PR873 B7 1894 ;•. ^1 i v/\V. A''^ V^s " (an^ a mon'6 foes B^ait fie f^eg of t>i6 ot»n ^ouBt^otb." OVERHEARD IN ARCADY BY ROBERT BRIDGES ILLUSTRATED BY OLIVER HERFORD, F. G. ATTWOOD, AND A. E. STERNER LONDON J. M. DENT AND CO. 69 Great Eastern Street 1894 to 1^2 (Jtlotaer Long years you' vc kept tlie door ajar To greet me, eoiiiiiig from afar ; Long years in mv aeciistonied place Fve read my welcome in yon r face. And felt tJie snnliglit of your love Drive back t/ie years and gently moi'e The tell-tale shadow 'round to youth. You've found the very spring, in truth. That baffles time — the kindling joy T/iat keefs me in your heart a boy. And now I send an unktiown guest To bide loith you and snugly rest Beside the old home' s ingle /look. — For love of me you' II love my book. CONTENTS PAGE \V. D. HOWELLS, I HENRY JAMES, 1 3 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH, 25 FRANK R. STOCKTON, 35 RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, 45 F. MARION CRAWFORD, 57 RUDVARD KIPLING, 67 GEORGE MEREDITH, ' . . 81 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 95 J. M. BARRIE, 107 THE HOME OF ROMANCE, 1 17 A LITTLE DINNER IN ARCADY, 1 25 ^*^ The author begs to acknowledge the kindness of J. A. Mitchell, editor oi Life, in permitting him to use the original illustrations with these articles which were published in Life over the signature Droch. W. D. HOWELLS ^a i ^ THE HOUSEHOLD OF W. D. HOWELLS Bromfield Corey, Esq. , . . A Boston Gentleman. Bartley Hubb.\kd Reporter of the Boston j5"-'^«/^. FuLKERSON * B"^'"*^ss Manager of the New ' "( York Every Other Week. Miss Annie Kilbukn, ... A New England Old Maid. Miss Penei.oi-e Laph..vm, . . 3 Daughter of Silas Lapham. and ( betrothed to Tom Corey. Scene: A Parlor Car on the Express train from Boston to New York. HUBBARD {nisliiiti:; in lafc, and recognizing FuL- KERSON as lie subsides) : Hello, Fulkerson ! What have you been doing in Boston ? No one in a real literary centre like ours ever heard of Eve?y Other Week. Fulkerson : That's why I came over. I've been to see all your Boston publishers and struck them for Ads. I simply said : "Gentlemen, Boston is the in- tellectual hub of the United States — no doubt of it. New York is on the outer rim of the whirlpool of Thought. In your town everybody writes books, no- body reads them ; in New York everybody reads them, nobody has a mind to write them. Hence, the wise 3 -^ publisher makes his books in Boston and sells them in New York. A page advertisement in New York will bring you ten orders to one from the same space in Boston. Moral — advertise in Every Other JVeek at ^loo a page and save $900. See ! ' ' And they saw me for $2,000 worth of contracts in my left-hand pocket. Hubbard : Whew ! That's better than writing in- terviews; guess I'll turn business manager; but I'll go on to New York first and interview Howells. I owe him a few. FuLKERsoN {laughing) : He ^/if you u}) brown in "A } Modern Instance" — made *• ^„ a sort of Terrible Example of you. Still, you oughtn't ^' "" " to kick. I hear the Events raised your s]jace - rate on '' -fif-- the strength of your no- "*<«a^««^ "''^S^' toriety, and that scores of Solid Men of Boston offered you bribes to \>\\\. them in your series of interviews. Hubbard {tvith satisfaction') : Oh, yes. I've even been asked to contribute a weekly budget of Boston scandal to a New York paper, and call it ' ' Society News." I'm right in the swim now, my boy. FuLKERSON (looking to7i>ard Corey, rcho has just re- turneti Hubbard's nod in a freezing manner) : \Vho is your friend who is not quite sure that he ought to recognize you in public? Hubbard : Oh, that is Bromfield Corey, Esq., a 4 real lioston Brahmin. 1 tried to interview him once on the rumored engagement of his son, Tom Corey, to old Silas Lapham's daughter Penelope, and he snubbed me cold. {IVif/i s//r/>r/sc\) By Jove! there she is in the seat in front of him, and he does not seem to know her from E\e — different layer of society, you know ! I might score a point now l)y introducing him to his future daughter-in-law as though we were old acquaintances. I met her once at a Veterans' ball in which Colonel Lapham was interested. Here goes ! (J^/s///g.) Mr. Corey, you ought to know Miss Penelope Lapham, who is sitting near you. This is Mr. Bromlield Corey, Miss Lap- ham. You've possibly heard of him from his son. I've met you ])oth i^rofes-sionally, you know ; re- porter of the Events ; going to New York to inter- view Howells ; want to know why he has left Boston for New York — what he thinks of the Four Hundred as intellectual material — why he has put my friend Fulkerson, here, in a novel — and all that sort of thing. But you don't know Fulkerson? Business Manager of Every Other Week — cliained lightning in booming his .sheet — full of schemes and l)ound to win. Look around, Fulkerson ! Here are some Bos- ton people who have heard of your paper and want to know you. Miss Lapham, this is Mr. Fulkerson ; Mr. Corey, you must knov/ my friend. Curious, isn't it, that Howells should have jKit us all in his books ? And there is another of us ! Miss Annie Kilburn, of Hatboro' ; met her when I went down 5 there to write up the Northwick defalcation. Miss Kilburn, I want to introduce a lot of friends of Mr. Howells to you — all met by chance in a parlor-car. {Presents everybody. ~) Now I have an idea. While we are waiting for the call to dinner, let us give our opinions of Howells. He has given the world his opinion of us ; let us return the compliment. I give you my word, Mr. Corey, I shan't publish it — ^just a little "literary symposium" to pass away the time. See ! Come, Miss Lapham, youth and beauty first, you know ! Penelope {/ookiiig shyly at Corev) : Oh, I can't say exactly what I think about Mr. Howells ! He helped me once out of a great trouble. I wanted to make a life-long sacrifice to what I thought was Duty. It would have made several people miserable for life, but I thought that did not matter so long as it was Duty. Then he showed me that what many people called Duty was an extreme form of selfishness which liked to pride itself on its monopoly of suffering. {B/iisIiiiig at her oivu earnestness.') I can't speak calmly about it, for it has brought me such happi- ness to see things in the natural light he has put them in. Miss Kilburn (aside to Penelope) : Dear child, he has helped older people than you to be happy when they really wanted to l)e miserable. Corey {looking distrustfully at Hubbard) : Of course one does not like to talk publicly about one's best friends ; but I have read Howells a long time, 6 and I have gone through several changes of opinion about him. Miss Kilburn : I can guess how you felt. Long ago you read " The Undiscovered Country," and you thought that the legitimate successor of Haw- thorne had arrived ? Corey (^smi/l/ig) : No ; not quite that. That is the feminine version of it. A man past middle life does not look for the "successor" to anybody. This whole show of living and working loses conti- nuity. At forty, this is a World of Chance ; at six- ty, we begin to believe in Providence again ; and at eighty, I hope to be as a little child and say Ac/smn with Colonel Newcome. Miss Kilburn : You are wandering away from " The Undiscovered Country." What dii/ yow think then ? Corey : Well, fifteen years ago I thought many things that I should not dream of now. For one, I thought Howells was a romantic novelist. Miss Kilburn : Perhaps he 7uas then. I don't believe that the change is all in us. Corey : I am always a good decade ahead of him in age ; and when I read him I have a vivid impres- sion of looking back on my own experiences and ob- servations. I suspect that he has always written with the utmost fidelity the impressions that the world has made on him. In youth, they were romantic, as they are in all healthy organisms ; in early maturity, they had a little of that cruelty of realism which 7 %.■ / comes to every man when he first ceases to find his own sensations the chief thing in life, and looks at other people ; and now in middle life, in the light of experience, he sees more than ever the inherent pathos in living. That is why the social problem seems to be the supreme thing to him now. FuLKERSON {cutting i/i) : He's on the right tack. As a man of business I can vouch for that. What the great public wants to read about is its own misery, with directions for hypnotizing it into happiness. That is why " Looking Backward " sold; and I am told that "A Hazard of New Fortunes " is the most popular of Howells's books, for the same reason. Hubbard : No, no, my boy. You are too mod- est. That book sold because you are in it. The average American likes to read about a howling busi- ness success, and you filled the bill. Corey {ironically to Annie Kilburn) : I have often wondered why Mr. Howells devoted so much time and space to unimportant people. One does not care to meet them, and I don't see why one should care to read about them. Miss Kilburn : Aren't they a big part of the big world, Mr. Corey ? Per- haps it is just a phase of Mr. Howells's scheme to hold the mirror up to reality. Corey {mcditativeh') : Perhaps. But one has such 8 3-~ Jl ^K a wide choice of realities in tliis world, that one may like to spend most of one's time with realities which are of importance. Miss Kilburn : Yes ; if you happen to be born in that environment. Now, I confess that I tried living with " important people "in Europe for several years, and then returned to the commonplaces of Hatboro ' with positive relief. It seems to me that I get an insight of finer shades of life in that provincial at- mosphere. Corey {philosophic ally) : You've caught the " tail- feather of a great truth," Miss Kilburn. The finest things in life are matters of the affections, and some- how you only thoroughly comprehend them in the particular environment where you ha\e spent your youth. That is why "Adam Bede " and "David Copperfield ' ' are the truest novels of their authors. FuLKERSON {7C'ho has been talking with Penelope and Hubbard) : Oh, I say, what are you so serious about over there? We've been pulling Howells to pieces, and Hubbard says he'll try to work us in his interview, after all, as a sort of chorus. Miss Lapham says tliat most of the girls she knows are down on Howells' s novels because the love-making is so matter- of-fact. Hubbard : Isn't it always matter-of-fact to every- body except the victims? Miss Lapham : Well, when we read a novel don't we want the victim's point of view? Corey : You must not take your novels so seri- 9 1 i ously, my dear. The woman who takes her fiction seriously is apt to take life frivolously. Take them half-and-half. Hubbard {cutting in) : Howells's views of love and socialism don't interest me a bit ; but I want to give him a straight tip on his idea of journalism. He doesn't seem to realize that it is a great profession which owes a big duty to the public ; and that, just as lawyers, doctors, and preachers have to do things which are very unpleasant to some of the parties con- cerned, so the reporter must, in the line of duty, do the disagreeable occasionally, /'rr had to, myself. Corey (jait/i intentioii) : I don't doubt it. Hubbard : My theory is that the newspaper is just as important in keei)ing the world straight as the old ^ belief in I'uture punishment was. Most peo- * — j^" pie have lost all fear of Hades, but they are sure, at any rate, that the press will find them out. I tell you, sir {looking at Corey), that a healthy con- science isn't a circumstance to a good, live newspaper in restraining evil in a community. Corey : It does fight the devil with fire. Hubbard : ^^'hy, sir, it keeps the American news- paper-man busy running down the wickedness that has been inspired by the American novel. I never wrote up a big crime that I did not find the suggestion of it in a novel hidden somewhere among the criminal's baggage. Fact ! FuLKERSON : I haven't any doubt that if Hubbard were given his dues as a great moral force he would lO be either the president of a City Re- form Ckib or a bishop. Hubbard : A bishop is a good enough job for me. Waiter (^passing through the car~) : Dinner is ready in the dining-car. First call to dinner ! {All rise to go to dinner.