CALIF. 
 
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 PLAIN- SPEAKING- 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OP 
 
 "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN" 
 
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 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1882
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD 7 
 
 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZERS 19 
 
 "ODD" PEOPLE 33 
 
 A LITTLE Music 53 
 
 CONIES 71 
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN 91 
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS 119 
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS (A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY) . . . 145 
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST 189 
 
 How SHE TOLD A LIE 217 
 
 A RUINED PALACE . 237 
 
 2133667
 
 PRELIMINARY. 
 
 IT has been remarked, "You may say anything, to 
 anybody, if you only know how to say it." That is, 
 with kindliness, good temper, and calm justice; with- 
 out bumptiousness, and, above all, free from the small- 
 est suspicion of envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. 
 Under such conditions, the act of speaking one's mind, 
 usually so obnoxious, is shorn of much of its harmful- 
 ness ; and fault-finding becomes less a weapon of offence 
 than a surgeon's lancet, used not for injury, but cure. 
 
 Therefore, if in this or succeeding papers I say some- 
 what hard things, I beg my readers to believe that it is 
 not out of a hard heart, careless of giving pain, but a 
 sad heart, knowing that pain must be given; and that if 
 bitter truths need to be spoken, they are better spoken 
 by an optimist than a pessimist, by a straightforward 
 Christian woman than by a cynic or a laughing philoso- 
 pher. 
 
 Also let me wholly disclaim intentional personalities.
 
 VI PRELIMINARY. 
 
 If there be a cap which fits any one, and he likes to 
 put it on his own head and fly into a passion about it, 
 that is his fault, not mine. I accuse no one let peo- 
 ple's own consciences accuse themselves. If by looking 
 into this silent glass they see their own image, and go 
 away, not forgetting, but remembering and amending 
 it for our moral beauty or ugliness depends very much 
 upon ourselves then my Plain-speaking will be no 
 offence, nor shall I have spokeu altogether in vain.
 
 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD
 
 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD, 
 
 "There is a tide in the affairs of men 
 Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." 
 
 "WHY, this is like a bit out of 'Cranford,'" said I at 
 a friend as we came out into the clear winter twilight, 
 from a house where she had taken me to pay a call. 
 
 "Yes; Mrs. Gaskell would have made a charming 
 picture out of that cosy little parlor, with Miss Sarah 
 sitting alone there, so round and fat and comfortable- 
 looking." 
 
 " Pretty, too," interposed I ; " she must have been 
 pretty when she was young." 
 
 "I believe she was. What a pity she has nothing 
 and nobody to devote herself to, except that parrot! 
 But the bird is almost as good to her as a child, and as 
 troublesome." (My friend does not believe in the de- 
 lightf ulness of children.) " And Miss Phillis makes as 
 much of the parrot as her sister does. I wish you had 
 seen Miss Phillis ; but she is always out of afternoons." 
 
 It seemed at the other end of the town lived an old 
 1*
 
 10 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 
 
 gentleman, very helpless and infirm, whom Miss Phillis 
 for years had gone to see every day, spending an hour 
 or two in reading or talking to him. 
 
 "In summer I often used to meet her walking beside 
 his Bath-chair. She is not at all like Miss Sarah, but 
 very tall and thin, and decidedly active for her years. 
 This winter I hear poor Mr. White cannot go out at 
 all, but Miss Phillis never misses a day in going to see 
 him." 
 
 " Is he a relation ?" 
 
 " Oh no ; only a very old friend. An old bachelor, 
 too quite solitary. People do say have said it any 
 time these thirty years that he had better have mar- 
 ried Miss Phillis, and that she would not have objected ; 
 but one never knows the truth of these things. They 
 have been most steady, life-long friends, anyhow." 
 
 Here, truly, was a chapter out of " Cranford," or out 
 of human life generally. Once I had myself chanced 
 to see Mr. White a funny little old man in a brown 
 Brutus wig : it was difficult to make a sentimental hero 
 of him. Still 
 
 "I have always been rather fond of Miss Phillis," 
 continued my friend. " She would have made a good 
 man's fireside very bright. Perhaps Mr. White was 
 one of those who are always missing their chances, who 
 cannot ' take the tide at the flood.' If so, it was a pity. 
 So many let happiness slip by them, and regret it when
 
 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 11 
 
 too late. Not that I am aware of Miss Phillis's regret- 
 ting anything. She is a very cheerful-minded woman, 
 and is invaluable now to old Mr. White." 
 
 We were neither of us in a moralizing mood, being also 
 cheerful-minded women, and bent on enjoying as much 
 as possible our brief winter holiday, "gently but kind- 
 ly," like our own advancing age ; so the conversation 
 dropped. 
 
 Since, however, it has often recurred to me how very 
 common is this fatal peculiarity of not being able to 
 " take the tide at the flood," especially in love affairs. 
 That affair of Miss Phillis and Mr. White may never 
 have existed at all except in the imagination of their 
 friends ; but I have known several other instances in 
 which a little honest rashness would have been the best 
 wisdom. 
 
 One case for instance. They were a young couple 
 playfellows from childhood. All their friends were 
 agreeable to, and expecting, their engagement; nay, 
 waiting somewhat anxiously for the gentleman to make 
 up his mind and say the final word, which from pure 
 shyness he delayed doing. At last, one Sunday the 
 young lady was going away from home on Monday he 
 determined to speak, during their usual evening walk 
 from church. But, "I'll go to church with you to- 
 night," said an unconscious, well-intentioned friend. 
 Alas ! " two is company, three is none." The proposal
 
 12 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 
 
 was not made was never made. Three days after the 
 lady accepted a long-persistent suitor, who years before 
 had made up his mind and declared it. No hearts 
 were broken, apparently. She married, but her old 
 playfellow is a bachelor still. He comes now and then 
 to see her, romps with her children, plays chess with her 
 husband, and does not look at all miserable. But per- 
 haps, when he goes back to his handsome, empty house, 
 he wishes things had been a little different. 
 
 However, love, if it be the heart of existence, consti- 
 tutes only a small portion of it externally, to a man at 
 least. On many other matters besides love matters this 
 inability to take the tide at the flood is fatal. How 
 many a man owes his whole success in life to the power 
 of being able to see the golden moment and catch it ere 
 it flies ! " All things come alike to all." That is (with 
 very rare exceptions), every man has a certain number 
 of chances; the distinction between success and failure 
 is that one grasps his chance, another lets it slip by. 
 An unanswered letter, an appointment broken, a train 
 missed, may, for all we know, change the color of our 
 whole existence. All the more so because we do not 
 know ; until, looking back, we see upon what trivial 
 things mere accidents apparently hinged the most 
 important events of our lives. A situation applied for 
 at once, and gained " just at the nick of time ; " a first 
 invitation accepted, not neglected ; a business letter
 
 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 13 
 
 answered without delay; an appointment kept, with 
 trouble and pains, perhaps, yet still kept : these small 
 things have many a time proved the key-stone of the 
 arch on which a young man has built his fortunes. 
 " Only a quarter of an hour ! " said an old fellow to a 
 young one who was apologizing carelessly for having 
 kept him waiting thus long. "My friend, to that quar- 
 ter of an hour I owe everything in life !" 
 
 Between the courage which seizes an opportunity and 
 the sanguine rashness which snatches at everything and 
 grasps nothing, is as wide a difference as between brav- 
 ery and foolhardiness. 
 
 Sometimes, however, one may make a mistake. A 
 lady once told me how she stood before a post-office 
 with a letter in her hand a momentous letter, written 
 on the impulse of the moment, and with a strong con- 
 scientious desire to do the right, all the more because 
 to do it was very painful ; how twice, three times, she 
 seemed to feel some invisible hand restraining her own ; 
 how she looked helplessly up to the silent sunset sky, 
 then, with a sort of desperation, dropped the letter into 
 the box and repented it to her dying day. 
 
 But these difficult crises seldom happen. On the 
 whole, far more harm is done by irresolution than by 
 precipitation. The feeble man, who never can make 
 up his mind, who lets chance after chance go past him, 
 is always a little too late for everything, and never
 
 14 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 
 
 knows that kindly Fortune has touched him till he 
 catches the last sad sweep of her garment as she glides 
 by forever! the misery which this man creates and 
 inflicts for it is a fallacy that any one can be nobody's 
 enemy but his own is, in the aggregate, much great- 
 er than that caused by the strong bad man. Him we 
 recognize at once, and against him we can protect our- 
 selves a little ; against the other we cannot protect our- 
 selves at all. Our very pity takes up arms against our 
 judgment. For, alas ! we know the certain end 
 
 "He that will not when he may, 
 When he would he shall have nay." 
 
 Only for a single hopeful minute is the tide at the 
 flood ; once turned, it has turned forever, and 
 
 " Leaves him at eve on the hleak shore alone." 
 
 All business men and women for women require to 
 be good " men of business " too in this our day know 
 that the aptitude for seeing the right moment to do a 
 thing, and the power to do it, without rashness, but also 
 without delay, is a vital necessity of success success in 
 anything. He who puts off till to-morrow what can be 
 done, or ought to be done, to-day is the most hopeless 
 of individuals in any position where regular systematic 
 work is required. Hopeless as a clerk or servant, but 
 more fatal still as master. Or as mistress ; for the real 
 heart of a family is almost always the mistress. If she
 
 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 15 
 
 cannot take the tide at the flood, judge the fittest mo- 
 ment for domestic decisions of all kinds, and carry them 
 out, woe betide her! There may be no actual ship- 
 wreck, but her household bark will be a very helpless, 
 helmless vessel at best. 
 
 This habit of dilatoriness and indecision is much of it 
 mere habit, the habit of imitation, which the youngers 
 are so ready to catch from the elders. Therefore, even 
 the child cannot be too early taught first the necessity 
 of making up one's mind, and then of acting upon it. 
 The trick of " hanging about," of wasting minute after 
 minute, hour after hour, in work as in play for idlers 
 never even play conscientiously is often acquired in 
 mere infancy, and never got rid of to the end of life. 
 What is in the boy or girl pure carelessness becomes in 
 the man or woman a confirmed peculiarity, which haunts 
 them like a curse, causing no end of misery to them- 
 selves and all belonging to them. 
 
 For we know our gains and achievements ; our losses, 
 our failures, we never fully know. But we may dimly 
 guess at them, by our despair over some application 
 thrown aside and neglected, till the lost chance of bene- 
 fiting ourselves or our neighbor can never be recalled ; 
 our remorse over an unanswered letter, when the writer 
 has suddenly gone whither no kindly word can reach 
 him any more ; our regret over cordial visits left un- 
 paid, and pleasant meetings unvalued, till friendship,
 
 16 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 
 
 worn out, dies a natural death, or burns itself to ashes 
 like a fire without fresh coals. Then we may lay the 
 blame on Providence, luck, circumstances ; anything or 
 anybody except the true sinner ourselves. 
 
 " We cannot help it," we plead, and after a certain 
 time we really cannot help it. There is a disease called 
 paralysis of the will, an actual physical disease, though 
 its results are moral, and every one who cultivates, or 
 rather does not strive with all his might to eradicate, 
 the habit of indecision lays himself open thereto. A 
 baby who knows its own mind, and stretches out the 
 little impetuous hand, quite certain it is the doll, and not 
 the wagon, that it wants to play with, and eager to snatch 
 it without wasting a minute, is a creature possessing a 
 quality not to be despised, but encouraged. The gift 
 of being able to know exactly what one wants, and the 
 strength to use all lawful methods to get it, is one of 
 the greatest blessings that can fall to the lot of a human 
 being. Let us, who are parents, try by all conceivable 
 means to secure it to our children. 
 
 For the young can learn ; the old seldom can. " Re- 
 deeming the time because the days are evil" is very 
 difficult when the days have become " evil ;" when the 
 glow has gone out of life, and, instead of the rosy flush 
 of hope, the gray twilight of endurance settles over all 
 things ; when we smile at " taking the tide at the flood," 
 knowing that no more tides will ever come, for us at 
 least ; but they may for our descendants.
 
 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 17 
 
 Let us teach them, whether or not we have learned the 
 lesson ourselves, " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
 do it with all thy might." And do it at the^time. Not 
 to-morrow, or the day after, or by-and-by when in the 
 mood for it, but at once, at the moment when it presents 
 itself to be done. For the tide will turn, and you never 
 know the moment of its turning. Be clear-sighted, cau- 
 tious, prudent but, after that, be decided. Make up 
 your mind slowly and carefully ; but having made it up, 
 act upon it. Do not * 
 
 "Linger shivering on the brink, 
 And fear to launch away." 
 
 Take the tide at the flood ; plunge boldly in ; do your 
 best, and trust the rest. 
 
 There is an old English verse, out of a love poem, I 
 think ; but it applies to many another crisis in life be- 
 sides love : 
 
 " He either fears his fate too much, 
 
 Or his deserts are small, 
 Who dares not put it to the touch, 
 To win or lose it all." 
 
 And, without defending either folly, recklessness, or 
 rashness, I think we may safely say that the man who 
 dares " put it to the touch " is the man most likely to 
 have his fate in his own hands. Whatever happens to 
 him, he will at least have the consolation of knowing 
 that he has lost nothing through weakness or delay.
 
 18 THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD. 
 
 Storms may come and wrecks too ; but at any rate he 
 is a brave sailor, ready to fight with destiny. He has 
 not allowed himself to rot stranded on a lee shore ; he 
 has taken the tide at the flood, and, wheresoever it bears 
 him, he has done his best.
 
 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZERS
 
 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZED, 
 
 THE " noble array of martyrs " sounds very fine ; and 
 how many people are, or believe they are, of that good- 
 ly company! Whether a large proportion might not 
 wholesomely be deposed thence, and relegated to the 
 uninteresting ranks of mere victims, feeble and coward- 
 ly, I should not like to say. But the pride of martyr- 
 dom consoles them so much in their sufferings that it 
 would be almost a pity to deprive them thereof, or to 
 suggest that the true martyr carefully covers his hair- 
 shirt with a velvet gown, and presents a placid and even 
 cheerful countenance to all beholders, in spite of the 
 vulture gnawing at his heart. 
 
 It is for the benefit of these vultures, and with the 
 hope of strangling some of them, that this chapter is 
 written. 
 
 In the first place, I would like to ask how much ought 
 we to allow ourselves to suffer? I mean, not the inevi- 
 table sufferings sent, or permitted, by God, but those 
 inflicted on us by our fellow-mortals by far the most 
 numerous, and the hardest to bear.
 
 22 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZEES. 
 
 Christianity bases a great deal of its theology on the 
 doctrine of non-resistance. "If a man smite thee on 
 the one cheek, offer him the other ; if he take away thy 
 cloak, let him have thy coat also." A great mystery 
 so great that I cannot help believing translators must be 
 at fault somehow, or (if it be not heresy to say this) that 
 Christ's disciples in repeating their Master's words some- 
 what misconstrued them. 
 
 It may be also that the command "Kesist not evil" 
 is only meant for an age when evil was so rampant that 
 it could not be resisted except by the Divine teaching 
 of self-sacrifice, which was then so new, and so startling- 
 ly opposite to anything the heathen world had ever 
 known. Still, the malediction " Offences must come, 
 but woe be to them through whom the offence cometh " 
 is sufficiently strong to warrant us in offering a word or 
 two on the other side the side of the victims against 
 the victimizers. 
 
 Most aggravating, to use no higher term, is it some- 
 times to notice how the good of this world are oppressed 
 by the bad, the cheerful and amiable by the sour-tem- 
 pered, the unselfish by the selfish, the careful by the 
 careless or prodigal. Not a week, not a day passes that 
 the more generous of us do not long to rescue some of 
 these poor victims out of the hands of their tormentors, 
 acting St. George and the Dragon over again, or becom- 
 ing a modern Perseus for a new Andromeda. Only,
 
 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZERS. ZO 
 
 alas ! the sufferers are seldom young and attractive, and 
 the persecutors often are so. 
 
 Take, for instance, the case of nervous invalids. These 
 are not seldom the most pathetically fascinating of wom- 
 en, whom, for a time at least, all the men of their ac- 
 quaintance are delighted to serve ; who frequently win 
 excellent, devoted husbands, and make slaves and mar- 
 tyrs of them for life. 
 
 The subtle charm of helplessness dominates most 
 strongly over the largest and most generous of natures. 
 A truly noble man unconsciously protects, and loves 
 that which he protects. The extent to which such a 
 one is victimized by a weak, selfish, egotistical invalid, 
 or quasi-invalid for the real invalids are sometimes the 
 most patient, unselfish, and unexacting of human beings 
 is all but incredible and wholly pitiable. 
 
 More so, I think, than when the case is reversed, be- 
 cause it seems woman's natural metier to be somebody's 
 slave all her life. But with men, who have, and ought 
 to have, a wider horizon, a larger duty including not 
 only the family, but the world it is, even granting all 
 the tenderness due from the strong to the weak, rather 
 hard to be tied to the triumphant chariot-wheels i. e., 
 the Bath-chair of a charming, interesting, but exigeante 
 valetudinarian to whom the one golden rule for inva- 
 lids, " Suffer as silently, and make others suffer as little, 
 as you can," is a dead letter.
 
 24 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZEES. 
 
 Possibly these victimizers, being also sufferers, should 
 be handled more gently than another sort, who have no 
 excuse at all. 
 
 Most families possess, near or remote, some member 
 who is a perpetual " root of bitterness springing up to 
 trouble them." Not necessarily a wicked, but a decid- 
 edly unpleasant person; weak in many points, but ex- 
 cellent at fault-finding and mischief-making; always 
 getting into hot water and dragging other people after ; 
 in disposition touchy, exacting, or morose. In short, 
 the sort of individual whom all would gladly escape 
 from, but, being unfortunately " one of the family," 
 they, the family, are bound to put up with, and do so 
 with a patience that is almost miraculous. Outsiders, 
 too, for their sakes, imitate them, treating the obnoxious 
 party with preternatural politeness "making love to 
 the devil," as I have heard it put, and propitiating him 
 or her with much greater care than would be necessary 
 towards the more agreeable relatives. For peace' sake, 
 all sorts of inconveniences are borne, all manner of lies 
 white lies told, until life becomes, when not an act- 
 ual endurance, a long hypocrisy. 
 
