Sunday afternoon, and we try to let him rest all he can. He sleeps, or rather dozes, a great deal, and seems losing his strength and energy," and she spoke quite frankly concerning their plans, projects, and hopes. She believed in Roger, and knew him to be a sincere friend, and it was her nature to be very outspoken where she had confidence. "If Millie can learn thoroughly what she is now studying," she concluded, "I think we can get along." "Yes," said Roger, in low, sad emphasis, "your sister is indeed one of a million, and my chance of winning one friendly thought from her also seems but one in a million. Belle, let us understand each other from the start. I have come to the city to stay, and I intend to succeed. I have an uncle in town who has given me a chance, and he'll do more for me, I think. He's peculiar, but he's shrewd and sensible, and when he is convinced that I intend to carry out certain plans he will aid me. He is watching me now, and thinks I am here only from a restless impulse to see the world; by and by he will know better. He has the obstinate Atwood blood, and if he takes a notion to give me a chance to get a first-class education, he will see me through. I'm going to have one anyway, but of course I'd rather be able to get it in five or six years than in eight or ten years, as would be the case if I had to work my own way. I am now employed in his commission store down town, but I am studying every spare moment I can get, and he knows it, only he thinks it won't last. But it will, and I shall at least try to be one of the first lawyers in this city. What's more, I shall work as few young men are willing to work or can work, for I am strong, and--well, I have motives for work that are not usual, perhaps. You see I am frank with you as you have been with me. You often talk like a gay child, but I understand you well enough to know that you are a whole-souled little woman, and thoroughly worthy of trust; and I have told you more about myself and present plans than any one else. Clara Bute informed me all about your courage at the store, and I felt proud that I knew you, and don't intend that you shall ever be ashamed of me. You may tell your mother all this if you please, because I wish her to know just what kind of a young fellow I am, and what are my connections and prospects. I would much like to come and see you and go out with you now and then; and if you and your--well, your family should ever need any service that it was in my power to render, I should like you all to feel that I am not altogether unfit to give it, or to be your associate." "You needn't talk that way," said Belle; "you are up in the world compared with us." "I mean every word I say. I respect your mother as I do my own, for I have seen her beautiful life and beautiful face for weeks and months. I never expect to see a more perfect and genuine lady. I am not well versed in society's ways, but I assure you I would make every effort in my power to act as she would think a young man ought to act. I'd rather fight a dragon than displease her." Tears of gratified feeling were in Belle's eyes, but she said brusquely, "Not versed in society's ways! Account, then, for that fashionable suit of clothes you are wearing." "They were not cut in Forestville," he replied dryly. "Roger," she said impulsively, "I'm wonderfully glad you've come to New York to live, for I was dying for a little society and fun that mother and Millie wouldn't disapprove of. They are so particular, you know, that I fairly ache from trying to walk in the strait and narrow path which is so easy for them. I want a lark. I must have a lark before long, or I'll explode. What can we do that will be real genuine fun? It will do you good, too, or you'll become a dull boy with nothing but work, work, work. You needn't tell me the world was only made to work in. If it was, I've no business here. You must think up something spicy, and no make-believe. I want to go somewhere where I can laugh with my whole heart. I can't go on much longer at this old humdrum, monotonous jog, any more than your colts up at the farm could go around like the plow-horses, and I know it isn't right to expect it of me. And yet what has been the case? Off early in the morning to work, standing all day till I'm lame in body and mad in spirit--stupid owls to make us stand till we are so out of sorts that we are ready to bite customers' heads off instead of waiting on 'em pleasantly. When I come home, mamma often looks tired and sad, for this life is wearing on her, and she is worrying in secret over papa's health. Millie, too, is tired and downhearted in spite of her trying to hide it. She won't go out anywhere because she says there are no places where young girls can go unattended that are within our means. I've got tired of the other shop-girls. A few of them are nice; but more of them are stupid or coarse, so I just sit around and mope, and go to bed early to get through the time. If I even try to romp with the children a little, mamma looks distressed, fearing I will disturb papa, who of late, when he comes out of his dozing condition, is strangely irritable. A year ago he'd romp and talk nonsense with me to my heart's content; but that's all passed. Now is it natural for a young girl little more than sixteen to live such a life?" "No, Belle, it is not, and yet I have seen enough of the city during the week I have been here to know that your mother and sister are right in their restrictions." "Well, then, it's a burning shame that in a city called Christian a poor girl is not more safe outside of her own door than if she were in a jungle. Do you mean to say that girls, situated as Millie and I are, must remain cooped up in little rooms the year round when our work is over?" "The street is no place for you to take recreation in after nightfall; and where else you can go unattended I'm sure I don't know. If there is any place, I'll find out, for I intend to study this city from top to bottom. A lawyer is bound to know life as it is, above all things. But you needn't worry about this question in the abstract any more. I'll see that you have a good time occasionally. You sister will not go with me, at least not yet--perhaps never--but that is not my fault. I've only one favor to ask of you, Belle, and I'll do many in return. Please never, by word, or even by look, make my presence offensive or obtrusive to Miss Mildred. If you will be careful I will not prove so great an affliction as she fears." "Roger Atwood, do you read people's thoughts?" "Oh, no, I only see what is to be seen, and draw my conclusions," he said, a little sadly. "Well, then, if you can have the tact and delicacy to follow such good eyesight, you may fare better than you expect," she whispered at the chapel door. He turned toward her with a quick flash, but she had stepped forward into the crowd passing through the vestibule. From that moment, however, a ray of hope entered his heart, and in quiet resolve he decided to conform his tactics to the hint just received. Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred followed half a block away, and the former said to her daughter: "There they go, Millie, chattering together like two children. You surely take this affair too seriously. His sudden and boyish infatuation with you was the most natural thing in the world. He had never seen a girl like you before, and you awoke him into something like manhood. Very young men are prone to fall in love with women older than themselves, or those who seem older, and speedily to fall out again. Martin has often said his first flame is now a gray-headed lady, and yet he was sure at one time he never could endure life without her. You know that I consoled him quite successfully," and Mildred was pleased to hear the old, sweet laugh that was becoming too rare of late. Even now it ended in a sigh. Mr. Jocelyn was losing his resemblance to the man she had accepted in those bright days that now seemed so long ago. "I hope you are right, mamma. It seems as if I ought to laugh at the whole affair and good-naturedly show him his folly, but for some reason I can't. He affects me very strangely. While I feel a strong repulsion, I am beginning to fear him--to become conscious of his intensity and the tenacity and power of his will. I didn't understand him at first, and I don't now, but if he were an ordinary, impulsive young fellow he would not impress me as he does." "Don't you think him true and good at heart?" "I've no reason to think him otherwise. I can't explain to you how I feel, nor do I understand it myself. He seems the embodiment of a certain kind of force, and I always shrank from mere force, whether in nature or people." "I can tell you how it is, Millie. Quiet and gentle as you seem, you have a tremendous will of your own, and very strong-willed people don't get on well together." "Astute little mother! Well, explain it in any way that pleases you, only keep your promise not to let him become the bane of my life." "I'm not at all sure but that Belle will soon usurp your place in his regard, nor would I object, for I am very anxious about the child. I know that her present life seems dull to her, and the temptations of the city to a girl with a nature like hers are legion. He can be a very useful friend to her, and he seems to me manly and trustworthy. I'm not often deceived in my impressions of people, and he inspires me with confidence, and has from the first. I never saw anything underhand in him at the farm." "Oh, no, he's honest enough, no doubt." "There, Millie," resumed her mother, laughing, "you have a woman's reason for your feelings--you don't like him, and that is the end of it. You must admit, however, that he has improved wonderfully. I never saw a young fellow so changed, so thoroughly waked up. He has sense, too, in little things. One would think from his dress he had been born and bred in the city. They didn't palm off an old-fashioned suit on him, if he was from the country. "Chant his praises to Belle, mamma, and she will greatly appreciate this last proof of his superiority. To me he seems like his clothes--a little too new. Still I admit that he can be of very great service to Belle; and if he will restrict his attentions to her I will be as polite as either of you can wish. I, too, feel a very deep sympathy for Belle. She is little more than a child, and yet her life is imposing upon her the monotonous work of a middle-aged woman, and I fear the consequences. It's contrary to nature, and no one knows it better than she. If he will help us take care of her I shall be grateful indeed; but if he grows sentimental and follows me as he did this morning, I could not endure it--indeed I could not." "Well, Millie dear, we won't cross any bridges till we come to them." CHAPTER XXV THE DARK SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS During the sermon it must be admitted that Belle's thoughts wandered from the text and its able development by Mr. Wentworth. In fact, she was developing a little scheme of her own, and, as the result, whispered at the close of service, "Mamma, Roger and I are going to take a walk in the Park. Can't I ask him home to supper? This is his first Sunday in town, and it will be so dismal--" "Yes, child, go and have a good time." Within the next five minutes radiant Belle was an unconscious embodiment of foreordination to Roger. He had had no idea of going to the Park, but Belle had decreed he should go, and as he smilingly accompanied her he certainly remained a very contented free agent. It was a clear, bracing afternoon and evening, wherein were blended the characteristics of both autumn and winter, and the young people returned with glowing cheeks and quickened pulses. "Oh, Millie!" cried Belle, "such a walk as I have had would make you over new. I felt as if I were a hundred this morning, but now I feel just about sixteen--that was my last birthday, wasn't it, mamma?" Both mother and sister smiled to see her sparkling eyes and bubbling happiness; and the latter thought, "For her sake I must certainly either master or conceal my dislike for that young fellow." Indeed, she herself appeared sadly in need of a little vigorous exercise in the frosty air. The events of the day had been exceedingly depressing; despondency had taken the place of the irritation and the hopes and fears that had alternated in the morning hours; but she unselfishly tried to disguise it, and to aid her mother in preparing an inviting supper for Belle and her guest. Mildred was obliged to admit to herself that Roger had very little of the appearance and manner of an uncouth countryman. There was a subtle, half-conscious homage for her mother in his every look and word, and for herself a politeness almost as distant and unobtrusive as her own. Once, when a sigh escaped her as she was busy about the room, she looked apprehensively at him, and, as she feared, encountered a glance from which nothing could escape. She now felt that her assumed cheerfulness deceived him so little that, were it not for Belle, she would wholly forego the effort, and end the long, miserable day in her own room. Suddenly the thought occurred to her: "I will learn from his microscopic eyes how papa appears to others not blinded by love as we are; for, in spite of all my efforts to look on the bright side, I am exceedingly ill at ease about him. I fear he is failing faster than we think--we who see him daily. Mr. Atwood has not seen him for months, and the least change would be apparent to him." Immunity from business induced Mr. Jocelyn to gratify his cravings more unstintedly on Sunday; and as he was often exceedingly irritable if disturbed when sleeping off the effects of an extra indulgence, they usually left him to wake of his own accord. Unfortunately the walls of his apartment were but curtains, and his loud breathings made it necessary to rouse him. This Mrs. Jocelyn accomplished with some difficulty, but did not mention the presence of Roger, fearing that in his half-wakened condition he might make some remark which would hurt the young man's feelings. She merely assisted him to arrange his disordered hair and dress, and then led the way to the supper-table he in the meantime protesting petulantly that he wished no supper, but would rather have slept. As he emerged from the curtained doorway, Mildred's eyes were fastened on Roger's face, determined that nothing in its expression should escape her. He at the moment was in the midst of a laughing reply to one of Belle's funny speeches, but he stopped instantly and turned pale as his eyes rested on the visage of her father. Had that face then changed so greatly? Had disease made such havoc that this comparative stranger was aghast and could not conceal the truth that he was shocked? It was with sharp anguish that these queries flashed through Mildred's mind, and, with her own perceptions sharpened and quickened, she saw that her father had indeed changed very greatly; he had grown much thinner; his complexion had an unnatural, livid aspect; his old serene, frank look was absent, and a noticeable contraction in the pupils of his eyes gave an odd, sinister aspect to his expression. There were other changes that were even more painful to witness. In former days he had been the embodiment of genial Southern hospitality; but now, although he made a visible effort for self-control, his whole body seemed one diseased irritable nerve. Roger almost instantly overcame his pained surprise, yet not so quickly but that it was observed by all, and even by him who had been the cause. "I am very sorry to learn you are not in good health," he was indiscreet enough to say as he offered his hand in greeting. "From whom have you learned this?" demanded Mr. Jocelyn, looking angrily and suspiciously around. "I assure you that you are mistaken. I never was in better health, and I am not pleased that any one should gossip about me." They sat down under a miserable constraint--Belle flushed and indignant, Mildred no longer disguising her sadness, and poor Mrs. Jocelyn with moist eyes making a pitiful attempt to restore serenity so that Belle's happy day might not become clouded. Roger tried to break the evil spell by giving his impressions of the Park to Mrs. Jocelyn, but was interrupted by her husband, who had been watching the young man with a perplexed, suspicious look, vainly trying to recall the name of one whose face was familiar enough, remarking at last very satirically, "Has it ceased to be the style to introduce people, especially at one's own table? I might appreciate this gentleman's conversation better if I knew his name." They all looked at each other in sudden dismay, for they could not know that opium impairs memory as well as health and manhood. "Martin," cried his wife, in a tone of sharp distress, "you ARE ill, indeed. There is no use in trying to disguise the truth any longer. What! don't you remember Roger Atwood, the son of the kind friends with whom we spent the summer?" and in spite of all effort tears blinded her eyes. The wretched man's instinct of self-preservation was aroused. He saw from the looks of all about him that he was betraying himself--that he was wholly off his balance. While vividly and painfully aware of his danger, his enfeebled will and opium-clouded mind were impotent to steady and sustain him or to direct his course. He had much of the terror and all the sense of helplessness of a man who finds himself in deep water and cannot swim. He trembled, the perspiration started out on his brow, and his one impulse now was to be alone with his terrible master, that had become the sole source of his semblance of strength as well as of his real and fatal weakness. "I--I fear I am ill," he faltered. "I'll go out and get a little air," and he was about to leave the room almost precipitately. "Oh, Martin," expostulated his wife, "don't go out--at least not alone." Again he lost control of himself, and said savagely, "I will. Don't any one dare to follow me," and he almost rushed away. For a moment Mrs. Jocelyn tried to bear up from instinctive politeness, but her lip quivered like that of a child; then the tide of her feeling swept her away, and she fled to the adjoining apartment. Mildred followed her at once, and Belle, with a white, scared face, looked into Roger's eyes. He rose and came directly to her and said, "Belle, you know you can always count on me. Your father is so ill that I think I had better follow him. I can do so unobserved." "Oh, Roger--why--is--is papa losing his mind?" His quick eye now noted that Fred and Minnie had become so impressed that something dreadful had happened that they were about to make the occasion more painful by their outcries, and he turned smilingly to them, and with a few reassuring words and promises soon quieted their fears. "Be a brave little woman, Belle," he at last said to her. "There is my address, and please promise to let me know if I can do anything for you and for--for Mrs. Jocelyn." "Don't go--please don't go yet," Belle pleaded. "Papa's looks and words to-night fill me with a strange fear as if something awful might happen." "Perhaps if I follow your father I may prevent--" "Oh, yes, go at once." He was intercepted at the door by the entrance of Mr. Jocelyn, who had had ample time in the few brief minutes that had elapsed to fill his system with the subtle stimulant. He now took Roger by the hand most cordially, and said, "Pardon me, Mr. Atwood. My health has become somewhat impaired of late, and I fear I have just had a rather bad turn; but the air has revived me, and the trouble now has passed. I insist that you stay and spend the evening with us." "Oh, papa," cried Belle, rushing into his arms, "how you frightened us! Please go into my room, there, and comfort mamma by telling her you are all well again." This he did so effectively that he soon led her out smiling through her tears, for her confidence in him was the growth and habit of years, and anything he said to her seemed for the moment true. And, indeed, the man was so changed that it was hard to realize he was not well. His face, in contrast with its aspect a few moments since, appeared to have regained its natural hue and expression; every trace of irritability had passed away, and with his old-time, easy courtesy and seeming frankness he talked so plausibly of it all that Belle and his wife, and even Roger, felt that they had attached undue importance to a mere temporary indisposition. Mildred made great effort to be cheerful for her father's sake, but the pallor did not pass from her face, nor the look of deep anxiety from her eyes. The shadow of coming trouble had fallen too heavily upon her, and that the marked exhibition of her father's failing powers should have occurred at this time added to the impression that Roger Atwood was their evil genius. She recalled the fact that he seemingly had been the first exciting cause of her father's unnatural behavior, and now his reappearance was the occasion of the most convincing proof they had yet received that the one upon whom they all depended was apparently failing in both mind and body. Even now, while he was doing his best to reassure and render happy his family, there was to her perception an unreality in his words and manner. She almost imagined, too, that he feared to meet her eye and shunned doing so. Not in the remotest degree, however, did she suspect the cause of his suddenly varying moods and changed appearance, but regarded all as the result of his misfortunes; and the miserable presentiment grew strong upon her that soon--alas! too soon--she would be the slender reed on which they all would lean. If she could have six months, only, of careful preparation she would not so dread the burden; but if now, or soon, the whole responsibility of the family's support should come upon her and Belle, what would they do? Her heart sank, and her very soul cowered at the prospect. She could not live in the present hour like Belle, but with too keen a foresight realized how dark and threatening was the future. The night was clear and beautiful, and Roger and Belle went up to the platform built over the roof. Not long afterward there was a knock at the door, and Mr. Ulph appeared. "Der night vas goot," he said to Mildred, "und I vill gif you von leedle glimpse oil hefen if you vould like him." The poor girl felt that she certainly needed a glimpse of something bright and reassuring, and wrapping herself warmly she followed her quaint friend to the roof. Roger grew taciturn as he watched the dim outline of her form and her white, upturned face. She seemed as cold and distant to him as the stars at which she gazed, and he thought dejectedly, "The least of them have an interest for her greater than I shall ever be able to inspire." He overrated her interest in the stars on that occasion, however, for though she did her best to follow the old astronomer's words, her heart was too sorrowful and preoccupied, and her eyes too often blinded by tears, which once glittered so distinctly in the rays of a brilliant planet that her companion stopped in the midst of a sentence and looked at her keenly. "You vas not habby, my leedle schild," he said kindly. "Dere's someding droubling you heart; put you gan no see vay inter der hefens drew dears do' dey vas glear as der lens off my glass." "I fear I shall have to see through tears very often, if I see at all," Mildred replied, with a low, suppressed sob. "Forgive me to-night. I DO feel grateful that you are willing to show me--but--I--I--well, I am troubled to-night about something, and I can't control myself. To-morrow night I'll be braver, and will help you. Please don't feel hurt if I leave you now." "Ah, mine leedle girl, learn vrom der schtars dot der great laws moost be opeyed, und don't you vorry und vret ober vat you gannot help. Shust you go along quiet und easy like Shupiter oup dere. Lots off dings vill dry to bull dis vay and dot vay outen der right orpt, put dond you mind 'em, und shust go right schtrait along und not care. You veels too mooch apout oder beoples. Der schtars deach you petter; dey goes right on der own vay und about der own pisness, unless dey vas voolish leedle schtars, like dot von dere dots shust gone to der duyvel vrom runin outen his vay toward der earth." She might have reminded him that, if she had acted upon this cold and selfish philosophy, his little child would now be sleeping in a distant cemetery instead of in his warm crib, but she only said, "Good-night, Mr. Ulph; I'll do better next time," and she hurried away. She felt that the sun and centre of their family life was passing under a strange and lasting eclipse, and the result might be darkness--chaos. She wiped her eyes carefully, that no traces of grief might appear, and then entered their room. Her mother was putting the children to bed, and her father looking dreamily out of the window. She kissed him, and said briefly, "I'm tired and think I will retire early so as to be ready for my work." He made no effort to detain her. She clasped her mother in a momentary passionate embrace, and then shut herself up to a night of almost sleepless grief. CHAPTER XXVI WAXING AND WANING MANHOOD Both Belle and Roger saw that Mildred had not been reassured by Mr. Jocelyn's return and manner; and as they thought it over they found it difficult to account for his strangely varying moods. After a rather lame effort to chat cheerily, Roger bad Belle good-night, and assured her that she now had a friend always within call. His uncle's modest residence was in a side street and not far away, but the young fellow walked for hours before applying his night-key to the door. What he had seen and heard that day touched his heart's core, and the influences that were so rapidly developing his manhood were greatly strengthened. For Belle he now had a genuine liking and not a little respect. He saw her foibles clearly, and understood that she was still more a child than a woman, and so should not be judged by the standards proper for those of mature age; but he also saw the foundations on which a noble womanhood might be built. She inspired a sense of comradeship and honest friendliness which would easily deepen into fraternal love, but Mrs. Jocelyn's surmise that she might some day touch that innermost spring which controls the entire man had no true basis. Nor would there have been any possibility of this had he never seen Mildred. A true man--one governed by heart and mind, not passion--meets many women whom he likes and admires exceedingly, but who can never quicken his pulse. On Mildred, however--although she coveted the gift so little--was bestowed the power to touch the most hidden and powerful principles of his being, to awaken and stimulate every faculty he possessed. Her words echoed and re-echoed in the recesses of his soul; even her cold, distant glances were like rays of a tropical sun to which his heart could offer no resistance; and yet they were by no means enervating. Some natures would have grown despondent over prospects seemingly so hopeless, but Roger was of a different type. His deep and unaccepted feeling did not flow back upon his spirit, quenching it in dejection and despair, but it became a resistless tide back of his purpose to win her recognition and respect at least, and his determination to prove himself her peer. A girl so beautiful and womanly might easily gain such power over several men without any conscious effort, remaining meanwhile wholly indifferent or even averse herself, and Roger had indeed but little cause for hope. He might realize every ambitious dream and win her respect and admiration, and her heart continue as unresponsive as it had been from the first. Many a man has loved and waited in vain; and some out of this long adversity in that which touched their dearest interests have built the grandest successes of life and the loftiest and purest manhood. A few months before, Roger seemingly had been a good-natured, pleasure-loving country youth, who took life as it came, with little thought for the morrow. Events had proved that he had latent and undeveloped force. In the material world we find substances that apparently are inert and powerless, but let some other substance be brought sufficiently near, and an energy is developed that seems like magic, and transformations take place that were regarded as supernatural in times when nature's laws were little understood. If this be true concerning that which is gross and material, how much more true of the quick, informing spirit that can send out its thoughts to the furthest star! Strong souls--once wholly unconscious of their power--at the touch of adequate motives pass into action and combinations which change the character of the world from age to age. But in the spiritual as in the physical world, this development takes place in accordance with natural law and within the limitations of each character. There is nothing strange, however strange it may appear to those who do not understand. Roger Atwood was not a genius that would speedily dazzle the world with bewildering coruscations. It would rather be his tendency to grow silent and reserved with years, but his old boyish alertness would not decline, or his habit of shrewd, accurate observation. He thus would take few false steps, and would prove his force by deeds. Therefore he was almost predestined to succeed, for his unusually strong will would not drive him into useless effort or against obstacles that could be foreseen and avoided. After Mildred's departure from the country he carried out his plans in a characteristic way. He wrote frankly and decidedly to his uncle that he was coming to the city, and would struggle on alone if he received no aid. At the same time he suggested that he had a large acquaintance in his vicinity, and therefore by judicious canvassing among the farmers he believed he could bring much patronage with him. This looked not unreasonable to the shrewd commission merchant, and, since his nephew was determined to make an excursion into the world, he concluded it had better be done under the safest and most business-like circumstances. At the same time recalling the character and habits of the country boy, as he remembered him, he surmised that Roger would soon become homesick and glad to go back to his old life. If retained under his eye, the youth could be kept out of harm's way and returned untainted and content to be a farmer. He therefore wrote to Roger that, if his parents were willing, he might secure what trade he could in farm produce and make the trial. At first Mr. and Mrs. Atwood would not hear of the plan, and the father openly declared that it was "those Jocelyn girls that had unsettled the boy." "Father," said Roger, a little defiantly and sarcastically, "doesn't it strike you that I'm rather tall for a boy? Did you never hear of a small child, almost of age, choosing his own course in life?" "That is not the way to talk," said his mother reprovingly. "We both very naturally feel that it's hard, and hardly right, too, for you to leave us just as we are getting old and need some one to lean on." "Do not believe, mother, that I have not thought of that," was the eager reply; "and if I have my way you and father, and Susan too, shall be well provided for." "Thank you," Mr. Atwood snarled contemptuously. "I'll get what I can out of the old farm, and I don't expect any provision from an overgrown boy whose head is so turned by two city girls that he must go dangling after them." Roger flushed hotly, and angry words rose to his lips, but he restrained them by a visible effort. After a moment he said quietly, "You are my father, and may say what you please. There is but one way of convincing you whether I am a boy or a man, and I'll take it. You can keep me here till I'm twenty-one if you will, but you'll be sorry. It will be so much loss to me and no gain to you. I've often heard you say the Atwoods never 'drove well,' and you found out years ago that a good word went further with me than what you used to call a 'good thrashing.' If you let me have my way, now that I'm old enough to choose for myself, I'll make your old age cozy and comfortable. If you thwart me, as I said before, you'll be sorry," and he turned on his heel and left them. Politic Mrs. Atwood had watched her son closely for weeks and knew that something was coming, but with woman's patience she waited and was kind. No one would miss him so much as she, and yet, mother-like, she now took sides against her own heart. But she saw that her husband was in no mood to listen to her at present, and nothing more was said that day. In the evening Roger drove out in his carriage and returned on horseback. "There's the money you paid for the buggy, with interest," he said to his father. "You aren't gone yet," was the growling answer. "No matter. I shall not ride in it again, and you are not the loser." Roger had a rugged side to his nature which his father's course often called out, and Mrs. Atwood made her husband feel, reluctant as he was to admit it, that he was taking the wrong course with his son. A letter also from his brother in town led him to believe that Roger would probably come back in the spring well content to remain at home; so at last he gave a grudging consent. Ungracious as it was, the young man rewarded him by a vigorous, thorough completion of the fall work, by painting the house and putting the place in better order than it had ever known before; meanwhile for his mother and sister he showed a consideration and gentleness which proved that he was much changed from his old self. "I can see the hand of Mildred Jocelyn in everything he says and does," Susan remarked one day after a long fit of musing, "and yet I don't believe she cares a straw for him." Her intuition was correct; it was Roger's ambition to become such a man as Mildred must respect in spite of herself, and it was also true that she was not merely indifferent, but for the reasons already given--as far as she had reasons--she positively disliked him. Roger brought sufficient business from the country to prevent regretful second thoughts in the mind of his thrifty uncle, and the impression was made that the young fellow might steady down into a useful clerk; but when as much was hinted Roger frankly told him that he regarded business as a stepping-stone merely to the study of the law. The old merchant eyed him askance, but made no response. Occasionally the veteran of the market evinced a glimmer of enthusiasm over a prime article of butter, but anything so intangible as a young man's ambitious dreams was looked upon with a very cynical eye. Still he could not be a part of New York life and remain wholly sceptical in regard to the possibilities it offered to a young fellow of talent and large capacity for work. He was a childless man, and if Roger had it in him to "climb the ladder," as he expressed it to himself, "it might pay to give him the chance." But the power to climb would have to be proved almost to a demonstration. In the meantime Roger, well watched and much mistrusted, was but a clerk in his store near Washington Market, and a student during all spare hours. He had too much sense to attempt superficial work or to seek to build his fortunes on the slight foundation of mere smartness. It was his plan to continue in business for a year or more and then enter the junior class of one of the city colleges. By making the most of every moment and with the aid of a little private tutoring he believed he could do this, for he was a natural mathematician, and would find in the classics his chief difficulties. At any rate it was his fixed resolve not to enter upon the study of the law proper until he had broadened his mind by considerable general culture. Not only did his ambition prompt to this, but he felt that if he developed narrowly none would be so clearly aware of the fact as Mildred Jocelyn. Although not a highly educated girl herself, he knew she had a well-bred woman's nice perception of what constituted a cultivated man; he also knew that he had much prejudice to overcome, and that he must strike at its very root. In the meantime poor Mildred, unconscious of all save his unwelcome regard, was seeking with almost desperate earnestness to gain practical knowledge of two humble arts, hoping to be prepared for the time--now clearly foreseen and dreaded--when her father might decline so far in mind and health as to fail them utterly, and even become a heavy burden. She did not dream that his disease was a drug, and although some of his associates began to suspect as much, in spite of all his precautions, none felt called upon to suggest their suspicions to his family. Causes that work steadily will sooner or later reach their legitimate results. The opium inertia grew inevitably upon Mr. Jocelyn. He disappointed the expectations of his employers to that degree that they felt that something was wrong, and his appearance and manner often puzzled them not a little even though with all the cunning which the habit engenders he sought to hide his weakness. One day, late in November, an unexpected incident brought matters to a crisis. An experienced medical acquaintance, while making a call upon the firm, caught sight of Mr. Jocelyn, and his practiced eye detected the trouble at once. "That man is an opium-eater," he said in a low tone, and his explanation of the effects of the drug was a diagnosis of Mr. Jocelyn's symptoms and appearance. The firm's sympathy for a man seemingly in poor health was transformed into disgust and antipathy, since there is less popular toleration of this weakness than of drinking habits. The very obscurity in which the vice is involved makes it seem all the more unnatural and repulsive, and it must be admitted that the fullest knowledge tends only to increase this horror and repugnance, even though pity is awakened for the wretched victim. But Mr. Jocelyn's employers had little knowledge of the vice, and they were not in the least inclined to pity. They felt that they had been imposed upon, and that too at a time when all business men were very restless under useless expenditure. It was the man's fault and not misfortune that he had failed so signally in securing trade from the South, and, while they had paid him but a small salary, his ill-directed and wavering efforts had involved them in considerable expense. Asking the physician to remain, they summoned Mr. Jocelyn to the private office, and directly charged him with the excessive and habitual use of opium. The poor man was at first greatly confused, and trembled as if in an ague fit, for his nerve power was already so shattered that he had little self-control in an emergency. This, of course, was confirmation of guilt in their eyes. "Gentlemen, you do me a great wrong," he managed to say, and hastily left the office. Having secreted himself from observation he snatched out his hypodermic syringe, and within six minutes felt himself equal to any crisis. Boldly returning to the office he denied the charge in the most explicit terms, and with some show of lofty indignation. The physician who was still present watched him closely, and noticed that the cuff on his left hand was somewhat crumpled, as if it had been recently pushed back. Without a word he seized Mr. Jocelyn's arm and pulled back his coat and shirt sleeve, revealing a bright red puncture just made, and many others of a remoter date. "There is no use in lying about such matters to me," said the physician. "How much morphia did you inject into your arm since you left us?" "I am a victim of neuralgia," Mr. Jocelyn began, without any hesitation, "and the cruel and unreasonable charge here made against me brought on an acute paroxysm, and therefore I--" "Stop that nonsense," interrupted the doctor, roughly. "Don't you know that lying, when lying is of no use, is one of the characteristic traits of an opium-eater? I am a physician, and have seen too many cases to be deceived a moment. You have all the symptoms of a confirmed morphia consumer, and if you ever wish to break your chains you had better tell doctors the truth and put yourself under the charge of one in whom you have confidence." "Well, curse you!" said Mr. Jocelyn savagely, "it was through one of your damnable fraternity that I acquired what you are pleased to call my chains, and now you come croaking to my employers, poisoning their minds against me." "Oh, as to poisoning," remarked the physician sarcastically, "I'll wager a thousand dollars that you have absorbed enough morphia within the last twenty-four hours to kill every one in this office. At the rate you are going on, as far as I can judge from appearances, you will soon poison yourself out of existence. No physician ever advised the destroying vice you are practicing, and no physician would take offence at your words any more than at the half-demented ravings of a fever patient. You are in a very critical condition, sir, and unless you can wake up to the truth and put forth more will-power than most men possess you will soon go to the bad." "I sincerely hope you will take this experienced physician's advice," said the senior member of the firm very coldly. "At any rate we can no longer permit you to jeopardize our interests by your folly and weakness. The cashier will settle with you, and our relations end here and now." "You will bitterly repent of this injustice," Mr. Jocelyn replied haughtily. "You are discharging a man of unusual business capacity--one whose acquaintance with the South is wellnigh universal, and whose combinations were on the eve of securing enormous returns." "We will forego all these advantages. Good-morning, sir. Did you ever see such effrontery?" he continued, after Mr. Jocelyn had departed with a lofty and contemptuous air. "It's not effrontery--it's opium," said the physician sadly. "You should see the abject misery of the poor wretch after the effects of the drug have subsided." "I have no wish to see him again under any aspect, and heartily thank you for unmasking him. We must look at once into our affairs, and see how much mischief he has done. If he wants the aid and respect of decent men, let him give up his vile practice." "That's easier said than done," the physician replied. "Very few ever give it up who have gone as far as this man." CHAPTER XXVII A SLAVE The physician was right. A more abject and pitiable spectacle than Mr. Jocelyn could scarcely have been found among the miserable unfortunates of a city noted for its extremes in varied condition. Even in his false excitement he was dimly aware that he was facing a dreadful emergency, and following an instinctive desire for solitude so characteristic of those in his condition, he took a room in an obscure hotel and gave himself up to thoughts that grew more and more painful as the unnatural dreams inspired by opium shaped themselves gradually into accord with the actualities of his life. For a month or two past he had been swept almost unresistingly down the darkening and deepening current of his sin. Whenever he made some feeble, vacillating effort to reduce his allowance of the drug, he became so wretched, irritable, and unnatural in manner that his family were full of perplexed wonder and solicitude. To hide his weakness from his wife was his supreme desire; and yet, if he stopped--were this possible--the whole wretched truth would be revealed. Each day he had been tormented with the feeling that something must be done, and yet nothing had been done. He had only sunk deeper and deeper, as with the resistless force of gravitation. His vague hope, his baseless dream that something would occur which would make reform easier or the future clearer, had now been dissipated utterly, and every moment with more terrible distinctness revealed to him the truth that he had lost his manhood. The vice was already stamped on his face and manner, so that an experienced eye could detect it at, once; soon all would see the degrading brand. He, who had once been the soul of honor and truth, had lied that day again and again, and the thought pierced him like a sword. And now, after his useless falsehoods, what should he do? He was no longer unacquainted with his condition--few opium victims are, at his advanced stage of the habit--and he knew well how long and terrible would be the ordeal of a radical cure, even if he had the will-power to attempt it. He had, of late, taken pains to inform himself of the experience of others who had passed down the same dark, slippery path, and when he tried to diminish instead of increasing his doses of morphia, he had received fearful warnings of the awful chasm that intervened between himself and safety. A few opium consumers can go on for years in comparative tranquillity if they will avoid too great excess, and carefully increase their daily allowance so as not to exhibit too marked alternations of elation and depression. Now and then, persons of peculiar constitution can maintain the practice a long time without great physical or moral deterioration; but no habitue can stop without sufferings prolonged and more painful than can be described. Sooner or later, even those natures which offer the strongest resistance to the ravages of the poison succumb, and pass hopelessly to the same destruction. Mr. Jocelyn's sanguine, impulsive temperament had little capacity for resistance to begin with, and he had during the last year used the drug freely and constantly, thus making downward advances in months that in some instances require years of moderate indulgence. Moreover, as with alcohol, many natures have an unusual and morbid craving for opium after once acquiring the habit of its use. Their appetite demands it with an imperiousness which will not be denied, even while in soul they recoil and loathe the bondage. This was especially true of Mr. Jocelyn. The vice in his case was wrecking a mind and heart naturally noble and abounding in the best impulses. He was conscious, too, of this demoralization, and suffered almost as greatly as would a true, pure woman, if, by some fatal necessity, she were compelled to live a life of crime. He had already begun to shrink from the companionship of his family. The play and voices of his little children jarred his shattered nerves almost beyond endurance; and every look of love and act of trust became a stinging irritant instead of the grateful incense that had once filled his home with perfume. In bitter self-condemnation he saw that he was ceasing to be a protector to his daughters, and that unless he could break the dark, self-woven spells he would drag them down to the depths of poverty, and then leave them exposed to the peculiar temptations which, in a great city, ever assail girls so young, beautiful, and friendless. Mildred, he believed, would die rather than sin; but he often groaned in spirit as he thought of Belle. Their considerate self-denial that he might not be disturbed after his return from business, and their looks of solicitude, pierced him daily with increasing torture; and the knowledge that he added to the monotony of their lives and the irksomeness of their poverty oppressed him with a dejection that was relieved only by the cause of all his troubles. But the thought of his loving, trusting, patient wife was the most unendurable of all. He had loved her from the first as his own soul, and her love and respect were absolutely essential to him, and yet he was beginning to recoil from her with a strange and unnatural force. He felt that he had no right to touch her while she remained so true and he was so false. He dreaded her loving gaze more than a detective's cold, searching eye. He had already deceived her in regard to the marks of the hypodermic needle, assuring her that they were caused by a slight impurity in his blood, and she never questioned anything he said. He often lay awake through interminable nights--the drug was fast losing its power to produce quiet sleep--trembling and cold with apprehension of the hour when she would become aware that her husband was no longer a man, but the most degraded of slaves. She might learn that she was leaning, not even on a frail reed, but on a poisoned weapon that would pierce her heart. It seemed to him that he would rather die than meet that hour when into her gentle eyes would come the horror of the discovery, and in fact the oft-recurring thought of it all had caused more pain than a hundred deaths. Could he go home now and reveal his degradation? Great drops of cold perspiration drenched him at the bare thought. The icy waters, the ooze and mud of the river seemed preferable. He could not openly continue his vice in the presence of his family, nor could he conceal it much longer, and the attempt to stop the drug, even gradually, would transform him almost into a demon of irritability and perhaps violence, so frightful is the rebellion of the physical nature against the abstinence essential to a final cure. At last he matured and carried out the following plan: Returning to the firm that had employed him, he told them of his purpose to go South among his old acquaintances and begin life anew, and of his belief that a sea voyage and change of scene would enable him to break the habit; and he so worked upon their sympathies that they promised to say nothing of his weakness, and not to let the past stand in his way if he would redeem himself. Then fortifying his nerves carefully with morphia he went home and broached the project to his wife and Mildred, plausibly advancing the idea that the change might restore his failing health. To his relief they did not oppose his scheme, for indeed they felt that something must be done speedily to arrest his decline; and although the separation would be hard for the wife to endure, and would become a source of increased anxiety for a time, it was much better than seeing him fail so steadily before her eyes. His plan promised improvement in their fortunes and cure of the mysterious disease that was slowly sapping his life. Therefore she tearfully consented that he should go, and if the way opened favorably it was decided that the family should follow him. The only question now was to raise the money required; and to accomplish this they sold the household effects still in storage, and Mildred, without a word, disposed of the most of her jewelry and brought the proceeds to her father; for the gold and gems worn in days that accorded with their lustre were as nothing to her compared with her father's life and health. "I would turn my blood into gold if I could, father," she said, with swimming eyes, "if it would only make you well and strong as you once were." The man's hand so trembled that he could scarcely receive the money. When by himself he groaned, "Oh, how awful and deep will be the curse of God if I turn this money against her by using it for the damnedest poison the devil ever brewed!" and he wrapped it up separately with a shudder. A few days later, with many tears and clinging embraces, they parted with him, his wife whispering in his ear at the last moment, "Martin, my every breath will be a prayer for your safety and health." Under the influence of the powerful emotions inspired by this last interview he threw his hypodermic syringe and morphia bottle overboard from the deck of the steamer, saying, with a desperate resolution which only an opium slave could understand, "I'll break the habit for one week if I die for it," and he sailed away into what seemed a region of unimaginable horrors, dying ten thousand deaths in the indescribable anguish of his mind and body. The winter storm that soon overtook the ship was magnified by his disordered intellect until its uproar was appalling in the last degree. The people on the vessel thought him demented, and for a few days the captain kept him under a continuous guard, and considerately suppressed the cause of his behavior, that was soon revealed by requests for opium that were sometimes pitiful pleadings and again irritable demands. He soon passed into a condition approaching collapse, vomiting incessantly, and insane in his wild restlessness. Indeed he might have died had not the captain, in much doubt and anxiety, administered doses of laudanum which, in his inexperience, were appalling in their amount. At last, more dead than alive, with racking pains, shiverings and exhaustion from prolonged insomnia, he was taken ashore in a Southern city and a physician summoned, who, with a promptness characteristic of the profession, administered a preparation of morphia, and the old fatal spell was renewed at once. The vitiated system that for days had been largely deprived of its support seized upon the drug again with a craving as irresistible as the downward rush of a torrent. The man could no more control his appetite than he could an Atlantic tide. It overwhelmed his enervated will at once, and now that morphine could be obtained he would have it at any and every cost. Of course he seemingly improved rapidly under its influence, and cunningly disguising his condition from the physician, soon dismissed him and resumed his old habits. He felt that it was impossible to endure the horrors of total abstinence, and, now that he was no longer under the observation of his family, he again tried to satisfy his conscience by promising himself that he would gradually reduce the amount used until he could discontinue it utterly--delusive hope, that has mocked thousands like himself. If he could have gone to an asylum and surrounded his infirm will by every possible safeguard, he might have been carried through the inevitable period of horrible depression; but even then the habit had become so confirmed that his chances would have been problematical, for experience sadly proves that confirmed opium-consumers are ever in danger of a relapse. CHAPTER XXVIII NEW YORK'S HUMANITY Mrs. Jocelyn drooped in her husband's absence, for every year had increased her sense of dependence. She felt somewhat like one who is drifting on a wreck. If the sea would only remain calm, all might be well; but the sea never is at rest very long, and if storms, dangers, and emergencies occurred what would she do? Each day that passed without word from her husband grew longer, and when at last a letter came it was vague and unsatisfactory. He hoped he was better; he hoped to find a foothold; and then came again several days of silence which were almost as oppressive to Mildred as to herself. Meanwhile their funds were failing fast, and they both felt that they ought not to sell anything else for mere living expenses. More critical emergencies might arise and find them destitute. If Mr. Jocelyn should become seriously ill in the South, they must be in a position to have him cared for and brought home. Mildred with extreme reluctance was compelled to face the necessity of giving up her studies so that she might earn something at once. She had about decided to reveal her troubles to Miss Wetheridge, when a hasty note from her friend swept away all immediate chance of aid in that direction. "The gentleman to whom I was soon to be married," she wrote, "has not been strong for a year past, and a few days since he was taken with a hemorrhage from his lungs. His physician ordered him to go immediately to Nassau. In accordance with our mutual wishes we were married quietly in the presence of a few relatives, and by the time this note reaches you we shall be on our way to the South. My heart is burdened with anxiety, and my hourly prayer is that God will spare the life of one so dear to me. I wish I could see you before I sail, but it is impossible. I have had to leave almost everything undone. Write me often." This note threw Mildred on her own resources. She felt that Mr. Wentworth could do little for her beyond certifying to her character, for he was the pastor of a congregation of which a large proportion were as poor as herself. There was naught to do but go to work like the others in uncomplaining silence and earn her bread. One evening she learned from Belle that the increased trade incident to the approaching holiday season had rendered more help necessary, and that one large shop on Sixth Avenue had already made known this need. When the doors opened the following morning, Mildred was among the crowd of applicants, and her appearance was so much in her favor that she was engaged at once on a salary of six dollars a week. Only immediate necessity could have induced her to take this step, for she justly doubted her ability to endure the strain of standing continuously. The shop, however, was full of girls as frail-looking as herself, and it was the only certainty of support within her reach. Her mother cried bitterly over the step, and she, also, could not hide a few tears, brave as she tried to be; but she said resolutely, "I'm no better than hundreds of others, and if they can endure it I can and will, for a while at least." The first day was one that she never forgot. The bright sun and clear, bracing atmosphere brought out crowds of shoppers, but the air of the store soon became vitiated, hot, and lifeless. In this close, stifling place she was compelled to stand, elbowed by other girls who were strangers to her, and too busy or too indifferent to aid materially her inexperienced efforts to learn her duties. She made blunders, for which she was scolded; she grew bewildered and faint, and when the few moments of nooning came she could not eat the lunch her mother had prepared. If she could only have had a cup of strong coffee she might have got through the day; but her employers were much too thrifty to furnish such a luxury, and she was too tired, and the time allotted her much too brief to permit its quest. Therefore she tried to rest a little from the intolerable fatigue and pain of standing, and to collect her thoughts. The afternoon crush of customers was greater even than that which had crowded the counters in the morning, and she grew more and more bewildered under the confused fire of questions and orders. If any one had had the time or heart to observe, there would have been seen in her eyes the pathetic, fearful look of some timid creature of the woods when harried and driven to bay by hounds. Suddenly everything grew black before her eyes; the piled-up goods, the chattering throng, faded, and she sank to the floor--there was no room for her to fall. When she revived she found that she had been carried to the cloak-room, in which the girls ate their lunch, and that a woman was kneeling beside her applying restoratives. In a few moments one of the managers looked in and asked, in an off-hand way, "How is she getting on?" With the instinct of self-preservation Mildred sat up, and pleaded, "Indeed, sir, I'm better. It was all so strange--the air was close. I beg of you not to discharge me. I will learn soon." "Oh, don't be so worried," the man replied good-naturedly. "It's nothing new to have a girl faint on the first day. You'll get used to it by and by like the rest. Will you be well enough to walk home, or shall I have a carriage ordered?" "Please don't get a carriage. It would frighten mamma terribly, and she would not let me come back, and I MUST come, for we need every penny I can earn." "Well, now, that's sensible, and you save the carriage hire also. You're a fine-looking, plucky girl, and I'll give you a place at the lace counter, near the door, where the air is better and the work lighter (and where her pretty face will do us no harm," he added mentally). "You are very kind, sir, and I can't tell you how much I thank you." "All right, you'll get into training and do as well as the best, so don't be discouraged," and the man had the grace or business thrift--probably a blending of both--to send her a cup of coffee. She was then left to rest, and go home when she felt like it. As early as she dared without exciting her mother's suspicions, she crept away, almost as the wounded slowly and painfully leave a field of battle. Her temples still throbbed; in all her body there was a slight muscular tremor, or beating sensation, and her step faltered from weakness. To her delicate organization, already reduced by anxiety, sedentary life, and prolonged mental effort, the strain and nervous shock of that day's experiences had been severe indeed. To hide the truth from her despondent mother was now her chief hope and aim. Her fatigue she would not attempt to disguise, for that would be unnatural. It was with difficulty she climbed the one flight of stairs that led to their room, but her wan face was smiling as she pushed open the door and kissed her mother in greeting. Then throwing herself on the lounge she cried gayly, "Come, little mother, give me an old maid's panacea for every ill of life--a cup of strong tea." "Millie," cried Mrs. Jocelyn, bending over her with moist eyes, "you look pale and gone--like--" "Oh no, mamma, I'm here--a good hundred and ten pounds of me, more or less." "But how did you get through the day?" "You will hardly believe it," was the reassuring reply; "I've been promoted already from work that was hard and coarse to the lace counter, which is near the door, where one can breathe a little pure air. If the goods were as second-hand as the air they would not have a customer. But come, mamma dear, I'm too tired to talk, and would rather eat, and especially drink. These surely are good symptoms." "Millie, you are a soldier, as we used to say during the war," said Mrs. Jocelyn, hastening the preparations for supper; "but you cannot deceive a mother's eyes. You are more exhausted than you even realize yourself. Oh, I do wish there was some other way. I'd give all the world if I had Mrs. Wheaton's stout red arms, for I'd rather wash all day and half the night than see you and Belle so burdened early in life." "I wouldn't have my beautiful mamma changed even by one gray hair," was the very natural response. Belle nearly rendered futile all of Mildred's efforts to hide the worst from her mother; for, after her duties were over, she went eagerly to the shop where she expected to find her sister. Having learned that Miss Jocelyn had fainted and had gone home some time in the afternoon, she sped almost breathlessly after her, and burst into the room with the words, "Millie! Millie!" Fortunately Mrs. Jocelyn was busy over the stove at the moment and did not see Mildred's strong cautionary gesture; but Belle's perceptions were almost instantaneous, and with one significant glance of her dark eyes she entered into the loving conspiracy. "What is it, Belle?" was Mrs. Jocelyn's anxious query. "I'm wild to know how Millie has got on the first day, and whether she has a big fight on her hands as I had. If she has, I declare war, too, against all the powers and principalities--not of the air, for there wasn't a breath of it in our store to-day. We've had a crush, and I'm half dead from trying to do two days' work in one. Ten minutes for lunch. Scores of cross customers all wanting to be waited on at once, and the floor-walkers flying around like hens bereft of heads, which, after all, are never of much use to either. In spite of all, here we are, mamma, ready for a cup of your good tea and other fixin's. Now, Millie, it's your turn. I've let off enough steam to be safe till after supper. Have you made cruel enemies to-day, from whom you desire my protection?" "No, Belle," said Mildred, laughing; "I haven't your force and brilliancy, and have made but a humdrum beginning. I was so stupid at one counter that they transferred me to another, and I'm glad of it, for laces are pretty, and taking care of them wouldn't seem like drudgery at all. Best of all, it's near the door, and every customer will give me a sustaining breath." "Millie is standing it capitally for a beginner," Belle remarked, with the air of a veteran, as Mildred eagerly drank her cup of tea and asked for more. "I was so tired the first night that it seemed as if I could scarcely swallow a mouthful." Thus they carried out the little ruse, careful not to exaggerate, for Mrs. Jocelyn's intuitions were quick. As it was she looked at her child with many misgivings, but she tried for their sakes to be cheerful, and praised the courage and spirit of both the girls, assuring them that they showed their true Southern blood, and that they reminded her of their father when, during his brief visits, he talked over the long, hard campaigns. At last they were in the privacy of their own room, and Mildred, as if she were the weaker and younger, buried her face on her sister's shoulder and sobbed despairingly, "Oh, Belle, you are the stronger. I fear I can't stand it at all. I've suffered more to-day than in all my life, and my feet and back still ache--oh, I can't tell you." The child soothed and comforted her, and said she had suffered just the same at first, and often still she felt that if she could not sit down for a few moments she would drop down; "but there, Millie," she concluded, with the best philosophy the case admitted of, "you get used to it gradually--you can get used to anything." "I don't believe I can," was the dejected reply, "and yet I must, if we would have shelter and bread. Oh that we might hear some good news from papa! Why don't he write oftener? I fear it is because he has nothing cheering to tell us." The next morning, in spite of all effort, Mildred was too ill and lame to rise, but she instructed Belie to assure her employer that she would come the following day. Mrs. Jocelyn tried hard to persuade her not to go back at all, and at last Mildred grew a little stern and said emphatically, "Please say no more, mamma. We can afford none of this weak nonsense. I must earn my bread, as do other girls, and have no time to lose." The following day, fortunately, was so stormy that customers were scattering, and Mildred had a chance to gain an idea of her duties and to rest a little from time to time, for out of consideration of the facts that she had been ill and was a beginner, she was permitted to sit down occasionally. She was so attractive in appearance, and had brought such an excellent certificate of character, that the proprietors were inclined to be lenient, and smooth a little the harsh and thorny path of a beginner. And so the weary days dragged on, and she slowly acquired the power to stand as did the others. They were days, however, which ended in a close approach to agony, from which the nights brought but slight and temporary relief, for so great was the pain in her feet and back that she would moan even in her sleep. Her sufferings were scarcely less than at first, but, as Belle said, she was "getting used" to them. It is a well-known fact that many would persist in living in spite of all the tortures of the Inquisition. I wonder if the old-time inquisitors and their "familiars" were ingenious enough to compel delicate women to stand and talk all day, and sometimes part of the night? In very truth, the poor girl was earning her bread by torture, and she soon found that she had many companions in suffering who, with woman's capacity for the patient endurance of pain, made the best of their lot, often trying to forget themselves in jests, laughter, and gossip, planning, meanwhile, in odd moments, for some snatch at the few pleasures that their brief evenings permitted--pleasures, too often, in which Mildred could or would take no part. While her gentleness and courtesy to all gave no cause for hostility, her air of quiet aloofness and her recognized superiority prevented her from becoming a favorite, nor did the many admiring looks and even open advances that she received from the young men in the store, and occasionally from customers, add to her popularity. The male clerks soon found, however, that beyond the line warranted by their mutual duties she was utterly unapproachable, and not a few of them united in the view held by the girls, that she was "stuck up"; but since she was not in the least above her business, no one could complain openly. As one long, exceedingly busy and weary day was drawing to a close, however, she received a sharp reprimand. A gentleman had agreed to meet his wife at the shop as he came up town, in order that they might together make provision for Christmas. The lady having nearly accomplished her round, and having proved herself a liberal purchaser, she was naturally accompanied toward the door by a very amiable foreman, who was profuse in his thanks. Suddenly it occurred to her that she would look at the laces, and she approached Mildred, who, in a momentary respite, was leaning back against the shelves with closed eyes, weary beyond all words of description. "Will you please wake that young woman up," the lady remarked, a little sharply. This the foreman did, in a way that brought what little blood the poor girl had left into her face. The shopper sat down on the plush seat before the counter, and was soon absorbed in the enticing wares, while her husband stood beside her and stole sidelong glances at the weary but beautiful face of the saleswoman. "Jupiter Ammon," he soliloquized mentally, "but she is pretty! If that flush would only last, she'd be beautiful; but she's too pale and fagged for that--out to a ball last night, I imagine. She don't even notice that a man's admiring her--proof, indeed, that she must have danced till near morning, if not worse. What lives these girls lead, if half the stories are true! I'd like to see that one rested, fresh, and becomingly dressed. She'd make a sensation in a Fifth Avenue drawing-room if she had the sense to keep her mouth shut, and not show her ignorance and underbreeding." But he was growing impatient, and at last said, "Oh, come, my dear, you've bought enough to break me already. We'll be late for dinner." The lady rose reluctantly, and remarked, "Well, I think I'll come and look at these another day," and they were bowed out of the door. "You must be more alert," said the foreman, imperatively, to Mildred. "These people are among the best and wealthiest in town." "I'll try," was the meek answer. The gentleman had hardly reached the sidewalk, however, before all his chivalry and indignation were aroused. Under the press of Christmas times a drayman had overloaded his cart, and the horse was protesting in his dumb way by refusing to budge an inch; meanwhile the owner proved himself scarcely equal to the animal he drove by furious blows and curses, which were made all the more reckless by his recent indulgence in liquor. The poor beast soon found many champions, and foremost among them was the critic of the weary shop-girl, who had suffered more that day than the horse was capable of suffering in his lifetime. The distinguished citizen, justly irate, I grant, sent his wife home in their carriage, and declared that he would neither eat nor sleep until he had seen the brute--the drayman, not the horse--arrested and looked up, and he kept his word. Much later, the wronged and tortured human creature of whom he had surmised evil, and on whom he had bestowed at best only a little cynical admiration, crept home with steps that faltered, burdened with a heaviness of heart and a weariness of body which could be measured only by the pitiful eye of Him who carries the world's sins and sorrows. The rescued horse munched his oats in stolid tranquillity, the woman raised to heaven her eyes, beneath which were dark, dark lines, and murmured, "O God, how long?" CHAPTER XXIX THE BEATITUDES OF OPIUM At least once each week Roger took Belle to some evening entertainment, selecting places that, while innocent, were in keeping with their years--full of color, life, and interest. The young girl improved at once, as the result of this moderate gratification of a craving that was as proper as it was natural. The sense of being restricted and arbitrarily shut away from the pleasures belonging to her youth no longer worked like a subtle and evil ferment in her mind. The repressed and unhappy are in tenfold more danger from temptation than those who feel they are having their share of life's good. The stream that cannot flow in the sunshine seeks a subterranean channel, and in like manner when circumstances, or the inconsiderate will of others, impose unrelenting restraint upon the exuberant spirit of youth, it usually finds some hidden outlet which cannot bear the light. Until Roger came, circumstances had restricted Belle within such a narrow and colorless life, and she was growing very discontented with her lot--a dangerous tendency. Through all this long ordeal her mother and Mildred had retained her sympathy, for she knew that they were not to blame, and that they were right in protesting against all acquaintances and amusements which involved danger. Now that she and Roger occasionally had a merry time together, and a confidential chat on Sunday, she accepted her long days of toil without complaint. The wholesome and tonic influence of a few hours of positive and unalloyed enjoyment in a busy or burdened life is properly estimated by a very few. Multitudes would preach better, live better, do more work and die much later, could they find some innocent recreation to which they could often give themselves up with something of the wholehearted abandon of a child. Belle now had pleasures to look forward to, or some bright scene to live over again, and, were it not for her sympathy for her sister and anxiety on her father's behalf, her brow would have been serene. To Mildred, however, the days were growing darker and the way more thorny. She was gaining only in the power of endurance; she was unconsciously developing the trait that bade fair to become the keynote of her life--fidelity. It was her absolute loyalty to her long-cherished love that prevented her from accepting invitations to go with Belle and Roger. Through all disguises she saw that the latter was a lover and not a friend, and while she had learned to respect him much more, she shrank from him none the less. True, therefore, to her womanly instincts, and pathetically patient with a life full of pain and weariness, she faltered on toward a future that seemed to promise less and less. Roger did not need to be told by Belle of Mildred's burdened life, although the young girl did speak of it often with sad and indignant emphasis. "Beautiful Millie, who would grace the finest house in the city," she said, "is as much out of place in this life as if a gazelle were made to do the work of a cart-horse. It's just killing her." "It's not the work that's harming her so much as the accursed brutality which permits more cruelty to white women than was ever inflicted on black slaves. If the shopkeepers owned these girls who serve their counters they would provide them seats instantly, on the same principle that some of your Southern people, who had no humanity, cared well for their human property; but these fellows know that when a girl breaks down they can take their pick from twenty applicants the next morning. If I could scalp a few of these woman-murderers, I'd sleep better to-night. Oh, Belle, Belle, ii you knew how it hurts me to see such advantage taken of Miss Mildred! I sometimes walk the streets for hours chafing and raging about it, and yet any expression of my sympathy would only add to her distress. You must never speak to her of me, Belle, except in a casual way, when you cannot help it, for only as I keep aloof, even from her thoughts, can she tolerate me at all." "Be patient, Roger. Millie is unlike many girls, and wants only one lover. Now I'd like half a dozen, more or less, generally more. She's too infatuated with that weakling, Vinton Arnold, to care for any one else. And to think he hasn't sent her one reassuring word since last summer! There isn't enough of him to cast a shadow. Catch me moping after such a dim outline of a man! But it's just like Millie. If he'd only vanish into thin air she might give him up, and perhaps he has." "No, he's in Europe, and has been there ever since he left the hotel at Forestville. I learned the fact the other day. He's living in luxury and idleness, while the girl who loves him is earning her bread in a way that's infernal in its cruelty." "How did you find that out?" Belle asked quickly. "It was in no mean or underhand way, and no knowledge of my inquiries will ever reach him. I thought she'd like to know, however, and you can tell her, but give her no hint of the source of your information." "Who told you?" was Mildred's prompt response to Belle's news that night, while a sudden bloom in her pale face showed how deeply the tidings interested her. "No matter how I learned the fact," replied Belle a little brusquely; "it's true. He wouldn't lift his little finger to keep you from starving." "You wrong him," cried Mildred passionately; "and I don't wish you ever to speak of him again. I know who told you: it was Roger Atwood, and I wish he would leave me and my affairs alone. He is singularly stupid and ill-bred to meddle in such a matter." "He has not meddled," retorted Belle indignantly, and wholly off her guard; "he thought you might like to know the truth, and he learned it in a way that left no trace. When you are in the streets you are always looking for Mr. Arnold (it's a pity he wasn't doing a little looking, too), and now your mind can be at ease. He isn't sick or dead; he's entirely safe and having a good time, faring sumptuously every day, while you are dying by inches for little more than bread and a nook in a tenement-house. I don't care what you say, I detest such a man." Mildred's overtaxed nerves gave way at Belle's harsh and prosaic words, and throwing herself on her couch she sobbed so bitterly that the inconsiderate child, in deep compunction, coaxed and pleaded with her not "to take it so hard," and ended by crying in sympathy, almost as heartily as Mildred herself. The latter was completely disarmed of her anger by Belle's feelings, and, indeed, as she came to think it all over, it did not seem so like desertion on Arnold's part, since he might have written from Europe and the letter have failed to reach her. That he should have been in New York all this time and have made no effort to find her would seem heartless indeed. At any rate, with her rare fidelity and faith, she would believe nothing against him without absolute proof. But of Roger Atwood she thought resentfully, "He reads my very thoughts. He has seen me looking for Vinton half-unconsciously when in the streets. He keeps himself in the background, and no doubt thinks himself very distant and considerate; but I can scarcely turn in any direction but I see his shadow, or meet with some indication that he is watching and waiting." There was more truth in her words than she half suspected. His duties required that he should be down town very early in the morning, but he was usually released in the afternoon, for his uncle tacitly humored his desire for study. Scarcely an evening elapsed that the young man did not pass and repass the shop in which Mildred was employed, for through the lighted windows he could see the object of his thoughts unobserved, and not infrequently he followed her as she wearily returned homeward, and his heart ached with the impotent desire to lighten the burdens of her life. He feared that she would never accept of his watchful care or thank him for it; but love is its own reward, and impels to action that does not well stand the test of the world's prosaic judgment. Beyond this brief and furtive gratification of his passion, he lost no time in sighing or sentiment, but bent his mind to his tasks with such well-directed and persistent energy that the commission merchant occasionally nodded significantly; for, in accordance with his habit, he took counsel of no one except himself. It was Roger's hope that, eventually, Mildred, for her own sake, could be persuaded to accompany Belle on some of their pursuits of evening recreation, and he suggested that the latter should persistently try to induce her to go, saying that her health and success in the future required more change and cheerfulness; but Mildred always said "No," with a quiet emphasis which admitted of no argument. In truth, when evening came she was too weary to go with him or with any one else, and the first Sunday after her duties at the shop began she could not be present at the chapel and meet her class. Mr. Wentworth called, fearing she was ill. She explained in part, and he was quick to understand. His brow darkened in such a frown that the poor girl grew frightened, and began: "Indeed, Mr. Wentworth, do not judge me harshly, or think that I let a trifle keep me--" Then he awakened to her misapprehension, and coming directly to her side he took her hand, with a face so kind, so full of deep, strong sympathy, that her eyes filled at once. "My poor child," he said, "could you imagine I was frowning at you?--brave little soldier that you are, braver and stronger in your way and place than I in mine. God bless you, no. I felt savage to think that in this nineteenth century, and right under the shadow of our church spires, this diabolical cruelty is permitted to go on year after year. Oh, I know all about it, Miss Mildred; you are not the first one by hundreds and hundreds. I wish I could give you more than sympathy, and that some other way would open--we must find some other way for you--but you have no idea how many are worse off in these bad times than you are--worthy people who are willing to work, but cannot get work. If it seems to you that I cannot do very much for you, remember that there are scores who, for the time, seem to have no resources at all. I trust you may soon hear such tidings from your father as will bring relief to both body and mind. And now, my child, don't let a morbid conscience add to your burdens. When you are as greatly in need of rest as you were last Sunday, don't come to the chapel. I'll take your class, or find a substitute." In a few minutes he was gone; but they were not alone, for he had made them conscious of One who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. How was the absent husband and father fulfilling the hopes that daily turned to him, but found no reward? He was literally writhing under chains that, to his horror, he could not break. He had found on shipboard that sudden and complete abstinence irom the drug brought a torture of mind and body that he could not endure, and now he was learning, in sickening fear, that he could not gradually reduce his daily allowance below a certain point without immediate sufferings beyond his fortitude to sustain. The room in the Inquisition, whose circular walls, studded with long, sharp spikes, gradually closed upon and pierced the victim, had its spiritual counterpart in his present condition. He was shut in on every side. If he made a push for liberty by abstaining from the drug, he was met and driven back by many nameless agonies. He seemed to recoil, inevitably, as if from steel barbs. Meanwhile the walls were closing in upon him. In order to prevent life from being a continuous burden, in order to maintain even the semblance of strength and manhood, so that he might have some chance of finding employment, he had to increase the quantity of morphia daily; but each succeeding indulgence brought nearer the hour when the drug would produce pain--pain only, and death. After a week or two of futile and spasmodic effort he drifted on in the old way, occasionally suffering untold agony in remorse and self-loathing, but stifling conscience, memory, and reason, as far as possible, by continuous stimulation. His quest of employment was naturally unsuccessful. The South was impoverished. Weak from the wounds of war, and the deeper enervation of a system that had poisoned her life for generations, she had not yet begun to rally. There was not enough business in the city for the slow and nerveless hands of its citizens, therefore there was little prospect for a new-comer, unless he had the capital and energy to create activity in the midst of stagnation. A few were slightly imposed upon at first by Mr. Jocelyn's exalted moods, and believed that he might do great things if he were given the chance; but they soon recognized that he was unsound and visionary, broaching plans and projects that varied widely with each succeeding interview. The greater number of his former friends and acquaintances were scattered or dead, and those who remembered him had their hands too full to do more than say a good word for him--saying it, too, more and more faintly as they saw how broken and untrustworthy he was. The story of his behavior on the ship, and correct surmises of the true cause of his manner and appearance, soon became current in business circles, and the half-pitying, half-contemptuous manner of those with whom he came in contact at last made it clear, even to his clouded mind, that further effort would be utterly useless. Meanwhile his habit now began to inflict a punishment that often seemed beyond endurance. The increased quantities of morphia with which he sought to sustain himself, combined with his anxiety, remorse, and solicitude for his family and his own future, filled the hours of darkness with one long nightmare of horror. His half-sleeping visions were more vivid and real than the scenes of day. From some harrowing illusion he would start up with a groan or cry, only to relapse a few moments later into an apparent situation more appalling and desperate. The earth would open and swallow him in fathomless darkness; then he was on a ship caught in a maelstrom and whirled down with a speed imaginable only by a mind as disordered and morbid as his own. Panting, struggling, drenched with a cold perspiration, he would struggle back into a brief and miserable consciousness. With scarcely any respite his diseased imagination would seize him again, and now the ship, with tattered sails and broken masts, would be becalmed in the centre of a cyclone. All around him was the whirling tornado from which the vessel had passed into awful silence and deceptive peace. Although viewless, a resistless volume was circling round him, a revolving torrent of air that might at any second make its existence known by wrenching the ship in some direction with such violence as to destroy it at once. When would the awful suspense be over, and the cyclone, with a peal of thunder through the rigging, again lay its frenzied grasp on the ill-fated ship? In unspeakable dread he seemed to spring from the deck in the hope of ending all, and would find himself gasping on his couch, which vice had made a place of torture, nor rest. But the visions which most shook his soul were those connected with his wife and children. He saw them starving; he saw them turned into the street, mocked and gibed at by every passer-by. He saw them locked up in prison-cells, under the charge of jailers that were half brute, half fiend; he saw Fred and Minnie carried off by an Italian padrone to a den reeking with filth, and loud with oaths and obscenity. With a hoarse shout of rage he would spring up to avert blows that were bruising their little forms; he saw his wife turn her despairing eyes from heaven and curse the hour of their union; he saw Mildred, writhing and resisting, dragged from her home by great dark hands that were claws rather than hands; worse than all, he saw Belle, dressed in colors that seemed woven from stains of blood, stealing out under the cover of night with eyes like livid coals. Such are the beatific visions that opium bestows, having once enchained its victims. Little wonder that, after spending nights upon a poisoned rack, Mr. Jocelyn was in no condition to meet his fellow-men and win their confidence. The dark thought crossed his mind more than once that he had better never return home--that, since he had lost his manhood, life had better go too; but in these darkest and most desperate moments the face of his wife would rise before him, and from her white lips came the cry, "No! no! no!" with such agonized intensity that he was restrained. Moreover, he had not given up hope altogether, and he determined to return, and, unknown to his family, consult his old physician, who had inadvertently led him into this terrible dilemma, and adjure him to undo his work. He might aid in concealing the truth from those from whom, of all others, the unhappy man would hide his shame. This seemed his one last chance. CHAPTER XXX THE SECRET VICE REVEALED On the day preceding Christmas, late in the afternoon, Roger Atwood boarded a steamer which had just arrived from a Southern city. His uncle, the commission merchant, was expecting a consignment of tropical fruits, and as the young man stood among others waiting to see the freight clerk, he overheard one of the vessel's officers remark, "His name is Jocelyn--so papers on his person indicate--and he must be sent to a hospital as soon as possible." Advancing promptly to the speaker, Roger said, "I overheard your remark, sir, and think I know the gentleman to whom you refer. If I am right, I will take him to his family immediately." The officer acted with such alacrity as to prove that he was very glad to get the sick man off his hands, and Roger noted the fact. A moment later he saw Martin Jocelyn, sadly changed for the worse, and lying unconscious in a berth. "I am right, I am very sorry to say," Roger said, after a moment, with a long, deep breath. "This will be a terrible shock to his family." "Do you think he is dying?" the officer asked. "I don't know. I will bring a physician and take Mr. Jocelyn home on one condition--that our consignment of produce is delivered at once. I must be absent, and my employer's interests must not suffer in consequence. I am doing you a favor, and you must return it just as promptly." The freight clerk was summoned, and Roger was assured that his uncle's consignment should take the precedence as fast as it could be reached. The young man then hastened to find the nearest physician, stopping a moment at his place of business to give a hurried explanation of his course. Mr. Atwood listened in silence, and nodded merely; but, as Roger hastened away, he muttered, "This mixing himself up with other people's troubles isn't very shrewd, but his making capital out of it so that my consignment will all be delivered to-night is--well, we'll call it even. He's no fool." The physician was rather young and inexperienced, and he pronounced Mr. Jocelyn's trouble to be congestion of the brain. He agreed to go with Roger to the old mansion and do what he could for the patient, although holding out slight hope of recovery. "She is learning to associate me with misfortune, and will dread my presence as if I were a bird of ill-omen," Roger groaned mentally, as he recalled the several miserable occasions which, in the mind of Mildred, were inseparably connected with himself; "but some day--SOME DAY, if I have to strive for a lifetime--she shall also learn that it is not I who bring the trouble." Christmas comes at the darkest and dreariest season of the year, making short, cold days, and longer, colder nights the holiday season, just as He, whose birth the day commemorates, comes to human hearts in the darkest and coldest hours of desolation. Even in the great city there were few homes so shadowed by poverty and sorrow that they were not brightened by some indications of the hallowed time. The old mansion, that once may have been embowered in evergreens, was again filled with the aromatic breath of the forest, for Roger had commissioned a friend in the country to send so large a supply to Belle that she was embarrassed with riches of hemlock, laurel, and pine, which, although given away prodigally, left enough to transform their rooms into the aspect of bowers. Since they had not money for toys, they could make the Christmas-tide a time of wonder and delight to Fred and Minnie in this inexpensive way, and Mildred, who would naturally shrink from the wild mountain home of the evergreen boughs, found in weaving and arranging them into tasteful decorations a pleasure alloyed by only one thought--she was indebted for it to Roger Atwood, the silent yet determined rival of the man she loved. Though he buried his feeling in such profound silence, and hid all manifestation so carefully that even her intuition could not lay hold of any one thing, and say, "This proves it," she nevertheless felt the presence of his love, and sometimes thought she felt it all the more because of its strong repression. It almost vexed her that he made no advances, and gave her nothing to resent, while all the time he was seeking her with the whole force of his will, or at least waiting for some possibility of the future. When Belle proposed that he should help decorate their living-room, since they, at this season, had only the remnants of evenings to give, and were wearied, too, almost beyond the power for extra effort, she felt that for Belle's sake she ought not to object, and that for her own sake she could not, so scrupulous had been the quiet, distant respect with which he had treated her. When he came he seemed to anticipate her thoughts and to obey her wishes in the arrangement of the greenery, even before she spoke, so keen was his observation and quick his sympathy with her mind. These very facts increased her prejudice and dislike. He was too clever, too keen-sighted and appreciative. Had he been indifferent toward her, and not so observant, she would have soon learned to like him and enjoy his society, for he had a bright, piquant way of talking, and was seldom at a loss for words. In fact, he had plenty of ideas, and was fast gaining more. One reason why Mildred shrank from him in strengthening repulsion was because, in his absorbing interest and his quick comprehension of her thought and feeling, he came too near. Without intending it, and in spite of himself, he intruded on her woman's privacy; for no matter how careful he might be, or how guarded she was in words or manner, she felt that he understood what was in her mind. Her natural impulse, therefore, was to shun his presence and suppress her own individuality when she could not escape him, for only an answering affection on her part could make such understanding appreciation acceptable. Roger was not long in guessing quite accurately how he stood in her thoughts, and he was often much depressed. As he had said to Clara Bute, he had a downright dislike to contend against, and this might not change with his success. And now it was his misfortune to become associated in her mind with another painful event--perhaps a fatal one. She might thank him sincerely for his kindness and the trouble he had taken in their behalf, but, all the same, deep in her heart, the old aversion would be strengthened. "That invertebrate, Arnold," he muttered, "represents to her the old, happy life; I, her present life, and it's my luck always to appear when things are at their worst. After to-night she will shudder with apprehension whenever she sees me. What WILL become of them if Mr. Jocelyn dies!" Full of forebodings and distress at the shock and sorrow impending over those in whom he was so deeply interested, he and the physician placed Mr. Jocelyn in a covered express wagon that was improvised into an ambulance, and drove up town as rapidly as they dared. In response to a low knock Mrs. Jocelyn opened the door, and the white, troubled face of Roger announced evil tidings before a word was spoken. "My husband!" she gasped, sinking into a chair. The young man knelt beside her and said, "Mrs. Jocelyn, his life may depend on your courage and fortitude." He had touched the right chord, and, after a momentary and half-convulsive sob, she rose quietly, and said, "Tell me what to do--tell me the worst." "I have brought him with me, and I have a physician also. I found him on a steamer, by accident. They were about to send him to a hospital, but I was sure you would want him brought home." "Oh, yes--God bless you--bring him, bring him quick." "Courage. Good nursing will prevent the worst." Roger hastened back to the patient, stopping on the way only long enough to ask Mrs. Wheaton to go to Mrs. Jocelyn's room instantly, and then, with the physician's aid, he carried the unconscious man to his room, and laid him on his bed. "Oh, Martin! Martin!" moaned the wife, "how changed, how changed! Oh, God! he's dying." "I hope not, madam," said the physician; "at any rate we must all keep our self-possession and do our best. While there is life there is hope." With dilated eyes, and almost fierce repression of all aid from other hands, she took the clothing from the limp and wasted form. "He IS dying," she moaned; "see how unnatural his eyes are; the pupils are almost gone. Oh, God! why did I let him go from me when he was so ill!" "Would you not like Belle and Miss Mildred summoned at once?" Roger asked. "Yes, yes, they ought to be here now; every moment may be precious, and he may become conscious." "At the same time I would like you to call on Dr. Benton in Twenty-third Street," added the physician. "He is a friend of mine, and has had much experience. In so serious a case I would like to consult him." Roger, while on his way to Dr. Benton's office, passed a livery-stable with a coach standing just within the door, and he at once resolved that the weary girls should not be exhausted by flying home in terror-stricken haste. He took the carriage, obtained the physician, and explained to him what had happened while on the way to the shop in which Belle was employed. It was Christmas-eve, and the store was still crowded with eleventh-hour purchasers, on whom the weary child was waiting in a jaded, mechanical way. Her vacant look and the dark lines under her eyes proved how exhausted she was; but at the sight of Roger a flash of light and pleasure came into her face, and then his expression caused it to fade into extreme pallor. "What is it?" she asked, turning from a garrulous customer. "Don't be alarmed; get your things and come with me. I will make it all right with your employer." "Belle," he said, when they were by the carriage door, "you must be a brave woman to-night. Your father is home, and he is very ill. Perhaps his life depends on quiet and freedom from all excitement. Dr Benton, an experienced physician, is in the carriage, and will go with us. You must tell your sister--I cannot." If Belle had been herself she would not have failed him; but, after the long strain of the day, she became completely unnerved at his tidings, and sobbed almost hysterically. She could not control herself sufficiently to enter the shop where Mildred stood, unconscious of the approaching shadow, and so the heavy task of breaking the news fell upon Roger. "If Belle, naturally so strong, was white and faint from the long, toilsome day, how wan and ghost-like poor Mildred will appear!" was his thought as he sprang to the sidewalk. They were closing up, and the discipline of the shop was over. Instead of pallor, there was an angry crimson in Mildred's cheeks, and an indignant fire in her eyes. She evidently was deeply incensed, and her companions apparently were as greatly amused. When she saw Roger the crimson deepened in her face, her brow knitted in strong vexation, and she went on with her task of putting the goods under her charge in order, as if she had not seen him; but the thought flashed through her mind: "Oh that he were to me what he is to Belle! Then he might punish my insolent persecutor, but he's the last one in the world to whom I can appeal. Oh, where's papa?" "Miss Jocelyn--" "Don't you see you have another beau?" whispered one of her companions as she passed out. "You won't treat this one with words and manner that are the same as a slap in the face, for he's too good-looking." She paid no heed to the gibe, for the young man's tone was significant, and she had lifted her eyes to his with eager questioning. His grave, sad face banished the flush from hers instantly. "Miss Jocelyn," Roger began again, in a low tone, "you have already learned to associate me with painful experiences. I cannot help it. But this, my misfortune, is nothing; you must nerve yourself for anxiety that will test even your strength. Your father is home, and ill. I will not explain further before strangers. Belle and a physician are awaiting you in the carriage." How quiet and measured were his words; but even in her distress she was painfully conscious that the slight tremor in his voice was the low vibration of a feeling whose repressed intensity would sooner or later break forth. Beyond a momentary shrinking from what seemed to her but well-mastered vehemence, she gave him no thought in her overwhelming solicitude. Scarcely a moment elapsed before she joined him at the door. As he placed her in the carriage he said, "Dr. Benton will explain to you what has happened." "Roger--" sobbed Belle, but he sprang on the box with the driver, and in a few moments they were at the door of the old mansion. "Dr. Benton," said the young man, "will you please accompany Miss Jocelyn? After the fatigue of the day and the shock of this evening she will need your support," and he saw that she leaned heavily on the physician's arm. Having dismissed the carriage, he found Belle leaning against the side of the house, faint and trembling. The young athlete lifted her in his arms and bore her steadily and easily to the doorway, and then again up the winding stairway. "Belle," he whispered, "if you lose your father you shall at least have a brother." She entwined her arm about his neck in mute acceptance of the relationship. Her every breath was a low sob, and she could not then tell him how his words reassured her, taking away, in part, the almost overwhelming terror of being left unprotected in the world. During Mr. Jocelyn's absence his family had tried to banish from their minds the memory of his weakness, and thus they had come to think of him again as the strong, cheerful, genial man they had known all their lives. The months preceding his departure were like a hateful dream. It had been a dearly cherished hope that, after breathing his native air for a few weeks, he would return the same frank, clear-eyed, clear-brained man that had won his way, even among strangers, after the wreck and ruin of the war. To him their thoughts had turned daily, in the hope of release from toil that was often torture, and from anxieties that filled every waking hour with foreboding. How bitter the disappointment then, and how terrible the shock, as they now looked upon his prostrate form, meagre, shrunken, and almost lifeless! Instead of the full, dark eyes that had beamed mirthfully and lovingly for so many years, there was an unnatural contraction of the pupils which rendered them almost invisible. His once healthful complexion was now livid, or rather of a leaden, bluish hue; his respirations stertorous and singularly deliberate. "He is dying," Mildred moaned; "he is far, far away from us, even now. Oh, if we could have but one look, one sign of farewell!" Belle and Mrs. Jocelyn became almost helpless with grief, for it did not seem possible to them that he could rally. "Oh, why did I let him go--why did I let him go!" was the wife's remorseful and often-repeated question. The elderly and experienced physician whom Roger had brought ignored with professional indifference the grief-stricken household, and was giving his whole mind to the study of the case. After examining the pupils of Mr. Jocelyn's eyes, taking his temperature, and counting his pulse, he looked at his associate and shook his head significantly. Roger, who stood in the background, saw that Dr. Benton did not accept the young physician's diagnosis. A moment later Dr. Benton bared the patient's arm and pointed to many small scars, some old and scarcely visible, and others recent and slightly inflamed. The young practitioner then apparently understood him, for he said, "This is both worse and better than I feared." "Worse, worse," growled Dr. Benton. "What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Jocelyn, more dead than alive. "Madam," began Dr. Benton very gravely, "have you never seen your husband using a little instrument like this?" and he produced from his pocket a hypodermic syringe. "Never," was the perplexed and troubled reply. The physician smiled a little satirically, and remarked, in a low aside, "I hope the drug has not affected the whole family. It's next to impossible to get at the truth in these cases." "Do you think he will die?" was her agonized query. "No, madam, we can soon bring him around, I think, and indeed he would probably have come out of this excess unaided; but he had better die than continue his excessive use of morphia. I can scarcely conceive how you could have remained ignorant of the habit." Mildred bowed her head in her hands with a low, despairing cry, for a flash of lurid light now revealed and explained all that had been so strange and unaccountable. The terrible secret was now revealed, as far as she was able to comprehend it--her father was an opium inebriate, and this was but the stupor of a debauch! The thought of his death had been terrible, but was not this worse? She lifted her face in a swift glance at Roger, and saw him looking at her with an expression, that was full of the strongest sympathy, and something more. She coldly averted her eyes, and a slow, deep flush of shame rose to her face, "Never shall I endure a humiliation but he will witness it, and be a part of it," was her bitter thought. The physicians meanwhile changed their treatment, and were busy with professional nonchalance. Mrs. Jocelyn was at first too bewildered by their words and manner to do more than look at them, with hands clasping and unclasping in nervous apprehension, and with eyes full of deep and troubled perplexity. Then, as the truth grew clearer, that a reflection had been made upon her own and her husband's truth, she rose unsteadily to her feet, and said, with a pathetic attempt at dignity, "I scarcely understand you, and fear that you as little understand my husband's condition. He never concealed anything from me. He has been unfortunate and in failing health for months, and that is all. I fear, from your cruel and unjust surmises, that you do not know what you are doing, and that you are destroying his slender chances for life." "Do you wish to discharge us, then?" was Dr. Benton's brusque response. He was a man of unusual skill, but blunt and unsympathetic, especially in cases wherein he suspected deception--an element almost inseparable from the morphia habit. The victim is almost invariably untruthful, and the family not unfrequently hide the whole truth in the desire to shield the disgraceful weakness. Dr. Benton was too familiar with these facts to be easily moved, but when the sad-hearted wife clasped her hands and cried, in tones that would touch the coldest heart, "I wish him to live, for his death would be far worse than death to us all," the physician said kindly, "There, there, Mrs. Jocelyn, I have seen many cases like this. Your husband will live, and will soon be able to speak to you. If you then can induce him to leave morphia alone, he may become as sound a man as ever." Mildred put her arm around her mother and drew her into her room, closing the door. A few moments later Roger heard the wife's passionate protest, "I do not believe it--I will never believe it." Then Dr. Benton said to him, "Here, young man, run to my house for an electric battery." When he returned Mr. Jocelyn was coming slowly out of his deep coma, and his appearance was changing rapidly for the better. There was a deep, indignant flush on Mrs. Jocelyn's face, and she took Roger aside and said earnestly, "Never believe the lies you have heard here to-night. I know that you will never repeat them." "Never, Mrs. Jocelyn." But Mildred was pale and almost stony in her cold, calm aspect; her heart, in her desperation, was hard toward every one. Belle had not comprehended the truth at all, having been too much overwhelmed by her emotions to heed the earlier remarks of the physicians, and Mildred had said to them significantly and almost sternly, "There is no need of giving your diagnosis any further publicity." Dr. Benton had then looked at her more attentively, and muttered, "An unusual girl; more's the pity." "Mr. Atwood," Mildred began, a few moments after his entrance, "we thank you for your aid in this painful emergency, but we need trouble you no further. Papa is rallying fast. I will thank you to inform me of all the expense which you have incurred in our behalf at your earliest convenience." "Mildred," interposed Mrs. Jocelyn, suddenly appearing from beside her husband's couch, the unwonted fire still burning in her usually gentle eyes, "I cannot permit Mr. Atwood to be dismissed so coldly. He has been a true friend in the most terrible emergency of our lives. I must have a strong, kind hand to sustain me now that my husband, my life, has been foully slandered in his own home." Belle, in even greater terror of being left alone, clung to his arm, and said, "He cannot leave us--he has made me a promise this night which will keep him here." With a troubled and deprecating look at Mildred, Roger replied, "I will not fail you, Mrs. Jocelyn, nor you, Belle; but there is no further need of my intruding on your privacy. I shall be within call all night." "He can stay in my room," said Mrs. Wheaton, who, although aiding the physicians, could not help overhearing the conversation. "No, he shall stay here," cried Belle passionately; "I'm so unnerved that I'm almost beside myself, and he quiets me and makes me feel safer. Millie has no right to show her prejudice at such a time." Mildred, white and faint, sank into a chair by the table and buried her face in her arms, leaving the young fellow in sore perplexity as to what course he ought to take. He believed the physicians were right, and yet Mrs. Jocelyn had taken it for granted that he shared her faith in her husband's truth, and he knew she would banish him from her presence instantly should he betray a doubt as to the correctness of her view. At the same time the expression of his face had shown Mildred that he understood her father's condition even better than she did. It seemed impossible to perform the difficult and delicate part required of him, but with love's loyalty he determined to do what he imagined the young girl would wish, and he said firmly, "Belle, I again assure you that you can depend upon my promise to the utmost. Mrs Jocelyn, my respect for you is unbounded, and the privilege of serving you is the best reward I crave. At the same time I feel that it is neither right nor delicate for me to witness sorrows that are so sacred. My part is to help, and not look on, and I can help just as well if within call all the time. Belle," he whispered, "dear Belle, I know you are unnerved by weeks of overwork as well as by this great trouble, but be a brave little woman once more, and all may soon be well," and he was about to withdraw when Dr. Benton appeared and said: "Mrs. Jocelyn, your husband is now out of all immediate danger, but everything depends upon his future treatment. I wish this young man to remain a little longer, for you must now decide upon what course you will take. We have been called in an emergency. There is no need that I should remain any longer, for the physician who accompanied him here is now amply competent to attend to the case. You have, however, expressed lack of confidence in us, and may wish to send for your own physician. If so, this young man can go for him at once. I can prove to you in two minutes that I am right, and I intend to do so; then my responsibility ceases. Everything depends on your intelligent and firm co-operation with whatever physician has charge of the case, and it is no kindness to leave you under a delusion that does your heart more credit than your head or eyes." He stepped back through the curtained doorway, and returned with her husband's vest, from an inner pocket of which he took a hypodermic syringe, a bottle of Magendie's solution, and also another vial of the sulphate of morphia. "I am an old physician," he resumed, "and know your husband's symptoms as well as you know his face. His possession of these articles should confirm my words. The slight scars upon his arms and elsewhere were made by this little instrument, as I can show you if you will come and observe--" His medical logic was interrupted by a low cry from the stricken wife, and then she fainted dead away. Mildred, on the contrary, stepped forward, with a pale, stern face, and said, "I will take charge of these," and she, carried the agents of their ruin to her own room. Instantly she returned, and assisted Mrs. Wheaton in the restoration of her mother. To Belle, who had looked on dazed, trembling, and bewildered, Roger whispered, "I shall be within call all night." CHAPTER XXXI AN OPIUM MANIAC'S CHRISTMAS Beneath his brusque manner Dr. Benton masked a kind heart when once its sympathies were touched. He soon became satisfied that Mr. Jocelyn's family were not trying to shield his patient, but were, on the contrary, overwhelmed with dismay and shame at the truth which he had made clear to them. He therefore set about helping them, in his own prosaic but effective way, and he did not leave them until they were all as well and quiet as the dread circumstances of the situation permitted. Opium slaves are subject to accidents like that which had overtaken Mr. Jocelyn, who, through heedlessness or while half unconscious, had taken a heavy overdose, or else had punctured a vein with his syringe. Not infrequently habitues carelessly, recklessly, and sometimes deliberately end their wretched lives in this manner. Dr. Benton knew well that his patient was in no condition to enter upon any radical curative treatment, and it was his plan to permit the use of the drug for a few days, seeking meanwhile to restore as far as possible his patient's shattered system, and then gain the man's honest and hearty co-operation in the terrible ordeal essential to health and freedom. If Mr. Jocelyn had not the nerve and will-power to carry out his treatment--which he much doubted--he would advise that he be induced to go to an institution where the will of others could enforce the abstinence required. He believed that Mr. Jocelyn would consent to this, when convinced of his inability to endure the ordeal in his own strength. Having explained his intentions and hopes to Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred, he left them cast down indeed, but not utterly devoid of hope. It seemed to them that the husband and father must renounce the fatal habit at once, in response to their appeals. They could not understand that it was already beyond his power to break his chains--that they must be broken by other hands, if broken at all. It may well be doubted if the light of Christmas day dawned on a sadder household than that which was sheltered in the old mansion. Worn and exhausted to the last degree, and yet sleepless from anxiety, grief, and shame, the two women watched beside the fitful, half-conscious man. At last he appeared to throw off his stupor sufficiently to recognize his wife; but it was with a strange look, in which were blended fear, suspicion, and shame. A cold perspiration broke out over his whole form, for something in her expression, and especially in the aspect of Mildred's face, seemed to indicate that they knew all, and his own guilty fears and conscience made the surmise true for the moment; but the tender manner in which his wife wiped his brow and kissed him were reassuring, and with his rallying powers grew the hope that his weakness might yet be unknown and successfully concealed until, by his physician's aid, he had thrown off the curse. Fearing above and beyond all things else that his wife would learn his degradation, he slowly and fitfully tried to mature plans of deception; but his enfeebled mind rallied so slowly that he felt for a time that silence and observation were his best allies. He would cautiously and suspiciously feel his way, and having learned all that had transpired since he remembered being on the steamer, he could then decide more clearly how to shape his course. He therefore affected to regard his condition as the result of a severe illness, and murmured that "quiet and home life would soon bring him round." Mildred kissed him also, and answered, "We cannot think otherwise, papa, for our love, our lives, and all are bound up in you." The morning dragged heavily away, for all except the little ones were under the impression that dark and woful days were before them. Mr. Benton had not disguised the truth--that the problem with which they had to deal was one of great difficulty and much doubt. This prospect was depressing, but that which weighed like lead upon their hearts was the thought that one who had ever been their ideal of honor and truth had deceived them for months, and had steadily yielded to a habit which he knew must destroy his family's honor and leave them friendless, penniless, and disgraced. The weeks of pain that Mildred had endured were not the result of a hard necessity, but of a vicious indulgence of a depraved appetite. Not disease but sin had so darkened their lives and brought them to a pass where even daily bread and shelter for the future were doubtful questions. A thousand times Mildred asked herself, "How can I go out and face the world with my name blackened by this great cloud of shame?" She felt as if she never wished to step into the open light of day again, and the thought of Vinton Arnold made her shudder. "There is now a great gulf between us," she moaned. "The truth that my father is an opium slave can never be hidden, and even were Vinton inclined to be faithful, his family would regard me as a leper, and he will yield to their abhorrence." The wound in both her own and her mother's heart was deep indeed. Their confidence was shattered, their faith in human goodness and honor destroyed. While they still hoped much, they nevertheless harbored a desperate fear, and, at best, the old serene trust could never return. Even if Mr. Jocelyn could rally and reform, there would ever remain the knowledge that he had once been weak and false, and might be again. He would be one who must be watched, shielded, and sustained, and not one upon whom they could lean in quiet faith. The quaking earth which shatters into ruin the material home brings but a slight disaster compared with the vice that destroys a lifelong trust in a husband and father. Mr. Jocelyn's nerves were much too weak and irritable to endure his children's voices, and their innocence and unconsciousness of danger smote him with unendurable remorse; they were, therefore, sent to Mrs. Wheaton's room. There, too, Belle met Roger, and was much reassured by his hopeful words. She only half comprehended the truth concerning her father, and now, feeling the worst was past, her mercurial nature was fast regaining its cheerfulness. She was one who might despair one day and be joyous the next. Like her father, she had unlimited courage, and but little fortitude. Although she did not know it, the outlook for her was more threatening than for any of the others, for she could not patiently submit to a slow, increasing pressure of poverty and privation. As her father feared, she might be driven to interpose the protest of a reckless life. Mr. Jocelyn was greatly reassured when Dr. Benton called, and treated him with much respect; and when a liberal allowance of morphia was injected into his arm, he became quite cheerful, believing that not only his family but even the physician was unaware, as yet, of his weakness. By neither sign nor word did Dr. Benton indicate his knowledge, for it was his design to rally his patient into the best possible condition, and then induce him to yield himself up wholly to medical skill, naturally believing that in his present enfeebled state he would shrink from entering on the decisive and heroic treatment required. Promising to call in the evening, he left Mr. Jocelyn apparently very much improved. In the afternoon Mildred went to her room to seek a little rest. The physician thought he had given enough of the drug to satisfy his patient until he returned, but he had not properly gauged the morbid craving with which he was trying to deal, and as the day declined Mr. Jocelyn became very restless. Finally, he said he felt so much better that he would rise and dress himself, and, in spite of his wife's remonstrances, he persisted in doing so. Although tottering from weakness, he said, irritably, and almost imperiously, that he needed no help, and wished to be alone. With sad foreboding his wife yielded, and waited tremblingly for his next step, for he had become to her an awful mystery. Her fears were fulfilled, for he soon lifted the curtain door and looked at her in a strange, suspicious manner. "I miss some medicine from my vest pocket," he said hesitatingly. Her face crimsoned, and she found no words with which to reply. "Did you take it out?" he demanded sharply. "No," she faltered. His manner began to grow excited, and he looked like a distorted image of his former self. Anger, suspicion, fear, and cunning were all blended in his face, but he so far mastered himself as to assume a wheedling tone and manner as he came toward her and said, "Nan, it was only a little tonic that I found beneficial while in the South. You must know where it is. Please give it to me." The poor woman was so overcome by her husband's appearance and falsehood that she felt sick and faint, and knew not what to say. "Where is it?" he demanded angrily, for he felt that unless he had the support of the drug speedily, he would wholly lose his self-control. "Oh, Martin," pleaded his wife, "wait till Dr. Benton comes; he will be here this evening." "Why this ado about nothing? I merely wish to take a little tonic, and you look as if I proposed suicide." "Martin, Martin, it is suicide of body and soul. It is worse than murder of me and your innocent children. Oh, Martin, my heart's true love, make me a Christmas gift that I will prize next to Him from whom the day is named. Give me the promise that you will never touch the vile poison again," and she knelt before him and sought to take his hand. For a moment he was overwhelmed. She evidently knew all! He sank into a chair, and trembled almost convulsively. Then came the impulse--an almost inevitable effect of the drug upon the moral nature--to lie about the habit, and to strive to conceal it, even after an unclouded mind would see that deception was impossible. "Nan," he began, as he grew a little quieter, "you take cruel advantage of my weak nerves. You must see that I am greatly reduced by illness, and I merely wish to take a little tonic as any sane man would do, and you treat me to a scene of high tragedy. Give me my medicine, and I know that I shall soon be much better." "Oh, my husband, has it really come to this?" and the wretched wife buried her face in her arms, and leaned heavily on the table. He was growing desperate. Through excess he had already reached a point where ordinary life became an unendurable burden without the stimulant; but facing a harrowing scene like this was impossible. He felt that his appetite was like a savage beast on which he held a weakening and relaxing grasp. With the strange, double consciousness of the opium maniac, he saw his wife in all her deep distress, and he had the remorse of a lost soul in view of her agony; he was almost certain that she knew how he had wronged her and his children, and he had all the shame and self-loathing of a proud, sensitive man; he knew that he was false to the sacred trusts of husband and father, and that awful thing we call a sense of guilt added its deep depression. It is not inability to comprehend his degradation, his danger, his utter loss of manhood, which opium imposes on its wretched slave, but an impossibility to do aught except gratify the resistless craving at any and every cost. All will-power has gone, all moral resistance has departed, and in its place is a gnawing, clamorous, ravening desire. The vitiated body, full of indescribable and mysterious pain, the still more tortured mind, sinking under a burden of remorse, guilt, fear, and awful imagery, both unite in one desperate, incessant demand for opium. While his wife sat leaning upon the table, her face hidden, she was the picture of despair; and, in truth, she felt almost as if she were turning into stone. If her husband had been brought home a mangled, mutilated man, as she often feared he might be during the long years of the war, she would have bent over him with a tenderness equalled only by the pride and faith that had ever found in him their centre; but this strange apparition of a man with odd, sinister-looking eyes, who alternately threatened and cowered before her--this man, mutilated more horribly in the loss of truth and love, who was thus openly and shamelessly lying--oh, was he the chivalric, noble friend, who had been lover and husband for so many years! The contrast was intolerable, and the sense of his falseness stung her almost to madness. She did not yet know that opium, like the corruption of the grave, blackens that which is the fairest and whitest. For a few minutes Mr. Jocelyn debated with himself. Was he strong enough to go out to the nearest drug store? After one or two turns up and down the room he found that he was not. He might fall in utter collapse while on the way, and yet his system, depleted by his recent excess, demanded the drug with an intensity which he could not restrain much longer without becoming wild and reckless. He therefore said to his wife, in a dogged manner, "Nan, I must have that medicine." The gentle creature was at last goaded into such a burst of indignation that for a few moments he was appalled, and trembled before her. The fire in her blue eyes seemed to scorch away her tears, and standing before him she said passionately, "As you are a man and a Southern gentleman, tell me the truth. I never concealed a thought from you; what have you been concealing from us for weeks and months? I wronged you in that I did not think and plan day and night how to save instead of how to spend, and I can never forgive myself, but my fault was not deliberate, not intentional. There was never a moment when I tried to deceive you--never a moment when I would not have suffered hunger and cold that you and the children might be warmed and fed. What is this tonic for which you are bartering your health, your honor and ours, your children's bread and blood? Mildred sold her girlhood's gifts, the few dear mementoes of the old happy days, that you might have the chance you craved. That money was as sacred as the mercy of God. For weeks the poor child has earned her bread, not by the sweat of her face, but in agony of body and unhappiness of heart. If it were disease that had so cast us down and shadowed our lives with fear, pain, and poverty, we would have submitted to God's will and watched over you with a patient tenderness that would never have faltered or murmured; but it's not disease, it's not something that God sent. It is that which crimsons our faces with shame." He sat cowering and trembling before her, with his face buried in his hands. In a sudden revulsion of tenderness she sank again on her knees before him, and pleaded in tones of tenderest pathos: "Martin, I know all; but I am ready to forgive all if you will be true from this time forward. I know now the cause of all your strange moods which we attributed to ill-health; I know the worst; but if, in humble reliance upon God, you will win back your manhood, the past evil days shall be blotted out, even as God blots out our sins and remembers them no more against us. We will sustain your every effort with sympathy and loving faith. We will smile at cold and hunger that you may have time--Great God!" and she sprang to her feet, white, faint, and panting. Her husband had taken his hands from his face, and glared at her like a famished wolf. In his desperate, unnatural visage there was not a trace of manhood left. "Give me the bottle of morphia you took from my pocket," he demanded, rising threateningly. "No words; you might as well read the Ten Commandments to an unchained tiger. Give it to me, or there is no telling what may happen. You talk as if I could stop by simply saying, coolly and quietly, I will stop. Ten thousand devils! haven't I suffered the torments of the damned in trying to stop! Was I not in hell for a week when I could not get it? Do you think I ask for it now as a child wants candy? No, it's the drop of water that will cool my tongue for a brief moment, and as you hope for mercy or have a grain of mercy in your nature, give it to me NOW, NOW, NOW!" The poor wife tottered a step or two toward her daughter's room, and fell swooning at the threshold. Mildred opened the door, and her deep pallor showed that instead of sleeping she had heard words that would leave scars on memory until her dying day. "The poison you demand is there," she said brokenly, pointing to her bureau. "After mamma's appeal I need not, cannot speak," and she knelt beside her mother. Her father rushed forward and seized the drug with the aspect of one who is famishing. Mildred shuddered, and would not see more than she could help, but gave her whole thought and effort to her mother, who seemed wounded unto death. After a few moments, to her unbounded surprise, her father knelt beside her and lifted her mother to a lounge, and, with a steady hand and a gentle, considerate manner, sought to aid in her restoration. His face was full of solicitude and anxiety--indeed he looked almost the same as he might have looked and acted a year ago, before he had ever imagined that such a demon would possess him. When at last Mrs. Jocelyn revived and recalled what had occurred, she passed into a condition of almost hysterical grief, for her nervous system was all unstrung. Mr. Jocelyn, meanwhile, attended upon her in a silent, gentle, self-possessed manner that puzzled Mildred greatly, although she ascribed it to the stimulant he had taken. After a few minutes a strange smile flitted across his face, and he disappeared within his own apartment. A little later, Mildred, returning from a momentary absence, saw him withdraw his syringe from the arm of her half-conscious mother. "What have you done?" she asked sternly, and hastening to his side. Secreting the instrument as a miser would his gold, he answered, with the same strange smile, "She shall have a merry Christmas yet; I have just remembered the day. See how quiet she is becoming; see that beautiful flush stealing into her pale face; see the light dawning in her eye. Oh, I gauged the dose with the skill of the best of them; and see, my hand is as steady as yours. I'm not a wreck yet, and all may still be well. Come, this is Christmas night, and we will keep it in good old Southern style. Where are Belle and the children? Ah! here they are. Where have you been, Belle?" "In Mrs. Wheaton's room," she replied, looking at her father in much surprise. "I was trying to keep the children quiet, so that you, mamma, and Millie might have a little rest." "That was very kind and good of you, and you now see that I am much better; so is mamma, and with your help and Mildred's we shall have a merry Christmas night together after all." "Papa is right," Mrs. Jocelyn added with vivacity. "I DO feel much better, and so strangely hopeful. Come here, Belle. I've scarcely seen you and the children all day. Kiss me, darlings. I believe the worst is now past, that papa will soon be well, and that all our troubles will end in renewed prosperity and happiness. I have been looking on the dark side, and it was wrong in me to do so. I should have had more faith, more hope, more thankfulness. I should bless God for that sight--Fred and Minnie on their father's knees as in old times. Oh, what a strange, bright turn everything has taken." "Mamma dear," said Belle, who was kneeling and caressing her, "can I not ask Roger in to see you? He has looked like a ghost all day, from anxiety about you." "Oh, no, no," gasped Mildred. "Now, Millie," began Mrs. Jocelyn in gentle effusion, "you carry your prejudice against Roger much too far. He has been the world and all to Belle since he came to town. Belle was like a prisoned bird, and he gave her air and room to fly a little, and always brought her back safe to the nest. Think of his kindness last night (suddenly she put her hand to her brow as if troubled by something half forgotten, but her serene smile returned). Papa, thanks to Roger's kindness, is here, and he might have been taken to a hospital. I now feel assured that he will overcome all his troubles. What we need is cheerfulness--the absence of all that is depressing. Roger is lonely away from his home and people, and he shall share our Christmas cheer; so call him, Belle, and then you and Millie prepare as nice a supper as you can;" and the girl flew to make good a prospect so in accordance with her nature. Mildred almost as precipitately sought her room. A moment later Roger was ushered in, and he could scarcely believe his eyes. The unconscious man, whom he at this time on the previous day believed dying, had his children on his lap, and was caressing them with every mark of affection. Although he still appeared to be very much of an invalid, and his complexion had a sallow and unnatural hue, even in the lamplight, it was difficult to believe that twenty-four hours before he had appeared to be in extremis. When he arose and greeted Roger with a courtesy that was almost faultless, the young fellow was tempted to rub his eyes as if all were a dream. Mrs. Jocelyn, too, was full of cheerfulness and hope, and made him sit beside her while she thanked him with a cordiality and friendliness that seemed even tinged with affection. If memory could be silenced there would be nothing to dispel the illusion that he looked upon a humble but happy home, unshadowed by any thought or trouble. As it was, the illusion was so strong that he entered into the apparent spirit of the occasion, and he chatted and laughed with a freedom and ease he had never yet known in their presence. "Where is Millie?" Mrs. Jocelyn suddenly asked. "We must be all together on this happy occasion. Minnie, call her, for I do not wish a moment of this long-deferred hour marred or clouded." "Millie," cried the child, opening the door, "mamma wants you to come right away. We are having a lovely time." "Don't mind Millie's ways," said Mrs. Jocelyn, touching Roger's arm and giving him a little confidential nod. "You understand each other." These words, with her manner, struck Roger as peculiar in one who had ever seemed to him the embodiment of delicacy, but he was too inexperienced to gauge them properly. When he turned, however, to bow to Mildred, who entered and took a seat in a distant corner, he was startled by her extreme pallor, but acting on Mrs. Jocelyn's advice he tried to act as before, resolving, nevertheless, that if his presence continued to be a restraint on one for whom he was ever ready to sacrifice himself, he would speedily depart. Belle was radiant in her reaction from the long, miserable day, and, with a child's unconsciousness, gave herself up to her happiness. "Millie shall rest as well as yourself, mamma, for she was up all night, and I'll get supper and prove what a housewife I am. Roger, if you do not swallow everything I prepare without a wry face, and, indeed, with every appearance of relish, I shall predict for you the most miserable old bachelorhood all your days." "I am afraid you will put Roger's gallantry to a very severe test," cried Mrs. Jocelyn gayly. "Indeed, I fear we have not very much for supper except the warmest good-will. Our poverty now, however, will not last long, for I feel that I can so manage hereafter as to make amends for all the past. I can see that I am the one who has been to blame; but all that's past, and with my clearer, fuller knowledge and larger opportunities I can do wonders." Roger was much struck by the peculiar smile with which Mr. Jocelyn regarded his wife as she uttered these words. "Lemme show you what Aunty Wheaton gave me dis mornin'," lisped Fred, pulling Roger up. As he rose he caught a glimpse of Mildred's face, and saw that she was regarding her mother and father in undisguised horror. Something was evidently wrong--fearfully wrong. There was a skeleton in that cheerful lighted room, and the girl saw it plainly. Never would he forget her terrible expression. He trembled with apprehension as he stood over the child's toy and tried to imagine what it was that had suddenly filled the place with a nameless dread and foreboding. So quick and strong was his sympathy for Mildred, so unmistakable had been the expression of the girl's face, that he was sure something must soon occur which would explain her fears. He was right, for at this moment Dr. Benton knocked, entered, and took the chair he had vacated. The physician looked with some surprise at his patient and Mrs. Jocelyn's flushed, smiling face. As he felt her pulse her sleeve fell back, and he saw the ominous little red scar, and then he understood it all, and fixed a penetrating glance on the face of her husband, who would not meet his eye. "I have done you wrong, Dr. Benton," Mrs. Jocelyn began volubly, "for we all are indebted to your skill that my husband is so much better. This day, which promised to pass so sadly, has a bright ending, thanks to your timely remedies. We are once more a united household, and I can never thank our dear young friend here, Mr. Atwood, enough that he discovered my husband and brought him to us and to your able treatment. Surely, Millie, your prejudice against him must vanish now, for--" "Mother," cried Mildred, "if you have a grain of reason or self-control left, close your lips. Oh, what a mockery it all is!" When Belle took her astonished eyes from Mildred's face, Roger, who stood near the door, was gone. "You had better follow your daughter's advice, Mrs. Jocelyn," said the physician quietly and soothingly; "you are a little feverish, and I prescribe quiet. May I see you alone a moment or two, Mr. Jocelyn?" "Yes, here in my room," added Mildred eagerly. It was with the aspect of mingled fear and haughtiness that Mr. Jocelyn followed Dr. Benton into the apartment, and the door was closed. "Mother, you are ill," said Mildred, kneeling beside her. "For my sake, for yours, pray keep quiet for a while." "Ill! I never felt better in my life. It's all your unreasonable prejudice, Millie." "I think so too," cried Belle indignantly. "We were just beginning to have a little sunshine, and you have spoiled everything." "I am the only one who knows the truth, and I shall take the responsibility of directing our affairs for the next few hours," replied Mildred, rising, with a pale, impassive face. "Belle, my course has nothing to do with Roger Atwood. I exceedingly regret, however, that he has been present. Wait till you hear what Dr. Benton says;" and there was something so resolute and almost stern in her manner that even Mrs. Jocelyn, in her unnatural exaltation, yielded. Indeed, she was already becoming drowsy from the effects of the narcotic. "You are not yourself, mamma. I'll explain all to-morrow," the young girl added soothingly. "Mr. Jocelyn," said the physician, with quiet emphasis, "you have injected morphia into your wife's arm." "I have not." "My dear sir, I understand your case thoroughly, and so do your wife and daughter, as far as they can understand my explanations. Now if you will cease your mad folly I can save you, I think; that is, if you will submit yourself absolutely to my treatment." "You are talking riddles, sir. Our poverty does not warrant any assumption on your part." "I know the insane and useless instinct of those in your condition to hide their weakness; but can you not control it, and permit me as your friend and physician to help you? I am seeking your interests, not my own." "Curse you!" cried Mr. Jocelyn, in a burst of uncontrollable anger; "if you had been my friend you would have let me die, but instead you have said things to my wife that have blasted me forever in her eyes. If she had not known, I could have made the effort you require; but now I'm a lost man, damned beyond remedy, and I'd rather see the devil himself than your face again. These are my rooms, and I demand that you depart and never appear here again." The physician bowed coldly, and left the ill-fated family to itself. Mildred, who overheard her father's concluding words, felt that it would be useless then to interpose. Indeed she was so dispirited and exhausted that she could do no more than stagger under the heavy burden that seemed crushing her very soul. She assisted her mother to retire, and the latter was soon sleeping with a smile upon her lips. Mr. Jocelyn sat sullenly apart, staring out into the bleak, stormy darkness, and Mildred left him for the first time in her life without giving him his good-night kiss. As she realized this truth, she sank on her couch and sobbed so bitterly that Belle, who had been meditating reproaches, looked at her with tearful wonder. Suddenly Mildred arose in strong compunction, and rushed back to her father; but he started up with such a desperate look that she recoiled. "Don't touch me," he cried. "Put your lips to the gutter of the streets, if you will, but not to such pitch and foulness as I have become." "Oh, papa, have mercy!" she pleaded. "Mercy!" he repeated, with a laugh that froze her blood, "there is no mercy on earth nor in heaven," and he waved her away, and again turned his face to the outer darkness. "Millie, oh, Millie, what IS the matter?" cried Belle, shocked at her sister's horror-stricken face. "Oh, Belle, is there any good God?" "Millie, I'm bewildered. What does it all mean? The evening that began so brightly seems ending in tragedy." "Yes, tragedy in bitter truth. Hope is murdered, life poisoned, hearts made to bleed from wounds that can never heal. Belle, papa loves opium better than he does you or me, better than his wife and little helpless children, better than heaven and his own soul. Would to God I had never lived to see this day!" CHAPTER XXXII A BLACK CONSPIRACY On the following morning Mrs. Jocelyn was ill and much depressed from the reaction of the drug that had been given without her knowledge, and after learning all that had transpired she sank into an almost hopeless apathy. Mildred also was unable to rise, and Belle went to their respective employers and obtained a leave of absence for a day or two, on the ground of illness in the family. Mrs. Wheaton now proved herself a discreet and very helpful friend, showing her interest by kindly deeds and not by embarrassing questions. Indeed she was so well aware of the nature of the affliction that overwhelmed the family that she was possessed by the most dismal forebodings as well as the deepest sympathy. Mr. Jocelyn had departed at an early hour, leaving a note wherein he stated that he might be absent some days seeking employment in a neighboring city. He had felt that it would be impossible to meet his family immediately after the experiences of the previous day. Indeed he had gone away with the desperate resolve that he would break his habit or never return; but alas for the resolves of an opium slave! Time dragged heavily on, the family living under a nightmare of anxiety, fear, and horrible conjectures. What might he not do? What new phase of the tragedy would hereafter be developed? Now that the busy season was over, the girls found that they could retain their position as saleswomen only by accepting whatever their employers chose to pay, and the thrifty shopkeepers satisfied their consciences with the thought that they could obtain scores of others at even lower prices. Mr. Schriven, in the multiplicity of other interests, had almost forgotten Belle, and she had become in his mind merely a part of the establishment. Her dejected face and subdued manner excited some remark among her companions when she again appeared, but her explanation, "Mother is ill," quieted all curiosity. For a few days Mildred looked as white and crushed as a broken lily, and then the reserve strength and courage of the girl began to reassert themselves. With a fortitude that was as heroic as it was simple and unostentatious, she resolutely faced the truth and resolved to do each day's duty, leaving the result in God's hands. With a miser's care she husbanded her strength, ate the most nourishing food they could afford, and rested every moment her duties permitted. The economy they were now compelled to practice amounted almost to daily privation. Belle and the children were often a little petulant over this change, Mrs. Jocelyn apathetic, but Mildred was inflexible. "We must not run in debt one penny," she would often remark with compressed lips. Although frequently unoccupied at the shop, she was nevertheless compelled to stand, and in spite of this cruel requirement she rallied slowly. Thanks, however, to her wise carefulness, she did gain steadily in her power to endure and to fight the hard battle of life. One of the saddest features of their trouble was the necessity of reticence and of suffering in silence. Their proud, sensitive spirits did not permit them to speak of their shame even to Mrs. Wheaton, and she respected their reserve. Indeed, among themselves they shrank from mentioning the sorrow that oppressed every waking moment and filled their dreams with woful imagery. Daring an absence of nearly two weeks Mr. Jocelyn occasionally wrote a line, saying that he was as well as they could expect, and that was all. Then he reappeared among them and began leading a desultory kind of life, coming and going in an aimless way, and giving but little account of himself. They saw with a deeper depression that he had not improved much, although apparently he had avoided any great excesses. Occasionally he gave Mildred a little money, but how it was obtained she did not know. It was well he was reticent, for had she known that it was often part of a small loan from some half-pitying friend of former days, and that it would never be repaid, she would not have used a penny of it. They were simply compelled to recognize the awful truth, that the husband and father was apparently a confirmed opium inebriate. At first they pleaded with him again and again, unable to understand how it was possible for him to continue in so fatal a course, but at last they despairingly desisted. He would at times weep almost hysterically, overwhelmed with remorse, and again storm in reckless anger and unreasoning fury. As in thousands of other homes wherein manhood and honor have been destroyed, they found no better resource than silent endurance. Under such inflictions resignation is impossible. For Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred it was simply a daily martyrdom, but in her companionship with Roger, Belle had much to sustain, cheer, and even brighten her life. He was in truth a loyal friend, and daily racked his brain for opportunities to show her and Mrs. Jocelyn some reassuring attention; and his kindness and that of Mrs. Wheaton were about the only glints of light upon their darkening way. Mildred was polite and even kind in her manner toward the young man, since for Belle's sake and her mother's she felt that she must be so. His course, moreover, had compelled her respect; but nevertheless her shrinking aversion did not diminish. The fact that an evil destiny had seemingly destroyed her hope of ever looking into the face of Vinton Arnold again made the revolt of her heart all the more bitter against an unwelcome love of which she was ever conscious when Roger was present. But he had won her entire respect; he knew so much, and he worked on and waited. The grasp of his mind upon his studies daily grew more masterful, and his industry and persistence were so steady that the old commission merchant began to nod to himself approvingly. The current of time flowed sluggishly on, bringing only changes for the worse to the Jocelyns. Early spring had come, but no spring-tide hope, and in its stead a bitter humiliation. The pressure of poverty at last became so great that the Jocelyns were in arrears for rent and were compelled to move. In this painful ordeal Mrs. Wheaton was a tower of strength, and managed almost everything for them, since no dependence could be placed on Mr. Jocelyn. The reader's attention need not be detained by a description of their new shelter--for it could not be called a home. They had a living-room and two very small bedrooms in a brick tenement wedged in among others of like unredeemed angularity, and belonging to the semi-respectable, commonplace order. It was occupied by stolid working-people of various nationalities, and all engaged in an honest scramble for bread, with time and thought for little else. The house was simply a modern, cheap shelter, built barely within the requirements of the law, and, from its newness, unsoiled as yet with the grime of innumerable crowded families. Everything was slight, thin, and money-saving in the architecture; and if a child cried, a shrill-tongued woman vociferated, or a laborer, angry or drunk, indulged in the general habit of profanity, all the other inmates of the abode were at once aware of the fact. By the majority, such sounds were no more heeded than the rumble in the streets, but to poor Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred, with natures like AEolian harps, the discords of such coarse, crowded life were often horrible. There was naught to do but exist from day to day, to win what bread they could wherewith to sustain a life that seemed to promise less and less. Mr. Jocelyn was steadily sinking, and Belle, at last, growing bitter and restless under the privations of her lot, in spite of Roger's unfaltering friendship. Mr. Jocelyn was not one who could sin in a conservative, prudent way. He seemed utterly unable to rally and be a man in his own strength, and his remorse over his conduct was so great that he sought a refuge in almost continuous excess. The greater the height, the more tremendous the fall, and he had now reached the recklessness of despair. He had many stolid, slouching neighbors in the tenements, who permitted life to be at least endurable for their families because of the intervals between their excesses; but an interval to Mr. Jocelyn was a foretaste of perdition. Nevertheless, if the wretched man, by a kindly violence, could have been shut up and away for weeks, perhaps months, from all possibility of obtaining the poisons that were destroying him, and treated with scientific skill, he might have been saved even at this late hour. When the world recognizes that certain vices sooner or later pass from the character of voluntary evil into the phase of involuntary disease, and should be treated rigorously and radically under the latter aspect, many lives and homes will be saved from final wreck. No principles are better known than the influences of soil, climate, darkness, and light upon a growing plant. If the truth could be appreciated that circumstances color life and character just as surely, marring, distorting, dwarfing, or beautifying and developing, according as they are friendly or adverse, the workers in the moral vineyard, instead of trying to obtain fruit from sickly vines, whose roots grope in sterility, and whose foliage is poisoned, would bring the richness of opportunity to the soil and purify the social atmosphere. Immature Belle, in spite of all the influences for good from her mother, her sister, and Roger, could scarcely reside where she did and grow pure and womanly. She was daily compelled to see and hear too much that was coarse, evil, and debasing. She knew that Roger was a friend, and nothing more--that his whole heart was absorbed in Mildred--and her feminine nature, stimulated by the peculiarities of her lot, craved warmer attentions. In her impoverished condition, and with her father's character becoming generally known, such attentions would not naturally come from young men whom those who loved her best could welcome. She was growing restless under restrictions, and her crowded, half-sheltered life was robbing her of womanly reserve. These undermining influences worked slowly, imperceptibly, but none the less certainly, and she recognized the bold, evil admiration which followed her more and more unshrinkingly. Mr. Jocelyn's condition was no longer a secret, and he often, in common with other confirmed habitues, increased the effects of opium by a free use of liquor. He therefore had practically ceased to be a protector to his daughters. Fred and Minnie, in spite of all the broken-hearted and failing mother could do, were becoming little street Arabs, learning all too soon the evil of the world. Since the revelation of her father's condition Mildred had finally relinquished her class at the mission chapel. Her sensitive spirit was so shadowed by his evil that she felt she would be speechless before children who might soon learn to associate her name with a vice that would seem to them as horrible as it was mysterious. Bread and shelter she must obtain, but she was too fear-haunted, too conscious of the shame to which she was linked, to face the public on any occasion not connected with her daily toil. The pride characteristic of American people who have lapsed from a better condition was intensified by her Southern birth and prejudices. More than hunger, cold, and even death, she feared being recognized, pointed out, stared at, and gossiped about, while the thought of receiving charity brought an almost desperate look into her usually clear blue eyes. Therefore she shrank from even Mr. Wentworth, and was reticent on all topics relating to their domestic affairs. She knew that there were many families whom he was almost sustaining through crises of illness and privation; she also knew that there were far more who sought to trade upon his sympathies. While she could take aid from him as readily as from any one, she also believed that before she could receive it she must be frank concerning her father. Rather than talk of his shame, even to her pastor, it might well be believed that the girl would starve. What she might do for the sake of the others was another question. Mr. Wentworth in sadness recognized the barrier which Mildred's pride was rearing between them, but he was too wise and experienced to be obtrusively personal. He sought earnestly, however, to guard the young girl against the moral danger which so often results from discouragement and unhappiness, and he entreated her not to part with her faith, her clinging trust in God. "A clinging trust is, indeed, all that I have left," she had replied so sadly that his eye suddenly moistened; "but the waves of trouble seem strong and pitiless, and I sometimes fear that my hands are growing numb and powerless. In plain prose, I'm just plodding on--God knows whither. In my weary, faltering way I am trying to trust Him," she added, after a brief silence, "and I always hope to; but I am so tired, Mr. Wentworth, so depressed, that I'm like the soldiers that have been described to me as marching on with heavy eyes and heavy feet because they must. There is no use in my coming to the chapel, for I haven't the heart to say a word of cheer to any one, and hollow words would hurt me, while doing no good. I am trying your charity sorely, but I can't help it. I fear you cannot understand me, for even your Christian sympathy is a burden. I'm too tired, too sorely wounded to make any response; while all the time I feel that I ought to respond gratefully and earnestly. It seems a harsh and unnatural thing to say, but my chief wish is to shrink away from everybody and everything not essential to my daily work. I think I shall have strength enough to keep up a mechanical routine of life for a long time, but you must not ask me to think or give way to feeling, much less to talk about myself and--and--the others. If I should lose this stolid self-control which I am gaining, and which enables me to plod along day by day with my eyes shut to what may be on the morrow, I believe I should become helpless from despair and grief." "My dear child," the clergyman had replied, in deep solicitude, "I fear you are dangerously morbid; and yet I don't know. This approach to apathy of which you speak may be God's shield from thoughts that would be sharp arrows. I can't help my honest sympathy, and I hope and trust that I may soon be able to show it in some helpful way--I mean in the way of finding you more remunerative and less cruel work," he added quickly, as he saw a faint flush rising in the young girl's face. Then he concluded, gravely and gently, "Miss Mildred, I respect you--I respect even your pride; but, in the name of our common faith and the bonds it implies, do not carry it too far. Good-by. Come to me whenever you need, or your conscience suggests my name," and the good man went away wholly bent on obtaining some better employment for Mildred; and he made not a little effort to do so, only to find every avenue of labor suited to the girl's capacity already thronged. Meanwhile the needs and sorrows of others absorbed his time and thoughts. Belle, because of her thorough liking and respect for Mr. Wentworth, and even more for the reason that he had obtained her promise to come, was rarely absent from her class, and the hour spent at the chapel undoubtedly had a good and restraining influence; but over and against this one or two hours in seven days were pitted the moral atmosphere of the shop, the bold admiration and advances in the streets, which were no longer unheeded and were scarcely resented, and the demoralizing sights and sounds of a tenement-house. The odds were too great for poor Belle. Like thousands of other girls, she stood in peculiar need of sheltered home life, and charity broad as heaven should be exercised toward those exposed as she was. As Mr. Jocelyn sank deeper in degradation, Mildred's morbid impulse to shrink, cower, and hide, in such poor shelter as she had, grew stronger, and at last she did little more than try to sleep through the long, dreary Sabbaths, that she might have strength for the almost hopeless struggle of the week. She was unconsciously drifting into a hard, apathetic materialism, in which it was her chief effort not to think or remember--from the future she recoiled in terror--but simply to try to maintain her physical power to meet the daily strain. It is a sad and terrible characteristic of our Christian city, that girls, young, beautiful, and unprotected like Mildred and Belle, are the natural prey of remorseless huntsmen. Only a resolute integrity, great prudence and care, can shield them; and these not from temptation and evil pursuit, but only from the fall which such snares too often compass. Of these truths Mildred had a terrible proof. A purer-hearted girl than she never entered the maelstrom of city life; but those who looked upon her lovely face looked again, and lingeringly, and there was one who had devoured her beauty daily with wolfish eyes. In charge of the department of the shop wherein she toiled, there was a man who had long since parted with the faintest trace of principle or conscience. He was plausible, fine-looking, after a certain half-feminine type, and apparently vigilant and faithful in his duties as a floor-walker; but his spotless linen concealed a heart that plotted all the evil his hands dared to commit. For him Mildred had possessed great attractions from the first; and, with the confidence bestowed by his power, and many questionable successes, he made his first advances so openly that he received more than one public and stinging rebuff. A desire for revenge, therefore, had taken entire possession of him, and with a serpent's cold, deadly patience he was waiting for a chance to uncoil and strike. Notwithstanding his outward civility, Mildred never met the expression of his eyes without a shudder. From frank-tongued Belle, Roger had obtained some hints of this man's earlier attentions, and of his present ill-concealed dislike--a latent hostility which gave Mildred no little uneasiness, since, by some pretext, he might cause her dismissal. She knew too well that they were in such straits now that they could not afford one hour's idleness. Roger therefore nursed a bitter antipathy against the fellow. One evening, late in March, the former was taking his usual brief walk before sitting down to long hours of study. He was at liberty to go whither he pleased, and not unnaturally his steps, for the hundredth time, perhaps, passed the door through which he could catch a glimpse of the young girl, who, with apparent hopelessness, and yet with such pathetic patience, was fighting a long battle with disheartening adversity. He was later than usual, and the employees were beginning to leave. Suddenly the obnoxious floor-walker appeared at the entrance with a hurried and intent manner. Then he paused a second or two and concealed himself behind a show-case. Roger now saw that his eyes were fixed on a girl who had just preceded him, and who, after a furtive glance backward, hastened up the avenue. Her pursuer--for such he evidently was--followed instantly, and yet sought to lose himself in the crowd so that she could not detect him. Partly in the hope of learning something to the disadvantage of one who might have it in his power to injure Mildred, and partly from the motive of adding zest to an aimless walk, Roger followed the man. The girl, with another quick glance over her shoulder, at last turned down a side street, and was soon walking alone where passengers were few and the street much in shadow; here her pursuer joined her, and she soon evinced violent agitation, stopping suddenly with a gesture of indignant protest. He said something, however, that subdued her speedily, and they went on together for some little distance, the man talking rapidly, and then they turned into a long, dark passage that led to some tenements in the rear of those fronting on the street. About midway in this narrow alley a single gas jet burned, and under its light Roger saw them stop, and the girl produce from beneath her waterproof cloak something white, that appeared like pieces of wound lace. The man examined them, made a memorandum, and then handed them back to the girl, who hesitated to take them; but his manner was so threatening and imperious that she again concealed them on her person. As they came out together, Roger, with hat drawn over his eyes, gave them a glance which fixed the malign features of the man and the frightened, guilty visage of the girl on his memory. They regarded him suspiciously, but, as he went on without looking back, they evidently thought him a casual passer-by. "It's a piece of villany," Roger muttered, "but of what nature I have no means of discovering, even were it any affair of mine. I am satisfied of one thing, however--that man's a scoundrel; seemingly he has the girl in his power, and it looks as if she had been stealing goods and he is compounding the felony with her." If he had realized the depth of the fellow's villany he would not have gone back to his studies so quietly, for the one nearest to his heart was its object. The scene he had witnessed can soon be explained. Goods at the lace counter had been missed on more than one occasion, and it had been the hope of Mildred's enemy that he might fasten the suspicion upon her. On this evening, however, he had seen the girl in question secrete two or three pieces as she was folding them up, and he believed she had carried them away with her. Immediately on joining her he had charged her with the theft, and in answer to her denials threatened to have her searched before they parted. Then in terror she admitted the fact, and was in a condition to become his unwilling accomplice in the diabolical scheme suggested by his discovery. He had said to her, in effect, that he suspected another girl--namely, Mildred Jocelyn--and that if she would place the goods in the pocket of this girl's cloak on the following afternoon he would by this act be enabled to extort a confession from her also, such as he had received in the present case. He then promised the girl in return for this service that he would make no complaint against her, but would give her the chance to find another situation, which she must do speedily, since he could no longer permit her to remain in the employ of the house for whom he acted. She was extremely reluctant to enter into this scheme, but, in her confusion, guilt, and fear, made the evil promise, finding from bitter experience that one sin, like an enemy within the walls, opens the gate to many others. She tried to satisfy such conscience as she had with the thought that Mildred was no better than herself, and that the worst which could happen to the object of this sudden conspiracy was a quiet warning to seek employment elsewhere. The man himself promised as much, although he had no such mild measures in view. It was his design to shame Mildred publicly, to break down her character, and render her desperate. He had learned that she had no protector worthy of the name, and believed that he could so adroitly play his part that he would appear only as the vigilant and faithful servant of his employers. Mildred, all unconscious of the pit dug beneath her feet, was passing out the following evening into the dreary March storm, when the foreman touched her shoulder and said that one of the proprietors wished to see her. In much surprise, and with only the fear of one whose position meant daily bread for herself and those she loved better than self, she followed the man to the private office, where she found two of the firm, and they looked grave and severe indeed. "Miss Jocelyn," began the elder, without any circumlocution, "laces have been missed from your department, and suspicion rests on you. I hope you can prove yourself innocent." The charge was so awful and unexpected that she sank, paie and faint, into a chair, and the appearance of the terror-stricken girl was taken as evidence of guilt. But she goon rallied sufficiently to say, with great earnestness, "Indeed, sir, I am innocent." "Assertion is not proof. Of course you are willing, then, to be searched?" She, Mildred Jocelyn, searched for stolen goods! Searched, alone, in the presence of these dark-browed, frowning men! The act, the indignity, seemed overwhelming. A hot crimson flush mantled her face, and her womanhood rose in arms against the insult. "I do not fear being searched," she said indignantly; "but a woman must perform the act." "Certainly," said her employer; "we do not propose anything indecorous; but first call an officer." They were convinced that they had found the culprit, and were determined to make such an example of her as would deter all others in the shop from similar dishonesty. Mildred was left to herself a few moments, faint and bewildered, a whirl of horrible thoughts passing through her mind; and then, conscious of innocence, she began to grow calm, believing that the ordeal would soon be over. Nevertheless she had received a shock which left her weak and trembling, as she followed two of the most trusty women employed in the shop to a private apartment, at whose door she saw a bulky guardian of the law. The majority, unaware of what had taken place, had departed; but such as remained had lingered, looking in wonder at the hasty appearance of the policeman, and the intense curiosity had been heightened when they saw him stationed near an entrance through which Mildred was speedily led. They at once surmised the truth, and waited for the result of the search in almost breathless expectation. The girl who had done Mildred so deep a wrong had hastened away among the first, and so was unaware of what was taking place; the chief conspirator, from an obscure part in the now half-lighted shop, watched with cruel eyes the working of his plot. CHAPTER XXXIII MILDRED IN A PRISON CELL Not from any sense of guilt, but rather from the trembling apprehensiveness of one whose spirit is already half broken by undeserved misfortune, Mildred tottered to a chair within the small apartment to which she had been taken. With an appealing glance to the two women who stood beside her she said, "Oh, hasten to prove that I am innocent! My burden was already too heavy, and this is horrible." "Miss Jocelyn," replied the elder of the women, in a matter-of-fact tone, "it's our duty to search you thoroughly, and, if innocent, you will not fear it. There will be nothing 'horrible' about the affair at all, unless you have been stealing, and it seems to me that an honest girl would show more nerve." "Search me, then--search as thoroughly as you please," cried Mildred, with an indignant flush crimsoning her pale, wan face. "I'd sooner starve a thousand times than take a penny that did not belong to me." Grimly and silently, and with a half-incredulous shrug, the woman, whose mind had been poisoned against Mildred, began her search, first taking off the young girl's waterproof cloak. "Why is the bottom of this side-pocket slit open?" she asked severely. "What is this, away down between the lining and the cloth?" and she drew out two pieces of valuable lace. Mildred looked at the ominous wares with dilated eyes, and for a moment was speechless with astonishment and terror. "Your words and deeds are a trifle discordant," began the woman, in cold satire, "but your manner is more in keeping." "I know nothing about that lace," Mildred exclaimed passionately. "This is a plot against--" "Oh, nonsense!" interrupted the woman harshly. "Here, officer," she continued, opening the door, "take your prisoner. These goods were found upon her person, concealed within the lining of her cloak," and she showed him where the lace had been discovered. "A mighty clear case," was his grinning reply; "still you must be ready to testify to-morrow, unless the girl pleads guilty, which will be her best course." "What are you going to do with me?" asked Mildred, in a hoarse whisper. "Oh, nothing uncommon, miss--only what is always done under such circumstances. We'll give you free lodgings to-night, and time to think a bit over your evil ways." One of the seniors of the firm, who had drawn near to the door and had heard the result of the search, now said, with much indignation, and in a tone that all present could hear, "Officer, remove your prisoner, and show no leniency. Let the law take its full course, for we intend to stamp out all dishonesty from our establishment, most thoroughly." "Come," said the policeman, roughly laying his hand on the shoulder of the almost paralyzed girl. "Where?" she gasped. "Why, to the station-house, of course," he answered impatiently. "Oh, you can't mean THAT." "Come, come, no nonsense, no airs. You knew well enough that the station-house and jail were at the end of the road you were travelling. People always get found out, sooner or later. If you make me trouble in arresting you, it will go all the harder with you." "Can't I--can't I send word to my friends?" "No, indeed, not now. Your pals must appear in court to-morrow." She looked appealingly around, and on every face within the circle of light saw only aversion and anger, while the cruel, mocking eyes of the man whose coarse advances she had so stingingly resented were almost fiendish in their exultation. "It's of no use," she muttered bitterly. "It seems as if all the world, and God Himself, were against me," and giving way to a despairing apathy she followed the officer out of the store--out into the glaring lamplight of the street, out into the wild March storm that swept her along toward prison. To her morbid mind the sleet-lad en gale seemed in league with all the other malign influences that were hurrying her on to shame and ruin. "Hi, there! Look where you are going," thundered the policeman to a passenger who was breasting the storm, with his umbrella pointed at an angle that threatened the officer's eye. The umbrella was thrown back, and then flew away on the gale from the nerveless hands of Roger Atwood. Dumb and paralyzed with wonder, he impeded their progress a moment as he looked into Mildred's white face. At last a time had come when she welcomed his presence, and she cried, "Oh, Mr. Atwood, tell them at home--tell them I'm innocent." "What does this outrage mean?" he demanded, in a tone that cause the officer to grasp his club tightly. "It means that if you interfere by another word I'll arrest you also. Move on, and mind your business." "Miss Jocelyn, explain," he said earnestly to her, without budging an inch, and the comparatively few passers-by began to gather around them. "You can have no communication with the prisoner on the street," said the arm of the law roughly; "and if you don't get out of my way you'll be sorry." "Please don't draw attention to me," entreated Mildred hurriedly. "You can do nothing. I'm falsely accused--tell them at home." He passed swiftly on her side, and, as he did so, whispered, "You shall not be left alone a moment. I'll follow, and to-morrow prove you innocent," for, like a flash, the scene he had witnessed the evening before came into his mind. "Quit that," warned the officer, "or I'll--" but the young man was gone. He soon turned, however, and followed until he saw Mildred led within the station-house door. The storm was so severe as to master the curiosity of the incipient crowd, and only a few street gamins followed his example. He was wary now, and, having regained his self-control, he recognized a task that would tax his best skill and tact. Having watched until he saw the officer who had made the arrest depart, he entered the station-house. To the sergeant on duty behind the long desk he said, with much courtesy, "I am a friend of Miss Jocelyn, a young woman recently brought to this station. I wish to do nothing contrary to your rules, but I would like to communicate with her and do what I can for her comfort. Will you please explain to me what privileges may be granted to the prisoner and to her friends?" "Well, this is a serious case, and the proof against her is almost positive. The stolen goods were found upon her person, and her employers have charged that there be no leniency." "Her employers could not have wished her treated cruelly, and if they did, you are not the man to carry out their wishes," Roger insinuated. "All that her friends ask is kindness and fair play within the limits of your rules. Moreover, her friends have information which will show her to be innocent, and let me assure you that she is a lady by birth and breeding, although the family has been reduced to poverty. She has influential friends." His words evidently had weight with the sergeant, and Roger's bearing was so gentlemanly that the official imagined that the young man himself might represent no mean degree of social and political influence. "Yes," he said, "I noticed that she wasn't one of the common sort." "And you must have observed also that she was delicate and frail looking." "Yes, that, too, was apparent, and we have every disposition to be humane toward prisoners. You can send her some supper and bedding, and if you wish to write to her you can do so, but must submit what you write to the captain of the precinct. I'm expecting him every minute." Roger wrote rapidly: "Miss JOCELYN--Your friends fully believe in your innocence, and I think I can say without doubt that they have the means of proving it. Much depends on your maintaining strength and courage. Bedding will be sent to make you comfortable, and, for the sake of your mother and those you love at home, I hope you will not refuse the supper that shall soon be sent also. I have ever believed that you were the bravest girl in the world, and now that so much depends on your fortitude and nerve, I am sure you will second the efforts of those who are trying to aid you. With the strongest respect and sympathy, ROGER ATWOOD." The captain, who soon appeared, saw no objection to this note, and promised that it should be sent to Mildred. Roger then went to the nearest restaurant, and procured a delicate and inviting supper, which, with a generous pot of coffee, he carried so swiftly through the storm that it was sent smoking hot to the cell in which Mildred was confined. He then hastened to a livery-stable, and, having obtained a carriage, was driven rapidly to the tenement in which the Jocelyns had their rooms. Mr. Jocelyn, fortunately, was absent; for Mildred's natural protector would only have made matters far worse. If the guardians of the law had looked upon the wrecked and fallen man they would have felt that the daughter's alleged crime was already half explained. But a visit from Mrs. Jocelyn would make a far different impression, and he determined that she alone should accompany him to the station-house. It would be useless to pain the reader with Mrs. Jocelyn's distress, and for a time Roger thought the tidings would crush the already stricken woman; but in answer to his appeal she soon rallied in defence of her child. At his request she assumed, as far as possible, the garb of a lady--the appearance and bearing of one was inseparable from her. It was with much difficulty that he persuaded the weeping and indignant Belle to remain with the children, for he well knew that she was far too excitable to deal with the police. Having made every provision possible for Mildred's comfort, they soon reached the station-house, and the sergeant in charge greeted them politely; but on learning their errand he frowned, and said to Mrs. Jocelyn, "No, you can't see her till she is brought into court to-morrow." In answer to the mother's appeals and Roger's expostulations he remarked impatiently, "Do you think I'm going to disobey orders? Either take my answer or wait till the captain comes in again." They had no other resource, and sat down to weary waiting, the mother weeping silently, and Roger, with sternly knit brows, deep in thought. At last the captain returned, and the sergeant rose and said, "Here's the mother of the girl who was taken with stolen goods on her person. She wishes to speak with you." "Well, what is it?" demanded the police-captain a little harshly, turning toward Mrs. Jocelyn; but his manner softened as he looked upon the thin, delicate features which had not yet lost their old, sweet charm, and which now were eloquent with a mother's unspeakable grief and solicitude. "Don't be frightened, madam," he added, somewhat kindly, as he saw the poor woman's ineffectual efforts to rise and speak. "I'm human, and not more hard-hearted than my duties require." At last Mrs. Jocelyn burst forth: "If you have a heart at all, sir, save mine from breaking. My child is innocent--it will be proved to-morrow. A year ago we had a happy, beautiful home, and my girl a father whom all men respected. We've had misfortunes, that, thank God, fall to the lot of few, but my child has kept herself spotless through them all. I can prove this. She is in prison to-night through no fault of hers. Oh, sir, in the name of mother-love, can you keep me from my child? Can I not see her even for a moment, and say to her one reassuring word? She may go mad from fear and shame. She may die. Oh, sir, if you have the heart of a man, let me see her, let me speak to her. You, or any one, may be present and see that I mean no harm." "There certainly has been some dreadful mistake," Roger put in hastily, as he saw the man was irresolute, and was regarding the suppliant sympathetically. "People who must command your respect will be glad to testify that Miss Jocelyn's character is such as to render impossible anything dishonorable on her part." "Let me warn you," said the officer keenly, "that any such negative testimony will have but little weight against the positive facts in the case." "Oh, let me see my child," cried Mrs. Jocelyn, in tones of such passionate pathos that his scruples gave way, and he said to the sergeant, "Let her see the girl! I'd be a brute to deny her, even if it is against our rules. The doorman need not stand near enough to embarrass them." As Mrs. Jocelyn eagerly descended to the cells in the basement, the captain remarked to Eoger, "The girl's friends will have to bestir themselves if they clear her. The evidence is so strong that she'll be committed for further trial, without doubt." "I think she'll be discharged to-morrow," replied Roger quietly. "I thank you for your kindness to Mrs. Jocelyn." "Mere statements as to the girl's previous character will not clear her," resumed the captain emphatically. "You are a relative, lover, or something, I suppose. This poor woman has knocked my routine methods a little out of gear. One rarely sees a face like hers in a station-house. She evidently comes of no common stock, and I'd like to hear that the charge is all a mistake, as you claim; but, young man, you can't meet criminal charges with generalities. You've got to show that she didn't steal that lace. I wish you success, for the mother's sake at least," and he passed into his private room. As Mildred was about to enter the station-house she had looked back, hoping, for the first time in her life, that Roger Atwood was near. The eager and reassuring wave of his hand satisfied her that he would know the place of her imprisonment, and that he would do for her all within his power. Again he had appeared in the hour of misfortune and bitter humiliation. But, inspite of her heart, she now did justice to his sturdy loyalty, and she was comforted and sustained by the thought that not quite all the world was against her. She also knew that he would relieve her mother and Belle from unendurable anxiety on account of her absence, and that he would summon Mr. Wentworth to her aid. His promise to prove her innocent had meant nothing to her more than that he would inform and rally all of her friends. That he could know anything that would throw light on the evil mystery did not seem possible. She was then too miserable and depressed to do much more than wait, in a sort of stunned torpor, for what might next occur. Mechanically she answered such questions as were put to her in order that a record of the case might be made, and then was led to the cells below. She shuddered as she saw the dimly lighted stairway, and it seemed to her morbid fancy that she was to be thrust into a subterranean dungeon. Such, in a certain sense, it was; for in some of the older station-houses the cells are located in the basement. At the end of the corridor, nearest the street, she saw several women, and, unkempt and disgusting as these station-house tramps appeared, the fact that some of her own sex were near was reassuring. A prison was to her a place full of nameless horrors, for the romances she had read in brighter days gave to it the associations of medieval dungeons. Of the prosaic character of a modern jail she knew nothing, and when she was placed within a bare cell, and the grated iron door was locked upon her, the horrible desolation of her position seemed as complete and tragic a fate as had ever overtaken the unfortunate in the cruel past. She sat down upon the grimy wooden bench, which was the only provision made for rest or comfort, and the thought of spending a lonely night in such a place was overpowering. Not that she could hope for sleep, even if there were downy pillows instead of this unredeemed couch of plank on which some beastly inebriate may have slept off his stupor the night before, but she felt weak and faint, and her overtaxed physical nature craved some support and rest. Distress of mind, however, soon made her forget all this, as her faculties slowly rallied from the shock they had received, and she began to realize that she was charged with a crime of which it might be difficult--perhaps impossible--to prove her innocence. At best, she feared she would always be so clouded with suspicion that all would refuse to employ her, and that her blighted life and undeserved shame, added to her father's character, would drag the family down to the lowest depths. The consequences to them all, and especially to Belle, seemed so threatening and terrible that she wrung her hands and moaned aloud. At every sound she started up, nervous and morbidly apprehensive. The grating of the key in the iron door had given her a sense of relief and refuge. The massive bars that shut her in also shut out the brutal and criminal, who were associated with a prison in her mind; the thoughts of whom had filled her very soul with terror, when she was first arrested. As it was early in the evening she happened to be the first prisoner, and she prayed that there might be no others, for the possibility that some foul, drunken man might be thrust into an adjoining cell made her flesh creep. How many long, sleepless hours must pass before morning could bring any hope of release! And yet she dreaded the coming day unspeakably, for her path to freedom lay through a police court, with all its horrible publicity. Her name might get into the papers, and proud Mrs. Arnold treasure up every scrap of such intelligence about her. The tidings of her shame might be sent to her who as Miss Wetheridge had been her friend, and even she would shrink from one around whom clung such disgraceful associations. Again and again she asked herself, How could the charge against her be met? How could the family live without her? What would become of them? Belle, alas, would be rendered utterly reckless, because hopeless. The unhappy prisoner was far beyond tears. Even her faith in God failed her, for, seemingly, He had left her the victim of cruel wrong and unredeemed misfortune. With her hot, dry eyes buried in her hands she sat motionless and despairing, and the moments passed like hours. At this crisis in her despair Roger's note was handed to her, and it was like the north star suddenly shining out on one who is benighted and lost. It again kindled hope, without which mind and body give way in fatal dejection. She kissed the missive passionately, murmuring, with eyes heavenward, "If he can clear my name from dishonor, if he will rescue my loved ones from the poverty and shame which are now threatening such terrible evils, I will make any sacrifice that he can ask. I will crush out my old vain love, if I die in the effort. My heart shall not prove a traitor to those who are true and loyal at such a time. He can save mamma, Belle, and the children from hopeless poverty, and perhaps destruction. If he will, and it is his wish, I'll give all there is left of my unhappy self. I will be his loyal wife--would to God I could be his loving wife! Oh, would to God he had loved Belle instead of me! I could be devotion itself as his sister. But surely I can banish my old fond dream--which was never more than a dream--when one so deserving, so faithful, is willing to give me his strong, helpful hand. We are both very young; it will be years before--before--and, surely, in so long a time, I can conquer my infatuation for one who has left me all these dreary months without a word. A woman's heart cannot be proof against reason, gratitude, and the sacred duty owed to those she loves best. At any rate, mine shall not be, and if he still craves the loyalty and--and--yes, the love of one so shamed and impoverished as I am, he shall have all-ALL," and her face grew stern with her purpose of self-mastery. She forced down some of the food he sent, and drank the coffee. "I will be brave," she murmured. "I will try to second his efforts to clear my name, for death were better than shame. I shall, at least, try to deserve his respect." Then musingly she added, "How can my friends have gained any information that would prove me innocent? Mother and Belle cannot know anything definite, nor can Mr. Wentworth. He promised in that brief whisper when he passed me in the street that he would prove it. Can he have learned anything in his strange vigilance? It seems impossible. Alas, I fear that their best hope is to show that I have hitherto borne a good character, and yet if my present home and our poverty are described, if--worse than all--papa appears in the court-room, I fear they will think the worst," and something of her old despair began to return when she heard approaching footsteps. "Millie!" cried a loved and familiar voice. The key grated in the lock, and in another moment she was sobbing on her mother's breast, and her bruised heart was healed by the unutterable tenderness of a mother's love. It filled the dark cell with the abounding, undoubting, unquestioning spirit of unselfish devotion, which was akin to the fragrance diffused from the broken box of alabaster. When sufficiently calm, Mildred told her mother what had happened, and she in turn whispered that Roger had strong hopes that he could prove her innocence on the following day, though how she did not know. "And yet, Millie," she concluded, "for some reason he inspires me with confidence, for while he feels so deeply, he is quiet and thoughtful about the least thing. Nothing seems to escape his mind, and he says he has some information of which he does not think it best to speak at present. He entreats you to take courage, and says that if you will 'keep up and be your brave, true self, gentle and strong,' you can do much to aid him. We will all stand by you, and Mr. Wentworth will be with us." "Where--where is papa?" faltered Mildred, with a slight flush. "I don't know," responded the wife, with a deep sob. "Alas, mother, it's cruel to say it, but it will be best that he should not appear at all. Keep him away if possible. I hope he may never know anything about it, unless you think this terrible result of his course may awaken him to a final struggle to do right. I would gladly suffer anything to save him." "No, Millie, he would not be his old self if he came into court," said her mother dejectedly, "and his appearance and manner might turn the scale against you. Our best hope is to let Roger manage everything. And now, good-by, my darling. God sustain you. Do not fear anything to night. Roger says you are safe, and that his only dread is that you may become nervously prostrated, and he relies on your help to-morrow. I can't stay any longer. Oh, God, how glad I would be if I could hold you in my arms all night! Belle is strongly excited, and says she will never believe a word against you, nor will any of your true friends--alas! I wish we had more." "Time is up," warned the doorman. "Tell Mr. Atwood that I am deeply grateful for his aid, and more grateful for his trust," said Mildred. "Courage, Millie; you can sustain me by keeping up yourself. You will find us in the court-room waiting for you." With an embrace in which heart throbbed against heart they separated, and the poor girl was comforted and more hopeful in spite of herself, for while she would shrink from Roger, her confidence in his shrewdness and intelligence had made such growth that she half believed he would find some way of proving her innocent, although how he had obtained any evidence in her favor she could not imagine. The bedding brought by her mother transformed the cellbunk into a comfortable couch, and she lay down and tried to rest, so as to be ready to do her part, and her overtaxed nature soon brought something like sleep. She was startled out of her half-consciousness by a shrill cry, and sprang to her feet. There was a confused sound of steps on the stairs, and then again the same wild cry that almost made her heart stand still. A moment later two policemen appeared, dragging a woman who was resisting and shrieking with demoniacal fury. The sight was a horrible one. The faces of the great, stalwart men were reddened by exertion, for the woman seemed to possess supernatural strength, and their familiarity with crime was not so great as to prevent strong expressions of disgust. Little wonder, for if a fiend could embody itself in a woman, this demented creature would leave nothing for the imagination. Her dress was wet, torn, and bedraggled; her long black hair hung dishevelled around a white, bloated face, from which her eyes gleamed with a fierceness like that of insanity. With no little difficulty they thrust her into a cell opposite the one in which Mildred was incarcerated, and as one of the men turned the key upon her he said roughly, "Stay there now, you drunken she-devil, till you are sober," and breathing heavily from their efforts they left the poor wretch to the care of the jailer. Mildred shrank away. Not for the world would she encounter the woman's frenzied eyes. Then she stopped her ears that she might not hear the horrid din and shameful language, which made the place tenfold more revolting. The man in charge of the cells sat dozing stolidly by the stove, some distance away. His repose was not to be disturbed by such familiar sounds. At last the woman became quiet, and Mildred breathed more freely, until some mysterious sounds, suggesting that her terrible neighbor was trying to open her door, awakened her fears, for even the thought of her coming any nearer made her tremble. She therefore sprang up and looked between the iron bars. At first she was perplexed by what she saw, and then her heart stood still, for she soon made out that the woman was hanging by the neck, from the highest bar of her cell door. "Help," Mildred shrieked; "quick, if you would save life." The man by the stove sprang up and rushed forward. "There, see--oh, be quick!" The jailer comprehended the situation at once, unlocked the door, and cut the parts of her clothing which the woman had improvised into a halter. She soon revived, and cursed him for his interference. He now watched her carefully, paying no heed to her horrible tongue, until the crazed stage of her intoxication passed into stupor. [Footnote: The writer saw the cell in which, on the evening before, the woman described tried twice to destroy herself. He also saw the woman herself, when brought before the police justice. She had seen twenty-five years, but in evil she seemed old indeed. According to her story, she was a daughter of the uritans.] To Mildred he said, reassuringly, "Don't be afraid; you're as safe as if you were at home." "Home, home, home!" moaned the poor girl. "Oh, what a mockery that word has become! My best hope may soon be to find one in heaven." CHAPTER XXXIV "A WISE JUDGE" When the interminable night would end Mildred could not guess, for no dawning was visible from her basement cell. The woman opposite gradually became stupid and silent. Other prisoners were brought in from time to time, but they were comparatively quiet. A young girl was placed in a cell not far away, and her passionate weeping was pitiful to hear. The other prisoners were generally intoxicated or stolidly indifferent, and were soon making the night hideous with their discordant respiration. The place had become so terrible to Mildred that she even welcomed the presence of the policeman who had arrested her, and who at last came to take her to the police court. Must she walk with him through the streets in the open light of day? She feared she would faint on what, in her weakness, would be a long journey, and her heart gave a great throb of gratitude as she saw Eoger awaiting her in the large general room, or entrance, to the station-house. Nor was her appreciation of his kindness diminished when she saw a man in attendance--evidently a waiter from a restaurant--with a plate of sandwiches and a pot of coffee. Roger came forward, eagerly grasping her hand, and there was so much solicitude and sympathy in his dark eyes that her tears began to gather, and a faint color to suffuse the pallor that at first had startled him. "Mr. Atwood," she murmured, "you are kindness itself, and I have not deserved it. Forgive me. I will try not to fail you to-day, for your respect sustains me, and I would not lose it." "I knew your brave spirit would second all our efforts," he said in like low tones, and with a bright, grateful look. "Here, waiter--come, Miss Jocelyn, it's by just such prosaic means that soldiers sustain the fight. You'll dine at home." "Yes, hurry up," added the officer; "we have no time now for words or ceremony." She ate a few mouthfuls, and drank some coffee. "I cannot take any more now," she said to Roger. Oh, how plainly her womanly instinct divined his unbounded loyalty; and, with bitter protest at her weakness, she knew with equal certainty that she shrank from his love with her old, unconquerable repugnance. With a dissimulation which even he did not penetrate, she looked her thanks as the officer led the way to the street, and said, "Since your friends provide the carriage, you can ride, miss; only we can't part company." She stepped into the coach, the policeman taking the opposite seat. "Oh, God, how pale and wan she is! This will kill her," Roger groaned, as she sprang up on the box with the driver. It was so early that few were abroad, and yet Mildred would not look up. How could she ever look up again! The leaden clouds seemed to rest upon the steeples of the churches. Churches! and such scenes as she had witnessed, and such a wrong as hers, were taking place under the shadow of their spires! Roger had passed as sleepless a night as had fallen to Mildred's lot, and bitterly he regretted that he had been able to accomplish so little. Mr. Wentworth was out of town, and would not be back for a day or two. Then he sought the judge before whom Mildred would appear the following morning, and learned, with dismay, that he, too, had gone to a neighboring city, and would return barely in time to open court at the usual hour! He had hoped that, by telling his story beforehand, the judge would adopt his plan of discovering the real culprit. This was still his hope, for, after long thought, he determined not to employ counsel, fearing it would lead to a prolongation of the case. His strong characteristic of self-reliance led him to believe that he could manage the affair best alone, and he was confident from his own inexperience. The rain had ceased, and for hours he paced the wet pavement near the station-house, finding a kind of satisfaction in being as near as possible to the one he loved, though utterly unable to say a reassuring word. Having learned that the prisoners might ride to court if the means were provided, he had a carriage ready long before the appointed time, and his presence did much to nerve Mildred for the ordeal she so much dreaded. On reaching the entrance at which the prisoners were admitted, he sprang down to assist Mildred to alight; but the officer said gruffly, "Stand back, young man; you must have your say in the court-room. You are a little too officious." "No, sir; I'm only most friendly." "Well, well, we have our rules," and he led the trembling girl within the stony portals, and she was locked up in what is termed "the box," with the other female prisoners, who were now arriving on foot. This was, perhaps, the worst experience she had yet endured, and she longed for the privacy of her cell again. Never before had she come in contact with such debased wrecks of humanity, and she blushed for womanhood as she cowered in the furthest corner and looked upon her companions--brutal women, with every vice stamped on their bloated features. The majority were habitual drunkards, filthy in person and foul of tongue. True to their depraved instincts, they soon began to ridicule and revile one who, by contrast, proved how fallen and degraded they were. And yet, not even from these did the girl recoil with such horror as from some brazen harpies who said words in her ear that made her hide her face with shame. The officer in charge saw that she was persecuted, and sternly interfered in her behalf, but from their hideous presence and contact she could not escape. By some affinity not yet wholly obliterated, the girl she had heard weeping in the night shrank to her side, and her swollen eyes and forlorn appearance could not hide the fact that she was very young, and might be very pretty. Mildred knew not what to say to her, but she took her hand and held it. This silent expression of sympathy provoked another outburst of grief, and the poor young creature sobbed on Mildred's shoulder as if her heart were breaking. Mildred placed a sustaining arm around her, but her own sustaining truth and purity she could not impart. A partition only separated her from the "box"--which was simply a large wooden pen with round iron bars facing the corridor--to which the male prisoners were brought, one after another, by the policemen who had arrested them. The arrival of the judge was somewhat delayed, and may the reader never listen to such language as profaned her ears during the long hour and a half before the opening of the court. Fortunately her turn came rather early, and she at last was ushered to the doorway which looked upon the crowded court-room, and her heart throbbed with hope as she singled out her mother, Belle, Mrs. Wheaton, and Roger, from among long lines of curious and repulsive faces. The former kissed their hands to her, and tried to give wan, reassuring smiles, which their tears belied. Roger merely bowed gravely, and then, with an expression that was singularly alert and resolute, gave his whole attention to all that was passing. After recognizing her friends, Mildred turned to the judge, feeling that she would discover her fate in his expression and manner. Was he a kindly, sympathetic man, unhardened by the duties of his office? She could learn but little from his grave, impassive face. She soon feared that she had slight cause for hope, for after what seemed to her an absurdly brief, superficial trial, she saw two of her companions of the "box" sentenced to three months' imprisonment. The decision, which to her had such an awful import, was pronounced in an off-hand manner, and in the matter-of-fact tone with which one would dispose of bales of merchandise, and the floods of tears and passionate appeals seemingly had no more effect on the arbiter of their fates than if he had been a stony image. She could not know that they were old offenders, whose character was well known to the judge and the officers that had arrested them. Such apparent haphazard justice or injustice had a most depressing effect upon her and the weeping girl who stood a little in advance. The next prisoner who appeared before the bar received very different treatment. He was a middle-aged man, and had the appearance and was clothed in the garb of a gentleman. With nervously trembling hands and bowed head, he stood before the judge, who eyed him keenly, after reading the charge of intoxication in the streets. "Have you ever been arrested before?" he asked. "No indeed, sir," was the low, emphatic reply. "Come up here; I wish to speak with you." The officer in attendance took the half-comprehending man by the elbow and led him up within the bar before the long desk which ran the whole width of the court-room, and behind which the judge sat with his clerks and assistants. "Now tell me all about it," said the judge, and the man in a few words told his story without any palliation. With a gleam of hope Mildred saw the expression of the judge's face change as he listened, and when at last he replied, in tones so low that none could hear them save he to whom they were addressed, she saw that look which wins all hearts--the benignant aspect of one who might condemn for evil, but who would rather win and save from evil. The man slowly lifted his eyes to the speaker's face, and hope and courage began to show themselves in his bearing. The judge brought his extortation to a practical conclusion, for he said, "Promise me that with God's help you will never touch the vile stuff again." The promise was evidently sincere and hearty. "Give me your hand on it," said his Honor. The man started as if he could scarcely believe his ears, then wrung the judge's hand, while his eyes moistened with gratitude. "You are at liberty. Good-morning, sir;" and the man turned and walked through the crowded court-room, with the aspect of one to whom manhood had been restored. Hope sprang up in Mildred's heart, for she now saw that her fate was not in the hands of a stony-hearted slave of routine. She looked toward her relatives, and greeted their tearful smiles with a wan glimmer of light on her own face, and then she turned to watch the fortunes of the weeping girl who followed next in order. She did not know the charge, but guessed it only too well from the judge's face, as the officer who had arrested her made his low explanation. She, too, was summoned within the rail, and the judge began to question her. At first she was too greatly overcome by her emotions to answer. As she cowered, trembled, and sobbed, she might well have been regarded as the embodiment of that shame and remorse which overwhelm fallen womanhood before the heart is hardened and the face made brazen by years of vice. Patiently and kindly the judge drew from her faltering lips some pitiful story, and then he talked to her in low, impressive tones, that seemed to go straight to her despairing soul. A kind, firm, protecting hand might then have led her back to a life of virtue, for such had been her bitter foretastes of the fruits of sin that surely she would have gladly turned from them, could the chance have been given to her. The judge mercifully remitted her punishment, and gave her freedom. Who received her, as she turned her face toward the staring throng that intervened between her and the street? Some large-hearted woman, bent on rescuing an erring sister? Some agent of one of the many costly charities of the city? No, in bitter shame, no. Only the vile madam who traded on the price of her body and soul, and who, with vulture-like eyes, had watched the scene. She only had stood ready to pay the fine, if one had been imposed according to the letter of the law. She only received the weak and friendless creature, from whom she held as pledges all her small personal effects, and to whom she promised immediate shelter from the intolerable stare that follows such victims of society. The girl's weak, pretty face, and soft, white hands were but too true an index to her infirm will and character, and, although fluttering and reluctant, she again fell helpless into the talons of the harpy. Hapless girl! you will probably stand at this bar again, and full sentence will then be given against you. The judge frowned heavily as he saw the result of his clemency, and then, as if it were an old story, he turned to the next culprit. Mildred had been much encouraged as she watched the issue of the two cases just described; but as her eyes followed the girl wistfully toward the door of freedom she encountered the cold, malignant gaze of the man who had charge of her department at the shop, and who she instinctively felt was the cause of her shameful and dangerous position. By his side sat the two women who had searched her and the leading foreman of the store. Sick and faint from apprehension, she turned imploringly toward Roger, who was regarding the floor-walker with such vindictive sternness that she felt the wretch's hour of reckoning would soon come, whatever might be her fate. This added to her trouble, for she feared that she was involving Roger in danger. No time was given for thoughts on such side issues, for the prisoner preceding her in the line was sentenced, after a trial of three minutes--a summary proceeding that was not hope-inspiring. The name of Mildred Jocelyn was now called, and there was a murmur of expectant interest in the court-room, for she was not by any means an ordinary prisoner in appearance, and there were not a few present who knew something of the case. The young girl was pushed before the bar, and would gladly have clung to it, in order to support her trembling form. But while she could not infuse vigor into her overtaxed muscles, her brave spirit rallied to meet the emergency, and she fixed her eyes unwaveringly upon the judge, who now for the first time noticed her attentively, and it did not escape her intensely quickened perceptions that his eyes at once grew kindly and sympathetic. Sitting day after day, and year after year, in his position, he had gained a wonderful insight into character, and in Mildred's pure, sweet face he saw no evidence of guilt or of criminal tendencies. It was, indeed, white with fear, and thin from wearing toil and grief; but this very pallor made it seem only more spiritual and free from earthliness, while every feature, and the unconscious grace of her attitude, bespoke high breeding and good blood. First, the officer who arrested her told his story, and then the elder of the two women who searched her was summoned as the first witness. The judge looked grave, and he glanced uneasily at the prisoner from time to time; but the same clear, steadfast eyes met his gaze, unsullied by a trace of guilt. Then the second woman corroborated the story of her associate, and the judge asked, "How came you to suspect the prisoner so strongly as to search her?" and at this point the floor-walker was summoned. The vigilant magistrate did not fail to note the momentary glance of aversion and horror which Mildred bestowed upon this man, and then her eyes returned with so deep and pathetic an appeal to his face that his heart responded, and his judgment led him also to believe that there was error and perhaps wrong in the prosecution. Still he was compelled to admit to himself that the case looked very dark for the girl, who was gaining so strong a hold on his sympathy. "I must inform your Honor," began the witness plausibly, after having been sworn, "that laces had been missed from the department in which this girl was employed, and I was keenly on the alert, as it was my duty to be. Some suspicious circumstances led me to think that the prisoner was the guilty party, and the search proved my suspicions to be correct." "What were the suspicious circumstances?" The man seemed at a loss for a moment. "Well, your Honor, she went to the cloak-room yesterday afternoon," he said. "Do not all the girls go to the cloak-room occasionally?" "Yes, but there was something in her face and manner that fastened my suspicions upon her." "What evidences of guilt did you detect?" "I can scarcely explain--nothing very tangible. The evidences of guilt were found on her person, your Honor." "Yes, so much has been clearly shown." "And she was very reluctant to be searched, which would not have been the case had she been conscious of innocence." The woman who searched her was now asked, "Did she shrink from search, in such a manner as to betoken guilt?" "I can't say that she did show any fear of being searched by us," was the reply. "She refused to be searched in the private office of the firm." "That is, in the presence of men? Quite naturally she did." Then to the floor-walker, "Have your relations with this girl been entirely friendly?" "I am glad to say I have no relations with her whatever. My relations are the same that I hold to the other girls--merely to see that they do their duty." "You are perfectly sure that you have never cherished any ill-will toward her?" "So far from it, I was at first inclined to be friendly." "What do you mean by the term friendly?" "Well, your Honor" (a little confusedly), "the term seems plain enough." "And she did not reciprocate your friendship?" was the keen query. "After I came to know her better, I gave her no occasion to reciprocate anything; and, pardon me, your Honor, I scarcely see what bearing these questions have on the plain facts in the case." A slight frown was the only evidence that the judge had noted the impertinent suggestion that he did not know his business. "Are you perfectly sure that you cherish no ill-will toward the prisoner?" "I simply wish to do my duty by my employers. I eventually learned that her father was an opium-eater and a sot, and I don't fancy that kind of people. That is my explanation," he concluded, with a large attempt at dignity, and in a tone that he evidently meant all should hear. "Her father is not on trial, and that information was uncalled for. Have you any further testimony?" the judge asked coldly. "No, sir," and he stepped down amid a suppressed hiss in the court-room, for the spectators evidently shared in the antipathy with which he had inspired the keen-eyed but impassive and reticent magistrate, who now beckoned Mildred to step up close to him, and she came to him as if he were her friend instead of her judge. He was touched by her trust; and her steadfast look of absolute confidence made him all the more desirous of protecting her, if he could find any warrant for doing so. She said to him unmistakably by her manner, "I put myself in your hands." "My child," the judge began seriously, yet kindly, "this is a very grave charge that is brought against you, and if it is your wish you can waive further trial before me at this stage of proceedings, for unless you can prove yourself innocent at this preliminary examination, your case must be heard before a higher court. Perhaps you had better obtain counsel, and have the whole matter referred at once to the grand jury." "I would rather be tried by you, sir," Mildred replied, in a vibrating voice full of deep, repressed feeling; "I am innocent. It would be like death to me to remain longer under this shameful charge. I have confidence in you. I know I am guiltless. Please let me be tried now, NOW, for I cannot endure it any longer." "Very well, then;" and he handed her a small, grimy Bible, that, no doubt, had been kissed by scores of perjured lips. But Mildred pressed hers reverently upon it, as she swore to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." After a few preliminary questions as to age, etc., the justice said, reassuringly, "Now tell your story briefly and clearly." It was indeed a brief story, and it had the impress of truth; but his Honor looked very grave as he recognized how little there was in it to refute the positive testimony already given. "Have you witnesses?" he asked. "My mother and sister are present, and--and--a young man who thinks he knows something in my favor." "I will hear your mother first," said the judge, believing that in her he would find the chief source of character; and when the sad, refined gentlewoman stood beside her daughter, he was all the more convinced that the girl ought to be innocent, and that all his insight into character and its origin would be at fault if she were not. In low, eager tones, Mrs. Jocelyn spoke briefly of their misfortunes, and testified as to Mildred's conduct. "She has been an angel of patience and goodness in our home," she said, in conclusion; "and if this false charge succeeds, we shall be lost and ruined indeed. My daughter's pastor is out of town, and in our poverty we have few friends who could be of any service. An old neighbor, Mrs. Wheaton, is present, and will confirm my words, if you wish; but we would thank your Honor if you will call Mr. Roger Atwood, who says he has information that will aid my child." "Very well, madam," responded the judge kindly, "we will hear Mr. Atwood." Roger was now sworn, while Mrs. Jocelyn returned to her seat. In the young fellow's frank, honest face the judge found an agreeable contrast with the ill-omened visage of the floor-walker, whose good looks could not hide an evil nature. "I must beg your Honor to listen to me with patience," Roger began in a low tone, "for my testimony is peculiar, and does not go far enough unless furthered by your Honor's skill in cross-questioning;" and in eager tones, heard only by the judge, he told what he had seen, and suggested his theory that if the girl, whom he had followed two evenings before, could be examined previous to any communication with her accomplice, she would probably admit the whole guilty plot. The judge listened attentively, nodding approvingly as Roger finished, and said, "Leave me to manage this affair. I wish you to go at once with an officer, point out this girl to him, and bring her here. She must not have communication with any one. Nor must anything be said to her relating to the case by either you or the officer. Leave her wholly to me." A subpoena was made out immediately and given to a policeman, with a few whispered and emphatic injunctions, and Roger was told to accompany him. "This case is adjourned for the present. You may sit with your mother within the railing," he added kindly to Mildred. The floor-walker had been watching the turn that the proceedings were taking with great uneasiness, and now was eager to depart, in order to caution the girl that Roger was in pursuit of against admitting the least knowledge of the affair; but the judge was too quick for him, and remarked that he was not through with him yet, and requested that he and the representative of the firm should remain. The two women who had testified against Mildred were permitted to depart. Then, as if dismissing the case from his mind, he proceeded to dispose of the other prisoners. Belle joined her sister, and greeted her with great effusiveness, looking ready to champion her against the world; but they at last quieted her, and waited with trembling impatience and wonder for the outcome of Roger's mission. The girl who had been led to wrong Mildred so greatly returned to the shop that morning with many misgivings, which were much increased when she learned what had occurred. She also felt that her accomplice had dealt treacherously in allowing such serious proceedings against Mildred, for he had promised that she should be merely taxed with theft and warned to seek employment elsewhere. "If he deceives in one respect he will in another, and I'm not safe from arrest either," she said to herself, and she made so many blunders in her guilty preoccupation that she excited the surprise of her companions. As she was waiting on a customer she heard a voice remark, "That's the girl," and looking up she grew faint and white as she saw, standing before her, a policeman, who served his subpoena at once, saying, "You must go with me immediately." Frightened and irresolute, she stammered that she knew nothing about the affair. "Well, then, you must come and tell his Honor so." "Must I go?" she appealed to one of the firm, who happened to be near. "Certainly," he replied, examining the subpoena; "go and tell all you know, or if you don't know anything, say so." "I don't see why I should be dragged into the case--" she began brazenly. "There's the reason," said the officer impatiently; "that subpoena has the power of bringing any man or woman in the city." Seeing that resistance was useless, she sullenly accompanied them to a street-car, and was soon in readiness to be called upon for her testimony. The judge having disposed of the case then on trial, Mildred was again summoned to the bar, and the unwilling witness was sent for. She only had time to cast a reproachful glance at the man who, she feared, had betrayed her, and who tried, by his manner, to caution her, when the judge demanded her attention, he having in the meantime noted the fellow's effort. "Stand there," he said, placing her so that her back was toward the man who sought to signal silence. "Officer, swear her. Now," he resumed severely, "any deviation from the truth, and the whole truth, will be perjury, which, you know, is a State-prison offence. I can assure you most honestly that it will be better for you, in all respects, to hide nothing, for you will soon discover that I know something about this affair." After the preliminary questions, which were asked with impressive solemnity, he demanded, "Did you not leave the shop on Tuesday evening, and pass up the Avenue to----Street?" "Yes, sir." "Did you not look back twice, to see if you were followed?" "I may have looked back." "You don't deny it, then?" "No, sir." "Did not Mr. Bissel, the floor-walker, join you in----Street, before you had gone very far?" "Ye--yes, sir," with a start. "Did he not say something that agitated you very much?" "He may have frightened me," she faltered. "Yes, he probably did; but why? Did you not make a strong gesture of protest against what he said?" "Yes, sir," with a troubled stare at the judge. "Did you not go on with him very quietly and submissively, after a moment or two?" "Yes, sir," and her face now was downcast, and she began to tremble. "Did you not enter a covered alley-way, that led to tenements in the rear?" "Yes, sir," with increasing agitation. "Well, what did you do there?" "Has he told on me, your Honor?" she gasped, with a sudden flood of tears. "What he has done is no concern of yours. You are under oath to tell the whole truth. There was a single gas-jet burning in the covered passage-way, was there not?" "Yes, sir," sobbing violently. "Has Miss Mildred Jocelyn ever wronged you?" "N--no, sir, not that I know of." "Now tell me just what occurred under that gas-jet." "I'll tell your Honor the whole truth," the girl burst out, "if your Honor'll let me off this time. It's my first offence, and we're poor, and I was driven to it by need, and he promised me that Miss Jocelyn wouldn't suffer anything worse than a warning to find another place." Believing that her accomplice had betrayed her, she told the whole story without any concealment, fully exonerating Mildred. Although the judge maintained his stern, impassive aspect throughout the scene, he hugely enjoyed the floor-walker's dismay and confusion, and his tortured inability to warn the girl to deny everything. "Please, your Honor, forgive me this time," sobbed the trembling witness in conclusion, "and I'll never do wrong again." "I have no right or power to punish you," replied the judge; "it rests wholly with your employers whether they will prosecute you or not. Send that floor-walker here" (to an officer). "Well, sir, what have you to say to this testimony?" he asked, as the fellow shuffled forward, pale and irresolute. "Remember, you are still under oath." The wily villain, caught in his own trap, hesitated. He was tempted to deny that the plot against Mildred was at his instigation; but, like the girl, he saw that the judge had mysterious information on the subject, and he could not tell how far this knowledge went. If he entered on a series of denials he might be confronted by another witness. The young man who had been sent to identify the girl, and whose unexpected presence had brought such disaster, might have been concealed in the passage-way, and so have seen and heard all. With the fear of an indictment for perjury before his eyes the fellow began to whine. "I was only trying to protect the interests of my employers. I had suspected the Jocelyn girl--" At this there arose from the court-room a loud and general hiss, Which the judge repressed, as he sternly interposed, "We have nothing to do with your suspicions. Do you deny the testimony?" "No, sir; but--" "That's enough. No words; step down." Then turning to Mildred, he said kindly and courteously, "Miss Jocelyn, it gives me pleasure to inform you that your innocence has been clearly shown. I should also inform you that this man Bissel has made himself liable to suit for damages, and I hope that you will prosecute him. I am sorry that you have been subjected to so painful an ordeal. You are now at liberty." "I thank--oh, I thank and bless your Honor," said Mildred, with such a depth of gratitude and gladness in her face that the judge smiled to himself several times that day. It was like a burst of June sunshine after a storm. While the witness was admitting the facts which would prove her guiltless, Mildred was scarcely less agitated than the wretched girl herself; but her strong excitement showed itself not by tears, but rather in her dilated eyes, nervously trembling form, and quickly throbbing bosom. Now that the tension was over she sank on a bench near, and covering her eyes, from which gushed a torrent of tears, with her hands, murmured audibly, "Thank God! oh, thank God! He has not deserted me after all." Looks of strong sympathy were bent upon her from all parts of the room, and even the judge himself was so much affected that he took prompt refuge in the duties of his office, and summoning the foreman of the shop, said, "You may inform your employers how matters stand." This functionary had been regarding the later stage of the proceedings in undisguised astonishment, and now hastened to depart with his tidings, the floor-walker following him with the aspect of a whipped cur, and amid the suppressed groans and hisses of the spectators. The girl, too, slunk away after them in the hope of making peace with her employers. The judge now observed that Roger had buttonholed a reporter, who had been dashing off hieroglyphics that meant a spicy paragraph the following day. Summoning the young man, he said, as if the affair were of slight importance, "Since the girl has been proved innocent, and will have no further relation to the case, I would suggest that, out of deference to her friends and her own feelings, there be no mention of her name," and the news-gatherer good-naturedly acceded to the request. A new case was called, and new interests, hopes, and fears agitated the hearts of other groups, that had been drawn to the judgment-seat by the misfortunes or crimes of those bound to them by various ties. Mrs. Jocelyn would not leave the place, which she had so dreaded, until Roger could accompany them, and they chafed at every moment of delay that prevented their pouring out their thanks. But Mildred's heart was too full for words. She fully understood how great a service he had rendered her. She bitterly reproached herself for all her prejudice in the past, and was in a mood for any self-sacrifice that he would ask. Tears of deep and mingled feeling fell fast, and she longed to escape from the staring crowd. Not before such witnesses could she speak and look the gratitude she felt. With downcast eyes and quivering lips she followed her mother--to whom Roger had given his arm--from the court-room. A carriage stood at the door, into which Mrs. Jocelyn was hurried before she could speak; then turning so promptly that there was no chance even for exuberant Belle or the effervescing Mrs. Wheaton to utter a syllable, Roger seized Mildred's hand, and said earnestly, "Thanks for your aid, Miss Jocelyn. I thought you were the bravest girl in the world, and you have proved it. I am as glad as you are, and this is the happiest moment in my life. I've just one favor to ask--please rest, and don't worry about anything--not ANYTHING. That's all. Good-by, for I must be off to business;" and before she or any of them could speak he caught a swiftly passing street-car and disappeared. CHAPTER XXXV "I AM SO PERPLEXED" The little group that Roger left on the sidewalk looked after him in a dazed manner for a moment, and then Belle exclaimed, a trifle indignantly, "Well, I declare, if he hasn't thanked you, instead of you thanking him." Mildred sprang into the carriage, feeling that she must have some refuge at once, and, burying her face on her mother's shoulder, burst into another passion of tears. "There, there," said Mrs. Wheaton, as they were driven toward their home; "the poor child's 'eart is too full for hany neat speeches now. Ven they meets hagain she'll thank him with heyes an' 'and, better than hany vords 'ere hon the street. He vas too bright a chap to take his thanks in this 'ere public place." To their surprise, Mildred raised her head, and replied, in strong protest, "You do him wrong, Mrs. Wheaton. He was so modest and manly that he wished to escape all thanks. He has taken a noble revenge on me for all my stupid prejudice." "That's right," cried ecstatic Belle. "Honest confession is good for the soul. I'll admit that most men and women are made of dust--street dust at that--but Roger Atwood is pure gold. He has the quickest brain and steadiest hand of any fellow in the world, and he'll stand up at the head before he's gray." Fortunately, Mr. Jocelyn was not at home when they returned, and they had a chance to take a quiet breath after their strong excitement. Mrs. Wheaton, with many hearty congratulations and words of cheer, took her departure. Mrs. Jocelyn was justly solicitous about Mildred, fearing that the reaction from an ordeal that would tax the strongest might bring utter prostration to her delicate and sensitive organism. Mildred's manner soon threatened to realize her worst fears. She had passed a sleepless night, and was faint from fatigue, and yet, as the hours lapsed, she grew more nervously restless. Her eyes were hot and dry, sometimes so full of resolution that they were stern in their steadfastness, and again her face expressed a pathetic irresoluteness and sadness that made the mother's heart ache. "Millie," she whispered, as she came to the bed on which the girl was tossing restlessly, "there's something on your mind. Mother's eyes are quick in reading the face of her child. You are thinking--you are debating something that won't let you rest, when you need rest so much. Oh, Millie darling, my heart was growing apathetic--it seemed almost dead in my breast. I've suffered on account of your father, till it seemed as if I couldn't suffer any more; but your peril and your troubled face teach me that it is not dead, and that my best solace now is devotion to my children. What is it, Millie, that you are turning over in your mind, which makes you look so desperately sad and fearful, and again--and then your expression frightens me--so determined as if you were meditating some step, which, I fear, you ought not to take? Oh, Millie, my child, the worst that I know about is bad enough, God knows, but your face makes me dread that you may be led by your troubles to do something which you would not think of were you less morbid and overwrought. I may have seemed to you a poor, weak woman in all of our troubles, but mother's love is strong, if her mind and body are not." "Mamma, mamma, do not judge me or yourself so harshly. You have always been my ideal, mamma, and I was thinking of nothing worse than how to rescue you and the others from your desperate straits. How can we go on living in this way, your heart breaking, your poor, frail body overtaxed with coarse labor, and Belle, Minnie, and Fred becoming contaminated by our dreadful surroundings. The shock I've received has awakened me from my old apathy. I see that while I just toiled for daily bread, and a little of it too, we were drifting down, down. Papa grows worse and worse. Belle is in danger; and what will become of Fred and Minnie if they remain long amid such scenes? Only yesterday morning I heard Fred quarrelling with another little boy on the landing, and lisping out oaths in his anger. Oh, mamma, we must be able to look forward to some escape from all this, or else you will soon give way to despair, and the worst will come. Oh that I were a man! Oh that I knew how to do something, through which I could earn enough to put papa into an institution, such as I have read of, and give you a home worthy of the name. But I cannot. I can only do what thousands of others can do, and take my chances with them in getting work. And now I seem so broken down in body and soul that I feel as if I could never work again. There seems to be one way, mamma, in which I can help you." And then she hesitated, and a deep, burning flush crimsoned the face that was so pale before. "Well," she said, at last, in a kind of desperation, "I might as well speak plainly, if I speak at all. It's no secret to you how Roger Atwood feels toward me, and also, mamma, you know my heart. While I could kiss his hand in gratitude, while I would not shrink from any suffering for his sake, to show how deeply I appreciate the priceless service he has rendered me, still, mamma, mamma, I'm only a woman, and am cursed with all the perversity of a woman's heart. Oh, what a loyal friend, what a devoted sister I could be to him! Mamma, can't you understand me?" "Yes, Millie," sadly answered her mother. "Well, mamma, I'm so perplexed. It seems for his sake, since we have become so poor and disgraced, that I ought to refuse his suit. To the world, and especially to his friends, it will appear dreadfully selfish that we should link our wretched fortunes to his, and so cloud his prospects and impede his progress. I can't tell you how I dread such criticism. And yet, mamma, you know--no, mamma, even you cannot understand how great would be my self-sacrifice, when to others it will appear that I am only too glad to cling to one who gives some promise of better days. But the turning point has now come. Hitherto my manner toward Mr. Atwood has been unmistakable, and he has understood me; and were he obtuseness itself he could not fail to understand me. But after what has happened I cannot treat him so any longer. It would be shameful ingratitude. Indeed, in my cell last night I almost vowed that if he would prove me innocent--if he would save you and Belle and the children, I would make any sacrifice that he would ask. If I feel this way he will know it, for he almost reads my thoughts, he is so quick, and his feeling for me is so deep. And yet, mamma, now that I have thought more I fear that in sacrificing my own heart I am also sacrificing him. His friends will think so, at least. He is so young, chivalric, and unworldly that he may think it a noble thing to help us fight out our battle; but will he think so in coming years? Will he think so if the struggle is long and hard? Will he think so if we impede and retard him? Alas, will he think so if he finds that I can give him only gratitude and respect? Oh, mamma, I am so perplexed. I don't want to wrong him; I can't see you suffer on hopelessly and helplessly, and therefore it seems I ought to give him the right to help us should he seek for it, as I feel sure he will if I show any relenting. We could not be married for a long time; but if we were engaged he could do much to shield and protect us all; and now, alas, we have no protector. Belle needs one--oh, how sorely she needs one--and what would have been my fate had he not come to my aid? It would seem heartless in me to say simply, Thank you, sir; and yet, what heart have I to give in exchange for his devotion? He deserves so much, and I can give so little. Oh, mamma, will an old love die and a new one grow because they--because you wish it, and pray for it? I am so perplexed, so tossed and torn by my conflicting thoughts and feelings that my poor brain reels, and it seems as if I should lose my reason. And yet I must decide upon some course, for if, after his loyalty to me, I give him hope, I'll not disappoint him if I died a thousand times--no, not if Vinton Arnold came and laid all his wealth at my feet; I can see his love in every glance of his eye, still more can I feel it when he is near me; and if I offer him friendship or a sister's affection, it will seem to him like giving a stone for bread. But I must offer him only these or else give him hope--a hope that it would now be dishonor to disappoint. Mamma, mamma, what shall I do--what ought I to do?" During this outpouring of her child's soul Mrs. Jocelyn was much agitated, and wiped tear after tear from her eyes. The impulse of her loyal, unworldly heart was first to take sides with Mildred's faithfulness to her earliest love, but her reason condemned such a course so positively that she said all she could against it. "Millie," she began, falteringly at first, "I feel with you and for you deeply. I know your rare quality of fidelity--of constancy. You are an old-fashioned Southern girl in this respect. While I would not have you wrong your heart, you must not blindly follow its impulses. It is often said that women have no reason, though some are calculating enough, Heaven knows. Surely, Millie, this is a case in which you should take some counsel of your reason, your judgment; and believe me, darling, I speak more for your sake than ours. While I admit that Roger has become very dear to me, I would not sacrifice you, my love, even in our sore straits. It is of you I think chiefly. I cannot endure the thought that the future of my darling child may be utterly blighted. I cannot bear to think of your settling down into a weary working-woman, with nothing to look forward to but daily drudgery for daily bread." "I do not dread that so much, mamma--oh, nothing like so much--as a long and perhaps a vain effort to love one who has a sacred right to love as well as loyalty." "Millie, you don't know how lonely and desolate your life might become. Millie--forgive me for saying it--your old love is utterly vain." "I know it, mamma," said Mildred, with a low sob. "Therefore, my darling, the sweetness and goodness of your young life ought not to be wasted on that which is vain and empty. If Mr. Arnold were worthy of your affections he would not have left you all this time without even a word. And, Millie, we may as well face the truth: we never belonged to the Arnolds' world, and it was wicked folly, for which I suffer hourly remorse, that we ever tried to approach it. If, instead of attempting to live like our rich neighbors, I had saved a goodly portion of your father's income, all might have been so different; but I was never taught to save, and I was just blind--blind. I never see your father but the thought comes, like a stab in the heart, I might have prevented it. Oh, if I had only stayed with him! It was during that fatal separation that he formed the habit which will cause his death and mine." (Poor Mrs. Jocelyn always remained under this illusion.) "Oh, mamma, mamma, don't talk that way: I can't bear it." "I must prepare you, Millie, darling, for what I clearly foresee. Martin is destroying himself, and I shall not long survive him. Oh, Millie, it's a terrible thing to love a weak man as I love your father. I love him so that his course is killing me. It could not be otherwise, for I am much to blame. Don't interrupt me; I am speaking these bitter words for your ultimate good. Your life is before you--" "Mamma, how can my life be before me if you die broken-hearted?" "Because you are young. You know that it would add tenfold bitterness to my already overflowing cup if I saw no chance for you, Belle, and the little ones. You may soon have to be mother and sister both. I forewarn you, because, as Roger says, you are strong as well as gentle, and you must not just drift helplessly toward we know not what. Oh, Millie, my poor crushed heart must have one consolation before it is at rest. Roger is not, and never will be, a weak man. It is not in his nature to give way to fatal habits. I, too, with a woman's eye, have seen his deep, strong affection for you, and with a mother's jealous love I have studied his character. He is a young giant, Millie, whom you unconsciously awoke to manhood. He comes of a sturdy, practical race, and unites to their shrewdness a chivalric Southern heart and large brain. He doesn't begin to know, himself, how much of a man he is, but the experience of life will fast develop him. He is one who will master circumstances, and not be molded by them. Obstacles will only stimulate his will. Your prejudice and dislike have not made him falter a moment. In the heart of a girl like you, Millie, I truly believe that a new love for such a man will surely spring up, and grow and strengthen with each succeeding year, and you would be worthy of him. You could make him happy, and eventually add greatly to his success. He is sure to become eminent, and be burdened with many large affairs, and the home you could make for him would be a refuge and a resting-place from which he would go out daily, strong and refreshed. Let his friends say what they please at first. He has his own career to make, and in his choice of you he has shown how unerring and sound his instincts are, and you can prove them so, and will, I think, when time has given your morbid and unhappy heart its healthful tone. Mrs. Wheaton has done much work at his uncle's house, and Mrs. Atwood talks to her quite freely. Mrs. Wheaton says they are wealthy, although they live so plainly, and that Mr. Atwood, Roger's uncle, is wonderfully taken with the young man, and means to give him a chance to climb among the highest, if he continues to be so steady and persevering. Of course you know that Roger will never be anything else than steady. And Mrs. Wheaton also says that Mr. Atwood will, no doubt, leave everything to him, for he has no children." "I am sorry you have told me this," sighed Mildred; "it would have been hard enough at best, but I should feel almost mercenary now." "Oh, Millie, you are too morbid and proud for anything," expostulated Mrs. Jocelyn, in whom no misfortune or sorrow could wholly blot out her old, mild passion for making good matches for her daughters--good matches in the right sense of the word--for she would look for worth, or what seemed worth to her, as well as the wealth that is too often considered solely. She had sought to involve Vinton Arnold by innocent wiles, and now, in pathetic revival of her old trait, she was even more bent on providing for Mildred by securing a man after her own heart. Love for her daughter, far more than ambition, was the main-spring of her motive, and surely her gentle schemes were not deserving of a very harsh judgment. She could not be blamed greatly for looking with wistful eyes on the one ray of light falling on her darkening path. After a brief, troubled silence Mrs. Jocelyn resumed, with pathos and pleading in her voice, "Millie, darling, if this could all be, it would brighten my last days." "There, there, mamma; as far as I CAN carry out your wishes, it shall be. I had already virtually promised it, and I should be perverse indeed could I not do all--all in my power to brighten your sad life. But, darling mamma, you must promise to live in return. A palace would be desolate if you were not seated in the snuggest corner of the hearth. I'll try to love him; I know I ought to give my whole heart to one who is so worthy, and who can do so much to brighten your life." "Blessings on you, Millie. You will soon learn to return all his affection. You are both young, and it will probably be years before you can be married. In the meantime you will have a protector and friend who will have the right to aid you. You were slowly dying for want of air and change and hope. You worked all day, and shut yourself up in this miserable place at night, and it could not last; as your affianced he can take your part against the world, and protect Belle; and during the years while he is making his way upward, you will learn to love him. You will become interested in his studies, hopes, and prospects. You will encourage, and at the same time prevent undue application, for no man knows how to take care of himself. He can be our deliverer, and you his good angel. Your relations and long engagement may not be exactly conventional; but he is not conventional, neither is your need nor our sad fortunes. Since God has put within our reach this great alleviation of our sorrow, ought we to refuse it?" "Set your mind at rest, mamma; you have made duty plain. I will do my best, and it now all rests with Roger." "Millie, you are a dear, good child," said the mother brokenly, and with smiles shining like light through her tears; and after a close embrace she went out, closing the door that the weary girl might rest at last. When alone, Mildred turned her face to the wall and breathed, like the lowest and saddest note of a wind-touched harp, "Vinton, Vinton Arnold, farewell forever. I must look for you no more--I must think of you no more. Oh, perverse heart, be still!" But a decision had been reached, and her perplexed mind had at last found the rest of a fixed resolve. Then nature asserted her right, and she slept long and heavily. When she awoke, the lamp was lighted in the one living-room, from which came the sounds of an unsteady step and a thick, rough voice. She trembled, for she knew that her father had come home again intoxicated--an event that was becoming terribly frequent of late. She felt too weak and nerveless to go out and look upon their living disgrace, and lay still with long, sighing breaths. "Even Mr. Atwood will turn from us in disgust, when he realizes papa's degradation," she thought. "Alas! can it be right to cloud his bright young life with such a shameful stain! Oh, if it were not selfish, I could wish to die and escape from it all." At last the heavy, shuffling step passed into the adjoining bedroom, and soon the wretched man was in stupor. As Mildred came out she saw Belle, who had returned from her work, looking toward the room in which her father slept, with a lowering, reckless expression that made her sister shudder. Mildred tried to banish evil thoughts by putting her arm around the young girl's neck and kissing her between the eyes. "Don't look so, Belle," she whispered. "Where is that to end?" Belle asked, in a strange, harsh voice, pointing toward the room. "Millie, I can't stand this life much longer." "Oh, Belle, don't forget there is a heaven beyond this life." "It's too far beyond. Look here, Millie; since God don't answer mamma's prayers, I haven't much faith in anything. See what undeserved trouble came upon you too. If it hadn't been for Roger you would have been in prison to-night, and we'd have been alone here with a drunken father. How can one have faith and try to be good when such things happen?" "Belle," said Mildred, with a solemnity that made the reckless, discouraged girl turn pale, "you had better take a knife from that table and stab mamma than do anything wrong." "Oh, hush!" whispered Belle, for Mrs. Jocelyn now entered with the children, whom she was glad to have away when the unnatural father returned, even though she knew they were with the wild young Arabs of the tenement. CHAPTER XXXVI A WOMAN'S HEART Mrs. Jocelyn and her daughters were silent and depressed during their meagre supper, for they never could become accustomed to the terrible skeleton in their household. When Mr. Jocelyn confined himself solely to opium he was not so revolting, but common, beastly intoxication was unendurable. They felt that it was brutalizing his very soul, and becoming a millstone around their necks which must drag them down to some unknown abyss of infamy. Mechanically they went through the motions of eating, the mother and daughters forcing down the little food they could afford, and the children ravenously devouring all that was given to them. As Mildred saw the mother trying to slip unnoticed her almost untasted supper from her plate to Fred's, she laid a hand upon her arm and said: "No, mamma; remember you are to live," she added in a low whisper, and the poor creature tried to smile and was submissive. With a pathetic maintenance of their old-time habits, they had scarcely cleared away the supper-table, put the children to rest, and made the poor little place as neat and inviting as possible, when Mr. Wentworth appeared, followed by Roger. Mildred had been expecting the latter with trepidation, Belle with impatience; and the hard, lowering look on the face of the young girl gave way to one of welcome and pleasure, for if Belle's good moods were apt to be transient, so were her evil ones, and the hearty, healthy spirits of the young fellow were contagious. Mildred was greatly relieved to see Mr. Wentworth, for while she had fully resolved to yield to Roger's suit, her heart, despite her will, welcomed delay. She was also glad that her pastor was present, for she could now show her strong gratitude without fear of immediate and embarrassing results. She was therefore more prompt even than Belle, and, taking the young man's hand in both of her own, she said, with tears in her eyes: "Why didn't you let me thank you this morning? My gratitude has been growing every moment, and you must take it all or I shall sink under it. Mr. Wentworth, I should have been in some horrible prison to-night, with my heart breaking from sorrow and shame, if it were not for this kind, generous friend, Mr. Atwood. I long cherished an unreasoning prejudice against you, and showed it openly. You have taken a strange revenge. No Southern gentleman could have acted more nobly, and a Southern girl could not use stronger praise than that." Roger's hand, usually so strong and steady, trembled. These words, warm from the heart of the girl who had hitherto been so distant and unapproachable, almost took away his breath. "Please don't," he faltered. "Such gratitude--such words--from you oppress me. I don't deserve such thanks. Any decent man would have been glad to save one who was so good and so wronged, and I shall always regard it as the luckiest event of my life that I happened to be the one to aid you. Oh, you don't know, you never can know what immense good-fortune it was." Then, as if fearing he might lose his self-control, he broke hastily away to greet Mrs. Jocelyn, but Belle caught him with the impulse of the warm-hearted sister she had become, and throwing her arm around his neck exclaimed, "I'm going to pay you with the best coin I have." And she kissed him again and again. "Oh, Jupiter!" gasped the blushing youth. "Bless that floor-walker and all his deviltry! I shall let him off just a little for this." "No, don't. I'll give you another kiss if you'll get even with him," Belle whispered. "It's a bargain," he said in her ear, and Belle ratified the compact immediately. "Oh," thought Mildred, in the depths of her heart, "if it were only Belle instead of me!" Mrs. Jocelyn's greeting was scarcely less demonstrative than Belle's, but there was a motherly tenderness in it that brought tears into the young fellow's eyes. "Blessings on you, my dear good boy," she murmured, "and a mother's blessing will do you no harm." "Look here," said Roger brusquely, "if you don't let up on a fellow I shall make a confounded fool of myself." And his lip quivered as if he were a boy in truth. Mr. Wentworth, who in their strong feeling had been quite ignored, at first looked on with smiling sympathy. Mildred had given him the hand that Roger released, and holding it in a warm clasp he did not speak at first, but watched a scene that had for him the attractions of a real drama. He now did not help Roger much by saying, in his hearty way, "That's right; lay it on strong; he deserves all, and more. Miss Mildred, I have been yellow with envy for the last two hours because I was absent. I would have eulogized you so in court that the judge would have addressed you as Saint Mildred, and yet it's but honest to say that you would have gone to jail like many a saint before you had not Roger got hold of the facts which enabled the judge to prove you innocent. The law is awfully matter-of-fact, and that lace on your person had to be accounted for." "Yes, yes," cried Belle, "tell us everything. We've been dying with curiosity all day, and you've been so mysterious and important, and have put on such airs, that you quite awed me. Seems to me that for a country boy you are blossoming fast." "It isn't necessary for a country boy to be a fool, especially when he has eyes," replied Roger in an off-hand way. "It's all simple enough. I happened to be passing the store where Miss Mildred--" "Happened to be passing! How often did you happen to pass?" Belle interrupted, with a face full of mischief. "You are not a judge, ma'am, and so can't cross-question," he answered, with a quick blush but a defiant little nod, "and if you were, no one is obliged to incriminate himself. I was merely passing, and the movements of that scamp, Bissel, slightly awakened my curiosity, and I followed him and the girl. I was exceedingly fortunate, and saw enough to enable the judge to draw from the girl the whole story. Now you see what a simple, prosaic part I played. Miss Jocelyn, in keeping up so bravely through scenes and experiences that were perfectly horrible to her, is the heroine of the piece. By Jove!