^ Miss Kilburn {to Penelope, who is standing by her) : Those men don't — ^t ' ^: like Mr. Howells because he sees through ~*^ the pretences with which they bolster up their vanity. I suspect that even Mr. Corey is irritated at Howells's moral earnestness. In Mr. Corey's world manners, not morals, are the real thing. n HENRY JAMES THE HOUSEHOLD OF HENRY JAMES The Master, Henry St. George, novelist. Paul Overt, A young writer. Miss Fancourt A worshipper of genius. Daisy Miller ^^ >°""S American from ( Schenectady, N. Y. Scene: TAe library and tvork-room c/St. George, in the rear of his London house. " A large high room, without windozvs, but with a wide skylight at the top, like a place of exhibition." The ivalls covered with book-shelves and prints ; a table littered with proofs and tnanuscripts ; a large leather lounge, on which Overt is seated smoking. St. George is paci?tg back and forth on a strip of brilliant red carpet, the length of the pol- ished foor. THE Master : It is good of you to leave the ladies upstairs to drink their tea alone, and to come down to this book-factory. I had just reached the end of a paragrai)h and wanted a smoke. Overt (carncsf/y) : It is a great ])rivilege for me to be allowed to interrupt you. The Master : No, no, my boy ! A talk with you is like a visit from one's old ideals. You see the visions that I saw thirty years ago. 15 Overt : I hope mine may reach as fine a maturity. The Master (^/(yoking in his eyes) : You may say poHte things upstairs in the drawing-room, but down here we talk to each other's hearts, honestly. Overt (^fliisJiing) : You know I admire your achievements The Master {i/iterrupfing) : We talked that out once before, and Henry James put it all in his story, ' ' The Lesson of the Master. ' ' What a wonderfully subtile man he is ! You remember how unconcern- edly he sat over there by the hearthstone while we talked, smoking and dreaming as we thought, but all the time seeing through our words into our very hearts. There is a man who has followed his Art as I would have you follow it. Don't waste your ad- miration on this Me.ss of Pottage which you call my succes.s — this forty volumes, and fine house, and car- riages, and titled friends ! My boy, my boy, you know better. Overt {eritically between rings of smoke) : Yes, I know what you mean. I do admire the way James does it. It is so very well-bred, so even in finish, so delicate in nuances. (S/ni/ing.) Indeed it is all the other adjectives which artists use in a studio when they are talking aV)out technic. You know the vo- cabulary ! Well, ihaf is Henry James — technic, technic, to the end of the story. But I want some- thing more — I want life, with its imperfections, its unreasonableness, its lack of those subtilties which Art spends itself upon. i6 < u Q a -J o •X "a V. c f- <; The Master (Jvipatiently) : Please don't go over all those pet phrases of the hot-blooded young man who wants to indulge his senses and calls it " study- ing life." 1 know them as well as 1 do the studio- cant about technic. I did not say that you could, learn everything from James. But \ou can learn froni him the possibilities of the English language in sep- arating emotions which are classed together by the untrained observer. Surely you have been astounded at the flexibility of his phrases ? Haven't you learned from them that our language is delicate, and refined, as well as virile ? Overt : I have, I have ! I read him always \vith sensations akin to those with which I watch my own warm breatli turn to wonderfully delicate traceries of frost on a window-pane. I follow intently tlie needle-points of the crystals as they shoot across tlie smooth glass, until the apparently hap-hazard lace- work takes a definite pattern — as though it had been prearranged from all eternity. Is the breath of life but a vapor to hang for a few moments in crystals of frost, and then melt into nothingness ? I rouse from my reverie chilled to my heart. And that is reading Henry James ! The Master : Your fancy does full credit to your feeling. What you do not see now is that your sen- sations are the usual chill which Youth feels in con- tact with Experience. Ten years from now you will begin to feel the surprising pathos, the warm-blooded charity, the tolerance of human eccentricity behind 19 this crystal art which chills you. Then you will read ''The Liar," "The Middle Years," "The Pupil," with tears in your eyes. Overt (^puzzled) : But what has he been driving at all these years that he has worked so faithfully at his art ? That is what bothers me. Is he simply do- ing it for the sake of working ? The Master : He put it all in a phrase once which means more the longer you ponder it. The thing which interests him supremely, which he makes it his mission to depict with his facile art, is the im- mitigability of our moral predicament. Overt {cynically) : The phrase is a polysyllabic terror. The Master (smiling) : But, as our American friend drinking tea upstairs would say, "• It gets there every time. ' ' The tragedy of living is in it — what the philosophers call heredity, environment, predestina- tion and all the other abstractions — but which you and I know as the never-ending daily tussle with those things in us which we would give our very lives to make different. James .sees it all as clearly, as pa- thetically, as any fiction-writer of his generation. We wonder now why his contemporaries called Thack- eray a cynic ; I suspect that our grandsons will won- der still more why we have called James cold and un- sympathetic. Overt {listening to footsteps on the stairs) : There come the young women ! Now we shall have new light on the subject. 20 Voices {cailing) : Please, may we come down ? The Master : If you don't mind solid chunks of smoke. Overt : And a hot discussion. {Enter Miss Fancourt and Daisy Miller, /// after- noon costume. ) Miss Fancourt {to Overt) : You promised to go with us to drink tea with the Princess Casamassima. Daisy Miller : And meet a lot of artistic and social freaks. Miss Fancourt : Henry James will be there, and you always enjoy his talk. Overt : Oh, yes, his talk is al- ways good. Th e Master ( c xp la i n i ng ) : James has been the cause of our dispute. Overt thinks he is a cold and unsympathetic artist {slyly'), and all the other things that the Philistines call him. Miss Fancourt {gushingly) : How can you, Mr. Overt? You, with the soul of an artist under your hat ! Daisy Miller {impertinent- ly) : I suspect that his artist- soul is just as conventionally English as his plug hat. 21 mz 'How CAN vor, Mk. 0\ei;t?" Miss Fancourt {mystified^ : What kind of hat ? Daisy Miller {laughing) : His l)kig, dicer, beaver, tile — don't you ^ know your mother ton2;ue ? ^^ Overt : James is an Ameri- can, but he does not sj^eak your language. Daisy Miller {positively) : And that's what's the matter with Mr. James. If he wrote his native language we'd read him more over the pond. The Master : I've often won- dered why you Americans do not more appreciate him. Daisy Miller: Well, I'll tell ' His Trolley's off the American yOU. Wire." He's lived with you so long that we're not onto his curves. Do you catch on ? His trolley's off the American wire. ( The others look at her and at each other in mute astonishment.) Oh, but you are slow at learning the lingo. We used to have a reading club in Schenec- tady — the girls of our set — to improve our minds, you know. Well, when we had finished " Barriers Burned Away," '^St. Elmo," Farrar's " Life of Cluist," and " Molly Bawn," one of the girls, a regular blue-stock- ing from Boston with glasses on her nose, proposed that we read Henry James. That roused my dander, " See here, girls," I said. " if you want to turn this 22 into a circle of King's Daughters to read religious books and sew for the heathen, I'll resign at once." The Boston girl looked shocked and said, " How can you be so rude. Mr. James writes the i)urest Boston English, and is highly ai)proved by Charles Kliot Nor- ton and the Harvard seniors. " {^S/'x/'/^^.i^'-) Oh, she made me tired. " Why doesn't he come to Ameri- ca again and learn something besides Bostonese ! " I said. '• We don't all talk like prigs or vulgarians over here ! In New York we're refined from our bangs to our boots, and don't you forget it ! " The Master {:^ctthi!^ control of liis face) : Thank you. I never understood why James was unpopular in America till 1 met you. Daisy Miller {protesting) : Oh, you must not take me for a fair sample of an American girl. I had to go abroad for my health before I had had a year at a fin- ishing school in New York. They put a polish on you there in which you can see to comb your hair. ]\Ir. James has not caught on to the fact that we're getting mighty civilized in the States. The Master {ttinihig to Miss Fancouri) : Come, give us an English girl's defence of him. Miss Faimcour t {■witJi ciitluisiasm) : He satisfies my longing for perfection in work. There is never any- thing in his stories to jar my taste. When he treats a disagreeal)le sid)ject, he does it as a gentleman would talk about it to a refined woman — with polite phrases, delicate metaphor, and a humor that plays about it all gently. There is none of the heat or i)rejudice about 23 his stories which is so often evident in the writings of people you would not care to know. When I have finished one of Mr. James's stories I always feel that I should like to meet him in the alcove of a library and talk about it all with him as though it were true. (Sta!-ting.~) And that's what I hope to do at Princess Casamassima's. I want to ask him whether he did not mean "The Real Thina: " to be a satire on the artist's point-of-view, as much as on the poor dear gentleman and gentlewoman who tried to be useful. (Tip Daisy and Overt.) Come, the afternoon is almost over ! (^They follow licr through the portieres after adieus to The Master.) The Master (^soliloquizing as he turns to his desk) : Ah, if I could only clothe my characters with gar- ments woven with James's art they would live for a century or two. But I have marketed my crude in- ventions for the luxuries of a Tondon establishment, for the pleasures of an ever-present success. But I know, and Overt and James know in their hearts, that it isn' t the Real Thing. ( Taking up his pen. ) Come, charlatan, pick up your fool's wand and finish your daily tricks ! THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 7\/ v^^'. »/ THE HOUSEHOLD OF THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Marjorie Daw, . . . j Only daughter of an old New Eng- ' land family. John Flemmixg, . . . Of New York, rich, and twenty-four. The Bad Boy Tom Bailey. Scene : The broad piazza of an old colonial mansion, with gam- brel roof and rambling extensions^ at the cross-roads near Rye, A'. //. /// a shady corner a hammock is sivung, and in it a girl of eighteen, zvith golden hair and dark eyes, swaying " like a pond-lily in the golden afternoon." In a ivickcr chair, very near the hammock, zV John Flemming. MARJORIE DAW {indignantly) ■ To think that Mr. Aldrich dareJ to put it in the story tliat there wasn't any colonial mansion, any piazza, any Marjorie Daw ! John Flemming : I believe that he was in league with Delaney (who must have been in love with you himself) to throw me off the track and make me give up the search for the ideal woman I loved. Marjorie {confidently) : He don't know how steadfast you are. John (trying to appear modest) : It was not that exactly. You see I knew [irosaic old Delaney too 27 well to believe that he could invent a girl like you out of whole cloth. I was sure that he had an orig- inal in his mind's eye, so I took rooms at the Surf House, and drove all the roads and by-ways 'round Rye till I found you. Marjorie {with beaming face) : And this is bet- ter than Mr. Aldrich's story ? John {flatteri/ig) : He did not half do you jus- tice. {The hain/nock swings conveniently near.) Marjorie : But I like Mr. Aldrich and his sto- ries very much, John, and you must, too. He often comes down this way to Stillwater to call on the Shackfords. You know he wrote a book about them and that awful murder case ? John {recollecting): Oh, yes! "The Stillwater Tragedy." Read it when I was laid up with my lame leg ; knew Durgin would be the real villain be- fore he had spoken ten words. That is no kind of a detective story. If you want the real thing you ought to read " The Leavenworth Case." Marjorie {severely) : You New York men are such Philistines ! Mr. Aldrich is a real man of let- ters. He would not stoop to detective stories. He writes literature. John {hedging) : I don't doubt it. But it took something more than mere literature to make me for- get that my leg was aching. Marjorie {7i)ith a tremble in her voice) : John, if we are to be happy together you must never, never speak lightly of my New England idols. 