LIBRARY) 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO !

 
 PUSHED BY UNSEEN HANDS.
 
 "In the brain, that wondrous world with one in 
 habitant, there are recesses dim and dark, treacherous 
 sands and dangerous shores, where seeming sirens 
 tempt and fade; streams that rise in unknown lands 
 from hidden springs, strange seas with % ebb and flow 
 of tides, resistless billows urged by storms of flame, 
 profound and awful depths hidden by mist of dreams, 
 obscure and phantom realms where vague and fear 
 ful things are half revealed, jungles where passion's 
 tigers crouch, and skies of cloud and blue where fan 
 cies fly with painted wings that dazzle and mislead; 
 and the poor sovereign of this pictured world is led 
 by old desires and ancient hates, and stained by 
 crimes of many vanished years, and pushed by hands 
 that long ago were dust, until he feels like some 
 bewildered slave that Mockery has throned and 
 
 crowned." 
 
 INGERSOLL.
 
 PUSHED BY UNSEEN 
 HANDS 
 
 BY 
 HELEN H. GARDENER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "Men, Women and Gods," te Sex in Brain," "Pulpit, Pew and 
 Cradle," "Is This Your Son, My Lord?" "A Thought 
 less Yes," "Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter," 
 "An Unofficial Patriot," and " Facts and 
 Fictions of Life" 
 
 FOURTH EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 
 
 9 AND I I EAST 1 6TH STREET
 
 Copyright 1890 
 
 BY 
 HELEN H. GA.RDENKR
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PREFACE, 9 
 
 AN ECHO FROM SHILOH, 17 
 
 OLD SAFETY-VALVE'S LAST RUN, .... 37 
 
 How MARY ALICE WAS CONVERTED, ... 77 
 
 A HALL OF HEREDITY, 97 
 
 "THAT REMINDS ME OF" . . . .137 
 
 His MOTHER'S BOY, 157 
 
 MR. WALK-A-LEG ADAMS "MEETS UP WITH" A 
 
 TARTAR, 197 
 
 ONYX AND GOLD, 219 
 
 IN DEEP WATER, 245 
 
 A PRISON PUZZLE, 271
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 1 > ACK of all human action there is a 
 
 sufficient cause. Some of the more 
 open and simple causes we have learned to 
 recognize. But in the complex and as yet 
 unanalyzed varieties of mental, moral, social, 
 industrial, or other aberrations, of what is 
 by courtesy called civilized society, we are 
 constantly confronted by strange manifesta 
 tions which we have made little intelligent 
 effort to comprehend. 
 
 In the industrial world the unseen hand 
 of greed has pushed millions of men into 
 an abjectness measured only by the awful 
 limits of their dependence. It has fostered in 
 the race those mental, moral and physical 
 conditions which retard even the painfully 
 slow progress of natural evolution toward 
 a loftier manhood.
 
 io Preface. 
 
 Again, in the dark and untrod halls of 
 heredity we have ignored and. still insist 
 upon ignoring the plainest finger-prints 
 of the " unseen hands that long ago were 
 dust." Only when those finger-prints are left 
 in blood do we deign to recognize them, 
 when it is, alas, too late to place in 
 their shadowy grasp the roses of beauty 
 and sheathe for them the weapons which 
 are double-edged. And so the blind lead 
 the blind and are pushed by the blind un 
 til they stumble by chance or fate upon 
 horror or hope, and, learning nothing by 
 the experience, their children and their chil 
 dren's children still grope within the same 
 dark walls and draw the window-shades 
 of habit and inherited forms of thought 
 against the sunlight of science and a ra 
 tional to-morrow. 
 
 Often our very courts of Justice are 
 made partners with the criminals they 
 prosecute because they must administer 
 laws which have come down to us from
 
 Preface. 1 1 
 
 the unseen hands of brutal power brutally 
 applied, or from ignorance, superstition, un 
 fairness or stealth. 
 
 The Past claps its fleshless hands and 
 the Present dances to the music of the 
 rattling bones. Until we cease, in the 
 darkness of willing blindness, to put patches 
 on the Past and learn to fit a new gar 
 ment to the fair form of the Future, we 
 shall continue to be pushed and swayed and 
 controlled by the myriad unseen hands that 
 should be to us a helpful memory and not 
 a merciless menace. 
 
 In these little studies of social and hered 
 itary conditions I hope I may have sug 
 gested many lines of thought to those who 
 care to think, and furnished imaginative en 
 tertainment for those who prefer to muse. 
 
 Dr. E. C. Spitzka, the leading brain spe 
 cialist (or alienist) of America, in writing of 
 certain of these stories, says: 
 
 " I am inclined to criticise and commend 
 this work much more earnestly than would
 
 1 2 Preface, 
 
 be looked for from the technical position of a 
 specialist. I attach far more than a mere 
 literary value to two of these stories, to which 
 especial attention is not likely to be directed, 
 and believe no other author of fiction has 
 ever adequately attempted what is here done. 
 The book will not only retain a place in 
 my library, but I also feel sure that other 
 more 'unified' works by the same pen will 
 be placed beside it. Appealing as they may 
 to a larger circle of readers, they must earn 
 the author a recognition, alas, to-day, awarded 
 to many shallow pretenders instead. . . . 
 We see strange things in the field of heredity, 
 and I can pay the book no higher compliment 
 than to say that I had heretofore believed 
 only specialists capable of at once intelli 
 gently and popularly dealing with these 
 subjects." . . . 
 
 While this most eminent brain authority 
 honors these sketches with a place in his 
 library, on the basis of their scientific sug 
 gestion and value, the late Don Piatt wrote
 
 Preface. 1 3 
 
 of similar stories by the same pen, which 
 have appeared 'under another title : 
 
 " It is not that they are beautiful stories, 
 for the charm is not in the fact of the 
 story, but in the delicate touch that leaves 
 so much to the reader's imagination. It 
 requires an imaginative genius to do this. 
 With such a quality and with her exquisite 
 touch she has a genius for writing fiction 
 which she should not throw away or degrade 
 on reformative novels or scientific specula 
 tion. These stories are rare fiction. Facts, 
 science and reformation work belong in an 
 other field." 
 
 And so each must decide for himself 
 what these stories contain for him. Whether 
 they present to his mind scientific suggestion 
 of important facts, or merely offer the enter 
 tainment of more or less impossible fiction. 
 Whether they will amuse his leisure hours 
 and tickle the fancy of a drowsy man, or 
 whether they are a stimulus, a suggestion or
 
 14 Preface. 
 
 a query. The mental outlook of each reader 
 will determine the value and quality of the 
 author's message for him. 
 
 HELEN H. GARDENER. 
 New York. 
 
 ^^ffiEPr
 
 AN ECHO FROM SHILOH.
 
 'Is not this something more than fantasy? 
 What think you of it? 
 Before my God, I might not this believe, 
 Without the sensible and true avouch 
 Of mine own eyes." 
 
 . . . xhe sleeping and the dead 
 Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood, 
 That fears a painted devil." . . . 
 
 "I tell you again, Banquo's buried; he cannot 
 come out of his grave." .... 
 
 "There are more things in heaven and earth, 
 
 Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE.
 
 AN ECHO FROM SHILOH, 
 
 T T is impossible to recall now what started 
 the discussion. I remember that we 
 suddenly found ourselves as people con 
 stantly do in the midst of a speculative phi 
 losophical debate, the genesis of which be 
 longs with the infancy of the race, and its 
 exodus will possibly be coincident with the 
 extinction of mankind. 
 
 " Now, here is a thing I'd like you to ex 
 plain to me," the thoughtful German gentle 
 man who sat in the corner was saying. " You 
 say that you don't believe in spirits, but how 
 do you account for a thing like this and, 
 mind you, I do not say it is spirits do it, but 
 I only ask you, how do you account for it 
 otherwise? It was in 1872. The medium 
 was not what you call a professional ; but she 
 was the little daughter of a friend of ours.
 
 2O An Eclio from Shiloh. 
 
 She was bareh sixteen years old then. We 
 were all sitting around a table like this you 
 know how they do it and it was clear day 
 light. She went into a sort of trance. Then 
 she began to shiver and say * Oohoo ! ' like 
 that, a sort of tremble. At last she said to 
 me, ' Don't you remember me ? oh, Herman, 
 don't you know me? You did me the last 
 kindness I received on earth. I am Lud- 
 wig Her voice died out, and she said 
 again, ' L-u-d-w-i-g,' in a far-away kind of tone. 
 I couldn't remember ever having had a friend 
 by that name for whom I had done any spe 
 cial last service. I tried hard to think, and 
 the others went on talking. I recalled a 
 schoolmate, in Germany, of the name ; but he 
 had died in California, and I was not there. 
 Another by the name was not dead yet. And 
 so I ran over all the people I had ever known 
 who were named Ludwig, and I said, ' You've 
 made a mistake. I never did a last service 
 for anyone named Ludwig/ The girl had 
 come out of her trance, and we told her
 
 An Echo from Shiloh, 21 
 
 what she had said. She argued with me 
 that there must have been such a person 
 because, she said, she had no knowledge of 
 what she had done or said, and some one 
 must have spoken to me through her. I said 
 1 No/ and I stuck to it. 
 
 " At last she said she'd try again. She did. 
 This time her hand grasped a pencil, and the 
 moment she was unconscious she wrote: 
 ' Oh, don't leave me ! Ludwig Maxer. 
 Shiloh.' The memory came back to me as 
 from the dead indeed. My heart stopped 
 beating. I had not thought of him for years. 
 He had never been my friend only a chance 
 comrade in arms and so many who were 
 nearer and dearer had gone down that 
 same awful day, and later on, that his very 
 memory had faded from my mind. It all 
 came back like a lightning flash in a clear 
 sky. That you may understand how this can 
 be so, I shall have to tell you a little war his 
 tory: You know I was on what you call the 
 wrong side the Confederate side. It is no
 
 22 An Echo from Shiloh. 
 
 matter now whether it was right or wrong. 
 One thing is very certain, it had its heroes, 
 and few of its stories have yet been told. 
 But dat is needer here nor dare," he said, for 
 getting his English accent and dropping into 
 the attractive broken inflection and pronun 
 ciation that lend an added charm to the con 
 versation of educated and thoughtful Ger 
 mans, whose mother-tongue is the language 
 of their thought and affection, no matter how 
 carefully they school themselves to conform 
 to the demands of the language of the land 
 of their adoption. 
 
 My German friend's ordinary every-day 
 sentences not only followed his English 
 grammar, but the inflection gave but slight 
 clue to his nationality. When, however, he 
 warmed to a thought or story that carried 
 him out of himself, his tongue would slip 
 certain letters, and, as I say, add charm 
 to the earnestness and force of his un 
 guarded naturalness, until he would notice 
 it himself, and, with an effort of memory
 
 An Echo from Shiloh. 23 
 
 and will, set his tongue on the English 
 track again. 
 
 Some one else spoke, and, in the break 
 which followed, much of the fire died out of 
 his face, and perhaps out of his thought as 
 well, and his speech resumed the beaten path 
 of conventional English. 
 
 " It was at the battle of Shiloh. I belonged 
 to the color guard. Volunteers were called 
 for to deploy and throw out a line toward a 
 thicket to see if there were masked batteries 
 behind it. At first a few men and then very 
 nearly the whole of the Twentieth Louisiana 
 regiment responded to the call, and we were 
 ordered to go far enough to draw their fire if 
 batteries were ambushed there, and then fall 
 back when the test had been made. Nearly 
 one thousand men marched toward those 
 bushes. We had to march through a corn 
 field and every old soldier will understand 
 what that means. Hidden from each other 
 there is no place so terrible to a soldier 
 as a cornfield!"
 
 24 An Echo from Shiloh. 
 
 His voice dropped, and his eyes assumed 
 a look of intense thoughtfulness as he faced 
 his handsome wife. 
 
 " I was not a married man then, and yet it 
 took a great deal of grim determination to 
 face the unknown but suspected danger. 
 Gott! I haf often wondered how the men 
 did it who knew there were wives and chil 
 dren at home waiting for dem ! But dat is 
 needer here nor dare!" 
 
 Again he pulled back to the story and to 
 English. 
 
 "They waited until we were almost on 
 them, and then whiz ! they opened fire. 
 Three hundred and twenty-one of us were 
 alive to tell the tale ! Poor August Zegler 
 was shot through the body, and fell with the 
 flag under him. He was the color-bearer. 
 He was shot through the bowels, and fell on 
 his face on the flag. 
 
 As we turned to run our orders were 
 only to learn if batteries were masked there, 
 and then retreat and we had surely learned
 
 An Echo from Shiloh. 25 
 
 that," he added, as a grim aside "as we 
 turned to run I rolled poor August over on 
 his back and caught up the flag from under 
 him. It was the Confederate flag the flag 
 you think was on the wrong side, and no 
 doubt it was, but it was our colors, and I 
 saved it." 
 
 Some one in the room said it was a fine 
 action; but he did not pause, and had no 
 thought of his deed, although he had been 
 promoted to a staff position as a result of this 
 bit of bravery. He was only coming to his 
 point in the story. 
 
 " Just as I caught up the flag and had got 
 five or six feet, with an impetus that threw 
 me still further ahead, poor Ludwig Maxer 
 fell on one knee at my side, and said, ' Oohoo,' 
 in a sort of a long shiver, and put out his 
 hands. He had been shot. He cried out 
 not especially to me: 'Oh, don't leave me 
 behind!' With the natural impulse of a com 
 rade I crowded my other arm around him 
 and tried to pull him to his feet again. He
 
 26 An EcJio from Shiloh, 
 
 had been hit in the small of the back, and 
 my arm hurt him worse dan de shot. He 
 made a groan, his head dropped on my shoul 
 der, and he was what you call unconscious. 
 One of de odder boys threw an arm around 
 him on de odder side, and we dragged him 
 forward until, from behind a covered place, 
 some of us carried the dead weight into the 
 ranks and on behind de line." 
 
 The German paused to wipe his fore 
 head and begin his deliberate English again. 
 
 " I say dead weight and it was that for 
 he was all paralyzed below the waist now. 
 But that is neither here nor there. What 
 I'm coming to is this. The poor fellow died 
 two days later without ever uttering a word, 
 and the strangest thing about it all was that 
 his little pet squirrel that he always carried 
 in his pocket had to be buried with him. We 
 couldn't take it away. It fought and bit us 
 every time we tried, and ran back into his 
 breast pocket. We wrapped the flag we had 
 rescued around poor Maxer, and from be-
 
 An EcJw from Shiloh. 27 
 
 neath the blue folds the little head of his 
 faithful comrade peered as we lowered him 
 into his grave. We covered him very slowly 
 to give it time to get out when it should un 
 derstand that it was really to be buried ; but 
 the trembling creature held its place and 
 and we buried it alive."' 
 
 There was a long pause. His voice had 
 grown low and almost tender. Several per 
 sons murmured inaudible trifles, but all were 
 intensely interested and eager for him to go 
 on. 
 
 " But, as I say," he continued, a moment 
 later, " there had been so many nearer and 
 dearer to me who were killed that day and 
 afterward, in the war, that the memory of 
 poor Maxer and his pet squirrel had died 
 out of my mind until this child-medium 
 flashed it across my mental vision again like 
 lightning in a clear sky. Now, how do you 
 account for that? " 
 
 " She had heard of it at the time," began
 
 28 An Eclw from Skilok. 
 
 the incredulous lady on his left; but he did 
 not allow her to finish the sentence. 
 
 " Mind you, I don't say it is spirits. All I 
 say is, these are the facts, and I'd like to hear 
 some one account for them." 
 
 The gentleman opposite took up the 
 suggestion thrown out by the skeptical 
 lady. 
 
 "The medium had heard of it at the time, 
 or more natural still you had told it in 
 the town after the war, and she had gotten 
 hold of it." 
 
 But the German was ready to meet both 
 suggestions : 
 
 "You must not forget that war was a 
 mere name to the little girl who did that. 
 She was barely sixteen, and all this had been 
 ten years before. She could hardly have 
 heard of it at the time and, besides, she 
 did not even know I had been in the battle 
 of Shiloh." He paused, and smiled in a sar 
 castic way. "And as for me telling dose facts 
 in dat border town so soon after de close of
 
 An Echo from SJtilok. 29 
 
 de war did any of you live in what was 
 called de border States along about dat time ? 
 No?" He displayed more excitement as he 
 asked the question than at any time be 
 fore, and his accent lapsed with his self-con 
 trol. "No! Well, den, all I got to say is, 
 anybody who didn't haf to tell he was with 
 Beauregard wasn't telling it. And I was a 
 young German. Nobody suspected that I 
 had been in the army. They thought I 
 had lately landed, and I let dem think dat. 
 It was what you call healthier." 
 
 We all laughed. 
 
 " It was mind acting on mind," began the 
 lady from Boston. "You were not aware 
 that you were thinking of your comrade in 
 arms at Shiloh; but you were, and in her 
 supersensitive state your own thought im 
 pressed itself on the mind of the child whom 
 you call a medium." 
 
 Several agreed to this explanation. One 
 or two questioned it. The words " second 
 ary consciousness," " unconscious cerebra-
 
 30 An Echo from Shiloh. 
 
 tion," "thought transference," and the like, 
 mingled with the general flow of suggestion 
 or assertion that each felt in duty bound to 
 offer as his or her contribution toward the 
 solution of the question. The German list 
 ened to them all. Then he said slowly: 
 
 " You must remember, I don't say it 
 was the spirit of Ludwig Maxer. I don't 
 know what it was that spoke and wrote 
 through that child but I do know it wasn't 
 what you are all talking about now. I 
 tell you I couldn't recall any such man un 
 til the second time, when she wrote the 
 full name and ' Shiloh ! ' I had hardly 
 known his first name. I was new to the 
 country and new to the war. I was drafted 
 soon after I had gone South, and was not 
 even in a regiment of men whom I had 
 known before. Some in my own company 
 had become almost dear to me, but he be 
 longed to Company K, and I to Company 
 F. We had had nothing in common. His 
 death and burial were to me what you call
 
 An Echo from Shiloh, 31 
 
 a mere episode, and but for the squirrel I 
 doubt if I could have recalled any of it 
 after so long* a time, and after so many 
 other experiences in the war and since. For, 
 you see, I was in a strange land then, and 
 I had married and had a family since that 
 happened. So much had filled in my life 
 in these ten intervening years, and that was 
 such a mere episode in with the rest, I 
 had forgotten it. Oh, no, she did not get 
 it from my mind that day. I got it from 
 hers, and so I say how do you explain it? 
 Spirits I do not say it was. Mind-reading 
 and the like I know it was not." 
 
 He whispered an aside to his wife, 
 who had appeared nervous while he talked. 
 Then he said, in the tone of one who 
 yields a point: 
 
 "My wife wants me to tell you one 
 thing I thought I would leave out. She 
 thinks it is strangest of all. It is dis " 
 
 "This," said his wife, gently touching 
 his hand.
 
 32 Aii EcJw from Sliiloh. 
 
 " Yes, this. When the little medium took 
 the pencil to write the name she seemed 
 partly conscious. As she wrote it she jerked 
 aside, and her hand tried to drop the pen- 
 cil and push something. When she came 
 out of her trance again, her finger had 
 several small bloody scratch-like marks on 
 it, and she said that all she remembered of 
 her second trance was that a squirrel tried 
 to bite her finger. Now, how do you ac 
 count for that?" 
 
 The lady from Boston smiled, but made 
 a note on an ivory tablet of the new point 
 in the case. Under the note she wrote, 
 "Optical illusion? Imagination or?" 
 
 Two or three of the party began to talk 
 in asides of the new feature in the matter, 
 and labor to fit it into their previously es 
 poused theories, each giving a different expla 
 nation. No one doubted the German's sin 
 cerity, and no one questioned his common- 
 sense. His integrity was above suspicion. 
 Yet his story was being explained away on
 
 An Echo from SJdloh. 33 
 
 all sides. Some of the explanations left the 
 problem vaguer than it was before. Some 
 of them were patently inadequate, and 
 others were simply ridiculous; but each per 
 son had a theory that appeared to satisfy 
 himself. 
 
 Each listened to his neighbor's hypothe 
 sis with deep scorn or profound incredulity, 
 and met some point with the German's 
 original inquiry: "But, on that basis, how 
 do you explain this?" And so the evening 
 came to an end, and each went his way, 
 triumphant in his own mental attitude, 
 which touched the shores of the unknown 
 at his individual angle, and, to his indi 
 vidual satisfaction, answered the question 
 from which we started. 
 
 And yet no two answers agreed.
 
 OLD SAFETY-VALVE'S LAST 
 RUN.
 
 . . . "But I remember now 
 I'm in this earthly world; where, to do harm, 
 Is often laudable: to do good, sometimes, 
 Accounted dangerous folly." . . . 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "Another age may divide the manual labor of 
 the world more equally on all the members of soci 
 ety, and so make the labors of a few hours avail to 
 the wants and add to the vigor of the man." 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 "You see, her eyes are open. 
 Ay, but their sense is shut." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the de 
 struction of the poor is their poverty." 
 
 BIBLE.
 
 OLD "SAFETY-VALVE'S" 
 LAST RUN. 
 
 I. 
 
 ^XAHE express train was due at Hardy's 
 Station twelve minutes before three 
 A. M. The night was clear. A white moon 
 light fell on the track direct and full. The 
 grade was easy and the curve not unduly 
 short, and yet there was a collision. A col 
 lision so awful in force and so terrible in 
 results that the entire country was thrown 
 into a fever of excitement when the "extra" 
 shout was heard in every city early the fol 
 lowing day, and people read with feverish 
 haste and shuddering horror the details of 
 the awful calamity. 
 
 " Extra ! ' stra ! ' stro ! Ex trbble sion 
 on r road! ' "Bulloss'vlif e ! Extra!" 
 
 Who has not heard the blood-curdling
 
 40 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 cry? Who has not felt his heart stand still 
 as it flashed through his brain that some 
 loved one might be on that very train? 
 Who has not felt the wildly glad sense 
 of relief when assured that the disaster 
 was on another road than that chosen by 
 the treasure of his own household? Who 
 has not, later on, been shocked by his sel 
 fish joy and settled down to a numb, dead 
 consciousness of pain and sorrow a vague 
 pain, a subdued sorrow for the unknown 
 hearts that were torn and bleeding as his 
 own might have bled and sorrowed? Ah, 
 the limitations of human sympathy! 
 
 Who has not forgotten the very acci 
 dent a few days later, and passed with un 
 thinking carelessness the darkened house 
 of the neighbor who, alas, has a home no 
 more? 
 
 Longer than the sympathy for the be 
 reaved, there lingers in the brain resent 
 ment against the living and a desire to 
 bring to retributive justice the careless or
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 41 
 
 wanton cause of the accident. In the case 
 of the disaster at Hardy's Station public 
 opinion, as voiced by the press, asserted 
 that it wanted, must have, and intended to 
 find the exact cause of the terrible collision. 
 
 The fireman was supposed to be one of 
 the dead whose charred bodies had not 
 been recognized; but the engineer a man 
 of unusual culture and capacity in his oc 
 cupation was in custody, and, it was said, 
 had admitted that he was asleep at his 
 post. At this point the superintendent of 
 the road had sent him a warning to say ab 
 solutely nothing until he was placed on 
 oath, and he had obeyed the command of 
 his superior officer. 
 
 The superintendent explained that since 
 the engineer had been an old and trusted 
 employe, he did not want him on the im 
 pulse of self-accusation, under the sting of 
 conscience and public censure to say things 
 that might lead to his own condemnation 
 at the trial.
 
 42 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 "It is quite possible that the rails 
 spread or that the air brake parted, so that 
 he shot past the siding, and into the other 
 train so suddenly that he himself is too 
 dazed to be sure just how it did happen. 
 I wish to talk with him before he says any 
 more for the public. Perhaps I can lead 
 him to recall everything. They say he is 
 quite dazed now and full of wild blame for 
 himself and for some one yet unknown. 
 Perhaps / can get at it. Let me see him 
 alone." 
 
 The superintendent had seen him alone, 
 but this interview, he said, had not been sat 
 isfactory. Nothing new came out. The super 
 intendent said, "I told him that I would 
 stand by him; that the road would be his 
 friend; that he need not be distressed nor 
 afraid. I thought best to quiet him. In 
 that way he will become more collected 
 and better able to go through the pre 
 liminary trial next week. He is apparently 
 both stubborn and insane now, for he was
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 43 
 
 resentful toward trie road for what reason 
 I fail to see and full of wild blame for 
 himself, and still he swears that he could 
 not help it. It is a strange case." 
 
 But before the trial, the self-tortured 
 engineer had made up his mind to tell 
 the exact truth and take the consequen 
 ces. He felt that he would not then be 
 the only one to fall under public censure, 
 and still his sensitive soul shrank and 
 shuddered at the thought of causing still 
 farther sorrow to other homes. The super 
 intendent had pointed out to him that no 
 good could come of such wholesale ravings 
 as his, and that the wives and families of 
 others than the dead were to be thought 
 of. 
 
 " You are a bachelor, John," he had said. 
 "Remember that, and we will stand by 
 you to the end. The coupling broke. The 
 switch was displaced, the air brake parted, 
 perhaps. Who can say they did not? Are 
 you sure they did not?" and John was silent.
 
 44 Old " Safety -Valve s" Last Run. 
 
 II. 
 
 The trial began. The engineer was on 
 the stand, and had asked to be permitted 
 to tell his story as he could. Excitement 
 ran high, but he sat pale and determined. 
 Then he began in a steady, clear voice, with 
 his eyes on the superintendent, who sat on 
 a front seat. His first sentence sent the 
 blood all out of his superior officer's face, 
 and drew a hum of rage and condemna 
 tion from the spectators, and of surprise 
 from the legal gentlemen present. 
 
 "I was asleep." There could be no mis 
 take as to what he said, and yet no one 
 could believe his senses. 
 
 "Nothing happened to the brakes. They 
 were not applied. It was light. The track 
 was in order; but I was asleep and did 
 not take the siding." 
 
 There was perspiration on his brow. 
 He raised a trembling hand and wiped it 
 away. The superintendent moved uneasily
 
 Old "Safety-Valves'' Last Run. 45 
 
 and whispered something to the lawyer for 
 the road. 
 
 " Hanging's too good for him," some one 
 back in the room said loud enough to be 
 heard. The bailiff rapped for silence. 
 
 The judge turned to the prisoner. 
 
 "Had you no sense of responsibility? 
 The public must be protected against en 
 gineers who sleep when on duty." 
 
 The engineer touched the bandage on 
 his broken arm and began again: "I do 
 not know how I escaped instant death, nor 
 how I jumped. It must have been instinct. 
 I was as dead asleep as a human being 
 could be. It seems to me I woke up after 
 I struck the ground. I was dazed like that 
 The superintendent will tell you why. He 
 said he would stand by me that we would 
 tell the truth. He knows why I was asleep 
 and" 
 
 "I object," came from the legal gentle 
 man who sat next to the superintendent 
 "Mr. Hart is not on trial."
 
 46 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 Mr. Hart's eyes flashed. The engineer 
 looked at him a moment, and his face 
 flushed. 
 
 "Keep to your story," said the judge. 
 " What business had you to be asleep on 
 an engine going at full speed at night?" 
 
 " Your Honor, I did all I could to keep 
 awake, I fixed my eyes on the track far 
 ahead and watched with an intentness no 
 one can understand but the honest engineer 
 who knows what a frightful responsibility 
 his is; who feels keenly the value of the 
 lives in his keeping, and yet who also 
 realizes that his own physical powers are 
 trembling on the verge of collapse." He 
 paused and wiped his forehead with his 
 roughened hand and changed the position 
 of his bandaged arm. " Your Honor, I knew 
 that I was keeping eyes, but not brain, 
 awake. I struck my head a sharp rap two 
 or three times with my fist. That called 
 my deadened energies up for a moment 
 but it was for a moment only. Nature
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 47 
 
 claimed my mind. I could not keep it. My 
 eyes were fixed on the track. My hand 
 was on the throttle but I was asleep. I 
 realize that I was sound asleep, your Honor. 
 
 No denial is possible. There" 
 
 An irresistible movement of indignation 
 stirred the court-room again. The specta 
 tors- looked first at the prisoner, and then 
 at the jury with eyes that conveyed no 
 doubt as to what the verdict would be if 
 they might give it. Asleep at his post! 
 The guardian of all those lives those 
 sleeping, helpless beings who had confi 
 dently put themselves in his care but a few 
 hours before to be trapped like rats in a 
 burning mass of wood and iron that he 
 might doze at his post and jump to safety, 
 leaving them to their fate! What need to 
 conduct the trial farther? He had admitted 
 his guilt. Hanging was too good for him. 
 He should have fifty lives to be taken, and 
 each should be yielded up if that were 
 possible. The prosecutor felt that his case
 
 48 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 was won and repeated to himself the old 
 maxim that he who attempts to conduct 
 his own defense has a fool for a client. He 
 pitied this man from the bottom of his 
 heart for having refused to accept as coun 
 sel the young attorney who had volun 
 teered his services; for even he would have 
 had more sense than to have allowed this 
 confession. He might have set up some 
 decently plausible theory in spite of the 
 facts, that would have left a loop-hole of 
 escape; but for a man to volunteer such a 
 statement as that he was simply asleep 
 on an engine that was speeding over a 
 moonlit track, and that being asleep he did 
 not see his signal orders to take a side 
 track, and so ran full head into another 
 train surely such a confession ended the 
 case. He smiled at the jury with profes 
 sional pleasure and was about to make a 
 remark, when Juror Number Seven ad 
 dressed the prisoner. 
 
 "Do you mean to say that you simply
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 49 
 
 went to sleep on your engine? That you 
 were sober and" 
 
 The prisoner lifted his heavy, pathetic 
 eyes and rested them on his questioner for 
 a moment. 
 
 " I was sober," he said slowly. " I never 
 drink, but I was asleep on the engine. I 
 could not help it. I was asleep." The re 
 iteration was pathetic and he was trem 
 bling now. 
 
 The prosecutor remarked drily that it 
 would be a good idea to put a man who 
 had a little habit like that where he could 
 do the least harm. 
 
