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The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes ou les planches trop grandes pour dtre reproduites en un seul cliche sont filmdes & partir de Tangle supdrieure gauche, de gauche d droite et de haut en bas, en prenant Ie nombre d'images ndcessaire. Le diagramme suivant illustre la m6thode : 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 FIRE AND FROST Stories, Dialogues, Satires, Essays, Poems, Etc. BY ETH ELBERT F. H. CROSS. THE BRYANT PRESS Toronto, 1898, A b I Entered according to the Act of Parliament of Canada in the office of tke Minister of Agriculture in the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Ninety-eight by Ethelbert F, H. Cross. PREFACE. Tlic: contents of this rolume include a number of stories and essays, etc., which have been written by the author at irregular intervals during the last few years, and some of which have already been published in periodical form— some of the stories in Sa/urday Aig/if, the essays in the M^'eek—ihe earliest in point of date being the essays, the majority of which were written several years ago. l^he essay on D'Arcy McCiee (An Exile from Erin) appeared in the World. Owing to the exigencies of space these essays have been abbreviated in the present volume, and for the same reason it has been im- possible to insert the " Scenes and Spirit Songs from Azrael," originally intended for publication in this volume. The essay entitled " The Great Days " consists largely of extracts from a larger paper on " The Origin and Destiny of Man." This and other recent essays of the author (including "A New Theory of Life," **The Unity and Eternity of Mind," and "A New Theory of the State," etc.) have not been inserted in this IV, PREFACE. volume, partly on account of their length, and also because they deal with controverted rjuestions in economics and philosophy, and might perhaps be more fittingly published in a separate volume than in one which, like " Fire and Frost," is intended for popular perusal, and appeals to the public chiefly on its literary merits. INDEX. Stories : ^ A Face on King Street "^""g A (iuest of God . 37 A Tragic Smile ... 51 The Last Patient ,, Fall of the Curate . . . 102 The Terrible Tale... 107 'J'he Yellow Mask The Triumph of Realism ,5 One Chum 176 A Rebel '97 Sweet Marie . . 202 An Extraordinary Episode 229 Satires : Thou Shalt Not Smile ^ The Splendid Soul The Intruder .... 130 Poems : The City Celestial.. . ••• 234 The Eternal Fires .... Vi. INDEX. PoKMS (Continued) : PAGK Spirit Sonnet 6 Accursed Sleep ^ 6 Ode to a* Book 89 J^ove and Pride 19^^ Utophia 128 Dialogues : The Devil and Mrs. Grundy 212 Apollo and Tomkins 63 King Billy and St. Pat . 217 Jonah and tie Whale 220 Peace and \' ar 173 Essays : The (ireat Days 17 A Poet Politician no A Master of Intrigue 183 Genius and Patriotibm 56 A Midnight Minstrel ... 145 Impressions of Rossetti 95 Politics as a Fine Art 226 An Exile from Erin 78 Impressions of a Poet 227 INDKX. vii. Humorous Selections, Prose-Poems, Etc. : A Tale of the Twelfth ',6 1' The Haunted Trolley 223 A^^emory 208 The Master Marksman , ^^ Scene from Azrael 27 Two Historic Costumes - , Something _^ g The Splendid Soul THEY stood on a star together, the Devil and Mammon, and looked down upon the earth as it swung hke a little apple far below in the infinite vortices uf the ether. *' It is a miserable little world," said Mammon, sur- veying it critically, " an extremely absurd little world." " Don't judge it by its inhabitants," said Satan pathetic- ally. " The world itself is not a bad one. and if you are looking for a bargain — something really nice in the way of worlds — there is the very thing you want." " But what are those little creatures crawling about on the surface of the little mud ball?" asked Mammon. " I don't want a world with vcmin like that on it. Are they ants ? Are they bugs ? " *' Yes, hum-bugs," said Satan. "They call themselves men, I believe, but ihey are really only vegetables, for they spend all their time hunting round for stuff to put into little bags they call their stomachs. They used to be spirits once, but all the spirit in them has dwindled down to a little spark they call their souls, which they seldom use at all, and they seem deaf and blind to all divinity in earth and air and heaven. I had quite a romantic career down there myself once." "So I believe,'' said Mammon. "That affair was badly bungled on both sides. Speaking from a purely business standpoint, I could never understand why any- one should try to save souls when he could buy them." " Ha ha ha," laughed Satan merrily. _^ ^ IIIK S1»I,I':NI)II> soui, " Oh, you may laui^h," cried Mamnion, " but this is a practic;il age and there's precious little that cash won't buy. Now if I were going into the salvation business and had the financial resources of Paradise at my com- mand do you suppose I would go about the salvation of souls in the old fashioned way with churches, preachers, crucifixes, etc.? No, not I. I'd take a run down to earth and make a straight cash offer for the whole outfit." " Ha ha ha," laughed Satan. *' Do you doubt it ? " said Mammon warmly. " Well I shall go down and buy them. If they value their souls so little, perhaps I won't need the finances of heaven." So Mammon spread his wings and soared majestically earthward, landing at the corner of King and Yonge street'J, where he assumed the form of a nian and strolled into a newspaper ofifice, '* I am thinking of buying up the earth," he remarked to the editor. " What will you take for your soul? " "You will find it in the waste-basket," said the editor, " I used it for a week or two, but the public wouldn't stand it, and the circulation declined. Run an ad. into the paper and you may do what you like with my soul." So Mammon took the editor's soul and passed on till I e met a woman. " Sell you my soul ! " cried the woman. " Oh, ever so gladly will I. It gives me such awful discomfort just at the most critical moments. A soul is the only part of a woman which no one seems to admire. Five dol- lars, did you say ? O ! thank you — that will buy me a new set of teeth." And, smiling artistically, she passed away, and Mam- THE SPLENDID SOUI,. to lill rt f mon proceeded till he met a politician, from whom he offered to buy a soul. " Why, certainly," said the politician. " It is a ter- tible nusiance to me. I have been trying to sell it all my life ; but you must take it subject to mortgages, and clean it at your own expense." So Mammon took, it, sadly, and passed to the house of the merchant. ' I have locked it up in my safe," said the merchant, " for fear it might get out and interfere with t)usiness. My soul is the only part of my possessions which I can- not reckon among my assets. Its use means commer- cial ruin." Then Mammon took the merchant's soul, and pro- ceeded till he met a laborer. " Sell you my soul I " said the laborer. " Ask me for something I own. I i)awned that to the boss for a living. I'm only a machine, you know, for working and eating and sleeping. What do I want with a soul ? " So Mammon asked the boss for the soul of the laborer, who sold it to him gladly, saying : " It is the only part of him I can't get any work out of, and it's always on the strike. You may take my own if you wish it, too. I never use it at all." Passing on his way. Mammon met a preacher. •'Why, certainly," said the preacher. "Bless us, what do I want with a mind ? Thinking is not part of my business. Everything is down in the book, you know, and besides the old-fashioned days when preach- ers required souls have passed away. When one has a fashionable congregation one doesn't care to ofTend them 4 THE. SPLENDID SOUK. by parading one's soul in public. Put a mite into the plate and you may take the soul if you wish. This is a practical age, and I can't run a church without money. So Mammon took the soul of the preacher and passed upon his way, and as he passed upon his way the news of his mission got abroad, and the people flocked to offer him their souls. And as he walked abroad he was delighted with the beauty of the world, but disgusted with the littleness of its people. " They are not men at all," he said, in scorn. " They are worms — earth of the earth and dust of the dust — and the most honored among them is he who sells his soul for the highest pi ice." But he was amazed to find so sordid a people sur- rounded by so many beautiful things, and marvelled exceedingly at the beauty of the buildings, the wonder- ful pictures that hung on the walls, the charm of the poems he read in the books, and the divine and pas- sionate music that filled the world with melody and joy when the people sang like echoes the songs of souls unseen. And Mammon called the people together and offered to buy their collective souls if every one was offered, but when the souls were piled in the marketplace it was found that one was lacking. " Who will not sell his soul?" shrieked the people. " Where is the crank who will not sell his soul ? " They found him in an attic with his pen between his fingers, writing divinest music — the dreamer, the poet, the thinker — who would not sell his soul. They took him to the market-place and tied him to a stake, and lit .1 , THK SPLENDID SOUL. 5 the fagols till the fierce flames crept up and burned his warm, white flesh. " Now, tell me," said Mammon to the people, as they watched the Dreamer burning, " who made the world so fair? Who filled it with the glory of song and the frozen joy called art ; the pictures that blush and glow with life ; the marble lips that almost speak ; the poems that thrill and palpitate in ecstacy of melodious meaning ? Who brought into the world the sweet things that make life worth living ?" The people bowed their heads in shame, and pointed to the stake. "It was he," they murmured, guiltily, "the man we are burning — the Dreamer." The Dreamer opened his lips and smiled, and spake before he died. •' I leave my spirit to the world," he said, " and Mammon is too poor to buy it now." They stood on a star together, God and the Dreamer. *' What is that wonderful world be'ow ? " asked the Dreamer, as he looked at a glorious sphereof light which swept through the luminous aisles of the infinite, its sur- face thronged with beautiful spirits, who lifted their voices in [)assionate song, exhaling many colored waves of melody and light on earth and heaven, and filling the universe with joy. " That is the sweetest star of all," said the Almighty One, " the ancient earth, transfigured by your love and sufiiering, and peopled wit. ihe souls you savt'd from Mammon. Come, we will dwell among them." w ! r Spirit— Sonnet. HOSE was the hand that bound me down In this dark temple of mortah'ty, And with unkindest strength confined A living Spirit in a house of clay, O aw/ul Father of tremend(.us tragedy, Shall I not stagger to my feet ai^am' >Vho sleepless in the midinght of mortality Shudder forever with divinest pain • And thou, O Earth, unholy sanctuary. Dark mother, on whose bosom cold 'l lie Clasp me not ever to thy breast so ti^ht Soon shall I rend aside thy arms, and fly Home to the realms of divinest light, The white eternal mansions of the'sky. j|8 ^ i A Face on King Street. WHERE had I seen it before— that face so strange and so familiar? Suddenly in the twilight it paused before me on the street — the face of a youth whom I had never met, and yet whose eyes as he lifted them to mine startled some slumbering memory to life and stirred my spirit with a sense of strange familiarity, a sudden recollection of vanished joys, and sweet ':om[)ani jnshij), and a secret shared in common. "Hallo!" I cried involuntarily; ''don't youremember — * The noise of the trolley drowned my voice, but his eyes as he stepped on the car met mine, and there suddenly leaped to his face a look of startled recognition. Then the car moved on and he was gone. Where had I seen him before ? Not in this life certain' ly, and yet I knew him well. Tonight as I lie sleepless on my couch in the still watches of the night, I seem to hear the sound of muffled drums, and my spirit is stirred to its profoundest depths by a sense of sweetest reminiscence. The corridors of memory are thronged with shadowy images imperceptible before, and a thousand deeper recollections, which form a shadowy background to the face I saw on King street. I know to-night that the life I am living is only one of a series. The spirit of man is eterrial, and will endure for- ever and has forever endured. There is no beginning, no end — from birth to death — from death to birth, we • A FACE ON KING STREKT. part to meet again, while fate behind the scenes sits spin- ning the locms of life and love, and binds our souls with kindred souls in sweet melodic sympathies through the long vistas of eternity. In the sweet silence ot the night the doors of the dark- ness are opened and the mystery is unveiled. I see it all again. I was leading an army to battle on the plains of Issus, and stretching far away before me in the gray light of the morning I saw the gilded helmets of ten thousand limes ten thousand men-at-arms, their helmets flashing bright in the sunlight, their gorgeous banners floating proudly to the breeze, their legions forming for battle at the im- perious summons of brazen trumpet and clashing cymbal. See, they advance. The armies meet. The glittering swords clash on the brazen helmet and shield, and steal into the joints of ihe armor and drink the blood of life. In the fierce death struggle the warriors grapple, and with clinched teeth and uplifted hands they struggle madly, fiercely, and the air is filled with the noises of battle, the clash of the sword, the war-cries of the legions, the shrieks of dying men and horses. Ah, see! they have broken our phalanx. To the rescue, my gallant Greeks! Quick! Remember Marathon. At the head oi the last legion I plunge into the battle, but not alone. Ah, no. Who is it rides on the white horse by the side of my gallant black as we ride gloriously forward, thrilling with battle joy, our golden armor flashing in the sun, the wild, hot blood of youth singing and dancing in our veins, our bright swords glittering in a radiant arch A KACK ON KINC; STREET. 9 around our heads as we plunge int.o the battle and drive the foe before us like chaff before iLe wind ? Ah, we were too fast. We are separated from the legions. I am surrounded. My sword breaks. My helmet is torn from my head. I am down. They are upon me, the enemy. Their fierce faces surround me. The swords and axes uplifted fall — upon whose shield? Who springs to my side and stands alone above me like a young lion at bay ? They throng upon him hfty to one. He is wounded. He is bleeding. He falls upon his knee, still fighting fiercely, his shield above me. Ah, a rescue! We are saved ! He falls into my arms. " Hephaestion," I whisper. " Alexander," he murmurs, the pale lips faintly smil- ing. As I lift the bloody helmet from his head the golden curls fall on my arm. It IV as the face I saw on King street. What does it mean ? Who was Hephaestion ? Who was Alexander? Where is the plain of Issus? Another vision floats before my eye. Where am I ? The lights are bright and the table is set with costly cups — it is a banquet hall. Around the table, heavily laden with choice dainties, rich wines, rare foods and golden ornaments, sit a company of stately warriors clad in costly robes. At the head of the table sits a giant, who towers a head and shoulders above his fellows and wears a golden crown upon his head, and by his left side a mighty sword is lying, and at his right I sit, who am his son. Noiselessly to and fro soft-footed slaves pass, distributing wines and foods and fruits on golden dishes 10 A I'ACK ON KIN(i STRKKT. ' (1 to the guests At the end ol" the table stands a youth, and in his hand is a harp. The eye of the king falls upon him, and he speaks. "Sing, Sweet Singer of Israel ; touch your harp and sing." His fingers fall upon the harp ; his silvery voice uplifted fills the air with the glory of song. The waves of melody beat upon my soul and awake sweetest sym- pathies. 'I'hey thrill the spirits of the guests. The wine- cups fall from their hands, their voices are hushed. Silent as statues they sir, enthralled, bewitched, fasci- nated by the cliarm of the wonderful song as it throbs upon the perfum^id air in sweet melodic waves of love and joy. He is silent. They throng about him and crown him with flowers and laurel. The brow of the king grows dark. " He will be king," he mutters. He seizes the sword and leaps to his feet, and- the guests shrink back affrighted, but I seize him by the arm. ** O, Saul, Saul, my father, spare the Sweet Singer of Israel." The uplifted arjn falls to his side. I lead the singer from the room. Together we tread the streets of the holy city to find him a place of reluge. His face is up- lifted to mine. ''Jonathan ! " he cries. " Ah, David ! " // was the face I saw on King street. What visions are these that haunt me as I pass on my way to the Forum, what dark forebodings of impending A KACK ON KlNd S'JRF.ET. II evil ? What omens of evil portent ? The cock crowed thrice last night and a o;littering sword was hung across the heavens. The air is heavy with the odor of hlood and the Tiber is moaning in its bed as I pass hurriedly on to the Forum. Why should I fear?— I who had led the Eagles of Rome upon a hundred battle-fields and earned the right to be her Hush ! Who would speak with CcCsar ? Ah, I am dead ! They throng about me, the senators; their daggers are buried in my flesh, and there is one among them— one face— he will not strike. I see him bending above me, love in his eyes, a dagger in his ha,. id. O cruel blow ! '' Et tu Brute r It IV J s the face 1 saw or King street, • • • ... The shadows are vague — incoherent. Many ages pass dimly before me ; his face is framed in ihern all. We were courtiers together, and kings together. We were soldiers and slaves, poets and priests ; in courts and camps, and in the quiet of the cloister— always to- gether. They burnt us together in Rome for loving the truth too well, and I looked across from my stake to his and laughed — we were divine The ages passed. I remember that glimpse of his face as I led the Ironsides at Naseby. He, bonnie Charlie, was a Royalist. The ages passed, all moving to one tremendous consum mation. The night is dark— black, black, black. What flashes of ligiit are these swift breaking in on the darkness.? 12 A FACE ON KIN(. STREET. 1^ 11! Hark to the roar of cannon and the clash of steel to steel, battle and smoke and carnage, and the lines of contending armies. Strange faces gather around me, outlined in bloody mists and smoke. It chokes me, the smoke. No, it parts. 1 see the eagle. O, memory tremendous. Sound the trumpet ! Shadows ! Tramp, tramp, iramp i Dusky regiments are marching behind me. I am advancing, ever advancing, over the hills. See the white snow ! Who is it rides by my side over the hills — white hills? That face — shadows — battles of blood and carnage ! Where am I ? These burning sands — these pyramids — Ten thousand ages look down on him by my side. Shadows — darkness. Where am I ? Hark to the trumpet ! the rattle of the drums ! I am leading armies to battle. See ! See I O memory tre- mendous — the sun of Austerlitz, arising, falls on his face by my side. Victory ! Eureka. I am the ruler of nations. See ! the kings are kissing my feet. Shadows ! Where am I ? Hark to the tramping armies — banners ! I am leading them on— fiame and fire ! O monstrous conflagration, the angels of God are fighting agairjst me. They have kindled the houses of Moscow. Frost ! Frost ! -it is in my veins. My blood is frozen. Shadows! Where am I ? Alone — against the world. Sound the trumpet! See ihu suri ! It sinks! Blood, blood, blood! — I am choking in rivers of blood ! P'ight on ! I sink— I rise ! Sound the trumpet ! Who answers ? What, am I alone? Nay ! there is one by my side. Ah ! hark to the dripping of water on the beach. Shadows! I am leading an army again. En avant / mes comrades. Lift the E»^les — once the best. Throw up the dice again. I A FACE ON K1N(; STREET. K\ My spirit is shrouded in darkness and the skies are ominous and dark — but still, advance — advance. Where am 1 ? Hark to the crash of the cannon. Bloodshed and carnage again ! bloodshed and smoke and carnage, and the clash of steel to steel. Advance the Eaglts ! Victory is ours, my children, if we crush those thin red squares. They stand — r j they iron or granite? Plough into them with the cannons. Crush them — sh.itter them — rend them. Kingdoms and crowns and sceptres to the men that crush the squares ! Hold back the Old Guard ; not yet. See ! I am blinded by smoke. vSay, are they standing still ? Ay — Old Guard, advance ! Crush me those purple squares. Veterans of Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz, See, they are gathered arouncl me! We have held the world at our teet. Crush me those Briton scjuares-it will be at our feet again. Sound tiie trumpet. En avant ! Hark to the tramp of ten thou- sand horsemen as they sweep like the whirlwind forward down on the thin red squares ! Do they break the squares ? The smoke is in my eyes ; I cannot see. What ! they recoil ! Sound the trumpet. Just one more charge — one more. Reform the ranks. Ah, who will lead? Who? Whose face is this by my side? Who rides away like a whirlwind to reform the shattered ranks and lead them, lion like, forward into the jaws of death ? See, he turns as he gallops forward, and I see his bright sword flashing in the air as he rises in his stirrups and waves a last farewell. His voice, sweet as a wedding bell, comes back'-'ard on the bleeding wind out of the valley of death. " Vive V Empereur." "4 A VMK (»N KINi; STUKKT. I£l«.rnal siirgin^^ of f?as, eternal suri;inq; of seas, they break upon the rocks — no, th« y break upon my heart '» they l)reak my heart, eternal surging of seas. • •••*• Where am I ? Ah, I remember. Sound the trumpet. Just one more charge— one more — en avant, mes — Rh ! Did someone speak? What is the matter — oh, I re- member — Toronto — yes, Toronto — for a lime. I saw liim yesterday on King street and now as I sit here in the quiet of the night I can hear tite fingers of fate weaving the loom of a still more magnificent destiny, shifting the scenes, clearing the stage, arranging the lights and preparing to lift the curtain upon the other act in the drama of l)eing. When I step upon the stage for the last great act of all- -the cro>\ning cataclysm of the centuries — the last tremendous war, well I know that ever by my side in summer sun or winter frost — in the dark valleys of rejection or on the towering mountain peaks of glory — forever loyal, forever true, I'll see — the face I saw on King street. There is no beginning, there is no end, only eternity and the soul What if we die — we meet again On some diviner height of thought ; O listen to the sweet refrain, We meet a^ain, we meet again. Beyond the tears, beyond the pain, iJeyond the death that slays in vain, We meet, again we meet again. Soul of my soul — we meet again, In white eternal halls. The Eternal Fires. T liE breath of God is on my brow, And in my heart the eternal fires, Flaming forever deathlessly, Have kindled in my heart divine desires. And thoughts that clamour for eternity, And dreams that shudder at mortality Until my golden chorded spirit all afire With never failing passion for divinity Throbs wiih great har i nnies — supremest ecs- tacies Immortal dreams, immortal love, immortal fire. Great melodies, and a divine desire To rise like some sweet sun athwart the night, And glowing through the vesture of mortality, Kindle the li.'ng universe with light. Accursed Sleep- r ,1 a ill' CCURSED sleep — what, must I close my eyes On all I love — on all that loveth me? The ecstacy — the beauty, the delight — of earth and sky, And flower, and wave and tree. And lips that laugh, and eyes that glow and weep With love's rare smile and tender ecstacy. Shall I forsake them all, O time, and flee, To shameless bow my head in shameful sleep ? Nay, rather will I steal the night from thee And make each hour golden with delight And hand them down to immortality To thrill the hearts of men with joy c»nd light. Alone amid the sleepers, I sleeping not, will write With word;^ that glow and flame and laugh and leap Like merry little sunbeams through the dark- ness of the night To kindle brighter mornings for mankind. Sweet rest, ye tired mortals, while I watch upon the steep. Back to your kennel, night ! — I will not sleep. ■-;«■ i The Great Days. PROM the summit of this great century whereto with tortuous steps humanity, enierging from the valleys of great tribulation and pys&ing through the furnace of bitter experience like a steel finely tem{)ered to mightier uses, has come to rear the temple of an enduring civilization and lay the foundations of a more magnificent destiny, we may pause for a moment to review the history and condition of the race, seeking a justification of the past in the achievements of the present, and a justification of the present in the promise of the future. What is the origin of man ? Has he arisen from the beasts or descended from gods ? Has he fought his way from savag(;ry to civilization or has he come down from civilization to savagery ? They who have something of the brute within them may wish to trace their genealogy back to brutes, but they feel the god like siir within them will seek a noble ancestry,and the justification of their pride will be found in that history which, with its records of departed great- ness furnishes a golden genealogy for the race. Back in the e:..iiest morning of time, seeking the earliest traces of man we find them not in hatchets of stone or mounds of clay, but in the ruins of great civilizations upon whose broken pillars and carven walls there is written in indelible letters the records of civilizations earlier still. The first glimpses of man we get on earth shows him, not clothed in skins and warring with brutes, but robed in purple i8 THE (JKEAT DAYS. and crowned with civilization, walking with an iniperia mien amid the temples his own hands had built, ".nd in the cities which his mind conceived. The present is bound to the past by a golden chain of civilization, and glancing back from link to link we find the greatest of [hem all in the very beginning of history. From Britain to Rome, back to Greece, from Greece to Persia, Assyria, Chaldea, Egypt, looking back through the aisle of the ages we see the beacon lights of mighty civilizations blazing on tlie summits of the centuries where the sun of civilization is reflected in the golden domes of innumerable cities, till at last it rises magnificently before the eyes of mer that wonderful sunburst of mythology which shows -is the splendid golden age, where man, freed from contagion of error, reigned in the world like a god on his throne. i r The men who walk the earth to-day have not attaiivjd to the full proportion of their personality. They have not risen to their full intellectual stature, nor developed the highest potencies of their being. The conditions of modern life have not been favorable to the develop- ment of the ideal man. The cruel struggle for existence, the sordid atmosphere of industrialism and the social and industrial restraints upon the time and liberty of the in- dividual have retarded his proper development and called into existence abnormal and unworthy traits of human nature. The man of to-day is an intellec- tual dwarf, hedged, bound down and crippled by an evil environment. It is only now and then by fits and starts, in deeds of heroism and words of love we see i THF<: CKKAT DAYS. ^9 the real man breaking out from the constraint of his narrow environment. He speaks in a language of love and kindly acts, we see him in the martyr dying for his faith, in the lover loyal to his love, in the father toiling for his child, in the patriot warring for his land, we feel him when we scorn the false and love the true. His is the voice called conscience, and his ambition is that aspira- tion which bids us rise to loftier heights than those on which we tread. Through the vesture of an evil environ- ment and along the lines of history we catch these glimpses of the ideal man, existent potentially in all, but masked by his age and shackled by his times, and wrought by the pressure of an industrial environment into a de^jrmed image of himself. And yet the environment is not wholly responsible for imperfect development of the race. The masses of man. kind themselves have proved too willing to bend their necks to the yoke and they sleep the sleep of mediocrity, instead of rising sublimely in splendid rebellion and as- serting their mightier manhood once and for ever. To those who worship the beautiful and love unsullied light, who cherish in their minds a pure ideal, and keep their inner eye forever fixed upon the picture of perfec- tion, there is something painfully repugnant in the con- tinued mediocrity of the masses of mankind. It is mortifying to think that the majority of our fellowmen, in the very humblest of whom we fondly like to think there is something of the angel, should be contented neither to seek nor to soar but forever to dig and delve, to hoe and sow and eat and sleep and die. Yet this is the history of mankind. Untold generations have 20 THE GRKAT DA VS. t I done this and this only, walking forever with their eyes upon the earth, obHvious of the stars. Sometimes, indeed, they have sought variety in war and murdered each other, and very often they have contentedly walked the earth with halters on their neck, chains on their limbs and darkness in their minds, bound by kings, bound by priests, bound by capitalists, but above all things, bound by their own consummate mediocrity. Only here and there, and now and then a stately spirit has spoken, a kingly soul has snapped his chains and soared, showing that in human nature there was something of the divine and whispering hope in the night. The history of civilization is not the record of a race but the biog- raphy of an imperial few in every age who have risen above the error of their age, lifting humanity with them. A contented man is a curse to the world. All progress has originated in discontent. Civilization itself was due to this. To be satisfied with any- thing less than the perfect is treason to progress. The man who is satisfied with what he has will ask for nothing better, but sleep the sleep of medi- ocrity, live a life of nothingness, and die the death of a dog. The man who is dissatisfied will demand something better, and get it. He will differ, he will dissent, he will deviate, he will rise, he will reign, and when he dies he will become an angel and aspire to be a God. Discontent is the root of progress, the source of civilization ; it indicates a lofty nature. The man who is satisfied with the low, is low. The man who aspires, complains and revolts does so because he has rur. C.RK.M DAYS. 21 something belter in him than the things he sees with- out, and he seeks to make the world as perfect as his thought. He strives to make the lowly without conform to the lofty within. He measures the world by his soul and fitids it exceedingly small. When old earth was ushered out of the midnight of chaos into the dawning of cosmos and passed from the agony of growth into the bliss of completion, the spirit of unrest must surely have passed from the element into the spirit of man newly made, and if ever it is banished from thence to mingle again with the elements, then will be a fitting time for it to sow the contagion of chaos again, and kindle once more the cosmic fires to rend forever in fragments the world whose citizens are worthy only of its dust. So long as men aspire, so long shoula they live. So long as the atmosphere of life is flooded with hope and faith and the eye of man is bent forward seek- ing new vistas, new pathways, new light and new truth, so long alone is it fitting that the sacred fires of life should burn in his heart as on an altar supremely divine. And so, forever tortured by divinest discontent in every age and epoch in the history of mankind, there have arisen from the ranks of humanity a few choice spirits to lead the race to loftier altitudes of thought. Without hope of reward, or promise of success, perse- cuted, misrepresented, maligned, with hands that bled by the roughness of the task, and eyes that grew dim with a longing for the light, the master thinkers have toiled in the quarries of the ages, hewing out the stones with which to build the edifice of civilization. The light which lighted the steps of humanity on its tortuous 22 THE (IREAT DAYS. journey sunwards has been shone from the stake ; where the hands of humanity, forever swift to strike, but sl'jwto save, have kindled fires to burn the men who saved them. The hap[)iest hour in the history of the race was when the human intellect, turning from the profitless disputations of an impossible thef'logy and the eternal nescience of metaphysics, sought refuge in the inductive method, and science, the youngest child of the intellect, was born to rise like a beautiful star above the horizon of human endeavor, and, radiating light and heat on earth and heaven, reveal the mystery of rock and cloud, of plant and star and world. From the birih of science the human race has advanced by lea[)s and bounds ; the b(>undaries of thought have been widened, and the tides of intellectual enquiry, which formerly flowed in a few channels, now flow in a myriad. Ideas, which were formerly the treas- ured possession of a cultured few, have now become the property of the many. The condition of the average man has been greatly improved, and the number of thinkers proportionately multiplied. I Reviewing the achievements of science at the close of the present century we are compelled to the con- clusion that the fundamental merit of its work lies not in its conclusions but its methods. Indeed, science as such, cannot logically attain to any definite conclusion until its facts are fully accumulated, and the very system, by which it proceeds in its search for truth by con- tinually bringing new facts to light, necessitates a perpetual modification of former conclusion!. Theories "- --^'- — iti-« 1 1 i I'iTt I ~n ^'^-"^ THE C.RFAT DAVS. 23 regarding the orij^in and destiny of man, the nature of matter and the relations of mind and body, which are based on the facts accumulated by science up to date, can only be accepted as provisional, and must be regarded, not as a declaration of faith on the part of science herself, but simply as the inferences drawn by individual thinkers from the study of the facts which she has accumulated and which are capable of other interpretations. The highest merit of science lies in its method, its rigorous insistence on a logical system of thought, its dispassionate ambition to ac(]uire facts for their own value and without reference to the conclu- sions to which they may lead, and its reference of all debatable issues to the supreme arbitration of reason. Proceeding by this method the human intellect at the conclusion of the nineteenth centurv finds itself in the possession of a great number of facts, in the light of which the problems which confront it seem not in- capable of solution, and which impel us to the conclusion that we are upon the eve of still greater discoveries, in the light of which, all existing hypotheses regarding the origin of man and his destiny must be very materially modified, if not entirely wiped out of existence. The great days lie before us. The paths of thought opened out by the mighty intellectual pioneers of the past are broadening out into great avenues, and along which the children of men with ever quicken- ing step are advancing to the heights of Utopia* In every department of thought we are upon the eve of great discoveries. The industrial pioblem, which has 24 THK (IkKAT DAYS. Vr ' been the cliicf impediment to the progress of the race will be solved by a codification of politics and the estab- lishment of a new state in which the people will resume control of their own franchises, and in accordance with the principles of a great economic law not hitherto enunciated, socialism and individualism will be har- monized, and national control of industries will be reconciled with the highest degree of individual liberty. But it is possible that even the establishment of such a state may be rendered superfluous by the rapid progress of science, and the possibility that the scientist will out- distance the politician in his endeavor to emancipate humanity from the thraldom of mechanical and indus trial pursuits. 'I'he industrial problem may be solved in a laboratory instead of in a legislature, and by a chemist instead of by a politician. The chemist will solve it by discovering a means of extracting the elements of food directly from the atmosphere, where they exist poten- tially, as well as in the earth or plant or animal. 