 Now, is this right ? Would it not be much more 
 right for the victims to take up arms against the vic- 
 timizer, and say plainly, " You are an intolerable nui- 
 sance. It is not fair that the many should suffer for 
 one. The family a whole family shall not be made
 
 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZER8. 25 
 
 miserable by you any longer. You must either mend 
 your ways or you must be got rid of, somehow." 
 
 Ay, and this should be done in the kindest and 
 most prudent way, of course, but decidedly done. If 
 all the " roots of bitterness " we know of were "grubbed 
 up," or at least safely planted out, what a blessing it 
 would be ! Many people, intolerable at home, are quite 
 pleasant and charming abroad, being forced then to ex- 
 ercise with strangers the self-control that they did not 
 care to use in the bosom of their family. Surely some 
 new philanthropist might invent asylums for the ill- 
 tempered, the sulky, the malicious, and egotistical : 
 egotism is always a kind of madness, and often the 
 forerunner of it. At any rate, surely every family 
 ought to do its best to get rid of any obnoxious ele- 
 ment which torments and harms the rest. Or, failing 
 that, it ought to do as the bees in a hive, and cover up 
 the corrupting nuisance with the smooth wax of polite 
 but remorseless indifference, till its injuriousness is neu- 
 tralized as much as possible. If we could but convince 
 tender-conscienced folk apt to be ridden over rough- 
 shod by those who have no conscience at all that, the 
 incurable evils of life being so great, to sit down and 
 tamely endure a curable evil is worse than foolish 
 wrong ! 
 
 I do not include among these nuisances the merely 
 bad-tempered, because, anomaly as it sounds, many bad- 
 2
 
 26 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZERS. 
 
 tempered people are exceeding good. Their besetting 
 sin is often a purely physical thing, arising from nervous 
 irritability or other controllable physical cause, which 
 produces a general malaise that causes them to suffer in 
 themselves quite as they make others suffer. If they 
 have the sense to see this and rule themselves accord- 
 ingly, they deserve sympathy, even in midst of con- 
 demnation. But if they say, " I can't help it. It's me, 
 and you must put up with it !" or, still worse, if, like 
 drunkards and madmen, who are always accusing other 
 people of being mad or drunk, they imagine everybody 
 is in league against them, and accuse cheerful, innocent 
 hearts of being haunted by the ugly black shadows that 
 so often cloud their own, then let us waste on them no 
 pity they merit none. We cannot cure them, we must 
 endure them ; still, let us at least escape from them, and 
 help others to escape, in every possible way. 
 
 It is a hard thing to say, but some of the cruellest of 
 victimizers are the people who are supposed to be de- 
 votedly attached to their victims. As perhaps they are, 
 but not in a right way. Instead of a safe and tender 
 embrace, they clutch at these unfortunates with the 
 strangling clasp of an octopus, fancying they love them, 
 when in fact they only love themselves. Many people 
 like well enough to be loved ; they keenly enjoy the 
 honor and glory of showing to the world that they are 
 loved. But of love itself, and of loving I give the
 
 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZEKS. 27 
 
 word its widest interpretation they are absolutely in- 
 capable. That deep, faithful, reverent passion which 
 can project itself out of itself and devote its whole pow- 
 ers, silently or openly, to the service of another of this 
 they have not the remotest idea. Jealous, exacting ; 
 demanding sacrifices and making none ; forever think- 
 ing, not "Do I love you?" but "Do you love me?" 
 and always suspecting that love to be less than they de- 
 serve such " lovers," be they men or women and I 
 must confess that they are oftenest women are the 
 greatest nuisances that their luckless objects of attach- 
 ment can be plagued with. Often they force their vic- 
 tims to wish ardently that, instead of loving, they would 
 take to hatingj or at any rate to wholesome indifference. 
 People write of the torments of unrequited love ; but 
 a far greater torment is it to be pursued by the egotisti- 
 cal affection of some one, whether friend or relative, 
 who worries your life out with fussy anxiety over your 
 health ; who, under color of aiding you, meddles fatally 
 in all your affairs, and, while calling himself (or herself) 
 your dearest friend, tries to separate you from every 
 other friend you have. Surely no moment of pity, or 
 even gratitude for unasked favors, ought to prevent 
 such victims from resolutely throwing off the victirni- 
 zers and escaping from their affectionate clutches by 
 every means that Christian charity allows. There are a 
 number of women, old and young, who go about the
 
 28 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZEES. 
 
 world bestowing their unoccupied hearts upon their 
 own sex or the other, rushing into vehement sentimen- 
 tal friendships or loves which are as trying to one side 
 as ridiculous on the other. We constantly see some 
 kindly, respectable Sindbad staggering on under the en- 
 forced embrace of a devoted friend or attached relative 
 a veritable Old Man of the Sea, unto whom we long 
 to say, " Throw him off, and let him find his own feet 
 and manage his own affairs !" as in nine cases out of ten 
 he would. People can quite well walk alone, only it is 
 so much easier to be carried. 
 
 Besides the compelled, inevitable victims, it is sad to 
 see what a number of well-meaning folk tacitly, and 
 most unnecessarily, victimize themselves. These are 
 the people who are always afraid of offending others ; 
 who imagine that somebody will expect something an 
 invitation, a visit, a letter, and be much annoyed at not 
 getting it. Consequently, they are forever doing -things 
 they do not want to do, for fear of vexing folk who are 
 not vexed at all ; or making endless apologies to people 
 who never required them, who perhaps have no time to 
 think about either the thing or the person, and it was 
 only the uneasy egotism of the other individual which 
 supposed they did. 
 
 For the dread of giving offence, like the habit of 
 taking it, springs fully as often from self-esteem as from 
 sensitiveness. Vain, self -engrossed people are apt to
 
 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZEKS. 29 
 
 exaggerate the importance they are to other people, and 
 so to have a nervous terror of offending them ; whereas 
 a man of single mind, who does not trouble himself 
 much about himself, never takes offence, and is there- 
 fore not apt to imagine he has given any. He goes 
 straight on, turning neither to the right nor the left 
 does the hest thing, so far as he sees it, and the kindly 
 thing whenever it lies in his power ; but beyond that he 
 does not afflict himself much as to what people think of 
 him or expect of him. If they expect what they had no 
 right to expect, exact more than they are justified in 
 requiring above all, take offence where he had no in- 
 tention of giving any then he altogether refuses to be 
 victimized. He may make no great stir and present 
 no obnoxious front indeed, probably he considers the 
 matter too small to fight about but the victimizes 
 can make nothing of him. He calmly goes on his way, 
 " worrying " neither himself nor his neighbor. Life is 
 too short for tempests in teapots, or indeed for any oth- 
 er unnecessary storm : we must just do our duty, and 
 let it alone. 
 
 But in this great question of doing one's duty, I think 
 we cannot too sharply draw the line between what real- 
 ly is our duty and what other people choose to suppose 
 it is probably each person having a different opinion 
 on the subject. We are apt to start in life with a grand 
 idea of self-sacrifice and an heroic sense of the joy of it.
 
 30 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZEBS. 
 
 Ay, and there is a joy, deeper than the selfish can ever 
 understand, delight keener than the pleasure-loving can 
 ever know, in spending and being spent for our best-be- 
 loved, or even in the mere abstract help of the good 
 and defence of the miserable that " enthusiasm of hu- 
 manity," as a great writer called it, which is at the heart 
 of all religion, the love of man springing from the love 
 of God. 
 
 Yet, alas ! erelong we come to learn that there are 
 sacrifices which turn out to be sheer mistakes, ruining 
 ourselves and profiting nobody ; that unselfishness, car- 
 ried to an extreme, only makes other people selfish ; 
 that " the fear of man bringeth a snare ;" and that to 
 embitter one's whole life through a weak dread of of- 
 fending this person, who has no right to be offended, or 
 of not doing one's duty to that person, who has the very 
 smallest claim to any duty at all, is well ! I will not 
 call it wrong, because it is a failing that leans to virtue's 
 side ; but it is simply silly. 
 
 To withstand evil is as necessary as to do good. And 
 if we withstand it for others, why not for ourselves? 
 Every time that we weakly suffer a needless wrong, we 
 abet and encourage the inflictor in perpetrating it. By 
 becoming passive and uncomplaining victims, we tacitly 
 injure the victimizes. They can but kill our bodies, as 
 they sometimes do by most amiable and unconscious 
 murder, slow and sure ; but we may kill their souls by
 
 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZERS. 31 
 
 allowing them, unresisted, to go on in some course of 
 conduct which must result in their gradual deterioration 
 and moral death. It may be a theory, startling enough 
 to some people, but warranted by a good long observa- 
 tion of life, if I say that I believe one half of the self- 
 sacrifices of this world the endless instances we see in 
 which the good are immolated to the bad, the weak to 
 the strong, the self-forgetting to the exacting and tyran- 
 nical spring not from heroism, but cowardice. 
 
 "We have not too many angels in this world, and we 
 know little enough of the angelic host above ; but the 
 angel who always most attracted my youthful imagina- 
 tion was St. Michael, the strong, the warlike, the wrestler 
 with the powers of evil. That we should so wrestle 
 with evil, even to our last breath, is as necessary as that 
 we should cling to good. And, lovely as Love may be, 
 there is another, a blindfold Woman with balance and 
 scales, still more beautiful. Justice is a great deal more 
 difficult to find than Mercy, and rarer. 
 
 And Justice would say to these victims, hopeless vic- 
 tims many, for they are not only too weak to struggle 
 against, but they actually love their victimizers : Pause 
 and consider whether there is not something beyond 
 and above either love or hatred, egoism or altruism 
 that sense of simple right and wrong which, when not 
 corrupted or set aside, is inherent in every human soul. 
 Fear God, and have no other fear. Serve God, and
 
 32 VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZEKS. 
 
 every other service will sink into its right proportions. 
 " For one is your Master, even Christ ; and all ye are 
 brethren." 
 
 And, if we really are brethren, let us try to be neither 
 victims nor victimizers.
 
 "ODD" PEOPLE
 
 ODD" PEOPLE. 
 
 " For ye suffer fools gladly." 
 
 YES, because we recognize them as fools ; and there 
 is in our human nature a certain Pharisaical element 
 which hugs itself in the thought that we are not "as 
 other men are." Therefore we regard them and their 
 folly with a self-contented and not unkindly pity. We 
 understand them and put up with them, and it soothes 
 our vanity to feel how very much we are above them. 
 
 But these others, the " odd " people, are somewhat 
 different. We do not understand them ; they keep us 
 always in an uneasy uncertainty as to whether we ought 
 to respect or despise them ; whether they are inferior 
 or superior to ourselves. Consequently we are to them 
 often unjust, and always untender. They puzzle us, 
 these people whom we designate as " unlike other peo- 
 ple " (that is, unlike ourselves and our charming and 
 highly respectable neighbors) ; whose motives we do 
 not comprehend, and whose actions we can never quite 
 calculate upon ; who are apparently a law unto them-
 
 36 "ODD" PEOPLE. 
 
 selves, independent of us ; who do not look up to us, 
 nay, we rather suspect they look down upon us, or are 
 at least calmly indifferent to us, and consequently more 
 irritating a thousand times than the obvious and con- 
 fessed fools. 
 
 An odd person ! How often one hears the term, and 
 generally in a tone of depreciation, as if it implied a 
 misfortune or a disgrace, or both ! Which it does, when 
 the oddity is not natural, but artificial, as is frequently 
 the case. Of all forms of egotism, that of being inten- 
 tionally peculiar is the most pitiful. Real eccentricity 
 is always rather a misfortune ; assumed eccentricity is a 
 folly if not a crime. The man who is always putting 
 himself in an attitude, physical or moral, in order that 
 the world may stare at him ; striving to make himself 
 different from other folks under the delusion that dif- 
 ference constitutes superiority ; such a man merits, and 
 generally gets, only contempt. He who, not from con- 
 sciousness, but conceit, sets himself against the tide of 
 public opinion deserves to be swept away by it, as most 
 commonly he is, in a whirl of just derision. 
 
 Quite different is the case of one who is neither a 
 fool nor an egotist, but merely "odd," born such, or 
 made such by inevitable and often rather sad circum- 
 stances and habits of life. And it is for these, worthy 
 sometimes of much sympathy, respect, and tenderness, 
 never certainly of contempt, that I wish to say a word.
 
 " ODD " PEOPLE. 37 
 
 I know a family who, having possessed a tolerable 
 amount of brains in itself for more than one generation, 
 had an overweening admiration for the same, and got 
 into a habit of calling all commonplace, ordinary people 
 " chuckie-stanes." Every Scotch schoolboy knows the 
 word. It describes precisely those people exactly like 
 everybody else, whom one is constantly meeting in so- 
 ciety, and without whom society could not get on at 
 all, for they make a sort of comfortable background to 
 the other people, who are not like everybody else. 
 
 But in all surface judgments and unkindly criticisms 
 must be a degree of injustice. No one is really a 
 " chuckie-stane." Every human being has his own in- 
 dividuality, small or large, his salient and interesting 
 points, quite distinct from his neighbors, if only his 
 neighbors will take the trouble to find them out. One 
 often hears the remark, especially from the young, that 
 such a person is "a bore," and such a house is "the 
 dullest house possible." For myself, I can only say, I 
 wonder where the " dull houses " are, and where the 
 " bores " go to ? since I never succeed in finding either. 
 Only once I remember a feeling of despair in having for 
 two mortal hours the companionship of a not brilliant 
 young farmer; but I plunged him at once into sheep 
 and turnips, when he became so enthusiastic and intel- 
 ligent that I gained from him information on agricultu- 
 ral subjects which will last me to the end of my days.
 
 38 " ODD " PEOPLE. 
 
 Very few people are absolutely uninteresting, except 
 those that are unreal. A fool is bearable, a humbug 
 never. 
 
 Now " odd " people, whatever they are, are certainly 
 not humbugs. Nor are they necessarily bad people ; 
 quite the contrary. Society, much as it dislikes them, 
 is forced to allow this. Many men and women whom 
 others stigmatize as " so very peculiar " are, the latter 
 often confess, not worse, but much better, than them- 
 selves ; capable of acts of heroism which they know 
 they would shrink from, and of endurance which they 
 would much rather admire than imitate. But then 
 they are such odd people ! 
 
 How ? In what does their oddity consist ? 
 
 Generally, their detractors cannot exactly say. The 
 sin mostly resolves itself into certain peculiarities of 
 manner or quaintnesses of dress ; an original way of 
 looking at things, and a fearless fashion of judging 
 them ; independence of, or indifference to, the innumer- 
 able small nothings which make the sum of what the 
 world considers everything worth living for, worth dy- 
 ing for, but which these odd people do not consider of 
 any importance at all. Therefore the world is offended 
 with them, and condemns them with a severity scarcely 
 commensurate to their deserts. 
 
 Especially in things most apparent outside their 
 manners and their clothing.
 
 "ODD" PEOPLE. 39 
 
 Now, far be it from me to aver that either of these 
 is of no consequence. Dress especially, as the "outward 
 and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," is of 
 the utmost consequence. Those who, by neglecting it, 
 make themselves singular in the eyes of strangers, or 
 unpleasant in those of friends, are strongly to blame. 
 
 But not less so are the people who wear out their own 
 lives and those of others by fidgeting over trifles ; be- 
 moaning a misfitting coat or an unbecoming bonnet, and 
 behaving as if the world had come to an end on account 
 of a speck on a boot or a small rent in a gown. There 
 is a proportion in things. Those who worry themselves 
 to death, and others too, over minute wrongs and errors, 
 commit a still greater wrong and overlook a much more 
 serious error. How many of us would prefer to dine 
 upon potatoes and salt, and dress in a sack with sleeve- 
 holes, rather than be ceaselessly tormented, with the best 
 of intentions, about what we eat, drink, and put on? 
 " Is not the life more than meat, and the body than 
 raiment ?" 
 
 Yes ; but society must have its meat and also its rai- 
 ment, and that in the best and most decorous form 
 which the general opinion of its members considers as 
 such. To set one's self rampantly against this code of 
 unwritten law is, when not wrong, simply foolish. The 
 obnoxious plebeian who insisted on vindicating that " a 
 man's a man for a' that," by presenting himself at a pa-
 
 40 "ODD" PEOPLE. 
 
 trician dinner in rough morning garb ; the conceited 
 young artist who appeared so picturesque and so 
 snobbish at a full-dress assembly in his velvet paint- 
 ing-coat, were certainly odd people ; but their oddity 
 was pure silliness neither grand nor heroic in the least. 
 Nor, I must say, can I consider much wiser the ladies, 
 young and old, whom I see yearly at private views, 
 dressed not like the ordinary gentlewomen of the day, 
 but just as if they had " stepped out of a picture ;" only 
 the pictures they choose to step out of are not always 
 the most beautiful often the most bizarre of their 
 kind. 
 
 As a general rule, any style of dress, whether an ex- 
 aggeration of the fashion of the time or a divergence 
 from it, which is so different from other people's as to 
 make them turn round and look at it, is a mistake. 
 This sort of eccentricity I do not defend. But I do de- 
 fend the right of every man and woman to dress him- 
 self and herself in their own way that is, the way 
 which they find most comfortable, suitable, and tasteful, 
 provided it is not glaringly obnoxious to the community 
 at large. 
 
 A gentleman who, hating the much-abused but stift- 
 endured chimney-pot hat, persists in going through life 
 with his noble brows shaded by a wide-awake ; a lady 
 who has manfully resisted deformity in the shape of 
 tight stays and high-heeled boots, has held out success-
 
 "ODD" PEOPLE. 41 
 
 fully against hoop-petticoats and dresses tied up like 
 umbrellas, who has declined equally to smother her fresh 
 young face under a coal-scuttle bonnet, or to bare her 
 poor old cheeks to sun and wind and critical observation 
 by a small stringless hat, good neither for use nor orna- 
 ment such people may be set down as "odd;" but 
 they are neither culpable nor contemptible. They do 
 what they consider right and best for themselves ; and 
 what possible harm do they do to other people ? 
 
 Besides though this is no excuse for all oddities, but 
 it is for some the chances are that they are people no 
 longer young, who have learned the true value of life 
 and the true proportions of things much better than 
 their accusers or criticisers. Possibly, too, they are 
 busy people, who have many other things to think of 
 than themselves and their clothes. It is the young, the 
 idle, the small-minded, who are most prone to vex them- 
 selves about petty and outside things. As years ad- 
 vance and interests widen, we see with larger eyes, and 
 refuse to let minute evils destroy in us and in those dear 
 to us that equal mind which, accepting life as a whole, 
 in all its earnestness and reality, its beauty and sadness 
 combined, weighs calmly and strikes bravely the balance 
 of good and ill. 
 