 The prisoner turned his heavy hunted 
 eyes from the juror to the State's attorney 
 and rested his head on one hand. Then 
 his eyes wandered to the face of the 
 superintendent of the road, and his lips 
 drew themselves a little tenser, but he did 
 not speak. The superintendent whispered 
 to the prosecutor that they might as well 
 close the case right there, "the quicker the
 
 5<D Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 better;" but Juror Number Seven was ready 
 with another question. 
 
 "Had you the habit of sleeping at your 
 post? Had you no sense of danger of 
 responsibility?" 
 
 "Your Honor," broke in the prosecutor, 
 rising, "the State has nothing to prove. 
 The prisoner has saved the railroad and 
 the State the necessity of dragging the case 
 along. I have just been instructed by Mr. 
 Hart, the superintendent and representative 
 of the road, that he is satisfied to have 
 the case go to the jury just as it is, and 
 certainly I could do little to strengthen it. 
 The" 
 
 The prisoner had struggled to his feet. 
 His great frame shook from head to foot. 
 The color had left his face. He was look 
 ing directly at the superintendent and his 
 ashen lips were moving, but no sound es 
 caped them. 
 
 This man whose nerves of steel and 
 resolute promptness of action had earned
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 51 
 
 for him the sobriquet of " Old Safety- 
 Valve," and made him the envy of every 
 engineer on the line, was facing a danger 
 that was new to him. He knew how to 
 rely on himself. He knew how to be si 
 lent and alert. He knew what measure to 
 put upon the villainy of. a wayside tramp 
 who schemes to wreck a train for gain, or 
 by appearing to save it from a danger of 
 his own devising, reaps the harvest of 
 gratitude and gold from passengers and 
 people. But with a mind tortured by the 
 scenes and thoughts of the past few days, 
 with nerves unstrung and brain tired out, 
 he did not dare to risk himself to decide 
 in such a case as this. 
 
 It could not be possible that the su 
 perintendent, who had known him and 
 his faithful work for all these years, who 
 had grown up in the service with him, 
 who had placed this extra duty on him at 
 a time when he had made earnest protest
 
 52 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 it could not be possible that Sidney Hart 
 was intending to desert him utterly! 
 
 His eyes wandered to the back of the 
 room, where a man, pale and shabby, stood 
 in a group that would have been described 
 by a police officer as " court-room loafers." 
 
 The prisoner grasped at the railing in 
 front of him. His eyes dilated and his 
 breath came in short, quick gasps. 
 
 " Jim ! " he said, in a voice of horror. 
 " Jim ! they are blaming it all on me ! And 
 no one comes to help me but the dead ! 
 
 Jim ! Jim ! It is too late. I " He put 
 
 his hand to his tortured head and sank in 
 a heap on the court-room floor. Not dead, 
 oh no, not so fortunate as that, only weak 
 ened in body and mind. Destined to live 
 a palsied, trembling, mumbling, repulsive 
 lump of clay, neither dead nor living. In 
 bondage to life and in bondage to death. 
 Belonging to neither the living nor the 
 dead. An inhabitant of no country a ten 
 ant of no tomb. With neither past nor
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Rim. 53 
 
 future. A creature of infinite pathos. Na 
 ture had whistled down brakes when the 
 speed was too high and the coupling had 
 parted. Henceforth poor Old Safety-Valve 
 would run on an unknown track, alone and 
 in the dark. There would be no headlight, 
 no stations, no signals, and no final desti 
 nation. Aimless, on a wild engine, poor 
 Old Safety-Valve had pulled out into the 
 infinite blackness that engulfed his over 
 wrought capacities, and Sidney Hart de 
 voutly thanked God that the summons had 
 come when it did. 
 
 He felt that Jim Blanchard would be 
 an easy man to silence. Jim had a large 
 family. He had deserted his post and Jim 
 was always sadly in need of money ! For 
 Superintendent Hart had understood at a 
 glance that the ghost that deceived the al 
 ready overtaxed brain of poor Old Safety- 
 Valve was the returned fireman of engine 
 42. He knew that the old fireman had 
 loved his comrade on the iron horse, but he
 
 54 Old "Safety-Valve's" Last 
 
 knew, too, that Jim loved life and a certain 
 little brood of helpless children up in the 
 hills by the machine shops in another state. 
 He knew that grim want for these helpless 
 little creatures would be a potent factor in 
 an argument with Jim, and so, in the con 
 fusion that followed, it came about that the 
 superintendent and the fireman passed out 
 of the room together and were driven away 
 in the same carriage. A strange and un 
 der ordinary circumstances an inexplicable 
 proceeding, surely ; but not so strange to 
 Juror Number Seven, who had used his 
 eyes and ears and brain to more than usual 
 purpose all along. 
 
 The calendar had broken down. The 
 case had disposed of itself. The jury was 
 discharged. The stricken prisoner was car 
 ried out and away to his living tomb. The 
 court-room emptied. 
 
 Three hours later, Juror Number Seven 
 saw a haggard, wretched man emerge from
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 55 
 
 the private door of the office of the super 
 intendent of the Spanville railroad. It was 
 the same man upon whose face the pris 
 oner's eyes had fixed themselves when his 
 mind began to wander when the final 
 shock came. It was the same man who 
 had been taken by the arm and put in the 
 carriage by the superintendent as he had 
 hurried from the court-room. It was the 
 same man, but his face was a different face. 
 Then, it had been haggard and wretched. 
 Now, it was desperate and distinctly self- 
 abased. Then, the figure was bent, poorly 
 clad and depressed. Now, it was slinking. 
 The remnants of manhood had departed. 
 The ownership of even a mental self seemed 
 gone as the ownership of a physical self 
 had been in pawn before. Poor Jim Blan- 
 chard had made a sturdy fight ; but what 
 good could it do Old Safety-Valve now for 
 him to tell the truth ? And the children 
 were hungry up there on the hill by the 
 car shops. They were growing up like
 
 56 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 weeds, in ignorance, to follow in their fa 
 ther's footsteps a slave to poverty, and 
 now, alas, to crime. The thought came to 
 him with a shock. He half turned to re 
 trace his steps to the office of the super 
 intendent. He thought he would like to 
 buy back his soul, even if the bodies of 
 all of them must remain in perpetual pawn 
 as the result. 
 
 Then he said to himself that it would 
 be better to let it go as it was now. What 
 was his honor worth at best? All he was 
 asked for was absolute silence, and the 
 price of that meant comfort and education 
 and rest to the tired wife and the little 
 ones on the hill. What could his peace of 
 mind his honor be when compared with 
 all that ? If it could help Old Safety- Valve 
 he would do right at whatever cost to those 
 
 blessed babies ; but " He's beyond the 
 
 clutch of the law now. He is safe." Jim 
 remembered that those were the very words 
 the superintendent had used. If the engi-
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 57 
 
 neer ever "came to," if they ever undertook 
 to prosecute him again, it would be time 
 enough to go to his rescue. If 
 
 " Come in and have a drink with me, 
 old man," said Juror Number Seven as he 
 saw Jim turn around for the fourth time 
 and retrace his steps half a block. "You 
 look cold an' seems to me I've seen you 
 somewhere before." 
 
 " I am cold," replied the fireman, relieved 
 that some one had spoken to and taken 
 him out of himself. " But if I've ever saw 
 you anywheres before it must 'a' been when 
 
 we was both drunk 're in hell," he added 
 
 with a desperate attempt at humor. 
 
 " Well, no matter about that," replied 
 the Juror, jocularly, as they drained the first 
 glass; "but we'll fill up and get acquainted 
 now, an' then we'll know each other bet 
 ter when we meet before the fiery furnace. 
 I'm a stranger in town myself, and I'm on 
 a toot. I'm willing to blow in a few stamps 
 on you fill her up again!" he said to the
 
 58 Old "Safety-Valve's" Last Run. 
 
 waiter, a little later, as he pushed Jim's 
 glass across the table for the fourth time. 
 
 'N we won'go'ometillmornin', hey ? " 
 
 " Not if the court knows himself," said 
 Juror Number Seven, and instantly regretted 
 his words, for the old fireman who had 
 begun to grow maudlin and talkative braced 
 up and looked at him steadily for a mo 
 ment. Then he leaned over and said in a 
 loud whisper: 
 
 " Court's a dam fraud ! " 
 
 Then he drew down the corners of his 
 eyes and nodded eight or ten times in rapid 
 succession. Juror Number Seven wondered 
 what he would better say. The belligerent 
 look in the old fireman's eye led him to 
 conclude that an argument would be most 
 to his taste, so he leaned back and with 
 exasperating complaisance remarked : 
 
 " Any man that commits a crime is 
 mighty likely to look at it in that way." 
 
 There was no reply. Jim drank the 
 last drops in his glass and himself beckoned
 
 Old "Safety-Valves' Last Run. 59 
 
 the waiter to refill it. When it was in 
 his hand again, he lifted it unsteadily across 
 the table toward his companion and gave it 
 a wavering jerk forward and remarked : 
 
 " Y' don't know whatyer talkin' about. 
 They're alwaystryin' th' wrong man." 
 
 Juror Number Seven nodded. Then he 
 winked. 
 
 " Why didn't you prove an alibi, then ? " 
 he inquired and slapped Jim on the back 
 and laughed uproariously. 
 
 " 'Twasn't me," said the old man, huski 
 ly, but on the defensive in an instant. 
 " 'Twasn't me. 'Twas Old Safety-Valve 
 they was a-tryin' 'n it was the sup'rintend- 
 ent they had oughter a tried. Ever blame 
 bit his fault 'n he knows knows knows- 
 it-dam-well. He " Jim's head sunk 
 on his arm, and Juror Number Seven si 
 lently withdrew. 
 
 On his way out he held a brief conver 
 sation with the proprietor of the place, and 
 transferred certain valuables to his hands.
 
 60 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 "Put him to bed. Don't let him leave 
 on any account until I come for him," he 
 said, and was gone. 
 
 But Juror Number Seven discovered that 
 certain hinges of the machinery of the courts 
 were not so well oiled as others, and that 
 it was a good deal more difficult to secure 
 the arrest and indictment of Superintendent 
 Sidney Hart than he had expected. 
 
 It had taken no great labor, it is true, 
 to secure the arrest and detention of the 
 old fireman, who had been reported dead 
 and had now turned up so unexpectedly. 
 No charge had been lodged against him, 
 but he was simply held as a witness. But 
 a witness for what ? A witness against 
 whom ? The few people who knew any 
 thing of it smiled over the vagaries of 
 Juror Number Seven, and wondered if he 
 supposed the courts were going to try a 
 paralytic imbecile for homicide. They grew 
 merry over the idea, and wondered how old 
 Jim would be, before the case came on.
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 61 
 
 They said that Juror Number Seven had 
 never been on a jury before, and that he 
 felt piqued that the case broke down. He 
 wanted to scare up some reason to go on 
 with it again. They scouted his assertion 
 that there was new evidence, and another 
 witness. No new evidence was needed. 
 Another witness was superfluous. The en 
 gineer had confessed, and then he had pro 
 ceeded to put himself beyond the pale of 
 the law by becoming actually and hopelessly 
 demented in court. It might be charitable 
 to infer that he had been touched a little 
 with dementia before the accident, and had 
 not simply fallen asleep at his post, as he 
 had confessed ; but that a short interval of 
 mental alienation may have overtaken him 
 then. This idea had been suggested by 
 Superintendent Hart as the kindest and most 
 plausible, and had been generally accepted. 
 The newspapers had commented upon it, 
 and sent a thrill of horror through many 
 a traveler by intimating that such a calam-
 
 62 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 ity was likely to overtake any engineer at 
 any moment, and that no human precaution 
 on the part of railroad officials could possi 
 bly avert the awful consequences. 
 
 "Such dispensations of Providence were 
 rare, thank God, but the possibility of their 
 becoming 1 more frequent owing to the high 
 tension of the present methods of life in 
 America" was pointed out, and again the 
 public trembled. 
 
 But at last "the farce of trying Super 
 intendent Hart for the Hardy's Station dis 
 aster" was brought about by the persis 
 tent and heroic efforts of "Crank Number 
 Seven," as he was now called by those who 
 followed his " maunderings." It was looked 
 upon as a good deal of a joke by every 
 one except Mr. Hart himself, and possibly 
 by one wretched man who stubbornly 
 waited in the House of Detention. He had 
 talked with Juror Number Seven a great 
 many times and he had begged pleaded 
 like a child not to be allowed to see his
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 63 
 
 old superintendent. But the superintend 
 ent had twice visited the little hut on the 
 hill by the car shops in the distant state, 
 and "with true Christian charity and his 
 well-known magnanimity he had provided 
 for the family of his misguided or ele 
 mented fireman." 
 
 Indeed, he had placed the older children 
 at school, and assured Jim's tired old wife 
 that they should, henceforth, want for noth 
 ing. He gave her a free pass and advised 
 her to visit Jim and to tell him how well 
 the road was looking after his family, and 
 that it had sent poor Old Safety-Valve 
 to a first-class private asylum, where no 
 expense would be spared to have every 
 comfort secured to him. 
 
 Juror Number Seven found Jim sick 
 and sullen after this visit from his wife, 
 and as it had occurred only two days be 
 fore the case was to be called, and since 
 the old wife was to be present having se 
 cured comfortable quarters near the House
 
 64 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 of Detention it was said Juror Number 
 Seven felt ill at ease and uncertain for 
 the first time. 
 
 If Jim would tell the story on the wit 
 ness-stand that he told to him, he would 
 be quite satisfied. But could Jim be relied 
 upon to do that? The stubborness of the 
 man and his singular timidity at times 
 puzzled Juror Number Seven sadly, and yet 
 he pushed the case. That pathetic wreck 
 who had fallen at his very feet on the 
 witness-stand haunted him day and night, 
 and Juror Number Seven felt that he 
 would deserve the same fate if he did not 
 do all in his power to place the case 
 before the public in what he conceived 
 to be its proper light. 
 
 III. 
 
 The day came. The court-room was 
 filled with curious spectators. The old fire 
 man took the witness-stand. The delay had 
 been so long, the case was so absurdly
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 65 
 
 weak, that public indignation and excite 
 ment had subsided into a sort of droll in 
 terest in the "curious piece of spite-work 
 or mental aberration of the man who was 
 professing to use the drunken maunderings 
 of a half-witted fireman to blacken the fair 
 name of one of the first Christian railroad 
 men of the country." 
 
 The preliminaries were hurried through. 
 The superintendent had seated himself by 
 the side of Jim's wife, who was silently 
 weeping, and it could be plainly seen that 
 he was whispering words of comfort to 
 her. "He will tell the truth. It will be 
 all right," he said to her aloud, and Jim 
 had heard, and hearing, trembled. 
 
 "For your sake and the children's not 
 for mine he will come out like a man, I 
 know, and the case will be at rest forever. 
 I have sent for all the children. They are 
 to be here in a moment. The sight of them 
 in their new clothes and happier faces 
 will bring Jim to his better self. I"
 
 66 Old "Safety -Valve's" Last Run. 
 
 The door behind the judge opened, and 
 and eight children, neat, tidy, and well-fed, 
 came into the room with awe and curi 
 osity on their faces. They saw their father's 
 face first. It had been long weeks since 
 they had seen him, and eight pairs of arms 
 were about him, eight pairs of lips sought 
 his, eight young voices said, "Papa! oh, 
 papa!" before silence and order had been 
 restored. 
 
 "What do you propose to prove?" the 
 judge inquired of Juror Number Seven, 
 when the case was resumed. "What do 
 you propose to prove by this witness?" 
 
 "Your Honor, I propose to prove that 
 the entire blame rests upon Superintend 
 ent Hart; that the engineer protested 
 earnestly, and almost with tears, against go 
 ing out that night on No. 42. He had 
 been on duty, without sleep, for twenty-seven 
 hours. The superintendent knew this. He 
 knew the faithful services of this man for 
 fifteen years, and yet he threatened him
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 67 
 
 with instant dismissal if he did not take 
 out that train. No one heard it except 
 this fireman and the wretched wreck of 
 humanity up there in the asylum, whose 
 nerves and brain gave way under the long 
 strain and the awful result. I propose to 
 prove that Sidney Hart and Sidney Hart 
 alone, was guilty, not only of the murder of 
 the people who perished in that awful 
 disaster, but that he is also guilty of the 
 murder of the brave engineer who worse 
 than dead who "- 
 
 " I object ! " exclaimed the defendant's 
 lawyer, and Sidney Hart looked steadily at 
 the wretched face of Jim. Then he reached 
 out a hand and drew the youngest child 
 of the witness up on to his knee and 
 stroked her sunny hair. Her hair had never 
 looked so lovely to Jim, for he had never 
 before seen her so well dressed , and so 
 round and rosy. His eyes filled with a mist 
 and he hung his head. 
 
 " Your Honor, it is all a lie," he said,
 
 68 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 hoarsely ; " I was drunk when I told him, 
 
 T " _, 
 
 " What ! " burst from the lips of the as 
 tonished ex-juror. " What ! Why, you have 
 told me fifty times since. You wept like a 
 child only three days ago, and " 
 
 A titter ran through the room. The 
 bailiff rapped for order. Jim's little girl 
 was holding the superintendent's shining 
 gold watch to her ear and delightedly 
 counting the ticks with silently moving lips 
 and sparkling eyes. 
 
 Jim looked at her again, and then at 
 his wife in her pretty new gown. 
 
 " I was foolin'," he said slowly. " I never 
 heard the superintendent tell him nothin'." 
 
 " And you did not know that the en 
 gineer, your friend, was forced to stay on 
 duty twenty-seven hours at a stretch ? " 
 asked Juror Number Seven. 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 "You don't know that he was threat-
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 69 
 
 ened if he didn't take that train out in 
 spite of his protests with dismissal ? " 
 
 "No," said the wretched man, with eyes 
 on the floor. 
 
 " I ask that this case be dismissed and 
 the indictment quashed," exclaimed the law 
 yer for the defense. " The whole proceeding 
 is an insult to the dignity of the court. 
 There is not and there never has been any 
 case." 
 
 " I see no reason why the motion of the 
 counsel for the defense should not be sus 
 tained," said the judge, slowly. " The case 
 is dismissed. The jury is discharged." 
 There was a wave of laughter in the room 
 and a great shuffling of feet. 
 
 " Flattest fizzle I ever saw," remarked 
 one man, as he left the room. 
 
 "But, my goodness, wasn't the superin 
 tendent good to him and them young uns 
 when he thought all the time that Jim 
 was goin' to swear against him! What a 
 man ! "
 
 70 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 " I'm a-goin' to put my John into his 
 Sunday school clast right off," remarked an 
 admiring mother, as she pinned her bonnet 
 strings. " He's got a clast at the mission 
 school, but I always thought he was too 
 proud for us; but jest look how he helt 
 that baby an' its pa lyin' agin' him all 
 along ! " 
 
 " I thought your better nature would 
 assert itself, Jim, when the test came," said 
 Superintendent Hart, shaking Jim's hand 
 warmly, as the children clung about him 
 and his wife dried her eyes. " You ought 
 to be proud of your father, little ones," he 
 added, taking his watch from the baby's 
 hand and replacing it in his pocket. 
 
 " Proud of the devil ! " muttered Jim 
 between his teeth, and the look in his eye 
 was not pleasant to the superintendent. 
 But notwithstanding that fact Superintend 
 ent Hart handed Jim's wife a roll of bills, 
 with the remark that her husband had been 
 off duty so long that she would no doubt
 
 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 71 
 
 need this and more for the children. He 
 looked straight at Jim and Jim dropped his 
 eyes, " for shame because of such generous 
 treatment by the man he had caused so 
 much trouble" as the report said. "You 
 can go back to your engine to-morrow," 
 added Mr. Hart, softly. " I can hold no ill- 
 feeling toward you, but you must give up 
 liquor, Jim, or your family these fine chil 
 dren will be ashamed of you. They "- 
 
 Jim raised his eyes, and Mr. Hart ceased 
 speaking. He waited to see Jim and his 
 family well on their way home, and then 
 he drove to his office, smiling and content 
 with the world. He knew quite well what 
 the outcome would be. He was a student 
 of human nature, in a quiet way. Jim 
 would feel depressed, bitter, discontented 
 with himself for a while, and then the feel 
 ing would gradually die out. Only heroes 
 fight systems for a principle, and poor old 
 Jim was not a hero. He was only a very 
 ordinary man, who had been cast in the
 
 72 Old "Safety-Valve's" Last Run. 
 
 usual mould the mould that is shaped by 
 environment. An honest man ? Yes, if 
 temptation were not too strong if burdens 
 were not too heavy. Loyal to his friends? 
 Yes, so long as he might see results 
 that touched those friends and who were 
 Jim's friends just now? His wife and chil 
 dren, surely, and to be loyal to them Jim 
 could not afford to think too closely about 
 causes and effects. Great love, encompassed 
 by ignorance and many children, may be 
 trusted to keep the twig of thought and the 
 back of poverty bent to receive the bur 
 den devised for it. Jim would grind his 
 teeth sometimes, and a flash of half-formed 
 thought would struggle in his brain for 
 sequence and for justification ; but it would 
 die out before it reached a definite conclu 
 sion. He would never trouble Sidney Hart 
 again. He would simply shovel coal into 
 his engine, eat what he could get, sleep 
 when given permission, and drink a little 
 now and then to stimulate his flagging en-
 
 Old "Safety-Valve's" Last Run. 73 
 
 ergies or to farther deaden insistent germs 
 of thought. He would die a natural death or 
 be killed on his engine before many years, 
 and nothing further would come of his one 
 pitiful little struggle. Another fireman 
 would take his place, and that would be 
 the end of the matter. Superintendent Hart 
 smiled with a return of his old cheerfulness ; 
 for he once more felt perfectly secure, and 
 feeling secure he also felt entirely virtuous. 
 "It would be simply maddening to be under 
 anybody's thumb," he thought, " even if that 
 thumb belonged to so powerless and vague 
 a creature as Jim Blanchard. Thank God, 
 I wasn't born to be patient under adverse 
 skies. I've got to hold the reins and do 
 the driving for myself and the horse has 
 got to go my way," he added, as he locked 
 his safe for the night; " or I'll break his 
 neck." Whether Superintendent Hart was 
 thinking of Jim as the horse or whether he 
 meant something far more general and im 
 personal it would be difficult to say. Cer-
 
 74 Old "Safety-Valves" Last Run. 
 
 tain it was, that the schedule paper of 
 time-table records he had replaced in the 
 desk had one less figure on it than when 
 he had taken it out. According to that re 
 cord which was, surely, enough for all 
 future contingencies, Poor Old Safety-Valve 
 had been on his engine only seven hours 
 and he went to sleep at his post. It was 
 truly a sad case, and he had paid heavy 
 price for his fault, and the superintendent 
 sighed and drove home to dinner.
 
 HOW MARY ALICE WAS 
 CONVERTED.
 
 "In evil long I took delight, 
 
 Unawed by shame or fear; 
 Till a new object struck my sight, 
 
 And stopped my wild career." 
 
 NEWTON'S HYMN. 
 
 "Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin, 
 And born unholy and unclean, 
 
 Sprung from the man whose guilty fall 
 Corrupts the race, and taints us all." 
 
 HYMN. 
 
 "If there is an angel who records the sorrows of 
 men as well as their sins, he knows how many and 
 deep are the sorrows that spring from false ideas 
 for which no man is culpable." 
 
 GEO. ELIOT. 
 
 "I do not find the religions of men at this 
 moment very creditable to them, but either childish 
 and insignificant, or unmanly and effeminating." 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 HOW MARY ALICE WAS 
 CONVERTED. 
 
 \ AT^HEM tbe usual winter -revivals" 
 began in Greenville, the various 
 denominations decided to combine in the 
 atfarlr upon Satan, and *rfl5S their forces in 
 the Methodist church, They were to divide 
 the spoils, so to speak, afterward. 
 
 This seemingly innocent arrangement 
 looked perfectly fair to the general public 
 and to sinners at large, but the Baptist and 
 other clergymen shook their heads in private 
 and showed a marked disrelish for, although 
 they consented to, the pooling system. They 
 had had experience before. It may not be 
 easy to believe; but it is, nevertheless, a fact 
 that, having been wrought to a state of re 
 ligions exaltation or frenzy in a given church, 
 it is within those same walls that the convert
 
 8o How Mary Alice was Converted. 
 
 tends to cast his lot thereafter, and while a 
 few go with their friends, back to the church 
 to which they are accustomed, the many 
 cling to the one where Satan was put to 
 flight after a vigorous struggle and charge 
 all along the line. 
 
 The decision to mass forces at the Meth 
 odist church had come only after a disastrous 
 attempt to conduct (the previous year) three 
 revivals in the town at the same time. The 
 opinion of the public had become so divided 
 as to the relative "power of the Spirit" at the 
 three places that the discussion of the real 
 subjects at issue were lost sight of. 
 
 The ungodly had hinted that the visiting 
 "boy preachers" and local clergymen were 
 spending more thought on trying to beat the 
 number of converts at the other meetings 
 than on anything else. They scoffingly as 
 serted that the night after the Baptists 
 announced forty-two souls saved the rival 
 clergyman (Methodist) had boldly claimed 
 fifty-one as his harvest up to that time. The
 
 How Mary Alice was Converted. 81 
 
 weight of evidence appeared to be on the 
 Methodist side, and certainly the volume of 
 sound was there ; albeit the ungodly hinted 
 that certain of the noisiest converts were 
 " stock," as it were, and had been saved each 
 winter with the utmost regularity for many 
 years past. 
 
 Hints of this nature were so frequently 
 thrown out that it became evident that some 
 thing had to be done. So when Brother 
 Salter announced that the following Sunday 
 he would open the revival at his church, by 
 a sermon on "The Lamb's Book of Life," he 
 created quite a stir in the congregation by 
 adding that since conferring together the 
 various clergymen had decided to forego 
 revivals in their own churches, and would 
 request their own congregations, and all 
 sinners more or less closely allied thereto, 
 to repair nightly to the Methodist church 
 where all the preachers would be for the 
 next three or four weeks, or as long as the
 
 82 How Mary Alice was Converted. 
 
 power of the Lord was manifest in their 
 midst. 
 
 Brother Salter spoke as if the "power of 
 the Lord" traveled about from place to 
 place, with all its belongings in a valise, and 
 tarried here or there according as invitations 
 were pressing. 
 
 He exhorted his flock to welcome and 
 detain, as long as might be, this Power, and 
 it was hinted by the bald-headed old scoffer 
 in the choir that he had clearly intimated 
 that he meant to give his clerical rivals a 
 point or two that might hereafter result in 
 more additions to their own flocks and a 
 greater number of brands plucked from the 
 burning, if they but followed his example. 
 
 But all this was merely the prelude to 
 the revival which almost swept the town 
 of sinners of mature years, and left only 
 the hopelessly skeptical or the palpably too 
 callow for the brethren to work upon. Each 
 denomination disliked to be outdone by a 
 rival, therefore pastoral visits were made,
 
 How Mary Alice -was Converted. 83 
 
 and deacons and "mothers in Israel" urged 
 every man, woman, and child who had ever 
 attended their own meetings to go to the 
 great combination revival the following 
 week, as it was to be the last, and a special 
 effort was to be made to very greatly in 
 crease the number of converts, so that there 
 might be a fair division afterward, when 
 they were formally taken into the various 
 churches. 
 
 Mary Alice and her friend Isabel were 
 the only two lambs belonging to one of 
 the Sabbath-school classes, who had not, 
 previous to this last week, gone up for 
 prayers, and after weeping and praying and 
 wrestling with the Lord night after night 
 announced themselves saved, and been made 
 objects of great rejoicing forthwith. 
 
 The "mourners' bench " was so crowded 
 by wretched " seekers " wedged in between 
 men and women who knelt beside them to 
 talk with, pray over, and weep for them, 
 that it was no unusual thing to see one of
 
 84 How Mary Alice was Converted. 
 
 the elders or deacons -give a sort of flying 
 leap in order to get past one group and to 
 another. 
 
 The church was filled with groans and 
 the sound of weeping. "Amen!" "Praise the 
 Lord!" "Come down now, dear Lord!" 
 "Bless his holy name!" and many such 
 other ejaculations, were so mingled with 
 sobs and groans, and cries of " Save me ! " 
 "Save me!" "I'm lost! lost! lost!" that the 
 nerves of a stronger person than poor little 
 Mary Alice might well have been unstrung 
 by the prevailing excitement. The child be 
 came terrified. She had not been allowed 
 to attend such a meeting before; but her 
 mother, a timid woman, had been wrestled 
 with that day, and half convinced that she 
 might really be standing between the child 
 and some possible good for the future. She 
 had, therefore, allowed her to go with her 
 friend Isabel and an older sister. 
 
 Groans, cries, shouts, prayers, and exhor- 
 tations were inextricably mingled in the
 
 How Mary Alice was Converted. 85 
 
 group about the mourners' bench. One 
 preacher was crying out, " Thank God, an 
 other sinner saved ! " " Plucked from the 
 burning ! Escaped from hell-fire ! " While 
 other despairing souls that failed to feel 
 that thrill of nerve and sense that follows 
 on excitement and overwrought nature, felt 
 themselves abandoned, indeed, of the Lord, 
 since this was their third or fourth or even 
 tenth night at the "altar," and still they 
 were conscious of no change. 
 
 Each exultant cry of conversion filled 
 them with new terror. It numbed sense and 
 paralyzed hope. "Is my name written in 
 the Lamb's book of life? Ask that ques 
 tion, sinner ; ask now ! " shouted one exhorter 
 above the noise and tumult. "I must know 
 now ! Now, Lord ! " 
 
 "Is mine there?" "Look, Lord, look!" 
 shouted others. 
 
 The idea swept like a fire across the sur 
 charged nerves of the congregation wedged 
 tightly together, in air so vile and close that
 
 86 How Mary Alice was Converted. 
 
 hysteria was superinduced as an inevitable 
 consequence. 
 