28 John (///^^'/-/r) : All right, my dear, make a list of them and I'll worship the whole lot — Emerson, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Whittier, Holmes, Aldrich Marjorik (r///////-,-- /;/) : Stop, stop ! Don't mention anybody else in the same breath ! John {curtly) : Amen ! {A five mimitcs' i/h/iii/ni/if s/7r//i\-, ami an affectionate reconciliation. ) 2g Marjorie (/// her instructive manner^ : If you are really and truly sorry, you must learn to appreciate Aldrich fully, as I do. John {j-esignedly) : Go ahead, please ! I'm in a repentant mood. Marjorie {laying down the /a7o) : You must un- derstand, first, that New England women have a great admiration for Aldrich's work, because so much of it deals with New England people and scenery. John {7i>ho has been alloiucd to smoke) : Queer, isn't it? You are never tired reading and writing about yourselves. Now in New York most of the men and women I know would rather read anything else than a New York novel. Marjorie {petulantly) : There are so few of them worth reading. John (risiug to the occasion on rings of smoke) : I am not so sure of that. There are Bunner, Janvier, Davis, Hibbard, Bangs, Matthews, Hopkinson Smith, Mrs. Harrison, and Mrs. Cruger — each of them has written a good story or two about New York. But we don't make so much ado about that sort of thing as you do. We ha\e a host of other things to interest us. Marjorie : Oh, I know all that. You are rank materialists, and are never worth much till you marry New England girls. (Coguettishly.) It isn't a bad combination. John {with ferinn-) : You bet it isn't ! Marjorie {confidently) : What fun I'll have spir- 3° itualizing you ! I'll begin with the Aldrich cure. First of all you must read " The Queen of Sheba." It's a love story, and i)erhaps you are in the mood to appreciate it. Such a charming story, too ! John {toJio knoius a great deal fjiore than he exhib- its) : Let me .see? {P"ff, puff-) Oh, yes, I re- member that — girl escapes from a lunatic asylum, meets the hero in a country lane and claims him for her own. Interval ; scene shifted to Switzerland — same man, same girl, minus the lunacy ; love with intensity, but man made miserable by apprehension of a return of the aforesaid madness. Slow fever — deathbed scene except the coup de grace ; miraculous recovery. Family physician guarantees a perfect cure of the lunacy. Wedding bells. Curtain. {Puff., puff.) Sweet, isn't it ? Marjorie {j-eady to shed tears) : You are a pro- voking old cynic, and you must not spoil my favorite stories. " The Queen of Sheba " is a beautiful idyl, and the things you have suggested are merely the framework for perfect prose and charming fancy. John (repentant) : I know it, my dear. Aldrich is an artist in words. (Con/essin^ his duplicity.) I often read his poetry — over and over again for the crystal beauty of it. There is never a halting foot, never a stumbling rhyme. I always feel w^hen I have finished one of his poems that he has done it once for all — polished it to the final comma. Marjorie {gi/ shingly) : You dear fellow — I am not to marry a Philistine after all ! 31 John (Jeasi?ig) : Well, I'm not so sure of that. I draw the line at " Baby Bell." As a profane friend of mine often says, " No dead kids in my literature, please. ' ' Marjorie {tvipiug her eyes) : Why will you say such disagreeable things ? — ^just when I begin to hope for you. John {jnaking it up) : I must chaff now and then, you know. You may praise " Wyndham Towers," "Spring in New England," "Friar Jerome," and " Pepita," all you wish, and I'll agree with you. Marjorie {l)rigJiteniug) : Why, those are his very best poems. You really have some discernment. John {self-satisfied) : Even a New York man knows a perfect thing of its kind when it comes his way. When I read Aldrich I think of rare cameos and intaglios. Marjorie : There is less of handiwork and more natural l^eauty in my impression. I think of a lovely ojjal where the richest tints and colors play — all the beauty of the great arch of the sky, when the au- rora waves over it, caught and im^jrisoned in that little gem. John (aside, reflectively) : I suppose that when you really arouse a New England girl you find a poet. (To Marjorie.) But you have not mentioned the best story of all, frum a man's point of view — " The Storv of a Bad Bov." Marjorie. Girls don't care to read about the pranks of bad boys. We suffer enough from them in 32 real life. (A luiJuisoDic yoiiiii:; )iiait on horsehack turns up the driveway tcncard the house.) There is the original Bad Boy now ! Uon't you know Tom Bailey, of New York, the distinguished i)olitician and editor ? He is at the Surf House. {Greetiir^s and introduc- tions when Bailey lias dismounted.) We were speak- ing of you. Mr. Flemming thinks your biography the best of Mr. Aldrich's novels. Bailey (/// despair) : Can I never live down that awful tale of my youth ! Some people really Ijelieve that I did all those things. I think 1 should have been nominated for go\ernor last June if a rival paper had not unearthed what it called my "' Terrible Re- cord as a Boy in Rivermouth." Flemming (/aughini^) : I remember ; but I heard a dozen men at the club declare that they would like to have a chance to vote for the original of the Bad Boy. They all looked upon you as the friend of their youth. I haven't a doubt that every winter a wave of mid- night explosions sweeps over the villages of this coun- try. It means that the next croj) of i)oys has been reading the "Story of a Bad Boy." It is i)assed along from generation to generation of village young- sters with "Tom Brown" and "Verdant Green." That is true immortality for an author. There are no books we love so long, no authors we remember so kindly as those we read and delighted in when young. Bailey (7cdth mock earnestness) : Then I'm con- demned to go down to posterity as the terror of good Z2> l)arents and correct school-teachers. I am even mis- trusted by the village police everywhere ! Marjorie (L-//ff//{i[ //f) : But the village girls won't love you the less for it. Flemminc; {judiciously) : Aldrich did one very fine thing with the " Bad Boy; " he annihilated the prig in American juvenile literature for a generation. Marjorie: And that's almost as good as being the delightful poet that he is. {A maid appears in the doorway.) And now we'll ha\-e luncheon. {Exeunt.) 34 FRANK R. STOCKTON The Ladv or the Tiger? THE HOUSEHOLD OF FRANK R. STOCKTON The Ladv, . The Tiger, \ One of the fairest maidens at a senii- ( baiiiaric court. 'I'lie fiercest beast in the kin£;doiii. Scene : Tjoo exactly similar luljoiuing rooms liioig 7vith the skins of 7oi Id beasts. A small iron-tarred n'iiuhnt) in the centre of the dividing wall ; heavily padded doors lead from each into a huge arena. In one room — The Lady ; in the other — The Tiger. Time: The Present. THE LADY i^ivitsi/ii^-fro/ii a ,lcep sleep on a liiran iOT'cird lail/i leopard skins) : H, I am weary, weary of this waiting! Here ^ must 1 stay till tliat young man answers the co- nundnnn, and ( hooses the Ladv or the Tiger. The Ti(;F.k (to//// /i/s ////^'v pinos .vZ/V/vV/;'^ //iroii^i^/i //le iron />ars of //le 7o//ii/o7o) : Hello, there ! You needn't make such a fuss about it ; Lm in the same boat with you. Ladv (sa//r/ia//y) : But you're a tiger, and 1 man-tiger at that. You're used to the solitude of the jungle, \\liile my only life has been the gay- ety of court. Why must we be shut up here all these years ? 37 /r^M' "Hei.i.o, there ! " Tiger {jncioiisly) Tiger {phiiosophica/Iy, scratch- ing his left car with his right patv) : Well, it's all done for a good cause — the cause of literature. The slave who brought me my break- fast this morning said that he heard the king remark to his daughter, the other day, that if the question were settled about the Lady or the Tiger, Stockton's occupation as a story-writer would be gone. Lady : I don't see why ! AVomen never do. Lady (?*:'//// severe dignity) : Perhaps Your Royal Bengal Highness can enlighten me? Tiger : It's just this way : Every time Stockton publishes a new book, most of the people in the kingdom rush t(j buy it to see whether it con- tains the answer to the Lady or the Tiger co- nundrum. When they J^^ don't find the answer, they keep on hoping and buy the next book ; and so on in- definitely. T>ADY (intcrestci/) : It isn't a bad scheme. 38 ^/p^. xm. ^ <■<. % 'Oh, I All WEAKY, WEARY OF THIS WAITING!" Tiger : A regular lead-pii)e cinch. It does not matter what he writes, tlie people are bound to buy it. Lady : Oh, well, they get their money's worth. A /i ■■' \^ . /':'*'/.> ' ''\ '"y,^ ■ . .G..r^-v.2 )»£5*, V '/ :- J ^^wfn \ ' \. y/ Av/// ) : I don't feel flattered 39 to be compared with a man. Respectable tigers al\va}s defend their women-folks and children to their last drop of blood. Your men, I under- ■^ii stand, general- *- >; .MS 'Yor NEVER DO AKYTHING Bl'T SMOKE CIG- AKETTES AND READ RiDER HaGGARD." ly desert t li e i r women under fire, and get divorces and " legal separa- tions," and break up tiieir families, and let their cubs shift for themselves. We may bullv our tigresses a good deal, but we are not ///a/ bad ! Lady {conc-i/iafiiii:; hiiii') : Well — you /kit'c a pretty good heart when one gets through your hide. But that ts tough ! That is why I despair of ever improving your literary taste. So far as I can see through the grating, you never do anything but l)rush your royal stripes, smoke cigarettes, and read Rider Haggard. Tiger frcvV// a Iccr) : Well, isn't tliat better than reading Stockton's everlasting conundrums? Lady (^patronizijigly) : You just show )our ignor- 40 ance I Mr. Stockton has written some perfectly beau- tiful tales with no conundrums in them at all. There is " Mrs. Jx'cks and Mrs. Ale.shine. " Tkikr (^rv//////^'' ill) : 1 guess The Dusantes were the conundrum in that book ! L.^DV { proh's/i/i!^-) : Wwt he answered that in the sequel. 'I'hen there is " The Late Mrs. Null " Tiger (vw'/// a JicnJisJi liuii:;]i) -. The biggest co- nundrum of the lot ! 1 tell \ou Stockton is simply a great big "* Lady (pettishly) : 1 won't talk to you any more to-day, unless you play fair. (Coaxi/i^i^iy.) IJut isn't " Rudder Grange " perfectly splendid ? Come now, you must admit that ! TicER {(/ii/>ioiis/y, (■//r7C'i//x' his r/(77i's) : I'm not saying that I was not interested in that, the day you poked it through the bars. PomoJia and Eupiieiiiiiu and the canal-boat, are great fun. But the mm are such awfid idiots! There may be men like those, but I never knew a genteel tiger who was such a fool. L.Miv ( /V7V//A7////V' lip) ■■ And }-ou did enjoy reading about Poiiiona s daughter, and the bal)y l)orrowed from New Dublin, and Lord Ed- ivard ? TioKR (rcliicfantly): Oh, yes! But they're not a patch on " King Solomon's Mines." Lady (/// despair) : You are 41 such a l)loodthirsty creature — like a real man. The only way to lead a man clear through a book is with a trail of gore. Why can't you appreciate nice, (juiet, gentle humor, full of good-will and sunshine, like Mr. Stockton's ? I don't believe he ever spoiled a page of a book with a grewsome or disagreeable image. That is why we women read so much of him. He soothes our nerves. Tiger {lualiciously) : That's the business of pills — not literature. Lady {indignantly) : You are incorrigible, and I won't talk to you. Go away from that window ! TicER {diplomatically) : Come, my dear lady, I have a great scheme to propose to you — a final solu- tion of the conundrum of the Lady or the Tiger ! Lady {resignedly) : All right ; Lll listen. Any- thing is better than staying here longer. Tiger : I'm glad to hear you say that, for you'll be sure to accept my plan. You know that every day at twelve o'clock, for ten years, that young man who loved the prince.ss is brought into the arena to choose one of these two doors — the Lady or the Tiger. Well, the king and the law can't compel him to choose till he's ready, and he won't be ready till he sees a perfectly untroubled smile on the princess's countenance when she points out the door. Do you follow nie ? Lady : Perfectly. For ten years he has been afraid to trust her to point out the door. And if he knows her disi)Osition as well as I do he never will 42 trust her. She'd rather have him die than marry me TicF.R {luWi joy) : That's it, exactly. What I have to propose gets around that beautifully. You see, these bars are near enough together to keep me from jumping through, but they are far enough apart for di. petite woman like you to crawl through. Now, if you will kindly put that hassock under the window-, and stand on it, I'll pull you through with my paws. Then I'll gently eat you — you are pretty enough to eat, and Til be very nice about it ; I shan't even wrinkle your gown. To-morrow morning, when the Nubian maid comes, she'll find your cell emi)tv, and will immediately report to the princess. The prin- cess will keep it to herself, and, at noon, when the young man is brought into the arena, she will joyfiilly point toward your door, which he will open with a great show of bravery. Of course you will not be there, and the king will think that the gods have set- tied the (piestion, for there won't be any traces of you ; and then he will order that I be released in my native jungles, and that the young man and the princess be immediately married. There you are, everybody pleased and happy, and the great conuntlrum .solved ! Tadv ( /////■////i,'- the hassock at the 701/1- Jim,- 43 dotv) : You horrid, horrid creature ! You must have got that idea from one of Rider Haggard's awful books ! Tiger : Meouw — wow — wow ! 