'J hen mm, emancipated from the humiliation of mechani:al b^Dor, will be able to devote their time to inttjUectual pursuits, to the uplifting and the improvement of the race, and to the solution of the riddle of existence. Man is like a sleeping god. Only a portion of his personality is active. This is the portion awakened by the condition of the world environment, and manifested through the five senses by means of which that fraction of his great psychical personality which has awakened look's out and takes cognizance of that portion of the universe perceptible through the five senses. But the THE GREAT DAYS. as greater portion of the environment and the most potent portion of it is supersensible, or in other words, it cannot be perceived by the five senses. As certain people are color blind, so man in his present semi-conscious con- dition is blind to all the finer formative forces of nature. Equally true is it that in the mind of man himself, and behind the senses as well as before them, there are great ultra-phenomenal forces and a mighty sub conscious personality. The vibrations of the ether from without, are not powerful enough to wake this to action, and hence unless aroused by an act of volition from within it remains dormant, and it only finds a voice in music. Music, purely a priori science — the science of numbers and vibrations — furnishes a clue hitherto overlooked by metaphysicians to the mystery of life. If heat, light, electricity, chemical affinity are musical vibrations of ether, and the mind could be made to vibrate in consonance with, or at a greater degree of activity, the thought waves might be cor- related with ether-waves and we could mould matter into different forms by acts of volition. Nature may be passive thought, as pictures are thoughts incanvas and statues arethoughtsin marble, soalsotrees, flowers, worlds, etc., thoughts crystallized in matter. Now, passive thought is always subject to thought in action, and ixiind is thought in action, hence the mind controls the body. Hitherto it has acted only on nature, only through intermediate forces, but if the psychic forces and physical of the environment be correlated with mind, the latter can act directly on nature by thought 26 'I' UK (IRliAl I».\VS. waves modifying matter directly by mental action. All the so-called forces exist potentially in the mind of man, who is a microcosm of everything in the uni- verse — divine and otherwise. • • • • • « • The thinker of tie future will lea great musician andcoriela'.e the waves of ether with waves of thought, and modify matter by volition. Then will the god awake. Scene from "Azrael." THE DRAMA OF' DKATH. ScENK. — Tne Hriige i>{ Suicides. Kosedale Ravine at Mid- nit;ht. /i«/^r. —A man slowly walking on the bridge. He paces half way over and leans upon the railing, looking down at the ravine. w ■^"^■^"^HEN will I hear llietn again, the voices of my dead ? Out of this darkness will they come to me, or must I wait until eternity opens gates of death to me ? Too sweet — too sweet — I think they were for such delay. There is a shorter, better way. Why should I linger in the world when love has fled ? Life without love is like a world without light, night without stars or heaven without the dead. Wheresoever love flies there love must follow. And whether it be on earth or out of it, among the living or the dead, in darkest hell or brightest heaven, if God be just and truth eternal, love shall fmd love again. " How dark it is below in that ravine. When last I passed along its pathway soft the place was filled with light. The grass was green. The sweet sun shone upon it and flowers blossomed gaily on its sward. A sweet bird sang divinely on the bushes — oh, ever so divinely did it sing — never before had bird sung quite so sweeily ! It w^ the lark, I think — perhaps the nightingale. Ah, whardoes it matter, since it sang divinely — oh, ever so divinely did it sing! I think it came from Heaven, that sweet bird, so utterly divinely did it sing— but '>f ■-■■' " 'mm 28 StKNK I ROM "A/KAIJ ." ■;l never ag.iin, () (Jod — never again. Who s|)oke of Heaven? Did some one speak of Heaven? No, it was flowers I spoke of — and a l)ird — a bird that sang most sweetly. Where are the flowers now ? Where is the song ? Where is the sunshine ? Alas, when last I walked in that ravine love walked by my side, but now love has departed. What wonder the sunshine should follow, and the sweet bird sing in Heaven. And underneath this oridge I seem to see a dark ravine that leadeth to eterniL". I think this is the very path to Heaven. Shall I not tread it home to those I love ? Down in that dark ravine where last I plucked a flower to deck my love shall I not find the flower of love immortal ? V'es ! I shall put my foot upon the railing thus and — and — Ah ! what is that below ? 1 seem to see a darkness moving in the darkness. A black-winged angel rises from the depths." Enter Azrael. Who are you ? Azrael. — I am Azrael whom men call death, and I am kind to men. When life hath done with them they come to me. I kiss them and they die. Man. — Kis:j me, sweet death. .Azrael. — You have another love. What sought ye on the bridge ? Man. — I sought for thee and love. Azrael. — Whoso seeketh for love must seek in lovely places. The gate of suicide leads not to Heaven. Man. — Quick, shew me the better pathway ! Azrael. — Who.so seeketh me must abide with me, l)ut they whom I seek abide with love forever. Thou Shalt Not Smile. IT was Sunday in Tolonto the (lood — Sunday of the year 2000 A.D. Throughout the city everything was quiet except where now and then a sacrilegious speck of dust, stirred by the wicked wind, made a naughty little sound ; but otherwise the city lay in silence, sepulchral and funereal, and every- thing was (juiet — quiet — quiet. Down in the Holy of Holies (formerly known as the City Hall) the sacred rulers of the city were gathered in solemn conclave, with tones "^ubdued and manner rever- ential, discussing ways and means of increasing the sanctity of the Sabbath and adding to the holiness of men. I.ong had they wrestled with their souls in violent prayer, with mournful groans and faces long and wt)eful, bewailing the errors of their fellowmen, and when the hour of prayer and meditation was over the Rev. Solo- mon Sorrows rose and spoke : " Dearly beloved brethren, fellow saints and sanctifiers of the city, the spirit moveth me in sundry places to declare and pronounce the wickedness of my fellowmen. Long have we labored, fellow purifiers, to make this city holier than heaven, but, behold, we have not sur- passed perfection yet ; for, oh, my beloved, it is not enough to be holy. We must be exceedingly holy ; we must be intensely holy ; we must be very, very, very holy, brethren." " O I holy, holy, holy ! " groaned the brethren. "Those of you who can endure the moial anguish of 30 THOU SHALT NOT SMILE. 'I , \ \,.\ liiiii 'i reverting to the evil days gone by," continued the brother, " will remember that a hundred years ago Tolonto was a wicked, wicked city." " O ! wicked, wicked, wicked," groaned the brethren. "A very Babylon of cities was it, bretr.ren. In those dark days the people used to smile. Men walked abroad with laughter in their eyes, and women wore no veils upon their faces. The Sabbath lasted only for one day, and street-cars ran upon it then, beloved. And, be- loved, the city reeked with all abominations ; there were theatres, and hotels, and cigar stores, and places of pleasure, and libraries, where the people dared to read the naughty, naughty, naughty newspapers, and wicked, wicked, wicked books — books that were not written by the Lord's anointed, but by the hell-inspired authors who believed that life should be a time of joy and glad- ness, that love was beautiful, and pleasure sweet." " 01 wicked, wicked, wicked ! " groaned the brethren. " And in those darksome, evil days, beloved, the peo- ple really had the nerve to think. They had ideas and thoughts and principles not found within the sacred Book, beloved, but born within tlieir earthy, earthy brains. They even dared to reason then, beloved, and reach conclusions contrary to the Word, and contradict their spiritual pastors." " O ! woe, woe, woe I " groaned the brethren. " But the spirit of the righteous was avenged," cried the Rev. Solomon Sorrows, exultingly. " We held a plebiscite and we destroyed them. We formed associa- tions of the righteous, and got control of the city. We made a law extending the Sabbath for seven days each THOU SHAIT NOT SMII.E. 31 week. We abolished all the abominations, the street- cars, the theatres, the cigar shops, the newspapers, the libraries, the museum, the ferry boats, the confectioneries. A law was passed forbidding women logo abroad unveiled. The public parks have been turned into graveyards, and none are permitted to enter them except to l)e buried. The Bible has been thoroughly revised and adapted to the higher spiritual needs of Tolonto. Thinking has been made a capital crime. Reading- and writing have been strictly forbidden, and the colleges and schools have been abolished, lest the people might acquire or com- municate ideas not acceptable to their spiritual pastors." "O ! glory, glory, glory ! " cried the brethren, "Prayer has been made compulsory, and attendance at church is enforced on all classes of the people, who must spend twelve out of every twenty-four hours in the temple of the holy. All musical instruments have bec:n destroyed, and singing and whistling are strictly forbid- den. Noihing but A'ater is allowed to be drunk by the people, and a special law passed defining the kinds of food permissible, and the amount of butter to be used on each slice of bread, and forbidding the use of sugar, fruit, pastry, or other luxuries. When the people are not in church they are compelled to be at work, and the proceeds thereof go to the support of us, their pastors, the holy ones — the elect of the Lord." *' O ! glory, glory, glory ! " cried the brethren. " All gaudy clothing has been iorl)idden, and the citi- zens must dress in crape and sackcloth. Silence is univers- ally ordained, lest the people say anything sinful. Pleasure- seeking is p'lnishable with death, and local branches of 32 THOU SHAI.T NOT SMILE. hi ' II, ; I I li.l I I hell have been estabhshed in the suburbs of the city, that the righteous may personally supervise the des' ruc- tion of sinners. The sun, 1 regret to say, still continues to shine, and the wicked stars still twinkle sacrilegiously, and, owing to an oversight of the Lord, there are only ten commandments, which may be enough for certain places, but we want more than ten in Tolonto." '* O ! more, more, more ! " groaned the brethren. " For, oh my brethren! it is not enough to be good, we must be goody goody, my beloved — " " O Goody — goody — goody," groaned the brethren. " And so, my beloved," continued the holy man, " we are ssembled to-night to rectify the blunders of the Lord, and to make some additional commandments, and " At this moment the proceedings of the Council were suddenly interrupted by sounds of an uproar outside, followed by noise of hurried feet hastily mounting the steps of the temple, and in another moment a man burst into the Council and cast himself at the feetof the holy ones, shrieking and wailing and tearing his hair, and howling in heart-rending tones : " O ! woe, woe, woe ! I saw him smile ! I saw him smile ! O ! woe, woe, woe ! He smiled upon the Sabbath ! " A hush of hoiror fell over the holy ones, and they gazed a moment in horror stricken silence upon the messenger, till the enormity of the crime announced so violently dawned fully on their minds. "Shut the door and close the window," shrieked the Rev. Hosea Scowls, leaping suddenly to his feet. " Let THOU SHALT NOT SMILE. 35 not the news of the sacrilege get abroad. We will hear the tidings in secret, and decree the punishment of the sinner." The door and window were carefully barred, and the brethren gathered in sombre silence about the messen- ger, who was still weeping copiously upon the pavement. " Who smiled, beloved brother ? " asked Rev. Jeremiah Jaundice. " Open your lips, beloved, and say who did this evil thing. Who smiled upon the Sabbath ? " " Upon the Tolonto Sabbath ! " groaned Rev. Hosea Scowls. "Alas ! yes, upon the Tolonto Sabbath ! Who was the wicked, wicked man who smiled upon the Tolonto Sabbath ? " Behold, 1 was expounding the word, my brethren," said the messenger, woefully. " I was expounding the word to my congregation a little while ago, and had just arrived at the eleventh hour of my discourse, wherein I laid down the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel according to Tolonto, wherein 'tis laid down that whoso presumeth to be happy shall be doomed to eternal damnation, both now and hereafter, but particularly now. I was just expounding this holy doctrine, be- loved, and the congregation of the contrite were receiving the same as ever, with meek and humble looks and downcast eves, as becometh a congregation, when^ lift- ing up my eyes, I saw a stranger at the back of the church, dressed, not in sackcloth like our sacred youth, but attired in gay apparel, and beautiful to look at." " O ! wicked, wicked, wicked ! " groaned the breth- ren. I 34 THOU SHALT NOT SMILE. " And, behold, brethren, I watched that sinner care- fully until my discourse was over, fearing he might steal from the fold. But when I knelt down to pray the appomted prayer for the eternal damnation of the happy, I closed my eyes according to the law ; but methought I heard a sound, as though some one were stirring. Then, behold, the Lord opened a corner of my eye and I saw the youth depart from the church. Hastily I sent messengers to follow him, and they followed him to the outskirts of the city, where the wicked flowers bloom, and there, beloved, he got on an abomination called a bicycle, and he — he — he " "Bar the window and stuff the key-hole," shrieked Rev. Solomon Sorrows, leaping to his feet. " Stuff it, stuff it, stuff it, brothers, lest the youth of the city hear and become corrupted! What did he do, beloved? " " He— he— he— smiled ! " " O ! horrible, horrible, horrors ! " groaned the brethren. O ! woe, woe, woe ! Alas ! for the sacred city. Someone has smiled on the Sabbath ! O ! woe^ woe, woe ! " Then the brethren held council together in the Holy of Holies, and made a new commandment : THOU SHALT NOT SMILE. And messengers were sent to capture the sinner. He rode on his bike and he smiled. Out from the streets of the desolate city where joy was withered and love lay dead he rode on his bike to the sweet green fields where flowers were budding and blushing and THOU SHALT NOT SMILE. 35 l)looming, and the golden dome of the glorious heavens, aflame with beauty and color and light, looked down divinely on fields that flowered and rivers that rippled and birds that sang, as the ancient earth, like a golden harp thrilled by the wonderful breath of God, quivered and trembled with joy transcendent and life immortal and love divine. He rode on his bike and he smiled, and the beautiful rays of the splendid sun shone bright in his path as he rode, and kindled the spring in the bosom of earth, till the voice of nature, melodious ever with breath of flower and carol of bird, smiled sweetly with him in merry greeting, and echoed the notes of his voice as he rode, with breath of bud and the song of lark and murmur of wave and wind and leaf. He rode on his bike and he smiled, and his joy was echoed in earth and heaven by a million azure smiles in the skies and a million laughing waves on the shore where old Ontario rolled her waters in mighty organ tones supreme, transcendent, and broke upon the shore with mighty laughters. And so he rode along the countryside until he came to the beautiful park which the Council of the Righteous had turned into a graveyard. There, being tired, he lay down upon the grass to rest. And as he slept, the darkness came upon him ; and with the darkness came the priests, its children. Like ghouls of the night, they stole upon him and seized him as he slept, and bound his tender limbs in chains, lashed I 36 THOU SIlAI.r Nor SMII.K. him with whips, and tied him to a stake, and gathered round and questioned him. *' Why did you fly from the church ? " asked Rev Hosea Scowls. " I fled to seek for God." " Why did you smile ? " " 1 smiled because I found Hi»ii." I They buried him under the soft, green grass, close to the heart of the nature he loved. And the Fweetest flowers blossomed on his grave, and sweet birds came and sang beside the flowers. But in the sacred city all was silent. Tolonto's holy Sabbath ruled agayi, and everything was quiet — quiet — quiet. \'mr?H A Guest of God. THE lights burnt low on the altar, and humbly kneelinj^ before the lights Brother Gabriel bowed and prayed, asking for light beyond them. Behind him the darkness had draped the church in gloom. Before him three candles cast light up- on the shadows, feebly revealing in vaguest outline the chancel, the nave, the cross — and Brother Gabriel kneel- ing before it. In humblest adoration he was kneeling, but in the holy place where holy visions come to the souls of those whose thoughts are holy, the thoughts of Brother Gabriel tendered earthwards, and dreams of earth were blent with prayers for heaven, and hopes of future bliss and joys celestial were shadowed by a memory of dead days and vanished faces. And even as he kne't in adoration before the altar of the church, his bride, his thoughts passed out beyond the altar, beyond the church, beyond the chancel — his thoughts passed out and knelt as he was kneeling before the altar of a love departed, and he could see a quiet little cottage standing beside a quiet country road, and he could see a boy and a girl together playing before the cottage, side by side. They had been lovers in their childhood, and lovers till a year or two ago, when he, surrendering to the wishes of his par- ents and to a sense of deeper duty, had sacrificed his love to his devotion and entered on his studies for the priesthood. I 38 A GUEST OF GOD. And now he knelt, a priest, before the altar of his spiritual bride, and strove with inward wrestlings and stern submission to hide away his craving for the human and bury deep the memory of liis love. He had thought it had been conquered long ago, that he had conquered it, and surrendered it, and trampled it under- foot, but the old love came back again to-night and he could see a face behind the candles. A year had passed since they had parted, and he had heard she was engaged to marry another — a wealthy and handsome suitor named Victor Morell. The match was a suitable one. Her parents decreed it and it was said he loved her passionately and took her love for granted. But she — did she remember? Did she forget? Ah, what a sacrilege it was to think these thoughts — and in this place ! Brother Gabriel told his beads and strove to drive the evil thoughts away, and it was consoling to him to reflect that he had never erred except in thought, and that he had ever lived a quiet, sinless life, shunning temptation and ever devotional and abounding in good work. Not so was it with many others. Victor Morell, for example, who was addicted to drink, and gambled and smoked and neglected the church, he could never enter the eternal life, but Brother Gabriel, could he but erase one little sin of memory from his mind, was certain of his sainthood. Brother Gabriel bowed his head and prayed for Victor Morell. i 1 i 'V- 1 ,1 " Hot Scotch." " Whisky-and-soda." A GUEST OF (iOI). 39 • Old Irish." " Lager." " Whisky for me." " Straight tip for Billy and cigars all around. Keep the change. Fill up, hoys. Here's to you." " Here's to Vic Morell. What's matter with Vic ? " " He's all right." " You bet." " For he's a jolly good fellow, For he's a j^lly good fellow, And he's a jolly good fellow, Which nobody can deny." With uproarious unanimity the merry company in the barroom of the Red Lion tavern placed on record their opinion of the merits of Victor Morell in the words of the good old song, in which none joined more heartily than the enthusiastic Victor himself, as he leaned against the bar waving his glass and smiling broadly his appreciation of the good judgment of his companions. " It's all right, boys," he said, somewhat unsteadily. " Perfectly correct in er'v particular, but guess I'll have to go." A roar of disappointment broke from the meeting. " Stay with the game, Vic," cried a companion pathe- tically. But the opposition of his companions only ^length- ened the somewhat nebulous intention of Mr. Victor to depart for regions unknown. " Got to go," he said, winking mysteriously. " Serious business — very." " It's the girl," said one of his companions. 4° A GUEST OF GOD. "What's the matter with her?" queried Victor, turning suddenly on the crowd. " She's all right," roared his companions, and he passed from the saloon to the tune of the enthusiastic chorus : '* She's a daisy, She's a daisy, elc." Mollified by this melodious tribute to his lady-love, Victor Morell staggered into the street. The cool night air, frosty and stinging, sobered him somewhat, and he vaguely realized that this was hardly the liour to visit his intended. Nevertheless, not caring to return and face the ridicule of his companions, he lit a new cigar and stalked majestically down the street in search of adventures. His mood at this moment was a decidedly amiable one. He felt friendly towards all the world. Everything impressed him very favorably. So far as he could see there was nothing the matter with anything or anybody, and everything was all right. He was surprised to observe that there were several moons in the sk)', and that the sidewalk was inclined to be shaky, but still he made no complaint and assumed it was all for the best. The stars that twinkled in the sky, the snowflakes under his feet, the houses by the wayside, and everything, great and small, animate and inanimate, he reckoned among his friends. He was full of the joy of life, and living was pure ecstasy. Though not of a religious nat'ire, he was even prepared to extend his support and friend- ship to the old church which towered at the corner; and when he saw a light twinkling up in the chancel window he determined at once to enter and assure the proprietor A (;iie:st of ciod. 41 of his cordial and unqualified friendship. Softly advanc- ing he opened the door and looked in. The body of the church was thick with darkness, but dirrily burning upon the altar three candles cast a pale liglit into the gloom, making the long aisles and the altar plainly vis- ible and revealing the dark figure of a priest who, appa- rently absorbed in his devotions, was kneeling motionless and praying before the mystic candle on the altar. A faint wave of incense carried his voice, strangely muffed, to the ears of his visitor. Ave Man'a, gratia plena^ Dominus tecum benedicta^ tu in mulien'bus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus ; Sancta Maria Mater Dei — The soul of Brother Gabriel was struggling with his flesh, and in the quiet hours of the night and strength- ened by the sight of sacred things, his faith was winning battles from his love and hopes of future bliss were con- quermg ghouls of memory. Afar from men, communing with divinity, his spirit gathered strength to lose the world, and in a dream of higher beatitude he thrust away desire for tlie human and prayed for heavenly bliss and life immortal. He might forgive himself if God for- gave him, and if forgetfulness were granted him in heaven his love would be well lost. And so with thoughts turned Godwards and soul exulting in renun- ciation, he dreamed of the life beautific and " Can I offer you a cigar ?" The priest looked up in horror and saw before him standing on the altar, a handsome youth in gay apparel, a silk hat tilted back upon his head, and in his hand, extended towards Gabriel, a case with some cigars. This 4a A (lUKST OF GOD. vision, so profane and sudden, arising apparently from the ground, seemed to the strained nerves of Brother Gabriel like some infernal supernatural visitation, and startled him with guilty recollection that there had been a grain of earth upon his spirit. Was it the devil come in human guise, as it was said he used at times to travel to tempt the wavering spirit from the church ? The thought possessed the priest with force of full convic- tion, and rising slowly to his feet and gripping tightly in his hand his crucifix, he held it sternly out towards the stranger, crying in thunder tones the exorcism, " Retro Satanthe.^^ A merry laugh rang through the church, but the stranger did not vanish, but with a look of huge amuse- ment in his eyes, which even in the shadows seemed quite friendly, he sought to reassure the brother by remarking : " I'm not old Nick, me boy — only a sort of cousin — dropped in from the external region to offer you a cigar.' Brother Gabriel waved the gift away, viewing the donor still with eyes of horror. " Satan or not," he answered sternly, " you are a child of sin and have been guilty of a sacrilege in coming here to-night." " Well, call it sinner and be quick," answered the visitor genially. " It's all right anyway, and as you don't offer me a chair I guess I'll sit down here." He sat solemnly down upon the altar steps, still puff- ing at his cigar and contemplating the priest with much interest. "You look rather glum, old boy," he remarked A (UJEST OK flOD, 43 sympathetically after a careful scrutiny. " Personally I feel gay"." " I am engaged in the duties of my sacred office, which keep me here to watch to-night," answered the priest with dignity. " Your presence here is a sacrilege, and you must depart at once." "That's easier said than done," answered his compan- ion amiably, "and I feel more like sitting than walking, but I will frankly confess to you I feel salubrious." Brother Gabriel deigned no answer, but, standing severely erect upon the altar, he still glared sternly at the intruder, who, whether owing to the solemnity of his surroundings or the contagious sobriety of the priest, seemed to be gradually becoming sober and passing from a convivial to a philosophic mond. " Funny thing — life, ain't it .?" he remarked genially to the priest. " Life is a sacred thing to me," answered the church- man sternly, "but you may find it funny now. Hereafter in eternal tortures you will reap the fruit of your carnal enjoyment to-day." " Indeed?" said the visitor calmly. "Well I find it very amusing at present." " But when you come to see the face of death you will repent — too late." "Death is the episode which I look forward to with much interest," said the sinner serenely, "but I don't complain of life. And, by the way, what should I repent?" "Repent of your carnal wayment of life, your cigars, your liquors, your cards; repent of your surrender to th li r 44 A GUEST OF GOD. senses, your love of the world, your scorn of spiritual things." "They all seem very minor sins," said Victor gaily, "and thesti are the little things that make one happy. The world is very beautiful and gay, but if you take away ihe fiowers of joy, and drape the skies, and call all pleas- ures sin, why then I think it would be time to say fare- well — good-bye to life, and take a quiet ...eep beneath the grass." "There is no sleep hereafter," said the priest, " but pain eternal for the souls who sought for joy on earth, and joy eternal for the whiter souls who did renounce the world, even as I." A peal of mocking laughter rang through the church as the sinner rose to his feet and cast his cigar aside. " What, you renounce the world! You have renounced nothing. How could you lose a thing you never found, or turn away from joys you never saw ? What mcrit^ is there in renunciation that has not teen the thing which it renounced? The angels would disdain such craven conquest. Go out and see the world and then r-enounce it — if you can." A troubled look crept into the eyes of the priest. Could it be true that he had conquered only shadows? Yes, it was true. To see the world, to feel temptation, and looking into the very eyes of sin to turn aside — that was what God required. He had but wrestled with visions. " Go out and see the world," cried his companion. '' See the sweet world, the world of joy and laughter, Jaste the red wine — wine, the lips, the pleasure. A GUKST 01'' GOD, 45 Drink from the cup of life — life, purple, radiant ; life as they live it out beyond the churches, where flowers bloom and bright stars glow and twinkle, and music, beautiful, profane, stirs the wild soul to rapture. Go out and see the world and then renounce it. You cannot, you dare not. " " I can ! I dare ! " cried Brother Gabriel, with the light of fanaticism in his eye as he glanced towards the door. He had fought with shadows too long. He longed to go out and meet a real temptation and conquer it. The sinner was startled to be taken at his word, and suddenly a strange idea came to his mind. Let the priest go back to the tavern, and he would kneel a little while before his altar. " We will change places for a time,'' he said. " You shall go forth a while and see the world, and I will be the guest of God to-night. Here, leave your gown and take my hat and coat. Go out and see the merry world this merry Christmas Eve — and then renounce it if you dare." The lights burnt low on the altar and the sinner knelt before the cross and smiled — smiled as he thought of Brother Gabriel brought face to face with all the world's delight. How different was that world from this dark temple, where the shadows had gathered so thickly, oppressing the spirit with gloom. He was stifled by the incense, and the white light of the candles hurt his eyes, which loved to gaze upon the sweet stars shining. And yet there was a strange, delicious pleasure in kneeling here before the quiet candles and resting far away from 46 A GUEST OF GOD. all the bustle, the noise, the turmoil and the endless striving of the wild world outside. A sense of spiritual isolation, of mental peace and moral exaltation stole softly on his soul, and he could almost think the dark, ness kindly that it concealed him from the storms out- side. "I could renounce them all," he muttered softly. "I think I could renounce them all but one — she, never! " " Gabriel ! " A cold shiver ran through the form of the sinner as a voice fell on his ear — a thin girl's voice rising vaguely out of the body of the church and floating towards the altar, and lifting up his eyes he saw a shadow pass up the aisle and glide towards the chancel. '* Gabriel," said the shadow, " are you there ? I am Marie." " Marie ! " Victor shuddered — his sweetheart — here — at night. What did it mean, and what was she to Gabriel ? He bowed his head and did not answer, seeming ab sorbed in prayer, but she glided up the chancel steps and stood beside the altar. " Gabriel, you must fly quickly," she said. " My brother, who wishes me to many Victor for his money, has quarrelled with me to-day. I told him I loved only you and would have no other, and he swears he will kill you. O, you know his temper. I saw him at the tavern as I came. He knows that you are here, and he is coming O, Gabriel, if you love me hide somewhere." The head of the sinner was bowed in his hands. He m A GUEST OF GOD. 47 did not answer. The joy of his life had suddenly gone out, and somewhere near his heart a little chord — a chord that once made music — snapped. What did it matter? It seemed the love of his soul had never loved him. What did anything matter now ? Vaguely he thought of Brother Gabriel. " He has gone forth to meet the world, he muttered, •'and lo! his world has come to seek him here." "O, God!" shrieked Marie. ^' Fly, Gabriel. Here he comes — he is coming." A smothered curse at the door of the church as some- one stumbled over the entrance confirmed her state- ment. A man had entered the door and, glancing sternly about him a moment, strode fiercely up the aisle. " O, you are there," he muttered fiercely, " together by . Brother Gabriel, I want my sister." The figure kneeling before the altar had drawn the woman to him. " I am Vicf.or," he whispered hoarsely in her ear. " Gabriel is at the Red Lion tavern. Now run away my pretty love bird and find your mate and make him happy. You give him love and I will give him life, and he will not renounce the world again. Run quickly. I will explain to Robert — and to God." She turned and fled through the door of the chancel. " Are you Gabriel ? " A passion-torn face rose up before him, and a hand with a revolver met his eye. " I am Gabriel." A shot rang through the church, and with that splen- 48 A GITKST OF GOD. did lie upon his lips the Guest of God entered a higher mansion. i ' " What's the matter with Vic. Morell ? " " He's all right.". ** Oh, he's a jolly good fellow, And he's a jolly good fellov/, He's a jolly good fellow, Which nobody can deny." The chorus rang out through the tavern, and to a man and a woman passing by there seemed to be an echo from the angels in the skies. * The lights burnt low on the altar, and softly restmg before the lights the body of the sinner lay in peace, but the soul of the sinner saw a light beyond the lights that burnt upon the altar. A Tragic Smile- 1 (Iri-aml a dieani Hut ah ! that dream is dead ; It was a drcain of things that may not he, It was a dream ol" things too sweet to .see, And joy forever fled. (My happy dream is dea .) I am a dream (Jod dreamt THE pen dropped from the tired fingers and the Dreamer buried his Iiead in his hands, and with a heart as tired as his pen, and spirit ill at ease, he waited for the dying of the year. " Let me in." A voice harsh and discordant broke on the silence of the room and mingled with the sound of heavy knock- ing on the door. Rising hastily to his feet the scholar strode to the door and threw it open wide, and an old man, worn and bent with age, staggered feebly into the room and sank in a chair by the study fire. His face, wrinkled and furrowed with the ravages of time, seemed somehow strangely familiar, and his repulsive person- ality haunted the mind of the scholar with a sense of ghastly reminiscence. " ^Vho are you ? " asked the Dreamer, eyeing him wonderingly. " I am the spirit of the past." "No, you are not the spirit of the past," responded the youth dejectedly, '' for the past is not a spirit, but a corpse. Who are you ? " ;o A IRACIC ^MIl.K. in I • r ■ 1 1 1 ■I I i' II '" 1 iini ilu,' Old \'car/' said tlu; visitor, wanning his hands at the fire. " Let lis talk l()<;ctlu'r seriously. \'our lilc has been a failure.'' " N'ou measure a man by his pursi-,"' cried the 1 )reaiiier indignantly. " Ves. and 1 measure the j)urse by the man," said the' Old N'ear severely. *' iUil what have you done with your life ? " " I have done nothing,"' re|)]ied the youth, " but 1 have often dreamt divinely. While others, blindly practieal, have passed tht ir days in offices and shoi)s, and lived the lives of vegetables and brutes, I have dwelt in mental palaees jeweled with hapj)}' hopes and golden visions. And day and night, by sweetest rapture thrilled, 1 have walked with the immortals on the Alpine heights of thought.'' " But Joy dwells in the valleys," said the old man softly, smiling. " 'I'hen she must dwell alone," answered the youth dejectedly. "Tut, tut, tut," cried the Old Year sharply; "your life has been a failure and you know it. (Capable of all things, you have proved equal to nothing, and now you must come away with me. W'e shall leave the world together. TUit first look at this mirror and see what - might - have - been " He drew from under his cloak a mirror whose silvery surface, as he turned it towards the Dreamer, was slightly blurred and clouded by vague and misty shadows. " What do you see?" asked the old man. n A TRACK- S.MII.K. 5' '' I see a court-room ; the j)lace is close and crowded with men and women. On the bencli, in robes of ermine, a judge is sitting, and in the dock a prisoner charged with murder. With tense, white face, hands clenched and eyes despairing, his pale lips (juivering with a voiceless agony, he ga/es hopelessly before him ; while over his head, invisible to all but one, the angel of death is hovering with hand outstretched to strike. A witness is standing in the box, and near, before him, clothed in robes of black, I see a lawyer (and the face of the lawyer is my face). 