 Perfection even in. the humblest and commonest de- 
 tails is to be striven after, but not to the sacrifice of 
 higher and better things. I have known a young lady
 
 42 "ODD" PEOPLE. 
 
 sulk through half a ball because her dress was not quite 
 as tight-fitting as the mode exacted ; and an elderly gen- 
 tleman make a happy family party miserable for a whole 
 dinner-time because there chanced to be too much salt 
 in the soup. Such terribly " even" folk as these drive 
 one to appreciate those that are " odd." 
 
 The world still contains many who persist in tithing 
 mint, anise, and cummin, and neglecting " wisdom, jus- 
 tice, and the weightier matters of the law." It is they 
 who are hardest upon the odd people. Their minds, ab- 
 sorbed in the mint, anise, and cummin of existence, can- 
 not take in the condition, intellectual and moral, of a 
 person upon whom those " weightier matters " weigh so 
 heavily that he is prone to overlook lesser matters. He 
 objects to be tied and bound by certain narrow social 
 laws, which, indeed, being of no real importance, he re- 
 fuses to consider laws at all. Therefore he is set down 
 as a law-breaker, laughed at as eccentric, or abused as 
 conceited, when probably there is in him not an atom of 
 either conceit or egotism, and his only eccentricity con- 
 sists in the fact that his own large nature cannot com- 
 prehend the exceeding smallness of other people's. He 
 gives Tom, Dick, and Harry credit for the same quick 
 sympathies, high aims, and earnest purposes that he has 
 himself, and is altogether puzzled to find in them noth- 
 ing of the kind. They can no more understand him 
 than if he spoke to them in Chinese. They only think
 
 " ODD " PEOPLE. 43 
 
 him " a rather odd sort of person " smile at him and 
 turn away. So he " slmts up " to use a phrase out of 
 that elegant slang which they are far more adepts at 
 than he ; and Tom, Dick, and Harry hate him forever- 
 more, with the relentless animosity of small souls tow- 
 ards another soul into whose depths they cannot in the 
 least penetrate, but sometimes suspect it to be a little 
 deeper and larger than their own. 
 
 And occasionally, rather to their annoyance, the fact 
 is discovered, even by the purblind world. 
 
 Take, for instance, that very " odd " person Don 
 Quixote whom successive generations have laughed at 
 as a mere fool ; but this generation begins to see in the 
 poor old knight a pathetic type of that ideal Christian 
 chivalry which spends itself in succoring the weak and 
 oppressed, which believes the best of every human be- 
 ing, and is only led astray by its expectation of finding 
 in others the purity, truthfulness, honor, and unselfish- 
 ness which are to itself as natural as the air it breathes. 
 But they are not the natural atmosphere of society, 
 which accordingly sets down those who practise these 
 virtues who have a high ideal of life, and strive 
 through endless difficulties and deficiencies to carry it 
 out as " Quixotic," or, at best, rather " odd," people. 
 Yet, is it not they who influence the world ? who do a 
 daring act of generosity or heroism, while others are 
 only thinking about it; and perpetrate philanthropic
 
 44 "ODD" PEOPLE. 
 
 follies with such success that those who would utterly 
 have scouted them, had they failed, now praise them as 
 possessing the utmost wisdom and most admirable com- 
 mon-sense ? 
 
 Again, many are odd simply because they are inde- 
 pendent. That weak gregariousness which is content 
 to " follow the multitude to do evil " (or good, as it 
 happens, and often the chances are pretty equal both 
 ways) is not possible to them. They must think, speak, 
 and act for themselves. And there is something in their 
 natures which makes them a law unto themselves, with- 
 out breaking any other rational laws. The bondage of 
 conventionality a stronghold and safeguard to feebler 
 folk is to them unnecessary and irksome. They mean 
 to do the right, and they do it, but they cannot submit 
 to the trammels of mere convenience or expediency. 
 Being quite sure of their own minds, and quite strong 
 enough to carry out their own purposes, they prefer to 
 do so, without troubling themselves very much about 
 what others think of them. Having a much larger 
 bump of self-esteem or self-respect than of love of ap- 
 probation, outside opinion does not weigh with them as 
 it does with weaker people, and they go calmly upon their 
 way without knowing or asking what are their neigh- 
 bors' feelings towards them. 
 
 Therefore their neighbors, seeing actions but not mo- 
 tives, and being as ignorant of results as they are of
 
 " ODD " PEOPLE. 4:5 
 
 causes, often pronounce upon them the rashest judg- 
 ments, denouncing the quiet indifference of true great- 
 ness as petty vanity, and the naturalness of a pure heart 
 and simple mind as mere affectation. For to the world- 
 ly unworldliness is so incredible, to the bad goodness is 
 so impossible, that they will believe anything sooner 
 than believe in either. Any one whose ideal of life is 
 above the ordinary standard, and who persists in carry- 
 ing it out after a fashion incomprehensible to society in 
 general, is sure to be denounced by society as " singu- 
 lar " or worse. . 
 
 It always was so, and always will be. That excellent 
 Italian gentleman I forget his name who felt it nec- 
 essary to apologize for Michael Angelo's manners, doubt- 
 lessly considered the old sculptor as an exceedingly 
 " odd " person. Odder still the man must have been 
 thought by many an elegant Florentine, when for some 
 mere crotchet about the abolition of the republic he 
 abruptly quitted Florence and all his advantages there; 
 nor ever returned, even though leaving unfinished those 
 works which still remain unfinished in the Mausoleum 
 of the Medici monuments of the obstinacy, or consci- 
 entiousness, or whatever you like to call it, of a mere 
 artist, who set his individual opinion and will in oppo- 
 sition to the highest power in the land. 
 
 Poor old fellow, with his grim, saturnine face and 
 broken nose ! How very " peculiar " he must have ap-
 
 46 "ODD" PEOPLE. 
 
 peared to his contemporaries ! One wonders if any one, 
 even Vittoria Colonna, had the sense to see into the 
 deep heart of him, with all its greatness, sadness, and 
 tenderness. There is a Pietsi of his at Genoa, and 
 another at St. Peter's, in which the Virgin Mother's 
 gaze upon her dead Son, lying across her lap, seems 
 to express all the motherhood and all the grief for 
 the dead since the foundation of the world. And yet 
 the sculptor might have been rough enough, and ec- 
 centric enough, outside ; and his friend might have 
 been quite excusable in craving pardon for his " man- 
 ners." 
 
 But there are cases in which eccentricity requires 
 more than apology a rebuke. Those peculiarities 
 which cause people to become a nuisance or an injury 
 to other people, such as unpunctnality as to time, neg- 
 lect or inaccuracy in business matters, and in all those 
 minor necessities or courtesies of life which make it 
 smooth and sweet these failings, from whatever cause 
 they spring, ought, even if pardoned, not to be par- 
 doned without protest. They are wrong in themselves, 
 and no argument or apology will make them right. 
 The man who breaks his appointments, forgets his 
 social engagements, leaves his letters unanswered and 
 promises unfulfilled, is not merely an " odd," but a very 
 erring, individual ; and, if he shelters himself for this 
 breach of every-day duties and courtesies by the notion
 
 " ODD " PEOPLE. 47 
 
 that he is superior to them, deserves not excuses, but 
 sharp condemnation. 
 
 Not so the peculiarities which harm nobody, and are 
 not culpable in themselves, though they may seem so to 
 the " chuckie-stanes " of society, who are afraid of any- 
 thing which differs from their own smooth roundness. 
 These failings, more worthy of respectful tenderness 
 than of blame or contempt who can tell the causes 
 from which they sprang? What human being knows 
 so entirely his fellow-creature's inner and outer life that 
 he dare pronounce upon crotchety habits, peculiar man- 
 ners of dress, eccentric ways of life or modes of thought, 
 which may have resulted from the unrecorded but never 
 obliterated history of years ? It is mostly the old who 
 are " odd ;" and when the young laugh at them, how do 
 they know that they are not laughing at what may be 
 their own fate one day? Many a peculiarity may have 
 sprung from some warped nobility of nature, many an 
 eccentricity may have originated in the silent tragedy 
 of a lifetime. 
 
 Of necessity, " odd " people are solitary people. They 
 may dwell in a crowd, and do their duty in a large fam- 
 ily, but neither the crowd nor the family understand 
 them ; and they know it. They do not always feel it 
 that is, not to the extent of keen suffering, for their very 
 "oddity" makes them sufficient to themselves, and they 
 have ceased to expect the sympathy which they know
 
 4:8 "ODD" PEOPLE. 
 
 they cannot get. Still, at one time, probably, they did 
 expect it. That " pernickity " old maid, whom her 
 nieces devoutly hope they may never resemble, may 
 have been the "odd" one but the thoughtful and 
 earnest one in a tribe of light-minded sisters, who 
 danced and dressed, flirted and married, while she 
 who herself might possibly have wished to marry once 
 upon a time, never did marry, but has lived her lonely, 
 self-contained life from then till now, and will live it to 
 the end. That man, who was once a gay young bache- 
 lor, and is now a grim old bachelor ; not positively dis- 
 agreeable, but very peculiar, with all sorts of queer no- 
 tions of his own, may have been, though the world little 
 guesses it, a thoroughly disappointed man ; beginning 
 life with a grand ideal of ambition or philanthropy, 
 striving hard to make himself, or to mend the world, or 
 both, and finding that the task is something 
 " Like one who strives in little boat 
 
 To tug to him the ship afloat." 
 
 And so, though he has escaped being swamped, he at 
 last gives up the vain struggle, folds his arms, and lets 
 himself float mournfully on with the ebbing tide. 
 
 For the tide of life is almost sure to be at its ebb 
 with those whom we call "odd" people. Therefore 
 we ask for them, not exactly compassion they seldom 
 need it, and would scorn to ask it for themselves but 
 that tenderness which is allied to reverence, and shows
 
 "ODD" PEOPLE. 49 
 
 itself as such. Young people have, in a sense, no right 
 to be odd. They have plenty of years before them, and 
 will meet in the world enough attrition so as to rub 
 down their angles, and make them polished and pleasant 
 to all beholders. Early singularities are generally mere 
 affectations. But when time has brought to most of us 
 the sad " too late," which in many things more or less 
 we all must find, the case is a little different. Then, it 
 becomes the generation still advancing to show that 
 which is just passing away tenderness, consideration, 
 and respect, even in spite of many harmless weaknesses. 
 For they know themselves as none other can ever 
 know them except God. Others see their failures, but 
 he saw how they struggled, and conquered sometimes. 
 Others behold their gains and triumphs; they have to 
 sit night and day face to face with their perpetual 
 losses. The world distinguishes, shrewdly enough, all 
 they have done, or not done ; they themselves only 
 know what they meant to do, and how far they have 
 succeeded. If. they are " odd " that is, if, having 
 strong individualities, they are not afraid or ashamed to 
 show them, to speak fearlessly, to act independently, or 
 possibly, plunging into the other extreme, to sink into 
 morbid silence and neither look nor speak at all what 
 marvel ? Better this than to be exactly like everybody 
 else, and go through life as evenly and as uselessly as a 
 chuckie-stane.
 
 50 "ODD" PEOPLE. 
 
 For, undoubtedly, odd people have their consola- 
 tions. 
 
 In the first place, they are quite sure not to be weak 
 people. Every one with a marked individuality has 
 always this one great blessing he can stand alone. In 
 his pleasures and his pains he is sufficient to himself ; 
 and if he does not get sympathy, he can generally do 
 without it. Also, " peculiar " people, though not attrac- 
 tive to the many, by the few who do love them are sure 
 to be loved very deeply, as we are apt to love those who 
 have strong salient points, and in whom there is a good 
 deal to get over. And, even if unloved, they have gen- 
 erally great capacity of loving a higher and, it may be, 
 a safer thing. For affection that rests on another's love 
 often leans on a broken reed ; love which rests on it- 
 self is founded on a rock, and cannot move. The waves 
 may lash, the winds may rave around it; but there it is, 
 and there it will abide. 
 
 The loneliness of which I have spoken is also some- 
 thing like that of a rock in the great sea, which flows 
 about it, around it, and over it, but cannot affect it save 
 in the merest outward way. Solitude, the possible lot 
 of many, is to these few a lot absolutely inevitable. No 
 use to murmur at it, or grieve over it, or shrink from it. 
 It is in the very nature of things, and it must be borne. 
 
 They whose standard of right is not movable but 
 fixed, not dictated to them from the outside but drawn
 
 "ODD" PEOPLE. 51 
 
 from something within ; whose ideal is nothing in them- 
 selves or what they have around them, but something 
 above and beyond both ; whose motives are often total- 
 ly misapprehended, because they belong not to the seen, 
 but the unseen ; and whose actions are alike misjudged 
 from their fearlessness of and indifference to either 
 praise or blame : such people will always seem " odd " 
 in the eyes of the world which knows its own, and 
 loves them, so far as it can. But these it never does 
 love, though it is sometimes a little afraid of them. 
 Now and then it runs after them for a while, and then, 
 being disappointed, runs back, and leaves them stranded 
 in that solitude which sooner or later they are sure to 
 find. Yet this solitude, increasing more and more as 
 years advance, has in it glimpses of divine beauty, and a 
 continued atmosphere of satisfied peace, which outsiders 
 can seldom comprehend. Therefore they had better 
 leave it, and the "odd" people who dwell in it, with 
 deep reverence, but without needless pity, in the hands 
 of the Great Consoler.
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 " WILL you favor us with a little music this even- 
 ing ?" 
 
 Such, in my young days, used to be the stereotyped 
 request. And truly the favor was small ; likewise the 
 gratitude. Everybody at once began talking louder 
 than ever ; and probably only the hostess, standing po- 
 litely by the piano, was much the wiser for that feeble, 
 florid performance of " La Source," or " Convent Bells," 
 or " Home, Sweet Home " with variations very varied 
 indeed. Perhaps, afterwards, one or two people con- 
 descended to listen to a mild interpretation of " She 
 Wore a Wreath of Koses," or even " The Heart Bowed 
 Down," and "I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls." 
 But any one who remembers what was the standard of 
 drawing-room vocalization a quarter of a century ago 
 will understand how the gentle sentimentalisms of poet 
 Bunn and Michael Balfe sufficed all our needs. A good 
 many of our young folks sang some in tune, some out 
 of tune : it did not matter much, as nobody listened
 
 56 A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 particularly. Some of us could play our own accom- 
 paniments ; some could not. These last fared badly 
 enough, generally falling into the hands of young ladies 
 who " had never been used to play at sight," or being 
 hammered -into nothing by some wild pianist who con- 
 sidered the accompaniment everything, the voice noth- 
 ing. And, our performances over, the listeners or non- 
 listeners said, " Thank you," and went on talking faster 
 than ever. All had done their duty, the evening had 
 been helped on by " a little music " as little as possible 
 and everybody was satisfied. 
 
 This, I believe most middle-aged people will allow, 
 is a fair picture of what English drawing-room music 
 was five-and-twenty or thirty years ago. 
 
 In the concert-room things were not much better. 
 There was, so far as I can call to mind, no educated 
 audience at all, and therefore no classical repertoire was 
 necessary. Ballads and bravuras, theatrical overtures 
 and pots-pourris of operatic airs, a few showy, noisy 
 piano-forte pieces or arrangements for violin and flute : 
 this was the ordinary pabulum provided for rnusic- 
 lovers. Such a bill of fare as nowadays true musicians 
 revel in of Saturday after-noons at the Crystal Palace, 
 at the Philharmonic, or the Monday Popular, was abso- 
 lutely unknown. Nobody would have cared for it. I 
 myself remember when Mendelssohn's " Lieder ohne 
 Worte " were first played, and nobody listened to them
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC. 57 
 
 particularly, or thought very much of them. And I 
 once heard a large and fashionable Glasgow audience 
 keep up a steady, remorseless monotone of conversation 
 all through one of Charles Halle's best recitals. 
 
 People do not do that now. Of late years, wherever 
 you go to hear a Beethoven symphony, you have the 
 comfort of hearing it in silence. A Crystal Palace au- 
 dience, for instance, will listen to the solidest of music 
 with a mute attention through which "you might hear 
 a pin drop." Nevertheless, to a great many people I 
 was going to write, the mass of people might be ap- 
 plied the withering sarcasm which was hurled at myself 
 the other day, on daring to own that I did not admire 
 all old masters. " Madam, there are people who, if you 
 play to them a fugue of Bach's, will answer ' Yes, very 
 fine ;' but in their hearts they prefer ' Pop goes the 
 Weasel.'" 
 
 It is in the hope of raising them from this lowest 
 depth of musical degradation that I am tempted to use 
 a little plain-speaking. Cultivation can do much ; and 
 if we believe as most of us do in our own great su- 
 periority to our grandfathers and grandmothers, why 
 not hope that our grandchildren may be superior to our- 
 selves ? I, for one, shall be only too glad to think so. 
 The old ways are not always the best ways, and the 
 weakest argument one can use against a new thing is 
 its being new. With exceeding pleasure I allow in 
 3*
 
 58 A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 how many things I have lived to see the world improve 
 especially the musical world. 
 
 For instance, last night, instead of the feeble even- 
 ing-party performances just recorded, I heard a young 
 lady, scarcely out of her teens, give Handel's " Whene'er 
 you Walk" in a thin soprano, certainly, but with per- 
 fectly true intonation and correct taste. Her mother 
 played it for her, and afterwards played a page or two 
 of dear old Corelli in a way to refresh any musical soul. 
 And I have lately been staying in a peaceful provincial 
 family, where the father and son sang " The Lord is a 
 Man of War" almost as well as I had heard it at the Han- 
 del festival the week before ; and where, out of business 
 hours, the whole house was alive with music one boy 
 playing the violin, another the organ, and a third the 
 piano-forte ; and all being able to take up a glee or an 
 anthem and sing it at sight, without hesitation or reluc- 
 tance. 
 
