TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 BY 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1896 
 
BOOKS BY BRAXDER MATTHEWS. 
 
 THE THEATRES OF PARIS. 
 
 FRENCH DRAMATISTS OF THE 19TH CENTURY. 
 
 THE LAST MEETING, a Story. 
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA, and Other Stones. 
 
 PEN AND INK: Essays on Subjects of More or Less Importance. 
 
 A FAMILY TREE, and Other Stories. 
 
 WITH MY FRIENDS: Tales Told in Partnership. 
 
 A TALE OF TWENTY-FIVE HOURS. 
 
 TOM PAULDING, a Story for Boys. 
 
 IN THE VESTIBULE LIMITED, a Story. 
 
 AMERICANISMS AND BRITICISMS, with Other Essays on Other Isms. 
 
 THE STORY OF A STORY, and Other Stories. 
 
 THE DECISION OF THE COURT, a Comedy. 
 
 STUDIES OF THE STAGE. 
 
 THIS PICTURE AND THAT, a Comedy. 
 
 VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN. 
 
 THE ROYAL MARINE, an Idyl of Narra K ansett. 
 
 BOOK-BINDINGS, Old and New; Notes of a Book-Lover. 
 
 HIS FATHER S SON, a Novel of New York. 
 
 ^INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF AMERICAN LITEKA- 
 
 T ALES. OF FANTASY AND FACT. 
 
 ASPECTS JX FICTION., ajfd plJetJVjntuJes in Criticism. (In Press.) 
 
 Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights reterved. 
 
TO 
 THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND 
 
 II. C. BUNXER 
 
 271761 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 A PIUMEU OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 3 
 
 THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 27 
 
 THE DREAM-GOWN OF THE JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 57 
 
 THE RIVAL GHOSTS 93 
 
 SIXTEEN YEARS WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY .... 131 
 
 THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 143 
 
 A CONFIDENTIAL POSTSCRIPT 207 
 
A PEIMEK OF IMAGINARY 
 
 GEOGRAPHY 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY 
 GEOGRAPHY 
 
 HIP ahoy!" 
 
 There was an answer from our 
 bark for such it seemed to me 
 by this time but I could not 
 make out the words. 
 
 " "Where do you hail from ?" was the next 
 question. 
 
 I strained my ears to catch the response, 
 being naturally anxious to know whence I had 
 come. 
 
 " From the City of Destruction !" was what 
 I thought I heard ; and I confess that it sur 
 prised me not a little. 
 
 " Where are you bound ?" was asked in turn. 
 Again I listened with intensest interest, and 
 again did the reply astonish me greatly. 
 
TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " Ultima Thule !" was the answer from our 
 boat, and the voice of the man who answered 
 was deep and melancholy. 
 
 Then I knew that I had set out strange 
 countries for to see, and that I was all un 
 equipped for so distant a voyage. Thule I 
 knew, or at least I had heard of the king who 
 reigned there once and who cast his goblet 
 into the sea. But Ultima Thule ! was not that 
 beyond the uttermost borders of the earth ? 
 
 " Any passengers ?" was the next query, and 
 I noted that the voice came now from the 
 left and was almost abreast of us. 
 
 " One only," responded the captain of our 
 boat. 
 
 " Where bound ?" was the final inquiry. 
 
 " To the Fortunate Islands !" was the an 
 swer; and as I heard this my spirits rose 
 again, and I was glad, as what man would not 
 be who was on his way to the paradise where 
 the crimson-flowered meadows are full of the 
 shade of frankincense-trees and of fruits of 
 gold? 
 
 Then the boat bounded forward again, and 
 I heard the wash of the waves. 
 
 All this time it seemed as though I were in 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 5 
 
 darkness; but now I began dimly to discern 
 the objects about me. I found that I was ly 
 ing on a settee in a state-room at the stern of 
 the vessel. Through the small round window 
 over my head the first rays of the rising sun 
 -darted and soon lighted the little cabin. 
 
 As I looked about me with curiosity, won 
 dering how I came to be a passenger on so un 
 expected a vo} T age, I saw the figure of a man 
 framed in the doorway at the foot of the 
 stairs leading to the deck above. 
 
 How it was I do not know, but I made sure 
 at once that he was the captain of the ship, 
 the man whose voice I had heard answering 
 the hail. 
 
 He was tall and dark, with a scant beard 
 and a fiery and piercing gaze, which penetrat 
 ed me as I faced him. Yet the expression of 
 his countenance was not unfriendly ; nor could 
 any man lay eyes upon him without a move 
 ment of pity for the sadness written on his 
 visage. 
 
 I rose to my feet as he came forward. 
 
 " Well," he said, holding out his hand, " and 
 how are you after your nap ?" 
 
 He spoke our language with ease and yet 
 
6 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 with, a foreign accent. Perhaps it was this 
 which betrayed him to me. 
 
 "Are you not Captain Vanderdecken ?" I 
 asked as I took his hand heartily. 
 
 u So you know me?" he returned, with a 
 mournful little laugh, as he motioned to me to 
 sit down again. 
 
 Thus the ice was broken, and he took his 
 seat by my side, and we were soon deep in 
 talk. 
 
 "When he learned that I was a loyal New- 
 Yorker, his cordiality increased. 
 
 " i have relatives in New Amsterdam/ 1 he 
 cried ; " at least I had once. Diedrich Knick 
 erbocker was my first cousin. And do you 
 know Rip Van Winkle ?" 
 
 Although I could not claim any close friend 
 ship with this gentleman, I boasted myself 
 fully acquainted with his history. 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Captain Vanderdecken, "I 
 suppose he was before your time. Most peo 
 ple are so short-lived nowadays ; it s only with 
 that Wandering Jew now that I ever have a 
 chat over old times. Well, well, but you have 
 heard of Rip ? Were you ever told that I was 
 on a visit to Hendrik Hudson the night Rip 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 7 
 
 went up the mountain and took a drop too 
 much ?" 
 
 I had to confess that here was a fact I had 
 not before known. 
 
 U I ran up the river," said the Hollander, 
 " to have a game of bowls with the English 
 man and his crew, nearly all of them coun 
 trymen of mine; and, by-the-way, Hudson 
 always insists that it was I who brought the 
 storm with me that gave poor Rip Yan Win 
 kle the rheumatism as he slept off his intox 
 ication on the hillside under the pines. He 
 was a good fellow, Eip, and a very good judge 
 of schnapps, too." 
 
 Seeing him smile with the pleasant mem 
 ories of past companionship, I marvelled when 
 the sorrowful expression swiftly covered his 
 face again as a mask. 
 
 " But why talk of those who are dead and 
 gone and are happy?" he asked in his deep 
 voice. " Soon there will be no one left, per 
 haps, but Ahasuerus and Yanderdecken the 
 Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutch 
 man." 
 
 He sighed bitterly, and then he gave a 
 short, hard laugh. 
 
8 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " There s no use talking about these things, 
 is there ?" he cried. " In an hour or two, if 
 the wind holds, I can show you the house in 
 which Ahasuerus has established his museum, 
 the only solace of his lonely life. He has 
 the most extraordinary gathering of curiosities 
 the world has ever seen truly a virtuoso s col 
 lection. An American reporter came on a 
 voyage with me fifty or sixty years ago, and 
 I took him over there. His name was Haw 
 thorne. He interviewed the Jew, and wrote 
 up the collection in the American papers, so 
 I ve been told." 
 
 " I remember reading the interview," I said, 
 " and it was indeed a most remarkable collec 
 tion." 
 
 " It s all the more curious now for the odds 
 and ends I ve been able to pick up here and 
 there for my old friend," Vanderdecken de 
 clared ; " I got him the horn of Hernani, the 
 harpoon with which Long Tom Coffin pinned 
 the British officer to the mast, the long rifle 
 of Natty Bumppo, the letter A in scarlet cloth 
 embroidered in gold by Hester Prynne, the 
 banner with the strange device * Excelsior, the 
 gold bug which was once used as a plummet, 
 
A PKIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 
 
 Maud Muller s rake, and the jack-knives of 
 Hosea Biglow and Sam Lawson." 
 
 " You must have seen extraordinary things 
 yourself," I ventured to suggest. 
 
 " No man has seen stranger," he answered, 
 promptly. " No man has ever been witness 
 to more marvellous deeds than I not even 
 Ahasuerus, I verily believe, for he has only 
 the land, and I have the boundless sea. I sur 
 vey mankind from China to Peru. I have 
 heard the horns of elfland blowing, and I 
 could tell you the song the sirens sang. I 
 have dropped anchor at the No Man s Land, 
 and off Lyonesse, and in Xanadu, where Alph 
 the sacred river ran. I have sailed from the 
 still-vexed Bermoothes to the New Atlantis, 
 of which there is no mention even until the 
 year 1629." 
 
 " In which year there was published an ac 
 count of it written in the Latin tongue, but by 
 an Englishman," I said, desirous to reveal my 
 acquirements. 
 
 " I have seen every strange coast," con 
 tinued the Flying Dutchman. " The Island of 
 Bells and Kobinson Crusoe s Island and the 
 Kingdoms of Brobdingnag and Lilliput. But it 
 
10 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 is not for me to vaunt myself for my voyages. 
 And of a truth there are men I should like to 
 have met and talked with whom I have yet 
 failed to see. Especially is there one Ulysses, 
 a sailor-man of antiquity who called himself 
 Outis, whence I have sometimes suspected 
 that he came from the town of "Weissnicht- 
 wo." 
 
 Just to discover what Vanderdecken would 
 say, I inquired innocently whether this was 
 the same person as one Captain Nemo of 
 whose submarine exploits I had read. 
 
 " Captain Nemo 2" the Flying Dutchman 
 repeated scornfully. "I never heard of him. 
 Are you sure there is such a fellow ?" 
 
 I tried to turn the conversation by asking 
 if he had ever met another ancient mariner 
 named Charon. 
 
 " Oh, yes," was his answer. " Charon keeps 
 the ferry across the Styx to the Elysian Fields, 
 past the sunless marsh of Acheron. Yes I ve 
 met him more than once. I met him only 
 last month, and he was very proud of his new 
 electric launch with its storage battery." 
 
 When I expressed my surprise at this, he 
 asked me if I did not know that the under- 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 11 
 
 world was now lighted by electricity, and that 
 Pluto had put in all the modern improve 
 ments. Before I had time to answer, he 
 rose from his seat and slapped me on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Come up with me ! if you want to behold 
 things for yourself," he cried. " So far, it 
 seems to me, you have never seen the sights !" 
 
 I followed him on deck. The sun was now 
 two hours high, and I could just make out a 
 faint line of land on the horizon. 
 
 " That rugged coast is Bohemia, which is 
 really a desert country by the sea, although ig 
 norant and bigoted pedants have dared to deny 
 it," and the scorn of my companion as he said 
 this was wonderful to see. " Its borders touch 
 Alsatia, of which the chief town is a city of ref 
 uge. Not far inland, but a little to the south, 
 is the beautiful Forest of Arden, where men 
 and maids dwell together in amity, and where 
 clowns wander, making love to shepherdesses. 
 Some of these same pestilent pedants have pre 
 tended to believe that this forest of Arden was 
 situated in France, which is absurd, as there 
 are no serpents and no lions in France, while 
 we have the best of evidence as to the exist- 
 
12 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 ence of both in Arden you know that, don t 
 you?" 
 
 I admitted that a green and gilded snake 
 and a lioness with udders all drawn dry were 
 known to have been seen there both on the 
 same day. I ventured to suggest further that 
 possibly this Forest of Arden was the Wander 
 ing Wood where Una met her lion. 
 
 " Of course," was the curt response ; " every 
 body knows that Arden is a most beautiful re 
 gion; even the toads there have precious jewels 
 in their heads. And if you range the forest 
 freely you may chance to find also the White 
 Doe of Kylstone and the goat with the gilded 
 horns that told fortunes in Paris long ago by 
 tapping with his hoof on a tambourine." 
 
 "These, then, are the Happy Hunting- 
 Grounds ?" I suggested with a light laugh. 
 
 " Who would chase a tame goat ?" he retort 
 ed with ill-concealed contempt for my ill-ad 
 vised remark. 
 
 I thought it best to keep silence ; and after 
 a minute or two he resumed the conversation, 
 like one who is glad of a good listener. 
 
 "In the outskirts of the Forest of Arden," 
 he began again, " stands the Abbey of Thele- 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 13 
 
 ma the only abbey which is bounded by no 
 wall and in which there is no clock at all nor 
 any dial. And what need is there of knowing 
 the time when one has for companions only 
 comely and well - conditioned men and fair 
 women of sweet disposition ? And the motto 
 of the Abbey of Thelema is Fais ce que vou- 
 dra Do what you will; and many of those 
 who dwell in the Forest of Arden will tell you 
 that they have taken this also for their device, 
 and that if you live under the greenwood tree 
 you may spend your life as you like it." 
 
 I acknowledged that this claim was proba 
 bly well founded, since I recalled a song of the 
 foresters in which they declared themselves 
 without an enemy but winter and rough 
 weather. 
 
 " Yes," he went on, " they are fond of sing 
 ing in the Forest of Arden, and they sing good 
 songs. And so they do in the fair land be 
 yond where I have never been, and which I can 
 never hope to go to see for myself, if all that 
 they report be true and yet what would I not 
 give to see it and to die there." 
 
 And as he said this sadty, his voice sank into 
 a sigh. 
 
14 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " And where does the road through the for 
 est lead, that you so much wish to set forth 
 upon it ?" I asked. 
 
 " That s the way to Arcady," he said " to 
 Arcady where all the leaves are merry. I may 
 not go there, though I long for it. Those who 
 attain to its borders never come back again 
 and why should they leave it ? Yet there are 
 tales told, and I have heard that this Arcady 
 is the veritable El Dorado, and that in it is the 
 true Fountain of Youth, gushing forth unfail 
 ingly for the refreshment of all who may reach 
 it. But no one may find the entrance who can 
 not see it by the light that never was on land 
 or sea." 
 
 "It must be a favored region," I re 
 marked. 
 
 " Of a truth it is," he answered ; " and on 
 the way there is the orchard where grow the 
 golden apples of Hesperides, and the dragon 
 is dead now that used to guard them, and so 
 any one may help himself to the beautiful 
 fruit. And by the side of the orchard flows 
 the river Lethe, of which it is not well for man 
 to drink, though many men would taste it 
 gladly." And again he sighed. 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 15 
 
 I knew not what to say, and so waited for 
 him to speak once more. 
 
 " That promontory there on the weather 
 bow," he began again after a few moments 
 silence, "that is Barataria, which was long 
 supposed to be an island by its former gover 
 nor, Don Sancho Panza, but which is now 
 known by all to be connected with the main 
 land. Pleasant pastures slope down to the 
 water, and if we w r ere closer in shore you 
 might chance to see Rozinante, the famous 
 charger of Don Quixote de la Mancha, grazing 
 amicably with the horse that brought the 
 good news from Ghent to Aix." 
 
 " I wish I could see them !" I cried, enthusi 
 astically ; " but there is another horse I would 
 rather behold than any the winged steed 
 Pegasus." 
 
 Before responding, my guide raised his hand 
 and shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon. 
 
 "No," he said at last. "I cannot descry 
 any this afternoon. Sometimes in these lati 
 tudes I have seen a dozen hippogriffs circling 
 about the ship, and I should like to have 
 shown them to you. Perhaps they are all in 
 the paddock at the stock-farm, where Apollo 
 
16 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 is now mating them with night -mares in the 
 hope of improving the breed from which he 
 selects the coursers that draw the chariot of 
 the sun. They say that the experiment would 
 have more chance of success if it were easier 
 to find the night-mares nests." 
 
 It was not a hippogriff I desired to see 
 especially," I returned when he paused, " al 
 though that would be interesting, no doubt. 
 It was the renowned Pegasus himself." 
 
 "Pegasus is much like the other hippo- 
 griff s,"he retorted, although perhaps he has 
 a little better record than any of them. But 
 they say he has not won a single aerial handi 
 cap since that American professor of yours har 
 nessed him to a one-hoss shay. That seemed 
 to break his spirit, somehow ; and I m told he 
 would shy now even at a broomstick train." 
 
 "Even* if he is out of condition," I declared, 
 "Pegasus is still the steed I desire to see 
 
 above all." 
 
 " I haven t set eyes on him for weeks," was 
 the answer, " so he is probably moulting ; this 
 is the time of year. He has a roomy boxstall 
 in the new Augean stable at the foot of Mount 
 Parnassus. You know they have turned the 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 17 
 
 spring of Castaly so that it flows through the 
 stable -yard now, and so it is easy enough to 
 keep the place clean." 
 
 " If I may not see Pegasus," I asked, " is 
 there any chance of my being taken to the 
 Castle of the Sleeping Beauty 3" 
 
 " I have never seen it myself," he replied, 
 " and so I cannot show it to you. Rarely in 
 deed may I leave the deck of my ship to go 
 ashore ; and this castle that you ask about is 
 very far inland. I am told that it is in a 
 country which the French travellers call La 
 Scribie, a curious land, wherein the scene is 
 laid of many a play, because its laws and its 
 customs are exactly what every playwright 
 has need of; but no poet has visited it for 
 many years. Yet the Grand Duchess of Ger- 
 olstein, whose domains lie partly within the 
 boundaries of Scribia, is still a subscriber to 
 the Gazette de Ilollande the only newspaper 
 I take himself, by the way." 
 
 This last remark of the Captain s explained 
 how it was that he had been able to keep up 
 with the news of the day, despite his constant 
 wanderings over the waste of waters ; and 
 what more natural in fact than that the Flying 
 
18 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Dutchman should be a regular reader of the 
 Holland Gazette? 
 
 Vanderdecken went forward into the prow 
 of the vessel, calling to me to follow. 
 
 " Do you see those peaks afar in the dis 
 tance ?" he asked, pointing over the starboard 
 bow. 
 
 I could just make out a saw-like outline in 
 the direction indicated. 
 
 " Those are the Delectable Mountains," he 
 informed me; " and down in a hollow between 
 the two ranges is the Happy Yalley." 
 
 " Where Easselas lived?" 
 
 "Yes," he replied, "and beyond the Delec 
 table Mountains, on the far slope, lies Prester 
 John s Kingdom, and there dwell anthropoph 
 agi, and men whose heads do grow beneath 
 their shoulders. At least, so they say. For my 
 part, I have never seen any such. And I have 
 now no desire to go to Prester John s Kingdom, 
 since I have been told that he has lately mar 
 ried Pope Joan. Do you see that grove of 
 trees there at the base of the mountains?" 
 
 I answered that I thought I could distinguish 
 weirdly contorted branches and strangely shiv 
 ering foliage. 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 19 
 
 "That is the deadly upas-tree," he explained, 
 " and it is as much as a man s life is worth to 
 lie down in the shade of its twisted limbs. I 
 slept there, on that point where the trees are 
 the thickest, for a fortnight a century or so 
 ago but all I had for my pains was a head 
 ache. Still I should not advise you to ad 
 venture yourself under the shadow of those 
 melancholy boughs." 
 
 I confess at once that I was little prompted 
 to a visit so dangerous and so profitless. 
 
 " Profitless ?" he repeated. " As to that I 
 am not so certain, for if you have a mind to 
 see the rarest animals in the world, you could 
 there sate your curiosity. On the shore, be 
 tween the foot-hills and the grove of upas, is a 
 park of wild beasts, the like of which no man 
 has looked upon elsewhere. Even from the 
 deck of this ship I have seen more than once a 
 drove of unicorns, or a herd of centaurs, come 
 down to the water to drink; and sometimes I 
 have caught a pleasant glimpse of satyrs and 
 fauns dancing in the sunlight. And once in 
 deed I shall never forget that extraordinary 
 spectacle as I sped past with every sail set 
 and a ten-knot breeze astern, I saw the phoenix 
 
20 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 blaze up in its new birth, while the little sala 
 manders frisked in the intense flame." 
 
 "The phoenix?" I cried. "You have seen 
 the phoenix?" 
 
 " In just this latitude," he answered, " but it 
 was about nine o clock in the evening and I 
 remember that the new moon was setting 
 behind the mountains when I happened to 
 come on deck." 
 
 " And what was the phoenix like ?" I asked. 
 
 " Really," he replied, " the bird was almost 
 as Herodotus described her, of the make and 
 size of the eagle, with a plumage partly red 
 and partly golden. If we go by the point by 
 noon, perhaps you may see her for yourself." 
 
 " Is she there still ?" I asked, in wonder. 
 
 " Why not ?" he returned. " All the game of 
 this sort is carefully preserved and the law is 
 off on phoenixes only once in a century. Why, 
 if it were not for the keepers, there soon would 
 not be a single griffin or dragon left, not a 
 single sphinx, not a single chimaera. Even as 
 it is, I am told they do not breed as freely 
 now as when they could roam the whole world 
 in safety. That is why the game laws are so 
 rigorous. Indeed, I am informed and believe 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 21 
 
 that it is not permitted to kill the were-wolves 
 even when their howling, as they run at large 
 at night, prevents all sleep. It is true, of 
 course, that very few people care to remain in 
 such a neighborhood." 
 
 " I should think not," I agreed. " And what 
 manner of people are they who dare to live 
 here?" 
 
 " Along the shore there are a few harpies," 
 he answered ; " and now and then I have seen 
 a mermaid on the rocks combing her hair with 
 a golden comb as she sang to herself." 
 
 "Harpies?" I repeated, in disgust. "Why 
 not the sea-serpent also ?" 
 
 " There was a sea-serpent which lived for years 
 in that cove yonder," said the Captain, pointing 
 to a pleasant bay on the starboard, " but I have 
 not seen it lately. Unless I am in error, it had 
 a pitched battle hereabouts with a kraken. I 
 don t remember who got the better of the fight 
 but I haven t seen the snake since." 
 
 As I scanned the surface of the water to 
 see if I might not detect some trace of one or 
 another of these marvellous beasts of the sea, 
 I remarked a bank of fog lying across our 
 course. 
 
23 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 "And what is this that we are coming to?" 
 I inquired. 
 
 "That?" Captain Yanderdecken responded, 
 indicating the misty outline straight before us. 
 " That is Altruria at least it is so down in the 
 charts, but I have never set eyes on it actually. 
 It belongs to Utopia, you know ; and they say 
 that, although it is now on the level of the 
 earth, it used once to be a flying island the 
 same which was formerly known as Laputa, 
 and which was first visited and described by 
 Captain Lemuel Gulliver about the year 1727, 
 or a little earlier." 
 
 " So that is Altruria," I said, trying in vain 
 to see it more clearly. " There was an Altru- 
 rian in New York not long ago, but I had no 
 chance of speech with him." 
 
 " They are pleasant folk, those Altrurians," 
 said the Captain, " although rather given to 
 boasting. And they have really little enough 
 to brag about, after all. Their climate is ex 
 ecrable I find it ever windy hereabouts, and 
 when I get in sight of that bank of fog, I al 
 ways look out for squalls. I don t know just 
 what the population is now, but I doubt if it is 
 growing. You see, people talk about moving 
 
A PRIMER OF IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHY 23 
 
 there to live, but they are rarely in a hurry to 
 do it, I notice. Nor are the manufactures of 
 the Altrurians as many as they were said to be. 
 Their chief export now is the famous Procrus 
 tean bed ; although the old house of Damocles 
 & Co. still does a good business in swords. 
 Their tonnage is not what it used to be, and 
 I m told that they are issuing a good deal of 
 paper money now to try and keep the balance 
 of trade in their favor." 
 
 "Are there not many poets among the in 
 habitants of Altruria ?" I asked. 
 
 " They are all poets and romancers of one 
 kind or another," declared the Captain. " Come 
 below again into the cabin, and I will show 
 you some of their books." 
 
 The sky was now overcast and there was a 
 chill wind blowing, so I was not at all loath to 
 leave the deck, and to follow Yanderdecken 
 down the steps into the cabin. 
 
 He took a thin volume from the table. 
 " This," he said, is one of their books News 
 from Nowhere, it is called." 
 
 He extended it towards me, and I held out my 
 hand for it, but it slipped through my fingers. 
 I started forward in a vain effort to seize it. 
 
24 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 As I did so, the walls and the floor of the 
 cabin seemed to melt away and to dissolve in 
 air, and beyond them and taking their place 
 were the walls and floor of my own house. 
 Then suddenly the clock on the mantelpiece 
 struck five, and I heard a bob-tail car rattling 
 and clattering past the door on its way across 
 town to Union Square, and thence to Green 
 wich Village, and so on down to the Iloboken 
 Ferry. 
 
 Then I found myself on my own sofa, bend 
 ing forward to pick up the volume of Cyrano 
 de Bergerac, which lay on the carpet at my 
 feet. I sat up erect and collected my thoughts 
 as best I could after so strange a journey. And 
 I wondered why it was that no one had ever pre 
 pared a primer of imaginary geography, giv 
 ing to airy nothings a local habitation and a 
 name, and accompanying it with an atlas of 
 maps in the manner of the Carte du Pays de 
 Tendre. 
 
 (1894.) 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 
 
 IS the twelfth stroke of the bell 
 in the tower at the corner tolled 
 forth slowly, the midnight wind 
 blew chill down the deserted av 
 enue, and swept it clear of all belated way 
 farers. The bare trees in the thin strip of 
 park clashed their lifeless branches ; the river 
 far below slipped along silently. There was 
 no moon, and the stars were shrouded. It was 
 a black night. Yet far in the distance there 
 was a gleam of cheerful light which lured me 
 on and on. I could not have said why it was 
 that I had ventured forth at that hour on such 
 a night. It seemed to me as though the yel 
 low glimmer I beheld afar off was the goal of 
 my excursion. Something within whispered 
 to me then that I need go no farther when 
 
28 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 once I had come to the spot whence the soft 
 glare proceeded. 
 