1 lark ! he is speaking now ; and his voice, stern and relentles.s, tortures the brain of the witness until his jarred and ([uivering nerves, all tangled and discordant, break down before the stormy tide of words, and the red lines of perjury glow on his ashen face. The witness descends from the box and the counsel turns to the jury. He is reasoning — he is plead ing. Over the twelve white faces he bends in a fever of passion and pleads for the life of the prisoner. Will they save him ? They waver. Will they slay him ? They waver. With words that weep and thoughts that burn and thrill he breathless bends above them plead- ingly and cuts the quivering cords of doubt with sword- like sentences of flame and fire. They waver no longer. Eureka ! he conquers — the prisoner is free, 'i'he angel of death has vanished from the court-room, and a soul snatched from the shadow of the infinite weeps on the neck of his saviour." " That might have been you," said the Old Year. " That might have been you ; but what are you now ? A dreamer. Look again ! What do you see ? " A I RACK .sMIl.K. ■I H ■51 4 4i *' I see — a statesman. He sits in the council of the nation, and with a master liand and cunning brain b,e weaves the looms of history, and binds and blends the warring elements of race and creed and faction and religion into the frame and form, the pat'ern and j)ro- portion, of a majestic nation. I see him making history." "That might iiave been you,/ said the Old ^'ear. "That might have been you; but what are you now? A dreamer. Look again ! \Miat do you see ? " " I see an orator," said the Dreamer. '• I see a mighty auditorium thronged with a multitude of people. ( )n the platform stands an orator and he gazes dreamily for- ward at the surging sea of faces upturned, ex[)ectant, before him. In silence — nay, he is silent no longer. See. he has lifted his hand. Hush, he is speaking ; soft melodies are dripping from his lips. In silvery tones and sweet he thrills the chords of ten thousand hearts, and still his voice is low. Hark ! it deepens— they tremble: it quivers -they weep: it coaxes — they are willing : it tiireatens they shudder. It ([uickens, it (juivers — ah ! see, he is growing diviner. He steps to the front of the platform and his voice peals forth like a trumpet, appealing, beseeching, rebuking, commanding ; it trembles, and rages, and thunders in ecstacy divine. 1 he pallid lips, now parted, pour forth a flood of (ire, a many-colored tide of glowing words and thoughts. He is a vocal flame, a phosphorescent personality of melo- dious light and sound. He looks through the dust on the souls of his hearers and speaks to the spirit within. See, he holds them in the hollow of his hand ; they are angels, they are devils — as he wills." A TkAdlC SMU.K. 5;> ''I'hal might have been you," said the Old Year, '• l)ut what are you now? A dreamer. Look again. What do you see ?" " I see an author, a wizard of words and singer of beautiful songs, who dips his pen in the blood of his heart and writes immortal visions upon the brains of men. See, they crown him with laurels and he sways liis pen like a sceptre, and the voice of mankind is the tongue of his fame and his throne is the heart of the world." " That might have been you," said the Old Year. " ^ iving and dead in glory forever, that might have been you ; but what are you now ? " " I am a tragedy," cried the Dreamer, arising to his feet. " 1 am a drama done behind the scenes ; I am a special creation doomed to a special destruction. Mv soul is like a fiery furnace molten red, and the consurn ing fires of genius burn my poor bram to ashes. I am the youngest brother of Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe - the divinest possibility that ever died unborn. I am a genius, I am — nothing." " What have you left? " asked the Old Year, stealthily watching his hand. "I have this," cried the Dreamer triumphantly, aid the barrel of his revolver flashed in the light of the fii r. " I ahvays thought the world unkind until it gave me - this." (The quivering chords upon the harp of life grew harsh and tangled in a moment, and a charred breath from hell crept through the palpitating nerves, playing a tragic discord on a soul divinely sweet.) 54 A TKAlilt SMII.K. f m I i '* I'irc ! " cried the Old Year fiercely. " Put your gun lo your eye and fire. I will bear you away in my arms.' " Hush," said the Dreamer softly, stirring the papers on the table with the point of his revolver. " The gen- erous world which gave me — this this pretty little Christmas present— this 'pistol — shall have a New Year's ^ift from me. These are the verses I was writing when you came. We will read them softly ti 1 the clock strikes twelve, then we will pull the little trigger : I dreamt a dream, hut ah I My dream is dead ; It was a dream of things that may not he. It was a dream of things too sweet to see, And joy forever fled. " Haste," cried the Old \'ear eagerly ; the hands (jf the clock draw near to the hour of twelve, the shadows are deepening in the west." "So do the shadows deepen on my soul," said the 1 )reamer wearily. Hark ! O dream, dead dream, dream of sweetest seeming ; When will I dream My sweetest dream again ? Dark is the night, my soul forever dreaming, Drifts deathward doubting God may he a dream. 1 am a dream Ghouls dreamt me in the midnight Lo I ** Fire !" cried the Old Year, leaping suddenly to his feet and stretching out his withered arms to seize his A IRACK sMIIK. D.^ Willing prey. " The finger of time points to the hour of twelve, the darkest darkness thickens in the sky and I must leave the world and you must come with me." "The darkest darkness gathers in my soul," said the Dreamer sadly, and his eye glanced dreamily down the harrelofthe revolver into the dim aisles and shadow- shrouded pathways that lead from life's infcrjio to the dreamless valley of death. His finger touched the trigger. "Stop!" A clarion voice rang through the room and a beautiful youth in garments of light, the New Year, radiant with love and joy, rose glittering on his sight, his silvery voice in music mingling with the sweet, melodious ( himing of a thousand mellow hells. "Stop. It was the mirror of the future which you saw. I will fulfil your dreams." " I am going now,'' shrieked the Old Year, making a dive for the window. "Go and be "cried tiie Dreamer, as the New Year clasped him to his heart. For when time and a youth jneet on the h'gh^vays oj HJe it is the youth who smiles. I heard a voice say, "Dreamer, dream again, Dream of undying hope, Unbended knee ; Dnani of the lavuel crown And victory, Dream, dreamer, dream again."' Ill Genius and Patriotism. IN ihc world of literature there are no nations. True genius transcends nationality. 'The sterility of (!!anadian literature to-day is due not to deficiency but to an excess of patriotism. Cienius is measured by its thought and not its dialect. The true author \vrite> not for any particu'ar time or people, but for all peoples and all ages High above the mouldering walls which feudalism and folly have reared, there is a pure and a rarified atmosphere w'.ere thinkers meet and mingle The greatest authors have not written for the particular tribe or nation with which the accident of birth had •associated them, but have penned their message for humanity. Earth itself was too small for Milton, too shallow for Dante, and too narrow for Plato. Canadians fail because they confine their work to a too limited range. The great problems of the age are not national problems They are issues common to all men. Those who have studied the social and economic tendencies of several nations have keenly realized the fact that by a universal and inevitable snythesis the issues of national debate are broadening into issues of human impoit The study of the novelist is human nature, not national nature. The study of the poet is human emotion, and intellect, and passion, and love, and truth, and that impartial nature which no nation can fence in. These things are common to the men of every country. The sun sends its message of light with equal impartiality to the watchers in every tribe t;KNIUS AND PATUIOIISM. 57 Patriotism is a limited altruism. It is an attribute ot nationality, and must vanish with nationality ihit when it vanishes it will vanish noi l)y death hut by growth, or if it dies it will die as the caterpillar dies, and at its death it will take wings and soar to the lofty altitude ot" a golden and glorious altruism. 'I'he author who aspires to rank with the JMatos and I )antes and (loethes must rise as they have risen, above all national j)rejudices, and speak the language of men instead of stuttering in the dialect of any peculiar tribe or nation. The gran- tleur of the Athenians lay in the breadth of their genius. While the citizens of other cities or nations were wrang- ling over local issues, these men walked in their groves and gardens discussing things eternal. The problems that occupied their minds were problems of human destinv, of human conduct and of human nature. Dio genes lived in his tub and discussed the universe Aristotle. Plato, Zeno, Socrates, Epicurus are remem- l)ered to-day becau.se they spoke of issues which every age cou'd appreciate The civil wars and broils in Florence were never deemed by Dante of sufficient impoit to distract his attention from that inspired vision which he has bequeathed to all nations and all ages. The author who aspires to be read through tlie mists of the ages must write in letters of fire. The work of Canadian authors will not be less honorable in the eyes of posterity if it be found that instead of bending their eyes to the dust they turned them to the universal stars. If kings and politicians have taken upon themselves the responsibility of dividing the race into clans and nations, the author is under no compulsion to confine his thouglu tM 5« (;EN[US .\Mi I'A IKIO'IISM. II ;.i a tt) the boundaries which their folly has presoribecL ( lenius should not be an accessory to the crime of nationality. 'I'l e Romans chained the si ive, Epictetus, but they could not chain the philosopher. It is tl e peculiar function of genius to cred'e from its mind an ideal universe whose on'y citizen is man. While the politicians of the various nations are howling their national anthems, or dancing a frantic war dance to music of tradition, the poets and the philosophers stand as old Plato stood in god-like grandeur beneath vaults of the universe listening to the music of the spheres, and feelin'4 that even the world itself is too narrow a home for that imprisoned soul whose thoughts are as wide as the infinite and as deep as God There are problems in art, in psychology and in sociology which the average Canadian author never touches on. It is idle to assert a deficiency of subjects. There are mysteries of mind, of conduct and of nature to be revealed The miracle of life is yet to be ex- plained, and the oracle of being asks from the thinkers of this country, as it has asked of all others, an answer to the question, " from whence and whither? " vScience and literature are closely correlated, and must soon go on their journey to the depths hand in hand There are promethean depths as yet unsounded in every de- p;.rtment of thought There are oracles still unread, there are oceans yet unsounded, there are cities yet unbuilt. Indeed, when we compare the things unknown with the things we know, and see the supreme mystery that encompasses us on every side, and how the esoteric shrouds the exoteric like the night prevailing over the illl (lENlUS AM) I'AIKIOriSM. 59 day, we cannot but think that we are indeed ujion the surface of a world and the past voices that have spoken, grand as they were, were but the h'spings of an infant who some day shall rise to manhood and rend aside the veil of ether, and in no wavering voice demand an answer to the question " Why ? " Within the depths of the human mind there linger anthems which the gods might chant, songs of such subtle music that sera[»hs might becomingly sing them. The greatest songs are yet unsung, the wisest sayings are yet unsaid Below the shallows seen slumber the depths invisible, and deeper han the spoken are the unspoken things Beethoven recorded the most subtle chords of music as yet revealed to ma'^, but these only seem like the echoes, faint and feeble, of some- mighty choir whose wildest and gnndest melodies are yet unheard. Mozart and Handel each caught and recorded marvellous melodies, which, glorious as they are, yet seem like only the overture of an opera whose most glorious anthems are yet unsung. Spinoza, Fitche and Schelling passed through the portico of the infinite, but seemed to drop their pens before recording the things beyond Boh me, Swedenborg and Blavatsky, borne on the w ngs of a subtle mysticism, seem to have penetrated into that occult universe where the causes sit in state, and yet the light they have given us seems merely a feeble candle, which burns feebly and ner- vously in the midst of a dense, dark inscrutable universe. Tyndall, Crooks and Tesla, having indicated the identity of the forces in ether, have paused for a moment to tell us that they are only beginning to learn. Herbert Spen- cer, in the very inception of his philosophy, speaks of a t I C)0 GKNIUS AND PATRIOTISM. H great " unknown." Political economy for two centuries has been seeking a remedy for social discontent, and in its latest utterance tells us that it has sought in vain. Meanwhi'e the authors of Canada are discussing the Fenian Raid. They tell in thrilling tones of the genesis of the sijuaw and the decline and fall of the papoose. They expatiate in glowing periods on the criminality of Sunday street cars. The columns of an Ottawa journal were recently occupied by a prolonged discussion be tween two aspiring Canadian writers on the correct and proper spelling of the word " honour," and another great man, '* the mightiest Roman of them all," with a genius as unique as it is rare, with a fervid patriotism that wou'd put a Regulus to shame, and an erudition which is unrivalled and profound, discusses the heroic achieve- ments of the York pioneers. Even assuming that the history of Canada were pro- lific of those incidents which form a fitting theme for genius, and display in activity the more subtle qualities of the mind, it does not follow that the Canadian author should reject the whole of the world for a part, or confine his studies of human nature to its manifestations in one particular district. It must also be borne in mind that the work of the author is not purely historical. The most important departments of human thought are those whose greatest development may be looked for in the future. 1 here are depths below depths and heights above heights. The realms of nature are yet unread. Even to those authors who do not aspire to deal with the more subtle problems of the universe, or to go be yond the world in which they dwell, there is ample (JENIUS AN [J PATRIOTISM. 6r material for thought and authorship in tlie great social and economic issues of the day. The evils of land mon- opoly, of unequal division of wealth, of poverty, of vice, of crime, of superstition, all form a fitting subject for the pen as well as for the voice. Ten million poverty- stricken people on this continent alone cry in agonized tones to the men of thought as well as of action to con- secrate their powers to the destruction of monopoly, the organization of industry and the emancipation of the masses. Surely when the rifle is beginning to speak on the question of labour and capital, the pen should not be silent ; and surely when these great and weighty issues, issues of life and death, issues of time and eter- nity, are awaiting a solution, the authors of Canada have not far to seek to find a sterner and worthier subject for their genius than the decline of the bison, or the beauty^ of Muskoka lakes. A nation is made honourable bv the honour of its men, and its greatness is measured by the capacities of its people. Had the authors of Athens never arisen above the barriers of nationality, Athens would be for- gotten today. If the authors of Canada content them- selves with the discussion of local issues, obscurity will l)e their reward. It behooves them to turn their eyes from the shallows to the depths, to recognize the fact that national divisions in no sense represent mental dis- tinctions, and to lend that genius which they possess in no less degree than any other people or era to the eluci- dation of those profound problems of race and intellect and society which form the common heritage of every people. Let it be said of this Canada of ours that it 02 CKXIls WD I'A'rklO'l'ISM. produced men whose minds were broad, whose as['ira tions were lofty, and wlio, standing on this spot of Mother Earth, looked higher than the walls that men have built and saw inspired visions in the skies. Let it be said that, wide as their country is, their minds are wider, thai while Canadians in name they are god-like in nature, and are elevated by the power of an aspiration which nation ality can never cripple and tradition can never stain. But if, on the other hand, the authors of this country continue to cower behind the walls of nationality, to tune their souls to the harmonies of the party machine, and to mumble in the dialed of a tribe instead of speak- ing the language of humanity, 1 cannot but think it altogether fitting and proper that their reward should be proportioned to their ambition, and their work be paid for in a coin as visionary as the feudal phantoms they adore. t:-. Apollo and Tomkins. ^^^L I'OLLO— It makes me weary — it makes me /\ exceedingly weary to read about other fe! __ jL lows doing the great thing while we poor modern devils are doomed by the asinine mediocrity of the age to live like cows in stalls and chew the cud of civilization. Men don't live nowadays ; they merely exist ; they are machines, they are moles, they are worms. The world is worn out, aged and sear ; the blood runs cold, the pulse beats slow, the wine of life is sour, the flowers of joy are withered, the lights burn low. Life is a failure. Tomkins —Nonsense. What do you know about life? — a foolish boy barely out of his teens! This is the most highly civilized epoch in the history of the world. Apollo— And what is civiliz.ition l)ut a coffin where the ancient joys lie buried ? One splendid moment of wild barbaric joy was worth a century of this. Give me the ancient ecstasy — when the world was savage and free and the battle of life was fought in a garden of flowers— bright skies, bright eyes, bright hopes, red wine, red lips, red blood, great hearts, great hopes, great hates, the lust for life, the battle joy. Tomkins — Heroes are fools. They were too primi- tive to be practical. If you get three meals a day you needn't complain. Look after number one. If you don't skin the other fellow he'll skin you. Make a dive for the dough whenever you see it. Life ain't so bad if it ^)4 AJ'OI.I.O AND TOM KINS. you've got the stuff The rich man is always fash oiv able. Cash will open any door in Toronto or elsewhce. Who made society influential and polite? Apollo — No one made it polite, but someone called it polite, and what a sweet exchange you offer for the deep joys of old. You spend your life making cash to open the door of joy, and when the cash is made your life is gone. You stand old and tired before the door of society with a golden key in your hand. You open it and find — a garden of roses ? No, but a select company of silly females and rattlebrained, simpering men — a hierarchy of mediocrities, where it is positively unfash- ionable to be intelligent, and criminal to be clever. Did you ever hear an original remark in a drawing- room ? ToMKiNS — Not often, but then I have seldom met you out, you know. I have, however, seen some clever men — not too clever, you know — just clever. Apollo— The men of to-day have milk in their veins instead of blood. ToMKiNs— Milk ! What of our football p'ayers, our hockey Apollo — Ye gods ! How Achilles would have smiled to see the sons of an imperial race, descendants of the men whose fathers conquered nations and wrote immor- tal epics, chasing a dirty piece of pigskin around the field or floundering like silly schoolboys on the ice ! What an intellectual effort it requires to be a civilized young man ! ToMKiNS — I am appalled at your superiority. We have some students, however, in the to>vn — some colleges. AI'OI.l.O AND TOM KINS. ^>5 Apollo— Where the minds of boys are stuffed with threadbare, worn-out thoughts of other men ; where the- flower of youth is wasted in the charnel atmosphere of lecture-rooms and library ; their eyes grow dim, the roses fade from their cheeks, their brows grow wrinkled. They bring knowledge away from college and leave their youth behind. 1 love a man as Nature made him, before the chains of civilization were laid upon him to cripple and deform. 1 love him in all his primitive simplicity - barbaric, beautiful and free— the brother of the rost-,. the lily and the dew, the comrade of the stars, alive and thrilling with creative music— the music of the storm.. ToMKiNS— Oh, give us a rest! I'm hungry! I'm going home ! I want some grub ! Toronto, Feb., '97. ii The Last Patient. I MK threw himself into a chair and covered his face with his hands. The long winter's drive was over at last, but the c(jld of the night was still in his veins and his brain felt heavy and numb. " I have overdone it," he muttered wearily. " Tiiere is a limit to nature's endurance. I have passed the limit to-night." Il had been a terrible journey — twenty miles through the heavy snow on the coldest of winter nights. Even now in the quiet of his study and before the blaze of the fire he could feel the sting of the frost upon his face and hear the surge of the remorseless wind as it drove the pitiless hail on his brow. The strain had been too great — too great for a frame already weakened and emaciated by a too close attendance to duty. Since the fever epi- demic had entered tlie neighborhood and carried off two of his fellow physicians among its victims, the burden of his duty had been greatly increased. By day and night, with unremitting care, he had gone upon his rounds and faced the common enemy in a hundred different homes. His life for the last few weeks had been one long succession of visits varied only by occa- sional brief intervals of rest. Last night he had known no sleep, and this day, though feeling strangely sick, he had pursued the round of his visits and had only now returned from a drive of twenty miles to sink in utter exhaustion into his easy-chair. '■V] THE I -AST I'AIIKNT. 67 "I have got it — the fever," he muttered, staring dizzily at the fire. And in the quiet of the study he could hear the noisy tlirohl)ing of his heart beating tumuUuously, while the blood coursed madly through his veins and he felt a weight like lead upon his brain. With aching eyes and mind distraught with care, he gazed unsteadily forward into the fire and seemed to see death in the flames. He longed for rest but could not rest ; sleep, and he could not sleep, for there was anarchy in his brain and his heart was freighted with fire. "Sonner or later," he murmured feebly. "Just as well soon as late." No, he had little to lose by death. All that he loved he had lost a little while before and what rem:iined was liardly worth possessing. He shuddered as he looked around, op})ressed by his isolation from the world and by the utter loneliness and hopelessness of life. He thought of other scenes and days — other and sweeter scenes — other and happier days, and one death-dealing day — the darkest day of all, when his heart had been broken in twain, and the light of his life had gone out. She had been very cruel. It was that which led to this — he had nothing to live foi now. His pitients, yes, his patients — he should certainly live for them — see their faces float before him — faces living and dead. Fevered faces, pallid faces — they floated before him in the twilight— faces of strong men in agony, and women and little children — little, little children, how they circled around him, and stared at 68 THE I-A^^T PATIENT. him with cold, unpitying eyes, and opened pallid lips to murmur : '* Physician, heal thyself." With a mocking laugh he leaped to his feet, half waking, half asleep, till the noise of his laughter recalled his scattered senses and startled him to a conscious- ness of his surroundings. His professional instincts and his professional pride revolted at his previous hesitance. He staggered to his feet and mixed a glass of medicine, drank it, and sank back in his chair. " I must have sleep," he muttered. " I am weak — weak. Another night like the last and I am finished. I cannot go out to night thoue;h the devil himself should call. I will not go out to-night." " Tinkle— tinkle— tmkle." It was the bell of the telephone vibrating suddenly on the silence. With a smothered curse the doctor sprang to his feet, then sank back again in his chair. " Let it ring and be ," he muttered. " I will not go out to night." " Tinkle— tinkle— tinkle." Imperious and petulant the bell rang through the house, calling him to duty. " I dare not," he muttered weakly. " I must have rest to-night." ^ " Tinkle— tinkle— tinkle." Who could it be? Which of his patients was it? Their faces flitted before him, one by one, and he won- dered which it could be who summoned him now so impressively in the midnight to risk his life for theirs. THK LAST PATIENT, 69 His heart was stirred to bitter indignation and revolt at tlie persistent cruelty of the bell. •'Tinkle— tinkle— tinkle." With a smothered rurse he jumped to his feet and eagerly strode to the telephone. " Who is it ? " he shouted angrily. " What do you want ? Who is it ? " And then it was that there came suddenly to his ear, borne with swift, electric impulse along the throbbing wire, a word — a name which stirred him like a trumpet and sent the hot blood rushing through his veins in an ecstasy of pleasure — and of pain. " Adele." "Adele!" he echoed. "You?" *' Yes. Come — come quickly." '• I will come — yes, quickly," he answered rapidly, every nerve in his body thrilling at this supreme appeal. She Wao ill — the light of his life, the light of the world — she was ill. He forgot the cruel past. The tube of the telephone dropped from his hand and he turned towards the door. • ••••. The patient lay upon his bed in the gray house on the hill and watched with restless eye the figure of a woman who sat in a chair by the window of the bed- room and looked out into the night. The face of the patient, flushed with fear, was also drawn in pain. There was a frown upon his brow and a strange, bitter passion lurking in his eyes, not born of physical disease, but seeming of the symptom of some other fever — some fever older and more malignant — which doctors could iHJ 70 THE LAST FATIENT. il not cure. The source of his mental disquietude was obviously the woman at the window, from whom his eves, steadily staring forward, were never removed for a moment. "You telephoned for a doctor, Adele," he murmured hoarsely. "Who?" "Martyn." "Why Martyn ?" he queried jealously. " Why Mar- tyn, I say? " '• The other two are dead," she said resentfully. " He is the only one ivailable." " Then I must have him or die. It is Martyn or death, eh ? " groaned the patient, turning restlessly on his pillow. "Yes," she answered wearily. " Or Martyn and death," muttered the patient viciously beneath his breath, as he relapsed again into silence. She looked out into the darkness of the night and wondered if he would come. It seemed so long ago since she had seen him, so long ago since they had met and parted, hoping never to meet again. So long ago it seemed since on that night of nights in the perfumed conservatory — surrounded by flowers in full bloom, by roses, and hyacinths, and violets, and thorns — he had knelt and sobbed at her feet, asking in vain the love she gave to that poor thing on the bed — to him and his gold. Yes, it seemed very long ago since she had answered " No" and sent him forth from her presence a broken- hearted man, vowing never to see her again— and now would he come ? I' I HI'. lAbl I'AIIKNI. 71 " He thinks it is me," she niurnjured, and in the siltnce of the night the thought was very sweet. A sound of a step in the distance drawing nearer and nearer — now it was at the door. She must meet iiini and tell him the truth. She left the window and passed to the parlor below, and glancing at a mirror on her way shuddered to see the paleness of her face. They met in the parlor. He started back in surprise. " Adele," he cried. ''You " " Yes, I." " I thought " -I was ill." u You said- " To come." " Thank God," he cried impulsively, " it is not you — thank God." As he spoke he staggered slightly. The reaction had been too great. He sank in a chair feeling faint. She glanced at him anxiously. He had changed very little with time, and his eyes were still filled with the same wonderful love that had glanced in them on the night when she set her little foot upon his heart. He sat for a moment in silence, striving to grasp the situation, then suddenly raised his head. '' Not you," he said. " Then who ? " " Henry." "Who?" " Henry." He sprang to his feet with an oath. There was a flush of righteous anger on his face. " Woman, woman, are you mad, or pitiless as hate to send for me — for him ? " 7^ IHK I, AST IWTIENT. ^ ii ■2^« i t I'ii ^'i His heart was filled to bursting with bitter indignation and despair, at this, her crowning cruelty. He wlked towards the door. " Arthur." When could he resist that voice ? He paused at the doorway. " Well ? " " See him or — he will die." *' Let him die and be . Ah, he will die ! "' The full meaning of the words flashed suddenly upon him then, breaking in a flood of joy upon his heart and opening up new vistas and possibilities to his mind. *' He will die," he muttered. "And then, Adele, and then " She shuddered and turned away, but her lips at least were true, " Save him," she whispered feebly, and led the way upstairs. The patient lay upon his bed and heard with hungry ears the voices down below. He cursed the God that made him helpless and placed him at the mercy of his rival. " He can save me. He can kill me," he muttered feverishly. " Which will she tell him to do ? " With clenched hands and panting breath he lay upon his bed and awaited the coming of his fate. Now there were steps on the stairs. He counted Ihem one by one. They paused. Hark to the whispers OPtide the door : Save him." " Adele, you ask too m^uch." The door was opened softly, and they entered the THE LAST PATIENT, 7. room together. The doctor walked to the side of the bed with a step unsteady and slow, and sank in a chair by the side of his patient. He was feeling strangely ill. and as the prospect of another sleepless night loomed up before him he seemed to see beyond it the shadow of the valley of death. " Leave us," he said to the woman. " I will watch by his side to-night." She shuddered and left the room. • ••#., That night a devil dark as night and cruel as fate rose up from the depths of hell and hovered above the gray house on the hill, and, even as he hovered, preparing to descend, lo ! the gates of heaven flew open wide and an angel bright as light and fair as day swept downwards and wrestled with the devil above the gray house on the hill. And when she entered the room in the morning the patient lay upon his bed and slept the sleep of health, with smiles upon his lips, and by his side the doctor knelt, his dead white hand upon the living pulse — and slept the sleep that knows no waking. Two Historic Costumes. CHAP. I. BEFORE THE F5ALL h I ■"^T might have been for you, sir," said the valet, " it fits so well." "It does, indeed," answered O'Grady care- lessly ; " I seem to have worn it before." " Impossible, sir," said the valet ; " it's a hundred — two hundred years old " "Impossible, of course," said O'Grady impatiently, " and yet it seems " "Will you not look in the mirror, sir?'' said the ser- vant enthusiastically. "Ah, what a beautiful fit !" " One moment," said the purchaser as he buckled the belt to his side and drew the sword from its sheath, " but what is this on the sword ? The steel is soiled — " " It is blood, sir," answered the valet proudly. " A stain, sir — a stain of blood ; the blood of some noble lord. The sword is old ; it has seen service, sir." "And so has the suit," said O'Grady ruefully; " but my purse has seen service, too, and we must adapt the one to the other. Oh, these historic balls !" "The suit has been used but little," answered the valet eagerly. " One owner was killed in a duel a few nights after he bought it. There was a quarrel at the ball, and then the duel ; but the suit is as good as new — all but that place that is stitched — there where the sword went through." M TWO HISTORIC COSTUMES. 75 He placed his fingers on a little spot cleverly stitched and just above the heart, but O'Grady started suddenly back. " Don't touch me," he cred, *' It pains." The valet looked at him wonderingly, then smiled in sudden understanding of the situation. " Imagination," he said. " I have met with it before in noble gentlemen who say that when they put on these suits they seem to assume the characters of their owners. "Assume— or resume," muttered O'Grady, thought- fully glancing at the cavalier who, attired in the costume of a courtier of Louis XIV., confronted him in the mirror. It was a very different costume from what he had worn all day, and yet it seemed very familiar. It might have been his daily dress, so perfectly natural did it seem. ''^ Mon dieu t how becoming it is," cried the valet enthusiastically, echoing his thoughts. " It might have been made for you, sir." " Perhaps it was," said O'Grady, half smiling at the conceit. " Who did you say was the owner?" "The Count de Lavat, sir," answered the servant, "a courtier of Louis XIV., stationed for a time at Quebec, where he was killed in a duel i^y le Viscount de Grassi " "Lavat — de Grassi," muttered O'Grady under his breath. " How familiar — how familiar." " Mon dieu I what ails you, sir ? " cried the valet, alarmed at the change in the voice of O'Grady, who had started suddenly back with his hand upon his sword. "I remember, ah, I remember," answered his master wildly. " It all comes back to me now. I have lived 76 TWO HISTORIC COSTUMES. before to-day — this sword — this suit — Violette and de Grassi — where is he ? ' " Eh, sir, I do not know," said the servant, " but his suit is gone to the ball. A gentleman called Wilkins purchased it, and just like you he say — when he look in the glass he say, ' My God, where is Lavat ? ' " " Ah, traitor, I will find you," cried O'Grady fiercely, and with an angry scowl he hastened away to the Armories. I CHAP. II. AT THE BALL. '• Lavat." " De Grassi." In the middle of the Armories two courtiers of Louis XIV. confronted each other fiercely. " You killed me in a duel a hundred years"ago," hissed Lavat fiercely. " I am delighted to hear it," answered De Grassi haughtily ; "and what about it, sir?" ''Where is Violette?" " Dear me ! Are you after her still ? " answered the other insolently. " O these historic balls ! " " She comes," cried the other wildly, as a beautiful figure drew near. " Violette ! " they cried simultaneously. " De Lavat— De Grassi," she muttered. "(What a nuisance.) This is like old times, is it not ? " " I love you !" cried Lavat. " What ! must I kill you again ?" shrieked De Grassi. " Will you do me a service ? " she asked sweetly. The cavaliers fell on their knees. TWO HISTORIC COSTUMES. 77 " Wander away to the Osgoode Hall grounds and kill each other again," she answered dreamily. "I have but one dance and will give it to the survivor." CHAPTER III. THE DUEL. The moon shone brightly in the winter sky and cast her pale and spectral beams on the grounds of Osgoode Hall. A couple of courtiers in the costume of the time of Louis XIV,, accompanied by their seconds, con- fronted each other in the snow, prepared to engage in mortal combat. "Villain !" hissed De Grassi, as he threw his iiut on the ground. " Traitor ! " shrieked Lavat, as he drew his sword from its sheath. One by one they removed their coats and vests to ease them while at combat, and as they laid the historic costumes on the ground the character of the courtier vanished with them, and a sudden recollection brought to light the real identity of the warriors. " Hallo, O'Grady ! " cried VVilkins. " Is that you, Wilkins? " cried O'Grady. Oh, these historic balls ! ■f, !'i '1 An Exile from Erin. . {T. ITArcy McGee.) It is now nearly thirly years since the bullet of Whalen removed from the field of public affairs in Canada one of ihe most brilliant and fascinating figures that has ever appeared in the arena of Canadian politics, " An Exile from Erin " he came to our shores and by the witchery of art and charm of resistless eloquence won for himself an enduring regard in the affections of his chosen countrs men. J)riven by an adverse fate from the shores of Old Ireland, he drifted first to America, then to Canadian soil, and found in the legislature of the nebulous nation a fitting field for the exercise of his gifts. At the parturition period of this country's history he threw into the scale of its political forces the weight of his wisdom and his wit, and lived to see the warring forces reconciled, and class and creed and races and religions bound and blent together in the great consum- mation of Confederation. Then, in the prime of life, with his foot implanted on the threshold of the new- born .