 Of course this implies a considerable amount of natu- 
 ral musical faculty as well as of cultivation ; yet perhaps 
 the great cause of the low standard of domestic music 
 in England, where professional music is as good as any- 
 where in Europe, is not so much the lack of talent as of 
 education. A professional musician of long experience 
 said to me, the other day, that he believed everybody 
 had a voice and an ear capable of cultivation which is, 
 I think, open to doubt. But, unquestionably, the num-
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC. 59 
 
 ber of persons, male and female, who have voices and 
 ears, and could, with some little trouble, be made into 
 musicians, is sufficiently numerous to prove that we 
 have only ourselves to blame if the present state of 
 English drawing-room music is well ! all true mu- 
 sicians and music-lovers know what it is, and how much 
 they often have to bear. 
 
 I once heard a non-musical friend say of herself and 
 another, after listening to an exquisitely played trio of 
 Mozart's, " It was eighteen pages, and we bore it well ;" 
 to which, of course, a laugh was the only possible an- 
 swer. But the negative sufferings of unmusical people 
 can be nothing to the positive agony of those others, 
 blessed or cursed with a sense of time and tune, when 
 doomed to be auditors of " a little music." As to the 
 instrumental, one braces one's nerves for what is going 
 to happen ; but when it comes to the vocal, one often 
 feels inclined to put one's fingers in one's ears and 
 scream. The torture I use the word deliberately 
 that it is to sit and smile at a smiling young lady sing- 
 ing flat with the most delightful unconsciousness, or 
 pounding away at a deafening accompaniment which is 
 sometimes a blessing, as it hides the errors of voice and 
 style ! And oh ! the patience it takes to say " Thank 
 you " to a young man who has perhaps a really fine 
 voice and great love for music, but has never learned 
 his notes, and sings from ear and guesswork ! Conse-
 
 60 A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 quently, his unhappy accompanist has to run after him 
 stopping out a crotchet here and lengthening a quaver 
 there, abolishing time altogether, and only too glad to 
 be "in at the death" with a few extempore chords. 
 Yet both these young sinners probably consider them- 
 selves, and are considered by their friends, as accom- 
 plished performers. 
 
 Ay here we have caught the right snake by the tail ! 
 Let us grasp him hard and pull him out. 
 
 There is a delusive tradition still extant that music is 
 an " accomplishment," and those who exercise it must be 
 "performers;" whereas it is an art, or rather a science, 
 and as exact a science as mathematics (which perhaps 
 accounts for the fact that many mathematicians have 
 been also musicians), and all who pursue it ought to be 
 careful, conscientious, and laborious students. 
 
 Thoroughness in anything is good and right thor- 
 oughness in music is indispensable. So long as the 
 piano-forte and singing are taught merely as superficial 
 branches of education, with a view to showing off, so 
 long will the standard of music remain as low as it now 
 is among our young people. They may be performers 
 after a fashion, but they will never be artists ; for the 
 true artist in any art thinks less of himself than of his 
 art, and the great charm of music to all educated mu- 
 sicians lies in its being a combination art; that is, its 
 aim is not, at least never should be, simply to show off
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC. 61 
 
 one's self, but to be able to take a part in a whole and 
 to contribute to the general benefit and enjoyrnent of 
 society. Therefore, a pianoforte-player who " has not 
 brought her music," a vocalist who "doesn't know that 
 duet has never learned it," or a part-singer who is 
 " very sorry, but cannot sing at sight," are a style of 
 musicians much to be deplored and a little blamed. 
 Something has been wrong in their education; they 
 have been taught to consider music as a personal exhi- 
 bition instead of an art, in which each artist is but a 
 student and a contributor to the general whole. 
 
 Until music is so taught from the first that every boy 
 or girl, young man or young woman, who pretends to 
 love and practise it shall be capable of doing this in 
 connection with others, of sitting down to play an ac- 
 companiment at sight, or reading a part in* a glee as 
 easily as out of a printed book, I fear we cannot be con- 
 sidered a musical nation. And it would be better for 
 us if we were, since of all the arts music is the most so- 
 cial, and sympathy therein the most delightful and the 
 most humanizing. 
 
 Another superstition of the last generation I should 
 also like to drag to light and annihilate. It was consid- 
 ered fitting that young ladies all young ladies should 
 learn music to sing if they could, but at all events to 
 play. Young ladies only. The idea of a boy playing 
 the piano was scouted entirely. I had once a small
 
 62 A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 friend who did it : we were both about eleven years old, 
 and he liked to come of Saturday afternoons to play 
 duets with me instead of cricket w r ith his school-fellows, 
 till the ridicule hurled at him was too much to bear. 
 He came no more. (N.B. I have never seen him since, 
 but I believe he is extant still doubtless a respectable 
 and elderly paterfamilias. Should he see this paper, I 
 hope he will remember our mutual sufferings, and allow 
 his own sons or grandsons to study music undespised.) 
 
 All boys who show any aptitude for music should be 
 taught it without hesitation. Nay, for some things it 
 is a greater advantage to boys than girls to have a pur- 
 suit which is at once a study and an amusement. We 
 all know how very helpless a man is without his work. 
 Should sickness or other necessity keep him away from 
 business, he goes moping about the house restless and 
 mournful, " as cross as two sticks," a torment to every- 
 body, and above all to himself. Women have usually 
 plenty to do, under all circumstances ; but men, unless 
 blessed with some special hobby, have almost nothing. 
 
 Young men especially. What anxiety do they not 
 give their parents as to how they should spend their 
 evenings, when they come home too tired to do any- 
 thing but amuse themselves ! In what way ? No diffi- 
 culty of answering the question in the family to which 
 I have referred, where one room emphatically " the 
 boys' room " contained a piano, a violin, a concertina,
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC. 63 
 
 and "scores" without end. The sounds that issued 
 from it at all available hours did not imply that the 
 boys were idling. Of course music may lead a man 
 into temptation, but it is just as likely to keep him out 
 of it. If " Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands 
 to do," perhaps it might be as well to place the idle 
 hands on the piano or violin, and see what would come 
 of that ! 
 
 But then, as I said, music must be studied as an art, 
 and not as a mere amusement. Whether or not my 
 clever professor be right, and everybody has a voice 
 and ear, only needing cultivation more or less, still in 
 many cases it requires the " more " and not the " less." 
 Besides, " everything that is worth doing at all is worth 
 doing well ;" and music is one of those things which, 
 if not done well, is better left undone, for the sake of 
 other folk. A man may hide his feeble sketches in his 
 portfolio, and publish his bad poetry, in books which 
 nobody reads ; but an incapable violinist, an incorrect 
 pianoforte-player, or a singer out of tune, cannot possi- 
 bly be secluded, but must exhibit his shortcomings for 
 the affliction and aggravation of society. 
 
 Therefore, I would advise no child's being taught 
 music who has not a natural aptitude for it. Decided 
 . musical talent generally shows itself early : many chil- 
 dren sing before they can speak. I have written down, 
 with the date affixed, so that there could be no mistake,
 
 64: A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 more than one actual tune invented and sung by a 
 small person three years old. But the negative to 
 these positive instances is less easily ascertained. The 
 musical like many another faculty develops more or 
 less rapidly according to the atmosphere it grows in ; 
 and there is always a certain period of "grind" so very 
 distasteful that many a child will declare it " hates mu- 
 sic " and wish to give it up, when a little perseverance 
 would make of it an excellent musician. I am no cul- 
 tivated musician myself ; I wish with all my heart the 
 hard work of life would have allowed me to be ; but I 
 feel grateful now for having .been compelled three times 
 over, amid many tears, to learn my notes which was 
 nearly all the instruction destiny ever vouchsafed me. 
 
 Nevertheless, I believe I did a good deed the other 
 day. A mother said to me, " My child is thirteen, and 
 has been working at music ever since she was seven. 
 She has no ear and no taste. If she plays a false .note, 
 she never knows it. Yet she practises very conscien- 
 tiously two hours a day. What must I do with her?" 
 My answer was brief: " Shut the piano and never let 
 her open it more." The advice was taken ; and the 
 girl, who now spends that unhappy two hours upon 
 other things, especially drawing, in which she is very 
 diligent and very clever, would doubtless bless me in 
 her heart if she knew all. 
 
 But the love of music, which she had not, often exists
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC. 65 
 
 with small capacity as to ear, voice, etc. Still, in such 
 cases, cultivation can do much. Many vocalists, profes- 
 sional and otherwise, have begun by being vox etprcete- 
 rea nihil that is, possessing a fine organ, but no skill 
 in using it ; while, on the other hand, many delightful 
 singers I recall especially Thomas Moore and Sheridan 
 Knowles have had scarcely any voice at all. The ex- 
 pression, the taste, the reading of a song, are as essential 
 as the voice to sing it ;' and these last long after Nat- 
 ure's slow but inevitable decay has taken away what to 
 a singer is always a sore thing to part with so sore 
 that many are very long, far too long, in recognizing 
 the sad fact that now, when they really know how 
 properly to sing a song, they have lost the power of 
 singing it. 
 
 But art, cultivation, and a little timely clear-sighted- 
 ness and clear-hearingness can prop up many a failing 
 voice. Any one who remembers how Braham sang at 
 seventy-five will acknowledge this. A then young but 
 now elderly musician once told me he remembered hav- 
 ing had to accompany the old tenor in " The Bay of 
 Biscay," given with a fire and force almost incredible 
 in a septuagenarian, and received with thunders of en- 
 cores. " My boy," whispered the great vocalist, " play 
 it half a tone lower." Again it was given and again 
 encored. " Half a tone lower still. They'll never find 
 us out." Nor did they ; and the applause after the third
 
 66 A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 effort was loudest of all, so completely did art conceal 
 the effects of failing nature. But suppose the singer 
 had not been an -artist? or the accompanist had only 
 understood "a little music," and been incapable of 
 transposing " half a tone ?" 
 
 If music is studied at all, it ought to be studied thor- 
 oughly, and from the very first. Parents are apt to 
 think that anybody can teach a child, and that any sort 
 of piano is good enough for a child to practise on. No 
 mistake can be more fatal. A child who is fit to be 
 taught at all should be taught by a capable musician, 
 with intelligence enough to make the groundwork not 
 merely superficial but solid, and not only solid but in- 
 teresting. A great deal of the preliminary study of 
 music is not at all interesting, unless the teacher thor- 
 oughly understands, and takes the trouble to make the 
 child understand, the infinite and complicated beauty of 
 the science of harmony, in opposition to the dulness of 
 mere strumming. Then the little soul, should there be 
 a musical soul, will soon wake up, will comprehend the 
 why and wherefore of the most wearisome of scales and 
 the hardest of exercises, and conceive an ambition, not 
 merely to " play a piece," but to become a true musician. 
 
 That playing of pieces or singing of songs merely to 
 gratify the parents and demonstrate the cleverness of 
 the teacher is the most dangerous thing possible for real 
 art. It substitutes clap-trap for pure taste, and outside
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC. 67 
 
 effect for thoroughness of study. It is also very bad 
 for the performer. Many a nervous child can play well 
 enough alone, but if set to show off. before a room full 
 of indifferent people is absolutely paralyzed. And an 
 inferior child, who is not nervous, is probably made in- 
 tolerably self -conceited by this showing-off ; which fool- 
 ish parents applaud and are delighted with, ignorant 
 that the true aim and end of music is, first, the delight 
 of the musician himself, and, next, that he should be 
 able, either singly or as a part in a whole, to contribute 
 to the delight of other people cultivated people first, 
 but likewise all people. For, in spite of my friend's se- 
 vere remark about " Pop Goes the Weasel," I believe 
 that the very highest art is also the simplest, and there- 
 fore will always touch the masses perhaps far more 
 than art a degree lower and more complex. There may 
 be two opinions upon Beethoven's " Mount of Olives," 
 grand as it is; but I think the veriest clown that ever 
 walked could not listen unmoved to Handel's " Hallelu- 
 jah Chorus ;" or even to what, after twenty-five years, 
 I remember like a dream, as the perfect expression of 
 musical art and religious faith Clara Novello's singing 
 of " I Know that my Redeemer Liveth." 
 
 It is art such as this, and taste cultivated so as to be 
 able to appreciate it, which I would desire to see put 
 in place of that " little music " which, like " a little learn- 
 ing," is a " dangerous thing." Dangerous, in the first
 
 68 A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 place, because all shallow and superficial acquirements 
 must be so ; and, secondly, because it inclines to a sys- 
 tem of personal display at small cost, which is always 
 the deterioration of true art. Surely it would be none 
 the worse for us in England it is not in Germany if, 
 instead of each person being taught to sing and play 
 for himself, more or less badly, the general aim of musi- 
 cal education were that every member of every family 
 should try to be able to take part in a simple family 
 concert good chamber music, or pleasant after-dinner 
 part songs and glees. Why should not our young peo- 
 ple be trained so as to enjoy their own performances at 
 home instead of going out to enjoy, or pretend to enjoy, 
 those of other folks, at theatres or music-halls, or still 
 less creditable places ? 
 
 In the good old times, probably it was so. Pepys's 
 Diary seems to imply that in his day every one could 
 bear a hand, or a voice, in an after-supper catch. -And 
 further back still we have plenty of evidence that the 
 Elizabethan soldiers thought none the worse of them- 
 selves for being able not only to sing, but to compose, 
 an Elizabethan madrigal. Our Victoria, who probably 
 knows and loves music much better than Queen Eliz- 
 abeth did, spite of her virginals and virginal -book, 
 might spread downwards, among all classes, that whole- 
 some influence which, if rightly guided, more than any 
 other refines a generation.
 
 A LITTLE MUSIC. (JV 
 
 But, even in my own generation, I have seen music 
 advance so much that I have hope in the " good tiirie 
 coming." It casts its shadow before. The other day, 
 at a garden party, I heard one of Mendelssohn's con- 
 certos, for piano, violin, and violoncello, given by three 
 young people in a manner that Mendelssohn himself 
 would have liked to hear. And a brother and sister 
 played a Handel duet, violin and piano, after a fashion 
 that implied many a pleasant evening of fraternal prac- 
 tising. The singing, too, though one voice had a little 
 passed its first youth, another owed more to cultivation 
 than to nature, and a third, though it was exceedingly 
 beautiful well ! the luckless accompanist had now and 
 then to count five crotchets in a bar in order to keep 
 time. Still, every vocalist showed taste, feeling, and ex- 
 pression, and every song was well chosen and pleasant 
 to hear. Between whiles people wandered to the sim- 
 ple tea-table under one tree and the fruit -table under 
 another, but they always returned and filled the music- 
 room filled it, I am glad to say, with an audience that 
 was perfectly silent. 
 
 And here let me end with a passionate and indignant 
 protest against the habit which ill-conditioned guests in- 
 dulge in, and weak hostesses permit, of talking during 
 music ; a solecism in good manners and good feeling, 
 which, whenever it is found, either in public or private, 
 should be put a stop to, firmly and remorselessly. If 
 people do not like music, they need not listen to it ;
 
 70 ' A LITTLE MUSIC. 
 
 they can go away. But any person who finds himself 
 at' a concert or in a drawing-room where music is going 
 on, and does not pay it the respect of silence total si- 
 lence is severely to be reprehended. And whosoever, 
 in any public room, sits by and does not remonstrate 
 against such behavior, or, in a private room, connives at 
 and submits to it, is let me put it in the mildest form 
 a very weak-minded and cowardly person. 
 
 To recapitulate in a few words. Let every child, 
 boy or girl, be taught music, or tried to be taught,, till 
 found incapable. Then abolish music altogether, and 
 turn to more congenial and useful study. Let no one 
 pretend to love music who does not really do so, but let 
 those who do love it study it well and thoroughly, so 
 far as the work of life will allow. And let them always 
 remember that the aim of their studies is not to display 
 themselves, but the music, since the best of musicians 
 is only an interpreter. There are endless varieties of 
 language to choose from, and each reader has a different 
 taste and different style. Nay, I will go so far as to 
 say that he who can interpret "Pop goes the Weasel" 
 with spirit, fire, and accuracy is not a person to be de- 
 spised. In one word, let every one who pretends to do 
 anything in the science of sweet sounds try to do it as 
 well as he possibly can. 
 
 Then haply we shall gradually cease to be " favored" 
 with that great abomination to all appreciative souls 
 " a little music."
 
 CONIES
 
 CONIES. 
 
 " The conies are but a feeble folk." PROVERBS. 
 
 LISTENING of late to the above text, it struck me 
 what a number of people there are in this world who 
 may be termed " conies !" Very sleek, mild, amiable 
 souls, quite harmless too (or apparently so), who go pot- 
 tering about on their pretty little feet, and hiding them- 
 selves in holes and corners, coming out every now and 
 then in the sunshine only in the sunshine and escap- 
 ing everything unpleasant as much as they can. For 
 they like brightness, and smoothness, and easiness of 
 living ; they are but " a feeble folk," after all. 
 
 And yet 
 
 Long ago I planned an article " On the Tyranny of 
 Weakness," for a tyranny it truly is, the sight of which 
 often makes one's blood boil with indignation. But 
 indignation against what? Against creatures so feeble 
 that attacking them feels like hitting a man that is 
 down. And then chivalry the pitying protection of 
 the weak by the strong is a thing so right and noble, 
 besides being so rare, that one fears to make it one whit 
 4
 
 74 CONIES. 
 
 the rarer. Besides, in dealing with the feeble, should 
 we not rather try and put strength into them than abuse 
 them for their want of it ? 
 
 These "conies," they are pretty, innocent-looking, 
 peaceful folk ; passing their mild lives in a hole in a 
 rock, and desirous of troubling nobody or at least 
 they say so. Yet the extent to which they do trouble 
 people, the torment they are to their affectionate friends 
 and to the world at large, by their weakness, indecision, 
 and general incapacity, is something incalculable. A 
 wicked person one can meet and battle with and some 
 forms of wickedness are only energy turned into a wrong 
 channel, and capable of being turned back again ; but 
 with the weak one has no chance. To have to do with 
 them is like walking along shifting sands, slipping at 
 every step, and dragged down continually by a weight 
 not one's own. No wonder that we at last cry out, and 
 learn to hate amiable fools with a rancor almost more 
 than we feel towards absolute villains. The latter are 
 ravening wolves, but these are wolves in sheep's cloth- 
 ing nay, clothed in the wol of the very mildest of 
 lambs who creep beside us and gnaw out our very 
 vitals before we are aware. 
 