 The pall of darkness was so dense that I 
 could not see the sparse houses I chanced to 
 pass, nor did I know where I was any more. 
 I urged forward blindly, walking towards the 
 light, which was all that broke the blackness 
 before me; its faint illumination seemed to 
 me somehow to be kindly, inviting, irresisti 
 ble. At last I came to a halt in front of a 
 building I had never before seen, although I 
 thought myself well acquainted with that part 
 of the city. It was a circular edifice, or so it 
 seemed to me then ; and I judged that it had 
 but a single story, or two, at the most. The 
 door stood open to the street ; and it was from 
 this that the light was cast. So dim was this 
 illumination now I had come to it that I mar 
 velled I could have seen it at all afar off as I 
 was when first I caught sight of it. 
 
 While I stood at the portal of the unsus 
 pected edifice, peering doubtfully within, won 
 dering to what end I had been led thither, and 
 hesitating as to my next step, I felt again the 
 impulse to go forward. At that moment tiny 
 darts of fire, as it were, glowed at the end of 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 29 
 
 the hall that opened before me, and they ran 
 together rapidly and joined in liquid lines and 
 then faded as suddenly as they had come- 
 but not too soon for me to read the simple 
 legend they had written in the air an invi 
 tation to me, so I interpreted it, to go forward 
 again, to enter the building, and to see for 
 myself why I had been enticed there. 
 
 Without hesitation I obeyed. I walked 
 through the doorway, and I became con 
 scious that the door had closed behind me as 
 I pressed forward. The passage was narrow 
 and but faintly lighted ; it bent to the right 
 with a circular sweep as though it skirted the 
 inner circumference of the building ; still curv 
 ing, it sank by a gentle gradient ; and then it 
 rose again and turned almost at right angles. 
 Pushing ahead resolutely, although in not a 
 little doubt as to the meaning of my advent 
 ure, I thrust aside a heavy curtain, soft to the 
 hand. Then I found myself just inside a large 
 circular hall. Letting the hangings fall be 
 hind me, I took three or four irresolute paces 
 which brought me almost to the centre of the 
 room. I saw that the walls were continuously 
 draped with the heavy folds of the same soft 
 
30 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 velvet, so that I could not even guess where it 
 was I had entered. The rotunda was bare of 
 all furniture ; there was no table in it, no chair, 
 no sofa; nor was anything hanging from the 
 ceiling or against the curtained walls. All that 
 the room contained was a set of four curiously 
 shaped narrow stands, placed over against one 
 another at the corners of what might be a 
 square drawn within the circle of the hall. 
 These narrow stands were close to the cur 
 tains ; they were perhaps a foot wide, each of 
 them, or it might be a little more : they were 
 twice or three times as long as they were wide; 
 and they reached a height of possibly three or 
 four feet. 
 
 Going towards one of these stands to exam 
 ine it more curiously, I discovered that there 
 were two projections from the top, resembling 
 eye-pieces, as though inviting the beholder to 
 gaze into the inside of the stand. Then I 
 thought I heard a faint metallic click above 
 my head. liaising my eyes swiftly, I read a few 
 words written, as it were, against the dark vel 
 vet of the heavy curtains in dots of flame that 
 flowed one into the other and melted away in 
 a moment. When this mysterious legend had 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 81 
 
 faded absolutely, I could not recall the words 
 I had read in the fitful and flitting letters of 
 fire, and yet I retained the meaning of the 
 message ; and I understood that if I chose to 
 peer through the eye-pieces I should see a 
 succession of strange dances. 
 
 To gaze upon dancing was not what I had 
 gone forth to do, but I saw no reason why I 
 should not do so, as I was thus strangely bid 
 den. I lowered my head until my eyes were 
 close to the two openings at the top of the 
 stand. I looked into blackness at first, and 
 yet I thought that I could detect a mystic 
 commotion of the invisible particles at which 
 I was staring. I made no doubt that, if I 
 waited, in due season the promise would be 
 fulfilled. After a period of expectancy which 
 I could not measure, infinitesimal sparks dart 
 ed hither and thither, and there was a slight 
 crackling sound. I concentrated my atten 
 tion on what I was about to see ; and in a 
 moment more I was rewarded. 
 
 The darkness took shape and robed itself in 
 color; and there arose out of it a spacious 
 banquet-hall, where many guests sat at supper. 
 I could not make out whether they were Ro- 
 
32 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 mans or Orientals ; the structure itself had a 
 Latin solidity, but the decorations were Eastern 
 in their glowing gorgeousness. The hall was 
 illumined by hanging lamps, by the light of 
 which I tried to decide whether the ruler who 
 sat in the seat of honor was a Roman or an 
 Oriental. The beautiful woman beside him 
 struck me as Eastern beyond all question. 
 While I gazed intently he turned to her and 
 proffered a request. She smiled acquiescence, 
 and there was a flash of anticipated triumph 
 in her eye as she beckoned to a menial and 
 sent him forth with a message. A movement 
 as of expectancy ran around the tables where 
 the guests sat at meat. The attendants opened 
 wide the portals and a young girl came for 
 ward. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen 
 years of age, but jn the East women ripen 
 young, and her beauty was indisputable. She 
 had large, deep eyes and a full mouth; and 
 there was a chain of silver and golden coins 
 twisted into her coppery hair. She was so like 
 to the woman who sat beside the ruler that I 
 did not doubt them to be mother and daugh 
 ter. At a word from the elder the younger 
 began to dance; and her dance was Oriental, 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 33 
 
 slow at first, but holding every eye with its 
 sensual fascination. The girl was a mistress 
 of the art ; and not a man in the room with 
 drew his gaze from her till she made an end 
 and stood motionless before the ruler. He 
 said a few words I could not hear, and then 
 the daughter turned to the mother for guid 
 ance ; and again I caught the flash of triumph 
 in the elder woman s eye and on her face the 
 suggestion of a hatred about to be glutted. 
 And then the light faded and the darkness 
 settled down on the scene and I saw no more. 
 I did not raise my head from the stand, for 
 I felt sure that this was not all I was to be 
 hold ; and in a few moments there was again 
 a faint scintillation. In time the light was 
 strong enough for me to perceive the irregular 
 flames of a huge bonfire burning in an old 
 square of some mediaeval city. It was even 
 ing, and yet a, throng of men and women and 
 children made an oval about the fire and about 
 a slim girl who had spread a Persian carpet on 
 the rough stones of the broad street. She was 
 a brunette, with dense black hair ; she wore a 
 striped skirt, and a jacket braided with gold 
 had slipped from her bare shoulders. She held 
 
34 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 a tambourine in her hand and she was twist 
 ing and turning in cadence to her own song. 
 Then she went to one side where stood a white 
 goat with gilded horns and put down her tam 
 bourine and took up two swords; and with 
 these in her hands she resumed her dance. A 
 man in the throng, a man of scant thirty-five, 
 but already bald, a man of stalwart frame, 
 fixed hot eyes upon her; and from time to 
 time a smile and a sigh met on his lips, but 
 the smile was more dolorous than the sio-h 
 
 t5 
 
 And as the gypsy girl ceased her joyous gyra 
 tions, the bonfire died out, and darkness fell 
 on the scene again, and I could no longer see 
 anything. 
 
 Again I waited, and after an interval no 
 longer than the other there came a faint glow 
 that grew until I saw clearly as in the morn 
 ing sun the glade of a forest through which a 
 brook rippled. A sad-faced woman sat on a 
 stone by the side of the streamlet ; her gray 
 garments set off the strange ornament in the 
 fashion of a single letter of the alphabet that 
 was embroidered in gold and in scarlet over 
 her heart. Visible at some distance was a lit 
 tle girl, like a bright - apparelled vision, in a 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 35 
 
 sunbeam, which fell down upon her through 
 an arch of boughs. The ray quivered to arid 
 fro, making her figure dim or distinct, now 
 like a real child, now like a child s spirit, as the 
 splendor came and went. With violets and 
 anemones and columbines the little girl had 
 decorated her hair. The mother looked at 
 the child and the child danced and sparkled 
 and prattled airily along the course of the 
 streamlet, which kept up a babble, kind, quiet, 
 soothing, but melancholy. Then the mother 
 raised her head as though her ears had de 
 tected the approach of some one through the 
 wood. But before I could see who this new 
 comer might be, once more the darkness set 
 tled down upon the scene. 
 
 This time I knew the interval between the 
 succeeding visions and I waited without impa 
 tience ; and in due season I found myself gaz 
 ing at a picture as different as might be from 
 any I had yet beheld. 
 
 In the broad parlor of a house that seemed 
 to be spacious, a middle - aged lady, of an ap 
 pearance at once austere and kindly, was look 
 ing at a smiling gentleman who was coming 
 towards her pulling along a little negro girl 
 
36 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 about eight or nine years of age. She was one 
 of the blackest of her race ; and her round, 
 shining eyes, glittering as glass beads, moved 
 with quick and restless glances over everything 
 in the room. Pier woolly hair was braided in 
 sundry little tails, which stuck out in every 
 direction. She was dressed in a single filthy, 
 ragged garment, made of bagging ; and alto 
 gether there was something odd and goblin- 
 like about her appearance. The severe old 
 maid examined this strange creature in dismay 
 and then directed a glance of inquiry at the 
 gentleman in white. He smiled again and 
 gave a signal to the little negro girl. Where 
 upon the black eyes glittered with a kind of 
 wicked drollery, and apparently she began to 
 sing, keeping time with her hands and feet, 
 spinning round, clapping her hands, knocking 
 her knees together, in a wild, fantastic sort of 
 time ; and finally, turning a somersault or two, 
 she came suddenly down on the carpet, and 
 stood with her hands folded, and a most sanc 
 timonious expression of meekness and solemni 
 ty over her face, only broken by the cunning 
 glances which she shot askance from the cor 
 ners of her eyes. The elderly lady stood si- 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 37 
 
 lent, perfectly paralyzed with amazement, while 
 the smiling gentleman in white was amused at 
 her astonishment. 
 
 Once more the vision faded. And when, 
 after the same interval, the darkness began to 
 disappear again, even while everything was dim 
 and indistinct I knew that the scene was shifted 
 from the South to the North. I saw a room 
 comfortably furnished, with a fire smoulder 
 ing in a porcelain stove. In a corner stood a 
 stripped Christmas-tree, with its candles burned 
 out. Against the wall between the two doors 
 was a piano, on which a man was playing a 
 man who twisted his head now and again to 
 look over his shoulder, sometimes at another 
 and younger man standing by the stove, some 
 times at a young woman who was dancing alone 
 in the centre of the room. This young woman 
 had draped herself in a long parti - colored 
 shawl and she held a tambourine in her hand. 
 There was in her eyes a look of fear, as of one 
 conscious of an impending misfortune. As I 
 gazed she danced more and more wildly. The 
 man standing by the porcelain stove was ap 
 parently making suggestions, to which she paid 
 no heed. At last her hair broke loose and fell 
 
38 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 over her shoulders ; and even this she did not 
 notice, going on with her dancing as though it 
 were a matter of life and death. Then one of 
 the doors opened and another woman stood on 
 the threshold. The man at the piano ceased 
 playing and left the instrument. The dancer 
 paused unwillingly, and looked pleadingly up 
 into the face of the younger man as he came 
 forward and put his arm around her. 
 
 And then once more the light died away and 
 I found myself peering into a void blackness. 
 This time, though I waited long, there were no 
 crackling sparks announcing another inexpli 
 cable vision. I peered intently into the stand, 
 but I saw nothing. At last I raised my head 
 and looked about me. Then on the hangings 
 over another of the four stands, over the one 
 opposite to that into which I had been looking, 
 there appeared another message, the letters 
 melting one into another in lines of liquid light ; 
 and this told me that in the other stand I could, 
 if I chose, gaze upon combats as memorable as 
 the delectable dances I had been beholding. 
 
 I made no hesitation, but crossed the room 
 and took my place before the other stand and 
 began at once to look through the projecting 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 39 
 
 eye-pieces. ISTo sooner had I taken this posi 
 tion than the dots of fire darted across the 
 depth into which I was gazing ; and then there 
 came a full clear light as of a cloudless sky, 
 and I saw the walls of an ancient city. At the 
 gates of the city there stood a young man, and 
 toward him there ran a warrior, brandishing a 
 spear, while the bronze of his helmet and his 
 armor gleamed in the sunlight. And trembling 
 seized the young man and he fled in fear ; and 
 the warrior darted after him, trusting in his 
 swift feet. Valiant was the flier, but far might 
 ier he who fleetingly pursued him. At last 
 the young man took heart and made a stand 
 against the warrior. They faced each other 
 in fight. The warrior hurled his spear and it 
 went over the young man s head. And the 
 young man then hurled his spear in turn and 
 it struck fair upon the centre of the warrior s 
 shield. Then the young man drew his sharp 
 sword that by his flank hung great and strong. 
 But by some magic the warrior had recovered 
 his spear; and as the young man came forward 
 he hurled it again, and it drove through the neck 
 of the young man at the joint of his armor, 
 and he fell in the dust. After that the sun 
 
40 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 was darkened ; and in a moment more I was 
 looking into an empty blackness. 
 
 "When again the light returned it was once 
 more with the full blaze of mid-day that the 
 scene was illumined, and the glare of the sun 
 was reflected from the burning sands of the des 
 ert. Two or three palms arose near a well, and 
 there two horsemen faced each other warily. 
 One was a Christian knight in a coat of linked 
 mail, over which he wore a surcoat of em 
 broidered cloth, much frayed and bearing more 
 than once the arms of the wearer a couchant 
 leopard. The other was a Saracen, who was 
 circling swiftly about the knight of the leop 
 ard. The crusader suddenly seized the mace 
 which hung at his saddle-bow, and with a 
 strong hand and unerring aim sent it crashing 
 against the head of his foe, who raised his 
 buckler of rhinoceros-hide in time to save his 
 life, though the force of the blow bore him 
 from the saddle. The knight spurred his steed 
 forward, but the Saracen leaped into his seat 
 again without touching the stirrup. While 
 the Christian recovered his mace, the infidel 
 withdrew to a little distance and strung the 
 short bow he carried at his back. Then he 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 41 
 
 A 
 
 circled about his foe, whose armor stood him 
 in good stead, until the seventh shaft appar 
 ently found a less perfect part, and the Chris 
 tian dropped heavily from his horse. But the 
 dismounted Oriental found himself suddenly in 
 the grasp of the European, who had recourse 
 to this artifice to bring his enemy within his 
 reach. The Saracen was saved again by his 
 agility ; and loosing his sword-belt, which the 
 knight had grasped, he mounted his watching 
 horse. He had lost his sword and his arrows 
 and his turban, and these disadvantages seemed 
 to incline him for a truce. He approached 
 the Christian with his right hand extended, 
 but no longer in a menacing attitude. "What 
 the result of this proffer of a parley might be 
 I could not observe, fbr the figures became in 
 distinct, as though a cloud had settled down 
 on them ; and in a few seconds more all was 
 blank before me. 
 
 When the next scene grew slowly into view 
 I thought for a moment it might be a contin 
 uation of the preceding, for the country I be 
 held was also soaking in the hot sunlight of the 
 South, and there was also a mounted knight 
 in armor. A second glance undeceived me. 
 
42 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 This knight was old and thin and worn, and 
 his armor was broken and pieced, and his hel 
 met was but a barber s basin, and his steed 
 was a pitiful skeleton. His countenance was 
 sorrowful indeed, but there was that in his 
 manner which would stop any man from deny 
 ing his nobility. His eye was fired with a high 
 purpose and a lofty resolve. In the distance 
 before him were a group of windmills waving 
 their arms in the air, and the knight urged 
 forward his wretched horse as though to 
 charge them. Upon an ass behind him was a 
 fellow of the baser sort, a genial, simple fol 
 lower, seemingty serving him as his squire. 
 As the knight pricked forward his sorry steed 
 and couched his lance, the attendant appar 
 ently appealed to him, and tried to explain, 
 and even ventured on expostulation. But the 
 knight gave no heed to the protests of the 
 squire, who shook his head and dutifully fol 
 lowed his master. What the issue of this un 
 equal combat was to be I could not see, for 
 the inexorable veil of darkness fell swiftly. 
 
 Even after the stray sparks had again flitted 
 through the blackness into which I was gazing 
 daylight did not return, and it was with diffi- 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 43 
 
 culty I was able at last to make out a vague 
 street in a mediaeval city doubtfully outlined 
 by the hidden moon. From a window high 
 above the stones there came a faint glimmer. 
 Under this window stood a soldier worn with 
 the wars, who carried himself as though glad 
 now to be at home again. He seemed to hear 
 approaching feet, and he withdrew into the 
 shadow as two others advanced. One of these 
 was a handsome youth with an eager face, in 
 which spirituality and sensuality contended. 
 The other was older, of an uncertain age, and 
 his expression was mocking and evil ; he car 
 ried some sort of musical instrument, and to 
 this he seemed to sing while the younger man 
 looked up at the window. The soldier came 
 forward angrily and dashed the instrument to 
 the ground with his sword. Then the new 
 comers drew also, and the elder guarded while 
 the younger thrust. There were a few swift 
 passes, and then the younger of the two lunged 
 fiercely, and the soldier fell back on the stones 
 wounded to the death. Without a glance be 
 hind them, the two who had withstood his on 
 slaught withdrew, as the window above opened 
 and a fair-haired girl leaned forth. 
 
44 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Then nothing was visible, until after an in 
 terval the light once more returned and I saw a 
 sadder scene than any yet. In a hollow of the 
 bare mountains a little knot of men in dark- 
 blue uniforms were centred about their com 
 mander, whose long locks floated from beneath 
 his broad hat. Around this small band of no 
 more than a score of soldiers, thousands of 
 red Indians were raging, with exultant hate in 
 their eyes. The bodies of dead comrades lay 
 in narrowing circles about the thinning group 
 of blue-coats. The red men were picking off 
 their few surviving foes, one by one ; and the 
 white men could do nothing, for their car 
 tridges were all gone. They stood at bay, val 
 iant and defiant, despite their many wounds ; 
 but the line of their implacable foemen was 
 drawn tighter and tighter about them, and one 
 after another they fell forward dying or dead, 
 until at last only the long-haired commander 
 was left, sore wounded but unconquered in 
 spirit. 
 
 When this picture of strong men facing 
 death fearlessly was at last dissolved into 
 darkness like the others that had gone before, 
 I had an inward monition that it was the last 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 45 
 
 that would be shown me ; and so it was, for 
 although I kept my place at the stand for two 
 or three minutes more, no warning sparks dis 
 persed the opaque depth. 
 
 When I raised my head from the eye-pieces, 
 I became conscious that I was not alone. Al 
 most in the centre of the circular hall stood a 
 middle-aged man of distinguished appearance, 
 whose eyes were fixed upon me. I wondered 
 who he was, and whence he had come, and 
 how he had entered, and what it might be that 
 he wished with me. I caught a glimpse of a 
 smile that lurked vaguely on his lips. Neither 
 this smile nor the expression of his eyes was 
 forbidding, though both were uncanny and in 
 explicable." He seemed to be conscious of a 
 remoteness which would render futile any 
 effort of his towards friendliness. 
 
 How long we stood thus staring the one 
 at the other I do not know. My heart beat 
 heavily and my tongue refused to move when 
 at last I tried to break the silence. 
 
 Then he spoke, and his voice was low and 
 strong and sweet. 
 
 " You are welcome," he began, and I noted 
 that the accent was slightly foreign, Italian 
 
46 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 perhaps, or it might be French. " I am glad 
 always to show the visions I have under my 
 control to those who will appreciate them." 
 
 I tried to stammer forth a few words of 
 thanks and of praise for what I had seen. 
 
 "Did you recognize the strange scenes 
 shown to you by these two instruments ?" he 
 asked, after bowing gently in acknowledg 
 ment of my awkward compliments. 
 
 Then I plucked up courage and made bold 
 to express to him the surprise I had felt, not 
 only at the marvellous vividness with which 
 the actions had been repeated before my eyes, 
 like life itself in form and in color and in mo 
 tion, but also at the startling fact that some 
 of the things I had been shown were true and 
 some were false. Some of them had happened 
 actually to real men and women of flesh and 
 blood, while others were but bits of vain imag 
 ining of those who tell tales as an art and as a 
 means of livelihood. 
 
 I expressed myself as best I could, clumsily, 
 no doubt ; but he listened patiently and with 
 the smile of toleration on his lips. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " I understand your 
 surprise that the facts and the fictions are 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 47 
 
 mingled together in these visions of mine as 
 though there was little to choose between 
 them. You are not the first to wonder or to 
 express that wonder ; and the rest of them 
 were young like you. When you are as old 
 as I am when you have lived as long as I 
 when you have seen as much of life as I then 
 you will know, as I know, that fact is often 
 inferior to fiction, and that it is often also 
 one and the same thing ; for what might 
 have been is often quite as true as what 
 actually was ?" 
 
 I did not know what to say in answer to 
 this, and so I said nothing. 
 
 " What would you say to me," he went on 
 and now it seemed to me that his smile sug 
 gested rather pitying condescension than kind 
 ly toleration " what would you say to me, if 
 I were to tell you that I myself have seen all 
 the many visions unrolled before you in these 
 instruments ? What would you say, if I de 
 clared that I had gazed on the dances of Sa 
 lome and of Esmeralda? that I had beheld 
 the combat of Achilles and Hector and the 
 mounted fight of Saladin and the Knight of 
 the Leopard 3" 
 
48 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " You are not Time himself ?" I asked in 
 amaze. 
 
 He laughed lightly, and without bitterness 
 or mockery. 
 
 " No," he answered, promptly, " I am not 
 Time himself. And why should you think so ? 
 Have I a scythe ? Have I an hour-glass ? Have 
 I a forelock ? Do I look so very old, then ?" 
 
 I examined him more carefully to answer 
 this last question, and the more I scrutinized 
 him the more difficult I found it to declare his 
 age. At first I had thought him to be forty, 
 perhaps, or of a certainty less than fifty. But 
 now, though his hair was black, though his eye 
 was bright, though his step was firm, though 
 his gestures were free and sweeping, I had my 
 doubts ; and I thought I could perceive, one 
 after another, many impalpable signs of ex 
 treme old age. 
 
 Then, all at once, he grew restive under my 
 fixed gaze. 
 
 "But it is not about me that we need to 
 waste time now," he said, impatiently. " You 
 have seen what two of my instruments con 
 tain; would you like now to examine the 
 contents of the other two 2" 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 49 
 
 I answered in the affirmative. 
 
 " The two you have looked into are gratui 
 tous," he continued. " For what you beheld 
 in them there is no charge. But a sight of the 
 visions in the other two or in either one of 
 them must be paid for. So far, you are wel 
 come as my guest; but if you wish to see any 
 more you must pay the price." 
 
 I asked what the charge was, as I thrust my 
 hand into my pocket to be certain that I had 
 my purse with me. 
 
 He saw my gesture, and he smiled once 
 more. 
 
 " The visions I can set before you in those 
 two instruments you have not yet looked 
 into are visions of your own life," he said. 
 " In that stand there," and he indicated one 
 behind my back, " you can see five of the 
 most important episodes of your past." 
 
 I withdrew my hand from my pocket. " I 
 thank you," I said, " but I know my own past, 
 and I have no wish to see it again, however 
 cheap the spectacle." 
 
 "Then you will be more interested in the 
 fourth of my instruments," he said, as he 
 waved his thin, delicate hand towards the 
 
50 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 stand which stood in front of me. " In this 
 you can see your future !" 
 
 I made an involuntary step forward ; and 
 then, at a second thought, I shrank back again. 
 
 " The price of this is not high," he contin 
 ued, " and it is not payable in money." 
 
 "How, then, should I buy it?" I asked, 
 doubtingly. 
 
 "In life!" he answered, gravely. "The 
 vision of life must be paid for in life itself. 
 For every ten years of the future which I may 
 unroll before you here, you must assign me a 
 year of life twelve months to do with as 
 I will." 
 
 Strange as it seems to me now, I did not 
 doubt that he could do as he declared. I 
 hesitated, and then I fixed my resolve. 
 
 " Thank you," I said, and I saw that he was 
 awaiting my decision eagerly. " Thank you 
 again for what I have already seen and for 
 what you proffer me. But my past I have 
 lived once, and there is no need to turn over 
 again the leaves of that dead record. And 
 the future I must face as best I may, the more 
 bravely, I think, that I do not know what it 
 holds in store for me." 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 51 
 
 " The price is low," he urged. 
 
 " It must be lower still," I answered ; " it 
 might be nothing at all, and I should still de 
 cline. I cannot afford to be impatient now 
 and to borrow knowledge of the future. I 
 shall know all in good time." 
 
 He seemed not a little disappointed as I 
 said this. 
 
 Then he made a final appeal : " Would you 
 not wish to know even the matter of your 
 end ?" 
 
 " No," I answered. " That is no tempta 
 tion to me, for whatever it may be I must 
 find fortitude to undergo it somehow, whether 
 I am to pass away in my sleep in my bed, 
 or whether I shall have to withstand the 
 chances of battle and murder and sudden 
 death." 
 
 "That is your last word?" he inquired. 
 
 " I thank you again for what I have seen," 
 I responded, bowing again ; " but my decision 
 is final." 
 
 " Then I will detain you no longer," he said, 
 haughtily, and he walked towards the circling 
 curtains and swept two of them aside. They 
 draped themselves back, and I saw before me 
 
52 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 an opening like that through which I had 
 entered. 
 
 I followed him, and the curtains dropped be 
 hind me as I passed into the insufficiently illu 
 minated passage beyond. I thought that the 
 mysterious being with whom I had been con 
 versing had preceded me, but before I had gone 
 twenty paces I found that I was alone. I 
 pushed ahead, and my path twisted and turned 
 on itself and rose and fell irregularly like that 
 by means of which I had made my way into 
 the unknown edifice. At last I picked my 
 steps down winding stairs, and at the foot I 
 saw the outline of a door. I pushed it back, 
 and I found myself in the open air. 
 