\ation, and his eloquent mind glowing with visions of future greatness in the councils of the vast Dominion, the shadow of the past fell heavily upon him, and the cruel hand of Fenianism snatched him from the service of his country, amidst whose enlightened councils and liberal institutions he had learned the lesson of tolera- tion and loyalty. The secret of the death and conduct of McGee must be right in the history of his early life. His present A\ KXII.K FROM KRIN. 79 was perpetually haunted by his past and the shadow of an early error hung heavily over the vista of a life made radiant by many kindly deeds. It was a dark day in Dublin, where many days are dark, when the spirit of O'Connell passed away, freeing the eager agitators of the " Young Ireland " faction from the last restraint to their fatal ambi'lon to realize visions by violence. Already t!ie agitation for the repeal of the Union initiated by the great tribune had gone farther than his wildest dreams had ever ventured, and led by famine and strengthened by suffering, had hovered dan- gerously near the perilous ridge of revolution. The flames his eloquence had kindled fed on the hopes his heart had cherished and the generation which echoed his denunciations to Britain rejected his counsels of peace. The year 1848, wh^'ch witnessed the occurrence of the rebellion which necessitated the departure of McGee f^om Ireland was then prolific of great events, not oily in Ireland, but in almost every country in Europe. Throughout the whole of the Continent the smoulder- ing spirit of revolution, so long subdued and crushed, at last burst forth with a tragic intensity which shook every throne in Europe. In France the barricades were erected and the red lines of flame sweeping down the bloody aisles of the boulevards emancipated the country from the monarchy. In Italy the heroic follower? of Maz- zini and Garibaldi had reaped the fruits of innumerable conspiracies and waged their gallant war for freedom with great, but short-lived success. In Hungary the genius of Kossuth had kindled the souls of the Magyars :1: 8o AN EXILE FROM ERIN. and the genius of liberty flashed fitfully forth from the ill-fated bayonets of Gorgey. In the German states the demand for constitutional freedom was fiercely echoed by millions of turbulent voices, and even in Russia the serf was shaking his chains. And was it to be expected that Ireland, restless, emotional, impatient, would remam silent in the midst of this universal turmoil, particularly when the voice of the most eloquent orators had com- bined with the exactions of the landlords, and the energy of their bailiffs to convince her peasantry that they were the most injured people in the world? The agitation for the repeal of the Union inaugurated by O'Connell had, even before he died, passed far beyond his control, and fanned by the fiery eloquence of a rising generation of brilliant men, had developed into an im- passioned agitation bordering very closely on revolution for the establishment of an independent Irish nation. And now the voice of the agitator and the zeal of the bailiff had found a terrible auxiliary in the great famine, which, sweeping over the country, completed the misery of the people and reduced the unfortunate peasants to a condition of abject destitution and poverty. At this time D'Arcy McGee, as editor of The Dublin Nation, was one of the most conspicuous of that bril- liant band of Irish journalists who voiced the sentiments of the Young Ireland party, and vigorously incited the people to rise and emancipate themselves from British rule. They were no Home Rulers, but Nationalists out and out, and demanded nothing less than the complete independence ot Ireland. They pointed with passion- ate indignation to the poverty of the people, to the AN l.Xll.K I kuM KRIN. 8i exactions of the landlords, to the starvation ot the pea- santry, to the destitution of the country, and recklessly declared that all these had been caused by British rule, and would be cured by Irish independence. They painted with a ^lowing and poetic eloquence the future of an Irish nation witli all her people rich and happy, sans landlords, sans bailiffs, sans famine, sans poverty, and the green f^ag over all. And the poor peasantry, hungry and ragged, and driven to desperation by the terrible famine, but ever hopeful, ever imaginative, and" ever responsive to the voice of eloquence, prepared ta arm themselves for the impending struggle, and with rusty muskets in their ragged arms go forth to fight for Ireland under the leadership of the valiant Dublin jour nalists. There is something strangely pathetic in the cre- dulity of these people, who have so often failed but never faltered, and knowing every mood but despair, cower among their wretched huts and cherish a hope not born of idle dreams that all will yet be well. The sun for- ever sinking has never set on Ireland, and the genius of her people is seen forever shining in the twinkle of an eye, the smile upon their lips and the unquenchable kindness of their large and loving hearts. The year 1848 found them, as usuil, at the disposal of the loudest agitat- ors, poor but patriotic, always willing, but seldom ready, ever brave and ever blind, always determined and always deluded, and never more completely destined to make their periodic and proverbial plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous. As the year advanced the preparations for an uprising became more extensive and more violent. The success 'I' %. w IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 5^ ^ ^ / o A o 1.0 I.I 1^128 U: |40 U 2.5 ;.8 1.25 IIIIII.4 ill! 1.6 7F i !; I'' !' li J 1' J r It 90 AN ODE TO A I500K O ! wondrous book, that thus canst hold, Within the compass of thy pages ; Thoughts that like living tempest rolled, And echoed down the wondering ages, Dreams that for other worlds have striven, And hopes that wandered near to heaven. But where, ah ! where is he — the thinker, The mind that shed thy fruitful germs ; And what art thou that hast a being, VViiila he that made thee feeds the worms, And while his bones in earth are lying, Thou still art here — exempt from d> iiti ? And every eye that views thy pages, And gazes wondering on thy story, Will lose its light — whil^^ other ages Are bringing tribute to thy glory. The sons of men are laid to rest, While thou eternally art blessed. And what was that which gave ihee powt.-: To sail unsinking on the sea ? Whose was the brain that toiled an hour To win eternity for thee ? That faded when it gave thee birih, And mingled with its mother earth. He lived in times when minds were shrouded, But saw the light, and in it wrought ; lli iji AN ODE TO A HOOK. And after hours, perplexed and clouded, Brought forth a thought, And tremblingly to thee consigned The sacred treasure of his mind, Bidding thee give it to mankind. He lived to see his work derided. And ignorance smote him with a curse ; But grandly rising he defied it, Then called his hearse. And left thy calm and tear stained pages To bear his greeting to the ages. The flame he kindled now is burning, The world grows happier in its light, And opening minds are d.iily learning To bless the champion of the night. A hundred statues mark his glory, A thousand voices tell his fame, The friends of freedom rush to battle, And win their battle in his name. 91 * ^ And thou the offspring of his sorrow, Faint shadow of the master-mind. Thou dost behold the golden morrow ; But he— Ah ! he is bhnd. And to the world's triumphant choral, The worm is echoing back a moral. ' i ' At the Point. 'd'' i ; 1 ^ i n OVV close we are to tragedy," she said, nervously glancing at the dark waters by the edge of the canoe. " How close indeed," he muttered, remembering he sat by a woman. The music of the band at Hanlan's came softly float- ing over the waters, gently mingling with the murmur of the waves, and, vaguely outlined in the distance, the oyagers could see a gliostiy promenade of shadows passing slowly to and fro upon the shore. The sound of music, softened and mellowed by ihe distance, throbbed upon the air, blending in sweet, melodious unison with the ripple of waves and the murmur cf passing voices, till the waters far beneath them throbbed with great harmonies and little melodies floated on invisible wings about the boat. " Suppose I it'll overboard, would you save me ?" she asked her comp.inion, anticipating the conventional " certainly," but Trevor was silent, though her eyes were fixed on him. " You do not answer," she muttered petulantly. " Why should I ? " he answered carelessly. " The question ib superfluous." There was a silence again in the boat, while she strove to grasp his meaning unavailingly, but with the usual vanity of woman placed a flattering interpretation on. his remark and waited for another. AT THE rOINT. 93 They were nol alone on thv.* waters. Other boats passed softly to and fro upon the surface of the waves, noise- lessly in and out of the shadows, but yet their vocal isolation was complete, and this was an ideal occasion for the anticipated proposal. Surely this was the time of times for the word of words to be said ; but her beauty had a rival in the night, and the soul of the thinker in cosmic communion with the spirit of nature around was becoming splendidly oblivious of the human. And yet ^he must break this silence. " It is a fine night," she said emphatically, as though she were describing a pudding. He looked at Ler wonderingly, and his poet's eyes were filled with startled horror and a sense of vague repulsion thrilled his soul. " Surely the occasion is worthy of a more original re- mark than that," he said impatiently, and his spirit, stirred profoundly by the beauty of the night and moved in depths she could not dream of, revolted at the inadequacy of the phrase. " Can it be that you are only ordinary? " he said. " Why do you call me ordinary ? " she asked in wonder and dimly conscious that she said a word which made the other word impossible. " I call you ordinary because you have profaned the splendid silence of this night by a commonplace remark," he said savagely, turning the boat to the shore with a sense of bitter disillusion. " Perhaps you could suggest a remark equal to the occasion," she said sneeringly. A splendid sentence trembled on his lips ready to I .ttsauimmi^ m^m 94 AT THE POINl blossom in spetch and mingle with the music of the night and take its place in that vague orchestra of ele- mental sound and light which thrilled the air around. His lips were opened but he suddenly paused. "She is only a woman " he thought, and turned the boat to the shore. " He is a poet," she shuddered, and asked, " Is this the point ? " ** It is Hanlan's Point," he answered. " The other point you missed." Impressions of Rossetti. AMONG the list of eminent decadents in whose work that very original critic, Max Nordau, has discovered symptoms of degeneration is Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The poet has accordingly been relegated by this amiable critic to that long list of the illustrious insane in which he has included so many of the mosteminent writers of theday.andamongtherii, of course, that school of literary impressionists with whose work the verse of Rossetti bears so delicate and subtle an affinity. It will be some consolation to the admirers of the poet to reflect that the harsh opinion of Nordau is entirely at variance with the verdict of that higher and rational school of criticism which, with hardly a dissenting voice, has assigned to this poet a foremost place among that exalted band of minstrels whose lofty mission it has been to find a rhythmic voice for those sublimer harm- onies which move the spirit of man to alternate smiles and tears. The critics have been very kind to Rossetti, perhaps because he was kind to the critics. He set be- fore them a dainty dish, which even the most fastidious intellectual epicure could hardly fail to relish ; and it would be a difficult thing indeed to find a flaw in any one of those beautiful sonnets which he wrought with such exquisite care, in which the soul of music seems to slumber, and which seem not only poetry, but the very essence of poetry. The limitations of Rossetti are more obvious than his H, !; Vi. r:~ 96 IMPRESSIONS OF ROSSKTTI. defects. His work is not characterized by that univer- sal sympathy, that cosmic breadth and depth of thought, and great imaginative power which is generally con- reived to be the visible stamp and seal of the highest form of genius. There are here no vast and primitive emotions, no turbulent upheavals of the depths, none of that great titanic wrath and rapture, those tragic heights and depths of pain and passion which thrill us with sudden and tempestuous emotion in the poets and prophets of old. There is none of the heroic grandeur of Homer, the sublime passion of yEschylus, the flame- clad imaginings of Dante, the prophetic ecstasy of Isaiah. We do not find these things in the work of Rossetti. His is essentially the poetry of a highly civ- ilized epoch, subtle, sensitive, and refined. Passion in- deed there is, indeed as terrible and as intense as ever rent the stormy heart of Prometheus, or moved the stony eyes of Loke to tears. But this emotion wears a veil, and tears its pallid face away, utters no heaven- rending cry of agony, but in a whisper hushed and sibi- lant, voices a grief as cruel as death or night. Under the influence of the great emotions the voice sinks to a whisper. The deepest grief is not the most audible. In this age of self-repression passion cowers behind the prison bars 0/ sense, and Will, the warder, holds the lock and key. Our sorrow is subdued. Our grief is not the grief of angry gods, but the deep and inexpres- sible anguish of a silent, inexplicable sphinx. And yet though his range is limited, and his sympa- thies are far from universal, I sometimes think this poet has struck a higher chord of music than any who pre- I I "^ IMPRESSIONS OF ROSSETTI. 97 ceded him. To him more than to any other of those who voice their moods in verse, there seems to have been given the facuhy to penetrate the profounder depths of feehng, to play more subtle melodies upon the soul of maij, to look down deeper into elemental emotions, to lift a little while the mystic veil, and gaze upon a beauty vague and terrible, as that which haunts the dreams of thosf* who sleep in graveyards. To those who read his verse there comes consciousness of pro- founder and diviner things than those perceptible to eyes blinded and dim with dust blown from the highways of the earth, he wakes the seventh sense and shows us spectral soulscapes of unearthly beauty. The intellect- ual atmosphere is redolent with the perfume of invisible flowers, music of invisible orchestras, visions of tb.e mystical realm which . . . lies in heaven across the flood Of ether as a bridge. Beneath the tides of day and night, With flame and darkness ridge. He seemed to see beyond the horizon of human per- ception, and piercing dusty mists with eyes of fire, gaze into the heart of the invisible. It was not enough for him to see the things that others see, or know the joys that gladdened other eyes, and thrilled the chords of souls not less than his with deep pulsations of immortal passion, and joy of mortal life and ecstasy of wind and wave and star. It was not enough for him to absorb into his soul the beauty and the verdure of the earth, and weave into the fibre of his verse the white and c;8 IMPRESSIONS OF ROSSETTI. ashen spltndour of the dawn, Ihe golden glory of the noonday sun, the sacred dusk of twilight. No. He would absoib them all indeed — and wait — so impatiently for the night — for the night to come with its darkness — and in the bosom of the darkness the stars — and from the hearts of tiie stars, the music — that music astral and divine — the music of the star-beams singing, and join his voice to theirs and sing a song whose hair Blows like a flame and blossoms like a wreath, till they who read his verse when the moon is high in the heavens and the astral light of the singing spheres floats earthwards so mysteriously, can sometimes hear in sweetest fancy the tinkle of angelic harps and hear the seraphim sweetly singing as they cluster in the twilight of the immortal heavens to sing immortal songs. It is this transcendental tone — this poetic perception of the supersensible — which gives this poet a place apart from his fellows. He seems to have touched a higher chord — subtle, attenuated and refined — some prelude of a sublimer minstrel — a stray note of a choir celestial — a floating melody which drifted downwards to lift us upwards along the aisles of light to realms forever di- vine, Where we shall meet With bodiless form and unapparent feet. The soul of man looks out of his prison-house of clay and waking strangely from the sleep of life holds cosmic communion with nature unconcealed and feels a deep ! IMPRESSIONS OF ROSSETTI. 99 US di- ■i \ eep and subtle affinity with all that is beautiful and fair — the sweet roses — its sisters — its brothers, the stars. From the tragic island of his frail mortality he drifts in dreams to glory and with an inner ear hears sweeter harmonie > than those poor muffled sounds which mocked him in the midnight of mortality. On waves of colour, sound, and light, he floats to sweetest rapture and is absorbed in the depths of that supreme Being whose mortal mood he was. Rossetti buried his happiness some years before he died and, as students of his biography know, he buried his poetry with her. There is no more pathetic picture in all literary biography than that which was visible to the eyes of those who saw a broken-hearted poet enter the room where the love of his heart lay dead, and after reading to ears that were deaf the poems he wrote to her honour, deposit in the coffin the book of verse which she had been the ever living inspiration. Later, the body was exhumed and the only copy of the poems then extant was rescued from oblivion ; and those who read these verses sometimes think they have absorbed the spirit of the dead and still retain with all its ecstasy of love some odour likewise of the grave, the coffin and the dust wherein they lay a time upon a pallid breast. Others who read them think that when the spirit parted from the clay, she took these lines with her to heaven to be revised by angels and dowered with perennial immortality by the warm brea 3f gods. But this is only fancy. On her death the poet strove to voice his grief in those sonnets of the Book of Life — sonnets which sometimes seem to sweat a sweat of ICO IMPRESSIONS OF KOSSET'II. 11 'I II blood, which glow and palpitate and tremble with the very ecstasy of music and blush and thill like things of flesh and blood. The lines are dripping with tears and damp with vermilion drops. His soul remembers yet The sunless hours that pass it by And still he hears the Night's disconsolate cry And feels the branches ringing wet Cast on his brow that may not once forget Dumb tears from the blind sky. The dew of death was on his brow some years before he died, and the relentless grip of an insidious disease drove l;im for peace to poison. Through the clouds of chloral and mists of tears the splendid soul shone like a star, and even as the microbe ate away the ropes of dust that bound the spirit and the flesh, his eyes forever open sought the light that fadeth not forever. Through the long hours of the night when pain denied him sleep he paced with restless step his studio and watched the first faint streaks of dawn fall on the picture that he loved. Look in my face — my name is Might Have-Been. I am also called — No More — Too Late — Farewell Up to thine ear I hold the dead sea shell. There is no biography but autobiography, no revela- tion but self-revelation. Where shall we seek the char- acter of an author? We must seek for it ii. his writings. The spirit of the author broods over his creations. His presence is visible between the lines. We hear his 'if IMPRESSIONS or ROSSETTI. lOI heart beats in its melodies. Through the flame-lit aisles of the Inferno stalks the majestic figure ot Dante. Milton walks in the Garden of Eden, and Homer dogs the footsteps of Achilles. Behind the fantastic figures which revel in the midnight saturnalia of U'alpurgis we see the sphinx-nke countenance of Goethe. The sun- set falls on Scottish hills and from a lonely cottage on the heather the face of Burns looks up and smiles forever. The skylark soars and Shelley sings. The raven sits on every bust of Pallas and the voice of Poe forever echoes in the ringing and the rolling and ihe tolling of the bells. The dark clouds brood above the heights of Sinai and the thunderings and the lightnings of some immortal wrath stir the spirit of Isaiah to prophesy. The blessed Damozel leans out of heaven, her lily-white hands are on the golden bars, and her eyes look sofily down- wards Like waters hushed at even ; and that white soul which gazes ever upwards, straining against the prison bars of clay in the dim ecstasy of breathless expectation and the vague wonder of di nnest discontent — that is Rossetti. \ V; ' .tL ,-.,_JJ^,. - The Fall of the Curate. II I I THE curate rose from his knees and turned out the lights on the altar. This was the work of the sexton, but the sexton had gone home and there was no one left in the church — none but the curate and the organist — the organist who sat in the shadow of his instrument dreamily fingering the keys. " Come, Morell," said the curate ; '* we must close up the church and go home." " Wait," said the organist softly. " Turn out the lights and wait." The curate looked at him wonderingly as he sat half concealed in the shadows that enveloped the organ and chancel in a dim, religious mist. He was a strange man, this organist, but a superb musician, of whom apart from that he knew very little. He was a strange man and had made a strange request, and one which in that holy place and hour grated harshly on the tired nerves of a curate already weak and overstrained by the prolonged Lenten services of fasting, and vigil, and prayer. The great bod.' of the church was already shrouded in dark- ness, with the exception of the light which shone from a few jets of gas on the chancel, whose feeble and uncertain rays, striving inefifectually to relieve the gloom, succeeded only in accentuating the dim fantasy of the shadows which played around the organ and mocked the pale and spectral light that fell on aisle, and altar, and nave. The strange and depressing influence of this environ- THE FALL OF THE CURATE. 103 ment, combined with the weariness begot of prolonged Lenten labor, stirred the gentle spirit of the curate to revolt against this sudde 1 attack upon his nerves. "I am tired," he said petulantly. " I have fasted for forty days and worked very hard in the parish. To- morrow (Good Friday) I must rise at seven. Let me go home and rest." " I have a confession to make," said the organist. " Put out the lights and listen." There was a strange thrill in the voice ot the organist, which moved the curate to wonder — moved him to wonder and fear. With a nervous glance at his com- panion he passed reluctantly to the lights and extin- guished them one by one, with the exception of the solitary jet which burned by the side of the musician in the shadow of the organ. His hand trembled as he touched the jets and his nervousness grew with the dark- ness which thickened and deepened around him, seem- ing to stifle him with its closeness and blackness, and oppressing him with a consciousness of some hidden and terrible danger. The last light was extinguished, and nervous and faint and exhausted he sank into a seat in the choir and gazed with stramed and expectant eyes at the vague and shadowy figure that sat motionless in front of the organ. But no sound disturbed the stillness ; the moments seemed longer than hours and the silence as dense as the darkness which oppressed the soul of the listener with a nameless and terril)le fear. A white hand fluttered in the air — fluttered a moment and fell— and suddenly upon the quiet of the hoi) place 104 THE TALI, OK TFIK tTKATE. i ! 1 1 i I s I'' lit I there hurst a flood of most unholy sound. It was a valse. Wave after wave and tide on tide of sacrilegious Tiusic beat the air, peah'ng and vibrating through the hollows of the chancel and rushing in fierce derision down the dark vistas of the aisles. It mounted to the galleries and rang among the rafters, storming the altar, and choir, and chancel with wild harmonic laughter and musical sneer and jeer, deriding the hohness of the temple and mocking the sanctity of the sanctua.y with fierce melodic scorn. " Be silent, madman,'' cried the curate; "remember where you are, the place, the hour." '* Be silent, you," cried the organist above the waves of sound. " Be silent you and listen. It is thus I have lived my life." The curate shuddered and bowed his head. The long Lenten fast had told on his emaciated frame. He was faint, and weak, and exhausted by the hard work of the parish, long days of watching by the beds of the sick, and nights of spiritual striving, and vigil, and fast, and prayer. But the long Lent battle was drawing to an end and he had hoped to rest — to rest and be happy ; and now at the moment of his greatest weakness, just when the battle was over and the victory seemed to be won ; when, weakened and worn by the struggle, he had hoped to find rest and peace — now, at the moment of his greatest weakness, the tempter was upon him. The evil one assailed him in the darkness of the church. Sin with her sweetest voice was singing as the sirens sang of old — singing of life and its joy. Profane and beautiful, the music thrilled his soul, THK K\I.I, OF- THK CURATK. »05 drowning the whispers of his conscience ^ith hot har- monic waves and waking \ assions and vearnings he had never known *^efore. Passionate and persuasive, it echoed through the aisles and corridors of his brain and stormed his soul with waves of fire and melody and light, as it had stormed and scorned the altar of the church wherein he knelt and prayed. For it was singing now of all life's sweetest joys, its passion and its ecstasy and hope — the lips that lure, the smile that slays, the hope that dares and ventures all, the faith that dies forever to live an hour, and the fathomless love that loses all to win a little and loves that little better than the lost. In tender tones and low it told of stolen joys and veiled and secret bliss, and rapture b3rn of the red, red wine, and j)urple passions, and pleasurej fierce and fair. Hark to the voice of Juliet singing a love song to her Romeo — a love song in the moonlight. A nightingale is calling to her mate — the song of the loved to her lover. Mark the royal rage of Othello — it is pealing, pealing, pealing from the organ. No, it is Ophelia now who weeps and whispers. Come, How the music thrills and trembles, soft and sweet, tender and low, tender and low, and soft and sweet, waking a wild de- lirium of emotional passion and longing in the soul of him who hears. "The world is fair," cries the organ. "The world is fair, fair, fair. Why are you wasting the dawn of your life in helpless longing and hopeless prayer, when all the world is fair, fair, fair ? " The curate heard and trembled for his soul. The contagion of passion had seized him, and he longed to IP^ io6 Tin<: I AM, OF THE CURATE. I I i I i feel what he heard, to go out of the darkness and gloom of the church into the beautiful world — the purple world, the world of passion, and smiles, and tears, and sunligh*, gold and glory. The white hand fluttered a moment in the air — flut- tered a moment and fell — and rested in silence on ihe keys. The voice of the organ was hushed, but still the music trembled and thrilled, thrilled in the soul of the curate. A thousand passions hitherto undreamt of vibrated in his heart and strange desires blossomed in his breast. His eye had glanced along the glowing chords of melody and seen the vistas of a larger life. The organist rose from the organ. His face was pale and sad and his eyes were full of f^^ar as he glanced at the fire in the eyes of the white wan face before liim. "You are going," said the curate. *'Ycs, I am going to h'ullivan's to gamble and dance and drink," said the musician. " May I come ? ' said the curate. The organist turned away his head and answered hoarsely, " Come." And they passed from the church together. The Terrible Tale. IT lay on the table before him and he almost trembled to touch it — the terrible thing ^ 1 . I 1 2 A rOET-I'Ul.ri'IClAN. in turn conquered and supplanted by Charlemagne and his Franks. Even the Saracens invaded the country and wrested tribute from the pope. Lovely valleys and fertile fields were devastated and reduced to sterility by the fierce incursions of the Nortlimen and Magyars. The Carlovingian kings were succeeded by a line of Italians, whose rule was practically only nominal and gave abundant opportunity for the growth of feudal and civic power. The great nobles in the provinces and the great merchants and bishops in the cities founded parties and factionfi, and inaugurated that bitter series of civil contentions which for many centuries filled the country with internal strife. In 962 ihe crown of Italy was seized by Otto, the German, and two centuries later that foolish burlesque on ancient grandeur, the Holy Roman Empire, was born. The twelfth century witnessed the beginning of the bitter struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines and the advent of Frederick Barbarossa, to reduce the growing power of the Italian cities. During this and the succeeding century the country was the scene of perpetual strife. When the people were not warring with some foreign power, they were engaged in bitter civil contentions, and suffering from self-inflicted wounds. The rivalries of factions, of princes, of nobles, of cities, and of provinces generated unceasing wars. Remnants of the many races that had overrun thecountry still lingered in localities to breed contention. By the fifteenth century, Italy was divided among five leading powers — the Papacy, Naples, Milan, Florence, and Venice. The last two republics for some time managed, on account chiefly of A I'OET-POLIliClAN. »U their commercial advantages, to preserve an isolated greatness, but this was as evanescent as it was glorious, and in the succeeding centuries their power declined. The condition of Italy in the fifteenth century was ag- gravated by the invasion of the French, and the country became a short time later a battle-ground for the rival forces of Francis I. and Charles V. In the sixteenth century it became largely subject to Spain, and for the next hundred years was alternately in the possession of several European powers. At the close of the eigh- teenth century, this unfortunate country, which had lain at the feet of nearly every conqueror in Europe, felt upon its bleeding so' the mighty tread of the greatest of all conquerors and saw the meteoric genius of Na- poleon flash like a glittering star across the horiz.on of its history, In 1805, Napoleon was crowned King of Italy. After the Congress of Vienna, the country was restored to its original position and practically became subject to' Aus- tria. The princes, who exercised absolute powers and mercilessly punished all attempts at reform, indepen- dence or self-government on the part of the people. A powerful Austrian army was stationed in Lombardo- Venetia, to aid any of the princes who might need its assistance to crush and control the people ; the Italians had absolutely no part in the control of their own coun- try and were severely punished if they ventured to de- mand it, or even to complain of the misery generated by political despotism. The discontent of the masses found vent in secret societies, of which the greatest was the Carbonari. Several risings took place against Austrian ?!;' — im 114 A POKT-POLITK IAN. I • IT I' ,i 11^ !»i despotism, but were suppressed with great cruelly and the leaders punished by death. Such was the condition of Italy at the time of the birth and boyhood of Mazzini. We see him first as an enthusi- astic student at Cienoa, poring over the classics, reading the pages of Tacitus, wandering by the shores of the beautiful sea with Plutarch in his hand, and drinking in with pride and wonder the marvellous story of the rise and glory and achievements of the great Romans of old. One does not need to be an Italian to sympathize with the passionate indignation of the young student when he compared the ancient glory of his country with its modern degradation. Even a stranger, who, unlike him- self, could claim no relationship with the immortals, can readily appreciate the deep emotion of the countryman of the C'lesars when he read of the mighty deeds of his ancestors and stood in startled wonder before the pictured glory of those days when old Rome sat enthroned upon her s&ven hills, crowned queen of the ancient world, and sent forth her C?esars to conquer and her Ciceros to charm. What vision of vanished glory must have passed before the mind of the dreamer as he sat, Plutarch in hand, on some high cliff by the shores of the happy sea. Visions of the imperial eagles sweeping through distant forests, riding on stormy seas, flashing triumphant in battle, and passing through danger and darkness, con- quering and to conquer through the world. Visions of Scipio on the ruins of Carthage, of Titus on the ruins of Jerusalem, of Pompey sweeping the Mediterranean, of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Visions of the magnificent city in the days of its antique splendor, its mighty streets A I'OKT-POLITICIAN. ^'5 lined with marble statues of those that had made it glorious, its stately palaces standing in pillared beauty by the way, its mighty Forum where the destinies of innumerable nations were determined. Visions of Cicero pleading with divine eloquence in the Forum. Visions of the mighty Coliseum with its gladiatorial combats and its benches thronged with the figures of the conquerors of the world. Visions of the mighty empire, which, extending on all sides of the imperial city, held in supreme subjection Gaul and German, Hun and Vandal, Jew and Egyptian, Grecian and Briton and innumerable other peoples in Europe and Africa and Asia. Visions of those all-conquering cohorts against which the bravest armies of mighty peoples dashed themselves in vain, for the destruction of which the prayers of the Druid to the gnarled god of the forest, of the Jew to the veiled presence of Jehovah, of the Greek to the supreme power of Jove,*of the Egyptian to the might of Osiris, were all offered up in vam. Visions of the imperial mistress of war supreme over all men and all their gods, and holding them all at her feet. Such were the pictures that rose before the eye of the student Mazzini when his mind dwelt on the past, but sadly different was the scene he saw when, rising from his dreams, he looked aroundjhim. He saw his country subject to a foreign power, his countrymen denied free- dom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of action. He saw them bowed down, humiliated and scorned. He saw the armed soldiers of Austria in his city and hardly dared even to whisper the love that filled his heart for Italy, the hatred he felt for her foes. He ■I I' ii6 A I'OKT-POMTICIAN. mil heard of frequent rel)el!ions of his hot-tempered country- men against the government, and sometimes saw thtir dead bodies dragged through the streets or hanging on the scaffold. As the Italians were denied all freedom of speech in public, they naturally were forced to form secret societies for the purpose of meeting together and devising means for the liberation of their country. The bluff, open-mir.ded Briton may sneer at the " under- hand " methods of these patriots, but he should not forget the fact that this method of warfare was forced upon the people by the despotism which forbade and punished every other form of assembly. There was no other alternative open. The patriots must meet in secret or not meet at all. In the year [S29 Mazzini allied himself with the Car- bonari feeling, however distrustful of their methods he might be, that in the ranks of that society alone would he find the opportunity which he desired to assist in the liberation ot his country. But the government were too familiar with the methods and too fearful of the purposes of this famous organization to neglect submitting it to a severe and perpetual scrutiny, and Mazzini soon found to his cost that not even the rigid formula of the secret ritual, or the severe rites of initiation, were adequate to protect the society from the intrusion of spies. It is not unlikely that secret agents of the government were present in every lodge of the conspirators, and the most guarded and reticent patriot was in perpetual danger of betrayal. A short time after he had joined the Car- bonari, Mazzini was betrayed to the police and cast into A H(JET-l'OLITlCIAN. »17 ina ;ret to rere vost of :ar- Into prison at Savona. His employment liere strikingly illustrated the quaint words of the poet : " Stone walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage." His body was imprisoned but not his mind. It was while confined to this cell that he formulated his future methods of political procedure. It was there that he saw, as in a vision, the picture of a great united Italy, free from coercion, free from division, and free from the curse of oppression ; there he dreamt that beautiful dream, which came also to Dante in his night, which has for many weary centuries been the inspiration and the joy of the poets and patriots of the stricken land — the dream of a nation awakening from its sleep, casting its fetters from its limbs and rising again to those sublime proportions, which made it once the pride and glory of the world. On his release from prison Mazzini organ- ized the "Young Italy Association." The purpose of this society was to achieve the liberty and union of the provinces of Italy and establish that country as an independent nation under a republican form of govern- ment. The aspirations of the patriots were not confined to the redemption of their own country. They wished to establish in Italy a model nation, an example to the other nations of Europe, a type on which the democrats of Europe would see the ideal to which they might bring their own nations to conform. Mazzini was essentially an idealist. He aspired to lil)erate the continent from the despotism of feudal institutions, and estal)lish a new and happier era of popular government, fraternity, union I iK A I'OKT-POI-ITK IAN. and peace. To the realization of this ideal his life was henceforth consecrated, and till the day of his death he toiled and fought, wrote, exhorted, plotted and sufTercd, that his dream might be written in indelible characters on the face of the land that he loved. The reward of his early exertions was a sentence of perpetual banish- ment, and from the year 1 832 he was an outlaw from Italy. Henceforth for many years his life was spent in hiding. To all but his most intimate associates his whereabouts was generally unknown. Despite the secrecy of his life, his energy never ceased. In some mysterious wny he seetned to communicate with all parts of hisow ) country and of Europe and to organize and direct that remark- able succession of conspiracies and agitations and of revolutionary ideas which made him the terror of all governments and the idol of all republicans. •(■' i^! (I ; ti^ 1 m L The discontent in Italy burst into revolution in Lom- bardy in 1^48, and Mazzini returned to that country to assist Garibaldi in leading and directing the forces of the revolutionists. Attempts on the part of the King of Sardinia to bribe him by the ofTer of the position of Prime Mmister of a new state of Piedmont- Lombardy, he rejected with scorn. He struggled bravely against the powerful forces of government, and even after the surrender of Milan, still toiled and schemed to maintain the contest in the Alps, bailing in this, he went to Tuscany. His vast popularity with his countrymen was amply evidenced by the passionate and enthusiastic wel- come he received at Leghorn and other places where he was recognized. He was elected a deputy to the A POKI-POIJIK IAN. 119 (in- to of of Republican Congress at Rome, and he and Armellina and SafTi were appointed a triumvirate with powers to govern the city as they pleased. From a political point of view, Mazzini was at this time probably at the summit of his greatness He was the idol of the Romans, and practically the absolute head of an Italian Republic. But his position, however exalted it might appear, was in reality far from enviable ; the forces at his disposal were weak and undisciplined, the fortifications of the city were of small strength. His camp was filled with spies and many of his supporters lacked only the opportunity to become traitors. A strong French army was march- ing against the city to replace the Pc^pe on his throne. What a Napoleon, an .Alexander or a Caesar would have done under circumstances like these, it is difficult to say. It is possible, perhaps, they might by sodie supreme expedient of genius, have overcome the marnfold difift- culties about them, defeated the French, marched swiftly on their other foes and routed them, established the new Republic on a firm basis, organized a powerful army, reconquered all Italy, defeated or conciliated Aus- tria and F'rance and re-established by force of genius the Republic of Italy. To accomplish such a tremendous task as this required, however, a genius and military capacity of so supreme a quality as is rarely given to man. Mazzini, brave, noble, eloquent, as he proved himself to be, was not a Caesar. After a short and stubborn resistance, the French entered Rome and re- placed the Pope on his beloved throne. The triumvirs resigned and left the city and Mazzini returned to Lon- don. Again he had failed to liberate Italy but he did ]\V , i \ 20 A MOliT-POl.rilCIAX. I ''V ^ jifi .'