44 RICHARD HARDING DAVIS THE HOUSEHOLD OF RICHARD HARDING DAVIS Van Bibbkk, . . Eleanore Cuyler, The Other Woman, Gallegher, . . A gentleman of leisure. i Devoted to society and good ( works. CJuite " impossible" in Our Set. \ A young tough, with good im- ( pulses. Scene: ^ Green car on Broadway above Twenty-third Street; time, two o'clock on an August afternoon. The streets are al- most deserted. The only occupant of the car is a tastefully dressed young luoman who is absorbed in reading a letter. {Enter Van Bibi'.f.r, puffing a little.^ 'r^ HARMED to catch a glimpse of you in town in midsummer ; was wait- ing a few hours, on my way from __^^'^ '^\^' "' Newport, to hear from my yacht '^^^T!^^/.-^'"^' if "^ which is somewhere between here and '^■' ' Oyster Bay. Caught sight of your jiro- file in the car window and ran for it. Av.-fully jolly to have the town all to ourselves like this. Account for yourself, ])lease ? Miss Cuvler : I came clown to consult, for a ^q\v 47 hours, with the girls at the College Settlement on Rivington Street. You know I am on the Advisory Committee, and w e occasionally have difficult questions to solve ; they've put an unusually hard one to me in this letter. Van Bibber : Sorry I can't offer to help you ; l)ut I always mix things uj). No head for fine questions ot morals. {Grasping for an idt-a.) I have it, hah, hah. A,sk our friend Dickey, hah, hah. He is always giving the girls good advice. Miss Cuyler : Oh, is Mr. Davis in town ? I thought he was abroad. Van Bibber : He was ; just arrived yesterday on the Fan's. No end of new togs — lovely coaching coat that touches his heels — beautiful collars with a sheer to them like a racing yacht — a new shade in gloves, and all that sort of thing. MissCuvLER: I don't doubt he is stunning, but that won't solve my diffi- culty. Van Bibber (sho7oi/ig his disaf'poiiitineiif) : I tliought you were one of his disciples ? Miss Cuyler : I have read all his stories, e\ en the one about myself. {Looking quiz- zically at Van Bibber.) Do you think he lias quite done us justice, Mr. Van Bibber? Van Bibber {a little ronfi/scd) : Oh, I say, you must not tease. I'm not the man he put in those stories, really now— a mere coincidence in • names. You don't think I'd do that ridiculous " swan-boat " business, do you? Never took so much trouble for anybody in my life, never. Miss Cuyler : I am not so sure of that. You are more of a man than you like most people to think. Van Bibber {lai(ghi?ig) : Chaff — more chaff — you're always chaffing me. {Confidentially.) lUit frankly now, Miss Cuyler, I'm not the sort of a cad he put in those stories, am I ? I don't pose as such a dreadfully superior person, do I, and patronize peo- l)le who are less lucky than I am ? Miss Cuvlkr {sincerel}^ : No, no ; you are never that. The only thing I don't like about you is your accent, and that's improving. Where did yow ])ick it up ? Van Bibber (honestly) : In England. Hiought it was the real thing, and have just found out that it 49 is cockney. {I/igeniioiis/y.) I say, now — you — you don't mind my telling* you thatjiw/ are nicer than the girl in Dickey's story ? Miss Cuyler (/with a sidelong g/ancc) : I've al- ways known that. We New York girls are not half the prigs he takes us to be. One might think from his stories that we are a combination of gorgeous frocks and intense sentiments — a sort of virtuous Ca- mille, if you can imagine that type. Van Bibber : Horribly disagreeable type to live with — always want to know the reason Why for every action. Dramatize their emotions and their friends, and want you to live up to their play. But you are Miss Cuvler {ci/tti/ig in) : Oh, I know. We are sensible enough. The New York girl is the product of very practical conditions. It is in the blood. Our fathers may have inherited their wealth but our grandfathers made it, and most of them in a very humble way. That sort of thing isn't forgotten in a generation. Van Bibber : Most of tlie girls I know are good fellows. Miss Cuyler : They have to be, or their brothers would make their lives miserable. Van Bibber : But Dickey looks at you through a kind of literary atmosphere. His stories are Miss Cuyler {intemtpting) : " New York from a Car Window " would be a good title for them. Van Bibber (a little cynically) : Next season I 50 Mjf'\ % suppose we'll have " London from a Car Window," and then Paris, and so on around the world. Miss Cuvler : Come now. Aren't we a little cruel to one of our best friends? He has a wonderfully good narrative style, at any rate, and he never wastes words in tell- ing a story. Van Bibber : Yes ; and I • don't think he is ever dull. You know he sccs ////// s^s — and that's i good deal. Miss Cuvler (iiicdifafn'c/y) : He sees / x; ^^ a great deal and he has an eye for the dramatic effect of things. Color and comi)Osition are his literary weapons. Van Bibber : And very {q\\ use them so well. Most of our story-writers simply think they are think- ing. Miss Cuvler (^i^'-Ar/zr///;,'- oi/f of tlic car window toward a corner of flic strccf) : Do you see that woman in half mourning, standing on the crossing and waiting for this car ? 77/af is to be the answer to my question from the College Settlement. Van Bibber (70/10 kno7c>s flic toicn^ : By Jove, that is the Other Woman of Dickey's story, on ac- count of whom our friend Miss Ellen threw over Latimer. Where did you meet her? Miss Cuvler : Down at the Settlement a few >/ i 51 months ago. She is absorbed in good work of that kind. Run along now, and let me talk with her. Van Bibber (^goin^ out as the car stops. Under his breatJi) : Whew ! To think that the dashing Birdie Benson should have taken to the Church ! (Jintcr The Other Woman, ivho is recognized by Miss Cuyler. Tlicy sit together and talk.') Miss Cuyler : The girls have written to me that you want to join in our work actively, and I am on my way to talk with them about it. The Other Woman : That is my errand also, and I am glad that I met you here alone where I can make an explanation. I don't want to go into this work while you have a false impression in your mind about me. Miss Cuyler : Your frankness wins me. The Other Woman : I need all of your good- will, oh, more than you can imagine. You must know first that I am not what you think me. I am not a widow ; I am not even a wife. {With hesita- tion.') I came from a liome of refinement in a coun- try village. It is the old story of a trusting girl de- ceived by the glib phrases of a city man of a certain type. My evil genius was a man of your own circle — handsome, i)lausible, almost eloquent. He has the fatal faculty of deceiving himself as easily as he deceives others. We were very happy for a time in a fool's Paradise, until he met a young woman in 52 r '^A,^ V V^ff ^? ( ■!; ?'"» /v '*i W "The OiHER Woman oi'- Dickey's Story." society, the daughter of a bishoi), whom lie thouglit worthy of his superior ({uaHties. Then he came to me with one of his canting sermons al)out his "duty to himself, his family, and society," and threw me over like a toy of which he was tired. He really loved me sincerely, too. Miss Cuyler {aside) : I always thought that Latimer's remarks to the bishoi ) in his study were sol- emn nonsense, and now I know- it. You can trust a w o m a n like Ellen for seeing through a sham '! ■ every time. The Other Woman (confiai/i/i^if) : The rest of my story is very short, but it is the worst. All my good impulses were dried \^^ by his cruelty, and I i)lunged into a world of which you do not even dream, and led a life that gained me the nickname of the " Dash- ing Birdie Benson." But one cannot escape from the good influences of the home of one's youth, and for a year now they have been drawing me to better things. Miss Cuyler You poor child. 55 I am sorry for you with all my heart. You must go away from this city where your old career will surely tnid you out. I'll discover a way out of it all. (^Enter newsboy with papers. ) Gallegher : Poypers ! Here's yer evenin' poy- pers ! Telegram, JVooes, IVorT , an' Sini I Miss Cuyler {scrufiiiiz/iig/y) : Aren't you Mr. Davis's friend, Gallegher, who caught the murderer over in Philadelphia? Gallegher {wifli a gri;i) : Yep; I'm from Phil- lie. It's too slow a town for me. Put that's a lot of guff he's been a-givin' ye, about me an' the bruis- ers. I got onto the bloke wid only tree fingers to his hand, i)ut I didn't do no cry-baby and holy cherub act when the coppers chased me into the Press office. I slid up to the managing editor and said, " Here's Mr. Dwyer's copy. Rush it quick. And say, cully, can't ye give me a box of cigarettes for bringing it so soon?" That's all that's uv it. See ! {Exit, siiigii?i:;) Extrv. Full account of the Torn ad y ! i^Conihicfor yells '' Rii'iiii^ioii Street,'' and both ex- eunt. ) 56 F. MARION CRAWFORD THE HOUSEHOLD OF F. MARION CRAWFORD Mr. Isaacs, i A learned Persian, dealer in ( precious stones. Ram Lai. An " adept " in Buddhism. Russell Vanbkugh, ... A New York lawyer. Princess Sakacinesca, . . Ol the Italian nobility. Scene : The deck of a P. &= O. steamer bound for Bombay, on the Ii/diaii Ocean ; a smooth sea, a gently moving zvarm breeze, and a brilliant tropical night. People of all niitionalities are promenading the decks, and amidships there is music and danc- ing. /// the shelter of the deck-cabins aft, a little group is seated: fart in earnest disc/ission. PRINCESS SARACINESCA : Oh the beauty of this tropic night ! It is the sky of Italy with the stars intensified. Vanbrugh : More volts of electricity in the heav- enly lamjjs. Isaacs : You Americans measure l)eauty in com- mercial terms. I never knew but one of you who was an idealist— and that was years ago in Simla. Vanbrugh : What is the name of the Prodigy? Isaacs : Marion Crawford — a journalist in India when I knew him, but now a popular novelist. For years he has sent me all his books. 59 -#--^-^- Princess : I often meet him in Rome Vanerugh : And I in New York. Isaacs : And each of us no doubt finds him ])er- fectly at home — a true cosmopolite, a citizen of the world. He is an excellent example of my theory that the more a man sees and knows, the more of an ideal- ist he becomes. Such a man sees widely different realities standing for an expression of the same men- tal or spiritual truth. They become to his clear eye the mere foliage of truth wliich varies with the acci- dents of climate, environment, nationality. The great writers of romance, in jjoetry or prose, have been always men of wide knowledge of the world — Scott, Dumas, Hugo. 60 ■J^. ^^?S:v -fj*'' Vanbru(;h : IJut a New England school-mistress whose horizon is l)()unded by her village streets will always write realistic stories. ^__ Isaacs (jaaving his hand toward (he promc- nadcrs) : How can any one look at this mov- ing throng — the nations of the world in mi- ■ crocosm — and doubt that the essence of life is the unseen — the ideal ! I have seen into the heart of yonder Buddhist, in his strange robe, and know that it has throbbed with like aspi- rations to mine. When you find what you once thought , to be a mere vision of your imagination ec^ually domesticated under the fez of a Turk, the tur- ban of a Hindoo, and the pot hat of an Englishman, you begin to suspect that tlie things which are seen are temi)oral, and those which are unseen are eternal. Tliat is what Crawford has put into his romances — the mar- vellous heart of man of whatever nation or tongue, torn with the same longings and desires, soothed with the same hopes. And yet learned men are saying that this is not the age of romance ! Princess (car?icsfh>) : As I have grown older and have had leisure to read and travel more, it lias been driven home to me that what we call Romance is the highest realism. The very wonders of industry, science, invention, which we call the spirit of the age, are the romantic dreams of strong men made visible. 