University of California • Berkeley 
 
 From the estate of 
 GEORGE METAXAS 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/emigrantaamateurOOstevrich 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 Vol. XV 
 
 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 ACROSS THE PLAINS t THE 
 SILVERADO SOUATTERS Sfe t 
 
*THE TRAVELS AND 
 ESSAYS OF ROBERT 
 LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 THE AMATEUR EMI- 
 GRANT t » ACROSS 
 THE PLAINS t THE SIL- 
 VERADO SQUATTERS % 
 
 tPUBLISHED IN 
 NEW YORK BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S 
 SONS « t 1901 t 
 
Far away were hilltops like little islands. '^^j& 
 Drawn by S. IV, J/ AN sCHAICK. 
 
^THE TRAVELS AND 
 ESSAYS OF ROBERT 
 LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 THE AMATEUR EMI- 
 GRANT % t ACROSS 
 THE PLAINS Sfe THE SIL- 
 VERADO SQUATTERS % 
 
 Ife PUBLISHED IN 
 NEW YORK BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S 
 SONS S SE 1901 S 
 
Copyright, 1892, 1895, by 
 Charles Scribnbr's Sons, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT i 
 
 From the Clyde to Sandy Hook 
 
 ACROSS THE PLAINS 93 
 
 With Other Memories and Essays 
 
 THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 311 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 From tb$ Clyde to Sandy Hook 
 
 PAG8 
 
 THE SECOND CABIN i 
 
 EARLY IMPRESSIONS lo 
 
 STEERAGE SCENES 20 
 
 STEERAGE TYPES 29 
 
 THE SICK MAN 42 
 
 THE STOWAWAYS 53 
 
 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW 69 
 
 NEW YORK 82 
 
 ?r) 
 
 ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 IVITH OTHER MEMORIES AND ESSAYS 
 
 ACROSS THE PLAINS 99 
 
 THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 149 
 
 FONTAINEBLEAU 169 
 
 EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 192 
 
 RANDOM MEMORIES 209 
 
 RANDOM MEMORIES Continued 223 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE LANTERN-BEARERS 235 
 
 A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 250 
 
 BEGGARS 266 
 
 LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 279 
 
 PULVIS ET UMBRA 290 
 
 A CHRISTMAS SERMON 299 
 
 THE SILyERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 Book 1 
 
 IN THE VALLEY 
 
 chapter page 
 
 1 Calistoga 320 
 
 II The Petrified Forest 325 
 
 III Napa Wine 330 
 
 IV The Scot Abroad , 337 
 
 Book II 
 
 WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 I To Introduce Mr. Kelmar 342 
 
 II First Impressions of Silverado 347 
 
 111 The Return 358 
 
 THE ACT OF SQUATTING 364 
 
 THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 374 
 
 THE SEA FOGS 385 
 
 THE TOLL HOUSE 392 
 
 A STARRY DRIVE 398 
 
 EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE 403 
 
 TOILS AND PLEASURES 415 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 FROM THE CLYDE TO SANDY HOOK 
 
TO 
 
 ROBERT ALAN MOWBRAY STEVENSON 
 
 Our friendship was not only founded before we were 
 bom by a community of blood, but is in itself near 
 as old as my life. It began with our early ages, and, 
 like a history, has been continued to the present 
 time. Although we may not be old in the world, 
 we are old to each other, having so long been inti- 
 mates. We are now widely separated, a great sea 
 and continent intervening ; but memory, like care, 
 mounts into iron ships and rides post behind the 
 horseman. Neither time nor space nor enmity can 
 conquer old affection ; and as I dedicate these 
 sketches, it is not to you only, but to all in the old 
 country, that I send the greeting of my heart. 
 
 R. L. S. 
 1879. 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 THE SECOND CABIN 
 
 1 FIRST encountered my fellow-passengers on the 
 Broomielaw in Glasgow. Thence we descended 
 the Clyde in no familiar spirit, but looking askance on 
 each other as on possible enemies. A few Scandina- 
 vians, who had already grown acquainted on the North 
 Sea, were friendly and voluble over their long pipes ; but 
 among English speakers distance and suspicion reigned 
 supreme. The sun was soon overclouded, the wind 
 freshened and grew sharp as we continued to descend 
 the widening estuary ; and with the falling temperature 
 the gloom among the passengers increased. Two of 
 the women wept. Any one who had come aboard 
 might have supposed we were all absconding from the 
 law. There was scarce a word interchanged, and no 
 common sentiment but that of cold united us, until at 
 length, having touched at Greenock, a pointing arm and 
 a rush to the starboard now announced that our ocean 
 steamer was in sight. There she lay in mid-river, at the 
 tail of the Bank, her sea-signal flying : a wall of bulwark, 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 a Street of white deck-houses, an aspiring forest of spars, 
 larger than a church, and soon to be as populous as 
 many an incorporated town in the land to which she 
 was to bear us. 
 
 1 was not, in truth, a steerage passenger. Although 
 anxious to see the worst of emigrant life, I had some 
 work to finish on the voyage, and was advised to go 
 by the second cabin, where at least I should have a table 
 at command. The advice was excellent; but to under- 
 stand the choice, and what I gained, some outline of the 
 internal disposition of the ship will first be necessary. 
 In her very nose is Steerage No. i, down two pair of 
 stairs. A little abaft, another companion, labelled Steer- 
 age No. 2 and 3, gives admission to three galleries, two 
 running forward towards Steerage No. i, and the third 
 aft towards the engines. The starboard forward gallery 
 is the second cabin. Away abaft the engines and below 
 the officers' cabins, to complete our survey of the vessel, 
 there is yet a third nest of steerages, labelled 4 and 5. 
 The second cabin, to return, is thus a modified oasis in 
 the very heart of the steerages. Through the thin par- 
 tition you can hear the steerage passengers being sick, 
 the rattle of tin dishes as they sit at meals, the varied 
 accents in which they converse, the crying of their chil- 
 dren terrified by this new experience, or the clean flat 
 smack of the parental hand in chastisement. 
 
 There are, however, many advantages for the inhabi- 
 tant of this strip. He does not require to bring his own 
 bedding or dishes, but finds berths and a table com- 
 pletely if somewhat roughly furnished. He enjoys a 
 distinct superiority in diet ; but this, strange to say, dif- 
 fers not only on different ships, but on the same ship 
 
THE SECOND CABIN 
 
 according as her head is to the east or west. In my 
 own experience, the principal difference between our 
 table and that of the true steerage passenger was the 
 table itself, and the crockery plates from which we ate. 
 But lest I should show myself ungrateful, let me recapit- 
 ulate every advantage. At breakfast, we had a choice 
 between tea and coffee for beverage ; a choice not easy 
 to make, the two were so surprisingly alike. I found 
 that I could sleep after the coffee and lay awake after 
 the tea, which is proof conclusive of some chemical dis- 
 parity; and even by the palate I could distinguish a 
 smack of snuff in the former from a flavour of boiling 
 and dish-cloths in the second. As a matter of fact, I have 
 seen passengers, after many sips, still doubting which 
 had been supplied them. In the way of eatables at the 
 same meal we were gloriously favoured ; for in addition 
 to porridge, which was common to all, we had Irish 
 stew, sometimes a bit of fish, and sometimes rissoles. 
 The dinner of soup, roast fresh beef, boiled salt junk, and 
 potatoes, was, I believe, exactly common to the steerage 
 and the second cabin ; only I have heard it rumoured that 
 our potatoes were of a superior brand; and twice a 
 week, on pudding-days, instead of duff, we had a saddle- 
 bag filled with currants under the name of a plum-pud- 
 ding. At tea we were served with some broken meat 
 from the saloon ; sometimes in the comparatively elegant 
 form of spare patties or rissoles ; but as a general thing, 
 mere chicken-bones and flakes of fish, neither hot nor 
 cold. If these were not the scrapings of plates their 
 looks belied them sorely ; yet we were all too hungry to 
 be proud, and fell to these leavings greedily. These, the 
 bread, which was excellent, and the soup and porridge 
 
 3 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 which were both good, formed my whole diet through- 
 out the voyage ; so that except for the broken meat and 
 the convenience of a table I might as well have been in 
 the steerage outright Had they given me porridge again 
 in the evening, I should have been perfectly contented 
 with the fare. As it was, with a few biscuits and some 
 whisky and water before turning in, I kept my body 
 going and my spirits up to the mark. 
 
 The last particular in which the second cabin passen- 
 ger remarkably stands ahead of his brother of the steer- 
 age is one altogether of sentiment. In the steerage there 
 are males and females ; in the second cabin ladies and 
 gentlemen. For some time after I came aboard I thought 
 I was only a male ; but in the course of a voyage of dis- 
 covery between decks, I came on a brass plate, and 
 learned that I was still a gentleman. Nobody knew it, 
 of course. I was lost in the crowd of males and females, 
 and rigorously confined to the same quarter of the deck. 
 Who could tell whether I housed on the port or star- 
 board side of steerage No. 2 and 3 ? And it was only 
 there that my superiority became practical ; everywhere 
 else I was incognito, moving among my inferiors with 
 simplicity, not so much as a swagger to indicate that I 
 was a gentleman after all, and had broken meat to tea. 
 Still, I was like one with a patent of nobility in a drawer 
 at home; and when 1 felt out of spirits I could go down 
 and refresh myself with a look of that brass plate. 
 
 For all these advantages I paid but two guineas. Six 
 guineas is the steerage fare ; eight that by the second 
 cabin ; and when you remember that the steerage pas- 
 senger must supply bedding and dishes, and, in five 
 cases out of ten, either brings some dainties with him, 
 
 4 
 
THE SECOND CABIN 
 
 or privately pays the steward for extra rations, the dif- 
 ference in price becomes almost nominal. Air compar- 
 atively fit to breathe, food comparatively varied, and the 
 satisfaction of being still privately a gentleman, may thus 
 be had almost for the asking. Two of my fellow-pas- 
 sengers in the second cabin had already made the passage 
 by the cheaper fare, and declared it was an experiment 
 not to be repeated. As I go on to tell about my steerage 
 friends, the reader will perceive that they were not alone 
 in their opinion. Out of ten with whom I was more or 
 less intimate, I am sure not fewer than five vowed, if 
 they returned, to travel second cabin ; and all who had 
 left their wives behind them assured me they would go 
 without the comfort of their presence until they could 
 afford to bring them by saloon. 
 
 Our party in the second cabin was not perhaps the 
 most interesting on board. Perhaps even in the saloon 
 there was as much good-will and character. Yet it had 
 some elements of curiosity. There was a mixed group 
 of Swedes, Danes, and Norsemen, one of whom, gen- 
 erally known by the name of ''Johnny," in spite of his 
 own protests, greatly diverted us by his clever, cross- 
 country efforts to speak English, and became on the 
 strength of that an universal favourite — it takes so little 
 in this world of shipboard to create a popularity. There 
 was, besides, a Scots mason, known from his favourite 
 dish as '* Irish Stew," three or four nondescript Scots, a 
 fine young Irishman, O'Reilly, and a pair of young men 
 who deserve a special word of condemnation. One of 
 them was Scots; the other claimed to be American; ad- 
 mitted, after some fencing, that he was born in Eng- 
 land ; and ultimately proved to be an Irishman born and 
 
 5 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 nurtured, but ashamed to own his country. He had a 
 sister on board, whom he faithfully neglected through- 
 out the voyage, though she was not only sick, but much 
 his senior, and had nursed and cared for him in child- 
 hood. In appearance he was like an imbecile Henry 
 the Third of France. The Scotsman, though perhaps as 
 big an ass, was not so dead of heart; and I have only 
 bracketed them together because they were fast friends, 
 and disgraced themselves equally by their conduct at the 
 table. 
 
 Next, to turn to topics more agreeable, we had a newly 
 married couple, devoted to each other, with a pleasant 
 story of how they had first seen each other years ago at 
 a preparatory school, and that very afternoon he had 
 carried her books home for her. I do not know if this 
 story will be plain to Southern readers; but to me it re- 
 calls many a school idyll, with wrathful swains of eight 
 and nine confronting each other stride-legs, flushed 
 with jealousy ; for to carry home a young lady's books 
 was both a delicate attention and a privilege. 
 
 Then there was an old lady, or indeed I am not sure 
 that she was as much old as antiquated and strangely out 
 of place, who had left her husband, and was travelling all 
 the way to Kansas by herself. We had to take her own 
 word that she was married ; for it was sorely contradicted 
 by the testimony of her appearance. Nature seemed to 
 have sanctified her for the single state ; even the colour 
 of her hair was incompatible with matrimony, and her 
 husband, I thought, should be a man of saintly spirit 
 and phantasmal bodily presence. She was ill, poor 
 thing ; her soul turned from the viands ; the dirty table- 
 cloth shocked her like an impropriety ; and the whole 
 
 6 
 
THE SECOND CABIN 
 
 Strength of her endeavour was bent upon keeping her 
 watch true to Glasgow time till she should reach New 
 York. They had heard reports, her husband and she, 
 of some unwarrantable disparity of hours between these 
 two cities; and with a spirit commendably scientific, 
 had seized on this occasion to put them to the proof. It 
 was a good thing for the old lady ; for she passed much 
 leisure time in studying the watch. Once, when pros- 
 trated by sickness, she let it run down. It was in- 
 scribed on her harmless mind in letters of adamant that 
 the hands of a watch must never be turned backwards ; 
 and so it behoved her to lie in wait for the exact moment 
 ere she started it again. When she imagined this was 
 about due, she sought out one of the young second- 
 cabin Scotsmen, who was embarked on the same experi- 
 ment as herself and had hitherto been less neglectful. 
 She was in quest of two o'clock; and when she learned 
 it was already seven on the shores of Clyde, she lifted up 
 her voice and cried " Gravy ! " I had not heard this in- 
 nocent expletive since I was a young child ; and I sup- 
 pose it must have been the same with the other Scotsmen 
 present, for we all laughed our fill. 
 
 Last but not least, I come to my excellent friend Mr. 
 Jones. It would be difficult to say whether I was his 
 right-hand man, or he mine, during the voyage. Thus 
 at table I carved, while he only scooped gravy ; but at 
 our concerts, of which more anon, he was the president 
 who called up performers to sing, and I but his mes- 
 senger who ran his errands and pleaded privately with 
 the over-modest. I knew I liked Mr. Jones from the 
 moment I saw him. I thought him by his face to be 
 Scottish; nor could his accent undeceive me. For as 
 
 7 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 there is a lingua franca of many tongues on the moles 
 and in the feluccas of the Mediterranean, so there is a 
 free or common accent among English-speaking men 
 who follow the sea. They catch a twang in a New 
 England port; from a cockney skipper, even a Scots- 
 man sometimes learns to drop an /j; a word of a dialect 
 is picked up from another hand in the forecastle ; until 
 often the result is undecipherable, and you have to ask 
 for the man's place of birth. So it was with Mr. Jones. 
 I thought him a Scotsman who had been long to sea ; 
 and yet he was from Wales, and had been most of his 
 life a blacksmith at an inland forge; a few years in 
 America and half a score of ocean voyages having suf- 
 ficed to modify his speech into the common pattern. 
 By his own account he was both strong and skilful in 
 his trade. A few years back, he had been married and 
 after a fashion a rich man ; now the wife was dead and 
 the money gone. But his was the nature that looks 
 forward, and goes on from one year to another and 
 through all the extremities of fortune undismayed; and 
 if the sky were to fall to-morrow, I should look to see 
 Jones, the day following, perched on a step-ladder and 
 getting things to rights. He was always hovering 
 round inventions like a bee over a flower, and lived in 
 a dream of patents. He had with him a patent medi- 
 cine, for instance, the composition of which he had 
 bought years ago for five dollars from an American 
 peddler, and sold the other day for a hundred pounds 
 (I think it was) to an English apothecary. It was called 
 Golden Oil, cured all maladies without exception ; and 
 1 am bound to say that 1 partook of it myself with good 
 results. It is a character of the man that he was not 
 
 8 
 
THE SECOND CABIN 
 
 only perpetually dosing himself with Golden Oil, but 
 wherever there was a head aching or a finger cut, there 
 would be Jones with his bottle. 
 
 If he had one taste more strongly than another, it was 
 to study character. Many an hour have we two walked 
 upon the deck dissecting our neighbours in a spirit that 
 was too purely scientific to be called unkind ; whenever 
 a quaint or human trait slipped out in conversation, you 
 might have seen Jones and me exchanging glances ; and 
 we could hardly go to bed in comfort till we had ex- 
 changed notes and discussed the day's experience. We 
 were then like a couple of anglers comparing a day's 
 kill. But the fish we angled for were of a metaphysical 
 species, and we angled as often as not in one another's 
 baskets. Once, in the midst of a serious talk, each 
 found there was a scrutinising eye upon himself; I own 
 I paused in embarrassment at this double detection ; but 
 Jones, with a better civility, broke into a peal of unaf- 
 fected laughter, and declared, what was the truth, that 
 there was a pair of us indeed. 
 
EARLY IMPRESSIONS 
 
 We steamed out of the Clyde on Thursday night, and 
 early on the Friday forenoon we took in our last batch 
 of emigrants at Lough Foyle, in Ireland, and said fare- 
 well to Europe. The company was now complete, and 
 began to draw together, by inscrutable magnetisms, 
 upon the decks. There were Scots and Irish in plenty, 
 a few English, a few Americans, a good handful of Scan- 
 dinavians, a German or two, and one Russian ; all now 
 belonging for ten days to one small iron country on the 
 deep. 
 
 As I walked the deck and looked round upon my fel- 
 low-passengers, thus curiously assorted from all north- 
 ern Europe, I began for the first time to understand the 
 nature of emigration. Day by day throughout the pas- 
 sage, and thenceforward across all the States, and on to 
 the shores of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear 
 and melancholy. Emigration, from a word of the most 
 cheerful import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. 
 There is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing 
 more pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as con- 
 ceived at home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young 
 man, you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues 
 forth into life, that great battle, to fight for his own hand. 
 
 lO 
 
EARLY IMPRESSIONS 
 
 The most pleasant stories of ambition, of difficulties 
 overcome, and of ultimate success, are but as episodes 
 to this great epic of self-help. The epic is composed 
 of individual heroisms ; it stands to them as the victori- 
 ous war which subdued an empire stands to the personal 
 act of bravery which spiked a single cannon and was 
 adequately rewarded with a medal. For in emigration 
 the young men enter direct and by the shipload on their 
 heritage of work; empty continents swarm, as at the 
 bo'sun's whistle, with industrious hands, and whole 
 new empires are domesticated to the service of man. 
 
 This is the closet picture, and is found, on trial, to 
 consist mostly of embellishments. The more I saw of 
 my fellow-passengers, the less I was tempted to the lyric 
 note. Comparatively few of the men were below thirty ; 
 many were married, and encumbered with families ; not 
 a few were already up in years ; and this itself was out 
 of tune with my imaginations, for the ideal emigrant 
 should certainly be young. Again, I thought he should 
 offer to the eye some bold type of humanity, with bluff 
 or hawk-like features, and the stamp of an eager and 
 pushing disposition. Now those around me were for 
 the most part quiet, orderly, obedient citizens, family 
 men broken by adversity, elderly youths who had failed 
 to place themselves in life, and people who had seen 
 better days. Mildness was the prevailing character; 
 mild mirth and mild endurance. In a word, I was not 
 taking part in an impetuous and conquering sally, such 
 as swept over Mexico or Siberia, but found myself, like 
 Marmion, ' ' in the lost battle, borne down by the flying. " 
 
 Labouring mankind had in the last years, and through- 
 out Great Britain, sustained a prolonged and crushing 
 
 II 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 series of defeats. I had heard vaguely of these reverses ; 
 of whole streets of houses standing deserted by the 
 Ty ne, the cellar-doors broken and removed for firewood ; 
 of homeless men loitering at the street-corners of Glas- 
 gow with their chests beside them ; of closed factories, 
 useless strikes, and starving girls. But I had never 
 taken them home to me or represented these distresses 
 livingly to my imagination. A turn of the market may 
 be a calamity as disastrous as the French retreat from 
 Moscow; but it hardly lends itself to lively treatment, 
 and makes a trifling figure in the morning papers. We 
 may struggle as we please, we are not born economists. 
 The individual is more affecting than the mass. It is by 
 the scenic accidents, and the appeal to the carnal eye, 
 that for the most part we grasp the significance of trage- 
 dies. Thus it was only now, when I found myself in- 
 volved in the rout, that I began to appreciate how sharp 
 had been the battle. We were a company of the re- 
 jected; the drunken, the incompetent, the weak, the 
 prodigal, all who had been unable to prevail against cir- 
 cumstances in the one land, were now fleeing pitifully 
 to another; and though one or two might still succeed, 
 all had already failed. We were a shipful of failures, the 
 broken men of England. Yet it must not be supposed 
 that these people exhibited depression. The scene, on 
 the contrary, was cheerful. Not a tear was shed on 
 board the vessel. All were full of hope for the future, 
 and showed an inclination to innocent gaiety. Some 
 were heard to sing, and all began to scrape acquaintance 
 with small jests and ready laughter. 
 
 The children found each other out like dogs, and ran 
 about the decks scraping acquaintance after their fash- 
 
 12 
 
EARLY IMPRESSIONS 
 
 ion also. ' * What do you call your mither ? " I heard one 
 ask. "Mawmaw," was the reply, indicating, I fancy, 
 a shade of difference in the social scale. When peo- 
 ple pass each other on the high seas of life at so early an 
 age, the contact is but slight, and the relation more 
 like what we may imagine to be the friendship of flies 
 than that of men ; it is so quickly joined, so easily dis- 
 solved, so open in its communications and so devoid of 
 deeper human qualities. The children, I observed, were 
 all in a band, and as thick as thieves at a fair, while their 
 elders were still ceremoniously manoeuvring on the out- 
 skirts of acquaintance. The sea, the ship, and the sea- 
 men were soon as familiar as home to these half-con- 
 scious little ones. It was odd to hear them, throughout 
 the voyage, employ shore words to designate portions 
 of the vessel. " Go' 'way doon to yon dyke," I heard 
 one say, probably meaning the bulwark. I often had 
 my heart in my mouth, watching them climb into the 
 shrouds or on the rails, while the ship went swinging 
 through the waves ; and I admired and envied the cour- 
 age of their mothers, who sat by in the sun and looked 
 on with composure at these perilous feats. *' He '11 
 maybe be a sailor," I heard one remark; '* now 's the 
 time to learn." I had been on the point of running for- 
 ward to interfere, but stood back at that, reproved. 
 Very few in the more delicate classes have the nerve to 
 look upon the peril of one dear to them ; but the life of 
 poorer folk, where necessity is so much more immediate 
 and imperious, braces even a mother to this extreme of 
 endurance. And perhaps, after all, it is better that the 
 lad should break his neck than that you should break his 
 spirit. 
 
 13 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 And since I am here on the chapter of the children, I 
 must mention one little fellow, whose family belonged 
 to Steerage [No. 4 and 5, and who, wherever he went, 
 was like a strain of music round the ship. He was an 
 ugly, merry, unbreeched child of three, his lint-white 
 hair in a tangle, his face smeared with suet and treacle ; 
 but he ran to and fro with so natural a step, and fell and 
 picked himself up again with such grace and good- 
 humour, that he might fairly be called beautiful when he 
 was in motion. To meet him, crowing with laughter 
 and beating an accompaniment to his own mirth with 
 a tin spoon upon a tin cup, was to meet a little triumph 
 of the human species. Even when his mother and the 
 rest of his family lay sick and prostrate around him, he 
 sat upright in their midst and sang aloud in the pleasant 
 heartlessness of infancy. 
 
 Throughout the Friday, intimacy among us men made 
 but a few advances. We discussed the probable dura- 
 tion of the voyage, we exchanged pieces of information, 
 naming our trades, what we hoped to find in the new 
 world, or what we were fleeing from in the old ; and, 
 above all, we condoled together over the food and the 
 vileness of the steerage. One or two had been so near 
 famine that you may say they had run into the ship with 
 the devil at their heels ; and to these all seemed for the 
 best in the best of possible steamers. But the majority 
 were hugely discontented. Coming as they did frorn a 
 country in so low a state as Great Britain, many of them 
 from Glasgow, which commercially speaking was as 
 good as dead, and many having long been out of work, 
 I was surprised to find them so dainty in their notions. 
 I myself lived almost exclusively on bread, porridge, 
 
 M 
 
EARLY IMPRESSIONS ' 
 
 and soup, precisely as it was supplied to them, and 
 found it, if not luxurious, at least sufficient. But these 
 working men were loud in their outcries. It was not 
 ''food for human beings," it was ''only fit for pigs," it 
 was "a disgrace." Many of them lived almost entirely 
 upon biscuit, others on their own private supplies, and 
 some paid extra for better rations from the ship. This 
 marvellously changed my notion of the degree of luxury 
 habitual to the artisan. I was prepared to hear him 
 grumble, for grumbling is the traveller's pastime ; but I 
 was not prepared to find him turn away from a diet 
 which was palatable to myself Words I should have 
 disregarded, or taken with a liberal allowance ; but when 
 a man prefers dry biscuit there can be no question of the 
 sincerity of his disgust. 
 
 With one of their complaints I could most heartily 
 sympathise. A single night of the steerage had filled 
 them with horror. I had myself suffered, even in my 
 decent second-cabin berth, from the lack of air; and as 
 the night promised to be fine and quiet, I determined to 
 sleep on deck, and advised all who complained of their 
 quarters to follow my example. I daresay a dozen of 
 others agreed to do so, and I thought we should have 
 been quite a party. Yet, when I brought up my rug 
 about seven bells, there was no one to be seen but the 
 watch. That chimerical terror of good night-air, which 
 makes men close their windows, list their doors, and 
 seal themselves up with their own poisonous exhala- 
 tions, had sent all these healthy workmen down below. 
 One would think we had been brought up in a fever 
 country; yet in England the most malarious districts 
 are in the bedchambers. 
 
 »5 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 I felt saddened at this defection, and yet half-pleased 
 to have the night so quietly to myself. The wind had 
 hauled a little ahead on the starboard bow, and was dry 
 but chilly. I found a shelter near the fire-hole, and made 
 myself snug for the night. The ship moved over the 
 uneven sea with a gentle and cradling movement. 
 The ponderous, organic labours of the engine in her 
 bowels occupied the mind, and prepared it for slumber. 
 From time to time a heavier lurch would disturb me as 
 I lay, and recall me to the obscure borders of conscious- 
 ness ; or I heard, as it were through a veil, the clear note 
 of the clapper on the brass and the beautiful sea-cry, 
 "All's well! " I know nothing, whether for poetry or 
 music, that can surpass the effect of these two syllables 
 in the darkness of a night at sea. 
 
 The day dawned fairly enough, and during the early 
 part we had some pleasant hours to improve acquaint- 
 ance in the open air; but towards nightfall the wind 
 freshened, the rain began to fall, and the sea rose so high 
 that it was difficult to keep one's footing on the deck. 
 I have spoken of our concerts. We were indeed a mu- 
 sical ship's company, and cheered our way into exile 
 with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all na- 
 tions. Good, bad, or indifferent — Scottish, English, 
 Irish, Russian, German or Norse, — the songs were re- 
 ceived with generous applause. Once or twice, a reci- 
 tation, very spiritedly rendered in a powerful Scottish 
 accent, varied the proceedings ; and once we sought in 
 vain to dance a quadrille, eight men of us together, to 
 the music of the violin. The performers were all humor- 
 ous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private 
 life ; but as soon as they were arranged for the dance, 
 
 i6 
 
EARLY IMPRESSIONS 
 
 they conducted themselves like so many mutes at a 
 funeral. I have never seen decorum pushed so far; and 
 as this was not expected, the quadrille was soon whistled 
 down, and the dancers departed under a cloud. Eight 
 Frenchmen, even eight Englishmen from another rank 
 of society, would have dared to make some fun for 
 themselves and the spectators; but the working man, 
 when sober, takes an extreme and even melancholy 
 view of personal deportment. A fifth-form schoolboy 
 is not more careful of dignity. He dares not be com- 
 ical; his fun must escape from him unprepared, and 
 above all, it must be unaccompanied by any physical 
 demonstration. I like his society under most circum- 
 stances, but let me never again join with him in public 
 gambols. 
 
 But the impulse to sing was strong, and triumphed 
 over modesty and even the inclemencies of sea and sky. 
 On this rough Saturday night, we got together by the 
 main deck-house, in a place sheltered from the wind 
 and rain. Some clinging to a ladder which led to the 
 hurricane deck, and the rest knitting arms or taking 
 hands, we made a ring to support the women in the 
 violent lurching of the ship ; and when we were thus 
 disposed, sang to our hearts' content. Some of the 
 songs were appropriate to the scene ; others strikingly the 
 reverse. Bastard doggrel of the music-hall, such as, 
 ** Around her splendid form, I weaved the magic circle," 
 sounded bald, bleak, and pitifully silly. '*We don't 
 want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do," was in some 
 measure saved by the vigour and unanimity with which 
 the chorus was thrown forth into the night. I observed 
 a Platt-Deutsch mason, entirely innocent of English, 
 
 17 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 adding heartily to the general effect. And perhaps the 
 German mason is but a fair example of the sincerity 
 with which the song was rendered ; for nearly all with 
 whom I conversed upon the subject were bitterly op- 
 posed to war, and attributed their own misfortunes, and 
 frequently their own taste for whisky, to the campaigns 
 in Zululand and Afghanistan. 
 
 Every now and again, however, some song that 
 touched the pathos of our situation was given forth; 
 and you could hear by the voices that took up the bur- 
 den how the sentiment came home to each. "The 
 Anchor's Weighed " was true for us. We were indeed 
 '* Rocked on the bosom of the stormy deep." How 
 many of us could say with the singer, *'Vm lonely to- 
 night, love, without you," or ''Go, some one, and tell 
 them from me, to write me a letter from home! " And 
 when was there a more appropriate moment for ''Auld 
 Lang Syne " than now, when the land, the friends, and 
 the affections of that mingled but beloved time were 
 fading and fleeing behind us in the vessel's wake ? It 
 pointed forward to the hour when these labours should 
 be overpast, to the return voyage, and to many a meet- 
 ing in the sanded inn, when those who had parted in 
 the spring of youth should again drink a cup of kindness 
 in their age. Had not Burns contemplated emigration, 
 I scarce believe he would have found that note. 
 
 All Sunday the weather remained wild and cloudy; 
 many were prostrated by sickness ; only five sat down 
 to tea in the second cabin, and two of these departed 
 abruptly ere the meal was at an end. The Sabbath was 
 observed strictly by the majority of the emigrants. I heard 
 an old woman express her surprise that "the ship didna 
 
 i8 
 
EARLY IMPRESSIONS 
 
 gae doon," as she saw some one pass her with a chess- 
 board on the holy day. Some sang Scottish psalms. 
 Many went to service, and in true Scottish fashion came 
 back ill pleased with their divine. *'I didna think he 
 was an experienced preacher," said one girl to me. 
 
 It was a bleak, uncomfortable day; but at night, by 
 six bells, although the wind had not yet moderated, the 
 clouds were all wrecked and blown away behind the 
 rim of the horizon, and the stars came out thickly over- 
 head. I saw Venus burning as steadily and sweetly 
 across this hurly-burly of the winds and waters as ever 
 at home upon the summer woods. The engine pounded, 
 the screw tossed out of the water with a roar, and shook 
 the ship from end to end ; the bows battled with loud 
 reports against the billows : and as I stood in the lee- 
 scuppers and looked up to where the funnel leaned out, 
 over my head, vomiting smoke, and the black and 
 monstrous topsails blotted, at each lurch, a different 
 crop of stars, it seemed as if all this trouble were a thing 
 of small account, and that just above the mast reigned 
 peace unbroken and eternal. 
 
 »9 
 
STEERAGE SCENES 
 
 Our companion (Steerage No. 2 and 3) was a favour- 
 ite resort. Down one flight of stairs there was a com- 
 paratively large open space, the center occupied by a 
 hatchway, which made a convenient seat for about 
 twenty persons, while barrels, coils of rope, and the car- 
 penter's bench afforded perches for perhaps as many 
 more. The canteen, or steerage bar, was on one side 
 of the stair; on the other, a no less attractive spot, the 
 cabin of the indefatigable interpreter. I have seen peo- 
 ple packed into this space like herrings in a barrel, and 
 many merry evenings prolonged there until five bells, 
 when the lights were ruthlessly extinguished and all 
 must go to roost. 
 
 It had been rumoured since Friday that there was 
 a fiddler aboard, who lay sick and unmelodious in 
 Steerage No. i ; and on the Monday forenoon, as I came 
 down the companion, I was saluted by something in 
 Strathspey time. A white-faced Orpheus was cheerily 
 playing to an audience of white-faced women. It was 
 as much as he could do to play, and some of his hearers 
 were scarce able to sit ; yet they had crawled from their 
 bunks at the first experimental flourish, and found better 
 than medicine in the music. Some of the heaviest heads 
 
 20 
 
STEERAGE SCENES 
 
 began to nod in time, and a degree of animation looked 
 from some of the palest eyes. Humanly speaking, it is 
 a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly, 
 than to write huge works upon recondite subjects. 
 What could Mr. Darwin have done for these sick wo- 
 men ? But this fellow scraped away ; and the world 
 was positively a better place for all who heard him. We 
 have yet to understand the economical value of these 
 mere accomplishments. I told the fiddler he was a 
 happy man, carrying happiness about with him in his 
 fiddle-case, and he seemed alive to the fact. 
 
 '' It is a privilege," I said. He thought a while upon 
 the word, turning it over in his Scots head, and then an- 
 swered with conviction, '' Yes, a privilege." 
 
 That night I was summoned by " Merrily danced the 
 Quaker's wife " into the companion of Steerage No. 4 
 and 5. This was, properly speaking, but a strip across 
 a deck-house, lit by a sickly lantern which swung to and 
 fro with the motion of the ship. Through the open 
 slide-door we had a glimpse of a grey night sea, with 
 patches of phosphorescent foam flying, swift as birds, 
 into the wake, and the horizon rising and falling as the 
 vessel rolled to the wind. In the center the companion 
 ladder plunged down sheerly like an open pit. Below, 
 on the first landing, and lighted by another lamp, lads and 
 lasses danced, not more than three at a time for lack of 
 space, in jigs and reels and hornpipes. Above, on either 
 side, there was a recess railed with iron, perhaps two 
 feet wide and four long, which stood for orchestra and 
 seats of honour. In the one balcony, five slatternly Irish 
 lasses sat woven in a comely group. In the other was 
 posted Orpheus, his body, which was convulsively in 
 
 21 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 motion, forming an odd contrast to his somnolent, im- 
 perturbable Scots face. His brother, a dark man with a 
 vehement, interested countenance, who made a god of 
 the fiddler, sat by with open mouth, drinking in the 
 general admiration and throwing out remarks to kin- 
 dle it. 
 
 ''That 's a bonny hornpipe now," he would say, *'it 's 
 a great favourite with performers; they dance the sand 
 dance to it. " And he expounded the sand dance. Then 
 suddenly, it would be a long ''Hush!" with uplifted 
 finger and glowing, supplicating eyes; "he's going to 
 play ' Auld Robin Gray ' on one string! " And through- 
 out this excruciating movement, — "On one string, 
 that's on one string ! " he kept crying. I would have giv- 
 en something myself that it had been on none; but the 
 hearers were much awed. I called for a tune or two, 
 and thus introduced myself to the notice of the brother, 
 who directed his talk to me for some little while, keeping, 
 I need hardly mention, true to his topic, like the seamen 
 to the star. " He 's grand of it," he said confidentially. 
 ' ' His master was a music-hall man. " Indeed the music- 
 hall man had left his mark, for our fiddler was ignorant 
 of many of our best old airs ; ' ' Logie o' Buchan, " for in- 
 stance, he only knew as a quick, jigging figure in a set 
 of quadrilles, and had never heard it called by name. 
 Perhaps, after all, the brother was the more interesting 
 performer of the two. I have spoken with him after- 
 wards repeatedly, and found him always the same quick, 
 fiery bit of a man, not without brains; but he never 
 showed to such advantage as when he was thus squir- 
 ing the fiddler into public note. There is nothing more 
 becoming than a genuine admiration ; and it shares this 
 
 22 
 
STEERAGE SCENES 
 
 with love, that it does not become contemptible al- 
 though misplaced. 
 
 The dancing was but feebly carried on. The space 
 was almost impracticably small ; and the Irish wenches 
 combined the extreme of bashfulness about this inno- 
 cent display with a surprising impudence and roughness 
 of address. Most often, either the fiddle lifted up its 
 voice unheeded, or only a couple of lads would be foot- 
 ing it and snapping fingers on the landing. And such 
 was the eagerness of the brother to display all the ac- 
 quirements of his idol, and such the sleepy indifference 
 of the performer, that the tune would as often as not be 
 changed, and the hornpipe expire into a ballad before 
 the dancers had cut half a dozen shuffles. 
 
 In the meantime, however, the audience had been 
 growing more and more numerous every moment; there 
 was hardly standing-room round the top of the com- 
 panion ; and the strange instinct of the race moved some 
 of the new-comers to close both the doors, so that the 
 atmosphere grew insupportable. It was a good place, 
 as the saying is, to leave. 
 
 The wind hauled ahead with a head sea. By ten at 
 night heavy sprays were flying and drumming over the 
 forecastle; the companion of Steerage No. i had to be 
 closed, and the door of communication through the sec- 
 ond cabin thrown open. Either from the convenience 
 of the opportunity, or because we had already a number 
 of acquaintances in that part of the ship, Mr. Jones and 
 I paid it a late visit. Steerage No. i is shaped like an 
 isosceles triangle, the sides opposite the equal angles 
 bulging outward with the contour of the ship. It is 
 lined with eight pens of sixteen bunks apiece, four bunks 
 
 23 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 below and four above on either side. At night the place 
 is lit with two lanterns, one to each table. As the 
 steamer beat on her way among the rough billows, the 
 light passed through violent phases of change, and was 
 thrown to and fro and up and down with startling swift- 
 ness. You were tempted to wonder, as you looked, 
 how so thin a glimmer could control and disperse such 
 solid blackness. When Jones and I entered we found 
 a little company of our acquaintances seated together at 
 the triangular foremost table. A more forlorn party, in 
 more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. 
 The motion here in the ship's nose was very violent; 
 the uproar of the sea often overpoweringly loud. The 
 yellow flicker of the lantern spun round and round and 
 tossed the shadows in masses. The air was hot, but 
 it struck a chill from its foetor. From all round in the 
 dark bunks, the scarcely human noises of the sick joined 
 into a kind of farmyard chorus. In the midst, these five 
 friends of mine were keeping up what heart they could 
 in company. Singing was their refuge from discomfort- 
 able thoughts and sensations. One piped, in feeble tones, 
 ''Oh why left 1 my hame ?" which seemed a pertinent 
 question in the circumstances. Another, from the invis- 
 ible horrors of a pen where he lay dog-sick upon the 
 upper shelf, found courage, in a blink of his sufferings, 
 to give us several verses of the *' Death of Nelson " ; and 
 it was odd and eerie to hear the chorus breathe feebly 
 from all sorts of dark corners, and '*this day has done 
 his dooty " rise and fall and be taken up again in this 
 dim inferno, to an accompaniment of plunging, hollow- 
 sounding bows and the rattling spray-showers over- 
 head. 
 
 24 
 
STEERAGE SCENES 
 
 All seemed unfit for conversation ; a certain dizziness 
 had interrupted the activity of their minds ; and except 
 to sing they were tongue-tied. There was present, 
 however, one tall, powerful fellow of doubtful nation- 
 ality, being neither quite Scotsman nor altogether Irish, 
 but of surprising clearness of conviction on the highest 
 problems. He had gone nearly beside himself on the 
 Sunday, because of a general backwardness to indorse 
 his definition of mind as ''a living, thinking substance 
 which cannot be felt, heard, or seen " — nor, I presume, 
 although he failed to mention it, smelt. Now he came 
 forward in a pause with another contribution to our 
 culture. 
 
 ''Just by way of change," said he, 'M'll ask you a 
 Scripture riddle. There's profit in them too," he added 
 ungrammatically. 
 
 This was the riddle — 
 
 C and P 
 
 Did agree 
 
 To cut down C ; 
 
 But C and P 
 
 Could not agree 
 
 Without the leave of G 
 
 All the people cried to see 
 
 The crueltie 
 
 Of C and P. 
 
 Harsh are the words of Mercury after the songs of 
 Apollo! We were a long while over the problem, 
 shaking our heads and gloomily wondering how a man 
 could be such a fool; but at length he put us out of sus- 
 pense and divulged the fact that C and P stood for 
 Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate. 
 
 25 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 I think it must have been the riddle that settled us ; 
 but the motion and the close air likewise hurried our 
 departure. We had not been gone long, we heard next 
 morning, ere two or even three out of the five fell sick. 
 We thought it little wonder on the whole, for the sea 
 kept contrary all night. I now made my bed upon the 
 second cabin floor, where, although I ran the risk of 
 being stepped upon, I had a free current of air, more or 
 less vitiated indeed, and running only from steerage to 
 steerage, but at least not stagnant ; and from this couch, 
 as well as the usual sounds of a rough night at sea, the 
 hateful coughing and retching of the sick and the sobs 
 of children, I heard a man run wild with terror beseech- 
 ing his friend for encouragement. **The ship's going 
 down! " he cried with a thrill of agony. *'The ship's 
 going down ! " he repeated, now in a blank whisper, 
 now with his voice rising towards a sob ; and his friend 
 might reassure him, reason with him, joke at him — all 
 was in vain, and the old cry came back, *'The ship's 
 going down ! ' ' There was something panicky and catch- 
 ing in the emotion of his tones ; and I saw in a clear flash 
 what an involved and hideous tragedy was a disaster to 
 an emigrant ship. If this whole parishful of people came 
 no more to land, into how many houses would the news- 
 paper carry woe, and what a great part of the web of our 
 corporate human life would be rent across for ever! 
 
 The next morning when I came on deck I found a new 
 world indeed. The wind was fair; the sun mounted 
 into a cloudless heaven; through great dark blue seas 
 the ship cut a swath of curded foam. The horizon was 
 dotted all day with companionable sails, and the sun 
 shone pleasantly on the long, heaving deck. 
 
 26 
 
STEERAGE SCENES 
 
 We had many fine-weather diversions to beguile the 
 time. There was a single chess-board and a single pack 
 of cards. Sometimes as many as twenty of us would 
 be playing dominoes for love. Feats of dexterity, puz- 
 zles for the intelligence, some arithmetical, some of the 
 same order as the old problem of the fox and goose and 
 cabbage, were always welcome; and the latter, I ob- 
 served, more popular as well as more conspicuously 
 well done than the former. We had a regular daily 
 competition to guess the vessel's progress ; and twelve 
 o'clock, when the result was published in the wheel- 
 house, came to be a moment of considerable interest. 
 But the interest was unmixed. Not a bet was laid upon 
 our guesses. From the Clyde to Sandy Hook I never 
 heard a wager offered or taken. We had, besides, 
 romps in plenty. Puss in the Corner, which we had 
 rebaptized, in more manly style. Devil and four Corners, 
 was my own favourite game; but there were many 
 who preferred another, the humour of which was to 
 box a person's ears until he found out who had cuffed 
 him. 
 
 This Tuesday morning we were all delighted with 
 the change of weather, and in the highest possible 
 spirits. We got in a cluster like bees, sitting between 
 each other's feet under lee of the deck-houses. Stories 
 and laughter went around. The children climbed about 
 the shrouds. White faces appeared for the first time, 
 and began to take on colour from the wind. I was 
 kept hard at work making cigarettes for one amateur 
 after another, and my less than moderate skill was 
 heartily admired. Lastly, down sat the fiddler in our 
 midst and began to discourse his reels, and jigs, and 
 
 27 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 ballads, with now and then a voice or two to take up 
 the air and throw in the interest of human speech. 
 
 Through this merry and good-hearted scene there 
 came three cabin passengers, a gentleman and two 
 young ladies, picking their way with little gracious tit- 
 ters of indulgence, and a Lady-Bountiful air about no- 
 thing, which galled me to the quick. I have little of 
 the radical in social questions, and have always nour- 
 ished an idea that one person was as good as another. 
 But I began to be troubled by this episode. It was as- 
 tonishing what insults these people managed to convey 
 by their presence. They seemed to throw their clothes 
 in our faces. Their eyes searched us all over for tatters 
 and incongruities. A laugh was ready at their lips ; but 
 they were too well-mannered to indulge it in our hear- 
 ing. Wait a bit, till they were all back in the saloon, 
 and then hear how wittily they would depict the man- 
 ners of the steerage. We were in truth very innocently, 
 cheerfully, and sensibly engaged, and there was no 
 shadow of excuse for the swaying elegant superiority 
 with which these damsels passed among us, or for the 
 stiff and waggish glances of their squire. Not a word 
 was said ; only when they were gone Mackay sullenly 
 damned their impudence under his breath ; but we were 
 all conscious of an icy influence and a dead break in the 
 course of our enjoyment. 
 
 aS 
 
STEERAGE TYPES 
 
 We had a fellow on board, an Irish-American, for all 
 the world like a beggar in a print by Callot; one-eyed, 
 with great, splay crow's-feet round the sockets; a 
 knotty squab nose coming down over his mustache; a 
 miraculous hat; a shirt that had been white, ay, ages 
 long ago ; an alpaca coat in its last sleeves ; and, with- 
 out hyperbole, no buttons to his trousers. Even in 
 these rags and tatters, the man twinkled all over with 
 impudence like a piece of sham jewellery ; and I have 
 heard him offer a situation to one of his fellow-passen- 
 gers with the air of a lord. Nothing could overlie such 
 a fellow; a kind of base success was written on his 
 brow. He was then in his ill days ; but I can imagine 
 him in Congress with his mouth full of bombast and 
 sawder. As we moved in the same circle, I was brought 
 necessarily into his society. 1 do not think I ever heard 
 him say anything that was true, kind, or interesting; 
 but there was entertainment in the man's demeanour. 
 You might call him a half-educated Irish Tigg. 
 
 Our Russian made a remarkable contrast to this im- 
 possible fellow. Rumours and legends were current in 
 the steerages about his antecedents. Some said he was 
 a Nihilist escaping; others set him down for a harmless 
 spendthrift, who had squandered fifty thousand roubles, 
 
 29 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 and whose father had now despatched him to America 
 by way of penance. Either tale might flourish in se- 
 curity ; there was no contradiction to be feared, for the 
 hero spoke not one word of English. I got on with 
 him lumberingly enough in broken German, and learnt 
 from his own lips that he had been an apothecary. 
 He carried the photograph of his betrothed in a pocket- 
 book, and remarked that it did not do her justice. The 
 cut of his head stood out from among the passengers 
 with an air of startling strangeness. The first natural 
 instinct was to take him for a desperado ; but although 
 the features, to our Western eyes, had a barbaric and 
 unhomely cast, the eye both reassured and touched. 
 It was large and very dark and soft, with an expression 
 of dumb endurance, as if it had often looked on desper- 
 ate circumstances and never looked on them without 
 resolution. 
 
 He cried out when I used the word. ''No, no," he 
 said, ''not resolution." 
 
 "The resolution to endure," I explained. 
 
 And then he shrugged his shoulders, and said, ''Ach, 
 ja/' with gusto, like a man who has been flattered in 
 his favourite pretensions. Indeed, he was always hinting 
 at some secret sorrow ; and his life, he said, had been 
 one of unusual trouble and anxiety ; so the legends of 
 the steerage may have represented at least some shadow 
 of the truth. Once, and once only, he sang a song at 
 our concerts; standing forth without embarrassment, 
 his great stature somewhat humped, his long arms fre- 
 quently extended, his Kalmuck head thrown backward. 
 It was a suitable piece of music, as deep as a cow's bellow 
 and wild like the White Sea. He was struck and charmed 
 
 30 
 
STEERAGE TYPES 
 
 by the freedom and sociality of our manners. At home, 
 he said, no one on a journey would speak to him, but 
 those with whom he would not care to speak; thus un- 
 consciously involving himself in the condemnation of 
 his countrymen. But Russia was soon to be changed; 
 the ice of the Neva was softening under the sun of civ- 
 ilization ; the new ideas, '" wie einefeine yioline/* v^trt 
 audible among the big empty drum notes of Imperial 
 diplomacy; and he looked to see a great revival, though 
 with a somewhat indistinct and childish hope. 
 
 We had a father and son who made a pair of Jacks-of- 
 all-trades. It was the son who sang the *' Death of 
 Nelson " under such contrarious circumstances. He was 
 by trade a shearer of ship plates ; but he could touch the 
 organ, had led two choirs, and played the flute and pic- 
 colo in a professional string band. His repertory of songs 
 was, besides, inexhaustible, and ranged impartially from 
 the very best to the very worst within his reach. Nor 
 did he seem to make the least distinction between these 
 extremes, but would cheerfully follow up '*Tom Bowl- 
 ing" with ** Around her splendid form." 
 
 The father, an old, cheery, small piece of manhood, 
 could do everything connected with tinwork from one 
 end of the process to the other, use almost every car- 
 penter's tool, and make picture frames to boot. *'I sat 
 down with silver plate every Sunday," said he, **and 
 pictures on the wall. I have made enough money to be 
 rolling in my carriage. But, sir," looking at me unstead- 
 ily with his bright rheumy eyes, '* I was troubled with 
 a drunken wife." He took a hostile view of matrimony 
 in consequence. ''It's an old saying," he remarked: 
 ''God made 'em, and the devil he mixed 'em." 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 I think he was justified by his experience. It was a 
 dreary story. He would bring home three pounds on 
 Saturday, and on Monday all the clothes would be in 
 pawn. Sick of the useless struggle, he gave up a pay- 
 ing contract, and contented himself with small and ill- 
 paid jobs. ** A bad job was as good as a good job for 
 me,'* he said; "it all went the same way." Once the 
 wife showed signs of amendment; she kept steady for 
 weeks on end; it was again worth while to labour and 
 to do one's best. The husband found a good situation 
 some distance from home, and, to make a little upon 
 every hand, started the wife in a cook-shop ; the chil- 
 dren were here and there, busy as mice; savings be- 
 gan to grow together in the bank, and the golden age 
 of hope had returned again to that unhappy family. But 
 one week my old acquaintance, getting earlier through 
 with his work, came home on the Friday instead of the 
 Saturday, and there was his wife to receive him reeling 
 drunk. He ''took and gave her a pair o' black eyes," 
 for which I pardon him, nailed up the cook-shop door, 
 gave up his situation, and resigned himself to a life of 
 poverty, with the workhouse at the end. As the chil- 
 dren came to their full age they fled the house, and estab- 
 lished themselves in other countries; some did well, 
 some not so well; but the father remained at home 
 alone with his drunken wife, all his sound-hearted pluck 
 and varied accomplishments depressed and negatived. 
 
 Was she dead now ? or, after all these years, had he 
 broken the chain, and run from home like a schoolboy ? 
 I could not discover which ; but here at least he was out 
 on the adventure, and still one of the bravest and most 
 youthful men on board. 
 
 32 
 
STEERAGE TYPES 
 
 *'Now, I suppose, I must put my old bones to work 
 again," said he; *' but I can do a turn yet." 
 
 And the son to whom he was going, I asked, was he 
 not able to support him ? 
 
 '*0h yes," he replied. *'But I'm never happy with- 
 out a job on hand. And I'm stout; I can eat a'most 
 anything. You see no craze about me." 
 
 This tale of a drunken wife was paralleled on board 
 by another of a drunken father. He was a capable man, 
 with a good chance in life ; but he had drunk up two 
 thriving businesses like a bottle of sherry, and involved 
 his sons along with him in ruin. Now they were on 
 board with us, fleeing his disastrous neighbourhood. 
 
 Total abstinence, like all ascetical conclusions, is un- 
 friendly to the most generous, cheerful, and human 
 parts of man ; but it could have adduced many instan- 
 ces and arguments from among our ship's company. I 
 was one day conversing with a kind and happy Scots- 
 man, running to fat and perspiration in the physical, 
 but with a taste for poetry and a genial sense of fun. I 
 had asked him his hopes in emigrating. They were like 
 those of so many others, vague and unfounded ; times 
 were bad at home ; they were said to have a turn for 
 the better in the States ; and a man could get on any- 
 where, he thought. That was precisely the weak point 
 of his position ; for if he could get on in America, why 
 could he not do the same in Scotland ? But I never 
 had the courage to use that argument, though it was 
 often on the tip of my tongue, and instead I agreed 
 with him heartily, adding, with reckless originality, 
 *'If the man stuck to his work, and kept away from 
 drink." 
 
 33 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 **Ah!" said he slowly, *'the drink! You see, that's 
 just my trouble." 
 
 He spoke with a simplicity that was touching, look- 
 ing at me at the same time with something strange and 
 timid in his eye, half-ashamed, half-sorry, like a good 
 child who knows he should be beaten. You would 
 have said he recognised a destiny to which he was born, 
 and accepted the consequences mildly. Like the mer- 
 chant Abudah, he was at the same time fleeing from his 
 destiny and carrying it along with him, the whole at an 
 expense of six guineas. 
 
 As far as I saw, drink, idleness, and incompetency 
 were the three great causes of emigration, and for all of 
 them, and drink first and foremost, this trick of getting 
 transported overseas appears to me the silliest means of 
 cure. You cannot run away from a weakness; you 
 must some time fight it out or perish ; and if that be so, 
 why not now, and where you stand ? Ccelum non ant- 
 mam. Change Glenlivet for Bourbon, and it is still 
 whisky, only not so good. A sea-voyage will not give 
 a man the nerve to put aside cheap pleasure ; emigration 
 has to be done before we climb the vessel; an aim in 
 life is the only fortune worth the finding; and it is not 
 to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself. 
 
 Speaking generally, there is no vice of this kind more 
 contemptible than another; for each is but a result and 
 outward sign of a soul tragically shipwrecked. In the 
 majority of cases, cheap pleasure is resorted to by way 
 of anodyne. The pleasure-seeker sets forth upon life 
 with high and difficult ambitions ; he meant to be nobly 
 good and nobly happy, though at as little pains as pos- 
 sible to himself; and it is because all has failed in his 
 
 34 
 
STEERAGE TYPES 
 
 celestial enterprise that you now behold him rolling in 
 the garbage. Hence the comparative success of the tee- 
 total pledge ; because to a man who had nothing it sets 
 at least a negative aim in life. Somewhat as prisoners 
 beguile their days by taming a spider, the reformed 
 drunkard makes an interest out of abstaining from in- 
 toxicating drinks, and may live for that negation. There 
 is something, at least, not to be done each day; and a 
 cold triumph awaits him every evening. 
 
 We had one on board with us, whom I have already 
 referred to under the name of Mackay, who seemed to 
 me not only a good instance of this failure in life of 
 which we have been speaking, but a good type of the 
 intelligence which here surrounded me. Physically he 
 was a small Scotsman, standing a little back as though 
 he were already carrying the elements of a corporation, 
 and his looks somewhat marred by the smallness of his 
 eyes. Mentally, he was endowed above the average. 
 There were but few subjects on which he could not 
 converse with understanding and a dash of wit; deliver- 
 ing himself slowly and with gusto, like a man who en- 
 joyed his own sententiousness. He was a dry, quick, 
 pertinent debater, speaking with a small voice, and 
 swinging on his heels to launch and emphasise an argu- 
 ment. When he began a discussion, he could not bear 
 to leave it off, but would pick the subject to the bone, 
 without once relinquishing a point. An engineer by 
 trade, Mackay believed in the unlimited perfectibility of 
 all machines except the human machine. The latter he 
 gave up with ridicule for a compound of carrion and 
 perverse gases. He had an appetite for disconnected 
 facts which I can only compare to the savage taste for 
 
 35 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 beads. What is called information was indeed a passion 
 with the man, and he not only delighted to receive it, 
 but could pay you back in kind. 
 
 With all these capabilities, here was Mackay, already 
 no longer young, on his way to a new country, with no 
 prospects, no money, and but little hope. He was al- 
 most tedious in the cynical disclosures of his despair. 
 ''The ship may go down for me," he would say, *' now 
 or to-morrow. I have nothing to lose and nothing to 
 hope." And again: *'I am sick of the whole damned 
 performance." He was, like the kind little man already 
 quoted, another so-called victim of the bottle. But 
 Mackay was miles from publishing his weakness to the 
 world ; laid the blame of his failure on corrupt masters 
 and a corrupt State policy ; and after he had been one 
 night overtaken and had played the buffoon in his cups, 
 sternly, though not without tact, suppressed all refer- 
 ence to his escapade. It was a treat to see him manage 
 this ; the various jesters withered under his gaze, and you 
 were forced to recognise in him a certain steely force, and 
 a gift of command which might have ruled a senate. 
 
 In truth it was not whisky that had ruined him ; he 
 was ruined long before for all good human purposes but 
 conversation. His eyes were sealed by a cheap, school- 
 book materialism. He could see nothing in the world 
 but money and steam-engines. He did not know what 
 you meant by the word happiness. He had forgotten 
 the simple emotions of childhood, and perhaps never 
 encountered the delights of youth. He believed in pro- 
 duction, that useful figment of economy, as if it had 
 been real like laughter; and production, without preju- 
 dice to liquor, was his god and guide. One day he 
 
 36 
 
STEERAGE TYPES 
 
 took me to task — a novel cry to me — upon the over- 
 payment of literature. Literary men, he said, were 
 more highly paid than artisans; yet the artisan made 
 threshing-machines and butter-churns, and the man of 
 letters, except in the way of a few useful handbooks, 
 made nothing worth the while. He produced a mere 
 fancy article. Mackay's notion of a book was Hoppus's 
 Measurer. Now in my time I have possessed and even 
 studied that work; but if I were to be left to-morrow 
 on Juan Fernandez, Hoppus's is not the book that I 
 should choose for my companion volume. 
 
 I tried to fight the point with Mackay. I made him 
 own that he had taken pleasure in reading books other- 
 wise, to his view, insignificant; but he was too wary 
 to advance a step beyond the admission. It was in vain 
 for me to argue that here was pleasure ready-made and 
 running from the spring, whereas his ploughs and but- 
 ter-churns were but means and mechanisms to give men 
 the necessary food and leisure before they start upon 
 the search for pleasure; he jibbed and ran away from 
 such conclusions. The thing was different, he declared, 
 and nothing was serviceable but what had to do with 
 food. ''Eat, eat, eat!" he cried; "that's the bottom 
 and the top." By an odd irony of circumstance, he 
 grew so much interested in this discussion that he let 
 the hour slip by unnoticed and had to go without his 
 tea. He had enough sense and humour, indeed he had 
 no lack of either, to have chuckled over this himself in 
 private ; and even to me he referred to it with the sha- 
 dow of a smile. 
 
 Mackay was a hot bigot. He would not hear of re- 
 ligion. I have seen him waste hours of time in argu- 
 
 37, 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 ment with all sort of poor human creatures who under- 
 stood neither him nor themselves, and he had had the 
 boyishness to dissect and criticise even so small a matter 
 as the riddler's definition of mind. He snorted aloud 
 with zealotry and the lust for intellectual battle. Any- 
 thing, whatever it was, that seemed to him likely to 
 discourage the continued passionate production of corn 
 and steam-engines he resented like a conspiracy against 
 the people. Thus, when I put in the plea for literature, 
 that it was only in good books, or in the society of the 
 good, that a man could get help in his conduct, he de- 
 clared I was in a different world from him. ' * Damn my 
 conduct! " said he. "I have given it up for a bad job. 
 My question is, *Can I drive a nail.?'" And he plainly 
 looked upon me as one who was insidiously seeking to 
 reduce the people's annual bellyful of corn and steam- 
 engines. 
 
 It may be argued that these opinions spring from the 
 defect of culture; that a narrow and pinching way of life 
 not only exaggerates to a man the importance of mate- 
 rial conditions, but indirectly, by denying him the neces- 
 sary books and leisure, keeps his mind ignorant of larger 
 thoughts; and that hence springs this overwhelming 
 concern about diet, and hence the bald view of existence 
 professed by Mackay. Had this been an English peasant 
 the conclusion would be tenable. But Mackay had 
 most of the elements of a liberal education. He had 
 skirted metaphysical and mathematical studies. He had 
 a thoughtful hold of what he knew, which would be ex- 
 ceptional among bankers. He had been brought up in 
 the midst of hot-house piety, and told, with incongru- 
 ous pride, the story of his own brother's deathbed 
 
 38 
 
STEERAGE TYPES 
 
 ecstasies. Yet he had somehow failed to fulfil himself, 
 and was adrift like a dead thing among external circum- 
 stances, without hope or lively preference or shaping 
 aim. And further, there seemed a tendency among 
 many of his fellows to fall into the same blank and un- 
 lovely opinions. One thing, indeed, is not to be learned 
 in Scotland, and that is the way to be happy, Yet that 
 is the whole of culture, and perhaps two-thirds of mo- 
 rality. Can it be that the Puritan school, by divorcing 
 a man from nature, by thinning out his instincts, and 
 setting a stamp of its disapproval on whole fields of 
 human activity and interest, leads at last directly to 
 material greed ? 
 
 Nature is a good guide through life, and the love of 
 simple pleasures next, if not superior, to virtue; and we 
 had on board an Irishman who based his claim to the 
 widest and most affectionate popularity precisely upon 
 these two qualities, that he was natural and happy. He 
 boasted a fresh colour, a tight little figure, unquenchable 
 gaiety, and indefatigable good-will. His clothes puzzled 
 the diagnostic mind, until you heard he had been once a 
 private coachman, when they became eloquent and 
 seemed a part of his biography. His face contained the 
 rest, and, I fear, a prophecy of the future; the hawk's 
 nose above accorded so ill with the pink baby's mouth 
 below. His spirit and his pride belonged, you might 
 say, to the nose ; while it was the general shiftlessness 
 expressed by the other that had thrown him from situa- 
 tion to situation, and at length on board the emigrant 
 ship. Barney ate, so to speak, nothing from the galley; 
 his own tea, butter and eggs supported him through- 
 out the voyage ; and about mealtime you might often 
 
 39 _ 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 find him up to the elbows in amateur cookery. His was 
 the first voice heard singing among all the passengers ; 
 he was the first who fell to dancing. From Loch Foyle 
 to Sandy Hook, there was not a piece of fun undertaken 
 but there was Barney in the midst. 
 
 You ought to have seen him when he stood up to sing 
 at our concerts — his tight little figure stepping to and 
 fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and 
 bestowing encouragement — and to have enjoyed the 
 bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, be- 
 tween grace and clumsiness, with which he brought 
 each song to a conclusion. He was not only a great 
 favourite among ourselves, but his songs attracted the 
 lords of the saloon, who often leaned to hear him over 
 the rails of the hurricane-deck. He was somewhat 
 pleased, but not at all abashed by this attention ; and 
 one night, in the midst of his famous performance of 
 '* Billy Keogh," I saw him spin half round in a pirou- 
 ette and throw an audacious wink to an old gentleman 
 above. 
 
 This was the more characteristic, as, for all his daffmg, 
 he was a modest and very polite little fellow among 
 ourselves. 
 
 He would not have hurt the feelings of a fly, nor 
 throughout the passage did he give a shadow of of- 
 ence; yet he was always, by his innocent freedoms and 
 love of fun, brought upon that narrow margin where 
 politeness must be natural to walk without a fall. He 
 was once seriously angry, and that in a grave, quiet 
 manner, because they supplied no fish on Friday; for 
 Barney was a conscientious Catholic. He had likewise 
 strict notions of refinement; and when, late one eve- 
 
 40 
 
STEERAGE TYPES 
 
 ning, after the women had retired, a young Scotsman 
 struck up an indecent song, Barney's drab clothes were 
 immediately missing from the group. His taste was for 
 the society of gentlemen, of whom, with the reader's 
 permission, there was no lack in our five steerages and 
 second cabin; and he avoided the rough and positive 
 with a girlish shrinking. Mackay, partly from his su- 
 perior powers of mind, which rendered him incompre- 
 hensible, partly from his extreme opinions, was espe- 
 cially distasteful to the Irishman. I have seen him slink 
 off with backward looks of terror and offended delicacy, 
 while the other, in his witty, ugly way, had been pro- 
 fessing hostility to God, and an extreme theatrical readi- 
 ness to be shipwrecked on the spot. These utterances 
 hurt the little coachman's modesty like a bad word. 
 
 4« 
 
THE SICK MAN 
 
 One night Jones, the young O'Reilly, and myself were 
 walking arm-in-arm and briskly up and down the deck. 
 Six bells had rung; a head-wind blew chill and fitful, the 
 fog was closing in with a sprinkle of rain, and the fog- 
 whistle had been turned on, and now divided time 
 with its unwelcome outcries, loud like a bull, thrilling 
 and intense like a mosquito. Even the watch lay some- 
 where snugly out of sight. 
 
 For some time we observed something lying black 
 and huddled in the scuppers, which at last heaved a lit- 
 tle and moaned aloud. We ran to the rails. An elderly 
 man, but whether passenger or seaman it was impossi- 
 ble in the darkness to determine, lay grovelling on his 
 belly in the wet scuppers, and kicking feebly with his 
 outspread toes. We asked him what was amiss, and 
 he replied incoherently, with a strange accent and in a 
 voice unmanned by terror, that he had cramp in the 
 stomach, that he had been ailing all day, had seen the 
 doctor twice, and had walked the deck against fatigue 
 till he was overmastered and had fallen where we found 
 him. 
 
 Jones remained by his side, while O'Reilly and I hur- 
 ried off to seek the doctor. We knocked in vain at the 
 
THE SICK MAN 
 
 doctor's cabin ; there came no reply ; nor could we find 
 any one to guide us. It was no time for delicacy; so 
 we ran once more forward ; and I, whipping up a lad- 
 der and touching my hat to the oificer of the watch, 
 addressed him as politely as I could : 
 
 *' I beg your pardon, sir; but there is a man lying bad 
 with cramp in the lee scuppers; and I can't find the 
 doctor." 
 
 He looked at me peeringly in the darkness ; and then, 
 somewhat harshly, *' Well, /can't leave the bridge, my 
 man," said he. 
 
 ' * No, sir ; but you can tell me what to do, " I returned. 
 
 *Ms it one of the crew ? " he asked. 
 
 ** I believe him to be a fireman," I replied. 
 
 I daresay oificers are much annoyed by complaints 
 and alarmist information from their freight of human 
 creatures; but certainly, whether it was the idea that 
 the sick man was one of the crew, or from something 
 conciliatory in my address, the oificer in question was 
 immediately relieved and mollified; and speaking in a 
 voice much freer from constraint, advised me to find a 
 steward and despatch him in quest of the doctor, who 
 would now be in the smoking-room over his pipe. 
 
 One of the stewards was often enough to be found 
 about this hour down our companion, Steerage No. 2 
 and 3 ; that was his smoking-room of a night. Let me 
 call him Blackwood. O'Reilly and I rattled down the 
 companion, breathing hurry ; and in his shirt-sleeves and 
 perched across the carpenter's bench upon one thigh, 
 found Blackwood; a neat, bright, dapper, Glasgow- 
 looking man, with a bead of an eye and a rank twang 
 in his speech. I forget who was with him, but the pair 
 
 43 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 were enjoying a deliberate talk over their pipes. I dare 
 say he was tired with his day's work, and eminently 
 comfortable at that moment; and the truth is, I did not 
 stop to consider his feelings, but told my story in a 
 breath. 
 
 *' Steward," said I, ** there's a man lying bad with 
 cramp, and I can't find the doctor." 
 
 He turned upon me as pert as a sparrow, but with a 
 black look that is the prerogative of man ; and taking 
 his pipe out of his mouth 
 
 *' That's none of my business," said he. ''I don't 
 care." 
 
 I could have strangled the little ruffian where he sat. 
 The thought of his cabin civility and cabin tips filled me 
 with indignation. I glanced at O'Reilly; he was pale 
 and quivering, and looked like assault and battery, 
 every inch of him. But we had a better card than 
 violence. 
 
 "You will have to make it your business," said I, 
 "for I am sent to you by the officer on the bridge." 
 
 Blackwood was fairly tripped. He made no answer, 
 but put out his pipe, gave me one murderous look, and 
 set off upon his errand strolling. From that day for- 
 ward, I should say, he improved to me in courtesy, as 
 though he had repented his evil speech and were anx- 
 ious to leave a better impression. 
 
 When we got on deck again, Jones was still beside 
 the sick man; and two or three late stragglers had 
 gathered round and were offering suggestions. One 
 proposed to give the patient water, which was promptly 
 negatived. Another bade us hold him up ; he himself 
 prayed to be let lie; but as it was at least as well ta 
 
 44 
 
THE SICK MAN 
 
 keep him off the streaming decks, O'Reilly and I sup- 
 ported him between us. It was only by main force 
 that we did so, and neither an easy nor an agreeable 
 duty ; for he fought in his paroxysms like a frightened 
 child, and moaned miserably when he resigned himself 
 to our control. 
 
 *' O let me lie ! " he pleaded. " I'll no' get better any- 
 way." And then, with a moan that went to my heart, 
 " O why did I come upon this miserable journey ? " 
 
 I was reminded of the song which I had heard a little 
 while before in the close, tossing steerage: ** O why left 
 I my hame?" 
 
 Meantime Jones, relieved of his immediate charge, 
 had gone off to the galley, where we could see a light. 
 There he found a belated cook scouring pans by the 
 radiance of two lanterns, and one of these he sought to 
 borrow. The scullion was backward. ** Was it one of 
 the crew ? " he asked. And when Jones, smitten with 
 my theory, had assured that it was a fireman, he reluc- 
 tantly left his scouring and came towards us at an easy 
 pace, with one of the lanterns swinging from his finger. 
 The light, as it reached the spot, showed us an elderly 
 man, thick-set, and grizzled with years; but the shift- 
 ing and coarse shadows concealed from us the expres- 
 sion and even the design of his face. 
 
 So soon as the cook set eyes on him he gave a sort 
 of whistle. 
 
 ''It's only a passenger I' ' said he; and turning about, 
 made, lantern and all, for the galley. 
 
 '*He's a man anyway," cried Jones in indignation. 
 
 '* Nobody said he was a woman," said a gruff voice, 
 which I recognised for that of the bo's'un. 
 
 45 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 All this while there was no word of Blackwood or 
 the doctor; and now the officer came to our side of the 
 ship and asked, over the hurricane-deck rails, if the doc- 
 tor were not yet come. We told him not. 
 
 '*No ?" he repeated with a breathing of anger; and 
 we saw him hurry aft in person. 
 
 Ten minutes after the doctor made his appearance 
 deliberately enough and examined our patient with 
 the lantern. He made little of the case, had the man 
 brought aft to the dispensary, dosed him, and sent 
 him forward to his bunk. Two of his neighbours in 
 the steerage had now come to our assistance, express- 
 ing loud sorrow that such *'a fine cheery body" should 
 be sick ; and these, claiming a sort of possession, took 
 him entirely under their own care. The drug had prob- 
 ably relieved him, for he struggled no more, and was 
 led along plaintive and patient, but protesting. His 
 heart recoiled at the thought of the steerage. *'0 
 let me lie down upon the bieldy side," he cried; '*0 
 dinna take me down!" And again: ''O why did 
 ever I come upon this miserable voyage ? " And yet 
 once more, with a gasp and a wailing prolongation of 
 the fourth word: " I had no call to come." But there 
 he was ; and by the doctor's orders and the kind force 
 of his two shipmates disappeared down the companion 
 of Steerage No. i into the den allotted him. 
 
 At the foot of our own companion, just where I found 
 Blackwood, Jones and the bo's'un were now engaged in 
 talk. This last was a gruff, cruel-looking seaman, who 
 must have passed near half a century upon the seas; 
 square-headed, goat-bearded, with heavy blond eye- 
 brows, and an eye without radiance, but inflexibly 
 
 46 
 
THE SICK MAN 
 
 Steady and hard. I had not forgotten his rough speech ; 
 but I remembered also that he had helped us about the 
 lantern ; and now seeing him in conversation with Jones, 
 and being choked with indignation, I proceeded to blow 
 off my steam. 
 
 "Well," said I, " I make you my compliments upon 
 your steward," and furiously narrated what had hap- 
 pened. 
 
 "I've nothing to do with him," replied the bo's'un. 
 "They're all alike. They wouldn't mind if they saw 
 you all lying dead one upon the top of another." 
 
 This was enough. A very little humanity went a 
 long way with me after the experience of the even- 
 ing. A sympathy grew up at once between the 
 bo's'un and myself ; and that night, and during the 
 next few days, I learned to appreciate him better. 
 He was a remarkable type, and not at all the kind of 
 man you find in books. He had been at Sebastopol 
 under English colours; and again in a States ship, 
 "after the Alabama, and praying God we shouldn't 
 find her." He was a high Tory and a high Englishman. 
 No manufacturer could have held opinions more hostile 
 to the working man and his strikes. ' ' The workmen, " 
 he said, "think nothing of their country. They think 
 of nothing but themselves. They're damned greedy, 
 selfish fellows." He would not hear of the decadence 
 of England. " They say they send us beef from Amer- 
 ica," he argued; "but who pays for it.^ All the mo- 
 ney in the world's in England." The Royal Navy 
 was the best of possible services, according to him. 
 "Anyway the officers are gentlemen," said he; "and 
 you can't get hazed to death by a damned non-commis- 
 
 47 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 sioned as you can in the army." Among na- 
 tions, England was the first; then came France. He 
 respected the French navy and liked the French people ; 
 and if he were forced to make a new choice in life, "by 
 God, he would try Frenchmen!" For all his looks and 
 rough, cold manners, I observed that children were 
 never frightened by him ; they divined him at once to be 
 a friend ; and one night when he had chalked his hand 
 and went about stealthily setting his mark on people's 
 clothes, it was incongruous to hear this formidable old 
 salt chuckling over his boyish monkey trick. 
 
 In the morning, my first thought was of the sick man. 
 I was afraid I should not recognise him, so baffling had 
 been the light of the lantern ; and found myself unable 
 to decide if he were Scots, English, or Irish. He had 
 certainly employed north-country words and elisions ; 
 but the accent and the pronunciation seemed unfamiliar 
 and incongruous in my ear. 
 
 To descend on an empty stomach into Steerage No. 
 I, was an adventure that required some nerve. The 
 stench was atrocious; each respiration tasted in the 
 throat like some horrible kind of cheese; and the 
 squalid aspect of the place was aggravated by so many 
 people worming themselves into their clothes in the 
 twilight of the bunks. You may guess if I was pleased, 
 not only for him, but for myself also, when I heard that 
 the sick man was better and had gone on deck. 
 
 The morning was raw and foggy, though the sun 
 suffused the fog with pink and amber; the fog-horn still 
 blew, stertorous and intermittent; and to add to the dis- 
 comfort, the seamen were just beginning to wash down 
 the decks. But for a sick man this was heaven com- 
 
 48 
 
THE SICK MAN 
 
 pared to the steerage. I found him standing on the hot- 
 water pipe, just forward of the saloon deck house. He 
 was smaller than I had fancied, and plain-looking; but 
 his face was distinguished by strange and fascinating 
 eyes, limpid grey from a distance, but, when looked 
 into, full of changing colours and grains of gold. His 
 manners were mild and uncompromisingly plain; and 
 I soon saw that, when once started, he delighted to 
 talk. His accent and language had been formed in the 
 most natural way, since he was born in Ireland, had 
 lived a quarter of a century on the banks of Tyne, and 
 was married to a Scots wife. A fisherman in the season, 
 he had fished the east coast from Fisherrow to Whitby. 
 When the season was over, and the great boats, which 
 required extra hands, were once drawn up on shore till 
 the next spring, he worked as a labourer about chemical 
 furnaces, or along the wharves unloading vessels. In 
 this comparatively humble way of life he had gathered 
 a competence, and could speak of his comfortable house, 
 his hayfield, and his garden. On this ship, where so 
 many accomplished artisans were fleeing from starvation, 
 he was present on a pleasure trip to visit a brother in 
 New York. 
 
 Ere he started, he informed me, he had been warned 
 against the steerage and the steerage fare, and recom- 
 mended to bring with him a ham and tea and a spice loaf. 
 But he laughed to scorn such counsels. "" I'm not afraid, " 
 he had told his adviser; "' I'll get on for ten days. I've 
 not been a fisherman for nothing." For it is no light 
 matter, as he reminded me, to be in an open boat, per- 
 haps waist-deep with herrings, day breaking with a 
 scowl, and for miles on every hand lee-shores, unbroken, 
 
 49 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 iron-bound, surf-beat, with only here and there an an- 
 chorage where you dare not lie, or a harbour impossible 
 to enter with the wind that blows. The life of a North 
 Sea fisher is one long chapter of exposure and hard 
 work and insufficient fare ; and even if he makes land at 
 some bleak fisher port, perhaps the season is bad or his 
 boat has been unlucky, and after fifty hours' unsleeping 
 vigilance and toil, not a shop will give him credit for a 
 loaf of bread. Yet the steerage of the emigrant ship had 
 been too vile for the endurance of a man thus rudely 
 trained. He had scarce eaten since he came on board, 
 until the day before, when his appetite was tempted by 
 some excellent pea-soup. We were all much of the 
 same mind on board, and beginning with myself, had 
 dined upon pea-soup not wisely but too well; only 
 with him the excess had been punished, perhaps be- 
 cause he was weakened by former abstinence, and his 
 first meal had resulted in a cramp. He had determined 
 to live henceforth on biscuit; and when, two months 
 later, he should return to England, to make the passage 
 by saloon. The second cabin, after due inquiry, he 
 scouted as another edition of the steerage. 
 