 "Is mine?" "And mine?" "Is mine, 
 Lord?" "O God, look, look!" shouted one 
 old clergyman. "Make me sure Lord; quiet 
 my soul ! Look, Lord, look in the Gi's ! " 
 
 The old man's name was Gifford, and in 
 spite of the air, the tumult, the religious 
 frenzy, in spite of all, there was a smile 
 which was almost an audible flutter as it 
 passed over the congregation. Some one 
 saw how fatal this would be, and struck in, 
 " Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and 
 wounded, sick and sore." The old hymn 
 caught the nerves of the vast body, and 
 the volume of sound that swelled on the 
 vibrant atmosphere almost drowned the 
 groans and shouts of the newly-converted or 
 still wretched "seekers." Mary Alice and 
 Isabel stood pale and trembling, too young 
 to have been subject to the slight touch of 
 comedy which had almost broken in upon 
 the solemnity of the occasion.
 
 How Mary Alice was Converted. 87 
 
 Just then one of the clergymen, a tall, 
 thin, dark, and terrible looking man came 
 slowly down the isle to where they stood, 
 wide eyed and trembling. He bent over 
 the two children, took both their small, 
 trembling hands in his, and asked solemnly, 
 " Do you want to go to hell ? " 
 
 The poor, trembling little wretches dis 
 claimed as well as they could any such de 
 sire, with the tears fast coming to their 
 eyes and their little throats dry and stiff. 
 
 "All of your Sabbath-school class are 
 saved. Only you two repel the Lord. Only 
 you two grieve his holy spirit. Do you 
 think he will forget you? He is looking at 
 you now, now I" and his explosive voice 
 made Mary Alice almost jump out of her 
 small boots, while Isabel fell to weeping 
 bitterly. 
 
 "He is touching your wicked heart at 
 last," said he, addressing Isabel. " Come 
 while there is yet time. Come! come! come!
 
 88 How Mary Alice was Converted. 
 
 The gate of hell yawns for you. This may 
 be your last chance, come!" 
 
 Both children were now in floods of 
 tears and wholly unable to think at all, 
 while he half led, half carried them forward 
 to the " mourners' bench " (now somewhat 
 thinned out) amid the applause and gratu- 
 lations of the entire congregation. The 
 children were at once made the subject of 
 a long and loud and orally punctuated 
 prayer by Brother Gifford, who, all uncon 
 scious of how perilously near he had brought 
 the tense nerves of the congregation to 
 laughter, now wrestled with the Lord in 
 supplication that he might give these two 
 "precious lambs one more chance to flee 
 from the wrath to come that they might 
 cease to do evil and learn to do well from 
 this time forth, even forever more." 
 
 But the moment they had found them 
 selves freed from the terrible face and 
 voice of the dark clergyman, who had made 
 personal inquiries as to their desire in re-
 
 How Mary Alice was Converted. 89 
 
 gard to a future abode, their healthy young 
 nerves reacted and the strangeness of the 
 situation so distracted their attention that 
 they straightway forgot to weep. 
 
 But presently Isabel fell to again and 
 wept as though her poor little heart would 
 break. Thereupon Mary Alice's sympathetic 
 soul joined in the lachrymose agony, and 
 the brethren, feeling that both were truly 
 "under conviction" and fairly on the road 
 to salvation, left the two small sinners alone 
 while they wrestled with older and less 
 sensitive culprits. 
 
 By and by their sobs ceased, their tired 
 little eyes closed; both children slept peace 
 fully, kneeling there at the "throne of 
 grace," with their curly heads resting on 
 their diminutive arms, and they on the 
 velvet-cushioned railing. 
 
 At last all of the other seekers were as 
 sisted to their feet, but these two knelt on. 
 "Praise the Lord! Thank his holy name!"
 
 90 How Mary Alice was Converted. 
 
 said the dark clergyman, fervently. "At 
 last! At last!" 
 
 He felt that these two had been hard 
 to reach, but now their " conviction " was 
 deep and sure. He bent down between 
 them, and the first words of his dreaded 
 voice awoke the two children, who sprang 
 to their feet, forgetting how or why they 
 were there. They both essayed to smile in 
 a polite and propitiatory way. 
 
 "Has light come? Do you feel at peace 
 with God?" inquired the dark clergyman, 
 mistaking the smiles for converted bliss. 
 "Yes, sir," said they, and smiled again. 
 
 Then there was much rejoicing and 
 hand-shaking, and it was announced that 
 two more vile sinners had found Christ. 
 The children felt that some way they had 
 done a very good thing, indeed, and began 
 to experience that sense of elation which 
 praise from their elders is sure to produce 
 in a sensitive child. Their little faces were 
 radiant. Many shook their hands, kissed
 
 How Mary Alice was Converted. 91 
 
 them, and otherwise showed their approval 
 of the new course they had adopted. "All 
 Hail the Power of Jesus' Name " was sung 
 lustily, in which the two little voices piped 
 up, and were much commended therefor. 
 
 The next day, Isabel and Mary Alice 
 were of opinion that they ought to feel 
 very different from their old, wicked selves; 
 but somehow they were unable to be quite 
 sure that they did. They thought that they 
 should have lost all taste for play, and were 
 shocked that dolls and "hide'n coop" still 
 had attractions for them. This they set 
 down as a snare for their feet, laid by Satan 
 himself, who they had no doubt was on 
 their track at that very moment. They con 
 cluded it would be safest to sit down with 
 their backs against the doll house as he 
 could not then come up suddenly behind 
 them and they could better give their 
 minds to thoughts of the next world. 
 
 "Wasn't it beautiful last night?" said 
 Mary Alice, with a distinct shiver.
 
 92 How Mary Alice was Converted. 
 
 "Mm," non-committally, from Isabel. 
 
 "Do you think God's as glad as they 
 said, 'cause we aren't going to hell now?" 
 
 " Of course he is ! How you talk ! " 
 
 Mary Alice felt crushed ; but by and by 
 she recovered, and asked quite seriously, 
 "What did you cry about last night, after 
 he stopped talking to us, I mean, up at the 
 mourner's bench?" 
 
 "I couldn't think of anything to cry for 
 at first," confessed Isabel, "but afterward I 
 thought of poor, dear little Nellie at home, 
 and then I just had to cry. I always do. 
 What did you?" 
 
 "Cause you did. I always have to if 
 anybody else does," Mary Alice replied 
 quite simply. There was a pause. Then she 
 asked in an awestricken tone. 
 
 "Do you suppose our religion's good if 
 we got it that way? You bein' sorry 'cause 
 you had a idiot sister at home and me bein' 
 sorry 'cause you was sorry 'cause you had a 
 idiot sister ? "
 
 Hozv Mary Alice was Converted. 93 
 
 "I don't see how anybody could have 
 anything worse to cry about than that" re 
 plied Isabel, hotly. "My mother says it is 
 the sorriest thing in the world, and besides, 
 she cries about it, and I guess she knows 
 what's good to cry about." 
 
 "Is that what she cried about when she 
 got religion?" inquired the persistent Mary 
 Alice. 
 
 "I don't know. Guess so," responded 
 Isabel, with disapproving composure. 
 
 "Le's ask her, and" began Mary Alice; 
 but Isabel broke in : 
 
 "Well, you can if you're a mind to, I 
 shan't. I've got my religion now. The 
 preacher said so, an' I'm goin' to join the 
 church next Sunday and get it over. Then 
 I guess ole Satan'll let me alone. He don't 
 know I was cryin' about Nellie." 
 
 "That's so," said Mary Alice, much re 
 lieved by the suggestion, and so it came 
 about that the following Sunday they were 
 "taken in on probation," with the promise
 
 94 How Mary Alice was Converted. 
 
 of full membership in six months if they 
 did not backslide in that time. Neither 
 small maid being detected during the six 
 months which followed, in any criminal acts 
 they were accepted as "full members in 
 good and regular standing" converted 
 thereto through the influences of an idiot 
 in the family and a fanatic in the church.
 
 A HALL OF HEREDITY.
 
 " How shall a man escape from his ancestors ? . . . 
 
 "Men are what their mothers made them. You 
 may as well ask a loom which weaves huckaback, why 
 it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from 
 this engineer, or chemical discovery from that jobber. 
 Ask the digger in the ditch to explain Newton's laws; 
 the fine organs of his brain have been pinched by 
 overwork and squalid poverty from father to son, for 
 hundreds of years. When each comes forth from his 
 mother's womb, the gate of gifts closes behind him. 
 Let him value his hands and feet, he has but one 
 pair. So he has but one future, and -that is already 
 predetermined in his lobes, and described in that little 
 fatty face, pig-eye, and squat form. All the privileges 
 and all the legislation in the world cannot meddle 
 or help to make a poet or a prince of him." 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE.
 
 A HALL OF HEREDITY. 
 
 the three children born to George and 
 Katherine Hinsdale, the most promis 
 ing by far was Oswald, the youngest son. 
 Congratulations upon his ability as well as 
 upon his finely shaped head and handsome 
 features had become so familiar to his 
 parents and indeed to the boy himself 
 that they were looked upon as quite a 
 matter of course by the time he was a lad 
 ready to enter the High School. 
 
 The other children envied him the ease 
 with which he mastered his lessons and 
 many were the prophecies as to his future 
 career. 
 
 No one doubted that he would be a 
 great man. No one questioned his ability 
 to shine in any walk of life that he might 
 choose, and his parents looked upon him
 
 too A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 as sure to be the prop and stay of their 
 declining years. If the other children got 
 into trouble, Oswald was ready and able to 
 -devise a plan to extricate them. He had 
 tact that rarest of gifts in a boy. If his 
 older brother undertook anything and found 
 himself stranded midway, he would laugh 
 ingly call Oswald to help him out. 
 
 " Here, Osie, I'm stuck. This thing won't 
 work at all. Fix it for me, won't you?" 
 
 It was the same confident cry whether 
 the difficulty were with the wheels of a 
 mechanical toy in process of construction, 
 the solving of a mathematical problem or 
 the adjustment of a refractory necktie. No 
 one doubted that the moment Oswald 
 touched it, it would fall gracefully into 
 place and give no farther trouble. 
 
 " Well, Os, how did you know that the 
 wheel had to go on that way ! " his 
 brother exclaimed one day, as he saw the 
 boy go to his father's assistance in bring-
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 101 
 
 ing to terms an eight-day clock that had 
 refused to strike. 
 
 Oswald laughed. He had never in his 
 life seen the inside of such a machine be 
 fore, but he had corrected his father's blun 
 der instantly. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know how I knew it, Ned," 
 he replied indifferently. " Just did, that's all. 
 I don't see how it could help being that 
 way. Seems awfully funny that father did 
 not see it. Say, Ned, let's go see that 
 sleight-of-hand fellow after school. I've an 
 idea I can do his tricks myself." 
 
 It was Hermann, the famous prestidig- 
 itateur, of whom he spoke, and both Ned 
 and his father laughed a little at the lad's 
 self-confidence. 
 
 I guess not, my boy," smiled his father. 
 "I think you will find more than your 
 match there; but you may go if you want 
 to. It will give your wits a shaking up to 
 try to catch the way he does his tricks, 
 I tell you what I'll do. I'll give you a
 
 IO2 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 quarter for every one of his illusions that 
 you can reproduce for your mother and me 
 to-night." 
 
 " 'Nuf said ! Hurrah ! " shouted the de 
 lighted boy as he turned a hand-spring out 
 of the door. The result of that stipulation 
 cost Mr. Hinsdale exactly $4.25, for the lad 
 actually did reproduce seventeen of the 
 master's clever illusions ! 
 
 "Take it as a warning, father," laughed 
 Ned. " You might have known he 
 could do it. I watched with all my might, 
 but I couldn't get onto one of them. Os is 
 a witch. I can see it in his off eye," he said 
 making a pass at his brother's left eye 
 in mock heroic style. There was just the 
 slightest hint of an inward cast in Oswald's 
 left eye. The faintest suggestion of a dif 
 ferent angle of vision from that of its 
 mate. 
 
 As the boys grew older, very little at 
 tention was given to the selection of a 
 suitable career for Oswald. That was ex-
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 103 
 
 pected to work itself out. But with the 
 other two children it was different. They 
 must be looked after. Their skill and ability 
 were both too weak and too embryonic to 
 trust to chance. It was a surprise, there 
 fore, to find Ned at the age of twenty- 
 four steadily making his way as a rising 
 young business man and to learn that Os 
 wald was "at present helping his brother." 
 
 That was the way it was always stated 
 by his parents. 
 
 Ned would say: "Oh, just now, Os is 
 keeping me straight. I don't know what 
 on earth I'd have done about those ridicu 
 lous mowing machines if he hadn't been 
 there when we unpacked them. Not an 
 other soul of us knew how to work them, 
 but he took to 'em as if he had been 
 born with one in his hand. I'm actually 
 afraid that Os will invent some devilish 
 thing himself some day that will give cold 
 chills to the rest of us." 
 
 There was a sudden peculiar flash in
 
 104 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 Oswald's face. The lids of his left eye 
 widened in a strange way until they ex 
 posed the entire iris. He compressed his 
 lips, and then, as he strode angrily out of 
 the room, flung back over his shoulder: 
 
 " You needn't trouble yourself about me ! 
 I understand it and I did at the time. 
 You all knew perfectly well how to manage 
 those machines. I'm not a fool!" 
 
 The family sat aghast. It was not like 
 Oswald. Each looked to the other for light. 
 
 "What is the matter with your brother, 
 Ned?" asked Mr. Hinsdale. 
 
 " Hanged if I know. That's a new one 
 on me. I guess he thinks I've been prying 
 into his work-room down at the store and 
 have made a guess at his latest fad. But 
 I haven't. I know he has stayed up there 
 alone a good deal lately; but I didn't sup 
 pose I'd understand his gimcracks if I saw 
 them, so I've never bothered to look He's 
 getting tremendously touchy lately, I" 
 
 "Don't put it that way, Ned," broke in
 
 A Hall of Heredity, IO$ 
 
 the restless little mother. "I think he feels 
 rather I don't know but that he Don't 
 you think it stings him to be to seem 
 a well sort of dependent on you?" 
 
 "Dependent on me! Great Caesar, mother, 
 what do you mean? Why Os can do any 
 thing. He" 
 
 The door opened slowly and Oswald's 
 face first appeared and then suddenly dis 
 appeared. His mother left the room. Late 
 that night she descended from her son's 
 room and her eyes were red from weeping. 
 She went softly, stealthily, to the drawer of 
 her dressing-case and drew forth a small 
 leather case. Then she looked for the tenth 
 time, with her habitual nervous insecurity 
 and trepidation, to be sure that her husband 
 was asleep, and slipped from the room 
 again. 
 
 The next morning, Oswald, who ap 
 peared to be in an unusually bright mood, 
 announced that he had heard from an old 
 school-fellow of a splendid chance to start
 
 io6 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 in business for himself, and that he had 
 decided to go. 
 
 " You can easily fill my place at the 
 store, Ned," he said cheerily and then with 
 a flash of gloomy fire, " any fifteen-year- 
 old boy can do all I did." 
 
 His brother began to protest, but the 
 mother noticed the sudden dilation of the 
 eyelids and that the left one did not match 
 its fellow. She had never observed it so 
 distinctly before. It gave her a shock as 
 the sudden recognition of a facial blemish, 
 but she tried to prevent what she feared 
 would be another unpleasant scene. 
 
 "I don't know but Osie is quite right. 
 He If he in case he can better himself 
 and I'm sure, Ned, you didn't mean to pre 
 vent " 
 
 " Osie is of age, now," began his father, 
 " and " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I'm of age. Why didn't you 
 say right out that I'd better be doing some-
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 107 
 
 thing," he muttered between his teeth as 
 he strode from the room, 
 
 "Osie, Osie, my son ! You did not un 
 derstand ! Osie don't " 
 
 But the boy was gone, nor did they see 
 him again for four months. It is true that 
 at the end of the first week he wrote a 
 most kind and gentle letter, making no 
 reference at all to his strange conduct. 
 Nor was it alluded to by any member of 
 the family at any time thereafter. His let 
 ters were bright and full of his new plans. 
 Vague they were, perhaps, but interesting 
 enough. The new enterprise promised well 
 and he was enthusiastic. At the end of 
 the fourth month he wrote for his sister to 
 visit him. She went. She was somewhat 
 surprised to find him living at a leading 
 hotel and in most sumptuous style. She 
 did not know of the absence of the little 
 leather case from her mother's dressing-case 
 drawer. 
 
 " What a lot of money you must be
 
 io8 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 making, Os," she said. " I'm so glad ! 
 Why didn't you tell us what a swell you 
 had grown to be all of a sudden ? I " 
 
 "Hush! Don't talk so loud. That man 
 next door will hear you, and he's the very 
 worst of all. I'm pretty sure he is at the 
 "bottom of the whole business," he said, 
 lowering his voice almost to a whisper and 
 pointing to the door leading out of his 
 room to an adjoining apartment. 
 
 " What whole business, Osie ? " queried 
 the girl eagerly, but under her breath. " I 
 don't know what you mean." 
 
 He focused his eyes upon her and an 
 indignant light crept into them. The lids 
 of the left one dilated strangely. His sis 
 ter hastened to explain. 
 
 " If you wrote about it to father or 
 mother, they did not tell me. I " 
 
 " Oh, well. Never mind, then. We 
 won't talk about it," he said quickly. " But 
 the first chance you get, you watch the 
 clerk. The one with side whiskers, and
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 109 
 
 see if he don't tell the first middle-aged 
 man that comes in something about me. 
 Just you watch now and then 111 tell you 
 all about it." 
 
 After that he talked of his new enter 
 prise, took her to see for herself how well 
 they were doing, and introduced her to his 
 partner. 
 
 "Why, Osie," exclaimed his sister, "why 
 didn't you tell me before that your partner 
 was our old school-fellow ? How nice ! 
 Why, how funny it seems to call you Mr. 
 Townsend ! " 
 
 " Don't, then," laughed the young part 
 ner. " Call me Henry, just as you always 
 did at school. But, dear me! I shall have 
 to say Miss Hinsdale, for you are such a 
 tall young lady now. Os doesn't tell me 
 much about you home folks. How is Ned? 
 And the rest ? Doing well, I hope ! " 
 
 All this had rattled on in a merry way, 
 when, suddenly, Oswald took his sister's
 
 I io A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 arm and started toward the door, where 
 he whispered: 
 
 "Notice closely. That is what I brought 
 you here for. Do you think Henry is all 
 right in his head, I mean ? " 
 
 "Oh, I didn't have a chance to observe," 
 she exclaimed softly. " Why ? Do you 
 
 think is there? You don't mean?" 
 
 She closed her upper teeth over her full 
 under lip and spread wide her eyes. Her 
 brother nodded mysteriously and drew her 
 outside. Once on the street he hastened 
 to change the subject. He showed her the 
 handsome buildings and various points of 
 interest and kept steadily away, she thought, 
 from the subject of his partner's mental 
 affliction. She did not feel surprised at 
 this. Oswald had grown so evasive of late 
 she hesitated to broach the subject herself. 
 Nothing more was said of it during her 
 brief stay, and, indeed, her brother was so 
 full of pleasant excursions for her enter 
 tainment that it almost escaped her mind.
 
 A Hall of Heredity. in 
 
 Their surprise at home, therefore, was 
 great indeed, when, six months later, Os 
 wald spoke in one of his letters of a dis 
 solution of the partnership, and said that: 
 " If this thing keeps up much longer, I 
 shall leave the state. I had hoped it 
 would not come to this, but I cannot and 
 I will not stand the pressure any longer." 
 
 The father was astonished. Mrs. Hins- 
 dale's dismay knew no bounds, and after 
 a serious family council it was decided 
 that either Ned or his father should go 
 on at once to learn what was the trouble. 
 Evidently a letter had miscarried, they 
 thought, for here were references to things 
 of which they knew absolutely nothing at 
 all. 
 
 " If the partnership has come to grief, 
 he will be awfully sensitive over it," re 
 marked his sister, " so let's don't say a 
 thing about " 
 
 The door opened, and Oswald came 
 hastily into the room. He appeared care-
 
 112 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 worn and there was a strangely restless 
 look in his eyes. The left one seemed 
 somehow to grow less like its fellow, and 
 yet few persons would have noticed the 
 change. 
 
 " Hello ! Os ! " exclaimed his brother, 
 rushing at him, but he waved his hand 
 scornfully toward Ned and went directly 
 to his mother. 
 
 "I'd like to see you alone, at once, 
 mother," he said, and they left the room to 
 gether. The three that were left gazed at 
 each other in blank amazement. 
 
 " He'll tell his mother all about it, no 
 doubt. We'll have to wait," said Mr. Hins- 
 dale, rising and leaning heavily upon the 
 table. " Sister, you would better not wait 
 up. It is late. Evidently Osie is in some 
 trouble, and he has followed his letter 
 home. It will be best for you not to see 
 him, perhaps, to-night." 
 
 The girl went softly from the room 
 and quietly closed her own door, that she
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 113 
 
 might not hear what was said by the 
 rather excited voice of her brother as he 
 paced the floor and talked with his mother 
 in his own room, next to hers. When she 
 had left the library, Ned walked over to 
 where his father stood, and, touching the 
 hand that bore tremblingly on the table, 
 said gently : 
 
 "Father, I'm afraid we are both think 
 ing the same sad thought and dreading the 
 same awful calamity. Did you did you 
 happen to notice his eyes?" 
 
 " Yes ! My God, Ned, have you thought 
 of it, too ! " said the unhappy father as he 
 sank into a chair and covered his face with 
 his hands. " But it is impossible ! Impos 
 sible! There has never been anything of 
 the kind in the family and he is the bright 
 est of us all." 
 
 II. 
 
 The following day, Ned and his father 
 called upon a friend who was also a physi-
 
 114 A HzM f 
 
 cian. They talked in a general and vague 
 way of mental disturbance. They put a 
 hypothetical case and the physician inter 
 rupted them before they were half through, 
 with 
 
 "Yes, yes, I can tell you all the rest 
 without another clue. The patient's parents 
 were nervous, senemic people. One or both 
 was indeterminate of character, and appre 
 hensive of forfeiting the good opinion of 
 somebody or everybody. Was conventional 
 of conduct for that reason. The patient 
 began life with brilliant promise was pre 
 cocious the pride of the family. May have 
 been most likely was a genius in some 
 respects. Look here," he exclaimed, rising 
 and taking from a well-filled cabinet a 
 strange, grotesque, but elaborately executed 
 piece of wood-carving, "that was done by 
 just such a man as you describe. He was 
 my patient, and a gifted fellow. If he had 
 only been looked after soon enough he 
 might have been saved, but" -
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 1 1 5 
 
 " Saved ! " exclaimed Mr. Hinsdale. " Saved ! 
 How do you mean ? " 
 
 " Oh, if when he began to be precocious 
 he had been taken from school, turned 
 loose in the country, not allowed to use his 
 over-stimulated, unequally formed and un 
 equally developed brain. If but what's 
 the use talking? What's the use of it? 
 His parents would have resented such a 
 suggestion bitterly; those who are physi 
 cally and mentally in a condition to bring 
 such children into the world always do, 
 until it is too late. That mental and physi 
 cal condition in them is the very thing 
 that in the next generation takes the other 
 turn. They'd think a doctor a fool who 
 hinted that their brilliant little Johnny 
 was not all right," he added, laughing. 
 
 " Oh, no, my friends, mental students look 
 behind the patient to find the 'unseen 
 hands that long ago were dust/ perhaps, 
 which push or turn the mental machinery
 
 n6 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 that has gone wrong, openly, for the first 
 time in this generation, maybe." 
 
 He had replaced the carving on its shelf, 
 but was still looking at it. The two guests 
 sat silent, each absorbed in his own thought. 
 Presently the doctor resumed: 
 
 "To my mind and eye that work is of 
 the same type as that of Gustave Dore. 
 There is mental chaos intellectual distor 
 tion combined with great powers of imagi 
 nation. Something has saved Dore", but my 
 poor fellow ran the usual course and died 
 the victim of his own delusions. But, see 
 here, we are waxing gloomy. Are you going 
 out to the races this afternoon? No? Well, 
 I am. I love a good horse next to my 
 children and I'm going to see the trot. 
 Wish you'd take the other seat, Ned. 
 Come along! Must you go so soon? Sorry. 
 Well, drop in again. I'm seldom busy at 
 this hour. It is my resting time, and I 
 don't see patients only friends. Good-by." 
 
 Neither father nor son spoke as they
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 117 
 
 walked toward home. Each had a terrible 
 weight upon his heart and each dreaded 
 to hear the other confess it. Finally, Ned 
 said in a tone hardly audible: 
 
 "Some of the symptoms he described are 
 not do not I have never seen." 
 
 The father groaned, but did not reply. 
 
 When they entered the house, Oswald 
 sat by the window, morose and sullen. 
 
 "They have been talking about me," 
 he said to his mother as he saw them ap 
 proach. " I know. And I believe Ned's at 
 the bottom of this whole infernal business. 
 But I'll show him! I'll leave the country- 
 I" 
 
 His mother began hastily to talk of 
 other things, and at that moment the hus 
 band and son entered. 
 
 "Hello, Osie," said Ned cheerily. "How'd 
 you like to go to the races this afternoon? 
 Dr. White invited me and I can't go. I'm 
 sure he'd like to have you, and you're so 
 fond of horses, Shall I"
 
 1 1 8 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 " No, you shan't. I know your tricks 1 
 don't go to any races, with your doctor. 
 You're a couple of" 
 
 "Osie! Osie!" exclaimed his mother. 
 
 His father stepped up to him and laid 
 a tender, trembling hand upon his arm. 
 
 "My son, Ned was only trying to give 
 you a pleasure. He I we"- 
 
 The father's voice trembled, and at that 
 moment, Ned, with a little sob in his 
 throat, led his mother from the room. 
 
 Oswald seemed to have forgotten his 
 irritation instantly and began to chat pleas 
 antly, but there was an ever-changing dila 
 tion and shifting of the eyes that fixed his 
 father's gaze and made his thoughts trou 
 bled and anxious. 
 
 But when, on the following evening, Os 
 wald appeared at a brilliant ball given by 
 his cousin Hortense, in honor of his return, 
 and when he was the admiration and envy 
 of all the young men of his set, because of 
 the warmth of devotion which he very evi-
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 119 
 
 dently aroused in the bosom of that young 
 lady's guest and friend, Elinor Maitland, his 
 father's anxiety subsided a little and he 
 said to Ned, upon their return from the 
 ball: 
 
 " I guess, after all, we were unduly dis 
 turbed, Ned. He has simply been left too 
 much alone and has grown morbid and al 
 lowed his quick temper to master him." 
 
 And Ned responded, with a new quality 
 of happiness in his voice: 
 
 "I guess there is no doubt of it, bless 
 him! And didn't you think, father, that 
 Miss Elinor took a decided interest in him? 
 Wouldn't that be splendid? She'd make a 
 man of him, if any one could and a fellow 
 could hardly be ugly tempered with her" 
 he added, a bit defensively and with just a 
 hint of apology toward the girl in his 
 voice. 
 
 III. 
 
 But Oswald's restless spirit urged him 
 to embark in another enterprise. He would
 
 I2O A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 have moments of despair, when he remem 
 bered that all of the contents of his mother's 
 little leather case had gone to satisfy the 
 demands of the hotel where he had lived 
 so lavishly. 
 
 Then he would lapse into resentment 
 against "the clerk with the side whiskers" 
 who had received the money. Once he 
 hinted at very dark things about this clerk, 
 and his mother essayed to learn what the 
 exact grievance was, but failed. She 
 thought it quite likely some affair between 
 young men that even her little Oswald did 
 not wish to confide to her. She always 
 thought of this stalwart fellow as her lit 
 tle Oswald. She remembered, so well, and 
 so sadly, the time when he first lay in hei 
 arms. Over him there had been a sort 
 of reconciliation with her husband. Not 
 that there had ever been an open break 
 between them ; but there had been sad, 
 bitter months for both. The unreasoning 
 and unreasonable jealousy and suspicion of
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 1 2 1 
 
 the young husband had made her life dur 
 ing that past year one of exquisite an 
 guish. From being a frank, open girl, she 
 had learned to hedge in all she did and 
 said. She had grown careful of her glances 
 and of her speech. She knew, full well, 
 
 *r- 
 
 that under his placid and seemingly com 
 pliant demeanor, her husband's eye was 
 upon her with ever an idea of treachery 
 toward him, with always a suspicion if she 
 but smiled upon another gentleman, or 
 spoke in his favor, that there probably 
 was back of her smile or light word 
 more that he did not know. 
 
 When the young wife first awoke to 
 this fact she was wretched beyond words. 
 She resented it bitterly, but by degrees 
 she had grown weary of the eternal con 
 test, and learned to evade all appearance 
 of interest in even the male members of 
 her own family. Partly in scorn, and 
 partly in sheer weariness of soul, she had 
 gradually learned to hedge against all
 
 122 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 shadow of suspicion. This was all so very 
 long ago now. With ripening years and 
 wisdom her husband had almost outgrown 
 his jealous watchfulness; but she thought 
 of it now, and of how the little Oswald 
 had brought to her the first words of 
 shame and repentance from her husband's 
 lips. She remembered how he had then 
 reproached himself and said that he had 
 been an " old fool." She recalled with 
 what high hopes she had accepted all he 
 said, and, burning the past behind them 
 and drenching its grave with their tears, 
 she had held the little peacemaker close 
 to her heart and sunk into a restful sleep. 
 Poor little peacemaker! A crisis had now 
 come in his life, and his mother wondered, 
 vaguely, if she would be able to bridge 
 the dark river for him as he had done 
 in his unconscious infancy for her. 
 
 " Osie, dear," she said, " I have no 
 more money. You know I had saved that 
 in all the past years. Your father never
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 123 
 
 knew I had it. But I tell you what I 
 will do. I have been thinking. If 
 if" 
 
 " You needn't throw it up to me ! I'll 
 pay you back ! You know very well you 
 forced me to take it ! I'd rather owe 
 somebody else ! I " 
 
 He had slammed the door behind him, 
 but the flash in his eyes had stung his 
 mother more even than had his bitter words. 
 Her head sank slowly on her folded arms 
 as they lay on the library table, and a 
 bitter groan escaped her white lips. The 
 boy had always spoken kindly to her. He 
 had grown bitter and sucpicious first 
 toward one, then another, and finally 
 toward almost all others. But until now 
 she had been spared this final blow. 
 