6i / Vanbrugh : But that does not justify the impos- sible romances of Crawford. A cynical friend of ^_^ mine calls them " fairy tales for grown-up p%3 X-Ji's^ children . ' ' 1^ ^^''f^K. Princess : Why " fairy tales ! " S' itilllJ''i)^^!S¥/!\ What is every-day New York to -'■ f*^ you — the telephone, the phono- ,_- graph, the Elevated, the Brooklyn / Bridge — would surpass the wildest dreams of impossible things that ever entered the head of that Arab trader who came \W on board at Aden. Go tell him that at home you talk to a friend a thousand miles away in a whisper, and hear the voice of your father who is dead repeated from a waxen spool ! He will laugh in your face — but will add that if you want to hear a true story of marvellous things he will tell you the tale of Aladdin's Lamp. Vanbrugh : I don't object to one of Crawford's rattling stories when I want to be amused after a hard day in court — l)ut then you must not ask me to take that .sort of thing seriously. (.S'w/////i,^ ) I don't be- lieve he takes it seriously himself. Isaacs : That is beside the jjoint. What I have been trying to say is that the so-called Romantic at- titude toward life is nearer truth than the Realistic. When Crawford writes romances he is attempting a higher form of art than — say Zola. Princess : The striking thing to me in his work is that, while his attitude toward life is romantic, his 62 stage -setting is always realistic. Saracinesca and I have been everywhere in recent years, and we have found the descriptions in Mr. Crawford's books al- most photographic — Constantinople, Munich, Prague, Arabia, London, New York, and our dear Italy. Isaacs : I am glad to hear you say that. Ro- mance is no excuse for lazy or inaccurate observa- tion. The best romancers are as accurate as the realists. Princess: Stevenson, Bourget, Loti, Kipling — for other examples at the present time — all travelling the world over for impressions of men and things ! Vanbruch : I care little for your distinctions of schools, method, and attitude. You are simply talk- ing the slang of art. But as a practical man with some experience in sifting the motives of men, I have often found Crawford's novels defi- cient in character-drawing. His men are all enormously rich, clever, and handsome; his women are surpassingly beautiful, and they all speak in the florid language of the melodrama. Isaacs : I prefer the language which clearly mirrors the thought, even though florid, to the linguistic horrors which some of your writers have put in what I believe you call dialect stories. I picked u}) a vol- ume of them in the hotel reading-room at Cairo the other day. It is my good fortune to know something of twenty languages — and yet never have I come across anything so strange as those 6-. K tales. A young American girl came looking for the book which she had Ibrgotten, and I asked her to tell me what it was. " My Royal A ■■■■r'-'-- -'^^ril Princelet," she said, with a *-' reak ore)- the side of t/ie c'essel an a^i^ed Buddhist appears.) Ram Lal : Peace, Abdul Hafiz ! You spoke my name. Isaacs : Aleikum Salaam, Ram Lal ! My friends and I have been talking about the young American who once was with us in the Himalayan Mountains on a perilous mission. Ram Lal : A brave man, my brother, and atelier of strange tales which I have since read in books on 64 . ■?'■- v the market-stalls of Cairo. Suez, and Bombay. I should rather read his books ihan argue with him. for 1 found him something of a sophist. As I have often said. " Life is too short to argue." Isaacs : But you did not find his books sophisti- cal ? Ram Lal : Nay, my brother, for T have found in them the sincerity that dwells only in the heart. Now the heart of man is the seed-ground for the flowers of the spirit. In it are planted those aspirations which under a quickening influence may spring into vigor- ous life. But wonderful as the heart is in its i)0.ssi- bilities, it still belongs to the earth, and our friend's beautiful stories are of the earth. The fidelity, the heroism, the beauty in them are of the world, worldly. The idealism in them is. artistic idealism, and has nothing akin to the highest idealism which is essen- ^ 65 tially moral. Higher than the laws of romance are the laws of Nature, which are the laws of Buddha. The essence of them is not pleasure, or beauty, or fi- delity to the affections, but Self-sacrifice. (As a fleecy cloud obscures the moon, he fades aivay) : calling Peace be with you ! I.SAACS : And with you. Peace ! (All arise in silence and start />eloiC'.) Vanbrugh (aside) : That old boy talks like a transcendental summer-school of Philosophy. They might appreciate him at Concord, but he's one too many for me. I'm rather glad Crawford isn't chuck fiiU of " moral idealism." Tlfink I'll go below and finish " Marion Darche " before I turn in. (Exit. ) 66 RUDYARD KIPLING ^hai- THE HOUSEHOLD OF RUDYARD KIPLING "Show me llie face uf Truth," the Sahib said — " Show me its beauty, before I'm dead ! " " Look ! " said the priest, " with unflincliing eyes ; " This is the World, and not Paradise. " Look ! It is wicked, and cruel, and strong, and wise ! " — ./ Biiddhisl Sicr. Mrs. Hauksbee, Cai't.mn Gadsby, Miss Threegan, . . Teken'ce Mulv.vney, \ Admired by men and feared ' by women. Of the Pink Hussars. Engaged to Captain Gadsby. \ Private in B Company of the ( Okl Regiment. Scene : Veranda of the Threegan house at Simla. A f//e view of the Simla hills and the valley below. Miss Threegan is seated in. a long chair, her eyes on the distant hills and her thoughts in England. In her lap an open letter of 7nany sheets, bearing the London post-mark. Her rcvery is broken in 7/pon bv footsteps of " a big yellow nuui with an enornioiis nionstachc," who walks 'with a cavalry su'a^ger. Time : A hot afternoon. CAPTAIN GADSBY : Ha— hmmm ! Miss Threegan (co/n/ii^^- hack from EtiglauJ atui tlic liills 7CI/1/1 rrluctaiict^ : Is that all yon have to say ? Gadsby : Come now, dear, be kind to me. I 69 know you like this hour to yourself, but the clulVs deserted and all Simla is taking its afternoon nap, and I'm desperately lonely. Dear old Maffiin has just gone back to the plains and I miss him awful. Miss Threegan (^pettishly) : I half believe you care more for that Captain Maffiin than you do for me, and, when we're married, I won't have it {tapping her foot). I ^cv//'/ have it, sir. Gadsby {conciliating) : 1 say, little featherweight, you won't be hard on Jack, will you ? He saved my life at Amdheran. If it had not been for Jack, sweetheart, you'd be engaged to another man. Miss Threegan {indignantly) : Never ! How dare you hint at such a thing ? We were alzaays in- tended for each other. It was pre — pre Gadsbv : Predestinated, and Jack was the divine instrument. So there I Miss Threegan : Oh, well, you may still care for Jack a little, if you'll let me always love dear Emma, and tell her all my secrets. Gadsby : What, that little Deercourt thing who used to make fim of me to my face ? Never, never ! She's in England, isn't she, now? Miss Threegan : Yes, and this is a lovely, long letter from her. Do you know, Pip, I think she's in love with Captain Mafflin — ^just a little bit ? Gadsbv {icit/i loarmtli) : The little minx — hardly out of the nursery and short dresses. Outrageous. Why, Jack is a n/an, dear, a big brave man. Miss Threegan (s/y/y) : Emma may be a little 70 • c-^.-- -«t» 'Si: Miss Thkeegan. minx and a nursery child with an aya/i, but she is one year older than the young woman you expect to marry, sir. Now what have you got to say for your- self? Gadsby {cornered^ : By Jove, little one, there's only one apology. {Loving iiittTliidc.) Now, tell me all about Emma's letter — she's a dear girl, and Jack must marry her. {Fiercely.) I'll compel him to it. Miss Threegan {jnollificd) : She writes that she is having a beautiful time in London ; and who do you think is the literary lion of the season ? Gadsby : Couldn't guess. Never read books. Miss Threegan : But it's an old friend of yours. Gadsby : No friend of mine ever wrote anything but beastly, dull official reports. Miss Threegan : Well, then, stupid, it's Mr. Kipling ! Gadsby {tintli astonislinicnf) : ^M■lat ! Not dear Ruddy, the boy who did those ballads and things for the Military Gazette ? Awfully good fellow, you know ; l)ut Ruddy can't make literature. Why, those stories of his in the Gazette were simply photo- graphs of what we all see around us here. Every- body knows that — true to life to the last button. TJiat isn't what they call literature. Miss Threegan {laughing at liini) : You're a dear old goose. You've just said the best thing pos- sible in his praise. All England and America are talking about his stories, because they have revealed 73 a new world to them " true to life to the last but- ton." Gadsby : There's Mrs. Hauksbee ! Let us call her in and tell her. She always said Ruddy would be a great man. Wonderful woman, that ! {Ca/iing to Mrs. Hauksbee 2oho is goi/ig />v in a 'Rickshaw.) Come and have a cup of tea; we've good news to tell you ! Mrs. Hauksbee (trips up tlic iazcii and sits in a 74 Iiami/iock. fd/iiiiiii;) : I wanted to stop, but I did not like to interrui)t a pair of lovers. Gadsby (wif/i iliiiiisy gallantry) : You're never an interruption, Mrs. Hauksbee. (Miss Threegan scoiols a little JuJiilc she pours tea.) Did you know that Kipling had taken London by storm ? Literary lion and all that sort of thing. Mrs. Hauksbee {jolio is never surprised at anv- thing) : I've been expecting it. I said to him : " My dear boy, fill your jjockets with those stories of yours from the Gazette ; go to England and make a book out of them. You'll show them at home for the first time what sort of an Llmpire they are govern- ing. An Englishman likes to be hit from the shoulder, and that is your style. You'll hit him." Rud stroked his big chin a moment, rubbed his glasses, and said : " Lll try it. LU call the book ' Plain Tales from the Hills,' and dedicate it ' To the Wittiest Woman in India.' " He always was a neat man at flattery. Miss Threegan (7ciit/i severity) : I must say I think many of his stories in the Gazette were wicked — very, very wicked. The men use such horrible language. Mrs. Hauksbee (looking at Gadsby with a glitter in her eyes) : But, my sweet child, you must not judge all men by the beautiful language of Captain Gadsby. Some of them t/o use horrid words when they are with each other. Gadsby (whose vocabulary is famous at the club) : 75 Ha — hmmm ! Yes, indeed, Minnie — the men do occasionally talk like that. Ruddy lived with us and knew the slang. (^Asidc.) I'll fine him a magnum and a score of pegs, when I catch him back here, for giving the boys away so dreadfully. Miss Threegan {fi///s/i///g a liffh') : But the women, Mrs. Hauksbee ! They do such terrible things in those stories. Ugh. I don't think this world is very, very bad. Mrs. Hauksbee {sfal>l>/ng at Gadsbv) : You must always believe what the Captain tells you about the world, when you are married. (tADSBV {tliiiiking about Airs. Hcrriott dcnu'/i at Naini Ta/, and loliat she 7ioet, my little man, but you see too nnich." Then he would look far away to the snow-line of the hills and say, sadly, but with determination : " I won't be driven l)y nice scru[)les into jjraising those things wliich most i)eople think fme and virtuous simi)ly because they are conventional. 1 won't, I won't. Some day I'll write a poem about a man named Tomlinson, who could be admitted neither to heaven nor hell when he died, because he had no original virtues or no original vices. He was simply conventional, and so they sent him Ijack to London to be happy." What can you say to a man who talks to you like that. Captain Gadsby ? Gadsby (jo/io is (X ji/di^r of /nc/i) : Nothing. By Jove, I believe he's got a hold of the right end of things. Mrs. Hauksbee {^oif/i couvictioii) : vSo do I. And the critics may call him bumptious, and gro- tesque, and brutal, and vulgar, and all the other ad- jectives which tliey use for what is sim})ly Kiicoirrcn- tioihtl : but I'll always believe that he has the heart of a man and the voice of a poet. The world does not often get the two united with such force. Oh, it is good to read what a strong man has written. Writing is mostly left to the weak who like to talk about their own emotions. Kipling looks at things like a man of action, and that's the great thing in life or letters. 