= = E = = ei , rr | BT SE TU nit ornell University Library “Tinian PROSE SPECIMENS FOR USE WITH CLASSES IN ENGLISH COMPOSITION BY CARSON S. DUNCAN EDWIN LONG BECK AND WILLIAM LUCIUS GRAVES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY D. G HEATH: & CO. PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK — CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY D. C. HEATH & CO. 1L2 PINKHAM PRESS BOSTON, MASS. PREFACE No book of specimens, however well selected, is designed to take the place of the composition and rhetoric text it- self; but there will always be room and always a need for the collection of stimulating and interesting selections from the work of those accomplished literary craftsmen whose writing is of the sort to make the student want to attempt things in the like spirit, if not in like manner. The book of models, therefore, constitutes a compact rhetorical labo- ratory, through which may be brought to life all those nec- essary abstractions, those fundamental principles in the theory of composition whose study, apart from concrete illustration, is of small avail. The distinct advantage of the book of models lies in the common possession, by teacher and student, of the same material, available at identical moments, and instantly suggestive of inquiry and answer —a fresh and varied source of supply for every aspect of each day’s work. Such material, if it possesses a live interest and touches the circle of the student’s own experience, is sure, with wise handling by the instructor, to provoke and maintain a wide-awake attention, and to rouse an eager ambition toward original composition. The makers of this book have tried to present material that is at once ample, varied, and not too remote from everyday experience. This book furnishes specimens of the conventional forms of discourse — Description, Narration, Exposition, iii iv PREFACE Argumentation, and Persuasion. The subdivisions under these general heads have not been followed far, the sub- titles serving as suggestions for analysis fully as much as for mutually exclusive classifications. In Description, for example, a specimen of Dominant Tone may also illustrate Point of View, but the purpose of the writer and the chief virtue of the writing are more clearly revealed by the former classification. In the longer selections there will, of course, be found more than a single principle. The notes will be found quite brief. The selections are so fully self-explanatory that practically no notes of this kind are needed. There remain, then, but two reasons for the notes; namely, for definition and for suggestion. These have guided in their construction. The notes have been placed at the back of the book, so that they would not obtrude themselves on the attention of those instructors who want to go alone, and would yet afford a means of handy reference for those who desire to know the purpose for which the selections were made, and who desire to find suggestions for classroom analysis. The range of possibilities in the use of model specimens is wide. Through them may be taught all the principles of structure, the building of the composition, with the bal- ancing of part against part, the even proportioning of divisions, and the gradation of the whole; and the ele- ments of emphasis, of unity, of climax, may all be made to appear to the student’s eye, as wellas tohis mind. Through the specific example before him he may be made to see, as well as to know, how the brief for an argument is made, how the completed structure grows from this skeleton. He may take the written article, of expository or argumen- tative sort, and analyze it for himself, so as to test it, to re- construct it, if necessary, or to determine how it has shaped PREFACE Vv itself in the writer’s mind. The descriptive material visu- alizes objects for him, appeals to all his senses, suggests fresh observation on his own part. It offers him examples in varying methods of recording what he sees ; it enlivens his commonplace experiences by showing what can be done through original treatment. Here is excellent oppor- tunity for the study of vocabulary, with all the interesting aspects of diction. The editors have, of course, taken suggestions from other texts, consciously and unconsciously. They desire here to acknowledge such indebtedness. Furthermore, they offer their grateful acknowledgments to the publish- ers who have generously permitted the use of copyrighted material: The Atlantic Monthly ; D. Appleton & Co.; The Independent, The Ridgeway Company; G. P. Putnam’s Sons; Henry Holt & Co.; The Dial; E. P. Dutton & Co.; Doubleday, Page & Co.; Little, Brown & Co.; Zhe North American Review; The Century Company; Zhe Nation; McClure’s Magazine; Charles Scribner’s Sons ; Duffield & Co.; Longmans, Green & Co.; The Outlook, Dodd, Mead & Co.; The Baker & Taylor Co.; Collier's ; The Saturday Evening Post. Finally, they wish to thank most heartily those students who have permitted the use of their themes in this book. Ouro STATE UNIVERSITY, CoLuMBUS, OHIO, August, 1912. CONTENTS DESCRIPTION POINT OF VIEW . . 3 5 ‘ The Ranch Frank Norris 2 A Glimpse of Old Dads Victor Hugo . é Outside Dorlcote Mill Hermiston The House on the Brae The Ride in the Train DoMINANT TONE The House of Usher Mr. Massy’s Stateroom Winter 3 Marseilles in Areas PHYSICAL SENSATION . The Return Home at Evening The Plowing Early Morning Oilors The Stockyards Browsing and Nibbling Night Sounds and Scents in Camp . MENTAL STATE . The First Morning in New York The Ironworker . In the Lull of the Storm . A Young Thief and his Plunder NATURE The Castaway . The Meadow Brook The Merry Men The Outer Islands How the Princess Saw the nse Th: “Saas George Eliot . RL. Stevenson . . SM. Barrie. Gouverneur Morris Edgar Allan Poe . . Joseph Conrad Eden Phillpotts Charles Dickens David Grayson Frank Norris David Grayson Upton Sinclair Maurice Thompson Maurice Thompson Dorothy Richardson . jJames Oppenheim . . Joseph Conrad . Daniel De Foe Gouverneur Morris Richard Jefferies R. L. Stevenson A. T. Quiller-Couch R. L. Stevenson Tifiaeai Tamsin] . vill ‘ INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS The Closed Room In the “Indian Queens” . Cumnor Place . A City House . In a Temple Garden Edgewood Farm PEOPLE FROM REAL LIFE . Charles Lamb . Thomas Moore. Charles Dickens PEOPLE FROM FICTION The Shepherd . Magnus Derrick Dinah Morris The Printer of Bursley Mrs. Hamps Captain Whalley PORTRAIT SKETCHES . STUDENTS’ THEMES In the Sleeper. The Short-Stop At the Day’s End Up Mt. Washington . 4 Getting Bottom The Basket-Ball Game The Sheriff The Governor . SIMPLE INCIDENT The Sword CONTENTS George Eliot . A. T. Quiller- Couch Sir’ Walter Scott William Herbert . Ralph Adams Cram Donald-G. Mitchell Thomas N. Talfourd NV. P. Willis Percy Fitegerald Frank Norris Frank Norris George Eliot Arnold Bennett . Arnold Bennett Joseph Conrad NARRATION Laurence Sterne Tom Tulliver Comes Home for Vaca- tion A Dog-Fight A SKETCH . Aged Folk George Eliot . Dr. John Brown . Alphonse Daudet . PAGE 66 67 69 73 75 77 81 81 82 83 83 83 87 88 89 90 92 96 96 97 98 99 101 102 104 105 106 106 108 118 122 12? CONTENTS DRAMATIC EPISODE . Climbing Bagworthy Water The Death in the Wheat . The Voice among the Trees DESCRIPTION IN NARRATION The Game ‘ i The Earthquake THE SHORT STORY The Captain from Bath 2 The Masque of the Red Death A BIBLE STORY . Absalom’s Revolt STUDENTS’ THEMES The Dive . Tommy and the Giessen The Melancholy of Jean Le Maudit Richard D. Blackmore . Frank Norris RL. Stevenson . james Hopper . jJames Hopper A. Ti; Quiller- Couch Edgar Allan Poe . The Bible. f . . . . . . EXPOSITION DEFINITION . What is Dry ee 2 T he Meaning of Literature What is Partisanship ? The Machine and the Boss EXPOSITION OF A PROCESS How to Make a Scientific Kite Open-Water Canoeing ScIENTIFIC EXPOSITION Modern Chemistry and Medicine Expository ANALYSIS The Problem . : s EXPOSITORY DESCRIPTION . The Electric Burglar- Alarm W. C. Deming Barrett Wendell The Outlook . ‘ Albert Bushnell Hart . Cleveland Moffett . Stewart Edward White . T. W. Richards . c Henry George : . Popular Science Monthly PAGE 130 130 141 146 153 153 162 168 168 178 185 185 195 195 198 201 209 209 211 213 215 221 221 225 228 228 238 238 249 249 x CONTENTS LITERARY CRITICISM . Charles Dickens INTERPRETATIVE DESCRIPTION The Michael of Guido Reni Niobe The Spire of Spilebacy Henry Fielding A PRINCIPLE OF CRITICISM Suggestion in Art Book REVIEW A Certain Rich Man DRAMATIC CRITICISM The Admirable Crichton . THE FAMILIAR Essay The Lure of the Berry The Branch Road THE EDITORIAL . School and College ‘ In Lieu of Society and Housewode : The Death of William James Experience, not Years STUDENTS’ THEMES How to Make Sorghum Molasses Government Education for the In- dian From Bacon’s Lipaay aden Walter Bagehot Nathaniel Hawthorne . Percy Bysshe Shelley Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer W. M. Thackeray . . John Van Dyke The Outlook . A. B. Walkley Lilizabeth W. Morris Walter Williams . The Dial Collier's Weekly The Nation . The Outlook c ARGUMENTATION ANALYSIS The Tariff; Who Should Revise It? Federal Ownership and Operation of Natural Monopolies The Political Issues of 1858 The Political Issues of 1858 The Outlook a * 5 flenry Rogers Seager Stephen A. Douglas Abiaham Lincoln PAGE 258 258 270 270 272 275 278 279 279 281 281 285 285 292 292 297 299 299 304 305 306 308 308 310 318 320 320 323 326 329 CONTENTS REFUTATION . : Will the Novel earaears ARGUMENT . Protection and Free Trade STUDENTS’ THEMES Brief and Argument — Should the United States fortify the Panama Canal? . A Brief — Tiinbecation to die United States should be further restricted PERSUASION . The Children’s Aid suse NOTES : . é : . . . . James Lane Allen Edwin R. A. Seligman. Phillips Brooks PAGE 331 331 333 333 346 346 355 358 358 371 PROSE SPECIMENS DESCRIPTION Point of View THE RANCH Frank Norris As from a pinnacle, Presley, from where he now stood, dominated the entire country. The sun had begun to set; everything in the range of his vision was overlaid with a sheen of gold. First, close at hand, it was the Seed ranch, carpeting the little hollow behind the Mission with a spread of greens, some dark, some vivid, some pale almost to yellowness. Beyond that was the Mission itself, its venerable campa- nile, in whose arches hung the Spanish King’s bells, al- ready glowing ruddy in the sunset. Farther on he could make out Annixter’s ranch house, marked by the skeleton- like tower of the artesian well, and a little farther to the east, the huddled, tiled roofs of Guadalajara. Far to the west and north, he saw Bonneville very plain, and the dome of the courthouse, a purple silhouette against the glare of the sky. Other points detached themselves, swimming in a golden mist, projecting blue shadows far before them; the mammoth live oak by Hooven’s, towering superb and magnificent; the line of eucalyptus trees, behind which he I 2 DESCRIPTION knew was the Los Muertos ranch house— his home; the watering tank, the great iron-hooped tower of wood that stood at the joining of the Lower Road and the County Road; the long windbreak of poplar trees and the white walls of Caraher’s saloon on the County Road. But all this seemed to be only foreground, a mere array of accessories—a mass of irrelevant details. Beyond Annixter’s, beyond Guadalajara, beyond the Lower Road, beyond Broderson Creek, on to the south and west, infinite, illimitable, stretching out there under the sheen of the sunset forever and forever, flat, vast, unbroken, a huge scroll, unrolling between the horizons, spread the great stretches of the ranch of Los Muertos, bare of crops, shaved close in the recent harvest. Near at hand were hills, but on that far southern horizon only the curve of the great earth itself checked the view. Adjoining Los Muertos, and widening to the west, opened the Broderson ranch. The Osterman ranch to the northwest carried on the great sweep of landscape; ranch after ranch. Then, as the imagination itself expanded under the stimulus of that measureless range of vision, even those great ranches resolved themselves into mere foreground, mere accessories, irrelevant details. Beyond the fine line of the horizons, over the curve of the globe, the shoulder of the earth, were other ranches, equally vast, and beyond these, others, and beyond these, still others, the immensities multiplying, lengthening out vaster and vaster. The whole gigantic sweep of the San Joaquin expanded, Titanic, before the eye of the mind, flagellated with heat, quivering and shim- mering under the sun’s red eye. At long intervals, a faint breath of wind out of the south passed slowly over the levels of the baked and empty earth, accentuating the silence, marking off the stillness. It seemed to exhale POINT OF VIEW 3 from the land itself, a prolonged sigh as of deep fatigue. It was the season after the harvest, and the great earth, the mother, after its period of reproduction, its pains of labor, delivered of the fruit of its loins, slept the sleep of exhaustion, the infinite repose of the colossus, benignant, eternal, strong, the nourisher of nations, the feeder of an entire world. THE Octopus ; Frank Norris. Copyright, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Used by permission. A GLIMPSE OF OLD PARIS Victor Hugo Now, what aspect did the city present when viewed from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame in 1482? We will endeavor to describe it. The spectator, on arriving out of breath, upon the sum- mit, was first of all struck by a dazzling confusion of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, squares, spires, steeples. All burst upon the eye at once—the formally-cut gable, the acute-angled roofing, the hanging turret at the angles of the walls, the ‘stone pyramid of the eleventh century, the slate obelisk of the fifteenth; the donjon tower, round and bare; the church tower, square and decorated; the large and the small, the massive and the airy. The gaze was for some time utterly bewildered by this labyrinth ; in which there was nothing but proceeded from art — from the most inconsiderable carved and painted house-front, with external timbers, low doorway, and stories projecting each upon each, up to the royal Louvre itself, which, at that time, had a colonnade of towers. But the following were the principal masses that were distinguishable when 4 DESCRIPTION the eye became steady enough to examine this tumultuous assemblage of objects in detail. First of all, the City. The island of the City, as is ob- served by Sauval, “is shaped like a great ship, sunk in the mud, and run aground lengthwise in the stream, about the middle of the Seine.” We have already shown that, in the fifteenth century, this ship was moored to the two banks of the river by five bridges... . The City, then, first presented itself to the view, with its stern to the east and its prow to the west. Looking toward the prow, you had before you an innumerable congregation of old roofs, with the lead-covered apse of Sainte-Chapelle rising above them broad and round, like an elephant’s back with the tower upon it. Only that here, the place of the elephant’s tower was occupied by the boldest, openest, airiest, most notched and ornamented spire that ever showed the sky through its lacework cone. Close before Notre-Dame, three streets terminated in the parvis, a fine square of old houses. The southern side of this Place was overhung by the furrowed and rugged front of the Hétel-Dieu, and its roof, which looks as if covered with pimples and warts. And then, right and left, east and west, within that narrow circuit of the City, were ranged the steeples of its twenty- one churches, of all dates, forms, and sizes, from the low and decayed Roman campanile of St. Denis-du-Pas to the slender spires of St. Pierre-aux-Boeufs and St. Laundry. Behind Notre-Dame extended northward, the cloister, with its Gothic galleries ; southward, the demi-Roman palace of the bishop ; and eastward, the uninhabited pointof theisland, called the terrain. Amid that accumulation of houses the eye could also distinguish, by the high perforated mitres of stone, which at that period, placed aloft upon the roof itself, surmounted the highest range of palace windows, POINT OF VIEW 5 the mansion presented by the Parisians, in the reign of Charles VI, to Juvénal des Ursins; a little farther on, the black pitch-covered market-sheds of the Marché Palus ; and in another direction, the new chancel of St. Germain- le-Vieux, lengthened, in 1458, by an encroachment upon one end of the Rue-aux-Febves; and then, here and there, were to be seen some crossway crowded with people, some pillory erected at the corner of a street, some fine piece of the pavement of Philip-Augustus — a magnificent flag- ging, furrowed in the middle to prevent the horses from slipping, — some solitary back yard,with one of those trans- parent staircase-turrets which they used to build in the fifteenth century. And onthe right of the Sainte-Chapelle to the westward, the Palais de Justice rested its group of towers upon the water’s brink. The hedges of the royal gardens which occupied the western point of the island, hid from view the islet of the Passeur. As for the water itself, it was hardly visible from the towers of Notre-Dame, on either side of the City; the Seine disappearing under the bridges, and the bridges under the houses. And when you looked beyond those bridges, the roofs upon which were tinged with green, having contracted un- timely moldiness from the vapors of the water; if you cast your eye on the left hand, toward the University, the first edifice that struck it was a large low cluster of towers, the Petit Chatelet, the gaping porch of which seemed to devour the extremity of the Petit-Pont. Then if your view ranged along the shore from east to west, you beheld a long line of houses exhibiting sculptured beams, colored window-glass, each story overhanging that beneath it, an interminable zig-zag of ordinary gables cut at frequent intervals by the end of some street, and now and then also by the front or corner of some great stone-built mansion, which seemed to 6 DESCRIPTION stand at its ease, with its court-yards and gardens, its wings and its compartments, amid that rabble of houses crowding and pinching one another, like a grand seigneur amidst a mob of rustics. . , The University, from one end to the other, presented to the eye one dense mass forming a compact and homogene- ous whole. Those thousand thick-set angular roofs, nearly all composed of the same geometrical element, when seen from above looked almost like one crystallization of the same substance. The capricious fissures formed by the streets did not cut this conglomeration into slices too dispropor- tionate. The forty-two colleges were distributed among them very equally, and were to be seen in every quarter. The amusingly varied summits of those fine buildings were a product of the same description of art as the ordinary roofs which they overtopped; being nothing more than a multi- plication, to the square or cube, of the same geometrical figure. Several fine mansions, too, lifted their heads mag- nificently here and there above the picturesque attic stories of the left bank. There were also a number of abbeys of a beauty more religious, of a grandeur more solemn, than the secular mansions, but not less beautiful nor less grand. The colleges held the medium in the architectual series between the great mansions and the abbeys, exhibiting a severe elegance, a sculpture less airy than that of the palaces, an architecture less stern than that of the convents. The churches (and they were numerous and splendid in the University, and of every architectural era) rose above the whole; and as one harmony more in that harmonious mass, they pierced in close succession the multifarious indented outline of the roofs, with boldly- cut spires, with perforated steeples, and slender aiguilles, or needle spires, the lines of which were themselves but POINT OF VIEW 7 a magnificent exaggeration of the acute angle of -the roofs. The ground of the University was hilly. The Montagne Ste. Genevieve, on the southeast, made one grand swell; and it was curious to see, from the top of Notre-Dame, that crowd of narrow, winding streets, those clusters of houses which, scattered in every direction from the summit of that eminence, spread themselves in disorder, and almost pre- cipitously down it sides, to the water’s edge; looking, some as if they were falling, others as if they were climbing up, and all as if hanging to one another; while the continual motion of a thousand dark points crossing one another upon the pavement, gave the whole an appearance of life. These were the people in the streets, beheld thus from on high and at a distance. NOTRE-DAME: Victor Hugo. OUTSIDE DORLCOTE MILL George Elkot A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on be- ‘tween its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships—-laden with the fresh- scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal—are borne along to the town of St. Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved crops, or touched already with the tint of the 8 DESCRIPTION tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of the last year’s golden clusters of bee-hive ricks ris- ing at intervals beyond the hedge-rows; and everywhere the hedge-rows are studded with trees; the distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank and listen to its low placid voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I remember the stone bridge. And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at, — perhaps the chill damp season adds a charm to the trimly-kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above. The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peaceful- ness of the scene. They are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world beyond. And now there POINT OF VIEW 9 is the thunder of a huge covered wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest wagoner is thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses, — the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner as if they needed that hint! See how they stretch their shoul- ders up the slope towards the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy feet that seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches! I should like well to hear them neigh over their hardly earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed from the harness, dipping their nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turning behind the trees. Now I can turn my eyes towards the mill again, and watch the unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little girl is watching it too: she has been standing on just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous, because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement. It is time the little playfellow went in, I think; and there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines out under the deepening gray of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS: George Eliot. Io DESCRIPTION HERMISTON Robert Louis Stevenson The road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of a stream, a favorite with anglers and with midges, full of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch. Here and there, but at great dis- tances, a byway branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse may be descried above in a fold of the hill ; but the more part of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation. Hermiston parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; and, by the time you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at the inimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place seated for fifty, and standing in a green by the burn-side among two-score grave-stones. The manse close by, although no more than a cottage, is surrounded by the brightness of a flower-garden and the straw roofs of bees; and the whole colony, kirk and manse, garden and graveyard, finds harborage in a grove of rowans, and is all the year round ina great silence broken only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn, and the bellon Sundays. A mile beyond the kirk the road leaves the valley by a precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to the place of Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the back-yard before the coach-house. All beyond and about isthe great field of the hills; the plover, the cur- lew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows in a ship’s rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill-tops huddle one behind another like a herd of cattle into the sunset. The house was sixty years old, unsightly, comfortable; a farm-yard and a kitchen garden on the left, with a fruit POINT OF VIEW II wall where little hard green pears came to their maturity about the end of October. The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent, but very ill reclaimed; heather and moorfowl had crossed the boundary wall and spread and roosted within ; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener to say where policy ended and unpolicied nature began. My lord had been led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a con- siderable design of planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir; and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop tothe moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Stand- ing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout, beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospect would be often black with tempests, and often white with the snows of winter. But the house was wind and weather proof, the hearths were kept bright, and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie might sit of an evening and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland, and watch the fire pros- per in the earthy fuel, and the smoke winding up the chim- ney, and drink deep of the pleasures of shelter. WEIR OF HERMISTON: Robert Louis Stevenson, Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons, Used by permission. THE HOUSE ON THE BRAE: J. M. Barrie On the bump of green round which the brae twists, at the top of the brae, and within cry of T’nowhead Farm, 12 DESCRIPTION still stands a one-story house, whose whitewashed walls, streaked with the discoloration that rain leaves, look yellow when the snowcomes. In the old days the stiff ascent left Thrums behind, and where is now the making of a suburb was only a poor row of dwellings and a manse, with Hendry’s cot to watch the brae. The house stood bare, without a shrub, in a garden whose paling did not go all the way round, the potato pit being only kept out of the road, that here sets off southward, by a broken dyke of stones and earth. On each side of the slate-colored door was a window of knotted glass. Ropes were flung over the thatch to keep the roof on in wind. Into this humble abode I would take any one who cares to accompany me. But you must not come in a contemp- tuous mood, thinking that the poor are but a stage removed from beasts of burden, as some cruel writers of these days say; nor will I have you turn over with your foot the shabby horse-hair chairs that Leeby kept so speckless, and Hendry weaved for years to buy, and Jess so loved to look upon. I speak of the chairs, but if we go together into the “room” they will not be visible to you. For a long time the house has been to let. Here, on the left of the door- way, as we enter, is the room, without a shred of furniture in it except the boards of two closed-in beds. The flooring is not steady, and here and there holes have been eaten into the planks. You can scarcely stand upright beneath the decaying ceiling. Worn boards and ragged walls, and the rusty ribs fallen from the fireplace, are all that meet your eyes, but I see a round, unsteady, wax-cloth- covered table, with four books lying at equal distances on it. There are six prim chairs, two of them not tobe sat upon, backed against the walls, and between the window and the POINT OF VIEW 13 fireplace a chest of drawers, with a snowy coverlet. On the drawers stands a board with colored marbles for the game of solitaire, and I have only to open the drawer with the loose handle to bring out the dambrod. In the carved wood frame over the window hangs Jamey’s portrait; in the only other frame a picture of Daniel in the den of lions, sewn by Leeby in wool. Over the chimney-piece with its shelves, in which the roar of the sea can be heard, are strung three rows of birds’ eggs. Once again we might be expecting company to tea. The passage is narrow. There is a square hole between the rafters, and a ladder leading up to it. You may climb and look into the attic, as Jess liked to hear me call my tiny garret-room. I am stiffer now than in the days when I lodged with Jess during a summer holiday I am trying to bring back, and there is no need for me to ascend. Do not laugh at the newspapers with which Leeby papered the garret, nor at the yarn Hendry stuffed into the windy holes. He did it to warm the house for Jess. But the paper must have gone to pieces and the yarn rotted decades ago. I have kept the kitchen for the last, as Jamey did on the dire day of which I shall have to tell. It has a flooring of stone now, where there used only to be hard earth, and a broken pane in the window is indifferently stuffed with rags. But it is the other window I turn to, with a pain at my heart, and pride and fondness too, the square foot of glass where Jess sat in her chair and looked down the brae. A WINDOW IN THRUMS : J. M. Barrie, Copyright by Charles Scribner’s Sons, Used by permission. 