 I was in a broad street, and over my head an 
 electric light suddenly flared out and white 
 washed the pavement at my feet. At the 
 corner a train of the elevated railroad rushed 
 by with a clattering roar and a trailing plume 
 of white steam. Then a cable -car clanged 
 past with incessant bangs upon its gong. Thus 
 it was that I came back to the world of 
 actuality. 
 
 I turned to get my bearings, that I might 
 find my way home again. I was standing 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE OF TIME 53 
 
 almost in front of a shop, the windows of 
 which were filled with framed engravings. 
 
 One of these caught my eye, and I confess 
 that I was surprised. It was a portrait of a 
 man it was a portrait of the man with whom 
 I had been talking. 
 
 I went close to the window, that I might 
 see it better. The electric light emphasized 
 the lines of the high-bred face, with its sombre 
 searching eyes and the air of old-world breed 
 ing. There could be no doubt whatever that 
 the original of this portrait was the man from 
 whom I had just parted. By the costume I 
 knew that the original had lived in the last 
 century; and the legend beneath the head, 
 engraved in a flowing script, asserted this to 
 be a likeness of "Monsieur le Comte de Cayli- 
 ostro" 
 
 (1895.) 
 
THE DREAM-GOWN OF THE JAPANESE 
 AMBASSADOR 
 
THE DREAM -GOWN OF THE 
 JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 
 
 FTER arranging the Egyptian and 
 Mexican pottery so as to contrast 
 agreeably with the Dutch and the 
 German beer-mugs on the top of 
 the bookcase that ran along one wall of the 
 sitting-room, Cosmo "Waynflete went back into 
 the bedroom and took from a half-empty trunk 
 the little cardboard boxes in which he kept the 
 collection of playing-cards, and of all manner 
 of outlandish equivalents for these simple in 
 struments of fortune, picked up here and there 
 during his two or three years of dilettante 
 travelling in strange countries. At the same 
 time he brought out a Japanese crystal ball, 
 which he stood upon its silver tripod, placing 
 
58 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 it on a little table in one of the windows on 
 each side of the fireplace ; and there the rays 
 of the westering sun lighted it up at once into 
 translucent loveliness. 
 
 The returned wanderer looked out of the win 
 dow and saw on one side the graceful and vigor 
 ous tower of the Madison Square Garden, with 
 its Diana turning in the December wind, while 
 in the other direction he could look down on 
 the frozen paths of Union Square, only a block 
 distant, but as far below him almost as though 
 he were gazing down from a balloon. Then he 
 stepped back into the sitting-room itself, and 
 noted the comfortable furniture and wood-fire 
 crackling in friendly fashion on the hearth, 
 and his own personal belongings, scattered here 
 and there as though they were settling them 
 selves for a stay. Having arrived from Europe 
 only that morning, he could not but hold him 
 self lucky to have found these rooms taken 
 for him by the old friend to whom he had an 
 nounced his return, and with whom he was to 
 eat his Christmas dinner that evening. He had 
 not been on shore more than six or seven hours, 
 and yet the most of his odds and ends were 
 unpacked and already in place as though they 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 59 
 
 belonged in this new abode. It was true that 
 he had toiled unceasingly to accomplish this, 
 and as he stood there in his shirt - sleeves, 
 admiring the results of his labors, he was con 
 scious also that his muscles were fatigued, and 
 that the easy-chair before the fire opened its 
 arms temptingly. 
 
 He went again into the bedroom, and took 
 from one of his many trunks a long, loose gar 
 ment of pale-gray silk. Apparently this beau 
 tiful robe was intended to serve as a dressing- 
 gown, and as such Cosmo Waynflete utilized it 
 immediately. The ample folds fell softly about 
 him, and the rich silk itself seemed to be sooth 
 ing to his limbs, so delicate was its fibre and 
 so carefully had it been woven. Around the 
 full skirt there was embroidery of threads of 
 gold, and again on the open and flowing sleeves. 
 With the skilful freedom of Japanese art the 
 pattern of this decoration seemed to suggest 
 the shrubbery about a spring, for there were 
 strange plants with huge leaves broadly out 
 lined by the golden threads, and in the midst 
 of them water was seen bubbling from the 
 earth and lapping gently over the edge of the 
 fountain. As the returned wanderer thrust 
 
60 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 his arms into the dressing-gown with its sym 
 bolic embroidery on the skirt and sleeves, he 
 remembered distinctly the dismal day when he 
 had bought it in a little curiosity-shop in Nu 
 remberg; and as he fastened across his chest 
 one by one the loops of silken cord to the three 
 coins which served as buttons down the front 
 of the robe, he recalled also the time and the 
 place where he had picked up each of these 
 pieces of gold and silver, one after another. The 
 first of them was a Persian daric, which he had 
 purchased from a dealer on the Grand Canal 
 in Yenice ; and the second was a Spanish peso 
 struck under Philip II. at Potosi, which he had 
 found in a stall on the embankment of the 
 Quay Voltaire, in Paris ; and the third was a 
 York shilling, which he had bought from the 
 man who had turned it up in ploughing a field 
 that sloped to the Hudson near Sleepy Hollow. 
 Having thus wrapped himself in this unusual 
 dressing-gown with its unexpected buttons of 
 gold and silver, Cosmo Waynflete went back 
 into the front room. He dropped into the 
 arm-chair before the fire. It was with a smile 
 of physical satisfaction that he stretched out 
 his feet to the hickory blaze. 
 
DKEAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 61 
 
 The afternoon was drawing on, and in New 
 York the sun sets early on Christmas day. 
 The red rays shot into the window almost 
 horizontally, and they filled the crystal globe 
 with a curious light. Cosmo Waynflete lay 
 back in his easy-chair, with his Japanese robe 
 about him, and gazed intently at the beautiful 
 ball which seemed like a bubble of air and 
 water. His mind went back to the afternoon 
 in April, two years before, when he had found 
 that crystal sphere in a Japanese shop within 
 sight of the incomparable Fugiyama. 
 
II 
 
 As he peered into its transparent depths, 
 with his vision focused upon the spot of light 
 where the rays of the setting sun touched it 
 into flame, he was but little surprised to dis 
 cover that he could make out tiny figures in 
 the crystal. For the moment this strange 
 thing seemed to him perfectly natural. And 
 the movements of these little men and women 
 interested him so much that he watched them 
 as they went to and fro, sweeping a roadway 
 with large brooms. Thus it happened that the 
 fixity of his gaze was intensified. And so it 
 was that in a few minutes he saw with no as 
 tonishment that he was one of the group him 
 self, he himself in the rich and stately attire 
 of a samurai. From the instant that Cosmo 
 Waynflete discovered himself among the peo 
 ple whom he saw moving before him, as his 
 eyes were fastened on the illuminated dot in 
 the transparent ball, he ceased to see them as 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 63 
 
 little figures, and he accepted them as of the 
 full stature of man. This increase in their 
 size was no more a source of wonderment to 
 him than it had been to discern himself in the 
 midst of them. He accepted both of these 
 marvellous things without question indeed, 
 with no thought at all that they were in any 
 way peculiar or abnormal. Not only this, but 
 thereafter he seemed to have transferred his 
 personality to the Cosmo "VVaynflete who was 
 a Japanese samurai and to have abandoned en 
 tirely the Cosmo Waynflete who was an Amer 
 ican traveller, and who had just returned to 
 New York that Christmas morning. So com 
 pletely did the Japanese identity dominate 
 that the existence of the American identity 
 was wholly unknown to him. It was as though 
 the American had gone to sleep in New York 
 at the end of the nineteenth century, and had 
 waked a Japanese in Nippon in the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century. 
 
 With his sword by his side a Murimasa 
 blade, likely to bring bad luck to the wearer 
 sooner or later he had walked from his own 
 house in the quarter of Kioto which is called 
 Yamashina to the quarter which is called 
 
64 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Yoshiwara, a place of ill repute, where dwell 
 women of evil life, and where roysterers and 
 drunkards come by night. He knew that the 
 sacred duty of avenging his master s death had 
 led him to cast off his faithful wife so that he 
 might pretend to riot in debauchery at the 
 Three Sea-Shores. The fame of his shameful 
 doings had spread abroad, and it must soon 
 come to the ears of the man whom he wished 
 to take unawares. Now he was lying prone 
 in the street, seemingly sunk in a drunken 
 slumber, so that men might see him and carry 
 the news to the treacherous assassin of his be 
 loved master. As he lay there that afternoon, 
 he revolved in his mind the devices he should 
 use to make away with his enemy when the 
 hour might be ripe at last for the accomplish 
 ment of his holy revenge. To himself he 
 called the roll of his fellow-ronins, now biding 
 their time, as he was, and ready always to obey 
 his orders and to follow his lead to the death, 
 when at last the sun should rise on the day of 
 vengeance. 
 
 So he gave no heed to the scoffs and the 
 jeers of those who passed along the street, 
 laughing him to scorn as they beheld him ly- 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 65 
 
 ing there in a stupor from excessive drink at 
 that inordinate hour of the day. And among 
 those who came by at last was a maji from 
 Satsuma, who was moved to voice the re 
 proaches of all that saw this sorry sight. 
 
 "Is not this Oishi Kuranosuke," said the 
 man from Satsuma, " who was a councillor of 
 Asano Takumi no Kami, and who, not having 
 the heart to avenge his lord, gives himself up 
 to women and wine ? See how he lies drunk 
 in the public street ! Faithless beast ! Fool and 
 craven ! Unworthy of the name of a samurai !" 
 
 And with that the man from Satsuma trod 
 on him as he lay there, and spat upon him, and 
 went away indignantly. The spies of Kotsuke 
 no Suke heard what the man from Satsuma 
 had said, and they saw how he had spurned the 
 prostrate samurai with his foot ; and they went 
 their way to report to their master that he 
 need no longer have any fear of the councillors 
 of Asano Takumi no Kami. All this the man, 
 lying prone in the dust of the street, noted ; 
 and it made his heart glad, for then he made 
 sure that the day was soon coming when he 
 could do his duty at last and take vengeance 
 for the death of his master. 
 
Ill 
 
 HE lay there longer than he knew, and the 
 twilight settled down at last, and the evening 
 stars came out. And then, after a while, and 
 by imperceptible degrees, Cosmo "VYaynflete 
 became conscious that the scene had changed 
 and that he had changed with it. He was no 
 longer in Japan, but in Persia. He was no 
 longer lying like a drunkard in the street of a 
 city, but slumbering like a weary soldier in a 
 little oasis by the side of a spring in the midst 
 of a sandy desert. He was asleep, and his 
 faithful horse was unbridled that it might 
 crop the grass at will. 
 
 The air was hot and thick, and the leaves 
 of the slim tree above him were never stirred 
 by a wandering wind. Yet now and again 
 there came from the darkness a faintly fetid 
 odor. The evening wore on and still he slept, 
 until at length in the silence of the night a 
 strange huge creature wormed its way steadily 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 67 
 
 out of its lair amid the trees, and drew near 
 the sleeping man to devour him fiercely. But 
 the horse neighed vehemently and beat the 
 ground with his hoofs and waked his master. 
 Then the hideous monster vanished ; and the 
 man, aroused from his sleep, saw nothing, al 
 though the evil smell still lingered in the 
 sultry atmosphere. He lay down again once 
 more, thinking that for once his steed had 
 given a false alarm. Again the grisly dragon 
 drew nigh, and again the courser notified its 
 rider, and again the man could make out 
 nothing in the darkness of the night; and 
 again he was wellnigh stifled by the foul 
 emanation that trailed in the wake of the 
 misbegotten creature. He rebuked his horse 
 and laid him down once more. 
 
 A third time the dreadful beast approached, 
 and a third time the faithful charger awoke 
 its angry master. But there came the breath 
 of a gentle breeze, so that the man did not 
 fear to fill his lungs ; and there was a vague 
 light in the heavens now, so that he could 
 dimly discern his mighty enemy ; and at once 
 he girded himself for the fight. The scaly 
 monster came full at him with dripping fangs, 
 
68 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 its mighty body thrusting forward its huge 
 and hideous head. The man met the attack 
 without fear and smote the beast full on the 
 crest, but the blow rebounded from its coat of 
 mail. 
 
 Then the faithful horse sprang forward and 
 bit the dreadful creature full upon the neck 
 and tore away the scales, so that its master s 
 sword could pierce the armored hide. So the 
 man was able to dissever the ghastly head and 
 thus to slay the monstrous dragon. The black 
 ness of night wrapped him about once more as 
 he fell on his knees and gave thanks for his 
 victory ; and the w^ind died away again. 
 
IV 
 
 ONLY a few minutes later, so it seemed to 
 him, Cosmo "Waynflete became doubtfully 
 aware of another change of time and place 
 of another transformation of his own being. 
 He knew himself to be alone once more, and 
 even without his trusty charger. Again he 
 found himself groping in the dark. But in a 
 little while there was a faint radiance of light, 
 and at last the moon came out behind a tower. 
 Then he saw that he was not by the roadside 
 in Japan or in the desert of Persia, but now 
 in some unknown city of Southern Europe, 
 where the architecture was hispano-moresque. 
 By the silver rays of the moon he was able to 
 make out the beautiful design damascened 
 upon the blade of the sword which he held 
 now in his hand ready drawn for self-defence. 
 
 Then he heard hurried footfalls down the 
 empty street, and a man rushed around the 
 corner pursued by two others, who had also 
 
70 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 weapons in their hands. For a moment Cosmo 
 Waynflete was a Spaniard, and to him it was 
 a point of honor to aid the weaker party. He 
 cried to the fugitive to pluck up heart and to 
 withstand the enemy stoutly. But the hunted 
 man fled on, and after him went one of the 
 pursuers, a tall, thin fellow, with a long black 
 cloak streaming behind him as he ran. 
 
 The other of the two, a handsome lad with 
 fair hair, came to a halt and crossed swords 
 with Cosmo, and soon showed himself to be 
 skilled in the art of fence. So violent was 
 the young fellow s attack that in the ardor of 
 self-defence Cosmo ran the boy through the 
 body before he had time to hold his hand or 
 even to reflect. 
 
 The lad toppled over sideways. " Oh, my 
 mother !" he cried, and in a second he was dead. 
 While Cosmo bent over the body, hasty foot 
 steps again echoed along the silent thorough 
 fare. Cosmo peered around the corner, and by 
 the struggling moonbeams he could see that it 
 was the tall, thin fellow in the black cloak, 
 who was returning with half a score of retain 
 ers, all armed, and some of them bearing 
 torches. 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 71 
 
 Cosmo turned and fled swiftly, but being a 
 stranger in the city he soon lost himself in its 
 tortuous streets. Seeing a light in a window 
 and observing a vine that trailed from the 
 balcony before it, he climbed up boldly, and 
 found himself face to face with a gray-haired 
 lady, whose visage was beautiful and kindly 
 and noble. In a few words he told her his 
 plight and besought sanctuary. She listened 
 to him in silence, with exceeding courtesy of 
 manner, as though she were weighing his 
 words before making up her mind. She raised 
 the lamp on her table and let its beams fall on 
 his lineaments. And still she made no answer 
 to his appeal. 
 
 Then came a glare of torches in the street 
 below and a knocking at the door. Then at 
 last the old lady came to a resolution; she 
 lifted the tapestry at the head of her bed and 
 told him to bestow himself there. No sooner 
 was he hidden than the tall, thin man in the 
 long black cloak entered hastily. He greeted 
 the elderly lady as his aunt, and he told her 
 that her son had been set upon by a stranger 
 in the street and had been slain. She gave a 
 great cry and never took her eyes from his 
 
72 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 face. Then he said that a servant had seen an 
 unknown man climb to the balcony of her 
 house. "What if it were the assassin of her son ? 
 The blood left her face and she clutched at 
 the table behind her, as she gave orders to 
 have the house searched. 
 
 When the room was empty at last she went 
 to the head of the bed and bade the man con 
 cealed there to come forth and begone, but to 
 cover his face, that she might not be forced to 
 know him again. So saying, she dropped on 
 her knees before a crucifix, while he slipped out 
 of the window again and down to the deserted 
 street. 
 
 He sped to the corner and turned it undis 
 covered, and breathed a sigh of relief and of 
 regret. He kept on steadily, gliding stealthily 
 along in the shadows, until he found himself 
 at the city gate as the bell of the cathedral 
 tolled the hour of midnight. 
 
How it was that he passed through the gate 
 he could not declare with precision, for seem 
 ingly a mist had settled about him. Yet a few 
 minutes later he saw that in some fashion he 
 must have got beyond the walls of the town, 
 for he recognized the open country all around. 
 And, oddly enough, he now discovered himself 
 to be astride a bony steed. He could not say 
 what manner of horse it was he was riding, 
 but he felt sure that it was not the faithful 
 charger that had saved his life in Persia, once 
 upon a time, in days long gone by, as it seemed 
 to him then. He was not in Persia now of 
 that he was certain, nor in Japan, nor in the 
 Iberian peninsula. Where he was he did not 
 know. 
 
 In the dead hush of midnight he could hear 
 the barking of a dog on the opposite shore of 
 a dusky and indistinct waste of waters that 
 spread itself far below him. The night gre\v 
 
74 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 darker and darker, the stars seemed to sink 
 deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasion 
 ally hid them from his sight. He had never 
 felt so lonely and dismal. In the centre of 
 the road stood an enormous tulip-tree ; its 
 limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough 
 to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting 
 down almost to the earth, and rising again 
 into the air. As he approached this fearful 
 tree he thought he saw something white hang 
 ing in the midst of it, but on looking more 
 narrowly he perceived it was a place where it 
 had been scathed by lightning and the white 
 wood laid bare. About two hundred yards 
 from the tree a small brook crossed the road ; 
 and as he drew near he beheld on the margin 
 of this brook, and in the dark shadow of the 
 grove he beheld something huge, misshapen, 
 black, and towering. It stirred not, but seemed 
 gathered up in the gloom like some gigantic 
 monster ready to spring upon the traveller. 
 
 He demanded, in stammering accents, " Who 
 are you ?" He received no reply. He repeated 
 his demand in a still more agitated voice. 
 Still there was no answer. And then the 
 shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 75 
 
 and with a scramble and a bound stood in the 
 middle of the road. He appeared to be a 
 horseman of large dimensions and mounted 
 on a black horse of powerful frame. Having 
 no relish for this strange midnight companion, 
 Cosmo Waynflete urged on his steed in hopes 
 of leaving the apparition behind ; but the 
 stranger quickened his horse also to an equal 
 pace. And when the first horseman pulled up, 
 thinking to lag behind, the second did like 
 wise. There was something in the moody and 
 dogged silence of this pertinacious companion 
 that was mysterious and appalling. It was 
 soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a 
 rising ground which brought the figure of his 
 fellow-traveller against the sky, gigantic in 
 height and muffled in a cloak, he was horror- 
 struck to discover the stranger was headless ! 
 but his horror was still more increased in 
 observing that the head which should have 
 rested on the shoulders was carried before the 
 body on the pommel of the saddle. 
 
 The terror of Cosmo Waynflete rose to des 
 peration, and he spurred his steed suddenly in 
 the hope of giving his weird companion the 
 slip. But the headless horseman started full 
 
76 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 jump with him. His own horse, as though pos 
 sessed by a demon, plunged headlong down the 
 hill. He could hear, however, the black steed 
 panting and blowing close behind him ; he 
 even fancied that he felt the hot breath of the 
 pursuer. When he ventured at last to cast a 
 look behind, he saw the goblin rising in the 
 stirrups, and in the very act of hurling at him 
 the grisly head. He fell out of the saddle to 
 the ground; and the black steed and the gob 
 lin rider passed by him like a whirlwind. 
 
VI 
 
 How long he lay there by the roadside, 
 stunned and motionless, he could not guess ; 
 but when he came to himself at last the sun 
 was already high in the heavens. He discov 
 ered himself to be reclining on the tall grass 
 of a pleasant graveyard which surrounded a 
 tiny country church in the outskirts of a pret 
 ty little village. It was in the early summer, 
 and the foliage was green above him as the 
 boughs swayed gently to and fro in the morn 
 ing breeze. The birds were singing gayly as 
 they flitted about over his head. The bees 
 hummed along from flower to flower. At last, 
 so it seemed to him, he had come into a land 
 of peace and quiet, where there was rest and 
 comfort and where no man need go in fear of 
 his life. It was a country where vengeance 
 was not a duty and where midnight combats 
 were not a custom. He found himself smiling 
 as he thought that a grisly dragon and a gob- 
 
78 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 lin rider would be equally out of place in this 
 laughing landscape. 
 
 Then the bell in the steeple of the little 
 church began to ring merrily, and he rose to 
 his feet in expectation. All of a sudden the 
 knowledge came to him why it was that they 
 were ringing. He wondered then why the 
 coming of the bride was thus delayed. He 
 knew himself to be a lover, with life opening 
 brightly before him ; and the world seemed to 
 him sweeter than ever before and more beau 
 tiful. 
 
 Then at last the girl whom he loved with his 
 whole heart and who had promised to marry 
 him appeared in the distance, and he thought 
 he had never seen her look more lovely. As 
 he beheld his bridal party approaching, he 
 slipped into the church to await her at the 
 altar. The sunshine fell full upon the portal 
 and made a halo about the girl s head as she 
 crossed the threshold. 
 
 But even when the bride stood by his side 
 and the clergyman had begun the solemn ser 
 vice of the church the bells kept on, and soon 
 their chiming became a clangor, louder and 
 sharper and more insistent. 
 
VII 
 
 So clamorous and so persistent was the ring 
 ing that Cosmo Waynflete was roused at last. 
 He found himself suddenly standing on his 
 feet, with his hand clutching the back of the 
 chair in which he had been sitting before the 
 fire when the rays of the setting sun had set 
 long ago. The room was dark, for it was 
 lighted now only by the embers of the burnt- 
 out fire; and the electric bell was ringing 
 steadily, as though the man outside the door 
 had resolved to waken the seven sleepers. 
 
 Then Cosmo Waynflete was wide-awake 
 again ; and he knew where he was once more 
 not in Japan, not in Persia, not in Lisbon, 
 not in Sleepy Hollow, but here in New York, 
 in his own room, before his own fire. He 
 opened the door at once and admitted his 
 friend, Paul Stuyvesant. 
 
 " It isn t dinner-time, is it ?" he asked. " I m 
 not late, ami ? The fact is, I ve been asleep." 
 
#0 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " It is so good of you to confess that," his 
 friend answered, laughing ; " although the 
 length of time you kept me waiting and ring 
 ing might have led me to suspect it. No, you 
 are not late and it is not dinner-time. I ve 
 come around to have another little chat with 
 you before dinner, that s all." 
 
 " Take this chair, old man," said Cosmo, as 
 he threw another hickory -stick on the fire. 
 Then he lighted the gas and sat down by the 
 side of his friend. 
 
 " This chair is comfortable, for a fact," Stuy- 
 vesant declared, stretching himself out luxuri 
 ously. " No wonder you went to sleep. What 
 did you dream of? strange places you had 
 seen in your travels or the homely scenes of 
 your native land." 
 
 Waynflete looked at his friend for a moment 
 without answering the question. He was start 
 led as he recalled the extraordinary series of 
 adventures which had fallen to his lot since he 
 had fixed his gaze on the crystal ball. It 
 seemed to him as though he had been whirled 
 through space and through time. 
 
 " I suppose every man is always the hero of 
 his own dreams," he began, doubtfully. 
 
DKEAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 
 
 81 
 
 " Of course," his friend returned ; " in sleep 
 our natural and healthy egotism is absolutely 
 unrestrained. It doesn t make any matter 
 where the scene is laid or whether the play is 
 a comedy or a tragedy, the dreamer has al 
 ways the centre of the stage, with the calcium 
 light turned full on him." 
 
 " That s just it," Waynflete went on ; " this 
 dream of mine makes me feel as if I were an 
 actor, and as if I had been playing many parts, 
 one after the other, in the swiftest succession. 
 They are not familiar to me, and yet I confess 
 to a vague feeling of unoriginality. It is as 
 though I were a plagiarist of adventure if that 
 be a possible supposition. I have just gone 
 through these startling situations myself, and 
 yet I m sure that they have all of them hap 
 pened before although, perhaps, not to any 
 one man. Indeed, no one man could have had 
 all these adventures of mine, because I see now 
 that I have been whisked through the centu 
 ries and across the hemispheres with a sudden 
 ness possible only in dreams. Yet all my ex 
 periences seem somehow second-hand, and not 
 really my own." 
 
 u Ticked up here and there like your brie- 
 
82 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 a-brac ?" suggested Stuy vesant. " But what 
 are these alluring adventures of yours that 
 stretched through the ages and across the 
 continents?" 
 
 Then, knowing how fond his friend was of 
 solving mysteries and how proud he was of his 
 skill in this art, Cosmo Waynflete narrated his 
 dream as it has been set down in these pages. 
 
 When he had made an end, Paul Stuyve- 
 sant s first remark was: "I m sorry I hap 
 pened along just then and waked you up be 
 fore you had time to get married." 
 
 His second remark followed half a minute 
 later. 
 
 " I see how it was," he said ; " you were sit 
 ting in this chair and looking at that crystal 
 ball, which focussed the level rays of the set 
 ting sun, I suppose ? Then it is plain enough 
 you hypnotized yourself !" 
 
 " I have heard that such a thing is possible," 
 responded Cosmo. 
 
 " Possible?" Stuy vesant returned, "it is cer 
 tain ! Bat what is more curious is the new way 
 in which vou combined your self - h} 7 pnotism 
 with crystal-gazing. You have heard of scry 
 ing, I suppose?" 
 
DKEAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 83 
 
 " You mean the practice of looking into a 
 drop of water or a crystal ball or anything of 
 that sort," said Cosmo, " and of seeing things 
 in it of seeing people moving about ?" 
 
 " That s just what I do mean," his friend 
 returned. "And that s just what you have 
 been doing. You fixed your gaze on the ball, 
 and so hypnotized yourself ; and then, in the 
 intensity of your vision, you were able to see 
 figures in the crystal with one of which vis 
 ualized emanations you immediately identified 
 yourself. That s eas}^ enough, I think. But 
 I don t see what suggested to you your separate 
 experiences. I recognize them, of course " 
 
 "You recognize them?" cried Waynflete, 
 in wonder. 
 