 Well do we know them, these dear "conies," who 
 have the character of being so very amiable. People 
 who are always deferring to other people ; who never 
 know their own minds perhaps, indeed, they have not
 
 CONIES. 75 
 
 got any to know ; who are always hanging the burden 
 of their existence upon friends and relatives; asking 
 advice, but seldom following it ; making endless plans 
 which they never carry out. They are full of the best 
 intentions, have the most ardent desire to do right ; 
 they put forth that desire and those intentions in the 
 most voluminous and exemplary form, yet somehow 
 nothing seems to come of either. They are always get- 
 ting into muddles; and if they ever succeed in doing 
 anything, the chances are they do it wrong. In fact, 
 most things seem to go wrong with them. Why? 
 They are not wild beasts, they are not reptiles, they are 
 simply "conies." The worst we can say of them is 
 that they are "a feeble folk," and yet they aggravate 
 us to the last limit of endurance. 
 
 Ay, even in small things. We all know sometimes 
 what it is to have a cony at the head of a pleasure 
 party which is sure, soon or late, to become a party of 
 pain. Not through any intentional badness. In fact, 
 the cony is the most yielding creature possible, always 
 deferring to everybody. But of that quick yet firm de- 
 cision which, taking in unselfishly and wisely the great- 
 est good of the greatest number, has sense to act upon 
 it without troubling anybody, and so does the best for 
 all of this the cony, male or female, is absolutely in- 
 capable. Consequently arise all kinds of mistakes and 
 mismanagements : some lose head, others temper, and
 
 76 CONIES. 
 
 the government, or autocracy is not a good autocrat 
 the best of rulers? drifts into a feeble, muddling, 
 wrangling democracy, which is the worst form of rule 
 for either a picnic or a kingdom. For, not to speak it 
 profanely, the doctrine of " Every man for himself, and 
 God for us all," very often ends in " Every man against 
 himself, and God for nobody." 
 
 It is a still more unfortunate circumstance when a 
 cony happens to be the master or mistress of a family 
 especially the latter, since, soon or late, a household 
 must fall into the hands of its women, and sink or 
 swim according to their capacities. I have seen more 
 than one creditable, well-managed family, in which all 
 the. world, except himself, recognized that its master 
 was a mere goose, happy if only a goose ! Yet he kept 
 up the delusion that he was " the head of the family," 
 and under his imaginary guidance and some one else's 
 real control all went well. But I never yet saw a 
 household in which the mistress was a fool, or even a 
 cony, which did not, soon or late, crumble into hopeless 
 decay. 
 
 She who is exactly the opposite of Solomon's " virtu- 
 ous woman," who does not " work willingly with her 
 hands ;" who rises up late in the morning and dislikes 
 the trouble of taking care of her children and guiding 
 her servants ; who, so far from " considering a field and 
 buying it," knows little or nothing about money, except
 
 CONIES. 77 
 
 spending it ; who has no will or opinion of her own, 
 but appeals in everything to her husband or whoever 
 chances to be near her for these sweet climbing-plants 
 will hang on to any sort of stick : such a woman may 
 be very charming, very pretty, very amiable, but woe 
 betide the man who marries her! He will soon learn 
 to sicken at her sweetness, to care nothing for her 
 charms nay, perhaps even to despise her affection, 
 since it probably expends itself in words and demon-, 
 strations instead of being the silent love of acts and 
 deeds, which make the rest and comfort of a man's 
 home. 
 
 It is hard enough for a man to be married to a bad 
 woman ; still, if she is not too bad, he can sometimes 
 reason with and control her, or, at the worst, he can get 
 rid of her. But for a man who marries a feeble woman 
 there is no hope. She can neither take care of him nor 
 of herself ; he cannot rule her, for the hardest thing 
 possible to manage is a fool ; and, saddest thoughts of 
 all, what hope has he for the future ? A bad man's 
 children often turn out very good perhaps, as said the 
 temperance lecturer about a drunken brother, in conse- 
 quence of his " shocking example." But what chance, 
 either by inheritance or upbringing, have the children 
 of a foolish, feeble mother, who can neither guide them 
 nor herself who, however sweet she may be, has no 
 notion of the firmness which is as necessary as tender-
 
 78 CONIES. 
 
 ness, aud of the wise authority which results from truest 
 love? 
 
 Glance into the inner life of a household like this, 
 and we know at once what to expect. There is a gen- 
 eral sense of doubtfulness and confusion. Meals never 
 appear at the fixed time ; arrangements are always lia- 
 ble to be altered or put off ; servants call you a little af- 
 ter the right hour, and carriages drive round to the door 
 just in time to let you miss your train. Children hang 
 about, and get in your way, poor lambs ! having no no- 
 tion of obedience, because, in truth, there is nothing to 
 obey ; domestics are disorderly because the orders given 
 are so often irregular and contradictory that it is impos- 
 sible to carry them out. Consequently, about the whole 
 regime is a kind of haziness a sense of being out of 
 focus which to clear-eyed, accurate people is simply 
 maddening. One feels it would be pardonable to relin- 
 quish the most charming friends in the world if they 
 will not give us our " meals reg'lar " if they are late 
 at night and equally late in the morning if they add 
 to all their plans and intentions the modification which 
 a sarcastic acquaintance once suggested should be put 
 up as the motto of a very amiable family, " Please 
 Heaven, should we remain in the same mind to-mor- 
 row." 
 
 Poor, dear " conies !" they have little enough mind 
 to remain in. But, for all that, they are very aggravat-
 
 CONIES. 79 
 
 ing. They always listen to the advice of the last ad- 
 viser. You may leave them on Monday, quite satisfied 
 that they will follow yours, after you have taken an im- 
 mensity of trouble to plan and to act for them ; and, 
 coming back on Tuesday, you may find that somebody 
 else has persuaded them to a contrary course ; that they 
 now see everything in quite a different light, and are 
 prepared to act diametrically opposite to their declared 
 intentions of yesterday. Of course you have nothing to 
 say; all your labor has been thrown away. But they 
 are so kind, so sweet, so grateful ; so desirous of doing 
 everything for the best, and pleasing everybody. What 
 can you do but "grin and bear it?" They have done 
 nothing in fact, they never do anything wrong; they 
 are so excessively gentle and innocent. You feel your- 
 self a great sinner for being irritated against them, yet 
 you are ; and you go away, resolving to take no more 
 trouble about them, till the next time. 
 
 This faculty, or non-faculty, of never knowing one's 
 own mind sometimes passes for wisdom. The gift of 
 seeing a subject on all sides is supposed to be very 
 valuable; prudence and caution are always ranked 
 among the virtues, and with reason. Yet I doubt if, in 
 the long run, a habit of rapid decision, even though it 
 occasionally becomes rashness, is not less harmful than 
 that fatal indecision which is the curse and misery of 
 life. The people who do something, even though they
 
 80 CONIES. 
 
 may now and then do it hastily and amiss, are certainly 
 more useful than the people who only talk about doing 
 things ; and they who have the blessed quality of being 
 able to make up their minds, even though they make it 
 up in a hard bundle and throw it at their neighbors' 
 heads, are, on the whole, less harmful to society than 
 those who never know their own minds at all. The 
 shrillest clarion, if in tune, is more tolerable than those 
 feeble trumpets giving an uncertain sound, which are 
 the torment and irritation of life. 
 
 Especially in one phase of life, to which conies of 
 both sexes are particularly liable, and in which they are 
 particularly objectionable : I mean the amatory phase. 
 Of course they fall in love (everybody does); and, being 
 conies that is, a smooth, soft, pliable, and attractive 
 race are specially prone to give and take the universal 
 complaint in a mild sort of way. Then, the trouble 
 they cause to their friends and relations is endless. 
 
 If there is a question to which man or woman ought 
 to be able to give a simple and direct answer, and in 
 which not to be able to give it is something worse than 
 ridiculous, it is the question whether they do or do not 
 prefer one to all others as a companion for life, or 
 whether, having chosen, they will hold fast to him or 
 her through life. One would imagine this was the 
 very easiest question to ask or answer, the very plainest 
 point of right and wrong, in which, whatever difficulties
 
 CONIES. 81 
 
 presented themselves outside, there could be none in the 
 mind of the persons concerned, who are, in truth, the 
 only persons concerned. If there is one thing in life 
 which people ought to decide for themselves, it is their 
 choice in marriage. 
 
 Tet this is the thing in which everybody interferes, 
 appeals for, or listens to, interference ; so that what 
 ought to be the happiest bit of life becomes the most 
 unhappy. I hope, to the end of my days, to be able to 
 sympathize with an honest and hearty love, whether 
 fortunate or not ; but I own that the " bother " some 
 young people and their love affairs cause to their affec- 
 tionate friends and the public in general is quite intol- 
 erable. 
 
 Sneerers at our sex have said that " any man can suc- 
 ceed in marrying any woman ;" and really, when one 
 looks round on the sort of men some women do conde- 
 scend to marry, one is almost tempted to believe this. 
 Persistency, patience, and courage are such rare quali- 
 ties that they almost deserve to win and do win cer- 
 tain kinds of women. Though it seems strange that 
 any true man, truly loving, should stoop to be loved in 
 that sort of way being asked by his idol for " a month's 
 time to think it over," or " till she has consulted her 
 friends," or, lowest degradation of all, " till she can in- 
 quire into his income, and whether he can make good 
 settlements." Of course exceptions will occur. Some 
 4*
 
 82 CONIES. 
 
 men make offers, especially to conies, before the girl 
 has ever seriously thought of them ; and some girls, of 
 timid nature, require long persuasion before they love. 
 Persistency, which is so attractive, often attains its end, 
 and happy marriages are not unknown in which the 
 lover has been refused several times and accepted at 
 last. Still, the safest marriage is certainly that in which 
 the momentous question needs only a yes or no, abso- 
 lute and final. Nay, perhaps the ideal of marriage is 
 that I once heard expressed or implied by an old lady, 
 looking with a smile at her old husband, and talking to 
 a newly affianced granddaughter, " Asked me, did yon 
 say ? Why, niy dear, he never asked me at all ! We 
 both knew our own minds, and so we married." 
 
 But the cony never knows her own mind, either be- 
 fore the offer or after it. It has been the fashion to 
 abuse faithless men "deceivers ever" but quite as 
 much woe has been worked by women not intentional- 
 ly faithless, and by no means willing to deceive. A 
 point-blank refusal kills no man, however he may say 
 it will. Often it does his character real good ; teaches 
 him his own failings, and shows him a rather desirable 
 thing for modern youths that he has not merely to 
 ask and to have. No tender-hearted maiden need fear 
 her discarded lover breaking his heart ; many a mascu- 
 line heart is " caught at the rebound," and the chances 
 are that the second will do quite as well as the first.
 
 CONIES. 83 
 
 The chief harm done to men is by feeble women, 
 who play fast and loose making and .breaking en- 
 gagements with equal facility, and with such exceeding 
 sweetness that they still get credit for that " amiabil- 
 ity" which is counted the utmost charm of our sex. 
 How far it is so whether a creature who can neither 
 take care of herself nor anybody else, neither decide 
 for herself nor anybody else, is tit to be a wife and 
 mother, even if not after the severe pattern of the 
 mother of the Gracchi, I will not attempt to argue. 
 All I can say is, I would rather see a son of mine mar- 
 ried to the "strongest-minded" woman alive than to a 
 cony. 
 
 Not that strength consists in never changing one's 
 mind, in the mulish theory, " I've said it, and I'll stick 
 to it ;" or in that other most amusing characteristic of 
 weak people, the " contrariness" of the Irish pig, which, 
 when you want it to go one way, obliges you to pull it 
 by the tail in another direction. Strong people are Sel- 
 dom obstinate, and never feel it the least humiliation 
 to change their minds on just grounds. The courage 
 which can frankly say, "I retract; I was mistaken," 
 and act upon it, is found among brave men and wom- 
 en ; rarely among conies. 
 
 Yet what worlds of misery does it not often save, es- 
 pecially in the matter of marriage ! How many unions, 
 rashly planned, are as madly carried out, when a few
 
 81 CONIES. 
 
 plain words would have prevented the wreck of two 
 lives. Far be it from me to defend infidelity ; but I 
 do say, seeing we are all liable to err liable, alas, even 
 to change! that an honest broken engagement is more 
 honorable, either to man or woman, than the false hon- 
 or of a deceitful, loveless marriage. 
 
 Another most trying thing about conies is, that they 
 are often such exceedingly good people, in a negative 
 way. You never can pick a hole in them ; they are 
 self-devoted and self-sacrificing; that is, they will let 
 themselves be killed by inches, when a little whole- 
 some resistance would have saved them for long and 
 useful lives. They are ready to go on till they drop, 
 when, by stopping in time, they need never have dropped 
 at all. Stronger natures, who have to stand by power- 
 less and see all this, find it very trying, and would pre- 
 fer a little honest badness to that insane goodness which 
 results in the good being altogether a prey to the wick- 
 ed. Still, often the tables are turned ; as I said, there 
 is no victimizer like your amiable cony, who, without 
 having the strength or the courage to be happy, has yet 
 the power to make other people most thoroughly mis- 
 erable. 
 
 How is this to be remedied ? for a fault-finder without 
 a remedy is like a doctor who can diagnose, but not heal, 
 or attempt to heal. 
 
 So many co-agents of fate or circumstances, and qual-
 
 CONIES. 85 
 
 Jties mental and physical, inherent or hereditary, com- 
 bine to produce what we call weakness of character, 
 that wholesale condemnation of it is as useless as it is 
 cruel. Besides, we have always to fight against the old 
 superstition that strength is a dangerous quality, except 
 in men. A child with a will of its own was the horror 
 of our forefathers ; and to break the will of our little 
 ones used to be considered one of the first duties of a 
 parent. 
 
 Things are changing now ; yet what a load of scorn, 
 vituperation, and ominous warning has been heaped 
 upon the devoted head of at least one parent I know, 
 who persists in not exacting from her child blind obe- 
 dience, and in believing that to whip a child degrades 
 equally itself and its punisher! "A rod for the fool's 
 back," if you will ; but let it be the grown-up fool, who 
 has so misused his authority that he needs to enforce it 
 by whipping. Exceptional instances may arise, impos- 
 sible to judge ; but, as a rule, I never hear of flogging 
 being the established system of a family without feel- 
 ing that it ought previously to be administered to the 
 parents. 
 
 May it not be that the harsh rule of fear and the re- 
 straint it induces, destroying all individuality of char- 
 acter, is the primary cause of that numerous race which 
 I have termed conies ?" Having never been accustomed 
 to think or decide for themselves, they never do it;
 
 66 CONIES. 
 
 taught from infancy that "a will of one's own" Is a 
 bad thing, a dangerous thing, they have never used it. 
 It is so much less trouble to lean on other people to 
 get other people to decide and act for one. And, then, 
 dependence is so interesting; so charming especially 
 in women. Thus the "feeble race" begin their career, 
 and grow gradually feebler year by year, causing more 
 and more trouble to all about them, until at last a sigh 
 of relief mingles with the tear of due regret as their 
 affectionate friends shovel the mould over them. At 
 least, they will burden nobody any more. 
 
 But why should they ever have done it? Why not 
 recognize from earliest infancy that "a will of one's 
 own" is not a curse, but a great blessing, to every hu- 
 man being. That is, a defensive, not an aggressive 
 will ; which, without interfering with any other, has 
 the power to think, decide, and act for one's self, there- 
 by saving a world of trouble to one's neighbors. So 
 far from being repressed, this quality ought to be culti- 
 vated as much as possible. A year-old infant who, if 
 you hold out to it a handful of toys, knows exactly 
 which toy it wants, snatches at it, grasps it, and, if los- 
 ing, weeps after it, is a far more hopeful specimen of 
 humanity than the irresolute child who never knows 
 what it wants, nor how to keep what it has. 
 
 True, you will need to teach the small creature not 
 to scratch and not to cry. You must help it to govern
 
 CONIES. 87 
 
 its own will, and even to learn the last lesson of true 
 bravery, to resign its own will should necessity arise. 
 
 And there is always a transition stage, when the will 
 is strong and the reason weak, during which your child 
 will give you a good deal of trouble, and you will have 
 to exercise not only great patience, but that wise author- 
 ity which superiors must always have over inferiors, for 
 the inferiors' good a very different thing from mere 
 tyranny. But wait, and you will have your reward. 
 If, instead of merely controlling a child, you can teach 
 it to control itself, you will have made it into a higher 
 human being, and benefited both it and yourself for the 
 rest of its life. 
 
 It may be heresy many old-fashioned people will 
 think it is so but I believe we ought to encourage in 
 all children, from the first dawn of reason, a reasonable 
 free-will, to be exercised, whenever possible, in all un- 
 important things, and in the more important, as reason 
 and common-sense develop. I would allow children to 
 choose their own clothes, presents: even, with limita- 
 tion, their own companions. I would teach them never 
 to lean where they can stand upright ; never to ask an- 
 other person to decide for them what they can decide 
 for themselves, or to do for them what they are able to 
 do for themselves ; that at all ages and in all crises, if 
 we must act, let us act without troubling other people ; 
 if we must suffer alas ! it is hard to teach a child this,
 
 88 CONIES. 
 
 and jet we ought let us, as much as possible, learn to 
 suffer alone, without inflicting needless pain upon other 
 people. 
 
 Sharp discipline this. It is even more difficult to 
 guide a will than to break it; but what a different re- 
 sult we shall find if we succeed ! Instead of feeble, 
 helpless, useless creatures conies, in short we shall 
 have made our children into capable human beings, 
 whom we can rely on and trust in ; who will be a help 
 to us, and not us only, through the thorny paths of life ; 
 whom, if such be God's will, we may even leave, with- 
 out fear, to fight the world without us. That sharpest 
 agony of parents, to die and leave our children help- 
 less, is greatly lessened if in our lifetimes we are able 
 to make them helpful, by urging them to independence, 
 not dependence ; teaching decision instead of indecision, 
 and brave action instead of passive endurance. They 
 may make a few mistakes we all do and some ene- 
 mies ; the weak often secretly hate the strong, even 
 while making use of them ; but, in the long-run, the 
 strong have the best of it. Hard-worked they may be ; 
 well-abused they will certainly be; but they will lead 
 not only the most useful, but the happiest, of lives. 
 
 " Fallen chernb, to be weak is miserable, 
 Doing or suffering," 
 
 says Milton's angel. He might well say it to all conies.
 