.: s not despair of her freedom. He organized the Society of the Friends of Italy and also the European Society, and busied himself contriving new plots and seeking new schemes to destroy foreign itifluence and monarchy in Italy. He planned and organized risings in Mantua, (ienoa, Leghorn and Milan. When the heroic (janhakli undertook hisfamousexpedition against Sicily and Naples, Mazzini spared no exertion to furnish it with all available essentials of success. When the army of the patriots were dispersed at Aspromonte, the profound indignation of Mazzini at the conduct of the King prompted him to a violent and eloquent attack on the Sardinian monarchy. The reply to this was a sentence of death. The con- vention of September, i860, the crowning triumph of the genius of Cavour was denounced by Mazzini as an unworthy compromise. In 1869 he was banished for a second time from Switzerland, where he had taken refuge, and the next year he was arrested and cast into {)rison at (iaeta. On his liberation he lived for a time at Lugano, and on March, 1872, his weary, tor- tured life came to a close, and he breathed his last at Pisa anil was buried in the land he loved far better than life. Such is the story of Mazzini, and a sadder, sweeter, grander life than his was never lived l^y man. I have given the bare outline of events, but who can tell the secret history of his thoughts and life, who can picture in cold type the terrible strength of that passion which could survive a thousand failures and see hope in the darkest night. Who can measure the might of that devotion at whose bidding he gladly, lovingly, laid down m A I'OET-POMTICIAN. 121 his peace, his prosperity, his rest, his hfe, upon the con- secrated altar of an almost hopeless cause. The secret history ol the life of Mazzini has never been written. We read of the events, the revolution, the conspiracies, the visible evidences of his activity, but we know nothing of the terrible toil, the planning and scheming and contriving which brought these things to [)ass ; nothing of the strange meetings in dark cellars ; the gatherings in hidden places, the meetings in strange caves by lonely Italian shores ; the assembling in mountain gorges of those ostracized conspirators, to whom the slightest revelation of their acf'vity meant death. We know nothing of the spinning, the weaving, and .vind- ing of the mysterious web of giant conspiracies of the secret language of signs and symbols by which the rebels communicated in public; the fierce, s*vift coun- cils held in lonely corners by the light of some dimly burning fire. Of these we know nothing, nor do we know anything of that internal, mental strife, that name- less sorrow with which the hunted patriot, driven from land to land, banished from the presence of light by the blood-hounds of the monarchs of Europe, looked down on the wrecks of shattered hopes, and mourned in secret tribulation the death of cherished dreams. To build, to weave, to scheme, to elaborate a plot, to see it budding into form beneath his subtle hands and then to learn that it had failed through treachery of friends or force of foes, this was the repeated experience of Mazzini. Who shall tell of the strength of that love which could outlive the death of many hopes ; who can record the tempests of his thoughts or tell of the doubts •• ) 1 ^ I !1 122 A POKT-POI.ITU.IAN. he defeated, the sins he smote, the cares he con- quered ? Mazzini was not the only weaver of plots for the liber- ation of Italy. In another and higher sphere a giant mind laid other and deeper plans whose fruit was the freedom and union of Italy. I shall not attempt in this short sketch to describe the character or follow in its intricate and winding ways the profound policy of one who was probably the greatest statesman of mod- ern Italy. To Cavour must be given the supreme credit for the union and freedom of Italy. He was more patient, more cautious, calmer, less scrupulous, than Mazzini or Garibaldi. He was willing to take liberty in fractions, to fight for a little at a time, lo temporize, to compromise, to acquiesce, to adapt himself to circum- stances, until by so doing he was enabled to attain a power by which he could control circumstances and adapt them in time to his will. Instead of alienating the government by expressing his opinions, he concili- ated it by concealing them. Having thus won the con- fidence of the ruling powers, he mounted upon it to office. He never attempted the impossible. He wasted no strength where it would be ineffectual. While Maz- zini, banished for his imprudence, sought to undermine the foundations of the fortress, and Garibaldi battered at is walls, Cavour remained inside and mixed with its defenders, learnt their secrets, studied their methods, won their confidence, became their leader, and, having thus obtained control of the fortress, handed it over to freedom. What his real opinions were no man knows, for he loved them too well to express them. He was A I'OKT-I'Ol.rilCIAN. '«.^ id as probably as great a patriot as Mazzini, but he knew the times and seasons too well to sow seeds on frozen ground. His profound plots, his deep intrigues, his consummate diplomacy, created those complications which forced Austria to withdraw from Italy. By masking his patriot- ism he preserved it for future use. He had his agents in every state in Italy and every court in Kurope. He scorned no means of attaining his ends, played un the animosities of individuals and the rivalries oi nations, and used all manner of instruments, from (iaribaldi to the ladies of the court. He critically estimated to what degree of weakness his opponents must be reduced be- fore a blow would be effectual. While the hot-headed patriots made fruitless attacks on the army of Austria and tried by force of arms to drive it from the country, Cavour looked deeper than they. He knew that the army was only an instrument obedient to orders. Who gave the orders ? Certain men 'n Vienna. Who were these men, what were there motives, what their charac- ter, to what influences were they susceptible, what was the weakness of each ? This was his business to find, and having found, to use for Italy. He knew that the forces of the Italians were not sufficiently powerful in themselves to drive the Austrians from Italy, but he also knew that, however weak his countrymen might be alone, they became formidable as auxiliaries of other powers. He must form an alliance with France or some other nation. Seeing that the energies of the revolu- tionists were divided, he determined to unite them. What were the influences antagonistic to union ? Each king and each state was subject to some controlling in- 124 A POKT- POLITIC I AN. m fluences. In one it was ambition, in another avarice, in another a woman, in another a priest. He must have spies in each court, agents in every palace ; statesmen, sweethearts, and valets, all must serve his ends and re- ceive their instructions from him, and so he wove his webs. At the same time he weakened the temporal power of the Pope. He outwitted the rulers of a Church which was represented at every court and in many royal households of Europe. He mastered with their own weapons, and in the very centre of their power, the keenest masters of intrigue in Europe. He undermined the papal power, conquered the Jesuits with their own subtle weapons, foiled Antonelli, and with the most per- fect courtesy ruined Romanism in Italy, where it is now only a name. But while to Cavour is conceded the Immediate credit for the union and liberation of Italy, to Mazzini there must also be conceded the honour of having awakened HI the hearts of his countrymen that passionate patriot- ism and fearless courage in the expression of their con- victions, which, if it did not in itself cause the des- truction of Austrian power in Italy, was at least instru- mental in proving to the Austrians that they could only retain the country at a vast expenditure of blood and money. Had the repeated revolts which Mazzini in- stigated and o'-ganized not convinced Austria of the difficulty of ruling the country, it is possible that, despite * the efforts of Cavour, she might have attempted the task for half a century longer. Towards the union of Italy Mazzini also contributed in no small degree. He united the people in a common cause, before Cavour :IBi A I'OET-l'Ol.ri'iClAN. 125 united them in a common country. He found that sen- timent of loyalty to Italy, without which its union could never have been consummated, and which, far more than any constitutions or statutes found an enduring basis of union. He made them Itahans in heart before they became Italians in fact. He organized branches of his society in every state, he taught the same holy lesson to all and in the heart of each he planted a blossom from the everlasting flower of h.s faith. He was a poet-politician and around him there has been long the halo of romance. He early dreamt a beautiful dream and waking to a tortured day kept ever before his love-lit eyes the perfect picture of his pure ideal. He often failed but never faltered. In darkest night or dreariest day, when the fires of hope burnt low and the picture of his idolized country stretched bleed- ing on her cross, rose darkly before his weary eyes, he still stretched out his hands to save her, revived her with his tears, fed her with his blood. His life was the life of a martyr. Not only did he suffer sorrow, pov- erty, pain and loss in person, but every blow that fell on Italy pierced him to his heart. He was one with his country and whenever she suffered he sighed, feeling her pains repeated in himself. His fidelity was perfect, no power could weaken his faith, though all were tried. The glitter of gold, the promise of peace, the power of princes, the danger of death, the wiles of priests, the edicts of governments, failure, poverty, exile, all failed to shake his allegiance to republicanism, his deathless love of Italy. He was worthy of the Romans of old, worthy of Reg- I 26 A POKT POLITIC IAN. ulus, worthy of Cato, worthy of Gracchus, worthy of Brutus. When in the capital of the new Italy another pantheon arises and the statues of noble Romans are re- placed uj)on the pedestals from which the impious hand of the conqueror had cast them down, they will not stand alone. By the side of Regulus, and in the com- panionship of Gracchus, fit associate alike of Cato and of Ci*^ ^To, there will stand the pictured bust of the patriot Mazzini, and if any ask the reason of his presence there it will be told to them that he was the man whose ever flowing tears and bleeding heart so fertilized the soil of Italy that it brought forth men like the men that it l)ore of old, who, standing by his side, freed their country and prepared for Italy a future worthy of her skies. He has redeemed this century from the charge of mediocrity of sentiment. His beautiful, bla.neless life consecrated to the service of a dream, will prove to the posterity that the present generation was not wholly des- titute of heroism. He has robbed antiquity of its mon- opoly of the heroic. A beautiful dreamer, he proved to the world that the things which are dreamt can be, that into the daikness of dust the glory of spirit can flow. Over the bowed figure of a toil-worn generation, over the wrecks of shattered faiths, the palsied forms of senile sen- timents, the smouldering fires of smitten hopes, his spirit passed like a fresh breath of life, and they awoke. Like the opening anthem of a great drama, like the music of an unfolding world, like the perfect voice of an angel in- carnate proclaiming a new heaven and a new earth, we A POET-POLITlClAN. 127 hear again his passionate words to the repubhcans of Europe : " From our cross of sorrow and persecution, we men of exile, representatives in heart and faith of the en- slaved millions of men, proclaim the religion of a new epoch. Let not the hateful cry of reaction be heard upon your lips but hearken to the sweet and solemn words of the days that are to be. Have faith, O ye who suffer for a noble cause, apostles of a truth the world comprehends not, warriors in a sacred fight whom ig- norance calls rebels. To-morrow, perhaps, the world, now incredulous, will bow before you in holy enthusiasm.' —the sublime cry of Galileo, ' Eppar si muove ' will float above the ages. Child of Humanity, raise thv brow to the sun of God and read upon the heavens, Faith and action. The future is ours." r ■f Utophia. '1'! {» Ml Utophia, beautiful city of dreams, When will the eyes of men behold thee Arise like a wonderful star in the night From the mists that enshroud and enfold thee? Thy mansions aglow with the light of the morning, Thy temples aflame with the beauty to be, The light of thy presence forever adorning A race everlastingly free. Long, long have we waited in darkness and sorrow With eyes that are aching and heavy with tears, Hoping to see thee to-morrow, to-morrow Enthroned on the summit of years. And oft in the night of our vain endeavor We have dreamed a dream of a sweeter morn, Only to waken to toil forever In cities forever forlorn. Cities we have, but we name them never, Shadows of shame — forever accurst — Where the souls of the millions toil forever In ceaseless hunger and quenchless thirst. Down, down in the darkness that never rises Crippled and dwarfed in their hopeless graves^ They curse the pitiless fate that disguises The souls of men in the bodies of slaves. I 29 UTOPHIA. And day by day we have toiled and striven, Fettered by fate and by folly bound, Till we saw a light in the darkness given' Of a city sought for and never found. Far through the mists of the midnight gleaming A beautiful vision met our sight, Forever to fly when the eyes of our dreaming Were opened again to the night. O city of dreams that are fairer than dreams. And hopes that flower— and fade again,' Marvellous mirage that is— or seems Forever sought for— in vain Mock us no longer— but rise in glory And crown the conquest that love began Till the beautiful dream of a beautiful story Is the visible dwelling of man. Utophia, wonderful city of dreams I see thy lights ! I see thy lights ! Far where the sun of the morning gleams Through the darkest and saddest of nights. The lights on thy altars are glowing and flaming, Thy mansions are thronged with the hosts of the free, And the voice of thy millions is grandly proclaim- ing " The things that are dreamt can be." m ' The Intruder. III I TME statue of the god stood in the garden on his pedestal, erect in marble pride, indifferent to the world, its joys and cares, and splendidly oblivious of the human. The pale rays of the moon fell softly on it, revealing its frozen beauty to the night and showing in quaint relief the smile of fine dis- dain with which it viewed the mortal underneath, who, with admiring eyes, gazed upwards upon the frozen god. " Well, Apollo, things have changed since those old Attic days when men and maidens knelt before you and wreathed your brows with flowers." Was it a fancy — or did the eyelid fall ? The stranger, watching the statue, thought he saw a sudden flush of purple on the cheek. "Men would not worship you to day if you were still abroad. The world is very civilized and very sordid, very wise and very miserable. Ah, Apollo, can you not come back again ? " He thought he Siw a thin vermilion line, and then another, stand out on the veins of the marble ; then laughed at the folly of his imagiijation and passed on musingly out of the garden. Step by step he slowly passed away, but when the last faint step had shed its feeble echo on the air the statue suddenly leaped to life. The marble veins were flushed with blood. The lips grew ruby red. The eyes flashed light, and Apollo, god of the morning, radiant and beautiful, but in a mortal guise, stepped down from his pedestal. THE INTRUDER. 131 sllll rdid, I not then then id on slowly led its )ed to The .polio, It in a " Mankind are miserable," he said, "and I have slept too long. I will go down and sing sweet songs and make men happy." Apollo stood upon a hill and looked down upon the city and thrilled with joy to see the golden lights that twinkled in the shadows of the buildings down below with vague suggestion of forbidden mystery. What were they doing there, the restless sons of men whose fathers wreathed his brow with flowers long centuries ago ? Wiiose were the songs they sang? What music moved them ? Did beauty thrill them still, and at what ahar did they kneel to-day ? His heart warmed to the world again as he saw it stretched in visible beauty before him. He v/ould go down and dwell with men once more. ^\'ere they unhappy ? He would make them happy and sifig sweet songs to fill their hearts with joy. Were they exultant ? He would share their pleasure and join his happy voice to swell the chorus. With eager steps he strode towards the city, and soon he stood amid its crowded streets thronged with the hur- rying feet of many people who hastened to and fro, intent on business. The world had altered strangely since he left it, and he was much surprired to see the bustle and excitement of the people, and the strained look of care upon their faces as they hurried eagerly he knew not where. What were they seeking ? Was it music, sweet sounds, or pictures, flowers, pleasure, l)eauty, or did they hasten to the shrine of some strange god whose name he did not know ? These faces, wrinkled and distorted with weight of some ignoble, sordid passion, filled him with horror as he moved r ' 13- niK INTRUDKK. I''i Iff Ki\ among them, so strangely different were they from the faces, bright with the rapiure of divine emotion, which smiled upon him in the old — the ever young — the golden days gone by when he was god, and man was god-like and beauty was his bride. The twilight deepened, and still he moved among them, filled with pity and bewilderment and terror to find himself unknown, unloved, unnoticed. And now and then he paused and touched his harp and lifted up his voice to sing them songs of an earlier love, a holier passion ; songs of the seasons — the splendid spring, the smiling summer, the golden autumn, ripe with decaying beauty ; songs of the heart, the minstrelsy of love, sweet lips, soft cheeks, and eyes athrill with passion ; songs of the soul, the spirit ditties, the heaven-soaring melodies, the songs celestial, rich with the music of divinest pas- sion — immortal hope, immortal joy, and love immortal. " So lived they," he murmured, " in the golden days gone by. So loved they, so sang they, so lived they steeped in music, in the olden, the golden, the happy days gone by — in the morning, the sunrise, tlie dawn- day of the world— when I was god, and life was melody, and man was god-like and beauty was his bride." And as he sang, the strangers gathered around him and mocked the sunlight dancing in his eyes, and bade him cease, saying, " Your song disturbs us. We cannot think, we cannot calculate, nor count, nor cheat, nor steal, nor live our lives, and do the thousand crafty, unholy things that gain us cash. Your song is golden but we cannot coin it." "This cash must be their god," he muttered, and TIIK INIIUDKR. 133 den ceased to sing, knowing his reign was over. Anoiher god reigned in tlie human heart, and beauty was an ah'en in the world. He was a stranger, seeking for joy and offer- ing joy for joy, but wherever he went they asked for cash and called him *' vagrant," *' idler, and drove him, tired, away, hungry, footsore, from the homes he sought to fill with music. At last he was arrested and brought before the court. "You are a loafer," said the magistrate. " Have you no l)usiness ? " " My business is to make men happy." " I never heard of that occupation," answered the court. "Can't you do anything practical? Cm you make boots, or break stones, or r-aw wood, or cut out coats, or dig drains, or do anything mechanical ? If not, you are a vagrant." " I can do none of these things," said Apollo, " for I am not a machine nor a brute. I am only a god, and I can only fill the world with music, and sing sweet songs, and tell great tales of gods, and build a temple of delight for men to dwell in, and play rare melodies upon the human heart, and paint upon the brain fair pic- tures." " But you cannot dig," cried the magistrate severelv. " You cannot dig, nor plough, nor make boots. Yoi are not practical. You are not useful. I send you to prison for life." And now Apollo lies in prison— the strings of his harp are broken, and who shall hear him sing ? r\: and .i ';?'! Tl 11 The Yellow Mask. HE crept up close to the garden wall, and, bend- ing down his head beside a crack, with hungry ears and flashing eyes he listened to the sounds of revelry within. How gay the music sounded as it floated out of the windows and through the trees, mingled with the sound of merry words and silvery laughter from the happy guests within. To a strolling actor out of employment, with an empty pocket and a passionate craving for pleasure, such a scene, at all times enticing, to night was doubly attractive. " Some of us are princes and some are paupers," he muttered jealously. " How fate mixes us up to be sure, placing the wrong men in the best places. Now, who is there inside who could adorn a ball like I ?" The sensuous music of a valse, borne to his ears on the warm breeze that floated through the garden, mur- mured a perfumed invitation in his ear, and stirred his heart with a passionate longing to leave a cheerless world behind and mingle with the guests wiihin. And why should he not ? There was only a wall between them. A sudden impulse moved his heart to join that splendid beauty show of flashing eyes and ringing laugh- ter, and placing his hand upon the wall he climbed and suddenly vaulted over, and cowered in the shadows of the foliage in the park. "Nothing venture, nothing win," he muttered, as he cowered behind the bushes watching the scene before THE YELLOW MASK. 135 of him. " It is a masquerade — ah, if 1 only had a mask ! " The beautiful gardens before him were brilliantly lighted with many colored lanterns, and to and fro along the broad pathways that wound among the flowers and the trees, long lines and groups of guests passed cease- lessly, gaily conversing and brilliantly attired in a grea^ variety of many colored costumes. " Fine feathers make fine birds," muttered the actor grudgingly, '* but if I only had a few feathers I could soar above them all and be a Romeo to some Juliet and court fortune in an hour." A step upon the path beside him warned nim to be cautious, and hastily drawing back behind the bushes he waited for the stranger to pass by. The path which ran beside his place of vantage was a narrow and winding one leading from the centre of the gardens, and in the imperfect light of a lantern which hung on the trees a short distance away he could see a man and woman coming down it closely masked and very handsomely attired. She was chatting vivaciously and he apparently was walking in moody silence by her side. Suddenly the woman paused and turned to the man beside her with an impatient toss of the head. " If you would only venture," she said. " I dare not," he muttered weakly. " Well, don't, but you know the penalty," she cried in a sudden temper, and turning hastily she walked back the way she had come, while he, instead of follow- ing her, stood for a moment irresolutely on the pathway, f»~ 136 TUK VKI.I.OW MASK. (fi; then sat down on a bench by the bushes and covered his face with his hands. " Well, that was a pretty miss," muttered the actor to himself as he cowered discontentedly behind the bushes- •* Why, the man can't play tlie lover at all. Ah, if he had only a little of my art he could have done the part to perfection. What a poor-spirited creature it is. I have a fancy to teach him a lesson." And leaping the buslies suddenly he stood in the centre of the pathway atid presented himself with a low bow to the stranger. " Pardon me, sir," he said, " but you did that very badly." " i3id what ? '' cried the other suddenly, jumping to his feet with a startled look in his eyes and laying his hand on his sword. " Why, the lover act," said the actor imperturbably. But don't draw, if you please, I am, -as you see, un- armed. When she said, ' Will you venture ? ' you should have bowed thus — gracefully — and said, ' Ay, madame, a*- ■ ,g — anything, madame, for you.' '' >h, indeed," said the other icily. " Sir, I think you .e very presuming." " And so was Romeo," said the actor enthusiastically, "and you, if you had only presumed a moment ago — but I could have done better myself — " "You certainly have the nerve," said the other haughtily, then his eye suddenly lighted up as a new thought came to his mind and he murmured softly to himself, " Surely Providence has sent this fellow to save the situation. We look very m.uch alike." Turning to TIIL VliLLOW MASK. 137 Dther new y to save g to the* actor instantly he cried, "I think you have ventured too far already, sir." A clash of steel broke the silence as his sword, appar- ently by accident, dropped from his hand on the pave- ment. In a moment the actor had seized it and pointed it at his throat. '• As far as your tliroal, my lord," he answered the other quickly, "and if you venture another word I will venture a little farther. Now give me your hat and cloak. I have a fancy to try the lover act myself." The face of the courtier turned suddenly pale, and then a look of relief passed over it, but he (luietly sub- mitted to be bound and gagged, and as the actor assumed the costume and mask of the other he almost fancied he saw a smile on the crafty face i.-afore him. " Our height is about the same," miittered the actor as he threw the cloak over his shoulders. " Our hair is of the same color, and the mask conceals the face, and as to the voice, trust an actor to imitate that. In other particulars we differ, but there I think I have the advan- tage of your lordship." A faint smile stole over the pale face of the vanquished courtier as his conqueror bowed gracefully before him, and with a gallant " Au revoir, monsieur," strode gaily down the pathway in the direction of the main prome- nade, in search of the departed Juliet. • fl • • t f "The Duke seems very gay to-night," murmured Lady Williams to a lady in a pink mask beside her, as they stood in the centre of the promenade watching a 11 m wi i 1 1. ! f. ;( 138 THE YELLOW MASK. gallant figure in a yellow mask passing gaily to and fro among the guests. "Very gay indeed," the other muttered wonderingly, "and yet, when I left him a moment ago he certainly was not gay." "See! he is coming this way," murmured the other quickly, and moving slightly to one side she left the yellow mask and the pink standing together. " You seem to have recovered your spirits, sir," said the woman abruptly. " Now that I see you I am revived," said the other, bowing magnificently. " Ah, madame, why did you leave me when I was on the point — of venturing " "You will venture — ?" she cried suddenly. " Anything, madame, for you." " The sooner the better," she murmured. " This way — the horses are waiting ! The priest is at the chapel ! " " O Romeo, Romeo ! " chuckled the actor, as he fol- lowed jauntily. t • • * • • When some guests passed that way at midnight they found the Duke lying bound and gagged by the path- way, but wearing his bonds very gaily, with the spirit of one who had escaped from a heavier bondage. They unbound and restored him to freedom, bul the bonds of the actor could not be undone, for a minister tied the knot. l^ The Master Marksman. foi- ls the T ^^ '- ^UT! tut! Hayhurst ! Hayhurst ! Hayhurst ! " growled the Major, plaintively. " Nettling but Hayhurst ! Everybody talking about Hayhurst even yet. It's Hayhurst when I go out, and Hayimrst when I come in, Hayhurst when I stand up, and Hayhurst when I sit down. Flags flying, bugles blowing, drums beating, dogs barking, civilians shouting, all Hayhurst, Hayhurst, Hayhurst. And what has he done, sir ? I ask you what has he done ? Shot some- thing. And what has he shot ? — a target, pshaw ! " "And what would you have hitn shoot?" asked the bank official (an emigrant from Hamilton) revengefully. "A house?" " No, sir — a man, a man, a living, real, animate man. An enemy of his country, sir, his queen and his God. To shoot a target — a mere target, a helpless, Inanimate, unbiased target ! What merit is there in that ? But to shoot a man, to shoot him at the right time in a gentle- manly r/,^,iner and a vital spot, to shoot him with cau- tion, w.th courtesy and with a Snider bullet, on beiialf of your queen, your country and your God, with patri- otic devotion, above the belt, so that he will perish and die — that, sir, is the work of a master marksman such as no mountain hamlet can produce. But I have known members of Her Majesty's militia, sir, who have shot men (I mention no names), and what was their reward ? Drums ? No, sir. Bugles ? No, sir. Fireworks ? No, 1^- li 140 THE MASTER MARKSMAN. II I sir. Reduced fares? No, sir. Five hundred dollars? No, sir. Five dollars ? No, sir. Drinks? No, sir; but scars — scars and obscurity." The Major '"aned back in his chair and groaned sig- nificantly and mixed another half-and-half, while his auditors followed suit in sympathy, with the exception of the bank ofificial, who, fearful for the reputation of his native village, took his negus unadulterated and turning the Major haughtily enquired with a cultured sneer, to " You are quite a shot yourself, I presume ? " " Look at me eye,'' said the Major sternly. " Observe me eye. What is the color of it ? Gray-blue, a silverish, grayish blue. That is the eye of a marksman, sir. Have you heard of William Tell, th^ hero saint and mountain- ous marksman, who shot from the head of his patriotic progeny an apple on behalf of his queen, his country, and his God ? When for the first tiiTie I read this remarkable episode I rose, rushed to the mirror and for the first time saw the bluish, silverish, grayish promise of future greatness in my eye. Then turning to myself I said in clarion tones, ' AIcManus, you are predestined to shoot, but not apples. No, not apples. No, but men, McManus, men.' The next day I joined the Queen's Own. As a member of this heroic organization I soon, on the strength of my eye, gained a continental reputation as a marksman. Holding targets in scorn, I impatiently awaited the day when the bugle would sum- mon me to battle to slaughter the foes of my queen, my country, and my God. At last the day arrived. Wrap- ped in peaceful slumber one night at my boarding-house I heard suddenly the agitation of a knocker, and look- THE MASTER MARKSMAN. 141 )rn, I sum- 1, my Vrap- louse look- ing out of the window saw the Colonel of the regiment agitating the knocker and crying in thrilling tones : '* ' McManus, arise. The Fenians are upon us. Re- port at the drill-shed in the morning.' "And I arose. In a moment I was standing before the mirror. It was there. Yes, tlie silverish, bluish, grayish light was there at the crisis. The eye and the hand of the master marksman were at the ser- vice of his country. The predestined moment had arrived. Others had shot at targets. McManus would shoot the foes of his native land. The trumpet sounded to battle, and we marched to the front with fearless and intrepid step. Ere many hours had passed, as history has recorded, we found ourselves one dim and dusky day in the presence of the foe — the Irish historic Fenian. Far away as eye could stretch, the hosts of the enemy lay before us in martial array. There they lay, sir ; there they lay, a great green host of furious Fenians. The trumpet sounded. Through the crash and the din of the onset I could hear the blood-curdling yell of the Irish, ' Death to the Sassenach ! ' And I knew in a moment that they had detected my presence in the ranks of my country and doomed me to destruction (be- ing a member of L.O.L. No. 38, as well as of the Q.O.R.). It was a critical moment. In the fore front of the battle I lay in skirmishing order and imminent danger by the side of Sergeant Wilkins. The bullets whistled and whirled around us. Thick clouds of smoke obscured our sight. Through the rattle of the rifles, the shrieks of the wounded, the booming of the cannon, the smoke of the artillery, I gazed with eagle eye, seeking the dead- W¥F 142 THE MASTKR .MARKSMAN. I /i mi \ '■ I ^1 f J i 1 ' ! 