 " I can tell you where you borrowed every 
 one of your adventures," Stuyvesant replied, 
 " But what I d like to know now is what sug 
 gested to you just those particular characters 
 and situations, and not any of the many oth 
 ers also stored away in your subconsciousness." 
 
 So saying, he began to look about the room. 
 
 "My subconsciousness?" repeated Wayn 
 flete. "Have I ever been a samurai in my 
 subconsciouisiiess ?" 
 
84 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Paul Stuyvesant looked at Cosmo Wayn- 
 flete for nearly a minute without reply. Then 
 all the answer he made was to say : " That s a 
 queer dressing-gown you have on." 
 
 "It is time I took it off," said the other, as 
 he twisted himself out of its clinging folds. 
 " It is a beautiful specimen of weaving, isn t 
 it ? I call it the dream-gown of the Japanese 
 ambassador, for although I bought it in a curi 
 osity-shop in Nuremberg, it was once, I really 
 believe, the slumber-robe of an Oriental en 
 voy." 
 
 Stuyvesant took the silken garment from his 
 friend s hand. 
 
 " Why did the Japanese ambassador sell 
 you his dream-gown in a Nuremberg curios 
 ity-shop ?" he asked. 
 
 " He didn t," Waynflete explained. " I nev 
 er saw the ambassador, and neither did the old 
 German lady who kept the shop. She told me 
 she bought it from a Japanese acrobat who was 
 out of an engagement and desperately hard up. 
 But she told me also that the acrobat had told 
 her that the garment had belonged to an am 
 bassador who had given it to him as a reward 
 of his skill, and that he never would have 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 85 
 
 parted with it if he had not been dead- 
 broke." 
 
 Stuyvesant held the robe up to the light 
 and inspected the embroidery on the skirt of it. 
 
 " Yes," he said, at last, " this would account 
 for it, I suppose. This bit here was probably 
 meant to suggest the well where the head 
 was washed, see ?" 
 
 " I see that those lines may be meant to 
 represent the outline of a spring of water, 
 but I don t see what that has to do with my 
 dream," Waynflete answered. 
 
 " Don t you?" Stuyvesant returned. "Then 
 I ll show you. You had on this silk garment 
 embroidered here with an outline of the well 
 in which was washed the head of Kotsuke no 
 Suke, the man whom the Forty-Seven Eonins 
 killed. You know the story ?" 
 
 " I read it in Japan, but " began Cosmo. 
 
 " You had that story stored away in your 
 subconsciousness," interrupted his friend. 
 " And when you hypnotized yourself by peer 
 ing into the crystal ball, this embroidery it 
 was which suggested to you to see yourself as 
 the hero of the tale Oishi Kuranosuke, the 
 chief of the Forty-Seven Ron ins, the faithful 
 
86 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 follower who avenged his master by pretend 
 ing to be vicious and dissipated just like 
 Brutus and Lorenzaccio until the enemy was 
 off his guard and open to attack." 
 
 " I think I do recall the tale of the Forty- 
 Seven Eonins, but only very vaguely," said 
 the hero of the dream. "For all I know I 
 may have had the adventure of Oishi Kuran- 
 osuke laid on the shelf somewhere in mv sub- 
 consciousness, as you want me to believe. But 
 how about my Persian dragon and my Iberian 
 noblewoman ?" 
 
 Paul Stuyvesant was examining the dream- 
 gown of the Japanese ambassador with mi 
 nute care. Suddenly he said, " Oh !" and 
 then he looked up at Cosmo Waynflete and 
 asked : " What are those buttons ? They seem 
 to be old coins." 
 
 "They are old coins," the other answered ; 
 " it was a fancy of mine to utilize them on 
 that Japanese dressing-gown. They are all 
 different, you see. The first is " 
 
 " Persian, isn t it ?" interrupted Stuyvesant. 
 
 " Yes," Waynflete explained, " it is a Persian 
 
 daric. And the second is a Spanish peso made 
 
 at Potosi under Philip II. for use in America. 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 87 
 
 And the third is a York shilling, one of the 
 coins in circulation here in New York at the 
 time of the [Revolution I got that one, in fact, 
 from the farmer who ploughed it up in a field 
 at Tarrytown, near Sunnyside." 
 
 " Then there are three of your adventures 
 accounted for, Cosmo, and easily enough," 
 Paul commented, with obvious satisfaction at 
 his own explanation. " Just as the embroidery 
 on the silk here suggested to you after you 
 had hypnotized yourself that you were the 
 chief of the Forty-Seven Konins, so this first 
 coin here in turn suggested to you that you 
 were Eastern, the hero of the < Epic of Kings. 
 You have read the Shah-Nameh? 
 
 " I remember Firdausi s poem after a fash 
 ion only," Cosmo answered. " Was not Rus- 
 tem a Persian Hercules, so to speak ?" 
 
 < That s it precisely," the other responded, 
 "and he had seven labors to perform; and 
 you dreamed the third of them, the slaying of 
 the grisly dragon. For my own part, I think I 
 should have preferred the fourth of them, the 
 meeting with the lovely enchantress; but that s 
 neither here nor there." 
 
 " It seems to me I do recollect something 
 
88 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 about that fight of Eustem and the strange 
 beast. The faithful horse s name was Eakush, 
 wasn t it ?" asked Waynflete. 
 
 " If you can recollect the Shah-N ameh, " 
 Stuyvesant pursued, " no doubt you can recall 
 also Beaumont and Fletcher s c Custom of the 
 Country? That s where you got the mid 
 night duel in Lisbon and the magnanimous 
 mother, you know." 
 
 " No, I didn t know," the other declared. 
 " Well, you did, for all that," Paul went on. 
 u The situation is taken from one in a drama 
 of Calderon s, and it was much strengthened 
 in the taking. You may not now remember 
 having read the play, but the incident must 
 have been familiar to you, or else your subcon- 
 sciousness couldn t have yielded it up to you 
 so readily at the suggestion of the Spanish 
 coin, could it ?" 
 
 "I did read a lot of Elizabethan drama 
 in my senior year at college," admitted Cos 
 mo, " and this piece of Beaumont and Fletch 
 er s may have been one of those I read ; but I 
 totally fail to recall now what it was all 
 about." 
 
 " You won t have the cheek to declare that 
 
DREAM-GOWN OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR 89 
 
 you don t remember the Legend of Sleepy 
 Hollow, will you?" asked Stuyvesant. " Yery 
 obviously it was the adventure of Ichabod 
 Crane and the Headless Horseman that the 
 York shilling suggested to you." 
 
 " I ll admit that I do recollect Irving s story 
 now," the other confessed. 
 
 So the embroidery on the dream-gown gives 
 the first of your strange situations ; and the 
 three others were suggested by the coins you 
 have been using as buttons," said Paul Stuy 
 vesant. " There is only one thing now that 
 puzzles me : that is the country church and 
 the noon wedding and the beautiful bride." 
 
 And with that he turned over the folds of 
 the silken garment that hung over his arm. 
 
 Cosmo Waynflete hesitated a moment and a 
 blush mantled his cheek. Then he looked his 
 friend in the face and said : " I think I can ac 
 count for my dreaming about her I can ac 
 count for that easily enough." 
 
 " So can I," said Paul Stuyvesant, as he 
 held up the photograph of a lovely American 
 girl that he had just found in the pocket of 
 the dream-gown of the Japanese ambassador. 
 
 (189G. ) 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 
 
THE EIYAL GHOSTS 
 
 I HE good ship sped on her way 
 across the calm Atlantic. It was 
 an outward passage, according to 
 the little charts which the com 
 pany had charily distributed, but most of the 
 passengers were homeward bound, after a 
 summer of rest and recreation, and they were 
 counting the days before they might hope to 
 see Fire Island Light. On the lee side of the 
 boat, comfortably sheltered from the wind, 
 and just by the door of the captain s room 
 (which was theirs during the day), sat a little 
 group of returning Americans. The Duchess 
 (she was down on the purser s list as Mrs. 
 Martin, but her friends and familiars called 
 her the Duchess of Washington Square) and 
 Baby Yan Kensselaer (she was quite old 
 enough to vote, had her sex been entitled to 
 
94 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 that duty, but as the younger of two sisters 
 she was still the baby of the family) the 
 Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer were dis 
 cussing the pleasant English voice and the 
 not unpleasant English accent of a manly 
 young lordling who was going to America 
 for sport. Uncle Larry and Dear Jones were 
 enticing each other into a bet on the ship s 
 run of the morrow. 
 
 " I ll give you two to one she don t make 
 420," said Dear Jones. 
 
 " I ll take it," answered Uncle Larry. " We 
 made 427 the fifth day last year." It was 
 Uncle Larry s seventeenth visit to Europe, and 
 this was therefore his thirty-fourth voyage. 
 
 "And when did you get in?" asked Baby 
 Van Kensseiaer. " I don t care a bit about 
 the run, so long as we get in soon." 
 
 "We crossed the bar Sunday night, just 
 seven days after we left Queenstown, and we 
 dropped anchor off Quarantine at three o clock 
 on Monday morning." 
 
 "I hope we sha n t do that this time. I 
 can t seem to sleep any when the boat stops." 
 
 "I can, but I didn t," continued Uncle 
 Larry, " because my state-room was the most 
 
THE KIVAL GHOSTS 95 
 
 for ard in the boat, and the donkey-engine 
 that let down the anchor was right over my 
 head." 
 
 " So you got up and saw the sun rise over 
 the bay," said Dear Jones, " with the electric 
 lights of the city twinkling in the distance, 
 and the first faint flush of the dawn in the 
 east just over Fort Lafayette, and the rosy 
 tinge which spread softly upward, and " 
 
 " Did you both come back together ?" asked 
 the Duchess. 
 
 " Because he has crossed thirty -four times 
 you must not suppose he has a monopoly in 
 sunrises," retorted Dear Jones. "No; this 
 was my own sunrise ; and a mighty pretty one 
 it was too." 
 
 " I m not matching sunrises with you," re 
 marked Uncle Larry calmly ; " but I m will 
 ing to back a merry jest called forth by 
 my sunrise against any two merry jests called 
 forth by yours." 
 
 " I confess reluctantly that my sunrise 
 evoked no merry jest at all." Dear Jones 
 was an honest man, and would scorn to in 
 vent a merry jest on the spur of the mo 
 ment. 
 
( J6 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " That s where my sunrise has the call," 
 said Uncle Larry, complacently. 
 
 "What was the merry jest?" was Baby 
 Yan Eensselaer s inquiry, the natural result of 
 a feminine curiosity thus artistically excited. 
 
 " Well, here it is. I was standing aft, near 
 a patriotic American and a wandering Irish 
 man, and the patriotic American rashly de 
 clared that you couldn t see a sunrise like that 
 anywhere in Europe, and this gave the Irish 
 man his chance, and he said, Sure ye don t 
 have m here till we re through with em over 
 there. " 
 
 " It is true," said Dear Jones, thoughtfully, 
 "that they do have some things over there 
 better than we do ; for instance, umbrellas." 
 
 " And gowns," added the Duchess. 
 
 "And antiquities" this was Uncle Larry s 
 contribution. 
 
 " And we do have some things so much 
 better in America !" protested Baby Van Rens- 
 selaer, as yet uncorrupted by any worship of 
 the effete monarchies of despotic Europe. 
 " We make lots of things a great deal nicer 
 than you can get them in Europe especially 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 97 
 
 " And pretty girls," added Dear Jones ; but 
 he did not look at her. 
 
 " And spooks," remarked Uncle Larry, casu 
 ally. 
 
 " Spooks ?" queried the Duchess. 
 
 " Spooks. I maintain the word. Ghost, if 
 you like that better, or spectres. We turn out 
 the best quality of spook " 
 
 " You forget the lovely ghost stories about 
 the Rhine and the Black Forest," interrupted 
 Miss Yan Rensselaer, with feminine inconsist 
 ency. 
 
 " I remember the Rhine and the Black 
 Forest and all the other haunts of elves and 
 fairies and hobgoblins ; but for good, honest 
 spooks there is no place like home. And 
 what differentiates our spook spiritus Ameri- 
 canus from the ordinary ghost of literature 
 is that it responds to the American sense of 
 humor. Take Irving s stories, for example. 
 The Headless Horseman that s a comic 
 ghost story. And Rip Yan Winkle consider 
 what humor, and what good humor, there is 
 in the telling of his meeting with the goblin 
 crew of Hendrik Hudson s men ! A still bet 
 ter example of this American way of dealing 
 
TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 with legend and mystery is the marvellous 
 tale of the rival ghosts." 
 
 " The rival ghosts !" queried the Duchess and 
 Baby Van Eensselaer together. " Who were 
 they?" 
 
 "Didn t I ever tell you about them?" an 
 swered Uncle Larry, a gleam of approaching 
 joy flashing from his eye. 
 
 " Since he is bound to tell us sooner or later, 
 we d better be resigned and hear it now," said 
 Dear Jones. 
 
 " If you are not more eager, I won t tell it 
 at all." 
 
 "Oh, do, Uncle Larry ! you know I just 
 dote on ghost stories," pleaded Baby Van 
 Eensselaer, 
 
 " Once upon a time," began Uncle Larry 
 "in fact, a very few years ago there lived 
 in the thriving town of New York a young 
 American called Duncan Eliphalet Duncan. 
 Like his name, he was half Yankee and half 
 Scotch, and naturally he was a lawyer, and 
 had come to New York to make his way. 
 His father was a Scotchman who had come 
 over and settled in Boston and married a 
 Salem girl. When Eliphalet Duncan was 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 99 
 
 about twenty ho lost both of his parents. 
 His father left him enough money to give 
 him a start, and a strong feeling of pride in 
 his Scotch birth ; you see there was a title in 
 the family in Scotland, and although Eliph- 
 alet s father was the younger son of a young 
 er son, yet he always remembered, and always 
 bade his only son to remember, that this an 
 cestry was noble. His mother left him her 
 full share of Yankee grit and a little old house 
 in Salem which had belonged to her family 
 for more than two hundred years. She was a 
 Hitchcock, and the Hitch cocks had been set 
 tled in Salem since the year 1. It was a great- 
 great-grandfather of Mr. Eliphalet Hitchcock 
 who was foremost in the time of the Salem 
 witchcraft craze. And this little old house 
 which she left to my friend Eliphalet Duncan 
 was haunted." 
 
 " By the ghost of one of the witches, of 
 course ?" interrupted Dear Jones. 
 
 " Now how could it be the ghost of a witch, 
 since the witches were all burned at the stake ? 
 You never heard of anybody who was burned 
 having a ghost, did you ?" asked Uncle Larry. 
 
 " That s an argument in favor of cremation, 
 
100 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 at any rate," replied Dear Jones, evading the 
 direct question. 
 
 " It is, if you don t like ghosts, I do," said 
 Baby Van Rensselaer. 
 
 " And so do I," added Uncle Larry. " I love 
 a ghost as dearly as an Englishman loves a 
 lord." 
 
 " Go on with your story," said the Duchess, 
 majestically overruling all extraneous discus 
 sion. 
 
 " This little old house at Salem was haunt 
 ed," resumed Uncle Larry. " And by a very 
 distinguished ghost or at least by a ghost 
 with very remarkable attributes." 
 
 "What was he like?" asked Baby Van 
 Rensselaer, with a premonitory shiver of an 
 ticipatory delight. 
 
 " It had a lot of peculiarities. In the first 
 place, it never appeared to the master of the 
 house. Mostly it confined its visitations to 
 unwelcome guests. In the course of the last 
 hundred years it had frightened away four 
 successive mothers-in-law, while never intrud 
 ing on the head of the household." 
 
 " I guess that ghost had been one of the 
 boys when he was alive and in the flesh." 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 101 
 
 This was Dear Jones s contribution to the tell 
 ing of the tale. 
 
 "In the second place," continued Uncle 
 Larry, " it never frightened anybody the first 
 time it appeared. Only on the second visit 
 were the ghost - seers scared ; but then they 
 were scared enough for twice, and they rarely 
 mustered up courage enough to risk a third in 
 terview. One of the most curious character 
 istics of this well-meaning spook was that it 
 had no face or at least that nobody ever saw 
 its face." 
 
 " Perhaps he kept his countenance veiled ?" 
 queried the Duchess, who was beginning to 
 remember that she never did like ghost stories. 
 
 "That was what I was never able to find 
 out. I have asked several people who saw the 
 ghost, and none of them could tell me any 
 thing about its face, and yet while in its pres 
 ence they never noticed its features, and never 
 remarked on their absence or concealment. It 
 was only afterwards when they tried to recall 
 calmly all the circumstances of meeting with 
 the mysterious stranger that they became 
 aware that they had not seen its face. And 
 they could not say whether the features were 
 
102 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 covered, or whether they were wanting, or 
 what the trouble was. They knew only that 
 the face was never seen. And no matter how 
 often they might see it, they never fathomed 
 this mystery. To this day nobody knows 
 whether the ghost which used to haunt the 
 little old house in Salem had a face, or what 
 manner of face it had." 
 
 " How awfully weird !" said Baby Yan 
 Eensselaer. "And why did the ghost go 
 away ?" 
 
 "I haven t said it went away," answered 
 Uncle Larry, with much dignity, 
 
 " But you said it used to haunt the little old 
 house at Salem, so I supposed it had moved. 
 Didn t it ?" the young lady asked, 
 
 " You shall be told in due time. Eliphalet 
 Duncan used to spend most of his summer va 
 cations at Salem, and the ghost never bothered 
 him at all, for he was the master of the house 
 much to his disgust, too, because he wanted 
 to see for himself the mysterious tenant at will 
 of his property. But he never saw it, never. 
 He arranged with friends to call him when 
 ever it might appear, and he slept in the next 
 room with the door open ; and yet when their 
 
THE KIVAL GHOSTS 103 
 
 frightened cries waked him the ghost was 
 gone, and his only reward Avas to hear re 
 proachful sighs as soon as he went back to 
 bed. You see, the ghost thought it was not 
 fair of Eliphalet to seek an introduction which 
 was plainly unwelcome." 
 
 Dear Jones interrupted the story-teller by 
 getting up and tucking a heavy rug more 
 snugly around Baby Van Kensselaer s feet, for 
 the sky was now overcast and gray, and the 
 air was damp and penetrating. 
 
 " One fine spring morning," pursued Uncle 
 Larry, " Eliphalet Duncan received great news. 
 I told you that there was a title in the family 
 in Scotland, and that Eliphalet s father was 
 the younger son of a younger son. Well, it 
 happened that all Eliphalet s father s brothers 
 and uncles had died off without male issue ex 
 cept the eldest son of the eldest son, and he, of 
 course, bore the title, and was Baron Duncan 
 of Duncan. Now the great news that Elipha 
 let Duncan received in New York one fine 
 spring morning was that Baron Duncan and 
 his only son had been yachting in the Hebri 
 des, and they had been caught in a black 
 squall, and they were both dead. So my 
 
104 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 friend Eliphalet Duncan inherited the title 
 and the estates." 
 
 " How romantic !" said the Duchess. " So 
 he was a baron !" 
 
 "Well," answered Uncle Larry, j" he was a 
 baron if he chose. But he didn t choose." \ 
 
 "More fool he!" said Dear Jones, senten- 
 tiously. 
 
 " Well," answered Uncle Larry, " I m not 
 so sure of that. \ You see, Eliphalet Duncan 
 was half Scotch and half Yankee, and he had 
 two eyes to the main chance. He held his 
 tongue about his windfall of luck until he 
 could find out whether the Scotch estates 
 were enough to keep up the Scotch title. He 
 soon discovered that they were not, and that 
 the late Lord Duncan, having married money, 
 kept up such state as he could out of the rev 
 enues of the dowry of Lady Duncan. And 
 Eliphalet, he decided that he would rather be 
 a well-fed lawyer in New York, living com 
 fortably on his practice, than a starving lord 
 in Scotland, living scantily on his title." 
 
 " But he kept his title ?" asked the Duchess. 
 
 "Well," answered Uncle Larry, "he kept 
 it quiet. I knew it, and a friend or two more. 
 
THE KIVAL GHOSTS 105 
 
 But Eliphalet was a sight too smart to put 
 Baron Duncan of Duncan, Attorney and 
 Counsellor at La\v, on his shingle." 
 
 "What has all this got to do with your 
 ghost?" asked Dear Jones, pertinently. 
 
 " Nothing with that ghost, but a good deal 
 with another ghost. Eliphalet was very 
 learned in spirit lore perhaps because he 
 owned the haunted house at Salem, perhaps 
 because he was a Scotchman by descent. At 
 all events, he had made a special study of the 
 wraiths and w r hite ladies and banshees and 
 bogies of all kinds whose sayings and doings 
 and warnings are recorded in the annals of 
 the Scottish nobility. In fact, he was ac 
 quainted with the habits of every reputable 
 spook in the Scotch peerage. And he knew 
 that there was a Duncan ghost attached to 
 the person of the holder of the title of Baron 
 Duncan of Duncan." 1 
 
 " So, besides being the owner of a haunted 
 house in Salem, he was also a haunted man 
 in Scotland?" asked Baby Van Eensselaer. 
 
 "Just so. But the Scotch ghost was not 
 unpleasant, like the Salem ghost, although it 
 had one peculiarity in common with its trans- 
 
106 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 atlantic fellow-spook. It never appeared to 
 the holder of the title, just as the other never 
 was visible to the owner of the house. In 
 fact, the Duncan ghost was never seen at all. 
 It was a guardian angel only. Its sole duty 
 was to be in personal attendance on Baron 
 Duncan of Duncan, and to warn him of im 
 pending evil The traditions of the house 
 told that the Barons of Duncan had again and 
 again felt a premonition of ill fortune. Some 
 of them had yielded and withdrawn from the 
 venture they had undertaken, and it had 
 failed dismally. Some had been obstinate, 
 and had hardened their hearts, and had gone 
 on reckless to defeat and to death. In no 
 case had a Lord Duncan been exposed to peril 
 without fair warning." j 
 
 " Then how came it that the father and son 
 were lost in the yacht off the Hebrides ?" asked 
 Dear Jones. 
 
 " Because they were too enlightened to 
 yield to superstition. There is extant now a 
 letter of Lord Duncan, written to his wife a 
 few minutes before he and his son set sail, in 
 which he tells her how hard he has had to 
 struggle with an almost overmastering desire 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 107 
 
 to give up the trip. Had he obeyed the 
 friendly warning of the family ghost, the 
 letter would have been spared a journey 
 across the Atlantic." 
 
 " Did the ghost leave Scotland for America 
 as soon as the old baron died?" asked Baby 
 Yan Rensselaer, with much interest. 
 
 " How did he come over," queried Dear 
 Jones " in the steerage, or as a cabin pas 
 senger ?" 
 
 "I don t know," answered Uncle Larry ? 
 calmly, "and Eliphalet didn t know. Forjas 
 he was in no danger, and stood in no need 
 of warning, he couldn t tell whether the ghost 
 was on duty OF not. Of course he was on the 
 watch for it all the time. But he never got 
 any proof of its presence until he went down 
 to the little old house of Salem, just before 
 the Fourth of July. He took a friend down 
 with him a young fellow who had been in 
 the regular army since the day Fort Sumter 
 was fired on, and who thought that after four 
 years of the little unpleasantness down South, 
 including six months in Libby, and after ten 
 years of fighting the bad Indians on the plains, 
 hef wasn t likely to be much frightened by a 
 
108 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 ghost. Well, Eliphalet and the officer sat out 
 on the porch all the evening smoking and 
 talking over points in military law. A little 
 after twelve o clock, just as they began to 
 think it was about time to turn in, they heard 
 the most ghastly noise in the house. It wasn t 
 a shriek, or a howl, or a yell, or anything they 
 could put a name to. It was an undetermin- 
 ate, inexplicable shiver and shudder of sound, 
 which went wailing out of the window. The 
 officer had been at Cold Harbor, but he felt 
 himself getting colder this time. Eliphalet 
 knew it was the ghost who haunted the house. 
 As this weird sound died away, it was followed 
 by another, sharp, short, blood-curdling in its 
 intensity. Something in this cry seemed fa 
 miliar to Eliphalet, and he felt sure that it pro 
 ceeded from the family ghost, the warning 
 wraith of the Duncans." 
 
 - 
 
 u Do I understand you to intimate that both 
 ghosts were there together?" inquired the 
 Duchess, anxiously. 
 
 " Both of them were there," answered Uncle 
 Larry. " You see, one of them belonged to 
 the house, and had to be there all the time, 
 and the other was attached to the person of 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 109 
 
 Baron Duncan, and had to follow him there ; 
 wherever he was, there was that ghost also. 
 But Eliphalet, he had scarcely time to think 
 this out when he heard both sounds again, not 
 one after another, but both together, and some 
 thing told him some sort of an instinct he 
 had that those two ghosts didn t agree, didn t 
 get on together, didn t exactly hit it off ; in 
 jact, that they were quarrelling." 
 
 " Quarrelling ghosts 1 Well, I never !" was 
 Baby Yan Eensselaer s remark. 
 
 " It is a blessed thing to see ghosts dwell 
 together in unity," said Dear Jones. 
 
 And the Duchess added, " It would certain 
 ly be setting a better example." 
 
 " You know," resumed Uncle Larry, " that 
 two waves of light or of sound may interfere 
 and produce darkness or silence. So it was 
 with these rival spooks. They interfered, but 
 they did not produce silence or darkness. On 
 the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the offi 
 cer went into the house, there began at once a 
 series of spiritualistic manifestations a regular 
 dark seance. A tambourine was played upon, 
 a bell was rung, and a naming banjo went sing 
 ing around the room." 
 
110 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 "Where did they get the banjo?" asked 
 Dear Jones, sceptically. 
 