 CONIES. 89 
 
 Still, let ns not curtail our text : " The conies are but 
 a feeble folk, yet they make their nests in the rock." 
 
 So they do. They always find somebody or other to 
 help them, and very comfortable " nests " do they some- 
 times make, chiefly at other people's expense. No mat- 
 ter. It is to the credit of human nature, and perhaps 
 for the education of human nature, that this should be 
 so. Let us not grudge them their shelter, poor things ! 
 Let us rather rejoice that there are some " stony rocks " 
 which will serve as " a refuge for the conies." 
 
 Still, one would prefer not to be and, above all, one 
 would try to save one's children from being a cony. 
 For we must never forget they will be children only 
 for a few years ; men and women afterwards, when we 
 are sleeping in dust. Better far than teaching them to 
 obey us is it to try and put into them that obedience to 
 absolute right which is, in truth, obedience unto God. 
 Safer, even, than our wisest decision for them is it to 
 implant in them strength and courage to decide for 
 themselves.
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 I WAS lately paying a call, which distance and occupa- 
 tion make only too rare, 011 an old friend whose servant, 
 after long detention at the front door, showed me, hesi- 
 tatingly, into the drawing-room. There the mistress, 
 who is a little near-sighted, rose up with an air of frigid 
 dignity quite startling. " Oh," cried she, when she saw 
 who it was, and came forward with an air of great re- 
 lief, " I beg your pardon. I thought you were a decayed 
 gentlewoman." 
 
 These words, so unlike herself, so foreign to the genial 
 kindly nature which I and all the world know her to 
 possess, were still surprising nay, more than surprising 
 till she explained that the day before the servant had 
 ushered in a large stout personage, half showily, half 
 shabbily dressed, who planted herself in the centre of 
 the room, and, folding her arms, opened communication 
 by saying, in a tone that might have overwhelmed any 
 other than the resolute and self-possessed little lady be- 
 fore her, "Madam, I ham a decayed gentlewoman." 
 Laughing heartily, I agreed that my friend had only
 
 94 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 taken wise precautions to keep me out, together with 
 the whole body of decayed gentlewomen. 
 
 Another circumstance happened to myself a week 
 after. I found in my drawing-room two unknown vis- 
 itors "ladies" they would probably call themselves 
 the elder of whom, mentioning her name (which I had 
 merely heard of, and not too satisfactorily, very long 
 ago), said, " I have taken the liberty of calling upon you 
 to ask if you will help to educate my daughter." Yeri- 
 ly, some people do " take liberties !" The child's pro- 
 genitors had been gentlefolks a quarter of a century 
 ago, Now, looking from her to the mother, I felt that 
 the only education she was fitted for was that of a 
 kitchen-maid. 
 
 But the ludicrous side of the question fades into seri- 
 ousness and sadness when we consider how many women, 
 gently born and reared, unaccustomed to anything but 
 contented idleness, will have in these.hard times either 
 to work or to starve, or to sink into the condition of a 
 "decayed gentlewoman." This must always be, more 
 or less. So long as the world contains extravagant or 
 unprincipled men, weak, incapable women, and children 
 who come unwelcomed, unblessed alas! they never 
 asked to be born, poor lambs there are sure to be a large 
 number of these sad excrescences on society, whom the 
 hard-hearted mock at, the tender-hearted pity, but both 
 feel to be a burden, not to say a nuisance indescribable.
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 95 
 
 We all know her well enough, by report or by expe- 
 rience not the " poor " or " reduced," but the " de- 
 cayed," gentlewoman, whose whole appearance bespeaks 
 a tacit acquiescence in that decay. She has a more than 
 shabbiness, a mouldiness of apparel, remarkable for but- 
 tons missing and never replaced, flounces torn and left 
 unmended, gay but crumpled ribbons, and half-crushed 
 artificial flowers. That stitch in time which saves nine 
 has evidently not been her peculiarity. Yet she struggles 
 feebly after the fashion, and her manner has a sort of 
 deprecatory gentility, as if she were always looking 
 back upon those better days which she is supposed to 
 have seen, instead of forward to that future which every 
 human being has, and in his own hands too, until he 
 dies. But our decayed gentlewoman has no idea of dy- 
 ing, her vitality being in the exaptly opposite ratio to 
 her powers of usefully employing it. Her enjoyment 
 nay, pride in her own misfortunes is deep and unal- 
 loyed. " I ham a decayed gentlewoman," she asserts 
 (with or without the k), and plants herself at our fire- 
 side, in a composed and undoubting appeal to Provi- 
 dence or us to take care of her. 
 
 Let me not be harsh. I know there are, and must 
 always be, a certain number of poor souls who cannot 
 take care of themselves ; who enter existence without a 
 backbone, as one may say, and from birth to death are 
 sure to hang helplessly upon somebody or other. Many
 
 U6 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 are amiable, well-meaning ; some are even attractive in 
 their way, and, like sweet-pease and other feeble vege- 
 tables, constantly succeed in finding a stout pole to climb 
 on, till the support grows weary and fails, and then they 
 bestow their charming incapacity upon somebody else. 
 Alas ! there must be always one section of the commu- 
 nity destined to fall a dead weight on the rest ; but is it 
 not desirable to reduce that section as much as possible ? 
 And how ? 
 
 " God helps those who help themselves." So, as a 
 rule, should men cruel as it may seem to say this. But 
 the exceptions to that rule must always be so numerous 
 the young, the old, the sick, the sorrowful that we 
 need never fear being turned into barbarians by the 
 practice of it. There are those whom we are bound to 
 help and glad to help, while their necessity lasts. Not 
 an hour longer. Infinitely more harm is done by that 
 lazy pity which prefers almsgiving to taking .trouble 
 than by the righteous hardness which amidst its utmost 
 benevolence never loses sight of the primal law, " If a 
 man will not work, neither shall he eat." 
 
 Nor a woman neither; for the old creed that our sex 
 must always be dependent on the other has become a 
 creed outworn. First, because there are not enough of 
 males to protect us ; and, secondly, because many of 
 them are quite incapable of doing it. Generally speak- 
 ing, a woman at any age out of teens, being well edu-
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 97 
 
 cated, prudent, and possessed of a tolerable amount of 
 common-sense and ordinary "gumption," can take care 
 of herself fully as well as any man can do it for her. 
 And, except in the love phase of life when help is so 
 delicious and helplessness so sweet most men prefer a 
 woman who will and can take care of herself. It saves 
 them a world of trouble. Much as they admire a 
 " gentlewoman," they are the very last to tolerate her 
 when she becomes " decayed." 
 
 What is the origin of the term, and the cause of the 
 thing ? for we shall find both very near together. First, 
 let us define what we mean by a gentlewoman. A 
 woman gentle (or gentille, for the French word equally 
 expresses it), in whom, therefore, no external circum- 
 stances can affect the internal quality of gentillesse. 
 She may sew and spin, bake and brew, as her great- 
 grandmothers did ; or she may earn her honest bread in 
 any of the independent modern ways which might have 
 startled a good deal those worthy ancestresses. But, be 
 she poor as a church mouse, or obliged to toil like any 
 negro slave, she will still remain herself. All she does 
 will be done like a lady, and nothing she can do will 
 ever make her less than a lady. We should strike at 
 the root of many evils if we could put this as a fixed 
 idea into the heads and hearts of our growing-up girls, 
 " Once a lady, always a lady." 
 
 But, alas ! ladyhood is no defence against hard fort- 
 5
 
 98 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 une. During the past year, how many hundreds of 
 tenderly reared women in England and Scotland have, 
 without any fault of their own, been cast adrift penni- 
 less, obliged to earn their daily bread, or to eat the bit- 
 ter bread of charity. What is to be done with them ? 
 Many are young enough to work, and willing enough to 
 work ; but they do not know how. They have been 
 brought up in the belief that to do nothing is the natu- 
 ral right of womanly gentility. In their terror of " any- 
 thing menial," they see no chance for them except to 
 become governesses; failing that, since teaching requires 
 not only education, but the faculty of imparting it, they 
 sink into "companions." A few feebly attempt to 
 practise art ; more than a few and those are the most 
 helpless of all struggle at literature. 
 
 Only professional authors know how numerous, and 
 how insanely credulous, are the amateur authors who 
 believe that, wanting money, they can earn it by writ- 
 ing, or that the want of money constitutes a reason for 
 writing ; also still sadder delusion ! that being backed 
 by a known author is, to an unknown one, be his or her 
 merit what it may, a royal road to success. To us who 
 know how hard that road is, and to how little it leads, 
 most piteous are the appeals. " I see many a story in 
 print no better than mine," says one. Most true ; peri- 
 odicals are flooded with rubbish, but much of it is never 
 paid for. " Surely I can make something by my poe-
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 99 
 
 try," pleads another ; " I have written poetry all my 
 life !" And how can one suggest that when a person 
 has " written all his life," and never been heard of by 
 the world, the chances are he never will be ? For true 
 capacity in authorship I carefully avoid the much mis- 
 applied word " genius " is irrepressible. It forces its 
 way, like water, to its own level, through all temporary 
 hindrances. Literature, like any other form of art, is a 
 trade a profession, and must be systematically learned 
 and worked at as such. Yet none do really great work 
 save those who bring to it neither the lazy indifference 
 of the amateur nor the patience of the mere bread-win- 
 ner, but something beyond both the divine impulse 
 which no outside circumstances can either repress or im- 
 part. Kindly adversity may show a poor gentlewoman 
 that she possesses this undeveloped power, and so teach 
 her to become an author ; but no real author was ever 
 manufactured out of the impecuniosity of a decayed 
 gentlewoman. 
 
 There has been a great deal said of late about lady- 
 helps. The idea seemed at first admirable, but its work- 
 ing-out has not been easy or successful. First, because 
 the lady-helps have generally been discovered to be not 
 ladies at all, but persons belonging to the semi-genteel 
 class, considering themselves above domestic service, 
 yet from their inherent want of refinement, as well as 
 of education, unable to get into a higher sphere just
 
 100 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 as one sees continually among the ranks of governesses 
 many young people who, from both their -antecedents 
 and their upbringing, ought to have stood behind 
 counters or swept rooms ; and, if they did this, and did 
 it thoroughly, would have been much more respected 
 and worthy of respect than they are now. Secondly, 
 because lady-helps and ordinary servants find it almost 
 impossible to amalgamate. The really good cook or 
 housemaid knows her work, and probably does it much 
 better than the lady, of whom she will feel herself at 
 once the superior, and yet, with a lurking sense of angry 
 pride, also the inferior. 
 
 A friend of mine, most enthusiastic on the subject, 
 soon discovered this fact, and wrote me that she had 
 been obliged to remodel her household and take lady- 
 helps only. She was full of hope concerning her nurse 
 and housemaid (a clergyman's two daughters) and her 
 cook (a physician's widow). Earnestly she begged I 
 would come down and admire the perfection of the 
 menage. But a few weeks later she begged me to de- 
 fer my visit, as she was stranded, domestically, for the 
 time. The clerical young ladies had turned out not 
 only incompetent, but impertinent ; the doctor's widow, 
 though a first-rate cook so good, indeed, that she might 
 have begun life in that capacity (as was possible) be- 
 guiled her leisure moments by making love to the gar- 
 dener's " boy." In deep despair, my friend vowed she
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 101 
 
 would rather suffer the evils of ordinary servants than 
 attempt lady-helps again. 
 
 Still, her experience may be exceptional. I have 
 known instances where the plan has succeeded entire- 
 ly, especially in nurseries. Lately I saw an advertise- 
 ment for a " mother's help," which probably meant that 
 the advertiser wanted to get a governess for nurse- 
 maid's wages; still, the idea was not .bad. Any one 
 who sees the sort of girls to whom mothers trust, and 
 say they are obliged to trust, not only their babies, but 
 their growing -up daughters, must own that a real 
 "mother's help," neither nurse, governess, nor lady's 
 maid, but a combination of all three in fact, a sort of 
 amateur elder sister or maiden aunt would be invalu- 
 ble. And the comfort she was to others would react 
 upon herself. 
 
 To those who have seen troubles, or have come down 
 in the world, the society of children is often far easier 
 than that of grown-up people. They never hurt or 
 bore or irritate, as " grown-ups " often do. Their in- 
 nocent love and childish confidence pour balm into a 
 sore heart. And, besides, there is a feeling of being of 
 use, of importance in the world of casting a daily seed 
 which can be watched springing up to bear fruit in fut- 
 ure days. I can imagine, even for herself, that the po- 
 sition of a nurse who knew herself a gentlewoman, and 
 therefore felt humiliated by nothing which she did for
 
 102 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 her little charges, whose equal she was, would, in any 
 kindly and honorable family, be more than endurable 
 desirable. But this would depend mainly upon herself, 
 and in lesser degree upon the sort of family into whose 
 arms, or clutches, she happened to fall. 
 
 But whether or not. the experiment of lady-helps 
 might answer out in the world, there is one form in 
 which it would jiot fail at home. 1 once met it was 
 at a garden-party a graceful, accomplished woman, 
 who introduced her three daughters, all so much after 
 the mother's type that I could not help admiring them. 
 
 " Yes," she said, with a tender pride, " I think my 
 girls are nice girls, and so useful, too. We are not rich, 
 and we have nine children ; so we told the elder girls 
 they would have either to turn out and earn their bread 
 abroad, or stay at home and do the work of the house. 
 They chose the latter. We keep only one servant for 
 rough work, and my girls take it by turns to be cook, 
 housemaid, and parlor-maid. In the nursery, of course " 
 (happy mother who could say " of course !"), " they are 
 all in all to their little brothers and sisters." 
 
 " But how about education ?" I asked. 
 
 " Oh, the work being divided among so many, we 
 find time for lessons too. Some we can afford to pay 
 for, and then the elders teach the younger ones. * Where 
 there's a will there's a way.' My girls are not igno- 
 ramuses, or recluses either. Look at them now."
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 103 
 
 And as I watched the gracious, graceful damsels in 
 their linen dresses and straw hats, home-manufactured, 
 but as pretty as any of the elegant toilets there, I saw 
 no want in them, quite the contrary. They looked so 
 happy, too ; so gay, and at ease. 
 
 " Yes," answered the smiling mother, " it is because 
 they are always busy; they never have time to fret 
 and mope, especially about themselves. I do believe 
 my girls are the merriest, happiest girls alive." 
 
 I could well imagine it. Highly as I esteem my own 
 sex believing honestly that the average woman, on the 
 whole, is better than the average "man, though the ideal 
 man and woman are probably both equal still I must 
 confess that we have our faults, and some of them are 
 bad enough. I have heard men say that they " never 
 knew a woman who had any notion of time," who, for 
 instance, could state a train correctly in female minds 
 the 10.32 always sinking to the 10.30, or the " ten some- 
 thing or other." Men do not love them the less for 
 this, or for many worse weaknesses, while they are 
 young and charming ; it is a different thing when they 
 grow old, unlovely, and fall into the preliminary stage 
 of that mournful decayedness of which I am speaking. 
 
 Inaccuracy, desultoriness, and general muddleness are 
 qualities which increase rather than diminish with years; 
 and I am bound to say that, early or late, women are 
 more prone to them than men. A friend of mine, oc
 
 104 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 cupied in a branch of art both pleasant and lucrative, 
 which she has taken a world of pains to form into a 
 school of instruction for the employment of women, 
 tells me she fears that, after all, she shall be forced to 
 take as pupils and apprentices only boys. 
 
 " Of all the ladies, old and young, who have come to 
 me," she states, " not one has had the persistence to 
 work with me a whole year the time necessary to 
 make their work valuable and worth paying for. They 
 come here for a few weeks or months, then gradually 
 their attendance becomes irregular, on one excuse or 
 other, and at last the/ give it up. Girls seem to have 
 no idea of 'going to business,' as boys are obliged to do, 
 working steadily on every day and all day long, wheth- 
 er they like it or not. Alas ! I am very sorry, but I 
 fear, unless I wish to lose my business altogether, I 
 must employ boys." 
 
 May we not find here the secret of many a sad story ! 
 Out of the house, as in it, girls are brought up without 
 any notion of the duty of work persistent, consecutive 
 work ; so that even when it is found for them they can- 
 not do it. For myself, after an experience of life nei- 
 ther very small nor very brief, I must candidly confess 
 that my difficulty in trying to help my own sex has 
 been not so much to find work as workers women who 
 can be relied on, first, to know how really to do what 
 they profess, and, next, to have conscientiousness and
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 105 
 
 persistency in doing it. Is this defect (a very grave 
 one) owing to natural infirmity or defective education ? 
 Being a woman, I incline to believe the latter. We are 
 not radically inferior to men, but only different from 
 them. Let us once find suitable work and be taught to 
 do it, and I think we can do it as well as most men as 
 thoroughly, as carefully, and perhaps even more earnest- 
 ly, for we bring to it the enthusiasm of an exceptional 
 career and exceptional training. Were tUis training not 
 exceptional, but universal; were we to bring up our 
 girls as well as our boys to what is called business hab- 
 its, punctuality, accuracy, the independent use and em- 
 ployment of money ; accustoming them from childhood 
 to keep accounts, and know as much as boys, in their 
 way, of the general business of the world ; above all, 
 impressing upon them that to work is the lot and duty 
 of woman as well as man, be she rich or poor, married 
 or single we might have fewer of those melancholy 
 wrecks of all dignity and loveliness in decayed gentle- 
 women. 
 
 Many reduced ladies owe their condition to misfort- 
 une solely, but a good many more to their own crass 
 ignorance and folly, or the beguilement of " too much 
 faith in man." For instance, one simple-hearted soul, 
 asked by a trusted friend to lend him " a few hundreds," 
 sends him back the required sum her little all requir- 
 ing not even an I O U ; for he tells her " such are not 
 5*
 
 106 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 necessary between friends," and he shall repay the 
 money directly. Possibly he means to do this, but he 
 uses it in business to stop a gap, becomes bankrupt, and 
 she penniless. A second, after years of toil, has laid by 
 a little income for her old-age; but she has. a brother 
 or cousin or some other male relative who wants it, asks 
 and gets it$ of course loses it, and she ends her days in 
 poverty, or a pensioner on the sympathy of friends. A 
 third, perhaps, has all her money invested ; but, as she 
 " knows nothing of business," she leaves it in the hands 
 of a trustee, asking no questions, only blindly receiving, 
 year by year, what he gives her, till some day she wakes 
 up to find there is nothing to receive. He has muddled 
 it all away, perhaps by carelessness, perhaps by some- 
 thing worse ; but still it is gone, and there is nothing 
 left for her but to work or starve. While a fourth 
 alas! this case is but one of hundreds within the past 
 year having her money in her own hands, takes the 
 advice of some male counsellor equally ignorant or 
 indifferent (men think so lightly of women's affairs), 
 invests it where it will bring in some large tempting 
 percentage, which it does for a few years; then comes 
 a collapse, and it makes itself wings and flies away. 
 