14 DESCRIPTION THE RIDE IN THE TRAIN Gouverneur Morris Judge Tyler and Tom Beauling stood hand in hand on the platform of the station at Mitford. It was a bright, blue day in the morning. Presently, far up the track they saw a puff of white smoke, and after an interval came a hoarse whistle. Then there was a distant rumble that grew momentarily louder, and soon the local charged around a curve and came straight at them. Little Beauling looked up to see if the judge was afraid, but he was not. The local grew bigger and louder, the rails trembled, people with satchels came out of the waiting-room; the local began to slow up, the engine crawled by, the tender, the baggage-car, the smoker —then the whole thing stopped with a cough, went on an inch, and stopped, hissing. All got aboard and found seats. By the greatest good fortune, the judge and Tom Beauling got a seat all to themselves, and Beauling was so glad that the judge elected to sit by the aisle instead of by the window. Newspapers were unfolded, spectacles put on, and the train started — that is, the train stayed where it was and the landscape started. Infinitely interesting things went by the window. Those close to the track went by so rapidly that you could not study them; those far away went slowly, and afforded a good, long look. At one place there was a tree with a robin sitting on the tip- top. The tree didn’t behave well to the robin, for without a word of warning it jerked itself out from under him and left him in the air. And, of course, the robin, to keep from falling, had to flap and flap. He couldn't have been a very well robin, for no matter how hard he flapped he just man- POINT OF VIEW Is aged to stay in the same place. And, of course, as the place moved almost as fast as the rest of the landscape, he was soon out of sight, and little Beauling could never know how it all ended. Pretty to see was the blue water beyond the land. Interesting were the white-sailed ships that could not stand up straight. Fascinating the back yards, with little boys playing ballin them. But more pretty, in- teresting, and fascinating was the white-faced youth who went up and down the aisle with a basketful of candies, caramels, and books. What a beautiful, generous nature that youth had, in spite of his hard face! For, like Prince Bountiful, he gave everybody a box of candy or a book for nothing. Insisted on giving it to them; wouldn’t take no forananswer. And—O baseness of human nature! O des- picable performance on the part of Prince Bountiful !—for, sinking to the lowest of creations, an Indian-giver, he went sneaking about and took back all the presents he had given. And when nobody was looking! Nobody but Tom Beau- ling. He saw — and despised. Whenever the landscape had a station it stopped, so that the people who didn’t like that part of the landscape could get into the train and wait tilla part they liked better came along, or that the people who did like that part could get out of the train and stay there. One man was so afraid that a station would go by before he could get on it, that he jumped out of the train while the landscape was still in motion and fell on his nose. Anda woman was so curious about it that she dropped all her important bundles (presents for her children, Beauling conjectured) and ran to see what had happened to the man. But the man got up, and was very angry with the woman for looking at him. Just as the station moved off, Beauling saw the woman pick up the presents for her children that she had dropped. He 16 DESCRIPTION was very curious about one. It was in a paper bag, and seemed to have melted, for it all ran out of the bottom of the bag —yellow and white. The woman dropped it, and the man drew back his foot to kick it. But at that the station disappeared, and the man and the woman, and Beauling never knew whether the man managed to kick the poor melted present or not. He looked up at the judge, and found that the judge was looking down at him. He smiled at the judge. The judge hastily turned to his paper. And now the landscape became fuller of houses, fields were fewer, trees misshapen. Some of the trees had boards hung about their necks. The boards were painted bright colors. Shadows darkened the train, roared, and went by. Soon a man shambled through the train and lighted the lamps. He wasn’t tall enough to do it, really, but he had quite a long stick, which burned at one end. Then two roaring shadows came in quick suc- cession — then sunlight. Beauling looked up at the judge, and found that the judge was looking down at him. He smiled reassuringly at the judge. The judge turned hastily away, and began to fold up his paper. And now there came a shadow almost as big as night. And the people by open windows shut them, for fear the shadow would reach in and grab their hats. The shadow was long and black and roaring, but every so often he had a sun-colored band around him, and you could see that he was made of bricks. After a long time the shadow began to slow up, and presently there was sunlight again —a place full of engines, a noise of many people —then a cool, darkish house, with the front wall gone, closed over them, and they got out on a long sidewalk. It stretched POINT OF VIEW 17 away ever so far, and stopped when it came to a lot of people who leaned against a rope to keep from falling. Then there was a walk through many streets, all of which looked familiar, and finally they came to a vast house of red bricks, which had a long flight of steps leading to a closed door with a funny little picket-gate in the middle of it. Over the door was a curved green board, with gold letters on it. Little Beauling looked up and up at the great face of the house. In one of the windows he saw the face of a child that looked out and out. In another window he saw the end of an iron bed, and one corner of a pillow. It was hot and stuffy in the train, Judge Tyler thought. It had been cool and delicious in the village. The sun came at such an angle through the window that it was difficult to read the paper. He thought of his pleasant study, with its controllable lights. The trip was long and dusty. He had made it often before; nothing was new or interesting. He vowed he would never make it again. There were too many people in the streets. They hurried by in all directions, with white faces and nervous steps. The people at Mitford had color in their cheeks. He’saw many little boys with faces as cold and hard as the faces of men. He looked down at the rosy boy at his side. How soon the cheeks would pale, and the little face grow troubled! He thought of his own childhood, the daisies and the meadow through which the trout brook streamed, the shady woods, the gentle cows that gave him milk, the sounds of the birds in the morning. Judge Tyler looked up and up at the great face of the house. And at one of the windows he saw the face of a child that looked out and out. Tom Beauling looked up at the judge, and saw that the judge was looking down at him. How bright the eyes of the judge! 18 DESCRIPTION They went up the steps, hand in hand, very slowly, for little Beauling had to get both feet on a given step before he could negotiate the next. This he always did with his right foot. Halfway up the flight they stopped. The judge was reading the gold letters on the green board: ORPHAN ASYLUM Little Beauling felt the hand that was holding his own tighten. Then he felt himself snatched into the air by a strong arm, and he heard a hoarse voice crying, “ Let’s get out of this, Tom!” Judge Tyler, with little Beauling in his arms, ran down the steps of the orphan asylum like one fleeing from justice. They had delicious things to eat off of a marble counter. You sat on a high chair that had only one leg, but wouldn’t upset. The things to eat were under little glass domes with little glass knobs on top. There was a big silver _ thing that hissed like an engine, and gave out tea, coffee, or soup. All that you had to do was to point at what you wanted, and a lady gave it to you as quickly as she possi- bly could. One lady was not so busy as the others. She sat behind a desk, and took all the money that people gave her. But she seemed to like the judge better than the other people, because after he had wiped his lips with a napkin and given her a green money, she smiled pleas- antly and gave him back eight green moneys and two silver moneys of different sizes and three little brown moneys. And she nodded pleasantly at Beauling, and said to the judge: “ Your grandson ?” “ My son,” said the judge, in a gruff voice. TOM BEAULING: Gouverneur Morris. Copyright, 1901, by The Century Company. Used by permission. DOMINANT TONE 1g Dominant Tone THE HOUSE OF USHER Edgar Allan Poe During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom. pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with whicn the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house and the simple landscape fea- tures of the domain, upon the bleak walls, upon the vacant eye-like windows, upon a few rank sedges, and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees — with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dreams of the reveler upon opium ; the bitter lapse into every-day life, the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think — what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, 20 DESCRIPTION there ave combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analy- sis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down —but with a shudder even more thrilling than before —upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. . . . I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat child- ish experiment, that of looking down within the tarn, had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition — for why should I not so term it? —served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy —a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity; an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn; a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. DOMINANT TONE 2 Shaking off from my spirit what mast have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hang- ing in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER . Edgar Allan Poe. MR. MASSY’S STATEROOM Joseph Conrad Mr. Massy’s stateroom —a narrow, one-berth cabin — smelt strongly of soap, and presented to view a swept, dusted, unadorned neatness, not so much bare as barren, not so much severe as starved and lacking in humanity, like the ward of a public hospital, or rather (owing to the size) like the clean retreat of a desperately poor but exem- plary person. Nota single photograph frame ornamented 22 DESCRIPTION the bulkheads; nota single article of clothing, not so much as a spare cap, hung from the brass hooks. All the inside was painted in a plain tint of pale: blue; two big sea-chests in sailcloth covers and with iron padlocks fitted exactly the space under the bunk. One glance was enough to embrace all the strip of scrubbed planks within the unconcealed cor- ners. The absence of the usual settee was striking; the teakwood top of the washing-stand seemed hermetically closed, and so was the lid of the writing-desk, which pro- truded from the partition at the foot of the bed-place, con- taining a mattress as thin as a pancake under a threadbare blanket with a faded red stripe, and a folded mosquito-net against the nights spent in the harbor. There was not a scrap of paper anywhere in sight, no boots on the floor, no litter of any sort, not a speck of dust anywhere; no traces of pipe-ash even, which, in a heavy smoker, was morally revolting, like a manifestation of extreme hypocrisy; and the bottom of the old wooden chair (the only seat there), polished with much use, shone as if its shabbiness had been waxed. The screen of leaves on the bank, passing as if unrolled endlessly in the round opening of the port, sent a wavering network of light and shade into the place. YOUTH : Joseph Conrad. Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Co, Used by permission, WINTER L£den Phillpotts Then, with the last week of the old year, winter swept westerly on hyperborean wings, and when these were passed a tremendous frost won upon the world. Day fol- lowed day of weak, clear sunshine and low temperature DOMINANT TONE 23 The sun, upon his shortest journeys, showed a fiery face as he sulked along the ridges of the moor, and gazed over the ice-chained wilderness, the frozen waters, and the dark mosses that never froze, but lowered black, like wounds on a white skin. Dartmoor slept insensibly under granite and ice; no sheep-bell made music; no flocks wan- dered at will; only the wind moaned in the dead bells of the heather; only the foxes slunk round cot and farm; only the shaggy ponies stamped and snorted under the lee of the tors and thrust their smoking muzzles into sheltered clefts and crannies for the withered green stuff that kept life in them. Snow presently softened the outlines of the hills, set silver caps on the granite, and brought the dis- tant horizon nearer to the eye under crystal-clear atmos- phere. Many a wanderer, thus deceived, plodded hopefully forward at sight of smoke above a roof-tree, only to find his bourne, that seemed so near, still weary miles away. The high moors were a throne for death. Cold below freezing-point endured throughout the hours of light and grew into a giant when the sun and his winter glory had huddled below the hills. Newtake Farm squatted like a toad upon this weary waste. Its crofts were bare and frozen two feet deep; its sycamores were naked save for snow in the larger forks, and one shivering concourse of dead leaves, where a bough had been broken untimely, and thus held the foliage. Suf- fering almost animate peered from its leaded windows; the building scowled; cattle lowed through the hours of day, and a steam rose from their red hides as they crowded to- gether for warmth. Often it gleamed mistily in the light of Will’s lantern when at the dead icy hour before dawn he went out to his beasts. Then he would rub their noses, and speak to them cheerfully, and note their congealed 24 DESCRIPTION vapors where these had ascended and frozen in shining spidery bands of ice upon the walls and rafters of the byre. Fowls, silver-spangled and black, scratched at the earth from habit, fought for the daily grain with a ferocity the summer never saw, stalked spiritless in puffed plumage about the farmyard, and collected with subdued clucking upon their roosts in a barn above the farmyard carts as soon as the sun had dipped below the hills. Ducks com- plained vocally, and as they slipped on the glassy pond they quacked out a mournful protest against the times. The snow which fell did not melt, but shone under the red sunshine, powdered into dust beneath hoof and heel; every cart-rut was full of thin white ice, like ground window- glass, that cracked dryly and split and tinkled to hob-nails or iron-shod wheel. The snow from the house-top, thawed by the warmth within, ran dribbling from the eaves and froze into icicles as thick as a man’s arm. These glittered almost to the ground, and refracted the sunshine in their prisms. CHILDREN OF THE MIST: Eden Phillpotts. Copyright by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Used by permission, MARSEILLES IN AUGUST Charles Dickens Thirty years ago Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day. A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity then, than at any other time, before or since. Every- thing in Marseilles and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared DOMINANT TONE 25 out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt away. The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves. There was no wind to make a ripple: on the foul water within the harbor, or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colors,:black and white, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at their moorings ; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or day, for months. Hindoos, Rus- sians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, French- men, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike — taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire. The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea; but it softened nowhere else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hillside, stared from the hoilow, stared from the interminable plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly toward the interior; so did their recumbent drivers when they were awake, which rarely happened; so did 26 DESCRIPTION the exhausted laborers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed by the glare, except the lizard passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry, hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the atmos- phere as if the air itself were panting. Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant it but a chink or key- hole, and it shot in like a white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the twilight of pillars and arches—dreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and begging — was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with occasional jangling of discordant church bells, and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. LITTLE DORRIT: Charles Dickens. Physical Sensation THE RETURN HOME AT EVENING David Grayson I turned my face homeward. Evening was falling, and as I walked I heard the crows calling, and the air was keen and cool, and I thought deep thoughts. And so I stepped into the darkened stable. I could not see the outlines of the horse or the cow, but knowing the place so well I could easily get about. I heard the horse step aside with a soft expectant whinny. I smelled the PHYSICAL SENSATION 27 smell of milk, the musty, sharp odor of dry hay, the pun- gent smell of manure, not unpleasant. And the stable was warm after the cool of the fields with a sort of animal warmth that struck into me soothingly. I spoke in a low voice and laid my hand on the horse’s flank. The flesh quivered and shrunk away from my touch — coming back confidently, warmly. I ran my hand along his back and up his hairy neck. I felt his sensitive nose in my hand. “You shall have your oats,” I said, and gave him to eat. Then I spoke as gently to the cow, and she stood aside to be milked. And afterward I came out into the clear bright night, and the air was sweet and cool, and my dog came bounding to meet me.— So I carried the milk into the house, and Harriet said in her heartiest tone: “You are late, David. But sit up, I have kept the biscuits warm.” That night my sleep was sound. ADVENTURES IN CONTENTMENT : David Grayson. Copyright, 1906, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Used by permission, THE PLOWING Frank Norris The plowing thus commenced, continued. The sun rose higher. Steadily the hundred iron hands kneaded and furrowed and stroked the brown, humid earth, the hundred iron teeth bit deep into the Titan’s flesh. Perched on his seat, the moist living reins slipping and tugging in his hands, Vanamee, in the midst of this steady confusion of constantly varying sensation, sight interrupted by sound, sound mingling with sight, on this 28 DESCRIPTION swaying, vibrating seat, quivering with the prolonged thrill of the earth, lapsed to a sort of pleasing numbness, in a sense, hypnotized by the weaving maze of things in which he found himself involved. To keep his team at an even, regular gait, maintaining the precise interval, to run his furrows as closely as possible to those already made by the plow in front—this for the moment was the entire sum of his duties. But while one part of his brain, alert and watchful, took cognizance of these mat- ters, all the greater part was lulled and stupefied with the long monotony of the affair. The plowing, now in full swing, enveloped him in a vague, slow-moving whirl of things. Underneath him was the jarring, jolting, trembling machine; not a clod was turned, not an obstacle encountered, that he did not receive the swift impression of it through all his body; the very friction of the damp soil, sliding incessantly from the shiny surface of the shears, seemed to reproduce itself in his finger-tips and along the back of his head. He heard the horse-hoofs by the myriads crushing down easily, deeply, into the loam, the prolonged clinking of trace-chains, the working of the smooth brown flanks in the harness, the clatter of wooden hames, the champ- ing of bits, the click of iron shoes against pebbles, the brittle stubble of the surface ground crackling and snap- ping as the furrows turned, the sonorous, steady breaths wrenched from the deep, laboring chests, strap-bound, shining with sweat, and all along the line the voices of the men talking to the horses. Everywhere there were visions of glossy brown backs, straining, heaving, swollen with muscle; harness streaked with specks of froth, broad, cup-shaped hoofs, heavy with brown loam, men’s faces red with tan, blue overalls spotted with axle- PHYSICAL SENSATION 29 grease; muscled hands, the knuckles whitened in their grip on the reins, and through it all the ammoniacal smell of the horses, the bitter reek of perspiration of beasts and men, the aroma of warm leather, the scent of dead stubble—and stronger and more penetrating than everything else, the heavy, enervating odor of the upturned, living earth. THE Octopus: frank Norris. Copyright, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Used by permission. EARLY MORNING ODORS David Grayson Of all the hours of the day there is none like the early morning for downright good odors—the morning before eating. Fresh from sleep and unclogged with food a man’s senses cut like knives. The whole world comes in upon him. A still morning is best, forthe mists and the moisture seem to retain the odors which they have distilled through the night. Upon a breezy morning one is likely to get a single predominant odor as of clover when the wind blows across a hay field or of apple blossoms when the wind comes through the orchard, but upon a perfectly still morning, it is wonderful how the odors arrange them- selves in upright strata, so that one walking passes through them as from room to room in a marvelous temple of fra- grance.... So it was this morning. As I walked along the margin of my field I was conscious, at first, coming within the shadows of the wood, of the cool, heavy aroma which one associates with the night: as of moist woods and earth mold. The penetrating scent of the night remains long 30 DESCRIPTION after the sights and sounds of it have disappeared. In sunny spots I had the fragrance of the open cornfield, the aromatic breath of the brown earth, giving curiously the sense of fecundity a warm, generous odor of day- light and sunshine. Down the field, toward the corner, cutting sharply, as though a door opened (or a page turned to another lyric), came the cloying, sweet fragrance of wild crab-apple blossoms, almost tropical in their richness, and below that, as I came to my work, the thin acrid smell of the marsh, the place of the rushes and the frogs. ADVENTURES IN CONTENTMENT : David Grayson. Copyright, 1906, Doubleday, Page & Co. Used by permission. THE STOCKYARDS Opton Sinclair A full hour before the party reached the city they had begun to note the perplexing changes in the atmosphere. It grew darker all the time, and upon the earth the grass seemed to grow less green. Every minute, as the train sped on, the colors of things became dingier; the fields were grown parched and yellow, the landscape hideous and bare. And along with the thickening smoke they began to notice another circumstance, a strange, pungent odor. They were not sure that it was unpleasant, this odor; some might have called it sickening, but their taste in odors was not developed, and they were only sure that it was curious. Now, sitting in the trolley car, they realized that they were on their way to the home of it — that they had traveled all the way from Lithuania to it. It was now no longer something far-off and faint, that you caught in whiffs; you could literally taste it, as well as smell it — PHYSICAL SENSATION 31 you could take hold of it, almost, and examine it at your leisure. They were divided in their opinions about it. It was an elemental odor, raw and crude; it was rich, almost rancid, sensual, and strong. There were some who drank it in as if it were an intoxicant; there were others who put their handkerchiefs to their faces. The new emigrants were still tasting it, lost in wonder, when suddenly the car came to a halt and the door was flung open, and a voice shouted — “Stockyards!” THE JUNGLE: Upton Sinclair, Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Co. Used by permission. BROWSING AND NIBBLING Maurice Thompson Along the banks of the streams of South Carolina and Georgia grows a grape, known by the musical name of muscadine, which I esteem as altogether the wildest and raciest of all wild fruit. Its juice has the musty taste of old wine along with a strange aromatic quality peculiarly its own. On splendid moonlight nights I have swung in the muscadine vines, slowly feasting on the great purple globes, while the raccoons fought savagely in the trees hard by, and a clear river gently murmured below. Next to the muscadine among wild fruits I rate the papaw as best. It is genuinely wild, rich, racy, and to me pala- table and digestible. I once sent a box of papaws toa great Boston author, whose friendship I chanced to possess, and was much disappointed to learn that the musty odor of the fruit was very distasteful to him. He fancied that the papaws were rotten. I dare say he never tasted them; and if he had, their flavor would have been too rank and savage for his endurance. 