 " I don t know. Materialized it, maybe, just 
 as they did the tambourine. You don t sup 
 pose a quiet New York lawyer kept a stock of 
 musical instruments large enough to fit out a 
 strolling minstrel troupe just on the chance of 
 a pair of ghosts coming to give him a surprise 
 party, do you ? Every spook has its own in 
 strument of torture. Angels play on harps, 
 I m informed, and spirits delight in banjos and 
 tambourines. These spooks of Eliphalet Dun 
 can s were ghosts with all modern improve 
 ments, and I guess they were capable of pro 
 viding their own musical weapons. At all 
 events, they had them there in the little old 
 house at Salem the night Eliphalet and his 
 friend came down. And they played on them, 
 and they rang the bell, and they rapped here, 
 there, and everywhere. ) And they kept it up 
 all night." 
 
 u All night ?" asked the awe-stricken Duch 
 ess. 
 
 " All night long," said Uncle Larry, solemnly ; 
 "and the next night too. Eliphalet did not 
 get a wink of sleep, neither did his friend. On 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 111 
 
 the second night the house ghost was seen by 
 the officer; on the third night it showed it 
 self again ; and the next morning the officer 
 packed his gripsack and took the first train to 
 Boston. He was a New-Yorker, but he said 
 he d sooner go to Boston than see that ghost 
 again. Eliphalet wasn t scared at all, part 
 ly because he never saw either the domicili 
 ary or the titular spook, and partly because 
 he felt himself on friendly terms with the 
 spirit world, and didn t scare easily. But after 
 losing three nights sleep and the society of 
 his friend, he began to be a little impatient, 
 and to think that the thing had gone far 
 enough. You see, while in a way he was 
 fond of ghosts, yet he liked them best one at 
 a time. Two ghosts were one too many. He 
 wasn t bent on making a collection of spooks. 
 He and one ghost were company, but he and 
 two ghosts were a crowd." 
 
 " What did he do ?" asked Baby Yan Kens- 
 selaer. 
 
 " "Well, he couldn t do anything. He waited 
 awhile, hoping they would get tired ; but he 
 got tired out first. You see, it comes natural 
 to a spook to sleep in the daytime, but a man 
 
112 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 wants to sleep nights, and they wouldn t let 
 him sleep nights. They kept on wrangling 
 and quarrelling incessantly ; they manifested 
 and they dark-seanced as regularly as the old 
 clock on the stairs struck twelve ; they rapped 
 and they rang bells and they banged the tam 
 bourine and they threw the flaming banjo 
 about the house, and, worse than all, they 
 swore." 
 
 " I did not know that spirits were addicted 
 to bad language," said the Duchess. 
 
 " How did he know they were swear 
 ing? Could he hear them?" asked Dear 
 Jones. 
 
 " That was just it," responded Uncle Larry ; 
 " he could not hear them at least, not dis 
 tinctly. There were inarticulate murmurs and 
 stifled rumblings. But the impression pro 
 duced on him was that they were swearing. 
 If they had only sworn right out, he would 
 not have minded it so much, because he would 
 have known the worst. But the feeling that 
 the air was full of suppressed profanity was 
 very wearing, and after standing it for a week 
 he gave up in disgust and went to the White 
 Mountains." 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 113 
 
 " Leaving them to fight it out, I suppose," 
 interjected Baby Yan Kensselaer. 
 
 " Not at all," explained Uncle Larry. " They 
 could not quarrel unless he was present. You 
 see, he could not leave the titular ghost behind 
 him, and the domiciliary ghost could not leave 
 the house. "When he went away he took the 
 family ghost with him, leaving the house ghost 
 behind. Now spooks can t quarrel when the} 7 
 are a hundred miles apart any more than men 
 can." 
 
 "And what happened afterwards?" asked 
 Baby Yan Eensselaer, with a pretty impatience. 
 
 " A most marvellous thing happened. Eliph- 
 alet Duncan went to the White Mountains, 
 and in the car of the railroad that runs to the 
 top of Mount Washington he met a classmate 
 whom he had not seen for years, and this class 
 mate introduced Duncan to his sister, and this 
 sister was a remarkably pretty girl, and Dun 
 can fell in love with her at first sight, and by 
 the time he got to the top of Mount Washing 
 ton he was so deep in love that he began to 
 consider his own unworthiness, and to wonder 
 whether she might ever be induced to care 
 for him a little ever so little." 
 
114 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " I don t think that is so marvellous a thing," 
 said Dear Jones, glancing at Baby Yan Rens- 
 selaer. 
 
 "Who was she?" asked the Duchess, who 
 had once lived in Philadelphia. 
 
 " She was Miss Kitty Sutton, of San Fran 
 cisco, and she was a daughter of old Judge 
 Sutton, of the firm of Pixley & Sutton." 
 
 "A very respectable family," assented the 
 Duchess. 
 
 " I hope she wasn t a daughter of that loud 
 and vulgar old Mrs. Sutton whom I met at 
 Saratoga one summer four or five years 
 ago ?" said Dear Jones. 
 
 " Probably she was," Uncle Larry responded. 
 
 " She was a horrid old woman. The boys 
 usedjbp call her Mother Gorgon." 
 
 " The pretty Kitty Sutton with whom Eliph- 
 alet Duncan had fallen in love was the dauo-h- 
 
 o 
 
 ter of Mother Gorgon. But he never saw the 
 mother, who was in Frisco, or Los Angeles, 
 or Santa Fe, or somewhere out West, and he 
 saw a great deal of the daughter, who was up 
 in the White Mountains. She was travelling 
 with her brother and his wife, and as they 
 journeyed from hotel to hotel Duncan went 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 115 
 
 with them, and filled out the quartette. Be 
 fore the end of the summer he began to think 
 about proposing. Of course he had lots of 
 chances, going on excursions as they were 
 every day. He made up his mind to seize the 
 first opportunity, and that very evening he 
 took her out for a moonlight row on Lake 
 Winipiseogee. As he handed her into the 
 boat he resolved to do it, and he had a glim 
 mer of a suspicion that she knew he was going 
 _tojdo it, too." 
 
 " Girls," said Dear Jones, " never go out 
 in a row-boat at night with a young man un 
 less you mean to accept him." 
 
 " Sometimes it s best to refuse him, and 
 get it over once for all," said Baby Yan Kens- 
 selaer, impersonally. 
 
 " As Eliphalet took the oars he felt a sudden 
 chill. He tried to shake it off, but in vain. 
 He began to have a growing consciousness of 
 impending evil. Before he had taken ten 
 strokes and he was a swift oarsman he was 
 aware of a mysterious presence between him 
 and Miss Button." 
 
 
 
 " Was it the guardian-angel ghost warning 
 him off the match?" interrupted Dear Jones. 
 
116 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " That s just what it was," said Uncle Lar 
 ry. [" And he yielded to it, and kept his peace, 
 and rowed Miss Button back to the hotel with 
 his proposal unspoken." j 
 
 " More fool he," said Dear Jones. " It will 
 take more than one ghost to keep me from 
 proposing when my mind is made up." And 
 he looked at Baby Van Rensselaer. 
 
 I" The next morning," continued Uncle Larry, 
 " Eliphalet overslept himself, and when he went 
 down to a late breakfast he found that the 
 Buttons had gone to New York by the morning 
 train. He wanted to follow them at once, and 
 again he felt the mysterious presence over 
 powering his will. He struggled two days, 
 and at last he roused himself to do what he 
 wanted in spite of the spook. When he arrived 
 in New York it was late in the evening. He 
 dressed himself hastily, and went to the hotel 
 where the Buttons were, in the hope of seeing 
 at least her brother. The guardian angel fought 
 every inch of the walk with him, until he began 
 to wonder whether, if Miss Button were to take 
 him, the spook would forbid the banns. At 
 the hotel he saw no one that night, and he 
 went home determined to call as early as he 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 117 
 
 could the next afternoon, and make an end of 
 it. When he left his office about two o clock 
 the next day to learn his fate, he had not 
 walked five blocks before he discovered that 
 the wraith of the Duncans had withdrawn his 
 opposition to the suit. There was no feeling 
 of impending evil, no resistance, no struggle, 
 no consciousness of an opposing presence. 
 Eliphalet was greatly encouraged. He walked 
 briskly to the hotel ; he found Miss Sutton 
 alone. He asked her the question, and got his 
 janswer." 
 
 " She accepted him, of course ?" said Baby 
 Yan Rensselaer. 
 
 "Of course," said Uncle Larry. "And while 
 they were in the first flush of joy, swapping 
 confidences and confessions, her brother came 
 into the parlor with an expression of pain on 
 his face and a telegram in his hand. The for 
 mer was caused by the latter, which was from 
 Frisco, and which announced the sudden death 
 of Mrs. Sutton, their mother." 
 
 " And that was why the ghost no longer 
 opposed the match ?" questioned Dear Jones. 
 
 " Exactly, j You see, the family ghost knew 
 that Mother Gorgon was an awful obstacle to 
 
118 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Duncan s happiness, so it warned him. But 
 the moment the obstacle was removed, it gave 
 its consent at once."! 
 
 The fog was lowering its thick, damp curtain, 
 and it was beginning to be difficult to see from 
 one end of the boat to the other. Dear Jones 
 tightened the rug which enwrapped Baby Yan 
 Rensselaer, and then withdrew again into his 
 own substantial coverings. 
 
 Uncle Larry paused in his story long enough 
 to light another of the tiny cigars he always 
 smoked. 
 
 " I infer that Lord Duncan " the Duchess 
 was scrupulous in the bestowal of titles " saw 
 no more of the ghosts after he was married." 
 
 " He never saw them at all, at any time, 
 either before or since. But they came very 
 near breaking off the match, and thus breaking 
 two young hearts." 
 
 " You don t mean to say that they knew any 
 just cause or impediment why they should not 
 forever after hold their peace?" asked Dear 
 Jones. 
 
 " How could a ghost, or even two ghosts, 
 keep a girl from marrying the man she loved ?" 
 This was Baby Yan Eensselaer s question. 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 119 
 
 "It seems curious, doesn t it?" and Uncle 
 Larry tried to warm himself by two or three 
 sharp pulls at his fiery little cigar. " And the 
 circumstances are quite as curious as the fact 
 itself. You see J Miss Button wouldn t be mar 
 ried for a year after her mother s death, so she 
 and Duncan had lots of time to tell each oth 
 er all they knew. Eliphalet got to know a 
 good deal about the girls she went to school 
 with ; and Kitty soon learned all about his 
 family. He didn t tell her about the title for 
 a long time, as he wasn t one to brag. But he 
 described to her the little old house at Salem. 
 J~And one evening towards the end of the sum- 
 ^mer, the wedding-day having been appointed 
 for early in September, she told him that she 
 didn t want a bridal tour at all; she just wanted 
 to go down to the little old house at Salem to 
 spend her honeymoon in peace and quiet, with 
 nothing to do and nobody to bother them. 
 Well, Eliphalet jumped at the suggestion: it 
 suited him down to the ground. All of a sud 
 den he remembered the spooks, and it knocked 
 him all of a heap. He had told her about the 
 Duncan banshee, and the idea of having an 
 ancestral ghost in personal attendance on her 
 
120 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 husband tickled her immensely. But he had 
 never said anything about the ghost which 
 haunted the little old house at Salem. He 
 knew she would be frightened out of her wits 
 if the house ghost revealed itself to her, and 
 he saw at once that it would be impossible to 
 go to Salem on their wedding trip. So he told 
 her all about it, and how whenever he went to 
 Salem the two ghosts interfered, and gave 
 dark seances and manifested and materialized 
 and made the place absolutely impossible. 
 Kitty listened in silence, and Eliphalet thought 
 she had changed her mind. But she hadn t 
 done anything of the kind." 
 
 " Just like a man to think she was going 
 to," remarked Baby Yan Rensselaer. 
 
 "She just told him she could not bear 
 ghosts herself, but she would not marry a 
 man who was afraid of them." 
 
 "Just like a girl to be so inconsistent," 
 remarked Dear Jones. 
 
 Uncle Larry s tiny cigar had long been ex 
 tinct. He lighted a new one, and continued : 
 " Eliphalet protested in vain. Kitty said her 
 mind was made up. \ She was determined to 
 pass her honeymoon in the little old house at 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 121 
 
 Salem, and she was equally determined not to 
 go there as long as there were any ghosts there. 
 Until he could assure her that the spectral 
 tenant had received notice to quit, and that 
 there was no danger of manifestations and 
 materializing, she refused to be married at all. 
 She did not intend to have her honeymoon 
 interrupted by two wrangling ghosts, and the 
 wedding could be postponed until he had 
 made ready the house for her." 
 
 "She was an unreasonable young woman," 
 said the Duchess. 
 
 " Well, that s what Eliphalet thought, much 
 as he was in love with her. And he believed 
 he could talk her out of her determination. 
 But he couldn t. She was set. And when a 
 girl is set, there s nothing to do but to yield 
 to the inevitable. And that s just what Eliph 
 alet did. \He saw he would either have to 
 give her up or to get the ghosts out ; and as 
 he loved her and did not care for the ghosts, 
 he resolved to tackle the ghosts. He had 
 clear grit, Eliphalet had he was half Scotch 
 and half Yankee, and neither breed turns tail 
 in a hurry. So he made his plans and he 
 went down to Salem. As he said good-bye to 
 
122 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Kitty he had an impression that she was sorry 
 she had made him go ; but she kept up bravely, 
 and put a bold face on it, and saw him off, and 
 went home and cried for an hour, and was 
 perfectly miserable until he came back the 
 next day." 
 
 "Did he succeed in driving the ghosts 
 away?" asked Baby Yan Rensselaer, with 
 great interest. 
 
 " That s just what I m coming to," said 
 Uncle Larry, pausing at the critical moment, 
 in the manner of the trained story-teller. 
 " You see, Eliphalet had got a rather tough 
 job, and he would gladly have had an exten 
 sion of time on the contract, but he had to 
 choose between the girl and the ghosts, and 
 he wanted the girl. He tried to invent or re 
 member some short and easy way with ghosts, 
 but he couldn t. He wished that somebody 
 had invented a specific for spooks something 
 that would make the ghosts come out of the 
 house and die in the yard. He wondered if 
 he could not tempt the ghosts to run in debt, 
 so that he might get the sheriff to help him. 
 He wondered also whether the ghosts could 
 not be overcome with strong drink a dis- 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 123 
 
 sipated spook, a spook with delirium tremens, 
 might be committed to the inebriate asylum. 
 But none of these things seemed feasible." 
 
 " What did he do ?" interrupted Dear Jones. 
 " The learned counsel will please speak to the 
 point." 
 
 " You will regret this unseemly haste," said 
 Uncle Larry, gravely, " when you know what 
 really happened." 
 
 " What was it, Uncle Larry ?" asked Baby 
 Van Kensselaer. " I m all impatience." 
 
 And Uncle Larry proceeded : 
 ["Eliphalet went down to the little old 
 house at Salem, and as soon as the clock struck 
 twelve the rival ghosts began wrangling as 
 before. Raps here, there, and everywhere, 
 ringing bells, banging tambourines, strumming 
 banjos sailing about the room, and all the 
 other manifestations and materializations fol 
 lowed one another just as they had the sum 
 mer before. The only difference Eliphalet 
 could detect was a stronger flavor in the 
 spectral profanity ; and this, of course, was 
 only a vague impression, for he did not ac 
 tually hear a single word. He waited awhile 
 in patience, listening and watching. Of course 
 
124 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 he never saw either of the ghosts, because 
 neither of them could appear to him. At last 
 he got his dander up, and he thought it was 
 about time to interfere, so he rapped on the 
 table, and asked for silence. As soon as he felt 
 that the spooks were listening to him he ex 
 plained the situation to them. He told them 
 he was in love, and that he could not marry 
 unless they vacated the house. He appealed 
 to them as old friends, and he laid claim to 
 their gratitude. The titular ghost had been 
 sheltered by the Duncan family for hundreds 
 of years, and the domiciliary ghost had had 
 free lodging in the little old house at Salem for 
 nearly two centuries. He implored them to 
 settle their differences, and to get him out of 
 his difficulty at once. He suggested that they 
 had better fight it out then and there, and see 
 who was master. He had brought down with 
 him all needful weapons. And he pulled out 
 his valise, and spread on the table a pair of 
 navy revolvers, a pair of shot-guns, a pair of 
 duelling-swords, and a couple of bowie-knives. 
 He offered to serve as second for both parties, 
 and to give the word when to begin. He also 
 took out of his valise a pack of cards and a 
 
THE EIVAL GHOSTS 125 
 
 bottle of poison, telling them that if they 
 wished to avoid carnage they might cut the 
 cards to see which one should take the poison. 
 Then he waited anxiously for their reply. 
 For a little space there was silence. Then he 
 became conscious of a tremulous shivering in 
 one corner of the room, and he remembered 
 that he had heard from that direction what 
 sounded like a frightened sigh when he made 
 the first suggestion of the duel. Something 
 told him that this was the domiciliary ghost, 
 and that it was badly scared. Then he was 
 impressed by a certain movement in the op 
 posite corner of the room, as though the 
 titular ghost were drawing himself up with 
 offended dignity. Eliphalet couldn t exactly 
 see those things, because he never saw the 
 ghosts, but he felt them. After a silence of 
 nearly a minute a voice came from the corner 
 where the family ghost stood- a voice strong 
 and full, but trembling slightly with sup 
 pressed passion. And this voice told Eliphalet 
 it was plain enough that he had not long been 
 the head of the Duncans, and that he had 
 never properly considered the characteristics 
 of his race if now he supposed that one of his 
 
126 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 blood could draw his sword against a woman. 
 Eliphalet said he had never suggested that the 
 Duncan ghost should raise his hand against a 
 woman, and all he wanted was that the 
 Duncan ghost should fight the other ghost. 
 And then the voice told Eliphalet that the 
 other ghost was a woman." 
 
 "What?" said Dear Jones, sitting up sud 
 denly. " You don t mean to tell me that the 
 ghost which haunted the house was a woman?" 
 
 " Those were the very words Eliphalet Dun 
 can used," said Uncle Larry ; " but he did not 
 need to wait for the answer. All at once he 
 recalled the traditions about the domiciliary 
 ghost, and he knew that what the titular 
 ghost said was the fact. He had never thought 
 of the sex of a spook, but there was no doubt 
 whatever that the house ghost was a woman. 
 No sooner was this firmly fixed in Eliphalet s 
 mind than he saw his way out of the difficulty. 
 The ghosts must be married ! for then there 
 would be no more interference, no more quar 
 relling, no more manifestations and material 
 izations, no more dark seances, with their raps 
 and bells and tambourines and banjos. At 
 first the ghosts would not hear of it. The 
 
THE RIVAL GHOSTS 127 
 
 voice in the corner declared that the Duncan 
 wraith had never thought of matrimony. But 
 Eliphalet argued with them, and pleaded and 
 pursuaded and coaxed, and dwelt on the ad 
 vantages of matrimony. He had to confess, 
 of course, that he did not know how to get a 
 clergyman to marry them ; but the voice from 
 the corner gravely told him that there need be 
 no difficulty in regard to that, as there was no 
 lack of spiritual chaplains. Then, for the first 
 time, the house ghost spoke, a low, clear, 
 gentle voice, and with a quaint, old-fashioned 
 New England accent, which contrasted sharp 
 ly with the broad Scotch speech of the family 
 ghost. She said that Eliphalet Duncan seemed 
 to have forgotten that she was married. But 
 this did not upset Eliphalet at all ; he remem 
 bered the whole case clearly, and he told her 
 she was not a married ghost, but a widow, 
 since her husband had been hanged for murder 
 ing her. Then the Duncan ghost drew atten 
 tion to the great disparity in their ages, say 
 ing that he was nearly four hundred and fifty 
 years old, while she was barely two hundred. 
 But Eliphalet had not talked to juries for 
 nothing ; he just buckled to, and coaxed those 
 
128 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 ghosts into matrimony. Afterwards he came 
 to the conclusion that they were willing to be 
 coaxed, but at the time he thought he had 
 pretty hard work to convince them of the ad 
 vantages of the plan." 
 
 " Did he succeed ?" asked Baby Yan Eens- 
 selaer, with a woman s interest in matrimony. 
 
 " He did," said Uncle Larry. " He talked 
 the wraith of the Duncans and the spectre of 
 the little old house at Salem into a matrimoni 
 al engagement. And from the time they were 
 engaged he had no more trouble with them. 
 They \vere rival ghosts no longer. They were 
 married by their spiritual chaplain the very 
 same clay that Eliphalet Duncan met Kitty 
 Sutton in front of the railing of Grace Church. 
 The ghostly bride and bridegroom went away 
 at once on their bridal tour, and Lord and 
 Lady Duncan went down to the little old 
 house at Salem to pass their honeymoon." 
 
 Uncle Larry stopped. His tiny cigar was 
 out again. The tale of the rival ghosts w r as 
 told. A solemn silence fell on the little party 
 on the deck of the ocean steamer, broken 
 harshly by the hoarse roar of the fog-horn. 
 
 (1883.) 
 
SIXTEEN YEARS WITHOUT A BIRTH- 
 DAY 
 
SIXTEEN YEAES WITHOUT A BIRTH 
 DAY 
 
 HILE the journalist deftly dealt with 
 the lobster d la Newburg, as it bub 
 bled in the chafing-dish before him, 
 the deep-toned bell of the church 
 at the corner began to strike twelve. 
 
 " Give me your plates, quick," he said, " and 
 
 we ll drink Jack s health before it s to-morrow." 
 
 The artist and the soldier and the professor 
 
 of mathematics did as they were told ; and then 
 
 they filled their glasses. 
 
 The journalist, still standing, looked the sol 
 dier in the eye, and said : " Jack, this is the first 
 time The Quartet has met since the old school 
 days, ten years ago and more. That this reun 
 ion should take place on your birthday doubles 
 the pleasure of the occasion. We wish you 
 many happy returns of the day !" 
 
132 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Then the artist and the mathematician rose 
 also, and they looked at the soldier, and re 
 peated together, " Many happy returns of the 
 day 1" 
 
 Whereupon they emptied their glasses and 
 sat down, and the soldier rose to his feet. 
 
 " Thank you, boys," he began, " but I think 
 you have already made me enjoy this one birth 
 day three times over. It was yesterday that I 
 was twenty-six, and " 
 
 " But I didn t meet you till last night," in 
 terrupted the journalist ; " and yesterday was 
 Sunday ; and I couldn t get a box for the thea 
 tre and find the other half of The Quartet all 
 on Sunday, could I ?" 
 
 " I m not complaining because yesterday was 
 my real birthday," the soldier returned, " even 
 if you have now protracted the celebration on 
 to the third day it s just struck midnight, you 
 know. All I have to say is, that since you have 
 given me a triplicate birthday this time, any 
 future anniversary will have to spread itself 
 over four days if it wants to beat the record, 
 that s all." And he took his seat again. 
 
 " "Well," said the artist, who had recently re 
 turned from Paris, " that won t happen till we 
 
SIXTEEN YEAKS WITHOUT A BIETHDAY 133 
 
 see the week of the four Thursdays, as the 
 French say." 
 
 " And we sha n t see that for a month of Sun 
 days, I guess," the journalist rejoined. 
 
 There was a moment of silence, and then the 
 mathematician spoke for the first time. 
 
 " A quadruplex birthday will be odd enough, 
 I grant you," he began, " but I don t think it 
 quite as remarkable as the case of the lady who 
 had no birthday for sixteen years after she was 
 born." 
 
 The soldier and the artist and the journalist 
 all looked at the professor of mathematics, and 
 they all smiled ; but his face remained perfect 
 ly grave. 
 
 " What s that you say ?" asked the journal 
 ist. " Sixteen years without a birthday ? Isn t 
 that a very large order 2" 
 
 "Did you know the lady herself?" inquired 
 the soldier. 
 
 " She was my grandmother," the mathema 
 tician answered. " She had no birthday for the 
 first sixteen years of her life." 
 
 " You mean that she did not celebrate her 
 birthdays, I suppose," the artist remarked. 
 "That s nothing. I know lots of families 
 
134 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Avhere they don t keep any anniversaries 
 at all" 
 
 "No," persisted the mathematician. "I 
 meant what I said, and precisely what I said. 
 My grandmother did not keep her first fifteen 
 birthdays because she couldn t. She didn t have 
 them to keep. They didn t happen. The first 
 time she had a chance to celebrate her birth 
 day was when she completed her sixteenth year 
 and I need not tell you that the family made 
 the most of the event." 
 
 " This a real grandmother you are talking 
 about," asked the journalist, " and not a fairy 
 godmother ?" 
 
 "I could understand her going without a 
 birthday till she was four years old," the sol 
 dier suggested, "if she was born on the 29th 
 of February." 
 
 " That accounts for four years," the mathe 
 matician admitted, " since my grandmother 
 was born on the 29th of February." 
 
 " In what year ?" the soldier pursued. " In 
 1796?" 
 
 The professor of mathematics nodded. 
 
 " Then that accounts for eight years," said 
 the soldier. 
 
SIXTEEN YEAES WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY 135 
 
 "I don t see that at all," exclaimed the 
 artist. 
 
 " It s easy enough," the soldier explained. 
 "The year 1800 isn t a leap-year, you know. 
 We have a leap-year every four years, except 
 the final year of a century 1YOO, 1800, 1900." 
 
 " I didn t know that," said the artist. 
 
 " I d forgotten it," remarked the journalist. 
 " But that gets us over only half of the diffi 
 culty. He says his grandmother didn t have a 
 birthday till she was sixteen. We can all see 
 now how it was she went without this annual 
 luxury for the first eight years. But who 
 robbed her of the birthdays she was entitled 
 to when she was eight and twelve. That s what 
 
 o 
 
 " Born February 29, 1796, the Gregorian cal 
 endar deprives her of a birthday in 1800," the 
 soldier said. " But she ought to have had her 
 first chance February 29, 1804. I don t see 
 how " and he paused in doubt. " Oh !" he 
 cried, suddenly ; " where was she living in 
 1804?" 
 
 " Most of the time in Russia," the mathema 
 tician answered. " Although the family went 
 to England for a few days early in the year." 
 