 He spoke apologetically of his emotion when ill. ' ' Ye 
 see, I had no call to be here," said he; '*and I thought 
 it was by with me last night. I've a good house at 
 home, and plenty to nurse me, and I had no real call 
 to leave them." Speaking of the attentions he had re- 
 ceived from his shipmates generally, ''they were all so 
 kind," he said, ''that there's none to mention." And 
 except in so far as I might share in this, he troubled 
 me with no reference to my services. 
 
 But what affected me in the most lively manner was 
 
 50 
 
THE SICK MAN 
 
 the wealth of this day-labourer, paying a two months' 
 pleasure visit to the States, and preparing to return in 
 the saloon, and the new testimony rendered by his 
 story, not so much to the horrors of the steerage as to 
 the habitual comfort of the working classes. One foggy, 
 frosty December evening, I encountered on Liberton 
 Hill, near Edinburgh, an Irish labourer trudging home- 
 ward from the fields. Our roads lay together, and it 
 was natural that we should fall into talk. He was cov- 
 ered with mud; an inoffensive, ignorant creature, who 
 thought the Atlantic Cable was a secret contrivance of 
 the masters the better to oppress labouring mankind; 
 and I confess I was astonished to learn that he had 
 nearly three hundred pounds in the bank. But this 
 man had travelled over most of the world, and enjoyed 
 wonderful opportunities on some American railroad, 
 with two dollars a shift and double pay on Sunday 
 and at night ; whereas my fellow-passenger had never 
 quitted Tyneside, and had made all that he possessed 
 in that same accursed, down-falling England, whence 
 skilled mechanics, engineers, millwrights, and carpenters 
 were fleeing as from the native country of starvation. 
 
 Fitly enough, we slid off on the subject of strikes and 
 wages and hard times. Being from the Tyne, and a 
 man who had gained and lost in his own pocket by 
 these fluctuations, he had much to say, and held strong 
 opinions on the subject. He spoke sharply of the mas- 
 ters, and, when I led him on, of the men also. The 
 masters had been selfish and obstructive; the men 
 selfish, silly, and light-headed. He rehearsed to me 
 the course of a meeting at which he had been present, 
 and the somewhat long discourse which he had there 
 
 51 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 pronounced, calling into question the wisdom and even 
 the good faith of the Union delegates; and although 
 he had escaped himself through flush times and starva- 
 tion times with a handsomely provided purse, he had 
 so little faith in either man or master, and so profound 
 a terror for the unerring Nemesis of mercantile affairs, 
 that he could think of no hope for our country outside 
 of a sudden and complete political subversion. Down 
 must go Lords and Church and Army ; and capital, by 
 some happy direction, must change hands from worse 
 to better, or England stood condemned. Such prin- 
 ciples, he said, were growing *'like a seed." 
 
 From this mild, soft, domestic man, these words 
 sounded unusually ominous and grave. I had heard 
 enough revolutionary talk among my workmen fellow- 
 passengers; but most of it was hot and turgid, and 
 fell discredited from the lips of unsuccessful men. This 
 man was calm; he had attained prosperity and ease; 
 he disapproved the policy which had been pursued by 
 labour in the past; and yet this was his panacea, — to 
 rend the old country from end to end, and from top to 
 bottom, and in clamour and civil discord remodel it with 
 the hand of violence. 
 
 52 
 
THE STOWAWAYS 
 
 On the Sunday, among a party of men who were 
 talking in our companion, Steerage Nos. 2 and 3, we 
 remarked a new figure. He wore tweed clothes, well 
 enough made if not very fresh, and a plain smoking-cap. 
 His face was pale, with pale eyes, and spiritedly enough 
 designed ; but though not yet thirty, a sort of black- 
 guardly degeneration had already overtaken his features. 
 The fine nose had grown fleshy towards the point, the 
 pale eyes were sunk in fat. His hands were strong and 
 elegant; his experience of life evidently varied; his 
 speech full of pith and verve ; his manners forward, but 
 perfectly presentable. The lad who helped in the sec- 
 ond cabin told me, in answer to a question, that he did 
 not know who he was, but thought, *'by his way of 
 speaking, and because he was so polite, that he was 
 some one from the saloon." 
 
 I was not so sure, for to me there was something 
 equivocal in his air and bearing. He might have been, 
 I thought, the son of some good family who had fallen 
 early into dissipation and run from home. But, making 
 every allowance, how admirable was his talk! I wish 
 you could have heard him tell his own stories. They 
 were so swingingly set forth, in such dramatic language, 
 
 53 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 and illustrated here and there by such luminous bits of 
 acting, that they could only lose in any reproduction. 
 There were tales of the P. and O. Company, where he 
 had been an officer; of the East Indies, where in former 
 years he had lived lavishly ; of the Royal Engineers, where 
 he had served for a period ; and of a dozen other sides 
 of life, each introducing some vigorous thumb-nail por- 
 trait. He had the talk to himself that night, we were 
 all so glad to listen. The best talkers usually address 
 themselves to some particular society; there they are 
 kings, elsewhere camp-followers, as a man may know 
 Russian and yet be ignorant of Spanish ; but this fellow 
 had a frank, headlong power of style, and a broad, hu- 
 man choice of subject, that would have turned any circle 
 in the world into a circle of hearers. He was a Homeric 
 talker, plain, strong, and cheerful; and the things and 
 the people of which he spoke became readily and clearly 
 present to the minds of those who heard him. This, 
 with a certain added colouring of rhetoric and rodomon- 
 tade, must have been the style of Burns, who equally 
 charmed the ears of duchesses and hostlers. 
 
 Yet freely and personally as he spoke, many points 
 remained obscure in his narration. The Engineers, for 
 instance, was a service which he praised highly ; it is 
 true there would be trouble with the sergeants ; but then 
 the officers were gentlemen, and his own, in particular, 
 one among ten thousand. It sounded so far exactly 
 like an episode in the rakish, topsy-turvy life of such an 
 one as I had imagined. But then there came incidents 
 more doubtful, which showed an almost impudent greed 
 after gratuities, and a truly impudent disregard for truth. 
 And then there was the tale of his departure. He had 
 
 54 
 
THE STOWAWAYS 
 
 wearied, it seems, of Woolwich, and one fine day, with 
 a companion, slipped up to London for a spree. I have 
 a suspicion that spree was meant to be a long one; but 
 God disposes all things ; and one morning, near West- 
 minster Bridge, whom should he come across but the 
 very sergeant who had recruited him at first! What 
 followed ? He himself indicated cavalierly that he had 
 then resigned. Let us put it so. But these resignations 
 are sometimes very trying. 
 
 At length, after having delighted us for hours, he took 
 himself away from the companion; and I could ask 
 Mackay who and what he was. *'That.?" said Mac- 
 kay. "Why, that's one of the stowaways." 
 
 "No man," said the same authority, "who has had 
 anything to do with the sea, would ever think of pay- 
 ing for a passage." I give the statement as Mackay 's, 
 without endorsement; yet I am tempted to believe that 
 it contains a grain of truth ; and if you add that the mai 
 shall be impudent and thievish, or else dead-broke, i/ 
 may even pass for a fair representation of the facts. W/ 
 gentlemen of England who live at home at ease have, 
 suspect, very insufficient ideas on the subject. All tf 
 world over, people are stowing away in coal-holes ad 
 dark corners, and when ships are once out to sea, b- 
 pearing again, begrimed and bashful, upon deck, /he 
 career of these sea-tramps partakes largely of the ad^n- 
 turous. They may be poisoned by coal-gas, or d^ by 
 starvation in their place of concealment; or when ^und 
 they may be clapped at once and ignominiousl/ into 
 irons, thus to be carried to their promised land, tlte port 
 of destination, and alas ! brought back in the sane way 
 to that from which they started, and there delivered over 
 
 55 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 to the magistrates and the seclusion of a county jail. 
 Since I crossed the Atlantic, one miserable stowaway 
 was found in a dying state among the fuel, uttered but 
 a word or two, and departed for a farther country than 
 America. 
 
 When the stowaway appears on deck, he has but one 
 thing to pray for : that he be set to work, which is the 
 price and sign of his forgiveness. After half an hour with 
 a swab or a bucket, he feels himself as secure as if he had 
 paid for his passage. It is not altogether a bad thing for 
 the company, who get more or less efficient hands for 
 nothing but a few plates of junk and duff; and every 
 now and again find themselves better paid than by a 
 whole family of cabin passengers. Not long ago, for 
 instance, a packet was saved from nearly certain loss by 
 the skill and courage of a stowaway engineer. As was 
 no more than just, a handsome subscription rewarded 
 him for his success ; but even without such exceptional 
 good fortune, as things stand in England and America, 
 the stowaway will often make a good profit out of his 
 dventure. Four engineers stowed away last summer 
 n the same ship, the Circassia; and before two days 
 -af:er their arrival each of the four had found a comfort- 
 ale berth. This was the most hopeful tale of emigra- 
 tici that 1 heard from first to last ; and as you see, the 
 luc was for stowaways. 
 
 ^y curiosity was much inflamed by what I heard; 
 and he next morning, as I was making the round of the 
 ship, I was delighted to find the ex-Royal Engineer en- 
 gageoin washing down the white paint of a deck house. 
 There vas another fellow at work beside him, a lad not 
 more tian twenty, in the most miraculous tatters, his 
 
 56 
 
THE STOWAWAYS 
 
 handsome face sown with grains of beauty and lighted 
 up by expressive eyes. Four stowaways had been found 
 aboard our ship before she left the Clyde, but these two 
 had alone escaped the ignominy of being put ashore. 
 Alick, my acquaintance of last night, was Scots by birth, 
 and by trade a practical engineer ; the other was from 
 Devonshire, and had been to sea before the mast. Two 
 people more unlike by training, character, and habits, it 
 would be hard to imagine ; yet here they were together, 
 scrubbing paint. 
 
 Alick had held all sorts of good situations, and wasted 
 many opportunities in life. 1 have heard him end a 
 story with these words : * ' That was in my golden days, 
 when I used finger-glasses." Situation after situation 
 failed him ; then followed the depression of trade, and 
 for months he had hung round with other idlers, play- 
 ing marbles all day in the West Park, and going home 
 at night to tell his landlady how he had been seeking 
 for a job. I believe this kind of existence was not un- 
 pleasant to Alick himself, and he might have long con- 
 tinued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but he had 
 a comrade, let us call him Brown, who grew restive. 
 This fellow was continually threatening to slip his cable 
 for the States, and at last, one Wednesday, Glasgow 
 was left widowed of her Brown. Some months after- 
 wards, Alick met another old chum in Sauchiehall 
 Street. 
 
 '' By the by, Alick," said he, '' I met a gentleman in 
 New York who was asking for you." 
 
 '* Who was that .^ " asked Alick. 
 
 "The new second engineer on board the So-and-so/' 
 was the reply. 
 
 57 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 ''Well, and who is he ?" 
 
 ''Brown, to be sure." 
 
 For Brown had been one of the fortunate quartette 
 aboard the Circassia. If that was the way of it in the 
 States, Alick thought it was high time to follow Brown's 
 example. He spent his last day, as he put it, " review- 
 ing the yeomanry," and the next morning says he to 
 his landlady, "Mrs. X., I'll not take porridge to-day, 
 please; I'll take some eggs." 
 
 "Why, have you found a job ?" she asked, delighted. 
 
 "Well, yes," returned the perfidious Alick; "I think 
 I'll start to-day." 
 
 And so, well lined with eggs, start he did, but for 
 America. I am afraid that landlady has seen the last 
 of him. 
 
 It was easy enough to get on board in the confusion 
 that attends a vessel's departure ; and in one of the dark 
 corners of Steerage No. i, flat in a bunk and with an 
 empty stomach, Alick made the voyage from the Broo- 
 mielaw to Greenock. That night, the ship's yeoman 
 pulled him out by the heels and had him before the 
 mate. Two other stowaways had already been found 
 and sent ashore ; but by this time darkness had fallen, 
 they were out in the middle of the estuary, and the last 
 steamer had left them till the morning. 
 
 "Take him to the forecastle and give him a meal," 
 said the mate, "and see and pack him off the first thing 
 to-morrow." 
 
 In the forecastle he had supper, a good night's rest, 
 and breakfast; and was sitting placidly with a pipe, 
 fancying all was over and the game up for good with 
 that ship, when one of the sailors grumbled out an oath 
 
 58 
 
THE STOWAWAYS 
 
 at him, with a '' What are you doing there ? " and "Do 
 you call that hiding, anyway ? " There was need of no 
 more; Alick was in another bunk before the day was 
 older. Shortly before the passengers arrived, the ship 
 was cursorily inspected. He heard the round come 
 down the companion and look into one pen after an- 
 other, until they came within two of the one in which 
 he lay concealed. Into these last two they did not 
 enter, but merely glanced from without; and Alick 
 had no doubt that he was personally favoured in this 
 escape. It was the character of the man to attribute 
 nothing to luck and but little to kindness; whatever 
 happened to him he had earned in his own right amply ; 
 favours came to him from his singular attraction and 
 adroitness, and misfortunes he had always accepted 
 with his eyes open. Half an hour after the searchers 
 had departed, the steerage began to fill with legitimate 
 passengers, and the worst of Alick's troubles was at an 
 end. He was soon making himself popular, smoking 
 other people's tobacco, and politely sharing their pri- 
 vate stock of delicacies, and when night came he re- 
 tired to his bunk beside the others with composure. 
 Next day by afternoon, Lough Foyle being already 
 far behind, and only the rough north-western hills of 
 Ireland within view, Alick appeared on deck to court 
 inquiry and decide his fate. As a matter of fact, he 
 was known to several on board, and even intimate 
 with one of the engineers ; but it was plainly not the 
 etiquette of such occasions for the authorities to avow 
 their information. Every one professed surprise and 
 anger on his appearance, and he was led prisoner be- 
 fore the captain. 
 
 59 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 ** What have you got to say for yourself?" inquired 
 the captain. 
 
 * ' Not much, " said Alick ; * ' but when a man has been 
 a long time out of a job, he will do things he would not 
 under other circumstances." 
 
 "Are you willing to work ?" 
 
 Alick swore he was burning to be useful. 
 
 *' And what can you do ?" asked the captain. 
 
 He replied composedly that he was a brass-fitter by 
 trade. 
 
 "I think you will be better at engineering,?" sug- 
 gested the officer, with a shrewd look. 
 
 ''No, sir," says Alick simply. — ''There's few can beat 
 me at a lie," was his engaging commentary to me as he 
 recounted the affair. 
 
 "Have you been to sea ?" again asked the captain. 
 
 "I've had a trip on a Clyde steamboat, sir, but no 
 more," replied the unabashed Alick. 
 
 "Well, we must try and fmd some work for you,'* 
 concluded the officer. 
 
 And hence we behold Alick, clear of the hot engine- 
 room, lazily scraping paint and now and then taking a 
 pull upon a sheet. " You leave me alone," was his de- 
 duction. " When I get talking to a man, I can get round 
 him." 
 
 The other stowaway, whom I will call the Devonian 
 
 — it was noticeable that neither of them told his name 
 
 — had both been brought up and seen the world in a 
 much smaller way. His father, a confectioner, died and 
 was closely followed by his mother. His sisters had 
 taken, I think, to dress-making. He himself had returned 
 from sea about a year ago and gone to live with his 
 
 60 
 
THE STOWAWAYS 
 
 brother, who kept the ''George Hotel" — *'it was not 
 quite a real hotel/' added the candid fellow — ''and had 
 a hired man to mind the horses." At first the Devonian 
 was very welcome; but as time went on his brother not 
 unnaturally grew cool towards him, and he began to find 
 himself one too many at the " George Hotel." "I don't 
 think brothers care much for you," he said, as a general 
 reflection upon life. Hurt at this change, nearly penni- 
 less, and too proud to ask for more, he set off on foot 
 and walked eighty miles to Weymouth, living on the 
 journey as he could. He would have enlisted, but he 
 was too small for the army and too old for the navy; 
 and thought himself fortunate at last to find a berth on 
 board a trading dandy. Somewhere in the Bristol Chan- 
 nel, the dandy sprung a leak and went down ; and though 
 the crew were picked up and brought ashore by fisher- 
 men, they found themselves with nothing but the clothes 
 upon their back. His next engagement was scarcely 
 better starred ; for the ship proved so leaky, and fright- 
 ened them all so heartily during a short passage through 
 the Irish Sea, that the entire crew deserted and remained 
 behind upon the quays of Belfast. 
 
 Evil days were now coming thick on the Devonian. 
 He could find no berth in Belfast, and had to work a 
 passage to Glasgow on a steamer. She reached the 
 Broomielaw on a Wednesday : the Devonian had a belly- 
 ful that morning, laying in breakfast manfully to pro- 
 vide against the future, and set ofT along the quays to 
 seek employment. But he was now not only penniless, 
 his clothes had begun to fall in tatters ; he had begun to 
 have the look of a street Arab ; and captains will have 
 nothing to say to a ragamuffin; for in that trade, as in 
 
 6\ 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 all Others, it is the coat that depicts the man. You may 
 hand, reef, and steer like an angel, but if you have a 
 hole in your trousers, it is like a millstone round your 
 neck. The Devonian lost heart at so many refusals. 
 He had not the impudence to beg; although, as he said, 
 *'when I had money of my own, I always gave it." 
 It was only on Saturday morning, after three v/hole 
 days of starvation, that he asked a scone from a milk- 
 woman, who added of her own accord a glass of milk. 
 He had now made up his mind to stow away, not from 
 any desire to see America, but merely to obtain the 
 comfort of a place in the forecastle and a supply of 
 familiar sea-fare. He lived by begging, always from 
 milkwomen, and always scones and milk, and was not 
 once refused. It was vile wet weather, and he could 
 never have been dry. By night he walked the streets, 
 and by day slept upon Glasgow Green, and heard, in 
 the intervals of his dozing, the famous theologians of 
 the spot clear up intricate points of doctrine and appraise 
 the merits of the clergy. He had not much instruction ; 
 he could ''read bills on the street," but was " main bad 
 at writing"; yet these theologians seem to have im- 
 pressed him with a genuine sense of amusement. Why 
 he did not go to the Sailor's Home I know not; I pre- 
 sume there is in Glasgow one of these institutions, 
 which are by far the happiest and the wisest effort of 
 contemporaneous charity ; but I must stand to my au- 
 thor, as they say in old books, and relate the story as 
 I heard it. In the meantime, he had tried four times to 
 stow away in different vessels, and four times had been 
 discovered and handed back to starvation. The fifth 
 time was lucky ; and you may judge if he were pleased 
 
 62 
 
THE STOWAWAYS 
 
 to be aboard ship again, at his old work, and with duff 
 twice a week. He was, said Alick, ''a devil for the 
 duff." Or if devil was not the word, it was one if any- 
 thing stronger. 
 
 The difference in the conduct of the two was re- 
 markable. The Devonian was as willing as any paid 
 hand, swarmed aloft among the first, pulled his natural 
 weight and firmly upon a rope, and found work for 
 himself when there was none to show him. Alick, on 
 the other hand, was not only a skulker in the grain, but 
 took a humourous and fine gentlemanly view of the 
 transaction. He would speak to me by the hour in 
 ostentatious idleness; and only if the bo's'un or a mate 
 came by, fell-to languidly for just the necessary time till 
 they were out of sight. "Vm not breaking my heart 
 with it," he remarked. 
 
 Once there was a hatch to be opened near where he 
 was stationed ; he watched the preparations for a second 
 or so suspiciously, and then, ** Hullo," said he, ** here's 
 some real work coming — I'm off," and he was gone 
 that moment. Again, calculating the six guinea passage- 
 money, and the probable duration of the passage, he re- 
 marked pleasantly that he was getting six shillings a day 
 for this job, ''and it's pretty dear to the company at 
 that." ''They are making nothing by me," was an- 
 other of his observations; "they're making something 
 by that fellow." And he pointed to the Devonian, who 
 was just then busy to the eyes. 
 
 The more you saw of Alick, the more, it must be 
 owned, you learned to despise him. His natural talents 
 were of no use either to himself or others ; for his char- 
 acter had degenerated like his face, and become pulpy 
 
 63 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 and pretentious. Even his power of persuasion, which 
 was certainly very surprising, stood in some danger of 
 being lost or neutralised by over-confidence. He lied in 
 an aggressive, brazen manner, like a pert criminal in the 
 dock; and he was so vain of his own cleverness that he 
 could not refrain from boasting, ten minutes after, of the 
 very trick by which he had deceived you. *'Why, 
 now I have more money than when I came on board," 
 he said one night, exhibiting a sixpence, ''and yet I 
 stood myself a bottle of beer before I went to bed yes- 
 terday. And as for tobacco, I have fifteen sticks of it." 
 That was fairly successful indeed; yet a man of his 
 superiority, and with a less obtrusive policy, might, 
 who knows ? have got the length of half a crown. A 
 man who prides himself upon persuasion should learn 
 the persuasive faculty of silence, above all as to his own 
 misdeeds. It is only in the farce and for dramatic pur- 
 poses that Scapin enlarges on his peculiar talents to the 
 world at large. 
 
 Scapin is perhaps a good name for this clever, unfor- 
 tunate Alick ; for at the bottom of all his misconduct 
 there was a guiding sense of humour that moved you to 
 forgive him. It was more than half a jest that he con- 
 ducted his existence. '' Oh, man," he said to me once 
 with unusual emotion, like a man thinking of his mis- 
 tress, ''I would give up anything for a lark." 
 
 It was in relation to his fellow-stowaway that Alick 
 showed the best, or perhaps I should say the only good, 
 points of his nature. "Mind you," he said suddenly, 
 changing his tone, " mind you that's a good boy. He 
 wouldn't tell you a lie. A lot of them think he is a 
 scamp because his clothes are ragged, but he isn't ; he's 
 
THE STOWAWAYS 
 
 as good as gold. " To hear him, you become aware that 
 Alick himself had a taste for virtue. He thought his own 
 idleness and the other's industry equally becoming. He 
 was no more anxious to insure his own reputation as a 
 liar than to uphold the truthfulness of his companion; 
 and he seemed unaware of what was incongruous in 
 his attitude, and was plainly sincere in both characters. 
 
 It was not surprising that he should take an interest 
 in the Devonian, for the lad worshipped and served him 
 in love and wonder. Busy as he was, he would find 
 time to warn Alick of an approaching officer, or even to 
 tell him that the coast was clear, and he might slip off 
 and smoke a pipe in safety. '* Tom," he once said to 
 him, for that was the name which Alick ordered him to 
 use, ''if you don't like going to the galley, I'll go for 
 you. You ain't used to this kind of thing, you ain't. 
 But I'm a sailor; and I can understand the feelings of 
 any fellow, I can." Again, he was hard up, and casting 
 about for some tobacco, for he was not so liberally used 
 in this respect as others perhaps less worthy, when Alick 
 offered him the half of one of his fifteen sticks. I think, 
 for my part, he might have increased the offer to a whole 
 one, or perhaps a pair of them, and not lived to regret 
 his liberality. But the Devonian refused. "No," he 
 said, "you're a stowaway like me; I won't take it from 
 you, I'll take it from some one who's not down on his 
 luck." 
 
 It was notable in this generous lad that he was strongly 
 under the influence of sex. If a woman passed near 
 where he was working, his eyes lit up, his hand paused, 
 and his mind wandered instantly to other thoughts. It 
 was natural that he should exercise a fascination propor- 
 
 65 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 tionally strong upon women. He begged, you will re- 
 member, from women only, and was never refused. 
 Without wishing to explain away the charity of those 
 who helped him, I cannot but fancy he may have owed 
 a little to his handsome face, and to that quick, respon- 
 sive nature, formed for love, which speaks eloquently 
 through all disguises, and can stamp an impression in 
 ten minutes' talk or an exchange of glances. He was 
 the more dangerous in that he was far from bold, but 
 seemed to woo in spite of himself, and with a soft and 
 pleading eye. Ragged as he was, and many a scare- 
 crow is in that respect more comfortably furnished, even 
 on board he was not without some curious admirers. 
 
 There was a girl among the passengers, a tall, blonde, 
 handsome, strapping Irishwoman, with a wild, accom- 
 modating eye, whom Alick had dubbed Tommy, with 
 that transcendental appropriateness that defies analysis. 
 One day the Devonian was lying for warmth in the 
 upper stoke-hole, which stands open on the deck, when 
 Irish Tommy came past, very neatly attired, as was her 
 custom. 
 
 ''Poor fellow," she said, stopping, ''you haven't a 
 vest." 
 
 "No," he said; "I wish Tad." 
 
 Then she stood and gazed on him in silence, until, in 
 his embarrassment, for he knew not how to look under 
 this scrutiny, he pulled out his pipe and began to fill it 
 with tobacco. 
 
 ' ' Do you want a match ? " she asked. And before he 
 had time to reply, she ran off and presently returned 
 with more than one. 
 
 That was the beginning and the end, as far as our 
 
 66 
 
THE STOWAWAYS 
 
 passage is concerned, of what I will make bold to call 
 this love-affair. There are many relations which go on 
 to marriage and last during a lifetime, in which less hu- 
 man feeling is engaged than in this scene of five minutes 
 at the stoke-hole. 
 
 Rigidly speaking, this would end the chapter of the 
 stowaways ; but in a larger sense of the word I have yet 
 more to add. Jones had discovered and pointed out to 
 me a young woman who was remarkable among her 
 fellows for a pleasing and interesting air. She was 
 poorly clad, to the verge, if not over the line, of disre- 
 spectability, with a ragged old jacket and a bit of a seal- 
 skin cap no bigger than your fist; but her eyes, her 
 whole expression, and her manner, even in ordinary 
 moments, told of a true womanly nature, capable of 
 love, anger, and devotion. She had a look, too, of re- 
 finement, like one who might have been a better lady 
 than most, had she been allowed the opportunity. 
 When alone she seemed preoccupied and sad; but she 
 was not often alone; there was usually by her side a 
 heavy, dull, gross man in rough clothes, chary of speech 
 and gesture — not from caution, but poverty of disposi- 
 tion; a man like a ditcher, unlovely and uninteresting; 
 whom she petted and tended and waited on with her 
 eyes as if he had been Amadis of Gaul. It was strange 
 to see this hulking fellow dog-sick, and this delicate, 
 sad woman caring for him. He seemed, from first to 
 last, insensible of her caresses and attentions, and she 
 seemed unconscious of his insensibility. The Irish hus- 
 band, who sang his wife to sleep, and this Scottish girl 
 serving her Orson, were the two bits of human nature 
 that most appealed to me throughout the voyage. 
 
 6^ 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 On the Thursday before we arrived, the tickets were 
 collected; and soon a rumour began to go round the 
 vessel ; and this girl, with her bit of sealskin cap, became 
 the centre of whispering and pointed fingers. She also, 
 it was said, was a stowaway of a sort; for she was 
 on board with neither ticket nor money ; and the man 
 with whom she travelled was the father of a family, 
 who had left wife and children to be hers. The ship's 
 officers discouraged the story, which may therefore have 
 been a story and no more ; but it was believed in the 
 steerage, and the poor girl had to encounter many curi- 
 ous eyes from that day forth. 
 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW 
 
 Travel is of two kinds; and this voyage of mine 
 across the ocean combined both. '' Out of my country 
 and myself I go," sings the old poet: and I was not 
 only travelling out of my country in latitude and longi- 
 tude, but out of myself in diet, associates, and con- 
 sideration. Part of the interest and a great deal of the 
 amusement flowed, at least to me, from this novel sit- 
 uation in the world. 
 
 I found that I had what they call fallen in life with 
 absolute success and verisimilitude. I was taken for a 
 steerage passenger; no one seemed surprised that I 
 should be so; and there was nothing but the brass 
 plate between decks to remind me that I had once been 
 a gentleman. In a former book, describing a former 
 journey, I expressed some wonder that I could be 
 readily and naturally taken for a pedlar, and explained 
 the accident by the difference of language and manners 
 between England and France. I must now take a 
 humbler view; for here I was among my own coun- 
 trymen, somewhat roughly clad, to be sure, but with 
 every advantage of speech and manner; and I am bound 
 to confess that I passed for nearly anything you please 
 except an educated gentleman. The sailors called me 
 
 69 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 **mate," the officers addressed me as ''my man," my 
 comrades accepted me without hesitation for a person 
 of their own character and experience, but with some 
 curious information. One, a mason himself, believed 
 I was a mason ; several, and among these at least one 
 of the seamen, judged me to be a petty officer in the 
 American navy; and I was so often set down for a prac- 
 tical engineer that at last I had not the heart to deny it. 
 From all these guesses I drew one conclusion, which 
 told against the insight of my companions. They might 
 be close observers in their own way, and read the man- 
 ners in the face ; but it was plain that they did not ex- 
 tend their observation to the hands. 
 
 To the saloon passengers also I sustained my part 
 without a hitch. It is true I came little in their way ; 
 but when we did encounter, there was no recognition 
 in their eye, although I confess I sometimes courted it 
 in silence. All these, my inferiors and equals, took me, 
 like the transformed monarch in the story, for a mere 
 common, human man. They gave me a hard, dead 
 look, with the flesh about the eye kept unrelaxed. 
 
 With the women this surprised me less, as I had 
 already experimented on the sex by going abroad through 
 a suburban part of London simply attired in a sleeve- 
 waistcoat. The result was curious. I then learned for 
 the first time, and by the exhaustive process, how much 
 attention ladies are accustomed to bestow on all male 
 creatures of their own station ; for, in my humble rig, 
 each one who went by me caused me a certain shock 
 of surprise and a sense of something wanting. In my 
 normal circumstances, it appeared every young lady 
 must have paid me some tribute of a glance ; and though 
 
 70 
 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW 
 
 I had often not detected it when it was given, I was 
 well aware of its absence when it was withheld. My 
 height seemed to decrease with every woman who 
 passed me, for she passed me like a dog. This is one 
 of my grounds for supposing that what are called the 
 upper classes may sometimes produce a disagreeable 
 impression in what are called the lower; and I wish 
 some one would continue my experiment, and find out 
 exactly at what stage of toilette a man becomes invisi- 
 ble to the well-regulated female eye. 
 
 Here on shipboard the matter was put to a more com- 
 plete test; for, even with the addition of speech and 
 manner, I passed among the ladies for precisely the 
 average man of the steerage. It was one afternoon that 
 I saw this demonstrated. A very plainly dressed woman 
 was taken ill on deck. I think I had the luck to be pres- 
 ent at every sudden seizure during all the passage; and 
 on this occasion found myself in the place of importance, 
 supporting the sufferer. There was not only a large 
 crowd immediately around us, but a considerable knot 
 of saloon passengers leaning over our heads from the 
 hurricane-deck. One of these, an elderly managing 
 woman, hailed me with counsels. Of course I had to 
 reply ; and as the talk went on, I began to discover that 
 the whole group took me for the husband. I looked 
 upon my new wife, poor creature, with mingled feel- 
 ings ; and I must own she had not even the appearance 
 of the poorest class of city servant-maids, but looked 
 more like a country wench who should have been em- 
 ployed at a roadside inn. Now was the time for me to 
 go and study the brass plate. 
 
 To such of the officers as knew about me — the doc- 
 
 7» 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 tor, the purser, and the stewards — I appeared in the 
 light of a broad joke. The fact that I spent the better 
 part of my day in writing had gone abroad over the 
 ship and tickled them all prodigiously. Whenever they 
 met me they referred to my absurd occupation with 
 familiarity and breadth of humorous intention. Their 
 manner was well calculated to remind me of my fallen 
 fortunes. You may be sincerely amused by the amateur 
 literary efforts of a gentleman, but you scarce publish 
 the feeling to his face. " Well ! " they would say : ''still 
 writing.?" And the smile would widen into a laugh. 
 The purser came one day into the cabin, and, touched 
 to the heart by my misguided industry, offered me some 
 other kind of writing, "for which," he added pointedly, 
 ' ' you will be paid. " This was nothing else than to copy 
 out the list of passengers. 
 
 Another trick of mine which told against my reputa- 
 tion was my choice of roosting-place in an active 
 draught upon the cabin floor. I was openly jeered and 
 flouted for this eccentricity; and a considerable knot 
 would sometimes gather at the door to see my last dis- 
 positions for the night. This was embarrassing, but I 
 learned to support the trial with equanimity. 
 
 Indeed I may say that, upon the whole, my new posi- 
 tion sat lightly and naturally upon my spirits. I ac- 
 cepted the consequences with readiness, and found 
 them far from difficult to bear. The steerage conquered 
 me; I conformed more and more to the type of the 
 place, not only in manner but at heart, growing hostile 
 to the officers and cabin passengers who looked down 
 upon me, and day by day greedier for small delicacies. 
 Such was the result, as I fancy, of a diet of bread and 
 
 72 
 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW 
 
 butter, soup and porridge. We think we have no sweet 
 tooth as long as we are full to the brim of molasses ; but 
 a man must have sojourned in the workhouse before he 
 boasts himself indifferent to dainties. Every evening, 
 for instance, I was more and more preoccupied about 
 our doubtful fare at tea. If it was delicate my heart was 
 much lightened ; if it was but broken fish I was propor- 
 tionally downcast. The offer of a little jelly from a 
 fellow-passenger more provident than myself caused a 
 marked elevation in my spirits. And I would have gone 
 to the ship's end and back again for an oyster or a 
 chipped fruit. 
 
 In other ways I was content with my position. It 
 seemed no disgrace to be confounded with my company ; 
 for I may as well declare at once I found their manners 
 as gentle and becoming as those of any other class. I 
 do not mean that my friends could have sat down 
 without embarrassment and laughable disaster at the 
 table of a duke. That does not imply an inferiority of 
 breeding, but a difference of usage. Thus I flatter my- 
 self that I conducted myself well among my fellow- 
 passengers ; yet my most ambitious hope is not to have 
 avoided faults, but to have committed as few as possi- 
 ble. I know too well that my tact is not the same as 
 their tact, and that my habit of a different society con- 
 stituted, not only no qualification, but a positive disa- 
 bility to move easily and becomingly in this. When 
 Jones complimented me — because I ''managed to be- 
 have very pleasantly" to my fellow -passengers, was 
 how he put it — I could follow the thought in his mind, 
 and knew his compliment to be such as we pay foreign- 
 ers on their proficiency in English. I dare say this praise 
 
 73 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 was given me immediately on the back of some un- 
 pardonable solecism, which had led him to review my 
 conduct as a whole. We are all ready to laugh at the 
 ploughman among lords ; we should consider also the 
 case of a lord among the ploughmen. I have seen a 
 lawyer in the house of a Hebridean fisherman; and I 
 know, but nothing will induce me to disclose, which of 
 these two was the better gentleman. Some of our finest 
 behaviour, though it looks well enough from the boxes, 
 may seem even brutal to the gallery. We boast too 
 often manners that are parochial rather than universal ; 
 that, like a country wine, will not bear transportation 
 for a hundred miles, nor from the parlour to the kitchen. 
 To be a gentleman is to be one all the world over, and 
 in every relation and grade of society. It is a high call- 
 ing, to which a man must first be born, and then devote 
 himself for life. And, unhappily, the manners of a cer- 
 tain so-called upper grade have a kind of currency, and 
 meet with a certain external acceptation throughout all 
 the others, and this tends to keep us well satisfied with 
 slight acquirements and the amateurish accomplishments 
 of a clique. But manners, like art, should be human and 
 central. 
 
 Some of my fellow-passengers, as I now moved among 
 them in a relation of equality, seemed to me excellent 
 gentlemen. They were not rough, nor hasty, nor dis- 
 putatious; debated pleasantly, differed kindly; were 
 helpful, gentle, patient, and placid. The type of man- 
 ners was plain, and even heavy; there was little to 
 please the eye, but nothing to shock; and I thought 
 gentleness lay more nearly at the spring of behaviour 
 than in many more ornate and delicate societies. I say 
 
 74 
 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW 
 
 delicate, where I cannot say refined ; a thing may be fine, 
 like ironwork, without being delicate, like lace. There 
 was here less delicacy ; the skin supported more cal- 
 lously the natural surface of events, the mind received 
 more bravely the crude facts of human existence; but I 
 do not think that there was less effective refinement, less 
 consideration for others, less polite suppression of self. 
 I speak of the best among my fellow-passengers ; for in 
 the steerage, as well as in the saloon, there is a mixture. 
 Those, then, with whom I found myself in sympathy, 
 and of whom I may therefore hope to write with a 
 greater measure of truth, were not only as good in their 
 manners, but endowed with very much the same natural 
 capacities, and about as wise in deduction, as the bankers 
 and barristers of what is called society. One and all were 
 too much interested in disconnected facts, and loved in- 
 formation for its own sake with too rash a devotion; 
 but people in all classes display the same appetite as 
 they gorge themselves daily with the miscellaneous 
 gossip of the newspaper. Newspaper reading, as far as 
 I can make out, is often rather a sort of brown study 
 than an act of culture. I have myself palmed off yester- 
 day's issue on a friend, and seen him re-peruse it for a 
 continuance of minutes with an air at once refreshed 
 and solemn. Workmen, perhaps, pay more attention ; 
 but though they may be eager listeners, they have rarely 
 seemed to me either willing or careful thinkers. Cul- 
 ture is not measured by the greatness of the field which 
 is covered by our knowledge, but by the nicety with 
 which we can perceive relations in that field, whether 
 great or small. Workmen, certainly those who were 
 on board with me, I found wanting in this quality or 
 
 75 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 habit of the mind. They did not perceive relations, but 
 leaped to a so-called cause, and thought the problem 
 settled. Thus the cause of everything in England was 
 the form of government, and the cure for all evils was, 
 by consequence, a revolution. It is surprising how 
 many of them said this, and that none should have had 
 a definite thought in his head as he said it. Some hated 
 the Church because they disagreed with it; some hated 
 Lord Beaconsfield because of war and taxes ; all hated the 
 masters, possibly with reason. But these feelings were 
 not at the root of the matter ; the true reasoning of their 
 souls ran thus — 1 have not got on ; I ought to have got 
 on; if there was a revolution I should get on. How.^ 
 They had no idea. Why.?^ Because — because — well, 
 look at America ! 
 
 To be politically blind is no distinction; we are all 
 so, if you come to that. At bottom, as it seems to me, 
 there is but one question in modern home politics, 
 though it appears in many shapes, and that is the 
 question of money ; and but one political remedy, that 
 the people should grow wiser and better. My work- 
 men fellow-passengers were as impatient and dull of 
 hearing on the second of these points as any member 
 of Parliament; but they had some glimmerings of the 
 first. They would not hear of improvement on their 
 part, but wished the world made over again in a crack, 
 so that they might remain improvident and idle and 
 debauched, and yet enjoy the comfort and respect that 
 should accompany the opposite virtues; and it was in 
 this expectation, as far as I could see, that many of 
 them were now on their way to America. But on the 
 point of money they saw clearly enough that inland 
 
 76 
 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW 
 
 politics, SO far as they were concerned, were reducible 
 to the question of annual income; a question which 
 should long ago have been settled by a revolution, they 
 did not know how, and which they were now about 
 to settle for themselves, once more they knew not how, 
 by crossing the Atlantic in a steamship of considerable 
 tonnage. 
 
 And yet it has been amply shown them that the sec- 
 ond or income question is in itself nothing, and may as 
 well be left undecided, if there be no wisdom and vir- 
 tue to profit by the change. It is not by a man's purse, 
 but by his character, that he is rich or poor. Barney 
 will be poor, Alick will be poor, Mackay will be poor; 
 let them go where they will, and wreck all the govern- 
 ments under heaven, they will be poor until they die. 
 
 Nothing is perhaps more notable in the average 
 workman than his surprising idleness, and the candour 
 with which he confesses to the failing. It has to me 
 been always something of a relief to find the poor, as a 
 general rule, so little oppressed with work. I can in 
 consequence enjoy my own more fortunate beginning 
 with a better grace. The other day I was living with 
 a farmer in America, an old frontiersman, who had 
 worked and fought, hunted and farmed, from his child- 
 hood up. He excused himself for his defective educa- 
 tion on the ground that he had been overworked from 
 first to last. Even now, he said, anxious as he was, 
 he had never the time to take up a book. In conse- 
 quence of this, I observed him closely ; he was occupied 
 for four or, at the extreme outside, for five hours out of 
 the twenty-four, and then principally in walking; and 
 the remainder of the day he passed in born idleness, 
 
 77 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 either eating fruit or standing with his back against a 
 door. I have known men do hard literary work all 
 morning, and then undergo quite as much physical fa- 
 tigue by way of relief as satisfied this powerful frontiers- 
 man for the day. He, at least, like all the educated 
 class, did so much homage to industry as to persuade 
 himself he was industrious. But the average mechanic 
 recognises his idleness with effrontery ; he has even, as 
 I am told, organized it. 
 
 I give the story as it was told me, and it was told 
 me for a fact. A man fell from a housetop in the city 
 of Aberdeen, and was brought into hospital with broken 
 bones. He was asked what was his trade, and replied 
 that he was a tapper. No one had ever heard of such 
 a thing before ; the officials were filled with curiosity ; 
 they besought an explanation. It appeared that when a 
 party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they would 
 now and then be taken with a fancy for the public- 
 house. Now a seamstress, for example, might slip 
 away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if 
 these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets 
 would cease, and thus the neighbourhood be advertised 
 of their defection. Hence the career of the tapper. He 
 has to do the tapping and keep up an industrious bus- 
 tle on the housetop during the absence of the slaters. 
 When he taps for only one or two the thing is child's- 
 play, but when he has to represent a whole troop, it is 
 then that he earns his money in the sweat of his brow. 
 Then must he bound from spot to spot, reduplicate, 
 triplicate, sexduplicate his single personality, and swell 
 and hasten his blows, until he produce a perfect illusion 
 for the ear, and you would swear that a crowd of emu- 
 
 78 
 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW 
 
 lous masons were continuing merrily to roof the house. 
 It must be a strange sight from an upper window. 
 
 I heard nothing on board of the tapper; but I was as- 
 tonished at the stories told by my companions. Skulk- 
 ing, shirking, malingering, were all established tactics, 
 it appeared. They could see no dishonesty where a 
 man who is paid for an hour's work gives half an hour's 
 consistent idling in its place. Thus the tapper would 
 refuse to watch for the police during a burglary, and call 
 himself an honest man. It is not sufficiently recognised 
 that our race detests to work. If I thought that I should 
 have to work every day of my life as hard as I am work- 
 ing now, I should be tempted to give up the struggle. 
 And the workman early begins on his career of toil. He 
 has never had his fill of holidays in the past, and his 
 prospect of holidays in the future is both distant and un- 
 certain. In the circumstances, it would require a high 
 degree of virtue not to snatch alleviations for the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 There were many good talkers on the ship ; and 1 be- 
 lieve good talking of a certain sort is a common accom- 
 plishment among working men. Where books are 
 comparatively scarce, a greater amount of information 
 will be given and received by word of mouth; and this 
 tends to produce good talkers, and, what is no less need- 
 ful for conversation, good listeners. They could all tell 
 a story with effect. I am sometimes tempted to think 
 that the less literary class show always better in narra- 
 tion ; they have so much more patience with detail, are 
 so much less hurried to reach the points, and preserve 
 so much juster a proportion among the facts. At the 
 same time their talk is dry; they pursue a topic plod- 
 
 79 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 dingly, have not an agile fancy, do not throw sudden 
 lights from unexpected quarters, and when the talk is 
 over they often leave the matter where it was. They 
 mark time instead of marching. They think only to 
 argue, not to reach new conclusions, and use their rea- 
 son rather as a weapon of offence than as a tool for self- 
 improvement. Hence the talk of some of the cleverest 
 was unprofitable in result, because there was no give 
 and take; they would grant you as little as possible for 
 premise, and begin to dispute under an oath to conquer 
 or to die. 
 
 But the talk of a workman is apt to be more interest- 
 ing than that of a wealthy merchant, because the 
 thoughts, hopes, and fears of which the workman's life 
 is built lie nearer to necessity and nature. They are 
 more immediate to human life. An income calculated 
 by the week is a far more human thing than one calcu- 
 lated by the year, and a small income, simply from its 
 smallness, than a large one. I never wearied listening 
 to the details of a workman's economy, because every 
 item stood for some real pleasure. If he could afford 
 pudding twice a week, you know that twice a week 
 the man ate with genuine gusto and was physically 
 happy ; while if you learn that a rich man has seven 
 courses a day, ten to one the half of them remain un- 
 tasted, and the whole is but misspent money and a 
 weariness to the flesh. 
 
 The difference between England and America to a 
 working man was thus most humanly put to me by a fel- 
 low-passenger : "In America, "said he, ''you get pies and 
 puddings." I do not hear enough, in economy books, 
 of pies and pudding. A man lives in and for the deli- 
 
 80 
 
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW 
 
 cacies, adornments, and accidental attributes of life, such 
 as pudding to eat and pleasant books and theatres to 
 occupy his leisure. The bare terms of existence would 
 be rejected with contempt by all. If a man feeds on 
 bread and butter, soup and porridge, his appetite grows 
 wolfish after dainties. And the workman dwells in a 
 borderland, and is always within sight of those cheer- 
 less regions where life is more difficult to sustain than 
 worth sustaining. Every detail of our existence, where 
 it is worth while to cross the ocean after pie and pud- 
 ding, is made alive and enthralling by the presence of 
 genuine desire ; but it is all one to me whether Croesus has 
 a hundred or a thousand thousands in the bank. There 
 is more adventure in the life of the working man who 
 descends as a common soldier into the battle of life, than 
 in that of the millionaire who sits apart in an office, like 
 Von Moltke, and only directs the manoeuvres by tele- 
 graph. Give me to hear about the career of him who is 
 in the thick of the business ; to whom one change of 
 market means an empty belly, and another a copious 
 and savoury meal. This is not the philosophical, but 
 the human side of economics; it interests like a story; 
 and the life of all who are thus situated partakes in a 
 small way of the charm of Robinson Crusoe; for every 
 step is critical, and human life is presented to you naked 
 and verging to its lowest terms. 
 
 Si 
 
NEW YORK 
 
 As we drew near to New York I was at first amused, 
 and then somewhat staggered, by the cautious and the 
 grisly tales that went the round. You would have 
 thought we were to land upon a cannibal island. You 
 must speak to no one in the streets, as they would not 
 leave you till you were rooked and beaten. You must 
 enter a hotel with military precautions ; for the least you 
 had to apprehend was to awake next morning without 
 money or baggage, or necessary raiment, a lone forked 
 radish in a bed; and if the worst befell, you would in- 
 stantly and mysteriously disappear from the ranks of 
 mankind. 
 
 I have usually found such stories correspond to the 
 least modicum of fact. Thus I was warned, I remem- 
 ber, against the roadside inns of the Cevennes, and that 
 by a learned professor ; and when I reached Pradelles 
 the warning was explained — it was but the far-away 
 rumour and reduplication of a single terrifying story 
 already half a century old, and half forgotten in the the- 
 atre of the events. So I was tempted to make light of 
 these reports against America. But we had on board 
 with us a man whose evidence it would not do to put 
 aside. He had come near these perils in the body; he 
 
 82 
 
NEW YORK 
 
 had visited a robber inn. The public has an old and 
 well-grounded favour for this class of incident, and shall 
 be gratified to the best of my power. 
 
 My fellow-passenger, whom we shall call M'Naugh- 
 ten, had come from New York to Boston with a com- 
 rade, seeking work. They were a pair of rattling blades ; 
 and, leaving their baggage at the station, passed the day 
 in beer-saloons, and with congenial spirits, until mid- 
 night struck. Then they applied themselves to find a 
 lodging, and walked the streets till two, knocking at 
 houses of entertainment and being refused admittance, 
 or themselves declining the terms. By two the inspira- 
 tion of their liquor had begun to wear off; they were 
 weary and humble, and after a great circuit found them- 
 selves in the same street where they had begun their 
 search, and in front of a French hotel where they had 
 already sought accommodation. Seeing -^e house still 
 open, they returned to the charge. A man in a white cap 
 sat in an office by the door. He seemed to welcome them 
 more warmly than when they had first presented them- 
 selves, and the charge for the night had somewhat unac- 
 countably fallen from a dollar to a quarter. They thought 
 him ill-looking, but paid their quarter apiece, and were 
 shown upstairs to the top of the house. There, in a 
 small room, the man in the white cap wished them 
 pleasant slumbers. 
 
 It was furnished with a bed, a chair, and some con- 
 veniences. The door did not lock on the inside; and 
 the only sign of adornment was a couple of framed pic- 
 tures, one close above the head of the bed, and the 
 other 'opposite the foot, and both curtained, as we may 
 sometimes see valuable water-colours, or the portraits 
 
 S5 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish 
 in the subject. It was perhaps in the hope of finding 
 something of this last description that M'Naughten's 
 comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was 
 startlingly disappointed. There was no picture. The 
 frame surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide, 
 an oblong aperture in the partition, through which they 
 looked forth into the dark corridor. A person standing 
 without could easily take a purse from under the pillow, 
 or even strangle a sleeper as he lay abed. M'Naughten 
 and his comrade stared at each other like Vasco's sea- 
 men, ''with a wild surmise;" and then the latter, 
 catching up the lamp, ran to the other frame and 
 roughly raised the curtain. There he stood, petrified; 
 and M'Naughten, who had followed, grasped him by 
 the wrist in terror. They could see into another 
 room, larger in size than that which they occupied, 
 where three men sat crouching and silent in the dark. 
 For a second or so these five persons looked each other 
 in the eyes, then the curtain was dropped, and M'Naugh- 
 ten and his friend made but one bolt of it out of the room 
 and downstairs. The man in the white cap said noth- 
 ing as they passed him ; and they were so pleased to be 
 once more in the open night that they gave up all notion 
 of a bed, and walked the streets of Boston till the morn- 
 ing. 
 
 No one seemed much cast down by these stories, but 
 all inquired after the address of a respectable hotel ; and 
 I, for my part, put myself under the conduct of Mr. 
 Jones. Before noon of the second Sunday we sighted 
 the low shores outside of New York harbour ; the steer- 
 age passengers must remain on board to pass through 
 
 84 
 
NEW YORK 
 
 Castle Garden on the following morning ; but we of the 
 second cabin made our escape along with the lords of 
 the saloon ; and by six o'clock Jones and I issued into 
 West Street, sitting on some straw in the bottom of an 
 open baggage-wagon. It rained miraculously ; and from 
 that moment till on the following night I left New York, 
 there was scarce a lull, and no cessation of the down- 
 pour. The roadways were flooded; a loud strident 
 noise of falling water filled the air ; the restaurants smelt 
 heavily of wet people and wet clothing. 
 
 It took us but a few minutes, though it cost us a good 
 deal of money, to be rattled along West Street to our 
 destination: ** Reunion House, No. lo West Street, one 
 minute's walk from Castle Garden ; convenient to Cas- 
 tle Garden, the Steamboat Landings, California Steam- 
 ers and Liverpool Ships ; Board and Lodging per day i 
 dollar, single meals 25 cents, lodging per night 25 cents; 
 private rooms for families; no charge for storage or 
 baggage ; satisfaction guaranteed to all persons ; Michael 
 Mitchell, Proprietor." Reunion House was, I may go 
 the length of saying, a humble hostelry. You entered 
 through a long bar-room, thence passed into a little 
 dining-room, and thence into a still smaller kitchen. 
 The furniture was of the plainest; but the bar was hung 
 in the American taste, with encouraging and hospitable 
 mottoes. 
 
 Jones was well known; we were received warmly; 
 and two minutes afterwards I had refused a drink from 
 the proprietor, and was going on, in my plain European 
 fashion, to refuse a cigar, when Mr. Mitchell sternly 
 interposed, and explained the situation. He was offer- 
 ing to treat me, it appeared; whenever an American 
 
 85 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 bar-keeper proposes anything, it must be borne in mind 
 that he is offering to treat ; and if I did not want a drink, 
 I must at least take the cigar. I took it bashfully, feel- 
 ing I had begun my American career on the wrong foot. 
 I did not enjoy that cigar; but this may have been from 
 a variety of reasons, even the best cigar often failing to 
 please if you ^moke three-quarters of it in a drenching 
 rain. 
 
 For many years America was to me a sort of prom- 
 ised land; ''westward the march of empire holds its 
 way"; the race is for the moment to the young; what 
 has been and what is we imperfectly and obscurely 
 know; what is to be yet lies beyond the flight of our 
 imaginations. Greece, Rome and Judaea are gone by 
 forever, leaving to generations the* legacy of their ac- 
 complished work ; China still endures, an old-inhabited 
 house in the brand-new city of nations; England has 
 already declined, since she has lost the States ; and to 
 these States, therefore, yet undeveloped, full of dark 
 possibilities, and grown, like another Eve, from one rib 
 out of the side of their own old land, the minds of 
 young men in England turn naturally at a certain hopeful 
 period of their age. It will be hard for an American to 
 understand the spirit. But let him imagine a young 
 man, who shall have grown up in an old and rigid cir- 
 cle, following bygone fashions and taught to distrust his 
 own fresh instincts, and who now suddenly hears of a 
 family of cousins, all about his own age, who keep 
 house together by themselves and live far from restraint 
 and tradition; let him imagine this, and he will have 
 some imperfect notion of the sentiment with which 
 spirited English youths turn to the thought of the Amer- 
 
 86 
 
NEW YORK 
 
 ican Republic. It seems to them as if, out west, the war 
 of life was still conducted in the open air, and on free 
 barbaric terms ; as if it had not yet been narrowed into 
 parlours, nor begun to be conducted, like some unjust 
 and dreary arbitration, by compromise, costume, forms 
 of procedure, and sad, senseless self-denial. Which of 
 these two he prefers, a man with any youth still left in 
 him will decide rightly for himself. He would rather 
 be houseless than denied a pass-key ; rather go without 
 food than partake of a stalled ox in stiff, respectable 
 society ; rather be shot out of hand than direct his life 
 according to the dictates of the world. 
 
 He knows or thinks nothing of the Maine Laws, the 
 Puritan sourness, the fierce, sordid appetite for dollars, 
 or the dreary existence of country towns. A few wild 
 story-books which delighted his childhood form the im- 
 aginative basis of his picture of America. In course of 
 time, there is added to this a great crowd of stimulating 
 details — vast cities that grow up as by enchantment; 
 the birds, that have gone south in autumn, returning 
 with the spring to find thousands camped upon their 
 marshes, and the lamps burning far and near along pop- 
 ulous streets ; forests that disappear like snow ; countries 
 larger than Britain that are cleared and settled, one man 
 running forth with his household gods before another, 
 while the bear and the Indian are yet scarce aware of 
 their approach ; oil that gushes from the earth ; gold that 
 is washed or quarried in the brooks or glens of the Si- 
 erras; and all that bustle, courage, action, and constant 
 kaleidoscopic change that Walt Whitman has seized and 
 set forth in his vigorous, cheerful, and loquacious verses. 
 
 Here I was at last in America, and was soon out upon 
 
 87 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 New York streets, spying for things foreign. The place 
 had to me an air of Liverpool ; but such was the rain 
 that not Paradise itself would have looked inviting. 
 We were a party of four, under two umbrellas ; Jones 
 and I and two Scots lads, recent immigrants, and not 
 indisposed to welcome a compatriot. They had been 
 six weeks in New York, and neither of them had yet 
 found a single job or earned a single halfpenny. Up to 
 the present they were exactly out of pocket by the 
 amount of the fare. 
 
 The lads soon left us. Now I had sworn by all my 
 gods to have such a dinner as would rouse the dead ; 
 there was scarce any expense at which I should have 
 hesitated; the devil was in it but Jones and I should 
 dine like heathen emperors. I set to work, asking after 
 a restaurant ; and I chose the wealthiest and most gas- 
 tronomical-looking passers-by to ask from. Yet, al- 
 though I had told them I was willing to pay anything 
 in reason, one and all sent me off to cheap, fixed-price 
 houses, where I would not have eaten that night for the 
 cost of twenty dinners. I do not know if this were 
 characteristic of New York, or whether it was only 
 Jones and I who looked un-dinerly and discouraged 
 enterprising suggestions. But at length, by our own 
 sagacity, we found a French restaurant, where there was 
 a French waiter, some fair French cooking, some so- 
 called French wine, and French cofTee to conclude the 
 whole. I never entered into the feelings of Jack on land 
 so completely as when I tasted that coffee. 
 
 I suppose we had one of the ''private rooms for fam- 
 ilies " at Reunion House. It was very small, furnished 
 with a bed, a chair, and some clothes-pegs ; and it de- 
 
 88 
 
NEW YORK 
 
 rived all that was necessary for the life of the human 
 animal through two borrowed lights ; one looking into 
 the passage, and the second opening, without sash, into 
 another apartment, where three men fitfully snored, or 
 in intervals of wakefulness, drearily mumbled to each 
 other all night long. It will be observed that this was 
 almost exactly the disposition of the room in M'Naugh- 
 ten's story. Jones had the bed ; I pitched my camp upon 
 the floor; he did not sleep until near morning, and I, for 
 my part, never closed an eye. 
 
 At sunrise I heard a cannon fired ; and shortly after- 
 wards the men in the next room gave over snoring for 
 good, and began to rustle over their toilettes. The sound 
 of their voices as they talked was low and moaning, like 
 that of people watching by the sick. Jones, who had 
 at last begun to doze, tumbled and murmured, and every 
 now and then opened unconscious eyes upon me wher^ 
 I lay. 1 found myself growing eerier and eerier, for I 
 daresay I was a little fevered by my restless night, and 
 hurried to dress and get downstairs. 
 
 You had to pass through the rain, which still fell 
 thick and resonant, to reach a lavatory on the other 
 side of the court. There were three basin-stands, and 
 a few crumpled towels and pieces of wet soap, white 
 and slippery like fish; nor should I forget a looking- 
 glass and a pair of questionable combs. Another Scots 
 lad was here, scrubbing his face with a good will. He 
 had been three months in New York and had not yet 
 found a single job nor earned a single halfpenny. Up 
 to the present, he also was exactly out of pocket by the 
 amount of the fare. I began to grow sick at heart for 
 my fellow-emigrants. 
 
 89 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 Of my nightmare wanderings in New York I spare to 
 tell. I had a thousand and one things to do ; only the 
 day to do them in, and a journey across the continent 
 before me in the evening. It rained with patient fury ; 
 every now and then I had to get under cover for a 
 while in order, so to speak, to give my mackintosh a 
 rest; for under this continued drenching it began to 
 grow damp on the inside. I went to banks, post- 
 offices, railway-offices, restaurants, publishers, book- 
 sellers, money-changers, and wherever I went a pool 
 would gather about my feet, and those who were care- 
 ful of their floors would look on with an unfriendly eye. 
 Wherever I went, too, the same traits struck me: the 
 people were all surprisingly rude and surprisingly kind. 
 The money-changer cross-questioned me like a French 
 commissary, asking my age, my business, my average 
 income, and my destination, beating down my at- 
 tempts at evasion, and receiving my answers in silence ; 
 and yet when all was over, he shook hands with me 
 up to the elbows, and sent his lad nearly a quarter of a 
 mile in the rain to get me books at a reduction. Again, 
 in a very large publishing and bookselling establish- 
 ment, a man, who seemed to be the manager, received 
 me as I had certainly never before been received in any 
 human shop, indicated squarely that he put no faith in 
 my honesty, and refused to look up the names of books 
 or give me the slightest help or information, on the 
 ground, like the steward, that it was none of his busi- 
 ness. I lost my temper at last, said I was a stranger in 
 America and not learned in their etiquette; but 1 would 
 assure him, if he went to any bookseller in England, of 
 more handsome usage. The boast was perhaps ex- 
 
NEW YORK 
 
 aggerated; but like many a long shot, it struck the 
 gold. The manager passed at once from one extreme 
 to the other; I may say that from that moment he 
 loaded me with kindness; he gave me all sorts of good 
 advice, wrote me down addresses, and came bare- 
 headed into the rain to point me out a restaurant, where 
 I might lunch, nor even then did he seem to think that 
 he had done enough. These are (it is as well to be 
 bold in statement) the manners of America. It is this 
 same opposition that has most struck me in people of 
 almost all classes and from east to west. By the time 
 a man had about strung me up to be the death of him 
 by his insulting behaviour, he himself would be just 
 upon the point of melting into confidence and service- 
 able attentions. Yet I suspect, although I have met 
 with the like in so many parts, that this must be the 
 character of some particular state or group of states ; for 
 in America, and this again in all classes, you will find 
 some of the softest-mannered gentlemen in the world. 
 I was so wet when I got back to Mitchell's toward 
 the evening, that I had simply to divest myself of my 
 shoes, socks and trousers, and leave them behind for 
 the benefit of New York city. No fire could have dried 
 them ere I had to start ; and to pack them in their pres- 
 ent condition was to spread ruin among my other pos- 
 sessions. With a heavy heart I said farewell to them 
 as they lay a pulp in the middle of a pool upon the floor 
 of Mitchell's kitchen. I wonder if they are dry by now. 
 Mitchell hired a man to carry my baggage to the station, 
 which was hard by, accompanied me thither himself, 
 and recommended me to the particular attention of the 
 officials. No one could have been kinder. Those whe 
 
 91 
 
THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 
 
 are out of pocket may go safely to Reunion House, 
 where they will get decent meals and find an honest 
 and obliging landlord. I owed him this word of 
 thanks, before 1 enter fairly on the second and far less 
 agreeable chapter of my emigrant experience. 
 
 92 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 WITH OTHER MEMORIES AND ESSAYS 
 
TO 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 Traveller and student and curious as you are, you will 
 never have heard the name of Vailima, most likely 
 not even that of Upolu, and Samoa itself may be 
 strange to your ears. To these barbaric seats there 
 came the other day a yellow book with your name 
 on the title, and filled in every page with the exqui- 
 site gifts of your art. Let me take and change your 
 own words: J'ai beau admirer les autresde toutes 
 mes forces, c'est avec vous queje'me complaisavivre, 
 
 R. L. S. 
 
 Vailima, 
 
 Upolu, 
 Samoa. 
 
LETTER TO THE AUTHOR 
 
 My Dear Stevenson: 
 
 You have trusted me with the choice and arrangement of these papers, 
 written before you departed to the South Seas, and have asked me 
 to add a preface to the volume. But it is your prose the public wish 
 to read, not mine; and I am sure they will willingly be spared the 
 preface. Acknowledgments are due in your name to the publishers 
 of the several magazines from which the papers are collected, viz. 
 Fraser's, Longman's, the Magazine of Art, and Scrihner's. I will 
 only add, lest any reader should find the tone of the concluding 
 pieces less inspiriting than your wont, that they were written under 
 circumstances of especial gloom and sickness. "I agree with you 
 the lights seem a little turned down," so you write to me now; 
 "the truth is I was far through, and came none to soon to the South 
 Seas, where I was to recover peace of body and mind. And how- 
 ever low the lights, the stuff is true. ..." Well, inasmuch as the 
 South Sea sirens have breathed new life into you, we are bound to be 
 heartily grateful to them, though as they keep you so far removed from 
 us, it is difficult not to bear them a grudge; and if they would recon- 
 cile us quite, they have but to do two things more — to teach you 
 new tales that shall charm us like your old, and to spare you, at 
 least once in a while in summer, to climates within reach of us who 
 are task-bound for ten months in the year beside the Thames. 
 
 Yours ever, 
 
 SIDNEY COLVIN. 
 February, 1892. 
 
I. ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF AN EMIGRANT BETWEEN 
 NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MONDAY. — It was, if I remember rightly, five 
 o'clock when we were all signalled to be present 
 at the Ferry Depot of the railroad. An emigrant ship 
 had arrived at New York on the Saturday night, another 
 on the Sunday morning, our own on Sunday afternoon, 
 a fourth early on Monday ; and as there is no emigrant 
 train on Sunday, a great part of the passengers from 
 these four ships was concentrated on the train by which 
 I was to travel. There was a babel of bewildered men, 
 women, and children. The wretched little booking 
 office, and the baggage-room, which was not much 
 larger, were crowded thick with emigrants, and were 
 heavy and rank with the atmosphere of dripping clothes. 
 Open carts full of bedding stood by the half-hour in the 
 rain. The officials loaded each other with recrimina- 
 tions. A bearded, mildewed little man, whom I take 
 to have been an emigrant agent, was all over the place, 
 his mouth full of brimstone, blustering and interfering. 
 It was plain that the whole system, if system there was, 
 had utterly broken down under the strain of so many 
 passengers. 
 
 My own ticket was given me at once, and an oldish 
 man, who preserved his head in the midst of this tur- 
 
 99 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 moil, got my baggage registered, and counselled me to 
 stay quietly where I was till he should give me the 
 word to move. I had taken along with me a small 
 valise, a knapsack, which I carried on my shoulders, 
 and in the bag of my railway rug the whole o^ Bancroft's 
 History of the United States, in six fat volumes. It was 
 as much as I could carry with convenience even for short 
 distances, but it insured me plenty of clothing, and the 
 valise was at that moment, and often after, useful for a 
 stool. I am sure I sat for an hour in the baggage-room, 
 and wretched enough it was ; yet, when at last the word 
 was passed to me and I picked up my bundles and got 
 under way, it was only to exchange discomfort for 
 downright misery and danger. 
 
 I followed the porters into a long shed reaching down- 
 hill from West Street to the river. It was dark, the 
 wind blew clean through it from end to end ; and here 
 I found a great block of passengers and baggage, hun- 
 dreds of one and tons of the other. I feel I shall have a 
 difficulty to make myself believed; and certainly the 
 scene must have been exceptional, for it was too dan- 
 gerous for daily repetition. It was a tight jam ; there 
 was no fair way through the mingled mass of brute and 
 living obstruction. Into the upper skirts of the crowd 
 porters, infuriated by hurry and overwork, clove their 
 way with shouts. I may say that we stood like sheep, 
 and that the porters charged among us like so many 
 maddened sheep-dogs; and I believe these men were 
 no longer answerable for their acts. It mattered not 
 what they were carrying, they drove straight into the 
 press, and when they could get no farther, blindly dis- 
 charged their barrowful. With my own hand, for in- 
 
 100 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 Stance, I saved the life of a child as it sat upon its 
 mother's knee, she sitting on a box; and since I heard 
 of no accident, I must suppose that there were many 
 similar interpositions in the course of the evening. It will 
 give some idea of the state of mind to which we were re- 
 duced if I tell you that neither the porter nor the mother 
 of the child paid the least attention to my act. It was 
 not till some time after that I understood what I had 
 done myself, for to ward off heavy boxes seemed at the 
 moment a natural incident of human life. Cold, wet, 
 clamour, dead opposition to progress, such as one en- 
 counters in an evil dream, had utterly daunted the spi- 
 rits. We had accepted this purgatory as a child accepts 
 the conditions of the world. For my part, I shivered a 
 little, and my back ached wearily; but I believe I had 
 neither a hope nor a fear, and all the activities of my 
 nature had become tributary to one massive sensation 
 of discomfort. 
 
 At length, and after how long an interval I hesitate to 
 guess, the crowd began to move, heavily straining 
 through itself. About the same time some lamps were 
 lighted, and threw a sudden flare over the shed. We 
 were being filtered out into the river boat for Jersey City. 
 You may imagine how slowly this filtering proceeded, 
 through the dense, choking crush, every one overladen 
 with packages or children, and yet under the necessity 
 of fishing out his ticket by the way ; but it ended at 
 length for me, and I found myself on deck under a flimsy 
 awning and with a trifle of elbow-room to stretch and 
 breathe in. This was on the starboard; for the bulk of 
 the emigrants stuck hopelessly on the port side, by 
 which we had entered. In vain the seamen shouted to 
 
 lOI 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 them to move on, and threatened them with shipwreck. 
 These poor people were under a spell of stupor, and did 
 not stir a foot. It rained as heavily as ever, but the wind 
 now came in sudden claps and capfuls, not without 
 danger to a boat so badly ballasted as ours; and we 
 crept over the river in the darkness, trailing one paddle 
 in the water like a wounded duck, and passed ever and 
 again by huge, illuminated steamers running many 
 knots, and heralding their approach by strains of music. 
 The contrast between these pleasure embarkations and 
 our own grim vessel, with her list to port and her freight 
 of wet and silent emigrants, was of that glaring de- 
 scription which we count too obvious for the purposes 
 of art. 
 
 The landing at Jersey City was done in a stampede. 
 I had a fixed sense of calamity, and to judge by con- 
 duct, the same persuasion was common to us all. A 
 panic selfishness, like that produced by fear, presided 
 over the disorder of our landing. People pushed, and 
 elbowed, and ran, the families following how they could. 
 Children fell, and were picked up to be rewarded by a 
 blow. One child, who had lost her parents, screamed 
 steadily and with increasing shrillness, as though verg- 
 ing towards a fit; an official kept her by him, but no one 
 else seemed so much as to remark her distress ; and I 
 am ashamed to say that I ran among the rest. I was so 
 weary that I had twice to make a halt and set down my 
 bundles in the hundred yards or so between the pier and 
 the railway station, so that I was quite wet by the time 
 that I got under cover. There was no waiting-room, no 
 refreshment room ; the cars were locked ; and for at least 
 another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp upon 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 the draughty, gaslit platform. I sat on my valise, too 
 crushed to observe my neighbours ; but as they were all 
 cold, and wet, and weary, and driven stupidly crazy by 
 the mismanagement to which we had been subjected, I 
 believe they can have been no happier than myself. 1 
 bought half a dozen oranges from a boy, for oranges and 
 nuts were the only refection to be had. As only two of 
 them had even a pretence of juice, I threw the other four 
 under the cars, and beheld, as in a dream, grown peo- 
 ple and children groping on the track after my leavings. 
 
 At last we were admitted into the cars, utterly de- 
 jected, and far from dry. For my own part, I got out a 
 clothes-brush, and brushed my trousers as hard as I 
 could till I had dried them and warmed my blood into 
 the bargain ; but no one else, except my next neighbour 
 to whom I lent the brush, appeared to take the least 
 precaution. As they were, they composed themselves 
 to sleep. 1 had seen the lights of Philadelphia, and been 
 twice ordered to change carriages and twice counter- 
 manded, before I allowed myself to follow their exam- 
 ple. 
 
 Tuesday, — When I awoke, it was already day; the 
 train was standing idle; 1 was in the last carriage, and, 
 seeing some others strolling to and fro about the lines, I 
 opened the door and stepped forth, as from a caravan by 
 the wayside. We were near no station, nor even, as far 
 as I could see, within reach of any signal. A green, 
 open, undulating country stretched away upon all sides. 
 Locust trees and a single field of Indian corn gave it a 
 foreign grace and interest; but the contours of the land 
 were soft and English. It was not quite England, 
 neither was it quite France ; yet like enough either to 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 seem natural in my eyes. And it was in the sky, and 
 not upon the earth, that I was surprised to find a change. 
 Explain it how you may, and for my part I cannot ex- 
 plain it at all, the sun rises with a different splendour in 
 America and Europe. There is more clear gold and 
 scarlet in our old country mornings; more purple, 
 brown, and smoky orange in those of the new. It may 
 be from habit, but to me the coming of day is less fresh 
 and inspiriting in the latter; it has a duskier glory, and 
 more nearly resembles sunset; it seems to fit some sub- 
 sequential, evening epoch of the world, as though 
 America were in fact, and not merely in fancy, farther 
 from the orient of Aurora and the springs of day. I 
 thought so then, by the railroad side in Pennsylvania, 
 and I have thought so a dozen times since in far distant 
 parts of the continent. If it be an illusion it is one 
 very deeply rooted, and in which my eyesight is ac- 
 complice. 
 
 Soon after a train whisked by, announcing and ac- 
 companying its passage by the swift beating of a sort 
 of chapel bell upon the engine; and as it was for this 
 we had been waiting, we were summoned by the cry 
 of ''All aboard!" and went on again upon our way. 
 The whole line, it appeared, was topsy-turvy ; an acci- 
 dent at midnight having thrown all the traffic hours 
 into arrear. We paid for this in the flesh, for we had 
 no meals all that day. Fruit we could buy upon the 
 cars ; and now and then we had a few minutes at some 
 station with a meagre show of rolls and sandwiches for 
 sale ; but we were so many and so ravenous that, though 
 I tried at every opportunity, the coffee was always ex- 
 hausted before I could elbow my way to the counter. 
 
 104 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 Our American sunrise had ushered in a noble sum- 
 mer's day. There was not a cloud ; the sunshine was 
 baking; yet in the woody river valleys among which 
 we wound our way, the atmosphere preserved a spark- 
 ling freshness till late in the afternoon. It had an in- 
 land sweetness and variety to one newly from the sea ; 
 it smelt of woods, rivers, and the delved earth. These, 
 though in so far a country, were airs from home. I 
 stood on the platform by the hour; and as I saw, one 
 after another, pleasant villages, carts upon the high- 
 way and fishers by the stream, and heard cockcrows 
 and cheery voices in the distance, and beheld the sun, 
 no longer shining blankly on the plains of ocean, but 
 striking among shapely hills and his light dispersed 
 and coloured by a thousand accidents of form and sur- 
 face, I began to exult with myself upon this rise in life 
 like a man who had come into a rich estate. And when 
 I had asked the name of a river from the brakesman, 
 and heard that it was called the Susquehanna, the beauty 
 of the name seemed to be part and parcel of the beauty 
 of the land. As when Adam with divine fitness named 
 the creatures, so this word Susquehanna was at once 
 accepted by the fancy. That was the name, as no other 
 could be, for that shining river and desirable valley. 
 
 None can care for literature in itself who do not take 
 a special pleasure in the sound of names ; and there is 
 no part of the world where nomenclature is so rich, 
 poetical, humorous, and picturesque as the United 
 States of America. All times, races, and languages have 
 brought their contribution. Pekin is in the same State with 
 Euclid, with Bellefontaine, and with Sandusky. Chel- 
 sea, with its London associations of red brick, Sloane 
 
 105 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 Square, and the King's Road, is own suburb to stately 
 and primeval Memphis; there they have their seat, 
 translated names of cities, where the Mississippi runs 
 by Tennessee and Arkansas;^ and both, while I was 
 crossing the continent, lay, watched by armed men, in 
 the horror and isolation of a plague. Old, red Manhat- 
 tan lies, like an Indian arrowhead under a steam fac- 
 tory, below anglified New York. The names of the 
 States and Territories themselves form a chorus of sweet 
 and most romantic vocables : Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, 
 Florida, Dakota, Iowa, Wyoming, Minnesota, and the 
 Carolinas ; there are few poems with a nobler music for 
 the ear: a songful, tuneful land; and if the new Homer 
 shall arise from the Western continent, his verse will 
 be enriched, his pages sing spontaneously, with the 
 names of states and cities that would strike the fancy 
 in a business circular. 
 
 Late in the evening we were landed in a waiting- 
 room at Pittsburg. I had now under my charge a 
 young and sprightly Dutch widow with her children ; 
 these I was to watch over providentially for a certain 
 distance farther on the way; but as I found she was 
 furnished with a basket of eatables, I left her in the 
 waiting-room to seek a dinner for myself 
 
 I mention this meal, not only because it was the first 
 of which I had partaken for about thirty hours, but be- 
 cause it was the means of my first introduction to a 
 coloured gentleman. He did me the honour to wait 
 upon me after a fashion, while 1 was eating; and with 
 every word, look, and gesture marched me farther into 
 the country of surprise. He was indeed strikingly un- 
 
 1 Please pronounce Arkansaw, with the accent on the first. 
 106 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 like the negroes of Mrs. Beecher Stowe, or the Christy- 
 Minstrels of my youth. Imagine a gentleman, certainly 
 somewhat dark, but of a pleasant warm hue, speaking 
 English with a slight and rather odd foreign accent, 
 every inch a man of the world, and armed with man- 
 ners so patronisingly superior that I am at a loss to 
 name their parallel in England. A butler perhaps rides 
 as high over the unbutlered, but then he sets you right 
 with a reserve and a sort of sighing patience which one 
 is often moved to admire. And again, the abstract 
 butler never stoops to familiarity. But the coloured 
 gentleman will pass you a wink at a time ; he is familiar 
 like an upper form boy to a fag; he unbends to you like 
 Prince Hal with Poins and FalstafF. He makes himself 
 at home and welcome. Indeed, I may say, this waiter 
 behaved himself to me throughout that supper much as, 
 with us, a young, free, and not very self-respecting 
 master might behave to a good-looking chambermaid. 
 I had come prepared to pity the poor negro, to put him 
 at his ease, to prove in a thousand condescensions that 
 I was no sharer in the prejudice of race; but I assure 
 you I put my patronage away for another occasion, and 
 had the grace to be pleased with that result. 
 
 Seeing he was a very honest fellow, I consulted him 
 upon a point of etiquette : if one should offer to tip the 
 American waiter ? Certainly not, he told me. Never. 
 It would not do. They considered themselves too 
 highly to accept. They would even resent the offer. As 
 for him and me, we had enjoyed a very pleasant con- 
 versation ; he, in particular, had found much pleasure in 
 my society ; 1 was a stranger ; this was exactly one of 
 those rare conjunctures. . . . Without being very clear 
 
 107 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 seeing, I can still perceive the sun at noonday ; and the 
 coloured gentleman deftly pocketed a quarter. 
 