32 DESCRIPTION Browsing and nibbling has led me to taste the inner bark of nearly every kind of tree growing in American woods. The hickory tree has a sap almost as sweet as that of the maple, but it mingles with the sweet a pungency and a slightly acrid element of taste at once pleasing and repel- lent to the pampered tongue. The oaks have much tannin in their bark, the astringency of which draws one’s lips like green persimmons; but the very innermost part, next the wood, is slightly mucilaginous and faintly sweet. Speaking of persimmons—after a few sharp frosts this fruit becomes mellow and rich, but to the last retains a certain drawing quality, a trace of that astringency already mentioned, which keeps it from being a favorite, save with the opossums. There is no other woodland influence, however, so strong and so fine as the perfumes, odors, and aromas. Of these each season has its own —the perfume of spring flowers, the odors of summer mosses and sweet punk, the aroma of buds and barks and gums. Even in midwinter, when a warm time comes, and the snow melts, and the ground is thoroughly thawed, there are woodsy odors borne about by the drowsy winds. In fact, the fragrance of January is sweeter than that of May. Go nibble the brown, pointed buds of the beech tree in midwinter, and you will find how well the individuality of the trees is condensed in those laminated little spikes. You taste the perfume of tassels and the fragrance of young leaves; there is an aromatic hint of coming nuts. You may almost taste the songs of the spring birds. What words these buds are! How prophetic! We bite them, and lo, the spring rises in a vision. Its poem is read in advance. I recollect a clear fountain of cold water around which grew festoons of cress and mint. I had been chasing the PHYSICAL SENSATION 33 wild things all the morning, as a true huntsman will, and now I was tired and thirsty. At such a time, what could be more welcome than mint and water? How soothing the fragrant flavor and the cooling draught! Then came the biting spiciness of the cress, to reinvigorate my nerve withal. Out of my pouch I drew a cake of maple sugar, and feasted like a god. When winter begins to come on, the nuts come too. I cannot understand the taste of those who do not like the rich, oily kernels of the butternut, the hickory nut, and the sweet acorns of the pine oak. Squirrels know which side of a nut is buttered. They have long ago learned that it is the inside. From Florida to Michigan one may run the gamut of nuts, beginning with the lily-nuts, or water chinque- pins, and running up to the great black walnut, includ- ing every shade of flavor and fatness. They are all good. They were made to eat in the open air; and he who takes them, as the squirrels do, after vigorous exercise in the woods, will find great comfort in them. I cannot rank the artist or poet very high whose stomach is too aristocratic for wild berries, nuts, and aromatic bark. I fear that such an one has long since allowed that trace of savage vigor, which made him of kin to Pan and Apollo, to slip away and be lost. By-WAYS AND BIRD NOTES: Maurice Thompson. NIGHT SOUNDS AND SCENTS IN CAMP Maurice Thompson The leaping of bass, plash, plash, at unequal intervals of time and distance, breaking through the supreme quiet of midnight, comes to one’s ears with a liquid, bubbling ac- companiment, not at all like anything else in the world. 34 DESCRIPTION The mocking-bird often starts from sleep in the scented foliage of the sweet-gum to sing a tender melody to the rising moon. At such times his voice reflects all the rich- ness and shadowy dreamfulness of the night. It blends into one’s sense of rest and becomes an element of enjoyment after one has fallen again into slumber. Frogs are night’s buffoons. ‘ Croak, croak, croak,” you hear one muttering, and with your eyes yet unopened and the silence and stillness of sleep scarcely gone from you, you wonder where he is sitting. On what green tus- sock, with his big eyes jetting out and his angular legs akimbo, does he squat? Suddenly, “Chug!’ You know how he leaped up, spread out his limbs, turned down his head and struck into the water like a shot. You chuckle grimly to yourself, turn over in your hammock, and all is forgotten. Then the screech-owl begins to whine in its tremulous, querulous falsetto, snapping its beak occasionally as if to remind the mice and small birds of its murderous desires. The big-horned owl laughs and hoots far away in gloomy glens. The leaves rustle, the river pours on, and the wind sinks and swells like the breath of a mighty sleeper. Perfumes, too, affect one strangely, on waking, in the depth of night. There is a certain decayed wood in the Southern forests which at times gives forth a delicate, far- reaching aroma. This, together with the occasional wafts of sweet-gum odor and the peculiarly sharp smell of pine resin, steals through the woodland ways and touches the sleeper’s senses until he slowly awakes. Drowsily he lies, with his eyes lightly closed, noting the tender shades of sweetness as they come and go. But the falling of a slight shower of rain, one of those short, light, even down-comings of large drops, which is not strong enough to break through MENTAL STATE 35 the leaf-canopy overhead, moves the outdoor slumberer to most exquisite enjoyment. He opens his eyes and all his senses at once. The air has sweet moisture in it, the dark- ness is deep. Above, around, far and near, a tumult is in the leaves. The shower is scarcely more than momentary in its duration, but it is infinitely suggestive. There are millions of voices calling from far and near. Vast organ swells, tender zolian strains, the thrummings of harp- strings, and the exquisite quaverings of the violin. Multi- tudes clapping hands and crying from afar in applause. Then as the cloud passes on, the throbbing sounds trail after it, and at length it all dies out beyond the hills. BY-WAYS AND BIRD NOTES: Maurice Thompson. Mental State THE FIRST MORNING IN NEW YORK Dorothy Richardson The rain was falling in great gray blobs upon the sky- light of the little room in which I opened my eyes on that February morning whence dates the chronological begin- ning of this autobiography. The jangle of a bell had awakened me, and its harsh, discordant echoes were still trembling upon the chill gloom of the daybreak. Lying there, I wondered whether I had really heard a bell ring- _ing, or had only dreamed it. Everything about me was so strange, so painfully new. Never before had I waked to find myself in that dreary, windowless little room, and never before had I lain in that narrow, unfriendly bed. Staring hard at the streaming skylight, I tried to think, to recall some one of the circumstances that might possibly account for my having entered that room and for my hav- 36 DESCRIPTION ing laid me down on that cot. When? and how? and why? How inexplicable it all wasin those first dazed moments after that rude awakening! And then, as the fantasies of a dream gradually assume a certain vague order in the waking recol- lection, there came to me a confused consciousness of the events of the preceding twenty-four hours —the long jour- ney and the weariness of it; the interminable frieze of flying landscape, with its dreary, snow-covered stretches blurred with black towns; the shriek of the locomotive as it plunged through the darkness; the tolling of ferry-bells, and then, at last, the slow sailing over a black river toward and into a giant city that hung splendid upon the purple night, tur- ret upon turret, and tower upon tower, their myriad lights burning side by side with the stars, a city such as the prophets saw in visions, a city such as dreamy childhood conjures up in the muster of summer clouds at sunset. Suddenly out of this chaotic recollection of unearthly splendors came the memory, sharp and pinching, of a new-made grave on a wind-swept hill in western Pennsyl- vania. With equal suddenness, too, the fugue of thunder- ing locomotives, and shrieking whistles, and sad, sweet tollings of ferry-bells massed itself into the clangorous music of a terrifying monody — “Work or STARVE, Work oR Starve!” THE LONG Day: Dorothy Richardson, Copyright by the Century Company. Used by permission. THE IRONWORKER Fames Oppenheim Richard felt sick, utterly sick. He reeled through the smoky air, turned a corner before the library, and crossed a bridge into the mill grounds. Many other men were MENTAL STATE 37 hurrying with him. As they went on, suddenly their grim faces were splashed by far fires and strange lights. They began stepping over intricate tangles of railway tracks in the yards, and all the time their faces shone brighter. Yet not a man of them took any interest, though all about them was one of the sublime scenes of America. They did not seem to see the shining tracks, the glistening red and green lanterns, the mills glowing through their win- dows like buildings eaten with fire, the tongues of flames through the roofs, the vast swirls of blaze and red-shudder- ing smoke clouds, and the thousand chimney pipes looking through the changing lights. Through allthis, among the buildings, over the rails, in the thick of a roar of machinery, a thunder and thirr and crash of tools, a confusion of yard- engines, shrieking up and down with little flat-cars, a hurry of lanterns — through it all, the men moved silently, dully, lit on every side, their black, greasy overalls glistening as they moved. Richard entered a large, square building where the slop- ing, many-beamed roof was in huge shadows. Set in the solid masonry of the floor were steel trapdoors. A man, grasping a lever, stood in front of one of these, just as an overhead crane, like a bridge running down the room, came whizzing along. From the crane hung suspended a huge steel hand. It stopped above the man; heat once pulled the lever, and the trapdoor at his feet opened like a huge mouth, revealing the “soaking pit.” This was a well of fire — white-hot — intolerable to the eye. Nor could the flesh come near it. But the huge steel hand never faltered. It reached down into the very hell of fire, and slowly drew out a dazzling, sizzling, white-hot, ten-ton ingot of steel. This it bore down the room and shoved on to steel rollers that ran off into the adjoining room. 38 DESCRIPTION Richard entered this next room. At his side the rollers, one next to the other in a long path, were turning, and the ingot slid over them, and made straight fora huge “ clothes wringer” that stood inits path. Suddenly it hit this steel- wringer with a loud “spla!’?— there was a shower of sparks, and it went through with a wild “ klong-a-a-]” — like the howl of a hungry lioness. The great wringer pressed the steel out, but no sooner had it emerged on the other side, longer and flatter, than it was shot back, and so, back and forth, until it was thinned into a long, wide ribbon of steel, and was rolled away to the next room to be cooled and sheared. - Laborers hovered about the immense and _ intricate wringer, and as the blazing ingot passed their faces and forms came and went sharp and shadowy. Two men stood at opposite sides on a little platform above the “ wringer,” each with his hand ona lever. One controlled the direction of the rolls, the other the force of the pressure. Richard relieved the man at the pressure-lever, and at once his work began. It was one of the most terrible nights of his life. He was sick ; he could hardly hold his head straight ; and yet he had to have a clear eye, a steady hand, and infinite pa- tience. His gaze never left the hurrying ingot, and he had to gauge its thickness and what it would stand. Each time it drew near, it shot over him a consuming heat that burnt and smothered and made the flesh tingle intolerably. Ordinarily he would not have felt this, but to-night he- was sick. The glare, too, hurt his eyes, and the steel lever got hot under his gloves. There was no breathing spell. Ingot followed ingot without pause. He pulled the lever, and then, with the wild “klong-a-a-l,” a shower of sparks, a smell of powder, MENTAL STATE 39 the ingot was squeezed. The speed was terrific and grew worse, for the little foreman had given out the impression that his men must pile up a record and beat the output of the other mills. And the responsibility was what made a man old—for if anything went wrong, if an ingot was spoiled or the mill stopped, the money loss to the workers, as well as to the mill, was very large, for the men were paid by the ton. Hour followed hour, and Richard pressed the lever down or pulled it up, his face twisted with the torture of the toil, every nerve, every muscle strained and alert and in action. His head now and then went dizzy and his face paled. Whenever he winked he saw a red ingot sliding back and forth. And worst of all, his heart was in wild and new revolt. He heard the cry of his wife — her words kept beating through his brain. Sick and desperate and struggling, he could not shun the truth. He knew that everything she had saidwastrue. Yes,bitterlytrue! Look at this machine — it did all the work — he, the man, merely waited on it, pulling the lever for it. That was his life. He was nothing but a cog. It was this for twelve hours, and then a bite, a sleep, and this again. What was he but an animal? Yes, Molly had told him. And then, each time an ingot hit the wringer, some phrase went through his head and made him struggle in- wardly. Bang —whow—ow —ow-—went an ingot! — and Molly was murmuring that he had no soul, that he did not love her. — Bang! —and she was speaking of the children. — Bang ! —and she told him how he had stopped his reading. — Bang!—and his friends. — Bang! — And he didn’t love Molly ; how could he ?— Bang! — he was getting to be an animal! On and on it went, the noise, the glare, the heat, the 40 DESCRIPTION dizzying sickness. Hour followed hour through the ter- rible night — hour after hour andnoendnear. His tongue and throat grew parched, and he seemed to be toiling over a sun-stricken desert of measureless, dazzling sand, toiling, lifting, sinking, burning. Now and then a shower of sparks leaped as through his brain; now and then the whole room turned red. Now he seemed to be pushing the lever down over the floating face of Molly, and her fearful cry rang through the mill. Now by a mighty ef- fort he saw clearly again — the hovering laborers all sharp and shadowy, the advancing ingot, the gloomy, dark wringer, the menacing heights above him. But Molly kept saying: ‘Richard, you don’t love me any more — you don’t love me!” So he gave the lever a good jam. There was a weird, unusual crash, a splutter, and a dozen men roared together. The rolls stopped, and in the queer silence Richard saw clearly again. He had jammed an ingot and broken a coupling sleeve. THE CoG: James Oppenheim. Everybody's Magazine, March, 1911. Used by permission. IN THE LULL OF THE STORM Joseph Conrad “The trouble’s not over yet,” insisted Jukes, propheti- cally, reeling and catching on. ‘“ She’s a wreck,” he added faintly. “The trouble’s not over yet,” assented Captain Mac- Whirr, half aloud. ‘“ Look out for her a minute.” “Are you going off the deck, sir?” asked Jukes, hur- MENTAL STATE 41 riedly, as if the storm was sure to pounce upon him as soon as he had been left alone with the ship. He saw her, battered and solitary, laboring heavily in a wild scene of mountainous black waters lit by the gleams of distant worlds. She moved slowly, breathing into the still core of the hurricane the excess of her strength in a white cloud of steam; and the deep-toned vibration of the escape was like the defiant trumpeting of a living creature of the sea impatient for the renewal of the contest. It ceased suddenly. A moan in the stillness of the air swooped upon Jukes’s head. It was so plain that he looked up, He saw the stars shining into the pit of black vapors- marking the circle of rushing winds and headlong seas. The ship was cut off from the peace of the earth. The wall rose high, with smoky drifts issuing from the inky edge that frowned upon the ship under the patch of glittering sky. The stars, too, seemed to look at her intently, asif for the last time, and the cluster of their splendor sat like a diamond on a lowering brow. Captain MacWhirr had gone into the chart room. There was no light there, but he could feel the disorder of that place where he used to live tidily. His arm-chair was up- set. The books had tumbled out on the floor; he scrunched a piece of glass under his boot. He felt for the matches and found a box on a shelf with a deep ledge. He struck one, and, puckering the corners of his eyes, he held out the little flame towards the barometer, whose glittering top of glass and metal nodded to him continuously. It stood very low — incredibly low — so low that Captain MacWhirr grunted. The match went out, and hurriedly he extracted another with thick, stiff fingers. Again a little flame burst before the nodding glass and 42 DESCRIPTION metal of the top. His eyes looked at it, out of the puckers, with attention, as if expecting a whisper. With his grave face he was like a hooded and misshapen pagan burning incense before the oracle of a joss. There was no mistake. It was low. Captain MacWhirr emitted a low whistle. He forgot himself till the flame diminished to a blue spark, burnt his fingers, and vanished. Perhaps something had gone wrong with the thing? There was an aneroid glass screwed above the couch. He turned that way, struck another match, and discovered the white face of the instrument looking at him from the bulkhead meaningly,-not to be gainsaid, as though the wisdom of men were made unerring by the indifference of matter. There was no room for doubt now. Captain MacWhirr pshawed at it and threw the match down. The worst was to come, then, and if the books were right, this worst would be very bad. The experience of the last six hours had enlarged his conception of what heavy weather could be like. ‘It'll be terrific,” he pronounced mentally. He had not consciously looked at anything by the light of the matches but the barometer, and yet some- how he had seen that the water-bottle and glass had been flung out of their stand. It seemed to give him a more in- timate knowledge of the tossing the ship had gone through. “T wouldn’t have believed it,” he thought. And his table had been cleared too; his rulers, his pencils, the ink-stand, —all the things that had their safe appointed places, — they were gone from them as if a mischievous hand had plucked them out and flung them on the wet floor. The hurricane had broken in upon the orderly arrangements of his privacy. This had never happened before and the dis- may reached the very seat of his composure. And the MENTAL STATE 43 worst was coming yet! He was glad the trouble in the *tween-decks had been discovered in time. If she had to go after all, then at least she wouldn't be going with a lot of people in her fighting tooth and claw. That would have been odious. And in that feeling there was a humane intention and a vague sense of the fitness of things. These instantaneous thoughts were yet in their essence heavy and slow, partaking of the nature of the man. He extended his hand to put back the match-box in its corner of the shelf. There were always matches there — by order. The steward had his instructions impressed upon him. “A box—just there, see? Not so very full—where I can put my hand on it, steward. Might want a light ina hurry. Can’t tell on board ship what you might want in a hurry. Mind now.” And, of course, on his side he would be careful to put it back scrupulously. He did so now, but before he removed his hand it occurred to him that perhaps he would never have occasion to use that box again. The vividness of the notion checked him, and for an infinitesimal fraction of a second his fingers closed again on the small object. This man, disturbed by a storm, hung on to a match-box ab- surdly, as though it had been a symbol of all those habits that make manifest the reality of life. He released it at last, and, letting himself fall on the settee, listened for the first sounds of returning wind. Not yet. He heard only the wash of water, the heavy splashes and the dull shocks of the confused seas boarding his ship from all sides. She would never have a chance to clear her decks. TYPHOON: Joseph Conrad. Copyright, 1902, by G. P. Putnam's Sons Used by permission. 44 DESCRIPTION A YOUNG THIEF AND HIS PLUNDER Daniel De Foe Nothing could be more perplexing than this money was tome all that night. I carried it in my hand a good while, for it was in gold, all but 14s.; and that is to say, it was in four guineas, and that 14 s. was more difficult to carry than the four guineas. At last I sat down and pulled off one of my shoes, and put the four guineas into that; but after I had gone a while, my shoe hurt me so I could not go, so I was fain to sit down again and take it out of my shoe, and carry itin my hand. Then I found a dirty linen rag in the street, and I took that up and wrapped it all to- gether, and carried it in that a good way. I have often since heard people say, when they have been talking of money that they could not get in, “I wish I had it in a foul clout’”’; in truth I had mine in a foul clout; for it was foul, according to the letter of that saying, but it served me till I came to a convenient place, and then I sat down and washed the cloth in the kennel, and so then put my money in again. Well, I carried it home with me to my lodging in the glass-house, and when I went to go to sleep I knew not what to do with it. IfI had let any of the black crew I was with know of it, I should have been smothered in the ashes for it, or robbed of it, or some trick or other put upon me for it; so I knew not what to do, but lay with it in my hand, and my hand in my‘bosom. But then sleep went from my eyes. Oh, the weight of human care! I, a poor beggar-boy, could not sleep so soon as I had but a little money to keep, who before that could have slept upon a heap of brickbats, or stones, or cinders, or anywhere, as MENTAL STATE 45 sound as a rich man does on his down bed, and sounder too. Every now and then dropping asleep, I should dream that my money was lost, and start like one frightened ; then, finding it fast in my hand, try to go to sleep again, but could not for a long while; then drop and start again. At last a fancy came into my head that if I fell asleep, I should dream of the money, and talk of it in my sleep, and tell that I had money, which if I should do, and one of the rogues should hear me, they would pick it out of my bosom, and of my hand too, without waking me; and after that thought I could not sleep a wink more; so that I passed that night over in care and anxiety enough; and this, I may safely say, was the first night’s rest that I lost by the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches. As soon as it was day I got out of the hole we lay in, and rambled abroad in the fields towards Stepney, and there I mused and considered what I should do with this money, and many a time I wished that I had not had it; for, after all my ruminating upon it, and what course I should take with it, or where I should put it, I could not hit upon any one thing, or any possible method to secure it, and it perplexed me so that at last, as I said just now, I sat down and cried heartily. When my crying was over, the case was the same; I had the money still, and what to do with it I could not tell. At last it came into my head that I would look out for some hole in a tree, and seek to hide it there till I should have occasion for it. Big was this discovery, as I then thought it. I began to look about me for a tree; but there were no trees in the fields about Stepney or Mile End that looked fit for my purpose; and if there were any that I began to look narrowly at, the fields were so full of people that 46 DESCRIPTION they would see if I went to hide anything there; and I thought the people eyed me as it was, and that two men in particular followed me to see what I intended to do. This drove me further off, and I crossed the road at Mile End, and in the middle of the town went down a lane that goes away to the Blind Beggar’s at Bethnal Green. When I came a little way in the lane I found a footpath over the fields, and in those fields several trees for my turn, as I thought. At last one tree had a little hole in it, pretty high out of my reach, and I climbed up the tree to get it, and when I came there I put my hand in, and found(as I thought )a place very fit; so I placed my treasure there, and was mighty well satisfied with it; but, behold, putting my hand in again to lay it more commodiously, as I thought, of a sudden it slipped away from me, and I found the tree was hollow, and my little parcel was fallen in quite out of my reach, and how far it might go in I knew not; so that, in a word, my money was quite gone, irrecoverably lost. There could be no room so much as to hope ever to see it again, for twas a vast great tree. As young as I was, I was now sensible what a fool I was before, that I could not think of ways to keep my money, but I must come thus far to throw it into a hole where I could not reach it. Well, I thrust my hand quite up to my elbow, but no bottom was to be found, or any end of the hole or cavity. I gota stick of the tree, and thrust it in a great way, but all was one. Then I cried, nay, roared out, I was in such a passion. Then I got down the tree again, then up again, and thrust in my hand again till I scratched my arm and made it bleed, and cried all the while most violently. Then I began to think I had not so much as a halfpenny of it left for a halfpenny roll, and I was hungry, and then I cried again. Then I came away in MENTAL STATE 47 despair, crying and roaring like a little boy that had been whipped; then I went back again to the tree, and up the tree again, and thus I did several times. The last time I had gotten up the tree I happened to come down not on the same side that I went up and came down before, but on the other side of the tree, and on the side of the bank also; and, behold, the tree had a great open place in the side of it close to the ground, as old hollow trees often have; and looking into the open place, to my inexpressible joy, there lay my money and my linen rag, all wrapped up just as I had put it into the hole; for the tree being hollow all the way up, there had been some moss or light stuff, which I had not judgment enough to know was not