136 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " What was the date when they left Rus 
 sia ?" asked the soldier, eagerly. 
 
 " They sailed from St. Petersburg in a Rus 
 sian bark on the 10th of February," answered 
 the professor of mathematics, "and owing to 
 head- winds they did not reach England for a 
 fortnight." 
 
 " Exactly," cried the soldier. " That s what 
 I thought. That accounts for it." 
 
 " I don t see how," the artist declared ; " that 
 is, unless you mean to suggest that the Czar 
 confiscated the little American girl s birthday 
 and sent it to Siberia." 
 
 "It s plain enough," the soldier returned. 
 " We have the reformed calendar, the Grego 
 rian calendar, you know, and the Russians 
 haven t. They keep the old Julian calendar, 
 and it s now ten days behind ours. They cele 
 brate Christmas three days after we have be 
 gun the new year. So if the little girl left St. 
 Petersburg in a Russian ship on February 10, 
 1801:, by the old reckoning, and was on the wa 
 ter two weeks, she would land in England af 
 ter March 1st by the new calendar." 
 
 " That is to say," the artist inquired, " the lit 
 tle girl came into an English port thinking she 
 
SIXTEEN YEARS WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY 137 
 
 was going to have her birthday the next week, 
 and when she set foot on shore she found out 
 that her birthday was passed the week before. 
 Is that what you mean?" 
 
 " Yes," answered the soldier ; and the math 
 ematician nodded also. 
 
 " Then all I have to say," the artist contin 
 ued, " is that it was a mean trick to play on a 
 child that had been looking forward to her first 
 birthday for eight years to knock her into 
 the middle of next week in that fashion !" 
 
 " And she had to go four years more for her 
 next chance," said the journalist. " Then she 
 would be twelve. Bat you said she hadn t a 
 birthday till she was sixteen. How did she 
 lose the one she was entitled to in 1808 ? She 
 wasn t on a Russian ship again, was she ?" 
 
 " No," the mathematician replied ; " she was 
 on an American ship that time." 
 
 " On the North Sea?" asked the artist. 
 
 "No," was the calm answer; "on the Pacific." 
 
 " Sailing east or west?" cried the soldier. 
 
 "Sailing east," answered the professor of 
 mathematics, smiling again. 
 
 " Then I see how it might happen," the sol 
 dier declared. 
 
138 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " Well, I don t," confessed the artist. 
 
 The journalist said nothing, as it seemed un 
 professional to admit ignorance of anything. 
 
 " It is simple enough," the soldier explained. 
 " You see, the world is revolving about the sun 
 steadily, and it is always high noon somewhere 
 on the globe. The day rolls round unceasing, 
 and it is not cut off into twenty-four hours. 
 We happen to have taken the day of Green 
 wich or Paris as the day of civilization, and 
 we say that it begins earlier in China and later 
 in California; but it is all the same day, we 
 say. Therefore there has to be some place out 
 in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where we 
 lose or gain a day if we are going east, we 
 gain it ; if we are going west, we lose it. Now 
 I suppose this little girl of twelve was on her 
 way from some Asiatic port to some Ameri 
 can port, and they stopped on their voyage at 
 Honolulu. Perhaps they d ropped anchor there 
 just before midnight on their February 28, 
 1808, thinking that the morrow would be the 
 29th ; but when they were hailed from the 
 shore, just after midnight, they found out that 
 it w r as already March 1st." 
 
 As the soldier finished, he looked at the 
 
SIXTEEN YEARS WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY 139 
 
 mathematician for confirmation of his expla 
 nation. 
 
 Thus appealed to, the professor of mathe 
 matics smiled and nodded, and said : " You 
 have hit it. That s just how it was that my 
 grandmother lost the birthday she ought to 
 have had when she was twelve, and had to go 
 four years more without one." 
 
 " And so she really didn t have a birthday 
 till she was sixteen !" the artist observed. 
 " Well, all I can say is, your great-grandfather 
 took too many chances. I don t think he gave 
 the child a fair show. I hope he made it up 
 to her when she was sixteen that s all !" 
 
 An hour later The Quartet separated. The 
 soldier and the artist walked away together, 
 but the journalist delayed the mathematician. 
 
 " I say," he began, " that yarn about your 
 grandmother was very interesting. It is an 
 extraordinary combination of coincidences. I 
 can see it in the Sunday paper with a scare- 
 head 
 
 < SIXTEEN YEARS WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY ! 
 
 Do you mind my using it ?" 
 
 " But it isn t true," said the professor. 
 " Not true ?" echoed the journalist. 
 
HO TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " No," replied the mathematician. " I made 
 it up. I hadn t done my share of the talking, 
 and I didn t want you to think I had nothing 
 to say for myself." 
 
 "Not a single word of truth in it?" the 
 journalist returned. 
 
 " Not a single word," was the mathemati 
 
 cian s answer. 
 
 "Well, what of that?" the journalist de 
 clared. " I don t want to file it in an affidavit 
 I want to print it in a newspaper." 
 
 (1894.) 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 
 
 HE telegraph messenger looked 
 again at the address on the envel 
 ope in his hand, and then scanned 
 the house before which he was 
 standing. It was an old-fashioned building of 
 brick, two stories high, with an attic above; 
 and it ^tood in an old-fashioned part of lower 
 New York, not far from the East River. Over 
 the wide archway there was a small weather 
 worn sign, " Ramapo Steel and Iron Works ;" 
 and over the smaller door alongside was a still 
 smaller sign, " Whittier, Wheatcrof t & Co." 
 
 When the messenger-boy had made out the 
 name, he opened this smaller door and entered 
 the long, narrow store. Its sides and walls 
 were covered with bins and racks containing 
 
144 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 sample steel rails and iron beams, and coils of 
 wire of various sizes. Down at the end of 
 the store were desks where several clerks and 
 book-keepers were at work. 
 
 As the messenger drew near, a red-headed 
 office - boy blocked the passage, saying, some 
 what aggressively, "Well?" 
 
 " Got a telegram for Whittier, Wheatcroft 
 & Co.," the messenger explained, pugnacious 
 ly thrusting himself forward. 
 
 " In there !" the office-boy returned, jerking 
 his thumb over his shoulder towards the ex 
 treme end of the building, an extension, roofed 
 with glass and separated by a glass screen 
 from the space where the clerks were at work. 
 
 The messenger pushed open the glazed door 
 of this private office, a bell jingled over his 
 head, and the three occupants of the room 
 looked up. 
 
 "Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.?" said the 
 messenger, interrogatively, holding out the 
 yellow envelope. 
 
 " Yes," responded Mr. Whittier, a tall, hand 
 some old gentleman, taking the telegram. 
 "You sign, Paul." 
 
 The youngest of the three, looking like his 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 145 
 
 father, took the messenger s book, and, glan 
 cing at an old-fashioned clock which stood in 
 the corner, he wrote the name of the firm and 
 the hour of delivery. He was watching the 
 messenger go out. His attention was suddenly 
 called to subjects of more importance by a 
 sharp exclamation from his father. 
 
 " Well, well, well," said the elder Whittier 
 with his eyes fixed on the telegram he had just 
 read. " This is very strange very strange 
 indeed !" 
 
 " What s strange ?" asked the third occupant 
 of the office, Mr. Wheatcroft, a short, stout, 
 irascible-looking man with a shock of grizzly 
 hair. 
 
 For all answer Mr. Whittier handed to Mr. 
 Wheatcroft the thin slip of paper. 
 
 No sooner had the junior partner read the 
 paper than he seemed angrier than was usual 
 with him. 
 
 " Strange !" he cried. " I should think it was 
 strange ! confoundedly strange and deuced 
 unpleasant, too." 
 
 " May I see what it is that s so very strange ?" 
 asked Paul, picking up the despatch. 
 
 " Of course you may see it," growled Mr. 
 
 10 
 
146 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Wheatcroft; "and let us see what you can 
 make of it." 
 
 The young man read the message aloud : 
 " Deal off. Can get quarter cent better terms. 
 Carkendale." 
 
 Then he read it again to himself. At last 
 he said, " I confess I don t see anything so very 
 mysterious in that. We ve lost a contract, I 
 suppose ; but that must have happened lots of 
 times before, hasn t it ?" 
 
 " It s happened twice before, this fall," re 
 turned Mr. Wheatcroft, fiercely, "after our bid 
 had been practically accepted and just before 
 the signing of the final contract !" 
 
 " Let me explain, Wheatcroft," interrupted 
 the elder Whittier, gently. "You must not 
 expect my son to understand the ins and outs 
 of this business as we do. Besides, he has only 
 been in the office ten days." 
 
 "I don t expect him to understand," growled 
 Wheatcroft. " How could he ? I don t under 
 stand it myself !" 
 
 "Close that door, Paul," said Mr. Whittier. 
 " I don t want any of the clerks to know what 
 we are talking about. Here are the facts in 
 the case, and I think you will admit that they 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 147 
 
 are certainly curious : Twice this fall, and now 
 a third time, we have been the lowest bidders 
 for important orders, and yet, just before our 
 bid was formally accepted, somebody has cut 
 under us by a fraction of a cent and got the 
 job. First we thought we were going to get 
 the building of the Barataria Central s bridge 
 over the Little Makintosh River, but in the end 
 it was the Tuxedo Steel Company that got 
 the contract. Then there was the order for 
 the fifty thousand miles of wire for the Trans 
 continental Telegraph ; we made an extraor 
 dinarily low estimate on that. We wanted 
 the contract, and we threw off, not only our 
 profit, but even allowances for office expenses ; 
 and yet five minutes before the last bid had to 
 be in, the Tuxedo Company put in an offer 
 only a hundred and twenty-five dollars less 
 than ours. Now comes the telegram to-day. 
 The Methuselah Life Insurance Company is go 
 ing to put up a big building; we were asked to 
 estimate on the steel framework. We wanted 
 that work times are hard and there is little 
 doing, as you know, and we must get work for 
 our men if we can. We meant to have this 
 contract if we could. We offered to do it at 
 
148 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 what was really actual cost of manufacture 
 without profit, first of all, and then without 
 any charge at all for office expenses, for in 
 terest on capital, for depreciation of plant. The 
 vice-president of the Methuselah, the one who 
 attends to all their real estate, is Mr. Carken- 
 dale. He told me yesterday that our bid was 
 very low, and that we were certain to get the 
 contract. And now he sends me this." Mr. 
 Whittier picked up the telegram again. 
 
 " But if we were going to do it at actual cost 
 of manufacture," said the young man, "and 
 somebody else underbids us, isn t somebody 
 else losing money on the job ?" 
 
 " That s no sort of satisfaction to our men," 
 retorted Mr. Wheatcroft, cooking himself 
 before the fire. " Somebody else confound 
 him ! will be able to keep his men together 
 and to give them the wages we want for our 
 men. Do you think somebody else is the 
 Tuxedo Company again?" 
 
 " What of it ?" asked Mr. Whittier. " Surely 
 you don t suppose 
 
 " Yes, I do," interrupted Mr. Wheatcroft, 
 swiftly. "I do, indeed. I haven t been in 
 this business thirty years for nothing. I know 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 149 
 
 how hungry we get at all times for a big, fat 
 contract; and I know we would any of us 
 wive a hundred dollars to the man who could 
 
 o 
 
 tell us what our chief rival has bid. It would 
 be the cheapest purchase of the year, too." 
 
 "Come, come, Wheatcroft," said the elder 
 Whittier; "you know we ve never done any 
 thing of that sort yet, and I think you and 
 I are too old to be tempted now." 
 
 "Nothing of the sort," snorted the fiery 
 little man ; " I m open to temptation this very 
 moment. If I could know what the Tuxedo 
 people are going to bid on the new steel rails 
 of the Springfield and Athens, I d give a thou 
 sand dollars." 
 
 " If I understand you, Mr. Wheatcroft," Paul 
 Whittier asked, " you are suggesting that there 
 has been something done that is not fair ?" 
 
 " That s just what I mean," Mr. Wheatcroft 
 declared, vehemently. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that the Tuxedo peo 
 ple have somehow been made acquainted with 
 our bids ?" asked the young man. 
 
 " That s what I m thinking now," was the 
 sharp answer. " I can t think of anything else. 
 For two months we haven t been successful 
 
150 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 in getting a single one of the big contracts. 
 We ve had our share of the little things, of 
 course, but they don t amount to much. The 
 big things that we really wanted have slipped 
 through our fingers. We ve lost them by the 
 skin of our teeth every time. That isn t ac 
 cident, is it? Of course not! Then there s 
 only one explanation there s a leak in this 
 office somewhere." 
 
 " You don t suspect any of the clerks, do 
 you, Mr. Wheatcroft?" asked the elder Whit- 
 tier, sadly. 
 
 "I don t suspect anybody in particular," re 
 turned the junior partner, brushing his hair 
 up the wrong way ; "and I suspect everybody 
 in general. I haven t an idea who it is, but 
 it s somebody! It must be somebody and 
 if it is somebody, I ll do my best to get that 
 somebody into the clutches of the law." 
 
 " Who makes up the bids on these important 
 contracts ?" asked Paul. 
 
 " Wheatcroft and I," answered his father. 
 " The specifications are forwarded to the works, 
 and the engineers make their estimates of the 
 actual cost of labor and material. These esti 
 mates are sent to us here, and we add what- 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 151 
 
 ever we think best for interest, and for ex 
 penses, for wear and tear, and for profit." 
 
 " Who writes the letters making the offer 
 the one with actual figures I mean ?" the son 
 continued. 
 
 " I do," the elder Whittier explained ; " I 
 have always done it." 
 
 " You don t dictate them to a typewriter ?" 
 Paul pursued. 
 
 " Certainly not," the father responded ; " I 
 write them with my own hand, and, what s 
 more, I take the press -copy myself, and there 
 is a special letter-book for such things. This 
 letter-book is always kept in the safe in this 
 office ; in fact, I can say that this particular 
 letter-book never leaves my hands except to 
 go into that safe. And, as you know, nobody 
 has access to that safe except Wheatcrof t and 
 me:" 
 
 " And the Major," corrected the junior 
 partner. 
 
 " No," Mr. Whittier explained, " Van Zandt 
 has no need to go there now." 
 
 " But he used to," Mr. Wheatcroft persisted. 
 
 " He did once," the senior partner returned ; 
 " but when we bought those new safes outside 
 
152 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 there in the main office, there was no longer 
 any need for the chief book-keeper to go to 
 this smaller safe ; and so, last month it was 
 while you were away, Wheatcroft Yan Zandt 
 came in here one afternoon, and said that, as 
 he never had occasion to go to this safe, he 
 would rather not have the responsibility of 
 knowing the combination. I told him we had 
 perfect confidence in him." 
 
 " I should think so !" broke in the explosive 
 Wheatcroft. " The Major has been with us 
 for thirty years now. I d suspect myself of 
 petty larceny as soon as him." 
 
 "As I said," continued the elder "Whittier; 
 " I told him that we trusted him perfectly, of 
 course. But he urged me, and to please him 
 I changed the combination of this safe that 
 afternoon. You will remember, Wheatcroft, 
 that I gave you the new word the day you 
 came back." 
 
 " Yes, I remember," said Mr. Wheatcroft. 
 " But I don t see why the Major did not want 
 to know how to open that safe. Perhaps he 
 is beginning to feel his years now. He must 
 be sixty, the Major ; and I ve been thinking 
 for some time that he looks worn." 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 153 
 
 "I noticed the change in him," Paul re 
 marked, " the first day I came into the office. 
 He seemed ten years older than he was last 
 winter." 
 
 "Perhaps his wound troubles him again," 
 suggested Mr. Whittier. " Whatever the rea 
 son, it is at his own request that he is now 
 ignorant of the combination. No one knows 
 that but Wheatcroft and I. The letters them 
 selves I wrote myself, and copied myself, and 
 put them myself in the envelopes I directed my 
 self. I don t recall mailing them myself, but I 
 may have done that too. So you see that there 
 can t be any foundation for your belief, Wheat- 
 croft, that somebody had access to our bids." 
 
 " I can t believe anything else !" cried Wheat- 
 croft, impulsively. " I don t know how it was 
 done I m not a detective but it was done 
 somehow. And if it was done, it was done by 
 somebody ! And what I d like to do is to catch 
 that somebody in the act that s all ! I d make 
 it hot for him!" 
 
 " You would like to have him out at the 
 llamapo Works," said Paul, smiling at the lit 
 tle man s violence, "and put him under the 
 steam-hammer ?" 
 
154 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " Yes, I would," responded Mr. Wheatcroft. 
 "I would indeed! Putting a man under a 
 steam-hammer may seem a cruel punishment, 
 but I think it would cure the fellow of any 
 taste for prying into our business in the fut 
 ure." 
 
 " I think it would get him out of the habit 
 of living," the elder Whittier said, as the tall 
 clock in the corner struck one. " But don t 
 let s be so brutal. Let s go to lunch and talk 
 the matter over quietly. I don t agree with 
 your suspicion, Wheatcroft, but there may be 
 something in it." 
 
 Five minutes later Mr. "Whittier, Mr. Wheat 
 croft, and the only son of the senior partner 
 left the glass-framed private office, and, walk 
 ing leisurely through the long store, passed 
 into the street. 
 
 They did not notice that the old book 
 keeper, Major Yan Zandt, whose high desk was 
 so placed that he could overlook the private 
 office, had been watching them ever since the 
 messenger had delivered the despatch. He 
 could not read the telegram, he could not 
 hear the comments, but he could sec every 
 movement and every gesture and every ex- 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 155 
 
 pression. He gazed from one speaker to the 
 other almost as though he were able to follow 
 the course of the discussion ; and when the 
 three members of the firm walked past his 
 desk, he found himself staring at them as if 
 in a vain effort to read on their faces the se 
 cret of the course of action they had resolved 
 upon. 
 
II 
 
 AFTEK luncheon, as it happened, both the 
 senior and the junior partner of Whittier, 
 Wheatcroft & Co. had to attend meetings, 
 and they went their several ways, leaving 
 Paul to return to the office alone. 
 
 When he came opposite to the house which 
 bore the weather-beaten sign of the firm he 
 stood still for a moment, and looked across 
 with mingled pride and affection. The build 
 ing was old-fashioned so old-fashioned, in 
 deed, that only a long -established firm could 
 afford to occupy it. It was Paul Whittier s 
 great-grandfather who had founded the Ram- 
 apo Works. There had been cast the cannon 
 for many of the ships of the little American 
 navy that gave so good an account of itself 
 in the war of 1812. Again, in 1848, had the 
 house of Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co. the 
 present Mr. Wheatcroft s father having been 
 taken into partnership by Paul s grand father 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 157 
 
 been able to be of service to the government 
 of the United States. All through the four- 
 years that followed the tiring on the flag in 
 1861 the Eamapo Works had been run day 
 and night. When peace came at last and the 
 people had leisure to expand, a large share of 
 the rails needed by the new overland roads 
 which were to bind the East and West to 
 gether in iron bonds had been rolled by Whit- 
 tier, Wheatcroft & Co. Of late years, as Paul 
 knew, the old firm seemed to have lost some 
 of its early energy, and, having young and 
 vigorous competitors, it had barely held its 
 own. 
 
 That the Kamapo Works should once more 
 take the lead was Paul Whittier s solemn pur 
 pose, and to this end he had been carefully 
 trained. He was now a young man of twen 
 ty-five, a tall, handsome fellow, with a full 
 mustache over his firm mouth, and with clear, 
 quick eyes below his curly brown hair. He 
 had spent four years in college, carrying off 
 honors in mathematics, was popular with his 
 classmates, who made him class poet, and in 
 his senior year he was elected president of the 
 college photographic society. He had gone to 
 
158 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 a technological institute, where he had made 
 himself master of the theory and practice of 
 metallurgy. After a year of travel in Europe, 
 where he had investigated all the important 
 steel and iron works he could get into, he had 
 come home to take a desk in the office. 
 
 It was only for a moment that he stood on 
 the sidewalk opposite, looking at the old build 
 ing. Then he threw away his cigarette and 
 went over. Instead of entering the long store 
 he walked down the alleyway left open for 
 the heavy wagons. When he came opposite 
 to the private office in the rear of the store 
 he examined the doors and the windows care 
 fully, to see if he could detect any means of 
 ingress other than those open to everybody. 
 
 There was no door from the private office 
 into the alleyway or into the yard. There 
 was a door from the alleyway into the store, 
 opposite to the desks of the clerks, and within 
 a few feet of the door leading from the store 
 into the private office. 
 
 Paul passed through this entrance, and 
 found himself face to face with the old book 
 keeper, Van Zandt, who was following all his 
 movements with a questioning gaze. 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 159 
 
 " Good-afternoon, Major," said Paul, pleas 
 antly. " Have you been out for your lunch 
 yet ?" 
 
 " I always get my dinner at noon," the 
 book-keeper gruffly answered, returning to his 
 books. 
 
 As Paul walked on he could not but think 
 that the Major s manner was ungracious. And 
 the voung man remembered how cheerful the 
 old man had been, and how courteous always, 
 when the son of the senior partner, while still 
 a school-boy, used to come to the office on Sat 
 urdays. 
 
 Paul had always delighted in the office, and 
 the store, and the yard behind, and he had 
 spent many a holiday there, and Major Van 
 Zandt had always been glad to see him, and 
 had willingly answered his myriad questions. 
 
 Paul wondered why the book-keeper s man 
 ner was now so different. Yan Zandt was 
 older, but he was not so very old, not more 
 than sixty, and old age in itself is not suffi 
 cient to make a man surly and to sour his 
 temper. That the Major had had trouble in 
 his family was well known. II is wife had 
 been flighty and foolish, and it was believed 
 
160 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 that she had run away from him ; and his 
 only son was a wild lad, who had been em 
 ployed by Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co., out of 
 regard for the father, and who had disgraced 
 himself beyond forgiveness. Paul recalled 
 vaguely that the young fellow had gone West 
 somewhere, and had been shot in a mining- 
 camp after a drunken brawl in a gambling- 
 house. 
 
 As Paul entered the private office he found 
 the porter there, putting coal on the fire. 
 
 Stepping back to close the glass door be 
 hind him, that they might be alone, he said : 
 
 " Mike, who shuts up the office at night ?" 
 
 " Sure I do, Mr. Paul," was the prompt re- 
 
 Pty- 
 
 " And you open it in the morning ?" the 
 young man asked. 
 
 " I do that !" Mike responded. 
 
 " Do you see that these windows are always 
 fastened on the inside ?" was the next query. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Paul," the porter replied. 
 
 "Well," and the inquirer hesitated briefly 
 before putting this question, " have you found 
 any of these windows unfastened any morning 
 lately when you came here ?" 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 161 
 
 " And how did you know that ?" Mike re 
 turned, in surprise. 
 
 " What morning was it ?" asked Paul, push 
 ing his advantage. 
 
 " It was last Monday mornin , Mr. Paul," 
 the porter explained, " an how it was I dunno, 
 for I had every wan of them windows tight on 
 Saturday night, an Monday mornin one of 
 them was unfastened whin I wint to open it to 
 let a bit of air into the office here." 
 
 " You sleep here always, don t you ?" Paul 
 proceeded. 
 
 " I ve slept here ivery night for three years 
 now come Thanksgivin ," Mike replied. " I ve 
 the whole top of the house to myself. It s an 
 illigant apartment I have there, Mr. Paul." 
 
 " Who was here Sunday ?" was the next 
 question. 
 
 " Sure nobody was here at all," responded 
 the porter, " barrin they came while I took 
 me a bit of a walk after dinner. An they 
 couldn t have got in anyway, for I lock up al 
 ways, and I wasn t gone for an hour, or maybe 
 an hour an a half." 
 
 " I hope you will be very careful hereafter," 
 said Paul. 
 
162 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " I will that," promised Mike, " an I am 
 careful now always." 
 
 The porter took up the coal-scuttle, and 
 then he turned to Paul. 
 
 " How was it ye knew that the winder was 
 not fastened that mornin ?" he asked. 
 
 " How did I know ?" repeated the young 
 man. "Oh, a little bird told me." 
 
 When Mike had left the office Paul took a 
 chair before the fire and lighted a cigar. For 
 half an hour he sat silently thinking. 
 
 He came to the conclusion that Mr. Wheat- 
 croft was right in his suspicion. Whittier, 
 Wheatcroft & Co. had lost important con 
 tracts because of underbidding, due to knowl 
 edge surreptitiously obtained. He believed 
 that some one had got into the store on Sun 
 day while Mike was taking a walk, and that 
 this somebody had somehow opened the safe. 
 There never was any money in that private 
 safe; it was intended to contain only impor 
 tant papers. It did contain the letter-book of 
 the firm s bids, and this is what was wanted 
 by the man who had got into the office, and 
 who had let himself in by the window, leav 
 ing it unfastened behind him. How this man 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 163 
 
 had got in, and why he did not get out by the 
 way he entered, how he came to be able to 
 open the private safe, the combination of 
 which was known only to the two partners 
 these were questions for which Paul Whittier 
 had no answer. 
 
 What grieved him when he had come to the 
 conclusion was that the thief for such the 
 house-breaker was in reality was probably 
 one of the men in the employ of the firm. It 
 seemed to him almost certain that the man 
 who had broken in knew all the ins and outs 
 of the office. And how could this knowledge 
 have been obtained except by an employee? 
 Paul was well acquainted with the clerks in 
 the outer office. There were five of them, in 
 cluding the old book-keeper, and although 
 none of them had been with the firm as long 
 as the Major, no one of them had been there 
 less than ten years. Paul did not know which 
 one to suspect. There was, in fact, no reason 
 to suspect any particular clerk. And yet that 
 one of the five men in the main office on the 
 other side of the glass partition within twenty 
 feet of him that one of these was the guilty 
 man Paul did not doubt. 
 