--beg your pardon, Mr. Wentworth--it was as good as a play to see how she looked her innocence into the heart and mind of the judge. I saw the judicial frost in his eyes melting like two icicles on the south side of a barn. Oh, the judge could see as far into a millstone as the next man," he continued, laughing, as if he relished the memory hugely. "After those horrid old hags were sent along so fast to where they belonged, he looked when Miss Jocelyn appeared as if a whole picture gallery were before him. He could keep up his official regulation manner, but his eyes paid a certain prisoner many compliments." "Roger, you've got the eyes of a lynx," said Belle, and Mildred was human enough to show the pleasure she felt at his words. "Nonsense," replied the young fellow in sudden confusion. "Any one who has learned to hunt well gets a quick eye." "The judge's eyes at least were not at all to blame," added Mr. Wentworth, laughing, and looking at Mildred so kindly and admiringly that the color which was stealing into her face deepened rapidly. "Well, to come down to business. Roger and I have been to see your employers, and we talked to them rather strongly. While they insist that they were misled and not to blame, they felt remorseful, and we struck while they were in their regretful mood. They give you a week's vacation, and send you twenty-five dollars as a small compensation for what you have suffered." "I don't want it," cried Mildred indignantly. "Oh yes, you do; besides it's only spoiling the Philistines. They had already discharged that scoundrel Bissel, and they intend prosecuting the girl. They apologize to you, and promise to raise your wages, but I think I can obtain enough sewing and fancy work to render it unnecessary for you to go back unless you prefer it. I don't want to think of your being subjected to that barbarous rule of standing any longer. I know of a lady on Fifth Avenue who is a host if she once becomes interested in any one, and through her I think I can enlist enough people to keep you busy. I feel sure she will be our ally when she knows all." "Oh, if I could only stay with mamma and work at home, I should be so glad," was the young girl's response. "Well, I must have one promise first, and your conscience should lead you to make it honestly. You must give me your word that you will not shut yourself up from light, air, and recreation. You must take a walk every day; you must go out with your sister and Roger, and have a good time as often as possible. If I find you sewing and moping here all the time, I shall feel hurt and despondent. Miss Millie, the laws of health are just as much God's laws as the Ten Commandments." "I feel you are right," she faltered. Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed, "But papa, papa. Mr. Wentworth, since all know it now, you must know the truth that is worse than death to us. I feel as if I wanted to hide where no one could ever see me again; I fear we do Mr. Atwood a wrong in permitting him to be so friendly." Roger towered up until he "looked six feet six," as Belle remarked afterward, and, coming straight to the speaker, he took her hand and said, "Miss Jocelyn, when I'm ashamed to be seen with you and Belle, I'll strike hands with Bissel in the sneak-thieving line. I ask for no prouder distinction, than to be trusted by your mother and by you." "Roger has settled that question, and shown himself a sensible fellow," resumed Mr. Wentworth, with an emphatic and approving nod. "Since you have spoken of a subject so deeply painful, I will speak plainly too. There are plenty of people, I admit, who treat the family of wrong-doers as if their unspeakable misfortune were their fault; and in a certain sense this tendency is wholesome, for it has a great restraining influence on those tempted to give way to evil. But this tendency should not be carried to cruel lengths by any one, and there are those who are sufficiently just to discriminate and feel the deepest sympathy--as I do. While it would be in bad taste for you and Miss Belle to ignore this trouble, and flaunt gayly in public places, it would be positively wicked to let your trouble crush out health, life, and hope. You are both young, and you are sacredly bound to make the best and the most of the existence that God has bestowed upon you. You have as good a right to pure air and sunshine as I have, and as good a right to respect while you maintain your present character. It would do your father no good, it would break your mother's heart, if you followed your morbid impulses. It would only add to your father's remorse. I fear his craving for the poisons that are destroying him has become a disease, and that it is morally impossible for him to refrain." "Do you think--would it be possible to put him into an institution," Mildred faltered. "Well, it would be expensive, and yet if he will go to one and make an honest effort to be cured, perhaps the money might be raised." "Oh," cried Mildred, "we'd starve almost, we'd work night and day to give him a chance." "The money shall be raised," said Roger quietly. "I've saved nearly all my wages, and--" "Oh, Mr. Atwood," burst out Mildred impetuously, "this would be far better than saving me from prison. I would pay you back every penny if I toiled all my life, and if papa could be his old self once more we would soon regain all that we have lost." Then a sudden passion of sobs shook her slight form. "Oh," she gasped brokenly, "I could die--I could suffer anything to save papa." "Mr. Wentworth," said the wife, with a look in her large tearless blue eyes which they never forgot, "we will live in one room, we'll spend only enough for bare existence, if you'll help us in this matter." Then putting her arms around Roger's neck she buried her face on his breast and murmured, "You are like a son to me, and all there is left of my poor crushed heart clings to you. If I could see Martin the man he was, I could die in peace." "He shall have the chance of the best and richest," said Roger brokenly. "I ask nothing better than to have a hand in saving such a man as Mr. Jocelyn must have been." Then was Roger's hour and opportunity, and he might at that time have bound Mildred to him by vows that the girl would sooner perish than break. Indeed in her abounding gratitude, and with every generous, unselfish chord in her soul vibrating, even his eyes could have been deceived, and he might easily have believed that he had won her heart. But there was neither policy nor calculation in his young enthusiasm. His love truly prompted his heart, but it was a heart abounding in good, unselfish impulses, if sufficient occasion called them forth. He loved Mrs. Jocelyn and Belle scarcely less than his own mother and sister, and yet with a different affection, a more ideal regard. They appealed to his imagination; their misfortunes made them sacred in his eyes, and aroused all the knightly instincts which slumber in every young, unperverted man. Chief of all, they belonged to Mildred, the girl who had awakened his manhood, and to whom he had felt, even when she was so cold and prejudiced, that he owed his larger life and his power to win a place among men. Now that she was so kind, now that she was willing to be aided by him in her dearest hopes, he exulted, and life grew rich in tasks for which the reward seemed boundless. The hope would come to him, as Mildred rose to say good-by with a look that he had never seen on any human face before, that she might soon give him something warmer and better than gratitude; but if she could not soon, he would wait, and if she never could return his love, he proposed to be none the less loyal as a friend. Indeed the young girl's expression puzzled him. The old pride was all gone, and she gave him the impression of one who is conquered and defenceless, and who is ready to yield anything, everything to the victor. And this ill-defined impression was singularly true, for she was in a passion of self-sacrifice. She felt that one who had been so generous and self-forgetful had a right to all that a true man could ask, and that it would be base in her to refuse. The greater the sacrifice the more gladly she would make it, in order that she too might prove that a Southern girl could not be surpassed in noblesse oblige by a Northern man. She was in one of those supreme moods in which men and women are swayed by one dominant impulse, and all other considerations become insignificant. The fact that those she loved were looking on was no restraint upon her feeling, and the sympathizing presence of the clergyman added to it. Indeed her emotion was almost religious. The man who had saved her from prison and from shame--far more: the man who was ready to give all he had to rescue her fallen father--was before her, and without a second's hesitation she would have gone into a torture-chamber for the sake of this generous friend. She wanted him to see his absolute power. She wanted him to know that he had carried her prejudice, her dislike by storm, and had won the right to dictate his terms. Because she did not love him she was so frank in her abandon. If he had held her heart's love she would have been shy, were she under tenfold greater obligations. She did not mean to be unmaidenly--she was not so, for her unconscious delicacy saved her--but she was at his feet as truly as the "devotee" is prostrate and helpless before the car of Juggernaut. But Roger was no grim idol, and he was too inexperienced, too modest to understand her. As he held her throbbing palm he looked a little wonderingly into her flushed face and tear-gemmed eyes that acknowledged him lord and master without reserve; then he smiled and said in a low, half-humorous tone, "I shan't be an ogre to you--you won't be afraid of me any longer, Miss Mildred?" "No," she replied impetuously; "you are the truest and best friend a woman ever had. Oh, I know it--I know it now. After what you said about papa, I should despise myself if I did not know it." She saw all his deep, long-repressed passion leap into his face and eyes, and in spite of herself she recoiled from it as from a blow. Ah, Mildred, your will is strong, your gratitude is boundless, your generous enthusiasm had swept you away like a tide, but your woman's heart is stronger and greater than all, and he has seen this truth unmistakably. The passion died out of his face like a flame that sinks down to the hidden, smouldering fire that produced it. He gave her hand a strong pressure as he said quietly, "I am indeed your friend--never doubt it;" then he turned away decidedly, and although his leave-taking from Mrs. Jocelyn and Belle was affectionate, they felt rather than saw there was an inward struggle for self-mastery, which made him, while quiet in manner, anxious to get away. Mr. Wentworth, who had been talking with Mrs. Jocelyn, observed nothing of all this, and took his leave with assurances that they would see him soon again. Mildred stood irresolute, full of bitter self-reproach. She took an impulsive step toward the door to call Roger back, but, checking herself, said despairingly, "I can deceive neither him nor myself. Oh, mamma, it is of no use." And indeed she felt that it would be impossible to carry out the scheme that promised so much for those she loved. As the lightning flash eclipses the sun at noonday, so all of her gratitude and self-sacrificial enthusiasm now seemed but pale sickly sentiment before that vivid flame of honest love--that divine fire which consumes at touch every motive save the one for the sacred union of two lives. "I wish I could see such a man as Roger Atwood look at me as he looked at you," said Belle indignantly. "I would not send him away with a heartache." "Would to Heaven it had been you, Belle!" replied Mildred dejectedly. "I can't help it--I'm made so, and none will know it better than he." "Don't feel that way," remonstrated Mrs. Jocelyn; "time and the thought of what Roger can do for us will work great changes. You have years before you. If he will help us save your father--" "Oh, mamma, I could shed for him all the blood left in my body." "Nonsense!" cried the matter-of-fact Belle. "He doesn't want your blood; he only wants a sensible girl who will love him as he deserves, and who will help him to help us all." Mildred made a despairing gesture and went to her room. She soon reappeared with a quilt and a pillow, and placing them on the floor beside the low bed in which the children slept, said, "I'll stay here, and you take my place with Belle, mamma. No," she added resolutely, as her mother began to remonstrate; "what I resolve upon I intend to do hereafter, even to the least thing. You shall not go near the room where papa is to-night." Throughout the evening, while love, duty, and generous sympathy planned for his redemption; throughout the long night, while the sad-hearted wife prayed for success in their efforts, the husband and father lay shrouded in the heavy, rayless darkness of a drunken stupor. CHAPTER XXXVII STRONG TEMPTATION Well, I must admit that I have rarely been so touched and interested before," said Mr. Wentworth, as he and Roger walked homeward together; "and that is saying much, for my calling brings human life before me in almost every aspect. Mildred Jocelyn is an unusual girl. Until to-day I thought her a trifle cold, and even incapable of very deep feeling. I thought pride--not a common pride, you know, but the traditional and proverbial pride of a Southern woman--her chief characteristic, but the girl was fairly volcanic with feeling to-night. I believe she would starve in very truth to save her father, though of course we won't permit any such folly as they are meditating, and I do not believe there is any sacrifice, not involving evil, at which she would hesitate. She's a jewel, Atwood, and in winning her, as you will, you will obtain a girl for whom a prince might well sue. She's one of a thousand, and beneath all her wonted self-control and reserve she has as true and passionate a heart as ever beat in a woman's breast." "Good-night," said Roger, a little abruptly. "I agree with all you can say in regard to Miss Jocelyn's nobility, and I shall not fail her, nor shall I make bargains or conditions in my loyalty. The privilege of serving such a woman is enough. I will see you again soon," and he walked rapidly down the street on which his uncle resided. Roger and Mr. Wentworth had become very good friends, and the latter had been of much service to the young fellow by guiding him in his reading and study. The clergyman had shown his usual tact in dealing with Roger. Never once had he lectured or talked religion at him, but he preached interestingly, and out of the pulpit was the genial, natural, hearty man that wins the respect and goodwill of all. His interviews with Roger were free from the faintest trace of religious affectation, and he showed that friendly appreciation and spirit of comradeship which young men like. Roger felt that he was not dealing with an ecclesiastic, but with a man who was as honest, earnest, and successful in his way as he ever hoped to be in his. He was therefore being drawn by motives that best accorded with his disposition toward the Christian faith--by a thorough respect for it, by seeing its practical value as worked out in the useful busy life of one who made his chapel a fruitful oasis in what would otherwise have been a moral desert. In his genuine humanity and downright honesty, in his care of people's bodies as well as souls, and temporal as well as spiritual interests, the minister was a tower of strength, and his influence for good over the ambitious youth, now fast developing the character which would make or mar him for life, was most excellent. While Roger spoke freely to him of his general hopes and plans, and gave to him more confidence than to any one else, there was one thing that, so far as words were concerned, he hid from all the world--his love for Mildred. The sagacious clergyman, however, at last guessed the truth, but until to-night never made any reference to it. He now smiled to think that the sad-hearted Jocelyns might eventually find in Roger a cure for most of their troubles, since he hoped that Mr. Jocelyn, if treated scientifically, might be restored to manhood. Mr. Ezra Atwood, Roger's uncle, sat in his small parlor far beyond his usual hour for retiring, and occasionally he paced the floor so impatiently as to show that his mind was deeply perturbed. While his nephew had studied books he had studied his nephew, and in the process the fossilization of his heart had been arrested, and the strong, steady youth had suggested hopes of something like a filial relation to the childless man. At first he had growled to himself, "If the boy were only mine I'd make a man of him," and then gradually the idea of adopting and making a man of him, had presented itself and slowly gained full possession of his mind. Roger was capable, persevering, and tremendously ambitious--qualities that were after the old man's heart, and, after maintaining his shrewd furtive observation for months, he at last muttered to himself, "I'll do it, for he's got the Atwood grit and grip, and more brains than any of us. His father is shrewd and obstinate enough, but he's narrow, and hasn't breadth of mind to do more than pinch and save what he can scratch out of that stony farm of his. I'm narrow, too. I can turn an honest penny in my line with the sharpest in the market, and I'm content; but this young fellow is a new departure in the family, and if given a chance and kept from all nonsense he can climb to the top notch. There's no telling how high a lawyer can get in this country if he has plenty of brains and a ready tongue." Thus the old man's dominant trait, ambition, which he had satisfied in becoming known as one of the most solid and wealthy men of his calling, found in his nephew a new sphere of development. In return for the great favors which he proposed to confer, however, he felt that Roger should gratefully accept his wishes as absolute law. With the egotism and confidence of many successful yet narrow men, he believed himself perfectly capable of guiding the young fellow's career in all respects, and had little expectation of any fortunate issue unless he did direct in all essential and practical matters. Mr. Atwood worshipped common-sense and the shrewd individuality of character which separates a man from his fellows, and enables him to wrap himself in his own interests and pursuits without babbling to others or being impeded by them. Influenced by his wife, he was kind to the poor, and charitable in a certain methodical way, but boasted to her that in his limited circle he had no "hangers-on," as he termed them. He had an instinctive antipathy to a class that he called "ne'er-do-weels," "havebeens," and "unlucky devils," and if their misfortunes and lack of thrift resulted from causes like those destroying Mr. Jocelyn he was sternly and contemptuously implacable toward them. He was vexed that Roger should have bothered himself with the sick man he had discovered on shipboard the day before Christmas. "It was no affair of his," he had grumbled; but as the young fellow had been steady as a clock in his business and studies after Mr. Jocelyn had recovered, he had given no further thought to these friends, nor had it occurred to him that they were more than passing acquaintances. But a letter from Roger's father, who had heard of Mr. Jocelyn's condition and of his son's intimacy with the family, awakened the conservative uncle's suspicions, and that very afternoon the well-meaning but garrulous Mrs. Wheaton had told his wife all about what she regarded as brilliant performances on the part of Roger at the police court. Mrs. Atwood was a kind-hearted woman, but she had much of her husband's horror of people who were not respectable after her strict ideal, and she felt that she ought to warn him that Roger's friends were not altogether desirable. Of course she was glad that Roger had been able to show that the young girl was innocent, but shop-girls living in low tenements with a drunken father were not fit companions for their nephew and possible heir. Her husband indorsed her views with the whole force of his strong, unsympathetic, and ambitious nature, and was now awaiting Roger with the purpose of "putting an end to such nonsense at once." The young man therefore was surprised to find, as he entered the hallway, that his uncle was up at an hour late for him. "I wish to see you," was the prompt, brief greeting from Mr. Atwood, who was uneasily tramping up and down the small stiff parlor, which was so rarely used that it might almost have been dispensed with as a part of the residence. Roger came forward with some anxiety, for his uncle lowered at him like a thunder-cloud. "Sit there, where I can see your face," was the next curt direction. There was neither guilt nor fear in the frank countenance that was turned full upon him. "I'm a man of few words," he resumed more kindly, for Roger's expression disarmed him somewhat. "Surely," he thought, "when the boy gets a hint of what I can do for him, he'll not be the fool to tangle himself up with people like the Jocelyns." "Where have you been to-night?" he asked bluntly. Roger told him. "Where were you last night and this morning?" Roger briefly narrated the whole story, concluding, "It's the first time I've been late to business, sir." The old man listened grimly, without interruption, and then said, "Of course I'm glad you got the girl off, but it's bad management to get mixed up in such scrapes. Perhaps a little insight into court-room scenes will do you no harm since you are to be a lawyer. Now that the affair is over, however, I wish you to drop these Jocelyns. They are of no advantage to you, and they belong to a class that is exceedingly disagreeable to me. I suppose you know what kind of a man Mr. Jocelyn is?" "Yes, sir; but you do not know what kind of a woman Mrs. Jocelyn is. She is--" "She is Jocelyn's wife, isn't she?" "Certainly; but--" "And the girl is his daughter. They live in a dowdy tenement, and are as poor as crows." "Misfortune and the wrong of others might make all this true of us," began the youth impetuously; "and yet if old friends should turn their backs--" "You are not an old friend," his uncle again interrupted, in his hard, business-like tones. "They are merely accidental acquaintances, who happened to board at your father's house last summer. They haven't the ghost of a claim upon you. It looks far more as if you were in love with the girl, and were making a romantic fool of yourself." Roger's face grew very white, but he controlled himself, and asked, "Uncle, have I ever treated you with disrespect?" "Certainly not; why should you?" "With some right I may also ask why you treat me with such disrespect?" The old man opened his eyes, and was somewhat taken aback by this unexpected question, and yet a moment's reflection showed him that he had given cause for it. He also misunderstood his nephew, and resumed, with a short conciliatory laugh, "I guess I'm the fool, to be imagining all this nonsense. Of course you are too much of an Atwood to entangle yourself with such people and spoil your prospects for life. Look here, Roger. I'll be frank with you, and then we'll understand each other. You know I've neither chick nor child, and I've turned a good big penny in business. When you first came I thought you were a rattle-pated country boy that wanted a lark in the city, and I took you more to keep you out of mischief than for any other cause. Well, I've watched you closely, and I was mistaken. You've got the stuff in you to make a man, and I see no reason why you should not be at the top of the heap before you reach my years, and I mean to give you a chance. You've got a little soft place in your head and heart, or you wouldn't be getting yourself mixed up in other people's troubles. I tell you what it is, my boy, a man who gets ahead in these times must strike right out for himself, and steer clear of all fouling with 'ne'er-do-weels,' as if they had a pestilence. Hook on to the lucky ones, the strong ones, and they'll help you along. Now if you'll take this course and follow my advice right along, I'll give you a chance with the first. You shall go to the best college in the land, next to the law-school, and then have money enough to enable you to strike high. By the time you are thirty you can marry an heiress. But no more Jocelyns and shop-girls who have been at stationhouses, if you please. The girl may have been innocent of that offence; but, plain man as I am, I don't like this style of people at all, and I know human nature well enough to be sure that they'll try to tie themselves on to you if they can. I've thought it all out in my slow way, and, since you've got it in you, I'm going to give you a chance to put the Atwood name where I can't, with all my money." Roger was deeply moved, for he had no idea that his uncle was cherishing such far-reaching plans in his behalf. While he had little sympathy with the cold, selfish side of the programme, his strong ambition responded powerfully to the prospect held out to him. He knew that the hopes inspired were not vain, for his uncle was a man whose deeds always outstripped his words, and that his fortunes were practically assured if he would follow the worldly-wise policy to which he had listened. His ambition whispered, "Mildred Jocelyn does not love you, and never will. Even now, after you have done so much for her, and her gratitude is boundless, her heart shrinks from you. She may not be able to help it, but it is true nevertheless. Why should you throw away such prospects for the sake of one who loves another man, and who, until in a time of desperate need, treated you with undisguised coldness and dislike? Besides, by yielding to your uncle's will you can eventually do more for the family than if thrown on your own resources." It was indeed the great temptation of his life, and he wavered. "Uncle," he said irresolutely, "you have indeed opened a very alluring prospect, and I am grateful that you think So well of me, and that you are willing to do so much. Since you have been so frank with me, I will be equally so with you," and he told him all about his relations with the Jocelyns, and tried to make the shrewd old merchant understand that they were not common people. "They are the most dangerous people of all," he interrupted impatiently. "Having once been up in the world, they think they are still as good as anybody, and are wild to regain their old position. If they had always been poor and commonplace, they would not be so likely to presume. What you say about the girl's not caring for you is sheer nonsense. She'd marry you to-morrow if she could. The one idea of such people is to get out of the slough into which they have fallen, and they'll marry out of it the first chance they get, and like enough they'll do worse if they can't marry. I tell you they are the most dangerous kind of people, and Southern at that. I've learned all about them; the father has gone to the devil for good and all, and, with your feeling and weakness toward them, you'll never be safe a moment unless you drop them completely and finally. Come, young man, let this affair be the test between us. I've worked hard for nearly a lifetime, and have a right to impose some conditions with what has been earned by forty years of toil, early and late. I never speculated once. Every dollar I had to spare I put in paying real estate and governments, and, Roger, I'm worth to-day a good half a million. Ha, ha, ha! people who look at the plain old man in the plain little house don't know that he could afford a mansion on the Avenue better than most of them. This is between ourselves, but I want you to act with your eyes open. If you are such a soft-headed fool as to let that girl, who you admit does not like you or care a rap for you personally, stand between you and such prospects, then I'm mistaken in you, and the sooner I find it out the better. Come, now, I'll be good-natured and liberal in the matter, for young men will be a little addle-pated and romantic before they cut their wisdom teeth. Through that English woman who works for your aunt occasionally you can see to it that these people don't suffer, but beyond that you must drop them once for all. What is more, your father and mother take the same view that I do, and your filial duty to them requires what I ask. While we naturally refuse to be mixed up with such people, we are seeking chiefly to promote your welfare; for the worst thing that can happen to a young man starting in life is to have a helpless lot of people hanging on him. So, come, give me your promise--the promise of an Atwood--and it will be all right." Eoger was not a self-sacrificing saint by any means. Moreover, he had inherited the Atwood characteristics sufficiently to feel all the worldly force of his uncle's reasoning, and to be tempted tremendously by his offers. They promised to realize his wildest dreams, and to make the path to fame and wealth a broad, easy track instead of a long, steep, thorny path, as he had expected. He was virtually on the mountain-top, and had been shown "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them." But against this brilliant background he saw the thin, pale face of Mrs. Jocelyn, as she looked up to him with loving trust and gratitude, and the motherly kiss that she had imprinted on his cheek was a seal to her absolute faith. He felt the pressure of Belle's arm about his neck, and remembered his promise to give her a brother's regard and protection, and justly he feared that if deserted now the impulsive, tempted girl would soon meet shipwreck. She would lose faith in God and man. But that which touched him most nearly were his words to Mildred--words spoken even when she showed him most plainly that her heart was not his, and probably never could be--"I am your friend; never doubt it." How false he would seem to them; how false and selfish to his friend, the great-hearted clergyman, who was like Christ himself in his devoted labors; how false and base he would ever feel himself to be in his own soul! For a time there was a terrible conflict in his breast as he paced the floor in long strides, with hands clenched and brow heavily contracted. His uncle watched him curiously and with displeased surprise, for that he could hesitate at all seemed to the worldly man an evidence of fatal weakness. Roger fought it out like a genuine Atwood, and was nearer akin to his uncle than the old merchant would ever suspect. His heart craved the kingdoms of the world unspeakably, but he now realized that he must barter for them his honor, his manhood, and love. Thus far he had a right to love Mildred, and it was not her fault she could not return it. But, poor and shamed as she was, he knew that she would despise him if he yielded now, even though he rose to be the foremost man of the nation. Not with any chivalric, uncalculating impulse did he reach his conclusion, but by the slow, deliberate reasoning of a cool-headed, sturdy race that would hold to a course with life-long tenacity, having once chosen it. Turning to his uncle, he asked quietly. "What did you mean by 'the promise of an Atwood'?" "You ought to know. Our family, for generations, have lived up among the granite hills of Forestville, and, although poor, our promises, whether spoken or written, are like them." "I'm glad to hear you say that--I'm glad to be reminded of it," his nephew replied. "Well, my promise has already been given. I have promised that poor broken-hearted woman, Mrs. Jocelyn, that I'd try to help her through her terrible misfortunes. I've promised her daughter Belle that I'd give her a brother's care and affection. I've promised the girl I love that I would at least be her friend, since I cannot be more. I'll prove myself a true Atwood, worthy to sustain the family name and honor by keeping my promises, and if I break them, you yourself, deep in your heart, would despise me." For a moment the old merchant was nonplussed, so adroitly and unexpectedly had Roger turned his words against him. Then, like most men suddenly put in a false position, he grew angry, and blurted out, "Nonsense! It doesn't apply at all. These artful women have come it over you--have entrapped you." The young man here made a strong gesture of protest. "Oh, don't try to deceive me," his uncle proceeded, more loudly and passionately; "I know the world. If I'd blindly made promises to adventurers who would compass my ruin, ought I to keep them? If I find I've indorsed a forged check, ought I not to stop its payment? In the name of your parents and as your uncle, I protest against this folly, for I see well enough where it will end. Moreover, I tell you plainly that you must choose between me and my offers, and that old sot of a Jocelyn and his scheming wife and daughters. If you can be carried away by such absurdity, you are weaker than water, and the sooner you learn by bitter experience the better, for you certainly belong to that class which only hard experience can teach. But I'd like to see those brazen-faced creatures and give them a piece of--" "Stop!" thundered Roger; "beware how you say another word against those whom sorrow should render sacred. You know less about them than about heaven. Do you forget that I am of age? You made me an offer, and I thanked you for it honestly and gratefully. What's more, I was base enough to be tempted by it. Oh, yes"--with a bitter laugh--"I was an Atwood enough for that. If you had not coupled it with the condition that I should, like a coward, desert helpless and unfortunate women to whom my word is given, I would have fulfilled your best hopes and ambitions, and have made your age glad with my grateful love and service. In your cold-hearted worldliness you have overreached yourself, and you wrong yourself more than me, even though I perish in the streets. But I won't starve. Mark my words: I'll place the Atwood name where you can't, with all your money, and I shall not make broken faith with those who trust me, the foundation of my fortunes." "Very well, then," said his uncle, who had quieted down into an anger of white heat; "since you prefer those disreputable strangers to your family, go to them. I wash my hands of you, and shall write to your father to this effect to-night. I'm a prompt man and don't dilly-dally." "Mrs. Jocelyn and her daughters are no more disreputable than you are, sir, and calling me 'soft-headed fool' doesn't make me one. I know the duty I owe my parents, and shall perform it. I shall write to them also. They shall hear both sides, and were your fortune multiplied a thousand times, I won't sell my manhood for it. Am I to have shelter another night, or do you wash your hands of me here and now?" "Oh, stay by all means, or you may find yourself in the same cell in which your paragon spent last night," replied his uncle, whose rage now passed all bounds. "Those words are brutal," said Roger sternly, "and if you are not ashamed of them after thinking them over, you are not the man I took you to be," and he stalked out of the room and out of the house, slamming the door after him. The old merchant sank into a chair, trembling with both anger and chagrin, for he felt that he had been worsted in the encounter. He did regret the words as soon as spoken, and a certain rude sense of justice made him feel, even in his excitement, that his nephew, although an egregious fool of course, had been true to his sense of right and honor. He was assuredly the victim of a designing lot of women, but believing them to be true, his course had been manly, and the thought would come, "Since he was so faithful to them, he would have been equally so to me, and he might have found the hussies out in time to prevent trouble." And now he had said words which in effect turned his brother's son out of doors at midnight With something like a groan and an oath he resolved not to write that night, and to see how he felt in the morning. His nephew on provocation had proved as great a Tartar as he knew himself to be, and he now remembered that the former had some excuse in his hot young blood, and that he had a right to choose against his offer, if fool enough to do it, without being reviled and insulted. After a wretched night he found on the breakfast-table a brief, cold note from Roger, saying that he would inform him in a day or two where to send his effects and such part of his salary as remained unpaid. The old man frowned, and the Atwood pride and obstinacy took possession of him like evil spirits. In grim reticence he resumed his old routine and life, and again gave himself up to the mechanical accumulation and saving of money. CHAPTER XXXVIII NO "DARK CORNERS" From his uncle's house Roger went to a small hotel and obtained a room in which to spend a sleepless night. After the excitement of anger passed, he recognized the difficulties of his position. He was worse than friendless in the great city, for when he sought employment and gave an account of his antecedents, people would ask suspiciously why he left his uncle. The reasons were of too delicate a nature to be babbled about in business offices. At first he was much depressed, and complained that "luck was dead against him." Moreover he felt that he had responded too harshly to his uncle, who, after all, was only trying to aid him in his cold-blooded way. Nevertheless he, too, had his share of the Atwood pride and obstinacy, and he resolved that the man who had called him a "soft-headed fool" for sacrificing himself to his sense of honor and duty must apologize before there could be any reconciliation. His good sense led him to make one wise resolution, and early in the morning he carried it out by making a clean breast of it to Mr. Wentworth. The good man listened with deep interest, and heartened the young fellow wonderfully by clapping him on the shoulder and saying, "You are made of the right stuff, Atwood, and although the material is yet a little raw and crude, experience and Christian principle will temper it in time into the finest metal." "Don't ascribe Christian principle to me," growled Roger, "for I'm tempted to swear like a pirate." "Very likely, and not without some reason. I occasionally feel a little that way myself, but I don't do it; neither have you." Roger stared. "You're not a bit like a minister," he burst out. "Sorry to hear it." "That isn't what I mean. You are a MAN. Our dominie up at Forestville was only a minister." "I have my share of human nature, Roger, and am glad of it, for I know from experience just how you young fellows feel. But it involves many a big fight. Christian principle doesn't mean a cotton-and-wool nature, or a milk-and-water experience, to put it in a homely way. It's Christian principle that makes Mildred Jocelyn, as you say, one of the bravest and best girls in the world. She's worth more than all your uncle's money, and you needn't be discouraged, for you'll win her yet. A young fellow with your pluck can make his way unaided, and thousands have done so without your motives or your ability. I'll stand by you, for you are the kind of man that I believe in. To make your course completely blameless, you must write a long filial letter to your mother, explaining everything; and if you'll take my advice you will send something like this to your uncle;" and sitting down he scratched off the following words: "On calmer reflection I perceive that your intentions toward me were kindly and friendly. I should have remembered this, and the respect due to your years, and not have spoken so harshly. For all that it was not right for me to say, I apologize. At the same time it is my undoubted right and unwavering purpose to be guided by my own conscience. Our views of life and duty vary so widely that it will be best for me to struggle on alone, as I can. This, however, is no reason why we should quarrel, or forget the ties of blood which unite us, or our characters as gentlemen." "Such a note will put you right with your own conscience and your people at home," resumed Mr. Wentworth, "and there's nothing like starting right." Roger complied at once, for the clergyman's "human nature" had gained his unlimited confidence. "Now I'm going out," said his friend. "You stay and make my study your own. There is paper, etc. I think I know of a room that you can obtain for a small sum from a nice, quiet family, and perhaps it will just suit you. I'll see; but don't take it if you don't like it. You'll stay and lunch with us, and we'll drink to your success in generous cups of coffee that only my wife knows how to make," and he left Roger cheered, hopeful, and resolute. What was better still, the young man was starting right, as was well proved by the long, affectionate, yet firm and manly letter written to his mother. After a genial lunch, at which he was treated with a respect and kindness which did him a world of good, he went with Mr. Wentworth to see the room, and was well pleased with it, and he added his future address to the note to his uncle. He then said: "I keep my promise about Mr. Jocelyn, and the sooner that man is put under treatment the better." "Why, Roger!" exclaimed his friend, "you can't do anything now." "I can do just what I promised. I have a hundred dollars in the bank, and there is about twenty-five still due me. With the latter sum I can get along until I can find employment." "Hold on, Roger; it seems to me that your generosity is getting the better of you now. Circumstances have greatly changed since you made your promise." "I've not changed, and my promises don't change with circumstances. It may be some time before you can raise the money, even if you can get it at all in these bard times, and it's something that ought to be done at once." "Give me your hand again, old fellow. The world would say we were a pair of fools, but we'll wait and see who's right. Come to me at nine to-morrow morning." Mr. Wentworth had several things on hand that he meant to do, but he dropped everything and started for the offices of some lawyers whom he knew, determined to find a foothold at once for his plucky protege. Roger went to call on Mrs. Jocelyn, feeling that he would like to get the matter relating to her husband settled, so that he might give all his thought and energy to the problem of making his way unaided. In response to his knock a light step crossed the floor, and the door was opened a little, revealing Mildred's face, then it was thrown open hospitably. "Oh, Mr. Atwood," she exclaimed, "I am very glad to see you. Forgive me that I opened the door so suspiciously, but you have never lived in a tenement, and do not know what awful neighbors are often prowling around. Besides, I was alone, and that made me more timid. I am so troubled about something, and perhaps you can help me, for you seem to be able to help every one," Mildred continued hastily, for she dreaded an embarrassing silence between them unspeakably. "I've been to see my employers in the hope they would forgive that poor girl who put the lace in my cloak, and they won't. They were polite and kind to me, and offered me better wages if I would come back, but were relentless toward the girl, saying they 'meant to break up that kind of thing once for all.' Don't you think something might be done?" "If you failed there would be no use of my trying," said Roger, smiling. "I think it was wonderfully good of you to go on such an errand." "I've had some lessons in goodness lately," she replied, with a little friendly nod. "As I talked with those stern men, I realized more than ever what an escape I've had, and I've thanked you in my heart a thousand times." The young fellow looked as if he had been repaid a thousand times, and wondered that he could have been so tempted by his uncle's terms, for it now seemed impossible that he could ever do aught else than serve the sweet, sad girl who looked into his eyes with the trust and friendliness which he had sought for so long in vain. His face became so expressive of his feelings that she hurried on to speak of another matter weighing on her mind. "Mr. Atwood," she said hesitatingly, "I have another trouble. You looked so vindictively at that Mr. Bissel in the court-room that I have feared you might do something that you would afterward regret. I know how one with your honorable spirit would feel toward such a wretch, but, believe me, he is beneath your notice. I should feel so badly if you got into any trouble on my account. Indeed it seems that I couldn't stand it at all," and she said it with so much feeling that he was honestly delighted. His spirits were rising fast, for this frank, strong interest in his welfare, in contrast with her old constraint and coldness, was sweet to him beyond all words. With a mischievous and rather wicked look in his dark eyes, he said, "You must leave that fellow to me. I'm not a saint as you are." Mildred proved that she was not altogether a saint by inwardly relishing his spirit, for she never could overcome some of the traits of her Southern blood; but she said, honestly and anxiously, "I should feel very badly if you got into any trouble." "That thought will make me prudent," he replied gratefully. "You would never feel badly again about anything, if I had my way." "I believe you, Mr. Atwood, and I can't see why I did not understand you better before," said Mildred, the words slipping out almost before she knew it. "I don't think you understand me yet," he answered, very gently. She did not reply, but he saw her fingers trembling with nervous apprehension as she tried to go on with her sewing; he also saw that she was growing very pale. Indeed she had almost the sick, faint look of one who is about to submit to some painful operation. "Don't be frightened, Miss Mildred," he remarked, after watching her keenly for a moment or two. She looked up and saw him smiling broadly at her. In answer to her perplexed look he continued quietly, "I can tell you what has been the matter between us, and what is the matter now--you are afraid of me." "Mr. Atwood--" faltered Mildred, and then words failed her, and her pale face crimsoned. "Don't you think it would be best for us to understand each other, now that we are to be friends?" he asked. "Yes," gasped the young girl faintly, fearing every moment that he would lose his self-control and pour out a vehement declaration of his love. She was prepared to say, "Roger Atwood, I am ready to make any sacrifice within my power that you can ask," but at the same time felt that she could endure slow torture by fire better than passionate words of love, which would simply bruise the heart that could make no response. If he would only ask quietly, "Mildred, will you be my wife when the right time comes? I'll be content with such love as you can give," she would have replied with the calmness of an unalterable purpose, "Yes, Roger, and I'll do my best," believing that years of effort might be crowned with success. But now, to have him plead passionately for what she could no more bestow than if she were dead, gave her an indescribable sense of fear, pain, and repugnance; and she cowered and shrank over the sewing which she could scarcely hold, so great was her nervous apprehension. Instead of the vehement declaration there came a low, mellow laugh, and she lifted her eyes and stared at him, her work dropping from her hands. Roger understood the situation so well, and was so thoroughly the master of it in his generous self-control and kindly intentions, that he should scarcely be blamed if he got out of it such bitter-sweet enjoyment as he could, and he said, with a twinkle in his eyes, "Miss Millie, I wasn't going to strike you." "I don't understand you at all," cried Mildred, with a pathetically perplexed expression and starting tears, for the nervous strain was becoming a little too prolonged. Roger became grave at once, and with a quiet, gentle manner he came to her side and took her hand. "Will you be as honest with me as I shall be with you?" he asked. "I'll try to be." "Well, then, I'll soon solve for you my poor little riddle. Miss Mildred, you know that I have loved you ever since you waked up an awkwad, lazy, country fellow into the wish to be a man." His words were plain enough now, surely, but she was no longer frightened, for he spoke in such a kindly natural voice that she looked him straight in the eyes, with a delicate bloom in her face, and replied: "I didn't wish to mislead you, Mr. Atwood, and I wouldn't trifle with you." "You have been truth and honesty itself." "No, I've not," she answered impetuously; "I cherished an unreasoning prejudice against you, and--and--I disliked you, though why, I can't see now, and nobly you have triumphed over both prejudice and dislike." "It will ever be the proudest triumph of my life; but, Miss Mildred, you do not love me in the least, and I fear you never will." "I am so sorry, so very sorry," she faltered, with a crimson face and downcast eyes. "I am, too; but that which I want to say to you is, that you are not to blame, and I don't blame you. I could not love a girl simply because she wanted me to, were such a thing possible, and why should I demand of you what I couldn't do myself? All I asked in the first place--don't you remember it in the old front walk at home?--was friendship. Let us go back to that. Let me become your simple, honest friend, and help you in every way within my power. Don't let me frighten you any more with the dread of high tragedy. Now you've had all the declaration you ever need fear. I won't break loose or explode under any provocation. I can't help my love, and you must not punish me for it, nor make yourself miserable about it, as if it were a powder magazine which a kind word or look might touch off. I want to put your heart to rest, for you have enough to bear now, Heaven knows; I want you to feel safe with me--as free from fear and annoyance as Belle is. I won't presume or be sentimental." "Oh, my perverse, perverse heart!" wailed Mildred. "I could tear it out of my breast and throw it away in disgust. I want to love--it would be a poor return for all that you are and have done for me--but it is of no use. I will not deceive one so true as you are, by even a trace of falseness. You deserve the love of the best woman in the world, and some day you'll find her---" "I have found her," he put in quietly. "No, no, no!" she cried passionately; "but I am as nature made me, and I can't seem to help myself. How strange it seems that I can say from the depths of my soul I could die for you, and yet that I can't do just the one thing you deserve a thousand times! But, Roger, I will be the most devoted sister that ever a man had." "No," he said, smiling, "that won't answer at all. That wouldn't be honest, as far as I am concerned. Belle is my sister, but you can never be. I know you don't love me now, and, as I've said, perhaps you never can, but I'm too persistent in my nature to give up the hope. Time may bring changes, and I've got years of up-hill work before I can think of marrying. You are in a self-sacrificing mood now. I saw it in your eyes and manner last night--I see it now. Mildred, I could take a very great advantage of you if I chose." "Indeed you could. You don't know how generous you are. You have conquered me, overwhelmed me by your kindness, and I couldn't say No to anything in your nature to ask." For a moment he looked sorely tempted, and then he said brusquely, "I'll put a spoke in that wheel. I'd give all the world for this little hand, but I won't take it until your heart goes with it. So there!" The young girl sighed deeply. "You are right," she murmured, "when you give so much I can give so little." "That is not what I was thinking of. As a woman you have sacred rights, and I should despise myself if I tried to buy you with kindness, or take advantage of your gratitude. I'll admit, too, since we are to have no dark corners in this talk, that I would rather be loved as I know you can love. I'd rather have an honest friendship than a forced affection, even though the force was only in the girl's will and wishes. I was reading Maud Muller the other night, and no woman shall ever say of her life's happiness, that but for me 'it might have been.'" "I don't think any woman could ever say that of you." "Mildred, you showed me your heart last night, and it has a will stronger than your will, and it shall have its way." The girl again sighed. "Roger," she said, "one reason why I so shrank from you in the past was that you read my thoughts. You have more than a woman's intuition." "No," he said, laughing a little grimly, "I'm not a bit feminine in my nature. My explanation may seem absurd to you, but it's true, I think. I am exceedingly fond of hunting, and I so trained my eyes that if a leaf stirred or a bird moved a wing I saw it. When you waked me up, and I determined to seek my fortunes out in the world, I carried with me the same quickness of eye. I do not let much that is to be seen escape me, and on a face like yours thoughts usually leave some trace." "You didn't learn to be a gentleman, in the best sense of the word, in the woods," she said, with a smile. "No, you and your mother taught me that, and I may add, your father, for when I first saw him he had the perfection of manners." He might also have referred to Vinton Arnold, whom he had studied so carefully, but he could not bring himself to speak of one whom in his heart he knew to be the chief barrier between them, for he was well aware that it was Mildred's involuntary fidelity to her first love that made his suit so dubious. At his reference to her father Mildred's eyes had filled at once, and he continued gently, "We understand each other now, do we not? You won't be afraid of me any more, and will let me help you all to brighter days?" She put both of her hands in his, and said earnestly, "No, I will never be afraid of you again, but I only half understand you yet, for I did not know that there was a man in the world so noble, so generous, so honest. You have banished every trace of constraint, and I'll do everything you say." There was a look of almost boyish pleasure on his face as she spoke, and in imitation of the heroes of the interminable old-time romances that once had formed the larger part of his reading, he was about to raise her hand to his lips when she snatched it away, and as if mastered by an impulse not to be controlled, put her arms around his neck and kissed him, then burst into tears with her head upon his shoulder. He trembled a moment, and said, in low tones, "God bless you, Millie." Then he gently placed her in her chair. "You mustn't do that again," he said gravely. "With you it was but a grateful sisterly impulse, but if I were Samson I'd not be strong enough--well, you understand me. I don't want to give the lie to all I've said." "Oh, Roger, Roger," sobbed the girl, "I can do nothing for you and yet you have saved me from shame and are giving us all hope and life." "You are responsible for all there is good in me," he tried to say lightly, "and I'll show you in coming years if you have done nothing for me. Good-by now. It's all right and settled between us. Tell Mrs. Jocelyn that one hundred dollars are ready as soon as she can induce her husband to take the step we spoke of." And he hastened away, feeling that it was time he retreated if he would make good the generous words he had spoken. CHAPTER XXXIX "HOME, SWEET HOME!" "Oh, Millie," cried Mrs. Jocelyn, entering with the children and throwing herself into a chair, fatigued and panting from her walk and climb of the stairs, "I've so much to tell you. Oh, I'm so distressed and sorry. It seems that evil has become our lot, and that we bring nothing but evil to others. You, too, look as if you had been crying as if your heart would break." "No, mamma, I feel much better--more at rest than I have been for a long time. My tears have done me good." "Well, I'm sorry I must tell you something that will grieve you dreadfully, but there's no help for it. It does seem when things are going wrong in one's life, there's no telling where they'll stop. You know Mrs. Wheaton works for Roger's aunt, Mrs. Atwood. Well, she was there this morning, and Mrs. Atwood talked dreadfully about us, and how we had inveigled her nephew into the worst of folly. She told Mrs. Wheaton that Mr. Atwood had intended to give Roger a splendid education, and might have made him his heir, but that he demanded, as his condition, that he should have nothing more to do with such people as we were, and how Roger refused, and how after a bitter quarrel the latter left the house at midnight. She also said that his uncle would have nothing more to do with him, and that his family at home would be almost equally angry. Oh, I feel as if I could sink into the earth with shame and worry. What shall we do?" "Surely, mamma, there is some mistake. Roger was here much of the afternoon, and he never said one word about it," Mildred answered, with a troubled face. "It's just like him. He didn't want to pain you with the news. What did he say?" she asked, with kindling interest, and Mildred told her substantially all that had occurred. "Well, Millie," said her mother emphatically, "you will be the queerest girl on the face of the earth if you can't love him now, for he has given up everything for you. He might have been richer than Vinton Arnold." "He must not give up anything," said Mildred resolutely. "There is reason in all things. He is little more than a boy in years, and he has a boy's simplicity and unworldliness. I won't let him sacrifice himself for me. He doesn't know what he is doing. His aunt's estimate of such people as we have become is correct, and I'll perish a thousand times before I'll be the means of dragging down such a man as Roger Atwood. If I knew where to find him I'd go and tell him so this moment." That was a dreary hour in the poor little home, but worse things were in store for them, for, as Mrs. Jocelyn said, when things are going wrong there is a terrible logic about them, and malign events follow each other with almost inevitable sequence. All was wrong with the head of the family, and terrible were the consequences to his helpless wife and children. Mr. Jocelyn heard a rumor of Mildred's experience in the police court, and he went to the place that day and obtained some account of the affair. More clearly and awfully than ever before he comprehended the depths into which he had fallen. He had not been appealed to--he had not even been told. He did not stop to consider how good the reasons were for the course his family had taken, but, blind with anger and despair, he sought his only refuge from the hell within his breast, and began drinking recklessly. By the time he reached the tenement where he dwelt he was in a state of wild intoxication. A man at the door called him a drunken beast, at which Mr. Jocelyn grasped him by the throat and a fierce scuffle ensued. Soon the whole populous dwelling was in an uproar, while the man retreated, fighting, up the stairways, and his infuriated assailant followed with oaths and curses. Women and children were screaming, and men and boys pouring out of their rooms, some jeering and laughing, and others making timid and futile efforts to appease and restrain the liquor-crazed man. Suddenly a door opened, and a pale face looked out; then a slight girlish figure darted through the crowd and clasped Mr. Jocelyn. He looked down and recognized his daughter Mildred. For a moment he seemed a little sobered, and then the demon within him reasserted itself. "Get out of my way!" he shouted. "I'll teach that infernal Yankee to insult a Southern officer and gentleman. Let me go," he said furiously, "or I'll throw you down the stairway," but Mildred clung to him with her whole weight, and the men now from very shame rushed in and overpowered him. He was speedily thrust within his own doorway, and Mildred turned the key after him and concealed it. Little recked the neighbors, as they gradually subsided into quiet, that there came a crash of crockery and a despairing cry from the Jocelyns' room. They had witnessed such scenes before, and were all too busy to run any risk of being summoned as witnesses at a police court on the morrow. The man whom Mr. Jocelyn had attacked said that he would see the agent of the house in the morning and have the Jocelyn family sent away at once, because a nuisance, and all were content with this arrangement. Within that locked door a terrible scene would have been enacted had it not been for Mildred's almost supernatural courage, for her father was little better than a wild beast. In his mad rush forward he overturned the supper-table, and the evening meal lay in a heap upon the floor. The poor wife, with a cry in which hope and her soul itself seemed to depart fell swooning on the children's bed, and the little ones fled to the darkest corner of Mildred's room and cowered in speechless fear. There was none to face him save the slight girl, at whom he glared as if he would annihilate her. "Let me out!" he said savagely. "No," said the girl, meeting his frenzied gaze unwaveringly, "not until you are sober." He rushed to the door, but could not open it. Then turning upon Mildred he said, "Give me the key--no words--or I'll teach you who is master." There were no words, but only such a look as is rarely seen on. a woman's face. He raised his hand to strike her, but she did not shrink a hair-breadth. "Papa," she said, in a low, concentrated tone, "you called yourself a Southern gentleman. I did not dream you could strike a woman, even when drunk." The effect of her words was magical. His hand sank to his side. Then he raised it and passed it over his brow as if it all were a horrid dream. Without a word he went with unsteady step to his own room, and again Mildred locked the door upon him. Mrs. Jocelyn's swoon was long and death-like, and before Mildred could restore her, Belle, returning from her work, tried to enter, and finding the door locked called for admittance. When she crossed the threshold and saw the supper dishes broken and scattered on the floor: when she saw her mother looking as if dead, the little ones crying at her side, and Mildred scarcely less pale than the broken-hearted woman, with a desperate look in her blue eyes, the young girl gave a long, low cry of despair, and covering her face with her hands she sank into a chair murmuring, "I can't endure this any longer--I'd rather die. We are just going to rack and ruin. Oh, I wish I could die, for I'm getting reckless--and--and wicked. Oh, oh, oh!--" "Belle, come and help me," said Mildred, in the hard, constrained tones of one who is maintaining self-control by the utmost effort. Belle complied, but there was an expression on her face that filled her sister's soul with dread. It were well perhaps to veil the agony endured in the stricken household that night. The sufferings of such women as Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred cannot be portrayed in words, and the dark chaos that had come into poor Belle's tempted, despairing, immature soul might well make her good angel weep. With a nature craving sunshine and pleasure like the breath of life, she felt herself being dragged hopelessly into darkness, shame, and abject poverty. The poor child was not deliberately contemplating evil--she was scarcely capable of doing good or evil deliberately--but a youth who had sought her once before, and of whom she had long been shy, was again hovering around her. She was more wary now, yet bolder, and received his advances with a manner tinged with mocking coquetry. He was profuse with promises, and she tried to believe them, but in her heart she could not, and yet she did not repulse him with that stern, brief decision which forms the viewless, impassable wall that hedges virtue. The sisters tried to remove the outward traces of their wrecked home, and mechanically restored such order as was within their power, but in their secret souls they saw their household gods overturned and trampled upon, and, with the honor and manhood of their father, they felt that night as if they had lost everything. After they had quieted their mother and brought the poor creature a brief oblivion, Mildred made a passionate appeal to Belle to stand by her. The warm-hearted girl cried and wrung her hands passionately, but all her trembling sister could obtain from her were the words, "Millie, we are being dragged down I don't know where." Events followed rapidly. Before Mr. Jocelyn, sullen, nerveless, racked with headache and tortured with heartache, could leave his room on the morrow, the agent of the tenement served a notice on him to the effect that he must vacate his rooms at once; that the other tenants complained of him as a nuisance; and that he (the agent) would be content to lose the rent for the few days that had elapsed since the last regular payment if they would all go out at once. The angry reply was that they would move that day, and, without a word, he left his family in suspense. In the course of the forenoon he returned with a furniture van, and had so braced himself with opium that he was able to assist effectively, yet morosely, in the packing and removing of their fast-dwindling effects, for everything not essential had been sold. His wife and daughter did not remonstrate--they were too dispirited for that--but in dreary apathy did his bidding as far as their strength permitted, feeling meanwhile that any change could scarcely be for the worse. Mildred almost felt that it was for the better, for their new shelter was in a small rear tenement not far from the old mansion, and was reached from the street by a long covered passageway. To her morbid fancy it suggested the hiding-place that her heart craved. She now scarcely heeded the facts that the place was anything but cleanly and that their neighbors were more unpromising in appearance than those they had just left. Mrs. Jocelyn was so ill and weak that she ought not to raise her hands, and Mildred felt that her strength was unequal to the task of even arranging their household articles so as to make the poor little nook inhabitable. She therefore went for their old stanch ally Mrs. Wheaton, who returned with her and wrought such miracles as the wretched place permitted of. In just foreboding she shook her head over the prospects of her friends in such a neighborhood, for her experienced eyes enabled her to gauge very correctly the character of the people who lived across the hall and in the upper and lower stories. They were chiefly ignorant and debased Irish families, and the good woman's fears were not wholly due to race antipathy. In the tenement from which they came, the people, although poor, were in the main stolid, quiet, and hard-working, but here on every side were traces and hints, even at midday, of degraded and vicious lives. The classes in the tenements appear to have a moral gravity or affinity which brings to the same level and locality those who are alike, and woe be to aliens who try to dwell among them. The Jocelyns did not belong to the tenement classes at all, and Mrs. Wheaton correctly feared that the purgatory which was the corner-stone in their neighbors' creeds would be realized in the temporal experience of the Southern family. Now that the step had been taken, however, she concealed her anxieties, and did her best to avoid collisions with the burly, red-faced women and insolent children whose officious offers of help were but thin veils to a coarse curiosity and a desire for petty pilfering. Mildred shuddered at the people about her, and was cold and brief in her words. As it was, Fred nearly brought on general hostilities by resisting a shock-headed little urchin who had not the remotest regard for the principles of MEUM and TUUM. As the sun declined the general verdict of the neighbors was, "They thinks themselves too foine for the loikes o' us, but we'll tache 'em." After Mrs. Wheaton had departed with many misgivings, Mildred took her father aside and told him plainly what had occurred the evening before. He sat with his face buried in his hands, and listened without a word. Indeed, he was so overwhelmed with shame and remorse that he was speechless. "Papa, look at me," she said at last. Slowly he raised his bloodshot, fearful eyes to hers, and the expression of his child's face made him tremble. "Papa," she said slowly, and her tones were both sad and stern, "you must never come home drunk again. Another such scene might cost mamma her life. If you WILL take opium, we cannot help it, but you must drink no more vile liquor. I have now learned from bitter experience what the latter means, and what it must lead to. I shall not fail in love and duty to you, but I cannot permit mamma, Belle, and the children to be utterly destroyed. You may do some wild, reckless deed that would blast us all beyond remedy; therefore, if you have a particle of self-control left, let rum alone, or else we must protect ourselves. We have endured it thus far, not with patience and resignation, but in a sort of apathetic despair. This apathy has been broken. Belle is becoming reckless, mamma is dying of a broken heart, and the little ones are exposed to influences that threaten to blight their lives. There must be some change for the better. We must at least be relieved from the fear of bodily harm and the intolerable shame of such scenes as occurred last night. In our hard struggle we must find some kind of a refuge and some degree of quiet and peace in what we call home. It is no kindness to you to endure in silence any longer, and I now see that it will be fatal to those we both love. You may not be able to refrain from opium, but you can and must give up liquor. If you cannot, and there is a remedy in the land, we must avail ourselves of it. I do not know what kind of a place you have brought us to, but I feel sure that we shall need protection. If you should come home again as you did last night, I am satisfied, from the looks of the people in this house, that we should have a scene of violence that I shudder to think of. You had better--it would be more merciful to stab mamma to her heart than to cause her death by drunkenness." Her words were not threatening, but were spoken with the calmness of inexorable resolve, and he sat before her with an ashen face, trembling like an aspen, for it was like the Day of Judgment to him. Then in gentler and pleading accents she told him of their plan to place him under skilful treatment, and besought him to yield himself up to the care of one who had won much reputation in dealing with cases like his own; but all the encouragement she could obtain were the words, "I'll think of it." The memory of those fearful days on shipboard, when he was without morphia, made him recoil with unspeakable dread from a like ordeal again, but he promised earnestly that he would indulge no more in liquor. With the cunning of an opium maniac he understood his danger, knowing that further scenes of violence would lead to his arrest and imprisonment. Of his gentle wife he had no fears, but this frail, resolute girl subdued him. He saw that he was driving a strong nature to desperation--saw it with all the agony and remorse of a naturally good father whose better nature was bound hand and foot by depraved appetites. He was conscious of the terrible wrong that he was inflicting on those for whom he once would have died to shield them from a breath of dishonor. But, come what might, he must have opium now, and to counteract the words of his daughter he took enough morphia to kill all the wretched inmates of the tenement. Under its slight exhilaration he felt some hope of availing himself of the proposition that he should go to a curative institution, and he half promised that he would before long. At this point the painful interview ended, and Mildred went for Belle, who as yet had no knowledge of their change of abode. As the two girls returned, in the dusk of evening, to the long dark passageway that led to the tenement in which they now had rooms, Mildred trembled with fear as she saw that its entrance was surrounded and blocked by a group of rough-looking young men and boys. Belle pushed boldly through them, although they leered, laughed, and made coarse jests. Mildred followed shrinkingly, with downcast eyes. "We'll tache 'em to be neighborly," were the last words she heard, showing that the young ruffians had already obtained their cue from their depraved and low-lived parents. They looked forward to a dismal evening, but a loyal friend came to their rescue. Roger, having arranged the room selected for him by Mr. Wentworth, could not resist the temptation to see those who were ever uppermost in his thoughts. In dismay and anxiety he learned of their hasty removal and something of the causes which led to it. From the janitor he obtained their present address, and the appearance of his broad shoulders and fearless face had a restraining influence on the mischief-making propensities of the rowdies who kennelled in the vicinity. The alien new-comers evidently were not friendless, and there was hesitation in the half-formed measures for their annoyance. Roger remained an hour or two, aiding the girls in trying to make the rooms more homelike, which, however, was rather a hopeless task. Mr. Jocelyn, half stupefied by opium, retreated to one of the small dark closet bedrooms, and left the scene unembarrassed by his presence. Roger remarked emphatically that the tenement was no place for them, but Mildred told him that the rent had been paid for a month in advance, and that they must try to endure it, adding, "The twenty-five dollars that you and Mr. Wentworth obtained for me has been, after all, a perfect Godsend." He was touched, and bound to her with bands of steel by the perfect trust she now reposed in him, and he determined to watch over her like an amiable dragon, making it his first and constant thought how to rescue them all from their wretched condition. He was much surprised, however, when Mildred said to him, as he was preparing to leave, "Mr. Atwood, there is something I wish to say to you. Will you let me walk a block or two with you, and then bring me back again?" Roger tried to disguise his feelings by saying laughingly that he would "walk to Spuyten Duyvil" with her, but added, "You are too tired to go out at all to-night. I will come to-morrow evening," and he remonstrated so earnestly and kindly that she yielded, promising to rest much of the following day. "Oh, Millie," said her mother, with a faint smile, "it does my heart good to see that there is some one who knows how and has the will to take care of you." "Yes," cried Belle, "this place is a perfect hole. It's not fit for nice girls to be seen in, and if Roger gives us a chance to get out of it you had better take it as soon as possible. I give you fair warning." "What do you mean, Belle?" asked her mother. Belle made no answer, but went to her closet bedroom with a morose, sullen look on her face. The poor woman looked inquiringly at Mildred, who said soothingly, "Don't worry, mamma. Belle is a little tired and discouraged tonight. She'll be in a better mood in the morning." When all were sleeping from the fatigues of the day, she sat alone with clasped hands and eyes so wide and troubled that it seemed as if she could never close them again. "Alas!" she sighed, "what must I do? He is our good genius, and yet I must drive him away. He must not sacrifice all his prospects for us. It would be most cruel and unjust to let him do so. I must reason with him and show him plainly that it would not be right, and absolve him from every shadow of blame for leaving us to such fate as God permits. Because he is so generous and brave he shall not suffer a loss which he cannot now comprehend." At last, from utter weariness, she fell into a broken sleep. CHAPTER XL NEIGHBORS Promptly the following evening Roger appeared, and with glowing cheeks told his friends that Mr. Wentworth had found him employment in a lawyer's office, which would enable him to pay his way and at the same time give him much practical insight into his chosen profession. Mildred looked at him wistfully, but her resolution was not shaken, and they went out together, Roger saying, with a smiling nod at Belle, "It will be your turn to-morrow evening." "Roger," said Mildred, "I've much to say to you, and it is of great importance that you should listen calmly and sensibly." "All right," he answered laughingly. "You will find me as quiet and impressible as the oysters over which we'll have our talk, but only on this condition. You shall not fatigue yourself by a word here in the street." Nevertheless she felt the phlegmatic creature's arm trembling under her hand. After a moment he went on, in the same light way, "I want you to understand I am not going to be a friend in name merely; I intend to assert my rights, and you had better learn from the start that I am the most tremendously obstinate fellow in the city." "But you must listen to reason." "Certainly; so must you." "To begin with," she resumed, "I've had my supper, and so don't need any more." "I haven't had mine, and am ravenous. The idea of talking reason to a hungry man! I know of a nice quiet restaurant which, at this hour, we'll have almost to ourselves. You surely won't be so unsocial as to let me eat alone." "Well, if I yield in trifles you must yield in matters that are vital. Why did you not get your supper before?" "Too busy; and then, to be honest, I knew I'd enjoy it a hundredfold more with you. I'm a social animal." Mildred sighed, for this good-comradeship was making her duty very hard. They soon reached the place in question, and Roger ordered enough for four. "You don't realize what you are doing in any respect," said Mildred in smiling reproof. "Wait half an hour before you settle that question," he replied with a confident nod. "I'll soon prove to you what an unsentimental being I am." "Oh," thought Mildred, "how can I give up his friendship when he acts in this way? And yet I must. He must be shown just how he is wronging himself." When the waiter had departed she looked straight into his eyes with one of her steadfast glances, and said earnestly, "Roger, I appreciate your generous kindness far more than any words can tell you, but the time has come for me to act resolutely and finally. Sad experience has taught me more within a year than most women learn in a lifetime. Mrs. Wheaton, who often works for your aunt, has told us of the sacrifice you have made in our behalf, and we cannot permit it. If not in years, I'm much older than you in other respects, and you don't realize--" Roger interrupted her by leaning back in his chair and breaking out into an irrepressible laugh. "So you are going to interfere in behalf of the small boy's interests? My venerable friend, permit me to remind you that I am six feet high in my stockings, and have lately reached the mature age of twenty-one." "Roger," replied Mildred, with a pained look on her face, "I'm in earnest, and I've lain awake nearly all of two nights thinking about it." "Millie, your oysters are getting cold. You don't know anything about boys, much less about men. Don't you know I'll be much more amiable after supper? It's the nature of the male animal, and what's the use of going against nature?" "Oh, Roger, listen to me. I'm desperately in earnest. To let you sacrifice such prospects as Mrs. Wheaton said your uncle held out to you for our sakes oppresses me with guilt. I can't eat anything--you don't realize--" "Millie Jocelyn," said Roger, his face becoming grave and gentle, "I know what you are driving at. You might as well try to stop Spring from coming on. I'm going to be your honest, faithful friend, so help me God! Even if you left me now and refused to speak to me again, I'd watch over you and yours in every way I could. It's my good destiny, and I thank God for it, for I feel it's making a man of me. I won't deceive you in one iota, and I admit to my shame that my worldly old uncle tempted me that night, especially after I saw from your face just how you felt. Even then my hope was that I could do more for you by yielding to his views than if I stood out against them, but a little thought convinced me that you would starve rather than take aid from one who would not give open friendship and companionship, and you would be right. Oh, I exult in your pride, and respect you for it. You are my ideal woman, Millie, and if my uncle had owned this island, and had offered it all to me, I'd have made a wretched bargain in giving up for it the privilege of being here this evening, with the right to look you straight in the eyes without shame. If I had yielded to him then, as the devil tempted me to, I'd never have known another day of self-respect or happiness. I'm building now on the rock of honor and manhood, and you can't say anything that will change my purpose. I know what I am about if I am only a 'boy'; and Mr. Wentworth, who has been told all, approves of my course. So eat your oysters, Millie, and submit to the inevitable." "Oh, Roger, Roger, what shall I say to you?" "Look here, Millie; if you were in my place, would you desert a brave, true girl in misfortune? No; unlike me, you would never have hesitated a moment." "But, Roger, as you say you--you--saw in my face a truth that absolved you--" "What I saw in your face," he said gravely, "is my misfortune. It is not anything for which you are to blame in the least. And, Millie, I'd rather have your friendship than any other woman's love. I'm choosing my own course with my eyes open, and, thank God, I've chosen rightly. I'd have been the most miserable fellow in the whole city if I had chosen otherwise. Now I'm happy. It's all right. I've vowed to be a brother to Belle, and to do all in my power for your sweet, gentle mother. I've vowed to be your true friend in all respects, and if you protested till Doomsday it wouldn't make any difference. I've written to my mother, and I know her well enough to be sure that she will approve of my course. So will my father by and by. He isn't bad at heart, but, like uncle, a dollar is so large in his eyes that it hides the sun. Be that as it may, I'm just as much of an Atwood as he is, and can be just as obstinate in doing what I know to be right as he can be in requiring a course that would spoil my life. Millie, there never was a soldier, in all the past, braver than you have shown yourself to be, and you are a delicate girl that I could carry like a child. Do you advise a young, strong-handed fellow to play the coward, and desert the women I love and honor in their sore need and danger? You have looked on only one side of this question, and you must not think so meanly of me as to even suggest anything of the kind again." "Roger, Roger, can you realize what you are saying?" Mildred faltered, a slow, painful flush crimsoning her face. "How can you honor those who are so disgraced? You don't know what papa has become. The world will share your uncle's views concerning us." "I do know all about your father, Millie, and I pity him from the depths of my soul. He is the dark background which brings out your absolute truth and purity. I do honor you and Mrs. Jocelyn as I honor my own mother, and I intend to prove myself worthy of your respect at least, for its loss would be fatal to me. I even honor your rare fidelity, though it stands so awfully in my way. Now, surely, we understand each other. But, come, this is far too serious talk for a restaurant and the supper-table. I am now going to give my whole soul to oysters, and I adjure you by our bonds to do the same. Here's to our friendship, Millie, and may I be choked the moment I'm false to it!" and he drained a generous cup of coffee. "You won't listen to me, then," she said, with a face wherein perplexity, relief, and gratitude were blended. "I won't listen to a word that will make me the most miserable wretch in the world, and you won't get rid of me as long as I live. So, there, you might as well submit to fate and eat your oysters." Her expression became very grave and resolute. "Roger," she said slowly, "I did not know there was so kind and true a man in the world. I will do anything that you can ask." His eyes suddenly became infinitely wistful and tender, and then he gave himself a little characteristic shake as he said, rather brusquely, "I accept that promise, and shall at once tax it to the utmost with the request that you eat a jolly good supper and call on me every time I can aid you." Her glance in response warmed his soul, and then she gave herself up to social friendliness in a way which proved that a great burden had been taken from her heart. On their way home, however, she hinted her fears in regard to Belle, and Roger understood her thoroughly. For the next few days he watched the young girl, and soon satisfied himself as to the character of the man who was pursuing her. His object now was to obtain some ground for brotherly interference, and one Saturday evening, while following Belle home, he saw a young man join her and receive an undoubted welcome. He soon became aware that matters were progressing fast and far, for the young people wandered off into unfrequented streets, and once, where the shadows were deepest, he saw Belle's attendant steal his arm about her waist and kiss her. Belle's protest was not very vigorous, and when at last they parted in the passageway that led to Belle's home the kiss was repeated and not resented at all. Roger followed the young man, and said, "You have just parted from Miss Belle Jocelyn." "Well, that's my affair." "You will find yourself so greatly mistaken that you had better answer my questions honestly. What are your intentions toward her? I have the right to ask." "None of your business." "Look here, young man, she has acknowledged me as her brother, and as a brother I feel toward her. I've only a few plain words to say. If your intentions are honorable I'll not interfere, although I know all about you, and you are not my style of man by any means. If your intentions are not honorable, and you do not cease your attentions, I'll break every bone in your body--I swear it by the God who made me." "Go to the devil!" muttered the fellow. "No, sir, nor shall I permit you to take one dear to me to the devil, but I pledge my word to send you straight to him if you harm Belle Jocelyn. Here, stop and look me in the eyes under this lamp. You kissed her twice to-night. Do you intend to make her your wife?" There was no answer, but the sullen, half-frightened face was an unmistakable response. "I understand you now," said Roger savagely, taking the fellow by the throat, "and I'll send you swiftly to perdition if you don't promise to let that girl alone," and his gleaming eyes and iron grasp awed the incipient roue so completely that he quavered out: "Oh, let go. If you feel the girl is your property, I'll let her alone." Roger gave him a wrathful push which precipitated his limp form into the gutter, and growled as he walked of, "If you value your life, keep your promise." An evening or two later Roger said to Belle, whom he had taken out for a stroll, "I kept my word--I cowhided that fellow Bissel, who played such a dastardly part toward your sister. Of course I did not want to get myself into trouble, or give him any power over me, so I found out his haunts and followed him. One night, as he was returning rather late from a drinking saloon, I spoiled his good looks with a dozen savage cuts. He was too confused to see who it was in the dark, and to mislead him more thoroughly I said, with the last blow, 'Take that for lying and causing a poor girl to be sent to prison.' He thinks, no doubt, that some friend of the thief was the one who punished him. What's more, he won't forget the lashing I gave him till his dying day, and if I mistake not his smooth face will long bear my marks." Belle gave but a languid approval, for she had missed her lover for the last two evenings. "Belle," he continued, gravely but gently, "I was tempted to choke the life out of a fellow the other night, and it was the life of one who kissed you twice." She dropped her hand from his arm, but he replaced it and held it tightly as he resumed, "I'm no make-believe brother, you know. I'm just such a brother as I would be if I had been born with you on a Southern plantation. Though the young man was not to my mind, I told him that if his intentions were honorable I would not interfere, but I soon learned that he was an out-and-out scoundrel, and I said words to him that will make him shun you as he would death. Belle, I would kill him as I used to club rattlesnakes in the country, if he harmed a hair of your head, and he knows it." "You misjudge him utterly," cried Belle in a passion, "and you have just driven away the one friend that I had in all the world. I won't stand it. I'm not a baby, and I won't be treated like one." Roger let her storm on without a word, but at last, when she concluded, "I've no father worthy of the name, and so I'll take care of myself," he asked quietly: "How about your mother, Belle?" In strong revulsion the impulsive girl gave way to an equally passionate outburst of grief. "Oh," she cried, "I wish I were dead!" "Belle," said Roger, very gently now, "if you listened to that fellow you would soon make that wish in earnest. Now in your heart you don't mean it at all. You don't love such a man, and you know it. Why should you throw your young, beautiful life into the gutter? It is a mere reckless protest against your unhappy life. Belle, you are not seventeen, and you may live till you are seventy if you take care of yourself. Think of the changes for the better that may come in that time. They shall come, too. I shall share with you all my fortunes, and you have told me many a time that I was sure to succeed. I pledge you my word that before many years you shall have good honest men at your feet," and he reasoned with her so sensibly, and petted and soothed her so kindly, that at last she clung to his arm as if it were a defence indeed, and said, with tearful eyes, "You ARE a brother in the best sense of the word, and I wonder you have patience with such a reckless, passionate fool as I am. I'm not fit for you to speak to." "No, Belle, you are not bad at heart--far from it. You are half desperate from your present misfortunes, and in your blind impulse to escape you would make matters infinitely worse. Be patient, dear. It's a long lane that has no turning. To one so young as you are life promises very much, if it is not spoiled at the beginning, and Mr. Wentworth would tell us that there is a heaven beyond it all." The influence of this interview did not speedily pass from her mind, and by her gentler and more patient bearing Mildred was taught again how much she owed to one whom she had so long repelled. Mr. Wentworth succeeded in interesting the lady to whom he had referred in Mildred, and a visit from the young girl confirmed her good impressions. As a result, sufficient work was found or made to give Mildred steady employment. Mr. Jocelyn was comparatively quiet and much at home. Often he was excessively irritable and exasperating in words and manner, but no longer violent from bestial excess. He put off the project of going to a curative institution, with the true opium inertia and procrastination, and all efforts to lead him to definite action proved fruitless. His presence, however, and his quiet, haughty ways, with Roger's frequent visits, did much for a time to restrain the ill-disposed people around them, but the inevitable contact with so much depravity and coarseness was almost unendurable. Now that Mildred no longer went out to her work, she taxed her ingenuity to the utmost to amuse Fred and Minnie, that she might keep them from the horrible associations beyond their door, but her father's irritability often rendered it impossible for them to remain in the room, and, childlike, they would assimilate somewhat with the little heathen among whom their lot was now cast. Poor Mrs. Jocelyn was sinking under her sorrows. She did not complain: she blamed herself with a growing morbidness for the ruin of her husband and the hard lot of her children, and hope deferred was making her heart sick indeed. Her refined, gentle nature recoiled with an indescribable repugnance from her surroundings, and one day she received a shock from which she never fully recovered. Her husband was out, and Mildred had gone to deliver some work. The children, whom she tried to keep with her, broke away at last and left the door open. Before she could close it a drunken woman stumbled in, and, sinking into a chair, she let a bundle slip from her hands. It fell on the floor, unrolled, and a dead infant lay before Mrs. Jocelyn's horrified gaze. Her cries for help brought a stout, red-faced woman from across the hallway, and she seemed to understand what was such a fearful mystery to Mrs. Jocelyn, for she took the unwelcome intruder by the shoulder and tried to get her to go out hastily, but the inebriated wretch was beyond shame, fear, or prudence. Pulling out of her pocket a roll of bills, she exclaimed, in hideous exultation: "Faix, I'oive had a big day's work. Trhree swell families on the Avenue guv me all this to burry the brat. Burry it? Divil a bit. It's makin' me fortin'. Cud we ony git dead babbies enough we'd all be rich, Bridget, but here's enough to kape the pot bilin' for wakes to come, and guv us a good sup o' whiskey into the bargain. Here, take a drap," she said, pulling out a black bottle and holding it up to Mrs. Jocelyn. "What yer glowrin' so ghostlike for? Ah, let me alone, ye ould hag," she said angrily to the red-faced woman, who seemed in great trepidation, and tried to put her hand over the drunken creature's mouth. "Who's afeard? Money'll buy judge and jury, an' if this woman peaches on us I'll bate her brains out wid the dead babby." Finding that words were of no avail, and that she could not move the great inert mass under which Mrs. Jocelyn's chair was creaking, the neighbor from across the way snatched the money and retreated to her room. This stratagem had the desired effect, for the woman was not so intoxicated as to lose her greed, and she followed as hastily as her unsteady steps permitted. A moment later the red-faced woman dashed in, seized the dead child and its wrappings, and then shaking her huge fist in Mrs. Jocelyn's face, said, "If yees ever spakes of what yer've sane, I'll be the death of ye--by the V'argin I will; so mum's the word, or it'll be worse for ye." When Mildred returned she found her mother nervously prostrated. "I've had a bad turn," was her only explanation. Her broken spirit was terrified by her awful neighbors, and not for the world would she add another feather's weight to the burdens under which her family faltered by involving them in a prosecution of the vile impostor who had sickened her with the exposure of a horrible trade. [Footnote: This character is not an imaginary one, and, on ample authority, I was told of an instance where the large sum of fifty dollars was obtained from some kindly family by this detestable method of imposition.] "Mamma," cried Mildred, in sharp distress, "we must leave this place. It's killing you." "I wish we could leave it, dear," sighed the poor woman. "I think I'd be better anywhere else." "We shall leave it," said the girl resolutely. "Let the rent go. I had already about decided upon it, and now I'll go with Mrs. Wheaton to-morrow and find rooms among more respectable people." The events of the evening confirmed her purpose, for the young roughs that rendezvoused nightly at the entrance of the long passageway determined that they would no longer submit to the "uppish airs" of the sisters, but "tache 'em" that since they lived in the same house they were no better than their neighbors. Therefore, as Belle boldly brushed by them as usual on her return from the shop, one young fellow, with a wink to his comrades, followed her, and where the passage was darkest put his arm around her waist and pressed upon her cheek a resounding kiss. In response there came from the entrance a roar of jeering laughter. But the young ruffian found instantly to his sorrow that he had aroused a tigress. Belle was strong and furious from the insult, and her plump hand came down on the fellow's nose with a force that caused the blood to flow copiously. After the quick impulse of anger and self-defence passed she ran sobbing like a child to Mildred, and declared she would not stay another day in the vile den. Mildred was white with anger, and paced the room excitedly for a few moments. "Oh, God, that we had a father!" she gasped. "There, Belle, let us be patient," she continued after a few moments; "we can't contend with such wretches. I promise you that this shall be your last day in this place. We ought to have left before." Then, as the girls grew calmer, they resolved not to tell either their father or Roger, fearing that they might become embroiled in a dangerous and disgraceful quarrel involving their presence in a police court. Mildred had given her mother a sedative to quiet her trembling nerves, and she was sleeping in one of the bedrooms, and so happily was not aware of Belle's encounter. Mr. Jocelyn soon came in, and, for the first time since Mildred's warning, was a little the worse for liquor, but he had the self-control to keep quiet, and after a few mouthfuls of supper went to his room overcome by the stupor he had sought. After the children were sleeping the girls gladly welcomed Roger, for he had become the chief source of light and hope in their saddened lives. And he did brighten and cheer them wonderfully, for, content with a long and prosperous day's work, and full of the hopefulness and courage of youth, he imparted hope and fortitude to them in spite of all that was so depressing. "Come, girls," he said at last, "you need some oxygen. The air is close and stifling in this den of a house, and outside the evening is clear and bracing. Let's have a stroll." "We can't go far," said Mildred, "for mamma is sleeping, and I would not have her wake and be frightened for anything." "Well, we'll only go around a block or two. You'll feel the stronger for it, and be in a better condition to move to-morrow," for Mildred had told him of her purpose, and he had promised to help them get settled on the following evening. When they reached the end of the dark passage-way they feared that trouble was brewing, for a score of dark, coarse faces lowered at them, and the fellow that Belle had punished glared at her above his bandaged face. Paying no heed to them, however, they took a brief, quick walk, and returned to find the entrance blocked by an increasing number of dangerous-looking young ruffians. "Stand aside," said Roger sternly. A big fellow knocked off his hat in response, and received instantly a blow in the eye which would have felled him had he not been sustained by the crowd, who now closed on the young man. "Run up the street and call for police," he said to the girls, but they were snatched back and held by some of the gang, and hands placed over their mouths, yet not before they had uttered two piercing cries. Roger, after a brief, desperate struggle, got his back to the wall and struck blows that were like those of a sledge-hammer. He was dealing, however, with some fairly trained pugilists, and was suffering severely, when a policeman rushed in, clubbing right and left. The gang dispersed instantly, but two were captured. The girls, half fainting from excitement and terror, were conducted to their room by Roger, and then they applied palliatives to the wounds of their knight, with a solicitude and affection which made the bruises welcome indeed to the young fellow. They were in terror at the idea of his departure, for the building was like a seething caldron. He reassured them by promising to remain until all was quiet, and the police also informed them that the house would be under surveillance until morning. On the following day, with Mrs. Wheaton's aid, they found rooms elsewhere, and Roger, after appearing as witness against the rowdies that had been captured, and informing his employers of what had occurred, gave the remaining hours to the efficient aid of his friends. CHAPTER XLI GLINTS OF SUNSHINE Their new rooms at first promised remarkably well. They were on the ground-floor of a large tenement that fronted on a rather narrow street, and their neighbors seemed quiet, well-disposed people. Mr. Wentworth soon called and congratulated them on the change. Mrs. Wheaton frequently came to give Mrs. Jocelyn a "'elping 'and," as she phrased it, but her eliminations did not extend to her work, which was rounded out with the completeness of hearty goodwill. Roger rarely missed an evening without giving an hour or two to the girls, often taking them out to walk, with now and then a cheap excursion on the river or a ramble in Central Park. In the latter resort they usually spent part of Sunday afternoon, going thither directly from the chapel. Mildred's morbidness was passing away. She had again taken her old class, and her face was gaining a serenity which had long been absent. One of the great wishes of her heart now had good prospect of being fulfilled, for her father had at last consented to go to an institution wherein he could receive scientific treatment suited to his case. The outlook was growing so hopeful that even Mrs. Jocelyn was rallying into something like hopefulness and courage, and her health was slowly improving. She was one whose life was chiefly sustained by her heart and the well-being of those she loved. Belle also was improving greatly. The memorable interview with Roger, already described, had a lasting influence, and did much to banish the giddiness of unthinking, ignorant girlhood, and the recklessness arising from an unhappy life. Now that the world was brightening again, she brightened with it. Among his new associates Roger found two or three fine, manly fellows, who were grateful indeed for an introduction to the handsome, lively girl, and scarcely a week passed during May and June that some inexpensive evening excursion was not enjoyed, and thoroughly enjoyed too, even by Mildred. Roger was ever at his best when in her society. His talk was bright and often witty, and his spirit of fun as genuine and contagious as that of Belle herself. He was now sincerely happy in the consciousness of Mildred's perfect trust and strong affection, believing that gradually, and even before the girl was aware of it, she would learn to give more than friendship. It was his plan to make himself essential to her life, indeed a part of it, and he was apparently succeeding. Mildred had put her fate into his hands. She felt that she owed so much to him that she was ready to keep her promise literally. At any time for months he might have bound her to him by promises that would never have been broken; he knew it, and she was aware of his knowledge, but when, instead of taking advantage of her gratitude, he avoided all sentiment, and treated her with a cordial frankness as if she were in truth simply the friend he had asked her to become, all of her old constraint in his presence was unthought of, and she welcomed the glances of his dark, intent eyes, which interpreted her thoughts even before they were spoken. The varying expressions of his face made it plain enough to her that he liked and appreciated her thoughts, and that his admiration and affection were only strengthened by their continued companionship. Moreover, she was well content with what she regarded as her own progress toward a warmer regard for him. One moonlight night in June they made up a little party for an excursion on a steamer plying down the Bay. Belle had had two attendants, and would have been just as well pleased had there been two or three more. As she once asserted, she could have kept them "all jolly." During the earlier hours Roger had been as merry and full of nonsense as Belle, but on their return he and Mildred had taken seats a little apart from the others and drifted into some talk relating to one of his studies, he in a simple, lucid manner explaining to her the latest theories on a disputed question. She surprised and pleased him by saying, with a little pathetic accent in her voice, "Oh, Roger, you are leaving me far, far behind." "What do you mean, Millie?" "Why, you are climbing the peaks of knowledge at a great pace, and what's to become of poor little me, that have no chance to climb at all worth naming? You won't want a friend who doesn't know anything, and can't understand what you are thinking about." "I'll wait for you, Millie; rest assured you shall never be left alone." "No, that won't do at all," she replied, and she was in earnest now. "There is one thing wherein you will find me as obstinate as an Atwood, and that is never to let our friendship retard your progress or render your success doubtful, now that you have struck out for yourself. Your relatives think that I--that we shall be a drag upon you; I have resolved that we shall not be, and you know that I have a little will of my own as well as yourself. You must not wait for me in any sense of the word, for you know how very proud I am, and all my pride is staked on your success. It ought to have been dead long ago, but it seems just as strong as ever." "And I'm proud of your pride. You are a soldier, Millie, and it isn't possible for you to say, 'I surrender.'" "You are mistaken. When you saved me from prison; when you gave nearly all you had that papa might have the chance which I trust will restore his manhood, I surrendered, and no one knew it better than you did." "Pardon me, Millie; the gates of the citadel were closed, and ever have been. Even your will cannot open them no, not even your extravagant sense of gratitude for what it would be my happiness to do in any case. That something which was once prejudice, dislike, repulsion, has retreated into the depths of your heart, and it won't yield--at least it hasn't yet. But, Millie, I shall be very patient. Just as truly as if you were the daughter of a millionaire, your heart shall guide your action." "You are a royal fellow, Roger," she faltered. "If you were not so genuinely honest, I should think you wonderfully shrewd in your policy." "Well, perhaps the honest course is always the shrewdest in the long run," he replied laughingly, and with a deep gladness in his tone, for her words gave a little encouragement. "But your charge that I am leaving you behind as I pursue my studies has a grain of truth in it as far as mere book learning goes. In your goodness, Millie, and all that is most admirable, I shall always follow afar off. Since I can't wait for you, as you say, and you have so little time to read and study yourself, I am going to recite my lessons to you--that is, some of them, those that would interest you--and by telling you about what I have learned I shall fix it all in my mind more thoroughly." Mildred was exceedingly pleased with the idea. "I don't see why this isn't possible to some extent," she said gladly, "and I can't tell you how much hope and comfort it gives me. That I've had so little time to read and cultivate my mind has been one of the great privations of our poverty, but if you will patiently try to make me understand a little of what you are studying, I won't relapse into barbarism. Oh, Roger, how good you are to me!" "That is like saying, How good I am to myself! Let me tell you, Millie, in all sincerity, that this plan promises as much for me as for you. Your mind is so quick, and you look at things so differently, that I often get new and better ideas of the subject after talking it over with you. The country boy that you woke up last summer was right in believing that you could be an invaluable friend, for I can't tell you how much richer life has become to me." "Roger, how I misunderstood you! How blind and stupid I was! God was raising up for me the best friend a girl ever had, and I acted so shamefully that anybody but you would have been driven away." "You do yourself injustice, and I wouldn't let any one else judge you so harshly." After reaching her room that night, Mildred thought, "I do believe mamma was right, and that an old-fashioned Southern girl, such as she says that I am, can learn to love a second time. Roger is so genuinely good and strong! It rests me to be with him, and he gives some of his own strength and courage. To-night, for the first time since he told me everything so gently and honestly, has anything been said of that which I can see is in his mind all the time, and I brought on all that was said myself. I can now read his thoughts better than he can read mine, and it would be mean not to give him a little of the hope and encouragement that he so richly deserves. It troubles me, however, that my mind and heart are so tranquil when I'm with him. That's not the way I once felt," she sighed. "He seems like the dearest brother a girl ever had--no, not that exactly; he is to me the friend he calls himself, and I'd be content to have things go on this way as long as we lived." "Millie," cried Belle roguishly, "what did Roger say to you to call out such sweet smiles and tender sighs?" The young girl started, and flushed slightly. "We were talking about astronomy," she said brusquely. "Well, I should think so, for the effects in your appearance are heavenly. If he could have seen you as you have appeared for the last ten minutes, he would be more desperately in love than ever. Oh, Millie, you are so pretty that I am half in love with you myself." "Nonsense! you are a giddy child. Tell me about your own favorites, and which of them you like best." "I like them all best. Do you think I'm going to be such a little goose as to tie myself down to one? These are but the advance guard of scores. Still I shall always like these ones best because they are kind to me now while I'm only a 'shop-lady.'" "You mustn't flirt, Belle." "I'm not flirting--only having a good time, and they know it. I'm not a bit sentimental--only jolly, you know. When the right time comes, and I've had my fun, I'm going to take my pick of the best." "Well, that's sensible. Belle, darling, are not Roger's friends better than those underhanded fellows who could not look mamma in the eyes?" "Oh, Millie," said the impulsive girl with a rush of tears, "don't speak of those horrid days. I was an ignorant, reckless fool--I was almost beside myself with despair and unhappiness; I could kiss Roger's hands from gratitude. Look here, Millie, if you don't marry him I will, for there's no one that can compare with him." "Come, now, don't make me jealous." "I wish I could. I've a great mind to flirt with him a little, just to wake up your old stupid heart. Still I think you are coming on very well. Oh, Millie, how I could dance at your wedding! Solid as I am, my feet would scarcely touch the floor." Mildred laughed, and said softly, "It would be a pity to deny you so much pleasure, Belle." Then she added resolutely, "No more talk about weddings, if you please. For long, long years Roger must give his whole mind to his studies. His relatives say that we shall hang helplessly upon him and spoil his life, but we'll prove them mistaken, Belle. I'd work my fingers off to give him the chance that he'll make so much of, for I'm as proud of him as you are." "That's the way to talk," exulted Belle. "I see how it's all coming out. He'll stand up head, as I told you, and I told you, too, that he'd win you in spite of yourself. Roger Atwood does all he undertakes--it's his way." "Well, we'll see," was the half-smiling, half-sighing answer; but sanguine Belle had no doubt concerning the future, and soon her long eyelashes drooped over her glowing cheeks in untroubled sleep. "Oh, how good for us all is the sunlight of a little happiness and hope!" Mildred thought. "Darling mamma is reviving, Belle is blossoming like a blush rose, and I--well, thank God for Roger Atwood's friendship. May I soon be able to thank Him for his love." Ah, Mildred Jocelyn, you have still much to learn. A second love can grow up in the heart, but not readily in one like yours. Within a month from the time that Mr. Jocelyn entered a curative institution, he returned to his family greatly changed for the better. His manner toward his family was full of remorseful tenderness, and he was eager to retrieve his fortunes. They welcomed him with such a wealth of affection, they cheered and sustained him in so many delicate and sympathetic ways, that he wondered at the evil spell which had bound him so long and made him an alien among those so lovable and so dearly beloved. He now felt sure that he would devote body and soul to their welfare for the rest of his days, and he could not understand why or how it was that he had been so besotted. The intense sufferings during the earlier stage of his treatment at the institution made him shrink with horror from the bare thought of his old enslavement, and during the first weeks after his return he did not dream it was possible that he could relapse, although he had been warned of his danger. His former morbid craving was often fearfully strong, but he fought it with a vindictive hatred, and his family, in their deep gladness and inexperience, felt assured that husband and father had been restored to them. It seemed as if he could not thank Roger enough, and his eyes grew eloquent with gratitude when the young fellow's name was mentioned, and when they rested on his bright, honest face. Mr. Wentworth went out among his business friends, and so interested one of them that a position was in a certain sense made for the poor man, and although the salary was small at first, the prospect for its increase was good if he would maintain his abstinence and prove that he had not lost his old fine business powers. This he bade so fair to do that hope and confidence grew stronger every day, and they felt that before very long they would be able to move into more commodious quarters, situated in a better part of the city, for by reason of the neglect of the streets and sewerage on the part of the authorities, the locality in which they now were was found to be both very disagreeable and unwholesome. They would have removed at once, but they were eager to repay Roger the money he had loaned them, although he protested against their course. Not realizing their danger, and in the impulse of their pride and integrity, they remained, practicing the closest economy. Early in July, Roger obtained a vacation, and went home on a visit, proposing to harden his muscles by aiding his father through the harvest season. He was so helpful and so kind and considerate that even grim, disappointed Mr. Atwood was compelled to admit that his boy had become a man. Mrs. Atwood tenderly and openly exulted over him, and, obeying her impulse, she wrote a friendly letter to Mildred, which made the young girl very happy. Susan became more than reconciled to Roger's course, for he promised that some day she should often come to the city and have splendid times. Clara Bute bad become the happy wife of a well-to-do farmer, and she sent an urgent request to Belle and Mildred to visit her. The latter would not leave her parents, but Belle accepted gladly, and the gay, frolicsome girl left more than one mild heartache among the rural beaux that vied with each other in their attentions. CHAPTER XLII HOPES GIVEN AND SLAIN The skies seemed serene and bright, with promise to all for many happy days, but clouds were gathering below the horizon, and, most unexpectedly to him, the first bolt fell upon Roger. A day or two before his return to the city he found at the village office a letter with a foreign post-mark, addressed, in his care, to Miss Mildred Jocelyn. He knew the handwriting instantly, and he looked at the missive as if it contained his death-warrant. It was from Vinton Arnold. As he rode away he was desperately tempted to destroy the letter, and never breathe a word of its existence. He hoped and half believed that Mildred was learning to love him, and he was sure that if Arnold did not appear he would win all that he craved. The letter, which he had touched as if it contained nitro-glycerine, might slay every hope. Indeed he believed that it would, for he understood Mildred better than she understood herself. She believed that Arnold had given her up. Her heart had become benumbed with its own pain, and was sleeping after its long, weary waiting. He was sure, however, that if not interfered with he could awaken it at last to content and happiness. This letter, however, might be the torch which would kindle the old love with tenfold intensity. Long hours he fought his temptation like a gladiator, for fine as had been Mildred's influence over him, he was still intensely human. At last he gained the victory, and went home quiet, but more exhausted than he had ever been from a long hot day's toil in the harvest-field. He had resolved to keep absolute faith with Mildred, and having once reached a decision he was not one to waver. As his mother kissed him good-by she held him off a moment, then whispered, "Roger, Miss Jocelyn has given you something better than all your uncle's money. I am content that it should be as it is." On the afternoon of the day of his arrival in the city he went to meet his fate. Mrs. Jocelyn greeted him like the mother he had just left, and Mildred's glad welcome made him groan inwardly. Never before had she appeared so beautiful to him--never had her greeting been so tinged with her deepening regard. And yet she looked inquiringly at him from time to time, for he could not wholly disguise the fear that chilled his heart. "Belle had a perfectly lovely time in the country," said Mrs. Jocelyn. "She has told us all about your people, and what a farmer you became. She said everybody was proud of you up at Forestville, and well they might be, although they don't know what we do. Oh, Roger, my dear boy, it does my heart good to see you again. We have all missed you so much. Oh, you'll never know--you never can know. Good-by now, for a little while. I promised Mrs. Wheaton that I'd bring the children over and spend the afternoon with her. She is going to show me about cutting some little clothes for Fred. What a dear kind soul she is, with all her queer talk. God bless you, my boy. You bring hope and happiness back with you." But the poor fellow was so conscious of his own coming trouble that tears came into his eyes, and after Mrs. Jocelyn had gone he looked at Mildred in a way that made her ask, gently and anxiously: "What is it, Roger?" Alter a moment's hesitation he said grimly, "Millie, it's rough on a fellow when he must be his own executioner. There, take it. It's the heaviest load I ever carried in my life," and he threw the letter into her lap. After a moment's glance she trembled violently, and became pale and red by turns, then buried her face in her hands. "I knew it would be so," he said doggedly. "I knew what was the matter all along." She sprang up, letting the letter drop on the floor, and clung to him. "Roger," she cried, "I won't read the letter. I won't touch it. No one shall come between us--no one has the right. Oh, it would be shameful after all--" "Millie," he said almost sternly, replacing her in her chair, "the writer of that letter has the right to come between us--he is between us, and there is no use in disguising the truth. Come, Millie, I came here to play the man, and you must not make it too hard for me. Read your letter." "I can't," she said, again burying her burning face in her hands, and giving way to a sudden passion of tears. "No, not while I'm here, of course. And yet I'd like to know my fate, for the suspense is a little too much. I hope he's written to tell you that he has married the daughter of the Great Mogul, or some other rich nonentity," he added, trying to meet his disappointment with a faint attempt at humor; "but I'm a fool to hope anything. Good-by, and read your letter in peace. I ought to have left it and gone away at once, but, confound it! I couldn't. A drowning man will blindly catch at a straw." She looked at him, and saw that his face was white with pain and fear. "Roger," she said resolutely, "I'll burn that letter without opening it if you say so. I'll do anything you ask." He paced the room excitedly with clenched hands for a few moments, but at last turned toward her and said quietly, "Will you do what I ask?" "Yes, yes indeed." "Then read your letter." She looked at him irresolutely a moment, then made a little gesture of protest and snatched up the missive almost vindictively. After reading a few lines her face softened, and she said, in accents of regret which she was too much off her guard to disguise, "Oh, he never received my answer last summer." "Of course not," growled Roger. "You deserved that, for you gave your note to that old blunderbuss Jotham, when I would have carried it safely." "Oh, Roger, I can't go on with this; I am wronging you too shamefully." "You would wrong me far more if you were not honest with me at this time," he said almost harshly. His words quieted and chilled her a little, and she replied sadly, "You are right, Roger. You don't want, nor should I mock you with the mere semblance of what you give." "Read the letter," was his impatient reply, "or I shall go at once." She now turned to it resolutely, proposing to read it with an impassive face, but, in spite of herself, he saw that every word was like an electric touch upon her heart. As she finished, the letter dropped from her hands, and she began crying so bitterly that he was disarmed, and forgot himself in her behalf. "Don't cry so, Millie," he pleaded. "I can't stand it. Come, now; I fought this battle out once before, and didn't think I could be so accursedly weak again." "Roger, read that letter." "No," he answered savagely; "I hate him--I could annihilate him; but he shall never charge me with anything underhanded. That letter was meant for your eyes only. Since it must be, God grant he proves worthy; but his words would sting me like adders." She sprang to him, and, burying her face upon his shoulder, sobbed, "Oh, Roger, I can't endure this. It's worse than anything I've suffered yet." "Oh, what a brute I am!" he groaned. "His letter ought to have brought you happiness, but your kind heart is breaking over my trouble, for I've acted like a passionate boy. Millie, dear Millie, I will be a brave, true man, and, as I promised you, your heart shall decide all. From this time forth I am your brother, your protector, and I shall protect you against yourself as truly as against others. You are not to blame in the least. How could I blame you for a love that took possession of your heart before you knew of my existence, and why has not Millie Jocelyn as good a right to follow her heart as any other girl in the land? And you shall follow it. It would be dastardly meanness in me to take advantage of your gratitude. Come now, wipe your eyes, and give a sister's kiss before I go. It's all right." She yielded passively, for she was weak, nerveless, and exhausted. He picked up the open letter, replaced it within the envelope, and put it in her hand. "It's yours," he said, "by the divine right of your love. When I come this evening, don't let me see a trace of grief. I won't mope and be lackadaisical, I promise," and smilingly he kissed her good-by. She sat for an hour almost without moving, and then mechanically put the letter away and went on with her work. She felt herself unequal to any more emotion at that time, and after thinking the affair all over, determined to keep it to herself, for the present at least. She knew well how bitterly her father, mother, and Belle would resent the letter, and how greatly it would disquiet them if they knew that her old love was not dead, and seemingly could not and would not die. With the whole force of her resolute will she sought to gain an outward quietude, and succeeded so well that the family did not suspect anything. She both longed for and dreaded Roger's appearance, and when he came she looked at him so kindly, so remorsefully, that she tasked his strength to the utmost; but he held his own manfully, and she was compelled to admit that he had never appeared so gay or so brilliant before. For an hour he and Belle kept them all laughing over their bright nonsense, and then suddenly he said, "Vacation's over; I must begin work to-morrow," and in a moment he was gone. "Millie," cried Belle, "you ought to thank your stars, for you have the finest fellow in the city," and they all smiled at her so brightly that she fled to her room. There Belle found her a little later with red eyes, and she remarked bluntly, "Well, you ARE a queer girl. I suppose you are crying for joy, but that isn't my way." After her sister was asleep Mildred read and re-read Arnold's letter. At first she sighed and cried over it, and then lapsed into a long, deep reverie. "Hard as it is for Roger," she thought, "he is right--I am not to blame. I learned to love Vinton Arnold, and permitted him to love me, before I had ever seen Roger. I should have a heart of stone could I resist his appeal in this letter. Here he says: 'You did not answer my note last summer--I fear you have cast me off. I cannot blame you. After insults from my mother and my own pitiful exhibitions of weakness, my reason tells me that you have banished all thoughts of me in anger and disgust. But, Millie, my heart will not listen to reason, and cries out for you night and day. My life has become an intolerable burden to me, and never in all the past has there been a more unhappy exile than I. The days pass like years, and the nights are worse. I am dragged here and there for the benefit of my health--what a miserable farce it is! For half the money I am spending here I could live happily with you, and, sustained by your love and sympathy, I might do something befitting my man's estate. One day, when I said as much to my mother, her face grew cold and stern, and she replied that my views of life were as absurd as those of a child! I often wish I were dead, and were it not for the thought of you I half fear that I might be tempted to end my wretched existence. Of course my health suffers from this constant unhappiness, repression, and humiliation. The rumor has reached me that your father has become very poor, and that he is in ill health. The little blood I have left crimsons my face with shame that I am not at your side to help and cheer you. But I fear I should be a burden to you, as I am to every one else. My fainting turns--one of which you saw-are becoming more frequent. I've no hope nor courage to try to get well--I am just sinking under the burden of my unhappy, unmanly lite, and my best hope may soon be to become unconscious and remain so forever. And yet I fully believe that one kind word from you would inspire me with the wish, the power to live. My mother is blind to everything except her worldly maxims of life. She means to do her duty by me, and is conscientious in her way, but she is killing me by slow torture. If you would give me a little hope, if you would wait--oh, pardon the selfishness of my request, the pitiable weakness displayed in this appeal! Yet, how can I help it? Who can sink into absolute despair without some faint struggle--some effort to escape? I have had the happiness of heaven in your presence, and now I am as miserable as a lost soul. You have only to say that there is no hope, and I will soon cease to trouble you or any one much longer.' "How can I tell him there is no hope?" she murmured. "It would be murder--it would be killing soul and body. What's more, I love him--God knows I love him. My heart just yearns for him in boundless pity and sympathy, and I feel almost as if he were my crippled, helpless child as well as lover. It would be cruel, selfish, and unwomanly to desert him because of his misfortune. I haven't the heart to do it. His weakness and suffering bind me to him. His appeal to me is like the cry of the helpless to God, and how can I destroy his one hope, his one chance? He needs me more than does Roger, who is strong, masterful, and has a grand career before him. In his varied activities, in the realization of his ambitious hopes, he will overcome his present feelings, and become my brother in very truth. He will marry some rich, splendid girl like Miss Wetheridge by and by, and I shall be content in lowly, quiet ministry to one whose life and all God has put into my hands. His parents treat Vinton as if he were a child; but he has reached the age when he has the right to choose for himself, and, if the worst comes to the worst, I could support him. myself. Feeling as I do now, and as I ever shall, now that my heart has been revealed to me, I could not marry Roger. It would be wronging him and perjuring myself. He is too grand, too strong a man not to see the facts in their true light, and he will still remain the best friend a woman ever had." Then, with a furtive look at Belle to see that she was sleeping soundly, she wrote: "DEAR VINTON: My heart would indeed be callous and unwomanly did it not respond to your letter, over which I have shed many tears. Take all the hope you can from the truth that I love you, and can never cease to love you. You do yourself injustice. Your weakness and ill health are misfortunes for which you are not responsible. So far from inspiring disgust, they awaken my sympathy and deepen my affection. You do not know a woman's heart--at least you do not know mine. In your constant love, your contempt for heartless, fashionable life, and your wish to do a man's part in the world, you are manly. You are right also in believing that if you lived in an atmosphere of respect and affection you would so change for the better that you would not recognize yourself. For my sake as well as your own, try to rally, and make the most of your sojourn abroad. Fix your mind steadily on some pursuits or studies that will be of use to you in the future. Do not fear; I shall wait. It is not in my nature to forget or change." And with some reference to their misfortunes, a repetition of her note which Jotham had lost, and further reassuring words, she closed her letter. "I am right," she said; "even Roger will say I am doing right. I could not do otherwise." Having made a copy of the letter that she might show it to Roger, she at last slept, in the small hours of the night. As early as possible on the following day she mailed the letter, with a prayer that it might not be too late. A day or two later she sought a private interview with her friend, and whispered, "Roger, dear Roger, if you do not fail me now you will prove yourself the best and bravest man in the world. I am going to repose a trust in you that I cannot share at present with any one else--not even my mother. It would only make her unhappy now that she is reviving in our brighter days. It might have a bad influence on papa, and it is our duty to shield him in every way." She told him everything, made him read the copy of her letter to Arnold. "You are strong, Roger," she said in conclusion, "and it would kill him, and--and I love him. You know now how it has all come about, and it does not seem in my nature to change. I have given you all I can--my absolute trust and confidence. I've shown you my whole heart. Roger, you won't fail me. I love you so dearly, I feel so deeply for you, I am so very grateful, that I believe it would kill me if this should harm you." He did not fail her, but even she never guessed the effort he made. "It's all right, Millie," he said with a deep breath, "and I'll be a jolly bachelor for you all my life." "You must not say that," she protested. "One of these days I'll pick you out a far better wife than I could ever be." "No," he replied decisively, "that's the one thing I won't do for you, if you picked out twenty score." He tried to be brave--he was brave; but for weeks thereafter traces of suffering on his face cut her to the heart, and she suffered with him as only a nature like hers was capable of doing. Events were near which would tax his friendship to the utmost. August was passing with its intense heat. The streets of the locality wherein the Jocelyns lived were shamefully neglected, and the sewerage was bad. Mr. Jocelyn was one of the first to suffer, and one day he was so ill from malarial neuralgia that he faltered in the duties of his business. "I can't afford to be ill," he said to himself. "A slight dose of morphia will carry me through the day; surely I've strength of mind sufficient to take it once or twice as a medicine, and then plenty of quinine will ward off a fever, and I can go on with my work without any break or loss; meanwhile I'll look for rooms in a healthier locality." His conscience smote him, warned him, and yet it did not seem possible that he could not take a little as a remedy, as did other people. With the fatuity of a self-indulgent nature he remembered its immediate relief from pain, and forgot the anguish it had caused. He no more proposed to renew the habit than to destroy his life--he only proposed to tide himself over an emergency. The drug was taken, and to his horror he found that it was the same as if he had kindled a conflagration among combustibles ready for the match. His old craving asserted itself with all its former force. His will was like a straw in the grasp of a giant. He writhed, and anathematized himself, but soon, with the inevitableness of gravitation, went to another drug store and was again enchained. [Footnote: It is a sad fact that more than half of those addicted to the opium habit relapse. The causes are varied, but the one given is the most common: it is taken to bridge over some emergency or to give relief from physical pain or mental distress. The infatuated victim says, "I will take it just this once," and then he goes on taking it until it destroys him. I have talked with several who have given way for the second and third time, and with one physician who has relapsed five times. They each had a somewhat different story to tell, but the dire results were in all cases the same. After one indulgence, the old fierce craving, the old fatal habit, was again fixed, with more than its former intensity and binding power.] For a few days Mr. Jocelyn tried to conceal his condition from his family, but their eyes were open now, and they watched him at first with alarm, then with terror. They pleaded with him; his wife went down on her knees before him; but, with curses on himself, he broke away and rushed forth, driven out into the wilderness of a homeless life like a man possessed with a demon. In his intolerable shame and remorse he wrote that he would not return until he had regained his manhood. Alas! that day would never come. CHAPTER XLIII WAS BELLE MURDERED? Mrs. Wheaton, Mr. Wentworth, and Roger did what they could for the afflicted family, and Roger spent the greater part of several nights in a vain search for the absent man, but he had hidden himself too securely, and was drowning reason, conscience, his entire manhood, in one long debauch. The young man grew more haggard than ever in his deep sympathy for his friends, for they clung to him with the feeling that he only could help them effectually. He begged them to move elsewhere, since the odors of the place were often sickening, but they all said No, for the husband and father might return, and this now was their one hope concerning him. In the second fall of her husband Mrs. Jocelyn seemed to have received her death-wound, for she failed visibly every day. One night Belle was taken with a severe chill, and then fever and delirium followed. When Roger came the ensuing evening, Mildred sobbed on his shoulder. "Oh, Roger, my heart is paralyzed with dread. The skies you were making so bright for us have become black with ruin. You are the only one who brings me any hope or comfort. Come with me. Look at Belle there. She doesn't know any of us. For the last hour her mind has wandered. Half the time she is thanking you for all that you have done for us; then she calls for papa, or is away in the country. The doctor has been here, and he looked very grave. He says it's all due to the bad sanitary condition of this part of the city, and that there are other cases just like it, and that they are hard to manage. Why didn't we move before? Oh, oh, oh!" and she cried as if her heart would break. "Don't grieve so, Millie," Roger faltered. "I never could stand it to see tears in your eyes. Belle is young and vigorous; she'll pull through." "I hope so. Oh, what should we do if she should--But the doctor says the fever takes a stronger hold on persons of full habit like Belle, and now that I've made inquiries I find that it has been fatal in several instances. We have been so troubled about papa that we thought of nothing else, and did not realize our danger. There are two cases like Belle's across the way, and one in this house, and none of them are expected to live." "Millie," said Roger resolutely, "I won't even entertain the thought of Belle's dying. I'm going to stay with you every night until she is out of danger. I can doze here in this chair, and I should be sleepless with anxiety anywhere else. You must let me become a brother now in very truth." "No, Roger, we can't permit it. You might catch the fever." "Millie, I will stay. Do you think I could leave you to meet this trouble alone? I can relieve you in many ways, and give you and your mother a chance for a little rest. Besides, what is the fever to me?" he added, with a touch of recklessness which she understood too well. "Roger," she said gravely, "think what your life and health are to me. If you should fail me I should despair." "I won't fail you," he replied, with a little confident nod. "You will always find me on hand like a good-natured dragon whenever you are in trouble. The first thing to do is to send these children to the country, and out of this poisoned air," and he sat down at once and wrote to his mother and Clara Wilson, formerly Clara Bute. Then, true to his word, he watched with Mildred and Mrs. Jocelyn every night. Frequently his hand upon the brow of the delirious girl would quiet her when nothing else could, and Mildred often saw his tears falling fast on the unconscious face. Mrs. Wilson answered his letter in person. "I couldn't wait a minute," she said. "I went right over to Mrs. Atwood's and told her that no one could have the children but me, and my husband says they can stay until you want them back. He is so good to me! Dear little Belle!" she sobbed, bending over the sufferer, "to think that I once so misjudged you! A better-hearted girl never breathed. As soon as she's able to be moved you must bring her right to me, and I'll take care of her till she's her old rosy, beautiful self. No, I'll come for her. I wish I could take her in my arms and carry her home now." "She often speaks of you," faltered Mildred. "Indeed she seems to be living all her old life over again." The doctor looked graver every day, and at last held out no hope. Late one night they saw that the crisis was near. Belle was almost inanimate from weakness, and Mrs. Jocelyn, Mildred, and Roger sat beside her in the large living-room, into which they had moved her bed, so that if possible she might get a little air--air that was laden with vile, stifling odors. At last the feeble tossings of the poor sufferer ceased, and she looked around intelligently. Her mother kissed her, and said soothingly, "Sleep, dear, and you'll soon be better." She shook her head, and continued to look as if in search of some one, and then whispered, "Where is papa?" "You are not strong enough to see him now," her mother replied with pallid lips, while Mildred put her hand to her side from the intolerable pain in her heart. Belle lay still a few moments, and they breathed low in their suspense. Her mother kept her soothing touch upon her brow, while Mildred held her hand. At last two great tears rolled down the poor girl's face, and she said faintly, "I remember now." "Oh, Belle, darling, sleep," murmured her mother, "and you will soon get well." Again she slowly shook her head. "Dear little mother," she whispered, "forgive naughty Belle for all her wild ways. You were always patient with me. Pray God to forgive me, for I'm going fast. If He's like you--I won't fear Him." Mrs. Jocelyn would have fallen on her child if Roger had not caught her and placed her gently on the lounge, where she lay with dry, tearless eyes and all the yearnings of the mother-heart in her wan face. Belle's eyes followed her wistfully, then turned to Mildred. "Good-by, Millie darling, best of sisters. You will have a long--happy life--in spite of all." Mildred clung to her passionately, but at Belle's faint call for Roger she knelt at the bedside and looked with streaming eyes on the near approach of death. "Roger," Belle whispered, "lift me up. I want to die on your breast--you saved me--you KNOW. Take care Millie--mamma--little ones. Don't wake them. Now--tell me--some--thing--comforting out of--the Bible." "'God is not willing that one of His little ones should perish,'" said the young fellow brokenly, thankful that he could recall the words. "That's sweet--I'm--one of His--littlest ones. It's--getting--very I know--what it-means. Good--by. We'll--have--good--times--together--yet." Then came that absolute stillness which he understood too well. He bowed his head upon the cold brow of the dead girl, and wept as only strong men weep in their first great sorrow. Mildred almost forgot her own grief in trying to lead him away and to comfort him, but he clung convulsively to Belle's lifeless form. At last he broke almost frantically away. "Roger, Roger," cried Mildred, "where are you going? What are you going to do?" "I don't know--I must have air or my heart will break; I'll go mad. She's just been murdered, MURDERED," and he rushed out. After a little while he returned, and said, "There, Millie, I'm better. I won't give way again," and he took her in his arms and let her cry away some of the pain in her heart. Mrs. Jocelyn still lay upon the sofa, white as marble, and with dry, dilated eyes. She was far beyond tears. On the day following Belle's death the Hon.------sat down to a sumptuous dinner in one of the most fashionable of the Saratoga hotels. A costly bottle of wine added its ruddy hue to his florid complexion. The waiters were obsequious, the smiling nods of recognition from other distinguished guests of the house were flattering, and as the different courses were brought on, the man became the picture of corpulent complacence. His aspect might have changed could he have looked upon the still form of the once frolicsome, beautiful girl, who had been slain because he had failed so criminally in fidelity to his oath of office. It would not have been a pleasant task for him to estimate how much of the money that should have brought cleanliness and health among the tenements of the poor was being worse than wasted on his own gross personality. CHAPTER XLIV THE FINAL CONSOLATIONS OF OPIUM The glowing September sun had rarely revealed a sadder group than that which still watched beside poor Belle. At last Roger looked at his watch and said: "I will now go and see Mr. Wentworth, and bring Mrs. Wheaton." "Very well, Roger," Mildred replied, "we leave everything in your hands." "Millie, I can't bear to have Belle placed in one of the crowded city cemeteries. Would you not be willing to have her sleep in our tree-shadowed graveyard at Forestville? We could keep flowers on her grave there as long as we lived." "Oh, Roger, how kind of you to think of that! It would be such a comfort to us!" "I will take her there myself on the evening boat," he said decisively, and he hastened away feeling that he must act promptly, for his aching head and limbs led him to fear that Belle's fever was already in his veins. Mr. Wentworth overflowed with sympathy, and hastened to the afflicted family with nourishing delicacies. Mrs. Wheaton soon followed, tearful and regretful. "I didn't know," she said; "I've 'ad a sick child or I'd a been hover before. Not 'earing from you I thought hall vas veil, and there's the poor dear dead, an' I might 'ave done so much for 'er." "No, Mrs. Wheaton, all was done that could be done in this poisoned air. We feared you might catch the fever if you came, and we knew you would come." "Hindeed I vould, if you hall 'ad the small-pox. Now I'm going to do heverything," and she fretted at every effort of the exhausted watchers to help her. Eoger telegraphed his father to meet him at the boat with the village hearse. The news spread fast, and the little community was soon deeply stirred with sympathetic interest. Mrs. Jocelyn was too weak to endure the journey, and Mildred would not leave her. Therefore Mr. Wentworth held a simple, heartfelt service over the one they all so loved, and Roger departed on his sad errand. He was eager to get away, and, if the thought of Belle had not been uppermost in all minds, it would have been seen that he was far from well in spite of his almost desperate efforts to hide his illness. His father found him on the boat delirious with fever. The old man's face was haggard and drawn as he returned to Forestville with his two helpless burdens, grieving far more for the one that was ill than for the one that was dead. "It's turning out just as brother Ezra said," he growled. "A man's a fool to mix himself up with other people's troubles." The interest in the village deepened into strong excitement when it became known that Roger was ill with the fever that had caused Belle's death, some timid ones fearing that a pestilence would soon be raging in their midst. But the great majority yielded to their good impulses, and Mrs. Atwood was overwhelmed with offers of assistance. Several young farmers to whom Belle had given a heartache a few weeks before volunteered to watch beside her until the funeral, and there was a deeper ache in their hearts as they sat reverently around the fair young sleeper. The funeral was a memorable one in Forestville, for the most callous heart was touched by the pathos of the untimely death. Meanwhile poor Roger was tossing in fever and muttering constantly of his past life. The name, however, oftenest on his lips was that of Millie Jocelyn. Never before in all the troubled past did the poor girl so need his sustaining love as on the night he left her. Mr. Wentworth spent an hour with the sad mother and daughter after the others had gone, and then sorrowfully departed, saying that he had an engagement out of town, and that he would come again immediately on his return. Mrs. Wheaton had gone home, promising that she would come back in the evening and spend the night with them, for she had a neighbor who would take care of the children, and so at last the two stricken women were left alone. Mildred was bathing her mother's head and trying to comfort her when the door opened, and a haggard, unkempt man stood before them. For a second they looked at him in vague terror, for he stood in a deep shadow, and then Mrs. Jocelyn cried, "Martin! Martin!" and tears came to her relief at last. He approached slowly and tremblingly. Mildred was about to throw herself into his arms, but he pushed her away. His manner began to fill them with a vague, horrible dread, for he acted like a spectre of a man. "Where are the children?" he asked hoarsely. "We have sent them to the country. Oh, papa, do be kind and natural--you will kill mamma." "There is crape on the door-knob," he faltered. "Where's Belle?" "Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Mildred, "Papa, papa, have mercy on us. Can't you sustain and help us at such a time as this?" "She is dead, then," he whispered, and he sank into a chair as if struck down. "Yes, she's dead. You were the first one she asked for when she came out of her fever." "Great God! my punishment is greater than I can bear," he groaned. "Oh, Martin," pleaded his wife, "come to me," and too weak to rise from her couch she held out her arms to him. He looked at her with a remorse and agony in his expression that were indescribable. "No, Nan," he said, "I'm not fit for you to touch now. I'm murdering you all," and he went hastily to his room and locked the door. They waited, scarcely breathing in their deep apprehension. In a few moments he came out, and his face was rigid and desperate in its aspect. In spite of his repelling gesture Mildred clasped him in her arms. The embrace seemed to torture him. "Let me go!" he cried, breaking away. "I poison the very air I breathe. You both are like angels of heaven and I--O God! But the end has come," and he rushed out into the gathering darkness. Mrs. Jocelyn tried to follow him, and fell prostrate with a despairing cry on the floor. Mildred's first impulse was to restore her mother, without seeking help, in the faint hope that her father would return, for she had learned what strange alternations of mood opium produces; but as the sense of his words grew clearer she was overpowered, and trembled so violently that she was compelled to call to her help a neighbor--a plain, good-hearted woman who lived on the same floor. When at last Mrs. Jocelyn revived she murmured piteously: "Oh, Millie, why didn't you let me die?" "Mamma," pleaded the girl, "how can you even think of leaving me?" "Millie, Millie darling, I fear I must. My heart feels as if it were bleeding internally. Millie"--and she grasped her child's shoulder convulsively, "Millie, look in his room for--for--his pistol." "Oh, mamma, mamma!" "Look, look!" said her mother excitedly. "I can't bear the suspense." Thinking that her mother was a little hysterical, and that compliance would quiet her, Mildred went to the place where her father always kept his cavalry revolver--the one memento left of his old heroic army life. IT WAS GONE! She almost sank to the floor in terror, nor did she dare return to her mother. "Millie, Millie, quick!" came in a faint cry from the outer room. The poor girl rushed forward and buried her face in her mother's bosom, sobbing, "Mamma, oh mamma, live for my sake." "I knew it, I knew it," said the stricken wife, with a long low cry. "I saw it in his desperate face. Oh, Martin, Martin, we will die together!" She clasped Mildred tightly, trembled convulsively a moment, and then her arms fell back, and she was as still as poor Belle had been. "Oh, mamma!" Mildred almost shrieked, but she was far beyond recall, and the suffering heart was at rest. When the woman returned with the cup of tea she had gone to prepare for Mrs. Jocelyn, she found the young girl leaning forward unconscious on the bosom of the dead mother. When she revived it was only to moan and wring her hands in despair. Mrs. Wheaton soon appeared, and having learned what had happened she threw her apron over her head and rocked back and forth in her strong sympathetic grief. But her good heart was not long content with tears, and she took Mildred into her arms and said: "I vill be a mother to you, and you shall never vant a 'ome vile I 'ave von," and the motherless girl clung to her in a way that did the kind soul a world of good. Before the evening was very far advanced a boy brought a note to the door. Mildred seized it and asked: "Who gave it to you?" "I don't know--a man. He pointed to this door, and then he went away very fast." She tore it open, and read in horror: "My darling wife, dear beyond all words in these my final despairing moments. My love for you and those left is the only trace of good remaining in my heart. I die for your sakes. My continued existence would be a curse, for I have lost my manhood. I am possessed by a devil that I can't control. I cannot ask you to forgive me. I can never forgive myself. Farewell. After I am gone, brighter days will come to you all. Pity me if you can, forgive me if you can, and remember me as I was before--" And there the terrible missive ended. For an hour the girl lay moaning as if in mortal pain, and then the physician who was summoned gave her a sedative which made her sleep long and heavily. It was quite late in the morning when she awoke, and the events that had passed first came to her like a horrid dream, and then grew into terrible reality. But she was not left to meet the emergency alone, for Mrs. Wheaton and Clara Wilson watched beside her. The latter in her strong sympathy had come to the city to take Mildred and her mother to the country, and she said to Mrs. Wheaton that she would now never leave her friend until she was in the breezy farm-house. After a natural outburst of grief Mildred again proved that Arnold's estimate of her was correct. She was equal to even this emergency, for she eventually grew quiet and resolute. "I must find papa," she said. "Shall I?" Mrs. Wilson asked Mrs. Wheaton significantly. "Yes, Millie is more hof a soldier than hany hof us." "Well," continued Mrs. Wilson, "Mrs. Wheaton found this in the morning paper: 'An unknown man committed suicide on the steps of No. 73----Street. His remains have been taken to the Morgue for identification.'" For a few moments Mildred so trembled and looked so crushed that they feared for her exceedingly. "Poor papa!" she moaned, "he was just insane from remorse and opium. Seventy-three----Street! Why, that was the house in which we used to live. It was there that papa spent his first happy years in this city, and it was there he went to die. Oh, how dreadful, how inexpressibly sad it all is! What shall we do?" "Leave hall to me," said Mrs. Wheaton. "Mrs. Wilson, you stay 'ere with the poor dear, an' I'll hattend to heverything." Mildred was at last too overpowered to do more than lie on the lounge, breathing in long tremulous sighs. Mrs. Wheaton went at once to the Morgue and found that the "unknown man" was indeed Mr. Jocelyn, and yet he had so changed, and a bullet-hole in his temple had given him such a ghastly appearance, that it was difficult to realize that he was the handsome, courtly gentleman who had first brought his beautiful daughter to the old mansion. Mrs. Wheaton represented to the authorities that he was very poor, that his daughter was an orphan and overcome with grief, and that she now was the nearest friend of the afflicted girl. Her statement was accepted, and then with her practical good sense she attended to everything. During her absence Mildred had sighed, "Oh, I do so wish that Eoger Atwood were here. He gives me hope and courage when no one else can." "Millie," said Mrs. Wilson tearfully, "for his sake you must rally and be braver than you have ever been before. I think his life now depends upon you. He has the fever, and in his delirium he calls for you constantly." At first Mrs. Wilson thought the shock of her tidings would be more disastrous to the poor girl, already so unnerved and exhausted, than all the terrible events which had thus far occurred. "I have brought him nothing but suffering and misfortune," she cried. "He gave up everything for us, and now we may cost him his life." "Millie, he is not dead, and you, if any one, can bring him life." She had touched the right chord, for the young girl soon became quiet and resolute. "He never failed me," she said in a low voice, "and I won't fail him." "That is the right way to feel," said Mrs. Wilson eagerly. "I now think that everything depends on your courage and fortitude. Mrs. Wheaton and I have planned it all out. We'll go to Forestville on the evening boat, and take your father's and mother's remains with us." Mrs. Wheaton learned from the undertaker connected with Mr. Wentworth's chapel that the clergyman would not be back until evening, and she told the former to tell their pastor all that had occurred, and to ask him to keep the circumstances of Mr. Jocelyn's death as quiet as possible. The man was discreet and energetic, and they were all so expeditious that the evening saw them with their sad freight on the way to Forestville, the keys of Mildred's rooms having been left with the kind woman who had befriended her in the sudden and awful emergency. Mrs. Wheaton parted from Mildred as if she were her own child, and went mournfully back to her busy, useful life. Mr. and Mrs. Jocelyn were buried with a quiet, simple service beside poor Belle, and sensible Mrs. Wilson soon inspired the good-hearted village people with the purpose to spare the feelings of the stricken girl in every possible way. Mildred caressed her little brother and sister with the tenderness of a mother added to her sisterly affection, and she was comforted to see how much they had already improved in the pure country air. "Oh, Clara," she said, "what a friend you have been to me! God alone can repay you." "Millie," Mrs. Wilson earnestly replied, "I owe you a debt I can never pay. I owe you and darling Belle happiness and prosperity for this life, and my hope of the life to come. My husband is strong and prosperous, and he says J shall do all that's in my heart for you. Oh, Millie, he is so good to me, and he cried over Belle like a child. I thought I loved him before, but when I saw those tears I just worshipped him. He has a man's heart, like Roger. Now, Millie, I'm going to keep these children as long as you'll let me, and treat them as my own. I feel that the promise has been given to me that they'll grow up to be a great comfort to us both." On the evening after the funeral Mildred went to aid in the care of Roger, and Mrs. Atwood greeted her with all the warmth and tenderness that a daughter would have received. Even Mr. Atwood drew his sleeve across his eyes as he said, "If you'll help us save our boy, you'll find that I'm not as crabbed and crooked a stick as I seem." Mildred was shocked and her heart chilled with fear at the change in Roger, but her hand upon his brow and her voice did more to quiet him than all the physician's remedies. She became his almost tireless watcher, and she said hopefully that the bracing autumn winds rustled around the farmhouse like the wings of ministering angels, and that they would bring life and health to the fever-stricken man. They all wondered at her endurance, for while she looked so frail she proved herself so strong. At last the crisis came, as it had in Belle's case, but instead of waking to die he passed from delirium into a quiet sleep, Mildred holding his hand, and when he opened his eyes with the clear glance of intelligence, they first looked upon her dear face. "Millie," he whispered. She put her fingers upon her lips, smiled, and said, "I won't leave you if you will be good and do all I say. You never failed me yet, Roger, and you must not now." "I'll surely get well if you stay with me, Millie," he answered contentedly, and soon he slept again as quietly as a child. CHAPTER XLV MOTHER AND SON Our story passes rapidly over the events of the ensuing months. In his native mountain air, and under the impulse of his strong, unbroken constitution, Roger recovered rapidly and steadily. As soon as he was strong enough he went to the village cemetery, and, leaning his head on Belle's grave, sobbed until Mildred led him away. For a long time tears would come into his eyes whenever the names of Mrs. Jocelyn and the young girl he loved so fondly were mentioned. He and Mildred planted the sacred place thick with roses and spring-flowering bulbs. Mildred resisted all entreaties to remain in the country, saying that she was a city girl at heart, and that, with Mr. Wentworth's aid, she could easily earn her livelihood in town, and do much for Fred and Minnie. Moreover, she felt that she could not be parted from Roger, for seemingly he had become an inseparable part of her life. The experiences he had shared with her were developing within him a strong and noble manhood, and he vowed that the young girl who had known so much sorrow should have all the happiness that he could bring to pass. When Mrs. Wheaton learned of Mildred's purpose to return to town, she took more commodious apartments in the old mansion, and set apart a room for the young girl. She also sold most of her own things and took Mildred's furniture out of storage, so that the place might seem familiar and homelike to her friend. When Roger had almost recovered his wonted health, Mrs. Atwood told her husband that he must go with her to visit his brother in town, for the worthy woman had a project on her mind which she carried out with characteristic directness and simplicity. They surprised Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Atwood at breakfast, and partook of the cheer offered them rather grimly and silently. After the meal was over Roger's mother said, without any circumlocution: "Brother-in-law, I've come to have a plain, honest talk with you, and if you're a true Atwood you'll listen to me. I want your wife and my husband to be present. We are nigh of kin, but we are forgetting ties which the Lord hath ordained. Ezra, I believe you are a good man at heart, but, like my husband, you set too much store by things that perish in the using. My boy has taught me that there are better things in this world, and we'll all soon be where we may look on money as a curse. You have not spoken to my son since last spring, and you've been cold toward us. I want you to know the truth, and realize what you're doing; then if you go on in this way, you must settle it with your own conscience;" and with a homely pathos all her own she told the whole story. The uncle at first tried to be grim and obstinate, but he soon broke down completely. "I'm glad you've come," he said huskily. "My conscience hasn't given me any peace for months, and I wanted to give in, but you know that it's like drawing an eye-tooth for an Atwood to give in. I'm proud of the boy, and he'll be a blessing to us all. He IS a new departure in the family; he's got more brains than any of us, and with it all a big, brave heart. He shall marry the girl if he wants to; and now that her old wretch of a father is dead, no harm need come of it. But they're young; they must wait until Roger is educated up to the best of 'em. Well, now that I've given in, there shall be no half-way work," and he insisted on sending for his lawyer and making his will in Roger's favor at once. "I didn't come for any such purpose as this," said Roger's mother, wiping her eyes, while his father could scarcely conceal his exultation; "but I felt that it was time for us to stop living like heathen," and after a visit of a very different nature from the one they had feared, the worthy couple returned to Forestville well content with the results of their expedition. Roger was jubilant over the news, and he hastened to impart it to Mildred, who was spending the remaining weeks of her sojourn in the country with her friend Mrs. Wilson. "Millie," he said, "you shall never want again. My good fortune would be nothing to me unless I shared it with you." But she disappointed him by saying, "No, Roger, you must let me live the independent life that my nature requires," and the only concession that he could obtain from her was a promise to receive his aid should any emergency require it. Before Mildred's return a letter from Vinton Arnold was forwarded to her at Forestville, and it must be admitted that it gave her sad heart something like a thrill of happiness. It was an eloquent and grateful outpouring of affection, and was full of assurances that she had now given him a chance for life and happiness. When she told Roger, he looked very grim for a moment, and then by a visible effort brightened up and said, "It's all right, Millie." After pacing the room for a few moments with a contracted brow, he continued, "Millie, you must grant me one request--you must not say anything to Arnold about me." "How can I say anything then about myself?" she answered. "I want him to know that I owe everything to you, and I hope to see the day when you will be the closest of friends." "Well, that will be a good way on. I must see him first, and learn more about him, and--well, friends related as Arnold will be to me are not common. I've too much of the old untamed man in me to go readily into that kind of thing. I will do anything in the world for you, but you must not expect much more till I have a few gray hairs in my head. Come now, you must humor me a little in this affair; you can say generally that some friends were kind, and all that, without much personal reference to me. If you should write as you propose, he might be jealous, or--worse yet--write me a letter of thanks. It may prevent complications, and will certainly save me some confoundedly disagreeable experiences. After I've seen him and get more used to it all, I may feel differently." "You certainly will, Roger. Your life will gradually become so rich, full, and happy, that some day you will look back in wonder at your present feelings." "Life will be full enough if work can make it so; but you must not expect me to outgrow this. It will strengthen with my years. It's my nature as well as yours. But I foresee how it will be," he continued despondently; "I shall inevitably be pushed further and further into the background. In your happy home life--" Before he could utter another word Mildred was sobbing passionately. "Roger," she cried, "don't talk that way. I can't bear it. If Vinton is jealous of you, if he fails in manly appreciation of you, I will never marry him. Strong as my love is for him, such a course would destroy it. There are certain kinds of weakness that I can't and won't tolerate." He was surprised and deeply touched, for her manner was usually so quiet and well controlled that even he was at times tempted to forget how strong and passionate was her nature on occasions sufficient to awaken it. "There, Millie, I've hurt your feelings," he said remorsefully. "Even I do not half understand your good, kind heart. Well, you must have patience with me. When the right time comes my deeds will satisfy you, I think, though my words are now so unpromising. But please don't deny me--don't say anything about me until I give you permission. What has occurred between us is sacred to me--it's our affair." "Very well, if you so wish it; but never even think again that you will ever be less to me than you are now." Nevertheless he went sadly away, saying to himself, "She's sincere, Heaven knows, but what I said will be true in spite of her best intentions." The next day, after many farewells and an hour spent beside Belle's grave, Roger returned to the city, far better prepared for life's battle than when he first left his native village. Two or three days later Mildred followed him, accompanied by Mrs. Wilson, who was determined to see her safely settled in Mrs. Wheaton's care. Pain and pleasure were almost equally blended in Mildred's experience as she looked upon the furniture and the one or two pictures that had escaped their poverty--all of which were so inseparable, in their associations, from those who were gone, yet never absent long from memory. But the pleasure soon got the better of the pain, for she did not wish to forget. Mrs. Wheaton's welcome was so hearty as to be almost overpowering, and when Roger appeared in the evening with a beautiful picture for her walls she smiled as she once thought she never could smile again. Mr. Wentworth also called, and was so kind and sympathetic that the young girl felt that she was far from friendless. "I so managed it," he whispered in parting, "that there was little public reference to your father's sad end. Now, Millie, turn your thoughts toward the future. Let Roger make you happy. Believe me, he's pure gold." "Just what poor Belle said," she thought sighingly after he had gone. "I must disappoint them all. But Roger will help me out. He deserves a far better wife than poor shamed, half-crushed Millie Jocelyn can ever make him, and he shall have her, too, for he is much too young and strong not to get over all this before many years elapse." Life soon passed into a peaceful, busy routine. Roger was preparing himself for the junior class in college under the best of tutors, and his evenings, spent with Mildred, were usually prefaced by a brisk walk in the frosty air. Then he either read aloud to her or talked of what was Greek to good-natured Mrs. Wheaton, who sat knitting in a corner discreetly blind and deaf. Unknown to Mildred, he was able to aid her very efficiently, for he taxed Mrs. Wentworth's ingenuity in the invention of all kinds of delicate fancy work, and that good lady, in the most business-like manner, gave the orders to Mildred, who thought that, considering the hard times, she was wonderfully prosperous. Twice during the winter she went with Roger to Forestville, and she had her little brother and sister spend the Christmas week with her. It was the brightest experience the little people ever remembered, although, unnoted by them, Mildred, with sad memories that do not belong to childhood, often wiped bitter tears from her eyes as she recalled the terrible events of the preceding holiday season. She became an efficient ally of Mr. Wentworth, and was almost as glad to aid him, in return for his stanch friendship, as the cause he represented. She and Vinton Arnold maintained quite a regular correspondence, and the fact occasioned the young man more than one stormy scene. His mother saw Mildred's letter before he received it, and the effect of the missive upon him, in spite of his efforts at concealment, were so marked that she at once surmised the source from which it came. The fact that a few words from Mildred had done more for the invalid than all the expensive physicians and the many health resorts they had visited would have led most mothers to query whether the secret of good health had not been found. Mrs. Arnold, on the contrary, was only angered and rendered more implacable than ever against the girl. She wrote to her husband, however, to find out what he could about her family, believing that the knowledge might be useful. Mr. Arnold merely learned the bare facts that the Jocelyns had become greatly impoverished, that they were living in low tenements, that the father had become a wretched sot, and, worse than all, that the girl herself had been in a station-house, although he believed she was proved innocent of the charge against her. He therefore wrote to his wife that the correspondence must cease at once, since it might involve the family in disgrace--certainly in disgraceful associations. He also wrote to his son to desist, under the penalty of his heaviest displeasure. With an expression of horror on her face, Mrs. Arnold showed this letter to her son. In vain he tried to protest that not one evil thing against Mildred could be proved; that she was innocence and purity itself; that her misfortunes and the wrong of others were no reason for desertion on his part. His mother for once lost her frigid politeness. "What!" she almost screamed, "do you think we would ever let that horrid creature bear our name? A woman who has been in a prison cell, and mixed up with the vilest and lowest people in the city, should not even be named in my presence." Her son gave her a strange, vindictive look. "You unnatural mother," he muttered between his teeth, "thus to speak of the girl to whom your son has given his best love, and who is worthy of it!" and he turned on his heel and left her. Mrs. Arnold became somewhat hysterical, and wrote home that she believed that Vinton was losing his mind. She soon learned, however, that she would have no ground for such a charge, although her son was becoming greatly changed. His politeness to her was scrupulous to a nicety, but was unrelenting in its icy coldness. At the same time she knew that he was continuing the correspondence, and she saw, too, that he was making the most studied and careful effort to gain in physical strength. One day she began to upbraid him bitterly for his disobedience, but he interrupted her by saying sternly: "Madam, there is no child present. I treat you with respect. I also demand respect." The proud, resolute woman admitted to herself that his management was becoming a difficult and dubious problem, and at last, discouraged and exasperated by the unwavering steadfastness of his course and manner, she wrote that they might as well return home, for "he was beyond her influence." Therefore, thrilling with glad expectation, Arnold found himself in his native city much sooner than he had expected. He had no very definite plans. If he could only become sufficiently well to earn his own livelihood the future would be comparatively clear. If this were impossible, his best hope was to wait, secure in Mildred's faith, for the chances of the future, believing that his father might relent if his mother would not. For this event, however, the outlook was unpromising. Mr. Arnold was incensed by his wife's fuller account of his son's behavior, and the proof she had obtained, in spite of his precautions, that he was in frequent correspondence with Mildred. He had since learned the circumstances of Mr. Jocelyn's wretched death, and that Mildred was but a sewing-girl, living with an ignorant English woman in a dilapidated old tenement, and his bitter revolt at the whole affair was quite natural in view of his superficial inquiries and knowledge. Both he and his wife judged from their proud and worldly standpoint solely, and therefore on the day following Vinton's arrival they summoned him to a private interview. At first Mr. Arnold proposed to reason with his son, but the cold, unyielding face soon so irritated him that he became almost violent in his anger. After he and his mother had nearly exhausted themselves, Vinton said quietly: "Now that you have both lectured and threatened me as if I were a boy, I would like to ask one question. Have I ever disgraced you yet?" The husband and wife looked at each other, and were not a little perplexed how to meet this passive resistance. In the same low, incisive tones, Vinton continued, "If you propose to turn me into the streets for loving Miss Jocelyn, do so at once, for I do love her, and I shall ever love her." "She shall not touch a penny of our money," said Mrs. Arnold, with an implacable look. "With me," replied her son, with the same old vindictive glance, "it is not a question of pennies, but of life and death. I feel toward Miss Jocelyn as I suppose my father once felt toward you, although what heart you had to win I cannot understand from your manner toward me. I have seen considerable of society, but have never met a woman who could compare with Mildred Jocelyn in all that constitutes a true lady. I shall not waste any words concerning the virtues of her heart upon such unsympathetic listeners, but I am at least a man in years, and have the right to love her." "Oh, certainly," said Mrs. Arnold angrily, "there is no law which can prevent your disgracing yourself and us." "Nor is there any law or gospel, madam, for your unnatural, unsympathetic course toward your own flesh and blood. Good-evening." "Now you see how strange and infatuated he has become," she said to her husband after her son's departure; but the old merchant shook his head in trouble and perplexity. "We have been too hard upon him, I fear," he said. "If you weaken in this matter, I shall not," she answered decisively. "If he gives way to this folly, both I and my children will disown all kith and kin." "Well, well," he replied impatiently, "it will have to be so, I suppose; but nevertheless I believe we have been too hard with him." CHAPTER XLVI A FATAL ERROR The next morning Arnold started out to visit the one rarely absent from his thoughts. It was a lovely day in the latter part of June, and his heart grew glad and hopeful in spite of the discouraging conditions of his lot. All the world could not prevent his loving Mildred, or destroy her faith, and at some time and in some way they would attain their happiness. These hopes were like the bright summer sun, and he walked with a firmer and more elastic tread than he had ever known before. When he reached the haggard old mansion his heart misgave him. "Can it be reality," he asked himself, "that she has been living in places like this?" and the half-defined fear entered his mind that she might have changed somewhat with her fortunes, and might no longer be in appearance the delicate, refined, beautiful girl that he had left so long since. But his impatient heart gave him no time for such imaginings, and he hastened to gratify his intense desire to look upon her face. In response to a low knock Mildred opened the door, and found herself in the arms of her lover. Then he held her off and looked at her earnestly. "Oh, Millie!" he exclaimed, "you have only grown more beautiful, more womanly in these long, weary years. Your face is the reflex of the letters on which I have lived, and which gave me the power to live." Then in the excess of his joy he sank into a chair, and, putting his hand upon his heart, looked very pale. She sprang to his side in alarm. "Don't worry, Millie," he said, taking her hand. "It's passing. I don't have them very often now. I'm much better, thanks to you. Happiness rarely kills." It was well that Mrs. Wheaton and the children were out. This scene would have been a great shock to the good woman, for she was Roger's ally, heart and soul, and did not even know of Arnold's existence. Since Arnold and Mildred were so fortunate as to be alone, they talked frankly over their old happy days, and as far as she could without breaking her promise to Roger, Mildred spoke of the deep sorrows which had almost overwhelmed her during his absence. "How my heart aches for you!" Arnold said. "I never realized before what sad experiences you have passed through. The part which I can't endure is that I have been of no help to you. On the contrary, you reached out this little hand and saved me. Everything has been just the opposite of what it ought to have been, and even now in these surroundings you are like a diamond in a dust-heap. Oh, how different it would all be if I had my way!" and he in turn told her quite frankly how he was situated. "Vinton," she said earnestly, "you must do all in your power to grow strong and make a place for yourself in the world. As you say, I cannot punish you for the pride and hostility of your parents; I don't think of them, and I could never take any favors at their hands. As a man you have the right to choose for yourself, and can do so while maintaining the utmost courtesy and respect toward your family. I don't fear poverty--I'm used to it. The thing for you to do is to find some honest work that won't tax you too greatly, and gain strength in its performance." "Oh, Millie, how strong and true you are! I will take your advice in this as in all respects. But we shall have to wait a long time, I fear. I have so little knowledge of business, and I think my father, influenced by my mother, will thwart rather than help me." "Very well, I can wait," she answered smilingly. "Indeed I'd rather wait." Now that her happiness seemed assured, however, she sighed over Roger so often and remorsefully that at last Arnold said, "You have some trouble on your mind, Millie?" "You must not expect to find me a light-hearted girl any more," she replied evasively. "Well," he said, as he clasped her closely in farewell, "my every waking thought shall now be how best to banish sighs and bring smiles." That evening, while they were out for a walk, Mildred said to Roger, with a little tremor in her voice, "He's come." He gave her a swift look, and then he turned as quickly away, but his arm grew rigid under her hand. "Don't fail me, Roger," she pleaded. "It's unexpected--I wasn't prepared," he said, in a low tone, and then he was silent. He felt her hand trembling so greatly that he soon mastered himself for her sake. "It's all right, Millie," he said heartily. "Be just as happy as you can." "How can I be truly happy when you are not?" she sighed. "Bless your kind heart! do you think I am going to stand off and lower at your happiness like a black cloud? Do you think I'm going to droop, look forlorn and deserted, and heave great sighs in dark corners? By all the powers! if I were capable of such meanness toward you, I'd whip myself worse than I did that fellow Bissel." "Do you think I'll feel for you any the less because you are so good and brave about it?" "Oh, confound it!" he said impatiently, "you must not feel too much. Spoiling your happiness won't do me any good; it would just make me savage." She leaned her head for a second against his shoulder and said, "I'm not a bit afraid of you, Roger." "There, Millie," he said quietly, "you always get the better of the old Satan in me, but I sometimes feel as if I could more easily tame a whole menagerie than my own nature. Come to think of it, it's all turning out for the best. To-morrow I go home on quite a long vacation. Father isn't very well this summer, and I'm to take charge of the harvest for him." "Isn't this plan a little sudden?" she asked. "Not more so than your news," he replied grimly. "Are you not willing to meet him yet?" "Not quite. After a few weeks in the fields I shall come back with the stoicism and appearance of a wild Indian. Come, Millie, I said I wouldn't fail you, nor shall I. Leave it all to me. I will explain to Mrs. Wheaton to-night, and to our other friends when the right time comes, and I will make it appear all right to them. If I justify you, they should have nothing to say. And now you have nothing to do but accept your happiness and make the most of it. I still request that you do not speak of me to Arnold except in a casual way. When we meet you can introduce me simply as a friend who was kind during your troubles. I'll soon know after we meet whether we can get on together, and if we can't it will save complications for you as well as myself. You must let me serve you in my own way, and I think my judgment will be better than yours in this matter." She was silent for a few moments, and by the light of a lamp he saw that her eyes were full of tears. "Roger," she said softly after a while, "I sometimes think that my affection for you is greater than my love for Vinton, but it is so different. It seems almost like my religion. You are a refuge for me, no matter what happens." "Thank you, Millie, but I don't deserve such honor." Mrs. Wheaton could not be brought to look at the situation as Roger did, and she accepted the fact of Vinton Arnold with but a grim acquiescence, which was not mollified by the young man's manner toward her. While meaning to be very kind and polite, he was unconsciously patronizing. She belonged to a class with which he had never had much to do, and in his secret soul he chafed at her presence and her relations to Mildred. While in the abstract he might say that Mildred's associations made no difference to him, he could not in fact overcome his lifelong prejudices, and Mildred's surroundings were not at all to his taste. Luxury and the absence of all that was rude and coarse had become essential to him, and Mrs. Wheaton's cockney English and homely life often gave him cold chills. Mildred in one respect disappointed him also, for she would take no aid from him, and would in no way deviate from her retired, independent life. "Even if my feelings and principles were not involved," she said, "good taste requires that I conform to my circumstances." She would take such quiet walks with him as his strength permitted, but would visit no places of public resort. In view of his family's hostility to his course, Arnold did not so much regret this, and so it came about that they spent many of their evenings on the platform over the roof, with the old German astronomer, star-gazing and oblivious, not far away. While Mildred maintained her loyalty to her old friends, and her resolute plainness and simplicity of life, she considerately recognized that it was all so foreign to her lover's previous experience that she could not expect him to feel as she did. Moreover, his presence renewed her old love for the refined and beautiful, and her heart, that had been so sad and preoccupied, awoke at last to the truth that she was out of her sphere--an exile far from the world her nature craved. Arnold seemed an inseparable part of that old world of beauty and elegance. His every act and word brought it back, and it caused a deepening regret that he was compelled to seek her in her present situation; therefore she also began to share his ill-concealed wish that she might soon escape. Honestly as she loved Mrs. Wheaton, and would love her for all her kindness, the good woman's talk and ways often jarred discordantly on her nerves. Arnold soon discovered this fact, and it made him very impatient over the prospect of life long continued under its present aspects. He was conscious of Mrs. Wheaton's latent hostility, and he had not the tact to conciliate her nor indeed did he make very great effort to do so. Mildred was very sorry for this, but did not blame him greatly, for she knew her plain old friend could never be to him what she was to those who had learned her goodness and worth in emergencies that had levelled all external differences. But in spite of the ingredients brought by these facts and the memories of the past, Mildred found the cup of happiness which Arnold pressed to her lips sweet indeed. She had been exceedingly sorrowful for a long time, and it is contrary to nature that the young should cling to sorrow, however true and constant they may be. Her love was a part of her happy girlhood, and now it seemed to have the power to bring back some of her former girlish lightness of heart. The prospects offered by Arnold certainly had little to do with the returning tide of gladness which seemed bearing her from the dark, rugged shores on which she had been nearly wrecked. It was a buoyancy inherent within the love she cherished, and her joy was so sweet, so profound, that she shut her eyes to the future and thought, "For a few days, for a few weeks, we'll just drink deeply at this life-giving fountain. After our long separation it will do us both more good than anything else." She had said to Arnold that she was willing to wait, that she would rather wait, but she soon began to feel differently. Arnold infused into her nature some of his own dreamy, enervated spirit, and sometimes he would describe to her an imaginary home so exactly to her taste that she would sigh deeply; and one day she remonstrated, "Don't tantalize me with any more such exquisite mirages. Let us rather think of the best and quickest way to secure a real home, and let us be content in it, however humble it must be." But Arnold was far better able to construct an imaginary palace than an ordinary cottage. Although he seemed gaining steadily under the impulse of his happiness, she often trembled to see how frail he was in body and how untrained and impracticable in mind. He was essentially the product of wealth, luxury, and seclusion, and while his intentions might be the best, she was sometimes compelled to doubt his ability to make much headway in the practical, indifferent world. Instead of being discouraged, she only thought, "No one can ever doubt the genuineness of my love. Roger is rich already, and he is certain to become eminent, and yet my love is more than all the world to me, and I so long for a little nook of a home that I could call all my own, that I would be willing to marry Vinton at once and support him myself if his health required it. I don't think I can be like other girls. I shall never get over my pride, but I haven't a particle of ambition. The world at large is nothing to me, and instead of wishing to shine in it, I am best pleased to escape its notice altogether." Arnold's family were as deeply perplexed as they were incensed at his course. He would not leave the city for any fashionable resort, and they well knew the reason. His father and mother hesitated in their departure, not knowing what "folly," as they termed it, he might be guilty of in their absence. They felt that they must bring the matter to some issue, and yet how to do so puzzled them greatly, for, as he had said, he had done nothing as yet to disgrace them, and his bearing toward them was as irreproachable as it was cold and dignified. At last, unknown to them, an elder brother undertook to solve the problem. He was a thorough man of the world, and his scrupulous compliance with the requirements of