firm, that had given way when it came to drop out of my hand, and so it had slipped quite down at once. I was but a child, and I rejoiced like a child, for I hol- loed quite out loud when I saw it; then I ran to it, and snatched it up, hugged and kissed the dirty rag a hundred times; then danced and jumped about, ran from one end of the field to the other, and, in short, I knew not what; much less do I know now what I did, though I shall never forget the thing, either what a sinking grief it was to my heart when I thought I had lost it, or what a flood of joy overwhelmed me when I had got it again. While I was in the first transport of my joy, as I have said, I ran about, and knew not what I did; but when that was over I sat down, opened the foul clout the money was in, looked at it, told it, found it was all there, and then I fell a-crying as violently as I did before, when I thought I had lost it. It would tire the reader should I dwell on all the little boyish tricks that I played in the ecstasy of my joy and satisfaction when I had found my money; so I break off 48 DESCRIPTION here. Joy is as extravagant as grief, and since I have been aman I have often thought, that had sucha thing befallen a man, so to have lost all he had, and not have a bit of bread to eat, and then so strangely to find it again, after having given it so effectually over —I say, had it been so with a man, it might have hazarded his using some violence upon himself. Well, I came away with my money, and having taken sixpence out of it, before I made it up again I went to a chandler’s shop in Mile End and bought a halfpenny roll and a halfpenny worth of cheese, and sat down at the door after I bought it, and ate it very heartily, and begged some beer to drink with it, which the good woman gave me very freely. Away I went then for the town, to see if I could find any of my companions, and resolved I would try no more hollow trees for my treasure. As I came along White- chapel I came by a broker’s shop over against the church, where they sold old clothes, for I had nothing on but the worst of rags; so I stopped at the shop, and stood looking at the clothes which hung at the door. “Well, young gentleman,” says a man that stood at the door, “you look wishfully. Do you see anything you like, and will your pocket compass a good coat now, for you look as if you belonged to the ragged regiment?” I was affronted at the fellow. ‘“ What’s that to you,” says I, “how ragged I am? IfI had seen anything I liked, I have money to pay for it; but I can go where I shan’t be huffed at for looking.” While I said this pretty boldly to the fellow, comes a woman out. ‘What ails you,” says she to the man, “to bully away our customers so? A poor boy’s money is as good as my Lord Mayor’s. If poor people did not buy MENTAL STATE 49 old clothes, what would become of our business?” And then turning to me, ‘Come hither, child,” says she; “if thou hast a mind to anything I have, you shan’t be hec- tored by him. The boy isa pretty boy, I assure you,” says she to another woman that was by this time come to her. “Aye,” says the other, “so he is, a very well-looking child, if he was clean and well dressed, and may be as good a gentleman’s son, for anything we know, as any of those that are well dressed. Come, my dear,” says she, “ tell me what is it you would have.” She pleased me mightily to hear her talk of my being a gentleman’s son, and it brought former things to my mind ; but when she talked of my being not clean and in rags, then I cried. She pressed me to tell her if I saw anything that I wanted. I told her no, all the clothes I saw there were too big for me. ‘Come, child,” says she, “I have two things here that will fit you, and I am sure you want them both ; that is, first, a little hat, and there,” says she (tossing it to me), “I'll give you that for nothing. And here is a good warm pair of breeches; I dare say,” says she, “they will fit you, and they are very tight and good; and,” says she, “if you should ever come to have so much money that you don’t know what to do with it, here are excellent good pockets,” says she, ‘“‘and a little fob to put your gold in, or your watch in, when you get it.” It struck me with a strange kind of joy that I should have a place to put my money in, and need not go to hide it again in a hollow tree, that I was ready to snatch the breeches out of her hands, and wondered that I should be such a fool never to think of buying me a pair of breeches before, that I might have a pocket to put my money in, and not carry it about two days together in my hand, and in my shoes and I knew not how; so, in a word, I gave 50 DESCRIPTION her two shillings for the breeches, and went over into the churchyard and put them on, put my money into my new pockets, and was as pleased as a prince is with his coach and six horses. THE HISTORY OF COLONEL JACQUE: Daniel De Foe. Nature THE CASTAWAY Gouverneur Morris A trained journalist will fall overboard (for pay) and de- scribe you certain phases with such excellent judgment and selection as to give you a proper notion of the whole. I am not a trained journalist, and, furthermore, my chute came with unfair suddenness, and I did not enter the sea with a mind focused to selection before description. What there was left of my mind was wholly taken up with the fact that the water was very much warmer than the air; and it must have been instinct, set to work by this, that started me stripping off my coat, and clutching, as I was rolled and tossed and smothered, after my bootlaces. Not for many seconds, I am sure, did it enter my head to look for the ship or to call for help. From the top of the wave to which I had made a sudden and involuntary ascent I caughta glimpse of the Major Pickzns’ lights in the wind- ward smother ; and, asI shot downward from the eminence, a choice of cries struggled in my mouth. I had an insane hesitation between “ Help” and “ Man overboard”; chose the former as the more piercing, and in the moment of uttering it, had my mouth filled to the brim with water, and never cried out at all. To get undressed obsessed me. And whenever I could NATURE 51 draw two lungs full of air I let the sea have its will of me, the while I ripped at shoelaces and buttons, and kicked and twisted myself free of this and that. Being at length naked, and in no fear of becoming water-logged, I tried to think out a plan. But there was nothing to that. To breathe in well-chosen moments, and to keep afloat with the least possible exertion, destroyed all powers of inaugura- tion. I could recollect, but I could not plan. It was easy enough to keep alive in the big seas, and they must have carried me swiftly shoreward; but the sensation was of being in mid-ocean, halfway between Charleston and Gibral- tar. It was a growing regularity in the waves with which I swam that prompted me to think that I was nearing land, and presently I heard, far ahead, a thunderous booming, as of surf upon a beach. Had the undertow been at all com- mensurate with the rush and charge of the surf I must have bobbed about in the offing until strangled. But I have been more put to it to make a landing at Bailey’s Beach in Newport through surf that hardly looked the name... . I noted with the most dismal forebodings how cold the air was after the water. I was upon a stretch of hard, fine sand; of what extent, whether continent, island or seaward rock, I could not guess. And the gale blowing upon my wet and open-pored nakedness (for I must have sweated profusely in the long swim) froze me to the marrow. I made an effort to find shelter, crossing the upward slope of the beach, and then descending, but only to find my feet among sharp marsh grasses that stuck like bayonets from an oozy mud. The night was dark as pitch, and I dared not advance in that direction. Nothing was open for me then, till daylight, but the beach, and returning I com- menced to run gingerly up and down, swinging my arms 52 DESCRIPTION violently across my chest, like a New York cab-driver on a winter night. Dawn came at last, showing upon the one hand a wild, white-maned sea, and upon the other, marsh and waterway, and waterway and marsh, and woody island and pond, and pond and woody island; and beneath my feet a splendid speedway, as it were, of white sand stretching illimitably north and south. Had I been an amphibian I must have thought myself upon the very boundaries of my paradise, but I was a cold, naked man, heartily sick of the amphibi- ous parts of amphibianism. The discordant cries of gulls rising by thousands from the marshes pierced the ear. Hundreds of shore birds, tired and discouraged by the storm, fed tamely in the shallow laps of water that ran up the beach after each thunderous bursting of a wave. The marsh at the back of the beach, into which I had inadvertently stepped during the night, was alive with myriads of fiddler-crabs, scuttling busily among the sharp, sparse grasses. I had never seen a region so full of life, nor so lonesome. For want of a better offering I went south along the beach, only to find that it was by no means an illimitable highway, but was broken and crossed by little streams and rivulets of marsh water, and, within a mile, by a wide river mouth. One thing was of comfort. The loud voice of the wind, as if by some magic of the full tide about to turn, had fallen to a whisper; and here and there through the gray daybreak the sun had stabbed out a ray. In a hollow of sand I found three seagull eggs, fresh enough to swallow; and, with the fear upon me of all known and unknown fevers, I rinsed my parched mouth and throat with river water. Then I retraced my steps and passed a mile or so NATURE 53 beyond my landing-place. The shore birds, thanks to the falling wind, and disturbed, no doubt, by me, began now to resume their northern migration, flying in little flocks from headland to headland of the beach, or in great flocks and in great swinging curves out over the still wildly- troubled sea. The tide, by now setting out, kept uncover- ing inch by inch the black, shellfishy feeding grounds of the gulls; and these fed, fought, piled upon each other, and screamed without decency or regard for the nearness of man. The swamp on my left became wetter and wetter, until presently it was all water, and I stood at the beginning of a long, narrow lake, that had for its eastern side banks of reeds and river sand, and for its western, holding straight on like a fine causeway, the beach itself upon which I was stranded. The two shores of the lake seemed to merge half a mile away, but whether or not the beach itself ex- tended any farther in that direction was guesswork. If not, I was so badly shipwrecked that it was not pleasant to think about. What should I do for food when the gulls had finished the business of raising their young, and what in the meantime for pure water ? My body was no more bare of clothes than my mind of comfort, and while I stood, trying to make head against an incipient rising of panic, I heard from the farther end of the lake two reports of a shotgun, very faint, but compact and distinct, and before I had even set out to run toward them they were followed by two more. THE VOICE IN THE RICE: Gouverneur Morris, Copyright, 1909, by Dodd, Mead & Co. Used by permission, 54 DESCRIPTION THE MEADOW BROOK kichard Jefferies Afar yonder I can see a summit beyond where the grass swells upwards to a higher level than this spot. There are bushes and elms whose height is decreased by dis- tance on the summit, horses in the shadow of the trees, and a small flock of sheep crowded, as is their wont, in the hot and sunny gateway. By the side of the summit is a deep green trench, so it looks from here in the hill- side: it is really the course of a streamlet worn deep in the earth. I can see nothing between the top of the espalier screen and the horses under the elms on the hill. But the starlings go up and down into the hollow space, which is aglow with golden buttercups, and, indeed, I am looking over a hundred finches eagerly searching, sweetly calling, happy as the summer day. A thousand thousand grass- hoppers are leaping, thrushes are laboring, filled with love and tenderness, doves cooing —-there is as much joy as there are leaves on the hedges. Faster than the starling’s flight my mind runs up to the streamlet in the deep green trench beside the hill. Pleasant it was to trace it upwards, narrowing at every ascending step, till the thin stream, thinner than fragile glass, did but merely slip over the stones. A little less and it could not have run at all, water could not stretch out to greater tenuity. It smoothed the brown growth on the stones, stroking it softly. It filled up tiny basins of sand, and ran out at the edges between minute rocks of flint. Beneath it went under thickest brooklime, blue flowered, and serrated water-parsnips, lost like many a mighty river for a while among a forest of leaves. Be- NATURE 55 tween the wheat and the grassy mound the path was almost closed, burdocks and brambles thrust the adven- turer outward to brush against the wheat-ears. Upward till suddenly it turned, and led by steep notches in the bank, as it seemed down to the roots of the elm trees. The clump of elms grew right over a deep and rugged hollow; their branches reached out across it, roofing in the cave. Here was the spring, at the foot of a perpendicular rock, moss-grown low down, and overrun with creeping ivy higher. Green thorn bushes filled the chinks and made a wall to the well, and the long narrow hart’s-tongue streaked the face of the cliff. Behind the thick thorns hid the course of the streamlet, in front rose the solid rock, upon the right hand the sward came to the edge — it shook every now and then as the horses in the shade of the elms stamped their feet — on the left hand the ears of wheat peered over the verge. The spring rises in a hol- low under the rock imperceptibly, and without bubbles or sound. The fine sand of the shallow basin is undisturbed —no tiny water-volcano pushes up a dome of particles. Nor is there any crevice in the stone, but the basin is al- ways full and always running over. As it slips from the brim a gleam of sunshine falls through the boughs and meets it. To this cell I used to come once now and then on a summer’s day, tempted, perhaps, like the finches, by the sweet cool water, but drawn also by a feeling that could not be analyzed. Stooping, I lifted the water in the hollow of my hand —carefully, lest the sand might be disturbed —and the sunlight gleamed on it as it slipped through my fingers. Alone in the green-roofed cave, alone with the sunlight and the pure water, there was a sense of something more than these. The water was 56 DESCRIPTION more to me than water, and the sun than sun. The gleaming rays on the water in my palm held me for a mo- ment, the touch of the water gave me something from itself. A moment, and the gleam was gone, the water flowing away; but I had them. Beside the physical water and physical light I had received from them their beauty ; they had communicated to me this silent mystery. The pure and beautiful water, the pure, clear, and beautiful light, each had given me something of their truth. MEADOW THOUGHTS: Richard Jefferies. THE MERRY MEN Robert Louis Stevenson The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as dark as January. Intervals of a groping twilight alternated with spells of utter blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these changes in the flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out of a man’s nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder over- head like one huge sail; and when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear the gusts dismally sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross, the wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and God only knows the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round the isle of Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in another, like the combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all this hurly-burly I could hear the NATURE 57 changeful voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed into my mind the reason of the name that they were called. For the noise of them seemed almost mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night; or if not mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality. Nay, and it seemed even human. As when savage men have drunk away their reason, and, discarding speech, bawl together in their madness by the hour; so, to my ears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the night. Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I won every yard of ground with conscious effort. We slipped on the wet sod, we fell together sprawling on the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten, and breathless, it must have taken us near half an hour to get from the house down to the Head that overlooks the Roost. There, it seemed, was my uncle’s favorite observatory. Right in the face of it, where the cliff is highest and most sheer, a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes a place of shelter from the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet and see the tide and the mad billows contending at his feet. As he might look down from the window of a house upon some street disturbance, so, from this post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the Merry Men. On such a night, of course, he peers upon a world of blackness, where the waters wheel and boil, where the waves joust together with the noise of an explosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye. Never before had I seen the Merry Men thus violent. The fury, height, and transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen and not recounted. High over our heads on the cliff rose their white columns in the darkness; and the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone. Sometimes three 58 DESCRIPTION at a time they would thus aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray would fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet the spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than impressive by its force. Thought was beaten down by the confounding uproar; a gleeful va- cancy possessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness ; and I found myself at times following the dance of the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a jigging instrument. THE MERRY MEN: Robert Louis Stevenson. Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Used by permission. THE OUTER ISLANDS Om It was in the purple twilight of May that I first saw the lamp shining. For me, a child of seven, the voyage had been a tiring one; it seemed many hours since, with a ringing of bells and hearts adventurously throbbing with the screw of our small steamboat, we had backed and swung, casting our wash in waves along the quay-walls, and so, after a pause during which we held our breath and drifted from the line of watching faces, had headed away for the great empty sky-line beyond which the islands lay. I knew that they lay yonder; for, the evening before, my father had led me up a tall hill and pointed them out to me — black specks in the red ball of the sun. But to-day, as hour after hour went by with the pant of the engines, the lift and slide of the Atlantic swell, the tonic wind humming against the stays, my eyes grew heavy, and at length my head dropped against my father’s shoulder. And then — to me it seemed the next instant—he woke me up and pointed towards the islands as they arose out of the indigo NATURE 59 sea. At first they looked rather like low-lying clouds, but after a minute or two there was no mistaking them; for, as if they had just discovered ws, they hung out lamp after lamp, some steady, some intermittent, but all of them gleam- ing yellow along the floor of the sea save one, a crimson light which hid and showed itself again northward of the rest. Crimson was my favorite color in those days, and even as I dropped back into sleep I decided that I liked this lamp best of all. I woke again to the sound of voices. We were passing a pilot-boat out there on watch for ships. Her crew hailed us as we went by, and I saw their faces in the green radi- ance of our starboard light — gaunt, dark faces, altogether foreign. One of the men, the oldest, was bareheaded, with long gray locks, and wore a yellow neckcloth with his shirt open below it, and his naked chest showing. Their voices as they answered our skipper were clear and gay like the voices of children. And, next, we were alongside a quay. Our seats, our bulwarks, even our decks, shone with dew. A crowd stood on the dim quay-edge and looked down on us, and chattered, but in soft voices. There was a policeman, too, and I wondered how Ze came there. Above this shadowy moving crowd rode the stars I had known at home. I took my father’s hand. At the head of the gangway he stooped, hoisted me on his shoulders, and carried me up and up through narrow, mysterious streets, around dark corners, past belated islanders hurrying down to the steamer; but always upward, until he pushed open a door and set me down blinking in a whitewashed bedroom lit by a couple of candles: and with that came sleep. Happy days followed: blue and white days — days vaulted and floored with blue, flashing with white granite, 60 DESCRIPTION with the rush of white water beneath the shadow of the leaning sail, with white cirrus clouds, with white wings of seabirds. It was the height of the nesting season, and the birds had brought us to the island; my father with a paint- box and camera, though — our time being short — he relied almost wholly on the latter. A naturalist, and by temper the gentlest of men, in his methods he was a born pioneer. You can hardly imagine how cumbrous and well-nigh hope- less a business it was in those days, not so long past, to pursue after wild life with a camera; but a thousand dis- heartening failures left him still grasping the inviolable shade, still confident that in photography, if it could only be given with rapidity and precision, lay the naturalist’s hope. Blurred negatives were all the spoil, and sorry enough, we bore back after long days of tossing and climb- ing among the Outer Islands; but we had the reward of living among the birds. They filled our thoughts, our lives for the time: great cormorants and northern divers, flitting red-legged oyster-catchers, shags spreading their wings to the wind and sun, sea-parrots, murrs, razor-bills, gannets questing by ones and twos — now poised, now drop- ping like a plummet with resounding splash; sand-pipers and curlews dotting the beaches and wading; tern, common gulls, herring-gulls, and kittiwakes, and at night- fall shearwaters popping from their holes and swimming and skimming around our boat as we headed for home. And then, the nests we discovered !— nay, the nests that at times we walked among, picking our steps like egg- dancers !—nests boldly planted on the bare rock ledges ; nests snugly hidden among the clusters of blue thrift and the massed sea-pinks. They bloomed everywhere, these sea-pinks; sheet upon sheet of pale rose-color, soon to show paler and fade before the rosy splendors of the NATURE 61 mesembryanthemum. But the thrift had no rival to fear, condensing blue heaven and blue sea in the flower it lifted against both; and to lie prone and make a frame with it for some winding channel when the tide-rip flashed and tossed was to send the eye plunging into blue like an East- ern diver after pearls. But when after sunset the blue deepened to violet, always in the heart of it glowed the crimson light upon Off Is- land. Night after night I watched it from my window, and wonderéd what manner of people they were who tended it, living out yonder on a rock where no grass grew, and in a roar of tide which the inhabitants of the greater islands heard on still days in a few inland valleys where it was possible to lose sight of the sea. I knew that the thousands of puffins bred there, and we were to visit the rock some day; but what with the tides and an all but ceaseless ground swell, our opportunity was long in coming, and Old Seth our boatman kept putting it off until I began to disbelieve in it altogether. It came, though, at last, with a cloudless morning and a northeasterly breeze, brisk and steady, the clearest day in a fortnight of clear days. We were heading northward close-hauled through a sound dividing two of the greater islands — Old Seth at the tiller, my father tending sheet, and I perched on the weather gunwale and peering over and down on the purple reefs we seemed to avoid so narrowly — when Seth lifted his voice in a shout, and then, with a word of warning, paid out sheet, brought the boat’s nose round and ran her in towards a silver-white beach on our left. THE WHITE WOLF: Arthur T. Quiller-Couch. Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons. Used by permission, 62 DESCRIPTION HOW THE PRINCESS SAW THE DAWN Robert Louis Stevenson When she came again to herself, she was standing to the mid-leg in an icy eddy of a brook, and leaning with one hand on the rock from which it poured. The spray had wet her hair. She saw the white cascade, the stars wavering in the shaken pool, foam flitting, and high over- head the tall pines on either hand serenely drinking star- shine; and in the sudden quiet of her spirit, she heard with joy the firm plunge of the cataract in the pool. She scrambled forth dripping. In the face of her proved weakness, to adventure again upon the horror of black- ness in the groves were a suicide of life or reason. But here, in the alley of the brook, with the kind stars above her, and the moon presently swimming into sight, she could await the coming of day without alarm. This lane of pine trees ran very rapidly down hill and wound among the woods; but it was a wider thoroughfare than the brook needed, and here and there were little dimpling lawns and coves of the forest, where the star- shine slumbered. Such a lawn she paced, taking patience bravely; and now she looked up the hill and saw the brook coming down to her in a series of cascades; and now approached the margin, where it welled among the rushes silently; and now gazed at the great company of heaven with an enduring wonder. The early evening had fallen chill, but the night was now temperate; out of the recesses of the wood there came mild airs as from a deep and peaceful breathing; and the dew was heavy on the grass and the tight-shut daisies. This was the girl’s first night under the naked heaven; and now that her fears NATURE 63 were overpast, she was touched to the soul by its serene. amenity and peace. Kindly the host of heaven blinked down upon that wandering Princess; and the honest brook had no words but to encourage her. At last she began to be aware of a wonderful revolution, compared to which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but the crack and flash of a percussion cap. The counte- nance with which the pines regarded her began insensibly to change; the grass, too, short as it was, and the whole winding staircase of the brook’s course, began to wear a solemn freshness of appearance. And this slow trans- figuration reached her heart, and played upon it, and transpierced it with a serious thrill. She looked all about; the whole face of nature looked back, brimful of meaning, finger on lip, leaking its glad secret. She looked up. Heaven was almost emptied of stars. Such as still lin- gered shone with a changed and waning brightness, and began to faint in their stations. And the color of the sky itself was the most wonderful; for the rich blue of the night had now melted and softened and brightened; and there had succeeded in its place a hue that has no name, and that is never seen but as the herald of the morning. “OQ!” she cried, joy catching at her voice, “QO! it is the dawn!” In a breath she passed over the brook, and looped up her skirts and fairly ran in the dim alleys. As she ran, her ears were aware of many pipings, more beautiful than music ; in the small dish-shaped houses in the fork of giant arms, where they had lain all night, lover by lover, warmly pressed, the bright-eyed, big-hearted singers began to awaken for the day. Her heart melted and flowed forth to them in kindness. And they, from their small and high perches in the clerestories of the wood cathedral, peered 64 DESCRIPTION down sidelong at the ragged Princess as she flitted below them on the carpet of moss and tassel. Soon she had struggled to a certain hilltop, and saw far before her the silent inflooding of the day. Out of the East it welled and whitened ; the darkness trembled into light; and the stars were extinguished like the street-lamps of a human city. The whiteness brightened into silver, the silver warmed into gold, the gold kindled into pure and living fire; and the face of the East was barred with elemental scarlet. The day drew its first long breath, steady and chill; and for leagues around the woods sighed and shiv- ered. And then, at one bound, the sun had floated up; and her startled eyes received the day’s first arrow, and quailed under the buffet. On every side, the shadows leaped from their ambush and fell prone. The day was come, plain and garish; and up the steep and solitary eastern heaven, the sun, victorious over his competitors, continued slowly and royally to mount. PRINCE OTTO: Robert Louis Stevenson, Copyright by Charles Scribner’s Sons, Used by permission, THE STORM Jeffery Farnol As I went, the woods gradually fell away, and I came out upon an open place. The ground rose sharply before me, but I climbed on and up and s0, in time, stood upon a hill. Now, standing upon this elevation, with the woods loom- ing dimly below me, as if they were a dark tide hemming me in on all sides, I became conscious of a sudden great NATURE 65 quietude in the air—a stillness that was like the hush of expectancy; not a sound came to me, not a whisper from the myriad leaves below. But, as I stood there listening, very faint and far away, I heard a murmur that rose and died and rose again, that swelled and swelled into the roll of distant thunder. Down in the woods was a faint rustling, as if some giant were stirring among the leaves, and out of their depths breathed a puff of wind that fanned my cheek, and so was gone. But, in a while, it was back again, stronger, more insistent than before, till, sudden as it came, it died away again, and all was hushed and still, save only for the tremor down there among the leaves; but lightning flickered upon the horizon, the thunder rolled nearer and nearer, and the giant grew ever more restless. Upon the stillness came a rustling, loud and ever louder, drowning all else, for the giant was awake at last, and stretching himself; and now, up he sprang with a sudden bellow, and, gathering himself together, swept up towards me through the swaying treetops, pelting me with broken twigs and flying leaves, and filling the air with the tumult of his coming. Oh, the wind!—the bellowing, giant. wind! On he came, exulting, whistling through my hair, stopping my breath, roaring in my ears his savage, wild halloo! And, as if in answer, forth from the inky heaven burst a jagged, blinding flame, that zigzagged down among the tossing trees, and vanished with a roaring thunder-clap that seemed to stun all things to silence. But not for long, for in the darkness came the wind again — fiercer, wilder than before, shrieking a defiance. The thunder crashed above me, and the lightning quivered in the air about me, till my eyes ached with the swift transitions from pitch darkness to 66 DESCRIPTION dazzling light — light in which distant objects started out clear and well-defined, only to be lost again in a swirl of blackness. And now came rain —a sudden, hissing down- pour, long threads of scintillating fire where the lightning caught it — rain that wetted me through and through. THE BROAD HIGHWAY: Jeffery Farnol, Copyright, 1911, by Little, Brown, and Company. Used by permission. Interiors and Exteriors THE CLOSED ROOM George Eliot But there was a chamber in Shepperton Vicarage which told a different story from that bare and cheerless dining- room, —a chamber never entered by any one besides Mr. Gilfil and old Martha the housekeeper, who, with David her husband as groom and gardener, formed the Vicar’s entire establishment. The blinds of this chamber were al- ways down, except once a quarter, when Martha entered that she might air and clean it. She always asked Mr. Gilfil for the key, which he kept locked up in his bureau, and returned it to him when she had finished her task. It was a touching sight that the daylight streamed in upon, as Martha drew aside the blinds and thick curtains, and opened the Gothic casement of the oriel window. On the little dressing-table there was a dainty looking-glass in a carved and gilt frame; bits of wax-candle were still in the branched sockets at the sides, and on one of these branches hung a little black laced kerchief ; a faded satin pincush- ion, with the pins rusted in it, a scent-bottle, and a large green fan, lay on the table; and on a dressing-box by the INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS 67 side of the glass was a work-basket, and an unfinished baby-cap, yellow with age, lying in it. Two gowns, of a fashion long forgotten, were hanging on nails against the door, and a pair of tiny red slippers, with a bit of tarnished silver embroidery on them, were standing at the foot of the bed. Two or three water-color drawings, views of Naples, hung upon the walls; and over the mantelpiece, above some bits of rare old china, two miniatures in oval frames. One of these miniatures represented a young man about seven-and-twenty, with a sanguine complexion, full lips, and clear candid gray eyes. The other was the likeness of a girl probably not more than eighteen, with small features, thin cheeks, a pale southern-looking com- plexion, and large dark eyes. The gentleman wore pow- der ; the lady had her dark hair gathered away from her face, and a little cap, with a cherry-colored bow, set on the top of her head, — a coquettish head-dress, but the eyes spoke of sadness rather than of coquetry. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE; George Eliot. IN THE “INDIAN QUEENS” A. T. Quiller-Couch The room was a long one — perhaps fifty feet from end to end, and not less than ten paces broad. It was wain- scoted to the height of four feet from the ground, probably with oak, but the wood had been so larded with dark blue paint that its texture could not be discovered. Above this wainscot the walls were covered with a fascinating paper. The background of this was a greenish-blue, and upon it a party of red-coated riders in three-cornered hats blew large horns while they hunted a stag. This pattern, striking 68 DESCRIPTION enough in itself, became immeasurably more so when re- peated a dozen times; for the stag of one hunt chased the riders of the next, and the riders chased the hounds, and so on in an unbroken procession right round the room. The window at the bottom of the room stood high in the wall, with short blue curtains and a blue-cushioned seat be- neath. In the corner to the right of it stood a tall clock, and by the clock an old spinet, decorated with two plated cruets, a toy cottage constructed of shells and gum, and an ormolu clock under glass. The floor was uncarpeted save for one small oasis opposite the fire. Here stood my table, cleanly spread, with two plated candlesticks, each holding three candles. Along the wainscot extended a regiment of dark, leather-cushioned chairs, so straight in the back that they seemed to be standing at attention. There was but one easy-chair in the room, and this was drawn close to the fire. I turned toward it. As I sat down I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. It was an unflattering glass, with a wave across the surface that divided my face into two ill-fitting halves, and a film upon it, due, I suppose, to the smoke of the wood fire below. But the setting of this mir- ror and the fireplace itself were by far the most noteworthy objects in the whole room. I set myself idly to examine them. It was an open hearth, and the blazing fagot lay on the stone itself. The andirons were of indifferently polished steel, and on either side of the fireplace two Ionic pilasters of dark oak supported a narrow mantel-ledge. Above this rested the mirror, flanked by a couple of naked, flat-cheeked boys, who appeared to be lowering it over the fire by a complicated system of pulleys, festoons, and flowers. These flowers and festoons, as well as the frame of the INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS 69 mirror, were of some light wood — lime, I fancy — and the glass tilted forward at a surprising angle, as if about to tumble on the hearth rug. The carving was exceedingly delicate. I rose to examine it more narrowly. As I did so, my eyes fell on three letters, cut in flowing italic capitals upon a plain boss of wood immediately over the frame, and I spelt out the word FV7. I sAW THREE SHIPS: 4.7. Quiller-Couch, Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Used by permission, CUMNOR PLACE Sir Walter Scott Four apartments, which occupied the western’ side of the old quadrangle at Cumnor Place, had been fitted up with extraordinary splendor. This had been the work of sev- eral days prior to that on which our story opened. Work- men sent from London, and not permitted to leave the premises until the work was finished, had converted the apartments in that side of the building, from the dilapidated appearance of a dissolved monastic house, into the sem- blance of a royal palace. A mystery was observed in all these arrangements: the workmen came thither and re- turned by night, and all measures were taken to prevent the prying curiosity of the villagers from observing or speculating upon the changes which were taking place in the mansion of their once indigent, but now wealthy neigh- bor, Anthony Foster. Accordingly, the secrecy desired was so far preserved, that nothing got abroad but vague and uncertain reports, which were received and repeated, but without much credit being attached to them. 70 DESCRIPTION On the evening of which we treat, the new and highly decorated suite of rooms were, for the first time, illumi- nated, and that with a brilliancy which might have been visible half-a-dozen miles off, had not oaken shutters, care- _ fully secured with bolt and padlock, and mantled with long curtains of silk and of velvet, deeply fringed with gold, pre- vented the slightest gleam of radiance from being seen without. The principal apartments, as we have seen, were four in number, each opening into the other. Access was given to them by a large scale staircase, as they were then called, of unusual length and height, which had its landing-place at the door of an antechamber, shaped somewhat like a gal- lery. This apartment the Abbot had used as an occasional council-room, but it was now beautifully wainscoted with dark foreign wood of a brown color, and bearing a high polish, said to have been brought from the Western Indies, and to have been wrought in London with infinite difficulty, and much damage to the tools of the workmen. The dark color of this finishing was relieved by the number of lights in silver sconces, which hung against the walls, and by six large and richly-framed pictures, by the first masters of theage. A massy oaken table, placed at the lower end of the apartment, served to accommodate such as chose to play at the then fashionable game of shovel-board; and there was at the other end an elevated gallery for the musi- cians or minstrels, who might be summoned to increase the festivity of the evening. From this antechamber opened a banqueting room of moderate size, but brilliant enough to dazzle the eyes of the spectator with the richness of its furniture. The walls, lately so bare and ghastly, were now clothed with hangings of sky-blue velvet and silver; the chairs were of ebony, INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS : 71 richly carved, with cushions corresponding to the hangings; and the place of the silver sconces which enlightened the antechamber, was supplied by a huge chandelier of the same precious metal. The floor was covered with a Span- ish foot-cloth, or carpet, on which flowers and fruits were represented in such glowing and natural colors, that you hesitated to place the foot on such exquisite workmanship. The table, of old English oak, stood ready covered with the finest linen, and a large portable court-cupboard was placed with the leaves of its embossed folding-doors dis- played, showing the shelves within, decorated with a full display of plate and porcelain. In the midst of the table stood a saltcellar of Italian workmanship — a beautiful and splendid piece of plate about two feet high, molded into a representation of the giant Briareus, whose hundred hands of silver presented to the guests various sorts of spices, or condiments, to season their food withal. The third apartment was called the withdrawing-room. It was hung with the finest tapestry, representing the fall of Phaeton; for the looms of Flanders were now much oc- cupied on classical subjects. The principal seat of this apartment was a chair of state, raised a step or two from the floor, and large enough to contain two persons. It was surmounted by a canopy, which, as well as the cushions, side-curtains, and the very foot-cloth, was composed of crimson velvet, embroidered with seed-pearl. On the top of the canopy were two coronets, resembling those of an earl and countess. Stools covered with velvet, and some cushions disposed in the Moorish fashion, and ornamented with Arabesque needle-work, supplied the place of chairs in this apartment, which contained musical instruments, embroidery frames, and other articles for ladies’ pastime. Besides lesser lights, the withdrawing-room was illuminated 72 DESCRIPTION by four tall torches of virgin wax, each of which was placed in the grasp of a statue, representing an armed Moor, who held in his left arm a round buckler of silver, highly pol- ished, interposed betwixt his breast and the light, which was thus brilliantly reflected as from a crystal mirror. The sleeping chamber belonging to this splendid suite of apartments, was decorated in a taste less showy, but not less rich, than had been displayed in the others. Two sil- ver lamps, fed with perfumed oil, diffused at once a deli- cious odor and a trembling twilight-seeming shimmer through the quiet apartment. It was carpeted so thick, that the heaviest step could not have been heard, and the bed, richly heaped with down, was spread with an ample coverlet of silk and gold; from under which peeped forth cambric sheets, and blankets as white as the lambs which yielded the fleece that made them. The curtains were of blue velvet, lined with crimson silk, deeply festooned with gold, and embroidered with the loves of Cupid and Psyche. On the toilet was a beautiful Venetian mirror, in a frame of silver filigree, and beside it stood a gold posset-dish to contain the night-draught. A pair of pistols and a dagger, mounted with gold, were displayed near the head of the bed, being the arms for the night, which were pre- sented to honored guests, rather, it may be supposed, in the way of ceremony, than from any apprehension of dan- ger. We must not omit to mention, what was more to the credit of the manners of the time, that in a small recess, illuminated by a taper, were disposed two hassocks of vel- vet and gold, corresponding with the bed furniture, before a desk of carved ebony. This recess had formerly been the private oratory of the Abbot, but the crucifix was re- moved, and instead, there were placed on the desk two Books of Common Prayer, richly bound, and embossed INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS 73 with silver. With this enviable sleeping apartment, which was so far removed from every sound, save that of the wind sighing among the oaks of the park, that Morpheus might have coveted it for his own proper repose, corre- sponded two wardrobes, or dressing-rooms as they are now termed, suitably furnished, and in a style of the same magnificence which we have already described. It ought to be added, that a part of the building in the adjoining -wing was occupied by the kitchen and its offices, and served to accommodate the personal attendants of the great and wealthy nobleman, for whose use these magnificent preparations had been made. KENILWORTH: Sir Walter Scott. A CITY HOUSE William Herbert The house is plain and even severe in treatment, and it has dignity without the slightest pretension. It is simply an interesting and very careful piece of brick-work, without any of the stone trimmings with which so many eastern architects like to spot and line the surface of their brick walls. A single course of stone marks the line of the ground floor, andthe window sills are similarly distinguished. The windows are small and not capped by any ornamental members whatsoever. The only important ornamental feature of the building is a strong string-course of terra cotta, cutting off the top floor; and this is well, because the top floor evidently contains a large number of small rooms, and is consequently distinguished from the other floors by the numerous windows which its plan demands. The entrance porch is treated with the same simplicity and the same respect for the dominant material. Its appear- 74 DESCRIPTION ance is not complicated and falsified by any scheme of applied decoration ; and the two columns which hold the lintel have a structural function. Its whole effect would perhaps be a little austere for the majority of eastern house-owners; but it is a salutary thing that the western architect can sometimes dispense with the decorative irrel- evances so often demanded in the east. The architecture of the interior is characterized by the same plain, consistent treatment. There are no imported mantelpieces, no white paint, none of the carpenter’s ver- sion of classic and Renaissance detail, no Gothic ceilings, and no “period” furnishing. The finish is simple and substantial throughout. All the rooms are more or less completely paneled, and when the paneling does not cover the walls, the intervening spaces are treated gener- ally with a solid color. The lines of the beams and of the cornice are very strong, and the different parts are tied well together. The wood-work is stained a dark brown; none of the ordinary classic moldings are used; and no doors are hung between the principal rooms. One apartment opens into another without the interruption even of “‘portiéres,” and the reader will notice that no curtains keep out the light from the windows, which serves to ex- plain the smallness of these openings. A pleasant sense of being spacious, conveniently planned, and well connected pervades these apartments. They are a worthy example of an architect’s interior ; and if the effect of the inside is like the effect of the outside, a little austere, it is, on the other hand, not in the least negative, or flat, or attenuated. HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY: William Herbert. Copyright by Duffield and Company. Used by permission. INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS 75 IN A TEMPLE GARDEN Ralph Adams Cram It is not around the great and famous temples that one finds the most alluring gardens, but in out-of-the-way spots, in forgotten valleys where foreign feet have seldom trod. Across the river from Uji I found one such garden in an hill temple I had never heard named before, Koshoji. There is a river road up to where the tumbling Ujigawa bursts through a cleft in the hills, and following this one suddenly comes upon a long straight path cut through dense black trees, rising steep from the river, and closed at the summit by a gleaming white Korean gateway. As one approaches, nothing is visible but this same gate with its arched opening in the white plastered base, surmounted by the intricate bracketing of its curved roof, long, plas- tered walls reaching away on either hand, and above, the low sweeping roofs of gray-green tile, and, in April, as when I saw it, a great cloud of pink vapor poised over all, the amazing blossoming of an ancient cherry. One comes out from under the white arch with a sudden catching of the breath. It is not a large temple, indeed it is hardly more than a toy, one of those still, little monas- teries asleep in a forgotten eddy of the turbulent river of change; but it is the more charming for all that. The Ni- shi and Higashi Hongwanji temples of Kyoto, the almost terrifying monster belonging to the latter sect in Nagoya, the complex and amazingly elaborate Obaku-san just a little way down the river, these vast and ceremonious structures crush one with the very majesty of their noble architec- ture; but for charm and fascination and keen appeal, one must search out tiny sanctuaries like this of Koshoji. 76 DESCRIPTION One enters first a little fore-court surrounded by build- ings on three sides, the fourth being filled by the wall and gateway. The hondo or preaching hall is in front, a low simple building; on the left is the residence, on the right the library and the bell cage. All the buildings are raised on low stone-walled terraces: there are few flowers, and the gardening is made up almost wholly of box and white sand. Of course there is the great pink tree, but its glory lasts for a short ten days in the spring, and for the rest of the year the scented box is supreme. Nothing could be finer than these great rounded masses of bronze green: they rise from the white sand like tropical islands from a phosphorescent sea, and their clean-cut contours come crisp and fine against the pearly plaster of the convent walls. In this fore-court all is trim and formal, but if you pass through a little gate in the farther left-hand corner, you come upon a very different scene. Here everything is wildly picturesque, though still on a tiny scale; the mo- nastic buildings wander off at all angles until they are brought up standing against the wall of a beetling hill from which the trees lean down, thrusting their twisted branches out over the, tiled roofs with their long, keen curves. From under the very temple, it seems, springs a minute mountain torrent threading its way through the midst of the garden at the bottom of a Lilliputian cre- vasse. Toy stone bridges are flung across it, little trees twisted into most impossible curves and angles jut from its banks, velvety box runs along the mossy stone em- bankment, and strange little wild flowers seek the edge of the water. There are bronze lanterns and vases also, and on the farther side the moss-blackened grave-stones begin and lead one away over the flat stepping stones to INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS a7 the hill base, then up the slope where the whole forest is full of similar memorials of the dead. This Koshoji is full of some kind of enchantment; once there, one would never leave. We had heard each evening down at our inn at Uji (our inn that was built far back in the days of Hideyoshi) the velvety boom of some enormous bell, a sound that seemed to draw one irresistibly to rise up in the still night and search for its source under the great, pale moon. In Koshoji we found the bell, and much more; a little oasis in the desert of steam trams and beer and liberal politics, and we wanted to stay there forever. The old Japan has this charm, and I think it concentrates itself and becomes really quite irresistible, in the form of a scented temple garden in some forgotten monastery, where the odor of incense mingles with that of box, where the patterned sand retains the lines of a thousand years ago, where tonsured bonzes in yellow robes move silently through the shed petals of a pink ‘cherry, and a thunderous bell gives tongue at the rising of the moon. : GLIMPSES OF JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE: Ralph Adams Cram. Copyright, 1905, by the Baker & Taylor Co. Used by permission, EDGEWOOD FARM Donald G. Mitchell Although possessing all the special requisites of which I had been in search, yet the farm was by no means with- out its inaptitudes and roughnesses. There was an ac- cumulation of half-decayed logs in one quarter, of moldering chips in another, — being monumental of the choppings and hewings of half a score of years. Old iron had its 78 DESCRIPTION establishment in this spot; cast-away carts and sleds in that; walls which had bulged out with the upheaval of — I know not how many —frosts, had been ingeniously mended with discarded harrows or axles; there was the usual débris of clam shells, and there were old outbuildings standing awry, and showing rhomboidal angles in their outlines. These approached the house very nearly, — so nearly, in fact, that in one direction at least, it was dif- ficult to say where the province of the poultry and calves ended, and where the human occupancy began. There was a monstrous growth of dock and burdock about the outer doors, and not a few rank shoots of that valuable medicinal herb—stramonium. There were the invariable clumps of purple lilacs, in most unmanageable positions; a few straggling bunches of daffodils; an an- cient garden with its measly looking, mossy gooseberries ; a few strawberry plants, and currant bushes keeping up interruptedly the pleasant formality of having once been set in rows, and of having nodded their crimson tassels at each . other across the walk. There were some half dozen huge old pear trees, immediately in the rear of the house, mossy, and promising inferior native fruit; but full of a vigor that I have since had the pleasure of transmuting into golden Bartletts. There were a few plum trees, loaded with black knot; a score of peach trees in out-of-the-way places, all showing unfortunate marks of that vegetable jaundice, the yellows, which throughout New England is the bane of this delicious fruit. , There was the usual huge barn, a little wavy in its ridge, and with an aged settle to its big doors; while under the eaves were jagged pigeon holes, cut by adventurous boys, ignorant of curvilinear harmonies. Upon the peak was a lively weather-cock of shingle, most preposterously active INTERIORS AND EXTERIORS 79 in its motions, and trimming to every flaw of wind with a nervous rapidity, that reminded me of nothing so much as of the alacrity of a small newspaper editor. There was the attendant company of farm sheds, low sheds, high sheds, tumble-down sheds, one with a motley array of sea- soned lumber, well dappled over with such domestic coloring as barn-yard fowls are in the habit of administering; an- other, with sleds and sleighs, — looking out of place in June, —and submitted to the same domestic garniture. There was the cider mill with its old casks, and press, seamy and mildewed, both having musty taint. A convenient mossy cherry tree was hung over with last year’s scythes and bush-hooks, while two or three broken ox chains trailed from the stump of a limb, which had suffered amputation. Nor must I forget the shop, half home-made, half remnant of something better, with an old hat or two thrust into the broken sashes — with its unhelved, gone-by axes, its hoes with half their blade gone, its dozen of infirm rakes, its hospital shelf for broken swivels, heel-wedges, and dried balls of putty. I remember passing a discriminating eye over the tools, bethinking me how I would swing the broad-ax, or put the saws to sharp service; for in bargaining for the farm, I had also bargained for the implements of which there might be immediate need. Directly upon the roadway, before the house, rose a high wall, supporting the little terrace that formed the front yard ; the terrace was a wilderness of roses, lilacs, and un- clipped box. The entrance way was by a flight of stone steps which led through the middle of the terrace, and of the wall; while over the steps hung the remnants of an ancient archway, which had once supported a gilded lan- tern; and I was told with an air of due reverence, that this 80 DESCRIPTION gilded spangle of the town life, was a memento of the hos- pitalities of a certain warm-blooded West Indian, who in gone-by years had lighted up the country home with cheery festivities. I would nave cherished the lantern if it had not long before disappeared; and the feet that may have once thronged under it, must be all of them heavy with years now, if they have not rested from their weary beat altogether. Both wall and terrace are now gone, and a gentle swell of green turf is in their place, skirted by a hedge and low rustic paling, and crowned by a gaunt pine tree, and a bowering elm. The same hospitable occupant, to whom I have referred, had made additions to the home itself, so as to divest it of the usual, stereotyped farm-house look, by a certain quaintness of outline. This he had done by extending the area of the lower story some ten feet, in both front and rear, while the roof of this annex was concealed by a heavy balustrade, perched upon the eaves; thus giving the effect of one large cube, surmounted by a lesser one; the upper- most was topped with a roof of sharp pitch, through whose ridge protruded two enormous chimney stacks. But this alteration was of so old a date as not to detract from the venerable air of the house. Even the jaunty porch which jutted in front of all, showed gaping seams, and stains of ancient leakage, that forbade any suspicion of newness. Within, the rooms had that low-browed look which be- longs to country farm-houses; and I will not disguise the matter by pretending that they are any higher now. I have occasional visitors whom I find it necessary to cau- tion as they pass under the doorways; and the stray wasps that z7// float into the open casements of so old a country: house, in the first warm days of Spring, are not out of reach of my boy (just turned of five), as he mounts a PEOPLE FROM REAL LIFE 81 chair, and makes a cut at them with his dog-whip, upon the ceiling. I must confess that I do not dislike this old humility of house-building; if windows, open chimney places, and situation give good air, what matters it, that your quarters by night are three or four feet nearer to your quarters by day? In summer, if some simple trellised pattern of pa- per cover the ceiling, you enjoy the illusion of a low branching bower; and of a winter evening, the play of the fire-light on the hearth flashes over it, with a kindly nearness. My FARM OF EDGEWOOD: Donald G. Mitchell. Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons. Used by permission. People from Real Life CHARLES LAMB Thomas N. Talfourd A light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, was surmounted by a head of form and expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about an expanded forehead; his eyes, soft brown, twinkled with varying ex- pression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the shoulders, and gave importance, and even dignity, toa diminutive and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance —catch its quivering sweetness —and fix it forever in words? There are none, alas! to answer the vain desire of friendship. 82 DESCRIPTION Deep thought, striving with humor ; the lines of suffering wreathed with cordial mirth; and a smile of painful sweet- ness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose. THOMAS MOORE N. P. Willis Moore’s head is distinctly before me as I write, but I shall find it difficult to describe. His hair, which curled once all over it in long tendrils, unlike anybody else’s in the world, and which probably suggested his sodraguet of “Bacchus,” is diminished now to a few curls sprinkled with gray, and scattered in a single ring above his ears. His eyes still sparkle like a champagne bubble, though Time has drawn his pencilings about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red, of the tinge of an October leaf, that seems to enamel his cheek, the eloquent record of the claret his wit has brightened. His mouth is the most characteristic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, slight and changeable as an aspen; but there is a set- up look about the lower lip, a determination of the muscle to a particular expression, and you fancy that you can almost see wit astride upon it. It is written legibly with the imprint of habitual success. It is arch, confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright gleam of fancy was break- ing on him. The slightly tossed nose confirms the fun of the expression, and altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, radiates, — everything but fee/s. Fascinating be- yond all men as he is, Moore looks like a worldling. PEOPLE FROM FICTION 83 CHARLES DICKENS Percy Fitzgerald There never was a man so unlike a professional writer: of tall, wiry, energetic figure; brisk in movement ; a head well set on; a face rather bronzed or sunburnt; keen, bright, searching eyes, and a mouth which was full of expression, though hidden behind a wiry mustache and grizzled beard. Thus the French painter’s remark that “he was more like one of the old Dutch admirals we see in the picture galleries, than a man of letters,’ conveyed an admirably true idea to his friends. He had, indeed, much of the quiet, resolute manner of command of a captain of a ship. He trod along briskly as he walked ; as he listened, his searching eye rested on you, and the nerves in his face quivered, much like those in the delicately formed nostrils of a finely bred dog. There was a curl or two in his hair at each side which was characteristic; and the jaunty way he wore his little morning hat, rather on one side, added to the effect. But when there was anything droll sug- gested, a delightful sparkle of lurking humor began to kindle and spread to his mouth, so that, even before he uttered anything, you felt that something irresistibly droll was at hand. People from Fiction THE SHEPHERD Frank Norris The shepherd was a man of about thirty-five. He was very lean and spare. His brown canvas overalls were thrust into laced boots. A cartridge belt without any 84 DESCRIPTION cartridges encircled his waist. A gray flannel shirt, open at the throat, showed his breast, tanned and ruddy. He wore no hat. His hair was very black and rather long. A pointed beard covered his chin, growing straight and fine from the hollow cheeks. The absence of any cover- ing for his head was, no doubt, habitual with him, for his face was as brown as an Indian’s —a ruddy brown — quite different from Presley’s dark olive. To Presley’s morbidly keen observation, the general impression of the shepherd’s face was intensely interesting. It was uncom- mon to an astonishing degree. Presléy’s vivid imagi- nation chose to see in it the face of an ascetic, of a recluse, almost that of a young seer. So must have appeared the half-inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends, the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers in the wilderness, beholders of visions, having their existence in a continual dream, talkers with God, gifted with strange powers. THE OCTOPUS : Frank Norris. Copyright, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Used by permission. MAGNUS DERRICK Frank Norris Magnus — the Governor — was all of six feet tall, and though now well toward his sixtieth year, was as erect as an officer of cavalry. He was broad in proportion, a fine commanding figure, imposing an immediate respect, impressing one with a sense of gravity, of dignity and a certain pride of race. He was smooth-shaven, thin- lipped, with a broad chin, and a prominent hawk-like nose — the characteristic of the family — thin, with a high PEOPLE FROM FICTION 85 bridge, such as one sees in the later portraits of the Duke of Wellington. His hair was thick and iron-gray, and had a tendency to curl in a forward direction just in front of his ears. He wore a top-hat of gray, with a wide brim, and a frock coat, and carried a cane with a yellowed ivory head. As a young man it had been his ambition to represent his native state— North Carolina —in the United States Senate. Calhoun was his “great man,” but in two suc- cessive campaigns he had been defeated. His career checked in this direction, he had come to California in the fifties. He had known and had been the intimate friend of such men as Terry, Broderick, General Baker, Lick, Alvarado, Emerich, Larkin, and, above all, of the unfortunate and misunderstood Ralston. Once he had been put forward as the Democratic candidate for gov- ernor, but failed of election. After this Magnus had definitely abandoned politics and had invested all his money in the Corpus Christi mines. Then he had sold out his interest at a small profit — just in time to miss his chance of becoming a multi-millionaire in the Comstock boom —and was looking for reinvestments in other lines when the news that “wheat had been discovered in Cali- fornia” was passed from mouth to mouth. Practically it amounted to a discovery. Dr. Glenn’s first harvest of wheat in Colusa County, quietly undertaken but sud- denly realized with dramatic abruptness, gave a new mat- ter for reflection to the thinking men of the New West. California suddenly leaped unheralded into the world’s market as a competitor in wheat production. In a few years her output of wheat exceeded the value of her out- put of gold, and when, later on, the Pacific and South- western Railroad threw open to settlers the rich lands 86 DESCRIPTION of Tulare County —conceded to the corporation by the government as a bonus for the construction of the road — Magnus had been quick to seize the opportunity and had taken up the ten thousand acres of Los Muertos. Wherever he had gone, Magnus had taken his family with him. Lyman had been born at Sacramento during the turmoil and excitement of Derrick’s campaign for governor, and Harran at Shingle Springs, in El Dorado County, six years later. But Magnus was in every sense the “ prominent man.” In whatever circle he moved he was the chief figure. In- stinctively other men looked to him as the leader. He himself was proud of this distinction; he assumed the grand manner very easily and carried it well. As a pub- lic speaker he was one of the last of the followers of the old school of orators. He even carried the diction and manner of the rostrum into private life. It was said of him that his most colloquial conversation could be taken down in shorthand and read off as an admirable speci- men of pure, well-chosen English. He loved to do things upon a grand scale, to preside, to dominate. In his good humor there was something Jovian. When angry, everybody around him trembled. But he had not the genius for detail, was not patient. The certain grandi- ose lavishness of his disposition occupied itself more with results than with means. He was always ready to take chances, to hazard everything on the hopes of colossal returns. In the mining days at Placerville there was no more redoubtable poker player in the county. He had been as lucky in his mines as in his gambling, sinking shafts and tunneling in violation of expert theory and finding “pay ” in every case. Without know- ing it, he allowed himself to work his ranch much as if PEOPLE FROM FICTION 87 he was still working his mine. The old-time spirit of ‘49, hap-hazard, unscientific, persisted in his mind. Everything was a gamble—who took the greatest chances was most apt to be the greatest winner. The idea of manuring Los Muertos, of husbanding his great resources, he would have scouted as niggardly, Hebraic, ungenerous. THE Octopus : Frank Norris. Copyright, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co. Used by permission, DINAH MORRIS George Eliot She held no book in her ungloved hands, but let them hang down lightly crossed before her, as she stood and turned her gray eyes on the people. There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations ; they had a liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by external objects. She stood with her left hand towards the descending sun, and leafy boughs screened her from its rays; but in this sober light the delicate coloring of her face seemed to gather calm vividness, like flowers at evening. It was a small oval face, of a uniform transparent whiteness, with an egg-like line of cheek and chin, a full but firm mouth, a delicate nostril, and a low perpendicular brow, surmounted by a rising arch of parting between smooth locks of pale reddish hair. The hair was drawn straight back behind the ears, and covered, except for an inch or two above the brow, by a net Quaker cap. The eyebrows, of the same color as the hair, were per- fectly horizontal and firmly penciled; the eyelashes, 88 DESCRIPTION though no darker, were long and abundant; nothing was left blurred or unfinished. It was one of those faces that make one think of white flowers with light touches of color on their pure petals. The eyes had no peculiar beauty, beyond that of expression ; they looked so simple, so candid, so gravely loving, that no accusing scowl, no light sneer could help melting away before their glance. ADAM BEDE: George Eliot. THE PRINTER OF BURSLEY Arnold Bennett The younger and bigger of the two men chatting in the doorway was Darius Clayhanger, Edwin’s father, and the first printer to introduce steam into Bursley. His age was then scarcely forty-five, but he looked more. He was dressed in black, with an ample shirt-front and a narrow black cravat tied in an angular bow; the wristbands were almost tight on the wrists, and, owing to the shortness of the alpaca coat-sleeves, they were very visible even as Darius Clayhanger stood, with his two hands deep in the horizontal pockets of his “ full-fall” trousers. They were not precisely dirty, these wristbands, nor was the shirt- front, nor the turned-down pointed collar, but all the linen looked as though it would scarcely be wearable the next day. Clayhanger’s linen invariably looked like that, not dirty and not clean; and further, he appeared to wear eternally the same suit, ever on the point of being done for, and never being done for. The trousers always had marked transverse creases; the waistcoat always showed shiningly the outline of every article in the pockets thereof, and it always had a few stains down the front PEOPLE FROM FICTION 89 (and never more than a few) and the lowest button inse- cure. The coat, faintly discolored round the collar and fretted at the cuffs, fitted him easily and loosely like the character of an old crony; it was as if it had grown up with him, and had expanded with his girth. Hishead was a little bald on the top, but there was still a great deal of mixed brown and grayish hair at the back and sides, and the mustache, hanging straight down with an effect recalling the mouth of aseal, was plenteous and defiant; a mustache of character, contradicting the full placidity of the badly shaved chin. CLAYHANGER: Arnold Bennett. Copyright, 1910, by E. P. Dutton & Co. Used by permission. MRS. HAMPS Arnold Bennett Aunt Clara was a handsome woman. Her age was about forty-two, which at that period, in a woman’s habit of mind, was the equivalent of about fifty to-day. Her latest photograph was considered to be very successful. * It showed her standing behind a velvet chair and leaning her large but still shapely bust slightly over the chair. Her forearms, ruffled and braceleted, lay along the fringed back of the chair, and from one negligent hand depended arose. A heavy curtain came downward out of nothing into the picture and the end of it lay coiled and draped on the seat of the chair. The great dress was of slate- colored silk, with sleeves tight to the elbow and thence, from a ribbon bow, broadening to a wide, triangular climax that revealed quantities of lace at the wrists. The pointed ends of the sleeves were picked out with squares of vel- vet. A short and highly ornamental fringed and looped go DESCRIPTION flounce gave contrasting value to the severe plainness of the skirt, designed to emphasize the quality of the silk. Round the neck was a lace collarette to match the furni- ture of the wrists, and the broad ends of the collarette were crossed on the bosom and held by a large jet brooch. Above that you saw a fine regular face, with a firm hard mouth and a very straight nose and dark eyebrows; small ears weighted with heavy jet ear-rings. The photograph could not render the clear perfection of Aunt Clara’s rosy skin; she had the color and the flashing eye of a girl. But it did justice to her really magnificent black hair. This hair was all her own, and the coiffure seemed as ample as a judge’s wig. From the low forehead the hair was parted exactly in the middle for about two inches; then plaited bands crossed and recrossed the scalp in profusion, forming behind a pat- tern exceedingly complicated, and down either side of the head, now behind the ear, now hiding it, now resting on the shoulder, now hanging clear of them, fell long multitudinous glossy curls. CLAYHANGER: Arnold Bennett. Copyright, 1910, by E. P. Dutton & Co, Used by permission, CAPTAIN WHALLEY Joseph Conrad Revolving these thoughts, he strolled on near the rail- ings of the quay, broad-chested, without a stoop, as though his big shoulders had never felt the burden of the loads that must be carried between the cradle and the grave. No single betraying fold or line of care disfigured the reposeful modeling of his face. It was full and untanned ; PEOPLE FROM FICTION gI and the upper part emerged, massively quiet, out of the downward flow of silvery hair, with the striking delicacy of its clear complexion and the powerful width of the forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you candid and swift, like a boy’s; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of the eyebrows the affability of his attention acquired the character of a dark and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on flesh a little, had increased his girth like an old tree presenting no symptoms of decay ; and even the opulent, lustrous ripple of white hairs upon his chest seemed an attribute of unquenchable vitality and vigor. Once rather proud of his great bodily strength, and even of his personal appearance, conscious of his worth, and firm in his rectitude, there had remained to him, like the heritage of departed prosperity, the tranquil bearing of a man who had proved himself fit in every sort of way for the life of his choice. He strode on squarely under the projecting brim of an ancient Panama hat. It had a low crown, a crease through its whole diameter, a nar- row black ribbon. Imperishable and a little discolored, this headgear made it easy to pick him out from afar on thronged wharves and in busy streets. He had never adopted the comparatively modern fashion of pipeclayed cork helmets. He disliked the form; and he hoped he could manage to keep a cool head to the end of his life without all these contrivances for hygienic ventilation. His hair was cropped close, his linen always of immacu- late whiteness ; a suit of thin gray flannel, worn thread-. bare but scrupulously brushed, floated about his burly limbs, adding to his bulk by the looseness of its cut. The years had mellowed the good-humored, imperturbable au- dacity of his prime into a temper carelessly serene ; and 92 DESCRIPTION the leisurely tapping of his iron-shod stick accompanied his footfalls with a self-confident sound on the flagstones. It was impossible to connect such a fine presence and this unruffled aspect with the belittling troubles of pov- erty; the man’s whole existence appeared to pass before you, facile and large, in the freedom of means as ample as the clothing of his body. YOuTH: Joseph Conrad. Copyright, Doubleday, Page & Co. Used by permission. Portrait Sketches Mr. Polly’s age was exactly thirty-five years and a half. He was a short, compact figure, and a little inclined to a localized embonpoint. His face was not unpleasing; the features fine, but a trifle too pointed about the nose to be classically perfect. The corners of his sensitive mouth were depressed. His eyes were a ruddy brown and troubled, and the left one was round with more of wonder in it than its fellow. His complexion was dull and yel- lowish. . .. He was, in the technical sense of the word, clean shaved, with a small sallow patch under the right ear and acuton the chin. His brow had the little pucker- ings of a thoroughly discontented man, little wrinklings and lumps, particularly over his right eye, and he sat with his hands in his pockets, a little askew on the stile, and swung one leg. THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY: A. G. Wells. Copyright by Duffield & Co. Used by permission, PORTRAIT SKETCHES 93 But these were the mere background to the really pleas- ant thing in the spectacle, which was quite the plumpest woman Mr. Polly had ever seen, seated in an armchair in the midst of all these bottles and glasses and glittering things, peacefully and tranquilly, and without the slight- est loss of dignity, asleep. Many people would have called her a fat woman, but Mr. Polly’s innate sense of epithet told him from the outset that plump was the word. She had shapely brows and a straight, well-shaped nose, kind lines and contentment about her mouth. Her plump- ness was firm and pink and wholesome, and her hands, dimpled at every joint, were clasped in front of her; she seemed as it were to embrace herself with infinite confi- dence and kindliness as one who knew herself good in substance, good in essence, and would show her gratitude to God by that ready acceptance of all that He had given her. Her head was a little on one side, not much, but just enough to speak of trustfulness, and rob her of the stiff effect of self-reliance. And she slept. THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY: #. G. Wells. Copyright by Duffield & Co. Used by permission. Uncle Jim was certainly not a handsome person. He was short, shorter than Mr. Polly, with long arms and lean big hands. A thin and wiry neck stuck out of his gray flannel shirt and supported a big head that had some- thing of a snake in the convergent lines of its broad knotty brow, meanly proportioned face, and pointed chin. His almost toothless mouth seemed a cavern in the twi- light. Some accident had left him with one small and active and one large and expressionless reddish eye, and wisps of straight hair strayed from under the blue cricket 94 DESCRIPTION cap he wore pulled down obliquely over the latter. He spat between his teeth and wiped his mouth untidily with the soft side of his fist. THE HIsToRY OF MR. PoLLy: #. G. Wells. Copyright by Duffield & Co. Used by permission. He beheld, then, waddling towards him autocratically, a man of an old-fashioned and gouty aspect, with hair as white as his own, but with shaved, florid cheeks, wearing a neck-tie— almost a neck-cloth— whose stiff ends pro- jected far beyond his chin; with round legs, round arms, a round body, a round face — generally producing the effect of his short figure having been distended by means of an air- pump as much as the seams of his clothing would stand. YOUTH : Joseph Conrad. He was a tall and angular young fellow, of an eager and sophomoric youth. His hair was very light and very smoothly brushed, his eyes blue and rather near-sighted, his complexion pink, with an obviously recent and superfi- cial sunburn, and his clothes, from the white Panama to the broad-soled shoes, of the latest cut and material. In- stinctively I sought his fraternity pin. He looked as though he might say “ Rah, rah,” something or other. THE FOREST: Stewart Edward White. The orchestra glided into the Spanish Dances, and from the wings stepped Dolores. She was dressed all in black. Her bodice, her skirts, her stockings, all were black. So small and so perfectly shaped were her feet that she had the audacity to wear white slippers; and over her left ear rested the stem of a crimson rose. THE MONK AND THE DANCER: Arthur Coslett Smith. PORTRAIT SKETCHES 95 A hawk-faced old man, with a long white beard and long white hair rode out from the cottonwoods. He had ona battered broad hat abormally high of crown, carried across his saddle a heavy rifle, and was followed by half a dozen lolloping hounds. ARIZONA NIGHTS: Stewart Edward White. The door burst open and a man sprang into the room. In his long, thin, white face two black eyes, set near to- gether, burned with terror. His mouth was open and quivering, his hands were fiercely clinched. Under a bat- tered derby hat his stringy black hair and ragged beard played over his paper collar in a fringe. He wore a cutaway suit, green and shiny with age, which, divorced at the waist, showed a ring of red flannel undershirt. He crept up to the counter like a kicked spaniel. THE PICAROONS: Gelett Burgess. A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water’sedge. His face was boyish but with a premature severity that hinted ata man’s experience. His complexion was naturally dark, and the sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown. His hair was as black and straight as an Indian's; his face had not yet been upturned to the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and steady blue. He looked at Captain Boone with the im- personal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor. A DouBLE-DYED DECEIVER: O. Henry. A head utterly withered, of a uniform coppery hue — like some very ancient holy picture, yellow with age; a sharp nose like a keen-edged knife; the lips could barely be seen—only the teeth flashed white and the eyes; and from under the kerchief some thin wisps of yellow 96 DESCRIPTION hair straggled on to the forehead. At the chin, where the quilt was folded, two tiny hands of the same coppery hue were moving, the fingers slowly twitching like little sticks. I looked more intently ; the face, far from being ugly, was positively beautiful, but strange and dreadful; and the