164 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 And therefore it seemed to him not so im 
 portant to prevent the thing from happening 
 again as it was to catch the man who had done 
 it. The thief once caught, it would be easy 
 thereafter for the firm to take unusual pre 
 cautions. But the first thing to do was to 
 catch the thief. He had come and gone, and 
 left no trail. But he must have visited the 
 office at least three time in the past few weeks, 
 since the firm had lost three important con 
 tracts. Probably he had been there oftener 
 than three times. Certainly he would come 
 again. Sooner or later he would come once 
 too often. All that needed to be done was to 
 set a trap for him. 
 
 While Paul was sitting quietly in the private 
 office, smoking a cigar with all his mental fac 
 ulties at their highest tension, the clock in the 
 corner suddenly struck three. 
 
 Paul swiftly swung around in his chair and 
 looked at it. An old eight-day clock it was, 
 which not only told the time of the day, but 
 pretended, also, to supply miscellaneous astro 
 nomical information. It stood by itself in the 
 corner. 
 
 For a moment after it struck Paul stared at 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 165 
 
 it with a fixed gaze, as though he did not see 
 what he was looking at. Then a light came 
 into his eyes and a smile flitted across his lips. 
 
 He turned around slowly and measured with 
 his eye the proportions of the room, the dis 
 tance between the desks and the safe and the 
 clock. He glanced up at the sloping glass roof 
 above him. Then he smiled again, and again 
 sat silent for a minute. He rose to his feet 
 and stood with his back to the fire. Almost in 
 front of him was the clock in the corner. 
 
 He took out his watch and compared its 
 time with that of the clock. Apparently he 
 found that the clock was too fast, for he walk 
 ed over to it and turned the minute-hand 
 back. It seemed that this was a more difficult 
 feat than he supposed or that he went about 
 it carelessly, for the minute-hand broke off 
 short in his fingers. A spasmodic movement 
 of his, as the thin metal snapped, pulled the 
 chain off its cylinder, and the weight fell with 
 a crash. 
 
 All the clerks looked up ; and the red 
 headed office-boy was prompt in answer to 
 the bell Paul rang a moment after. 
 
 " Bobby," said the young man to the boy, 
 
166 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 as he took his hat and overcoat, "I ve just 
 broken the clock. I know a shop where they 
 make a specialty of repairing timepieces like 
 that. I m going to tell them to send for it at 
 once. Give it to the man who will come this 
 afternoon with my card. Do you understand ?" 
 
 " Cert," the boy answered. " If he ain t got 
 your card, he don t get the clock." 
 
 " That s what I mean," Paul responded, as 
 he left the office. 
 
 Before he reached the door he met Mr. 
 Wheatcroft. 
 
 " Paul," cried the junior partner, explosively, 
 " I ve been thinking about that about that 
 you know what I mean ! And I have decided 
 that we had better put a detective on this 
 thing at once !" 
 
 " Yes," said Paul, " that s a good idea. In 
 fact, I had just come to the same conclusion. 
 I" 
 
 Then he checked himself. He had turned 
 round slightly to speak to Mr. Wheatcroft; 
 he saw that Major Van Zandt was standing 
 within ten feet of them, and he noticed that 
 the old book-keeper s face was strangely pale. 
 
Ill 
 
 DURING the next week the office of Whit- 
 tier, "Wheatcroft & Co. had its usual aspect 
 of prosperous placidity. The routine work 
 was done in the routine way ; the porter 
 opened the office every morning, and the office- 
 boy arrived a few minutes after it was opened ; 
 the clerks came at nine, and a little later the 
 partners were to be seen in the inner office 
 reading the morning s correspondence. 
 
 The "Whittiers, father and son, had had a 
 discussion with Mr. Wheatcroft as to the most 
 advisable course to adopt to prevent the fut 
 ure leakage of the trade secrets of the firm. 
 The senior partner had succeeded in dissuad 
 ing the junior partner from the employment 
 of detectives. 
 
 " Not yet," he said, " not yet. These clerks 
 have all served us faithfully for years, and I 
 don t want to submit them to the indignity of 
 being shadowed that s what they call it, isn t 
 
168 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 it? of being shadowed by some cheap hire 
 ling who may try to distort the most inno 
 cent acts into evidence of guilt, so that he can 
 show us how smart he is." 
 
 " But this sort of thing can t go on forever," 
 ejaculated Mr. Wheatcroft. " If we are to be 
 underbid on every contract worth having, we 
 might as w^ell go out of the business !" 
 
 " That s true, of course," Mr. Whittier ad 
 mitted ; " but we are not sure that we are 
 being underbid unfairly." 
 
 " The Tuxedo Company have taken away 
 three contracts from us in the past two 
 months," cried the junior partner ; " we can 
 be sure of that, can t we ?" 
 
 " We have lost three contracts, of course," 
 returned Mr. "Whittier, in his most conciliatory 
 manner, " and the Tuxedo people have capt 
 ured them. But that may be only a coinci 
 dence, after all." 
 
 " It is a pretty expensive coincidence for 
 us," snorted Mr. Wheatcroft. 
 
 " But because we have lost money," the sen 
 ior partner rejoined gently, laying his hand 
 on Mr. Wheatcroft s arm, " that s no reason 
 why we should also lose our heads. It is no 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 169 
 
 reason why we should depart from our old 
 custom of treating every man fairly. If there 
 is any one in our employ here who is selling 
 us, why, if we give him rope enough he will 
 hang himself, sooner or later." 
 
 "And before he suspends himself that way," 
 cried Mr. Wheatcroft, " we may be forced to 
 suspend ourselves." 
 
 " Come, come, Wheatcroft," said the senior 
 partner, " I think we can afford to stand the 
 loss a little longer. What we can t afford to 
 do is to lose our self-respect by doing some 
 thing irreparable. It may be that we shall 
 have to employ detectives, but I don t think 
 the time has come yet." 
 
 "Very well," the junior partner declared, 
 yielding an unwilling consent. " I don t in 
 sist on it. I still think it would be best not 
 to waste any more time but I don t insist. 
 What will happen is that we shall lose the 
 rolling of those steel rails for the Springfield 
 and Athens road that s all." 
 
 Paul Whittier had taken no part in this dis 
 cussion. He agreed with his father, and saw 
 he had no need to urge any further argument. 
 
 Presently he asked when they intended to 
 
170 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 put in the bid for the rails. His father then 
 explained that they were expecting a special 
 estimate from the engineers at the Ramapo 
 Works, and that it probably would be Satur 
 day before this could be discussed by the part 
 ners and the exact figures of the proposed con 
 tract determined. 
 
 " And if we don t want to lose that contract 
 for sure," insisted Mr. Wheatcroft, " I think 
 we had better change the combination on that 
 safe." 
 
 " May I suggest," said Paul, " that it seems 
 to me to be better to leave the combination 
 as it is. What we want to do is not to get 
 this Springfield and Athens contract so much 
 as to find out whether some one really is get 
 ting at the letter-book. Therefore we mustn t 
 make it any harder for the some one to get at 
 the letter-book." 
 
 " Oh, very well," Mr. Wheatcroft assented, a 
 little ungraciously, "have it your own way. 
 But I want you to understand now that I 
 think you are only postponing the inevitable!" 
 
 And with that the subject was dropped. 
 For several days the three men who were 
 together for hours in the office of the Ramapo 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 171 
 
 Iron and Steel Works refrained from any dis 
 cussion of the question which was most prom 
 inent in their minds. 
 
 It was on Wednesday that the tall clock 
 that Paul Whittier had broken returned from 
 the repairer s. Paul himself helped the men 
 to set it in its old place in the corner of the 
 office, facing the safe, which occupied the cor 
 ner diagonally opposite. 
 
 It so chanced that Paul came down late on 
 Thursday morning, and perhaps this was the 
 reason that a pressure of delayed work kept 
 him in the office that evening long after ev 
 ery one else. The clerks had all gone, even 
 Major Van Zandt, always the last to leave 
 and the porter had come in twice before the 
 son of the senior partner was ready to go for 
 the night. The gas was lighted here and 
 there in the long, narrow, deserted store, as 
 Paul walked through it from the office to the 
 street. Opposite, the swift twilight of a New 
 York November had already settled down on 
 the city. 
 
 " Can t I carry yer bag for } T e, Mister Paul?" 
 asked the porter, who was showing him out. 
 
 "No, thank you, Mike," was the young 
 
172 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 man s answer. "That bag has very little in 
 it. And, besides, I haven t got to carry it far." 
 
 The next morning Paul was the first of the 
 three to arrive. The clerks were in their places 
 already, but neither the senior nor the junior 
 partner had yet come. The porter happened 
 to be standing under the wa.gon archway as 
 Paul Whittier was about to enter the store. 
 
 The young man saw the porter, and a mis 
 chievous smile hovered about the corners of 
 his mouth. 
 
 " Mike," he said, pausing on the door-step, 
 " do you think you ought to smoke while you 
 are cleaning out our office in the morning?" 
 
 " Sure, I haven t had me pipe in me mouth 
 this mornin at all," the porter answered, taken 
 by surprise. 
 
 " But yesterday morning ?" Paul pursued. 
 
 " Yesterday mornin !" Mike echoed, not a 
 little puzzled. 
 
 " Yesterday morning at ten minutes before 
 eight you were in the private office smoking a 
 pipe." 
 
 " But how did you see me, Mr. Paul ?" cried 
 Mike, in amaze. " Ye was late in comin down 
 yesterday, wasn t ye ?" 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 173 
 
 Paul smiled pleasantly. 
 
 " A little bird told me," he said. 
 
 " If I had the bird I d ring his neck for tell- 
 in tales," the porter remarked. 
 
 "I don t mind your smoking, Mike," the 
 young man went on, " that s your own affair ; 
 but I d rather you didn t smoke a pipe while 
 you are tidying up the private office." 
 
 " Well, Mister Paul, I won t do it again," 
 the porter promised. 
 
 "And I wouldn t encourage Bob to smoke, 
 either," Paul continued. 
 
 u I encourage him ?" inquired Mike. 
 
 " Yes," Paul explained ; " yesterday morn 
 ing you let him light his cigarette from your 
 pipe didn t you?" 
 
 " Were you peekin in thro the winder. Mis 
 ter Paul?" the porter asked, eagerly. "Ye 
 saw me, an I never saw ye at all." 
 
 "JSTo," the young man answered, " I can t say 
 that I saw you myself. A little bird told me." 
 
 And with that he left the wondering porter 
 and entered the store. Just inside the door 
 was the office-boy, who hastily hid an nn- 
 lighted cigarette as he caught sight of the 
 senior partner s son. 
 
174 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 When Paul saw the red-headed boy he smiled 
 again, mischievously. 
 
 " Bob," he began, " when you want to see 
 who can stand on his head the longest, you or 
 Danny the boot-black, don t you think you 
 could choose a better place than the private 
 office?" 
 
 The office-boy was quite as much taken by 
 surprise as the porter had been, but he was 
 younger and quicker- witted. 
 
 " And when did I have Danny in the office?" 
 he asked, defiantly. 
 
 " Yesterday morning," Paul answered, still 
 smiling, "a little before half-past eight." 
 
 " Yesterday mornin ?" repeated Bob, as 
 though trying hard to recall all the events 
 of the day before. " Maybe Danny did come 
 in for a minute." 
 
 "He played leap-frog with you all the way 
 into the private office," Paul went on, while 
 Bob looked at him with increasing wonder. 
 
 " How did you know?" the office-boy asked, 
 frankly. " Were you lookin through the win 
 dow ?" 
 
 " How do I know that you and Danny stood 
 on your heads in the corner of the office with 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 175 
 
 your heels against the safe, scratching off the 
 paint ? Next time I d try the yard, if I were 
 you. Sports of that sort are more fun in the 
 open air." 
 
 And with that parting shot Paul went on 
 his way to his own desk, leaving the office-boy 
 greatly puzzled. 
 
 Later in the day Bob and Mike exchanged 
 confidences, and neither was ready with an 
 explanation. 
 
 "At school," Bob declared, "we used to 
 think teacher had eyes in the back of her head. 
 She was everlastingly catch in me when I did 
 things behind her back. But Mr. Paul beats 
 that, for he see me doin things when he wasn t 
 here." 
 
 " Mister Paul wasn t here, for sure, yester 
 day mornin ," Mike asserted ; " I d take me 
 oath o that. An if he wasn t here, how could 
 he see me givin ye a light from me pipe ? 
 Answer me that ! He says it s a little bird 
 told him ; but that s not it, I m thinkin . Not 
 but that they have clocks with birds into em, 
 that come out and tell the time o day, 
 Cuckoo ! Cuckoo ! Cuckoo ! An if that big 
 clock he broke last week had a bird in it that 
 
176 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 could tell time that way, I d break the thing 
 quick so I would." 
 
 " It ain t no bird," said Bob. " You can bet 
 your life on that. No birds can t tell him 
 nothin no more n you can catch em by putting 
 salt on their tails. I know what it is Mr. Paul 
 does least, I know how he does it. It s second- 
 sight, that s what it is ! I see a man onct at 
 the theayter, an he " 
 
 But perhaps it is not necessary to set down 
 here the office-boy s recollection of the trick 
 of an ingenious magician. 
 
 About half an hour after Paul had arrived 
 at the office Mr. Wheatcroft appeared. The 
 junior partner hesitated in the doorway for a 
 second, and then entered. 
 
 Paul was watching him, and the same mis 
 chievous smile flashed over the face of the 
 young man. 
 
 " You need not be alarmed to-day, Mr. 
 Wheatcroft," he said. "There is no fascinat 
 ing female waiting for you this morning." 
 
 " Confound the woman !" ejaculated Mr. 
 Wheatcroft, testily. " I couldn t get rid of her." 
 
 " But you subscribed for the book at last," 
 asserted Paul, " and she went away happy." 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 177 
 
 "1 believe I did agree to take one copy 
 of the work she showed me," admitted Mr. 
 Wheatcroft, a little sheepishly. Then he 
 looked up suddenly. " Why, bless my soul," 
 he cried, " that was yesterday morning 
 
 " Allowing for differences of clocks," Paul 
 returned, " it was about ten minutes to ten 
 yesterday morning." 
 
 " Then how do you come to know anything 
 about it? I should like to be told that !" the 
 junior partner inquired. "You did not get 
 down till nearly twelve." 
 
 " I had an eye on you," Paul answered, as 
 the smile again flitted across his face. 
 
 " But I thought you were detained all the 
 morning by a sick friend," insisted Mr. Wheat 
 croft. 
 
 " So I was," Paul responded. " And if you 
 won t believe I had an eye on you, all I can 
 say then is that a little bird told me." 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense !" cried Mr. Wheatcroft. 
 " Your little bird has two legs, hasn t it ?" 
 
 " Most birds have," laughed Paul. 
 
 " I mean two legs in a pair of trousers," ex 
 plained the junior partner, rumpling his griz 
 zled hair with an impatient gesture. 
 
 lfl 
 
178 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " You see how uncomfortable it is to be 
 shadowed," said Paul, turning the topic as 
 his father entered the office. 
 
 That Saturday afternoon Mr. Whittier and 
 Mr. Wheatcroft agreed on the bid to be made 
 on the steel rails needed by the Springfield 
 and Athens road. While the elder Mr. Whittier 
 wrote the letter to the railroad with his own 
 hand, his son manoeuvred the junior partner 
 into the outer office, where all the clerks hap 
 pened to be at work, including the old book 
 keeper. Then Paul managed his conversation 
 with Mr. Wheatcroft so that any one of the 
 five employees who chose to listen to the ap 
 parently careless talk should know that the 
 firm had just made a bid on another important 
 contract. Paul also spoke as though his father 
 and himself would probably go out of town 
 that Saturday night, to remain away till Mon 
 day morning. 
 
 And just before the store was closed for the 
 night, Paul Whittier wound up the eight-day 
 clock that stood in the corner opposite the 
 private safe. 
 
IV 
 
 ALTHOUGH the Whittiers, father and son, 
 spent Sunday out of town, Paul made an ex 
 cuse to the friends whom they were visiting, 
 and returned to the city by a midnight train. 
 Thus he was enabled to present himself at 
 the office of the Ramapo Works very early on 
 Monday morning. 
 
 It was so early, indeed, that no one of the 
 employees had arrived when the son of the 
 senior partner, bag in hand, pushed open the 
 street door and entered the long store, at the 
 far end of which the porter was still tidying 
 up for the day s work. 
 
 "An is that you, Mister Paul?" Mike 
 asked in surprise, as he came out of the pri 
 vate office to see who the early visitor might 
 be. "An 5 what brought ye out o your bed 
 before breakfast like this f 
 
 " I always get out of bed before breakfast," 
 Paul replied. " Don t you f 
 
180 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " Would I get up if I hadn t got to get up 
 to get my livin ?" the porter replied. 
 
 Paul entered the office, followed by Mike, 
 still wondering why the young man was there 
 at that hour. 
 
 After a swift glance round the office Paul 
 put down his bag on the table and turned 
 suddenly to the porter with a question. 
 
 " When does Bob get down here ?" 
 
 Mike looked at the clock in the corner be 
 fore answering. 
 
 " It 11 be ten minutes," he said, " or maybe 
 twenty, before the boy does be here to-dav, 
 seein it s Monday mornin , an he ll be tired 
 with not workin of Sunday." 
 
 " Ten minutes," repeated Paul, slowly. After 
 a moment s thought he continued, " Then I ll 
 have to ask you to go out for me, Mike." 
 
 " I can go anywhere ye want, Mister Paul," 
 the porter responded. 
 
 " I want you to go" began Paul, " I want 
 you to go " and he hesitated, as though he 
 was not quite sure what it was he wished the 
 porter to do, " I want you to go to the office 
 of the Gotham Gazette and get me two copies 
 of yesterday s paper. Do you understand ?" 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 181 
 
 " Maybe they won t be open so early in the 
 mornin ," said the Irishman. 
 
 " That s no matter," said Paul, hastily cor 
 recting himself ; " I mean that I want you to 
 go there now and get the papers if you can. 
 Of course, if the office isn t open I shall have 
 to send again later." 
 
 " I ll be goin now, Mister Paul," and Mike 
 took his hat from a chair and started off at 
 once. 
 
 Paul walked through the store Avith the 
 porter. When Mike had gone the young man 
 locked the front door and returned at once 
 to the private office in the rear. He shut him 
 self in, and lowered all the shades so that 
 whatever he might do inside could not be seen 
 by any one on the outside. 
 
 Whatever it was he wished to do he w T as 
 able to do it swiftly, for in less than a minute 
 after he had closed the door of the office he 
 opened it again and came out into the main 
 store with his bag in his hand. He walked 
 leisurely to the front of the store, arriving just 
 in time to unlock the door as the office-boy 
 came around the corner smoking a cigarette. 
 
 When Bob, still puffing steadily, was about 
 
182 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 to open the door and enter the store he looked 
 up and discovered that Paul was gazing at 
 him. The boy pinched the cigarette out of his 
 mouth and dropped it outside, and then came 
 in, his eyes expressing his surprise at the pres 
 ence of the senior partner s son down-town at 
 that early hour in the morning. 
 
 Paul greeted the boy pleasantly, but Bob 
 got away from him as soon as possible. Ever 
 since the young man had told what had gone 
 on in the office when Bob was its only oc 
 cupant, the office-boy was a little afraid of the 
 young man, as though somewhat mysterious, 
 not to say uncanny. 
 
 Paul thought it best to w r ait for the porter s 
 return, and he stood outside under the archway 
 for five minutes, smoking a cigar, with his bag 
 at his feet. 
 
 When Mike came back with the two copies 
 of the Sunday newspaper he had been sent to 
 get, Paul gave him the money for them and 
 an extra quarter for himself. Then the young 
 man picked up his bag again. 
 
 " When my father comes down, Mike," he 
 said, " tell him I may be a little late in get 
 ting back this morning." 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 183 
 
 " An are ye goin away now, Mister Paul ?" 
 the porter asked. " What good was it that ye 
 got out o bed before breakfast and come down 
 here so early in the raornin ?" 
 
 Paul laughed a little. " I had a reason for 
 coming here this morning," he answered, brief 
 ly ; and with that he walked away, his bag in 
 one hand and the two bulky, gaudy papers in 
 the other. 
 
 Mike watched him turn the corner, and then 
 went into the store again, where Bob greeted 
 him promptly with the query why the old 
 man s son had been getting up by the bright 
 light. 
 
 " If I was the boss, or the boss s son either," 
 said Bob, " I wouldn t get up till I was good 
 and ready. I d have my breakfast in bed if I 
 had a mind to, an my dinner too, an my supper. 
 An I wouldn t do no work, an I d go to the 
 theayter every night, and twice on Saturdays." 
 
 " I dunno why Mister Paul was down," 
 Mike explained. " All he wanted was two o 
 thim Sunday papers with pictures in thim. 
 What did he want two o thim for I dunno. 
 There s reading enough in one o thim to last 
 me a month of Sundays." 
 
184 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 It may be surmised that Mike would have 
 been still more in the dark as to Paul Whit- 
 tier s reasons for coming down-town so ear 
 ly that Monday morning if he could have 
 seen the young man throw the copies of the 
 Gotham Gazette into the first ash -cart he 
 passed after he was out of range of the por 
 ter s vision. 
 
 Paul was not the only member of Whittier, 
 Wheatcroft & Co. to arrive at the office early 
 that morning. Mr. Wheatcroft was usually 
 punctual, taking his seat at his desk just as 
 the clock struck half-past nine. On this Mon 
 day morning he entered the store a little be 
 fore nine. 
 
 As he walked back to the office he looked 
 over at the desks of the clerks as though he 
 was seeking some one. 
 
 At the door of the office he met Bob. 
 
 " Hasn t the Major come down yet ?" he 
 asked, shortly. 
 
 " No, sir," the boy answered. " He don t 
 never get here till nine." 
 
 " H m," grunted the junior partner. " When 
 he does come, tell him I want to see him at 
 once at once, do vou understand ?" 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 185 
 
 " I ain t deaf and dumb and blind," Bob re 
 sponded. " I ll steer him into you as soon as 
 ever he shows up." 
 
 But, for a wonder, the old book-keeper was 
 late that morning. Ordinarily he was a model 
 of exactitude. Yet the clock struck nine, and 
 half-past, and ten before he appeared in the 
 store. 
 
 Before he changed his coat Bob was at his 
 side. 
 
 " Mr. Wheatcroft he wants to see you now 
 in a hurry," said the boy. 
 
 Major Van Zandt paled swiftly, and stead 
 ied himself by a grasp of the railing. 
 
 " Does Mr. Wheatcroft wish to see me ?" he 
 asked, faintly. 
 
 " You bet he does," the boy answered, " an 
 in a hurry, too. He came bright an early 
 this morning a-purpose to see you, an he s 
 been a-waiting for two hours. An I guess 
 he s got his mad up now." 
 
 "When the old book-keeper with his blanched 
 face and his faltering step entered the private 
 office Mr. Wheatcroft wheeled around in his 
 chair. 
 
 " Oh, it s you, is it ?" he cried. " At last !" 
 
186 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 I regret that I was late this morning, Mr. 
 Wheatcroft," Van Zandt began. 
 
 " That s no matter," said the employer ; 
 "at least, I want to talk about something 
 else." 
 
 "About something else?" echoed the old 
 man, feebly. 
 
 " Yes," responded Mr. Wheatcroft. " Shut 
 the door behind you, please, so that that red 
 headed cub out there can t hear what I am go 
 ing to say, and take a chair. Yes ; there is 
 something else I ve got to say to you, and I 
 want you to be frank with me." 
 
 Whatever it was that Mr. Wheatcroft had 
 to say to Major Yan Zandt it had to be said 
 under the eyes of the clerks on the other side 
 of the glass partition. And it took a long 
 time saying, for it was evident to any observ 
 er of the two men as they sat in the private 
 office that Mr. Wheatcroft was trying to force 
 an explanation of some kind from the old 
 book-keeper, and that the Major was resisting 
 his employer s entreaties as best he could. 
 Apparently the matter under discussion was 
 of an importance so grave as to make Mr. 
 Wheatcroft resolutely retain his self-control; 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 187 
 
 and not .once did he let his voice break out 
 explosively, as was his custom. 
 
 Major Yan Zandt was still closeted with 
 Wheatcroft when Mr. "Whittier arrived. The 
 senior partner stopped near the street door to 
 speak to a clerk, and he was joined almost 
 immediately by his son. 
 
 " Well, Paul," said the father, " have I got 
 down here before you after all, and in spite 
 of your running away last night ?" 
 
 "No," the son responded, "I was the first 
 to arrive this morning luckily." 
 
 "Luckily?" echoed his father. "I suppose 
 that means that you have been able to accom 
 plish your purpose whatever it was. You 
 didn t tell me, you know." 
 
 " I m ready to tell you now, father," said 
 Paul, " since I have succeeded." 
 
 Walking down the store together, they 
 came to the private office. 
 
 As the old book-keeper saw them he started 
 up, and made as if to leave the office. 
 
 " Keep your seat, Major," cried Mr. Wheat- 
 croft, sternly, but not unkindly. " Keep your 
 seat, please." 
 
 Then he turned to Mr. Whittier. " I have 
 
188 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 something to tell you both," he said, "and I 
 want the Major here while I tell you. Paul, 
 may I trouble you to see that the door is 
 closed so that we are out of hearino- ?" 
 
 o 
 
 " Certainly," Paul responded, as he closed 
 the door. 
 
 "Well, Wheatcroft," Mr. Whittier said, 
 " what is all this mystery of yours now ?" 
 
 The junior partner swung around in his 
 chair and faced Mr. Whittier. 
 
 " My mystery ?" he cried. " It s the mys 
 tery that puzzled us all, and I ve solved 
 it." 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked the senior 
 partner. 
 
 " What I mean is, that somebody has been 
 opening that safe there in the corner, and 
 reading our private letter-book, and finding 
 out what we were bidding on important con 
 tracts. What I mean is, that this man has 
 taken this information, filched from us, and 
 sold it to our competitors, who were not too 
 scrupulous to buy stolen goods !" 
 