 She did not move. Her daughter en 
 tered with a cheery 
 
 " Oh, mamma, did you " 
 
 The girl stopped suddenly, and, with a 
 finger to her lips, tiptoed from the room.
 
 124 -A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 " Mamma has fallen asleep," she said 
 to herself. " Blessed little mamma ! She 
 has looked so anxious and sad lately. It 
 must be something about Osie, but they 
 do not tell me. Osie is cross and ugly. 
 I think papa has scolded him. He whis 
 pered to me yesterday that papa was at 
 the bottom of it all. When I asked 
 what, he looked at me angrily and said 
 that I knew very well. But I don't. I 
 don't know at all. Elinor is the only one 
 he does not seem to feel hurt at. Oh!" 
 she exclaimed softly to herself, when a sud 
 den light came into her face. "I've solved 
 the whole mystery, I do believe. Papa 
 thinks he's too young to marry, and should 
 wait until he is established in business, 
 and he resents it ! Oh, I see ! " 
 
 She tapped her slippered foot on the 
 rug and drew her eyelids down. She was 
 thinking out a plan to help Oswald. 
 Meantime, in the room below, Mrs. Hins- 
 dale sat thinking, thinking, thinking, if a
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 125 
 
 mere whirl of chaotic mental pain may be 
 called thought. Her heart was sore and 
 bruised and an awful light was slowly 
 dawning upon her. Until now her heart 
 had held full sway. To-day her head poor, 
 tired, troubled, never very clear or exact 
 head, wholly unaccustomed to grapple with 
 problems not in her "woman's sphere" was 
 beginning to take a part. 
 
 " It cannot, it must not be too late ! " 
 she said, rising unsteadily from her chair. 
 " Great God ! forgive us all ! We have 
 been so blind, so blind, so blind ! " She 
 raised her hands pleadingly above her 
 head and closed her eyes, but the tears 
 streamed down her sad, blanched face, from 
 beneath the trembling lids. At last she 
 slipped to the floor upon her knees and 
 with outstretched arms and streaming eyes 
 called out into space, "God help us! God 
 help us ! It must not be too late ! "
 
 126 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 IV. 
 
 That night Oswald did not come home. 
 He had but little money with him, and 
 when another day passed and still he did 
 not return, the, family talked for the first 
 time openly of their secret, serious fears. 
 Florence alone was excluded from the coun 
 cil. She had gone to see Elinor that af 
 ternoon, and asked if Oswald had been 
 there since the previous day. She had 
 done it quite incidentally and with a de 
 sire not to appear anxious. 
 
 Elinor laughed a little nervously, but 
 said he had spent "a few minutes with 
 her just before he took the train." Flor 
 ence had not asked what train. She was 
 too proud to let her friend know that he 
 had left home in anger. 
 
 Days passed and no news came from 
 the wanderer. At the end of the week 
 the mother could bear it no longer. She 
 went to Elinor Maitland herself. She had
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 127 
 
 thought she would be perfectly calm, and 
 lead the girl quite naturally to talk of 
 the boy they both loved. But when she 
 saw Elinor's pale face she asked, quite 
 without prelude, as she drew the tall 
 young form to a seat beside her : 
 
 "Have you heard from Oswald, dear?" 
 
 The girl's eyes opened wide with ques 
 tioning fear. Mrs. Hinsdale felt that her 
 hand trembled. 
 
 " No," she said, in a scarcely audible 
 voice, with her eyes now upon the floor. 
 
 "Oh, Elinor, Elinor!" said the mother, 
 wild with fear for her son, "did he did 
 you ? You didn't discard him, dear ! 
 You hold my boy's life more than his life 
 in your hands! He has talked of you 
 to me ! Elinor, dear ! " She slipped to 
 her knees beside the girl and clasped her 
 hands. " For God's sake, Elinor, help us 
 save our boy ! " 
 
 Elinor's face was as white as stone. It 
 seemed to her that her heart would break;
 
 128 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 but no tears came. Her brain was hot 
 and it refused to think. At last she took 
 the streaming face before her, in her young 
 strong arms, and kissed it reverently. 
 
 " Mother ! " she whispered, and then the 
 hot blood rushed to her cheeks. "Mother, 
 we did not quarrel. He said I must go 
 with him and I could not do that. Then 
 he" she paused and bit her lip. Tears 
 stood in her eyes for the first time. Mrs. 
 Hinsdale tightened her grasp upon the girl's 
 waist and pressed her own face hot with 
 shame against Elinor's heaving breast. 
 There was a long silence. 
 
 "I cannot tell you, mother," whispered 
 she softly. 
 
 Mrs. Hinsdale lifted her eyes to the 
 girl's face. 
 
 "He did not ?" Her eyes dropped 
 again. Elinor shivered. 
 
 "He tried to stab himself and and I 
 took the knife from him. He" 
 
 Mrs. Hinsdale was sobbing violently.
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 129 
 
 "Why didn't you go with him, dear? 
 Why did you let him go alone like that? 
 When he was so desperate? Why?" 
 
 The girl's eyes dilated again. She was 
 staring at the older woman in dismay; but 
 she could form no word in reply. At last 
 she said, as if in self-defence: 
 
 "I I was afraid of him. He looked 
 so strangely. His eyes " she shivered 
 "his eyes frightened me. I thought he 
 had quarreled with you. He spoke so bit 
 terly" She checked herself and stroking 
 the silver hair of her companion, resumed 
 quickly : " He had always so adored you. 
 He always talked of you more than of 
 anything else. He" 
 
 The door flew suddenly open and with 
 a quick stride Oswald stood over the pair. 
 They were paralyzed by his face. It was 
 hard and set, and filled with a demon's fire, 
 with his left hand he grasped his mother's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Ah ! " he sneered bitterly, " I have at
 
 130 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 last discovered the whole damnable plot, 
 have I ? It is you two precious she devils 
 who have made all the trouble concocted 
 all- the schemes from the first was it?" 
 he shouted, with the force and power of a 
 maniac, and before the half-fainting pair 
 could move he had fired a fatal shot. His 
 mother lay on the floor with a cruel wound 
 in her breast. 
 
 Elinor had sprung to her feet. She 
 ran screaming from the room. The bullet 
 that followed her buried itself in the stair- 
 way beyond. 
 
 When the butler and house-man en 
 tered, an instant later, Oswald stood with 
 the smoking weapon in his hand, gazing 
 with profound satisfaction upon the slowly 
 relaxing features of his mother. 
 
 "You will see," he remarked quite coolly, 
 "that justice is not wholly a thing of the 
 past and God still avenges his own. She 
 posed as my mother; but there lies the 
 middle-aged gentleman who talked about
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 131 
 
 me to the clerk with the side whiskers. 
 That is why I had to leave the hotel. 
 And he had the impudence to come here 
 and put his arms around Elinor! I shot 
 him and I suppose if some other compli 
 cation doesn't turn up that the whole in 
 fernal conspiracy is at an end. Now I 
 shall be able to sleep." 
 
 " Yes, you'll have a damned good chance 
 to sleep," responded the policeman who led 
 him away. I'd advise you to begin as 
 soon as you get to the calaboose." But Os 
 wald appeared not to hear him, and strode 
 on, quite docilely, towards the living death 
 that awaited him. He had not felt so light 
 and happy since he could remember. He 
 had at last achieved an end! 
 
 " He's a workin' the insanity racket," 
 scornfully remarked the roundsman, "but 
 he's altogether too clear-headed on other 
 subjects. He's lived here, man and boy, too 
 long for that sort of guff to go down.
 
 132 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 Always was smart. Always was wo'thless, 
 an' always was stuck up." 
 
 "Guess he'll get a chance t' monkey 
 with one mechanical appliance that he can't 
 manage," responded the Chief, glancing at 
 a large picture of an electrical chair that 
 hung on the office wall. Whether it hung 
 there for edification or for adornment, the 
 Chief would have been puzzled to state. 
 
 V. 
 
 The medical experts differed. Those for 
 the defence found him undoubtedly insane. 
 Those for the prosecution were equally sure 
 that Oswald Hinsdale was mentally respon 
 sible. The high character of all of these 
 gentlemen precluded the possibility that 
 they were influenced by ulterior motives. 
 Their professional ability excluded all belief, 
 in the public mind, that they could be 
 mistaken. 
 
 The Prosecution proved that there had 
 never been a case of insanity in the family.
 
 A Hall of Heredity. 133 
 
 The jury was perplexed. The judge un 
 easy. Only the prisoner was serene. His 
 conduct told strongly against him. He in 
 sisted that he would do the same deed 
 over if he were given the chance. He 
 wrote pages upon pages of comments 
 many of them shrewd and witty upon the 
 different features of the trial. He drew 
 humorous sketches of the members of the 
 jury. One of the newspapers published 
 some of these caricatures and commented 
 upon their great cleverness. 
 
 The night of his conviction, after he 
 had gone back to his cell, he asked the 
 keeper to let him see the picture of the 
 electrical chair. He studied all of its points 
 with care and attention, and expressed a 
 conviction that he could improve upon its 
 construction, and flew into a passion be 
 cause he was not allowed a knife with 
 which to whittle out a working model upon 
 which he could prove the superiority of his 
 design.
 
 134 A Hall of Heredity. 
 
 The following morning the keeper re 
 marked to the warden with a shake of 
 the head, " I'm stumped. About half the time 
 I think he's shammin', an' the other half 't 
 looks as if he was sort of pushed by un 
 seen hands and worked kind of mechanical- 
 like. I kinder wish they had a sent him up 
 fer life, 'nstead of what they did." 
 
 The warden glanced up with a sneer, 
 ing smile : 
 
 "Gettin* chicken hearted, ain't you, Jerry? 
 What's t" hinder the doctors from knowin' 
 it if he was looney? Hey?" 
 
 "Well, half of 'em said he wus," re 
 marked Jerry, as he withdrew, "an* I don't 
 know who's t' make sure that the jury 
 didn't pin their faith to the wrong half. 
 But it ain't none o' my funerile an' I 
 wisht it wasn't his'n," he added, as he 
 yielded his place to the relief watch.
 
 THAT REMINDS ME OF"-
 
 "How short a time since this whole nation rose 
 every morning to read or hear the traits of courage 
 of its sons and brothers in the field, and was never 
 weary of the theme ! .... I am much mistak 
 en if every man who went to the army, had not a 
 lively curiosity to know how he should behave in 
 
 action Each whispers to himself : ' My 
 
 exertions must be of small account on the result ; 
 only will the benignant Heaven save me from dis 
 gracing myself and my friends and my State. Die! 
 Oh, yes, I can die ; but I cannot afford to misbehave ; 
 and I do not know how I shall feel.' " 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 "THAT REMINDS ME OF"- 
 
 ( 4 ^ I ^HERE are several kinds of courage 
 as well as of cowardice," said the 
 old soldier who was promoted from the 
 ranks for conspicuous bravery on the field 
 of Shiloh. 
 
 "Now, there was the case of our order 
 ly. When we were enlisted he was made 
 orderly because of his fine figure and so 
 cial position. He was a good fellow, too, 
 and a leader in our athletic club, fond of 
 hunting, and a good marksman; and none 
 of us who were merely privates envied 
 him. But he disappeared from view dur 
 ing our first skirmish, and did not report 
 until a day after the battle. We thought 
 he had been captured or killed. When he 
 put in an appearance at camp again, he 
 said that just as the first guns had been
 
 140 "That Reminds Me Of"- 
 
 fired he had a dreadful attack of cramps, 
 and had lain ever since all but dead in 
 the strip of woods that skirted the battle 
 field. 
 
 " Some of us had our suspicions, of 
 course, but we kept them to ourselves, and 
 it is only fair to say that we felt a little 
 ashamed of ourselves for harboring thoughts 
 that were dishonoring to our handsome 
 young orderly. 
 
 " Well, everything went along as usual 
 until the next engagement. It was a 
 good deal of a battle, you know Shiloh." 
 
 Everyone smiled at the modesty of his 
 expression and seemed to think it was 
 a good deal of a battle at Shiloh. 
 
 " I'm free to confess that our whole 
 command wavered. There was an impulse 
 to turn and run when the deadly fire 
 opened on us most of us were boys, 
 then. But in an instant that subtle influ 
 ence that is felt all along the line when 
 an officer's voice rings out clear and bold
 
 "That Reminds Me Of"- 141 
 
 stemmed the pulse-beat that swept along 
 the front rank, and we closed up and 
 marched steadily into the hell of rifle and 
 cannon that waited for us. 
 
 " Perhaps you don't know that I was 
 on what you call the wrong side the 
 Southern side. Well, I was. It is neither 
 here nor there how that came about; for 
 I only started in, this time, to tell a lit 
 tle thing about courage, and ask what you 
 think of it and I don't suppose you will 
 think that courage is of a different qual 
 ity because it happened to be Confederate. 
 
 " At any rate, you won't think so if 
 any of you were soldiers," he added, laugh 
 ing softly. 
 
 There was a murmur of assent from 
 the tall man in the corner, who did not 
 use his title, although he had earned it 
 as a union volunteer, and risen from the 
 ranks until he was a staff officer, with 
 the eagle on his shoulder. 
 
 " Nobody who faced you questions the
 
 142 "That Reminds Me Of"- 
 
 quality of your bravery," came from the 
 serene artist, who served all through the 
 war as an undistinguished Low Private 
 so he said. His rough exterior and the 
 tenderness of his heart had won the love 
 of all who knew him, and the exquisite 
 delicacy of artistic conception and touch 
 had, for years now, placed his name high 
 on the ladder of fame. 
 
 No one else spoke, and the Confed 
 erate went on. 
 
 " Well, of course, we had no time to 
 think whether our orderly was there or 
 not, until the battle was all over. Then 
 we began to inquire among ourselves 
 and found that no one had seen him 
 since the firing began. 
 
 " Somebody suggested cramps again, 
 but we were not at all sure that he had 
 not been killed, so we dropped it, as peo 
 ple do such chaffing in the face of death. 
 
 " Well, now, you'd hardly believe that 
 that fellow actually reported two days af-
 
 "That Reminds Me Of 1 - 143 
 
 ter the battle, with exactly the same old 
 excuse. Of course he was degraded to the 
 ranks, and put on what we called Miss 
 Nancy duty. That is, he had no gun at 
 all, and it was his duty simply to carry 
 the wounded off the field, after the battle 
 was over, or stay behind the lines and 
 give relief to those who crawled back, 
 wounded. 
 
 "He was never called anything else but 
 old Cholera Morbus and, by gad, he had 
 the courage to stay and take it ! 
 
 "But that is not all though I think 
 that required more grit than I'd have 
 had. But this I'm coming to is what I 
 started to tell. Just the minute he found 
 himself in that position a disgraced, dis 
 honored, and disarmed soldier he sudden 
 ly developed a grade of courage that fair 
 ly made your heart stand still. He never 
 once stayed behind the ranks. He would 
 walk right out in front, where he was 
 just as likely to be shot by us as by the
 
 144 "That Reminds Me Of"- 
 
 Yankees, and rescue a comrade who had 
 fallen, and take him back where, in case 
 of a charge, he wouldn't be trampled. 
 
 "I've seen him do it fifty times, and, 
 if one of the men, who were detailed to 
 help him wouldn't go along, by George, 
 he'd go alone, and struggle back with his 
 burden, covering the wounded man the 
 best he could with his own body. I saw 
 him do it once or twice when I don't be 
 lieve I could have forced myself up to 
 such an act of foolhardy heroism if it had 
 been to save my life. It was almost cer 
 tain death, and he must have known it 
 perfectly well, for, as I say, he had none 
 of the excitement and mental occupation 
 of moving with large numbers, and he 
 hadn't even a revolver or any means of 
 defence. By gad ! I don't know how he 
 ever did it ! " 
 
 "Don't you think he was trying to re 
 trieve his reputation?" drawled the artistic
 
 "That Reminds Me Of"- 145 
 
 Low Private, " and hoped thereby to be 
 restored to the ranks ? " 
 
 " Well, sir," responded the Confederate, 
 slowly, " we all had that idea the first 
 few times we saw him do it, and we 
 kept on calling him old Cholera Morbus; 
 but after he'd kept it up for over a year 
 our colonel had him transferred to a reg 
 iment where his record and sobriquet were 
 not known. The colonel said in his hear 
 ing, to his new commander, that he had 
 been so conspicuously brave when detailed 
 to do relief work, that it was hoped and 
 believed that he would rise from the ranks 
 in a short time. 
 
 " Well, sir, the minute that man was 
 given a gun again, and put in the ranks, 
 with a chance to defend himself, and to 
 have the aid and inspiration that numbers 
 would give, he " 
 
 "Not cramps again?" queried the tall 
 colonel, with an incredulous laugh. 
 
 " As true as there is a God in heaven,
 
 146 "That Reminds Me <?/"- 
 
 he did that very thing! That is to say, 
 when the battle was over he turned up 
 with that excuse again. 
 
 " Now, how would you explain that ? 
 If it was lack of courage how do you 
 account for his extraordinary and wholly 
 unnecessary and unasked-for courage the 
 moment he had no arms, and was at the 
 mercy of both lines of battle ? 
 
 "It has always puzzled me, and I used 
 to look at the fellow with feelings little 
 short of awe. It was the strangest study 
 I ever saw, in courage. Did either of you 
 ever see a case to beat it ? " he asked, 
 looking from the tall colonel to the artistic 
 Low Private. 
 
 The latter named gentleman shook his 
 head. 
 
 "I don't know that I ever did," he said, 
 thoughtfully. " But we had a funny case 
 in our company. He was a sort of half 
 witted creature with defective vocal organs. 
 I think he'd lost part of the roof of his
 
 u T/iat Reminds Me Of" 147 
 
 mouth, or his palate, or something. Any 
 how, he talked the queerest you ever heard. 
 Sounded like a duck quacking. No, not 
 like that, either. Talked 'nis wa'," said the 
 Low Private, twisting his mouth to one 
 side and making queer, guttural, roofless, 
 unspellable sounds. 
 
 " His name was Christian. He was the 
 biggest fool about some things that I ever 
 saw. He had an old flint-lock gun that he 
 thought the world and all of and he used 
 to keep it polished up so bright that you 
 could see your face in it. He polished it 
 with a strap. He'd hold the old flinter be 
 tween his knees, and rub that strap back 
 and forth, back and forth, as swift as light 
 ning, until the barrel would be fairly hot, 
 and it would look like a mirror. Of course, 
 he was not a regular soldier, but he was a 
 good cook and did chores, and we made 
 a sort of a pet and butt of him. Every 
 body liked him and joked with him. All 
 the time he was not otherwise engaged he
 
 148 "That Reminds Me Of"- 
 
 would be sitting behind his tent polishing 
 his old flint-lock. We used to offer to 
 swop guns with him, but he wouldn't trade 
 for the best Enfield ever made. When we 
 marched he'd teeter along with that darned 
 old flint-lock over his shoulder shining like 
 burnished silver. Of course, the boys used 
 to steal it and leave a good gun in its 
 place; but the first time we tried it, Chris 
 tian cried like a baby until we made the 
 joker give it back, and the second time, by 
 gad, he showed fight and the comical part 
 about it was he was going to lick the man 
 who hooked it the first time, and he didn't 
 know anything about who had it this time. 
 "But all that is only to give you an 
 idea of the sort of chap Christian was before 
 I came to his feat of courage or whatever 
 you might call it. It goes without saying 
 that he was never allowed in a battle ; but 
 at Vicksburg he broke loose, as the boys 
 always said, and got in the fight all on his 
 own hook.
 
 "That Reminds Me Of 149 
 
 " Of course, after the firing begins in ear 
 nest, it is so constant that it is only a whir 
 and a buzz, and you don't distinguish the 
 noise of your own gun from that of all the 
 rest. Well, sir, we all had an idea that if 
 Christian ever did undertake to discharge 
 his gun, some of us would fall, sure. We 
 thought the old thing would explode, so 
 we never gave him any ammunition. 
 
 " Somehow or other, he got some. He 
 told us he took it off a 'dead Reb,' and 
 I don't doubt that he did. Anyway, he got 
 a good big supply, and some of the boys 
 saw him loading away and taking aim at 
 a lively rate. He was right up with the 
 line, and the men who saw him had no 
 chance to stop him. Then, when the old 
 flinter didn't explode, they concluded it was 
 all right, and forgot all about Christian 
 and his shiny gun. 
 
 "Toward night, as the firing ceased only 
 as stray shots here and there warned us 
 to lay low after we had fallen back for
 
 150 " That Reminds Me Of- 
 
 the night some of us saw that darned 
 fool away out between the lines, sitting 
 down on the ground beside a dead man. 
 And what do you suppose he was doing?" 
 
 "Polishing his gun!" suggested the Con 
 federate, laughing! 
 
 "No, not exactly," said the Artistic Low 
 Private, stooping over to illustrate his reply, 
 "but it wasn't far from it. Here lay the 
 dead man with a splendid new Enfield rifle 
 beside him, and here sat that fool Chris 
 tian, and you must remember that sharp 
 shooters and straggling men were popping 
 away pretty steadily, picking off every head 
 that showed itself out of cover. The dust 
 would spat up all about him as if handsful 
 of beans were thrown about him on the 
 ground. You know how that is. 
 
 " Well, there he sat, cross-legged, tugging 
 away for dear life at the strap on the En- 
 field. He undid that strap which was new 
 and then took off his old one and threw 
 it over the dead man's arm. Then, he de-
 
 "That Reminds Me Of" 151 
 
 liberately buckled the new strap onto his 
 old flinter, got up, shouldered it and waddled 
 back to our lines. The bullets were just 
 whizzing past him all the time. 
 
 " He didn't get a scratch. When we got 
 a chance, we examined his gun, and, by 
 Jove, it was loaded nearly to the muzzle. 
 He'd loaded it every time, bat he hadn't 
 fired it once." 
 
 "If he had, there would have been a 
 wide vacancy in your ranks," remarked the 
 Confederate, laughing. 
 
 "I guess there's no doubt about that, 
 but, they do say, the ' Lord takes care of 
 children and fools,'" replied the Artist, 
 gravely. 
 
 "Which would you call the men who 
 stood around your patriot with the sur 
 charged blunderbuss?" queried the tall colo 
 nel, drily." 
 
 Everyone laughed. 
 
 "It's a fact, I hadn't thought of that," 
 assented the Artist, dreamily. " But, what I
 
 152 "That Reminds Me Of"- 
 
 started out to ask was, What do you think 
 of the courage of that donkey who calmly 
 sat there and undid and refastened that 
 strap? He knew enough to know he was 
 being shot at, and, two or three times, he 
 stopped an instant in his work, and, shak 
 ing his fist at the enemy, remarked: <Dod 
 blast ye! I'm agoin' t' hav' nis new snrap 
 er bust. Dod blast ye! Shoon away,' and, 
 when he got good and ready, he shoul 
 dered his old surcharged blunderbuss and 
 walked off the field like a drum-major on 
 dress parade. I've always wondered what 
 the Rebs thought of it. Of course, they 
 couldn't know what he was doing, nor that 
 he was a sort of a looney. They must 
 have thought he was a demi-god of courage, 
 who bore a charmed life. Yes, courage is a 
 queer thing, and is displayed in strange 
 ways. Sometimes, you have it and some 
 times you don't. I wasn't as scared all 
 the time I was in the army as I was one 
 day in Paris, when one of the young devils
 
 "That Reminds Me Of"- 153 
 
 in the studio put a live bull frog into my 
 coat pocket, and I put my hand in, on it. I 
 nearly had a fit. I was scared almost to 
 death. Yes, indeed, courage is a queer thing 
 and takes freaks in all of us, I guess." 
 "Speaking of that reminds me of a case 
 
 in our" began the tall colonel. But at 
 
 that moment, a lady at the piano dashed 
 into a lively air, and the colonel's story is 
 yet to be told.
 
 HIS MOTHER'S BOY.
 
 "Ye noticed Polly, the baby? A month afore she 
 
 was born, 
 
 Cicely, my old woman, was moody-like and forlorn; 
 Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers 
 
 and trees: 
 Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a 
 
 woman be's. 
 Narvous she was, and restless said that she 'couldn't 
 
 stay.' 
 Stay and the nearest woman seventeen miles away! 
 
 One night the tenth of October I woke with a chill 
 
 and fright, 
 For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't 
 
 in sight; 
 But a note was pinned to the blanket, which it said 
 
 that she 'couldn't stay,' 
 But had gone to visit a neighbor seventeen miles 
 
 away! 
 
 I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kern 
 
 to this spot 
 
 Lost on the plains in '50, drownded almost, and shot; 
 But out on this alkali desert, a hunting a crazy wife, 
 Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life." 
 
 BRET HARTE. 
 "Men are what their mothers made them." 
 
 EMERSON.
 
 HIS MOTHER'S BOY. 
 
 "\ A 7"E were sitting in my library with 
 the light turned very low. He 
 was my guest under rather sad and trying 
 circumstances, for, in the adjoining room 
 lay a little body, bandaged, and unconscious; 
 and he, my guest, was the child's brother 
 and guardian. Until to-day we were stran 
 gers, but he had arrived, an hour before, in 
 response to my telegram. I had sent the 
 message the moment I discovered his ad 
 dress, by reading a kind and tender letter, 
 which was taken by the police from the 
 little lad's pocket when he was shot. 
 
 On the strength of that letter, I had 
 kept the boy at my own house, instead of 
 sending him to the hospital. Everything 
 it was possible to do had been done for 
 him; but he had, as yet, never regained
 
 160 His Mother's Boy. 
 
 consciousness. Notwithstanding this fact, he 
 had twice dragged his weak body from the 
 bed, and attempted to leave the house. He 
 seemed unhappy, only because he could not 
 "go somewhere," as he expressed it, in his mum 
 bled, broken utterance. I supposed that his 
 mind had been so impressed by a journey he 
 was to take, that even in his delirium he could 
 not forget it, and was trying to push ahead. 
 
 I was telling his brother this, as we sat 
 in the darkened library and talked over the 
 case in subdued tones. What I told him 
 was what I now tell you. I had been driv 
 ing with my wife through the streets of 
 Albany, when we came suddenly upon an 
 excited crowd of men, women, and children. 
 There had been, a few minutes before, a col 
 lision between the Pinkerton men and a 
 body of railroad strikers. There lay on the 
 ground two men, a woman, and this boy. 
 The police were driving the maddened 
 crowd back. One of the officers mistook me 
 for my brother, who is a hospital surgeon,
 
 His Mother's Boy. 161 
 
 and asked me to look after the child. He 
 was such a delicate looking little fellow, so 
 well dressed, and so evidently did not be 
 long to anyone present, that my wife in 
 sisted that he be laid in our carriage and 
 driven to our home until his parents could 
 be notified. This was done. An officer went 
 with us, and when we had put the child to 
 bed, while we awaited the coming of the 
 doctor, we searched his pockets and found 
 the letter referred to. It began: 
 
 "My dear little brother," and ended 
 "your devoted brother, Walter." At first I 
 did not see the clue this gave, but the 
 envelope was addressed to Master Ralph 
 Travers, and had been written in Maiden, 
 Mass., but there was no postmark. It was 
 an old letter, too, so that it was not certain 
 that it would be of much use to us. 
 
 However, we decided to send a telegram 
 at once to Mr. Walter Travers at Maiden, 
 and say that his little brother was seriously 
 hurt and was apparently alone. I did this.
 
 1 62 His Mother s Boy. 
 
 The reply came promptly. "I shall come at 
 once. Watch him closely, or he will escape." 
 I looked at the little chap with renewed in 
 terest " Escape ! " I thought, and could 
 hardly repress a smile. It seemed such an 
 absurd word to apply to him. After his 
 wounds for he had received a scalp wound 
 from a stone or club, as well as the bullet 
 in his shoulder had been dressed, and we 
 had done all we could for him, we left 
 him alone in the room, hoping he might 
 sleep. We heard his voice, and listened, 
 and looked. He was talking about "going," 
 and later on he struggled to his feet, and 
 I had to lay him down again. 
 
 While we were out of the room another 
 time, he had gone as far as the hall door, 
 and had fallen from weakness. 
 
 Then I began to think perhaps he had 
 been insane, and that the word "escape" 
 was used by his brother for that reason. 
 From that moment we did not leave him 
 alone an instant until his brother came.
 
 His Mother's Boy. 163 
 
 I did what I could to relieve my guest's 
 natural anxiety about the little fellow. He 
 sat for a long time by the bed, after looking 
 with approval at the bandages and medicines. 
 
 "I am a doctor, myself," he said simply 
 in explanation. 
 
 "Oh, that is good," I replied. "I hope 
 you find everything right." 
 
 "I do indeed, and how can I thank you? 
 It was You were very, very kind. I" 
 
 His feelings overcame him. He stooped 
 and kissed the pale face, and then turned 
 to me, and took my hand in both of his 
 own and drew me toward the door. 
 
 Once outside he said, "You will under 
 stand. I cannot talk of it now. He is very 
 dear to me, and I am all he has in the 
 world, poor little fellow." 
 
 He spoke as if the child were in some 
 way afflicted, and I thought again of the 
 word "escape," 
 
 "Your emotion is perfectly natural, I am 
 sure," I said. "We did nothing. He is a
 
 164 His MotJters Boy. 
 
 pretty boy, and we liked to feel that he 
 would prefer to wake up when that time 
 comes in a place that would seem more 
 like home than a hospital ward." 
 
 The doctor pressed my hand again, and 
 sat down by the library table. 
 
 "Tell me all about it, please all," he 
 said presently. 
 
 I did so. 
 
 "You wonder how he happened to be 
 here alone, and why I asked you to watch 
 him," he said when I had finished. "You 
 will have to let me tell you a long story; 
 for without a theory I have, I could not ex 
 plain to you either the why, or the how. 
 Even with the theory, I am puzzled still. 
 Perhaps you can help me unravel the 
 mystery and advise me for the future. 
 You are older than I. I am not quite 
 thirty, and if the poor little fellow pulls 
 through this, I have still a strange and 
 unknown road to pilot him over." 
 