77 Gadsbv : Yes, he has lived with us, with all kinds of us — and that is why. There is a verse of his scrawled in charcoal over the grill in the Degchi Club which tells it all : " I have eaten your bread and salt, I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives that ye led were mine." Why, would you believe it, there are three common soldiers down in B Company who would whip the regiment if Kipling asked them to ! (^Pointing.') There's one of them now, teaching the colonel's boy how to ride a pony. i^Cal/iiig.) Mulvaney ! Mul- vaney ! Bring the boy in. The ladies want to see him. (MuLVANEV, t/ic kn\ and the pony eoi/ie up tJie broad roadicay to the veranda, and at the regulation distance, salute. The boy has the precision of a veteran.^ Mulvaney : It's only respict for you, Captain, that would lade me to inthurrupt the mornin' drill uv the mounted battalion. Gadsby : We want to tell you of an old friend of yours — Mr. Kipling. He's become / a great man at home, in England, writing for them all 'sM about India. Mulvaney : God bless him : 78 MULV.WEV. he's a broth iiv a man. Many's the peg he's dhrunk wid me an' Jock and Stanley. Ses he, " Mulvaney, soom day I'll be tor a writin' doon thim tales thot ye've been blandanderin' to me fur years past." And faith, if he's ben doin' that in London, there's little left betune Terence Mulvaney and dis-ris-pect- ability by this time. Dinah Shadd will mek uv me life a basted purgathory if she hears iit. {Looki/igat Miss Threegan.) Whin ye write to London, Miss, will ye say to Mister Kipling that the ould rig' mint is dhrinkin' health an' succis to him — three fine:ers, standi a' up! (Sa/uffs. T/w// to box o>i po/iv.) 'Shun ! By foors, right wheel, march I {^Excioit, singiiig.') " And when tlie war began, we cliased tlic bold Afglian, An' we made tlie blooniin' Ghazi for to flee, boys O ! " Mrs. Hauksree {flioi/ghffiilly) : It's because Rud knew men like that, and like you — and all of us from Viceroy to Sa/s, that he is able to write so truthfully, so vividly, that men and women ten thousand miles away feel that they have lived here among us. {Si/i/i- vioiis licr ' Rickshazv, and all rise to walk doicni the lawn.) 79 GEORGE MEREDITH Pi'^'^Pi^ V 4.-^ \ "That kindly man in gkey homespun who sits in his little chalet on the. hillside yonder, and writes great books." THE HOUSEHOLD OF GEORGE MEREDITH Nevil Beauchamp, . . . Commander R. N. and a Radical. Adrian Hakley A Wise Youth and a cynic. Diana Warwick, . . . . Of the Crossways, Surrey. „ r, \ An English gentleman, entrajjed Tom Reuworth -^ ^^ ^-^„^ - • - ^ Scene: The ridge of Box Hill in Surrey , from ivhich spreads a •wonderful view. The spires of Dorking in the middle disitime ; on the right a great rise of wooded hills, dotted with country places, with a glimpse of the village of Guildford. The hills and valleys are fooded with the sunshine of a perfect jfuue day. DlAi\A and Reuvvortii are seated on a rustic bench near the winding piithway along which pass and repass groups on their way to the summit of Bo.x Hill. DIANA : After all ray storms and shipwreck, Tom, you have towed the derelict into this bay of green and peaceful liills. Redworth {foi/iti/ig across the valley) : And there, in the clump of trees near Guildford, is The Crossways — your safe anchorage always. Diana : And I shall never .slip the anchor — -never again without you as i)ilot. The world is a great sea, beautiful and tempestuous — and, oh so cruel to a woman alone! {lookiui:;; in his eyes). lam glad that you are so strong a man, and that you love me. 83 Redworth : All the years that I have waited for you are a little day, and an hour like this is a lifetime. Diana (smiluig) : And this is my quiet, prosaic Tom, who never spoke a word of love to me in all these years, but always fought my battles ! Redworth : If you are glad that I have been per- sistent in loving you, Diana, you must thank that kindly man in grey homesjjun who sits in his little chalet on the hillside yonder, and writes great books. Diana : So it is Mr. Meredith who has been mak- ing my everyday Tom a poet — and not love at all ? We women always find that a man is the inspiration of those best things which we flatter ourselves that we have inspired. Redworth {solc/n/i/y') : Since the night of that ball in Dublin, when I first saw " the flashing arrows in your eyes," I have had but one inspiration — the love of you. But one day when I was in despair about your loving Dacier, and was walking gloomily across the downs I met INIeredith at the crossing of a hedge. He caught the trouble in my eyes, and we sat down on the top step of the stile to talk it out. "My l)oy," he said when he had heard it all, " no one can love as you love without eternal profit to your soul — whether in the 84 i'^^sjfc^ < Id Id K h a X h a 7. < end you win her or not. It is the strength of Nature in you creating an ideal which has given and will always give a unity and stability to your work. 1 never see a man successful in the right way (not by luck or selfishness) — a man who is doing strenuously the best that Nature has put in him to do — that I do not begin to look for the one idea which is the inspiration of it. I have watched your life and work here and in London for ten years — your steady, l)ersistent development — and have often wondered what the main-.spring was. Now I kiioza it ! Croon, go on, and the very laws of Nature, which are the laws of God, will fight for you ! " Then he strode across the downs, his grey eyes filled with that soft light which Nature gives to those who love her. Diana {refleetiii^^) : He met my Tom a despairing lover and left him a l)rave man ! Mr. Meredith is always putting heart and hope into thoughtfid men and women everywhere. What a lovely afternoon his life is having — belated fame come home at last, the admiration of intellectual people, the love of friends. Redworth {pointing dotun the fieitinuay) : There are two of his friends now — as different as men can be ; both well-born — the one an enthusiast, a reformer, a radical ; the other /dose and a cynic. Yet if you go deep enough (as Meredith no doubt has) you will find a common substratum which makes them con- genial — the cynic and the reformer both love human- ity. The cynic jeers at one side of it — its frailties; the reformer lauds another side of it — its common 87 virtues. Each in his own heart loves that middle ground where frailties and virtues mingle — and tliat is ordinary human nature. (^E liter Beauchamp rt-z/c/ Adrian.) Beauchamp {greeting Diana and Redworth) : At the foot of the hill we passed Meredith standing by his box- wood hedge. He waved a hand and called out to us, " Follow that path up the hill and you'll find Happiness ; a little while ago I saw two lovers go by, hand in hand." (Diana looks eonsciously at Redworth.) And Adrian jeers back at him, "No happiness ever came from following Love. This is the hill of Purgatory." "With Dante's Beatrice at the top," called Meredith. " Rather a Siren whis- tling from a rock," ungallantly jibed Adrian ; and so we passed out of hearing with our game of" Shuttle- cock." Diana {to Adrian) : Still playing at cynic, O Wise Youth, while the rest of the world moves on to happiness. Adrian {to Diana) : For you " the rest of the world" is simply Redworth. Diana {bowing) : If you could see " the rest of the world " in one woman that I know you would cease being a cynic. You know Mr. Meredith says of you, " Adrian only sees one part of the world, and that not the best part." Adrian : Meredith is a howling optimist. He sits on the hillside in his chalet and blows gorgeous 88 bubbles which mirror this lovely valley ; and he calls them the world, l)ecause they are round, and beauti- ful, and shot with rainbows. \)\\y.x (poiafcii/v) : But Adrian is a jeering i^es- simist. He sits in his tower at Raynham Abbey, shuts out all the light, turns his eye inward on the memories of his youth, and says: "This is the world. It is full of high ho^jes which lead to noth- ing ; of false women and designing men ; of the dreams of a man of intellect that never produce action. All this is the world, and I'll laugh at it." Oh, Wise Youth, how much you could learn from Meredith 1 Beauchamp {cafiiii/ii^ tlic hist sentence) : Learn from Meredith ! He has been my University. I never knew what it was to have any interests outside of my own people and class until I read him and talked with him. Men of letters are always praising his epigrams, his fancy, his imagination. They miss his greatness entirely. Meredith is great because he has put the very Spirit of Liberty in his creations. It is not Radicalism, or Socialism, or Liberalism; it is the attitude of viind which is back of these and all other movements toward a broader life tor all men. It is iiidividiialisni. Diana : His first rule of freedom is to break the shackles which other men have forged for you. Adrian : And then he puts on you a pair of his own particular kind of shackles ; I know the trick of the real philosopher. He prates of freedom — which 89 means liberty to make other ijeoijle think as he him- self thinks. That is the basis of all intellectual tyranny. Beauchamp : Meredith has no shackles. He says to every man : ' ' Fall back on Nature for guidance — not landscapes and the mountains which are the Wordsworthian panacea — but your own nature in right conditions." Adrian : To what awful depths it leads some men ! Beauchamp : Because they and their fathers have been bound hand and foot for generations, and Nat- ure has been distorted. For all these there is but one remedy — restore the conditions of Nature, freedom to work at what is congenial, freedom to live in God's pure air. freedom to know your fellowman on equal terms ! If that is .socialism, I am a socialist and so is Meredith. We are better called simply humanitar- ians. Adrian {to Diana) : We must divert Beauchamp or we'll be getting a flood of his campaign speeches on us. {To Beauchaimp) FU follow you in your ad- miration for Meredith on another tack. His epi- grams charm me. He is one of the few contempor- ary writers of fiction who presuppose that their readers are beings of independent intelligence. His epigrams are flints which will only strike fire against steel. Diana : To me the finest thing in his work is his knowledge of a woman's heart. Other novelists, 90 even great ones, have made their women either deh- cate creatures of sentiment, or woolly-minded men in petticoats. It has been beyond them to picture sen- timent and strength united in a charming woman. But Mr. Meredith has raised the standard of woman- hood in fiction by women like Rosamund, Lucy, Rhoda Fleming, Vittoria, Jenny Uenham, and my dearest Emmy. Adrian : Wise Meredith ! He flatters your sex and you love him, and read his books. Redworth {quietly) : You have all had your say about him, and have missed his best achievement. Every one of his books teaches that the true social unit is not a strong man alone, or an acute woman alone — but a man and a woman who love each other with all their hearts. That is Nature's greatest les- son. And all the barriers which caste, or prejudice, or creed place between loving hearts are the foes of progress. Break them down, Beaucham}) ; break them down, Adrian! It isn't optimism, or pessim- ism, or individualism that rules the world. It is Love ! Adrian {bowin^i;; to Diana and Redworth) : I salute the Social Unit, and continue my way alone u[) the mountain of Purgatory. {Staiis up the path- rvay. ) Beauchamp : And I follow and hope to find Beatrice at the summit. (Exit.) Diana (ca/Iiuij; after) : Her name is Jenny Den- ham, and I hope you'll find her. 91 Redworth : Come, dear, the shadow of the mountain has fallen on The Crossways, and we have a long walk across the valley before sunset. {They go down the Ridge of Box Hill.') 92 >:i^'w^^'^^^'''-^>i5 '-asf^i "Come, deak, the shadow w the mountain has tallen on The Ckossvvays." ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ^v "Not truly one, but tkulv two. THE HOUSEHOLD OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Alan Breck A Highland Jacobite of 1750. Daviu Balfour, .... A Young Lowland Scot. Dk. Jkkyll A Philanthropist. Mr. Hyde A Villain. Prince Otto, ( Idealists, and late rulers of Princess Seraphina, . . ) Griinewald. King Tembinok.'\, .... Of Apemama, South .Sea Islands. Scene I. — .4 moonliglit night on Castle Hill, Edii/btirgli, Al.