 Wednesday. — A little after midnight I convoyed my 
 widow and orphans on board the train; and morning 
 found us far into Ohio. This had early been a favourite 
 home of my imagination ; I have played at being in Ohio 
 by the week, and enjoyed some capital sport there with 
 a dummy gun, my person being still unbreeched. My 
 preference was founded on a work which appeared in 
 CasseU's Family Paper, and was read aloud to me by 
 my nurse. It narrated the doings of one Custaloga, an 
 Indian brave, who, in the last chapter, very obligingly 
 washed the paint off his face and became Sir Reginald 
 Somebody-or-other ; a trick I never forgave him. The 
 idea of a man being an Indian brave, and then giving 
 that up to be a baronet, was one which my mind re- 
 jected. It offended verisimilitude, like the pretended 
 anxiety of Robinson Crusoe and others to escape from 
 uninhabited islands. 
 
 But Ohio was not at all as I had pictured it. We 
 were now on those great plains which stretch unbroken 
 to the Rocky Mountains. The country was flat like 
 Holland, but far from being dull. All through Ohio, 
 Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, or for as much as I saw of 
 them from the train and in my waking moments, it 
 was rich and various, and breathed an elegance peculiar 
 to itself. The tall corn pleased the eye ; the trees were 
 graceful in themselves, and framed the plain into long, 
 aerial vistas ; and the clean, bright, gardened townships 
 spoke of country fare and pleasant summer evenings on 
 the stoop. It was a sort of flat paradise; but, I am 
 afraid, not unfrequented by the devil. That morning 
 
 108 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 dawned with such a freezing chill as I have rarely felt; 
 a chill that was not perhaps so measurable by instru- 
 ment, as it struck home upon the heart and seemed to 
 travel with the blood. Day came in with a shudder. 
 White mists lay thinly over the surface of the plain, as 
 we see them more often on a lake ; and though the sun 
 had soon dispersed and drunk them up, leaving an at- 
 mosphere of fever heat and crystal pureness from horizon 
 to horizon, the mists had still been there, and we knew 
 that this paradise was haunted by killing damps and 
 foul malaria. The fences along the line bore but two 
 descriptions of advertisement; one to recommend to- 
 baccos, and the other to vaunt remedies against the 
 ague. At the point of day, and while we were all in 
 the grasp of that first chill, a native of the state, who 
 had got in at some way station, pronounced it, with a 
 doctoral air, "a fever and ague morning." 
 
 The Dutch widow was a person of some character. 
 She had conceived at first sight a great aversion for the 
 present writer, which she was at no pains to conceal. 
 But being a woman of a practical spirit, she made no 
 difficulty about accepting my attentions, and encouraged 
 me to buy her children fruits and candies, to carry all 
 her parcels, and even to sleep upon the floor that she 
 might profit by my empty seat. Nay, she was such a 
 rattle by nature, and so powerfully moved to autobio- 
 graphical talk, that she was forced, for want of a better, 
 to take me into confidence and tell me the story of her 
 life. I heard about her late husband, who seemed to 
 have made his chief impression by taking her out pleas- 
 uring on Sundays. I could tell you her prospects, her 
 hopes, the amount of her fortune, the cost of her house- 
 
 109 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 keeping by the week, and a variety of particular matters 
 that are not usually disclosed except to friends. At one 
 station, she shook up her children to look at a man on 
 the platform and say if he were not like Mr. Z. ; while 
 to me she explained how she had been keeping com- 
 pany with this Mr. Z., how far matters had proceeded, 
 and how it was because of his desistance that she was 
 now travelling to the west. Then, when I was thus put 
 in possession of the facts, she asked my judgment on 
 that type of manly beauty. I admired it to her heart's 
 content. She was not, I think, remarkably veracious in 
 talk, but broidered as fancy prompted, and built castles 
 in the air out of her past ; yet she had that sort of can- 
 dour, to keep me, in spite of all these confidences, stead- 
 ily aware of her aversion. Her parting words were 
 ingeniously honest. ''I am sure," said she, ''we all 
 ought to be very much obliged to you." I cannot pre- 
 tend that she put me at my ease ; but I had a certain 
 respect for such a genuine dislike. A poor nature would 
 have slipped, in the course of these familiarities, into a 
 sort of worthless toleration for me. 
 
 We reached Chicago in the evening. I was turned 
 out of the cars, bundled into an omnibus, and driven off 
 through the streets to the station of a different railroad. 
 Chicago seemed a great and gloomy city. I remember 
 having subscribed, let us say sixpence, towards its res- 
 toration at the period of the fire; and now when I be- 
 held street after street of ponderous houses and crowds 
 of comfortable burghers, I thought it would be a grace- 
 ful act for the corporation to refund that sixpence, or, at 
 the least, to entertain me to a cheerful dinner. But 
 there was no word of restitution. I was that city's ben- 
 
 . no 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 efactor, yet I was received in a third-class waiting-room, 
 and the best dinner I could get was a dish of ham and 
 eggs at my own expense. 
 
 1 can safely say, I have never been so dog-tired as that 
 night in Chicago. When it was time to start, I de- 
 scended the platform like a man in a dream. It was a 
 long train, lighted from end to end ; and car after car, as 
 I came up with it, was not only filled but overflowing. 
 My valise, my knapsack, my rug, with those six pon- 
 derous tomes of Bancroft, weighed me double ; I was 
 hot, feverish, painfully athirst; and there was a great 
 darkness over me, an internal darkness, not to be dis- 
 pelled by gas. When at last I found an empty bench, 
 I sank into it like a bundle of rags, the world seemed to 
 swim away into the distance, and my consciousness 
 dwindled within me to a mere pin's head, like a taper 
 on a foggy night. 
 
 When I came a little more to myself, I found that 
 there had sat down beside me a very cheerful, rosy little 
 German gentleman, somewhat gone in drink, who was 
 talking away to me, nineteen to the dozen, as they say. 
 I did my best to keep up the conversation ; for it seemed 
 to me dimly as if something depended upon that. I 
 heard him relate, among many other things, that there 
 were pickpockets on the train, who had already robbed 
 a man of forty dollars and a return ticket ; but though I 
 caught the words, I do not think I properly understood 
 the sense until next morning; and 1 believe I replied at 
 the time that I was very glad to hear it. What else he 
 talked about I have no guess; I remember a gabbling 
 sound of words, his profuse gesticulation, and his smile, 
 which was highly explanatory ; but no more. And I 
 
 III 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 suppose I must have shown my confusion very plainly ; 
 for, first, I saw him knit his brows at me like one who 
 has conceived a doubt; next, he tried me in German, 
 supposing perhaps that I was unfamiliar with the English 
 tongue ; and finally, in despair, he rose and left me. I 
 felt chagrined ; but my fatigue was too crushing for de- 
 lay, and, stretching myself as far as that was possible 
 upon the bench, I was received at once into a dreamless 
 stupor. 
 
 The little German gentleman was only going a little 
 way into the suburbs after a diner fin, and was bent on 
 entertainment while the journey lasted. Having failed 
 with me, he pitched next upon another emigrant, who 
 had come through from Canada, and was not one jot 
 less weary than myself. Nay, even in a natural state, 
 as I found next morning when we scraped acquaintance, 
 he was a heavy, uncommunicative man. After trying 
 him on different topics, it appears that the little German 
 gentleman flounced into a temper, swore an oath or two, 
 and departed from that car in quest of livelier society. 
 Poor little gentleman ! I suppose he thought an emigrant 
 should be a rollicking, free-hearted blade, with a flask of 
 foreign brandy and a long, comical story to beguile the 
 moments of digestion. 
 
 Thursday. — I suppose there must be a cycle in the 
 fatigue of travelling, for when I awoke next morning, I 
 was entirely renewed in spirits and ate a hearty break- 
 fast of porridge, with sweet milk, and coffee and hot 
 cakes, at Burlington upon the Mississippi. Another 
 long day's ride followed, with but one feature worthy 
 of remark. At a place, called Creston, a drunken man 
 got in. He was aggressively friendly, but, according to 
 
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ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 English notions, not at all unpresentable upon a train. 
 For one stage he eluded the notice of the officials ; but 
 just as we were beginning to move out of the next sta- 
 tion, Cromwell by name, by came the conductor. There 
 was a word or two of talk; and then the official had the 
 man by the shoulders, twitched him from his seat, 
 marched him through the car, and sent him flying on to 
 the track. It was done in three motions, as exact as a 
 piece of drill. The train was still moving slowly, al- 
 though beginning to mend her pace, and the drunkard 
 got his feet without a fall. He carried a red bundle, 
 though not so red as his cheeks; and he shook this 
 menacingly in the air with one hand, while the other stole 
 behind him to the region of the kidneys. It was the first 
 indication that I had come among revolvers, and I ob- 
 served it with some emotion. The conductor stood on 
 the steps with one hand on his hip, looking back at 
 him ; and perhaps this attitude imposed upon the crea- 
 ture, for he turned without further ado, and went off 
 staggering along the track towards Cromwell, followed 
 by a peal of laughter from the cars. They were speak- 
 ing English all about me, but I knew I was in a foreign 
 land. 
 
 Twenty minutes before nine that night, we were de- 
 posited atthe Pacific Transfer Station near Council Bluffs, 
 on the eastern bank of the Missouri river. Here we 
 were to stay the night at a kind of caravanserai, set apart 
 for emigrants. But I gave way to a thirst for luxury, 
 separated myself from my companions, and marched 
 with my effects into the Union Pacific Hotel. A white 
 clerk and a coloured gentleman whom, in my plain 
 European way, I should call the boots, were installed 
 
 113 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 behind a counter like bank tellers. They took my name, 
 assigned me a number, and proceeded to deal with my 
 packages. And here came the tug of war. I wished to 
 give up my packages into safe keeping; but I did not 
 wish to go to bed. And this, it appeared, was impos- 
 sible in an American hotel. 
 
 It was, of course, some inane misunderstanding, and 
 sprang from my unfamiliarity with the language. For 
 although two nations use the same words and read the 
 same books, intercourse is not conducted by the dic- 
 tionary. The business of life is not carried on by words, 
 but in set phrases, each with a special and almost a slang 
 signification. Some international obscurity prevailed 
 between me and the coloured gentleman at Council 
 Bluffs ; so that what I was asking, which seemed very 
 natural to me, appeared to him a monstrous exigency. 
 He refused, and that with the plainness of the West. 
 This American manner of conducting matters of busi- 
 ness is, at first, highly unpalatable to the European. 
 When we approach a man in the way of his calling, and 
 for those services by which he earns his bread, we con- 
 sider him for the time being our hired servant. But in 
 the American opinion, two gentlemen meet and have a 
 friendly talk with a view to exchanging favours if they 
 shall agree to please. I know not which is the more 
 convenient, nor even which is the more truly courteous. 
 The English stiffness unfortunately tends to be continued 
 after the particular transaction is at an end, and thus fa- 
 vours class separations. But on the other hand, these 
 equalitarian plainnesses leave an open field for the in- 
 solence of Jack-in-office. 
 
 I was nettled by the coloured gentleman's refusal, 
 
 114 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 and unbuttoned my wrath under the similitude of iron- 
 ical submission. I knew nothing, I said, of the ways 
 of American hotels ; but I had no desire to give trouble. 
 If there was nothing for it but to get to bed immedi- 
 ately, let him say the word, and though it was not my 
 habit, I should cheerfully obey. 
 
 He burst into a shout of laughter. '' Ah! " said he, 
 *'you do not know about America. They are fine 
 people in America. Oh ! you will like them very well. 
 But you mustn't get mad. I know what you want. 
 You come along with me." 
 
 And issuing from behind the counter, and taking me 
 by the arm like an old acquaintance, he led me to the 
 bar of the hotel. 
 
 *' There," said he, pushing me from him by the 
 shoulder, **go and have a drink!" 
 
 THE EMIGRANT TRAIN 
 
 All this while I had been travelling by mixed trains, 
 where I might meet with Dutch widows and little Ger- 
 man gentry fresh from table. I had been but a latent 
 emigrant; now I was to be branded once more, and 
 put apart with my fellows. It was about two in the 
 afternoon of Friday that 1 found myself in front of the 
 Emigrant House, with more than a hundred others, to 
 be sorted and boxed for the journey. A white-haired 
 official, with a stick under one arm, and a list in the 
 other hand, stood apart in front of us, and called name 
 after name in the tone of a command. At each name 
 you would see a family gather up its brats and bundles 
 and run for the hindmost of the three cars that stood 
 
 »I5 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 awaiting us, and I soon concluded that this was to be 
 set apart for the women and children. The second or 
 central car, it turned out, was devoted to men travel- 
 ling alone, and the third to the Chinese. The official 
 was easily moved to anger at the least delay ; but the 
 emigrants were both quick at answering their names, 
 and speedy in getting themselves and their effects on 
 board. 
 
 The families once housed, we men carried the second 
 car without ceremony by simultaneous assault. I sup- 
 pose the reader has some notion of an American railroad- 
 car, that long, narrow wooden box, like a flat-roofed 
 Noah's ark, with a stove and a convenience, one at 
 either end, a passage down the middle, and transverse 
 benches upon either hand. Those destined for emi- 
 grants on the Union Pacific are only remarkable for 
 their extreme plainness, nothing but wood entering in 
 any part into their constitution, and for the usual in- 
 efificacy of the lamps, which often went out and shed 
 but a dying glimmer even while they burned. The 
 benches are too short for anything but a young child. 
 Where there is scarce elbow-room for two to sit, there 
 will not be be space enough for one to lie. Hence the 
 company, or rather, as it appears from certain bills 
 about the Transfer Station, the company's servants, 
 have conceived a plan for the better accommodation 
 of travellers. They prevail on every two to chum to- 
 gether. To each of the chums they sell a board and 
 three square cushions stuffed with straw, and covered 
 with thin cotton. The benches can be made to face 
 each other in pairs, for the backs are reversible. On the 
 approach of night the boards are laid from bench to 
 
 ii6 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 bench, making a couch wide enough for two, and 
 long enough for a man of the middle height; and the 
 chums lie down side by side upon the cushions with 
 the head to the conductor's van and the feet to the en- 
 gine. When the train is full, of course this plan is 
 impossible, for there must not be more than one to 
 every bench, neither can it be carried out unless the 
 chums agree. It was to bring about this last condition 
 that our white-haired official now bestirred himself He 
 made a most active master of ceremonies, introducing 
 likely couples, and even guaranteeing the amiability and 
 honesty of each. The greater the number of happy 
 couples the better for his pocket, for it was he who 
 sold the raw material of the beds. His price for one 
 board and three straw cushions began with two dollars 
 and a half; but before the train left, and, I am sorry to 
 say, long after I had purchased mine, it had fallen to 
 one dollar and a half 
 
 The match-maker had a difficulty with me ; perhaps, 
 like some ladies, I showed myself too eager for union 
 at any price ; but certainly the first who was picked out 
 to be my bedfellow, declined the honour without thanks. 
 He was an old, heavy, slow-spoken man, 1 think from 
 Yankeeland, looked me all over with great timidity, 
 and then began to excuse himself in broken phrases. 
 He didn't know the young man, he said. The young 
 man might be very honest, but how was he to know 
 that ? There was another young man whom he had 
 met already in the train ; he guessed he was honest, and 
 would prefer to chum with him upon the whole. All 
 this without any sort of excuse, as though I had been 
 inanimate or absent. I began to tremble lest everyone 
 
 117 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 should refuse my company, and I be left rejected. But 
 the next in turn was a tall, strapping, long-limbed, 
 small-headed, curly-haired Pennsylvania Dutchman, 
 with a soldierly smartness in his manner. To be exact, 
 he had acquired it in the navy. But that was all one ; 
 he had at least been trained to desperate resolves, so he 
 accepted the match, and the white-haired swindler pro- 
 nounced the connubial benediction, and pocketed his fees. 
 
 The rest of the afternoon was spent in making up the 
 train. I am afraid to say how many baggage-waggons 
 followed the engine, certainly a score; then came the 
 Chinese, then we, then the families, and the rear was 
 brought up by the conductor in what, if I have it rightly, 
 is called his caboose. The class to which I belonged 
 was of course far the largest, and we ran over, so to 
 speak, to both sides ; so that there were some Caucasians 
 among the Chinamen, and some bachelors among the 
 families. But our own car was pure from admixture, 
 save for one little boy of eight or nine, who had the 
 whooping-cough. At last, about six, the long train 
 crawled out of the Transfer Station and across the wide 
 Missouri river to Omaha, westward bound. 
 
 It was a troubled uncomfortable evening in the cars. 
 There was thunder in the air, which helped to keep us 
 restless. A man played many airs upon the cornet, 
 and none of them were much attended to, until he came 
 to "Home, sweet home." It was truly strange to note 
 how the talk ceased at that, and the faces began to 
 lengthen. I have no idea whether musically this air is 
 to be considered good or bad; but it belongs to that 
 class of art which may be best described as a brutal 
 assault upon the feelings. Pathos must be relieved by 
 
 ii8 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 dignity of treatment. If you wallow naked in the pa- 
 thetic, like the author of ''Home, sweet home," you 
 make your hearers weep in an unmanly fashion; and 
 even while yet they are moved, they despise themselves 
 and hate the occasion of their weakness. It did not 
 come to tears that night, for the experiment was inter- 
 rupted. An elderly, hard-looking man, with a goatee 
 beard and about as much appearance of sentiment as 
 you would expect from a retired slaver, turned with a 
 start and bade the performer stop that " damned thing.'* 
 "I've heard about enough of that," he added; "give 
 us something about the good country we're going to." 
 A murmur of adhesion ran round the car; the performer 
 took the instrument from his lips, laughed and nodded, 
 and then struck into a dancing measure; and, like a new 
 Timotheus, stilled immediately the emotion he had 
 raised. 
 
 The day faded; the lamps were lit; a party of wild 
 young men, who got off next evening at North Platte, 
 stood together on the stern platform, singing "The 
 Sweet By-and-bye " with very tuneful voices ; the chums 
 began to put up their beds ; and it seemed as if the busi- 
 ness of the day were at an end. But it was not so; for, 
 the train stopping at some station, the cars were in- 
 stantly thronged with the natives, wives and fathers, 
 young men and maidens, some of them in little more 
 than nightgear, some with stable lanterns, and all offer- 
 ing beds for sale. Their charge began with twenty-five 
 cents a cushion, but fell, before the train went on again, 
 to fifteen, with the bed-board gratis, or less than one- 
 fifth of what I had paid for mine at the Transfer. This 
 is my contribution to the economy of future emigrants. 
 
 119 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 A great personage on an American train is the news- 
 boy. He sells books (such books!), papers, fruit, lolli- 
 pops, and cigars; and on emigrant journeys, soap, 
 towels, tin washing dishes, tin coffee pitchers, coffee, 
 tea, sugar, and tinned eatables, mostly hash or beans 
 and bacon. Early next morning the newsboy went 
 around the cars, and chumming on a more extended 
 principle became the order of the hour. It requires but 
 a copartnery of two to manage beds ; but washing and 
 eating ean be carried on most economically by a syndi- 
 cate of three. I myself entered a little after sunrise in- 
 to articles of agreement, and became one of the firm 
 of Pennsylvania, Shakespeare, and Dubuque. Shake- 
 speare was my own nickname on the cars; Pennsyl- 
 vania that of my bedfellow; and Dubuque, the name of 
 a place in the State of Iowa, that of an amiable young 
 fellow going west to cure an asthma, and retarding his 
 recovery by incessantly chewing or smoking, and some- 
 times chewing and smoking together. I have never 
 seen tobacco so sillily abused. Shakespeare bought a 
 tin washing-dish, Dubuque a towel, and Pennsylvania 
 a brick of soap. The partners used these instruments, 
 one after another, according to the order of their first 
 awaking ; and when the firm had finished there was no 
 want of borrowers. Each filled the tin dish at the wa- 
 ter filter opposite the stove, and retired with the whole 
 stock in trade to the platform of the car. There he 
 knelt down, supporting himself by a shoulder against 
 the woodwork or one elbow crooked about the railing, 
 and made a shift to wash his face and neck and hands ; 
 a cold, an insufficient, and, if the train is moving rap- 
 idly, a somewhat dangerous toilet. 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 On a similar division of expense, the firm of Pennsyl- 
 vania, Shakespeare, and Dubuque supplied themselves 
 with coffee, sugar, and necessary vessels; and their 
 operations are a type of what went on through all the 
 cars. Before the sun was up the stove would be 
 brightly burning; at the first station the natives would 
 come on board with milk and eggs and coffee cakes ; 
 and soon from end to end the car would be filled with 
 little parties breakfasting upon the bed-boards. It was 
 the pleasantest hour of the day. 
 
 There were meals to be had, however, by the way- 
 side: a breakfast in the morning, a dinner somewhere 
 between eleven and two, and supper from five to eight 
 or nine at night. We had rarely less than twenty min- 
 utes for each ; and if we had not spent many another 
 twenty minutes waiting for some express upon a side 
 track among miles of desert, we might have taken an 
 hour to each repast and arrived at San Francisco up to 
 time. For haste is not the foible of an emigrant train. 
 It gets through on sufferance, running the gauntlet 
 among its more considerable brethren ; should there be 
 a block, it is unhesitatingly sacrificed ; and they cannot, 
 in consequence, predict the length of the passage within 
 a day or so. Civility is the main comfort that you miss. 
 Equality, though conceived very largely in America, 
 does not extend so low down as to an emigrant. Thus 
 in all other trains, a warning cry of "All aboard!" re- 
 calls the passengers to take their seats ; but as soon as 
 1 was alone with emigrants, and from the Transfer all 
 the way to San Francisco, I found this ceremony was 
 pretermitted; the train stole from the station without 
 note of warning, and you had to keep an eye upon it 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 even while you ate. The annoyance is considerable, 
 and the disrespect both wanton and petty. 
 
 Many conductors, again, will hold no communication 
 with an emigrant. I asked a conductor one day at 
 what time the train would stop for dinner; as he made 
 no answer I repeated the question, with a like result; a 
 third time I returned to the charge, and then Jack-in- 
 office looked me coolly in the face for several seconds 
 and turned ostentatiously away. I believe he was half 
 ashamed of his brutality; for when another person 
 made the same inquiry, although he still refused the in- 
 formation, he condescended to answer, and even to 
 justify his reticence in a voice loud enough for me to 
 hear. It was, he said, his principle not to tell people 
 where they were to dine ; for one answer led to many 
 other questions, as what o'clock it was ? or, how soon 
 should we be there? and he could not afford to be 
 eternally worried. 
 
 As you are thus cut off from the superior authorities, 
 a great deal of your comfort depends on the character 
 of the newsboy. He has it in his power indefinitely to 
 better and brighten the emigrant's lot. The newsboy 
 with whom we started from the Transfer was a dark, 
 bullying, contemptuous, insolent scoundrel, who treated 
 us like dogs. Indeed, in his case, matters came nearly 
 to a fight. It happened thus : he was going his rounds 
 through the cars with some commodities for sale, and 
 coming to a party who were at Seven-up or Cascino (our 
 two games), upon a bed-board, slung down a cigar-box 
 in the middle of the cards, knocking one man's hand to 
 the floor. It was the last straw. In a moment the 
 whole party were upon their feet, the cigars were upset, 
 
 122 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 and he was ordered to "get out of that directly, or he 
 would get more than he reckoned for." The fellow 
 grumbled and muttered, but ended by making off, and 
 was less openly insulting in the future. On the other 
 hand, the lad who rode with us in this capacity from 
 Ogden to Sacramento made himself the friend of all, 
 and helped us with information, attention, assistance, 
 and a kind countenance. He told us where and when 
 we should have our meals, and how long the train would 
 stop ; kept seats at table for those who were delayed, 
 and watched that we should neither be left behind nor 
 yet unnecessarily hurried. You, who live at home at 
 ease, can hardly realise the greatness of this service, even 
 had it stood alone. When I think of that lad coming 
 and going, train after train, with his bright face and 
 civil words, I see how easily a good man may become 
 the benefactor of his kind. Perhaps he is discontented 
 with himself, perhaps troubled with ambitions; why, 
 if he but knew it, he is a hero of the old Greek stamp ; 
 and while he thinks he is only earning a profit of a few 
 cents, and that perhaps exorbitant, he is doing a man's 
 work, and bettering the world. 
 
 I must tell here an experience of mine with another 
 newsboy. I tell it because it gives so good an example 
 of that uncivil kindness of the American, which is per- 
 haps their most bewildering character to one newly 
 landed. It was immediately after I had left the emigrant 
 train ; and I am told I looked like a man at death's door, 
 so much had this long journey shaken me. I sat at the 
 end of a car, and the catch being broken, and myself 
 feverish and sick, I had to hold the door open with my 
 foot for the sake of air. In this attitude my leg debarred 
 
 123 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 the newsboy from his box of merchandise. I made haste 
 to let him pass when I observed that he was coming; 
 but I was busy with a book, and so once or twice he 
 came upon me unawares. On these occasions he most 
 rudely struck my foot aside ; and though I myself apol- 
 ogised, as if to show him the way, he answered me 
 never a word. I chafed furiously, and I fear the next 
 time it would have come to words. But suddenly I felt 
 a touch upon my shoulder, and a large juicy pear was 
 put into my hand. It was the newsboy, who had ob- 
 served that 1 was looking ill and so made me this pres- 
 ent out of a tender heart. For the rest of the journey I 
 was petted like a sick child; he lent me newspapers, 
 thus depriving himself of his legitimate profit on their 
 sale, and came repeatedly to sit by me and cheer me up. 
 
 THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA 
 
 It had thundered on the Friday night, but the sun 
 rose on Saturday without a cloud. We were at sea — 
 there is no other adequate expression — on the plains of 
 Nebraska. I made my observatory on the top of a fruit- 
 waggon, and sat by the hour upon that perch to spy 
 about me, and to spy in vain for something new. It 
 was a world almost without a feature ; an empty sky, 
 an empty earth; front and back, the line of railway 
 stretched from horizon to horizon, like a cue across a 
 billiard-board ; on either hand, the green plain ran till it 
 touched the skirts of heaven. Along the track innumer- 
 able wild sunflowers, no bigger than a crown-piece, 
 bloomed in a continuous flower-bed; grazing beasts 
 were seen upon the prairie at all degrees of distance and 
 
 124 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 diminution ; and, now and again we might perceive a 
 few dots beside the railroad which grew more and more 
 distinct as we drew nearer till they turned into wooden 
 cabins, and then dwindled and dwindled in our wake 
 until they melted into their surroundings, and we were 
 once more alone upon the billiard-board. The train 
 toiled over this infinity like a snail; and being the one 
 thing moving, it was wonderful what huge proportions 
 it began to assume in our regard. It seemed miles in 
 length, and either end of it within but a step of the hori- 
 zon. Even my own body or my own head seemed a 
 great thing in that emptiness. I note the feeling the 
 more readily as it is the contrary of what I have read of 
 in the experience of others. Day and night, above the 
 roar of the train, our ears were kept busy with the in- 
 cessant chirp of grasshoppers — a noise like the wind- 
 ing up of countless clocks and watches, which began 
 after a while to seem proper to that land. 
 
 To one hurrying through by steam there was a certain 
 exhilaration in this spacious vacancy, this greatness of 
 the air, this discovery of the whole arch of heaven, this 
 straight, unbroken, prison-line of the horizon. Yet one 
 could not but reflect upon the weariness of those who 
 passed by there in old days, at the foot's pace of oxen, 
 painfully urging their teams, and with no landmark but 
 that unattainable evening sun for which they steered, and 
 which daily fled them by an equal stride. They had 
 nothing, it would seem, to overtake ; nothing by which 
 to reckon their advance ; no sight for repose or for en- 
 couragement; but stage after stage, only the dead green 
 waste under foot, and the mocking, fugitive horizon. 
 But the eye, as I have been told, found differences even 
 
 >25 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 here; and at the worst the emigrant came, by perse- 
 verance, to the end of his toil. It is the settlers, after 
 all, at whom we have a right to marvel. Our con- 
 sciousness, by which we live, is itself but the creature 
 of variety. Upon what food does it subsist in such a 
 land ? What livelihood can repay a human creature for 
 a life spent in this huge sameness ? He is cut off from 
 books, from news, from company, from all that can re- 
 lieve existence but the prosecution of his affairs. A sky 
 full of stars is the most varied spectacle that he can hope. 
 He may walk five miles and see nothing; ten, and it is 
 as though he had not moved; twenty, and still he is in 
 the midst of the same great level, and has approached 
 no nearer to the one object within view, the flat horizon 
 which keeps pace with his advance. We are full at 
 home of the question of agreeable wall-papers, and wise 
 people are of opinion that the temper may be quieted by 
 sedative surroundings. But what is to be said of the 
 Nebraskan settler.^ His is a wall-paper with a ven- 
 geance — one quarter of the universe laid bare in all its 
 gauntness. His eye must embrace at every glance the 
 whole seeming concave of the visible world; it quails 
 before so vast an outlook, it is tortured by distance ; yet 
 there is no rest or shelter, till the man runs into his 
 cabin, and can repose his sight upon things near at 
 hand. Hence, I am told, a sickness of the vision pecu- 
 liar to these empty plains. 
 
 Yet perhaps with sunflowers and cicadae, summer and 
 winter, cattle, wife and family, the settler may create a 
 full and various existence. One person at least I saw 
 upon the plains who seemed in every way superior to 
 her lot. This was a woman who boarded us at a way 
 
 126 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 Station, selling milk. She was largely formed ; her fea- 
 tures were more than comely ; she had that great rarity 
 — a fine complexion which became her; and her eyes 
 were kind, dark, and steady. She sold milk with pa- 
 triarchal grace. There was not a line in her counte- 
 nance, not a note in her soft and sleepy voice, but spoke 
 of an entire contentment with her life. It would have 
 been fatuous arrogance to pity such a woman. Yet the 
 place where she lived was to me almost ghastly. Less 
 than a dozen wooden houses, all of a shape and all 
 nearly of a size, stood planted along the railway lines. 
 Each stood apart in its own lot. Each opened direct off 
 the billiard-board, as if it were a billiard-board indeed, 
 and these only models that had been set down upon it 
 ready made. Her own, into which I looked, was clean 
 but very empty, and showed nothing homelike but the 
 burning fire. This extreme newness, above all in so 
 naked and flat a country, gives a strong impression of 
 artificiality. With none of the litter and discolouration 
 of human life ; with the paths unworn, and the houses 
 still sweating from the axe, such a settlement as this 
 seems purely scenic. The mind is loth to accept it for 
 a piece of reality ; and it seems incredible that life can 
 go on with so few properties, or the great child, man, 
 find entertainment in so bare a playroom. 
 
 And truly it is as yet an incomplete society in some 
 points ; or at least it contained, as I passed through, one 
 person incompletely civilised. At North Platte, where 
 we supped that evening, one man asked another to pass 
 the milk-jug. This other was well-dressed and of what 
 we should call a respectable appearance; a darkish man, 
 high spoken, eating as though he had some usage of 
 
 127 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 society ; but he turned upon the first speaker with ex- 
 traordinary vehemence of tone 
 
 ''There's a waiter here!" he cried. 
 
 ' ' I only asked you to pass the milk, " explained the first. 
 
 Here is the retort verbatim 
 
 ''Pass! Hell! I'm not paid for that business; the 
 waiter's paid for it. You should use civility at table, 
 and, by God, I'll show you how! " 
 
 The other man very wisely made no answer, and the 
 bully went on with his supper as though nothing had oc- 
 curred. It pleases me to think that some day soon he will 
 meet with one of his own kidney ; and that perhaps both 
 may fall. 
 
 THE DESERT OF WYOMING 
 
 To cross such a plain is to grow homesick for the 
 mountains. I longed for the Black Hills of Wyoming, 
 which I knew we were soon to enter, like an ice-bound 
 whaler for the spring. Alas! and it was a worse coun- 
 try than the other. All Sunday and Monday we trav- 
 elled through these sad mountains, or over the main 
 ridge of the Rockies, which is a fair match to them for 
 misery of aspect. Hour after hour it was the same un- 
 homely and unkindly world about our onward path ; 
 tumbled boulders, cliffs that drearily imitate the shape 
 of monuments and fortifications — how drearily, how 
 tamely, none can tell who has not seen them; not a 
 tree, not a patch of sward, not one shapely or com- 
 manding mountain form; sage-brush, eternal sage- 
 brush ; over all, the same weariful and gloomy colouring, 
 grays warming into brown, grays darkening towards 
 black; and for sole sign of life, here and there a few 
 
 128 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 fleeing antelopes ; here and there, but at incredible in- 
 tervals, a creek running in a canon. The plains have a 
 grandeur of their own ; but here there is nothing but a 
 contorted smallness. Except for the air, which was 
 light and stimulating, there was not one good circum- 
 stance in that God-forsaken land. 
 
 I had been suffering in my health a good deal all the 
 way ; and at last, whether I was exhausted by my com- 
 plaint or poisoned in some wayside eating-house, the 
 evening we left Laramie, I fell sick outright. That was 
 a night which I shall not readily forget. The lamps did 
 not go out; each made a faint shining in its own neigh- 
 bourhood, and the shadows were confounded together 
 in the long, hollow box of the car. The sleepers lay in 
 uneasy attitudes ; here two chums alongside, flat upon 
 their backs like dead folk; there a man sprawling on the 
 floor, with his face upon his arm; there another half 
 seated with his head and shoulders on the bench. The 
 most passive were continually and roughly shaken by 
 the movement of the train; others stirred, turned, or 
 stretched out their arms like children ; it was surprising 
 how many groaned and murmured in their sleep ; and 
 as I passed to and fro, stepping across the prostrate, and 
 caught now a snore, now a gasp, now a half-formed 
 word, it gave me a measure of the worthlessness of rest 
 in that unresting vehicle. Although it was chill, I was 
 obliged to open my window, for the degradation of the 
 air soon became intolerable to one who was awake and 
 using the full supply of life. Outside, in a glimmering 
 night, I saw the black, amorphous hills shoot by un- 
 weariedly into our wake. They that long for morning 
 have never longed for it more earnestly than I. 
 
 129 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 And yet when day came, it was to shine upon the 
 same broken and unsightly quarter of the world. Mile 
 upon mile, and not a tree, a bird, or a river. Only down 
 the long, sterile canons, the train shot hooting and 
 awoke the resting echo. That train was the one piece 
 of life in all the deadly land ; it was the one actor, the 
 one spectacle fit to be observed in this paralysis of man 
 and nature. And when I think how the railroad has 
 been pushed through this unwatered wilderness and 
 haunt of savage tribes, and now will bear an emigrant 
 for some ;£i2 from the Atlantic to the Golden Gates; 
 how at each stage of the construction, roaring, im- 
 promptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang 
 up and then died away again, and are now but wayside 
 stations in the desert ; how in these uncouth places pig- 
 tailed Chinese pirates worked side by side with border 
 ruffians and broken men from Europe, talking together 
 in a mixed dialect, mostly oaths, gambling, drinking, 
 quarrelling and murdering like wolves ; how the plumed 
 hereditary lord of all America heard, in this last fast- 
 ness, the scream of the ''bad medicine waggon " chariot- 
 ing his foes ; and then when I go on to remember that 
 all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in 
 frock coats, and with a view to nothing more extraor- 
 dinary than a fortune and a subsequent visit to Paris, it 
 seems to me, I own, as if this railway were the one 
 typical achievement of the age in which we live, as if it 
 brought together into one plot all the ends of the world 
 and all the degrees of social rank, and offered to some 
 great writer the busiest, the most extended, and the 
 most varied subject for an enduring literary work. If it 
 be romance, if it be contrast, if it be heroism that we re- 
 
 130 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 quire, what was Troy town to this? But, alas! it is 
 not these things that are necessary — it is only Homer. 
 Here also we are grateful to the train, as to some god 
 who conducts us swiftly through these shades and by 
 so many hidden perils. Thirst, hunger, the sleight and 
 ferocity of Indians are all no more feared, so lightly do 
 we skim these horrible lands ; as the gull, who wings 
 safely through the hurricane and past the shark. Yet 
 we should not be forgetful of these hardships of the 
 past; and to keep the balance true, since I have com- 
 plained of the trifling discomforts of my journey, per- 
 haps more than was enough, let me add an original 
 document. It was not written by Homer, but by a boy 
 of eleven, long since dead, and is dated only twenty 
 years ago. I shall punctuate, to make things clearer, 
 but not change the spelling. 
 
 "My dear sister Mary, — / am afraid you will go 
 nearly cra^y when you read my letter. If Jerry " (the 
 writer's eldest brother) ' ' has not written to you before 
 now, you will be surprised to heare that we are in Cali- 
 fornia y and that poor Thomas " (another brother y of fif- 
 teen) "is dead. We started from in July y with 
 
 plenty of provisions and too yoke oxen. We went along 
 very well till we got within six or seven hundred miles of 
 Californiay when the Indians attacked uSo We found 
 places where they had killed the emigrants. We had one 
 passenger with uSy too guns, and one revolver; so we ran 
 all the lead We had into bullets (and) hung the guns up in 
 the wagon so that we could get at them in a minit. It 
 was about two o'clock in the afternoon ; droave the cattel 
 
 131 
 
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 a little way; when a prairie chicken alited a little way 
 from the wagon. 
 
 "Jerry took out one of the guns to shoot it, and told 
 Tom to drive the oxen. Tom and I drove the oxen, and 
 Jerry and the passenger went on. Then, after a little, 
 I left Tom and caught up with Jerry and the other man, 
 Jerry stopped for Tom to come up; me and the man went 
 on and sit down by a little stream. In a few minutes, 
 we heard some noise; then three shots (they all struck 
 poor Tom, I suppose); then they gave the war hoop, and 
 as many as twenty of the red skins came down upon us. 
 The three that shot Tom was hid by the side of the road 
 in the bushes. 
 
 "' I thought the Tom and Jerry were shot; so I told the 
 other man that Tom and Jerry were dead, and that we 
 had better try to escape, if possible. I had no shoes on; 
 having a sore foot, I thought I would not put them on. 
 The man and me run dawn the road, but We was soon 
 stopt by an Indian on a pony. We then turend the other 
 way, and run up the side of the Mountain, and hid be- 
 hind some cedar trees, and stayed there till dark. The 
 Indians hunted all aver after us, and verry close to us, 
 so close that we could here there tomy hawks Jingle. At 
 dark the man and me started on, I stubingmy toes against 
 sticks and stones. We traveld on all night; and next 
 morning. Just as it was getting gray, we saw something 
 in the shape of a man. It layed Dawn in the grass. We 
 went up to it, and it was Jerry. He thought we ware 
 Indians. You can imagine how glad he was to see me. 
 He thought we was all dead but him, and we thought him 
 and Tom was dead. He had the gun that he took out of 
 
 132 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 the wagon to shoot the prairie Chicken; all he had was 
 the load that was in it, 
 
 "'We traveld on till about eight o'clock. We caught 
 up with one wagon with too men with it. We had trav- 
 eld with them before one day; we stopt and they Drove 
 on; we knew that they was ahead of us, unless they had 
 been killed to. My feet was so sore when we caught up 
 with them that I had to ride; I could not step. We trav- 
 eld on for too days, when the men that owned the cattle 
 said they would (could) not drive them another inch. We 
 unyoked the oxen; we had about seventy pounds of flour; 
 we took it out and divided it into four packs. Each of 
 the men took about i8 pounds apiece and a blanket. I 
 carried a little bacon, dried meat, and little quilt; I had 
 in all about twelve pounds. We had one pint of flour a day 
 for our anoyance. Sometimes we made soup of it; some- 
 times we {made) pancakes; and sometimes mixed it up with 
 cold water and eat it that way. We traveld twelve or four- 
 teen days. The time came at last when we should have to 
 reach some place or starve. We saw fresh horse and cattle 
 tracks. The morning come, we scraped aU the flour out of 
 the sack, mixed it up, and baked it into bread, and made 
 some soup, and eat everything we had. W^ traveld on all 
 day without anything to eat, and that evening we Caught up 
 with a sheep train of eight wagons. We traveld with them 
 till we arrived at the settlements; and know I am safe in 
 California, and got to good home, and going to school. 
 
 ''Jerry is working in . // is a good country. 
 
 You can get from ^o to 60 and y^ Dollars for cooking. 
 Tell me all about the affairs in the States, and how all the 
 folks get along. ' ' 
 
 133 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 And SO ends this artless narrative. The little man was 
 at school again, God bless him, while his brother lay 
 scalped upon the deserts. 
 
 FELLOW PASSENGERS 
 
 At Ogden we changed cars from the Union Pacific to 
 the Central Pacific line of railroad. The change was 
 doubly welcome; for, first, we had better cars on the 
 new line; and, second, those in which we had been 
 cooped for more than ninety hours had begun to stink 
 abominably. Several yards away, as we returned, let 
 us say from dinner, our nostrils were assailed by rancid 
 air. I have stood on a platform while the whole train 
 was shunting ; and as the dwelling-cars drew near, 
 there would come a whiff of pure menagerie, only a 
 little sourer, as from men instead of monkeys. I think 
 we are human only in virtue of open windows. With- 
 out fresh air, you only require a bad heart, and a remark- 
 able command of the Queen's English, to become such 
 another as Dean Swift; a kind of leering, human goat, 
 leaping and wagging your scut on mountains of offence. 
 I do my best to keep my head the other way, and look 
 for the human rather than the bestial in this Yahoo-like 
 business of the emigrant train. But one thing I must 
 say, the car of the Chinese was notably the least of- 
 fensive. 
 
 The cars on the Central Pacific were nearly twice as 
 high, and so proportionally airier; they were freshly 
 varnished, which gave us all a sense of cleanliness as 
 though we had bathed ; the seats drew out and joined 
 in the centre, so that there was no more need for bed 
 
 »34 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 boards ; and there was an upper tier of berths which 
 could be closed by day and opened at night. 
 
 I had by this time some opportunity of seeing the 
 people whom I was among. They were in rather 
 marked contrast to the emigrants I had met on board 
 ship while crossing the Atlantic. They were mostly 
 lumpish fellows, silent and noisy, a common combina- 
 tion ; somewhat sad, I should say, with an extraordinary 
 poor taste in humour, and little interest in their fellow- 
 creatures beyond that of a cheap and merely external 
 curiosity. If they heard a man's name and business, 
 they seemed to think they had the heart of that mys- 
 tery; but they were as eager to know that much as 
 they were indifferent to the rest. Some of them were 
 on nettles till they learned your name was Dickson 
 and you a journeyman baker; but beyond that, whether 
 you were Catholic or Mormon, dull or clever, fierce or 
 friendly, was all one to them. Others who were not 
 so stupid, gossiped a little, and, I am bound to say, 
 unkindly. A favourite witticism was for some lout to 
 raise the alarm of ''All aboard!" while the rest of us 
 were dining, thus contributing his mite to the general 
 discomfort. Such a one was always much applauded 
 for his high spirits. When I was ill coming through 
 Wyoming, I was astonished — fresh from the eager 
 humanity on board ship — to meet with little but laugh- 
 ter. One of the young men even amused himself by 
 incommoding me, as was then very easy ; and that not 
 from ill-nature, but mere clodlike incapacity to think, 
 for he expected me to join the laugh. I did so, but it 
 was phantom merriment. Later on, a man from Kan- 
 sas had three violent epileptic fits, and though, of 
 
 135 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 course, there were not wanting some to help him, it was 
 rather superstitious terror than sympathy that his case 
 evoked among his fellow-passengers. '' Oh, I hope he's 
 not going to die ! " cried a woman ; * ' it would be terrible 
 to have a dead body ! " And there was a very general 
 movement to leave the man behind at the next station. 
 This, by good fortune, the conductor negatived. 
 
 There was a good deal of story-telling in some quar- 
 ters ; in others, little but silence. In this society, more 
 than any other that ever I was in, it was the narrator 
 alone who seemed to enjoy the narrative. It was rarely 
 that any one listened for the listening. If he lent an ear 
 to another man's story, it was because he was in im- 
 mediate want of a hearer for one of his own. Food and 
 the progress of the train were the subjects most gen- 
 erally treated ; many joined to discuss these who other- 
 wise would hold their tongues. One small knot had no 
 better occupation than to worm out of me my name; 
 and the more they tried, the more obstinately fixed I 
 grew to baffle them. They assailed me with artful 
 questions and insidious offers of correspondence in the 
 future ; but I was perpetually on my guard, and parried 
 their assaults with inward laughter. I am sure Du- 
 buque would have given me ten dollars for the secret. 
 He owed me far more, had he understood life, for thus 
 preserving him a lively interest throughout the journey. 
 I met one of my fellow-passengers months after, driv- 
 ing a street tramway car in San Francisco ; and, as the 
 joke was now out of season, told him my name with- 
 out subterfuge. You never saw a man more chopfallen. 
 But had my name been Demogorgon, after so prolonged 
 a mystery he had still been disappointed. 
 
 156 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 There were no emigrants direct from Europe — save 
 one German family and a knot of Cornish miners who 
 kept grimly by themselves, one reading the New Tes- 
 tament all day long through steel spectacles, the rest 
 discussing privately the secrets of their old-world, mys- 
 terious race. Lady Hester Stanhope believed she could 
 make something great of the Cornish ; for my part, I 
 can make nothing of them at all. A division of races, 
 older and more original than that of Babel, keeps this 
 close, esoteric family apart from neighbouring English- 
 men. Not even a Red Indian seems more foreign in 
 my eyes. This is one of the lessons of travel — that 
 some of the strangest races dwell next door to you at 
 home. 
 
 The rest were all American born, but they came from 
 almost every quarter of that Continent. All the States 
 of the North had sent out a fugitive to cross the plains 
 with me. From Virginia, from Pennsylvania, from New 
 York, from far western Iowa and Kansas, from Maine 
 that borders on the Canadas, and from the Canadas 
 themselves — some one or two were fleeing in quest of 
 a better land and better wages. The talk in the train, 
 like the talk I heard on the steamer, ran upon hard 
 times, short commons, and hope that moves ever west- 
 ward. I thought of my shipful from Great Britain with 
 a feeling of despair. They had come 3000 miles, and 
 yet not far enough. Hard times bowed them out of the 
 Clyde, and stood to welcome them at Sandy Hook. 
 Where were they to go ? Pennsylvania, Maine, Iowa, 
 Kansas ? These were not places for immigration, but 
 for emigration, it appeared; not one of them, but I 
 knew a man who had lifted up his heel and left it for an 
 
 137 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 ungrateful country. And it was still westward that they 
 ran. Hunger, you would have thought, came out of 
 the east like the sun, and the evening was made of edi- 
 ble gold. And, meantime, in the car in front of me, 
 were there not half a hundred emigrants from the oppo- 
 site quarter ? Hungry Europe and hungry China, each 
 pouring from their gates in search of provender, had 
 here come face to face. The two waves had met; east 
 and west had alike failed; the whole round world had 
 been prospected and condemned; there was no El 
 Dorado anywhere; and till one could emigrate to the 
 moon, it seemed as well to stay patiently at home. Nor 
 was there wanting another sign, at once more pictu- 
 resque and more disheartening; for, as we continued to 
 steam westward toward the land of gold, we were 
 continually passing other emigrant trains upon the 
 journey east; and these were as crowded as our own. 
 Had all these return voyagers made a fortune in the 
 mines ? Were they all bound for Paris, and to be in 
 Rome by Easter.^ It would seem not, for, whenever 
 we met them, the passengers ran on the platform and 
 cried to us through the windows, in a kind of wailing 
 chorus, to ''Come back." On the plains of Nebraska, 
 in the mountains of Wyoming, it was still the same 
 cry, and dismal to my heart, "Come back!" That 
 was what we heard by the way ''about the good coun- 
 try we were going to." And at that very hour the 
 Sand-lot of San Francisco was crowded with the un- 
 employed, and the echo from the other side of Market 
 Street was repeating the rant of demagogues. 
 
 If, in truth, it were only for the sake of wages that 
 men emigrate, how many thousands would regret the 
 
 138 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 bargain! But wages, indeed, are only one considera- 
 tion out of many; for we are a race of gipsies, and 
 love change and travel for themselves. 
 
 DESPISED RACES 
 
 Of all stupid ill-feelings, the sentiment of my fellow- 
 Caucasians towards our companions in the Chinese car 
 was the most stupid and the worst. They seemed 
 never to have looked at them, listened to them, or 
 thought of them, but hated them a priori. The Mongols 
 were their enemies in that cruel and treacherous battle- 
 field of money. They could work better and cheaper 
 in half a hundred industries, and hence there was no 
 calumny too idle for the Caucasians to repeat, and even 
 to believe. They declared them hideous vermin, and 
 affected a kind of choking in the throat when they be- 
 held them. Now, as a matter of fact, the young Chi- 
 nese man is so like a large class of European women, 
 that on raising my head and suddenly catching sight of 
 one at a considerable distance, I have for an instant 
 been deceived by the resemblance. I do not say it is 
 the most attractive class of our women, but for all that 
 many a man's wife is less pleasantly favoured. Again, 
 my emigrants declared that the Chinese were dirty. 
 I cannot say they were clean, for that was impossible 
 upon the journey; but in their efforts after cleanliness 
 they put the rest of us to shame. We all pigged and 
 stewed in one infamy, wet our hands and faces for half 
 a minute daily on the platform, and were unashamed. 
 But the Chinese never lost an opportunity, and you 
 would see them washing their feet — an act not dreamed 
 
 ^39 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 of among ourselves — and going as far as decency per- 
 mitted to wash their whole bodies. I may remark by 
 the way that the dirtier people are in their persons the 
 more delicate is their sense of modesty. A clean man 
 strips in a crowded boathouse; but he who is unwashed 
 slinks in and out of bed without uncovering an inch of 
 skin. Lastly, these very foul and malodorous Cauca- 
 sians entertained the surprising illusion that it was the 
 Chinese waggon, and that alone, which stank. I have 
 said already that it was the exception, and notably the 
 freshest of the three. 
 
 These judgments are typical of the feeling in all West- 
 ern America. The Chinese are considered stupid, be- 
 cause they are imperfectly acquainted with English. 
 They are held to be base, because their dexterity and 
 frugality enable them to underbid the lazy, luxurious 
 Caucasian. They are said to be thieves; I am sure they 
 have no monopoly of that. They are called cruel; the 
 Anglo-Saxon and the cheerful Irishman may each reflect 
 before he bears the accusation. I am told, again, that 
 they are of the race of river pirates, and belong to the 
 most despised and dangerous class in the Celestial Em- 
 pire. But if this be so, what remarkable pirates have 
 we here! and what must be the virtues, the industry, 
 the education, and the intelligence of their superiors at 
 home ! 
 
 Awhile ago it was the Irish, now it is the Chinese 
 that must go. Such is the cry. It seems, after all, that 
 no country is bound to submit to immigration any more 
 than to invasion : each is war to the knife, and resistance 
 to either but legitimate defence. Yet we may regret 
 the free tradition of the republic, which loved to depict 
 
 140 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 herself with open arms, welcoming all unfortunates. 
 And certainly, as a man who believes that he loves free- 
 dom, I may be excused some bitterness when I find her 
 sacred name misused in the contention. It was but the 
 other day that I heard a vulgar fellow in the Sand-lot, 
 the popular tribune of San Francisco, roaring for arms 
 and butchery. '* At the call of Abreham Lincoln," said 
 the orator, " ye rose in the name of freedom to set free 
 the negroes ; can ye not rise and liberate yourselves from 
 a few dhirty Mongolians ?*' 
 
 For my own part, I could not look but with wonder 
 and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched 
 the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. Gun- 
 powder and printing, which the other day we imitated, 
 and a school of manners which we never had the deli- 
 cacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a 
 long-past antiquity. They walk the earth with us, but 
 it seems they must be of different clay. They hear the 
 clock strike the same hour, yet surely of a different 
 epoch. They travel by steam conveyance, yet with 
 such a baggage of old Asiatic thoughts and superstitions 
 as might check the locomotive in its course. Whatever 
 is thought within the circuit of the Great Wall ; what 
 the wry-eyed, spectacled schoolmaster teaches in the 
 hamlets round Pekin ; religions so old that our language 
 looks a halfling boy alongside ; philosophy so wise that 
 our best philosophers find things therein to wonder at; 
 all this travelled alongside of me for thousands of miles 
 over plain and mountain. Heaven knows if we had 
 one common thought or fancy all that way, or whether 
 our eyes, which yet were formed upon the same design, 
 beheld the same world out of the railway windows. 
 
 141 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 And when either of us turned his thoughts to home and 
 childhood, what a strange dissimilarity must there not 
 have been in these pictures of the mind — when I be- 
 held that old, gray, castled city, high throned above the 
 firth, with the flag of Britain flying, and the red-coat 
 sentry pacing over all; and the man in the next car to 
 me would conjure up some junks and a pagoda and a 
 fort of porcelain, and call it, with the same affection, 
 home. 
 
 Another race shared among my fellow-passengers in 
 the disfavour of the Chinese ; and that, it is hardly ne- 
 cessary to say, was the noble red man of old story — he 
 over whose own hereditary continent we had been 
 steaming all these days. I saw no wild or independent 
 Indian; indeed, I hear that such avoid the neighbour- 
 hood of the train ; but now and again at way stations, 
 a husband and wife and a few children, disgracefully 
 dressed out with the sweepings of civilisation, came 
 forth and stared upon the emigrants. The silent stoicism 
 of their conduct, and the pathetic degradation of their ap- 
 pearance, would have touched any thinking creature, but 
 my fellow-passengers danced and jested round them with 
 a truly Cockney baseness. I was ashamed for the thing 
 we call civilisation. We should carry upon our con- 
 sciences so much, at least, of our forefathers' misconduct 
 as we continue to profit by ourselves. 
 
 If oppression drives a wise man mad, what should be 
 raging in the hearts of these poor tribes, who have been 
 driven back and back, step after step, their promised 
 reservations torn from them one after another as the 
 States extended westward, until at length they are shut 
 up into these hideous mountain deserts of the centre — 
 
 142 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 and even there find themselves invaded, insulted, and 
 hunted out by ruffianly diggers ? The eviction of the 
 Cherokees (to name but an instance), the extortion of 
 Indian agents, the outrages of the wicked, the ill-faith of 
 all, nay, down to the ridicule of such poor beings as 
 were here with me upon the train, make up a chapter 
 of injustice and indignity such as a man must be in some 
 ways base if his heart will suffer him to pardon or for- 
 get. These old, well-founded, historical hatreds have 
 a savour of nobility for the independent. That the Jew 
 should not love the Christian, nor the Irishman love the 
 English, nor the Indian brave tolerate the thought of the 
 American, is not disgraceful to the nature of man ; rather, 
 indeed, honourable, since it depends on wrongs ancient 
 like the race, and not personal to him who cherishes 
 the indignation. 
 
 TO THE GOLDEN GATES 
 
 A LITTLE corner of Utah is soon traversed, and leaves 
 no particular impressions on the mind. By an early 
 hour on Wednesday morning we stopped to breakfast 
 at Toano, a little station on a bleak, high-lying plateau 
 in Nevada. The man who kept the station eating-house 
 was a Scot, and learning that I was the same, he grew 
 very friendly, and gave me some advice on the country 
 I was now entering. "You see," said he, "I tell you 
 this, because I come from your country." Hail, brither 
 Scots ! 
 
 His most important hint was on the moneys of this 
 part of the world. There is something in the simplicity 
 of a decimal coinage which is revolting to the human 
 mind; thus the French, in small affairs, reckon strictly 
 
 143 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 by halfpence ; and you have to solve, by a spasm of 
 mental arithmetic, such posers as thirty-two, forty-five, 
 or even a hundred halfpence. In the Pacific States they 
 have made a bolder push for complexity, and settle their 
 affairs by a coin that no longer exists — the bit, or old 
 Mexican real. The supposed value of the bit is twelve 
 and a half cents, eight to the dollar. When it comes 
 to two bits, the quarter-dollar stands for the required 
 amount. But how about an odd bit ? The nearest coin 
 to it is a dime, which is short by a fifth. That, then, is 
 called a short bit. If you have one, you lay it trium- 
 phantly down, and save two and a half cents. But if you 
 have not, and lay down a quarter, the bar-keeper or 
 shopman calmly tenders you a dime by way of change ; 
 and thus you have paid what is called a long bit, and 
 lost two and a half cents, or even, by comparison with 
 a short bit, five cents. In country places all over the 
 Pacific coast, nothing lower than a bit is ever asked or 
 taken, which vastly increases the cost of life ; as even for 
 a glass of beer you must pay fivepence or sevenpence- 
 halfpenny, as the case may be. You would say that 
 this system of mutual robbery was as broad as it was 
 long ; but I have discovered a plan to make it broader, 
 with which I here endow the public. It is brief and 
 simple — radiantly simple. There is one place where 
 five cents are recognised, and that is the post-office. A 
 quarter is only worth two bits, a short and a long. 
 Whenever you have a quarter, go to the post-office and 
 buy five cents' worth of postage-stamps ; you will receive 
 in change two dimes, that is, two short bits. The pur- 
 chasing power of your money is undiminished. You 
 can go and have your two glasses of beer all the same; 
 
 144 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 and you have made yourself a present of five cents' worth 
 of postage-stamps into the bargain. Benjamin Franklin 
 u^ould have patted me on the head for this discovery. 
 
 From Toano we travelled all day through deserts of 
 alkali and sand, horrible to man, and bare sage-brush 
 country that seemed little kindlier, and came by supper- 
 time to Elko. As we were standing, after our manner, 
 outside the station, I saw two men whip suddenly from 
 underneath the cars, and take to their heels across coun- 
 try. They were tramps, it appeared, who had been 
 riding on the beams since eleven of the night before; 
 and several of my fellow-passengers had already seen 
 and conversed with them while we broke our fast at 
 Toano. These land stowaways play a great part over 
 here in America, and I should have liked dearly to be- 
 come acquainted with them. 
 
 At Elko an odd circumstance befell me. I was com- 
 ing out from supper, when I was stopped by a small, 
 stout, ruddy man, followed by two others taller and 
 ruddier than himself. 
 
 ''Ex-cuse me, sir," he said, '*but do you happen to 
 be going on?" 
 
 I said I was, whereupon he said he hoped to persuade 
 me to desist from that intention. He had a situation to 
 offer me, and if we could come to terms, why, good 
 and well. ''You see," he continued, "Vm runnings 
 theatre here, and we're a little short in the orchestra. 
 You're a musician, I guess .^" 
 
 I assured him that, beyond a rudimentary acquain- 
 tance with ''Auld Lang Syne" and ''The Wearing of 
 the Green," I had no pretension whatever to that style. 
 He seemed much put out of countenance; and one of 
 
 145 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 his taller companions asked him, on the nail, for five 
 dollars. 
 
 ** You see, sir," added the latter to me, "he bet you 
 were a musician; I bet you weren't. No offence, I 
 hope.?" 
 
 *'None whatever," I said, and the two withdrew to 
 the bar, where I presume the debt was liquidated. 
 
 This little adventure woke bright hopes in my fellow- 
 travellers, who thought they had now come to a coun- 
 try where situations went a-begging. But I am not so 
 sure that the offer was in good faith. Indeed, I am more 
 than half persuaded it was but a feeler to decide the bet. 
 
 Of all the next day I will tell you nothing, for the 
 best of all reasons, that I remember no more than that 
 we continued through desolate and desert scenes, fiery 
 hot and deadly weary. But some time after I had 
 fallen asleep that night, I was awakened by one of my 
 companions. It was in vain that I resisted. A fire of 
 enthusiasm and whisky burned in his eyes ; and he de- 
 clared we were in a new country, and I must come 
 forth upon the platform and see with my own eyes. 
 The train was then, in its patient way, standing halted 
 in a by-track. It was a clear, moonlit night; but the 
 valley was too narrow to admit the moonshine direct, 
 and only a diffused glimmer whitened the tall rocks 
 and relieved the blackness of the pines. A hoarse clam- 
 our filled the air; it was the continuous plunge of a 
 cascade somewhere near at hand among the mountains. 
 The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigorous in 
 the nostrils — a fine, dry, old mountain atmosphere. I 
 was dead sleepy, but I returned to roost with a grateful 
 mountain feeling at my heart. 
 
 146 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 When I awoke next morning, I was puzzled for a 
 while to know if it were day or night, for the illumina- 
 tion was unusual. I sat up at last, and found we were 
 grading slowly downward through a long snowshed; 
 and suddenly we shot into an open; and before we 
 were swallowed into the next length of wooden tunnel, 
 I had one glimpse of a huge pine-forested ravine upon 
 my left, a foaming river, and a sky already coloured 
 with the fires of dawn. I am usually very calm over 
 the displays of nature ; but you will scarce believe how 
 my heart leaped at this. It was like meeting one's 
 wife. I had come home again — home from unsightly 
 deserts to the green and habitable corners of the earth. 
 Every spire of pine along the hill-top, every trouty pool 
 along that mountain river, was more dear to me than a 
 blood relation. Few people have praised God more 
 happily than I did. And thenceforward, down by Blue 
 Canon, Alta, Dutch Flat, and all the old mining camps, 
 through a sea of mountain forests, dropping thousands 
 of feet toward the far sea-level as we went, not I only, 
 but all the passengers on board, threw off their sense 
 of dirt and heat and weariness, and bawled like school- 
 boys, and thronged with shining eyes upon the plat- 
 form and became new creatures within and without. 
 The sun no longer oppressed us with heat, it only shone 
 laughingly along the mountain-side, until we were fain 
 to laugh ourselves for glee. At every turn we could see 
 farther into the land and our own happy futures. At 
 every town the cocks were tossing their clear notes 
 into the golden air, and crowing for the new day and the 
 new country. For this was indeed our destination ; this 
 was ** the good country " we had been going to so long. 
 
 »47 
 
ACROSS THE PLAINS 
 
 By afternoon we were at Sacramento, the city of gar- 
 dens in a plain of corn; and the next day before the 
 dawn we were lying to upon the Oakland side of San 
 Francisco Bay. The day was breaking as we crossed 
 the ferry ; the fog was rising over the citied hills of San 
 Francisco ; the bay was perfect — not a ripple, scarce a 
 stain, upon its blue expanse ; everything was waiting, 
 breathless, for the sun. A spot of cloudy gold lit first 
 upon the head of Tamalpais, and then widened down- 
 ward on its shapely shoulder ; the air seemed to awaken, 
 and began to sparkle ; and suddenly 
 
 " The tall hills Titan discovered," 
 
 and the city of San Francisco, and the bay of gold and 
 corn, were lit from end to end with summer daylight. 
 
 [1879.] 
 
 148 
 
II. THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 THE WOODS AND THE PACIFIC 
 
 The Bay of Monterey has been compared by no less 
 a person than General Sherman to a bent fishing-hook ; 
 and the comparison, if less important than the march 
 through Georgia, still shows the eye of a soldier for 
 topography. Santa Cruz sits exposed at the shank; the 
 mouth of the Salinas river is at the middle of the bend ; 
 and Monterey itself is cosily ensconced beside the barb. 
 Thus the ancient capital of California faces across the 
 bay, while the Pacific Ocean, though hidden by low hills 
 and forests, bombards her left flank and rear with never- 
 dying surf. In front of the town, the long line of sea- 
 beach trends north and north-west, and then westward 
 to enclose the bay. The waves which lap so quietly 
 about the jetties of Monterey grow louder and larger in 
 the distance ; you can see the breakers leaping high and 
 white by day ; at night, the outline of the shore is traced 
 in transparent silver by the moonlight and the flying 
 foam; and from all round, even in quiet weather, the 
 low, distant, thrilling roar of the Pacific hangs over the 
 coast and the adjacent country like smoke above a 
 battle. 
 
 These long beaches are enticing to the idle man. It 
 would be hard to find a walk more solitary and at the 
 
 149 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 same time more exciting to the mind. Crowds of ducks 
 and sea-gulls hover over the sea. Sandpipers trot in 
 and out by troops after the retiring waves, trilling to- 
 gether in a chorus of infinitesimal song. Strange sea- 
 tangles, new to the European eye, the bones of whales, 
 or sometimes a whole whale's carcase, white with car- 
 rion-gulls and poisoning the wind, lie scattered here 
 and there along the sands. The waves come in slowly, 
 vast and green, curve their translucent necks, and burst 
 with a surprising uproar, that runs, waxing and waning, 
 up and down the long key-board of the beach. The 
 foam of these great ruins mounts in an instant to the 
 ridge of the sand glacis, swiftly fleets back again, and 
 is met and buried by the next breaker. The interest is 
 perpetually fresh. On no other coast that I know shall 
 you enjoy, in calm, sunny weather, such a spectacle of 
 Ocean's greatness, such beauty of changing colour, or 
 such degrees of thunder in the sound. The very air is 
 more than usually salt by this Homeric deep. 
 
 Inshore, a tract of sand-hills borders on the beach. 
 Here and there a lagoon, more or less brackish, attracts 
 the birds and hunters. A rough, spotty undergrowth 
 partially conceals the sand. The crouching, hardy, live- 
 oaks flourish singly or in thickets — the kind of wood 
 for murderers to crawl among — and here and there the 
 skirts of the forest extend downward from the hills 
 with a floor of turf and long aisles of pine-trees hung 
 with Spaniard's Beard. Through this quaint desert the 
 railway cars drew near to Monterey from the junction 
 at Salinas City — though that and so many other things 
 are now for ever altered — and it was from here that you 
 had the first view of the old township lying in the sands,. 
 
 150 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 its white windmills bickering in the chill, perpetual 
 wind, and the first fogs of the evening drawing drearily 
 around it from the sea. 
 
 The one common note of all this country is the haunt- 
 ing presence of the ocean. A great faint sound of 
 breakers follows you high up into the inland canons; 
 the roar of water dwells in the clean, empty rooms of 
 Monterey as in a shell upon the chimney ; go where you 
 will, you have but to pause and listen to hear the voice 
 of the Pacific. You pass out of the town to the south- 
 west, and mount the hill among pine woods. Glade, 
 thicket, and grove surround you. You follow winding 
 sandy tracks that lead no whither. You see a deer; a 
 multitude of quail arises. But the sound of the sea 
 still follows you as you advance, like that of wind 
 among the trees, only harsher and stranger to the ear; 
 and when at length you gain the summit, out breaks on 
 every hand and with freshened vigour, that same un- 
 ending, distant, whispering rumble of the ocean; for 
 now you are on the top of Monterey peninsula, and the 
 noise no longer only mounts to you from behind along 
 the beach towards Santa Cruz, but from your right also, 
 round by Chinatown and Pinos lighthouse, and from 
 down before you to the mouth of the Carmello river. 
 The whole woodland is begirt with thundering surges. 
 The silence that immediately surrounds you where you 
 stand is not so much broken as it is haunted by this dis- 
 tant, circling rumour. It sets your senses upon edge ; 
 you strain your attention ; you are clearly and unusually 
 conscious of small sounds near at hand; you walk listen- 
 ing like an Indian hunter; and that voice of the Pacific 
 is a sort of disquieting company to you in your walk. 
 
 151 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 When once I was in these woods I found it difficult 
 to turn homeward. All woods lure a rambler onward ; 
 but in those of Monterey it was the surf that particularly 
 invited me to prolong my walks. I would push straight 
 for the shore where I thought it to be nearest. Indeed, 
 there was scarce a direction that would not, sooner or 
 later, have brought me forth on the Pacific. The empti- 
 ness of the woods gave me a sense of freedom and dis- 
 covery in these excursions. 1 never in all my visits met 
 but one man. He was a Mexican, very dark of hue, 
 but smiling and fat, and he carried an axe, though his 
 true business at that moment was to seek for straying 
 cattle. I asked him what o'clock it was, but he seemed 
 neither to know nor care ; and when he in his turn asked 
 me for news of his cattle, I showed myself equally in- 
 different. We stood and smiled upon each other for a 
 few seconds, and then turned without a word and took 
 our several ways across the forest. 
 
 One day — I shall never forget it — I had taken a trail 
 that was new to me. After a while the woods began 
 to open, the sea to sound nearer hand. I came upon a 
 road, and, to my surprise, a stile. A step or two farther, 
 and, without leaving the woods, I found myself among 
 trim houses. I walked through street after street, par- 
 allel and at right angles, paved with sward and dotted 
 with trees, but still undeniable streets, and each with its 
 name posted at the corner, as in a real town. Facing 
 down the main thoroughfare — " Central Avenue," as 
 it was ticketed — I saw an open-air temple, with benches 
 and sounding-board, as though for an orchestra. The 
 houses were all tightly shuttered ; there was no smoke, 
 no sound but of the waves, no moving thing. I have never 
 
 152 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 been in any place that seemed so dreamlike. Pompeii 
 is all in a bustle with visitors, and its antiquity and 
 strangeness deceive the imagination ; but this town had 
 plainly not been built above a year or two, and perhaps 
 had been deserted overnight. Indeed, it was not so 
 much like a deserted town as like a scene upon the stage 
 by daylight, and with no one on the boards. The bark- 
 ing of a dog led me at last to the only house still occu- 
 pied, where a Scotch pastor and his wife pass the winter 
 alone in this empty theatre. The place was '* The Pa- 
 cific Camp Grounds, the Christian Seaside Resort." 
 Thither, in the warm season, crowds come to enjoy a 
 life of teetotalism, religion, and flirtation, which I am 
 willing to think blameless and agreeable. The neigh- 
 bourhood at least is well selected. The Pacific booms 
 in front. Westward is Point Pinos, with the light- 
 house in a wilderness of sand, where you will find the 
 lightkeeper playing the piano, making models and bows 
 and arrows, studying dawn and sunrise in amateur oil- 
 painting, and with a dozen other elegant pursuits and 
 interests to surprise his brave, old-country rivals. To 
 the east, and still nearer, you will come upon a space of 
 open down, a hamlet, a haven among rocks, a world of 
 surge and screaming sea-gulls. Such scenes are very 
 similar in different climates ; they appear homely to the 
 eyes of all ; to me this was like a dozen spots in Scot- 
 land. And yet the boats that ride in the haven are of 
 strange outlandish design ; and, if you walk into the 
 hamlet, you will behold costumes and faces and hear a 
 tongue that are unfamiliar to the memory. The joss- 
 stick burns, the opium pipe is smoked, the floors are 
 strewn with slips of coloured paper — prayers, you 
 
 153 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 would say, that had somehow missed their destination — 
 and a man guiding his upright pencil from right to left 
 across the sheet, writes home the news of Monterey to 
 the Celestial Empire. 
 
 The woods and the Pacific rule between them the 
 climate of this seaboard region. On the streets of 
 Monterey, when the air does not smell salt from the 
 one, it will be blowing perfumed from the resinous tree- 
 tops of the other. For days together a hot, dry air will 
 overhang the town, close as from an oven, yet healthful 
 and aromatic in the nostrils. The cause is not far to 
 seek, for the woods are afire, and the hot wind is blow- 
 ing from the hills. These fires are one of the great 
 dangers of California. I have seen from Monterey as 
 many as three at the same time, by day a cloud of smoke, 
 by night a red coal of conflagration in the distance. A 
 little thing will start them, and, if the wind be favour- 
 able, they gallop over miles of country faster than a 
 horse. The inhabitants must turn out and work like 
 demons, for it is not only the pleasant groves that are de- 
 stroyed ; the climate and the soil are equally at stake, 
 and these fires prevent the rains of the next winter and 
 dry up perennial fountains. California has been a land 
 of promise in its time, like Palestine ; but if the woods 
 continue so swiftly to perish, it may become, like Pales- 
 tine, a land of desolation. 
 
 To visit the woods while they are languidly burning 
 is a strange piece of experience. The fire passes through 
 the underbrush at a run. Every here and there a tree 
 flares up instantaneously from root to summit, scatter- 
 ing tufts of flame, and is quenched, it seems, as quickly. 
 But this last is only in semblance. For after this first 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 squib-like conflagration of the dry moss and twigs, there 
 remains behind a deep-rooted and consuming fire in the 
 very entrails of the tree. The resin of the pitch-pine is 
 principally condensed at the base of the bole and in the 
 spreading roots. Thus, after the light, showy, skir- 
 mishing flames, which are only as the match to the ex- 
 plosion, have already scampered down the wind into 
 the distance, the true harm is but beginning for this 
 giant of the woods. You may approach the tree from 
 one side, and see it, scorched indeed from top to bottom, 
 but apparently survivor of the peril. Make the circuit, 
 and there, on the other side of the column, is a clear 
 mass of living coal, spreading like an ulcer; while un- 
 derground, to their most extended fibre, the roots are 
 being eaten out by fire, and the smoke is rising through 
 the fissures to the surface. A little while, and, without 
 a nod of warning, the huge pine-tree snaps off short 
 across the ground and falls prostrate with a crash. 
 Meanwhile the fire continues its silent business; the 
 roots are reduced to a fine ash ; and long afterwards, if 
 you pass by, you will find the earth pierced with radiat- 
 ing galleries, and preserving the design of all these sub- 
 terranean spurs, as though it were the mould for a new 
 tree instead of the print of an old one. These pitch- 
 pines of Monterey are, with the single exception of the 
 Monterey cypress, the most fantastic of forest trees. 
 No words can give an idea of the contortion of their 
 growth ; they might figure without change in a circle of 
 the nether hell as Dante pictured it; and at the rate at 
 which trees grow, and at which forest fires spring up 
 and gallop through the hills of California, we may look 
 forward to a time when there will not be one of them 
 
 155 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 left Standing in that land of their nativity. At least they 
 have not so much to fear from the axe, but perish by 
 what may be called a natural although a violent death ; 
 while it is man in his short-sighted greed that robs the 
 country of the nobler red-wood. Yet a little while and 
 perhaps all the hills of sea-board California may be as 
 bald as Tamalpais. 
 
 I have an interest of my own in these forest fires, for 
 I came so near to lynching on one occasion, that a 
 braver man might have retained a thrill from the ex- 
 perience. I wished to be certain whether it was the 
 moss, that quaint funereal ornament of Californian for- 
 ests, which blazed up so rapidly when the flame first 
 touched the tree. I suppose I must have been under 
 the influence of Satan, for instead of plucking off a piece 
 for my experiment, what should 1 do but walk up to a 
 great pine-tree in a portion of the wood which had es- 
 caped so much as scorching, strike a match, and apply the 
 flame gingerly to one of the tassels. The tree went off 
 simply like a rocket; in three seconds it was a roaring 
 pillar of fire. Close by 1 could hear the shouts of those 
 who were at work combating the original conflagration. 
 I could see the waggon that had brought them tied to a 
 live oak in a piece of open ; 1 could even catch the flash 
 of an axe as it swung up through the underwood into 
 the sunlight. Had any one observed the result of my 
 experiment my neck was literally not worth a pinch of 
 snuff; after a few minutes of passionate expostulation I 
 should have been run up to a convenient bough. 
 
 To die for faction is a common evil; 
 But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil. 
 156 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 I have run repeatedly, but never as I ran that day. At 
 night I went out of town, and there was my own par- 
 ticular fire, quite distinct from the other, and burning as 
 I thought with even greater vigour. 
 
 But it is the Pacific that exercises the most direct and 
 obvious power upon the climate. At sunset, for months 
 together, vast, wet, melancholy fogs arise and come 
 shoreward from the ocean. From the hill-top above 
 Monterey the scene is often noble, although it is always 
 sad. The upper air is still bright with sunlight; a glow 
 still rests upon the Gabelano Peak ; but the fogs are in 
 possession of the lower levels; they crawl in scarves 
 among the sandhills; they float, a little higher, in clouds 
 of a gigantic size and often of a wild configuration; to 
 the south, where they have struck the seaward shoulder 
 of the mountains of Santa Lucia, they double back and 
 spire up skyward like smoke. Where their shadow 
 touches, colour dies out of the world. The air grows 
 chill and deadly as they advance. The trade-wind 
 freshens, the trees begin to sigh, and all the wind- 
 mills in Monterey are whirling and creaking and fill- 
 ing their cisterns with the brackish water of the sands. 
 It takes but a little while till the invasion is complete. 
 The sea, in its lighter order, has submerged the earth. 
 Monterey is curtained in for the night in thick, wet, 
 salt, and frigid clouds, so to remain till day returns; 
 and before the sun's rays they slowly disperse and 
 retreat in broken squadrons to the bosom of the sea. 
 And yet often when the fog is thickest and most 
 chill, a few steps out of the town and up the slope, 
 the night will be dry and warm and full of inland 
 perfume. 
 
 157 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 MEXICANS, AMERICANS, AND INDIANS 
 
 The history of Monterey has yet to be written. 
 Founded by Catholic missionaries, a place of wise 
 beneficence to Indians, a place of arms, a Mexican cap- 
 ital continually wrested by one faction from another, an 
 American capital wnen the first House of Representa- 
 tives held its deliberations, and then falling lower and 
 lower from the capital of the State to the capital of a 
 county, and from that again, by the loss of its charter 
 and town lands, to a mere bankrupt village, its rise and 
 decline is typical of that of all Mexican institutions and 
 even Mexican families in California. 
 
 Nothing is stranger in that strange State than the ra- 
 pidity with which the soil has changed hands. The 
 Mexicans, you may say, are all poor and landless, like 
 their former capital; and yet both it and they hold 
 themselves apart and preserve their ancient customs 
 and something of their ancient air. 
 
 The town, when I was there, was a place of two or 
 three streets, economically paved with sea-sand, and 
 two or three lanes, which were watercourses in the 
 rainy season, and were, at all times, rent up by fissures 
 four or five feet deep. There were no street lights. 
 Short sections of wooden sidewalk only added to the 
 dangers of the night, for they were often high above 
 the level of the roadway, and no one could tell where 
 they would be likely to begin or end. The houses 
 were, for the most part, built of unbaked adobe brick, 
 many of them old for so new a country, some of very 
 elegant proportions, with low, spacious, shapely rooms, 
 and walls so thick that the heat of summer never dried 
 
 158 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 them to the heart. At the approach of the rainy season 
 a deathly chill and a graveyard smell began to hang 
 about the lower floors ; and diseases of the chest are 
 common and fatal among house-keeping people of 
 either sex. 
 