 " We all suspected this, as you know," the 
 elder Whittier said ; " have you any thing new 
 to add to it now ?" 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 189 
 
 "Haven t I?" returned Mr. Wheatcroft. 
 " I ve found the man ! That s all !" 
 
 " You, too r ejaculated Paul. 
 
 " Who is he ?" asked the senior partner. 
 
 " Wait a minute," Mr. Wheatcroft begged. 
 " Don t be in a hurry and I ll tell you. Yes- 
 terda} 7 afternoon, I don t know what possessed 
 me, but I felt drawn down -town for some 
 reason. I wanted to see if anything was 
 going on down here. I knew we had made 
 that bid Saturday, and I wondered if anybody 
 would try to get it on Sunday. So I came 
 down about four o clock, and I saAv a man 
 sneak out of the front door of this office. I 
 followed him as swiftly as I could and as 
 quietly, for I didn t want to give the alarm 
 until I knew more. The man did not see me 
 as he turned to go up the steps of the elevated 
 railroad station. At the corner I saw his face." 
 
 " Did you recognize him ?" asked Mr. Whit- 
 tier. 
 
 " Yes," was the answer. " And he did not 
 see me. There were tears rolling down his 
 cheeks, perhaps that s the reason. This morn 
 ing I called him in here, and he has finally 
 confessed the whole thing." 
 
190 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 who is it?" asked Mr. Whittier, 
 dreading to look at the old book-keeper, who 
 had been in the employ of the firm for thirty 
 years and more. 
 
 "It is Major Van Zandt!" Mr. Wheatcroft 
 declared. 
 
 There was a moment of silence; then the 
 voice of Paul Whittier was heard, saying, " I 
 think there is some mistake !" 
 
 "A mistake!" cried Mr. Wheatcroft. "What 
 kind of a mistake ?" 
 
 " A mistake as to the guilty man," respond 
 ed Paul. 
 
 " Do you mean that the Major isn t guilty ?" 
 asked Mr. Wheatcroft. 
 
 " That s what I mean," Paul returned. 
 
 "But he has confessed," Mr. Wheatcroft 
 retorted. 
 
 " I can t help that," was the response. " He 
 isn t the man who opened that safe yesterday 
 afternoon at half-past three and took out the 
 letter-book." 
 
 The old book-keeper looked at the young 
 man in frightened amazement. 
 
 " I have confessed it," he said, piteously 
 " I have confessed it." 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 191 
 
 " I know you have, Major," Paul declared, 
 not unkindly. "And I don t know why you 
 have, for you were not the man." 
 
 " And if the man who confesses is not the 
 man who did it, who is ?" asked Wheatcroft, 
 sarcastically. 
 
 " I don t know who is, although I have my 
 suspicions," said Paul ; " but I have his photo 
 graph taken in the act !" 
 
WHEN Paul Whittier said he had a photo 
 graph of the mysterious enemy of the Eama- 
 po Steel and Iron Works in the very act of 
 opening the safe, Mr. Whittier and Mr. Wheat- 
 croft looked at each other in amazement. Major 
 Yan Zandt stared at the young man with fear 
 and shame struggling together in his face. 
 
 Without waiting to enjoy his triumph, Paul 
 put his hand in his pocket and took out two 
 squares of bluish paper. 
 
 " There, - he said, as he handed one to his 
 father, " there is a blue print of the man taken 
 in this office at ten minutes past three yester 
 day afternoon, just as he was about to open 
 the safe in the corner. You see he is kneeling 
 with his hand on the lock, but apparently just 
 then something alarmed him and he cast a 
 hasty glance over his shoulder. At that sec 
 ond the photograph was taken, and so we 
 have a full-face portrait of the man." 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 193 
 
 Mr. Whittier had looked at the photograph, 
 and he now passed it to the impatient hand of 
 the junior partner. 
 
 " You see, Mr. Wheatcroft," Paul continued, 
 " that although the face in the photograph 
 bears a certain family likeness to Major Yan 
 Zandt s, all the same that is not a portrait of 
 the Major. The man who was here yesterday 
 was a young man, a man young enough to be 
 the Major s son !" 
 
 The old book-keeper looked at the speaker. 
 
 " Mr. Paul," he began, " you won t be hard 
 on the " then he paused abruptly. 
 
 " I confess I don t understand this at all !" 
 declared Mr. Wheatcroft, irascibly. 
 
 " I am afraid that I do understand it," Mr. 
 Whittier said, with a glance of compassion at 
 the Major. 
 
 " There," Paul continued, handing his father 
 a second azure square, " there is a photograph 
 taken here ten minutes after the first, at 3.20 
 yesterday afternoon. That shows the safe 
 open and the young man standing before it 
 with the private letter-book in his hand. As 
 his head is bent over the pages of the book, 
 the view of the face is not so good. But there 
 
 13 
 
194 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 can be no doubt that it is the same man. You 
 see that, don t you, Mr. "Wheatcrof t ?" 
 
 " I see that, of course," returned Mr. Wheat- 
 croft, forcibly. " What I don t see is why the 
 Major here should confess if he isn t guilty !" 
 
 " I think I know the reason for that," said 
 Mr. Whittier, gently. 
 
 " There haven t been two men at our books, 
 have there?" asked Mr. Wheatcrof t " the 
 Major, and also the fellow who has been pho 
 tographed ?" 
 
 Mr. Whittier looked at the bookkeeper for 
 a moment. 
 
 "Major," he said, with compassion in his 
 voice, "you won t tell me that it was you who 
 sold our secrets to our rivals ? And you might 
 confess it again and again, 1 should never 
 believe it. I know you better. I have known 
 you too long to believe any charge against 
 your honest}?, even if you bring it yourself. 
 The real culprit, the man who is photographed 
 here, is your son, isn t he ? There is no use in 
 your trying to conceal the truth now, and 
 there is no need to attempt it, because we 
 shall be lenient with him for your sake, 
 Major." 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 195 
 
 There was a moment s silence, broken by 
 Wheatcroft suddenly saying : 
 
 " The Major s son ? Why, he s dead, isn t 
 he? He was shot in a brawl after a spree 
 somewhere out West two or three years ago 
 at least, that s what I understood at the 
 time." 
 
 "It is what I wanted everybody to under 
 stand at the time," said the book-keeper, break 
 ing silence at last. " But it wasn t so. The 
 boy was shot, but he wasn t killed. I hoped 
 that it would be a warning to him, and he 
 would make a fresh start. Friends of mine got 
 him a place in Mexico, but luck was against 
 him so he wrote me and he lost that. Then 
 an old comrade of mine gave him another 
 chance out in Denver, and for a while he kept 
 straight and did his work well. Then he 
 broke down once more and he was discharged. 
 For six months I did not know what had be 
 come of him. I ve found out since that he 
 was a tramp for weeks, and that he walked 
 most of the way from Colorado to New York. 
 This fall he turned up in the city, ragged, 
 worn out, sick. I wanted to order him away, 
 but I couldn t. I took him back and got him 
 
196 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 decent clothes and took him to look for a 
 place, for I knew that hard work was the only 
 thing that would keep him out of mischief. 
 He did not find a place, perhaps he did not 
 look for one. But all at once I discovered 
 that he had money. He would not tell me 
 how he got it. I knew he could not have 
 come by it honestly, and so I watched him. 
 I spied after him, and at last I found that he 
 was selling you to the Tuxedo Company." 
 
 " But how could he open the safe ?" cried 
 Mr. Wheatcroft. " You didn t know the new 
 combination." 
 
 "I did not tell him the combination I did 
 know," said the old book-keeper, with pathetic 
 dignity. u And I didn t have to tell him. He 
 can open almost any safe without knowing the 
 combination. How he does it, I don t know ; 
 it is his gift. He listens to the wheels as they 
 turn, and he sets first one and then the other; 
 and in ten minutes the safe is open." 
 
 " How could he get into the store ?" Mr. 
 Whittier inquired. 
 
 " He knew I had a key," responded the old 
 book-keeper, "and he stole it from me. He 
 used to watch on Sunday afternoons till Mike 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 197 
 
 went for a walk, and then he unlocked the 
 store, and slipped in and opened the safe. Two 
 weeks ago Mike came back unexpectedly, and 
 he had just time to get out of one of the rear 
 windows of this office." 
 
 " Yes," Paul remarked, as the Major paused, 
 " Mike told me that he found a window un 
 fastened." 
 
 " I heard you asking about it," Major Van 
 Zandt explained, " and I knew that if you were 
 suspicious he was sure to be caught sooner or 
 later. So I begged him not to try to injure 
 you again. I offered him money to go away. 
 But he refused my money ; he said he could 
 get it for himself now, and I might keep mine 
 until he needed it. He gave me the slip yes 
 terday afternoon. When I found he was gone 
 I came here straight. The front door was un 
 locked ; I walked in and found him just closing 
 the safe here. I talked to him, and he refused 
 to listen to me. I tried to get him to give up 
 his idea, and he struck me. Then I left him, 
 and I went out, seeing no one as I hurried home. 
 That s when Mr. Wheatcroft followed me, I 
 suppose. The boy never came back all night. 
 I haven t seen him since ; I don t know where 
 
198 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 he is, but he is my son, after all my only son! 
 And when Mr. Wheatcroft accused me, I con 
 fessed at last, thinking you might be easier on 
 me than you would be on the boy." 
 
 "My poor friend," said Mr. Whittier, sym 
 pathetically, holding out his hand, which the 
 Major clasped gratefully for a moment. 
 
 " Now that we know who was selling us to 
 the Tuxedo people, we can protect ourselves 
 hereafter," declared Mr. Wheatcroft. " And 
 in spite of your trying to humbug me into be 
 lieving you guilty, Major, I m willing to let 
 your son off easy." 
 
 " I think I can get him a place where he will 
 be out of temptation, because he will be kept 
 hard at work always," said Paul. 
 
 The old book-keeper looked up as though 
 about to thank the young man, but there 
 seemed to be a lump in his throat which pre 
 vented him from speaking. 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Wheatcroft began, explosively, 
 " That s all very well ! but what I still don t un 
 derstand is how Paul got those photographs !" 
 
 Mr. Whittier looked at his son and smiled. 
 "That is a little mysterious, Paul," he said, 
 " and I confess I d like to know how you did it." 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 199 
 
 " Were you concealed here yourself ?" asked 
 Mr. Wheatcroft. 
 
 " No," Paul answered. " If you will look 
 round this room you will see that there isn t 
 a dark corner in which anybody could tuck 
 himself." 
 
 " Then where was the photographer hid 
 den ?" Mr. Wheatcroft inquired, with increas 
 ing curiosity. 
 
 " In the clock," responded Paul. 
 
 "In the clock?" echoed Mr. Wheatcroft, 
 greatly amazed. " Why, there isn t room in 
 the case of that clock for a thin midget, let 
 alone a man !" 
 
 Paul enjoyed puzzling his father s partner. 
 " I didn t say I had a man there or a midget 
 either," he explained. " I said that the pho 
 tographer was in the clock and I might have 
 said that the clock itself was the photographer." 
 
 Mr. Wheatcroft threw up his hands in dis 
 gust. " Well," he cried, " if you want to go on 
 mystifying us in this absurd way, go on as long 
 as you like! But your father and I are en 
 titled to some consideration, I think." 
 
 " I m not mystifying you at all ; the clock 
 took the pictures automatically. I ll show you 
 
200 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 how," Paul returned, getting up from bis chair 
 and going to the corner of the office. 
 
 Taking a key from his pocket he opened 
 the case of the clock and revealed a small 
 photographic apparatus inside, with the tube 
 of the objective opposite the round glass panel 
 in the door of the case. At the bottom of the 
 case was a small electrical batter} 7 , and on a 
 small shelf over this was an electro-magnet. 
 
 " I begin to see how you did it," Mr. Whit- 
 tier remarked. " I am not an expert in pho 
 tography, Paul, and I d like a full explanation. 
 And make it as simple as you can." 
 
 " It s a very simple thing indeed," said the 
 son. " One day while I was wondering how 
 we could best catch the man who was getting 
 at the books, that clock happened to strike, 
 and somehow it reminded me that in our photo 
 graphic society at college we had once sug 
 gested that it would be amusing to attach a 
 detective camera to a timepiece and take snap 
 shots every few minutes all through the day. 
 I saw that this clock of ours faced the safe, and 
 that it couldn t be better placed for the pur 
 pose. So when I had thought out my plan, I 
 came over here and pretended that the clock 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 201 
 
 was wrong, and in setting it right I broke off 
 the minute-hand. Then I had a man I know 
 send for it for repairs ; he is both an electrician 
 and an expert photographer. Together we 
 worked out this device. Here is a small snap 
 shot camera loaded with a hundred and fifty 
 films ; and here is the electrical attachment 
 which connects with the clock so as to take a 
 photograph every ten minutes from eight in 
 the morning to six at night. We arranged 
 that the magnet should turn the spool of film 
 after every snap-shot." 
 
 "Well!" cried Mr. Wheatcroft. "I don t 
 know much about these things, but I read the 
 papers, and I suppose you mean that the clock 
 pressed the button, and the electricity pulled 
 the string." 
 
 " That s it precisely," the young man re 
 sponded. " Of course I wasn t quite sure how 
 it would work, so I thought I would try it 
 first on a week-day when we were all here. 
 It did work all right, and I made several inter 
 esting discoveries. I found that Mike smoked 
 a pipe in this office and that Bob played 
 leap-frog in the store and stood on his head in 
 the corner there up against the safe !" 
 
202 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 " The confounded young rascal !" interrupted 
 Mr. Wheatcroft. 
 
 Paul smiled as he continued. " I found also 
 that Mr. Wheatcroft was captivated by a 
 pretty book-agent and bought two bulky vol 
 umes he didn t want." 
 
 Mr. Wheatcroft looked sheepish for a mo 
 ment. 
 
 " Oh, that s how you knew, is it?" he growled, 
 running his hands impatiently through his 
 shock of hair. 
 
 " That s how I knew," Paul replied. " I told 
 you I had an eye on you. It was the lone eye 
 of the camera. And on Sunday it kept watch 
 for us here, winking every ten minutes. From 
 eight o clock in the morning to three in the 
 afternoon it winked forty -two times, and all it 
 saw was the same scene, the empty corner of the 
 room here, with the safe in the shadow at first 
 and at last in the full light that poured down 
 from the glass roof over us. But a little after 
 three a man came into the office and made 
 ready to open the safe. At ten minutes past 
 three the clock and the camera took his photo 
 graph in the twinkling of an eye. At twenty 
 minutes past three a second record was made. 
 
THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE 203 
 
 Before half -past three the man was gone, and 
 the camera winked every ten minutes until 
 six o clock quite in vain. I came down early 
 this morning and got the roll of negatives. 
 One after another I developed them, dis 
 appointed that I had almost counted fifty 
 of them without reward. But the forty- 
 third and the forty-fourth paid for all my 
 trouble." 
 
 Mr. Whittier gave his son a look of pride. 
 " That was very ingeniously worked out, Paul ; 
 very ingeniously indeed," he said. " If it had 
 not been for your clock here I might have 
 found it difficult to prove that the Major was 
 innocent especially since he declared himself 
 guilty." 
 
 Mr. Wheatcroft rose to his feet, to close the 
 conversation. 
 
 " I m glad we know the truth, anyhow," he 
 asserted, emphatically. And then, as though 
 to relieve the strain on the old book-keeper, he 
 added, with a loud laugh at his own joke, 
 " That clock had its hands before its face all 
 the time but it kept its eyes open for all 
 that !" 
 
 " Don t forget that it had only one eye," 
 
204 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 said "Whittier, joining in the laugh; "it had 
 an eye single to its duty." 
 
 " You know the Frencli saying, father," 
 added Paul, " < In the realm of the blind the 
 one-eyed man is king. " 
 
 (1895.) 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL POSTSCRIPT 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL POSTSCRIPT 
 
 T was pithily said by one of old 
 that a bore is a man who insists 
 upon talking about himself when 
 you want to talk about yourself. 
 There is some truth in the saying, no doubt ; 
 but surely it should not apply to the relation 
 of an author to his readers. So long, at least, 
 as they are holding his book in their hands, 
 it is a fair inference that they do not wish 
 to talk about themselves just that moment ; 
 indeed, it is not a violent hypothesis to sug 
 gest that perhaps they are then willing enough 
 to have him talk about himself. For the ego 
 tistic garrulity of the author there is, in fact, 
 no more fit occasion than in the final pages of 
 his book. At that stage of the game he may 
 fairly enough count on the good humor of his 
 readers, since those who might be dissatisfied 
 
208 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 with him would all have yielded to discourage 
 ment long before the postscript was reached. 
 
 The customary preface is not so pleasant a 
 place for a confidential chat as the unconven 
 tional postscript. The real value and the true 
 purpose of the preface is to serve as a tele 
 phone for the writer of the book and to bear 
 his message to the professional book-review 
 ers. On the other hand, only truly devoted 
 readers will track the author to his lair in a 
 distant postscript. While it might be pre 
 sumptions for him to talk about himself before 
 the unknown and anonymous book-reviewers, 
 he cannot but be rejoiced at the chance of a 
 gossip with his old friends, the gentle readers. 
 
 Perhaps the present author cannot drop into 
 conversation more easily than by here ventur 
 ing upon the expression of a purely personal 
 feeling his own enjoyment in the weaving of 
 the unsubstantial webs of improbable adven 
 ture that fill the preceding pages. "With an 
 ironic satisfaction was it that a writer who is 
 not unaccustomed to be called a mere realist 
 here attempted fantasy, even though the re 
 sults of his effort may reveal invention only 
 and not imagination. It may even be that it 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL POSTSCEIPT 209 
 
 was memory (mother of the muses) rather 
 than invention (daughter of necessity) which in 
 spired the * Primer of Imaginary Geography. 
 I have an uneasy wonder whether I should 
 ever have gone on this voyage of discovery 
 with Mynheer Vanderdecken, past the Bohe 
 mia which is a desert country by the sea, if I 
 had not in my youth been allowed to visit 
 A Virtuoso s Collection ; and yet, to the 
 best of my recollection, it was no recalling of 
 Hawthorne s tale, but a casual glance at the 
 Carte du Pays de Tendre in a volume of 
 Moliere, which first set me upon collecting the 
 material for an imaginary geography. 
 
 In the second of these little fantasies the 
 midnight wanderer saw certain combats fa 
 mous in all literature and certain dances. 
 Where it was possible use was made of the 
 actual words of the great authors who had de 
 scribed these combats and these dances, the 
 descriptions being condensed sometimes and 
 sometimes their rhythm being a little modified 
 so that they should not be out of keeping with 
 the more pedestrian prose by which they were 
 accompanied. Thus, as it happens, the dances 
 of little Pearl and of Topsy could be set forth, 
 
 14 
 
210 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 fortunately, almost in the very phrases of 
 Hawthorne and of Mrs. Stowe, while I was 
 forced to describe as best I could myself the 
 gyrations of the wife who lived in A Doll s 
 House and of her remote predecessor as a 
 " new woman," the daughter of Herodias. 
 The same method was followed in the writing 
 of the third of these tales, although the au 
 thors then drawn upon were most of them less 
 well known ; and the only quotation of any 
 length was the one from Irving describing the 
 mysterious deeds of the headless horseman. 
 
 Now it chanced that the * Dream-Gown of 
 the Japanese Ambassador, instead of appear 
 ing complete in one number of a magazine, as 
 the two earlier tales had done, was published 
 in various daily newspapers in three instal 
 ments. In the first of these divisions the re 
 turned traveller fell asleep and saw himself in 
 the crystal ball ; in the second he went through 
 the rest of his borrowed adventures ; and in 
 the third his friend awakened him and un 
 ravelled the mystery. When the second part 
 appeared a clergyman who had read the 
 4 Sketch -Book (even though he had never 
 heard of the Forty -Seven Ronins, or the 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL POSTSCRIPT 211 
 
 Shah-Nameh, or the Custom of the Coun 
 try ) took his pen and sat down and wrote 
 swiftly to a newspaper, declaring that this in 
 stalment of my tale had been " cribbed bod 
 ily, and almost verbatim et literatim, in one- 
 third of its entire length, from the familiar 
 Legend of Sleepy Hollow. " He asked sar 
 castically if the copyright notice printed at 
 the head of my story was meant to apply also 
 to the passages plagiarized from Irving. He 
 declared also that " it is unfortunate for liter 
 ary persons of the stamp of the author of 
 6 Vignettes of Manhattan that there still ex 
 ist readers who do not forget what they have 
 read that is worth remembering. Such read 
 ers are not to be imposed on by the most skil 
 ful bunglers (sic) who endeavor to pass off as 
 their own the work of greater men." 
 
 The writer of this letter had given his 
 
 address, Christ Church Eectory, , K J. 
 
 (I suppress the name of the village for the sake 
 of his parishioners as I suppress the name of 
 the man for the sake of his family). There 
 fore I wrote to him at once, telling him that if 
 he had read the third and final instalment of 
 my story with the same attention he had given 
 
212 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 to the second part he would understand why 
 I was expecting to receive from him an apol 
 ogy for the letter he had sent to the newspa 
 per. In time there reached me this inadequate 
 and disingenuous response, hardly worthy to be 
 called even an apology for an apology : 
 
 " In reply to your courteous communication, let me say 
 that had I seen the close of your short story, I should 
 have grasped the situation more fully, and should doubt 
 less have refrained from giving it any special attention. 
 
 "When one considers, however, the manner in which 
 your copy was published by the paper, deferring the ex 
 planation until the appearance of the third instalment, it 
 must be acknowledged that there was opportunity for 
 surprise and criticism. The fault should have been found 
 with the way in which the article was published, rather 
 than with the story itself, that appearing at its conclusion 
 a self-confessed mosaic of quotations. Needless to add 
 that its author s aim to amuse, entertain, and instruct 
 has been manifestly subserved. 
 
 "Yours most sincerely, 
 
 Of another tale ( Sixteen Years without a 
 Birthday ) I have nothing to say except to 
 record a friend s remark after he had finished 
 it, that he had " read something very like it 
 not long before in a newspaper ;" so perhaps 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL POSTSCRIPT 213 
 
 I may be permitted to declare that I had not 
 read something very like it anywhere, but had, 
 to the best of my belief, " made it all up out 
 of my own head." Nor need I say anything 
 about the Rival Ghosts except to note that 
 it is here reprinted from an earlier collection 
 of stories which has now for years been out of 
 print. 
 
 The last tale of all, the Twinkling of an 
 Eye, received the second prize for the best 
 detective story, offered by a newspaper syn 
 dicate the first prize being taken by a story 
 written by Miss Mary E. Wilkins and Mr. J. E. 
 Chamberlain. The use of the camera as a 
 detective agency had been suggested to me by 
 a brief newspaper paragraph glanced at casual 
 ly several } r ears before. And I confess that it 
 was with not a little amusement that I em 
 ployed this device, since I had then recently 
 seen my Vignettes of Manhattan criticized as 
 being " photographic in method." Here again 
 I had no reason to doubt the originality of my 
 plot; and here once more was my confidence 
 shattered, and I was forced to confess that 
 fiction can never hope to keep ahead of fact. 
 
 After the Twinkling of an Eye was pub- 
 
214 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 Jished in the newspapers which had joined in 
 offering the prizes, it was printed again in one 
 of the smaller magazines. There it was read 
 by a gentleman connected with a hardware 
 house in Grand Rapids, who wrote to me, in 
 forming me that the story I had laboriously 
 pieced together had in some of its details, 
 at least been anticipated by real life more 
 than a year before I sat down to write out my 
 narrative. This gentleman has now kindly 
 given me permission to quote from his letter 
 those passages which may be of interest to 
 readers of the Twinkling of an Eye : 
 
 It appears that the cash-drawer of the hard 
 ware store, in which small change was habit 
 ually left over night for use in the morning be 
 fore the banks open, was robbed three nights 
 running, although only a few dollars were taken 
 at a time. " The large vault, in which are kept 
 the firm s papers, had not been tampered with, 
 and the work was evidently that of some petty 
 thief. The night-watchman was a trusted em 
 ployee, and my father did not wish to accuse 
 him unjustly. And, besides, he did not wish 
 to warn the thief. So nothing was said to the 
 watchman. The nights on which the till had 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL POSTSCRIPT 215 
 
 been tapped were Thursday, Friday, and Satur 
 day. Father goes down to the store every Sun 
 day morning for about half an hour to open the 
 mail, and it was then that he discovered the 
 Saturday night theft. Directly after Sunday 
 dinner, father went down to see an electrical 
 friend of his, who executed a plan which my 
 father had devised. The cash-drawer was sit 
 uated in one corner of the office (quite a large 
 one), in which both the wholesale and retail 
 business is transacted. He placed a large de 
 tective camera in the corner opposite the till, 
 and beside it, and a little behind, a quantity 
 of flash-light powder in a receptacle. This 
 powder was connected by electric wires with 
 the till in such a manner that when the drawer 
 was opened the circuit would be completed 
 and the powder ignited. Everything worked 
 to perfection. The office is always left dark 
 at night, so the shutter of the camera could be 
 left open without spoiling the film. The cam 
 era was in place Sunday evening, but the thief 
 stayed away. It was set again on Monday 
 night, and that time we got him. A small 
 wire was attached to a weight near the cam 
 era extending to the till. As the thief started 
 
216 TALES OF FANTASY AND FACT 
 
 to open the drawer the weight made a slight 
 noise. He glanced in the direction of the 
 noise, started, pulled the weight a little far 
 ther, and we had his picture. Detectives had 
 already been working on the case, and the 
 thief was identified and arrested on the 
 strength of the portrait. When he was in 
 formed that we had his picture, he made a full 
 confession. He said that when the flash-light 
 went off he nearly fainted from fright." 
 
 After this experience I am tempted to give 
 up all hope that I can ever invent anything 
 which is not a fact, even before I make it up. 
 I am now prepared, therefore, to discover that 
 I did really have an interview with Count 
 Cagliostro, and also that I was actually an 
 unwilling witness at the wedding of the rival 
 ghosts. 
 
 (1896.) 
 
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