'f. il ■ f liest of my country's foes. Even as I gazed, the bewil- dered voice of Sergeant Wilkins murmured in my ear : " ' McManus, which is grass and which is Fenians ? Both is green.' " ' Trouble me not,' I answered ; ' trouble me not with details. I am dissatisfied with our conformation. Our Cieneral is a man of great domestic virtues, but no- thing but a master stroke can deliver us from the Irish.' Snider rifle in my hand I pondered deeply, seeking a way cut of destruction. The fight grew sterner and s'.erner ; the noise grew louder and louder ; the smoke grew thicker and thicker, and suddenly, through the roar and the din of the battle, the voice of the General came to my ears, crying, ' McManus, why don't you shoot ? ' ' General,' I answered, * I abide me time.' " The fight went on again. The bullets whisiled and whirled ; the smoke grew thicker and thicker ; the artillery thundered and boomed, and suddenly again, through the din and the turmoil of the conflict, the agonized voice of the General cried : " ' McManus, why don'/ you shoot ? ' •' 'General,' I answered, ' I am engaged in thought.' " The artillery battered and boomed, the rifles rattled and rang, the Irish hooted and howled, the slaughtered [>trished and died, the smoke grew thicker and thicker, when suddenly through the chaos and confusion of the conflict the sound of a voice in the last accents of despair came again to my ears : " ' McManus, 2t'/ty don^t you shoot ? ' " ' General/ I answered, ' I honor your domestic vir- tues. Leave me alone.' TFJJ': MASTI'.R MARKSMAN. ^43 " The enemy drew nearer and nearer. They sur- rounded us. They outflanked us. They environed us; and I saw that unless some master marksman intervened to turn the tide of battle we would be speedily extin- guished. At this supreme moment a sudden inspiration kaped to my mind. I turned to Sergeant Wilkins and swiftly said : " ' Point out to me the arch-Fenian. Point out to me the commander in chief, the supreme rel)el, the greatest, greenest, loftiest of them all. Point him out and I sliall bring this painful episode in the history of my country to a sudden close.' *' As Wilkins turned to answer my question his head suddenly disappeared with a look of the greatest aston- ishment and was carried on the wings of a cannon-ball to the rear of the army. "Roused to the highest pitch of indignation at this unseemly interruption to our conversation, I determined to bring the battle to a close. The front rank of the enemy was now within a few yards of ours. Quietly creeping through the bushes I entered their ranks and passed unobserved to the rear, where the commander- in-chief, considering the battle won, was standing at ease and being measured for a crown. Stepping in front of him, I gazed upon him sternly. 'General,' 1 said " ' King Patrick, if ye plase,' he interrupted. " ' General,' I said, ' look at me eye ! " '■He looked and trembled. 'It's McManus,' he cried. "I covered him with my Snider rifle. 'General,' I said, ' give the word ! ' 144 THE MASTER MARKSMAN. m\ 1^ " ' Retreat, ye devils/ he shrieked, ' McManus has a bead on your general' " In a moment all was confusion. The enemy fled, and I found me comrades gathered around to congratu- late me on having saved from tremendous destruction me Queen, me country and me God." ' A Midnight Minstrel. THE light of civilization can burn as well as brighten as the sun that shines can scorch,, and there are some who feel its rays like daggers, and writhe amidst the thorns its warmth has nourished ; and there are some who at its zenith, live in utter night doomed by the day to darkness. The sun is responsible for the Sahara. There are deserts as well as gardens, and sighs as well as smiles, and in the very centre and soul of civilization a stately soul [has lived a withered life, majestically pro- lific in its gloom. One of the most remarkable poems which the mind of the nineteenth century has produced, and one which, if merit be the measure of endurance, is destined to live exalted for many centuries more — is that midnight epic, by James Thomson, "The City of Dreadful Night." This poem is the work of a modern Dante, who had no need to search his imagina- tion for a hell, being fortunate enough to live in Lon- don. It is even more fearful than the " Inferno " or •' Purgatorio," because it is more real. It is not a crea- tion, but a picture. It is not a phantom of a brooding mind, but it is a crape-clad fact, draped, it may be, with the darkness of a sorrowing mind, shrouded perhaps un- duly with the raven imagery of individual grief, but still a fact which many sad eyes have seen, a midnight poem of which several sad stanzas had already been written in Ill; lii ■ J 146 A MIDN'IOHl MINSlKKi,. the intelligible wrinkles of many stricken brows. Tlie touching language of wrinkles is unfortunately one which society is not at all limes anxious to read, and which poets searching for a present popularity are seldom brave enough to record, and so it behooved this poet to do it for them, and this while other rhymsters were sweetly warbling of lilies and roses, of azure clouds, and flowers, and silvery streams, and smiling skies and fair coquettes, he grandly, grimly, sternly did, and so behold *' The City of Dreadful Night '' rising in gloomy grandeur |-,efore the eyes of men, its foundation deeply, firmly laid upon the granite rock of fact ; its massive outlines clearly defined for the centuries ; its mighty shadow falling across the plain of ages. It is a negative argument for Utopia, a powerful pamphlet in the propaganda for social reform, and a new and striking feature in the landscape of the world's imagination. " The City of Dreadful Night " must take its place in the pantheon of imperish- able thought, there to live exalted when the reality of which it is the image has been wiped away from earth, and there to be gazed at, wonderingly, by eyes as yet unopen and ages as yet unborn, as a dark reminiscence of the barbaric nineteenth century, and spoken of by lips as yet unsealed as " the picture of a hell, called in the language of the ancients, "City." It is significantly strange that there should be born of human thought works so dissimilar as this author's " City of Dreadful Night " and that other poem of his namesake, James Thompson, *' The Castle of Indolence." One is the smile of genius, the other is its frown ; one is the light of day, the other the light of A MIUNKiin MINSTRKL. 147 d \r Id ur xid irly ing for )cial :ape Ldfu\ sh- of ;n tart s y et :ence lof by led in Id be , this other ICastle Lher is ight of the night. One is gilded with sunshine, the other is shrouded witli shadow ; and yet both came from citi- zens of a common civihzation ; but the eyes of one were surely on the stars, while the other looked at the earth. And which is the worthiest ? 'i'he truth is not always welcome ; a smile is more lovely than a frown, laughter more melodious than sobs, mirth more harmonious than misery. And, if this is so, what wonder that Thompson, the happy, has a throne in the temple of Fame, while Thomson, the gloomy, is exiled from its walls. A ragged poet, he wanders around its walls, sing- ing a dirge lore musical in its plaintive intensity, in its vast immensity, than any that are sounding in the exclu- sive precincts of its perfumed halls. But he is dolorous, and therefore unpopular ; he is veracious and there- fore unfashionable ; and right well and bitterly he knows that for a time, at least, none but his fellow- exiles, his fellow-paupers, his fellow-sharers of the realm of doubt and death and darkness will listen to the music of his song. Perhaps, had he sung a sweeter strain, one falser, but more lovely, the crowd might have flocked from the temple, seized him, borne him into its sacred precincts, robed him in garments rare and rich, and placed him on a throne. Sometimes to the mind of the poet there came a doubt whether it would not be wiser, kindlier in him to sing in strains less gloomy. Why should he paint a mournful picture ? Why add to the burden of human woe the tortured vis- ions of his imagination ? Why drag the devil from the depths, the pauper from the poorhouse, the drunkard from the ditch, and hold them up before the eyes of 148 A MIDNIGHT MINSTREL. i WL '•- I'll ' 'I sensitive contemporaries or shuddering posterity ? Why exorcise the ghosts and bid the angry gods unveil ? The poet pauses before the c;ate of the stately sepulchre to answer : " Because a cold rage seizes one at whiles To show the bitter, old and wrinkled truth, Stripped naked from all vesture that beguiles, False dreams, false hopes, false masks and modes of youth. Because it gives some sense of power and passion, In helpless impotence to try and fashion Our woe in living words, howe'er uncouth." This man actually differed from his age and gave the lie to the majority. Is it necessary to deviate from ex- position to biography and inform the reader that his age ignored him in consequence, that he was crucified upon the cross of hostile criticism ? That might be safely inferred from a general knowledge of the times. James Thomson was indeed one of those unfortunate poets who write in poverty and are paid with pain. Thus, when he wrote his master epic, with bitter prescience he predicted that he would be ignored by his age : •' If any care for the weak words here written, It must be some one desolate, fate-smitten, Whose faith and hope are dead or who would die. * * ♦ * ¥ ♦ l"- Yet here and there some weary wanderer In this same city of tremendous night Will understand the speech and feel a stir Of fellowship in all disastrous fight." A MII)NI(;iIT MINSrUKI.. 149 he And then standing in bitter loneliness in the night, standing with stately head bowed down, among ears that heard not, eyes that saw not and love that stood afar, in. the great city of tremendous night, with lips that trem- bled and eyes alight with that rare fire that never fades, and heart bursting with grief and pain and genius, he turned from the h'ght to the darkness, he gathered his fellow-beggars around him, the only audience he had, the only auditors he cared for ; and with outstretched hands and passionate intensity of grief, he poured forth the mournful music of his song : ** O sad fraternity do I unfold Your dolorous mysteries shrouded from 01 yore: Nay, be assured, no secret can be told To any who divined it not before." And so the dark tide of turbulent melody flows with mighty dirge-like music from his mind, scene on scene, and verse after verse, unfolding new depths of darkness and new strains of grief. There is no greater or more prolific subject for poetic inspiration than the modern city, with its bewildering reveh^tion of every form and phase and tint and shade of human nature, fair and foul. There is man in com- munion with man, dependent on man, warring with man and interlaced and interwoven by social shackles, locks and chains into the intricate complexity of society. It is not in repose but in conflict that human nature is fully and truly revealed. Man must be studied, not as an individual unit, but as a component portion of uni- versal unity. He must be heard as a note in the general t; m '>i 14 t! 11' Bill Mf il : »5o A MIltNKiU'l MINSTRKI.. harmony, a strain in the common choir. He must he seen under circumstances in which a thousand varying conditions call forth a thousand varying trails of char- acter, and every chord of his being is touched and quickened into life. Thus he is seen m the city. There all the streams and tidesof pleasure, sorrow, grief and passion run and riot, meet and mingle. There necessity breeds the thief, envy the liar, sorrow the saint and adversity the hero. There in mad chaos the tides of being ebb and flow, and crystal waters mingle with the black. Here as in a mighty theatre, vast pan^jrama of human nature is unfolded, the shifting scenes of life appear, each actor steps upon the stage, every depth is sounded, every shallow is seen, and innumerable characters, shades of character and possibilities and capacities of character, are re- vealed. There are the mighty alternations ot life, the palaces and tenements, the boulevards and lanes, the sick and poor, the smi'e and sigh, the laugh and groan, peace and strife, life and death. There noble weakness battles, sadly failing, and vice grows rich on food of hu- man woe, and there on the runes of wrinkled faces may be read the saddest social problem yet unsolved. The city seemed a wilderness whose myriad soils, some ster- ile, few fertile, grow few flowers and many weeds ; where daily, hourly, momentarily, the seeds are sown and the bitter harvest of misery reaped. There, written in in- delible letters upon the intelligible register of living flesh, may be seen the story of every stage in the evo- lution from savagery to civilization. The old barbarian is there damned with the double agony of his humilia- tion and the sight of a civilization he cannot share. A MlhMCHI MINSTRK1-. 1^1 There i:i endless monotony of toil can be seen that sad- dest slavery— the subjection of mind to the body, the homage of the thought to the flesh, the bondage of the intellect to the stomach. There men are degraded to slaves or automata. There are the invisible chains that bind with links more cruel and pains more pitiless than ever despot fashioned or decreed. There is a hopeless tyranny of conditions, a bastile of social environment, a conspiracy of circumstances, which terrorize the impo- tent victim of their necessity, robbing him of everything but despair. There in cloud of care and shame of sin and shadow of an omnipresent gloom, the sable city stands. It stands like a withered tree on whose gnarled boughs and mouldered limbs sit songless birds and buds that never blossom ; within whose fibres, roots and heart the worms creep, breeding rottenness ; and on its top- most boughs, perhaps, a few green leaves which draw their nourishment from the roots, which die of stolen life; and from the heart of the gloom, from the very centre and core of dreariest night a denizen, a black raven sing- ing in the tones of a Jiightingale, pours forth its miracle of plaintive song, its melody and music of the night. How sad it is to think that many more caged birds, now doomed to be dumb or doleful, to faint and die in the tainted atmosphere and gloom, will never sing their songs — the songs unsung, the locked harmonies, the still-born music, born and buried at once ; the world has slain its best smgers before their mouths were opened. The silent songsters that haunt the dreary depths might in a happier atmosphere burst forth into music, and pal- pitate with love, might fill the world with sovereign T52 A MIDNIGHT MINSTREL m i:;* as J i i- '1 V strains, divine and deathless, that would repay a thou- sand times in the golden coin of song the toil that made them sing. The poem is a description of the great city at rn'ght. It is the narrative of one who wandered through its tangled streets and saw them draped and shrouded in heavy gloom. But there is something more than the darkness of nature reflected in the poetic picture, the darkness of the observing mind is also there. The gloom that pervades the poem is a double gloom. It comes in oart from without the mind and part from within. The poet saw the city through the veil of his despair, which was only intensified by the kindred gloom of night. To the brooding mind of Thomson, the city was dark at any time, dark in the dawn, dark in the day, and doubly dark at night. For there was darkness in his mind that pondered, and dark- ness in the eyes that gazed and darkness in the thought that mourned. His was a grief stricken mind, and he felt magnetic sympathy with kindred gloom, so fitly symbolized by brooding night. The ingredients that enter into the composition of the poem are dual — sub- jective and objective. The former are permanent, the latter transitory. The misery of the city may by just statesmanship be alleviated and destroyed, the problem of poverty may be solved in time, the light of genius may dissipate the darkness of the civic bastile, and shed pros- perity and peace into the darkest ditches and the sad- dest slums. Industrial order may supplant industrial confusion, co-operation may supersede a competition which has degenerated into robbery and theft. The city I I A MlDNMdHT MINSTREL. 153 the just 3\em may pros- sad- .1 may be cleansed, the stains of vice, crime and poverty, which are born of social ineqiiahty and injustice, may vanish with the advent of social equality and content. The city of Dreadful Night, as a present fact and feature of society, may vanish with time, the objective source of the poet's gloom may disappear, but the subjective capa- city for grief must remain. There is no alchemy in time to extract the gloom from the mind of man. It is part of the web and woof of human nature. It is the dark thread m the fabric of thought. It is an elemental mood of mind. When the worlds mingled together, and the nebular currents, freighted with cosmic fire, framed and fashioned in mingled ecstasy and agony the tissue of material being, the ingredients of gloom were mingled with the rest. Il has been said that every man has his mission. Let it also be said that every poem has its purpose. I like to think that even the faintest rhyme is not written alto- gether in vain, but brings its humble strain of melody to the store of universal harmony, its tribute of ideas to the treasury of universal thought, that, behind the magic of its music, and the mystery of its meaning, there lurks the grandeur of its moral, — that it is freighted with a fact, and carries with it in its journey to the realms of individual thought, the divine illumination of a new and welcome truth ; that when the master thinker wrought it from the texture of his thought, he fash- ioned it a soul. It may be that the thought that is the spirit and the essence of a poem is never completely severed from the poet's mind; that though visibly de- tached, it is invisibly linked to its source, that there are 154 A MIDNKiHT MINSTRKI, «fN r^ subtle chords of tenuous thought, and telepathic contin- uity, which still connect it with the parent mind, and that, when by sense of sound or sight, another thinker becomes cognizant of its being, he has but (in the words he saw or heard) been linked to invisible circuits of thought and wrought into communion with the creative mind. If every poem has its purposes, and every fabric of fancy its foundations o( fact, it may be asked what is the uieaning which lies concealed in the heavy drapery of this frame ; what are the facts it commemorates, and what is the measure of its reality? Psychology would seem to teach us that every conception is a combination of perceptions, that the material of thought is supplied by experience. If this is so then must these mental types united in two poems have had these actual proto- types ; ideas were based on images and images cast on the retina by the external world. On logical grounds, therefore, we affirm an external material reality as the prototype of this internal mental production. Even if it were what the plutocratic critic will pronounce it— a dream, the laws which govern the production and deter- mme the character of dreams, inexorably declare that they must find their basic material in the external en- environment of the mind ; but in the realm of midnight thought, no stranger ever enters. The subject matter of dreams is supplied by experience of waking life. Com- binations, exaggerations, grotesque imitations of the ma- terials of experience, there may be; but the ideas of which the mental monstrosities are composed can all, if analyzed and separated, be traced to the environment of daily life, and in citizens of dreamland, like the strange A MIDNIC.HT MINSTREL. '55 of ill, if nt of ange phantoms that throng the mind in delirium, and lineal descendants of the inhabitants of earth, emigres from the republic of reason to empire of imagination, staid upright thoughts, who take advantage of the night to join a mental masquerade and revel in the Saturnalia of midnight fantasy, and the weightiest authorities on hyp- notism inform us that the hypnotist can never discover in the mind of his subject, or unveil any experience not supplied by and limited to the world environment of subject. If this is so, we may safely conclude dain Ill n »56 A MIDNIGHT MINSTREL. li" I J h 'f- and which he carried in his mind, because the harmoni- ous within revolted and rebuked the discord without. What a strange home for genius — that thing of be- wildering light — was this dark city. Ther^ is no sun "^r star or satellite, which gives forth light like genius. The primordial elemental cosmic fires burn in the mind of man, and daylight, dawnlight, moonlight, sunlight, star- light, jewel-light, electric light, and even the light of candles on the highest of altars, burn dim in the pres- ence of genius. The rays of thought are cosmic and supernal, they find the way through mists and clouds and nights, and shrouds and doubts ; yes, and through the deepest fold of night called death, they find their glorious way — these mystic rays of thought. Why, then, with such fire in his mind, did James Thomson despair? Was his genius too feeble, or was dust too thick to let him see in ecstasy of intuition, as may by some be seen, that only the imperfect can die ; that harmony is exter. nal, omnipresent, infinite ; that thought is the basis of being and made of fair spirit stuff, which only dies to purify its threads ; that mind could not comprehend the relative were it not absolute, the finite were it not infinite. It is strange of all the world's cities, London should have been chosen as his home, strange that his thoughts should hear groans for cradle song and sighs for lulla- bys. These things are sadly strange, but the thing sublimely strange is this — that to all the leagued powers of the city whose mission it was to cripple and maim, could neither maitn nor dwarf nor cripple the strength and majesty of his mind. The mind ex[)anded even there A MIDNIGHT MINSTREL. 157 and broke the chains of hostile circumstances. But there were other cities where it was not darkness. All were not Londons. Even as he sighed, others in iiap- pier civic homes were smiling. The world was not wholly miserable. The habitations of all men were not gloomy. Beneath the lights of other skies, other and happier cities had their place, and cherished in their myriad homes the throbbing hearts of millions. Venice the beautiful, caressed by silvery waves, throned on a smiling sea, crowned by a heaven of perpetual light, and kissed and kindled into life and joy by sun and sea and star. Florence the golden— a jewelled picture in an azure frame — a marble memory of greater days when all her palaces were decked with dreams — dreams from the mind of Angelo, dreams from the soul of Leonardo, dreams from the brain of Raphael, and saved from time forever by spiritual threads that lent them deathless life. Lovely Florence, the witchery of art and sky and soul, the music of lutes and lives and loves, the perfumes of perfect flowers, the glory of crowned art all met and mingled there. No wonder the great Dante had to leave her walls to find a hell. Paris was another city of delight, another town that had what London lacked, a city of the Celts, that people in whose breast the God that made them planted the flower of perpetual joy, whose revolutions were sunbursts, whose bloody deeds were blossoms and brought forth flowers, whose battles only seemed to fertilize their soil, who never had to seek delight because they carried it, whose every tear brought forth its rainbow, whose gloom was -^^"^ 'ancisco, throned on the majestic mother of seas — the vast Pacific, looking out through her Ciolden Gate with loving glance across the dreamy depths, freighted with orange groves, with luscious fruits, and rich with ruby wine, the Mecca of the sick, blessed with perpetual summer, in whose air microbes take wings and fly, peace conquers pain, and men grow rich with joy, and full to satiety with a sensous, somnolent breath of delight. These were the other cities, but he knew them not. Only one did he know, and that was the greatest, dark- est and most terrible of all. A city not of joy, not of peace, not of rest, not of art, not of love, but a *' City of Dreadful Night." So he found it, so he painted it, and so he has bequeathed it to the ages. Even after living, London is dead ; it will live again in his verse. He will pass with his dolorous vision down the aisles of many ages. A bard in black, he will unfold his tale to the wondering ears of posterity. He will gather them from their revels in the golden age, and in the midst of their festivity he will speak, and the voice of joy will be hushed. By the witchery of his voice and verse he will awake again the tortured night, and dimly outlined within it they will see the midnight city, faintly, misty; mjl A MIDNK.Hl MINSTKEI,. '59 there will be seen again in the twinkling lights the gloomy outlines of the dreary houses, the bridge of sui- cides, the domes of dark cathedrals, the steeples of van- ished churches, the leprous lanes, the multiplied beating of the sea of sobs and sighs, the dark Thames, the beg- gars, the usurers, the broken images of men, and in the midst of all, a cowering figure casting a lurid light over the whole with his eyes, the soul of the city, with head bowed down, a ragged miserable minstrel, pointing with withered hands to the charnel pile and sobbing in dreary, hopeless tones, that weird refrain, ending fear- fully, breathlessly sad : " As I came through the city, thus it was As I came through the city." Perhaps posterity, kinder than age, he dragged before them for judgment, will realize that the crape of his cloak, the raven sable hue of his thought, the darkness of his verse did not belong to himself, but that his gen- eration had robed him in blick. Perhaps posterity looking through the veil he wore, a web so closely spun by tangled thought, so stained by centre gloom, will see within as white and pure a soul as ever glorified the name of man. The truth will not be hid. In him it found a voice that scorned to lie. It spoke, and he was its utterance. This voice, majestic as the strong seas, titanic as the towering hills, which, though it knew no hills and saw no seas, yet gathered in the vastness of its utterance, the majesty of both the agony of hills, the grief of gods. When even at a distance we contemplate the misery II m 160 A MIl^NlGHT MINSTREL. of those depths, when at a distance of some thousand miles, we feel and share the shame of a derehct humanity and bade the misery be, and stretches out no hand to make it cease, when over the waste of waters there is borne to our ears in Toronto the sobs of the prisoners in the desolate city, and before our eyes, in tortured gloom, there rises a vision of the midnight city, freighted with agony and canopied with care, we cannot but echo in no steady tone, the bitter words of him who has made its gloom immortal and bequeathed the "City of Dread- ful Night " and its stricken denizens to eternity. '* The chambers of the mansions of my heart In every one whereof thine image dwells, Are black with grief, eternal for thy sake. " The inmost oratorv of my soul, Wherein thou ever dwellest, quick or dead, Is black with grief, eternal for thy sake." We gave this poet sympathy as a miser gives alms to a beggar ; but posterity will give him glory as the subject brings gifts to a king. He will stand a midnight minstrel at the banquet halls of posterity, and when the cup of ruby joy goes round and others string their golden harps, and tell the children of the dawn what their fathers have achieved, he will unfold his dreary tale and tell what they endured. A Tale of the Twelfth. TOLD AT THK CLUH. ii u ES Oranges! Les Oranges! a bas les Oranges !" " Wake up, wake up, Major," growled the bank official nervously, "or if you must howl in your sleep, please don't howl in French." "French, sir," roared the warrior, leaping suddenly from his seat. " Are they coming upon us ? 1 am pre- pared." He glared threateningly around him until the sight of the familiar faces recalled him to a sense of his surroundings and he resumed his seat. It was a hot July afternoon and the sun beat down with merciless vigor on the lawn of the club, where as usual at that hour a company of choice spirits were lounging and smoking and occasionally engaging in a conversation decidedly slow until the sudden exclama- tion of the dozing warrior concentrated their attention on the portly figure of Major McManus, who now sat erect in his chair gazing solemnly around him with an air of gloom and dejection. '• Is this the twelfth?" he asked at last in hollow tones. "It is," chorused the company with thrilling unan- imity. The Major groaned. "Enough ! " he said. " Enough ! Me doom is sealed. The die is cast. The end draws nigh. The days of McManus are numbered. The son of my father is doomed — doomed ! " l62 A TALE OF THK TWELFTH. i ^ HIM ! For a moment the companions of the dejected warrior gazed at him with an air of mingled consternation and curiosity till suddenly to the mind of each came a recol- lection of a dreadful rumor which furnished a clue to the excited language. At various times of recent years it had been reported that the Major was a member of a secret society. During the greater part of the year this rumor was dormant, but every twelfth of July to the sound of fifes and the beating of drums the rumor revived again, and McManusbecame a centre of dark suspicions at the club. On these occasions he wore a look of profound mystery, and when asked the simplest question would look suspiciously at his questioner and smiling darkly answer : "There are some things which may be revealed, sir, and there are some things which may not be revealed, sir. >> On the glorious Twelfth itself he was transformed and patronized his fellowman. " We come from the North, sir. We fought ai the Boyne, sir. The blood of McManus adorns the sod of Erin. Ye may see it to the present day in the form of grass, sir." On such occasions as this his fellow clubmen regarded him with awe. They seemed to see an orange halo round his brow. In fancy they beheld him presiding over dark and mysterious tribunals and administering the blood-curdling rites of esoteric rituals. The lawyer felt painfully inferior and the bank official was reputed to have chased an inoffensive goat three miles through A TALE OK TFIK TWELFTH. 163 the I of m of the slums hoping to track the creature to its lair and find the lodge rooms of a secret union, Why was it then that on this anniversary of the Boyne the Major was depressed? Why did he shudder in the seclusion of the club-rooms and murmur, "I am doomed " ? " Doomed/' echoed the lawyer. •' Sir, I am tracked," said the Major tragically, " I am dogged. Yes sir, dogged by Jesuits, by Jesuits in dis- guise, sir." The Major took another glass and groaned another groan. " Enough," he said. " Enough, I have been singled out for destruction. The bolt may fall at any mo- ment, but ere I die I will reveal to you and to posterity the cause of my annihilation, I will reveal why I am tracked. A year ago to-day I was in the God-forsaken, priest-ridden v''^ige of St. Pierre in le Province of Que- bec. Why I was there 'tis not for me to say. There are some things which may be revealed, and there are some things which may not be revealed. Enough to say I was there, and with me was Daniel T. Darby of L. O. L. No. 16. There we were, sir ! There we were ; environed, hemmed in and surrounded by mediaeval darkness. But did we falter? No. When the Twelfth of July dawned on that God-forsaken village it found us at the bar of our host, drinking to the health of Wil- liam of Glorious Memory. The morning passed with- out catastrophe, but sitting in the parlor, where we had foregathered to do liquid justice to the occasion, T determined that the greatest event in the history of 164 A TALE OF THK TWEI-KTH. I mankind shou'd then and there be fniingly commemor- ated. The waves of superstition beat about us. Priest- craft reared its unblushing front on every side. The minions of midnight outnumbered us by thousands. In two hours our train would arrive, but between then and now lay a historic interval in which to do or die. We had no drums, no banners, and so profoundly sunk were the populace in the mire of superstition that not even a fife could be found. But we were there, sir, and the occasion was also there, I rose, and walking to the door of the tavern, looked recklessly around. The day was dull and misty. The village was sunk in silence and superstition, and everything looked gloomy, God- forsaken and forlorn. There was an ominous silence in the lurid air, such as preceded the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It was a solemn moment. Should we cower in the tavern or display ourselves ? The spirits of our fathers bade us display ourselves. We deter- mined to organize a procession and parade the town. We drank again the health of William of Glorious Mem- ory, and drumless, fifeless, and bannerless as we were, Daniel T. Darby and myself set forth together on that perilous journey from which we might never return. We walked from the tavern to the end of the village, then turning fearlessly we walked from the end of the village back to the tavern. The clouds of superstition rolled around us. The waves of Romanism beat upon our brow?. The mists of mediaevalism dimmed our eyes. The blight of bigotry hung above our heads ; the pes- tilence of priestcraft dogged our daring footsteps and through the obscuring mists of doganism we could see A lALK OK IMK I WKI.KTH. 165 the people glaring at us anxiously. On re-entering the tavern we saw a black-robed figure at the bar. But did we falter ? No. Raising my goblet to my lips I said in thrilling tones : " ' I drink to the health of William of Glorious Mem- ory.' "The priest drew back and trembled. A look of fiendish malignity flashed from his mediceval eye. " * Les Oranges,' ne hissed, and crossing himself ten times he turned and fled. " ' Darby,' I said, ' tiie enemy are upon us. Prepare to die.' A sudden shriek rang through the lurid air. It was the train. Yet there was hope. We marched to the station. Elated by the prospect of surviving (to serve the cause hereafter), I raised my voice to the high heavens and whistled Boyne Water. " The village rose and gnashed its teeth. Led by a black-robed figure it rushed to the station, and as we entered the car a thousand hungry voices shrieked : " * Les Oranges, les Oranges, a bas les Oranges.' " Which translated means, 'The bloody Orangemen. Murder them, skin them, roast them, paralyze the bloody heretics.' The train steamed away. On the station stood a black- robed figure with a diabolic look of fury in his eyes. " From that moment my fate was sealed. Jesuits dog me. Thrice have I dreamed that I would die to-day. For many days a strange suspicious looking figure has tracked me through the streets. I have avoided him till now, but soon — Great William — there he is." A shabby, suspicious-looking person had stolen upon m: III i66 A TALE OF THE TWELFTH. the lawn and was swiftly approaching the major, who murmured hoarsely : " I await me doom." A thrill of horror ran through the crowd. The as- sassin advanced. Suddenly he drew something from his pocket and thrust it towards the major. Was it a dagger ? No, it was a piece of paper. " Your whisky bill, major," he said. Ml';: "a The Triumph of Realism. ,UCH things don't happen," said the editor. " I think they do," said the author. " No„ The tale is not reahstic," said the editor. "The situation is strained, the characters are un- natural, the pathos is overdone, the accidents are fan- tastic and pass far beyond the boundaries of the probable. The climax is not warranted by the antece- dent circumstances, nor is it natural. Men don't die like that— they die—" " Like Little Nell," said the author ironically. " Not wholly, and yet in a fairly decent and respect- able manner and with due regard to the solemnity of the occasion, and the unlimited possibiHty beyond. The tale won't do. It is unnatural." "What do you want ? '" asked the author grimly as he received back ihe rejected manuscript and returned it to his pocket. " I am capable of writing anything. Tell me what you want." I want something realistic," said the editor, " realis- tic and at the same time original and unique. A dram- atic situation, a striking character, a page from the book of life, true to nature, faithful to facts, one of live tragic episodes, realistic and vivid and "rue." The editor was young and enthusiastic, a type of the ne- man in journalism. He had his ideals and aver- sions and hi"- heaven-begotten inspirations. He had ii I Ikv itil lift V ■ l|l i 1 1 If it ■1 1 68 THE TRIUMPH OF REALISM. also his mission, which was to reclaim literature from its aridity and make it extremely new. The author was obviously a hack. He also was young but not enthusiastic. His clothes were threadbare, his ambition was lukewarm, his boots were worn at the heels, his soul was the soul of the cynic, his brain was the brain of a doubter, and the very material sources of his inspiration were apparent in the patches on his boots. And yet behind the wearied indifferenceof his eyes there seemed at times to glow a flash of some diviner light which might have kindled into flames imperishable if fanned by the breath of some kindlier mother than ne- cessity. Did the editor see it? Who knows? There was a curious gleam in his eyes as he glanced at the dark intellectual face before him. *'To write like that one must live," said the author ; *' live and suffer and feel. The essence of realism is ex- f^erience. We chisel our fancies from facts. But the age IS arid, and cold, prosaic. To v^^rite like that one must taste the bitter-sweet — even the forbidden fruit ; must thrill with life's raptures of loving and living, for the tales you want are made not of paper and ink, but woven out of the skeins of the soul, heart, flesh and J)lood." "Yes, to write it you must live," said the editor thoughtfully, "and if you write it you live forever." The office door was closed, and buttoning his coat tightly around him to shut out the cold draught that blew in from the street, the author walked slowly down- stairs and stood for a moment on the steps leading to the street, gazing dreamily before him into the mist of THK TRIL'MPH OF REALISM. 