 He sat silent for a moment, and looked
 
 His Mother s Boy. 165 
 
 out into the street through the parted cur 
 tains, in front of him. My wife entered, 
 and went softly into the sick-room. 
 
 "I should like to hear the story," I 
 said, still vaguely uncomfortable, but with 
 renewed confidence in the man, who wrote 
 his little brother the letter I had read, and 
 who seemed now so tender and thoughtful. 
 He began in a low voice, with his eyes 
 fixed on the street beyond : 
 
 "When my father brought my pretty 
 young step-mother home, I was prepared to 
 be, if not exactly unfriendly, at least ready 
 to become so upon very slight grounds. I 
 had heard, here and there, as all children 
 do, the hints and flings which prepare 
 their minds for hostile feeling toward the 
 new-comer who may be, and often is, wiser, 
 kinder, and more loving than was the one 
 whose place she has come to fill." 
 
 I was glad my wife had gone into the 
 sick-room. This was a sore point with her. 
 I hoped that she had not heard him.
 
 1 66 His Matters Boy. 
 
 "But most of us, old and young, take 
 our opinions receive our entire mental out 
 look from others. That which we hear 
 often becomes to our receptive minds a 
 part of our mental equipment, and we seri 
 ously believe that we are stating our own 
 thoughts and opinions, when, in nine cases 
 out of ten, we are doing nothing of the 
 kind. Frequency of iteration passes as 
 proof, and we are saddled, before we know 
 it, with a thousand prejudices and assump 
 tions that we have neither originated nor 
 understood, an investigation into whose bear 
 ings would not only result, in many cases, 
 in an entire revolution of opinion, but 
 would disturb the basis of many a hoary 
 belief, and right many a cruel injustice." 
 
 He paused. I bowed assent, and he 
 went on. 
 
 "I supposed that step-mothers were ne 
 cessarily a very undesirable acquisition in 
 any family, and this well-established theory 
 was so firmly rooted in what I believed
 
 His Mother s Boy. 167 
 
 to be my mind, that nothing short cf the 
 love and devotion I had for my father 
 enabled me to receive his pretty bride 
 with even a show of cordiality. 
 
 "I can see now what a strain it must 
 all have been for her. To come among 
 strangers all of whom were curious and 
 none of whom excelled in either wisdom 
 or charity having just entered that strange 
 and winding path called matrimony, with 
 the usual blindness to its meaning with 
 which it is the fashion to invest the one 
 to whom it must always mean much of 
 sorrow, and more of responsibility. 
 
 "To tread such a path without striking 
 one's feet against the thorns of individu 
 ality, and tearing one's hands with the 
 thistles of rudely awakened ignorance, must 
 be very difficult ; but add to this the fact 
 that my young step-mother would have no 
 friendly faces about her, to which she was 
 accustomed, that there were none of her 
 own kindred, and none of her culture and
 
 1 68 His MotJurs Boy. 
 
 training to whom she might go to unbur 
 den her heart or ask advice ; and then 
 add to this, also, the fact that her new 
 position involved the wisdom to guide and 
 the patience to win the love of others be 
 side my father, and you will be able to 
 understand something, perhaps, of what I 
 shall tell you of her conduct and its un 
 happy results as I am convinced upon 
 my little brother. 
 
 " Her constant self-denial, and heroic 
 efforts to live for others, and to sacrifice 
 herself, was, I am satisfied, the sole cause 
 of the strange, sad, developments that grew 
 to be so puzzling in the character of her 
 child. Nature is a terrible antagonist. 
 You may refuse her demands and stran 
 gle her needs to-day ; but to-morrow she 
 will be avenged. The saddest part of this 
 sad fact to me is this: She is too often 
 avenged upon those who are helpless 
 upon those who come after. 
 
 " I was a lad of seventeen when my
 
 His Mother's Boy. 169 
 
 new mother came, and I was no better 
 and no worse than the average unthink 
 ing youth. I had been trained to be a 
 gentleman, always, toward women, and I 
 hope that I sustained my reputation in my 
 conduct towards my father's wife. She 
 was pretty, too, unusually pretty, and that 
 helped a good deal. It is always easier to 
 be polite to a pretty woman than to one 
 who is lacking in the one thing upon 
 which to the shame of the race be it said 
 womanhood has been valued." 
 
 I looked up again and smiled. He 
 turned his face to meet my eyes for the 
 first time since he began, and a rather 
 sarcastic smile lit his own somewhat som 
 ber features as he went on. 
 
 " It is quite as easy for me now, as 
 a practicing physician, to be attentive to 
 and interested in a homely man or boy 
 as in one who has regular features and 
 fine teeth ; but it is equally true that this 
 is not the case with women and girls. I
 
 170 His Mothers Boy. 
 
 trust that I have always done my profes 
 sional duty in any case; but I have done 
 it with pleasure that was real and inter 
 est that was constant, I am sure, far more 
 frequently when the patient has been a 
 woman of beauty. 
 
 " It is not an element which enters 
 into the treatment of my male patients." 
 
 " Naturally," I assented, still smiling, 
 and he turned toward the window again, 
 and his usual gravity returned. 
 
 " But all this is a digression only in 
 so far as it may serve to illustrate the 
 indubitable fact that to use a gaming ex 
 pression my step-mother played her high 
 est trump card upon my susceptible, boyish 
 nature, when she stepped from the car 
 riage, and I saw that she was fair to look 
 upon. I made up my mind at once that 
 she should never know that I was sorry 
 she had come, and I did what I could to 
 carry out the resolve. 
 
 " But for all that she did know it.
 
 His Mother's Boy. 171 
 
 Her whole attitude toward me was one of 
 apology and conciliation, and my father 
 saw and seeing, alas ! approved. 
 
 "I am sorry to be compelled to say 
 this, for my father was, in the main, a 
 thoughtful and humane man, and certainly 
 he had no wish to humiliate or harass his 
 young wife. He thought her conduct quite 
 natural and quite commendable. It looked 
 so to me, also, at that time. This being 
 the case, you will readily see how it came 
 about that she, point by point, and step 
 by step, yielded up her own individuality 
 upon the altar of our egoism and made 
 it her duty and I still hope it was in a 
 measure her pleasure, also to minister to 
 us and to repress whatever stirrings of per 
 sonal opinion, desire, or preference she may 
 have had. 
 
 "At first, I remember, she would gaze 
 silently, for long period*, out of the win 
 dow, and sigh. One day she said to me : 
 ' Walter, did you ever have an intense
 
 172 His Mothers Boy. 
 
 longing to get away somewhere? Any 
 where ? ' 
 
 " I can't say that I ever had, Saint 
 Katherine," I replied, using the name she 
 had asked me to join my father in apply 
 ing to her. It was the second time I had 
 ventured to so address her, notwithstand 
 ing her request, and the other time it had 
 been used with my father's sportive inflec 
 tion. That day, however, her sad face and 
 strange question had made me fear that 
 some one had wounded her, and I instinct 
 ively used the name with a kind and gen 
 tle tone in my voice. 
 
 " She turned from the window, and faced 
 me. Her lips parted and closed again. 
 Suddenly there were tears in her eyes, and 
 she said, with a trembling lip : 
 
 " ' Why, Walter, you are beginning to 
 like me, after all ! I ' 
 
 " She stopped to steady herself, and I, 
 young brute that I was, laughed. I was 
 sorry a moment later, but I had not un-
 
 His Mothers Boy. 173 
 
 derstood her mood, and so my own had 
 cut across it harshly. She had turned her 
 face to the window again, and I stepped 
 to her side. I was too young, and awk 
 ward to know just what to say to retrieve 
 myself, so I took her hand in my own 
 and lifted it to my lips, as I had so often 
 seen my father do. She did not move 
 we were both silent for a long time. At 
 last I said, having whipped myself up to 
 it: 
 
 " You are a saint, Katherine, and I was 
 a brute to laugh. I I didn't mean to 
 hurt you. I" 
 
 " She threw her arms about my neck, 
 and sobbed like a child. It was the first 
 time I had ever seen a woman weep. I 
 was almost as tall then as I am now, and 
 she was shorter by half a head than I. 
 For the first time in my life I began to 
 feel that perhaps father and I were not the 
 only persons in the household who should 
 be considered. I am bound to say that
 
 174 His Mothers Boy. 
 
 my thought was very vague, and that it took 
 scant root, for her emotion touched my 
 sympathy, and I had all I could do to keep 
 back the tears myself. 
 
 "At that age, I should have looked 
 upon it as very unmanly to weep, and so I 
 exerted all the little brain I had command 
 of, to keep down my very natural emotion." 
 
 He paused, but I ventured to make no 
 remark, and he began again ; 
 
 " I think she mistook my silence she 
 was but a few years older than I and so 
 she straightened herself up, and without 
 another word left the room. But I bore 
 you," he said, breaking off abruptly. 
 
 "Not at all, not at all. I am intensely 
 interested. Go on." 
 
 He looked at me, and was sure of my 
 earnestness, then his voice resumed the 
 same gently reflective tone again; 
 
 "She did not come down to dinner 
 that night, and father only remarked that 
 she said her head ached. I felt guilty, I
 
 His Mother's Boy. 175 
 
 did not know why, or what about; but 
 somehow I felt that instead of helping 
 things on, by an attempt to be more 
 friendly, my step-mother and I had suc 
 ceeded in rendering the home atmosphere 
 even less clear and bright than it was 
 before. 
 
 " And so it was. She attempted no 
 farther confidences with me, and gave her 
 self up more and more to household affairs. 
 She appeared to think that it was her 
 duty to be always at the beck and call 
 of my father, and if she planned a drive 
 of which she was fond and he chanced 
 to come in, she would say quietly to the 
 groom: 
 
 "'Take the horses back, I shall not go 
 now. Mr. Travers may need me. He came 
 in a moment ago.' 
 
 "She was all ready to go to Boston 
 one day, and showed more eagerness than 
 I had seen her display since she came to 
 us, when father came up from the office,
 
 176 His Mothers Boy. 
 
 bringing with him a guest who had unex 
 pectedly arrived from the West. 
 
 "Saint Katherine, as I now always called 
 her, took her gloves off as she saw them 
 coming up the walk, and before they 
 opened the door her hat was laid aside. I 
 felt sure I had seen her lift a handker 
 chief to her eyes. I said: 
 
 "'Confound that old fellow, what did he 
 have to come to-day for? He always stays 
 a week, too. But you must make your trip 
 to Boston just the same. We can manage 
 as we used to.' 
 
 "She looked at me gratefully, I thought, 
 but again restrained herself, and said noth 
 ing of her own disappointment. 
 
 "As I look at it now, it seems to me 
 she never had her own way about any 
 thing. She had no companionship, but such 
 as had always been congenial to my father, 
 and the interests and aims of the people 
 about us were new to her, and unlike those 
 of her old home.
 
 His Mothers Boy. 177 
 
 "At last, one day, I saw her working 
 on a little garment. She hated to sew, and 
 a new light dawned upon me. I think I 
 may have "been actuated by jealousy; but 
 I can hardly say what it was that caused 
 me to demand more of her time and at 
 tention after that. I felt that the time 
 would soon come when father and I would 
 not be the only ones to claim her attention, 
 and perhaps I proceeded upon that idea to 
 get all I could while I could. 
 
 "'Won't you play chess with me, Saint 
 Katherine?' I asked that afternoon. 'Oh, 
 I beg pardon. I did not notice the car 
 riage. If you were going out, go.' I said 
 this in a tone that showed very plainly 
 that I would be deprived of my pleasure 
 if she should go. She stayed. I beat her 
 at chess, and was happy. 
 
 "As time wore on she had been with 
 us over a year now her suppressed rest 
 lessness grew more apparent. Even my 
 father noticed it, and told her that for the
 
 178 His Mother's Boy. 
 
 child's sake she should keep herself well 
 under control. I was outside the window 
 when he said it, and it gave me a new idea. 
 
 "'Yes/ she said, 'I suppose so; but it 
 seems to me I shall go mad if I can't go 
 away somewhere. I know it must be fool 
 ish and wrong; but I so long to see other 
 places, and* 
 
 "'People?' my father suggested, not un 
 kindly. But I remember feeling sorry that 
 he said it. 
 
 "There was a long silence. Then she 
 said in a low, self-accusing voice, 'I suppose 
 it is all wrong; but I sJwuld love to see 
 some of the people I used to know or 
 even strangers, who are who are not' 
 She did not finish. 
 
 "Presently she said: 'I sometimes think 
 I would crawl on my hands and knees if 
 only I might go if don't think I am not 
 satisfied. It is not that, but' 
 
 " My father's voice was low and kind 
 although he presented the old, and as I
 
 His Mothers Boy. 179 
 
 now believe, injurious idea of the repres 
 sion and control of natural desire for the 
 sake of the child and I walked away. 
 
 "The next day I said, 'Saint Katherine, 
 would you like to drive over to Wilton 
 to-day? We could get back for dinner at 
 seven. 
 
 " ' Oh, how nice ! ' she exclaimed, with 
 her eyes sparkling. I made up my mind 
 that I would suggest some such thing every 
 day, but, boy-like, I forgot or neglected it. 
 
 "We went. Her pleasure in all the 
 new faces and sights was almost childish. 
 She was starving for a change of scene and 
 companionship, and even such as she might 
 easily have had she often denied herself, 
 from an overwrought sense of duty." 
 
 My guest got upon his feet, and walked 
 twice across the room, looking in at the 
 sick child as he passed the door. 
 
 " She lived only two years longer, and 
 father and I had little Ralph to bring up 
 the best we could, I was so fond of the
 
 180 His Mother's Boy. 
 
 little fellow, that it was easy for me to 
 look after him, and the nurse was not often 
 out of sight or hearing of either father or 
 me, but she had to carry him about constant 
 ly. He was an angel, in motion, so my 
 father said; but the moment he was kept 
 quiet or still he was anything but an an 
 gel. He would have his own way, by hook 
 or by crook, and as soon as he could walk 
 we had to lock the door of his room, or 
 he would slip out of his little low bed 
 when nurse was asleep, and scramble down 
 stairs and out into the grounds and be lost." 
 
 I began to see new meaning in the 
 word " escape." 
 
 " Three or four times we had a great 
 fright in that way. Then we locked the 
 door. As he grew older that did not work. 
 He unlocked it, or climbed out of the win 
 dow. 
 
 " When he was seven years old, he ran 
 off, and got as far as Norton, on the high 
 way to Boston, before he was found. He
 
 His Mother's Boy. 181 
 
 was tired and hungry, and footsore; but he 
 was trudging steadily on. 
 
 " A farmer picked him up and brought 
 him home. Hardly a month passed from 
 that time on that he did not run away. I 
 remember the first time I found him. He 
 was sitting by the railway track, eight miles 
 from home, waiting for the west-bound train. 
 He was nearly eight years old then, and 
 as handsome a child, and as good a one 
 in other ways, as you often meet. I struck 
 him that time. I was so frightened. You 
 know that is brute instinct to strike the 
 thing you love when you have just rescued 
 it from danger. I rarely ever saw a mother 
 snatch her child out of danger that she did 
 not either strike or scold it, before the pallor 
 of anguish at the thought of its peril had 
 left her face. It is a strange human char 
 acteristic. I have often tried to solve its 
 exact meaning." He was silent so long that 
 I turned. He was just returning from 
 another glance into the boy's room.
 
 1 82 His Mothers Boy. 
 
 I mumbled assent, and he resumed his 
 seat by the table. 
 
 " But to go back to the boy. He looked 
 up at me in terrified surprise. I had never 
 struck him before. Then he said: 
 
 "'The cars would have come in ten min 
 utes. That man said so. I was going to 
 -to' 
 
 " ' You were going to Chicago, I sup- 
 pose,' I said indignantly, as the train thun 
 dered past, a moment later. 
 
 " ' Chicago, yes/ he said, brightening up. 
 I think that was the first time he knew 
 where he was bound for. 
 
 "Soon after that, my father died. Ralph 
 promised not to run away any more, and 
 I think he tried to keep his promise; but 
 in less than six months, what I believe to 
 have been his inheritance from the starved 
 and repressed nature of his mother got the 
 better of him again, and he escaped. We 
 could trace him a short distance, and then 
 all clues faded out. The whole village
 
 His Mothers Boy. 183 
 
 turned out, and day and night we looked. 
 We telegraphed the railway men, but to no 
 purpose. 
 
 " At last we gave him up. We con 
 cluded he had attempted to cross the river, 
 and had been drowned. God, how I lashed 
 myself for having struck him ! " 
 
 My guest wiped the moisture from his 
 face now, and sat silent for a long time. 
 My wife had returned from the sick-room 
 a moment before, and seated herself in the 
 shadow. He did not appear to notice that 
 we were not alone. 
 
 "It was during this time that I began 
 to think out blindly and vaguely the rea 
 son for my little brother's curious mania," 
 he began again. My wife motioned me not 
 to call his attention to her. " His mother 
 had refused to nature all that it plead for 
 of personal pleasure and self-gratification, 
 and starved and outraged nature, I began 
 to believe, had transmitted to the child, not 
 only the craving that had gone unsatisfied,
 
 1 84 His Mother's Boy. 
 
 but the self-will to execute it. Boys, you 
 know, are not trained to think that the 
 world was made for woman, with man an 
 incident in her life. They are not made 
 to feel that they have no personality. But 
 their desires, their ambitions, their person 
 ality as individuals, are to be honored and 
 gratified, if possible, and so the general trend 
 of thought and the strength of will fitted well 
 into his heredity the stamp he bore of 
 longing for the change she never had 
 and so I grew to believe that he traveled 
 the road nature had laid out and custom 
 had paved for him." 
 
 I could see my wife's eyes grow large 
 and intense, as she bent forward to listen. 
 
 "It was five weeks before we heard from 
 him. We had given him up for dead, when 
 he walked in one day, and frightened the 
 servants almost to death. 
 
 "I did not strike him that time. I had 
 begun to think. 
 
 " He told me that night, all about his
 
 His Mother's Boy. 185 
 
 travels, and how homesick he got. It was 
 a strange tale, and broken by his enthu 
 siasm, about a certain circus man who had 
 been kind to him, and cared for him for 
 several days, until the child, under the spell 
 of his hereditary trait, had run away from 
 his new friend." 
 
 I knew, now, what the word " escape " 
 had meant in that telegram, and my wife 
 nodded to me with the same thought in 
 her mind. 
 
 " He promised to stay at home, after 
 that, and said he was very sorry that I had 
 worried so much about him. He stayed 
 quietly with us nearly a year. Then he 
 really did go to Chicago. He stole or 
 begged rides on the cars, and people gave 
 him food. He fell into the hands of the 
 police, and I was telegraphed for. They 
 sent for me, and I brought him home. He 
 was ragged and repentant. That was last 
 Christmas. I gave him a new pony, upon 
 his solemn promise not to ride more than
 
 1 86 His Mother's Boy. 
 
 five miles from home without the groom 
 or me. He said that was all he wanted. 
 He was sure of it, and I hoped the sense 
 of freedom of going on his own horse, and 
 where and when he wished would keep his 
 mania in check. 
 
 " I had hopes that after he should be 
 thirteen or fourteen years old he would out 
 grow it, and I have been trying to tide 
 him over to that time. I have tried, too, 
 all along, in my rather immature way, to 
 arouse his sense of honor and responsibil 
 ity toward me. But the ideas conveyed by 
 those words have seemed to strike sympa 
 thetic but disabled chords in his nature. 
 His mother's over-taxed self-repression and 
 sense of duty to others, her lack of com 
 prehension of self-duty and personal value, 
 has reacted in her boy, to restore the bal 
 ance to Nature, and he is swept into the 
 path of her repression with a force beyond 
 his power to check. 
 
 "I have grown to feel that father and
 
 His Mother s Boy. 187 
 
 I, in our egotistic blindness, helped to stamp 
 the boy with his uncomfortable inheritance, 
 and now I must bide my time, and act 
 as wisely and as kindly as I can." 
 
 "You seem to have been very thought 
 ful and studious," I ventured. " It is a puz 
 zling case, and a new idea to me." 
 
 " My study of anthropology helped me, 
 I suppose," he replied, rising nervously to 
 pace the floor again. 
 
 "It was a fortunate thing for poor little 
 Ralph that I took that for my life-work. 
 It has helped me to read between the lines 
 for him, and to be wise with him beyond 
 my years, perhaps. I have always been glad 
 of that." 
 
 He had paused near the bed-room door, 
 but he had not seen my wife as she sat 
 in the shadow. 
 
 " His pony was all right for a time ; 
 but when he heard me read I was a fool 
 to do it of the railroad strikes in Albany, 
 it was too much for him. His five miles
 
 1 88 His Mothers Boy. 
 
 stretched into twenty, and then, I fancy, 
 some unscrupulous fellow told him he would 
 give him a ticket to Albany in exchange 
 for his horse. It was too much for him. 
 No doubt he parted with poor Gyp with 
 a sob, and climbed aboard the train. And 
 to think that it should have been poor lit 
 tle Ralph, whose curiosity and ignorance 
 took him where he received the murder 
 ous Pinkerton bullet and that cruel blow 
 on the head. Poor little chap! I cannot 
 believe he will die, though his chances are 
 very slim, very slim, indeed," he said, sad 
 ly, as he turned to enter the sick-room. 
 
 A cry escaped him. I sprang to my 
 feet in time to see him catch to his breast 
 the little white form that had staggered 
 silently into the room. 
 
 "Brother!" the weak little voice cried 
 in delight, and he then fainted again. The 
 doctor laid him in his bed gently, and my 
 wife bent over him. 
 
 "That means that he is better, doctor,"
 
 His Mother's Boy. 189 
 
 she said in a voice that tried to be con 
 fident and cheery. " He has known no one 
 before since we brought him home. What 
 a lovely face he has ! " 
 
 "Yes, he has his mother's own face," 
 he replied with a sigh. " She was a lovely 
 woman, and, alas ! she was the victim of 
 her own virtues as he is." 
 
 " I fancy my wife will question your stand 
 ard of virtues," I said, as we returned to the li 
 brary some time after. He smiled more light 
 ly than I had yet seen him, and turned to her. 
 
 " I question that myself, madam as an 
 anthropologist and a student of heredity." 
 
 " You do not think, then, that the cre 
 ative or character-moulding parent can af 
 ford to risk self-effacement and subserviency 
 of intellect and position ? " she asked dryly. 
 
 "Not unless we wish to continue a sub 
 servient and incompetent race, which shall 
 be dominated by power cruelly used," he 
 replied, looking steadily at her. Then he 
 added, smiling:
 
 190 His Mother s Boy. 
 
 "This I speak, as Saint Paul might say, 
 not as a man, but as an anthropologist. 
 I am still a little bit in the position of 
 the brave apostle, too. The 'natural man' 
 and the scientific are at war within me. The 
 one cries, 'Travers, you would like for your 
 wife and daughters to be sweetly, confiding 
 ly dependent upon you, and to live for and 
 because of you; to be unselfish, and self-sac 
 rificing,' and I reply, 'I love it dearly; it 
 is a sweet and holy idea to me.' Then 
 the scientific man remarks, 'Doctor, are you 
 not providing for a basis of character and 
 heredity which shall make your children the 
 victims of your egotism?' And the doc 
 tor bows assent." 
 
 My wife laughed softly, and stepped to 
 the inner door. 
 
 " He is better," she said, coming back. 
 "He is sleeping naturally for the first time." 
 Then she stepped quickly to the doctor's 
 side, and held out her hand. 
 
 " He will not need a mother much while
 
 His Mother s Boy. 191 
 
 the anthropologist lives with you; but if he 
 ever should, send him to me." 
 
 There were tears in her eyes, as there 
 were in those of our guest. He held her 
 hand a moment, and then turned abruptly 
 and left the room. 
 
 An hour later there stood on my wife's 
 desk a handsome bunch of roses, and my 
 wife only smiled. 
 
 " Shall you say anything more about it?" 
 I asked. 
 
 " No," she replied. " There is no need. 
 He will send the boy when he grows rest 
 less at home, I am sure of that now. 
 These roses are my answer. Perhaps, be 
 tween the two, we can satisfy his travel 
 ing instinct. What a mercy it was not 
 something worse ! " 
 
 " What ? " I asked, in astonishment. 
 
 "I heard the whole story," she said, 
 "and I could not help thinking that his 
 theory would account for a good many 
 things in the world. It is the exact oppo-
 
 i 92 His Mother s Boy. 
 
 site of the usual one. Woman has been 
 taught that to repress and keep in check 
 nature will make her child strong and 
 destroy in it the development of unrea 
 sonable appetite as for drink or murder. 
 His idea seems to be that undue repression, 
 as surely as undue indulgence, will make 
 its heavy mark on the plastic nature form 
 ing. Perhaps that is true. Nature struggles 
 to restore the balance. How do we know 
 that murder in the heart, though it be re 
 pressed, may not account for many a trag 
 edy in the next generation? Who knows 
 but a run-down system depriving itself of 
 stimulants it craves may not account for 
 the yearning born in many a man for such 
 
 stimulants? Who knows but" 
 
 My wife stopped. Presently she said : 
 " He scared me almost to death as he devel 
 oped that idea in my mind. What a lot we 
 have got to learn of it all, even if he is wrong ! " 
 "Don't learn it," I said laughing. "It 
 will tire you out."
 
 His Mothers Boy. 193 
 
 "It tires me out not to," she said. "I 
 am going to study anthropology." 
 
 Two weeks later she said: 
 
 "The books are so stupid. They assume 
 everything and they prove nothing, because 
 their assumptions are all wrong. I'm go 
 ing to ask Dr. Travers to write from his 
 premises, and see if he can't stir up a little 
 less obscure and complacent thought. Even 
 if he is not on the right track, it will do 
 these stupid moles good. They get no 
 where because they start wrong." 
 
 "Better write one yourself," I suggested, 
 smiling. 
 
 "I shall do nothing of the kind. I don't 
 know enough about it." 
 
 "Oh," I called after her, as she left the 
 room. "I didn't suppose a knowledge of the 
 subject to be written upon was at all neces 
 sary. What a ridiculous conscience you 
 have, Eva." 
 
 She has not mentioned it since, but I 
 do not believe she takes my flippancy as
 
 194 His Mother s Boy. 
 
 in good taste. Anyhow, I have dropped the 
 subject of heredity with the feeling that I 
 had got perilously near a buzz-saw in motion,
 
 MR. WALK-A-LEG ADAMS 
 'MEETS UP WITH" A TARTAR.
 
 "Fool. I had rather be any kind of thing than 
 a fool." 
 
 "Kent. This is not altogether fool, my lord. 
 
 "Fool, No, 'faith lords and great men will not let 
 me; if I had a monopoly out, they would have part 
 on't: and ladies too, they will not let me have all 
 
 fool to myself; they'll be snatching." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE.
 
 MR. WALK-A-LEG ADAMS " MEETS 
 UP WITH" A TARTAR. 
 
 
 
 TN any other part of the country with 
 which I am acquainted it would be 
 said that Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams overtook a 
 Tartar; but to distinguish between the two 
 ideas intended to be conveyed when you 
 say, "I met in the road to-day a certain 
 person," or, "I overtook in the road to-day 
 a certain person," the Southern people of 
 whom I write would say, " I met up with," 
 to express the latter fact. 
 
 The information of the meeting is im 
 parted by the usual word; while the idea 
 that you were going the same way when 
 the meeting took place is briefly conveyed 
 by the words "up with." 
 
 It sounds strange enough, no doubt, to 
 unaccustomed ears, but there are those who
 
 2OO Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 
 assert that it fills those first of all requi 
 sites of correct and forcible speech brevity 
 and definiteness. So when I say that Mr. 
 Walk-a-leg Adams "met tip with" a Tar 
 tar, I make use of a localism, it is true; 
 but is it not a localism which has a dis 
 tinct value of a nature which gives it a 
 right not only to exist, but to be seriously 
 considered as well? 
 
 But, be that as it may, it is quite cer 
 tain that when Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 sauntered out into the big road from be 
 hind the huge woodpile which formed the 
 chief feature of the variously shaped col 
 lections of logs which composed his home, 
 he had no idea of the exciting events in 
 which he was about to take an active part, 
 and which were henceforth to constitute a 
 memorable chapter in the history of his 
 neighborhood, as well as the most tremen 
 dous and far-reaching event of his whole 
 career. 
 
 Indeed, it is to be seriously doubted if
 
 "Meets Up With" a Tartar. 201 
 
 Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams had had any very 
 distinct ideas on any subject whatever on 
 that morning, or on any other morning of 
 his pathetically deficient life. 
 
 There was a legend in the neighbor 
 hood that the poor demented fellow's name 
 was John Quincy, and that he was one of 
 the saddest illustrations of degeneracy to 
 be met with in all the sickening records of 
 decadence from a one-time splendid ancestry. 
 
 But, however that may be, in these days 
 he was known by three of the eight words 
 which formed his entire vocabulary. 
 
 Why these particular eight words 
 chanced to be the ones which fastened 
 themselves upon the .darkened intellect and 
 vocal cords of this physical giant it would 
 be impossible to say ; but certain it is that 
 " God-a'mighty walk a leg hands is that" 
 formed the entire linguistic stock-in-trade 
 of one of the best farm "hands" to be 
 had in the county. 
 
 It is very much to be doubted if his
 
 2O2 Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 
 mental equipment extended over even so 
 wide a field as his vocabulary, for it is 
 quite beyond question that whatever mean 
 ing the poor fellow may have originally 
 attached to the words themselves had long 
 since vanished, and that they were now 
 used merely as a means of vocalization. 
 
 It is true, however, that when he was 
 very greatly astonished, frightened, or pleased, 
 the emphasis did change places, and in ex 
 treme cases the "a'mighty" was pronounced 
 in full and with varying degrees of intensity. 
 
 There was a large family of these 
 Adams giants ; but when the farmers there 
 about wanted the strongest, most willing, 
 and least troublesome "hand," in the har 
 vest-field or at the cider-press, they engaged 
 Walk-a-leg, even if they had to send for him 
 and take him home again each day as was 
 often the case unless one of his somewhat 
 more rational brothers was employed at the 
 same time to remind him of his engagement 
 by taking him to fill it.
 