fashionable society led his mother to regard him as a model of propriety. In his private, hidden life he was as unscrupulous as the ultra fashionable often are. "Vinton," he said one day, "what a fool you are making of yourself in this affair! You have been brought up like a girl, and you are more simple and innocent than they average. I've seen your charmer, and I admit that she is a fine creature. As far as looks go, you show as much judgment as any man in town, but there your wits desert you. Girls in her position are not nice as to terms when they can greatly better themselves. You have money enough to lodge her like a princess compared with her present condition. Verbum sat sapienti." Vinton replied indignantly that he knew nothing about Mildred. "Oh, I know all about women," was the confident reply; "have forgotten more than you ever knew." Nevertheless this thought, like an evil seed, sprang up into a speedy but not rank growth. Arnold saw that his family would regard his marriage as an outrage which they would resent in every possible way, and that their hostility now was but an ill-concealed, smouldering fire. The relation to him would not be what his brother suggested, but as sacred and binding as marriage. His unhealthful reading, his long years abroad, and the radical weakness of his nature prepared him to accept this solution as the easiest and best that circumstances permitted of. He justly doubted whether he would soon, if ever, gain the power of being independent. He knew nothing of business, and hated its turmoil and distractions, and while for Mildred's sake he would attempt anything and suffer anything, he had all the unconquerable shrinking from a manful push out into the world which a timid man feels at the prospect of a battle. He had been systematically trained into weakness, and he felt that men, when he came to compete with them, would discover and take advantage of his defects. His cold, haughty reticence was but disguised timidity. In Mildred's presence he ever showed the best side of his nature, and his lonely, repressed life had always touched the tenderest chords of her heart. If their love had been smiled upon from the first, how different would have been his fate! She would have tenderly developed his dwarfed, crushed manhood, and the result would have been happiness for them both. "Millie," said Arnold, one starlight night, "do you care very much for the world's opinions?" They were sitting on the platform above the old mansion. The German astronomer, after grumbling awhile at an obscuring haze, had gone downstairs in disgust, and left the lovers to themselves. "No, Vinton, I never cared much for the world at any time, and now I have an almost morbid impulse to shrink from it altogether. I'm like my dear mamma. Home was her world. Poor, dear mamma!" and she buried her face on his shoulder and shed tears that his presence robbed of much of their bitterness. "I not only do not care for the world," he said impetuously, "but I hate it. I've been dragged through it, and have ever found it a desert, stony place. My heart just aches for the sweet quiet and seclusion of such a home as you could make, Millie. As it is, I have no home. A hollow iceberg could not be more cold and joyless than my present abode. Neither have you a home. It is only in stolen moments like these, liable to interruption, that we can speak of what is in our hearts;" and then, prompted by his feelings, longings, and the apparently friendless condition of the girl whose head rested so trustingly on his breast, he broached the scheme of life that had taken possession of his imagination. At first, in her faith and innocence she scarcely understood him, but suddenly she raised her head, and looked at him with startled eyes. "What!" she said, in trembling alarm, "no marriage? Mr. Wentworth and Roger Atwood not present?" "No minister could make our union more sacred than it would be to me," he faltered, "and as soon as my obdurate parents--" She sprang to her feet, and exclaimed passionately, "I'd rather die ten thousand deaths than bring a blush of shame to Roger Atwood's face." Then she sank into her chair in an uncontrollable outburst of grief. He pleaded with her, but she was deaf; he tried to caress her, but although half unconscious from her agony, she repulsed him. "Oh, oh," she moaned, "is this the sole reward of my fidelity?" "Millie, Millie," he entreated, "you will kill me if you cannot control yourself. I will do anything you say--submit to any terms. Oh, pity me, or I shall die." "Leave me," she said faintly. "Never," he cried; "I'd sooner cast myself down from this height." By visible and painful effort she at last grew calm enough to say firmly: "Mr. Arnold, I do pity you. Even at this moment I will try to do you justice. My heart seems broken, and yet, I fear you will suffer more than I. My own womanhood would make your words the sufficient cause for our final separation, and had I not a friend in the world we could never meet again. But I have a friend, a brother to whom I owe more than life, and whom I love better than life. He would have made me rich if I would have let him, but I loved you too well. Not for my hope of heaven would I make him blush for me. I would have married you and lived in a single room in a tenement. I would have supported you with my own hands. The weaknesses for which you were not to blame drew my heart toward you, but you have shown a defect in your character to-night which creates an impassable gulf between us. In view of the wrong done you by others I forgive you--I shall pray God to forgive you--but we have fatally misunderstood each other. If you have any manhood at all, if you have the ordinary instincts of a gentleman, you will respect the commands of an orphan girl, and leave me, never to approach me again." Speechless, almost paralyzed in his despair, he tottered to the steps and disappeared. CHAPTER XLVII LIGHT AT EVENTIDE AS Mrs. Wheaton crossed the hallway from a brief call on a neighbor, Vinton Arnold passed her. She noted by the light of the lamp in her hand that his pallor was ghostlike, and she asked quickly: "Vere is Miss Jocelyn?" He paid no more heed to her than if he were a shadow of a man, and went by her with wavering, uncertain steps, without a word. In sudden alarm she hastened to the roof, and found Mildred kneeling by her chair, weeping and almost speechless from grief. She took the girl in her arms, and said excitedly, "Vat did he say to you?" "Oh," sobbed Mildred, "my heart is broken at last. I feel as mamma did when she said her heart was bleeding away. Mrs. Wheaton, I shall stay with you now as long as I live, and it seems as if it wouldn't be very long. Never speak of him again--never speak of it to a living soul. He asked that which would banish you and Roger--dear, brave, patient Roger--from my side forever, and I will never see his face again. Oh, oh, I wish I could die!" "I'm a plain voman," Mrs. Wheaton said grimly, "but I took the measure of 'im soon as I clapped my heyes on 'im; but, Millie, me darlin', you couldn't be so cruel as to break hour 'earts by dying for sich a man. You vould make the vorld black for us hall, yer know. Come, dear, come vith me. I'll take care hof yer. I'm not fine like 'im that's gone, thank the Lord, but I'll never ax ye to do haught that Mr. Ventvorth vouldn't bless," and she half supported the exhausted, trembling girl to her room, and there was tender and tireless in her ministrations. In the early dawn, when at last Mildred slept for an hour or two, she wrote, in a half-eligible scrawl, to Roger, "Come back. Millie wants you." His presence in response was prompt indeed. On the second morning after the events described, Mildred sat in her chair leaning back with closed eyes. Mrs. Wheaton was away at work, and her eldest daughter was watching the little brood of children on the sidewalk. A decided knock at the door caused the young girl to start up with apprehension. She was so nervously prostrated that she trembled like a leaf. At last she summoned courage and opened the door slightly, and when she saw Roger's sun-burned, honest face she welcomed him as if he were a brother indeed. He placed her gently in her chair again, and said, with a keen look into her eyes, "How is this, Millie? I left you happy and even blooming, and now you appear more pale and broken than ever before. You look as if you had been seriously ill. Oh, Millie, that couldn't be, and you not let me know," and he clasped her hand tightly as he spoke. She buried her burning face on his shoulder, and said, in a low, constrained tone, "Roger, I've told Mr. Arnold this much about you--I said I'd die ten thousand deaths rather than cause you to blush for me." He started as if he had been shot. "Great God!" he exclaimed, "and did he ask you aught that would make you blush?" Bitter tears were Mildred's only answer. The young man's passion for a few moments was terrible, but Mildred's pallid face soon calmed him. "You could not harm him," she said sadly. "What is one blow more to a man who is in torture? I pity him from the depths of my soul, and you must promise me to let him alone. Never for a moment did I forget that you were my brother." In strong revulsion of feeling he bent one knee at her side and pleaded, "Oh, Millie, give me the right to protect you. I'll wait for you till I'm gray. I'll take what love you can give me. I'll be devotion itself." "Don't, Roger," she said wearily. "I love you too well to listen. Such words only wound me. Oh, Roger, be patient with me. You don't understand, you never will understand. I do give you the right to protect me; but don't talk that way again. I just long for rest and peace. Roger, my friend, my brother," she said, lifting her eyes appealingly to his, and giving him both of her hands, "don't you see? I can give you everything in this way, but in the way you speak of--nothing. My heart is as dead as poor Belle's." "Your wish shall be my law," he said gently. "And you'll not harm Mr. Arnold?" "Not if it will hurt you." "I never wish to see or hear from him again, and you'll never have cause to fear any one else." "Millie," he said sadly, "it is for you I fear most. You look so sad, pale, and broken-hearted. There isn't a sacrifice I wouldn't make for you. Millie, you won't let this thing crush you? It would destroy me if you did. We will resume our old quiet life, and you shall have rest of body and soul;" and he kept his word so well that, before many months passed, her mind regained sufficient tone and strength to enable her to engage in the simple duties of life with something like zest. He talked to her about many of his studies, he searched the stores for the books which he thought would be to her taste, and took her to see every beautiful work of art on exhibition. In spite of her poverty, he daily made her life richer and fuller of all that he knew to be congenial to her nature. While she gained in serenity and in capability for quiet enjoyment, he was positively happy, for he believed that before many years passed she would be ready to spend the rest of life at his side. He meantime was pursuing his studies with a vigor and success that inspired his friends with the most sanguine hopes. Vinton Arnold, on that terrible night when his false dream of life was shattered, went through the streets as oppressed with shame and despair as if he were a lost spirit. As he was slowly and weakly climbing the stairs his father called him to the sitting-room, where he and his wife were in consultation, feeling that matters must be brought to some kind of a settlement, Mrs. Arnold urging extreme measures, and her husband bent on some kind of compromise. As his son entered, the old gentleman started up, exclaiming: "Good God, my boy, what is the matter?" "He's going to have one of his bad turns," said his mother, rising hastily. "Hush, both of you," he commanded sternly, and he sat down near the door. Fixing a look of concentrated hatred on his mother, he said slowly, "Madam, you are not willing that I should marry Mildred Jocelyn." "And with very good reason," she replied, a little confused by his manner. "Well, let it rejoice such heart as you have--I shall never marry her." "What do you mean?" "I mean never to speak to you again after this brief interview. I am a lost man--lost beyond hope, and you are the cause. If you had had a mother's heart my father would not have been so obdurate. Since you would not let me marry her, I was tempted by my love and the horrible life I lead in this house to offer her a relation which would have been marriage to me, but from which her proud, pure spirit, recoiled, as I recoil from you, and I shall never see her face again in this world or in any world. Your work is finished. You need not scheme or threaten any more. While she is as good as an angel of heaven, she is as proud as you are, and you have murdered my hope--my soul. Father, I have but one request to make to you. Give me money enough to live anywhere except under this roof. No, no more words to-night, unless you would have me die in your presence with curses on my lips. I have reached the utmost limit;" and he abruptly left the room. Mrs. Arnold took refuge in hysterics, and her husband rang violently for her maid, and then locked himself up in his library, where he walked the floor for many an hour. The next morning he tried to make overtures to his son, but he found the young man deaf and stony in his despair. "It's too late," was all that he would say. "Oh, let him alone," protested his wife irritably, as her husband came down looking sorely troubled; "Vinton will indulge in high tragedy for a few months, and then settle down to sensible life," and in the hope of this solution the old merchant went gloomily to his business. That day Vinton Arnold left his home, and it was years before he returned. Two years or more passed away in quiet, toilsome days for Mildred. She had gained serenity, and apparently had accepted her lot without repining. Indeed, thanks to Roger's unfaltering devotion, it was not a monotonous or a sad one. He let her heart rest, hoping, trusting that some day it would wake from its sleep. In compliance with her wish he was in semblance a brother, and his attentions were so quiet and frank, his manner toward her so restful, that even she half believed at times that his regard for her was passing into the quiet and equable glow of fraternal love. Such coveted illusions could not be long maintained, however, for occasionally when he was off his guard she would find him looking at her in a way that revealed how much he repressed. She shed many bitter tears over what she termed his "obstinate love," but an almost morbid conviction had gained possession of her mind that unless she could return his affection in kind and degree she ought not to marry him. At last she began to grow a little restless under her rather aimless life, and one day she said to her pastor, Mr. Wentworth, "I want a career--isn't that what you call it? I'm tired of being a sewing-woman, and soon I shall be a wrinkled spinster. Isn't there something retired and quiet which a girl with no more brains and knowledge than I have can do?" "Yes," he said gravely; "make a home for Roger." She shook her head. "That is the only thing I can't do for him," she replied very sadly. "God only knows how truly I love him. I could give him my life, but not the heart of a wife. I have lost everything except truth to my womanly nature. I must keep that. Moreover, I'm too good a friend of Roger's to marry him. He deserves the strong first love of a noble woman, and it will come to him some day. Do you think I could stand before you and God's altar and promise what is impossible? No, Mr. Wentworth, Roger has a strength and force of character which will carry him past all this, and when once he sees I have found a calling to which I can devote all my energies, he will gradually become reconciled to the truth, and finally accept a richer happiness than I could ever bring him." "You are an odd girl, Mildred, but perhaps you are right. I've learned to have great faith in you. Well, I know of a career which possibly may suit you. It would open an almost limitless field of usefulness," and he told her of the Training School for Nurses in connection with Bellevue Hospital. The proposition took Mildred's fancy greatly, and it was arranged that they should visit the institution on the following afternoon. Roger sighed when he heard of the project, but only remarked patiently, "Anything you wish, Millie." "Dear old fellow," she thought; "he doesn't know I'm thinking of him more than myself." Mildred made her friend Clara Wilson and her brother and sister a long visit the following summer, and in the fall entered on her duties, her zest greatly increased by the prospect of being able before very long to earn enough to give Fred and Minnie a good education. The first year of her training passed uneventfully away, she bringing to her tasks genuine sympathy for suffering, and unusual aptness and ability. Her own sorrowful experience made her tender toward the unfortunate ones for whom she cared, and her words and manner brought balm and healing to many sad hearts that were far beyond the skill of the hospital surgeons. During the first half of the second year, in accordance with the custom of the School, she responded to calls from wealthy families wherein there were cases of such serious illness as to require the services of a trained nurse, and in each instance she so won the confidence of the attending physician and the affection of the family as to make them personal friends. Her beautiful face often attracted to her not a little attention, but she was found to be as unapproachable as a Sister of Charity. Roger patiently waited, and filled the long months with unremitting toil. One evening toward the latter part of the first six months of her outside work, Mildred returned from nursing a patient back to health. She found the lady in charge of the institution in much tribulation. "Here is Mrs. Sheppard, from one of the most influential families on Fifth Avenue, offering anything for a nurse. Her brother is dying with consumption, she says. He has a valet in attendance, but the physician in charge says he needs a trained nurse, for he wants constant watching. He is liable to die at any moment. We haven't a nurse unemployed. Do you feel too tired to go?" "Oh, no," said Mildred. "My patient improved so much that for the last week I've almost been resting." "And you think you can go?" "Certainly." "I'll tell Mrs. Sheppard then to send for you in a couple of hours. That will give you time to get ready." Two hours later Mildred was driven rapidly by a coach-man in livery to a mansion on Fifth Avenue, and she was speedily ushered into the room where the patient lay. He was sleeping at the time, with curtains drawn and his face turned away. Mildred only glanced at him sufficiently to see that he was very much emaciated. A middle-aged lady who introduced herself as Mrs. Sheppard received her, saying, "I'm so glad you are here, for I am overcome with fatigue. Last night he was very restless and ill, and would have no one near him except myself. His valet is in that room just across the hall, and will come at the slightest summons. Now while my brother is sleeping I will rest at once. My room is here, opening into this. Call me if there is need, and don't mind if he talks strangely. Your room is there, just beyond this one," and with a few directions, given with the air of extreme weariness, she passed to her own apartment, and was soon sleeping soundly. Mildred sat down in the dim room where the light fell upon her pure, sweet profile, which was made a little more distinct by the flickering of the cannel-coal fire, and began one of the quiet watches to which she was becoming so accustomed. Her thoughts were very painful at first, for they seemed strangely inclined to dwell on Vinton Arnold. From the time they parted she had heard nothing of him, and since the brief explanation that she had been compelled to give to Roger, his name had not passed her lips. He had been worse than dead to her, and she wondered if he were dead. She had never cherished any vindictive feelings toward him, and even now her eyes filled with tears of commiseration for his wronged and wretched life. Then by a conscious effort she turned her thoughts to the friend who had never failed her. "Dear Roger," she murmured, "he didn't appear well the last time I saw him. He is beginning to look worn and thin. I know he is studying too hard. Oh, I wish my heart were not so perverse, for he needs some one to take care of him. He can't change; he doesn't get over it as I hoped he would," and her eyes, bent on the fire, grew dreamy and wistful. Unknown to herself, she was watched by one who scarcely dared to breathe lest what seemed a vision should vanish. The dying man was Vinton Arnold. His married sister, overcome by weariness and the stupor of sleep, had inadvertently forgotten to mention his name, and Mildred was under the impression that the name of her patient was Sheppard. She had never been within the Arnold mansion, nor was she specially familiar with its exterior. Entering it hastily on a stormy night, she had not received the faintest suggestion that it was the home to which she and her mother had once dreamed she might be welcomed. When at last Arnold had awakened, he saw dimly, sitting by the fire, an unfamiliar form, which nevertheless suggested the one never absent from his thoughts. Noiselessly he pushed the lace curtain aside, and to his unspeakable wonder his eyes seemed to rest on Mildred Jocelyn. "She is dead," he first thought, "and it is her spirit. Or can it be that my reason is leaving me utterly, and the visions of my tortured mind are becoming more real than material things? Oh, see," he murmured, "there are tears in her eyes. I could almost imagine that a good angel had taken her guise and was weeping over one so lost and wrecked as I am. Now her lips move--she is speaking softly to herself. Great God! can it be real? Or is it that my end is near, and long-delayed mercy gives me this sweet vision before I die?" His sombre and half-superstitious conjectures were almost dispelled by a little characteristic act on Mildred's part--an act that contained a suggestion of hope for Roger. In awakening the stronger traits of manhood in the latter she had also evoked an appreciation of beauty and a growing love for it. Mildred was human enough not to regret that this developing sense should find its fullest gratification in herself. Though so determined to become a wrinkled spinster, she found a secret and increasing pleasure in the admiring glances that dwelt upon her face and dainty figure, and this fact might have contained for him, had he known it, a pleasing hint. It must be confessed that she no longer wished to go into his presence without adding a little grace to her usually plain attire; and now that she was thinking so deeply of him she involuntarily raised her hand to adjust her coquettish nurse's cap, which by some feminine magic all her own she ever contrived to make a becoming head-dress rather than a badge of office. Even to Vinton Arnold's perturbed and disordered mind the act was so essentially feminine and natural, so remote from ghostly weirdness, that he raised himself on his elbow and exclaimed, "Millie, Millie Jocelyn!" "Ah," cried Mildred starting from her chair and looking fearfully toward the half-closed door of Mrs. Sheppard's room. In her turn her heart beat quickly, with the sudden superstitious fear which the strongest of us cannot control when we seem close to the boundaries of the unseen world. "It was HIS voice," she murmured. "Millie, oh, Millie, are you real, or is it a dream?" She took two or three steps toward the bed, stopped, and covered her face with her hands. "Oh, speak!" he cried in agony. "I do not know whether I am dreaming or awake, or whether I now see as if before me the one ever in my thoughts. You hide your face from me," he groaned, sinking back despairingly. "You have come for a brief moment to show me that I can never look upon your face again." Mildred thought swiftly. Her first impulse was to depart at once, and then her womanly pity and sense of duty gained the mastery. Vinton Arnold was now a dying man, and she but a trained nurse. Perhaps God's hand was in their strange and unexpected meeting, and it was His will that the threads of two lives that had been bound so closely should not be severed in fatal evil. Should she thwart His mercy? "Mr. Arnold," she said, in an agitated voice, "this is a strange and undreamed-of meeting. Let me quiet your mind, however, by telling you how simple and matter-of-fact are the causes which led to it. I am now a professional nurse from the Training School connected with Bellevue Hospital, and your sister, having sent to the School for assistance, obtained my services as she might those of any of my associates. In view--perhaps--it would be best for one of them to take my place." He was strongly moved, and listened panting and trembling in his weakness. "Millie," at last he faltered, "is there any God at all? Is there any kind or merciful spirit in nature? If so, you have been sent to me, for I am dying of remorse. Since you bade me leave you I have suffered tortures, day and night, that I cannot describe. I have often been at the point of taking my own life, but something held me back. Can it be that it was for this hour? Mildred, I am dying. The end of a most unhappy life is very near. Is there no mercy in your faith--no mercy in your strong, pure womanly heart?" "Vinton," she said gently, "I believe you are right. God has sent me to you. I will not leave you until it is best." "Millie, Millie," he pleaded, "forgive me. I cannot believe in God's forgiveness until you forgive me." "I forgave you from the first, Vinton, because I knew there was no cold-blooded evil in your mind, and I have long felt that you were more sinned against than sinning. If I stay I must impose one condition--there must be no words concerning the past. That is gone forever." "I know it, Mildred. I killed your love with my own hand, but the blow was more fatal to me than to you." "Can you not rally and live?" she asked tearfully. "No," he said, with a deep breath. "Moreover, I have no wish to live. The dark shadow of my life will soon fall on you no more, but the hope that I may breathe my last with you near brings a deep content and peace. Does any one yet suspect who you are?" "No. I fear Mrs. Arnold will not think it best." "I have never spoken to Mrs. Arnold since that awful night, and if she interferes now I will curse her with my last breath. This is my one hope--my one gleam of light in the life she has cursed--" "Hush, oh hush! Unless my presence brings quietness I cannot stay," for at the name of his mother he became dangerously agitated. "I will tell Mrs. Sheppard in the morning, and I think she will arrange it so that I can do all in my power for you." "No," he replied, after a little thought, "I will tell her. She is unlike my mother and other sisters, and has a good heart. She has taken entire charge of me, but I was in such a hell of suffering at the thought of dying without one word from you that I was almost a maniac. I will be quiet now. Leave all to me; I can make her understand." When Mrs. Sheppard entered, as the late dawn began to mingle with the gaslight, she found her brother sleeping quietly, his hand clasping Mildred's. To her slight expression of surprise the young girl returned a clear, steadfast look, and said calmly, "When your brother awakes he has some explanations to make. I am Mildred Jocelyn." The lady sank into a chair and looked at her earnestly. "I have long wished to see you," she murmured. "Vinton has told me everything. I was so overcome with sleep and fatigue last night that I neither told you his name nor asked yours. Did you not suspect where you were?" "Not until he awoke and recognized me." "Was he greatly agitated?" "Yes, at first. It was so unexpected that he thought me a mere illusion of his own mind." "Miss Jocelyn, I believe God sent you to him." "So he thinks." "You won't leave him till--till--It can't be long." "That depends upon you, Mrs. Sheppard. I am very, very sorry for him," and tears came into her eyes. Low as was the murmur of their voices, Arnold awoke and glanced with troubled eyes from one to the other before it all came back to him; but his sister brought quiet and rest by saying gently, as she kissed him: "Vinton, Miss Jocelyn shall not leave you." CHAPTER XLVIII "GOOD ANGEL OF GOD" The young nurse soon became known through the house simply as Miss Mildred. With the exception of Mrs. Sheppard, the valet, and the physician, no one entered the sick-room except Mr. Arnold, and the old man often lingered and hovered around like a remorseful ghost. He had grown somewhat feeble, and no longer went to his business. His son had tolerated his presence since he had come home to die, but had little to say to him, for the bitterness of his heart extended to the one who had yielded to his mother's hardness and inveterate worldliness. In the secrecy of his heart the old merchant admitted that he had been guilty of a fatal error, and the consequences had been so terrible to his son that he had daily grown more conscience-smitten; but his wife had gained such an ascendency over him in all social and domestic questions that beyond occasional protests he had let matters drift until Vinton returned from his long exile in Europe. The hope that his son would get over what his wife called "an absurd youthful folly" was now rudely dispelled, and in bitterness he reproached himself that he had not adopted a different course. From the way in which he came in and looked at his son when he was sleeping, it was soon revealed to Mildred how he felt, and she pitied him also. Mrs. Sheppard was a wealthy widow, and the eldest daughter. She was for the present making her home under the paternal roof. Unlike her mother, she had quick, strong sympathies, which sorrows of her own had deepened. She had assumed the care of her brother, and infused into her ministry a tenderness which at last led the imbittered heart to reveal itself to her. She was therefore already prepared to be Mildred's sincere ally in bringing a little light into the late evening-tide of her brother's clouded day. Most of the time she sat in her own room with the door ajar, leaving Vinton to the ministrations of his nurse. He required far less care now, for he seemed content to rest as one might during a respite from torture. His eyes would follow Mildred with a pathetic longing when he was awake, and when she took his hand and told him to sleep he would obey like a child. He seemed better because so quiet, but he grew weaker daily. All knew, and none better than himself, that life was slowly ebbing. His father came in more frequently than ever, for his son showed no restlessness at his presence now. At Mildred's request Vinton even began to greet him with something like a welcome, and the young girl did all in her power to make the old gentleman feel at home; sometimes she would place a large easy-chair by the fire and ask him to sit with them. He was glad to comply, and often looked wonderingly and earnestly at the fair young nurse that was working such a transformation in the patient. He once or twice tried to become better acquainted with her, but ever found her gentle, deferential, and very reserved. Twice Mildred asked Vinton to let her send for Mr. Wentworth, but he shook his head and said that she alone could do him any good. "Read the Bible to me when you feel like it. I'll listen to you, but my best hope is to sleep so quietly that I shall have no dreams. If that cannot be, I'll remember that you forgave me." "Such words make me very sad," she replied, on the latter occasion, tears rushing into her eyes. "I am not worthy that you should care so much," he said. "What am I but a flickering rush-light which your hand is shielding that it may burn out quietly?" "Vinton, you are wrong. The life which God has given you cannot cease. I am not wise and learned, and I have an almost unconquerable diffidence in speaking on these subjects, except to children and the poor and ignorant. But since you won't see any one else, I must speak. You say God sent me to you, and I accept your belief, but He did not send me to you merely to relieve physical pain and mental disquiet. If a man is stumbling toward an abyss of darkness, is it any great kindness to hold a lamp so that his last steps may be easier? There is for each one of us a vital truth and a sacred duty, and in shutting your eyes to these and living in the present hour, you show--pardon an honest friend for saying it--you show a more fatal weakness than you have yet manifested." "You are mistaken, Mildred," he said bitterly. "As far as I am concerned, what truth is there for me to contemplate except a wasted, unhappy life, wrecked and shamed beyond remedy, beyond hope. I long ago lost what trace of manhood I once had. Never dream that because you have forgiven me I shall forgive myself. No, no," he said, with a dark vindictiveness in his eyes, "there are three that I shall never forgive, and I am one of them. As for duty, the word is torment. What can I do--I who can scarcely raise my hand? My day is over, my chance has gone by forever. Don't interrupt me. I know you would speak of the consolations of religion, but I'd rather go to the devil himself--if there is one--than to such a God as my mother worships; and she has always been a very religious woman. The whole thing long since became a farce to me at our church. It was just as much a part of the fashionable world that blighted me as the rest of society's mummeries. You never went there after you had real trouble to contend with. It was the last place that you would think of going to for comfort or help. The thought of you alone has kept me from utter unbelief, and I would be glad to believe that there is some kindly power in existence that watches over such beings as you are, and that can reward your noble life; but as far as I am concerned it's all a mystery and a weariness. You are near--you are merciful and kind. This is all the heaven I expect. It is far more than I deserve. Let me rest, Mildred. It will be but for a few more days. Then when you close my eyes, may I sleep forever," and he leaned back faint and exhausted. He would not let her interrupt him, for he seemed bent on settling the question as far as he was concerned, and dismissing it finally. She listened with fast-falling tears, and answered sighingly, "Oh, I do wish you would see Mr. Wentworth. You are so wrong--so fatally mistaken." "No," he said firmly, "I will see no one but you." "Oh, what shall I say to you?" "Do not grieve so about me. You cannot change anything. You cannot give me your strong, grand nature any more than you can your beautiful life and perfect health. I could become a Catholic and worship St. Mildred," he added with a smile, trying to banish her tears. "The only duty that I am capable of is to try to make as little trouble as possible, and to cease making it altogether soon. Go and rest, and I will too, for I'm very tired." "No," she said resolutely. "My mission to you must not end so weakly, so uselessly. Will you do me a favor?" "I?" "Yes; listen quietly and honestly;" and she read the first verses of the nineteenth chapter of St. John, ending with the words, "Behold the man." "Vinton," she said eagerly, "the truth to which I referred was embodied truth, and your first sacred duty is to look to Him and live. To the last conscious moment of life this will remain your first and most sacred duty, and were you the strongest man in this city you could not do more. It's not a question of religions at all, or of what other people are or believe. The words I have read have brought you face to face with this Divine Man, who came to seek and save that which was lost. Never did a despairing human soul cry out to Him in vain. He is as real as I am. His tender pity is infinitely beyond mine. Far better and wiser would it be for you to turn from me than from Him. Oh, merciful Christ, how the world wrongs Thee!" and she buried her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly. "Millie, please don't," he entreated. "I can't endure to see you so grieved." "Forgive me--I am forgetting myself sadly; but how can I see you so hopeless, so despairing, when there is no more need of it than of your refusing what I try to do for your comfort? There, rest now, but think of what I've said. I may have done wrong to tire you so, but to minister to the body only, when the soul, the man within you, is in such infinite need seems but a mockery. If you continue to wrong Him who should be the one great hope of every human heart, you will sadden all my days. My mission will be but a poor one indeed." He was very much exhausted, but he said gently, "I will think of it, and may the One you serve so faithfully bless you for your divine pity. What you have said seems to make everything different; you appear to have something real and definite in your mind. Give me your hand and I will rest; then, my good angel, teach me your faith." This Mildred did almost wholly from God's own word. At first it was hard for him to believe that there were any possibilities for one like him, but at last he accepted the truth that God is not willing that the least should perish. "The mystery of life is something that the wisest cannot solve," she said to him, "but the best hopes of the world have ever centred about this Divine Friend. Burdened hearts have gone to Him in every age and found rest. Oh, how often He has comforted me when mine seemed breaking! In response to a simple trust He gives a hope, a life which I do not think can be found elsewhere, and in the limitless future that which was all wrong here may be made right and perfect." "So this is your revenge, Millie. You come and bring me this great hope." "No, God sent me." Mildred's mission to the sad-hearted Mrs. Sheppard was almost as sacred and useful as to her brother, and they had many long talks which possessed all the deep interest which is imparted by experiences that leave a lasting impress on memory. Every day increased the bitter regret that short-sighted worldliness had blighted one life and kept from others one who had such rare powers of creating all that constitutes a home. To Roger Mildred had written almost daily, telling him everything. Her letters were so frank and sincere that they dispelled the uneasiness which first took possession of his mind, and they gradually disarmed him of his hostility to the dying man. There is a point in noble souls beyond which enmity falters and fails, and he felt that Mildred's course toward Arnold was like the mercy of God. He reverenced the girl who like an angel of mercy was bringing hope to a despairing soul. "Laura," said old Mr. Arnold to Mrs. Sheppard one evening as she was sitting with him in his library, "this young nurse is a continual surprise to me." "What do you mean, papa?" "Well, she impresses me strangely. She has come to us as a professional nurse, and yet I have never seen a more perfect gentlewoman. There is a subtle grace and refinement about her which is indescribable. No wonder Vinton has been made better by her care. I wouldn't mind being sick myself if I could have her about me. That girl has a history. How comes she in such a position?" "I think her position a very exalted one," said his daughter warmly. "Think what an infinite blessing and comfort she has been in our household." "True, true enough; but I didn't expect any such person to be sent to us." "I am perfectly ready to admit that this young girl is an unusual character, and have no doubt that she has had a history that would account for her influence. But you are in error if you think that these trained nurses are recruited from the ranks of commonplace women. Many of them come from as good families as ours, and have all the instincts of a true lady. They have a noble calling, and I envy them." "Well, you know more about it than I do, but I think this Miss Mildred a rare type of woman. It's not her beautiful face, for she has a charm, a winsomeness that is hard to define or account for. She makes me think of some subtle perfume that is even sweeter than the flower from which it is distilled. Would to God Vinton had met such a girl at first! How different it all might have been!" Mrs. Sheppard left the room so hastily as to excite her father's surprise. One day Vinton said to Mildred, "How can I be truly forgiven unless I forgive? I now see that I have wronged God's love even more than my mother has wronged me, and in my deep gratitude from the consciousness of God's forgiveness I would like to forgive her and be reconciled before I die. To my brother I will send a brief message--I can't see him again, for the ordeal would be too painful. As for my father, I have long ceased to cherish enmity against him. He, like myself, is, in a certain sense, a victim of our family pride." "Vinton," Mildred replied, "I cannot tell you how glad I am to hear you speak so. I have been waiting and hoping for this, for it is proof that your feeling is not mere emotion and sentiment. You now propose to do something that is more than manly--it is divine. God's greatest, dearest, most godlike prerogative is to forgive, and man's noblest act is to forgive a great wrong. Vinton, you have now won my respect." She never forgot his answering glance. "Millie," he said softly, "I can die happy now. I never expected more than your pity." "If you will do this, your memory will become sweet and ennobled in my heart. Your action will show me how grandly and swiftly God can develop one who has been wronged by evil." "God bless you, my good angel. Ask my sister to send for my father and mother at once. I feel a little stronger this evening, and yet I think the beginning of my new life is very near." Mildred went into Mrs. Sheppard's room and told her of Vinton's purpose. She looked at the young girl for a moment with eyes blinded by tears, and then clasped her in a close, passionate embrace which was more eloquent than any words. "Oh, Mildred," she said, with a low sob, "if you only could have been my sister!" Then she hastened to carry out her brother's wishes. The fire burned brightly in the grate, the softened lights diffused a mild radiance through the room, and the old impression of gloom was utterly absent when Vinton's parents entered. Neither Mrs. Arnold nor her husband was quite able to hide the surprise and embarrassment felt at the unexpected summons, but Mr. Arnold went promptly to the bedside, and, taking his son's hand, said huskily, "I'll come any time you wish, my dear boy, be it night or day." Vinton gave as warm a pressure in answer as his feebleness permitted, and then he said gravely, "I wish you and mother to sit here close to me, for I must speak low, and my words must be brief. I have but a little fragment of life left to me, and must hasten to perform the few duties yet within my power." "Had not this young woman better retire?" suggested Mrs. Arnold, glancing coldly at Mildred, who stood in the background, Mrs. Sheppard detaining her by a strong, warm clasp of her hand. "No," said Vinton decisively, "she must remain. Were it not for the influence of this Christian--not religious, but Christian--girl, you would never have seen my face again, with my consent. In showing me how God forgives the sinful, she has taught me how to forgive. Mother, I never expected to forgive you, but I do from my heart. I am far beyond the world and all worldly considerations. In the clear light of the endless life to which we are all hastening, I see as never before how small, petty, and unworthy are those unnatural principles which blight human life at fashion's bidding. Mother, I wish to do you justice. You tried to care for me in my childhood and youth. You spared yourself no expense, no trouble, but you could not seem to understand that what I needed was sympathy and love--that my heart was always repressed and unhappy. The human soul, however weak, is not like an exotic plant. It should be tended by a hand that is as gentle as it is firm and careful. I found one who combined gentleness with strength; stern, lofty principle with the most beautiful and delicate womanhood; and you know how I lost her. Could I have followed the instincts of my heart, my fate would have been widely different. But that is now all past. You did not mean to wrong me so terribly. It was only because your own life was all wrong that you wronged me. Your pride and prejudice prevented you from knowing the truth concerning the girl I loved. Mother, I am dying, and my last earnest counsel to you and father is that you will obey the words of the loftiest and greatest, 'Learn of me, for I meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.' If you cannot do this, your lives will be a more wretched failure than mine has been. Bury your worldly pride in my grave, and learn to be gentle and womanly, and may God forgive you as truly as I do." As he spoke slowly and feebly, the cold, proud woman began to tremble and weep, and when his words ceased she sank on her knees at his bedside and sobbed, "Oh, what have I done? Must I bear the remorse of having murdered my own child?" "No, mother, you were blinded as I was. You will be forgiven as I have been. In the better home of heaven we'll find the secret of our true relationship which we missed here. Good-by now. I must hasten, for I am very weak." Mrs. Arnold rose, put her arms around her son and kissed him, and her daughter supported her from the room, Vinton's eyes following her sorrowfully until she disappeared. Then he said, "Dear old father, come and sit close beside me." He came, and bowed his head upon his son's hand. "Millie," he called feebly to the young girl who stood by the fire with her face buried in her hands. She came at once. "God bless you for those tears. They fall like dew into my soul. Millie, I feel as if--I don't know what it means--it seems as if I might go to my rest now. The room is growing dark, and I seem to see you more in my mind than with my eyes. Millie, will you--can you so far forgive me as to take my head upon your bosom and let me say my last words near your heart?" "Great God!" cried his father, starting up, "is he dying?" "Father, please be calm. Keep my hand. Let my end come as I wish. Millie, Millie, won't you?" Her experienced eyes saw that his death was indeed at hand--that his life had but flickered up brightly once more before expiring. Therefore she gratified his final wish, and took his head upon her breast. "Rest, rest at last," he sighed. "Father," he said after a moment or two, "look at this dear girl who has saved my soul from death." The old man lifted his head and gazed upon the pure, sweet face at which he had looked so often and questioningly before. "Oh, Vinton, Vinton, God forgive me! I see it all. Our insane pride and prejudice kept a good angel from our home." "Yes, father, this is Mildred Jocelyn. Was I wrong to love her?" "Oh, blind, blind fool that I've been!" the old man groaned. "Don't grieve so, father. If you will listen to her words, her mission to us all will be complete. She is fatherless. Be kind to her after I am gone." The old man rose slowly and leaned his brow on Mildred's head. "My child," he said brokenly, "all my love for Vinton shall now go to you, and his portion shall be yours." "God bless you, father. Good-by now. Let me sleep," and his eyes closed wearily. "That's right, my boy; you'll be better in the morning," and with feeble, faltering steps he left the room, murmuring, "Oh, that I had only known in time!" Mrs. Sheppard now entered and took his place. For a little time Vinton seemed to sleep. Then he opened his eyes and looked slowly around. They kindled into loving recognition as they rested on his sister. "Laura, your patience and mercy toward me have been rewarded," he whispered. "Say to Mansfield and my other brother and sisters what I told you. Be as kind to Mildred as you have been to me. Good-by." "Millie, Millie, good angel of God to me, farewell for a little while." His eyes closed again, his breath came more and more slowly, and at last it ceased. His sister put her hand over his heart. His sad, thwarted life had ended on earth. Mildred kissed him for the first time in her ministry, and murmured, as she gently laid his head back upon the pillow, "Thank God, it has not ended as I feared!" CHAPTER XLIX HOME We take up the thread of our story after the lapse of several months. Mildred left the Arnold family softened and full of regret. Even proud Mrs. Arnold asked her forgiveness with many bitter tears, but beyond a few little significant gifts they found it impossible to make the one toward whom their hearts were now so tender take more than the regular compensation that went toward the support of the institution to which she belonged. Mr. Arnold and Mrs. Sheppard would not give her up, and often came to see her, and the old gentleman always made her promise that when he became ill she would take care of him; and once he whispered to her, "You won' take anything from me now, but in my will I can remember my debt. All my wealth cannot pay what I owe to you." "Money has nothing to do with my relations to you," she replied gently. "Vinton's portion belongs to you," was his quiet reply. "The poor boy so understood it, and I shall not break faith with the dead." "Then his portion shall go toward relieving suffering in this city," was her answer. "You can do what you please with it, for it shall be yours." While Mildred quietly performed her duties as head-nurse in one of the wards during the last six months of the two years of her sojourn at the Training School, some important changes had occurred in Roger's circumstances. He had, more than a year before, graduated second in his class at college, and had given the impression that he would have been first had he taken the full four years' course. His crotchety uncle, with whom since the reconciliation he had resided, had died, and after a few months his wife followed him, and Roger found himself a wealthy man, but not a happy one. Beyond giving his parents every comfort which they craved, and making his sister Susan quite an heiress, he scarcely knew what to do with the money. His uncle's home was not at all to his taste, and he soon left it, purchasing a moderate-sized but substantial and elegant house in a part of the city that best suited his convenience. Here he installed Mrs. Wheaton as housekeeper, and, with the exception of his own suite of rooms and the sleeping apartments, left all the rest unfurnished. After placing himself in a position to offer hospitalities to his country relatives, he determined that the parlors should remain empty, as a mute reproach to Mildred. One evening, a week before she graduated, he induced her to go with him to see his house. "It's not a home," he whispered; "I merely stay here." Then, without giving time for reply, he ushered her into the hall, which was simply but very elegantly furnished. Mildred had time only to note two or three fine old engravings and a bronze figure, when Mrs. Wheaton, bustling up from the basement, overwhelmed her with hospitality. They first inspected her domains, and in neatness and comfort found them all that could be desired. "You see," said the good woman, as she and Mildred were hidden from view in a china closet, "I could get hup quite a grand dinner, but I hain't much use fur these 'ere things, for he heats less and less hevery day. I'm troubled habout Mr. Roger, fur he seems kinder low hin 'is spirits and discouraged like. Most young men vould feel like lords hin 'is shoes, but he's a-gettin' veary and listless-like. Vun day he vas so down that I vanted 'im to see a doctor, but he smiled kinder strange and said nothin'. He's a-gettin' thin and pale. Vat vould I do hif he should get sick?" Mildred turned in quick alarm and glanced at the young man, who stood looking at the glowing kitchen-range, as if his thoughts were little interested in the homely appliances for his material comfort. His appearance confirmed Mrs. Wheaton's words, for his features were thinner than they had been since he recovered from his illness, and there was a suggestion of lassitude and dejection in his manner. She went directly to him and said: "Mrs. Wheaton tells me you are not well." He started, then threw off all depression, remarking lightly, "Mrs. Wheaton is fidgety. She prepares enough food for four men. I'm well--have been working rather late at night, that's all." "Why do you, Roger?" she asked, in a voice full of solicitude. "If I don't feel sleepy there is no use in wasting time. But come, you have seen enough of the culinary department. Since Mrs. Wheaton has charge of it you can know beforehand that everything will be the best of its kind. I think I can show you something in my sitting-room that will interest you more." Mrs. Wheaton preceded them, and Mildred took his arm in a way that showed that he had not been able to banish her anxiety on his behalf. "Let me see your parlors, Roger," she said when they again reached the hall. "I expect to find them models of elegance." He threw open the door and revealed two bare rooms, the brilliantly burning gas showing frescoes of unusual beauty, but beyond these there was nothing to relieve their bleak emptiness. "I have no use for these rooms," he remarked briefly, closing the door. "Come with me," and he led her to the apartment facing the street on the second floor. The gas was burning dimly, but when he had placed her where he wished her to stand, he suddenly turned it up, and before her, smiling into her eyes from the wall, were three exquisitely finished oil portraits--her father and mother and Belle, looking as she remembered them in their best and happiest days. The effect upon her at first was almost overpowering. She sank into a chair with heart far too full for words, and looked until tears so blinded her eyes that she could see them no longer. "Roger," she murmured, "it's almost the same as if you had brought them back to life. Oh, Roger, God bless you--you have not banished papa; you have made him look as he asked us to remember him," and her tender grief became uncontrollable for a few moments. "Don't cry so, Millie," he said gently. "Don't you see they are smiling at you? Are the likenesses good?" "They are lifelike," she answered after a little. "How could you get them so perfect?" "Belle and your mother gave me their pictures long ago, and you remember that I once asked you for your father's likeness when I was looking for him. There were some who could aid me if they knew how he looked. Then you know my eye is rather correct, and I spent a good deal of time with the artist. Between us we reached these results, and it's a great happiness to me that they please you." Her eyes were eloquent indeed as she said, in a low tone: "What a loyal friend you are!" He shook his head so significantly that a sudden crimson came into her face, and she was glad that Mrs. Wheaton was busy in an adjoining room. "Come," he said lightly, "you are neglecting other friends;" and turning she saw fine photographs of Mr. Wentworth, of Clara Wilson, Mrs. Wheaton, and her little brother and sister; also oil portraits of Roger's relatives. She went and stood before each one, and at last returned to her own kindred, and her eyes began to fill again. "How rich you are in these!" she at last said. "I have nothing but little pictures." "These are yours, Millie. When you are ready for them I shall place them on your walls myself." "Roger," she said a little brusquely, dashing the tears out of her eyes, "don't do or say any more kind things to-night, or my self-control will be all gone." "On the contrary, I shall ask you to do me a kindness. Please sit down on this low chair by the fire. Then I can add the last and best picture to this family gallery." She did so hesitatingly, and was provoked to find that her color would rise as he leaned his elbow on the mantel and looked at her intently. She could not meet his eyes, for there was a heart-hunger in them that seemed to touch her very soul. "Oh," she thought, "why doesn't he--why can't he get over it?" and her tears began to flow so fast that he said lightly: "That will do, Millie. I won't have that chair moved. Perhaps you think an incipient lawyer has no imagination, but I shall see you there to-morrow night. Come away now from this room of shadows. Your first visit to me has cost you so many tears that you will not come again." "They are not bitter tears. It almost seems as if I had found the treasures I had lost. So far from being saddened, I'm happier than I've been since I lost them--at least I should be if I saw you looking better. Roger, you are growing thin; you don't act like your old self." "Well, I won't work late at night any longer if you don't wish me to," he replied evasively. "Make me that promise," she pleaded eagerly. "Any promise, Millie." She wondered at the slight thrill with which her heart responded to his low, deep tones. In the library she became a different girl. A strange buoyancy gave animation to her eyes and a delicate color to her face. She did not analyze her feelings. Her determination that Roger should have a pleasant evening seemed to her sufficient to account for the shining eyes she saw reflected in a mirror, and her sparkling words. She praised his selection of authors, though adding, with a comical look, "You are right in thinking I don't know much about them. The binding is just to my taste, whatever may be the contents of some of these ponderous tomes. There are a good many empty shelves, Roger." "I don't intend to buy books by the cartload," he replied. "A library should grow like the man who gathers it." "Roger," she said suddenly, "I think I see some fancy work that I recognize. Yes, here is more." Then she darted back into the sitting-room. In a moment she returned exclaiming, "I believe the house is full of my work." "There is none of your work in the parlors, Millie." She ignored the implied reproach in words, but could not wholly in manner. "So you and Mrs. Wentworth conspired against me, and you got the better of me after all. You were my magnificent patron. How could you look me in the face all those months? How could you watch my busy fingers, looking meanwhile so innocent and indifferent to my tasks? I used to steal some hours from sleep to make you little gifts for your bachelor room. They were not fine enough for your lordship, I suppose. Have you given them away?" "They are in my room upstairs. They are too sacred for use." "Who ever heard of such a sentimental brother!" she said, turning abruptly away. Mrs. Wheaton was their companion now, and she soon gave the final touches to a delicate little supper, which, with some choice flowers, she had placed on the table. It was her purpose to wait upon them with the utmost respect and deference, but Mildred drew her into a chair, with a look that repaid the good soul a hundred times for all the past. "Roger," she said gayly, "Mrs. Wheaton says you don't eat much. You must make up for all the past this evening. I'm going to help you, and don't you dare to leave anything." "Very well, I've made my will," he said, with a smiling nod. "Oh, don't talk that way. How much shall I give the delicate creature, Mrs. Wheaton? Look here, Roger, you should not take your meals in a library. You are living on books, and are beginning to look like their half-starved authors." "You are right, Miss Millie. 'Alf the time ven I come to take havay the thinks I finds 'im readin', and the wittles 'ardly touched." "Men are such foolish, helpless things!" the young girl protested, shaking her head reprovingly at the offender. "I must have some company," he replied. "Nonsense," she cried, veiling her solicitude under a charming petulance. "Roger, if you don't behave better, you'll be a fit subject for a hospital." "If I can be sent to your ward I would ask nothing better," was his quick response. Again she was provoked at her rising color, for his dark eyes glowed with an unmistakable meaning. She changed the subject by saying, "How many pretty, beautiful, and costly things you have gathered in this room already! How comes it that you have been so fortunate in your selections?" "The reason is simple. I have tried to follow your taste. We've been around a great deal together, and I've always made a note of what you admired." "Flatterer," she tried to say severely. "I wasn't flattering--only explaining." "Oh dear!" she thought, "this won't do at all. This homelike house and his loneliness in it will make me ready for any folly. Dear old fellow! I wish he wasn't so set, or rather I wish I were old and wrinkled enough to keep house for him now." Conscious of a strange compassion and relenting, she hastened her departure, first giving a wistful glance at the serene faces of those so dear to her, who seemed to say, "Millie, we have found the home of which you dreamed. Why are not you with us?" Although she had grown morbid in the conviction that she could not, and indeed ought not to marry Roger, she walked home with him that night with an odd little unrest in her heart, and an unexpected discontent with the profession that heretofore had so fully satisfied her with its promise of independence and usefulness. Having spent an hour or two in her duties at the hospital, however, she laughed at herself as one does when the world regains its ordinary and prosaic hues after an absorbing day-dream. Then the hurry and bustle of the few days preceding her graduation almost wholly occupied her mind. A large and brilliant company was present in the evening on which she received her diploma, for the Training School deservedly excited the interest of the best and most philanthropic people in the city. It was already recognized as the means of giving to women one of the noblest and most useful careers in which they can engage. Mildred's fine appearance and excellent record drew to her much attention, and many sought an introduction. Mr. Wentworth beamed on her, and was eloquent on the credit she had brought to him. Old Mr. Arnold and Mrs. Sheppard spoke to her so kindly and gratefully that her eyes grew tearful. Mrs. Wheaton looked on exultantly as the proudest and richest sought the acquaintance of the girl who had so long been like her own child. But the first to reach and greet her when the formalities of the evening were over was her old friend who had been Miss Wetheridge. "We have just arrived from a long absence abroad," she exclaimed, "and I'm glad and thankful to say that my husband's health is at last restored. For the first year or two he was in such a critical condition that I grew selfish in my absorption in his case, and I neglected you--I neglected everybody and everything. Forgive me, Mildred. I have not yet had time to ask your story from Mr. Wentworth, but can see from the way he looks at you that you've inflated him with exultation, and now I shall wait to hear all from your own lips," and she made the girl promise to give her the first hour she could spare. In spite of all the claims upon her time and attention, Mildred's eyes often sought Roger's face, and as often were greeted with a bright, smiling glance, for he had determined that nothing should mar her pleasure on this evening. Once, however, when he thought himself unobserved, she saw a look of weariness and dejection that smote her heart. When the evening was quite well advanced she came to him and said, "Won't you walk with me a little in this hallway, where we can be somewhat by ourselves? It so happens that I must go on duty in a few moments, and exchange this bright scene for a dim hospital ward; but I love my calling, Roger, and never has it seemed so noble as on this evening while listening to the physician who addressed us. There is such a deep satisfaction in relieving pain and rescuing life, or at least in trying to do so; and then one often has a chance to say words that may bring lasting comfort. Although I am without a home myself, you do not blame me that I am glad it is my mission to aid in driving away shadows and fear from other homes?" "I am homeless, too, Millie." "You! in that beautiful house, with so many that you love looking down upon you?" "Walls and furniture cannot make a home; neither can painted shadows of those far away. I say, Millie, how sick must a fellow be in order to have a trained nurse?" She turned a swift, anxious glance upon him. "Roger, tell me honestly," she said, "are you well?" "I don't know," he replied, in a low tone; "I fear I'll make you ashamed of me. I didn't mean to be so weak, but I'm all unstrung to-night. I'm losing courage--losing zest in life. I seem to have everything, and my friends consider me one of the luckiest of men. But all I have oppresses me and makes me more lonely. When I was sharing your sorrows and poverty, I was tenfold happier than I am now. I live in a place haunted by ghosts, and everything in life appears illusive. I feel to-night as if I were losing you. Your professional duties will take you here and there, where I cannot see you very often." "Roger, you trouble me greatly. You are not well at all, and your extreme morbidness proves it." "I know it's very unmanly to cloud your bright evening, but my depression has been growing so long and steadily that I can't seem to control it any more. There, Millie, the lady superintendent is looking for you. Don't worry. You medical and scientific people know that it is nothing but a torpid liver. Perhaps I may be ill enough to have a trained nurse. You see I am playing a deep game," and with an attempt at a hearty laugh he said good-night, and she was compelled to hasten away, but it was with a burdened, anxious mind. A few moments later she entered on her duties in one of the surgical wards, performing them accurately from habit, but mechanically, for her thoughts were far absent. It seemed to her that she was failing one who had never failed her, and her self-reproach and disquietude grew stronger every moment. "After all he has been to me, can I leave him to an unhappy life?" was the definite question that now presented itself. At last, in a respite from her tasks, she sat down and thought deeply. Roger, having placed Mrs. Wheaton in a carriage, was about to follow on foot, when Mr. Wentworth claimed his attention for a time. At last, after the majority of the guests had departed, he sallied forth and walked listlessly in the frosty air that once had made his step so quick and elastic. He had not gone very far before he heard the sound of galloping horses, then the voices of women crying for help. Turning back he saw a carriage coining toward him at furious speed. A sudden recklessness was mingled with his impulse to save those in extreme peril, and he rushed from the sidewalk, sprang and caught with his whole weight the headgear of the horse nearest to him. His impetuous onset combined with his weight checked the animal somewhat, and before the other horse could drag him very far, a policeman came to his aid, dealing a staggering blow behind the beast's ear with his club, then catching the rein. Roger's right arm was so badly strained that it seemed to fail him, and before he could get out of the way, the rearing horse he was trying to hold struck him down and trampled upon him. He was snatched out from under the iron-shod hoofs by the fast gathering crowd, but found himself unable to rise. "Take me to Bellevue," he said decisively. The hospital was not far away, and yet before an ambulance could reach him he felt very faint. Mildred sat in her little room that was partitioned off from the ward. Her eyes were wide and earnest, but that which she saw was not present to their vision. Suddenly there were four sharp strokes of the bell from the hospital gate, and she started slightly out of her revery, for the imperative summons indicated a surgical case which might come under her care. There was something so absorbing in the character of her thoughts, however, that she scarcely heeded the fact that an ambulance dashed in, and that the form of a man was lifted out and carried into the central office. She saw all this obscurely from her window, but such scenes had become too familiar to check a deep current of thought. When, a few moments later, the male orderly connected with the ward entered and said, "Miss Jocelyn, I've been down and seen the books, and accordin' to my reckonin' we'll have that case," she sprang up with alacrity, and began assuring herself that every appliance that might be needed was in readiness. "I'm glad I must be busy," she murmured, "for I'm so bewildered by my thoughts and impulses in Roger's behalf, that it's well I must banish them until I can grow calm and learn what is right." The orderly was right, and the "case" just brought in was speedily carried up on the elevator and borne toward the ward under her charge. With the celerity of well-trained hands she had prepared everything and directed that her new charge should be placed on a cot near her room. She then advanced to learn the condition of the injured man. After a single glance she sprang forward, crying, "Oh, merciful Heaven! it's Roger!" "You are acquainted with him then?" asked the surgeon who had accompanied the ambulance, with much interest. "He's my brother--he's the best friend I have in the world. Oh, be quick--here. Gently now. O God, grant his life! Oh, oh, he's unconscious; his coat is soaked with blood--but his heart is beating. He will, oh, he will live; will he not?" "Oh, yes, I think so, but the case was so serious that I followed. You had better summon the surgeon in charge of this division, while I and the orderly restore him to consciousness and prepare him for treatment." Before he ceased speaking Mildred was far on her way to seek the additional aid. When she returned Roger's sleeve had been removed, revealing an ugly wound in the lower part of his left arm, cut by the cork of a horseshoe, made long and sharp because of the iciness of the streets. A tourniquet had been applied to the upper part of the arm to prevent further hemorrhage, and under the administration of stimulants he was giving signs of returning consciousness. The surgeon in charge of the division soon arrived, and every effort of modern skill was made in the patient's behalf. Bottles of hot water were placed around his chilled and blood-drained form, and spirits were injected hypodermically into his system. The fair young nurse stood a little in the background, trembling in her intense anxiety, and yet so trained and disciplined that with the precision of a veteran she could obey the slightest sign from the attendant surgeons. "He never failed me," she thought; "and if loving care can save his life he shall have it night and day." At last Roger knew her, and smiled contentedly; then closed his eyes in almost mortal weariness and weakness. As far as he was able to think at all, he scarcely cared whether he lived or died, since Mildred was near him. The physicians, after as thorough examination as was possible, and doing everything in their power, left him with hopeful words. The most serious features in the case were his loss of blood and consequent great exhaustion. The division surgeon said that the chief danger lay in renewed hemorrhage, and should it occur he must be sent for at once, and then he left the patient to Mildred's care, with directions as to stimulants and nourishment. Mildred would not let Roger speak, and he lay in a dreamy, half-waking condition of entire content. As she sat beside him holding his hand, she was no longer in doubt. "My 'stupid old heart,' as Belle called it, is awake at last," she thought. "Oh, how awful would be my desolation if he should die! Now I know what he is to me. I loved Vinton as a girl; I love Roger as a woman. Oh, how gladly I'd take his place! What could I not sacrifice for him! Now I know what he has suffered in his loneliness. I understand him at last. I was hoping he would get over it--as if I could ever get over this! He said he was losing his zest in life. Oh, what an intolerable burden would his loss make of life for me! O God, spare him; surely such love as this cannot be given to two human souls to be poured out like water on the rock of a pitiless fate." "Millie," said Roger faintly, "your hand seems alive, and its pulsations send little thrills direct to my heart. Were it not for your hand I would think my body already dead." "Oh, Roger," she murmured, pressing her lips on his hand, "would to God I could put my blood into your veins. Roger, dear beyond all words, don't fail me, now that I need you as never before. Don't speak, don't move. Just rest and gain. Hush, hush. Oh, be quiet! I won't leave you until you are stronger, and I'll always be within call." "I'll mind, Millie. I was never more contented in my life." Toward morning he seemed better and stronger, and she left him a few moments to attend to some other duties. When she returned she saw to her horror that hemorrhage had taken place, and that his arm was bleeding rapidly. She sprang to his side, and with trained skill pressed her fingers on the brachial artery, thus stopping further loss of blood instantly. Then calling to the orderly, she told him to lose not a second in summoning the surgeon. Roger looked up into her terror-stricken face, and said quietly, "Millie, I'm not afraid to die. Indeed I half think it's best. I couldn't go on in the old way much longer--" "Hush, hush," she whispered. "No," he said decisively, "my mission to you is finished. You will be an angel of mercy all your days, but I find that after all my ambitious dreams I'm but an ordinary man. You are stronger, nobler than I am. You are a soldier that will never be defeated. You think to save my life by holding an artery, but the wound that was killing me is in my heart. I don't blame you, Millie--I'm weak--I'm talking at random--" "Roger, Roger, I'm not a soldier. I am a weak, loving woman. I love you with my whole heart and soul, and if you should not recover you will blot the sun out of my sky. I now know what you are to me. I knew it the moment I saw your unconscious face. Roger, I love you now with a love like your own--only it must be greater, stronger, deeper; I love you as a woman only can love. In mercy to me, rally and live--LIVE!" He looked at her earnestly a moment, and then a glad smile lighted up his face. "I'll live now," he said quietly. "I should be dead indeed did I not respond to that appeal." The surgeon appeared speedily, and again took up and tied the artery, giving stimulants liberally. Roger was soon sleeping with a quietude and rest in his face that assured Mildred that her words had brought balm and healing to a wound beyond the physician's skill, and that he would recover. And he did gain hourly from the time she gave him the hope for which he had so long and so patiently waited. It must be admitted that he played the invalid somewhat, for he was extremely reluctant to leave the hospital until the period of Mildred's duties expired. A few months later, with Mrs. Heartwold--the Miss Wetheridge of former days--by her side, she was driven to Roger's house--her home now. The parlors were no longer empty, and she had furnished them with her own refined and delicate taste. But not in the midst of their beauty and spaciousness was she married. Mr. Wentworth stood beneath the portraits of her kindred, and with their dear faces smiling upon her she gave herself to Roger. Those she loved best stood around her, and there was a peace and rest in her heart that was beyond joy. When all were gone, Roger wheeled the low chair to its old place beside the glowing fire, and said: "Millie, at last we both have a home. See how Belle is smiling at us." "Dear sister Belle," Mildred murmured, "her words have come true. She said, Roger, when I was fool enough to detest you, that you 'would win me yet,' and you have--all there is of me." Roger went and stood before the young girl's smiling face, saying earnestly: "Dear little Belle, 'we SHALL have good times together yet,' or else the human heart with its purest love and deepest yearning is a lie." Then turning, he took his wife in his arms and said, "Millie darling, we shall never be without a home again. Please God it shall be here until we find the better home of Heaven." APPENDIX Christian men and women of New York, you--not the shopkeepers--are chiefly to blame for the barbarous practice of compelling women, often but growing girls, to stand from morning until evening, and often till late in the night. The supreme motive of the majority of the men who enforce this inhuman regulation is to make money. Some are kind-hearted enough to be very willing that their saleswomen should sit down if their customers would tolerate the practice, and others are so humane that they grant the privilege without saying, By your leave, to their patrons. There is no doubt where the main responsibility should be placed in this case. Were even the intoxicated drayman in charge of a shop, when sober he would have sufficient sense not to take a course that would drive from him the patronage of the "best and wealthiest people in town." Upon no class could public opinion make itself felt more completely and quickly than upon retail merchants. If the people had the humanity to say, We will not buy a dime's worth at establishments that insist upon a course at once so unnatural and cruel, the evil would be remedied speedily. Employers declare that they maintain the regulation because so many of their patrons require that the saleswoman shall always be standing and ready to receive them. It is difficult to accept this statement, but the truth that the shops wherein the rule of standing is most rigorously enforced are as well patronized as others is scarcely a less serious indictment, and it is also a depressing proof of the strange apathy on the question. No labored logic is needed to prove the inherent barbarity of the practice. Let any man or woman--even the strongest--try to stand as long as these frail, underfed girls are required to be upon their feet, and he or she will have a demonstration that can never be forgotten. In addition, consider the almost continual strain on the mind in explaining about the goods and in recommending them, in making out tickets of purchase correctly while knowing that any errors will be charged against their slender earnings, or more than made good by fines. What is worse, the organs of speech are in almost constant exercise, and all this in the midst of more or less confusion. The clergyman, the lecturer, is exhausted after an hour of speech. Why are not their thunders directed against the inhumanity of compelling women to spend ten or twelve hours of speech upon their feet? The brutal drayman was arrested because he was inflicting pain on a sentient being. Is not a woman a sentient being? and is any one so ignorant of physiology as not to have some comprehension of the evils which must result in most cases from compelling women--often too young to be mature--to stand, under the trying circumstances that have been described? An eminent physician in New York told me that ten out of twelve must eventually lose their health; and a proprietor of one of the shops admitted to me that the girls did suffer this irreparable loss, and that it would be better for them if they went out to service. The fact that cashiers who sit all day suffer more than those who stand proves nothing against the wrong of the latter practice. It only shows that the imperative law of nature, especially for the young, is change, variety. Why not accept the fact, and be as considerate of the rights of women as of horses, dogs, and cats? While making my investigations on this subject, I asked a gentleman who was in charge of one of the largest retail shops in the city, on what principle he dealt with this question. "On the principle of humanity," he replied. "I have studied hygienic science, and know that a woman can't stand continuously except at the cost of serious ill-health." Later I asked the proprietor if he did not think that his humanity was also the best business policy, for the reason that his employes were in a better condition to attend to their duties. "No," he said; "on strict business principles I would require constant standing; but this has no weight with me, in view of the inhumanity of such a rule. If I had the room for it in the store, I'd give all my employes a good slice of roast beef at noon; but I have not, and therefore I give them plenty of time for a good lunch." The manager of another establishment, which was furnished with ample means of rest for the girls, said to me, "A man that compels a girl to stand all day ought to be flogged." He also showed me a clean, comfortable place in the basement in which the girls ate their lunches. It was supplied with a large cooking-stove, with a woman in constant attendance. Each girl had her own tea or coffee-pot, and time was given for a substantial and wholesome meal. I would rather pay ten per cent more for goods at such shops than to buy them at others where women are treated as the cheapest kind of machines, that are easily replaced when broken down. Granting, for the sake of argument, that customers may not be waited on quite so promptly, and that the impression of a brisk business may not be given if many of the girls are seated, these are not sufficient reasons for inflicting torment on those who earn their bread in shops. I do not and cannot believe, however, that the rule is to the advantage of either employer or customer in the long run. It is not common-sense that a girl, wearied almost beyond endurance, and distracted by pain, can give that pleasant, thoughtful attention to the purchaser which she could bestow were she in a normal condition. At very slight expense the proprietors of large shops could give all their employes a generous plate of soup and a cup of good tea or coffee. Many bring meagre and unwholesome lunches; more dine on cake, pastry, and confectionery. These ill-taught girls are just as prone to sin against their bodies as the better-taught children of the rich. If employers would give them something substantial at midday, and furnish small bracket seats which could be pulled out and pushed back within a second of time, they would find their business sustained by a corps of comfortable, cheerful, healthful employes; and such a humane, sensible policy certainly ought to be sustained by all who have any sympathy with Mr. Bergh. The belief of many, that the majority of the girls are broken down by dissipation, is as superficial as it is unjust. Undoubtedly, many do carry their evening recreation to an injurious excess, and some place themselves in the way of temptations which they have not the strength to resist; but every physician knows that some recreation, some relief from the monotony of their hard life, is essential. Otherwise, they would grow morbid in mind as well as enfeebled in body. The crying shame is that there are so few places where these girls can go from their crowded tenement homes and find innocent entertainment. Their dissipations are scarcely more questionable, though not so elegantly veneered, as those of the fashionable, nor are the moral and physical effects much worse. But comparatively few would go to places of ill-repute could they find harmless amusements suited to their intelligence and taste. After much investigation, I am satisfied that in point of morals the working-women of New York compare favorably with any class in the world. To those who do not stand aloof and surmise evil, but who acquaint themselves with the facts, it is a source of constant wonder that in their hard and often desperate struggle for bread they still maintain so high a standard. Tenement life with scanty income involves many shadows at best, but in the name of manhood I protest against taking advantage of the need of bread to inflict years of pain and premature death. We all are involved in this wrong to the degree that we sustain establishments from which a girl is discharged if she does not or cannot obey a rule which it would be torture for us to keep. I shall be glad, indeed, if these words hasten by one hour the time when from the temple of human industry all traders shall be driven out who thrive on the agonies of girls as frail and impoverished as Mildred Jocelyn. THE END 
60751	----	Gutenberg (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) BABOE DALIMA; OR, THE OPIUM FIEND. BY T. H. PERELAER TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH BY THE Rev. E. J. VENNING, M.A. LONDON: VIZETELLY & CO., 16 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1888. BABOE DALIMA; OR, THE OPIUM FIEND. CHAPTER I. AT MOEARA TJATJING. It was a terrible night in February 188-. A violent storm from the north-west was raging along the northern coast of Java. The wind howled and roared as though a legion of fiends were holding Sabbath in the black mass of clouds which were driving along. The waves of the Java sea were running mountain high, and came curling into the beach in monstrous billows topped with mighty crests of dazzling foam. These crests were brightly phosphorescent, and each breaker, as it came rolling in, for an instant shed a pale fantastic shower of sparks upon the black seething waters, leaving, the next instant, the blackness darker than before. The sea-coast on which our story opens formed here, as in so many other places in Java, an extensive marsh, the slimy clay of which the influence of the tropical sun had clothed with a most curious kind of vegetation. Had it been day, the eye, as far as it could reach, would have rested upon thousands upon thousands of tree-tops, closely packed together, and rising about thirty feet from the soil. The stems of these trees did not reach the ground, but rested on knotty roots, which, like arches, grew out of the earth. These roots were divided, branching out in all directions, so that the trees might be likened to many-footed creatures, the supports or legs of each of which crossed and recrossed with those of its neighbour. Thus looking along the ground might be seen a kind of tangled network under a thick canopy of green, and that network again was entwined with gigantic creepers, hanging in festoons from the singular archways and climbing upwards into the tops of the trees. By daylight, between those myriads of twisted roots forming, as it were, a gigantic labyrinth, there might have been seen a swarming mass of living things, unsightly and loathsome, which would have filled the beholder with wonder and disgust. There, among thousands of other living beings, lay the sluggish alligator glaring at its prey with fixed and stony eye. There countless tortoises and "Mimis" were crawling and darting about in quest of food. There swarmed monstrous crabs and shrimps of all kinds, varying in size from that of the largest lobster to the almost microscopical sea-spider. All these in millions were wriggling in the filthy ooze which was formed of the detritus of this singular mangrove forest. In the mud which clung about the roots, these hideous creatures lived and teemed, not perhaps in a state of perfect concord, yet maintaining an armed kind of peace which did not prevent them from becoming allies whenever some unhappy victim, whose luckless star had cast upon that shore, had to be overpowered. Close by the narrow strip of land, where, not only in storms but in all weathers, land and water seemed to strive for the mastery, there stood a small hut hidden away completely among a clump of "Saoe" trees. These trees grew there, the only ones of their kind amidst the gloomy forest of mangrove. Surrounded by the dense foliage as by an impenetrable wall, the hut was completely invisible from the land. On the other side it commanded a wide view of the sea; but even there it was screened from observation by its position among the leaves. We called it a hut,--it was, indeed, little more than a large sentry box, and it, most appropriately, bore the name of "djaga monjet" or monkey-perch. It was put together in a very primitive fashion, and was covered with "Kadjang" mats and "attaps," both of these rough building materials obtained from the Nipah palm. The "djaga monjet" was built in the morass on piles which raised it some considerable distance from the ground. Thus the waves which now and then threatened to swallow up the fore-shore altogether, could freely wash about under it, and break and divide against the firmly driven stakes. The trunk of a tree, with some rough steps clumsily cut into it, served as a ladder and gave access to the hut which, at the time this tale begins, was wrapped in the deepest darkness, but which yet was not tenantless. Two voices might have been heard issuing from the doorway. The speakers fancied they were talking in a confidential whisper; but the blustering of the storm had gradually led them on to raise their voices, so that now they were yelling at each other rather than conversing. That, however, was of very little consequence. At such an hour, and in such fearful weather, no human being would have dreamed of prowling about there. The most zealous coastguard's man would have declined that duty. The men in the hut were talking in Malay, but they might, without difficulty, have been recognised for Chinamen. Their guttural pronunciation, the difficulty with which they sounded the letter "r," which with them indeed was spoken as "l," and a certain lisping, weakly, altogether most unpleasant accent, put the matter beyond doubt. Yes, they were two Chinamen who, sitting in that little watch-house, were eagerly, in the pitch dark night, scanning the angry sea before them. "No," said one of them, after a considerable interval of silence--"No, there is nothing whatever to be seen. In such weather, it would be simply tempting fate. You may be quite sure that the Kiem Ping Hin is snugly lying at anchor at Poeloe Karabab. She would never think of starting in such a storm." "You may be right," replied the other, "but the master's orders were most positive. We are posted here on purpose to help the men of the Kiem Ping Hin to get their cargo safe ashore." "That is true enough, Than Khan, and we shall get our pay, I daresay; but, for all that, you cannot deny that she cannot possibly come in to-night. Just hark how the wind howls, hear how the breakers roar--our perch is shaking like a reed. How would you like to be out on such a night as this?" "I," cried Than Khan, "not for all the money in the world. But still we know the old Arab Awal Boep Said--he is a tough old sea-dog, and no weather will--" "Look out!" cried the other; "there, just there! You see that big curling wave yonder! Look, you can just see it by the light of the foam. Yes, by Kong! A 'djoekoeng!'" "You are right, Liem King," replied Than Khan, "it is a 'djoekoeng'" (a boat made of a hollowed tree-stem). "There were two persons in her, both Javanese--I fancied a man and a woman." "Yes," said Liem King; "the man was rowing hard, the woman seemed frightened, she had her hands up to her face." "The 'djoekoeng,'" shouted Than Khan, "was heading for the shore; but she can never get through the breakers." "I am not so sure of that," replied Liem King. "She was making straight for Moeara Tjatjing, if she can only keep that course, she may pull through." "Why," said Than Khan, "in such a sea as this, no boat can live, she must be swamped. A rare feast for the boajas, eh?" "That 'djoekoeng,'" said Liem King, "will get through safe enough. I made her out to be a surf boat, and you know it takes a good deal to upset them." "No doubt," said Than Khan, "for all that, I am glad enough I am not in her." "Look out," shouted the other. "Look, there she is again, yes, she is making for the Moeara. If she can get behind the 'bow-nets' she is safe enough." "If she can get under the lee of the bow-nets, perhaps, but, but--" "Another boat," exclaimed Liem King. "There are white men in her." The words were no sooner uttered than two, three, four sharp reports were heard. They were rifle-shots fired from the boat, upon the occupants of the "djoekoeng." With what result who could tell? For a single instant only, the faint gleam of some gigantic breaker had revealed the two boats to the pair of spies. The next moment all was deep darkness again, and, gaze as intently as they would, not even their sharp eyes could discover anything further. Thus a quarter of an hour passed away, when suddenly Than Khan exclaimed, "A steamer!" Sure enough, far out at sea, shone the well-known green and red lights, and, high above them, the white light at the mast-head. "The guard-ship!" cried Liem King. "No doubt of it," said the other, "it must be the Matamata. Well, all I can say is that if the Kiem Ping Hin has left her anchorage she is not showing any lights; she has got away safe enough by this time." "Come, I think we may be off home to the Kampong; no smugglers will come ashore to-night, you may be sure." For a while longer did the two Celestials keep watching the steamer's movements. First she showed her three lights plainly enough, she was therefore making straight for the land. After a time, however, all of a sudden, her green light disappeared, leaving for a while the red light only visible. Presently that also went out and only the white top-mast light remained visible, and, as it seemed stationary, our Chinamen concluded that the steamer had anchored or was perhaps moving with her head to the wind. Said Than Khan at length, "It is no use staying here; while that cursed Matamata is about they will not be able to get anything ashore. Come, let us be going." "All right," replied Liem King; "but I vote we first go and have a look at the Tjatjing, we may just possibly get to know something about the 'djoekoeng.'" So our two worthies clambered down the rough log which, as we have shown, stood as a ladder against the hut; the wind howling, meanwhile, as furiously as ever. In a few steps they came upon a kind of pathway for which they had to grope with their feet in the deep darkness. They found it; and as every now and then a wave would come washing over it, the two Chinamen had to splash on in the brine. That, however, did not greatly interfere with their progress. They knew the road well, and even had the weather been rougher, they would have got along without much hesitation. They had, in fact, not very far to go. In a few minutes they reached the small river Tjatjing which close by emptied itself into the Java Sea. At the spot where the Chinamen came upon the stream it made a kind of bend or elbow as if, just before losing itself in the ocean, it had thought better of it and was trying to retrace its course. At that bend the mangrove roots retired a little from the shore, leaving a pretty wide open space from which the prospect over the river would have been quite clear; but the darkness was so intense that even Than Khan's ferret eyes could make out nothing. "If the 'djoekoeng' has reached the Moeara at all," roared Than Khan in the ear of his companion, "she must have come ashore here. They cannot possibly have got her further up the Tjatjing, there is not water enough and the marsh-weed completely chokes it up." "Hush," said Liem King; "I hear something." He was right. In spite of the awful noise of the tempest a low moaning sound could just be heard. Both pricked their ears, took their bearings; and softly, with stealthy tread they sneaked forward in the direction of the sound. Presently, they almost stumbled over a boat which lay on the beach with its stern half under water. "The 'djoekoeng,'" muttered Than Khan. Directed by the moaning sound they groped along the boat which was but a hollowed tree. Its bamboo sail-wings were lying close by smashed all to pieces by the wind and water; and a few steps further on they discovered two human beings lying prostrate in the rank grass. "Who is there?" called Liem King as he cautiously drew nearer. "It is I," replied a very feeble voice in answer to the challenge. "I? who is I?" asked the Chinaman. "I, Ardjan," was the answer. "What?" cried Liem King, "Ardjan of the Kiem Ping Hin." A faint cry at these words issued from the lips of one of the castaways. "Silence," whispered the other Chinaman. Both then bent forward over the figure which had given the name of Ardjan; but in that thick darkness it was impossible to distinguish anything. One of them pulled a dark lantern out of his pocket, struck a match and, with some trouble, managed to procure a light. As soon as he had recognised the features he cried out: "By ----! it is Ardjan! What in the world are you doing here?" "I have fallen overboard," was the reply. "Indeed you have? with that 'djoekoeng?'" sneered Liem King. "I found her in the water as I was swimming about," was the reply. "And that woman?" continued Liem King; "how about her? Did you pick her up also floating about? Who is she?" "She is Moenah, my sister," faintly said Ardjan. "Ah! your sister," exclaimed Than Khan with a low, dirty laugh. "I daresay she also managed to tumble overboard?" With these words he threw the light of the lantern full on the face of the so-called sister. The uncertain gleam revealed the well-shaped form of a beautiful Javanese maiden of sixteen who, in her confusion, strove to conceal her face under a veil, which, like all the rest of her clothing, was dripping wet. "Hallo!" cried Than Khan as he roughly tore the veil from the girl's face, "what have we here? Dalima! the little 'baboe' of His Excellency the Resident." At these words the maiden cowered down in the most abject terror. The two Chinamen exchanged a few hasty words in whispers in which the name Lim Ho could be distinguished. That name seemed to have an extraordinary effect upon the poor girl. When she heard it her face became the very picture of terror. This Lim Ho was one of the sons of the great opium farmer at Santjoemeh and the man was madly in love with the poor little Javanese girl. He had offered her large sums of money, he had tempted her with costly gifts, but all in vain. He had addressed himself to her father, a poor peasant in the "dessa" of Kaligaweh close by the principal township, again without success. Then the wretch had sworn that, at any price, the girl should be his, even if to possess her he might have to commit a crime. He was a kind of scoundrel who would stick at nothing. At the mention of that hateful name the girl recoiled and shrunk together in terror. She knew the man, and now she also knew the two rascals into whose power she had thus been thrown. The two Chinamen kept on whispering to each other; they spoke in Chinese of which language neither Ardjan nor Dalima knew a single word. Before, however, the former had time to collect his thoughts or his energies, the scoundrels were upon him. They tied up his hands and feet with a thin rope which Liem King drew out of the capacious pocket of his baggy trousers. Before he had time to defend himself Ardjan found himself helpless, tied up in the shape of a hoop. But even had there been time to resist, the poor fellow could have done nothing. He was quite unarmed, he had not had time even to snatch up his dagger-knife, and the frightful exertion of rowing the "djoekoeng" through the breakers had so completely fagged him out, that, when the men came upon him, he was lying panting for breath on the beach and quite incapable of further exertion. The low moaning sound which had guided the Chinamen to him was the sound of his gasping and panting for breath as he lay on the shore. Having firmly secured Ardjan, the Chinamen took hold of Dalima and pinioned her also, ordering her to keep perfectly quiet and threatening to kill her should she disobey. It was a good thing for Dalima that her captors could not see the expression on her face as they uttered their threatening warning. There passed over the girl's features an expression of contempt which would have given them food for reflection; and might have induced them to make quite sure of their fair prisoner. But of this they saw nothing, and, thinking the girl safe enough, they turned to her companion. His arms were tied behind him and fastened to his feet which had also been tightly bound. Liem King now took up a stout bamboo stick which had formed part of the rigging of the surf boat, and having passed it under Ardjan's arms they each took hold of one end of the bamboo, and put it on their shoulders, and then, with their living burden thus helplessly dangling between them they ran at a slow trot up the path, along which, a few minutes before, they had groped their way. At every jolt the poor Javanese uttered a cry of anguish. It was torture indeed that they made Ardjan endure. The whole weight of his body, bent in the most constrained attitude, was bearing upon his arms, and the whippy motion of the pliable stick made every movement almost unendurable as the Chinamen jogged slowly along. The bones of the arms upon which, as a sack, the entire body was hanging seemed at every moment about to snap, and the limbs felt as if every jog must wrench them from their sockets. But neither Liem King nor Than Khan paid the slightest heed to Ardjan's shrieks, they kept quietly trotting along. In vain did the wretched man entreat them to kill him and so put him out of the misery he was enduring. In vain, seeing his prayers unheeded, did he hurl the most offensive epithets at the heads of his tormentors, hoping thus to provoke them to rage and goad them on to take summary vengeance. To all Ardjan's entreaties and insults, the Chinamen replied only with derisive laughter, and the "Aso tjina" (Chinese dog) repeated again and again, Than Khan, who had one hand free, repaid with a tremendous blow with his fist, the effect of which was only to increase the agony of the sufferer. In a few minutes, however, which to Ardjan seemed an age of torture, the "djaga monjet" was reached. The ropes which tied Ardjan's feet were then untied, leaving his arms only closely pinioned. The Chinamen then ordered him to climb up the rough steps and enforced their command by pricking him with the points of their daggers. The Javanese knew well that the faintest show of resistance might cost him his life, and now that the torture of dangling on the bamboo was no longer felt, he began to take a more cheerful view of life. So he passively did as he was told, and in a few moments he was at the top and inside the hut. There the two brutes once again tied him up securely, and, in order to make even an effort of flight impossible, they fastened his hands tightly on his chest and forced the bamboo cane through the bend of the elbows which were sticking out behind his back. Thus trussed up, as it were, the least movement on the part of Ardjan occasioned the most unbearable pain to his bruised and swollen limbs. Then, they laid him down on his back on the floor of the hut, and to make assurance doubly sure, they lashed him to one of the principal posts of the small building. Having made all safe, the Chinamen went off to fetch Dalima. What they intended to do with the girl was a matter of dispute between them. Liem King proposed that they should settle by a cast of the dice which of them should possess her; but Than Khan, who was of a more practical and covetous turn of mind, explained to his companion that a good round sum of money might be got out of the son of the rich opium farmer if they delivered her into his hands. They were still debating the question when they reached the Tjatjing, where they had left their victim lying on the grass. There they soon found out that they need not have argued the matter at all; for though they searched the whole place with the utmost minuteness, they could find no trace of Dalima. Yes, they did find a trace; for behind a clump of undergrowth close to the spot where they had left the girl, they discovered the coil of rope with which they had bound her. She had, evidently, somehow or other found means to get her wrists to her mouth, and had succeeded in gnawing through the cords. Once her hands were free it was mere child's play to untie her feet and legs. "Devil take her!" exclaimed Liem King, "that tit-bit is lost to us." "Indeed she is," sighed Than Khan; "we have allowed a nice little sum to slip through our fingers. Lim Ho would have paid well for her." "Now, I think," said Liem King, "the best thing will be not to breathe a word about her to the Company." "Oh, of course, not a single word," assented Than Khan; "now that she has got away that would be most dangerous." "But what," asked the other, "had we better do now with Ardjan? I think we had better let him go, too. He is sure to let out all about Dalima." "No fear," rejoined Than Khan, "he won't dare to do that. Should he utter a single word about the girl Lim Ho would have him clubbed to death." "Well," said Liem King, pensively, "for all that I think the safest plan is to let him go." "H'm," said the other, "why so? You know as well as I do that he ought to be on board the Kiem Ping Hin. Now, how on earth did he manage to get here in that 'djoekoeng?' Take my word for it, there is some mystery about that. Very likely it may be important to the Company to get to the bottom of that. Ah," added he, with a deep sigh of disappointment, "I only wish we had tied up that wretched girl a little more securely." "Oh, no, don't say so!" cried Liem King, "you would have bruised those darling little wrists and dainty ankles." "Bah!" cried Than Khan. "What nonsense, I wish we had her here; now she is off. Where can she have got to?" "Yes," replied Liem King, "that is the question, where to look for her. But come along, let us hurry back or else we may find the other bird flown too. There is something, you know, that tells me we have made a good catch in him." So the two rascals got back to the hut, and found Ardjan lying there quietly enough, just as they left him. He had not been able to stir hand or foot. As soon as he saw that the Chinamen came back alone his eye brightened. "Where is Dalima?" he exclaimed, most anxiously. The Chinamen made no answer. "Has she got away?" he asked again. Than Khan shook his head. It was enough, there was something so doleful in that gesture that Ardjan did not, for a moment, doubt. Dalima had escaped. Now he could breathe more freely. If only he had been equally fortunate. He had tried all he could to get rid of these accursed ropes; but, alas! his arms hurt him so frightfully he thought they were broken, and he had to give up the attempt in despair. Where might the dear girl be now? He felt but little anxiety on that score. She had managed, perhaps, to run to Kaligaweh, where her parents lived--the distance was not great--she must, by this time, be close to the dessa. Perhaps, she had taken the way to Santjoemeh, where lived the family of the Resident, as she was in his service as nurse. In that case, she would have a long journey before her, and she could not reach it before daybreak. If only then she could at once tell her whole story--then, yes, who knows, then he might even yet be rescued. But all such reflections were roughly interrupted by Liem King, who asked him, "Where did you come from on so wild a night as this?" "I?" said Ardjan, "why, I have come from Santjoemeh, to be sure. I intended to take Dalima to her father at Kaligaweh. The nor'-wester drove us out to sea, I rowed with might and main to get to the Moeara Tjatjing." "What do you mean?" grinned Than Khan. "What business had you at the Moeara? Oh, now I see, you wanted, no doubt, to pay us a visit here! That is it--is it not?" Ardjan trembled inwardly; but he replied calmly enough: "I could not get as far as Sepoetran, and found myself drifting out to sea, so I was compelled to make for the nearest land." "But they have been after you," exclaimed Than Khan. "You have been fired at." "So I have," said Ardjan. "It must have been a boat of that wretched Matamata, they must have taken me for a smuggler." "Have you any stuff with you?" asked Than Khan. There was no reply to that question. Had these Chinamen known in what position he really was, they never would have asked him such a question as that. "But," continued Liem King, "you are mate of the Kiem Ping Hin. How is it you are not on board of her?" For a moment the Javanese did not know what to answer, then he said: "Captain Awal Boep Said has given me leave to spend two days on shore." "You go and tell your grandmother that tale, it won't do for us. What! just at this time, when there is so much work on hand?" cried Than Khan. "Well," said Ardjan, "it is true, nevertheless." "Very good," replied Than Khan, "the Company will soon get to know all about that." After these words there was silence. The Chinamen wrapped themselves up in a kind of rug or mat, and sat down cross-legged on the floor, with their heads bent forwards on their breast, and thus they seemed to be falling into a doze. Ardjan, still fastened up in the most painful way to the bamboo stick, had to lie on his back. It was pitch dark in the hut; the door and the shutters were closed to exclude, as much as possible, the cold morning air. But, when every now and then the Javanese turned his head to the right or left, he could, through the chinks of the lath floor, see that day was breaking. A greyish light began to appear under the hut, and thus Ardjan could see the filthy mud in which a number of crawling things, such as sea-eels, marsh-snakes, iguanas, and water-lizards were swarming. They were in quest of the miscellaneous offal which they were wont to find under the "djaga monjet." For a while all was quiet, when suddenly the report of a gun shook the hut. The sound startled both the Chinamen to their feet. It was evidently a signal. Than Khan rushed to the door, and threw it open. It was then broad daylight, the sun was just about to rise, and was bathing the eastern horizon in a flood of the richest purple. CHAPTER II. IN THE DJAGA MONJET. For a moment or two, Than Khan stood rubbing his eyes, the sudden glare of light almost blinded him after the darkness of the hut. As soon as he became somewhat accustomed to the morning light, he perceived that a great change had taken place in nature. The wind which had been howling so dismally all night long had now fallen considerably, and the thick black clouds were breaking up, while patches of clear blue sky were becoming visible on all sides. The eastern horizon was perfectly cloudless, and the sun rising in full glory was bathing all he touched in the purest gold. It was a magnificent spectacle, certainly, that morning of calm after the night of storm; but neither Than Khan nor his companion seemed to pay the slightest heed to these beauties of nature. The two Celestials were not troubling their minds about the sun; they were eagerly scanning the surface of the sea, and that not for the purpose of admiring the stately roll of the long breakers; they were looking out for something quite different. Yonder, at a considerable distance from the shore, they could just see a ship dancing on the waves. They could make her out with the naked eye to be a schooner-brig, which, under shortened sail, was lying close to the wind, and was evidently purposely keeping away from the land. She had some kind of signal flying; but what it was they could not make out. Liem King then produced a ship's telescope, which was kept stowed away under the "attaps" in a corner of the roof, and which had long since lost its original colour, being thickly covered with a coating of dirt and dust. The Chinaman handled the glass as one who was familiar with its use, and, after looking for awhile, he turned to his mate, and said: "The letters T.F.N.W. on a red ground. That must be the Kiem Ping Hin. She ought to have come in last night, and--" "She is trying to anchor, I suppose," said Than Khan. "No, she is not," replied Liem King; "she is only trying to keep out of the smuggling radius." "Well," cried Than Khan, "that's cool enough anyhow. Why! only last night we had the Matamata here." "Why," said the other, "she is safe enough. Where she is now lying the steamer could not get at her, and, what's more, she is flying the British ensign. Under those colours no one will dare to meddle with her. The Dutch are frightened to death of the English." After looking through his glass at the schooner for a few moments longer Liem King exclaimed: "They are lowering the boat!" "Then one of us," said Than Khan, "will have to run to the landing place at the Tjatjing." "Very well, you go," said Liem King. "No, you," said the other. "Why should we not both go together?" asked Liem King. "Certainly not," rejoined Than Khan. "Would you," he asked as he pointed to Ardjan, "leave this fellow here alone and unwatched?" "Perhaps you are right," assented the other, "let us toss up for it." "All right," replied Than Khan, "I don't mind." One of them then produced some white pebbles about the size of beans among which there were a few black ones. With a certain amount of dexterity he flung them upon a wooden board which seemed made for the purpose. Liem King counted the throw to see how many black ones were lying together. It was Than Khan's turn next. "I have won," he exclaimed. "You see I have seven black together. You had but five." "Very good," said Liem King. "I shall go." "But mind," said the other, "not a word about Dalima!" "You trust me," was the answer. A strange scornful smile passed over Ardjan's features. Than Khan sat down cross-legged in the doorway of the hut, placing himself in such a manner that while he had a clear view of the bay before him, he could at the same time watch every movement Ardjan might attempt to make. Not a single action on board the schooner escaped the Chinaman's watchful eye. He saw the smuggler lower her boat, he then saw five or six Chinese get into her. The little craft, rowed by a Javanese crew, then put off and got under weigh. It soon got into the seething breakers and as Than Khan watched the tremendous exertions of the rowers, he could not help admiring the cool steady way in which the helmsman kept her head firmly to the waves. "That must be Lim Ho himself," he muttered. Ardjan shuddered at the mention of that name. "Lim Ho!" he exclaimed, his voice betraying his terror. "Yes," said Than Khan, "in a few minutes they will all be here." Just then the boat was getting into the Moeara. He was right, the light craft manned by eight stout rowers was flying through the water and had got clear of the dangerous surf. Once under the lee of the bow-nets and fairly in the bay, the boat was in comparatively smooth water and darted into the mouth of the Tjatjing. Liem King stood at the landing place waiting to receive his countrymen and he began at once to lead the way to the little watch-house. The five Chinamen had no sooner stepped ashore than the Javanese crew began to make all possible haste to unload the boat. A number of small tins and barrels lay piled up in the bottom and these they brought to land and most carefully stowed away, hiding them in the sand under the bushes which grew hard by. "Jolly stuff that black butter," said one of the fellows, as he pointed to the barrels. The small casks looked as if they had just come out of some Dutch farmhouse. They were all sealed with green wax and bore the well-known stamp of Van der Leeuw. "I wish I could get hold of a couple of taël of that butter," said another of the crew with a laugh. "Well," said another, "you can be off presently to the opium den of Babah Tjoa Tjong Ling and there you can get as much as you like of it. You will find it easy enough to get rid of your hardly earned wages." In a few minutes all the tins and barrels were safely stowed away and then the Javanese crew followed the steps of their Chinese masters to the "djaga monjet." When the five Chinamen had entered the little hut, the examination of Ardjan, who was still lying on the floor in the same painful position, was commenced at once. On the way to the hut Liem King had told his master as much as he deemed prudent about Ardjan's capture; but not a word did he breathe about Dalima. Lim Ho listened with attention to his report. This Lim Ho was a tall, powerfully-built Chinaman. He was the chief of that band of smugglers, about five-and-twenty years of age. He had a wan yellow complexion, and a false, evil look in his slanting eyes. When he heard it was Ardjan, the mate, who had been caught, he could not repress a smile of satisfaction. As soon as Liem King had made his report, he asked in a tone of assumed indifference: "Was the fellow alone when you came upon him?" "Oh yes, quite alone," readily replied Liem King. Lim Ho showed that he was greatly disappointed at the news. "He came ashore in a 'djoekoeng,' I think you told me?" he asked. "He did, sir," replied Liem King. "Could the 'djoekoeng' have turned over at sea?" continued Lim Ho. "Very likely," replied the wily Chinaman. "When Than Khan and myself found the 'djoekoeng,'" he continued, "Ardjan was lying exhausted and wet through on the beach--he looked as if he had been washing about in the water, and the bamboos of the rigging were smashed to pieces." "All right," said Lim Ho superciliously, "we shall hear all about that presently." As he entered the hut, he did not deign so much as to cast a look at Ardjan; but abruptly asked him: "What made you run away?" "I was homesick," was the reply, "I was heartily sick of the ship and wanted to get back to the 'dessa.'" "Indeed!" sneered Lim Ho. "And that was the reason, I suppose, why you took Dalima with you?" Ardjan kept silence; Liem King and Than Khan were growing as pale as death. "Where was the girl drowned?" suddenly asked Lim Ho. "Drowned," shouted Ardjan, "you say drowned. Have they drowned her, then?" "Have they drowned her?" said Lim Ho in a mocking tone of voice. "Was not the 'djoekoeng' upset when the pair of you tried to run away in her? Where did that take place? perhaps Dalima may somehow have been able to get out." "Able to get out," repeated Ardjan. "But the 'djoekoeng' did not turn over at all," he exclaimed. "We both of us got ashore. She was terribly frightened at the storm to be sure, but quite unhurt, and I was completely exhausted with rowing." "But," roared Lim Ho, "what has become of her, then?" "That, I cannot tell you," replied Ardjan, "you must ask Liem King and Than Khan." These two worthies stood trembling with apprehension. "Did you fellows hear that?" shouted Lim Ho in a towering passion. "Did you hear that? I am waiting for you--what is your answer?" "I do not know what has become of the girl," stammered Than Khan. "She has, very likely, been devoured by a crocodile, for all I know," added Liem King. "Did she get to land? Yes or no?" roared Lim Ho, while in his impatience he stamped about the little hut, shaking it to its foundations. "She did," replied Ardjan. "Those two scoundrels first tied me up, and then they bound Dalima's arms and legs. They brought me in here, and after that they went out in quest of Dalima. But all I know is they came back without her." Lim Ho's piercing eyes were watching the two Chinamen as Ardjan was speaking. "I have no doubt," Liem King again ventured to say, "that some crocodile has carried her off." "Or maybe," said Than Khan, "a tiger has got hold of her." Lim Ho applied a small whistle to his lips. He blew a shrill piercing note, and at the summons one of the Javanese crew at once presented himself at the door of the hut. "Call your mates," ordered Lim Ho. In an instant the whole boat's crew was present. "Tie me up those scoundrels," cried Lim Ho, "make them fast," he said, as he pointed to Liem King and Than Khan. "Tie them up, and securely too, do you hear me!" The men readily obeyed, it was the work of an instant. Nothing in this world gave these fellows greater delight than to be allowed to lay their hands upon a Chinaman. They set to work as roughly, as brutally as they could. The knots were tied and they hauled upon the ropes with a will. The wretched victims groaned with the pain. Oh! if ever it should come to an outbreak, then woe to the Celestials in Java, they would find but little mercy. Who knows--were such a catastrophe to take place they might not be the only race to suffer. There are others who might get into trouble too! When both the Chinese spies were firmly secured, Lim Ho called to his men. "Now, my lads, now for a hunt! A girl--little Dalima--has escaped from us and we must get her back. Five hundred 'ringgiets' six dollars to the man who finds her and brings her in!" With a ringing cheer the boat's crew dashed from the hut. When they had left, Lim Ho ordered one of his followers to hand him his pipe. He filled the small bowl with the slender bamboo stem with extremely fine-cut tobacco, then he lit the pipe and began to blow the smoke from his nostrils. Thereupon he took a seat on the only chair the hut contained. It was a rough and clumsy piece of furniture, cut out of the wood with a clasp-knife. The other Chinamen sat down cross-legged on the floor, while their captain once again turned to Ardjan. "Come now," said he, "just you tell us how you managed to get Dalima out of the Kiem Ping Hin. You knew well enough, did you not, that I wanted the girl? But, look you, no lies! No lies, mind you! Your life is in my hands; you are aware of that, I hope." Ardjan could but utter a deep sigh. He begged that his hands might be slackened if but a little. "To be trussed up like this," said he, "is unbearable torture." "No, no," laughed Lim Ho. "First let us hear what you have to say, then we shall see what we can do for you." Nevertheless he gave the order to remove the bamboo cane which had so long tortured the poor Javanese, and as soon as that was removed the Chinaman said: "Now, speak up, I am listening to you!" "You are aware," began Ardjan, "that I am mate on board the Kiem Ping Hin. Yesterday afternoon we were lying at anchor behind Poeloe Kalajan which is not far from Santjoemeh, when a 'djoekoeng' rowed up to us in which a couple of your countrymen were seated. At first I thought that they came alongside to take off some of the smuggled opium with which the schooner is partly loaded. I, therefore, threw them a rope and helped them up the ship's side. But, instead of coming to fetch anything off, they brought something aboard with them. It was a heavy sack which they carefully hoisted on deck, and which had something of the appearance of a human form. However, that was no business of mine, it was not the first time that I had seen that kind of thing going on. I even lent a hand at carrying the load into the captain's cabin, and I laughed and joked with the Chinamen at the fun Awal Boep Said was going to have. "When, shortly after, the captain came on board, I told him of the bit of good luck that had befallen him, and I fancied he would be mightily pleased. Not a bit of it, instead of at once rushing down into his cabin, he quietly remained on deck, simply ordering me to keep a sharp look out as he was expecting some friends. And, true enough, a few hours later you, Lim Ho, came on board with two of your followers. You reached the schooner just in time. Night was rapidly falling, and a north-westerly storm was blowing up. No sooner were you aboard than it began to blow furiously. The moment I saw you, an unpleasant feeling came over me, and quite involuntarily my thoughts at once flew to the sack which I had helped to get aboard, and which then was lying on the bed in the cabin. I longed to get away down below to have a look; but the captain, who was watching the storm that was brewing, ordered the men to the braces and had a second anchor brought out. I had, of course, to take my share of duty and could not leave the deck. "When, an hour or so after, I got to the cabin, I found you there stretched out on a couch. You were hard at it smoking opium, your pipe was in your hand, and with evident satisfaction you were swallowing down the smoke.-- "I knew well enough what all this meant. A man whose senses are dulled and deadened by habitual excess, must find something to rouse him. I knew that you had some little pigeon in your clutches, and that you were seeking to recruit by opium your exhausted powers. Your object was to get the greatest possible amount of enjoyment out of your victim--You know the properties of opium, and how to make use of it. "Now all this did not concern me, I merely chuckled--I thought, that's a common thing enough! I remember a hadji telling me that opium is a gift of Ngahebi Mohammed, and the ever-blessed in Paradise use it to renew their strength and thus are for ever beloved by the houris. "But yet, I could not get rid of that strange feeling that told me all was not well. I could not get rid of my anxious curiosity. Dalima has long ago been promised to me by her parents. She is to be my wife as soon as I can get together a few more 'ringgiets' which will enable me to purchase a yoke of oxen. The day on which I can get them together, is to be my wedding-day. "But Lim Ho," and at these words the voice of the Javanese began to hiss and assume an almost threatening tone, "but Lim Ho, I know also that you covet the maiden,--I know what treasures you have offered her--I know what sums you have offered her parents as the price of her virtue, and of her innocence. "I made up my mind--I must see who was there in the cabin.--Oh! I had not, at that time, the least suspicion that it was Dalima! She had rejected all your advances with the utmost contempt. Her father had even threatened to kreese you. How could the 'baboe' of the Ioean Resident have come into your power?--You see it was impossible!" "Yes, yes, as you say it was quite impossible," said Lim Ho with a grin, excited by the story of Ardjan. "I say, Ong Kwat, just tell us how the girl came into your hands!" "No need of that," resumed Ardjan, "I know all about it. Dalima told me the whole story in the 'djoekoeng.' Yesterday she was out for a walk with her master's youngest child in the lane behind the Residence. The boy in his play, flung his ball into a ditch by the side of the road. A Chinaman happened to be passing at the time and Dalima requested him to fetch the toy out of the water. He did so at her request; but instead of returning the ball to the child he pitched it as far as he could into the garden. The boy ran off eagerly to fetch it, and Dalima was looking after the child, when suddenly the Chinaman flung himself upon her, gagged her, and before she could utter a single cry threw a sack over her head. Thus muffled he dragged her to the end of the lane, and put her into a 'djoekoeng' which was lying in the ditch. The boat at once put off, and in an hour's time was alongside the Kiem Ping Hin." "Just so!" exclaimed Lim Ho. "Now, Ong Kwat, is not that just about how you managed it?" The man thus addressed grinned, nodded his head and added, "Yes, master, for four whole days I had been on the prowl for that catch." "Now, Ardjan," resumed Lim Ho, "you may go on again; but mind you, no lies." The Javanese continued: "As I entered the cabin I gave a hasty look round. You, Lim Ho, were partially unconscious, still smoking opium. You had not got to that stage when the drug excites the passions to madness. Your attendant was intent upon kneading the 'mandat' balls. There was no one in the cabin but you two, so I ventured to creep in, and, by the light of the lamp that was burning there, I saw--Dalima. "With one bound I was at her side, in an instant I had severed the ropes which tied her, and in another moment I had dragged her out of the cabin. Thereupon I flew forward, got some clothes which I happened to have by me, and in a few seconds was back again with them. Dalima slipped them on, and thus partially disguised I hid her under a heap of sails which happened to be lying in the stern. "Meanwhile the storm was raging in all its fury, and I have no doubt that it was chiefly owing to the noise of the wind that we had been able to get clear of the cabin unperceived. Captain Awal Boep Said, like a good Mussulman, was telling his beads, and from time to time uttered an 'Allah achbar' (God is great), or a 'Bismillah' (God be praised). The other men were all taking shelter in the forecastle, and your servants were lying sea-sick in their bunks. "Of these favourable circumstances I made the best use I could. The 'djoekoeng,' in which Dalima had come alongside, was still lying there dancing on the waves. I took hold of the painter and drew the boat up to the side. The girl slid down into her along a rope which was hanging over the ship's side. I followed her, seized upon a paddle and then I cast her adrift, and the storm soon drove us far from the Kiem Ping Hin. "I was in hopes that I might succeed in reaching that part of the beach which lies nearest to the Resident's house; but when the 'djoekoeng' got under the Poeloe Kalajan the wind got hold of her and we had to drift at the mercy of the waves. "Then I managed to set the wings which were lying in the bottom of the boat. Without them we must certainly have capsized and been drowned. I kept on rowing with all my might; for I knew that once we were driven past the cape there would be an end of us. At length--at length--I managed to struggle through the breakers. One more effort and we were safe at the Moeara Tjatjing! The moment danger was over I fell down utterly exhausted, and, before I had time to recover Than Khan and Liem King had discovered us. They pinioned us both, Dalima and me. Me they carried off to this hut; what has become of the girl I don't know. I have not seen or heard of her since. Now then, Lim Ho," said he in conclusion, "that is the whole truth." For a short time silence was preserved, Lim Ho seemed to reflect on what he had heard, and no one in the hut ventured to disturb his reflections. At length he spoke, turning to Than Khan and Liem King, and said: "Well, what have you to say to all that?" Neither of them answered a word. "Do you intend to answer, yes or no?" roared Lim Ho in a furious passion, as he dealt Than Khan, who lay bound on the floor, a heavy kick in the side. "The Javanese lies," cried the Chinaman, writhing with pain. "We have seen nothing of the girl!" "He probably got her off into the woods," added Liem King, "before we came up." "I would gladly have given my life for Dalima," cried Ardjan, "but I was lying on the beach utterly prostrate; I could not defend her, sir, I could not defend myself. I am telling you the truth. These two scoundrels must know what they have done with her!" Lim Ho muttered a few words to himself and appeared to be thinking what he would do next, when voices were heard outside the hut, the voices of the boat's crew who had been hunting for Dalima, and were now returning with the tidings that their search had been fruitless, and that they had nowhere been able to find the girl. Ardjan's face gleamed with satisfaction as he heard it, and he at once grew calmer. "Unless," said one of the Javanese boatmen, holding up a coil of rope, "you call this a trace of her. I found this close by the spot where we landed." Lim Ho fixed his eye upon the two wretched spies. They held their peace, that silent proof effectually closed their mouths. "These are," said Ardjan, in a much quieter tone of voice than that in which he had spoken before, "these are the cords with which they bound Dalima's wrists and ankles. I recognise them perfectly." Lim Ho hereupon uttered but two words; but they were words which caused Ardjan and Liem King and Than Khan to shudder with terror. In most abject terms they prayed for mercy. But Lim Ho remained deaf to all their entreaties, he scarcely deigned to cast a look at them; but now and then in his cold rage he would deal a savage kick at the body of one or the other of the prostrate Chinamen. In a few abrupt words he gave his orders to the Javanese crew. Whatever his commands might be, his men were but too ready to carry them out. A couple of them at once left the hut while the others set Ardjan and the two Chinamen upon their legs and prepared to take them out of the cabin. "Oh, sir, have pity, have mercy upon us!" Than Khan exclaimed in truly piteous accents. "Where is Dalima?" was the furious rejoinder. "We don't know where she is!" cried both the Chinamen. "And you!" shouted Lim Ho turning to Ardjan; "do you know what has become of her?" "I know nothing about it," was the reply. "I think that most probably she may have got back to the Residence." "Have mercy, have mercy!" shrieked Liem King. "What? mercy on such brutes as you?" scornfully said Lim Ho. "But," they asked; "what harm have we done?" "I will tell you what you have done," sneered Lim Ho. "You have had Dalima in your power and you have been pleased to let her go. That's what you have done and you shall suffer for it. And you!" he hissed out in fury, as he turned to Ardjan, "you have dared to carry the girl away. Oh, you shall pay for it!" "But she is my bride," pleaded the wretched man. "Your bride, indeed," said Lim Ho with concentrated rage. "Your bride? Do you think a pretty girl like Dalima is destined to be the bride of a Javanese dog like you? But it was last night that you carried her off from the Kiem Ping Hin. Might you perhaps in that 'djoekoeng'--" A disgusting leer of disappointed passion passed over the features of Lim Ho as he uttered the half finished question. "No, no, by Allah!" fiercely exclaimed the Javanese. "Dalima is as pure as the white flower of which she bears the name. But," added he in a calmer mood, "you know better than that. You know that in such weather as we had last night I had very little time for trifling and love-making." "That's lucky for you," cried Lim Ho; "had you so much as touched her too freely I would this very moment drive my kreese into you. As it is, I will simply punish you for having run away. I will consent to forget that Dalima is anything to you. But," he added with an odious smile, "you seem to forget that the matter is somewhat serious for you. You ran away, remember, to give the coastguard notice of the arrival and of the movements of the Kiem Ping Hin--" "That is not true," hastily interrupted Ardjan. "That, you see, amounts to treachery--treachery to the Company," continued Lim Ho without taking the slightest notice of Ardjan's indignant denial. "It's a serious matter as you know." "I tell you it is all a lie," cried the wretched Javanese, driven to despair by the other's manner. "It is all a lie. I ran away to save Dalima from your filthy clutches; you may drive your dagger into me for that, but I am no traitor." "I tell you again," replied Lim Ho with perfect calmness, "that your intention was to betray the secrets of the Company. You know the laws of the Company, do you not? I will therefore give you the same punishment as to those two scoundrels. I will then have you put on board the Kiem Ping Hin; not as her mate; oh, no, but simply as a slave; and you will be put ashore at Poeloe Bali and there you will have to remain on pain of death. You will remain there, I say, as long as ever the Company shall see fit." "Oh no!" wildly cried Ardjan, "not that, anything but that; rather kill me at once. I have not played the spy; I am no traitor. I will not, I cannot live away from Dalima!" The face of Lim Ho plainly showed the bitter hatred he felt towards his rival--a hatred the more intense because he knew that Ardjan possessed the fair young girl's heart. He did not, however, vouchsafe any further reply; but gave a sign to the boatmen. With blows and kicks they drove the prisoners before them down the rough steps. They revelled in the brutality which they were allowed to show to these unhappy wretches. With their hands tightly bound behind their backs the three were half driven, half pushed down, and being quite unable to steady themselves they tumbled down into the filthy mud beneath and grovelled there amidst the shouts of laughter of their tormentors until they were again roughly put on their feet. Lim Ho and his pig-tailed companions heartily joined in the merriment and thus encouraged the rough sailors in their unmerciful handling of the miserable captives. CHAPTER III. HOEKOEM KAMADOOG--THE VAN GULPENDAM FAMILY. Nothing could be more strange, and indeed awful, than the contrast between the fair face of nature and the hideous cruelty which man was about to perpetrate on that little sequestered spot on the north coast of Java. The storm which had been raging furiously during the night had now fallen to a fresh yet warm breeze. The leaves of the singular forest of mangrove were softly rustling in the wind, and the waves, which a few hours ago were madly dashing on the shore, now were quietly running up the beach with pleasant and melodious murmurs. Indeed, the prospect from the hut over the little bay of the Moeara Tjatjing, enclosed by its two headlands, was picturesque in the extreme. Under the bright beams of the early morning sun, the intense blue of the sea was glittering with indescribable purity and brilliancy, the surface of the ocean was still heaving, the waves still were following each other as in pursuit, here and there a breaker might still be seen topped by a snow-white cap of foam; but there was nothing angry in the scene. The bosom of Amphitrite still heaved, but all fierce and angry passions seemed to have died away. At some little distance from the land the schooner Kiem Ping Hin was dancing on the water, rising and falling gracefully, while the British ensign floated at the peak. Just in front of the hut, in which took place the stormy scenes we have described in the former chapters, and close by the small group of "Saoe" trees we have mentioned, there stood a clump of "Niboeng" palms. Straight and smooth as candles were their stems, and high up in the air their feathery tops were waving to the breeze. On all sides, excepting on that of the sea, the mangrove wood, with its maze of tangled roots, surrounded the hut as with an impenetrable wall. The bay to which Lim Ho and his attendants had dragged their unhappy prisoners was thus perfectly lonely, closely screened from every human eye. As soon as they had arrived at the spot, Lim Ho made a signal to his men. In an instant the prisoners had their clothes torn from their bodies, and stark naked they were firmly lashed to the smooth stems of three palm trees. The ropes, which had already served to confine the limbs of Dalima, now were used to tie Ardjan and the two Chinese spies to the trunks of these trees, which, to them, were to become stakes at which they were destined to endure the most excruciating agony. The victims knew well what was in store for them, and kept anxiously looking round to see what would happen; their eyes, however, glaring around with wild terror, could not, at once, discover what they sought, and what they were every moment dreading to see. Although the tropical sun was burning down on their backs, yet they were trembling in every limb, as if shivering with cold; their hands were fastened high up above their heads, and the ropes were passed round their loins and knee-joints. Thus they could not make the slightest movement without extreme pain, for the ropes being plaited of "Iemoetoe" were hard, rough, and prickly. Suddenly Than Khan uttered a startled cry, he had been anxiously looking round, and he now saw a couple of sailors coming up from the wood, each carefully bearing a bundle of leaves. The wretched man knew at a glance that the hour of torture was at hand. The leaves which the sailors bore well deserve description. They were broad and heart-shaped, and were attached to twigs resembling brushwood. The edges of the leaves were roughly jagged like the teeth of a saw, and their upper and under surfaces were covered with white hairy down. They were leaves of the "Kamadoog," the devil thistle, the most terrible plant perhaps which the earth produces. With infinite precaution--a precaution which needs no explanation--the Javanese sailors made, of these leafy twigs, three broom-like scourges, around the handles of which they carefully wrapped some grass and bits of rag. When he saw his men thus armed, Lim Ho gave the signal to begin. Three sailors stepped up to the victims, and with the twigs began to strike their backs, their loins, their thighs, and the calves of their legs. Then was enacted a hideous, but most curious scene. It was not, properly speaking, any scourging at all, the blows which they inflicted were as light as possible; they rather flipped or stroked the flesh of their victims, and it looked as if they were engaged in simply driving away insects or troublesome flies from the naked bodies. Now and then, one or other of them would give a somewhat harder flip, as if some obstinate fly refused to be dislodged from the spot. But the features of the unfortunate wretches, who were suffering this apparently playful scourging, were in horrible contrast with the seeming gentleness of the treatment. The faces of Ardjan and of his companions in misfortune were actually distorted with terror, their eyes were starting from the sockets. Wherever those dreadful leaves lightly fell on the skin, the body at once shrunk away in pain, the limbs began to quiver, the muscles began to work up and to stiffen in knots, as if drawn together by violent cramp. But still that gentle flicking and stroking went on. The sufferers began to writhe and twist about their bodies in intolerable anguish. Still the heartless executioners went on with their hideous task. The miserable victims panted for breath, a low, most pitiful moaning escaped from their lips; they gnashed their teeth with agony, they bit their lips until the blood came; but all to no purpose--nothing could bring them relief. "Have mercy, sir," they moaned with the piteous wail of a dying child. But Lim Ho had no mercy to show his wretched victims, he waved his hand to the executioners, who, at that sign, entirely changed their mode of operation, and now the gentle fanning was replaced by a severe downright flogging. The blows, laid on with the full strength of the sailors, rained down upon the bare bodies of the tortured wretches, their skin resounded under the pattering of the leaves, which, less barbarous than the men who wielded them, began to tear and fly from their stems. As soon as that flogging commenced, the prisoners no longer moaned, they roared, they yelled, they howled with anguish. It was the cry of a wild beast wounded to death, which gathers up its remaining strength for one dying roar. The limbs of the miserable men now not only shrank and writhed; but with the convulsive energy which only such extremity of torture could lend, they clasped with their legs the smooth trunks of the trees, they seemed to try and sink into them and bury themselves in the wood. It was an awful spectacle, and yet, strange to say, no wounds could be seen, no contusions, no livid spots even; nothing at all in fact to account for such unheard-of suffering. The skin only looked somewhat puffy, somewhat red and inflamed, and covered with very small blisters. The wounds which the bodies of the victims bore were serious enough, it is true; but they had nothing to do with the leaves of the terrible nettle. In their almost superhuman efforts to burst their bonds, and in their frantic contortions, the sufferers had forced the ropes into the flesh, and here and there the strands had cut their way to the bone, so that streams of blood were pouring along their arms, along their thighs and loins, and were forming broad red spots on the soft slippery soil. That anguish must have been acute enough in itself; but it was nothing compared to the torture occasioned by the leaves of the devil-thistle. At length the instruments of torture had become well nigh stripped, there was left in fact only the bare twigs, on which here and there a few tattered leaves were still dangling, the poisonous leaves lay scattered in all directions, faded, torn, and shapeless about the feet of the sufferers. But, even then, Lim Ho did not think of causing the torture to cease, he seemed to be bent on utterly destroying his victims. He ordered the men to stop for a few moments. It was not because he felt any pity. Not at all, he merely caused the half dead bodies to be sprinkled with salt water, which, if possible, augmented the torments they endured. The monster was, in fact, on the point of resuming his inhuman flogging, when suddenly a cry was raised, "The police, the police!" In furious haste Lim Ho and his assistants flew up to the tortured Chinamen. In a moment they had severed the cords which bound them to the trees, and the next instant they were dragging the wretches who were curling and twisting in their agony along the rough path which led to the landing-place where their boat lay moored. Two of Lim Ho's men would have performed the same office for Ardjan, but the shouts of the rescuing party became louder every instant, the men were stricken with panic, took to their heels, and with all speed rejoined their retreating comrades. They got to the boat just in time, for they had no sooner got into her, before five or six policemen led on by Dalima and closely followed by a crowd of people came to the spot. "Allah," exclaimed the young girl as she caught sight of Ardjan, who was still tied up to the tree, moaning with pain, and whose almost lifeless body was hanging like a sack in the somewhat slackened ropes; "Allah, what in the world have they done to him!" In a moment the unfortunate man was surrounded, his bonds were severed, and he was laid down gently on a mat which somebody had run to fetch from the little watch-house. But he could not utter a word. He yelled with pain, and rolled about on the ground writhing like a crushed worm. "Oh, my God!" he moaned most piteously, "I am in pain! in pain!" "Where is the pain?" cried Dalima, as she sat crouching down beside him. "It is the kamadoog," the sufferer managed to say between his sobs of anguish. "The kamadoog!" cried the bystanders in horror. It was plain enough now. One of the spectators had taken up a few torn leaves, and at once recognised the terrible nettle. Every man in the crowd turned pale with horror. And truly the kamadoog is a dreadful plant. The slightest contact with its formidable leaves occasions a violent itching, painful as a severe burn; and, when used as an instrument of torture, it causes the most intolerable suffering, for at least seven days; it makes the limbs stiffen, and produces a burning fever, which not unfrequently ends in the most painful death. "Has anyone here any 'sirihkalk?'" (chalk made of sea-shells) cried Dalima. Some few of the bystanders had with them the "sirih," which they are fond of chewing. They unwrapped the sirih-leaf in which were the pinang-nut, the chalk, and the tobacco, which form this highly-prized chew, and gave the chalk to the girl, who hastened to anoint the sufferer with the paste-like alkali. But, unfortunately, so great was the surface which had been exposed to the stroke of the hairy leaves, that the supply of "sirih-chalk" was altogether inadequate, and only a very small portion of the blisters could be treated with the remedy. Dalima was in despair. There was nothing else for it but to carry Ardjan into the hut, which afforded a shelter from the burning sun. Then some of the men hurried away to fetch a supply of oil and chalk, which they hoped would mitigate the pain, and check the fever. By evening, if all were well, Ardjan might perhaps have so far recovered as to bear the fatigue of being moved to more convenient quarters. While these remedies were being applied to poor Ardjan, the boat in which Lim Ho had put off, was being rowed past the djaga monjet, and was getting out of the little bay. The policemen stood on the shore calling to the crew to come back; but no one took the slightest notice of their summons, and, as they had no firearms with them to enforce obedience, the only reply they got was a derisive cheer, and a shout of defiance. As he rowed by the djaga monjet, Lim Ho had plainly recognised Dalima, who, actively employed in assisting her tortured lover, was running about, in and out, here and there. The sight of her literally maddened the brutal Chinaman; he was on the point of ordering his boat's crew to return and row to land. But, in another instant, he came to himself, and recovered his reason. It would indeed have been the act of a madman to try and carry off the girl just then. He knew that he could place great dependence upon the power of his gold; but yet, in full daylight, in the very face of all those people, he felt he could hardly try its influence upon the native police. So he could only shake his fist in impotent rage, and the word to return remained unspoken. The boat swiftly glided out of the Moeara Tjatjing, and at once made for the Kiem Ping Hin, which was already loosening her sails, and waiting impatiently for the return of her boat's crew. As they mounted the deck, Captain Awal Boep Said came up to report to Lim Ho that the smoke of a steamer could just be seen on the horizon. "Probably," he added, "it is the Matamata, she was here yesterday." "Those white blockheads," muttered Lim Ho, with a scornful laugh. "At night they have their coloured lights up, and we can tell them miles away. By day they take care to send up a cloud of smoke which no one can mistake. I will bet they have not discovered us yet, while we have had our eye on her ever so long ago." "It is the guard-ship, sir, likely enough. What are your orders?" said the captain. "The wind has risen somewhat with the sun," replied Lim Ho. "Set sail at once, and steer for Bali." A quarter of an hour later, the Kiem Ping Hin was gracefully heeling over to the freshening breeze, and, under full sail, was flying to the eastward. When, much later on, the Matamata came to the Moeara Tjatjing, the smuggler, an excellent sailing craft, was on the horizon; she was nothing more than a faint white speck on the deep blue sea. The clumsy old guard-ship, which, under favourable circumstances, could not make more than six knots, and might perhaps do eight knots under extra pressure, had not the smallest chance of overtaking the rakish schooner, running eleven knots before the breeze. In less than an hour, the vessels were out of sight of one another altogether. Meanwhile, what had befallen Dalima that she thus managed to come up at the right moment of time to rescue Ardjan from compulsory exile? As soon as she had succeeded in gnawing through the rope which tied her wrists, no very difficult task for her sharp white teeth--she plucked asunder the knots by which her feet were confined. That did not take long, and with a gesture of contempt she flung the cords aside and was hastening from the spot. For a moment or two, however, she stood still, considering whether she ought not to go straight to the djaga monjet, perhaps she might be of some service to Ardjan. At that moment, however, she caught the voices of the two Chinamen who were coming down the pathway in quest of her. This at once brought her to a decision and thoroughly terrified she ran off at the top of her speed in the opposite direction. As she was speeding along she made up her mind to go straight to her mistress and implore her aid. But, the question was, would she listen to her story, would she help her? Well, if she would not, then she would go to the Resident, he surely could not refuse to hear her. Thus, like a hunted roe she flew along, the thick forest had no terrors for her, she was a true child of Nature and knew her road well, and so, in a few seconds, she had disappeared among the tangled roots of the mangrove. It was in the early morning that she reached the grounds of the house. The first thing she saw under the half open verandah or "pandoppo" was the Resident's daughter. Her young mistress was quite alone, she was lying back in a comfortable rocking-chair and was reading a book in which she seemed wholly absorbed. So Dalima glided very softly into the pandoppo and, without making the least sound, with a graceful motion seated herself cross-legged on the floor close to the maiden who continued gently rocking herself as she read. "Nana," said Dalima in the softest whisper which sounded like a gentle sigh, "Nana!" At the sound the young girl gave a sudden start, she dropped her book and springing up from her seat, "Siapa ada?" (who is there) she cried half in terror, half in surprise. The daughter of the Resident stood there for a few moments in the rays of the early sun, a perfect picture of loveliness. Her forehead of the purest ivory-white was surrounded by a rich mass of glossy dark-brown curls, her nose and chin might have served as models to a sculptor. But, though the features were faultlessly regular, the whole face was full of animation and of life. The lips of the rosiest red and of exquisite form resembled a freshly opened rosebud, the cheeks were tinged with the glow of health and the large deep-brown eyes were full of tenderness and plainly spoke of a gentle and loving disposition within. The neck and bust of the young girl were modestly veiled under the folds of a tastefully arranged "Kabaja" which, however, could not hide the well-filled and perfectly rounded form it strove to conceal. "Who is there?" she had cried as startled she had sprung up from her chair. "It is I, Nana," whispered Dalima in a scarcely audible voice. The fair young girl, whom we have tried faintly to depict to the reader, was called Anna. In ordinary conversation the servants usually addressed her as "Nonna" (Miss). But Dalima, either by reason of her youth or it may be because she was shy and gentle of nature, was Anna's special favourite and enjoyed certain privileges with her young mistress over the other servants; she was indeed looked upon in the light of a companion, and so she always used to call her "Nonna Anna" which was first contracted into "Nonanna," and then became simply "Nana." Thus the reader will perceive that the name "Nana" has nothing whatever in common with Zola's disgusting production, nor yet with the inhuman monster who made himself so sadly notorious at Cawnpore. At the words "It is I, Nana," Anna looked down and no sooner saw Dalima seated at her feet than she recovered from her scare. She offered to raise the maiden who, however, maintained her position on the floor of the verandah. "You here, Dalima," cried she; "where in the world have you been? Mamma is dreadfully angry with you. Where have you come from?" "Nana," she replied, "I have been carried off!" "By whom?" asked Anna. "By some of Lim Ho's men," said Dalima. "Lim Ho?" cried Anna now really frightened, "Lim Ho? What, have you been in his power?" "Yes I have," said the young girl. "What, all night?" "No," replied Dalima, "No, not all night; Allah has been my protection and--" "So, so! That gadabout has come home at last, has she?" cried a voice which caused both the girls to start with terror. It was Anna's mother, who just then came into the pandoppo without having been noticed either by her daughter or by Dalima. She came straight from her bathroom as was evident from the rich black hair which flowed waving down her back, and had completely wetted the kabaja she wore, while she had covered her neck and shoulders with a bathing-towel of the finest material. Bending her head backwards she drew the towel from under her hair and handed it to the nènèh (old Javanese woman) who followed her, with the order to go and dry it immediately. Madam Laurentia van Gulpendam, whose maiden name was Termolen, was a stately matron, fully thirty-five years of age, and was still extremely beautiful. Years and maternity had not made much impression upon her charms. She had but one child, Anna, and fearing that the natural duties of a mother might impair her beauty, she had confided her daughter to the care of a nurse. In spite, however, of all precautions, the influence of time was now beginning to make itself felt, and though it could not be denied that Laurentia carried the load of years proudly enough, yet lately she had found the necessity of bringing certain powders and certain mysterious toilette-confections into requisition, to help out the somewhat fading complexion and (to use an elegant expression of her husband who had had something to do with the sea, and was always interlarding his conversation with nautical terms) to caulk here and there an indiscreet, and too obtrusive wrinkle. Here and there also a silver thread might have been detected among the wealth of jet-black hair, had not the Nènèh Wong Toewâ, been anxiously watchful, and at its very first appearance plucked out the traitor. The finely formed lips also had begun to lose somewhat of their bright carnation; and the corners of the mouth were beginning to droop. But for these tokens of advancing age also, the nènèh was on the watch. For preserving the mouth she had a sourish kind of fluid prepared from the red ant which she used as "vinaigre de toilette," and for the wrinkles she had an ointment made of the fat of lizards, in which when boiling hot sundry scorpions and centipedes had met a painful death. But Nènèh Wong Toewâ was moreover an old, experienced doctoress, and she had many other wonderful secrets in her possession which she placed at the disposal of her mistress; and if the stately Laurentia still kept her lawful lord and master enthralled by her charms,--if the world around was still bound to confess that she was a fine woman,--if her waist, her shoulders, her bosom did still, in a ball-room, attract the greedy, admiring eyes of the men, and awakened envy among the ladies--then to Wong Toewâ a great share of these much coveted honours was due, and often from behind a screen the old crone would stand unobserved and enjoy the triumph of her mistress, and delight in the homage which followed her wherever she went. Laurentia Termolen was the daughter of a former resident, and was an exceedingly handsome and agreeable girl when, at the tender age of sixteen, she became the wife of Mr. van Gulpendam who, at that time, was controller of the Home Department, and her father's right hand. Though born in India she was of European parents, both on the mother's and father's side: and she had had the advantage of an excellent education, that is to say, large sums of money had been lavishly spent upon her. She had had the very best masters in language, in music, in dancing, &c., she had even been sent to Holland to receive the finishing touches. Now, under ordinary circumstances, she might--nay she would have developed into an excellent woman; but unfortunately for her, these ordinary and favourable circumstances were wanting. For both papa and mamma were people of inordinate ambition, and had, moreover, or perhaps in consequence of that ambition, one ruling passion, the love of display. They wanted to make a great figure in their little world, and to keep up an immense amount of outward show. But all this cost money, much money, very much money, and the means whereby they sought to obtain the necessary dross, were not always such as would bear honest scrutiny. From her earliest childhood, Laurentia had heard snatches of conversation, later on she had been present at incidents, and had witnessed family quarrels, in which dishonesty and prodigality strove for the mastery. Thus her young mind had, of necessity, been poisoned, and germs of corruption had been planted within her which were sure to bring forth the most lamentable results. If now, in Holland, she had but fallen into good hands, all this might, to a great extent at least, have been remedied, and the poisonous germs within her might perhaps have been stifled or their growth might have been checked. But hers had been the case of so many Indian-born children. She had always been looked upon as an object of financial speculation, she had always been considered as a kind of gold mine which her parents intended thoroughly to work and make the most of. Thus a mere outward veneer of good manners and a mare "jargon de bon ton" were thought amply sufficient; and of true education and moral development there had, with her, never been any question at all. Now, had but van Gulpendam been the right man for it, he might even at the time of their marriage have made a total change in the disposition of the young girl entrusted to his care. But van Gulpendam was a man who had gone to India merely to make his fortune, and had but one object, namely, to return as soon as possible, and especially as rich as possible, to his own country. He was therefore the very last man to set an example of honesty and purity, and his intimacy with the Termolens had done nothing to counteract the evil that was in him. Money-making was his only passion, and his union with fair Laurentia had only served to make that sordid principle strike deeper roots into his heart. After her marriage Laurentia's duty was to follow her husband, who took good care to obtain from his father-in-law none but places in the interior and most remote parts of the island. Thus he had become controller at Brandowo; after that, Assistant Resident at Bandjar Oetara; both of these places where hardly a single European could be found, and where consequently no one could watch the dodges and tricks of the official household. How he had managed to be on the most excellent terms with the Regent who exacted taxes in kind, and at the same time also had the most cordial relations with the representatives of the opium farmers, who found it necessary to throw dust into the eyes of the Dutch authorities; and how she had lent out money to the natives on the most exorbitant interest for which she did not scruple to take, as securities, valuable articles such as jewels and heirlooms, all these dirty transactions had remained a profound secret and had not prevented van Gulpendam from rising to the position of full Resident. This long isolation had, moreover, the most pernicious effect upon his grasping character, and upon the no less ambitious disposition of his young wife. By continual contact with none but inferiors who bowed down to them to the very ground, the bearing of Laurentia had grown to be intolerably arrogant. She had become imperious woman personified, and this grave blemish in her character was so entirely in harmony with her outward appearance, that when she had to appear in public on official occasions in the full dignity of "Resident's wife" she might have served as model for a Juno. Such then was the mother of Anna van Gulpendam, as she suddenly stalked into the pandoppo and at the sight of Dalima straightway fired up and cried out: "So! has that slut come in again?" "Now then," she continued in her wrath, "tell me, you young monkey, where have you been? You have been out, I'll be bound, dragging about with that lover of yours!" "Pardon, madam!" cried the young girl. "I did not run away. I did not indeed!" "And you did not leave master Leo running about by himself in the garden?" "I was carried off, madam," said the young girl. "Carried off!" cried Mrs. van Gulpendam scornfully, "by whom, pray?" "By two strange Chinamen," replied Dalima. "How did that come to pass?" asked her mistress. Thereupon Dalima gave her mistress a detailed account of her forcible abduction by Ong Kwat, of which we have made mention above. We ought here to add that "sienjo Leo" just mentioned was the son of the Resident's brother, and that the boy had been staying for a considerable time at the residence, his father at that time having his home at Billiton. "And where did they take you to?" enquired Mrs. van Gulpendam. There was in her voice some little emotion, called forth no doubt by the young girl's graphic description. "They took me on board a big ship," said Dalima. "Whose ship was that?" "I don't know," replied Dalima. "I had not, however, been on board long before Lim Ho came--" "Lim Ho," cried Mrs. van Gulpendam now thoroughly roused!--"Lim Ho, the son of the rich opium farmer!" "That is the man," replied Dalima trembling as in utter confusion she still was crouching at the feet of her Nonna Anna. A very peculiar smile began to play upon Mrs. van Gulpendam's lips, and a very peculiar fire began to sparkle in her eyes. "Anna," said she to her daughter, "I wish you would just go and ask your father if he would like a cup of coffee, and, if he does, get it him; will you?" The young girl at once took the hint and disappeared. As soon as she was gone Laurentia in feverish haste and with heaving bosom turned to Dalima and said: "Well, what then?" Oh! poor Dalima understood that look so well, and little as she knew of the world she knew so well why the "nonna" had been sent away. She repressed her emotion however, and calmly enough she said: "Lim Ho went to smoke opium." "Of course, of course," said Laurentia, huskily, "of course he went to smoke opium, before--" It is utterly impossible to convey in words any idea of the expression on the face of Laurentia van Gulpendam as she allowed the word "before" to slip from her lips. Those wildly gleaming eyes, that projecting slightly quivering jaw, those half-open lips which allowed the breath to pass with a slightly hissing sound, and that full bosom heaving convulsively under the wet kabaja--all these were the visible signs of passion raging unrestrained within. That face betrayed the whole story, aye and even betrayed her regret that van Gulpendam did not smoke opium. "Well," she said at length, after having for a few moments stared at Dalima; "well, and what happened then?" "Nothing happened at all," was Dalima's quiet reply. "Nothing," cried Laurentia; "that's a lie! Lim Ho would have had you carried to his ship merely to--" "Before he had done smoking," hastily interposed Dalima, "I was rescued." "Rescued! rescued! By whom?" "By Ardjan," replied the girl, trembling more violently than before. "By Ardjan? by Ardjan?" shouted her mistress. "Oh! you filthy creature. Now I see it all. Of course you ran away from 'master Leo' to go and have a game with your Ardjan, and now you want to put it all upon Lim Ho. Wait a bit, I will-- "Gulpendam!" she shouted, "Gulpenda-a-m!" So shrill and so sharp sounded her voice as she thus called for her husband, that a couple of servants came rushing in thinking something terrible must have happened. "Call your master!" she cried to them. "Pardon, madam, pardon!" cried poor Dalima in wailing tones. "No, no," said her mistress, "no pardon for a creature like you." CHAPTER IV. THE PLOT THICKENS. Mr. van Gulpendam came rushing in. Stately and dignified as was the "Kandjeng toean Residèn" (High and mighty Lord Resident), yet when fair Laurentia called in that tone of voice he became briskness personified. A wicked world, indeed, whispered that on such occasions he dared not for his life be one whit less nimble. The resident was, like his fair spouse, in undress; he had on only a pair of pyjamas and a "Kabaja," and in this airy costume was seated in the outer fore-gallery of the spacious residence, engaged in leisurely sipping his coffee and enjoying his morning cigar, when the voice of his wife was heard re-echoing through the house: "Gulpendam, Gulpenda-am!" As if electrified, at the last long drawn-out syllable, van Gulpendam flew up out of his rocking-chair, and that with such violence and speed, that he drove the thing flying away several feet behind him. "Man, the umbrella, quickly!" he roared. Besides the habitual and constant use of nautical terms to which we have already alluded, van Gulpendam had another weakness; he would always insist upon having the emblem of his authority, the pajoeng, (umbrella) close by his side. In the very entrance of the official mansion four of these umbrellas were placed in a stand by the chair which the Lord Resident was wont to occupy. In his private office another pajoeng stood close by his writing desk; in his bedroom yet another was conspicuous at the head of the residential bed-stead. Thieves might break in during the night, such was his argument, and at the majesty of the mighty pajoeng would recoil in horror. To that argument Laurentia, imperious though she was, had had to bow, and had been forced to suffer the emblem of her lord's supremacy in the inmost sanctuary of her bed-chamber; but in the pandoppo where, in her capacity of mistress of the house, she was determined to rule supreme--no pajoeng was ever allowed to intrude. If the Resident wished to go out for a walk then it was always "Man, the umbrella!" and the umbrella and the cigar-case and the lighted slow match obediently followed his footsteps. Sometimes when the great man would cool his forehead in the breeze, the servant obsequiously carried the official gold-laced cap--reverently it was carried behind him as a priest might bear some holy relic. As van Gulpendam made his appearance in the pandoppo he was greeted with the words, somewhat sternly uttered: "What business has that pajoeng here? You know I won't have the thing in this place." And turning very sharply upon the unhappy attendant, Laurentia cried: "Back with you, away, quick!" and a single look from the master caused the man to disappear with his umbrella faster, indeed, than he had entered. "I say," said Mrs. van Gulpendam, addressing her husband, "Dalima has come back. I want you just to guess where that good-for-nothing creature has been to." "What is the use of my trying to guess?" replied the husband. "She has no doubt dropped anchor somewhere in the dessa." "In the dessa," scornfully exclaimed the lady, "oh, no doubt. Not a bit of it--she has been on the tramp with that Ardjan of her's." "Pardon, madam!" cried the poor girl, who understood Dutch quite well enough not to lose a syllable of her mistress's words. "And now," Laurentia went on, all in a breath, "now she has came home with quite a romantic tale. She pretends that she has been carried off, forsooth, by Lim Ho, and that she has passed the night in a ship. Just fancy that." At the name of Lim Ho, and at the mention of the word "ship," the Resident pricked his ears. The captain of the Matamata, the guardship, had sent in a report in which he had said that the Kiem Ping Hin had been cruising about the coast. That schooner-brig belonged to the opium farmer, who was shrewdly suspected of being in close league with the opium smugglers. Hence the attention of the Resident was so suddenly arrested. "What ship?" asked van Gulpendam, somewhat hastily. "How should I know what ship?" replied his wife. "You had better ask that wretched girl." "Pardon, madam!" cried Dalima, as she was still cowering in great terror on the floor of the pandoppo. "Come, Dalima," said van Gulpendam, with some kindness in his voice, "come now, my girl, just tell us what has really happened to you." "Allah, master, they have caught Ardjan. Have pity!" "They have caught Ardjan, you say," interrupted van Gulpendam, "who have caught him?" "Babah Than Khan and babah Liem King," replied the girl, weeping bitterly. "Oh ho," muttered her master to himself, and then turning to the girl again, he said, aloud, "Where did they lay hands on him?" "In the Moeara Tjatjing, toean," was the reply. "In the Moeara Tjatjing," said van Gulpendam, musingly; "what brought him there, I wonder?" "He had just escaped with me," sobbed Dalima. "That's it, now what did I tell you!" almost shrieked Laurentia. "From the ship," added poor Dalima, between her sobs. "Aye, no doubt!" cried her mistress. "Run away from this house. That is nearer the truth!" "For goodness sake," said the Resident, apart to his wife, "let the girl get under weigh, or else we shall never get to land," and turning to Dalima, he said: "Now come, first of all, let us hear how you got on board the ship." Thereupon, the poor girl, still seated cross-legged on the floor, began to tell her master all that had befallen her from the time of her forcible abduction out of his garden, to the moment that she had succeeded in gnawing through the ropes which bound her, and had taken to headlong flight. Just as the girl was beginning her tale, Anna had quietly re-entered the pandoppo, and thus heard the whole story. "Well," said the Resident, when Dalima had ended the story of her woes. "Well, that is a curious tale certainly; and now what about Ardjan--did you leave him behind you at the Moeara Tjatjing?" "Why, sir," replied Dalima, "he could not move, he was tied hand and foot when the two Chinamen carried him off on the pole. They could not, however, have taken him very far; for scarcely had I got my feet free, before I saw their lanterns shining between the trees, and heard their voices approaching. Had it been light enough they must have seen me running away, and most probably I should never have got clear of them at all." "Then you suppose Ardjan is still there?" asked her master, somewhat eagerly. "That I cannot say, toean," replied Dalima. "I overheard them saying to each other that they intended first to take Ardjan to the djaga monjet, and then come back and fetch me." "To the djaga monjet," hastily cried van Gulpendam. "Man! man!" "If I were you," said his wife, as bitterly as she could, "I would this time leave the pajoeng behind." But without taking the slightest notice of the amiable remark, the Resident turned to the servant, who had appeared at his call, and said: "Man, you will go at once with a couple of your mates to the Moeara Tjatjing. As you go you are to rouse the people of the neighbouring dessas, and take as many of them with you as you think you will require to help you, and then you will try and arrest Ardjan the Javanese. Baboe Dalima there will show you the way." "Oh, you believe the girl's story then?" contemptuously asked Laurentia. "Well, not all of it perhaps," replied her husband, "but anyhow it is of the utmost importance that the matter should be cleared up." And turning to his servant, he went on: "You carry out my orders to the letter; do you hear? And now go, and take Dalima with you." When both had disappeared, van Gulpendam said in a whisper to his wife: "At the bottom of all this mystery, depend upon it, there is some opium-scandal. Whenever Lim Ho's name is mixed up in anything, there is something going on that must not see the light; and--if my soundings are correct--then--the rich papa will have to pay the piper." These words the Resident accompanied with a most expressive gesture, moving his thumb and fore-finger as a man who is counting down money. Mrs. van Gulpendam tried to stop him by looking significantly at her daughter Anna. "Oh, come, come," laughed the husband, "she is no longer a baby. When you were her age you had seen a good deal more than that at your parents'. She must by degrees get to understand where all the housekeeping-money comes from." And drawing his daughter to him, he said to her, as he patted her smooth cheek, "I am right, Anna, am I not? When by-and-bye you are married, you will like to live in a fine house like this, you will like to have your jewels like your mother, you will want fine dresses, elegant carriages, the best and most thorough-bred horses, eh?" "Well, my dear father," replied the fair girl with a blush and a most bewitching smile, "I suppose every girl would; however, I am not particularly fond of all these things." "Oh, no," interrupted the Resident with a laugh, "we know all about that. All girls talk just as you do when they are your age. It is always the same thing, 'Beauty when unadorned &c., &c.' But," he continued, "all that sentiment does not last very long; in time women begin to see that the vital question is to appear as beautiful as possible. And now, my girl, you run away, and go and have a look to my breakfast; I have ordered it to be laid in the verandah and I have asked my secretary van Nes to come and have it with me. You know he is a man who knows what is good--so mind you look to the honour of the galley." When his daughter had left the pandoppo to do her father's bidding, he turned to his wife and said: "Now, my dear Laurentia, just you listen to me. In a day or two I have to pay our bill to John Pryce of Batavia, it comes to 20,000 guilders, as you know, and of that sum I haven't got the first thousand together yet. Now, if I am right about this Lim Ho business, why then you will see, we shall have fair weather enough for our money-question; oh yes, and we shall log a good bit more than that--we shall have a nice little sum in the locker after the bill is paid--that may come in handy--what do you say, eh?" "Of course," replied his wife thoughtfully, "but then that running away of Dalima, I don't like--" "Now, now," cried her husband, "just you wait a bit, don't be in a hurry, don't go running off the stocks too fast! If the girl's yarn be true, then--yes--I am afraid that Lim Ho has been fishing behind the net. And yet, when I come to look at it that is not so bad for us either. It will only make him clap on more sail and--if we can only keep our helm steady, then that little job may turn out a very nice little breeze for us. A Chinaman, you know, will go far--aye he will go very far to gratify his passions. So you just let me brace up, and mind don't you go taking the wind out of my sails." It was growing rather late in the evening--about half past seven--when the Oppas, who had been sent out, returned and reported to his master that, with Dalima's help, he had found Ardjan. The news came to Mr. van Gulpendam just after he had risen from table, and was sitting with his wife and daughter in the cool front gallery of the sumptuous Residential mansion. They were awaiting the arrival of some friends and acquaintances who were, on that evening, to partake of the family's friendly and sociable hospitality. Yes--we use the words friendly and sociable hospitality; for the van Gulpendams, with all their faults, were very hospitable, and could be most friendly and sociable. Of course their intense worldliness and love of display had a great deal to do with their hospitality; but it was so tempered by the bon-ton of both host and hostess that, on such evenings as this, their ostentation was hardly, if at all, perceptible. This was to be a friendly and sociable evening. On such evenings not every one had the entrée of the Residence; they were, in fact, quite different from the grand official receptions. These formal receptions took place regularly, once a week, on Wednesday. Then lower officials, subaltern officers, leading men of commerce, planters, strangers, in one word mere official visitors were received. On these grand occasions the Lord Resident would appear in state, clad in light-blue cloth coat with silver buttons, in white cashmere trousers, in all the splendour, in short, which his high office could shed upon poor mortal man. Then also his handsome wife decked out in all her jewellery would flaunt about like a gorgeous peacock. But at such receptions not a gleam, not a vestige of friendliness or sociability could be discovered within the walls of the house. Then on the one side, there was nothing but pride, conceit and arrogance, and, on the other, all was humility and obsequious cringing with here and there a little touch of half-concealed mockery. But the ordinary evening gatherings were for intimate friends and highly-placed officials who, by reason of their position or wealth, could venture familiarly to approach the Residential throne. Invitations there were none; but certain dignitaries were sure to put in an appearance, such as the Commandant of the garrison who was a Colonel at least, the President of the High Court of Justice, the Chief of the Medical Staff, the President of the Local Board of Trade, and such like. All these good people came without ceremony, without compliment, stood and chatted for a moment or two with Mrs. van Gulpendam or said a few pretty things to her fair daughter, shook hands with the Resident in a friendly way, talked over the bits of news of the day and then settled down at the little card-tables for a quiet game. As a rule Mrs. van Gulpendam would take a hand, and, it must be said, that she was by no means amongst the least lucky of the players, especially when, towards the end of the evening, the play began to run rather high. Of this love of play dear little Anna used to make excellent use. As soon as she had seen the guests properly attended to, she would slip away indoors, take her seat at her piano, and there would give herself up to the full enjoyment of Chopin or Beethoven or Mozart, whose masterpieces the young girl revelled in and would study with the enthusiasm of a born musician. Such was to be this evening's programme, though as the sequel will show, the music was to serve quite another purpose. When the "Oppas" had, in minute detail, reported all he had learnt to know about poor Ardjan, and how he had conveyed the Javanese who was in a burning fever, to the hospital to be there further taken care of--the countenance of his chief brightened up wonderfully. "The deuce, the deuce," he muttered between his teeth, "that bit of a joke with the devil-nettle may come to cost Lim Ho's worthy papa a pretty penny!" From a distance Mrs. van Gulpendam was eagerly watching the emotions which were pretty clearly reflected on her husband's countenance. But the good humour of the Resident rose to absolute satisfaction when the man went on reporting to him that his people, with the assistance of the inhabitants of the dessa, had discovered certain small casks and tins carefully stowed away in the dense underwood, and which, in all probability, contained opium. "Who, do you say, found these things?" asked the Resident. "Oh!" said the Oppas, "all of us." "What," fell in van Gulpendam, somewhat taken aback, "did the dessa folk see them as well as you?" "Engèh (yes), Kandjeng toean," replied the man, who was seated cross-legged in front of his master. The reply evidently did not please his excellency at all, and his displeasure was plainly reflected in his face. "And where did you make this haul?" he continued. "Have you brought it along with you?" "Pardon me, Kandjeng toean," replied the Oppas, "I had the things taken to the chief inspector of police." "Stupid ass!" muttered van Gulpendam almost inaudibly. "Engèh, Kandjeng toean," was the stolid reply--the man did not understand the epithet. The word "Engèh" is always in the mouth of a Javanese whenever he addresses a European. He will give that answer even when he has not understood a word of what has been said to him, and it must not be taken to express any opinion of his own, but it is simply a meaningless and polite kind of consent to whatever his superior may choose to say to him. Van Gulpendam thoroughly knew the Javanese character, and was therefore not the least surprised at his man's answer. "Go," said he, "to the inspector and tell him that I want him to come to me at once." The servant still retaining his posture, pushed himself backward for a few paces, then sprang up and hurried off to carry out his master's order. A few moments later, after the usual greetings and compliments had been exchanged, the conversation became general. Anna seized this opportunity, and quietly slipped away, scarcely noticed by any one present. Dalima, she knew, had returned, and she was full of curiosity to hear what had become of Ardjan. She had managed to overhear a few scraps of her father's conversation with the "Oppas," but had not been able to get at the truth of the story. When she reached the pandoppo she found Dalima there, seated, cross-legged as usual, but with tears streaming down her cheeks. "What in the world has happened to you, Dalima?" cried she. "Do tell us all about it." "O Nana," cried the poor girl, "they have abused my Ardjan so shamefully!" And thereupon she told her mistress in what a pitiable state she had found her lover. "Oh," she sobbed, "if I could have got there a little sooner!" "But, who has treated him so dreadfully?" cried Anna full of sympathy. "Lim Ho," replied Dalima. "Lim Ho?" said Anna. "Why, what was he doing there?" "That I can't tell you," replied the girl. "All I can say is that I recognised him quite plainly as he was rowed past the djaga monjet 'out of the Moeara Tjatjing.'" "Oh, you may have been mistaken, Dalima," said her young mistress. "Mistaken, Nana! Oh no," replied the girl. "I could see him clench his fist in anger when he caught sight of me. I feel sure, indeed, he would have put back had he dared; and the few words Ardjan could speak have made me certain it was he." "But," asked Anna, "what could have induced him to torture the poor fellow so unmercifully with the kamadoog?" "I am sure I don't know," said Dalima, colouring; "perhaps it was because Ardjan is my sweetheart; it may be because he rescued me from the Kiem Ping Hin. Oh, dearest Nana," continued the poor girl, with a flood of tears, "poor dear Ardjan has gone mad, he does nothing but rave." "And where is he now?" asked Anna, striving to quiet the sobbing girl. "He is in the hospital; the police took him there after they had gone to fetch the inspector." "The inspector?" cried Anna. "What had he to do with it?" "The men took some small casks and some tins which they had found, to his house," was Dalima's reply. "Opium!" exclaimed Anna, now really frightened. "Where did they find the horrid stuff?" "They found it close to the hut where Ardjan was tortured." "Close to the hut, you say," cried Anna. "They found it at the same time that they discovered Ardjan?" "Yes, Na," faltered Dalima, scarcely audibly. For a moment the fair girl stood as if lost in thought. "I hope it will not compromise poor Ardjan," said she, musingly, and then, having collected her thoughts, she again turned to Dalima, and said: "Were you quite alone with Ardjan when you left the ship in the djoekoeng?" "Quite alone, Nana." "You are sure, there was nothing in the djoekoeng when you got into her? Now think well." "Quite sure, Nana, nothing whatever," replied Dalima. "How could there be? We slid along a bit of rope into the boat, while the storm was howling all round us, and glad enough we were to get out of the ship and away from her as soon as possible." Nonna Anna reflected for a few moments. Then she started as if a sudden thought had struck her, ran into her own room, which adjoined the pandoppo, and soon returned carrying with her a writing case. She put it down before one of the lamps which were burning there, and hurriedly scribbled a little note. When she had sealed it, she handed it to the maid, and said: "Now, Dalima, listen to me. Do you really love Ardjan, and are you anxious to save him?" "Oh, Nana," cried the poor girl, ready again to burst into tears; "how can you ask that?" "Very well," said Anna, quietly, "then take this note to Mr. van Nerekool, you understand?" "Oh yes, I know," cried the girl; "he lives in Aboe Street close by the Catholic Church. But it is so far away, and it is now so late." "Then you had better tell Sodikromo, the gardener's boy, to go with you," said Anna. "You can take a 'sâdos' (dos-à-dos) and you will soon be there and back--So now quick--make haste." It did not take Sodikromo long to get the vehicle ready, and soon he and Dalima were on their way with the nonna's message. While this was going on in the pandoppo, Mr. and Mrs. van Gulpendam were receiving their guests, who kept on gradually arriving, with the courtesy and suavity they could so well put on. "Well, that is kind of you, colonel, I call it really very kind of you to remain faithful to our little party," said Laurentia to a gentleman who had just come in. He was in plain clothes; but his bearing and his white hair closely clipped and his bristling moustache plainly proclaimed him a soldier. "And why, madam," replied he, "what may have led you to suppose that I would have denied myself the pleasure of presenting myself here to-night?" "Van Gulpendam has told me," replied the hostess, "that there has been very ugly news from Atjeh, and that a considerable part of our garrison would have to leave. So I took it for granted that you would be much too busy to--" "Do what, madam?" said the colonel, smiling. "To come and take my hand here as usual?" "By no means, I can assure you that a good deal would have to happen before I would forego the pleasure of your charming society. Oh, no," he continued, "I have given my orders--the rest, the chief of my staff will see to." "And you," said Laurentia, turning to another of her newly-arrived guests, "have not these sad tidings given you a great deal to do? A very large medical staff will have to accompany the expedition--at least, as member of the Red Cross I have received some such intimation from Batavia." "No, madam," replied the gentleman thus addressed, who was chief medical officer at Santjoemeh. "I have not to complain of overwork. Every provision for our expedition to Atjeh has been made and I need not trouble my head about it any more. But, for all that, I can assure you that I was in real danger of being obliged to miss your pleasant party this evening." "Indeed," said Laurentia, with much assumed interest, "I hope there is no case of serious illness among our friends, doctor?" "I am glad to say there is not, madam," replied the doctor. "But, as I was at my dinner this afternoon, the young surgeon on duty at the hospital came running in to tell me that I was urgently wanted. A young native, he said, had been brought in by the police, who was in a most dreadful condition, suffering from something which completely puzzled him. His diagnostica was altogether at fault." "His--what was at fault, did you say, doctor?" enquired Mrs van Gulpendam. "His diagnostica, madam," replied the surgeon. "That is the name, you know, we give to the science by which we recognize a special form of disease. Well, as the young fellow assured me that the patient was in an extremely critical state--in fact in extremis--I had no choice but to go and see him. You know, dear madam," proceeded the surgeon, sententiously, "a physician's devotion must be that of a priest." "Oh, I know, of course," replied Laurentia, with a slight smile; "but pray go on." "Well," continued the surgeon, "I went all the way to the hospital. And now, just guess what was the matter!--Oh, those young doctors of the new school! The fellow had his mouth full of fine words--of absent diaeresis, of efflorescentia, of formicatio, of hemianthropia, and what not. But he couldn't see with all his brand new science, that he had to do with a very simple--though I must own--a most severe case of urtication." "A severe case of what?" enquired Laurentia. "Why, madam, of urtication," replied the doctor, "the man had undergone, somehow or other, a most severe flogging with nettle-leaves." "Nettle-leaves!" exclaimed van Gulpendam, breaking into the conversation, his interest being thoroughly aroused at the doctor's words. "These things," he continued, "are called in Javanese, I think, Kamadoog--are they not, doctor?" "Precisely so, Resident, you are quite right," was the surgeon's reply. "Pray, doctor, do go on with your story," said van Gulpendam. "Ten knots an hour if you please." "Well," said the doctor, "that foolish young fellow might have let me finish my dinner in peace. There was nothing to be done in the case but what the people of the dessa had done already, the parts most afflicted had to be covered with sirih-chalk and the other parts with oil. It was very simple. The man was, of course, in a burning fever, but I need not have been disturbed for that, there are antifebrilia and antidinika in abundance in store, he might have administered them without calling me in." "And how long," asked van Gulpendam, somewhat eagerly, "do the effects of such an urtication, as you call it, last?" "Oh, that is impossible to say, that depends entirely upon how the nettle has been applied. This patient of ours has had an uncommonly heavy dose of it, and, in my opinion, the fever will last some forty-eight hours. Then, I hope, it will abate, but it will be quite a fortnight before the man is on his legs again." "A fortnight," said van Gulpendam, with a frown. "Why, that is a long time." "Yes," said the surgeon, "it will be quite a fortnight, and then only if all goes well." "And tell me," continued the Resident, "will it leave any serious consequences?" "None whatever, my dear sir. If the patient once gets well over the fever, there will be none." "But surely," insisted van Gulpendam, "there will be scars and the skin will be discoloured." "Certainly not--nothing of the kind," replied the other. "So that," continued the Resident, "after the cure there will be no visible proofs of the treatment he has received?" "There will be none. But, Resident, why all these questions? Perhaps you take some special interest in the man?" "Not I," said van Gulpendam, carelessly, but yet with some confusion. "Why should I? I know nothing about the case, I have heard nothing about it; but I have heard so much of the terrible effects of the Hoekoem Kamadoog that I often have wished to learn something more about it." Other guests were arriving, and so the conversation dropped. After the usual greetings the card-tables were occupied, while Anna was busying herself at the tea-table. Play had, however, scarcely begun before the chief inspector of police was announced. He paid his respects to the lady of the house, interchanged a few words with some of his acquaintance, and then turning to the Resident he said: "I beg your pardon, sir, for thus disturbing you; but the message I received, left me no choice but to intrude myself upon you at once." "Quite right, quite right, Mr. Meidema," said the host, as he rose from his seat and turning to his partners he said: "Gentlemen, you must oblige me by playing a three-handed game for a few minutes, I have urgent business with Mr. Meidema." The two officials entered a side-chamber which opened upon the gallery, and after having carefully shut the door, Mr. van Gulpendam, without preface whatever, said to the inspector: "Mr. Meidema, you have made a considerable capture of opium to-day, I hear." "Yes, Resident," was the reply, "three buttertubs full, and fifteen tins have been delivered into my custody. In the tubs the opium was packed just like butter, one little tub of ten kilos, inside a larger one, and surrounded by coarse salt. The tins contain about five kilos each. The whole amounts to about one and a half 'pikols.'" "So, so," said van Gulpendam, "that is a pretty good haul." "Which are worth," continued Meidema, "I should say, about nine thousand guilders." "How do you make that out?" asked the Resident. "You know Government delivers the raw opium to the farmers at the rate of 30 guilders the kattie. Now, 30 � 150, is, according to my reckoning, no more than four thousand five hundred guilders. I am right, am I not?" "You are perfectly right, sir," replied Meidema. "But you must remember that this is not raw material. We have got hold of tjandoe, and you know, I suppose, that one kattie of raw opium gives only fifteen thirty second parts of pure tjandoe." "I daresay you are right," said the other. "But," he added, fixing a very strange look upon his inspector, "are you quite sure it is opium?" Without appearing to notice his superior officer's look, Meidema answered at once: "It is something better than that, sir, it is tjandoe. Look at the sample, I have one here with me. It is the purest Bengal article." "Hadn't we better," said van Gulpendam, "submit that sample to a chemist for analysis?" "Just as you please," said Meidema; "but I see not the slightest need for that. It is tjandoe, and it contains, at least, twenty or thirty per cent of morphia." "Indeed," quoth van Gulpendam. "I was only thinking--Well, it is your business, you know what is best. The contraband has been placed in your custody. You know, I suppose, where it came from?" "Oh yes, sir, I know where it came from. Your chief servant told me that it was put on shore from the Kiem Ping Hin, and you know--" "From the Kiem Ping Hin," hastily exclaimed van Gulpendam. "What makes you think that?" "What makes me think that?" slowly repeated Meidema. "Why, Resident, I told you just now your chief servant told me so." "Man, man," cried the Resident, in a loud voice. The servant thus summoned appeared; and then turning to Mr. Meidema and pointing to the Javanese, the Resident said: "Is that the man who told you this?" "Yes, sir," said Meidema, "that is the man." "Man," said the Resident, as he sternly fixed his eye upon his Javanese servant, "that opium which you delivered to the toean Inspector, was found upon Ardjan--was it not?" "Engèh, Kandjeng toean," was the man's reply. "But"-- "I will have no 'buts,'" cried van Gulpendam, "simply yes or no." "Engèh, Kandjeng toean," said the man again stolidly. "You hear it, Mr. Meidema?" "Oh yes, Resident, I hear it," replied the inspector, in a strange tone of voice. "Very well, then," continued his superior officer, "you will please to draw up your official report in accordance with that man's evidence." "But, sir--" began the other. "I will have no 'buts,'" interrupted van Gulpendam, sharply. "All you have to do is to do your duty." "Have you any other commands for me, Resident?" drily asked the inspector, with a stiff bow. "No, thank you--none at present." A few moments later the card parties were in full swing, and Laurentia, who was holding splendid hands, was in unusually high spirits, and exceedingly talkative. "Humph," muttered her husband, as he took his seat at his own table. "She is beginning rather early--rather too early I am afraid." CHAPTER V. MUSIC HATH CHARMS. Just as Mr. Meidema was leaving the Residence in his brougham, another carriage drove up and Mr. van Nerekool walked up the steps which gave access to the gallery in which the company was assembled. It may have struck the reader as somewhat strange that so young, so well-educated and so refined a girl as Anna van Gulpendam assuredly was, should have ventured to write to the young lawyer, and strange also that the latter should so speedily have answered her summons in person. But, in the first place, it is well to remember that, when she wrote that letter Anna, completely carried away by the sore distress of Dalima, and, in the kindness of her heart, most anxious to do what she could for her favourite servant, acted purely upon impulse; and had not stopped to consider that perhaps her action might be looked upon as somewhat forward and indelicate. Further it must be said, that although never a word of love had passed between them, yet they were united in the very strongest bond of sympathy--such sympathy as always will draw together true and noble natures whenever they happen to meet. As they were themselves perfectly honest and guileless; no paltry suspicions could possibly arise on either side. That this strong bond of sympathy did exist between Anna van Gulpendam and young Mr. van Nerekool, cannot be denied; but for the present at least, there was no more than this. Whether or not that bond would ever be drawn closer and give place to more intimate and tender relations the sequel will show. "Good evening, madam," said van Nerekool as he made his bow to the hostess, "I hope I have the pleasure of finding you well." "There's that fool again! What has that booby come on board for I wonder?" grumbled van Gulpendam, while fair Laurentia answered the young man's greeting as amiably as possible. "Well, Mr. van Nerekool, this is indeed kind of you," said she. "We are glad to see you! You do not wear out your welcome. We only too seldom have the pleasure of seeing you!" "Very good indeed of you to say so, Mrs. van Gulpendam; but, you know, I don't much care for cards and, in the presence of such an adept as you are, I cannot help feeling myself, to say the least, somewhat of a fâcheux troisième." As he was speaking his eye at a glance took in the whole company but failed to light on her whom it sought. So turning to the gentlemen he said: "Well, Resident, I need not enquire after you, nor after your health, colonel, nor yours, my dear doctor; anyone can see there is not much the matter with you. How are the cards serving you this evening? I hope you are in luck," continued he to the secretary seated at the other table. "Not over well," muttered van Nes. "I was getting on pretty fairly just at first but--" "Ah, Mr. van Nerekool," cried Mrs. van Gulpendam in the best of spirits; "you should have come a few minutes earlier, you should have seen my last hand. Why I held--" "Will Mr. van Nerekool take tea or coffee?" said a silvery voice interrupting the threatened explanation. The young man turned at once. "Good evening, Miss Anna," said he most heartily. "How are you? But I need not ask, you look like a fresh-blown Devonshire rose, so charming, so--" "Will you take tea or coffee?" said Anna, demurely, with an arch smile at the young man's compliments. "Did you make the coffee yourself, Miss Anna?" "Oh, no," replied the still smiling girl, "our cook always makes it." "And the tea?" asked van Nerekool also with a smile. "Yes, that is my department, Mr. van Nerekool." "I will take a cup of tea if you please." "Our cook makes most excellent coffee, I assure you," cried Mrs. van Gulpendam. "I don't doubt it," replied the young man, with a slight bow. "I do not for a moment question her talent, madam; but, if you will allow me, I prefer a cup of tea. It reminds one of home, you know. If you please, Miss Anna, may I ask you for a cup of tea?" "On one condition," said the young girl, playfully. "It is granted at once," replied the young man. "Now, what is it?" "That you will presently accompany me in 'Fleurs d'oranger.' You know Ludovic's charming duet, do you not?" Van Nerekool made a wry face and slightly raised his hands in a deprecating manner. "Oh," continued the young girl, laughing. "You may look as solemn as a judge on the bench; but I won't let you off. The 'Fleurs d'oranger' or no tea--there you have my ultimatum. My ultimatum, that is what they call the last word before a declaration of war, don't they, colonel?" "Quite right, Miss Anna," said the old soldier, who, wholly engrossed in his cards, had heard nothing but the last words of the question. "An ultimatum," cried van Nerekool, "a declaration of war? Who would be so mad as to declare war against you? No, no; sooner than be suspected of that I would play 'Fleurs d'oranger' the whole evening!" "There you go to the other extreme," laughed Anna, "that is always the way with you lawyers, at least papa says so; you are always finding paragons of perfection or else monsters of iniquity." "No, no, we are not so bad as all that, Miss Anna!" said van Nerekool. "But will you allow me for a few moments to watch your mother's play and take a lesson from her?" "Do so, by all means," said Anna, "meanwhile I must go and pour out the tea and see to the other refreshments, and when I have done I mean to play a sonata of Beethoven." "Beethoven!" cried van Nerekool, "most delightful, Miss Anna, do let me beg of you to give us the second sonata in D dur Op. 36." "What tyrants you gentlemen are," replied the young girl. "Very well, you shall have your sonata, but, after that, remember, 'Fleurs d'oranger.' Now go and take your lesson." The young lawyer went and took a seat behind Mrs. van Gulpendam's chair, and, although he did not pretend to any great knowledge of cards, yet he could not help admiring that lady's fine and close play, while Anna did the honours of the tea-table, and was busily tripping about to see that the servants did not neglect their duties, and that the guests were properly attended to. As he was seated there behind fair Laurentia, and was attentively studying her cards, the glow of light which numerous splendid chandeliers shed over the entire gallery, finely brought out his clearly cut profile. Charles van Nerekool was a man of five or six and twenty years of age. After he had most honourably completed his studies at the university of Leyden, he had been appointed junior member of the Court of Justice at Santjoemeh when, a few months back, he had arrived from Holland. He was a tall, fair-haired man, scrupulously neat in his attire, and most careful of his personal appearance. His fine, sharply chiselled features had not yet lost their European freshness and bloom, and were well set off by a thick curly beard and moustache, some shades lighter than his hair. His winning manners, which were those of a courteous and highly-bred gentleman, perfectly harmonized with his handsome countenance, and he was universally esteemed an accomplished and most agreeable companion. But, though society had justly formed a high opinion of him, there was one point in his character which would not allow him ever to become a popular man. He was a lawyer in the truest and noblest sense of the word. A man who, deeply versed in the law, yet would tolerate nothing that was not strictly just and upright. Quibbling and casuistry had no attractions for him; he was, in fact, honest as gold and true as a diamond. Hence his manner of speech was always frank and straightforward--oftentimes he was too plain spoken, for he would not and could not condescend to wrap up his real sentiments in fine words or ambiguous phrases. Anyone therefore, who has the slightest knowledge of the present state of society, may readily understand why the number of his real friends was but small. A strict sense of justice, a noble frankness of expression, and an intense love of truth, for truth's sake, are, unfortunately, not the qualities which serve to push a man forward most quickly in the official world--at least not in the official world of India. Van Gulpendam, especially--though he could not close his doors to a man in van Nerekool's position, heartily detested him, and had repeatedly expressed his dislike to the old judge who presided over the Council at Santjoemeh. "Ah well!" this latter had, on one occasion, said to him, "you are rather too hard upon our young colleague. Remember this Mr. van Nerekool is but a newly fledged chicken. You will see when he has been here a year or two he will turn out a very useful fellow indeed. Why, every one of us had, at his age, just those fine idealistic views of life which he now holds." This answer made our worthy friend, van Gulpendam, look rather queer. His conscience, at any rate, did not accuse him of fine principles and idealistic views,--not such views, at least, as those for which he found fault with van Nerekool. The young man was still seated behind Laurentia's chair, attentively keeping his eye on her cards. "I cannot say," said the lady with a forced smile, "that you improve my luck. Since you have been sitting there I have scarcely picked up a card worth looking at. I wish you would go and have a look at the Resident's hand.