 There was no activity but in and around the saloons, 
 where people sat almost all day long playing cards. 
 The smallest excursion was made on horseback. You 
 would scarcely ever see the main street without a horse 
 or two tied to posts, and making a fine figure with their 
 Mexican housings. It struck me oddly to come across 
 some of the Cornhill illustrations to Mr. Blackmore's 
 Erema, and see all the characters astride on English sad- 
 dles. As a matter of fact, an English saddle is a rarity even 
 \n San Francisco, and, you may say, a thing unknown 
 in all the rest of California. In a place so exclusively 
 Mexican as Monterey, you saw not only Mexican sad- 
 dles but true Vaquero riding — men always at the hand- 
 gallop up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest 
 corner, urging their horses with cries and gesticulations 
 and cruel rotatory spurs, checking them dead with a 
 touch, or wheeling them right-about-face in a square 
 yard. The type of face and character of bearing are 
 surprisingly un-American. The first ranged from some- 
 thing like the pure Spanish, to something, in its sad 
 fixity, not unlike the pure Indian, although I do not 
 suppose there was one pure blood of either race in all 
 the country. As for the second, it was a matter of 
 perpetual surprise to find, in that world of absolutely 
 mannerless Americans, a people full of deportment, 
 solemnly courteous, and doing all things with grace 
 and decorum. In dress they ran to colour and bright 
 
 159 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 sashes. Not even the most Americanised could always 
 resist the temptation to stick a red rose into his hat- 
 band. Not even the most Americanised would de- 
 scend to wear the vile dress hat of civilisation. Spanish 
 was the language of the streets. It was difficult to get 
 along without a word or two of that language for an 
 occasion. The only communications in which the pop- 
 ulation joined were with a view to amusement. A 
 weekly public ball took place with great etiquette, in 
 addition to the numerous fandangoes in private houses. 
 There was a really fair amateur brass band. Night after 
 night serenaders would be going about the street, 
 sometimes in a company and with several instruments 
 and voices together, sometimes severally, each guitar 
 before a different window. It was a strange thing to 
 lie awake in nineteenth-century America, and hear the 
 guitar accompany, and one of these old, heart-breaking 
 Spanish love songs mount into the night air, perhaps 
 in a deep baritone, perhaps in that high-pitched, pa- 
 thetic, womanish alto which is so common among 
 Mexican men, and which strikes on the unaccustomed 
 ear as something not entirely human but altogether sad. 
 The town, then, was essentially and wholly Mexican ; 
 and yet almost all the land in the neighbourhood was 
 held by Americans, and it was from the same class, nu- 
 merically so small, that the principal officials were se- 
 lected. This Mexican and that Mexican would describe 
 to you his old family estates, not one rood of which re- 
 mained to him. You would ask him how that came 
 about, and elicit some tangled story back-foremost, from 
 which you gathered that the Americans had been greedy 
 like designing men, and the Mexicans greedy like chil- 
 
 160 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 dren, but no other certain fact. Their merits and their 
 faults contributed alike to the ruin of the former land- 
 holders. It is true they were improvident, and easily 
 dazzled with the sight of ready money ; but they were 
 gentlefolk besides, and that in a way which curiously 
 unfitted them to combat Yankee craft. Suppose they 
 have a paper to sign, they would think it a reflection on 
 the other party to examine the terms with any great 
 minuteness ; nay, suppose them to observe some doubt- 
 ful clause, it is ten to one they would refuse from deli- 
 cacy to object to it. I know I am speaking within the 
 mark, for I have seen such a case occur, and the Mexi- 
 can, in spite of the advice of his lawyer, has signed the 
 imperfect paper like a lamb. To have spoken in the 
 matter, he said, above all to have let the other party 
 guess that he had seen a lawyer, would have "been 
 like doubting his word." The scruple sounds oddly to 
 one of ourselves, who have been brought up to under- 
 stand all business as a competition in fraud, and honesty 
 itself to be a virtue which regards the carrying out but 
 not the creation of agreements. This single unworldly 
 trait will account for much of that revolution of which 
 we are speaking. The Mexicans have the name of being 
 great swindlers, but certainly the accusation cuts both 
 ways. In a contest of this sort, the entire booty would 
 scarcely have passed into the hands of the more scrupu- 
 lous race. 
 
 Physically the Americans have triumphed ; but it is 
 not entirely seen how far they have themselves been 
 morally conquered. This is, of course, but a part of a 
 part of an extraordinary problem now in the course of 
 being solved in the various States of the American 
 
 i6i 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 Union. I am reminded of an anecdote. Some years 
 ago, at a great sale of wine, all the odd lots were pur- 
 chased by a grocer in a small way in the old town of 
 Edinburgh. The agent had the curiosity to visit him some 
 time after and inquire what possible use he could have 
 for such material. He was shown, by way of answer, 
 a huge vat where all the liquors, from humble Gladstone 
 to imperial Tokay, were fermenting together. ''And 
 what, " he asked, ' ' do you propose to call this ? " ' ' I'm 
 no very sure," replied the grocer, ''but I think it's go- 
 ing to turn out port." In the older Eastern States, I 
 think we may say that this hotch-potch of races is going 
 to turn out English, or thereabout. But the problem is 
 indefinitely varied in other zones. The elements are 
 differently mingled in the south, in what we may call 
 the Territorial belt, and in the group of States on the 
 Pacific coast. Above all, in these last, we may look to 
 see some monstrous hybrid — whether good or evil, 
 who shall forecast ? but certainly original and all their 
 own. In my little restaurant at Monterey, we have sat 
 down to table day after day, a Frenchman, two Portu- 
 guese, an Italian, a Mexican, and a Scotchman : we had 
 for common visitors an American from Illinois, a nearly 
 pure blood Indian woman, and a naturalised Chinese; 
 and from time to time a Switzer and a German came 
 down from country ranches for the night. No wonder 
 that the Pacific coast is a foreign land to visitors from 
 the Eastern States, for each race contributes something 
 of its own. Even the despised Chinese have taught the 
 youth of California, none indeed of their virtues, but the 
 debasing use of opium. And chief among these influ- 
 ences is that of the Mexicans. 
 
 162 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 The Mexicans although in the State are out of it. 
 They still preserve a sort of international independence, 
 and keep their affairs snug to themselves. Only four or 
 five years ago Vasquez, the bandit, his troops being dis- 
 persed and the hunt too hot for him in other parts of 
 California, returned to his native Monterey, and was seen 
 publicly in her streets and saloons, fearing no man. The 
 year that I was there there occurred two reputed mur- 
 ders. As the Montereyans are exceptionally vile speak- 
 ers of each other and of every one behind his back, it is 
 not possible for me to judge how much truth there may 
 have been in these reports ; but in the one case every 
 one believed, and in the other some suspected, that there 
 had been foul play; and nobody dreamed for an instant 
 of taking the authorities into their counsel. Now this 
 is, of course, characteristic enough of the Mexicans ; but 
 it is a noteworthy feature that all the Americans in Mon- 
 terey acquiesced without a word in this inaction. Even 
 when I spoke to them upon the subject, they seemed 
 not to understand my surprise ; they had forgotten the 
 traditions of their own race and upbringing, and become, 
 in a word, wholly Mexicanised. 
 
 Again, the Mexicans, having no ready money to speak 
 of, rely almost entirely in their business transactions 
 upon each other's worthless paper. Pedro the penni- 
 less pays you with an I O U from the equally penniless 
 Miguel. It is a sort of local currency by courtesy. Credit 
 in these parts has passed into a superstition. I have 
 seen a strong, violent man struggling for months to re- 
 cover a debt, and getting nothing but an exchange of 
 waste paper. The very storekeepers are averse to ask- 
 ing for cash payments, and are more surprised than 
 
 163 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 pleased when they are offered. They fear there must 
 be something under it, and that you mean to withdraw 
 your custom from them. I have seen the enterprising 
 chemist and stationer begging me with fervour to let 
 my account run on, although I had my purse open in 
 my hand; and partly from the commonness of the case, 
 partly from some remains of that generous old Mexican 
 tradition which made all men welcome to their tables, a 
 person may be notoriously both unwilling and unable to 
 pay, and still find credit for the necessaries of life in the 
 stores of Monterey. Now this villainous habit of living 
 upon * ' tick " has grown into Californian nature. I do not 
 mean that the American and European storekeepers of 
 Monterey are as lax as Mexicans ; I mean that American 
 farmers in many parts of the State expect unlimited credit, 
 and profit by it in the meanwhile, without a thought 
 for consequences. Jew storekeepers have already 
 learned the advantage to be gained from this ; they lead 
 on the farmer into irretrievable indebtedness, and keep 
 him ever after as their bond-slave hopelessly grinding 
 in the mill. So the whirligig of time brings in its re- 
 venges, and except that the Jew knows better than to 
 foreclose, you may see Americans bound in the same 
 chains with which they themselves had formerly bound 
 the Mexican. It seems as if certain sorts of follies, like 
 certain sorts of grain, were natural to the soil rather than 
 to the race that holds and tills it for the moment. 
 
 In the meantime, however, the Americans rule in 
 Monterey County. The new county seat, Salinas City, 
 in the bald, corn-bearing plain under the Gabelano Peak, 
 is a town of a purely American character. The land is 
 held, for the most part, in those enormous tracts which 
 
 164 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 are another legacy of Mexican days, and form the present 
 chief danger and disgrace of California ; and the holders 
 are mostly of American or British birth. We have here 
 in England no idea of the troubles and inconveniences 
 which flow from the existence of these large landholders 
 — land-thieves, land-sharks, or land-grabbers, they are 
 more commonly and plainly called. Thus the town- 
 lands of Monterey are all in the hands of a single man. 
 How they came there is an obscure, vexatious question, 
 and, rightly or wrongly, the man is hated with a great 
 hatred. His life has been repeatedly in danger. Not 
 very long ago, I was told, the stage was stopped and 
 examined three evenings in succession by disguised 
 horsemen thirsting for his blood. A certain house on 
 the Salinas road, they say, he always passes in his buggy 
 at full speed, for the squatter sent him warning long 
 ago. But a year since he was publicly pointed out for 
 death by no less a man than Mr. Dennis Kearney. 
 Kearney is a man too well known in California, but a 
 word of explanation is required for English readers. 
 Originally an Irish drayman, he rose, by his command 
 of bad language, to almost dictatorial authority in the 
 State; throned it there for six months or so, his mouth 
 full of oaths, gallowses, and conflagrations ; was first 
 snuffed out last winter by Mr. Coleman, backed by his 
 San Francisco Vigilantes and three gatling guns; com- 
 pleted his own ruin by throwing in his lot with the 
 grotesque Greenbacker party ; and had at last to be res- 
 cued by his old enemies, the police, out of the hands of 
 his rebellious followers. It was while he was at the 
 top of his fortune that Kearney visited Monterey with 
 his battle-cry against Chinese labour, the railroad mo- 
 
 165 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 nopolists, and the land-thieves; and his one articulate 
 counsel to the Montereyans was to "hang David Jacks." 
 Had the town been American, in my private opinion, 
 this would have been done years ago. Land is a sub- 
 ject on which there is no jesting in the West, and 1 have 
 seen my friend the lawyer drive out of Monterey to ad- 
 just a competition of titles with the face of a captain 
 going into battle and his Smith-and- Wesson convenient 
 to his hand. 
 
 On the ranche of another of these landholders you 
 may find our old friend, the truck system, in full opera- 
 tion. Men live there, year in year out, to cut timber for 
 a nominal wage, which is all consumed in supplies. The 
 longer they remain in this desirable service the deeper 
 they will fall in debt — a burlesque injustice in a new 
 country, where labour should be precious, and one of 
 those typical instances which explains the prevailing 
 discontent and the success of the demagogue Kearney. 
 
 In a comparison between what was and what is in 
 California, the praisers of times past will fix upon the 
 Indians of Carmel. The valley drained by the river so 
 named is a true Californian valley, bare, dotted with cha- 
 parral, overlooked by quaint, unfinished hills. The 
 Carmel runs by many pleasant farms, a clear and shal- 
 low river, loved by wading kine; and at last, as it is 
 falling towards a quicksand and the great Pacific, passes 
 a ruined mission on a hill. From the mission church 
 the eye embraces a great field of ocean, and the ear is 
 filled with a continuous sound of distant breakers on 
 the shore. But the day of the Jesuit has gone by, the 
 day of the Yankee has succeeded, and there is no one 
 left to care for the converted savage. The church is 
 
 1 66 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 roofless and ruinous, sea-breezes and sea-fogs, and the 
 alternation of the rain and sunshine, daily widening 
 the breaches and casting the crockets from the wall. 
 As an antiquity in this new land, a quaint specimen of 
 missionary architecture, and a memorial of good deeds, 
 it had a triple claim to preservation from all thinking 
 people; but neglect and abuse have been its portion. 
 There is no sign of American interference, save where 
 a headboard has been torn from a grave to be a mark 
 for pistol bullets. So it is with the Indians for whom it 
 was erected. Their lands, I was told, are being yearly en- 
 croached upon by the neighbouring American proprie- 
 tor, and with that exception no man troubles his head 
 for the Indians of Carmel. Only one day in the year, 
 the day before our Guy Fawkes, the padre drives over 
 the hill from Monterey; the little sacristy, which is the 
 only covered portion of the church, is filled with seats 
 and decorated for the service ; the Indians troop together, 
 their bright dresses contrasting with their dark and mel- 
 ancholy faces ; and there, among a crowd of somewhat 
 unsympathetic holiday-makers, you may hear God 
 served with perhaps more touching circumstances than 
 in any other temple under heaven. An Indian, stone- 
 blind and about eighty years of age, conducts the sing- 
 ing; other Indians compose the choir; yet they have 
 the Gregorian music at their fmger ends, and pronounce 
 the Latin so correctly that I could follow the meaning as 
 they sang. The pronunciation was odd and nasal, the 
 singing hurried and staccato. 'Mn saecula saeculo-ho- 
 horum," they went, with a vigorous aspirate to every 
 additional syllable. I have never seen faces more viv- 
 idly lit up with joy than the faces of these Indian sing- 
 
 167 
 
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL 
 
 ers. It was to them not only the worship of God, nor 
 an act by which they recalled and commemorated bet- 
 ter days, but was besides an exercise of culture, where 
 all they knew of art and letters was united and ex- 
 pressed. And it made a man's heart sorry for the good 
 fathers of yore who had taught them to dig and to reap, 
 to read and to sing, who had given them European 
 mass-books which they still preserve and study in their 
 cottages, and who had now passed away from all au- 
 thority and influence in that land — to be succeeded by 
 greedy land-thieves and sacrilegious pistol-shots. So 
 ugly a thing may our Anglo-Saxon Protestantism appear 
 beside the doings of the Society of Jesus. 
 
 But revolution in this world succeeds to revolution. 
 All that I say in this paper is in a paulo-past tense. The 
 Monterey of last year exists no longer. A huge hotel 
 has sprung up in the desert by the railway. Three sets 
 of diners sit down successively to table. Invaluable 
 toilettes figure along the beach and between the live 
 oaks; and Monterey is advertised in the newspapers, 
 and posted in the waiting-rooms at railway stations, as 
 a resort for wealth and fashion. Alas for the little town ! 
 it is not strong enough to resist the influence of the 
 flaunting caravanserai, and the poor, quaint, penniless 
 native gentlemen of Monterey must perish, like a lower 
 race, before the millionaire vulgarians of the Big Bo- 
 nanza. 
 
 [1880.] 
 
 168 
 
III. FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 VILLAGE COMMUNITIES OF PAINTERS 
 
 The charm of Fontainebleau is a thing apart. It is a 
 place that people love even more than they admire. 
 The vigorous forest air, the silence, the majestic avenues 
 of highway, the wilderness of tumbled boulders, the 
 great age and dignity of certain groves — these are but 
 ingredients, they are not the secret of the philtre. The 
 place is sanative; the air, the light, the perfumes, and 
 the shapes of things concord in happy harmony. The 
 artist may be idle and not fear the ** blues." He may 
 dally with his life. Mirth, lyric mirth, and a vivacious 
 classical contentment are of the very essence of the bet- 
 ter kind of art; and these, in that most smiling forest, 
 he has the chance to learn or to remember. Even on 
 the plain of Biere, where the Angelus of Millet still tolls 
 upon the ear of fancy, a larger air, a higher heaven, 
 something ancient and healthy in the face of nature, 
 purify the mind alike from dulness and hysteria. There 
 is no place where the young are more gladly con- 
 scious of their youth, or the old better contented with 
 their age. 
 
 The fact of its great and special beauty further recom- 
 mends this country to the artist. The field was chosen 
 by men in whose blood there still raced some of the 
 
 169 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 gleeful or solemn exultation of great art — Millet who 
 loved dignity like Michelangelo, Rousseau whose mod- 
 ern brush was dipped in the glamour of the ancients. It 
 was chosen before the day of that strange turn in the 
 history of art, of which we now perceive the culmina- 
 tion in impressionistic tales and pictures — that volun- 
 tary aversion of the eye from all speciously strong and 
 beautiful effects — that disinterested love of dulness 
 which has set so many Peter Bells to paint the river-side 
 primrose. It was then chosen for its proximity to Paris. 
 And for the same cause, and by the force of tradition, the 
 painter of to-day continues to inhabit and to paint it. 
 There is in France scenery incomparable for romance 
 and harmony. Provence, and the valley of the Rhone 
 from Vienne to Tarascon, are one succession of master- 
 pieces waiting for the brush. The beauty is not merely 
 beauty ; it tells, besides, a tale to the imagination, and 
 surprises while it charms. Here you shall see castel- 
 lated towns that would befit the scenery of dream- 
 land; streets that glow with colour like cathedral 
 windows ; hills of the most exquisite proportions ; flow- 
 ers of every precious colour, growing thick like grass. 
 All these, by the grace of railway travel, are brought to 
 the very door of the modern painter; yet he does not 
 seek them ; he remains faithful to Fontainebleau, to the 
 eternal bridge of Gretz, to the watering-pot cascade in 
 Cernay valley. Even Fontainebleau was chosen for 
 him; even in Fontainebleau he shrinks from what is 
 sharply charactered. But one thing, at least, is certain, 
 whatever he may choose to paint and in whatever man- 
 ner, it is good for the artist to dwell among graceful 
 shapes. Fontainebleau, if it be but quiet scenery, is 
 
 170 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 classically graceful ; and though the student may look 
 for different qualities, this quality, silently present, will 
 educate his hand and eye. 
 
 * But, before all its other advantages — charm, loveli- 
 ness, or proximity to Paris — comes the great fact that 
 it is already colonised. The institution of a painters' 
 colony is a work of time and tact. The population 
 must be conquered. The inn-keeper has to be taught, 
 and he soon learns, the lesson of unlimited credit; he 
 must be taught to welcome as a favoured guest a young 
 gentleman in a very greasy coat, and with little baggage 
 beyond a box of colours and a canvas; and he must 
 learn to preserve his faith in customers who will eat 
 heartily and drink of the best, borrow money to buy 
 tobacco, and perhaps not pay a stiver for a year. A 
 colour merchant has next to be attracted. A certain 
 vogue must be given to the place, lest the painter, most 
 gregarious of animals, should find himself alone. And 
 no sooner are these first difficulties overcome, than fresh 
 perils spring up upon the other side ; and the bourgeois 
 and the tourist are knocking at the gate. This is the 
 crucial moment for the colony. If these intruders gain 
 a footing, they not only banish freedom and amenity ; 
 pretty soon, by means of their long purses, they will 
 have undone the education of the innkeeper; prices will 
 rise and credit shorten ; and the poor painter must fare 
 farther on and find another hamlet. '*Not here, O 
 Apollo ! " will become his song. Thus Trouville and, 
 the other day, St. Raphael were lost to the arts. Curi- 
 ous and not always edifying are the shifts that the French 
 student uses to defend his lair; like the cuttlefish, he 
 must sometimes blacken the waters of his chosen pool ; 
 
 171 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 but at such a time and for so practical a purpose Mrs. 
 Grundy must allow him licence. Where his own purse 
 and credit are not threatened, he will do the honours of 
 his village generously. Any artist is made welcome, 
 through whatever medium he may seek expression; 
 science is respected ; even the idler, if he prove, as he 
 so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find 
 himself at home. And when that essentially modern 
 creature, the English or American girl-student, began 
 to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a draw- 
 ing-room at home, the French painter owned himself 
 defenceless; he submitted or he fled. His French re- 
 spectability, quite as precise as ours, though covering 
 different provinces of life, recoiled aghast before the in- 
 novation. But the girls were painters ; there was noth- 
 ing to be done ; and Barbizon, when I last saw it and 
 for the time at least, was practically ceded to the fair 
 invader. Paterfamilias, on the other hand, the common 
 tourist, the holiday shopman, and the cheap young gen- 
 tleman upon the spree, he hounded from his villages 
 with every circumstance of contumely. 
 
 This purely artistic society is excellent for the young 
 artist. The lads are mostly fools ; they hold the latest 
 orthodoxy in its crudeness; they are at that stage of 
 education, for the most part, when a man is too much 
 occupied with style to be aware of the necessity for any 
 matter; and this, above all for the Englishman, is ex- 
 cellent. To work grossly at the trade, to forget senti- 
 ment, to think of his material and nothing else, is, for 
 awhile at least, the king's highway of progress. Here, 
 in England, too many painters and writers dwell dis- 
 persed, unshielded, among the intelligent bourgeois. 
 
 172 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 These, when they are not merely indifferent, prate to 
 him about the lofty aims and moral influence of art. 
 And this is the lad's ruin. For art is, first of all and last 
 of all, a trade. The love of words and not a desire to 
 publish new discoveries, the love of form and not a 
 novel reading of historical events, mark the vocation of 
 the writer and the painter. The arabesque, properly 
 speaking, and even in literature, is the first fancy of the 
 artist ; he first plays with his material as a child plays 
 with a kaleidoscope; and he is already in a second stage 
 when he begins to use his pretty counters for the end 
 of representation. In that, he must pause long and toil 
 faithfully ; that is his apprenticeship ; and it is only the 
 few who will really grow beyond it, and go forward, 
 fully equipped, to do the business of real art — to give 
 life to abstractions and significance and charm to facts. 
 In the meanwhile, let him dwell much among his fellow- 
 craftsmen. They alone can take a serious interest in the 
 childish tasks and pitiful successes of these years. They 
 alone can behold with equanimity this fingering of the 
 dumb keyboard, this polishing of empty sentences, 
 this dull and literal painting of dull and insignificant 
 subjects. Outsiders will spur him on. They will say, 
 **Why do you not write a great book? paint a great 
 picture?" If his guardian angel fail him, they may 
 even persuade him to the attempt, and, ten to one, his 
 hand is coarsened and his style falsified for life. 
 
 And this brings me to a warning. The life of the 
 apprentice to any art is both unstrained and pleasing; it 
 is strewn with small successes in the midst of a career 
 of failure, patiently supported ; the heaviest scholar is 
 conscious of a certain progress ; and if he come not ap- 
 
 >73 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 preciably nearer to the art of Shakespeare, grows letter- 
 perfect in the domain of A-B, ab. But the time comes 
 when a man should cease prelusory gymnastic, stand 
 up, put a violence upon his will, and for better or worse, 
 begin the business of creation. This evil day there is 
 a tendency continually to postpone: above all with 
 painters. They have made so many studies that it has 
 become a habit; they make more, the walls of exhibi- 
 tions blush with them ; and death finds these aged stu- 
 dents still busy with their horn-book. This class of 
 man finds a congenial home in artist villages; in the 
 slang of the English colony at Barbizon we used to call 
 them ''Snoozers." Continual returns to the city, the 
 society of men farther advanced, the study of great 
 works, a sense of humour or, if such a thing is to be 
 had, a little religion or philosophy, are the means of 
 treatment. It will be time enough to think of curing 
 the malady after it has been caught ; for to catch it is the 
 very thing for which you seek that dream-land of the 
 painters' village. ''Snoozing" is a part of the artistic 
 education ; and the rudiments must be learned stupidly, 
 all else being forgotten, as if they were an object in 
 themselves. 
 
 Lastly, there is something, or there seems to be some- 
 thing, in the very air of France that communicates the 
 love of style. Precision, clarity, the cleanly and crafty 
 employment of material, a grace in the handling, apart 
 from any value in the thought, seem to be acquired by 
 the mere residence ; or if not acquired, become at least 
 the more appreciated. The air of Paris is alive with this 
 technical inspiration. And to leave that airy city and 
 awake next day upon the borders of the forest is but to 
 
 »74 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 change externals. The same spirit of dexterity and 
 finish breathes from the long alleys and the lofty groves, 
 from the wildernesses that are still pretty in their con- 
 fusion, and the great plain that contrives to be decora- 
 tive in its emptiness. 
 
 In spite of its really considerable extent, the forest of 
 Fontainebleau is hardly anywhere tedious. I know the 
 whole western side of it with what, I suppose, I may 
 call thoroughness ; well enough at least to testify that 
 there is no square mile without some special character 
 and charm. Such quarters, for instance, as the Long 
 Rocher, the Bas-Breau, and the Reine Blanche, might 
 be a hundred miles apart; they have scarce a point in 
 common beyond the silence of the birds. The two last 
 are really conterminous ; and in both are tall and ancient 
 trees that have outlived a thousand political vicissitudes. 
 But in the one the great oaks prosper placidly upon an 
 even floor; they beshadow a great field; and the air and 
 the light are very free below their stretching boughs. In 
 the other the trees find difficult footing; castles of white 
 rock lie tumbled one upon another, the foot slips, the 
 crooked viper slumbers, the moss clings in the crevice; 
 and above it all the great beech goes spiring and casting 
 forth her arms, and, with a grace beyond church archi- 
 tecture, canopies this rugged chaos. Meanwhile, divid- 
 ing the two cantons, the broad white causeway of the 
 Paris road runs in an avenue : a road conceived for pa- 
 geantry and for triumphal marches, an avenue for an 
 army ; but, its days of glory over, it now lies grilling in 
 the sun between cool groves, and only at intervals tha 
 
 175 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 vehicle of the cruising tourist is seen far away and faintly 
 audible along its ample sweep. A little upon one side, 
 and you find a district of sand and birch and boulder; 
 a little upon the other lies the valley of Apremont, all 
 juniper and heather; and close beyond that you may 
 walk into a zone of pine trees. So artfully are the in- 
 gredients mingled. Nor must it be forgotten that, in 
 all this part, you come continually forth upon a hill-top, 
 and behold the plain, northward and westward, like an 
 unrefulgent sea ; nor that all day long the shadows keep 
 changing; and at last, to the red fires of sunset, night 
 succeeds, and with the night a new forest, full of whisper, 
 gloom, and fragrance. There are few things more reno- 
 vating than to leave Paris, the lamplit arches of the Carrou- 
 sel, and the long alignment of the glittering streets, and to 
 bathe the senses in this fragrant darkness of the wood. 
 
 In this continual variety the mind is kept vividly 
 alive. It is a changeful place to paint, a stirring place 
 to live in. As fast as your foot carries you, you pass 
 from scene to scene, each vigorously painted in the 
 colours of the sun, each endeared by that hereditary 
 spell of forests on the mind of man who still remembers 
 and salutes the ancient refuge of his race. 
 
 And yet the forest has been civilised throughout. 
 The most savage corners bear a name, and have been 
 cherished like antiquities; in the most remote. Nature 
 has prepared and balanced her effects as if with con- 
 scious art ; and man, with his guiding arrows of blue 
 paint, has countersigned the picture. After your far- 
 thest wandering, you are never surprised to come forth 
 upon the vast avenue of highway, to strike the centre 
 point of branching alleys, or to find the aqueduct trail- 
 
 176 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 ing, thousand-footed, through the brush. It is not a 
 wilderness ; it is rather a preserve. And, fitly enough, 
 the centre of the maze is not a hermit's cavern. In the 
 midst, a little mirthful town lies sunlit, humming with 
 the business of pleasure ; and the palace, breathing dis- 
 tinction and peopled by historic names, stands smoke- 
 less among gardens. 
 
 Perhaps the last attempt at savage life was that of the 
 harmless humbug who called himself the hermit. In a 
 great tree, close by the high-road, he had built himself 
 a little cabin after the manner of the Swiss Family Rob- 
 inson; thither he mounted at night, by the romantic 
 aid of a rope ladder; and if dirt be any proof of sin- 
 cerity, the man was savage as a Sioux. I had the 
 pleasure of his acquaintance; he appeared grossly stu- 
 pid, not in his perfect wits, and interested in nothing 
 but small change ; for that he had a great avidity. In 
 the course of time he proved to be a chicken-stealer, 
 and vanished from his perch; and perhaps from the 
 first he was no true votary of forest freedom, but an 
 ingenious, theatrically-minded beggar, and his cabin in 
 the tree was only stock-in-trade to beg withal. The 
 choice of his position would seem to indicate so much ; 
 for if in the forest there are no places still to be discov- 
 ered, there are many that have been forgotten, and that 
 lie unvisited. There, to be sure, are the blue arrows 
 waiting to reconduct you, now blazed upon a tree, 
 now posted in the corner of a rock. But your security 
 from interruption is complete ; you might camp for 
 weeks, if there were only water, and not a soul sus- 
 pect your presence; and if I may suppose the reader to 
 have committed some great crime and come to me for 
 
 177 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 aid, I think I could still find my way to a small cavern, 
 fitted with a hearth and chimney, where he might lie 
 perfectly concealed. A confederate landscape-painter 
 might daily supply him with food ; for water, he would 
 have to make a nightly tramp as far as to the nearest 
 pond ; and at last, when the hue and cry began to blow 
 over, he might get gently on the train at some side sta- 
 tion, work round by a series of junctions, and be quietly 
 captured at the frontier. 
 
 Thus Fontainebleau, although it is truly but a plea- 
 sure-ground, and although, in favourable weather, and 
 in the more celebrated quarters, it literally buzzes with 
 the tourist, yet has some of the immunities and offers 
 some of the repose of natural forests. And the soli- 
 tary, although he must return at night to his frequented 
 inn, may yet pass the day with his own thoughts in 
 the companionable silence of the trees. The demands 
 of the imagination vary; some can be alone in a back 
 garden looked upon by windows; others, like the os- 
 trich, are content with a solitude that meets the eye; 
 and others, again, expand in fancy to the very borders 
 of their desert, and are irritably conscious of a hunter's 
 camp in an adjacent county. To these last, of course, 
 Fontainebleau will seem but an extended tea-garden : a 
 Rosherville on a by-day. But to the plain man it offers 
 solitude : an excellent thing in itself, and a good whet 
 for company. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I was for some time a consistent Barbizonian ; et ego in 
 Arcadia vixi, it was a pleasant season ; and that noise- 
 less hamlet lying close among the borders of the wood 
 
 178 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 is for me, as for so many others, a green spot in mem- 
 ory. The great Millet was just dead, the green shutters 
 of his modest house were closed; his daughters were in 
 mourning. The date of my first visit was thus an epoch 
 in the history of art: in a lesser way, it was an epoch in 
 the history of the Latin Quarter. The Petit Ctnacle 
 was dead and buried ; Murger and his crew of sponging 
 vagabonds were all at rest from their expedients ; the 
 tradition of their real life was nearly lost; and the petri- 
 fied legend of the yie de Boheme had become a sort of 
 gospel, and still gave the cue to zealous imitators. But 
 if the book be written in rose-water, the imitation was 
 still farther expurgated ; honesty was the rule ; the inn- 
 keepers gave, as I have said, almost unlimited credit; 
 they suffered the seediest painter to depart, to take all 
 his belongings, and to leave his bill unpaid; and if they 
 sometimes lost, it was by English and Americans alone. 
 At the same time, the great influx of Anglo-Saxons had 
 begun to affect the life of the studious. There had been 
 disputes ; and, in one instance at least, the English and 
 the Americans had made common cause to prevent a 
 cruel pleasantry. It would be well if nations and races 
 could communicate their qualities ; but in practice when 
 they look upon each other, they have an eye to nothing 
 but defects. The Anglo-Saxon is essentially dishonest; 
 the French is devoid by nature of the principle that we 
 call ''Fair Play." The Frenchman marvelled at the 
 scruples of his guest, and, when that defender of in- 
 nocence retired over-seas and left his bills unpaid, he 
 marvelled once again; the good and evil were, in his 
 eyes, part and parcel of the same eccentricity ; a shrug 
 expressed his judgment upon both. 
 
 179 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 At Barbizon there was no master, no pontiff in the 
 arts. Palizzi bore rule at Gretz — urbane, superior 
 rule — his memory rich in anecdotes of the great men of 
 yore, his mind fertile in theories; sceptical, composed, 
 and venerable to the eye ; and yet beneath these out- 
 works, all twittering with Italian superstition, his eye 
 scouting for omens, and the whole fabric of his man- 
 ners giving way on the appearance of a hunchback. 
 Cernay had Pelouse, the admirable, placid Pelouse, smil- 
 ingly critical of youth, who, when a full-blown commer- 
 cial traveller, suddenly threw down his samples, bought 
 a colour-box, and became the master whom we have all 
 admired. Marlotte, for a central figure, boasted Olivier 
 de Penne. Only Barbizon, since the death of Millet, 
 was a headless commonwealth. Even its secondary 
 lights, and those who in my day made the stranger 
 welcome, have since deserted it. The good Lachevre 
 has departed, carrying his household gods; and long 
 before that Gaston Lafenestre was taken from our midst 
 by an untimely death. He died before he had deserved 
 success; it may be, he would never have deserved it; 
 but his kind, comely, modest countenance still haunts 
 the memory of all who knew him. Another — whom 
 I will not name — has moved farther on, pursuing the 
 strange Odyssey of his decadence. His days of royal 
 favour had departed even then ; but he still retained, in 
 his narrower life at Barbizon, a certain stamp of conscious 
 importance, hearty, friendly, filling the room, the occu- 
 pant of several chairs ; nor had he yet ceased his losing 
 battle, still labouring upon great canvases that none 
 would buy, still waiting the return of fortune. But these 
 days also were too good to last; and>the former favourite 
 
 180 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 of two sovereigns fled, if I heard the truth, by night. 
 There was a time when he was counted a great man, 
 and Millet but a dauber; behold, how the whirligig of 
 time brings in his revenges ! To pity Millet is a piece of 
 arrogance; if life be hard for such resolute and pious 
 spirits, it is harder still for us, had we the wit to under- 
 stand it; but we may pity his unhappier rival, who, for 
 no apparent merit, was raised to opulence and momen- 
 tary fame, and, through no apparent fault, was suffered 
 step by step to sink again to nothing. No misfortune 
 can exceed the bitterness of such back-foremost pro- 
 gress, even bravely supported as it was; but to those 
 also who were taken early from the easel, a regret is due. 
 From all the young men of this period, one stood out by 
 the vigour of his promise ; he was in the age of fermenta- 
 tion, enamoured of eccentricities. " l\ faut faire de la 
 peinture nouvelle," was his watchword; but if time and 
 experience had continued his education, if he had been 
 granted health to return from these excursions to the 
 steady and the central, I must believe that the name of 
 Hills had become famous. 
 
 Siron's inn, that excellent artists' barrack, was man- 
 aged upon easy principles. At any hour of the night, 
 when you returned from wandering in the forest, you 
 went to the billiard-room and helped yourself to liquors, 
 or descended to the cellar and returned laden with beer 
 or wine. The Sirons were all locked in slumber; there 
 was none to check your inroads; only at the week's 
 end a computation was made, the gross sum was di- 
 vided, and a varying share set down to every lodger's 
 name under the rubric : estrats. Upon the more long- 
 suffering the larger tax was levied ; and your bill length- 
 
 i8i 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 ened in a direct proportion to the easiness of your dis- 
 position. At any hour of the morning, again, you could 
 get your coffee or cold milk, and set forth into the forest. 
 The doves had perhaps wakened you, fluttering into 
 your chamber; and on the threshold of the inn you were 
 met by the aroma of the forest. Close by were the great 
 aisles, the mossy boulders, the interminable field of 
 forest shadow. There you were free to dream and 
 wander. And at noon, and again at six o'clock, a good 
 meal awaited you on Siron's table. The whole of your 
 accommodation, set aside that varying item of the estrats, 
 cost you five francs a day ; your bill was never offered 
 you until you asked it ; and if you were out of luck's 
 way, you might depart for where you pleased and leave 
 it pending. 
 
 IV 
 
 Theoretically, the house was open to all comers ; prac- 
 tically, it was a kind of club. The guests protected 
 themselves, and, in so doing, they protected Siron. 
 Formal manners being laid aside, essential courtesy was 
 the more rigidly exacted ; the new arrival had to feel 
 the pulse of the society ; and a breach of its undefined 
 observances was promptly punished. A man might be 
 as plain, as dull, as slovenly, as free of speech as he de- 
 sired ; but to a touch of presumption or a word of hec- 
 toring these free Barbizonians were as sensitive as a 
 tea-party of maiden ladies. 1 have seen people driven 
 forth from Barbizon; it would be difficult to say in 
 words what they had done, but they deserved their fate. 
 They had shown themselves unworthy to enjoy these 
 corporate freedoms; they had pushed themselves; they 
 
 182 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 had ''made their head;" they wanted tact to appreciate 
 the 'Tine shades" of Barbizonian etiquette. And once 
 they were condemned, the process of extrusion was 
 ruthless in its cruelty; after one evening with the for- 
 midable Bodmer, the Baily of our commonwealth, the 
 erring stranger was beheld no more; he rose exceeding 
 early the next day, and the first coach conveyed him 
 from the scene of his discomfiture. These sentences of 
 banishment were never, in my knowledge, delivered 
 against an artist; such would, I believe, have been il- 
 legal; but the odd and pleasant fact is this, that they 
 were never needed. Painters, sculptors, writers, singers, 
 I have seen all of these in Barbizon; and some were 
 sulky, and some blatant and inane ; but one and all en- 
 tered at once into the spirit of the association. This 
 singular society is purely French, a creature of French 
 virtues, and possibly of French defects. It cannot be 
 imitated by the English. The roughness, the impatience, 
 the more obvious selfishness, and even the more ardent 
 friendships of the Anglo-Saxon, speedily dismember 
 such a commonwealth. But this random gathering of 
 young French painters, with neither apparatus nor pa- 
 rade of government, yet kept the life of the place upon 
 a certain footing, insensibly imposed their etiquette upon 
 the docile, and by caustic speech enforced their edicts 
 against the unwelcome. To think of it is to wonder 
 the more at the strange failure of their race upon the 
 larger theatre. This inbred civility — to use the word 
 in its completest meaning — this natural and facile ad- 
 justment of contending liberties, seems all that is re- 
 quired to make a governable nation and a just and 
 prosperous country. 
 
 183 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 Our society, thus purged and guarded, was full of high 
 spirits, of laughter, and of the initiative of youth. The 
 few elder men who joined us were still young at heart, 
 and took the key from their companions. We returned 
 from long stations in the fortifying air, our blood renewed 
 by the sunshine, our spirits refreshed by the silence of 
 the forest ; the Babel of loud voices sounded good ; we 
 fell to eat and play like the natural man ; and in the high 
 inn chamber, panelled with indifferent pictures and lit 
 by candles guttering in the night air, the talk and laugh- 
 ter sounded far into the night. It was a good place and 
 a good life for any naturally-minded youth ; better yet for 
 the student of painting, and perhaps best of all for the 
 student of letters. He, too, was saturated in this atmos- 
 phere of style; he was shut out from the disturbing 
 currents of the world, he might forget that there existed 
 other and more pressing interests than that of art. But, 
 in such a place, it was hardly possible to write ; he could 
 not drug his conscience, like the painter, by the produc- 
 tion of listless studies; he saw himself idle among many 
 who were apparently, and some who were really, em- 
 ployed ; and what with the impulse of increasing health 
 and the continual provocation of romantic scenes, he 
 became tormented with the desire to work. He en- 
 joyed a strenuous idleness full of visions, hearty meals, 
 long, sweltering walks, mirth among companions; and 
 still floating like music through his brain, foresights of 
 great works that Shakespeare might be proud to have 
 conceived, headless epics, glorious torsos of dramas, 
 and words that were alive with import. So in youth, 
 like Moses from the mountain, we have sights of that 
 House Beautiful of art which we shall never enter. They 
 
 184 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 are dreams and unsubstantial ; visions of style that re- 
 pose upon no base of human meaning; the last heart- 
 throbs of that excited amateur who has to die in all of 
 us before the artist can be born. But they come to us 
 in such a rainbow of glory that all subsequent achieve- 
 ment appears dull and earthly in comparison. We were 
 all artists ; almost all in the age of illusion, cultivating 
 an imaginary genius, and walking to the strains of some 
 deceiving Ariel; small wonder, indeed, if we were 
 happy! But art, of whatever nature, is a kind mistress; 
 and though these dreams of youth fall by their own 
 baselessness, others succeed, graver and more sub- 
 stantial; the symptoms change, the amiable malady 
 endures ; and still, at an equal distance, the House 
 Beautiful shines upon its hill-top. 
 
 Gretz lies out of the forest, down by the bright river. 
 It boasts a mill, an ancient church, a castle, and a bridge 
 of many sterlings. And the bridge is a piece of public 
 property ; anonymously famous ; beaming on the incuri- 
 ous dilettante from the walls of a hundred exhibitions. 
 I have seen it in the Salon ; I have seen it in the Acad- 
 emy ; I have seen it in the last French Exposition, ex- 
 cellently done by Bloomer; in a black-and-white, by 
 Mr. A. Henley, it once adorned this essay in the pages 
 of the Magazine of Art. Long-suffering bridge ! And 
 if you visit Gretz to-morrow, you shall find another gen- 
 eration, camped at the bottom of Chevillon's garden 
 under their white umbrellas, and doggedly painting it 
 again. 
 
 185 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 The bridge taken for granted, Gretz is a less inspiring 
 place than Barbizon. I give it the palm over Cernay. 
 There is something ghastly in the great empty village 
 square of Cernay, with the inn tables standing in one 
 corner, as though the stage were set for rustic opera, 
 and in the early morning all the painters breaking their 
 fast upon white wine under the windows of the vil- 
 lagers. It is vastly different to awake in Gretz, to go 
 down the green inn-garden, to find the river streaming 
 through the bridge, and to see the dawn begin across 
 the poplared level. The meals are laid in the cool ar- 
 bour, under fluttering leaves. The splash of oars and 
 bathers, the bathing costumes out to dry, the trim canoes 
 beside the jetty, tell of a society that has an eye to plea- 
 sure. There is "something to do " at Gretz. Perhaps, 
 for that very reason, I can recall no such enduring ar- 
 dours, no such glories of exhilaration, as among the 
 solemn groves and uneventful hours of Barbizon. This 
 * ' something to do " is a great enemy to joy ; it is a way 
 out of it; you wreak your high spirits on some cut-and- 
 dry employment, and behold them gone! But Gretz is 
 a merry place after its kind : pretty to see, merry to in- 
 habit. The course of its pellucid river, whether up or 
 down, is full of gentle attractions for the navigator: 
 islanded reed-mazes where, in autumn, the red berries 
 cluster; the mirrored and inverted images of trees; lil- 
 ies, and mills, and the foam and thunder of weirs. And 
 of all noble sweeps of roadway, none is nobler, on a 
 windy dusk, than the high road to Nemours between 
 its lines of talking poplar. 
 
 But even Gretz is changed. The old inn, long shored 
 and trussed and buttressed, fell at length under the mere 
 
 u86 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 weight of years, and the place as it was is but a fading 
 image in the memory of former guests. They, indeed, 
 recall the ancient wooden stair; they recall the rainy 
 evening, the wide hearth, the blaze of the twig fire, 
 and the company that gathered round the pillar in the 
 kitchen. But the material fabric is now dust; soon, 
 with the last of its inhabitants, its very memory shall 
 follow; and they, in their turn, shall suffer the same 
 law, and, both in name and lineament, vanish from the 
 world of men. '' For remembrance of the old house' 
 sake," as Pepys once quaintly put it, let me tell one 
 story. When the tide of invasion swept over France, 
 two foreign painters were left stranded and penniless in 
 Gretz; and there, until the war was over, the Chevil- 
 lons ungrudgingly harboured them. It was difficult to 
 obtain supplies ; but the two waifs were still welcome 
 to the best, sat down daily with the family to table, 
 and at the due intervals were supplied with clean nap- 
 kins, which they scrupled to employ. Madame Che- 
 villon observed the fact and reprimanded them. But 
 they stood firm ; eat they must, but having no money 
 they would soil no napkins. 
 
 VI 
 
 Nemours and Moret, for all they are so picturesque, 
 have been little visited by painters. They are, indeed, 
 too populous; they have manners of their own, and 
 might resist the drastic process of colonisation. Mon- 
 tigny has been somewhat strangely neglected ; I never 
 knew it inhabited but once, when Will H. Low installed 
 himself there with a barrel of piquette, and entertained 
 
 187 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 his friends in a leafy trellis above the weir, in sight of 
 the green country and to the music of the falling water. 
 It was a most airy, quaint, and pleasant place of resi- 
 dence, just too rustic to be stagey ; and from my mem- 
 ories of the place in general, and that garden trellis in 
 particular — at morning, visited by birds, or at night, 
 when the dew fell and the stars were of the party — I 
 am inclined to think perhaps too favourably of the future 
 of Montigny. Chailly-en-Biere has outlived all things, 
 and lies dustily slumbering in the plain — the cemetery 
 of itself The great road remains to testify of its for- 
 mer bustle of postilions and carriage bells; and, like 
 memorial tablets, there still hang in the inn room the 
 paintings of a former generation, dead or decorated long 
 ago. In my time, one man only, greatly daring, dwelt 
 there. From time to time he would walk over to Bar- 
 bizon, like a shade revisiting the glimpses of the moon, 
 and after some communication with flesh and blood re- 
 turn to his austere hermitage. But even he, when I last 
 revisited the forest, had come to Barbizon for good, and 
 closed the roll of Chaillyites. It may revive — but I 
 much doubt it. Acheres and Recloses still wait a pio- 
 neer; Bourron is out of the question, being merely 
 Gretz over again, without the river, the bridge, or the 
 beauty; and of all the possible places on the western 
 side, Marlotte alone remains to be discussed. 1 scarcely 
 know Marlotte, and, very likely for that reason, am not 
 much in love with it. It seems a glaring and unsightly 
 hamlet. The inn of Mother Antonie is unattractive; 
 and its more reputable rival, though comfortable enough, 
 is commonplace. Marlotte has a name ; it is famous ; if I 
 were the young painter I would leave it alone in its glory. 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 VII 
 
 These are the words of an old stager; and though 
 time is a good conservative in forest places, much may 
 be untrue to-day. Many of us have passed Arcadian 
 days there and moved on, but yet left a portion of our 
 souls behind us buried in the woods. 1 would not dig 
 for these reliquiae; they are incommunicable treasures 
 that will not enrich the finder; and yet there may lie, 
 interred below great oaks or scattered along forest paths, 
 stores of youth's dynamite and dear remembrances. 
 And as one generation passes on and renovates the field 
 of tillage for the next, I entertain a fancy that when the 
 young men of to-day go forth into the forest, they shall 
 find the air still vitalised by the spirits of their prede- 
 cessors, and, like those ''unheard melodies" that are 
 the sweetest of all, the memory of our laughter shall 
 still haunt the field of trees. Those merry voices that 
 in woods call the wanderer farther, those thrilling si- 
 lences and whispers of the groves, surely in Fontaine- 
 bleau they must be vocal of me and my companions ? 
 We are not content to pass away entirely from the scenes 
 of our delight; we would leave, if but in gratitude, a 
 pillar and a legend. 
 
 One generation after another fall like honey-bees upon 
 this memorable forest, rifle its sweets, pack themselves 
 with vital memories, and when the theft is consum- 
 mated depart again into life richer, but poorer also. 
 The forest, indeed, they have possessed, from that day 
 forward it is theirs indissolubly, and they will return to 
 walk in it at night in the fondest of their dreams, and 
 use it for ever in their books and pictures. Yet when 
 
 189 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 they made their packets, and put up their notes and 
 sketches, something, it should seem, had been forgot- 
 ten. A projection of themselves shall appear to h^unt 
 unfriended these scenes of happiness, a natural child 
 of fancy, begotten and forgotten unawares. Over the 
 whole field of our wanderings such fetches are still 
 travelling like indefatigable bagmen; but the imps of 
 Fontainebleau, as of all beloved spots, are very long of 
 life, and memory is piously unwilling to forget their 
 orphanage. If anywhere about that wood you meet 
 my airy bantling, greet him with tenderness. He was 
 a pleasant lad, though now abandoned. And when it 
 comes to your own turn to quit the forest may you 
 leave behind you such another; no Antony or Werther, 
 let us hope, no tearful whipster, but, as becomes this 
 not uncheerful and most active age in which we figure, 
 the child of happy hours. 
 
 No art, it may be said, was ever perfect, and not 
 many noble, that has not been mirthfully conceived. 
 And no man, it may be added, was ever anything 
 but a wet blanket and a cross to his companions who 
 boasted not a copious spirit of enjoyment. Whether 
 as man or artist, let the youth make haste to Fontaine- 
 bleau, and once there let him address himself to the 
 spirit of the place; he will learn more from exercise 
 than from studies, although both are necessary; and 
 if he can get into his heart the gaiety and inspiration 
 of the woods he will have gone far to undo the evil of 
 his sketches. A spirit once well strung up to the con- 
 cert-pitch of the primeval out-of-doors will hardly dare 
 to finish a study and magniloquently ticket it a picture. 
 The incommunicable thrill of things, that is the tuning- 
 
 IQO 
 
FONTAINEBLEAU 
 
 fork by which we test the flatness of our art. Here it 
 is that Nature teaches and condemns, and still spurs up 
 to further effort and new failure. Thus it is that she 
 sets us blushing at our ignorant and tepid works ; and 
 the more we find of these inspiring shocks the less 
 shall we be apt to love the literal in our productions. 
 In all sciences and senses the letter kills; and to-day, 
 when cackling human geese express their ignorant 
 condemnation of all studio pictures, it is a lesson most 
 useful to be learnt. Let the young painter go to Fon- 
 tainebleau, and while he stupefies himself with studies 
 that teach him the mechanical side of his trade, let him 
 walk in the great air, and be a servant of mirth, and 
 not pick and botanise, but wait upon the moods of 
 nature. So he will learn — or learn not to forget — the 
 poetry of life and earth, which, when he has acquired 
 his track, will save him from joyless reproduction. 
 
 [1882.] 
 
 lOl 
 
IV. EPILOGUE TO '' AN INLAND VOYAGE"^ 
 
 The country where they journeyed, that green, breezy 
 valley of the Loing, is one very attractive to cheerful and 
 solitary people. The weather was superb ; all night it 
 thundered and lightened, and the rain fell in sheets ; by 
 day, the heavens were cloudless, the sun fervent, the 
 air vigorous and pure. They walked separate: the 
 Cigarette plodding behind with some philosophy, the 
 lean Arethusa posting on ahead. Thus each enjoyed his 
 own reflections by the way ; each had perhaps time to 
 tire of them before he met his comrade at the designated 
 inn ; and the pleasures of society and solitude combined 
 to fill the day. The Arethusa carried in his knapsack 
 the works of Charles of Orleans, and employed some of 
 the hours of travel in the concoction of English ron- 
 dels. In this path, he must thus have preceded Mr. 
 Lang, Mr. Dobson, Mr. Henley, and all contemporary 
 roundeleers ; but for good reasons, he will be the last to 
 publish the result. The Cigarette walked burthened 
 with a volume of Michelet. And both these books, it 
 will be seen, played a part in the subsequent adventure. 
 
 The Arethusa was unwisely dressed. He is no pre- 
 cisian in attire ; but by all accounts, he was never so ill- 
 
 1 See An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1878. 
 192 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 inspired as on that tramp; having set forth indeed, upon 
 a moment's notice, from the most unfashionable spot in 
 Europe, Barbizon. On his head, he wore a smoking- 
 cap of Indian work, the gold lace pitifully frayed and 
 tarnished. A flannel shirt of an agreeable dark hue, 
 which the satirical called black ; a light tweed coat made 
 by a good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen trou- 
 sers and leathern gaiters completed his array. In person, 
 he is exceptionally lean ; and his face is not like those of 
 happier mortals, a certificate. For years he could not 
 pass a frontier or visit a bank without suspicion ; the 
 police everywhere, but in his native city, looked as- 
 kance upon him ; and (though I am sure it will not be 
 credited) he is actually denied admittance to the casino 
 of Monte Carlo. If you will imagine him, dressed as 
 above, stooping under his knapsack, walking nearly 
 five miles an hour with the folds of the ready-made 
 trousers fluttering about his spindle shanks, and still 
 looking eagerly round him as if in terror of pursuit — 
 the figure, when realised, is far from reassuring. When 
 Villon journeyed (perhaps by the same pleasant valley) 
 to his exile at Roussillon, I wonder if he had not some- 
 thing of the same appearance. Something of the same 
 preoccupation he had beyond a doubt, for he too must 
 have tinkered verses as he walked, with more success 
 than his successor. And if he had anything like the 
 same inspiring weather, the same nights of uproar, men 
 in armour rolling and resounding down the stairs of 
 heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the wild 
 bull's-eye of the storm flashing all night long into the 
 bare inn-chamber — the same sweet return of day, the 
 same unfathomable blue of noon, the same high-col- 
 
 103 
 
EPILOGUE TO ''AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 oured, halcyon eves — and above all if he had anything 
 like as good a comrade, anything like as keen a relish 
 for what he saw, and what he ate, and the rivers that 
 he bathed in, and the rubbish that he wrote, I would ex- 
 change estates to-day with the poor exile, and count 
 myself a gainer. 
 
 But there was another point of similarity between the 
 two journeys, for which the Arethusa was to pay dear: 
 both were gone upon in days of incomplete security. 
 It was not long after the Franco-Prussian war. Swiftly 
 as men forget, that country-side was still alive with tales 
 of uhlans, and outlying sentries, and hairbreadth *scapes 
 from the ignominious cord, and pleasant momentary 
 friendships between invader and invaded. A year, at 
 the most two years later, you might have tramped all 
 that country over and not heard one anecdote. And a 
 year or two later, you would — if you were a rather ill- 
 looking young man in nondescript array — have gone 
 your rounds in greater safety ; for along with more in- 
 teresting matter, the Prussian spy would have some- 
 what faded from men's imaginations. 
 
 For all that, our voyager had got beyond Chateau 
 Renard before he was conscious of arousing wonder. 
 On the road between that place and Chatillon-sur-Loing, 
 however, he encountered a rural postman ; they fell to- 
 gether in talk, and spoke of a variety of subjects ; but 
 through one and all, the postman was still visibly pre- 
 occupied, and his eyes were faithful to the Arethusa's 
 knapsack. At last, with mysterious roguishness, he 
 inquired what it contained, and on being answered, 
 shook his head with kindly incredulity. *' Non/' said 
 he, '' non, vous ave^ des portraits.'* And then with a 
 
 194 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 languishing appeal, '"Voyons, show me the portraits! " 
 It was some little while before the Arethusa, with a 
 shout of laughter, recognised his drift. By portraits he 
 meant indecent photographs; and in the Arethusa, an 
 austere and rising author, he thought to have identified 
 a pornographic colporteur. When countryfolk in France 
 have made up their minds as to a person's calling, ar- 
 gument is fruitless. Along all the rest of the way, the 
 postman piped and fluted meltinglv to get a sight of the 
 collection ; now he would upbraid, now he would rea- 
 son — "'yqyons, I will tell nobody"; then he tried cor- 
 ruption, and insisted on paying for a glass of wine; 
 and, at last, when their ways separated — ''Non/' said 
 he, "ce n*est pas Men de voire part. O non, ce n'est 
 pas hien." And shaking his head with quite a senti- 
 mental sense of injury, he departed unrefreshed. 
 
 On certain little difficulties encountered by the Are- 
 thusa at Chatillon-sur-Loing, I have not space to dwell ; 
 another Chatillon, of grislier memory, looms too near 
 at hand. But the next day, in a certain hamlet called 
 La Jussiere, he stopped to drink a glass of syrup in a 
 very poor, bare drinking shop. The hostess, a comely 
 woman, suckling a child, examined the traveller with 
 kindly and pitying eyes. " You are not of this depart- 
 ment.?*" she asked. The Arethusa told her he was 
 English. "Ah!" she said, surprised. "We have no 
 English. We have many Italians, however, and they 
 do very well ; they do not complain of the people of 
 hereabouts. An Englishman may do very well also; it 
 will be something new." Here was a dark saying, over 
 which the Arethusa pondered as he drank his grena- 
 dine; but when he rose and asked what was to pay, 
 
 195 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 the light came upon him in a flash. "'O, pour votis/' 
 replied the landlady, ''a halfpenny! " Pour vous ? By 
 heaven, she took him for a beggar! He paid his half- 
 penny, feeling that it were ungracious to correct her. 
 But when he was forth again upon the road, he became 
 vexed in spirit. The conscience is no gentleman, he is 
 a rabbinical fellow ; and his conscience told him he had 
 stolen the syrup. 
 
 That night the travellers slept in Gien; the next 
 day they passed the river and set forth (severally, as 
 their custom was) on a short stage through the green 
 plain upon the Berry side, to Chatillon-sur-Loire. It 
 was the first day of the shooting ; and the air rang with 
 the report of firearms and the admiring cries of sports- 
 men. Overhead the birds were in consternation, wheel- 
 ing in clouds, settling and re-arising. And yet with all 
 this bustle on either hand, the road itself lay solitary. 
 The Arethusa smoked a pipe beside a milestone, and I 
 remember he laid down very exactly all he was to do at 
 Chatillon : how he was to enjoy a cold plunge, to change 
 his shirt, and to await the Cigarette's arrival, in sublime 
 inaction, by the margin of the Loire. Fired by these 
 ideas, he pushed the more rapidly forward, and came, 
 early in the afternoon and in a breathing heat, to the 
 entering-in of that ill-fated town. Childe Roland to 
 the dark tower came. 
 
 A polite gendarme threw his shadow on the path. 
 
 ''^ Monsieur estvoyageur?'' he asked. 
 
 And the Arethusa, strong in his innocence, forgetful 
 of his vile attire, replied — I had almost said with gaiety : 
 *'So it would appear." 
 
 * ' His papers are in order .? " said the gendarme. And 
 
 1^6 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 when the Arethusa, with a slight change of voice, ad- 
 mitted he had none, he was informed (politely enough) 
 that he must appear before the Commissary. 
 
 The Commissary sat at a table in his bedroom, 
 stripped to the shirt and trousers, but still copiously 
 perspiring; and when he turned upon the prisoner a 
 large meaningless countenance, that was (like Bar- 
 dolph's) *'all whelks and bubuckles," the dullest might 
 have been prepared for grief. Here was a stupid man, 
 sleepy with the heat and fretful at the interruption, 
 whom neither appeal nor argument could reach. 
 
 The Commissary. You have no papers ? 
 
 The Arethusa. Not here. 
 
 The Commissary. Why ? 
 
 The Arethusa. I have left them behind in my valise. 
 
 The Commissary. You know, however, that it is for- 
 bidden to circulate without papers ? 
 
 The Arethusa. Pardon me : I am convinced of the 
 contrary. I am here on my rights as an English subject 
 by international treaty. 
 
 The Commissary {wttb scorn). You call yourself an 
 Englishman ? 
 
 The Arethusa. I do. 
 
 The Commissary. Humph. — What is your trade ? 
 
 The Arethusa. I am a Scotch Advocate. 
 
 The Commissary {with singular annoyance). A Scotch 
 advocate ! Do you then pretend to support yourself by 
 that in this department } 
 
 The Arethusa modestly disclaimed the pretension. 
 The Commissary had scored a point. 
 
 The Commissary. Why, then, do you travel ? 
 
 The Arethusa. I travel for pleasure. 
 
 197 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 The Commissary (pointing to the knapsack, and with 
 sublime incredulity). Avec ^a ? Voyei-vous, je suis 
 un homme intelligent ! (With that ? Look here, I am a 
 person of intelligence ! ) 
 
 The culprit remaining silent under this home thrust, 
 the Commissary relished his triumph for a while, and 
 then demanded (like the postman, but with what dif- 
 ferent expectations ! ) to see the contents of the knap- 
 sack. And here the Arethusa, not yet sufficiently awake 
 to his position, fell into a grave mistake. There was 
 little or no furniture in the room except the Commis- 
 sary's chair and table; and to facilitate matters, the 
 Arethusa (with all the innocence on earth) leant the 
 knapsack on a corner of the bed. The Commissary 
 fairly bounded from his seat; his face and neck flushed 
 past purple, almost into blue; and he screamed to lay 
 the desecrating object on the floor. 
 
 The knapsack proved to contain a change of shirts, 
 of shoes, of socks, and of linen trousers, a small dress- 
 ing-case, a piece of soap in one of the shoes, two vol- 
 umes of the Collection Jannet lettered Poesies de Charles 
 d' Orleans, a map, and a version book containing divers 
 notes in prose and the remarkable English roundels of 
 the voyager, still to this day unpublished : the Commis- 
 sary of Chatillon is the only living man who has clapped 
 an eye on these artistic trifles. He turned the assort- 
 ment over with a contumelious finger; it was plain 
 from his daintiness that he regarded the Arethusa and 
 all his belongings as the very temple of infection. Still 
 there was nothing suspicious about the map, nothing 
 really criminal except the roundels; as for Charles of 
 Orleans, to the ignorant mind of the prisoner, he seemed 
 
 198 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 as good as a certificate ; and it was supposed the farce 
 was nearly over. 
 
 The inquisitor resumed his seat. 
 
 The Commissary {after a pause). Eh bien,je vais vous 
 dire ce que vous etes. Vous etes aUemand et vous veneT^ 
 chanter a la foire. (Well, then, I will tell you what you 
 are. You are a German and have come to sing at the 
 fair.) 
 
 The Arethusa. Would you like to hear me sing } 1 
 believe I could convince you of the contrary. 
 
 The Commissary. Pas de plaisanterie, monsieur ! 
 
 The Arethusa. Well, sir, oblige me at least by look- 
 ing at this book. Here, I open it with my eyes shut. 
 Read one of these songs — read this one — and tell me, 
 you who are a man of intelligence, if it would be pos- 
 sible to sing it at a fair } 
 
 The Commissary {critically), Mais oui. Tres Men, 
 
 The Arethusa. Comment, monsieur ! What ! But 
 you do not observe it is antique. It is difficult to under- 
 stand, even for you and me; but for the audience at a 
 fair, it would be meaningless. 
 
 The Commissary {taking a pen). Enfin, il faut en 
 finir. What is your name } 
 
 The Arethusa {speaking with the swallowing vivacity 
 of the English). Robert-Louis-Stev'ns'n. 
 
 The Commissary {aghast). He! Qiioi? 
 
 The Arethusa {perceiving and improving his advan- 
 tage). Rob'rt-Lou's-Stev'ns'n. 
 
 The Commissary {after several conflicts with his pen). 
 Eh Men, il faut se passer du nom. (^a ne s'ecrit pas, 
 (Well, we must do without the name: it is unspella- 
 ble.) 
 
 199 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 The above is a rough summary of this momentous 
 conversation, in which I have been chiefly careful to 
 preserve the plums of the Commissary; but the remain- 
 der of the scene, perhaps because of his rising anger, 
 has left but little definite in the memory of the Arethusa. 
 The Commissary was not, I think, a practised literary 
 man ; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and 
 embarked on the composition of the proces-verbal, than 
 he became distinctly more uncivil and began to show a 
 predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: 
 ** You lie! " Several times the Arethusa let it pass, and 
 then suddenly flared up, refused to accept more insults 
 or to answer further questions, defied the Commissary 
 to do his worst, and promised him, if he did, that he 
 should bitterly repent it. Perhaps if he had worn this 
 proud front from the first, instead of beginning with a 
 sense of entertainment and then going on to argue, the 
 thing might have turned otherwise; for even at this 
 eleventh hour the Commissary was visibly staggered. 
 But it was too late ; he had been challenged ; the proces- 
 verbal was begun; and he again squared his elbows 
 over his writing, and the Arethusa was led forth a pris- 
 oner. 
 
 A step or two down the hot road stood the gendar- 
 merie. Thither was our unfortunate conducted, and 
 there he was bidden to empty forth the contents of his 
 pockets. A handkerchief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and 
 tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change : that 
 was all. Not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing 
 whether to identify or to condemn. The very gendarme 
 was appalled before such destitution. 
 
 **I regret," he said, '*that I arrested you, for I see 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 that you are no voyou. * ' And he promised him every 
 indulgence. 
 
 The Arethusa, thus encouraged, asked for his pipe. 
 That he was told was impossible, but if he chewed, he 
 might have some tobacco. He did not chew, however, 
 and asked instead to have his handkerchief 
 
 '' Non/' said the gendarme. '"Nous avons eu des 
 histoires de gens qui se sontpendm. ' ' (No, we have had 
 histories of people who hanged themselves.) 
 
 "What," cried the Arethusa. ''And is it for that 
 you refuse me my handkerchief? But see how much 
 more easily I could hang myself in my trousers!" 
 
 The man was struck by the novelty of the idea; but 
 he stuck to his colours, and only continued to repeat 
 vague olTers of service. 
 
 '* At least," said the Arethusa, ''be sure that you ar- 
 rest my comrade; he will follow me ere long on the 
 same road, and you can tell him by the sack upon his 
 shoulders." 
 
 This promised, the prisoner was led round into the 
 back court of the building, a cellar door was opened, he 
 was motioned down the stair, and bolts grated and 
 chains clanged behind his descending person. 
 
 The philosophic and still more the imaginative mind 
 is apt to suppose itself prepared for any mortal accident. 
 Prison, among other ills, was one that had been often 
 faced by the undaunted Arethusa. Even as he went 
 down the stairs, he was telling himself that here was a 
 famous occasion for a roundel, and that like the com- 
 mitted linnets of the tuneful cavalier, he too would 
 make his prison musical. I will tell the truth at once : 
 the roundel was never written, or it should be printed 
 
 201 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 in this place, to raise a smile. Two reasons interfered : 
 the first moral, the second physical. 
 
 It is one of the curiosities of human nature, that al- 
 though all men are liars, they can none of them bear to 
 be told so of themselves. To get and take the lie w^ith 
 equanimity is a stretch beyond the stoic ; and the Are- 
 thusa, who had been surfeited upon that insult, was 
 blazing inwardly with a white heat of smothered wrath. 
 But the physical had also its part. The cellar in which 
 he was confined was some feet underground, and it was 
 only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aperture high up 
 in the wall and smothered in the leaves of a green vine. 
 The walls were of naked masonry, the floor of bare 
 earth ; by way of furniture there was an earthenware 
 basin, a water-jug, and a wooden bedstead with a blue- 
 gray cloak for bedding. To be taken from the hot air 
 of a summer's afternoon, the reverberation of the road 
 and the stir of rapid exercise, and plunged into the 
 gloom and damp of this receptacle for vagabonds, 
 struck an instant chill upon the Arethusa's blood. Now 
 see in how small a matter a hardship may consist : the 
 floor was exceedingly uneven underfoot, with the very 
 spade-marks, I suppose, of the labourers who dug the 
 foundations of the barrack; and what with the poor 
 twilight and the irregular surface, walking was impos- 
 sible. The caged author resisted for a good while; but 
 the chill of the place struck deeper and deeper; and at 
 length, with such reluctance as you may fancy, he was 
 driven to climb upon the bed and wrap himself in the 
 public covering. There, then, he lay upon the verge 
 of shivering, plunged in semi-darkness, wound in a 
 garment whose touch he dreaded like the plague, and 
 
 202 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 (in a spirit far removed from resignation) telling the roll 
 of the insults he had just received. These are not cir- 
 cumstances favourable to the muse. 
 
 Meantime (to look at the upper surface where the 
 sun was still shining and the guns of sportsmen were 
 still noisy through the tufted plain) the Cigarette was 
 drawing near at his more philosophic pace. In those 
 days of liberty and health he was the constant partner 
 of the Arethusa, and had ample opportunity to share in 
 that gentleman's disfavour with the police. Many a 
 bitter bowl had he partaken of with that disastrous 
 comrade. He was himself a man born to float easily 
 through life, his face and manner artfully recommending 
 him to all. There was but one suspicious circumstance 
 he could not carry off, and that was his companion. 
 He will not readily forget the Commissary in what is 
 ironically called the free town of Frankfort-on-the-Main ; 
 nor the Franco-Belgian frontier; nor the inn at La Fere; 
 last, but not least, he is pretty certain to remember 
 Chatillon-sur-Loire. 
 
 At the town entry, the gendarme culled him like a 
 wayside flower; and a moment later, two persons, in a 
 high state of surprise, were confronted in the Commis- 
 sary's office. For if the Cigarette was surprised to be 
 arrested, the Commissary was no less taken aback by the 
 appearance and appointments of his captive. Here was 
 a man about whom there could be no mistake : a man 
 of an unquestionable and unassailable manner, in apple- 
 pie order, dressed not with neatness merely but elegance, 
 ready with his passport, at a word, and well supplied 
 with money : a man the Commissary would have dofTed 
 his hat to on chance upon the highway ; and this beau 
 
 203 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 cavalier unblushingly claimed the Arethusa for his com- 
 rade ! The conclusion of the interview was foregone ; 
 of its humours, I remember only one. *' Baronet?" de- 
 manded the magistrate, glancing up from the passport. 
 " Alors, monsieur, votes etes lefils d'un baron? " And 
 when the Cigarette (his one mistake throughout the in- 
 terview) denied the soft impeachment, '"Alors," from 
 the Commissary, '' ce n' est pas votre passeportl" But 
 these were ineffectual thunders; he never dreamed of 
 laying hands upon the Cigarette ; presently he fell into 
 a mood of unrestrained admiration, gloating over the 
 contents of the knapsack, commending our friend's 
 tailor. Ah, what an honoured guest was the Commis- 
 sary entertaining ! what suitable clothes he wore for the 
 warm weather ! what beautiful maps, what an attractive 
 work of history he carried in his knapsack ! You are to 
 understand there was now but one point of difference 
 between them : what was to be done with the Arethusa ? 
 the Cigarette demanding his release, the Commissary 
 still claiming him as the dungeon's own. Now it chanced 
 that the Cigarette had passed some years of his life in 
 Egypt, where he had made acquaintance with two very 
 bad things, cholera morbus and pashas ; and in the eye 
 of the Commissary, as he fingered the volume of Mi- 
 chelet, it seemed to our traveller there was something 
 Turkish. I pass over this lightly ; it is highly possible 
 there was some misunderstanding, highly possible that 
 the Commissary (charmed with his visitor) supposed 
 the attraction to be mutual and took for an act of grow- 
 ing friendship what the Cigarette himself regarded as a 
 bribe. And at any rate, was there ever a bribe more 
 singular than an odd volume of Michelet's history ? The. 
 
 204 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 work was promised him for the morrow, before our 
 departure; and presently after, either because he had 
 his price, or to show that he was not the man to be be- 
 hind in friendly offices — "'Eh bien/' he said, "" je sup- 
 pose qu'il faut Idcher voire camarade. ' ' And he tore 
 up that feast of humour, the unfinished proces-verbal. 
 Ah, if he had only torn up instead the Arethusa's roun- 
 dels! There were many works burnt at Alexandria, 
 there are many treasured in the British Museum, that I 
 could better spare than the proces-verbal of Chatillon. 
 Poor bubuckled Commissary ! I begin to be sorry that 
 he never had his Michelet: perceiving in him fine human 
 traits, a broad-based stupidity, a gusto in his magisterial 
 functions, a taste for letters, a ready admiration for the 
 admirable. And if he did not admire the Arethusa, he 
 was not alone in that. 
 
 To the imprisoned one, shivering under the public 
 covering, there came suddenly a noise of bolts and 
 chains. He sprang to his feet, ready to welcome a com- 
 panion in calamity ; and instead of that, the door was 
 flung wide, the friendly gendarme appeared above in 
 the strong daylight, and with a magnificent gesture 
 (being probably a student of the drama) — ''Vom etes 
 Hbre! " he said. None too soon for the Arethusa. I 
 doubt if he had been half an hour imprisoned; but by 
 the watch in a man's brain (which was the only watch 
 he carried) he should have been eight times longer; and 
 he passed forth with ecstasy up the cellar stairs into the 
 healing warmth of the afternoon sun ; and the breath of 
 the earth came as sweet as a cow's into his nostril ; and 
 he heard again (and could have laughed for pleasure) the 
 concord of delicate noises that we call the hum of life, 
 
 205 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 And here it might be thought that my history ended ; 
 but not so, this was an act-drop and not the curtain. 
 Upon what followed in front of the barrack, since there 
 was a lady in the case, I scruple to expatiate. The wife 
 of the Marechal-des-logis was a handsome woman, and 
 yet the Arethusa was not sorry to be gone from her so- 
 ciety. Something of her image, cool as a peach on that 
 hot afternoon, still lingers in his memory : yet more of 
 her conversation. ''You have there a very fine par- 
 lour," said the poor gentleman. — " Ah," said Madame 
 la Marechale (des-Iogis), "you are very well acquainted 
 with such parlours! " And you should have seen with 
 what a hard and scornful eye she measured the vaga- 
 bond before her ! I do not think he ever hated the Com- 
 missary ; but before that interview was at an end, he 
 hated Madame la Marechale. His passion (as I am led 
 to understand by one who was present) stood confessed 
 in a burning eye, a pale cheek, and a trembling utter- 
 ance ; Madame meanwhile tasting the joys of the mata- 
 dor, goading him with barbed words and staring him 
 coldly down. 
 
 It was certainly good to be away from this lady, and 
 better still to sit down to an excellent dinner in the inn. 
 Here, too, the despised travellers scraped acquaintance 
 with their next neighbour, a gentleman of these parts, 
 returned from the day's sport, who had the good taste 
 to find pleasure in their society. The dinner at an end, 
 the gentleman proposed the acquaintance should be 
 ripened in the cafe. 
 
 The cafe was crowded with sportsmen conclamantly 
 explaining to each other and the world the smallness of 
 their bags. About the centre of the room, the Ciga- 
 
 206 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 rette and the Arethusa sat with their new acquaintance ; 
 a trio very well pleased, for the travellers (after their 
 late experience) were greedy of consideration, and their 
 sportsman rejoiced in a pair of patient listeners. Sud- 
 denly the glass door flew open with a crash ; the Mare- 
 chal-des-logis appeared in the interval, gorgeously belted 
 and befrogged, entered without salutation, strode up the 
 room with a clang of spurs and weapons, and disap- 
 peared through a door at the far end. Close at his heels 
 followed the Arethusa's gendarme of the afternoon, im- 
 itating, with a nice shade of difference, the imperial 
 bearing of his chief ; only, as he passed, he struck 
 lightly with his open hand on the shoulder of his late 
 captive, and with that ringing, dramatic utterance of 
 which he had the secret — '" Suive:(^! " said he. 
 
 The arrest of the members, the oath of the Tennis 
 Court, the signing of the declaration of independence, 
 Mark Antony's oration, all the brave scenes of history, 
 I conceive as having been not unlike that evening in the 
 cafe at Chatillon. Terror breathed upon the assembly. 
 A moment later, when the Arethusa had followed his 
 recaptors into the farther part of the house, the Ciga- 
 rette found himself alone with his coffee in a ring of 
 empty chairs and tables, all the lusty sportsmen huddled 
 into corners, all their clamorous voices hushed in whis- 
 pering, all their eyes shooting at him furtively as at a 
 leper. 
 
 And the Arethusa } Well, he had a long, sometimes 
 a trying, interview in the back kitchen. The Marechal- 
 des-logis, who was a very handsome man, and I believe 
 both intelligent and honest, had no clear opinion on the 
 case. He thought the Commissary had done wrong, 
 
 207 
 
EPILOGUE TO "AN INLAND VOYAGE" 
 
 but he did not wish to get his subordinates into trouble ; 
 and he proposed this, that, and the other, to all of which 
 the Arethusa (with a growing sense of his position) 
 demurred. 
 
 "In short," suggested the Arethusa, **you want to 
 wash your hands of further responsibility ? Well, then, 
 let me go to Paris.'* 
 
 The Marechal-des-logis looked at his watch. 
 