 " Meets Up With" a Tartar. 203 
 
 But much of the year this simple giant 
 roamed about aimlessly, ate where he chanced 
 to find himself at meal-time, and slept on 
 the best bed at hand when sleep overtook 
 him. 
 
 His harmlessness was taken for granted, 
 and comments on, discussions about, and 
 differences of opinion over his verbal vaga 
 ries served to eke out many a case of oral 
 gymnastics commonly called by the partici 
 pants therein " conversation " which had 
 drifted on to the arid banks of rural limita 
 tions, and promised to be a hopeless wreck 
 until this timely rescue once more started 
 the aimless and fragile bark upon its infinite 
 wanderings. 
 
 But when Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams started 
 out that day, he had, so far as I can tell, no 
 definite object in view; but it is certain that 
 when he "met up with" a lady whom he 
 had never had the pleasure of seeing before, 
 his delight was unmistakable and unbound 
 ed. To meet with a stranger to say nothing
 
 2O4 Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 
 of that stranger being a woman was to him 
 a rare and altogether delightful experience. 
 
 From the moment he had seen, in the 
 distance, a form which had not the familiar 
 lines of any women of his limited acquaint 
 ance, he had swung his powerful legs at a 
 rate to make him "meet up" very soon, with 
 a much swifter traveller than Miss Alfaretta 
 Bangs had ever been even in her younger 
 days, before the neuralgic twinges had set 
 tled with so much energy about her decided 
 and always self-assertive joints. 
 
 So when this great, muscular, good-na 
 tured fellow shot past her, and then sud 
 denly turned about and remarked, with cor 
 dial friendliness, " God-a'mighty-walk-a-leg- 
 hands-is-that ! " she was naturally somewhat 
 astonished, and not altogether unreasonably, 
 I think, doubted if she had heard correctly 
 the full purport of his remark. 
 
 "Howdy," she said, with that perfunctory 
 inflection common to those who greet all 
 whom they may meet in the road as a mere
 
 " Meets Up With" a Tartar. 205 
 
 matter of course, and not at all as a matter 
 of acquaintance. 
 
 He grinned, but continued to stand ex 
 actly in front of her, and remarked this 
 time with much emphasis, and slapping his 
 left leg vigorously as he did so "God- 
 a'mighty, walk-a-leg J '" possibly with some 
 vague idea in his helpless brain of express 
 ing by means of the emphasis, the fact that 
 he had been compelled to travel with undue 
 rapidity in order to make her acquaintance 
 at all. 
 
 This time there was no doubt in her 
 mind that she had heard correctly, and that 
 this profane Hercules meant to do her a mis 
 chief, or, at the very least, to offer her a 
 gratuitous insult. 
 
 But Miss Alfaretta Bangs had not taught 
 school in the " mountings " for fifteen years 
 for nothing, and she did not intend that 
 her prospects of securing a school in this 
 neighborhood where she was as yet a stran-
 
 2o6 Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 
 ger should be destroyed by a display of the 
 white feather now. 
 
 Indeed she strongly suspected that this 
 wicked giant was one of the very young 
 fellows whom she would be called upon to 
 teach in the event of securing the school 
 and that her identity being known to him 
 was the circumstance to which she owed 
 this present impertinence. 
 
 As I have before hinted, Miss Alfaretta 
 Bangs was not timid. 
 
 She had had experience. 
 
 She drew herself up to a sinuous height, 
 not far below his own, and, with a single 
 sweep of an arm not unaccustomed to the 
 vigorous use of the birch rod of no small 
 proportions, brought the back of a hand 
 soft and small at no time in her life 
 into violent contact with the half-open and 
 wholly surprised mouth of her admirer. 
 
 "All mighty! walkaleg/z^/zdj is that!" 
 exclaimed he, jumping fully three feet and 
 spreading a propitiatory, albeit an appreciative
 
 "Meets Up With" a Tartar. 207 
 
 smile, over a countenance not wholly un 
 used to familiarities of an ungentle nature, 
 offered in rough, but well-meant jest by 
 his fellow-laborers. 
 
 " Wai, hit war my han', ef yo' mus' ax," 
 exclaimed she, in irate astonishment that 
 he did not attempt to resent the blow. " An' 
 ef I do walk on my legs hit air none er 
 yo' call fer to meet up with me an' low 
 ter cuss me fer hit. They air my legs, an' 
 they air a'most es servigerous es my han's 
 ef ye oncet gits erquainted with 'em. Don' 
 y' stan' thar'n grin at me, ye cussin' eg- 
 iot ! " she added, her wrath waxing with 
 his growing effort at conciliation. 
 
 " Git outen my road ! " she commanded, 
 "an' try yer cussin' skeer on some er these 
 yer saft critters thet ain't teeched school ter 
 mo' rantankerous egiots than y' ever see in 
 these yer diggins, 'n haint been skeered er 
 none o' ye yit, nuther. The fack air I've 
 whalloped mo' survigerous egiots than what 
 y' air, befo' yo' mammy fetched y' outen pan-
 
 2o8 Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 
 terlets. I've tuk the hull hide offen bigger 
 'n yo'," she concluded, triumphantly. 
 
 Her frequent use of the word idiot had 
 no relation to this particular case ; nor did 
 she guess at any time during the interview 
 that the poor fellow was really more lack 
 ing in mental qualifications than the ordi 
 nary male biped, all of whom, she was 
 thoroughly of opinion, were more or less 
 wanting in those endowments which indi 
 cate a sound mind and a correct judgment. 
 
 " God tf//migh&r / " exclaimed Mr. Ad 
 ams, in evident relish of her vigorous tones 
 and energetic gestures, as he brought one 
 powerful fist down into the other tremen 
 dous palm, with a resounding thwack that 
 had a perceptible effect upon the nerves a 
 heretofore unknown possession-of the an 
 cient maiden before him. 
 
 "Don' y' God a'mighty me, ye cussin' 
 coot ! " exclaimed she, recovering herself, as 
 she was about to turn and ignominiously 
 flee. "Don' y' God a'mighty me, er I'll thes
 
 "Meets Up With" a Tartar. 209 
 
 lay y' plum ouwt ! " And she started toward 
 him as if to carry her threat into imme 
 diate execution; but the great ^foolish fel 
 low backed dexterously along, immediately 
 in front of her, at a rate calculated to do 
 justice to her best qualities as a pedestrian 
 of no mean ability. 
 
 The exercise, the novel situation, her 
 extraordinary excitement and now rapidly 
 dawning fear appeared to give him the keen 
 est delight. 
 
 No one had ever thought of getting 
 angry with Walk-a-leg Adams, and he was 
 therefore having a new, and to him, appar 
 ently charming experience. 
 
 He backed along like a great crawfish, 
 laughing uproariously, and from time to time 
 giving vent to one or another section of 
 his cherished vocabulary, the while slapping 
 with his enormous palm those huge and en 
 ergetic means of locomotion which swung 
 like great pendulums from his hip-joints 
 with a vigor which indicated an abiding con-
 
 2io Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 
 fidence in the tenacity of the muscles of 
 articulation of both the member attacking 
 and the member attacked. 
 
 But whichever part of his scant ling 
 uistic store he employed to give vent to his 
 feelings, it gave Miss Bangs a fresh im 
 pulse to catch him and break as many of 
 his bones as it might lay in her power to frac 
 ture before he could make good his escape. 
 
 Once she stopped long enough to pick 
 up a large and wicked-looking club, which 
 only added ecstasy to her tormentor and 
 intensified the emphasis upon his best-loved 
 words. 
 
 "A'mighta?/" yelled he in a transport of 
 admiration for her humor in this new game 
 they were inventing together; "A'migh&r/ 
 Walk-a-/^," laughed he, slapping his great 
 thigh, and raising therefrom a perfect cloud 
 of dust previously collected by his brown 
 jean trousers from barn-floors and hay 
 mows, where his recent sittings and sleep- 
 ings had taken place.
 
 "Meets Up With" a Tartar. 211 
 
 "I'll A'mighty you! I'll walkaleg you! 
 ef I ketch y' oncet 'n' I'll ketch y' yit 
 Yll back inter sutnpin' er nuther yit, 'n' 
 'fore y' git up I'll break every las' bone 
 in yer wuthless cayrcass," gasped she, out 
 of breath. 
 
 The rage and exercise were telling on 
 her greatly. 
 
 Presently she struck her foot on a stone 
 that he had dextrously backed over, and 
 fell sprawling in the dust. 
 
 Instantly the great, uncouth, tender-heart 
 ed fellow was by her side, and, stooping 
 over her prostrate form, inquired in the gen 
 tlest, most anxious and sympathetic tones, 
 "Walk-a-leg? Hands is that?" at the same 
 time attempting to lift her bodily in his arms 
 with the care and solicitude with which a 
 young mother might lift a hurt child. 
 
 Quick as a flash she sprang to her feet, 
 nimbly avoiding his arms, and brought the 
 heavy club still tightly clutched in both 
 hands with a tremendous crash down upon
 
 212 Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 
 the poor fellow's bent head, and leaving him 
 lying by the side of her club, she strode 
 triumphantly on to the village, in the firm 
 belief that she had but justly freed herself 
 from what she had come to believe was a 
 real danger. 
 
 Shortly thereafter, Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 appeared after having undergone such rude 
 surgery for a fractured skull as the neigh 
 borhood afforded with his head tied up, a 
 dazed look of dawning intelligence on his 
 countenance, and, much to the astonishment 
 and deep mystification of his sympathetic 
 family and neighbors, with his vocabulary 
 enriched by three more words, the purport 
 of which did not enlighten his friends as 
 to the origin of his broken skull. 
 
 The three words he acquired with such 
 unexpected suddenness appeared, however, 
 to have more relation to the subject-matter 
 in hand than had his previous utterances, 
 and were the index of a correspondingly 
 more lucid mental condition.
 
 "Meets Up With" a Tartar. 213 
 
 The words were "old she-devil" pronounced 
 with, much emphasis and with no percep 
 tible preference for either of them. 
 
 Indeed, they each seemed to relieve his 
 mind greatly, and the combination was so par 
 ticularly satisfactory that he repeated it for 
 some days with the regularity of a clock, 
 and the enthusiasm of a new convert. 
 
 From that time he grew in grace, ad 
 ding very slowly, it is true, but steadily 
 to his little stock of English, as well as to 
 his dawning wits ; and when I saw him last 
 which was three years later he impressed 
 me as a not altogether stupid, but rather 
 slow, very good-natured, and somewhat talk 
 ative fellow, with a fear of nothing on this 
 earth but women. 
 
 He had fought and killed even in his 
 more benighted days many a bear ; it had 
 always been a delight to him to conquer a 
 rattlesnake ; but if a sun-bonnet appeared 
 above the horizon Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 precipitately withdrew.
 
 214 Mr. Walk-a-leg Adams 
 
 In going to and from his work, it was 
 his invariable habit to leave the "big road" 
 to such as dared encounter its terrors; he 
 crossed the fields or traveled through tan 
 gles where nothing more dangerous and vi 
 cious lurked than an occasional panther and 
 a not-at-all infrequent moccasin. 
 
 With these he was at home; he knew 
 their tricks. But on a highway infested, 
 as it might be, by a Miss Alfaretta Bangs, 
 he was convinced that no man was safe. 
 
 To this view he held strenuously, and 
 therefore invariably chose the lesser dangers 
 of the primitive forest. 
 
 And yet it was undoubtedly due to the 
 touch of her magic wand that Mr. Adams 
 had come to be invariably spoken of, by 
 those who knew him, as "he," whereas they 
 had previously designated him as " it." 
 
 So little did he realize the source of his 
 benefits that, from having previously been 
 an indiscriminate adorer of the sex, it came 
 to pass, after that momentous day when he
 
 "Meets Up With" a Tartar. 215 
 
 underwent the mysterious change, as a re 
 sult of having "met up with" a Tartar and 
 attempted by means of a somewhat too 
 limited vocabulary, and one not possessed 
 of that continuity of ideas which the oc 
 casion appeared to demand to make friends 
 with her on general principles, and with 
 out an adequate comprehension of the sit 
 uation by either party to the fray, that he 
 could never thereafter be persuaded to look 
 upon any woman as other than a great and 
 imminent danger.
 
 ONYX AND GOLD.
 
 "A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. 
 Look with thine ears ; see how yon' justice rails 
 
 upon yon* simple thief. 
 Hark, in thine ear ; change places ; and, handy-dandy, 
 
 which is the justice, which the thief? 
 
 "Through tatter' d clothes, small vices do appear; 
 Robes, and furr'd gowns, hide all. Plate sin with gold, 
 And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks ; 
 Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "The wild beast is slumbering in us all. It is not 
 necessary always to invoke insanity to explain its 
 
 awakening." 
 
 SPITZKA.
 
 ONYX AND GOLD. 
 
 T \ID it ever strike you how many 
 thieves succeed in securing respect 
 able partners, and how very often the law 
 of the land is wholly on the side of the pil 
 fering gentry and against their victims ? " 
 asked the Prosecuting Attorney as he sat 
 fingering the frail stem of the wine-glass 
 which sat on the dainty cloth before him. 
 It was at Delmonico's, and the four gentle 
 men were in evening dress. 
 
 " Of course, it wouldn't do for me to say 
 that sort of thing publicly, but it is odd that 
 men like you should never have thought of 
 it. Any other incongruity from the clumsy 
 airs of a stage beauty up to" 
 
 " Up to the absurdity of serving that de 
 licious wine to a fellow like you, who has 
 no more sensitive palate than than an
 
 222 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 amateur artist," broke in young Fenton, 
 laughing at his own attempt at a blind 
 pun. "You may appreciate root-beer to the 
 full, but, for the Lord's sake, don't drink 
 this as if it were a decoction of herbs. 
 Look!" He held his glass up to the light 
 and watched the sparkle with the eye of a 
 lover. 
 
 "It's tip-top, and no mistake, Fen; but 
 I was so interested in and stirred by the 
 remark I heard that rascal at the last table 
 make as he passed us that I really must 
 confess to a fit of abstraction or indiffer 
 ence, rather as I drank that glass. No dis 
 respect to the wine intended, old fellow." 
 
 They all glanced toward the table at the 
 far end of the room, and a ripple of curiosity 
 began to arise in their minds. 
 
 " Hadn't noticed him," remarked Bowman 
 languidly, gazing at the stranger through 
 gold-bowed glasses. 
 
 "You don't mean to tell us that he is 
 one of the light-fingered gentry, or a candi-
 
 Onyx and Gold. 22$ 
 
 date for the penitentiary on the Court docket, 
 as you call it," said Fenton, with a touch of 
 real surprise and curiosity as he slowly re 
 placed his glass upon the table. 
 
 " Elbowing the criminal classes at Del's is 
 a new order of things, isn't it," smiled the 
 genial Political Idol who sat on the Prose 
 cutor's right. 
 
 '' Well, that depends upon whom you are 
 pleased to -classify that way," replied the 
 man of law, grimly. Then, laughing a little, 
 "but, no, I shouldn't say it was a new order 
 of things only a new nomenclature and 
 there really is a good deal in a name, after 
 all. Call that fellow a young blood who is 
 sowing his wild oats, or a society favorite 
 who plays a bit high for his means, or men 
 tion him as an unlucky gentleman of leisure, 
 and he is accepted at par away above par 
 value, indeed, by all of us. But if I say 
 that he is a conscienceless young scamp, 
 who is living the life of a low debauchee, 
 or that he is a professional gambler who
 
 224 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 plays with money that is not his own and 
 ruins those who confide in him ; or if I casu 
 ally remark that there sits a young fellow 
 who never did a useful thing in his life, 
 and has no more idea of ethics than a 
 than a boiled lobster why, society, includ 
 ing all of us, casts suspicious glances at 
 him, and suggests that he is out of place 
 in the company of respectable gentlemen. 
 Yet it's all a mere matter of terminology. 
 Dig for the meaning in either case and 
 you'll find exactly the same root. It's all 
 one. I " 
 
 The Political Idol burst into a merry 
 peal of laughter. 
 
 " Fairly sold ! " he exclaimed. " ' Pon my 
 word, you're getting to be a capital joker. 
 And that reminds me of a good thing that 
 happened over in Washington only yester 
 day. A certain member of the Cabinet who 
 shall be nameless for it was really a trifle 
 rough on him was walking down Penn. 
 Avenue with the Rev. Dr. Booth, D.D., and
 
 Onyx and Gold. 225 
 
 one or two others and myself as a sort of 
 annex. They were deep in a theological 
 discussion when a poorly clad fellow regular 
 tramp stepped up to him and shook his 
 fist in the Government Official's face, and 
 accused him of about every crime you 
 could mention. A crowd gathered and we 
 had been taken so by surprise that there 
 we stood perfect pictures of misery, unable 
 to get out of the mob until a policeman 
 came up and carried the impulsive tramp 
 to winter quarters. It was quite too funny 
 to the rest of us; but I thought I could 
 detect two or three damns lurking behind 
 the remainder of that theological debate." 
 The Idol winked and sipped his wine. His 
 great reputation as a raconteur gave color 
 and pith to his story, and the gentlemen 
 all laughed heartily. 
 
 " Was a little rough, but I guess it wasn't 
 the first time he'd heard the same or similar 
 uncomplimentary remarks think so?" que 
 ried Fenton. " A man he once made a busi-
 
 226 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 ness contract with which he afterwards repu 
 diated (for, of course, we can't help knowing 
 who you mean) told me all I ever wanted 
 to know about his character. I fancy the 
 tramp only repeated what the pious hum 
 bug has been told so often that he must 
 know it by heart by this time." 
 
 "Guess if the vote of the country were 
 taken on that topic, the gentleman in the 
 winter quarters, and the gentleman in the 
 Cabinet would poll about an equal vote 
 hey ? " sneered Bowman. 
 
 " Well," responded the Idol, with a 
 chuckle, " the vote might poll pretty even, 
 but it wouldn't weigh even by a good deal 
 when the scales of Justice were appealed 
 to. Scales are all alike. They respond to 
 weight, not to number nicht wahr?" he 
 ended, smiling significantly at the Prosecutor. 
 
 But that gentleman, strange to say, did 
 not warm up in response to the genial Phil 
 osopher of Success. This was a most unusual 
 experience and it piqued to farther effort the
 
 Onyx and Gold. 227 
 
 merry social ring-master. At last he paused 
 in one of his humorous remarks, and turned 
 an almost pathetic gaze toward the original 
 object of their remarks. 
 
 " Did you say that poor fellow over there 
 had fallen into bad ways? Tell us about 
 it. Who is he? He doesn't look half bad. 
 Perhaps" 
 
 The Prosecutor was in a surly mood. 
 "Perhaps you'll be on his side? Well, I 
 guess you will be ; for the law is, damn it ! 
 That's what makes me mad. My hands are 
 simply tied. The law is his partner and he 
 is a thief." 
 
 The Idol raised his eyebrows and pursed 
 up his lips reproachfully. " I'm afraid you're 
 on a moral crusade, old fellow. Now don't 
 do it. Take my advice. Go with the swim. 
 It pays a hundred cents on the dollar to do 
 that. If the law is on his side, so am I. 
 Now trot our your case ! Waiter, bring me 
 some Apollinaris ! " 
 
 " Well, the case is simple enough. He
 
 228 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 has defrauded dozens of honest men ; he 
 has caused more than one to lose health 
 and position and an honorable hold on life, 
 and, this morning, I followed to the grave 
 one man and I don't know how many more 
 there may be whom he has murdered, and 
 yet, as I say, the law is on his side! I tell 
 you it makes me hot sometimes. I lost my 
 temper when I saw him saunter in here to 
 spend on a dinner what would have saved 
 the life of the poor fellow we buried to-day. 
 It is infamous ! Infamous ! And the worst of 
 it all is, his case is only one of many. The 
 law that protected him could not protect 
 an honest man, for there is no case wherein 
 such a man could need its protection. Its 
 very existence on the statute books is an 
 insult to honesty and a menace to society. 
 It has no place in a free country. It is a 
 survival from an order of things that Ameri 
 cans should destroy, root and branch. It 
 is infamous in design and in execution 
 it is devilish. Only rascals "
 
 Onyx and Gold. 229 
 
 " Hush, speak lower," whispered Bowman, 
 "he is coming past us on his way" 
 
 " Why, 'pon my word, this is lucky ! 
 Didn't notice you until this instant, or I'd 
 have joined you," said the young fellow as 
 he paused with his hand extended to the 
 Idol. "Don't you recall Osmond? Ah, I 
 thought so. Charming evening. Sorry I 
 must go. Engagement at the Casino. Are 
 you going, too ? Delightful ! Meet you 
 there," he added, glancing at a splendid 
 jeweled watch and replacing it in his pocket. 
 He bowed slightly to the other gentlemen, 
 grasped the Idol's outstretched hand again, 
 and was gone. The Prosecutor ground his 
 teeth. The Idol smiled merrily. 
 
 "Dear me, he is all right! I didn't rec, 
 ognize him at that distance and side face ; 
 but he goes in the very best social circles 
 and was at college with Ned. Lives hand 
 somely. Bachelor apartments and all the 
 rest. I first met him in St. Petersburg. 
 He cut a wide swath there and in Paris
 
 230 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 too, I believe. I remember some talk about 
 the gay dinners he gave some of the frail 
 sisterhood over there. A good story about 
 one of those same dinners is told " 
 
 The Idol drifted off into one of his spicy 
 stories making good his old reputation as 
 a clever after-dinner talker. As they were 
 about to part at the door a half hour later, 
 Fenton slipped his hand under the Prose 
 cutor's arm. "Which way you going? Any 
 special engagement? No? Then do come 
 up to the club with me. I'm dying to hear 
 about it. What is the story? How did 
 Osmond kill the fellow ? Why can't you 
 twist the law around him ? I always 
 thought " 
 
 "No, you didn't," snapped the Prosecutor. 
 "What you mean is that you never thought 
 at all on the subject. You just floated with 
 the froth as that shrewd political humbug 
 advises all fortunate men to do. But in 
 my opinion the time's not so very far off 
 when the patient body of water upon which
 
 Onyx and Gold. 231 
 
 he and the rest of us are, and have been, 
 floating for ages untold, will break up into 
 angry waves, and then " 
 
 He snapped his finger. 
 
 " And then ? " queried Fenton, pausing 
 to light his cigar. 
 
 " Well, then honest men will begin to 
 see through the smooth-tongued, oily-man 
 nered humbugs they worship to-day, and 
 elect to make and sustain infamous laws, 
 and then their little jig will be up. I 
 know I struck him as a fool, to-night ; but 
 it was a pretty sudden change for me from 
 the poor, bare room where I helped to com 
 fort the orphans of Osmond's latest victim, 
 and saw the hopeless face of the widow, 
 to a seat at Del's, with the murderer at 
 another table." 
 
 The Club house door swung open, and 
 they entered. They threw their top coats 
 over a chair and seated themselves before 
 one of the windows facing the avenue.
 
 232 Onyx arid Gold. 
 
 Fenton urged again that he was anxious 
 to hear the whole story. 
 
 " Oh, it's simple enough not to attract 
 much attention. The poor devil we buried 
 to-day Paul Bendenburger was an art dec 
 orator. He did exquisite work and had the 
 nature and tastes of an artist. His wife 
 and he had pinched and scraped ever since 
 they came to a country in which they fondly 
 hoped for justice to the poor, trying to es 
 tablish Paul in a business of his own. At 
 last the happy day came. He had a very 
 good little shop and a reputation with 
 wealthy firms of doing the finest work with 
 the most painstaking skill. Orders that 
 were sent to large firms often found their 
 way to Bendenburger because of the exquis 
 ite finish of all he did. Well, about two 
 years ago the largest order he had ever had 
 was sent to him. It was to decorate a 
 suite for Osmond. No expense was to be 
 spared. Everything was to be of the finest. 
 The bath-room was to be of onyx, and all
 
 Onyx and Gold. 233 
 
 gilt ornamentation in the entire suite was 
 ordered to be of i8-carat gold. It don't 
 take a great deal of onyx and gold to make 
 a pretty big bill. Paul knew Osmond to 
 be a rich man. The order had come through 
 a good firm. To make this work a great 
 success was to place Paul on a splendid 
 business footing. Other rich men would 
 send for him. He and his wife were as 
 happy as two children over it. They both 
 planned and worked day and night. Paul 
 had to mortgage all his shop and effects 
 to procure the materials to work with, but 
 they were only too glad to do it, for he 
 was to be paid several thousand dollars over 
 and above all expenses when the work was 
 done. He felt sure that this was to be his 
 last hard year. There was some delay with 
 the other workmen, and it was late in the 
 fall before Paul's part of the work was well 
 under way. He went back and forth day 
 after day, and, if truth must be told, he 
 had no warm coat to go in. He took an
 
 234 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 awful cold, but the job was so nearly done 
 that he whipped himself up to finishing it. 
 Once Paul's wife met Osmond on the stairs 
 while he was exultingly showing a chum 
 over the rooms, and ventured to ask him to 
 one side. She hinted that if he would only 
 advance a mere trifle on the work it would 
 be [gratefully received. Well, he simply flew 
 into a rage, and told Paul to keep his wife 
 at home where she belonged or he'd take 
 the, job from him yet. Paul tried to pre 
 tend that he wasn't much ill, and he would 
 not stop to see a doctor, for he must get 
 the rooms done. Well, at last they were 
 done, and there was a grand illumination, 
 a dinner, and a lot of newspaper talk over 
 the exquisite work. That was over a year 
 ago now. Paul was not at the dinner," 
 sneered the Prosecutor. "He was in bed. 
 The doctor said, however, that all he needed 
 was plenty of wholesome food and a little rest. 
 He had worked too hard. So the Bren- 
 denburgers felt rather happy, and waited
 
 Onyx and Gold. 235 
 
 in the belief that after to-morrow the plenty 
 of food and rest would begin to be theirs." 
 The Lawyer paused, and looked out of 
 the window so long that Fenton ventured: 
 " Was he too ill to recover ? " 
 " No ! " thundered his companion, turn 
 ing savagely upon him. " No, he was not. 
 If Osmond hadn't been a thief. If he had 
 paid his bills even then, if he had paid 
 even for the expense he had put Paul to, 
 it would not have been too late ; but he 
 even let the mortgage on the shop, which 
 had been given to get the onyx and gold 
 for his bath-room, be foreclosed ! Paul's 
 wife went to Osmond again, about that. 
 Paul was too ill and discouraged to do any 
 thing, by this time. She begged and pleaded 
 with tears, only that he would advance 
 enough to protect the shop, and take his 
 own time to pay the rest. Think of the 
 infamy of it ! 'Advance ' that which had been 
 already advanced to him! That is the po 
 sition to which such men reduce the poor.
 
 236 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 They make cringing liars out of honest 
 tradesmen. Well, she was put off with a 
 promise. When she was gone, Osmond 
 simply directed his valet never to admit 
 her again. Then Paul sat up on his sick 
 bed and wrote. He told the whole piti 
 ful truth to Osmond even that they were 
 hungry and " 
 
 " Did Osmond dispute the accounts say 
 they were wrong or ? " began Fenton. 
 
 "Dispute nothing! He was too damned 
 selfish and lazy to even go over the ac 
 counts. Never made any claim at all. Sim 
 ply said he couldn't afford to pay trades 
 men when he deigned to say anything at 
 all on the subject. As a rule he said 
 nothing. But after a paper was obtained 
 which yanked him up in supplementary 
 proceedings, he had to make some sort of 
 reply. 
 
 "That was when I first heard of it all. 
 Paul was brought into court a mere wreck 
 of himself. His shop was gone, his health
 
 Onyx and Gold. 237 
 
 was gone, and even his hope had almost 
 died by this time, But his poor little wife 
 kept him up with the thought that American 
 law would see justice done to the poor and 
 honest, and that here, in a Court of Justice 
 in free America, at least, he could meet 
 a rich man on an equal footing." 
 
 " I should think as much! " remarked Fen- 
 ton, looking at the dying light in his cigar, 
 and then drawing out a fresh weed to light. 
 "I don't wonder you felt your professional 
 pride aroused and took a personal interest 
 in getting the cash for them. But how did 
 it happen he died before you got it?" 
 
 "It happened that he died before they 
 got it, simply because they never did get it, 
 and they never will get it. Osmond isn't 
 built that way. He can't afford to throw 
 away money on trades-people," sneered the 
 Prosecutor. " He's got to spend his misera 
 ble pittance of $30,000 a year with his 
 friends and on others of his ilk. On our 
 merry Political Idol and "
 
 238 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 "But the law!" broke in Fenton, "why 
 I thought?" 
 
 "My dear young friend, I told you a 
 while ago that you didn't think at all. You 
 only float. Now, I haven't a doubt that 
 you've read more than fifty times, that the 
 law holds that you can't collect from a man 
 who has an income left to him if he swears 
 that income ' is not more than enough to 
 support him in the manner in which he was 
 brought up.' Well, you didn't have head 
 enough to think what is a plain enough 
 fact that any man on this earth who would 
 resist an honest debt by taking advantage 
 of such a law can make that claim, and 
 that the law is his partner in the theft from 
 his victims. Who enabled Paul Bendenbur- 
 ger to live in the manner to which lie had 
 been accustomed? No law looked after his 
 interests and comfort. He'd always had a 
 good home and lived comfortably until Os 
 mond stole it all from him, and the law sane-
 
 Onyx and Gold. 239 
 
 tioned the theft. Sometimes I get so hot in 
 the collar when I think of" 
 
 The Prosecutor walked impatiently up 
 and down the room, and then stood facing 
 the window with the light from the street 
 lamp glistening upon the single stone in 
 his bosom. 
 