\N and D.WIU are sitting on. the wall of the turret which half en- closes the great cam/on, Afons A/eg. Behno them lies the citv ; in the distance the Firth of Forth, and on the horizon the coast of Fife. QLAN BRECK: Do ye ken, David, that we're 1 I bogles brought back to Auld Reekie by that scribbhng warlock, Rab Stevenson ? David Balfour : Ay. He's a braw hand at clish- maclaver. I dinna ken \\hy lads and lasses gang aboot reedin' the lees he's writ alioot me and ye, Alan Breck. Ye' re no sic a grand maun to l)e re- membered a hundred years syne. Alan (^20/1/1 mock iiidignatiou) : Man, I whiles wonder at ye ! That was a grand tale he wrote about the fechtin in the roundhouse. Waur I no a bonny 97 fighter, my lad ? An' it's a gude thing to have it writ in a book and read by Highlanders the noo. It taks a maun to techt like that ! David {^rebiikiiigly) : Ye' re aye vain of your prowess, Alan. Ye \\aur a maun the days lang syne, but noo ye're a puir wraith that the sun will drive ben. Alan : But Rab Stevenson has gie us life for anither hundred years. And Scots aye talk aboot us when they sit by the ingle-neuk with his bukes i' their loofs. David : I'm no sayin' he canna ^\Tite aboot fechtin, and murder, and piratical men, and a' sic wardly things that the Deil inspires. But he's no releegious, Alan ; he hae's nae respect for the Auld Kirk ; and, therefore, he hae's nae richt to be called a leetary maun. Alan : Hoot lad ! Ye mak me dour wi' your fashin'. There's Rabbie Burns who writ verses against the Auld Kirk, and did'na we meet him the ither nicht a crackin' jokes amang the ghaists, wi' Sir \Valter, and Allan Ramsay, and Dr. John Brown — ay, and his own ne'er-do-weel. Tarn o'Shanter, amang them all? It's no the auld Kirk, God bless it alway, but the heart i' a maun that maks him gude. And Rab Stevenson's heart's i' the richt spot. David (701 t/i his usual caution^ : Well, I'm dout- sum. There's no enoo' o' the Catechism i' his tales to mak' them leetary. John Knox wouldna approve of them. 98 Alan {jui/It iiidi^^iiatioii) : Ve've lieen a ghaist for a hundred years, li\ in" abune the clouds, and ye canna see that the (uide Sheperd does'na wait lor John Knox to sijeak before he lets a Scotsman into the leetary fold ! (^TJic fog rises from flic Firth of Fortli. and sweeps up f/ie Castle Hill. Tlie sun ereeps oi'er Ar- tliur s Seat, ami as its first ray toueJies t/ie Castle: wall, Alan and Da\id vanish in the mist.) Scene \\. — Tkf laboratory of L)K. Jekvll in his old LoiiJoit house. The walls from fJoor to cfili/i^ arc lined with shelves filled with bottles of chemicals. A table bet'veen t'oo wii/dows is covered with retorts, test tubes, etc. A Buiiscii burner is throwing a jet of pale blue fame on a retort filed with a bub- bling liquid, in which the globules rise and fall, tiashing like many-colored eyes. A fire is on the hearth, ami before it stand Dr. JEKYLI. .cr^'— 'Watty Scott or Jamie Bakrie." THE HOUSEHOLD OF J. M. BARRIE Gavin Dishart, . Babbie Tammas Haggart, . j The little Minister of the Auld ' Licht Kirk in Thrums. ) Known as " The Egyptian," ( married to Gavin. The Humorist of Thrums. Scene : JV/e siimme>- seat in the garden of the Auld Lieht Manse in Thrums. Babbie is seated in the sun of a icarmish ytine day, knitting blue yarn stoektngs. Enter Gax^K from the door of /lis study, carrying a new book in his hand. Here's more l)uttintr in a AVIN {siffi/ig near IJadeie) e's been at his tricks again. Babbie : "W'lio ? Gavin : Jamie Barrie. writin' about iis he's been book. Babbie {lookitii:; at Jiim slyly) : Does he tell any more tales about a Little Minister who was fooled by an Egyptian ? Gavin {dropping:!; into Scotch, affectionate- ly) : Ah, my lassie, but Jamie did mak you braw and bonnie in the buke 1 I am 109 \:i: no sayin' that you're not a cantie bit stocky wi the hcht o' heaven i' your een, but Jamie shudna hae flattered you so to your face. It's wicked and warldly ! BABfiiE {with a mocking sigh) : We all have our trials to bear, and it's yours to have a worldly minded woman for a wife. ^V G.w\y (im/ig/i a /if /v) : I did y '" not say that, my lass. I said Jamie Barrie was worldly to put your capers with the soldiers in a book, and to tell everybody that you had a bonnie face. Babbie {roguisJily) : Well, haven't I? Gavin {cannily) : Some might think so. I have no definite opinion. Babbie {with flashing eyes) : You haven't, my little minister ? Then what did you mean by your compliments that evening when 3'Ou came to meet me at Nanny Webster's well ? I'll have you up before Tammas Whamond and the session of the kirk for deceit and false speaking. Gavin {laughing) : Oh, but I love to rouse the Egyptian in your flashing black eyes I They glow with fire like I>och Lomond at sunset. Babbie {demurely) : And you, an Auld Licht minister, blethering like that to a woman who has been your wife for a year ! You're what Tammas Haggart calls a " blaw-i'-my-lug." I lO Gavin i^-iuhc) /urs learned her ivays) : A man. even a minister, soon learns to manage his wife by telling her what she likes to hear. Tammas gave me that advice soon after 1 married yon, and he is a wise man. Babbie : Tammas has been spoiled because Jamie Barrie i)Ut him in his book. The other day he spoke to me al)Out " me and Rab Burns and other leetary men." He was finding fault with your ser- mon at the time as hardly up to his standard. (iAViN : Barrie may have spoiled Tammas a lit- tle, but Thnnns. as a whole, is proud of his books. I think I understand my i)eople better by reason of them. Babbie (ser/ons/j) : Yes, he has put in his books the heroism of poverty. It is so easy to put a rich and titled hero in a book, but to show heroism in narrow and forbidding circumstances, like Jess and Hendry's, in "A Window in Thrums," is a very difficult thing. Gavin : He does more than that. He shows you the compensations of poverty. All the books I used to study at the University made pov- erty a hatefid thing — a blot on the fair earth. But Barrie's Thrums weavers teach a different lesson. Babbie : And we who live among them know^ how much better off they are than many of the rich. I know I , 11, , ' . • T ' 1.^ " It IS so EASY TO riT a should l)e happier in Jess s cottage ^^^^ ^^^ ^,^^^^ „^^^ than I was in Lord Rintoul's castle. in a book." Ill '^ / This rich patronize Him." Gavin {putiiii}^ on his severe prcacJi- ei-'s vuijuier) : It's the fear of the Lord that glorifies the Ufe _y of rich and poor ahke. Z'^ Babbie (mise/i/ezm/s/v) : I am not so sure of that. It's only the poor who fear the Lord ; the rich patronize Him. I know, for Lve Hved with both kinds. Gavin l^a little slioeked) : We must not jest with serious things. Babbie {eonfidently) : There is nothing wrong in teUing the truth. Barrie sees it clearer than we do here. It is absolute fidelity to their affections that makes people worth anything, whether they be rich or poor. That is why the great world has laughed and cried over the '■ Window in Thrums." They looked right into the heart of that little family and found everything clean, and genuine, and honest. t>. /;/ v Gavin (adminXi;-lv) : ^^'hat Ik i^--::- a little philosoi)her I have mar- }\Jp- ' ried ! And I thought she was only a half- wild Egyptian ! Babbie: Oh. I'll be writing your sermons yet, and the session will wake up to listen. Gavin : You can "„V i. 'The great world has laughed and cried OVER 'The Window in Thrums.'" 1 T 2 He came into my study solemnity." begin by telling me what to say at the Literary Club which meets to-night at the lown House. Haggart asked me yesterday to take part in the discussion. He came into my study with unusual solemnity, and said that after prayerful consid- eration the Club had decided that the time had arrived to discuss the ([uestion whether Watty Scott or Jamie Barrie was the greatest Scottish nov- elist. Uite Walls is to read a poem on the subject, and Mr. Dickie is to compare Scott and Homer. Babbie: Evidently Mr. Dickie does not put Barrie in the .same cla.ss with Scott and Homer ? CtAvin : Oh, no. You know he is the free-think- ing schoolmaster from Tilliedrum, and is a little jeal- ous of the recent literary eminence of Thrums. The other day he said to me, contemi)tuously : "Jamie Barrie is nought but a U. P. minister turned to writin' tales, and ower i)Oor tales at that. Watty Scott wudna ever hae thocht that Tammas Haggart was sarceestic." Babbie {snii/i/i^i^) : What does Tammas himself think of Barrie ? Gavin : Here he is, coming for my answer about attending the Club. Let us ask him. WITH INrSL'AL 113 (^Eiiter Tam.mas Hag(;art.j Haggart {lunving) : Hoo's a' wi ye ? And are ye coomin' the nicht to the Leetary Club ? Gavin : A\-, and I am hoping to hear your views about Jamie. Babbie : As I can't be there to hear, won't you tell me what you're going to say, Tammas? Haggart (/>/ deep tJwiight) : I dinna ken yet. As I hae often said to Jamie Barrie, " Humour spouts oot l)y itsel." It will be humourous, nae doot, and Davit Lunan winna be able to see the place to lauch. Davit is daft. Babbie: But you'll praise Jamie's books, won't you? We can't let Mr. Dickie go back to TilHe- drum and say we're ashamed of our ain bairn. Haggart : He'll no do that. I mean to be sae sarceestic to Mr. Dickie, that he'll go ben to Tillie- drum wi' respect for all of us. Babbie {impatientl}^ : But what do you think of Mr. Barrie ? HAGCiART {^meditative!}') : Jamie is no a humourist like mysel. Jamie is what, i' the minister's presence. I may call a Romanticalicist, and when I say that. I ken that Waster Lunny will think he knows what I am haverin' aboot. But naebody, even the minister, kens what I mean by a Romanticalicist. {Laughing to him- self.') Ay, maun, but that's a fine bit o' sarcasm. {Rubbing his ehin.) What I mean by it is that Jamie Barrie sees the outside of hoo we all live in Thrums, 114 l)ut he (loesna grasp the real inards uf it. So he maks up the inards oot of his ain head and writes it on jjaper. antl calls it a true tale. We are no sae glaikit as he maks us. We were no born on the Sawbath. Gavin : But he does not say we are glaikit (silly). Haggart {irritated^ : He put it doon in writin' that Tammas Haggart said, *' A body canna lie ex- peckit baith to mak the joke an to see't : that would be doin' twa tbwk's wark." I ken better than that. I've made a joke and seen't mysel at the same time — but no vera often. I (r/rcavs see the joke within a week o' makin' it. Babbie : I know you do, and I'll tell Jamie so the next time he comes to Thrums. (Margaret calls fnvu the door that IVean-wa/id has coDic to sec the minister. All exeunt.) -'J-V I / ^ I / i J "IVE M.-\DE A JOKE AND SEEN IT MVSEL AT THE SAME TIME." 115 THE HOME OF ROMANCE THE HOME OF ROMANCE The Wisf. Adrian /of New York, and recently : ( °l The Gentle Diana, . . . i wedded Scene: The deck of a steamer on the Caledonian Canat, t)etioecii Banavie and Inverticss, iti the Highlands of Scotland. Time : The Present — midsummer. RDRIAN : They like to call this the " Home of Romance," as though the Scottish landscape were responsible for it all. The true home of romance is the warm heart of a man or woman — and you can easily find that in other lands than the Highlands. Diana : Even in New York ? Adrian : 1 found it there — but what a search I made for it ! I began to think that it was as elu- sive as the Philosopher's stone. One day. when I was despairing, I met ivw. Diana : But I don't turn what I touch into gold. Adrian : Oh, no. I've already found out that you reverse the process. You turn gold into any- thing that takes your fancy. We have ten trunks 119 filled with the results of your necromancy. Think of the duty on them I Diana : Yes — a real home of romance comes high. But you should be thankful that I am a simple villa, and not a great ca.stle with scores of retainers. They are expensive. Adrian: You shall always be "just as high as mv heart." Diana: I'll remind you of that some day. It isn't safe to make pretty speeches to a tyrannical wife. Adrian : Very well — we'll have lots of old scores to settle up " some day." I'm making note of them, because you know we can t disagree on our wedding journey. Diana: I can. For instance, I think you are all wrong in poking fun at the Scotch for calhng this the " home of romance." Think of the romantic places we ha\e seen in the past three days. {Rapidly turns the leaves of a guide-book.') There was the jjlace where Roderick Dim and Fitz-James fought in the Trossachs. Adrian : A quiet little bit of forest, that no one would look at if Sir Walter had not written a poem. Diana : And there was Ellen'' s Isle. Adrian : Sir Walter again — you would never have mentioned it if he had not. Diana {impatiently) : But think of Oban, and Dunstaffnage Castle, and the Cataract of Connel — all in an hour. I20 Adrian : Yes ; William Black, Professor Blackie, and Ossian are responsible for your interest in them. I also have read the guide-book. D1.A.N.A. : Ugh ! You are a horrid, horrid — what you call it — iconoclasf. But you can't .say anything mean about Ben Nevis. Think what a view we had of him this morning. Did you ever see a finer min- gling of grays and greens and browns, with patches of purple, when the sun came out? And over it all the blue-white mist crowning his stately head. Adrian : Yes, all that, and noted besides for {jjKotiiii:;) " the distillery from which comes the cele- brated whiskey called ' Long John ' or ' Dew of Ben Nevis ' " That is what makes it dear to the heart of the Scot. Diana {despe/'afcly) : But wasn't "The Well of Heads " awe-inspiring — terrible? Adrian : A nice old rock with seven heads very badly carved on it, and an inscription commemorat- ing a very bloody ending to an old feud, which simply isn't in for gore with the McCoy-Hatfield feud in our own country. You would not travel very far at home to see the tomb of all the McCoys, would you ? Diana : But I would to see such a sight as the "Falls of Foyers" where we climbed at the last landing. Adrian : Simply because Burns wrote " Among the lieathy hills and ragged woods The roaring Foyers pours his mossy floods." 