 ** You may leave," said he, **by the ten o'clock train 
 for Paris." 
 
 And at noon the next day the travellers were telling 
 their misadventure in the dining-room at Siron's. 
 
 ao8 
 
V. RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 I. THE COAST OF FIFE 
 
 Many writers have vigorously described the pains of 
 the first day or the first night at school; to a boy of 
 any enterprise, I believe, they are more often agreeably 
 exciting. Misery — or at least misery unrelieved — is 
 confined to another period, to the days of suspense and 
 the '* dreadful looking-for" of departure; when the old 
 life is running to an end, and the new life, with its new 
 interests, not yet begun ; and to the pain of an immi- 
 nent parting, there is added the unrest of a state of con- 
 scious pre-existence. The area-railings, the beloved 
 shop-window, the smell of semi-suburban tanpits, the 
 song of the church-bells upon a Sunday, the thin, high 
 voices of compatriot children in a playing-field — what 
 a sudden, what an overpowering pathos breathes to him 
 from each familiar circumstance ! The assaults of sor- 
 row come not from within, as it seems to him, but from 
 without. ] was proud and glad to go to school ; had I 
 been let alone, I could have borne up like any hero ; but 
 there was around me, in all my native town, a conspir- 
 acy of lamentation : '* Poor little boy, he is going away 
 — unkind little boy, he is going to leave us " ; so the un- 
 spoken burthen followed me as I went, with yearning 
 and reproach. And at length, one melancholy afternoon 
 
 209 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 in the early autumn, and at a place where it seems to 
 me, looking back, it must be always autumn and gen- 
 erally Sunday, there came suddenly upon the face of all 
 I saw — the long empty road, the lines of the tall houses, 
 the church upon the hill, the woody hillside garden — 
 a look of such a piercing sadness that my heart died ; 
 and seating myself on a door-step, I shed tears of mis- 
 erable sympathy. A benevolent cat cumbered me the 
 while with consolations — we two were alone in all that 
 was visible of the London Road : two poor waifs who 
 had each tasted sorrow — and she fawned upon the 
 weeper, and gambolled for his entertainment, watching 
 the effect, it seemed, with motherly eyes. 
 
 For the sake of the cat, God bless her! I confessed at 
 home the story of my weakness ; and so it comes about 
 that I owed a certain journey, and the reader owes the 
 present paper, to a cat in the London Road. It was 
 judged, if I had thus brimmed over on the public high- 
 way, some change of scene was (in the medical sense) 
 indicated ; my father at the time was visiting the harbour 
 lights of Scotland ; and it was decided he should take 
 me along with him around a portion of the shores of 
 Fife ; my first professional tour, my first journey in the 
 complete character of man, without the help of petti- 
 coats. 
 
 The Kingdom of Fife (that royal province) may be 
 observed by the curious on the map, occupying a tongue 
 of land between the firths of Forth and Tay. It may be 
 continually seen from many parts of Edinburgh (among 
 the rest, from the windows of my father's house) dying 
 away into the distance and the easterly baar with one 
 smoky seaside town beyond another, or in winter print- 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 ing on the gray heaven some glittering hill-tops. It has 
 no beauty to recommend it, being a low, sea-salted, 
 wind- vexed promontory; trees very rare, except (as 
 common on the east coast) along the dens of rivers ; the 
 fields well cultivated, I understand, but not lovely to 
 the eye. It is of the coast I speak : the interior may be 
 the garden of Eden. History broods over that part of 
 the world like the easterly haar. Even on the map, its 
 long row of Gaelic place-names bear testimony to an 
 old and settled race. Of these little towns, posted 
 along the shore as close as sedges, each with its bit of 
 harbour, its old weather-beaten church or public build- 
 ing, its flavour of decayed prosperity and decaying fish, 
 not one but has its legend, quaint or tragic : Dunferm- 
 line, in whose royal towers the king may be still ob- 
 served (in the ballad) drinking the blood-red wine; 
 somnolent Inverkeithing, once the quarantine of Leith ; 
 Aberdour, hard by the monastic islet of Inchcolm, hard 
 by Donibristle where the ''bonny face was spoiled"; 
 Burntisland where, when Paul Jones was off the coast, 
 the Reverend Mr. Shirra had a table carried between 
 tide-marks, and publicly prayed against the rover at the 
 pitch of his voice and his broad lowland dialect; King- 
 horn, where Alexander "brak's neckbane" and left 
 Scotland to the English wars; Kirkcaldy, where the 
 witches once prevailed extremely and sank tall ships 
 and honest mariners in the North Sea; Dysart, famous 
 — well famous at least to me for the Dutch ships that 
 lay in its harbour, painted like toys and with pots of 
 flowers and cages of song-birds in the cabin windows, 
 and for one particular Dutch skipper who would sit all 
 day in slippers on the break of the poop, smoking a 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 long German pipe; Wemyss (pronounce Weems) with 
 its bat-haunted caves, where the Chevalier Johnstone, 
 on his flight from Culloden, passed a night of supersti- 
 tious terrors ; Leven, a bald, quite modern place, sacred 
 to summer visitors, whence there has gone but yester- 
 day the tall figure and the white locks of the last En- 
 glishman in Delhi, my uncle Dr. Balfour, who was still 
 walking his hospital rounds, while the troopers from 
 Meerut clattered and cried ' ' Deen, Deen " along the streets 
 of the imperial city, and Willoughby mustered his hand- 
 ful of heroes at the magazine, and the nameless brave 
 one in the telegraph office was perhaps already finger- 
 ing his last despatch; and just a little beyond Leven, 
 Largo Law and the smoke of Largo town mounting 
 about its feet, the town of Alexander Selkirk, better 
 known under the name of Robinson Crusoe. So on, 
 the list might be pursued (only for private reasons, 
 which the reader will shortly have an opportunity to 
 guess) by St. Monance, and Pittenweem, and the two 
 Anstruthers, and Cellardyke, and Crail, where Primate 
 Sharpe was once a humble and innocent country min- 
 ister : on to the heel of the land, to Fife Ness, overlooked 
 by a sea wood of matted elders and the quaint old man- 
 sion of Balcomie, itself overlooking but the breach or 
 the quiescence of the deep — the Carr Rock beacon ris- 
 ing close in front, and as night draws in, the star of the 
 Inchcape reef springing up on the one hand, and the 
 star of the May Island on the other, and farther off yet 
 a third and a greater on the craggy foreland of St. Abb's. 
 And but a little way round the corner of the land, im- 
 minent itself above the sea, stands the gem of the 
 province and the light of mediaeval Scotland, St. An- 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 drews, where the great Cardinal Beaton held garrison 
 against the world, and the second of the name and title 
 perished (as you may read in Knox's jeering narrative) 
 under the knives of true-blue Protestants, and to this 
 day (after so many centuries) the current voice of the 
 professor is not hushed. 
 
 Here it was that my first tour of inspection began, 
 early on a bleak easterly morning. There was a crash- 
 ing run of sea upon the shore, 1 recollect, and my father 
 and the man of the harbour light must sometimes raise 
 their voices to be audible. Perhaps it is from this 
 circumstance, that I always imagine St. Andrews to be 
 an ineffectual seat of learning, and the sound of the east 
 wind and the bursting surf to linger in its drowsy class- 
 rooms and confound the utterance of the professor, until 
 teacher and taught are alike drowned in oblivion, and 
 only the sea-gull beats on the windows and the draught 
 of the sea-air rustles in the pages of the open lecture. 
 But upon all this, and the romance of St. Andrews in 
 general, the reader must consult the works of Mr. An- 
 drew Lang ; who has written of it but the other day in 
 his dainty prose and with his incommunicable humour, 
 and long ago in one of his best poems, with grace, and 
 local truth and a note of unaffected pathos. Mr. Lang 
 knows all about the romance, 1 say, and the educational 
 advantages, but I doubt if he had turned his attention 
 to the harbour lights; and it may be news even to him, 
 that in the year 1863 their case was pitiable. Hanging 
 about with the east wind humming in my teeth, and 
 my hands (1 make no doubt) in my pockets, I looked 
 for the first time upon that tragi-comedy of the visiting 
 engineer which I have seen so often re-enacted on a 
 
 213 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 more important stage. Eighty years ago, I find my 
 grandfather writing: "It is the most painful thing that 
 can occur to me to have a correspondence of this kind 
 with any of the keepers, and when I come to the Light 
 House, instead of having the satisfaction to meet them 
 with approbation and welcome their Family, it is dis- 
 tressing when one is obliged to put on a most angry 
 countenance and demeanour." This painful obligation 
 has been hereditary in my race. I have myself, on a 
 perfectly amateur and unauthorised inspection of Turn- 
 berry Point, bent my brows upon the keeper on the 
 question of storm-panes ; and felt a keen pang of self- 
 reproach, when we went down stairs again and I found 
 he was making a coffm for his infant child; and then 
 regained my equanimity with the thought that I had 
 done the man a service, and when the proper inspector 
 came, he would be readier with his panes. The human 
 race is perhaps credited with more duplicity than it de- 
 serves. The visitation of a lighthouse at least is a busi- 
 ness of the most transparent nature. As soon as the 
 boat grates on the shore, and the keepers step forward 
 in their uniformed coats, the very slouch of the fellows' 
 shoulders tells their story, and the engineer may begin 
 at once to assume his ' ' angry countenance. " Certainly 
 the brass of the handrail will be clouded; and if the 
 brass be not immaculate, certainly all will be to match 
 — the reflectors scratched, the spare lamp unready, the 
 storm-panes in the storehouse. If a light is not rather 
 more than middling good, it will be radically bad. Medi- 
 ocrity (except in literature) appears to be unattainable 
 by man. But of course the unfortunate of St. Andrews 
 was only an amateur, he was not in the Service, he had 
 
 ai4 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 no uniform coat, he was (I believe) a plumber by his 
 trade and stood (in the mediaeval phrase) quite out of 
 the danger of my father; but he had a painful inter- 
 view for all that, and perspired extremely. 
 
 From St. Andrews, we drove over Magus Muir. My 
 father had announced we were **to post," and the 
 phrase called up in my hopeful mind visions of top- 
 boots and the pictures in Rowlandson's Dance of Death; 
 but it was only a jingling cab that came to the inn door, 
 such as I had driven in a thousand times at the low 
 price of one shilling on the streets of Edinburgh. Be- 
 yond this disappointment, I remember nothing of that 
 drive. It is a road I have often travelled, and of not 
 one of these journeys do I remember any single trait. 
 The fact has not been suffered to encroach on the 
 truth of the imagination. I still see Magus Muir two 
 hundred years ago; a desert place, quite uninclosed; 
 in the midst, the primate's carriage fleeing at the gallop; 
 the assassins loose-reined in pursuit, Burley Balfour, 
 pistol in hand, among the first. No scene of history has 
 ever written itself so deeply on my mind; not because 
 Balfour, that questionable zealot, was an ancestral cousin 
 of my own ; not because of the pleadings of the victim 
 and his daughter; not even because ofthe live bum-bee 
 that flew out of Sharpe's 'bacco-box, thus clearly indi- 
 cating his complicity with Satan; nor merely because, 
 as it was after all a crime of a fine religious flavour, it 
 figured in Sunday books and afforded a grateful relief 
 from Ministering Children or the Memoirs of Mrs. 
 Katharine IVinslowe. The figure that always fixed my 
 attention is that of Hackston of Rathillet, sitting in the 
 saddle with his cloak about his mouth, and through all 
 
 215 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 that long, bungling, vociferous hurly-burly, revolving 
 privately a case of conscience. He would take no hand 
 in the deed, because he had a private spite against the 
 victim, and ''that action " must be sullied with no sug- 
 gestion of a worldly motive; on the other hand, ''that 
 action," in itself was highly justified, he had cast in his 
 lot with " the actors," and he must stay there, inactive 
 but publicly sharing the responsibility. "You are a 
 gentleman — you will protect me! " cried the wounded 
 old man, crawling towards him. "Iwill never lay a 
 hand on you," said Hackston, and put his cloak about 
 his mouth. It is an old temptation with me, to pluck 
 away that cloak and see the face — to open that bosom 
 and to read the heart. With incomplete romances 
 about Hackston, the drawers of my youth were lum- 
 bered. I read him up in every printed book that I could 
 lay my hands on. I even dug among the Wodrow 
 manuscripts, sitting shame-faced in the very room where 
 my hero had been tortured two centuries before, and 
 keenly conscious of my youth in the midst of other and 
 (as I fondly thought) more gifted students. All was 
 vain : that he had passed a riotous nonage, that he was 
 a zealot, that he twice displayed (compared with his 
 grotesque companions) some tincture of soldierly reso- 
 lution and even of military common sense, and that he 
 figured memorably in the scene on Magus Muir, so 
 much and no more could 1 make out. But whenever I 
 cast my eyes backward, it is to see him like a landmark 
 on the plains of history, sitting with his cloak about his 
 mouth, inscrutable. How small a thing creates an im- 
 mortality ! I do not think he can have been a man en- 
 tirely commonplace ; but had he not thrown his cloak 
 
 216 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 about his mouth, or had the witnesses forgot to chroni- 
 cle the action, he would not thus have haunted the 
 imagination of my boyhood, and to-day he would 
 scarce delay me for a paragraph. An incident, at once 
 romantic and dramatic, which at once awakes the judg- 
 ment and makes a picture for the eye, how little do we 
 realise its perdurable power ! Perhaps no one does so but 
 the author, just as none but he appreciates the influence 
 of jingling words; so that he looks on upon life, with 
 something of a covert smile, seeing people led by what 
 they fancy to be thoughts and what are really the ac- 
 customed artifices of his own trade, or roused by what 
 they take to be principles and are really picturesque ef- 
 fects. In a pleasant book about a school-class club. 
 Colonel Fergusson has recently told a little anecdote. A 
 "Philosophical Society" was formed by some Acad- 
 emy boys — among them, Colonel Fergusson himself, 
 Fleeming Jenkin, and Andrew Wilson, the Christian 
 Buddhist and author of The Abode of Snow. Before 
 these learned pundits, one member laid the following 
 ingenious problem: ''What would be the result of 
 putting a pound of potassium in a pot of porter ? " ''I 
 should think there would be a number of interesting 
 bi-products," said a smatterer at my elbow; but for me 
 the tale itself has a bi-product, and stands as a type of 
 much that is most human. For this inquirer who con- 
 ceived himself to burn with a zeal entirely chemical, was 
 really immersed in a design of a quite different nature; 
 unconsciously to his own recently breeched intelligence, 
 he was engaged in literature. Putting, pound, potas- 
 sium, pot, porter; initial p, mediant t — that was his 
 idea, poor little boy ! So with politics and that which 
 
 217 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 excites men in the present, so with history and that 
 which rouses them in the past : there lie at the root of 
 what appears, most serious unsuspected elements. 
 
 The triple town of Anstruther Wester, Anstruther 
 Easter, and Cellardyke, all three Royal Burghs — or two 
 Royal Burghs and a less distinguished suburb, I forget 
 which — lies continuously along the seaside, and boasts 
 of either two or three separate parish churches, and 
 either two or three separate harbours. These ambigui- 
 ties are painful; but the fact is (although it argue me 
 uncultured), I am but poorly posted upon Cellardyke. 
 My business lay in the two Anstruthers. A tricklet of 
 a stream divides them, spanned by a bridge; and over 
 the bridge at the time of my knowledge, the celebrated 
 Shell House stood outpost on the west. This had been 
 the residence of an agreeable eccentric; during his fond 
 tenancy, he had illustrated the outer walls, as high (if I 
 remember rightly) as the roof, with elaborate patterns 
 and pictures, and snatches of verse in the vein of exegi 
 monumentum ; shells and pebbles, artfully contrasted 
 and conjoined, had been his medium ; and I like to think 
 of him standing back upon the bridge, when all was 
 finished, drinking in the general effect and (like Gibbon) 
 already lamenting his employment. 
 
 The same bridge saw another sight in the seven- 
 teenth century. Mr. Thomson, the ''curat" of An- 
 struther Easter, was a man highly obnoxious to the 
 devout: in the first place, because he was a ''curat"; 
 in the second place, because he was a person of irregular 
 and scandalous life; and in the third place, because he 
 was generally suspected of dealings with the Enemy of 
 Man. These three disqualifications, in the popular lit- 
 
 218 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 erature of the time, go hand in hand ; but the end of 
 Mr. Thomson was a thing quite by itself, and in the 
 proper phrase, a manifest judgment. He had been at a 
 friend's house in Anstruther Wester, where (and else- 
 where, I suspect,) he had partaken of the bottle; in- 
 deed, to put the thing in our cold modern way, the 
 reverend gentleman was on the brink of delirium tre- 
 mens. It was a dark night, it seems; a little lassie 
 came carrying a lantern to fetch the curate home ; and 
 away they went down the street of Anstruther Wester, 
 the lantern swinging a bit in the child's hand, the barred 
 lustre tossing up and down along the front of slumber- 
 ing houses, and Mr. Thomson not altogether steady on 
 his legs nor (to all appearance) easy in his mind. The 
 pair had reached the middle of the bridge when (as I 
 conceive the scene) the poor tippler started in some base- 
 less fear and looked behind him; the child, already 
 shaken by the minister's strange behaviour, started also ; 
 in so doing, she would jerk the lantern; and for the 
 space of a moment the lights and the shadows would 
 be all confounded. Then it was that to the unhinged 
 toper and the twittering child, a huge bulk of blackness 
 seemed to sweep down, to pass them close by as they 
 stood upon the bridge, and to vanish on the farther side 
 in the general darkness of the night. '' Plainly the devil 
 came for Mr. Thomson!" thought the child. What 
 Mr. Thomson thought himself, we have no ground of 
 knowledge ; but he fell upon his knees in the midst of 
 the bridge like a man praying. On the rest of the jour- 
 ney to the manse, history is silent; but when they came 
 to the door, the poor caitiff, taking the lantern from the 
 child, looked upon her with so lost a countenance that 
 
 219 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 her little courage died within her, and she fled home 
 screaming to her parents. Not a soul would venture 
 out; all that night, the minister dwelt alone with his 
 terrors in the manse; and when the day dawned, and 
 men made bold to go about the streets, they found the 
 devil had come indeed for Mr. Thomson. 
 
 This manse of Anstruther Easter has another and a 
 more cheerful association. It was early in the morning, 
 about a century before the days of Mr. Thomson, that 
 his predecessor was called out of bed to welcome a 
 Grandee of Spain, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, just 
 landed in the harbour underneath. But sure there was 
 never seen a more decayed grandee; sure there was 
 never a duke welcomed from a stranger place of exile. 
 Half-way between Orkney and Shetland, there lies a cer- 
 tain isle; on the one hand the Atlantic, on the other 
 the North Sea, bombard its pillared cliffs; sore-eyed, 
 short-living, inbred fishers and their families herd in its 
 few huts ; in the graveyard pieces of wreck-wood stand 
 for monuments ; there is nowhere a more inhospitable 
 spot. Belle- Isle-en-Mer — Fair-Isle-at-Sea — that is a 
 name that has always rung in my mind's ear like music; 
 but the only ''Fair Isle" on which I ever set my foot, 
 was this unhomely, rugged turret-top of submarine 
 sierras. Here, when his ship was broken, my lord Duke 
 joyfully got ashore; here for long months he and cer- 
 tain of his men were harboured ; and it was from this 
 durance that he landed at last to be welcomed (as well 
 as such a papist deserved, no doubt) by the godly in- 
 cumbent of Anstruther Easter ; and after the Fair Isle, 
 what a fine city must that have appeared ! and after the 
 island diet, what a hospitable spot the minister's table! 
 
 220 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 And yet he must have lived on friendly terms with his 
 outlandish hosts. For to this day there still survives a 
 relic of the long winter evenings when the sailors of the 
 great Armada crouched about the hearths of the Fair- 
 Islanders, the planks of their own lost galleon perhaps 
 lighting up the scene, and the gale and the surf that beat 
 about the coast contributing their melancholy voices. 
 All the folk of the north isles are great artificers of knit- 
 ting: the Fair-Islanders alone dye their fabrics in the 
 Spanish manner. To this day, gloves and nightcaps, 
 innocently decorated, may be seen for sale in the Shet- 
 land warehouse at Edinburgh, or on the Fair Isle itself 
 in the catechist's house ; and to this day, they tell the 
 story of the Duke of Medina Sidonia's adventure. 
 
 It would seem as if the Fair Isle had some attraction 
 for *' persons of quality." When I landed there myself, 
 an elderly gentleman, unshaved, poorly attired, his 
 shoulders wrapped in a plaid, was seen walking to and 
 fro, with a book in his hand, upon the beach. He paid 
 no heed to our arrival, which we thought a strange thing 
 in itself; but when one of the officers of the Pharos, 
 passing narrowly by him, observed his book to be a 
 Greek Testament, our wonder and interest took a higher 
 flight. The catechist was cross-examined ; he said the 
 gentleman had been put across some time before in Mr. 
 Bruce of Sumburgh's schooner, the only link between 
 the Fair Isle and the rest of the world ; and that he held 
 services and was doing " good." So much came glibly 
 enough ; but when pressed a little farther, the catechist 
 displayed embarrassment. A singular diffidence ap- 
 peared upon his face: ''They tell me," said he, in low 
 tones, ''that he's a lord." And a lord he was; a peer 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 of the realm pacing that inhospitable beach with his 
 Greek Testament, and his plaid about his shoulders, set 
 upon doing good, as he understood it, worthy man! 
 And his grandson, a good-looking little boy, much bet- 
 ter dressed than the lordly evangelist, and speaking with 
 a silken English accent very foreign to the scene, accom- 
 panied me for a while in my exploration of the island. 
 I suppose this little fellow is now my lord, and wonder 
 how much he remembers of the Fair Isle. Perhaps not 
 much ; for he seemed to accept very quietly his savage 
 situation ; and under such guidance, it is like that this 
 was not his first nor yet his last adventure. 
 
 222 
 
VI. RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 II. THE EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Anstruther is a place sacred to the Muse; she in- 
 spired (really to a considerable extent) Tennant's ver- 
 nacular poem Anst'er Fair; and I have there waited 
 upon her myself with much devotion. This was when 
 I came as a young man to glean engineering experience 
 from the building of the breakwater. What I gleaned, 
 I am sure I do not know ; but indeed I had already my 
 own private determination to be an author ; I loved the 
 art of words and the appearances of life ; and travellers, 
 and headers, and rubble, and polished ashlar, and pierrcs 
 per dues, and even the thrilling question of the string- 
 course, interested me only (if they interested me at all) 
 as properties for some possible romance or as words to 
 add to my vocabulary. To grow a little catholic is the 
 compensation of years; youth is one-eyed ; and in those 
 days, though I haunted the breakwater by day, and 
 even loved the place for the sake of the sunshine, the 
 thrilling seaside air, the wash of waves on the sea-face, 
 the green glimmer of the divers' helmets far below, and 
 the musical chinking of the masons, my one genuine 
 preoccupation lay elsewhere, and my only industry was 
 in the hours when I was not on duty. I lodged with 
 a certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade ; and there, 
 
 223 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 as soon as dinner was despatched, in a chamber scented 
 with dry rose-leaves, drew in my chair to the table and 
 proceeded to pour forth literature, at such a speed, and 
 with such intimations of early death and immortality, as 
 I now look back upon with wonder. Then it was that 
 I wrote yoces Fidelium, a series of dramatic monologues 
 in verse ; then that I indited the bulk of a covenanting 
 novel — like so many others, never finished. Late I sat 
 into the night, toiling (as I thought) under the very dart 
 of death, toiling to leave a memory behind me. 1 fee! 
 moved to thrust aside the curtain of the years, to hail 
 that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap 
 Voces Fidelium on the fire before he goes ; so clear does 
 he appear before me, sitting there between his candles 
 in the rose-scented room and the late night; so ridiculous 
 a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does the fool present! 
 But he was driven to his bed at last without miraculous 
 intervention; and the manner of his driving sets the 
 last touch upon this eminently youthful business. The 
 weather was then so warm that I must keep the win- 
 dows open ; the night without was populous with moths. 
 As the late darkness deepened, my literary tapers bea- 
 coned forth more brightly ; thicker and thicker came the 
 dusty night-fliers, to gyrate for one brilliant instant round 
 the flame and fall in agonies upon my paper. Flesh and 
 blood could not endure the spectacle ; to capture immor- 
 tality was doubtless a noble enterprise, but not to cap- 
 ture it at such a cost of suffering; and out would go the 
 candles, and off would I go to bed in the darkness, rag- 
 ing to think that the blow might fall on the morrow, 
 and there was Voces Fidelium still incomplete. Well, 
 the moths are all gone, and Voces Fidelium along with 
 
 224 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 them ; only the fool is still on hand and practises new 
 follies. 
 
 Only one thing in connection with the harbour tempted 
 me, and that was the diving, an experience I burned to 
 taste of. But this was not to be, at least in Anstruther ; 
 and the subject involves a change of scene to the sub- 
 arctic town of Wick. You can never have dwelt in a 
 country more unsightly than that part of Caithness, the 
 land faintly swelling, faintly falling, not a tree, not a 
 hedgerow, the fields divided by single slate stones set 
 upon their edge, the wind always singing in your ears 
 and (down the long road that led nowhere) thrumming 
 in the telegraph wires. Only as you approached the 
 coast was there anything to stir the heart. The plateau 
 broke down to the North Sea in formidable cliffs, the 
 tall out-stacks rose like pillars ringed about with surf, 
 the coves were over-brimmed with clamorous froth, the 
 sea-birds screamed, the wind sang in the thyme on the 
 cliff's edge ; here and there, small ancient castles toppled 
 on the brim ; here and there, it was possible to dip into 
 a dell of shelter, where you might lie and tell yourself 
 you were a little warm, and hear (near at hand) the 
 whin-pods bursting in the afternoon sun, and (farther 
 off) the rumour of the turbulent sea. As for Wick it- 
 self, it is one of the meanest of man's towns, and situate 
 certainly on the baldest of God's bays. It lives for her- 
 ring, and a strange sight it is to see (of an afternoon) 
 the heights of Pulteney blackened by seaward-looking 
 fishers, as when a city crowds to a review — or, as 
 when bees have swarmed, the ground is horrible with 
 lumps and clusters ; and a strange sight, and a beautiful, 
 to see the fleet put silently out against a rising moon, 
 
 225 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 the sea-line rough as a wood with sails, and ever and 
 again and one after another, a boat flitting swiftly by the 
 silver disk. This mass of fishers, this great fleet of boats, 
 is out of all proportion to the town itself; and the oars 
 are manned and the nets hauled by immigrants from the 
 Long Island (as we call the outer Hebrides), who come 
 for that season only, and depart again, if ''the take" be 
 poor, leaving debts behind them. In a bad year, the 
 end of the herring fishery is therefore an exciting time; 
 fights are common, riots often possible ; an apple knocked 
 from a child's hand was once the signal for something 
 like a war; and even when I was there, a gunboat lay 
 in the bay to assist the authorities. To contrary inter- 
 ests, it should be observed, the curse of Babel is here 
 added ; the Lews men are Gaelic speakers. Caithness 
 has adopted English ; an odd circumstance, if you reflect 
 that both must be largely Norsemen by descent. I re- 
 member seeing one of the strongest instances of this 
 division: a thing like a Punch-and-Judy box erected on 
 the flat grave-stones of the churchyard ; from the hutch 
 or proscenium — I know not what to call it — an eldritch- 
 looking preacher laying down the law in Gaelic about 
 some one of the name of Fowl, whom I at last divined 
 to be the apostle to the Gentiles ; a large congregation 
 of the Lews men very devoutly listening; and on the 
 outskirts of the crowd, some of the town's children (to 
 whom the whole affair was Greek and Hebrew) pro- 
 fanely playing tigg. The same descent, the same coun- 
 try, the same narrow sect of the same religion, and all 
 these bonds made very largely nugatory by an acci- 
 dental difference of dialect ! 
 Into the bay of Wick stretched the dark length of the 
 
 226 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 unfinished breakwater, in its cage of open staging; the 
 travellers (like frames of churches) over-plumbing all; 
 and away at the extreme end, the divers toiling unseen 
 on the foundation. On a platform of loose planks, the 
 assistants turned their air-mills ; a stone might be swing- 
 ing between wind and water ; underneath the swell ran 
 gaily ; and from time to time, a mailed dragon with a 
 window-glass snout came dripping up the ladder. 
 Youth is a blessed season after all ; my stay at Wick was 
 in the year of l^oces Fidelium and the rose-leaf room at 
 Bailie Brown's ; and already I did not care two straws 
 for literary glory. Posthumous ambition perhaps re- 
 quires an atmosphere of roses ; and the more rugged 
 excitant of Wick east winds had made another boy of 
 me. To go down in the diving-dress, that was my ab- 
 sorbing fancy; and with the countenance of a certain 
 handsome scamp of a diver, Bob Bain by name, I grat- 
 ified the whim. 
 
 It was gray, harsh, easterly weather, the swell ran 
 pretty high, and out in the open there were ''skipper's 
 daughters," when I found myself at last on the diver's 
 platform, twenty pounds of lead upon each foot and my 
 whole person swollen with ply and ply of woollen un- 
 derclothing. One moment, the salt wind was whistling 
 round my night-capped head; the next, I was crushed 
 almost double under the weight of the helmet. As that 
 intolerable burthen was laid upon me, I could have found 
 it in my heart (only for shame's sake) to cry off from the 
 whole enterprise. But it was too late. The attendants 
 began to turn the hurdy-gurdy, and the air to whistle 
 through the tube ; some one screwed in the barred win- 
 dow of the vizor ; and I was cut off in a moment from my 
 
 227 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 fellow-men ; standing there in their midst, but quite di- 
 vorced from intercourse : a creature deaf and dumb, pa- 
 thetically looking forth upon them from a climate of his 
 own. Except that I could move and feel, I was like a 
 man fallen in a catalepsy. But time was scarce given 
 me to realise my isolation ; the weights were hung upon 
 my back and breast, the signal rope was thrust into my 
 unresisting hand ; and setting a twenty-pound foot upon 
 the ladder, I began ponderously to descend. 
 
 Some twenty rounds below the platform, twilight 
 fell. Looking up, I saw a low green heaven mottled 
 with vanishing bells of white ; looking around, except 
 for the weedy spokes and shafts of the ladder, nothing 
 but a green gloaming, somewhat opaque but very rest- 
 ful and delicious. Thirty rounds lower, I stepped off on 
 the pierre^ per dues of the foundation ; a dumb helmeted 
 figure took me by the hand, and made a gesture (as I 
 read it) of encouragement; and looking in at the crea- 
 ture's window, I beheld the face of Bain. There we 
 were, hand to hand and (when it pleased us) eye to eye ; 
 and either might have burst himself with shouting, and 
 not a whisper come to his companion's hearing. Each, 
 in his own little world of air, stood incommunicably 
 separate. 
 
 Bob had told me ere this a little tale, a five minutes' 
 drama at the bottom of the sea, which at that moment 
 possibly shot across my mind. He was down with an- 
 other, settling a stone of the sea-wall. They had it well 
 adjusted, Bob gave the signal, the scissors were slipped, 
 the stone set home; and it was time to turn to some- 
 thing else. But still his companion remained bowed 
 over the block like a mourner on a tomb, or only raised 
 
 228 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 himself to make absurd contortions and mysterious 
 signs unknown to the vocabulary of the diver. There, 
 then, these two stood for awhile, like the dead and the 
 living; till there flashed a fortunate thought into Bob's 
 mind, and he stooped, peered through the window of 
 that other world, and beheld the face of its inhabitant 
 wet with streaming tears. Ah ! the man was in pain ! 
 And Bob, glancing downward, saw what was the trou- 
 ble : the block had been lowered on the foot of that un- 
 fortunate — he was caught alive at the bottom of the sea 
 under fifteen tons of rock. 
 
 That two men should handle a stone so heavy, even 
 swinging in the scissors, may appear strange to the in- 
 expert. These must bear in mind the great density of 
 the water of the sea, and the surprising results of trans- 
 plantation to that medium. To understand a little what 
 these are, and how a man's weight, so far from being an 
 encumbrance, is the very ground of his agility, was the 
 chief lesson of my submarine experience. The know- 
 ledge came upon me by degrees. As I began to go 
 forward with the hand of my estranged companion, a 
 world of tumbled stones was visible, pillared with the 
 weedy uprights of the staging : overhead, a flat roof of 
 green : a little in front, the sea-wall, like an unfinished 
 rampart. And presently in our upward progress. Bob 
 motioned me to leap upon a stone; I looked to see if 
 he were possibly in earnest, and he only signed to me 
 the more imperiously. Now the block stood six feet 
 high ; it would have been quite a leap to me unencum- 
 bered ; with the breast and back weights, and the twenty 
 pounds upon each foot, and the staggering load of the 
 helmet, the thing was out of reason. I laughed aloud 
 
 229 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 in my tomb ; and to prove to Bob how far he was astray, 
 I gave a little impulse from my toes. Up I soared like 
 a bird, my companion soaring at my side. As high as 
 to the stone, and then higher, I pursued my impotent 
 and empty flight. Even when the strong arm of Bob 
 had checked my shoulders, my heels continued their 
 ascent; so that I blew out sideways like an autumn 
 leaf, and must be hauled in, hand over hand, as sailors 
 haul in the slack of a sail, and propped upon my feet 
 again like an intoxicated sparrow. Yet a little higher 
 on the foundation, and we began to be affected by the 
 bottom of the swell, running there like a strong breeze 
 of wind. Or so I must suppose ; for, safe in my cushion 
 of air, I was conscious of no impact; only swayed idly 
 like a weed, and was now borne helplessly abroad, and 
 now swiftly — and yet with dream-like gentleness — 
 impelled against my guide. So does a child's balloon 
 divagate upon the currents of the air, and touch and 
 slide off again from every obstacle. So must have in- 
 effectually swung, so resented their inefficiency, those 
 light crowds that followed the Star of Hades, and uttered 
 exiguous voices in the land beyond Cocytus. 
 
 There was something strangely exasperating, as well 
 as strangely wearying, in these uncommanded evolu- 
 tions. It is bitter to return to infancy, to be supported, 
 and directed, and perpetually set upon your feet, by the 
 hand of someone else. The air besides, as it is supplied 
 to you by the busy millers on the platform, closes the 
 eustachian tubes and keeps the neophyte perpetually 
 swallowing, till his throat is grown so dry that he can 
 swallow no longer. And for all these reasons — although 
 I had a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy in my surround- 
 
 230 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 ings, and longed, and tried, and always failed, to lay 
 hands on the fish that darted here and there about me, 
 swift as humming-birds — yet I fancy I was rather re- 
 lieved than otherwise when Bain brought me back to 
 the ladder and signed to me to mount. And there was 
 one more experience before me even then. Of a sud- 
 den, my ascending head passed into the trough of a 
 swell. Out of the green, I shot at once into a glory of 
 rosy, almost of sanguine light — the multitudinous seas 
 incarnadined, the heaven above a vault of crimson. 
 And then the glory faded into the hard, ugly daylight 
 of a Caithness autumn, with a low sky, a gray sea, and 
 a whistling wind. 
 
 Bob Bain had five shillings for his trouble, and I had 
 done what I desired. It was one of the best things I 
 got from my education as an engineer: of which how- 
 ever, as a way of life, I wish to speak with sympathy. 
 It takes a man into the open air; it keeps him hanging 
 about harbour-sides, which is the richest form of idling ; 
 it carries him to wild islands ; it gives him a taste of the 
 genial dangers of the sea ; it supplies him with dexteri- 
 ties to exercise; it makes demands upon his ingenuity; 
 it will go far to cure him of any taste (if ever he had 
 one) for the miserable life of cities. And when it has 
 done so, it carries him back and shuts him in an office! 
 From the roaring skerry and the wet thwart of the 
 tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk; and with 
 a memory full of ships, and seas, and perilous head- 
 lands, and the shining pharos, he must apply his long- 
 sighted eyes to the petty niceties of drawing, or measure 
 his inaccurate mind with several pages of consecutive 
 figures. He is a wise youth, to be sure, who can bal- 
 
 231 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 ance one part of genuine life against two parts of drudg- 
 ery between four walls, and for the sake of the one, 
 manfully accept the other. 
 
 Wick was scarce an eligible place of stay. But how 
 much better it was to hang in the cold wind upon the 
 pier, to go down with Bob Bain among the roots of the 
 staging, to be all day in a boat coiling a wet rope and 
 shouting orders — not always very wise — than to be 
 warm and dry, and dull, and dead-alive, in the most 
 comfortable office. And Wick itself had in those days 
 a note of originality. It may have still, but I misdoubt 
 it much. The old minister of Keiss would not preach, 
 in these degenerate times, for an hour and a half upon 
 the clock. The gipsies must be gone from their caverns ; 
 where you might see, from the mouth, the women tend- 
 ing their fire, like Meg Merrilies, and the men sleeping 
 off their coarse potations ; and where in winter gales, 
 the surf would beleaguer them closely, bursting in their 
 very door. A traveller to-day upon the Thurso coach 
 would scarce observe a little cloud of smoke among the 
 moorlands, and be told, quite openly, it marked a pri- 
 vate still. He would not indeed make that journey, for 
 there is now no Thurso coach. And even if he could, 
 one little thing that happened to me could never happen 
 to him, or not witj) the same trenchancy of contrast. 
 
 We had been upon the road all evening; the coach- 
 top was crowded with Lews fishers going home, scarce 
 anything but Gaelic had sounded in my ears ; and our 
 way had lain throughout over a moorish country very 
 northern to behold. Latish at night, though it was 
 still broad day in our subarctic latitude, we came down 
 upon the shores of the roaring Pentland Firth, that 
 
 232 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 grave of mariners; on one hand, the cliffs of Dunnet 
 Head ran seaward ; in front was the little bare, white 
 town of Castleton, its streets full of blowing sand; 
 nothing beyond, but the North Islands, the great deep, 
 and the perennial ice-fields of the Pole. And here, in 
 the last imaginable place, there sprang up young out- 
 landish voices and a chatter of some foreign speech ; 
 and I saw, pursuing the coach with its load of Hebrid- 
 ean fishers — as they had pursued vetturmt up the passes 
 of the Apennines or perhaps along the grotto under 
 Virgil's tomb — two little dark-eyed, white-toothed 
 Italian vagabonds, of twelve to fourteen years of age, 
 one with a hurdy-gurdy, the other with a cage of white 
 mice. The coach passed on, and their small Italian 
 chatter died in the distance; and I was left to marvel 
 how they had wandered into that country, and how 
 they fared in it, and what they thought of it, and when 
 (if ever) they should see again the silver wind-breaks 
 run among the olives, and the stone-pine stand guard 
 upon Etruscan sepulchres. 
 
 Upon any American, the strangeness of this incident 
 is somewhat lost. For as far back as he goes in his 
 own land, he will find some alien camping there; the 
 Cornish miner, the French or Mexican half-blood, the 
 negro in the South, these are deep in the woods and far 
 among the mountains. But in an old, cold, and rugged 
 country such as mine, the days of immigration are long 
 at an end ; and away up there, which was at that time 
 far beyond the northernmost extreme of railways, hard 
 upon the shore of that ill-omened strait of whirlpools, 
 in a land of moors where no stranger came, unless it 
 should be a sportsman to shoot grouse or an antiquary 
 
 233 
 
RANDOM MEMORIES 
 
 to decipher runes, the presence of these small pedes- 
 trians struck the mind as though a bird-of-paradise had 
 risen from the heather or an albatross come fishing in 
 the bay of Wick. They were as strange to their sur- 
 roundings as my lordly evangelist or the old Spanish 
 grandee on the Fair Isle. 
 
 534 
 
VII. THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 These boys congregated every autumn about a certain 
 easterly fisher-village, where they tasted in a high de- 
 gree the glory of existence. The place was created 
 seemingly on purpose for the diversion of young gen- 
 tlemen. A street or two of houses, mostly red and 
 many of them tiled ; a number of fine trees clustered 
 about the manse and the kirkyard, and turning the chief 
 street into a shady alley ; many little gardens more than 
 usually bright with flowers ; nets a-drying, and fisher- 
 wives scolding in the backward parts ; a smell of fish, 
 a genial smell of seaweed; whiffs of blowing sand at 
 the street-corners; shops with golf-balls and bottled 
 lollipops ; another shop with penny pickwicks (that re- 
 markable cigar) and the London Journal, dear to me for 
 its startling pictures, and a few novels, dear for their 
 suggestive names : such, as well as memory serves me, 
 were the ingredients of the town. These, you are to 
 conceive posted on a spit between two sandy bays, and 
 sparsely flanked with villas — enough for the boys to 
 lodge in with their subsidiary parents, not enough (not 
 yet enough) to cocknify the scene : a haven in the rocks 
 in front : in front of that, a file of gray islets : to the left, 
 endless links and sand wreaths, a wilderness of hiding- 
 
 235 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 holes, alive with popping rabbits and soaring gulls : to 
 the right, a range of seaward crags, one rugged brow 
 beyond another; the ruins of a mighty and ancient 
 fortress on the brink of one; coves between — now 
 charmed into sunshine quiet, now whistling with wind 
 and clamorous with bursting surges; the dens and 
 sheltered hollows redolent of thyme and southernwood, 
 the air at the cliff's edge brisk and clean and pungent of 
 the sea — in front of all, the Bass Rock, tilted seaward 
 like a doubtful bather, the surf ringing it with white, 
 the solan-geese hanging round its summit like a great 
 and glittering smoke. This choice piece of seaboard 
 was sacred, besides, to the wrecker; and the Bass, in 
 the eye of fancy, still flew the colours of King James ; 
 and in the ear of fancy the arches of Tantallon still rang 
 with horseshoe iron, and echoed to the commands of 
 Bell-the-Cat. 
 
 There was nothing to mar your days, if you were a 
 boy summering in that part, but the embarrassment of 
 pleasure. You might golf if you wanted ; but 1 seem 
 to have been better employed. You might secrete your- 
 self in the Lady's Walk, a certain sunless dingle of el- 
 ders, all mossed over by the damp as green as grass, 
 and dotted here and there by the streamside with roof- 
 less walls, the cold homes of anchorites. To fit them- 
 selves for life, and with a special eye to acquire the art 
 of smoking, it was even common for the boys to har- 
 bour there; and you might have seen a single penny 
 pickwick, honestly shared in lengths with a blunt knife, 
 bestrew the glen with these apprentices. Again, you 
 might join our fishing parties, where we sat perched as 
 thick as solan-geese, a covey of little anglers, boy and 
 
 236 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 girl, angling over each other's heads, to the much entan- 
 glement of lines and loss of podleys and consequent shrill 
 recrimination — shrill as the geese themselves. Indeed, 
 had that been all, you might have done this often ; but 
 though fishing be a fine pastime, the podley is scarce 
 to be regarded as a dainty for the table; and it was a 
 point of honour that a boy should eat all that he had 
 taken. Or again, you might climb the Law, where the 
 whale's jawbone stood landmark in the buzzing wind, 
 and behold the face of many counties, and the smoke 
 and spires of many towns, and the sails of distant ships. 
 You might bathe, now in the flaws of fine weather, 
 that we pathetically call our summer, now in a gale of 
 wind, with the sand scourging your bare hide, your 
 clothes thrashing abroad from underneath their guar- 
 dian stone, the froth of the great breakers casting you 
 headlong ere it had drowned your knees. Or you might 
 explore the tidal rocks, above all in the ebb of springs, 
 when the very roots of the hills were for the nonce 
 discovered; following my leader from one group to 
 another, groping in slippery tangle for the wreck of 
 ships, wading in pools after the abominable creatures of 
 the sea, and ever with an eye cast backward on the 
 march of the tide and the menaced line of your retreat. 
 And then you might go Crusoeing, a word that covers 
 all extempore eating in the open air: digging perhaps a 
 house under the margin of the links, kindling a fire of 
 the sea-ware, and cooking apples there — if they were 
 truly apples, for I sometimes suppose the merchant must 
 have played us off with some inferior and quite local 
 fruit, capable of resolving, in the neighbourhood of 
 fire, into mere sand and smoke and iodine; or per- 
 
 237 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 haps pushing to Tantallon, you might lunch on sand- 
 wiches and visions in the grassy court, while the wind 
 hummed in the crumbling turrets ; or clambering along 
 the coast, eat geans^ (the worst, I must suppose, in 
 Christendom) from an adventurous gean tree that had 
 taken root under a cliff, where it was shaken with an 
 ague of east wind, and silvered after gales with salt, 
 and grew so foreign among its bleak surroundings that 
 to eat of its produce was an adventure in itself. 
 
 There are mingled some dismal memories with so 
 many that were joyous. Of the fisher- wife, for instance, 
 who had cut her throat at Canty Bay ; and of how I ran 
 with the other children to the top of the Quadrant, and 
 beheld a posse of silent people escorting a cart, and on 
 the cart, bound in a chair, her throat bandaged, and the 
 bandage all bloody — horror! — the fisher-wife herself, 
 who continued thenceforth to hag-ride my thoughts, 
 and even to-day (as I recall the scene) darkens daylight. 
 She was lodged in the little old jail in the chief street; 
 but whether or no she died there, with a wise terror of 
 the worst, I never inquired. She had been tippling; it 
 was but a dingy tragedy ; and it seems strange and hard 
 that, after all these years, the poor crazy sinner should 
 be still pilloried on her cart in the scrap-book of my 
 memory. Nor shall I readily forget a certain house in 
 the Quadrant where a visitor died, and a dark old wo- 
 man continued to dwell alone with the dead body; nor 
 how this old woman conceived a hatred to myself and 
 one of my cousins, and in the dread hour of the dusk, 
 as we were clambering on the garden-walls, opened a 
 window in that house of mortality and cursed us in ^ 
 
 1 Wild cherries. 
 238 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 shrill voice and with a marrowy choice of language. It 
 was a pair of very colourless urchins that fled down the 
 lane from this remarkable experience ! But I recall with 
 a more doubtful sentiment, compounded out of fear and 
 exultation, the coil of equinoctial tempests; trumpeting 
 squalls, scouring flaws of rain; the boats with their 
 reefed lugsails scudding for the harbour mouth, where 
 danger lay, for it was hard to make when the wind had 
 any east in it; the wives clustered with blowing shawls 
 at the pier-head, where (if fate was against them) they 
 might see boat and husband and sons — their whole 
 wealth and their whole family — engulfed under their 
 eyes ; and (what I saw but once) a troop of neighbours 
 forcing such an unfortunate homeward, and she squall- 
 ing and battling in their midst, a figure scarcely human, 
 a tragic Maenad. 
 
 These are things that I recall with interest ; but what 
 my memory dwells upon the most, I have been all this 
 while withholding. It was a sport peculiar to the place, 
 and indeed to a week or so of our two months' holiday 
 there. Maybe it still flourishes in its native spot; for 
 boys and their pastimes are swayed by periodic forces 
 inscrutable to man ; so that tops and marbles reappear 
 in their due season, regular like the sun and moon ; and 
 the harmless art of knucklebones -has seen the fall of the 
 Roman empire and the rise of the United States. It may 
 still flourish in its native spot, but nowhere else, I am 
 persuaded ; for I tried myself to introduce it on Tweed- 
 side, and was defeated lamentably; its charm being 
 quite local, like a country wine that cannot be ex- 
 ported. 
 
 The idle manner of it was this: — 
 
 239 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 Toward the end of September, when school-time 
 was drawing near and the nights were already black, 
 we would begin to sally from our respective villas, each 
 equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. The thing was 
 so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce 
 of Great Britain ; and the grocers, about the due time, 
 began to garnish their windows with our particular 
 brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the 
 waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the 
 rigour of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled 
 noisomely of blistered tin ; they never burned aright, 
 though they would always burn our fingers ; their use 
 was naught; the pleasure of them merely fanciful; and 
 yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat asked for 
 nothing more. The fishermen used lanterns about their 
 boats, and it was from them, I suppose, that we had 
 got the hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did 
 we ever play at being fishermen. The police carried 
 them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them in 
 that ; yet we did not pretend to be po^cemen. Burglars, 
 indeed, we may have had some haunting thoughts of ; 
 and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns 
 were more common, and to certain story-books in 
 which we had found them to figure very largely. But 
 take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was sub- 
 stantive ; and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his 
 top-coat was good enough for us. 
 
 When two of these asses met, there would be an 
 anxious ''Have you got your lantern.?^" and a gratified 
 '"Yes!" That was the shibboleth, and very needful 
 too ; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, 
 none could recognise a lantern-bearer, unless (like the 
 
 240 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 pole-cat) by the smell. Four or five would sometimes 
 climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger, with nothing 
 but the thwarts above them — for the cabin was usually 
 locked, or choose out some hollow of the links where 
 the wind might whistle overhead. There the coats 
 would be unbuttoned and the bull's-eyes discovered; 
 and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge windy 
 hall of the night, and cheered by a rich steam of toast- 
 ing tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen would 
 crouch together in the cold sand of the links or on the 
 scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight themselves 
 with inappropriate talk. Woe is me that I may not 
 give some specimens — some of their foresights of life, 
 or deep inquiries into the rudiments of man and nature, 
 these were so fiery and so innocent, they were so richly 
 silly, so romantically young. But the talk, at any rate, 
 was but a condiment; and these gatherings themselves 
 only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. The 
 essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the 
 black night; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not 
 a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to 
 make your glory public : a mere pillar of darkness in the 
 dark ; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of 
 your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your 
 belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge. 
 
 It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of 
 the most stolid. It may be contended, rather, that this 
 (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives, 
 and is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice is not 
 
 241 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness 
 of man's imagination. His life from without may seem 
 but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden 
 chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted ; 
 and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, 
 he will have some kind of a bull's-eye at his belt. 
 
 It would be hard to pick out a career more cheerless 
 than that of Dancer, the miser, as he figures in the **OId 
 Bailey Reports," a prey to the most sordid persecutions, 
 the butt of his neighbourhood, betrayed by his hired 
 man, his house beleaguered by the impish school-boy, 
 and he himself grinding and fuming and impotently 
 fleeing to the law against these pin-pricks. You marvel 
 at first that any one should willingly prolong a life so 
 destitute of charm and dignity; and then you call to 
 memory that had he chosen, had he ceased to be a 
 miser, he could have been freed at once from these 
 trials, and might have built himself a castle and gone es- 
 corted by a squadron. For the love of more recondite 
 joys, which we cannot estimate, which, it may be, we 
 should envy, the man had willingly foregone both com- 
 fort and consideration. *' His mind to him a kingdom 
 was " ; and sure enough, digging into that mind, which 
 seems at first a dust-heap, we unearth some priceless 
 jewels. For Dancer must have had the love of power 
 and the disdain of using it, a noble character in itself; 
 disdain of many pleasures, a chief part of what is com- 
 monly called wisdom ; disdain of the inevitable end, that 
 finest trait of mankind ; scorn of men's opinions, another 
 element of virtue ; and at the back of all, a conscience just 
 like yours and mine, whining like a cur, swindling like 
 a thimble-rigger, but still pointing (there or thereabout) 
 
 242 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 to some conventional standard. Here were a cabinet 
 portrait to which Hawthorne perhaps had done justice ; 
 and yet not Hawthorne either, for he was mildly minded, 
 and it lay not in him to create for us that throb of the 
 miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his vast arms 
 of ambition clutching in he knows not what : insatiable, 
 insane, a god with a muck-rake. Thus, at least, look- 
 ing in the bosom of the miser, consideration detects the 
 poet in the full tide of life, with more, indeed, of the poetic 
 fire than usually goes to epics ; and tracing that mean 
 man about his cold hearth, and to and fro in his discom- 
 fortable house, spies within him a blazing bonfire of 
 delight. And so with others, who do not live by bread 
 alone, but by some cherished and perhaps fantastic plea- 
 sure; who are meat salesmen to the external eye, and 
 possibly to themselves are Shakespeares, Napoleons, or 
 Beethovens ; who have not one virtue to rub against an- 
 other in the field of active life, and yet perhaps, in the 
 life of contemplation, sit with the saints. We see them 
 on the street, and we can count their buttons; but 
 heaven knows in what they pride themselves ! heaven 
 knows where they have set their treasure ! 
 
 There is one fable that touches very near the quick of 
 life : the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, 
 heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, 
 and found himself on his return a stranger at his con- 
 vent gates; for he had been absent fifty years, and of all 
 his comrades there survived but one to recognise him. 
 It is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols, 
 though perhaps he is native there. He sings in the most 
 doleful places. The miser hears him and chuckles, and 
 the days are moments. With no more apparatus than 
 
 243 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 an ill-smelling lantern I have evoked him on the naked 
 links. All life that is not merely mechanical is spun out 
 of two strands : seeking for that bird and hearing him. 
 And it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and 
 the delight of each so incommunicable. And just a 
 knowledge of this, and a remembrance of those fortu- 
 nate hours in which the bird has sung to us, that fills us 
 with such wonder when we turn the pages of the realist. 
 There, to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it 
 consists of mud and of old iron, cheap desires and cheap 
 fears, that which we are ashamed to remember and that 
 which we are careless whether we forget ; but of the note 
 of that time-devouring nightingale we hear no news. 
 
 The case of these writers of romance is most obscure. 
 They have been boys and youths; they have lingered 
 outside the window of the beloved, who was then most 
 probably writing to some one else ; they have sat before 
 a sheet of paper, and felt themselves mere continents of 
 congested poetry, not one line of which would flow; 
 they have walked alone in the woods, they have walked 
 in cities under the countless lamps ; they have been to 
 sea, they have hated, they have feared, they have longed 
 to knife a man, and maybe done it; the wild taste of 
 life has stung their palate. Or, if you deny them all the 
 rest, one pleasure at least they have tasted to the full — 
 their books are there to prove it — the keen pleasure of 
 successful literary composition. And yet they fill the 
 globe with volumes, whose cleverness inspires me with 
 despairing admiration, and whose consistent falsity to 
 all I care to call existence, with despairing wrath. If 
 I had no better hope than to continue to revolve among 
 the dreary and petty businesses, and to be moved by the 
 
 244 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 paltry hopes and fears with which they surround and 
 animate their heroes, I declare I would die now. But 
 there has never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet; 
 if it were spent waiting at a railway junction, I would 
 have some scattering thoughts, I could count some grains 
 of memory, compared to which the whole of one of these 
 romances seems but dross. 
 
 These writers would retort (if I take them properly) 
 that this was very true ; that it was the same with them- 
 selves and other persons of (what they call) the artistic 
 temperament; that in this we were exceptional, and 
 should apparently be ashamed of ourselves; but that our 
 works must deal exclusively with (what they call) the 
 average man, who was a prodigious dull fellow, and 
 quite dead to all but the paltriest considerations. I ac- 
 cept the issue. We can only know others by ourselves. 
 The artistic temperament (a plague on the expression ! ) 
 does not make us different from our fellow-men, or it 
 would make us incapable of writing novels; and the 
 average man (a murrain on the word ! ) is just like you 
 and me, or he would not be average. It was Whitman 
 who stamped a kind of Birmingham sacredness upon 
 the latter phrase; but Whitman knew very well, and 
 showed very nobly, that the average man was full of 
 joys and full of a poetry of his own. And this harping 
 on life's dulness and man's meanness is a loud profession 
 of incom[:etence ; it is one of two things : the cry of the 
 blind eye, / cannot see, or the complaint of the dumb 
 tongue, / cannot utter. To draw a life without delights 
 is to prove I have not realised it. To picture a man 
 without some sort of poetry — well, it goes near to 
 prove my case, for it shows an author may have little 
 
 245 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 enough. To see Dancer only as a dirty, old, small- 
 minded, impotently fuming man, in a dirty house, be- 
 sieged by Harrow boys, and probably beset by small 
 attorneys, is to show myself as keen an observer as 
 . . . the Harrow boys. But these young gentlemen- 
 (with a more becoming modesty) were content to pluck 
 Dancer by the coat-tails ; they did not suppose they had 
 surprised his secret or could put him living in a book: 
 and it is there my error would have lain. Or say that 
 in the same romance — I continue to call these books 
 romances, in the hope of giving pain — say that in the 
 same romance, which now begins really to take shape, 
 I should leave to speak of Dancer, and follow instead 
 the Harrow boys; and say that I came on some such 
 business as that of my lantern-bearers on the links ; and 
 described the boys as very cold, spat upon by flurries of 
 rain, and drearily surrounded, all of which they were ; 
 and their talk as silly and indecent, which it certainly 
 was. I might upon these lines, and had I Zola's genius, 
 turn out, in a page or so, a gem of literary art, render 
 the lantern-light with the touches of a master, and lay 
 on the indecency with the ungrudging hand of love,*^ 
 and when all was done, what a triumph would my pic- 
 ture be of shallowness and dulness! how it would have 
 missed the point! how it would have belied the boys! 
 To the ear of the stenographer, the talk is merely silly 
 and indecent; but ask the boys themselves, and they are 
 discussing (as it is highly proper they should) the pos- 
 sibilities of existence. To the eye of the observer they 
 are wet and cold and drearily surrounded ; but ask them- 
 selves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite pleasure, 
 the ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern. 
 
 246 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 III 
 
 For, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy is often hard 
 to hit. It may hinge at times upon a mere accessory, 
 like the lantern, it may reside, like Dancer's, in the mys- 
 terious inwards of psychology. It may consist with 
 perpetual failure, and find exercise in the continued chase. 
 It has so little bond with externals (such as the observer 
 scribbles in his note-book) that it may even touch them 
 not; and the man's true life, for which he consents to 
 live, lie altogether in the field of fancy. The clergyman, 
 in his spare hours, may be winning battles, the farmer 
 sailing ships, the banker reaping triumph in the arts : all 
 leading another life, plying another trade from that they 
 chose; like the poet's housebuilder, who, after all is 
 cased in stone, 
 
 " By his fireside, as impotent fancy prompts, 
 Rebuilds it to his liking." 
 
 In such a case the poetry runs underground. The ob- 
 server (poor soul, with his documents !) is all abroad. 
 For to look at the man is but to court deception. We shall 
 see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; 
 but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome 
 of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by 
 nightingales. And the true realism were that of the 
 poets, to climb up after him like a squirrel, and catch 
 some glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. And 
 the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the 
 poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice 
 far beyond singing. 
 
 For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the 
 
 247 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 actors lies the sense of any action. That is the explanation, 
 that the excuse. To one who has not the secret of the 
 lanterns, the scene upon the links is meaningless. And 
 hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of re- 
 alistic books. Hence, when we read the English realists, 
 the incredulous wonder with which we observe the 
 hero's constancy under the submerging tide of dulness, 
 and how he bears up with his jibbing sweetheart, and 
 endures the chatter of idiot girls, and stands by his 
 w^hole unfeatured wilderness of an existence, instead of 
 seeking relief in drink or foreign travel. Hence in the 
 French, in that meat-market of middle-aged sensuality, 
 the disgusted surprise with which we see the hero drift 
 sidelong, and practically quite untempted, into every 
 description of misconduct and dishonour. In each, we 
 miss the personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, 
 that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked 
 and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls 
 dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon 
 into the colours of the sunset; each is true, each incon- 
 ceivable ; for no man lives in the external truth, among 
 salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric cham- 
 ber of his brain, with the painted windows and the 
 storied walls. 
 
 Of this falsity we have had a recent example from a 
 man who knows far better — Tolstoi's Powers of Dark- 
 ness. Here is a piece full of force and truth, yet quite 
 untrue. For before Mikita was led into so dire a situa- 
 tion he was tempted, and temptations are beautiful at 
 least in part; and a work which dwells on the ugliness 
 of crime and gives no hint of any loveliness in the temp- 
 tation, sins against the modesty of life, and even when 
 
 248 
 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 
 
 a Tolstoi writes it, sinks to melodrama. The peasants 
 are not understood ; they saw their life in fairer colours ; 
 even the deaf girl was clothed in poetry for Mikita, or 
 he had never fallen. And so, once again, even an Old 
 Bailey melodrama, without some brightness of poetry 
 and lustre of existence, falls into the inconceivable and 
 ranks with fairy tales. 
 
 IV 
 
 In nobler books we are moved with something like 
 the emotions of life; and this emotion is very variously 
 provoked. We are so moved when Levine labours in 
 the field, when Andre sinks beyond emotion, when 
 Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet beside the 
 river, when Antony, "not cowardly, puts off" his helmet,'* 
 when Kent has infinite pity on the dying Lear, when, in 
 Dostoieflfsky's Despised and Rejected, the uncomplaining 
 hero drains his cup of suffering and virtue. These are 
 notes that please the great heart of man. Not only love, 
 and the fields, and the bright face of danger, but sacri- 
 fice and death and unmerited suffering humbly sup- 
 ported, touch in us the vein of the poetic. We love to 
 think of them, we long to try them, we are humbly 
 hopeful that we may prove heroes also. 
 
 We have heard, perhaps, too much of lesser matters. 
 Here is the door, here is the open air. Itur in antiquam 
 silvam. 
 
 249 
 
VIII. A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 The past is all of one texture — whether feigned or 
 suffered — whether acted out in three dimensions, or 
 only witnessed in that small theatre of the brain which 
 we keep brightly lighted all night long, after the jets are 
 down, and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed in the 
 remainder of the body. There is no distinction on the 
 face of our experiences ; one is vivid indeed, and one 
 dull, and one pleasant, and another agonising to remem- 
 ber; but which of them is what we call true, and which 
 a dream, there is not one hair to prove. The past stands 
 on a precarious footing; another straw split in the field 
 of metaphysic, and behold us robbed of it. There is 
 scarce a family that can count four generations but lays 
 a claim to some dormant title or some castle and estate: 
 a claim not prosecutable in any court of law, but flatter- 
 ing to the fancy and a great alleviation of idle hours. A 
 man's claim to his own past is yet less valid. A paper 
 might turn up (in proper story-book fashion) in the se- 
 cret drawer of an old ebony secretary, and restore your 
 family to its ancient honours, and reinstate mine in a 
 certain West Indian islet (not far from St. Kitt's, as be- 
 loved tradition hummed in my young ears) which was 
 once ours, and is now unjustly someone else's, and for 
 
 250 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 that matter (in the state of the sugar trade) is not worth 
 anything to anybody. I do not say that these revolu- 
 tions are likely ; only no man can deny that they are pos- 
 sible; and the past, on the other hand, is lost forever: 
 our old days and deeds, our old selves, too, and the very 
 world in which these scenes were acted, all brought 
 down to the same faint residuum as a last night's dream, 
 to some incontinuous images, and an echo in the cham- 
 bers of the brain. Not an hour, not a mood, not a glance 
 of the eye, can we revoke; it is all gone, past conjuring. 
 And yet conceive us robbed of it, conceive that little 
 thread of memory that we trail behind us broken at the 
 fpockefs edge ; and in what naked nullity should we be 
 left ! for we only guide ourselves, and only know our- 
 selves, by these air-painted pictures of the past. 
 
 Upon these grounds, there are some among us who 
 claimed to have lived longer and more richly than their 
 neighbours ; when they lay asleep they claim they were 
 ^till active ; and among the treasures of memory that all 
 men review for their amusement, these count in no sec- 
 ond place the harvests of their dreams. There is one 
 of this kind whom I have in my eye, and whose case is 
 perhaps unusual enough to be described. He was from 
 ^ child an ardent and uncomfortable dreamer. When he 
 had a touch of fever at night, and the room swelled and 
 shrank, and his clothes, hanging on a nail, now loomed 
 up instant to the bigness of a church, and now drew 
 away into a horror of infinite distance and infinite little- 
 ness, the poor soul was very well aware of what must 
 follow, and struggled hard against the approaches of 
 that slumber which was the beginning of sorrows. But 
 Jiis struggles were in vain ; sooner or later the night-hag 
 
 251 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 would have him by the throat, and pluck him, strangling 
 and screaming, from his sleep. His dreams were at 
 times commonplace enough, at times very strange : at 
 times they were almost formless, he would be haunted, 
 for instance, by nothing more definite than a certain hue 
 of brown, which he did not mind in the least while he 
 was awake, but feared and loathed while he was dream- 
 ing; at times, again, they took on every detail of circum- 
 stance, as when once he supposed he must swallow the 
 populous world, and awoke screaming with the horror 
 of the thought. The two chief troubles of his very nar- 
 row existence — the practical and everyday trouble of 
 school tasks and the ultimate and airy one of hell and 
 judgment — were often confounded together into one 
 appalling nightmare. He seemed to himself to stand 
 before the Great White Throne ; he was called on, poor 
 little devil, to recite some form of words, on which his 
 destiny depended; his tongue stuck, his memory was 
 blank, hell gaped for him ; and he would awake, cling- 
 ing to the curtain-rod with his knees to his chin. 
 
 These were extremely poor experiences, on the whole ; 
 and at that time of life my dreamer would have very 
 willingly parted with his power of dreams. But pres- 
 ently, in the course of his growth, the cries and phys- 
 ical contortions passed away, seemingly forever; his 
 visions were still for the most part miserable, but they 
 were more constantly supported ; and he would awake 
 with no more extreme symptom than a flying heart, a 
 freezing scalp, cold sweats, and the speechless midnight 
 fear. His dreams, too, as befitted a mind better stocked 
 with particulars, became more circumstantial, and had 
 more the air and continuity of life. The look of the 
 
 252 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 world beginning to take hold on his attention, scenery 
 came to play a part in his sleeping as well as in his wak- 
 ing thoughts, so that he would take long, uneventful 
 journeys and see strange towns and beautiful places as 
 he lay in bed. And, what is more significant, an odd 
 taste that he had for the Georgian costume and for 
 stories laid in that period of English history, began to 
 rule the features of his dreams ; so that he masqueraded 
 there in a three-cornered hat, and was much engaged 
 with Jacobite conspiracy between the hour for bed and 
 that for breakfast. About the same time, he began to 
 read in his dreams — tales, for the most part, and for the 
 most part after the manner of G. P. R. James, but so 
 incredibly more vivid and moving than any printed 
 book, that he has ever since been malcontent with 
 literature. 
 
 And then, while he was yet a student, there came to 
 him a dream-adventure which he has no anxiety to re- 
 peat; he began, that is to say, to dream in sequence 
 and thus to lead a double life — one of the day, one of 
 the night — one that he had every reason to believe was 
 the true one, another that he had no means of proving 
 to be false. I should have said he studied, or was by 
 way of studying, at Edinburgh College, which (it may 
 be supposed) was how 1 came to know him. Well, in 
 his dream life, he passed a long day in the surgical thea- 
 tre, his heart in his mouth, his teeth on edge, seeing 
 monstrous malformations and the abhorred dexterity of 
 surgeons. In a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he came 
 forth into the South Bridge, turned up the High Street, 
 and entered the door of a tall land, at the top of which 
 he supposed himself to lodge. All night long, in his 
 
 253 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after stair in 
 endless series, and at every second flight a flaring lamp 
 with a reflector. All night long, he brushed by single 
 persons passing downward — beggarly women of the 
 street, great, weary, muddy labourers, poor scarecrows 
 of men, pale parodies of women — but all drowsy and 
 weary like himself, and all single, and all brushing 
 against him as they passed. In the end, out of a north- 
 ern window, he would see day beginning to whiten 
 over the Firth, give up the ascent, turn to descend, and 
 in a breath be back again upon the streets, in his wet 
 clothes, in the wet, haggard dawn, trudging to another 
 day of monstrosities and operations. Time went quicker 
 in the life of dreams, some seven hours (as near as he 
 can guess) to one ; and it went, besides, more intensely, 
 so that the gloom of these fancied experiences clouded 
 the day, and he had not shaken off their shadow ere it 
 was time to lie down and to renew them. I cannot tell 
 how long it was that he endured this discipline ; but it 
 was long enough to leave a great black blot upon his 
 memory, long enough to send him, trembling for his 
 reason, to the doors of a certain doctor; whereupon 
 with a simple draught he was restored to the common 
 lot of man. 
 
 The poor gentleman has since been troubled by noth- 
 ing of the sort; indeed, his nights were for some while 
 like other men's, now blank, now chequered with 
 dreams, and these sometimes charming, sometimes 
 appalling, but except for an occasional vividness, of no 
 extraordinary kind. 1 will just note one of these occa- 
 sions, ere 1 pass on to what makes my dreamer truly 
 interesting. It seemed to him that he was in the first 
 
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A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 floor of a rough hill-farm. The room showed some 
 poor efforts at gentility, a carpet on the floor, a piano, I 
 think, against the wall; but, for all these refinements, 
 there was no mistaking he was in a moorland place, 
 among hillside people, and set in miles of heather. He 
 looked down from the window upon a bare farmyard, 
 that seemed to have been long disused. A great, un- 
 easy stillness lay upon the world. There was no sign 
 of the farm-folk or of any live stock, save for an old, 
 brown, curly dog of the retriever breed, who sat close 
 in against the wall of the house and seemed to be dozing. 
 Something about this dog disquieted the dreamer; it was 
 quite a nameless feeling, for the beast looked right 
 enough — indeed, he was so old and dull and dusty and 
 broken-down, that he should rather have awakened 
 pity; and yet the conviction came and grew upon the 
 dreamer that this was no proper dog at all, but some- 
 thing hellish. A great many dozing summer flies 
 hummed about the yard ; and presently the dog thrust 
 forth his paw, caught a fly in his open palm, carried it 
 to his mouth like an ape, and looking suddenly up at 
 the dreamer in the window, winked to him with one 
 eye. The dream went on, it matters not how it went ; 
 it was a good dream as dreams go ; but there was noth- 
 ing in the sequel worthy of that devilish brown dog. 
 And the point of interest for me lies partly in that very 
 fact: that having found so singular an incident, my im- 
 perfect dreamer should prove unable to carry the tale to 
 a fit end and fall back on indescribable noises and in- 
 discriminate horrors. It would be different now; he 
 knows his business better! 
 For, to approach at last the point : This honest fel- 
 
 255 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 low had long been in the custom of setting himself to 
 sleep with tales, and so had his father before him ; but 
 these were irresponsible inventions, told for the teller's 
 pleasure, with no eye to the crass public or the thwart 
 reviewer: tales where a thread might be dropped, or 
 one adventure quitted for another, on fancy's least sug- 
 gestion. So that the little people who manage man's 
 internal theatre had not as yet received a very rigorous 
 training; and played upon their stage like children who 
 should have slipped into the house and found it empty, 
 rather than like drilled actors performing a set piece to a 
 huge hall of faces. But presently my dreamer began to 
 turn his former amusement of story-telling to (what is 
 called) account; by which I mean that he began to write 
 and sell his tales. Here was he, and here were the little 
 people who did that part of his business, in quite new 
 conditions. The stories must now be trimmed and 
 pared and set upon all fours, they must run from a be- 
 ginning to an end and fit (after a manner) with the 
 laws of life; the pleasure, in one word, had become a 
 business ; and that not only for the dreamer, but for the 
 little people of his theatre. These understood the change 
 as well as he. When he lay down to prepare himself 
 for sleep, he no longer sought amusement, but printable 
 and profitable tales ; and after he had dozed off in his box- 
 seat, his little people continued their evolutions with the 
 same mercantile designs. All other forms of dream de- 
 serted him but two : he still occasionally reads the most 
 delightful books, he still visits at times the most delight- 
 ful places ; and it is perhaps worthy of note that to these 
 same places, and to one in particular, he returns at inter- 
 vals of months and years, finding new field-paths, vis- 
 
 256 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 iting new neighbours, beholding that happy valley under 
 new effects of noon and dawn and sunset. But all the 
 rest of the family of visions is quite lost to him : the com- 
 mon, mangled version of yesterday's affairs, the raw- 
 head-and-bloody-bones nightmare, rumoured to be the 
 child of toasted cheese — these and their like are gone; 
 and, for the most part, whether awake or asleep, he is 
 simply occupied — he or his little people — in consciously 
 making stories for the market. This dreamer (like many 
 other persons) has encountered some trifling vicissitudes 
 of fortune. When the bank begins to send letters and 
 the butcher to linger at the back gate, he sets to be- 
 labouring his brains after a story, for that is his readiest 
 money-winner; and, behold! at once the little people 
 begin to bestir themselves in the same quest, and labour 
 all night long, and all night long set before him trun- 
 cheons of tales upon their lighted theatre. No fear of his 
 being frightened now; the flying heart and the frozen 
 scalp are things bygone; applause, growing applause, 
 growing interest, growing exultation in his own clev- 
 erness (for he takes all the credit), and at last a jubilant 
 leap to wakefulness, with the cry, *'I have it, that'll 
 do! " upon his lips: with such and similar emotions he 
 sits at these nocturnal dramas, with such outbreaks, like 
 Claudius in the play, he scatters the performance in the 
 midst. Often enough the waking is a disappointment: 
 he has been too deep asleep, as I explain the thing; 
 drowsiness has gained his little people, they have gone 
 stumbling and maundering through their parts; and the 
 play, to the awakened mind, is seen to be a tissue of ab- 
 surdities. And yet how often have these sleepless 
 Brownies done him honest service, and given him, as he 
 
 257 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 sat idly taking his pleasure in the boxes, better tales than 
 he could fashion for himself. 
 
 Here is one, exactly as it came to him. It seemed he 
 was the son of a very rich and wicked man, the owner 
 of broad acres and a most damnable temper. The 
 dreamer (and that was the son) had lived much abroad, 
 on purpose to avoid his parent; and when at length he 
 returned to England, it was to find him married again 
 to a young wife, who was supposed to suffer cruelly 
 and to loathe her yoke. Because of this marriage (as 
 the dreamer indistinctly understood) it was desirable 
 for father and son to have a meeting; and yet both being 
 proud and both angry, neither would condescend upon 
 a visit. Meet they did accordingly, in a desolate, sandy 
 country by the sea; and there they quarrelled, and the 
 son, stung by some intolerable insult, struck down the 
 father dead. No suspicion was aroused ; the dead man 
 was found and buried, and the dreamer succeeded to 
 the broad estates, and found himself installed under the 
 same roof with his father's widow, for whom no pro- 
 vision had been made. These two lived very much 
 alone, as people may after a bereavement, sat down to 
 table together, shared the long evenings, and grew daily 
 better friends ; until it seemed to him of a sudden that 
 she was prying about dangerous matters, that she had 
 conceived a notion of his guilt, that she watched him 
 and tried him with questions. He drew back from her 
 company as men draw back from a precipice suddenly 
 discovered; and yet so strong was the attraction that 
 he would drift again and again into the old intimacy, 
 and again and again be startled back by some sugges- 
 tive question or some inexplicable meaning in her 
 
 258 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 eye. So they lived at cross purposes, a life full of 
 broken dialogue, challenging glances, and suppressed 
 passion; until, one day, he saw the woman slipping 
 from the house in a veil, followed her to the station, 
 followed her in the train to the seaside country, and 
 out over the sandhills to the very place where the 
 murder was done. There she began to grope among 
 the bents, he watching her, flat upon his face; and 
 presently she had something in her hand — 1 cannot 
 remember what it was, but it was deadly evidence 
 against the dreamer — and as she held it up to look at 
 it, perhaps from the shock of the discovery, her foot 
 slipped, and she hung at some peril on the brink of the 
 tall sand-wreaths. He had no thought but to spring 
 up and rescue her; and there they stood face to face, 
 she with that deadly matter openly in her hand — his 
 very presence on the spot another link of proof. It was 
 plain she was about to speak, but this was more than 
 he could bear — he could bear to be lost, but not to talk 
 of it with his destroyer; and he cut her short with trivial 
 conversation. Arm in arm, they returned together to 
 the train, talking he knew not what, made the journey 
 back in the same carriage, sat down to dinner, and 
 passed the evening in the drawing-room as in the past. 
 But suspense and fear drummed in the dreamer's bosom. 
 *'She has not denounced me yet" — so his thoughts 
 ran — "when will she denounce me? Will it be to- 
 morrow ? " And it was not to-morrow, nor the next 
 day, nor the next; and their life settled back on the old 
 terms, only that she seemed kinder than before, and 
 that, as for him, the burthen of his suspense and won- 
 der grew daily more unbearable, so that he wasted 
 
 259 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 away like a man with a disease. Once, indeed, he 
 broke all bounds of decency, seized an occasion when 
 she was abroad, ransacked her room, and at last, hidden 
 away among her jewels, found the damning evidence. 
 There he stood, holding this thing, which was his life, 
 in the hollow of his hand, and marvelling at her incon- 
 sequent behaviour, that she should seek, and keep, and 
 yet not use it; and then the door opened, and behold 
 herself. So, once more, they stood, eye to eye, with 
 the evidence between them; and once more she raised 
 to him a face brimming with some communication ; and 
 once more he shied away from speech and cut her off. 
 But before he left the room, which he had turned upside 
 down, he laid back his death-warrant where he had 
 found it; and at that, her face lighted up. The next 
 thing he heard, she was explaining to her maid, with 
 some ingenious falsehood, the disorder of her things. 
 Flesh and blood could bear the strain no longer; and I 
 think it was the next morning (though chronology is 
 always hazy in the theatre of the mind) that he burst 
 from his reserve. They had been breakfasting together 
 in one corner of a great, parqueted, sparely-furnished 
 room of many windows; all the time of the meal she 
 had tortured him with sly allusions; and no sooner 
 were the servants gone, and these two protagonists 
 alone together, than he leaped to his feet. She too 
 sprang up, with a pale face ; with a pale face, she heard 
 him as he raved out his complaint: Why did she torture 
 him so ? she knew all, she knew he was no enemy to 
 her; why did she not denounce him at once.? what sig- 
 nified her whole behaviour ? why did she torture him ? 
 and yet again> why did she torture him ? And when he 
 
 260 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 had done, she fell upon her knees, and with outstretched 
 hands: ''Do you not understand?" she cried. "I love 
 you!" 
 