 Now, had these hapless ladies known two simple 
 facts, understood by every man of business first, that an 
 extra high rate of interest implies always a correspond- 
 ing risk of capital ; secondly, that no money should be
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 107 
 
 lent to the dearest friend or nearest relative without the 
 same security being exacted as from a stranger; and that 
 no honorable man would borrow money, especially from 
 a woman, upon any other terms : had they known this, 
 they might have escaped those afflictions which they 
 meekly term " the will of God," but which come solely 
 from the folly or sin of man. I could write volumes on 
 this subject, having seen so much of the sufferings of 
 my own sex, from their own weakness and the wicked- 
 ness of the other, that I feel, like Jonah, " I do well to 
 be angry." But better than even righteous indignation 
 against wrong are the attempts of prudent people to 
 discover its remedy. 
 
 Among the various suggestions to save women from 
 sinking into miserable dependence I will name one : 
 that those who still have health, energy, and a fair 
 amount of capacity should embrace a calling which is 
 as exceptional in its difficulties as in its rewards name- 
 ly, that of the professional sick-nurse. Talking once 
 with a lady, the matron of a hospital, who fulfilled to an 
 almost ideal degree that honorable position,.! said how 
 different was the ordinary sick-nurse the " Mrs. Gamp" 
 that used to be, though, fortunately, she has almost 
 ceased to exist from Roman Catholic Soeurs de la 
 Charite, or the excellent Petites So3urs des Pauvres. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " it is because they do their 
 work, as the beggars say, ' for the love of God.' It is
 
 108 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 not only difficult, but impossible, to go through the hard- 
 ships and fulfil the duties of a nurse's life except for a 
 higher motive than mere money." 
 
 That is true ; but it may also, and very allowably, be 
 done for money, and for that filliug-up of the emptiness 
 of life which women after their first youth, or having 
 gone through some heavy sorrow, often so bitterly feel. 
 We have no convents for them to refuge in and pos- 
 sibly wish to escape from, as soon as time has softened 
 down or worn away the cause that drove them thither ; 
 but we English scarcely value enough the system of 
 nursing sisterhoods, whether religious or secular in their 
 character, which should be open to women of all de- 
 grees, educated or uneducated, rich or poor. All who 
 have gone through the agony of watching serious illness 
 must have felt how exceedingly difficult it is to get a 
 good sick-nurse a woman who, to the rare natural 
 qualities necessary to that high vocation, adds the pro- 
 fessional skill which experience alone can give. But, if 
 found, her value is priceless, not only to her patient, but 
 to the whole family. 
 
 Nursing is an instinct, but it is also an art. It re- 
 quires to be learned by systematic training, which, how- 
 ever, is now supplied in almost every London hospital, 
 and many sisterhoods, or other similar homes, where 
 women of all degrees may acquire the requisite knowl- 
 edge for a moderate cost. It is a question, too, whether
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 109 
 
 those most useful institutions, cottage hospitals, which 
 are now being established all over the country, might 
 not with advantage open their doors for the reception 
 of two or three permanent nurses, who were always to 
 be found there if wanted, and part of whose wages 
 should be paid to the hospital in return for board, lodg- 
 ing, and instruction, prior to and during the intervals of 
 work. This, however, is a scheme necessarily immature, 
 which I merely throw out for the consideration of those 
 who have time and power to follow it up. It might 
 embrace the needs of many poor but capable women, 
 " ladies " or not, who dislike the publicity of a London 
 hospital, yet are anxious to work, not solely for money, 
 but for that pleasure which often comes not till later 
 life, though never too late the pleasure of doing good. 
 
 The third and last division of my subject I have care- 
 fully thought over before committing to print. Many 
 well-meaning, but I think mistaken, friends have ad- 
 vised me not to commit it to print at all. Wherefore ? 
 Why, in the name of common-sense, should a false and 
 foolish delicacy so overcome our common-sense that, 
 while vice is paraded before us every day when, as a 
 publisher told me lately, " No novel will sell without 
 some spice (i. e., sin) in it " the mere reference to 
 things which are not sinful at all, but the sacred mys- 
 teries of nature, is to be avoided as indecorous? 
 
 I have spoken of the careers that are open to women,
 
 110 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 without their trenching upon those of men, which is in 
 every way undesirable. But there is one where men 
 have been allowed to trench upon ours a sphere of 
 usefulness so natural, so right, so especially sacred to 
 women, that I only marvel so few should enter upon it, 
 not only out of the lower but the educated classes. 
 
 An ordinary sick-nurse must prepare herself to fight 
 bravely with every form of inevitable and hopeless hu- 
 man suffering. But there is one form of hopeful suffer- 
 ing to which women are condemned ; in which, former- 
 ly, only fheir own sex ministered to them. Without 
 opening medical discussions, I wish to give it as my 
 distinct opinion in which numbers more of my sex 
 agree that women, and women only, should be em- 
 ployed, not merely as monthly nurses, but (why not use 
 the old Bible word ?) as midwives. We are apt to for- 
 get that childbirth is not a disease, but a natural event, 
 in which Nature can generally take care of herself, if 
 aided by care, caution, experience, and, above all, pa- 
 tience. It is that quality of patience so much greater 
 in our sex than the other which makes it desirable, if 
 for no other reason, that the obstetric art should fall ex- 
 clusively into the hands of women not ignorant, but 
 educated women who, at the critical hour and after- 
 wards, can use their brains as well as their hearts, their 
 intelligence and sympathy as well as their practical skill 
 and experience.
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. Ill 
 
 Those who go about the world I do not mean the 
 gay, but the hard-working and much-suffering, world 
 must have noticed how very many women die in child- 
 birth. Not so much among the upper classes, who have 
 skilled doctors and nurses, or the lower, who have 
 neither, only some clever old woman, who, making up 
 in experience what she lacks in education, brings safely 
 into existence half the population of a village ; but the 
 intermediate class, the wives of clerks, tradesmen, or 
 poor gentlemen, who aim at having the dignity of doc- 
 tor and nurse, but can only afford them of ah inferior 
 kind, and often pay with their lives for the incapacity 
 and carelessness of both. 
 
 It is for these that an educated woman, who would 
 be at once a trained midwife and a monthly nurse, 
 might come to the rescue, lessening rather than increas- 
 ing the heavy expenses which in many families make 
 the advent of every child a dread and a curse rather 
 than a blessing, and lessening still more those sad fa- 
 talities which the stricken household believes to be the 
 " visitation of God," but which others know well would 
 not have happened, did not need to happen, except 
 through stolid ignorance, indifference, or culpable neg- 
 lect on the part of those attending the sufferer. And 
 such cases are only too common commoner than most 
 people know, because naturally it is to everybody's in- 
 terest to hush them up. Alas ! many of us might say,
 
 112 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 remembering how we looked in hopeless regret on some 
 pale, coffined face, taken suddenly away in the midst of 
 youth and life, " She did not die, she was killed simply 
 killed." 
 
 But, setting aside these exceptional cases, any one 
 who has seen how much many mothers undergo, during 
 the weeks of helplessness when they are shut up with 
 some coarse, uneducated, unsympathizing nurse, will 
 appreciate the blessing that such a one as I have indi- 
 cated would be, not only to the patient herself, but to 
 the whole family one who would, for the time being, 
 identify herself with the household which she entered 
 in its cloud of care, and leaves in that sunshine of hope 
 and happiness which every little baby ought to bring 
 with it. Who more than she would have the power of 
 making herself valued and beloved by both parents and 
 children passed on with honor from one grateful 
 household to another while her power of work lasted ? 
 Gratitude is not a common virtue; yet I think if any 
 human being might find it, it would be a really valuable 
 monthly nurse. Happiness is not the portion of us all ; 
 most women especially the unmarried must be con- 
 tent with vicarious joys, and also vicarious sorrows. 
 They, above all, should understand that to be loved you 
 must make yourselves lovable ; to be valued, you must 
 prove yourself valuable. Yet I tbink most old maids 
 and childless widows might draw a good deal of real
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 113 
 
 happiness out of such a career as that I suggest, which 
 has in it so many elements of making others happy. 
 
 "Whether or not the medical profession will open its 
 doors unrestrictedly to women is a question I do not mean 
 to argue.. The point is not so much the opening of the 
 door as the fitness of those who enter it. And in this 
 case, as in most others, the universal law, the survival 
 of the fittest, will decide the whole question within not 
 too many years. But if women can be made capable 
 of this one branch of the profession, I believe it ought 
 to be left in their hands a state of things which, so far 
 from being novel or abnormal, would only be a return 
 to the "good old times." I have no means of abso- 
 lutely proving the fact, but it is a fact, that only in the 
 last generation and ours have male accoucheurs been 
 accustomed to practise, or women to consider their ser- 
 vices essential to safety. : .. -. 
 
 The opening of such a career would give a future to 
 many poor gentlewomen who, still in middle life, with 
 good health, good sense, and good courage, wish to ed- 
 ucate themselves for the dignity of work rather than 
 accept the humiliation of charity. And it would also 
 supply a want, and furnish, to the daughters of profes- 
 sional men especially, the only " woman's right " which 
 it is advisable to impress^upon our girls the right 
 of independence ; that every unmarried woman who 
 does not inherit an income ought to owe it to neither
 
 114 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 father, brother, nor any other male relation, but to 
 earn it. 
 
 The greai mistake of the last generation resulting 
 in so many "decayed gentlewomen" is, that parents 
 have not been wise enough to see this, but have brought 
 up their girls to be mere appendages to and encum- 
 brances on the boys; spending large sums on their 
 sons' education, and thinking that the daughters would 
 educate themselves ; and, if not, what matter ? they are 
 sure to marry. But they are not sure; and, even if 
 they were, is not marriage a partnership ? When the 
 wife can bring in, on her side, either money or the 
 power of earning it, surely it is better for the husband, 
 and not worse for her. That is, provided she sacrifices 
 none of the home-duties, which make her half of the 
 partnership not the least arduous, to that independence 
 which no honorable man would wisli to deny her. I 
 have always noticed that it is the strongest, the wisest, 
 and the tenderest men who admit and uphold this doc- 
 trine. Only the mean, the weak, the wicked among 
 mankind are, or ever need be, afraid of women. And 
 1 have tried, in these few plain words, to urge women 
 not to be afraid of themselvesnot even though they 
 have suffered that cruel " coming down in the world " 
 which often seems so much worse to the victims them- 
 selves than to outsiders. 
 
 Take the world at its worst, it is never so bad but
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 115 
 
 that it knows a gentlewoman when it finds her, and 
 respects her accordingly, if she continues to respect 
 herself ; ay, even though she has sunk to lowest depths 
 of poverty. But, ordinarily, if she be also a good 
 woman, she never does so sink, for hands ready 
 and willing are sure to be stretched out to her. 
 When they are not, when she drops hopelessly into 
 the condition of our friend the decayed gentlewom- 
 an, depend upon it there has been a "screw loose" 
 somewhere. 
 
 Still, poverty may come, sickness and sorrow forcing 
 the proudest and most independent lady to submit to 
 be helped by some one. It should be a consolation to 
 know that this help can be accepted in such a way as 
 to confer a positive boon on its bestower. Of all life's 
 joys, none has so peculiar a sweetness as the power of 
 giving, and of having those gifts accepted in a right 
 spirit. And one of the most unlovely qualities that 
 any woman can have is the angry pride that accepts 
 them in a wrong spirit, and rejects indignantly well- 
 meant kindness. 
 
 There were once two women, both workingwomen, 
 and both gentlewomen. The younger, grieved at the 
 shabbiness of her friend's winter bonnet, used a piece 
 of velvet she had meant for her own in surreptitiously 
 making one, and sending it, carefully packed, and ad- 
 dressed in a feigned hand, to be left anonymously at
 
 116 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 the elder lady's door. Shortly afterwards the latter 
 appeared, very irate. 
 
 " What do you think, my dear ? Some one has had 
 the impertinence to send me a bonnet ! How dared 
 any one suppose I wanted a bonnet? As if I would 
 condescend to wear an anonymous present ! What 
 could they mean ?" 
 
 Meekly the girl suggested that possibly "they" 
 meant no harm. 
 
 " But it was harm. It was impertinence. Such an 
 ugly bonnet, too ! I can't send it back, for I have no 
 idea where it comes from ; but I would never wear it." 
 
 " Then," the other asked, " what do you mean to do 
 with it 2" 
 
 " My dear, the very instant I get home, I shall take 
 a pair of scissors and pick it to pieces." 
 
 The young friend said nothing never did say any- 
 thing. The dear head which refused to put on. the vel- 
 vet bonnet has long slept " under the daisies," and the 
 kindly heart never knew the pain it unwittingly gave. 
 But this little tale may not be useless to some who call 
 their pride independence, and their self-assertion self- 
 respect. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are women we have all known 
 such who, in accepting kindnesses, actually confer 
 them. These are they whom no misfortune can sour, no 
 poverty humiliate. They may sink from their thousands
 
 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 117 
 
 a year to hundreds, or even to tens, but they never lose 
 any real dignity. Everybody respects, them ; every- 
 body loves them. Friends battle for the pleasure of 
 their company, and for the honor of giving them any 
 help they may require sure that they will not take a 
 farthing more than they do require; equally sure that 
 what they really need will be accepted in a spirit so 
 sweet, so simple and natural, that it increases instead 
 of diminishes affection on both sides. For they re- 
 ceive kindness just as the grass receives dew or the 
 flowers sunshine knowing whence alone it comes, 
 though it may be administered by human hands. 
 
 Homeless though such women often are, and are 
 doomed to be, there is never a home where they are 
 not welcome, and where their bright and useful pres- 
 ence does not bring comfort and cheerfulness. They 
 do everything for everybody as long as they possibly 
 can ; and, when their power of doing ceases, they sub- 
 mit to be "done for" in the best sense without any 
 unnatural or painful resistance. In their day they have 
 taken care of so many, that it is but fair others should 
 take care of them. And they never lack some one 
 who not only does it, but has pleasure in doing it. 
 Even when come the years of slow decline, or the last 
 painful struggle before the final release, nobody is 
 "glad to get rid of them." Though all natural ties 
 may have died out, the adopted ties of affectionate
 
 118 DECAYED GENTLEWOMEN. 
 
 gratitude are quite as strong, and remain so to the end. 
 I have known a whole family mourn for and miss, al- 
 most as if she had been a mother, some poor little old 
 maid, not connected with them by blood or anything 
 else, except that self-devotion which is the strongest 
 bond of all. As I have said, " Once a lady, always a 
 lady ;" so, once lovable is to be always lovable, and be- 
 loved. Any woman who is that need not fear changed 
 fortunes, sickness, or old-age. Help will come when she 
 needs it; especially if, as long as she can, she nerves 
 herself to do without it, and uses all her powers to make 
 herself pleasant and useful wherever she goes. Then 
 her candle, being never put under a bushel, will burn 
 out brightly to its latest flicker. Of her it may be truly 
 said that she is the salt of the earth ; and, be she ma- 
 tron, widow, or old maid, the wholesomeness of her 
 nature will keep her fresh and young to the last. Poor 
 she may be, "reduced," "unfortunate," but nothing 
 will ever sink her into the condition o*f a "decayed" 
 gentlewoman.
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 
 
 " SET a thief to catch a thief." Well, even so ! And 
 " honor among thieves " you may always find the prov- 
 erb and counter-proverb is an equally noble sentiment. 
 I am not going to lay bare the secrets of the prison- 
 house. 
 
 Still, may not the ancient gladiator be allowed to 
 haunt his former arena, to examine and criticise the com- 
 batants, to watch with interest the various "throws?" 
 And the old vocalist, who has quietly dropped, let us 
 hope in good time, into the teacher of singing is it un- 
 natural that he should sometimes like to frequent the 
 stalls, and make his own comments on his brethren still 
 before the footlights? For he loves his art as much 
 as ever ; he understands its secrets perhaps better than 
 ever, only But peace ! Is he not an aged gladiator 
 a tired singer ? Happy for him if he is wise enough 
 to recognize this fact and act upon it. 
 
 Yes, there comes a time when we authors must accept 
 the truth that it is better for us, as well as our books, to 
 be " shelved." We ought never to write at all unless 
 6
 
 122 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEK8. 
 
 we have something to say ; and there are few things sad- 
 der than to see a writer to whom the world has listened, 
 and listened with pleasure, go on feebly repeating him- 
 self, sinking from originality into mediocrity, and then 
 into the merest commonplace. " Stop in time " is the 
 wisest advice that can be given to all who live by their 
 brains. These brains, even if the strongest, will only 
 last a certain time, and do a certain quantity of work 
 really good work. Alas, for those authors who have 
 to live upon their reputation after their powers are 
 gone ! 
 
 But though the impulse of genius melts away, and 
 even talent can be worn out in time, there is one thing 
 which, among much lost, is assuredly gained, and that 
 is experience. The quickness to detect faults won 
 through fighting with our own, and the knowledge 
 how to rectify these errors when found, are advan- 
 tages we possess still, and should not lightly underrate. 
 Therefore, if, after having written novels for more than 
 a quarter of a century, I have lately tried reading them, 
 may I be allowed a few words, which I trust none of my 
 co-mates will misconstrue, nor their readers and mine 
 misapprehend ? 
 
 Novel-making I use the word designedly, for it is a 
 mistake to suppose that a novel makes itself is not 
 an impulse, but an art. The poet may be " born, not 
 made ;" but the novelist must make himself one, just
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 123 
 
 as much as any carpenter or bricklayer. Yon cannot 
 build a house at random, or without having learned the 
 bricklayer's trade ; and by no possibility can you con- 
 struct a three-volume story, which shall be a real, endur- 
 ing work of art, without having attained that mechani- 
 cal skill which is as necessary to genius as the furnace 
 to the ore and the lapidary's tool to the diamond. And 
 since most long-experienced workmen are supposed to 
 know something of their tools and the way to use them, 
 as well as to be tolerable judges of the raw material in 
 which they have worked all their days, I do not apolo- 
 gize for writing this paper. It may be useful to some 
 of those enthusiastic young people who think, as a fash- 
 ionable lady once said to me, " Oh, how charming it 
 must be to write a novel ! Couldn't you teach me ?" 
 