121 Now Bryant wrote better poetry than that about the Kaaterskill Falls at home, and yet you made fun of them last summer ' ' because they turn them on for a quarter apiece." Diana (^laughing): It was funny, wasn't it? — and the excuse is that the money goes to the Metho- dists. It ought to be Baptist money. Adrian : But honestly, Diana, Scotland is the home of romance because it is the home of Scott, Burns, Black, Macdonald, Stevenson, and Barrie — and of thousands of men, like that old Highlander in kilts on the tow-path, who loves what they have written. I would wager he has a copy of Burns in his sporran, and has quoted him a half dozen times to the grim Celt who is walking with him. Those old boys don't read for excitement or for knowledge, but because they love their land, and their people, and their religion — and their great writers simply express for them those emotions in words they can understand. You and I come over here with thousands of our countrymen, to borrow their emotions. It is lovely, it is romantic, and it stirs your heart and mine, be- cause we were raised on Scott and Burns. In Eng- land we travel from place to place in the same way on a wave of memory and emotion, because we have always read tlie great Englishmen who loved their country and honored it by writing about it with feeling. Diana : It is almost as bad as loving another man's wife and neglecting your own. 122 Adrian : And yet these Britishers accuse us of bragging about our country I The milhonaire from Oshkosh may — but our writers don't. Many of them hardly show it decent respect. Diana : The old school did — Hawthorne. Cooper, Simms, Brockden Brown, Emerson, Whit- tier. Adrian : And their works endure in the hearts of their countrymen. But the men of to-day — aren't they building up a beautiful set of literary associa- tions for their countrymen ? Imagine our descend- ants making pilgrimages to the house where our Daisy Millers were (according to tradition) supposed to have lived and sjjoken l)ad English ; where our Tom Sawyers locked in their school teachers ; to tlie ruins of the Tuxedo Clul) to see where Charley Rich broke his stick and swore horribly when he was re- fused hy Miss Million : to Beacon Street in search of the lamp-post under which Miss Prudence stood wher she consulted with her Soul ! Diana : That's enough. 1 know the whole tril)e, and I would not walk half a block if I were assured that I could shake hands with any one of them in the flesh. But see, there is the sun shining on the Castle of Inverness, and the purple hills, and a gleam of Moray Firth ! It is lovely and I love it. and it is the end of a beautiful day. Adrian : Then why do you look pensive? Diana (laughing) : I was thinking by contrast of the way in which the sinking sun strikes the red 123 tower of the Produce Exchange, and old Liberty's halo, and the Brooklyn Elevators Adrian : x-Vnd the Multi floor Apartment House on Fifty-ninth Street, and a six-room flat. Diana : Yes — home. Adrian : The Home of our Romance. {^Chorus of 'bus drivers: '* Royal Hotel, sir,'" " Citlloden Inn''' ^'■Sutherland Anns,'' " Take you right up. ' ' ) 124 A LITTLE DINNER IN ARCADY A LITTLE DINNER IN ARCADY.* Life and Miss Fanny de Sikcle (costume after Gibson). Mr. Howells and Miss Diana (ot'The Crossways). Mr. James and The Egyptian (of Thrums). Mr. Crawford and Miss Daisy Mili.ick (of Schenectady, N. Y.). Mr. Bunner and Mrs. Hauksbee (of Simla). Mr. Page and Princess Saracinesca (of Rome). Mr. Meredith and Meh Lady (of Virginia). Mr. Kipling and Miss Penelope Lapham (of Boston). Mr. B.\rrie and Miss Midge (of South Washington Square). Scene. — A round table in the Oitagon room of a ivayside inn, over- looking ike I'allev of Arcady. In the centre of the table, a mound of/lowers, on ivhich appears the motto, " While there's Life there's Hope." The ladies of the party wear costumes which represent many different styles of the past decade, tind are evidently sttspicious of the social standing of each other. The ?nen have long known each other in Arcady, are 7nore at ease,, but are evidently not quite sure that they approve oj the ladies. As the dinner advances and the wine-glasses are filled and refilled with Falernian and Nectar, the constraint vanishes and everybody talks. MISS FAN {lo Life, 70/10 is in Io7'c rcilli Iwr) : You dear boy, why fit/ you give me tlie \>ldcQ of honor at tlie talile ? * Written for tlie Jubilee Number of Life. 127 Life : Because you are the bud of the past dec- ade, and you will be the perfect flower of the coming one. Every man of us here would rather please you than all the rest of the world. Miss Fan : What a dance I lead you ! Don't you find that I am hard to please ? Life {luith intention) : You are always kind to me, dear. Miss Fan : For that pretty speech I'll try to be gracious. But honestly, boy, I don't like your guests— the women I mean. They are hardly in our set. Where did you ])ick them up ? Life : I told each man to bring one of his own family. Then I mixed the names in a hat and drew this combination. Miss Fan: Well, I hope they like it, but I'm sure Mr. Ho wells looks bored. Life : Why, Diana is the brightest woman at the table, but very romantic. See the "flashing arrows in her eyes" while she talks ! Diana {to Life) : I know you are talking about me — but I'll forgive you if it was kind. I've been telling Mr. Howells that I like his American girls, but not his married women — they are so censori- ous. Howells: They don't call it that hard name in Boston; it is simply "accumulating materials for a correct diagnosis of character. " Miss Lapham : We are not all given to back- biting in Boston. Most of us are charitable. 128 Miss Fan {^as/i/i- to Howells) : She is nut (juile in the swiin in liuston, is she? Old Silas Laphani's daughter ? {ra/s///j:^^ her eyebrows) Paint? Meh Lady : You Northern gyurls shouldn't be so critical of folks. We all simply flatter our sweet- hearts, and lead them 'round with a gold chain. Daisy Miller : Well, 1 like that 1 'I'hink of our flattering Charley Rich and his set. They are so conceited now that they think all the girls are in love with them. We have to train all the young nol)S down with sarcasm before they are endurable. We are onto their style. Princess Saracinesca {to PAdE) : What queer English that young woman speaks I I fear that I must have had an uncultivated teacher in Rome. It's all so strange to me. Page : You must come and visit us in Ole Vah- ginia, my deah lady, to heah the real old English language. ^^' e are descended from the Cavaliers, madam. Princess : Now, I understand the peculiar spelling in " Marse Chan." It's old English, isn't it, like Chaucer and Beowulf? Pa(;e (shi/tiiig tlie si/i>jcct) : Oh, I say, Meh Lady, you must invite the Princess down to the old plantation. She is writing a book about America, and I reckon it will be all 129 Fan. Boston and New York as usual, unless we divert her. Mrs. Hauksbee : Invite me too, please. I want to see America. I only know what I've read about it in Mr. James's novels, and what Mr. Kipling has told me. BuNNER {behind his hand to Page) : She must have a beautiful chromo picture of us then in her mental gallery. Imagine taking }our impression of America from James and Kii)ling ! KiPLiNt; {laughing) : Come, now, Bunner, I could not help hearing. Have not I atoned for tlie sins of my youth with "The Naulahka?" Isn't Tarvin a good American ? Bunner : He's not a real American ; only a newspaper American, made by the drummer and the '■'■ funny man." Kipling : And never met with outside of Puck ! Barrie: What I've come over here to see is a real American girl. Miss Fan (unth a ghincc around the table) : You won't find her in contemporary novels. Daisv Miller (eonseiousiv) : I think Mr. James has done us justice. Miss Fan {maliciously) : Oh, yes, he has done justice to some of the freaks we annually export. James {calmly) : Why do you keep some of your best freaks at home then? I can't make bricks with- out straw. Meh Lady {gently) : We are not all nervous and 130 impertinent over here. Come, visit us oftener, Mr. James. The Midge : Oh, who would say so cruel a thing about us? I've found everybody so kind in New York. Miss Fan {aside to Life) : A little Bohemian from the French quarter — that kind is always gener- ous. They live in such a little bit of a world and have to help each other. The Egyptian : It seems to me that all you American girls know too much. You have no illu- sions, no romance. In Scotland we still occasionally die for the man we love. Miss Fan : How horrid ! Over here that sort of thing only happens in Bowery hotels, among for- eigners. Barrie : Ay. But what does the real American lass do for the man she loves with all her soul ? Miss Fan : Marries him, every time. He can't escape her, and would not if he could. That is why I don't approve of you good people who write our novels. You make us so shallow in our artifices, and often so vulgar and impertinent. Really, don't you see that the girl of the period \\<>q^ finesse with sincer- ity ? That is where you misinterpret us. We are not artificial ; we simply combine the business tact that we inherit from our fathers, with the fidelity and re- ligions instincts that we inherit from our mothers. Kipling : A sort of combination of the best traits of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley — Crawford : With a considerable addition of jewelry and frocks. It seems to me that you more than ever overdress the part of the ingenue. Miss Fan : Another of the mistakes of our novel- ists ! Our beautiful frocks have raised the art stand- ards of the country. Our fathers have been forced to build houses and buy furniture, and fixtures, and broughams to accord with the lovely costumes of their charming daughters. A fine jewel must have an appropriate setting, and we've got it. HowELLS : Very well, how would you have us picture the girl of the new decade. Miss Fan ? Miss Fan : She must be, like my dear Diana, " A man and woman for brains ; " her beauty will be the flower of health ; her wit, the i)olish of the world ; her sympathy, the result of a true insight into our "moral predicament," as Mr. James delights to call it. She will be a ])atriot and an optimist always. Meredith : I like to hear you say that. I am getting to be an old man, but I believe more and more in the promptings of nature in youth. How can any one live near to nature without being an op- timist ! I don't mean the trees and flowers only — but near to men and women who live and suffer, and hope. HowELLS (rising) : Here's to the flower of the century — the American Girl ! May we love her in our homes, do her full justice in our books, and wear her image in our hearts ! Miss Fan : And here's to the eyes of the next 1.32 century, through which jiosterity will see us — the American Novelist ! May he always picture us as good as we are, and never better than we ought to be! Life : And here's confusion to all Critics who re- fuse to appreciate the American Girl and the Ameri- can Novelist ! The End. T ^ ■-» ^ JO -"^ ;.^s DATE DUE ' CAVLORO miNTCD IN U.S.A. >''' Bridges, Robert, 1858-194 Overheard in A^cady / UC SOUTHERN RFGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 609 310 8 3 1210 00337 9284