 Hereupon, with a pang of wonder and mercantile de- 
 light, the dreamer awoke. His mercantile delight was 
 not of long endurance ; for it soon became plain that in 
 this spirited tale there were unmarketable elements; 
 which is just the reason why you have it here so briefly 
 told. But his wonder has still kept growing; and I 
 think the reader's will also, if he consider it ripely. For 
 now he sees why I speak of the little people as of sub- 
 stantive inventors and performers. To the end they 
 had kept their secret. I will go bail for the dreamer 
 (having excellent grounds for valuing his candour) that 
 he had no guess whatever at the motive of the woman 
 — the hinge of the whole well-invented plot — until the 
 instant of that highly dramatic declaration. It was not 
 his tale; it was the little people's! And observe: not 
 only was the secret kept, the story was told with really 
 guileful craftsmanship. The conduct of both actors is 
 (in the cant phrase) psychologically correct, and the 
 emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising climax. I 
 am awake now, and I know this trade ; and yet I can- 
 not better it. I am awake, and I live by this business ; 
 and yet I could not outdo — could not perhaps equal — 
 that crafty artifice (as of some old, experienced carpen- 
 ter of plays, some Dennery or Sardou) by which the 
 same situation is twice presented and the two actors 
 twice brought face to face over the evidence, only once 
 it is in her hand, once in his — and these in their due 
 order, the least dramatic first. The more I think of it, 
 the more I am moved to press upon the world my ques- 
 
 261 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 tion : Who are the Little People ? They are near con- 
 nections of the dreamer's, beyond doubt; they share 
 in his financial worries and have an eye to the bank- 
 book; they share plainly in his training; they have 
 plainly learned like him to build the scheme of a con- 
 siderate story and to arrange emotion in progressive 
 order; only I think they have more talent; and one 
 thing is beyond doubt, they can tell him a story piece 
 by piece, like a serial, and keep him all the while in ig- 
 norance of where they aim. Who are they, then ? and 
 who is the dreamer ? 
 
 Well, as regards the dreamer, I can answer that, for 
 he is no less a person than myself; — as I might have 
 told you from the beginning, only that the critics mur- 
 mur over my consistent egotism; — and as I am posi- 
 tively forced to tell you now, or I could advance but 
 little farther with my story. And for the Little People, 
 what shall I say they are but just my Brownies, God 
 bless them ! who do one-half my work for me while I 
 am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest 
 for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly sup- 
 pose I do it for myself That part which is done while 
 I am sleeping is the Brownies' part beyond contention ; 
 but that which is done when I am up and about is by 
 no means necessarily mine, since all goes to show the 
 Brownies have a hand in it even then. Here is a doubt 
 that much concerns my conscience. For myself — what 
 I call I, my conscience ego, the denizen of the pineal 
 gland unless he has changed his residence since Des- 
 cartes, the man with the conscience and the variable 
 bank-account, the man with the hat and the boots, and 
 the privilege of voting and not carrying his candidate at 
 
 262 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 the general elections — I am sometimes tempted to sup- 
 pose he is no story-teller at all, but a creature as matter 
 of fact as any cheesemonger or any cheese, and a realist 
 bemired up to the ears in actuality ; so that, by that ac- 
 count, the whole of my published fiction should be the 
 single-handed product of some Brownie, some Familiar, 
 some unseen collaborator, whom I keep locked in a 
 back garret, while I get all the praise and he but a share 
 (which I cannot prevent him getting) of the pudding. 
 I am an excellent adviser, something like Moliere's ser- 
 vant; I pull back and I cut down ; and I dress the whole 
 in the best words and sentences that I can find and make ; 
 I hold the pen, too; and I do the sitting at the table, 
 which is about the worst of it; and when all is done, I 
 make up the manuscript and pay for the registration ; so 
 that, on the whole, I have some claim to share, though 
 not so largely as I do, in the profits of our common en- 
 terprise. 
 
 I can but give an instance or so of what part is done 
 sleeping and what part awake, and leave the reader to 
 share what laurels there are, at his own nod, between 
 myself and my collaborators ; and to do this I will first 
 take a book that a number of persons have been polite 
 enough to read, the Strange Case of Dr. JekyU and Mr. 
 Hyde. I had long been trying to write a story on this 
 subject, to find a body, a vehicle, for that strong sense 
 of man's double being which must at times come in 
 upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking crea- 
 ture. I had even written one. The Travelling Compan- 
 ion, which was returned by an editor on the plea that it 
 was a work of genius and indecent, and which I burned 
 the other day on the ground that it was not a work of 
 
 263 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 genius, and that Jekyll had supplanted it. Then came 
 one of those financial fluctuations to which (with an 
 elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred in the third 
 person. For two days I went about racking my brains 
 for a plot of any sort ; and on the second night I dreamed 
 the scene at the window, and a scene afterwards split 
 in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took 
 the powder and underwent the change in the presence 
 of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and 
 consciously, although I think I can trace in much of it 
 the manner of my Brownies. The meaning of the tale 
 is therefore mine, and had long pre-existed in my gar- 
 den of Adonis, and tried one body after another in 
 vain ; indeed, I do most of the morality, worse luck ! 
 and my Brownies have not a rudiment of what we call 
 a conscience. Mine, too, is the setting, mine the char- 
 acters. All that was given me was the matter of three 
 scenes, and the central idea of a voluntary change be- 
 coming involuntary. Will it be thought ungenerous, 
 after I have been so liberally ladling out praise to my un- 
 seen collaborators, if I here toss them over, bound hand 
 and foot, into the arena of the critics } For the business 
 of the powders, which so many have censured, is, I am 
 relieved to say, not mine at all but the Brownies'. Of 
 another tale, in case the reader should have glanced at 
 it, I may say a word : the not very defensible story of 
 Olalla. Here the court, the mother, the mother's niche, 
 Olalla, Olalla's chamber, the meetings on the stair, the 
 broken window, the ugly scene of the bite, were all given 
 me in bulk and detail as I have tried to write them ; to 
 this I added only the external scenery (for in my dream I 
 never was beyond the court), the portrait, the characters 
 
 264 
 
A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 
 
 of Felipe and the priest, the moral, such as it is, and 
 the last pages, such as, alas ! they are. And 1 may even 
 say that in this case the moral itself was given me ; for 
 it arose immediately on a comparison of the mother and 
 the daughter, and from the hideous trick of atavism in 
 the first. Sometimes a parabolic sense is still more un- 
 deniably present in a dream; sometimes 1 cannot but 
 suppose my Brownies have been aping Bunyan, and 
 yet in no case with what would possibly be called a 
 moral in a tract; never with the ethical narrowness; 
 conveying hints instead of life's larger limitations and 
 that sort of sense which we seem to perceive in the ara- 
 besque of time and space. 
 
 For the most part, it will be seen, my Brownies are 
 somewhat fantastic, like their stories hot and hot, full 
 of passion and the picturesque, alive with animating in- 
 cident; and they have no prejudice against the super- 
 natural. But the other day they gave me a surprise, 
 entertaining me with a love-story, a little April comedy, 
 which I ought certainly to hand over to the author of A 
 Chance Acquaintance, for he could write it as it should 
 be written, and 1 am sure (although I mean to try) that I 
 cannot. — But who would have supposed that a Brownie 
 of mine should invent a tale for Mr. Howells ? 
 
 J05 
 
IX. BEGGARS 
 
 In a pleasant, airy, up-hill country, it was my fortune 
 when I was young to make the acquaintance of a cer- 
 tain beggar. I call him beggar, though he usually al- 
 lowed his coat and his shoes (which were open-mouthed, 
 indeed) to beg for him. He was the wreck of an ath- 
 letic man, tall, gaunt, and bronzed; far gone in con- 
 sumption, with that disquieting smile of the mortally 
 stricken on his face ; but still active afoot, still with the 
 brisk military carriage, the ready military salute. Three 
 ways led through this piece of country; and as I was 
 inconstant in my choice, 1 believe he must often have 
 awaited me in vain. But often enough, he caught me ; 
 often enough, from some place of ambush by the road- 
 side, he would spring suddenly forth in the regulation 
 attitude, and launching at once into his inconsequential 
 talk, fall into step with me upon my farther course. ''A 
 fine morning, sir, though perhaps a trifle inclining to 
 rain. I hope I see you well, sir. Why, no, sir, I don't 
 feel as hearty myself as I could wish, but I am keeping 
 about my ordinary. I am pleased to meet you on the 
 road, sir. I assure you I quite look forward to one of 
 our little conversations." He loved the sound of his 
 
 266 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 own voice inordinately, and though (with something too 
 off-hand to call servility) he would always hasten to 
 agree with anything you said, yet he could never suffer 
 you to say it to an end. By what transition he slid to 
 his favourite subject I have no memory; but we had 
 never been long together on the way before he was 
 dealing, in a very military manner, with the English 
 poets. ''Shelley was a fine poet, sir, though a trifle 
 atheistical in his opinions. His Queen Mab, sir, is quite 
 an atheistical work. Scott, sir, is not so poetical a 
 writer. With the works of Shakespeare I am not so 
 well acquainted, but he was a fine poet. Keats — John 
 Keats, sir — he was a very fine poet." With such ref- 
 erences, such trivial criticism, such loving parade of his 
 own knowledge, he would beguile the road, striding 
 forward up-hill, his staff now clapped to the ribs of his 
 deep, resonant chest, now swinging in the air with the 
 remembered jauntiness of the private soldier; and all 
 the while his toes looking out of his boots, and his shirt 
 looking out of his elbows, and death looking out of his 
 smile, and his big, crazy frame shaken by accesses of 
 cough. 
 
 He would often go the whole way home with me: 
 often to borrow a book, and that book always a poet. 
 Off he would march, to continue his mendicant rounds, 
 with the volume slipped into the pocket of his ragged 
 coat ; and although he would sometimes keep it quite 
 a while, yet it came always back again at last, not much 
 the worse for its travels into beggardom. And in this 
 way, doubtless, his knowledge grew and his glib, 
 random criticism took a wider range. But my library 
 was not the first he had drawn upon : at our first en- 
 
 267 ^ 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 counter, he was already brimful of Shelley and the athe- 
 istical Queen Mab, and ' ' Keats — John Keats, sir. " And 
 I have often wondered how he came by these acquire- 
 ments; just as I often wondered how he fell to be a 
 beggar. He had served through the Mutiny — of which 
 (like so many people) he could tell practically nothing 
 beyond the names of places, and that it was ''difficult 
 work, sir," and very hot, or that so-and-so was ''a very 
 fine commander, sir." He was far too smart a man to 
 have remained a private; in the nature of things, he must 
 have won his stripes. And yet here he was without 
 a pension. When I touched on this problem, he would 
 content himself with diffidently offering me advice. 
 "A man should be very careful when he is young, sir. 
 If you'll excuse me saying so, a spirited young gentle- 
 man like yourself, sir, should be very careful. I was 
 perhaps a trifle inclined to atheistical opinions myself." 
 For (perhaps with a deeper wisdom than we are in- 
 clined in these days to admit) he plainly bracketed ag- 
 nosticism with beer and skittles. 
 
 Keats — John Keats, sir, — and Shelley were his fa- 
 vourite bards. I cannot remember if I tried him with 
 Rossetti; but I know his taste to a hair, and if ever I did, 
 he must have doted on that author. What took him 
 was a richness in the speech ; he loved the exotic, the 
 unexpected word; the moving cadence of a phrase; a 
 vague sense of emotion (about nothing) in the very let- 
 ters of the alphabet: the romance of language. His 
 honest head was very nearly empty, his intellect like a 
 child's ; and when he read his favourite authors, he can 
 almost never have understood what he was reading. 
 Yet the taste was not only genuine, it was exclusive; I 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 tried in vain to offer him novels ; he would none of them ; 
 he cared for nothing but romantic language that he 
 could not understand. The case may be commoner 
 than we suppose. I am reminded of a lad who was 
 laid in the next cot to a friend of mine in a public hos- 
 pital, and who was no sooner installed than he sent out 
 (perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap Shakespeare. 
 My friend pricked up his ears ; fell at once in talk with 
 his new neighbour, and was ready, when the book ar- 
 rived, to make a singular discovery. For this lover of 
 great literature understood not one sentence out of 
 twelve, and his favourite part was that of which he un- 
 derstood the least — the inimitable, mouth-filling rodo- 
 montade of the ghost in Hamlet. It was a bright day in 
 hospital when my friend expounded the sense of this be- 
 loved jargon : a task for which I am willing to believe my 
 friend was very fit, though I can never regard it as an 
 easy one. I know indeed a point or two, on which I 
 would gladly question Mr. Shakespeare, that lover of big 
 words, could he revisit the glimpses of the moon, or 
 could I myself climb backward to the spacious days of 
 Elizabeth. But in the second case, I should most likely 
 pretermit these questionings, and take my place instead 
 in the pit at the Blackfriars, to hear the actor in his 
 favourite part, playing up to Mr. Burbage, and rolling 
 out — as I seem to hear him — with a ponderous gusto — 
 
 " Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd." 
 
 What a pleasant chance, if we could go there in a party ! 
 and what a surprise for Mr. Burbage, when the ghost 
 received the honours of the evening! 
 
 269 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 As for my old soldier, like Mr. Burbage and Mr. 
 Shakespeare, he is long since dead ; and now lies buried, 
 I suppose, and nameless and quite forgotten, in some 
 poor city graveyard. — But not for me, you brave heart, 
 have you been buried! For me, you are still afoot, 
 tasting the sun and air, and striding southward. By 
 the groves of Comiston and beside the Hermitage of 
 Braid, by the Hunters' Tryst, and where the curlews 
 and plovers cry around Fairmilehead, I see and hear 
 you, stalwartly carrying your deadly sickness, cheer- 
 fully discoursing of uncomprehended poets. 
 
 The thought of the old soldier recalls that of another 
 tramp, his counterpart. This was a little, lean, and 
 fiery man, with the eyes of a dog and the face of a 
 gipsy ; whom I found one morning encamped with his 
 wife and children and his grinder's wheel, beside the 
 burn of Kinnaird. To this beloved dell I went, at that 
 time, daily ; and daily the knife-grinder and I (for as long 
 as his tent continued pleasantly to interrupt my little 
 wilderness) sat on two stones, and smoked, and plucked 
 grass, and talked to the tune of the brown water. His 
 children were mere whelps, they fought and bit among 
 the fern like vermin. His wife was a mere squaw ; I 
 saw her gather brush and tend the kettle, but she never 
 ventured to address her lord while I was present. The 
 tent was a mere gipsy hovel, like a sty for pigs. But 
 the grinder himself had the fine self-sufficiency and 
 grave politeness of the hunter and the savage; he did 
 me the honours of this dell, which had been mine but 
 
 270 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 the day before, took me far into the secrets of his life, 
 and used me (I am proud to remember) as a friend. 
 
 Like my old soldier, he was far gone in the national 
 complaint. Unlike him, he had a vulgar taste in letters ; 
 scarce flying higher than the story papers; probably 
 finding no difference, certainly seeking none, between 
 Tannahill and Burns; his noblest thoughts, whether of 
 poetry or music, adequately embodied in that some- 
 what obvious ditty, 
 
 " Will ye gang, lassie, gang 
 To the braes o' Balquidder: " 
 
 — which is indeed apt to echo in the ears of Scottish 
 children, and to him, in view of his experience, must 
 have found a special directness of address. But if he 
 had no fine sense of poetry in letters, he felt with a deep 
 joy the poetry of life. You should have heard him speak 
 of what he loved ; of the tent pitched beside the talking 
 water; of the stars overhead at night; of the blest re- 
 turn of morning, the peep of day over the moors, the 
 awaking birds among the birches; how he abhorred 
 the long winter shut in cities; and with what delight, 
 at the return of the spring, he once more pitched his 
 camp in the living out-of-doors. But we were a pair 
 of tramps; and to you, who are doubtless sedentary 
 and a consistent first-class passenger in life, he would 
 scarce have laid himself so open; — to you, he might 
 have been content to tell his story of a ghost — that of a 
 buccaneer with his pistols as he lived — whom he had 
 once encountered in a seaside cave near Buckie; and 
 that would have been enough, for that would have 
 shown you the mettle of the man. Here was a piece 
 
 271 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 of experience solidly and livingly built up in words, 
 here was a story created, teres atque rotundus. 
 
 And to think of the old soldier, that lover of the lit- 
 erary bards! He had visited stranger spots than any 
 seaside cave ; encountered men more terrible than any 
 spirit; done and dared and suffered in that incredible, 
 unsung epic of the Mutiny War; played his part with 
 the field force of Delhi, beleaguering and beleaguered ; 
 shared in that enduring, savage anger and contempt of 
 death and decency that, for long months together, be- 
 devil'd and inspired the army; was hurled to and fro in 
 the battle-smoke of the assault; was there, perhaps, 
 where Nicholson fell; was there when the attacking 
 column, with hell upon every side, found the soldier's 
 enemy — strong drink, and the lives of tens of thousands 
 trembled in the scale, and the fate of the flag of Eng- 
 land staggered. And of all this he had no more to say 
 than 'Miot work, sir," or *'the army suffered a great 
 deal, sir," or ''I believe General Wilson, sir, was not 
 very highly thought of in the papers." His life was 
 naught to him, the vivid pages of experience quite 
 blank: in words his pleasure lay — melodious, agitated 
 words — printed words, about that which he had never 
 seen and was connatally incapable of comprehending. 
 We have here two temperaments face to face ; both un- 
 trained, unsophisticated, surprised (we may say) in the 
 tgg\ both boldly charactered: — that of the artist, the 
 lover and artificer of words; that of the maker, the 
 seeer, the lover and forger of experience. If the one 
 had a daughter and the other had a son, and these mar- 
 ried, might not some illustrious writer count descent 
 from the beggar-soldier and the needy knife-grinder? 
 
 272 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 III 
 
 Every one lives by selling something, whatever be his 
 right to it. The burglar sells at the same time his own 
 skill and courage and my silver plate (the whole at the 
 most moderate figure) to a Jew receiver. The bandit 
 sells the traveller an article of prime necessity : that trav- 
 eller's life. And as for the old soldier, who stands for 
 central mark to my capricious figures of eight, he dealt 
 in a specialty ; for he was the only beggar in the world 
 who ever gave me pleasure for my money. He had 
 learned a school of manners in the barracks and had the 
 sense to cling to it, accosting strangers with a regi- 
 mental freedom, thanking patrons with a merely regi- 
 mental difference, sparing you at once the tragedy of his 
 position and the embarrassment of yours. There was 
 not one hint about him of the beggar's emphasis, the 
 outburst of revolting gratitude, the rant and cant, the 
 ** God bless you, Kind, Kind gentleman," which insults 
 the smallness of your alms by disproportionate vehe- 
 mence, which is so notably false, which would be so un- 
 bearable if it were true. I am sometimes tempted to 
 suppose this reading of the beggar's part, a survival of 
 the old days when Shakespeare was intoned upon the 
 stage and mourners keened beside the death-bed; to 
 think that we cannot now accept these strong emotions 
 unless they be uttered in the just note of life ; nor (save 
 in the pulpit) endure these gross conventions. They 
 wound us, I am tempted to say, like mockery ; the high 
 voice of keening (as it yet lingers on) strikes in the face 
 of sorrow like a buffet; and the rant and cant of the 
 staled beggar stirs in us a shudder of disgust. But the 
 
 273 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 fact disproves these amateur opinions. The beggar lives 
 by his knowledge of the average man. He knows what 
 he is about when he bandages his head, and hires and 
 drugs a babe, and poisons life with Poor Mary Ann or 
 Long, long ago ; he knows what he is about when he 
 loads the critical ear and sickens the nice conscience 
 with intolerable thanks ; they know what they are about, 
 he and his crew, when they pervade the slums of cities, 
 ghastly parodies of suffering, hateful parodies of grati- 
 tude. This trade can scarce be called an imposition ; it 
 has been so blown upon with exposures ; it flaunts its 
 fraudulence so nakedly. We pay them as we pay those 
 who show us, in huge exaggeration, the monsters of 
 our drinking-water; or those who daily predict the fall 
 of Britain. We pay them for the pain they inflict, pay 
 them, and wince, and hurry on. And truly there is 
 nothing that can shake the conscience like a beggar's 
 thanks; and that polity in which such protestations can 
 be purchased for a shilling, seems no scene for an hon- 
 est man. 
 
 Are there, then, we may be asked, no genuine beg- 
 gars ? And the answer is. Not one. My old soldier 
 was a humbug like the rest; his ragged boots were, in 
 the stage phrase, properties; whole boots were given 
 him again and again, and always gladly accepted ; and 
 the next day, there he was on the road as usual, with 
 toes exposed. His boots were his method ; they were 
 the man's trade; without his boots he would have 
 starved ; he did not live by charity, but by appealing to 
 a gross taste in the public, which loves the limelight on 
 the actor's face, and the toes out of the beggar's boots. 
 There is a true poverty, which no one sees : a false and 
 
 274 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 merely mimetic poverty, which usurps its place and 
 dress, and lives and above all drinks, on the fruits of the 
 usurpation. The true poverty does not go into the 
 streets ; the banker may rest assured, he has never put a 
 penny in its hand. The self-respecting poor beg from 
 each other; never from the rich. To live in the frock- 
 coated ranks of life, to hear canting scenes of gratitude 
 rehearsed for twopence, a man might suppose that giving 
 was a thing gone out of fashion ; yet it goes forward on 
 a scale so great as to fill me with surprise. In the houses 
 of the working class, all day long there will be a foot 
 upon the stair; all day long there will be a knocking at 
 the doors; beggars come, beggars go, without stint, 
 hardly with intermission, from morning till night; and 
 meanwhile, in the same city and but a few streets off, 
 the castles of the rich stand unsummoned. Get the tale 
 of any honest tramp, you will find it was always the 
 poor who helped him; get the truth from any work- 
 man who has met misfortunes, it was always next door 
 that he would go for help, or only with such exceptions 
 as are said to prove a rule; look at the course of the 
 mimetic beggar, it is through the poor quarters that he 
 trails his passage, showing his bandages to every win- 
 dow, piercing even to the attics with his nasal song. 
 Here is a remarkable state of things in our Christian 
 commonwealths, that the poor only should be asked to 
 give. 
 
 IV 
 
 There is a pleasant tale of some worthless, phrasing 
 Frenchman, who was taxed with ingratitude: " 11 faut 
 savoir garder Vindependance du coeur/' cried he. I 
 
 275 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 own I feel with him. Gratitude without familiarity, 
 gratitude otherwise than as a nameless elem.ent in a 
 friendship, is a thing so near to hatred that I do not care 
 to split the diiference. Until I find a man who is pleased 
 to receive obligations, I shall continue to question the 
 tact of those who are eager to confer them. What an art 
 it is, to give, even to our nearest friends! and what a 
 test of manners, to receive ! How, upon either side, we 
 smuggle away the obligation, blushing for each other; 
 how bluff and dull we make the giver; how hasty, how 
 falsely cheerful, the receiver! And yet an act of such 
 difficulty and distress between near friends, it is sup- 
 posed we can perform to a total stranger and leave the 
 man transfixed with grateful emotions. The last thing 
 you can do to a man is to burthen him with an obliga- 
 tion, and it is what we propose to begin with ! But let 
 us not be deceived : unless he is totally degraded to his 
 trade, anger jars in his inside, and he grates his teeth at 
 our gratuity. 
 
 We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: 
 gratitude and charity. In real life, help is given out of 
 friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the 
 hand of friendship, or it is resented. We are all too 
 proud to take a naked gift : we must seem to pay it, if 
 in nothing else, then with the delights of our society. 
 Here, then, is the pitiful fix of the rich man ; here is that 
 needle's eye in which he stuck already in the days 
 of Christ, and still sticks to-day, firmer, if possible, 
 than ever: that he has the money and lacks the love 
 which should make his money acceptable. Here and 
 now, just as of old in Palestine, he has the rich to dinner, 
 it is with the rich that he takes his pleasure : and when 
 
 276 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 his turn comes to be charitable, he looks In vain for a re- 
 cipient. His friends are not poor, they do not want ; the 
 poor are not his friends, they will not take. To whom 
 is he to give ? Where to find — note this phrase — the 
 Deserving Poor ? Charity is (what they call) central- 
 ised; offices are hired; societies founded, with secre- 
 taries paid or unpaid : the hunt of the Deserving Poor 
 goes merrily forward. I think it will take more than 
 a merely human secretary to disinter that character. 
 What ! a class that is to be in want from no fault of its 
 own, and yet greedily eager to receive from strangers; 
 and to be quite respectable, and at the same time quite 
 devoid of self-respect ; and play the most delicate part of 
 friendship, and yet never be seen ; and wear the form 
 of man, and yet fly in the face of all the laws of human 
 nature : — and all this, in the hope of getting a belly-god 
 Burgess through a needle's eye! O, let him stick, by all 
 means: and let his polity tumble in the dust; and let his 
 epitaph and all his literature (of which my own works 
 begin to form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even 
 from the history of man ! For a fool of this monstrosity 
 ofdulness, there can be no salvation: and the fool who 
 looked for the elixir of life was an angel of reason to the 
 fool who looks for the Deserving Poor! 
 
 And yet there is one course which the unfortunate 
 gentleman may take. He may subscribe to pay the 
 taxes. There were the true charity, impartial and im- 
 personal, cumbering none with obligation, helping all. 
 There were a destination for loveless gifts ; there were 
 
 277 
 
BEGGARS 
 
 the way to reach the pocket of the deserving poor, and 
 yet save the time of secretaries ! But, alas ! there is 
 no colour of romance in such a course; and people 
 nowhere demand the picturesque so much as in their 
 virtues. 
 
 378 
 
X. LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO PRO- 
 POSES TO EMBRACE THE CAREER OF ART 
 
 With the agreeable frankness of youth, you address 
 me on a point of some practical importance to yourself 
 and (it is even cortceivable) of some gravity to the world : 
 Should you or should you not become an artist ? It is 
 one which you must decide entirely for yourself; all that 
 I can do is to bring under your notice some of the ma- 
 terials of that decision ; and I will begin, as I shall pro- 
 bably conclude also, by assuring you that all depends 
 on the vocation. 
 
 To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom 
 and of old age. Youth is wholly experimental. The 
 essence and charm of that unquiet and delightful epoch 
 is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life. These 
 two unknowns the young man brings together again 
 and again, now in the airiest touch, now with a bitter 
 hug ; now with exquisite pleasure, now with cutting 
 pain ; but never with indifference, to which he is a total 
 stranger, and never with that near kinsman of indiffer- 
 ence, contentment. If he be a youth of dainty senses 
 or a brain easily heated, the interest of this series of ex- 
 periments grows upon him out of all proportion to the 
 pleasure he receives. It is not beauty that he loves, nor 
 pleasure that he seeks, though he may think so ; his de- 
 
 379 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 sign and his sufficient reward is to verify his own ex- 
 istence and taste the variety of human fate. To him, 
 before the razor-edge of curiosity is dulled, all that is not 
 actual living and the hot chase of experience wears a 
 face of a disgusting dryness difficult to recall in later 
 days ; or if there be any exception — and here destiny 
 steps in — it is in those moments when, wearied or sur- 
 feited of the primary activity of the senses, he calls up 
 before memory the image of transacted pains and plea- 
 sures. Thus it is that such an one shies from all cut- 
 and-dry professions, and inclines insensibly toward 
 that career of art which consists only in the tasting and 
 recording of experience. 
 
 This, which is not so much a vocation for art as an 
 impatience of all other honest trades, frequently exists 
 alone ; and so existing, it will pass gently away in the 
 course of years. Emphatically, it is not to be regarded; 
 it is not a vocation, but a temptation ; and when your 
 father the other day so fiercely and (in my view) so 
 properly discouraged your ambition, he was recalling 
 not improbably some similar passage in his own experi- 
 ence. For the temptation is perhaps nearly as common 
 as the vocation is rare. But again we have vocations 
 which are imperfect; we have men whose minds are 
 bound up, not so much in any art, as in the general ars 
 artium and common base of all creative work; who 
 will now dip into painting, and now study counterpoint, 
 and anon will be inditing a sonnet : all these with equal 
 interest, all often with genuine knowledge. And of 
 this temper, when it stands alone, I find it difficult to 
 speak; but I should counsel such an one to take to let- 
 ters, for in literature (which drags with so wide a net) 
 
 280 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 all his information may be found some day useful, and 
 if he should go on as he has begun, and turn at last into 
 the critic, he will have learned to use the necessary tools. 
 Lastly we come to those vocations which are at once 
 decisive and precise ; to the men who are born with the 
 love of pigments, the passion of drawing, the gift of 
 music, or the impulse to create with words, just as 
 other and perhaps the same men are born with the love 
 of hunting, or the sea, or horses, or the turning-lathe. 
 These are predestined ; if a man love the labour of any 
 trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the 
 gods have called him. He may have the general voca- 
 tion too : he may have a taste for all the arts, and I think 
 he often has ; but the mark of his calling is this laborious 
 partiality for one, this inextinguishable zest in its tech- 
 nical successes, and (perhaps above all) a certain can- 
 dour of mind, to take his very trifling enterprise with a 
 gravity that would befit the cares of empire, and to think 
 the smallest improvement worth accomplishing at any 
 expense of time and industry. The book, the statue, 
 the sonata, must be gone upon with the unreasoning 
 good faith and the unflagging spirit of children at their 
 play. Is it worth doing ? — when it shall have occurred 
 to any artist to ask himself that question, it is implicitly 
 answered in the negative. It does not occur to the child 
 as he plays at being a pirate on the dining-room sofa, 
 nor to the hunter as he pursues his quarry ; and the can- 
 dour of the one and the ardour of the other should be 
 united in the bosom of the artist. 
 
 If you recognise in yourself some such decisive taste, 
 there is no room for hesitation : follow your bent. And 
 observe (lest I should too much discourage you) that the 
 
 281 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 disposition does not usually burn so brightly at the first, 
 or rather not so constantly. Habit and practice sharpen 
 gifts ; the necessity of toil grows less disgusting, grows 
 even welcome, in the course of years ; a small taste (if 
 it be only genuine) waxes with indulgence into an ex- 
 clusive passion. Enough, just now, if you can look 
 back over a fair interval, and see that your chosen art 
 has a little more than held its own among the thronging 
 interests of youth. Time will do the rest, if devotion 
 help it ; and soon your every thought will be engrossed 
 in that beloved occupation. 
 
 But even with devotion, you may remind me, even 
 with unfaltering and delighted industry, many thousand 
 artists spend their lives, if the result be regarded, utterly 
 in vain : a thousand artists, and never one work of art. 
 But the vast mass of mankind are incapable of doing 
 anything reasonably well, art among the rest. The 
 worthless artist would not improbably have been a quite 
 incompetent baker. And the artist, even if he does not 
 amuse the public, amuses himself; so that there will 
 always be one man the happier for his vigils. This is 
 the practical side of art: its inexpugnable fortress for 
 the true practitioner. The direct returns — the wages 
 of the trade — are small, but the indirect — the wages 
 of the life — are incalculably great. No other business 
 offers a man his daily bread upon such joyful terms. 
 The soldier and the explorer have moments of a wor- 
 thier excitement, but they are purchased by cruel hard- 
 ships and periods of tedium that beggar language. In 
 the life of the artist there need be no hour without its 
 pleasure. I take the author, with whose career I am 
 best acquainted ; and it is true he works in a rebellious 
 
 282 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 material, and that the act of writing is cramped and 
 trying both to the eyes and the temper; but remark him 
 in his study, when matter crowds upon him and words 
 are not wanting — in what a continual series of small 
 successes time flows by ; with what a sense of power 
 as of one moving mountains, he marshals his petty 
 characters ; with what pleasures, both of the ear and 
 eye, he sees his airy structure growing on the page; 
 and how he labours in a craft to which the whole ma- 
 terial of his life is tributary, and which opens a door to 
 all his tastes, his loves, his hatreds, and his convictions, 
 so that what he writes is only what he longed to utter. 
 He may have enjoyed many things in this big, tragic 
 playground of the world; but what shall he have en- 
 joyed more fully than a morning of successful work ? 
 Suppose it ill paid : the wonder is it should be paid at 
 all. Other men pay, and pay dearly, for pleasures less 
 desirable. 
 
 Nor will the practice of art afford you pleasure only ; 
 it affords besides an admirable training. For the artist 
 works entirely upon honour. The public knows little 
 or nothing of those merits in the quest of which you 
 are condemned to spend the bulk of your endeavours. 
 Merits of design, the merit of first-hand energy, the 
 merit of a certain cheap accomplishment which a man 
 of the artistic temper easily acquires — these they can 
 recognise, and these they value. But to those more 
 exquisite refinements of proficiency and finish, which 
 the artist so ardently desires and so keenly feels, for 
 which (in the vigorous words of Balzac) he must toil 
 '* like a miner buried in a landslip," for which, day after 
 day, he recasts and revises and rejects — the gross mas^ 
 
 28^ 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 of the public must be ever blind. To those lost pains, 
 suppose you attain the highest pitch of merit, posterity 
 may possibly do justice ; suppose, as is so probable, you 
 fail by even a hair's breadth of the highest, rest certain 
 they shall never be observed. Under the shadow of 
 this cold thought, alone in his studio, the artist must 
 preserve from day to day his constancy to the ideal. It 
 is this which makes his life noble; it is by this that the 
 practice of his craft strengthens and matures his char- 
 acter; it is for this that even the serious countenance of 
 the great emperor was turned approvingly (if only for 
 a moment) on the followers of Apollo, and that sternly 
 gentle voice bade the artist cherish his art. 
 
 And here there fall two warnings to be made. First, 
 if you are to continue to be a law to yourself, you must 
 beware of the first signs of laziness. This idealism in 
 honesty can only be supported by perpetual effort; the 
 standard is easily lowered, the artist who says '' It will 
 do, ' ' is on the downward path ; three or four pot-boilers 
 are enough at times (above all at wrong times) to falsify 
 a talent, and by the practice of journalism a man runs 
 the risk of becoming wedded to cheap finish. This is 
 the danger on the one side; there is not less upon the 
 other. The consciousness of how much the artist is 
 (and must be) a law to himself, debauches the small 
 heads. Perceiving recondite merits very hard to at- 
 tain, making or swallowing artistic formulae, or perhaps 
 falling in love with some particular proficiency of his 
 own, many artists forget the end of all art : to please. 
 It is doubtless tempting to exclaim against the ignorant 
 bourgeois ; yet it should not be forgotten, it is he who is 
 to pay us, and that (surely on the face of it) for services 
 
 284 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 that he shall desire to have performed. Here also, if 
 properly considered, there is a question of transcen- 
 dental honesty. To give the public what they do not 
 want, and yet expect to be supported : we have there 
 a strange pretension, and yet not uncommon, above all 
 with painters. The first duty in this world is for a man 
 to pay his way ; when that is quite accomplished, he 
 may plunge into what eccentricity he likes; but em- 
 phatically not till then. Till then, he must pay assid- 
 uous court to the bourgeois who carries the purse. And 
 if in the course of these capitulations he shall falsify his 
 talent, it can never have been a strong one, and he will 
 have preserved a better thing than talent — character. 
 Or if he be of a mind so independent that he cannot 
 stoop to this necessity, one course is yet open : he can 
 desist from art, and follow some more manly way of 
 life. 
 
 I speak of a more manly way of life, it is a point on 
 which I must be frank. To live by a pleasure is not a 
 high calling; it involves patronage, however veiled; it 
 numbers the artist, however ambitious, along with 
 dancing girls and billiard markers. The French have a 
 romantic evasion for one employment, and call its prac- 
 titioners the Daughters of Joy. The artist is of the same 
 family, he is of the Sons of Joy, chose his trade to please 
 himself, gains his livelihood by pleasing others, and has 
 parted with something of the sterner dignity of man. 
 Journals but a little while ago declaimed against the 
 Tennyson peerage; and this Son of Joy was blamed for 
 condescension when he followed the example of Lord 
 Lawrence and Lord Cairns and Lord Clyde. The poet 
 was more happily inspired ; with a better modesty he ac- 
 
 285 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 cepted the honour; and anonymous journalists have not 
 yet (if I am to believe them) recovered the vicarious dis- 
 grace to their profession. When it comes to their turn, 
 these gentlemen can do themselves more justice ; and I 
 shall be glad to think of it; for to my barbarian eyesight, 
 even Lord Tennyson looks somewhat out of place in 
 that assembly. There should be no honours for the 
 artist; he has already, in the practice of his art, more 
 than his share of the rewards of life; the honours are 
 pre-empted for other trades, less agreeable and perhaps 
 more useful. 
 
 But the devil in these trades of pleasing is to fail to 
 please. In ordinary occupations, a man offers to do a 
 certain thing or to produce a certain article with a merely 
 conventional accomplishment, a design in which (we 
 may almost say) it is difficult to fail. But the artist steps 
 forth out of the crowd and proposes to delight : an im- 
 pudent design, in which it is impossible to fail without 
 odious circumstances. The poor Daughter of Joy, car- 
 rying her smiles and finery quite unregarded through 
 the crowd, makes a figure which it is impossible to re- 
 call without a wounding pity. She is the type of the 
 unsuccessful artist. The actor, the dancer, and the singer 
 must appear like her in person, and drain publicly the 
 cup of failure. But though the rest of us escape this 
 crowning bitterness of the pillory, we all court in essence 
 the same humiliation. We all profess to be able to de- 
 light. And how few of us are! We all pledge our- 
 selves to be able to continue to delight. And the day 
 will come to each, and even to the most admired, when 
 the ardour shall have declined and the cunning shall be 
 lost, and he shall sit by his deserted booth ashamed. 
 
 286 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 Then shall he see himself condemned to do work for 
 which he blushes to take payment. Then (as if his lot 
 were not already cruel) he must lie exposed to the gibes 
 of the wreckers of the press, who earn a little bitter 
 bread by the condemnation of trash which they have 
 not read, and the praise of excellence which they cannot 
 understand. 
 
 And observe that this seems almost the necessary end 
 at least of writers. Les Blancs et les Bleus (for instance) 
 is of an order of merit very different from Le VicomU de 
 Bragelonne ; and if any gentleman can bear to spy upon 
 the nakedness of CiMtle Dangerom^ his name I think is 
 Ham : let it be enough for the rest of us to read of it 
 (not without tears) in the pages of Lockhart. Thus in 
 old age, when occupation and comfort are most needful, 
 the writer must lay aside at once his pastime and his 
 breadwinner. The painter indeed, if he succeed at all 
 in engaging the attention of the public, gains great sums 
 and can stand to his easel until a great age without dis- 
 honourable failure. The writer has the double misfortune 
 to be ill-paid while he can work, and to be incapable of 
 working when he is old. It is thus a way of life which 
 conducts directly to a false position. 
 
 For the writer (in spite of notorious examples to the 
 contrary) must look to be ill-paid. Tennyson and 
 Montepin make handsome livelihoods ; but we cannot all 
 hope to be Tennyson, and we do not all perhaps desire 
 to be Montepin. If you adopt an art to be your trade, 
 weed your mind at the outset of all desire of money. 
 What you may decently expect, if you have some talent 
 and much industry, is such an income as a clerk will 
 earn with a tenth or perhaps a twentieth of your nervous 
 
 287 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 output. Nor have you the right to look for more; in 
 the wages of the life, not in the wages of the trade, lies 
 your reward ; the work is here the wages. It will be 
 seen I have little sympathy with the common lamenta- 
 tions of the artist class. Perhaps they do not remember 
 the hire of the field labourer; or do they think no par- 
 allel will lie ? Perhaps they have never observed what 
 is the retiring allowance of a field officer; or do they 
 suppose their contributions to the arts of pleasing more 
 important than the services of a colonel ? Perhaps they 
 forget on how little Millet was content to live; or do 
 they think, because they have less genius, they stand 
 excused from the display of equal virtues ? But upon 
 one point there should be no dubiety : if a man be not 
 frugal, he has no business in the arts. If he be not frugal, 
 he steers directly for that last tragic scene of levieux 
 saltimbanque ; if he be not frugal, he will find it hard to 
 continue to be honest. Some day, when the butcher is 
 knocking at the door, he may be tempted, he may be 
 obliged, to turn out and sell a slovenly piece of work. 
 If the obligation shall have arisen through no wanton- 
 ness of his own, he is even to be commended; for 
 words cannot describe how far more necessary it is that 
 a man should support his family, than that he should 
 attain to — or preserve — distinction in the arts. But if 
 the pressure comes through his own fault, he has stolen, 
 and stolen under trust, and stolen (which is the worst 
 of all) in such a way that no law can reach him. 
 
 And now you may perhaps ask me, if the debutant 
 artist is to have no thought of money, and if (as is im- 
 plied) he is to expect no honours from the State, he may 
 not at least look forward to the delights of popularity ? 
 
 288 
 
LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
 
 Praise, you will tell me, is a savoury dish. And in so 
 far as you may mean the countenance of other artists, 
 you would put your fmger on one of the most essential 
 and enduring pleasures of the career of art. But in so 
 far as you should have an eye to the commendations of 
 the public or the notice of the newspapers, be sure you 
 would but be cherishing a dream. It is true that in cer- 
 tain esoteric journals the author (for instance) is duly 
 criticised, and that he is often praised a great deal more 
 than he deserves, sometimes for qualities which he 
 prided himself on eschewing, and sometimes by ladies 
 and gentlemen who have denied themselves the privi- 
 lege of reading his work. But if a man be sensitive to 
 this wild praise, we must suppose him equally alive to 
 that which often accompanies and always follows it — 
 wild ridicule. A man may have done well for years, 
 and then he may fail ; he will hear of his failure. Or he 
 may have done well for years, and still do well, but the 
 critics may have tired of praising him, or there may have 
 sprung up some new idol of the instant, some " dust a 
 little gilt," to whom they now prefer to offer sacrifice. 
 Here is the obverse and the reverse of that empty and 
 ugly thing called popularity. Will any man suppose 
 it worth the gaining ? 
 
 289 
 
XL PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 We look for some reward of our endeavours and 
 are disappointed ; not success, not happiness, not even 
 peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to 
 do well. Our frailties are invincible, are virtues barren ; 
 the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the 
 sun. The canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; 
 and we look abroad, even on the face of our small earth, 
 and find them change with every climate, and no coun- 
 try where some action is not honoured for a virtue and 
 none where it is not branded for a vice ; and we look in 
 our experience, and find no vital congruity in the wisest 
 rules, but at the best a municipal fitness. It is not 
 strange if we are tempted to despair of good. We ask 
 too much. Our religions and moralities have been 
 trimmed to flatter us, till they are all emasculate and 
 sentimentalised, and only please and weaken. Truth 
 is of a rougher strain. In the harsh face of life, faith 
 can read a bracing gospel. The human race is a thing 
 more ancient than the ten commandments; and the 
 bones and revolutions of the Kosmos, in whose joints 
 we are but moss and fungus, more ancient still. 
 
 290 
 
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 I 
 
 Of the Kosmos in the last resort, science reports many 
 doubtful things and all of them appalling. There seems 
 no substance to this solid globe on which we stamp : 
 nothing but symbols and ratios. Symbols and ratios 
 carry us and bring us forth and beat us down ; gravity 
 that swings the incommensurable suns and worlds 
 through space, is but a figment varying inversely as 
 the squares of distances ; and the suns and worlds them- 
 selves, imponderable figures of abstraction, NHg and 
 HgO. Consideration dares not dwell upon this view; 
 that way madness lies ; science carries us into zones of 
 speculation, where there is no habitable city for the 
 mind of man. 
 
 But take the Kosmos with a grosser faith, as our 
 senses give it us. We behold space sown with rota- 
 tory islands, suns and worlds and the shards and wrecks 
 of systems : some, like the sun, still blazing ; some rot- 
 ting, like the earth; others, like the moon, stable in 
 desolation. All of these we take to be made of some- 
 thing we call matter: a thing which no analysis can 
 help us to conceive ; to whose incredible properties no 
 familiarity can reconcile our minds. This stuff, when 
 not purified by the lustration of fire, rots uncleanly into 
 something we call life ; seized through all its atoms with 
 a pediculous malady ; swelling in tumours that become 
 independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent prodigy) 
 locomotory ; one splitting into millions, millions cohering 
 into one, as the malady proceeds through varying stages. 
 This vital putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, 
 yet strikes us with occasional disgust, and the profusion 
 
 2pl 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 of worms in a piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh 
 darkened with insects, will sometimes check cur breath- 
 ing so that we aspire for cleaner places. But none is clean : 
 the moving sand is infected with lice ; the pure spring, 
 where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue of 
 worms ; even in the hard rock the crystal is forming. 
 
 In two main shapes this eruption covers the coun- 
 tenance of the earth: the animal and the vegetable: one 
 in some degree the inversion of the other: the second 
 rooted to the spot; the first coming detached out of its 
 natal mud, and scurrying abroad with the myriad feet 
 of insects or towering into the heavens on the wings of 
 birds : a thing so inconceivable that, if it be well con- 
 sidered, the heart stops. To what passes with the an- 
 chored vermin, we have little clue : doubtless they have 
 their joys and sorrows, their delights and killing agonies : 
 it appears not how. But of the locomotory, to which 
 we ourselves belong, we can tell more. These share 
 with us a thousand miracles : the miracles of sight, of 
 hearing, of the projection of sound, things that bridge 
 space; the miracles of memory and reason, by which 
 the present is conceived, and when it is gone, its image 
 kept living in the brains of man and brute ; the miracle 
 of reproduction, with its imperious desires and stagger- 
 ing consequences. And to put the last touch upon this 
 mountain mass of the revolting and the inconceivable, 
 all these prey upon each other, lives tearing other lives 
 in pieces, cramming them inside themselves, and by 
 that summary process, growing fat : the vegetarian, the 
 whale, perhaps the tree, not less than the lion of the 
 desert; for the vegetarian is only the eater of the dumb. 
 
 Meanwhile our rotatory island loaded with predatory 
 
 392 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 life, and more drenched with blood, both animal and 
 vegetable, than ever mutinied ship, scuds through space 
 with unimaginable speed, and turns alternate cheeks to 
 the reverberation of a blazing world, ninety million 
 miles away. 
 
 What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease 
 of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying 
 drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bring- 
 ing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair 
 like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his 
 face ; a thing to set children screaming ; — and yet looked 
 at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, how sur- 
 prising are his attributes ! Poor soul, here for so little, 
 cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so in- 
 commensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, 
 savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey 
 upon his fellow lives : who should have blamed him had 
 he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely 
 barbarous ? And we look and behold him instead filled 
 with imperfect virtues : infinitely childish, often admira- 
 bly valiant, often touchingly kind ; sitting down, amidst 
 his momentary life, to debate of right and wrong and the 
 attributes of the deity ; rising up to do battle for an egg 
 or die for an idea; singling out his friends and his mate 
 with cordial affection; bringing forth in pain, rearing 
 with long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the 
 heart of his mystery, we find in him one thought, strange 
 to the point of lunacy : the thought of duty ; the thought 
 of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his 
 God : an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it 
 
 293 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be 
 possible, he will not stoop. The design in most men 
 is one of conformity ; here and there, in picked natures, 
 it transcends itself and soars on the other side, arming 
 martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, 
 it is a bosom thought: — Not in man alone, for we trace 
 it in dogs and cats whom we know fairly well, and 
 doubtless some similar point of honour sways the ele- 
 phant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so 
 little: — But in man, at least, it sways with so complete 
 an empire that merely selfish things come second, even 
 with the selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are 
 conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest 
 shrinks from the reproof of a glance, although it were a 
 child's ; and all but the most cowardly stand amid the 
 risks of war; and the more noble, having strongly con- 
 ceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and embrace 
 death. Strange enough if, with their singular origin 
 and perverted practice, they think they are to be re- 
 warded in some future life : stranger still, if they are per- 
 suaded of the contrary, and think this blow, which they 
 solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity. 1 shall be 
 reminded what a tragedy of misconception and miscon- 
 duct man at large presents : of organised injustice, cow- 
 ardly violence and treacherous crime ; and of the damning 
 imperfections of the best. They cannot be too darkly 
 drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his efforts 
 to do right. But where the best consistently miscarry, 
 how tenfold more remarkable that all should continue 
 to strive; and surely we should fmd it both touching 
 and inspiriting, that in a field from which success is 
 banished, our race should not cease to labour. 
 
 294 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 If the first view of this creature, stalking in his rota- 
 tory isle, be a thing to shake the courage of the stoutest, 
 on this nearer sight, he startles us with an admiring 
 wonder. It matters not where we look, under what 
 climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in 
 what depth of ignorance, burthened with what errone- 
 ous morality; by camp-fires in Assiniboia, the snow 
 powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his blanket, 
 as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering 
 his grave opinions like a Roman senator; in ships at sea, 
 a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his bright- 
 est hope a fiddle in a tavern and a bedizened trull who 
 sells herself to rob him, and he for all that simple, inno- 
 cent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave 
 to drown, for others; in the slums of cities, moving 
 among indifferent millions to mechanical employments, 
 without hope of change in the future, with scarce a 
 pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, hon- 
 est up to his lights, kind to his neighbours, tempted 
 perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps long- 
 suffering with the drunken wife that ruins him ; in India 
 (a woman this time) kneeling with broken cries and 
 streaming tears, as she drowns her child in the sacred 
 river; in the brothel, the discard of society, living mainly 
 on strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, a thief, the 
 comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of 
 honour and the touch of pity, often repaying the world's 
 scorn with service, often standing firm upon a scruple, 
 and at a certain cost, rejecting riches: — everywhere 
 some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some de- 
 cency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign 
 of man's ineffectual goodness : — ah ! if I could show 
 
 395 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 you this ! if I could show you these men and women, 
 all the world over, in every stage of history, under 
 every abuse of error, under every circumstance of fail- 
 ure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still 
 obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, 
 in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, 
 the poor jewel of their souls ! They may seek to es- 
 cape, and yet they cannot ; it is not alone their privilege 
 and glory, but their doom ; they are condemned to some 
 nobility ; all their lives long, the desire of good is at their 
 heels, the implacable hunter. 
 
 Of all earth's meteors, here at least is the most strange 
 and consoling :thatthis ennobled lemur, this hair-crowned 
 bubble of the dust, this inheritor of a few years and sor- 
 rows, should yet deny himself his rare delights, and add 
 to his frequent pains, and live for an ideal, however 
 misconceived. Nor can we stop with man. A new 
 doctrine, received with screams a little while ago by 
 canting moralists, and still not properly worked into 
 the body of our thoughts, lights us a step farther into the 
 heart of this rough but noble universe. For nowadays 
 the pride of man denies in vain his kinship with the 
 original dust. He stands no longer like a thing apart. 
 Close at his heels we see the dog, prince of another 
 genus: and in him too, we see dumbly testified the 
 same cultus of an unattainable ideal, the same constancy 
 in failure. Does it stop with the dog ? We look at our 
 feet where the ground is blackened with the swarming 
 ant : a creature so small, so far from us in the hierarchy 
 of brutes, that we can scarce trace and scarce comprehend 
 his doings; and here also, in his ordered polities and rigor- 
 ous justice, we see confessed the law of duty and the fact 
 
 296 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 of individual sin. Does it stop, then, with the ant ? Rather 
 this desire of well-doing and this doom of frailty run 
 through all the grades of life : rather is this earth, from the 
 frosty top of Everest to the next margin of the internal 
 fire, one stage of ineffectual virtues and one temple of 
 pious tears and perseverance. The whole creation 
 groaneth and travaileth together. It is the common and 
 the god-like law of life. The browsers, the biters, the 
 barkers, the hairy coats of field and forest, the squirrel 
 in the oak, the thousand-footed creeper in the dust, as 
 they share with us the gift of life, share with us the love 
 of an ideal : strive like us — like us are tempted to grow 
 weary of the struggle — to do well ; like us receive at 
 times unmerited refreshment, visitings of support, re- 
 turns of courage; and are condemned like us to be cruci- 
 fied between that double law of the members and the 
 will. Are they like us, I wonder, in the timid hope of 
 some reward, some sugar with the drug ? do they, too, 
 stand aghast at unrewarded virtues, at the sufferings of 
 those whom, in our partiality, we take to be just, and 
 the prosperity of such as, in our blindness, we call 
 wicked ? It may be, and yet God knows what they 
 should look for. Even while they look, even while they 
 repent, the foot of man treads them by thousands in the 
 dust, the yelping hounds burst upon their trail, the bul- 
 let speeds, the knives are heating in the den of the 
 vivisectionist; or the dew falls, and the generation of a 
 day is blotted out. For these are creatures, compared 
 with whom our weakness is strength, our ignorance 
 wisdom, our brief span eternity. 
 
 And as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of ter- 
 ror and under the imminent hand of death, God forbid 
 
 297 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 it should be man the erected, the reasoner, the wise in 
 his own eyes — God forbid it should be man that wearies 
 in well-doing, that despairs of unrewarded effort, or 
 utters the language of complaint. Let it be enough for 
 faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, 
 strives with unconquerable constancy : Surely not all in 
 vain. 
 
 aps 
 
XII. A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 By the time this paper appears, I shall have been talk- 
 ing for twelve months ; ^ and it is thought I should take 
 my leave in a formal and seasonable manner. Valedic- 
 tory eloquence is rare, and death-bed sayings have not 
 often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, 
 wit and sceptic, a man whose life had been one long 
 lesson in human incredulity, an easy-going comrade, a 
 manoeuvring king — remembered and embodied all his 
 wit and scepticism along with more than his usual good 
 humour in the famous "I am afraid, gentlemen, I am 
 an unconscionable time a-dying." 
 
 I 
 
 An unconscionable time a-dying — there is the picture 
 (" I am afraid, gentlemen, ") of your life and of mine. The 
 sands run out, and the hours are ** numbered and im- 
 puted," and the days go by; and when the last of these 
 finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what 
 else ? The very length is something, if we reach that 
 hour of separation undishonoured ; and to have lived at 
 all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to have 
 ^i. e. in the pages of Scrihner's Magazine (1888). 
 
 290 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 served. There is a tale in Tacitus of how the veterans 
 mutinied in the German wilderness ; of how they mobbed 
 Germanicus, clamouring to go home; and of how, seiz- 
 ing their general's hand, these old, war-worn exiles 
 passed his finger along their toothless gums. Sunt 
 lacrymce rerum: this was the most eloquent of the 
 songs of Simeon. And when a man has lived to a fair 
 age, he bears his marks of service. He may have never 
 been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army ; 
 at least he shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread. 
 
 The idealism of serious people in this age of ours is 
 of a noble character. It never seems to them that they 
 have served enough ; they have a fine impatience of their 
 virtues. It were perhaps more modest to be singly 
 thankful that we are no worse. It is not only our ene- 
 mies, those desperate characters — it is we ourselves who 
 know not what we do; — thence springs the glimmer- 
 ing hope that perhaps we do better than we think : that 
 to scramble through this random business with hands 
 reasonably clean, to have played the part of a man or 
 woman with some reasonable fulness, to have often re- 
 sisted the diabolic, and at the end to be still resisting it, 
 is for the poor human soldier to have done right well. To 
 ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is but a tran- 
 scendental way of serving for reward; and what we take 
 to be contempt of self is only greed of hire. 
 
 And again if we require so much of ourselves, shall 
 we not require much of others } If we do not genially 
 judge our own deficiencies, is it not to be feared we 
 shall be even stern to the trespasses of others } And he 
 who (looking back upon his own life) can see no more 
 than that he has been unconscionably long a-dying, will 
 
 300 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 he not be tempted to think his neighbour unconscion- 
 ably long of getting hanged ? It is probable that nearly 
 all who think of conduct at all, think of it too much ; it 
 is certain we all think too much of sin. We are not 
 damned for doing wrong, but for not doing right; Christ 
 would never hear of negative morality ; thou shalt was 
 ever his word, with which he superseded thou shalt not. 
 To make our idea of morality centre on forbidden acts 
 is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our 
 judgments of our fellow-men a secret element of gusto. 
 If a thing is wrong for us, we should not dwell upon 
 the thought of it; or we shall soon dwell upon it with 
 inverted pleasure. If we cannot drive it from our minds 
 — one thing of two : either our creed is in the wrong 
 and we must more indulgently remodel it; or else, if 
 our morality be in the right, we are criminal lunatics 
 and should place our persons in restraint. A mark of 
 such unwholesomely divided minds is the passion for 
 interference with others : the Fox without the Tail was 
 of this breed, but had (if his biographer is to be trusted) 
 a certain antique civility now out of date. A man may 
 have a flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for the duties 
 of life, that spoils his temper, that threatens his integ- 
 rity, or that betrays him into cruelty. It has to be con- 
 quered; but it must never be suffered to engross his 
 thoughts. The true duties lie all upon the farther side, 
 and must be attended to with a whole mind so soon as 
 this preliminary clearing of the decks has been effected. 
 In order that he may be kind and honest, it may be 
 needful he should become a total abstainer; let him be- 
 come so then, and the next day let him forget the cir- 
 cumstance. Trying to be kind and honest will require 
 
 301 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 all his thoughts ; a mortified appetite is never a wise com- 
 panion ; in so far as he has had to mortify an appetite, 
 he will still be the worse man ; and of such an one a great 
 deal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and 
 a great deal of humility in judging others. 
 
 It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our 
 life's endeavour springs in some degree from dulness. 
 We require higher tasks, because we do not recognise 
 the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and 
 honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequen- 
 tial for gentlemen of our heroic mould ; we had rather 
 set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclu- 
 sive ; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, 
 cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task be- 
 fore us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is 
 rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism re- 
 quired is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gor- 
 dian knots of life ; each must be smilingly unravelled. 
 
 To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to 
 spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family 
 happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall 
 be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends 
 but these without capitulation — above all, on the same 
 grim condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a 
 task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He 
 has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a 
 hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to 
 be successful. There is indeed one element in human 
 destiny that not blindness itself can controvert : what- 
 ever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to 
 succeed ; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art 
 and study ; it is so above all in the continent art of liv- 
 
 302 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 ing well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end 
 or for the end of life : Only self-deception will be satis- 
 fied, and there need be no despair for the despairer. 
 
 But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another 
 year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination : it is a 
 season, from all its associations, whether domestic or 
 religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatis- 
 fied with his endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. 
 And in the midst of the winter, when his life runs low- 
 est and he is reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, 
 it is well he should be condemned to this fashion of the 
 smiling face. Noble disappointment, noble self-denial 
 are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they 
 bring bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom 
 of heaven maim; another to maim yourself and stay 
 without. And the kingdom of heaven is of the child- 
 like, of those who are easy to please, who love and who 
 give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters 
 and the builders and the judges, have lived long and 
 done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; 
 and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, 
 the shame were indelible if we should lose it. Gentle- 
 ness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; 
 they are the perfect duties. And it is the trouble with 
 moral men that they have neither one nor other. It was 
 the moral man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could not 
 away with. If your morals make you dreary, depend 
 upon it they are wrong. I do not say *'give them up," 
 for they may be all you have ; but conceal them like a 
 
 30} 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler 
 people. 
 
 A strange temptation attends upon man : to keep his 
 eye on pleasures, even when he will not share in them ; 
 to aim all his morals against them. This very year a 
 lady (singular iconoclast!) proclaimed a crusade against 
 dolls; and the racy sermon against lust is a feature of 
 the age. I venture to call such moralists insincere. At 
 any excess or perversion of a natural appetite, their lyre 
 sounds of itself with relishing denunciations ; but for all 
 displays of the truly diabolic — envy, malice, the mean 
 lie, the mean silence, the calumnious truth, the back- 
 biter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of family 
 life — their standard is quite different. These are wrong, 
 they will admit, yet somehow not so wrong; there is 
 no zeal in their assault on them, no secret element of 
 gusto warms up the sermon ; it is for things not wrong 
 in themselves that they reserve the choicest of their 
 indignation. A man may naturally disclaim all moral 
 kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola or the hobgoblin 
 old lady of the dolls ; for these are gross and naked in- 
 stances. And yet in each of us some similar element 
 resides. The sight of a pleasure in which we cannot or 
 else will not share moves us to a particular impatience. 
 It may be because we are envious, or because we are 
 sad, or because we dislike noise and romping — being 
 so refined, or because — being so philosophic — we have 
 an overweighing sense of life's gravity : at least, as we 
 go on in years, we are all tempted to frown upon our 
 neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays so fond 
 of resisting temptations ; here is one to be resisted. 
 They are fond of self-denial ; here is a propensity that 
 
 304 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 cannot be too peremptorily denied. There is an idea 
 abroad among moral people that they should make their 
 neighbours good. One person I have to make good: 
 myself. But my duty to my neighbour is much more 
 nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him 
 happy — if I may. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Happiness and goodness, according to canting moral- 
 ists, stand in the relation of effect and cause. There 
 was never anything less proved or less probable: our 
 happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our 
 constitution; we stand buffet among friends and ene- 
 mies ; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an asper- 
 sion with unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to 
 be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves 
 very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease 
 very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not 
 meant to help us. It is not even its own reward, ex- 
 cept for the self-centred and — I had almost said — the 
 unamiable. No man can pacify his conscience ; if quiet 
 be what he want, he shall do better to let that organ 
 perish from disuse. And to avoid the penalties of the 
 law, and the minor capitis diminutio of social ostracism, 
 is an affair of wisdom — of cunning, if you will — and 
 not of virtue. 
 
 In his own life, then, a man is not to expect happiness, 
 only to profit by it gladly when it shall arise ; he is on 
 duty here; he knows not how or why, and does not 
 need to know ; he knows not for what hire, and must 
 not ask. Somehow or other, though he does not know 
 what goodness is, he must try to be good ; somehow 
 
 305 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 or Other, though he cannot tell what will do it, he must 
 try to give happiness to others. And no doubt there 
 comes in here a frequent clash of duties. How far is he 
 to make his neighbour happy ? How far must he re- 
 spect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so hard to 
 brighten again ? And how far, on the other side, is he 
 bound to be his brother's keeper and the prophet of his 
 own morality ? How far must he resent evil ? 
 
 The difficulty is that we have little guidance ; Christ's 
 sayings on the point being hard to reconcile with each 
 other, and (the most of them) hard to accept. But the 
 truth of his teaching would seem to be this : in our own 
 person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and 
 to pardon all ; it is our cheek we are to turn, our coat 
 that we are to give away to the man who has taken our 
 cloak. But when another's face is buffeted, perhaps a 
 little of the lion will become us best. That we are to 
 suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceiv- 
 able and surely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is 
 a kind of wild justice ; its judgments at least are deliv- 
 ered by an insane judge; and in our own quarrel we 
 can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in 
 the quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. One 
 person's happiness is as sacred as another's ; when we 
 cannot defend both, let us defend one with a stout heart. 
 It is only in so far as we are doing this, that we have 
 any right to interfere : the defence of B is our only 
 ground of action against A. A has as good a right to 
 go to the devil, as we to go to glory ; and neither knows 
 what he does. 
 
 The truth is that all these interventions and denunci- 
 ations and militant mongerings of moral half-truths, 
 
 306 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 though they be sometimes needful, though they are 
 often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of 
 duties. Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an 
 arsenal of pious disguises ; this is the playground of in- 
 verted lusts. With a little more patience and a little 
 less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be found 
 in almost every case ; and the knot that we cut by some 
 fine heady quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public 
 affairs, by some denunciatory act against what we are 
 pleased to call our neighbour's vices, might yet have 
 been unwoven by the hand of sympathy. 
 
 IV 
 
 To look back upon the past year, and see how little 
 we have striven and to what small purpose; and how 
 often we have been cowardly and hung back, or teme- 
 rarious and rushed unwisely in ; and how every day and 
 all day long we have transgressed the law of kindness; 
 — it may seem a paradox, but in the bitterness of these 
 discoveries, a certain consolation resides. Life is not 
 designed to minister to a man's vanity. He goes upon 
 his long business most of the time with a hanging head, 
 and all the time like a blind child. Full of rewards and 
 pleasures as it is — so that to see the day break or the 
 moon rise, or to meet a friend, or to hear the dinner-call 
 when he is hungry, fills him with surprising joys — this 
 world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fall 
 through, health fails, weariness assails him ; year after 
 year, he must thumb the hardly varying record of his 
 own weakness and folly. It is a friendly process of de- 
 tachment. When the time comes that he should go, 
 
 307 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 there need be few illusions left about himself Here 
 lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: — 
 surely that may be his epitaph, of which he need not be 
 ashamed. Nor will he complain at the summons which 
 calls a defeated soldier from the field : defeated, ay, if he 
 were Paul or Marcus Aurelius ! — but if there is still one 
 inch of fight in his old spirit, undishonoured. The faith 
 which sustained him in his life-long blindness and life- 
 long disappointment will scarce even be required in this 
 last formality of laying down his arms. Give him a 
 march with his old bones; there, out of the glorious 
 sun-coloured earth, out of the day and the dust and the 
 ecstasy — there goes another Faithful Failure ! 
 
 From a recent book of verse, where there is more than 
 one such beautiful and manly poem, I take this me- 
 morial piece: it says better than I can, what I love to 
 think; let it be our parting word. 
 
 " A late lark twitters from the quiet skies; 
 And from the west, 
 Where the sun, his day's work ended, 
 Lingers as in content, 
 There falls on the old, gray city 
 An influence luminous and serene, 
 A shining peace. 
 
 ** The smoke ascends 
 In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires 
 Shine, and are changed. In the valley 
 Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, 
 Qosing his benediction. 
 Sinks, and the darkening air 
 Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night— 
 Night, with her train of stars 
 And her great gift of sleep. 
 308 
 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 
 
 " So be my passing! 
 My task accomplished and the long day done, 
 My wages taken, and in my heart 
 Some late lark singing, 
 Let me be gathered to the quiet west, 
 The sundown splendid and serene, 
 Death." 1 
 
 1 From A Book of Verses by William Ernest Henley. D. Nutt, 
 
 [1888.] 
 
 309 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
" Vixerunt nonnulH in agris, deleciaUre sua famiUari. His idem propositum 
 /kit quod regibus, ui ne qua re agerent, ne cut parerent, Ubertate uterentur: 
 cuius propriunt est sic vivere ut velis." 
 
 Cic.,£>eOj:,I.xx. 
 
TO 
 
 VIRGIL WILLIAMS 
 
 AND 
 
 DORA NORTON WILLIAMS 
 
 THESE SKETCHES ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 BY THEIR FRIEND 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 THE scene of this little book is on a high mountain. 
 There are, indeed, many higher; there are many 
 of a nobler outline. It is no place of pilgrimage for the 
 summary globe-trotter; but to one who lives upon its 
 sides. Mount Saint Helena soon becomes a centre of in- 
 terest. It is the Mont Blanc of one section of the Cali- 
 fornian Coast Range, none of its near neighbours rising 
 to one-half its altitude. It looks down on much green, 
 intricate country. It feeds in the spring-time many 
 splashing brooks. From its summit you must have an 
 excellent lesson of geography : seeing, to the south, San 
 Francisco Bay, with Tamalpais on the one hand and 
 Monte Diablo on the other; to the west and thirty miles 
 away, the open ocean ; eastward, across the cornlands 
 and thick tule swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where 
 the Central Pacific railroad begins to climb the sides of 
 the Sierras; and northward, for what I know, the white 
 head of Shasta looking down on Oregon. Three coun- 
 ties, Napa County, Lake County, and Sonoma County, 
 march across its cliffy shoulders. Its naked peak stands 
 nearly four thousand five hundred feet above the sea; 
 its sides are fringed with forest ; and the soil, where it 
 is bare, glows warm with cinnabar. 
 
 Life in its shadow goes rustically forward. Bucks, 
 
 315 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 and bears, and rattlesnakes, and former mining opera- 
 tions, are the staple of men's talk. Agriculture has 
 only begun to mount above the valley. And though 
 in a few years from now the whole district may be 
 smiling with farms, passing trains shaking the moun- 
 tain to the heart, many-windowed hotels lighting up 
 the night like factories, and a prosperous city occupy- 
 ing the site of sleepy Calistoga; yet in the meantime, 
 around the foot of that mountain the silence of nature 
 reigns in a great measure unbroken, and the people of 
 hill and valley go sauntering about their business as in 
 the days before the flood. 
 
 To reach Mount Saint Helena from San Francisco, 
 the traveller has twice to cross the bay: once by the 
 busy Oakland Ferry, and again, after an hour or so of 
 the railway, from Vallejo junction to Vallejo. Thence 
 he takes rail once more to mount the long green strath 
 of Napa Valley. 
 
 In all the contractions and expansions of that inland 
 sea, the Bay of San Francisco, there can be few drearier 
 scenes than the Vallejo Ferry. Bald shores and a low, 
 bald islet inclose the sea; through the narrows the tide 
 bubbles, muddy like a river. When we made the pas- 
 sage (bound, although yet we knew it not, for Silverado) 
 the steamer jumped, and the black buoys were danc- 
 ing in the jabble; the ocean breeze blew killing chill; 
 and, although the upper sky was still unflecked with 
 vapour, the sea fogs were pouring in from seaward, 
 over the hilltops of Marin County, in one great, shape- 
 less, silver cloud. 
 
 South Vallejo is typical of many Californian towns. 
 It was a blunder; the site has proved untenable; and, 
 
 316 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 although it is still such a young place by the scale of 
 Europe, it has already begun to be deserted for its neigh- 
 bour and namesake, North Vallejo. A long pier, a num- 
 ber of drinking saloons, a hotel of a great size, marshy 
 pools where the frogs keep up their croaking, and even 
 at high noon the entire absence of any human face or 
 voice — these are the marks of South Vallejo. Yet there 
 was a tall building beside the pier, labelled the Star Flour 
 Mills ; and sea-going, full-rigged ships lay close along 
 shore, waiting for their cargo. Soon these would be 
 plunging round the Horn, soon the flour from the Star 
 Flour Mills would be landed on the wharves of Liver- 
 pool. For that, too, is one of England's outposts; 
 thither, to this gaunt mill, across the Atlantic and Pa- 
 cific deeps and round about the icy Horn, this crowd 
 of great, three-masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing 
 nothing, and return with bread. 
 
 The Frisby House, for that was the name of the hotel, 
 was a place of fallen fortunes, like the town. It was 
 now given up to labourers, and partly ruinous. At din- 
 ner there was the ordinary display of what is called in the 
 west a two-hit house : the tablecloth checked red and 
 white, the plague of flies, the wire hencoops over the 
 dishes, the great variety and invariable vileness of the 
 food and the rough coatless men devouring it in silence. 
 In our bedroom, the stove would not burn, though it 
 would smoke ; and while one window would not open, 
 the other would not shut. There was a view on a bit 
 of empty road, a few dark houses, a donkey wandering 
 with its shadow on a slope, and a blink of sea, with a 
 tall ship lying anchored in the moonlight. All about 
 that dreary inn frogs sang their ungainly chorus. 
 
 3»7 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 Early the next morning we mounted the hill along a 
 wooden footway, bridging one marish spot after an- 
 other. Here and there, as we ascended, we passed a 
 house embowered in white roses. More of the bay be- 
 came apparent, and soon the blue peak of Tamalpais 
 rose above the green level of the island opposite. It 
 told us we were still but a little way from the city of 
 the Golden Gates, already, at that hour, beginning to 
 awake among the sand-hills. It called to us over the 
 waters as with the voice of a bird. Its stately head, blue 
 as a sapphire on the paler azure of the sky, spoke to us 
 of wider outlooks and the bright Pacific. For Tamal- 
 pais stands sentry, like a lighthouse, over the Golden 
 Gates, between the bay and the open ocean, and looks 
 down indifferently on both. Even as we saw and 
 hailed it from Vallejo, seamen, far out at sea, were scan- 
 ning it with shaded eyes; and, as if to answer to the 
 thought, one of the great ships below began silently to 
 clothe herself with white sails, homeward bound for 
 England. 
 
 For some way beyond Vallejo the railway led us 
 through bald green pastures. On the west the rough 
 highlands of Marin shut off the ocean; .in the midst, in 
 long, straggling, gleaming arms, the bay died out among 
 the grass ; there were few trees and few enclosures ; the 
 sun shone wide over open uplands, the displumed hills 
 stood clear against the sky. But by-and-by these hills 
 began to draw nearer on either hand, and first thicket 
 and then wood began to clothe their sides ; and soon 
 we were away from all signs of the sea's neighbour- 
 hood, mounting an inland, irrigated valley. A great 
 variety of oaks stood, now severally, now in a becoming 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 grove, among the fields and vineyards. The towns were 
 compact, in about equal proportions, of bright, new 
 wooden houses and great and growing forest trees; 
 and the chapel bell on the engine sounded most festally 
 that sunny Sunday, as we drew up at one green town 
 after another, with the townsfolk trooping in their Sun- 
 day's best to see the strangers, with the sun sparkling 
 on the clean houses, and great domes of foliage hum- 
 ming overhead in the breeze. 
 
 This pleasant Napa Valley is, at its north end, block- 
 aded by our mountain. There, at Calistoga, the rail- 
 road ceases, and the traveller who intends faring farther, 
 to the Geysers or to the springs in Lake County, must 
 cross the spurs of the mountain by stage. Thus, Mount 
 Saint Helena is not only a summit, but a frontier; and, 
 up to the time of writing, it has stayed the progress of 
 the iron horse. 
 
 V9 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CALISTOGA 
 
 It is difficult for a European to imagine Calistoga, the 
 whole place is so new, and of such an occidental pat- 
 tern ; the very name, I hear, was invented at a supper- 
 party by the man who found the springs. 
 
 The railroad and the highway come up the valley 
 about parallel to one another. The street of Calistoga 
 joins them, perpendicular to both — a wide street, with 
 bright, clean, low houses, here and there a verandah 
 over the sidewalk, here and there a horse-post, here and 
 there lounging townsfolk. Other streets are marked 
 out, and most likely named ; for these towns in the New 
 World begin with a firm resolve to grow larger, Wash- 
 ington and Broadway, and then First and Second, and 
 so forth, being boldly plotted out as soon as the com- 
 munity indulges in a plan. But, in the meanwhile, all the 
 life and most of the houses of Calistoga are concentrated 
 upon that street between the railway station and the 
 road. I never heard it called by any name, but I will 
 hazard a guess that it is either Washington or Broadway. ^ ^ \' 
 Here are the blacksmith's, the chemist's, the general 
 merchant's, and Kong Sam Kee, the Chinese laundry- 
 man's; here, probably, is the oifice of the local paper 
 
 320 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 (for the place has a paper — they all have papers); and 
 here certainly is one of the hotels, Cheeseborough's, 
 whence the daring Foss, a man dear to legend, starts his 
 horses for the Geysers. 
 
 It must be remembered that we are here in a land of 
 stage-drivers and highwaymen: a land, in that sense, 
 like England a hundred years ago. The highway rob- 
 ber — road-agent, he is quaintly called — is still busy in 
 these parts. The fame of Vasquez is still young. Only 
 a few years ago, the Lakeport stage was robbed a mile or 
 two from Calistoga. In 1879, the dentist of Mendocino 
 City, fifty miles away upon the coast, suddenly threw off 
 the garments of his trade, like Grindofr,in The Miller and 
 his Men, and flamed forth in his second dress as a cap- 
 tain of banditti. A great robbery was followed by a 
 long chase, a chase of days if not of weeks, among the 
 intricate hill-country ; and the chase was followed by 
 much desultory fighting, in which several — and the 
 dentist, I believe, amongst the number — bit the dust. 
 The grass was springing for the first time, nourished upon 
 their blood, when I arrived in Calistoga. I am reminded 
 of another highwayman of that same year. ''He had 
 been unwell," so ran his humorous defence, '*and the 
 doctor told him to take something, so he took the ex- 
 press box." 
 
 The cultus of the stage-coachman always flourishes 
 highest where there are thieves on the road, and where 
 the guard travels armed, and the stage is not only a link 
 between country and city, and the vehicle of news, but 
 has a faint warfaring aroma, like a man who should be 
 brother to a soldier. California boasts her famous stage- 
 drivers, and among the famous Foss is not forgotten. 
 
 321 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 Along the unfenced, abominable mountain roads, he 
 launches his team with small regard to human life or the 
 doctrine of probabilities. Flinching travellers, who be- 
 hold themselves coasting eternity at every corner, look 
 with natural admiration at their driver's huge, impas- 
 sive, fleshy countenance. He has the very face for the 
 driver in Sam Weller's anecdote, who upset the election 
 party at the required point. Wonderful tales are current 
 of his readiness and skill. One in particular, of how one 
 of his horses fell at a ticklish passage of the road, and 
 how Foss let slip the reins, and, driving over the fallen 
 animal, arrived at the next stage with only three. This 
 I relate as I heard it, without guarantee. 
 
 I only saw Foss once, though, strange as it may 
 sound, I have twice talked with him. He lives out of 
 Calistoga, at a ranche called Fossville. One evening, 
 after he was long gone home, I dropped into Cheese- 
 borough's, and was asked if I should like to speak with 
 Mr. Foss. Supposing that the interview was impossi- 
 ble, and that I was merely called upon to subscribe the 
 general sentiment, I boldly answered **Yes." Next 
 moment, I had one instrument at my ear, another at 
 my mouth, and found myself, with nothing in the 
 world to say, conversing with a man several miles off 
 among desolate hills. Foss rapidly and somewhat 
 plaintively brought the conversation to an end ; and he 
 returned to his night's grog at Fossville, while I strolled 
 forth again on Calistoga high street. But it was an odd 
 thing that here, on what we are accustomed to consider 
 the very skirts of civilisation, I should have used the 
 telephone for the first time in my civilised career. So it 
 goes in these young countries; telephones, and tele- 
 
 322 _ 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 graphs, and newspapers, and advertisements running 
 far ahead among the Indians and the grizzly bears. 
 