--" "Thank you," cried her husband, "much obliged, you want to give me a spell of bad fortune." There are no more superstitious people in the world than your veteran card-players. At Mrs. van Gulpendam's not very reasonable or very courteous remark, van Nerekool had of course risen, and the Resident's exclamation made him feel rather awkward; he did not, in fact, very well know what to do, when the young lady of the house came to the rescue. "Now Mr. van Nerekool," said she, "my 'Fleurs d'oranger!' what has become of them? It is time to begin, I think." "And my sonata in D dur," replied the young man, "what has become of it? I have not heard a single note of it yet." "True," she said, "I had quite forgotten it; come and turn over the music for me." "Yes, that's right," said fair Laurentia, "you go and turn over the music," and for an instant she looked at the young people as they retired together and then fixed her eyes once again upon her cards. "Now, you see," continued she, "what did I tell you, no sooner has he turned his back than I get quite different cards!" "Oh," muttered van Gulpendam from his table, "I can't bear to have a fellow prying into my hand. If he does not wish to play what does the booby want to come here for at all, I wonder?" "H'm," said the old colonel, "perhaps he is anxious to learn." "To learn," contemptuously echoed van Gulpendam, "he will never be any good at cards, he is not practical enough for that!" "I quite agree with you, Resident," said the judge somewhat drily, "a man who is not of a practical turn of mind will never make much of a hand at cards." "No, nor at anything else either," grumbled van Gulpendam; "come, let us go on with the game. It is my lead. Hearts, I say." The two young people had entered the inner gallery and were no sooner out of sight of the company, before van Nerekool began: "I have received your note, Miss Anna, and, as you see, I have hastened to obey your summons." "For goodness sake speak lower," whispered she. And then in her usual tone of voice she continued: "Just help me, please, to find the music." Whilst they were engaged in taking the pieces one by one out of a curiously carved étagère which stood by the piano and examining them, the young girl said in a whisper: "Yesterday our baboe Dalima was forcibly carried away out of the garden--Hush! do not interrupt me or I shall not have time to tell you all. The author of the outrage is Lim Ho. She has, however, been most providentially rescued by Ardjan, the man to whom she is engaged to be married. Thereupon Lim Ho has had him most fearfully tortured with Kamadoog leaves--so dreadfully that he is now in the hospital--" "Look here, Miss Anna, I have found your 'Fleurs d'oranger,'" said van Nerekool aloud as he heard some one moving outside. "Yes, thank you," replied Anna. "But what can have become of that sonata? Here it is," she continued in the same tone of voice, "I have it; but pray, Mr. van Nerekool, put that heavy pile of music on the piano." "Oh," said he, "you intend to give us the sonata before the waltz?" "Yes," said Anna, "that is best I think;" and then she continued softly, "I know that sonata so perfectly that I can go on talking while I am playing it by heart." She sat down to the instrument, van Nerekool standing close by her side ready to turn over the leaves for her. Anna struck the first notes of Beethoven's magnificent work while she continued: "As I was telling you, Ardjan had to be taken to the hospital in consequence of the brutal treatment he had received. But that is not what made me write to you." "What was it then?" whispered van Nerekool eagerly. "I am all ears, Miss Anna." "Well then," said she, "pay attention to me." And while the nimble fingers of the talented girl ran over the keys, while she rendered in most masterly style the lovely reveries of the inspired musician--strains which full of sweetness yet here and there seem clouded by the great gloom which was impending over the author's future life--she told the young man the whole story of Dalima's abduction, of her rescue by Ardjan, in what wretched plight the poor Javanese had been found, and she told him also that close by the place where they found him a considerable quantity of smuggled opium had been discovered, and had been delivered into the custody of the chief inspector of police. Van Nerekool had not for a single instant turned his eye from the music, he had never once made a mistake in turning over the pages; but yet he had been listening so attentively that not a single word had escaped his ears. At the ill-omened word opium his countenance fell. The young girl noticed the change of expression though she did not allow her emotion to influence her play. Indeed she executed the final movement of the sonata--that brilliant movement in which a very flood of fancies all seem to unite in conveying the idea of perfect bliss--in so faultless and spirited a manner, that the card-players in the outer gallery, pausing for a few moments in their game to listen, broke out in a loud chorus of applause. "But do you know for certain, Miss Anna," said van Nerekool, under cover of the noise, "that it was opium?" "How should I know?" replied she before the clamour had subsided. "But was that opium brought ashore by Ardjan and Dalima?" "Most certainly not," said she in a whisper, "there was nothing of the kind in the djoekoeng in which they came to land." "How then did the stuff get there?" asked van Nerekool. "Dalima could tell me nothing about it," continued the young girl. "And now," she went on in her usual tone of voice, "now for the 'Fleurs d'oranger!'" "But," insisted van Nerekool in a scarcely audible whisper, "what makes you fear that Ardjan will be suspected? As far as I can see there is not a shadow of a suspicion against him, unless--" "Hush!" said Anna, "presently--" And then, as a pleasant sequel to Beethoven's sublime melody, the sparkling notes of the delightful waltz were heard filling both galleries with gay and pleasant music. While the last chords were still re-echoing, the young girl answered van Nerekool's question: "Just now," said she, "Mr. Meidema was with my father and--" dear little Anna paused and hesitated. "And?" said van Nerekool. "Come, Miss Anna, you must tell me all." "I overheard part of their conversation--" "Oh," said he, "you listened just a little bit?" The poor girl blushed deeply, face, neck and ears were covered with the glow. "Well yes," said she resolutely, "I did listen. I had heard my father ordering the Oppas to go and fetch Mr. Meidema and somehow I could not get rid of the suspicion that it had something to do with Ardjan. When the inspector called I got behind the screen which masks the door and--" "Well, yes, Miss Anna, go on, you must tell me all." "And then I heard all they said," continued she. "What did you hear?" asked the young man, eagerly. "All they said," she replied. "Yes; but," continued he, "what did they talk about?" "Oh! Mr. van Nerekool," said Anna, "I really cannot tell you all that passed." "Perhaps not; but yet you can remember the gist of their words. Do try, Miss Anna." "Mr. van Nerekool," said she; "I am not at all sure that I have a right to--" "But my dear Miss Anna, why then did you send for me? Just ask yourself that question?" "Oh!" sighed Anna, "I was so over-anxious to save Dalima's lover." "Just so," replied he; "I can quite understand that; but in what way can I possibly serve you unless you will trust me with all that took place? As far as I can see at present, there seems not the remotest reason why Ardjan should be accused of this smuggling business. Do pray trust me, Miss Anna!" "Oh! how I wish I could!" sighed the poor girl again. "How I wish I could; but it is so very hard." "What is your difficulty?" insisted the young man. "That conversation between my father and Mr. Meidema," replied she. "But come," she continued; "you are right; you must know everything or nothing. I will tell you all." Thereupon, burning with shame, the young girl repeated just what had passed between the two officials. She concealed nothing--neither the supposed value of the smuggled wares, nor Meidema's suspicions as to their source, nor the examination of the chief servant. But when she came to reveal the fact that her father had, in a manner, forced the policeman to accuse Ardjan, the poor girl almost broke down. Van Nerekool understood her confusion but too well, he knew enough and felt too deeply how humiliating was her position to wish to prolong the conversation. But before dismissing the subject he said: "Just now you told me that Mr. Meidema had mentioned the name of the ship from whence he suspected the opium to have been brought. Do you happen to remember it?" "Yes," said Anna; "I believe it was Hing Kim Lin, or Lin King Him, or something of that kind." "Was it perhaps Kiem Ping Hin?" asked the lawyer, in a very grave voice. "Now think well before you answer." "Yes, Mr. van Nerekool," she cried still in the same subdued tones, "that was the name." The young man could not suppress a sigh as he looked down sadly at the fair girl beside him. "Why do you look so strangely at me?" asked Anna in some alarm. "Do you know to whom this Kiem Ping Hin belongs?" he asked. "No," said she; "how should I?" "Well, then, the Kiem Ping Hin belongs to Lim Ho." "To Lim Ho? what, to the son of the opium farmer?" cried the girl, covering her face with her hands as if she were trying to hide herself. "That is the man," replied van Nerekool, as he looked down anxiously at her. Then Anna remembered the infamous dialogue between her parents at which that morning she had been present. The hot tears of shame came rushing into her eyes, forced their way through her closed fingers and went trickling down her shapely hands as she sobbed out: "Oh, my God! my God!" "Miss Anna, dear Miss Anna," said van Nerekool, deeply moved at the sight of her grief; "do be calm; pray, do not despair. I will do all I possibly can to save that unfortunate man. I promise you that solemnly." "But, my father," cried Anna, as she hurriedly with her handkerchief tried to wipe away the tears which were still flowing fast. "But, my father?" "Not a word of all this to him." "Oh! no; Mr. van Nerekool," said she, "I do not mean that; but will this wretched business compromise him in any way?" "Not if I can help it," replied he; "I shall do my best to arrange matters so as to leave him out of the question altogether. Trust me." "Thank you, thank you," said Anna. "Now let us say no more. I will go in and try to hide my feelings; you had better remain at the piano for awhile." "Yes," said he, "I shall go on playing something or other and then I will take my leave." In a quarter of an hour or so, van Nerekool was again standing behind the card-players. The game was nearly over, they were just having the last round and soon the company began to break up. "Really, Mrs. van Gulpendam has too much luck," said the old colonel, as he sat ruefully looking at the few scattered counters he had before him. Presently all had taken their leave and the Resident was standing looking out at the departing guests when he heard a subdued voice saying behind him: "May I be allowed to say something, Kandjeng toean?" Van Gulpendam turned and saw his chief servant seated cross-legged beside him. "What have you got to tell me?" asked he, abruptly. "I made a mistake just now, Kandjeng toean," was the man's reply. "A mistake," said the Resident; "what do you mean?" "When I told the inspector toean that the opium was found on Ardjan." "Brute!" roared van Gulpendam. "If you dare to retract your words I give you the sack--I shall have you clapped into prison. Do you hear me?" "Engèh, Kandjeng toean," said the poor native with his usual drawl, and placing his folded hands upon his forehead he respectfully and submissively made his "sembah" (salaam). CHAPTER VI. A LUCKY DAY. Van Nerekool's interference was destined to bear very little fruit; but, on the other hand, it involved him in the most serious troubles. He was so young, he was so utterly without experience of all the complicated mazes of injustice which, in Dutch India, are found in both the judicial and administrative departments as soon as ever these are brought into contact with anything that touches the great Opium monopoly. A few weeks after his conversation with Anna van Gulpendam, she told him, on the occasion of another visit which he paid to her family, that Ardjan had been discharged from the hospital, but only to be immediately committed to jail. Thereupon, van Nerekool began to make inquiries from the President of the Council at Santjoemeh, and from him he heard that the Javanese was lying in prison on an accusation of smuggling opium in considerable quantities. "But," added the President, Mr. Zuidhoorn, "there is, in this case, one very curious feature, which I do not at all understand." "Indeed," said van Nerekool, "what may that be?" "Why, it is this," said Mr. Zuidhoorn. "Last week I received a letter from the Resident, in which he tells me in what order and on what dates he wants us to take the cases we have before us." "Why," cried van Nerekool, "he has no right whatever to do that--such dictation is perfectly illegal--it is directly contrary to the law!" "Precisely so," continued Zuidhoorn. "And, as you may suppose, I have flatly refused to obey his directions. But listen further. On that list of his, Ardjan's trial is put the very last of all. Can you make that out?" "Well," said van Nerekool, "I daresay it is because he has no proofs against the man. In fact, I feel persuaded that it is a mere trumped up case, and knowing that it is so, he wishes to keep the man as long as possible in custody, so that when ultimately he is acquitted, he may have the satisfaction of saying: the fellow has been so many months locked up for my pleasure." Mr. Zuidhoorn cast a sharp look at his young colleague. "It may be so," said he, after a pause, "however, that is not the view I take of the matter." "Indeed," said the other, "what, then, is your opinion?" "Well," said Mr. Zuidhoorn, "you know, I suppose, that I have applied for leave of absence on account of my health, and that I am going to Holland?" "I have heard so," replied the young man; "but what of that?" "What of that?" repeated the President. "Don't you see! If the cases should be taken in the order van Gulpendam directs, why then, we have so many of them that Ardjan cannot possibly be tried before six or eight weeks." "Certainly, I see that," said van Nerekool; "but--" "You see," continued the President, "by that time I shall be far enough away." "Quite so," rejoined the other; "but what does that matter? I suppose some other judge will be appointed in your place to preside at Santjoemeh, while you are absent." A bitter smile curled the lip of Mr. Zuidhoorn. "Who knows?" said he, "where that substitute may have to come from. Travelling in India is a slow business. If, for instance, Mr. Raabtoon were called from Padang, or Mr. Nellens had to come from Makassar, why, there are two months gone before either of them can be properly installed, and meanwhile--" "Meanwhile," interrupted van Nerekool, "they may appoint some other member of the court for the time being, to get through the unfinished cases." "Yes," replied Mr. Zuidhoorn. "They could do that no doubt; but they will not. You know well enough that in case of absence on leave, the Resident has the power himself to preside at the Council." "Yes," said van Nerekool; "what if he did?" "If he did," continued Mr. Zuidhoorn, "it is obvious enough what would happen. As soon as I am gone, the Resident will take Ardjan's case himself." "But, my dear sir," said van Nerekool, "why should he do such a thing?" "How can I tell why?" replied the other. "You recollect how, some time ago, a colonial minister wrote to the king and drew his majesty's attention to the fact that officials are systematically bribed by the opium farmers, and that thus the authority of those who have to carry out the laws is undermined, seeing that they are wholly under the influence of the Chinese opium farmers and smugglers. Look you, my dear sir, I have much more experience in these matters than you can have, and when I come to consider the evident anxiety there seems to exist at headquarters, to have this case of Ardjan's put off to the last, then I cannot but suspect that an attempt is being made to get the case out of the hands of the unprejudiced and competent judge." "But," exclaimed van Nerekool, indignantly, "that is most monstrous, it is infamous." "No doubt it is," quietly said the President. "And what course have you taken?" asked van Nerekool. "I have taken the only course I could take," replied Mr. Zuidhoorn. "I have simply done my duty. I have already told you that I have flatly refused to put off the case. It will, therefore, come before us in its proper turn, that is to say, about Tuesday fortnight." It was not, however, to be so. A few days before the above conversation took place between the legal officials, the Resident, Mr. van Gulpendam, received an unexpected visit. Yes, the visit was a wholly unexpected one, for it was Sunday, and about two o'clock in the afternoon, at a time when, of all others, no man in Dutch India looks to be disturbed. About eleven o'clock that same morning, Mr. van Gulpendam had gone to his club, and had amused himself with a game or two at billiards. He liked to show his subordinates that, though he had not cruised about Delft or Leyden, he yet was just as handy as they were at cutting a ball into the middle pocket, and had not forgotten how to put on side. About one o'clock, he had gone home, had made an excellent and hearty luncheon, and then, in the pleasing consciousness of being able to enjoy the Lord's Day undisturbed, had put on his pyjamas and kabaai, and was just preparing to turn in for his afternoon nap. His hand was already on the handle of his bedroom door, when lo, his chief servant appeared in his usual quiet, stealthy way, slid down to the ground, made a most respectful "sembah," and softly whispered that Babah Lim Yang Bing requested the honour of a few moments' interview with the Kandjeng toean. "Babah Lim Yang Bing," exclaimed van Gulpendam, in surprise. "What? the Opium farmer?" "Engèh, Kandjeng toean." "Show him in at once," ordered the master. "But, van Gulpendam," said his wife, "what are you thinking about? In that costume?" "It does not matter, my dear," replied the husband, "we must sail when the wind blows fair. But--oh yes--" and, calling another attendant, he ordered, "Go and fetch the pajoeng stand here." Laurentia shrugged her shoulders. "There's a pretty thing, the Resident in pyjamas and kabaai, and the golden pajoeng by his side." "It looks more dignified, my dear. You leave me to manage, we are having a fair breeze, I tell you. Now you run away to your nest." "Humph," muttered Laurentia, with her most captivating smile. "Very sociable, I must say, all alone. Come, my dear," she continued, "do send that Chinaman about his business." "Not a bit of it," said van Gulpendam, "we must keep the galley fire in--you seem to forget our bill to John Pryce." But the lady had vanished. One of her female attendants had come in and whispered to her mistress that M`Bok Kârijâh was in the kitchen waiting to see her. This M`Bok Kârijâh was a friend of Nènèh Wong Toewâ and pretty nearly as old as she was; but she had more strings to her bow than Mrs. van Gulpendam's confidante, for besides being a doekoen, she was also a bepôrrô, a dealer in jewellery. "Much use her coming now," muttered the lady, "now that my husband has this Chinaman on his hands." She hastened however to her room, and ordered her servant to show the old woman up. At the entrance of the pandoppo the Chinaman and the old crone met. Neither, however, seemed to have the slightest knowledge of the other; but a smile played upon the lips of the babah. For anyone but M`Bok Kârijâh that smile was no more than the stereotyped smirk which the sallow face of every Celestial wears when he is about to enter the presence of a superior. The old woman, however, knew that it was a smile of inward satisfaction. Preceded by the servant girl she entered the inner gallery and was admitted into the njonja's bed-chamber, while the Chinaman approached the Resident who sat comfortably balancing himself in his rocking-chair by the side of which was displayed the pajoeng stand which surrounded the high and mighty lord with its lustre of umbrellas. "Well, babah," began van Gulpendam as with a careless gesture he motioned the Chinaman to a seat, "Well, babah, what brings you here this hot time of day?" The Chinaman took a chair without ceremony, and with a sly look he said airily, "Oh I merely came to inquire after the health of the Kandjeng toean." "The deuce you have, babah, I must say you might have chosen some other time for that." "Oh, pray don't say so, Kandjeng toean. Really this is the very best time for a little quiet chat. Body and mind are now both at rest, and this is the very moment for a little business." "Oh so," said van Gulpendam, with a laugh, "the babah has come on business, has he?" "That is why," said the Chinaman lowering his voice, "I was so anxious that no one should see me slipping into the garden of the Residence." Van Gulpendam pricked his ears. "You are very mysterious, babah," said he, "have you come to bother me again about that confounded opium?" "Yes, Kandjeng toean, and for something else besides." "Very well, babah, let us hear what you have to say." He had it on the tip of his tongue to call out, "Very well, babah, haul away," and, had he at the moment known how to get it out in Malay, out it would have come. But he had time to reflect that the Chinaman would not, in any case, have appreciated the force of the nautical phrase. Babah Lim Yang Bing, then, in his oily fashion proceeded to give his version of the seizure of opium near the djaga monjet in the Moeara Tjatjing, and made some attempt to explain to the Resident that what had been seized there was in reality no opium at all. "Oh, indeed," laughed van Gulpendam, "that is your tack is it? It was not opium--what was it then?" "Oh, Kandjeng toean," smiled the other, "it was nothing but scrapings of opium pipes mixed with the thickened juice of certain plants." "Well," said the Resident in a mocking tone of voice, "if that be so, then there is an end of the matter, then there is nothing illegal at all in it." "Yes, yes," replied the other, "but the inspector of police insists that it is opium." "The deuce he does!" said van Gulpendam. "Yes," said the Chinaman, "and he has consulted a couple of Chinese experts, and these, not knowing where the stuff came from, and judging by the smell and the taste have come to the conclusion, and have publicly declared, that it is first class tjandoe, very superior to that which the government supplies us farmers with." "You mean to tell me," cried van Gulpendam in amazement, "that the inspector has told you all that?" "Yes, Kandjeng toean, and he has done more than that He has placed a sample of it into the hands of a chemist." "Well," said the other. "And what is the chemist's opinion?" "He has made an affidavit," replied the Chinaman, "to the effect that it is real tjandoe containing thirty-two per cent. of morphine." "That settles the matter," said the Resident. "I am sorry for it babah, I cannot help you at all, things must take their course." "But," insinuated the other, "if the Kandjeng toean would--" "No, no, babah!" said van Gulpendam in an absent kind of way, as if his mind was on something else. "No, babah, I can do nothing for you." "I am very sorry to hear it," said the Chinaman affecting to sigh though the stereotyped smile still hovered on his lips. Then, with ready tact dropping that topic of conversation altogether, he began to talk about indifferent matters, about the gossip of the day, the state of trade, about the ships that had just come in, and so on--when suddenly he said: "Yesterday, you know, the Wyberton of the Rotterdam Lloyd came into harbour. She has brought me a splendid consignment of Havanah cigars. I have had a few of them packed up as samples in cases of a dozen. They are very fine indeed. I happen to have one of these little cases about me. Will the Kandjeng toean do me the favour of having a look at it?" With these words the wily Chinaman produced a cigar-case, which, as far as outward appearance went, was really very pretty indeed, it was very tastefully embroidered with bunches of red roses. The Resident took the case, looked at it, admired it, and opened it. It contained twelve cigars, very fine looking Havanahs, which, by their fragrance, were undoubtedly of an excellent brand. But, as the Chinaman went on talking, the Resident looked at the case and its contents in a very abstracted mood, as if he hardly saw it at all, his thoughts were evidently elsewhere. At length, he handed the case back, and said, "Yes, a very pretty thing--it seems a very fine sample." "Would the Kandjeng toean condescend to accept them at my hands?" asked the Chinaman with his most winning smile. "What? you wish me--?" "Oh sir, it is but the merest trifle. The Kandjeng toean will have the pleasure of smoking a really excellent cigar--I will answer for it--and he will be conferring the greatest favour upon me if he will accept them as a little present." Without making any reply, without so much as a sign of consent, the Resident listlessly allowed the gift to drop on a little table that stood by his side, and, just as if nothing whatever had happened, he took up the conversation precisely where it had been broken off. "When that opium came ashore," said he, "did anyone happen to be present?" "No one, Kandjeng toean, but my two spies, Liem King and Than Khan." "Can you trust the fellows?" "Most absolutely," was the reply, "there is not the smallest fear from that quarter." "And the opium was discovered, you say, close to the spot where Ardjan was picked up?" "Not two hundred yards from where he was," replied the Chinaman. "And they found the djoekoeng in which he came ashore did they not?" asked van Gulpendam. "Yes, Kandjeng toean, it was a surf boat." "That is all I want to know, babah," said the Resident. The astute Chinaman took the hint, he rose and was preparing to leave; but the Resident motioned him back to his seat. "You have not said a word yet, babah, about that other business," said van Gulpendam carelessly. "What business?" "Your son Lim Ho has treated Ardjan most barbarously." "One has nothing but sorrow from one's children, Kandjeng toean," said the Chinaman piteously. "That is all very fine," said the Resident, "but the chief medical officer has made an official report which is very serious, very serious indeed. I am afraid, I am afraid--" "Ah, this is a world of suffering and woe, Kandjeng toean," sighed Lim Yang Bing most dolefully. "Is there no possible means of squaring it with the doctor?" "Who knows," said van Gulpendam thoughtfully. "Now if I had the matter in hand, I might perhaps--" "O pray, Kandjeng toean," whined the Chinaman. "Do pray help me I beseech you." "I shall see," said van Gulpendam. "A great deal depends upon yourself, babah. You know the penalty for ill-treatment is very severe." The Chinaman, in a moment, took the not too delicate hint. He felt in his pocket and drew forth a little silver tea-caddy of most exquisite workmanship. Said he; "That Wyberton I mentioned just now, has brought me some very fine silver ware from Paris. Just look at that fretwork. Do you think van Kempen in the Hague could turn out anything better than that?" Van Gulpendam took the box. "Aye, aye," said he, as he examined it, "it is marvellously pretty--very tasteful I must say." "I have had the box filled with the choicest Chousong, such tea never reaches Europe, it is reserved for the court at Pekin. Just smell it, Kandjeng toean, is it not delicious?" The resident opened the tea-caddy and put his nose to it, but not before he had had a peep inside it. "Most delicious," he exclaimed. "Why, babah, you must send me some of that tea, we cannot get anything worth drinking here, the njonja is always grumbling at her storekeeper." "Oh!" cried the Chinaman, "may I beg the Kandjeng toean to accept that little sample as an offering to the njonja?" "Thank you very much, babah, I am pleased to accept it in her name. I am sure she will be delighted with it." The face of the Celestial glowed with satisfaction; he felt that now he had his foot fairly in the stirrup. "I may hope then," said he, "that the Kandjeng toean will--" "I can promise you nothing at all, babah," said the Resident. "I shall see, however, what I can do." He rose as he spoke--a sign that the interview was at an end; but suddenly a thought seemed to strike him. "Do you know who it is that has charged your son with ill-treating Ardjan?" "Yes, I do, Kandjeng toean, it is Pak Ardjan, the father of the mate." "He is a notorious opium smuggler, is he not? Some day or other he will burn his fingers at it." The Chinaman looked up in surprise; but he saw through it. "At least," continued van Gulpendam, in the most off-hand way, "that is what I hear from the police, it is no business of mine. I shall see what I can do." Babah Lim Yang Bing stepped up to the great man and familiarly held out his hand; Jack was as good as his master now. But just at that moment a handsome big dog--one of Anna's favourites--came bounding into the pandoppo, and wagging his tail, came jumping up at his master. Van Gulpendam took the animal's paw and coolly placed it into the babah's outstretched palm. "Oh, it is all the same to me, noble sir," said the Chinaman, with his false smile, as he heartily shook the dog's honest paw. The Dutch official thoroughly understood those words of the Chinaman. As soon as he was alone in the pandoppo, he, with a greedy look, opened the cigar-case and emptied it on the table. His face beamed with joy, for round each Havanah there was very neatly wrapped a bank-note of a thousand guilders, in such a manner that one half of the cigars only was covered, and nothing could be seen of the paper when first the case was opened. Next he put his fingers into the tea-caddy. Yes, there again he encountered the same soft kind of paper. He was about to pull it out; but suddenly he thought better of it, he hurriedly replaced the precious cigars, snatched up the case and the silver box, and rushed into his private office where he immediately sat down and began to write the letter which so puzzled the President of the Council at Santjoemeh. Just as he had sealed it, he heard his wife coming into the inner gallery, and taking leave of M`Bok Kârijâh. "A lucky day," he whispered in her ear, as he threw his arm round her neck. "A lucky day," and thus he drew her along. "A lucky day?" she asked, replying to his embrace by folding her arm round his waist as she gazed at him with moist and glittering eyes. Thus they went to the bedroom. When he got there van Gulpendam carefully closed the door and double locked it. Then he drew his wife to the table, and, taking a seat, he shook out upon it the contents of the cigar-case and of the tea-caddy, while Laurentia stood by him, her eyes fixed upon the bits of paper. There were five-and-twenty of them, there could be no mistake about them, for the mark upon their silky surface told plainly enough that each represented the value of one thousand guilders. A shade of disappointment passed over Laurentia's handsome features. It passed away in an instant, and was gone long before her husband could notice it. He saw her eagerly seizing upon the notes, carefully unrolling them from the cigars and smoothing down those which had come out of the tea-caddy in a sadly crumpled condition. "Twenty-five thousand guilders!" cried she. "A pretty sum indeed--Truly it is a lucky day, for added to what I have got--" "What have you got?" cried her husband. "Yes, what I have just now received from M`Bok Kârijâh!" "Let us see! What did she give you?" eagerly cried van Gulpendam. "I will show you presently; but first this." As she spoke she took up a little parcel which was lying on the table by the side of a cardboard box which bore marks of having already been opened. She then carefully stripped off and put aside the pisang-leaves in which the parcel was wrapped, and at length she produced a small cup of the commonest earthenware, which contained a greenish, quivering jelly, of most disgusting appearance. "First take this," said Laurentia, as, with a tiny Chinese spoon, she scooped out of the greenish mass, a piece about the size of a hazel-nut, and held it to her husband's lips as though she was going to feed him. "First take that, Gulpie, dear--and then I will show you." Van Gulpendam cast a most comical look of despair at the gruesome morsel, while his face assumed an expression of loathing which baffles description. "That filthy stuff again," he whined submissively. "You know it is no good." "Oh, yes," said she, "it is--this is quite a new drug. It must work, M`Bok Kârijâh brought it to me only this morning." "Do you intend me to swallow that horrid stuff?" "Come, Gulpie," said his wife, as she still held the spoon to his mouth. "Now, don't be childish, swallow it at once. You will see how it will work," continued she, as she patted his back with her hand. "Now, there's a dear, swallow it down, and then I will tell you how I have had as good a Hari ontong as you." Whether his wife's coaxing words and ardent looks, or his intense curiosity to know what she had to tell him, overcame his repugnance matters but little. Suffice it to say, that the poor wretch shut his eyes, and opened his mouth, while his wife, with the spoon, put the pale-greenish mess upon his tongue. As he tasted it he heaved so violently with intense disgust, that an explosion seemed imminent. "Come, swallow, swallow!" cried Laurentia, again patting his back with her soft hand. "So, so, that's right; and now clean the spoon, the stuff is much too precious to waste." So the unhappy man was compelled to lick up and swallow the last vestige of the nauseous compound which clung to the spoon. "And now," said he, "now for your story." "Come here, Gulpie," said his wife, in her most coaxing manner. "Come here and sit down by me on the divan, and I will tell you all about it." She took up the box from the table, and seating herself cross-legged on the divan after the fashion of the natives, she drew her husband close to her side. And now she proceeded to relate to him how M`Bok Kârijâh had, in the strictest confidence, told her how madly Lim Ho was in love with the baboe Dalima, and, as if they both did not know that well enough already, she added, with a strange smile, that he would do anything in the world to gain possession of the maiden. The forcible abduction from under the very eyes of her mistress was indeed proof sufficient of the ardour of his passion, and the poor fellow had been most grievously disappointed that he had been unable to attain his object. Fair Laurentia did not tell her husband all this simply, and as a matter of fact story. No, no, she was an artiste in the arts of wheedling and seduction. She took her time and knew how to impart to her tale the necessary shades and tints--here and there seeming to hesitate as if modestly disinclined to enter into somewhat questionable details; and then again at the right moment launching out into a freedom of speech which threatened to become impassioned if it did not indeed actually border upon the indecent. And so she managed to finish her story by a glowing description of the ardent Chinaman and the personal charms of lovely Dalima. Van Gulpendam had first listened to her attentively, her highly coloured narrative had greatly interested him. But--Was it the effect of the drug he had swallowed, or was it an occasional peep into fair Laurentia's half-open kabaja, or were there other influences at work which made him lose his mental balance? At all events, the man was trembling with excitement when his fair neighbour brought her story to an end with the words: "M`Bok Kârijâh implored me to lend her my assistance and to exert my influence with Dalima to make her yield to Lim Ho's ardent passion. As earnest of the man's gratitude she offered me this." Thus saying, Laurentia opened the box and drew forth a magnificent red coral necklace depending from which hung a large rosette of precious stones. "Look, Gulpie, look!" she cried, triumphantly, "these brilliants alone are worth more than ten thousand guilders," and as she spoke she threw the necklace over her well-shaped shoulders. The deep red corals showed off splendidly on the soft pearly white skin, while the rich clasp of jewels lay glittering on her heaving bosom. But van Gulpendam had no eyes for the costly gift. He clasped his fair wife to his breast as he exclaimed beside himself with passion: "You are lovely, my Laurentia! You are too lovely!" "The drug, the drug," cried she, "you see it is the drug! M`Bok Kârijâh has surpassed herself. You see, Gulpie, you see!" "Yes; darling Laurie," cried he, in ecstasy. "It must be the stuff. I feel it working in my veins." "Indeed, indeed, this is--this is indeed, a lucky day!" CHAPTER VII. A TRAITOR IN THE DESSA. About twelve miles to the south-east of Santjoemeh, in a hilly country which offers to the eye a continual succession of picturesque and lovely views, lies the little dessa Kaligaweh. It is situated in the centre of an extensive forest of cocoa-nut trees which encloses it as in a circle of emerald, and which, viewed from an eminence close by, resembles a mighty garland of verdure whose tops waving in the gentle breeze have the appearance of a frame of grass-green lace-work. This cocoa-nut forest may be said to form the outer court of the dessa, for the village itself lies concealed in a thick grove of fruit-trees in which the most splendid mangoes, the most delicious ramboetans, the most refreshing assams, the juiciest bliembiengs, the most fragrant djeroeks and the coolest djamboes, and many other gifts of intertropical Pomona grow up and flourish in the richest luxuriance. Here and there tufts of underwood fill the spaces between the little huts and the trees, and flowers in the wildest profusion fill the air with their fragrance and enchant the eye by their rich but harmonious diversity of colour. The dessa itself is enclosed by dense rows of bamboo, the thick and tall Black bamboo, which furnishes the natives with the most useful building material, and whose long massive stalks growing quite close together and gracefully bending under the load of the heavy plumage of verdure they have to support, form an almost impenetrable hedge, while at the same time they cast the most grateful shade over the enclosure within. Kaligaweh was but an inconsiderable dessa. Some thirty or forty huts scattered here and there in picturesque disorder among the fruit trees formed the centre of the small community. The inhabitants of this spot so highly favoured by nature occupied themselves, for the most part, with the culture of rice to which the soil was admirably adapted, and the fruitful rice-fields rose all around in the form of an amphitheatre on the hill-slopes. The lower grounds contained several fish-ponds well stocked with bandengs, djampals, Cataks, Gaboes, and many other kinds of fish, all of them highly esteemed by the European and Chinese inhabitants of Santjoemeh, and therefore fetching good prices in the market of that place. Hence the population of Kaligaweh might have been a highly prosperous and flourishing community, had it not been for the ravages which one fatal and all-destructive pest spread among them. Their bane was the passion for opium. That fatal drug had undermined not only their prosperity, but broken down also the constitutions of all those who gave themselves up to its use. It was a sad fact, alas, that the great majority of those who dwelt in Kaligaweh were enslaved to it; but sadder yet it was that there were not a few among them who could recall the good time when the name of opium was scarcely known there. In that short space of time, how complete a change had come over so lovely a spot! About twelve years ago a native of the dessa, who, in his youth had left it to seek his fortune elsewhere, returned to Kaligaweh. This man, whose name was Singomengolo, but who usually was known as Singo, had let loose the opium fiend upon the quiet and innocent little dessa in which he was born. Singo, on leaving home, had fallen into the hands of the recruiting serjeants. By encouraging his innate passion for gambling, and by initiating him into the mysteries of opium smoking, these soul-destroyers had, in an unguarded moment, induced him to enlist, and thus to bind himself to the service for a period of six years. The wretches helped the miserable man soon to get rid of the bounty in opium-dens, in gambling houses, at cock-fights, and in excesses of all kinds. Then for six years he was a soldier. As soon as his time of service had expired, Singo left the army in which he had acquitted himself with some credit, and obtained a place as oppasser (policeman) under one of the government controllers in the interior of the island. He soon gave evidence of considerable skill as a detective, and earned for himself the reputation of a very sharp and clever officer. This reputation brought him under the notice of one of the agents of the opium farmer for the district, who recommended him to the Company; and the Company, appreciating his services, obtained for him the place of bandoelan or opium-detective at their chief office at Santjoemeh. In that capacity, his dexterity and cunning, not only in the detection of opium smuggling but also in bringing to light other mysterious and shady transactions, won him the warm support of Lim Yang Bing, the wealthy opium farmer, who used constantly to employ him, especially in cases which had baffled the shrewdest of his agents and spies. Singo's services were, in fact, invaluable to his master; for whenever, for some reason or other, a man stood in the rich Chinaman's way, Singo could always be depended upon to find smuggled opium in his possession, though the victim might not have perhaps, in all his life, so much as seen the drug. In the year 1874 Babah Lim Yang Bing, by sheer dint of bribery, contrived to get the number of opium stores in his district increased by ten; and among the unfortunate dessas which were thus poisoned by sanction of the Dutch government, was Kaligaweh. Now, it was easy enough to set up an opium den in the little village; but it was quite another matter to make it pay, which was all Lim Yang Bing cared for. As soon as the government had granted the license, an opium store arose in Kaligaweh, a hole filthy in the extreme, so as to remain faithful to the tradition of such dens. Over the door appeared a black board on which in huge white letters were conspicuously painted the words, "Opium store," in Dutch, in Javanese, and in Chinese, and in the characters peculiar to those tongues. The two Chinamen, who were entrusted with its management, did their very best to attract people, they lavished their most winning smiles upon the passers-by, they exhausted every means of enticing them to enter; but it was all in vain. Not a single man ever ventured to set foot in the noisome hole. Babah Lim Yang Bing was not slow to perceive that so good an example would become contagious, and might spread among the other dessas of his district. It was quite obvious to the most casual observer, that Kaligaweh and its environs were wealthy and prosperous out of all comparison with the places where the opium trade flourished. Why, the mere outward appearance of its people was quite enough to show this; and the broad chests and sinewy arms of its men, and the firmly rounded hips and full shoulders of its women and girls, whose bronzed skin bore the ruddy glow of health, formed the most startling contrast with the ghastly, sunken countenances, and shrivelled frames of the walking skeletons which one encountered in other less favoured localities. But, chiefly was the eye of that cunning Chinaman attracted by the rich rice-fields which covered the entire district, and which pleasantly surrounded its little dessas nestling in the dark foliage of their fruit trees as islets amidst a sea of emerald, when the young crops imparted light and cheerfulness to the scene; or presently again would encircle these dessas as in a bright band of gold, when the stalks, ripening under the tropical sun, were bending under their weight of grain, and waved to the soft harvest breeze. In whatever season of the year, or from whatever side one might, at that time, approach Kaligaweh, its fields testified to the frugal industry of its inhabitants. They always spoke of regular and systematic cultivation, and of careful and constant irrigation, and they thus loudly proclaimed--a fact with which the reader is already acquainted--that its people were prosperous and happy, and led very different lives to the squalid and wretched existence which was dragged out in the places where the passion for opium had taken root. All this it was Lim Yang Bing's purpose to alter. Not only was the material welfare of the dessa a thorn in his side; but his covetous nature longed to transfer the earnings of its simple and frugal population to his own already over-filled pockets. His attempt with the opium-store had hitherto, we have seen, borne no fruit; it had proved a failure, and had brought loss rather than profit to its owner. He had determined, at any cost, to bring about a change. On a certain evening, it was towards the end of harvest, the population of Kaligaweh, men and women, young men and maidens, were returning homewards from the fields. The women had been hard at work all day, handling the sickles and cutting the ripe grain from the stalks, while the men had been no less busily engaged in taking the little bundles from the hands of the reapers, and binding them together into big bundles. The faces of all were flushed with exertion, and glowing with satisfaction, for the crop this year was a heavy one; no plagues of any kind had interfered with its growth, so that the landowners looked forward to laying up many pikols in their barns, and the more humble labourers could count upon a plentiful payment in kind. That, in itself, was quite sufficient to account for the universal good-humour and gaiety which prevailed. The rice-harvest is, indeed, in the rural districts of the rich island of Java, a great national festival, a day of joy, which, for its simple people, has more real significance than all the other Mahommedan festivals. It is then for them fair time. Clad in their gay, many-coloured dresses, the women and maidens assemble on the green; then many a heart, for the first time, feels the tender passion; then many an old love-affair is settled, and many a "yes" is softly murmured. The climate, the surrounding scenery in those glad harvest-fields, all invite to merriment and glee. True it is, we must not deny it, that, on such occasions, unguarded innocence is sometimes betrayed, and that, now and then, an offering is brought to the shrine of Lucina; but, much more frequently, the vows then made will presently be ratified and confirmed by the priest, and, at the very worst, no such frightful consequences ensue as are wont to arise in more highly civilized society. On this evening, as the merry bands of reapers approached the dessa, the lively tones of the cymbal fell upon their ears. The people looked at one another in astonishment at the unwonted sounds, and were at a loss to know who had prepared for them this pleasant surprise. When they came to the village green, they saw two booths erected under the splendid Wariengien or wild-fig trees which overshadowed the dessa, and over each of these booths there waved the Dutch flag. One of them was, as yet, closed, but in the back of the other were seated, cross-legged, a band of musicians, who made the air resound with their inspiriting strains. In front of this orchestra, a space was left vacant, the ground of which had been levelled and sprinkled with fine sand, and the booth was fairly well illuminated with lanterns of various colours. A loud cheer arose from the village crowd, for now they began to see that they might expect a much richer treat than a mere concert. Singomengolo, whom Lim Yang Bing had despatched with plenary powers to Kaligaweh and who had provided this entertainment for his friends in the dessa, was standing close by leaning up against one of the bamboo stems, which supported the roof of the booth, and was, with sundry nods and smiles, welcoming the fresh arrivals who were, for the most part, old acquaintances of his, and who warmly greeted him on his return to the dessa. In a twinkling, the sickles, the bands of straw, and the bundles of rice were stowed away, and the broad-brimmed hats, with which the labourers protected themselves at their work from the full glare of the mid-day sun, were laid aside. Soon the entire population came crowding to the green, and romping and playing filled the open space in front of the booth, then by degrees seated themselves on the soft carpet of tuft. Meanwhile, the sun had gone down in the West, and the stars were coming out one by one, and began to show their soft and twinkling light, while the moon, rising in the dark blue vault of heaven as a large blood-red disc, shed the fantastic shadows of the Wariengien trees upon the assembled groups. Round about the tree-tops innumerable swarms of bats flitted in giddy mazes uttering their peculiar, short, shrill cry, and high above them, in the evening air, sundry flying squirrels kept circling round mysteriously, who seemed to be selecting the juiciest fruits on which, presently, they intended to make a feast. When all were seated, and some degree of order had been obtained; at a signal from Singo, the cymbals and all the instruments in the orchestra struck up, and filled the air with pleasant melody. "Bogiro, Bogiro!" shouted the younger and more enthusiastic part of the audience. That first piece, indeed, which may most fitly be compared with our overture, is one in which all the instruments of a Javanese orchestra play together, and which serves as an introduction to the programme which is to follow. At times, it must be said, the cymbals would make a most discordant and deafening noise, but this was varied now and then by solos which were musical and pleasant enough to the ear. Evidently the musicians were this evening on their mettle, they exerted themselves to the utmost to deserve the applause of their simple audience; and the profound silence with which that wanton and excitable crowd sat listening, sufficiently testified to the success of their endeavours. At the last clash of the cymbals, the people broke silence, and by ringing shouts and lively cheers gave vent to their satisfaction as a Westerly audience would have shown its approval by clapping of hands. Singomengolo, with the help of a couple of his assistants, and aided by the two Chinamen who kept the opium-store, then offered the notables, who were present, cigars wrapped in leaves, while sweets and confectionery were handed round to the more distinguished ladies of the company. Round the two booths several stalls had been erected, at which the lower classes could go and gratify their tastes. The satisfaction of these poor people was unbounded, when they found that all these dainties were provided free of charge, and that it was in this generous manner that Singo had determined to celebrate his return among them. On all sides, praises and thanks were lavished on his liberality. But the tempter took good care not to let them know that the tobacco of which those pleasant little cigars were made had been well steeped in infusion of opium, and that the pernicious juice of the Polyanthes tuberosa largely entered into the composition of the nice sweets he had so bountifully served out. Perfectly unconscious of this treachery the poor people thoroughly enjoyed their treat, and were loud in praises to their generous friend. Presently, the cymbal was heard again, and every one hurried back to his seat. At the first notes of the piece which followed a loud cheer arose; "Taroe Polo, Taroe Polo" was the cry as the people recognised the well known sounds, then all sat silent and listened with rapt attention. The story or legend of which the musicians were about to give a musical interpretation, was familiar to almost every inhabitant of the dessa, yet here and there small groups gathered round some old man as he told the oft-repeated tale to his younger friends. The music of Java is the interpretation, the embodiment, the rhythmical expression of the numberless fables, legends, and romantic tales current in the island. It is inseparably connected with them just as appropriate gesture and modulation of the voice are the necessary accompaniments of oratory. Of these legends the story of Taroe Polo is one of the prettiest and well-calculated to awaken the softest emotions in the breast of the susceptible Javanese. In very low tones, which blended with the notes of the music, but yet in an audible voice, the old man said: Taroe Polo was a young prince who one day while he was out hunting lost his way in the dense tropical forest, and as he was wandering about, suddenly came upon an old ruinous palace the existence of which had never been suspected. Making his way through the tangled undergrowth, he soon came up to the walls and entered the ruin. As he roamed about the spacious and much decayed galleries, he was greatly surprised to find himself in an apartment which the hand of time had spared, and which retained all its former freshness and splendour. As he looked round in amazement at so sudden and strange a sight, his eye lit upon a young damsel of wondrous beauty surrounded by a train of attendants, who, although unable to vie with their mistress in loveliness, yet were all comely and young. She was a princess, a king's daughter, confined by the cruelty of her mother to that lonely spot, because she would give no ear to the suit of an old though powerful monarch, who was anxious to make her his bride. The moment prince Taroe Polo caught sight of this enchanting vision, he felt a fire kindle in his breast, and casting himself down at her feet, he began to pour out to her the tale of his passionate love; hear how well the little silver cymbal and the strips of resonant wood struck with small hammers with their soft silvery tones express the tender feelings of the prince, how they seem to sing, to woo, to implore as the young man kneels to his love. The young maiden listens but too willingly to his eager suit, her bosom heaves, she sighs, the flute with its languishing notes quite plainly tells the tale. But she is compelled to repress her emotion, for she is guarded by her attendants, who are her mother's slaves, and who one and all will be ready to betray her. She replies in broken accents, in single syllables, the harp faithfully gives back her confusion. Gently however, and with the cunning of love she tries to get rid, if but for a few moments, of those who stand around her. She succeeds, and now the passionate joy of the lovers breaks forth unrestrained. How well that burst of passion is rendered in full symphony by the two stringed viol, the accordian, the flute and the zither. Thus having, for a while, given way to their feelings, they suddenly remember that they can never win the mother's consent, that her followers are incorruptible and that their only chance of bliss is to flee away together--far away to the mountains. The lovely princess, however, will not yield, her maiden pride refuses to take the irrevocable step. But the prayers of Taroe Polo, now soft as the gentle breeze which rustles in the tree-tops, then vehement and passionate as the tempest blast which howls over the fields--at length prevail. Her own heart pleads for him, her love is sounding his praise, still she wavers, she hesitates. But the thought of her mother and of the fate which awaits her should the secret of her love become known, quite overcomes her. With downcast eyes, but with a smile of joy she casts herself into the arms of her love, and with him she flies--she flies to the blue mountains, which loom far away in the mist. The whole Javanese orchestra celebrates this happy close with a full burst of melody, the cymbals with rapid clang indicate the swiftness of their flight, and then the coy sighs of the maiden are succeeded by the jubilant song of the prince, and a loud clash of victory brings the piece to a triumphant close. The whole population of Kaligaweh--simple folk--sat awe-struck listening with breathless attention until the last sounds of the gamelang had faded, quivering away in the distance. The moon had meanwhile risen, had lost her blood-red hue and was now prying down upon that rustic village green through the tall Wariengien trees and flooding all those who sat there with silvery light. By this time the other booth had been opened and within a group of men could be seen cleverly manipulating some packs of Chinese cards. Your Javanese is a born gambler. With him the love of play is the ruling passion, nay the mother of all others, which without that excitement might be harmless enough. The sight of that booth is irresistible, many of the men rise at once to take part in the seductive game, whilst others who are anxious to see the theatrical performance which was to follow, begin to ask Singo or his attendants for one of those cigars which they had found so delicious. The poor little women too are so fond of those nice little sweetmeats and cannot help showing that a second edition of those dainties would not be unwelcome. But, the crafty minions of Lim Yang Bing were on the watch. With the most pleasant smiles they told the company that the supply intended for free distribution had come to an end; but that the stall-keepers were ready to sell cigars and sweetmeats to anyone who would pay for them. It was a sore disappointment; the stall-keepers were ready to sell, but where was the money to come from? For though we know that the people of Kaligaweh were in every way prosperous, yet there was but very little of the filthy dross of this world among them. Singomengolo read their feelings at once, and with devilish craft he pointed to the open gambling booth. There, he grinned, plenty of all sorts of coins could be picked up in a few minutes. It was a mere matter of luck. His words acted like oil cast upon the fire. "But to play, one must have ready money to stake," suggested one of the bystanders. And how then about the rice which you have just brought home? said the tempter with a leer worthy of Satan himself. A new light dawned upon the wretched people. The rice, of course, how was it that they had never thought of that? "And will they take rice for payment?" asked one. "Take it?" cried Singo, "of course they will and allow you the full market value for it." "And," continued the tempter, "You can see for yourselves that to-day is a lucky day for you. Look at Pak Ardjan how he is rattling the rix-dollars. It was true enough, there stood Pak Ardjan, the father of the late mate--there he stood dancing and jumping about like a madman, while he rattled in his closed hands the three rix-dollars he had just won. Three rix-dollars! Why that was at least half a month's wages! And to win all that money in a few minutes! All one wanted was but a little pluck--fortune would be kind enough." Thus spake many of the poor creatures, little knowing what nets were spread around them. Still there was a great deal of hesitation--men had not altogether taken leave of their senses. The great majority still held back, and but very few bundles of rice had found their way to the gambling booth. Just then--Kaseran and Wongsowidjojo and Kamidin, and Sidin, and so many others began to cut the same capers as Pak Ardjan. They also danced about, they also shouted for joy, they showed the people--the one three, the other five, a third seven, and yet another ten guilders which they had made in a twinkling. That Singo really was an excellent fellow, he had returned to make the fortunes of all his friends. Then there was no holding them. Soon the whole booth was full of men blindly intent upon tempting fortune, while outside the cymbal resounded, and the voices of the actresses(?) were beginning to make themselves heard. But the keepers of the gambling-booth were no fools. Their policy was not to frighten the poor dessa-people at this first attempt; and evidently only a very small portion of the rice-harvest had fallen into their hands. The cheerful and happy faces of the gamblers told plainly enough that there were not many losers among them, and if here and there one had been unlucky, it was always one who could very well stand a slight reverse of fortune. In truth, the "croupiers" did but very little business that night, though they were clever enough to take care, now that the ball had been set rolling, that their losses were not ruinously heavy. In fact, as the night grew on, the rix-dollars of the winners were imperceptibly but surely melting away to guilders and the guilders to still smaller change. Yet, on the whole, the gamblers had won sufficient to make them all noisy and happy. At length came the hour of midnight, and the heavy gong was struck at the guard-house. The booth-keepers declared that they intended to close, that they had had a really bad night, and they actually did blow out the candles and shut up the place. Many of the people were still lingering about and listening to the cymbal and the craving for cigars began to be felt again. Thus the stall keepers did a roaring trade, and seeing that they also were in the pay of the Babah Lim Yang Bing the money which the confederates had lost at cards, managed to come back to them again through another channel, so that the sacrifice, after all, was not a very alarming one. At length the store of those pleasant cigars, which was not a very large one to start with, was exhausted. Then, with an indescribably low and nasty smile, Singo and his accomplices began to point to the opium-den where, for the same money, much more real enjoyment could be obtained. In that wretched hole some girls were publicly seated on the rough benches, and with their shapely fingers were daintily rolling the little balls of opium, and casting seductive looks, coupled with wanton gestures, at the poor victims who stood gazing at the open door of that fatal den without being able quite to pluck up the courage to enter. Alas! for many of them, the temptation was too strong. Excited by the poison which they had already imbibed in considerable quantity--seduced by the wanton allurements of those fair women--first one gave way, then another, and although that night not every compartment of the opium-den was occupied, yet the Chinamen who kept it had every reason to be satisfied. When Lim Yang Bing was told of the result of that night's work he rubbed his hands together as he chuckled, that "Singomengolo is really an invaluable fellow--I must not lose sight of him." CHAPTER VIII. DECAY OF THE DESSA.--ARREST OF PAK ARDJAN. This first fairly successful attempt upon the little dessa was systematically repeated, and every evening the inspiriting tones of the cymbal resounded on the green of Kaligaweh, and every evening also the temptations described in the former chapter were renewed. All this might cost Lim Yang Bing some money at first; but he knew well enough that he would be the gainer in the end and that his capital would soon return to him with ample interest. By degrees it became less and less necessary to allow the gamblers to win; and it was not very long before such a thing only happened now and again so that the hope of gain might not die out altogether. Gradually the poor deluded people began to lose more and more; and one bundle of rice after another passed into the hands of the sharpers who, it must be said, gave liberal prices; and allowed somewhat more than the full market value for the produce. But it was not only the spirit of gambling which had thus been aroused in Kaligaweh; together with that degrading passion--perhaps in consequence of it--the abuse of opium began to increase to an alarming extent. Six months, indeed, had scarcely elapsed before it became a notorious fact that a very considerable part of the population had taken to opium smoking; and--sadder still--that the opium farmers found powerful allies in the women of the dessa, who very soon began to perceive the influence which the drug had upon their husbands, and who, instead of trying to arrest the unfortunate creatures on their road to ruin, rather encouraged their fatal passion. One reason of this was, that the terrible effects of the poison did not at once manifest themselves. No--the enemy made his approaches in the dark, he advanced slowly but surely. At first the quantity used was but very small, a couple of matas or so a day, not even as much as that, were for those primitive people who were wholly unaccustomed to the drug quite sufficient to procure blissful rest and delightful sleep, and to call up visions of the houris with which Mohammed has peopled his paradise. Double that quantity would produce exuberant gaiety and excite to the most inordinate passions. And that peace, that excitement, that bliss could be purchased at the opium-store for fourteen cents (about 2 1/2d.) a mata. It was indeed dirt-cheap! But--though in the beginning of his downward course, the opium smoker could rest satisfied with so moderate an allowance--albeit even this did not fail to make a breach in his modest budget seeing that the expenditure was pretty constant--presently his constitution began to get seasoned to it, and it took a much greater quantity of the poison to have the desired effect. At first a man would only occasionally indulge and take up the bedoedan (opium pipe) say, once a week; but gradually his nervous system began to grow accustomed to the stimulant, and then a craving for the poison began to be felt, so that already several men could be pointed out who, as soon as the influence of the narcotic had passed off, were dull, downcast, nervous and restless; and who, in consequence, felt utterly miserable. There was but one means to raise them out of their state of depression; and so they would take up the bedoedan again and swallow another dose of the poison. And thus by degrees it came to pass that at length there was with them scarcely an interval between one fit of intoxication and the next. That thus the prosperity of the dessa was inevitably destined to disappear did not admit of the slightest doubt. Not only was the actual expense of this habitual indulgence greater than the means of many would allow; but the fatal habit engendered other cravings which also had to be gratified, and which helped to sweep away the little that opium had left. Moreover the love of work--never under any circumstances too strong in a tropical land--was first seriously impaired, then wholly extinguished, and, when not under the influence of the opiate the smoker was a slovenly, drowsy, lazy and objectless being, wholly unfit for the least exertion, whom nothing could rouse into activity but fresh indulgence in the baneful remedy. Indeed the sanitary condition of the people of Kaligaweh had degenerated with such alarming rapidity, that the most casual observer could not fail to be struck by the change. If, in days gone by, a European visited the dessa--which it is true but very seldom happened--he could not fail to admire the healthy and sturdy look of its inhabitants; but now he constantly came upon men and women whose ghastly appearance could not but excite in him the deepest pity. There could be no mistake about it, at a single glance it was evident that he had before him the victims of the terrible opium-fiend. Those grey livid faces from which every trace of the Oriental bronze tint had faded; that wrinkled skin which looked like parchment overheated without being scorched; those wasted angular features which gave to the head the appearance of an unsightly skull; those deep sunken eyes with their jaded look and the dark blue rings around them; those stooping forms and receding chests; that extraordinary emaciation of the upper body, of which every rib could be counted, and which conveyed an idea of transparency, for the specimens which one met had hardly a rag about them; barely a bit of dirty clothing wrapped round their loins to hide their nakedness; that deep distressing cough which came, with hollow sound, from the labouring breast and spoke of lungs wasted with disease whilst it seemed to shake to pieces the entire frame; those spindle legs, so poor, so meagre, that they seemed hardly able to totter along under the weight of the body they had to support; all these formed the stereotyped picture of defaced humanity and bore incontestable witness to the protracted sufferings and unfathomable misery which had reduced these poor blighted creatures to mere walking skeletons. When later on Singomengolo revisited the dessa where he first saw the light, and where, as a thanksoffering, he had planted the most terrible curse, his lip must have curled with a Satanic smile. Yes, all he could now see there; those cocoa-nut trees overgrown with moss and parasites; those orchards neglected and decayed; those unwatered rice-fields and half-tilled fields; those two or three oxen whose lean and sickly appearance spoke plainly of neglect and starvation; yes, all these things were his work. It was his fault that now the harvest was scanty and worthless; it was his fault that even that wretched harvest had been pawned long before the ani anis had so much as begun their work; it was his fault that clothes, furniture, tools, everything, had been sold or pawned for next to nothing, and that all had been swallowed up in the bottomless pit of that national curse. But Babah Lim Yang Bing the opium farmer and his friends Ong Sing Beh and Kouw Thang the keepers of the pawnshop and of the gambling-booth were thriving wonderfully, and by their glorious aid the Dutch Treasury also was doing well in comparison, at least, with former days when those three noble sources of income contributed little or nothing to that unsatiable Moloch, the Revenue. Gaily therefore might the Dutch flag wave in the breeze, and proudly might the Dutch arms display their manly motto "Je Maintiendrai" above the opium-den, the gambling-booth and the pawn-shop--that much worshipped Trinity which forms the most elaborate system of extortion under which ever a poor conquered race has groaned. Among the first of the infatuated wretches which fell into the pit so carefully dug for them, was Pak Ardjan, the father of the mate of the schooner brig Kiem Ping Hin. But a short time ago he was looked upon as a thriving and well-to-do Javanese peasant, the possessor of a yoke of powerful oxen, now he had gambled, rioted and smoked away house and goods and had plunged his helpless family into the most hideous misery. Where was now the pleasant little cottage with its neat hedge of golden-yellow bamboo and its clean dark-brown roof of thatch made of leaves? Where was that comfortable little house in which Pak Ardjan was wont to sit with wife and children, passing his days in peace and cheerfully looking forward to the future? Alas! the miserable hovel which now barely sheltered the once happy family was small, low, close, in fact a ruin. The single room of which it consisted was pervaded by that offensive musty smell which decaying bamboo generally emits. One look at the walls, the lower parts of which had already rotted away while the upper were rapidly crumbling under the attacks of the white ant, and one glance at the roof which was in one place bulging inwards and in another fast going to dust, was quite sufficient to account for the closeness of the air. On the bits of matting, which covered the still more filthy floor, the children were rolling about, many of them naked as they were born, while the mother and father, if he happened to be at home, clad in rags which were never washed and were leaving their bodies in tatters sat crouching on the floor stupidly gazing at the scene of desolation before them. Gazing! aye, if the stony mechanical stare could be called by that name. For the father had lost all consciousness of the hopeless misery of his family. The frightful selfishness produced by the abuse of opium: the constantly growing indifference to all things round about him, even to his own wife and children; the rapidly increasing love of idleness, and incapacity for work, for care, for exertion in fact of any kind which at length made him utterly unable to think of anything by day or night except of how he might gratify his passion and the other cravings it engendered, and for which he was driven to sacrifice everything. All this had clouded his sight, and as a man stone-blind he was tottering on the very brink of a precipice. Whilst he was in the first lethargic state brought on by the moderate use of the narcotic, he would be quiet, peaceful and contented, and would dose away and dream and build up for himself--for himself only--a paradise in which none but sensual pictures presented themselves to his eye and to his mind. Then as he continued to smoke, and when he reached the next stage--the stage of frenzy--he would, regardless of his children's presence, shamelessly pursue his wife round the cabin, for at such times she seemed to him the houri of his dreams, and then, in that wretched hovel at any hour of the night or day, scenes would be enacted such as the poor innocent children ought never to have witnessed. For, at such times the man was like a brute beast, wholly incapable of bridling his degraded passions. Then the final paroxysm would be reached, and the effect of the dreadful poison would begin to wear off; and then the wretched creature would fall into a state of utter prostration, of annihilation which for himself, and worse still for his family, was indeed a cup of woe. Then the smoker would begin to tremble all over, then he became restless and uneasy, then his entire nervous system seemed to be out of joint, then every limb would be racked with pain--then he would moan most piteously, and cry like a child, sobbing and declaring that he was at the point of death and then--yes; then there was but one single means to relieve him and to bring him back out of that state of intolerable agony, and that was once again to grasp the pipe and to fight the disease with the poison which had caused it. Then the wife had to run out to buy opium--where the money was to come from, that was her business. Then one of the children had to knead and roll the opium-balls and another little one had to hold the lamp which, for that kind of smoking, is indispensable, and a third had to make strong coffee which was generally got by theft out of the government-plantations. And if, from sheer want of money, all this could not be done--nay even when it was not done quite quickly enough for the impatience of the nervous sufferer--then the wretched man would fill the hut with wailing and lamentation, with curses and revilings which drove its inmates to the verge of despair. Amidst such surroundings as these Ardjan had grown up, and although he had not fallen as deeply as his father, yet in the years of his childhood, the age which is most susceptible of good or evil, his heart and mind had received the impressions which made it possible for him later on to take service on board a smuggling-brig, and to make him feel towards the company which employed him in its nefarious transactions, such loyalty as we heard him express in the djaga monjet before Lim Ho the son of Lim Yang Bing the opium farmer at Santjoemeh. So long as Ardjan, who was the eldest son, was but a child, the family was plunged in the depths of bestial degradation; but when he had grown up and, after having served awhile as a sailor in a government vessel, had gone on board the Kiem Ping Hin, things began somewhat to mend at home in the dessa. This was especially the case when young Ardjan, who had a very good head on his shoulders, was promoted to be mate of the smuggling brig. In that capacity he had constant opportunities of handling the cargo, and of such a drug as opium, which takes up but little space, he could very easily now and then appropriate to himself quantities of comparatively considerable value. This he did the more readily, and with the less reluctance, as his notions on the meum and tuum were of the vaguest description. The opium thus pilfered he used to deliver to his father who, in this manner, was enabled, not only fully to indulge in his ruling passion, but also to dispose of the superfluity to his neighbours. In this illegal traffic Pak Ardjan frequently made considerable gains, which, however, far from being of any substantial benefit to his empoverished household, would always be squandered with lavish extravagance. Such was the state of things when Resident van Gulpendam gave Lim Yang Bing the hint that Pak Ardjan was, in the estimation of the police, held to be a notorious smuggler. From what has been said above it is evident that what the Resident had said was true, the police had their suspicions, and had often been on the old smuggler's track, without ever having been able to bring the offence home to him. It must be said indeed, that so long as Ardjan was on board the Kiem Ping Hin they made no very determined efforts to convict his father. Equally true it was that Pak Ardjan, not knowing at the time that his son lay under suspicion of having brought on shore the discovered opium, had laid a formal accusation against Lim Ho, on account of the brutal manner in which he had treated his son. Now, the old opium-smoker had taken this step, not because he felt any pity for his son, nor because he wished to be revenged upon the Chinaman for the wrong he had thus inflicted upon one of his family--still less had he done so because he was anxious that the offender should receive condign punishment. Oh no, Pak Ardjan was not actuated by any such motives as these. A short time before his adventure at the Moeara Tjatjing Ardjan had procured for his father a few katties of opium. So long as the supply lasted, the old man had not troubled himself in the least about the treatment his son had undergone; but when he saw that the supply was beginning to run low, then he began to look with apprehension to the future, and especially alarmed was he when he heard that Ardjan had exchanged the hospital for the jail. His poor muddled brain fancied that he might hasten Ardjan's release by making a charge against Lim Ho; and he had been further encouraged to take the step by the advice of a pettifogging lawyer, who thought that, in an action against the rich son of the still more wealthy opium-farmer, he had discovered a very pretty little vein of gold. Thus the charge was, in the proper form, laid before the Court at Santjoemeh and a prosecution against Lim Ho was ordered accordingly. This matter the president of the Council had put into the hands of his young colleague, van Nerekool, and he, most anxious that justice should be done and that the miscreant should pay the legal penalty for his offence; and glad also, thus to be able to perform the promise which he had made to Anna, the fair daughter of the Resident, that he would do his best to save Dalima's lover, had readily undertaken the case, and was confident that he would be able to bring it to a successful issue. But, on a certain afternoon, while the sun was yet high in the heavens, Pak Ardjan had gone to have a look at his store of opium which he had secreted by burying it deep in the ground, and heaping over the place a heavy layer of stones. Much to his regret he found, upon opening his store, that, at the most, he had but a couple of taël left. These he proceeded to carry home with him; for he had promised some opium-smoking friends to let them have a supply that evening, and, as they were good customers and paid him handsomely, he would not disappoint them. When he reached home his children informed him that Singomengolo had made his appearance in the dessa, and had been making sundry enquiries about him. The appearance itself of the man in the dessa, was nothing very extraordinary, nor was it, under the circumstances, strange that Pak Ardjan's name should have been mentioned by him. But somehow or other an accountable feeling of distrust came over the old man which impelled him to try and hide the opium he had about him. Now if he had been in his normal condition he would straightway have returned to the ravine and buried his treasure safely in its former hiding place, before further steps could be taken against him. But the fit of depression was on him, his nerves were again beginning to play tricks with him, his mental powers were, as usual after prolonged abstinence, growing confused--in short he was bordering on that stage in which he would need another dose of opium to pick him up. Accordingly, he set aside a couple of matas for his own use, and, having carefully wrapped the remainder in nipah-leaves, he thrust the packets for concealment behind the attapa-leaves which formed the crazy roof of his cabin. This done, it was the old story again, and the whole family had to set to work to minister to him in his disgusting opium debauch. But as he lay stretched there on the bench, and just as he was beginning to light his third pipe, before that, therefore, he was wholly under the influence of the poppy-juice, Singomengolo suddenly appeared on the door-step, accompanied by four or five policemen, and by the two Chinamen, who kept the opium-store. The instant he crossed the threshold, the bandoelan knew what was going on within, although Pak Ardjan had started up, and with some dexterity, had managed to hide his pipe under the filthy pillow which is inevitably present on every couch, and his children had secreted the lamp and the yet unsmoked opium. The sickly sweetish smell, however, which pervaded the close stuffy room could not deceive anyone, least of all a bandoelan so thoroughly experienced as was the agent of the opium-farmer. "There has been opium smoked here!" he cried in a peremptory tone, as he and his followers made their way into the cabin. "Oh no," stammered Pak Ardjan in dismay, "oh no, indeed there has not!" while his wife and children, like so many frightened sheep, huddled together in a corner. "Guard the door and the windows," cried Singo to his policemen, and then turning again upon Pak Ardjan he repeated more sternly even than before, "You have been smoking opium, I tell you!" "Oh no, indeed I have not," replied the unfortunate man. "Why there is the pipe," cried the opium hunter, as he triumphantly drew the corpus delicti from under the pillow. "Why here is the pipe, and quite hot too!" Pak Ardjan already beside himself with fear felt completely crushed at this evident proof of his guilt. "Where is the opium?" asked Singomengolo in threatening tones. Pak Ardjan returned no answer. "Well, never mind," said Singo, "we shall soon find it," and a horrid smile crossed his lips. He made a signal to the Chinamen, and to the policemen who were not engaged in watching the door and windows; and then ensued a search, we may call it a hunt, the description of which may well seem incredible to those who do not know that such frightful scenes are not at all of uncommon occurrence. Under the couch, under the mats which covered the floor, they searched, they rooted up the very floor of the cabin, they poked about under the stove and in the ashes of that very primitive kind of cooking-apparatus; pillows were rent open, and their contents scattered on the floor; the few boxes and baskets were torn open, and the noisome rags they contained were shaken and contemptuously flung aside; the poor miserable furniture, a few pots and pans, the rice-kettle, the tombok-block, the rice-panniers, even the sirih-box were turned over, but nothing--nothing could they find. Singomengolo was angry. Now he ordered a body-search to be made. First they seized upon Pak Ardjan and, though he offered some resistance, he was, with sundry kicks and blows, very soon shaken out of the few filthy rags which hung about him, and, in his hideous leanness, he stood there naked before the eyes of his family. The sense of decency, which never leaves even the most utterly degraded, made the poor man cower down moaning to the ground trying to hide his nakedness from the eyes of his children. Then came the mother's turn, and the turn of the children--some of them girls from seven to fourteen years of age. Regardless alike of the mother's feelings or of the innocence of childhood, the inhuman monsters proceeded in their search, and a scene was then enacted so hideous, so disgusting, that over it we must draw a veil. The children cried, the girls sobbed and wept, the mother shrieked under this base and violent treatment, it was of no avail. But presently, one of the policemen rudely seized upon the eldest daughter, poor little Sarina, a girl of fourteen; she, in her fright, dropped her sarong, and uttered a scream of terror. That cry made Pak Ardjan bound to his feet, madly he flung himself upon the cowardly wretch, with one wrench he dragged the fellow's sabre from its scabbard, and with its edge he dealt the miscreant two such blows as sent him, sorely wounded and howling with pain, flying from the scene of his dastardly exploit. But the poor father thus goaded to madness and blinded by fury, whose withered arm and wasted frame could not endure any sustained exertion, was at once overpowered and disarmed before he could strike another blow in defence of his outraged household. They bound him most cruelly, they tied his ankles together and forced the rough and prickly gemoetoe-cords between his toes, which at the slightest movement, put the unfortunate man to excruciating torture. Next they proceeded to handcuff him; but, as the manacles were much too wide to confine his shrivelled wrists, they drove in between the arm and the iron, rough pieces of firewood, and this caused such intolerable pain that a lamentable howl came from Pak Ardjan's lips--a howl most like that of some poor beast in its dying agony. But now the opium? The opium? Hitherto none had been found. Singomengolo stood scratching his ear. He was, indeed, in a most awkward predicament. "What a rage the Kandjeng toean Resident will be in," muttered he. But he did not mind him much. He would bluster no doubt a good deal and bark; but he would take good care not to bite. But, what would Babah Lim Yang Bing think of it? might he not look with suspicion upon all this fruitless zeal. And then the newspapers! What if they began to talk--and talk those confounded papers would there could be no doubt about it. And the judges! What if they should take it up? They must take it up of course. Pak Ardjan had violently, and with arms in his hand, resisted the police--the opium police. And that was a crime which could not be hushed up. That was one of the offences which the Dutchmen always punished with the greatest severity. Yes, but then the fact would come out that there had been a visitation, a pretty severe visitation, and that nothing had been found. And then other matters might, and would probably, leak out. Aye, they had handled the little girls a little too brutally. And those judges were such an inquisitive lot, they were sure to get to the bottom of it all. He was in an awkward plight. Oh! had he but found the opium! Or better still, had he but taken his usual precautions! "And yet," muttered he, as his hawk-like eye darted round the little hut, "I had such very precise instructions. I was to wait until Pak Ardjan had returned from the ravine, then--But would it not have been much wiser to surprise him in the ravine?--No, no--that would never have done--he might have sworn that he had found the opium there by chance, and those judges are so lenient, they will believe anything, and they never convict if there is the possibility of a doubt. No, no, the opium must--it shall--be found in Pak Ardjan's own possession, that only will be conclusive evidence of guilt. But--I cannot find it--Eh! eh!" he exclaimed, "what have we here?" With one bound Singomengolo reached the corner where a slight bulge in the roof seemed to look as if it had quite lately been disturbed. The edges of the nipah-leaves did not look quite so dark in that spot as the others which had been exposed to the smoke. The bandoelan thrust his hand into the roof, he felt about for a few moments, and then, he drew forth two small parcels. These he hastily unwrapped and uttered a cry of triumph. It was the opium which Pak Ardjan had tried to hide just before his house was searched. "You lie, you scoundrel!" roared he, to the wretched Javanese, as he dealt him a blow in the face with the back of his hand, which made the blood to spurt from his lips. But the latter replied not a word. When the captured opium had been duly examined by the witnesses, the detected criminal was flung into a filthy sedan-chair carried by some natives who had been pressed for that service. Thus under proper escort and guard, Pak Ardjan was conveyed to Santjoemeh, and lodged in the jail. A few days later Resident van Gulpendam laid a formal charge against Pak Ardjan before the court at Santjoemeh. He was accused of opium-smuggling, and of having violently, and with arms in his hands, resisted the police in the execution of their duty; one of the officers having received serious wounds in the affray. Mr. Zuidhoorn, the President, read over the charge, and as he read he could not conceal a bitter smile. "It is disgusting," muttered he, "disgusting!" CHAPTER IX. NJONJA MAHAL--THE THREE FRIENDS. When Lim Yang Bing informed his son of the arrest of his accuser Pak Ardjan, and communicated to him some of the details of the capture, Lim Ho chuckled with delight. "That's one good riddance, at all events," quoth he, to himself. "Now, with a very little management on our part, that fellow will be found guilty and sent to the devil long before his son's smuggling case can come on at all. The most dangerous witness will then be out of the way." Then, for a while, Lim Ho seemed lost in thought. He had made the njonja of the Resident a very handsome and valuable present of jewellery, in return for which he had got nothing but a mere empty promise that she would see what she could do for him in the way of inducing the girl to listen to his proposals. "Indeed! njonja mahal, an expensive lady," he muttered. "By Kong, what will be her price if I should need her active help in the case of the girl's refusal? Mercy on me! that will cost a pretty penny." But Pak Ardjan's arrest gave another direction to his thoughts. "No, the girl is not to be won, of that I am certain, she hates me too much to consent. But that is precisely the thing which makes her so attractive to me. She is an elegant, pretty girl! That's true enough, but there are many other good-looking maidens in the dessas--That's tame, I know all about them. No, no, to make the rebellious hussy bend to my will; to cover her, who detests me, with my kisses; to have her, who despises me, in my arms; and then--yes, then, when I am tired of her, and she is soiled and faded body and soul--then to be able to trample upon her, and fling her from me. That, look you, is the highly flavoured dish which, in my pursuit of her, I intend to enjoy. And, by Kong, I shall have my way, too. How? that I don't know, just yet. By force or by cunning? that matters little--if needs be, by both!" Thus he muttered to himself as, in his father's house, he lay stretched out on a most luxurious divan, with his long Chinese pipe in his mouth, in which he was smoking the most fragrant tobacco the Celestial empire produces. "By cunning?" he continued, after a few puffs at his pipe, "by cunning? Now, what is the most serious obstacle? The girl's will, no doubt;--well, I shall know how to get over that, if I get the chance, that will have, I daresay, to be a matter of violence after all. Now what else is there? The njonja!--The baboe is in her service; but I think she will help me, especially if--" Here the wretch moved his hand in the manner so peculiar to the Chinese, when they count money, putting down at each gesture a little pile of coins, which always contains the exact number required, never one piece more or less. "Now, is there any one else in my way? Yes, there is Ardjan, who wants to marry her; but he is pretty well accounted for, he is safe enough in jail, and won't very easily get out of the mess he is in, as he is charged with having smuggled a couple of pikols of opium. Long before he has been condemned, and has served his time, the deed must be done. Yes, long before that Dalima must have been mine! What, then--why, then? I sha'n't give either of them another thought, then the question will be, what pretty one will next take my fancy,--from Ardjan, I have nothing to fear, even if he does escape punishment, the company will know how to deal with him. There is only one man left against whom I must be on my guard, that is Setrosmito, Dalima's father. Oh, that cursed Javanese, he threatened me with his kris, did he? When I offered him five hundred rix-dollars for his daughter! Oh, I will pay him out for that. But how?--A thought strikes me--That arrest of Pak Ardjan seems to have been the easiest matter in the world. If Setrosmito could be made to fall into the same trap--if we could secure him--were it but for a few weeks!" Springing up from his couch, Lim Ho ran to a small gong which stood by a pillar, supported on a very elegant foot of china, and with a small stick, which was carved in the shape of a crocodile's head, the emblem of Ngoh, the water-god, he struck two sharp blows upon the clear-toned metal. A gaudily dressed Javanese servant immediately made his appearance, walked up to the divan, and, squatting down before it, placed his hands to his forehead, and obsequiously made his "sembah." "Do you think, Drono," asked Lim Ho, "that Singomengolo is still at Santjoemeh?" "I saw him only this morning, babah," replied Drono, as he repeated his sembah. "Then run and fetch him at once," said his master. "You will find him, I have no doubt, somewhere about the opium-store. Tell him I want to speak to him. Make haste!" "Sajah babah," said the man, as he glided back a few paces, then rose, and with his face still turned to his master, made his way out of the room. "Yes," continued Lim Ho to himself, pursuing the thoughts which the entrance of the servant had interrupted. "Yes, if it were but for a few weeks, in that time, I have no doubt, I could find some means of enticing little Dalima. The njonja Resident might be most useful to me in this. But it will cost money! No matter, there is no lack of that!" He rose again and struck the gong, and another Javanese servant presented himself. "Has Drono gone yet?" asked Lim Ho. "Not yet, babah," was the man's reply, "but he is just about to start." "Very well, then run and call him back," ordered Lim Ho. A moment later Lim Ho's confidential servant again stood before him. "Before you go to look for Singo," said the master, "you must go to the house of M`Bok Kârijâh, and you must tell her that I want to see her here as soon as possible." "Saja-babah," said Drono, as again he made the sembah. "Yes," cried Lim Ho, impatiently, "but be off at once. Saja-babah." The next day, M`Bok Kârijâh entered the Residence, and asked to see the njonja besar, or great lady. She was admitted at once, for it was morning, and Laurentia had just finished attending to her household duties, and had given out all that was needful to the cook. She was at that moment engaged in changing her morning kabaai for another one, made of fine lawn trimmed with lace. Indeed, the lady's doors were never closed to the old quack, and she would always receive her, at any hour of the day, if she could possibly do so. "Good morning, njoonjaa," said the old woman, in that drawling tone so peculiar to the obsequious Javanese, while she squatted down at the European lady's feet. "Tabeh nènèh," replied Laurentia. "Did the obat have the desired effect?" began the old hag. "Oh yes," replied Laurentia; "it worked admirably, you must let me have a good supply of it." "That is what I intended to do, njonja, but the ingredients, you know, are so difficult to get, they are so expensive." Laurentia took a small purse from her work-basket, and put a couple of rix-dollars into the old woman's hand. "There," said she, "take that to buy them, and mind you let me have some soon." The crone took the money, and tied it up in the corner of a dirty handkerchief, from which a bunch of keys was dangling, and, with a cunning leer, she assured the lady that she would have no reason to complain. Then she began to talk about master Leo, and to tell Laurentia what a dear, clever little chap he was, and how everyone in the street turned back to look at the little fellow as he passed. No doubt, now and then, an eye might be cast on the baboe also who had charge of him; for, there could be no question about it, the baboe was exceedingly pretty. Really, the njonja ought not to allow such a girl to go about so freely; she was too good-looking, and there are always people wicked enough to take advantage of innocence. The njonja knew that well enough, and it would be such a pity if the poor girl should get into bad hands. There was so much money to be made out of her. So the old hag rattled on; and so, in a disjointed way, and by degrees, she told Laurentia that Lim Ho's passion for Dalima was daily increasing in violence, and that every day he was prepared to make greater sacrifices to gain possession of her. Then Laurentia's greedy eye began to glisten, and cunning old M`Bok was clever enough to see that she might safely venture. Bending forward, but still keeping her watchful eye fixed on Laurentia's face, she went on for some time speaking in whispers, and seemed to be arousing the lady's keenest attention; for evidently Laurentia did not lose a word, and frequently nodded in token of assent. When the nènèh had finished speaking, Mrs. van Gulpendam did not at once reply, but, for awhile, seemed lost in meditation. At length she said: "Boleh; tapeh--mentega sama ikan." At the first word, "Boleh," which signifies "it is possible, it might be done," the dull eye of the old hag brightened; but, at the remainder of the sentence, she looked up with genuine surprise. Yes, the purely idiomatic Dutch expression, though rendered most correctly in Malay, was beyond her. "Mentega sama ikan?" she asked, in a strangely puzzled tone of voice. "To be sure," repeated Laurentia, in Malay. "Sauce with the fish. Don't you understand me, nènèh? Cash down, I mean, M`Bok, cash down! I am not going to be taken in by empty promises." "Alas!" sighed the old woman, who now saw clearly enough what was meant by "Sauce with the fish." She drew a little box out of the folds of the sash which confined the sarong around her scraggy hips, and offered it to the njonja. It contained a pair of valuable golden ear-rings of Chinese workmanship, richly set with diamonds. "Is that all?" asked Mrs. van Gulpendam, with a contemptuous smile. "They are very valuable," muttered the old hag. But the Resident's wife slowly shook her head. "Lim Ho asked me," continued M`Bok, "to tell you that he intends to come and personally express his gratitude to you as soon as the affair has succeeded." Laurentia laughed, "When the affair has succeeded," she repeated, scornfully. "A pretty story, indeed! No, I don't intend to see the babah at all." "But, njonja--" "That will do," said Laurentia; "not another word about it. Come," continued she, "you may take those things away with you again." "But what then am I to tell Lim Ho?" asked the nènèh. "You may tell him just whatever you like, nèh." "But, njonja--" "Now, M`Bok," said Laurentia, resolutely, "not another word on that subject. Don't forget to bring me a good supply of the obat." "Has the njonja no other orders for me?" "None at present," was the answer. "I only wished to tell you that I have another little lot of jewellery at home," insisted the old hag; "ear-rings, rings--!" "No, no, nèh," said Laurentia, interrupting her; "but if you should happen to know of some bracelets." "Bracelets, njonja? of what kind?" "Golden ones, of course," replied Mrs. van Gulpendam. "A little while ago I saw some that I should very much like to have; the Chinese major's daughter was wearing them. They were beauties, serpents of old gold which went three or four times round the wrist and they had eyes of brilliants and in their mouth was a rose-coloured diamond as thick as that, look!" And the njonja at these words held up her little finger. Old M`Bok Kârijâh devoured, so to speak, the words which she heard. "If," continued the njonja, "you could find me such a pair of bracelets, I should think them well worth having and--there might be a little profit for you too." These words were uttered in the most careless manner possible, though Laurentia's eyes seemed to pierce the old woman as she spoke them. "Saja, njonja," replied M`Bok, scrambling to her feet; "Good morning, njonja." "Good morning, nèh," said the lady. Half an hour after this interview Lim Ho uttered a frightful curse as again and again he repeated the words, "An expensive lady!" But he was too much intent upon his purpose to hesitate and so next day he handed M`Bok the bracelets for which she had asked him. Before proceeding further with our story, we shall have to give the reader some information concerning Mr. van Nerekool, the young lawyer to whom Anna van Gulpendam had appealed for help in her anxiety to save Ardjan, the future husband of her favourite servant Dalima. Hitherto the narrative has carried us away, now it is time to cast a look backward. Charles van Nerekool was, as we have seen, a fine tall young man of about five or six-and-twenty years of age, with handsome clearly cut features, a light beard and moustache and thick curly hair of a somewhat darker shade. He had studied at Leyden, the Athens of Holland. But though he had passed all his examinations most creditably, yet, he could not help confessing to himself that he had not altogether done justice to his great abilities. Both at the Grammar School and at the University he had passed for a somewhat absent and careless fellow in his studies. He had, from his early youth, been too much inclined to waste his time on objectless hobbies; but they were hobbies which showed that his mind was one of no ordinary stamp. Mighty fond was he, when a boy, of all kinds of things which lay outside the regular routine of his school duties. First and foremost, he loved music, then drawing, painting, in fact, the general contemplation of nature. Consequently, he had frequently been kept in for neglecting his lessons; but the boy did not much mind that; and on such occasions he would go away into a corner of the schoolroom and sit and dream. Then, as he sat there all alone with his fair head turned upward to the clear blue sky, some one would say, "Poor child, he is not long for this world, it will end in consumption." But Charles van Nerekool was not at all consumptive; for it happened with him, as with so many other seemingly delicate boys, that the approach of manhood brought with it robust health. When quite a child he had had the misfortune to lose his father. Spiteful tattling people, such persons as are always most anxious about things which in no way concern them, would have it that that father had never existed, or to speak more correctly, would have it that it was never known who was that father. What reason had they for flinging about these suspicions? Why? none at all. It was all the merest tittle-tattle, the merest putting together of trifling circumstances. Even at the name van Nerekool the busy-bodies would shake their heads and suggest that it ought to be read backwards, van Lookeren. But true or false, it mattered very little. In these days, a man can earn respect by his ability and his honesty; and where these are present, he will be highly valued in the world--in the world, that is to say, of people whose esteem is worth having. His mother was supposed to be in very easy circumstances and to enjoy a very sufficient income. At all events, the young man's studies had always been amply provided for, and his allowance at Leyden had been liberal enough to enable him to take part in all the amusements in which his fellow students used to indulge. But when, towards the end of the young man's time at college, Mrs. van Nerekool died somewhat suddenly, it appeared that in reality her means were most slender; and that she had indeed realised all the property she possessed and denied herself everything in order to be able to defray the expenses of her son's education. Seeing this, the trustee who undertook the settlement of Mrs. van Nerekool's affairs, strongly advised the young man to try and get appointed to the judicial staff in Dutch India. This advice young van Nerekool took. The short time which he had yet to spend at the University he employed in the closest application to his studies, and after having passed a brilliant examination, he was appointed to a place in India and put under the orders of the Governor General. When he got out to Batavia, they kept him for a year in the capital to help the members of the high court of Justice to get through arrears of work which had accumulated. This year was by no means time lost; for young van Nerekool thus got a much clearer insight in all legal matters which concerned the natives of the island than he could otherwise have done, seeing that the revision of all sentences passed by the courts in Java and Madura had to go through his hands. Shortly after, he was appointed member of the Council at Santjoemeh, which appointment gave him further opportunity of gaining useful information. At Santjoemeh, the young man had the good fortune to find in Mr. Zuidhoorn, the president of the Council, a thoroughly worthy and honest man, who proved himself a trustworthy guide, and who, fully appreciating the abilities and sterling qualities of his young colleague, took every opportunity of developing them in the right direction. In Mr. Zuidhoorn he had before him a living example of strict integrity and of that impartiality and freedom from prejudice which it is not always easy to practise in the service of dame Justitia. At Santjoemeh van Nerekool made the acquaintance of two men, one of whom was about his own age and the other four or five years his junior. The names of these gentlemen were William Verstork and Edward van Rheijn. Both were in the government service in the Residence of Santjoemeh; but Verstork was obliged to live at Banjoe Pahit, which was the chief dessa of the division of that name to which Kaligaweh also belonged, and van Rheijn was serving his probation in the capital and in the office of the Resident. They were both fine honest fellows quite unspoiled by Indian intrigue and corruption and who held every evasion of the truth in abhorrence. In the main point therefore their dispositions harmonised admirably with the frank nature of Charles van Nerekool, yet were their characters somewhat different from his. Mr. Verstork was, probably in consequence of his longer stay in India and his greater experience, of a much more pliable disposition than his friend; and though himself incapable of anything mean or underhand, yet to a certain extent, he was inclined to give way to his superiors and to wink at, or close his eyes to, transactions of theirs which would not bear the strictest scrutiny. This he was compelled to do, he said, in order not to spoil his career. This pliability of character frequently used to involve him in warm disputes with his two friends, in which, however, he would not try to justify himself, but used to palliate his conduct by appealing to the exceptional circumstances in which he was placed and which were indeed of sufficiently trying a nature to give him a claim to indulgence. He also had, at an early age, lost his father; but less fortunate than van Nerekool, he was left as the eldest son of a large and needy family; and though his mother had heroically striven to provide for the wants of herself and children, yet her earnings were not by any means sufficient even partially to attain that object. Moreover at the time of old Mr. Verstork's death two of William's younger brothers were receiving their education in Europe, and the studies of these young people could not be interrupted without altogether marring their prospects of future success. Thus it came to pass that Controller Verstork had a very heavy burden of care resting upon him, since the future of that family, of which he was in reality the bread-winner, depended entirely on the career he might make. If, therefore, he could now and then be accused of lukewarmness, or if for the shortcomings of others he was too ready to find extenuating circumstances or excuses, the difficult position in which he was placed ought to be fairly considered. As far as he himself was concerned he always was in word and deed scrupulously just and honest, and the future will show that, in cases of emergency, he could play his part with manliness and vigour. Edward van Rheijn, the probationary-controller, was not of so yielding a nature, lukewarmness was not one of his faults. He was, indeed, as yet too young to have acquired Verstork's circumspection and prudence; but in the office of Mr. van Gulpendam, under whose immediate orders he had been placed, he was in a terrible school and he had every opportunity to become, according to the latter's favourite expression, "a thoroughly useful and efficient Indian functionary." These three men, then, were friends in every sense of the word, and they never neglected a single opportunity of enjoying each other's society. Charles and Edward had, of course, constant chances of meeting since they both lived at Santjoemeh. They might, indeed be called inseparables. It was not so, however, with Verstork, whose station, the dessa Banjoe Pahit was quite twelve miles from the Residence; and for whom, therefore, there could be no question of daily intercourse with his two friends. Every Saturday afternoon when his work was over and he had closed his office, he used to jump on his horse and ride off at full speed to Santjoemeh where he was wont to lodge with one of his friends. The Saturday evening he used to spend at the "Harmonie" and listen to the excellent music of the militia band. On Sunday he was accustomed to pay some visits, and, of course, to call upon his chief officer, the Resident, and on Monday morning he was off again before daylight so as to be able to take his bath and have his breakfast and to be in his office punctually at nine o'clock. The two inseparables generally accompanied him wherever they could, but the Sunday evenings were specially devoted to friendly intercourse and conversation. These they invariably used to spend together either at van Nerekool's house or at van Rheijn's. On one of these occasions, Charles had told his friends how that, on one of his visits to the van Gulpendams he had been introduced to the Resident's daughter Anna, how he had cultivated that young lady's acquaintance whenever he had met her at the "Harmonie," at evening parties, or at the Residence itself; and he further confessed that Miss Anna van Gulpendam appeared to him the most amiable and accomplished girl he had ever in his life had the pleasure of meeting. "Indeed," he had continued to say, "I do not exactly know what my sentiments are. Is it a mere friendly feeling towards a pretty and accomplished child, or is it perhaps love which is beginning to nestle in my heart? I am so utterly inexperienced in such matters that I cannot tell; all I know is that I am never so happy as when I am in her company." "And you manage to be so pretty frequently?" said van Rheijn with a malicious smile. "For some time," he continued to Verstork, "friend Charles has been away from home almost constantly. I really see very little of him, he is out almost every evening, and then you are sure to find him wherever Miss Anna and her parents happen to be, or else at the Residence whether it happens to be a reception night or not. You know I am half beginning to suspect him of taking a hand at the Residential card-table. I have several times strolled round the house trying to find out something; but the place is so closely hedged in by flowers and shrubs, that my curiosity has never once been rewarded and I have not been able to get at the secret at all." William Verstork shook his head doubtfully at this communication, "Is there any truth in all that?" he asked, as he steadfastly kept his eye on van Nerekool. "Oh yes," said the latter without the least hesitation, "but yet--" "It is a very sad thing," said Verstork, interrupting him. "A sad thing?" asked Charles, somewhat hastily, "what do you mean? you won't allow me to finish what I have to say." "Very well," said Verstork, "say on." Van Nerekool then went on to tell him how very powerfully he had felt himself attracted to the young girl; but that hitherto he had not allowed a single word to betray his feelings. What had passed between them was mere conversation, in which he had indeed discovered how fresh and ingenuous the young girl was; but which had never gone further than the merest every-day talk, and had entirely been confined to little compliments, and to those harmless encounters of wit in which young people who are fairly gifted, and are not particularly anxious to hide their light under a bushel, are wont to indulge. He was absolutely certain that Anna was wholly unconscious of what was passing in his bosom. But he continued to tell his friends, that on a certain evening, it was getting rather late, a Javanese servant had brought him a note in which dear little Anna had begged him to come at once and see her at the Residence. William Verstork could not help smiling at this communication. "Pray don't laugh," cried Charles gravely, "although I cannot help confessing that very strange thoughts forced themselves upon me also. It was so strange, was it not? So wholly contrary to the usages of society that a young girl should write such a letter at such a time. At the time I could only look upon it as an étourderie, a thoughtless action; but I am glad to tell you I soon found out my mistake. The dear girl saw me appear at her father's house without showing the slightest symptom of confusion, and soon convinced me that she had excellent reasons for her seemingly strange conduct. As it was not at all an unusual thing for me to accompany her, it could not awaken any one's suspicion, that we took our places at the piano in the brilliantly lighted inner gallery. Then I learnt why Anna had thus strangely summoned me. She wished to invoke my assistance for a certain Javanese, who is the lover and is to be the future husband of her baboe; and who now lies under a charge of opium-smuggling." Thereupon van Nerekool told his friends all he had heard from Anna, about Ardjan's ill-treatment, and about the opium discovered at the Moeara Tjatjing. When he had finished speaking, William Verstork again said feelingly: "It is very sad!" "Yes, it is very sad," rejoined Charles, totally misunderstanding the meaning of his friend's words. "But I hope the Javanese will not be found guilty." "And," asked Verstork deliberately, "And--your affection for this girl is, you say, very strong?" "Well," resumed van Nerekool, "since that evening I have, as Edward has told you, had frequent opportunities of meeting my dear Anna, sometimes at the Zuidhoorns', sometimes at the Commandant's, and sometimes at her parents' house; and I have had frequent conversations with her on the subject of this unfortunate police-case. And every time I have seen her I have received stronger and stronger proofs--" "Of the innocence of the Javanese, I suppose!" said van Rheijn, somewhat playfully. "No, not so," said van Nerekool, "but of the goodness of her heart, of the true nobility of her soul and of the honesty and purity of her character. And--my dear old friends, I must confess it, I am now entirely under her spell." "It is a very sad thing," said Verstork most seriously. "But what the deuce do you mean--'by your very sad thing?'" cried Charles, somewhat out of patience. "Your affection for her, my dearest friend," said the other; "you are laying up for yourself a very sad future." "But how so?" cried Charles. "My dear friend," said Verstork, "I ask you to give me a week to answer that question." "Why," cried van Nerekool, "you talk as if you had to pronounce a sentence. Come, there's a good fellow, out with it at once." "Next Saturday," said Verstork, "I intend to come again to Santjoemeh and, take my word for it, then I will give you an answer." Whatever efforts van Nerekool might make, he could make nothing more out of the mysterious controller, and he had to rest content with the promise of a full explanation on the next Saturday. CHAPTER X. UNE INVITATION � LA CHASSE ET UNE INVITATION � LA VALSE. William Verstork was destined to keep his appointment with his friends; but it was not at all in the way he intended. When he promised to meet them he thought that he would, as usual, ride over to Santjoemeh on the Saturday afternoon and stay until Monday morning. It was, however, not to be so. On Thursday morning Charles van Nerekool and Edward van Rheijn received a letter inviting them to go to Banjoe Pahit. "That will be," wrote Verstork to his two friends, "a complete change of parts. Hitherto I have been your guest, but now I insist upon appearing in the character of host. Of host!--surely my pen must be playing tricks with me. Yes, indeed, for in order to play the host, one must be able to show hospitality--no, no--hospitality is not the right word; but in order to play the host one must be able to provide for one's friends; and though I know well enough that you would not at all object to put up with my poor controller's lodging and with my still more humble dish of rice--yet I do not intend to offer you such meagre fare. Where I shall stow you away I really don't know, nor can I tell where you will find your entertainment. There's a fine invitation! I hear you exclaim. Yet, my dear friends, I feel quite certain that you will accept it. Just hear what I have to say. For some time past the maize fields of the inhabitants of my division, have been ravaged by wild boars, these have, in fact, of late become a real plague; and the dessa Kaligaweh is the principal scene of their nightly depredations. The main body of these formidable poachers finds, I am told, a refuge in the wild bush which surrounds the Djoerang (ravine) Pringapoes. This djoerang is a wild mountain cleft, and is situated very nearly in the centre of my division; the two dessas Banjoe Pahit and Kaligaweh, which are about five miles apart, lie on the outskirts of it; the one in the hilly country and the other in the lower grounds sloping down to the sea-shore. I have made up my mind to clear my district, as far as I can, of these mischievous creatures, and, for that purpose, I intend next Saturday and Sunday to hold a battue. I cannot possibly take any other days for it, as I cannot, at any other time, be away from my office. You see, therefore, my dear friends, that my letter to you is 'Une invitation à la chasse,' and that kind of thing, I know, you will not refuse. On Saturday morning I will send you a couple of first-rate horses which the wedono has offered me for the use of such of my friends as may like to join in the sport. I suppose that you will, both of you, be able to knock off work at about two o'clock; you will then want an hour to have a bath and to get your shooting-coats on. Pray don't forget a pair of tall gaiters, which in our rough country and among our thorny bushes, you will find absolutely necessary. So that, say at three o'clock, you can be in the saddle. If you will only give your horses their heads I know they will easily carry you six miles an hour, so that at about five o'clock you will be at my house. That is agreed upon, is it not?" "Certainly, by all means," cried Charles and Edward both together, as if they wished to convey their acceptance of his invitation to the writer at Banjoe Pahit. Said van Nerekool: "I must go and have a look at my gun, and I should think it would be well to take a couple of revolvers." "Of course," said van Rheijn, "William says so in his letter. Just hear what he goes on to say. 'Look well to your firearms, and see that they are in good order, for I can tell you that these pigs, when they are roused from their lair, are not by any means contemptible foes. You must, beside your guns, bring revolvers or, at least, a good hunting-knife, one you can fix on the end of your rifle, as a sword-bayonet.'" "The devil we must!" said van Nerekool, "where in the world must I get all these things from? I shall have to try and borrow them somewhere I suppose. I have got a pretty good shot-gun of my own, but I can't fix a bayonet to it. I don't think it is much use except for shooting rice-birds, or sparrows. I must somehow manage to get hold of a rifle." "Well," said van Rheijn, "the Regent of Santjoemeh, Radhen Mas Toemenggoeng Pringgoe Kesoemo has, I know, a splendid repeating rifle and a yatagan, and the Vice Regent has a pair of excellent Le Faucheux central-fire revolvers. I have no doubt they will gladly lend them to you." "Then the best thing for me to do is to go and pay a visit at the Regent's house," said van Nerekool. "There is no need whatever to do that," said van Rheijn. "There is to be a grand reception and ball at the Residence to-night. On such an occasion those native grandees are not at all likely to be absent. You will be there, I presume?" he continued, with a very meaning smile. "Certainly," cried van Nerekool, with much warmth, "do you think I would--?" "Lose an opportunity of a dance with pretty Miss Anna?" asked van Rheijn, finishing the sentence for him. "Well, you can at the same time ask for the loan of the weapons, that will save you a tedious call upon those Javanese worthies, But--" "Well, but--what?" asked van Nerekool, "what do you mean?" "Do you know how to handle a rifle?" "Oh, you need not trouble yourself about that," replied van Nerekool, "I was always practising shooting at Leyden, and they used to consider me a very good shot, too." That evening the Residence at Santjoemeh was most brilliantly illuminated. In the spacious outer gallery, in the inner gallery, in the pandoppo, in the side-rooms, in fact on all sides, rich chandeliers were glittering in the stately mansion. The innumerable jets of gas surrounded by globes of ground glass cast a bright, yet pleasantly softened light over the handsome apartments, and even over such parts of the garden as immediately surrounded the house. But there, amidst the shrubs and flowers, the gaslight had to compete with the brightly shining moon, a competition in which man's invention could not hope to gain the advantage. The Queen of Night was casting over everything her placid white light; houses, roads, grassy lawns, shrubs and flowers lay bathed in her radiance; and wherever her beams glided through the branches they shed a dim, uncertain twilight, which was gentle as a caress, and mysterious as the vision of a dream. The glare of the gas, on the other hand, surrounded the building as with a reddish circle, in which, it is true, everything was brilliantly lighted, but in which every object seemed touched, as it were, with an unclean finger, when compared with the lily white hue of the natural illumination outside. This reddish circle grew fainter and fainter as it spread farther from its centre. For some little distance the gaslight seemed to soil the absolute purity of the moonbeams; but gradually their lily-white prevailed, and calmly rested upon the landscape beyond. In front of the house there was a splendid avenue of Kanarie trees which led from the domain to Santjoemeh. At that hour of night, when seen from the front gallery, the gas-jets, by which the avenue was partially lighted, looked in the moonlight which fell through the tufted trees, like so many big fire-flies, and, in the soft breeze which barely moved the foliage, they threw on the well-kept gravel path, the most fantastic shapes which seemed to run after each other in perpetual chase. In the far distance more fire-flies were seen, red, green, blue, yellow, all the colours of the rainbow, in fact. These were the carriage-lamps of those who were coming to attend the reception and ball, and who thus, by different coloured lamps, gave notice of their approach. The front gallery was as yet empty, only the daughter of the house stood for a few moments at the balustrade looking down the whole length of the avenue. Said she to herself: "Yon red light which glitters so brightly is the carriage of the assistant-resident of police, he always has the right of precedence. And that blue one is Mr. Zuidhoorn's, and that violet--Ah, there right away in the distance, that green--I must be off--the foremost carriage is almost in the grounds--However, I am glad van Nerekool is coming--It would never do for him to see me looking out." She turned and joined her parents, who, having been told by the Chief Constable that the guests were approaching, had entered the inner gallery. Anna took her place by the side of her mother ready to receive and to return the greetings of the visitors. Mr. van Gulpendam, however, first went to have a look in the front gallery. He was dressed very simply in black evening coat without any official badge or distinction whatever, though the pajoeng stand figured conspicuously enough at the end of the gallery. He walked to the balustrade and cast a look outside. Down below at the foot of the broad flight of steps which on both sides gave access to the front gallery, a couple of sentinels were marching up and down with shouldered arms. They regulated their walk, so that they met in front of the middle of the gallery, then, in turning round they took care that the tips of their bayonets should just clash together, a sound which evidently was as sweet as heavenly music in the Resident's ears. At all events he looked down with much complacency upon the two sentinels and thrust forward his chest as one who would say: "Look, that is the homage due to my exalted rank and transcendent merit." Close by the main building, but a little on one side of it, a small temporary pavilion had been erected, and upon it also the Resident bestowed a look. The bandsmen of the militia at Santjoemeh, dressed in full uniform, had just arrived, and were engaged there in arranging their desks and opening their music-books and making other preparations. A condescending nod to the bandmaster showed that Mr. van Gulpendam was in an excellent humour. Thereupon he turned and joined his wife and daughter. "Those fellows," said he, "don't seem to drive very fast, however, they are heaving in sight now." Fair Laurentia, proud as any queen, had taken up her position in the middle of the inner gallery, in front of a sofa which had been placed there on purpose before a valuable Japanese screen. She held in one hand a splendid bouquet of the rarest flowers, while from the wrist of the other dangled her curiously carved ivory fan, a weapon which the lady knew how to handle most becomingly. She was clad sumptuously in a black satin dress, which set off wonderfully well the perfection of her ample form. The corsage, reduced to the very limits modesty would allow, that is to say that it was sleeveless and cut down very deep in the back and very low in front, gave an ample view of her finely formed and well rounded arms, of her splendid shoulders which looked as if carved out of alabaster, and of a bosom which might have moved Venus Kallipyga to envy. One line lower, and that corsage would not have been able to contain the charms which it had to confine within almost too narrow compass. An exceedingly elaborate coiffure sustained the dark-brown locks of her stately head by means of a magnificent diadem glowing with precious stones, while a number of coquettish little curls straying over her clear white forehead, imparted to the sparkling dark eyes of the beautiful woman an uncommonly seductive fire. Round her neck she wore the blood-coral necklace with diamond clasps which M`Bok Kârijâh had handed to her, and on her wrists glittered the two serpent bracelets of old gold with diamond eyes which she had so greatly admired on the nonna of the Chinese major, and which had wrung from Lim Ho an imprecation accompanied by the words, "Betoel, njonja mahal!" By her side stood her daughter Anna, who by the absolute simplicity of her attire, formed the strangest possible contrast with her mother. However much Laurentia had tried, nothing would induce Anna to appear in a low-necked dress. Her corsage, which like the dress was of rose-coloured silk, was modestly closed around the neck, yet did not prevent the imagination from picturing to itself the treasures which it modelled with perfect exactness. For jewellery of any kind, the pretty girl had a positive distaste. One simple Malmaison rose glowed in her dark glossy hair, which was dressed as plainly as possible, but the wealth of which she was not able to conceal. On her bosom a little bud of tea-rose attracted attention to its delicately shaded yellow tints, while it dispersed thoughts which, at that modestly veiled yet finely modelled bust, might perhaps be tempted to take too wild a flight. "How absurd of you it is, Anna," said Mrs. van Gulpendam, crossly enough, as she surveyed her daughter from head to foot with a sarcastic smile, "to appear at an evening party so shabbily dressed as that! Why, your late governess used to make a better figure. People would take her for the daughter of the house, and you for the governess." In a certain sense the worldly woman was right enough. The late governess she alluded to was a frivolous Parisienne, who had in every way encouraged Mrs. van Gulpendam in her tastes, and had even urged her on to greater extravagance. Thus she had got into the good graces of the mistress of the house, and--evil tongues used to whisper--she stood very high in favour with the Resident also. But be this true or false, this much is certain that Mademoiselle Hélène Fouillée had no more succeeded in corrupting the mind of the young girl entrusted to her care, than in spoiling her naturally excellent taste. It was not Anna's intention to reply to her mother's ill natured remark, even had she had time to do so. At that moment was heard the sound of feet mounting the broad steps which led to the front gallery, and in a few seconds, in came a number of young gentlemen of different races, some with white cheeks, some with brown, some with fair hair, and some with black locks heavily oiled and stiff as pipe stems, all in correct evening dress, with the starchiest collars, and with opera-hats under their arms. These were, as Mr. van Gulpendam used to style them, the ordinary seamen of the feast, who had to keep up the liveliness of the mess; and who were expected to stand always ready by the signal halliards. With this peculiar figurative language he meant to convey that these young gentlemen were expected to hold themselves in readiness for any emergency. Most of them were clerks and writers in the Resident's office, who were admitted on these high occasions on condition that they were always prepared to dance with any lady who might happen to be in want of a partner. Very humbly and very modestly they approached to pay their respectful compliments to the family. In return for this homage they obtained a condescending shake of the hand from their chief, a pleasant little smile and nod from his pretty daughter, while mamma, with her own fair fingers, fastened a rosebud in their buttonholes, thus dubbing them the stewards of the evening's entertainment. "And now, young people," said Laurentia, with her most fascinating smile, "you must dance merrily to-night." "Aye, aye," grumbled van Gulpendam, "a good stiff breeze mind--no doldrums, do you hear!" All heads were submissively bent under this windy exhortation, when suddenly Laurentia cried: "Quick, there come our guests!" As a black cloud the young men rushed from the room, as the foremost carriages drove up. Presently, three of them returned to the inner gallery, escorting the wife of the assistant resident of police and her two daughters, a pair of good-looking twins of about twenty. "Well, how very kind of you, Mrs. Meidema," cried Laurentia, in her most pleasant tones, as she grasped the hand of the lady who had just arrived and drew her close to give her a kiss on the forehead. Each of the two young girls also obtained this high distinction. "It is really kind of you to have come," continued the garrulous hostess. "I hardly dared to hope that we should have the pleasure of seeing you here to-night. Mrs. Zuidhoorn was this morning telling me that one of your children is ill." "Oh no, I am glad to say," replied Mrs. Meidema, "it is not so bad as that, only slightly indisposed, it is nothing but a slight cold." The Assistant Resident who followed his ladies, made his bow to the mistress of the house, and then shook hands with his chief. As the young ladies were exchanging greetings, one of the sisters whispered to Anna van Gulpendam, "I have something to tell you presently, Anna." "Secrets, Matilda?" asked she. A slight nod was the answer, in fact no other reply was possible; for after the family Meidema a constant stream of visitors came up and crowded around the host and hostess to pay them their respects. Then appeared the President of the Court, and the members of the judicature, the officials of the Home Department, the officers of the garrison, the leading commercial men and principal manufacturers--all these accompanied by the ladies of their families, whenever these were old enough to join in the dancing. There further appeared the Regent of Santjoemeh Radhen Mas Toemenggoeng Pringgoe Kesoemo and the Vice-regent Radhen Pandjie Merto Winoto and the chief djaksa (public prosecutor) Mas Djogo Dirdjo and many other Javanese grandees and all these with their principal wives. There appeared also the major of the Chinese Tang Ing Gwan and captains, Lim Liong Hie and Tjaa Kwat Kong and several lieutenants of that nation. There also Lim Yang Bing the opium farmer at Santjoemeh and his son Lim Ho put in an appearance. All these people thronged around the three members of the Residential family as they stood by the above mentioned sofa. They all smiled and nodded, and bowed, and shook hands, and made protestations--indeed, at the Hague you could not have seen it done better. If all these utterances which spoke of attachment and devotion, were but in sober reality the outcome of hearty good will--why, then Santjoemeh would have been an earthly Paradise. Meanwhile, the militia-band had been playing the overture of La Dame Blanche, to which music, however, not a single soul had paid the slightest attention. When the overture was ended, and flattery, and incense, and compliments, had, at length, been exhausted, the Resident made a signal, which was forthwith repeated by one of the ministering spirits in the front-gallery. Straightway were heard the tones of a formal Polonaise, whereupon the assembled guests pairing off began to move about in the spacious inner and outer galleries. It was a stately procession, reminding one very much of a march-past, during which the keen eyes of the ladies could sharply criticise each other's toilettes. The Resident led the procession with the Commandant's wife on his arm, immediately behind them, came fair Laurentia on the arm of that commanding officer, while the chief of the medical staff followed with Anna, This was a thorn in van Nerekool's side; but when, after the Polonaise, were heard the exhilarating strains of "L'invitation à la valse," the old doctor had led Anna to a seat, youth asserted its rights, and soon Anna and Charles were gliding together in the inner gallery. It was a sight, to see the two young people so happy, with pleasure beaming from their eyes. "I believe," said Anna in a subdued voice, as she waltzed, "I believe there is some news about Ardjan." "About Ardjan?" asked Van Nerekool, evidently perplexed. Not, indeed, the case of Anna's protégé but merely his name had escaped the young man's memory, his face told that plainly enough. "Yes, Ardjan, don't you recollect, baboe Dalima's lover," rejoined Anna, "have you forgotten him already--Oh those men, those men!" "I confess, it is very stupid of me," replied van Nerekool; "but what news is there, Miss van Gulpendam?" "I don't yet know what it is, Mr. van Nerekool." "Mr. van Nerekool!" said Charles, "that sounds remarkably stiff and formal." "Miss van Gulpendam," said Anna playfully in the same tone, "that also sounds remarkably stiff and formal." "Will you then give me the right to call you Miss Anna, or, shorter still--simply Anna--dear, darling Anna?" The young girl blushed most prettily. She did not utter a word; but her hand, as it rested lightly on his shoulder, was her interpreter. The slightest little pressure, and that was all. It was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to make Charles the happiest of mortals. His right arm encircled her waist, with his left hand he held hers, while his eye was steadfastly fixed downward on the graceful form before him. Thus, for a few moments they glided on in silence, "I am waiting for your answer," said he at length, "dear--darling Anna. I may call you so, may I not?" No distinctly spoken word came from her lips; but she uttered a sound, very pleasant to hear, though quite indefinite. It was a gentle breath, something like a suppressed sigh, and sounded like a veil which her maiden modesty cast over the unpronounced answer. Yes--but--might it not have been her breathing somewhat quickened by the exertion of dancing? With the blindness and bungling so peculiar to true lovers, Charles at once interpreted that sigh as a sign of fatigue, and somewhat anxiously he said to her: "You are tired! shall I take you to your seat?" "Oh no," said she in a scarcely audible whisper, "I am not at all tired. Do let us go on dancing." However inexperienced in such matters van Nerekool might be, those words were plain enough. "With the greatest pleasure, dear Anna," he cried, as he led his partner on amid the maze of dancers. "You give me leave then to call you dear--dearest Anna?" One eloquent look from the fair girl was the answer. "Oh then," continued he passionately, "let me tell you how dear you are to me, how dearly, how fondly I love you." Her well-gloved hand moved convulsively on his shoulder. "Yes, darling Anna," he continued in a lower tone, but more eagerly than before--"I love you as never man can have loved before,--I love you with all my heart and with all my soul, and the proudest and happiest moment of my life will be that in which I shall be able to call you mine--my own! Tell me, dearest Anna, tell me, may I hope for some return of my love?" The girl's eye fell before his burning glance, but this was a turning point in her life, and when it was a question of such vital importance to both, she was much too frank and too honest to try and hide her feelings under a cloak of false modesty. Very softly therefore; but in a voice which to Charles was distinctly audible, she murmured, "Yes." For a few moments he was silent, and seemed lost in thought Gently they glided on together to the time of that delightful music, and, though in the midst of a throng of dancers, wholly engrossed in each other, they felt as lonely as on some island washed by the storm-tossed waves. But his arm now more firmly clasped her waist, for a single instant it seemed as if he would have caught her up to his breast and held her there, as if to take possession of his treasure. "You make me too happy," said he at length, "You make me too happy with that little word, which to me is full of the deepest meaning. Now will you allow me to see your parents to-morrow and lay before them my formal request for your hand?" At these words the girl's countenance fell, she replied however: "Most certainly I will allow you, Mr. van Ne----" "My name is Charles, dearest Anna," whispered the young man. "Certainly, Charles, I will allow you--but it would not be right to try and conceal from you the fact that my father is prejudiced against you. My father does not like you at all, I have gathered that from many an unguarded expression that has fallen from him." "Oh, yes," he replied, "I know that well. I also have noticed his dislike. But what objection can he have to me?" "Well," said Anna, "to tell you the truth, I do not think he knows that himself--some unaccountable antipathy, I suppose. You know he calls you a dreamer, an enthusiast, an unpractical person, in fact, who will never make much way in the world." "And my Anna," asked the young man, "does she also look upon me as a dreamer and an enthusiast?" The fair girl looked up to him with a merry smile. "Yes," continued van Nerekool, "I am an enthusiast--that is quite true. I am devoted to all that is good and all that is beautiful. I am an enthusiast where my darling is concerned--that is true enough. But is it a fact that I am an unpractical fellow, and one who will never make his way in the world? Methinks that just now, when I am trying to win the dearest girl in the world, I am proving myself to be most thoroughly practical, inasmuch as I am striving to secure for myself the greatest imaginable happiness, and I think that, far from dreaming, I am giving proof of being very properly and very wide awake. Don't you think so, dearest?" Another soft pressure on that poor shoulder which already had had so much to bear was her answer. "And do you think, dearest Anna," he continued, "that that antipathy is strong enough to make your father so hostile to me that he will refuse his consent to a union on which he knows that your happiness as well as mine depends?" "I do not say so, Charles," was her reply. "But you must make up your mind to difficulties and obstacles of all kinds." "Very good," said he, "we shall have to fight against them; difficulties are made to be removed and obstacles to be overcome. Anna, my darling, I count upon your love and your constancy; you may safely count on mine. Nothing--you hear me?--nothing in the world will in the slightest degree affect my love to you. The very obstacles you speak of will only serve to enhance the joy of our union." The music ceased, and with it ceased the dance. Charles released his partner's waist and offered her his arm. "Let us walk about for a few minutes," said he; "to-morrow I shall call upon your parents. I will request them to see me some time in the morning. That is a settled question, is it not?" She nodded with her calm, sweet smile. After having made a couple of turns around the inner gallery the two lovers found themselves at one of the doors which opened upon the pandoppo, where the illumination was equally bright. Several couples--groups of young girls--also were passing through the pandoppo to get to the garden of the Residence, there to enjoy for a while the freshness and coolness of the pleasant night. Anna and Charles followed the others somewhat mechanically; and soon found themselves among the ornamental shrubberies and bushes which the tropical sun brings forth in such abundance. Between these the pathways, laid down in the style of an English park, meandered gracefully and fantastically as the inspiration of some skilful artist. "I fancy I saw Matilda Meidema and a couple of my friends yonder just now," said Anna, "down there in the Salak-lane. She has something to tell me. I shall be with you again directly." Was it natural modesty? Was it a kind of dread of being alone for the first time with him whom she loved, and to whom she had just now spoken her faithful and trustful "yes?" Was it perhaps womanly curiosity which impelled her to go and hear what secret her friend had to communicate, and a burning anxiety also to pour into her ear the great secret of her own happiness? Perhaps so. At all events, she was about to speed away, but van Nerekool prevented her with gentle violence as he pressed to his heart the hand which lay on his arm. "There will be time enough presently, dearest love," murmured he in a whisper, as if he feared some one in the garden might catch up his words; "there will be time enough presently to hear what Matilda has to tell you. This hour is mine." CHAPTER XI. A GARDEN SCENE. Meanwhile, the moon had risen high in the heavens. Through the lofty tree-tops, her beams formed the most curiously shaped and fantastic silhouettes, which, under the influence of the cool night-breeze, seemed to drive one another up and down in endless chase along the bright yellow paths, and the velvety lawns. Here and there, the moonlight fell through groups of Tjemara trees, which, with their long needle-like foliage, greatly resemble our larches, and thus had, as it were, to pass through a network of the finest lace. Nothing could be more weird, and, to a poetic eye, more pleasing, than these strange patches of sifted light, which cast no shadows, and offered so great a contrast to the calm white radiance around, that they looked like the mysterious rings in which elves and fairies hold their nightly revels. This night, however, the otherwise so quiet garden offered a most animated spectacle. On all sides, in the avenues, under the trees, on the lawns, were scattered about merry groups of young men and girls, and many more sedate parties also of older people, all thoroughly enjoying the fresh balmy air, and, after the heat and glare of the crowded ball-rooms, finding relief in the cool breeze and pleasant moonlight. After the waltz was over, the band had struck up a fantasia on airs from La Traviata. As the picolo and the cornet began the well-known duet of the first act in which Alfred and Violetta declare their mutual love, and where the music so eloquently interprets the words: "Un jour l'âme ravie, Je vous vis si jolie, Que je vous crus sortie Du céleste séjour. Etait-ce donc un ange, une femme, Qui venait d'embraser mon âme? Las! je ne sais encor ... mais depuis ce beau jour, Je sais que j'aime d'un pur amour." Van Nerekool's arm stole round the waist of his dear Anna, as he led her into a thick grove of Pandan, under whose heavy and broad foliage they might hope, for a few moments, to escape from the observation of those around them. "Now, my own dearest Anna," said he, "now that we are alone, let me repeat the words which, yonder in the midst of all those people, and with all those eyes fixed upon us, I could but whisper." The young girl hung trembling all over on her lover's arm. "Anna, my darling, I love you; I love you more dearly than my words can express, more dearly than my mother, than my sister, more dearly than myself. As I am by your side, I can dream of nothing but happiness, to breathe the same air that you breathe is bliss indeed. O darling Anna, let me tell you again and again how dearly, how faithfully, I love you!" The strong man clasped the girl to his breast, and she hid her head on his shoulder. "Tell me, Anna," he continued, passionately, "tell me, do you feel some such love for me? Do you love me, dearest? I know I have already had your answer, but repeat that word once again now that we are here alone, now that we are here far from the noise of the world, repeat that little word now as we are standing under the eye of God himself." He drew the young girl still more closely to him, as he bowed his head down to her lips to listen. She closed her eyes, and then, blending with the wondrous soughing of the breeze in the Tjemara trees, softly and melodiously the magic syllable fell from her lips. He all but uttered a cry of joy, and, bending his head still deeper down towards her, he whispered in trembling accents, "Dearest one, now let me set the seal to my vows of true and faithful love;" and, before Anna had time to utter a word, their lips met, and then, with one long, ardent kiss, they closed the band which, for this transitory world, was to hold their hearts and lives inseparably united. Thus for a few moments they stood in fond embrace, gazing at one another with joy ineffable, while high above them the broad Pandan-leaves were gently waving and sheltering them under their friendly shade, and the wind sighing to the Tjemaras wafted to them from yonder distance the sweet strains of melody which again and again seemed to say: "... Mais depuis ce beau jour, Je sais que j'aime d'un pur amour." Those brief moments of rapture were indeed, for the happy pair of lovers, an ever-memorable page in the book of their life; the fairest page, no doubt, and the happiest. Soon, too soon, they were to be roughly shaken out of their blissful dream. "Anna!" cried a loud voice, "Matilda Meidema is looking for you everywhere. Where can you have got to, my child?" It was the voice of Anna's mother Laurentia, which suddenly startled our lovers out of their ecstasy. At a single glance the sharp-sighted woman had taken in the whole scene; but she betrayed no surprise, and, in the most winning manner, continued: "I left Matilda, only a moment ago, by yonder bed of roses--if you will follow this path, you can't help meeting her." And, as her daughter stood irresolute: "Oh," said she, "you need not be anxious; Mr. van Nerekool will be kind enough to offer me his arm, so you see you will not leave him sorrowing and utterly forsaken. Make haste." These words uttered in the most friendly tone, yet so full of sarcasm, dismayed the young girl utterly, and caused her to hurry away with sad forebodings. "And now, Mr. van Nerekool," said Mrs. van Gulpendam, somewhat loftily, to the young man. "Now, it is our turn, will you kindly offer me your arm?" Without a word, and with a courtly bow, van Nerekool complied; but he felt sick at heart, as though he had committed some crime. "Come," said she, "we will walk up this avenue of Tjemaras, it is lighter here and not so mysteriously dark as in that horrid Pandan grove. True, I don't suppose you will have to tell me such pretty tales as you were just now whispering to Anna, Fie, Mr. van Nerekool, that was hardly a loyal action on your part, I must say--" Charles cast his eye on the woman who was leaning on his arm, and who, so calmly and with so musical a voice, signified her maternal disapprobation. They had come forth from the Pandan grove, so that the moonlight, shining full upon the perfect form of her snowy bosom, which a thin tulle handkerchief only nominally protected from the night air, imparted to her person an indescribably fascinating appearance. As though dazzled at the sight, the young man, for a single instant, closed his eyes; and when he opened them again, he found the deep, dark gaze of the beautiful woman fixed full upon him. She seemed to divine the impression which the view of her charms had, for a passing moment, made upon the youthful and susceptible man. Her look seemed to interrogate, and, at the same time, was encouraging. "Madam," said Charles at length with a deep breath, as if he were putting from him an unwelcome thought; "Madam, you were doubtless surprised to find me walking with Miss Anna in this somewhat lonely part of the garden--" "Walking with her, yes,--and kissing her," said fair Laurentia, completing the sentence. "Well, yes," continued Charles, "and kissing her; but should you perhaps think that we had purposely selected this spot, then--" "Well, what then?" asked she, with a sly smile. "Then you would be misjudging Miss Anna and myself." "I considered," retorted Laurentia, somewhat sarcastically, "that the spot was an admirable one--well-chosen for kissing." "Yet it was the merest chance that brought us to it. Believe me, before that moment,--or to speak more correctly,--before this evening, not a word of love had ever passed between us." "Oh, Mr. van Nerekool!" exclaimed Laurentia, with a mocking smile, "that is quite incredible! Do you expect me to believe that two young people of different sexes, should be kissing each other in an out-of-the-way corner, if there had not previously been some words of affection,--of love,--spoken between them--without, in fact, any question of passion on either side?" "And yet, madam, believe me, it is the perfect truth. I never tell a lie," broke in Charles, with considerable vehemence. "Aye, aye," said Laurentia, "I know all about it. I once was young myself. Oh," continued the pleasure-loving woman, her voice falling at the remembrance of that youth from which she was so loth to part. "Oh, when I was nineteen, I was exactly what Anna is now--I was, as she is now, a budding beauty, I had just as fresh and youthful feelings--I was just as child-like and playful as she is." Van Nerekool shuddered at this comparison of the daughter with the mother. "I was just as kind-hearted, just as lovable as she is. Oh believe me," continued she, excitedly, while she allowed her hand to lean on his arm more heavily perhaps than was needful, and gave that arm a gentle pressure. "Believe me, one need not have a very lively imagination to see that Anna will be precisely like me." For a moment she paused, as if she began to see that she was being carried away by her subject. "No doubt, madam," replied van Nerekool, gallantly, as he allowed his eye to wander from the face of his fair companion to her shoulders, to her bosom, to her feet. "No doubt, one may safely predict that Miss Anna will, in charms and perfections, nearly come up to her mother." "Pray, Mr. van Nerekool, no compliments," said Laurentia, with an affected smile. "But may I beg of you," continued he, "to let me know for what purpose you drew the parallel? I do not quite see--" Laurentia shook the wealth of curls which covered her neck and descended to her shoulders. No, the simpleton whose arm she held, did not understand her. That was plain enough. One thought of M`Bok Kârijâh swiftly passed through her brain, and drew a sigh from her. "Oh," she continued, while her bosom rose and fell quickly as she drew breath more rapidly, "I merely meant to state that I was young once--" "And you are young still," cried van Nerekool, politely. "That a kiss has been snatched from me too," continued Laurentia, with a smile of pleasure at the remembrance, "but that occurred in open daylight, in the presence of my parents, and not in the darkness of a Pandan grove." "Now, madam," said van Nerekool, very seriously, "allow me, I pray you, to tell you how it all happened. For about a twelvemonth I have been visiting at your house. At first my visits were but rare, of late they have become much more frequent. Now, you are a clever woman and you cannot have failed to see the reason of this. I had made the acquaintance of your daughter, and the more thoroughly I began to appreciate her amiable and noble character, the more deeply did the shaft which had struck me at my first visit, enter into my heart. How shall I go on, madam--the simple truth is that soon I felt that at her side only I could be truly happy. But;--though I ventured to hope that Miss Anna had no aversion for me--and though I thought that I might reckon upon your friendly aid also--yet I very soon began to notice that I failed to gain the good-will of Mr. van Gulpendam. Indeed, I may say, that he positively dislikes me. That feeling of dislike he could not always repress, though he observed towards me the forms of strict politeness; and, though I cannot complain of any purposely inflicted slights, yet now and then his repugnance would show itself in a manner which, to me, has been wholly unmistakable. This, in some measure, discouraged me. Then again, I know that, as yet, my income will not suffice to set up housekeeping on however modest a scale. Thus, you yourself, my dear madam, must have perceived that I left Miss Anna in utter ignorance of my affection for her. Whether or not she may have suspected my passion, I do not dare to say; but certainly I uttered no single word of love to her--" "But Mr. van Nerekool--" "Allow me, madam, to finish my story: certainly I uttered no single word of love to her until this evening when, in the giddy whirl of the dance, the secret which I had so long and so faithfully kept escaped me. I was beside myself with joy when the first declaration of my love was not met with a refusal. And, as a loving mother, can you now blame me because, as we were walking together a few moments later in this garden, I was driven, by the magic power of this lovely scene, by the solemn quiet of this enchanting spot, and by the seductive notes of the music which could not but find an echo in my heart, again to declare my love? Can you blame me because, as I held in my arms the pure angel of my dreams and clasped her to my heart, I sealed the solemn compact of our love with a kiss as pure and as holy--I swear it--as the angels in Heaven might interchange?" Charles van Nerekool spoke with the fire, with the enthusiasm, of truth. His words were nothing like the commonplaces of society, nothing like the phrases which sound like a mere sentimental lesson learnt out of the romantic pages of Georges Sand, of Georges Ohnet or of Hector Malot. His words were eloquent, manly; and came from a true and loyal heart, and they made a deep impression on the fair lady who leaned on his arm, Laurentia--always very impressible--closed her eyes for a moment, as if dazed by the power and purity of his love. Had Mr. van Gulpendam ever, thought she, thus declared his love to her--had he ever spoken of her in such terms? Alas! no; he was a man wholly absorbed in the love of money; and--and--But she--she?--was she free from those faults which now she looked upon with such horror in her husband? For one single moment she was forced to confess herself guilty, for a single moment better thoughts prevailed. But this was only for a moment. The instant after she began to feel jealous of her daughter. Yes, jealous and angry at the thought that Anna has succeeded in winning so pure, so proud, so manly a love--a love which she herself had never either felt or inspired. Moreover she put no faith in so much purity and sincerity as the words of van Nerekool evidently conveyed. Her very nature forbade her to do so. All affection, all love between persons of opposite sexes was, in her estimation, the mere expression of material passion and the consequence of carnal desire. Purity and love were, to her, mere sounds, which, if she could understand them at all, only served as a cloak for far different sentiments. To her they were--they could be--nothing more. Under the influence, therefore, of such miserably grovelling views, she answered sarcastically: "Yes, I can understand all that! Immeasurable bliss under the Pandan bushes! Now, Mr. van Nerekool, shall I tell you what I think of that chaste kiss and all the rest of it?--Well, I think that they are merely fine names for something which might be expressed in totally different language. Why! you, as a man, you surely must know what meaning the world attributes to a kiss!" "Pardon me, madam," replied Charles, somewhat sadly, "I am, as yet, very young and very inexperienced." "Yes," said Laurentia with a mocking laugh, "I can quite perceive that." "Oh madam," cried the young man, "I beg you let us not waste time in useless playing with words. Yes I am young, I repeat it, I am inexperienced, I have but little knowledge of the sentiments which seem to pass current in the world; feelings which appear to be ticketed like the samples of some commercial traveller, each to fit into their own compartment--one affection of the heart another of the head, another of the senses. Of all this I know nothing. I can say but one thing, I truly, and in all good faith and honesty, love your daughter; and especially, my love for her is a pure love in which the pursuit after pleasure has not once entered. Believe me when I say this in all the sincerity of my heart. Such insinuations I never expected to hear from her who is the mother of her whom I honour and respect above all things. I love Anna with all my heart and with all my powers, and I feel within me the glorious strength which honourable love alone is able to impart." These principles of the young man spoken out so forcibly and in so manly a spirit, baffled Mrs. van Gulpendam completely. She felt at once that it would be no use whatever to try and play any idle games with him. "But," said she somewhat impatiently, "what then do you want of me?" This she asked quite forgetting that it was she who had asked van Nerekool to give her his arm, and that it was she who had brought up this conversation--a conversation which seemed to be turning greatly to her discomfiture. "I caught you," she continued, "as you were holding Anna in your arms, in a lonely spot, and as you were pressing a kiss upon her lips. Now I ask you, what am I to think of the vaunted purity of your love? Your practice seems to me to be in direct contradiction with your fine principles. I ask you again: is such conduct in any way excusable, while the girl's parents are left in ignorance of this passion?" "Mrs. van Gulpendam, I have tried to explain to you how circumstances entirely beyond my control, have led me to betray my feelings. If you will not take my word for it, then I can only lament that you, my dear Anna's mother, have formed so low an opinion of my character. But, much as I do regret that, such considerations can now no longer withhold me. I have agreed with Miss Anna, that to-morrow I will ask your leave to call upon you in order to formally make my request to yourself and Mr. van Gulpendam, for your daughter's hand. Now, however, let me anticipate that to-morrow and make my petition to you here which it was my intention to lay before you to-morrow. And, may I add to that request, the prayer that you will kindly intercede on my behalf, with Mr. van Gulpendam?" As he made his petition Charles van Nerekool had stopped in his walk and had dropped Laurentia's arm, and now he was looking up into the eyes of Anna's mother, with the beseeching look of yearning love. Knowing the young man's character, it cannot for a moment be supposed that he acted with any view to theatrical effect when he stopped exactly in the centre of one of those strange shadowy glades under the Tjemara trees. The curious light, however, surrounded his head as with a mysterious aureola which made the finely chiselled features of his grave countenance and his fair curls stand out to the greatest advantage. Fair Laurentia was an excellent judge of manly beauty; and the ardent look which she cast upon the young man, as he stood there in an attitude of supplication before her, would have filled Anna with dismay had she been able to see it and been able to understand its significance. The momentary danger, however, fortunately passed away; for the thoughts of the practical woman were just then distracted by the approach of two sons of the Celestial empire, who, walking in an avenue which ran parallel to that in which she was, made the fine gravel crunch under their curiously curved but heavy sandals. These were babah Tang Ing Gwan the major of the Chinese troops at Santjoemeh and babah Lim Yang Bing the opium farmer. They also had come out to enjoy the fresh air, and were honestly confessing to each other that, on the whole, they did not find much amusement in these European entertainments. Said Lim Yang Bing with a most disgusting leer to his companion, "It is only the bare shoulders, arms, &c., of the European ladies and girls that reconcile me in any way to so tedious a party. It cannot be denied that the creatures are well made. But what on earth can the husbands and fathers of these things mean, to come and exhibit them thus publicly; and then what shamelessness, what want of modesty in those white women to show themselves thus, Tjiss! Fie upon them!" "Yes, indeed, Tjiss!" said the Chinese major, an elderly man who with his long grey moustache drooping on to his breast, had a very martial, indeed a venerable appearance. "Yes, Tjiss!" said he, "I would not allow my wife or daughters to appear before me in such dress as that, or rather in such undress!" "Have you noticed the njonja toean Resident?" said Lim Yang Bing. "She--" "Hold your tongue!" whispered the major in a warning voice, "she is standing just there talking to the young judge; what can she have to say to him?" Lim Yang Bing answered not a word; but a low cunning smile played upon his lips. The intrigues of his son Lim Ho were perfectly well known to him. He also remembered his conversation with the Resident--and van Nerekool was a member of the judicial bench. No! the njonja had heard nothing but the crunching of the gravel; but the mere sight of these two Chinamen--and especially the sight of the opium-farmer, which brought at once Lim Ho to her mind, and her arrangements with M`Bok Kârijâh--caused the demon of money to triumph, and put to silence all other passions in her breast. "Mr. van Nerekool," said she in a gentle coaxing tone of voice, "the Resident is not at all so badly disposed towards you as you seem to think. But he is a man who has a great eye for all that is practical.--Allow me to speak and do not interrupt me.--Our conversation has already lasted too long. The world might, you know--But no, you love my daughter do you not?" She hesitated--she stammered, she was trembling all over. Young van Nerekool gazed at her with a strange puzzled expression which she seemed perfectly to understand. "The Resident," she resumed, "will have practical men and--you must pardon me," she continued with slight hesitation, "you must pardon me for saying so; but you are not a practical man. No, no," continued she hastily, "don't look at me like that! You are moving in a world of dreams, which is very far removed indeed from practical every-day life. You picture to yourself an ideal world as different as possible from the one in which we live. And, I can tell you, if you cannot somehow or other manage to wake up out of your day-dreams, you will be in great danger of never making any way at all in the judicial career which you have chosen. Yours is, in sober fact, a most prosaic career; and the one of all others, in which dreams and fancies are utterly out of place." Van Nerekool listened to this homily with the greatest attention and most submissively, though he felt arising within him a nameless feeling of uneasiness which he had much trouble to suppress. "I am prepared to accede to your request," resumed fair Laurentia with her most winning smile, but at the same time emphasizing every syllable as if she counted them,--"I will speak for you, and I will plead your cause with the Resident,--and if I once consent to do that, Anna will be yours." "Oh how can I sufficiently thank you," exclaimed van Nerekool, laying his hand on his heart, as if he wished to keep down its beating. Very little more and he would, in his transport of gratitude, have snatched up Laurentia to his breast and covered her with kisses. Happily, however, he restrained himself,--happily, for who knows what effect such an act might have had upon the excitable woman. "Be calm, Mr. van Nerekool," said she, "be calm. I am ready to intercede for you; but then, on your part, you must make me one promise." "Oh speak, madam, speak--I will in every way--" "Mr. Zuidhoorn," quietly resumed Laurentia, "is, as you may have heard perhaps, on the point of starting for Holland to recruit his health--I am right, am I not?" "Very good," she continued as Charles made a gesture of assent, "there is a case coming before the Court which I am particularly anxious to see satisfactorily settled." "But, madam," interposed the lawyer, "I am a member of the judicial council and have nothing whatever to do with the lower court." "At my recommendation," replied Laurentia, "you will, being one of the junior judges, be appointed President of the lower court pending the arrival of Mr. Zuidhoorn's substitute. That will be a step for you, will it not?" "Certainly it will," said van Nerekool, "I pray you go on." "And--who knows?--But to come to the point. There is a Javanese at present in custody whose name is Ardjan, the fellow has been smuggling opium." Van Nerekool's heart began to throb almost audibly. Of course the mother of his dearest Anna could but wish to help this poor Ardjan out of his trouble, and was about to call upon him to lend her his assistance. He therefore thought that he quite spoke her mind when he interrupted her by saying: "Who is accused of smuggling opium, you mean, dear madam." "That comes to the same thing," replied Mrs. van Gulpendam somewhat tartly. The young lawyer looked up in surprise, he could make nothing of it. "Ardjan," continued Laurentia, again quite calmly, "is an arch-smuggler, he belongs to a family of smugglers. Just lately--a day or two ago--his father was caught in the act, and offered armed resistance to the police in the execution of their duties. Such scum as that must be severely dealt with--do you hear?" "Yes, madam, I hear," said van Nerekool, drily, "I know that he did offer resistance to the authorities; but--as far as opium-smuggling is concerned--" "Smuggling!" cried the lady, vehemently, "is theft--is theft! you know that well enough, Mr. van Nerekool, it is stealing from the revenue, it is stealing from the public purse." "Most undoubtedly it is, madam; but what I wanted to ask is--Has this case of smuggling been properly brought home to them?" "Oh, certainly it has," cried Laurentia. "Ardjan is the guilty man--there is no one else to suspect. Of course, I know well enough that a conspiracy had been formed to cast suspicion upon Lim Ho, the son of the great opium farmer. Now what an absurdity!--the son of the farmer who, with his father, has the greatest interest in stopping all smuggling transactions!--it is simply absurd. I know also that in order further to prejudice Lim Ho, an accusation has been trumped up against him in the upper court, in which he is charged with having flogged Ardjan with Kamadoog leaves. But, of course, Mr. van Nerekool, you will know how to tear to pieces that web of deceit and perjury. You will know how to deal with that nest of smugglers, and make short work of all these perjurers!" "Madam," replied the young man, "you may be quite sure that, if I have the honour of being appointed to the temporary presidency of the lower court, I shall, to the best of my abilities, discharge my duties with the strictest impartiality. He who is in the right shall have justice; and he who is guilty, shall not evade the punishment he deserves. I happen to know something about that smuggling business, and also of the so-called resistance to the police of which Pak Ardjan stands accused, and I think I can assure you that neither father nor son is as culpable as he is supposed to be." "What a downright simpleton the booby is," thought Mrs. van Gulpendam. "Mr. van Nerekool," she whispered in his ear, "the Resident is quite right--You are not a practical man." "But, madam--" "But remember, it is only if you follow my directions, that Anna will be yours. You mind that!" "But," cried Nerekool, in extreme perplexity, "what is it you require me to do?" "Ardjan and his father must both be transported," said Mrs. van Gulpendam, most resolutely. "Where to?--that matters but little--to Deli, to Atjeh--Yes, Atjeh, perhaps, would be the better place." "They will be transported," said Van Nerekool, with equal resolution, "both of them, if they are found guilty." "Guilty or not guilty!" exclaimed Mrs. van Gulpendam, "you will do as I tell you!--Or else--no presidency--You will do as I tell you--or else, depend upon it--no Anna!" The blood flew up into the face of the upright young judge at this intolerable dictation. His whole mind and soul rebelled against such gross injustice. He dropped the arm of the fair temptress, and, without reflecting, he hissed rather than spoke in the heat of his indignation. "Madam, I love your daughter, I dearly love Anna; but to purchase her hand at that price--the price of my own dishonour--Never, never!" "Never?" sneered Laurentia. "No, madam, never, never!" exclaimed van Nerekool. "Why, she herself would be the very first to despise and reject me, could I be guilty of such baseness and accept so odious an offer. But," continued he, suddenly changing his tone, "surely all this is but a jest, surely you are not in earnest!" "I am in right--downright earnest," said Laurentia, sternly. "It is my last word to you--it is war or peace between us--I leave it to your own choice." "I would not willingly make an enemy of anyone," said van Nerekool, very sadly; "but a clear conscience is to me precious above all things. Farewell, madam." He covered his face with both his hands, as he hurried from the spot. For awhile he wandered about in the greatest excitement, seeking the loneliest spots in the garden. Presently, however, he somewhat recovered his composure, and, stunned by the blow that had just fallen on him, he made his way back again to the inner gallery. There he found Matilda van Meidema, who called to him, and said: "Mr. van Nerekool, my friend Anna has requested me to give you a message, it is this. Unless some means of rescue be found, Ardjan's case is hopelessly lost. All the witnesses have either been corrupted or put out of the way, so that his condemnation is certain." "And from whom has Miss Anna got all this information?" asked van Nerekool with a sad absent smile. "She had it from me, Mr. van Nerekool," replied the young girl. "And how did you get to know all this, Miss Meidema?" he asked. "Why, Mr. Judge," said she, "you happen to be in a rather inquisitive mood! I suppose," she continued with a laugh, "your curiosity is professional. The only thing I can tell you is that I have obeyed Anna's orders and delivered my message." Thus saying, with a curtsey she hurried away. Charles wandered about for a while objectless among the guests. But, after his conversation with Laurentia he could find no rest. He looked round for Anna; but she, as daughter of the house, had, on the occasion of a formal party like the present, many duties to perform. Though the young girl's face showed but little enjoyment of the scene around her, yet it wore its usual pleasant smile. It was, however, a forced smile which, to her lover's eye, signified nothing else than anxiety and restlessness. At that sight all desire to remain left him, especially as he knew that he could not venture to approach her. So he went to look for his hat; and having found it, took leave of the Resident and of his wife, and a few minutes after he was gone. "Take care! Think it over well," had been Laurentia's last whispered words as he made his parting bow. CHAPTER XII. HUSBAND AND WIFE.--MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. It was getting rather late in the day. The sun had already risen high when Mr. and Mrs. van Gulpendam took their seat at the breakfast-table in the pandoppo. The Resident, according to his invariable custom, had risen early; but the ladies did not quite so soon recover from the fatigues of the last night's ball. When, at length, fair Laurentia appeared in the pandoppo she found her husband sitting in full dress, light-blue coat and silver buttons on which the arms of Holland shone conspicuous; but evidently in very bad temper. He sat impatiently turning about a paper in his hands: "At last!" he cried. "What do you mean by at last," she rejoined, "I suppose that is to be my good-morning?" "Very likely," said he gruffly. "Now is this breakfast-time I ask you? You know how very busy I am." "Then why did you not have your breakfast before?" asked his wife. "Why? why?" he grumbled, "that is always the way you women put us off! You know I don't like to sit down to meals alone!" "Then why did you not call Anna? She would have had some news to tell you," replied the wife. It appears that, after the party, Laurentia had not taken the trouble to enlighten her husband as to what had occurred on the previous evening. She had so much to do as hostess--and then she had not missed a single dance;--the young men of Santjoemeh had been simply charming! "Anna, Anna," growled van Gulpendam, "why, I have seen nothing of her yet. You women never can have a good stiff run without being knocked up all the next day! But--what is up with Anna? What news may she have to tell me?" "I will leave that to her--Anna!--call your young lady," said Laurentia turning to Dalima, who just then came into the pandoppo. "Miss Anna will be here presently," said the baboe. "But meanwhile," repeated van Gulpendam, "what news has the girl to tell me?" "Oh," said Laurentia wearily, "I would much rather she should herself tell you. She could much better explain it herself why she allowed van Nerekool to kiss her last night in the garden. But, I should like to know what paper that is there in your hand. You know I don't like to see the rubbish at my table. There is room enough in the office for all that sort of thing; and what's more you have my full leave to keep all those things there!" Van Gulpendam had taken the rather startling communication of his wife quite coolly; so coolly, indeed, that it exceedingly provoked fair Laurentia. She had, therefore, sought to vent her displeasure upon something, and that something, she had found in the unlucky piece of paper. "It is a telegram," said van Gulpendam, moodily, "which I have just received, and which has annoyed me not a little." "A telegram?" she cried. "Yes, a message from the Hague. Look! yesterday evening at nine o'clock, this thing was sent off, and this morning by daylight, we have it here." "Well," said Laurentia, in no mood to humour her husband, "do you call that so very quick? Don't you remember Amy's letter, when we had sent her our congratulations on her engagement? Our telegram left the office at Santjoemeh at eleven o'clock, and, she wrote to us, that the very same morning at nine o'clock, it was delivered to her. That's quick if you like--it seems to me, rather more than quick!" "Why, Laurentia" said her husband, "I have explained it to you. The reason lies in the difference of longitude." "Yes, yes, I know all about that, the sun turns--no the earth turns. Oh yes, I know all about it. But that does not alter the fact that it was very quick work. Fancy to receive a telegram, actually before it was sent off! But what can there be in that telegram from the Hague, to put you out so?" "Bah!" said van Gulpendam, "what do you women know about business?" "Yes, but tell me," she insisted, "from whom is it?" "It is from my brother Gerard," replied van Gulpendam shortly. "And what is it about?" asked Laurentia; "now don't keep me waiting, it is not gallant." At the word gallant, van Gulpendam made a wry face, "Oh," said he, "it is about the matter of the Netherland's Lion. Nothing can come to it--unless--" "Yes, unless what?" inquired Laurentia. "Unless the opium monopoly at Santjoemeh, can be made to bring in a great deal more money than it does at present. The estimates of our colonial secretary are not at all approved of, and they reckon upon getting a couple of millions more from that source." "They, they, who are they?" continued Laurentia. "Why--Sidin, pull down the blinds!" said the resident prudently. "That sun," continued he, "is so troublesome shining through the venetians. You ask who are they? Why they are the government, the ministers, the Lower House in fact." "Oh," said Laurentia, carelessly, "is that all?" "Is that all! of course it is," replied her husband grumpily, "quite enough too, you know as well as I do that the farmer pays more than twelve hundred thousand guilders for his privilege." "Well," said Laurentia, "what of that?--next year he will have to put down fifteen or eighteen hundred--there's the end of it." "Of course," growled the Resident, "it is easy enough to say there's the end of it." "When is the contract to be renewed?" asked she. "This September," was the reply. "Very good, then you leave it to me." "Yes, but--" objected van Gulpendam. "Now, my dear," said she, "pray, let us have no fuss, our dear Javanese friends will have to smoke a little more opium apiece--and--you will wear the bertes knabbeldat--what do you call the thing?" "Virtus nobilitat" said van Gulpendam, with dignity. "All right! the Virtus nobilitat, you will wear it in your button hole, but--it will be my doing." "How so?" asked the husband, in surprise. "Now Gulpie, that is my secret. You will see, the opium contract will produce four or six hundred thousand more. Don't therefore let us have any troubling about it before the time. Now let us change the subject. How is it," she continued, "that you took so coolly what I just now told you about Anna? about Anna, you know, and van Nerekool?" "Come," said the Resident, "let us have our breakfast, Anna is not coming down it seems, and I have no time to spare." "All right," said his wife, "let us have breakfast, but that will not, I hope, prevent you from answering my question?" Van Gulpendam shook his head. "Pass the coffee, nènèh," said Laurentia to her maid Wong Toewâ. When the two cups of fragrant coffee stood before the pair, and each had cut a piece of bread, had buttered it, and spread upon it a thin slice of smoked venison, the lady, still anxious to have her answer, asked: "Well now, Gulpie dear?" "If I am ever to succeed in getting more out of the opium contract," said he musingly, "I shall probably want van Nerekool's help." "His help? What? for the opium contract?" said Laurentia, with an innocent smile, as if she understood nothing at all about the matter. "Just listen to me," replied her husband. "If Lim Ho, in that matter, you know, of Ardjan, should be found guilty and condemned--why, then, his father Lim Yang Bing must, of course, be excluded from the competition altogether." "Why so?" asked Laurentia. "Don't you see why?" retorted van Gulpendam--"If for no other reason; then simply to shut the mouth of the papers. What a row they would make if the father of a man found guilty of opium-smuggling and of a barbarous outrage moreover, should have the monopoly granted him. Why it would be worse than the noise about the capstan when they are heaving the anchor!" "But, my dear," objected Laurentia, "do you think that at Batavia they will trouble themselves about the barking of the local papers?" "Yes and no," replied the Resident. "The curs themselves will be despised no doubt; but still, in self-defence, they will have to order an inquiry." "And you will be the man to hold it, won't you?" said Laurentia, with a meaning smile. "Possibly I might be, but what if the Dutch papers were to take up the cry?" "Oh, the Dutch press!" said Laurentia, disdainfully. "It is pretty tame on the subject of opium. It will never join in a cry against it unless it be actually compelled." "Yes," said the Resident, "that's all very fine, but one never can tell how the cat may jump, or what secret influence may be at work. If Lim Ho is found guilty, it would most certainly be advisable that his father should not bid at all for the monopoly." "But," said Laurentia, "he is the wealthiest of the Chinese Company." "I know that as well as you do," grumbled her husband. "Put him aside, and your bids will fall instead of rising," insisted his wife. "No doubt they will--" "And then, my dear Gulpie," said Laurentia, with a laugh, "you may whistle for your bertes knabbeldat." "Just so," said he, moodily. "But, if that be so," persisted Laurentia, "it seems to me that Lim Ho must not be found guilty. He must be got off at any price, that's my way of looking at it." "You are perfectly right, my dear," replied the Resident, "and it is precisely for the purpose of getting him off, that I shall want van Nerekool's help. If he should become our son-in-law--or if the mere prospect of such a thing were to be held up to him--then--I have already told you, that I intend--as soon as Zuidhoorn is out of the way, to appoint him president of the court pro tem." "Yes," broke in Laurentia, hastily, "but he won't hear of it." "Won't hear of it?" said her husband, slowly, and in surprise. "No, he won't hear of it." "How do you know that?" "Well," said Laurentia, "I will tell you. When last night I found these two young people hugging and kissing in the garden, I sent Anna about her business." "Yes," said the Resident, very anxiously, "and then--" "Then I just took the opportunity of sounding the young gentleman." "Of sounding him?" cried van Gulpendam in dismay. "Aye, my word was 'sounding'" replied Laurentia, very quietly, "but I tell you there is no dealing with that fellow." Thereupon Laurentia told her husband pretty accurately what had taken place the night before in the Pandan grove and under the Tjemara trees, and reported to him the conversation she had there held with Charles van Nerekool. She omitted to tell him--very prudently too--that if she, by chance, had had to deal with a man of laxer morals and principles, she would have run great risk of becoming her daughter's rival. When her story was ended, her husband heaved a deep sigh and throwing himself back in his chair he said: "Oh those women, those women! You have gone to work much too rashly," continued he. "You ought to have tacked about instead of running. No doubt you had a fair chance before you--a very nice south easterly trade--but you have thrown it away. You have gone full tilt at your object, and so have overshot your anchorage!" "Oh, bother your tacks and runnings and trades and anchorages," cried fair Laurentia, out of patience, and vexed beyond measure to find that all her fine management was so lightly spoken of. "You just let me alone, that's the best thing you can do." "But," said the Resident, "you have spoilt the whole job!" "There was not much to spoil in the job, I can tell you, there was no doing anything with that booby." Very bitterly indeed did the fair woman speak these words. If but her Gulpie had been able to seize the meaning of her smile. But after all the French realistic school may be right when it says that there is no blinder thing in the world than a husband. At all events, poor van Gulpendam did not see, or he did not understand that peculiar smile. "No doing anything with him, you say? Ah, well, who knows. Just listen to me, Laurie. It is just possible, nay it is probable that, after such a conversation, van Nerekool will shortly--to-day perhaps or to-morrow--come and ask me for our Anna's hand." "Well," said Laurentia, "what then?" "Then I shall see," replied her husband with a self-satisfied smile, "then I shall see what port I must steer for. I may, perhaps, know how to bring him to his bearings. I may be clever enough to drive him into some harbour of refuge." "I hope you may," said Laurentia, incredulously, "but I very much doubt your success." "Meanwhile," resumed van Gulpendam, "you must use all your influence with Anna. It is very likely that van Nerekool will give her a hail before he makes up his mind to board me. Now, should that happen--why then all may be well--You understand me, Laurie, don't you? Anna must be our strongest ally." "But," cried Laurentia, "would you really give our dear, beautiful child to that sanctimonious young prig?" "I must, if I can't manage it otherwise; but, you see we are not on that tack just yet. If once we get into a good steady trade, and we have got what we want--why then, we shall no doubt find some means to get Anna to go about." Laurentia nodded. How little did these two parents know their own child! "And," continued the Resident, cynically, "to heave the love-stricken simpleton overboard as so much useless ballast." "Hush," said he, "here she comes!" "Good morning, Anna, my darling. You have slept soundly, I daresay, after your night's dissipation. How she did enjoy herself! How the little corvette ran from the slips! Why! you did not miss a single dance!" Anna, to use her father's favourite phraseology, was thoroughly taken aback. Her father then, had heard nothing at all about it--absolutely nothing! After her adventure in the garden, she quite anticipated stern faces in the morning, and was prepared for a good scolding. That, indeed, was partly the reason why she had lingered so much longer than usual in her room. And now, lo and behold! her father greeted her more kindly and more cheerfully than ever before. Perhaps mamma had had no time to make the serious communication. No, that was hardly possible, her parents had been for a considerable time together in the pandoppo, she knew that from Dalima. And yet--well--she replied to her father's hearty greeting with an equally hearty kiss, and was just turning to her mother when van Gulpendam said: "That's right--now I have had my breakfast, I have had my morning kiss--now I must be off to work, there is plenty of it waiting for me. I must leave you ladies alone." "Anna," continued he, more seriously, "listen attentively to what your mother will have to say to you. Remember you must take all that she will tell you as if it came from me. Good-bye, Anna, good-bye, Laurentia." And off he was, through the inner, into the front gallery, where he met his private secretary who had been, for some time, waiting for him. He shook hands, offered him a cigar, took one himself, and proceeded with great care to light it at the match which his oppasser respectfully offered him. When it was well lighted, he handed the taper to his subordinate, who addressed himself as carefully and as systematically as his chief to the important function of lighting his cigar. This done, the two officials walked for awhile up and down the roomy gallery, discussing the morning's news, and making arrangements for the day's work which lay before them. Meanwhile, nonna Anna had exchanged her customary morning greeting with her mother, and had sat down by her side at the breakfast table, while baboe Dalima offered her the cup of coffee which she had poured out at the little side-table. "It is nice, miss Anna," said she, with a pleasant smile to her youthful mistress. Anna gave her a friendly little nod, took up the cup, and slowly sipped the fragrant decoction, now and then passing the tip of her tongue over her rosy lips as if unwilling to lose the least drop. When the little cup was empty, she handed it back to the baboe, with the words: "Another cup." "Engèh, Nana," answered Dalima, as she took the cup and hastened to the side-table. Then Anna buttered a slice of bread; but she did this so slowly and deliberately, with such an amount of concentrated attention indeed, that it was clear her mind was not upon what she was doing. In fact, she dreaded the opening of the impending conversation. Laurentia sat next to her daughter not speaking a single word; but keeping her eye constantly upon the girl. Very steadily she looked at her, and very kindly too. She sat admiring the pure, fresh complexion of the young girl, who, although she had passed a great part of the night in dancing, and had probably slept but very little during the remaining portion, was still as clear and bright as ever. She admired also her slim yet well rounded form, admirably set off by the pretty kabaja, and she sat calculating to what extent those charms might have captivated that cold and pensive van Nerekool, to what extent they might force him to bow his neck under the yoke which was being prepared for him. But, if the mother's eye brightened as she looked upon her daughter's beauty, yet, amidst all this admiration, one sad thought would come up to her mind. More than a quarter of a century ago, van Hoop gave that thought utterance when he said: "Daughter a-courting--mother grows old." And then there came over her a feeling of jealousy, as she thought of the manly beauty of Charles van Nerekool, who had treated her with such strange indifference. Would she have to give up all hope of entangling that young man if he could be made to despair of ever obtaining Anna's hand? But--away with all such idle thoughts and fancies. The words of her husband were still ringing in her ears. Her business was to save the son of the opium-farmer, if she wished to see her dear Gulpie's breast adorned with the bertes knabbeldat. Thus, in silence, the daughter and the mother sat side by side. The former could not trust herself to speak, and tried to hide her confusion by affecting to be wholly engrossed in her breakfast, for which, if the truth were told, she felt but very little appetite. The latter sat collecting her thoughts, and making up her mind how best to make the attack. At length, Laurentia began in the most affectionate manner. "Anna, my dear child, now just tell me what could have induced you to walk about in the garden alone with Mr. van Nerekool last night?" "Mother," stammered the girl, in dire confusion. "You need not blush so, my dear child," continued her mother; "I saw quite enough yesterday to tell me all that is going on. But that does not make it clear to me how you formed that attachment. I fancy, Anna," she continued, "I fancy I have some right to your confidence, have I not?" "O mother!" cried the poor girl, "I cannot myself explain to you how it all happened." "But, Anna!" "I love Charles," cried Anna, wildly; "I love him, that is all I know about it!" "But tell me, Anna, have you ever seriously asked yourself whether you feel for him that deep and lasting affection without which no woman ought to permit the addresses of any man?" "Yes, mother." "Have you asked yourself whether this man, who has for the moment gained your affections, is the one to whom you are prepared to devote your whole life?" "Yes, mother," replied Anna, bravely, "yes, mother, for my love for him rests entirely on the noble qualities which distinguish him from all others. It is his honest heart especially which has won my love." "Now all this, Anna," resumed Mrs. van Gulpendam, "is somewhat frivolous." "Frivolous, mother!" cried the young girl; "do you call it frivolous that my eye has been open not to mere outward show, not to the mere superficial varnish and polish of society; but to genuine and substantial qualities, to sterling firmness of character and to honesty of principle?" "Tut, tut, tut!" exclaimed Laurentia, "these are mighty fine words indeed." "Do you disapprove of my choice, mother dear?" asked Anna. "Disapprove," said Laurentia, gravely, "no, my child, it is not I who disapprove." "Oh! yes; I know that papa is not at all fond of Mr. van Nerekool!" Mrs. van Gulpendam made no reply to this exclamation. "Have you loved him long?" asked she at length. "Yes, mamma; my love for him has grown without my knowing it." "Come now, Anna," said Laurentia, with a sad incredulous smile, "come now." "I do assure you," pleaded the girl, "it was altogether without my knowledge." "How then, and when did you discover that you were in love with him?" persisted her mother. "You know, mamma, do you not? that he used to visit here frequently--very frequently." "Well, yes," said Laurentia, "I know that; but that is no answer to my question." "During his visits here," continued the young girl, "I was generally alone in his company. At one time you would be engaged at cards; at another you were surrounded by your friends and taken up in discussing some article of toilette or deep in the secrets of a plum-pudding. At another time again, you, as hostess and wife of the chief man in the district, had to do the honours of the house and had to occupy yourself with generals, colonels, presidents and such like; and amidst all this business you had no time to devote to your daughter--" "But," cried Laurentia, interrupting her daughter's words; "that sounds very much like a reproach." "Do let me get on, mother dear," implored Anna; "do let me get on. You have asked me how that affection arose in my heart--I would now lay open my heart to you; you have a right to it; you are my mother." "Then," she resumed, "I felt myself so utterly lonely in those gay circles in which commonplace, self-sufficiency, mediocrity, and frivolity reigned supreme. I felt myself so lonely in the midst of that buzz of conversation which, to me, had no attraction--in the midst of all those people for whom I had the greatest aversion--" "Anna, Anna!" cried her mother, "take care of what you are saying. Remember it is your parents' friends and your parents' company that you are thus censuring." "Is it my fault, dearest mother," continued Anna, "that I feel a distaste for all such society? Have you not often felt the same aversion--tell me, mother dear?" Laurentia gave no reply; she seemed to devour her daughter's words. "Go on," said she, somewhat sternly. "Then," resumed Anna, "I used to slip away quietly to my piano; there I found one never-failing means of getting rid of the company I disliked--then--" "Oh! yes," said Laurentia, sarcastically, "then my daughter used to plunge into Beethoven, Mendelsohn, Mozart, Chopin and all the rest of them, and neglect the world--" "No, mother," hastily broke in Anna, "not neglect--but tried for a while to forget the world which for me, as I have said, has no attractions--in the glorious realm of music, which, as a paradise, lay open before me." "That is a mighty fine speech," said Laurentia, with mocking lip but with moistened eye; for the emotional woman could not, with all her cynicism, remain unmoved at her daughter's enthusiasm. "Very fine, indeed; but, all this, remember, does not explain to me how you first came to discover that you were in love with van Nerekool." "Among all the company which surrounded you," continued Anna, "there were but very few indeed who could resist the temptation of a quadrille-party, of some political dispute or of a description of a white damask burnouse to--" "To group themselves around the priestess of Harmony," said Mrs. van Gulpendam, with a good-natured smile. "To enjoy some better and higher pleasure than the trivial conversation of the so-called beau monde," continued Anna. "Among those few was Mr. van Nerekool, or rather I should say he was the only one; for even if now and then some young man would come and stand at my piano for a moment or two,--he did so--not for the sake of the music, still less for the sake of her who played it--" "Now, Anna dear!" broke in Mrs. van Gulpendam, "we are getting a little too modest I think!" "Still less I said," continued the young girl, not noticing the interruption, "for the sake of her who played it; but merely because I happened to be the daughter of the Resident to which some little compliment ought now and then to be paid, and some little politeness was due. All these would run away quickly enough the moment the cards were brought in or the moment they heard some quotation from the colonial news in the Java papers. Then it was that I was left alone with Charles. I found in him a true lover of music, and one who can feel what music means! Thus we were generally isolated in the midst of a crowd, and thus used we to express our feelings in the delicious melody which our fingers could produce--No, no, dear mother," she continued, most seriously, "pray do not smile. On such occasions never one word escaped from the lips of either of us which could convey the slightest hint of what was passing in our hearts. That word might perhaps have remained unspoken; for I am convinced that van Nerekool was thinking as little about love as I was, and that we both felt nothing more than a mutual attraction to one another. But last night--during the Invitation à la valse, our secret slipped out--and oh, dearest mother, you yourself witnessed our first kiss!" As she spoke these words the young girl gently laid her head upon her mother's breast, who flung her arm around her as she looked into her daughter's appealing eyes. "And now, mother," continued Anna, softly, "can you forgive your child for having obeyed the voice of her heart?" "My darling girl," said Laurentia, "not only do I forgive you for what was no more than natural; but what is more, I can tell you that circumstances might arise which would make me fully approve of your choice." "Approve of my choice, mother!" exclaimed the girl. "Oh, you make me happy indeed!" And kneeling down, she hid her face in her mother's lap and broke out into convulsive sobs which shook her entire frame. Laurentia, wholly unprepared for this storm of passion, lifted her up and tried to soothe her. "Come, now, Anna," said she, "try and be calm; try and compose yourself! How can my simple words have moved you so? Could you possibly suspect me of not doing my utmost to secure your happiness?" "My happiness!" cried the young girl. "Yes, my happiness--yes, dearest mother, that is the right word--it is indeed my happiness," continued she, as she covered her mother's face with kisses. "Now, Anna," at length said Laurentia, anxious to put an end to this tender effusion, "do sit down quietly by my side, as you were sitting just now, and then with your hand in mine and your eye fixed on mine, we can talk over this delicate matter quietly. Come and sit down here close to my heart." She pressed her child's head to her bosom. It was a pretty picture, but it conveyed, alas! the exact contrary of the story of the serpent and the husbandman. "But," asked Anna, anxiously, and folding her hands as if in prayer, "do you think papa will ever give his consent?" "I think he may," replied Laurentia. "Oh, that would be a blessing!" cried Anna. "Don't you think, mammy dear, that would be too great a blessing?" "No, Anna, not at all, now listen to me. Your father will not be very easily won, in fact we shall have to take him by storm." "Dear mother," cried Anna, "have you not spoken to papa about it yet?" "Not only will it be hard to gain him" continued Laurentia, coldly, without noticing her daughter's interruption, "but something would have to happen by which van Nerekool might conciliate him." "I feel certain, dearest mother," cried Anna, "that Charles will do anything to obtain my hand!" "Do you?" asked Laurentia. "He would do anything you say. Are you quite sure that you are not just a little too sanguine?" "Oh, mother dear!" cried the girl in a deprecating tone. "Yes, I said too sanguine; for I have some reason to fear that Charles is not quite so deeply in love as he would wish you to suppose." "Mother!" cried Anna, looking up at her reproachfully. "Don't interrupt me, Anna. Last night, as you know, I remained for some time in the garden with Mr. van Nerekool after I had, from his own lips, heard the confession of his love." "Mamma dear!" cried the young girl, breathlessly, "his confession did you say!" "Now pray don't excite yourself," said Laurentia with an icy smile. "After he had confessed his attachment to you--I opened to him the prospect, not only of obtaining your father's consent--" "Oh, mother, dear, how kind of you," now sighed the young girl as she covered Laurentia's face with kisses. Laurentia gently put her aside and resumed: "I opened to him not only the prospect of gaining your father's consent; but I further proposed to him a means of greatly improving his own position, and of thus making his marriage with a girl like you, more possible." "A girl like me?" asked Anna in surprise. "Am I then unlike all other girls that a marriage with me would be less possible?" "My dear child," said Laurentia, "listen to reason. You know that from your childhood you have been brought up in the midst of a certain degree of luxury,--now surely you would not like to renounce all these comforts, to which you have been born and bred and--" "For the man I love I would sacrifice anything!" eagerly cried the girl. "Yes, I know," replied Laurentia coldly, "all that reads very well in a novel; but you will not find that it will stand the test of experience. In practical everyday life the saying is but too true: 'When poverty enters at the door, love flies out at the window.'" "Oh!" cried Anna, "there is no fear of that with me and Charles." "That is all very fine," continued Laurentia, "but we, your parents, we who have to entrust your future happiness to a husband, we must take care that that husband can offer you a home free from the anxieties of poverty. Now we were in hopes that we might have met Mr. van Nerekool half way in this matter--But--" "But--what mamma? oh, tell me what he said." "Why, he had only one word to say--and that word was 'never.'" "Never," cried Anna, "I do not quite understand you, mother. You told me that he confessed to you that he loves me--you showed him some prospect of winning my hand and he replies 'never!' How can that possibly be?" "I placed a condition before him," said Laurentia somewhat nervously. "A condition!" cried Anna, "what might that be?" "Well--it was a condition of marriage--if you will have it plainly." "And--" cried Anna, "to that condition of marriage he replied 'never?' I am more puzzled than ever." "It was after all but a very trifling matter," said Laurentia, "it was merely just a little thing to please your father and, by complying with it, Mr. van Nerekool might have helped your father to win honour and glory--and, moreover, he might have considerably improved his own position." "Oh, dearest mother," said Anna, "there must be some misunderstanding, Charles is a noble fellow--it is the true nobility of his soul which mainly attracted me to him--Why! not many weeks ago he promised to help me in saving the lover of my baboe and would he now--?" "What?" exclaimed Laurentia, "the lover of your baboe?" "Yes," replied Anna, "of baboe Dalima. But what has that to do with it?" "That is the very case!" cried Mrs. van Gulpendam, "I was recommending him to--" "Well, then you see," said Anna, quietly, as she interrupted her mother, "you see clearly there must be some misunderstanding--all that will very easily be explained. Tell me, pray, what condition did you propose to van Nerekool?" "Yes," said Laurentia slowly after a moment's pause, "you are the only one who can arrange this matter. And, pray remember, that this is a question upon which depends van Nerekool's future career--and your own marriage." And then, the proud ambitious woman told her daughter that she was bent upon obtaining for her husband the order of the Netherland's Lion; that this distinction, however, would not be got unless the returns of the opium trade at Santjoemeh improved considerably--that in fact the Virtus nobilitat was to be the price for the increase in the revenue of Holland. "But," continued Laurentia, "in order to make that increase possible, Lim Yang Bing must continue to hold the opium monopoly--and that he must cease to do if his son Lim Ho be found guilty of smuggling and of outrage upon the natives. Therefore we are under the cruel necessity--!" As her mother began to speak Anna listened attentively; as she continued, the girl sat with her eyes fixed on her mother's lips as though she would read the words before she uttered them; at these last words, she flew up wild and furious and passionately broke in upon Laurentia's speech: "Ardjan is to be sacrificed, that my father may get the Netherland's Lion--that never--no, mother, do you hear me, that cannot--that shall not be!" "But, Anna!" exclaimed Laurentia much alarmed at her daughter's violence, "pray do not excite yourself so!" "And did you make that proposal to Charles?--Yes? Oh, then I am wretched indeed!" "But, Anna--" Laurentia began to say. "Now I understand his 'never,'" said the girl bitterly. "No, he is right, never, never shall he marry the daughter of such parents as mine!" At these words she dashed out of the pandoppo and locked herself in her own room. CHAPTER XIII. A RIDE TO BANJOE PAHIT. AMOKH! "Now are you ready to start?" With this question, Edward van Rheijn came rushing into van Nerekool's room on Saturday afternoon. "Yes, I am quite ready," answered his friend; "but how about horses?" "Oh! Verstork has taken good care of that," was van Rheijn's reply, "if you will let me send out your servant for a few moments you will have them prancing at the door in less than ten minutes." The young men had not long to wait, for they had scarcely time to drink a glass of beer and light a cigar, before two excellent saddle horses made their appearance. They were well-bred Makassars, not so perfect in shape, and handsome to look at as Kadoeërs or Battakers; but good serviceable animals with broad, well made chests, indicating both strength and endurance, and provided with good sinewy legs which, if not particularly symmetrical, were strong and fit for hard work. In a twinkling, the young men were in the saddle. "And now, your rifle?" said Edward. "Sidin, give me the gun," said van Nerekool to his servant. The man handed to his master the splendid rifle which, at his request, the regent of Santjoemeh had lent to the judicial functionary. Charles slung the weapon by the strap over his shoulder, put a couple of revolvers into his holsters; so that, as far as arms went, he was almost as well off as his friend van Rheijn. A few moments later, the pair had left Santjoemeh, and at a brisk trot were riding eastward in the direction of Banjoe Pahit, which was their destination. They did not talk much by the way, in fact only a word now and then passed between them. There was indeed no very great inducement to conversation; for, though the road they were following was fairly well shaded by Tamarind and Kanan trees, yet the tropical heat was most oppressive, and would not much decrease until the sun was nearing the horizon. But it was only three in the afternoon, so that the orb of day was still far from the end of his journey. The horses, however, were high-mettled and indefatigable and kept up a good pace, at a trot where the road was level, and breaking into a gallop, when it ran up hill. The noble animals very seldom required to be pulled up to a walk, and could not long be kept to that pace to which they were but little accustomed. Moreover, the scenery through which the two friends were passing might well, in every sense of the word, be called enchanting. First their road lay through pleasant looking dessas, whose dark roofs of atap-leaves and golden yellow fences, formed a most agreeable prospect in the midst of the dark foliage of the fruit trees which completely overshadowed them. Next came plantations of cocoa-nut trees where the slender palms planted in regular rows, lifted up high in the air their waving plume-like tops, and cast curious ever-changing shadows on the turf which covered the ground. Further on still, as squares on a vast chess-board, were seen the extensive rice-fields, the dikes or mounds which bounded them richly overgrown with grass or shaded by toeri or klampies bushes showing quite distinctly, while the rice-fields themselves lay, at this time of the year, glittering in the sunlight, like so many huge water-tanks; for after harvest they are flooded, and then present an aspect of molten silver enclosed in frames of bright green. Then behind the rice-fields arose the stately mountains which densely covered with virgin forest, formed a deep band of dark-green around the glittering squares. Further on again, in the far distance, all became indistinct, and assumed a uniform deep purple hue which contrasted sharply and most beautifully with the light azure of the sky above. Now and then, after the horses had had a long stiff gallop up a more than usually steep slope, they would require a few minutes' rest; then the riders upon looking back, caught glimpses of the Java sea which lay on the horizon, shining under the sun's beams like a boundless mirror on which the white sails of the ships appeared as hovering sea-gulls, or the thick smoke from some steamer's funnel curled darkly over the watery expanse. Thus, our young friends had but little time to notice the intensity of the heat. Their's was still that happy time of life in which man is most capable of enjoying all that is grand and beautiful. Both of them also were of a somewhat poetical nature, and the ever-varying scenery which to the right and to the left lay stretched out before them, could not fail to captivate and charm them by its sublimity and its beauty. Time had indeed flown with them, when, in the neighbourhood of a small dessa called Kalimatti, they caught sight, in the distance, of four gentlemen, followed by a numerous escort all mounted and spurring on to meet them. "Hurrah!" cried van Rheijn, "there is William Verstork. Look, Charles, that man yonder on the fine iron-grey riding at the head of the party!" "Who are those with him?" asked van Nerekool--"Why if my eyes don't deceive me--they are August van Beneden, Leendert Grashuis, Theodoor Grenits and--by Heaven--yes, Fritz Mokesuep also!" "You are right!" shouted his companion, "and escorted by the wedono, the djoeroetoelies, the loerah, the kebajan, the kamitoewag, the tjank (native chiefs) good Heavens!--by all the district and dessa-grandees of Banjoe Pahit and their whole suite! And," he continued, as he drew nearer, "upon my word all in full dress on their little horses, with tiger-skin saddle-cloths and richly embroidered red velvet or cloth saddles. Hurrah, capital fun!" cried Edward van Rheijn, greatly excited as he waved his pith helmet to the advancing troop. "Hurrah, hurrah!" shouted the others gleefully, and soon the group of horsemen had joined the two friends and greetings and welcomes were warmly exchanged. "You seem to be out of spirits, Charles," said Verstork to van Nerekool as he shook his hand; "what is the matter with you, old fellow--I hope you are not ill?" "No, thank you," replied the other, "I am perfectly well. I will tell you by-and-by what ails me." "Mr. van Nerekool is suffering perhaps from the effects of a refusal," remarked one of the young fellows who had accompanied Verstork. The controller cast a look at his friend and noticed at once that the random and heedless shaft had struck home. He therefore at once changed the conversation and said, "If you are not unwell then let us forward to Banjoe Pahit." "Gentlemen," he cried, "by threes trot!" and a moment after he gave the word "Gallop!" just like some old cavalry officer. There was no need of the spur,--the fiery horses at once dashed forward, and away went the little band of friends galloping down the avenue which lay stretched out before them, and which, with its soft carpet of turf, hardly gave out a sound under the horses' hoofs. "Capital road this," cried one of the company. "It speaks highly for the care the controller takes of his district!" William Verstork gave him an approving nod, he was evidently by no means insensible to the compliment. "Good means of communication, my friend, are the highways to prosperity," replied he sententiously. "No doubt," observed another with a scornful smile, "if the population is allowed to make use of them!" Behind the party of European horsemen, at the distance prescribed by etiquette, followed the native chiefs with their retinue. They were all mounted on spirited little horses of pure native breed, which were quite able to keep up with the pace of the others, and might perhaps, in a long journey, have outstayed them. Now, while this cavalcade is rapidly moving on to Banjoe Pahit, we will seize the opportunity of making a slight acquaintance with the companions Verstork had brought with him. We will do this in as few words as possible, as some of them, at least, are only casually connected with this narrative. Augustus van Beneden was a native of Gelderland, a fine healthy looking fellow of about twenty, whose yellow curly hair and firm, yet open countenance were characteristic of the inhabitants of the Betuwe. He was a barrister by profession, and had lately settled down in Santjoemeh where he was beginning to get a fairly good practice. Leendert Grashuis, a South-Hollander, held the position of deputy surveyor at the land registry office of Santjoemeh. He was an excellent mathematician, and had greatly distinguished himself in the geodetic and geomorphic sciences. As surveying engineer, his services were invaluable in all questions which had to do with the fixing of the boundaries of property in the residence. When he entered upon his duties, he found the whole matter of boundaries in the most utter confusion--a confusion, which became only worse confounded, when, in settling disputes about real property, the official maps had to be produced and appealed to. When called upon to give his decision, Leendert Grashuis always was on the side of right and equity, and offered the most determined opposition to all manner of rapacity or exaction, even should it happen to be the Government itself which made the encroachment. He was about seven and twenty years of age, and upon his agreeable exterior, good-nature and perfect sincerity were so plainly stamped, that he was a universal favourite with all who had the privilege of knowing him. Theodoor Grenits also, was a man of a similar nature. He was a native of Limburg, and, in his intercourse with his neighbours the Belgians, had acquired a good deal of the free and easy manner of that nation. He, therefore, was more especially in request in company where youth and pleasure presided. He had received his early education at the Athenæum at Maastricht, and had then gone to Leyden to complete his legal studies. But in these studies, he had most signally failed. Now he was employed in a merchant's office, and was striving, by strict attention to his work and by diligence, to make up, in a mercantile career, for the time he had wasted at the University. But, though no great student, he also was a right noble and honest young fellow, and in thorough sympathy with the company in which we just now have met him. Fritz Mokesuep, however, was a man of totally different stamp, and was in every way the very opposite of the others. He was about thirty years old and was a clerk in the revenue office at Santjoemeh. Education he had none; for at a very early age his father had placed him in the office of a tax-collector in a small provincial town in Holland. This want of education necessarily closed to him the prospect of rising in the social scale, which, however, he was very ambitious of doing. An opportunity had offered, which he thought would enable him to attain his object. The Colonial Secretary, having need of the services of men acquainted with certain special branches in the collection of the revenue which were at that time badly managed in Dutch India, offered to send out thither a certain number of men thus specially qualified, without demanding any further examination whatever. Of this offer Mokesuep had taken advantage, in the hope that adroitness and suppleness of spirit might, in those far-away possessions, supply for him the place of more solid attainments. In this hope, however, he was doomed to be disappointed, for, having on his arrival in Batavia, been placed as third clerk in the department of finance, he had very soon given abundant evidence of the exceeding narrowness of his views and abilities; and thus he was packed off to Santjoemeh in the capacity which he was now still occupying there, and which bid fair to be his "bâton de maréchal." He was literally a "tax-collector" in the least favourable sense of the word; and, upon his naturally depraved character, the very nature of his office had had a still more depraving effect. He was artful, cunning, hypocritical, and thoroughly false by nature. His only pleasure in the world was to scrape and to hoard, and he scrupled not to employ any means, even lying and cheating, to gratify his passion. This grasping instinct of his came out, of course, most strongly in his mode of collecting the taxes; and the narrowness of his mind showed itself in the petty annoyances with which he was perpetually plaguing all those with whom he came into official contact. His greatest enjoyment was in extorting the last half-cent though he would never protect anyone against demands however excessive. On the contrary, the Indian Government might safely reckon upon his co-operation, whenever money had to be squeezed out, even though it might be by means the most arbitrary and the most unjust. His outward appearance, was entirely in harmony with his character. His head was small, gradually growing narrower towards the top, and was sparsely covered with chestnut hair, which he wore plastered against the temples, in two elegant curls by means of bandoline, gum, starch, fishlime, or some such abomination. His face was long and angular, and wore that faded yellow look which sometimes, a towel will assume when allowed to lie for a long time unused, in a drawer or cupboard. His nose was well-formed and sharp; but with the projecting lips of his small mouth, it formed a profile something between that of a baboon and a ferret--at all events, it plainly enough indicated that he belonged to the family of the rodentia. That was the reason, perhaps, why he was familiarly called Muizenkop (mouse-head). Not a vestige of hair or down appeared on his chin or lip--in fact a Jesuit father might have envied him his sallow faded complexion. How could a man like William Verstork have ever admitted such a fellow into his company? The reason was obvious. Mokesuep was the strict letter of fiscal regulations incarnate, and as the controller wanted to have as little as possible to do with the narrow minded quibblings of the financial department, he had attached this man to his staff, who, if he did not always give him the best advice with regard to excise questions, at all events protected him against unpleasant remarks. While the reader has been occupying himself with these very slight personal sketches, the cavalcade had traversed the distance which lay between the dessas Kalimatti and Banjoe Pahit, and now was just entering the latter place. Banjoe Pahit, a large dessa, pleasantly situated in a mountainous part of the island had, on that afternoon, in honour of its expected guests, donned its festive attire. On all sides the inhabitants appeared out of doors, even the women and children all in their very best apparel which they generally wore only on Fridays. At the flag-staff, which stood in the grounds of the Controller's quarters, a brand-new Dutch flag was flying. The Wedono, the Loerah, and other principal men of the dessa--aye, even the public vaccinator and the Mohammedan priest had followed that example, and expressed their zeal on this occasion, and their goodwill, by hoisting the tricolor by the side of their houses on the bamboo pole from which usually a dovecote used to dangle. The cymbals also were sounding merrily, and imparted to the demonstrations of the inhabitants, who all had turned out to welcome the strange gentlemen, a very characteristic and local stamp. "Upon my word," cried Edward van Rheijn, once again, "capital fun--our Controller is giving us a grand reception--that is a good beginning." "I have no hand, whatever, in that fun," replied Verstork. "The people are rejoicing because you have come to rid them of the swarms of tjellings, which ravage their fields to a frightful extent. You will see how enthusiastically they will turn out to-morrow to help us in beating up the game." The cavalcade had now entered the grounds, in which stood the Controller's house, and the riders were dismounting. "Gentlemen," said Verstork addressing van Nerekool and van Rheijn, "I bid you welcome to my poor dwelling." And then more generally to the company, he said: "We shall take a few minutes to make ourselves comfortable after our hot ride, and have a bath, and then it will be time to sit down to dinner." "So early as this?" asked one of the guests. "To be sure," replied Verstork, "for after we have had something to eat--which meal you must take as a hunter's dinner, substantial but short--we shall have to get into the saddle again, to make a reconnaissance at the Djoerang Pringapoes, for we must settle before sunset where our battue will have to start from, and where we shall have to post ourselves and lie in wait for the animals." "But we shall have the moon to-night, shall we not?" enquired van Rheijn. "I even fancy that it is full moon." "You are quite right," said Verstork, "and we shall need it, too, on our ride home. Believe me, our arrangements will take up some considerable time; and then we shall all have to turn in early, because to-morrow by daybreak we must be at our posts in the Djoerang, and begin work." Then turning to two of the Javanese chiefs, who had followed the party into the grounds, he continued: "Wedono and you Loerah, you will both, I hope, presently, ride with us to the Djoerah?" "Yes, kandjeng toean," was their reply. "Thanks; you will stay to dinner?" But, in the most courteous manner possible, both the Javanese begged to be excused;--they had some business to transact at home--at the time appointed, however, they would be quite ready to start. They did not say--which was indeed the reason of their refusal--that they feared that among the viands pork might be included, or that some of the dishes might be prepared with lard or some other ingredient derived from the accursed and unclean beast. The sun had just set, when the sportsmen had finished their survey of the principal approaches to the Djoerang Pringapoes, and had made all the necessary arrangements with the two Loerahs of Banjoe Pahit and of Kaligaweh, for placing the marksmen, and other matters pertaining to the morrow's sport. They happened to be just then in the lower part of the Djoerang, where a small stream, which runs right through the ravine, flows down over its rocky bed, forming a series of small cataracts and eddies which contribute to make the landscape, already a beautiful one, the most picturesque spot in the whole Residence of Santjoemeh. A few hundred yards off, in the rice-plain, lay the dessa Kaligaweh, bathed in all the wondrous tints with which the setting sun coloured the evening sky, and cast its reflection in the waters of the rice-fields which, here, were flooded as elsewhere. With its trees, its palms, its bamboos, its orchards, which almost entirely embosomed the little yellow-fenced huts, that little dessa casting its image upon the watery mirror, formed a scene of such magic beauty that the Europeans could not tear themselves from so lovely a view. Nor until the glorious tints began slowly to fade away before the rising moon, could they make up their minds to turn homeward. They were just saying good-bye to the Loerah of Kaligaweh, and were impressing upon him the necessity of bringing up his people early next morning, and were turning their horses' heads and preparing for a sharp gallop back to Banjoe Pahit when--suddenly in the direction of the last named dessa, there was heard a frightful tumult. All started and stood still, and listened in the utmost astonishment. The yelling and screaming continued, and then amidst the confused noise made by the shrieks of women and children, the dreadful word, "Amokh, Amokh!" (murder) was distinctly heard. "What on earth can all this mean, Loerah?" cried Verstork to the chief of the dessa who was still by his side. "I don't know, kandjeng toean," replied he; "but I will ride off at once and find out." "Wait a bit," cried another, "here comes a policeman running like mad." So it was; panting and almost completely out of breath one of those canaries (so called from their yellow braided uniforms) came running up along a pathway which led across the sawah-fields to the Djoerang Pringapoes. As soon as he got up to the group of horsemen he squatted down by the Controller's horse and made the sembah. "Kandjeng toean," he panted, "they are running Amokh in the dessa yonder. One bandoelan has been already krissed and a policeman severely wounded." "Who is running Amokh?" cried Verstork. "I don't know, kandjeng toean," replied the man. "Women and children are flying about yelling and screaming and I hurried off at once to fetch the Loerah; but as I ran along I heard that Setrosmito is the murderer." "Setrosmito!" exclaimed Verstork in utter amazement. "What, old Setrosmito? Quite impossible; is it not, Loerah?" "No, kandjeng toean," was the chief's reply. "But the man is much too quiet a fellow for that," continued the Controller. "Moreover, he is not given to opium smoking, is he?" "No kandjeng toean," was the cautious reply. The screaming still continued, and though it was already growing dusk, people could be distinctly seen running about wildly in the dessa. "Come, gentlemen," said Verstork to his friends, "my presence is required yonder. Will you come with me? If we make haste we can get there in a minute or two." "All right," cried the young men with one voice; "lead on, we follow you." There was but one of the little party who ventured to ask: "Is it quite safe, do you think?" That man was Mokesuep; but his objection was lost to the others. They had already followed Verstork's example, and digging their spurs in their horses' flanks were tearing along the road to Kaligaweh. Mokesuep had not, however, made up his mind. He was not quite so rash as that. Dreadful tales of "Amokh runners" were crossing his brain. For a moment or two he stood irresolute not well knowing what he had better do; but just then the shrieks redoubled while the gongs were beaten furiously. That was quite enough for him. Thought he to himself: "In such cases it is most prudent to take care and keep a whole skin." So he turned his horse, gave it the spurs and galloped off to Banjoe Pahit instead of to Kaligaweh. As they were riding to Kaligaweh, Verstork thought it well to caution his friends by telling them that in cases of Amokh running the thing is to be on one's guard, and that fear and panic only serve to make matters worse and increase the danger. "At all events," said he, "keep your revolvers ready." His caution was, however, not needed. When the horsemen came racing into the dessa they met a few frightened women clasping their little ones to their breast as if to protect them; but all the men were standing with lance or kris in hand drawn up around a little hut which was closed, and about which there was nothing in any way remarkable. "If he comes out we must catch him on our lances," was the cry. "What is all this confusion about?" cried Verstork, leaping from his horse, throwing the bridle to one of the bystanders, and stepping into the ring. "Setrosmito has been running Amokh," was the reply from all sides. "Setrosmito, how is it possible?" muttered the Controller, inaudibly. But scarcely had he uttered the words, before the door of the cabin flew open and Setrosmito appeared on the threshold. He was an elderly man with grizzly hair which was flying in wild confusion about his head. His jacket was torn to ribbons and a few shreds of it only hung from one of his arms. His face, breast and hands were smeared with blood, so that the poor wretch looked a hideous object. "There he is, there he is," shouted the mob. "Now look out!" Every lance-point was at once thrown forward in anticipation of a mad rush. "I don't wish to hurt anybody," cried Setrosmito, to his fellows of the dessa. "But let no one come near me to lay a hand on me; the first that touches me is a dead man!" With so frantic a gesture did he wave his kris, and so ghastly did he look in his frenzy, that the crowd rushed back in dismay. Thus Verstork, who the instant before had stood lost in the press, now found himself standing in the foreground. No sooner, however, had the unfortunate Javanese caught sight of the white man than he cried out in piteous tones. "Pardon, kandjeng toean, pardon," and hurling his kris from him he flung himself at the Controller's feet. "Pardon, pardon, kandjeng toean!" he cried again and again. All this had passed with lightning rapidity--so quickly, indeed, that the bystanders scarcely knew what was going on. When the man besmeared with blood had advanced towards the Controller, many thought that the latter's life was in danger. His friends, revolver in hand, rushed forward to protect him, the natives also were springing forward to despatch the now defenceless murderer. But Verstork calmly stopped them, put the foremost back with his hand, and restrained the others by crying out in a tone of command: "Back, all of you! Keep back from the man. Do you hear?" And going up to the crouching wretch, who was still crying in an imploring tone of voice "Pardon, kandjeng toean," he said: "Have you been running Amokh, Setrosmito?" "Sir," cried the latter, "I have killed a bandoelan who was acting disgracefully towards my child. Yes, I have done that. I have also wounded a policeman who was helping him in it. Who would have protected my child if I had not done so? But I have harmed no one else. The whole dessa will tell you so!" Verstork looked towards the crowd. All stood breathless around; not a word of protest was spoken. "You confess to having killed a bandoelan and wounded an officer?" asked Verstork, sternly. "Yes, kandjeng toean," said the poor Javanese, almost inaudibly. "Wedono," said Verstork, "have this man bound." "Pardon, kandjeng toean, pardon!" cried the wretched man, when he heard the order. "Pardon! I have only protected my daughter from disgusting ill-treatment." "You have resisted the authorities, nobody has a right to do that," replied the Controller in a firm and impressive voice. "But, Setrosmito," he continued, "the matter will be investigated by the proper tribunal, and if, as you say, your child has suffered ill-usage--no doubt that will be taken into consideration, and your punishment will be lessened accordingly." A dull murmur arose in the crowd. They knew by sad experience what kind of justice they might expect from the white man when there was opium in the question. A bitter smile was on every countenance, and many a curse was muttered against that unmerciful race which holds sway over Java and sucks its very life's blood. Now that the people began to see that they had to do--not with a wild Amokh runner who murdered indiscriminately but--with a father who had merely protected his child from outrage, the feelings of the crowd instantly changed and not a man or woman in the dessa but pitied the wretched criminal. But a single commanding look from the Controller and one wave of the Wedono's hand sufficed to repress every sign of displeasure. "Wedono," said Verstork, "you will have that man carefully guarded--you and the Loerah will be answerable for him; and you will further see that to-morrow morning early, he is taken under properly armed escort to Santjoemeh." "Pardon, kandjeng toean," again groaned the unhappy father, as the people of the dessa helped to tie his arms. "The 'Higher Court' must decide the matter, Setrosmito," said Verstork, "I may and I can do no more than my duty." CHAPTER XIV. A SEARCH FOR OPIUM. WHAT CAME OF IT. To return that night to Banjoe Pahit was clearly impossible. Verstork had to hold a preliminary inquiry into the terrible event which had so suddenly disturbed the dessa, and about this investigation, he was determined to set at once, and to conduct it in the thorough and conscientious manner in which he was wont to discharge all his duties. These were the facts which this inquiry brought to light. At about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, Singomengolo, the opium farmer's trusty spy, and a Chinese bandoelan had made their appearance in the dessa Kaligaweh. They had proceeded straight to the opium-den, where they had to obtain some necessary information from the men in charge of that establishment. When they had learned what they wanted to know, they went to the Loerah's house; but that functionary was not at home, having been called away, as we know, to make the necessary arrangements for the next day's hunting. So the two worthies had betaken themselves to one of the other members of the dessa government, who granted them the assistance of the local police. Accompanied by a couple of policemen, the Chinese bandoelan went to the dwelling of Setrosmito, the father of Baboe Dalima, and when he got there, he signified his intention of searching the premises. Said he to Setrosmito: "You never visit the store kept by Babah Than Kik Sioe, you never smoke any opium there, nor even purchase any from him. The opium-farmer has, therefore, come to the conclusion that you manage somehow to get hold of smuggled opium. Anyhow, my orders are to search your house, thoroughly." "I never go to the den to smoke," was the honest old peasant's straightforward reply, "nor do I smoke opium at home; you will find nothing of the kind under my roof. But do as you like!" Thereupon, the Chinaman and his two policemen were about to enter, when Setrosmito stopped them. "No, no," said he, very calmly, "wait a bit. Before you begin, I shall have you fellows searched." And, turning to some of his friends whom the appearance of the bandoelan had brought about the hut, he said: "Sidin and Sariman, just lend a hand to overhaul these fellows." The opium-hunters were too well used to such treatment to make any serious resistance, and they submitted to the scrutiny--a scrutiny which was conducted most minutely, but which did not result in producing the least trace of opium. When they had been examined thoroughly, Setrosmito allowed the men to enter his dwelling, and to proceed with their visitation of the premises. The hunt which ensued was merely a repetition of the scene which had, a short time ago, taken place in the wretched cabin of poor Pak Ardjan; but if no opium had been found upon the persons of the searchers, neither did the Chinese bandoelan, nor his men succeed in discovering the slightest trace of contraband goods in any corner of the house. Just as in Pak Ardjan's case, here again they turned over everything, and ransacked every hole and corner; but not the slightest vestige of opium was found in the place. At length the Chinaman despairing of success, and very angry at his failure, cried out in a rage: "Where are your children?" Setrosmito quietly answered, "The children are on the common minding the oxen." An evil smile played upon the yellow features of the bandoelan, when he heard this man actually was the possessor of a pair of oxen. In the once thriving dessa Kaligaweh, there were, alas! at present very few of the inhabitants who could boast of owning so much as that. He did not, however, speak a single word; but he left the hut taking his two policemen with him, and went to report to Singomengolo that all their trouble had been fruitless. When Singo had heard his subordinate's statement, he looked with a contemptuous and pitying smile upon him, as he scornfully said to the Chinaman: "Much use you are to Lim Ho and Lim Yang Bing! You a bandoelan! You will never find smuggled opium," he continued, in a jeering tone, "you are too clumsy." "No," was the man's indignant reply, "nor you either, where there is no opium to be found!" "Come, Keh," said Singo. "Will you bet me a rix-dollar that I don't manage to find some?" "Quite impossible," cried the Chinaman, "I have turned the house inside out. I have searched the bamboo laths of the walls and roof, and there is nothing--absolutely nothing anywhere." "Have you looked under the hearth?" asked Singomengolo. "Yes." "And in the ashes under the hearth?" "Yes," was the reply again. "And have you grubbed up the floor?" "Yes." "And have you turned over the baleh-baleh and the cushions?" "Yes, yes, yes!" cried the man, impatiently. "I am no child, I suppose." "No, you are no child," jeered Singo, "but you are one of the greatest fools in the world; as stupid as one of those oxen! Now, just you come along with me," he added, after having flung these amenities at the head of his pig-tailed countryman. "Just you come along with me and you will see that my eyes are better than yours. You could see nothing; but I shall manage to ferret out something before long. Those mangy dessa-dogs always have opium about them." The wretch seemed to forget that in that very dessa he had himself first seen the light; however--that is the way of the world! So the four men set out once again to Setrosmito's house; and once again, as before, did the Javanese attempt to insist upon searching the persons of his unwelcome visitors before allowing them to enter. But Singomengolo would have nothing of the kind. He refused point-blank to submit to any search. Said he, in his blustering way: "You lay your hands on me and I will thrash you like a mangy cur!" Setrosmito tried to protest; but it was in vain. "Aye, aye," said he, "if that be the case then I have but little doubt that they will find anything they want. I know all about those tricks. Kabajan," he continued, as he turned to one of the chief men of the dessa, who stood looking on among the crowd which was rapidly assembling. "Kabajan, I call upon you to witness what is about to happen here." But the latter, who had the greatest horror of coming into collision with the wretches of the opium monopoly, made no reply whatever to the old man's appeal, and quietly slipped away. Singomengolo, with a brutal and defiant laugh, entered the hut with his followers. It so happened that at the moment, Setrosmito's little children also came in. The two boys and their sister had just returned from the common, and opened their eyes wide at seeing so many people assembled round their father's house. The two boys were eight and nine years of age. Like most of the young Javanese children, they had pretty little faces, with the funniest expression in their twinkling and roguish dark-brown eyes; but their appearance was, to a European eye, wholly spoilt by the manner in which their heads had been treated. They were clean shaven except one single tuft of hair of about a hand's breadth, which the razor had spared and which one of the boys wore on the top of his head, and the other over his left ear. They had the well-formed and supple limbs which are characteristic of their race, and were exceedingly slender in the waist. These natural advantages were seen to the greatest advantage since, in accordance with the primitive customs of the island, they ran about completely naked, with nothing on at all except a silver ring round each ankle. The little girl, a child of seven, was remarkably pretty, her well-formed childish face peeping out charmingly under a profusion of jet-black glossy hair. Her arms were bare, and the only clothing she wore was a bright-coloured patchwork apron which was secured round the hips by a slender chain of silver, from which dangled a small ornamental plate of the same metal. When they ran into the hut they found Singomengolo very busy indeed turning over the contents of boxes and prying into pots and pans, while their father was most carefully watching every gesture he made, and was not allowing a single motion of his nimble hands to pass unnoticed. This close attention vexed the wretched spy beyond measure, who thus saw his wicked plan frustrated, because, while those keen eyes were upon his fingers, he could not even attempt to exercise his sleight of hand without being instantly detected. In the hope therefore of distracting the father's attention, Singo made a sign to the Chinaman, who, with his slanting eyes, sat looking at the children and leering most offensively at pretty little Kembang. The man understood the signal and at once seized one of the boys, and, under the pretence of searching for concealed opium, he felt all over their little bodies, under the armpits, in fact, anywhere wherever a little mandat-ball could by any possibility lie hidden. The boys kicked and fought under this disgusting treatment and did all they could to bite and scratch the dirty scoundrel; but not a single cry did they utter which might draw away their father's eyes from the manipulations of Singomengolo. But when the bandoelan laid hold of the girl and strove to tear off her apron, the poor child could not repress a loud cry of terror, she tore herself away from his rude grasp, and flying to her mother, tried to hide herself on her breast, while the poor woman clasped her child in her arms as if to protect it from further insult. It was, however, in vain; the Chinaman with his sickly yellow face came up to the mother and, with the help of his two assistants, wrenched the poor girl from the woman's arms, who was wholly unable to resist their violence. "Your turn next," cried the Chinaman to the mother, "that young cat has had plenty of time to pass the stuff to you. Keep your seat!" Then the disgusting scene through which the two boys had passed was re-enacted on this helpless child--a proceeding infinitely more loathsome, inasmuch as its victim was a little creature of the tender sex towards whom the wretch thought he might with impunity act as he pleased. "Alla tobat!" screamed the poor woman who was compelled to see her daughter thus outraged wantonly before her eyes. That bitter cry of distress had the desired effect. For a single instant it caused Setrosmito to turn his watchful eyes to his wife; but that single instant was sufficient. Quick as lightning Singomengolo took advantage of it, and slipped his closed hand under the little Pandan mat which was spread out over the baleh-baleh and which, during the search, had already three or four times been lifted and shaken without result. Then, in triumph, he produced from under it a little copper box, and, as he held it up with a theatrical gesture he exclaimed: "You see that; after all, there was smuggled opium in the house; I knew I should find it!" Setrosmito turned deadly pale at the sight; he well knew what the Dutch law-courts had in store for him, and the thought of the ruin which thus stared him in the face filled him with rage and fury. "There was no opium concealed here," he cried out; and in his despair not well knowing what he was doing, he put his hand out mechanically to the kris, an old heirloom which was stuck into the bamboo-wall above the baleh-baleh. "You dirty dog," he cried to Singomengolo, "it was you yourself that slipped that box under the mat!" The words had scarcely passed his lips before Singomengolo answered the frantic accusation by a blow with his clenched fist which struck Setrosmito right in the mouth. Maddened with pain and rage the unhappy man plucked the kris from its sheath; but at that moment, suddenly, little Kembang uttered a heartrending scream of pain and horror. That cry saved the life of the opium spy. The poor father looked round as if bewildered at the sound; but when he saw the disgusting leer upon the Chinaman's face and in what an outrageously indecent manner that wretch was treating his pretty little flower, the blood seemed to rush to his head and his rage was at once turned into another direction. A red mist--red as blood--clouded his eyes. "Help, help, pain, pain!" cried poor little Kembang. Utterly blinded and wholly beside himself with fury the father, kris in hand, flew towards the miscreant. "Amokh, Amokh!" shouted one of the policemen, as he saw the flaming kris in the frenzied father's hand. "Amokh, Amokh!" cried the crowd outside taking up the shout without knowing what was going on inside the hut. Women and children rushed away yelling and screaming in all directions. Soon on all sides resounded the fatal words: "Amokh, Amokh!" The men flew home to fetch their lances and krisses, not in the least knowing what really was the matter, but at the mere terror of the sound. "Amokh, Amokh!" repeated the watchmen as they rushed wildly to the guardhouse and began to make as much noise as they could upon the public gongs. The policeman who had been the first to cry Amokh, made a frantic effort to draw his sabre; but the blade was so firmly rusted into the sheath that no efforts he could make would draw the weapon. The other policeman who had no time to draw tried to lays hands upon the infuriated Javanese; but as he attempted to seize him, he received a slash across the face and breast which was no doubt but a deep flesh wound; but though not mortal, occasioned so much pain and so much bleeding that the wounded man fell back moaning and was glad enough to save his life in headlong flight. The sight was quite enough for his comrade, and he also took to his heels at full speed. Then Setrosmito found himself face to face with the ill-starred Chinaman, who had not let go his hold on the little girl and concerning whose outrageous behaviour there could be not the slightest doubt. "Let her go! let her go, I say!" yelled the father, mad with rage and foaming at the mouth. Whether the bandoelan was utterly bewildered in the presence of such imminent peril, or whether, in his excitement, he did not realise the full extent of the danger; suffice it to say that he did not obey that supreme command. His wan face now made more than usually hideous by passion, wore a vacant and unmeaning smile; still he did not release the girl; but only tried to get her in front of him, and to shield himself behind her. "Amokh, Amokh!" was still the cry all around. "Let go!" roared Setrosmito, again; and again the wretched Chinaman replied with a vacant laugh. "Amokh, Amokh!" resounded the gong with threatening roar. "Let go!