169 white snow which, falling through the gathering twilight, shrouded the figures of the passers by in dim fantastic mist. "What does he wish me to do?" he muttered wearily. " To murder, or rob or love, or do some desperate thing in order that I may feel the things of which I speak, and know whereof I write, and be realistic ? And yet it is true enough. The thoughts I have recorded are only the shadows of thoughts, echoes of earlier voices, spectres of other stories, cinders of extinct fires, cinders and ashes and dust. Yes, the things I have written are colorless, lifeless, passionless things, and from a commer- cial standpoint apparently worthless. Perhaps it is better so » And as he stood there in the twilight, surveying with introspective glances the barren vista of the life behind him, he seemed to see as in a glass inverted a vision of the joy he had not known, and to become dimly con- scious of a deeper life within him, pointing through paths he dared not dream of to heights he could not see. " A letter for you sir," said the postman. '* Ah, yes — from — " said the editor as he opened the paper and read : " I am writing a wonderful tale, wonderfully terrible and true. I dare not trust it to the post, and live in per- petual anguish lest robbers break in and steal it. A greater never was written, and it is as fresh as the dawn of the morning, as fair as the sunset in the evening, and as true as the truth which trembles and falls from the •■1'! ill I 70 THE TRIUMPH OF REALISM. i Mf palewhitelipsofGod. I have lived it line byline. It is flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood; agony and ecstacy are in it, and the light of setting suns, and the blush of the sweetest of morning's dawn, and the pathetic dusk of the saddest of evenings. Come. I am perfectly sane. I can hear them clapping — the generations to come ; and the lights burn bright on the holiest of altars where they kneel before me — a god. Come. Dinner at eight." "A modest man," said the editor, *' mad a^ a march hare. It will be as good as a circus to see him." H' i|. ■f;3' If. "Will he come ?" said the watcher wearily, as she gazed at the dead white thing beside her, spectral and pale in the twilight. " The cruel man who sowed de- sire in the humblest heart in the world. Will he come and behold his work ? " Three candles burnt by the coffin, and the light of their pale thin rays shone through the sober twilight and fell on the eyes of the watcher, and on the ink- stained lines of the story, and on the cold white face of the dead. The room seemed full of memories — mem- ories ashen and pale. They lurked in the folds of the curtains and in the worn threads of the carpet and the soiled pages of the books — the books, sad sentinels on the verge of the valley of thought, bereft of their old companions, cowered together and trembled, doubting the measure of their responsibility for the thing that was lying there dead. A step on the pavement outside the door halted ir- resolute, as though the comer were filled with a spirit of doubting ; it fell on the step, and the shrill bell echo- THE TRIUMPH OF REALISM. 171 ed through the hollows of the house till the depths of silence shuddered at the sacrilege of the sound. Then the watcher rose from the coffin and the light of the holy candles fell on her beautiful face as its sorrow deep- ened into a faint, sad smile. She passed from the room and closed the door and shut in the cerpse and candles, the coffin and the dead, and passed down the stairs with outstretched hand as one welcomes a welcome guest. "You have come," she murmured softly; " and it was kind of you to come." Slowly she turned and led the way up the stairs into the chamber of death. In the centre stood a table, and the table was set as for a feast. At the foot was a chair for the stranger and on each side of it a glass filled with curiously colored liquid. At the head was another plate, and on it lay a pearl- handled pistol. The editor sat in the cliair at the foot of the table and gazed with startled and wondering eyes at the sorrow- ful face of the watcher, who had taken her place at the head. The only light in the room come from the can- dles on the coffin, whose rays, fickle and pale and uncer- tain, flickered gloomily on the living and the dead. " You had your doubt?," said the watcher. " You had your doubts as to the realism of his works. To-night he died, and I shall die to bear testimony to the folly of your doubts ; and very shortly now your doubts shall die, or if the things you see and read to- night permit your doubts to live, then you shall die." The voice was hushed for a moment and silence pre- vailed again. " That is arsenic to your right and choral to your left, ill; 17-' THE IRlLMlii (JF REALISM. and this is a pretty little pistol," said the watcher. " In the hand of the corpse in the coffin is a manuscript ; in the manuscript is a soul — the soul of him who died. Within your reach is the strangest and divinest tale that was ever written by man. Rise and take it and read." He rose. From the cold white hand he took the tale. " They will call it romance," he murmured once in fear before he died," said the watcher, " and he sent for you to witness that it was not romance. Do you doubt ? " " It is true," said the editor, for he saw the tragic truth in her eyes and the truth in the face of the dead. "Your doubts are dead," said the watcher, "and you may live to say they are dead. And he is dead and I — pass the choral — or I fire ! " He passed the cup. •' He is immortal as the gods," she murmured, then she drank ; " and I am dead forever." The candles grew dim in their sockets. "Go," she said. " The soul — which you bought — take it with you ; the body I love lies here." til" Peace and War.^ (Scene — A mountain in Macedonia. Peace and a Man are stand- ing together and War approaching in the distance ) Man — Who is that stranger that is drawing near us, fining the earth and heaven with brazen clamor, distilling darkness from his sable wings, awaking ancient fevers in my blood, and stirring in my soul a dreadful presage of some illimitable evil ? War — I am War — glorious War — come back to the world again to kindle splendid chaos and destruction and set the nations one against the other. Long have I waited in remotest darkness, an exile from the earth, my ancient kingdom, but now I come again, my ancient ally, to let your panther passions loose again. Here, take the glittering sword I bring you and slay the piteous wretch who stands beside you. Man — You are a stranger, yet familiar. Your voice is thunder and your eyes are lightning, and you have stirred within me something that was sleeping, but Peace and I have long been allies also ; 1 love her well, and she has made me lovely. We have been happy to- gether, and War — What ! is this little bleating lamb a man ? — this puny little creature who is whining of love, and peace, and gentleness and mercy — is this my ancient ally, Man, who used to look so beautiful in battle, and wade through seas of blood to crowns and sceptres ? Is * Written on outbreak of war between Greece and Turkey. '74 i»p:ack and war. u il w. this the purple-blooded ruler of creation, whose war songs filled the universe with music and sent the lesser creatures cowering to the lair, who fought his way from savagery and weakness up to possession and supreme omniscience? If Peace had preached to you when you were hungry, you would have died of that starvation which is the fate of those whose lands you conquered. Here, take again the glittering sword I give you. Peace — The flowers are budding, and blushing and blooming on the battle-fields of old. Men have forgot their ancient enmities and called each other "brother" for a time. The golden grain is ripening in the fields. Deep in the graves the ancient wrongs are buried. The evil sores are healed, and gentle music comes from the harvest fields where truth is ripening and men and maids are singing songs of joy and reaping rich fruition of co- hesion. The voice of war was hushed, and in the little cottage in the valley — gladly forgetful and divinely happy — the mother tells her heart that peace is sweet. Sweet is the song the mother sings, and sweeter than the breath of flowers budding War — And Man, the ancient ruler of creation, whose sword flashed like a flaming brand in battle, has cast aside the symbol of his greatness and lain down among the cows and sheep. The eagle has become a cooing dove, and the red blood has turned to milk and water. Man — Give me the sword. I was a tiger once, and fought the other brutes and conquered them, and when you speak the tiger wakes again and cries aloud for blood, beautiful blood ! blood ! blood ! PEACE AND WAR. 175 PEACE-What, Will you leave me ? I, who made you holy ; I, who lifted you above creation and made you poet,pamter, statesman, thinker; I, who called forth the music of your soul and placed the jewelled crown of cmhzation on the forehead of the brute; I, who have nurtured, fondled, made you kin to angels ? What can you give to me— Man— I give you this ! {Stabs her,) fwHf tH hi 111 ' V. I i 1 1 ^ Bl I 'W ■ One Chum 44 a (( (I OODBY." The warm hands clung together quiver- ing and loth to part, and the dark eyes looked into the grey eyes till the grey eyes faltered and fell, and the trembling lips of their owner whispered : Don't take it so hard, old man." O, Billy, how could you ? " " Nonsense — this — this marriage needn't make any difference — we can still be friends, you know. There ib only a woman between us." " Only a woman." "One would think I was going to a burial instead of a wedding," said his companion nervously, with his eyes still cast on the ground. " Many a man has buried a friend when he married a wife," muttered the other gloomily, and his eyes glanced broodingly back to the day when a thousand hopes were buried beneath the burden of this great treason. They had been so happy up in the old attic room where they had kept batch together — he and Billy. Through a mist of tears he seemed to see again the happy days gone by — the old school-room where they had sat as boys — the cricket field where they had played — the river where they rowed — and all their early griefs and joys rose up before him — the sorrows and the joys they had shared together. " She is so pretty, you know," the apologetic voice of :p =z ONH CHUM. 177 of his companion broke in upon his thoughts, " and — and — she has n.oney and — Jack, why don't you speak ?" The old school bell was ringing in his ears. He heard again the voices of the boys. His soul was haunted by a vision of green fields and happy voices. " Played, sir ! Played ! Tackle him low, Billy ' " Where was it ? The memories crowded upon him with a rush of sweet remembrance — the old school-house, the merry games and the days of auld lang syne. " It will start me in business, you know," continued the faltering voice of his companion, "and besides — besides — a man must get married some day, you know — and besides, it needn't interfere with our friendship, and for God's sake say something, old man — say somethmg." They had been so merry together up in the old attic room. He played the old fiddle and Bill smoked the old pipe, and they read the poets together, and the boys came in to see them, and he had thought — had thought " Jack speak to me — say something. Jack ! Jacky — if you wish — do you wish — Ah, here comes Mary. Let me introduce you to— O, Jack ! " He shrank back and trembled, for his eye uplifted had met the eye of his companion and he cowered before its fire — its scorn. Another moment and his hand was cast aside. Strong arms were thrown around him. " Here's one for auld lang syne," cried Jack, wildly, as he clasped him for a moment to his heart, then cast him fiercely from him at her feet. 1 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) % // ^/ <' \^ w- /- fA A 1.0 I.I 1.25 IM 2.0 1.8 U 11.6 v] <^ /a m /a o\ ^:> ^^/ "f* /a W m % (p- ?, I ' ( 178 ONE CHUM. *' Traitor, begone vv'th your woman ! " ''What's the matter with the old fiddle? Nothing but discord, discord, discord." Pie threw the instrument petulantly on the table, muttering, " It seems all out of tune — since — Billy — went away. He used to sit there in the arm-chair and say ' Bravo ! ' when I played — but now Pshaw ! this cursed pipe won't draw. Ah, here's another — Billy's ; his wife won't let him smoke, and he left it here tor me. To hell with it ! " He cast it into the fire and grimly watched it burning, then suddenly plunged his hand into the flames and pulled it out again" and laid it lovingly on the table, feeling a fierce spiritual joy in the physical pain of the burn. " I pulled you out of the fire and I pulled him out of the water, and I would have gone through hell fiic to make him happy, and now " He buried his face in his hands. • ••!■• " What a rude fellow that old chum of yours was ! I wonder you could associate with fellows like that, Willie dear. You must cut those old friends and stay at home with your wifie. Won't you, Willie dearie ? " She laid her head lovingly on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek, but he thrust her aside. *' Go on with your novel, you little fool, and leave my friends alone." " What an old bear it is, to be sure," she said pout- ingly; but keenly alive to the fact that nothing but con- j- ;:ii 6 ite «.{.; ONE CHUM. 179 I Willie home Ikissed ive my pout- It con- ciliatory methods would accomplish the immediate object she had in view she continued her caresses. " Now, ducky, don't 00 be naughty to 00 little wifey, but treat 00 little Mary with " " P'or heaven's sake, what do you want, woman ? " groaned Billy wearily. " Is it a new bonnet or a ticket for the concert ? " " Well, you know, dearie, I haven't been to the theatre for two nights, and you promised " " Very well, I will take you," cried her husband im- patiently, and she bounded triumphantly away to the mirror and left him alone in the room gazing dreamily at the fire, glad to be freed from her presence, but bowed beneath the burden of a memory which would not vanish while life remained. His heart felt very lonely as he thought of the vanished days and the great heart he had cast aside to win this flimsy woman. What was the silly chatter of this shallow woman com- pared with the wit, the pathos, the sweet familiar tones of that most eloquent voice which had spoken to him so often in the little attic room above the trees ? What consolation had matrimony to offer him for the loss of that sweet companionship and those noctes ambrozianae, those splendid vanished nights when the fires of wit burnt brightly in the little attic room where he and Jack had laughed and talked together, and planned, ind dreamed, and played the old fiddle, and read the great books, and dreamt the great dreams, and built such splendid castles in the air together ? That merry music, that dear voice, those flashing eyes, and that great loyal heart beating in time to his — he would never know again. r r -'£7- t m i-m.M ' n'r ^ i8o ONE CHUM. Since the day they had parted he had heard nothing of Jack, and dared not write him, for he knew the friend he had lost would take no tainted love. " I must go home to mother at once, Willie," said a shrill voice behind him, as his wife bounded breathlessly into the room. '* The smallpox is in the neighborhood and it is really dangerous to stay, and — gracious — how pale you look, I believe you are getting it. Heavens, is that the bell ? " She dashed hurriedly from the room and soon he heard the sound of carriage wheels, and the servants who came to carry him to bed brought a neat little per- fumed note. *• Dear Willie, I will send the doctor at once. You have the symptoms of smallpox and I will stay at mother's till you recover, for even if it doesn't kill one, you know, it ruins one's complexion. Good-bye, dearie." " Thank God," he said, " thank God." • • • • • • This was the worst case the neighborhood Iiad known, and long the patient tossed upon his bed and in his mad deliriums talked of footballs, and. schools, and cricket fields, and " Jack." This was the name forever on his lips, and until the day when all the servants had fied from the house in horror from the fell disease, a stranger arrived at the house and took his place by the bed. The patient had recovered and stood by the bed of his nurse one cold grey evening as the twilight was ONE CHU.M. l8l melting into night. The sick man was shghtly delirious and wandered in his speech. " Listen .0 the bell," he muttered dreamily " Do you hear the school bell, Billy? Hustle, or we'll be late." Hush, Jack," sobbei his companion. " Keen ud your heart and set well." " My heart," cried the sick man wildly, " I haven't got any heart. I gave it away to Billy and he squeezed U l,ke a lemon and tore i. to pieces and jumped on it. bZ°:L%T' ^"''- ' '°^"' )-°"-always-see I am iJUly— the Billy you nursed back to life " " Billy is dead," said the sick man sadly. " He died at a wedding," " The voice grew weaker and weaker and night and death drew nigh. Suddenly the shadow of de r.^m passed from the tired face and the bright eyes op ned feebly, gazmg wistfully around. "I am going to heaven," he muttered; "1 wonder will Billy be there." wonder " Here Jack, here ! " sobbed his companion, bending eagerly above him, filled with a passionate c av ng f"? one last word of love. ^ The eyes beneath him flashed suddenly with a look o d,v.nest recollection-divinest forgiveness-and the pallid li,« ^.ere parted with the same sweet smile of old. Then the face was thoughtful a moment. I here are no marriages in heaven," muttered the patient gladly. " We will kee. bach in heaven Bmyl troCpe.""'^"^'''^"'''^'^^'-"'^^-''-^' M^ 182 ONE CHUM. A smile of supreme contentment passed over the worn face. " Good-bye, Billy." "Good-bye, Jack." The warm hand clung to the cold hand quivering, and loth to part, then dead eyes looked into the ^;rey eyes and the grey eyes faltered and fell. m ■ i A Master of intrigue. T INHERE is a subtle element in history which priests call providence and fools fatality, but which is neither providence nor fate but only human genius veiled. Behind the play of passions and the war of words there lurks the brooding presence of ambition and thought concealed forms life revealed after the pattern of its dark desires. Dark are the depths of the Tiber and red the recesses of the Seine, but darker and ruddier still are the depths of the realm unrevealed, within whose sombre shades and winding paths reign the masters of unwritten arts, who pull the strings that set the little puppets going upon the mimic stage of history. "We who make history cannot write it," said Metter- nich, but he might more fittingly have said, " We who make history dare not write it." For there are things behind the things we see, deeds delicately done and tragic tales untold, and ever through the hallows of the ages there comes the muffled sob of candour crucified, and the light laugh of the duplicity crowned; and perhaps it may be well to deviate a little from the trodden path- ways of tradition, and, 'eaving the orthodox historian in weighty consideration of the dust and ashes, the rags and ruins of the past, seek for the living cause behind these casual consequences; and following to its sources in the individual mind that elusive, causal element which origin- ates events, study in Talleyrand a typt^ of the personal ele- ; I T84 A MASTER OF INTRUIUE. I f f I ;ii M I .; i t ment in history — the "iron hf\nd within the velvet glove," which with such quiet, subtle strength has fashioned the framework of society, woven the network of conspiracy, and sprung the mine of historical catastrophe. In Talleyrand we see the greatest modern representative of that class of politicians of whom Machiavelli was the interpreter and Guicciardini the historian, but whose representatives are older by far than the worthy sages of Florence, and whose lineage, if traced to its remotest sources, would carry us back perhaps to that distant day when primeval man amid Cainazoic rocks mated his wit with the cunning of the wolf or matched his ingenuity with the wiles of the serpent in the stern struggle for existence. Nor have the descendants of the primeval parent been altogether unworthy of his fame, and if, from his cave among the pliocene rocks where he had mocked the futile strategy of the baser brutec and utilized his proficiency in perfidy to perpetuate the race, he could have looked forward through the ages and beheld the long line of his progenitors who carried the vulpine instinct to perfection, his soul perhaps would swell with as much pride as ours is sad with shame when he contemplated the innumerable statesmen, priests and princes who crept to power along the winding paths of perfidy, and grew fat on a diet of duplicity. This is not the highest form of genius, but it is apparently the most successful, for it seems to be the peculiar will of Providence that knaves should have the making of his- tory while the hero and heretic find abundant reward in the prison, the scaffold, the crucifix, the stake, the inquisition and the grave. And the masses of mankind, A MASTER OF INTRKJUK. 185 everlastingly duped, have they not fashioned thrones and palaces for the schemer? And weak of knee and blind of eye cowered trembling beneath the lash of their master crying at every fresh infliction, " It is the will of God," running frantically to their priest, their astrologer, their talisman for consolation, while behind the curtain of events, with busy brain and scornful smile, sit the knaves who feed on their folly. The highest genius is creative. It adds to the sum of human wisdom or human happiness. It touches into music the chords of the soul of man and with fingers of fire, in letters of light, writes deep upon the human consciousness a truth eternal. The thinker — the poet, the statesman, the scientist, the fathers of thought and the founders of nations — these are the beacon lights, the suns of the universe of thought. After them, and on a lower plane, come the men whose light shines not for humanity, but as a dark lantern to guide their individual steps to power. Of such was Talleyrand. He was not the highest type of man. No ! very far from that. Many a stately head was laid on the hard pillow of the guillotine, which even lyii.g lowly there did tower above his own. And many a noble soul passed from that tragic stage weary and willing into the shadowl^nd far more heroic than he. For this is the pathos of history that they who sow so rarely reap; they lead the forlorn hope, they scale the heights, they conquer, but they die ; and when they fall, in rush with stealthy tread the birds of prey, the vampires and vultures of history— the Robespierres, Talleyrands, Fouches — and seize the spoils so dearly m iji^M; 186 A MASTKR OF IN'JRKiUE. bought. But when these men die, they die; while the grave of a Rousseau, a Voltaire, or a Danton is the portico to immortality, and their coffin a triumphal car that passes down the aisles of many ages well welcomed and well loved. A rustle of silk and a glitter of gold, and the old court stands before us. There are the pretty puppets dancing on the crust of the volcano, while underneath, with restless fury, rage the titanic forces of the avenging revolution. And over it all with smile and sneer the heirs of wealth and folly meet and mingle. Perfumed, powdered, and polished, cultured, courtly and caustic, in gorgeous silks and glittering jewels, prince and peer and lord and lady, stately age and smiling youth, radiant beauty and ready wit, courtier, soldier, noble and prince, moved through the palace and banquet halls, bowmg and smiling, flirting and joking, with the polished grace of the vanished days, and in their midst Talleyrand, Perigord, Bishop of Autun, witty with the witty, and wise with the wise, holy with the holy, haughty with the haughty, frailer than the frailest, stronger than the strongest, and deeper than the deep- est, — famous for his fion mots and delicate sarcasm, studying with amused interest the eccentricities of his fellows, delicately dissecting the motives of rulers, j :^in- ing in the little intrigues of the court as he would a game of euchre, and all the time stealthily politely elbowing his way with courtly grace to power. With delicate skill he estimated the relative strength and weakness of his rivals, with cool deliberation he studied the .A masti<:k of intrigue. 187 play of princely passions, and with ceaseless vigilance he followed the ebb and flow of popular emotions. Causes, sources, seeds, these were the things he sought, that he might lay his finger on the springs of action and fashion effects. Why did he not exert his talent to avert the revol- ution? The answer to this is simple — because his ability, unlike that of the royal advisers, amounted to genius, and in its light he saw that the revolution was inevitable, that it was born in the cruel past, that it was the offspring of ages, the child of the centuries, the nursling of time, too strong, too vast, and above all, too just to be averted by the art of man. And even if the people could have borne their burdens a generation longer, and if it had been possible for Talleyrand to creep into the councils of the court and suggest some pro- found expedient to avert the approaching catastrophe, it is very doubtful if he desired to do so. Perhaps he was as anxious for a conflict as the mob themselves, for the crisis is the festival of genius. It is then the voice of necessity calls him and the door of opportunity is open. Then in the conflict of its guardians he can sv.eep down like an eagle and carry the crown away. To create a crisis, this is the ambition that has haunted the Richelieus, the Cromwells, the Mazarins, and Borgais. In times of peace the king can dispense with his min- isters and play with his fool. But in an emergency the genius is inevitable. Nevertheless it is possible that Talleyrand, like many others, was largely influenced in his early attitude toward 1 88 A MASTKR or IN'TUIGUK. :■ H the revolution by a consideration of the earlier disturb- ence of the Fronde, and he may for a time have aspired to play the role of a Mazarin in the new revolution. • • • • t • If such an ambition ever crossed his mind it was not of long duration, and a careful study of his conduct previous to 1793 will show that any ambition which he might haveentertained toassume the attitude of a Mazarin had been by then abandoned. If he failed to obtain an ascendency over the queen we must ascribe the failure to one of two reasons, either that Marie Antoinette had rejected his advances as i)ersonal adviser, or that he had voluntarily abandoned his ear'y intrigues for the control of the councils of the court, or that in his anxiety to con- ciliate the people he had gone so far as to excite the suspicion of the court and thus nullified the effect of his previous intrigue. The latter we assume to be the true explanation of the problem. It is not at all likely that had he directed his efforts solely to obtaining a personal ascendency over the king or queen he would have failed. On the other hand, it is difficult to suppose that though he might relax he would entirely abandon his at- tempts to control the councils of the court, for it was not by any means his habit to burn his bridges behind him. It is therefore likely, as I have suggested in the third explanation, that if his defection to the popular party was due to the fact that in his well-founded conviction thac that party was the stronger, he carried his early advances to its leaders so far as to offend the queen for whose exceptional susceptibility to suspicion he had neglected to make due allowance, and ciceirg at last that A MASTKR OK INTRKIUK. 189 lat he had lost the confidence of the court he boldly and finally embraced the popular cause. There can not be the slightest doubt, however, that Talleyrand made no perceptible advances to the leaders of the people or even to Mirabeau until he had very thoroughly con- vinced himself that the royal cause was hopeless, and his foresight and sagacity in his perceiving this at so early a date forms a very striking contrast to the folly of the sovereigns who ignored it. The student of history who, mystified by the attitude of Talleyrand at this epoch, seeks for a clue in the attitude of his historic prototypes under apparently analogous circumstances, or founds an explanation of his conduct on purely historic data, is liable to form a very erroneous conception of the tendencies of that profound and con- summate mental strategy which governed his actions and determined his attitude to the court and revolution. There was an element present in the environment and in the calculations of Talleyrand peculiar to the time and land in which be lived, though of comparatively no interest to Ximines, Richelieu, Alberoni or other past masters of the art of intrigue. This was the element liberated by the revolution — the will of the people. If Talleyrand was the last of the courtiers he was the first of the politicians. He marks a critical stage in the evolution of the demagogue, the stage when the courtier develops into the politician and the suppliant for princely favor becomes the suppliant for the suffrages of the people. It is true the masses existed physically before the revolution, but their political existence had been largely potential till then. Hitherto they had been iii yi 190 A MASTER OF INTRKIUP: subject to the sovereign, and the courtier who won the favor of the prince could generally control the country. The single apparent exception to this occurred at the time of the Fronde, but those who are familiar with the secret history of that disturbance will know that the tiiomentary self-assertion of the people had its origin largely in the intrigues of De Retz and Mole and never of itself acquired sufficient importance to be a determining factor in the conduct of Mazarin, or ev2n of its pro- moters. In the time of Talleyrand, however, it became necessary for the aspirant for office to study not only the whims of princes but the passions of the people. The first to perceive this was Mirabeau, who en- deavored to serve the people in public and the court in secret, and between them would have fallen had he lived, for the experiment was too new and popular passions too high to then admit of the compromise sub- sequently adopted by Louis Phillipe. Talleyrand played the dual role of diplomat and politician. As the former he appealed for the favor of princes, as the latter for the favor of peoples. In one capacity he sought the strongest man, in the other the most popular prejudice. These he always supported till they became unpopular, then chose the new favorite. If the man was strong and the idea weak he remained courtier and served the man. This is the key to his relation to Napoleon. If the idea were the stronger and the ruler weak he became politician and served the idea. This is the key to his attitude to the revolution, and after the restoration, when realizing that democracy was stronger than Louis he delicately reconciled the functions of ^ A MASTER OF INTRKIUE. lOl courtier and politician as advocate of constitutioned monarchy. • • • • • • And wiien the crisis came — the mightiest crisis that France had ever known, the petty pohticians quickly found that the waters of a deluge are not navigable by those who learned to sail on shallow streams. In the face of this vast emergency when in the whirlwind Ci unique events and clash of titanic passions the ancient arts of intrigue were confounded, even Talleyrand was for a time appalled. Of what value were calculation, inference, induction, or theory of probabilities regarding the consequences of events which had their origin in impulse and were subject to momentary modification originating as in wayward whims or wishes of the mob ? Again the remarkable prescience which had preserved Talleyrand from destruction on the fall of the throne j)reserved him again from the menace of the Terror. He quietly left the country and went to England, leaving the factions to destroy each other, while he, preserving secret communication with all parlies, awaited in safety the result. The sagacity of this move was justified by events. After a short visit to America he returned again to France and began that elaborate series of intrigues which determined his relation to the consulate and to Napoleon. iger of Out of the wreck of the Empire he emerged apparently triumphant, but his prestige was irreparably damaged. He had betrayed too great a god to receive the homage of mankind The brevity of his premiership at the restor- I ( m■^\^ I HI Ifii 192 A MASTER OF INTRIGUE. ation indicates the universal distrust with which he was regarded by all parties. Nevertheless, on the fruits of his former peculations he lived a prosperous life for many years and lingered long — a stately reminiscence of a tragic past in the midst of a new generation. And what a past it had been ! He had spoken with Voltaire. He had known Rousseau. He had bowed to Louis XV. He had knelt to Louis XVL He had kissed the fingers of Marie Antoinette. He had seen the most depraved of mon- archs and the most detestable of demagogues. He had known the greatest orator, the greatest soldier, the greatest thinker, the stateliest courtier, the greatest tool, the greatest villain, the greatest sovereign, and the greatest republican, in the history of France ; and he had witnessed the greatest event in the history of Europe. He had administered the sacrament in Notre Dame. He had been the idol of the court and the president of the revolutionary assembly. He had made innumerable fortunes, contrived a thousand conspiracies, outlived the boundaries of nations, determined the destinies of kings, stolen the liberties of peoples, and held the fate of empires in the hollow of his hand. And through this wonderful panorama of events, emerging triumphant in court, and cloisters, cabinet, at banquet and council, in salon or parliament, at balls or revolutions, he moved with the same calm, courtly grace as when he bowed to kiss the hand of Louis in the days of the ancient regime. His life was the triumph of treason. As his long life drew to an end he determined to die decorously. At the last moment the dignitaries of the church and court and the king himself were summoned mmmm'^^mmmm :3m A MASTER OF INTRIGUE. 