 Alone, on the other side of the railway, stands the 
 Springs Hotel, with its attendant cottages. The floor 
 of the valley is extremely level to the very roots of the 
 hills ; only here and there a hillock, crowned with pines, 
 rises like the barrow of some chieftain famed in war; 
 and right against one of these hillocks is the Springs 
 Hotel — is or was; for since I was there the place has 
 been destroyed by fire, and has risen again from its 
 ashes. A lawn runs about the house, and the lawn is 
 in its turn surrounded by a system of little five-roomed 
 cottages, each with a verandah and a weedy palm be- 
 fore the door. Some of the cottages are let to residents, 
 and these are wreathed in flowers. The rest are occu- 
 pied by ordinary visitors to the hotel ; and a very plea- 
 sant way this is, by which you have a little country 
 cottage of your own, without domestic burthens, and 
 by the day or week. 
 
 The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena is 
 full of sulphur and of boiling springs. The Geysers are 
 famous; they were the great health resort of the Indians 
 before the coming of the whites. Lake County is dotted 
 with spas ; Hot Springs and White Sulphur Springs are 
 the names of two stations on the Napa Valley railroad; 
 and Calistoga itself seems to repose on a mere film above 
 a boiling, subterranean lake. At one end of the hotel 
 enclosure are the springs from which it takes its name, 
 hot enough to scald a child seriously while I was there. 
 At the other end, the tenant of a cottage sank a well, 
 and there also the water came up boiling. It keeps this 
 end of the valley as warm as a toast. I have gone 
 
 323 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 across to the hotel a little after five in the morning, when 
 a sea fog from the Pacific was hanging thick and gray, 
 and dark and dirty overhead, and found the thermom- 
 eter had been up before me, and had already climbed 
 among the nineties; and in the stress of the day it was 
 sometimes too hot to move about. 
 
 But in spite of this heat from above and below, doing 
 one on both sides, Calistoga was a pleasant place to 
 dwell in; beautifully green, for it was then that fa- 
 voured moment in the Californian year, when the rains 
 are over and the dusty summer has not yet set in ; often 
 visited by fresh airs, now from the mountain, now 
 across Sonoma from the sea ; very quiet, very idle, very 
 silent but for the breezes and the cattle bells afield. 
 And there was something satisfactory in the sight of 
 that great mountain that enclosed us to the north: 
 whether it stood, robed in sunshine, quaking to its top- 
 most pinnacle with the heat and brightness of the day; 
 or whether it set itself to weaving vapours, wisp after 
 wisp growing, trembling, fleeting, and fading in the 
 blue. 
 
 The tangled, woody, and almost trackless foothills 
 that enclose the valley, shutting it off from Sonoma on 
 the west, and from Yolo on the east — rough as they 
 were in outline, dug out by winter streams, crowned by 
 cliffy bluffs and nodding pine trees — were dwarfed into 
 satellites by the bulk and bearing of Mount Saint Helena. 
 She over-towered them by two-thirds of her own stat- 
 ure. She excelled them by the boldness of her profile. 
 Her great bald summit, clear of trees and pasture, a 
 cairn of quartz and cinnabar, rejected kinship with the 
 dark and shaggy wilderness of lesser hilltops. 
 
 324 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PETRIFIED FOREST 
 
 We drove off from the Springs Hotel about three in 
 the afternoon. The sun warmed me to the heart. A 
 broad, cool wind streamed pauselessly down the valley, 
 laden with perfume. Up at the top stood Mount Saint 
 Helena, a bulk of mountain, bare atop, with tree-fringed 
 spurs, and radiating warmth. Once we saw it framed 
 in a grove of tall and exquisitely graceful white oaks, in 
 line and colour a finished composition. We passed a 
 cow stretched by the roadside, her bell slowly beating 
 time to the movement of her ruminating jaws, her big 
 red face crawled over by half a dozen flies, a monument 
 of content. 
 
 A little farther, and we struck to the left up a moun- 
 tain road, and for two hours threaded one valley after 
 another, green, tangled, full of noble timber, giving us 
 every now and again a sight of Mount Saint Helena and 
 the blue hilly distance, and crossed by many streams, 
 through which we splashed to the carriage-step. To 
 the right or the left, there was scarce any trace of man 
 but the road we followed; I think we passed but one 
 ranchero's house in the whole distance, and that was 
 closed and smokeless. But we had the society of 
 these bright streams — dazzlingly clear, as is their wont, 
 
 325 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 Splashing from the wheels in diamonds, and striking a 
 lively coolness through the sunshine. And what with 
 the innumerable variety of greens, the masses of foliage 
 tossing in the breeze, the glimpses of distance, the de- 
 scents into seemingly impenetrable thickets, the contin- 
 ual dodging of the road, which made haste to plunge 
 again into the covert, we had a fine sense of woods, 
 and spring-time, and the open air. 
 
 Our driver gave me a lecture by the way on Califor- 
 nian trees — a thing I was much in need of, having fal- 
 len among painters who know the name of nothing, 
 and Mexicans who know the name of nothing in English. 
 He taught me the madrona, the manzanita, the buck- 
 eye, the maple; he showed me the crested mountain 
 quail; he showed me where some young redwoods 
 were already spiring heavenwards from the ruins of the 
 old; for in this district all had already perished: red- 
 woods and redskins, the two noblest indigenous living 
 things, alike condemned. 
 
 At length, in a lonely dell, we came on a huge wooden 
 gate with a sign upon it like an inn. **The Petrified 
 Forest. Proprietor : C. Evans, " ran the legend. Within, 
 on a knoll of sward, was the house of the proprietor, and 
 another smaller house hard by to serve as a museum, 
 where photographs and petrifactions were retailed. It 
 was a pure little isle of touristry among these solitary 
 hills. 
 
 The proprietor was a brave old whitefaced Swede. 
 He had wandered this way. Heaven knows how, and 
 taken up his acres — I forget how many years ago — 
 all alone, bent double with sciatica, and with six bits in 
 his pocket and an axe upon his shoulder. Long, useless 
 
 326 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 years of seafaring had thus discharged him at the end, 
 penniless and sick. Without doubt he had tried his 
 luck at the diggings, and got no good from that ; with- 
 out doubt he had loved the bottle, and lived the life of 
 Jack ashore. But at the end of these adventures, here 
 he came ; and, the place hitting his fancy, down he sat 
 to make a new life of it, far from crimps and the salt sea. 
 And the very^sight of his ranche had done him good. It 
 was ** the handsomest spot in the Californy mountains." 
 ''Isn't it handsome, now ? " he said. Every penny he 
 makes goes into that ranche to make it handsomer. 
 Then the climate, with the sea-breeze every afternoon in 
 the hottest summer weather, had gradually cured the 
 sciatica ; and his sister and niece were now domesticated 
 with him for company — or, rather, the niece came only 
 once in the two days, teaching music the meanwhile in 
 the valley. And then, for a last piece of luck, ''the 
 handsomest spot in the Californy mountains " had pro- 
 duced a petrified forest, which Mr. Evans now shows at 
 the modest figure of half a dollar a head, or two-thirds 
 of his capital when he first came there with an axe and 
 a sciatica. 
 
 This tardy favourite of fortune — hobbling a little, I 
 think, as if in memory of the sciatica, but with not a 
 trace that I can remember of the sea — thoroughly rural- 
 ized from head to foot, proceeded to escort us up the hill 
 behind his house. 
 
 "Who first found the forest?" asked my wife. 
 
 "The first? I was that man," said he. "I was 
 cleaning up the pasture for my beasts, when I found 
 this" — kicking a great redwood, seven feet in diameter, 
 that lay there on its side, hollow heart, clinging lumps 
 
 327 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 of bark, all changed into gray stone, with veins of quartz 
 between what had been the layers of the wood. 
 
 '' Were you surprised ? " 
 
 ** Surprised ? No ! What would I be surprised about ? 
 What did I know about petrifactions — following the sea ? 
 Petrifaction ! There was no such word in my language ! 
 I knew about putrefaction, though ! 1 thought it was a 
 stone; so would you, if you was cleaning up pasture/' 
 
 And now he had a theory of his own, which I did 
 not quite grasp, except that the trees had not *'grewed " 
 there. But he mentioned, with evident pride, that he 
 differed from all the scientific people who had visited 
 the spot; and he flung about such words as ''tufa" and 
 "silica" with careless freedom. 
 
 When 1 mentioned I was from Scotland, '* My old 
 country," he said; '*my old country" — with a smiling 
 look and a tone of real affection in his voice. I was 
 mightily surprised, for he was obviously Scandinavian, 
 and begged him to explain. It seemed he had learned 
 his English and done nearly all his sailing in Scotch 
 ships. ' ' Out of Glasgow, " said he, * ' or Greenock ; but 
 that's all the same — they all hail from Glasgow." And 
 he was so pleased with me for being a Scotsman, and 
 his adopted compatriot, that he made me a present of a 
 very beautiful piece of petrifaction — I believe the most 
 beautiful and portable he had. 
 
 Here was a man, at least, who was a Swede, a Scot, 
 and an American, acknowledging some kind allegiance 
 to three lands. Mr. Wallace's Scoto-Circassian will not 
 fail to come before the reader. I have myself met and 
 spoken with a Fifeshire German, whose combination of 
 abominable accents struck me dumb. But, indeed, I 
 
 328 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 think we all belong to many countries. And perhaps 
 this habit of much travel, and the engendering of scat- 
 tered friendships, may prepare the euthanasia of ancient 
 nations. 
 
 And the forest itself.? Well, on a tangled, briery hill- 
 side — for the pasture would bear a little further cleaning 
 up, to my eyes — there lie scattered thickly various 
 lengths of petrified trunk, such as the one already 
 mentioned. It is very curious, of course, and ancient 
 enough, if that were all. Doubtless, the heart of the 
 geologist beats quicker at the sight ; but, for my part, 
 I was mightily unmoved. Sight-seeing is the art of 
 disappointment. 
 
 " There's nothing under heaven so blue, 
 That's fairly worth the travelling to." 
 
 But, fortunately. Heaven rewards us with many agree- 
 able prospects and adventures by the way ; and some- 
 times, when we go out to see a petrified forest, pre- 
 pares a far more delightful curiosity in the form of Mr. 
 Evans, whom may all prosperity attend throughout a 
 long and green old age. 
 
 329 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 NAPA WINE 
 
 I WAS interested in Californian wine. Indeed, I am 
 interested in all wines, and have been all my life, from 
 the raisin wine that a schoolfellow kept secreted in his 
 play-box up to my last discovery, those notable Valtel- 
 lines that once shone upon the board of Caesar. 
 
 Some of us, kind old Pagans, watch with dread the 
 shadows falling on the age: how the unconquerable 
 worm invades the sunny terraces of France, and Bor- 
 deaux is no more, and the Rhone a mere Arabia Petraea. 
 Chateau Neuf is dead, and I have never tasted it; Her- 
 mitage — a hermitage indeed from all life's sorrows — 
 lies expiring by the river. And in the place of these 
 imperial elixirs, beautiful to every sense, gem-hued, 
 flower-scented, dream-compellers : — behold upon the 
 quays at Cette the chemicals arrayed; behold the an- 
 alyst at Marseilles, raising hands in obsecration, attest- 
 ing god Lyoeus, and the vats staved in, and the dishonest 
 wines poured forth among the sea. It is not Pan only ; 
 Bacchus, too, is dead. 
 
 If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, 
 the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked 
 by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degust- 
 ing tenderly, and storing reminiscences — for a bottle 
 
 330 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retro- 
 spect — if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! 
 Now we begin to have compunctions, and look back 
 at the brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties, 
 where the guests drank grossly, discussing politics the 
 while, and even the schoolboy **took his whack," like 
 liquorice water. And at the same time, we look tim- 
 idly forward, with a spark of hope, to where the new 
 lands, already weary of producing gold, begin to green 
 with vineyards. A nice point in human history falls to 
 be decided by Californian and Australian wines. 
 
 Wine in California is still in the experimental stage; 
 and when you taste a vintage, grave economical ques- 
 tions are involved. The beginning of vine-planting is 
 like the beginning of mining for the precious metals: 
 the wine-grower also ' ' prospects. " One corner of land 
 after another is tried with one kind of grape after an- 
 other. This is a failure; that is better; a third best. 
 So, bit by bit, they grope about for their Clos Vougeot 
 and Lafite. Those lodes and pockets of earth, more 
 precious than the precious ores, that yield inimitable 
 fragrance and soft fire ; those virtuous Bonanzas, where 
 the soil has sublimated under sun and stars to some- 
 thing finer, and the wine is bottled poetry : these still 
 lie undiscovered ; chaparral conceals, thicket embowers 
 them; the miner chips the rock and wanders farther, 
 and the grizzly muses undisturbed. But there they 
 bide their hour, awaiting their Columbus; and nature 
 nurses and prepares them. The smack of Californian 
 earth shall linger on the palate of your grandson. 
 
 Meanwhile the wine is merely a good wine ; the best 
 that I have tasted better than a Beaujolais, and not un- 
 
 331 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 like. But the trade is poor ; it lives from hand to mouth, 
 putting its all into experiments, and forced to sell its 
 vintages. To find one properly matured, and bearing 
 its own name, is to be fortune's favourite. 
 
 Bearing its own name, I say, and dwell upon the in- 
 nuendo. 
 
 ''You want to know why California wine is not drunk 
 in the States ?" a San Francisco wine merchant said to 
 me, after he had shown me through his premises. 
 "Well, here's the reason." 
 
 And opening a large cupboard, fitted with many little 
 drawers, he proceeded to shower me all over with a 
 great variety of gorgeously tinted labels, blue, red, or 
 yellow, stamped with crown or coronet, and hailing 
 from such^a profusion of clos and chdteaux, that a single 
 department could scarce have furnished forth the names. 
 But it was strange that all looked unfamiliar. 
 
 ' ' Chateau X ? " said I. "I never heard of that. " 
 
 " I dare say not," said he. "I had been reading one 
 ofX 's novels." 
 
 They were all castles in Spain ! But that sure enough 
 is the reason why California wine is not drunk in the 
 States. 
 
 Napa valley has been long a seat of the wine-grow- 
 ing industry. It did not here begin, as it does too often, 
 in the low valley lands along the river, but took at once 
 to the rough foothills, where alone it can expect to pros- 
 per. A basking inclination, and stones, to be a reservoir 
 of the day's heat, seem necessary to the soil for wine ; 
 the grossness of the earth must be evaporated, its mar- 
 row daily melted and refined for ages ; until at length 
 these clods that break below our footing, and to the eye 
 
 332 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 appear but common earth, are truly and to the perceiv- 
 ing mind, a masterpiece of nature. The dust of Riche- 
 bourg, which the wind carries away, what an apotheosis 
 of the dust! Not man himself can seem a stranger 
 child of that brown, friable powder, than the blood and 
 sun in that old flask behind the faggots. 
 
 A Californian vineyard, one of man's outposts in the 
 wilderness, has features of its own. There is nothing 
 here to remind you of the Rhine or Rhone, of the low 
 cote d'or, or the infamous and scabby deserts of Cham- 
 pagne; but all is green, solitary, covert. We visited 
 two of them, Mr. Schram's and Mr. M'Eckron's, sharing 
 the same glen. 
 
 Some way down the valley below Calistoga, we 
 turned sharply to the south and plunged into the thick 
 of the wood. A rude trail rapidly mounting; a little 
 stream tinkling by on the one hand, big enough per- 
 haps after the rains, but already yielding up its life; 
 overhead and on all sides a bower of green and tangled 
 thicket, still fragrant and still flower-bespangled by the 
 early season, where thimble-berry played the part of 
 our English hawthorn, and the buck-eyes were putting 
 forth their twisted horns of blossom : through all this, 
 we struggled toughly upwards, canted to and fro by 
 the roughness of the trail, and continually switched 
 across the face by sprays of leaf or blossom. The last 
 is no great inconvenience at home ; but here in Califor- 
 nia it is a matter of some moment. For in all woods 
 and by every wayside there prospers an abominable 
 shrub or weed, called poison-oak, whose very neigh- 
 bourhood is venomous to some, and whose actual touch 
 is avoided by the most impervious. 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 The two houses, with their vineyards, stood each in 
 a green niche of its own in this steep and narrow forest 
 dell. Though they were so near, there was already a 
 good difference in level; and Mr. M'Eckron's head must 
 be a long way under the feet of Mr. Schram. No more 
 had been cleared than was necessary for cultivation; 
 close around each oasis ran the tangled wood; the glen 
 enfolds them ; there they lie basking in sun and silence, 
 concealed from all but the clouds and the mountain 
 birds. 
 
 Mr. M'Eckron's is a bachelor establishment; a little 
 bit of a wooden house, a small cellar hard by in the hill- 
 side, and a patch of vines planted and tended single- 
 handed by himself. He had but recently begun; his 
 vines were young, his business young also ; but I thought 
 he had the look of the man who succeeds. He hailed 
 from Greenock : he remembered his father putting him 
 inside Mons Meg, and that touched me home; and we 
 exchanged a word or two of Scotch, which pleased me 
 more than you would fancy. 
 
 Mr. Schram's, on the other hand, is the oldest vine- 
 yard in the valley, eighteen years old, I think; yet he 
 began a penniless barber, and even after he had broken 
 ground up here with his black malvoisies, continued for 
 long to tramp the valley with his razor. Now, his 
 place is the picture of prosperity: stuffed birds in the 
 verandah, cellars far dug into the hillside, and resting 
 on pillars like a bandit's cave: — all trimness, varnish, 
 flowers, and sunshine, among the tangled wildwood. 
 Stout, smiling Mrs. Schram, who has been to Europe 
 and apparently all about the States for pleasure, enter- 
 tained Fanny in the verandah, while I was tasting wines 
 
 334 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 in the cellar. To Mr. Schram this was a solemn office; 
 his serious gusto warmed my heart; prosperity had not 
 yet wholly banished a certain neophite and girlish trepi- 
 dation, and he followed every sip and read my face with 
 proud anxiety. I tasted all. I tasted every variety and 
 shade of Schramberger, red and white Schramberger, 
 Burgundy Schramberger, Schramberger Hock, Schram- 
 berger Golden Chasselas, the latter with a notable bou- 
 quet, and I fear to think how many more. Much of it 
 goes to London — most, I think; and Mr. Schram has a 
 great notion of the English taste. 
 
 In this wild spot, I did not feel the sacredness of an- 
 cient cultivation. It was still raw, it was no Marathon, 
 and no Johannisberg; yet the stirring sunlight, and the 
 growing vines, and the vats and bottles in the cavern, 
 made a pleasant music for the mind. Here, also, earth's 
 cream was being skimmed and garnered; and the Lon- 
 don customers can taste, such as it is, the tang of the 
 earth in this green valley. So local, so quintessential is 
 a wine, that it seems the very birds in the verandah 
 might communicate a flavour, and that romantic cellar 
 influence the bottle next to be uncorked in Pimlico, and 
 the smile of jolly Mr. Schram might mantle in the glass. 
 
 But these are but experiments. All things in this 
 new land are moving farther on : the wine-vats and the 
 miner's blasting tools but picket for a night, like Bed- 
 ouin pavillions ; and to-morrow, to fresh woods ! This 
 stir of change and these perpetual echoes of the moving 
 footfall, haunt the land. Men move eternally, still chas- 
 ing Fortune; and, fortune found, still wander. As we 
 drove back to Calistoga, the road lay empty of mere 
 passengers, but its green side was dotted with the 
 
 3^5 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 camps of travelling families : one cumbered with a great 
 waggonful of household stuff, settlers going to occupy 
 a ranche they had taken up in Mendocino, or perhaps 
 Tehama County; another, a party in dust coats, men 
 and women, whom we found camped in a grove on 
 the roadside, all on pleasure bent, with a Chinaman to 
 cook for them, and who waved their hands to us as we 
 drove by. 
 
 33(y 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SCOT ABROAD 
 
 A FEW pages back, I wrote that a man belonged, in 
 these days, to a variety of countries; but the old land 
 is still the true love, the others are but pleasant infideli- 
 ties. Scotland is indefinable; it has no unity except 
 upon the map. Two languages, many dialects, innu- 
 merable forms of piety, and countless local patriotisms 
 and prejudices, part us among ourselves more widely 
 than the extreme east and west of that great continent 
 of America. When I am at home, 1 feel a man from 
 Glasgow to be something like a rival, a man from Barra 
 to be more than half a foreigner. Yet let us meet in 
 some far country, and, whether we hail from the braes 
 of Manor or the braes of Mar, some ready-made affec- 
 tion joins us on the instant. It is not race. Look at us. 
 One is Norse, one Celtic, and another Saxon. It is not 
 community of tongue. We have it not among our- 
 selves ; and we have it almost to perfection, with Eng- 
 lish, or Irish, or American. It is no tie of faith, for we 
 detest each other's errors. And yet somewhere, deep 
 down in the heart of each one of us, something yearns 
 for the old land, and the old kindly people. 
 
 Of all mysteries of the human heart, this is perhaps the 
 
 337 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 most inscrutable. There is no special loveliness in that 
 gray country, with its rainy, sea-beat archipelago; its 
 fields of dark mountains ; its unsightly places, black with 
 coal ; its treeless, sour, unfriendly looking corn-lands ; its 
 quaint, gray, castled city, where the bells clash of a 
 Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly 
 and beat. I do not even know if 1 desire to live there; 
 but let me hear, in some far land, a kindred voice sing 
 out, '*0h, why left I my hame ?" and it seems at once 
 as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and no society 
 of the wise and good, can repay me for my absence 
 from my country. And though I think I would rather 
 die elsewhere, yet in my heart of hearts I long to be 
 buried among good Scots clods. I will say it fairly, it 
 grows on me with every year: there are no stars so 
 lovely as Edinburgh street-lamps. When I forget thee, 
 auld Reekie, may my right hand forget its cunning! 
 
 The happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotchman. 
 You must pay for it in many ways, as for all other ad- 
 vantages on earth. You have to learn the paraphrases 
 and the shorter catechism; you generally take to drink; 
 your youth, as far as I can find out, is a time of louder 
 war against society, of more outcry and tears and tur- 
 moil, than if you had been born, for instance, in Eng- 
 land. But somehow life is warmer and closer; the 
 hearth burns more redly; the lights of home shine 
 softer on the rainy street; the very names, endeared 
 in verse and music, cling nearer round our hearts. An 
 Englishman may meet an Englishman to-morrow, upon 
 Chimborazo, and neither of them care; but when the 
 Scotch wine-grower told me of Mons Meg, it was like 
 magic. 
 
 33» 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 *• From the dim shieling on the misty island 
 Mountains divide us, and a world of seas; 
 Yet still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland, 
 And we, in dreams, behold the Hebrides." 
 
 And, Highland and Lowland, all our hearts are Scotch. 
 
 Only a few days after 1 had seen M'Eckron, a mes- 
 sage reached me in my cottage. It was a Scotchman 
 who had come down a long way from the hills to map- 
 ket. He had heard there was a countryman in Calis- 
 toga, and came round to the hotel to see him. We 
 said a few words to each other; we had not much to 
 say — should never have seen each other had we stayed 
 at home, separated alike in space and in society; and 
 then we shook hands, and he went his way again to 
 his ranche among the hills, and that was all. 
 
 Another Scotchman there was, a resident, who for the 
 mere love of the common country, douce, serious, re- 
 ligious man, drove me all about the valley, and took as 
 much interest in me as if I had been his son : more, per- 
 haps ; for the son has faults too keenly felt, while the 
 abstract countryman is perfect — like a whiff of peats. 
 
 And there was yet another. Upon him I came sud- 
 denly, as he was calmly entering my cottage, his mind 
 quite evidently bent on plunder : a man of about fifty, 
 filthy, ragged, roguish, with a chimney-pot hat and a 
 tail coat, and a pursing of his mouth that might have 
 been envied by an elder of the kirk. He had just such 
 a face as I have seen a dozen times behind the plate. 
 
 '' Hullo, sir! " I cried. " Where are you going ? " 
 
 He turned round without a quiver. 
 
 " You are a Scotchman, sir ? " he said gravely. " So 
 am I; I come from Aberdeen. This is my card," pre- 
 
 339 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 senting me with a piece of pasteboard which he had 
 raked out of some gutter in the period of the rains. 
 **I was just examining this palm," he continued, indi- 
 cating the misbegotten plant before our door, ** which 
 is the largest specimen I have yet observed in Cali- 
 foarnia." 
 
 There were four or five larger within sight. But 
 where was the use of argument ? He produced a tape- 
 line, made me help him to measure the tree at the level 
 of the ground, and entered the figures in a large and 
 filthy pocket-book, all with the gravity of Solomon. 
 He then thanked me profusely, remarking that such lit- 
 tle services were due between countrymen ; shook hands 
 with me, "for auld lang syne," as he said; and took 
 himself solemnly away, radiating dirt and humbug as 
 he went. 
 
 A month or two after this encounter of mine, there 
 came a Scot to Sacramento — perhaps from Aberdeen. 
 Anyway, there never was any one more Scotch in this 
 wide world. He could sing and dance, and drink, I 
 presume; and he played the pipes with vigour and suc- 
 cess. All the Scotch in Sacramento became infatuated 
 with him, and spent their spare time and money, driv- 
 ing him about in an open cab, between drinks, while he 
 blew himself scarlet at the pipes. This is a very sad 
 story. After he had borrowed money from every one, 
 he and his pipes suddenly disappeared from Sacra- 
 mento, and when I last heard, the police were looking 
 for him. 
 
 I cannot say how this story amused me, when I felt 
 myself so thoroughly ripe on both sides to be duped in 
 the same way. 
 
 340 
 
IN THE VALLEY 
 
 It is at least a curious thing, to conclude, that the races 
 which wander widest, Jews and Scotch, should be the 
 most clannish in the world. But perhaps these two are 
 cause and effect: '* For ye were strangers in the land of 
 Egypt." 
 
 M» 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 TO INTRODUCE MR. KELMAR 
 
 One thing in this new country very particularly strikes 
 a stranger, and that is the number of antiquities. Al- 
 ready there have been many cycles of population suc- 
 ceeding each other, and passing away and leaving behind 
 them relics. These, standing on into changed times, 
 strike ^the imagination as forcibly as any pyramid or 
 feudal tower. The towns, like the vineyards, are ex- 
 perimentally founded: they grow great and prosper 
 by passing occasions ; and when the lode comes to an 
 end, and the miners move elsewhere, the town remains 
 behind them, like Palmyra in the desert. I suppose 
 there are, in no country in the world, so many deserted 
 towns as here in California. 
 
 The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena, 
 now so quiet and sylvan, was once alive with mining 
 camps and villages. Here there would be two thou- 
 sand souls under canvas; there one thousand or fifteen 
 hundred ensconced, as if for ever, in a town of comfort- 
 able houses. But the luck had failed, the mines petered 
 out ; and the army of miners had departed, and left this 
 quarter of the world to the rattlesnakes and deer and 
 grizzlies, and to the slower but steadier advance of hus- 
 bandry. 
 
 342 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 It was with an eye on one of these deserted places. 
 Pine Flat, on the Geysers road, that we had come first 
 to Calistoga. There is something singularly enticing in 
 the idea of going, rent-free, into a ready-made house. 
 And to the British merchant, sitting at home at ease, it 
 may appear that, with such a roof over your head and a 
 spring of clear water hard by, the whole problem of the 
 squatter's existence would be solved. Food, however, 
 has yet to be considered. I will go as far as most peo- 
 ple on tinned meats ; some of the brightest moments of 
 my life were passed over tinned mulligatawney in the 
 cabin of a sixteen-ton schooner, storm-stayed in Portree 
 Bay; but after suitable experiments, I pronounce au- 
 thoritatively that man cannot live by tins alone. Fresh 
 meat must be had on an occasion. It is true that the 
 great Foss, driving by along the Geysers road, wooden- 
 faced, but glorified with legend, might have been in- 
 duced to bring us meat, but the great Foss could hardly 
 bring us milk. To take a cow would have involved 
 taking a field of grass and a milkmaid ; after which it 
 would have been hardly worth while to pause, and we 
 might have added to our colony a flock of sheep and an 
 experienced butcher. 
 
 It is really very disheartening how we depend on other 
 people in this life. " Mihi est propositum," as you may 
 see by the motto, *'id quod regibus;" and behold it 
 cannot be carried out, unless I find a neighbour rolling 
 in cattle. 
 
 Now, my principal adviser in this matter was one 
 whom I will call Kelmar. That was not what he called 
 himself, but as soon as I set eyes on him, I knew it was 
 or ought to be his name ; I am sure it will be his name 
 
 343 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 among the angels. Kelmar was the store-keeper, a 
 Russian Jew, good-natured, in a very thriving way of 
 business, and, on equal terms, one of the most service- 
 able of men. He also had something of the expression 
 of a Scotch country elder, who, by some peculiarity, 
 should chance to be a Hebrew. He had a projecting 
 under lip, with which he continually smiled, or rather 
 smirked. Mrs. Kelmar was a singularly kind woman ; 
 and the oldest son had quite a dark and romantic bear- 
 ing, and might be heard on summer evenings playing 
 sentimental airs on the violin. 
 
 I had no idea, at the time I made his acquaintance, 
 what an important person Kelmar was. But the Jew 
 store-keepers of California, profiting at once by the 
 needs and habits of the people, have made themselves 
 in too many cases the tyrants of the rural population. 
 Credit is offered, is pressed on the new customer, and 
 when once he is beyond his depth, the tune changes, 
 and he is from thenceforth a white slave. I believe, 
 even from the little I saw, that Kelmar, if he choose to 
 put on the screw, could send half the settlers packing 
 in a radius of seven or eight miles round Calistoga. 
 These are continually paying him, but are never suffered 
 to get out of debt. He palms dull goods upon them, 
 for they dare not refuse to buy ; he goes and dines with 
 them when he is on an outing, and no man is loudlier 
 welcomed; he is their family friend, the director of their 
 business, and, to a degree elsewhere unknown in mod- 
 ern days, their king. 
 
 For some reason, Kelmar always shook his head at 
 the mention of Pine Flat, and for some days I thought 
 he disapproved of the whole scheme and was propor- 
 
 344 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 tionately sad. One fine morning, however, he met me, 
 wreathed in smiles. He had found the very place for 
 me — Silverado, another old mining town, right up the 
 mountain. Rufe Hanson, the hunter, could take care of 
 us — fine people the Hansons; we should be close to 
 the Toll House, where the Lakeport stage called daily ; 
 it was the best place for my health, besides. Rufe had 
 been consumptive, and was now quite a strong man, 
 ain't it ? In short, the place and all its accompaniments 
 seemed made for us on purpose. 
 
 He took me to his back door, whence, as from every 
 point of Calistoga, Mount Saint Helena could be seen 
 towering in the air. There, in the nick, just where the 
 eastern foothills joined the mountain, and she herself be- 
 gan to rise above the zone of forest — there was Silverado. 
 The name had already pleased me ; the high station pleased 
 me still more. I began to inquire with some eagerness. 
 It was but a little while ago that Silverado was a great 
 place. The mine — a silver mine, of course — had 
 promised great things. There was quite a lively popu- 
 lation, with several hotels and boarding-houses; and 
 Kelmar himself had opened a branch store, and done 
 extremely well — '* Ain't it?" he said, appealing to his 
 wife. And she said, ''Yes; extremely well." Now 
 there was no one living in the town but Rufe the hun- 
 ter ; and once more I heard Rufe's praises by the yard, 
 and this time sung in chorus. 
 
 I could not help perceiving at the time that there was 
 something underneath ; that no unmixed desire to have 
 us comfortably settled had inspired the Kelmars with 
 this flow of words. But I was impatient to be gone, to 
 be about my kingly project ; and when we were offered 
 
 M5 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 seats in Kelmar's waggon, I accepted on the spot. The 
 plan of their next Sunday's outing took them, by gopd 
 fortune, over the border into Lake County. They v^ould 
 carry us so far, drop us at the Toll House, present us to 
 the Hansons, and call for us again on Monday morning 
 early. 
 
 i46 
 
CHAPTER 11 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SILVERADO 
 
 We were to leave by six precisely ; that was solemnly 
 pledged on both sides ; and a messenger came to us the 
 last thing at night, to remind us of the hour. But it was 
 eight before we got clear of Calistoga: Kelmar, Mrs. 
 Kelmar, a friend of theirs whom we named Abramina, 
 her little daughter, my wife, myself, and, stowed away 
 behind us, a cluster of ship's coffee-kettles. These last 
 were highly ornamental in the sheen of their bright tin, 
 but I could invent no reason for their presence. Our 
 carriageful reckoned up, as near as we could get at it, 
 some three hundred years to the six of us. Four of the 
 six, besides, were Hebrews. But I never, in all my life, 
 was conscious of so strong an atmosphere of holiday. 
 No word was spoken but of pleasure ; and even when 
 we drove in silence, nods and smiles went round the 
 party like refreshments. 
 
 The sun shone out of a cloudless sky. Close at the 
 zenith rode the belated moon, still clearly visible, and, 
 along one margin, even bright. The wind blew a gale 
 from the north ; the trees roared ; the corn and the deep 
 grass in the valley fled in whitening surges; the dust 
 towered into the air along the road and dispersed like 
 the smoke of battle. It was clear in our teeth from the 
 
 34Z 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 first, and for all the windings of the road it managed to 
 keep clear in our teeth until the end. 
 
 For some two miles we rattled through the valley, 
 skirting the eastern foothills ; then we struck off to the 
 right, through haugh-land, and presently, crossing a dry 
 water-course, entered the Toll road, or, to be more 
 local, entered on ''the grade." The road mounts the 
 near shoulder of Mount Saint Helena, bound northward 
 into Lake County. In one place it skirts along the edge 
 of a narrow and deep canon, filled with trees, and I 
 was glad, indeed, not to be driven at this point by the 
 dashing Foss. Kelmar, with his unvarying smile, jog- 
 ging to the motion of the trap, drove for all the world 
 like a good, plain, country clergyman at home; and I 
 profess I blessed him unawares for his timidity. 
 
 Vineyards and deep meadows, islanded and framed 
 with thicket, gave place more and more as we ascended 
 to woods of oak and madrona, dotted with enormous 
 pines. It was these pines, as they shot above the lower 
 wood, that produced that pencilling of single trees I had 
 so often remarked from the valley. Thence, looking up 
 and from however far, each fir stands separate against 
 the sky no bigger than an eyelash ; and all together lend 
 a quaint, fringed aspect to the hills. The oak is no 
 baby; even the madrona, upon these spurs of Mount 
 Saint Helena, comes to a fine bulk and ranks with 
 forest trees ; but the pines look down upon the rest for 
 underwood. As Mount Saint Helena among her foot- 
 hills, so these dark giants out-top their fellow-vege- 
 tables. Alas ! if they had left the redwoods, the pines, 
 in turn, would have been dwarfed. But the redwoods, 
 fallen from their high estate, are serving as family bed- 
 
 348 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 Steads, or yet more humbly as field fences, along all 
 Napa Valley. 
 
 A rough smack of resin was in the air, and a crystal 
 mountain purity. It came pouring over these green 
 slopes by the oceanfuL The wood sang aloud, and 
 gave largely of their healthful breath. Gladness seemed 
 to inhabit these upper zones, and we had left indiffer- 
 ence behind us in the valley. ''I to the hills will lift 
 mine eyes!" There are days in a life when thus to 
 climb out of the lowlands, seems like scaling heaven. 
 
 As we continued to ascend, the wind fell upon us 
 with increasing strength. It was a wonder how the 
 two stout horses managed to pull us up that steep in- 
 cline and still face the athletic opposition of the wind, 
 or how their great eyes were able to endure the dust. 
 Ten minutes after we went by, a tree fell, blocking the 
 road; and even before us leaves were thickly strewn, 
 and boughs had fallen, large enough to make the pas- 
 sage difficult. But now we were hard by the summit. 
 The road crosses the ridge, just in the nick that Kel- 
 mar showed me from below, and then, without pause, 
 plunges down a deep, thickly wooded glen on the far- 
 ther side. At the highest point a trail strikes up the 
 main hill to the leftward ; and that leads to Silverado. 
 A hundred yards beyond, and in a kind of elbow of the 
 glen, stands the Toll House Hotel. We came up the 
 one side, were caught upon the summit by the whole 
 weight of the wind as it poured over into Napa Valley, 
 and a minute after had drawn up in shelter, but all 
 buffetted and breathless, at the Toll House door. 
 
 A water-tank, and stables, and a gray house of two 
 stories, with gable ends and a verandah, are jammed 
 
 349 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 hard against the hillside, just where a stream has cut for 
 itself a narrow canon, filled with pines. The pines go 
 right up overhead; a little more and the stream might 
 have played, like a fire-hose, on the Toll House roof. 
 In front the ground drops as sharply as it rises behind. 
 There is just room for the road and a sort of promon- 
 tory of croquet ground, and then you can lean over the 
 edge and look deep below you through the wood. I 
 said croquet ground , not green ; for the surface was of 
 brown, beaten earth. The toll-bar itself was the only 
 other note of originality : a long beam, turning on a 
 post, and kept slightly horizontal by a counterweight 
 of stones. Regularly about sundown this rude barrier 
 was swung, like a derrick, across the road and made 
 fast, I think, to a tree upon the farther side. 
 
 On our arrival there followed a gay scene in the bar. 
 I was presented to Mr. Corwin, the landlord; to Mr. 
 Jennings, the engineer, who lives there for his health; 
 to Mr. Hoddy, a most pleasant little gentleman, once a 
 member of the Ohio legislature, again the editor of a 
 local paper, and now, with undiminished dignity, keep- 
 ing the Toll House bar. I had a number of drinks and 
 cigars bestowed on me, and enjoyed a famous oppor- 
 tunity of seeing Kelmar in his glory, friendly, radiant, 
 smiling, steadily edging one of the ship's kettles on the 
 reluctant Corwin. Corwin, plainly aghast, resisted gal- 
 lantly, and for that bout victory crowned his arms. 
 
 At last we set forth for Silverado on foot. Kelmar 
 and his jolly Jew girls were full of the sentiment of 
 Sunday outings, breathed geniality and vagueness, and 
 suffered a little vile boy from the hotel to lead them 
 here and there about the woods. For three people all 
 
 350 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 SO old, SO bulky in body, and belonging to a race so 
 venerable, they could not but surprise us by their ex- 
 treme and almost imbecile youthfulness of spirit. They 
 were only going to stay ten minutes at the Toll House ; 
 had they not twenty long miles of road before them on 
 the other side ? Stay to dinner ? Not they ! Put up 
 the horses ? Never. Let us attach them to the veran- 
 dah by a wisp of straw rope, such as would not have 
 held a person's hat on that blustering day. And with 
 all these protestations of hurry, they proved irrespon- 
 sible like children. Kelmar himself, shrewd old Russian 
 Jew, with a smirk that seemed just to have concluded 
 a bargain to its satisfaction, intrusted himself and us 
 devoutly to that boy. Yet the boy was patently falla- 
 cious; and for that matter a most unsympathetic urchin, 
 raised apparently on gingerbread. He was bent on his 
 own pleasure, nothing else; and Kelmar followed him 
 to his ruin, with the same shrewd smirk. If the boy 
 said there was "a hole there in the hill" — a hole, pure 
 and simple, neither more nor less — Kelmar and his Jew 
 girls would follow him a hundred yards to look com- 
 placently down that hole. For two hours we looked 
 for houses ; and for two hours they followed us, smell- 
 ing trees, picking flowers, foisting false botany on the 
 unwary. Had we taken five, with that vile lad to head 
 them off on idle divagations, for five they would have 
 smiled and stumbled through the woods. 
 
 However, we came forth at length, and as by acci- 
 dent, upon a lawn, sparse planted like an orchard, but 
 with forest instead of fruit trees. That was the site of 
 Silverado mining town. A piece of ground was levelled 
 up, where Kelmar's store had been ; and facing that we 
 
 351 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 saw Rufe Hanson's house, still bearing on its front the 
 legend Silverado Hotel. Not another sign of habitation. 
 Silverado town had all been carted from the scene ; one 
 of the houses was now the schoolhouse far down the 
 road ; one was gone here, one there, but all were gone 
 away. It was now a sylvan solitude, and the silence 
 was unbroken but by the great, vague voice of the 
 wind. Some days before our visit, a grizzly bear had 
 been sporting round the Hansons' chicken-house. 
 
 Mrs. Hanson was at home alone, we found. Rufe 
 had been out after a '* bar," had risen late, and was now 
 gone, it did not clearly appear whither. Perhaps he had 
 had wind of Kelmar's coming, and was now ensconced 
 among the underwood, or watching us from the shoul- 
 der of the mountain. We, hearing there were no houses 
 to be had, were for immediately giving up all hopes of 
 Silverado. But this, somehow, was not to Kelmar's 
 fancy. He first proposed that we should ''camp some- 
 veres around, ain't it } " waving his hand cheerily as 
 though to weave a spell ; and when that was firmly re- 
 jected, he decided that we must take up house with the 
 Hansons. Mrs. Hanson had been, from the first, flus- 
 tered, subdued, and a little pale ; but from this propo- 
 sition she recoiled with haggard indignation. So did 
 we, who would have preferred, in a manner of speaking, 
 death. But Kelmar was not to be put by. He edged 
 Mrs. Hanson into a corner, where for a long time he 
 threatened her with his forefinger, like a character in 
 Dickens; and the poor woman, driven to her entrench- 
 ments, at last remembered with a shriek that there were 
 still some houses at the tunnel. 
 
 Thither we went ; the Jews, who should already have 
 
 352 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 been miles into Lake County, still cheerily accompany- 
 ing us. For about a furlong we followed a good road 
 along the hillside through the forest, until suddenly that 
 road widened out and came abruptly to an end. A can- 
 on, woody below, red, rocky, and naked overhead, was 
 here walled across by a dump of rolling stones, danger- 
 ously steep, and from twenty to thirty feet in height. A 
 rusty iron chute on wooden legs came flying, like a 
 monstrous gargoyle, across the parapet. It was down 
 this that they poured the precious ore ; and below here 
 the carts stood to wait their lading, and carry it mill- 
 ward down the mountain. 
 
 The whole canon was so entirely blocked, as if by 
 some rude guerilla fortification, that we could only 
 mount by lengths of wooden ladder, fixed in the hill- 
 side. These led us round the farther corner of the dump ; 
 and when they were at an end, we still persevered over 
 loose rubble and wading deep in poison oak, till we 
 struck a triangular platform, filling up the whole glen, 
 and shut in on either hand by bold projections of the 
 mountain. Only in front the place was open like the 
 proscenium of a theatre, and we looked forth into a great 
 realm of air, and down upon treetops and hilltops, and 
 far and near on wild and varied country. The place still 
 stood as on the day it was deserted : a line of iron rails 
 with a bifurcation ; a truck in working order ; a world 
 of lumber, old wood, old iron ; a blacksmith's forge on 
 one side, half buried in the leaves of dwarf madronas ; 
 and on the other, an old brown wooden house. 
 
 Fanny and I dashed at the house. It consisted of three 
 rooms, and was so plastered against the hill, that one 
 room was right atop of another, that the upper floor was 
 
 353 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 more than twice as large as the lower, and that all three 
 apartments must be entered from a different side and level. 
 Not a window-sash remained. The door of the lower 
 room was smashed, and one panel hung in splinters. 
 We entered that, and found a fair amount of rubbish : 
 sand and gravel that had been sifted in there by the 
 mountain winds; straw, sticks, and stones; a table, a 
 barrel ; a plate-rack on the wall ; two home-made boot- 
 jacks, signs of miners and their boots; and a pair of 
 papers pinned on the boarding, headed respectively 
 *' Funnel No. i," and '* Funnel No. 2," but with the 
 tails torn away. The window, sashless of course, was 
 choked with the green and sweetly smelling foliage of 
 a bay ; and through a chink in the floor, a spray of poison 
 oak had shot up and was handsomely prospering in the 
 interior. It was my first care to cut away that poison oak, 
 Fanny standing by at a respectful distance. That was 
 our first improvement by which we took possession. 
 
 The room immediately above could only be entered 
 by a plank propped against the threshold, along which 
 the intruder must foot it gingerly, clutching for support 
 to sprays of poison oak, the proper product of the coun- 
 try. Herein was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, 
 where miners had once lain ; and the other gable was 
 pierced by a sashless window and a doorless doorway 
 opening on the air of heaven, five feet above the ground. 
 As for the third room, which entered squarely from the 
 ground level, but higher up the hill and further up the 
 canon, it contained only rubbish and the uprights for 
 another triple tier of beds. 
 
 The whole building was overhung by a bold, lion- 
 like, red rock. Poison oak, sweet bay trees, calycan- 
 
 354 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 thus, brush, and chaparral, grew freely but sparsely all 
 about it. In front, in the strong sunshine, the platform 
 lay overstrewn with busy litter, as though the labours 
 of the mine might begin again to-morrow in the 
 morning. 
 
 Following back into the cafion, among the mass of 
 rotting plant and through the flowering bushes, we 
 came to a great crazy staging, with a wry windlass on 
 the top; and clambering up, we could look into an open 
 shaft, leading edgeways down into the bowels of the 
 mountain, trickling with water, and lit by some stray 
 sun-gleams, whence I know not. In that quiet place 
 the still, far-away tinkle of the water-drops was loudly 
 audible. Close by, another shaft led edgeways up into 
 the superincumbent shoulder of the hill. It lay partly 
 open ; and sixty or a hundred feet above our head, we 
 could see the strata propped apart by solid wooden 
 wedges, and a pine, half undermined, precariously 
 nodding on the verge. Here also a rugged, horizontal 
 tunnel ran straight into the unsunned bowels of the 
 rock. This secure angle in the mountain's flank was, 
 even on this wild day, as still as my lady's chamber. 
 But in the tunnel a cold, wet draught tempestuously 
 blew. Nor have I ever known that place otherwise 
 than cold and windy. 
 
 Such was our first prospect of Juan Silverado. I own 
 I had looked for something different : a clique of neigh- 
 bourly houses on a village green, we shall say, all empty 
 to be sure, but swept and varnished; a trout stream 
 brawling by ; great elms or chestnuts, humming with 
 bees and nested in by song-birds ; and the mountains 
 standing round about, as at Jerusalem. Here, moun- 
 
 355 
 
THE SILVHRADO SQUATTERS 
 
 tain and house and the old tools of industry were all 
 alike rusty and downfalling. The hill was here wedged 
 up, and there poured forth its bowels in a spout of 
 broken mineral; man with his picks and powder, and 
 nature with her own great blasting tools of sun and 
 rain, labouring together at the ruin of that proud moun- 
 tain. The view up the canon was a glimpse of devas- 
 tation ; dry red minerals sliding together, here and there 
 a crag, here and there dwarf thicket clinging in the 
 general glissade, and over all a broken outline trenching 
 on the blue of heaven. Downwards indeed, from our 
 rock eyrie, we beheld the greener side of nature; and 
 the bearing of the pines and the sweet smell of bays 
 and nutmegs commended themselves gratefully to our 
 senses. One way and another, now the die was cast. 
 Silverado be it! 
 
 After we had got back to the Toll House, the Jews 
 were not long of striking forward. But I observed that 
 one of the Hanson lads came down, before their de- 
 parture, and returned with a ship's kettle. Happy Han- 
 sons! Nor was it until after Kelmar was gone, if I 
 remember rightly, that Rufe put in an appearance to 
 arrange the details of our installation. 
 
 The latter part of the day, Fanny and I sat in the ve- 
 randah of the Toll House, utterly stunned by the up- 
 roar of the wind among the trees on the other side of 
 the valley. Sometimes, we would have it it was like a 
 sea, but it was not various enough for that ; and again, 
 we thought it like the roar of a cataract, but it was too 
 changeful for the cataract ; and then we would decide, 
 speaking in sleepy voices, that it could be compared 
 with nothing but itself. My mind was entirely preoc- 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 cupied by the noise. I hearkened to it by the hour, 
 gapingly hearkened, and let my cigarette go out. 
 Sometimes the wind would make a sally nearer hand, 
 and send a shrill, whistling crash among the foliage on 
 our side of the glen; and sometimes a backdraught 
 would strike into the elbow where we sat, and cast the 
 gravel and torn leaves into our faces. But for the most 
 part, this great, streaming gale passed unweariedly by 
 us into Napa Valley, not two hundred yards away, 
 visible by the tossing boughs, stunningly audible, and 
 yet not moving a hair upon our heads. So it blew all 
 night long while I was writing up my journal, and after 
 we were in bed, under a cloudless, starset heaven ; and 
 so it was blowing still next morning when we rose. 
 
 It was a laughable thought to us, what had become 
 of our cheerful, wandering Hebrews. We could not 
 suppose they had reached a destination. The meanest 
 boy could lead them miles out of their way to see a 
 gopher-hole. Boys, we felt to be their special danger; 
 none others were of that exact pitch of cheerful irrele- 
 vancy to exercise a kindred sway upon their minds: 
 but before the attractions of a boy their most settled 
 resolutions would be wax. We thought we could fol- 
 low in fancy these three aged Hebrew truants wander- 
 ing in and out on hilltop and in thicket, a demon boy 
 trotting far ahead, their will-o'-the-wisp conductor; 
 and at last about midnight, the wind still roaring in the 
 darkness, we had a vision of all three on their knees 
 upon a mountain-top around a glow-worm. 
 
 357 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE RETURN 
 
 Next morning we were up by half-past five, accord- 
 ing to agreement, and it was ten by the clock before 
 our Jew boys returned to pick us up: Kelmar, Mrs. 
 Kelmar, and Abramina, all srailing from ear to ear, and 
 full of tales of the hospitality they had found on the 
 other side. It had not gone unrewarded ; for I observed 
 with interest that the ship's kettles, all but one, had 
 been ''placed." Three Lake County families, at least, 
 endowed for life with a ship's kettle. Come, this was 
 no misspent Sunday. The absence of the kettles told 
 its own story : our Jews said nothing about them ; but, 
 on the other hand, they said many kind and comely 
 things about the people they had met. The two 
 women, in particular, had been charmed out of them- 
 selves by the sight of a young girl surrounded by her 
 admirers; all evening, it appeared, they had been tri- 
 umphing together in the girl's innocent successes, and 
 to this natural and unselfish joy they gave expression 
 in language that was beautiful by its simplicity and 
 truth. 
 
 Take them for all in all, few people have done my 
 heart more good ; they seemed so thoroughly entitled to 
 happiness, and to enjoy it in so large a measure and so 
 
 358 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 free from after-thought ; almost they persuaded me to be 
 a Jew. There was, indeed, a chink of money in their 
 talk. They particularly commended people who were 
 well to do. "" He don't care — ain't it?" was their 
 highest word of commendation to an individual fate; 
 and here I seem to grasp the root of their philosophy — 
 it was to be free from care, to be free to make these 
 Sunday wanderings, that they so eagerly pursued after 
 wealth ; and all this carefulness was to be careless. The 
 fine, good humour of all three seemed to declare they 
 had attained their end. Yet there was the other side 
 to it; and the recipients of kettles perhaps cared greatly. 
 No sooner had they returned, than the scene of yes- 
 terday began again. The horses were not even tied 
 with a straw rope this time — it was not worth while ; 
 and Kelmar disappeared into the bar, leaving them un- 
 der a tree on the other side of the road. I had to devote 
 myself I stood under the shadow of that tree for, I 
 suppose, hard upon an hour, and had not the heart to 
 be angry. Once some one remembered me, and brought 
 me out a half a tumblerful of the playful, innocuous 
 American cocktail. I drank it, and lo ! veins of living 
 fire ran down my leg ; and then a focus of conflagration 
 remained seated in my stomach, not unpleasantly, for 
 quarter of an hour. I love these sweet, fiery pangs, 
 but I will not court them. The bulk of the time I spent 
 in repeating as much French poetry as I could remem- 
 ber to the horses, who seemed to enjoy it hugely. And 
 now it went — 
 
 " O ma vieille Font-georges 
 Ou volent les rouges-gorges: " 
 359 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 and again, to a more trampling measure — 
 
 ** Et tout tremble, Irun, Coimbre, 
 Santander, Almodovar, 
 Sitot qu'on entend le timbre 
 Descymbales de Bivar." 
 
 The redbreasts and the brooks of Europe, in that dry and 
 songless land ; brave old names and wars, strong cities, 
 cymbals, and bright armour, in that nook of the moun- 
 tain, sacred only to the Indian and the bear! This is 
 still the strangest thing in all man's travelling, that he 
 should carry about with him incongruous memories. 
 There is no foreign land ; it is the traveller only that is 
 foreign, and now and again, by a flash of recollection, 
 lights up the contrasts of the earth. 
 
 But while I was thus wandering in my fancy, great 
 feats had been transacted in the bar. Corwin the bold 
 had fallen, Kelmar was again crowned with laurels, and 
 the last of the ship's kettles had changed hands. If I 
 had ever doubted the purity of Kelmar's motives, if I 
 had ever suspected him of a single eye to business in his 
 eternal dallyings, now at least, when the last kettle was 
 disposed of, my suspicions must have been allayed. I 
 dare not guess how much more time was wasted; nor 
 how often we drove off, merely to drive back again and 
 renew interrupted conversations about nothing, before 
 the Toll House was fairly left behind. Alas! and not 
 a mile down the grade there stands a ranche in a sunny 
 vineyard, and here we must all dismount again and 
 enter. 
 
 Only the old lady was at home, Mrs. Guele, a brown 
 old Swiss dame, the picture of honesty ; and with her 
 
 360 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 we drank a bottle of wine and had an age-long conver- 
 sation, which would have been highly delightful if 
 Fanny and I had not been faint with hunger. The ladies 
 each narrated the story of her marriage, our two Hebrews 
 with the prettiest combination of sentiment and finan- 
 cial bathos. Abramina, specially, endeared herself with 
 every word. She was as simple, natural, and engaging 
 as a kid that should have been brought up to the busi- 
 ness of a money-changer. One touch was so resplen- 
 dently Hebraic that I cannot pass it over. When her 
 ''old man" wrote home for her from America, her old 
 man's family would not intrust her with the money for 
 the passage, till she had bound herself by an oath — on 
 her knees, I think she said — not to employ it otherwise. 
 This had tickled Abramina hugely, but I think it tickled 
 me fully more. 
 
 Mrs. Guele told of her home-sickness up here in the 
 long winters ; of her honest, country-woman troubles 
 and alarms upon the journey ; how in the bank at Frank- 
 fort she had feared lest the banker, after having taken 
 her cheque, should deny all knowledge of it — a fear I 
 have myself every time I go to a bank ; and how cross- 
 ing the Luneburger Heath, an old lady, witnessing her 
 trouble and finding whither she was bound, had given 
 her "the blessing of a person eighty years old, which 
 would be sure to bring her safely to the States. And 
 the first thing I did," added Mrs. Guele, ''was to fall 
 downstairs. " 
 
 At length we got out of the house, and some of us 
 into the trap, when — judgment of Heaven ! — here came 
 Mr. Guele from his vineyard. So another quarter of an 
 hour went by ; till at length, at our earnest pleading, we 
 
 361 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 set forth again in earnest, Fanny and I white-faced and 
 silent, but the Jews still smiling. The heart fails me. 
 There was yet another stoppage ! And we drove at last 
 into Calistoga past two in the afternoon, Fanny and I 
 having breakfasted at six in the morning, eight mortal 
 hours before. We were a pallid couple; but still the 
 Jews were smiling. 
 
 So ended our excursion with the village usurers ; and, 
 now that it was done, we had no more idea of the na- 
 ture of the business, nor of the part we had been playing 
 in it, than the child unborn. That all the people we had 
 met were the slaves of Kelmar, though in various de- 
 grees of servitude; that we ourselves had been sent up 
 the mountain in the interests of none but Kelmar; that 
 the money we laid out, dollar by dollar, cent by cent, 
 and through the hands of various intermediaries, should 
 all hop ultimately into Kelmar's till ; — these were facts 
 that we only grew to recognise in the course of time 
 and by the accumulation of evidence. At length all 
 doubt was quieted, when one of the kettle-holders con- 
 fessed. Stopping his trap in the moonlight, a little way 
 out of Calistoga, he told me, in so many words, that he 
 dare not show face there with an empty pocket. ''You 
 see, I don't mind if it was only five dollars, Mr. Stevens," 
 he said, *'but I must give Mr. Kelmar something." 
 
 Even now, when the whole tyranny is plain to me, 
 I cannot find it in my heart to be as angry as perhaps I 
 should be with the Hebrew tyrant. The whole game 
 of business is beggar my neighbour; and though per- 
 haps that game looks uglier when played at such close 
 quarters and on so small a scale, it is none the more in- 
 trinsically inhumane for that. The village usurer is not 
 
 362 
 
WITH THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
 
 SO sad a feature of humanity and human progress as the 
 millionaire manufacturer, fattening on the toil and loss 
 of thousands, and yet declaiming from the platform 
 against the greed and dishonesty of landlords. If it were 
 fair for Cobden to buy up land from owners whom he 
 thought unconscious of its proper value, it was fair 
 enough for my Russian Jew to give credit to his farm- 
 ers. Kelmar, if he was unconscious of the beam in his 
 own eye, was at least silent in the matter of his broth- 
 er's mote. 
 
 3^3 
 
THE ACT OF SQUATTING 
 
 There were four of us squatters — myself and my 
 wife, the King and Queen of Silverado; Sam, the Crown 
 Prince; and Chuchu, the Grand Duke. Chuchu, a set- 
 ter crossed with spaniel, was the most unsuited for a 
 rough life. He had been nurtured tenderly in the soci- 
 ety of ladies ; his heart was large and soft ; he regarded 
 the sofa-cushion as a bed-rock necessary of existence. 
 Though about the size of a sheep, he loved to sit in 
 ladies' laps ; he never said a bad word in all his blame- 
 less days ; and if he had seen a flute, 1 am sure he could 
 have played upon it by nature. It may seem hard to 
 say it of a dog, but Chuchu was a tame cat. 
 
 The ki^.g and queen, the grand duke, and a basket of 
 cold provender for immediate use, set forth from Calis- 
 toga in a double buggy ; the crown prince, on horse- 
 back, led the way like an outrider. Bags and boxes 
 and a second-hand stove were to follow close upon our 
 heels by Hanson's team. 
 
 It was a beautiful still day ; the sky was one field of 
 azure. Not a leaf moved, not a speck appeared in heaven. 
 Only from the summit of the mountain one little snowy 
 wisp of cloud after another kept detaching itself, like 
 smoke from a volcano, and blowing southward in some 
 high stream of air: Mount Saint Helena still at her inter- 
 minable task, making the weather, like a Lapland witch. 
 
 364 
 
THE ACT OF SQUATTING 
 
 By noon we had come in sight of the mill : a great 
 brown building, half-way up the hill, big as a factory, 
 two stories high, and with tanks and ladders along the 
 roof; which, as a pendicle of Silverado mine, we held 
 to be an outlying province of our own. Thither, then, 
 we went, crossing the valley by a grassy trail; and 
 there lunched out of the basket, sitting in a kind of por- 
 tico, and wondering, while we ate, at this great bulk 
 of useless building. Through a chink we could look far 
 down into the interior, and see sunbeams floating in 
 the dust and striking on tier after tier of silent, rusty 
 machinery. It cost six thousand dollars, twelve hun- 
 dred English sovereigns; and now, here it stands de- 
 serted, like the temple of a forgotten religion, the busy 
 millers toiling somewhere else. All the time we were 
 there, mill and mill town showed no sign of life; that 
 part of the mountain-side, which is very open and 
 green, was tenanted by no living creature but ourselves 
 and the insects ; and nothing stirred but the cloud manu- 
 factory upon the mountain summit. It was odd to com- 
 pare this with the former days, when the engine was in 
 full blast, the mill palpitating to its strokes, and the carts 
 came rattling down from Silverado, charged with ore. 
 
 By two we had been landed at the mine, the buggy 
 was gone again, and we were left to our own reflections 
 and the basket of cold provender, until Hanson should 
 arrive. Hot as it was by the sun, there was something 
 chill in such a home-coming, in that world of wreck 
 and rust, splinter and rolling gravel, where for so many 
 years no fire had smoked. 
 
 Silverado platform filled the whole width of the can- 
 on. Above, as I have said, this was a wild, red, stony 
 
 365 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 gully in the mountains; but below it was a wooded 
 dingle. And through this, 1 was told, there had gone 
 a path between the mine and the Toll House — our 
 natural north-west passage to civilization. I found and 
 followed it, clearing my way as I went through fallen 
 branches and dead trees. It went straight down that steep 
 canon, till it brought you out abruptly over the roofs 
 of the hotel. There was nowhere any break in the de- 
 scent. It almost seemed as if, were you to drop a stone 
 down the old iron chute at our platform, it would never 
 rest until it hopped upon the Toll House shingles. Signs 
 were not wanting of the ancient greatness of Silverado. 
 The footpath was well marked, and had been well trod- 
 den in the old days by thirsty miners. And far down, 
 buried in foliage, deep out of sight of Silverado, I came 
 on a last outpost of the mine — a mound of gravel, some 
 wreck of wooden aqueduct, and the mouth of a tunnel, 
 like a treasure grotto in a fairy story. A stream of water, 
 fed by the invisible leakage from our shaft, and dyed 
 red with cinnabar or iron, ran trippingly forth out of 
 the bowels of the cave; and, looking far under the arch, 
 I could see something like an iron lantern fastened on 
 the rocky wall. It was a promising spot for the imagi- 
 nation. No boy could have left it unexplored. 
 
 The stream thenceforward stole along the bottom of 
 the dingle, and made, for that dry land, a pleasant 
 warbling in the leaves. Once, I suppose, it ran splash- 
 ing down the whole length of the canon, but now its 
 head waters had been tapped by the shaft at Silverado, 
 and for a great part of its course it wandered sunless 
 among the joints of the mountain. No wonder that it 
 should better its pace when it sees, far before it, day- 
 
 366 
 
THE ACT OF SQUATTING 
 
 light whitening in the arch, or that it should come 
 trotting forth into the sunlight with a song. 
 
 The two stages had gone by when I got down, and 
 the Toll House stood, dozing in sun and dust and 
 silence, like a place enchanted. My mission was after 
 hay for bedding, and that I was readily promised. But 
 when I mentioned that we were waiting for Rufe, the 
 people shook their heads. Rufe was not a regular man 
 
 any way, it seemed; and if he got playing poker 
 
 Well, poker was too many for Rufe. I had not yet 
 heard them bracketted together; but it seemed a natu- 
 ral conjunction, and commended itself swiftly to my 
 fears ; and as soon as I returned to Silverado and had 
 told my story, we practically gave Hanson up, and set 
 ourselves to do what we could find do-able in our 
 desert-island state. 
 
 The lower room had been the assayer's office. The 
 
 floor was thick with debris — part human, from the 
 
 former occupants; part natural, sifted in by mountain 
 
 winds. In a sea of red dust there swam or floated 
 
 sticks, boards, hay, straw, stones, and paper; ancient 
 
 newspapers, above all — for the newspaper, especially 
 
 when torn, soon becomes an antiquity — and bills of 
 
 the Silverado boarding-house, some dated Silverado, 
 
 some Calistoga Mine. Here is one, verbatim; and if 
 
 any one can calculate the scale of charges, he has my 
 
 envious admiration. 
 
 Calistoga Mine, May 3rd, 1875. 
 John Stanley 
 
 To S. Chapman, Cr. 
 To board from April i st, to April 30 . . . $25 75 
 " " " May I St, to 3rd . . . . 2 00 
 
 27 75 
 367 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 Where is John Stanley mining now ? Where is S. 
 Chapman, within whose hospitable walls we were to 
 lodge ? The date was but five years old, but in that 
 time the world had changed for Silverado ; like Palmyra 
 in the desert, it had outlived its people and its purpose ; 
 we camped, like Layard, amid ruins, and these names 
 spoke to us of pre-historic time. A boot-jack, a pair 
 of boots, a dog-hutch, and these bills of Mr. Chapman's 
 were the only speaking relics that we disinterred from 
 all that vast Silverado rubbish-heap ; but what would I 
 not have given to unearth a letter, a pocket-book, a 
 diary, only a ledger, or a roll of names, to take me back, 
 in a more personal manner, to the past ? It pleases me, 
 besides, to fancy that Stanley or Chapman, or one of 
 their companions, may light upon this chronicle, and 
 be struck by the name, and read some news of their 
 anterior home, coming, as it were, out of a subsequent 
 epoch of history in that quarter of the world. 
 
 As we were tumbling the mingled rubbish on the 
 floor, kicking it with our feet, and groping for these 
 written evidences of the past, Sam, with a somewhat 
 whitened face, produced a paper bag. "What's this.^" 
 said he. It contained a granulated powder, something 
 the colour of Gregory's Mixture, but rosier ; and as 
 there were several of the bags, and each more or less 
 broken, the powder was spread widely on the floor. 
 Had any of us ever seen giant powder ? No, nobody 
 had ; and instantly there grew up in my mind a shadowy 
 belief, verging with every moment nearer to certitude, 
 that I had somewhere heard somebody describe it as 
 just such a powder as the one around us. I have 
 learnt since that it is a substance not unlike tallow, 
 
 368 
 
THE ACT OF SQUATTING 
 
 and is made up in rolls for all the world like tallow 
 candles. 
 
 Fanny, to add to our happiness, told us a story of a 
 gentleman who had camped one night, like ourselves, 
 by a deserted mine. He was a handy, thrifty fellow, 
 and looked right and left for plunder, but all he could lay 
 his hands on was a can of oil. After dark he had to see 
 to the horses with a lantern; and not to miss an op- 
 portunity, filled up his lamp from the oil can. Thus 
 equipped, he set forth into the forest. A little while af- 
 ter, his friends heard a loud explosion ; the mountain 
 echoes bellowed, and then all was still. On examina- 
 tion, the can proved to contain oil, with the trifling ad- 
 dition of nitro-glycerine; but no research disclosed a 
 trace of either man or lantern. 
 
 It was a pretty sight, after this anecdote, to see us 
 sweeping out the giant powder. It seemed never to be 
 far enough away. And, after all, it was only some rock 
 pounded for assay. 
 
 So much for the lower room. We scraped some of 
 the rougher dirt off the floor, and left it. That was our 
 sitting-room and kitchen, though there was nothing to sit 
 upon but the table, and no provision for a fire except a 
 hole in the roof of the room above, which had once con- 
 tained the chimney of a stove. 
 
 To that upper room we now proceeded. There were 
 the eighteen bunks in a double tier, nine on either hand, 
 where from eighteen to thirty-six miners had once 
 snored together all night long, John Stanley, perhaps, 
 snoring loudest. There was the roof, with a hole in it 
 through which the sun now shot an arrow. There was 
 the floor, in much the same state as the one below, 
 
 369 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 though, perhaps, there was more hay, and certainly 
 there was the added ingredient of broken glass, the man 
 who stole the window-frames having apparently made 
 a miscarriage with this one. Without a broom, without 
 hay or bedding, we could but look about us with a be- 
 ginning of despair. The one bright arrow of day, in that 
 gaunt and shattered barrack, made the rest look dirtier 
 and darker, and the sight drove us at last into the open. 
 
 Here, also, the handiwork of man lay ruined : but the 
 plants were all alive and thriving; the view below was 
 fresh with the colours of nature; and we had exchanged 
 a dim, human garret for a corner, even although it were 
 untidy, of the blue hall of heaven. Not a bird, not a 
 beast, not a reptile. There was no noise in that part of 
 the world, save when we passed beside the staging, and 
 heard the water musically falling in the shaft. 
 
 We wandered to and fro. We searched among that 
 drift of lumber — wood and iron, nails and rails, and 
 sleepers and the wheels of trucks. We gazed up the 
 cleft into the bosom of the mountain. We sat by the 
 margin of the dump and saw, far below us, the green 
 treetops standing still in the clear air. Beautiful per- 
 fumes, breaths of bay, resin, and nutmeg, came to us more 
 often and grew sweeter and sharper as the afternoon de- 
 clined. But still there was no word of Hanson. 
 
 I set to with pick and shovel, and deepened the pool 
 behind the shaft, till we were sure of sufficient water 
 for the morning; and by the time I had finished, the 
 sun had begun to go down behind the mountain shoul- 
 der, the platform was plunged in quiet shadow, and a 
 chill descended from the sky. Night began early in our 
 cleft. Before us, over the margin of the dump, we could 
 
 370 
 
THE ACT OF SQUATTING 
 
 see the sun still striking aslant into the wooded nick be- 
 low, and on the battlemented, pine-bescattered ridges 
 on the farther side. 
 
 There was no stove, of course, and no hearth in our 
 lodging, so we betook ourselves to the blacksmith's 
 forge across the platform. If the platform be taken as 
 a stage, and the out-curving margin of the dump to 
 represent the line of the footlights, then our house 
 would be the first wing on the actor's left, and this 
 blacksmith's forge, although no match for it in size, the 
 foremost on the right. It was a low, brown cottage, 
 planted close against the hill, and overhung by the foli- 
 age and peeling boughs of a madrona thicket. Within 
 it was full of dead leaves and mountain dust, and rub- 
 bish from the mine. But we soon had a good fire 
 brightly blazing, and sat close about it on impromptu 
 seats. Chuchu, the slave of sofa-cushions, whimpered 
 for a softer bed ; but the rest of us were greatly revived 
 and comforted by that good creature — fire, which gives 
 us warmth and light and companionable sounds, and 
 colours up the emptiest building with better than fres- 
 coes. For a while it was even pleasant in the forge, 
 with the blaze in the midst, and a look over our shoul- 
 ders on the woods and mountains where the day was 
 dying like a dolphin. 
 
 It was between seven and eight before Hanson ar- 
 rived, with a waggonful of our effects and two of his 
 wife's relatives to lend him a hand. The elder showed 
 surprising strength. He would pick up a huge pack- 
 ing-case, full of books of all things, swing it on his 
 shoulder, and away up the two crazy ladders and the 
 breakneck spout of rolling mineral, familiarly, termed a 
 
 37» 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 path, that led from the cart-track to our house. Even 
 for a man unburthened, the ascent w^as toilsome and 
 precarious; but Irvine scaled it with a light foot, car- 
 rying box after box, as the hero whisks the stage child 
 up the practicable footway beside the waterfall of 
 the fifth act. With so strong a helper, the business 
 was speedily transacted. Soon the assayer's office 
 was thronged with our belongings, piled higgledy-pig- 
 gledy, and upside down, about the floor. There were 
 our boxes, indeed, but my wife had left her keys in Cal- 
 istoga. There was the stove, but, alas ! our carriers had 
 forgot the chimney, and lost one of the plates along the 
 road. The Silverado problem was scarce solved. 
 
 Rufe himself was grave and good-natured over his 
 share of blame ; he even, if I remember right, expressed 
 regret. But his crew, to my astonishment and anger, 
 grinned from ear to ear, and laughed aloud at our dis- 
 tress. They thought it ''real funny" about the stove- 
 pipe they had forgotten ; ''real funny " that they should 
 have lost a plate. As for hay, the whole party refused 
 to bring us any till they should have supped. See how 
 late they were! Never had there been such a job as 
 coming up that grade! Nor often, I suspect, such a 
 game of poker as that before they started. But about 
 nine, as a particular favour, we should have some hay. 
 
 So they took their departure, leaving me still staring, 
 and we resigned ourselves to wait for their return. The 
 fire in the forge had been suffered to go out, and we 
 were one and all too weary to kindle another. We 
 dined, or, not to take that word in vain, we ate after a 
 fashion, in the nightmare disorder of the assayer's office, 
 perched among boxes. A single candle lighted us. It 
 
 373 
 
THE ACT OF SQUATTING 
 
 could scarce be called a house-warming; for there was, 
 of course, no fire, and with the two open doors and the 
 open window gaping on the night, like breaches in a 
 fortress, it began to grow rapidly chill. Talk ceased; 
 nobody moved but the unhappy Chuchu, still in quest 
 of sofa-cushions, who tumbled complainingly among 
 the trunks. It required a certain happiness of disposi- 
 tion to look forward hopefully, from so dismal a begin- 
 ning, across the brief hours of night, to the warm shin- 
 ing of to-morrow's sun. 
 
 But the hay arrived at last, and we turned, with our last 
 spark of courage, to the bedroom. We had improved 
 the entrance, but it was still a kind of rope- walking ; 
 and it would have been droll to see us mounting, one 
 after another, by candle-light, under the open stars. 
 
 The western door — that which looked up the canon, 
 and through which we entered by our bridge of flying 
 plank — was still entire, a handsome, panelled door, 
 the most finished piece of carpentry in Silverado. And 
 the two lowest bunks next to this we roughly filled 
 with hay for that night's use. Through the opposite, 
 or eastern-looking gable, with its open door and win- 
 dow, a faint, diffused starshine came into the room like 
 mist; and when we were once in bed, we lay, awaiting 
 sleep, in a haunted, incomplete obscurity. At first the 
 silence of the night was utter. Then a high wind be- 
 gan in the distance among the treetops, and for hours 
 continued to grow higher. It seemed to me much such 
 a wind as we had found on our visit; yet here in our 
 open chamber we were fanned only by gentle and re- 
 freshing draughts, so deep was the canon, so close our 
 house was planted under the overhanging rock. 
 
 373 
 
THE hunter's family 
 
 There is quite a large race or class of people in Amer- 
 ica, for whom we scarcely seem to have a parallel in 
 England. Of pure white blood, they are unknown or 
 unrecognisable in towns; inhabit the fringe of settle- 
 ments and the deep, quiet places of the country ; rebel- 
 lious to all labour, and pettily thievish, like the English 
 gipsies ; rustically ignorant, but with a touch of wood- 
 lore and the dexterity of the savage. Whence they came 
 is a moot point. At the time of the war, they poured 
 north in crowds to escape conscription; lived during 
 summer on fruits, wild animals, and petty theft; and at 
 the approach of winter, when these supplies failed, 
 built great fires in the forest, and there died stoically by 
 starvation. They are widely scattered, however, and 
 easily recognised. Loutish, but not ill-looking, they 
 will sit all day, swinging their legs on a field fence, the 
 mind seemingly as devoid of all reflection as a Suffolk 
 peasant's, careless of politics, for the most part incapa- 
 ble of reading, but with a rebellious vanity and a strong 
 sense of independence. Hunting is their most con- 
 genial business, or, if the occasion offers, a little ama- 
 teur detection. In tracking a criminal, following a 
 particular horse along a beaten highway, and drawing 
 
 374 
 
THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 
 
 inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of those som- 
 nolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display activity 
 of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye may 
 know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, 
 Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, 
 Alva, or Orion, pronounced Orrion, with the accent on 
 the first. Whether they are indeed a race, or whether 
 this is the form of degeneracy common to all back- 
 woodsmen, they are at least known by a generic by- 
 word, as Poor Whites or Low-downers. 
 
 I will not say that the Hanson family was Poor White, 
 because the name savours of offence; but I may go as 
 far as this — they were, in many points, not unsimilar 
 to the people usually so-called. Rufe himself combined 
 two of the qualifications, for he was both a hunter and 
 an amateur detective. It was he who pursued Russel 
 and Dollar, the robbers of the Lake Port stage, and cap- 
 tured them the very morning after the exploit, while 
 they were still sleeping in a hayfield. Russel, a drunken 
 Scotch carpenter, was even an acquaintance of his own, 
 and he expressed much grave commiseration for his fate. 
 In all that he said and did, Rufe was grave. I never 
 saw him hurried. When he spoke, he took out his pipe 
 with ceremonial deliberation, looked east and west, and 
 then, in quiet tones and few words, stated his business 
 or told his story. His gait was to match ; it would never 
 have surprised you if, at any step, he had turned round 
 and walked away again, so warily and slowly, and 
 with so much seeming hesitation did he go about. He 
 lay long in bed in the morning — rarely indeed, rose be- 
 fore noon ; he loved all games, from poker to clerical 
 croquet; and in the Toll House croquet ground I have 
 
 375 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 seen him toiling at the latter with the devotion of a 
 curate. He took an interest in education, was an active 
 member of the local school-board, and when I was there, 
 he had recently lost the schoolhouse key. His waggon 
 was broken, but it never seemed to occur to him to 
 mend it. Like all truly idle people, he had an artistic 
 eye. He chose the print stuff for his wife's dresses, 
 and counselled her in the making of a patchwork quilt, 
 always, as she thought, wrongly, but to the more edu- 
 cated eye, always with bizarre and admirable taste — 
 the taste of an Indian. With all this, he was a perfect, 
 unoffending gentleman in word and act. Take his clay 
 pipe from him, and he was fit for any society but that 
 of fools. Quiet as he was, there burned a deep, per- 
 manent excitement in his dark blue eyes; and when 
 this grave man smiled, it was like sunshine in a shady 
 place. 
 
 Mrs. Hanson {nee, if you please, Lovelands) was more 
 commonplace than her lord. She was a comely woman, 
 too, plump, fair-coloured, with wonderful white teeth ; 
 and in her print dresses (chosen by Rufe) and with a 
 large sun-bonnet shading her valued complexion, made, 
 I assure you, a very agreeable figure. But she was on 
 the surface, what there was of her, out-spoken and loud- 
 spoken. Her noisy laughter had none of the charm of 
 one of Hanson's rare, slow-spreading smiles ; there was 
 no reticence, no mystery, no manner about the woman : 
 she was a first-class dairymaid, but her husband was an 
 unknown quantity between the savage and the noble- 
 man. She was often in and out with us, merry, and 
 healthy, and fair; he came far seldomer — only, indeed, 
 when there was business, or now and again, to pay a 
 
 376 
 
THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 
 
 visit of ceremony, brushed up for the occasion, with his 
 wife on his arm, and a clean clay pipe in his teeth. 
 These visits, in our forest state, had quite the air of an 
 event, and turned our red canon into a salon. 
 