--You won't!--Well then, die like a dog!--" shrieked the wretched father, goaded to madness. And--with lightning speed, before the miserable Chinaman had time to cower down behind the little girl whom he still held before him--Setrosmito drew the well-tempered blade across the fellow's throat. "Alas, I am dead!" yelled the Chinaman, his eyes wildly rolling in his head. They were the last words he uttered. With convulsive clutch he tried to close the gaping wound in his neck; but it was no use, the blood violently came spurting in fine jets through his fingers, a dreadful fit of coughing seized him, and the torrent of blood which rushed from his mouth covered poor little Kembang from head to foot. Tottering like a drunken man, and still grasping the girl, the wretch, for a few moments, tried to steady himself, but then reeled and fell heavily to the ground in the agony of death. "Amokh, Amokh!" was still the cry all round the hut. "Amokh, Amokh!" still harshly roared the gongs. For three or four seconds Setrosmito, after his dreadful deed, stood gazing about him like a man utterly dazed or in a dream. He at length brought his left hand to his eyes and then slowly he seemed to recover his reason; then he began to realize his position. At his feet there lay the Chinese bandoelan still convulsively twitching in the throes of death; but soon all was over. All this had passed in an incredibly short space of time, almost with the swiftness of thought; but the room in which the father stood over the victim of his momentary frenzy was already quite deserted; for, with his men, Singomengolo had also taken to his heels. Even the two little boys, who at first had stared at the spectacle hardly knowing what was taking place, had taken to flight in alarm at their father's threatening kris, and the wife had snatched up her little daughter and she also had rushed from the house. "Amokh, Amokh!" that shout outside sounded in the ears of the unhappy man as his death-knell. He knew but too well of what terrible significance was the fatal word. He knew well that wherever that word is heard, the entire population rushes at once to arms, and that, without stopping to make any inquiry, without even knowing who the man-slayer is, it cuts him down without the smallest mercy, though perhaps he may in reality be guilty of nothing worse than merely defending his own life or protecting the honour of wife or children. Already a few armed men came charging into the hut with their lance-points levelled at his breast. "Stand back!" shouted Setrosmito whose rage had not yet had time to cool down. "Stand back! whoever comes nearer I will serve as I have served that wretch!" The man was evidently in deadly earnest and the kris was waved in so threatening a manner at the words that his assailants turned and fled in alarm and formed up in a close ring around the hut. In that circle there was a great deal of talking, of consulting, of screaming and gesticulating; but there seemed not to be a single man who felt the smallest desire of again crossing the threshold. It was at this juncture that Controller Verstork came galloping up with the gentlemen who accompanied him and, as we have heard, put an end to the murderous scene by taking the ill-fated man prisoner. In the course of the inquiry which followed Singomengolo produced the opium which he declared he had found in Setrosmito's house and which, in the interest of the opium-farmer, he had confiscated. In the small copper-box there was but a very small quantity of the poppy-juice which, when weighed at the opium store, was found to be but fifty matas, that is about eighteen milligrams. It was a brownish sticky mass enclosed in a tiny box which could be easily concealed in the closed palm of a man's hand. The Controller took possession of the box and in the presence of the opium-hunter he sealed it up according to the law. "Did anyone witness the finding of this box under the mat on the baleh-baleh?" asked Verstork. "Oh yes, certainly," was the reply, "the Chinese bandoelan saw me find it." "The man who is dead? Anyone else?" continued the Controller. "Yes, the two policemen," said Singo. "Indeed!" remarked Verstork. "These were the men, I think, who, a few moments before could discover nothing?" "No matter," said the opium spy with great effrontery. "I, kandjeng toean," he continued, "am a sworn bandoelan--I found it there and my word suffices. The testimony of the policemen is altogether superfluous." The look of utter contempt and loathing which Verstork cast upon him as he spoke seemed to have but little effect upon the shameless spy; for he merely made the usual obsequious salute and as he turned to go, he muttered: "I shall go and make my report to Babah Lim Yang Bing and to the Inspector of Police." Then he mounted his horse and rode away seemingly along the high-road to Santjoemeh. Seemingly; for presently it will appear whither he actually did go and what business he had on hand. As soon as he was out of sight of the dessa he took a pathway to the right which ran through the rice-fields and along that bridle-path he rode across the hilly country and thus took a more direct way to the capital than that which the highway offered. His horse seemed to know the country well and made good progress, so that it was hardly midnight when he reached a lonely little cabin. There he dismounted, knocked up its inmate and sent the man on with a message to Santjoemeh. When Verstork reached the house of the Loerah who with the Wedono had actively assisted him in his troublesome inquiry, it was about nine o'clock in the evening. He found his friends assembled there and impatiently awaiting his arrival. "I say," muttered August van Beneden, "how long you have kept us!" The young barrister was not in the best of tempers just then for he had been very anxiously looking forward to the promised expedition and now he began to fear that it might not come off at all. Moreover he had, in the Loerah's house, been frightfully bored as he waited for his friend's return. "I say, how long you have kept us!" "It was no fault of mine," replied Verstork. "I have had my hands pretty full to-night." "Besides," he continued, "it makes no great difference; for the more I can get through to-night the less I shall have to do in the morning." "In the morning?" said another of the company in no agreeable surprise. "Yes, of course," said Verstork. "Supposing for a moment that in order to keep you company, I had not held that inquiry this evening; but had ridden back with you to Banjoe Pahit as we proposed to do, why--then I must have gone through it all to-morrow morning and then we must have said good-bye to our hunting party." "To-morrow morning!" echoed Edward van Rheijn. "Would not Monday morning have done just as well?" The Controller gave the young man a look which evidently was full of displeasure. He had indeed a sharp answer on the tip of his tongue; but he refrained from uttering it, and very quietly replied: "No, no, Monday would have been too late in a matter of this kind. Remember, we have to do with a case of man-slaughter which is moreover complicated by an opium scandal, and as matters stand even now we shall find this a sufficiently perplexing business." "And are you quite ready now?" asked van Rheijn. "Yes," replied the other. "So that to-morrow morning there will be nothing to detain you?" "All right, all right!" said Verstork somewhat impatiently. "And you will be able to take the lead in our expedition, I hope." "Yes, yes, you need not trouble about that, I have only a couple of letters to write." "A couple of letters!" cried van Rheijn but half reassured. "A short report," said the Controller, "to the Resident, and a request to the native prosecutor and to the doctor to come and view the body and to hold the inquest." "Is not that right, van Nerekool?" continued he, turning to his friend. "That is the proper course to take, is it not?" "What did you say?" said the young lawyer starting up as from a dream, and passing his hand over his forehead;--lost in anxious thought he had hardly heard his friend's question. The question was repeated and received an affirmative answer. "We have a good long ride before us to get back to Banjoe Pahit," remarked Theodoor Grenits, "and to-morrow morning it will be light very early, eh?" "Certainly it will," replied Verstork; "but," continued he as he looked at his watch, "we must not think of getting back to Banjoe Pahit to-night. It is now quite nine o'clock, and, however brightly the moon may be shining we cannot possibly go faster than at a walk, so that we cannot expect to reach the Controller's quarters before midnight. No, I shall write my official letters here at the tjarik's, they can then be at once sent off by the Loerah. The Wedono will ride back to Banjoe Pahit to get everything ready for to-morrow's work. He has the command of all the beaters there, that has been all arranged and settled and we need not trouble about that, even though we change our quarters for the night." "That is all very well," said August van Beneden, "but where shall we find these quarters?" "Well," rejoined Verstork, "we must do the best we can, 'à la guerre comme à la guerre.' There is a small passangrahan here in the dessa which is furnished with a single baleh baleh and we must ask the Loerah to fit it up for us somehow or other." "To fit it up?" cried Grenits in surprise; "have you an outfitting store here in this out-of-the-way place?" "No, no, my worthy disciple of Mercury," replied Verstork with a laugh, "that kind of establishment would do but a very poor business here. If we can lay our hands upon a few pillows and a couple of mattresses we must think ourselves very lucky." "A couple of mattresses for the seven of us," grumbled van Beneden who was by no means unmindful of his bodily comforts, "that is but a poor allowance I fear." "For my part," said Verstork, "I am quite ready to give up my share. I prefer the baleh baleh. It will not be the first time I have slept on one; and slept very soundly too I can tell you. The others must draw lots. But--" "But what?" asked van Rheijn. "Someone just now spoke of seven," replied Verstork. "It seems to me we are but six--Who is missing? The deuce! where is Mokesuep?" "Yes," cried a couple of others, "where has Mokesuep got to?" "He was off like a shot as soon as he heard the cry of Amokh," said van Rheijn laughing. "I saw him when we turned for Kaligaweh riding back full speed to Banjoe Pahit." "Now, I call that prudence with a vengeance," remarked Grenits. "Prudence! Is that the right word do you think?" asked one of the others. "I don't care," said van Rheijn, "I am heartily glad we have got rid of the fellow, for the time, at all events. I say, Verstork, how in the world did you manage to get hold of such a sneak as that?" "Oh," replied Verstork, "I often find the fellow useful. He is thoroughly up, you see, in all excise quibbles; and I think it best to keep in with him. You can all understand that--can you not?" "Well," said van Rheijn, "I wish he would be off altogether and go right on to Santjoemeh." "No," said Verstork, "I don't think he will do that." "Wedono, will you see to it that Mr. Mokesuep is called early to-morrow morning?" "Yes, kandjeng toean," replied the native. "And now, gentlemen," said Verstork, "I must leave you for half an hour or so to the care of the Loerah, he will make you as comfortable as he can--won't you, Loerah?" "Yes, kandjeng toean," was the invariable reply. A few minutes later the sportsmen had taken possession of the passangrahan, while the Controller sat in the small verandah of the tjarik's house busily writing his letters. CHAPTER XV. UNDER THE WARIENGIEN TREE. IN THE OPIUM-DEN. The passangrahan did not turn out so very bad after all. The Loerah had managed to get together six mattresses and, somewhere or other, he had found six pillows also. Whether these things were clean or not, the miserable flicker of the little oil-lamp which hung in the middle of the apartment, did not reveal. The Loerah, however, had surpassed himself--he had actually provided six chairs. Very crazy and very tumble-down certainly they were; but they were not wholly unfit for use, and in a dessa like Kaligaweh might be looked upon as "objets de luxe." But the young people did not feel the slightest inclination to turn in, they were as yet too much excited by the events they had just witnessed to think of going to sleep. So they brought out the chairs upon the aloon aloon in front of the passangrahan, and having seated themselves in a circle they made themselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow and lit their manillas. There was, of course, no question of getting anything to drink in the shape of wine or beer, still less possibility was there of obtaining a glass of grog. Unless there are Europeans settled in a dessa, such liquors are nowhere to be found. But the Loerah had supplied for the refreshment of his guests an ample quantity of cocoa-nut milk, and that drink was pronounced most excellent. Indeed it is a most delicious and very refreshing beverage when it is obtained from a young nut before the flesh has had time to set and harden inside the rind. Very soon the little circle of friends was comfortably seated under a gigantic Wariengien tree, the tall branches of which spreading out far and wide on all sides formed a canopy which covered nearly the entire space of the aloon aloon, and offered a most grateful shade by day, and a shelter also against the heavy dews of night. From the majority of the horizontal branches there grew down a number of shoots, some as thick as a man's finger, others no thicker than a pipestem, others again as fine as whip-cord. These shoots, as soon as they reached the soil, struck root and then rapidly increasing in girth, formed, as it were, a number of pillars which helped the old giant to bear his dense mass of wood and of foliage, and greatly enhanced the beauty of the venerable tree. The firmament above was of the deepest blue, and wonderfully pure and clear. In that vault of Heaven innumerable stars glittered and twinkled in spite of the moon which, now about her full, was shedding over the peaceful scene her soft and placid radiance. But nature, though so calm and placid, was by no means silent. The air was full of sounds, the strange mysterious music of a tropical night. A gentle breeze was rustling in the branches, and amidst the countless leaves of the colossal wild fig-tree was thus forming, so to speak, the groundwork of a concert produced by a host of invisible artists. In spite of the late nightly hour, a wood-pigeon would now and then come flying home into the crown of the Wariengien tree, and be welcomed on its return by the soft cooing of its mate. Sometimes a solitary cock would start up and, beguiled by the bright moonbeams, would utter his shrill musical crow, fondly imagining, no doubt, that he was heralding the dawn of day. Every moment was heard the sharp, piercing squeak of the swarm of bats, which, in their hunt for insects under the canopy of leaves, glided about in a giddy maze of intersecting and intertwining circles, ovals, spirals and ellipses. Sometimes again from afar came the dismal cry of the flying dogs, as on soft inaudible wing they swooped down upon some fruit-tree in the dessa and quarrelled for the possession of some choice manga. But all these sounds, some musical, others harsh, might be looked upon as the solo-parts in the nameless humming concert which prevailed on all sides and of which the performers were invisible to human eye. In that nightly hour, wherever the ear might turn it heard a constant quivering and throbbing sound, sometimes rising to such a pitch that it unpleasantly affected the ear, then again dying away like the scarcely perceptible murmur of the breeze in a cornfield, and then suddenly ceasing for a moment or two as if to allow the rustling of the leaves to be heard for an instant; but only to join in chorus again with renewed vigour as if wishing to drown all other sounds. This was the chirping of millions upon millions of the greenish orange kind of grasshopper, which perched on every blade of grass on the aloon aloon, and hanging from every leaf of the immense tree, caused that sharp thrilling mass of sound which at times made the air literally quiver with its intensely sharp notes. Did the young men there assembled pay any heed to this mysterious melody? Did they lend an ear to those notes which, in the tropics, make the midnight hour more tuneful than the dull and heavy noon, when the sun, in his full power, makes all nature thirsty and silent? Had they an eye for that delicious night, with its soft breeze, its glittering firmament, its quiet but glorious moonlight, its quaint and pleasing shadows? It is doubtful whether they heard or saw anything of all these. Indeed, they were wholly engrossed in conversation, and that conversation most naturally ran upon the events of the day. The dreadful scene of social misery at which they had been present was far too powerful to be dismissed from their thoughts. That murder scene was talked over and turned about, and looked at from every point of view; but, the few hurried words with which Verstork, before he went off to write his letters, had explained the matter to his friends, had filled them, one and all, with the deepest pity for poor Setrosmito, and for his family, in their bitter affliction. Said Grashuis: "What untold misery does that detestable opium-policy bring upon this, in other respects, so richly blessed island? Is it not enough to make one hide one's head with shame at the thought that a considerable portion of the Dutch revenue is derived from so foul a source?" "Tut, tut," interrupted van Beneden, "that foul source, as you call it--I suppose you mean the opium-revenue--is in no way different from any other tax levied on an article of luxury." "Granted," replied Grashuis, "but, who made the inhabitants of the Indian Archipelago acquainted with that luxury?" "That's more than I can tell you," said the other. "I daresay it is with opium very much as it is with drink; whence did we get the products of distillation? Who first discovered them? I fancy it would be no easy matter to find a satisfactory answer to those questions. One thing, however, is quite certain, that the Dutch nation is not responsible for the discovery of opium." "That's true enough," replied Grashuis, "but I hardly think that a mere negative certificate of that kind will be accepted as a proof of good conduct." "No, certainly not," interrupted Grenits, "for our conscience, though it is clear of the charge of having discovered the drug, by no means acquits us of the more serious charge of having introduced and imported it, and--" "Come, that's all nonsense," cried van Rheijn, "that is a mere assertion of yours, which will not stand the test of inquiry. If you will look into Band's well-known 'Proeve,' there you will find that the Orientals, such as the Turks, the Persians, the Arabians, and the Hindoos, have been for many, for very many centuries, addicted to the use of opium. It is, therefore, most probable that when the Dutch first came to India, they found the habit of opium-smoking already established." "You are quite wrong, my worthy friend," cried Grenits, interrupting him. "You are quite wrong, for this same Band, whose authority on the subject I am as ready to admit as you are, expressly declares that he has not been able to discover when opium began to be used in Dutch India. Now, this confession is, in my opinion, most significant, coming from so distinguished a statesman as Band. For, surely, if he had been able to prove in his treatise on opium, that its use was common when we first arrived there, he would, for the sake of our national honour, not have concealed so important a fact, but, on the contrary, have made the most of it. But I go further than this. Later on in his book, Band goes on to say that when in the sixteenth century Europeans first began to show themselves in Indian waters, the use of opium was known only in the Moluccas, and that, as regards the rest of the Archipelago, its abuse existed only among a very few foreigners, who had settled down in the different sea-ports." "Well," asked van Rheijn, "but must we not look upon that as the expression of a mere private opinion? What do you say?" he continued, turning to van Nerekool. "Band, you see, was an opponent of the use of opium." Van Nerekool was, however, wholly engrossed in his own thoughts, and made no reply to the question. He seemed, indeed, not to have heard it at all. Grenits, however, at once broke in and said: "What? Band an opponent of opium? Where in the world did you get that from? Certainly not out of his book, which throughout is written in a spirit of the strictest impartiality. He cannot help mentioning the deleterious effect of the poppy-juice; but he does so with the utmost caution, and I defy anyone to discover in his treatise the merest hint at a scheme, or even at a proposal for counteracting its abuse. Just now you called Band's opinion a personal one. Well, so far as the introduction of opium is concerned, no doubt that opinion is personal; but, it is an opinion which has been confirmed by the testimony of a host of distinguished travellers of his day. Read, for instance, the voyages of such men as van Sinschoten, Cornelis Houtman, Wijbrandt, van Warwijck, and so many others, all countrymen of ours, and illustrious men of our heroic age, and you will find that Band does not, by any means, stand alone in his opinion." "I say," cried van Rheijn, not too civilly, "where the devil does a merchant like you get all that information from?" The discussion was, in fact, arousing some of that jealous feeling which everywhere exists between the official and the mercantile classes; but which is stronger, perhaps, in Dutch India than elsewhere. Grenits replied very quietly, "It is precisely in my capacity of merchant that I have found it necessary to study, not only all the products of the Archipelago, but to gain all possible information also about the imported articles of commerce which are likely to produce the greatest profits." "That is exactly what opium does," remarked van Rheijn, "and, for that reason, I presume that the trade would like to get it into its own hands." "What the trade may like or may not like," replied Grenits very coolly, "I neither know nor care. As far as I myself am concerned, I would not, if I could, derive any profits from so foul a source; and I feel quite certain that many, very many men in my position are of the same opinion. As a proof of the truth of my words, I point to the fact that, as far as I know, no European firm has ever made a bid for the opium monopoly." "Indeed," said van Rheijn, sarcastically, "and how then about the Netherland's Handelmaatshappij?" "The Handelmaatshappij" replied Grenits, "is a very recent offshoot of the East India Company of unblessed memory, and is entirely identified with the government. It is, as a matter of fact, nothing more than the shopman in the government's grocery store. The opium monopoly is carried on by the State, and it is, therefore, no wonder that the 'Companie ketjil' (Javanese name for the Handelmaatshappij) did undertake the supplying of opium. But this European Company did not long occupy the honourable position of opium-farmer. According to Band, the government did not make sufficiently large profits out of the monopoly, and it was therefore decided to put it into Chinese hands. These Chinamen knew how to carry on the abominable traffic, and have brought it to the highest degree of development. Looking at the question from another point of view, and considering the names of the men who at that time were members and directors of the Handelmaatshappij, I cannot help thinking that men so illustrious were not at all sorry to see so dirty a source of profit closed to them." "What are you talking about!" exclaimed van Rheijn, "with your 'dirty source of profit?' Does not the Company trade in gin? Does not your own firm deal in alcohol? And you, when you get to be head of a firm, will you give up all trade in spirits, and all the profits it brings in?" "Oh," cried Grenits, "now I see! you are one of those many men who place abuse of opium on the same line with abuse of strong drink. But, mark what I say, all those who, whether here or in Holland, argue thus, are doing infinitely more mischief than they are aware of. Some few of them, no doubt, know the real merits of the case, and are perfectly competent, therefore, to measure the mischief they are doing. All such men are actuated by personal motives; they have a certain object in view, it may be of advantage or of ambition. But by far the greater number speak thus merely to please, merely to gain the approbation of their hearers. The good people in Holland like to listen to such arguments. They are pleased when they hear men who have been in India, and therefore, of course, know all about it, say, with an air of easy superiority: 'Oh, that opium is not so very great an evil after all. All over the world, man sometimes needs a little stimulant. Just look at our good Mr. Pastor, he surely has the welfare of his flock at heart, yet he does not grudge a man a modest glass or two of gin. Let us follow that spiritual example, and let us not grudge the poor Javanese his opium-pipe. Opium and gin, why they come to very much the same thing in the end!' Yes, to such arguments men open their ears willingly enough; for, though the opium monopoly may be a dirty source of revenue, yet it does bring in lots of money; and men are only too pleased to hear, that after all they have been needlessly disquieting themselves, and that there is really no need of putting an end to so considerable a source of gain." "Well, my good friend Grenits, you must pardon me for saying so; but I also am one of those who not only silently approve of the argument, but who are prepared openly and loudly to maintain that gin and opium, inasmuch as they are both intoxicants, stand on precisely the same level. I maintain that the abuse of either is injurious, and that the one does not much more harm than the other." It was August van Beneden who thus came to the rescue of van Rheijn. The latter looked round triumphantly, as he exclaimed: "Hear, hear! You see, gentlemen, I am not the only one who holds those views. Bravo, August!" "Of course," said Grenits, quickly, "you are quite right in saying that spirituous liquors are injurious for--" "I say, Grenits," cried Grashuis, with a laugh, "mind the members of your club at the Hague don't hear that." "For," continued Grenits, without paying any heed to the interruption, "for the abuse of spirits also arises from a craving after pleasure and oblivion and proves a want of will-power to resist that craving, even when its satisfaction is purchased at the price of self-respect, domestic happiness and health. To deny that, would be to prove myself ignorant of the labours of Father Matthew, and so many other friends of total abstinence. But, you will pardon me if I adhere to the opinion I have already expressed, that in thus placing the abuse of opium on the same level with the abuse of alcohol shows an ignorance of established facts and an ignorance also of the literature of our colonies with regard to opium. For, remember, my friends, our own countrymen, such men as van Linschoten, Valentijn, Band, van Dedem and I do not know how many more stigmatise opium as an aphrodisiac--as a powerful means of exciting unclean passions. Van Linschoten in the account of his travels, plainly speaks of certain effects of the abuse of opium which, though we are men together here, I could not venture to repeat; and foreign travellers most fully confirm his testimony. The learned Chinaman Li Schi Ischin in his Chinese Pharmacopoeia, which was written as early as 1596, tells us that the common people in China, made use of opium chiefly as an aphrodisiac. The German traveller Miklucho-Maclay in 1873, after he had made personal experiments at Hong Kong in opium smoking, has noted down certain details with which I cannot bring myself to pollute your ears. Now all this ought, I think, to give us much food for reflection. And when we find men like Rochussen, Loudon, Hasselman, van Bosse, and many others, who, the one as Governor General, and the other as Colonial Secretary, some of them in both capacities, have stood up in their place in parliament, and have openly spoken of opium as an evil, as a most terrible evil, indeed as a poison and a pest, why then, I think, it will not be very difficult to come to the conclusion, that the effects and the consequences of the abuse of opium are of a different nature altogether, and are infinitely more fatal than those which result from the abuse of alcohol." "Would you not like," said van Beneden, "just merely for the sake of experiment, to try opium smoking? I, for myself, very much wish to know what its effects really are." "So would I," said van Rheijn, "and we could make the experiment easily enough." "How so?" asked Grashuis. "For us Europeans, opium is not easy to get, and surely we could not go to the opium den and smoke there, and make ourselves a laughing-stock of the people." "No, we could hardly do that," said van Rheijn; "but among my acquaintances, I count one Lim Ho the son of the great opium-farmer. I know, if I ask him, he will procure me a few madat balls." "Contraband, I suppose," said Grenits, with a laugh. "You know those opium farmers are the greatest smugglers!" "What does that matter?" said van Rheijn. "Opium is opium I suppose; I shall, no doubt, be able to get a pipe, and as soon as I have got the things, I will let you know, and then we shall meet at my house. We shall draw lots, and the one upon whom the lot falls, shall submit himself to the experiment, while the others look on, and make notes. Is that a bargain?" "Aye, aye!" they all cried, all except van Nerekool, who was still abstracted, and deeply plunged in his own thoughts. "Meanwhile," continued van Rheijn, "I feel bound in fairness to confess that our friend Grenits has defended his position in a most masterly way. Indeed I must say that I had not expected to find so much knowledge in matters concerning the opium monopoly, in a commercial man." Grenits merely smiled, it was a bitter smile; but he was too much accustomed to such remarks from members of the official corps to take offence at them. "But," continued van Rheijn, "with all his arguments, he will never persuade me that opium is a cause of greater misery, and that opium is a greater curse to a country than strong drink." While this discussion had been going on, Verstork had written his reports and had sent them off to the authorities at Santjoemeh, and he had got back to the passangrahan in time to hear Grenits speak of the evils of opium smoking. He also heard his friend van Rheijn make his last assertion. He thereupon at once put in his word. "Well, gentlemen," said he, "we have just now the fairest possible opportunity of satisfying ourselves as to the truth of Mr. Grenits' argument. The opportunity is, in fact, too good to be neglected. You are here in one of the most wretched of all dessas which are the victims of the opium-monopoly. It is not very long ago that this same Kaligaweh was remarkable as one of the cleanest, neatest, and most prosperous of all our Javanese villages. Now, look round about you. Everything is neglected, and is falling into decay. The huts are, almost all, tumbling to ruin--the roads, which lead to the dessa, and which run through it, are mere pools of mud, and of the well-trimmed and beautiful hedges, which once separated these roads from the fields, not a vestige now remains. It is hardly ten o'clock as yet, and the opium-den is not yet closed. The inhabitants, moreover, are in a state of excitement owing to that murder, and are also disturbed by the presence of so many European gentlemen. They are, therefore, wide awake. In the opium-den you will be able to feast your eyes, and satisfy your curiosity." At the proposal all the young men had jumped to their feet--all but van Nerekool who, with his head still resting on his hand, seemed unconscious of what was going on around him. "Come, Charles," said Verstork, laying his hand on his friend's shoulder, "come, Charles, you will come along with us, won't you?" The young lawyer started as if awakened out of a dream. "Where are you going to?" asked he, with so genuine an air of surprise, as made it evident that he had not heard one word of what was going on around him. Said Verstork, "We are off to the opium-den." "To the opium-den!" cried van Nerekool, in a tone of alarm, "to the opium-den, surely you are not going--" "To smoke," said Verstork. "No, no, my friend, you need not be alarmed, we are only going to have a look. But," continued he, "gentlemen, you must make up your minds to see some very unpleasant sights, for, I think, to-night the den happens to be very full. "But, wait a bit, if you intend really to gain some insight into these opium matters, we must--" And, turning to one of the policemen who was always in attendance, he said: "Sariman, run and call the two Chinamen of the opium-store--tell them I want to speak to them, at once." "Very well, kandjeng toean." "One moment, gentlemen! Otherwise you would miss the most interesting part of the show." They had but a very short time to wait, for the two Chinamen came running up as soon as they received the message: "Come, quick, quick, the noble noble lord calls you!" When the Chinamen reached the group, Verstork said to his friends: "Now, then, gentlemen, let us go." "But," said one of the Chinamen, in a somewhat insolent tone of voice, when he saw that his presence was wholly ignored, "But you sent for us, sir." "Hold your tongue, babah," said Verstork, briefly; "we are going to pay a visit to your opium-den. You come along with us." "To the opium-den!" cried the babah, "then I will go, and--" "You stay here with me; both of you," said the Controller in a tone of authority which they dared not disobey. The two Celestials interchanged looks; but they did not utter one word, and silently followed the gentlemen. The opium-den at Kaligaweh lay behind the chapel at the eastern extremity of the aloon aloon. The visitors, therefore, had but a couple of hundred yards to walk before they reached that noble establishment licensed by the Dutch rulers of the soil. No, certainly, it was not a proud building, raising its head majestically, in the glorious consciousness of being one of the many suckers which replenish the Dutch exchequer. Not at all. Its outward appearance would not lead anyone to suspect that it was one of the conduits of the great opium monopoly--that fearful force--that section pump, which pours millions upon millions into the treasury. No, a thousand times, no! It was a squalid, filthy little bamboo building, which looked like an old tumble-down barn or shed. The walls were partially rotten by long neglect, and gave out the peculiar musty smell of decaying bamboo. The roof, bulging in here and there, threatened to fall in upon the heads of the visitors within. The entire structure was a picture of decay and desolation, and the inside of the den completely corresponded with its pitiful exterior. The space within those mouldy walls and that half-rotten roof was extremely low, and the damp atmosphere was not only stuffy and close, but was permeated with the offensive sickly sweetish smell which is the invariable and unmistakable characteristic of burning opium. The floor of the den was the bare ground and the soil had not even been levelled and beaten down as is the case in almost all Javanese cabins; but was most uneven, great black lumps sticking up all over it which the bare feet of the Javanese and the hard soles of the Chinamen had polished till they looked shining as marble. Here and there, the smoky gleam of a dirty petroleum lamp revealed a wet patch or a little pool of greenish brown water of most suspicious appearance which affected most unpleasantly the organs both of sight and smell. As the gentlemen were about to enter the low door of the den, one of the Chinamen tried to utter a note of warning; but Verstork, who was keeping an eye on him, would not let him utter a sound and in a threatening tone of voice whispered to him: "Be quiet, babah." When the visitors had entered they found themselves in a small square apartment at the end of which was a partition with two doors and a small opening. "That door," said the Controller, who acted as guide, pointing to one of them, "opens into a little room in which one of the storekeepers generally sits, and through that little square opening hands to the customers bits of red paper covered with Chinese characters. The buyers of opium have to pay ready money for one of these tickets which represents a greater or smaller quantity of tjandoe according to the price paid. With that bit of paper the purchaser then vanishes through that other door." "What a beastly hole, to be sure!" remarked Grenits. "Oh!" replied Verstork, "this is only the anteroom. Wait until you get inside and then you will see something much better than this." Thus speaking he pushed open the second bamboo door which did not turn on hinges but was fastened to the door-post with loops and ran squeaking and scraping along a bit of smooth wood. This door gave access to a narrow passage which would have been in total darkness but for the hazy light of a few wretched oil-wicks which could only just be seen glimmering, through the chinks of the bamboo partition on either side. In this passage the atmosphere was still more stuffy and the nasty smell of the madat still more nauseous. The floor of the passage was so uneven, so slippery and so indescribably filthy, that it required the greatest care to keep on one's legs at all, and to prevent oneself from slipping down full length into the soapy mud. This passage ran down the centre of the barn and on either side of it were rows of pens twelve in number, the entire barn being thus divided into twenty-four partitions. The partition walls did not exceed four or five feet in height, so that from one pen one could easily look into another. These compartments had each a door which opened upon the passage in which the European visitors were standing. "May we open one of these doors?" asked van Beneden, as he stretched out his hand to one of them. "You may not, sir!" cried one of the Chinamen who, having noticed the gesture, understood the meaning of the question. "Hold you tongue, will you!" said Verstork, in a loud tone of voice. "You be off, out of the place altogether." And after the Chinaman had disappeared, he turned to his friends, and said: "I do not think you will care to go into those filthy holes. We can see well enough what is going on inside through the chinks in the partitions and doors, indeed, I believe, we shall thus see more than if we were to enter." "Look," continued he, "there you have a smoker in the first stage of intoxication." Yes! there, on the baleh baleh, lay a Javanese. There he lay on the only article of furniture which the den could boast of, stretched out full length, and half reclining on his side. He had thrown off his head-cloth, and his Long black hair floated over the disgustingly filthy pillow on the bench. His eyes, which betrayed his ecstatic condition, were half closed, and every now and then, he brought with his right hand the bowl of his opium pipe to the tiny flame which was flickering on a bit of wick dipping in a little saucer of oil. As he did so his head, partly supported on his left hand, would be slightly bent forward, as he took the thick bamboo stem of the pipe between his lips. Then, very slowly, he inhaled the smoke of the kindling opium. After a few puffs, he put down the pipe and turned over on his back, his head thrown back upon the pillow. The smoker now closed his eyes entirely, and strained with might and main to swallow the smoke he had inhaled. As soon as he had succeeded in doing this, he lay quite still while a look of satisfaction and enjoyment passed over his countenance. That look of satisfaction, however, offered the strangest contrast with the whole exterior appearance of the man, even with the features on which it appeared. Before lying down on the baleh baleh, he had flung aside his vest, and now lay covered only by his shirt which was the filthiest and most loathsome rag imaginable. The man was as lean as a skeleton, and would have been admirably fitted to take his place at the Danse Macabre. The faint light of the little palita showed every rib in his body, and the dark shadows which they cast, showed how deep were the cavities between that trellis work of bone. His arms were like sticks encased in brown leather-like skin. His legs were not visible, being covered by the sarong; but the appearance of the feet, which protruded from under the garment, proved that like the arms the legs also were nothing but skin and bone. When the man had, for awhile, held the smoke which he had swallowed, he blew it out again very slowly through his nostrils, a proceeding which it took some time to accomplish--then he turned over on his side and appeared to fall into a deep sleep. At that sight a female form, which had been crouching in one corner of the compartment, and had thus remained unnoticed, rose up and made for the door. The poor creature had been present there all the time--In her haste to leave the wretched little apartment, she nearly ran up against the European gentlemen. "Oh, heavens! the devil!" she cried; but, in the darkness, she could not recognise anyone, and so she hurried into a neighbouring recess. In that recess, the spectacle was more horrifying still. There, stretched out on the baleh baleh, lay an old Javanese. He was as angular, as emaciated, and as much wasted away, as the other man; but he was in another stage of intoxication. He had smoked more than one madat ball, hence he was in a different state of ecstasy. His hollow, sunken eyes glittered with unwonted fire; his breast heaved, and his face wore a bestial grin, the lower jaw protruding far beyond the upper stamping the features with the mark of the brutal passions which were raging within. The upper part of his body also was bare, but the violence of the passions which possessed him caused his entire frame to heave and quiver, and had made him cast aside even his sarong, so that now he lay there in the state in which the patriarch Noah was discovered by his sons. No sooner had the creaking door given admittance to the woman than he called out sharply to her: "Where have you been all this time? Come, make haste, get me another pipe." The wretched creature obeyed without a murmur. She advanced to the baleh baleh, took some tandjoe out of a small box, warmed it at the flame of the palita, and then mixed it with a little very finely cut tobacco. Then she rolled it in her fingers into a little ball about the size of a large pea, put this into the bowl of the opium pipe, and handed it to the wretched smoker. During these operations, and when she leaned forward to hand him the pipe, the miserable smoker, no longer master of his passions, and wholly unable to restrain himself, had acted in a manner so outrageously indecent, that Grashuis cried out: "Oh, this is too revolting! Come, let us be off, I cannot stand it any longer." Just at that moment a cry was heard a little further down the half-dark passage. "Good God, this is most infamous! Is it possible--Let us get out--Let us get out, friends--fire from Heaven will fall upon us and consume us!" It was van Beneden who had walked a few steps further down the passage, and had been peering into one of the recesses down there. Now he wildly rushed out of the place, dragging his friends almost by main force along with him. "What in the world is the matter with you?" asked Grenits. "Oh, I can't tell you what I have seen," cried August van Beneden, hardly able to speak plainly in his excitement. "Come along." "Now no false modesty," said Grashuis; "we have come here on purpose to gain what information we can about the horrors of opium, and so each one of us must tell his experience. What was it you saw, Theodoor?" "Don't ask me," cried Theodoor Grenits. "It is really too abominable; such things must not be uttered--And the victim--was a little Javanese girl--she struggled frightfully." "Aye," said van Rheijn, "I thought I heard screaming." "And can we do nothing? Come, Verstork, you as Controller--" But Verstork restrained his companions who were preparing once again to rush into the den. "I shall take good care," said he, "not to meddle in any opium matters. They, at Batavia, would very soon find me wholly unfit to hold any government appointment and, however revolting a deed may be, I should find no support in van Gulpendam my superior officer at Santjoemeh. My whole career would be ruined--No, my friends, I must let things take their course." "But," cried Grenits, "I am not bound by any such considerations--I will--" "You will keep quiet I hope," said Verstork to his friend who was trying to make his way once again into the opium den. "Remember that I am in your company, and that even if you went in there quite alone you would still compromise me by your rash and foolish action. I beg you therefore--Here! you see the child is coming out." As Verstork spoke a little Javanese girl hardly ten years of age came rushing out of the loathsome den, she sobbed and moaned as she ran past the European gentlemen. "Oh this is fearful--this is fearful," cried Grenits, "and then to have to stand still while such horrors are going on! I should like to--But--" continued he as he turned to van Beneden, "will you still maintain that opium is in its effects to be compared to drink." August van Beneden did not reply; but the deepest indignation was visible in his countenance. "Come," said Verstork, as he tried to calm his friend, "let us not remain standing here, men, women and children are beginning to crowd round." "Those people," cried Grenits, "were just now looking on at those filthy scenes through the chinks of the bamboo walls." "And," said van Beneden, "the opium farmers did not try to prevent them, but seemed on the contrary to encourage them. I could see it all plainly enough." "Come," said Verstork again, "let us be off. Let us go and sit down again under the Wariengien tree. Oppas," continued he to one of the policemen who always kept near him, "you go and tell these dessa people that they are to go home--it is time for all to go to sleep." CHAPTER XVI. THE OPIUM-MONOPOLY. A QUIET CHAT. The people of Kaligaweh were quiet folk, and did as they were told. Very soon the dessa had resumed its ordinary peaceful appearance, and the little group of European gentlemen were once again seated under the widely-spreading crown of the gigantic wild-fig tree. But if, a short time ago, they had paid but very little attention to the wondrous beauties of the tropical night, their visit to the opium-den made them still more indifferent to its attractions. As soon as they were again seated, the conversation, naturally enough, turned upon the terrible scenes which they had witnessed. "In that passage," said Grashuis, who, as surveyor, was accustomed to take in local details at a glance, "there were twenty-four doors and therefore there must be twenty-four such hideous pens. If all of them--What a pity it is that we allowed ourselves to be scared and that we did not carry out our investigation to the end." "No, no, my friend," said Verstork, "I am glad we did not. Almost all the recesses were occupied, and the scenes which they would have revealed would have differed only from those you saw in the degree of beastliness. I repeat it--it is much better that we did not go on. But, when I tell you that in the dessa Kaligaweh there are some eighty households which number about six hundred souls, one hundred and thirty of which are able-bodied working men, and that such a den as we visited remains open for three-quarters of the four-and-twenty hours--And when I further tell you that if you had looked into the wretched huts all around you would have found many an opium-smoker in them also--then, I think you will be able to form some idea of the extent which the abuse of opium has attained." "Do you happen to know," asked Grashuis, who was fond of statistics, "what percentage of the inhabitants is given to this abuse of opium?" "Well," returned the other, "I do not think we shall do much good by troubling ourselves about figures which are generally misleading and only serve to prove how clever statisticians are in the art de grouper les chiffres." "Yes," said Grenits, "and we know full well that treasury officials have very little scruples on such points." "It is a blessing that Muizenkop does not hear you say that," said van Rheijn, with a laugh, "you would see him fire up at such a suggestion." "With regard to Kaligaweh," continued Verstork, "I venture most confidently to assert that there are not ten men in the dessa who are free from the vice of opium smoking." "Humph," muttered van Beneden, who, though a lawyer, was also fond of figures, "that is about 93 per cent." "I found that out," continued the controller, "when, about a twelvemonth ago I was on the look-out for a man to put into the place of my former loerah; a good fellow enough, but one whom the opium-pipe had rendered totally unfit for any position of trust." "Did you succeed?" asked Grenits. "Yes, I did; but not without much difficulty. It was my intention to appoint Setrosmito, the poor devil who just now has got himself into trouble, and it was only because the man could neither read nor write that I had to give up the idea. The inquiries, however, which I then was forced to make, revealed to me the startling fact that women, and even children of eight or nine years of age use opium. They actually scrape out the father's pipe in order to get hold of the fatal narcotic." "But," remarked van Beneden, "Kaligaweh probably forms an exception." "Not by any means," rejoined Verstork, testily; "during my official career I have been stationed in several residencies, and I venture to affirm that, as far as opium is concerned, their condition is much the same as that in Santjoemeh. You will find hundreds of dessas in the island like Kaligaweh." "I suppose," put in Grenits, "we must except the Preanger districts?" "Oh yes, certainly," assented Verstork, "the use of opium is altogether forbidden there." "And does that work well?" "Excellently," said Verstork. "That is, I have no doubt," asked Grashuis, "a tentative measure on the part of the Government which, if it succeeds, will be extended to the whole of Java?" "Not at all," replied Verstork. "In the first place the prohibition has been in force too long to be merely tentative for it dates back as far as 1824; and then, in the next, it was not at all adopted with the view of checking the abuse of opium; but merely because it was feared that the people would take to coffee-stealing in order to be able to satisfy their craving." "Come," said van Rheijn, "that is not at all a bad idea." "Is it possible," exclaimed Grashuis, "to conceive a more cynical confession of the fact that opium demoralises the people?" "And if," continued Grenits, "you add that confession to the scenes which we have just witnessed, then put the question seriously to yourselves: is there any truth in the assertion made by van Rheijn and backed up by van Beneden, that the abuse of opium can in any way be compared to the abuse of alcohol, or put on the same level with it? No, no, in my opinion, it is infinitely more deplorable!" "Such is my opinion also," assented Verstork; "every attempt made to put down or to limit the extent of opium-smoking and to check its abuse, must be looked upon as an act of much greater philanthropy than the efforts made by the friends of temperance or the preachers of total abstinence. But--" "Yes--but what?" cried another. "But," continued he, "every such attempt is a direct blow aimed at the revenue at home." "Aye, aye, there you have it," said Grenits; "and whenever you raise such a question as that, our good friends at the Hague are uncommonly hard of hearing." "Well, I don't blame them," interrupted van Rheijn, "they cannot afford to sacrifice the millions which the opium trade pours into the treasury." "God help us!" cried Grenits, "did ever man hear such an argument as that? What would you say to a thief who would try to excuse his theft by saying that he was in need of the stolen money to go and fuddle himself in a beershop; or to a murderer who would try and justify his crime by stating that he poisoned his uncle only because he wanted the inheritance to--to--well, say to keep his mistress?" "Oh, oh, oh!" cried several voices, "what a comparison!" "Yes," said Verstork, "the comparison is certainly not flattering; but it has the advantage of being a perfectly just one. So long as our country indulges in the costly luxury of an administration such as ours; and so long as it maintains the opium trade in its present state to furnish funds for that costly administration: such proceeding may very justly be compared to the action of a thief who steals a banknote in order to go and spend it in a gin-palace." "Or rather," cried Grenits, "to that of a man who poisons his uncle so that he may have the handling of his money. I consider the latter comparison to be a still more just one; because it cannot be denied that though Holland has always treated her Indian possessions as a milch-cow, the present system of scraping and squeezing is beginning to exceed all reasonable bounds and limits." "Oh! oh!" again cried van Rheijn and van Beneden as in protest. "Well gentlemen," asked Grenits, "am I exaggerating? Tell me now, are they not, at home, exceeding all limits and bounds in the heavy taxation which they heap on the shoulders of the industrial and commercial classes?" "Aye, but," remarked van Beneden, "you must remember that in Holland people have to pay taxes as well as out here." "If you will take the trouble to look into the matter," said Grenits, "you will find that they do not pay anything like what the people have to pay here. Then again, I ask, do they not exceed all bounds and limits in increasing the burdens, already too heavy, which the poor native population has to bear?" "I quite agree with you there," said Verstork. "Do they not," continued Grenits, "exceed all limits in the pitiful and niggardly way in which they treat their soldiers out here?" "How so?" asked van Rheijn. "Why, to give you but one instance, by loudly declaring that there is peace at Atjeh--a peace which has no real existence whatever--and thereby robbing the poor soldiers and doing them clean out of their already too meagre pay?" "Oh, what need we bother ourselves about those soldier fellows!" cried van Rheijn. "Do they not again," continued Grenits, "overpass all reasonable limits, by encouraging and fostering the abuse of opium?" "Now, that is too bad," cried van Beneden, "now you are going too far; that accusation of yours is not a fair one." "You think so, do you?" said Grenits. "Well then just take Band's book in hand. There you will find proof absolute of the fact that it is, and has always been, the policy at the Hague to encourage and to foster the opium-trade as much as possible. Figures are stubborn things--just listen to what they have to say. In 1832, the opium revenue amounted to three millions, in 1842 it rose to very nearly seven millions. In 1870 it was quite ten millions, in 1880 it amounted to thirteen millions. In 1885 that same revenue rose to nineteen millions; and new, in 1886, it is estimated at quite twenty one millions, and our House of Representatives has accepted that estimate without the slightest demur, and without one word of protest. Of course, every now and then, there is a great moan made in political and in other circles at home, and a great deal is said about the iniquities of the opium trade; but, for all that, the authorities have their hands perfectly free and are encouraged by all parties to squeeze out of that trade as much as it can be made to yield." "But, excuse me," asked van Rheijn, "is it not one of the first duties of every government to make an impost as productive as possible?" "Certainly it is,--and it is precisely therein that lies the immorality and the demoralizing tendency of the opium-monopoly. You see, in order to enable the farmers to increase their bids, the abuse of the drug must be encouraged. Thus the poor natives are driven, we may say, into the opium-den by any and by every means--the most illegal and the dirtiest means seem to have the preference. Just read our local papers, and then you will be edified, I think, at the infamous annoyance which the Chinese opium-factors are empowered to inflict upon the non-consumers, and at the unlimited control they are allowed to exercise, always in the most shameless and arbitrary fashion, over any poor wretch who, seeing, it may be, the error of his ways, tries to diminish his daily consumption." "Or provide himself with smuggled opium," remarked van Rheijn, interrupting him. Grenits, however, paid no heed to the remark, and went on: "The opium-monopoly was originally established with the very laudable object of raising the price of the article and of thus leaving it within the reach of as few people as possible. On that principle, therefore, every regulation must be condemned which tends to augment the revenue by increasing, the sale. But, at present, our Colonial Secretary relies upon the system as a regular means of increasing the revenue. When we have such facts as these before us, facts which can be proved to demonstration, then we feel ourselves driven to pronounce this judgment: 'Our government and our representatives are fully convinced of the terrible and fatal effects of the abuse of opium by their Indian subjects; but they will not consent to forego the profit which they obtain by the wholesale poisoning of an entire population.'" "Come, come, poisoning! That is a rather strong word!" cried van Beneden. "Yes," continued Grenits, very quietly, "I said poisoning--that was my word. If in Holland an apothecary does not keep his opium in the proper poison chest, or if he is detected in selling it without the proper order from a medical man, he is fined--very heavily fined. Am I not right, van Nerekool?" Thus addressed van Nerekool raised his head, looked up vacantly for a moment or two and gave an affirmative nod; it seemed very doubtful whether he had understood the question at all. Grenits, however, accepted that nod as a gesture of assent, and continued: "Yet that same poison may here be procured without the slightest difficulty, nay more than that, is actually forced upon the poor people in the most shameless manner by the Chinese scoundrels who keep the opium dens. And that goes on under the eyes, and with the full cognizance, sanction, and under the protection of the Dutch Government." "You are growing tiresome," sneered van Rheijn, "you keep on harping on that one string--the Dutch Government--The fact is, my dear fellow, you are tarred with the self-same brush of discontent as all the manufacturers and merchants out here in India." "Why should I not be?" cried Grenits passionately. "I do not always agree with all their opinions; but yet I do form a part of that important commercial body; and when a question arises which effects the vital interests of industry and commerce--Well, yes, then you may say that I am tarred with the same brush." "But have these grumblers really so very much to complain of?" asked Grashuis in a bantering tone of voice. "I should think they have," replied Grenits. "Under our present system we are not only flayed; but we are sucked dry, in a manner which, elsewhere, would drive men to open rebellion. When the Dutch revolted against Spain, and when the Belgians rose up in arms against the Dutch, neither of them had anything like so much to complain of as we have here,--neither of them suffered anything like the extortion which the Indo-Europeans have to put up with at the hands of their present oppressors." "Oh, oh, oh!" cried several voices. "We have now to pay duties and taxes compared to which the tithes at which our ancestors rebelled were the merest child's play. And then, in return, what rights do we enjoy?--If one could, on so serious a subject, be capable of indulging in a sorry joke--I might say that we have the privilege only of having absolutely no rights at all. For, that which here in India goes by the name of law and justice, is in reality nothing more than the merest burlesque; and that is especially true in all matters which concern the revenue. Wherever there is a little money to be made, the State flings itself upon its victims as some ravenous beast leaps upon its prey, and then one may look in vain for the smallest protection--least of all in any case which concerns that imperium in imperio the terrible opium monopoly!" "You are exaggerating, you are talking wildly!" cried van Rheijn. "I wish I were," continued Grenits; "but just take up that terrible book 'Might versus Right,' a book written by a member of the High Court of Justice at Batavia, who was formerly, for many years, Attorney General in that same court, and for half an ordinary lifetime was president of the Residential Council. A man, therefore, who ought to know, and who does know what he is talking about, and then--when you have read what he has to say--tell me if I am exaggerating." "Oh, the writer of that book is another grumbler!" said van Rheijn, "whose only object is to set the whole world against the functionaries of our Administration." "That is a very heavy accusation to bring against a man who, in my opinion, is thoroughly honest, and who has had the courage, and therefore deserves the credit, of having told the plain unvarnished truth. Such, however, is our national gratitude!" "Oh yes!" cried van Rheijn, "I am not at all surprised to find you commercial men in ecstasies about that man and about his book. To all grumblers it is of course meat and drink." "Let me tell you, my good fellow," said Grenits, "that those whom you call grumblers have had good cause given them for discontent." "Come, come," said the other, "you talk very finely; but after all they are only a pitiful handful of very tame insurgents. Depend upon it we shall manage very easily to keep order among them." "Yes, yes, I know," said Grenits, bitterly, "that is the old stock phrase. It was used some little time ago by certain organs of the Dutch press when the people, exasperated by vexatious extortions, strove--by perfectly legitimate means mind you--to resist acts of arbitrary injustice and exaction on the part of the Dutch Government. "Tame insurgents!" continued he, vehemently. "Tame insurgents! By heaven! let them not at home taunt us much longer with that name. A very little more, and they will be at their wits' end to deal with an insurrection which will prove itself anything but tame. Don't let them forget, yonder, that, to carry on a miserable war like that at Atjeh, they had to sweep up the scum of Europe; for you know that Dutch heroism in our towns at home made the poor wretches whom they manage to press for that service sing the pleasant refrain: 'My life is pain and woe, To Atjeh I will go ...'" "Grenits, Grenits!" cried Verstork, trying to calm his friend's growing excitement. "Yes," said he, "my dear Verstork, I am wrong and I am going too far, I have very nearly done. But those heedless words, 'tame insurgents,' have worked a great deal more mischief than those who first uttered them could possibly foresee. They have proved to us that, in our lawful resistance to extortion, we have nothing to expect but only contempt and abuse. May God in his mercy protect Holland! But I have good reason to know that if a man were to arise amongst us possessed of the necessary talent for organisation, and one who, at the same time, had sufficient tact to gather around him all that discontent which at present is powerless because it is divided amongst itself--If such a man, I say, were to arise who could make the most of the utter state of perplexity they are in yonder--we, the 'tame insurgents,' would make our mother country pass through very evil days indeed!" "Well," said van Rheijn, "all that is not so very formidable after all. In case matters came to the worst, the army would know how to do its duty." "Its duty!" cried Grenits. "That sounds well from you who just now were the first to scoff at those 'soldier fellows'. But I ask you this one question:--Has the Government any right whatever to reckon upon the fulfilment of that duty? Has it not neglected, in the most shameful manner, its duty towards that army? I will allow--I am indeed fully persuaded--that in spite of any treatment the officers would stick to their duty, and would do it strictly and honourably. But--! can one expect as much from all the foreigners, which have been shipped out hither? Why, even now in Atjeh, they are deserting to the enemy with bag and baggage, with arms and ammunition--and, in the case I was supposing, they would go over in entire companies. Can one look for any sense of duty in these poor wretched native soldiers, who have almost to a man, by the most shameful means--by opium, by gambling, by the allurements of the vilest women--been pressed into the service. No, no, pray don't go on deceiving yourselves." "There!" cried van Rheijn, "now you are simply talking treason--your language is seditious." "Treason, do you call it?" cried Grenits, passionately. "When I do nothing more than lay my finger upon the wound?" "Gentlemen," said Verstork interposing, "methinks it is high time to close this discussion. Such topics are very apt to make men hot, and--moreover, why, it is just past midnight. We must go and get some rest, for to-morrow we must be up by day-break and we have a very fatiguing day before us. The Djoerang Pringapoes which you visited with me this evening, is no ball-room let me tell you--you will find that out to-morrow. Come, let us all turn in and get some sleep!" At these words all, except van Nerekool, rose and prepared to retire. "I am very glad," said Grashuis, "that old Muizenkop was not present at this conversation. Had he been here, by to-morrow evening the Resident would have known all about it, chapter and verse, with no doubt the necessary additions and flourishes. And then, my good friend Grenits, you would have had a 'mauvais quart d'heure.' Who knows, they might have packed you off to Atapoepoe or to Tomini Bay; perhaps they might have kicked you out of the island altogether. Remember poor lawyer Winckel!" Grenits shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. "Are you coming to bed?" asked Verstork as he walked up to van Nerekool who was still seated with his head resting on his hand outside the hut which the others had already entered. Van Nerekool made no reply, he merely looked up and stared into the face of his friend with a strange dazed expression. "What in the world is the matter with you, old fellow?" said Verstork as he laid his hand on his shoulder and sat down by the side of his friend. "You have been so silent and so absent all day, you must be ill I fear!" "No, William, I am not ill, but I feel so very--so very wretched." "Wretched!" said Verstork, "come now, tell us all about it, there's a good fellow, let me bear some part of your sorrow!" "Ah!" sighed van Nerekool, "I can tell you nothing--nothing that you could share with me. William, my dear friend, you recollect our conversation of last Saturday night at Santjoemeh?" "Every word of it," replied Verstork. "I then told you that in one week's time I would give you my reasons why I considered your love affair with Miss van Gulpendam a very sad business. That week is up to-day--is it not?" "Yes, my friend," said van Nerekool very sadly. "But you can tell me nothing now. During the last week many things have happened. I suppose that even on Saturday last you knew that Resident van Gulpendam was not at all well disposed towards me?" To that question Verstork gave no direct reply; but he insisted upon being told all that had taken place. "Come," said he, "come, Charles, tell me all about it. You know perfectly well that you have in me a true friend. Let us hear all about it." "But," replied van Nerekool, "you want rest. You ought to go to sleep. To-morrow you have a hard day before you." "Oh!" said Verstork, lightly, "never mind about that. I have often enough gone the rounds of the government coffee-plantations, and have passed many a sleepless night in the dessas with quite as hard a day in prospect as to-morrow is likely to be. I can very easily afford an old friend like you an hour or so of sleep. Do pray speak out." Charles van Nerekool hesitated no longer. He felt indeed in great need of sympathy; and wanted, above all things, to pour out his heart to his friend. He began his story therefore, by telling him how, on the occasion of the State-ball, he had declared his love to Anna. In the most vivid colours he described to his friend that happy moment in which, carried away by the excitement of the dance and the glorious tones of Weber's waltz, he had allowed the long-treasured secret of his heart to escape from him; and his rapture when the girl, whom he so dearly loved, had uttered the one little word which assured him that she returned his affection. He told him of that sacred moment when their lips first met in the garden. "Oscula qui sumpsit, si non et caetera sumpsit Haec quoque quae data sunt, perdere dignus erat." muttered Verstork to himself. He, in his youth, had studied the classics, and now he could not help smiling as he recalled the two well-known lines from Ovid's Ars Amandi. But when he saw with what a sorrowful shake of the head his friend answered the half audible quotation, he at once discovered how deep a wound had been struck into that poor heart. The story of that blissful love-scene and of those happy moments spent in the garden of the Residence in the shade of the Padan arbour, was followed by an equally graphic description of the rude awakening out of that dream of love and felicity. Charles van Nerekool went on telling his friend how Mrs. van Gulpendam had broken in upon the interview--he told him all about the conversation which he afterwards had held with fair Laurentia. A very very bitter smile passed over the Controller's lips when he heard what means of seduction the Resident's wife had deigned to employ. "My poor friend, my poor friend," he muttered almost inaudibly; "but is this all?" "Oh, no!" cried van Nerekool. "Well, go on, I am all ears." "The next day," continued van Nerekool, "I paid a visit to the Residence, as I had promised Anna I would do; in order to lay before her father my formal request for her hand. I had great difficulty in obtaining an audience at all; and it was not until after I had waited for a considerable time that I got to be admitted into the presence of the Resident. "'I have not very much time to spare, sir,' were his first words of welcome when he saw me enter the office in which he sat to receive me. "'I have not very much time to spare, therefore I beg you will at once get under weigh.' "'Mr. van Gulpendam,' I began, 'yesterday I had some talk with Miss Anna--and--' "'Do pray set sail at once,' cried he, interrupting my opening speech, 'I tell you again I have no time for dawdling. I may at once tell you that I do not think it a very proper thing for a gentleman to get a young girl into a quiet corner. Fair and above board is my motto, sir. An honest man sails straight into port. All that tacking and trimming are not to my taste, I can tell you.' "'My dear sir!' cried I, 'I have already told Mrs. van Gulpendam that the excitement and the surroundings had quite thrown me off my guard. It is now, and it always was, my intention to ask you fairly and openly for your daughter's hand. There can, between us, be no question of any intrigues or mysteries, and my presence here, Mr. van Gulpendam, has no other motive than to declare to you my love to Miss Anna, and to obtain your sanction to our union as man and wife.' "'So, so,' said he, 'does the wind sit in that quarter? You have pricked your chart very prettily indeed. Now would you like to know what I have put down in my log, eh?' "'Mr. van Gulpendam, I can assure you that I never was more serious in my life--the question is to me one of the utmost importance,' said I, amazed and disgusted at all this sea-jargon. 'In heaven's name let us lay aside all jesting. I simply have the honour of asking you for the hand of your daughter.' "'Mr. van Nerekool,' he replied, 'I also am in a most serious mood.' This he said in a somewhat nettled tone, however, not another nautical expression passed his lips during the interview. 'How can you suspect me of jesting, when I ask you whether you can surmise to what decision I am about to come with regard to your question?' "'I hope,' cried I, 'that your decision will not be unfavourable to me! Oh, sir, I love Miss Anna with all my heart and with all my soul!' "'Of course, of course,' said he, 'these are the regular stock phrases of all lovers. Now, are you really and seriously in love with her?' "'How can you ask such a question?' cried I, vehemently. "'Well,' replied van Gulpendam, 'I have my reasons,--and they are very good reasons too--for doing so. You had an interview yesterday evening with my wife, had you not?' "'Yes, Resident,' was my reply. "'And the conversation you then held with her opened up to you the prospect of a future career. I think I am right there?' was his second question. "I simply sat staring at the man in utter amazement. Never, never, could it have come into my head that he and his wife were of the same way of thinking in such a matter as that." "Why not, pray?" asked Verstork, very quietly. "Why, my dear friend, I looked upon the Resident as worldly and frivolous indeed; but I thought he was an honourable man, and one who kept himself altogether clear of the intrigues in which his wife appears to dabble." Again the bitter smile curved Verstork's lips; but in the deep shadow of the the Wariengien tree, van Nerekool failed to perceive it. "Go on," said Verstork, who, though deeply moved, spoke in so perfectly quiet and composed a tone of voice, that his friend did not notice his feelings. "To his last question," resumed van Nerekool, "I replied, 'Yes, Resident, you are right. Mrs. van Gulpendam did make me certain proposals.' "'She spoke to you then of your future prospects, as well as on the subject of your present request?' asked the Resident. "'Yes, Resident,' was my reply,--indeed I was growing very nervous. "'Well, then,' resumed he, 'you see that you have the making of your career entirely in your own hands; and I do hope that you will now at length prove yourself a man of some practical common sense.' "My dear William! at these words, which, you will notice, cast a grave suspicion upon the motive of my request, upon which, however, my entire happiness depended, I felt, as it were, the ground sinking away from under me. "'But, Resident,' I cried, in despair, 'do you really know what Mrs. van Gulpendam did propose to me?' "'Well, yes,' he said, in a very off-hand and somewhat mocking manner, 'pretty well, pretty well, I think. She held out to you the prospect of being appointed successor to the present Chairman of the Council at Santjoemeh, which important position, I think she told you, might very probably be permanently conferred upon you. Further she did not refuse you her daughter's hand--whom you declare that you love so very dearly. You see I am pretty well informed. Now, if you have called upon me this morning to ascertain what guarantees I can give you that these proposals will be realised--and allow me to tell you that is the course a sensible man would certainly take--then, I think I may say, you need not be uneasy.' "This utterly false interpretation of my motives, stung me to the quick. What ignoble thoughts and sentiments must have been stirring in that bosom! "'Mr. van Gulpendam!' I cried out, interrupting him, very warmly, 'I was not in the least thinking of those proposals. Still less, if possible, did I call here this morning in order to ascertain your intentions--nothing of all this was present to my mind when I asked you whether you were aware of the offers Mrs. van Gulpendam made me last night.' "'Indeed,' said he very coolly, 'then I fear I have misunderstood you altogether, Mr. van Nerekool. In that case with what intention did you put that question to me?' "'What was my intention?' I replied. 'Why, my intention was simply this. Are you aware that Mrs. van Gulpendam asked me to violate my oath and my duty?' "'Oh, come, come,' said he all but laughing at me. "'Are you aware,' I continued still more hotly, 'that I was actually required to send a poor innocent man into banishment?' "'My dear sir, you must be dreaming,' said he in the same tone of banter. "'Are you aware,' I still continued, 'that the prospect of obtaining your daughter's hand, that honours and promotion were offered me at the price of a human life?' "'Now Mr. van Nerekool,' cried van Gulpendam with much assumed indignation, 'now you are going too far! I forbid you to utter such insinuations and to make such charges against my wife. What! you come here to me to ask me for my daughter's hand, and you think you will obtain your request, I suppose, by heaping insults and slanders upon the mother of the woman you pretend to love!' "'Insults and slanders!' I exclaimed. "At these words of mine he cooled down immediately. "'Well' said he, 'perhaps the expression is too strong. There must be some misunderstanding.' And then, very quietly, he went on: 'Your proposal, Mr. van Nerekool, is a great honour both to my daughter and to myself. It has, however, come upon me so very unexpectedly that I feel sure you will allow me some time for reflection. I must indeed take some little time to consider a matter upon which the entire happiness of my daughter will depend. Moreover, you see there can be no hurry. Anna is very young--she is indeed much too young to think of marriage just yet.' "'You do not therefore deprive me of hope?' I exclaimed and, in my excitement, I seized his hand and held it. "He looked at me in astonishment. 'I can promise you nothing, absolutely nothing, Mr. van Nerekool. Anna has plenty of time before her, she can take a year--two years, perhaps--before she decides upon a step which involves a union for life. By that time we can talk over these matters again. Meanwhile--' He broke off hesitating. "'Meanwhile?' I asked almost breathlessly. "'Meanwhile,' he continued very coldly, 'you will do well not to continue your visits at the Residence. I know you do not wish to compromise a simple-hearted and honest young girl, I shall, therefore, not expect to see you here excepting, of course, at our official receptions.' "That was plain speaking enough,--was it not William? It was tantamount to a refusal." Verstork looked at his friend with very real and deep sympathy. "I had a presentiment," he said, "of the trouble that was awaiting you. You remember in what manner I received your communication last week?" "Yes, and to-day you promised you would let me know why--" "Now tell me, Charles," said Verstork, "is there any need for me to say anything more? You must, by this time, I presume, have been able to form a pretty accurate estimate of the family circle into which you would have been received in case your offer had been accepted." "But William, Anna--!" "Oh, yes," cried Verstork, "I know Anna is the purest and most amiable creature in the world. I know, as well as you do, that Anna is absolutely innocent of all this intrigue and trickery. Indeed I have often wondered how so fair a flower could have opened and developed in the midst of such surroundings. But, let the girl be--why simply what she is--however adorable she may be, if you marry her you cannot help being fettered to her parents, who are most certainly the most self-seeking and most corrupt beings which can possibly be found in any respectable society. My dear friend, just reflect how utterly and hopelessly wretched you would be tied to such a pair of schemers. That, my dear fellow, was the very thing I wanted to point out to you." Van Nerekool heaved a deep sigh and, lost in thought, did not answer a word. He sat as one in a dream, with his head resting on his hand, peering upwards into the vast crown of the Wariengien tree through which the moon, now high up in the heavens, was casting her soft white beams. For awhile Verstork respected his friend's silence. At length he said: "Come now, Charles, you have, I hope, somewhat relieved your breast. I have with a single word been able to draw your attention to that which it imported you much to know. Now try and forget all this for a while in sleep. You have this day had a long--and to you who are unaccustomed to such exercise--a necessarily fatiguing ride. Rest will, therefore, be most beneficial to you. To-morrow still greater fatigues are in store for you. These also I hope will be a distraction, and prove wholesome to your mind. If we would be fit for work to-morrow we must get some sleep. Come along." Van Nerekool sighed again. Without a word he rose, he pressed the hand of his friend and then followed him into the hut. The others were already fast asleep, and he stretched himself out by their side upon the wooden bench. CHAPTER XVII. IN THE DJOERANG PRINGAPOES. Toeaan!--Toeaaan!--Toeaaaan!-- Such were the most unwelcome sounds which, a few hours later, were heard in the hut in which all our friends lay heavily sleeping. Gentle sleep had, at length, taken compassion on poor van Nerekool also. For a long time after his conversation with Verstork, he had not been able to close an eye; and had been tumbling and tossing about and making the crazy couch creak and groan to such an extent that Leendert Grashuis and August van Beneden, who were close beside him, had uttered many an angry exclamation: "For heaven's sake keep quiet! don't keep rolling about like that--it is enough to make a fellow sea-sick--" and then again: "The majesty of the law seems uncommonly restless to-night; perhaps the mosquitoes trouble it, or an unquiet conscience, or a fit of the blues." But at length, thank God, Charles had fallen into a deep sleep; he was not destined, however, very long to enjoy that blissful rest. "Toeaan! Toeaaan!" Thus once again the voice began to cry. It was the voice of Verstork's servant who had got the watchman of the guard-house to wake him, and was now very cautiously trying to rouse his master out of his sleep. But the Javanese servant felt that he was engaged in a very ticklish duty; and he set about it with all the circumspection which he was aware such unpleasant duties required. He knew, by sad experience, that European gentlemen are apt to lose their temper when suddenly, at a very early hour, they are aroused out of a delightful sleep; therefore, on all such occasions the wily Javanese serving-man preferred to keep at a respectful distance from his Kandjeng toean, who, he knew, might at such a time be easily moved to raise his hand and deal him a sound box on the ears for his trouble. Not that Verstork was at all given to such rough usage of his servants; on the contrary, he was known and beloved among the natives for his kindly consideration, and for the coolness of his temper. But this was a wholly exceptional occasion, and one could never tell what the sudden irritation of being roughly shaken out of a pleasant slumber might produce. It was very easy to get a good slap in the face, and therefore the astute Javanese prudently kept himself at a safe distance. "Toeaan! Toeaaan!" he ventured to say again in a very intense drawling whisper. But Verstork did not hear him. "Toeaan! Kandjeng toeaan!" Still not a word! Then the servant very cautiously crept up to the couch. When he was close to his master he again cried out, in a still more subdued and still more drawling voice, "Toeaaan! toeaaaan!" Still Verstork stirred not a limb, only van Nerekool seemed to have caught the sound, and was beginning to move about restlessly. Then the man, very gently--so gently that it could not disturb the sleeper--began to fold back that part of the rug which covered his master's feet. The faint glimmer of the lamp which hung dangling from one of the rafters, just allowed him to see what he was about. When he had laid bare one of Verstork's feet, he began very, very gently to tickle his master's great-toe, while in the same cautious manner he again whispered "Toeaaan! toeaaaan!" and seemed, by the very humility of his voice, to beg pardon for the liberty he was taking in rousing his high and mighty master. This tickling of the toe had, at once, the desired effect. Starting up Verstork sat up and cried: "Who is there?" As he said these words he put his hand to his foot, evidently fearing that a snake had touched him. Indeed, the chilly and leathery skin of a native may very easily convey such an impression, especially on a man who is but half awake. "Who is there?" he cried again. But by this time the Javanese servant had, with a bound, jumped away out of the possible reach of his master's hand, and from the furthest corner of the hut he said: "It is I, Kandjeng toean!" "What do you want?" roared the Controller, now thoroughly aroused, and not in the sweetest temper. "It is now four o'clock, and the dessa people are all waiting." "Is that all?" growled Verstork, who thought that his rest had been very unnecessarily disturbed. Who knows what absurdity he might in his drowsiness have added, had not the "toeaan, toeaan" of his servant, and the subsequent noise awakened van Beneden also, who was sleeping quite close to him. He jumped up at once, and the moment he was awake began, as the Resident might perhaps have said, to turn up all hands. "Come boys!" he shouted cheerily "Come boys, get up all of you!" as he threw himself from his bed with such energy as made the slight bamboo structure sway and creak as if it had been rocked by an earthquake. "What's the matter, what's up?" cried several voices starting out of sleep. "What's up?" cried van Beneden. "There's nothing up! You get up, all of you, as fast as you can. It is four o'clock, and the dessa folk are all ready for the chase." That word acted like magic. In a twinkling all were on their legs. They dressed, washed, combed, brushed themselves as well as one can perform all these processes in the interior of a dessa, which offers no great facilities for an elaborate toilet to Europeans who have passed the night in a small country hut. For washing, indeed, there was no convenience at all--the only basin in the place was a mere potsherd. But, all were anxious to be off, and like soldiers who, in the field, have not always Sèvres or even Delt at command, they did the best they could, and soon completed their hasty toilet. Diogenes, the Greek philosopher of Sinope, had frequently, no doubt, dressed himself in much the same fashion. In a few moments all were ready, even van Nerekool who was bent upon seeking some relief for mental pain in physical exertion. When they stepped out of the cabin they saw the entire male population seated cross-legged on the village green, trying to protect themselves from the cold morning air by drawing their sarongs as far as possible over their shoulders. Every man had brought his lance, and had stuck it upright before him into the ground. Every one of them held a huge rattle, an instrument very like that with which our old watchmen used to murder sleep while they pretended to keep guard over the sleepers. The moon was, by this time, casting her beams under the branches of the Wariengien tree, and, as the pale light shone upon that strange group of human beings seated there in a crouching posture, it illustrated most vividly the theory of Darwin, so very much did that assembly look like a great conclave of apes. "Are all your men here, Loerah?" asked Verstork. "Yes, Kandjeng toean." "Very good. Then send one part of them round by the maize fields of the dessa, let the second division spread itself to the westward over the neck of the Dojerang Pringapoes, and let the rest go right into the ravine." "Yes, Kandjeng toean--But--!" "Well, but what?" asked Verstork, noticing the Loerah's hesitation. "May not the animals," said the chief, "thus make their escape through the eastern side of the ravine?" "How so, Loerah?" said Verstork. "You have heard, I suppose, that the people from Banjoe Pahit will occupy the whole of the eastern side, and part even of the western side of the ravine? Very good, now we understand each other I hope. We shall get on horseback at once, and will post ourselves in the upper part of the pass, and, if our instructions have been properly carried out, the whole of the game must come that way. Now, just listen carefully to what I have to tell you, Loerah." "Yes, Kandjeng toean." "As soon as we have got to the upper part of the ravine we shall fire a shot." "Shall we hear it, sir, right down at the bottom?" "You are right, Loerah, quite right, it is a good distance--perhaps too far--Well then, I will tell you what you must do. As soon as day begins to break--but, mind you, before the sun has fairly risen--you will set your beaters to work. But, whatever you do, take care that the beasts have the road to the ravine left open to them." "Yes, Kandjeng toean," was the invariable answer of the Loerah, always spoken in the most respectful tone. Then in the deepest silence the beaters betook themselves to their posts while the European horsemen took the road to Banjoe Pahit. As yet it was quite dark, so that the horses had to proceed at a very slow walk. This very moderate pace was absolutely necessary, because the road which they had to follow was a narrow path leading through the flooded rice fields, and the slightest deviation might have led to a highly unpleasant mud-bath. Presently, however, a faint streak of light was beginning to show itself on the eastern horizon. At first it was all but imperceptible, it seemed like a faint reflection of the waning moonlight; but gradually it became broader and deeper, then is began to spread a fiery glow over the eastern sky, and made the stars, which were still brightly twinkling in the zenith, to pale and fade away. The narrow path kept winding upwards; for Banjoe Pahit, towards which the riders were making their way, lay on much higher ground than Kaligaweh which was situated on the low foreshore. As the dawning light grew clearer and brighter, the horsemen were able to mend their pace, and soon the horses were going along at a good sharp trot, impelled, in a measure, by the instinct which told them that they were heading in the direction of their stables. The upper end of the ravine was reached in good time, and the horsemen dismounted and gave their beasts in charge of a couple of Javanese servants who had come to meet them along with the body of beaters from Banjoe Pahit to which Mokesuep also had joined himself. These men at once took the horses home to the dessa. It was not yet full daylight. The western sky was still a deep dark blue; but in the East the dawn was clothing itself in all the brilliant hues which herald the near approach of the perfect day. On all sides trees and bushes grew in the wildest disorder, and in their branches birds innumerable were piping and warbling, each, in his own way, sending up his hymn of praise to the great Creator. Leaves, twigs, boughs, flowers, and grass-blades, all were thickly covered with the tiniest possible specks of dew; and, as the light gradually brightened in the East, seemed bathed as it were in molten silver. In spite of their impatience to begin their work upon the game, our young friends could not help pausing for a few moments in order to admire the magnificent spectacle before them, and to enjoy the delightful freshness of that glorious time which immediately precedes a sunrise; when suddenly, very far in the distance, was heard the confused noise of a most frightful tumult. "There they go!" cried Verstork, "those are our beaters, what a row the fellows are making to be sure." The natives were indeed hard at it, springing their rattles, banging on bamboos, yelling and screaming in a manner which drowned every other sound in nature, especially in that solemn morning hour when the orb of day is just about to rise. At first the noise was heard as a mere confused hum very far away in the distance; but, as it gradually drew nearer and nearer, it became so exciting that even poor van Nerekool, forgetting his woes for a while, ran up and down clutching his rifle with trembling hand, and some of his companions, more excited even than he was, had their weapons at full cock, ready to open fire at a moment's notice. "Now then, my friends," said Verstork, trying to calm down all this unnecessary flurry; "pray keep quiet. We have plenty of time before us. Please all keep cool, or we shall have some accident with those firearms." "Are we in a good position here?" asked Grashuis. "We are standing too close together it strikes me," remarked van Beneden. "I intend to take you a little further into the ravine," said Verstork. So they all advanced some fifty or hundred yards along a steep pathway which ran winding down through shaggy bushes and rocky boulders. Just by the side of that rugged path, the brook Banjoe Pahit began its downward course along its bed of rocks. It was a wonderfully beautiful little stream; its waters of the purest crystal went dancing from crag to crag, forming, in one place, a pleasant little basin or pool, at another tumbling down in foaming cataracts and splashing waterfalls, then, suddenly and mysteriously, disappearing altogether for a while amidst the wild shrubs and rugged boulders, and then a little further on, springing up again to renew its brawling and wanton play. The scene in the Djoerang Pringapoes was as wild and savage as possible, but marvellously picturesque withal. When the party had clambered down about a third part of the slope, the massive walls of rock which, up to that point, completely hemmed in the entrance to the ravine and which formed a kind of slit, suddenly ran back like the sides of a funnel, while they continued grandly and majestically to tower up into the sky. The bottom of the ravine, however, as well as its walls, bore abundant evidence of great natural convulsions. Huge boulders were flung about in it at random in all directions, the stems of the trees which grew there were twisted and curled up into lumps and knots and were still bearing tufts of withered grass and nests of dry branches; the smoothly polished rocks also amply testified that when the north-east wind opened the sluice gates of heaven and the water-floods came down in torrents from the heights--the Banjoe Pahit could howl and roar along, and form dreadful currents and whirlpools; and that, at such times, it was well to keep out of the now quiet defile. As the hunters were looking about them at the savage scene around, the din made by the beaters was gradually coming nearer and nearer. It was still a considerable way off and not a solitary head of game had shown itself. "I wonder how that is?" said August van Beneden. "I fancied that we might have set to work shooting at once. May not our wild boars, if there are any at all in this ravine, have got away by some other road?" "No, no," replied Verstork, "the Djoerang Pringapoes is hemmed in on almost all sides with perpendicular rocks, such as not even a wild pig can climb. There are two or three spots where the walls are not quite so steep, and which such animals might perhaps scale; but, if the Loeras of Banjoe Pahit and of Kaligaweh have carried out my instructions, these weak points have all been occupied by their men, so that none of the animals can have got away by them. The beaters, you see, with their abominable rattles are driving the pigs into the ravine, and I know they will all make for it, especially as it is their usual haunt." "Aye, aye," said van Rheijn, "I see; but once in this ravine, depend upon it they will lie very close, there is plenty of room here for a game at hide and seek, and if they choose to get to cover, we may stand here waiting for them till doomsday." "That might be so," remarked Verstork with a smile, "if the beaters would let them. But those fellows with their rattles will follow the pigs into the ravine and drive them in our direction. You will see how they will manage that presently. Just listen--what a row they are kicking up yonder--one would think they were a pack of fiends!" Verstork indeed might well say so; for your Javanese, under ordinary circumstances cool and phlegmatic enough, can, on such occasions as a boar-hunt, display activity and energy in abundance. Then he seems almost beside himself; then he screams, he yells, he bellows, he whistles, he hisses, he crows, he shrieks. Then he frantically plies his rattle and, with any weapon he may happen to have in his hand, he bangs upon anything and everything he comes across, on trunks of trees, on stones--which, by the way, not unfrequently give out most melodious sounds--on the sheath of his kris--undoubtedly he would bring down a whack on the skull of his neighbour also were he suffered to do so. And all this for the mere purpose of making a noise, the most horrible din imaginable in order to drive the game, which by nature is wild enough, into the direction which he wishes it to take. "Now," said Verstork, "just a few paces further on and then we come to the entrance of the Djoerang Ketjel where a small stream, which we call the Karang Aleh, flows into the Banjoe Pahit. After the junction the two streams flow together through the narrowest gorge of the Pringapoes. Look there, you can see the split in the rocks just ahead. You see we are bounded on all sides by sheer cliffs and the game must pass through this defile to reach the upper part of the ravine and get away." "By Jove," cried van Rheijn, "this does not strike me as a very pleasant spot, the place looks like a picture of universal ruin and desolation." Indeed it was a terrible scene. The ragged sides of the ravines, consisting entirely of grey lava-rock, towered up perpendicularly into the sky. Here and there, on the bare walls, a mass of stone seemed, in its descent, to have stuck fast; and, in course of time, a little soil had gathered on its surface. In this shallow layer of earth, vegetation had immediately sprung up and formed there, as it were, a little green island in the midst of the grey ocean of desolation. Huge fragments of jagged stone lay scattered about in the wildest confusion, and amidst these, many weird and unsightly plants grew and flourished, such as the Sembong, the Kemanden Kerbo and the Oering aring with its venomous prickles. There also were seen the gnarled and twisted stems of the Djatie doerie and of the Siwallan. These stunted trees raised their poor meagre crowns out of the sea of stone, and, by arresting the progress of the débris which the water-flood whirled along, served to block up the pass still more effectually. "Now then, my friends," said Verstork, "let us divide--we are standing here much too close together. Van Nerekool, the Wedono, and myself will take our stand here just opposite this narrow pass. You, Leendert, go with August to the top of that piece of rock which you see yonder to the right. You Theodoor and Frits take up your position on that broken ground on the slope. From those points you will have the gorge completely under your fire, and--if you really are as good shots as you are supposed to be--why then not a solitary pig ought to escape us. But make haste, get into your places--the beaters seem to be getting quite close." It was indeed high time; for every instant the infernal din was coming nearer and growing more distinct. It was, in fact, becoming positively deafening. It sounded as if a veritable Pandemonium had broken loose. Grenits made a very wry face when he found that Mokesuep was to be his companion; but he had no chance of remonstrance at thus being saddled with a most uncongenial companion, for he had to get to his post without delay. The positions which the guns were to occupy had been admirably chosen and showed a perfect knowledge both of the game and of the ground. The marksmen were all posted in full view of one another, so that there could be no risk of accident, at the same time their fire commanded the narrow opening of the ravine which lay open before them. Moreover they were all directed to take their stand upon spots slightly elevated above the level of the soil and were thus, to a great extent, out of the reach of the fearful tusks of the infuriated animals. Thus then they stood, most eagerly watching; but, though the entrance to the Djoerang lay perfectly open before them with here and there a few stunted shrubs much too low and small to conceal even the smallest pig, not a vestige of any animal could be seen. This suspense seemed intolerably long to the impatient and impulsive Europeans who were far from being endowed with the calm phlegmatic temperament of the natives. The Wedono stood there quiet and motionless as a statue. "I can see nothing whatever," shouted August van Beneden to his friend, making use of his hands as a speaking-trumpet. "I fancy our good dessa-folk have taken it easy and have allowed the game to slip away quietly to the right or left." "It is my opinion that the ravine is empty," remarked van Nerekool, to whom this long inaction was more irksome than even to the others. Verstork interpreted van Beneden's words to the Wedono who, rifle in hand, was standing by his side, and asked him if he thought it possible. "It may be,--but--perhaps it is not so," was the chiefs cautious reply. Still they waited, and waited--the din of the beaters was approaching with every moment and their yells became more distinct. A few minutes more would decide the question whether there was any game in the ravine or not, for a very short time would bring the beaters to the mouth of the opening. Verstork was getting quite nervous with impatience, jokes were beginning to pass pretty freely among his friends, and although they were perfectly good-humoured jests and showed not the slightest ill-will towards him, yet they were not pleasant to listen to. Mokesuep was the only one who, in a singularly offensive tone, cried out: "I say, Controller, I hope all that pork we are going to kill won't disagree with us!"-- "Hold your tongue, wretched Muizenkop," said Theodoor Grenits. "You always find some nasty thing to say!" "That's all very fine," replied Mokesuep, "I can tell you I am getting beastly tired of standing here. A lot of fellows invited for a day's shooting, when there is nothing to shoot at!" "The pigs were here all right enough," said Grenits, "you may depend upon that; I don't suppose you can blame Verstork if the beaters have allowed them to escape!" Mokesuep was on the point of making some ill-natured rejoinder when Bang! Bang! Bang! went three rifle shots and interrupted his sneering remarks. They were the rifles of Verstork, of van Nerekool and of the Wedono. These three were posted at the very mouth of the ravine, and had suddenly caught sight of a greyish indistinct mass of living things rushing towards the opening. Quick as thought, the three had thrown their rifles up to their shoulders and had opened fire upon the advancing herd of swine. The other hunters had, as yet, seen nothing. The rattling and yelling of the beaters seemed to redouble in intensity the moment they heard the first shots fired, and almost drowned the discordant grunts and groans of the pigs as they pressed into the narrow defile. From that moment however, all doubts as to the issue of the day's sport were at an end. The three first rifle shots had bowled over the three foremost animals, one of which was a boar of gigantic size, and for a moment stopped the rush of the entire herd. The wounded animals lay on the ground, struggling and fighting, uttering fearful squeaks and striking out right and left with their formidable tusks at those who came behind, thus almost wholly blocking up the narrow opening. That lasted however only for a moment or two, for the noise of the beaters drove the creatures to such a pitch of fury that, in spite of all opposition, they rushed over the bodies of their fallen leaders. But the three men who had first opened fire, had, in those few moments, had time to reload, and an instant after, all the others posted to the right and left caught sight of the game and at once opened fire upon the dense struggling mass of pigs, hardly a single shot being lost. Thereupon a scene of the direst confusion ensued. The wounded animals tumbled over one another uttering groans and squeaks which baffle description. The hindmost ones, still urged on by the terrific noise of the beaters, fought and pushed their way to the front. The sows grimly defended their young and seemed to vent their fury upon the carcases of the dead and wounded, and, in that terrific melée, the bullets of the seven hunters kept plunging with the deadliest effect. The rifled breech-loaders poured shot after shot into the densely packed mass, and every moment the narrow gap became more and more impassible. That went on for the space of about three minutes, during which the breech-loaders plied their unerring fire. Presently van Nerekool said to Verstork: "Are we not running the risk of hitting some of the men in the rear?" "Oh, no," replied Verstork, "if they have followed my instructions there is no danger whatever. A few yards lower down there is a sharp elbow in the ravine, so that if one of our bullets should happen to miss or to pass through the body of one of these beasts it must bury itself in the walls of rock. You hear--according to agreement, the fellows have already stopped their noise--they are not at all anxious to come to close quarters and to expose themselves to a stray bullet." Meanwhile the fire had been kept up with hardly any cessation and with almost the same fatal effect. The grunting herd still was striving to push onward and to get clear of the deadly pass, and again and again the bullets knocked down the foremost, who in their death-struggle, dealt ripping blows all around. But at length, after having for a while wallowed about hopelessly, a small remnant which still remained unwounded, suddenly headed round, led on by a huge black-coloured boar, and now no longer awed by the beaters, made a headlong charge back into the ravine from which they found it impossible to escape. CHAPTER XVIII. ENTRAPPED. "Hurrah! they have turned tail, they are making off!" exclaimed Mokesuep. That hero had all the while been trembling with fear; he had been in mortal terror lest the pigs should break through the line of fire; for if they had succeeded in doing so, a close struggle with the sword bayonet would probably have ensued. Therefore he had most anxiously been peering about to see if he could discover any way of retreat up the steep mountain sides. If, during that morning there had been shots fired which had flown wide of the mark, such misses had been due to his shaking hand. Indeed, some of his bullets had gone right over the wall of rock which hemmed in the ravine on all sides; but most fortunately had not injured any of the Javanese who were beating on the other side. The unpleasant whistling, however, of the projectiles from Mokesuep's rifle had scared the natives, and it was in a measure owing to those stray shots that the beaters had given up the battue rather sooner than they ought to have done. Grenits was in a rage. "What are you hurrahing about," cried he to Mokesuep, "you were never born to be a Nimrod, that's plain enough!" "Well," stammered the coward, whose lips were still white with fear; "it is all right, is it not?" "All right!" cried Grenits, "no, it's all wrong. Don't you see that the remnant of the herd will get clear away? Come! forward! They are getting away, I tell you, we must get after them and not let a single head escape! Forward, boys, forward!" The other young men, who were just as much vexed as was Grenits at the unsatisfactory result of their hunt, rushed into the pass together rifle in hand. Mokesuep only, very prudently remained behind, not even could the Wedono get him to follow by crying out to him, "Come! quick, sir." Our hero merely shook his head and stood looking after his companions until they disappeared out of his sight. Then throwing his rifle over his shoulder he took the road to Banjoe Pahit as he muttered to himself: "No doubt, that's all very well; but I shall take precious good care not to come into contact with that filthy vermin. No, no, I shall go and have a chat with the wife of Verstork's cook--who knows what I may manage to do in that quarter! A nice little woman that! A devilish sly dog that Controller; what fun if I could get some shooting over his preserves!" Thus mumbling to himself he walked along and had gained the upper entrance to the Djoerang Pringapoes. From that eminence he could command a fine extensive view over the broad rice-fields which rose in terraces on the hill-slopes, and whose surfaces, flooded with water at that time of the year, lay glistening in the bright sunshine like so many polished mirrors. It was as yet very early--scarcely half past seven o'clock. Mokesuep stood there looking all around him, not indeed in admiration of the beauties of nature; for a creature of his stamp could have no eye for that kind of thing; but gazing about anxiously and more than half frightened at the silence and solitude in which he now found himself after the riot and confusion down in the ravine. In the far distance he could still distinguish the shouts of the hunters and could now and then hear a shot fired by them at the retreating game; but the noise of the hunt grew fainter and fainter, and as it gradually died away in the depths of the Djoerang, not another sound was heard round about. This sudden stillness had something very disquieting about it. Mokesuep half wished that some human being would appear to share the solitude with him, and yet, on the other hand, he was wholly afraid of meeting with some of the natives. He had heard dreadful tales of the robbers by which some of the inland parts of Java were infested and rendered unsafe; and though he had a rifle slung from his shoulder which might have inspired any other man with confidence, he was of far too cowardly a nature to put any trust in his weapon. He stepped along slowly and cautiously, and presently, at the foot of a small range of hills lying to the northward and which formed a continuation of the chain of mountains in which the Djoerang Pringapoes was situated, he discovered a solitary hut, partly hidden away in the thick underwood which grew around it. Close by a couple of oxen were grazing by the side of a pathway. This little road ran past the hut to the north-west, and winded along the low dykes of the rice-fields. As Mokesuep traced the pathway in its course over the hill-slopes, he suddenly perceived a human figure evidently making for the hut. It was the form of a woman, of that there could be no doubt. Mokesuep breathed freely again; in the presence of a woman, especially if that woman happened to "be a native, he felt brave enough; so he determined to wait for her, to try and enter into conversation and to walk pleasantly and sociably together to Banjoe Pahit. The approaching form, standing out boldly over the flooded rice-fields and reflected in their shining surface grew more and more distinct with every moment. "By Jove," muttered Mokesuep, after having watched her for awhile, "by Jove, what a pretty girl! All the better for me--I shall have a charming walk with that dear little thing!" He was, however, altogether out in his reckoning. When the girl got close to the hut, she took a side path which ran in a south-easterly direction downwards amongst the rice-terraces, and which appeared to lead to Kaligaweh. Great was Mokesuep's disappointment at seeing this, and he was about to call out to her. Just then a Javanese came out of the hut and began beckoning to the girl. "By heaven!" muttered Mokesuep, "that is Singomengolo, the opium spy. What in the world is he doing here?" And immediately he concealed himself behind some bushes which were growing by the wayside. It was indeed Singomengolo, the wretch whom the evening before we saw leaving Kaligaweh and riding to the lonely hut. Again and again, he beckoned to the girl; but as she did not heed him, he cried out: "Dalima!" At this call the girl turned for an instant. Yes, it was pretty little Dalima, the baboe in the family of Mrs. van Gulpendam. She stopped for a moment, while her features showed undisguised terror as she recognised the notorious opium-hunter, whom she knew well by sight. She did not, however, stop for more than a single instant, and then sped on again as fast as she could. "Dalima!" again cried Singomengolo, "Dalima, where are you hurrying to?" "I am going to Kaligaweh," said the girl in a nervous tone of voice. "Well, just come here for a moment," continued Singo. "No, no," she replied, "I have not an instant to spare, I must get to my father as quickly as I possibly can," and again she sped on her way. "Come here, I say," cried Singomengolo, "I have something to tell you about your father!" "Oh, yes, I know," rejoined the young girl, "they told me father is very ill--that is why I am in such a hurry." "You are wrong," cried Singo, "your father is not ill--it is something much worse than that." The girl stopped at once: "Worse than that?" she asked, "tell me, is he dead?" "No--much worse!" "By Allah--what is it?" "Come here," said Singo, "and I will tell you. There are things, you know, that one cannot shout out by the wayside." This brought Dalima to his side. As she walked up to him, she had to pass the bushes behind which Mokesuep was lying concealed--in fact, in passing she brushed by them. As usual Dalima was very neatly dressed. Round her waist she wore a gaily coloured sarong, her bodice was of pink cotton, and over her shoulders was folded a red kerchief, from one of the points of which dangled a bunch of keys. She had a double melattie flower in her thick heavy tresses, which, in the midst of that ebon-black mass of hair, looked like a pretty white rose. Just then her face was covered with a rich flush caused partly by the exertion of her long walk, partly by the pleasant coolness of the morning air; but this rich colour added animation to her pretty features, and blended most harmoniously with the deep bronze of her complexion. The experienced eye of the concealed fiscal functionary did not allow a single one of these charms to escape it. Yes, there were certain cases in which Mokesuep was by no means insensible to the beautiful, though its contemplation generally awakened evil passions in his breast; and not unfrequently led to criminal designs. What might have happened had he walked alone with Dalima to Banjoe Pahit, who can tell. For the present the appearance of Singomengolo forced him to remain in hiding. When the girl had come close to the hut, she asked again: "What is the matter? tell me!" "Come in with me," replied the opium-spy, "and I will let you know why your father has been taken into custody." As he said these words, Dalima suddenly uttered a loud shriek. Singomengolo thought, of course, that the news he had told her and his rough manner of conveying it, had wrung that cry from the young girl; but Dalima had turned round abruptly and was trying to run away as fast as her feet would carry her. The fact is, she had, through the half open door of the hut seen the odious face of Lim Ho gazing at her with eyes dilated with passion. That sight made the poor girl turn and dart away; but she had hardly gone a few yards before Singomengolo overtook her, and grasping her wrists, tried, by main force, to drag her along with him into the hut. Dalima resisted with all her might. She screamed for help, she kicked at her captor and tried to bite the hands with which he held her arms tightly clasped. In fact she fought as desperately as a wild cat, determined to resist and defend herself to the very last. She was in hopes also that her cries might possibly be heard, for she was under the impression that just now she had seen a European on the pathway which crossed the road she was taking. Any other man but Mokesuep would have flown to the rescue of the poor child; who knows to what excess of heroism even he might have allowed himself to be carried--not indeed out of any feeling of kindly sympathy or from any chivalrous promptings; but in the hope of perhaps--Yes--in such a mind as his the foulest thoughts will spring even as venomous toad-stools on an unclean soil. But--he also had caught sight of Lim Ho--he had noticed that face burning with ignoble passion. At a glance he understood what was going on, and, at the same time, he resolved to keep perfectly quiet in order that he might reap the fullest advantage out of the situation. Lim Ho's father was an enormously wealthy man, and when the safety or reputation of his son was concerned he would not mind coming down handsomely--a couple of thousand guilders or so were nothing to a man of that kind. Poor little Dalima! In utter despair she had flung herself to the ground, most heartrending were her shrieks of agony, help! help! but it was all in vain. The mean wretch who might, by merely raising his hand so to speak, have set her free, kept himself snugly concealed. He looked upon the struggle with cynical eye, nay was actually gloating with satisfaction at the glimpses which now and then he caught of the charms, which, in the violence of her resistance, Dalima could not always keep concealed. This went on for some little time, and Singomengolo began to feel that it was impossible for him to drag her along any further without assistance from Lim Ho. He called to the Chinaman to come to his aid. The latter at once obeyed the call, came out of the hut, and tried to clasp the girl in his arms and thus carry her along. But when, in that attempt, he got a very painful bite in the ear, the wretch became mad with fury. He laid hold of the mass of hair which in the struggle had become loosened, and was now quite unrolled, and twisting his hand into the heavy tresses while Singomengolo still held the girl's wrists, he dragged her by main force into the hut. For a considerable time after that the fearful shrieks "Help! help! toean!" were still heard; but gradually they grew fainter and fainter until at length they ceased altogether. In the very far distance rifle shots still resounded; but even if Dalima could have heard them in the excitement of the struggle, she must have understood that her voice could not possibly reach so far, and that, in any case, if help did come, it must come too late. How did Dalima happen to be on the fatal spot at that early hour? The reader may remember how that, after having accomplished his heroic deed in the dessa Kaligaweh, Singomengolo had ridden away and had taken the direction of the lonely hut in the hill-country; and how, on his arrival, he had sent the man who lived there as his messenger to Santjoemeh. This man had two commissions to execute. In the first place he was told to go and give into Lim Ho's own hands a little note with which Singo had entrusted him, and, after having done that, he was to call at the Residence and was to tell baboe Dalima that her father Setrosmito had suddenly been taken dangerously ill and that he was most anxious to see her. The messenger, who was a very shrewd and clever fellow, had at once jumped on the back of one of those small and ugly, but well-nigh indefatigable Javanese ponies, whose muscles of steel seem never to tire and carry them in a surprisingly short space of time over vast distances. It was about eleven o'clock when he reached the stately mansion of babah Lim Yang Bing. He was very lucky, for he was not kept waiting a single instant, as Lim Ho happened to be within at the time. The son of the rich opium farmer lay reclining luxuriously upon a splendid divan, his long Chinese pipestem was between his lips and by his side on a small table stood a cup of arrack. He was listening in a kind of rapture to two of his servants, who, like himself, were children of the Celestial Empire. These fellows seated on low ivory stools were twanging on a kind of two-stringed fiddle or guitar, and were drawing tones out of their instruments which would not only have horrified a Vieuxtemps or a Paganini, but would have instantly dispersed even a meeting of tom-cats who, in the matter of harmony, are not usually reckoned to be exacting. Lim Ho no sooner caught sight of Singomengolo's emissary, than he jumped up from the couch, grasped the letter which the man held out to him, and eagerly scanned the very few words it contained. It was a document brief and laconic as a telegram but, to Lim Ho, of the deepest significance. The words it contained were only these: "Everything ready, be here by seven in the morning." The Chinaman pulled out his watch, he looked at the time while he asked the messenger what the weather was like. "Bright moonlight, babah," was the man's reply. Lim Ho then dismissed him, flinging him a rix-dollar, and telling him to be specially careful how he discharged his second commission. He ordered him to come and report the result to him, then he ordered his horse to be saddled and waited. The man did not find his second task quite such an easy one to perform as the former. The Resident van Gulpendam and his wife were seated with some visitors at the usual card-tables; but the daughter of the house had already retired to her own room, and had given her baboe leave to go to bed without waiting up any longer. The fellow found it therefore necessary to go to the back of the premises, and at length he contrived to get one of the servants to go and rouse Dalima. The young girl was terribly shocked at hearing the dreadful tidings of her father, whom the rascal represented as being in a dying state. She at once rushed into the pandoppo and entered the bedroom of her young mistress who, fortunately, had not yet retired to rest. "Nana, give me leave!" she cried, in the greatest agitation, as soon as she had opened the door. "Come," said Anna, "what is the matter with you? do try and be calm." The young lady had perceived at once that there was something very wrong, and tried to quiet her servant's excitement by herself remaining perfectly cool and self-possessed. Thereupon Dalima told her that a man had just arrived from Kaligaweh with a message from her father who was lying at death's door, and who wished, for the last time perhaps, to see his daughter. "Oh, Nana," begged the poor girl, "do try and get me leave to go home!" "But, Dalima," objected Anna, "what is the time?" And looking at a handsome clock on a console close by, she continued, "Why it is close upon midnight!--It is out of the question--You could not possibly go out in the dark!" "Oh!" cried Dalima, in pleading tones, "Nana knows that I am very brave. I know the way perfectly. I shall take the short cut over the hills; by that road I shall get to Kaligaweh without meeting anybody." "That is just it," rejoined Anna; "it is that very solitude that I am most frightened at. You might come across a tiger or a wild boar." "Why, Nana! there are no tigers anywhere in the neighbourhood; if there were we must have heard of them, and as for boars, I am not the least bit afraid of them, they always run away if they possibly can. Do pray, dearest Nana, get me leave to go. I promise you that by to-morrow night I shall be back again." "I don't at all like the idea of it, Dalima. What will mamma say?" "Oh, Nana dear," cried the baboe, in despair, "do pray go and try--do pray go and ask madam!" "She is quite sure to refuse," said Anna. "Why should she?" persisted the girl. "She will be just as much afraid as I am that in the darkness of the night some accident may happen to you. How can you possibly dare to undertake such a journey, Dalima?" "My father is dying--he wants to see me!" cried Dalima. "That is quite enough to give me courage for anything, Miss Anna. I would go to Kaligaweh even if I knew that the road was full of ghosts--yes, if there were a ghost behind every tree! Yet, I am much more frightened of ghosts than of beasts or of men. Nana, I beg and pray--do go and ask your mother!" "Well," said the tender-hearted young girl, "I will go and try; but mind you, I know it will not be of the slightest use." "Thank you, Nana, thank you." Thereupon Miss Anna rose from the divan upon which she had taken a seat after she had admitted Dalima. She thrust her dainty little feet into a pair of slippers she had carelessly thrown off. The young girl was already partially undressed, and had been reclining in only her sarong and kabaai; but she very soon threw about her a richly embroidered morning gown, with a few turns of her dexterous hand she twisted the rich mass of her loose-hanging hair into a knot, and ran to the front-gallery in which her parents and the other card-players were still engaged in their game. To her great surprise fair Laurentia made no difficulty at all, and at once acceded to her daughter's request, stipulating only that, before setting out, Dalima should finish some needle-work which she had given her to do and which she particularly wished to have ready by the morning. Oh, no! Mrs. van Gulpendam had no objection whatever to Dalima's going to Kaligaweh; on the contrary, she thought it very praiseworthy in the girl that she showed so much devotion to her parents. A honey-sweet smile hovered on her lips as she gave her gracious permission, and no one--least of all her pure and innocent daughter--could have guessed at the awful abyss of wickedness which lurked behind that sunny smile. Highly pleased with the result of her attempt, Anna hastened with her good news to Dalima, and in the kindness of her heart she gave up a considerable portion of her night's rest to assist her baboe in getting through her task of needle-work. It is a dreadful thing to have to say; but Laurentia had not made that stipulation about finishing the work without an object. Her object was to delay Dalima's departure, so that she might not reach the hut in the middle of the night, and, in the darkness, perhaps pass it unobserved. Diligently assisted by her mistress, the baboe was able to set out on her journey about three o'clock in the morning. After having affectionately taken leave, Dalima left the premises by the back-way through a small garden gate, of which Anna had procured her the key. This gate took her straight into the road which led over the hills to Kaligaweh. The moon was shining brightly in the heavens, and thus the girl was able to walk along rapidly, and soon she lost sight of Santjoemeh while not a single thought of danger crossed her brain. Lim Ho had been informed by Singomengolo's messenger that the pretty baboe had received the news of her father's illness--the reader however knows that a far different calamity had befallen Setrosmito--so he said in a highly satisfied tone: "That is all right. You must be tired out, and I don't suppose you care to return to your hut to-night? Eh?" "No, babah," was the man's answer. "Very well, my people will show you a bedroom, you can go and have a rest. To-morrow I will pay you for your service." As soon as the fellow had disappeared, Lim Ho consulted his watch. "Nearly one o'clock," he muttered to himself, and then aloud he added: "Than Loa, is the horse ready saddled?" The servant replied with a couple of Chinese words, whereupon Lim Ho rose. He put on a kind of cap without peak, in shape not at all unlike a Scotch bonnet, then he snatched up a riding-whip and leaped into the saddle. "Don't go to sleep--keep good watch--mind," he cried to his servant as he rode off, and setting spurs to his horse he was soon out of sight. The main road which he took was a much longer one than the narrow foot-path which Dalima had chosen; but by starting thus early he knew he could easily get before her. He did not know that before she could set off to her father's bedside the poor girl would have a good deal of sewing to do, and he thought therefore that he had to hurry in order to be in time at the hut. But his horse was a fine animal of Persian breed, and he felt confident that it would bring him to the spot before Dalima could possibly reach it. It was about half-past three when he dismounted and joined Singomengolo, whom he found waiting for him. The pair of villains sat down to consult about the best way of carrying out their infamous attempt. During this consultation Lim Ho repeatedly showed signs of impatience at Dalima's unexpected delay. They were still talking together when the day began to dawn, and presently the sun rose, when, of a sudden, a dreadful outburst was heard in the far distance--a noise was heard of yelling, of rattling, of banging--it seemed as if the world was coming to an end. Lim Ho started up in terror from the mat upon which he was seated by the side of the opium spy. "What on earth may that be?" he cried. "Oh," replied Singomengolo as calmly as possible, "that is nothing at all--only the toean Controller of Banjoe Pahit going on a pig-hunt--the dessa folk of that place and of Kaligaweh are beginning to beat up the game." "How do you know that?" asked Lim Ho. "I was at Kaligaweh yesterday, and there I met the Controller and the company he has with him; they came to make the necessary arrangements for the day's hunting." "You were at Kaligaweh?" asked Lim Ho. "Of course I was, babah," replied Singo quietly. "I was there," he continued with a nasty smirk, "to catch old Setrosmito at opium-smuggling." "Aye, aye," said Lim Ho, "that's true, I know now." Lim Ho pronounced these words in a tone of voice which showed that to him the infamous plot whereby a victim had been removed out of his father's way, was the most trifling incident in the world, a bagatelle which had wholly escaped his memory. "And did you succeed in finding opium?" "Of course I did," replied Singomengolo, "you know well enough, babah, that I always succeed when it suits me to try." "Yes, yes," said Lim Ho in a patronising way, "you are a clever fellow, there is no doubt about that. Dalima's father has, I suppose, been got rid of at least for a few weeks?" "Yes, for a longer time than a few weeks," replied Singo very significantly. "How so? Has anything else happened then?" "Setrosmito has run amokh and has killed a countryman of yours outright, and severely wounded a policeman. It was precious nearly all up with me too; but I managed to slip away from him in the very nick of time." "Good! good!" said Lim Ho, gleefully rubbing his hands together. "So that?" he continued. "So that," remarked Singomengolo, "Dalima's father, if they don't hang him, will be at the very least imprisoned for life." "You know," said Lim Ho, "that was wonderfully cleverly managed. But what's up now?" In the distance a well sustained rifle-fire was heard, in fact the chase had begun. "It is only the gentlemen in the Djoerang Pringapoes. They are firing at the wild-pigs I suppose. Allah prosper them!" "But," said Lim Ho, "may not those white fellows get into our way, the ravine, you know, is not so very far off." "The toeans," said Singo, "are a great deal too much engrossed in their sport to take any notice of what we are about. For myself, I much prefer to hear them blazing away yonder to their heart's content in the Djoerang Pringapoes, than to know that they are sitting quill-driving in their offices. Your white man with a pen in his hand is a much more formidable creature, and is much more formidably armed too, than when he handles a rifle." Thus they sat talking and listening to what was going on beneath them in the Djoerang, while time was rapidly passing away. "But Dalima does not seem to be coming," signed Lim Ho, with impatience. "Yes, she is," said Singo, "yonder on that path between the rice-fields I see some one--that must be she." "Look, look!" cried Lim Ho, in consternation, "there from the ravine comes a white man--now we have lost our chance." Singomengolo turned his eyes in the direction which Lim Ho indicated, and, as he looked, he muttered a deep curse; he saw at once that the Chinaman had not been mistaken. Yet, he could not make out at all who it could be so quietly making his way towards the hut. He was one of the shooting party, there could be no doubt about that, for he carried a rifle and came from the direction of the Djoerang. And that wretched mar-plot must come right across Dalima's path, just as she was coming in the other direction! Everything had been so carefully planned--and now--that brute! It was enough to drive a fellow mad! But the next moment Lim Ho cried out joyously: "By Jove, it is toean Mouse-head that is coming along there. I know him perfectly well. Now I don't mind a bit. I know him. You may call the baboe as much as you like, there is no danger. I will square matters easily enough with that fellow yonder!" Lim Ho had recognised our friend Mokesuep. As the reader has been told, that gentleman used familiarly to be called by almost everyone in Santjoemeh, "Muizenkop," and this nickname some wags had translated into Javanese. Thus he went by the name of Kapala tikoes, or the Mouse-head. Singomengolo also recognised the exciseman of Santjoemeh, and now he no longer felt much apprehension that his detestable plot would be frustrated. "A mere matter of money," said he to the Chinaman, with a significant smile. As Dalima came to the crossway, and was about to enter the path which ran down to Kaligaweh, the opium-spy had left the hut, and was preparing to call to her to stop, when he saw the European hastily conceal himself behind the clump of bushes by the roadside. This move on the part of Mokesuep completely reassured the accomplices, and their wicked plot was crowned with the success with which the reader has already been made acquainted. Even had Mokesuep felt any inclination to present himself in the character of rescuer, that impulse was wholly extinguished the moment Lim Ho appeared upon the scene. The wretched coward only hid himself more closely behind his screen of leaves as he muttered: "By Jove, dame Fortune is playing into my hand--no one but an ass would refuse so fair an offer." Meanwhile the despairing cries of poor little Dalima were gradually dying away as her strength began to fail, and as she became utterly exhausted. "Help, help! toean, help!" was the last piercing shriek which re-echoed in that solitude. The only response, alas! was the well-sustained rifle-fire in the distance. CHAPTER XIX. HELP! HELP! But yet, poor Dalima's shrieks and wild cries for help had been heard. That part of the mountain cleft, into which the hunters had plunged in pursuit of the retreating wild boars, did not extend very far, it was not longer than about a thousand yards; but the bottom of the ravine was just there exceedingly winding, and, as it followed the tortuous course of the small stream Banjoe Pahit, it was strewn all over with huge fragments of stone, while the dark-grey walls of volcanic trachyte towered up almost perpendicularly to the height of more than fifty or sixty yards. In that narrow pass the scene of confusion was utterly indescribable. The grunting and squealing of the maddened herd of swine, the yelling and rattling of the beaters who, on seeing the animals charge back, had resumed their unearthly noise, the almost incessant crashing of the fire from the breech-loading rifles--all these sounds, echoing and re-echoing within that narrow rock-bound gorge, made a din which was absolutely deafening. The hunted animals now desperate and infuriated, madly charged at the line of native beaters, who seemed to them less formidable than their European foes. For a few moments the dessa folk attempted to make a stand, and thrusting about furiously with their lances, they made some ineffectual efforts to turn the beasts back again into the ravine. But they very soon had to give way before the charge of the formidable tusks, and took to their heels altogether as soon as the rifle bullets began to screech over their heads. Those cylindero-conical projectiles from the new-fashioned rifles make such a horrid screaming as they speed overhead on their deadly errand, that it is no wonder they demoralised the poor natives altogether. In less than no time the line of beaters had vanished before the charge of the boars, as the mountain mist before the morning sun. The greater part of the Javanese managed to swarm up the high rocky peaks, others darted up the trees; but not a single one ventured to remain within reach of the sharp tusks of the wild boars. The animals were however greatly diminished in numbers and not very many of them succeeded, under the incessant rifle-fire, in getting clear of the pass. Upward of fifteen carcases lay stretched motionless on the ground; but a far greater number had received wounds more or less severe; which, however, in that climate were sure to prove fatal. "Forward, boys, forward!" cried Verstork, excited by the success they had gained; "forward, we must not let a single one of that mischievous brood escape!" That, however, was much more easily said than done. The hunters continued to press the retreating game, and contrived to fire many a shot and to bring down many a victim; but the pigs were uncommonly fleet of foot and now that the chain of beaters was broken and there was nothing to stop them, they were soon lost to sight amid the inextricable tangle of shrubs, tree-trunks, and boulders which encumbered the bottom of the ravine. Our European friends did their very utmost to keep up with the game; but it was a task which would have required nothing less than the nimbleness and dexterity of an orang-outang to accomplish, perhaps even that animal might have had to give up the pursuit. Yes, there they stood at length, dead beat, their clothes in tatters, their hands torn by the thorns through which in the heat of the excitement they had forced their way, in one word, completely pumped out and exhausted, there they stood panting and gasping for breath. At length Verstork managed somewhat to recover his wind, and shouted to his friends to rally them. "Where is Grashuis?" asked the Controller, looking around him. "And where is Grenits?" van Rheijn managed to gasp out. They were nowhere to be seen, and their friends were beginning to feel anxious about them, when a couple of rifle-shots in the distance informed the hunters that the two missing men were still obstinately bent on continuing the pursuit. "That will never do," said Verstork, "we must go after them, one can never tell what may happen and what need there may be of assistance. But," continued he, "can any of you tell me where the shots came from?" Every hand was raised at once; but they unfortunately all pointed in different directions. Had there been hands enough they would, no doubt, have indicated every point in the compass. "There," said one. "No, no, there," cried another. "You are wrong," said a third, "they came from this side." "That's a confounded nuisance," said Verstork much perplexed, "the shots took me quite by surprise and I really don't know from what direction they came. We must wait a bit, perhaps they will fire again." "I am precious glad of it," said van Beneden, "now we can sit down and rest a bit on that rock yonder. I am regularly fagged out." He had not, however, a very long rest, for barely ten minutes had elapsed before another shot was heard, and this was followed almost immediately after by a second discharge. This time the reports were evidently further off than before; but there was no mistake about the direction from whence they came. "Come gentlemen," cried Verstork, as he snatched up his rifle again, "come, gentlemen, this way!" "Might we not wait a few minutes longer?" pleaded van Beneden, "I am dead tired." "Meanwhile," said the Wedono, as he pointed to the smooth trunk of a komessoe tree, "I shall get up into that tree. Perhaps I may catch sight of them." The Javanese dessa-chief was a nimble young fellow, and using his hands and feet he soon was in the top. "Can you see anything, Wedono?" cried Verstork. "No, nothing yet, kandjeng toean," was the man's reply. "But--wait a bit--Yes, there they are yonder--both of them. They are clambering along the side of the ravine still after the pigs. But it is a good way off!" "Come, gentlemen," said the Controller, "it won't do to sit here, we must be off at once, we must try and get up to them." Meanwhile Leendert Grashuis and Theodoor Grenits had been running on ahead and were pursuing with the indomitable energy and hot enthusiasm of youth, a small family of pigs consisting of one gigantic boar, a sow and four young ones. Helter skelter they rushed on, pursuers and pursued, over and under rocks, over and right through thorny bushes, sometimes by the side of the small stream, sometimes in the water in which the animals would plunge and disappear for a moment in the whirling eddies, and then reappear again vigorously swimming and struggling. Now and then, as the beasts were scrambling up the face of a rock, the two hunters would catch a momentary glimpse of their prey. Then they would try to steady themselves in order to get a fair shot; but before they could pull the trigger, the beasts had again disappeared among the stones and bushes, and then after them again in spite of the heat and fatigue. This continued for a while until the old boar led his party up the steep slope of the ravine wall, evidently with the view of gaining the open field at the top along which they could fly with greater speed. But, alas for them! that move on the part of their leader gave the rifles fair play. As soon as the animals began to ascend they became visible among the stunted grass which grew on the slope, and two shots resounded almost simultaneously. One of the little ones, mortally wounded, rolled down the slope and the old sow flew madly to its assistance. But the pains the poor animal took to get its young on its legs again and to push it along were all in vain, her instinct seemed to tell her that she must hurry back along with the others in order to escape from the deadly bullets. A moment or two afterwards, another young one lost its footing and began to stumble down the slope. The mother was on the spot again and trying to help it along. It was a touching sight indeed to see that mother defending and taking care of her little one, to see how she strove to push it along very gently yet very strongly too with her pointed snout, uttering the while the most loving and encouraging grunts. But hunters have no bowels of mercy. Scarcely had the pair proceeded a few yards before the two rifles cracked again, and sow and young one rolled to the very bottom of the ravine. As she fell she glared defiance at her enemies, while she kept her eye still fixed on her offspring and uttered a sharp squeal of warning to her mate above. At that moment a third shot was fired and the third little pig came rolling down to the very feet of the hunters. The boar thereupon turned to bay uttering the most fearful grunts, turning up his bristles and drawing back his lips so as to show not only his formidable tusks but also the teeth which were white as ivory and sharp as chisels. Another shot was fired but missed and, when the smoke of the powder had cleared away, the boar and the only young one which was left had disappeared round a corner. But Grenits and Grashuis did not for a moment think of leaving him to escape, and they at once proceeded to clamber up the steep rock in pursuit. They knew that to cut off the boar's retreat they must gain the top before him. But they found it no child's play. They kept on climbing with the most dogged determination; but they found the rocky slope, upon which even the split hoof of a wild boar could hardly keep a precarious foothold, a very dangerous path for a foot encased in a European boot. At length, after almost superhuman efforts, they had managed to clamber up to the top and, as they panted for breath, they anxiously looked around; but could discover not a vestige of the animals they had so painfully pursued. They had no doubt gained the top of the rock before them and had disappeared in the tangled underwood which covered the plain. To hunt any further for the fugitives would be sheer waste of time and of strength. Completely fagged out with their exertions, the two friends were about to throw themselves down on the grass under the shadow of some low bushes, when suddenly Grenits uttered a sharp cry. He found himself face to face with the terrible wild boar. The animal, on gaining the top of the rock with its young one, had, likewise exhausted, stretched itself out to rest, thinking it had shaken off the pursuit of its enemies. Now, however, it fancied that it was attacked in its very lair, and too weary to attempt to escape, it turned to bay and, as such animals will do, when driven to fury, at once assumed the offensive. Grenits had but just time to jump aside and to bring his rifle into a position of defence. The boar nimbly avoided the bayonet thrust which Theodoor aimed at it, and then furiously turning upon his foe, he charged. It was a very fortunate thing for Grenits that his legs were encased in stout leather gaiters or else the sharp ripping tusk would have inflicted a terrible wound. But though the leather resisted the blow, yet such was the fury of the attack that Grenits lost his balance, fell backward, and for a second was in the most deadly peril. Had he been alone, the furious beast would undoubtedly have flung itself upon him and in that defenceless position he must have been ripped open in an instant. Already the boar was darting at his fallen foe. For an instant Theodoor shuddered as he saw his bloodshot eye and felt the hot breath of the monster in his face. Then he closed his eyes and awaited the fatal thrust. But at that moment the beast uttered a wild grunt of rage and turned away from Grenits to face another opponent. All this, though it takes some time to tell, had passed with the rapidity of lightning; but short though the time was, yet Leendert Grashuis had been able to shove a cartridge into the breech of his gun and to bring his sword-bayonet to the charge. He had no chance of firing however, for the shot would have been much more likely to injure his prostrate friend than to kill the boar. Not the fraction of a second was to be lost if he would save Grenits' life. Theodoor, as we have seen, was already lying helpless on the ground and the next instant must have been fatal. Then with all his might Grashuis drove his bayonet at the infuriated creature. The thrust caused a painful wound but glanced off on the right shoulder blade, while the monster at once turned to confront this fresh assailant The boar then tried to deal Grashuis a blow with its prominent tusks, but was caught on the bayonet. The force of the blow was such that the weapon bent like a hoop and was driven up to the muzzle into the boar's throat. For an instant Leendert thought of drawing his weapon back; but at once seeing the impossibility of doing so he pulled the trigger and the animal received the entire charge full in the head. With a terrific bound it sprang back tearing the rifle out of Grashuis' hands, then it turned round once or twice and fell down twitching convulsively in the throes of death. A few seconds afterwards, all was over. All this had passed so quickly that the two friends scarcely realised what had happened. They stood for a second or two gazing at the death-struggle as if they were stunned and dazed; but presently the truth dawned upon them, and they began to understand how dreadful was the peril from which they had so narrowly escaped. Then they embraced and congratulated one another most heartily, Theodoor Grenits especially felt that he had escaped death as by a miracle. After the first excitement had somewhat abated, human infirmity began to make itself felt. The wild pursuit of the game, the oppressive heat, the painful clambering up and along the ravine wall, and last but not least, the desperate hand to hand struggle, which followed this exertion, had exhausted our two friends so utterly and so completely, that they could no longer keep their feet, but flung themselves full length upon the grass. Thus they lay, panting and striving to recover their breath, when, after the lapse of a few minutes, Grenits thought that in the bushes close by he caught a glimpse of the last little pig that had escaped the butchery. Without taking the trouble to rise, he slipped a cartridge into his breech-loader, put his weapon to his shoulder and fired in the direction where he had fancied he had seen the little beast disappear in the bushes. The echo of the report reverberated grandly through the ravine like a clap of thunder--on and on rolled the stately sound, gradually growing fainter and fainter, until at length it died away softly rumbling in the far distance. But the sound had not quite passed away, when Grashuis, as if suddenly moved by some spring, raised himself upon his elbow: "Did you hear that?" asked he, in a tone almost of alarm. "Hear what?" said Grenits, "the report of my rifle--Of course I heard it." "No, no," said the other, "I fancied I heard a human voice just now! Listen." Yes, yonder in the far distance, but yet audibly and distinctly was heard the cry: "Help! Help! Help!" "By heaven!" cried Grenits, jumping up, "that's a woman's voice!" "Help! help! toean!" "A woman's voice," repeated Grashuis, "and crying out for help! Listen again." "Help! help! toean!" "I can see no other toeans besides ourselves. Our comrades are far away in the ravine--and the voice does not come from that direction at all," continued Grashuis. "But," said Grenits, as he looked all around, "I can see nothing anywhere, Leendert!" "No more can I," replied the other. "The reflection from the water on those rice-fields dazzles me painfully." "Look yonder--I fancy I can see a hut--surely the cry must have come from there," said Grashuis. Just then the cry was heard again, but much more faintly. "Help! help! toean!" "That is a woman's voice," repeated Grenits, "she is crying to us for help." "But," said Grashuis, "what toeans can she be calling to?" "What is that to me?" exclaimed Grenits. "Come along, some poor thing is calling for help. Come along, I don't feel a bit tired now." Before they hastened away, the two friends cast a look at the ravine, out of which they had clambered a short time before--and there they caught sight of their comrades who were following them, and who were, in their turn, preparing to gain the summit of the rock. Grenits thereupon fired off his gun, in order to attract their attention, and when he saw that he had succeeded, he called to them, at the top of his voice, while he stretched out his arm towards the west: "There, there!" he cried. Then both hurried away. "What did Theodoor say?" asked Verstork. "Could you make it out?" "Not a word," replied van Nerekool, "he was much too far off; but something strange seems to have happened." "Come let us hurry on," said Verstork. The little party then began to toil up the steep. They were not, however, fired by the same enthusiasm which had inspired their friends, and thus they took thrice as long to accomplish the ascent. When they at length reached the summit, they could, in the distance, see Grenits and Grashuis running at the top of their speed between the rice-fields. The latter turned for an instant and waved his arm as if to urge his comrades to greater speed. "Help! help! toean!" was heard again, but this time the cry was so faint as to be barely audible. The two European gentlemen had, however, by this time, got much nearer to the hut. "Come on, come on," shouted Grenits, hoping that he would urge his friends to greater speed. "Are you sure," asked Grashuis, "that we are going in the right direction? It appears to me as if we were getting further away from the sound." But they had no time for considering the matter, for, at that moment a female form was seen rushing from the hut and running to meet them. "Help, toean, help!" she cried, as she fell down at their feet. It was a Javanese girl, whom neither Grenits nor his friend recognised. With dishevelled hair and stained with blood, she rolled on the grass as she covered her face with both hands. "Help, toean, help," she moaned. Astounded by the strange and unexpected apparition, the two hunters stood looking at the poor girl before them. In their amazement they knew not what to do. Grenits, however, who could not bear to see a human being thus grovelling at his feet, took hold of the girl's arm and tried to raise her from the ground; but she shook off his hand. "I am ashamed," she muttered, as she tried to cast the thick masses of hair over her bosom. Just then a man, a Javanese, came darting out of the hut, and seeing the poor girl he ran up to her at once. With a rough grasp he laid hold of her arm, and strove to pull her up. "Ah!" she exclaimed; then, as she recognised the fellow, she tore herself away from him with a look of the utmost terror. "Help, toean, toean, help!" she begged, turning again to the two European gentlemen. "Let go that woman's arm!" shouted Grenits, boiling with rage. "What have you got to do with her?" asked Grashuis, who now recognised Singomengolo. "She has been smuggling opium," replied Singo, and turning to the girl he hissed in a threatening tone, "Come along, will you, or else--" "Take pity on me, gentlemen, take pity on me!" cried the wretched woman. "Come along, will you!" shouted Singomengolo, furiously, as he tried by main force to drag her away. "Let go that woman, I say--or else I'll smash your skull in!" shouted Grenits, raising the butt of his rifle. Meanwhile Grashuis had seized Singomengolo round the waist and was attempting to drag him backward. "I am a bandoelan," said the Javanese spy, somewhat haughtily; "I am a bandoelan; you gentlemen will be sorry for having threatened me and laid hands upon me." And, turning to the woman, he said again, "Come along!" "Once again, let her go," cried Grenits, and this time in a tone of voice which plainly showed that he would stand no nonsense and was in deadly earnest. Indeed he was on the point of bringing down the butt of his gun crash upon the skull of the Chinaman, when he felt someone grasping his arm from behind and heard a voice whispering in his ear: "Take care Theodoor, take care, it is a dangerous thing to meddle with those opium fellows." Theodoor looked round, and, to his great surprise, he saw that it was Mokesuep who thus warned him. "You, Muizenkop!" cried he. "Where have you sprung from?" "I lost my way," was the reply. "But for heaven's sake keep cool or you will get yourself into trouble." "What do I care," shouted Grenits; "let go my arm, I will soon settle the matter with that confounded opium spy!" Singomengolo stood there before him with an indescribable look of ferocious malice on his evil countenance. He had laid his hand on the hilt of his kris and, proud and impetuous as he naturally was, he would undoubtedly have answered any act of violence with a stab of his knife, if indeed the first blow had not laid him senseless. For a moment he stood glaring at the European with bold and glittering eye. Then suddenly he seemed to change his mind. He released the girl's arm, for, across the rice fields, he now saw another group advancing rapidly. In this group his quick sight had at once recognised not only the Controller of Banjoe Pahit but also the wedono of the district, and at the sight his sallow face grew pale. "What's all this about?" asked Verstork as he came up to the spot. "That wretched woman has been smuggling opium, Kandjeng toean," replied Singomengolo. "That woman?" "But--" cried van Nerekool, in amazement. "But, it is Dalima!" "Dalima?" "Yes Dalima, the baboe of the Resident." "Good," said van Rheijn, with a laugh. "Our Resident keeps a baboe--a stock of feeding bottles also--no doubt!" Van Nerekool turned crimson. He had not wished to say, "the baboe of the Resident's daughter." Verstork removed one of the girl's hands from her face. "Yes--it is indeed Dalima! And you say that she has smuggled opium?" he continued, turning to Singomengolo. He made a sign to one of the wedono's servants, who at once gave the young girl a shawl, into which she hastily wrapped herself. "Most assuredly," replied the bandoelan, "I have searched her myself." "Indeed you have," rejoined Verstork, "and torn off her clothing in the process?" "She would not allow--" "And it is you then," continued Verstork, "who have so shamefully ill-treated her?" "But what was I to do, Kandjeng toean? She offered resistance, and--look here, I found this upon her!" As he spoke, Singomengolo held up to the Controller's view a small box. This little box was strangely similar to the one which, the evening before, he had delivered to Verstork. Indeed, if the latter had not with his own hand carefully sealed it and had not sent it off himself to Santjoemeh he could have sworn that this second box was the identical one he had seen before. "Did you find that box in the girl's possession?" asked he, very sternly. "Yes, I did," replied Singomengolo, unabashed. "I have not smuggled opium!" cried poor Dalima, still cowering on the ground. "I have not smuggled anything; they dragged me into the hut and have ill-used me shamefully." "But," asked Verstork, "what brought you here at all?" "I was on my way to Kaligaweh. Last night some man came to the Residence, he came to tell me that my father was dying. Then I got leave from the njonja and from nonna Anna to go and see him." "Leave from the njonja and from nonna Anna, you said?" asked Verstork. "And from nonna Anna, yes, Kandjeng toean," said Dalima. "Then those two ladies will be able to bear witness to that I suppose?" asked Verstork. "Yes, Kandjeng toean." "And I can bring witnesses to swear that this girl had opium in her possession," interrupted Singo. "Witnesses!" said Verstork. "Who are they?" Singomengolo cast a crafty look around him ere he replied. He saw Mokesuep quietly entering the little hut. That gentleman had taken advantage of the confusion and had quietly sneaked away, while he had a chance to do so unperceived. He had reasons of his own for so doing; but Singomengolo's lip curled with a disdainful smile. "Just now," quoth he, "there was a Dutch gentleman here." "A Dutch gentleman!" echoed Verstork, now quite losing his temper. "A Dutch gentleman! take care what you are saying. Are you trying to make a fool of me? I won't stand such impudence, do you hear!" "Muizenkop was here just now," remarked Grenits interrupting him. "Muizenkop? why I have seen nothing of him all the morning!" "I don't know how it is," replied Grenits, "he told me something about losing his way." "But, what has become of him?" asked the Controller. "That I don't know--anyhow, he was standing here a minute ago." "But," continued Verstork speaking to Singomengolo. "You said two witnesses--who is the other?" "Lim Ho," was the fellow's insolent reply. "Lim Ho!" exclaimed van Nerekool in amazement. "And Dalima in that condition! Now I understand all about it!" "Lim Ho has terribly ill-used me," sobbed the poor girl "and--" but she could not utter another word. "And?" persisted Verstork. "He and that man there held me fast." "You villainous brute!" shouted van Nerekool as he shook his clenched fist in the wretch's face. "She has smuggled opium," replied the spy without flinching. "She has smuggled opium, and I found it upon her--that is all. The gentlemen must try not to lose their tempers. The girl is simply telling a parcel of lies." "I do not lie," cried Dalima, "I have not smuggled--my condition shows plainly enough how they have treated me." At a gesture from the controller a couple of oppassers lifted up the young girl from the ground. Van Nerekool assisted them, and called for another covering to wrap around her. Then turning to the Controller he said, "A foul outrage has been committed here--the way that poor girl has been treated is simply infamous!" Having thus for the moment taken care of Dalima, the company entered the hut. There they found Mokesuep smoking a friendly cigar with Lim Ho. The latter's ear was bandaged. "So," said Verstork to Mokesuep without bestowing so much as a look upon the Chinaman. "So you're here!" "Yes," was the reply, "I am here, I lost my way this morning in the ravine and have been wandering about until I came upon this hut. I then sought shelter from the burning sun. Bah, how hot it is in those open fields!" All this was said with the greatest self-possession. At the last sentence the wretch actually puffed as if he had really been suffering much from the heat. "You have been here some time then?" asked Verstork. "Well yes," was the reply, "about half an hour I should say, if you call that some time." "You will be called upon to bear witness," said the controller. "Indeed--bear witness to what?" "A dreadful outrage has been committed on that girl," continued Verstork. "An outrage?" asked Mokesuep as if much astonished. "I know nothing at all about it." "Nothing whatever has taken place here," remarked Singomengolo speaking in Malay; for though he would not use it yet he understood the Dutch language perfectly. "Nothing at all has taken place here," he repeated, "except the discovery of smuggled opium. Is that true or not, babah?" The Chinaman who had risen from his seat when the European gentlemen entered the hut, exchanged looks with Mokesuep, but answered at once, "Nothing else, Kandjeng toean." "I am not talking to you," said Verstork to the Chinaman, and then turning to Mokesuep he continued. "That girl, the baboe of the Resident at Santjoemeh, accuses both these men of having perpetrated a terrible crime." Mokesuep, who did not know Dalima, stood confounded when he learned who she was. The baboe of the Resident! What if that high and mighty one were to take up the cause of his servant? Indeed he did not know what to say or what to do. "Did you hear my words?" asked the Controller very sternly and very impatiently. The wretch caught a significant glance of Lim Ho who stood there audaciously puffing at his cigar. "I have seen nothing whatever of it, Controller," he replied. "But I," interrupted Singomengolo in a taunting tone of voice, "I accuse that baboe of having smuggled opium--I found it in her possession--the babah and the Dutch gentleman can bear witness to that." "Is that true?" asked Verstork. The Chinaman did not answer at once, vile and utterly depraved though he was, yet even he hesitated. He could not quite make up his mind utterly to destroy the poor girl whom he had so deeply injured. But Singomengolo gave him a significant look and made him a sign which was almost imperceptible. "Yes," said Lim Ho at length, "that is perfectly true." "Is that true?" said Verstork turning to Mokesuep. "Yes--it is true," replied the latter with the utmost effrontery. "Did you actually see the bandoelan find this box in the girl's possession?" "Yes," replied the wretch. At this word Dalima fell into a dead swoon. The other men present at the scene could not repress gestures of contempt and loathing, for all were firmly convinced of the poor girl's innocence and of the perjured scoundrel's infamy. "You damned wretch!" shouted Theodoor Grenits beside himself with fury and utterly unable any longer to restrain himself. A contemptuous smile, accompanied with a still more contemptuous gesture, was Mokesuep's only reply. That was too much for Grenits. "There! there!" he shouted livid with rage, "there, there! take that." And at the words he dealt the infamous scoundrel two swinging blows in the face. "Mr. Grenits! Mr. Grenits," cried Verstork in a dignified manner, "Do pray control yourself, do not make my official duty more difficult to perform than it already is." CHAPTER XX. A DINNER-PARTY. A few hours later our sportsmen were seated at table in the pandoppo of the Controller's house at Banjoe Pahit. Fritz Mokesuep, however, we need hardly say, was not of the party. William Verstork was a man who, as a rule, could put up with a good deal; but on this occasion he had not cared to conceal the aversion with which that individual inspired him. As soon as poor Dalima had been properly attended to, and under escort of a policeman, had been sent off in a tandoe as a prisoner to Santjoemeh, the Controller had told Mokesuep, in pretty plain language, that, after what had taken place between him and Grenits, his company could very well be dispensed with. "It seems to me," had been Mokesuep's reply, "that the person who inflicted the insult is the one that ought to stand aside." "Such, no doubt would, under ordinary circumstances, have been my opinion also," returned Verstork, with icy coolness; "but before I can consent to receive you as my guest, you will have to explain to me, in a satisfactory way, how you came to be in this hut, so far from the hunting-ground, and just at the time when the young girl was so shamefully ill-used." "She has not been--" interrupted Mokesuep. "Now, pray do not mistake me," resumed Verstork, "I said ill-used, at the present moment I make use of no stronger expression. We found her here half-naked and bleeding, and she was calling upon us for help. She had, therefore, evidently been ill-treated, at present I say nothing more than that. She suffered this ill-treatment in your presence--in your presence, who pretend to be a gentleman; and I repeat what I said just now, you will have to give me satisfactory proof that it was not in your power to assist or defend this poor young girl before I will consent to receive you under my roof." "But, Mr. Verstork--!" "If you can clear yourself of the suspicion which, perhaps very unjustly, at present rests upon you, I can assure you that nothing will give me greater pleasure than to hold out my hand to you, indeed you will find me the first to do so, unless my friend Grenits should forestall me." "In that case," said Grenits, "Mr. Mokesuep will find me perfectly prepared to give him any satisfaction he may require." "Satisfaction!" sneered Mokesuep, "never you mind about that, I know well enough how to get satisfaction!" "You refuse then," continued Verstork coldly, "to furnish me with the explanations I require?" "I owe you no explanations whatever, Mr. Verstork," cried Mokesuep, "I intend to reserve my explanations for the Resident's ear." "Very well, sir, just as you please," replied Verstork. "In that case I have nothing further to say to you," and with a stiff, formal bow he added: "Pray let me not detain you any longer." Mokesuep ground his teeth with rage at this direct dismissal; he flung his rifle over his shoulder, and, accompanied by Lim Ho and Singomengolo, who had stood by as silent spectators of the scene, without understanding much of what was going on, he hurried away in the direction of Santjoemeh. As he went he cried, "You shall pay for this, Mr. Verstork. I shall have my revenge!" It was a terrible threat, no doubt; but it did not take away the appetite of our friends; and so, as we have said before, a few hours after found them seated at the table in the pandoppo of the Controller at Banjoe Pahit. The pandoppo of the Controller's house could not, in size or extent, be compared with the splendid gallery in the stately residential mansion at Santjoemeh. But, for that very reason, it was more homely and more comfortable. It lacked the vast empty spaces between the columns, reminding one of a big market-hall, and it had not the lofty roof which made one think of a cathedral. It was, in fact, much more like a cosy sitting-room, and to this air of homely comfort, the tasteful manner in which Verstork had furnished it, contributed not a little. Indeed, this pandoppo was Verstork's ordinary sitting-room, and a very pleasant retreat it was. The big windows, all of them furnished with venetian blinds, gave free access to the breeze, while, on the sunny side, they could be closed so as to exclude the heat; and thus within that gallery it was always deliciously cool. The entire house moreover was surrounded by trees encircling it as with a crown of verdure, and their pleasant shade tempered the glaring light of the tropical day. There, William Verstork used to sit whenever his presence was not required in his office. There, at sunrise, he sipped his early cup of coffee, there he breakfasted and used to dine. There again he was wont to enjoy his papers and periodicals as in the afternoon he took a cup of tea, and used to dream away the evenings musing within himself, and often wondering whether, in such a place, it was well for a man to be alone. At any time of the day this pandoppo was a pleasant retreat, and specially gay and comfortable did it look now when the host had gathered his friends around his table. The very table itself contributed to the gaiety and brightness of the scene. On that board were displayed the inevitable bowls of rice, cooked by steaming in conical baskets of bamboo, every grain snow-white, distinct and separate. And with this standing dish of rice were served up in small saucers, an endless variety of soups, vegetables, sauces, pickles, and condiments of all kinds. There were chicken-broth, fish-soup, and other thicker kinds of soup. Then a variety of dishes flavoured with Spanish pepper, among which devilled shrimps, devilled eggs, the celebrated little red-fish of Macassar, the bean of the Paskia speciosa and the famous "pirate pepper," so called no doubt on account of its extreme pungency. The more substantial dishes consisted of meat and fish, such as jerked beef, smoked venison, roast or boiled joints, boiled and braised fowl, and a delicious fresh water fish, the Olfromeus Olfax. These and other dishes, too numerous to mention, are generally served up at a complete and well appointed dinner--or as they call it in Java--rice table. But the object which specially attracted the attention of our Luculluses as they entered the pandoppo, and which made them smack their lips in anticipation of a rare feast, was a sucking pig which stood conspicuous in the centre of the table in a capacious dish. It was roasted whole, was standing upright on its four legs, and had a lemon in its snout. It was a product of the day's hunting, one of the first victims, in fact, which had fallen, and had at once been taken home by one of Verstork's servants to play a prominent part in the entertainment. Every one of the guests did full justice to the good fare, and all proved themselves to be right valiant trenchermen; but though the grinders were kept busily at work, and though the palates fully appreciated the highly flavoured and succulent dishes, yet the tongues were by no means allowed to remain idle, nor was the conversation suffered to flag around the hospitable board. The reader may well believe there was plenty to talk about. "That confounded Muizenkop!" quoth Theodoor Grenits, "why, the fellow very nearly made me lose my temper." "Come, come, don't mention him," replied van Rheijn, "his very name would take away one's appetite." "By Jove," cried August van Beneden, "that sucking pig is a most delicious morsel." "Very nice, indeed," remarked van Rheijn. "But, how many of those chaps have we bowled over I wonder?" "That I cannot tell you," said Verstork. "But," resumed van Beneden, "we ought to know the number in order that we may be able to judge in how far our expedition may be called successful. How shall we find out?" "Patience, August, patience," said Verstork with a smile. "All right, William," continued van Beneden, "you know I have no great stock of that commodity. I wonder how many of those beasts we have knocked over. I saw a good number of them sprawling about." "The wedono will be here presently with his report," replied Verstork. "The wedono! Yes, he has disappeared--where can he have got to?" "Well," said Verstork, "I ordered him and the two loerahs to make a careful search in the Djoerang Pringapoes. He will no doubt soon be here to tell us the result of our day's work." The words were scarcely spoken, before one of the oppassers came in to announce the arrival of the dessa-chief. "Show him in!" cried Verstork. "Well, Wedono," he continued with a smile, "I see you come to share our rice-table, that is very kind of you, I am glad to see you." The Javanese chief, however, had recoiled in terror. Had the conscientious Mohammedan been a Roman Catholic he would most assuredly have crossed himself. As it was he merely muttered in the direst confusion, "Excuse me, Kandjeng toean! You know that we are not allowed to eat pork." "But, you can take something else, Wedono--there is beef on the table and fowl and duck and fish--anything you like in fact." "Thank you, Kandjeng toean, thank you; but all these things have been cooked in the same kitchen as the sucking pig, and, you know our religion forbids us--" "I am sorry for it, Wedono," replied Verstork. "I came here, Kandjeng toean," continued the chief, "to give you my report of the day's hunting." "Very well, Wedono!" "Seventeen pigs great and small have been killed. The Chinamen at Kaligaweh and at Banjoe Pahit have bought the carcases from the village people and are now busy carting them away." "Ah, Wedono, those Chinamen know what is good," said Verstork. "I suppose so, Kandjeng toean," replied the dessa-chief with a forced smile. "That is a pretty good number I think--is it not, Wedono?" remarked van Rheijn. "Do you think," he continued, "that we have pretty well exterminated them?" "Pretty nearly," answered the wedono. "A number of our people have gone after the pigs that broke away and have dispatched several of them. There are but a very few left and they have sought for refuge in the high mountain land, so that I do not think that we shall be troubled any more by that mischievous brood." "Well then, my friends," cried Verstork elated at the success of his expedition, "we may say that we have done a good morning's work. Here's good luck to Banjoe Pahit and the dessa-folk!" All the guests sprang to their feet and raised their glasses. Van Rheijn thrust a tumbler of beer into the wedono's hand--and with a joyous "hip, hip, hip, hurrah!" a toast was drunk to the inhabitants of the district who had been delivered from their troublesome visitors. "Has the Kandjeng toean any further orders for me?" asked the wedono. "If not I will beg leave to retire." "Yes, Wedono--there is something else. In the entrance of the Djoerang Pringapoes there lies a very big old boar, you will know him by his long tusks--I very much wish to have the head." "Excellent, excellent," exclaimed van Beneden, "Une hure de sanglier à la sauce piquante, that will be a rare treat!" "Hush, August!" said Verstork and, turning again to the wedono he continued, "Then further, I want you at once to open the inquiry in the matter of Dalima." "Certainly, Kandjeng toean." "And come to me presently--I must have some talk with you about that affair." "Very good, Kandjeng toean." "Presently," cried van Beneden, "presently why--" and then he struck up "We won't go home till morning ... Till daylight doth appear." The entire company joined in the well-known old tune. When the noise had somewhat subsided, Verstork continued; "Duty, my friends, before pleasure. You will presently go and have your afternoon nap, then you will take a bath. I shall pursue this inquiry with the help of the wedono. This evening it is my intention to return to Santjoemeh with you; for the first thing to-morrow morning I must have an interview with the Resident. You have understood me, Wedono, have you not?" "Yes, Kandjeng toean." "Very good then, I will not detain you." With a courtly bow, the dessa-chief took leave of the company and retired. The dinner went on; but the mention of Dalima had somewhat dashed the high spirits of the guests. The recollection of the sad event of the morning seemed to cast a chill over them all and to sober down even the merriest of the party. "Poor little Dalima!" sighed Grashuis, after a few moments' silence during which he had been discussing a duck's wing, "Poor little Dalima! could she be guilty of smuggling opium?" "Get along with you," cried van Beneden. "Does that pretty little thing look like a smuggler?" "Take care, August," said van Rheijn with a laugh, "a lawyer ought not to allow himself to be influenced by outward appearance. Am I not right, Charles?" Van Nerekool was not there and then ready with an answer to this appeal; he was in fact busily employed in removing the bones from a splendid slice of fish. But after a moment's pause he said: "Certainly not--yet, for all that I also am firmly persuaded of the girl's innocence." "Of course, of course--the baboe of nonna Anna, eh Charles--cela va sans dire?" "But," remarked van Rheijn, "the thing that puzzles me is that the opium was found upon her." "Do you believe that?" asked another. "Well I don't know what to say, there is Muizenkop's testimony." "What! would you take that scoundrel's word?" "Aye, aye," said Verstork very seriously, "the whole business looks ugly enough." "As far as I can see," said Grashuis, "there is but one hope left, and that is that nonna Anna may have influence enough with her father to get the affair hushed up." A bitter smile curled van Nerekool's lip, but he uttered not a word. "Now if Lim Ho, the son of the opium farmer, were not mixed up in the matter," said Verstork musingly, "why then you might have some reason for that hope--yes--then I think things might be squared; but now--" "But," exclaimed van Beneden interrupting his friend, "can you for a moment suspect that the judicial power--?" "My dear friend--my good August," replied Verstork, "a highly placed judicial functionary here in Dutch India once spoke these words: 'The opium trade lies upon this country as a heavy curse--it has impressed its stamp upon everything, alas, even upon our courts of justice.' I think I am right, Charles?" Van Nerekool nodded affirmatively. "Well," said van Rheijn, "all that is very sad, a very sad state of things indeed; but the worst of it is that the use of opium makes opium-farming a necessary evil." "What nonsense you do talk!" cried Grenits impatiently. "But Theodoor!" "But Edward!"-- "If the abuse of opium did not exist, then surely there would at once be an end of opium-farming. You will allow that I think?" "Oh yes," replied Grenits, "that sounds very plausible no doubt; but now supposing I were to retort by saying if there were no opium-monopoly then the abuse of the drug would never have assumed its present proportions? That does not perhaps sound so pleasant; but it is a statement which is more easily verified." "Oh yes, yes, we heard all about that last night; unfortunately however, the proof was not forthcoming." "Well," said Grenits, "what does history say?" "History," replied the other, "what you call history is neither more nor less than the personal opinion and utterance of the historian. One man contends that Europeans brought opium into the country, and another holds a different view--so much for history." "But Edward, I hope you do not distrust the Council of India?" "Well what does the Council say, Theodoor?" "If my memory serves me, it says this, or words to this effect: 'The opium monopoly has always been most anxiously watched by the Government as one of the most important sources of public revenue, and every means of enhancing the productiveness of that source of income has been most eagerly adopted.'" "Aye, aye," returned van Rheijn; "but is all this true?" "Why," said Grenits, "I hope, Edward, you do not doubt my word?" "Not in the least, my dear fellow, not in the least. I am quite ready to admit that your quotation is accurate; but was the Council properly informed when it gave that opinion?" "Well," replied Grenits, "if you go on like that, then we shall not be able to trust anybody or anything. Those people are paid, and most handsomely paid, to get the best and most trustworthy information. But independently altogether of the Council's opinion, in which you seem to have but little faith, tell me, does not the constantly rising revenue from the farming of opium afford proof absolute of the truth of the Council's word? Every successive year the estimate is higher and higher." "I know that," said van Rheijn, "but estimate and actual produce are widely different things." "True enough, they are sometimes widely different; but in this particular case they are not. Heaven and earth are moved to reach the figure at which the minister has estimated the revenue, and means the most unfair, even the most criminal, are employed in order, if possible, to surpass the sum at which the revenue has been placed. How many a Netherland's Lion has been given away because, in this district or in that, the produce of the opium contract has exceeded the figure at which the minister put it! How proudly must the 'Virtus Nobilitat' thus earned glitter upon the breast of its possessor!" "But I want to know," remarked August van Beneden, "is the use of opium really as injurious to the body as men say it is? We saw with our own eyes last night that as far as morality is concerned it has not much to recommend it; but how about its influence upon the material body? We sometimes hear the word poisoning used; that very term indeed was made use of last night, but it seems to me that it is a system of poisoning under which a man may attain to a very good old age, just as a man may grow old who drinks a glass or two of grog." "Listen to me," said Verstork in a most serious tone. "We are sitting here together, all, I hope, honest trustworthy men I can therefore speak my mind freely and fearlessly before you, and I may without reserve give you the conclusion to which a long and richly varied experience has led me on the subject of opium. "The habitual use of opium, even in comparatively moderate doses, invariably leads to vitiation of the blood and constriction of the vessels. This again gives rise to an asthmatic condition and to a permanent and wasting and almost always incurable dysentery. These are accompanied by the most distressing symptoms and intolerable suffering. Upon the opium smoker, moreover, medicines begin gradually to lose their effect, excepting the narcotic poisons in ever increasing quantities. Hence the sufferer is driven to seek relief in augmented doses of the poison, and if he cannot obtain these, his condition becomes utterly unbearable. Yet to this suffering he is doomed, unless he can pass from one fit of intoxication to the other. Opium smoking is the only thing to alleviate the miseries of the collapse which follows an opium debauch, and but few can afford the continual drain of so expensive a remedy. Where a sufficient quantity of good wholesome food is taken, these lamentable results may be slow in showing themselves; and a generous and strengthening diet has preserved many a man, for an entire lifetime, from the most serious consequences of his pernicious habit. But even in these cases, the state of the blood and the general condition of health are so bad, that trifling ailments, such as an ordinary boil or a slight wound, assume a most malignant character and often lead to fatal results; and who can venture to say how many diseases, which depend upon cachexia and which are so common in this country, are caused, or, at all events, are greatly aggravated by the habitual use of opium? "I spoke just now of a sufficient quantity of nutritive food; but we know too well--and the Government also knows it--that but very few of the natives can afford a supply of food which can be called either sufficient or nutritious. It is well known how exceedingly meagre the diet of the Javanese is, even among those who are in tolerably good circumstances; and it is well known also that, even when he can afford it, he very seldom makes use of food which is really strengthening. And that diet, be it more or less generous, must of necessity become more and more meagre when every day a considerable, and ever more considerable portion of the wages is squandered in the purchase of opium. Thus the enjoyment itself tends to make impossible the only condition under which it might be indulged in with anything like impunity. "But, you will doubtless object--in such cases lack of money must compel these people to limit themselves to a very moderate consumption, and they will thus be preserved from the fatal effects of excessive indulgence. Such, however, is not always the case. There are men, and their number is by no means small, who in the days of their prosperity have gradually accustomed themselves to a very considerable consumption of the drug; and who, when all their worldly possessions have vanished in clouds of intoxicating smoke, have been compelled either to satisfy themselves with diminished doses of opium or else to abstain from smoking altogether. It is difficult to fathom the hopeless misery of such poor creatures. Further, experience has proved, that very many whose daily consumption is strictly moderate, yet at forty years of age and upwards suffer frightfully from the ill effects of opium, especially of the most painful and incurable dysentery. I myself have at Berbek, at Trengalek, at Santjoemeh, here at Banjoe Pahit and elsewhere, cured a great number of such sufferers with a certain remedy, and thus I have had ample opportunity to make myself personally acquainted with the facts. "Now, if with these unfortunate creatures we compare the thousands who, at home, drink their couple of glasses of beer or of spirits, then it will appear at a glance how much more pernicious is the use of opium than the use of alcohol. The former indeed, is infinitely more stupefying and deadening, and thus, very much more rapidly than alcohol, it destroys the appetite; so that, even when plenty of wholesome food is at hand, it either cannot be taken at all or else loses much of its nutritive value. Confirmed opium smokers have repeatedly told me that, in consequence of their pernicious habit, they could eat only a few pinches of rice a day, whereas, when, by the help of a remedy with which I supplied them, they were able gradually to diminish their daily dose of opium, they could take ten times the amount of nourishment. "Then comes another point, and that is the extreme fascination and seductiveness of opium, which causes the most pleasurable bodily sensations, which fills the mind with glorious dreams, which, for a while, removes all pain and suffering, while it, at the same time, deadens much more effectually than strong drink, the mental faculties, in this depressed race already sufficiently dormant, and thus the use of opium holds its victim much more securely bound in the fetters of his fatal passion, than the moderate use of alcohol enslaves anyone at home. "Having thus, by degrees, come to the influence of opium upon the mind and the character, I must certainly not omit to draw your attention to the selfishness and self-indulgence which it develops in the smoker; to the ever-growing indifference to all his surroundings, even to his own wife and children; to the listless indolence and aversion to work, to care, to trouble in fact of any kind, which at length, by night or day, allows him to think of nothing but of his master-passion and all its concomitant cravings, to the gratification of which everything must be sacrificed, and everybody must become subservient. A gin drinker, for the indulgence in his ignoble passion, demands no other service than that now and then someone is sent out to fetch him his dram; but the opium smoker, if he can afford the luxury of attendance at all, monopolises the services of his entire household. One must work hard to earn the means of satisfying his expensive craving, another must go and purchase his opium, a third must stand by in readiness to fill his pipe, a fourth must prepare his coffee and the other refreshments he requires. It is true, no doubt, that he is not so violent and not so noisy in his debauch as one who is under the influence of liquor; but, when the effects of the narcotic begin to wear off and his pains and ailments again begin to make themselves felt, then, unless the whole family is at his beck and call and ready once more to minister to his passion, he fills the house with invectives and threatening--then he utters moanings and lamentations most pitiful and heartrending. If to this we add the bodily and mental debility which the opium slave transmits as a legacy to his wretched offspring, though the majority of smokers cease at an early age to have children at all, then we cannot help wondering what kind of miserable stunted race will be the second or third generation from the present one. "And then," continued Verstork, after a pause, "and then the poverty and destitution which the use of opium entails! What an amount of prosperity and welfare has already been,--and is daily being--swallowed up by the use of that baneful drug! Among the lower classes, an opium smoker, even though he smokes in strict moderation, very soon arrives at the point when he must devote his entire earnings to the purchase of the drug, while at the same time his craving for refreshing and stimulating dainties must likewise be satisfied. The families are legion in which the wife, assisted perhaps by one or two of her children, is the only breadwinner. Should she happen to be in delicate health, should she be disabled by sickness or childbed, why then the misery of such a household is unfathomable. And, believe me, such cases of extreme misery are much more frequent out here than similar cases of destitution in Europe occasioned by the abuse of drink. "Now all these powers, bodily, mental, and moral; and all that prosperity, which at present opium saps and destroys, might be devoted to industry and agriculture. If such use were made of them, how much greater would be both production and consumption, and how much more considerable would be the profit to the exchequer--a profit earned in a fair and legitimate way--than any revenue which the accursed system of opium farming can produce! Thousands upon thousands of the natives here have neither the energy, nor the means, nor the inclination to work or to learn how they may profitably cultivate their gardens and fields, neither do they care to progress in any branch of industry whatever; because they have offered up--and are continually offering--all they possess in the world to opium. But, are not industry and agriculture the very life-blood of a State? Yet here, the state itself does all it possibly can to poison that life-blood, and thus to bring about its own destruction." William Verstork here paused for awhile, after so long an oration, he felt the necessity of quenching his thirst with a glass of beer. All his guests sat silently waiting for what he might further have to say. His words had evidently made a very deep impression upon his hearers, for the language to which they had listened was the simple and unvarnished tale of actual experience; and, however young and heedless some of them might be, yet the speech of their friend had awakened their interest, and had gone straight to their hearts. At length, after having drawn a long breath, the Controller went on to say: "You know, my friends, that my official career has not been passed entirely at Santjoemeh. My probationary time I spent in the capital of the Kediri residence. As second-class controller I was some time at Berbek and at Trenggalek. I know, therefore, from personal experience how matters stand in those residencies also. Now listen to me. Kediri has a population of about 700,000 souls--the vast majority of them very poor people. In that place the opium contract produces eighteen hundred thousand guilders. If to that sum we add the price paid for the drug delivered to the farmer, and the profits which he makes on the sale then, I think, we shall be well within the mark if we put down two and a half millions of guilders as the sum which those poor people, of their own free will, pay annually to purchase a few hours a day of enjoyment and oblivion. I say nothing now about the cost of smuggled opium; the amount paid for it is not known, and every one must, therefore, form his own opinion of that. How is it possible for a population so poor to find so large a sum of money, in addition, mind you, to all their other burdens, such as compulsory labour, salt-tax, rent, licenses, import duties, &c.? That is a mystery to me--but then you should see what kind of a life is that of a poor Javanese family. "Their house is generally very small, built of bamboo and covered with straw. Furniture they have none whatever; a mat spread out on a bamboo bench, and a coarse pillow is what they sleep on. They cook their food on the ground in pots and pans of the commonest earthenware; they eat it on pisang leaves with their fingers; they drink water out of an earthenware pitcher. They seldom, we may say never, wash their clothes which, such as they are, they continue to wear until they fall in rags from their bodies. The children run about naked, and grow up in the mud among the bullocks. At five o'clock in the morning they rise and go to work so as to be present in time for roll-call at six. They work for their masters, in the rice-fields, at road-making, in the coffee plantations, or in the osier-beds. Should a man get a day off, he may go and work on his own account, and then he can earn about 40 or 50 cents (10 pence) for ten hours' labour. When they get home in the evening, they have their morsel of food and fully half the day's earning is spent on opium. At eight o'clock all are fast asleep, and up to eight o'clock the only lamp they have in the hut is a saucer with a cotton wick in a little stinking oil. Such is the faithful picture of the daily life of a Javanese opium smoker. Nothing--absolutely nothing to make the slightest break in this weary monotony. Nothing but work, hard work; mostly for insufficient wages, very frequently compulsory labour for no wages at all. And then, behind their backs to be called a pack of lazy scoundrels! That is a little too bad. Tell me, have we Dutch any feeling at all for our fellow-creatures? Is it not at length high time that all that compulsory and unpaid labour should be done away with and that the opium-curse should be banished from the land? Every right-minded Dutchman ought to do his best according to the utmost of his power to attain that end, because every Dutchman is personally and individually responsible for so frightful a state of things, and every Dutchman ought to be heartily ashamed of himself while the poor patient Javanese are being so shamefully imposed upon. All that the poor native can earn either by his work for his masters or in his own free time, he must, in one shape or other, offer up to that insatiable Moloch, the public treasury. There is but one thing left for him, and that is a little rice; and of that he has not enough to last him for the whole year." "Yes," observed Grenits, when Verstork had finished speaking, "yes, William, you are perfectly right, and that is the reason why he seeks for consolation and temporary oblivion in the opium den, just as in Holland a poor man in similar circumstances flies for relief to the bottle. Thus cause and effect act and react upon one another; misery suggests opium or drink, and drink and opium in their turn engender misery. It requires a very powerful effort of the will to shake off either bad habit, and drink and opium are the very things which deprive a man of whatever power of will he may have. Therefore it is perfectly hopeless to expect the people to take the initiative in any such reforms as Verstork has mentioned; the evil keeps on spreading and is daily striking deeper roots. The ruling power ought to exercise its authority and drag these poor degraded people out of the slough of despond in which so many of them are wallowing. It ought to do this, I say, regardless of cost and trouble; and regardless also of the pain it may for the moment inflict. Every right-minded citizen ought, according as he is able, to assist the government in that arduous task, and whoever would, for selfish motives, strive to retard or to frustrate this plan of rescue ought at once to be put aside and rendered harmless. If Holland and Dutch India cannot continue to exist, or to speak more correctly, cannot continue to pay their way without screwing a revenue out of such immoral sources as abuse of opium, abuse of drink and unpaid compulsory labour--why then for honour of the country it were better that it should do like the man who is no longer able to maintain, by honest means, a separate home of his own, and go and live as a boarder in the house of another." For a few moments all sat silent. They all felt the truth, the undeniable truth of Theodoor's words, though his concluding sentence had most deeply wounded their patriotic pride. At length van Beneden started up from his seat, and going up to Verstork he took his hand and pressed it cordially. "I thank you," said he in a tone of deep emotion, "I thank you heartily for the insight you have given me into the fatal effects of opium. I am but a young lawyer and have, as yet, had no opportunity of appearing as counsel in any case connected with the traffic. I have read much about the abuse of the drug, and I learned much last night under the Wariengien tree on the green at Kaligaweh; but your manly and vigorous words have awakened my conscience, and here, in the presence of you all, I solemnly promise that I will, on the very first opportunity that may present itself, make the very best use I can of what your experience has taught me." "Hurrah!" cried Leendert Grashuis. "William, your excellent speech has thus had not only a practical, but it will have an immediate effect. Aye, my friends, I say an immediate effect; for I have a proposition to make to you--" "Out with it!" they cried, "let us hear it." "Yesterday, we all but witnessed the Amokh which took place at Kaligaweh; this morning we were within a few minutes of witnessing another and no less terrible crime. It is not my intention to analyse the feelings to which these scenes have given rise in our hearts--the father a manslayer, and the daughter dishonoured. Both these events, however, are intimately and immediately connected with the infamous system of opium-farming. We have heard the testimony of our superior officer. In the name of all assembled here, I thank him for his noble sentiments; and now my friends let us not be behind him in generosity. Dalima and her father must have an advocate in the trial which awaits them, and that advocate we have found. Both the accused parties will, in our friend August van Beneden, find a defender who will take up their cause with zeal and ability. Methinks, I can hear his maiden speech--it will be a splendid one." "Thank you, Leendert," said van Beneden with much emotion, "I can assure my friends that they have not misjudged me." "Aye, aye," continued Grashuis, "I know that well; but we all of us intend to participate in the good work, do we not?" "By all means!" was the general cry. "Well then, listen to me, for now I come to the proposal I have to make. In this case there can be no question of offering our friend van Beneden any honorarium--that would deprive his labour of love of its chief merit. But in carrying on this defence many expenses will necessarily be incurred and many fees will have to be paid in advance. We all know that Dame Justice is in India an expensive--a most expensive hussy. Well then, let us all join hands and undertake to find the funds that may be required--then August will be able to carry on both cases in the most effectual and vigorous manner." "Agreed, agreed!" they all exclaimed. "Now, August, do your best!" "Now that we have arranged that business," resumed Grenits, "I have a question to put to our host." "By all means, Theodoor," said Verstork, "what is it?" "I am a merchant," said Grenits, "and as such, I am bound to be very inquisitive. In trade I not only need all the information I can obtain about any article of commerce; but I find a little chemistry uncommonly useful--" "Come to the point," cried several of the guests; "we don't want any lectures on chemistry and commerce!" But Grenits, without paying any heed to the interruption, went on: "Just now in your speech you made mention of a certain remedy which I think you said you found useful in curing some unhappy slaves to opium. Is that, may I ask, a secret remedy?" "A secret remedy?" asked Verstork, with a laugh. "What do you mean--do you take me for a quack-doctor?" "Not by any means," replied Grenits. "Since this remedy then is not a secret one, will you tell me what it is?" "With pleasure," said Verstork; "they are pills which were given me by a missionary. They are composed of opium and radix rhei or rhubarb, in the following proportions: Twelve of these pills contain three grains of opium and twelve grains of rhubarb. They are to be administered every five days; the first time twelve have to be taken, the next time nine, the third time six, but it is very seldom indeed that the third dose is required, for by that time the patients are generally cured." "And," persisted Grenits, "can you actually vouch for their efficacy?" "To be sure I can," replied Verstork. "In my study you will find a kind of trophy consisting of a dozen bedoedans or opium-pipes which the smokers have deposited with me with the solemn promise that they would never touch the pipe again. The missionary who gave me the pills can speak most positively of upwards of seventy cures." "Now," asked Grenits, "you will not be offended if I give you a bit of advice in your own interest and in the interest also of the missionary?" "Certainly not," said Verstork, "let us hear it, by all means." "Well, my advice is this: keep that prescription strictly to yourself and don't say a word about it to anybody. The colonial secretary who has but one object in view, and that is, to raise the opium revenue as much as possible, might look upon your remedy as an attack made upon the golden calf; and missionaries have before this been impeded in their Gospel work, and men have been expelled from the colonies, and official functionaries have been suspended or pensioned off for the commission of much more venial offences than bringing such pills as yours to the opium-smoker." Verstork turned slightly pale as he heard his friend's well-meant advice. For a single moment his thoughts flew to those dear ones who so greatly needed his assistance and support. Did he repent of having thus honestly spoken his mind? Who can say!--He put his hand to his forehead as if to wipe away some unpleasant reflection. "Oh," said he, "it is not quite so bad as that, I hope." "Perhaps not," said Grenits, with a smile, "but your pills will not earn you the Netherlands' Lion." "That may be," said the Controller, "however, Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra, that is my motto. For all that I shall not give the poor souls one pill the less." Then, allowing his eye to wander over the table which by this time had been pretty well cleared, for our friends had sat down to dinner as hungry as hunters, he continued-- "My friends, our dinner is over. After yesterday's jaunt and this morning's exertion, and after the very short rest we had last night, you must all need repose. My servants will show you to your rooms. I am going to work and, as I told you just now, this evening I am off with you to Santjoemeh. I wish you all a pleasant siesta." A few minutes later the pandoppo was deserted and towards evening the five friends were galloping along the road to the capital. CHAPTER XXI. IN THE RESIDENT'S OFFICE. Verstork was much too late. After the scene in the hut near the Djoerang Pringapoes, he ought at once to have jumped into the saddle and there and then have galloped off to Santjoemeh; thus he might possibly have succeeded in warding off the storm that was gathering over his head. As it was, he had allowed another to forestall him. It was not long before he found that out. "So!