 "You don't mean to tell me that there 
 is no way at all for that widow to get" 
 
 "I mean to tell you just this. By false 
 pretences, Osmond and his is one case in 
 many got Paul and Lena Bendenburger to 
 impoverish themselves to furnish unneces 
 sary splendor for him, that he caused them 
 to lose home, business, health and, in Paul's 
 case, life, and that the law says he has a 
 right to withhold payment. I mean to say 
 that the family of Paul is ruined, that he 
 is dead, that his widow is broken in health, 
 and that her heart is dead within her, and 
 the law says Osmond may not be disturbed 
 in the enjoyment of his $30,000 income, his 
 onyx-and-gold bath, and the artistic home
 
 240 Onyx and Gold. 
 
 he has filched from an honest man. I mean 
 to say that Osmond is a respectable and 
 respected citizen hobnobbing to-night with 
 the leading after-dinner swells of this city, 
 and that I helped put the man he murdered 
 in a pauper's grave to-day; and that to 
 morrow I shall help 'commit' his wife and 
 children to the tender mercies of an organ 
 ization which combines not only the idea, 
 but the name, of charity and correction, so 
 that no human being not entirely hopeless 
 or depraved will pass into its hands. I 
 mean to say" 
 
 " For God's sake don't say any more ! " 
 broke in Fenton, " why can't we repeal the 
 law ? " 
 
 The Prosecutor turned slowly around 
 from the window. 
 
 " Do you mean it, Fen ? " he asked in an 
 unsteady tone. "When you say we, do you 
 mean it ? " 
 
 Fenton nodded his head, and tossed his 
 unlighted cigar into the fire.
 
 Onyx and Gold. 241 
 
 " Well then we can. If only fellows like 
 you will help make public opinion, old chap. 
 Help make public opinion travel the right 
 way, and not trot along in a fit of idiotic 
 glee at the heels of the shallow Idols whom 
 it pays to throw dust and gold dust at 
 that in the eyes of those who are too poor, 
 too ignorant and too helpless to have any 
 influence whatever on public opinion. And 
 whether you know it or not, it is the pocket- 
 book that makes public opinion, old fellow. 
 He was right to-night when he said that 
 the scales of Justice do not move for num 
 bers. They are influenced by weight. That 
 old chap in the Bible knew what he was talk- 
 ing about, too, when he said, ' The rich man's 
 wealth is his strong city : the destruction of 
 the poor is their poverty.' But come, sup 
 pose we drop in on the last act of the Pi 
 rates of Penzance. I'd like to see the comic 
 side of piracy for a while to-night. I've 
 seen only the tragic side and the heartless 
 one all day."
 
 IN DEEP WATER.
 
 "And each man and each year that lives on earth 
 Turns hither or thither, and hence or thence is fed ; 
 And as a man before was from his birth, 
 So shall a man be after among the dead. 
 
 "We are baffled and caught in the current, and bruised 
 
 upon edges of shoals ; 
 As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the 
 
 wind-shaken souls." 
 
 SWINBURNE.
 
 IN DEEP WATER. 
 
 t( TN my opinion, living is a waste of 
 valuable time," remarked John Car 
 roll, sententiously. 
 
 Everybody laughed. 
 
 "Of course, Carroll would top the argu 
 ment off with some such absurdity as that," 
 said one of the men near him. " It wouldn't 
 be Carroll if he didn't. But this time it seems 
 to me he rather overdid the matter. How 
 you going to waste time, old man, if you 
 were not living ? " he added, turning to the 
 imperturbable figure beside him. 
 
 " I don't know. That's your proposition. 
 What I said was that living is a waste of 
 valuable time. I didn't say that not to live 
 would be." 
 
 "No, but I suppose you are about to 
 remark now, that never to have been born
 
 248 In Deep Water. 
 
 would be to truly improve your opportuni 
 ties," suggested Bentley, who was standing 
 near the window gazing down Fifth avenue. 
 " Perhaps so," acquiesced the first speaker. 
 "I haven't worked that proposition out yet; 
 but I have the first one. I've been wasting 
 time living now for forty odd years. So 
 have you. What's the good of it ? What 
 comes of it ? If you never had been born 
 you wouldn't know it. By and by you'll 
 die you wo'n't know that either, and " 
 
 "I cannot agree to the last statement," 
 broke in his neighbor. " In the next life 
 we will, no doubt, know all about this life 
 and why we were put here." 
 
 John Carroll looked steadily at him for a 
 moment before he replied: 
 
 "Don't you think it would be more sen 
 sible to know about it while we're here ? " 
 he inquired slowly. " What good can it do 
 to know after we're out of it ? If that plan 
 is kept up I suppose we won't know what
 
 In Deep Water. 249 
 
 we're in the next world for either until we 
 move on." 
 
 " Move on! " exclaimed his neighbor with 
 a face so full of astonishment that even 
 Carroll joined in the laugh that followed 
 " Move where ? " 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know; do you?" asked 
 Carroll, dryly. 
 
 Doddridge shook his head. 
 
 " I didn't know but you might. You 
 seem to be one ahead of where we are 
 now on the topic of lives and worlds. I 
 didn't know but you might be two ahead. 
 I don't see what's to hinder." 
 
 Young Doddridge moved uneasily in his 
 chair, and said something about there being 
 only one more of each. 
 
 " How do you know ? " insisted Carroll, 
 holding his head very far to one side, and 
 half closing his eyes as he looked intently 
 at his antagonist. The other men glanced 
 at each other and winked. 
 
 " I've tried my level best to recall where
 
 250 In Deep Water. 
 
 I came from whether I ever lived in any 
 other world before this one and I can't. 
 Looks to me as if I started just like a bum. 
 ble-bee, forty odd years ago, right here. I've 
 buzzed around a little, and built a nest, and 
 stung a few people by way of variety, and 
 and when the frost comes, I'll get nipped 
 in the bud, so to speak, just like my bumble 
 bee and then" 
 
 The mixed metaphor disturbed no one- 
 and Carroll snapped his fingers and made 
 a toss with his hand to indicate that he 
 had finished. 
 
 " And then you'll stop wasting valuable 
 time living," laughed Bently, as he bowed 
 and smiled to a lady who had just crossed 
 the avenue in front of the club house. 
 
 " Looks that way to me, as an unpreju 
 diced observer," assented Carroll. "I don't 
 know how it looks to the bee." 
 
 " His returns are not in," put in a small 
 man on the other side of the room, and then 
 he grew red in the face and fidgeted about
 
 In Deep Water. 251 
 
 in his chair. John Carroll looked at him 
 long enough to make him thorougly uncom 
 fortable. He wished that he had not ven 
 tured a remark. Then Carroll said slowly: 
 
 " That's it exactly. If the bumble-bee's 
 returns were in, it would knock the big head 
 out of a good many of us. I haven't the least 
 doubt that he puts in half of his time plan 
 ing the exact spot on St. Peter's anatomy 
 that he's going to sting when he gets to 
 glory. Meantime he practices all he can on 
 us, just to keep his hand in. But you or 
 I are only used for target practice while 
 he's in this vale of tears. Real business 
 won't begin until he's translated." 
 
 " Carroll, you're the most blasphemous 
 man I ever heard talk. If I didn't know it 
 was two-thirds in fun, and the other third not 
 in earnest, I'd say you ought to be "- 
 
 " Try it," broke in Carroll turning sud 
 denly on his neighbor. " The trouble with 
 you is, Doddridge, that you not only know 
 all about the next world, but you know ex-
 
 252 In Deep Water. 
 
 actly what other people ought to think in 
 this one, and, if they don't think the same 
 little picaytmish thought you do, you are 
 under the impression that they ought to 
 ask your leave to live at all. Why, good 
 God, man, if our friend the bumble-bee's 
 bump of self-esteem bore the same relation 
 to his brains that yours does, people would 
 mistake him for a young robin, and feed 
 him angle worms." 
 
 He got up and walked to the window. 
 Everybody laughed except his victim, to ap 
 pease whose wrath Carroll laughed also, as 
 he laid a hand on Bentley's shoulder. 
 
 " I'm going over to Governor's Island," 
 he said in a lower tone. " I've got to see 
 a man over there, and this club is getting 
 altogether too "- 
 
 He paused for a word, but Bentley did 
 not supply it; he only chuckled in a man 
 ner that sent a trembling little motion 
 through his frame and made radiating lines 
 about his eyes and the corners of his mouth.
 
 In Deep Water. 253 
 
 lie appeared to be thoroughly amused. Car 
 roll began again, in an undertone, after a 
 moment's delay : 
 
 " There's always some donkey sitting 
 around here now-a-days, who feels a 'call' 
 to assume a tone of godliness and infal 
 libility that makes me mad. I'm thinking 
 of having a hat-band printed for Doddridge, 
 with ' Be good, and you will be happy ' 
 on it." 
 
 "Shall you use diamond type, or abbre- 
 viate some of the words?" inquired Bentley, 
 still looking down the street and chuckling. 
 Carroll burst into a fit of laughter that had 
 in it genuine amusement, and put to flight 
 his irritation. 
 
 " I'll let it go around twice," he replied, 
 and, taking up his own head covering, he 
 started for the door. 
 
 Once upon the pavement he stood try 
 ing to decide whether he should walk up 
 to Forty-second street, or down to Thirty- 
 third, to take the Elevated train for South
 
 254 I n Deep Water. 
 
 ferry. He went through the same process 
 of reasoning daily. He argued that he 
 needed the exercise that the longer walk 
 would give him, and that there was no great 
 haste about getting over to the Island. It 
 was a lovely day in May, and he had been 
 in-doors for several hours. He crossed the 
 street, and, arguing in favor of the farther 
 station, took "his way steadily to the one 
 that was nearest. That was the usual .pro 
 cess through which he went, and he felt 
 sure it would end just so each time, and 
 still, he told himself, that he needed the 
 extra exercise so much that one of these 
 days he would begin to take it regularly. 
 This appeared to be a perfectly satisfactory 
 adjustment of the difficulty for the time 
 being, and so he settled himself comfort 
 ably in a cross-seat and opened his morn 
 ing paper. The sun poured in through the 
 window, and he sat on the inside end of 
 the seat, so that its rays could not reach 
 him. No one faced him, and he congratu-
 
 In Deep Water. 255 
 
 lated himself that he had gone to the right 
 station, after all, for these seats had been 
 vacated as he entered the car. 
 
 At Eighth street he heard, in a vague 
 and unheeding way, a rough voice of com 
 mand : 
 
 " No, not that way ! Here, go in here 
 no go long! Set down! No, over there! 
 Good Lord ! W-h-e-w ! " Carroll had not 
 looked up at first ; but the voice came 
 nearer and nearer, and then a woman, with 
 her arms clasped about an enormous bun 
 dle, done up first in what had once been 
 white cotton cloth, outside of which two 
 torn and battered newspapers now essayed 
 to stretch themselves, half stepped, half fell 
 over his feet and into the seat by the win 
 dow. Following her was an older woman, 
 carrying, clasped to her bosom, a tremen 
 dous oiled-cloth-covered valise from which 
 the handles were torn on one side. She sat 
 down with a thud on the seat facing him. 
 Then the rough voice went on :
 
 256 In Deep Water. 
 
 " Move over no, don't-git-up ! Move over 
 I said ! W-h-e-w ! Gosh ! " 
 
 Carroll looked at the speaker for the first 
 time, and discovered that it was a police 
 man whom he had known as McGonigle, 
 and upon whom he had always looked as 
 being a kind-hearted and obliging officer. He 
 inferred at once as it was obvious, from the 
 brutally curious faces about the car, all of 
 its occupants had done that these two 
 women were a particularly vicious pair of 
 criminals. He wondered what their line of 
 crime was. Instinctively he put his hand 
 on his pocket, and then felt for his watch. 
 He tried to do it as if by accident, and 
 to keep his eyes turned from the woman 
 who faced him. McGonigle had seated 
 himself with his -back to the woman who 
 shared his seat and nursed the black va 
 lise. He had draped one leg carelessly 
 over the end of the seat as he sank into 
 it, and his foot swung back and forth in 
 the aisle. He took his hat off and mopped
 
 In Deep Water. 257 
 
 his face with a handkerchief that had been 
 cleaner a day or two before. It was a face 
 so quiet and serious in expression that it 
 would have started streams of envy in the 
 breast of many a fop who struggles vainly 
 to conceal what he is pleased to call his 
 emotions, behind a mask of well-bred qui 
 etude and non-committal placidity. The 
 policeman's words and tones had been harsh, 
 but his temper appeared to be wholly un 
 ruffled. As he replaced his hat he recog 
 nized Carroll and lifted it again. Carroll 
 bowed and smiled. 
 
 "Why, hello, McGonigle! That you?" 
 he said, pleasantly. 
 
 "Its what there is left of me," replied 
 the burly guardian of the peace, in a tone 
 that was as emotionless and sustained in 
 its one quiet key as if he had studied the 
 art under a master. 
 
 Carroll laughed. " What there is left of 
 you would make two very decent sized fel 
 lows yet, McGonigle."
 
 258 In Deep Water. 
 
 McGonigle was flattered, but he turned 
 his head slowly and bestowed a long side 
 glance upon the girl who shared Carroll's 
 seat. The glance apeared to indicate 
 more in sorrow than in anger that there 
 would have been at least twice as much 
 of him had he not encountered her. Not 
 that it was either an angry or a reproach 
 ful glance. It was too placidly stolid to 
 indicate such lively emotion. 
 
 Carroll winced a little. He wondered 
 how McGonigle could bear to make such a 
 pointed thrust under existing circumstances, 
 and he affected absolute preoccupation with 
 his paper as he stealthily felt for his pocket- 
 book again. It was on the side next to 
 the girl with the bundle. He had taken 
 another glance at her face a moment be 
 fore, as he pretended to look out of the 
 window, and he thought again how hard it 
 was to determine the grade of crime for 
 which such as she should merit this rough 
 public treatment. The ladies in the car had
 
 In Deep Water. 259 
 
 looked both shocked and indignant, and they 
 had studied these unfortunates, ever since 
 the two had staggered through the aisle 
 under the double burden of bundles and 
 rough orders, with a frankness that it was 
 painful to witness. He felt that the pris 
 oners must be hardened indeed if it did 
 not sting them to the quick. The older 
 woman, who sat with McGonigle, hadn't a 
 bad face, Carroll thought not a very bad 
 one. He wondered how long she had been 
 a criminal, and how she began. He thought 
 her not homely, though poorly dressed and 
 evidently badly frightened. The younger 
 one, beside him, was decidedly repellant of 
 feature. She looked stubborn. He could 
 see her face in the narrow glass opposite. 
 
 Presently McGonigle touched him on the 
 knee with one of his enormous fingers. 
 Carroll held his paper to one side and 
 looked at him. 
 
 " Immigrants," remarked McGonigle, suc 
 cinctly, and then he jerked his thumb
 
 260 In Deep Water. 
 
 toward the girl behind him. Then he 
 paused as if the effort had worn him out. 
 Carroll fidgeted, for the policeman's move 
 ment had been so plain that he felt sure 
 both women had understood it, even if they 
 had not heard what he said. 
 
 " Had 'm up to the station house all 
 night," he went on in the same tone of sad 
 comment, with pauses of such length be 
 tween the words as to suggest extreme ver 
 bal exhaustion. " Lost theirselves last night. 
 Nobody up there couldn't talk to 'em." His 
 words were all pitched on the same key. 
 He looked at the girl from time to time, 
 with slow eyes that had the comprehend 
 ing quality of an ox in their fine brown 
 color. Carroll was growing hot. He af 
 fected to read, and held the paper so as 
 to shield his own face from the sight of 
 the two women. He wanted to ask if they 
 were caught smuggling, or just what the 
 charge was; but he could not bear to feel 
 that they knew as they must that the
 
 In Deep Water. 261 
 
 policeman was telling him about them. 
 Presently McGonigle went on : 
 " I'm takin' 'em to the Barge office. 
 Reckon somebody down there can sling 
 their language sounds like three grunts 
 'n a yell ! " There was a long pause be 
 tween his sentences. He appeared to labor 
 with painful deliberation around the next 
 idea he wished to express, and then pro 
 duce words to express it from a vocabu 
 lary that had no adequate means of egress. 
 He shifted his leg to let a lady pass, and, 
 as the car pulled out from Chambers street, 
 he gazed steadily at the younger woman 
 until she turned her face to the window 
 and arranged her hat with both hands. 
 Then he turned slowly until he could see 
 the older one. This position was too un 
 comfortable to be sustained long, while his 
 leg hung over the arm of the seat where 
 he had replaced it, so he looked at Car 
 roll again, and with no perceptible change 
 of expression said :
 
 262 in Deep Water. 
 
 " I don't know what language it is 'n I 
 can't tell by lookiri at 'em. . . . But, lord, 
 it must be kind of awful to be in a coun 
 try where you can't make nobody under 
 stand. ... It makes me fairly sweat .to 
 think of it,'' He abstracted his handker 
 chief from his pocket again and mopped his 
 face. Such a placid face. The moisture 
 did not appear to be caused by emotion, 
 in spite of the words. Carroll concluded 
 that the women could not understand a 
 word that was said, so he ventured a ques 
 tion, meanwhile looking with great display 
 of interest out of the opposite window. 
 
 " Lord ! no, they ain't criminals. . . . 
 They're purty nigh as green as they come." 
 . . . Long pause, during which Carroll 
 asked a question. "Where was they goin'? 
 I do' know 'n neither do they. . . . Found 
 'em walkin round lost an skeered. . . . 
 Took 'em to the station-house." . . Longer 
 pause and a steady ox-like contemplation 
 of the face of the girl. Then, while still
 
 In Deep Water. 263 
 
 looking at her: "Mmmm! but I wisht you 
 could a' seen that young one eat las' night. 
 ... I thought she'd bust. ... It was 
 axually funny." 
 
 Carroll smiled, but beyond the word there 
 were no evidences of humor or fun about 
 the policeman. His expression had not 
 once changed, and his tone was the same 
 whether the punctuation indicated by his 
 words called for period, question mark, or 
 exclamation point. 
 
 " Hungry, was she ? " ventured Carroll, 
 in an undertone. McGonigle transferred 
 his gaze to his interlocutor for a moment, 
 and something very like expression strug 
 gled into his face. 
 
 "Hungry!" he said, "with a slight varia 
 tion of tone. " Hungry ! Well I don't 
 know's she was 'specially hungry; but she 
 shorely wus holler plum through." 
 
 Carroll raised his paper suddenly, and 
 when he took it from before his face again 
 his eyes sought McGonigle's ; but that gen-
 
 264 In Deep Water. 
 
 tleman was carefully inspecting the counte 
 nance and physical proportions of his charge 
 with the phenomenal appetite. His face 
 was as grave and stolid as ever, but a gen 
 uine gleam of curiosity had struggled into 
 it. Both women looked steadily out of 
 the window, and clutched their bundles. 
 After a long survey of the girl, McGonigle 
 went on, jerking his thumbs in her direc 
 tion: 
 
 " The young one is kind of smart, too. 
 . . . You kin make her ketch on to most 
 anything; but the other one" jerking his 
 thumb toward her "is 'most a fool." . . 
 Carroll, in spite of himself, moved uneasily. 
 McGonigle turned half around and exam 
 ined the hands clasped about the large 
 black valise. 
 
 " Married, too, I reckon. . . . Got on 
 a ring." 
 
 Carroll looked at him again, to see if 
 he had intended the juxtaposition of the 
 ideas conveyed in his speculation as to her
 
 In Deep Water. 265 
 
 being weak-minded and married; but Mc- 
 Gonigle's eyes were traveling steadily over 
 the face and figure of the girl again, and 
 nothing but serious speculative wonder was 
 in them. 
 
 " But, honest Injun, I do wisht you could 
 'a' seen that there girl eat last night. . . 
 It was the funniest I ever see. ... I 
 shorely did think she'd bust. ... I was 
 axually skeered." . . He was still gazing 
 at her. There was a pause. "I never did 
 see a girl eat like that girl et. I don't 
 know when she filled up last; but it must 
 a' been quite a spell ago. . . . My 
 lord how she did eat." He appeared 
 to be a trifle nervous yet as to the ability 
 of her anatomy to withstand the unusual 
 internal strain, and his apprehensions were 
 not allayed by the steady pressure of her 
 huge bundle against the overcharged or 
 gans. But presently the thought seemed to 
 dawn upon him that Carroll might think 
 he was complaining of his arduous duties
 
 266 In Deep Water. 
 
 as an officer. Something very like a smile 
 struggled through the settled muscles of 
 his face. 
 
 " 7 been havin' a good enough time all 
 mornin', though. . . . Been ridin' around 
 from pillar t' post with them two girls 
 ever sense seven o'clock. I reckon they're 
 plum wore out with the sergeant up t' the 
 station house 'n the judge down 't the po 
 lice court 'n all of us talkin' at 'em an' 
 they gittin' no where 'n understandin' noth- 
 in.' " . . He closed his eyes, and Carroll 
 had about concluded that he was intent 
 upon a nap before he reached the Barge 
 office, so that his overburdened faculties 
 could be rested and ready for the next tilt 
 with the difficulties of strange and ungodly 
 languages when, just as the trainman called 
 out, "South Ferry!" McGonigle opened his 
 eyes and remarked with unusual energy of 
 inflection : 
 
 " I certainly did think she'd bust ! " 
 Carroll touched his hat to the two wo-
 
 In Deep Water. 267 
 
 men, greatly to their surprise, and watched 
 them down the stairs, and saw them walk 
 by the side of the ox-like McGonigle, toward 
 the white stone pile where some one would 
 be able to speak the mysterious language. 
 Then he turned toward the slip where the 
 little government boat lay waiting. He 
 showed his card to the soldier in charge 
 and told which officer on the Island he wish 
 ed to see. Then he stepped aboard. He 
 was the only passenger. He sat far for 
 ward, and looked steadily into the water for 
 a while. Then he fell to wondering what 
 life meant to such human pawns as those 
 two women. What had they expected to 
 find in America ? Why had they come ? 
 Or was their motive too formless and vague 
 to be reproduced in words ? Had their 
 coming to a strange land been the mere 
 impulse of unsatisfied human craving for 
 something other than they had? "I won 
 der what they think of the experiment now," 
 he said half aloud. "I wonder if they think
 
 268 In Deep Water. 
 
 living is a waste of valuable time ! " He 
 smiled as the idea and the discussion at 
 the club recurred to him. 
 
 " I venture to say McGonigle doesn't, at 
 all hazards," he thought, as he stepped 
 ashore, "and who is to say that McGonigle 
 is not a profound philosopher?" 
 
 He laughed lightly, and climbed the hill 
 on his way to the officer's quarters.
 
 A PRISON PUZZLE.
 
 " As long as dishonorable success outranks honest 
 effort as long as society bows and cringes before the 
 great thieves there will be little ones enough to fill 
 the jails. 
 
 " Society kills its enemies, and possibly sows in 
 the heart of some citizen the seeds of murder. 
 
 " Where is the man with intelligence enough to 
 take into consideration the circumstances of each 
 individual case ? ' ' ' Is it possible that thoughts, 
 or desires, or passions, are the children of chance, born 
 of nothing? Can we conceive of Nothing as a force, 
 or a cause ? If, then, there is behind every desire 
 and passion an efficient cause, we can, in part at least, 
 
 account for the actions of men." 
 
 INGERSOLL.
 
 A PRISON PUZZLE. 
 
 "X/'ES, he was the queerest man we ever 
 had to handle, since I've been war 
 den here. Generally speaking, I can size 
 up a fellow in a day or two, and I don't 
 have to change my mind much after it 
 once gets made up not as a rule. 
 
 You see I've been handling criminals, 
 one way and another, for pretty close to 
 nineteen years, and a man learns a good 
 deal about human nature in its various 
 forms in nineteen years. But Henry Ben 
 nett was too much for me. Of course that 
 wasn't his real name; but that is the name 
 he was tried under and so it was the one 
 he was always known by here except the 
 times he was called Number 432, added 
 the warden, smiling grimly. 
 
 But Number 432 pleased him just as
 
 274 d Prison Puzzle, 
 
 well as Bennett and was just as close to 
 the mark, no doubt. I had made up my 
 mind toward the last that he hadn't a spot 
 in his heart as big as a buckshot that cared 
 a continental for any human being, except 
 for Number 432, alias Bennett, alias forty 
 or fifty other things. 
 
 I suppose his affections got so divided 
 up between these numerous individualities 
 of his own that he really had no further 
 stock to draw on for bestowal upon such 
 other units of the human race as he might 
 come in contact with. (This conceit amused 
 the warden, and he drew a large hand 
 across his mouth to wipe away a smile, 
 but it still lingered in his eyes). 
 
 Now, don't get the idea that Bennett was 
 a brutal fellow. Because that is just ex 
 actly the sort of descriptive adjective that 
 wouldn't fit him at all. Oh, yes, of course, 
 the newspapers described him that way.^ 
 because most folks think that is the reg 
 ulation way for a crook to be pictured.
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 275 
 
 In fact, most people think lie is that way. 
 Why, dear me, I've heard women who 
 wouldn't be able to detect a criminal, un 
 less he was covered with blood and hitched 
 up tandem with his victim, vow they always 
 could tell whether a person was what he 
 claimed to be and all the rest of it. Thought 
 the criminal classes, as they called the ones 
 that were caged, had a queer look. Showed 
 it in their eyes and couldn't look at you 
 straight and but, Lord! you've heard all 
 that rot often enough, no doubt, without 
 me going over it. Well, the published de 
 scriptions of criminals cater to just this 
 type of folly. Now, in my humble opinion, 
 if it wasn't for all that sort of nonsense, 
 it wouldn't be so easy for criminals to work. 
 People wouldn't swallow the large assort 
 ment of ridiculous bait, if they didn't feel 
 sure that such an honest-faced fellow, as 
 they usually express it, could hardly deceive 
 them. They seem to expect a defaulter to 
 go around with a copper-plate dial attached
 
 276 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 to his face, which points out to all observers 
 the exact date of his deviation from the 
 path of rectitude. Since this patent revolv 
 ing thief-detector does not appear upon 
 Rogue Plausible's face, his shrewd and self- 
 confident victims nibble away at any pre 
 posterous bait the scamp may happen to 
 offer. 
 
 But I've switched away off of the orig 
 inal track. Well, to go back. Bennett al 
 ways denied the murder he was accused 
 of poisoning a ballet-girl he had lived with 
 though he acknowledged to pretty nearly 
 every other crime on the calendar. But he 
 was such a picturesque liar at all times 
 that the denial had no weight, and indeed, 
 his confessions had none, for I very often 
 doubted if he was really guilty of half the 
 things he confessed to. 
 
 He was such a good-looking fellow, with 
 the frankest and openest face, too, that it 
 was hard to believe that he was the com 
 plete moral idiot that he sometimes claimed
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 277 
 
 to be in the tales he told of his past career. 
 Now, you look as if you thought that last 
 remark did not agree with some things I 
 said before, but it does. I hold that as a 
 rule when a man looks upon himself as a 
 criminal, and continues long in that men 
 tal condition (and provided, too, that he 
 thinks of crime as reprehensible which 
 many a criminal does not), then he begins 
 to show it in his face and bearing. The 
 trouble is that most defaulters, for instance, 
 think of themselves habitually as honest and 
 upright men gone wrong for this trip only. 
 They both respect and believe in themselves. 
 Look at the average railroad wrecker, 
 for example. I don't mean the petty crim 
 inal who only puts a boulder on the track 
 and makes a corporation lose a few thou 
 sand in wreckage and kills one or two poor 
 devils. I mean the kind of wreckers who 
 mow down thousands of helpless people by 
 devious processes called shrewd business 
 methods. That kind of a wrecker causes
 
 278 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 more financial ruin, more mental despair and 
 more actual deaths, too, than the others ; 
 but he looks upon himself as an entirely 
 honorable man, and, strange as it may ap 
 pear, the community, the church to which he 
 usually belongs and the state to which he 
 is a standing menace, agree to so accept him. 
 They one and all do him honor. Well, now, 
 you will readily understand that his face 
 does not show the marks of his crimes be 
 cause, as I said, he does not look upon him 
 self and is not estimated by others as a 
 criminal. Well, you can just carry that il 
 lustration through a thousand other phases 
 of crime or business, whichever you've a 
 mind to trace and find the parallel. 
 
 But, in my experience, it is a pretty gen 
 eral rule that a person who has grown to 
 think of himself as a criminal, and knows 
 that he is so classed by others, even if he 
 has only done some petty deed, is very apt 
 to lose his more open and frank expressions 
 of face and conduct.
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 Now, Bennett didn't. Up to the very 
 last even when we were keeping him alive 
 by medical skill and dainty food, so that 
 the state could have a chance to kill him 
 at its leisure and by approved machinery, 
 he never lost that ingenuousness of man 
 ner and method of conversation that was 
 so fetching. He would tell the most pre 
 posterous lie so simply, so frankly, and with 
 so little reason for deceiving us, that half 
 a dozen times he caught us napping. We 
 believed him. When we'd find him out 
 and tax him with it, his laugh was as glee 
 ful as that of a little child and held in 
 it as small a tincture of bitterness or guile. 
 He enjoyed his own lies heartily. One 
 couldn't help laughing with him. The spon 
 taneity and heartiness of his mirth was 
 simply contagious. Of course, such a man 
 would always be a favorite wherever he was, 
 and equally, of course, his capacity and op 
 portunities for crime were simply limited 
 by his own freaks of fancy or needs, as
 
 280 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 the case might be. He always said that 
 his first lawless acts were the results of 
 poverty, but that may or may not be true. 
 As far back as we could trace him, he had 
 not been impoverished in the sense that the 
 word should be used. But to a man of 
 his tastes and habits it was the result of 
 biting poverty indeed, if his suite of apart 
 ments was not elegantly appointed, or if 
 his wine were not of a delicate and old 
 brand. 
 