 Such was the pair who ruled in the old Silverado Ho- 
 tel, among the windy trees, on the mountain shoulder 
 overlooking the whole length of Napa Valley, as the 
 man aloft looks down on the ship's deck. There they 
 kept house, with sundry horses and fowls, and a family 
 of sons, Daniel Webster, and I think George Washing- 
 ton, among the number. Nor did they want visitors. 
 An old gentleman, of singular stolidity, and called 
 Breedlove — I think he had crossed the plains in the 
 same caravan with Rufe — housed with them for awhile 
 during our stay; and they had besides a permanent 
 lodger, in the form of Mrs. Hanson's brother, Irvine 
 Lovelands. I spell Irvine by guess ; for I could get no 
 information on the subject, just as I could never fmd 
 out, in spite of many inquiries, whether or not Rufe was a 
 contraction for Rufus. They were all cheerfully at sea 
 about their names in that generation. And this is surely 
 the more notable where the names are all so strange, and 
 even the family names appear to have been coined. At 
 one time, at least, the ancestors of all these Alvins and 
 Alvas, Loveinas, Lovelands, and Breedloves, must have 
 taken serious council and found a certain poetry in these 
 denominations ; that must have been, then, their form 
 of literature. But still times change ; and their next de- 
 scendants, the George Washingtons and Daniel Web- 
 sters, will at least be clear upon the point. And anyway, 
 and however his name should be spelt, this Irvine Love- 
 lands was the most unmitigated Caliban I ever knew. 
 
 377 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 Our very first morning at Silverado, when we were 
 full of business, patching up doors and windows, mak- 
 ing beds and seats, and getting our rough lodging into 
 shape, Irvine and his sister made their appearance to- 
 gether, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; 
 he, because he was working for me, to my sorrow, cut- 
 ting firewood at I forget how much a day. The way 
 that he set about cutting wood was characteristic. We 
 were at that moment patching up and unpacking in the 
 kitchen. Down he sat on one side, and down sat his 
 sister on the other. Both were chewing pine-tree gum, 
 and he, to my annoyance, accompanied that simple 
 pleasure with profuse expectoration. She rattled away, 
 talking up hill and down dale, laughing, tossing her head, 
 showing her brilliant teeth. He looked on in silence, 
 now spitting heavily on the floor, now putting his head 
 back and uttering a loud, discordant, joyless laugh. He 
 had a tangle of shock hair, the colour of wool ; his mouth 
 was a grin ; although as strong as a horse, he looked 
 neither heavy nor yet adroit, only leggy, coltish, and in 
 the road. But it was plain he was in high spirits, 
 thoroughly enjoying his visit; and he laughed frankly 
 whenever we failed to accomplish what we were about. 
 This was scarcely helpful : it was even, to amateur car- 
 penters, embarrassing; but it lasted until we knocked 
 off work and began to get dinner. Then Mrs. Hanson 
 remembered she should have been gone an hour ago ; and 
 the pair retired, and the lady's laughter died away among 
 the nutmegs down the path. That was Irvine's first 
 day's work in my employment — the devil take him! 
 
 The next morning he returned and, as he was this 
 time alone, he bestowed his conversation upon us with 
 
 378 
 
THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 
 
 great liberality. He prided himself on his intelligence; 
 asked us if we knew the school ma'am. He didn't think 
 much of her, anyway. He had tried her, he had. He 
 had put a question to her. If a tree a hundred feet high 
 were to fall a foot a day, how long would it take to fall 
 right down } She had not been able to solve the prob- 
 lem. ** She don't know nothing," he opined. He told 
 us how a friend of his kept a school with a revolver, 
 and chuckled mightily over that; his friend could teach 
 school, he could. All the time he kept chewing gum 
 and spitting. He would stand a while looking down; 
 and then he would toss back his shock of hair, and laugh 
 hoarsely, and spit, and bring forward a new subject. A 
 man, he told us, who bore a grudge against him, had 
 poisoned his dog. ''That was a low thing for a man 
 to do now, wasn't it } It wasn't like a man, that, 
 nohow. But I got even with him: I pisoned his dog." 
 His clumsy utterance, his rude embarrassed manner, set 
 a fresh value on the stupidity of his remarks. I do not 
 think 1 ever appreciated the meaning of two words un- 
 til I knew Irvine — the verb, loaf, and the noun, oaf ; 
 between them, they complete his portrait. He could 
 lounge, and wriggle, and rub himself against the wall, 
 and grin, and be more in everybody's way than any 
 other two people that I ever set my eyes on. Nothing 
 that he did became him; and yet you were conscious 
 that he was one of your own race, that his mind was 
 cumbrously at work, revolving the problem of existence 
 like a quid of gum, and in his own cloudy manner en- 
 joying life, and passing judgment on his fellows. Above 
 all things, he was delighted with himself You would 
 not have thought it, from his uneasy manners and trou- 
 
 379 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 bled, Struggling utterance ; but he loved himself to the 
 marrow, and w^as happy and proud like a peacock on 
 a rail. 
 
 His self-esteem was, indeed, the one joint in his har- 
 ness. He could be got to work, and even kept at work, 
 by flattery. As long as my wife stood over him, cry- 
 ing out how strong he was, so long exactly he would 
 stick to the matter in hand ; and the moment she turned 
 her back, or ceased to praise him, he would stop. His 
 physical strength was wonderful ; and to have a woman 
 stand by and admire his achievements, warmed his 
 heart like sunshine. Yet he was as cowardly as he 
 was powerful, and felt no shame in owning to the 
 weakness. Something was once wanted from the crazy 
 platform over the shaft, and he at once refused to ven- 
 ture there — "did not like," as he said, "foolin' round 
 them kind o' places," and let my wife go instead of 
 him, looking on with a grin. Vanity, where it rules, 
 is usually more heroic: but Irvine steadily approved 
 himself, and expected others to approve him; rather 
 looked down upon my wife, and decidedly expected 
 her to look up to him, on the strength of his superior 
 prudence. 
 
 Yet the strangest part of the whole matter was per- 
 haps this, that Irvine was as beautiful as a statue. His 
 features were, in themselves, perfect; it was only his 
 cloudy, uncouth, and coarse expression that disfigured 
 them. So much strength residing in so spare a frame 
 was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape. He 
 must have been built somewhat after the pattern of Jack 
 Sheppard ; but the famous housebreaker, we may be cer- 
 tain, was no lout. It was by the extraordinary powers of 
 
 380 
 
THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 
 
 his mind no less than by the vigour of his body, that he 
 broke his strong prison with such imperfect implements, 
 turning the very obstacles to service. Irvine, in the 
 same case, would have sat down and spat, and grum- 
 bled curses. He had the soul of a fat sheep, but, re- 
 garded as an artist's model, the exterior of a Greek God. 
 It was a cruel thought to persons less favoured in their 
 birth, that this creature, endowed — to use the language 
 of theatres — with extraordinary *' means," should so 
 manage to misemploy them that he looked ugly and 
 almost deformed. It was only by an effort of abstrac- 
 tion, and after many days, that you discovered what he 
 was. 
 
 By playing on the oaf's conceit, and standing closely 
 over him, we got a path made round the corner of the 
 dump to our door, so that we could come and go with 
 decent ease ; and he even enjoyed the work, for in that 
 there were boulders to be plucked up bodily, bushes to 
 be uprooted, and other occasions for athletic display: 
 but cutting wood was a different matter. Anybody 
 could cut wood; and, besides, my wife was tired of 
 supervising him, and had other things to attend to. 
 And, in short, days went by, and Irvine came daily, 
 and talked and lounged and spat; but the firewood re- 
 mained intact as sleepers on the platform or growing 
 trees upon the mountain-side. Irvine, as a woodcutter, 
 we could tolerate; but Irvine as a friend of the family, 
 at so much a day, was too bald an imposition, and at 
 length, on the afternoon of the fourth or fifth day of our 
 connection, I explained to him, as clearly as I could, the 
 light in which I had grown to regard his presence. I 
 pointed out to him that I could not continue to give 
 
 381 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 him a salary for spitting on the floor; and this expres- 
 sion, which came after a good many others, at last 
 penetrated his obdurate wits. He rose at once, and 
 said if that was the way he was going to be spoke to, 
 he reckoned he would quit. And, no one interposing, 
 he departed. 
 
 So far, so good. But we had no firewood. The next 
 afternoon, I strolled down to Rufe's and consulted him 
 on the subject. It was a very droll interview, in the 
 large, bare north room of the Silverado Hotel, Mrs. Han- 
 son's patchwork on a frame, and Rufe, and his wife, 
 and I, and the oaf himself, all more or less embarrassed. 
 Rufe announced there was nobody in the neighbour- 
 hood but Irvine who could do a day's work for any- 
 body. Irvine, thereupon, refused to have any more to 
 do with my service; he " wouldn't work no more for a 
 man as had spoke to him 's I had done." I found my- 
 self on the point of the last humiliation — driven to be- 
 seech the creature whom I had just dismissed with 
 insult: but I took the high hand in despair, said there 
 must be no talk of Irvine coming back unless matters 
 were to be differently managed; that I would rather 
 chop firewood for myself than be fooled; and, in short, 
 the Hansons being eager for the lad's hire, I so imposed 
 upon them with merely affected resolution, that they 
 ended by begging me to re-employ him again, on a 
 solemn promise that he should be more industrious. 
 The promise, I am bound to say, was kept. We soon 
 had a fine pile of firewood at our door; and if Caliban 
 gave me the cold shoulder and spared me his conversa- 
 tion, I thought none the worse of him for that, nor did 
 I find my days much longer for the deprivation. 
 
 382 
 
THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 
 
 The leading spirit of the family was, I am inclined to 
 fancy, Mrs. Hanson. Her social brilliancy somewhat 
 dazzled the others, and she had more of the small change 
 of sense. It was she who faced Kelmar, for instance ; 
 and perhaps, if she had been alone, Kelmar would have 
 had no rule within her doors. Rufe, to be sure, had a fine, 
 sober, open-air attitude of mind, seeing the world with- 
 out exaggeration — perhaps, we may even say, without 
 enough ; for he lacked, along with the others, that com- 
 mercial idealism which puts so high a value on time and 
 money. Sanity itself is a kind of convention. Perhaps 
 Rufe was wrong; but, looking on life plainly, he was 
 unable to perceive that croquet or poker were in any 
 way less important than, for instance, mending his 
 waggon. Even his own profession, hunting, was dear 
 to him mainly as a sort of play; even that he would 
 have neglected, had it not appealed to his imagination. 
 His hunting-suit, for instance, had cost I should be afraid 
 to say how many bucks — the currency in which he 
 paid his way: it was all befringed, after the Indian 
 fashion, and it was dear to his heart. The pictorial side 
 of his daily business was never forgotten. He was even 
 anxious to stand for his picture in those buckskin hunt- 
 ing clothes ; and I remember how he once warmed al- 
 most into enthusiasm, his dark blue eyes growing 
 perceptibly larger, as he planned the composition in 
 which he should appear, *' with the horns of some real 
 big bucks, and dogs, and a camp on a crick" (creek, 
 stream). 
 
 There was no trace in Irvine of this woodland poetry. 
 He did not care for hunting, nor yet for buckskin suits. 
 He had never observed scenery. The world, as it ap- 
 
 3Sy 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 peared to him, was almost obliterated by his own great 
 grinning figure in the foreground: Caliban Malvolio. 
 And it seems to me as if, in the persons of these broth- 
 ers-in-law, we had the two sides of rusticity fairly well 
 represented : the hunter living really in nature ; the clod- 
 hopper living merely out of society : the one bent up in 
 every corporal agent to capacity in one pursuit, doing at 
 least one thing keenly and thoughtfully, and thoroughly 
 alive to all that touches it ; the other in the inert and 
 bestial state, walking in a faint dream, and taking so dim 
 an impression of the myriad sides of life that he is truly 
 conscious of nothing but himself It is only in the fast- 
 nesses of nature, forests, mountains, and the back of 
 man's beyond, that a creature endowed with five senses 
 can grow up into the perfection of this crass and earthy 
 vanity. In towns or the busier country sides, he is 
 roughly reminded of other men's existence; and if he 
 learns no more, he learns at least to fear contempt. But 
 Irvine had come scatheless through life, conscious only 
 of himself, of his great strength and intelligence ; and 
 in the silence of the universe, to which he did not lis- 
 ten, dwelling with delight on the sound of his own 
 thoughts. 
 
 384 
 
THE SEA FOGS 
 
 A CHANGE in the colour of the light usually called me 
 in the morning. By a certain hour, the long, vertical 
 chinks in our western gable, where the boards had 
 shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as 
 stripes of dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid 
 that I used to marvel how the qualities could be com- 
 bined. At an earlier hour, the heavens in that quarter 
 were still quietly coloured, but the shoulder of the moun- 
 tain which shuts in the canon already glowed with 
 sunlight in a wonderful compound of gold and rose and 
 green ; and this too would kindle, although more mildly 
 and with rainbow tints, the fissures of our crazy gable. 
 If I were sleeping heavily, it was the bold blue that 
 struck me awake ; if more lightly, then I would come to 
 myself in that earlier and fairier light. 
 
 One Sunday morning, about five, the first brightness 
 called me. I rose and turned to the east, not for my de- 
 votions, but for air. The night had been very still. The 
 little private gale that blew every evening in our canon, 
 for ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, had 
 swiftly blown itself out; in the hours that followed not 
 a sigh of wind had shaken the treetops ; and our barrack, 
 for all its breaches, was less fresh that morning than of 
 
 385 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 wont. But I had no sooner reached the window than I 
 forgot all else in the sight that met my eyes, and I made 
 but two bounds into my clothes, and down the crazy 
 plank to the platform. 
 
 The sun was still concealed below the opposite hill- 
 tops, though it was shining already, not twenty feet 
 above my head, on our own mountain slope. But the 
 scene, beyond a few near features, was entirely changed. 
 Napa valley was gone; gone were all the lower slopes 
 and woody foothills of the range; and in their place, 
 not a thousand feet below me, rolled a great level ocean. 
 It was as though 1 had gone to bed the night before, 
 safe in a nook of inland mountains, and had awakened in 
 a bay upon the coast. I had seen these inundations 
 from below ; at Calistoga 1 had risen and gone abroad^ 
 in the early morning, coughing and sneezing, under 
 fathoms on fathoms of gray sea vapour, like a cloudy 
 sky — a dull sight for the artist, and a painful experience 
 for the invalid. But to sit aloft one's self in the pure 
 air and under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus 
 look down on the submergence of the valley, was 
 strangely different and even delightful to the eyes. Far 
 away were hilltops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky 
 surf beat about the foot of precipices and poured into all 
 the coves of these rough mountains. The colour of that 
 fog ocean was a thing never to be forgotten. For an 
 instant, among the Hebrides and just about sundown, I 
 have seen something like it on the sea itself But the 
 white was not so opaline; nor was there, what surpris- 
 ingly increased the effect, that breathless, crystal still- 
 ness over all. Even in its gentlest moods the salt sea 
 travails, moaning among the weeds or lisping on the 
 
 386 
 
THE SEA FOGS 
 
 sand ; but that vast fog ocean lay in a trance of silence, 
 nor did the sweet air of the morning tremble with a 
 sound. 
 
 As I continued to sit upon the dump, I began to ob- 
 serve that this sea was not so level as at first sight it 
 appeared to be. Away in the extreme south, a little hill 
 of fog arose against the sky above the general surface, 
 and as it had already caught the sun, it shone on the 
 horizon like the topsails of some giant ship. There 
 were huge waves, stationary, as it seemed, like waves 
 in a frozen sea; and yet, as I looked again, I was not 
 sure but they were moving after all, with a slow and 
 august advance. And while I was yet doubting, a 
 promontory of the hills some four or five miles away, 
 conspicuous by a bouquet of tall pines, was in a single 
 instant overtaken and swallowed up. It reappeared in 
 a little, with its pines, but this time as an islet, and only 
 to be swallowed up once more and then for good. This 
 set me looking nearer, and I saw that in every cove 
 along the line of mountains the fog was being piled in 
 higher and higher, as though by some wind that was 
 inaudible to me. I could trace its progress, one pine 
 tree first growing hazy and then disappearing after 
 another; although sometimes there was none of this 
 fore-running haze, but the whole opaque white ocean 
 gave a start and swallowed a piece of mountain at a 
 gulp. It was to flee these poisonous fogs that I had 
 left the seaboard, and climbed so high among the moun- 
 tains. And now, behold, here came the fog to besiege 
 me in my chosen altitudes, and yet came so beautifully 
 that my first thought was of welcome. 
 
 The sun had now gotten much higher, and through 
 
 387 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 all the gaps of the hills it cast long bars of gold across 
 that white ocean. An eagle^ or some other very great 
 bird of the mountain, came w^heeling over the nearer 
 pine-tops, and hung, poised and something sideways, 
 as if to look abroad on that unwonted desolation, spy- 
 ing, perhaps with terror, for the eyries of her comrades. 
 Then, with a long cry, she disappeared again towards 
 Lake County and the clearer air. At length it seemed to 
 me as if the flood were beginning to subside. The old 
 landmarks, by whose disappearance I had measured its 
 advance, here a crag, there a brave pine tree, now be- 
 gan, in the inverse order, to make their reappearance 
 into daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. 
 This was not Noah's flood ; it was but a morning spring, 
 and would now drift out seaward whence it came. So, 
 mightily relieved, and a good deal exhilarated by the 
 sight, I went into the house to light the fire. 
 
 I suppose it was nearly seven when I once more 
 mounted the platform to look abroad. The fog ocean 
 had swelled up enormously since last I saw it; and a 
 few hundred feet below me, in the deep gap where the 
 Toll House stands and the road runs through into Lake 
 County, it had already topped the slope, and was pour- 
 ing over and down the other side like driving smoke. 
 The wind had climbed along with it; and though I was 
 still in calm air, I could see the trees tossing below me, 
 and their long, strident sighing mounted to me where 
 I stood. 
 
 Half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all the 
 ridge on the opposite side of the gap, though a shoulder 
 of the mountain still warded it out of our canon. Napa 
 valley and its bounding hills were now utterly blotted 
 
 388 
 
THE SEA FOGS 
 
 out The fog, sunny white in the sunshine, was pour- 
 ing over into Lake County in a huge, ragged cataract, 
 tossing treetops appearing and disappearing in the spray. 
 The air struck with a little chill, and set me coughing. 
 It smelt strong of the fog, like the smell of a washing- 
 house, but with a shrewd tang of the sea salt. 
 
 Had it not been for two things — the sheltering spur 
 which answered as a dyke, and the great valley on the 
 other side which rapidly engulfed whatever mounted — 
 our own little platform in the canon must have been 
 already buried a hundred feet in salt and poisonous air. 
 As it was, the interest of the scene entirely occupied 
 our minds. We were set just out of the wind, and but 
 just above the fog; we could listen to the voice of the 
 one as to music on the stage ; we could plunge our eyes 
 down into the other, as into some flowing stream from 
 over the parapet of a bridge ; thus we looked on upon 
 a strange, impetuous, silent, shifting exhibition of the 
 powers of nature, and saw the familiar landscape chang- 
 ing from moment to moment like figures in a dream. 
 
 The imagination loves to trifle with what is not. Had 
 this been indeed the deluge, I should have felt more 
 strongly, but the emotion would have been similar in 
 kind. I played with the idea, as the child flees in de- 
 lighted terror from the creations of his fancy. The look 
 of the thing helped me. And when at last I began to 
 flee up the mountain, it was indeed partly to escape 
 from the raw air that kept me coughing, but it was also 
 part in play. 
 
 As I ascended the mountain-side, I came once more 
 to overlook the upper surface of the fog ; but it wore a 
 different appearance from what I had beheld at daybreak. 
 
 389 
 
THE SILVERADO SQyATTERS 
 
 For, first, the sun now fell on it from high overhead, 
 and its surface shone and undulated like a great nor'land 
 moor country, sheeted with untrodden morning snow. 
 And next the new level must have been a thousand or 
 fifteen hundred feet higher than the old, so that only 
 five or six points of all the broken country below me, 
 still stood out. Napa valley was now one with Sonoma 
 on the west. On the hither side, only a thin scattered 
 fringe of bluffs was unsubmerged ; and through all the 
 gaps the fog was pouring over, like an ocean, into the 
 blue clear sunny country on the east. There it was 
 soon lost ; for it fell instantly into the bottom of the val- 
 leys, following the water-shed ; and the hilltops in that 
 quarter were still clear cut upon the eastern sky. 
 
 Through the Toll House gap and over the near ridges 
 on the other side, the deluge was immense. A spray 
 of thin vapour was thrown high above it, rising and 
 falling, and blown into fantastic shapes. The speed of 
 its course was like a mountain torrent. Here and there 
 a few treetops were discovered and then whelmed again ; 
 and for one second, the bough of a dead pine beckoned 
 out of the spray like the arm of a drowning man. But 
 still the imagination was dissatisfied, still the ear waited 
 for something more. Had this indeed been water (as it 
 seemed so, to the eye), with what a plunge of rever- 
 berating thunder would it have rolled upon its course, 
 disembowelling mountains and deracinating pines ! And 
 yet water it was, and sea- water at that — true Pacific 
 billows, only somewhat rarefied, rolling in mid air 
 among the hilltops. 
 
 I climbed still higher, among the red rattling gravel 
 and dwarf underwood of Mount Saint Helena, until I 
 
 590 
 
THE SEA FOGS 
 
 could look right down upon Silverado, and admire the 
 favoured nook in which it lay. The sunny plain of fog 
 was several hundred feet higher; behind the protecting 
 spur a gigantic accumulation of cottony vapour threat- 
 ened, with every second, to blow over and submerge our 
 homestead ; but the vortex setting past the Toll House 
 was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in the 
 arms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sun- 
 shine. About eleven, however, thin spray came flying 
 over the friendly buttress, and I began to think the fog 
 had hunted out its Jonah after all. But it was the last 
 effort. The wind veered while we were at dinner, and 
 began to blow squally from the mountain summit; and 
 by half-past one, all that world of sea-fogs was utterly 
 routed and flying here and there into the south in little 
 rags of cloud. And instead of a lone sea-beach, we 
 found ourselves once more inhabiting a high mountain- 
 side, with the clear green country far below us, and the 
 light smoke of Calistoga blowing in the air. 
 
 This was the great Russian campaign for that season. 
 Now and then, in the early morning, a little white lake- 
 let of fog would be seen far down in Napa Valley ; but 
 the heights were not again assailed, nor was the sur- 
 rounding world again shut off from Silverado. 
 
 391 
 
THE TOLL HOUSE 
 
 The Toll House, standing alone by the wayside under 
 nodding pines, with its streamlet and water-tank; its 
 backwoods, toll-bar, and well trodden croquet ground ; 
 the ostler standing by the stable door, chewing a straw ; 
 a glimpse of the Chinese cook in the back parts ; and 
 Mr. Hoddy in the bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and 
 equally anxious to lend or borrow books; — dozed all 
 day in the dusty sunshine, more than half asleep. There 
 were no neighbours, except the Hansons up the hill. 
 The traffic on the road was infinitesimal; only, at rare 
 intervals, a couple in a waggon, or a dusty farmer on a 
 spring-board, toiling over "the grade" to that metro- 
 politan hamlet, Calistoga; and, at the fixed hours, the 
 passage of the stages. 
 
 The nearest building was the schoolhouse, down the 
 road ; and the school-ma'am boarded at the Toll House, 
 walking thence in the morning to the little brown shanty, 
 where she taught the young ones of the district, and re- 
 turning thither pretty weary in the afternoon. She had 
 chosen this outlying situation, I understood, for her 
 health. Mr. Corwin was consumptive; so was Rufe; 
 so was Mr. Jennings, the engineer. In short, the place 
 was a kind of small Davos : consumptive folk consort- 
 
 392 
 
THE TOLL HOUSE 
 
 ing on a hilltop in the most unbroken idleness. Jen- 
 nings never did anything that I could see, except now 
 and then to fish, and generally to sit about in the bar 
 and the verandah, waiting for something to happen. 
 Corwin and Rufe did as little as possible; and if the 
 school-ma'am, poor lady, had to work pretty hard all 
 morning, she subsided when it was over into much the 
 same dazed beatitude as all the rest. 
 
 Her special corner was the parlour — a very genteel 
 room, with Bible prints, a crayon portrait of Mrs. Cor- 
 win in the height of fashion, a few years ago, another 
 of her son (Mr. Corwin was not represented), a mirror, 
 and a selection of dried grasses. A large book was laid 
 religiously on the table — ''From Palace to Hovel," I 
 believe, its name — full of the raciest experiences in 
 England. The author had mingled freely with all 
 classes, the nobility particularly meeting him with open 
 arms ; and I must say that traveller had ill requited his 
 reception. His book, in short, was a capital instance 
 of the Penny Messalina school of literature; and there 
 arose from it, in that cool parlour, in that silent, way- 
 side, mountain inn, a rank atmosphere of gold and 
 blood and "Jenkins," and the ''Mysteries of London," 
 and sickening, inverted snobbery, fit to knock you 
 down. The mention of this book reminds me of an- 
 other and far racier picture of our island life. The lat- 
 ter parts of Rocambole are surely too sparingly con- 
 sulted in the country which they celebrate. No man's 
 education can be said to be complete, nor can he pro- 
 nounce the world yet emptied of enjoyment, till he has 
 made the acquaintance of "the Reverend Patterson, 
 director of the Evangelical Society." To follow the 
 
 3P3 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 evolutions of that reverend gentleman, who goes 
 through scenes in which even Mr. Duffield would hesi- 
 tate to place a bishop, is to rise to new ideas. But, 
 alas! there was no Patterson about the Toll House. 
 Only, alongside of "From Palace to Hovel," a sixpenny 
 '*Ouida" figured. So literature, you see, was not un- 
 represented. 
 
 The school-ma'am had friends to stay with her, other 
 school-ma'ams enjoying their holidays, quite a bevy of 
 damsels. They seemed never to go out, or not beyond 
 the verandah, but sat close in the little parlour, quietly 
 talking or listening to the wind among the trees. Sleep 
 dwelt in the Toll House, like a fixture: summer sleep, 
 shallow, soft, and dreamless. A cuckoo-clock, a great 
 rarity in such a place, hooted at intervals about the 
 echoing house ; and Mr. Jennings would open his eyes 
 for a moment in the bar, and turn the leaf of a news- 
 paper, and the resting school-ma'ams in the parlour 
 would be recalled to the consciousness of their inaction. 
 Busy Mrs. Corwin and her busy Chinaman might be 
 heard indeed, in the penetralia, pounding dough or rat- 
 tling dishes; or perhaps Rufe had called up some of the 
 sleepers for a game of croquet, and the hollow strokes 
 of the mallet sounded far away among the woods : but 
 with these exceptions, it was sleep and sunshine and 
 dust, and the wind in the pine trees, all day long. 
 
 A little before stage time, that castle of indolence 
 awoke. The ostler threw his straw away and set to 
 his preparations. Mr. Jennings rubbed his eyes; happy 
 Mr. Jennings, the something he had been waiting for 
 all day about to happen at last ! The boarders gathered 
 in the verandah, silently giving ear, and gazing down the 
 
 394 
 
THE TOLL HOUSE 
 
 road with shaded eyes. And as yet there was no sign 
 for the senses, not a sound, not a tremor of the moun- 
 tain road. The birds, to whom the secret of the hoot- 
 ing cuckoo is unknown, must have set down to instinct 
 this premonitory bustle. 
 
 And then the first of the two stages swooped upon the 
 Toll House with a roar and in a cloud of dust; and the 
 shock had not yet time to subside, before the second was 
 abreast of it. Huge concerns they were, well-horsed 
 and loaded, the men in their shirt-sleeves, the women 
 swathed in veils, the long whip cracking like a pistol; 
 and as they charged upon that slumbering hostelry, each 
 shepherding a dust storm, the dead place blossomed 
 into life and talk and clatter. This the Toll House ? — 
 with its city throng, its jostling shoulders, its infinity 
 of instant business in the bar ? The mind would not 
 receive it! The heartfelt bustle of that hour is hardly 
 credible ; the thrill of the great shower of letters from 
 the post-bag, the childish hope and interest with which 
 one gazed in all these strangers' eyes. They paused 
 there but to pass: the blue-clad China-boy, the San 
 Francisco magnate, the mystery in the dust coat, the 
 secret memoirs in tweed, the ogling, well-shod lady 
 with her troop of girls ; they did but flash and go ; they 
 were hull-down for us behind life's ocean, and we but 
 hailed their topsails on the line. Yet, out of our great 
 solitude of four and twenty mountain hours, we thrilled 
 to their momentary presence ; gauged and divined them, 
 loved and hated ; and stood light-headed in that storm 
 of human electricity. Yes, like Piccadilly Circus, this 
 is also one of life's crossing-places. Here I beheld one 
 man, already famous or infamous, a centre of pistol- 
 
 395 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 shots : and another who, if not yet known to rumour, 
 will fill a column of the Sunday paper when he comes 
 to hang — a burly, thick-set, powerful Chinese desper- 
 ado, six long bristles upon either lip ; redolent of whis- 
 key, playing cards, and pistols ; swaggering in the bar 
 with the lowest assumption of the lowest European 
 manners ; rapping out blackguard English oaths in his 
 canorous oriental voice; and combining in one person 
 the depravities of two races and two civilizations. For 
 all his lust and vigour, he seemed to look cold upon 
 me from the valley of the shadow of the gallows. He 
 imagined a vain thing; and while he drained his cock- 
 tail, Holbein's death was at his elbow. Once, too, I 
 fell in talk with another of these flitting strangers — like 
 the rest, in his shirt-sleeves and all begrimed with dust 
 — and the next minute we were discussing Paris and 
 London, theatres and wines. To him, journeying from 
 one human place to another, this was a trifle ; but to 
 me! No, Mr. Lillie, I have not forgotten it. 
 
 And presently the city-tide was at its flood and began 
 to ebb. Life runs in Piccadilly Circus, say, from nine 
 to one, and then, there also, ebbs into the small hours 
 of the echoing policemen and the lamps and stars. But 
 the Toll House is far up stream, and near its rural 
 springs ; the bubble of the tide but touches it. Before 
 you had yet grasped your pleasure, the horses were put 
 to, the loud whips volleyed, and the tide was gone. 
 North and south had the two stages vanished, the 
 towering dust subsided in the woods; but there was 
 still an interval before the flush had fallen on your 
 cheeks, before the ear became once more contented 
 with the silence, or the seven sleepers of the Toll House 
 
 396 
 
THE TOLL HOUSE 
 
 dozed back to their accustomed corners. Yet a little, 
 and the ostler would swing round the great barrier 
 across the road ; and in the golden evening, that dreamy 
 inn begin to trim its lamps and spread the board for 
 supper. 
 
 As I recall the place — the green dell below; the 
 spires of pine; the sun-warm, scented air; that gray, 
 gabled inn, with its faint stirrings of life amid the slum- 
 ber of the mountains — I slowly awake to a sense of ad- 
 miration, gratitude, and almost love. A fine place, 
 after all, for a wasted life to doze away in — the cuckoo 
 clock hooting of its far home country ; the croquet mal- 
 lets, eloquent of English lawns ; the stages daily bring- 
 ing news of the turbulent world away below there ; and 
 perhaps once in the summer, a salt fog pouring over- 
 head with its tale of the Pacific. 
 
 397 
 
A STARRY DRIVE 
 
 In our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy inter- 
 regnum. The queen and the crown prince with one 
 accord fell sick; and, as 1 was sick to begin with, our 
 lone position on Mount Saint Helena was no longer 
 tenable, and we had to hurry back to Calistoga and a 
 cottage on the green. By that time we had begun to 
 realize the difficulties of our position. We had found 
 what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our 
 red canon ; and it was the dearest desire of our hearts 
 to get a China-boy to go along with us when we re- 
 turned. We could have given him a whole house to 
 himself, self-contained, as they say in the advertise- 
 ments ; and on the money question we were prepared 
 to go far. Kong Sam Kee, the Calistoga washerman, 
 was entrusted with the affair; and from day to day it 
 languished on, with protestations on our part and mel- 
 lifluous excuses on the part of Kong Sam Kee. 
 
 At length, about half-past eight of our last evening, 
 with the waggon ready harnessed to convey us up the 
 grade, the washerman, with a somewhat sneering air, 
 produced the boy. He was a handsome, gentlemanly 
 lad, attired in rich dark blue, and shod with snowy 
 white; but, alas! he had heard rumours of Silverado. 
 
 293 
 
A STARRY DRIVE 
 
 He knew it for a lone place on the mountain-side, with 
 no friendly wash-house near by, where he might smoke 
 a pipe of opium o' nights with other China-boys, and 
 lose his little earnings at the game of tan ; and he first 
 backed out for more money ; and then, when that de- 
 mand was satisfied, refused to come point-blank. He 
 was wedded to his wash-houses ; he had no taste for 
 the rural life ; and we must go to our mountain servant- 
 less. It must have been near half an hour before we 
 reached that conclusion, standing in the midst of Calis- 
 toga high street under the stars, and the China-boy and 
 Kong Sam Kee singing their pigeon English in the 
 sweetest voices and with the most musical inflections. 
 
 We were not, however, to return alone; for we 
 brought with us Joe Strong, the painter, a most good- 
 natured comrade and a capital hand at an omelette. I 
 do not know in which capacity he was most valued — 
 as a cook or a companion ; and he did excellently well 
 in both. 
 
 The Kong Sam Kee negotiation had delayed us un- 
 duly ; it must have been half-past nine before we left 
 Caljstoga, and night came fully ere we struck the bot- 
 tom of the grade. I have never seen such a night. It 
 seemed to throw calumny in the teeth of all the painters 
 that ever dabbled in starlight. The sky itself was of 
 a ruddy, powerful, nameless, changing colour, dark 
 and glossy like a serpent's back. The stars, by innumer- 
 able millions, stuck boldly forth like lamps. The milky 
 way was bright, like a moonlit cloud; half heaven 
 seemed milky way. The greater luminaries shone each 
 more clearly than a winter's moon. Their light was 
 dyed in every sort of colour — red, like fire; blue, like 
 
 399 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 Steel; green, like the tracks of sunset; and so sharply 
 did each stand forth in its own lustre that there was no 
 appearance of that flat, star-spangled arch we know so 
 well in pictures, but all the hollow of heaven was one 
 chaos of contesting luminaries — a hurly-burly of stars. 
 Against this the hills and rugged tree-tops stood out 
 redly dark. 
 
 As we continued to advance, the lesser lights and 
 milky ways first grew pale, and then vanished; the 
 countless hosts of heaven dwindled in number by suc- 
 cessive millions; those that still shone had tempered 
 their exceeding brightness and fallen back into their cus- 
 tomary wistful distance ; and the sky declined from its 
 first bewildering splendour into the appearance of a 
 common night. Slowly this change proceeded, and 
 still there was no sign of any cause. Then a whiteness 
 like mist was thrown over the spurs of the mountain. 
 Yet a while, and, as we turned a corner, a great leap of 
 silver light and net of forest shadows fell across the road 
 and upon our wondering waggonful ; and, swimming 
 low among the trees, we beheld a strange, misshapen, 
 waning moon, half-tilted on her back. 
 
 ** Where are ye when the moon appears ? " so the old 
 poet sang, half-taunting, to the stars, bent upon a courtly 
 purpose. 
 
 *'As the sunlight round the dim earth's midnight tower of shadow pours, 
 Streaming past the dim, wide portals, 
 Viewless to the eyes of mortals, 
 Till it floods the moon's pale islet or the morning's golden shores." 
 
 So sings Mr. Trowbridge, with a noble inspiration. And 
 so had the sunlight flooded that pale islet of the moon, and 
 
 400 
 
A STARRY DRIVE 
 
 her lit face put out, one after another, that galaxy of stars. 
 The wonder of the drive was over; but, by some nice 
 conjunction of clearness in the air and fit shadow in the 
 valley where we travelled, we had seen for a little while 
 that brave display of the midnight heavens. It was 
 gone, but it had been ; nor shall I ever again behold the 
 stars with the same mind. He who has seen the sea 
 commoved with a great hurricane, thinks of it very differ- 
 ently from him who has seen it only in a calm. And the 
 difference between a calm and a hurricane is not greatly 
 more striking than that between the ordinary face of 
 night and the splendour that shone upon us in that 
 drive. Two in our waggon knew night as she shines 
 upon the tropics, but even that bore no comparison. 
 The nameless colour of the sky, the hues of the star-fire, 
 and the incredible projection of the stars themselves, 
 starting from their orbits, so that the eye seemed to dis- 
 tinguish their positions in the hollow of space — these 
 were things that we had never seen before and shall 
 never see again. 
 
 Meanwhile, in this altered night, we proceeded on our 
 way among the scents and silence of the forest, reached 
 the top of the grade, wound up by Hanson's, and came 
 at last to a stand under the flying gargoyle of the chute. 
 Sam, who had been lying back, fast asleep, with the 
 moon on his face, got down, with the remark that it 
 was pleasant *'to be home." The waggon turned and 
 drove away, the noise gently dying in the woods, and 
 we clambered up the rough path, Caliban's great feat of 
 engineering, and came home to Silverado. 
 
 The moon shone in at the eastern doors and windows, 
 and over the lumber on the platform. The one tall pine 
 
 401 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 beside the ledge was steeped in silver. Away up the 
 canon, a wild cat welcomed us with three discordant 
 squalls. But once we had lit a candle, and began to 
 review our improvements, homely in either sense, and 
 count our stores, it was wonderful what a feeling of 
 possession and permanence grew up in the hearts of 
 the lords of Silverado. A bed had still to be made up for 
 Strong, and the morning's water to be fetched, with clink- 
 ing pail ; and as we set about these household duties, 
 and showed off our wealth and conveniences before the 
 stranger, and had a glass of wine, I think, in honour of 
 our return, and trooped at length one after another up 
 the flying bridge of plank, and lay down to sleep in our 
 shattered, moon-pierced barrack, we were among the 
 happiest sovereigns in the world, and certainly ruled 
 over the most contented people. Yet, in our absence, 
 the palace had been sacked. Wild cats, so the Hansons 
 said, had broken in and carried off a side of bacon, a 
 hatchet, and two knives. 
 
 403 
 
EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE 
 
 No one could live at Silverado and not be curious 
 about the story of the mine. We were surrounded by 
 so many evidences of expense and toil, we lived so en- 
 tirely in the wreck of that great enterprise, like mites in 
 the ruins of a cheese, that the idea of the old din and 
 bustle haunted our repose. Our own house, the forge, 
 the dump, the chutes, the rails, the windlass, the mass 
 of broken plant; the two tunnels, one far below in the 
 green dell, the other on the platform where we kept our 
 wine; the deep shaft, with the sun-glints and the water- 
 drops ; above all, the ledge, that great gaping slice out 
 of the mountain shoulder, propped apart by wooden 
 wedges, on whose immediate margin, high above our 
 heads, the one tall pine precariously nodded — these 
 stood for its greatness; while, the dog-hutch, boot- 
 jacks, old boots, old tavern bills, and the very beds 
 that we inherited from bygone miners, put in human 
 touches and realised for us the story of the past. 
 
 I have sat on an old sleeper, under the thick madronas 
 near the forge, with just a look over the dump on the 
 green world below, and seen the sun lying broad among 
 the wreck, and heard the silence broken only by the 
 tinkling water in the shaft, or a stir of the royal family 
 
 403 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 about the battered palace, and my mind has gone back 
 to the epoch of the Stanleys and the Chapmans, with a 
 grand tutti of pick and drill, hammer and anvil, echoing 
 about the canon ; the assayer hard at it in our dining- 
 room ; the carts below on the road, and their cargo of 
 red mineral bounding and thundering down the iron 
 chute. And now all gone — all fallen away into this 
 sunny silence and desertion : a family of squatters din- 
 ing in the assayer's office, making their beds in the big 
 sleeping room erstwhile so crowded, keeping their wine 
 in the tunnel that once rang with picks. 
 
 But Silverado itself, although now fallen in its turn 
 into decay, was once but a mushroom, and had succeeded 
 to other mines and other flitting cities. Twenty years 
 ago, away down the glen on the Lake County side there 
 was a place, Jonestown by name, with two thousand 
 inhabitants dwelling under canvas, and one roofed house 
 for the sale of whiskey. Round on the western side of 
 Mount Saint Helena, there was at the same date, a sec- 
 ond large encampment, its name, if it ever had one, lost 
 for me. Both of these have perished, leaving not a stick 
 and scarce a memory behind them. Tide after tide of 
 hopeful miners have thus flowed and ebbed about the 
 mountain, coming and going, now by lone prospectors, 
 now with a rush. Last, in order of time came Sil- 
 verado, reared the big mill, in the valley, founded the 
 town which is now represented, monumentally, by 
 Hanson's, pierced all these slaps and shafts and tunnels, 
 and in turn declined and died away. 
 
 " Our noisy years seem moments in the wake 
 Of the eternal silence." 
 404 
 
EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE 
 
 As to the success of Silverado in its time of being, 
 two reports were current. According to the first, six 
 hundred thousand dollars were taken out of that great 
 upright seam, that still hung open above us on crazy 
 wedges. Then the ledge pinched out, and there fol- 
 lowed, in quest of the remainder, a great drifting and 
 tunnelling in all directions, and a great consequent effu- 
 sion of dollars, until, all parties being sick of the ex- 
 pense, the mine was deserted, and the town decamped. 
 According to the second version, told me with much 
 secrecy of manner, the whole affair, mine, mill, and 
 town, were parts of one majestic swindle. There had 
 never come any silver out of any portion of the mine; 
 there was no silver to come. At midnight trains of 
 packhorses might have been observed winding by de- 
 vious tracks about the shoulder of the mountain. They 
 came from far away, from Amador or Placer, laden with 
 silver in *'old cigar boxes." They discharged their 
 load at Silverado, in the hour of sleep; and before the 
 morning they were gone again with their mysterious 
 drivers to their unknown source. In this way, twenty 
 thousand pounds' worth of silver was smuggled in un- 
 der cover of night, in these old cigar boxes; mixed with 
 Silverado mineral; carted down to the mill; crushed, 
 amalgamated, and refined, and despatched to the city 
 as the proper product of the mine. Stock-jobbing, if it 
 can cover such expenses, must be a profitable business 
 in San Francisco. 
 
 I give these two versions as I got them. But I place 
 little reliance on either, my belief in history having been 
 greatly shaken. For it chanced that I had come to dwell 
 in Silverado at a critical hour; great events in its history 
 
 405 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 were about to happen — did happen, as I am led to be- 
 lieve; nay, and it will be seen that I played a part in 
 that revolution myself. And yet from first to last I 
 never had a glimmer of an idea what was going on; 
 and even now, after full reflection, profess myself at 
 sea. That there was some obscure intrigue of the 
 cigar-box order, and that 1, in the character of a wooden 
 puppet, set pen to paper in the interest of somebody, so 
 much, and no more, is certain. 
 
 Silverado, then under my immediate sway, belonged 
 to one whom 1 will call a Mr. Ronalds. I only knew him 
 through the extraordinarily distorting medium of local 
 gossip, now as a momentous jobber; now as a dupe to 
 point an adage; and again, and much more probably, 
 as an ordinary Christian gentleman like you or me, who 
 had opened a mine and worked it for a while with bet- 
 ter and worse fortune. So, through a defective window- 
 pane, you may see the passer-by shoot up into a hunch- 
 backed giant, or dwindle into a pot-bellied dwarf. 
 
 To Ronalds, at least, the mine belonged; but the 
 notice by which he held it would run out upon the 30th 
 of June — or rather, as I suppose, it had run out already, 
 and the month of grace would expire upon that day, 
 after which any American citizen might post a notice of 
 his own, and make Silverado his. This, with a sort of 
 quiet slyness, Rufe told me at an early period of our 
 acquaintance. There was no silver, of course ; the mine 
 *' wasn't worth nothing, Mr. Stevens," but there was a 
 deal of old iron and wood around, and to gain posses- 
 sion of this old wood and iron, and get a right to the 
 water, Rufe proposed, if I had no objections, to **jump 
 the claim." 
 
 406 
 
EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE 
 
 Of course, I had no objection. But I was filled with 
 wonder. If all he wanted was the wood and iron, 
 what, in the name of fortune, was to prevent him taking 
 them.? ''His right there was none to dispute." He 
 might lay hands on all to-morrow, as the wild cats had 
 laid hands upon our knives and hatchet. Besides, was 
 this mass of heavy mining plant worth transportation ? 
 If it was, why had not the rightful owners carted it 
 away ? If it was, would they not preserve their title to 
 these movables, even after they had lost their title to the 
 mine ? And if it were not, what the better was Rufe ? 
 Nothing would grow at Silverado ; there was even no 
 wood to cut; beyond a sense of property, there was 
 nothing to be gained. Lastly, was it at all credible that 
 Ronalds would forget what Rufe remembered ? The 
 days of grace were not yet over: any fine morning he 
 might appear, paper in hand, and enter for another year 
 on his inheritance. However, it was none of my busi- 
 ness; all seemed legal; Rufe or Ronalds, all was one 
 to me. 
 
 On the morning of the 27th, Mrs. Hanson appeared 
 with the milk as usual, in her sun-bonnet. The time 
 would be out on Tuesday, she reminded us, and bade 
 me be in readiness to play my part, though I had no idea 
 what it was to be. And suppose Ronalds came ? we 
 asked. She received the idea with derision, laughing 
 aloud with all her fine teeth. He could not find the 
 mine to save his life, it appeared, without Rufe to guide 
 him. Last year, when he came, they heard him *'up 
 and down the road a hollerin' and a raisin' Cain." And 
 at last he had to come to the Hansons in despair, and 
 bid Rufe, ''Jump into your pants and shoes, and show 
 
 407 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 me where this old mine is, anyway!" Seeing that 
 Ronalds had laid out so much money in the spot, and 
 that a beaten road led right up to the bottom of the dump, 
 I thought this a remarkable example. The sense of local- 
 ity must be singularly in abeyance in the case of Ronalds. 
 
 That same evening, supper comfortably over, Joe 
 Strong busy at work on a drawing of the dump and the 
 opposite hills, we were all out on the platform together, 
 sitting there, under the tented heavens, with the same 
 sense of privacy as if we had been cabined in a parlour, 
 when the sound of brisk footsteps came mounting up 
 the path. We pricked our ears at this, for the tread 
 seemed lighter and firmer than was usual with our 
 country neighbours. And presently, sure enough, two 
 town gentlemen, with cigars and kid gloves, came de- 
 bouching past the house. They looked in that place 
 like a blasphemy. 
 
 **Good evening," they said. For none of us had 
 stirred; we all sat stiff with wonder. 
 
 **Good evening," I returned; and then, to put them 
 at their ease, '* A stiff climb," I added. 
 
 '*Yes," replied the leader; ''but we have to thank 
 you for this path." 
 
 I did not like the man's tone. None of us liked it. 
 He did not seem embarrassed by the meeting, but threw 
 us his remarks like favours, and strode magisterially by 
 us towards the shaft and tunnel. 
 
 Presently we heard his voice raised to his companion. 
 **We drifted every sort of way, but couldn't strike the 
 ledge." Then again: 'Mt pinched out here." And 
 once more: ** Every miner that ever worked upon it 
 says there's bound to be a ledge somewhere." 
 
 408 
 
EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE 
 
 These were the snatches of his talk that reached us, 
 and they had a damning significance. We, the lords of 
 Silverado, had come face to face with our superior. It 
 is the worst of all quaint and of all cheap ways of life 
 that they bring us at last to the pinch of some humilia- 
 tion. I liked well enough to be a squatter when there 
 was none but Hanson by ; before Ronalds, I will own, 
 I somewhat quailed. I hastened to do him fealty, said 
 I gathered he was the Squattee, and apologised. He 
 threatened me with ejection, in a manner grimly plea- 
 sant — more pleasant to him, I fancy, than to me; and 
 then he passed off into praises of the former state of 
 Silverado. " It was the busiest little mining town you 
 ever saw : " a population of between a thousand and 
 fifteen hundred souls, the engine in full blast, the mill 
 newly erected ; nothing going but champagne, and hope 
 the order of the day. Ninety thousand dollars came 
 out; a hundred and forty thousand were put in, making 
 a net loss of fifty thousand. The last days, I gathered, 
 the days of John Stanley, were not so bright; the cham- 
 pagne had ceased to flow, the population was already 
 moving elsewhere, and Silverado had begun to wither 
 in the branch before it was cut at the root. The last 
 shot that was fired knocked over the stove chimney, 
 and made that hole in the roof of our barrack, through 
 which the sun was wont to visit slug-a-beds towards 
 afternoon. A noisy last shot, to inaugurate the days of 
 silence. 
 
 Throughout this interview, my conscience was a 
 good deal exercised; and I was moved to throw my- 
 self on my knees and own the intended treachery. But 
 then I had Hanson to consider. I was in much the 
 
 409 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 same position as Old Rowley, that royal humourist, 
 whom '* the rogue had taken into his confidence." And 
 again, here was Ronalds on the spot. He must know 
 the day of the month as well as Hanson and I. If a 
 broad hint were necessary, he had the broadest in the 
 world. For a large board had been nailed by the crown 
 prince on the very front of our house, between the door 
 and window, painted in cinnabar — the pigment of the 
 country — with doggrel rhymes and contumelious pic- 
 tures, and announcing, in terms unnecessarily figur- 
 ative, that the trick was already played, the claim al- 
 ready jumped, and Master Sam the legitimate successor 
 of Mr. Ronalds. But no, nothing could save that man ; 
 quern deus vult perdere, prim dementat. As he came 
 so he went, and left his rights depending. 
 
 Late at night, by Silverado reckoning, and after we 
 were all abed, Mrs. Hanson returned to give us the 
 newest of her news. It was like a scene in a ship's 
 steerage : all of us abed in our different tiers, the single 
 candle struggling with the darkness, and this plump, 
 handsome woman, seated on an upturned valise beside 
 the bunks, talking and showing her fine teeth, and 
 laughing till the rafters rang. Any ship, to be sure, 
 with a hundredth part as many holes in it as our bar- 
 rack, must long ago have gone to her last port. Up to 
 that time I had always imagined Mrs. Hanson's loqua- 
 city to be mere incontinence, that she said what was 
 uppermost for the pleasure of speaking, and laughed 
 and laughed again as a kind of musical accompaniment. 
 But I now found there was an art in it. I found it less 
 communicative than silence itself. I wished to know 
 why Ronalds had come; how he had found his way 
 
 410 
 
EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE 
 
 without Rufe ; and why, being on the spot, he had not 
 refreshed his title. She talked interminably on, but her 
 replies were never answers. She fled under a cloud of 
 words ; and when I had made sure that she was pur- 
 posely eluding me, I dropped the subject in my turn, 
 and let her rattle where she would. 
 
 She had come to tell us that, instead of waiting for 
 Tuesday, the claim was to be jumped on the morrow. 
 How ? If the time were not out, it was impossible. 
 Why ? If Ronalds had come and gone, and done noth- 
 ing, there was the less cause for hurry. But again I 
 could reach no satisfaction. The claim was to be 
 jumped next morning, that was all that she would 
 condescend upon. 
 
 And yet it was not jumped the next morning, nor 
 yet the next, and a whole week had come and gone 
 before we heard more of this exploit. That day week, 
 however, a day of great heat, Hanson, with a little roll 
 of paper in his hand, and the eternal pipe alight; Breed- 
 love, his large, dull friend, to act, I suppose, as witness ; 
 Mrs. Hanson, in her Sunday best; and all the children, 
 from the oldest to the youngest; — arrived in a proces- 
 sion, tailing one behind another up the path. Caliban 
 was absent, but he had been chary of his friendly visits 
 since the row; and with that exception, the whole 
 family was gathered together as for a marriage or a 
 christening. Strong was sitting at work, in the shade 
 of the dwarf madronas near the forge ; and they planted 
 themselves about him in a circle, one on a stone, another 
 on the waggon rails, a third on a piece of plank. Grad- 
 ually the children stole away up the canon to where 
 there was another chute, somewhat smaller than the 
 
 411 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 one across the dump; and down this chute, for the rest 
 of the afternoon, they poured one avalanche of stones 
 after another, waking the echoes of the glen. Mean- 
 time we elders sat together on the platform, Hanson 
 and his friend smoking in silence like Indian sachems, 
 Mrs. Hanson rattling on as usual with an adroit volu- 
 bility, saying nothing, but keeping the party at their 
 ease like a courtly hostess. 
 
 Not a word occurred about the business of the day. 
 Once, twice, and thrice I tried to slide the subject in, 
 but was discouraged by the stoic apathy of Rufe, and 
 beaten down before the pouring verbiage of his wife. 
 There is nothing of the Indian brave about me, and I 
 began to grill with impatience. At last, like a highway 
 robber, I cornered Hanson, and bade him stand and 
 deliver his business. Thereupon he gravely rose, as 
 though to hint that this was not a proper place, nor the 
 subject one suitable for squaws, and I, following his 
 example, led him up the plank into our barrack. There 
 he bestowed himself on a box, and unrolled his papers 
 with fastidious deliberation. There were two sheets 
 of note-paper, and an old mining notice, dated May 
 30th, 1879, part print, part manuscript, and the latter 
 much obliterated by the rains. It was by this identical 
 piece of paper that the mine had been held last year. 
 For thirteen months it had endured the weather and 
 the change of seasons on a cairn behind the shoulder 
 of the canon ; and it was now my business, spreading 
 it before me on the table, and sitting on a valise, to 
 copy its terms, with some necessary changes, twice 
 over on the two sheets of note-paper. One was then 
 to be placed on the same cairn — a "mound of rocks" 
 
 412 
 
EPISODES IN THE STORY OF A MINE 
 
 the notice put it; and the other to be lodged for regis- 
 tration. 
 
 Rufe watched me, silently smoking, till I came to the 
 place for the locator's name at the end of the first copy ; 
 and when I proposed that he should sign, I thought I 
 saw a scare in his eye. "I don't think that'll be neces- 
 sary," he said slowly; "just you write it down." Per- 
 haps this mighty hunter, who was the most active 
 member of the local school board, could not write. 
 There would be nothing strange in that. The constable 
 of Calistoga is, and has been for years, a bed-ridden 
 man, and, if I remember rightly, blind. He had more 
 need of the emoluments than another, it was explained ; 
 and it was easy for him to **depytize," with a strong 
 accent on the last. So friendly and so free are popular 
 institutions. 
 
 When I had done my scrivening, Hanson strolled out, 
 and addressed Breedlove, ' * Will you step up here a bit ? " 
 and after they had disappeared a little while into the 
 chaparral and madrona thicket, they came back again, 
 minus a notice, and the deed was done. The claim 
 was jumped; a tract of mountain-side, fifteen hundred 
 feet long by six hundred wide, with all the earth's 
 precious bowels, had passed from Ronalds to Hanson, 
 and, in the passage, changed its name from the "Mam- 
 moth " to the " Calistoga." I had tried to get Rufe to 
 call it after his wife, after himself, and after Garfield, 
 the Republican Presidential candidate of the hour — 
 since then elected, and, alas! dead — but all was in vain. 
 The claim had once been called the Calistoga before, and 
 he seemed to feel safety in returning to that. 
 
 And so the history of that mine became once more 
 
 4'3 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 plunged in darkness, lit only by some monster pyro- 
 technical displays of gossip. And perhaps the most 
 curious feature of the whole matter is this: that we 
 should have dwelt in this quiet corner of the mountains, 
 with not a dozen neighbours, and yet struggled all the 
 while, like desperate swimmers, in -this sea of falsities 
 and contradictions. Wherever a man is, there will be 
 a lie. 
 
 414 
 
TOILS AND PLEASURES 
 
 I MUST try to convey some notion of our life, of how 
 the days passed and what pleasure we took in them, 
 of what there was to do and how we set about doing 
 it, in our mountain hermitage. The nouse, after we 
 had repaired the worst of the damages, and filled in 
 some of the doors and windows with white cotton 
 cloth, became a healthy and a pleasant dwelling-place, 
 always airy and dry, and haunted by the outdoor per- 
 fumes of the glen. Within, it had the look of habita- 
 tion, the human look. You had only to go into the 
 third room, which we did not use, and see its stones, 
 its sifting earth, its tumbled litter; and then return to 
 our lodging, with the beds made, the plates on the 
 rack, the pail of bright water behind the door, the stove 
 crackling in a corner, and perhaps the table roughly 
 laid against a meal, — and man's order, the little clean 
 spots that he creates to dwell in, were at once con- 
 trasted with the rich passivity of nature. And yet our 
 house was everywhere so wrecked and shattered, the 
 air came and went so freely, the sun found so many 
 portholes, the golden outdoor glow shone in so many 
 open chinks, that we enjoyed, at the same time, some 
 of the comforts of a roof and much of the gaiety and 
 
 415 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 brightness of al fresco life. A single shower of rain, to 
 be sure, and we should have been drowned out like 
 mice. But ours was a Californian summer, and an 
 earthquake was a far likelier accident than a shower of 
 rain. 
 
 Trustful in this fine weather, we kept the house for 
 kitchen and bedroom, and used the platform as our 
 summer parlour. The sense of privacy, as I have said 
 already, was complete. We could look over the dump 
 on miles of forest and rough hilltop; our eyes com- 
 manded some of Napa Valley, where the train ran, and 
 the little country townships sat so close together along 
 the line of the rail. But here there was no man to in- 
 trude. None but the Hansons were our visitors. Even 
 they came but at long intervals, or twice daily, at a stated 
 hour, with milk. So our days, as they were never in- 
 terrupted, drew out to the greater length ; hour melted 
 insensibly into hour; the household duties, though they 
 were many, and some of them laborious, dwindled into 
 mere islets of business in a sea of sunny day-time ; and 
 it appears to me, looking back, as though the far greater 
 part of our life at Silverado had been passed, propped 
 upon an elbow, or seated on a plank, listening to the 
 silence that there is among the hills. 
 
 My work, it is true, was over early in the morning. 
 I rose before any one else, lit the stove, put on the water 
 to boil, and strolled forth upon the platform to wait till 
 it was ready. Silverado would then be still in shadow, 
 the sun shining on the mountain higher up. A clean 
 smell of trees, a smell of the earth at morning, hung in 
 the air. Regularly, every day, there was a single bird, 
 not singing, but awkwardly chirruping among the 
 
 416 
 
TOILS AND PLEASURES 
 
 green madronas, and the sound was cheerful, natu- 
 ral, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, nor in- 
 terrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a 
 nightingale; it was mere woodland prattle, of which 
 the mind was conscious like a perfume. The freshness 
 of these morning seasons remained with me far on into 
 the day. 
 
 As soon as the kettle boiled, I made porridge and 
 coffee; and that, beyond the literal drawing of water, 
 and the preparation of kindling, which it would be hy- 
 perbolical to call the hewing of wood, ended my do- 
 mestic duties for the day. Thenceforth my wife laboured 
 single-handed in the palace, and I lay or wandered on 
 the platform at my own sweet will. The little corner 
 near the forge, where we found a refuge under the ma- 
 dronas from the unsparing early sun, is indeed connected 
 in my mind with some nightmare encounters over Eu- 
 clid, and the Latin Grammar. These were known as 
 Sam's lessons. He was supposed to be the victim and 
 the sufferer; but here there must have been some mis- 
 conception, for whereas I generally retired to bed after 
 one of these engagements, he was no sooner set free 
 than he dashed up to the Chinaman's house, where he 
 had installed a printing press, that great element of civ- 
 ilization, and the sound of his labours would be faintly 
 audible about the canon half the day. 
 
 To walk at all was a laborious business ; the foot sank 
 and slid, the boots were cut to pieces, among sharp, 
 uneven, rolling stones. When we crossed the platform 
 in any direction, it was usual to lay a course, following 
 as much as possible the line of waggon rails. Thus, if 
 water were to be drawn, the water-carrier left the house 
 
 4»7 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 along some tilting planks that we had laid down, and 
 not laid down very well. These carried him to that 
 great highroad, the railway; and the railway served 
 him as far as to the head of the shaft. But from thence 
 to the spring and back again he made the best of his 
 unaided way, staggering among the stones, and wading 
 in low growth of the calycanthus, where the rattlesnakes 
 lay hissing at his passage. Yet I liked to draw water. 
 It was pleasant to dip the gray metal pail into the clean, 
 colourless, cool water; pleasant to carry it back, with 
 the water lipping at the edge, and a broken sunbeam 
 quivering in the midst. 
 
 But the extreme roughness of the walking confined us 
 in common practice to the platform, and indeed to those 
 parts of it that were most easily accessible along the 
 line of rails. The rails came straight forward from the 
 shaft, here and there overgrown with little green bushes, 
 but still entire, and still carrying a truck, which it was 
 Sam's delight to trundle to and fro by the hour with 
 various ladings. About midway down the platform, 
 the railroad trended to the right, leaving our house and 
 coasting along the far side within a few yards of the 
 madronas and the forge, and not far off the latter, ended 
 in a sort of platform on the edge of the dump. There, 
 in old days, the trucks were tipped, and their load sent 
 thundering down the chute. There, besides, was the 
 only spot where we could approach the margin of the 
 dump. Anywhere else, you took your life in your right 
 hand when you came within a yard and a half to peer 
 over. For at any moment the dump might begin to 
 slide and carry you down and bury you below its ruins. 
 Indeed, the neighbourhood of an old mine is a place be- 
 
 418 
 
TOILS AND PLEASURES 
 
 set with dangers. For as still as Silverado was, at any 
 moment the report of rotten wood might tell us that the 
 platform had fallen into the shaft; the dump might be- 
 gin to pour into the road below; or a wedge slip in the 
 great upright seam, and hundreds of tons of mountain 
 bury the scene of our encampment. 
 
 I have already compared the dump to a rampart, built 
 certainly by some rude people, and for prehistoric wars. 
 It was likewise a frontier. All below was green and 
 woodland, the tall pines soaring one above another, each 
 with a firm outline and full spread of bough. All above 
 was arid, rocky, and bald. The great spout of broken 
 mineral, that had dammed the canon up, was a crea- 
 ture of man's handiwork, its material dug out with a pick 
 and powder, and spread by the service of the trucks. 
 But nature herself, in that upper district, seemed to have 
 had an eye to nothing besides mining; and even the 
 natural hill-side was all sliding gravel and precarious 
 boulder. Close at the margin of the well leaves would 
 decay to skeletons and mummies, which at length some 
 stronger gust would carry clear of the canon and 
 scatter in the subjacent woods. Even moisture and de- 
 caying vegetable matter could not, with all nature's 
 alchemy,, concoct enough soil to nourish a few poor 
 grasses. It is the same, they say, in the neighbour- 
 hood of all silver mines ; the nature of that precious rock 
 being stubborn with quartz and poisonous with cinnabar. 
 Both were plenty in our Silverado. The stones sparkled 
 white in the sunshine with quartz; they were all stained 
 red with cinnabar. Here, doubtless, came the Indians 
 of yore to paint their faces for the war-path ; and cin- 
 nabar, if I remember rightly, was one of the few articles 
 
 419 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 of Indian commerce. Now, Sam had it in his undis- 
 turbed possession, to pound down and slake, and paint 
 his rude designs with. But to me it had always a fine 
 flavour of poetry, compounded out of Indian story and 
 Hawthornden's allusion : 
 
 *' Desire, alas! desire a Zeuxis new, 
 From Indies borrowing gold, from Eastern skies 
 Most bright cinoper . . ." 
 
 Yet this is but half the picture ; our Silverado platform 
 has another side to it. Though there was no soil, and 
 scarce a blade of grass, yet out of these tumbled gravel- 
 heaps and broken boulders, a flower garden bloomed as 
 at home in a conservatory. Calycanthus crept, like a 
 hardy weed, all over our rough parlour, choking the 
 railway, and pushing forth its rusty, aromatic cones 
 from between two blocks of shattered mineral. Azaleas 
 made a big snow-bed just above the well. The shoul- 
 der of the hill waved white with Mediterranean heath. 
 In the crannies of the ledge and about the spurs of the 
 tall pine, a red flowering stone-plant hung in clusters. 
 Even the low, thorny chaparral was thick with pea-like 
 blossom. Close at the foot of our path nutmegs pros- 
 pered, delightful to the sight and smell. At sunrise, 
 and again late at night, the scent of the sweet bay trees 
 filled the canon, and the down-blowing night wind 
 must have borne it hundreds of feet into the outer air. 
 
 All this vegetation, to be sure, was stunted. The 
 madrona was here no bigger than the manzanita ; the 
 bay was but a stripling shrub ; the very pines, with four 
 or five exceptions in all our upper canon, were not so 
 
 420 
 
TOILS AND PLEASURES 
 
 tall as myself, or but a little taller, and the most of them 
 came lower than my waist. For a prosperous forest 
 tree, we must look below, where the glen was crowded 
 with green spires. But for flowers and ravishing per- 
 fume, we had none to envy : our heap of road-metal was 
 thick with bloom, like a hawthorn in the front of June; 
 our red, baking angle in the mountain, a laboratory of 
 poignant scents. It was an endless wonder to my mind, 
 as I dreamed about the platform, following the progress 
 of the shadows, where the madrona with its leaves, the 
 azalea and calycanthus with their blossoms, could find 
 moisture to support such thick, wet, waxy growths, or 
 the bay tree collect the ingredients of its perfume. But 
 there they all grew together, healthy, happy, and happy- 
 making, as though rooted in a fathom of black soil. 
 
 Nor was it only vegetable life that prospered. We 
 had, indeed, few birds, and none that had much of a 
 voice or anything worthy to be called a song. My morn- 
 ing comrade had a thin chirp, unmusical and monoto- 
 nous, but friendly and pleasant to hear. He had but one 
 rival : a fellow with an ostentatious cry of near an octave 
 descending, not one note of which properly followed 
 another. This is the only bird I ever knew with a 
 wrong ear; but there was something enthralling about 
 his performance. You listened and listened, thinking each 
 time he must surely get it right ; but no, it was always 
 wrong, and always wrong the same way. Yet he 
 seemed proud of his song, delivered it with execution 
 and a manner of his own, and was charming to his 
 mate. A very incorrect, incessant human whistler had 
 thus a chance of knowing how his own music pleased 
 the world. Two great birds — eagles, we thought — 
 
 421 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 dwelt at the top of the canon, among the crags that 
 were printed on the sky. Now and again, but very 
 rarely, they wheeled high over our heads in silence, or 
 with a distant, dying scream; and then, with a fresh 
 impulse, winged fleetly forward, dipped over a hilltop, 
 and were gone. They seemed solemn and ancient 
 things, sailing the blue air: perhaps coeval with the 
 mountain where they haunted, perhaps emigrants from 
 Rome, where the glad legions may have shouted to be- 
 hold them on the morn of battle. 
 
 But if birds were rare, the place abounded with rattle- 
 snakes — the rattlesnakes' nest, it might have been named. 
 Wherever we brushed among the bushes, our passage 
 woke their angry buzz. One dwelt habitually in the 
 wood-pile, and sometimes, when we came for firewood, 
 thrust up his small head between two logs, and hissed 
 at the intrusion. The rattle has a legendary credit; it is 
 said to be awe-inspiring, and, once heard, to stamp it- 
 self forever in the memory. But the sound is not at all 
 alarming ; the hum of many insects, and the buzz of the 
 wasp convince the ear of danger quite as readily. As a 
 matter of fact, we lived for weeks in Silverado, coming 
 and going, with rattles sprung on every side, and it 
 never occurred to us to be afraid. I used to take sun- 
 baths and do calisthenics in a certain pleasant nook 
 among azalea and calycanthus, the rattles whizzing on 
 every side like spinning-wheels, and the combined hiss 
 or buzz rising louder and angrier at any sudden move- 
 ment; but I was never in the least impressed, nor ever 
 attacked. It was only towards the end of our stay, that 
 a man down at Calistoga, who was expatiating on the 
 terrifying nature of the sound, gave me at last a very good 
 
 422 
 
TOILS AND PLEASURES 
 
 imitation; and it burst on me at once that we dwelt 
 in the very metropolis of deadly snakes, and that the rat- 
 tle was simply the commonest noise in Silverado. Im- 
 mediately on our return, we attacked the Hansons on 
 the subject. They had formerly assured us that our 
 canon was favoured, like Ireland, with an entire im- 
 munity from poisonous reptiles; but, with the perfect 
 inconsequence of the natural man, they were no sooner 
 found out than they went off at score in the contrary 
 direction, and we were told that in no part of the world 
 did rattlesnakes attain to such a monstrous bigness as 
 among the warm, flower-dotted rocks of Silverado. 
 This is a contribution rather to the natural history of 
 the Hansons, than to that of snakes. 
 
 One person, however, better served by his instinct, 
 had known the rattle from the first; and that was Chu- 
 chu, the dog. No rational creature has ever led an 
 existence more poisoned by terror than that dog's at 
 Silverado. Every whiz of the rattle made him bound. 
 His eyes rolled; he trembled; he would be often wet 
 with sweat. One of our great mysteries was his terror 
 of the mountain. A little away above our nook, the 
 azaleas and almost all the vegetation ceased. Dwarf 
 pines not big enough to be Christmas trees, grew thinly 
 among loose stone and gravel scaurs. Here and there 
 a big boulder sat quiescent on a knoll, having paused 
 there till the next rain in his long slide down the moun- 
 tain. There was here no ambuscade for the snakes, 
 you could see clearly where you trod; and yet the 
 higher I went, the more abject and appealing became 
 Chuchu's terror. He was an excellent master of that 
 composite language in which dogs communicate with 
 
 423 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 men, and he would assure me, on his honour, that there 
 was some peril on the mountain ; appeal to me, by all 
 that I held holy, to turn back; and at length, finding all 
 was in vain, and that I still persisted, ignorantly fool- 
 hardy, he would suddenly whip round and make a bee- 
 line down the slope for Silverado, the gravel showering 
 after him. What was he afraid of? There were ad- 
 mittedly brown bears and California lions on the moun- 
 tain ; and a grizzly visited Rufe's poultry yard not long 
 before, to the unspeakable alarm of Caliban, who dashed 
 out to chastise the intruder, and found himself, by moon- 
 light, face to face with such a tartar. Something at 
 least there must have been: some hairy, dangerous 
 brute lodged permanently among the rocks a little to the 
 north-west of Silverado, spending his summer there- 
 about, with wife and family. 
 
 And there was, or there had been, another animal. 
 Once, under the broad daylight, on that open stony 
 hillside, where the baby pines were growing, scarcely 
 tall enough to be a badge for a MacGregor's bonnet, I 
 came suddenly upon his innocent body, lying mummi- 
 fied by the dry air and sun : a pigmy kangaroo. I am 
 ingloriously ignorant of these subjects ; had never heard 
 of such a beast ; thought myself face to face with some 
 incomparable sport of nature ; and began to cherish 
 hopes of immortality in science. Rarely have 1 been 
 conscious of a stranger thrill than when I raised that 
 singular creature from the stones, dry as a board, his 
 innocent heart long quiet, and all warm with sunshine. 
 His long hind legs were stiff, his tiny forepaws clutched 
 upon his breast, as if to leap ; his poor life cut short 
 upon that mountain by some unknown accident. But 
 
 424 
 
TOILS AND PLEASURES 
 
 the kangaroo rat, it proved, was no such unknown 
 animal ; and my discovery was nothing. 
 
 Crickets were not wanting. I thought I could make 
 out exactly four of them, each with a corner of his own, 
 who used to make night musical at Silverado. In the 
 matter of voice, they far excelled the birds, and their 
 ringing whistle sounded from rock to rock, calling and 
 replying the same thing, as in a meaningless opera. 
 Thus, children in full health and spirits shout together, 
 to the dismay of neighbours; and their idle, happy, 
 deafening vociferations rise and fall, like the song of the 
 crickets. I used to sit at night on the platform, and 
 wonder why these creatures were so happy ; and what 
 was wrong with man that he also did not wind up his 
 days with an hour or two of shouting; but I suspect 
 that all long-lived animals are solemn. The dogs alone 
 are hardly used by nature ; and it seems a manifest in- 
 justice for poor Chuchu to die in his teens, after a life so 
 shadowed and troubled, continually shaken with alarm, 
 and the tear of elegant sentiment permanently in his eye. 
 
 There was another neighbour of ours at Silverado, 
 small but very active, a destructive fellow. This was a 
 black, ugly fly — a bore, the Hansons called him — who 
 lived by hundreds in the boarding of our house. He 
 entered by a round hole, more neatly pierced than a 
 man could do it with a gimlet, and he seems to have 
 spent his life in cutting out the interior of the plank, 
 but whether as a dwelling or a store-house, I could 
 never find. When I used to lie in bed in the morning 
 for a rest — we had no easy-chairs in Silverado — I 
 would hear, hour after hour, the sharp cutting sound of 
 his labours, and from time to time a dainty shower of 
 
 425 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 sawdust would fall upon the blankets. There lives no 
 more industrious creature than a bore. 
 
 And now that I have named to the reader all our 
 animals and insects without exception — only I find I 
 have forgotten the flies — he will be able to appreciate 
 the singular privacy and silence of our days. It was 
 not only man who was excluded : animals, the song of 
 birds, the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, clouds 
 even, and the variations of the weather, were here also 
 wanting; and as, day after day, the sky was one dome 
 of blue, and the pines below us stood motionless in the 
 still air, so the hours themselves were marked out from 
 each other only by the series of our own affairs, and 
 the sun's great period as he ranged westward through 
 the heavens. The two birds cackled a while in the early 
 morning ; all day the water tinkled in the shaft, the bores 
 ground sawdust in the planking of our crazy palace — 
 infinitesimal sounds ; and it was only with the return of 
 night that any change would fall on our surroundings, or 
 the four crickets begin to flute together in the dark. 
 
 Indeed, it would be hard to exaggerate the pleasure 
 that we took in the approach of evening. Our day was 
 not very long, but it was very tiring. To trip along un- 
 steady planks or wade among shifting stones, to go to 
 and fro for water, to clamber down the glen to the Toll 
 House after meat and letters, to cook, to make fires and 
 beds, were all exhausting to the body. Life out of 
 doors, besides, under the fierce eye of day, draws largely 
 on the animal spirits. There are certain hours in the af- 
 ternoon when a man, unless he is in strong health or en- 
 joys a vacant mind, would rather creep into a cool cor- 
 ner of a house and sit upon the chairs of civilization. 
 
 426 
 
TOILS AND PLEASURES 
 
 About that time, the sharp stones, the planks, the up- 
 turned boxes of Silverado, began to grow irksome to 
 my body ; 1 set out on that hopeless, never-ending quest 
 for a more comfortable posture ; I would be fevered and 
 weary of the staring sun ; and just then he would begin 
 courteously to withdraw his countenance, the shadows 
 lengthened, the aromatic airs awoke, and an indescri- 
 bable but happy change announced the coming of the 
 night. 
 
 The hours of evening, when we were once curtained 
 in the friendly dark, sped lightly. Even as with the 
 crickets, night brought to us a certain spirit of rejoicing. 
 It was good to taste the air; good to mark the dawning 
 of the stars, as they increased their glittering company; 
 good, too, to gather stones, and send them crashing 
 down the chute, a wave of light. It seemed, in some 
 way, the reward and the fulfilment of the day. So it is 
 when men dwell in the open air; it is one of the simple 
 pleasures that we lose by living cribbed and covered in 
 a house, that, though the coming of the day is still the 
 most inspiriting, yet day's departure, also, and the return 
 of night refresh, renew, and quiet us ; and in the pas- 
 tures of the dusk we stand, like cattle, exulting in the 
 absence of the load. 
 
 Our nights were never cold, and they were always 
 still, but for one remarkable exception. Regularly, about 
 nine o'clock, a warm wind sprang up, and blew for ten 
 minutes, or maybe a quarter of an hour, right down 
 the canon, fanning it well out, airing it as a mother 
 airs the night nursery before the children sleep. As far 
 as I could judge, in the clear darkness of the night, this 
 wind was purely local : perhaps dependent on the con- 
 
 427 
 
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS 
 
 figuration of the glen. At least, it was very welcome to 
 the hot and weary squatters ; and if we were not abed 
 already, the springing up of this lilliputian valley-wind 
 would often be our signal to retire. 
 
 I was the last to go to bed, as I was still the first to 
 rise. Many a night I have strolled about the platform, 
 taking a bath of darkness before I slept. The rest would 
 be in bed, and even from the forge I could hear them 
 talking together from bunk to bunk. A single candle 
 in the neck of a pint bottle was their only illumination ; 
 and yet the old cracked house seemed literally bursting 
 with the light. It shone keen as a knife through all the 
 vertical chinks; it struck upward through the broken 
 shingles ; and through the eastern door and window, it 
 fell in a great splash upon the thicket and the over- 
 hanging rock. You would have said a conflagration, 
 or at the least a roaring forge ; and behold, it was but 
 a candle. Or perhaps it was yet more strange to see 
 the procession moving bedwards round the corner of 
 the house, and up the plank that brought us to the bed- 
 room door; under the immense spread of the starry 
 heavens, down in a crevice of the giant mountain, these 
 few human shapes, with their unshielded taper, made 
 so disproportionate a figure in the eye and mind. But 
 the more he is alone with nature, the greater man and 
 his doings bulk in the consideration of his fellow-men. 
 Miles and miles away upon the opposite hilltops, if there 
 were any hunter belated or any traveller who had lost 
 his way, he must have stood, and watched and won- 
 dered, from the time the candle issued from the door of 
 the assayer's office till it had mounted the plank and 
 disappeared again into the miners' dormitory. 
 
 428 
 
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