--that is your report of what has taken place!" said van Gulpendam, in the most offensive and sneering tone imaginable, when the Controller at length, after having long been kept waiting and after having times out of number paced up and down the front-gallery, had been admitted into the presence of his chief. "So--that is your report is it? It seems to me you have taken your time about it! Yesterday, before noon, the information had already reached me. A pleasant dinner time for me when such things are occurring in my residency. But the gentlemen, it seems, were amusing themselves with hunting. Oh, yes! anything may be going on in their district, then they see nothing, they hear nothing!" "But, Resident--" Verstork ventured to say. "Hold your tongue, sir," cried van Gulpendam, savagely, "I have asked you no question, when I do it will be time enough to answer, and then, I suspect, you will have no reply to make." Verstork was standing there, in the office of his superior officer, pale as death and unnerved and biting his lips with suppressed rage. "I cannot say, Mr. Verstork, that you have clapped on too much sail--you have been somewhat slow in making me acquainted with these painful events." "Resident, I--" "I did not put any question," again roared van Gulpendam, with a look of scorn and contempt upon his subordinate, "please hold your tongue!" "It appeared to me, Resident, that--" "Be silent, I say! I only have a right to speak--" Verstork, however, took no heed of this rude interruption, and quietly went on: "--That you made some remarks about the time of my presenting my report. If that be so, I feel it my duty, nay my right, to exculpate myself." "If you will not keep silence," shouted van Gulpendam, "I will call--" he was on the point of making a mistake, he was just going to say the boatswain's mate; but he checked himself and said, "I will call my chief constable and have you removed out of my presence." "Hark you, Mr. van Gulpendam," said Verstork drawing himself up to his full height, and speaking with much dignity, "Hark you, I am neither your corporal nor your boatswain of the watch. And, further, let me tell you that if you continue to address me in such terms I will lodge a complaint against you with the Secretary for the Home Department, or better still, with the Governor General!" It was now van Gulpendam's turn to change colour, he saw that he had gone a little too far. He had so long been accustomed to see every one bowing down before him and putting up with all his whims and fits of bad temper, that he never thought of checking himself in the presence of Verstork, whom he had always looked upon as an easy-going and good-tempered fellow. He now, however, at once drew in his horns and said in a very different tone: "Pardon me, Mr. Verstork, you know I am of a sanguine temperament. I am, moreover, very much vexed at not receiving this news from one of my officers in the first instance. Come, take a seat, I should like to run my eye over this report." The Controller sat down, while the resident at his desk turned his back to the light and began reading the document. Outside the office, a couple of police oppassers were pacing up and down, attracted, no doubt, to the spot by the high tone of voice in which the conversation had been carried on. In a moment or two van Gulpendam again broke out--"I thought as much--I had been warned of this--" But, checking himself, he said no more, and went on reading. "Resident," said Verstork, "may I beg leave to inquire against what you have been warned?" Van Gulpendam looked up over the sheet of paper he held in his hand, and fixing his eye on the controller's face which was turned to the light, he said, with an assumed air of dignity: "Mr. Verstork, you really ought to try and cure yourself of the bad habit you seem to have contracted of interrogating your superiors. Believe me that kind of thing makes a very bad impression. I do not mind telling you what warning I have received, not, mind you, because you demand the information; but because I consider it only fair that you should know. It will probably bring you to the conclusion that you had better take back this report and modify it altogether." "Modify my report, Resident?" exclaimed Verstork; but, without noticing the interruption, van Gulpendam continued: "I have been informed that you intend to represent matters in such a light as to make it appear that a successful attempt has been made on the honour of this Javanese girl. "But, Resident," said Verstork, very gravely, "this question concerns a person who is in your service, who is the baboe--I may almost say--the companion, of your own daughter." "And who, as such," said van Gulpendam, interrupting him, "ought to be a person of unblemished character. I quite agree with you there. Unfortunately, she is nothing of the kind. Only a few days ago she was roaming about outside the house for the whole night, and then came in with a long rigmarole about a forcible abduction of which she pretended to have been the victim. Now again, for the second time, she is out at night, and this time she is found in the possession of opium. She is the daughter of a smuggler--you know that as well as I do, seeing that on Saturday last there was a murder committed in her father's house, of which, luckily, you sent me timely notice. She is engaged to be married to another opium smuggler; and now it has been proved that she is a smuggler herself. At present she is safe under lock and key, and I am glad of it, as it will spare me the trouble of driving the brazen-faced slut out of my premises." "But, Resident," resumed Verstork, as soon as his chief paused for a moment to take breath, "when we came running up to her cries for help, she was naked, bleeding, her hair dishevelled. Everything in fact pointed to--" "A desperate resistance to the police," broke in van Gulpendam. "I know all about that. Did you examine her?" "No, I did not." "Very well, that examination I have ordered the medical authorities to hold, and see there," continued the Resident, as he looked out of the window, "why, unless I am mistaken, that is the carriage of the chief medical officer now stopping at the gate! We shall soon get to the bottom of this business." Almost immediately after this the chief constable came in to announce the arrival of the Surgeon General. The latter advanced to the Resident's chair, shook hands very ceremoniously, and then went through the same process, but much more familiarly, with the Controller. "Ha, Verstork--you here?" he said. Before, however, the Controller had time to reply, the Resident, turning to the doctor, said: "Take a seat, doctor--well?--" "No question of any such thing, Resident!" "Indeed--now did I not tell you so? But the girl was wounded they told me." "A few scratches of no importance whatever--mere trifling skin-wounds and a little blood!" "There was therefore no stu--stu--what did you call it?" "Stuprum violentum--Oh, no, no! nothing of the kind. Here is the formal certificate properly filled in--that will be sufficient to satisfy all objections." "Thank you, doctor--much obliged to you." "Now, Resident, I must beg you to excuse me. I must be off at once as I have a number of visits to pay. Good-bye, sir--good-bye, Verstork." "No excuse required, doctor," said van Gulpendam, "don't let me detain you; good-morning!" As soon as the medical officer had disappeared van Gulpendam turned to Verstork and said: "You heard that--didn't you, Mr. Verstork?" "Oh, yes, I heard it; but my conviction is not the least shaken." "It is not?" "No, Resident." "Well, for all that," said van Gulpendam, airily, "I advise you to heave to." "To heave to? I don't understand you," said Verstork, though all the time he understood perfectly. "I will express my meaning in plainer terms," returned van Gulpendam, very deliberately, "I advise you, as I have done already, to take back this report and to modify it." "Why should I do so, Resident? Why do you give me that advice?" "Because, in the first place, the facts mentioned in it are twisted, exaggerated, and represented from a prejudiced and partial point of view." "Resident!" interrupted Verstork. But without heeding him van Gulpendam went on: "In fact that paper reads like a sensational report, which evidently is aimed at attaining some ultimate object. And then again there occur in it passages which most certainly will be highly displeasing to the Government. Here, for instance, is one of them:" The Resident turned over the leaves of the document, and seemed to be looking for a certain passage; having found it he read as follows: "Allow me also to state that my official career of twelve years has taught me that the opium-monopoly is an imperium in imperio; that in order to promote the opium-trade everything the people loves and honours is trampled upon and trodden under foot. The opium-farmer does not trouble himself in the least about police regulations or about penal statutes, his satellites simply enter people's houses and violate the right of domicile; his spies and his policemen--at all events the police which he has in his pay--have no scruples whatever, and pay no respect to anything. A European would make himself liable to severe punishment were he to treat the natives in the manner in which the refuse of mankind, if only they are in the opium-farmer's employ, dares to treat them. These opium-agents have respect neither for the husband, the wife, nor the daughter. In the houses, aye even on the public roads, they strip them, they search them in the most disgusting manner, and never trouble themselves about any protest at all. These scoundrels, sheltering themselves under the impunity which the opium monopoly casts over them, inflict upon the natives the most horrible insults frequently to satisfy their own passions, sometimes merely for the purpose of revenge. A sad proof of this is the treatment to which the Javanese girl, Dalima, has been subjected." The Resident paused here for an instant and fixed a penetrating glance upon his subordinate; but the latter as steadily returned his gaze. "You see," he continued, "when I read such rant as that, then I am forced to suspect"--and here the high functionary significantly tapped his forehead with his finger--"that there is something wrong with you here!" "Resident! exclaimed Verstork, "you are forgetting yourself!" "Not at all, my dear sir, for by writing thus, what do you in fact tell me, in so many words? What but this: that in your districts these domiciliary visits and these searches on the high roads are necessary to prevent the illegal sale of opium. You know, even better than I do, that quite lately there have in your districts been several very ugly revelations. I have only to call to your mind the capture at Moeara Tjatjing, the capture at Kaligaweh in the house of Pak Ardjan, and now again smuggled opium is found with Setrosmito and with his daughter Dalima. Suspicions may perhaps have arisen in my mind that Banjoe Pahit is a hot-bed of smuggling; but now your most intemperate language confirms my worst fears." "Resident!" cried Verstork no longer able to contain himself, "however great is the respect which I am bound to feel for your mature judgment, yet I cannot allow these words of yours to pass without protesting against them. For, in the first place, you insinuate that I have been guilty of neglect of duty with regard to the opium-traffic, and, in the next, you suggest that this neglect of duty on my part has made Banjoe Pahit a hot-bed of the smuggling-trade. I am, however, perfectly well acquainted with the duties which the Order of 1867 imposes upon me, and, allow me to assure you, I am too conscientious to neglect those duties." "My dear Mr. Verstork, I did not intend----" interrupted van Gulpendam. "Give me leave to continue," resumed Verstork; "I have been attacked, I now defend myself against your imputations, it is my duty to do so, and I claim it as my right. I positively and utterly deny that Banjoe Pahit is a hot-bed of smuggling." "Do you intend to tell me then," cried van Gulpendam, "that no smuggling is carried on there?" "I do nothing of the kind, Resident," replied Verstork, "were I to do so that would be saying what I know to be untrue. My district lies right along the open and everywhere accessible coast of the Java sea. The laws which control the illegal traffic in opium are, as you are aware, wholly insufficient; and, even such as they are, we have not the power to carry out the laws effectually. No wonder then that the smugglers--and, as you know, the opium-farmers themselves are the chief offenders--no wonder, I say, that the smugglers make the most of this lax state of things. It stands to reason that it should be so; but if you compare the illegal trade which goes on at Banjoe Pahit with the smuggling in the adjoining districts which lie along the same sea-coast, then I maintain that you will find that my district, far from being as you would have it, a hot-bed of smuggling, contrasts, in that respect, very favourably with the others. Now, as regards the cases to which you have twice alluded, I, as controller of the district, have very carefully investigated them; and I now give it you as my deliberate opinion that the opium discovered at Moeara Tjatjing was put on shore by the boats of the schooner brig Kiem Ping Hin, a vessel which, you know, does not stand in the odour of sanctity; whilst the other two concern but very minute quantities of the drug which assuredly would never have been found at all, had the bandoelans been previously themselves well searched." "That is all very fine, Mr. Verstork," replied van Gulpendam, "but for the present it carries us too much into detail. To come to the point, however, I now again repeat my friendly advice, go about, go about, and take back this report." William Verstork sat there pale as death. For a moment he covered his eyes with his hands as if he would exclude some painful vision, and he reflected. The thought of his mother, of his sisters and brothers, came up vividly before him, and ran like a red-hot iron through his brain. He fully grasped the purport of the advice he had heard. He knew perfectly well that it was not only a counsel, but also a threat, a threat moreover from an all-powerful superior to a helpless subordinate. For one moment--to his honour be it said, it was but for one moment--he hesitated; then his strong natural sense of duty resumed its sway. "Resident," said he in a gentle and low, but yet in a perfectly steady voice, "what would be your opinion of me if I were to give way and follow your counsel? What would you think of me if I were to take back my report? I say nothing now of the violence which I thus would be doing to my sense of common honesty." "Sirrr!" roared van Gulpendam in a passion. "Would you not, in that case, consider me wholly unfit for the position which I at present occupy; would you not feel the deepest contempt for my character, and would not your sense of duty urge you at once to request me to retire from my country's service? At any rate, I know that you could never again, from that moment, place the slightest confidence in me. Is not that true? And yet the position I occupy imperatively demands that I should enjoy the fullest confidence of my superior officer." Mr. van Gulpendam had by this time recovered his temper, he could not help feeling the force of Verstork's words. "You take the whole business," said he in his most conciliatory manner, "much too seriously. Now, just see how I look upon it. Yesterday you gentlemen had a most fatiguing day's hunting. I make no doubt that now and then the pocket-flask was appealed to--of course it was, and very naturally too. After the hunt was over, a jolly sociable dinner, at which strong, heady Haantjes beer and heavy Baour wine--perhaps even generous champagne circulated pretty freely. No harm in that, all that is the most natural thing in the world. Amongst young people one could expect nothing else. Well--in that happy frame of mind you sat down to write your report--that is how I look upon it." "Indeed, Resident," replied Verstork, "that report of mine then seems to have made no impression upon you, than that either I was not right in the head, or that I wrote it under the influence of liquor?" "Mr. Verstork, my dear sir, you have such a queer way of blurting out things. Believe me, I have but one object in view, and that is to prevent you--in your own interest mind you--to commit an act of folly. It is for you to say whether you are prepared to withdraw this report--yes or no. To this I have but a single word to add, and that is: that your entire career depends upon your present decision." Verstork heaved a deep sigh. He saw only too clearly that, in whatever way he might decide to act, his position was an exceedingly difficult one. But for all that he would not retrace one step on the straight path upon which he had entered, which he knew was the path of truth and honour, and very quietly, but very firmly he said: "Resident, my decision is taken. Come what will, I refuse to take back my report." "Is that your final decision?" "It is, Resident." "Now think it well over--is that your last word?" "Resident, it is." "Be it so," said van Gulpendam with apparent resignation, "you will have no one but yourself to blame for the consequences." "I am prepared to meet the consequences, Resident." "Very well, in that case I shall have to send up the paper in its present state to the Governor General--the matter will then be in his hands." Verstork was preparing to rise and take his leave, thinking that the painful interview was at an end. "One moment please, Mr. Verstork," said the Resident. "Just sit down for another few minutes--I have another account to settle with you." "What is that, Resident?" asked the Controller. "Yesterday morning a highly respected inhabitant of the island was publicly insulted and even suffered personal violence, merely because, at your bidding, he bore testimony to the truth. That abuse and that ill-treatment he suffered in your presence and you did not, so far as I am aware, exercise your authority either to prevent it or to put a stop to it." "It was all the work of an instant," replied Verstork; "the words were uttered and the blows were dealt so suddenly and so unexpectedly, that no one--not even you--had you been present--could have interposed. I can assure you that had there been the slightest fear of the offence being repeated, I would have stepped in to prevent it." "I know nothing about all that," said van Gulpendam coldly. "I only know that abusive words were uttered and blows were dealt, while you, the superior officer, stood by. That is how the matter stands. Now if I could only have suggested to the authorities that our young hunters were in a state of excitement and that the action was merely one of youthful indiscretion." "No, Resident, not so," exclaimed Verstork, "not at all--not at least under the influence of that particular kind of excitement which you were kind enough to suggest just now." "It was done therefore in cold blood! I am obliged, Mr. Verstork, to take notice of that fact; you see even if I were disposed to be lenient, your own words deprive me of the power of hushing the matter up. All this, I fear, is not much in your favour, sir, and your friend, who seems so ready with his fists, will thank you no doubt for your testimony to his sobriety." "My friend!" cried Verstork, "what has he got to do with all this?" "What has he got to do with it? Why he will find that out soon enough I fear. I have here lying before me a formal accusation, which I hoped I might be able quietly to shelve and say no more about; but now, I must forward it to the authorities. You see, Mr. Verstork, you might have avoided all this unpleasantness." "Ah, Resident," replied Verstork very bitterly, "I begin to see that Mr. Mokesuep has not allowed the grass to grow under his feet. Be all that, however, as it may. If you think that this trifling occurrence must be followed up--very well then, let the law have its course! I shall be the very first to appear as a witness." The Resident uttered a strange short laugh; but made no reply. Verstork rose from his seat. "Have you any further orders, sir?" he said with a formal bow. "None at present, Mr. Verstork." "Then I beg to wish you a very good morning." A slight nod from the Resident, who still kept his seat at his desk, was the only reply to his greeting. The next moment Verstork was walking down the steps of the mansion muttering to himself as he went, "Poor mother, poor sisters!" "Stupid ass," said van Gulpendam to himself. "Yes, an arrant fool indeed! Now that that booby won't come to terms the business will require a little more piloting. Never mind, I have friends in Batavia who know how to get such questions safe into harbour; men who knew how to make General van der Heijden disappear, and who will not think much of this little job. Forward! is the word--at the end of it all there is the 'Virtus Nobilitat.'" A short time after, Verstork sat down to dinner with his friend van Nerekool. The latter was the only one at home since van Rheijn had sent word that pressing business would keep him at the office and that he could therefore not be in to dinner. The two friends were discussing the events of the former day and the result also of the morning's interview with the Resident. The Controller was so utterly downcast and disheartened, that van Nerekool, who himself was not in the best of spirits, yet felt that he must try and cheer him up and put some courage into him. "Come, William, old fellow," he said, "don't hang your head so sadly. You would almost make me think that you repent of the course of action you have taken." "Repent, Charles," cried the other, very sadly and yet without a sign of hesitation. "Repent? no never, if it were all to do again I would, in every respect, act as I have done. But, my poor mother, my poor sisters!" "Don't look at things so darkly," said van Nerekool. "So darkly did you say? Why--the very best thing that can happen is that I shall be transferred to some other place--that I shall be torn out of the sphere of work to which here I have become accustomed." "Well," said Charles, "and suppose that should happen?" "Why, that in itself is already a grave misfortune; you know how expensive moving is in India. Then comes the question, where shall I be sent to? You do not suppose that they will give me a lucrative place. For years and years I shall have to face very serious pecuniary difficulties and, meanwhile, it will be impossible for me to do for my dear family that which it has now so long been my pleasure to do." "Come, come," replied Charles van Nerekool, "cheer up! Even if it comes to the worst, some remedy will be found for that at least--I can promise you so much at least." "But, my dear Charles--that is the smallest misfortune that can happen to me. Every other possibility is simply terrible. Just think--what if they dismissed me from the service altogether?" "Now," said Charles, "you are exaggerating. What in the world have you done to deserve dismissal! On the contrary, you have secured for yourself the esteem and admiration of every honest man." "Honest man!" said Verstork bitterly, "oh you don't know with whom I have to deal!" Van Nerekool's face twitched painfully--he had learned to know something of the man with whom his friend had come into collision. "But," continued he as cheerfully as he could, "but can we not think of some means of warding off the blow? Can we not manage to avoid even the least of these misfortunes?" "Aye," cried Verstork, "that is the very thing I have been cudgelling my brains about?" "Have you any friends at Batavia," asked van Nerekool, "do you know any one there?" "Friends? yes, I know one man, a certain Mr. Reijnaals." "What? Reijnaals--the son-in-law of the member of the Indian Council?" "Yes, that is the man." "Why then he is your man. Come cheer up and let us now together sit down and draw up an accurate account of all that has taken place. That account you will send to Reijnaals. And I also have friends in Batavia who, I think, have some influence. I will write to them. Come let us set to work and begin our battle fearlessly--it is no good moping." So the two friends sat down to their task and when, very late in the afternoon, Edward van Rheijn came home from his office, two letters almost as bulky as parcels, had been sent off by the mail. Van Rheijn looked weary and care-worn. "You are very late," said van Nerekool--"have you been very busy?" "Yes, very busy," was the brief reply. "I am tired out and am going to lie down a bit." "Anything particular?" "No, nothing very particular; but plenty of work." "What about?" asked van Nerekool. "Excuse me," replied van Rheijn putting his fingers to his lips, "they are office-secrets which I am not at liberty to reveal." With these words he involuntarily cast a pitying look on William Verstork. CHAPTER XXII. A SALE AT BANJOE PAHIT. On a Saturday evening, about a fortnight after, a great number of young people were assembled in the open air at the round table before the verandah of Concordia, the club at Santjoemeh. It was a gala-night and consequently all the élite of Santjoemeh had turned out. The gentlemen were for the most part inside the club-house, or strolling about within the grounds, the ladies, either on foot or reclining in elegant carriages, were promenading and enjoying the splendid evening which the full moon, at nine o'clock high up in the heavens, rendered still more delightful, and listening to the excellent music of the band. Within the club-house were seated some elderly ladies and gentlemen, gravely and solemnly playing a game at cards; the young people lounged in the front gallery, while the gayer and more restless spirits among them sought the open air and were, as we said above, grouped round the table in front of the outer gallery. There they found themselves in full view of the ladies whose glances they were glad to receive and ready to repay with interest. "Look yonder," cried one of this group, "there goes pretty little Celine with her mother and her aunt!" "Yes," replied another, "and Hermance on horseback; I think her a much prettier girl." "I say, look out! there comes the Resident's carriage." "Aye, I see with fair Laurentia. She is no doubt coming to take a hand. Just look how attentive van Rheijn is to her. Quite the gallant--he is helping her down--now he offers his arm!" "Of course! the njonja of Kandjeng toean Resident!" "You may say what you like but she is a monstrous fine woman--I envy that fellow Edward!" "I grant you--she is a splendid woman--but she is not a patch upon her daughter." "You are right there," cried another. "By the way where can nonna Anna have got to? One sees her nowhere now." "I am told she is gone on a visit to a friend--they say to spend a few weeks with the wife of the Assistant Resident of Karang Anjer." "What Karang Anjer in Bagelen? That is a deuce of a way off! Is there anything wrong with her?" "Why, don't you know? Van Nerekool has proposed and been refused--and it appears that until Charles can get some other appointment elsewhere, the Resident wants to keep his daughter out of the way." "What do you say?" asked another, "Charles van Nerekool going away--what in the world is that for?" Just then Grenits, who had been sitting some time in the reading-room of the Club, came up to the group of young men with a newspaper in his hand. "Good evening, Theodoor!" was the general cry; for the young merchant was very much liked by all, and exceedingly popular among the members. "Have you got any news that you are walking about with the Santjoemeh Herald?" "Listen to me, gentlemen," said Grenits as he slowly unfolded his paper and began to read: "'Messrs. Gladbach and Co., will sell by public auction on Monday the 24th inst., the whole of the Furniture and Effects belonging to William Verstork, Esq., Controller at Banjoe Pahit. The principal items include: seats, rocking and easy chairs, tables, marble-topped consoles, mirrors, paintings, lamps of all descriptions, terra-cotta statuettes, awnings, screens, bedsteads and bedroom furniture complete--wash-stands, wardrobes, linen-presses, cupboards, kitchen and stable furniture--all in excellent preservation and as good as new. Further a splendid collection of plants such as roses, crotons, ferns, &c., in pots and ornamental tubs. One Bengal cow with calf in full milk, a considerable quantity of poultry; turkeys, geese, ducks, fowls and pigeons. Several carriages all nearly new--a well-trained saddle horse, a pair of iron-grey carriage horses, a pair ditto, black Battakkers. Messrs. Gladbach & Co. are prepared to supply full particulars, catalogues and conditions of sale. Nota Bene. On Monday next from 7.30 to 8.30 carriages will start from the green at Santjoemeh to convey intending purchasers to and from Banjoe Pahit free of cost.'" As Grenits concluded, his hearers looked at one another in some surprise. "Come, that's not a bad idea," said one, "that free conveyance is a capital dodge." "Verstork going to leave!" cried another. "Where is he off to--it seems he is going to sell even his saddle-horse." "He is going to Atjeh," replied Grenits. "He won't want a horse there." "To Atjeh! why that is impossible" cried another, "the army is in charge there, there can be no vacancy in that place for a civilian like Verstork!" "I know nothing at all about it--I can only tell you what William has told me. But, in order that no mistake may arise, allow me to tell you gentlemen that my friend Verstork knows nothing whatever about the free conveyances to Banjoe Pahit, that is entirely my doing, about which I have not consulted him. I alone am responsible for that addition to the advertisement." "I see," laughed one of the company, "you do not want the thing to hang fire." "Very likely not," said Grenits coolly. "But," asked another, "why is Verstork to be removed, and to Atjeh, of all places in the world?" Grenits shrugged his shoulders but made no reply. "Why, don't you know?" cried another, "it is all about that affair with Lim Ho! You have heard of the story of Lim Ho and the pretty baboe Dalima?" "Aye--I know now--when Lim Ho so nobly resisted temptation--at least so says our Surgeon-major." "Yes," added another voice, "and when our friend Grenits boxed somebody's ears." "Ah, yes--Muizenkop did catch it--I say what has come of that business?" "He has brought an action against me," shortly replied Grenits. "Has he? The brute! But how do you know that, Theodoor?" "Why," said Grenits, "he has served me with a summons." "Ai--! that means a few days' free lodging for you, my friend. Well, never mind, we will come and look you up now and then--won't we, gentlemen?" "To be sure we will," was the general chorus. "Time enough to think of that," said Grenits. "If I am locked up I shall expect to see you, my friends. But just at present we have something more serious to attend to. About that sale--I invite you all to put in an appearance on Monday next." "That Grenits always has an eye to business," said one of the young men with a laugh. "Gentlemen," continued Theodoor most gravely, "this is no joking matter. It concerns an innocent man who hitherto has maintained a mother and sisters entirely dependent upon his aid--and the question is whether he will, in the future, be able to continue to give them that assistance?" "Oh, is that it!" was the cry all round, "then we shall all be there--you may depend upon us!" "Yes, you may depend upon every one of us!" "Thank you," said Grenits, "that's a bargain." Yes! William Verstork was removed from Banjoe Pahit and was to be sent to Atjeh! The detailed report which he had dispatched to Reijnaal had been of no avail. He might perhaps have over-estimated his friend's influence--or, perhaps, that friend did not much like to meddle in the matter; at all events nothing came of Verstork's appeal. The letters also which van Nerekool had written to Batavia led to nothing. He did receive a kind of answer; but they were only a few vague and half intelligible sentences. What really happened in Batavia was this. On a certain Friday--the usual day on which the Council of India meet--the assembled members were greatly surprised at seeing the Governor General suddenly appear in their midst, a thing which very seldom happened. "Gentlemen," he said, after the customary ceremonial greetings had been exchanged, "Gentlemen, a very serious complaint against a first-class Controller has been forwarded to me by the Resident at Santjoemeh. I have also received a document from the subordinate officer, containing his defence to the charges made by his superior. This document directly contradicts many of the Resident's statements, and it is for that reason that I am desirous of having the advantage of your opinion. Now the Resident at Santjoemeh is a most zealous and meritorious public servant, thoroughly devoted to his country's interests; but it must be said that in the discharge of his duties, and especially in his conduct towards his subordinates, he is frequently too absolute and peremptory, and allows his feelings to get the better of him. I must, at the same time, however, confess that even thus he never loses sight of the common-weal. Such being the case in this matter also, it would not have been difficult for me, I think, so to settle the dispute as to satisfy both parties without in any way interfering with the superior officer's authority. Unfortunately, however, the question is a more complicated one. The difference between the Resident and his Controller is one which seems to implicate the opium-farmer at Santjoemeh, and which threatens to bring us into conflict with him. I think indeed I may go a step further, and that I am justified in saying that a strict investigation, such as the controller insists upon, would bring to light certain transactions which would compel us altogether to exclude the present farmer Lim Yang Bing from the approaching contest for the opium monopoly. Now, in strict justice, that exclusion would no doubt be highly desirable; but we must not lose sight of the fact that this Lim Yang Bing is the wealthiest Chinaman in Santjoemeh, that he stands at the head of the most considerable company in that district, and that he thus exercises almost absolute control over his countrymen there. The consequence, therefore, of excluding him from the coming opium competition, would be a very considerable fall in the amount which, at present, it is expected to realise. And that, in days like the present!--Yes, gentlemen, I repeat it, at a time like the present!--Just now I received a telegram in cypher from the Hague, which tells me that the estimate of the Colonial Secretary has found no favour in our house of Representatives; because it is thought that his estimate is much too low, and that expenses have not been sufficiently kept down. That telegram further states that one of you gentlemen will most probably soon be invited to take the place of our present Colonial Secretary. Well--whoever he may be, I cannot say that I envy him the distinction. It is quite certain, however, that the first thing he will be expected to do, is to drive up the revenue to as high a figure as possible, and, for that purpose, the opium monopoly, in spite of what men may think or say about it, seems to me to be the only available means. In order, therefore, not to make the task of the future minister more difficult than it must of necessity be, it is my opinion that it would be good policy just at present to protect the opium farmer. The Resident of Santjoemeh tells me that the withdrawal of Lim Yang Bing from the competition will make a difference in the revenue of at least six or seven hundred thousand guilders." At the mention of these figures, the eyes of the youngest member of the Council sparkled with unwonted fire, and, in his zeal for the public exchequer, forgetting the usual etiquette, he interrupted the Governor General before the latter had quite finished his speech. "With your Excellency's leave," said he, jumping up from his seat with much animation, "I would remark, and I feel confident that, in what I am about to say, I shall but utter the sentiments of all my colleagues, that under circumstances like the present, we ought not to hesitate to adopt any measures which may serve to make the finances of the country correspond to the demands of the times. Any proposal which may promote such equilibrium cannot fail of ready acceptance from a board such as ours, which, inspired by the highest patriotic feelings, is ever prepared to make any sacrifices for the welfare of Holland." The appeal was so shameless that its very grossness insured its success. The members of the Council bowed their heads in acquiescence, and the lips, which could have uttered such terrible truths, under the influence, doubtless, of the enervating effect of the tropical sun, now merely opened sleepily to utter an obsequious: "Yes, your Excellency!" The Governor General, who at once perceived that he had gained his point, then said with a sigh: "In that case my course with the Controller is clear. I am much obliged to you, gentlemen, for your counsel." The next moment the drum was rolling at the main guard, and the men turned out to present arms to the king's representative as he drove away to his palace on the Koningsplein, well satisfied, no doubt, that he had performed a signal service to his country, if not to humanity at large. In four days' time William Verstork received the order of his removal to Atjeh, and, what was perhaps more galling still, along with it a letter from the Director of the Home Department, in which that official expressed the hope that, in his capacity of Controller, he would make the best use of his undoubted abilities and of his great knowledge of the native character to aid and assist the military authorities in their arduous task of pacifying the population. And, the director went on to say: "Allow me also to cherish the expectation that, in the future, you will exhibit a greater amount of tact; and to suggest that you should show more deference and respect to your superiors; for, after this plain warning, you can expect no further indulgence." "Well, Charles," cried Verstork, as he flung the letter upon the table, "what do you think of that?" "I think it is a burning shame!" replied van Nerekool, his voice trembling with indignation. "You see, my dear fellow," continued Verstork, "this is the most favourable result we could anticipate. Removed to Atjeh! that is to say struck off from the list of the Home Department of Java and Madura. It is simply a degradation. Are these the principles which animate our rulers? The state of society out here is rotten--rotten to the core!" "No, no!" cried van Nerekool, with animation, "don't say that--there is one part of that society which is sound and undefiled, and which stands high above the tricks and paltry intrigues of the ruling powers--and that is the judicature. The power of the law will succeed in bridling and subduing the monster of injustice and tyranny." Charles van Nerekool spoke these words with all the enthusiasm of truth--he was fully persuaded of the truth of his assertion. Verstork looked at his friend and a bitter smile came over his troubled countenance. He did not, however, say a single word, he would not disturb the day-dream of his friend--the future, he knew, would soon enough dissipate his fond illusions. Banjoe Pahit, that quiet and secluded dessa, was, on Monday morning, the scene of the greatest excitement. At the gate of the Controller's house a Javanese stood striking measured blows on the gong, and that unwonted noise brought the entire population around him. Within the house, Grenits, Grashuis, and van Nerekool were busily employed helping Verstork to set out the furniture, which, presently, was to be offered for sale, to the best advantage. In one place a writing-desk had to be placed in a more prominent position--in another a cupboard or table had to be re-arranged. Pictures also and statuettes had to be placed in the most favourable light; for Grenits, with the true eye of a commercial man, knew that, next to advertising, a tasteful exhibition of the articles would attract the attention of the buyers. At length all was considered in readiness, and it was with a kind of mournful satisfaction that the friends walked through the apartments, surveying and admiring the arrangement in which they had borne a principal share. In the back galleries especially, where the glass, the crystal and the dinner-services were displayed, their finishing touches had been remarkably successful. Everything looked so neat, and in such perfect order, that Grenits could not help exclaiming: "No one would think that these are bachelor's quarters! William, I can promise you an excellent sale." Meanwhile the gong kept on clanging incessantly. Just then a couple of carriages came rolling up to the Controller's house. Out of one of these stepped the Regent of Santjoemeh, and he at once walked up to the European gentlemen. After the customary salutations: "Well, Radhen Mas Toemenggoeng," said Grashuis hugely pleased at seeing the Javanese chief arriving thus early, "you are coming, I hope, to buy a good lot!" "Perhaps, sir, but money is scarce," replied the Regent with a smile. "Never mind that, Radhen Mas," laughed Grenits, "you can buy on tick." The cautious old chief smiled and shook his head, but had no time to reply; for by this time the second conveyance, a capacious drag, had discharged its load which consisted of a member of the firm of Gladbach and Co. and the whole of his staff of clerks, &c. The agent walked up to Verstork, shook hands with him and whispered: "Very bad news, Controller!" "What is the matter?" asked Verstork. "The Chinamen at Santjoemeh have been ordered not to come to your sale." "Who gave that order?" "I don't know," replied the agent shrugging his shoulders. This was bad news indeed; for the Chinamen, if they happen to be well disposed towards the owner, are generally very brisk bidders. Their abstention indeed threatened to be very disastrous. Verstork heaved a deep sigh as he ran his eye over his possessions which now bid fair to go for an old song. He sighed, not because he particularly regretted the probable loss; but at the thought of his dear ones yonder who-- But fortunately he had no time for indulging in melancholy forebodings, for the carriages now succeeded one another with amazing rapidity. Drags, landaus, waggonettes, dog-carts, and spring-carts, came flying up the drive and began setting down their loads at the entrance of the Controller's house. A great number of horsemen too and pedestrians from the estates round about, began to flock in; and the oppassers on duty found it as much as they could do to keep the carriages in line, to put up the saddle-horses and to usher the gentlemen into the house. All ranks of European society in Java were there represented; landowners, tenants, coffee planters, rice-planters, sugar and indigo manufacturers, merchants, insurance agents, shipping agents, solicitors, notaries, barristers, judges, officers of the Army and Navy, in fact it seemed as if the whole of Santjoemeh had migrated bodily to Banjoe Pahit. In the capital all business was at a standstill; there was not a single conveyance, not a single spring-cart or carriage to be got there. The Resident van Gulpendam noticed that these vehicles did not occupy their usual stands, and was told that they were all off to Banjoe Pahit. He smiled at the information; but it was on the wrong side of his mouth. Still the gong went on giving forth its harsh discordant sounds. The employés of the Home office and its clerks and writers, who were employed in the Residential office, were conspicuous by their absence. Not one of them had been able to get leave for an excursion to Banjoe Pahit. The Javanese population, in their usual retiring way, timidly crowded round the animated scene. These poor people most assuredly did not come to buy, they were impelled by curiosity just to get a peep at the interior of a European's dwelling house. Treêng, treêng went the gong incessantly. When the company had pretty well assembled, and compliments had been duly exchanged, Verstork left the place. He could not bear to be present and see his household gods dispersed. So he went to the Mohammedan priest, with whom he had some matters to settle before he left the dessa, and after the sale was over he purposed to return to Santjoemeh with van Nerekool, Grashuis and Grenits.-- No sooner had he left, than the representative of Gladbach & Co. whispered a few words to the auctioneer. The latter made a sign to one of his servants. Hereupon the gong began to clash more horribly than before, a shower of blows fell on the metal disc. This infernal din lasted for a space of ten minutes, and then suddenly ceased altogether. The proceedings now began. The sale was opened in the front gallery in which a very fine collection of flowers in ornamental pots and tubs, were tastefully arranged in groups of a dozen, on the steps which led up to the verandah. These were the first lots to be disposed of. "Twelve pots of flowers!" began the auctioneer, "who will make a bid for them?" "One guilder!" cried someone in the crowd. "One guilder bid, one guilder!" cried the auctioneer in the usual drawl. "One and a half!" "One and a half," repeated the auctioneer. "Two guilders! Three guilders! Four guilders! Five guilders!" came the bids in quick succession. "Five guilders! Five guilders bid!" cried the auctioneer, "Who bids higher? Five guilders are bid," drawled the auctioneer, as he turned his head and stared hard at the last bidder but one. "Eight guilders!" cried the latter. "Eight guilders!" cried the echo, "who bids higher?" Then the fire opened again. "And a quarter," cried a voice. "Eight and a half!" "Eight three quarters!" "Nine guilders!" "Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen!" "Thirteen guilders," cried the auctioneer, "who bids more than thirteen?" "I wouldn't mind," cried a voice, "if I only knew how to get those confounded pots home to Santjoemeh." "Never mind that," shouted another, "I will take them for you in my cart." "Thirteen, twice!" said the auctioneer. "Fourteen, fifteen," went the bids. "Fifteen!--once!" said the auctioneer. "Twenty guilders!" shouted a voice which rang out above all the noise. "A fine bid," murmured Grenits. "Twenty guilders, once--Twenty, twice--Twenty for the third and last time!" Bang! down came the hammer. "Who is the buyer?" asked the clerk. "I am," replied an officer. He was an elderly man--a first Lieutenant of Infantry. "Who is I?" asked the auctioneer from his perch. "I, Langeveld, first Lieutenant of Infantry." "Mr. Langeveld, do you pay cash down?" asked the auctioneer. "Cash down?" asked the officer, quite surprised, "what do you mean? Your office always gives three months' credit." "Only to those whose pay is above two hundred and fifty guilders," said the man. "Two hundred and fifty guilders? Whose order is that?" "It is the order of the superintendent of sales at Santjoemeh," replied the auctioneer. "The Resident," muttered van Nerekool, "a most infamous trick!" "Do you pay ready money? No?" continued the auctioneer, "then you will have to find some security, or else the lot will have to be put up again." The officer, who was a man of unblemished name and character, turned fiery red at this wanton and unexpected insult. "Lieutenant Langeveld, I will be your security!" cried van Nerekool. The officer bowed his thanks. The second lot of flowers, however, which was much finer than the first, did not fetch a rix-dollar. The shameful dodge at headquarters evidently had its effect on the spirits of the buyers. Grenits saw the drift of all this in a moment. He held a hasty consultation with van Nerekool and a few landowners who were standing by him. Just as the third dozen of pots were being put up, a burly, broad-shouldered gentleman cried out: "A word with you, Mr. Auctioneer. A disgraceful trick is being played here--I never saw such a dirty thing done before--a trick which Mr. van Nerekool, Mr. Grenits and myself are determined to frustrate. For every gentleman who wishes to buy at this sale, and who may happen to fall under this novel condition of having to pay ready money, we will stand security." "Bravo! bravo!" was the general shout. "Does that satisfy you, Mr. Auctioneer?" The man nodded assent. He could not do otherwise. This incident served to rouse a general enthusiasm; the third lot of flowers brought eighty guilders; the last no less a sum than two hundred and fifty. True it is that before this last lot was put up Grenits had cried: "Crotons! magnificent crotons! The Adal-adal! (Croton Tiglium); the Camilla (Rothlera tinctoria); the Kamillakkian (Croton Corylifolius) and the wax-bearing Croton (Croton sebiferus)! Who will bid for them? I bid sixty guilders!" A cheer followed his words; the game went on merrily--seventy--eighty--ninety guilders! Higher and higher still went the bids, until the two hundred and fifty guilders were reached. The lucky man who secured the lot received quite an ovation, just as if he had drawn the first prize in the State lottery. That set the ball a-rolling. Chairs, tables, mats, lamps, wardrobes, mirrors, pictures, all went for the same fabulous prices. At last it became a mad charge in which every one seemed bent on securing something, no matter at what cost. Long faces were drawn indeed; but it was not because the bids were too high but because the prices were wholly out of the reach of some pockets. It was in the back gallery, however, that the excitement rose to its highest pitch. "Twelve liqueur glasses!" shouted the auctioneer. They were very ordinary little glasses--in Holland they might be worth a penny a-piece--in India they might cost perhaps five or six pence. "Twelve liqueur glasses!" again shouted the man. "Out of which the bitters taste remarkably good!" cried Grashuis, "I know that by experience." "We might try some," cried a voice; "yonder in that stand I see a decanter of bitters." A cheer followed this proposal--a servant was already busy pouring out the liqueur. "What kind of bitters is that?" "Maagdbitter," said a sienjo. "Pahit prawan," translated an interpreter. A thundering hurrah greeted that splendid attempt at translation. "I say, Kees, you must be made interpreter--sworn interpreter!" shouted one of the bystanders. "Here's to you; I drink your health in pahit prawan!" "One rixdollar!" cried Grenits. "Three! Four! Five! Six! came the bids, in rapid succession. The auctioneer could not turn his head fast enough to catch the eye of the bidders. "Six!" at length he managed to exclaim. "Seven! Eight!--" "Ten!" cried Grenits. "Ten offered," droned the auctioneer with the utmost indifference. This was not the first strange scene he had witnessed in his profession. "Ten!" cried he, "won't any gentleman go higher than ten." "Come, come, that is pretty fair," said a voice. "Ten once, ten twice, ten for the third and last time!" Bang! down came the hammer. "An expensive set," grumbled some one in the crowd, "a hundred and twenty guilders--the bitters must be good at that price." "Especially pahit prawan!" "Well, give us another glass." The last lot put up for sale--a gajoeng, that is a simple cocoa-nut vessel with a handle used for throwing water over the body in the bath, fetched five and twenty guilders. The friends of Verstork might well congratulate each other. They had worked to some purpose. When half an hour later the clerk posted up the total receipts, the house very nearly came down with the deafening cheers. "Nine thousand seven hundred and forty guilders!" exclaimed Verstork, when he heard the result of the sale; "why, the whole kit was not worth three thousand. Thanks, many thanks, my friends." He shook hands warmly with van Nerekool, with Grashuis, with van Beneden and with Grenits. "You have saved me many an hour of dreadful anxiety," he whispered to them. Eight days after, the Controller was standing, in excellent spirits, on the deck of the Tamborah which was to convey him to his new abode. Full of courage and full of hope, he took leave of the trusty friends who accompanied him to the steamer. "Once again," he cried to them from the deck, "thanks, a thousand thanks!" Grenits had helped him to realise as profitably as possible the proceeds of the sale, and when he reached Batavia he had sent a considerable portion of the money to his mother, recommending her to be very careful of it, as he might most probably be obliged, in consequence of his removal from Banjoe Pahit, to diminish the amount of his monthly remittances. When the Tambora was nearly on the horizon there were still handkerchiefs waving farewell to him from the shore-boat. Verstork still kept on deck gazing at the shore. "Fine noble fellows," he muttered as he wiped away a tear. CHAPTER XXIII. THE COURT ADJOURNED. On a certain day, not very long after the events narrated in the former chapters, a carriage drew up before the pandoppo of the Regent's house situated on the green of Santjoemeh, where the members of the judicial bench of that district used to hold their court. Out of the carriage there stepped a gentleman who looked with some surprise at the concourse of people which had gathered around the house; but who, nevertheless, with calm and dignified air, walked up the steps which led to the interior. That gentleman was Mr. Zuidhoorn, the president of the district-court, who, on the day appointed, had come to open the session. The crowd assembled in front of the Regent's pandoppo consisted chiefly of Javanese, a circumstance which could not but attract the notice of the judicial functionary, inasmuch as the native population, which was formerly so fond of frequenting the courts held under the Wariengien trees of the village green by its native chiefs, now shows the greatest disinclination to enter the Dutch courts of justice. As a rule, the Javanese is never seen there except he be fettered or under the escort of a couple of policemen--that is to say, either as a prisoner, as a criminal, or as a witness. Among the crowd some Chinamen also were conspicuous, and all were evidently awaiting with anxiety an event of no common interest. "What is the meaning of this concourse, Mr. Thomasz?" asked Mr. Zuidhoorn of the deputy-recorder, whom he met as he entered the pandoppo. The latter, who was a half-caste, looked up at his chief with a puzzled expression of countenance. "You stare at me very strangely," continued Mr. Zuidhoorn. "What can have brought all this crowd of people together?" "They are curious, I suppose, to know," replied the recorder, not without hesitation, "how it will end." "How will what end?" "Well, sir, what will be the result of the session." "The session?" repeated Mr. Zuidhoorn, surprised in his turn, "is there anything very remarkable about it?" The recorder evidently felt very ill at ease. "Sir," he stammered, "you seem not to know what has taken place." "No, I don't," replied Mr. Zuidhoorn, "what is the matter?" Mr. Thomasz was getting more and more nervous. His face, which was very sallow, began to assume a greenish yellow complexion. Mr. Zuidhoorn seeing the man's confusion cried out: "Speak up for goodness sake, man, speak up!" "The native members--of the council, sir--have received a letter from the Resident--" he managed to stammer. "A letter--!" exclaimed Mr. Zuidhoorn--"from the Resident! What in the world about?" "It was a letter, sir, forbidding them to attend this session." "Forbidding them to attend!" exclaimed Mr. Zuidhoorn, now fairly astonished. "Why, Mr. Thomasz, have you taken leave of your senses?" "No, sir, indeed I have not," replied the recorder with a painful smile. "You question me and I am obliged to answer--and further--" "Well, what else? Out with it!" "The Chinese assessors and the head-djaksa have received similar communications--so that--" "So that what?" cried the president impatiently. "So that there will be no court held to-day since you will be the only member present." "Is it possible?" exclaimed the president. "I tell you what, Mr. Thomasz, my carriage is still at the door, you jump into it and drive off at once to all the native members, and also to the Chinese assessors, and to the djaksa, and tell them that I order them to come here without delay. To-day is the assize-day, and I am determined that the cases shall be heard." "I will do as you bid," replied the recorder. "You are my superior officer." "Very good--make haste." As soon as the man had left, Mr. Zuidhoorn began pacing up and down the pandoppo in great excitement. "It is a monstrous thing!" cried he to himself, "I could not--I dared not--suppose that they would carry matters so far! Yet I ought to have foreseen something of the kind! Yes--I am a great fool--why! when a few weeks ago I received a request from the Resident to alter the order of the cases, a request with which I refused to comply, then I suspected that there was some scheme on foot; but that they would have adopted so arbitrary a course as this! A few days ago even, when I received a written statement from the Resident informing me that I was no longer competent to preside over the court, because I had obtained leave of absence, even then I could not suppose that they would have recourse to so high-handed an infraction of the law. Yesterday the Resident informed me by word of mouth that he intended to avail himself of the right of presiding in person; but I made no reply, for I looked upon his words as a merely formal notice, and never dreamt that anyone could be foolish enough to tamper so offensively with the regulations of the court. Yes! for a most stupid thing it is thus to enforce an old and obsolete rule, which was made when, as yet, there was no idea of any individual being specially appointed as President of the Sessions. But--what can be the drift of all this? What can it all mean?" he asked himself as he paced up and down. His eye lit upon the charge-sheet which the recorder had left lying on the green-baize cover of the table. He took it up and began to read out the cases inscribed upon it, making his remarks upon them as he went on. "M`Bok Bardjo: accused of secretly conveying away coffee! Poor people who are compelled to plant coffee, and are not allowed to drink it; but are obliged to put up with a wretched decoction of coffee-leaves! "Bariedin: charged with wearing in public a civilian's cap--Ridiculous! Those fellows in the Home Department do make fools of themselves--such a trifle is high treason in their eyes. "Sarina: charged with deserting her infant child--that's bad--not so bad however as flinging the poor little thing into the river or the canal as they generally do at home in such cases. "Pak Ardjan: accused--of--opium--smuggling--and wounding--a policeman! Now I think I am coming to it--now a light dawns in upon me; and the next case? "Ardjan: accused--of--opium--smuggling! Ardjan, the future husband of the baboe Dalima!" These two last cases Mr. Zuidhoorn had read so slowly and so deliberately that he seemed almost to spell every syllable; then, for a while, he stood lost in thought, while he put his finger to his forehead. "How could I have forgotten that? And van Nerekool, who so recently talked the whole of this business over with me!--And--the day after to-morrow I must be off to Holland! "Well, no matter, those cases must be disposed of to-day, and they shall be disposed of at any price! I shall see about that!" Yes, the judge would see; but not in the sense in which he meant it; he would see that the court was not to sit at all that day. When he had got thus far in his soliloquy, the door opened, and the Regent of Santjoemeh appeared, and with him came one of the most considerable of the native chiefs of the Residence, Radhen Ngahebi Wirio Kesoemo. They were both members of the court, and it was their turn to be in attendance. They were accompanied by the panghoeloe or priest, carrying the inevitable Koran in his hand. Both the former dignitaries confirmed the statement of the deputy-recorder, and told Mr. Zuidhoorn that the Resident had expressly forbidden them to attend the court on that day. "But," they continued, "since the Kandjeng toean judge has summoned us, we feel it our duty to obey his commands." "But," asked the president, "what reason does the Resident give for this prohibition?" The Regent merely shrugged his shoulders and, very prudently, made no reply. Radhen Ngahebi however said: "Yesterday I called upon the Resident, and then the Kandjeng toean informed me that, after having got leave of absence, you were no longer qualified to take the chair at the sessions; and that it was for that reason he had sent the letter." Mr. Zuidhoorn smiled contemptuously; but, in the presence of natives, he refrained from uttering a single word which might have even a semblance of questioning the authority of the highest official who was the representative of the Dutch power in Santjoemeh. Indeed he scarcely had time to speak, for very soon after the Javanese chiefs and the Chinese assessors also entered the pandoppo. They very cautiously and with infinite circumlocution informed the toean lakkel, thus they pronounced the word "rakker" which signifies judge, that they were not to blame for arriving so late. At length the chief djaksa appeared. He made a ceremonious bow to the chairman and to the other members of the court and said, that he had that very morning been summoned into the presence of the Resident, and that he had, from his lips, received a peremptory order not to attend the court. "However," he continued, "in my capacity of native judge I am under your immediate authority, and I have come to inquire how you wish me to act in this matter." As he spoke he made another deep bow to his superior officer. "Djaksa," replied Mr. Zuidhoorn, "I have no commands whatever to give you. You occupy so high a position that I must leave you to judge for yourself what course you had better pursue. As far as I am concerned, I have most positively made up my mind to carry on the business of the court to-day; and, seeing that our number is now complete, I intend to open the proceedings at once. Gentlemen, please to take your seats." Scarcely, however, had they done so, and just as Mr. Zuidhoorn was in the act of bringing down his presidential hammer and declaring the sessions opened, the back door of the pandoppo was thrown open and the private secretary of the Resident appeared on the threshold. He was in official costume and accompanied by a posse of policemen, one of whom held aloft behind him the Resident's unopened umbrella, in token that the secretary appeared as representative of his chief. Without deigning to offer any greeting, the secretary began: "You, Radhen Mas Toemenggoeng Pringgoe Kesoemo, and you, Radhen Ngahebi Wirio Kesoemo, and you, Panghoeloe Mas Ali Ibrahim, and you, Ong Ang Thay, and Kwee Lie Liang--you have, as members, as priest, and as assessors of this court of justice, received a written order from the Kandjeng toean Resident distinctly forbidding you to attend here on this day. The Kandjeng toean Resident now sends me to inquire what can have induced you to commit so grave an offence as knowingly and deliberately to disobey the command of him who is the direct representative of the Kandjeng toean Governor General, who again in Batavia stands in the place of the Kandjeng toean Radja dari Tana Nederland dan Hindia? Speak, I am prepared to hear what explanation you have to offer for conduct so insubordinate? Be well assured that whatever may be your excuse, the Kandjeng toean Resident will give it his calm and impartial consideration." The deepest silence succeeded this startling address. With the exception of the chairman, the men assembled there seemed annihilated by the secretary's words, they hardly dared to draw a breath, they scarcely ventured to look at one another. They wished the ground would open and swallow them up. How could they have had the audacity of daring to disregard the express command of the Mighty Lord? Their disobedience was indeed flagrant! Would the Kandjeng toean ever forgive them for it? Such were the thoughts which passed through the brains of the fearless and independent judges who were considered fit and proper persons impartially to administer justice to their countrymen. Mr. Zuidhoorn--who thoroughly knew the Javanese character and who had learned to fathom the abject and cringing servility of the native chiefs towards their Dutch masters--Mr. Zuidhoorn, who so often had compared them with the dog that licks the hand of the man that strikes him--looked with compassion on the poor creatures that showed such abject cowardice even when sitting in the very court to which they had been summoned to discharge duties, which, above all other duties, demand perfect fearlessness and independence. This servility, indeed, could hardly be laid to their charge; it was the natural result of the long system of extortion and bullying to which their race had been subjected. Once again the secretary very impatiently asked: "Radhen Mas Toemenggoeng and Radhen Ngahebi, I am still awaiting the answer I am to carry to the Kandjeng toean Resident!" After having looked round and waited a while to see whether any of the chiefs thus addressed would attempt to say anything in justification, Mr. Zuidhoorn, in a most dignified and impressive manner said: "An answer, Mr. Secretary, which I will take upon myself to give you. I, in my capacity of President of this court of Santjoemeh, to whom the members, the priest and the assessors, in all matters relating to this court, are directly subordinate, I, this morning, sent to them my peremptory orders to attend here. The said members and assessors, therefore, are in no wise to blame--they have merely, in this matter, obeyed the commands which I, their superior officer, have issued to them. The entire responsibility rests upon me. Be kind enough, Mr. Secretary, to communicate this my reply to the Resident; and do not, by your presence, any further delay the business of this court." "Mr. Zuidhoorn, after leave of absence has been granted you, you have no right whatever to occupy the chair. I enter my protest against the course of action you have seen fit to adopt; and I call upon you now to resign your place to the Resident who intends this day to preside in person." "Mr. Secretary," replied Mr. Zuidhoorn with the utmost calmness, "it is not my intention to enter into any argument with you about my rights. You will inform the Resident that I shall not resign my seat; and that I intend, to the last moment, to carry out conscientiously the duties of my office. Again I request you to withdraw, in order that the court may proceed with the business it has before it." "Mr. Zuidhoorn!" cried the secretary, in a threatening tone of voice, "mind what you are about!" "The entire responsibility rests upon my shoulders, Mr. Secretary. Usher, clear the court, and see that it be not further disturbed!" Mr. van Gulpendam flew into a foaming rage when he received the message. In a towering passion he strode up and down the front-gallery of the Residence, the secretary striving like a dog to keep up with him, which his corpulence however would hardly allow him to do. "What insolence!" shouted the great man, "what insolence! He shall pay for it! But--what to do now? Meanwhile the trials are going on, and we shall have an acquittal no doubt. Those law chaps are capable of anything! I know what I shall do--a company of soldiers! I shall have them driven out of the place at the point of the bayonet like so many sea-mews!" He rushed into his office--forgetting, in his anger, that such Napoleonic measures are not exactly suited to the taste of the Dutch people--to send a note to the officer in command of the troops requesting him to come to him at once. As soon as he had written his precious epistle he bellowed out "Oppas! Oppas!!" in tones so stentorian that all the policemen and the whole staff of servants on the premises came flying to the spot, thinking that some dreadful accident had happened. Even the sentries, who were on duty, heroically brought their muskets to the charge against some imaginary foe; and, in this martial attitude, resolutely stood awaiting the things which might happen. Fair Laurentia was at the time very busy in the pandoppo discussing with her kokkie the mysteries of a fricasseed chicken. She also started up and came flying into the office while, with trembling hand, she sought to adjust her kabaja. "What is the matter? What is the matter?" she cried. But, before the Resident had time to reply, and before he had despatched his note to the officer in command of the garrison, the deputy-recorder walked up the steps of the gallery. The moment he saw him, van Gulpendam knew that he was the bearer of some tidings, and, not able to restrain his impatience, he ran to meet him, impetuously crying out, "What is the matter, Mr. Thomasz?" "Resident, I have come to inform you that the court has risen and stands adjourned for a week." "What? adjourned? After what my secretary told me? Have the members refused to sit? Splendid fellows those natives!" "No, no, Resident, by your leave--the chiefs did not refuse at all." "Didn't they? Then how did it come about?" "I will tell you, Resident. When Mr. Zuidhoorn was about to open the proceedings and when he spoke the words: 'Usher, clear the court and see that it be not further disturbed,' he found that the usher had disappeared altogether." "The usher disappeared?" "Yes, Resident, he had got out of the way." Van Gulpendam's face beamed with satisfaction. "But," said he, "that would hardly put a stop to the proceedings?" The secretary here interposed and said: "As I was leaving the court I ordered the usher to write, from my dictation, a paper summoning Mr. Zuidhoorn and all the members of the court to clear out of the premises." "Sharp practice that!" remarked van Gulpendam. "Do you not approve of my conduct, Resident?" "Of course, most certainly I do; but what took place next?" "The poor devil of an usher was so utterly dumfoundered that he could not hold a pen, and it was no use therefore to dictate anything to him. I then gave him the message to deliver verbally." "Yes--and then?" asked van Gulpendam. "Then I came away to tell you." "But I suppose," continued van Gulpendam--"you, Mr. Thomasz, will be able to tell us what happened?" "When the usher again entered the court," resumed the deputy-recorder, "he stammered forth a few incoherent and utterly unintelligible words, to which Mr. Zuidhoorn did not pay the slightest heed. He brought his hammer down, declared the session open, and turned to the chief djaksa to request him to read out the first charge." "What case was it, Mr. Thomasz?" asked van Gulpendam with some curiosity. "Oh, it was some case of coffee-stealing, sir, some old woman--" "Oh yes, all right, go on!" "Yes," continued the deputy-recorder, "Mr. Zuidhoorn might well look--and he did open his eyes uncommonly wide, for the chief djaksa, who, a moment or two before, was sitting by his side close to him,--he too had vanished." "Vanished?" Mr. van Gulpendam burst out laughing. "I can picture to myself Mr. Zuidhoorn's face!" he cried. "Mr. Thomasz, you are a capital story-teller. Do go on--run off the log-line." The deputy-recorder continued: "They looked high and low for the djaksa; but he could not be found. So one of the vice-djaksas had to be summoned. It was a curious thing however, that, although a few minutes before two or three were present in the pandoppo, they now had the greatest trouble to lay hands on a single one." "Oh!" interrupted van Gulpendam, "they managed to get one in tow at last?" "Yes, Resident." "What a pity!" The exclamation escaped from the Resident's lips in spite of himself. "There was no harm done, however," continued Mr. Thomasz. "How so? Go on with your tale." "Well, sir, when Mr. Zuidhoorn told the vice-djaksa that he called upon him to fill the place of the absent official, the poor fellow most suddenly was seized with a violent fit of colic!" "A fit of colic!" laughed van Gulpendam. "What fun, what fun!" "Yes, and so severe was the poor fellow's attack that he made the most extraordinary grimaces--in fact it literally doubled him up." "Oh how rich--how very rich!" cried van Gulpendam still laughing immoderately. "And, at length--with both hands to his stomach--was compelled to rush out of the room." "With both hands!" shouted van Gulpendam, "come anchor, anchor! Thomasz, you will be the death of me." The deputy-recorder looked around with much gravity--never before in all his official career had he had such success as a low comedian, and, thinking he might venture further, he resumed: "Aye--but--Resident, that was not the funniest part of it." "Not? well give way--full speed ahead!" "No, Resident, the funniest part of the whole business was Mr. Zuidhoorn's face. That's what you ought to have seen. He sat there, with his mouth wide open, scowling over his spectacles which hung down low on his nose, after the retreating figure of the colic-stricken djaksa; and, in his loose gown, he looked for all the world like an old gingham umbrella in a cover much too big for it." "That will do! that will do! Mr. Thomasz," grinned van Gulpendam, "you have told your story splendidly!" The deputy-recorder made a low bow in acknowledgment of the compliment. "And what happened next?" "Why then, Resident, nothing could happen--there was no djaksa, no usher of the court--so the session could not go on. The members present were smiling and were beginning to look at their watches; evidently they had had quite enough of sitting there to no purpose. So Mr. Zuidhoorn had no option--he brought down his hammer and adjourned the court for a week. Thereupon I hurried off at once to bring you the news." "And capitally you have done it, Mr. Thomasz! I am much obliged to you--at the proper time I will repay your zeal." As soon as the deputy-recorder had left, van Gulpendam turned to his secretary who, with folded arms, had stood listening to the conversation. "Our object, you see, has been attained--now to take advantage of the fair tide. You must take care that all the documents are ready in good time--next week I purpose to take the chair myself at the assizes." "Everything shall be in readiness, sir," replied the secretary; "but will you allow me to make one remark?" "By all means, secretary--fire away!" "The whole of this business seems to me to be a very serious game." "How so?" exclaimed van Gulpendam, "do you think I am afraid of burning my hands in cold water?" "What I mean, Resident, is this. It is a very lucky chance indeed that Mr. Zuidhoorn happened to disregard your injunction and that he was thus compelled to adjourn the court for another week." "Well!" cried van Gulpendam impatiently, "cut it short." "If he had not done so," continued the secretary, "you would this day have presided--would you not?" "Certainly, and then we should have settled matters by this time." The secretary scratched his ear. "Resident," said he thoughtfully, "are you sure of Mr. Meidema?" "Sure of Meidema? what has he to do with it?" "The opium-haul they made at Moeara Tjatjing," continued the secretary, "is a pretty valuable one. I fancy that Meidema is rather looking forward to reaping some benefit from the confiscation which must follow the sentence of the court." "Has he told you so? Has he given you any hint to that effect?" "Not exactly, Resident. But you must remember Mr. Meidema has a large family to provide for; and it is whispered in Santjoemeh that he finds some difficulty in making both ends meet. Indeed it would not surprise me to hear that he is in debt. So, you see, a little windfall of that kind would come in very handy." "But," said van Gulpendam "he has no right to any such thing--the law forbids it." "You are quite right, Resident, nothing ever escapes your eagle eye; but yet--'il y a des accommodements avec le ciel,' and therefore--" "But how?" asked van Gulpendam testily. "Look you, Resident, that I can't tell you--I don't know; but I fancy some loophole could be found. In this particular case, for instance, baboe Dalima is the real discoverer. Now supposing she, in order to save her Ardjan, should hand over her share or part of it--and remember she can have not the slightest idea of its value--to a third party?" For a moment or two the Resident reflected, then with a smile he turned to his secretary and said: "Well--even if that were so--that does not explain to me why I should distrust Mr. Meidema. As far as I can see, any hope of sharing in the profits of the confiscated tjandoe would make him as pliable as spun yarn." "It is very possible, Resident, your judgment is seldom at fault; but you must not lose sight of the 23rd clause of the opium-law. For myself, I would not mind swearing that Mr. Meidema is shaping his course with his eye on that particular clause. In the case which he, as head of the local police, has drawn up, you will notice that though he states the opium to have been found not far from the prisoner Ardjan, yet he takes care to add that the Javanese came ashore in a small surf-boat which could not possibly have conveyed so large a quantity, and which, moreover, was dashed to pieces by the waves; whereas the packages discovered show no trace whatever of having been in contact with water." "Is that mentioned in his report?" "Yes, Resident, it is, and there is something else. He draws attention to the fact that the schooner brig Kiem Pin Hin was seen cruising about off the coast on the night in question, and that the cutter of the Matamata gave chase to a boat of the smuggling vessel." "Did you read that report?" asked van Gulpendam who now began to be really alarmed. "Very possibly you are on the right tack," the Resident muttered rather than said. "Now, Mr. Secretary, be kind enough to hand me Mr. Meidema's report as soon as ever it reaches our office, and further send an oppasser to request that gentleman, in my name, to step over here at once." This, of course, was a dismissal in optimâ formâ. When van Gulpendam found himself alone he looked up the act of 1874 and said: "The secretary mentioned clause 23 I think. Let us see. Oho! a fine of one thousand to ten thousand guilders! And, when I come to consider how, on the evening of the occurrence, Mr. Meidema laid stress upon the exact value of the capture of tjandoe--Yes, then I am driven to confess that our secretary may perhaps be in the right channel after all." He sprang up from his seat, and with rapid steps began to walk up and down the gallery. "Oh!" cried he gnashing his teeth with vexation--"all this bother brought on by that wretched fellow van Nerekool! Oh--if Anna would but consent!" CHAPTER XXIV. PARENTS v. DAUGHTER; DUTY v. AUTHORITY. Yes, if Anna would but consent! But, that was the very thing she would not do. After both her parents, who were so strangely unlike their high-minded child, had employed every means in their power to induce Anna to join their conspiracy by using the influence she had over van Nerekool, the girl had replied: "No, never!" just as firmly and just as resolutely as Charles himself had uttered those words in reply to Mrs. van Gulpendam in the garden of the Residence. "No, never, never!" said the true-hearted girl as emphatically as it was possible to pronounce the words. "But remember," cried Laurentia, "his whole career depends upon the attitude you choose to assume in this matter!" "Charles shall never condescend to seek promotion by stooping to a mean, dishonourable action," was the girl's reply. "Anna!" shouted the Resident, in a furious rage, "take care what you say! I advise you to keep some check upon your tongue!" "For goodness sake, Gulpie," interposed Laurentia soothingly, "now do be quiet--anger will not mend matters." And then turning again to her daughter, she continued: "And Anna, I wish you not to lose sight of the fact that the possibility of your union with van Nerekool depends wholly on your present line of conduct." "My union!" sadly exclaimed the poor girl. "A woman who is really in love," continued her mother, "has a very considerable amount of power to influence the man upon whom she has set her affections." "But, mother, do you then really wish me to try and persuade Charles to lend himself to an infamous breach of duty?" "Anna, don't go too far!" roared van Gulpendam, beside himself with anger. "Would you," continued Anna, "would you have me deliberately widen the gap which is already growing between us? No, no, I shall not do that. All joy has been swept out of my life for ever; and I have now but one wish left, and that is that my image, pure and unsullied, may continue to live in his memory. I can never become his wife, that I know well; but my name at least shall remain with him as fair and as spotless as the remembrance of a blissful dream!" "But, Anna," persisted her mother, speaking in her most honeyed and winning tones, "but, Anna, my dear girl, why should you talk thus? Why should there be no joy for you in this life? Surely that is tormenting yourself quite needlessly." "Oh, mother!" cried the poor girl, "do spare me the pain and the sorrow of having to utter words which will be most distressing to you and most painful to my father to hear. No, no! Of happiness for me there can be no further question--of a union with van Nerekool, I must never again allow myself to think!" "Ah," sighed Laurentia, "if you would but--" "Yes, mother, just so, if I could but--But I will not. Suppose, for a moment, that Charles were weak enough to yield to my persuasion. Suppose I could succeed in talking him over, and could get him to consent to your proposals. Why then, from that very moment, every tender feeling would be wiped clean out of my breast. If such a thing ever could be--why then, I would utterly despise a man who is ready to offer up his duty to his inclination; and who could be base enough to stoop to a crime, in order to win the girl upon whom he has set his heart." "Anna, not another word!" cried van Gulpendam, in the most threatening accents. "But, father," she continued, "surely I ought to tell you what my feelings are. I must give utterance to thoughts which seem to choke me! As certainly as I know that I wish him to keep a pure and stainless memory of me--so surely am I convinced that he also, on his part, desires nothing more fervently than that his name should dwell with me, as it does now, great, noble, and strictly upright! Oh, I could not, indeed, bear to face the life of utter desolation, which would be in store for me were I compelled to despise him whom now, above all human beings, I look up to as noble and great. No, no, if such a thing could ever come to pass--then my misery would be too great a burden to bear! Come what will, the memory of Charles shall always remain unsullied in my heart." Mrs. van Gulpendam could but heave a deep sigh, while her husband was trembling with suppressed rage. At length he exclaimed, in the tones of a man who has fully made up his mind, "Let us cut this short, it has lasted too long. I take it then, Anna, that you absolutely and finally refuse to accede to your mother's suggestion?" "Yes, father--I do refuse most positively," said Anna, in a tone not one whit less resolute than her father's. "Mind, you are utterly spoiling all his prospects in life," said van Gulpendam, warningly. "Better that," was her reply, "much better, than that I should rob him of his honour." "It makes your marriage with him impossible." "I know it but too well," sighed Anna, "but I cannot help that--the fault of that lies with my parents." "How can you make that out?" exclaimed Laurentia. "He cannot, and he never shall, marry the daughter of parents who could venture to make him such infamous proposals!" "Anna!" roared her father, "you are utterly forgetting yourself--it is time we should have no more of this. A girl who dares to make use of such language to her parents shows herself unworthy of them. I fully intended to put an end to this nonsensical love-story altogether. It has, indeed, already compromised you. I intended to send you away, for a while, on a visit to Karang Anjer; and I meant you to start on your journey next week. Now, however, I change my mind; and you must be off at once--to-morrow morning." "To-morrow morning!" exclaimed Laurentia. "What will the Steenvlaks say to this sudden change of plan?" "Assistant Resident Steenvlak," replied her husband, "has been suddenly called away to Batavia. He has been obliged to leave Mrs. Steenvlak and her daughters at Karang Anjer, and, as he may be away from home for a considerable time, the family will no doubt be glad enough to have someone to stay with them during his absence. However that may be, Anna will, I am sure, be welcome. I am going to my office this moment and will at once send off a telegram to Karang Anjer. To-morrow morning Anna will start for Poerworedjo, a friend of mine will be there to meet her, and he will take her on in his carriage to the Steenvlaks. She will travel by way of Koetoe Ardjo and Keboemen." Laurentia heaved a deep sigh. "We shall have but very little time to get her things ready," said she. The remark itself and still more the way she made it, showed plainly enough that the bother of this sudden departure touched her much more nearly than the separation from her child. "Oh! mother," said Anna as quietly as possible, "pray leave all that entirely to me. I shall be quite ready to start to-morrow, as early as ever you please." "Do you intend her to stay long with the Steenvlaks?" asked Laurentia. "That will very much depend upon herself," was van Gulpendam's reply. "I don't want to see her face again, unless she consents to return in a much more submissive mood, and is prepared to behave in a dutiful and becoming manner to her parents." As he uttered these words, van Gulpendam glanced at his daughter hoping--perhaps expecting--that he might detect in her some signs of relenting. But, though she was deadly pale, Anna did not betray the feelings which were stirring within her. On her placid features there was no trace either of irresolution or of defiance; there was nothing but quiet determination and settled purpose. "You have, I presume," continued the Resident, "well weighed and thoroughly understood what I said?" He rose and prepared to go to his office. "Certainly, father, I have understood you perfectly. To-morrow morning I leave this house never to set foot in it again. Even if you had not so decided, I myself would have insisted upon an immediate separation." "Oh, ho! Does the wind sit in that quarter? And pray, may I be allowed to ask my proud and independent daughter what plans she may have formed for the future? She surely must be aware that she cannot quarter herself for an indefinite period of time upon the Steenvlaks?" Van Gulpendam, as he put the question, assumed a tone and manner in the highest degree offensive and taunting. But Anna would not allow herself to be ruffled and, in the calmest possible way she replied: "You ask me, father, what are my plans for the future, and I must beg you to allow me to keep my intentions to myself. For the present moment I gladly accept the hospitality of the Steenvlaks. You know how fond I am of the two girls and how much I respect and admire their mother. But, as to the future, my plans are, at present, I must confess, very vague. I do not very well know what to say about them; and, even if I were ever so anxious to give you my confidence, I could hardly tell you what I intend to do. Of one thing, however, you may rest assured--whatever may happen, I shall never again be a source of trouble or expense to you." "Indeed!" replied van Gulpendam, still in his sneering tone. "Indeed! And so my daughter seems to fancy that she can step out into the wide world without a penny in her pocket! I am very curious to learn what impressions she may have formed of that world." "You must pardon me, father," replied the young girl still very quietly; "but now you compel me to touch upon a subject which I feel is a very delicate one. You have given me an education which has but very poorly fitted me to provide for my own maintenance. Yes--I might, perhaps, earn something by giving music lessons; but here in Java I could not well do so without casting a reflection upon your name. To go to Holland and there have to roam about the streets in search of employment--the very thought is repugnant to my feelings. But all these are matters for future consideration." "Oh, you think so?" sneered van Gulpendam, "for future consideration! Now, it appears to me, that in such schemes, the earning of money ought to be the first and most important consideration." "Such being your opinion," replied Anna with a sigh, but no less resolutely and calmly than before, "I must now come to business. I did not think I should ever have had to speak to you on this subject at all--indeed the matter would never have crossed my lips, had not necessity compelled me to speak out freely. Two years ago, you remember, we received the news that Grandmamma van Gulpendam had died at Gouda. The same mail which brought us the sad tidings of her death, brought me a letter forwarded by her lawyer. In that letter the dear old lady took a most affectionate leave of me and told me how much she regretted that she had never had the opportunity of seeing me or becoming acquainted with me. She informed me further that, in her will, she had left me the sum of 30,000 guilders, and that, as soon as I was nineteen, the money would be at my disposal. She begged me, however, not to mention the matter to you as she did not wish to deprive you of the pleasure of giving me that surprise on my nineteenth birthday. Her lawyer merely added a few words confirming my grandmother's communication; and he went on to tell me that he had invested the capital in the 4 1/2 per cents, and that, by the express desire of the deceased, the money was not to be realised. Well, the interest of this sum, which is mine and which you will hardly refuse to give me, is amply sufficient for my present wants. Next year I shall be nineteen and I shall then have the power to dispose of the capital. By that time I shall have made up my mind as to the manner in which I can most usefully employ it." All this, the young girl spoke so naturally and so quietly that both her parents, who latterly had gained some insight into the character of their daughter, understood perfectly well that they had to deal with a resolution which nothing could shake. They were, indeed, greatly surprised to find that Anna was so well informed as to the dispositions which her grandmother had made in her favour; but they felt that denial or resistance to her claim were alike impossible. Indeed her better nature began to prevail over the mother, and tears stood in her eyes as she said: "Anna! poor child! what a terrible future you are laying up for yourself!" "Mother," was the girl's reply, "a future more terrible than that which must await me here, I cannot possibly conceive. What worse misfortunes can overtake me? I defy Fortune to be more cruel to me in the time to come than she has already shown herself in the past." At these words van Gulpendam rose from the seat he had resumed. He put his hand to his throat as if to clear away something which was rising there and threatened to choke him. But, his was a tyrannical nature, and he at once repressed the natural emotion which, he feared, might overcome him. The very consciousness, indeed, of the fact that his child was so much purer, so much better and stronger than he was himself, was unbearable to him. "Yes! yes!" he exclaimed, "that is all mighty fine--very fine and very romantic! Unfortunately it lacks common sense. We have now said all we have to say to each other and the upshot of it is that I stick to my resolution; and that to-morrow morning early, you leave for Karang Anjer." "I am not aware, father," said the girl with much dignity, "I am not aware that I have made any attempt to alter your decision." "Very good, that settles the matter!" cried van Gulpendam, and then, with concentrated fury in his voice, he continued: "We shall find some way of breaking that little temper." These were his parting words as he turned to go. On the morrow of this most painful interview, just as day was about to dawn, a carriage stood waiting at the steps of the residential mansion. It was one of those light conveyances drawn by four horses which Europeans often use in the interior of Java where railways are unknown, and which are well suited to traverse long distances along broken roads and steep mountain paths. Under the back seat of this vehicle was strapped a small travelling bag, only just big enough to contain a few necessary articles of clothing. Anna had made up her mind that she would not take away with her out of her father's house any single thing but what was strictly necessary. Even that she would have left behind, but for the consideration that the interest of the money left her by her aunt which, for the last two years, had not been paid to her, amply sufficed to cover the value of the few things she packed up. Not a single jewel, not one silk dress, not the least bit of lace, did that little bag contain. She carefully left all those superfluities behind her, and would carry away nothing but a little underclothing and a couple of plain muslin dresses. The small travelling trunk had scarcely been strapped into its place before Anna herself appeared in the front gallery. She was clad with the utmost simplicity in a black dress, and dark-coloured bonnet. There was on her person nothing whatever to catch the eye but the plain linen collar and the cuffs round her wrists, and these narrow strips of white seemed only to increase the demureness and earnestness of her appearance. As she thus prepared to leave her parents' home, she was alone, not a soul was by to comfort her. The rosy dawn was casting its friendly light over the garden, upon the shrubs, the flowers, the leaves, and even over the furniture of the verandah; and the young girl cast a yearning, sorrowful glance upon all these familiar objects which awakened so many memories in her breast. For an instant it seemed as if she hesitated; but it was only for an instant, for hastily brushing away the tears which were silently stealing down her cheeks, she sprang upon a splendid Devoniensis which was growing against the balustrade, and hastily plucked one just opening bud which she put into her bosom as she muttered with a sob: "My darling flower, you shall go with me into exile!" and the next moment she had jumped into the carriage which immediately started. Not another sigh, not another look. The final separation was thus accomplished. The vehicle rumbled heavily through the massive and highly ornamented gates, and then with all speed made for the hill-country of the interior of Java. Anna meanwhile throwing herself back in the carriage gave way to sad reflections. But all the while, hidden by the Venetian blinds, Anna's mother had been standing and watching her daughter with feverish anxiety. She had caught the desolate expression in Anna's eyes as she glanced around upon all those familiar objects which from childhood had been so dear to her; she had seen the girl plucking that rosebud, and her eyes had eagerly followed her as she sprang into the carriage. Then a hoarse cry escaped from her lips, "My God, my God," she sobbed, "has it come to this? Where there was everything to ensure happiness! How will all this end?" Aye indeed; how was it all to end? That was a question to which the future was to give a terrible answer. Late on that afternoon, Anna arrived at a small dessa in the interior, and left her carriage while a change of horses was being made. She asked the postmaster if he would allow her to sit down and rest awhile in his bamboo verandah, and he very readily granted her request. Then she drew forth her writing materials and was soon wholly absorbed in the work of writing a letter. For a few moments she sat irresolute, her pale and careworn face plainly enough showing that she had a most difficult and serious task before her. First she heaved a deep sigh; then two big, burning tears slowly trickled down and fell heavily on the paper before her. But at length, by degrees she appeared to be carried away by her subject, and she wrote on in feverish haste. Yes, the subject of that letter was indeed to the young girl a serious and difficult one; for she was composing her last letter to her lover van Nerekool. In the condition of utter loneliness in which she then was, she laid bare her whole soul to him, and, although words thus written were intended to meet the eye only of him to whom they were addressed; yet the novelist is guilty of no indiscretion if he should glance over the young girl's shoulder to gain an insight into her feelings and thus give the motive for her actions. The letter was not a very long one; yet it cost poor Anna a great deal of anxious thought. "Mr. van Nerekool," she wrote, "from the evening when we met on the occasion of the ball at the Residence, I have, in spite of all your endeavours to obtain another interview, purposely avoided seeing you again. On that occasion you asked me to become your wife, and I allowed you to speak to my parents on the subject. Under those circumstances you were no doubt perfectly justified in seeking for further intercourse with me, and it is for this reason that I now address these last words to you. After I left you in the garden, you had a long interview with my mother, and it was not until the following morning that I learned what had been the subject of conversation between you. Pardon me, Mr. van Nerekool, for I know that a child ought not to criticise the actions of her parents; but it is that conversation and the fact that my father endorses everything my mother then said, that makes my union with you impossible. Yours is an upright and loyal nature, and you cannot and must not think of making me your wife after the infamous proposals which have been made to you. You will say perhaps that a child is not guilty of the actions of her parents and cannot be held responsible for them. In that you are perfectly right, and I must tell you that my conscience is as clear, and that, if in my present forlorn condition I may be allowed so to speak, I, at this present moment, hold up my head as high as before I knew anything of my mother's designs. But to be always face to face with the man to whom the odious propositions were made; to be ever conscious, even in our tenderest moments, of the fact that I was flung to the man I love as the price of dishonour, that is a prospect which to me is utterly unendurable. You are a gentleman, and, as such, you would, no doubt, always have treated my parents with deference and with the proper show of respect; but to know that all this must be a mere empty show put on in deference to a daughter's natural affections, O Charles!--allow me for the last time to call you by that dear name--O Charles! that would have made life an intolerable burden to me, and must inevitably, in the end, have destroyed your happiness also. "I am writing these words to you from Sapoeran where I am resting for a few minutes while we are changing horses. You have, no doubt, heard that I am going on to Karang Anjer to stay with the Steenvlaks. My father, I know, has proclaimed that fact loudly enough and it must have come to your ears. Yes! I am now on my way to that lonely retreat; but that is only the first stage on the long and difficult road which lies before me. Do you ask what I intend to do? Well, my dear friend, I myself do not yet know what my future course will be. It is most probable that I shall try and get away to Europe, or perhaps to Australia. This much, however, is quite certain; that after my visit to the Steenvlaks I shall disappear altogether; for the very name of van Gulpendam has become hateful to me. But, Charles, when I shall have vanished, when even my very name shall no longer be mentioned, and I shall be as one over whom the grave has closed; then, I know, you will be generous enough to give a thought now and then to the poor girl who, innocent of even a thought of evil, would have esteemed herself only too happy to have been able to call herself yours; but for whom such happiness was not reserved. One request I have to make. Do not lose sight of Dalima. I know her sad condition. I know all about it. I know more about her misfortunes, at least as far as its authors are concerned, than you can do. But, for my sake, I know you will not leave that unhappy girl to her fate. I have no doubt that on the pretended accusation of opium smuggling, she will be found guilty, and condemned. I know it but too well! With our false notions of right and wrong, whenever opium enters into any question, no other result is, I fear, possible. But, oh! I beg of you, do not abandon her. Do not allow her, when once she regains her freedom, to sink into that pool of infamy into which all her countrymen inevitably fall, when, guilty, or not guilty, they have once come under the ban of our criminal law. And now, dearest Charles, farewell! In this world we shall meet no more. I will not, I cannot, ask you to forget me, a passing thought you will sometimes bestow upon her who now will bear no other name than "Anna." This letter the poor girl put into the hands of the postmaster, and it was sent off in due course though not so soon as she wished; for in those inland parts the mail goes out but twice a week. Although the distance between Sapoeran and Poerworedjo was not very great, yet the sun had fairly set before the carriage reached the latter place. Anna put up at the hotel, and, after having partaken of some refreshment, she lay down thoroughly wearied out by the journey, and fortunately she was soon fast asleep. After this short digression which the thread of our story required, we return to the Residence at Santjoemeh. When the secretary left the room, Resident van Gulpendam had bitterly exclaimed: "Oh, if Anna would but consent!" For a while he seemed lost in thought and sat turning over in his mind how matters would have stood if Anna could have persuaded van Nerekool to give way, and if he, on the conditions proposed to him, had been appointed President of the court. "Well!" he muttered at length, "it can't be helped. However, we shall manage I suppose to weather this Norwester and to get our boat safe into harbour." "But," he continued, "what did the secretary mean by alluding to that clause in the opium-law? Let me see, which was it? Oh yes, I have it, clause 23. Just let us have another look at it!" Herewith he took up the bundle of papers which he had replaced among other documents on the ledge over his writing-table. For some time he fingered the pages, turning them over impatiently, at length he exclaimed: "Oh, here we are! No. 228. Now let us see, clause 23--'All offences committed against the regulations herein laid down to which no special penalties are attached, are punishable by a fine of one thousand to ten thousand guilders for every hundred katies of opium or under, and of one hundred guilders for every additional katie?' By Jove! the fellow is right after all!--that's where the coast lies, is it? We shall have to get out another anchor. It is not at all a bad idea, but--" "The inspector requests the honour of an interview with you Kandjeng toean!" cried one of the oppassers, as he flung open the door to announce Mr. Meidema. "Show him in," was the reply. "Resident," began the inspector as he entered, "I just now met your secretary, and he told me that you wished to see me." "Quite right, Mr. Meidema, pray be seated. I have just seen your report on that smuggling business at Moeara Tjatjing; but I am surprised to find that your statement does not at all agree with the actual facts of the case." "How is that, Resident?" "No, Mr. Meidema, no it does not. Will you please try to recall our conversation on the very evening of the discovery?" continued the Resident with his eye steadily fixed upon his subordinate. "I remember that conversation perfectly, Resident." "Well," resumed van Gulpendam, "if my memory serves me, I then pointed out to you--and I did so by means of witnesses--that the opium was found in the possession of the Javanese called Ardjan. At the time you seemed to agree with me." "Certainly, Resident, I did not just then venture to contradict the opinion you had formed, and which you so positively stated as your conviction. It was, however, my duty to investigate the matter--" "And?"--interrupted van Gulpendam. "And the result of that investigation has led me to the conclusions I have embodied in the report of the case which, as head of the police, it was my duty to draw up." "Yes," hastily said the Resident, "against all probability, and in the teeth of the evidence!" "By your leave, Resident," said Meidema, "the report--" "Shall I tell you," broke in van Gulpendam, "shall I tell you to what your investigation has led you?" But Mr. Meidema, carried away by his argument, paid no heed to the question, and continued: "The report, for the matter of that, is not binding upon the court." "That's a good job too," said van Gulpendam, somewhat sarcastically; "but I asked you just now to what your inquiry has led you." "To what it has led me, Resident?" replied Meidema. "I think that is a very strange question, coming from you. I have, as I was in duty bound, held an inquiry simply for the sake of arriving at the truth." "Of course, Mr. Meidema, that is supposed to be the object of every inquiry; but I think that this particular investigation may have led you to a somewhat different result." "What may that be, Resident?" asked the other, calmly. "It has led you to the discovery that the fines, which are to be divided among the finders of the smuggled opium, can more easily be recovered from the wealthy farmer than from the poor Javanese fellow out of which no one can screw anything at all." "Resident!" cried Meidema, "such language--" "Mr. Meidema, pray be calm. My words merely express the impression which your report has made upon my mind." "But, Resident, I have nothing whatever to do with the fines. They are no business of mine. I am perfectly acquainted with the law on the subject, and I really do not know what meaning I must attach to your insinuations." "Oh, come," said van Gulpendam scornfully, "do you think I am not up to all the dodges by which the law may be evaded?" "Resident," said Meidema, indignantly, "I must really request you to modify your opinion of me. I never have stooped to any of the dodges you think fit to allude to. Not a single penny of the fines, not a single grain of the opium has ever come into my hands. And, allow me to say, that if you do not feel thoroughly convinced that when I say so I speak the bare truth--why then the office you hold compels you to lodge an accusation against me at head quarters." "Mr. Meidema," said van Gulpendam, coolly, "we are, I fear, wandering away from our subject. You tell me that you have been holding an inquiry--do you not? Now pray let me know, whose evidence may you have heard?" "Whose evidence? Why, in the first place that of the prisoner Ardjan--" "Of course, he has told you that he has nothing to do with the matter, that I can quite understand. Whom else did you examine?" "I next took the evidence of baboe Dalima--" "Oh, yes, she also is locked up on a charge of opium smuggling; she has no doubt given her lover a most excellent character. Fine witnesses those of yours, Mr. Meidema, I must say. Have you any others?" "Yes," replied the Inspector, quietly, "I have examined the dessa people who were that night pressed to assist in Ardjan's arrest." "And?" cried van Gulpendam, impatiently. "Come, look sharp!" "And their story contradicts, on almost every point, that of the police oppassers." "Of course it does, those dessa dogs always hang together; but all that ought not to have satisfied you as Chief Inspector of Police." "No, Resident, it ought not, I confess; and what is more, it has not," continued Meidema. "When the evidence appeared to me so very contradictory, I myself went down in person to Moeara Tjatjing, to inspect the boat in which Ardjan is said to have brought the opium ashore." "And you found nothing?" inquired van Gulpendam. "Oh, yes, Resident, I did. I found the surf-boat, and I am fully satisfied that it was much too small to contain the captured opium." "If I remember rightly, Mr. Meidema," observed van Gulpendam, "that boat is said to have held two persons, Ardjan and Dalima?" "Quite so, Resident." "The boat then was large enough to hold those two, eh?" "Yes, Resident, it might have done so; but there was room for nothing more." "But," asked van Gulpendam, "supposing now that baboe Dalima never was in that boat at all--what would you say to that, Mr. Meidema?" "Never in the boat at all, Resident!" exclaimed the other, in astonishment. "In that case," continued the Resident, "I suppose there might have been room for the opium if carefully stowed away?" "Well, yes, perhaps," said Meidema; "but the proof--" "Oh, yes, the proof--I can find you proof enough. I myself can solemnly declare that, during the whole of that night, baboe Dalima never left my house at all. And not only so, but all the members of my family are ready to declare as much." "Well!" said Meidema, "then all I can say is that the case is beginning to assume a very serious aspect." "Why! What are you driving at now?" exclaimed van Gulpendam. "Come, man, fire away!" "I mean that your statement directly contradicts the word of your daughter." "My daughter--the chatter of a silly girl!" "Not so, Resident," continued Meidema, very seriously, "I have in my possession a formal statement in Miss van Gulpendam's own handwriting, in which she gives a detailed account of baboe Dalima's abduction, of her forcible detention on board the schooner brig Kiem Ping Hin, and of her rescue by Ardjan." Van Gulpendam turned pale at those words, he felt as if he had received a stunning blow; Mr. Meidema, however, did not allow him time to recover his composure, but continued: "I have further in my possession the sworn testimony of the mate and the crew of the coastguard ship Matamata, which proves that on the night in question they manned the cutter in order to give chase to a surf-boat which contained two persons. That they fired upon them; but that they were compelled to give up the chase because of the tremendous sea that was running at Moeara Tjatjing in which their clumsy craft would have had no chance to keep afloat. Thus you perceive, Resident, that there were actually two persons in that boat, and that, consequently, there could have been no room for the opium. Moreover--" "What else?" broke in van Gulpendam, who was gradually recovering from his surprise. "Moreover, the surf-boat was dashed to pieces on the beach. I saw the wreck lying partly in the water and partly covered with mud, and I have witnesses to prove that the cases, in which the smuggled opium was packed, had not been in contact with sea-water at all. No, no, Resident, I am firmly persuaded that the stuff never came ashore in that boat, and further, that Ardjan has had no hand in the transaction." For a few moments the Resident sat lost in thought. "Mr. Meidema," he said at length, "have you, as you were bound to do, employed an expert to ascertain the quantity, the quality, and the particular kind of opium that was found?" "Yes, Resident, I have done so." "Have you secured the surf-boat itself?" "Yes, Resident," replied Meidema, "I did so; but, owing to some strange neglect for which I am unable to account, the watchman at the town jail, who had charge of the boat and with whom I had deposited it for safety, had broken up the boat and used the timber for firewood." A smile flitted over van Gulpendam's features, as he muttered, inaudibly: "I have found the leak, I can caulk it," and then, aloud, he said: "That's a thousand pities--to whose negligence do you ascribe that?--But, never mind, we can look into that some other time. Now, Mr. Meidema, will you allow me to give you a piece of good advice?" "Oh, Resident, you know, I am always most happy to receive good advice," was the reply. "Your finances," continued van Gulpendam, "are not in the most flourishing condition, I think. Eh?" "Resident!" "You have a large family--and your expenses must be considerable. Well then, my advice to you is this: Try and arrange matters quietly with the opium farmer." "What do you mean, Resident?" cried Meidema, in utter amazement. "You are shrewd enough, Mr. Meidema, to understand my drift. Lim Yang Bing is a wealthy man, and a kind, indulgent father. His son, you know, is on the eve of making an excellent match. He won't be so very particular just now as to what he pays." "Resident!" "And then," continued van Gulpendam, "another piece of advice let me give you. Very luckily for you the court, which was to have sat to-day and given judgment on that opium-case, has been adjourned. You see, you have yet time to alter that report of yours; which, I must say, appears to me to be drawn up with too much partiality." "That I will never do!" cried Meidema, vehemently interrupting his chief. "Mr. Meidema," resumed van Gulpendam, "I am merely giving you friendly advice. You have a large family--there are a good many mouths to feed. However, think the matter over well." "No, never, never, Resident!" "Very well, in that case our interview may be considered at an end. But don't be in a hurry, think it over well." When Mr. Meidema had left, the Resident stood for a while gazing after him. At length, hoarse with passion, he cried out: "That opposition must be overcome." CHAPTER XXV. EVE'S DAUGHTERS AND THE SERPENT. A couple of days after Mrs. Meidema was sitting with her two daughters in one of the hinder galleries of her house. Our reader has already made a slight acquaintance with the pretty pair of twins on the occasion of the reception and ball at the Residence. They were now sitting with their mother, very busy mending a heap of boys' clothing which appeared to be in a deplorable state. "It is too bad,--really it is shameful," said Gesina. "Now just do look at this, mother,--why the sleeve is literally torn out of it, and there is a huge rent right in the breast. I say, mother, do you think that jacket is worth patching up?" "To be sure it is, Sijntje," replied the mother, "now just you set to work with a will." "Those good-for-nothing boys!" cried Gesina, "they keep us stitching for them all day long." "Come, come," threw in her sister Matilda, "boys will be boys, and ours are so full of spirits." "That is no reason, I suppose," said Gesina, "why they should be climbing trees all day, and get their clothes in such a frightful state." "How do you suppose a boy is to keep out of a tree?" asked Matilda. "If I were a boy I would do just the same." The mother smiled at her daughter's warm defence of her little brothers. "Oh, yes," said she, "it would be a pretty sight to see Matilda up a tree." The two young girls had a laugh at the idea, and then Gesina said, "Don't you think, mother dear, that you might get us a needlewoman to help us with all this heap of clothes." "My dear girl, what are you thinking about?" asked Mrs. Meidema. "Well," continued Matilda, coming to her sister's help, "I must say I think the idea a very good one." "But, my dear girls, pray remember that a needlewoman would have to be paid, and pray where is the money to come from?" "Anna van Gulpendam," put in Matilda quickly, "I know always has her needlewoman." "No doubt she has," said Mrs Meidema; "but you must remember, Tilda, that Anna is an only child, and that she is, moreover, the Resident's daughter." "Is there then very much difference, mother, between the income of a Resident and that of an Assistant Resident." "I should think so, indeed," replied Mrs. Meidema; "the Resident draws fifteen hundred guilders a month at least, and your father has at the most but five hundred." "So much difference as that," said Matilda, seriously; "indeed I never thought it was so much." "And then, Tilda dear," continued her mother, "as I said before, the Resident has but one daughter, and we have five children to provide for." "Are children very expensive?" asked Gesina. "You can reckon it up for yourself, Sijntje--there is food to get and clothing and school-fees and--oh, ever so many odds and ends besides." "It is a pity!" sighed the girl, after a while. "What is a pity?" "It is a pity that boys are such an expensive luxury, for they are jolly little fellows." "Now did you ever hear such a girl?" laughed Mrs. Meidema, "first she grumbles at the trouble those good-for-nothing boys give her, and then she calls them jolly little fellows!" "Well, mother dear, you must let me grumble a bit now and then, I really can't help it when we have such a heap of boys' clothes to mend," and with these words the young girl laid her fair head lovingly on her mother's shoulder. "Money is not everything," said Matilda, sententiously, as she kept on stitching busily, while Mrs. Meidema was running her fingers through her daughter's flowing curls. The difference between her father's income and the pay of Resident van Gulpendam led Matilda to make this philosophical remark. "Of course not, Matilda," replied Gesina, "of course not; money is not everything--look at us now, are we not happy?" "Yes," said Matilda, "and to complete the comparison, could anyone be happier even in the Residence itself? Oh, when I come to think over what has happened, I cannot help feeling very sad. Poor, poor Anna!" "Have you had any news from her?" asked Gesina, who by this time had resumed her work. "Yes, this morning I had a letter from Karang Anjer, such a wretchedly sad letter. Knowing Anna's character as I do I can read despair in every word, and I fear--oh, yes, I fear, the very worst--She is capable, I do really think, of any desperate deed." "But," cried Gesina, "what can be the matter with her?" "I do not know the rights of it all," replied her sister. "On those matters Anna is very reserved; but what I know is that her parents will not consent to her marriage with van Nerekool." "Oh, she will soon get tired of Karang Anjer, and then we shall have her back again." "I think not; indeed she writes to tell me that it is her intention never to return. Her letter is so full of sorrow, so miserably despondent, it reads to me like a last farewell--as it were a parting for life. She writes to me as her best and truest friend, and beseeches me not to cast a stone at her should her despair prompt her to a step which will make the world scorn her memory. Mother dear, what am I to do, what can I do to relieve her--I wish I could go to see her at Karang Anjer!" "My dear child," said Mrs. Meidema quietly, "the very best thing you can do is to allude as little as possible, in your correspondence with Anna, to her attachment to van Nerekool. She has, as you yourself say, not taken you fully into her confidence; and from this you may conclude that there exist secrets which you cannot, without indiscretion, touch upon; and which it would only increase her pain to needlessly pry into. Time is the great healer, and it must have its soothing effect upon Anna in her distress. I know something of what has been going on, and I am in hopes that things may yet turn out well." "You know what has happened, mother?" cried Matilda, "do tell me all about it. I am so dearly fond of Anna, that anything which concerns her has, for me, the greatest interest." "Matilda," replied Mrs. Meidema, "Anna, who I do not think herself knows just how matters stand, has thought it right to keep silent before you. She has, in my opinion, acted very wisely." "But, mother!" "Yes, I say, she has acted very wisely in this matter, for she might perhaps have had to reveal to you a depth of wickedness which a young girl may very well remain ignorant of. You must allow me to follow her example. Just now you said, very wisely too, that money is not everything in the world. You were quite right, it is not. There now you see before you a family to which money is no object, which possesses moreover all other requisites for happiness, such as health, consideration, the highest position in our little society; and yet you see there is no happiness. No, money is not everything--But yet--" As she said it, the poor woman heaved a deep sigh. The fact that she was sitting there with her daughters hard at work, showed plainly enough that the earthly dross was not altogether so indifferent to her as her words might seem to imply--and she hesitated to go on--her girls looked up at her with an inquiring glance. "But yet?" asked Gesina. "Pray finish what you had to say, mother." "Well," continued Mrs. Meidema, "I had but very little to add; yet a couple of hundred guilders a year more would greatly improve our position. We have very heavy expenses to meet, we have a great deal of money to find; and--" The awning which separated the back-gallery from the grounds beyond, and sheltered it from the glaring light outside, was here suddenly flung aside, admitting a dazzling flood of sunlight which made the three ladies look up in surprise. "Babah Lim Yang Bing wishes to speak with the master," said one of the servants. "But your master is not in, he is at his office," replied Mrs. Meidema, "you know that as well as I do." "I told the babah so, njonja," said the man. "Well?" "He wishes to speak to the njonja." Mrs. Meidema made a gesture of impatience. But Lim Yang Bing, the wealthiest Chinaman in the residence of Santjoemeh--perhaps the richest man in all Dutch India--was not the kind of man who could very well be turned away. It was, moreover, no very unusual thing for him to come and pay his respects to the ladies and, on such occasions, he generally had some pretty little nick-nacks to show. "Very well, show him in," said Mrs. Meidema. The needle-work had in all haste to be put away and concealed, and some light fancy work had to be snatched up; for it would never do to let that Chinaman see a European family employed in such drudgery. "Tabeh njonja, tabeh nonna nonna. Saja halap--" But we will not attempt to reproduce the Chinaman's execrable Malay. In fact it would hardly be possible to do so, as the men of his nationality find the greatest difficulty to pronounce some of the consonants, and their talk is often extremely difficult to understand. "Good-morning, madam; good-morning, young ladies," said he most courteously, "I hope I am not intruding. I thought I might have found the Assistant Resident at home; but since I am not so fortunate, I take the liberty of paying my respects to the ladies--in the first place to inquire after their health, and also to tell them a great piece of news." "News?" asked Mrs. Meidema, who like most women did not lack curiosity. "Pray be seated, babah." And, turning to the native servant who was sitting cross-legged on the steps of the gallery, she said: "Todrono, bring a chair." As the Chinaman took his seat, the two girls looked at him with wonder-waiting eyes. "And now, babah, for your important news!" said Mrs. Meidema, somewhat eager to hear it. "First," said Lim Yang Bing with another bow, "allow me to inquire after the state of the ladies' health." "Oh, thank you," replied Mrs. Meidema, "we are all perfectly well." "Toean Allah be praised," cried the Chinaman in high-flown tones, but with the sweetest of smiles on his lips. "Now for your news, babah!" cried Gesina impatiently. "Yes, nonna, I don't wonder at your curiosity, you are quite right, the young ladies especially will enjoy it." "But, babah, do pray speak out, tell me what it is all about," cried Matilda as eagerly as her sister. "Well," said the Chinaman, "it is about a wedding." "A wedding!" exclaimed one. "A Chinese wedding?" asked the other. "Yes, ladies, yes, a Chinese wedding, as you say," replied Lim Yang Bing, laying as much stress as he could upon his words. "Delightful!" cried both the young girls. "And who may the happy couple be?" asked Mrs. Meidema somewhat more soberly. "I may not tell you that, nja." "Oh!" said Gesina with much disappointment in her voice, "then it is not decided yet." "Yes," replied Lim Yang Bing, "it is quite certain; it is so far decided indeed that I have samples of the silk with me now." "Samples of the silk!" cried both the young girls in a breath. "Yes, the samples of silk. You surely must have heard, young ladies, that on such occasions the betrothed couple always make some little presents to the invited guests. And since you ladies will, I hope, honour me by witnessing the ceremony, I have ventured to bring the samples along with me. Very fine silk indeed; I ordered it on purpose from Nan Hioeng. But you must judge for yourselves, ladies." Therewith he produced a small parcel which he carefully unfastened and the contents of which he displayed to the women's admiring gaze. "Oh!" cried Gesina, "just look at that lovely green shot with red! what a charming dress that would make!" "And," exclaimed Matilda, "what a splendid blue! Dark blue with flowers. If I had to choose, I would--" "And will not Mrs. Meidema make her choice?" asked Lim Yang Bing. Mrs. Meidema could not help casting an eye upon the seductive parcel but--she hesitated. "Come, come, pray select a sample for yourself, madam," said the Chinaman with a supplicating look. "But--babah--" she began, "I have never heard of gifts offered at Chinese weddings. I know they are customary at the New Year." "Yes, yes njonja, you are quite right, on that occasion we offer gifts all round to all our acquaintances; but at a wedding we only do so to our old friends, and--I take the liberty of reckoning the Assistant Resident among my very good friends." "Yes, but babah, you know Mr. Meidema, do you not?" "Surely the njonja would not refuse my poor little present," interrupted the Chinaman. "Oh, mother, dear!" whispered Gesina beseechingly. "No, babah, I will not downright refuse; but before coming to any decision or making any choice, I must have a talk to my husband." "Of course, of course," hastily said Lim Yang Bing, "that is nothing more than right and proper. It makes matters, in fact, easier for me, as perhaps, madam, you would not mind to intercede for me with the Assistant Resident." "Intercede for you, babah!" cried Mrs. Meidema now thoroughly surprised. "You know that my intercession has but very little influence with my husband." The Chinaman smiled--it was a cunning leer, as he said: "No, no, madam, I did not mean you to intercede for me--I cannot have expressed myself properly--what I meant was--to intercede for the bridegroom." "For the bridegroom?" asked Mrs. Meidema. "Oh, yes; but who is the happy man, babah?" "Madam, that is a secret--However, I may just as well tell you at once; as soon as you know who he is I feel sure I can reckon upon your sympathy. Well, the happy man, then, is my son Lim Ho." "Indeed!" said Mrs. Meidema very coolly, "and who is the young lady?" "Ngow Ming Nio." "The daughter of Ngow Ming Than--is she not? A very pretty girl and a very rich girl too--I am sure I congratulate you, babah." "And now, may I reckon upon you, madam, to intercede for Lim Ho?" asked the Chinaman. "I do not see," said Mrs. Meidema, "in what Lim Ho can need my intercession." "Ah, well," sighed Lim Yang Bing, "I fear that the poor boy is not in very good odour with the Assistant Resident. If only you would speak a good word for him, madam." "But why? His marriage can have nothing to do with Mr. Meidema." "No, njonja; but--" said the Chinaman dropping his voice, "You see there is something about an opium business in which the poor boy has got mixed up." "I will have nothing whatever to do with that sort of thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Meidema now fairly frightened. "There, babah, please put those samples up again." The Chinaman was taken aback, he reluctantly rolled up the parcel and slowly and deliberately put it into his pocket. "But, njonja," he mumbled, "the poor fellow is as innocent as the babe unborn." "I won't hear anything about it, babah, not another word, please, on the subject." "If only the toean Assistant Resident would hear what he has to say," insisted Lim Yang Bing. "Come, mother," whispered Gesina, who, to her infinite vexation saw the splendid silk dress fading away on the horizon, "If father would but hear what Lim Ho has to say for himself." Mrs. Meidema again hesitated. "Well," said she, "if my intercession is to go no further than that--I can see no objection to ask my husband to do that." "Mother, take care!" said Matilda in a very low but very warning voice. "I am infinitely obliged to the njonja," said the Chinaman as he took Mrs. Meidema's hand and gratefully pressed it. "I shall leave these samples here with you--" "Oh, no! no! I will have nothing to do with them." "But, mother," whispered Gesina. "Mother, take care!" said Matilda as softly. Lim Yang Bing did not at all like these whisperings of the two young ladies, and so he hastened to say: "My dear madam, I can assure you that those poor samples have nothing in the world to do with your pleading for my son. I have the honour of inviting you and your two charming daughters--and of course, Mr. Meidema--to be present at my son's marriage. There is not much harm in that I hope. I reckon you among my good friends and, as an acknowledgment of the honour which your presence will confer upon them, the young couple beg you to accept a slight present. In that no one will see any harm I hope; in fact it is simply our national custom. So far, I think we are agreed. This small parcel of samples I will leave here in order that the ladies may have time to make their choice and to talk over the whole matter with the Assistant Resident when he comes in." Put thus plausibly, the offer could hardly be refused. But even if Mrs. Meidema had wished to make an objection she had no time to do so; for the wily Chinaman had very hurriedly put down the parcel on the table, had muttered his tabehs with a few hasty words to the effect that he intended to look in again and ascertain what choice the ladies had made, and then had disappeared. When once the babah was fairly out of the place, the two young girls looked at each other and at their mother. Gesina with a smile on her pretty lips, Matilda with a very serious expression of countenance. "A Chinese wedding!" exclaimed the former. "No doubt there will be a reception and then, what a splendid dance we shall have. When the Chinese do give a party they know how to do it well!" "Do keep quiet, Sijntje," said Mrs. Meidema. She spoke reprovingly, although, as a loving mother, she was pleased to see her girl's radiant looks. They had so few opportunities to go out, especially to such parties as this promised to be. Once a year they got an invitation to the Residence, and that was all. "And how fine I shall look," continued the girl in her glee, "in my new silk dress." She took the parcel from the table, "Oh, yes," said she, "I have quite made up my mind, I choose the green silk. And you Tilda?" "I don't know," replied the other, "but somehow, I feel that all this bodes misfortune." "Oh, I say, how very silly! Just look at these samples!" cried Gesina as she opened the bundle. "Oh, what a splendid bit of brown silk--look mother, dear, that is something for you! And that deep blue is Tilda's choice; it is fine, yes it is very fine; but the green is to my mind the best of all. Just look--But--But--what is that!" Gesina was spreading the piece of silk on her knee in order to bring out the fine effect of the colours. As she did so--something slid out of the packet and fell at her feet. For a moment the three ladies sat there as if petrified, for at a glance they had recognized bank-notes--papers of five hundred guilders. At length Gesina stooped and picked them up. She counted them, one, two, three--up to ten. "Five thousand guilders!" she stammered in utter confusion. "How could they have got into the parcel? It must be some mistake of the babah's--surely he must have made some mistake." "I feared as much!" thought Matilda almost aloud. "Five thousand guilders!" The thought flashed through Mrs. Meidema's brain as she took the parcel and the papers from her daughter's hand, "Five thousand guilders!" Her first impulse was to send at once after the babah and to call him back--to give him his money, and to have him and his samples and his notes kicked out of the house. Five thousand guilders! And the Chinaman was already so far away. Five thousand guilders! Was it wise to let the servants know all this--no certainly not--it would not be wise. Five thousand guilders! It was about as much as her husband's salary for ten months amounted to. She took up the notes, looked at them, smoothed them down one by one, then rolled them together. Five thousand guilders! That would pay all those troublesome tradesmen's bills, and even then, when every farthing was paid, there would be a nice little sum left. Then Meidema might get leave of absence for a while to go into the hill-country. He wanted a change, lately he had been looking very poorly--a couple of weeks' holidays in the hills would quite set him up. Five thousand guilders! The boys might have new jackets. All these thoughts however were cut short by the rumbling of carriage wheels on the drive. "That is father!" cried Gesina, "quick! put away those samples and notes!" She tried to seize them, she had already hastily rolled up the whole parcel together and was about to hide it under the coarse needlework with which they had been busy as the Chinaman came in. But her mother took it from her and quietly laid it upon the table before her. The voice of her husband was heard in the front gallery giving some orders to his servant, and that voice had startled the good woman out of the train of evil thoughts which had unconsciously risen up within her, and which had threatened to lead her astray from the path of duty. No, no, from the man by whose side she had courageously walked for the best part of her life, she could have no secret; from him, whom she had followed for so many years in weal and in woe, she would have nothing hidden. She determined to lay everything open before her husband, he might then act as he thought best. True, they were very poor; but she felt that she must abide by his decision. All these thoughts, in a moment of time, flashed through the mind of this brave and loyal wife, and when Meidema walked into the back-gallery her mind was fully made up. The girls jumped up to give their father the usual kiss, the mother also rose to welcome him. But Meidema saw, at a single glance, that there was something wrong. He put his hands on his wife's shoulders and steadily looking her in the face he said cheerily: "I say, mammy dear--is there any news?" "Yes, Meidema, there is," replied his wife gravely, "sit down, I have something to tell you!" "I say, old girl, you look very serious, are the girls in the way?" "No, no, let them stay, I have no secrets that they may not hear--in fact I prefer them to be here." "My love, how solemn you are! Is there anything wrong? Anything to do with them eh? Have they had an offer? No? Of course not, you would not have looked so black if they had." "Now pray," said his wife, "pray do not talk such nonsense." "Oh, I see, it must be those boys! they have been naughty--trousers torn, jackets in holes! Yes--those youngsters are an awful nuisance--Never mind all that will come right by-and-by." "All that will come right!"--At those words he stopped short, poor man! his interview with the Resident then came to his memory and he began restlessly to pace up and down the gallery. He took out his cigar-case and looked at Matilda. She jumped up, "May I light it for you, father?" she said. She put the cheroot to her lips, lighted a match, and drew a few whiffs. As the smoke went curling up her nostrils and into her eyes, she made a funny little grimace--then she coughed slightly and closed her eyes, and, when the cigar was well lighted, she gave it to her father saying: "Ah bah, horrid! How can you gentlemen like that nasty smoke?" "Why you little minx!" said her father laughing, "you have lit it at the wrong end!" "It is more economical, father." "Perhaps so; but that is why it tastes nasty." "Well, father," said Matilda suddenly growing serious, "now please sit down and attend to mother." "Yes, Meidema, please sit down," said his wife; "I have to talk to you on a most serious matter." "All right, wifey--here I am seated--now I am all ears." "Babah Lim Yang Bing has been here this morning!" "Indeed!--I met him a few minutes ago, he greeted me most politely--more politely in fact than usually." "Do you know, Meidema, what he came here for?" "What he came here for? Not I," replied the husband somewhat astonished at his wife's words. The name of the opium-farmer had roused some suspicion within him though he was unable to guess what his errand might have been. "I suppose," said he, after a moment's pause, "I suppose he merely dropped in to have a chat." "Do you know," said Mrs. Meidema, "that his son Lim Ho is about to be married?" "Yes, I have heard some such rumour. To the daughter of that rich old Chinaman--is it not?" "Yes, father," interrupted Gesina, "to pretty little Ngow Ming Nio." "Lim Yang Bing," continued Mrs. Meidema, "was here this morning to invite you and me and the girls to the wedding." "All right," replied Meidema, "the girls will have rare fun; I daresay you know," he continued, as he patted the cheek of one of the twins, "you know a Chinese marriage is a most interesting ceremony. Is that then the reason why you all look so solemn? Oh, aye--I see--it is about the dresses. The other day when the Resident gave his ball we had some trouble about that. It is a great expense no doubt; but--" "No, Meidema, that is not troubling me, for the Chinaman offers us a present." "A present!" shouted the Assistant Resident. "Yes, he tells me that, on such occasions, they always give presents." "Quite right--some sweetmeats, a few cakes, perhaps. But what of that?" "No, no," said his wife, "not sweetmeats at all; but silk for dresses." "Silk!" cried Meidema, "the fellow must have gone mad! I never have heard of any such presents; and yet I have been a good while in India." "He has even left some samples here with us," continued Mrs. Meidema, "very fine silk, I assure you, most splendid quality. But there was one slight condition attached to his gift." "Indeed! a condition! what might that be?" "That I should intercede with you for Lim Ho." "For Lim Ho--oh, oh! and what did you say to that?" "I told him I would have nothing to do with it." "Where are these samples?" cried Meidema. "Hand them to me, I will fling them into the fire." "Now Meidema, do be quiet for a bit!" "Intercede for Lim Ho! So! they thought to bribe you with a yard or two of silk!" "No, no Meidema, not only with a yard or two of silk--just open that parcel." The inspector tore it open, and, in his excitement he cried, "Where is it?" The banknotes fell to the ground. Pale and utterly unnerved he picked them up, he opened them, looked at his wife and daughters with a stern look; but he spoke not a word. At length, breaking out into a curse, he crumpled up the whole parcel of samples and notes together into one formless mass as he hoarsely cried: "The devil take that d--d Chinaman! the fellow shall pay for this!" And calling to his servant he cried: "Todrono, have the horses put in!" Ten seconds later he had dashed out of the room. CHAPTER XXVI. NEATLY MANAGED. "Yes, Resident, I accuse the opium farmer of a gross attempt at bribery." Such were the words with which Mr. Meidema concluded his detailed account to Mr. van Gulpendam of what had taken place at his house that morning. "Avast! Mr. Meidema, steady a bit! You are going ahead much too fast. Can you be quite sure that the five thousand guilders were concealed in that parcel of silk samples for the purpose of bribery?" "I have already told you, Resident, that what he came for was to induce my wife to exert her influence over me in favour of Lim Ho. Yes, most decidedly. I know that the money was intended for a bribe." "But, Mr. Meidema," observed the Resident, "would it not be much more charitable to suppose that Lim Yang Bing, who is, by nature, a kind and generous man, really felt some concern at your financial difficulties?" "My financial difficulties!" exclaimed Meidema, fairly white with rage. "I should like to find out who spreads those absurd rumours. I am not rich, I admit; but if every man's affairs were in as good order as mine! Then--" "Let us not get out of our course, my dear sir," remarked van Gulpendam, interrupting him at the right moment. "Very good, Resident, I do not wish to do so; but who gives that confounded Chinaman any right to trouble himself about my private affairs. What right has he to offer my wife and daughters presents of five thousand guilders?" "But, can you be sure it was meant for a gift?" "What else could the money have been meant for?" asked Meidema. "Well, I don't know," replied van Gulpendam, "but might not the notes have got mixed up with the samples of silk purely by accident? You ought to know how carelessly such fellows handle paper money, they sometimes have a whole bundle of it loose in their pockets. Now I am persuaded, on the contrary, that when presently you meet Lim Yang Bing the whole business will be explained to your satisfaction. I will send for him. Have you any objection?" "None whatever, Resident; but the fellow may say or swear what he likes; it will not alter my opinion, and nothing will make me retract my charge against him." "Don't be in such a hurry to blow off steam, Mr. Meidema, just allow me to prick your chart for you, and you will soon see that you are out of your course altogether." Hereupon van Gulpendam called one of his oppassers, and ordered the man to mount, and to ride off full speed to the opium farmer's house. "Tell him I want him to come to me at once." The two gentlemen had hardly spent half-an-hour in conversation on the ordinary topics of the day, when an elegant carriage, drawn by two splendid Persian horses, dashed up to the gate of the residential mansion. A few moments later a servant announced the opium farmer. "Show him in," said the Resident. Lim Yang Bing sauntered into the room with his usual listless air and with the stereotyped smile on his lips. The oppasser had already told him that he would find the Assistant Resident of Police with his Excellency, and he looked upon this as a good sign; and had no doubt but that his troublesome smuggling question would be settled off-hand. He therefore greeted the gentlemen with great cordiality. "Tabeh, Kandjeng toean, toean!" The Resident pointed to a chair, and as soon as Lim Yang Bing was seated, he began: "Babah, Assistant Resident Meidema, fancies that he has reason to complain of your conduct." "No, no!" exclaimed Meidema, interrupting his superior officer, "I do not fancy anything of the kind, I actually do lodge an accusation against him." Both gentlemen spoke in Malay, and the Chinaman was thus able to understand all that was said. "And what cause of complaint may he have?" asked the Celestial, with his imperturbable smile. "You ask me," replied Meidema, "what I accuse you of? I will tell you. I accuse you of offering me a bribe--to me, the head of the police!" "I, Kandjeng toean?" asked the Chinaman, with well acted surprise. "When could I have done such a thing?" "Not much more than an hour ago," was the reply. "Just now, this very morning at my own house!" "The toean Assistant Resident must be poking fun at me. It is true that I met him a little while ago; but I had not the honour of exchanging so much as a single word with him." "I know that well enough," interrupted Meidema impetuously; "but did you not this morning call at my house?" The Chinaman looked upon the interview as a farce, in which every actor had to play his part. He had often acted in such little plays himself and had performed pretty creditably on such occasions. He continued therefore; "Oh, yes, Kandjeng toean, I did pay your ladies a visit, it was to invite you and them to the wedding, just in the same way, and for the same purpose, as I called at the Residence to invite the njonja and his Excellency." "Indeed!" said Meidema, sarcastically, "I suppose you came to offer silk dresses to the njonja Resident? Eh?" Lim Yang Bing winced under the blow; and his sallow face grew several shades paler. It was beginning to dawn upon him that matters were serious after all, and, in some confusion, he glanced at the Resident; but van Gulpendam, who was seated directly opposite to the Assistant Resident, could not, just then, make him any sign; yet Lim Yang Bing thought he could detect an encouraging expression in the Resident's eye. "And," continued Meidema, with increasing vehemence, "that you offered the njonja Resident a roll of bank-notes also. Did you not?" As he spoke these words, he flung the money down before him on the writing-table as if it burned his fingers. At this the Chinaman turned livid--for a moment he was utterly confounded. "There! you see, Resident!" continued Meidema, pointing to the farmer. "You see! Why, guilt is written in every line of the fellow's face!" At these words Lim Yang Bing recovered his presence of mind, he jumped up at once, snatched up the crumpled notes, spread them out before him, and began deliberately to count them, "one, two, three, four--ten." Then slowly raising his expressionless eyes to Meidema's face, he asked: "Does the toean Assistant Resident really intend to accuse me of attempting to bribe him?" "Yes, babah, I do most decidedly accuse you of it." "But, may I ask, why then does not the Kandjeng toean give me back the whole sum?" asked the Chinaman, very composedly, and with the usual smirk on his lips. "The whole sum?" cried Meidema, utterly taken aback, "what on earth can the fellow mean?" "Yes, toean," replied Lim Yang Bing, "I said, the whole sum. I have felt for some time that the toean Assistant Resident is by no means kindly disposed to me or mine; but I think it is not quite fair of him to fling me back a small part of my money, and so to try and ruin me, while he keeps back the greater part for himself." All this he said without showing the slightest emotion, without the slightest heat, without so much as even raising his voice; but in the drawling sing-song way in which Chinamen generally speak; and with the obsequious smirk which Chinese features always wear when the owner is addressing a superior. "Babah!" shouted Meidema trembling with rage, "take care of yourself, don't go too far!" But Lim Yang Bing felt his advantage, and was not to be intimidated. With the same false smile and in the same drawling tones he continued: "But I clearly see what the toean Assistant Resident is aiming at. The greater part of the present which I took the liberty of offering to the njonja he keeps for himself, and to that he intends to add the fine which Lim Ho will have to pay, should he be found guilty of smuggling instead of Ardjan. It is not at all a bad idea, I admit; but I leave it to the Kandjeng toean to say whether he thinks it quite fair and honest." Meidema sat there as if thunderstruck. A terrible suspicion began to arise within him. Yes! his money matters were not by any means in a healthy state. His housekeeping was an expensive one, all that, he felt, was true enough. Could his wife under the hard pressure of circumstances--could she have been induced to yield to the temptation, might she possibly not have told him the whole truth? Might she perhaps have mentioned to him only part of the bribe she had received, just to see how he would take it? Yes! that must be it--His wife and his daughters! Yes! now it flashed across him that they seemed much confused when he came in. And then the line of conduct which he had adopted before the Resident who, he felt, was no friend to him--with an awful imprecation he sprang to his feet: "Babah!" he exclaimed, "you are an impudent liar!" "If the toean Assistant Resident becomes abusive," said Lim Yang Bing with the same imperturbable calmness, "then I must request the Kandjeng toean to give me leave to retire." "Mr. Meidema," said van Gulpendam sternly, "I must beg of you to moderate your language." "How much do you say there was in that packet?" asked Meidema, in despair. "I offered the njonja Assistant Resident ten bank notes of a thousand, and ten of five hundred guilders." Poor Meidema fairly moaned with anguish and dismay. "Is that true?" he asked again, with faltering tongue. "I swear it!" was the quiet reply. "Oh! I must go and get to the bottom of this!" cried the wretched man, as he frantically rushed from the room. The Chinaman and the Resident watched him with a curious smile. "Splendidly parried, babah!" cried van Gulpendam admiringly, and then muttering to himself, he said: "I wonder what port that obstinate fool will make for in this storm." "Perhaps the Kandjeng toean will now allow me to retire?" asked Lim Yang Bing, with much humility. "Certainly, babah, certainly, let me not detain you." And, after the usual compliments had been exchanged, the Chinaman took his leave. "Deep fellow that Chinaman, devilish deep! Aye, aye, those who dabble in opium must have their wits about them, they must know how to trim their sails!" Foaming with rage, Meidema got home. He could not wait until his carriage had reached the door; it had scarcely got into the grounds, before he jumped out crying to the coachman, "Wait for me!" He traversed the fore and inner galleries at a bound, and when he reached the back-room where the ladies of his family were still sitting at their needlework, he flew up to his wife, who, noticing at once his excited state, rose from her chair. He grasped both her wrists in his iron grasp, and, exerting all his strength, he forced her down on her knees before him. All this had passed so quickly that, although the two girls had also sprung up, yet neither of them understood what was going on. "There!" roared the infuriated husband, "there! that is your proper position! And now answer me. Where is the rest of the money?" "What money?" asked his wife in alarm. "The ten thousand guilders!" thundered Meidema. "What ten thousand guilders?" asked his unhappy wife, still on her knees. "Meidema! let go my wrists, you are hurting me!" "No, I shall not let you go until you have told me where you have hidden the money." "What money are you talking about?" "The ten thousand guilders you had from the opium farmer!" "Father," said Gesina, "let mother go, and listen to me, I will tell you all about it." "You!" roared her father without releasing his wife whom he still kept kneeling before him. "I took the parcel from Lim Yang Bing," continued the young girl. "It was I who opened it, and we all admired the samples of silk. At that time, I swear to you, father, there were no notes in it. I swear it by all that I hold dear! When mother refused to listen to his conditions, he put the parcel back into his pocket. Later on, mother consented to speak to you about Lim Ho and to consult you about the silk, then, the babah flung the parcel on the table and hurried away." "But the ten thousand guilders!" cried Meidema impatiently. "Let me finish what I have to say, father," continued the young girl. "As soon as he was gone I again took up the samples. And now I come to think of it, they were not the same we had admired before. At the time, however, I did not notice the change. I took one of the samples and spread it on my knee to bring out the effect of the colours, and then--the notes fell out of the packet to the floor." "Fifteen thousand guilders!" said the father who had been listening with impatience but had not lost a word. "No, father, not fifteen thousand; there were ten five hundred guilder notes. There were no more than that," replied the girl in a firm and steady voice. "Is that the truth?" asked her father as he fixed his eye on his wife and children. But there was so much honesty and innocence in the eyes of his twins; and his wife looked up at him so firmly and trustfully, that further doubt was impossible, while all three as with one mouth and in one breath said: "That is the truth." Then the wretched man raised his wife from the floor where she was still on her knees before him. He clasped her in his arms and, as he pressed her to his heart, he cried in a lamentable voice: "My God! my God! I am a miserable wretch! I have dared to suspect my darlings--the only ones I love upon earth!" And, stretching out his arms, he flung them round the neck of his wife and children as sobbing, he cried: "Oh, my dearest ones, can you ever forgive me?" Standing thus, the four formed a group which would have charmed a sculptor; but which must have filled with rapture the heart of any true friend of man. The wife, the daughters, overwhelmed the man, who a moment before had so brutally treated them, with kisses and caresses. Oh, they could so well place themselves in his position--they could so well understand why he had been blinded by passion! "Was I not right?" said Matilda, "when I feared that the parcel boded us no good." "But do tell me, Meidema," asked his wife, "what can have happened that has so terribly unnerved you?" "That beastly Chinaman," he cried, "actually declared in the Resident's presence that he had given you not five but fifteen thousand guilders." "Good God, how infamous!" exclaimed Mrs. Meidema. "Infamous, yes most infamous! but what can one expect from a wretched speculator in opium? Such a fellow as that is capable of any infamy." "But," asked the anxious mother, "may not all this do you a deal of harm?" She had some little insight into the intrigues carried on in Dutch India. "Yes," sighed Meidema, "no doubt it will. If I had to do with honest people, it would not trouble me much; but now!--However, I must see what I can do. My carriage is still at the door--I am off straight to the Resident." "That's a queer story of yours, Mr. Meidema." Such was the only remark which Mr. van Gulpendam thought proper to make when Meidema had most indignantly given him a full account of what had occurred. While he spoke, the Resident had been sitting most attentively listening to his words; but the expression of his countenance showed no sign of sympathy. Now and then there was even a slight motion of impatience and an incredulous smile. That studied indifference and almost insolent smile exasperated the already over-wrought Assistant Resident to such a degree that, when at length his superior officer made his most unfeeling remark, he could not help crying out with indignation: "A queer story you call it, Resident. You mean, I suppose, a most infamous business!" "He, he, he! Mr. Meidema, not quite so fast if you please." "But, Resident, what do you mean--Do you not then think it a most infamous business?" "Oh, yes, most certainly I do; but the question is for whom?" "For whom? Is that the question, Resident? Then it appears to me you do not believe me." "Don't be in a hurry, Mr. Meidema, just listen quietly to me." "But, Resident, this is a matter which demands an instant explanation. If you do not take my word--" "Now, Mr. Assistant Resident, I beg you will allow me to speak." These words Mr. van Gulpendam uttered with that measured tone of voice, and with that dignity which only a Resident knows how to assume. They brought about an immediate and entire change in his subordinate's demeanour. Meidema at once mastered his excitement, he replied not a single word; but only bowed in sign that he was ready to listen. "I said just now," began the Resident, "'a queer story' and now I repeat the words--Yes, it is a very queer story, a very queer story indeed. I will for a moment suppose, Mr. Meidema, that you are an honest man." The Assistant Resident gnashed his teeth and writhed with inward passion at the insinuation; but he uttered not a sound. He had made up his mind, outwardly at least, to retain his composure, and to listen in silence. Without appearing to notice Meidema's evident anguish, the Resident continued: "I am ready to admit, for argument's sake, that you are an honest man; but I think you yourself must allow that appearances are terribly against you. Just put yourself in the position of a Resident; put yourself in my place. I am bound by my office to inquire into these matters calmly and impartially, without fear or prejudice, and, I must add without sympathy either; and then just see on what side probabilities have been accumulating. It is known to everyone, that you are in serious money difficulties--that is an open secret--and, I must tell you, that in your public capacity as chief magistrate, that common report is most injurious to you. When a man is in grave pecuniary difficulties, it is almost impossible to make the public believe that he can be impartial, inaccessible to bribes and strictly honest. The temptations, you see, are too great. On the one side there are tempting offers, which always manage to find a way for themselves, on the other there are the claims of his family, claims which have a powerful voice, and which clamour to be heard. Public opinion, therefore, needs must be against you. Under these painful circumstances, the opium farmer comes to your house and offers presents, in the form of silk dresses, to your wife and daughters, and he offers further a considerable bribe in the tangible shape of money. Now, do you think that you can make anyone believe that all this could occur without there having been some previous relations between you, some quiet understanding to encourage such bare-faced proposals? Surely not! You have told me with your own lips that the opium farmer came to invoke the aid of your wife. Therefore, he must have had some good cause to believe that not only could her aid be purchased; but also that her intercession, when obtained, would be of some value to him. Now, if you are compelled to grant me all this--why, then I say that you can hardly wonder if I come to the conclusion that she was not to-day solicited for the first time. At all events, you must allow that an impartial judge might very easily come to that conclusion. Now this is not all, there is yet another point to be considered. You have yourself confessed that, at least for a time, you yourself believed Mrs. Meidema guilty. Your description of the scene--the deplorable scene--which has just now taken place at your house, amply proves that. And, let me say in passing that I most strongly disapprove of such want of temper and of such want of self-control in my subordinates; but that in the particular case which I have now before me, I am willing to excuse it. However, as I was saying, the scene of which you gave me so graphic a description, amply proves that you yourself did not consider Mrs. Meidema above suspicion." Poor Meidema! He sat there before the pitiless inquisitor, pale as death, motionless as a statue. His bloodshot eyes gazed stonily at the Resident who, with a kind of refinement of cruelty, seemed to delight in probing his wound to the quick. At that moment the wretched man sat there accusing himself more bitterly than van Gulpendam or any one else on earth could have done. The voice of conscience is, to the upright man, the most terrible voice of all. Yes--it was but too true, he had been guilty of suspecting the wife of his bosom, he had thought evil of his two innocent daughters. The Resident was pitiless; but he was quite right. And then, alas! that was not the worst of it; his conscience had a still louder reproach to make. He had been so miserably weak that he had not been able to keep that foul suspicion to himself--he had not been man enough to keep it locked up in his own bosom. Honest and loyal as he was himself, he had fancied that the truth--the whole truth--would have proved the strongest bulwark for innocence. Thus, in a moment of blind honesty, he had, for no other purpose than to bring out more strongly the innocence of his family, betrayed to his enemy the excess of violence into which his wild frenzy had led him. And now, the weapon to which he had fondly trusted for his defence, had turned in his hand; not against himself only, but also against those dear ones of whose perfect purity he had no longer the faintest shadow of a doubt. The thought was too terrible to bear, it was maddening--his eyes began to ache as though a red-hot iron were pressed upon them. But, unmindful of his sufferings, his pitiless tormentor quietly continued: "From all this must we not then reasonably conclude, Mr. Meidema, that your wife, terrified--and very naturally terrified--at your unreasoning violence, must have confined herself to a simple denial after she had attempted to mislead you in the matter of the ten thousand guilders? You see," continued the Resident with a friendly smile, "after all, the best thing is, that we should give that aspect to a most lamentable occurrence; one cannot very well hold you responsible for the actions of your wife." At these words Meidema could restrain himself no longer. "No!" shouted he, "that suspicion shall not be cast upon her--my wife is innocent!" "Mr. Meidema," said van Gulpendam, in tones of mock sympathy, "let me implore you to take my advice, and to consider well what you are about. Once you let go that anchor, I have no other alternative than--" He paused, even he seemed to hesitate, even he recoiled from what he was about to say. "No other alternative than--what?" asked Meidema, with something of the listlessness of despair. "Than to consider you the guilty man and to hold that your family are in conspiracy with you." "Resident!" "Be calm, pray be calm! Remember it is not I who choose the alternative--you yourself force it upon me. Once again, let me remind you of your financial difficulties; let me remind you of the animosity which, in your report, you plainly show to Lim Ho. In that paper you eagerly seize upon every little circumstance which can possibly be adduced to prove him guilty; and you as carefully avoid everything which might point to Ardjan as the culprit. In fact you screen the Javanese in every way you possibly can. Taking all these things into consideration, the words spoken just now by the opium-farmer must needs give us food for reflection. You remember what he said, do you not? His words were blunt and cruel, I admit; but he seems to have had justice on his side. 'He wants,' said the Chinaman, 'to keep for himself the greater part of the present which I offered to the njonja, and he intends in addition to secure the fine which Lim Ho will have to pay if he be found guilty.' A fine which we know could not be screwed out of Ardjan. And when, in connection with those words we come to examine the 23rd clause of the Opium Act, why, then I do not think that many words will be needed to convince you that you must not venture to reckon upon either my sympathy or my support." Meidema, poor wretched man, was utterly crushed and annihilated. Without uttering a sound, he sat vacantly staring at his chief. "No, no," continued van Gulpendam, "I can see no alternative. Either you are guilty or your wife is guilty, perhaps both are equally culpable. You have, however, still time to make a choice; it is not yet too late, but that choice must be made quickly, now, at once; for I have made up my mind to telegraph to headquarters this very day." To telegraph! Poor Meidema only heard the one dreadful word "telegraph." He knew well what that word implied; he knew well in what an arbitrary and off-hand way the fate of subordinates is decided at Batavia. Already he saw himself dismissed and disgraced, shunned as a social leper by every respectable man; his wife and children wandering about in poverty, exposed to hunger and untold misery. Just then, as if he had been able to read the unhappy man's thoughts, the Resident said: "Come, Mr. Meidema, decide, make up your mind, there must be no delay." "What must I do, Resident?" moaned the poor man, now fairly at his wits' end. "What must you do? It is clear enough what you have to do. There is your report; it has just been handed to me along with the other papers relating to the business of the Court at which on Tuesday next I intend to preside. Take it; here it is; do with it what you will." He thrust the document into Meidema's hand--who took it, gazed at it for a moment with meaningless stare, then made some gesture with his hands as though he would tear it up; but--before he could accomplish the fatal deed, his brain seemed to whirl and he fell heavily to the ground. A doctor was sent for at once. When he made his appearance, he found Meidema lying back in a chair surrounded by the entire household of the Residence, but utterly unconscious; and all around the floor was strewed with fragments of paper. The physician spoke of brain fever, and he ordered the patient to be removed to the hospital. "There is no danger, I hope, doctor?" asked the Resident, in tones of the deepest sympathy. "My dear sir," replied the medical man, "there is the very gravest danger. It is a very sad case, it will surprise me much if the man does not go mad--that is if he gets over this attack at all." The Resident thereupon at once drove off to break the fatal news as gently as possible to Mrs. Meidema. The evening papers contained the following paragraph: "We are grieved to state that Assistant Resident of Police, W. D. Meidema, was this morning suddenly taken seriously ill. It seemed at first as if he were suffering from some acute form of brain fever; but after careful examination, our zealous and able medical officer has come to the conclusion that it is a case of 'melancholia attonita.' It is his opinion that no relief can be hoped for unless the patient be at once removed to Europe. There he will probably have to pass a considerable time in some asylum in which he can have the care which his peculiar malady requires. If we are rightly informed, our Resident at once telegraphed to Batavia; so that it is probable there will be no delay in obtaining the necessary leave of absence. Mr. van Gulpendam has further exerted himself to the utmost in obtaining a passage to Europe for the sorrow-stricken family in the Noah III. which is to sail for Patria on the day after to-morrow. Mrs. van Gulpendam also is untiring in her attention, and entirely devotes herself to assist the afflicted family by word and deed. Both the Resident and his wife have once again shown how cordial is their sympathy with their subordinates, and how thoroughly they have their welfare at heart. Our best wishes accompany Mrs. Meidema and her children, and we heartily pray that the Assistant Resident may speedily be restored to health." The correspondent had been well informed. This much is certain, that on the 14th of July the ship Noah III. left her anchorage, and under the influence of the Eastern monsoon, left the harbour of Santjoemeh and was quickly out of sight. Van Gulpendam had, in the overflowing kindness of his heart, accompanied his friends to the ship's side. He had warmly pressed Mrs. Meidema's hand and uttered the kindliest sentiments at parting. Then, when the ship was but a speck on the horizon, he uttered a deep sigh of relief, and with a pleasant smile, he muttered to himself: "Come, I have managed that pretty neatly." CHAPTER XXVII. SUMMUM JUS SUMMA INJURIA. FATHER AND SON CONDEMNED. MURDER OF SINGOMENGOLO. A couple of days later, Mr. Zuidhoorn left Santjoemeh. He started for Batavia in one of the Dutch Indian Navigation Company's ships, intending to take a passage to Singapore in the Emirne. From Singapore he was to go to Marseilles in the Irrawady of the Messageries Maritimes. He was, as we have seen, a thoroughly honest man; and he had fully made up his mind to let the authorities at Batavia know all that had occurred at the last session in Santjoemeh. He intended to act in this matter as prudently as possible; but yet was resolved that the officials at the head-quarters should be fully informed of the shameful intrigues that were carried on in the interior. But--between the forming of a good resolution and the carrying out of it, there is a vast difference, as Mr. Zuidhoorn was soon to discover. He had but three days to stay in Batavia, and he found that he could not, in these three days, obtain an interview with the Governor General. Mr. Zuidhoorn had taken the trouble to go all the way to Buitenzorg; but it was only to find that, on the very day of his arrival, his Excellency had, in the early morning, started for Tjipannas. The only thing, therefore, that he could do was to wait till the morrow, and then take a carriage and drive to that place. Mr. Zuidhoorn took the precaution of telegraphing to the adjutant on duty, and as he received no answer to his telegram, he started the next morning for Tjipannas. He was doomed to be once again disappointed; for when he arrived, he was told that, unfortunately, His Excellency the Governor was confined to his room by a severe attack of fever, and that no one could be admitted to his presence. The aide-de-camp made this announcement with a profusion of excuses, and tried to explain that he had not been able to send a reply to the telegram because His Excellency had not been taken ill until late in the night. There was no help for it, and Mr. Zuidhoorn had to hurry back, as best he could, to Batavia; cursing his unlucky star. But in these fruitless efforts to gain the Governor's ears, two precious days had been wasted, and he had but one left. On the following morning Mr. Zuidhoorn called upon the Chief Justice. This gentleman received him with a cordiality which was somewhat too boisterous to be real. "Here you are at length, my dear Zuidhoorn!" cried he, as, with much outward show of friendship, he grasped his hand. "Indeed, I am delighted to see you! I have been alarming myself so dreadfully about the state of your health, that it is a positive relief to see you as well as you are. I thought your indisposition was much more serious. I am glad to find you are not so very bad after all; but it is getting high time for you to go away for a bit and get a little rest." Mr. Zuidhoorn did not know what to make of all this. "You thought me very ill?" he asked in surprise. "What do you mean? I don't remember, in any of my letters, that I represented my state of health as worse than it really is. And then 'high time to get away?' I assure you I do not understand what you mean. I was not at all anxious to leave." "I suppose not," rejoined the Chief Justice, "I suppose not; but I know you are beginning to feel the effect of the climate." "Of the climate?" repeated Zuidhoorn still more puzzled. "Yes! yes! you see, when we Europeans are forced to live in the tropics for any considerable time, then, in some cases, nervous debility begins to set in, frequently accompanied by weakening or softening of the brain--" "My dear sir," cried Zuidhoorn, "your hints--" "Are not in the least applicable to you! My dear Zuidhoorn, I know that as well as you do; but pray let me finish what I was going to say. Some men, I observed, begin to suffer from debility and impaired brain-power--others grow nervous, excitable, irritable--" "Chief Justice!" cried Zuidhoorn, "is that the case with me?" "As a rule," continued the other without noticing the interruption, "as a rule the patient is, in such cases, wholly unconscious of his condition; and is under the impression that he continues to speak and act precisely as he was always wont to do." "Is such the case with me?" again asked Zuidhoorn, repeating his question. "Well, yes, my dear colleague, I am sorry to say that, to a certain extent, it is. You yourself are not aware of it, of course: but yet to your friends the style in which you write has, of late, betrayed a degree of irritability which you, as an excellent juris peritus, know is scarcely desirable in a high legal functionary." "But my dear sir!" exclaimed Zuidhoorn, "I am not at all aware--" "Quantum est quod nescimus!" interrupted the other. "Well," continued Zuidhoorn, "it is a very curious thing that no one has ever dropped the slightest hint to me of any such infirmity." "True enough, my dear colleague; but nevertheless it has been noticed for some little time. At first I looked upon it merely as a result of the extreme interest which we know you take in the discharge of your duties. But it soon became evident to your friends that it was a symptom of failing health: and, as you know perfectly well, in our profession especially, it is of the utmost importance that there should be meus sana in corpore sano." Mr. Zuidhoorn was utterly amazed, as well as fairly disgusted. Was that then the impression which his long and conscientious services had made upon his superiors at head-quarters? Was that the reward for the many years of anxious work which he had bestowed upon his office? "But, my dear sir," said he, "you will, I suppose, not object to give me a single instance in which that supposed infirmity of mine has manifested itself to you?" "A single instance! my worthy friend, why! I will give you ten, twenty if you like!" "I ask you but for one," was Zuidhoorn's reply. "Very well then," said the Chief Justice, "look at that recent business of the Santjoemeh sessions." "Which sessions?" asked Zuidhoorn. "Ah, you see! you have a kind of inner consciousness that there are several occasions on which--" "That is the merest quibble!" cried Zuidhoorn, somewhat testily, "the merest quibble! I have attended at, and presided over, so many sessions, that my question is, surely, a very natural one." "Well, I will tell you," replied the other, "I am alluding to the affair with Resident van Gulpendam." "Who would persist in presiding over the trials, which he had no right whatever to do." "Come, come, my dear friend," said the Chief Justice, "you must be losing sight of clause 92 of our Judicial regulations. But, I ascribe that want of memory to your mental condition." "Pardon me," interrupted Mr. Zuidhoorn warmly, "the condition of my mind has nothing whatever to do with it. You said clause 92?" "Precisely so," replied the Chief Justice, "that clause confers upon the Resident the power of presiding at any session which may be held within his district, should he think it right and proper so to do." "I know that," answered Zuidhoorn, "but pray remember, that when that 92nd clause was in force, there was as yet no thought of appointing specially qualified lawyers to the presidential office. At that time such a regulation may have been useful and even necessary; but, as matters stand now, it would be an utter absurdity for any Resident who is a layman, to put aside the specially appointed president in order to thrust himself upon a court of justice in the capacity of chairman. Methinks that--" "Mr. Zuidhoorn, allow me to say, that we judges ought to be the very first to show strict respect to the written law. Certain rules and regulations may appear useless or even mischievous; but so long as they remain in force, we are bound to abide by them. And--pardon me the question--have you in this particular case acted up to that principle?" "It seems to me then," said Zuidhoorn, "that you do not approve of my line of conduct?" "Not only do I disapprove of it," replied the Chief Justice, "but the Governor General also is extremely annoyed at the attitude you have chosen to assume in this case. In his opinion the line of conduct you have thought it right to adopt has seriously impaired the prestige which ought to belong to your position." "Oh, indeed! is that his Excellency's opinion?" asked Mr. Zuidhoorn musingly. "Now I begin to see why I have not been admitted to an audience." "Have you tried to obtain one?" "Yes, I have," was the reply. "The day before yesterday I went to Buitenzorg--yesterday I went on to Tjipannas--" "And--?" "I was told by the aide-de-camp on duty that his Excellency was ill in bed and could see no one." "You see!" exclaimed the Chief Justice. "What did I tell you?" "But, my dear sir," interposed Zuidhoorn, "the most scandalous proceedings are going on. For the sake of shielding a wealthy opium farmer, a poor devil of a Javanese--!" "Has been falsely accused--and will in all probability, be found guilty in spite of his innocence," remarked the Chief Justice with a cynical smile. "Oh, yes, we know all about it, you have put the whole question most clearly and most circumstantially before us. But what are we to do? We are powerless, and must bend our heads to the storm. You know summum jus, summa injuria." Mr. Zuidhoorn was leaning his head on his hand as his colleague spoke thus; and was vacantly, almost hopelessly, staring before him. "Let me give you a friendly piece of advice, my dear colleague," resumed the Chief Justice kindly; "the fact is you are not at all well--you are more seriously indisposed than you yourself are aware of. To-morrow you mean to sail in the Emirne, eh? Very well, my advice to you is to leave all these worries and bothers behind you in Batavia; fling off all these anxieties, and go to Europe to recruit your failing strength. In a couple of years' time you will return with fresh vigour--a new man, in fact, in mind and body--and then you will for many years to come continue to be an ornament to a profession in which, allow me to tell you, very few can compete with you. And now you must excuse me. My time is very precious and-- Oh, yes, one other recommendation let me give you before taking leave. For the future, pray take the greatest care never to meddle in any way, if you can possibly help it, with any of the complications and intrigues of the opium trade. I need hardly tell you that it is an imperium in imperio and, to this I may add, malum malo proximum; in all such matters, he who touches pitch must be defiled. And now--I can only wish you a quick and pleasant voyage and a happy time in the old country. Good-bye, my dear Zuidhoorn, good-bye. A pleasant journey to you!" The two cases of opium smuggling, the one at the Moeara Tjatjing and the other arising out of the discovery in the hut of Pak Ardjan at Kaligaweh, did not come on at once before the court at Santjoemeh. Resident van Gulpendam was delighted when he heard from the Chief Justice at Batavia, that, owing to the scarcity of legal men at head quarters, there was no chance whatever of filling up, for some time to come, the vacancy caused by Mr. Zuidhoorn's departure. The sittings of the court at which the Resident now had to preside, were held, as usual, regularly once a week; but Mr. van Gulpendam found no difficulty, on one pretext or another, in putting off the hearing of the opium cases from week to week. At length, however, the chief djaksa had informed him that the two Chinamen, Than Khan and Liem King, who had been on watch in the djaga monjet, could nowhere be found. Presently it was found that Awal Boep Said, the captain of the schooner brig, Kiem Ping Hin, on whose testimony Ardjan chiefly relied, had also disappeared without leaving a trace behind him. Then van Gulpendam thought that the proper time had come to bring up the prisoners for trial. Ardjan had to confess that on the February night in question, he had come ashore in very stormy weather; that the boat of the Matamata had chased him and had fired upon him; but he was quite unable to prove that the opium discovered, not far from the spot where his surf-boat was driven ashore, had not been landed by him. Thus all the evidence was against him. Then he called upon Dalima to prove that she was seated with him in the boat. The president, however, assured the court that the girl had not, on that night, left the grounds of the Residence, and that her testimony, therefore, must be a mere tissue of falsehood and of no value whatever--that it could not in any case invalidate the evidence already produced. The Resident further drew the court's attention to the fact that Dalima herself was about to be put on trial for a precisely similar offence--a fact which could not but affect the weight of her testimony. The court thus came to the conclusion that it was perfectly useless to call so tainted a witness. Moreover the chief djaksa deposed that Pak Ardjan, the prisoner's father, had confessed that the smuggled opium which Singomengolo had found in his cabin, had been supplied to him by his son. Thus the guilt of the prisoner was clearly established and Ardjan was, accordingly, found guilty of an attempt at smuggling one and a half pikols of pure opium which was equivalent to about three pikols of raw material. This brought the case under the 23rd clause of the Act, and the court condemned him to three years' penal servitude, and further to pay a fine of three thousand guilders. In default of payment, he was to have three months' compulsory labour on the public works for every hundred guilders. Ardjan was, therefore, doomed to what virtually came to eight years' penal servitude. The poor victim of this gross miscarriage of justice gnashed his teeth with impotent rage when he heard the sentence. Could he have expected more lenient treatment at the hands of the white men? Perhaps he had, poor fellow! After the son, the father--after Ardjan, Pak Ardjan. His case was treated in a still more off-hand manner if possible, than his son's. The prisoner had confessed that he had smuggled opium in his possession. Entrapped by artful cross-examination; and without having the slightest suspicion how heavily his testimony would weigh against his son Ardjan, he had admitted that the latter used, from time to time, to supply him with the drug. He had further been forced to confess that he had wrenched a sword from one of the oppassers and, in consequence of the fellow's grossly indecent conduct towards his little daughter, had dealt the wretch a couple of slashing blows with his own weapon. But hardly any notice whatever was taken of these extenuating circumstances--they were, in fact, not inquired into at all. The wretched father was there and then found guilty of having illegally in his possession two katties of opium. As this was his first offence, he could only be sentenced to forfeit the captured wares and to undergo three months' hard labour. But on the other charge, that namely, of having offered resistance to the police and of having wounded one of the officers in the execution of his duty, he was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. Thus father and son were both satisfactorily disposed of. The latter, though perfectly innocent, was sent to penal servitude for eight years. The former, for a very simple offence, for which only a trifling penalty could be inflicted, had not the infamous conduct of the searchers driven him to resistance, was sent to penal servitude for ten years. The Chief Justice at Batavia fixed upon Atjeh as the place where the culprits should serve their time; but--before the order could arrive at Santjoemeh--both Ardjan and his father had managed to make their escape. It was an awful night, dark as pitch, while a terrible thunderstorm had burst over Santjoemeh. The young native soldier who was on sentry-duty inside the outer wall of the prison, had been driven to seek for shelter within his sentry-box, terrified by the flashes of lightning, the deafening claps of thunder, and the torrents of rain; when, suddenly, he felt an iron grip upon his throat. Before he had time to utter a sound, a blow from a heavy piece of wood stretched him senseless on the ground. Meanwhile the thunder kept on rattling and the rain came splashing down with redoubled fury--such rain as is only seen in the tropics. Of these circumstances, so favourable to their flight, the fugitives made the best use. Nimble and strong, as a good sailor must be, Ardjan was able to help his father to gain the top of the wall, then he soon managed to clamber up himself. Once firmly seated, he lowered the old man to the ground on the other side, and, in a twinkling, he was at his side. Not one of the sentries on duty outside the wall was to be seen, they also, in such dreadful weather, had got under cover. The rain still poured down in torrents, and the water was coursing over the plain beyond and dashing down the streets as if all the rivers in the country had broken their bounds. Outside the prison wall all was darkness. One solitary oil-lamp was flickering in a lantern; but it only shed a sickly and feeble light in its immediate neighbourhood, while its wretched little glimmers served but to make more palpable the darkness beyond. Just at the moment when the fugitives had safely reached the foot of the wall, there came a blinding flash of lightning, cleaving its zig-zag way through the clouds. The flash was followed immediately by a stunning clap of thunder with that peculiar crackling sound which tells that the lightning has struck something close by, and then another noise was heard--it was that of a mighty cocoa nut palm which split from top to bottom, came crashing to the ground. The two Javanese then left the shelter of the wall where they knew that the rounds might at any moment discover them; and, taking advantage of the dense darkness which followed upon the dazzling flash, they darted across the small plain in which the prison stood, and, in a few moments, had reached the edge of the dessa. Once there, they were perfectly safe, for not one of the inhabitants of the dessa would have thought of betraying the victims of the detested opium tyranny to the vengeance of the white man. When Resident van Gulpendam was informed of this escape, he was simply furious. One of the sentries stated that, after the fall of the palm-tree, he had heard a sound as of something splashing in the water; but the darkness made it impossible for him to distinguish what it was, and he thought it must be some dog who was trying to get away from so dangerous a neighbourhood. The Resident at once ordered the man to be tried by court-martial, and had him punished with fourteen days' close imprisonment. The most careful search was made to discover the fugitives. All the detectives, all the spies, all the creatures of the opium police, were turned out, and used their utmost skill; but all to no purpose. For months the entire district of Banjoe Pahit, especially the dessa Kaligaweh, was carefully watched; the wife and children of Pak Ardjan were not lost sight of for a moment; but without result. At length the police were driven to the conclusion that the criminals could not have returned to Kaligaweh and that they must, in fact, have left the residence of Santjoemeh altogether. Presently men ceased to talk about the matter, and soon the whole business was clean forgotten; when--a couple of months later--an event took place which, while it recalled the occurrence to men's minds, gave them at the same time ample food for reflection. On a certain evening Singomengolo had come to Lim Yang Bing and had told him that he thought he had found a trace of the fugitives; but, as he feared some of the information he had gained might leak out, he refused to give any further explanation. He requested, however, that he might, for that evening, have the assistance of two of Lim Yang Bing's men; and he picked out two Chinese bandoelans to accompany him on his voyage of discovery. The opium farmer tried all he knew to get at Singomengolo's secret. He questioned and cross-questioned him; but he could get nothing out of him. The bandoelan persisted in saying that he could hope for success only by keeping strictly secret the clue he had obtained. He further said that he was not at all certain that the information he had gained was genuine; and that he might very possibly be on a wrong scent altogether. The only thing he allowed to slip out was that the field of his operations lay not far from Kaligaweh. As soon as he had obtained the help he required, Singomengolo started off with his two police-spies; but he did not return. When on the following morning, the opium farmer heard that his trusty servant had not yet come home, he began to grow anxious. He was so used to see his bandoelan at a stated hour in the morning, to receive from him a report of all that had occurred during the twenty-four hours, and to give him his further orders, that the man's want of punctuality on this occasion gave him no little alarm. On that morning especially, he had been impatiently awaiting Singo's usual visit, as he was extremely curious to know what success had followed the night's expedition. He waited and waited with still growing impatience until noon. Then, the suspense becoming intolerable, he called for his carriage, and drove straight off to the Residence. "What is the matter now, babah?" cried van Gulpendam, greatly surprised at the manner of his visitor, who seemed to have lost all the calmness and composure which are so very characteristic of his nation. "Kandjeng toean," hurriedly said Lim Yang Bing, "I come to invoke your aid!" Thereupon he told the Resident what little he knew of Singomengolo's expedition, and could not hide the anxiety which the bandoelan's prolonged absence caused him. For a few moments the Resident sat reflecting on what he had heard. He had received, from one of the landowners at Banjoe Pahit, secret information which was of a very disquieting nature. A hint had been conveyed to him from that source, that very probably Banjoe Pahit would be threatened by a visit from certain bands of robbers. The hint was, however, so very vague and had apparently so little to support it, that he had not paid much attention to it. The new controller, whom he had appointed in the place of Verstork, and to whom he had imparted the information he had received, assured him that the district was profoundly quiet, that the population was as orderly and contented as it could possibly be; and that not a single alarming symptom could be discovered. True it was that the land-tax came in somewhat slowly; but, on the other hand, other sources of revenue were decidedly improving, and, judging from the flourishing state of the opium den at Kaligaweh, the bidding at the approaching sale of the monopoly would run unusually high. This report was eminently satisfactory to the Resident, and though he knew perfectly well that the foundation upon which the controller had built his pleasant expectations, was an extremely crazy one; for in such matters it was not an easy thing to deceive the keenly practised eye of van Gulpendam, yet he was quite ready to accept it as sufficient, because he reckoned upon the report as a convenient screen under which to hide himself should matters turn out not quite so satisfactory as his subordinate would make them appear. He had, therefore, written to the landowner a most polite letter in which he thanked him for his information; but in which he at the same time told him that he had reason to think his fears were unfounded, adding that for the future, it might perhaps be advisable not to spread such alarming reports. Strange that, as Lim Yang Bing was telling his tale, these vague rumours of possible disturbance had come up spontaneously to the mind of the Resident, yet so it was. Very probably van Gulpendam could not have explained the fact to himself. Why should the rather late return of Singomengolo--for, as yet, there was no ground for giving his absence any other name--why should that have any connection with those faint rumours of robber bands which had not shown the slightest symptom of having any substantial foundation? No, no, that was out of the question. Van Gulpendam accordingly tried to calm the Chinaman's fears. "But, babah," said he, "surely you have no reason for all this uneasiness. It must, I should think, be no uncommon occurrence for a bandoelan to be delayed for some time on a secret mission--" "No, kandjeng toean," was the reply, "not Singomengolo. He always takes his measures so carefully and lays down his plans so accurately, that he never fails to be with me at the appointed time." "Well, babah," asked the Resident, "in what manner can I assist you?" "All I want," replied Lim Yang Bing, "is for you to give me a few oppassers and your written authority to call upon the dessa people to lend the police any assistance they may require." "But," persisted van Gulpendam, "what do you want the oppassers and the dessa people to do?" "I wish," said the Chinaman, "thoroughly to search Kaligaweh. I don't know how to explain it, kandjeng toean; but I have a kind of presentiment that Singomengolo has fallen into some trap and has met with foul play." "Very good," said van Gulpendam, "so be it, I have no objection." A few hours later, a numerous band of men was searching Kaligaweh in every direction; but no discovery was made that could throw any light upon the matter. The dessa people were preparing to go home, and the policemen were getting ready to return to Santjoemeh, when a fisherman came up and told them that at Kali Tjatjing he had seen something which looked like three dead bodies. Thereupon the search was at once resumed, and, under the fisherman's guidance, the police proceeded to the spot he had mentioned. At length under a thickly tangled clump of mangrove, quite close to the river bank, they found the bodies of Singomengolo and of one of his Chinese followers. Both bodies were covered with wounds; and so fearfully hacked about with the kris, that death must have been almost instantaneous. The third Chinaman still showed some signs of life when they found him. He had a dreadful gash in the throat; but if it had been attended to at once he might possibly have survived. Loss of blood, however, had now made his recovery hopeless. When the party of searchers reached him he opened his eyes feebly, and muttered some disconnected words. He tried to say something about men with blackened faces, and some of those present thought they could distinguish the name of Ardjan, then, uttering a deep sigh, the man expired. CHAPTER XXVIII. CORRESPONDENCE. The departure of Verstork for Atjeh, seemed to have drawn more closely together the little band of friends which, after the boar-hunt in the Djoerang Pringapoes, we saw so cosily seated around the hospitable board at Banjoe Pahit. The loss of one of their number had strengthened rather than weakened their mutual feelings of friendship. We said the loss of one of their friends; but in this case that is hardly the correct word to use; for, though William Verstork was far away, yet he continued to dwell in the memory of them all, and he was perpetually the subject of their conversation. It was, however, not only that affectionate remembrance which held the friends so closely united. Letters were continually passing between them, and Verstork was kept well informed by his friends at Santjoemeh of all that concerned themselves privately, and also of the events which form the subject of our story, and in which they all played a more or less prominent part. Edward van Rheijn had, under the influence of van Gulpendam, for a time grown somewhat cool towards his friends; but when he began to gain a deeper insight into the real character of the Resident, and began to see with what cynical selfishness he turned everything to his own advantage, his feelings towards his friends became as warm as ever they had been before. He wrote a long letter to Verstork about his successor at Banjoe Pahit, in which he showed him how mischievous and destructive was that man's influence in the formerly thriving district. Everything, he said, was rapidly going to ruin, the rice-culture was being woefully neglected, and the second crops shared the same fate. Breach of contract was now an almost daily occurrence, inasmuch as the once so orderly and industrious population, was fast getting lazy, listless, in fact utterly unfit for any regular work whatever. In one word, the entire district was visibly deteriorating, and could look forward to nothing but a future of crime and misery. On the other hand, the opium den, the gambling hells and the pawn shop, were in a most flourishing condition, and produced large incomes to the farmers of those sources of revenue to the Dutch treasury. In order to satisfy the inordinate passion for gambling and for opium, smuggling was rapidly on the increase, and theft was of daily occurrence; nay, there were even ugly whispers of robber bands, which were said to have been organised, and to have already begun their criminal operations. Van Rheijn concluded his letter with these words: "The bandoelan Singomengolo--You remember the scoundrel who was present at the dreadful Amokh scene at Kaligaweh, and who afterwards arrested baboe Dalima--has been found murdered close to Moeara Tjatjing, and two of his Chinese followers have shared his fate. I have every reason to believe that this crime had nothing to do with robbers; my opinion is that it was a pure case of revenge; for on the bandoelan's body there was found the sum of sixty-eight guilders, and this plainly enough shows that robbery could not have been the motive of the murder. There is another very remarkable circumstance in this case, and it is this: Besides the money, I told you of--there were found on him five small copper boxes, which are precisely like the two little boxes you took possession of at Kaligaweh, and in the Djoerang Pringapoes. Indeed, I must tell you that I am now beginning to see what a fearful curse the opium trade is to the country. I make that confession the more freely to you, as you recollect, no doubt, that some little time ago I had not made up my mind on the question. Such, in the few months of your absence, has become the condition of Banjoe Pahit; and--to fill up the cup of misery--a rumour is now current that the land-tax is to be raised, and that the other already existing taxes are to be exacted with much greater severity; while, at the same time, fresh burdens will be heaped upon the shoulders of the natives. In one word, money grabbing in every possible shape and form, in the form of compulsory labour, in the form of duty on salt, in the form of import and export duties, in the form of opium dens, of gambling booths, in the shape of pawn shops,--everywhere extortion, the most wrung out of the poor wretched Javanese. William! William! where must all this end? I can foresee nothing but calamity--there must come a crash. It may come sooner or, it may be, later; but come it must. For the condition of Banjoe Pahit is by no means exceptional. It may much rather be looked upon as typical of the state of the entire island of Java." August van Beneden wrote to his friend to tell him all that had occurred with regard to the impending trials of the Javanese Setrosmito, and of his daughter baboe Dalima. He wrote as follows: "Just fancy, William! The Government have thrown all kinds of obstacles in the way of my appearing as defending counsel in these two cases. You will hardly guess what reasons are given for this opposition. The objection is, that perhaps I might have to be called as a witness in both cases. It was a rather clever dodge; but, as you may suppose, I stuck to my point. The whole question has been submitted to the Judge Commissary of the court of Santjoemeh; and, when I had declared that I had witnessed nothing, and that therefore my testimony could not be called for, after I had formally stated that I had no pecuniary interest whatever in the matter, and had consented unconditionally to abide by his decision, the Judge withdrew his opposition, and permitted me to plead in both cases. But he further said that, should I be unexpectedly called as a witness, he could not allow me to be sworn.--And now, William, pray attend to the reason which he gave for that decision. He could not allow me to be sworn because, although I am undertaking this defence gratuitously and do not expect to receive any fee; yet, as defending counsel, I must be looked upon as having an indirect interest in the acquittal of my clients, and am not, therefore, in the eyes of the law, a perfectly independent and unbiassed witness! Now what do you think of that? I freely admit speaking as a man and as a lawyer that the decision is correct, quite correct; but, what if that principle were to be applied to all witnesses that appear in court? Would not the testimony of all the bandoelans, the opium-hunters, the opium-den keepers, 'et hoc genus omne,' much rather lie open to suspicion? It is an admitted fact that all these men speak under the direct dictation of the opium farmer, and that, moreover, owing to the rewards which the law allows them, they have a most direct and material interest in procuring convictions. Oh, William! our entire legal system--and especially our treatment of the natives in opium cases--is most lamentably deficient. "The charges against Setrosmito and baboe Dalima will be brought before the native court, and it is but very seldom that counsel are heard there. It is my intention, therefore, to appear as counsel only in the case of Setrosmito. With regard to Dalima, should she be found guilty, she will have an appeal to the Superior Court at Santjoemeh, and then I shall have to conduct her defence with as much vigour as possible. You may ask perhaps why make that distinction between the two cases? Listen to me, and bear in mind that I am acting under van Nerekool's advice. "You have probably heard that Singomengolo, who in both trials was to have been the principal witness, has been mysteriously murdered. At first I thought that his removal was all in favour of my clients; but I have since ascertained that the chief bandoelan has left behind him a sworn deposition of all the facts, and that it will be received as evidence by the court. Thus his death is a positive and serious injury to our cause, inasmuch as we cannot now confront him with Lim Ho, and with the defendants. I fully expected to have been able to lead them into a long and angry discussion, in the course of which, I have no doubt, that several facts would have come to light, which would have enabled me to prove that the father committed the crime of which he stands accused, under the most extenuating circumstances; and clearly to bring out the absolute innocence of the daughter, and the brutal violence to which she has been subjected. Now, however, we are in a very different position. At the preliminary inquiry before the Judge Commissary, Mrs. van Gulpendam has stated that she was quite unaware of Dalima's absence from the house on the night in question; and thus the girl now lies under very serious suspicion of having left the grounds of the Residence for an improper purpose. You remember, of course, that on the morning of our boar-hunt she appealed to the fact of her having received leave of absence both from the njonja and from nonna Anna. Whereupon you asked her whether these ladies would bear witness to that fact. You recollect also that she at once replied in the affirmative. But you will ask perhaps: 'How about Miss van Gulpendam?' Well, William, that is another very mysterious business! The common report is that the Resident's daughter has gone to Karang Anjer on a visit to the Steenvlaks. But, no sooner had the inquiry about Dalima begun, than the Resident said that his daughter had gone to Europe, and that she intended to stay for a while with an aunt of hers who lives in Switzerland. But the most curious circumstance is that in the lists of passengers of all the ships which have, within the last few months, sailed for Europe, the name of Miss Anna van Gulpendam can nowhere be found. You know how inquisitive are our gossips at Santjoemeh--Well, the public--that public which sees everything, hears everything, and pries into everything--has made every possible endeavour to find out what may have become of Miss van Gulpendam; but without the slightest success. The Resident has been pressed on the point by many an indiscreet busy-body, and he treats the whole thing in a very light and airy way. He has concocted some tale to the effect that his daughter, in company with two English ladies, left by a boat from Tjilatjap, that she started for Port Adelaide, and from thence intends to take the mail-boat to England. Not a soul, of course, believes a word of the yarn, which is all the more apocryphal from the fact that the father has never yet been induced to mention the name of the ship in which the young lady is said to have sailed. Some anxious souls amongst us have actually gone the length of telegraphing to Acraman, Main, and Co. of Adelaide, and the answer they received was:--'We know nothing of the arrival of three ladies from the Dutch Indies.'--Van Nerekool is frantic, that you may well suppose. A few days ago he was talking about going to Karang Anjer to inquire after his lady-love, for whom he has still the deepest and warmest affection. He has been there and has returned as wise as he was before. He will, I have no doubt, write to you and tell you, poor fellow, all about his adventures. I rather fancy, indeed, that he has done so already. The sum total of all this is, my dear William, that my clients' affairs are in a very bad state; but I do not despair. I shall do my very utmost to save the poor creatures. To spur me on to further exertions, I have the fact that poor Dalima is, as the saying is, in an interesting condition; so that the consequences of Lim Ho's detestable misdeed are already showing themselves. Will this circumstance be of any use to me at the trial? I doubt it much. We have no legal proof of the outrage and, therefore, I think it will be best for all concerned to hush the matter up as much as possible. All right-minded men, however, are moved with the deepest sympathy for the poor girl; and should she be discharged, or after she has left the prison, will be ready to protect her. She will need all the support she can get; for, after her father's condemnation, she will be homeless, and, disgraced as she is by van Gulpendam's assertions, she will not be able to get a place anywhere either as baboe or in any other capacity. However, time brings counsel!" It was a letter from Grenits which brought Verstork news of the double escape of Ardjan and his father from the jail at Santjoemeh, and told him of the consternation which that event had spread in official circles. The young merchant wrote to his friend, and said: "The Resident tries to appear perfectly indifferent to the escape of the prisoners, and whenever it is talked about treats the matter with much unconcern. But it has been remarked with what feverish anxiety the fugitives have been pursued. I can assure you that, when the regular police were at fault, the whole army of opium-spies was pressed into the service. But since Singomengolo and two of his Chinamen were found murdered--and murdered too without having been robbed--the very gravest anxiety has been felt; and a report was current that the guard at the Residence had been doubled. There is not a word of truth, however, in that rumour, and I can positively deny it. The two sentries, as usual, march up and down before the door of the high and mighty one; but the officer who commands that honourable corps of civilian soldiers has assured me that the cartridge box in the guardroom at the Residence has not even been unlocked. A good job too; for if those heroes should begin to fire ball-cartridge, loyal and peaceful citizens will be in considerably greater peril than the offenders. But, for all that, I am heartily glad that the fellows have got clear away. Their escape may not be legally justifiable; but a most grievous piece of injustice has thus been partially rectified. The father was driven to his reckless deed by the brutal conduct of the police towards his children, while the son had no hand whatever in the opium smuggling with which he was charged. You know that perfectly well, and the public knows it as well as you do. My own little affair with Mokesuep will now very shortly come before the high court of justice. The case is an extremely simple one. I have admitted that I did give the fellow two good slaps in the face, and my confession has been confirmed by the evidence of the man himself, and by that of Lim Ho and of Grashuis. Acting on van Beneden's advice, I have not pleaded any extenuating circumstances; because we do not wish to bring up poor little Dalima's name. The doctor has given a formal certificate to the effect that no outrage has been committed, and thus there is no possibility of legally proving the offence. And yet we are all of us morally convinced that a gross outrage was perpetrated, but--when shall we see justice dealt out fairly in India?" It was, however, van Nerekool's letter which made the deepest impression on Verstork, though he had read the other communications with very great interest. The young judge told his friend all about Anna van Gulpendam's sudden disappearance and what had taken place since she left. He said: "I have done all I could possibly do to meet her again; but to no purpose. Not only have her parents taken every precaution to make a meeting impossible; but Anna herself was determined not to see me again when I had at length persuaded Mrs. Meidema to let me know when I might expect to find Anna at her house. Now she is gone--and I received a letter from Sapoeran; but, my dear friend, it is a letter which robs me of all hope. She writes: 'My union with you is utterly impossible, you cannot, you must not think of making me your wife after the infamous proposals which have been made to you. You will say, perhaps, that a child is not guilty of the actions of her parents and cannot be held responsible for them. In that you are perfectly right, and I must tell you that my conscience is as clear; and that, if in my present forlorn condition I may be allowed so to speak, I, at this present moment hold up my head as high as before I knew anything of my mother's designs. But to be always face to face with the man to whom the odious propositions were made, to be ever conscious, even in our tenderest moments, of the fact that I was flung to the man I love as the price of dishonour, that is a prospect which is to me utterly unendurable. You are a gentleman, and as such, you would no doubt always have treated my parents with deference and with the proper show of respect; but to know that all this must be a mere empty show, put on in deference to a daughter's natural affections,--Oh Charles! that would have made life an intolerable burden to me, and must in the end, have destroyed your happiness also.' William, my dear friend, these lines sounded to me so full of despair, while at the same time they are so full of love, that they made me the happiest and, at the same time, the most wretched of men. I can fully enter into her feelings--I can understand her deep disgust at the actions of her parents; and it is for that very reason that I now, if possible, love her still more ardently than before. Her noble character stands clearly revealed in every word of her letter and commands my respect and admiration. I often ask myself how can such a child have sprung from such parents? It must be by a freak of nature that two such depraved creatures could have begotten so noble a child. How is it possible that amid such surroundings Anna has remained spotless and pure? To us who hold the cynical opinion that with our mother's milk we imbibe our mother's faults, it is an insoluble enigma. But, you see William, all this only serves to increase my affection for the lovely girl who happens to have crossed my path of life. What will be the end of it all? That is a question I often seriously put to myself; but I can find no answer to it. There are moments when I recoil from my very self; for I am beginning to discover within me certain feelings which I hardly dare to analyse. Are these feelings to be accounted for by the obstacles which my love to Anna has encountered? Would they ever have arisen in my breast if the course of my love, like that of so many of my fellow-men, had run smoothly along? I cannot tell; for the ideal which once I formed of married life is so strangely different from the storm which now rages within me, that I sometimes cannot repress a painful smile when I call to mind my visions of days gone by. Then woman was to me an ethereal being rather than a companion of flesh and blood who can herself feel the passion she inspires. You know, my dear friend, how little, hitherto, I have been accessible to what is called love. Well, now I am a different man. At times I feel as if a burning fire were consuming me. There are moments when painful yearnings arise within me for that pure and lovely being, for that proud maiden, whose very chastity and purity attract me with irresistible power. She flies from my love--and, oh William! I confess it to you though I confess it with shame--that there are moments in which I not only long to make her mine, but in which I madly swear that at any price she shall be mine. And then--alas that I should have to say so--in this storm of passion there is nothing tender, nothing sentimental; but it is simple passion which masters me, the mere selfish and senseless raging of the grossly material man, who is prepared to fling himself, by force if need be, upon the object which he has determined to obtain. "After the receipt of that last letter I have repeatedly written to Anna. Again and again I have told her of my love. I have conjured her not to trample upon my affection. I have begged, I have entreated, I have prayed her not to refuse me her hand. Her parents would surely not persist in rejecting me; my worldly prospects might improve; indeed, I let her know that, as far as mere money was concerned, she need have no anxiety whatever; for that one of my mother's sisters had left me, not indeed any very considerable sum, but yet a competence. I told her that I must succeed in getting an appointment far away from the abode of her parents, and that, if life in India was really unbearable to her, we could cross the sea and go to Australia; that we might there marry and live quietly and forgotten by all, yet happy in our mutual affection. All this I wrote, and a great deal more; but, my dear friend, I received not a single word in reply. Regularly my letters have been returned to me and always unopened. Then I began to see that her determination was not to be shaken. With her own hand she enclosed my letters in an envelope and with her own hand firmly and boldly wrote the address. There could be no mistake about it; it was indeed her own handwriting. What was I to do? What could I do? I was in the most excited frame of mind; yet the huge mass of arrears with which the courts at Santjoemeh are overloaded would not allow me to ask for even a single day's leave of absence. I felt that I must get away--that I must fly to Karang Anjer; for I was persuaded that even yet I might induce Anna to look with less coldness upon my love. At length my last letter was returned to me unopened as all the others had been. As I held it in my hand a strange feeling of dread seemed to come over me for--the address was not in Anna's handwriting. Hastily I tore open the cover. Yes, there was my letter, unopened, and upon it were written these few hurried words: 'Anna van Gulpendam has left Karang Anjer!' You may perhaps be able, William, to understand my feelings as I read the words 'Anna has left Karang Anjer!' and not another syllable to give me a clue as to where my darling then was. Who could have written those few words--it was certainly not Anna's hand, that I could see at a glance. But who could it be? Was it a woman's hand at all? The writing was regular, the letters were fairly formed; but they told me nothing. One thing I felt quite distinctly, namely that, at any cost, I must get to Karang Anjer or else anxiety and suspense would kill me. The only question was, how to get away. You know that my superior officer in the High Court of Justice is a friend of van Gulpendam, and thus I knew I could not venture to ask him for leave of absence, I am glad I did not, for had I done so, I feel convinced that every one of my steps would have been watched. Happily, however, help came from an unexpected quarter. I became seriously indisposed. Congestion and feverish attacks made me wholly unfit for work, and though I was not forced to take to my bed, yet the doctor was so uneasy about the state of my health, that he insisted upon my starting at once for the hills; for, he declared, immediate change of climate was the only remedy for my complaint. You may imagine my feelings of joy when I heard this. I said, however, as quietly as I could, 'Well, doctor, is there any particular spot to which you advise me to go?' "'I fancy,' he replied, 'Salatiga will be about the best place; it lies pretty high up, 1800 feet I think.' "'Would not Wonosobo do just as well?' I asked, with assumed indifference. "'Have you any preference for that place?' he asked. "'Oh no,' I replied, 'not exactly a preference; but the Assistant Resident there is a friend of mine and I know several of the landowners in the neighbourhood. At Salatiga I shall be quite a stranger and must feel very lonely.' "'Well then by all means,' said the doctor, 'go to Wonosobo. In fact it lies up higher still, quite 2200 feet, that will be still better for you.' "The necessary certificate was soon signed, and in two days I was seated in a travelling carriage and was off on my way to the hills. Wonosobo, as you probably know, is 73 miles from Karang Anjer; but what were they in my eyes? Was it the hope which began to dawn within me, or had a reaction already set in? I cannot tell; but this much I know, that from the very commencement of my journey, I felt as if fresh life had been infused into me. In any other frame of mind the trip would have been highly interesting; for the country through which I passed was enchantingly lovely. I traversed the mountain district of Prahoe which is quite 8000 feet above the sea-level; then I went through the Dieng plateau, that classical volcanic region which the German naturalist Franz Junghuhn has so graphically described. My road then took me along Goenoeng Panggonang and Goenoeng Pakoeodja with their still active solfataras and their springs of boiling water; along the Telerep, that shattered old volcano whose very appearance testifies of eruptions and convulsions which defy description; along the Telogo Mendjer, the deep crater-lake inbedded in walls of rock and offering one of the loveliest basins in the whole world. Then further along the western slopes of the Goenoeng Lindoro, the fairest and most symmetrical volcano in Java which rises to a perpendicular height of fully 10,000 feet above the sea-level; and thus, at length, I arrived at Wonosobo. But for all this I had no eyes. I passed unmoved by all these marvellous beauties of nature, which in the shape of pyramids, of jagged mountain-ridges, of steep and towering rocks, of dashing mountain torrents, of thundering cataracts, of magnificent lakes, of green table-lands, of picturesque valleys, of dizzy ravines, of deep, dark precipices, of hoary forests, of delightful coffee and tea plantations, moved before me like some wondrous and ever varied panorama. One only thought possessed me: Anna! and I had but one object in view, namely, to hurry on as quickly as possible and to get to the end of my journey. "'Come coachman, drive on, drive on!' was my only cry to the Automedon who certainly did his best and plied his long whip with merciless dexterity. "But when I arrived at Wonosobo my impatience was far from being satisfied. "The kindest reception awaited me, and the Assistant Resident had prepared for my entertainment on the most liberal scale. You know the family Kleinsma, so I need enter into no details. The journey had the most beneficial effect upon my health; but yet I had to allow several days to pass before I could safely venture on a trip to Karang Anjer. I made use of my stay to tell my host something, at least, of the state of my affairs. I explained to him that I was most anxious to avoid observation and to keep away from Poerworedjo the capital of that district. "'Indeed,' said Kleinsma, 'you will find that no easy matter. In that case you will have to go by way of Kaliwiro, Ngalian, Peniron and so to Karang Anjer.' "'Will that take me far out of my way?' I asked, thinking that he was alluding to the length of the journey. "'Not at all,' was his reply. 