 He was willing to deny himself the com 
 forts of life, but without its luxuries he 
 maintained that he simply could not live. 
 The old chap who first got off that idea 
 knew what he was talking about, too, for 
 it isn't comfortable to be obliged to dodge 
 the law or one's creditors. It does annoy 
 those who posses the elegancies of life to 
 be hauled up in supplementary proceedings, 
 and to be compelled to swear that the pay 
 ment of a tailor's bill is a financial impos 
 sibility.
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 281 
 
 Well, my first knowledge of Bennett was 
 in a case of that kind. He had a regular 
 yearly income at that time. It had been 
 left him by will. He said that it was his 
 mother who had provided him with the 
 yearly pittance, as he always entitled it, but 
 no one ever knew how true that was. This 
 pittance was $15,000. He swore that he 
 simply could not live on such a sum as that 
 in the style to which he had been accus 
 tomed, and at the same time pay tradesmen 
 their bills. He did not at all blame the 
 tradespeople for demanding payment, but he 
 assured the judge that, upon his honor as a 
 gentleman and his oath as a citizen, he sim 
 ply could not afford to allow his natural 
 sympathies for the laboring classes to blind 
 him to his first duty, which was to maintain 
 himself in the manner in which he had been 
 brought up. It came out on that trial that 
 he recently had had fitted up a magnificent 
 suite of apartments, one feature of which 
 was a teak inlaid smoking-room twenty-four
 
 282 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 feet square, with Turkish divans and all that 
 sort of thing in it. The total cost of this 
 one room he said he really did not know, 
 but the bills which were presented in court 
 by different tradesmen aggregated over $10- 
 ooo, and Bennett swore that he had been 
 compelled to advance a large sum to what 
 he termed the poor devil of a decorator to 
 enable him to procure the raw materials to 
 work with. 
 
 Well, of course the law being on his 
 side, the court decision left him with the 
 elegancies of life and left the confiding 
 tradesmen with the comforts ; that is to 
 say, with the knowledge of work well and 
 honestly done and an empty pocket-book to 
 show for it. Bennett used to talk quite 
 feelingly of that case after he came here. 
 He said he had found out that a gentle 
 man could get along, after a manner, with 
 out an elaborate smoking-room, and that he 
 didn't blame the workmen for kicking. He 
 said he didn't doubt he would have done
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 283 
 
 the same thing if he had been in their places. 
 One day, I suggested to him that the 
 time might not be far off, when, if that 
 particular law was not repealed, tradesmen 
 might take another method of collecting 
 their bills a method not so comfortable 
 for the luxurious debtor. Well, you should 
 have seen his face ! It was a study. " Com 
 fortable!" said he, "more comfortable meth 
 od ! Look here, warden, were you ever 
 hauled up into one of those beastly court 
 rooms in a supplementary proceeding case? 
 No? Well, then, you don't know what you 
 are talking about. There isn't anything 
 on this earth less comfortable than that. 
 Why, great God, man ! I had to confess 
 that all the income I had was a beggarly 
 $15,000, and everybody knew perfectly well 
 that my expenses were a damned sight 
 nearer $75,000 every year of my life. Well, 
 do you think it was comfortable after that 
 to have some fellow at the Club look as 
 if he thought I needed the money when
 
 284 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 I suggested a game of poker or lost a few 
 hundred on a race ? Gad ! I don't know 
 of a more ^comfortable thing except the 
 other accompaniment of the same vile court 
 room. Why my clothes actually smelled of 
 the foul air when I came out! I took a 
 cab to my rooms, of course, and I could 
 plainly detect the odor all the way up-town. 
 It made me faint. I went into that same 
 blessed smoking-room and disposed of every 
 rag I had worn. My man took them, and, 
 by Jove, I'd been fool enough to put on a 
 perfectly fresh suit that morning. I learned 
 better than that. I never wore a new suit 
 to court in any case, afterward. It is a 
 sheer waste of good money, for no gentle 
 man could ever wear the things again. Then 
 it's an insult to your tailor such abuse 
 of his work." 
 
 Well, Bennett would talk like that even 
 after his last appeal had failed and he was 
 waiting for the chair. The enormity of ill- 
 fitting or bad-smelling clothes appealed to
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 285 
 
 his mind always; but the fact that he was 
 convicted of a most awful and treacherous 
 crime I do not believe ever gave him a 
 real pang, unless it was at the last, and 
 that was what I started to tell you about. 
 
 As I said, I had positively made up my 
 mind that there was no human being out 
 side of himself whose griefs, woes or pangs 
 could touch a single chord of his nature 
 more deeply than to merely stir a mild 
 interest which, after all, was to him as a 
 species of mental entertainment or matinee 
 performance, for his benefit. 
 
 But about a week before he was to die 
 an old lady called here and asked to see 
 him. She examined his pictures and read, 
 most carefully, the record of all the birth 
 and other marks we had by which to iden 
 tify him. She trembled like a leaf and said 
 as she read each one, "Yes, yes!" or she 
 would merely nod her poor head and weep. 
 
 She was not a rich woman. I could see 
 that plainly enough, and so I told her that
 
 286 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 I suspected she had made a mistake and 
 that this man was not her long-lost son; 
 but she insisted upon seeing him, and I 
 consented. 
 
 I went in with her because I had a little 
 curiosity to see how Bennett would take 
 her claim upon him. He always had per 
 fect self-command, and so I felt sure that 
 whatever he did would be done quite de 
 liberately, and it would give me a chance 
 to study his nature under a new and dif 
 ferent light. 
 
 I had arranged for her to see him in 
 my inner office, but I had not told Bennett 
 why he was sent for. He stepped in quite 
 briskly, as he had done several times be 
 fore when occasion had required him there, 
 and he did not see the lady until he stood 
 within four feet of me. I was watching 
 his face closely. 
 
 " You sent for me?" he began, in his 
 cheerful tone, and with his eyes as steady 
 and devil-may-care as usual. His glance fell
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 287 
 
 upon the lady, who had risen to her feet 
 at the sound of his voice, and he started 
 perceptibly, and, I thought, changed color, 
 but he was always so pale after the long 
 confinement that I could not make sure that 
 it was not the usual pallor simply intensified 
 by the glare of light which had come sud 
 denly upon his face from my window. He 
 looked steadily at her for a moment and 
 she moved forward. Her hands were trem 
 blingly clutching at a chair and the sure 
 conviction that she had found her son was 
 written in every line of her unhappy face. 
 
 " Edward," she gasped, " Edward, my son ! 
 Oh, my God ! " 
 
 She would have fallen had not Bennett 
 sprung with quick and ready arm to sup 
 port her. It was done with the grace of 
 a social expert which even his prison garb 
 did not conceal. I had allowed him to 
 catch her because I wanted to detect him 
 if he did the least thing to betray himself. 
 She did not faint, but sat trembling as she
 
 288 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 clung to him and sobbed. All that she said 
 aloud was "Edward, oh, Edward, my son, 
 my son ! " This she repeated over and over 
 as she gazed at him or buried her face in 
 her handkerchief. At first Bennett made 
 no reply at all, but after she had taken the 
 wine I offered her, he said quite gently and 
 still with the drawl of his general speech 
 intensified, if possible. 
 
 "My dear madam, I can hardly say that 
 I am sorry to tell you that you are mis 
 taken; because in this costume and under 
 these circumstances I am sure you do not 
 wish to find your son. And for your sake, 
 therefore although it cuts me to the quick 
 to disappoint a lady or to have you see 
 me in this garb I am still most happy to 
 say that your son is not here. I am not 
 Edward." 
 
 He allowed her to hold his hand, but 
 he glanced at me and shook his head. She 
 did not yield in her belief, and, pushing 
 back the sleeve of his shirt, placed her finger
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 289 
 
 on a little scar which had not been noted 
 on our prison record. Then she bent sud 
 denly over and kissed the spot and wept 
 anew. " Edward, Edward ! oh, my son ! " she 
 sobbed again. " That little scar was put 
 there when you saved me from Edward, 
 do not deny me! I know you are my boy! 
 
 Your voice ! " 
 
 I had felt sure that he had tried to 
 change his voice a little at first, but if he 
 was acting it was all so perfect that I was 
 puzzled. He stuck to it that his mother 
 had died twenty years before and had left 
 him the yearly income the insufficiency of 
 which had led to our first acquaintance, for 
 I had been the court officer, then, and not 
 the warden. The woman before us had 
 probably never had over two thousand a 
 year in her life. She was a refined, lady 
 like woman of that large class who go 
 through the world in a simple and conven 
 tional way, never dreaming of the tempta 
 tions that surround those who are luxurious
 
 290 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 of taste, and, who are by legal and social 
 conditions placed where a different reading 
 of the words honor and justice give to them 
 other standards of right and new explana 
 tions of the motives and aims of existence, 
 which to her mind would seem strange in 
 deed. Even less had her experience re 
 vealed to her the temptations and the bru 
 talizing forms of abject want with its con 
 sequent developments of vice. " I am not 
 your son, Madam," he now repeated in a 
 firm voice, and with a slight smile added, 
 "You will permit me to congratulate you 
 upon that fact since since your son, let 
 us hope, may be found in less, ah, in more 
 ah attractive quarters." He waved his 
 free hand toward me and closed his little 
 Chesterfieldian speech with, " If my good 
 friend, the warden, will permit the rude 
 ness. But really, these are not precisely 
 the surroundings which a lady would ah 
 - er select for a son, I am sure." A lit 
 tle light laugh ended his remark, and I
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 291 
 
 could not help feeling the absurdity of it 
 myself, even though I felt keenly for the 
 woman before me. 
 
 "You may go now," I said to him, and 
 with gentle promptness he freed his other 
 hand, drawing the sleeve back over the 
 scar as he did so, and with a bow to the 
 weeping woman and a wave of the hand 
 to me he followed the guard back to his 
 solitary cell. The lady made a move as if 
 to follow him, but I restrained her. She 
 told me that she was absolutely certain that 
 the prisoner was her son, and that the scar 
 on his arm had been received when he was 
 a mere lad, in defending her from a furious 
 dog. 
 
 "He was so brave," she said. "Always 
 so brave and kind to me, too; but he was 
 ambitious and and we I I have not 
 seen him for ten long years, but I know 
 he is my son. 
 
 " When I heard of the trial and of the 
 awful crime he was accused of (I do not
 
 292 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 believe he killed the girl, warden) when 
 I heard of it and saw the description of 
 him, I felt sure it was Edward, who we 
 thought was dead. I planned and planned 
 to come, but my heart failed me until now, 
 and I have come a long, long way. But I 
 know he is my son. It is like him to try 
 to spare me. He would rather bear his dis 
 grace alone. He will not he warden, let 
 me go to his cell! Let me see him alone, 
 I beg!" 
 
 She had come close to me, and she held 
 out her trembling hands most piteously. It 
 was against our rule, but I told her she 
 might go. I decided to keep her in sight 
 and to watch the man as I could, by a 
 system of mirrors which I always kept for 
 that purpose, and of which the condemned 
 man knew nothing. 
 
 "Well, do you know when she reached 
 his cell she uttered a piercing shriek. " He 
 is dead! He is dead! ' she screamed and 
 we rushed in, the keeper and I. There she
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 293 
 
 lay across his body, moaning and sobbing, 
 and he was in a dead swoon. When she 
 found that life was not extinct, she helped 
 us to revive him, but went away of her own 
 accord before he opened his eyes, saying 
 she would come again, but that he might 
 better not see her, perhaps, just now. 
 
 After he had revived sufficiently to talk, 
 he said to me: "I never could bear to see 
 a woman weep. It always unnerves me, 
 and as you can readily understand, warden, 
 this my ah surroundings are not exactly 
 such as one doesn't care to have any lady 
 see one in this condition." He glanced 
 down at himself. "Please do me the favor 
 not to let it happen again. I really cannot 
 bear it, you know, I'll be all unstrung for 
 the when the state is ready to dispense 
 with my company. And really that would 
 be unkind after such a lot of trouble to 
 keep me in good form for the public show." 
 The last was said with a sneer, for he had 
 insisted that he might be allowed to die
 
 294 ^ Prison Puzzle. 
 
 a natural death (as he surely would have 
 done had we let him), rather than that 
 they should postpone his electrocution, as 
 was twice done, to nurse him back from 
 death's door, simply that he might be led 
 to the grave, by a legally prescribed pro 
 cess instead of by nature's simpler path. 
 
 " Bennett," said I, suddenly turning upon 
 him, "the jig is up. What is the use of 
 lying ? She told me all about you, and you 
 may just as well drop all this guff, and 
 give that poor old mother of yours an hour 
 or two of comfort before before I was 
 going to say before you die, but I hadn't 
 the heart to say it." He took me up lightly: 
 
 " Give her the comfort of knowing she 
 has a son to be hanged I beg pardon 
 electrocuted next Friday ? " he said, looking 
 steadily at me. "What do you take me for? 
 A brute ? No, no, my friend," he added, ris 
 ing and stretching himself languidly and 
 assuming his usual drawl again, " I am 
 really afraid the ah lady will have to be
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 295 
 
 deprived of that comfort. I've acted a good 
 many parts in my time, but you will really 
 have to get some one else to do Edward 
 for her. I wouldn't do honor to the role. 
 Now, you'd grace that part," he said, laugh 
 ing as the idea occurred to him. " If she 
 comes back, I absolutely decline to see her. 
 You play Edward. Tell her you had for 
 gotten her address, but that henceforth she 
 will find a son here or hereabouts." His 
 laugh was quite spontaneous, and I began 
 to waver anew in my opinion. The next 
 day she came again, and in spite of his 
 protest, I let her go to his cell. The result 
 was abont the same, as before. She talked 
 of many things to him, and plead with him 
 to tell the truth to acknowledge that he 
 was her son, Edward Whipple. He was 
 kind, sympathetic, stern, evasive, and semi 
 indignant by turns, but he absolutely denied 
 all connection with her. At last an idea ap 
 peared to strike him. He asked the guard 
 to call me. I had been where I could see
 
 296 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 and hear every word, but he had not known 
 it. When I entered, he waved me to a seat 
 on his bed and with a little laugh said: 
 " This lady, ah er Mrs. Williams did you 
 say is the name?" 
 
 Her lips trembled and tears started 
 again to her eyes. 
 
 " Whipple," I said, now almost fully con 
 vinced that it was really a case of mis 
 taken identity. " Ah, yes, certainly, Whip- 
 pie," he said, bowing toward me ; " Mrs. 
 Whipple, who has mistaken me for her son, 
 appears to be in great grief at the loss of 
 her boy and no wonder. From her de 
 scription of him he must have been a 
 model son, indeed, and I am sure if he were 
 alive he would ah er it would have been 
 his pleasure to do something ah hand 
 some for his mother. Now, warden, it oc 
 curs to me that since I have really no 
 human being to leave my little beggarly 
 pittance to (I had intended to make you 
 my heir, and beg pardon for depriving you
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 297 
 
 of what I had grown to look upon as al 
 ready your property) it occurs to me that 
 since this lady came here hoping to find a 
 son, and since I am compelled to deprive 
 her of that ah satisfaction, I may be per 
 mitted I might return the compliment 
 which she insists upon paying me, when 
 she desires to claim me as her dear and up 
 right son, by ah in a substantial manner. 
 
 "I cannot be your natural son, Mrs. Wil 
 liams I beg pardon Mrs. Whipple ; but at 
 least you may permit me to do what I 
 am sure your son Edward would wish to 
 do were he in were I in case he had 
 the misfortune to be in a position to make 
 his will." 
 
 He had turned to the lady, and was 
 laboring rather unusually hard with his 
 short-coming breath. She uttered many pro 
 tests. Said she had no thought of his 
 money, but wanted his love instead. I 
 watched him sharply, but as she spoke he 
 had stepped to the little table we had al-
 
 298 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 lowed him, whereon lay pen and ink. I 
 had hoped he would leave us a confession. 
 Instead he had written a will. I had been 
 made his sole heir. He now drew up an 
 other exactly like the first, only Mrs. Whip- 
 pie's name replaced mine and I appeared 
 only as a witness. It was a queer sensation 
 to help disinherit myself in that convict 
 cell, with a weeping woman protesting all 
 the while, and the keeper mumbling that 
 he'd be damned, when the document was 
 read, and he was asked to witness it with me. 
 
 It was drawn up in very lawyer-like 
 shape, too, and signed in a steady, fine soci 
 ety hand, " Henry Bennett Convict No. 432." 
 He smilingly said that the latter was for 
 better identification. 
 
 When he had finished, the dazed woman 
 fell at his feet and wept, and prayed that 
 he would acknowledge her as his mother. 
 " I only wish that I could, my dear 
 madam," he said, raising her to her feet; 
 " but, whether fortunately or unfortunately
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 299 
 
 for you (and there can be no doubt that 
 it is most unfortunate for myself), I am 
 not your son. My name is Bennett known 
 here, purely for convenience, I assure you, 
 as Number 432." His voice was kind and 
 gentle, but the scamp glanced at me and 
 winked. I felt like choking him. Perhaps 
 the knowledge of my sudden loss and how 
 near I had come to an inheritance, had 
 something to do with the desire, for as a 
 rule he aroused in me little feeling aside 
 from an intense desire to read the riddle 
 of his nature. That wink set my teeth on 
 edge and I felt like striking him, but when 
 the next moment he turned pale, and one 
 of his awful sinking spells followed I could 
 think of nothing but reviving him. Again 
 we sent the lady away, and that night Ben 
 nett wrote a note to her not to come to see 
 him any more. 
 
 " You have done me the honor to claim 
 me as your son," he wrote ; " and I have 
 done what little I could to reciprocate. To
 
 300 A Prison Puzzle. 
 
 show you how sincerely I wish I were the 
 Edward you have lost (and yet it seems 
 cruel to so wish), I have made over to you 
 all I possess, together with my sympathy 
 and grateful thanks. But, my dear Madam, 
 I beg of you not to come again. It cuts 
 me to the heart. I am not so strong as I 
 once was. The atmosphere of this estab 
 lishment leaves much to be desired, and, 
 were it felt important to society to prolong 
 my life beyond a very brief time, I feel sure 
 a change of scene and air would be de 
 cided upon by those who had my best in 
 terests at heart. 
 
 "Believe me, dear madam, your obliged 
 and obedient servant, 
 
 "Henry Bennett, 
 
 "Otherwise, No. 432." 
 
 He had filled even this note with his 
 ghastly humor, and trusted to her dazed and 
 simple nature not to see it. I remonstrated 
 with him, but he only laughed at me, and 
 said that my objection was only the "wail
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 301 
 
 of the disinherited;" and the idea tickled 
 him mightily. Well, while we were talking, 
 the woman came to the door. The guards 
 had allowed this because they had seen 
 her there before, and knew I was with the 
 condemned man. Every one felt like humor 
 ing him and the general belief was (out 
 side of the watch and myself) that he 
 really wanted to see her. 
 
 He was to die the next day. The 
 woman held out her hands toward him, 
 and then suddenly tottered and would have 
 fallen, but he caught her in both his arms. 
 I thought he pressed her to his breast for 
 an instant, but at once he placed her in 
 the only chair and stepped back to his 
 cot where I sat. He reached over and took 
 the note he had read and handed to me 
 with such glee just before she entered, 
 and, as if in a fit of abstraction, he tore it 
 into small bits. There is no need to tell 
 you of the scene that day. It was like the 
 others, only, perhaps, less satisfactory. The
 
 302 A Prison Puzzle* 
 
 next morning the poor fellow paid the 
 penalty of his crime in the way the State 
 deems wise, and whether at the same time 
 poor Mrs. Whipple lost a son, I am still 
 unable to decide. Sometimes I feel sure it 
 was a case of mistaken identity, and again 
 I am convinced that Number 432 simply 
 determined to shake at whatever cost to 
 himself the faith of his poor mother in 
 her belief that she had really found her lost 
 boy in convict's garb, and that her child 
 would rest in a murderer's grave. On that 
 theory there develops in his character a 
 phase no one had suspected, and yet it 
 would not surprise me to find out some 
 day that Number 432 really was Edward 
 Whipple. But if I do discover it, I shall 
 never let her know. It is to get your 
 opinion of it all, that I tell the story. 
 Was he merely the moral imbecile he 
 claimed to be specimens of which are not 
 particularly rare in society or was he her 
 son, with something of the hero in him
 
 A Prison Puzzle. 303 
 
 that is to be found in many a criminal ? 
 What did she do with the money? 
 Well, that is another puzzle. I don't know 
 whether it was because she lost faith in 
 her own identification of Bennett, or whether 
 she would not use money that she be 
 lieved her son had obtained dishonestly, 
 but certain it is she would never use a 
 cent of it. It was the fund that bought 
 this prison library the solace and salva 
 tion of 'Society's Exiles' who are buried 
 here year after year.
 
 "A THOUQHTLBSS YKS." 
 
 BY HELEN H. GARDENER. 
 SOME; PRESS COMMENTS. 
 
 Marked by a quaint philosophy, shrewd, sometimes pungent reflec 
 tion, each one possesses enough purely literary merit to make its way 
 and hold its own. "The Lady of the Club " is indeed a terrible study 
 of social abuses and problems, and most of the others suggest more in 
 the same direction. N. Y. Trubine. 
 
 All the stories are distinguished by a remarkable strength, both of 
 thought and language. Pittsburg Bulletin. 
 
 Will do considerable to stir up thought and breed a " divine discon 
 tent " with vested wrong and intrenched injustice. The stories are 
 written in a bright, vivacious style. Boston Transcript. 
 
 She appreciates humor and makes others appreciate it. All of the 
 stories, whether humorous or pathetic, have a touch of realism, and are 
 written clearly and forcibly. Boston Herald. 
 
 Bright and light, gloomy and strange, cleverly imagined, fairly amus 
 ing, tragic and interesting, by turns. N. Y. Independent. 
 
 Thoughtfully conceived and beautifully written. Chicago Times. 
 
 Each story is a literary gem. San Francisco Call. 
 
 Full of wit and epigram ; very enjoyable and profitable reading. Just 
 long enough to induce the wish that they were a little longer an ex 
 cellent feature in a story. Portland (Me.) Transcript. 
 
 Helen Gardener puts moral earnestness and enthusiasm for humanity 
 into her stories. Even her pessimism is better than the nerveless super 
 ficiality of her rivals. Unity (Chicago.) 
 
 Illustrate the indubitable fact that the times are out of joint. 
 Charleston (S. C.) News. 
 
 Exceptionally excellent. Convey a moral lesson in a manner always 
 vivid, invariably forcible, sometimes startling. Arena. 
 
 The author is not morbid ; she is honestly thoughtful. The mystery 
 and consequences of heredity is the motive of some of the strongest. 
 N. Y. Herald. 
 
 With a terseness and originality positively refreshing. On subjects 
 to suit the thoughtful, sad, or gay. Mil-wattkee Journal. 
 
 Have made their mark as new, original, and strong. She could not 
 write ungracefully if she tried, and this book is like a varied string of 
 pearls, opals, and diamonds. N. Y. Truth. 
 
 A work of fiction by one of the few feminine philosophers who have 
 boldly faced the problems of life. Belford's Magazine. 
 
 Bright, thoughtful, and taking. Written by a woman with brains, 
 who dares to think for herself. The Writer (Boston.) 
 Paper, 50 Cents; Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 ARENA PUBLISHING CO., Copley Square, Boston, riass.
 
 From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 H le Hit of the year/' 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 AN UNOFFICIAL PATRIOT. 
 
 Have you read Helen H. Gardener's new war story, "An 
 Unofficial Patriot"? No? Then read what competent 
 critics say of this remarkable historical story of tha Civil 
 War. 
 
 Helen H. 
 Gardener 
 
 Chicago Times 
 
 The Literary Hit 
 of the Season 
 
 Rockford (111.) 
 Republican 
 
 " Helen H. Gardener has made for herself within a very few 
 years an enviable fame fur the strength and sincerity of her 
 writing on some of the most important phases of modern social 
 questions. Her most recent novel, now published under the title 
 of ' An Unofficial Patriot,' is no less deserving of praise. As an 
 artistic piece of character study this book is possessed of supe 
 rior qualities. 1 here is nothing in it to offend the traditions of 
 an honest man, north or south. It is written with an evident 
 knowledge of the circumstances and surroundings such as might 
 have made the story a very fact, and, more than all, it is written 
 with an assured sympathy for humanity and a recognition of 
 right and wrong wherever found. As to the literary merit of 
 the book and its strength as a character study, as has been said 
 heretofore, it is a superior work. The study of Griffith Daven 
 port, the clergyman, and of his true friend, ' Lengthy ' Patterson, 
 is one to win favor from every reader. There are dramatic 
 scenes in their association that thrill and touch the heart. 
 Davenport's two visits to President Lincoln are other scenes 
 worthy of note for the same quality, and they show an apprecia 
 tion of the feeling and motive of the president more than histori 
 cal in its sympathy. Mrs. Gardenei may well be proud of her 
 success in the field of fiction." 
 
 " Helen Gardener's new novel, ' An Unofficial Patriot,' which 
 is just out, will probably be the most popular and salable novel 
 since ' Robert Elsmere.' It is by far the most finished and 
 ambitious book yet produced by the gifted author and well de 
 serves a permanent place in literature. 
 
 " The plot of the story itself guarantees the present sale. It 
 is ' something new under the sun' and strikes new sensations, 
 new situations, new conditions. To be sure it is a war story, and 
 war stories are old and hackneyed. But there has been no such 
 war story as this written. It gives a situation new in fiction and 
 tells the story of the war from a standpoint which gives the book 
 priceless value as a sociological study and as supplemental 
 history. 
 
 " The plot is very strong and is all the more so when the 
 reader learns that it is true. The story is an absolutely true one 
 and is almost entirely a piece of history written in form of fic 
 tion, with names and minor incidents altered." 
 
 For sale by all nevjsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass.
 
 PUSHED BY UNSEEN HANDS." 
 
 BY HELEN H. GARDENER. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER. 
 
 These tales illustrate strange influences that shape human action and 
 seem to he outside of the actor. ... Dr. Spitzka, the brain special 
 ist, writes that two of the stories deal with curious things usually ob 
 served only by specialists in the field of heredity. 
 
 DETROIT TRIBUNE. 
 
 Setting aside the scientific suggestion, the imaginative faculty of 
 Helen Gardener is conspicuous in the conception of plot and the de 
 velopment of character. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL. 
 
 The stories are vital with earnest thought. . . . This author 
 gives indication of having come to stay. 
 
 CHARLESTON (S. C.) NEWS. 
 
 All of the stories are striking and thoughtful. Some of them are 
 very dramatic and their literary quality is marked enough to enable 
 even a careless reader to enjoy them. 
 
 BOSTON GLOBE. 
 
 An artist reproduces nature in such a way that we recognize it as real 
 or ideal. The ideal can be as real to us as any scene beheld with our 
 open eyes. . . . "Pushed by Unseen Hands "is a collection of 
 short stories so realistic as to leave no doubt of their actuality. 
 
 NEW ORLEANS PICAYUNE. 
 
 A number of good short stories, most of which turn on some of the 
 mysterious facts that lie in that borderland between the seen and the un 
 seen, so fascinating to the imagination and so baffling to inquiry. Miss 
 Gardener's touch is very exquisite and she draws her mental pictures 
 with the hand of a master, showing in a few rapid lines more sharp and 
 attractive characteristics than many author's can in labored pages. 
 
 OMAHA BEE. 
 
 As a writer of short stories Helen Gardener has achieved an enviable 
 reputation, and her new book gives indication that she does not intend 
 to relinquish this charming method of giving to her readers pleasure 
 with profit, whatever else she may do. 
 
 CHICAGO TIMES. 
 
 Miss Gardener has been subjected to much censure for her boldness 
 and frankness with which she expresses her views on some subjects not 
 usually discussed in public. The Orthodox have ever been prone to con 
 found the surgical and the scandalous. . . . From a literary point 
 of view the stories are vivid and artistic, while as to their motives and 
 spirit they are farther removed from the prurient and scandalous than 
 most of those who censure her. She is a woman of remarkable gifts 
 and of superb courage. 
 
 Paper, 50 Cents ; Cloth, $1.00. 
 ARENA PUBLISHING CO., Copley Square, Boston, Mass.
 
 From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 Helen H. 
 Gardener 
 
 A Collection of 
 stirring, unusual 
 Stories, dealing 
 with unhack 
 neyed themes in 
 a masterly way 
 
 Helen H. i5ar6ener's Essays an6 Short Stories. 
 
 Price, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. 
 A THOUGHTLESS YES. 
 
 A collection of short stories in which field this brilliant 
 writer is especially suggestive and successful. These 
 stories have gone through several editions, and with the 
 continual expansion of Mrs. Gardener's fame as the author 
 of "Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter?" "An Unofficial 
 Patriot " and other books of world-wide repute, they find 
 new and delighted readers and admirers. The opinions 
 of the press give the book a very high place as a work of 
 genuine literary art. 
 
 Marked by a quaint philosophy, shrewd, sometimes pungent 
 reflection, each one possesses enough purely literary merit to 
 make its way and hold its own. " The Lady of the Club" is 
 indeed a terrible study of social abuses and problems, and most 
 of the others suggest more in the same direction. 
 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 Will do considerable to stir up thought and breed a " divine 
 discontent " with vested wrong and intrenched justice. The 
 stories are written in a bright, vivacious style. 
 
 Boston Transcript. 
 
 Price, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents, 
 Helen H. FACTS AND FICTIONS OF LIFE. 
 Gardener A Collection of Sparkling and Thoughtful Essays on the 
 
 Vital Questions of Life, that should awaken the conscience 
 in every man not dead to a sense of all moral obligation, 
 and spur every woman to stand steadfast and strong and 
 demand in the marriage relation a manhood that shall be 
 A Remarkable as c ^ ear an d unpolluted as womanhood. 
 Book. It marks But Helen Gardener is at her best in the most difficult liter- 
 
 an epoch in the ary channel, that of the essayist. She says more in fewer words 
 trend of Social ' than any writer of the day, and learned savants pause to drink 
 Thought ! in the ideas that she has drawn from the fountain of common 
 
 sense. Her work, " Facts at d Fictions of Life," has reached a 
 large sale, and is now being translated into German, French and 
 Russian and two Oriental lauguags. These essays deal with 
 the most delicate and least understood problems of life, in a 
 clear, modest and uncumpromi! ig manner, and consist of 
 twelve papers read at the World's Fair Congresses by the 
 author, who was listened to vv.th breathless silencs by the 
 largest audiences of the Congresses, and after each paper she 
 received most enthusiastic ovations. 
 
 Louisville Courier Journal. 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass.
 
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