193 and knelt by his side, and with them came others, kings who did not kneel, who were not summoned, whom they did not see. ible O! igh lant icil, Ived to Ime. ,die Ithe led " But he could not hear the word death without changing color," says his biographer. "His domestics scarcely dared place before him letters sealed wifh black," and when he lay upon his bed in the last illness his mind dwelt continually in the past. In the long watches of the night, tossing restlessly in his bed, he murmured the names of Louis, Mirabeau, Napoleon, Fouche, Lafayette, and his mind went back to the vanished days and lingered fondly in the salons of the ancient regime where, a golden-haired oracle in silver and silk, he laughed and joked and gambled long ago. And he saw again the gilded butterflies that flut- tered round a queenly form, careless, beautiful and gay, and wandering lightly from group to group he heard the merry laugh of Artois, the cultured sneer of Provence, the haughty voice of Montmorency, the courtly tones of Lafayette, and as the music throbbed on the per- fumed air he heard outside the marble halls the murmur of a mighty storm, and while within in pride of blood sovereigns and lords and courtiers gaily glided. " Yet behind all — lowering, cowering — lo, a shape, Vague as the night, draped interminably, head fast and form in scarl'^'t folds, Whose face and e^ none may see Out of its robes only this — the red robe lifted by the arm, if I i ',, ill ff- 1 m' i i )ii'"i ^ly.? I f 194 A MASTER OF INTRIGUE. One finger crooked pointed high on the top like the head of a snake appears. « • • • « § " Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, Like lightning it leaped forth, half startled at itself, Its feet upon the ashes and rags — its hands tight to the throats o^ kings." The vision of the court had vanished, and he heard the knocking, fierce, turbulent knocking at the doors of the bastile, the clamoring and the knocking, and the voices, mad turbulent voices, silent for centuries, now aroused, shrieking, cursing, reviling, calling aloud for bread, for justice, for revenge, thunder of Mirabeau, thunder of Verginaud, thunder of Danton; and behind these gaunt figures, the faces, fierce hungry faces writ deep with passions and pain, while out of the soul's dark places the panther passions leapt, and liberty, bloody but beautiful, arose, unchained and unforgiving. What were those pale figures that were hurried forward amidst the chaos, confusion, derision, in faded tinsel and silk, trembling and weak up to the bloody guillotine — king and queen and courtier — the gay old court now bleeding, helpless, headlesT, all — all except Citizen Talley- rand, ex-bishop of Autun, most estimable revolutionist. Turbulent voices and bloody faces, fury and fire and fear, sons of the Terror, remembering, reproaching, re- venging with fire and steel and lead, and lo ! in the midst of it all, over it all, prevv Med the music of the marseillaise, the sound of the nacions arising, the tramp A MASTER OF INTRIGUE. 195 of approaching armies, the call of ihe st-'cken republic, the bugle, the smoke and the thunder, the clash of opposing armies, the rattle of musketry, the shrieks of the wounded, the smoke of the battie-field, the ciasc steel to steel, battle pnd blood and death, and o t ^i u all emerging the spirit of war incarnate in Napoieoi^, a meteoric star, glittering and dazzling and flaming, daring, dazzling, deluding, hushing contention and crushing freedom, then over the land subdued out of the breathless silence the sound of a silvery trumpet thriUing, daring the nations to battle. The clash of contending armies, the drums, the bugles, and banners, the eagles triumphant and haughty, the sun of Austerlitz arising, the chorus of exultant soldiers through the smoke and the turmoil arising " Vive le Empereur ! " Veterans of Valmy and Areola, veterans of Jena and Friedland, veterans of Marengo and Bordino, decked with the legion of honor, wounded and scarred and battered, how proudly and lovingly they shouted "Vive le Empereur!" Reproachfully they watched him, haunting him who summoned the hostile armies against the chief they bled for, and then he saw the last great horror and the end. Hand-in-hand, a little time upon the hill-tops they had wandered, Napoleon and Nemesis (ex- bishop of Autun). Then he beckoned to the nations and lo, the empire fell — and now — how they crowded round him in the midnight — ghosts from the guillotine, ghosts from the battle-fields and a grim ghost from St. Helena. The visions and the voices, aye the voices, soft courtly voices murmuring " Vive le Roi," fierce, hungry voices shrieking "Vive le Revolution!" rough soldier voices i 1 196 A MASTER OF INTRIGUE. shouting "Vive le Empereur!" For he had known Ihem all, yes and had echoed them all, ay and betrayed them all, and now they all awaited his coming beyond the ghastly gates. And so with his ghosts around him he passed from the presence of men. Forever from the presence of men — a prince in his own generation — a handful of dust to posterity. Toronto, 1894. Love and Pride. i^ i Ah ! love, I am strong and you are frail, Or you are strong and I am frail, maybe ; Let one be frail, let one prevail. Ere from the night the tremendous gale Sweep both into the sea. m A Rebel. TME king came out of the palace and stood by the marble steps dreamily watching the moon. A cloak of scarlet and velvet hung over his slender frame, and his white hand rested carelessly on the jewelled hilt of his sword. His royal face wa.s clouded by very human care and the sovereignty slept in his eyes. A mighty poor specimen of a king he seemed to me, who had lately come to the court with a royal ideal in my mind, and had lingered on the terrace to compare the dream with the man. Alas ! was this moon-struck, lovesick swain a king — a ruler of men ? In a moment he turned his eyes from the moon and fixed them on my face, then suddenly flushed scarlet. " You are pitying me," he cried. " How dare you pity a king?" Here was a pretty pickle. I had just arrived at court seeking preferment, and now by a careless glance I had made a foe of the king. Where truth is treason silence is safety, and so I stood silent before him. " You carry your head rather high for one who is only a page," he cried, with an angry stamp of his foot. " A touch of an axe on the neck might humble your pride a bit." This was too much for my patience. King or no king, his language outdistanced discretion and kindled sudden fire in my heart. I laid my hand on my sword. '* If you were not a king " I said. " What then, my pretty spark ? " 'I n « IP'i ill m \ IP p ■■ '': ' : i ii ' * iq8 A REBEL. " Why, then you would be a corpse," I answered hotly. He stured ?t me a moment, then suddenly burst out laughing. " You are the funniest courtier I have ever met," he said. " And why do you pity me, pray ? " ** Oh, you are only half a king," 1 answered warmly, for his laughter touched my p'"ide. *• I have read about kings in books, but you .ire not like a king." " And I have read about courtiers in books," he an- swered lightly, " and you are certainly not like a cour- tier. But wherein am I short of perfection ? " " Oh, you are moon-struck," I answered recklessly. ** Look at you idling and dallying here at the beck and call of a woman when your kingdom, is going to ruin and traitors are seeking your throne. A pretty sort of a king to be running after petticoats when there's fighting to be done." " Whom do you want me lo fight ? " he muttered in a bewildered tone of vo.ce. " Fight yourself," I answered scornfully, *' and slay the slave within you. Shake yourself loose of the shal- low sex. They are frivolous jades, I assure you, and not at all to be trusted. If you must love, love someone who can kindle a king within you, and not a moon- struck swain." *' This language is strong," he answered watching m.e with a strange light in his eyes. " Pray, is your sword as sharp as your words ? " " Try it," I answered briefly. "I will," replied he quickly. "I have never mef A REBKI,. 199 ll- iot )n- rd et one of your kind before. I will put your bravery to .est." lie paused for a moment thoughtfully, then pointed his finger to a pavilion half-hidden among the trees in the park before the palace. " In a couple of hours," he said, " be there, where a champion of the king will meet you and put your cour- age to test." I bowed, and he turned away and re-entered the door of the palace. I passed along up the terrace, intending to descend, when a door at the farther end suddenly opened and a woman came slowly out and dreamily looked at the moon. I don't take much interest in women, but the conqueror of the king had a certain in- terest for nij, and I stood for a moment watching her, feeling considerable wonder to think that so shallow a creature could bring a king to her feet. Suddenly she turned and faced me with an angry toss of the head. " You scorn me," she said haughtily ; " how dare you scorn a queen ? " It is time enough to be bullied when one is married, but women are very conceited and need to be carefully handled, and her lofty tone, so irritating to my pride, was possibly due to a mistake. " Madame," I answered warmly, " the shadows have deceived you, and I am not the king." "That is easily seen," she muttered wonderingly, " but who on earth are you ? " '* I am a freeman," I answered loftily. " A little too free," she answered saucily, " and some- what forward for a boy.' >' ill Ifll ' If U :' » i i 5. B N' '' li ^ ■ ill 200 A KVAWA.. I muttered, stung " If you were not the queen to the quick by her sneer. " What then, my saucy rebel ? " " Why, then you would be a slave," I answered, and she suddenly dropped her eyes. " Is your heart as brave as your eyes ? " she mur- mured. " Try it," I answered proudly. ** I will," replied she quickly. " I will choose a cham- pion to test it, in a couple of hours, at, say, that quiet pavilion there among the trees, and if you conquer I will forgive you." We bowed to each other gracefully and she quietly turned away and re entered the palace door. Now, here was a pretty predicament. I suddenly recollected that by an unfortunate coincidence she had named the very place and hour selected by the king. Well, what did it matter? I have a relish for swordplay, and have pinked a couple of men before to-day. I could take them on both at once — the more the merrier, for what's the use of living if one can't have a little fun with whatever comes along ? The moon had hidden behind a cloud when the event- ful hour arrived, and I found the park decidedly dark as I picked my way through the trees in the direction of the pavilion appointed for a rendezvous. A lonelier place for a meeting it would have been difficult to select, for though in the royal park, the use of the place was for- bidden to all but the family of the king, and its seclu- sion from the world was absolute. Picking my way through the bushes, I walked along A REBEf,. 201 the soft grass to what was apparently the back of the pavihon. then .uddenly paused, for standing face to face m the centre I saw a couple of shadows enveloped in cloaks and eying each other cautiously. Then one shadow spoke softly in a voice that was strangely muf- " Rebel, : am the champion of the Queen. Why did you scorn the Queen ? " And the other : •' Rebel, I am the champion of the King. Why did you pity the King ? " ^ Then the shadows removed their masks, and a Kin^ and a Rebel stood facing each other, but I was not the rebel. Toronto, Jan., '98. ini'i I v^'- ■• Sweet Marie. MK threw the book aside, and rising restlessly fiom his seat paced impatiently to '^ fro in the narrow limits of his attic room. " Who can beat that ? " he muttered feverishly " The light of stars and the perfume of flowers are in it." Who could he be, this rival who had won the affections of the public, whose name was on every lip, whose book sold like wildfire, while he, poor devil, sat starving in his little attic, feeding on dreams and in momentary expect- ation of a visit from his landlady for arrears of rent ? Why had fame passed him by to visit the domicile of his rival ? It was hard — very hard. He picked up the paper again and glanced at the advertisement — ah ! there he was again : "The Queen of Scots, a tragedy in three acts, by Eugene Morell, will be performed to-night at the The- atre Francais. Mile. Marie Roselli will play in the title role — Mary of Scots. The performance of this, the first drama of the talented young author, is looked forward to with much interest. Monsieur Morell is singularly fortunate in securing the services of the beautiful Marie Roselli to create the character of the Queen." He dropped the paper with a groan. " So," he said, "Marie — She, too, will contribute to his glory. It was not enough that he should win the affections of the public — ah ! that was very hard — but he wrote a play, as I write plays, but his are of course accepted, and she, of all others will play them." SWEET MARIE. 203 id, ras the This was the unkindest cut of all. Had he not scrap- ed and saved, time and again, out of his meagre earn- ings to keep enough to enable him to indulge in the one luxury of his lonely life, a seat in the top gallery of the theatre? And from there he would look down with adoring eyes on her w'.iom he worshipped from afar. But there had been a time, long ago, when he had known her, out in a little village in Normandy, when they were boy and girl tr^gether and had plighted their love one to the other — but that was long ago. Her beauty had attracted the attention of a wealthy patron, and now she was the idol of Paris, and he — alas ! Night after night he had sat in the gallery looking with hungry eyes upon her beauty, and when the play was over had he not haunted the door to see her passing out ? And then how he would hurry home and seize his pen and write — so hard, so long — in the still and silent watches of the night, write some strange, immortal thing, and even as he wrote would sometimes fall asleep and dream it was accepted — dream of the temple of fame on the golden heights of Parnassus, dream of the crown of laurel and the throne where he sat enthroned in glory, with her, the queen of love and beauty, by his side. And he too, had written a play — a play for her to act. It was rejected, and now what did tne papers say? Eugene had gained the day. Eugene was famous ; Eugene was beloved. Eugene, Eugene, Eugene ! How the name grated on his soul ! He heard it wherever he went. The fame of his rival was the shadow that dark- ened his life. 'I ■ 204 SWKET MARIK. .1 111 y > ( I " They will come before the curtain," he muttered, with a picture of his rival's triumph in his eye. " I'hey will come before the curtain, he and she, and stand together, hand-in-hand, and bow, he and mademoiselle. Mon Dieu ! " He l)uried his face in his hands and sat for a moment with the shadows deepening around him. " It must not be," he muttered. " It must not be." How to prevent it — that was the problem. How could he, a poor, unknown author, with barely enough to buy a ticket for the top gallery of the theatre — how could he prevent the performance of a play at one of the great- est operas in Paris ? He rose to light a lamp, and as he did so the flame flashed on the paper which lay on the table before him, and he read : " Fatal Accident ! Monsieur Droit of the Theatre Francais met with a fatal accident yesterday when crossing the bridge on the Seine. His foot slip- ped and he fell into the river. The body has not yet been recovered." Monsieur Droit. Where had he seen that name? Ah yes, it was in the play bill. He was to have taken the part of the headsman in the play of Eugene Morell — Mary of Scots. The author leaped to his feet with a sudden cry of delight. He knew the stage manager at the theatre ; there was a vacancy in the company nov, so he might face Eugene yet. " Who says I cannot conceive a great idea ? " he cried in ecstasy. '* Ah, it is sublime. What a drama it would m i-J-J' -« 'J SWEET MAKIE. 205 make ! But I will act this one myself. The ax — that I must arrange." vSeizing his hat he passed out of the roonij down the stairs, and walked hurriedly in the direction of the theatre. Eugene Morell pinned a rose to his coat and glanced approvingly at the mirror. He felt very happy that ni.^ht, and the face reflected in the mirror was young and handsome and the eyes were beaming l)rightly with the unmistakable light of genius. The long days of his probation were over. He had found fame while yet in his youth, and was great in the flower of his days. His name was on all lips, his books delighted the eyes of millions. To-night he felt divine, and the ruby blood of the immortals pulsed in his veins. His masterpiece would tonight be played in the greatest theatre in Paris by the loveliest actress in France. '•'I'he carriage is waiting, sir," said the maid, knock- ing at the door. V Ah, yes, I'm coming," he answered gaily, and run- ning down the stairs he leaped into the carriage and drove to the theatre like a king to his coronation. ried )uld The curtain rose. The eyes of a vast audience which filled every seat in the theatre were strained eagerly forward and fixed with anxious expectation on the stage. Like some sweet fairy princess robed in garments of light and shedding a halo of beauty around her as she walked, she passed across the stage. Mary the Queen, Marie the beloved of the pauper. A vision of beauty ■ I'- ll , .j Mil: ^''' 't 206 SWEF/r MARIE. forever it seemed to them, who say that she had never looked as beautiful as then, when on the strange and tragic night she played a part written for her alone by one whose inspiration was her love. The first act was over and the curtain fell amid a hurricane of applause. The second and the third were repetitions of the first. With flushed cheeks the author sat in his box and beheld the triumph of his play, feeling how small a portion of the credit was due to him alone. He could not see the figure of his rival lurking in ghastly disguise behind the scenes, nor could he hear the whis- pered words which passed between the headsman and the Queen. "You or he I" muttered thehead ;n fiercely. "See, 1 have a revolver ; warn him and he dies. And this is the ax for you ! Choose, Marie. I swear it. Vol or he." She shuddered and looking lovingly at the bouquet of flowers in her hand, the beautiful flowers Eugene had thrown at her feet. " Ah ! I love him," she cried passionately, as her eyes flashed fire at the gloomy figure before her, " Let it be me." He trembled and bowed his head. "False," he mut- tered, "false." The curtain rose. This was the last sad act. See, she was coming, the Queen, coming to the scaff"old to die. Why did she shudder as she walked up the steps of the scaffold — Sweet Marie. It was only a play after all. And yet how very realistic was that splendid tear in her eye as she turned and waved a last farewell to — strange SWEET MARIE. 207 she had waved it to one of the boxes. A mistake pardonable in one who made so few. A cold shiver ran through the frame of Eugene Morell as e leaned heavily on the side of his box, oppressed by a strange premonition of some hidden, inexphcable evil What was it ? See ! The headsman - Ah, what yes- so cruel ! How they glared ! Now at him-now af her Who was It? How pale she was and how fair, as she mounted the steps o the scaffold-Sweet Marie-as she mounted the steps of the scaffold and waved a last farewell. • • . . _ " Stop ! " shrieked the author suddenly, as the ax swung through the air above her bended heLd A cry of horror burst from the crowd, and then the curtam fell and he sat alone with his fame. Toronto, June, 1896. [ti i: wn •I !; iH ii m ir A Memory. 44 I s it not beautiful ?" she murmured, glancing through half-closed eyes around her. The softened rays from colored lamps around were reflected in red and yellow flashes from the dia- monds and the rubies on her neck. Her complexion was a beautiful pink delicately dusted with magnesia and her deep blue eyes shone brightly through a haze of belladonna. Her pose was adapted to the environ- ment. " Beautiful, indeed," he answered absently, with a far-away look in his eyes. She was thinking of the place, the hour, the oppor- tunity. He was not thinking of her. His eyes, averted, glanced dreamily downward at a flower in his hand — a little flower which he had plucked from a plant that nestled half-hidden among the roses by his side — a small forget-me-not. " One feels so lonely at times in a great house like this," she murmured thoughtfully. Vaguely he realized that a critical moment had come. Things had been drifting this way for several months, and with all the ingenuity of her artful sex she had led him to this point, and why should he not be led ? She was an heiress and he was poor. She had beauty, talent, and wealth. She was the most admired, the most desired in her set, and many men had vainly sought the hand which she had plainly let him see was voluntarily his. And now she was sitting beside him. A MEMORN 209 Her glance was tender and her words were inviting. He had only to say a word and wealth and beauty and ease were his, and yet — How sweet that little flower looked as it nestled in his hand, as sweet as that sweet hour long ago when suddenly there arose before him a face and he had heard a voice which stirred his inmost heart with sud- den passion for possession, and dreams of sweet com- panionship, and a love surpassing life. Where were those dreams today? Whose was that love? Had someone else forgotten, and he — could he forget ? He shivered slightly and rose to fix the blind. Out- side the world looked cold and cheerless. The night was dark, the frost was on the ground and a bitter wind was moaning among the trees. Incide was luxury, light and ease, soft cushions, comfort, jewels and gold, and all that gold could buy — and yet — He was a lover of luxury and his heart was filled with a perennial longing for the beautiful things of life. How pleasant it would be to be at ease on these soft cush- ions, and live a life of idleness and ease freed from the necessity for daily toil — the bitter struggle for existence. Yes, for such luxury as this he might forego his liberty, endure the minor penalties of matrimony, the loss of friends and freedom, the domestic trials, the noisy chil- dren, the cares, the grief, the woman — and yet — He was counting up the chances. On one hand were beauty, wealth and ease. On the other hand — a memory. Why did they play that valse? How the sweet music thrilled his heart with passionate remembrance T^ !| IH if: 210 A MEMORY. and regret and visions of dead days and vanished faces : Can you forget the hour When first we met, For woman — wealth — or power — Can you forget ? She wondered at his hesitance. Would he let the golden opportunity go by ? Would he reject what others vainly sought ? When wealth and beauty lay at his feet, would he spurn them both aside ? What dream with- held him? What vision held him back? Can you forget the hour, Sweet hour when first we met ? The fair, unfading flower. The sun that will not set — • Till you forget ? He rose unsteadily to his feet. The woman looked at him wonderingly. She could not see the face behind the flowers. She could not see the past. She could not hear the voice that echoed in the vaulted halls of memory : Forget me not, my lover. For treason breeds regret : L'fe passeth in an hour. But love — can love forget ? A mist of tears obscured his sig.it. He could not see her beauty — he could not see her gold. " I will say good-night," he said. " Is it good-bye? " she murmured. if I) i-;^ Hi Ri u led A MKMORV. en ily et, th- 211 O, yes, good-bye," he answered. Through an aisle of flam.ng roses they passed from the conservatory ou. mto the splend,d halls, filled with luxurious things and noble p,c,ures. She glanced significantly at then, as they passed, and he who loved the beauti(ul-he shuc! dered to forego them. She openod the door. Outside e n,gt was dark and cheerless. Inside was bea and wealth and ease; but with a little flower in his ha., lie passed out mto the night. at id Id of ;e The Devil and Mrs. Grundy. Satan.- How'dy do, Mrs. Grundy ? Mrs. Grundy. — I'm feeling very good, thankic, but the world is awful bad, Mr. Satan. Sa'j AN, — A chronic complaint, Mrs. (}rundy, l)ut I'm delighted to see you recognize me. There are some who doubt my existence. Mrs. Grundy. — Indeed, but I don't, Mr. Satan. I'm too good a Christian for that. But I didn't believe it was you at first, when I saw your cigarette, for I says to myself: The devil isn'' wicked enough to smoke a cig. arette. The tempting of Eve was bad enough, but cig- arettes is worse. O, Mr. Satan, how shockin' ! Satan.— Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! Don't be too hard on me, Mrs. Grundy. I'm only a merry fellow looking round for a cfiance to make people happy. Mrs. Grundy. — You ought to be ashamed of your- self, Mr. Satan, to be a-doin' of things like that. Satan. — What — do you call it a sin to be happy ? Mrs. Grundy. — My goodness, gracious, yes. This is no time to be happy — it's salvation we're a-seeking of here. Satan. — And are you finding it, Mrs. Grundy ? Mrs. Grundy. — Yes, thank the Lord, I've found it, but this rest is awful wicked. And oh 1 it's a terrible time I'm havin' a-reformin' of this world. A-reformin' and reformin' and reformin* of the world. Such a wicked world as it is, Mr. Satan. Satan. — That's rather hard on its Maker. IHE DKVIL AND MRS. «;Rl XI»V. 213 It f 3le Mrs. Grundy. — Well, maybe the Lord did the best he could, but I can't understand what he was a-thinkin' of when he made such a wicked world. If it wasn't for me and the Christian Endeavours and the W.C.T.U., it wouldn't be fit to live in. But we're fixin' things up, Mr. Satan, we're a-cleanin' and scrubbing, and investi- gatin' and tryin' to make it respectable like and decent. S.ATAN. — And how are Mr. Grundy and the children ? Mrs. Grundy. — My gracious, goodness me, I ain't got no time to think about them. I'm too busy a-re- formin' of the world. But bless me, now I come to think on it, I believe they is sick, Mr. Satan. I was down in the prison, to-day, makin' some soup for that poor dear murderer that killed his old mother with an ax, and he was a-takin' of it so nicely, and me consolin' with him and him repentin' and preparin' to die nice and Christianlike, when in comes a man to the prison and yells : " Your husband's a-dying, Mrs. Grundy, and your children is sick with the fever." Then I goes down on my knees and prays : " Look after them, Lord," says I. *' Oh ! look after me husband and childer. Lord, while I'm lookin' after the world." Satan. — And did they get well, Mrs. Grundy ? Mrs Grundy. — Indeed I don't know, Mr. Satan. I'm too busy a-reformin' to ask. Satan. — It's about this reforming matter I desired to sse you, madam. I am, as you are doubtless aware, the proprietor of an establishment fitted up at the beginning of time to accommodate a limited number of sinners of a very superior kind. But since the apothesis of you, 1 I i W-''i 214 THE UEVH, AND MRS. (;Kt'Nl)Y. Mrs. (iruiidy, the sinners are coming in too quick, and the quality is visibly deteriorating. Mrs. Grundy. — Indeed I'm sending you all I can, Mr. Satan, and gracious me, there's a lot of them, what with the people as smoke, and the people as drink, and them as goes to the theatres, and them as reads Sunday newspapers, and them as stays out late o' nights, and them as chews, and them horrible boys as smokes cigar- ettes, and them struttin' jades as goes to the matinees — O my gracious me, but there's an orful pile on 'em, Mr. Satan, and I'm bustlin' them off and hustlin' them all the time and sendin' *em all to you just as quick as I can, Mr. Satan. Satan — But madam, permit me to tell you that the accommodation is limited. We have all the heathen of all ages down there already, all the inhabitants of the great civilization previous to the Christian era, including the Athenians, the ancient Romans, including such eminent men as Plato, Socrates, Horace, and others with whom you are doubtless not acquainted. Mrs. Grundy. — Indeed, no. I don't associate with sich haythens. Satan. — And in addition to these we have many illus- trious moderns — heretics, madam, who were sent down for thinking, having been previously burned by the church — these and many more — in fact the great majority of the people on earth who live in other than Christian countries, and now to these you are sending down the great majority of Christians for the most trivial offences. Mrs. Grundy — But my goodness me, I can't allow IHK DKVll, AM) MKS. (.Rl'\|)\. 2'5 them to slay here, Mr. Satan, to associate with the likes of me — hussies as goes to matinees and sich hke, Satan. — Hut the old-time sinners are objecting, Mrs. Grundy, to the class you are sending; down now. You can readily ap[)reciate why a sinner of the hij^li intellect- ual standing of Socrates or Galileo or IJruno who has earned his infernal {)re-eminence by a long series of in- tellectual crimes, crowned by a glorious martyrdom on earth, should hesitate to associate wiih some [)oor little creature who is sent down for attending a ballet. (Con- sider these things, Mrs. Grundy. Mrs. Grundv. -~\^^ell I ain't asending y(ju any murderers or thieves or suvSi like now, Mr. Satan ; them poor dears nearly always repents and we makes them pies before they dies and sends 'em nice and comfortable lu heaven. It's jist the really wicked people as smokes cigarettes and drinks beer, and stays out late at nights, and rides in the Sunday cars, and dances, and laughs and sings, and plays cards, and them hussies as goes to mat- inees — O, them is the wicked ones, Mr. Satan. We're sendin' 'em all down to you, and I hopes you scarify them well, Mr, Satan, pour biiiti' water on 'em and skin 'em alive, Mr. Satan. Don't I wish I was down to see 'em squirmin' ! Satan. — Indeed, Mrs. Grundy, w e haven't the heart to punish them ; they look so sad by the time you get through with them that even the devils weep to behold them and we try to make them merry down below. Mr.s. Grundy. — O my goodness me, what wickedness ! what wickedness — Lands above ! I never dreamed hell .!i 41 W W 216 THt liKVIL ANI» MKS. (IkUNDY. was so terrible as that to make men merry ; why, I thought you only tortured them. How can you be so sinful Mr, Satan ? I ain't a-going to speak to you no more. Satan. — O Mrs. (}rundy, Mrs. Grundy, you have made such a hell out of earth that people are looking to me for heaven. mm ] King Billy and St. Pat. vScRNR.— //;i(/\ y Jonah and the Whale.* Jonah. — Where am I at? Tlie place seems dark and treacherous, and not a single ray of light can I discover to guide my footsteps from the depths mysterious. I know not where I am, nor whither I am going. What shall I do? My body bids me rest. My spirit craves for light, I shall protest. Whale. — What's this that I have swallowed, this being oratorical, vociferous, full of complaints, desires, hopes, ambitions, who though he sleeps in depths remote from light cries out for the stars, and clamors for the sunshine, and manifests a yearning for divinity out of proportion to his strength. It seems to be a different sort of creature to those which uncomplainingly lie in the stomachs of whosoever desireth to consume them and fatten on the strength they dare not use. And yet to look at 'twas a dainty morsel, and little different from the other worms." Jonah. — Methinks the universe wherein I lie is speak- ing, or it hath found a voice that speaketh for it. Oh, thou mysterious and tremendous being within whose depths cadaverous I am lying, inform me, 1 beseech you where I am and why and wherefore, and whither I am going ? Whale. — Be quiet, or I'll digest you. Jonah, — That is no way to argue. Give me reasons. *The above dialogue has no reference to the scripture story of Jonah, liut is purely symbolical. , ! ■ a JONAH AND THE WHAIK. 221 Whale. — What infidel, could you ask for reasons. O what impious morsel have I swallowed— a worm that asks for reasons lies uneasy in the stomach that seeks to fatten on the brains of men. O wicked worm adapt yourself to fate. Whatever is, must be, then why com- plain ? Jonah. — And if you looked to fate to feed you, whale methinks you would not live to feed on man. Whale. — I am a great big whale, and vou are only a little man. I help myself, but you depend on fate, but if you are an obedient little man I will be a generous whale and tell you pretty stories about the great sea, and the stars and gods — the things you seek but cannot find. Jonah. — And will it be trut, O whale ? Whale. — On the word of a whale what I tell you is true — The world is a great big ball, consisting of the sea and the sky. In the sky is Providence and eternal joy, while the sea is inhabited by me, its representative, and a number of little men who are wicked and cannot swim. I swallow these men to save them from drowning, and the only way they can reach salvation is by passing through me, after which they enter heaven. Therefore be quiet, Jonah. On the word of a whale I swallowed you because I loved you and through me lies salvation. Jonah. — O whale, methinks that your philosophy coincides extremely well with your desires. Your wis- dom is begotten of your necessities, and your advice agreeth with your appetite. Whale. — Whatever is, must be. On the word of a m i;' I '- I it '< Vii illfe^ 222 JONAH ANO IHK WIIAl-E. whale, it is the will of Providence that you lie where you lie. Jonah. — And if it be the will of Providence that you lie when you lie, then Providence has given you a tongue that has betrayed you. But even if your tongue had served you better, your appetite has revealed to me your grossness, and whoso entereth you, seeking salvation, findeth but darkness and destruction. Whale. — What is this that I have swallowed. Me- thinks withm his brain there lurks a poison that will destroy me. Yea, with his talk he seems to feed upon nu', gnawing his way to the light. The brains of meni like fangs of serpents, must be destroyed by those who would feed upon them, else will they sting and slay. Begone, rash mortal. I reject you — Vomits him. Jonah. — Ah, see the sun — how glorious. The sea is deep, but swimming by myself, methinks Pll reach eternal shores while yon gross monster sinketh to the depths. i The Haunted Trolley. I ^^■^T was here he fell,'' said the conductor. " Ri^ht under the wheels of the car ,and they went over him. I can hear his bones crunching, still sir, — eh I did some one speak ?" The car stopped abruptly as he hastily turned the l)rake. " I heard a voice," said the conductor; "did some one call ?" There was silence on the car. The three passengers inside and the man on the platform looked at the ques- tioner curiously and shook their heads. 1 1 was an all night car and the hour was nearly twelve. The conductor had l)een on duty all night. " Some one got on," said the conductor. "Ah, you got in, did you? I thought I heard you call." 'i'he number of passengers in tin: car was still the same. The bell rang twice and the conductor resumed his place on the platform. The j)assengers looked wonderingly around the car, but no remarks were passed. The car swept swifdy on its course till a couple of blocks farther, then it stopped and the outside passenger got off. The conductor re-entered the car. " Fares, please." The passengers paid their fares, and the cotiductor passed up the aisle to a vacant seal ; and held out his box as to an invisible passenger — " i\ire, please." rrrr (■iiii m mm !\' : ! 224 THE FIAUN'IEI^ IROIIKV. There was a faint clink in the box. The passengers shivered and looked at the door. The conductor was looking steadily before him with a dazed look in his eyes. " 'I'ransfer, did you say," lie muttered. " We don't transfer to heaven." There was silence again in the car. Silence. What was that ? A whisper — what was it, the spectral sound that came from the vacant seat ? ** I say we don't do it," repeated the conductor angrily, as though arguing with some invisible passenger. *Mt can't be done, I say." There was silence again for a moment, then again that spectral sound, and a look of relief passed over the face of the conductor. "To the cemetery," he muttered vaguely. •' O, ye^. I'll take you as far as the cemetery." He turned and passed to the door. The passengers rose hastily to follow him, when suddenly he turned fiercely upon them. His face was ghastly pale and his eyes looked wildly before him filled with a great horror. " Don't leave me," he muttered weakly. *' Don't leave me alone with him. They shivered. ** I told him a lie," he whispered hoarsely. "This car is not going to heaven. It is bound straight for hell." They looked at him wonderingly. "Do you know the reason why?" he asked. "Because I'm on it ; that's why. It was me that killed him, you know. He loved her, and I ran over him instead of stopping the car." THK HAUNTKD TROLLP:V. car ^25 The bell rang suddenly. '• He wants to get out !" shrieked the ( onductor. "This is the cemetery. Ha ! Ha I Ha !" The lights of the car went out suddenly. The' pas- sengers shrunk trembling against the sides. Out of the darkness a white hand shone with uplifted finger beckon- ing to the conductor. There was a sound as though some one was struggling. Then the lights flashed up again and fell on the fact of a corpse bent forward with wildly protruding eyes, and hand upon the brake. use j(f