'On the contrary you will by that road cut off about one third of the distance; but you cannot travel in a carriage. Our roads about here are very good; but in the interior you can travel only on horseback. You will moreover have to take a guide; for the roads cross one another and form so intricate a web, that it forms a very labyrinth and, even the most accurate map would hardly save you from losing your way altogether.' "That prospect however could not deter me. I passed eight days in that beautiful climate, and then, when all feverish symptoms had left me, I undertook the journey which was, in truth, a rather perilous one. The horse which Kleinsma had procured me was a stout Javanese mountain nag, and, in spite of the difficult nature of the ground, he always managed to get along at the rate of about six miles an hour. When the road lay up the mountain, the good beast would take to galloping without my having to use whip or spur. When the path ran downhill, if the descent was not too steep, he would keep up a decent trot or a good fast walk. At Ngalian I changed horses and obtained a still better mount than my former one. Thus I got over the Besser mountains, over the spurs of the Midangang and of the Paras and Boetak hills, and, at four o'clock in the afternoon, I reached Karang Anjer. "Alas! William, all this trouble proved in vain. I could gain no information about my dear Anna. I intend to let you know all about my disappointment on a future occasion; for the present, I have not the courage to go on." CHAPTER XXIX. AT KARANG ANJER. AN ACQUITTAL. Yes, it was true enough, all poor van Nerekool's trouble had been absolutely in vain. When he got to Karang Anjer he found in Mrs. Steenvlak a most amiable and highly accomplished lady, who, in her husband's absence, received him most kindly and hospitably; but who, as regards Anna van Gulpendam, refused to give him the slightest information. The young lawyer did his very best--he questioned and cross-questioned his hostess; but he had to do with a shrewd and clever woman who was quite able to hold her own, and would give him no direct answers. Most amiable Mrs. Steenvlak was no doubt; but he could get no information out of her; and all her replies to his oft-repeated questions left our despairing lover in the greatest perplexity. He begged and entreated, and she listened to him with the most unwearying patience, she showed even the deepest sympathy for his distress; but nevertheless nothing could move her to divulge anything. "Yes," said she, "Anna has been staying with us for the last few weeks, and I am happy to say, Mr. van Nerekool, that I succeeded in becoming her friend, and in obtaining her confidence. I will tell you further, that in her despair, the poor girl has told me everything--you understand me, do you not, when I say everything? She has told me of your mutual affection, and she has also shown me the barrier, the insurmountable barrier, which must for ever keep you apart." "Madam!" cried van Nerekool in dismay at her words. "And," continued Mrs. Steenvlak, "I am bound to tell you that I think the dear girl is right in every word she says. Of a marriage between you and her there cannot possibly be any further question; not even if you could succeed in winning the full consent of her parents. Utter misery for both of you would be the inevitable result of so foolish a step. Anna is, in my opinion, quite right when she maintains that a woman must have an unsullied name for her dowry." "But, madam!" passionately cried van Nerekool, "Anna is blameless and pure!" "I am speaking of her name, Mr. van Nerekool, not of her person. A man must be able to pronounce his wife's name without having to blush as he mentions it. Her parents must possess his esteem, and they must be worthy of his respect. If those conditions do not exist then, for both man and wife, existence must soon become intolerable. It must become so to him; for he will always have to be carefully on his guard, weighing every word he speaks or leaves unspoken; and this restraint soon must banish all real confidence between them. Every heedless expression, on the other hand, would inevitably inflict a wound upon her, and, in the most innocent utterances, she needs must see some hidden meaning. In fact, under such circumstances, no compromise is possible." "But, Mrs. Steenvlak," insisted van Nerekool, "I have proposed to Anna that we should leave Java altogether and go to Australia, to Singapore, or to any other place she might prefer. There no one would know the name of van Gulpendam, and we might live only for one another--and--and, I believe that our love would enable us to forget the dreary past, and thus a compromise might very easily be possible. As far as I am concerned no single word would ever drop from my lips which would allude to the past--I know how deeply any such hint must wound her, and, believe me, I love her far too dearly to inflict upon her the slightest pain." "Oh yes, Mr. van Nerekool, of that I have no doubt whatever; but, you see, that very silence, that very reticence on your part would be most painful to her; and it would ultimately become too great a restraint upon you also--you could not possibly bear it. But, for the matter of that, I must tell you that, with respect to your letters to her, she has never told me a single word." "How could she do so?" asked van Nerekool, "all my letters have been returned to me unopened." "I am glad of it," replied Mrs. Steenvlak, "there again Anna has acted most wisely; and in acting thus she has spared herself, and you too, much useless sorrow. Every communication from you, every effort on your part to remove the existing obstacles between you, could only be most painful, and could not possibly lead to any good result." "Madam!" cried van Nerekool. "You said, for instance, just now, that you have proposed to Anna to go to Singapore, and to be married there. But, just consider, how could you have undertaken that journey? Separately? I do not suppose that you could intend so young a girl to undertake such a journey alone. Together? You feel at once how such a proposition would have wounded her modesty and her feelings. No, I am glad indeed that she had the courage not to read your letters." "But, Mrs. Steenvlak," said van Nerekool, adopting another tone, "supposing that I were prepared to accept the present circumstances as they are?" "What can you mean?" asked Mrs. Steenvlak in some surprise. "Supposing," continued he, "that in spite of her parents, in spite of all that has occurred, I should be prepared to make her my wife?" "Mr. van Nerekool," replied Mrs. Steenvlak very seriously, "do not speak so wildly I pray. In spite of her parents! That must mean that you are prepared to accept all the consequences such a step would entail. In other words, that you are prepared to show her parents that respect and that esteem which they could justly claim from you as their son-in-law. But do you not see that by thus acting you would be making yourself contemptible in Anna's eyes?--you would be taking away the last support the girl still has to cling to in her exile. Believe me, the cruellest blow you can strike a woman of her nature, is to prove to her that she placed her affections on one unworthy of her. The unsullied image of him whom once she loved--whom she perhaps still fondly loves--gives her, in spite of the obstacles which separate you from one another, the best consolation in her sorrow. And that pure remembrance will be to her, together with the consciousness of having acted strictly in accordance with her duty, her chief support in a lonely life." As Mrs. Steenvlak was speaking, Charles van Nerekool had covered his face with his hands. At her last words however he sprang up from his chair, he took her hand and said: "A lonely life you say? Oh, do tell me where Anna now is. I will go to her, perhaps even yet I may succeed in winning her--tell me where to find her!" "Mr. van Nerekool," rejoined Mrs. Steenvlak, very quietly, "do not, I pray you, try to do any such thing. She has given me her fullest confidence, and I do not intend to betray it. She has told me every detail, she has consulted me about the line of conduct she ought to adopt; and in all she does she has my sanction. Do you think that I would throw fresh difficulties in her way? You surely cannot wish me to do so." "But," cried van Nerekool passionately, "what does she intend to do--what kind of plans has she formed?" "She simply intends henceforth to live forgotten." "Perhaps to mar--!" cried he. "My dear sir," hastily interrupted Mrs. Steenvlak, "do not pronounce that word, I forbid you to do so. In your mouth such a word conveys a foul calumny. She has refused your hand--she will never marry another." "But what then does she intend to do?" "I have told you," replied Mrs. Steenvlak, "she intends to live in perfect solitude and oblivion; and thus she wishes quietly to await death, which, she hopes, will soon release her from all her troubles." "She is ill then?" cried he in dismay. "No, she is not ill," replied Mrs. Steenvlak; "but such a trial as she has gone through is not at all unlikely to impair a young girl's health; and may very probably shorten her life." "Madam," cried van Nerekool, "your words are torture!" "I am telling you the simple truth." "Oh tell me--where is she?" "Never," was the quiet reply. "Is she in Java? Is she in India?" "I will not give you the slightest clue." "Has she gone to Europe? Oh, I beg and pray you, have pity upon me and deliver me from this fearful suspense?" "I will tell you nothing at all. Do you understand me, Mr. van Nerekool? nothing at all." "Can I not in any way move you to pity?" "No, Mr. van Nerekool, I intend to remain true to my word and, moreover--" "But, madam," interrupted van Nerekool vehemently, "you must take pity upon my wretchedness!" "Moreover," continued Mrs. Steenvlak calmly, "I feel certain that in acting as I am doing, and in keeping absolute silence, I am preventing much future misery." "You are hard, you are pitiless!" cried the young man in despair, as he rushed from the house. For a couple of days longer he stayed at Karang Anjer, at the house of the regent of that dessa who entertained him with the utmost hospitality. He cross-examined his host. "Yes--he knew nonna Anna well. She had frequently, in company with the njonja, called upon his wife; but she had gone away without letting anyone know where she intended to go to. His wife and he thought that she had gone back to Santjoemeh." The unhappy lover kept wandering about the neighbourhood, making inquiries everywhere. He tried to obtain some clue from the loerahs, from the overseer, from the postmasters round about; but nowhere--nowhere--could he obtain the slightest information. Either these people really knew nothing, or else they were obeying orders and would tell him nothing. This seemed to van Nerekool most likely, as he heard at a certain posting station that no one could tell where the young lady had gone. During his wanderings he sat down at many a guard house, and again and again he put the same question: "Could anyone tell him where to look for the young European lady?" But it was only to receive the same answer over and over again, "No, sir." In his distress and perplexity, he at length left Karang Anjer and went to Tjilatjap, for he wanted to find out whether there was any truth in the report which van Gulpendam had so assiduously circulated, namely that his daughter had gone to Europe. Very luckily for him the regent of Karang Anjer possessed a travelling carriage which he placed at the disposal of his guest. This was a most fortunate thing for van Nerekool; for he would otherwise have had to travel the fifty-two miles to the harbour on horseback, and, in his desponding frame of mind, the fatigue of so long a journey might have had the most serious effect upon his health. The road from Karang Anjer to Tjilatjap lies on one continuous plain which is but very little above the sea-level, while the hills which rise close to the Indian Ocean run north and south, thus preventing the free circulation of land and sea breezes and rendering the atmosphere exceedingly oppressive and stifling. When van Nerekool reached the harbour, he found that there also he could obtain no tidings. Neither the assistant resident of that place, nor the harbour-master nor any of the agents of the steam Navigation Company--nor, in fact any of the other shipping agents, knew anything about the departure of a young girl to Australia or to any other country. For months past no strange ship had sailed from that port; and the boats of the India Navigation Company which run to Australia, do not go along the South coast of Java but get into the Indian Ocean by the Bali straits. It was evident, therefore, that van Gulpendam's tale of two ladies under whose escort Anna travelled to Europe, was a merely trumped-up story. Weary and sick at heart, van Nerekool was forced to return to Wonosobo by way of Bandjar Negara. There he stayed for a little while longer, and when, in that magnificent climate, he had almost entirely regained his health and strength, he went back to Santjoemeh where he found his friends, August van Beneden, Leendert Grashuis, Theodoor Grenits and Edward van Rheijn anxiously waiting to welcome him home. "Well?" was the question of all of them as soon as they had made inquiries after their friend's health, "well?" The question alluded of course to his inquiries, for the anxiety and the efforts of van Nerekool had remained no secret among them. "Nothing!" replied van Nerekool fetching a deep sigh, "I have found out nothing, not even the faintest clue." "No more have I," added Grenits. "You?" asked Charles in surprise. "Yes," rejoined the young merchant. "I also have been at work. I have made inquiries amongst all the commercial men in Dutch India; but from all sides I have had but one answer. 'No young girl in any way corresponding to the description of Miss van Gulpendam has started from any of the shipping stations.'" "You think therefore--?" asked van Nerekool. "I think that Miss van Gulpendam has not left Java at all." "But where on earth can she be then?" cried van Rheijn. "God only knows!" sighed van Nerekool. "But her parents?" observed Leendert Grashuis, "we can hardly suppose that a young lady of her age could have thus disappeared without consulting her parents." "No," said van Rheijn, "especially as we know that Resident van Gulpendam is not exactly the papa to play tricks with." "Yet," rejoined van Nerekool, "I am of opinion that neither the Resident nor his wife have the least idea where Anna now is." Thereupon he told his friends all about his conversation with Mrs. Steenvlak; and when he had given them a detailed account of all that passed between him and that lady, he concluded by saying, "She only could give us the information we want if she would." "If that be so," remarked van Beneden, "we ought to search in the neighbourhood of Karang Anjer." "I have done so," was van Nerekool's reply, "I have most minutely searched the entire district. I have questioned everybody whom I considered in the least likely to know anything about her movements; but all my inquiries have ended in nothing." "Well, Charles," said Grashuis, "in that case I can see nothing for it than to leave the solution of the mystery to time." "To time!" sighed van Nerekool, "I suppose you are right; but, my dear friends, I am most wretched and most miserable." "You must get to business and, by hard work, seek to divert your thoughts," said van Beneden. "I can assure you that your absence has not diminished the arrears of work at the Court of Justice. At all events, brooding over your troubles can do no good whatever." "Well," replied van Nerekool, "to work then. God grant that hard work may have the effect you anticipate." "That reminds me," remarked Grenits, "that to-morrow I shall have to appear in court." "You? what for?" "Don't you remember Mokesuep's business?" "Oh, aye, for the cuffs you administered to that scoundrel!" "That will mean eight days for you, friend Theodoor," observed van Beneden, "eight days at least of seclusion. Well, that's not so very formidable after all." August van Beneden was not very far wrong, for the court condemned Grenits to ten days' imprisonment and to pay a fine of twenty-five guilders for the assault, which, though it had led to no serious consequences, was no light offence, inasmuch as it had been committed on the person of a witness in a case of opium smuggling. The sentence would probably have been much more severe; but the court made allowance for the natural feelings of indignation called forth by the shameful conduct of the opium police towards a defenceless young girl, at which the plaintiff Mokesuep had been present without interfering to protect her from insult. No sooner had the sentence been pronounced, than every hand in a crowded court was stretched out to Theodoor Grenits, while Mokesuep was shunned like some venomous reptile. The public did not look upon the punishment in the light of a degradation at all; and Grenits became the hero of the hour. A few days after this, baboe Dalima's case came on before the native court at Santjoemeh. The Javanese girl most emphatically denied that any opium had been found in her possession, she even swore that she had not been searched for any such object. She gave a very simple and unvarnished account of all that had taken place; but the testimony of Mrs. van Gulpendam and that of Mokesuep contradicted her assertions. The former handed in a written statement to the effect that she had not given the baboe leave to spend the night outside the Residence; but had only given her permission to start on the next morning, and that she had, in fact, set her a pretty heavy task of needlework to finish before going. Mokesuep swore that the girl's story was a fabrication from beginning to end, that she had violently resisted the search for opium and had bitten Lim Ho's ear as he made an attempt at holding her hands. That, in this struggle with the bandoelan, her dress had become torn and deranged, and that she might very probably have received a few scratches, but that there had been nothing resembling the outrage of which she accused Lim Ho. The medical officer also was examined, and he maintained that there could have been no such assault as the girl complained of; he spoke only of some slight abrasions which had occasioned a trifling loss of blood. In all this evidence the demoralising influence of the opium farmer could plainly be seen; but however conscientious might have been the new president who now occupied Mr. Zuidhoorn's place, the evidence must have compelled him to dismiss the complaint lodged by Dalima against Lim Ho. The court, therefore, proceeded to deal with the charge of opium smuggling of which the baboe stood accused. The deposition left by the murdered bandoelan Singomengolo was positive enough. It stated most distinctly that, hidden in the folds of her sarong and under the waistband, he had found a box full of opium. That the box in question had been delivered to Controller Verstork and had been sealed up by him. That the contents had been examined and were found to consist of eight matas of opium of coarse and blackish appearance, and of a sourish smell, and that, therefore, it could not have been obtained from the opium farmer in a legitimate way. But, when the little box was produced in court and was shown to Lim Ho, he hesitated for a while, and at length said that the struggle which was going on prevented him from actually seeing Singomengolo produce the box and that, moreover, his ear was very painful, and he was at the time busy in trying to staunch the blood. He could not, therefore, declare that he had seen the box at all until Singomengolo handed it to Verstork. It thus appeared that the man, though a vile scoundrel, was not wholly devoid of better feelings. Not so, however, with Mokesuep. When he entered the witness-box, bound by his oath to utter nothing but the truth, he did not for an instant scruple to say that he had actually seen Singomengolo discover the box hidden in the girl's clothing; and in giving his evidence he entered so minutely into detail and gave so graphic a description of the poor girl's struggles, that he fairly disgusted all present. Very ominous murmurs of disapprobation arose among the crowd. This went so far, that at length the president had to interfere, and to request the witness to confine himself strictly to the facts, as all such embellishments and elaborate descriptions were clearly superfluous. The chief-djaksa appeared as public prosecutor, and, as this was Dalima's first offence, he demanded that she should be condemned to three months' hard labour. August van Beneden however stood up for the defence, and drew the attention of the court to the fact that the small box which had been produced, was precisely similar to that other one which the bandoelan pretended to have discovered in the hut of Setrosmito the defendant's father. He further mentioned the rather strange coincidence, that, on the body of Singomengolo, after his murder, a number of other little boxes were found, all precisely similar again to that produced against Dalima. He called the coppersmith from whom the bandoelan had procured these boxes, and this man swore that Singomengolo had bought twelve of them from him, at the price of seven guilders. August van Beneden took advantage of this man's evidence to remind the court of the dodges and tricks which all opium hunters were well known to employ in order to secure the conviction of any one they might accuse. Finally he altogether disputed the authority of the individuals who had testified to the nature and value of the opium. The document they had drawn up as containing the result of their examination, he rejected as absolutely valueless; inasmuch as it was the work of Chinamen who were no chemists at all; but had come to the conclusion that the drug could not have been obtained through the regular channels, simply on the evidence of colour, taste, and smell. He pointed out that, as a general rule, the worst opium smugglers were the farmers themselves, and that, in hardly any two cases were their wretched mixtures alike. In fact he defied even the most expert chemist to establish anything like perfect similarity between two different decoctions of the same farmer. The young advocate was completely successful; and the court at Santjoemeh declared that the charge against baboe Dalima had not been satisfactorily established, and therefore acquitted her. She was set at liberty there and then, and the treasury was ordered to pay the costs of the prosecution. The verdict was hailed with thundering applause, and the public became so demonstrative that the president had peremptorily to call for silence. Mokesuep left the court amidst looks and gestures of the most profound contempt and much hissing and hooting. He got into his carriage as quickly as he could and immediately drove off. It was evident that the public was well aware of what had taken place in the hut by the Djoerang Pringapoes, and that everybody knew the odious part Mokesuep had played in the transaction. The trial was no sooner over than a crowd of well-wishers surrounded the unfortunate Javanese girl Every one could plainly enough see the painful situation she was in, and pitied her accordingly. Had the law allowed further inquiry, Lim Ho might have found himself in a difficult position; but as no legal remedy existed, the public showed the greatest sympathy towards his victim. On all sides she received congratulations on the happy issue of her trial, on all sides she heard kind words and friendly offers. Van Nerekool, Grenits, Grashuis, van Rheijn, and van Beneden, were of course close to the poor creature who, though deeply moved by the sympathy she received, yet could not refrain from shedding tears of sorrow as she thought of her blighted youth. Van Nerekool proposed to place her in the house of an aged couple where she might be sure of the kindest treatment in return for such services as she could render to the mistress of the house. Dalima heartily thanked the young judge for his great kindness; but she told him that she intended to take up her abode with her mother until after the event she was expecting. The poor girl was a genuine child of nature, and felt no false shame as she spoke of her misfortune. She took that opportunity, however, to gain some information about nonna Anna. But, as we know, Charles van Nerekool could tell her nothing more than that her young mistress had spent some time at Karang Anjer, and thereupon had disappeared without leaving any clue as to her whereabouts. "Karang Anjer? where is that?" asked Dalima, musingly. Van Nerekool gave her the necessary directions, and then he proceeded to join his friends whom Grenits had invited to his house to drink a glass together in honour of van Beneden's victory. It was getting somewhat late in the day and the sun's rays darting down almost perpendicularly made the heat most oppressive; but a good pair of horses soon brought our friends to Grenits' door. Glad enough to get under cover, they all rushed in, and Grenits at once cried out to his servant, "Sidin, get us some fizz quickly!" and a few moments after the young men were congratulating van Beneden on his well-merited success in a glass of sparkling Veuve Clicquot. After the first burst of excitement was over, and when they had begun to discuss somewhat more calmly the incidents of the trial, a feeling of disappointment began to prevail. "Is it not enough to make one despair altogether of the future of our fair Indian possessions," cried Grashuis, "when we come to think that we are sitting here congratulating one another on the issue of such a case as this? Every single person, including even the members of the court itself, is convinced that poor little Dalima is the victim of a most detestable outrage and yet, not only does the real culprit escape scot free, but the innocent girl herself was very near being found guilty, and punished for a purely imaginary offence! Could such a thing ever have happened at home? There must be something radically wrong in our entire colonial system." "I will tell you in one word," replied Grenits, "where the mischief lies, it is the abominable opium trade which is at the bottom of all this, which overrules and demoralises everything out here. You heard the head-djaksa's prosecution? Did you ever see anything more neatly put together? Did you notice how cleverly all the witnesses who might have spoken in Dalima's favour were got out of the way? Verstork sent to Atjeh, Miss van Gulpendam smuggled away somehow or other, while Mokesuep did not fail to put in an appearance." "The brute!" muttered van Rheijn. "Yes," continued Grenits, "and if it had not been for our friend August, that poor girl would have been found guilty as so many others have been who have been falsely accused of opium crimes. Just now you asked, Leendert, whether any such thing could possibly happen in Holland. I do not take upon myself to say what may be possible or impossible there; but this one thing I do know, that our whole opium-system is derived from thence, that year by year the opium revenue keeps on rising by several millions; and that thus the passion for opium is, by every possible means, excited to its utmost pitch. I further know that our Government and our Government officials are thus compelled by the authorities at home to support the opium farmers and to wink at all their dirty tricks with their attendant train of fatal consequences. Is it not enough to make one hide one's head for shame when we come to think that we belong to a nation whose sordid love of money and grasping avarice not only tolerate such a state of things, but actually fosters and encourages it?" All present shook their heads and sighed; for the words Grenits uttered were the simple truth. "But," inquired van Rheijn, "ought we to blame the nation for all this? Ought we not rather to find fault with the Government which countenances such abuses?" "The Government!" impatiently exclaimed Grenits, "a nation always deserves the Government it has. Yes, of course, it is the Government which issues the orders and which acts; but the nation looks on and--is loud in its praises of a minister who can boast that he makes as much out of the business as can be squeezed from it. It seems to me that the Dutch people have either lost their manliness altogether or else are on the verge of idiocy. It has no eye, no heart for its colonies, no feeling whatever, nothing, only one single thought: 'that minister balances his budget admirably!' And then the minister, feeling certain of success and applause, actually in his place in the House allows himself to perpetrate jests which an ordinary individual would be ashamed to utter in a pot-house. Then his friends applaud and the legislature seems to consider his jokes a very pretty exhibition of wit." Fortunately, however, at this moment Sidin came in, and his appearance checked the young merchant's indignant flow of words, a thing which his friends might not have found it easy to do. The Javanese servant held two formidable looking letters in his hand, which he offered to his master. "By Jove," cried van Rheijn, "two official letters! I bet you that it is the order to send you to jail." Grenits made no reply, but quietly opened one of the letters. "Only a very commonplace marriage announcement," said he when he had glanced at the paper; and then, when he had looked at it again, he cried out: "I say, boys, here's fun! just listen to me:--'Mr. and Mrs. Lim Yang Bing and Mr. and Mrs. Ngow Ming Than have the honour to announce the approaching marriage of Mr. Lim Ho, son of the former, to Miss Ngow Ming Nio daughter of the latter. The marriage ceremony will take place on the third of September next, and a reception will subsequently be held at the residence of Mr. Lim Yang Bing in the Gang Pinggir at Santjoemeh.'" "Piping hot," remarked Grenits, "poor Dalima's trial is scarcely over!" "A Chinese wedding must be a curious affair," said van Rheijn. "You are going eh?" "You may go if you like," returned van Nerekool, "I have not the slightest objection, if only you will allow me to stay at home. I could not, for the life of me, hold out my hand to that scoundrel Lim Ho, or offer him even the most formal congratulations." "Come, come," said Grashuis. "There will no doubt be a great crowd, and it will be easy enough to get out of that part of the ceremony without being remarked at all; who is to notice it?" "That's right!" laughed Grenits, "that's it 'des accommodements avec le ciel!' But just let me see what this second document is about. Upon my word, Edward, you would have won your bet. The day after to-morrow, I have to surrender myself into the custody of the jailer to undergo my sentence of ten consecutive days of imprisonment." For a few moments, a silence fell upon all present. They quite justified Grenits' conduct, and in fact applauded it as a generous outburst of manly indignation. But yet the fact of ten days' imprisonment threw a gloom over these young men, who were so full of vigour and life. The condemned man, however, was the first to regain his cheerfulness, "Well, my friends," cried he, "you will try and preserve me from feeling too lonely, I hope." "That we will!" cried one, "I have a splendid novel by Ebers, called Serapis, it has only just come out, I will send it you." "And I," exclaimed another, "I shall have my piano sent up to the jail, then you can strum away to your heart's content." "And we will come and sit with you as often as we possibly can, you will not lack company." "That's best of all!" cried Grenits gaily. "I will bring my fiddle." "Yes, and I my flute." "Then," laughed Grenits, "we shall get the whole jail to execute a sarabande de condamnés." "The sarabande is all very well," remarked van Beneden; "but I think we might do something better than that." "Well, what is it?" asked all in chorus. "You remember, do you not, that as we were seated together under the Wariengien tree on the green at Kaligaweh, I proposed making an experiment in opium smoking, in order to find out what its effect really is. Very well, on Sunday next, we might carry out that plan." "Capital! a capital idea!" "But," asked Grashuis, "who will provide the opium and the pipe?" "Leave that to me," replied van Rheijn, "don't trouble about that, I shall get all we require." "All right, gentlemen," said Grenits, "that's a bargain!" As he spoke he shook hands with his friends, and the company broke up. CHAPTER XXX. BABOE DALIMA'S JOURNEY. A long the rough mountain path which runs winding through the volcanic region of Soembrieng and Lindoro, baboe Dalima, a few days after her acquittal and release, was stepping along with her usual firm and springy tread. She was clad with the utmost simplicity in sarong and kabaja, but was as neat and tidy as in the days when she was Anna's favourite servant. On her shoulder, tied up in a shawl, she carried a bundle containing probably some articles of wearing apparel. We must notice also that she was not barefooted; but wore a pair of sandals to the use of which she seemed perfectly accustomed. It was evident, therefore, that the girl intended to take a long journey, while her outward appearance showed that she must already have got over a considerable amount of ground. How then did Dalima get to the spot where now we find her, at so great a distance from Kaligaweh, and what was the object of her journey? Immediately after her release, she had made, as we saw in the last chapter, some anxious inquiries after nonna Anna. When she was told that her young mistress had gone to Karang Anjer and had then disappeared without leaving a trace, her simple brain had set to work; and there arose within her the determination to go and seek for Anna on her own account. She had but little comprehension of the social relations which exist between Europeans; but somehow her instinct told her that her beloved Nana must be in distress. She felt that the dear girl must be sorely in need of a companion, and so the faithful creature at once devoted herself to share the load of sorrow with her former mistress. But, Karang Anjer was a great way off--in her estimation the distance seemed infinite. Her friends in the dessa had told her that it lay somewhere yonder, not far from the great sea, and near to the territory of the Queen of the south, a mysterious being of whom the Javanese stand in the greatest awe. But all that could not deter her. She made up her mind to summon up courage and to plod resolutely on, even though, as her friends again had informed her, the road might take her along seething solfataras, along burning mountains, along dizzying precipices and through lonely forests. She could travel only by day for fear of the wild beasts. Other fears she had none; for she knew that no man would wantonly molest her; and her outward appearance was not such as to suggest that she had anything to lose. And yet she did possess a treasure, which she had anxiously hoarded and had tied up in a handkerchief and now was carrying with her in the bundle which hung from her shoulder. When she lay in prison at Santjoemeh, nonna Anna had, from time to time, sent her small sums of money; van Beneden also and van Nerekool when they visited her to gather particulars for her defence, never failed to leave a few coins with the poor Javanese girl. All these presents she had thankfully accepted and most carefully saved up; for she always had an eye to the future. In this manner she had collected quite forty guilders, and this money, she had before starting, changed into twopenny and fivepenny pieces, knowing well that the sight of guilders or rixdollars might attract the attention of the evil-disposed, and might bring trouble upon her. This money had, in fact, for some time been constantly present to her mind, and had been the cause of some hesitation before she finally could make up her mind to undertake her long journey. She had anxiously hoarded it to meet the expenses which she knew must soon come upon her. The money was dear to her, for she would not be a burden upon her poor mother, who, now that her father was a prisoner, had already trouble enough to feed her little brothers and sisters. This money she had clung to, for young as she was, she knew that a time of need would soon be at hand. But all these considerations vanished as she thought of her Nana--then she wavered no longer. Her own unhappy condition, indeed, gave her but little uneasiness. She knew how kind-hearted her country-women are, and she felt sure that in the hour of need, she would find some hospitable roof to shelter her; and that even the very poorest would reach her a helping hand, and would gladly share her modest ration of rice with a traveller in distress. Once, at Kaligaweh, Dalima had received a visit from M`Bok Kârijâh, the loathsome confidante of Mrs. van Gulpendam. Perhaps it was at that lady's suggestion that the old hag went to see her. She had whispered to her something about a medicine made from the Clitoria Ternatea. At first poor Dalima had not understood what she meant and had opened her eyes wide with surprise--she knew nothing, of course, of the connection between the filthy old hag and the Resident's lady. But when the crone pretended to sympathise with her in her misfortune; and proceeded to speak out more plainly--then the girl's indignation and disgust knew no bounds, and she drove the old hag from her presence, threatening to rouse the entire dessa against her should she venture to show her face again. Her nature revolted at the foul crime which M`Bok dared to suggest, such practices she was quite content to leave to the more highly favoured daughters of civilisation. Thus then had she started on her journey, and, with the little bundle which contained all her earthly possessions on her back, she had trudged over hill and dale; and after eight days of steady walking, she was beginning to draw near to her destination. Whenever, at nightfall, she reached some dessa she would at once seek out the native priest and tell him that she was travelling to Karang Anjer in search for her father whom she hoped to find there. Perceiving the plight she was in, the good man then used generally to direct her to some kind-hearted woman, who willingly took her in for the night, and not unfrequently refused to take the small coin she tendered in payment for her lodging. Sometimes even they would give her a couple of small parcels of boiled rice as provision on the road. But she was not always so fortunate. Sometimes it happened that she could not well make out the directions given to her, and thus night would come on before she could reach any inhabited spot. Then she used to beg for a resting-place on the bench of some guard-house, and her prayer was never refused. But, on one occasion, even this poor resource failed her. Her road that evening lay through a dense wood, the sun was about to set, and under the thick foliage it soon grew pitch dark. She could keep to the path only by looking upward and following the narrow strip of sky which showed through the tree-tops stretching along in the same direction as the rough road. The stars were twinkling brightly, and for some time she listened breathlessly hoping to hear some sound, such as the late crowing of a cock, or the measured strokes on the rice tomboks, which might lead her to some human dwelling. Then she hurried on again; but she did not come across even a detached guard-house. At length she was suddenly brought to a standstill by the shrill discordant "meoh! meoh!" of a peacock which, perched in the upper branches of a lofty tree, thus announced that the last glimmer of light was disappearing in the west. Dalima stopped in terror, for she well knew that the peacock is hardly ever heard in the woods unless a tiger is near. Soon, however, she recovered her presence of mind, and quickly glancing round, she plunged into the wood and began to climb into a tree which stood close by. She was not indeed very well fitted for such gymnastics; but carefully clambering up, she, with some trouble, managed to reach one of the lower branches. As soon as she got there she felt safe. A panther will rarely attack mankind, and the tiger, she knew, does not climb trees. So she tried to make herself as comfortable as she could on the branch which was, fortunately, quite thick enough to bear her weight, and grew out horizontally so as to form a kind of seat. But that night of nearly eleven hours seemed to her of interminable length. She did not dare to give way to sleep, fearing that she might lose her balance and fall to the ground, and the branch on which she tried to settle herself, and the trunk against which she leaned, were covered with a thick knotty bark, which pressed into her limbs and gave her great pain. Again and again she attempted to change her position, but the relief thus obtained was only temporary. Then she tried to assume the squatting attitude which is customary with the natives; but, in clambering up the tree, the sandals had dropped from her feet, and the rough bark, cutting into the soles of her feet, soon made that position unbearable. To these discomforts was added the plague of myriads of insects, such as ants, mosquitoes, sundry kinds of beetles and other pests, which settled upon her, and caused the most frightful itching, while her hands, which supported her, and with which she had to keep her balance, were not always free to brush the tormentors away. She had also been obliged to drop her bundle, which contained her clothes, her money, in fact all she possessed; but she felt no anxiety on that account. No human being was present in that wood, and even if any one had been lurking about, he would hardly have been wandering in the dark just under the tree where she was seated. As for the animals which might be roving about, they would not disturb her little bundle. So the night crept slowly along, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that the poor girl at length welcomed the first faint streak of grey which began to tinge the eastern horizon. But she had much longer still to wait and endure the pain which every instant was getting more acute. For, during the night, she had heard very alarming sounds. The hoarse and terrible hoh! heoh! of the tiger had resounded more than once. There was no mistaking that well-known cry, and however painful her position might be, she could not yet venture to descend. Indeed the tiger is never more formidable than just at dawn of day--then he prowls about noiselessly like a huge cat seeking for his prey--then he hurries off to the nearest water hole to quench his burning thirst, and to lay in his provision of water for the day. In one word, she knew that the hour of early dawn is the most dangerous; and she felt that she must still have patience. On that branch she must remain perched until the sun was fairly above the horizon, and the daylight had penetrated the foliage, driving all evil beasts to their lairs. Soon she found that she had done well to be patient, for once again the peacock gave forth his screeching meoh! meoh! thus hailing the dawn as he had the evening before greeted the last glow of the setting sun. Thus Dalima knew that the tiger was close by. So she kept her seat high up on her branch, shivering with cold in the keen morning air, while she watched the faint streak of light gradually expanding and deepening, and the stars fading away one by one. Gradually the rosy tint of morning began to spread to the zenith, driving back the damp shadows deeper and deeper into the wood. Oh! how slowly time seemed to go by! how lazily the sun seemed to rise! And no wonder; for the agony she was enduring was growing well-nigh intolerable. She twisted and stretched her cramped limbs as she anxiously peered all around. Under her feet all was as yet dusky and grey. She could only just descry her bundle lying under her on the grass, and her sandals at the foot of the tree; but overhead the light was already shining, and the choir of birds was beginning to carol forth its morning hymn of praise. But how slowly time crept on! She saw the sky assuming a deeper and ruddier hue, while the East was clad in glorious purple. The clouds, the trees, the leaves, the branches above were all bathed in gold, and presently the light broke through to the bottom of the wood. Then the sun rose in his majesty and flooded everything in dazzling radiance. At length Dalima felt that she could safely leave her perch, and after giving another look round and observing the same precautions she used in clambering up, she began to descend. As soon as she reached the ground in safety, she stretched her numbed limbs, then she took up her bundle, in which she fortunately found a couple of parcels of rice. Swarms of ants were evidently anxious to share her breakfast with her; but these she soon got rid of. A little stream was murmuring close by, to this she hastened and bathed her face, her feet, and her arms in the cool refreshing water. Thus, having somewhat recovered from her painful night-watch, she sat down and enjoyed her rice, and a draught from the clear brook. Then with fresh courage and renewed strength, she continued her journey. The whole of that day she plodded along patiently until she came to a guard-house, where she heard the joyful news that the next dessa she would come to was Karang Anjer. "How far is it from here?" she asked. The man looked puzzled; for your Javanese is not much of a hand at judging distances. However, after a few moments' reflection, he told her that she would have to pass about fifty telegraph poles. Next day, with fresh courage she resumed her journey, and, after a good half-hour's walking, she reached the dessa. She lost no time in inquiring for the house of Mrs. Steenvlak and, having found it, she sent in her name to the njonja, adding that she was the baboe of nonna Anna. During her stay with the Steenvlaks, Anna had often, very often, spoken about her faithful servant, and always in terms of the greatest kindness and affection, so that Dalima found the most cordial reception. But, as regards the main object of her long journey, the poor baboe could get no information whatever. Prayers and entreaties were alike in vain. To all her questions she could obtain no other answer than, "I do not know." "But, njonjaa, Nana has been staying with you here," cried the poor girl. "Yes, Dalima, that is so." "But where is she now, njaa?" "She has gone away." "Yes, njaa; but where is she?" "That I cannot tell you." The faithful young girl twisted and turned her questions in every conceivable way--most plaintively she lengthened out her "njonjaaa"--but she could get no answer. Did Mrs. Steenvlak really not know what had become of Anna? That was hardly probable. Might she perhaps have some suspicion that Dalima had been sent on her errand by van Nerekool? That was precisely what the lady did think probable. She knew that the girl was well aware of the affection which existed between her mistress and the young lawyer, and, moreover, Dalima had, in the course of conversation quite innocently remarked, that Charles van Nerekool had visited her in the prison at Santjoemeh, and that she had received money from him. Mrs. Steenvlak was very far indeed from harbouring any sinister suspicions against Dalima; she saw perfectly well that love for her mistress was the only motive that had brought her all that distance. But yet, she could not help thinking that this devotion to Anna was mingled with some feeling of gratitude for the European gentleman who had showed himself so kind to Dalima in her distress. And again, might not the girl honestly imagine that in bringing the lovers together she was promoting the happiness of both? These considerations made Mrs. Steenvlak very guarded in her replies. "Njonjaa," began Dalima again, "do tell me where I may find my Nana." "I have told you already, and I tell you again, that I know nothing about it," was the lady's answer. "But, njaa, tell me, do you know where she has gone to?" cried Dalima, wringing her hands. "No, I tell you--how should I, baboe?" "But you know at least in which direction she went?" asked the girl, still sticking to her point. "Of course," replied Mrs. Steenvlak, "I know that." "Oh, then, tell me," cried the sobbing girl, with a ray of hope in her swollen eyes. "I may not, I cannot tell you, baboe." "But why not, njaa?" "Because, before Anna left me she made me promise her--" "What, njaa?" "That I would let no one know--no one, do you understand me, Dalima?" "That does not apply to me, you may trust me, njaa." "No, no," replied Mrs. Steenvlak, "I will trust no one--Anna was particularly anxious that I should not speak." "But, perhaps she is in need of my help, njaa. Where can she be? She is not fit to take care of herself, she is not accustomed to it. Do tell me," sobbed the poor girl again, "I must find my Nana." "No," said Mrs. Steenvlak firmly, "a promise once made must not be broken, you know that as well as I do, Dalima." For all her firmness, the kind-hearted lady was deeply moved by the devotion of the poor creature, who had already gone through so much suffering in her little life, that it was a wonder her temper had not been soured altogether by misfortune. She was half sorry that she had given her word to Anna; but yet, until she was authorised to do so, she did not feel justified in breaking silence. "The best advice I can give you," she said at length, as she looked with much compassion at the girl who sat sobbing at her feet, "is to return at once to Santjoemeh, or better still to Kaligaweh. Can I do anything for you to help you on your journey back?" Baboe Dalima sadly shook her head. "Come, come, you will want some money on the road, eh?" and opening her purse she took out four rix-dollars and put them into the girl's hand. Without uttering a word, Dalima accepted the gift, and carefully tied up the money in her handkerchief. Then she rose, respectfully kissed Mrs. Steenvlak's hand, and disappeared. As soon as she got outside, she muttered, "That gives me so many more days to look for Nana." Dalima's wants were but few. A couple of pence for her lodging, some twenty, or five and twenty cents for her food--that was all she required. Instead of leaving Karang Anjer, she continued to wander about the neighbourhood. She questioned, she inquired, she managed to penetrate everywhere. She could do what van Nerekool, as a European, and in his position as judge, was not able to do. She would, for instance, sit down at every small fruit and coffee stall she found on her way. At one place she would sit down and eat some rice, flavoured with red pepper; at another place again she would purchase some rasped cocoa-nut sweetened with the syrup of goela-areng; at another little stall again she would sip a cup of coffee or eat a bunch of ramboetans. These delicacies she could purchase for a very few cents, sometimes they cost her nothing at all; for the woman who kept the stall would look strangely at her, and when she produced her money would quietly put it back, and say: "Never mind, keep that for your baby, and take another cup of coffee, you are welcome to it." But Dalima did not sit down at these stalls to enjoy herself--she did so because it gave her an opportunity of asking questions and making inquiries. But, alas, all her perseverance and all her endeavours were, for a considerable time, fruitless. During the first few days of her wandering, she learned absolutely nothing. She was beginning to despair, and to give up all hope of success. She was, however, soon to have her reward; for on a certain day, as she was slowly walking through the dessa Prembanan, which is situated about three miles to the southwest of Karang Anjer, she obtained some information which seemed to point in the right direction. A woman told her that, on a certain day, about two months ago, one of the poles of a light litter suddenly snapped, and a fresh pole had to be procured. The bearers put down the litter and, as a bamboo of sufficient length and strength was not very easily found, some considerable delay ensued. During this time of waiting, a nonna had stepped out of the litter, and had taken a seat at the stall, and called for a cup of coffee. "A nonna, you say?" cried Dalima breathless with excitement: "are you sure of that?" "Oh, yes, quite sure," replied the woman. "She was dressed exactly like all Javanese girls, in a very simple sarong and a plain cotton kabaja, and she had sandals on her feet. But those feet had evidently been but little exposed to the sun, they were very small, very white, and not at all flattened out as our feet are. I fancy that not even the princesses at Sala have fairer and tinier feet; but for that matter she might perhaps have been a princess." "Why do you think so?" asked Dalima. "Well, she spoke Javanese; but entirely with the a sound so that I had some difficulty in catching what she said." "You spoke to her then, ma?" "Yes, I did," replied the stall-keeper, "she spoke with something of your accent." "But what did she say to you, ma?" "She first asked for coffee and then for ramboetans." "Did she say anything more?--do try and remember." "Oh, yes; she further asked me how far it is from here to the dessa Sikaja, and I told her that it is about two miles off." "Anything else?" cried Dalima impatiently. "Then she asked how far Sikaja is from the dessa Pringtoetoel; but I could not tell her that, as I know nothing of the country beyond our own district." "Did you hear her say anything more, ma?" "No." "But ma, did you see her face?" "Certainly I did," replied the woman, "why not?" "And?" asked Dalima, anxiously. "Her features were those of a white woman, though rather dark. Her face and hands, however, did not correspond in colour with her feet. In fact I suspected at the time that she had stained them. But perhaps the nonna had been running about a good deal in the sun." "And her hair, ma?" asked Dalima. "It was tied up in a knot." "What colour was it, ma?" "It was as black as yours; but much softer, it looked like silk and was wavy. Oh, yes! now I feel sure she was a nonna." "Yes," thought Dalima, "it is she;" and then she continued aloud: "She asked you no other question, ma?" "No, nothing else," replied the stall-keeper. Dalima did not stay long--a quarter of an hour later she was on her way to Sikaja. How she sped there, we shall see later on. The day after, she reappeared in Karang Anjer; but it was only to fetch the bundle she had left behind her. Then she disappeared, and no one saw or heard anything more of her. Mrs. Steenvlak sent a couple of oppassers to inquire what had become of her; but they returned saying that the girl had gone away, no one could tell whither. "She must have gone back to Santjoemeh," thought Mrs. Steenvlak. "Was I right after all in keeping my word to Anna? Time will show. Anna did seem greatly attached to her baboe; and no doubt, in her present lonely state, the girl would be a pleasant and useful companion." CHAPTER XXXI. THE PRISON AT SANTJOEMEH--THE OPIUM-TRADE AT ATJEH. It was a glorious afternoon in August and the green at Santjoemeh presented a pleasant and most animated appearance. The military band was performing a selection of music and numbers of carriages were slowly moving about among a crowd of pedestrians. The fine turf which, during the west monsoon, gives the square so fresh and pleasant an aspect, was now completely dried up and burnt to a uniform dark brown tint, while here and there the soil, which mostly consists of red clay, was gaping open in wide fissures under the scorching influence of the tropical sun. But at that hour in the afternoon, the sun had already run a considerable portion of his daily course, and was casting his slanting rays through the tops of the tall kanarie trees which, with their dark and glossy foliage, enclose the green as in a frame of verdure. The north-easterly monsoon was blowing freshly along the coasts of Java; it was rustling in the leaves, in the branches, and even far inland it was making its cooling influence felt, pleasantly tempering the heat of the day. The whole of Santjoemeh was astir. Europeans, natives, Chinamen and Arabs were walking about in motley groups. Every one seemed bent upon enjoying the music and upon breathing his share of the deliciously cool evening air. The Resident van Gulpendam and his wife, as charming as ever, had driven up the green in a handsome landau drawn by a pair of splendid horses. They were very busy exchanging greetings and nods on all sides; and distributing their most affable smiles among their friends and acquaintances. Officials of all kinds and of all grades were there and the leading men of commerce; all these, accompanied by their wives and daughters, sauntered about laughing, talking, or enjoying the music. We just now said all Santjoemeh was astir. But yet anyone who was well acquainted with the European world at Santjoemeh--and really it was not very difficult in that small inland town to become tolerably well known to everyone of any social importance--could not help noticing that one small group was wanting; a group which, by reason of its youth, its wit and gaiety, always was wont to impart a certain flavour of mirth to all these gatherings; a group which used to attract the brightest eyes and win the most beaming smiles--this little group was, on the present occasion, conspicuous by its absence. "What can have become of Edward van Rheijn?" "Where is Leendert Grashuis?" "Where can August van Beneden have got to?" Such were the inquiries which might be heard on every side. "Yes, and Grenits, where is he? What has become of our merry Theodoor?" "Theodoor? Why, don't you know--he is in the lock-up?" "Oh, yes, of course, I had quite forgotten; he is in for ten days, eh?" "Ah! well then, you hardly need ask where the others are to be found." "They are keeping him company you may be sure--cela va sans dire." "They are faithful friends these four." "Faithful, you call them? I tell you their devotion to each other is positively edifying. They are simply inseparable." "Hallo!" cried another, "there goes Mokesuep!" "I say, just look; now he is making his bow to the Resident. What a magnificent sweep--his hat almost touches the ground!" "And what a charming smile the fair Laurentia is giving him." "I should rather think so. In that late business of Lim Ho--" "Come, I say! no scandal if you please!" "Scandal you call it; why, all Santjoemeh is talking about it!" "Mokesuep," cried another, "won't go and pay Grenits a visit, I bet!" "He had better not show his nose there; he would find himself in queer street, I fancy!" "Yes, that he would; and no more than he deserves--the scoundrel!" "Look at him now, shaking hands with the Assistant Resident." "He is only a new chum--as soon as he has got to know the fellow--" "Why, then he will do just exactly as the Resident does; he will follow his lead, you will see." "Well, well," remarked another, "such fellows have their value." "Come gentlemen, do keep quiet; let us listen; they are just striking up Le lever du soleil." "The lever of what did you say? That's a good joke--the sun is just setting." "Do be quiet, I want to hear the music." It was the last piece on the programme, and at the moment when a brilliant fugue seemed to celebrate the rising of the orb of day--the actual sun was disappearing behind the hills to the west of Santjoemeh. "Just twelve hours out!" cried one, "either the sun or the bandmaster must have been having a drop too much!" A very few minutes afterwards the green was deserted. However, the frequenters of the Sunday afternoon concert, had been quite right in their surmise. Van Nerekool, van Beneden and van Rheijn--the three "vans," as the wits of Santjoemeh loved to call them, had indeed gone to the prison to pass the afternoon and evening, with their friend Grenits. He, poor fellow, had been condemned to ten days' imprisonment and he had already been in durance vile for some time. As soon as they had had their bath after the usual siesta, they had started for the prison, and at that hour the sun was still high and the streets were almost deserted. They were true friends and they cheerfully gave up these hours of amusement, which were indeed the most pleasant of the whole week, to the poor prisoner. It was a sacrifice, however, which brought its own reward. The apartment in which the young men were on that afternoon assembled, did not by any means wear a dismal appearance, it suggested anything rather than a prison cell. The room was of moderate size and perfectly square. On either side of the door two large windows admitted light and air, and these could be closed by means of Venetian blinds. The door gave access to a tolerably wide verandah, the architraves of which rested on pillars in the Doric style; and this gallery was common to four other similar apartments which served the same purpose as that for which Grenits was immured--namely to deprive their occupants, for the time being, of liberty. That verandah looked out upon a small but cheerful looking quadrangle, very tastefully laid out in grass plots and planted with flowering shrubs all covered with gay and many-coloured blossoms. The little square was enclosed by the buildings which formed the jail, one of its sides being occupied by the governor's house, a building which had a double row of pillars and whose spacious front-gallery was enlivened by a splendid collection of roses of all kinds, amongst which the thick double Persian rose, the fair Devoniensis, the Souvenir de la Malmaison and the fragrant tea-rose were conspicuous. The room occupied by Grenits was very prettily furnished. It had a good table, a very comfortable seat something like a garden seat, and half-a-dozen chairs; all these of the best native workmanship. The walls were hung with four or five fairly good pictures, and a handsome lamp was suspended from the ceiling. The floor was almost entirely covered with tiles and these again were hidden by matting of the finest texture. But the most elegant piece of furniture the room contained was undoubtedly the piano which van Beneden had sent to the prison for his friend's amusement. The bedroom, no less tastefully furnished than the apartment we have attempted to describe, was immediately adjacent to the sitting-room--so that Grenits had not much reason to complain, and his captivity was not very irksome. Said Grashuis, as he entered and looked around: "Why, old fellow! this looks really very comfortable. This is the first time I have ever been inside a prison, and I had no idea the Government took such good care of the criminals it has to keep under lock and key." "That's all you know about it!" laughed van Rheijn, "you ought to go and inspect the other side." "Where? on that side?" asked Grashuis as he pointed to the governor's house. "No, no," said van Beneden, "yonder in that wing, that is where you ought to go and have a look. That would make you sing a different tune." "Shall we go?" cried Leendert as he rose from his seat. "Thank you, much obliged--the smell would soon drive you away. The poor native prisoners lie there huddled together in a space miserably too small for them. The only furniture you would see there is a wretched bench or two, which in filthiness so closely rivals the floor, that the original colour of both has long since disappeared. At nightfall some further ornaments are introduced in the shape of sundry representatives of the tub family--and these utensils presently contribute their fragrance to the already pestilent atmosphere. The prisoners have but a very scanty allowance of air and light, admitted through two small heavily barred openings. The walls are supposed to be white-washed; but are smeared all over with blotches of blood, produced by mosquitoes and other still fouler insects crushed against them by the human finger, and are covered with sirih-spittle and other nameless abominations. All things considered, I believe you will give me credit for acting the part of a friend in strongly dissuading you from paying a visit to that horrid den." "Yes, August is quite right," remarked Grenits. "I ventured to go and have a look at the place yesterday, and I have not yet got over my feelings of disgust. But come, let us change the subject. Edward, your boy has just now brought me a parcel." "Yes, I sent him with it, where is it?" "It is there, just over there on the piano." "My friend," said van Rheijn as he deliberately opened the parcel, "here you have a brand-new bedoedan. You see the bowl is perfectly pure and the stem has never been used. And here is a small quantity of the very best tjandoe--prime quality as Grenits might say." "Oh yes," said Beneden--"that is, I suppose, for our experiment, is it not? How much opium have you there?" "This little box contains about twenty-five matas." "How much may that be?" "Let me see! That comes to about one centigramme." "But is that enough?" asked Grashuis. "Enough? Yes, Leendert, too much!" replied van Rheijn. "Yet Miklucho-Maclay, in his well-known experiment consumed one hundred and seven grains." "Well, if you reckon it up as I have done, you will find that a hundred and seven grains come to only eighteen matas and a fraction." "Very good, in that case we might begin at once." "Now please don't be in such a hurry," put in van Rheijn. "Why should we put it off?" asked Grashuis. "We have now a few quiet hours before us, such an opportunity may not recur." "But, I take it," objected van Nerekool, "our object is not merely to observe the sensations which opium smoking produces." "Methinks," interrupted Grashuis, "that there has never been a question of anything else." "That may be so," replied van Nerekool; "but yet I fancy we must all have some further object in view. Speaking for myself, I should be very sorry indeed to have anything to do with an experiment, whereby--well, how shall I best express myself?--whereby merely the animal side of the question is to be considered." "Yes, and so should I," cried van Beneden. "And so say I," added van Rheijn. "Yet," remarked Grenits, "even from that low point of view the problem would be worth studying. Don't you remember what we saw in the den at Kaligaweh?" "Bah! bah!" cried all in disgust. "Come, no more of that," said van Nerekool very seriously. "If your experiment is to reproduce any scenes like those--then I will take no part in it." "That is exactly my opinion," said van Rheijn, "and I am anxious therefore to give to our investigation a totally different aspect, and to conduct it on strictly scientific principles." "Very well," observed Grashuis; "but who is to conduct this scientific investigation--to do that we need a man of science." "Yes," said van Beneden, "we are no doubt most competent representatives of the judicial, the civil, the mathematical and the commercial branches of the community; but we do not represent the faculty." "Just so," replied van Rheijn; "but I have made provision for that?" "In what way?" "I have invited Murowski to join us." "What? Murowski the Pole?" cried one. "Murowski the snake-charmer?" said another. "Murowski the butterfly hunter?" cried a third. "Yes, gentlemen, Murowski, our learned medical officer. But, if you please, a little more respect for that high-priest of science. Do not, pray, forget that he is the most celebrated entomologist India has ever possessed and that is, I think, saying a good deal in these days when every little German prince gives his paltry decorations and family orders for any complete--or incomplete--collection of insects, or for a bowl of disgusting reptiles tortured to death in arrack. And, further, please not to forget that he is a most earnest observer of all scientific phenomena, a man whose very name will impress upon our séance that stamp of learning which it will need if it is to go forth to the world of science as a noteworthy experiment. Our Pole was in ecstasies when he heard of our experiment, and when I asked him to undertake the management of it, he promised to bring his thermometers, his stethoscopes--You will see what a dose of learning he will give us!" "That's all very fine;" said Grenits, "but meanwhile he has not turned up." "Perhaps," suggested van Beneden, "he is hunting butterflies." "Excuse me," replied van Rheijn, "in addition to his other merits, the man is also a great lover of music. Nothing in the world would induce him to miss the afternoon concert on the green, moreover he is deeply smitten with Miss Agatha van Bemmelen, and she, no doubt, is there in the family coach." "Oh, ho!" said Grenits, "that is a pretty little butterfly, she has money too." "Oh, yes, your Poles are no fools." "But how long will he be?" "He has promised me," replied van Rheijn, "to join us as soon as the music is over; and he is the man to keep to his word." "Meanwhile we might get up a little music on our own account," suggested van Beneden. "You see," said Grenits pointing to the piano, "Charles is at his post already." Van Nerekool, who had taken but little part in the conversation, had, in fact, risen and gone to the piano. At first, in an absent kind of way, he struck a few chords; but presently, under the influence of thoughts which always reverted to Anna, he had struck up L'absence of Tal. The room soon was filled with melancholy strains and sentimental trills. "No, no!" cried van Rheijn, "let us have no music, you see what effect it has. Just look at him sitting there, why there are tears in his eyes! A most pernicious thing, believe me, in this climate and in this horrid dungeon." The last chord had died away and still van Nerekool remained moodily seated at the instrument, his head bent forward and his hands resting heavily on the keys. "I say, Charles!" cried Edward, "no more music now. Come and sit here by me, and, while we are waiting for Murowski, I have a letter to read to you which I have just now received from Verstork." "From William!" exclaimed van Nerekool; and, rousing himself at the name of his friend, he took the seat van Rheijn indicated to him. "It is strange," he continued, "I have had no answer to my letter." "No more have I," said van Beneden. "Nor I!" cried Grenits. "I don't much wonder at that," replied van Rheijn, "he is much too busy yonder at Kotta Radja. You may fancy how much he has to do, as he is the only civilian in that military world." "Yes," said Grashuis, "a military world which has become a very small one now that our centralising system has come into operation." "A system, Leendert, which might more properly be styled a system of isolation," said Grenits; "it won't be very long before our grand army will be sitting there like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island without any other means of communication with the surrounding inhabitants than that of bullets." "Come, come, Theodoor," interrupted one, "no politics." "Especially, I suppose, no Atjeh politics," laughed Grenits. "Oh aye, I know all about that, we Dutchmen dread that subject as a cat dreads water; but, my friends, remember that for all that, it is a question which involves the most vital interests of our country and its colonies." "Now that'll do, that'll do!" they cried. "All right, my friends," said Grenits with a laugh, "I must not, of course, inflict upon my kind friends who deign to come and while away the time of a poor captive, a subject of conversation which is distasteful to them. But, yet, I cannot make out what in the world William can have to control at Kotta Radja. The native population which has, nominally, remained faithful to us and shows its good faith by treacherously attacking our soldiers--" "Now there you go again--do shut up!" "Well, but;" persisted Grenits, "this is no politics, I do not suppose he has to look after the mess of the soldiers and marines!" "Bah!" cried van Rheijn somewhat contemptuously, "what does a merchant know about such things? It is very much as if I should give a dissertation on the state of trade in madapollams." "You are right, quite right," laughed Grenits, "I confess myself wrong. Let the cobbler stick to his last. But now for William; what does he write about?" "Here is his letter," said van Rheijn; "but I ought first to tell you that I sent him a short account of the changes which have taken place in his district of Banjoe Pahit since he left it. I told him what lamentable influence the too compliant temper of his successor has had upon the condition of the population. To this letter of mine I have his reply, and I need hardly tell you that his views on that subject are not couleur de rose. But you had better hear what he says: "'All you have told me, dear Edward, about the state of affairs at Banjoe Pahit has made me very sad. Agriculture neglected, breach of contract a daily occurrence, and the fatal passion for opium increasing day by day! Alas, alas! can all this be justly put to the account of my successor? Should you not rather cast the blame upon me? Such terrible changes surely never take place suddenly. No, no, if indeed matters have changed for the worse as rapidly as you say, then I fear there must have been some antecedent cause for this wretched state of decay. I will tell you frankly, my friend, that my conscience bitterly upbraids me. It tells me that I have not always done that which it was my bounden duty to do; and that I have not set my face against the abuse of opium as sternly and as rigidly as I should have done. It is true, of course, that the opium den was established at Kaligaweh before I came to the place; and, so far, my conscience is clear. But the evil had not then assumed the proportions which makes it such a terrible curse at present. At that time there were still a great number of inhabitants who never touched opium. I might then, had I only been firm enough, have insisted upon the fact, that the opium den ought not to be maintained there--that, in fact, it had no reason to exist, inasmuch as it did not, at that time, provide for any local need. I did so, it is true; but weak and timid as I was, I did so in a half-hearted way. I did not forcibly enough insist upon the terrible fact that this same opium den was a most insidious means of seduction; and that, in the end, it must inevitably bring the poor people to ruin and misery. "'That is where I feel I am to blame. I may, perhaps, in self justification, try to persuade myself that, as a civil servant, I was bound to do all I could to augment the national income, that, by not opposing with all my might the use of opium, I was helping, as far as I could, to redress the balance of our national expenditure; that, even had I tried to check the havoc wrought by this baleful drug, I could have expected no assistance from my superior officer van Gulpendam, nor yet have hoped for any support from the authorities at home; that, on the contrary, they would between them have crushed me like a bit of glass had I dared so much as to lift up my little finger against this infamous stop-gap of our national finances. I have tried to persuade myself that any such action on my part must have plunged my relations, who for the present and, as far as I can see, for the future, are entirely dependent upon me, into the direst poverty-- "'But, my dear Edward, all this sophistry profits me nothing; my conscience refuses to be lulled by any such specious arguments. For conscience is inexorable, and it loudly cries out that I have failed to do my duty as public servant in not vigorously standing up for the poor natives to whose protection I was pledged. Alas! the past cannot be recalled! "'If it were lawful, under any circumstances whatever, to rejoice over the death of any fellow creature, I think I might rejoice over the death of Singomengolo--that detestable bandoelan who has caused so much trouble and misery. But, why do I talk of exulting over his death? Some equally worthless fellow will no doubt be found to take his place and to undertake the dirty work of an opium spy. The farmers are wealthy enough to create, so to speak, such creatures every where, and the Government! why--the Government--yes, it will, with a smile, pocket the foully earned money amidst the applause of the Dutch nation.'" "I say!" exclaimed Grenits, sarcastically, "don't you think it is about time to cry 'Shut up?'" But van Rheijn went on quietly reading, not heeding the interruption: "'I was just now blaming myself for not having carried out my duty more strictly. I hardly need tell you that I have made a solemn vow to act very differently in the future, and that I have determined henceforth to protect, to the utmost of my powers, the natives against the horrors of opium. But, that is more easily said than done. For, whom can I protect out here in Atjeh? The native population? Good Lord! all I see about me in this place resembles anything in the world rather than a native population. There is no such thing. Just let me tell you what is going on here. General van Swieten landed in 1873, and from that moment the natives have retired as our troops have advanced. When he returned to Europe we were holding a piece of ground which was completely deserted by the natives, and on which not a single Javanese was ever seen. I ought to except the narrow strip of land between the river Atjeh and the sea, the so-called dominion of Marassa, which, at most, supported no more than two thousand souls, and these, let me tell you, were by no means addicted to opium. Later on, when Colonel Pel took the command, things did not improve, on the contrary, the state of affairs grew gradually worse and worse. The natives were more determined than ever in their resistance to the hated invaders; and though that officer did try to introduce something like order into that most puzzling place Kotta Radja, which was entrusted to his care, and it must be said, did so with conspicuous success, yet daily his position became, if possible, one of greater isolation. Very soon no other communication with the surrounding natives became possible than by means of arms; and when they did meet it was not for the purpose of amicable conferences, but only to do one another as much injury as possible. You know all about this, for history must have told it you. The very first thing, indeed, which arises and flourishes under the folds of our Dutch ensign is not a house of prayer or a school, but an opium den. That is the first token of civilisation and the first blessing our rule brings with it. Among these conquered races there was not, as yet, a single man who would smoke the stuff; but yet an opium farmer had to be found. And why? Look you, Edward, when I put that question seriously to myself, then I can find no other answer than this one, namely: that it was necessary to make the Dutch people believe that the time of public expenditure on Atjeh had passed, and that now the place was beginning to pay. You may remember what a shout of joy was uttered by the daily press in Holland when, in the year 1875, the news arrived that the retail sale of opium in Atjeh was producing a yearly sum of 190,000 guilders, that is 16,000 guilders a month. A few, those who were capable of reflection, shook their heads doubtfully; but not even they were able to estimate the extent of the evil which this apparent gain would inevitably entail. "'It is, however, as clear as day, that no farmer could have been found to bid for the monopoly if the opium had been sold only to the few Marassans who remained faithful to us. Even granting that every single man of them smoked opium--and that was very far from being true, for the lower classes in this place are not nearly so much addicted to the habit as they are in Java; but even granting that--the entire number of smokers could not have exceeded three hundred. How could sixteen thousand guilders a month have been made out of these?--Why, it was clearly impossible, not even if every man smoked opium, drank opium and ate opium. You must consider that the farmer has to pay for the raw material with which the Government supplies him, that he has to pay all current expenses, that he has to make a living for himself, and that he must, moreover, make some profit. Thus I confidently state that, in order to be able to give sixteen thousand guilders for his privilege, he must retail opium for at least three times that amount. But who then are the consumers? Who are the people that bring this so-called profit to our national chest? "'I will tell you, Edward, who they are: "'In the first place, all the native soldiers quartered here. In consequence of the state of war and of the wretched arrangements in camp and bivouac, it is utterly impossible to keep any control over these men, and thus there is no question of repressive--still less of preventive--measures. The agents of the opium farmer prowl about among the encampments and bivouacs and most generously deign to accept, in payment of the poison they supply, the pay and, when that is gone, even the very clothing of the soldiers. "'Now, my friend, I ask you, do you begin to see why, during the Atjeh war, we suffered such terrible losses through sickness, and why our losses still remain so great? Now do you begin to see why all our hospitals are overcrowded? Do you now see what has demoralised our entire Indian force to such an extent, that, if we should have to face a serious rebellion or have to resist an attack on our colonies from any Western power--we can expect very little, or indeed nothing at all, from it? Then just reckon up what every soldier costs by the time he is equipped and drilled and fit to send out to join his regiment in the field. Just calculate what expense the country is put to for keeping all these men in hospital, and then you will be able to judge of the wretched shortsightedness of a policy which has created so fictitious a source of gain. "'I have mentioned, in the first place, the native soldiers as principal consumers of the poison; but the Chinese coolies and workmen also, whom the Government has to hire at an immense cost, from Penang, from Malacca, from Singapore, from Tandjong Pinang, and even from China itself, to occupy the country which the Atjehers have deserted, furnish another considerable contingent to the opium smokers, and consequently to the floating population of the hospitals and to the fixed population of the grave-yards. Who shall dare to compute with anything approaching to accuracy, the sums of money which are thus squandered merely to fill up the gaps which the abuse of opium is perpetually making among this working population? "'And, in the third place, the opium farmer finds his customers among the servants of the numerous officers, civil servants, and contractors; and, though this class of smokers do not entail any loss in the shape of money, inasmuch as the State has not to replace them; yet it must not be forgotten that as a direct consequence of the demoralisation of this class of men, there is at present at Kotta Radja, and more especially at Oleh-leh, a degree of insecurity of life and property, of which in Java you can form not the slightest conception. "'With regard to the moral condition of Oleh-leh, the harbour of Kotta Radja, it is simply indescribable! The things which daily are taking place in the opium dens within and around that spot where the poison can legally be purchased, simply baffle description. "'We saw some horrid sights at Kaligaweh, did we not? Well, my friend, what happens here exceeds everything that the most depraved imagination can possibly conjure up. "'The practices are, in one word, abominable. "'But, you may say perhaps, that if the poison were not to be obtained in a lawful way, men would procure it by illegal means. I say no! most emphatically I say no! Not a single ship can approach the North-West part of Sumatra's coast without being thoroughly searched. Very little trouble and care would be amply sufficient to prevent even as much as a single taël of opium to find its way into that part of Atjeh which is in our occupation. It would be the simplest thing in the world to prevent the import of the poison altogether. "'But no, that is not the object. The object of the Government, on the contrary, is to stimulate the opium trade as much as possible, and if ever the now rebellious population is brought under our yoke, the trade will flourish more vigorously than ever. The Dutch nation must be made to believe that Atjeh really produces a revenue, though, from even a financial point of view, this bogus revenue must result in the direst loss. "'In order to attain that object we have stuck at nothing--we have poisoned and demoralized the civil and military branches of the State--and have degraded men to the level of the beast. And all this merely for the prospect of the rich harvest which the opium trade will yield to the national exchequer as soon as we shall have forced Atjeh to share the blessings of our rule. "'Under these circumstances, you can readily see that it is difficult--that it is in fact impossible--for me to do what I feel it is my duty to do. That duty is incompatible with the position of a Government official.'" CHAPTER XXXII. A SCIENTIFIC OPIUM DEN The reader was here interrupted by a loud voice crying out in the verandah: "Donnerwetter! what has become of Mr. Grenits?" "That's our Pole," said van Rheijn, folding up the letter he was reading and replacing it in his pocket. "There is nothing specially interesting in the end of William's letter, and I do not think it advisable to allow a private communication of this kind to spread beyond our own little circle." The door opened and Dr. Murowski entered. Having shaken hands with the prisoner and greeted the other gentlemen, he said in a queer lingo of his own, made up of Dutch, German, and Polish, but which we will not attempt to reproduce: "Rather behind time, I fear, gentlemen, rather behind time, but donnerwetter--!" "Come, come, doctor," said van Beneden with a laugh, "no strong language if you please. I daresay you fell in with Miss van Bemmelen on the green." The doctor reddened up to the very roots of his hair, as he replied in some confusion: "Well, yes, I did meet her--" "In that case, my dear fellow," continued van Beneden, "you need not trouble yourself to make any apology at all, where there is a lady in the case--" "Stuff and nonsense!" broke in Murowski, "I wasn't in her company for five minutes!" "If that be the case, doctor," said van Rheijn, "we must ask you why you have kept us so long. You knew we were all here waiting for you." "Oh, never mind," put in Grashuis with a smile, "don't press him too hard--our learned friend has probably been hunting some other pretty little butterfly!" "Yes, I can see him," continued van Beneden, "net in hand, running after some splendid Sphynx." "Indeed," growled Murowski, "you seem to have a pretty lively imagination. Sphynx indeed! A funny kind of Sphynx has been after me!" Van Rheijn laughed aloud. "Now, come," said he, "illustrious countryman of Sobieski, of Poniatowski, and so many other worthies in ski, let us have your news--for news you evidently have to tell us. Let us have it. But, mind you, whatever excuse you may have to make--it will have to be a a good one." "As I was strolling about the green enjoying the music," began the doctor, "my chief called me aside and said he wanted to see me at his quarters as soon as ever the concert was over." "Well, what of that?" cried the friends. "A request of this kind," rejoined the Pole, "is, as you know, gentlemen, tantamount to a positive order." "Yes, yes," cried van Rheijn, full of curiosity, "we grant you that; but what important communication had he to make to you?" "No doubt some case of pneumato--" began van Beneden. But Murowski did not give him time to complete his sentence. "He simply wanted to tell me that I am to be transferred to another station." "You are going to leave us?" exclaimed the friends in a breath. "Yes, gentlemen, so it seems--you see I have been a very long time settled in this place," grumbled Murowski, "it must be quite five months and a half." "Well, and where are they going to send you to?" "To Gombong, it appears." "They might very easily have packed you off to a worse place," said van Rheijn, "to Singkelen, for instance, or to Atjeh." "Oh, I have no doubt you are quite right there," sighed Murowski, "but where on earth is Gombong? You must excuse my ignorance, gentlemen," continued he, with a smile, "the study of Indian geography is, I fear, somewhat neglected in Poland." "Gombong," exclaimed van Rheijn, "is in Bagelen." "Indeed," replied the Pole, "I am much obliged to you for the information; but where may Bagelen be?" "Bagelen," said the embryo-controller, with a certain sense of superiority, pointing in the required direction, "Bagelen is only just over there." "Not over the sea then?" cried Murowski, evidently much relieved. "No, no, my dear fellow, not a bit of it; a carriage will take you there very comfortably. But, why don't you ask van Nerekool, he has but just returned from the very place. He knows all about it. Why! he lost his heart there!" "Lost his heart? At Gombong?" asked Murowski, looking from one to the other with a puzzled air. "Not exactly at Gombong; but at all events very close by, at Karang Anjer. Do you know Miss van Gulpendam?" "Pretty Miss van Gulpendam! Of course I do," exclaimed the doctor. "Very well then, Miss van Gulpendam has gone to Karang Anjer, and she has taken our friend's heart along with her." "That's smart," replied the Pole, quite mistaking the meaning of the word he employed. "Oh, you think so?" asked Grashuis, drily. This conversation, as may well be supposed, was highly distasteful to van Nerekool. He hastened to put an end to it by saying: "Gentlemen, I vote we begin to think of our experiment." "Ah, you are right," exclaimed the doctor, "our experientia by all means; experientia optima rerum magistra you know. By-the-bye, did you receive the parcel I sent you?" "Oh, yes," answered Grenits, "you will find it safe on that little table yonder." Thereupon Murowski produced his instruments; a couple of thermometers, a hygrometer, an aneroid barometer, a stethoscope, and a small chemical balance. While he was arranging these, van Rheijn opened the other parcel, which contained a bedoedan and a small box of tjandoe. "I say," cried van Beneden, who was the first to open the little box, "precious nasty stuff this looks!" Murowski took the box from him, examined the contents, and then falling at once into a lecturing tone, he began: "Opium is an amorphous, sticky substance which, being of a gummy nature, is not fissile but plastic. It is of a dark brown colour, possesses a faint sweetish smell, and is somewhat oily to the touch. Its chief constituents are morphine and narcotine, in the absence of these the drug has no value." "But," interrupted van Beneden somewhat impatiently, "which of us is to submit to the experiment?" "The best plan to settle that question," said van Rheijn, "would be, I think, to draw lots." "Very good," put in Murowski, "providing you allow me to stand out, as I shall have to watch the experiment." "Now, I think," suggested Grenits, "you had better let me make the trial." "Why you, rather than anyone of us?" "Why, because, being a prisoner," replied Grenits, "I have plenty of time on my hands to get over the effects of the debauch." "You are quite right," said van Rheijn, "I never thought of that--I must be at my office as usual to-morrow morning." "And I," continued van Beneden, "I have to be in court, on Setrosmito's business, you know." "Of course, of course!" cried all in chorus, "not one of us must, on any account, miss that trial." "Very good," said Grenits, "we are all agreed then that I am to be the smoker." "It is very kind of you, Theodoor, to make the offer." "All right, I am quite ready to begin." "Very likely," interrupted Murowski, "but that is more than I am." "No, and I am not ready yet," said Edward van Rheijn. Thereupon, assuming the most severe professional gravity, the worthy Pole commenced carefully to weigh out the stock of opium, which he found came to 142 grains. This fact he noted down in his pocket-book. "You had better add," said van Rheijn, "that there are twenty-five matas." "Twenty-five what?" asked Murowski, again with a puzzled look. "Twenty-five matas," repeated van Rheijn. "Matas!" exclaimed the doctor. "What? eyes?" The general burst of merriment which followed the question served only to augment the doctor's surprise. "Eyes!" laughed van Rheijn, "no, no, nothing of the kind. The Government table of opium weights runs thus: 1 pikoe = 100 katties, 1 kattie = 16 taëls, 1 taël = 10 tji, and 1 tji = 10 matas, and therefore--" "All right, all right!" cried Murowski, as he joined in the laugh, "now I see it." "But, gentlemen," he continued, "we must look sharp, the sun has set." It was nearly a quarter past six and, in the month of August, the sun in Java sets some time before that hour. Murowski requested Grenits to have the lamps lighted, and when the servant had brought in the lights, the Pole continued: "Now then, Grenits, get your clothes off!" "What is that for?" asked Theodoor. "My dear fellow," replied the doctor, "I must have you in pyjamas; for I shall have narrowly to watch the action of the chest." Grenits retired to his bedroom, and in a few minutes returned clad in his ordinary night clothing. The doctor then made him lie down on the divan, he felt his pulse, examined his tongue, sounded him with the stethoscope, and carefully took his temperature. During these preliminaries the countenance of Murowski wore a look of stern solemnity which, no doubt, ought to have impressed the spectators with the feelings of respect and awe due to a high priest of science; but which, unfortunately, only served to excite their merriment. Even Grenits himself could hardly repress a smile. "What in the world is the good of all that hocus-pocus?" whispered August van Beneden to Grashuis. "Why are you lawyers," rejoined the other, "always fencing with scraps of Latin? It is the correct thing, I suppose. It is a trick of the trade." At length Grenits said: "Well, doctor, is my carcase in pretty good order?" "Perfect," replied Murowski, "perfectly normal; I must have a look at the barometer, and then our experiment may begin at once." The barometer recorded 745 m.m., and the doctor made a note of the reading. "There, now," he said to Grenits, "I am quite ready--no, no, wait a bit--there is something else. When did you last partake of food?" "At half-past twelve," replied Grenits, "the usual dinner." "Thank you," said the doctor, and looking at his watch he continued, "It is now half-past six--just six hours ago. Did you partake of anything in the way of spirits?" "No, nothing of the kind," answered Grenits, "nothing but a little pale ale." The doctor then placed his thermometers in position under the patient's arms. While all this was doing, van Rheijn was busily employed dividing the opium into twenty-five equal parts. Then he lit the lamps, and, warming the bits of opium at the flame of the little lamp to make them soft, he kneaded into each of them some very finely cut Javanese tobacco, and then rolled them into small round pills. His friends looked on with some surprise at the dexterity with which he performed these manipulations; for he had not told them that, previously, he had asked Lim Ho to show him how the thing ought to be done. This lesson the wily Chinaman had been only too willing to give him. "Who knows," thought he, with a grin, "perhaps the Europeans may take a fancy to the delicacy." When Edward had prepared his pills, he produced the bedoedan. It consisted of a tolerably thick bamboo stem some nine or ten inches in length, highly polished and of a beautiful light-brown tint. This stem was open at one end and sealed at the other. Very near to the closed end and at right angles to the stem, a small earthenware bowl was inserted into the wood. "It is a spick-span brand new one, I can assure you," said van Rheijn to Theodoor, "I bought it myself for this very occasion." "Thank heaven for that!" cried Grenits. "Just fancy if one of those old sots had been sucking and slobbering at it! Bah! it makes me sick to think of it." "That shows how innocent you are," rejoined van Rheijn, "your real lover of opium, your 'feinschmecker,' prizes an old pipe very highly. When the stem is thoroughly saturated and the bowl thickly encrusted with juice, the smoke must be indeed delicious." Thus saying, Edward put one of the little pills into the bowl and handed the pipe, thus loaded, to his friend, while he drew the little table with the lamp within easy reach of the smoker. Grenits lay stretched out at full length on the divan, the front of his kabaai was wide open, so that the action of the chest was plainly visible, and his head rested on a somewhat hard pillow. "Now," remarked Grashuis, "there is only one thing lacking, and that is the greasy filthy pillow we saw in the den at Kaligaweh." "Much obliged to you, Leendert," laughed Grenits. "I would not for the world touch the beastly thing--this pillow will do perfectly well." Thus speaking, he turned his face to the lamp, applied his mouth to the stem of his bedoedan, and, trying to imitate as closely as he could the proceedings he had witnessed at Kaligaweh, he was about to apply the bowl to the flame. "Hold hard!" cried Murowski, "don't be in a hurry, one moment." With these words he took Theodoor's pulse and held it for fully a minute looking the while carefully at his watch. Then he once again applied the stethoscope, examined the thermometers, replaced them, and finally, in his notebook he wrote: Pulse 72, respiration 24, temperature 99 1/2. "That's it," said he, "now then puff away to your heart's content." With one steady long pull Grenits sucked the flame of the lamp into the bowl. As the opium-ball kindled, a faint sweetish odour began to pervade the apartment, a smell somewhat suggestive of warm blood and treacle. "Swallow it, swallow it!" cried van Rheijn. This, however, was more easily said than done. Grenits made an effort to swallow the nasty smoke; but then a violent fit of coughing compelled him to open his mouth and blow out the fumes into the room, augmenting thereby the nauseous smell which already pervaded the apartment. "Poeah! poeah!" cried Grenits, puffing and coughing. "What do you feel? What do you taste?" asked Murowski. "I am half choked with coughing," stammered Grenits, "and I have a nasty sweetish taste in my mouth. I cannot describe it." This first draw had been a deep one; the madat-ball was entirely consumed; van Rheijn slipped another opium-ball into the pipe. "Now, this time," said he, "you must try to swallow the smoke; you have done so often enough when you have blown the smoke of a cigar from your nose." Poor Grenits made another attempt. This time he did actually inhale the fumes and succeeded in retaining them for some seconds, after which he allowed them slowly to curl out at his nostrils. Dr. Murowski made a note in his pocket-book, pulse 70, respiration 25, temperature normal. Being asked again what he felt, Grenits answered: "I feel nothing; but the sweet taste has gone and now it tastes rather bitter." After the third pipe, Theodoor complained that his head felt heavy and said he wanted to go to sleep. This drowsiness seemed to increase with the fourth and fifth pipes; but, as yet, Grenits was well able to resist it. He returned sensible answers to the questions put to him by his friends; but remarked that his faculties seemed to be clouded and that he had to reflect for some considerable time before he could grasp the meaning of a question, and that he could not readily frame an answer. He was able, however, to sit upright, and could even walk up and down the room without support. Dr. Murowski watched him carefully and after the sixth pipe he found, that the drowsy feeling was still increasing, that the pulse was at 70 while the respiration had risen to 28. The eighth pipe produced further drowsiness, but yet Theodoor was able to tell the time by the clock. With the ninth pipe, his speech became thick and his utterance indistinct; and when the doctor pressed him very hard, he said that his tongue seemed as if it were increasing in volume. After the tenth pipe, the patient began to complain of a bitter taste in his mouth, and said he felt giddy. The doctor at once grasped his hand; but pulse and respiration both remained unaltered. After the eleventh, Grenits could no longer raise himself unaided from the divan, and, when he tried to walk had to be supported, so tottering and uncertain were his steps. After the twelfth pipe, which he smoked very slowly, a remarkable change came over the patient. Theodoor was now lying with his eyes closed; but every now and then he opened them and there was now a brightness in his look which offered a strange contrast to his former dull and heavy expression. His sensations, he declared, were highly pleasurable; but he could give no description of his feelings. "Charles, Charles," he faintly cried, "give us a little music," and he turned slightly to van Nerekool. The latter at once sat down at the piano and began very softly to play Chopin's variations on airs from Don Giovanni. The ecstatic expression on the smoker's face showed that he took in every chord and every note. "Go on playing," he murmured, as soon as Charles left off, "more music--more smoke--give me the pipe." This ecstatic state went on increasing with the thirteenth pipe and with it also the craving for opium grew more intense. Theodoor now began to laugh; he stretched out and waved his arms--the most pleasant pictures were evidently floating through his brain. When Murowski asked him what made him laugh he replied, with a fresh burst of unnatural merriment: "I don't know, I don't know!" Presently he requested van Nerekool to play him a certain passage from Schumann's Manfred. In this state of ecstasy the patient remained while he smoked his fourteenth and fifteenth pipes. The fixed smile did not leave his features; but now he ceased to reply to the questions of his friends. He also grew restless by degrees and no longer lay still as before. After the sixteenth pipe Grenits complained of having to leave off smoking while the pipe was being refilled. He grew fretful and found fault with van Rheijn for not having supplied another bedoedan, for then, he said, the experiment might have gone on without interruption. Dr. Murowski observed that the pulse was at 72 and the respiration at 28; that the conjunctiva was much bloodshot and the eyelids heavy and drooping. After the seventeenth pipe the smoker suddenly started up and attempted to walk; but, after a few steps, fell down and was unable to rise. His friends carried him back to the divan. He begged hard to be allowed to go on smoking and, as the doctor declared there was no danger whatever, the request was complied with. The eighteenth pipe brought back the state of ecstasy which, for awhile, seemed to have left the patient. Every now and then he opened his eyes wide and seemed to follow some flying image. With the twentieth pipe these symptoms merely increased, and when Murowski asked him how he felt he replied: "Oh! I feel so happy; I never felt anything like it before." The doctor made the following note: Sclerotica much inflamed, pulse 70, respiration 25, temperature 100·04, satyriasis setting in. Upon being asked if he wanted anything, he replied: "I don't want anything--nothing at all--leave me alone. The pipe! give me the pipe! that Edward, that Edward! does he want the thing to fail altogether?" The next instant he exclaimed: "Oh! if this be Mohammed's paradise, let me go on smoking for ever! The pipe! the pipe!" "Is it not high time," asked van Nerekool anxiously, "to put a stop to this? The poor fellow will, I fear, do himself some serious mischief." "No, no, no," cried the Pole. "Don't be alarmed, I answer for him, there is not the slightest danger. His pulse is perfectly regular, the breathing has quickened somewhat; but there is only a rise of ·3 in the temperature. It would be a pity not to go on now, this experiment is most important to science." After the twenty-first pipe, Grenits seemed to lose all control over himself. He lay still, almost motionless; but every word he uttered, every look and every gesture betrayed what was passing within. This continued until the twenty-fourth pipe had been smoked. Murowski then again asked him how he felt, and he answered pretty quietly: "Oh! I am at peace, at rest. Delightful! delightful!" But this was far from satisfying our Pole. With his right forefinger on the patient's pulse and his left hand spread out on his breast, he kept on asking him again and again, "What kind of feeling is it?" Theodoor, however, did not reply. By this time he was heaving and panting with excitement. His arms and hands were stretched out clutching convulsively at some phantom of his brain. His face wore a look of unutterable bliss which filled the bystanders at once with amazement and horror. "Doctor, doctor!" muttered van Nerekool, "let us put an end to this. Look at him, look at him. It is disgusting!" But the Pole would not give in. "There is no danger, none whatever!" he cried; "we must go on now, we must go on!" With the tough tenacity of the man of science bent upon fathoming some natural phenomenon, he eagerly watched Theodoor's slightest movement. He was desperately anxious to make the patient speak out. "Grenits!" he cried, "Grenits, do you hear me; tell me, do you hear me?" Then he forced up the eyelids, and with his finger sharply filliped his nose as he kept on crying, trembling with impatience: "Do you hear me, Grenits, do you hear?" Grenits muttered a few incoherent words as he restlessly tossed about on the divan. "Do you hear me?" persisted the doctor. "Tell me, can you understand?" "Oh, yes, yes," at length muttered Grenits, "do leave me alone!" In his eagerness the doctor bent over his patient, he did not for an instant take his eyes from his face. Just then the friend was transformed wholly into the man of science who, entirely mastered by the passionate desire of unravelling some secret of nature, might become capable of practising vivisection even upon his fellow-man. "Oh do tell me," passionately implored the doctor, "do tell me what you feel!" "What I feel?" muttered Theodoor vaguely. "Oh it is delightful, delightful--more delicious than--" "This is too bad!" shouted van Nerekool, "abominable! I can't stand this any longer!" and, snatching the pipe out of Grenits' hand, he stamped on it with his foot. Then he seized the box in which there remained but a single pill of opium and violently flung it and its contents out of the window. "That's right, quite right!" cried Grashuis and van Beneden in a breath. "It is a pity, a thousand pities," complained Murowski. But even he had very soon to change his tone, as the condition of Grenits now began seriously to alarm even the medical man. The smoker's pulse had fallen to 62, and his respiration to 24, while the temperature had risen to 101·40. Grenits moreover was now growing very restless, and was pouring forth a torrent of libidinous and incoherent ejaculations. His eyes were bloodshot, his face much swollen, his skin was hot and dry, while the hands were damp with clammy sweat. Incessantly he kept on clamouring for opium. "The pipe, give me the pipe! van Rheijn, the pipe!" he almost yelled, and this amidst a string of loose and frantic exclamations. Murowski, now beginning to fear that the experiment might have been carried too far, endeavoured to make him drink some of the strong coffee which had been kept ready for the purpose, by pouring it down his throat with a spoon. He bathed his head with iced water, and every now and then, made him sniff strong smelling salts. Thus, with considerable difficulty, the doctor at length succeeded in somewhat quieting his patient. The coffee, especially, seemed to have a soothing effect. At first Grenits violently resisted all attempts to make him swallow it; but presently, of his own accord he began to ask for it, and the beverage had the most sobering effect. Gradually the excitement began to abate, the patient's voice became more natural and subdued, and his utterances less wild. At length Grenits fell into a deep sleep. Murowski took out his pocket-book and wrote: Pulse 70, respiration 24, temperature 100. "Normal," said he with a sigh of relief, "quite normal! However, I shall not leave him to-night." The gaoler was very easily persuaded to allow the doctor to remain with his patient for that night, and Grenits slept for thirty-three hours. When he at length awoke he found that, with the exception of a feeling of exhaustion and a pretty severe headache, he was none the worse of his opium-debauch. Even these unpleasant sensations, however, left him as soon as he had taken a bath, and then he became ravenously hungry so that his attendant had some difficulty in serving him quickly and plentifully enough. Three days after these events Murowski was on his way to his new station. It was his intention to expand his notes into a full account of what he had witnessed, and to send his paper on the effects of opium smoking to one of the scientific publications in Germany. The experiment in the prison at Santjoemeh had one good effect, at least, upon those who were assembled to witness it: it served namely, to confirm the opinions they already held with regard to the use of opium. It would not be true to say that van Rheijn had ever stood up as a defender of the use of the drug; yet he had always striven to find some argument in palliation of the Government system; but now even he was completely converted. With poor Theodoor Grenits the events of that evening were, for a long time, a very sore point; and he never could bear the slightest allusion made to his antics while under the spell of the poppy-juice. "May I be hanged!" he cried, "if ever again I touch a bedoedan, however seductive and pleasant may be the images it calls up." And then, turning to his friends, he said, "Gentlemen, I beg you will do me the great favour of never, in the slightest manner, alluding to the past; and," continued he enthusiastically, "let us now join hands and solemnly declare war--war to the knife against the opium trade." CHAPTER XXXIII. IN THE PANDOPPO OF THE REGENT. The day which followed the opium experiment described in the last chapter, promised to be an interesting one to the inhabitants of Santjoemeh. On that day, Setrosmito, the father of baboe Dalima, who had for months been lying in gaol on a charge of having murdered a Chinese bandoelan in the execution of his duty, and who had been accused also of opium-smuggling, was to be brought to trial. The evidence had already been taken, and the witnesses on both sides had been examined. The prisoner confessed that he had, with his kris, taken the Chinaman's life; but he stoutly denied that he had been guilty of smuggling. All Santjoemeh had turned out, that is to say, the whole European population; for it was known that August van Beneden would conduct the defence. As our readers know, the young lawyer had already appeared as counsel for baboe Dalima; but at her trial he had merely watched the proceedings in behalf of his client, and had no opportunity of showing his powers as an advocate. Thus the speech he was expected to deliver in defence of Setrosmito, might be looked upon as virtually his maiden-speech. In social circles, however, and on several minor occasions, August van Beneden had given evidence of much ability and considerable readiness of speech, and thus the good people of Santjoemeh were looking forward to the coming trial as to a rare intellectual treat. But that was by no means all. It was further rumoured that the unfortunate bandoelan had lost his life in consequence of his misconduct towards the little daughter of the prisoner. Now, the public at Santjoemeh knew pretty well what excesses the bandoelans used frequently to permit themselves to take in these domiciliary visits for opium; and thus expected that some spicy details would be forthcoming at the trial. It was, moreover, confidently expected that in his devotion to Themis, the young lawyer would lay his finger heavily upon the crying abuses of the infamous opium traffic, that plague-spot of Javanese society and that disgrace to the European conquerors of the island. No wonder, therefore, that long before the time appointed for the trial, the pandoppo of the Regent's house in which the court was to sit, was crowded to its utmost capacity. Even ladies appeared in the audience, and foremost among these was fair Laurentia van Gulpendam. As a rule, no ladies ever appear at these native trials; but, on this occasion, the full-flavoured particulars which were sure to be revealed, might perhaps account for their presence. At all events, the numerous staff of servants looked on in amazement at this unusual concourse; for generally the public is, on such occasions, conspicuous only by its absence. These attendants found it as much as they could do to provide seats for all the company, and though there always is an abundant supply of chairs in every Regent's house, yet on this occasion, a sufficient number of seats could hardly be mustered. Had it been evening, and had the numerous lamps which swung from the roof of the pandoppo been alight, one might have imagined oneself at some festive gathering, or rather, one might have thought, that an exhibition of juggling or other such-like entertainment was about to take place; for, at one extremity of the spacious hall, there was a raised platform three steps above the level of the floor. On this stage was seen a long table covered with a green baize cloth on which were displayed a thick book and a number of 'pièces de conviction;' and at which several chairs were placed in order. A police oppasser, who, judging from his demeanour, was fully aware of the importance of his office, was mounting guard at the table, evidently posted there to keep the profane vulgar at a respectful distance. Had any unruly spirit attempted to approach, he would no doubt, with a noble flourish, have dragged the rusty bit of iron which he wore by his side from its scabbard. Pending the entrance of the judges, the crowd tried to pass the time as agreeably as it could. Greetings were exchanged, jokes circulated freely, the people laughed and chatted, and, in fact, behaved, in that temple of Justice, precisely as they might have done at a music-hall during the interval. "Good morning, Mrs. van Gulpendam, do you intend to be present at our session?" The speaker was Mr. Thomasz, deputy clerk of the court. He had strolled in en amateur to have a look at the proceedings; for the chief clerk himself was on that day to officiate, and Thomasz meant to make the best of the opportunity thus offered him of paying his court to fair Laurentia. "Good morning," replied the Resident's wife as she held out her hand. "Yes, I have come to have a look. I never have been present at one of these trials, and am rather curious to see what they are like. This case will be an interesting one, I think?" "I think it will, madam," replied Thomasz; "but for my part, I consider the examination of the witnesses much more entertaining." "I daresay," said Laurentia; "but--that horrid murderer--they are sure to find him guilty, are they not?" "I am not so sure of that, madam." "You are not? Why not?" "No, indeed, I am not. The head djaksa has indeed got up a splendid case for the prosecution, there is not a loop-hole in it; but ever since our Residents and Assistant-Residents have ceased to preside, and the duty has devolved upon professional lawyers, we seem to be be under the influence of a kind of morbid philanthropy--and, it would not at all surprise me if the scoundrel got clean off, especially--" "Ah yes," exclaimed Laurentia, "I know what you would say: especially since a European has undertaken the defence of that Javanese scoundrel. It is perfectly unheard-of--monstrous! But, tell me, who pays that counsel, do you know, Mr. Thomasz?" "Hush! madam, that's a secret." "A secret!" cried Laurentia, "you must keep no secrets from the wife of your Resident. You seem to know all about it. Come tell me what you know." "Let us go on the platform then," said Thomasz with a faint smile, "no one will be able to overhear us up there." They walked up the steps, went to the table, and made a pretence of examining the objects displayed upon it. The policeman on guard, of course, took good care not to interfere with the njonja Resident and the assistant registrar of the court. "Now then," said Laurentia in an undertone, "you may speak out. Who pays that lawyer?" "A company, madam," was the reply. "A company! What? of Chinamen?" cried Laurentia impatiently. "I did not say so, madam," replied the deputy clerk with a smile and a slight bow. "What company then?" "Of Europeans, madam." "Oh ho! you know them. You need not deny it; I see it in your face." "Hush, madam," whispered Thomasz, "there are a couple of ladies coming near," and then aloud he added: "Yes this is the very kris with which the deed was done--you see the wavy blade is stained with blood--that black spot--" Mrs. van Gulpendam seized the weapon. "Give me their names," she whispered as she stooped forward over the table to take it up. "I know but one of them--van Nerekool." "Van Nerekool--still that van Nerekool," hissed the fair woman between her clenched teeth. And then, turning to the pandoppo, she said to one of the ladies who had by this time mounted the platform: "Look here, Henriette, just look here--this is the kris with which the murder was committed." The policeman in charge of the table seemed inclined to step forward to forbid the others to approach; but a haughty look from Laurentia restrained him. "Is that really the kris?" asked Henriette. "Yes," exclaimed Laurentia, "look, you! that's how it was done--slash across the throat!" She accompanied these words with a sweep of the formidable weapon which made both the ladies start back in terror. "A magnificent woman that Laurentia!" said a young man in the body of the hall. "Just look at her attitude, look at her features, look at that hand as she grasps the dagger! What a lady Macbeth! what a perfect instep!" "Aye, aye," quoth another, "she is posing, she knows--she feels--that we are admiring her." "What are you frightened at?" continued Mrs. van Gulpendam, "see here, that spot is the blood of the victim, is it not, Mr. Thomasz?" "Disgusting!" cried both ladies in a breath. "How can you touch it, my dear madam?" "Touch it? why not?" scornfully replied Laurentia as she flung back the kris rattling upon the table. "Why not touch it? the thing doesn't bite." "Of course not, my dear," said Henriette; "but the mere thought that it has murdered a man!" "Pooh! a Chinaman!" cried Laurentia. "But a Chinaman is a human being," objected her friend. "I suppose so," was Laurentia's disdainful reply. "It is well that Lim Yang Bing or Lim Ho are not by to hear you," said Thomasz forcing a laugh. "Oh that is a different matter altogether," said the arrogant woman. "They are opium-farmers," cried Henriette. "They are millionaires!" added her friend. The two ladies uttered these exclamations almost simultaneously, with an indescribable tone of sarcasm peculiar to their sex. Laurentia fully understood the taunt and felt it too; but she gave no sign of displeasure. "Ah yes," continued Henriette following up her pleasant little home-thrust. "Now you mention their names, what has become of the two Chinamen. I don't see them. Yonder is the Chinese captain and Kam Tjeng Bie the wealthy merchant; but I can't see the two opium-farmers." "They will take good care," added the other lady, "not to show their noses here." "I daresay," carelessly remarked Laurentia, "that they find plenty to do getting ready for the wedding." "Is not the murderer," asked Henriette, "the father of baboe Dalima who accused Lim Ho of--?" "My dear Henriette," hastily interposed Mrs. van Gulpendam, "that is the merest tattle--in our gossiping Santjoemeh you ought not to believe one tenth part of what you hear." "But," continued she rather hurriedly as if anxious to change the subject, "but, Mr. Thomasz, what kind of gollokh is that yonder on the table--that looks as if it were blood-stained too--did the murderer use that thing also?" "Oh no, madam," replied the assistant-clerk, "that is nothing but chicken's blood." "Chicken's blood?" inquired Henriette with a laugh. "Yes, dear madam, we call that the gollokh soempah." "Indeed, and what may that mean?" "We might translate it by the 'oath-knife,'" replied Thomasz; "it is, in fact, with that instrument that the Chinese take an oath." "That's interesting! did you ever see it done, Mr. Thomasz?" "Oh yes, madam, very frequently." "Do tell us all about it," cried Henriette, "how is it done?" "It is as simple a ceremony as possible, ladies. The witness who is about to be sworn, accompanied by a Chinese interpreter, and one of the members of the court, walks up to a block of wood. Then the gollokh is placed into his hand and with it he chops off the head of a black chicken. Nothing more, and nothing less. It is an utterly meaningless performance, and, at first sight, it is simply ludicrous." "But why must the chicken be black, Mr. Thomasz?" asked Henriette. "That is more than I can tell you, madam," replied he. "You are aware, I suppose, that white is the mourning colour in China." "Oh, yes, I know that; but--a black chicken? There must be some hidden meaning in that," mused Henriette. "There may be, madam," replied Thomasz; "but I have never been able to discover any, though I have frequently asked interpreters and even Chinese chiefs about it. There exists, however," he continued, "in China another manner of taking an oath, the significance of which is, perhaps, more obvious. But it is used only on special and very important occasions." "Can there be any question of greater moment," asked Henriette, somewhat sharply, "than that of speaking the truth before a judge?" "Certainly there may be, madam," was the reply. "More important do you mean to tell me, than of giving solemn testimony upon which may depend perhaps the life or death of a human being?" "Undoubtedly, madam," said Thomasz. "Well!" cried Henriette, "I should like to know what questions those may be!" "To give you only one instance," replied Thomasz, "the great oath, the solemn oath which the Government requires to be taken when a man is made a Chinese officer." "Indeed!" exclaimed Henriette with a laugh, "do you call that so very serious a matter?" "And then," continued the assistant clerk, "on certain occasions, though rarely, the great oath is administered in civil cases, where the interests involved are very considerable." "Ah, now I understand you! When it is a question of £ s. d.," laughed Henriette; "but, pray, tell us something about that great oath." "With pleasure, madam, only I am afraid I do not know very much about it. The rites observed on such occasions are borrowed from the ceremony with which the oath is administered in China to princes and high state officials on their appointment. I will, in as few words as possible, try to describe to you what takes place. The witness first writes down the evidence he intends to give or the promise he intends to make, on a strip of red paper, and then he confirms the truth of his words by calling down upon himself the most fearful curses should his evidence prove untrue, or should he fail to carry out his engagement. This strip of red paper the witness next carries to the temple, and solemnly spreads it out upon the table of offerings, between a number of burning candles, some bottles of wine and some confectionery, which are destined to be gifts or offerings to the idol. While this is going on the priests are screeching forth a form of prayer, at certain passages of which a bell is violently rung. Thereupon the witness, in a loud voice, reads out what he has written on the paper, the priests the while burning incense. Finally, the red paper is held to the flame of one of the candles, and, having been thrown down on the table, is allowed to burn until it is reduced to ashes. This concludes the ceremony. I know, ladies, my description is most imperfect; but I hope that I have succeeded in giving you some notion of this very curious solemnity." "Much obliged to you, Mr. Thomasz," said Laurentia, holding out her hand to him as, with haughty glance, she surveyed the company assembled in the pandoppo. "I wonder whom she is looking for?" whispered one of the young men in the body of the hall. "Not for me I fear," sighed another, "perhaps--" "The gentlemen of the court!" bawled a police oppasser, much in the tone of a French huissier when he shouts, "La cour, messieurs!" The name of the individual who was supposed to be the object of Laurentia's solicitude remained unspoken. Just then, out of one of the side buildings which could be seen from the pandoppo through the intervals between the blinds, there appeared two European gentlemen, two Javanese chiefs and two Chinese officers. These formed a kind of procession and slowly marched towards the pandoppo. Having entered the hall they ascended the platform, and took their seats at the table, on the chairs placed ready for them. At the head of the procession walked Mr. Greveland, the successor of Mr. Zuidhoorn and president of the court. After him, came Radhen Mas Toemenggoeng Pringgoe Kesoemo, regent of Santjoemeh; Radhen Pandjie Merto Winoto the patih, and babah Tang Ing Gwam the Chinese major--these three were members of the native Council. Then followed Mas Wirio Kesoemo the head djaksa, and behind him came the clerk of the court, while Hadjie Moehammad Kassan, the panghoeloe or native priest, closed the procession. The president was in his judicial robes of office, while the clerk of the court appeared in black frock-coat and white trousers. The Javanese members wore, of course, the national costume, which consisted of a short jacket with stiff gold-embroidered collar over a similarly embroidered vest, with the finely stitched sarong wrapped in neat and narrow plaits round the waist. On their heads they wore the ordinary scarf; but in addition to this they also wore the kopja, an ugly and shapeless head-gear, looking like a bit of stove-pipe ornamented with narrow gold lace. The Chinese major was in full Mandarin's dress, the most conspicuous part of his attire being a kind of tabard of light blue cloth, on which, in front and behind, were richly embroidered in gold a pair of monstrous dragons. His head was covered with a stiff cap of light blue cloth. This cap had a somewhat high crown, on the top of which, surmounting a little tuft or tassel, shone a large blue gem of extraordinary lustre. The panghoeloe was clad in a sombre-looking cassock reaching down to his heels. He was remarkable chiefly by a turban of prodigious size, which, by its magnitude and colour, proclaimed that the man had visited the tomb of the prophet and was therefore a Hadjie or pilgrim. In his hand he held a book which looked much worn and soiled. This was the sacred book--the Koran. On the steps leading to the platform were seated several Javanese youths dressed in the national costume but without the kopja. These were the mantries, generally young men of good family, and even of noble birth, who were present to listen to the proceedings, and thus to qualify themselves for future appointments. They sat on the steps with their legs crossed before them, and each had on his knees a writing tablet, on which he was prepared to jot down whatever remarks he might consider valuable enough to be thus rescued from oblivion. Mr. Greveland took the chair at the middle of the oblong table. On his right hand sat the regent and on his left the clerk of the court. Next to the regent sat the djaksa and on his right again sat the panghoeloe. The clerk of the court had on his left the patih, and after him came the Chinese major. All these places were allotted to their several occupants, in accordance with the rules of the strictest etiquette, to which Eastern nations always attach the utmost importance. Just after the president had taken his seat, August van Beneden made his appearance in his barrister's gown; and, by the chairman's direction, sat down at the end of the table by the side of the Chinese major. At that moment the pandoppo of the regent's house offered an interesting and most curious spectacle. It was a wide roomy shed the lofty roof of which was supported by eight pillars, and completely open on all sides. In order to temper the glare of the sunlight, and also to exclude the prying looks of the public outside, the spaces between the pillars were hung with green kreés or mats, while the members of the court had the further protection of a canvas screen stretched behind them. Behind the judges some Javanese servants were squatting. These men bore the pajoengs of the Javanese chiefs, and though these umbrellas were closed, yet their bearers held them aloft in such a manner that they could plainly be seen behind the backs of their masters. As the native court was then sitting; and taken as typical of the entire judicial system as regards the native inhabitants of the island of Java, it presented a strange combination of those three leading principles which the Dutch Government has, sometimes in greater sometimes in lesser degree, but always very cleverly, managed to unite. First there was the European law represented by the person of the President; in the next place the native usage was respected which demands that both the judges shall be Javanese chiefs or nobles of the highest rank; and in the third place there was the Mohammedan law represented by the panghoeloe whose office it was to enforce due respect for the injunctions of the Koran. Between the platform and the first row of chairs there was a considerable open space which, however, was not protected by any kind of railing. To the right and left of the platform stood a pair of native police oppassers in their bright yellow uniform and with side-arms dangling from bright yellow belts. The poor fellows cut a sorry figure as they stood there, they were quite taken aback at the sight of so large a crowd. Fair Laurentia had taken her seat on the middle chair of the first row. As njonja Resident this place of honour belonged to her, and by her side she had placed two of her most intimate friends. Close around these clustered the most fashionable and important inhabitants of Santjoemeh, or such as considered themselves the most important; and behind these again came the miscellaneous crowd which filled the pandoppo from end to end. The conversation, however, now that the judges had entered, was carried on in whispers or in a low undertone. Edward van Rheijn, Charles van Nerekool and Leendert Grashuis, we hardly need say, were present in the third or fourth row of chairs among a number of their young friends and acquaintances--the jeunesse dorée of Santjoemeh. Thus they had an excellent view of the proceedings. "Look at that Thomasz," said van Rheijn, "what an ass the fellow is making of himself with Laurentia!" "Yes, yes," quoth Grashuis, "he is making hay while the sun shines." "I don't know so much about that," remarked one of the young men present, "it seems to me that just now he is pretty well at home at the Residence." "There are very queer rumours afloat about him," whispered another. "Rumours!" said van Rheijn testily, "why, in Santjoemeh, the air is always full of rumours. What would Santjoemeh be without its chronique scandaleuse?" "If people will behave themselves in that way!" "Yes, and if appearances are all against them!" "Indeed," said van Rheijn tartly, "am I to suppose that, where a woman's good name is concerned, you would go by appearances?" "They say that M`Bok Kârijâh has been employed." "Oh! if that filthy hag has a finger in the pie, then--" "They say!" exclaimed van Rheijn contemptuously, "they say!--and pray who are they?" "Well--everybody--" "At all events I am not one of them," replied van Rheijn. "No more am I," added Grashuis. "Hush," whispered van Rheijn, "I am sure Laurentia can hear all we say; just look how she pricks her ears." "How very dignified van Beneden looks in his gown," said Grashuis anxious to change the subject and slightly raising his voice. "I don't see it," returned van Rheijn; "he looks for all the world like an umbrella in its case." At that moment fair Laurentia turned and cast her eye over the group of young gentlemen seated behind her. They all greeted and bowed. Van Rheijn, however, had a gracious smile all to himself--it might have been perhaps in acknowledgment of his comparison of van Beneden with the umbrella. "Oh, you sly fox," whispered one with a nudge, "that is why you took me up so sharply just now? eh?" "Do shut up!" said van Rheijn, "I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself for talking such nonsense!" "Have you received an invitation yet?" asked Grashuis, wishing to turn the conversation into another channel. "What invitation?" "To Lim Ho's wedding party." "Yes, I got one the other day," said one. "And so have I," said another. "That is a curious custom," remarked van Nerekool, "for the bridegroom to give the wedding party." "Yes," added another, "it is so totally different from what one sees among Western people." "Different!" exclaimed van Rheijn, "of course it is--it is quite consistent with everything else in China. With them everything is upside down. Their mourning colour is white and blue is half-mourning. Their ladies wear trousers and the men carry fans. Such things as knives, spoons and forks they leave to us barbarians, while they manage very cleverly to whisk down their food with a pair of chop-sticks. They hold that descendants can ennoble their ancestors so that one may become a count or a baron after one's death. They pay their doctors so long as they keep well; but the moment they fall sick they stop payment. What can you expect from such people--? surely you may let them hold their wedding feast at the bridegroom's house instead of the bride's!" A general laugh greeted this whimsical sally which had by no means been uttered in an undertone. Mrs. van Gulpendam joined in the merriment and rewarded the speaker with another friendly nod. "You see! you lucky dog! you are decidedly in her good books." "Hush, gentlemen! here comes the murderer." "What? unfettered?" "Yes, the law demands that an accused man shall appear free and unfettered before his judges." "But it does not forbid a couple of constables to stick close to his elbow." "Hush!" Mr. Greveland had repeatedly struck the table with his wooden hammer. "Usher," he said at length with much dignity, "you must see that silence is kept in court." The man thus addressed was a sjenjo or half-caste--he rushed up and down the pandoppo in frantic endeavours to enforce the order he had received, "Hush, hush, silence! Silence, ladies and gentlemen!" he bawled at the top of his voice, thus making more noise than all the company put together. Again the hammer came down, and the president himself called: "Silence." "Silence!" shouted the usher imploringly, as he stretched out his arms and looked as if he were going to swim, or was trying to lay a tempest. At length he succeeded in controlling those unruly tongues. One of the very last to give way was Laurentia--"who had a right to interfere with her--the Resident's wife? Those gentlemen on the bench are always giving themselves such airs!" Presently, however, even her chatter ceased. Once again the president brought down his hammer. "The session is opened," said he; "constables bring the prisoner forward!" One of the oppassers hereupon drew Setrosmito to the foot of the steps and made him squat down in front of the table. The poor fellow looked a wretched object indeed. The months he had passed in prison had effectually done their work upon him. He was frightfully lean, and the warm brown colour of his skin had turned a dusky grey. His long lank hair, which here and there straggled from under his head-dress, had turned grey--nay white. As he advanced he looked timidly around him, he cast one imploring glance at van Beneden, who gave him a friendly nod and a smile of encouragement, and then, submissively, he squatted down in the spot to which the policeman pointed. When first Setrosmito came forward some one uttered a loud heart-rending shriek of Ah God!--this cry was followed by the usher's cry for silence. At the back of the pandoppo several Javanese women were huddled together. They were the friends of Setrosmito's wife, who had accompanied her into the court. She it was who had uttered the wail which made all the spectators turn their heads. She had not been able to restrain her feelings at the sight of the wretched object in which she could hardly recognise her husband. Van Nerekool at once hurried up to the poor creature, he got one of the regent's servants to give her a kind of stool, and then he tried to quiet her. "You must keep quiet, M`Bok Dalima," said he, "or else you won't be allowed to remain here." The poor sobbing woman buried her face in both her hands. On all sides were heard murmurs of "The murderer's wife! Poor woman!" "Silence!" roared the usher. CHAPTER XXXIV. SETROSMITO'S TRIAL. As soon as the commotion produced by that lamentable cry had subsided, Mr. Greveland began to question the prisoner. "What is your name?" he asked. The djaksa interpreted the question to the accused man in Javanese. The prisoner with his head bent forward and his eyes steadfastly fixed on the floor replied: "Setrosmito, kandjeng toean." "Where were you born?" "At Kaligaweh, kandjeng toean." "How old are you?" "I don't know, kandjeng toean." The djaksa turned to the clerk of the court and said, "Put him down about forty years of age." There was, in reality, but little need for all this interrogatory; for the particulars had been already noted down during the course of the preliminary examinations. The questions were, in fact, put merely pro forma. "Where do you live?" continued the president. "In the prison, kandjeng toean," innocently answered the prisoner. "Aye! but I mean before you went to prison?" "In the dessa Kaligaweh, kandjeng toean." "Setrosmito," continued the president, "do you know why you have been brought here before us?" "Yes, kandjeng toean." "Let us hear it then." "They tell me I have smuggled opium, and that I have killed a Chinaman," quietly replied the Javanese, without so much as raising his eyes from the floor. A murmur of indignation ran through the pandoppo at the apparent callousness of the reply. "Silence!" cried the president. "Silence in the court!" vociferated the usher. "Do you plead guilty to these charges?" asked Mr. Greveland. The djaksa interpreted the question; but the prisoner hesitated--he seemed not to know what he ought to say. He cast a furtive sidelong glance at August van Beneden, who reassured him by saying: "Speak up, Setrosmito, speak up, tell the simple truth." "No, kandjeng toean," said he, "I am not guilty of smuggling. I never touch the bedoedan. I have killed a Chinaman because he ill-treated my child." The Javanese spoke in a very low tone of voice--he was abashed before that large audience and before his chiefs. He spoke moreover in the Javanese tongue, which hardly any one present could understand, so that his answer produced no impression whatever. "Now, listen attentively, Setrosmito," said the president. "The charges against you, your own statements, and the evidence of the witnesses, will be read out to you." "Yes, kandjeng toean." Thereupon the clerk of the court rose, and in the sing-song monotonous tone of voice peculiar to his class, began to read all the depositions and the whole body of evidence which the preliminary examinations had produced. He read very fast, very indistinctly, and in so low a tone of voice that not a soul in the pandoppo, not even the president himself, who was seated close beside him, could understand what he said. The prisoner, of course, could not catch a single word; for the papers were all drawn up in Malay, a language of which the simple dessa-labourer knows little or nothing. From time to time this dreamy flow of words was interrupted by the djaksa, whose duty it was to translate to the prisoner the more important parts of the case. But even the interpretation was got through at such a pace that it was very doubtful whether the prisoner was any the wiser for the djaksa's translation. He sat squatting on the floor without changing his attitude, and kept his eyes rivetted on one spot; his hands, fumbling the while at the skirts of his jacket, betrayed his extreme agitation. At every explanation of the djaksa, whether he understood it or not, he mumbled the invariable Javanese answer: "Yes, kandjeng toean." This reading of the evidence was a most dreary and tedious business. Even the members of the council at the table kept up a whispered conversation, which the president had repeatedly to interrupt with an impatient gesture and a stern look of displeasure. The audience, however, did not confine themselves to mere whispers. No one spoke out aloud; but gradually there arose a humming and buzzing--an indescribable rumour, broken now and again by some lady's giggle--which sadly interfered with the majesty of the law. In vain did the usher exert the full power of his lungs. His shout of "silence" produced its effect for the moment; but it was only for the moment. The instant after the universal buzzing began again as if a huge swarm of bees had taken possession of the pandoppo. "What an insufferable bore that clerk is to be sure!" simpered Mrs. van Gulpendam. "He leaves the reading to his nose," remarked Mr. Thomasz. "Mind your chief does not hear you," said one of the ladies. "Pray don't tell him!" cried Thomasz, "he does not know he talks through his gable--if he did, he might try and improve." "Be quiet, Mr. Thomasz," said Laurentia, with a burst of laughter, "you really must not make us laugh so." "What? I, madam?" asked the clerk. "You? Of course. The Resident calls you a dry comical fellow." "How, madam, do you mean to say the Resident applies such terms to me?" "Yes, he does--don't you like them?" "Madam," replied the assistant-clerk, "professionally I cannot say that I do. Just fancy, ladies," he continued, turning to the others, "a comical clerk, who ever heard of such a thing?" He uttered these words with a serio-comic air, so irresistibly droll, that the ladies fairly shook with suppressed laughter. "Oh--do hold your tongue, Mr. Thomasz!" Laurentia at length managed to say, "you see how savagely Mr. Greveland is glaring at you." "What a time that mumbler takes to be sure!" said a voice almost aloud in the centre of the pandoppo. "If one might only light a cigar to while away the time," said another. "Or get a glass of bitters!" "I was asking an oppasser just now to fetch me a glass of beer--my throat is as dry as a lime-kiln," said another voice in an audible whisper. "Well--and did you get it?" "Don't I wish I may get it? 'Not allowed, sir,' was all I could get out of that canary-bird, who looked as black as a three days' west monsoon." "Shall we go to the club, it is close by?" asked another. "Yes, if I thought that muttering would last much longer." "Silence! silence!" shouted the usher, "respect for the court!" That respect for the court was all very well; but the good people of Santjoemeh had gathered together for the sake of amusement, and they were being bored almost to death. At length the clerk had got to the end of his dreary tale--at length the djaksa had, for the last time, said to the prisoner: "Do you understand, Setrosmito?" And at length, for the last time, the latter had replied in his monotonous drone the same words: "Yes, kandjeng toean." Then came the usual shuffling of feet and a general murmur of satisfaction which, however, the usher soon managed to subdue. As soon as silence had been restored, the head djaksa rose from his chair and, in his capacity of public prosecutor, he began to open the case for the Government. His speech was remarkably well put together, and worked out with much skill and care; but it could have an interest only for those who knew nothing of the other side of the case. It was, in fact, little more than a statement of what had occurred, strictly on the lines of the report of the bandoelan Singomengolo. The public prosecutor took the case of opium smuggling as conclusively proved. He dwelt at great length upon the cunning displayed in hiding the forbidden wares under the pandan-mat of the couch--the opium itself and the box which had contained it lay before him on the table as convincing proofs of the truth of what he advanced. Then, in very forcible words, he went on to dilate upon the craftiness of these opium smugglers; and tried to show how, in their endeavours to cheat the revenue, they gave evidence of much cleverness; but generally over-reached themselves and proved, by the tricks they employed, their utter want of honesty and moral sense. Mas Wirio Kesoemo waxed well-nigh eloquent when he pointed out how the passion for opium was, hand over hand, gaining ground in Java; and how this debasing passion was promoted and fostered chiefly by the abominable smuggling trade. He dwelt, in glowing terms, upon the absolute necessity of repressing, by every means the law would allow, that dirty underhand traffic which was the fruitful source of so much misery. "Picture to yourselves," he cried, "the amount of injury which this nefarious trade is inflicting upon the realm beyond the ocean, upon all India, and especially upon our own beloved island of Java. Think of the millions which are lost--the millions!--I might say the tens of millions, and then calculate the amount of good which these tens of millions might produce if they were allowed to flow quietly and without check into the national treasury!" At these words the djaksa, who up to that time had been addressing the members of the council, turned to the public, knowing well that this argumentum ad crumenam would tickle the public ear. And he was not mistaken. The audience consisted for the most part of Dutchmen, and the tinkle of these tens of millions had a metallic sound which was strangely fascinating to the hearers. A distinct murmur of approbation arose, many a head nodded in silent assent and many a voice muttered: "Hear, hear! If we could but be delivered from that abominable smuggling!" These evident tokens of sympathy did not escape the djaksa's watchful eye, and Mas Wirio Kesoemo did not let so favourable an opportunity pass without expressing the fervent hope that the judges would not fail, by their sentence in the present case, to crush the foul reptile which battened upon the national prosperity. He called upon them, therefore, to pass upon the prisoner, who not only sat there accused of the heinous crime of smuggling; but was charged also with the additional offence of murder, the heaviest sentence which the law would allow. By doing so, he added, they would earn for themselves the cordial thanks of the island of Java, and establish a claim upon the gratitude of the entire Dutch nation. For a moment it seemed as if the greater part of the company assembled in the pandoppo, would have given vent to their feelings of satisfaction by cheering and clapping of hands--one cry of "bravo!" was distinctly heard; but the usher repressed all such manifestations with his repeated shout of "Silence--silence in the court!" The head djaksa now proceeded with the second part of his case against Setrosmito, that, namely, of having murdered a Chinese bandoelan; a charge which was inseparably connected with the former one of opium smuggling. The entire assembly hung breathless on his lips, as he described how Setrosmito had resisted the searching of his house; how, when the fatal box had been discovered, he had hurled an opprobrious name at Singomengolo and called him a "dirty dog;" how he had, thereupon, seized his kris and how, when the chief bandoelan fled back in terror, he had flung himself upon an inoffensive and defenceless Chinaman, and had drawn the wavy blade of his knife across his throat, while a stream of blood deluged murderer and victim alike. This description, graphic almost to brutality in its details, made a powerful impression upon the audience. One of the ladies present screamed and fainted away, and had to be carried off insensible. This episode caused considerable commotion, and Setrosmito cast an anxious glance behind him to see what was going on. "Silence! silence!" bawled the usher. As soon as order had been, in some measure, restored, Mas Wirio Kesoemo proceeded to dwell on the increasing temerity of the opium smugglers, who scrupled not to take a human life rather than risk the loss of their smuggled wares. He insisted upon the necessity of inflicting the extreme penalty for the protection of the police in the execution of their arduous duties; and he ended his speech by demanding that the murderer be condemned to death by hanging, or, if the defence could establish any extenuating circumstances, that the sentence should be at least twenty years of penal servitude with hard labour. A deep silence reigned in the pandoppo as the djaksa resumed his seat, one might have heard a pin drop, so intensely was that frivolous crowd impressed by this fearful demand for a human life. A kind of spell lay upon all, every heart seemed compressed as in a vice. A general sigh of relief was heard when the president broke the silence: "Setrosmito," asked Mr. Greveland, "have you heard what the public prosecutor has said?" The prisoner looked up with a puzzled expression at the speaker; but he did not answer a word. The entire case had been conducted in Malay, of which he did not understand a single word. The expression of the poor fellow's face showed that plainly enough. The president repeated his question, which the djaksa, thereupon, interpreted to Setrosmito. The prisoner cast one look upon August van Beneden, and upon a nod from the latter, answered: "Yes, kandjeng toean." "Have you anything to say in reply?" asked the president. Another look at his counsel, and then the prisoner answered: "No, kandjeng toean." A cry of indignation and horror arose in the pandoppo at the seeming callousness of the answer. "Silence, gentlemen! Silence in the court!" shouted the usher. As soon as he could make himself heard, Mr. Greveland said: "I call upon the counsel for the defence." "At length!" muttered Grashuis, with a deep sigh. "Now we shall hear something very fine!" cried Mrs. van Gulpendam, with a sneer; but in a voice quite loud enough to reach the young lawyer's ears. Van Beneden very calmly rose from his chair, wiped his forehead, and then, in a clear voice which could distinctly be heard through the entire pandoppo, he said: "The trial which is now occupying the attention of this honourable court is one which is indigenous to the soil of Java. I might say, indeed, that in no other spot in the world could such a case arise. There can be nothing simpler, nothing more plain than the demand of the prosecution! Opium has been smuggled, some one must be punished for it. A man has lost his life, some one must hang for the murder. Undoubtedly the law must have its course, and the criminal ought to be punished. We are living here in the East, in the home of the law of retaliation--an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! This, gentlemen, is a hard law unworthy of our Western civilisation; but against it we have the right of inquiry, and our milder code allows every accused man the right of defence. It is of this right of defence, that, in behalf of the unhappy man sitting there at your feet and awaiting his fate at your hands, I now intend to avail myself. "Now, if the facts were really such as the prosecution has represented them to be--why then there would be nothing for me to do than to commend the prisoner to the clemency of the court, or rather I should say, that I would not, in that case, have undertaken at all the defence of a cause which my conscience could not justify. I take, therefore, a totally different view of the matter; and am prepared to lay before you the grounds upon which I have arrived at a wholly different conclusion. I beg that you will lend me your attentive hearing. "But, before entering into the details of this case," continued the young lawyer, in a voice which clearly betrayed emotion, "allow me to pay my tribute to the zeal, the devotion, and the undoubted ability of a man concerning whom I must not speak without reticence, inasmuch as I am bound to him in the straitest bond of friendship. "Mr. William Verstork was controller of the district of Banjoe Pahit when the facts occurred which now claim our attention. Independently altogether of the action of the Government, he undertook the task of continuing the investigations which he had initiated. The result of his inquiry he has submitted to the proper authorities. I ask, why were not these papers laid before us? Allow me, gentlemen, to pass very lightly over this most important omission. I could not enter into that subject without stirring up a pool of iniquity which is immediately connected with the opium question; and I freely confess that I shrink from thus occupying your valuable time. For the defence of the unhappy man for whose interests I am responsible, it will suffice if I now tell you that the documents to which I allude exist beyond the possibility of doubt or denial; and that I have here, lying on the table before me, the authentic copies properly attested and legalised by the Governor of Atjeh and by the Chief Justice at Batavia. "You all," continued van Beneden with a courteous gesture, addressing the public as well as the bench, "you all know William Verstork, and I would not even mention the noble qualities of that zealous public servant--there would be no need of doing so--were it not that our president, Mr. Greveland, has but lately arrived at Santjoemeh. The interests of my client demand that I should clearly point out to him that the writer of these documents is universally known as an upright man, who, in his official capacity, has won for himself the esteem and affection of all, natives as well as Europeans, that have come into contact with him. That he is a most dutiful son who, for the sake of his mother and his younger sisters and brothers, has made the greatest sacrifices; and that, before this large audience I assert, without the slightest fear of contradiction, that a more single-minded and honourable man has never trodden the soil of Netherland's India." A burst of applause, cheering and clapping of hands followed immediately upon this general appeal. Mrs. van Gulpendam sat gnawing her lips with suppressed rage, while the noise drove the usher to the verge of frenzy. At length, by dint of much hammering, Mr. Greveland obtained silence, he rose and said: "Much as I appreciate this tribute of affection, this spontaneous testimony to the merits of a distinguished public servant; yet I must warn the public against such demonstrations either of approval or disapproval. Should they be repeated it will be my duty at once to clear the court. Mr. van Beneden, I beg you to proceed." August had made the most of this interruption, he had wiped his forehead and refreshed himself with a draught of iced water. He continued: "After the fatal evening, William Verstork repeatedly visited Kaligaweh. He thought he thoroughly knew Setrosmito and remembered the well known lines of Racine: 'Un jour ne fait point d'un mortel vertueux Un perfide assassin, un lâche meurtrier.' But, for all that he determined to sift the case to the very bottom. He made minute inquiries on all sides, and, as the result of his investigation, he found that the man who is now sitting there before you crushed under the load of so terrible an accusation, has ever been an irreproachable husband, a tender and devoted father, an industrious hard-working labourer--that he is, in fact, one of those quiet and submissive villagers of which our Javanese population is chiefly composed, and which make it possible for an entire race, which may well be called the quietest and meekest on earth, to submit to the cruel fiscal yoke we have imposed upon it. I have here, lying on this table before me, the sworn testimony of the wedono of the district of Banjoe Pahit. He states that on a certain occasion, when a loerah had to be appointed for the dessa Kaligaweh, the man most eligible for the post was this same Setrosmito, especially because he was known never to touch opium; but that he could not recommend him for the appointment, because the man could neither read nor write. "Now, gentlemen, I ask you, how comes it to pass that a man bearing so excellent a character should be brought up here before you as an opium smuggler and a murderer? An opium smuggler! At those words your very looks betray what is passing in your minds. You know well enough what is going on in this residence of Santjoemeh. You turn away in disgust at the mere mention of the word 'opium smuggler!' But, let me ask you, upon what grounds has the prosecution founded this most serious charge? Why, upon no grounds whatever! The prosecution has not even attempted to bring forth any proof of the prisoner's guilt. Their case rests entirely upon the unsupported word of one of the opium farmer's bandoelans--upon the bare assertion of a vile wretch whom public opinion holds up to public execration as capable of the lowest and most infamous perjury. Yes, gentlemen, I repeat it most emphatically, this charge rests upon nothing whatever but upon the bare word of Singomengolo, and upon that little box which lies there in evidence before you on this table. "But, you all must remember, it is not so very long ago, that, on this very same table, we had before us a number of those little boxes, all of them the property of that same bandoelan; and that, on that occasion, you had to acquit the daughter of the prisoner who was also charged with smuggling; who was charged with smuggling, mind, by that same Singomengolo. And how did he attempt to prove that charge? Why, by swearing that he had seized upon her person a box precisely similar to that which you now see before you. Again I ask you, what proofs have we that this box was discovered under the pandan-mat of the couch in Setrosmito's dwelling? We have none! You hear me, I repeat that word, we have absolutely no proof of the truth of that bare assertion. But, on the contrary, for the defence, I have the clearest possible proofs that it never was there at all. We rely on proofs which are absolutely incontrovertible. And here, gentlemen, allow me once again to turn to the sworn evidence of my friend William Verstork. "'When one of the Chinese bandoelans, accompanied by a couple of police oppassers, presented themselves at the door of Setrosmito's house for the purpose of making a domiciliary visit, no opposition whatever was offered to their searching the place. The only precaution taken was that they were themselves submitted to a search before entering the premises. On that occasion no opium, nor any vestige of opium was found; not even under that very pandan-mat on the couch. The two oppassers and the witnesses Sidin and Sariman, who were present at the visitation, have expressly sworn to that fact. Sariman indeed has sworn most positively that the pandan-mat was twice lifted up, and that the Chinaman had most minutely examined the pillow which lay upon it.' "That I think is plain enough, gentlemen, is it not? "But now, allow me to continue with Verstork's sworn declaration. "Very shortly after they had left, Singomengolo himself appeared to search the house. He refused point-blank to submit to the usual body search; whereupon Setrosmito protested and said: 'In that case, no doubt, opium will be discovered in my house. I know all about these dodges.' I have the proofs of all this here before me signed by the Kabajan of the dessa. "And, of course, opium was found, gentlemen. It was discovered in the very spot where the Chinese bandoelan, who was no fool either, had looked twice without making any discovery. That again is clear enough, I think. "Opium smuggler! The court will understand that I fling the odious accusation far, far away from me. Not indeed because the charge has not been legally proved; for I know that in these opium-cases very curious evidence is often admitted; but because my client is innocent, absolutely innocent, of any such offence; because he is the victim of one of those detestable conspiracies which, as every one well knows, are commonly resorted to when some obnoxious individual has to be removed or some sordid wretch thirsts for revenge. "Opium smuggler! Yes, the prosecution has dwelt at considerable length and with considerable eloquence upon the millions, the tens of millions, of which this illegal traffic is robbing the public exchequer. "As the Public Prosecutor made his fervent appeal, every heart was thrilling with emotion, though it may not perhaps have been of a very noble kind. And, gentlemen, he was perfectly right. Millions, yea tens of millions are lost to the revenue! But they are not lost in the manner the prosecution has so graphically described; they are not conveyed away in little boxes which hold but a minute quantity of the drug. The millions of which we heard so much just now--Ah, gentlemen! need I tell you who are the men that thus defraud the revenue? Why your own hearts have already pronounced their names, they are trembling now on your very lips. Those smugglers are not poor dessa-folk, they flaunt their ill-gotten wealth boldly in the face of our good people of Santjoemeh; and can afford to keep Singomengolos to remove out of their path any unfortunate creature who may stand in their way. Shall I mention these names which are even now on every lip? Why should I do so? An Attorney General once ventured to lay his finger on the plague-spot and to denounce these criminals to the Governor General. What did he gain by it? That is the question I would ask you?" The young barrister here paused for a few moments, to allow these last words, which he had driven home like a wedge, time to sink into the hearts of his hearers. In the pandoppo the deepest silence reigned. The assembled crowd sat breathless listening to every word as it fell from van Beneden's lips. On all those faces there was but one expression, and it said plainly enough "Aye truly! that is the state of things which the accursed opium-monopoly has created in this island." After a short pause, August continued: "I now pass on to the second and far more terrible charge which has been brought against my client. Shall I be able to purge him of that accusation as I know that I have cleared him of the former? Here there is no question of denial. The facts are all plain enough and are all frankly admitted. The fatal deed has been done, the grave has closed over the ill-starred victim; and the weapon, the kris with which the fatal wound was inflicted, lies there before you on the table. "The prosecution has given us a shockingly graphic description of the terrible occurrence, and has painted, in the most vivid colours, the manner in which that kris was slashed across the throat of the unhappy bandoelan. It is not difficult to see why so much stress was laid upon the bloody scene, and why we had the loathsome details so forcibly placed before us. But yet, gentlemen, I venture to think, that the cause of my client has been benefited rather than damaged by this vivid word-painting. For the more painful the impression produced, the more forcibly must the question arise: 'How was it possible that a creature of so quiet and meek a nature could have been goaded to a deed of such unbridled fury?' Again I appeal to the testimony of William Verstork, and I think it well to tell you that I also have personally and independently made a careful investigation into all the facts of this most painful case; and the results of my personal inquiry I will proceed to lay before you. Yes, gentlemen, I also shall have to be graphic and realistic; but remember that I am merely following the example set me by the prosecution. Yes, gentlemen, I also shall have to enter into harrowing and revolting details; but I shall do so only because the cause for which I am pleading compels me to that course." And now the young lawyer displayed a power of eloquence such as had never before been heard in Santjoemeh--never perhaps in all Dutch India. He made use of words not only but also of gestures. He "acted" as Mrs. van Gulpendam spitefully remarked to one of her friends. Yes, he did enact before his spell-bound audience that tragic scene, building up the entire drama, as Cuvier out of a single bone would construct the entire skeleton of some antediluvian monster. He made them see how the opium-hunters penetrated that peaceful dwelling. He made them hear how Singomengolo haughtily refused to submit to any examination. One could behold as it were the ruthless ransacking of all the poor furniture, one could hear the children crying and wailing at the licentious conduct of the ruffians who had respect neither for age nor sex. The entire audience shuddered at the "Allah Tobat," the frenzied cry of the desperate mother, and one could see also how, at his wife's bitter cry, Setrosmito's eye had, for a single instant, glanced away from Singomengolo, and how the latter had profited by that instant of distraction to draw forth the box of opium with a gesture of insolent triumph. How rage and indignation wrung from the unhappy father an abusive epithet which was answered immediately by a blow in the mouth. How, stung to madness at that insult, Setrosmito grasped his kris; how at that fatal moment the cry of little Kembang had drawn the attention of the father to his poor little girl; how he had seen her exposed to the hideous outrages of the Chinese bandoelan. All these events the eloquence of the advocate conjured up, as it were, before the eyes of his hearers. At the words, "Let go!" uttered with incomparable energy, the audience seemed to see the father flinging himself upon the astonished bandoelan, who, dazed by the very imminence of peril, had not sufficient presence of mind to desist from his outrageous conduct, and thereupon resounded the terrible words, "Die then like a dog!" in a tone which filled the entire pandoppo with shuddering horror. Even Setrosmito, who profoundly ignorant of the Dutch language did not understand a word of his counsel's speech, and had for some time been sitting vacantly staring before him, even he, at length, grew attentive, lifted his eyes inquiringly to the young man's face, and then kept them riveted upon him with concentrated intensity. No! the rich flow of words had no meaning to him whatever; but the gestures he could interpret quite plainly. He saw the whole tragedy unfolded before his eyes--he saw his outraged child--he saw the hand of the speaker go through the very action which cost a human life. With eyes glittering with excitement he nodded again and again at his counsel, while thick heavy tear-drops kept trickling down his cheeks. "Yes, that is how it happened," he murmured audibly amidst the deep silence to the Javanese chiefs while he stretched out his arms imploringly towards them. "And," continued van Beneden, with still increasing fervour, "if now, after having thus laid before you the bare facts of the case, if now I turn to you with the question: 'Is that man guilty of murder--who slew another--yes; but who slew him in a moment of ungovernable rage, and in defence of his innocent child?' What must be your answer? Is there anyone here who would cast a stone at him who drew the weapon--and who used it--to preserve his own child from the foulest outrage that can be perpetrated in a father's sight? Aye but, 'this is a question of opium-police!' If I could, for a moment, harbour the thought that anyone present under this roof would, for the sake of the opium question, desire to hear a verdict of guilty returned against this man--why then, in sheer despair, I should be driven to exclaim: 'Woe to the nation that contains such a wretch--woe to the man, who, for so sordid a principle, would tread Eternal Justice under foot--such a nation must be near its fall!'" The effect of these words was simply indescribable, a shudder seemed to run through the assembly. "And now," continued the young man turning to the prosecution, "go on your way, pile one judicial error upon another, erect for yourself a pedestal so lofty that the cry of the unhappy victim of the opium traffic--that insatiable Minotaur--will not reach your ears! The time will come, when, from above, retribution will overtake you. The day will dawn when the Dutch nation will awake out of its lethargy and sweep you and your opium-god from the face of the earth. "As for you," continued August van Beneden turning to the members of the council and speaking in a more subdued voice, but yet with a persuasive energy which it was impossible to withstand, "as for you, gentlemen, place yourselves, I pray you, in the position of that unhappy man whose eyes were just now dropping tears as I sketched, in a manner which could reach his comprehension, the terrible deed of which he is accused. Picture to yourselves the hours--the days of mortal anxiety he has passed through, and is even now passing through as his fate is hanging on your lips--then you will in some measure, be able to realise the unutterable joy with which he presently will hail the verdict which you will deliver--a verdict of 'not guilty' which will restore to his wife and family a man who can so sturdily stand up in their defence." Having thus said, van Beneden resumed his seat, or rather fell back exhausted in his chair. It was getting late, the sun was high up in the heavens, and an oppressive heat weighed like lead upon the assembled crowd. For a few moments, absolute silence ensued, the silence of emotions too deep for utterance and which was broken only by a sob here and there. But then, a tempest of cheering arose which made the very roof tremble, and amidst which the stentorian voice of the usher was completely drowned. This applause and general enthusiasm continued for a considerable time, and was not hushed until the president had repeatedly threatened to have the court cleared. The prosecution was crushed, utterly annihilated. Feeling that his cause was lost, the djaksa attempted to have the trial adjourned; but Mr. Greveland saw plainly enough how very undesirable such an adjournment would be; and he wisely refused to grant it. Thus compelled there and then to get up and reply, Mas Wirio Kesoemo could not rise to the level of his subject. He mumbled a few words which did not awaken the slightest attention--he said something about the necessity of vindicating the action of the police, he uttered a few incoherent sentences, he stammered, he drawled, he repeated himself over and over again, and finally sat down without having produced any impression whatever. As soon as he had ended, the president called upon the defence to exercise its right of reply. With a gesture of lofty disdain, van Beneden refused to avail himself of his privilege: "No, no, Mr. President," he said, "anything I could now add would but lessen the impression made by the prosecution. It is to the weakness of the charge brought against him, rather than to the power of the defence, that my client must owe his acquittal." After a moment's pause the president turned to the panghoeloe and asked him what law the sacred book prescribed. In a sleepy tone of voice the latter replied, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth--the man has taken a life--the man must die." A shriek resounded in the pandoppo, a Javanese woman had fainted away. The members of the council thereupon retired to their consulting room. After a while they returned into court and the clerk proceeded to read out an elaborate judgment, wherein, after a number of "seeing thats" and "whereases," the verdict of "Not Guilty" on both counts was at length pronounced. Then the real storm broke loose. A great number of the audience rushed up to van Beneden and warmly congratulated him on the victory he had just gained. The president, far from trying to repress the general enthusiasm, now cordially joined in it. August raised Setrosmito from the floor and whispered some words in his ear which were immediately afterwards affirmed by the Regent himself. The poor Javanese cast one single look at his young champion, he pressed his hand to his heart and uttered a few incoherent words. But that one look was sufficient for van Beneden, it was the overflowing of a grateful heart. At the very bottom of the pandoppo one solitary voice cried out: "Great is the justice of the whites!" A few moments after, the pandoppo was deserted. Said Grashuis to his friend as he was walking home with him: "By Jove, old fellow, you have knocked the wind clean out of me--I am still under the spell. That is natural enough; but what I want to know is how you managed to get the native chiefs on your side?" "Very simply indeed," replied the other, "I called upon them yesterday and read my speech to them in Malay." "Come, come, that's cute!" laughed Grashuis. The young lawyer, however, did not tell his friend that, at the conclusion of that visit, the old Regent of Santjoemeh had pressed his hand and whispered to him: "You are a noble fellow!" CHAPTER XXXV. A MEETING IN THE KARANG BOLLONG MOUNTAINS. On the western slope of the Goenoeng Poleng--that mighty mass of rock which forms the nucleus, as it were, of the Karang Bollong range running along the South Coast of Java, and not far from the dessa Ajo there stood a modest little hut. To the traveller approaching from the North or from the South, it was completely hidden by the walls of rock which towered around it. Steeply rising ground but scantily covered with thin grass and prickly shrubs, shut out all view from the back of the little cabin. From either side also nothing could be seen but the rocky slopes, with here and there a small patch of arable ground. But the front of the hut offered a prospect which, for loveliness and variety, could hardly be equalled, certainly not surpassed; and which amply made up for the dreariness of the view on the other sides. From the small front gallery or verandah the incline ran down pretty swiftly, and displayed to the eye a panorama which might in truth be called magnificent. Immediately beneath this verandah lay the mountain-slope; at first bald and bare, with huge weather-worn boulders scattered about here and there, and a few stunted shrubs. Between these a narrow pathway ran winding down. In its tortuous course it seemed to rival the brook, as, twisting and bubbling and splashing and foaming, it went merrily and swiftly dancing down its fantastically-cut bed. As gradually the slope ran down to the valley, the vegetable kingdom began to assert itself more and more. At first there appeared dwarf trees with curiously twisted trunks and strangely gnarled branches, these, in their turn, gave way to the more luxuriant representatives of the realm of Silvanus, and these again gradually merged into a rich plantation of fruit-bearing trees, above which the tall cocoa-nut palms reared their feathered heads waving and nodding to the breeze. Beyond this, at the foot of the mountain, lay the little dessa Ajo, snugly embowered in a mass of glossy foliage. Very pleasant to look at from the eminence were the dwellings of the native villagers with their neat brown roofs and bright yellow fences peeping here and there through the rich verdure, reflected in the waters of the Kali Djetis, which forms the western boundary of the dessa; and which, at that point, makes a majestic sweep before emptying itself by a wide mouth into the Indian Ocean. The view of that ocean still further enhanced the beauty of the grand panorama which lay stretched out in front of the little hut. On a fine calm day the deep-blue expanse of water extended far--endlessly far--away to the horizon, glittering under the rays of the tropical sun like a metallic mirror; while numerous fishing boats, with their white but quaintly-shaped sails, hovered about the Moeara Djetis, and skimmed like birds over the glassy surface. When, however, the South-East trade was blowing stiffly, and the flood-tide helped to raise the waves, the aspect of the ocean was entirely changed. Then not a single boat was to be seen; but heavy breakers came tumbling in, and, as these reached the mouth of the river, and met the body of downflowing mountain water, they would tower up and roll along steadily for awhile as a huge wall of solid blue, then curl over into mighty crests, and finally break into a foam-sheet of dazzling whiteness. This magnificent spectacle, a kind of prororoca on a small scale, could be watched from the verandah in its minutest details. The hut itself was but a very poor little dwelling; constructed, as those places generally are, of such primitive materials as bamboo and atap. It consisted indeed merely of four walls and a roof. It had a door in front and behind, which gave access to a small verandah, while, in the side-walls, two square shutters did duty for windows. Whether or not the space within was divided into separate apartments we cannot tell. There are secrets into which a novelist must not venture to pry; and there are feelings which, even he, must know how to respect. It may be his duty--his painful duty--to introduce his readers to an opium-den, and reveal to them the horrors it conceals, if, by so doing, he may reasonably hope to do something to cure a crying evil; but he ought not, without sufficient reason, to invade the sacred rights of privacy by throwing open to his readers a cottage wherein-- But, modest as was the little building which stood there lonely and deserted on that mountain slope, and poor as was its outward appearance, yet there existed a very marked difference between it and the other cabins, the dwellings of the dessa people, far down at the foot of the mountain. The difference consisted herein, that it was scrupulously neat and clean, and bore no trace whatever of the slovenliness and general want of cleanliness which is too often the characteristic of the houses of the ordinary Javanese villager. The Javanese, indeed, are an Eastern race. As such they have certain points in common with all the other branches of the great Oriental family, whether we call them Moors, Hindoos, Arabs, Chinese, Egyptians, Berbers, aye, or even Greeks, Italians, or Spaniards. The entire house from top to bottom, from the roof of fresh nipah leaves to the hedge of yellow bamboo hurdle, looked bright and clean. The small plot of ground in front was carefully laid out as a trim garden with well kept paths and pretty bits of green lawn. The flower-beds also, and the ornamental shrubs, which grew around, spoke of careful tending, while an impenetrable hedge of the conyza indica enclosed the entire nook. At the back of the house lay a patch of grass, evidently used as a drying ground, for several articles of female apparel, such as slendangs, sarongs, and the like, were hanging on ropes stretched over bamboo poles, and fluttered in the breeze. In the front gallery a single flower-pot was conspicuous, a thing very seldom found in any Javanese house, in which flowered a magnificent "Devoniensis" in full bloom; and close by stood a native loom, at which a young girl was seated cross-legged on a low bamboo stool. Wholly intent upon her work, she is plying the shuttle with nimble fingers. As novelist, we are, to some extent, a privileged being, and may venture to draw near though we would not intrude into the little house. The girl is so deeply absorbed in her task that we have leisure, unperceived, to examine the further contents of the verandah; but specially to watch its solitary occupant. That she has for some considerable time been hard at work, the reel tells us; for it already contains quite a thick roll of tissue, the result of her day's toil; so does, likewise, the spinning-wheel, which stands hard by, ready to supply the shuttle with thread as soon as it may need replenishing. As regards the girl herself, she is, just now, bending forward over her work so that we cannot catch even a glimpse of her features. Her dress, consisting of a simple jacket of light-blue cotton, and the sarong made of some dark-coloured material, with a gay flowering pattern, proclaim her to be a Javanese. So also do the hands and such parts of the face and neck as we are able to see, by their brownish yellow tint. So again does the hair which is combed away smooth from the forehead and rolled up at the back of the head in a thick heavy kondeh or plait. Aye, but--that kondeh, however carefully it may have been plaited and fastened up, yet it at once awakens our curiosity. Little rebellious locks have here and there strayed away, and very unlike the stiff straight hair of full-bred Javanese beauties, they curl and cluster lovingly around the plait, while the shorter hair under the kondeh also forms crisp little curls which cast a dark shade over the light-brown neck. "Might she be a nonna after all?" we murmur inaudibly. Our suspicion is strengthened when, by the side of the little stool, our eye lights upon a pair of tiny slippers. These slippers are not remarkable in any way, they are of the simplest make and wholly devoid of ornament; but it strikes us at once that in Java girls or women hardly ever wear such things, and then--more remarkable still--their size and shape point to the fact that the owner's feet in no way correspond to the broad, splay feet of the natives. As we stand wondering and losing ourselves in surmises, the weaving girl very slightly changes her position, and one snow-white toe comes peeping out from under her sarong. The startling difference of colour betrays the secret at once: She is a nonna! Wholly unconscious of our proximity the girl looks up and casts a single glance at the fair view stretched out before her--she utters a deep sigh and-- "That face," we murmur inwardly, "where have we seen that pretty face?" We have, however, no time to collect our thoughts, for, the next moment as the young girl is again bowing her head to resume her work, a quick light footstep is heard on the path which leads to Ajo. The girl looks up, evidently scared at the unusual sound, she peers anxiously forward and then, almost bereft of the power of speech by the suddenness of the surprise, she gasps forth the cry, "Dalima!" Yes, it is indeed Dalima who, with nimble step, has crossed the garden and is now running up to the verandah. The weaving-girl starts up from her stool, and before her unexpected visitor has time to mount the three steps, the pair are locked in each other's embrace and forming, as it were, but one exclamation we hear the words: "Nana!" "Dalima!" Now the mystery is cleared up, now we recognize at once both the one and the other. That weaving girl is Anna van Gulpendam and the other is poor Dalima whom we followed in her anxious and painful search as far as Karang Anjer when we lost sight of her until now. "Where have you come from?" asked Anna, as again and again she clasped the Javanese girl to her breast. "To-day I came from the dessa Ajo," archly replied Dalima. "What brought you there?" "Well, I came from the dessa Pringtoetoel, that's where I was yesterday." "But," continued Anna, "what business had you there?" "The day before that," resumed Dalima not heeding the interruption, "I was at Gombong and the day before that again at Karang Anjer." "At Karang Anjer?" exclaimed Anna. "What induced you to go there?" "To look for my Nana," was the reply. "To look for me? Is that why you have come all the way from Santjoemeh? Have you undertaken so long a journey to look for me?--and in your condition too!" Anna spoke these last words with some hesitation, while the furtive glance she cast at the poor girl's figure left no doubt as to her meaning. "Yes, Nana," replied Dalima very quietly and without the least trace of confusion. "As soon as ever I left the prison, thanks to the aid of the young judge," continued she, as she fixed one penetrating look upon Anna who felt the blood fly up to her cheeks at the words, "I went to look after my mother. Thanks again to toean Nerekool, I found her and the children well provided for. My next thought was for my Nana. The toean had told me that the nonna was no longer staying at Karang Anjer but had left, and had vanished without leaving a trace behind her. I thought I could guess why. I knew how lonely, how forsaken, how utterly miserable my dear Nana must feel. An irresistible longing came over me--the longing you know of a young woman in my situation--" she added with a faint sad smile, "to go at once and look for Nana so that I might be of some service to her. I started and--" "Does toean van Nerekool know of all this?" asked Anna much alarmed. "No, Nana, he knows nothing whatever about it." "You did not tell him what you were going to do?" "No, Nana, I did not." "Might you not perhaps have dropped some hint to Mr. van Nerekool, or may be to your mother? Do, Dalima, try and remember!" "No, I have not given toean Charles the slightest hint of my intention. I told my mother that I was going to seek for you." "Where?" asked Anna. "Well, Nana, at Karang Anjer." "But you knew that you would not find me at Karang Anjer?" "Oh, I knew that; but I wanted to see Mrs. Steenvlak. I thought she would be sure to tell me where you had gone." "Did you go to Mrs. Steenvlak?" inquired Anna, "Yes, Nana." "And--?" "I could learn nothing from her. The njonja confessed that she knew where you were; but she refused to tell me--she said she had promised not to let anyone know." Anna drew a deep sigh of relief. "But how then did you manage to find me, Dalima?" she asked. "Well, Nana, how shall I tell you that? It is such a long story. I have been wandering about in all directions, I have made inquiries everywhere. I asked at the posting-houses, at the loerahs of each dessa I passed through. I questioned the gardoes and the stall-keepers on the road. In fact I asked everywhere and everybody. In my wanderings, at length I happened to come to the dessa Pembanan." "The dessa Pembanan!" cried Anna in the greatest agitation. "Yes," resumed Dalima, "that's where I found the first trace. You took a cup of coffee there at a stall while you had to wait for the pole of your sedan to be repaired." Anna glanced down uneasily at her yellow-stained hands. "Oh! it is no use looking at your hands," continued Dalima with a smile. "The old stall-keeper has sharp eyes and the stain could hardly deceive her. She guessed at once that you were either a nonna or a princess." "Well, go on!" sighed Anna. "You asked her how far Pembanan was from the dessas Sikaja and Pringtoetoel--did you not?" "Yes, that is so," replied Anna. "Very well, then, that clue I have followed, up hill and down dale." "Poor, poor dear girl!" cried Anna, as with tears in her eyes she again clasped Dalima to her breast. "Poor child! such a journey, and in your condition, too! Yes, now I see how worn and weary you look!" "Oh, that's nothing!" cried Dalima cheerfully, "that's nothing, I am strong enough, Nana, don't trouble yourself about that. "At Pringtoetoel," she continued, "I got further information. There they told me that you had gone on to the dessa Ajo. When I got there I found the very sedan in which you had travelled--it was stowed away in the loerah's grounds--and they told me that you had a house built for yourself up here--How very pretty!" As she said this Dalima looked around; and an involuntary sigh escaped from her lips, a sigh which contrasted strangely with her spoken words. The Javanese girl could not help comparing this wretched little tenement with the stately Residential palace at Santjoemeh. Hitherto the conversation had been carried on standing, the girls half leaning upon, half embracing one another. Said Anna, who perfectly understood the meaning of that sigh and wished to break the train of Dalima's thoughts: "Come, let us sit down, you must be dead-tired, poor Dalima." So saying she resumed her seat on the little bench while Dalima, as in days gone by, squatted down on the mat at Anna's feet and laid her head lovingly in her mistress's lap. Then the conversation flowed on as briskly as before. "No, Nana," said Dalima, "I am not the least tired. I arrived yesterday morning, very early, at Ajo and have had plenty of time for rest." "But now," resumed Anna, "do tell me something about yourself, about your own affairs, about the trial and all that." Thereupon followed the story with which our readers are acquainted. We need hardly add that in the telling of it van Nerekool's name was by no means forgotten. Dalima's deep gratitude to her benefactor would not allow her for an instant to neglect his interests. It even seemed as if that gentleman's name was introduced into her story more frequently than the narrative strictly required. So much so that Anna could not help saying: "Will you assure me, will you swear, that it was not at Mr. van Nerekool's suggestion that you have undertaken this journey in quest of me?" "Yes, Nana, I will swear it," replied Dalima readily and with the utmost candour. "And now," continued Anna, "you must make me another promise, and that is that you will never in any way whatever, let him know that you have succeeded in finding me." Dalima made no reply. For a few moments she hesitated. "Now listen to me, Dalima," resumed Anna very firmly, "if you will not make me that promise, and promise it most solemnly, then we must part. You will have to leave me and I shall go elsewhere. Heaven only knows where I shall go to!" One instant the Javanese girl looked up at her companion incredulously--then seeing that Anna was in downright earnest she exclaimed: "Not stay with you, Nana! Oh! do not say so. I who have travelled so far to be with you. You cannot mean it. Not stay with you? But that can never be. I have left my parents, my friends, my home, my all--only to be close to you--and now you talk of parting!" The poor child could get no further; uncontrollable sobs stifled her voice. "No, no!" cried Anna, who was in reality no less deeply moved than her companion; "no, no, very far from it. Above all things I wish to keep you here with me; but you must promise that you will not let anyone know where I am hiding--will you promise that?" Dalima flung herself weeping into her mistress's arms: "You are so lonely here, so miserably poor!" she sobbed. "Oh, that is nothing," cried Anna, "never mind that; I have got used to it." "He loves you so dearly, so tenderly," pleaded the baboe. "Not another word on that subject, Dalima," said Anna, very sternly; "you cannot possibly understand how insurmountable a barrier there exists between Mr. van Nerekool and myself. There can never be a question of marriage between us, let me tell you that once and for all." The baboe made no immediate reply, but went on sobbing and weeping as if her heart would break. "Will you make that promise, Dalima?" insisted Anna. "I owe him so much," sobbed Dalima, "I am so anxious to make him happy." "You would be doing him the greatest wrong, Dalima." "Wrong?" cried the baboe, "how so? by bringing him to you; oh, Nana!" "Once again, I say not another word on that subject," cried Anna; and then, taking her companion's hand she continued: "Now, Dalima, give me your hand--so, that is right; now you will give me your promise, will you not?" "It makes my heart ache to think of it," sobbed Dalima, "but if you will have it so, I must obey. I give you my promise." "That's a good girl," said Anna cheerfully, but with a painful smile. "Now I am glad that you have come, for you will be able to help me, oh! ever so much. Look what a splendid striped material I have here on the loom." "Do you make those things, yourself, Nana?" asked Dalima in pitying accents, "you, the daughter of a kandjeng toean Resident?" "Now, Dalima," said Anna sadly, "that is another subject you must never mention. Not a soul knows me here. They do not so much as suspect that I am a white woman. They take me for a Solo princess who has been banished by her father--you told me so yourself--Oh! there are such funny stories about that, the one funnier than the other. You see that name of poetri is of the greatest use to me. The good dessa-folk look upon me as a kind of supernatural being and it protects me from all danger. Why even the old woman who sells my goods takes me for a relative of the Queen of the South, and can get much better prices for me than the things would otherwise fetch." "Do you sell those 'kains' you make, Nana?" exclaimed Dalima, folding her hands in sorrowful wonder, "you, the child of a kandjeng toean?" "But Dalima," replied Anna, with a smile, "that child of a kandjeng toean, as you call her, must eat like other mortals. Come, I must get on with my work, we have wasted too much time already in talking. That kain polèng mas has been ordered and I must get it done as soon as possible." So Anna set to work again at the loom. Dalima, for a little while, sat watching her with tearful eyes; but presently she jumped up, took the spinning-wheel and placed it close to the loom so that they could continue their conversation without allowing their hands to be idle, and then began industriously to spin. So clever did she show herself at the wheel that Anna gave her an approving nod and said: "That's right; now I shall have some real help and we shall get on famously. Nothing kept me back so much as that continual spinning every time my spool was empty." "Oh, but," said Dalima, with a smile, and not without a touch of pride, "I can do a good deal more than spinning. You will see I can take my turn at the loom as well. I am a particularly good hand at painting on linen." "Indeed, I am glad to hear that; then you will be of the greatest use to me; for I must confess I am as yet rather awkward at it though I have improved very much since I began. Before we go and get dinner ready I must show you some of my productions in that line." Thus chatting, the girls went on working diligently for another couple of hours until it became time to go to the kitchen. In that department also, everything was poor enough. It required no very elaborate cookery-book to prepare their simple meal. Dalima would not allow her Nana to have any hand whatever in the cooking. She took the basket of raw rice, ran to the brook which flowed hard by, thoroughly washed the grains until the water ran off clear through the basket. Then she put the koekoesan on the fire in a dangdang, wrapped a little salt fish with herbs and Spanish pepper in pisang leaves to make pèpèsan ikan, and roasted them slightly over the glowing coal fire. Next she toasted a few strips of meat and had everything ready long before the rice was done. "Now, Nana," she asked as she looked around, "where is our table and the table-linen? I want to lay the cloth." "You forget, it seems, Dalima, that I have turned Javanese. If I wish to remain unknown, I must conform, in every respect, to the manners and customs of our dessa-people There is my table and these are my knife and fork." Thus saying, Anna pointed downwards to the pandan mat which covered the floor and then held up her taper fingers. Dalima heaved a deep sigh. "But, Nana," she asked, "can it be necessary for you to work and to live thus? Have you then no money at all?" "Money!" replied Anna, who retained all her pride in the midst of her adversity, "I have plenty of money, I am very well off, I might indeed call myself rich for one in my position. But you must not forget that I am in hiding; and that if I did not work and did not live exactly like the natives, they would begin to suspect me and then my hiding-place would very soon be discovered. Moreover, who can tell what the future may have in store; the day may come when that money which I now so carefully hoard, though you may perhaps think me stingy, may be of the greatest use to us?" "Oh, Nana!" cried the baboe, as she strove to put in a word. But Anna would have no arguments. "Come, come," said she, "let us change the subject. While the rice is boiling, come and see how I have been getting on with my painting." She took Dalima into the back-gallery where stood several frames on which were stretched the tissues she had woven and which showed the process of painting in all its stages. On one of them the piece of linen was as yet pure white and the flowers which were to be painted were only lightly traced upon it. Another frame showed the designs partly covered with wax, so as to protect these parts from the action of the dye. On a third again the ground colour had been applied and the wax had been removed from such portions of the design as were to receive the next coat of paint. Neatly arranged around stood the small pots of colours, of indigo, of red paint, of brown paint, of yellow paint, and so forth. All these things Dalima surveyed with the critical eye of an expert and she highly approved of the arrangements. She took up a saucer which held the wax, and having held it to the fire, she proceeded, by means of a little tube, to pour the melted substance on one of the drawings and so gave proof of her skill in that kind of work. "You see, Nana!" she cried, triumphantly, "you see how useful I shall be to you! I shall also teach you how to use the 'aboe Kesambi' (ashes of the Scheichera trijaga), I don't see any about here--then you will see how vastly your flowers will improve in colour and softness." Thus then had baboe Dalima found a home on the slope of the Goenoeng Poleng. Thus she was again united to the young mistress to whom she was attached with a fervour of devotion which is not uncommon among Javanese servants. Both girls toiled and moiled together. Anna insisted upon taking her full share in all the drudgery of the little housekeeping--and whatever objections the baboe might strive to make, Anna would share and share alike. In Dalima she had acquired not a servant; but a true and faithful companion and friend, and a comforter and supporter in the time of her bitter trial. How long was that peaceful life to last--? CHAPTER XXXVI. LIM HO'S WEDDING. On a fine September morning, of the same year in which the other events of our story took place, Santjoemeh was once again in a state of commotion. And no wonder. For that day had been fixed upon for the marriage of Lim Ho. Of Lim Ho, the son of the opium farmer, the son of the millionaire Lim Yang Bing, with Ngow Ming Nio, the prettiest Chinese girl of Santjoemeh, the prettiest perhaps in all Dutch India. She was the only daughter of old Ngow Ming Than, a speculator who had dealt in every possible thing out of which money could be made, and who was honoured, esteemed and sought after for the sake of the millions he had scraped together. Money everywhere exercises a certain power of attraction; not otherwise was it at Santjoemeh, and the union of two such enormous capitals was certain, therefore, to awaken general interest. Moreover, a Chinese wedding of this kind was a very rare occurrence, and the reports of the magnificence which the house of Lim Yang Bing would display on the occasion, were so extravagant that they bordered on the miraculous, and opened to the imagination visions like those of the Arabian Nights. All Santjoemeh--taking these words in the same sense as "tout Paris" on similar occasions--had been scheming and intriguing to obtain an invitation; and many a pleasant smile had been lavished on babah Ong Sing Kok, or on babah Than Soeï, the purveyors of Mesdames Zoetbrouw and Greenhoed, ladies who, in the ordinary way, did not waste their blandishments on Chinamen, because it was thought that these gentlemen had a pretty large acquaintance among the staff of servants on Lim Yang Bing's establishment, and that through them the much coveted card of invitation might be procured. There were some who were wicked enough to whisper, that a certain nonna had promised one of Lim Ho's cousins to give him a kiss if he would procure her parents a ticket for admission. The wicked went on to say, that this Chinaman, a shrewd fellow--like most of his race--had refused to undertake the negotiation, unless he received payment on account; an instalment which was not to count on the day of final settlement. That these negotiations had been very much protracted owing to the many difficulties which would constantly arise; that, on every such check in the proceedings, progress had to be reported to the young lady, and that our artful young Celestial had made every fresh effort on his part depend upon the payment of another instalment on hers. If all this were true, then the poor nonna must have paid pretty dearly for her ticket--in kisses. That, however, is the story of the wicked, it is not ours. On that September morning then, Santjoemeh was in a fever of excitement and expectation. If here and there perhaps Lim Ho's ugly adventure with baboe Dalima had not been forgotten, the remembrance of that outrage did not damp the general enthusiasm, or keep any one at home. Those who were troubled with a somewhat tender conscience, laid the flattering unction to their soul that, as there had been no prosecution, probably the whole story was false, or that, at the worst, no great harm had been done. Others there were who fully believed the truth of the reports which had been spread abroad; and who actually envied Lim Ho his "bonne fortune." That Dalima was such a pretty girl! Oh, no! there was no one who would deny himself the expected pleasure on that account. It was very much the other way. The evening before the eventful day, Santjoemeh had had something like a foretaste of the coming joy. For, on that evening, a procession had started to the Chinese temple. Now, marriage has, in the celestial empire, no necessary connection whatever with any religious observances; yet, on the present occasion, it had been thought well to propitiate the goddess Má Tsów Pô, the guardian and protecting deity of candidates for matrimony and of newly married people. Accordingly, on the eve of the wedding, a procession had been formed in front of the bride's house. First came a numerous band of native musicians who, on their brass instruments accompanied by a drum of monstrous size, performed a selection of waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and redowas. In spite of the horrible dissonance of their execution, these lively tunes would have set even Johann Strauss a jigging could he but have heard them. Then followed a corps of Chinese artists whose grating one-stringed fiddles, clashing cymbals and discordant screeching wind-instruments, alternated with the former band; and produced a mixed medley of hideous sounds, which literally set one's teeth on edge, and put all but the most inveterate sightseers to instant flight. At the head of the procession and in its rear, marched six torch-bearers, while eight paper lanterns were born aloft on red poles on either side. These shed a soft coloured light and, by their fantastic shapes, imparted a thoroughly Chinese air to the scene. But the nucleus, and most important part of the pageant, consisted of twelve boys who walked two and two, and were called 'lo jen see' (barefeet). They were dressed in short nankin gowns reaching only to the knee, under which appeared the bare legs and feet, and on their heads they wore tall conical caps, trimmed with red fringe. Each of these youths held in his hand the pa-lee, or hollow metal ring containing little bits of iron, from which hung small copper bells. With these, the bearers made a gentle rattling sound as they marched along. When the temple was reached, the boys grouped themselves around the image of Má Tsów Pô, a deity represented as standing on the clouds and wearing a crown in token of her dignity of Queen of Heaven. Then, to a kind of measure, they began to mumble and chaunt their prayers and incantations, shaking their ring the while incessantly. This went on for about the space of an hour, and then the procession reformed and marched homeward with a far greater crowd at its heels than had accompanied its setting out. The next day, however, was the great day. Very early in the morning carriages began to rattle through the streets of Santjoemeh, to fetch the landowners, officials, and other distinguished guests, who lived in the country round about. On the stroke of ten the élite of the Residence had assembled in the vast inner-gallery of Lim Yang Bing's mansion. The gentlemen were all in full-dress, in uniform, or in black evening dress; the ladies wore ball toilettes; and at the entrance a number of Chinese boys were stationed to hand to each of their fair guests a bouquet of lovely pink roses. As one by one the principal guests drove up, crackers were let off, varying in number according to the social position of the individual who presented himself. If two or more happened to enter together, bunches of crackers were exploded in exact proportion to the number of visitors; and sometimes these fireworks exploded with a din that was almost deafening. At length Mr. van Gulpendam and his fair spouse made their appearance. They were received and escorted into the house by Chinese officers with the most punctilious ceremony. At his entrance, two copper serpents were exploded, and there were flatterers among the company who declared to Laurentia and to Lim Yang Bing, that, compared to the din these terrible serpents made, an eruption of Krakatoea was but child's play. The object of this infernal noise was two-fold. It was useful on the one hand to frighten away the evil spirits who might be lurking about the premises, and, on the other, it served as an expression of joy and as an evidence of cordial welcome to the visitors. As soon as the Resident had arrived, a long line of the intimate friends and acquaintances of the bridegroom, accompanied by the inevitable band and by the barefeet who had officiated on the previous evening, started off to fetch the bride from the house of her parents. Meanwhile, the major and the captain of the Chinese did the honours of the feast, while the lieutenants of that nation acted as masters of the ceremonies. Nothing could be more courteous than the manner in which these gentlemen acquitted themselves of their onerous duties. They attended to every want, they offered refreshments; and soon the popping of champagne corks indoors began to mingle with the incessant banging of the fireworks without; and generous wine, iced in huge silver bowls, was foaming and sparkling in the crystal glasses. For the ladies, there was an ample supply of hippocras, Golden water, Chartreuse and other liqueurs. Lim Yang Bing had offered his arm to fair Laurentia, and the pair walked leisurely up and down that stately saloon, which, under ordinary circumstances, might be called magnificent, but had now been specially decorated with the utmost skill and taste. The woodwork, the pillars, the beams and architraves of the apartment were all curiously carved and heavily gilt, and represented either hideous dragon-forms, or else scenes of domestic life in China. The walls were tinted a delicate rose-colour, and the floor, of pure Carrara marble, was covered with matting woven of the finest split rottan. At the end of this splendid saloon stood the altar of Tao Peng Kong gorgeously decorated, while wide strips of red silk, bearing black Chinese letters, hung on either side of the sanctuary. "Tell me, babah," asked the Resident's wife, "what may be the meaning of that scribble on those red rags?" "They are proverbs, njonja, taken from Kong Foe Hi," gallantly replied the Chinaman. "Yes, but what do they mean?" "That one, njonja, signifies: 'May the five blessings abide in this house.'" "And the others?" "They are the names of the five blessings." "Ah indeed!" continued Laurentia, "and what are those blessings?" "A long life, peace and rest, love of virtue, wealth and a happy end as the crown of life." "And what do the letters on those lanterns signify? I say, babah, they are very fine!" said Laurentia pointing upward at the lanterns, depending from the ceiling and from the beams. They were handsome hexagonal contrivances skilfully made, in the Chinese style, of wrought copper, and having large plates of pure polished crystal let into the sides. "Yes, yes, njonja," assented the babah with a complacent smile, "as you say they are very beautiful objects; but they cost a good deal of money. Now could you give a guess at the price of one of those copper lanterns?" "Not I, babah! how could I? let me see--they may be worth some fifty guilders." "Fifty guilders!" exclaimed the Chinaman with something like pity for her ignorance. "Oh, njonja, how could you have made such a bad shot. Why! I thought you prized the masterpieces of our Chinese art somewhat more highly than that!" "Well!" said the crafty woman, "and what, pray, may be the value of the things?" "Every lantern, njonja, you see hanging there, has cost me in Canton, three hundred and fifty guilders, without reckoning carriage and duty." "Oh, never mind that!" laughed Laurentia, "I daresay you managed to smuggle them across." "No, njonja, by Kong, no! I can show you the receipt from the custom-house. Will the njonja--" "No, babah, don't trouble yourself, I take your word for it. But what may they have cost you altogether?" "Close upon four hundred guilders a piece, njonja." "There are about thirty of them I should think," said Laurentia. "Only five and twenty, njonja." "Only! Only five and twenty!" said Mrs. van Gulpendam smiling. "It is pretty well, I should say--ten thousand guilders worth of lanterns!" Lim Yang Bing's face glowed with satisfaction. Like most parvenus he took an intense delight in letting every one know what he had paid for the precious objects he exhibited. "And look, njonja," he continued, "pray look at those tigers." With these words the opium-farmer pointed to a pair of red marble tigers. The figures were life-size and were represented crouching on two black marble pedestals at the foot of the two pillars one on each side of the altar. "Yes, babah, I admire them much--they are very fine indeed! They must have cost a pretty penny I should think?" "Each one of those figures represents five thousand guilders, njonja." "But babah!" cried Laurentia. "You see, njonja," said the babah sententiously, "when one gives a wedding party of this kind, one ought to do it well. Have you noticed that cock over the altar yonder?" "I see it, babah, I see it, how exquisitely it is carved." "It is cut out of a single block of peachwood," said the Chinaman, "that little thing alone has cost me twelve hundred guilders." "I say, babah! you must be a rich man," remarked Laurentia. "So, so," replied the Chinaman inordinately proud in his assumed modesty. "Do you happen to know what the wedding breakfast and this evening's banquet will cost me?" "No, I don't--do tell me, babah!" "Well, I will--they will stand me in very nearly fifteen thousand guilders." "Why, babah! you must be a very rich man," said Laurentia in a wheedling voice. "Oh, not very," whined the Chinaman. "But you don't know how much I give my son as my wedding gift." "You mean to Lim Ho, the bridegroom? No, I cannot guess--do tell me, babah?" "Two millions!" he whispered, fairly beside himself with delight. "Two million guilders!" exclaimed Laurentia, feigning the utmost surprise. "Why, babah, you must have a mint of money!" "No, njonja, not overmuch!" "And all of it out of your opium contract, eh?" The Chinaman looked at his fair companion, he gave her a very strange look; that word opium had completely sobered him. "And you have only had the contract for three years, I think, babah?" continued Laurentia. Lim Yang Bing nodded assent. In his heart he was beginning to curse his boasting and vapouring. "Have you seen the Resident lately?" asked Laurentia carelessly, but determined to strike while the iron was hot. "No, njonja," replied the Chinaman politely, but with none of his former gush. "I know he wishes to speak to you about the contract--it runs out I think with the current year?" "Yes, njonja." "And I think the monopoly for the next three years will be granted some time this month?" "Yes, njonja." "Do you intend to bid for it, babah?" "I think so, njonja." "Yes, njonja! no, njonja! I think so, njonja!" cried Laurentia mimicking the poor Chinaman most comically, "But, hush, someone is listening--What do you say is the meaning of those words on the lanterns, babah?" The last question she asked in her ordinary tone of voice, with that light-hearted giggle which was peculiar to the handsome woman. "Those letters mean: 'We pray for happiness and prosperity.'" "Thank you, and on that one yonder?" "The word on that one signifies: 'Lantern of Heaven?'" Thus talking they had walked away out of ear-shot. "Now," resumed Laurentia in a subdued voice, "now we can go on with our conversation: "You seem to be very lukewarm about that monopoly business, babah. I fear you will have a competitor at the auction." "Who is he?" asked Lim Yang Bing somewhat eagerly. "I have heard the name of Kwee Sioen Liem mentioned, the Solo man; you know!" "Indeed," muttered the Chinaman evidently much put out. "Yes, they say he is a rich man, he may do you some damage perhaps, babah," continued Mrs. van Gulpendam fixing her glittering eyes upon her companion. To this Lim Yang Bing made no reply, but he kept on with measured step walking by the side of the Resident's wife. "That bit of information does not seem to affect you very much?" continued Laurentia with a slight sneer. "Is that why the Resident wants to see me?" asked the Chinaman. "Yes, I think so, partly at least for that; and I believe he has some other business to transact with you. The Government, you know, expects the bids to go much higher this year." "Oh ho!" grinned the Chinaman. "You now pay twelve hundred thousand guilders for your monopoly, do you not? You will have to make it twenty, or else the Government will keep the whole business in its own hands." "Let them!" said Lim Yang Bing smiling disdainfully, "I should very much like to see that." But, after a moment's reflection, he went on: "It is quite impossible to offer more; as it is, we can only just avoid a loss." "And yet you can manage to give two millions to your son as a wedding present," remarked Laurentia, with a knowing laugh. "Aye," he continued, as if he had not heard the remark, "if the Government would grant more licenses in the Residence, in that case."-- "Is that all?" cried Laurentia carelessly. "How many do you hold now? But; that is no business of mine. How many more do you want?" "Ten at the very least," was the ready answer. "That's a good many, babah!