face seemed the more dreadful to me that on it — on its metallic cheeks —I saw, struggling . . . struggling, and unable to form itself —a smile. THE LIVING RELIC: /van Turgenev. Students’ Themes IN THE SLEEPER Sleep would not come. My shoes clattered above me, the porter rattled down another berth, and the wheels kept up their incessant rumbling. Restlessly I pushed the blind up a few inches, and leaning on my elbow, looked out. My car, of course, seemed to be standing still while the moonlit landscape fairly flew by me. Broad, gently-swell- ing hills hurried past, fading away to the dim horizon, with occasional black mounds of trees breaking the hazy line between earth and sky. Now the long, dark line of a farmhouse suddenly rushed into view and as suddenly disappeared. Then again came the endless fields, their ragged fences along the roadside apparently running races with the telegraph poles. All at once a sharp whistle pierced the stillness, the fields seemed to lessen their pace, and with a jar we pulled up before a one-roomed, one-story station. A single lamp glimmered through the dingy win- dows. A dirty blue-overalled man lurched across the sag- ging platform and lazily swung his flickering lantern. Again the quick jar, the irregular jerks, and the wheels rumbled monotonously on. STUDENTS’ THEMES 97 THE SHORT-STOP It was the last and the deciding game between the Reds and the Pirates, and every loyal fan in Cincinnati was out at the ball park, rooting like mad for his beloved Reds. As they marched out to their field positions, though, that Pittsburg aggregation assuredly showed a great front, — a husky lot they were. And the biggest and huskiest of them all was the man at short. What broad shoulders, what a chest, what huge scoop-like hands, what bulging calves that short-stop did have! But you looked most of all at his face, — a squatty visage set on a big bull-neck, a face furrowed with wrinkles, with cheek-bones large and protruding, eyes set far back — but nothing escaped their gaze — and a big, broad mouth. Every feature stood out as if carved from bronze, a clean-cut face, full of character, and as brown as the glove on his huge left hand. And who is it? Why, Hans Wagner, the man who made Pittsburg famous, the most wonderful ball player in the world. Yes, he does look big and awkward and clumsy for a great player, but wait till you see him in action. And we did see him in action. If anything came along between second and third, and less than twelve feet in the air, we loyal Red fans heaved another sigh, but pocketed our chagrin in admiration of that great big German. Everywhere he seemed to be; nothing got past him, high or low, near or far. Thwack! and the balls were stopped by that big left mitt, and in the wink of an eye they went whirling over to first base, lit in the basket-like glove over there, and another of our men was out. So it was when we got our only chance to score. One man out, bases full, Larry McLain at the bat. Larry would get ’em if any one 98 DESCRIPTION could; one strike didn’t worry him. Up it came, a nice little “spit-ball,” and bang! it met Larry’s bat fairly and squarely. Oh,whatabeauty! Twice ashighas Wagner’s head it was speeding for the left fence like a bullet, a sure two-bagger. But it never got that far. The mighty Hans crouched and leaped high up in the air, that fatal brown mitt reaching up, up, high above his head. Swack! the ball struck his glove, and down he came to the ground, hold- ing that “ sure two-bagger ”’ in his big left paw. . . . Then, quick as a flash, he shot the sphere to first; Egan was caught, and Hans Wagner had pulled off another double play. In spite of our loyalty to the Reds, we let out a yell of sheer admiration for a feat that none else could ac- complish. AT THE DAY’S END Father and I have been plowing all day to get the early wheat sowed before the frosts. We notice the gathering gloom and the sun rapidly sinking behind the wood in a shadowy blur of red. We unhook the weary, panting teams and plod slowly down the lane to the barns. The harness off the horses, we bed them deep in clean yellow straw, filltheir mangers to overflowing with timothy from the back field, and soon they are crunching contentedly at their grain. The angry, squealing hogs are quieted with a bushel of corn, the cows are milked, watered, and turned out for the night; and as I cross to the barn I see sister ‘Bess coming in from the chicken-house and watch her stop on the back porch to pull the supper bell. Father and I stamp up to the house and with heaves and grunts pull off our boots, splash and splutter into the wash basins, knock our hair into shape, and sink into our STUDENTS’ THEMES 99 chairs at the clean little table with a long sigh. How good that supper tastes! White, mealy potatoes, sweet, fresh-made apple-sauce, thick slices of home-made bread, fragrant, refreshing tea. The meal over, mother and Bess wash the dishes and carefully put them on the shelves. Father is propped back in his chair, slowly puffing at his pipe, and deeply absorbed in the columns of the Pizkuille Express. Stretched out before the stove is Jack, the farm dog, fast asleep, but with twitching legs; the old Maltese cat is under the table, rubbing a delicate paw over and over her face ; and I lean in the doorway, tired, contented, and watch a big yellow star that sparkles in the east, high above the locust tops. UP MT. WASHINGTON The passengers scrambled aboard the stubby little car; the dinky little engine, with much puffing and choking, much noise and bluster, backed up to it, was coupled on, and started up the long steep ascent. Already it was past sundown and the valleys were shadowy, but the mountain peak toward which we aspired, shone with considerable snowy brilliance. More and more slanted the stubby little car as it followed its irascible leader up the steep slope. The conductor showed by a simple experiment with his watch dangling from its chain that the angle of ascent was almost 45°, and told of the possible disaster should that stubby little car break loose. At this recital the fair ladies uttered faint screams of fright, while the brave men looked gallantly and steadfastly and resolutely toward that bril- liant summit. Up went the stubby little car with creaking joints; up came the dark from the valleys. But the summit was still 100 DESCRIPTION bright with its coating of snow. The group of travelers grew silent in the twilight; even the commonplace excla- mations of wonder were hushed. Then the timber line was crossed. From this time on the bantam engine and stubby little car wound their way up amid rocks, big as houses, small as cobblestones, everywhere, desolate, bleak, barren, — but away above was the summit still bright with snow. The sharp, rapid chugging of the bantam engine sud- denly ceased; at which the silent passengers looked anx- iously out, only to discover a little coaling station perched among the rocks. Quickly the supply of coal was taken aboard and the engine began once more its laborious climb. And now the darkness had quite closed up the valleys and enveloped even the dinky little train. A few stars were lighted far away in the sky. And the company was again silent. Then a sudden sense of something impending thrilled through the company. No one knew exactly why, but they all looked toward the mountain-top. A mysterious bright- ness surrounded it; it fairly glowed, as if from some magic radiance. The chugging engine, the creaking car were for- gotten ; the great rock fields were unnoticed ; even the pale stone pillar marking the spot where some one had met a romantic death was passed almost wholly unobserved. The light on the mountain-top grew brighter and brighter. And then the breath was snatched away from the com- pany in half articulated cries of wonder and amazement; male and female cries mingled; and the faces of fair women and brave men were blanched; for away at the summit, rounding the curve of the mountain with a glori- ous sweep — was the full harvest moon. STUDENTS’ THEMES IOI GETTING BOTTOM The river just off the old pier measured thirty feet; too deep, they had said, for even him to dive and bring up bottom. He did not think so, and swore to show them. Thus it was that he stood there that day, perched far out on the farthest pile, his half-naked body glistening in the summer sun, and looking for all the world like some strange bird pausing awhile in its up-river flight. As he stood, his feet could not have been more than three times his own length from the placid green river, yet his eyes seemed to look from a dizzy pinnacle. He squatted once and gazed at the still depths below him: Not so high, — Pshaw ! — Anyway, there was nothing to be gained by delay. He rose, tightened the strings that bound his trunks, then stretched his arms above his head, inclined slightly for- ward, grasped the edge of the pile firmly with his toes, and balanced himself delicately. Of a sudden he crouched, then sprang and shot out, a white streak, down toward the water. The river, the placid river, was now hurled at him with terrific speed. Up it came, up,—clap! His hands had not completely broken the force of the impact and his head ached a little. But he knew only that he was chilled ; the day had been hot. He opened his eyes. He was dropping through an uncanny yellow-green silence. Down, down; with heavy strokes he was pushing the river above him. He paused a moment and stretched his arm below him, — stretch — stretch, his fingers twitched, but only the cold water of the river met them. Again he stroked down- ward; the water grew suddenly icy. It chilled him fur- ther with its silent coldness, and when he opened his eyes, Io2 DESCRIPTION everything was darker, a greenish black. Still no bottom; his chest began to feel the pressure and his ears ached dully. Was he going straight through to China. He thought he must be. Then he would go to China, but he would get bottom. Down — still down — what was that? Mud? His outstretched hand had touched something soft and like velvet, something not water; he struggled to find it again, but he could not. The pressure upon his lungs was killing him; something would burst soon. And his ears pained him acutely. Madly he jerked his head back and up. He no longer thought of the bottom; he no longer thought of anything. He must get up — away — away from this terror that was choking him, that was crushing him. He was shooting up, he knew it, he felt it, —but oh, how slowly! They had said that the river was thirty feet deep; they meant miles. Up, up, —the air was warmer — he was getting nearer, — but air, air, —something — anything but this yellowish water — he must suffocate, burst — Poof! Out! the sur- face — the sun —and he might breathe once more. His eyes were full of water and his ears buzzed; but now that he realized that he was again in his own element, with no imminent danger of being crushed to death, his first thoughts were of the river bed. He batted his eyes and blinked laboriously at the fingers of his right hand. Yes, there was still a trace of the black mud. He had got bottom. THE BASKET-BALL GAME Gayforth had never seen a game of basket-ball. When he was in college, he had played base-ball, principally, STUDENTS’ THEMES 103 though he was interested in foot-ball as well; but basket- ball was a sport known in his time only in the east. As he came down Saturday afternoon from the train, he sat next in the street-car to two young fellows who were eagerly discussing the chances of their college team in a game to come off that night; and the sight of their enthusiasm de- termined him in the intent to see the game. At seven-thirty he was heading into the wind that blew across the open, snow-covered campus, following a slippery path that led toward a huge, shadowy building starred with lights. He pushed his way through the big swinging door, and bought a red ticket from the busy youth who sat at the entrance to the gymnasium floor. It was early when he was led to a seat in the great, empty, high-arched hall, and he sat for a while almost alone, watching with the interest of old association the young fellows who pushed their way to the best places in the gallery, or somewhat self-consciously led pretty girls to the seats on the floor. The lines of golden incandescent electrics blinded him, and he shaded his eyes, as he looked out across the floor, smooth and dimly reflecting the blinking arcs high above. All of a sudden, five bare-shouldered, muscular young men ran swiftly out upon the playing surface. Gayforth followed with eager eyes the quick, sure movements of the practice; he wondered at the lightning passes, the easy, loose-wristed twist with which one man lifted the ball from the foul line into the basket, and the grace and latent strength evident in every move of the young athletes. A band in the gallery suddenly blared forth a quick-step, the crash of the horns and drums sounding deafeningly in the big, echoing room. Another team leaped upon the floor, ran through its practice, and rested. By this time the gallery was packed, and every seat on the floor was taken. 104 DESCRIPTION Gayforth leaned forward from his chair, to be as close as he could to the players. The referee called the men into a close ring in the mid- dle of the floor for instructions. Then the players ran to their places, the whistle shrilled out, and instantly the game was on. Gayforth became bewildered by the con- fusing swiftness and wild intensity of the play. He felt his heart pounding with the old youthful excitement, though his mind was a whirl of half-formed impressions. He heard the constant thud of soft-shod feet striking the hard floor, the dull clang of the basket frame as the ball hooked itself down into the net, and the instant sharp yell that followed from the onlookers. Two men, colliding, fell at his very feet. He glimpsed the contortion of pain that flashed across the face of one; he saw the shine of the lights on their wet faces and shoulders, and caught the sharp odor from their hot, sweating bodies. The whole floor was a maze of moving legs and arms, a bewildering kaleidoscope of shifting pose, with the ball making long arcs across from man to man, or curving through the air toward the basket. By the time Gayforth had fixed the system and the de- tails in his mind, the game was over, and the crowd was streaming in a long, thick-pressed line through the gym- nasium doors and out once more into the moonlit winter night, there to scatter into black patches, trailing in every direction across the snow. THE SHERIFF The B. & O. fast train drew smoothly up to the plat- form at Binkersville. It was scheduled to stop there for ten minutes to change crews, and half the town was STUDENTS’ THEMES 105 down at the station. I cannot tell how it was, but before five minutes had gone, every one in my coach knew there stood a man on the platform “who had killed his man.” With the rest I looked for him out of awakened curiosity. A man was leaning against an empty truck, with his arms folded. He was dressed in a suit of soft, dark blue, on which were brass buttons. His face was rather thin and lean, smooth-shaven except for a stiff, black mustache that bristled over a mouth which gripped a cigar like a vice. The chin was square and protruded slightly. And the black, soft hat with a broad brim fitted his make-up so well that I did not at first notice it. Even as I looked he glanced my way with eyes of the clearest steel gray. I had identified him. ‘The Sheriff,” I said to myself, “he has killed his man.” THE GOVERNOR The crowds that lined both sides of the street cheered wildly as a carriage passed, in which. sat a man who nodded to this side and that and lifted his shiny black silk hat from time to time. He had a face of iron, set, massive, emotionless. An iron-gray mustache bristled stiffly over his lips, but one guessed they fitted firmly together. His well-molded head was covered with short-cropped, iron- gray hair. His eyes were blue-gray with a glint of steel in them. Every inch of him declared the man a master of men. There was no need for any one to say it; all knew at a glance that this was the — Governor. NARRATION Simple Incident THE SWORD Laurence Sterne When states and empires have their periods of declen- sion, and feel in their turns what distress and poverty is, —I stop not to tell the causes which gradually brought the house of d’E ,in Brittany, into decay. The Marquis dvE had fought up against his condition with great firm- ness; wishing to preserve, and still show to the world, some little fragments of what his ancestors had been — their indiscretions had put it out of his power. There was enough left for the little exigencies of obscurity. But he had two boys who looked up to him for /¢gkt — he thought they deserved it. He had tried his sword, —it could not open the way, — the mounting was too expensive, — and simple economy was not a match for it: there was no resource but commerce. In any other province in France saving Brittany, this was smiting the root forever of the little tree his pride and affection wished to see reblossom. But, in Brittany, there being a provision for this, he availed himself of it; and, taking an occasion when the States were assembled at Rennes, the Marquis, attended with his two boys, en- tered the court; and having pleaded the right of an an- 106 SIMPLE INCIDENT 107 cient law of the duchy, which, though seldom claimed, he said, was no less in force, he took his sword from his side: “Here,” said he, “take it; and be trusty guardian of it till better times put me in condition to reclaim it.” The president accepted the Marquis’s sword; he stayed a few minutes to see it deposited in the archives of his house, and departed. The Marquis and his whole family embarked the next day for Martinico, and, in about nineteen or twenty years of successful application to business, with some unlooked- for bequests from distant branches of his house, returned home to reclaim his nobility, and to support it. It was an incident of good fortune, which will never happen to any traveler but a sentimental one, that I should be at Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition: I call it solemn —it was so to me. The Marquis entered the court with his whole family: he supported his lady ; — his eldest son supported his sister, and his youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his mother — he put his handkerchief to his face twice. There was a dead silence. When the Marquis had ap- proached within six paces of the tribunal, he gave the Marchioness to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before his family —he reclaimed his sword. His sword was given him; and the moment he got it into his hand, he drew it almost out of the scabbard:— ’twas the shining face of a friend he had once given up :— he looked attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the same, — when observing a little rust which it had contracted, near the point, he brought it near his eye, —I think I saw a tear fall upon the place, —I could not be deceived by what followed. “T shall find,” said he, “some other way to get it off.” 108 NARRATION When the Marquis had said this, he returned his sword into its scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it, — and, with his wife and daughter, and his two sons follow- ing him, walked out. Oh, how I envied him his feelings! A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY: Laurence Sterne, TOM TULLIVER COMES HOME FOR VACATION George Eliot Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels to be expected; for if Mrs. Tulliver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came —the quick, light bowling of the gig-wheels — and in spite of the wind, which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to re- spect Mrs. Tulliver’s curls and cap-strings, she came out- side the door, and even held her hand on Maggie’s offend- ing head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning. “There he is, my sweet lad! But Lord ha’ mercy! he’s got never a collar on; it’s been lost on the road, I’ll be bound, and spoilt the set.” Mrs. Tulliver stood with her arms open; Maggie jumped first on one leg and then on the other; while Tom de- scended from the gig, and said, with masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, “Hello! Yap!— What! are you there?” Nevertheless, he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Maggie hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-gray eyes wandered toward the SIMPLE INCIDENT | 109 croft, and the lambs, and the river, where he promised himself that he would begin to fish the first thing to-morrow morning. He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and, at twelve or thirteen years of age, look as much alike as goslings—a lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eye-brows —a physiognomy in which it seems impos- sible to discern anything but the generic character of boy- hood; as different as possible from poor Maggie’s phiz, which Nature seemed to have molded and colored with the most decided intention. But that same Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals some of her most rigid, inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodifiable characters; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink and white bit of masculinity with the inde- terminate features. “ Maggie,” said Tom, confidentially, taking her into a corner as soon as his mother was gone out to examine his box, and the warm parlor had taken off the chill he had felt from the long drive, ‘“‘ you don’t know what I’ve got in my pockets,” nodding his head up and down as a means of arousing her sense of mystery. “No,” said Maggie. “How stodgy they look, Tom! Is it marls (marbles) or cobnuts?” Maggie’s heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was “no good”’ playing with der at those games — she played so badly. “Marls! no; I’ve swopped all my marls with the little IIo : NARRATION fellows, and cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the nuts are green. But see here!” He drew something half out of his right-hand pocket. “What is it?” said Maggie, ina whisper. “I can see nothing but a bit of yellow.” “Why, it’sa new... guess, Maggie.” “Oh, I can’t guess, Tom,” said Maggie, impatiently. “Don’t be a spit-fire, else I won’t tell you,” said Tom, thrusting his hand back into his pocket and looking de- termined. ‘No, Tom,” said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold of the arm that was stiffly held in the pocket. “I’m not cross, Tom; it was only because I can’t bear guessing. Please be good to me.” Tom’s arm slowly relaxed, and he said, ‘‘ Well, then, it’s a new fish-line —two new uns— one for you, Maggie, all to yourself. I wouldn’t go halves in the toffee and ginger-bread on purpose to save the money; and Gibson and Spouncer fought with me because I wouldn’t. And here’s hooks — see here! ... I say, won't we go an’ fish to-morrow down by Round Pool? And you shall catch your own fish, Maggie, and put the worms on, and every- thing: won’t it be fun?” Maggie’s answer was to throw her arms around Tom’s neck and hug him, and hold her cheek against his without speaking, while he slowly unwound some of the line, say- ing, after a pause : “Wasn’t I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to yourself? You know, I needn’t have bought it if I hadn’t liked.” “Yes, very, very good... . I do Jove you, Tom.” Tom had put the line back in his pocket, and was look- ing at the hooks one by one before he spoke again. SIMPLE INCIDENT III “And the fellows fought me because I wouldn’t give in about the toffee.” “Oh, dear! I wish they wouldn’t fight at your school, Tom. Didn’t it hurt you?” “Hurt me? no,” said Tom, putting up the hooks again, taking out a large pocket-knife, and slowly opening the largest blade, which he looked at meditatively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he added: “TI gave Spouncer a black eye, I know—that’s what he got by wanting to leather me,; I wasn’t going to go halves because anybody leathered me.” “Oh, how brave you are, Tom! I think you're like Samson. If there came a lion roaring at me, I think you'd fight him — wouldn’t you, Tom?” “How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing? There’s no lions only in the shows.” “No; but if we were in the lion countries —I mean, in Africa, where it’s very hot — the lions eat people there. I can show it you in a book where I read it.” “Well, I should get a gun and shoot him.” “ But if you hadn’t got a gun—we might have gone out, you know, not thinking, just as we go fishing; and then a great lion might run toward us roaring, and we couldn’t get away from him. What should you do, Tom?” Tom paused, and at last turned away contemptuously, saying, ‘“‘But the lion zsz’¢ coming. What’s the use of talking?” “But I like to fancy how it would be,” said Maggie, following him. Just think what would you do, Tom?” “Oh, don’t bother, Maggie! you're such a silly—I shall go and see my rabbits.” Maggie’s heart began to flutter with fear She dared not tell the sad truth at once, but she walked after Tom 112 NARRATION in trembling silence as he went out, thinking how she could tell him the news so as to soften at once his sorrow and his anger; for Maggie dreaded Tom’s anger of all things — it was quite a different anger from her own. “Tom,” she said, timidly, when they were out-of-doors, “how much money did you give for your rabbits?” “ Two half-crowns and a sixpence,” said Tom, promptly. “T think I have a great deal more money than that in my steel purse upstairs. I’ll ask mother to give it you.” “What for?” said Tom. “I don’t want your money, you silly thing. I’ve got a great deal more money than you, because I’m a boy. I always have half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes, because I shall be a man, and you only have five-shilling pieces, because you're only a girl.” “Well, but, Tom—if mother would let me give two half-crowns and a sixpence out of my purse to put into your pocket to spend, you know, and buy some more rabbits with it?” “More rabbits? I don’t want any more.” “Oh, but, Tom, they’re all dead.” Tom stopped immediately in his walk and turned around toward Maggie, ‘“‘ You forgot to feed’em, then, and Harry forgot?” he said, his color heightening for a moment, but soon subsiding. “Tl pitch into Harry—TI'll have him turned away. And I don’t love you, Maggie. You shan’t go fishing with me to-morrow. I told you to go and see the rabbits every day.” He walked on again. “Yes, but I forgot—and I couldn’t help it, indeed, Tom. I’m so very sorry,” said Maggie, while the tears rushed fast. “You're a naughty girl,” said Tom, severely, “and I’m sorry I bought you the fish-line. I don’t love you.” SIMPLE INCIDENT II3 “Oh, Tom, it’s very cruel,” sobbed Maggie. ‘“I’d for- give you if you forgot anything —I wouldn’t mind what you did —I’d forgive you and love you.” “You're a silly; but I never do forget things —/ don’t.” “Oh, please forgive me, Tom; my heart will break,” said Maggie, shaking with sobs, clinging to Tom’s arm, and laying her wet cheek on his shoulder. Tom shook her off and stopped again, saying in a per- emptory tone, “ Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren’t Ia good brother to you?” “Ye-ye-es,” sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling convulsively. “ Didn’t I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money o’ purpose, and wouldn’t go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn’t?” “Ye-ye-es ...andI.... lo-lolove you so, Tom.” “But you’re a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for nothing.” “But I didn’t mean,” said Maggie; ‘I couldn’t help it.” “Yes, you could,” said Tom, “if you’d minded what you were doing. And you area naughty girl, and you shan’t go fishing with me to-morrow.” With this terrible conclusion Tom ran away from Maggie toward the mill, meaning to greet Luke there, and complain to him of Harry. Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two; then she turned round and ran into the house and up to her attic, where she sat on the floor and II4 NARRATION laid her head against the worm-eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Tom was come home, and she had thought how happy she should be, and now he was cruel to her. What use was anything if Tom didn’t love her? Oh, he was cruel! Hadn’t she wanted to give him the money, and said how sorry she was? She knew she was naughty to her mother, but she had never been naughty to Tom — had never meant to be naughty to him. “Oh, he is cruel!” Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the attic. She was too miserable to be angry. These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless. Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be tea-time, and they were all having their tea and not thinking of her. Well, then, she would stay up there and starve herself — hide herself behind the tub, and stay there all night; and then they would all be frightened, and Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the pride of her heart as she crept behind the tub; but she began to cry again at the idea that they didn’t mind her being there. If she went down again to Tom now, would he forgive her? Perhaps her father would be there, and he would take her part. But, then, she wanted Tom to forgive her because he loved her, not because his father told him. No, she would never go down if Tom didn’t come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride, SIMPLE INCIDENT II5 and soon threw it. She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just then she heard foot- steps on the stairs. Tom had been too much interested in his talk with Luke, in going the round of the premises, walking in and out where he pleased, and whittling sticks without any par- ticular reason, except that he didn’t whittle sticks at school, to think of Maggie and the effect his anger had produced on her. He meant to punish her, and, that business hav- ing been performed, he occupied himself with other matters like a practical person. But when he had been called in to tea, his father said, “ Why, where’s the little wench?” and Mrs. Tulliver, almost at the same moment, said, “Where’s your little sister?” both of them having supposed that Maggie and Tom had been together all the afternoon. “JT don’t know,” said Tom. He didn’t want to “tell” on Maggie, though he was angry with her; for Tom Tulliver was a lad of honor. “What! hasn’t she been playing with you all this while?” said his father. ‘“ She’d been thinking o’ nothing but your coming home.” “T haven’t seen her this two hours,” says Tom, com- mencing on the plum-cake. “ Goodness heart, she’s got drownded!” exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, rising from her seat and running to the window. “How could you let her do so?” she added, as became a fearful woman, accusing she didn’t know whom of she didn’t know what. “Nay, nay, she’s none drownded,” said Mr. Tulliver. “You've been naughty to her, I doubt, Tom?” “T’m sure I haven’t, father,” said Tom, indignantly. “T think she’s in the house.” “Perhaps up in the attic,” said Mrs. Tulliver, “a-singing \ 116 NARRATION and talking to herself and forgetting all about meal- times.” “You go and fetch her down, Tom,” said Mr. Tulliver, rather sharply, his perspicacity or his fatherly fondness for Maggie making him suspect that the lad had been rather hard upon “ the little un,” else she would never have left his side. ‘And be good to her, do you hear? else I'll let you know better.” Tom never disobeyed his father, for Mr. Tulliver was a peremptory man, and, as he said, would never let anybody get hold of his whip-hand; but he went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plum-cake, and not intending to re- trieve Maggie's punishment, which was no more than she deserved. Tom was only thirteen, and had no decided views in grammar an‘? atithmetic, regarding them for the most part as open questions, but he was particularly clear and positive on one point; namely, that he would punish everybody who deserved it; why, he wouldn’t have minded being punished himself, if he deserved it; but, then, he never adzd deserve it. It was Tom’s step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs when her need of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down with her swollen eyes and disheveled hair to beg for pity. At least her father would stroke her head and say, “‘ Never mind, my wench.” It is a wonder- ful subduer, this need of love —this hunger of the heart — as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke and change the face of the world. But she knew Tom’s step, and her heart began to beat violently with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of the stairs, and said, “ Maggie, you're to come down.” But she rushed to him and clung around his neck, sobbing, ‘Oh, Tom, please forgive me —I can’t SIMPLE INCIDENT 117 bear it — I will always be good —always remember things — do love me — please, dear Tom!” We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarreled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swal- lowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behavior to the mere impulsiveness of the lower ani- mals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilized society. Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random, sobbing way ; and there were tender fibers in the lad that had been used to answer to Maggie’s fondling, so that he behaved with a,weakness quite inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as she deserved; he actually began to kiss her in return, and say: “Don’t cry, then, Magsie —here, eat a bit 0’ cake.” Maggie’s sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company ; and they ate together, and rubbed each other’s cheeks and brows and noses together while they ate with a humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies. “Come along, Magsie, and have tea,” said Tom, at last, when there was no more cake except what was downstairs. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS: George Eliot. 118 NARRATION A DOG-FIGHT Dr. John Brown Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were com- ing up Infirmary Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why. When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church. “A dog-fight!” shouted Bob, and was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we got up! And is not this boy nature? and human nature too? and don’t we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like fighting ; old Isaac says they “delight” in it, and for the best of all reasons ; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They see three of the great car- dinal virtues of dog or man—courage, endurance, and skill—in intense action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A boy, be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off with Bob and me fast enough: it is a natural, and a not wicked interest, that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action. Does any curious and finely ignorant woman wish to know how Bob’s eye at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could not see the dogs fighting ; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd mascu- line mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman, fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her SIMPLE INCIDENT “11g tongue and her hands freely upon the men, as so many “brutes”; it is a crowd annular, compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus. Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over: a small, thoroughbred, white buli terrier is busy throttling a large shepherd’s dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trified with. They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up, took his final grip of poor Yarrow’s throat, — and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a brown, hand- some, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would ‘drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile,” for that part, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. “Water!” but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. “Bite the tail!’’ and a large, vague, benevolent middle aged man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of Yarrow’s tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged friend, — who went down like a shot. Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. ‘ Snuff! a pinch of snuff!” observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an eye-glass in his eye. “Snuff, indeed!” 120° NARRATION growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring. “ Snuff! a pinch of snuff!” again observes the buck, but with more urgency ; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free! The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms, — comforting him. But the -bull terrier’s blood is up, and his soul unsatis- fied; he grips the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of amende, and is off. The boys, with Bob and mé at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes, bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow,— Bob and I, and our small men, panting behind. There under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff, sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets: he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, and has the Shakespearean dewlaps shaking as he goes. The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold himself up, and roar, — yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar. How is this? Bob and Tare up tothem. He zs muzzled! The bailies had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master study- ing strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient dveechix. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage, —a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the dark- ness ; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring ; his SIMPLE INCIDENT 121 whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, “ Did you ever see the like of this?” He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite. i We soon had a crowd; the Chicken held on. “A knife!” cried Bob; and a cobbler gave him his knife: you know the kind of knife, worn away obliquely to a point and always keen. I put its edge to the tense leather; it ran before it; and then! —one sudden jerk of that enor- mous head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, —and the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped limp and dead. A solemn pause: this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the small of the back like a rat, and broken it. He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed ; snuffed him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, “ John, we’ll bury him after tea.” “Yes,” said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made up the Cowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten some en- gagement. He turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn. There was a carrier’s cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient, black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse’s head, looking about angrily for something. “Rab, ye thief!” said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than dignity, and watching his master’s eye, slunk dismayed under the cart,—his ears down, and as much as he had of tail down too. What a man this must be, — thought I, — to whom my tremendous hero turns tail! The carrier saw the muzzle 122 NARRATION hanging, cut and useless, from his neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone, were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to say, ‘ Rab, my man, puir Rabbie,” — whereupon the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted ; the two friends were reconciled. ‘ Hupp!” and a stroke of the whip were given to-Jess; and off went the three. Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a tea) in the back-green of his house in Mel- ville Street, No. 17, with considerable gravity and silence ; and being at the time in the Iliad, and, like all boys, Tro- jans, we called him Hector, of course. RAB AND HIs FRIENDS: Dr. John Brown, A Sketch AGED FOLK Alphonse Daudet “A letter, Pére Azan?” “Yes, monsieur; and it comes from Paris.” He was quite proud, that worthy old Azan, that it came from Paris. I was not. Something told me that that Pa- risian missive from the Rue Jean-Jacques, dropping thus upon my table unexpectedly, and so early in the morning, would make me lose my whole day. I was not mistaken, — and you shall see why. “You must do me a service, my friend,” said the letter. ‘Close your mill for a day, and go to Eyguieres. Eyguieres A SKETCH 123 is a large village, three or four leagues from your mill, — a pleasant walk. When you get there, ask for the Orphans’ Convent. The first house beyond the convent is a low building with gray shutters, and a small garden behind it. Enter without knocking, —the door is always open, —and as you enter, call out very loud: ‘Good-day, worthy people ! I am a friend of Maurice.’ On which you will see two little old persons— oh ! but old, old, ever so old — stretching out their hands to you from their big armchairs; and you are to kiss them for me, with all your heart, as if they were yours, your own friends. Then you will talk. They will talk to you of me, and nothing else; they will say a lot of foolish things, which you are to listen to without laughing. You won’t laugh, will you? They are my grandparents ; two beings whose very life Iam, and who have not seen me these ten years. ... Ten years,a long time! But how can I help it? Paris clutches me. And they, they are so old that if they came to see me, they would break to bits on the way.... Happily, you are there, my dear miller, and, in kissing you, these poor old people will fancy they are kissing me. I have so often told them about you, and of the good friendship that —” The devil take good friendship! Just this very morning, when the weather is so beautiful but not at all fit to tramp along the roads; too much mistral, too much sun, a regular Provence day. When that cursed letter came, I had just picked out my shelter between two rocks, where I dreamed of staying all day like a lizard, drinking light and listening to the song of the pines. Well, I could not help myself. I shut up the mill, grumbling, and hid the key. My stick, my pipe, and off I went. : I reached Eyguieres in about two hours. The village was deserted; everybody was in the fields. From the elms 124 NARRATION in the courtyards, white with dust, the grasshoppers were screaming. To be sure, in the square before the mayor’s office, a donkey was sunning himself, and a flock of pigeons were dabbling in the fountain before the church, but no one able to show me the Orphans’ Convent. Happily, an old witch suddenly appeared, crouching and knitting in the angle of her doorway. I told her what I was looking for; and as she was a witch of very great power, she had only to raise her distaff, and behold! the Orphans’ Convent rose up before me. It was a large, sullen, black house, proud of exhibiting above its. arched portal an old cross of red freestone with Latin around it. Beside this house, I saw another, very small; gray shutters, garden behind it. I knew it directly, and I entered without knocking. All my life I shall remember that long, cool, quiet cor- ridor, the walls rose-tinted, the little garden quivering at the other end, and seen through a thin blind. It seemed to me that I was entering the house of some old bailiff of the olden time of Sedaine. At the end of the passage, on the left, through a half-opened door, I heard the tick-tack of a large clock and the voice of a child —a child in school —who was reading aloud, and pausing at each syllable: “Then — Saint — I-re-nze-us — cri-ed — out — I—am — the — wheat — of — the — Lord — I—must —be — ground — by — the — teeth — of — these —an-i-mals.” I softly approached the door and looked in. In the quiet half-light of a little room, an old, old man with rosy cheeks, wrinkled to the tips of his fingers, sat sleeping in a chair, his mouth open, his hands on his knees. At his feet, a little girl dressed in blue — with a great cape and a linen cap, the orphan’s costume — was reading the life of Saint Irenzeus in a book that was bigger than herself. The reading had operated miraculously on the entire house- A SKETCH 125 hold. The old man slept in his chair, the flies on the ceil- ing, the canaries in their cage at the window, and the great clock snored: tick-tack, tick-tack. Nothing was awake in the room but a broad band of light, which came, straight and white, between the closed shutters, full of lively sparkles and microscopic whirlings. Amid this general somnolence, the child went gravely on with her reading : — “Tm-me-di-ate-ly — two — li-ons —dart-ed — up-on — him —and—ate—him—up.” At this moment I entered the room. The lions of Saint Jrenzeus darting into the room could not have produced greater stupefaction. A regular stage effect! The little one gave a cry, the big book fell, the flies and the canaries woke, the clock struck, the old man started up, quite frightened, and I myself, being rather troubled, stopped short on the sill of the door, and called out very loud: ‘“ Good-day, worthy people! I am Maurice’s friend.” Oh, then! if you had only seen him, that old man, if you had only seen how he came to me with outstretched arms, embracing me, pressing my hands, and wandering about the room, crying out: — “Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!” All the wrinkles of his face were laughing. He was red. He stuttered : — “ Ah! monsieur—ah! monsieur.” Then he went to the back of the room and called : — “Mamette!” A door opened, a trot of mice in the corridor—it was Mamette. Nothing prettier than that little old woman with her mob-cap, her brown gown, and the embroidered handkerchief which she held in her hand in the olden fashion. Most affecting thing! the two were like each 126 NARRATION other. With a false front and yellow bows to his cap, he too might be called Mamette. Only, the real Mamette must have wept a great deal in her life, for she was even more wrinkled than he. Like him, she, too, had an orphan with her, a little nurse in a blue cape who never left her; and to see these old people protected by those orphans was indeed the most touching thing you can imagine. On entering, Mamette began to make mea deep curtsey, but a word of the old man stopped her in the middle of it:— “A friend of Maurice.” Instantly she trembled, she wept, dropped her handker- chief, grew red, very red, redder than he. Those aged folk! who have hardly a drop of blood in their veins, how it flies to their face at the least emotion! “Quick, quick, a chair,” said the old lady to her little girl. “Open the shutters,” said the old man to his. Then taking me each by a hand they led me, trotting along, to the window the better to see me. The armchairs were placed; I sat between the two on a stool, the little Blues behind us, and the questioning began: — “How is he? What is he doing? Why doesn’t he come? Is he happy?” Patati, Patata/ and so on for two hours. I answered as best I could all their questions, giving such details about my friend as I knew, and boldly invent- ing others that I did not know; being careful to avoid ad- mitting that I had never noticed whether his windows closed tightly and what colored paper he had on his walls. “The paper of his bedroom? blue, madame, light blue, with garlands of flowers —” A SKETCH 127 “Really!” said the old lady, much affected; then she added, turning to her husband: “He is such a dear lad!” “Yes, yes! a dearlad!” said the other, with enthusiasm. And all the time that I was speaking they kept up between them little nods, and sly laughs and winks, and knowing looks; or else the old man came closer to say in my ear: — “Speak louder, she is a little hard of hearing.” And she on her side : — “A little louder, if you please. He doesn’t hear very well.” Then I raised my voice, and both of them thanked me with a smile; and in those faded smiles, —bending toward me, seeking in the depths of my eyes the image of their Maurice,—TI was, myself, quite moved to see that image, vague, veiled, almost imperceptible, as if I beheld my friend smiling to me from afar through a mist. Suddenly the old man sat upright in his chair. “T have just thought, Mamette, —perhaps he has not breakfasted !” And Mamette, distressed, throws up her arms. “ Not breakfasted! oh, heavens!” I thought they were still talking of Maurice, and I was about to say that that worthy lad never waited later than noon for his breakfast. . But no, it was of me they were thinking ; and it was indeed a sight to see their commotion when I had to own that I was still fasting. “Quick! set the table, little Blues! That table in the middle of the room—the Sunday cloth—the flowered plates. And no laughing, if you please! Make haste, make haste!” And haste they made. Only time to break three plates and breakfast was served. “A good little breakfast,” said Mamette, leading me 128 NARRATION to the table; “only, you must eat it alone. We have eaten already.” Mamette’s good little breakfast was a cup of milk, dates, and a barquette, a kind of shortcake, no doubt enough to feed her canaries for a week; and to think that I, alone, I ate up all their provisions! I felt the indignation around the table; the little Blues whispered and nudged each other; and those canaries in their cage, —I knew they were saying: “Oh! that monsieur, he is eating up the whole of the barquette!” I did eat it all, truly, almost without perceiving that I did so, preoccupied as I was by looking round that light and placid room, where floated, as it were, the fragrance of things ancient. Especially noticeable were two little beds from which I could not detach my eyes. Those beds, almost two cradles, I pictured them in the morning at dawn, still inclosed within their great fringed curtains. Three o’clock strikes. That is the hour when old people wake. “ Are you asleep, Mamette?” “No, my friend.” “TIsn’t Maurice a fine lad?” “Yes, yes, a fine lad.” And from that I imagined a long conversation by merely looking at the little beds of the two old people, standing side by side. During this time a terrible drama was going on at the other end of the room beforea closet. It concerned reach- ing up to the top shelf for a certain bottle of brandied cherries which had awaited Maurice’s return for the last ten years. The old people now proposed to open it for me. In spite of Mamette’s supplications the husband was determined to get the cherries himself, and, mounted on a A SKETCH 129 chair to the terror of his wife, he was striving to reach them. You can see the scene from here: the old man trembling on the points of his toes, the little Blues clinging to his chair, Mamette behind him, breathless, her arms ex- tended, and, pervading all, a slight perfume of bergamot exhaled from the open closet and the great piles of un- bleached linen therein contained. It was charming. At last, after ‘many efforts, they succeeded in getting it from the closet, that famous bottle, and with it an old silver cup, Maurice’s cup when he was little. This they filled with cherries to the brim — Maurice was so fond of cherries! And while the old man served me, he whispered in my ear, as if his mouth watered : — “You are very lucky, you, to be the one to eat them. My wife put them up. You'll taste something good.” Alas! his wife had put them up, but she had forgotten to sweeten them. They were atrocious, your cherries, my poor Mamette— But that did not prevent me from eat- ing them all without blinking. The meal over, I rose to take leave of my hosts. They would fain have kept me longer to talk of that dear lad, but the day was shortening, the mill was far, and I had to go. The old man rose when I did. “Mamette, my coat; I will accompany him as far as the square.” I felt very sure that in her heart Mamette thought it too cool for the old man to be out, but she did not show it. Only, as she helped him to put his arms into the sleeves of his coat, a handsome snuff-colored coat with mother- of-pearl buttons, I heard the dear creature say to him softly : — “ You won't be late, will you?” 130 NARRATION And he, with a roguish air : — “Hey! hey! I don’t know — perhaps not.” Thereupon they looked at each other, laughing, and the little Blues laughed to see them laugh, and the canaries laughed, too, in their cage, after their fashion. Between ourselves I think the smell of those cherries had made them all a little tipsy. Daylight was fading as we left the house, grandpapa and I. A little Blue followed at a distance to bring him back; but he did not see her, and seemed quite proud to walk along, arm in arm with me, like a man. Mamette, beaming, watched us from the sill of her door with pretty little nods of her head that seemed to say: “ See there! my poor man, he can still walk about.” LETTERS FROM My MILL: Alphonse Daudet. Copyright, 1900, by Little, Brown & Co. Used by permission. Dramatic Episode CLIMBING BAGWORTHY WATER Richard D. Blackmore But when I was turned fourteen years old, and put into good smallclothes, buckled at the knee, and strong blue worsted hosen, knitted by my mother, it happened to me without choice, I may say, to explore the Bagworthy water. And it came about in this wise. My mother had long been ailing, and not well able to eat much; and there is nothing that frightens us so much as for people to have no love of their victuals. Now I chanced to remember that once, at the time of the holi- days, I had brought dear mother, from Tiverton, a jar of DRAMATIC EPISODE 131 pickled loaches, caught by myself in the Lowman river, and baked in the kitchen oven, with vinegar, a few leaves of bay, and about a dozen pepper-corns. And mother had said that, in all her life, she had never tasted anything fit to be compared with them. Whether she said so good a thing out of compliment to my skill in catching the fish and cooking them, or whether she really meant it, is more than I can tell, though I quite believe the latter, and so would most people who tasted them; at any rate I now resolved to get some loaches for her, and do them in the selfsame manner, just to make her eat a bit. There are many people, even now, who have not come to the right knowledge what a loach is, and where he lives, and how to catch and pickle him. And I will not tell them all about it, because, if I did, very likely there would be no loaches left ten or twenty years after the appear- ance of this book.