--if ten additional licenses were granted, then I understand you to say that you are prepared to go up to two millions?" Lim Yang Bing could only nod assent; he had no time to express himself verbally, for at that moment the procession, which had gone to fetch the bride had returned, and was appearing at the entrance of the gallery. Its arrival was greeted with an explosion of fireworks so tremendous, and a cacophony from the Chinese band so hideous, that the din was absolutely deafening. If any evil spirits had been lurking about, that atrocious noise must certainly have made them take to their heels. No, not even the Shan Sao could stand that. In the midst of all this uproar, a comely group of Chinese maidens, very demure damsels, with finely cut features and modestly attired in picturesque gowns of yellow silk, with rose coloured sashes round their slim little waists, came forward to meet the bride and to bid her welcome. They offered her a garland of peach blossom, the emblem of maiden purity, and some nick-nacks amongst which was a cock, the emblem of the sungod, curiously carved out of peach-wood. Lim Ho also advanced to offer his hand to Ngow Ming Nio, and to lead her to a table well furnished with the customary viands. On that board appeared an endless array of dishes, the usual Chinese dishes, such as sharks' fins, soup made of stags' tendons and birds' nests, "kiemlo" and "bahmieh" (two fat soups) and other delicacies of no particular significance. But besides these the table contained other articles of food to which a distinctly emblematical meaning was attached. There was the pomegranate sliced in such a manner as to display to the greatest advantage its innumerable seedgrains, signifying the numerous offspring with which might the marriage be richly blessed! There were large heaps of the orange, fit emblem of the sweetness of life, which might the happy pair long enjoy! There were clusters of the oyster, typifying the distinct personality of each member and the unbroken unity of the entire family; and lastly some cuttings of the sugar cane, signifying the blessedness of the married state which, as that cane from knot to knot, from joint to joint, still increases in sweetness and in love. The betrothed couple now took their place at the table, Lim Ho at his bride's left hand, the place of honour in China. Before them were set two mighty goblets of pure gold. Both the beakers were filled with wine to the brim, and were connected with one another by a thread of scarlet silk. Then the bride and bridegroom simultaneously drained half the contents of the cups, after which they exchanged goblets, taking care however, that the scarlet thread remained unbroken. This time the cups were drained. "Ouff!" cried van Beneden, who was present with his friends, "it is enough to take one's breath away! Each of those things must hold at least a bottle and a half of wine I bet! For Lim Ho it is nothing; but for that poor little thing!" "Aye, and I bet, you wouldn't mind hob-nobbing with pretty Ngow Ming Nio," replied Grenits. "Do hold your tongue!" said Grashuis as he glanced at a group of Chinamen who stood near, and who looked anything but pleased at the unseemly burst of merriment which at so solemn a moment, had greeted Grenits' words. "Hush! Hush!" was the cry on all sides. Resident van Gulpendam glared round indignantly, and Laurentia looked black as thunder at the interruption in the midst of the drinking ceremony. Van Rheijn would have crept underground to avoid those terrible eyes. When the couple had thus copiously pledged one another, the bridegroom took the left hand of the bride. He raised it to the level of her breast, and in that attitude, the pair gravely saluted one another. "I say," whispered Grenits, "I wish that dear little pet would give me such a bow." "I daresay," remarked August van Beneden; "a dear little pet with two millions of money." "Hush, hush!" was again the cry. "Pooh!" cried Grenits, "millions squeezed out of the opium trade!" The young lawyer hung his head in confusion. "You are right," said he. "No! from such a source I would not take a single farthing!" "Hush, hush!" Van Gulpendam's eyes flashed with indignation. The next rite was a very curious one indeed. Two dishes were placed before the betrothed. They contained a mixture of red and white pellets, the size of an ordinary pea. Grenits turned to one of the Chinamen who stood close beside him in the crowd, and asked what might be the meaning of this ceremony. "Are they medicine?" he asked. "Yes, sir," replied the Chinaman. "The red balls represent the Jang or male, the white represent the Jin or female principle in nature." "Hush, hush!" resounded again on all sides. Lim Ho and the bride now, each in a golden spoon, took up a red and a white ball, swallowed them and once again bowed deeply to one another. Then the dishes were interchanged, just as the cups had been before, the ceremony was repeated and with that act, the marriage was complete. They were now man and wife inseparably joined together. Ngow Ming Nio and Lim Ho, the one set of millions was joined to the other. During all these festive rites, did Lim Ho bestow even one passing thought upon his victim, baboe Dalima? We doubt it. The nuptial ceremonies having been thus performed, the young wife took up in the spoon two of the little balls and gracefully presented them to the lips of her husband, and, with a winning smile, invited him to eat. By this rite the newly married woman bound herself to bear all the cares and anxieties of the domestic arrangements in the future household. While this ceremony was going on, one of the oldest members of the family audibly recited a few words in the Chinese tongue. "What is he saying?" asked Grenits, turning to his friendly neighbour. "O toean," replied the latter, "it is a quotation from the Sji-king, the book of songs which was printed long, very long ago." (It is said to have been printed in the eleventh century B.C.) "But what is the meaning of the quotation?" "It has a very pretty meaning--something like this: 'The peach tree is young and fair, its blossoms are pure and bright--this young woman is going to her future home and will be an excellent manager of her domestic affairs.'" "Very pretty indeed!" laughed Grenits. When the young wife had thus, typically, served her husband with food, both made another low obeisance, and this concluded the ceremony. The last bow was the signal for another terrific outburst of noise. The small cannon thundered, salvos of innumerable mertjons were fired off, the band of the Santjoemeh militia, which had appeared but lately on the scene, played up with all its might, the Chinese orchestra shrieked forth most dismal wails, and that roaring, that crackling, that drumming, that tooting, that sawing and scraping produced a din so indescribably stunning and so hideous that an ear-drum of bull's hide could hardly have endured the noise. In the midst of this tumult the newly married couple took up their position in front of the altar of Tao' Peh Kong. First, they each kindled a little stick of sandal wood and fragrant incense which, while burning, they stuck into a massive golden bowl half filled with scented ashes. Thus having paid their homage to the household god, they turned to receive the congratulations of the company. This was not a national custom at all, for in China, when no white men are present, the wedded pair at once retire to their apartment. It was, in fact, a concession made to Western usage, and the Chinamen who were present scrupulously avoided taking any part in it. The majority of them left, to show their zeal, no doubt, by letting off some more fireworks and completing the rout of the evil spirits. Resident van Gulpendam, taking his wife's arm, at once headed the procession of Europeans all eager to fall down before those millions thus auspiciously coupled together. But for these millions, however lovely might have been the bride, and though in the little world around him Lim Ho might have been voted a very good sort of fellow, not a single soul would have so much as dreamed of taking part in this chorus of hollow compliment. The scandal about Dalima was of much too recent date. But now that the two millions on the one side had joined the two millions on the other--now that Lim Ho, the son of Lim Yang Bing, the all-powerful opium farmer, was the happy man, now the entire European population was ready to crowd around that highly-favoured couple and press upon them their heartfelt and sincere congratulations. Not content with this, Mr. van Gulpendam considered it his duty, after having shaken hands, to add a few words of affectionate advice. Very fortunate indeed it was that neither husband nor wife understood the Dutch language and thus were spared the infliction of the nautical terms with which the worthy resident so richly interlarded his discourse, but which he found utterly untranslatable into Malay. It was a good thing also for the patience of the bystanders, that Laurentia stood by the side of her dear spouse and exhorted him to be brief by digging the point of her elbow pretty sharply into his side. At length the twaddle of the chief functionary came to an end, and now ensued a scene of handshaking, of cringing and fawning, and of general cant on both sides, which would have filled any honest heart with the deepest disgust. But neither Lim Yang Bing nor Lim Ho failed to notice that neither Theodoor Grenits, nor August van Beneden, nor Leendert Grashuis, nor Edward van Rheijn had joined this troop of sycophants. They had taken advantage of the crowd and confusion to leave the house. Charles van Nerekool had flatly refused to go at all. He could not overcome the aversion with which Lim Ho had inspired him; but when he heard a report of the proceedings, he resolved that, should another such opportunity occur, though the festivities might be held on a much smaller scale, he would try and witness so extraordinary a spectacle. It was well perhaps for our young friends that they left when they did; for presently the scene became rather uproarious. No sooner were the greetings exchanged and the congratulations ended, than the champagne corks began to pop with an energy and frequency which seemed to rival the bangs of the mertjons outside. Presently the whole company, Chinamen and Europeans, stood up, holding aloft their glasses full of sparkling wine, and deafening cheers were raised, while the Chinese "trauwkoeis" and the clattering cymbals screeched and clashed, and the militia trumpets brayed, and the serpents and mertjons banged with a noise as if a town was being bombarded. In the midst of this unearthly din the bridal pair disappeared; anxious, probably, to save their ear-drums. In the evening, the formal banquet took place, to which eighty guests had been invited. The menu of the feast had been carefully prepared by a French mâitre d'hôtel, and was excellent; although next day the wags of Santjoemeh would have it that dishes decidedly peculiar to the Celestial empire had graced the board, such as "Potage Kiemlo à la Tartare," "Potage printanier à l'ail," "Croquettes aux oreilles de rats," "Bouchées d'ailerons de requins," "Consommées de tripang," &c. &c. After dinner, President van Gulpendam rose to propose the toast of the evening; and to drink the health of the newly married couple. He did so, if the reports are to be believed, in a speech of extraordinary brilliancy. It fell to his lot also, afterwards, to propose the health of the Chinese officers, and, in doing so, he expressed a hope that the Netherlands might always find in her Chinese subjects as faithful and useful members of the community as they had hitherto proved themselves to be. He laid very marked stress upon the word "useful," and the close of his speech was greeted with thundering applause. Lim Yang Bing replied to this toast, and at the conclusion of his remarks he proposed the health of Mr. and Mrs. van Gulpendam. He heartily congratulated Santjoemeh on the possession of such excellent rulers, and for the good of its inhabitants in general, and of the Chinese community in particular, he expressed the hope that they might long see that noble pair at the head of the Residence. It was well that the roof of the mansion was a pretty strong one and that the foundations of its walls and pillars were firm and deep, or else some deplorable calamity must have occurred; for the deafening cheers of the company burst forth with the force of a hurricane; the soil literally shook under the feet of the assembled guests at the salvoes of mertjons and of small ordnance without, while the air within was alive with the popping of corks, which flew from the necks of the bottles with the regularity of well sustained file-fire. So unbounded was the enthusiasm with which the eloquent words of the worthy opium farmer were received. After the banquet came the ball, which was attended by almost the whole of Santjoemeh. Towards midnight, there was a display of Chinese fireworks in the grounds, and our pig-tailed brethren, on that occasion, proved how immeasurably superior is their skill in pyrotechny compared to anything European artists can aspire to in that line. Then dancing was resumed with fresh vigour, and the last couples did not leave the ball-room until the break of day. "That was a glorious, a most sumptuous feast, babah," said Resident van Gulpendam a few days later to his friend Lim Yang Bing. "My eyes! didn't you make the galley smoke!" "Yes, kandjeng toean," replied the opium farmer, with a smile of intensely gratified vanity. "Yes; but it has cost me a pretty little sum of money, why, in champagne alone, I have spent more than two thousand guilders, and quite another twelve hundred in Rhenish wine. The fireworks I had direct from Canton, and they have cost me three thousand at the very least." As he dwelt upon these details, the man was in the seventh heaven of delight. CHAPTER XXXVII. DISGRACEFUL OPPOSITION. TWO OPIUM COMPANIES BY THE EARS. Nearly the whole of Santjoemeh had been keeping festival. It was, indeed, no everyday occurrence for the son of the rich opium farmer of the district to marry the daughter of an equally wealthy disciple of Mercury. At the union of so many millions the Dutch public could not but evince the liveliest interest--and it had done so. We said: nearly the whole of Santjoemeh; for there were some who had not thought it incumbent upon them to grace the banquet and the ball with their presence. Van Beneden, Grashuis, van Rheijn, and Grenits, had allowed their ethnological curiosity to prevail so far as to induce them to go and witness the nuptial ceremony; but nothing could persuade them to attend the subsequent festivities. They had, on the contrary, determined, while the European population was crowding within Lim Yang Bing's stately mansion in the Gang Pinggir, and the natives were swarming all around it, to pass a particularly quiet evening together at the house of their friend van Nerekool. When they entered they found the young judge still seated at his study bending over his work by the light of a reading-lamp. "Hallo!" cried one, "still at it?" "Are the courts so very busy just now?" asked another. "By Jove!" exclaimed a third, "that's what I call zeal for the service!" "Ornithologically speaking," laughed van Beneden, "our friend Charles should be classed with the rara avis. Come, come, old fellow, this is no time for working! All Santjoemeh is astir--just hear what an infernal row is going on yonder." "Yes," remarked Theodoor Grenits, with a scornful laugh, "they are making noise enough over it." "My dear friends," replied van Nerekool, "the greater part of the day I have been very busy indeed; for as Leendert just now observed with more truth than he himself was aware, at the present moment we have a great deal of work to get through in the courts; but yet, when you came in, I was occupied in a very different manner." "Would it be indiscreet to ask what made our host bend his head so anxiously over his desk?" asked Theodoor. "Not at all, I was reading a letter I have just received from William; that is what made me lay aside my pen." "From William Verstork?" "How is he?" "Is he well?" "How is he getting on at Atjeh?" These questions crossed one another, and were uttered, as it were, in a breath; for the five young men were warmly attached to the worthy controller. "Yes," replied van Nerekool, "I am glad to tell you that Verstork is in perfect health, and that he is getting on uncommonly well in the military world yonder." "Well, that's a blessing," remarked van Rheijn, who never liked soldiers, "I am glad to hear it--I don't at all want to change places with him." "And what is his letter about, Charles?" asked van Beneden. "His letter is a very long one," replied van Nerekool, "much too long to read to you this evening. The greater part of it, moreover, is devoted to purely private matters; and contains particulars concerning the parents of Anna van Gulpendam, which I do not think I have a right to communicate to you. He tries to cure me of my love for her, and I have no doubt that his endeavour is exceedingly well meant; but yet the contents of his letter have made me very melancholy, as they make the chasm between us appear deeper and more impassible than it seemed before. "Where can she be?" he continued after an instant's pause--"If I only knew that then all would not be lost!" The four friends looked at one another sadly--that letter had evidently touched a string which vibrated painfully in van Nerekool's heart. "Come, Charles," said Grashuis, trying to rouse his friend, "you must not give way to that melancholy mood. You must try and accept the inevitable. Moreover, who can tell what the future may bring!" "But she is gone!" cried Van Nerekool hopelessly, "she has disappeared without leaving a trace." A strange smile passed over Edward van Rheijn's lips; but he made no direct remark. At length he said: "Baboe Dalima also seems to have mysteriously disappeared." Van Nerekool made an impatient gesture as one who would say: 'What is that to me?' "I happened lately to be at Kaligaweh," continued van Rheijn, "and I chanced to meet old Setrosmito there. He tells me that Dalima started off some time ago for Karang Anjer." "For Karang Anjer!" exclaimed van Nerekool, "and what--?" "But from that time to this her family have had no tidings from her," continued van Rheijn. "Have they heard nothing?" asked Charles. "Not a single word--indeed her parents do not know whether she is alive or dead." Van Nerekool's head sunk down despondingly on his breast. "One faint gleam of hope," he murmured, "and then dark night again!" For a while no one spoke. At length van Beneden, who wished to lead his friend's thoughts into a different channel, broke the silence: "Does Verstork write upon no other subject than this?" "Oh, yes," replied Charles, who was gradually regaining his composure. "Let us go into the inner room and I will read you the most interesting portion of his letter. This is not at all the place for a comfortable chat." Thereupon they left the study, which, with its folios and bulky law-books, did not indeed present a very sociable or cosy appearance. "Sabieio, chairs and cigars for the gentlemen!" cried van Nerekool. When all were seated and the fragrant Manillas were lighted, he continued: "Gentlemen, what do you say to a glass of beer?" No very determined opposition being offered to this hospitable proposal, van Nerekool again called to his servant, "Sabieio, bring us some iced beer." Thus all having quenched their thirst in the pleasant and cooling beverage: "Now then gentlemen," said Charles, "I will give you the most important parts of William's letter," and he began to read as follows: "'Do you recollect that when we sat down to dinner together after our day's hunting in the Djoerang Pringapoes, I told you of a certain recipe for pills to counteract opium, and how that I also told you what success I had already had with this medicine? Grenits, at the time, was not at all inclined to look favourably upon that communication, and took a very gloomy view of the prospect which lay before me. The words he used on that occasion have been continually ringing in my ears; and to this day I remember them as clearly as when they were spoken, he said: "Keep that prescription strictly to yourself, and don't say a word about it to anybody. The Colonial Secretary, who has but one object in view, and that is to raise the opium revenue as much as possible, might look upon your remedy as an attack made upon the golden calf; and missionaries have before this been impeded in their Gospel work, and men have been expelled from the colonies, and official functionaries have been suspended or pensioned off for the commission of much more venial offences than bringing such pills as yours to the opium smokers." Now, Charles, you know that although with an eye to the future of the members of my family, who, to some extent, depend upon me for support, I was, for a few moments, depressed at my friend's gloomy prognostic; yet I soon rallied, and, after a little reflection, began to look upon Grenits' words as the outcome of a passing fit of melancholy induced by our conversation, which had almost exclusively run on opium horrors and opium scandals. Indeed, Grenits himself could not have intended to paint the future in colours as dark as his words seemed to imply; for you remember that when I laughed and said: "Oh, it is not quite so bad as that, I hope," he replied with a smile, "Perhaps not; but your pills will not earn you the Netherlands' Lion." "'Ah, no, Charles! I never aimed at any such distinction. The little good I have been able to do I have done simply for its own sake and without the least expectation of any recompense. Such ambition I have always most willingly left to others; for I know full well that seldom real merit, sometimes the directly opposite, but always a certain amount of pliability and want of back-bone, is rewarded by these outward tokens of official approbation. And the mere thought that I might so much as be suspected of belonging to those invertebrates would suffice to paralyse every effort on my part. The shaft which Theodoor thus shot at random missed its mark; yet neither he nor I could, at that time, suspect how much sarcasm lay hidden in his last words or how very much to the point had been his foregoing counsels. Now pay good heed to what I am about to tell you. "'I had not been here very long, before I received a document from the Chief Secretary's office at Batavia. That, in itself, was no very uncommon occurrence. I have frequently had communications from that quarter when information was required on certain civil questions, such as duties and other things of that kind, about which they did not wish to trouble the Military Governor. But yet, it seemed rather strange to me that, on this occasion, I did not receive the document through the Chief of the Military Department. It was a written paper, yet not a despatch. It looked more like a circular although these are generally either printed or lithographed. Now listen to what it contained: "An attempt has been discovered at Batavia to import certain pills consisting of or mixed with opium, under the pretence that they are medicinal. The Indian Government has come to the conclusion that the pills in question must be considered as a preparation of opium, and it, therefore, forbids the importation of this so-called medicine except through its own agents, and the sale thereof excepting by the regularly licensed opium farmers and such apothecaries and chemists as are specially exempt from the provisions of the Opium Act. You are hereby requested strictly to enforce the Government's decision on this subject." "'This precious document bore the Home Secretary's signature. "'Here at Oleh-leh I had made attempts with the pills in question to cure the Chinese opium smokers of their fatal passion, and my efforts in their behalf had met with marked success. I had further given a couple of hundred of them to the officers of the garrison for distribution among such of their men as might need them. These gentlemen also gave me the most glowing account of the success of the medicine. The trophy of bedoedans in my study was enriched by half-a-dozen pipes; and I must confess, Charles, that as often as my eye happened to fall on those instruments of moral ruin, which are hanging there harmless on my wall as the visible tokens of victories obtained, I could not repress a feeling of self-satisfaction. Was I now to desist? Was I forbidden any longer to attempt the rescue of the infatuated wretches around me? I could not realise it--I could not believe it. Surely the Government would not refuse to hold out a helping hand to the myriads of wretched victims of opium which swarm all about India! There must be a mistake somewhere. The Government must have been misinformed and all that was needed was for somebody to open its eyes to the truth. "'To put these pills into the hands of the opium farmer for distribution would be reducing the whole thing to the most utter absurdity and to ensure failure beforehand. "'I therefore sat down and drew up a carefully detailed statement in which I gave the result of my own experience, the evidence of the missionaries and the favourable opinions also of the officers mentioned above. I added to my document legally attested declarations of these gentlemen as to the salutary effects of the medicine. "'Finally, I ventured to suggest, that, in favour of these pills as a bona fide medicine, an exception might be made, and that, as prepared and sent out by the Missionary Society, they might be excluded from the regulations of the opium law. "'My dear Charles, what was I about? Oh, yes, as an honest man I had followed the dictates of my conscience; but it was too simple-minded on my part to hope that the Government might, in the highest interests of morality, be induced to forego even the smallest scrap of its profits. I was a greenhorn indeed to sit down and pen such a document at a time when money--money--money--is the only question with the Government and money-scraping seems to be our highest national virtue; while men resolutely close their eyes to the dirty gutters out of which it is raked together. "'Very soon after, indeed by the very next mail, I received a reply to my proposal. It ran thus: "It is not the intention of the Government to discuss the proposal contained in your letter of the --th. The pills in question must have lately found their way into other parts of the island as well as into Batavia. Ostensibly they are designed to wean the smokers from the excessive use of opium; but in reality they only serve to procure that indulgence at a much cheaper rate for those who, either from want of means or for other reasons, cannot procure the drug from the legitimate source. While you were occupying the post of controller in the district of Santjoemeh we had good reason to suspect that, in your official capacity, you were not disinclined to evade--we are willing to believe from the best motives--the Government regulations with regard to the sale of opium; and that you thus contributed to diminish the public revenue. Your last letter incontestably proves that you are pursuing the same practices now. On a public servant who entertains such views of his duty, the Government cannot look with much favour; and were it not that I am fully persuaded that you are actuated by the very best motives in pursuing your present line of conduct, and that your well-known family relations make me very loth to adopt decided measures, I would at once propose your dismissal as a man unfit for the public service. I have directed the Governor carefully to watch your proceedings and to report immediately to head-quarters the first failure of duty on your part that may come under his notice. I need hardly tell you that the State requires from its servants a very different conception of duty from that of lending a willing ear to every foolish sentiment of morbid philanthropy; and that, therefore, if you give any further cause for dissatisfaction you must not reckon upon any consideration whatever."'" "It is disgraceful!" exclaimed Grenits as soon as van Nerekool ceased reading. "A noble-hearted fellow like William Verstork to be so shamefully treated!" "Oh, that opium, that opium!" continued Grashuis no less indignantly than his friend, "it seems to taint the very life-blood of our nation. Has it then come to this that we are to be deprived of every means of stemming the national evil?" "Yes, it is indeed disgraceful!" chimed in van Beneden. "But, my friends," objected van Rheijn, "are you not rather one-sided in your view of the matter and rather too hasty in forming an opinion? May there not be some truth in what the Government alleges and might not these pills, under the pretence of being a cure, only be another means for extending the illicit traffic in opium?" "Oh, Edward!" exclaimed van Nerekool, "how can you bring yourself to suspect William Verstork of illicit traffic?" "And the Netherland's Missionary Society?" added Grashuis. "Pardon me, my friends," cried van Rheijn as he passionately jumped up from his chair. "You misunderstand me entirely, I never meant to suggest anything of the kind. I am just as much convinced as any of you can be that both William Verstork and our missionaries are acting in this matter with the most perfect good faith and honour. I was not for an instant thinking of them when I spoke. But might not men without principle and without honour, under cover of these wholesome pills, introduce others made of pure opium and thus defraud the revenue?" "Well," said Grenits doubtfully, "such a thing might perhaps come to pass." "And is it not then right and proper," continued van Rheijn, "that the Government should guard against possible fraud? Under cover of these pills the opium plague might conceivably attain to altogether extravagant dimensions." "Without the treasury being one penny the better for it," hastily interposed Grashuis. "So long as the revenue is kept up they are not so over squeamish in Government circles about the abuse of opium. Quite the contrary." "And then Verstork's proposal to admit only the pills sent out by the Missionary Society was fair enough," added Grenits. "It would not be very difficult to protect and encourage the use of the medicine and at the same time guard against adulteration or fraud. But no," he continued, "that is evidently not what the Government wants. Not one poor scruple must be taken from the dose of poison which is, in a measure, forced upon the people, and every effort to mitigate the evil must, in spite of the twaddle and cant at the Hague, be sternly repressed. My friends, you all recollect our discussions on that subject. In the face of what we have heard and seen can anyone deny or doubt that opium lies as a curse upon our poor Indian possessions?" For a few moments the young men sat silently gazing on the floor before them. Alas no! that plain fact could not be denied--all were equally convinced of its truth. "Yes, that opium!" sighed van Beneden. "Friends, let us change our ground without, however, quitting our subject. It would be a pity to do so just now--just now that we five men are assembled here together in Santjoemeh to protest against opium, while, at the same moment, yonder, the trumpets are braying and the cannon is roaring in homage to the millions which that same opium has wrung from the people. At the present moment the pig-tailed children of the Celestial empire are gathered together in perfect harmony and concord around their Tao Peh Kong; but such is not always the case. Circumstances sometimes arise which kindle the bitterest animosities between these Chinese brethren. As I was looking through a pile of papers, not very long ago, I happened to come upon a pretty quarrel which greatly interested me and gave me a deep insight, from another point of view, into the vicious circle in which the question of opium farming revolves. We are now sitting here so cosily and quietly together that I should like to take advantage of this favourable opportunity to tell you the story. I must only beg of you that you will pay no heed either to the names, the places or the dates I may use. I have no right to incriminate the actors in my tale, some of whom are still living. On the other hand, my story would lack interest and vividness were I to speak of N or P and introduce places as X or Y. I shall therefore take the liberty of introducing fictitious names. I beg you will bear that in mind. "In the year--let us put it at ten years ago--there existed in the capital of one of Java's Residences--supposing we say in Santjoemeh--a mighty opium company, to which we will give the name of Hok Bie. This company Hok Bie had cast a covetous eye upon the monopoly in a district adjoining to Santjoemeh, which we will call Bengawan. But this same district had also attracted the attention of a young Chinaman called Tio Siong Mo. This young man was very wealthy, although he had not as many millions at command as had the company Hok Bie. "It would lead me too far afield," continued van Beneden, "were I to describe to you all the intrigues and plots which were set on foot, all the bribery and corruption which took place on both sides, to get possession of the coveted prize. Suffice it to say that the antagonists exerted their utmost powers; for Bengawan was a prize indeed. From the opium farmers' point of view it was the fattest district in all Java--and so it is now, unless I am much mistaken, and at present counts the greatest number of opium dens--though I hardly need add, as a corollary, that it contains the most wretched and poverty-stricken population in the island. "At first it seemed as if the company Hok Bie would carry all before it; for it managed to cast serious doubts upon the solvency and credit of its adversary's sureties, and if they could be discredited, Tio Siong Mo would be excluded from the contest altogether. "Tio Siong Mo, however, held firm, he fought the bribers with their own weapons; and he found means, somehow or other, to re-establish the credit of his sureties. How? You will perhaps be able to give a shrewd guess at that." "Oh, yes, yes, go on!" cried Grenits, "that is as clear as the sun at noonday." "Well then, that dodge having failed, the company Hok Bie began to look round for other means of attack. First it endeavoured to bribe Tio Siong Mo's sureties and to induce them to declare themselves bankrupts; but that did not succeed. Next it made an offer to its competitor of half a million of guilders in cash if he would retire from the contest. Half a million! It was a liberal bid, there was no denying that. But no! Tio Siong Mo did not waver a single instant, he flatly refused the tempting offer; for the monopoly of Bengawan was worth a much larger sum of money than that. "On the day of the sale five competitors came forward; but three of these very soon dropped out of the bidding, and the representative of the company Hok Bie and Tio Siong Mo were left to fight out the matter between them. "I will not weary you by describing the contest, which was carried on at one time with what seemed the wildest recklessness and at another with the most cunning circumspection. There were some very exciting passages in the battle. At length Hok Bie bid eighty thousand guilders." "Eighty thousand?" exclaimed van Rheijn. "Why, that is not a very large sum." "A month, a month, my dear fellow!" said van Beneden, correcting him. "Well, a month, so be it," resumed van Rheijn; "that comes to only nine hundred and sixty thousand guilders a year. Here in Santjoemeh--!" "For those days it was an exorbitant price," continued van Beneden, "I know all about it, and I can assure you it was an extravagantly high price." "Well, and what happened then?" asked van Nerekool. "The representative of Hok Bie had called out eighty thousand, thinking by that bid to disconcert and crush his opponent, for he had made a tremendous leap from sixty to eighty." "The deuce!" cried van Rheijn, "and then?" "Tio Siong Mo lost not an instant; but with the utmost coolness he said: 'Another thousand.' "He spoke these words in a tone of voice which seemed to convey that he simply intended to add a thousand to whatever bid the other party might make. "Hok Bie's representative looked blue; that last bold jump of his had brought him to the end of his tether--he was not empowered to go further. The resident who presided encouraged the competitors to go on. But no one spoke. "At length was heard the 'third time,' accompanied by the fall of the hammer, and Tio Siong Mo had secured the monopoly. It was a large sum to pay merely for the contract; but the young Chinaman laughed in his sleeve. He knew well enough that in the dessa Bengawan he could screw double that amount out of it. But, as you will see, he reckoned without his host. The company Hok Bie was furious at having thus been worsted, and resolved to have its revenge. At the very first meeting of the directors four hundred thousand guilders were voted, not only to ensure Tio Siong Mo's fall, but even to secure him a comfortable little nook in the State prison. Two of the oldest members of the board undertook the job." "By Jove!" cried Grenits, who was thoroughly interested in the story. As a merchant, such a piece of business was quite in his line, and he pricked his ears as a young race-horse, impatient for the start, dilates his quivering nostrils. "By Jove, I am anxious to hear how they managed that." "They managed it very simply, indeed," continued van Beneden, "though it cost them a mint of money. But when it is a question of gratifying his passions, or of pampering his vanity your Chinaman is by no means stingy." "No," said Grenits, "nor yet when it comes to throwing out a sprat to catch a mackerel." "Agreed," said van Beneden; "but now let me go on, or else we shall not get to the end of the story to-night." "Just so," assented Edward van Rheijn. "Make what haste you can; for I have also my little opium tale to tell--and something else besides that." "Very good! August, drive ahead!" said Grenits. "There were at that time a couple of opium districts which were contiguous to Bengawan, and which lay along the Java sea. Upon these the company Hok Bie at once flung itself, the monopoly not having as yet been granted for them." "Yes, of course," remarked van Rheijn, "having lost the rich district of Bengawan, a couple of rather more meagre ones would form an agreeable compensation." "Upon these," continued van Beneden, not heeding his friend's interruption, "the company Hok Bie greedily flung itself, and for the opium privilege of those two districts, it paid the sum of 40,000 guilders a month; though it was clear as day that at such a price it must incur a heavy loss." "What then could it have been about to offer the money?" asked van Nerekool. "The company's object was to get a large strip of the Java sea under its control." "Oho!" exclaimed Grenits and van Rheijn in a breath--A light was beginning to dawn upon them. "Do you fellows now begin to understand?" asked August with a broad smile. "That's a good job. "You must know that the Residence Bengawan is bounded on the north by these two districts. The consequences of this acquisition soon began to show themselves. The coast of the Java sea lay open to the company Hok Bie, and smugglers soon began to ply diligently between that coast and Singapore. The contraband very soon found its way through the two districts to the interior, so that presently Bengawan was literally flooded with smuggled opium. To such an extent was this contraband trade carried on, that the drug was readily sold for about one half-penny, a price at which the farmer could not possibly afford to sell it. "Then Tio Siong Mo attempted to brazen it out. He began by punctually meeting his obligations, and every month paid the contract money into the treasury. He did this, poor fellow, in the hope that the European authorities would assist him and protect him against this illicit trade which was robbing the revenue as well as himself. And what were the effects of all his representations to the Government--'Schwamm darüber'--Even where he did obtain some kind of co-operation from some chief official, he got no support whatever from the subordinates. They all, to a single man, sided with the much more powerful company Hok Bie, which never left any service unrewarded. "These punctual payments were all very well so long as Tio Siong Mo could find the money. But, however well lined his chest might be, it was with him--as it always must be where much is going out and little or nothing coming in--a mere question of time. "In the latter half of the second year of the contract, Tio Siong Mo was declared a bankrupt. He could not possibly cover his expenses, and by that time had fallen in arrears and owed a colossal sum to the treasury, a debt of which little or nothing was ever recovered, because, at the critical moment, his sureties had absconded to Singapore. So cleverly did these worthies dispose of their property, that they left nothing but debts behind them. "'The Dutch Government wields a sword without mercy,' said the financial secretary; and that same Government which, by taking proper measures in its own interest as well as in the interest of their farmer, might have put a stop to smuggling on anything like a large scale, but had neglected to do so--that same Government now clapped poor Tio Siong Mo into prison. There he lingered for several years, and quite lately he has been released, it being evident that nothing was to be got out of him. We sometimes say, with regard to horses, that they who earn the corn do not always get it; and this episode I think shows that they who are punished are not always the real culprits." "But what ultimately became of the Bengawan contract after the farmer's bankruptcy?" asked van Rheijn, curiously. "Of course," resumed van Beneden, "the district had to be put up again after Tio Siong Mo's failure. Who were the new farmers the papers do not tell me; but, from a whining lamentation uttered by the financial secretary, in which he exhorts the judges to the utmost rigour against the luckless bankrupt, it appears that the whole thing only produced forty-one thousand guilders. Thus the State, in addition to the large sum owing by Tio Siong Mo, lost a clear sum of forty thousand guilders a month." "That's the style!" exclaimed Grenits, "I wish such a thing as that would happen regularly, year by year, in all the districts, then some means would speedily be found to put an end to the opium traffic altogether." "And what became of the two coast districts, which the company Hok Bie had taken?" asked van Rheijn, very anxious to get to the bottom of the story. "What could the company make of them? they could be worked only at a loss, and, as soon as the object it had in view was obtained, it made over the contract to some other company--no doubt at considerable loss. At least Hok Bie would have no more to do with them." "And the moral of the story is?" asked Leendert Grashuis. "Why, simply this," said Theodoor Grenits, "that from whatever point of view you look at the opium-farming system, you are sure to catch sight of something particularly loathsome and disgusting." "And that such a rotten system should form one of the principal sources of the Netherlands' colonial revenue!" "Yes," assented van Beneden. "In these latter days it has indeed been raised to that dignity by men in office, into whose hands the indifference of our Dutch nation has placed unlimited power." CHAPTER XXXVIII. FURTHER FACTS ABOUT OPIUM. BIRDS-NESTING AT KARANG BOLLONG. These were most unpalatable facts for our friends to listen to. But, however painful they might be, and however offensive to the ear of a patriotic Dutchman, yet they were facts which could neither be ignored nor explained away. Very gravely and very sadly the five young men sat slowly rocking themselves in their chairs and watching the wreaths of blue smoke as they curled upwards from their manillas. Thus they passed some time in silent thought, when suddenly, in the distance were heard fresh volleys of musketry, redoubled banging of mertjons, and this noise accompanied by loud bursts of cheering repeated again and again, which, arising within the banqueting hall, was taken up by the thousands of natives who stood without waiting for the display of fireworks. That crescendo in the festive din was occasioned no doubt by Lim Yang Bing's eloquent speech in honour of Resident van Gulpendam. "Sabieio, fill the glasses!" cried van Nerekool to his servant, making an effort to shake off the gloomy thoughts which oppressed him, and which not even van Beneden's story had been able to dissipate. For the next few minutes they all sat listening to the disturbance outside, and when at length the noise had died away, van Rheijn re-opened the conversation. "You told us just now, my dear August, that Tio Siong Mo had found no co-operation or support among the inferior class of officials; but that these, on the contrary, sided with the more powerful company Hok Bie. Now I take it for granted that you did not talk merely at random; but that you had some sufficient grounds for saying what you did. One thing, however, is not quite clear to me, and that is whether you meant that accusation to apply to the native opium-officials or to the Europeans. You will grant me, I suppose, that the accusation is a rather serious one." Van Beneden did not raise his eyes, he drew a deep breath. At length after an interval of a few seconds, he said: "Yes, you are perfectly right, the charge is undoubtedly a serious one. As a lawyer I am perfectly aware of that; and you were quite right also in presuming that I did not utter it without due consideration. The question you now ask me is this: 'To whom do you intend this grave censure to apply?' I might answer with perfect truth, that I apply it to native and European officials alike. But to be absolutely candid I ought to go further and confess that, when I spoke, I was aiming specially at the European officers." "August!" cried van Rheijn, evidently much moved at his friend's earnestness and sincerity. "May you not be taking too partial and unfair a view of the situation?" "My dear fellow," replied van Beneden, "just listen to what I am about to tell you, and then I will leave you to judge for yourself-- "Among the mass of documents relating to this Tio Siong Mo's business, I came upon some remarks made by a very highly placed official, a man perfectly competent to form a correct opinion; and who had, in fact, been consulted on this very occasion. His remarks run thus: "'The salaries paid to the officials who are employed in checking the trade in contraband opium are wholly insufficient; and in the discharge of their most arduous duties, these public servants receive no support at all. The consequence of this is, that hardly a single person who is properly qualified for the work will ever offer his services. In what manner, then, are those places filled? Why, in the simplest manner possible. Individuals are appointed quite at random and are then placed under the orders of some Resident or other. These poor creatures, who, as a general rule, have no very brilliant antecedents to boast of, and who know little or nothing of the opium trade, receive a salary of 150 guilders (£12 10s.) a month, and are stationed at such points as the smugglers are most likely to resort to. It follows, of course, from the nature of the case that these stations are far away from any inhabited spot, generally in the heart of some swamp or in the all but impenetrable jungle on the north coast of Java. In such localities there can be no question of a house; and some of these men have to hire a small bamboo hut at the rate of 25 or 30 guilders a month, or else they run up a kind of rough shanty at their own expense. They have no staff whatever--there being no money to provide one--and thus, on an emergency, they have to apply for help to the chiefs of the nearest dessas, and that is very much like going to the devil for confession. Moreover, the Residents compel these people to keep two horses, which animals they must purchase for themselves, and they have to pay 10 guilders a month at least for forage for each horse. If now we take into consideration deductions for widows' and orphans' fund, then these wretched creatures receive only about 102 guilders a month, out of which they must find house rent and servants' wages, leaving them, say 67 guilders to live upon, to find themselves in dress, and to keep their often numerous families. Now, the question is, how can such persons manage to live at all in even the most frugal manner? How do they manage to keep body and soul together? They have no other resource than to apply to the opium-farmer for assistance, and in him they always find a most obliging money-lender. The whole question, then, comes to this: Are not such officers forced by mere pressure of circumstances to squeeze as much out of their wretched billet as can be got out of it?' "And thus, you see, my dear Edward, that all these men either are, or very soon get to be, under the thumb of the opium-farmers, and the consequences of such a state of things are, you must grant, inevitable. By the side of the note I read to you just now, I found a list--it was a long list--of the names of such individuals as, either for neglect of duty or for having aided and abetted the smugglers, had been dismissed the service. There were others who were mere puppets in the farmers' hands, and who could not venture on the slightest remonstrance if the farmer himself was implicated in the smuggling trade. Then there was a third--alas! the list was a very short one--of officials who undertook to perform their duties conscientiously, and who, looking upon a smuggler as a smuggler, whether he happened to be an opium-farmer or not, were determined to put down the illegal traffic whoever might be engaged in it. I regret, however, to have to add that those names very quickly disappear from the scene. The Residents soon found fault with such men--they had no tact--no management--in fact, some ground of complaint was sure to be found. And then, of course, the Government does not like to see the farmers, so long as they pay their contract money regularly into the treasury, annoyed by opposition of any kind." "But," exclaimed Grenits, somewhat warmly, "what becomes, at that rate, of the assertion made over and over in Parliament by the Colonial Secretary, that the abuse of opium is in every possible way kept in check? As far as I can make out from your statement, the Government seems, indirectly of course, actually to protect the smuggling by the farmers, and these, equally of course, in order to dispose of their contraband, press the drug by all means, legal or illegal, upon the helpless population." "The sum and substance of all I have told you is simply this," said van Beneden. "No man who has the slightest respect for himself can or will undertake any office for the suppression of opium smuggling, and therefore a lower class of people must be employed, and thence, you see, it becomes possible for the tricks and dodges of such companies as Hok Bie to succeed." "By Jove!" cried van Nerekool, "that's another nice little glimpse into the charming situation which the system of opium-farming has created. Come! now we are about it, we had better exhaust the unsavoury subject as far as we can. Did you not say just now, van Rheijn, that you also had an opium tale to tell?" "Oh, yes," replied Edward, "and something else besides that." "Indeed!" said Grashuis; "go on then. I thought I was pretty well informed; but every moment I am making fresh discoveries." "Now, gentlemen," said van Nerekool, "are you all furnished with cigars? Van Rheijn, we are waiting to hear you." "I have had a letter from Murowski," began van Rheijn. "From Murowski?" cried one. "From our Pole?" "From our doctor?" "Yes, gentlemen, from our expert at the scientific opium-smoke. Now, as his letter contains very few, if any, secrets, and that moreover it is addressed to us in general, I need not follow our host's example; and I will read it to you in full." "But, my dear fellow," said Grenits, "it is getting late, nearly nine o'clock. Is there anything in that letter about butterflies?" "Oh, yes." "And about beetles and snakes?" "Oh yes, certainly." "Then, I say! heaven help us, those entomologists are so long-winded; they don't spare you a single claw, not an antenna, not a shard!" "Oh, you won't find it so bad as all that," laughed van Rheijn; "just listen." "'My dear friend, in your last letter you ask me how I pass the time at Gombong. At first, I must confess, it was tedious work and everything looked very black. You know, I was rather smitten with Agatha van Bemmelen, and I have reason to flatter myself that she used not to shut her little peepers very hard when she happened to meet me at Santjoemeh. So, when I first came here, my thoughts ran entirely on her; I detested my new place, and cursed the man who had played me the scurvy trick of having me transferred. Of entomology there was no question. Two or three times I went out and tried to get some specimens, but I failed woefully. Wherever I went, in whatever direction I took my walks, there was but one picture before my eyes--the image of my Agatha's sparkling eyes and my Agatha's rosy cheeks. "'So utterly lost was I in rapture that the rarest specimens in butterflies fluttered past my very nose without my so much as holding out my net. I gave the whole thing up in despair, and tossed all my apparatus into a corner. But, what to do with oneself at Gombong? The officers of the garrison were busy enough; but I had nothing--absolutely nothing--to occupy my time. The climate of Gombong is a wretched one--most miserably healthy, no chance of ever getting a patient here! Being a devout Catholic, I sent up a little prayer every now and then for a good epidemic, or at least some case worthy of keeping one's interest going--nothing of the kind!'" "Well now," cried Theodoor, "did you ever hear of such a fellow, praying for an epidemic! Such a chap as that ought to be put out of the colony altogether--he is fit only for the new lunatic asylum at Buitenzorg!" "Nonsense!" retorted van Rheijn, "does not every one pray for his daily bread? Does not our friend van Beneden here pray for a good lawsuit--and that is, perhaps, not much less serious a matter than an epidemic. But let me go on. "'Seeing that my prayers were not heard, I sought refuge in poetry;--perhaps I might say I prayed and wrote verses alternately. I celebrated my well-beloved in alexandrines, in iambics, in pentameters, in hexameters, in odes, in lyrics, in sonnets, in stanzas, in German, in Polish--'" "That must have sounded well!" interrupted Grashuis. "'--In Polish, in French, nay, even in Latin!'" "In Latin!" exclaimed Grenits, with a shout of laughter, "the fellow must have gone raving mad!" "Just fancy the poor child receiving an ode from her adorer entitled 'Solis occasus,'--and 'Virgini Agathæ pulcherrimæ Bemmelensi dedicatus'--I should like to have seen her little phiz," cried van Beneden. "Do stop all that nonsense," remonstrated van Rheijn, who nevertheless was laughing as heartily as the others, and when silence had been restored, he continued: "'And Heaven only knows how much paper I might have wasted had not suddenly the news reached me that my adored Agatha was engaged, and was, indeed, on the point of being married. Then I crumpled up all my poetical effusions, and that very evening made a nice little fire of them. They were of some use in that way in keeping off the mosquitoes and other such like vermin. I invited all the officers of the garrison to a jolly good champagne supper; and, after having passed a night in which I rivalled the Seven Sleepers of holy memory--I arose next morning a new man--perfectly cured!--'" "That Pole is a practical fellow," cried Grashuis. "I say, Charlie, you should take a leaf out of his book!" "'Thereupon I resumed my insect hunting, and then, for the first time, it dawned upon me that the hemiptera, the diptera, the hymenoptera, the lepidoptera, the coleoptera--'" "I say, I say!" cried Grenits, "might you not skip all these barbarous words. That a Pole like Murowski makes use of them is excusable perhaps--he knows no better; but that he should inflict them upon us!--it is unpardonable." "Oh, well!" replied van Rheijn, "I have almost done-- "'--The coleoptera, the crustaceans are really our best and truest friends, and that they would, after all, afford me the most wholesome recreation. I happened to be in luck's way. Patients there were none, and, to make assurance doubly sure, a medical officer, and therefore a colleague of mine, had arrived here in Gombong. He had obtained three months' leave, and, in this mild and singularly equable climate, he hoped to find a cure for an incipient liver-complaint. This gentleman was willing, he was indeed quite eager, to take my place in any unforeseen emergency, if it were only to break the monotony of his existence out here. I quickly availed myself of this favourable opportunity to ask our military chief for eight days' leave to go on a trip into the Karang Bollong mountains and give myself up to my passion for entomology. "'"By all means," said the kind-hearted captain, "by all means, you go and catch butterflies and snoutbeetles. Only see that in those wild mountain districts you don't come to grief; and, mind you, be back again in time." "'An hour after, I had shouldered my gun, slung on my game-bag; and, with the tin box for my collection strapped to my back, I was on the war-path, my servant following with the other necessaries. From Gombong I marched through the dessas Karang djah, Ringodono and Pringtoetoel, and there I was in the heart of the mountain country. That journey I did not make in a single day; but I took my time, and spent two days in covering the ground. "'I will not tire you with an account of my insect-hunt, that would, in fact, be casting pearls before swine.'" "Upon my word, that is a good one!" exclaimed Grenits, laughing. "Our Pole is exquisitely polite!" "Well," laughed van Rheijn, "he is paying you back in your own coin, you remember what you said about 'barbarous words' just now. But let me get on. "'But yet I must tell you that my trip was very successful. I have every reason to be satisfied; for among many other rare and valuable specimens, I secured a fine Ulysses and a splendid Priamos. But what will constitute the real glory of my collection is an Atlas, a truly magnificent creature, which, with outspread wings, covers an area of nearly a foot square. I will not however dwell on these matters. I know you take no interest in them. No, no, I have a subject to write upon which will prove much more attractive to yourself and to your friends. Our experiment in opium-smoking has been haunting me ever since I witnessed it; and I have by no means forgotten the conversation we held on that occasion. What I then heard and saw has opened my eyes and my ears, and has made me very attentive whenever the opium question is mentioned. And, I must say, that I have here been brought to the very spot where I am able to glean most interesting information about the use of that drug. In my wanderings through the Karang Bollong mountains, I have been brought into contact with the gathering of the far-famed birds' nests. Whether you gentlemen are acquainted with that source of the Dutch revenue, I know not; but in order to come to the subject I wish to lay before you, that is, the abuse of opium and the encouragement the Government gives to that abuse, I must give you a short account of this most interesting gathering of birds' nests. You must, for the present at least, take my word for the truth of every syllable I write--'" "The deuce we must!" cried Grenits, "he is rather exacting!" "I bet we shall have a lot of learned stuff inflicted upon us. The prigs which the German Universities turn out can be pedantic to the last degree." "No fear," replied van Rheijn, "for my part I must say that I have found in this letter, a great number of highly interesting particulars. But I must get on. "'The Karang Bollong mountain range is, as you are probably aware, a spur of the Goenoeng Djampong which again forms the connecting link between the Midangang mountains and the Goenoeng Batoer. The bulk of these Karang Bollong mountains consists of extensive chalkbeds which form the table-land known as Goenoeng Poleng; and, on the side of the sea, these chalk-beds are surrounded by a broad band of trachyte rock which rises perpendicularly out of the Indian Ocean. In this massive wall of trachyte the ocean, with its mighty breakers rolling in from the South Pole upon Java's coast, has washed numerous holes or cavities, some of which extend to a considerable distance underground. It is in the innermost recesses of these caves that men find the nests of a certain kind of swallow which the natives call manoek lawet, and to which the Zoologists give the name of hirundo esculenta.'" "Didn't I tell you so?" cried Grenits indignantly; "the Pole is beginning already to bring in his Latin names. Heaven only can tell what may be in store for us!" "And what about me, then?" remarked van Rheijn. "I have had to read the whole letter! You need not trouble yourself, that Latin will come all right enough. I go on: "'----give the name of hirundo esculenta. The nests consist of a slimy substance which is found in the stomach of the birds. These little swallows cover the spot in the rock they have selected for their nest with an extremely fine coating of this gelatinous stuff. As soon as this layer has dried and has had time to harden, they apply a second coat, which again must have time to dry before they can proceed with their building. And thus they go on gradually and layer by layer until the nest is complete. When it is finished it looks like a saucer of small diameter which has been broken in two with the line of fracture cemented to the wall of stone. Thus these little nests consist of a hardened gelatinous mass of a light yellow colour and which, when they are of superior quality, ought to be somewhat transparent.'" "And the Chinese eat such trash as that and like it?" cried Grashuis curling his lip in disgust. "Do let me go on," said van Rheijn. "'When soaked in water and properly cooked these nests are looked upon by the Chinese as the rarest delicacy. A cup of broth made of that gelatinous substance represents, in their estimation, the most delicious beverage that can gratify the human palate. They ascribe to this soup rare medicinal virtues and prize it as a never-failing aphrodisiac. In my opinion this latter is the only quality which gives value to the nests.'" "And this again is the sort of thing out of which the Dutch Government makes a revenue!" exclaimed Grenits. "It is a very lucky thing that the ingathering of these nests can only be carried out on a small scale, or else, no doubt, some means would be found to force this kind of food upon such Chinese as do not, at present, crave for it; just as the farmers do their utmost to drive the population into their infamous opium-dens." "'The gathering of these nests,'" continued van Rheijn still reading Murowski's letter, "'takes place three times a year. The first gathering begins in the latter part of April and is called "Oedoean kesongo." The second begins in the middle of August and is called "Oedoean telor," and the third, the "Oedoean kapat," takes place in December. Now that kind of birdsnesting, my friends, is an occupation which I very willingly leave to the Javanese who make it their business. To gain the entrance of one of those caves they must clamber down the perpendicular face of the rock along ladders. The ladder, for instance, which leads to the mouth of the Djoembling cave is only 660 feet long. My heart beat high with desire to make a trip to these subterranean vaults. But--when I laid myself flat down and got my head over the edge of the rock while a couple of Javanese were holding on to my legs--when I saw that rottang ladder swinging hither and thither in the breeze sometimes clinging to the wall and then again curving inward and for a while lost to the eye. When, at a giddy depth below, I saw the huge breakers come tumbling in and forming there at the foot of the rocks a savage scene, a wild and whirling chaos of spouting water, of dazzling foam and of blinding spray. When my ear caught the hoarse thunder of their charge while I felt the very stone under me quiver with the shock--then, I must confess a feeling of sickening horror came over me; I started back involuntarily, and nothing on earth could have induced me to plant my foot on the crazy ladder which, a few moments ago, I had made up my mind to descend. "'But how grand, how magnificent, how sublime was the spectacle! The towering waves which like a stately row of hills came moving along the intense azure blue of the Indian Ocean--that graceful curve of the billow as it neared the pumice reefs which lie at the base of the mass of trachyte--then the thundering fall of this mighty crest toppling over, as it were, into a sea of seething milk in which every drop, every foam-speck glittered in the rays of the tropical sun--that finely divided spray which hung over the watery mass and wrapped it as in a veil of transparent silver-gauze--all this, my friends, formed a spectacle which can never be effaced from my memory but will dwell there engraven as on tables of stone. At times, when a wave of unusual height came rolling in, the entrance of the caves would be completely swallowed up and hidden and the water driven into the interior would continue its perpetual work of excavation. Then, for a few moments it seemed as if the holes had disappeared. But presently, when the wave flowed back again, the water, impelled by the tremendous force of the compressed air within, would rush forth like a horizontal fountain five or six hundred feet in length, spouting and hissing and blowing with a roar which was perfectly appalling, and forming whirls and high-flowing eddies in the retreating wave. "'No, no, no, I durst not touch that swinging ladder; but I have nevertheless made up my mind to penetrate by some other means into the interior of those mysterious cavities. The natives here tell me that when the south-east trade-wind is far from the south-coast of Java, on very calm days a flat-bottomed boat may enter the Goewah Temon, which is the name of one of the grots. The loerah of the dessa Ajo has promised me to keep a canoe in readiness for me, if I will give him notice beforehand; and, on the first favourable opportunity I mean to make the attempt. Meanwhile, however, I have had to satisfy myself with a description of this birdsnesting which I soon hope to witness in person, and this is what one of the chiefs has told me concerning it. "'From the mouth of the caves the Javanese have stretched a couple of cables along the interior wall. The lower of these rottang-cables serves as foot-hold, the upper is grasped in one hand, while with the other hand, the man engaged in the work picks the birds' nests from the rock. When the hand cannot reach them the man detaches them by means of a long bamboo pole furnished with an iron hook, and as they fall he has to catch them in a small hand net. As you may suppose, the taking of these swallows' nests is an extremely perilous undertaking. First to clamber down that ladder to an extreme depth along the perpendicular face of the rock and dangling over that boiling sea, then to penetrate into these holes into which the ocean thrusts its waves. In rough weather the work has to be stopped altogether in many of the caves; and, not unfrequently, it happens that the ropes are washed away and the poor fellows who trust to them are dashed to pieces or miserably drowned. You will ask then, perhaps, how can people be found to venture on so hazardous an undertaking? You know, of course, that no race on earth is more attached to its native soil than the Javanese. That characteristic is found in this part of the island also. There is perhaps no wilder and more ungrateful soil in this world than this region in the Karang Bollong mountains. Nothing, or next to nothing, can be made out of agriculture. The tiny rice-fields one meets with here and there on the mountain slopes, are not worth mentioning; and, as far as tradition reaches, the scanty population of this part of Java has always supported itself and does still support itself, by collecting these edible nests. "'Whether they fared better or worse before the Dutch government appropriated that source of income to itself, I have not been able to ascertain. But one thing is certain, that the pay these poor wretches receive from the Government is something worse than pitiful. I have now lying before me a statement drawn up by an official in this part of the country, from which I gather that, for every sack of 80 nests delivered into the Government stores, the man who collects them gets a sum of 15--let us put it down in words--of fifteen cents (about 3d.)!'" "Aye but," said Grashuis, "before we follow the grumblings of our Pole any further, it would be well to know what is the commercial value of those 80 nests." "As a merchant," remarked Grenits, "I can at once supply you with the information you require. The Chinese are always ready to give five thousand guilders for a pikol of nests, and, since one hundred of them weigh about one kattie and the pikol contains one hundred katties, our Government receives four hundred guilders, while it sends the poor devil of a native about his business with 15 cents! By Heaven it is a crying shame!" "But has not the Government other expenses to meet?" asked Grashuis. "Allow me to continue," said van Rheijn, "I promise you an answer to your question, August." "All right, drive ahead!" "'It is true,'" continued van Rheijn, "'that when a man has good luck he may deliver 12 bags.'" "That comes to one guilder eighty cents (about 3s.)," cried Grenits! "and then he must be in luck! God help the poor fellow!" "Now do not be constantly interrupting me!" cried Edward impatiently. "'One must be a Javanese to encounter such perils for so miserable a pittance; for, to realize that magnificent sum, the poor devil must make several trips to the cave which has been assigned to him. The shortest gathering always lasts three weeks, and the longest sometimes goes on for more than two months. Now, how can the native be induced, for such utterly inadequate pay, to face this perpetual and deadly risk? I fancy I can see that question hovering on your lips, and if you will bear with me for a few moments I will tell you. In the first place the Government has secured the co-operation of the native chiefs. You know what a dependent race are the Javanese, how they trust implicitly to their chiefs, and these men are indeed paid on a much more liberal scale. Where the actual worker receives his three shillings, the loerah, for instance, is paid twenty guilders (£1 13s. 4d.), besides a number of perquisites of all kinds, and he receives this, mind you, merely for superintending the work, as it is called. Yet it is probable that the respect and obedience of even a Javanese would not endure such miserably inadequate pay, and therefore the Government has devised another means of binding these poor creatures hand and foot, and that means, my dear friends, is--opium! "'I will not trouble you with all the superstitious fads which the Government not only tolerates but pays for in the matter of this gathering of birds' nests; nor will I speak of the idolatrous worship of Njahi Ratoe Segoro Kidoel which precedes every expedition, and which also is paid for out of the public purse. I will merely point out to you the use which is made of opium, the pernicious effect of which, when taken in anything like excessive quantities, you have yourselves been able to observe. "'Well then, let me tell you that in everything which has any relation whatever to this gathering of nests the current coin is opium. "'If the wajang and toppeng-players have to be sent for, five petty chiefs and four dessa-folk are despatched to fetch them. For this piece of service each of the former receives one kedawang, and each of the latter half a kedawang of opium, the kedawang being equivalent to about two matas. For the cleansing and clearing of the Goewah Bollong loerahs and other chiefs are specially appointed, the former receiving each two and the latter one kedawang of opium. The wajang and toppeng-players receive on their arrival, sixteen kedawangs apiece and four kedawangs for sadjen or offering, and, on their departure, they are paid with a further present of sixteen kedawangs of opium. "'In the Goewah Bollong a feast is always held before the commencement of the expeditions; and for this feast, a certain number of bullocks and one goat have to be killed. For the slaughtering of each of these animals eight kedawangs of opium are paid. For each quarter of the slaughtered animals which must be brought in and carried by one petty chief and two dessa men, the chief is paid one, and the men have half a kedawang of opium apiece. When the ladders are brought to the edge of the cliff, a ceremony which requires two chiefs and two men, the former receive one kedawang, and the latter half a kedawang of opium. "'But I have not finished yet, the abuse of opium goes much further than that. My friends, I beg you have patience and read on. "'At the festival itself the following quantities are served out: to each loerah and each petty chief two kedawangs, and to every guest one kedawang. I have now lying before me a paper from which the following words are an extract: "'"It is impossible to give, with any exactness, the number of persons present at these customary festivals; but seeing that every guest has his portion of opium served out to him, it may be taken for granted that no one who has the slightest right to be present, fails to avail himself of it. At the opening of every cave eight kedawangs are served out, and when the ropes are fastened another eight kedawangs are paid." "'During the ingathering of the nests--but how shall I get through it all? Let me try to be brief. The loerah of Goewah Jedeh gets 76, the loerah of Goewah Dahar gets 64, the one at Goewah Mandoe Loro 44, and the other loerahs receive 40 kedawangs apiece. The toekans of these caves receive each 54, the bekels 24, and the sekeps each 12 kedawangs of opium. "'But even this is not all. The dessas in which the ladders are made are paid in opium, the persons appointed to mount guard over the nests when they are gathered receive their pay in opium. The transmission of the produce, the carrying to and fro of orders, the return of the ladders, the guarding of the caves--everything--everything--is paid with the same fatal drug. In one word, the entire thing is simply an opium debauch on a colossal scale; and it is the surest means of accustoming the people to the use of the deadly narcotic. But--why should I further dilate upon this matter, my letter is already, I fear, too long and I have still to communicate to you certain things which I know will be of the greatest interest to you.'" "Is there much more of the letter?" asked Grashuis. "Yes, I have some pages more to read," replied van Rheijn. "You have given us quite a budget already," remarked van Beneden. "True; but it is extremely interesting," said Grenits. "By Jove, those Poles know how to make use of their eyes." "He has learnt that lesson from the Germans, you know they steal with their eyes." "True, witness the Franco-German war in which the Teutons proved that they knew more about France than the French authorities themselves." "Don't you think," asked van Rheijn, "we had better get on as fast as we can? The most interesting part of the letter is yet to come." These last words he spoke with a strange look at Charles van Nerekool. "Had we not better have a drink first?" suggested Grenits. "By Jove, yes!" cried van Rheijn, "my throat is as dry as a rasp." "Sabieio!" cried van Nerekool, "fill the glasses." While the servant performed that duty the gentlemen lit a fresh cigar, rocked themselves for a while in their rocking-chairs and then were all attention. CHAPTER XXXIX. MUROWSKI ON THE TRACK.--AN OPIUM SALE AT SANTJOEMEH. "Now then," said van Rheijn, "let us proceed. "'Two days before my leave had expired and that, therefore, I should have to return to my garrison duties at Gombong, I started very early in the morning before the break of day from the dessa Ajo in which I had passed the night. My intention was to explore the Western slopes of the Goenoeng Poleng, and I expected that this trip would bring a rich harvest to my collection. And, my friends, I must tell you that my hopes were amply--very amply--realised. For I secured an Arjuna, a large and most lovely butterfly with pointed golden-green wings fringed with a deep velvety band of black. It was a rare specimen I can assure you, and absolutely perfect and uninjured. The day before, one of the dessa-people at Ajo had brought me a Cymbium Diadema, a fine brown shell spotted with white, which the man assured me, he had picked up on the sands in one of the creeks on the South coast of the island of Noesa Kambangan. I purchased it from the fellow for a mere song. "'But enough of this: I return to my subject. "'As I told you, I had started some time before the break of day and had got some distance from the dessa Ajo when the dawn began to tinge the entire mountain range of Karang Bollong. My path was not a very pleasant one to travel along; for it took me right across all the ravines which run down from the heights. These are funnel-shaped, exceedingly tortuous; and twisting and turning in all directions they run down to the plain at the foot of the range, in which the Kali Djetis flows onward to the sea. "'As gradually I mounted higher and higher, the panorama stretched out at my feet became more and more imposing. The fresh invigorating morning air and the truly magnificent scenery about me, filled me with delight; and every now and then I actually forgot my passion for butterflies wholly absorbed as I was in the glories which lay around me. "'At length I gained a ridge between two pretty deep ravines, and I was stopping for a few moments to regain my breath after the exertion of climbing the steep ascent up which my path had led me. In both these ravines little brooks were gurgling. They were mere threads of water hurrying down the Goenoeng Poleng, and it was refreshing to look upon them as they frisked and danced and foamed along their strange zig-zag course. From the eminence on which I then stood, they looked like ribbons of silver tape unconsciously displaying their beauty to the morning air. The ravine which I had just left was strewn with big blocks of trachyte flung about in confusion, great masses of ruin detached, no doubt, from the central range. Such was the case also in the other ravine into which I was preparing to descend; but between the boulders and scanty shrubs, my eye suddenly caught the attap-roof of a Javanese house. From the place where I stood, I could catch sight only of the front verandah; but yet that small hut, situated there in the wild and lonely mountain range and at some distance from the dessa Ajo, arrested my attention. Can it be some misanthropist, I thought, who is living there so far away from the haunts of men? Through an open window, my eye could penetrate one of the rooms in the hut, and I thought I saw a snow-white bed-curtain waving to and fro under the influence of the morning breeze; I fancied also that I could distinguish a chair. Now all this greatly puzzled me; for your Javanese, as a rule, does not indulge in such luxuries, and, if he makes use of a curtain at all, he generally selects one of some gaudily coloured material.'" Van Rheijn paused for a moment or two to take a drink of beer, and in doing so he cast a penetrating look upon Charles van Nerekool. The latter was sitting in his chair listlessly rocking himself up and down, and had very much the appearance of a man who listens but whose thoughts are travelling elsewhere. "You are not listening to me, Charles," he cried! At this abrupt address van Nerekool started up out of his reverie. "I?" he asked in confusion. "Now, you see!" continued van Rheijn with a laugh, "while I am wasting my breath to get to the end of Murowski's budget, our friend the judge there is sitting in a brown study, his thoughts wandering heaven knows where, but certainly nowhere near the dessa Ajo. But wait a bit, you fellows, mark my words, you will see a change soon. The part most interesting to him is just coming. Now listen." Van Nerekool shook his head and smiled incredulously, he puffed hard at his cigar, sat up straight in his chair and disposed himself to listen with concentrated attention. Van Rheijn went on reading: "'But, while I was thus standing, gazing and pondering, I heard far, far away beneath my feet, a noise of laughing, giggling and playing--in fact, the silvery tones of two girls' voices. "'I stretched out my neck and cautiously peered about to find out, if possible, from whence those pleasant sounds proceeded; but it was in vain, I could discover nothing. I noticed, however, that the foaming brook beneath me took a very sharp turn, and that close to its side grew a large Wariengien tree, whose massive foliage defied every inquisitive look; while, at the same time, a pretty little clump of shrubs shut out the view on either side. Meanwhile, the tittering and laughing went on, mingled every now and then with a playful little shriek, accompanied by the sound of plunging and splashing of water. Then it dawned upon me that yonder in that clear mountain stream, some girls were amusing themselves with bathing. What shall I say in excuse of my indiscretion? I suppose the best, in fact the only excuse I can offer, is that a man is neither a stock nor a stone. My road, moreover, led straight to the attractive spot; and thus, without, I fear, giving much thought to what I was doing, I found myself on the way to emulate Actaeon in his fatal curiosity, never in the least expecting to spy out a Diana. "'So I cautiously clambered down the slopes, taking, as you may suppose, the most particular care not to make the least noise which might disturb the bathing nymphs. For a little while my path ran down directly to the Wariengien tree, which overshadowed a considerable area. If the course of the narrow path had only continued in that direction a little longer it must have brought me to the very foot of the tree. But, suddenly, I came upon a large rock, and there the road ran to the left and seemed to shorten the way by leading straight to another bend in the creek. Most probably this led to some ford, for I could see the path on the other side of the brook, running up the side of the ravine. Now, what was I to do? I ought, like a good boy, to have followed the path no doubt; but my curiosity was stimulated by the splashing and laughing, which now seemed much nearer to me than before. I confess, the temptation was too great, and I left the path in order to get up to the Wariengien tree. Good luck seemed to favour me. From the rock which barred the road I could see a gentle slope thickly overgrown with bushes. In these numberless butterflies were fluttering about; but, will you believe me? I never so much as gave them a look or a thought I had left my tin box and my net behind at the foot of the rock so as to be quite free in my movements. Like some Dajak or some Alfoer of Papua I stole along from bush to bush.'" The young men burst out into a loud shout of laughter. "I can see our Pole," laughed Grenits, "sneaking along like an Alfoer, in something like Adam's costume, up to the bathers." "Yes," said van Rheijn, laughing as heartily as the others, "with only an ewah round his loins. "But pray let me go on, we are coming to the most interesting and most important part. Are you listening to me, Charles?" "I am not losing a single syllable," said the latter, moving somewhat uneasily in his chair. "Do make haste." "'--From bush to bush, and I got as near as I possibly could. At length I found myself standing before a kind of hedge which grew around the Wariengien, and made it impossible for me to advance any further. The magnificent wild-fig tree stood on the edge of an oval water-basin, which might have been washed out by the power of the stream, or might have been hewn by the hand of man out of the mass of gray trachyte rock. The pool itself appeared to be about 25 yards long, and perhaps 15 yards broad, and the heavy crown of the Wariengien cast a pleasant shadow right over it. It was fed from the brook of which, in fact, it formed a part, and the water, though deep, was so bright and clear that even the smallest pebbles could be seen distinctly at the bottom. These details, you must know, have only lately occurred to me; at that moment I had no time to pay any particular attention to them, something very different was engrossing my thoughts. For, in the centre of the pool, of which from my position I could survey about twenty feet, were swimming and splashing and frisking about two female forms. How shall I describe to you what I saw and what I felt without too painfully affecting one of your friends.'" Here Edward stole another glance at his friend van Nerekool. "Go on, go on!" cried the latter almost passionately as he caught the look. "'Two female forms. Both had on the usual bathing dress of Javanese women, that is the sarong. You know how prettily, and how modestly too, the Indian beauties can coquet with that rather scanty garment--how they draw it up and fasten it above the bosom; and, I presume, you can imagine how such a garment, when wet through and closely clinging to the limbs, rather serves to heighten than to veil the charms it is intended to conceal. That, however, I will leave to your fertile imaginations. Both girls were extremely beautiful, though each had her own style of beauty. One of them was decidedly a Javanese, the nose slightly turned up, the round cheeks and somewhat full lips, in fact the entire face, bore unmistakably the stamp of her nationality. For a few moments she stood still in a somewhat shallow part of the pool, and busied herself in readjusting her sarong, which had got rather loose in swimming. As she did so I could at once perceive that the young woman I had before me was in what is called an interesting condition.'" Once again van Rheijn paused for an instant and shot a quick glance at van Nerekool. The latter sat in his chair literally panting with excitement, and taking in every word with the most eager attention. "Go on! Go on!" he murmured. "'The other was altogether of much slimmer build. Her bust, which the wet sarong could hardly conceal, showed that it had been in contact with the European corset, and her features proclaimed her of totally different race from her companion. Had the skin not been brown I should at once have pronounced her to be a European, especially as her hair, though jet-black, was silky, and fell around her as a mantle, and, while she was swimming, floated on the water behind in a mass of wavy curls. Then, I thought, I could trace something of Arabian origin in the fair creature I saw moving in the crystal stream. Arabian! why that could not be; for at the very same moment I thought I recognised her very features. "'My friends, I am utterly unable to describe to you the lovely scene I was just then gazing upon. No pen is eloquent enough for that. It would need the brush of some great artist to catch the glow and colour of that entrancing view. "'Quite unconscious that, in that lonely pool far away from any human dwelling, and in the recesses of such a wilderness, any indiscreet eye was watching them--the two girls, like real water nymphs, were gaily disporting themselves. They pursued one another, trying to duck each other in the stream, while they had the greatest trouble to prevent their sarongs from getting loose and falling down. That game lasted a considerable time, it seemed as if the pretty creatures could not make up their mind to leave the cool refreshing stream. At length the slimmer of the two girls said: "Come, baboe, it is time to go home."'" "Ha, ha, it was Malay they were speaking and not Javanese at all!" remarked Grashuis. "No, no," replied Edward, glancing uneasily at van Nerekool, "it was not Javanese; but let me read on, we are now coming to the dénouement. "'The fair swimmer got to the side of the pool and sat down on the rocky bank allowing her little feet to paddle in the water. She presently began to wring out her mass of hair and, as she was sitting with her face turned away from me, from the position I occupied I could only catch a glimpse of part of her back as she lifted up her arms to tie up her hair. Was it the light in my eyes? Was it all a mere delusion? Did my eyes play me false altogether? I began to think that her back was not nearly so dark as her face, her neck and her hands. Puzzled beyond measure I was determined to get a better view. I grasped a branch of one of the shrubs which were around me, I hoisted myself up and bent forward as far as I could! Alas!--no, rather let me say thank God!--in making that movement I slipped. A big lump of stone, dislodged, no doubt, by the motion of my feet, went rolling down the slope and fell down plump into the water to the right of and close beside the fair bather. It was just by the merest chance that I did not tumble in myself, what a fright the poor little dear would have been in! It was bad enough as it was. At the splash made by the stone the girl uttered a cry of terror, she suddenly moved to the left and started to fly. In doing so her sarong must have hitched in some projecting stone, and-- "'By all the gods, she was a pure-bred European! Face, arms, hands, neck, shoulders, all were brown; but for the rest she was lily-white--that beautiful creamy white which is so characteristic of brunettes. "'Then it all became clear to me--Miss van Gulpendam--she who had so mysteriously disappeared--that face with which I felt all along I was familiar--Oh, there was no possibility of a mistake, I knew her well enough now in spite of the dark colouring of her skin. Though the girls could not see me behind my thick hedge, yet they were much startled and frightened. They at once snatched up their clothes and fled up the path which leads to the hut I had seen on the ridge, and as they ran I could overhear the Javanese saying to her companion: "Don't be alarmed, Nana, there is no person there." Probably she meant to say that the stone was loosened by the movement of some animal or perhaps she ascribed it to mere chance. In spite, however, of this, both of them hurried out of sight as fast as they could, and soon the sheltering roof of their little hut received them. "'It was then only that I began to feel how unpardonable had been my indiscretion and, to spare the young ladies' feelings as much as I could, I remained for a long time concealed. When I thought they must have given up looking out, I sneaked as quietly as possible, under cover of the bushes, to the bottom of the ravine, and there a bend in the path soon enabled me to get away unperceived. Such, my friends, is my adventure in the Karang Bollong mountains. I have sent you this news as soon as possible for I know how happy my communication will make one of you. I will not venture to give you any counsel as to what you ought to do under the circumstances; but I place myself entirely at your disposal and shall at any time be ready to point out the little hut to you.'" "Anna!--Anna found!" exclaimed van Nerekool, jumping up out of his chair and striding impatiently up and down the inner gallery. "What do you intend to do?" asked van Beneden. "What I intend to do? Why, to-morrow morning at daybreak I am off--I will--!" "My dear fellow," said Grashuis, restraining, as well as he could, his friend's impatience and excitement, "now, pray, do not be in a hurry." "How can you talk such nonsense!" cried van Nerekool--"Do not be in a hurry!--And what if meanwhile she should again disappear?" "I do not think," remarked van Rheijn, "that there is much danger of that. I suppose the girls have by this time got over their fright--indeed there was not much to terrify them--and as they have probably not seen any one since of whom they can have the least suspicion, they will come to the conclusion that they were scared by a false alarm. I do not think they will for a moment think of leaving that lonely spot." "My dear friends," said van Beneden, "I believe the very best thing we can do at present is to go to bed. It is now late, and we ought to have time to think this matter over. At all events, Charles must certainly not think of starting to-morrow morning; by doing so he would spoil his whole career. A man in his position must not run away from his post as a deserter." "Yes," said Charles, "you fellows had better go to bed. I shall sit down at once and write for leave of absence." "That's right," quoth Theodoor Grenits. "In that case we shall have a few days for quiet reflection. And now, Charles, my boy, I have no need to ask for leave, I intend to go with you on your journey; here's my hand upon it!" The young men hereupon shook hands and each went to his own lodging, while, in the distance, the sounds of revelry at the Chinaman's house were still resounding. Van Nerekool applied for leave of absence; but found that it took some time to obtain it. Mr. Greveland was just at that time so very busy that he could not undertake to grant Charles' request, however eagerly this latter might press for it. The President, however, forwarded van Nerekool's application to the authorities at Batavia. Thus Charles was forced for some days to wait with such patience as he could command. Meanwhile, however, events were taking place which exercise some influence on the course of our story and which we will now proceed to narrate. Not long after the nuptials between Lim Ho and pretty and wealthy Ngow Ming Nio had been solemnized, the great day came round on which the opium monopoly for the years 18--, 18--, and 18-- had to be assigned. This was a most important event for the whole official world, and one which, in the well known financial position of matters at home, was especially significant to those who were in authority at Batavia and Santjoemeh. For, if the Colonial Secretary could but show a goodly number of millions as the produce of the sale of opium-contracts, why then he and his colleagues might feel themselves pretty safe in their seats. They thought, and not without excellent reason, that if they could but manage to increase the revenue they would, by that means, gain infinite credit in the Parliament at home. It need hardly be said therefore that every nerve was strained to obtain so desirable a result. Resident van Gulpendam had, as our readers know, another, that is a private, reason for making every exertion; and he left no stone unturned to induce as many as he possibly could to come and bid for the lucrative contract. His agents were out on all sides trying to get the rival companies to enter into competition, and in these efforts his handsome wife was of the greatest assistance to him. The proud woman had set her heart and soul upon seeing her husband's breast adorned with the "bertes knabbeldat." Now that the existing contracts were fast running out, and that by the last day of December, the opium-monopolies for the different districts had to be again put up to the highest bidder, the greatest activity prevailed. The strictest precautions against smuggling were taken along the entire coast-line--against such smuggling, be it understood, as was not carried on by the farmers themselves. Bandoelans and policemen were everywhere on the alert, and were left to do pretty much as they pleased in their visitations of suspected houses, or in their search for opium on the persons of the unhappy creatures to whom they might owe a grudge. Especially did those suffer from their insolence, who either did not make use of opium at all, or who used it in strict moderation. The success which these stringent measures obtained was rapid and complete. The sale of opium by the farmers rose in an extraordinary manner now that contraband wares could no longer be obtained, and the retail price of the pernicious drug rose in proportion. "If we could only have that kind of thing always going on!" cried Lim Ho who, when the conversation turned upon opium, could not always keep a discreet tongue in his head. But Lim Yang Bing, who was older and wiser, and who, above all things, feared competition at the coming sales, merely shrugged his shoulders. He would have been glad enough to say nothing about this sudden increase in his daily receipts; but, with so many opium-dens under his control, secrecy was well-nigh impossible. But Resident van Gulpendam did more than this. He, through his agents, cleverly spread the report that the Government intended largely to increase the number of opium-licenses in his Residence. This had its effect also, and presently a feverish excitement began to show itself in the rival Chinese camps. On the important day of the sale, a brand-new flag of extraordinary dimensions, the finest and brightest that could be found, was waving in the morning breeze from the flag-staff in front of the residential mansion. On that day the whole body of oppassers had been mustered. They numbered over twenty men, all dressed in new uniforms with bright yellow belts furbished up as smartly as possible. The native soldiers also on sentry were in full-dress, and they marched up and down before the steps of the Residence with a solemnity and gravity of demeanour, which plainly showed that they were impressed with a full consciousness of the responsibilities which rested upon them. To add to the brilliancy of the display, Resident van Gulpendam had summoned to Santjoemeh a couple of assistant residents and a couple of controllers from the adjoining districts. These gentlemen, together with all the native chiefs then present in the capital, assembled towards ten o'clock in the front gallery. All were, of course, in full official dress with sprigs of orange and oak-leaves embroidered in silver on their collars. The orange, an emblem of purity; the oak, the type of manly vigour and independence. They had on white cashmere trousers with a broad gold stripe, and the regulation dress-sword by their sides. Presently the Chinese contingent also began to arrive, all dressed in clean white jackets and black trousers monstrously wide in the legs, their heads carefully shaven and polished, while the long scalp-lock which forms the tail was treated with the greatest care, plaited skilfully and with almost mathematical exactness, and interwoven with red, blue, and white silk cord. At first only a few idlers appeared strolling in merely out of curiosity to have a look at the proceedings. These were succeeded by other more wealthy men, the representatives of the various companies, who might be expected to enter into the competition. Last of all Lim Yang Bing and his son Lim Ho drove up and, as they stepped out of their carriage, they carefully scrutinized their countrymen present. For some time the Celestials mingled with the official personages, and formed a group in which salutations and hand-shakings bore witness to the cordiality existing between them. But when the soldier on guard struck one blow upon the gong which stood beside his sentry-box, and thus announced that it was half-past ten, Resident van Gulpendam accompanied by his private secretary--both in full-dress--entered the front gallery, while Mrs. van Gulpendam, on the arm of van Rheijn, appeared at one of the open doors. The chiefs present all made a low bow, the sentries presented arms, the oppassers formed a line by the pajoeng stand, in which a gorgeous emblem of dignity was conspicuous. The officials present now advanced in a body to pay their homage to the representative of the Governor-General who, in his turn, represents the King of the Netherlands in these far-away Asiatic regions. Next, the Chinamen came forward to perform a similar duty, and after this the two groups of Europeans and Chinamen remained apart. A few of the latter, foremost among them Lim Yang Bing and Lim Ho, walked up to Laurentia, and gave her a courteous greeting. She was all affability and cordially shook hands with the pair as well as with some others, who were standing near; and then she invited all the babahs to come in and have something to drink. "It is so frightfully hot just now in Santjoemeh!" she protested. A faint smile passed over the Chinamen's wan and yellow features; they bowed their thanks as they cast significant looks at one another. Then they followed their fair guide through the inner gallery into the pandoppo. A large table stood there bearing a number of trays full of champagne glasses, while, under the table, might be seen little tubs of ice, in which the bottles with their silvered corks were neatly arranged. "Open the champagne!" cried Laurentia to three or four attendants who stood by. The corks popped, and in a few moments all the babahs, rich and poor, were standing glass in hand eager to be allowed the honour of touching glasses with the Njonja-Resident. As a rule, your Chinaman is a great stickler for etiquette; and, on any ordinary occasion, they would no doubt have sipped their wine leisurely, with half-closed eyes as they have seen Europeans do; but now they behaved in a widely different manner. For fair Laurentia had informed them that, when they had the honour of drinking with a njonja, the glass must be emptied at a single draught. "The gentlemen call that ad fundum," remarked the Chinese major. "Just so, babah," replied Laurentia as she gave him a sly nudge. In an instant every cup was drained. "Fill the glasses!" she cried; and from that moment Mrs. van Gulpendam kept the waiters busy. On one pretext or another, she took care that the glasses were kept filled and that their contents were duly and speedily disposed of. Meanwhile the Resident himself had been engaged in conversation with his friends and subordinates in the front gallery. "What has become of our babahs?" he asked presently. "Come, gentlemen, I do not think we shall have cause to repent if we go and look them up. It is frightfully hot here. Don't you think so?" Thus saying and wiping the perspiration from his brow with his cambric handkerchief, he led the way into the interior of the house followed by his embroidered and lace-covered staff. "Ah, I thought as much!" he cried, as he entered the pandoppo, and then to the servants: "Look sharp, give the gentlemen glasses." As this was going on, Laurentia slipped away unobserved leaving the lords of the creation to enjoy themselves in their own fashion. The Resident whispered a few words to Kwee Siong Liem, one of the wealthiest Chinamen in Santjoemeh, and this latter, during the brief conversation, strove to cast furtive glances at Lim Yang Bing. "I shall go as high as I possibly can, kandjeng toean," said the babah; "but I fear--" "You need not be afraid," whispered van Gulpendam. "Aye, but, kandjeng toean, the bidding will run up too high!" "Don't forget, babah, that there are eight additional licenses specified in the contract." "That's all very well, kandjeng toean; but--" However, the kandjeng toean did not stay to listen to the Chinaman's objection. He stepped forward, took off his cocked hat, raised the glass which a servant had put into his hand and said: "Here's success to the sale!" The sentiment drew forth cheers from the assembled Celestials on whom the generous wine of Veuve Clicquot was beginning to have an exhilarating effect. "To the health of the kandjeng toean!" cried the assistant resident of police. "To the health of the Chinese major!" shouted another and so it went on. To all these toasts ample justice was done. The little slanting eyes of the Celestials were really beginning to twinkle right merrily. At length the clock struck eleven and the clear metallic sound rang quivering through the apartment. "Now, gentlemen!" cried the Resident, "to business! But first allow me to inform those present here who may not happen to be successful in this competition, that in a few days the monopoly for the district of Bengawan will be put up to auction; and that, a couple of days after that again, another valuable contract will be offered for sale. You see, therefore, that there are rich, very rich profits awaiting many of you." After having thus spoken, the Resident led the way into the inner gallery followed by the entire company. In this room stood a large table with a white marble top on which were scattered about a number of official papers and documents. At the head of this table van Gulpendam took up his position surrounded by his staff; and opposite him stood the crowd of Chinamen, the table separating the two groups from one another. On the wall of the room hung a very fine picture, a life-size, half-length portrait of King William III., and this picture formed the centre, as it were, of the two groups of Europeans and Asiatics. "The secretary will now proceed to read out the conditions of the opium contract which we are about to dispose of," said the Resident very solemnly. The official thus alluded to began at once, in the usual monotonous and almost unintelligible drone, to mumble a series of articles which he seemed to have by heart. Indeed, the whole thing was a mere formality. Those who had come prepared to bid for this Government contract were perfectly familiar with every word that paper contained. At the preamble, "In the name of the King," every head bowed deeply. One article, in which mention was made of the fact that the new opium farmer would have the privilege of opening a number of stores in addition to those specified in the former contract, the secretary took care to read out with an amount of distinctness and emphasis which could not fail to arrest the attention of all interested parties. When this formality was ended, the Resident said: "The sum bid for the former contract which is now about to expire was twelve hundred and thirty-two thousand guilders-- Who will make a higher bid?" "Twelve hundred and thirty five!" cried a voice. "Twelve hundred and forty thousand!" said another. "Twelve hundred and fifty!" was heard in a corner. "Twelve hundred and sixty!" There was a pause of a few seconds. "Twelve hundred and sixty is offered," quietly repeated van Gulpendam. "Thirteen hundred thousand!" exclaimed Kwee Siong Liem who stood at one side of the table. Lim Yang Bing had not yet spoken a word; but now he looked up, gave one inquiring look at his rival and cried: "Fourteen hundred thousand!" "Fifteen!" The real battle had begun. "Sixteen hundred thousand!" was the opium farmer's ready reply. Once again a short pause ensued. "It is hot to-day!" whispered a voice. The Resident cast a look at one of his oppassers and the man immediately left the room. A few instants later three or four servants hurried in bearing trays full of glasses in which the deliciously iced champagne was foaming and glittering. The Chinamen eagerly took them--it was so very very hot! "Sixteen hundred thousand guilders is offered!" cried Mr. van Gulpendam. At that moment Lim Yang Bing's opponent seized upon two of the glasses and, in his feverish excitement, he gulped down their contents. "Sixteen hundred and twenty-five!" he cried. "Seventeen hundred thousand!" retorted the opium farmer with great composure. Another pause, which was broken only by the heavy breathing of the excited crowd and the clinking of the glasses, which under the able superintendence of Laurentia, who stood behind a side-door watching the scene, were continually being replenished by the waiters. "Seventeen hundred thousand!" repeated the Resident. "Seventeen hundred and twenty!" cried Lim Yang Bing's rival. "Eighteen hundred thousand!" answered the farmer. Another glass of the seductive beverage was required before a higher bid was made. "Eighteen hundred and twenty thousand!" at length gasped Kwee Siong Liem huskily, as if he were losing his voice altogether. "Nineteen hundred thousand!" cried Lim Yang Bing. His rival was beginning to waver, yet he mustered up courage to mutter in an almost inaudible whisper: "Nineteen hundred and twenty-five thousand!" "Two millions!" exclaimed Lim Yang Bing triumphantly. A dead silence ensued. After that knock-down blow one might have heard a pin drop. It was evident that the opposition was crushed. Perhaps Kwee Siong Liem might have made another attempt; but the members of his company pulled him forcibly back and prevented him from rashly uttering another word. "Two millions are bid," said the Resident. "Allow me once again to draw the attention of the company to the fact that several additional licenses will be granted." But it was of no avail. The servants--poor fellows--kept rushing about filling up the glasses; but the wine seemed to have lost its power. "Two millions once! "Two millions--twice. Will anyone bid higher? Two millions--for the third time!" Bang! down came the hammer. "Subject to the approval of the Dutch Government," said the Resident impressively, "I declare this opium contract to be assigned to Lim Yang Bing!" At these words all the officials crowded round their chief to wish him joy on his brilliant success; while most of the Chinamen pressed around Lim Yang Bing to congratulate him and shake hands with him. Laurentia took care that another round of champagne should set the seal on the bargain. There was, of course, a great deal of excitement for some time, and much enthusiasm was displayed; but whether any one present bestowed even a passing thought upon the poor unhappy dessa-people, out of whose scanty means and enfeebled frames this enormous sum was to be wrung--that we cannot undertake to affirm. Yes, there was one man who did think of them; and that man was van Rheijn. He looked sadly up at the portrait of the king as he asked himself whether it could really be his royal will that such things should go on among his subjects. Alas, the dumb canvas could not answer, and the picture of the sovereign gazed down quietly upon the noisy crowd. Scarcely had the Resident got rid of his visitors before he rushed into his study, and soon returned with beaming countenance, bearing in his hand two telegrams, each couched in precisely similar terms. "Result of opium-sale at Santjoemeh--two millions. Van Gulpendam." One dispatch was destined for Batavia, the other was for the Hague. When the oppasser whom he sent to the telegraph office had disappeared, van Gulpendam looked around him with the utmost satisfaction and complacency. As his eye fell upon the Dutch flag, which spread its gay colours to the breeze, he fancied that those folds pointed to the North-West--towards home. "Aye," he muttered to himself, "from that quarter my reward must come." Turning round as he said these words, he saw Laurentia standing at his elbow. He gave her one penetrating look: "You here yet?" asked he. But without replying, she grasped his arm, drew him with gentle violence into the inner room, and there, when safe from every prying look, she clasped him in her strong white arms to her breast. "Gulpie!" she cried, "Gulpie, my darling! you have surpassed yourself!" "Yes," said he, with assumed modesty, "yes, I have piloted that frigate pretty cleverly, though I say so myself. Now, I hope they will not be ungrateful at the Hague!" CHAPTER XL. THE "VIRTUS NOBILITAT." ANNA AND DALIMA. A TELEGRAM. Oh no, the people at the Hague were not at all ungrateful. Eight days had not elapsed before the telegraph had flashed across the ocean the news, that it had been the pleasure of H. M. the king to confer upon his trusty servant van Gulpendam the order of the Netherlands' Lion. By the next mail the particulars arrived in Java, and it then became known that immediately after the receipt of the telegram announcing the result of the opium-sale at Santjoemeh, a special council of Ministers was called. At this meeting the Colonial Secretary, elated to the verge of excitement, had drawn special attention to the conspicuous merit of Resident van Gulpendam, and had dwelt upon the great financial advantages which would accrue to the State if all the other residents were encouraged to emulate his example. He reminded his colleagues that the revenue derived from the coffee-culture was fast dwindling away and threatened soon to become a thing of the past; and that, therefore, opium was in the future to be looked upon as the chief means for keeping afloat the ship of the State. That it was for this reason a matter of the utmost importance to strive and raise the revenues, derived from that source, by all possible means, as indeed he had always shown himself zealous to do from the day that the king had entrusted the affairs of the colonies to his hands. Knowing perfectly well that he had nothing new to say, yet the minister purposely left something unsaid. He took care not to tell his colleagues, and the nation, that, with anything like judicious management, the coffee culture would have continued as profitable as ever it was; but that, by gross neglect and swindling on the part of the officials who had the management of it, that source of revenue had been well-nigh destroyed. He further omitted to let them know, that the culture of coffee was a means of spreading prosperity and contentment among the native population; whereas the encouragement of opium was a public disgrace and a national curse. Upon these subjects the Colonial Secretary did not touch; and thus his colleagues unanimously applauded his speech and supported his application for the Netherlands' Lion, an application to which, being a constitutional monarch, King William III. could not refuse his sanction. Some few there were, no doubt, who shook their heads dubiously as the news of this honourable distinction reached Santjoemeh. But yet, when the newspapers, in their boldest type, conveyed to the people the happy tidings, almost all Santjoemeh was beside itself for joy. Cards, letters, telegrams of congratulation came pouring in on all sides, not only from Java; but also from friends in Holland. The van Gulpendams received visits innumerable, and even those who did not join in the universal chorus of rapture, yet found it difficult to refrain from giving some outward show of satisfaction. Such want of courtesy might very easily have been ascribed to envy. But these were not the only demonstrations of the public joy. Fêtes, dinner parties, balls were given to celebrate the memorable event. The Regent of Santjoemeh led the way by giving a splendid banquet in honour of the newly made knight; and his example was speedily followed by the Government officials, by the members of the Club "Concordia," by the Chinese major, &c. &c. As a grand final to this round of festivities, a state ball was given at the Residence, at which, it is needless to say, that all Santjoemeh was expected to be present, as indeed it was. On these festive occasions, toasts were drunk, speeches were made, congratulatory odes were recited--and all this to glorify the man whose breast was now decorated with the "virtus nobilitat." Fair Laurentia, with that fine tact, which, in woman, is almost an instinct, had tried to persuade her husband to appear in public with the very tiniest cross suspended from the narrowest possible bit of blue and orange ribbon. This would undoubtedly have been in good taste; but the Resident would have none of it. He sent at once to Batavia for a cross about as big as an ordinary saucer, and he suspended it from a ribbon of proportionate width. "When you do hang out a flag," said he to his wife, "men must be able to see it a mile off and you must let it blow out bravely." That was his view of the matter, and no argument had been of any avail against this nautical aphorism. To tell the truth, the man was mighty proud of himself and hugely enjoyed all the fuss that was made about him. His satisfaction would indeed have been perfect, had not certain uneasy rumours begun to spread among the public. It was whispered, that among the native population, the feeling of contentment of which the Resident was constantly making mention in his despatches, was not by any means so perfect as he tried to represent it. Rumours were abroad of secret gatherings and even of conspiracies far more alarming than the casual assembling of robber bands. It was a curious thing that a certain paper in Batavia, alluding to these secret risings in the residence of Santjoemeh, said that a Holy War was in preparation, and gave this information on trustworthy authority. This paper, which had thus ventured to disturb the serenity of the authorities, was treated in the most summary manner, its plant was confiscated, its offices closed, its editor banished; all this to prove, of course, that there was no disturbance whatever, but that the press only was dangerous. But yet, some very plain hints were conveyed to Resident van Gulpendam that it would be well for him to do his utmost to prove that the situation was really as satisfactory as he represented it to be, and that the unpleasant rumours were nothing more than idle gossip. Accordingly, van Gulpendam had, during the festive week, made some excursions into the parts which were said to be disaffected; but he had found the most profound quiet everywhere. At the suggestion of the European officials, the native chiefs had not failed to wait on the kandjeng toean to offer him their very sincere congratulations on the distinction with which it had been the king's pleasure to honour him. Nothing could be better. Van Gulpendam was in the highest possible spirits, he had a kind word for all, he courteously acknowledged every profession of good will, whether it came from European or native; and exhorted every one to continue in these pleasant paths of peace. But yet, amidst all this chorus of jubilation, one jarring note was heard. It came from a well-known European settler, who owned a large sugar-plantation and factory, situated on the extreme limits of the residence of Santjoemeh. This gentleman was most positive in his assertion, that clandestine meetings and assemblies were, now and then, held in a wood close by his property. He had his information from sources which, he thought, were absolutely trustworthy; and he further declared that he was acquainted even with the names of a couple of the ringleaders. He could not help looking upon these secret meetings as suspicious, even though perhaps they might not be immediately dangerous. "And may I beg you to tell me what are those names?" said Mr. van Gulpendam sarcastically. "I know only two of them," was the reply; "they must be father and son, for they are Pak Ardjan and Ardjan; the latter, I am told, is a bold and determined fellow, and both seem to belong to the dessa Kaligaweh in the district of Banjoe Pahit." At the mention of these names, the Resident felt that he turned pale. He pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his face and to hide his evident confusion. "It is oppressively hot!" cried he, in a faint tone of voice. A glass of iced water was handed to him, and soon he regained his composure. Determined to remove the impression which his momentary confusion might have made, he continued: "Pooh, pooh! Those Kaligaweh fellows have crossed the sea long ago. Depend upon it they won't show their noses on Dutch territory again. I know for a fact that they were quite lately seen at Singapore. There can be no doubt about that." "Well, Resident," replied the sugar-planter in a serious tone, "I must tell you that I do not feel at all safe. You know, of course, that here in India the outlying settlers always are the first victims of these native plots; and that if such a rising as I apprehend were to break out, all Europeans would be ruthlessly massacred. My grounds," he continued, "lie far away, and, in case of a sudden outbreak, it would take two days at least for either police or military to reach me. I shall therefore esteem it a great favour if you will grant me some kind of protection. Send me a few policemen whom I can trust, I will see to the arming of the men." "Policemen! my dear sir. What are you talking about? What would be the use of them?" asked the Resident with a compassionate smile; for he had by this time completely regained his self-possession. "You are creating fanciful dangers. It is, in fact, absurd to talk in this manner." "I know what I know," rejoined the sugar-factor, "and I say without any hesitation, that the reports which have reached me do not appear to me at all fanciful or incredible." "All right!" said van Gulpendam carelessly. "You must excuse me, Resident," insisted the sugar-planter, "but I think that if you were living with your family in that lonely spot you would not talk in quite such an easy way." Although our friend van Gulpendam was not precisely the stuff that heroes are made of, yet he was not by any means a coward. He felt, moreover, perfectly well that the moment had arrived to payer de sa personne. What might be said at Batavia should it be suspected that he felt the slightest distrust or fear? "All nonsense!" cried he in the same sarcastic and careless manner. "Come now, my dear sir, to prove to you how certain I am that there is nothing wrong, I invite myself and my wife to go and stay with you for a fortnight on your plantation. I know you keep a pretty good galley, do you accept my offer?" "With the greatest pleasure in the world, Resident," eagerly cried the planter. He felt sure that the Resident of the district would take care to come under a sufficient escort of police. "Very well, then," replied van Gulpendam; "as soon as ever these festivities are over at Santjoemeh, I will let you know; and then you may get a couple of rooms ready for us." "And how many oppassers do you intend to bring?" "None at all! a couple of my servants, and that is all. I intend to show you that I have the fullest confidence in the state of affairs, and that I am under no apprehension whatever. Now that is agreed upon, eh?" Just outside, close under the verandah in which this conversation was taking place, a couple of sentries were walking up and down as a guard of honour to the kandjeng toean. If any one could but have watched one of these fellows, he must have noticed that the sentry marched up and down in such a manner as always to keep as close as possible to the speakers. He must have observed also, that the man was listening to every word that was said; and that his eyes wore a most dangerous and sinister expression. At the last sentence spoken by the Resident a gleam of satisfaction seemed to overspread the native soldier's face and, had he received a classical education, no doubt the man would have muttered to himself: "Deus quem vult perdere prius dementat." As soon as van Gulpendam returned to Santjoemeh, he gave it out far and wide that both his wife and himself were tired out by this round of festivities, that they needed rest and had made up their minds to go and enjoy a fortnight's peace and quietness at the factory "Soeka maniesan." Two days later they started. Laurentia took only her maid, and van Gulpendam a couple of body-servants; but, on the box, a single oppasser was seated beside the coachman. His duty was to hold aloft the golden pajoeng in token that the Resident toean was seated within. That same day Charles van Nerekool and Theodoor Grenits also started for Gombong, intending from thence, in company with Murowski, to go and surprise Anna van Gulpendam in her lonely retreat. The two carriages crossed as they left the town of Santjoemeh. The one over which the pajoeng was displayed travelling in an eastern direction, while the other took the road to the south. After nonna Anna and baboe Dalima had been so thoroughly frightened at their bathing place, they no longer ventured to go alone to the spot. They thought--indeed by this time they felt sure--that the stone which so unexpectedly had splashed down by Anna's side, had been detached from the rock above by the tread of some animal--of some wild boar perhaps or some stray goat. But for all that the fright had suggested the possibility of a surprise. Anna, therefore, had persuaded an old Javanese woman to come and take up her abode with them in the little hut. She would accompany them to the bathing place and mount guard while the young girls were disporting themselves in the water, and would thus be able to give them timely warning of the approach of any possible intruder. There was another advantage gained by taking this nènèh into their service; for they could now leave to her certain necessary and menial duties which would leave them more time to spend at the loom or to work in the painting room. The harder they worked the faster the money came in, for the kahins and the slendangs which they wove, and the sarongs they painted, were in great request. In fact they generally had more orders on hand than they could manage to execute. The result was that the inmates of the hut began to find themselves in somewhat easy circumstances, and--was it perhaps owing to this fact, or was it because no one could look upon the two pretty girls without being attracted by them?--At all events this much is certain that when, on rare occasions, they appeared in the dessa Ajo, where they had no fear of being recognised, the young men of the village would cast many a tender look upon them--sometimes even a kindly word was whispered as they passed. All this the girls mightily enjoyed, and they had many a hearty laugh over the love-lorn looks of the village swains. One day Dalima merrily said to her young mistress: "If they only knew that they were casting sheeps' eyes at a resident's daughter, wouldn't they fly back in terror?" "Hush, Dalima, do not mention such a thing again," said Anna very seriously. "You ought to know that I dislike any such allusions. I am no longer a resident's daughter!" But, when she perceived that her scolding tone of voice really grieved her companion, she continued with a pleasant smile: "As if the young men of Ajo ever gave me a look!" "But, Nana," asked Dalima, "whom do they look at then?" "They have evidently taken a fancy to one of us," replied Anna, "but it is certainly not to me; I can see that plainly enough. All those smiles and sweet little whispers are for you, Dalima." "How can you talk such nonsense!" said Dalima half-crossly. "I am only telling you the truth, Dalima." "Have you ever noticed Kjahi Wangsa, Nana? He has no eyes but for you." "No, no, Dalima, for you." "No, for you, Nana!" And so the girls would run on almost daily, and on such occasions it would have been hard to say who had the last word. One day, as they were thus merrily talking, Anna said to her friend: "What if it were the Kjahi who gave us that fright the other day?" "What do you mean, Nana?" "I mean that it might have been that booby watching us." "There is not the least fear of that," replied Dalima, "he would never have dared to do such a thing. Not one of the young fellows are bold enough for that--he, least of all." "Not much boldness required for that," laughed Anna, "to play the spy on two young girls!" "Well, I tell you, he would not have dared to do it. But you need not trouble yourself, there was no one there at all. You know how long we kept looking about and, though we had a view of the path for a long way to the right and left, we saw not a single soul." "Yet," rejoined Anna, "it seems to me a very mysterious thing." "If there were anybody there at all," continued Dalima, "it must have been a white man." "A white man, Dalima!" "Yes, it is now so long ago that I do not mind telling you all about it. A few days earlier it would only have made you nervous. The evening before we were frightened by the fall of that stone, a white man arrived at Ajo, and passed the night in the loerah's house." "Dalima!" cried Anna, in dismay, "who was he?" "I can't tell you, Nana. I have tried hard enough to find out; but I have discovered nothing further than that he busied himself with butterfly catching. Pah!" We may mention here that the natives of Java are, as a rule, afraid of butterflies. They fancy that the dust from their wings produces violent itching and even leprosy. Hence Dalima's exclamation of disgust. "Did you see him, Dalima?" continued Anna, "did he see you?" "Well, no, Nana, I did not. In fact next morning he started before daybreak. The last that was seen of him was at Pringtoetoel, he was then going in an easterly direction." "Why did you not tell me this at once?" asked Anna. "Why should I have done so? It would only have disturbed you for nothing. What was the use of troubling you to no purpose?" For a few moments the girls spoke not a word. Dalima, who was beginning to fear that Anna was really displeased, at length broke the silence and said: "You are not angry with me, Nana?" "Angry? no, Dalima." "What makes you look so serious then?" "I wish we could move to some other place," sighed Anna. "Move? why?" cried Dalima. "Yes, move away, further into the mountain, where the country is wilder and more lonely. Yonder close by the birds-nest grots. I wish I could retreat into one of those caves!" "What are you thinking about, Nana?" cried Dalima, growing seriously alarmed at her friend's words. "Oh, I have some kind of presentiment that Charles is on my track," sighed Anna. "He ought to have been here before this," remarked the baboe with something very like scorn in her voice. "A Javanese," she continued, "would have found you out long ago." "How about Ardjan then?" asked Anna. "Ardjan!" cried Dalima sadly, "Ardjan is a convict, he has run away, Allah only knows where he is and what he is about. Moreover, I am no longer his betrothed. To him I am nothing more than a poor fallen girl!" Both again were silent for some time, each absorbed in her own thoughts. Anna was sorry that she had touched so sensitive a chord; but it was Dalima who continued: "But even if it were so, if the young judge really were on your track--" "Oh! don't speak so," cried Anna, "the very thought fills me with terror. If I could think that possible I would start off at once." "But what can you have against him?" persisted the baboe. "No more of this, Dalima!" "Have you ceased to love him then? Have you cast him out of your heart?" "Don't speak so!" cried Anna in the greatest excitement; "not love him? Oh! if that were true! Cast him out of my heart! Not a day, not an hour, not a minute passes without my thinking of him!" "Well then," continued the simple Javanese girl, "why be so cruel?" "Be silent, Dalima!" "Can you not feel how wretched you are making him, Nana?" "Oh! I pray you, pray do not say another word. Never, never can I be his--no--nor any other man's wife." Dalima looked up at her with a puzzled expression. It would not be easy perhaps to say exactly what was passing in her mind. On her face there was a look of astonishment mingled with vexation; in her eyes one might read: "What funny whims those white folk have! How miserable they make their lives!" After a little while she was about to renew the conversation, she was in the act of opening her mouth to do so, when, just at that moment, the nènèh entered the gallery where the two girls were sitting. She had been down to the dessa to make some purchases, and now came in to give an account of what she had bought and of the money she had spent. Her entry created a diversion; but, when the old woman began to open her budget of news, she caused the greatest consternation. She told the girls that three Europeans had arrived at the dessa and had taken up their quarters in the loerah's house. "Three Europeans?" cried Anna, pale with terror. "Yes, Nana," replied the nènèh, who, thinking that she was speaking to a countrywoman of her own, always followed Dalima's example and addressed the Resident's daughter as "Nana." "Did you see them, nèh?" asked Dalima. "No," said the old woman. "Could you find out what business they have in the village?" "Some say one thing, some another," was the reply. "I have heard it said that they are railway people who are out on a shooting expedition. I think it very likely, for they have guns with them. Another man told me they are after snakes. Well they can catch enough of them here. As I was coming along just now I saw a deadly snake. Luckily I caught sight of the beast or else I might have trodden on it, and then it would have been all up with me. A third report is that the gentlemen have come to visit the birds-nest caves." "Did you hear anything else?" "No, Nana; but why do you look so strange? There is nothing whatever to be frightened at--those white men never hurt anybody. Look--there they are--coming up the path!" Anna gave one look in the direction to which the nènèh pointed. She uttered a shriek and catching up a slendang which she flung over her head she rushed from the house. Dalima, who also had recognised van Nerekool among the party, followed her mistress and both flew as fast as their feet would carry them up the pathway which ran in the opposite direction to the south of the Poleng range. The three men could see two female forms leaving the hut and rushing up the slope over against them. "There she goes!" exclaimed Murowski. "Anna! Anna!" cried van Nerekool in heartrending accents; but it was in vain. That moment the two girls disappeared in a sudden bend of the mountain path. And now, before coming to the closing scene of our story, we must here cast another look backward. Van Nerekool and Grenits had started, as we heard just now, in a carriage from Santjoemeh on their way to Wonosobo. From thence they had pursued their journey on horseback. They had no time, they had no inclination, to admire the beauty of the sublime scenery through which they passed. Whenever Grenits tried to rouse his companion and awaken in him some interest in the glories that surrounded them, the latter might cast a furtive glance around, but it was only to cry immediately after: "Let us get on, Theodoor, let us get on!" Before setting out on their journey, they had telegraphed to Murowski, and they found that medical officer quite ready to accompany them. His colleague was still staying at Gombong and our Pole therefore found but little difficulty in getting his leave of absence prolonged for four or five days. The travellers, however, did not arrive at Gombong until pretty late in the day. They were tired out with their long ride and felt that they must put off further operations to the morrow. Of that compulsory delay they made the best use they could by calling upon the commandant of the place to pay their respects to him. "If you three are going on the campaign!" exclaimed the kind-hearted soldier, "I advise the butterflies and the beetles to keep a pretty sharp look-out. There will be slaughter on the hills to-morrow. I hope you have a good supply of corks and pins for the poor prisoners. However, I wish you success." But while they sat chatting with the commandant and with his wife and enjoying a cool glass of beer in the verandah, a servant brought in a telegram. It was addressed to Murowski. He took it from the man. "Will you allow me?" said he, looking towards the lady of the house. "Of course, of course," said she, "no ceremony required for telegrams. Open it at once; perhaps it is about some patient. I only hope it will not interfere with your expedition." Murowski tore open the envelope and glanced at the signature. "It is from van Rheijn," said he to his friends-- "Great God!" he continued, "what have we here?" "What is the matter? What is it?" exclaimed all in a breath. "Tell van Nerekool," he read, "that Resident van Gulpendam and his wife have been murdered by a band of ketjoes. Further particulars by letter!" For some seconds all present sat dumb with amazement and horror. Then van Nerekool sprang to his feet, he snatched the telegram from Murowski's hand, and held it up to the light of the lamp. He rubbed his eyes as if he could not trust his senses: "Aye!" he exclaimed at length--"true, too true!" "Is Mr. van Nerekool related to those poor people?" asked the captain's wife, who was struck by the ghastly pallor of the young judge's face. "Pardon me, madam," said Grenits, "we happened to leave Santjoemeh at the same time as the family van Gulpendam. The mere thought of so terrible a murder perpetrated on friends, whom we but lately left in the full glow of health and spirits, fills us with horror." The lady nodded assent. "It is indeed terrible!" she murmured. "My friends," said van Nerekool, turning to Murowski and Grenits, "I fear our expedition will have to be deferred for a few hours. Under these terrible circumstances I feel it my duty to go at once and see Mrs. Steenvlak. How far is it from here to Karang Anjer, captain?" "About six pals, Mr. van Nerekool," replied the soldier. "Is it as much as that? Could you manage to get me a horse?" "My own horse is at your disposal," said the captain. "What do you intend to do?" "I must at once ride off to Karang Anjer. It is now about seven o'clock. Before eight I can be there. To-morrow morning before daybreak I shall be off again, and at six I hope to be back here to resume our journey to Karang Bollong. You need not fear, captain, I shall see that your horse is well cared for." "I am not at all afraid of that," replied the captain. "He will find an excellent stable at the Steenvlaks." Then he rose and went to give the necessary orders to get the horse saddled. "Miss van Gulpendam was staying: with the Steenvlaks--" said the lady of the house, her curiosity thoroughly aroused at this sudden resolution on the part of van Nerekool. "You are right, madam" replied Murowski. "You see it is very probable that Mr. Steenvlak may know where the young lady is to be found, and we might then break the sad news gently to her." Meanwhile Grenits had been asking van Nerekool what he intended to do. "She cannot now refuse to give me a few words to Anna," was his reply. "In such terrible circumstances a true friend's advice may be of the greatest value. Do you not approve of my plan?" Theodoor merely nodded assent while he warmly pressed his friend's hand. Ten minutes later van Nerekool was in the saddle and was galloping along the road to Karang Anjer. When he arrived there he found the Steenvlaks had already been informed of the terrible event; for the Assistant Resident also had received a telegram from Santjoemeh. CHAPTER XLI. THE OUTLAWS AT SOEKA MANIESAN. FEARFUL RETRIBUTION. Yes! the terrible news was true--it was but too true--! When the van Gulpendams arrived at Soeka maniesan, the proprietor of that sugar-factory could not help admitting that lately all symptoms of disturbance had disappeared. He had caused the woods, in which the supposed seditious meetings were held, to be carefully watched; but he had not been able to discover in them a single human being. Thus, he had come to the conclusion, that either his former information had been altogether false, or else that the mutinous spirits had removed to some other part of the country. Resident van Gulpendam, on his arrival, summoned the Assistant Resident of the district of which Soeka maniesan was an outlying station, and he also called before him the Regent and the Wedonos of the place; but he could not extract anything out of them which might awaken so much as a suspicion of danger. Very much the other way! All these authorities declared that the most profound calm and content prevailed throughout the district, though the Regent was fain to admit that there was a great deal of poverty and distress about. "Indeed!" said the Resident; "and what may be the cause of this sad state of things, Radhen Adipattie?" The Javanese chief shook his head dubiously, he did not at all like answering that question. As he stood there hesitating, van Gulpendam asked: "Do the landowners pay the labourers reasonably well?" "Oh, yes, kandjeng toean." "Perhaps the rice harvest has failed or has not, this season, produced as much as usual?" "No, no, kandjeng toean, the harvest has been especially good and abundant this year. The men have brought home many bundles of rice to the common barn." "What then may be the cause of the distress you speak of, Radhen Adipattie?" asked the Resident. "I do not know," replied the Javanese chief with a sigh. The truth was, that he knew it well enough; but that he did not dare to speak out. He knew equally well that if he told the whole truth he would incur the displeasure of the Resident. He knew that the barns were empty. The harvest had been plentiful indeed; but very little of the crop had found its way to the barns. The fact is, that the Javanese is a mere grown-up child. He had simply squandered away his produce while it was yet standing unripe in the fields. To lay his hands upon a little ready cash, he had sold his rice, long before it was cut, to the Chinese money-lenders. And the money thus obtained, at a ruinous sacrifice of course, had speedily found its way to the opium-den, to the gambling-booth and to the pawn-shop. It had been swallowed up by that august Trinity which is the chief source of Dutch revenue. No, no! the Regent was too prudent a man to put his thoughts into words, he cast a look of awe upon the big cross which glittered on the Resident's breast and, with another sigh, he said again: "I cannot tell, kandjeng toean." The Resident was perfectly satisfied with the result of his investigation, and declared that he would occupy no other rooms than those in the outbuildings. He professed himself quite contented with the ordinary visitors' quarters. "But, Resident," persisted the proprietor, "your apartments in the house are all ready for you." "My worthy friend," said van Gulpendam, "I won't hear of any such thing. I intend to prove to you that I am perfectly satisfied as to the state of the country, and, in the out-buildings I shall sleep as securely and as soundly as you in your house." From this resolution no arguments could move him. And, indeed, it seemed that he was perfectly right. The reports which came in from all quarters were so reassuring, that the owner of the factory Soeka maniesan himself was beginning to incline to the opinion that he must have been deceived. The first night which the Resident and his wife passed in their apartments, was as quiet as any night could possibly be, and they enjoyed the most delightful rest. The next day was spent in a minute survey of the sugar-factory although it was rather late in the season, and the yearly campaign was about to close. In the afternoon they took a pleasant walk, in the course of which both Mr. and Mrs. van Gulpendam were delighted at the very great respect which was paid them by every class of natives they happened to meet. Not that such homage was strange to them, quite the contrary; for, while he was only a controller, van Gulpendam had exacted that every native whom he encountered on the way should squat down and make a respectful sembah, and that every woman should turn away her face, which is the usual way of showing deference. But here, all these things were done by the natives with such evident signs of deep humility--the country people were evidently so overawed at the sight of their august visitors--that both the Resident and Laurentia were delighted at so much submission. No, no, in these parts there could be not the smallest ground for apprehension; van Gulpendam thought he knew quite enough of the native character to make sure of that. The evening also was passed most pleasantly. The owner of Soeka maniesan had invited the principal families of the neighbourhood to meet the Resident; and these had, of course, eagerly, accepted the invitation. The gentlemen, and some of the ladies too, sat down to a quiet game at cards, and those who did not play, passed the time pleasantly enough with music and social conversation. If some remnants of uneasiness could yet have lingered in the Resident's mind, the placid landscape which lay stretched out before him must have dissipated all such vague apprehensions. The moon stood high in the heavens and shed her calm quiet light over the scene. A cool breeze was rustling in the leaves of the splendid trees by which the entire building was surrounded. In fact, everything breathed the most profound peace, that serene quiet which makes tropical nights above all things delicious. Thus the evening passed in quiet enjoyment, and the hour of midnight had struck before the carriages came rumbling up to take the visitors home. When the guests had taken their departure, and the inmates of the house were preparing to retire to rest, one of the overseers came in and reported that some fellow had been seen sneaking about behind the garden hedge. "Some thief, probably," said the man carelessly, as if such a thing was a not at all unusual occurrence. "Come," said the proprietor, "let us go and have a look round." As he said these words, he took down his gun, and offered the Resident a weapon of the same description. Van Gulpendam however, with a wave of his hand, declined to take it. The two gentlemen, accompanied by the overseer, walked out into the grounds; while the ladies retired to their bedrooms. As we have already said, the weather was beautifully warm and clear. The two European gentlemen strolled about but could discover nothing to breed suspicion. The cool night-air induced them somewhat to extend their walk. They got outside the grounds and entered the fields of sugar-cane which adjoined the property, in which the canes had already been partially gathered. The cane which had been cut had been carried away to the factory; but a considerable part of the field was still occupied by the tall stems awaiting the hand of the reaper. Here and there in the field were big heaps of dry leaves which had been stripped from the cane and were destined presently to be carried to the factory to serve as fuel. The proprietor of Soeka maniesan was a thoroughly practical sugar manufacturer, a man who knew all the ins and outs of his trade; and Mr. van Gulpendam, who, while he occupied inferior positions in the interior of the island, had been brought much into contact with that industry, prided himself upon being pretty well up in the subject also. Thus between these two experts, the conversation never once flagged. Followed at a respectful distance by the overseer, the gentlemen strolled leisurely along discussing the various kinds of cane which were grown on the plantation. Van Gulpendam would have it, that the light yellow cane contained the greatest amount of saccharine matter, while the other declared, quite as positively, that his long experience had taught him that the dark brown cane was the more profitable to grow. Both gentlemen stuck to their opinion, and the discussion was growing somewhat lively; when--suddenly--a yell was heard, and a number of men with blackened faces and armed with clubs, sprang up from behind one of the heaps of leaves and made a rush straight at the two Europeans. Startled at this sudden apparition, the Resident and his host took to flight; but they had time to run only a very few paces, before the nimble-footed Javanese had caught up the proprietor of the factory and felled him to the ground with a single blow, before he could so much as get his gun up to his shoulder. The Resident they did not overtake until he had got within the grounds; but, instead of striking at him, the men seized him, flung him down to the ground and securely bound him. What had meanwhile become of the overseer was a mystery. Very likely he had thrown himself down and was crouching behind a heap of leaves; or, perhaps, he was hiding behind some bushes. As van Gulpendam was being bound, he could see a dozen of the men rushing off in the direction of the wing in which was situated his wife's bedroom. He would have cried out for help; but a powerful hand drove into his mouth a gag made of an old rag and prevented him from uttering a sound. He could see that the attacking party first attempted to open the door; but, finding it locked and fast bolted, dashed it from its hinges with their clubs. Then the whole party rushed in and cries of terror arose from the interior--then, suddenly, came one terrible shriek of agony--and all was still again--. This had taken place so rapidly, that the din made by the battering in of the door only startled some inmates of the house and the men who, during the night, had to attend to the steam-engines in the factory. Long before anyone could come to the rescue, the attacking party had returned to their comrades, who mounted guard over van Gulpendam. Then, one of them without attempting to disguise his voice, said: "Come, make haste, let us get along, the horses are waiting for us in the cane-field." "Is the lady dead?" asked one of the men as coolly as possible. "Dead!" was the reply, in a voice which trembled with revengeful passion. "Come, pick up that white pig, or else all the factory men will be upon us and I shall have to kris the dog; that would be a pity." At the words, a couple of bamboo poles were thrust under the arms and legs of poor van Gulpendam. "I am the kandjeng toean Resident!" he tried to say. Whether the words were understood or not is doubtful; but the only result of the effort was a furious blow in the mouth which drove the foul gag further home. "March!" said the leader. Four Javanese thereupon took up the bamboo poles on their shoulders and trotted off with their burden. The sufferer groaned with the intense pain caused by the jolting; but his lamentations were not heard, or if they were, no one paid the slightest heed to his distress. Close outside the factory grounds stood half-a-dozen horses saddled and all ready to start. Upon one of these van Gulpendam was tightly strapped, then some of the men mounted the other animals and the troop was ready to move on. "To the 'djaga monjet!'" cried one of the horsemen to those whom he left behind. "Yes, yes!" eagerly cried the others. As soon as the mounted men had disappeared with their prisoner, the party which was left behind set fire to the sugar-canes. The reedy stems burned fiercely and soon the dreadful roar of the flames was mingled with the sharp crackling of the canes. Under cover of these flames and of the smoke, the party were enabled to make good their escape; and it was not until then that the big gong of the factory began to sound the alarm. While this seizure was taking place at Soeka maniesan, another surprise of the same kind was being carried out with equal success in another quarter. About six pals from the town of Santjoemeh there stood a quaint looking building, hidden away very pleasantly amid charming scenery in the bends of the rising ground. Had the house been built in anything like Swiss or Italian style, it might have been called a chalet or a villa; but the order of its architecture was so distinctly Mongolian that no mistake could be made as to its origin. It was, in fact, a Chinese pavilion which lately had become the property of Lim Ho the son of the opium factor at Santjoemeh. If anyone had fondly hoped that, after his marriage, our babah would have settled down and become somewhat less irregular in his habits, a single peep into the interior of that pavilion must have dispersed all such pleasant illusions. That small building, situated there in so charming and lonely a spot was, in fact, nothing else than a trap into which the licentious young Chinaman was wont to decoy the victims of his lust and was enabled to ensure their ruin. The apartments of the pavilion were all furnished regardless of cost and in the most sumptuous Asiatic style. In every room there were luxurious divans and on every wall hung pictures which might be valuable, perhaps, as works of art, but the subjects of which were sensual and immoral to the lowest degree. On that same night in which the attack was made upon Soeka maniesan, that Chinese pavilion also was surprised. Here the attempt succeeded even more easily than that on the sugar plantation. Lim Ho had that evening left his house in Santjoemeh and was sitting in his pavilion impatiently awaiting for some poor creature who had aroused his passions, and whom his agents had promised to bring him. He had with him only two Chinese servants, fellows who neither would nor could offer the faintest resistance. About midnight, a knock was heard at the door. It was a low faint knock, and the babah, in a fever of expectation, and thinking it was the pigeon which had been decoyed to his den, gave the word at once to open the door. No sooner, however, had the bolts been drawn and the key turned in the lock, than half-a-dozen men with blackened faces and armed to the teeth sprang in. Lim Ho, true to the cowardly nature of his race, turned pale as death but never for an instant thought of resistance. He glanced round nervously to see whether any way of escape lay open to him; but when he saw both doors occupied and guarded by the attacking party, he tried, in his unmanly terror, to hide himself by creeping under one of the divans. In a very few minutes, however, he was dragged out of that hiding place and was securely bound, strapped to a horse and carried off. Here again, just as at Soeka maniesan, the attacking party left everything untouched. They did not lay a finger on any of the articles of value which lay scattered about; but they confined themselves strictly to the murder of Mrs. van Gulpendam and to the capture of the Resident and of the opium farmer's son. The proprietor of the sugar factory had, it is true, been knocked down by a blow of one of their clubs; but that blow had not been struck wantonly. It was inflicted simply as a precaution and in self-defence; for the man would undoubtedly have run off and spread the alarm. He would have roused his factory hands and caused the whole plot to fail, and he would immediately have started in pursuit of the raiders. That had to be guarded against at all hazards. But the blow did not prove deadly or even dangerous. As soon as the first excitement, consequent upon the discovery of Laurentia's murder, had somewhat subsided, a band of men had sallied forth to put out the fire in the fields, and then the owner of the factory was discovered lying insensible just outside his own grounds. At first they thought he was dead; for he was quite unconscious. They carried him into the house, and then his wife soon found out that her husband, though stunned by a severe blow, was neither wounded nor materially injured. Every effort was made to restore him, and after some time, he recovered his senses. The day had dawned before the police had arrived at Soeka maniesan and began to make their inquiries. There and then a careful examination was held of the entire staff employed on the factory--every single individual being submitted to a rigorous interrogatory; but no clue was found which could lead to the detection of the perpetrators of this daring outrage. Just outside the yet smouldering cane-fields, were found the tracks of horses; but that led to no result for the weather had for a long time been very dry and the morning breeze had covered all further tracks with a thick layer of fine dust. Thus there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate the direction the horsemen might have taken. The proprietor himself, poor fellow, could not give the slightest information. All he knew was that, as he was quietly walking about engaged in argument with the Resident, a number of fellows with blackened faces had started up from behind one of the tall piles of leaves, that he had attempted to run away, but had been overtaken and had received a blow on the head which stunned him. Of what had taken place after that he, of course, knew nothing whatever. The overseer's story was, if possible, still more unsatisfactory. He said that the instant he saw the threatening forms appearing from behind the heap of dadoe, he had flung himself down flat upon the ground and then crept under another heap of leaves; and that he had not ventured to stir out of that hiding place until he heard the crackling of the canes and began to fear that the leaves which covered him might be attacked by the flames. While in this state of terror and suspense, he had seen nothing and had heard nothing. Now, the question was: where were they to look for Resident van Gulpendam? The police were at their wits' end. The whole district of Santjoemeh was, naturally enough, in the greatest excitement; and universal horror prevailed at the terrible fate which, in all probability, had overtaken the chief of the district. But do what they could, and search where they would, not a trace of the criminals could be discovered, not a single gleam of light could be cast upon the impenetrable mystery. For a day or two this state of suspense endured until a fisherman, as he was trying to get his boat into the Moeara Tjatjing, caught sight of the naked body of a European floating just outside the surf. He made for it and drew it into his boat and then took it to the loerah of Kaligaweh which was the nearest dessa. Had this simple Javanese fisherman only known that it was the body of the kandjeng toean, he would no doubt have turned away his head and quietly said to his mates: "Let Allah's justice float by undisturbed." Had he been able to foresee what troubles he was bringing upon himself by raising that corpse from its watery grave, he would have taken good care not to touch it. The alligators would, no doubt, soon enough have provided for its burial. As it was, the loerah of the dessa began by locking up the poor fellow. Then he had to submit to endless examinations by the wedono, by the pattih, by the regent, by the controller, by the assistant resident, by the public prosecutor. All these authorities were most eager in the matter; and thought that, in this poor man, they held in their hands a clue to the mysterious drama enacted at Soeka maniesan. Thus they vied with one another in badgering the poor devil, until they drove him to desperation, and he at length was forced to declare that he was light-headed and of weak intellect. The body was readily identified as that of Resident van Gulpendam. There could be no doubt about that; for the features were almost intact. But all the parts which the sea-monsters had spared appeared extremely inflamed and swollen; and it was evident that the unhappy man must have died under an extremity of torture, though there was nothing to show that any knife or sharp instrument had caused his death. What then had been his fate? "To the 'djaga monjet!'" Yes! It was indeed to that very same dismal hut in the mangrove swamp by the Moeara Tjatjing, to which we introduced our readers in our first chapters, that the band of horsemen was now riding at full speed. They carefully avoided all the dessas which lay on the road, a thing which they could easily do as they were perfectly acquainted with all the bye-paths. They shunned even the guard-houses, not being certain that the watchmen stationed there could be implicitly trusted. Thus, without let or hindrance, the little troop rode on, and the day was just beginning to break when they reached the mangrove wood, in which the "djaga monjet" was situated. When they carried van Gulpendam, still bound hand and foot, into the hut, they found Lim Ho there. He had been brought in some time before, and was lying stretched out at full length upon the wretched flooring. He also was bound so tightly that he could not move hand or foot. At a signal from a tall, slim Javanese, who appeared to be the leader of the band, the cords which bound the unhappy prisoners were loosened, and the gags were removed from their mouths. Around them stood about twenty Javanese, all unrecognisable, with blackened faces and fully armed. The Chinaman uttered not a word, he seemed prostrate with terror. The sudden shock appeared to have annihilated him. But, as soon as the European felt that he was free, he stretched his limbs, and in a voice of conscious dignity he said: "Are you aware that I am the kandjeng toean Resident?" "Yes, kandjeng toean," replied the leader in a tone of mock humility. "It is but a few days ago," continued van Gulpendam, "that the kandjeng toean Radja honoured me with a particular mark of his high favour." As he spoke these words he pointed haughtily to the huge cross which still was hanging sparkling on the breast of his light-blue resident's frock. "Yes, kandjeng toean!" repeated the leader, while all his men made the sembah in token of deep respect. "Government will exact the most terrible punishment should you hurt so much as a hair of my head!" A mocking laugh was the answer to that speech. Twenty men grasped the handles of their krises; but at a wave from the leader's hand, all kept silence, and not a single word was spoken, not a single blade was drawn. "Before Government will be able to punish," rejoined the Javanese quietly, "you will both be dead men." "Dead!" exclaimed Lim Ho in a voice husky with terror. "Dead?" cried van Gulpendam. "No, no, you dare not do that! My death would be too fearfully avenged!" "Both of you, I said--" resumed the leader with perfect coolness, "I said both of you deserve to die. We have passed sentence upon you. That sentence must be carried out--after that, they may do with us what they will--I mean, of course, if they can lay hands upon us." "But," cried Lim Ho, half mad with terror, "what have I done?" "You ask me what you have done? Well, I will tell you. In this very hut, you inflicted upon a man, whose only fault was that he loved, and intended to marry, a girl upon whom you had cast your lustful eyes, the most atrocious torture. You ask what you have done? That same young girl you contrived, with the assistance of the njonja of yonder wretch, to get into your possession, you outraged her most brutally, and then, when you had worked your foul will upon her, you cast her off and accused her of opium smuggling." Lim Ho's face grew ashy-pale as he heard these terrible words, he began to understand into whose hands he had fallen. Van Gulpendam thought that he ought still to keep up his proud and dignified bearing. He could not bring himself to believe that a mere Javanese would dare to raise his hand against his august person, against the kandjeng toean. But yet he thought it advisable to speak in a somewhat conciliatory tone. "If what you have just now said be true," he began, "then certainly Lim Ho deserves severe punishment, and I pledge you my word that I will exert my authority to see that his punishment shall be proportioned to his offence; but what have I done that you dare to treat me thus?" "You, you, kandjeng toean!" vehemently broke in the leader, in a voice which seemed fairly to hiss with rage, "you have made the offences, as you call them, of this Chinese dog possible. You have had the man, of whom I just now spoke, cast into a dungeon, you condemned him to the most barbarous punishment, knowing all the while that he was innocent. And all this you have done merely in order that you might screen the smuggling trade of that scoundrel. You supplied the opium-farmer with the means of preventing that girl's father from defending his own child against the brutality of yon beastly Chinaman. Do you still ask me what you have done? Why, you and your wife are guilty of all I have said--and you and your wife deserve to die. Part of our sentence has already been carried out, and, believe me, it will be fully executed." "Wha--! What? Partly carried out you said?" gasped van Gulpendam. "My wife--!" The leader turned to one of his followers: "Tell the kandjeng toean what has become of the njonja." "The njonja is dead!" was the brief reply. "Yes!" shouted the leader wildly, "the njonja is dead! We had mercy upon her, one single stab put an end to her accursed life. Look here--those spots on my kris--they are her blood!" "That shriek I heard?" cried van Gulpendam. "Was the last sound she will ever utter in this world. But," continued the Javanese, still carried away by his passion, "do not for a moment flatter yourself that we will deal thus mercifully with you. Upon a woman we could have compassion. But you! Oh yes, you shall suffer! You shall feel something of the tortures you are so ready to inflict upon others!" Even then van Gulpendam retained something of his fortitude and haughty bearing, and he said: "I bid you beware of the punishing hand of the Dutch Government, it will know how to avenge me." "I am prepared to brave any peril, if only I have my revenge," said the Javanese. "Upon you I am determined to execute justice!" "Justice, justice!" cried van Gulpendam, "and who are you that you dare to prate about justice, even while you are planning sedition and preparing for murder? Tell me who are you?" "Who I am? Well, you shall know!" In a corner of that wretched cabin stood a tub filled with water. The Javanese took up the cocoa-nut scoop which hung by it and washed his face. "Now do you recognise me?" he cried, as he drew himself up to his full height before his prisoners. "Ardjan!" sighed Lim Ho. "Ardjan!" cried van Gulpendam as thoroughly dismayed as was his companion in misfortune. Both of them now plainly saw that they were reserved for some dreadful death. The account which each had to settle with that young man was a heavy one indeed. "Have mercy! Have mercy upon us!" they cried as they fell down on their knees before him, their teeth chattering with terror as they knelt at his feet. "Mercy?" almost shrieked Ardjan. "What mercy did you show poor Dalima and old Setrosmito? Come, speak up, will you? What mercy did you show to me and to my old father? Dalima violated! My father and I locked up for months in a loathsome prison, and then, sentenced--by your very mouth--to years of penal servitude-- And now you ask me to have mercy? If I could feel pity then indeed you might call me the veriest blockhead in the world. But," continued the Javanese, after a moment's pause, "tell me, supposing I could feel pity, supposing I were to set you free, tell me, kandjeng toean, what would you do then?" These words were spoken in a much milder tone, it seemed as if Ardjan were wavering, and, in that hesitation, the unfortunate European thought he could see a faint gleam of hope. Trembling with fear, he raised himself on his knees, and, wringing his hands in agony, he cried, while big tears went coursing down his cheeks: "Oh, do not fear. You shall have full pardon--free pardon--I have power with the Government and I can induce them to forgive all. The great lord at Batavia will grant me my request. All the injustice which has been done shall be amply made good. You shall have compensation--I will see to it I will pay it out of my own purse--! All that has happened shall be made good, believe me!" "Dalima's injuries also?" asked a hoarse croaking voice from behind Ardjan. "Those white fellows seem to think they are almighty, or else they fancy that we Javanese are the greatest fools in the world!" That name of Dalima and these few scornful words seemed to rouse Ardjan out of the fit of weakness which appeared for a moment to have come over him. He shook his head violently as if he wished to drive out some unwelcome thoughts, at that movement his head-cloth became loosened and his long black hair streamed fiercely and wildly over his shoulders. "No! no!" he exclaimed, "no pity, no mercy. Now I have you in my power, you are crawling and cringing at my feet as mean and as cowardly as the vilest beasts. Did you ever see a Javanese so degrade himself? Did you ever see a native act so meanly, even when pleading for his life? You have sent plenty of them to the gallows, and you ought to know how a coloured man can die. Pity! mercy! Ha! ha! ha! You are ready enough now with your promises; but in your hearts you are, even now, scheming how you may evade them and break them. Trust a white man's word!--ha! ha! ha! As if we don't know all about that. Whenever did a white man keep his promise to us Javanese? Whenever--" Here one of the men whispered something into Ardjan's ear. "Yes, yes, you are right, let us cut it short. No, no--no pity, far from it. You shall have a painful, a cruel death. I had made up my mind to give you the most terrible--the 'hoekoem madoe--'" Lim Ho uttered a fearful yell at these terrible words. "Mercy! mercy!" he moaned. "--But that would take too much time," continued Ardjan, who had by this time regained his composure. "We might get the police upon us before you were quite finished and that would spoil the game-- No, I have given up that idea. You shall undergo the 'hoekoem kamadoog.' The same punishment, you remember, Lim Ho, that you gave me; and yet I had committed no fault whatever, and the kandjeng toean there thought it right to leave your outrageous crime unpunished. No, you must not be able to say that I am more barbarous than you." "Mercy! Mercy!" cried both the wretched men. "No! no! no pity!" rejoined Ardjan. Then, with a signal to one of his mates, he continued: "Strip them and take them outside!" That order was carried out literally and in a very few minutes. The fine light-blue coat was rent from the Resident's back, his trousers followed and his shirt; and torn to ribbons they soon lay on the dirty floor of the cabin--even the Virtus nobilitat was trampled under foot. Lim Ho underwent the same rough operation, and then both men stood there naked before their pitiless judges. Then their hands were tied behind their backs and the wretched creatures were simply pitched down the rude steps. Ardjan reminded Lim Ho of the glorious fun he had eight months ago when the two Chinamen and himself were similarly treated. "You remember," he laughed, "how Than Khan and Liem King tumbled down from top to bottom? It was fine sport to you then!" It took but a few moments to tie up the two victims to the Niboeng-palms, which grew in front of the hut--to the very trees to which the two Chinamen and Ardjan himself had been fastened. "The kandjeng toean to that tree," said Ardjan, pointing to the stem at which he had himself suffered. "Pardon! Pity!" the poor victims kept crying incessantly. No one heeded their agonising yells. When they were tied up--Ardjan gave the word: "Now, my lads, give way!" Four men stepped forward each armed with a bunch of the formidable nettle, and the blows began to fall like rain upon the bare limbs of the wretched victims. Wherever the leaves fell the flesh seemed to shrink away in agony. The Chinaman bit his under-lip until the teeth met in the flesh, but he did not utter a single moan. At first van Gulpendam strove to follow his example; but he had not the tough resolution of an Asiatic in this supreme moment. He could not restrain himself. First he moaned, then he whimpered, he cried aloud in his misery, he howled, he yelled with pain. Nothing could touch his ruthless executioners. "Pardon! mercy!" he cried. "Oh, I beg for mercy!" But, in reply to his piteous cries, came the words: "Dalima! Ardjan! Pak Ardjan! Setrosmito!" And then upon the brain of the unhappy Resident there flashed another name, a name more terrible to him perhaps than all the others: "Meidema, Meidema! pardon, mercy!" he kept on wailing in a voice which told of the most exquisite torture. But gradually his cries grew weaker, at length they became hardly intelligible--they gurgled like a hoarse and dying rattle in the throat. The pain was beyond endurance. Still the men kept plying their deadly nettle. At length his head began to dangle helplessly, and it seemed as if the unfortunate sufferer had lost consciousness. Lim Ho had been fortunate enough to reach that state much earlier, and was thus sooner out of his misery. Ardjan stood by at the scene, glaring at his victims with revengeful eagerness. He clenched his fists convulsively, he had to exercise the greatest self-control to prevent himself from catching up one of the bunches of kamadoog leaves and having his blow at the wretched beings who had not scrupled to inflict the same barbarous treatment upon himself. No, no, he felt not the smallest grain of pity--he could think only of his own wrongs and his own happiness destroyed for ever. Even if the voice of pity could have spoken within him it would have been stifled by his father, who, standing close behind him, kept on whispering in his ear: "Dalima, Dalima!" For some time the two victims had been unconscious; but yet Ardjan did not think of putting a stop to the torture. At every blow, at every touch even of those terrible leaves the skin of the sufferers puckered up though the bodies no longer felt the pain. The muscles stretched, then ran up into knots and horrid spasms shot through the entire frames. Soon the bodies could no longer support themselves, but hung in the cords that bound them, limp as empty sacks. The eyes of the tortured men were closed; but every now and then they would spasmodically open for a moment, and would stare with a blood-shot stony gaze which betrayed the extreme suffering which even the senseless body was undergoing. In their dying agonies they flung their heads convulsively to and fro, dashing them up fearfully against the Niboeng palm while flecks of foam came flying from their lips. But, in this world everything must come to an end, and at length the protracted sufferings were over. Gradually the convulsive starts of the two bodies began to subside and finally ceased altogether. The soul had left its earthly tenement. Then Ardjan, in tones the most indifferent in the world, said, "Enough!" At the word, his men looked at him for further instructions. "Untie them," he said, and without speaking another word, he pointed to the sea. The instant the ropes were cut through, the bodies fell with a heavy thud to the ground. As he fell van Gulpendam for the last time opened his eyes and, very softly, but quite intelligibly he sighed forth the single word: "Meidema!" The thought of that unhappy family--of those good honest people whose ruin he had so craftily and cruelly planned, haunted that guilty soul even as it was taking its flight. With that name on his lips he expired. Lim Ho gave no sign of life. Both corpses were then dragged to the Kali Tjatjing and pitched into the water, and the stream quickly carried them out to the Java sea. In the far distance between the two headlands could be seen the schooner brig Kiem Ping Hin quietly riding at anchor and flying the British ensign. Faithful to her calling she was waiting for an opportunity to deliver her smuggled goods to the company Lim Yang Bing. CHAPTER XLII. IN THE GOEWAH TEMON. CONCLUSION. "Anna, Anna!" cried van Nerekool, and in that cry he cast his whole soul; but it was uttered in vain; for just then a sharp bend in the path caused the two girls to disappear behind a great mass of rock. When Charles, Murowski and Grenits reached the spot where they had caught this last glimpse of the fugitives, not a trace could be discovered of either of them. "Anna, Anna!" shouted Charles again and again at the top of his voice; but a beautifully distinct echo, reverberating from the opposite hills, seemed only to mock his cries. Our three friends, however, were now compelled to pause. They felt that they could go on no longer, and must stop awhile to regain breath. The exertion, indeed, had been very great; for that little path kept winding upward, ever upward, and the headlong speed with which they had rushed on made a short rest absolutely necessary. Charles, however, every now and then, repeated his cry of "Anna, Anna!" He thought that his voice might perhaps reach the girl and induce her to stop or to turn. But, no other response came to his anxious call, than that of the sportive echo which, sharply and clearly, flung back the two syllables, "Anna, Anna!" When they had rested awhile, and to some extent regained their strength and their wind, the three set off again in pursuit. They had to follow a road which led them along the most eccentric windings up hill and down dale. At one time the path would run sharply round some huge rock, at another it would follow the course of some erratic mountain-stream. Elsewhere again, it ran zigzagging down an almost perpendicular slope; but yet, on the whole, the ground was steadily rising and was evidently leading up to the lofty table-land which is bounded by the cliffs of the Goenoeng Poleng. Very frequently the road would run, for a while, abruptly downhill as it took them into the bottom of some wild ravine; but this, far from giving them rest, only increased the discomfort of travelling. For the sudden change of motion threatened to dislocate their already tired knees and then, every descent was immediately succeeded by a sharp and trying climb which put to tremendous proof the soundness and power of their lungs. But in spite of fatigue, the three men kept hurrying on. Van Nerekool's impatience would brook no delay. They panted, they caught their breath, they puffed and blew like grampuses; but still they kept on. As they turned every sharp bend in the road, they felt sure that they must catch sight of the fugitives; for certainly they could not have got very far ahead of them. Escape was utterly impossible; for there existed but the one path up the mountain, and that went twisting and turning through a country so wild and so rugged that no human being could leave the footpath either to the right or left. So they anxiously peered round all about them whenever they gained some spot which gave a command of the country; but look as they would, not a glimpse could they catch of either Anna or Dalima. At length the three men gained the top of the plateau, and they felt that, for a few moments, they must again sit down and rest. But yet, they could find no trace of the young girls they were so eagerly following. The road now no longer rose, it merely twisted in and out between huge boulders of rock, between hill tops, and around thick clumps of dwarf shrubs, and thus it offered no extensive view. "They cannot possibly be far ahead of us!" panted van Nerekool. "Let us get on, let us get on! We must be close upon them!" But in this the young man was mistaken--as a matter of fact the girls had really gained very considerably on their pursuers. In the first place, they had a considerable start when the chase began. They had been able to run nimbly along a path which was quite familiar to them, which they had indeed been accustomed to climb almost daily. Their knowledge of the country enabled them to make many a short cut with which the Europeans were unacquainted; and thus they had managed to avoid many a long bend and twist in the road. And lastly, extreme terror seemed to have lent Anna wings, and poor Dalima had been compelled, as best she might, to toil after her young mistress. When they reached the plateau, Anna kept on leading the way and hurrying in a southerly direction. She knew that the sea could not be far away; for the thunder of the breakers, which, for some time, had been audible in the distance as a hoarse murmur, now grew more distinct every moment; and as they sped on they could feel the very soil quivering under the terrific pounding of the mighty ocean on the perpendicular wall of rock. "Where are you running to, Nana?" panted Dalima. "Let us hurry on!" cried Anna impatiently, as she ran, casting behind her many an anxious look. "But, where are we going to, Nana?" "Why yonder!" cried Anna hurriedly as she pointed to the south. "But that way leads to the sea!" cried Dalima. "Just so," replied Anna, "and that is where I want to go." "What are we going to do there, Nana?" asked Dalima anxiously. "I know a hiding place where no one will find us or even go to look for us." "What? There, Nana?" "Yes, yes, do come along--try to make another effort--it cannot be far away!" "A hiding place?" repeated Dalima. "But, Nana, there is nothing over there but the bare rock." "Aye; but in those rocks there are holes!" cried Anna much excited. "The Goewahs!" exclaimed the baboe in utter dismay. Anna answered a few words which, however, Dalima did not catch. Darting on like a hind, the Resident's daughter had outstripped her companion. Dalima was naturally very strong and inured to fatigue and exertion; but her condition was beginning to tell upon her. The burden she had to bear and the rapid motion, had utterly exhausted her, and she felt her strength fast ebbing away. The blood began to flush up to her head, her temples throbbed, her eyes seemed covered as with a reddish film; and an insupportable feeling of weariness and listlessness pervaded her entire frame. Still she struggled on game to the last. Her breathing was getting thick and wheezy--she was, in fact, on the point of fainting altogether. But this little Javanese girl was endowed with a tough frame and an indomitable will; and, though almost exhausted, yet she struggled after her companion as mechanically she kept muttering to herself: "Forward! Forward!" Oh no! she could not, she would not leave her Nana in the hour of need. This painful progress went on for some time. At length, after they had turned round an immense boulder which seemed to form a barrier to the path, Anna stood still. Before her, in all its grandeur, lay stretched out the Indian Ocean; and from the height of about twelve hundred feet she could obtain a magnificent view of it. She cast one anxious look behind her. The position she now occupied commanded an extensive view of the path along which she had toiled up; but not a soul could she see stirring on it. Might the pursuit have been given up? It seemed improbable, yet it was possible. Might they have missed the road and gone off on some wrong track? Anna fancied, that every now and then, she had heard her name called out behind her; but that again might very well be the result of her over-wrought imagination. Again and again she eagerly scanned the horizon in all directions. But no, nothing, nothing was to be seen. Somewhat quieted she then turned her attention to poor Dalima, who, panting and moaning, had, by this time, come up to her, and then, almost senseless, had sunk to the ground. Anna sat down by her companion. She tried to cheer her up; she rubbed and kneaded, in native fashion, the muscles of her neck and shoulders, she patted her hands; in fact, she neglected nothing that the most anxious solicitude could suggest until she saw that Dalima had somewhat recovered from her prostration. As soon as she had succeeded in relieving her companion, Anna again gave an anxious nervous look behind her, but still she could perceive nothing. Then she walked forward resolutely to the edge of the slope which ran before her down to the sea. "Yes," said she, half aloud, "the ladder is still hanging there. I have heard a good many tales about the Goewah Temon. If it must be so--I shall fly there for refuge!" Then, once again, looking to the north, she continued: "But I hope I may not have to undertake that fearful journey--I can see nothing," she said with a sigh, "if Charles were really on my track, he must have appeared long before this on the table-land!" Therewith she turned her face full to the ocean. Though she was disguised in Javanese dress, yet she was, and always would remain, a child of the West; that is to say, her eyes were open to the glories which Nature was there offering to her gaze. Before her lay the Indian Ocean. On the far horizon it seemed to melt away into the sky; but yet in that distance a line clearly defined the apparent contact of sea and heaven. Closer inland the water wore a dark blue tint, forming a beautiful contrast with the light azure-blue of the heavens. This contrast was rendered more striking still by the tremendous rollers which came up from the South. Those mighty billows looked like long lines of liquid hills, which seemed to detach themselves from the horizon and come rolling in majestically upon the shore of Java. These immense waves were smooth as polished glass; for not the faintest breath of wind so much as ruffled their surface, and thus rising and falling calmly and mysteriously, they looked like the undulations of some vast sheet of dark blue cloth. They came rolling in quietly and regularly like the ranks of an advancing army; and, on the side of the wide ocean, they sloped but very gently, as though the deep were too languid to exert itself. But, on the land-side, the slope was steep and the columns of water came on black as an advancing wall. At first, and seen at a distance, the tops of these advancing waves were smooth and round; but as the watery mass neared the land and the wave rose higher and higher, so gradually did it narrow and grow sharper at the top; and the billows seemed to succeed one another at shorter intervals. At length, the tops lost their rounded form altogether--they became a mere ridge which began to fret angrily--then they sharpened to a mere line which, fast and furious, seemed eager to outstrip the wave itself. A moment after, this line of water began to bend forward, forward, forward still, until it formed an arc of immeasurable length. Presently that graceful curve seemed to fly to pieces and shake itself into a ragged crest of silver foam; and, at last, the entire mass came toppling down, covering the sea with thick milk-white froth which came sparkling, and thundering, and dashing itself into blinding spray against the wall of trachyte which seemed to say to the mighty element: "Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther." Anna did not venture to look down into the sheer depth below her, where the waters were boiling in their fury. She feared that a look into that giddy depth might shake her resolution should she actually be compelled to attempt the descent. She gazed out far away to the horizon. There, almost due west, she could clearly see Noesa Kembangan, that beautiful hilly island which, with its luxurious vegetation, seemed to float as a basket of flowers on the watery expanse. She could clearly discern its lighthouse standing on the Tjemering hill--standing out clear against the light blue sky like a pillar of cloud arising from among the foliage. Here and there the bosom of the ocean was dotted with a white sail like some big sea-bird disporting itself upon the glassy surface. And, as if chance had wished to accentuate that resemblance, just then a flight of snow-white cranes came hovering by, forming a dull white stripe on the azure sky. They flew harshly screeching towards the West, on their way, probably, to the fishy lagoons and morasses which there abound. The swift and easy flight of these birds suggested a sad thought to poor Anna: "Oh, that I had wings," she sighed, "that I also could fly, fly far away and be at rest!" And then her fancy carried her back to the past. The image of Charles van Nerekool rose up vividly before her. As in a dream she pictured to herself how happy she might have been by her lover's side. She could hear that "invitation à la valse" and to its delightful melody she seemed once again to float about with his arm around her. She could hear his first murmured confession of love. She again passed through those delicious moments after the dance in the quiet garden of the Residence. Before her, arose the Pandan grove in which Charles had gently detained her to reiterate his declaration of love. At the rhythmical swell and thunder of the ocean, which was giving forth its mighty melody at her feet, she fancied she could hear again the soft duet played by the cornet and the piccolo: "Un jour l'âme ravie, Je vous vis si jolie, Que je vous crus sortie Du céleste séjour. Etait-ce donc un ange, une femme, Qui venait d'embraser mon âme? Las! Je ne sais encore.... Mais depuis ce beau jour Je sais que j'aime d'un pur amour." She felt once again her lover's arm around her waist and his voice she could hear whispering to her softly, and saying: "Anna, my darling, I love you, I love you more dearly than words can express, more dearly than my mother, than my sister, more dearly than my own life!" Oh! those precious words! Ah! that heavenly moment! And then, dreaming on, she heard: "Tell me, Anna, tell me. Do you love me, dearest? I know I have already had your answer; but repeat that word once again, now that we are here alone--now that we are here, far from the noise of the world--repeat that little word now, as we are standing under the eye of God himself!" She had treasured up those words. They were engraven as it were, in her heart. Then she could feel the kiss--the first kiss of love which set the seal to her murmured reply. She could feel-- But, as at Santjoemeh, so here again, she was destined to be roughly startled out of her reverie. She fancied she could hear the voice of her mother. She would have cur-- No, no, not that, she had not the heart to curse anyone; but she cast one reproachful look upwards to heaven, as she felt how so much bliss had been turned to misery and woe. The pleasant dream had vanished. "A blighted life!" she sighed, "a blighted life!" A sudden shriek shook her up out of her day-dream. "Nana!" cried Dalima, "the gentlemen are coming." And indeed, to Anna's horror, she then saw in the bend of the path Murowski, van Nerekool, and Grenits, coming along with all speed. Without taking one instant for deliberation she dashed down the slope which led to the awful precipice before her. "Nana! Nana!" cried Dalima beside herself with terror, "what are you about?" The poor Javanese girl did her best to follow her companion; but, before she could fairly stagger to her feet, Anna was far ahead of her, and, fagged and exhausted as Dalima was, she could not pursue her quickly enough. As she neared the edge of the slope which ended in a perpendicular wall of rock running straight down to the sea, she could see Anna lay hold of the upper steps of the rottang-ladder which led down to the deep below. "Nana! Nana!" she cried in heartrending accents. She rushed on--she saw her young mistress place one foot carefully upon the ladder--she saw her body gradually disappearing. "Nana! Nana!" Now, only Anna's head was visible. That also disappeared, and she could only see one hand clutching at the topmost rung. "Nana! Nana!" The hand let go its hold before Dalima could bend forward to grasp it. It was gone--gone! Then the Javanese girl flung herself flat upon the ground and peered over the edge of the fearful precipice which yawned beneath her. What she saw there was enough to freeze the young blood in her veins. But she had no time to waste in gazing with horror at what was going on below. Once again she shrieked, "Nana! Nana!" Just then she felt some one grasp her arm. She looked up, and van Nerekool was standing beside her. "You here, Dalima!" cried he, not understanding in the least what was going on. "Where is nonna Anna?" "Allah! tobat toean!" cried Dalima, still lying on the ground, but pointing with horror down into the deep. "There? There?" exclaimed Charles beside himself with terror, while he flung himself down on the ground and gazed into that frightful precipice. Fortunately Grenits and Murowski were close behind their friend. He was in a fearfully dangerous position, as he, regardless of all caution, hung over the wall of rock, and it was well for him that his friends firmly grasped his legs. "Charles! Charles!" they cried. "Anna! Anna!" cried van Nerekool in despair--for yonder, far beneath him, he could see the girl cautiously climbing down the long ladder which, made of rottang ropes, was dangling and swaying about under the burden it had to carry. The foot of this crazy ladder dipped into the sea, and was being swayed about by the breakers as they came rolling in shore. When a wave thundered up it swept the end of the ladder into the cave as the water rushed into the opening; and then, when it receded spouting out of the mouth with the force of a cataract, the foot of the ladder was whirled away again in the opposite direction. This violent motion repeatedly dashed Anna up against the face of the rock as she was dangling there far above the surface of the sea, and every now and then a roller would dash its blinding spray upward as if greedy for its prey. At that fearful sight van Nerekool shuddered. "Anna! Anna!" he called again and again in heartrending tones. His voice seemed to reach her above the din of the water. Timidly she glanced upwards. When she saw that face which showed clearly against the blue sky, and which she recognised in an instant, she uttered a faint shriek and hurried down faster than before. Van Nerekool sprang to his feet. "I must go down!" cried he nervously. And before his friends could do anything to prevent him, he had grasped the top of the ladder, had stretched out one foot over the abyss, had placed it into one of the rungs, and had begun his perilous descent. It was now Murowski's turn, and Grenits's turn, to fling themselves down flat on the ground. Certainly it was a horrifying sight to behold those two human beings dangling above that roaring sea on one frail ladder of rope. The two men could not speak, they could hardly breathe, so intense was the excitement and tension of that moment. There they lay gazing down, utterly powerless to stretch out even a finger to save their friend. As soon as Anna perceived that van Nerekool was following her she obeyed the impulse which had driven her to flight, and tried to descend more rapidly than before. But, another thought came flashing upon her. She had heard the dessa-people at Ajo talking a great deal about the Goewah Temon. She knew, from them, that, at low water, the entrance to the cave might be reached; and that then the cave itself might be entered. She knew also that this entrance could only be gained by swimming, because the bottom of the cavity was quite six feet below the lowest water mark. She did not mind that, for she could swim like a duck; but--! but--! all this was only practicable at ebb tide, at dead low water, and when the sea was calm and there were no breakers rolling in. But now--! now the waves were dashing with terrific violence against that trachyte wall--It seemed as if every successive wave reached higher--Yet she descended--further down--still down-- "Anna! Anna!" cried Charles above her head. At length she reached the top of the vaulted cavity. She knew that, at low water, the opening was about fifty feet high, but how narrow did it look just then! Indeed the greater part of it was covered by the sea. She fancied she might just manage to reach the courses of rottang-rope which led from the mouth of the hole to its interior to assist the gatherers of swallows' nests in their perilous work. She was putting out her hand to feel for one of those cables. But, as she did so, a wave of enormous strength came rolling up and broke at her feet with a crash like thunder, and fearfully shook the foot of the ladder which hung loosely floating about at the entrance of the cave. Terrified out of her senses, the young girl lost her presence of mind altogether. She let go her grip, and fell backward into the seething water. "A blighted life!" was her last cry as she fell. Van Nerekool had looked down, as he felt the huge wave approaching--he saw his beloved Anna fall backward--he saw her floating in that boiling surf--he saw her tossed and rolled about like a log in that thick mass of white foam. For the merest fraction of a second he could see her glorious mass of jet-black hair waving on the gleaming surface--and then--all was sucked up into the cave and disappeared from his view. To him, she was now lost for ever! There he was, helplessly dangling above the precipice which had just swallowed up his dearest treasure on earth, and--for an instant he knew not what to do. The next moment came the lull and the huge billow was hurrying back to sea. Then the young man saw the immense volume of water spouting out of the cave with magnificent energy; but--in that clear blue column, as it rushed forth, his eye could catch nothing which looked like a human body; and it flashed upon him that, dead or alive, Anna must have been left behind in the cave. She might have clutched hold of some projecting rock, her clothing might have caught somewhere. Quick as lightning he darted down the ladder. The top of that cave he must get to before the next wave came tumbling in. With feverish eagerness he clutched the rungs--he made no use of his feet--he rather slid down and--he just contrived to grasp one of the rottang cables, and get his feet clear of the ladder when, another wave gave it a violent shake which might have compelled him to let go his grip and might have swallowed him up as it had done Anna. Van Nerekool was now, comparatively speaking, safe. Two sturdy cables of considerable thickness were stretched out parallel to one another all along the inner wall of the grot. At intervals these were fastened by gemoetoe cords to the salient parts of the rock. On the lower of these cables Charles could plant his feet, while with his hands he grasped the upper one. Beneath him the sea was roaring and over his head and all around him fluttered the sea-swallows uttering their shrill cries and darting in and out of the mouth of the cave through the blinding spray. Grenits and Murowski from the top of the cliff had eagerly watched all that had passed. They had been horrified at seeing Anna fall and van Nerekool disappear in the cavity. "Well!" cried one of them, "what to do now?" "We can do no good up here," said the other. Dalima begged them to tell her what they had seen, and as soon as she had heard it she cried: "We must be off at once to the loerah of the dessa Ajo. He has a boat with which, I know, he occasionally visits the Goewahs." And that brave little Javanese girl, forgetting all about herself and her painful condition, shook off her fatigue and was already far down the pathway before the Europeans had found time to follow her. And, when they came to the foot of the mountain they found the boat of which Dalima had spoken. The loerah made a very wry face when he heard the project of the two Europeans. To try and get to the Goewah Temon in such weather! It could not be done. He pointed to the mouth of the Kali Djeties. There the mountain water flowing down was struggling with the rising tide and made the breakers fly up in clouds of spray. At the sight, which was indeed an awful one, the two friends all but despaired. Must they then give up all hope? Must they leave van Nerekool to perish without an effort? "I will give you fifty guilders, loerah!" cried Grenits, "if you bring me up to the cave!" The Javanese chief scratched the back of his head in sore perplexity. "And I," cried Murowski, "I give another fifty!" The loerah began to waver. He exchanged a few anxious words with a couple of men who stood by his side. These seemed not so scrupulous. With a gesture of assent they at once sprang into the boat into which the Europeans took their seats also. "Look here," cried Grenits almost cheerfully, "each of you fellows shall have five-and-twenty guilders if we succeed!" "I will give the same to each of you," said Murowski, "and now give way with all your might." The loerah had taken his place in the afterpart of the crazy boat and he held the steering paddle. Even Dalima and our two friends Grenits and Murowski had armed themselves with a paddle and prepared to help the rowers to the best of their ability. Under the impulse of these six blades the boat shot rapidly ahead. At first, as long as the boat was in the bay all went well. The loerah steered straight for the middle of the entrance of the Moeara; for he was anxious to avoid the tossing and the dangerous back-draught of the water along the coast, and thus, helped on by the stream of the river, the little boat sped on like an arrow released from the bowstring. But, as they gradually got into the estuary, the force of the ocean began to make itself felt. The current began to decrease more and more until at length it was no longer perceptible. Now small waves began to beat up against the keel, and these presently increased in size and power as they coursed along the sides and gave a kind of pounding or stamping motion to the little boat. Still the canoe travelled on--it got into the midst of the foam caused by the breakers and into the eddies formed by the retreating waves. The little cockle-shell seemed dancing on foam. The loerah, who knew that the critical moment was approaching, was sitting in the stern his lips tightly compressed. He wore an anxious and determined look as he clutched his steering-paddle which, at one time, the wave strove, as it were, to pluck from his grasp, and at another the violent swaying of the boat threatened to wrench from him. He was keeping a most anxious look-out, it was a question of life or death. Could he venture to go on? When the billow broke, the hollow tree-stem was at a considerable distance from it. But now the question was: could they hope to get over the distance between that mountain of water and the next one before it also would break? No, he thought they could not. The risk was too great to run. Still he kept looking out and, in the far distance, the next mass of water came steadily rolling up. It was coming on like a towering hill. To the men sitting in that frail canoe it looked like a mountain. The little boat was still hurrying on and, though very unsteadily, yet the five paddles kept way on her. The great wave every instant came nearer and nearer--at length it seemed to rear--it rose as it were perpendicularly over that nutshell, which seemed mad enough to brave its fury. Already it began to form its silvery white crest and appeared like a solid wall of polished blue glittering under the sun's beams. "Easy all," shouted the loerah, who had the while been carefully watching the approaching wave. At the word the paddles ceased to move, and the boat lost all the way she had on her. But just then it seemed as if, without any impulse at all, the little boat was hurrying to meet the huge billow. It looked as if she must inevitably be swallowed up in that mighty curl of water which was about to form. "Back her, back her!" shouted the loerah as he plied his paddle vigorously. Fortunately the frail boat immediately obeyed the reversed action of the paddles, and was drawing back at the moment when the mass of water was beginning to topple over. One moment, indeed it was only for the fraction of a second, the inmates of the canoe caught a glimpse of that vast cave of water, that enormous cylinder of light-blue transparent crystal. But still the wave continued to curl, to describe something like three quarters of a complete arc, and then--it came crashing down at a few paces from where the boat lay, it came crashing down with a sound like thunder, and covered the entire surface of the sea with thick, milk-white foam. "Give way, give way!" now fairly roared the loerah and, impelled by those sturdy arms, the boat shot ahead over the whirling eddies, through the dense foam flakes, while the terrible force of water went dashing up the mouth of the Moeara. Now came the time for exertion; for she must be well away out of that place before the back-sweep of the retreating wave could overtake her, she must be fairly out to sea before another such breaker could come upon her. The men plied their paddles furiously, and the small craft shot ahead with lightning speed. A little while, one supreme effort, and then she began to rise. "Give way! Give way!" again shouted the loerah and, redoubling his own efforts, he encouraged his men to row vigorously. Thus impelled under the frantic strokes of the rowers, the boat was driven up the slope of the wave, which had not yet become dangerously steep. For an instant the little shell hung balancing on that watery edge, her ends hovering in the air, only the centre of her keel resting on the water, and then, she quietly slid down the opposite pent and all were out of danger. The loerah thereupon steered a southerly course; but yet it took a considerable time to reach the mouth of the Goewah. When they got near the cave the ebb tide had fairly set in, and the helmsman had to exercise only ordinary prudence to pilot the boat into the cavity. Meanwhile what had been going on inside? When van Nerekool had gained a footing on one of the cables, he had at once cautiously begun to advance, groping his way in the twilight which reigned in the cave. It struck him that the subterranean vault, into which he was now venturing, was of considerable extent, and ran in far under the base of the mountains; but at the same time, he noticed that the bottom of the cave gradually rose, so that the sea, excepting in a few holes here and there, only penetrated about two hundred feet into the interior. But, within that space, the water had full sway, and was raging furiously. At first, he could hardly see anything: but presently his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and he began, moreover, to feel more confidence in the feat of tight-rope walking he was trying to accomplish. Thus he advanced deeper and deeper still into the cavity. At length, close beside a slab of trachyte against which the water was dashing furiously, he thought he could descry something. Taking advantage of every prominent bit of rock he carefully let himself down, and he was fortunate enough to succeed in reaching the mass of trachyte. He found its surface uneven enough to give firm foothold, and at length he found some natural steps by which he could venture to descend to the water's edge. And when he got there--there was his Anna, quite unconscious! She had, in her drowning agony, clutched at the rugged face of the rock. The lower part of her body lay floating about in the water; but her head was resting on her arm, which encircled one of the out-jutting pieces of stone. Charles seized her, he grasped her waist and tried to drag her up against the face of the boulder. The tide was rising and he had need to make haste; for every moment it seemed more probable that Anna would be washed away by the back-rushing waves. By dint of putting forth all his strength, Charles at length succeeded in dragging her to the upper surface of the slab, and then he sat down beside her. He took off his coat and spread it out upon the stone to make his Anna as comfortable a resting place as he could. Her head was resting on his lap and, in that position, he allowed her for awhile quietly to rest. A single glance around had satisfied van Nerekool of the fact that the highest tides had never reached the top of the block of stone, and that therefore they were, as far as the sea was concerned, in a place of safety. With his handkerchief he gently wiped away the sea-water from her pale countenance, and he took a strange delight in spreading out upon his knees her luxuriant mass of black-hair as if to dry it. He knew also that it would be worse than useless to try and get out of the cave before low water, the violence of the waves was too great to admit of any such hope. But, he thought, that, at dead-low water it might be possible to reach the ladder which was still tossing about in the entrance of the cave. By that time he had no doubt that Anna would have regained consciousness, and he knew she could swim. Then once on the ladder--However! he thought, time will bring counsel! Thus musing he gazed down at the beautiful girl who lay there helpless on his knees, Murowski, he thought, and Grenits would surely do something to come to the rescue. It was indeed a critical moment in the young man's life. There, stretched out before him, lay the one being who was dearer to him than all the earth, the one being whom he adored with all the power of his soul, the one being who had robbed him of sleep and deprived him of rest, whose dear image was always and everywhere floating before him. The one human being whom he longed for, whom he yearned to call his own, with all the passionate eagerness and all the tenderness of his impulsive nature. Anna, in her Javanese dress, was covered only by her sarong and kabaja. The slendang, which had served as her head-dress, she had lost in her descent down the ladder. This extremely primitive costume, made of the lightest and most flimsy materials, was now wet through; and there lay the poor girl unconscious on the lap of her lover, who was suffering torments which might fitly have found a place in Dante's Inferno. The dim twilight and the finely divided spray which hung all around seemed to bathe that virgin form in a kind of mystic ether and imparted to the entire scene something weird and sublime. Slowly--very slowly--time rolled on--too slowly for poor Charles van Nerekool. Meanwhile the water no longer rose, and the turn of the tide was beginning to be felt. Every wave which rushed in, roared and boiled and foamed just as did the former one; but yet the water did not reach quite so high, nor did the waves rage so furiously. But, hours would have to elapse before Charles could venture to make for the opening. "Oh, if Anna would but awake," sighed van Nerekool, who, not for an instant, had moved his eyes from the beloved object, "oh, that she would awake! In her own presence she would find a much more powerful protector than in me!" His prayer was heard. Still insensible, Anna mechanically made an attempt to wipe away some drops of water from her brow. Charles tried to assist her in this, he tried to put up his handkerchief; but in doing so he had stooped and his hot feverish breath fell on the face and neck of the girl. This startled Anna and, at length, she opened her eyes. She turned her head, she looked about inquiringly, not able to make out where she was; presently her eye fell upon Charles. With a loud scream she made an effort to start up, "You, you here?" she exclaimed, and again she tried to rise and run away. But van Nerekool gently put his arm round her waist, and drew her to his breast: "Anna," said he, "dearest Anna, do take care, do be quiet--you will slip down--the sea is still much too high." "You here!" she cried half-dazed, "I shall--I will--" And once again she attempted to wrench herself out of his arms. "Anna," said he soothingly, "do be quiet, do be prudent! the rock is wet and slippery. Be careful, you are yet in great danger." His voice was so low and he spoke so tenderly, that the young girl gave up her wild attempt. But when her eye fell upon her own person and she discovered in what a state she was lying in the young man's arms, she once again tried to shake herself free. The sea-water had washed the stain off her face, and the bright scarlet blush was now plainly visible as she cast down her eyes in dire distress. "Leave me, Charles," she stammered in confusion, "do leave me!" But he only clasped her tighter to his heart, and covered her face with burning kisses. "Anna, I love you--Anna, I have found you again!" he exclaimed, passionately, "and never, never again shall I leave you." "But, Charles, do have pity on me," pleaded the poor girl in faltering accents, as she again strove to free herself from his embrace, "yours I can, I may--never be." "Anna," cried he huskily, as he pressed her closer and closer still to his breast. She probably misunderstood his action--at all events she continued very, very sadly: "No, Charles, your wife I can never be--and--oh, you love me too well, do you not?--to have any other thoughts." The poor girl said these words in a voice so unutterably sad that van Nerekool felt at once that he had unwittingly wounded her modesty. At once he released her, though he still kept his arm round her waist. "But, Anna," said he, "why should you not become my wife?" "No, never!" replied she resolutely. "Not then, and not now. I have given you my reason very fully. Now let me go." "But, Anna," he persisted, "since that time circumstances have entirely changed." "What circumstances?" she asked, looking up anxiously in the young man's face. "Why, now your father and mother are dead--" "What? father and mother dead?" exclaimed the poor girl, before the word had fairly left his lips. He nodded assent. Anna covered her face with both hands and sobbed convulsively. It was a very strange scene down there in that gloomy cave. Those two young people--one of them in his shirt sleeves--the other in her wet sarong and kabaja, indeed, one might say, scarcely dressed at all--sitting there side by side on a bare slab of rock. She with her face buried in her hands and sobbing as if her heart would break, he gazing down eagerly and lovingly upon her, striving, as it were, to fathom the thoughts which were rising in that maiden breast, and upon which he felt that his happiness depended. "But, can it be true?" said she at last amidst the sobs which convulsively shook her entire frame, "can it be true? Oh, Charles, you could not be cruel enough to invent such a story. Charles, Charles, what am I to believe?" "Anna, dearest Anna, what do you think of me? do you really think me capable of thus trifling with your most sacred feelings. Indeed, you are misjudging me, Anna." She kept on weeping bitterly and was inconsolable. He gently drew her to him, trying to comfort her in her distress. And now she offered no resistance; but she rather nestled up to his breast. Now that she was an orphan, and that she knew she was alone in the world, she sought for protection with the man whom she had always faithfully loved. "Both dead," she kept repeating again and again, "what did they die of? Oh, tell me how it happened! You have come straight from Santjoemeh, and you must know all about it." "No, my love, on the contrary I know just nothing at all. When I left Santjoemeh both your parents were in excellent health and spirits. On the very morning when I set out with Grenits--" "With Grenits?" asked Anna, "Theodoor Grenits? Is he with you here?" "Yes, my love, he is--but, as I was saying, when we started, on that very morning Mr. and Mrs. van Gulpendam set out for Soeka maniesan." "Soeka maniesan?" inquired Anna, "what place may that be?" "It is a sugar factory situated in the extreme east of the Residence of Santjoemeh. It was not until after we had reached Gombong that we received tidings of the sad event. A telegram." And then, in as few words as he could, he told the poor girl all he knew. It was not much and amounted simply to the fact that both the Resident and his wife had been murdered by a band of robbers. The letter in which van Rheijn promised to give further details was, no doubt, at that moment waiting for them at Gombong. When he had told Anna all he knew, van Nerekool paused for a few moments. He wished to give the poor girl time to recover, in some measure, from the terrible blow that had so suddenly fallen upon her. She was literally overwhelmed with sorrow and sat leaning up against him weeping bitterly. Her nature had but little in common with that of her parents. She herself had brought about the parting--of her own free will she had left her parents' roof, with the settled determination of never returning to it again. But now, death had stepped in--death had made that parting irrevocable--death had made a reunion impossible--and now, all her affections at once flew back to the beings to whom she owed her life. Now she clean forgot all the dreary past, she clean forgot all that was bad, only to remember, with the greater tenderness, whatever had been kind and good. Yes, she was, indeed and in truth, deeply affected, and, had it been in her power, she would have laid down her life to undo the past. While they were sitting thus the ebb tide had fairly set in, and the water was beginning rapidly to draw back. Every successive wave, as it rushed into the cave, was less violent and retreated also more quietly. That went on until the fury of the water had entirely abated, and presently they were merely ripples that entered the Goewah Temon. "Now, my dearest Anna," said van Nerekool, anxious to break the silence and to lead her thoughts into another channel, "now it is time to move, or else we might be surprised by another tide." She raised her head and looked about her. When she saw that the sea was calm she also felt that no time was to be lost. She wiped away her tears. "Yes," said she, "we must get out of this place; but, can you swim? For, you see, the water which is standing in the mouth of the cave yonder is much too deep to wade through. Yes? Then that is all right--there is no fear--we shall soon get to the ladder." With these words she prepared to leave the stone on which they had found a safe resting-place, and was getting ready to slip into the water; but Charles kept her back, and gently pressing her to him, he said: "After the terrible news you have just now heard from me it may not be right for me to speak of love. But, Anna, I have lately felt so utterly wretched, and, in these last few moments I have been so unspeakably happy! Promise me now, in this solemn place and in this solemn hour, that you will not again try to escape from me." She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes, there was an expression of heart-felt sorrow in her countenance, and she could not utter a single word. "All obstacles," continued he, softly whispering in her ear, "are now removed. You are now your own mistress. Tell me, dearest Anna, may I hope?" She turned away her head and laid her hand on his mouth. There was, in the midst of her sorrow, something playful in the action, and Charles caught that hand and covered it with kisses. "Thanks!" he said, "thanks! Oh I know well that just now you can give me no other answer. Thanks again and again. But Anna, now we must take to the water, we must be off." Both were on the point of entering the sea and beginning their perilous journey, when voices were heard outside the cave. Charles and Anna looked at one another in surprise; but in another moment they saw Dalima, Grenits, and Murowski, accompanied by a couple of Javanese, who--the reader knows in what manner--appeared in a canoe at the mouth of the cave. "Great heavens!" exclaimed poor Anna, as she cast a look at her clothing. "And I in this wet dress!" She blushed scarlet as she saw the sarong and kabaja clinging to her limbs. She felt, moreover, that Charles was gazing at her; and this only augmented her confusion. Charles, however, took up the coat on which she had been seated and offered it to her as a covering. Meanwhile the little boat had been coming up and Grenits and Murowski, and especially Dalima, were beside themselves with joy when they found that the friends, whom they had given up for lost, were alive and well. The loerah of the dessa Ajo had flung a couple of sarongs into his boat before starting, to wrap up the bodies in, he had said, so certain was he that the pair must have perished. But, these two garments now came in very handy. Anna was able to wrap herself well in them, and in this Dalima was eager to help her. Then she stepped into the boat. In a few minutes they had left the Goewah Temon and, two hours later, Anna, Dalima, van Nerekool, Grenits and Murowski were safely and comfortably seated together in the little house on the slope of the Goenoeng Poleng. At that meeting, plans for the future were very speedily determined upon, and the sun had scarcely reached the zenith, before Anna and Dalima were seated, each in a litter, and were on their way to Karang Anjer. The gentlemen formed the escort to the two litters; and a very formidable escort they looked, armed, as they were, with their fowling pieces. At the house of the Steenvlaks Anna met with the most cordial reception. There she determined to remain until--Well, yes! until the days of her mourning were passed. After all this had been properly settled the young men returned to Gombong. Theodoor and Charles at once went to the captain who was in command there, to take leave of him and to thank him for having granted their friend Murowski leave to accompany them. "Well, gentlemen," cried the bluff but kind-hearted soldier as he caught sight of them, "have you had any luck?" "Oh yes," cried Grenits, "we have had splendid success!" "That is right, I am glad to hear it. And did you get any good specimens?" "Glorious specimens, captain!" exclaimed Murowski, roguishly, "splendid specimens! Why, amongst others we have had the luck to catch a magnificent, a unique butterfly--a puella formosa." "Very good, I wish you luck with the little beast, but for heaven's sake don't bother me with your Latin." Even van Nerekool could not refrain from laughing as he thought of the little butterfly they had captured. Fourteen months later Anna van Gulpendam and Charles van Nerekool became man and wife. The wedding took place very simply and without the slightest display, at the house of Assistant Resident Steenvlak. August van Beneden and Theodoor Grenits gave away the bride, and Edward van Rheijn and the Polish doctor Murowski were witnesses for the bridegroom. At the conclusion of the marriage ceremony, who should suddenly turn up but William Verstork. After the death of Resident van Gulpendam, he had been at once recalled to Santjoemeh where his merits were well known and where he was highly esteemed. No one expected to see him at the wedding; for a telegram had brought the news that the steamer in which he travelled from Batavia had run ashore and had stuck fast somewhere about Tegal. But, when he found that getting the ship off the shallows would be a long business, Verstork had left her and gone ashore, and then had posted all the way to Karang Anjer. He was determined, at any cost, to be present at his friend's wedding. But, on his journey, he had been unavoidably delayed, and thus came too late to take part in the actual ceremony, though in ample time to join, on that auspicious day, in the warm congratulations which were showered on the young couple. Yes, if ever there were hearty congratulations and sincere good wishes they were indeed those which the young people received from the friends who, in the absence of nearer relations on either side, were then gathered around them. After the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. van Nerekool started for Tjilatjap intending there to take the boat to Batavia where van Nerekool had obtained a judicial appointment. The others returned to their own spheres of work. Murowski remained at Gombong and the others went to Santjoemeh and resumed their everyday duties. But all of them, to a man, were animated with one resolution and had determined that thenceforward it should rule all their actions. And that resolution was, to carry on war--implacable war--war à outrance against the horrors of the opium traffic. If they could only succeed in abolishing the fatal system of opium farming--if they could but succeed in preventing that poison from being forced upon the population, then they felt assured that abuse of opium would soon cease to be a curse of the fair island of Java; and that the opium-fiend would soon lose his power. And now we conclude with the person who gives her name to this book. We must tell our readers that a few months after baboe Dalima had found those whom she loved so faithfully and so well in the cave of the Karang Bollong mountain range, she became the mother of a dead child. That had been a great blow to her; for, in spite of the foul outrage of which she had been the victim, her warm little heart had eagerly looked forward to the advent of the little stranger. She had so looked forward to love the poor little thing. Oh, how tenderly she would have nursed it, how she would have fondled it and caressed it--as perhaps no other mother had ever done before her. Such were her dreams. She had already prepared its cradle. Not such a thing as we cold Western folk understand by the word; no, no, it was a very simple little basket, woven by her own fingers out of bamboo. But that little crib she had made so cosy, so comfortable; she had furnished it with the softest cushions and wrapped round it the best of her sarongs to keep away the mosquitoes by night and ward off the sun's rays by day. It would be a little nest which she would hang up in the front gallery of the small cottage in which she meant to take up her abode, and, as she softly would rock it to and fro she would play on the gambang and lull her little bird to sleep with her low sweet song. Now, all that happiness was gone! The fatigue, the exertion which she had undergone, and all the anxieties of the terrible events through which she had passed; the dreadful suspense at the Goewah Temon in which she had so nearly lost her darling Nana, had proved too much for her. Yes, she had been very very sad; but time heals even the deepest wounds. And then, after all, she was with her Nana and she intended to remain with her to her latest breath. She had travelled with Anna to Batavia, and there she settled down to be the baboe of the little van Nerekools who, she fervently hoped, would bless the union of her friends. And anyone who knows the faithful affection with which the Javanese do attach themselves to their masters, if the latter will but treat them with anything like fairness and kindness, must feel certain that baboe Dalima will remain faithful to her trust until THE END.