 No. I was afraid not. And though work is genius, 
 as some one has said, and not quite without truth, I 
 could not advise my young friend to try. 
 
 Novel the word, coming from the Italian novella, 
 implies something new : a rifacciamento, or remaking, 
 in an imaginative shape, of the eternally old elements 
 of mortal life, joy and sorrow, fortune and misfortune, 
 love and death ; also virtue and vice, though whether 
 the novel should illustrate any special moral is a much- 
 debated question. 
 
 Apparently, beyond some vague notions of virtue re- 
 warded and vice punished, the old romancists did not
 
 124: ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEES. 
 
 consider a moral necessary. There is certainly no pur- 
 pose in the " Arabian Nights' Entertainments," or the 
 "Decameron" of Boccaccio, nor very much in "Sir 
 Charles Grandison." Probably less than none in " Tom 
 Jones," and others of the same age and class. Even the 
 author of "Waverley," the Shakespeare of novelists, 
 only teaches us, as Shakespeare does, by implication. It 
 has been left to modern writers to convert the novel into 
 a sort of working steam-engine, usable for all purposes ; 
 and to express through it their pet theories of religion 
 or morality, their opinions on social wrongs and reme- 
 dies, and their views on aesthetic and philosophical sub- 
 jects. From the art of cookery up or down to the 
 law of divorce, anybody who thinks he has anything to 
 say, says it in three volumes, mashed up, like hard po- 
 tatoes, in the milk and butter of fiction. 
 
 A portion, however, of our modern novel-writers re- 
 pudiate the idea of having any moral purpose whatever ; 
 and, truly, few of their readers can accuse them of it. 
 Amusement pure and simple not always either sim- 
 ple or pure, but always amusement is their sole aim. 
 They that is, the cleverest of them are satisfied to 
 cut a bit at random out of the wonderful web of life, 
 and present it to you just as it is, wishing you to accept 
 it as such, without investigating it too closely or paus- 
 ing to consider whether the pattern is complete, what 
 the mode and method of the weaving, and whether you
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 125 
 
 only see a part or the whole. That there is a whole 
 that life is not chance-work, but a great design, with 
 the hands of the Divine Artificer working behind it all 
 so seldom comes into their calculations that they do 
 not expect it to come into yours. Therefore, with a 
 daring and sometimes almost blasphemous ingenuity, 
 they put themselves to play Providence, to set up their 
 puppets and knock them down, and make them between 
 whiles " play such fantastic tricks before high heaven " 
 that one feels heaven's commonest law of right and 
 wrong would to them be, to say the least, extremely in- 
 convenient. 
 
 But to return. Certainly whatever my fashionable 
 young friend might think no one can be taught to 
 write novels. Yet to suppose that novel-writing comes 
 by accident or impulse that the author has only to sit 
 with his pen in his hand and his eyes on the ceiling, 
 waiting for the happy moment of inspiration is an 
 equal mistake. 
 
 It may be a theory startling to sentimental folk and 
 offensive to lazy folk, but I believe a true author, of the 
 highest and most useful kind, never has any " moods." 
 He does not wait for the impulse of genius to come 
 upon him sitting miserably on his poor little joint- 
 stool or his elegant arm-chair like the Pythian oracle 
 over her crack in the sacred cavern, waiting for the 
 afflatus of the god. He settles to his daily work as reg-
 
 126 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEKS. 
 
 ularly and conscientiously as the blacksmith and the 
 bricklayer do to theirs. So much of it is always manip- 
 ulation spiritual and intellectual manipulation certain- 
 ly, yet mere handiwork, to be learned by experience 
 only that if he thinks he can trust solely to inspira- 
 tion, genius, or whatever you choose to call it, he will 
 find he might as well attempt to light his house with a 
 will-o'-the-wisp, instead of calling in the aid of the can- 
 dle-maker and the gas-man. 
 
 Still, neither of these can do any good without light 
 the kindling of the heaven-sent flame. And the nov- 
 elist's work is not exactly like that of the bricklayer 
 and blacksmith though I have heard of a popular 
 writer who turns out so many pages per diem as the 
 village Yulcan does horseshoes. True literature is the 
 combination of two things the impulse to write and 
 the knowledge how to do it. 
 
 To make a novel that is, to construct out of the 
 ever-changing kaleidoscope of human fate a picture of 
 life which shall impress people as being life-like, and 
 stand out to its own and possibly an after generation as 
 such this is a task that cannot be accomplished with- 
 out genius, but which genius, unaided by mechanical 
 skill, will surely fail to accomplish thoroughly. Much 
 of what is required comes not by intuition, but experi- 
 ence. " How do you write a novel 2" has been asked 
 me hundreds of times; and, as half the world now
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 127 
 
 writes novels, expecting the other half to read them, 
 my answer, given in plain print, may not be quite use- 
 less. The shoemaker who in his time has fitted a good 
 many feet need not hesitate to explain his mode of 
 measuring, how he cuts and sews his leather, and so 
 on. He can give a hint or two on the workmanship ; 
 the materials are beyond his power. 
 
 What other novelists do I know not, but this has 
 been my own way db ovo. For, I contend, all stories 
 that are meant to live must contain the germ of life, 
 the egg, the vital principle. A novel " with a purpose" 
 may be intolerable, but a novel without a purpose is 
 more intolerable still as feeble and flaccid as a man 
 without a backbone. Therefore, the first thing is to fix 
 on a central idea, like the spine of a human being or the 
 trunk of a tree. Yet, as Nature never leaves either 
 bare, but clothes them with muscle and flesh, branches 
 and foliage, so this leading idea of his book will be, by 
 the true author, so successfully disguised as not to ob- 
 trude itself objectionably ; indeed, the ordinary reader 
 ought not even to suspect its existence. Yet from it, 
 this one principal idea, proceed all after-growths : the 
 kind of plot which shall best develop it, the characters 
 which must act it out, the incidents which will express 
 these characters, even to the conversations which evolve 
 and describe these incidents. All are sequences, fol- 
 lowing one another in natural order ; even as from the
 
 128 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 
 
 seed-germ result successively the trunk, limbs, branches, 
 twigs, and leafage of a tree. 
 
 This, if I have put my meaning clearly, shows that 
 a conscientiously written novel is by no means a piece 
 of impulsive, accidental scribbling, but a deliberate work 
 of art ; that though, in one sense, it is also a work of 
 nature, since every part ought to result from and be 
 kept subservient to the whole, still, in another, the novel 
 is the last thing that ought to be allowed to say of itself, 
 like Topsy, " 'spects I growed." Except in one sense. 
 If an author's personages are strongly and clearly de- 
 fined to his own mind, he knows that, in whatever sit- 
 uations he places them, they must think, act, and speak 
 in a certain way. Events develop character ; but char- 
 acter also moulds action and event. Viewed in this 
 light, a really human novel " writes itself." 
 
 Style or composition, though to some it comes nat- 
 urally, does not come to all. When I was young, an 
 older and more experienced writer once said to me, 
 "Never use two adjectives where one will do; never 
 use an adjective at all where a noun will do. Avoid 
 italics, notes of exclamation, foreign words, and quo- 
 tations. Put full stops instead of colons ; make your 
 sentences as short and clear as you possibly can ; and 
 whenever you think you have written a particularly 
 fine sentence, cut it out." 
 
 More valuable advice could not be given to any young
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 129 
 
 author. It strikes at the root of that slip-shod literature 
 of which we find so much nowadays, even in writers of 
 genius. To these latter, indeed, it is a greater tempta- 
 tion ; their rapid, easy pen runs on as the fancy strikes, 
 and they do not pause to consider that in a novel, as in 
 a picture, breadth is indispensable. Every part should 
 be made subservient to the whole. You must have 
 a foreground and background, and a middle distance. 
 If you persist in working up one character, or finish- 
 ing up minutely one incident, your perspective will be 
 destroyed, and your book become a mere collection of 
 fragments ; not a work of art at all. The true artist 
 will always be ready to sacrifice any pet detail to the 
 perfection of the whole. 
 
 Sometimes, I allow, this is hard. One gets interest- 
 ed novel-writers only know how interested in some 
 particular character or portion of the plot, and is tempt- 
 ed to work out these to the injury of the rest. Then 
 there usually comes a flat time, say about the second 
 volume, when the first impetus has subsided, and the 
 excitement of the denouement has not yet come, yet the 
 story must be spun on somehow, if only to get to some- 
 thing more exciting. This may account for the fact 
 that so many second volumes are rather dull. But a 
 worse failure is when the third volume dwindles down, 
 the interest slowly diminishing to nothing. Or else the 
 story is all huddled up, everybody married or killed 
 6*
 
 130 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEKS. 
 
 somehow not as we novelists try to do it, "comfort- 
 ably," but in a hasty, unsatisfactory manner, which 
 makes readers wonder why the end is so unworthy of 
 the beginning. 
 
 Either mistake is fatal, and both commonly proceed 
 from carelessness, or from the lack of that quality with- 
 out which no good work is possible the infinite capacity 
 of taking trouble. "Look at my manuscript," said a 
 voluminous writer once to me ; " there is hardly a single 
 correction in it ; and this is my first draught. I never 
 copy, and I rarely alter a line." It would have been 
 uncivil to say so, but I could not help thinking that 
 both author and public would have been none the worse 
 if my friend had altered a good many lines and recop- 
 ied not a few pages. 
 
 While on the question of manuscripts, let me say one 
 practical word. Authors are apt to think that any sort 
 of " copy" is good enough for the press. Quite the con- 
 trary. An untidy, useless, illegible manuscript is an 
 offence to the publisher, a dangerous irritation to his 
 " reader," and to the printer an absolute cruelty. Also, 
 many proof corrections, often made so wantonly, and 
 costing so much trouble and money, are severely to be 
 condemned. Doubtless the genus irritdbile has its 
 wrongs, from hard-headed and often hard-hearted men 
 of business; but volumes might be written about the 
 worry, the loss, the actual torment, that inaccurate, ir-
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEKS. 131 
 
 regular, impecunious, and extravagant authors are to 
 that much-enduring and necessarily silent class, their 
 publishers. 
 
 An accusation is often made against us novelists that 
 we paint our characters, especially our ridiculous or un- 
 pleasant characters, from life. Doubtless many second- 
 rate writers do this, thereby catching the ill-natured 
 class of readers, which always enjoys seeing its neigh- 
 bor "shown up." But a really good novelist would 
 scorn to attain popularity by such mean devices. Be- 
 sides, any artist knows that to paint exactly from life is 
 so difficult as to be almost impossible. Study from life 
 he must copying suitable heads, arms, or legs, and ap- 
 propriating bits of character, personal or mental idio- 
 syncracies, making use of the real to perfect the ideal. 
 But the ideal should be behind it all. The nature to 
 which he holds up the mirror should be abstract, not 
 individual ; he is a creator, not an imitator, and must 
 be a poor creator who can only make his book read by 
 gibbeting therein real people, like kites and owls on a 
 barn-door, for the amusement and warning of society. 
 
 We writers cannot but smile when asked if such-and- 
 such a character is " drawn from life," and especially 
 when ingenious critics fancy they have identified cer- 
 tain persons, places, or incidents almost always falsely. 
 Of course, we go about the world with our eyes open ; 
 but what we see, and how we make use of it, is known
 
 132 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 
 
 only to ourselves. Our sitters are never aware they are 
 being painted, and rarely, if ever, recognize their own 
 likenesses. Whether or not it may be right to hold up 
 to public obloquy a bad or contemptible character, we 
 mi^ht surely be allowed to paint a perfect one if we 
 could find it, which is not too probable. For me, I can 
 only say that, during all the years I have studied hu- 
 manity, I never met one human being whom I could 
 have " put into a book," as a whole, without injuring 
 my work. The only time I ever attempted (by re- 
 quest) to make a study from nature, absolutely literal, 
 all the reviewers cried out, to iny extreme amusement, 
 " This character is altogether unnatural." 
 
 Hitherto I have considered the novel simply as a lit- 
 erary achievement a book " clever," " interesting ;" 
 above all, a book " that will sell." But there is a high- 
 er and deeper view of it, which no writer can escape, 
 and no conscientious writer would ever wish to escape. 
 If we, poor finite mortals, begin telling stories, we take 
 into our feeble hands the complicated machinery of life, 
 of which none can understand the whole, and very few 
 even the smallest bit ; we work it out after our own 
 fancy, moral or no moral ; we invent our puppets, and 
 put them through their marionette-like antics, iu imi- 
 tation of the great drama which a mysterious Hand is 
 forever playing with us human beings ; and sometimes 
 we think we could do it quite as well, if we had the
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 133 
 
 chance ! But do we ever consider that, in making up 
 from imagination a picture of reality, we are, in rather 
 a dangerous way, mimicking Providence ? much as chil- 
 dren do with their dolls when they make them go to 
 school or be put to bed, or have the measles ; imitating 
 ordinary child-life, so far as they understand it, in their 
 innocent way. But our ways are not always innocent, 
 and our wisdom is sometimes less than a child's. A 
 bad novel, which does not "justify the ways of God to 
 men" as Milton vainly tried to do in " Paradise Lost" 
 but leaves behind it the impression that the world is all 
 out of joint, that there is no difference between right 
 and wrong, and nothing in life worth living for such 
 a novel does more harm than a dozen atheistical books, 
 or a hundred dull, narrow-minded sermons. Poison, 
 taken as such, may find an antidote; there is no de- 
 fence against it when administered in the form of food. 
 That the novel, not only in its literary but moral form, 
 is an engine of enormous power, no one could doubt 
 who had the reading of the letters received, say in a 
 single year, or even a single month, by any tolerably 
 well-known author, from all parts of the world, and 
 from total strangers of every age, class, and degree. 
 Not merely the everlasting autograph -beggars, or the 
 eulogists, generally conceited egotists, who enjoy the 
 vanity of corresponding with celebrated folk, but the 
 honest, well-meaning, and often most touching letter-
 
 134: ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 
 
 writers, who pour out their simple hearts to the un- 
 known friend who has exercised so strong an influence 
 over their lives. To this friend they appeal not only 
 for sympathy, but advice often of the most extraor- 
 dinary kind on love affairs, the education of children, 
 business or domestic difficulties, impulses of gratitude, 
 revelations of perplexing secrets, outcries of intolerable 
 pain, coming sometimes from the very ends of the earth, 
 in a mixture of tragedy and comedy, to the silent recip- 
 ient of these strange phases of human life stranger 
 than anything he or she has ever dared to put into any 
 novel. Yet so it is ; and any conscientious author can 
 but stand mute and trembling in face of the awful 
 responsibility which follows every written line. 
 
 This, even of the ordinarily good books ; but what of 
 the bad ones? 
 
 I believe a thoroughly " bad " book, as we of the last 
 generation used to style such bad either for coarse- 
 ness of style, as " Tristram Shandy," or laxity of morals, 
 like " Don Juan " does infinitely less harm than many 
 modern novels which we lay on our drawing-room ta- 
 bles, and let our young daughters read ad infinitum, 
 or ad nauseam : novels, chiefly, I grieve to say, writ- 
 ten by women, who, either out of sheer ignorance or a 
 boastful, morbid pleasure in meddling with forbidden 
 topics, often write things that men would be ashamed 
 to write.
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEBS. 135 
 
 Absolute wickedness crime represented as crime, and 
 licentiousness put forward as licentiousness is far less 
 dangerous to the young and naturally pure mind than 
 that charming sentimental dallying with sin which 
 makes it appear so piteous, so interesting, so beautiful. 
 Nay, without even entering upon the merits of the 
 favorite modern style of fiction in which love, to be 
 attractive, must necessarily be unlawful there is a style 
 of novel in which right and wrong are muddled up to- 
 gether, as if the author, and consequently the reader, 
 would take no trouble to distinguish between them. 
 Instead of white being white, and black black, both 
 take a sort of neutral tint the white not so very pure 
 after all, and the black toned down into an aesthetic 
 gray. 
 
 In such novels the characters are made interesting, 
 not by their virtues, but their faults ; a good woman 
 worships a bad man, and vice versa. Now, this may 
 sometimes be in. real life; but to present it in fiction, 
 to make a really noble woman the abject, willing slave 
 of a contemptible brute not worthy to tie her shoes, or 
 an honorable man doing all sorts of erring things for 
 the sake of a feeble or vile woman, whom her own sex, 
 and the best of the other, would heartily despise the 
 effect of such a picture as this is to confuse all one's 
 notions of good and bad, and produce a blurred and 
 blotted vision of life, which, to those just beginning
 
 136 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 
 
 life, is either infinitely sad or infinitely harmful. Be- 
 sides, it is not true. Time brings its revenges ; and if 
 there is one certainty in life, it is the certainty of retri- 
 bution. Ay, even in this world : and, alas ! down to 
 the third and fourth generation. A creed by the 
 young doubted or despised, but which the old, whether 
 optimists or pessimists, know and have proved as a 
 fact. 
 
 There is another favorite subject of modern fiction : 
 a man or woman married hastily or unhappily, and 
 meeting afterwards some " elective affinity," the right 
 man or right woman. No doubt, this is a terrible lot, 
 which may happen to the most guiltless persons, and 
 does happen, perhaps, oftener than is generally suspect- 
 ed. Novelists seize upon it as a dramatic position, and 
 paint it in such glowing, tender, and pathetic colors 
 that, absorbed in the pity of the thing, we quite forget 
 its sin. The hapless lovers rouse our deepest sympathy ; 
 we follow them to the very verge of crime, almost re- 
 gretting that it is called crime ; and when the obnoxious 
 husband or wife dies, and the lovers are dismissed to 
 happiness as is usually done we feel quite relieved 
 and comfortable! 
 
 Now, surely this is immoral, as immoral as the coars- 
 est sentence Shakespeare ever penned, or the most pas- 
 sionate picture that Shelley or Byron ever drew. Nay, 
 more so, for these are only nature vicious, undisguised,
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEES. 137 
 
 but natural still, and making no pretence of virtue; but 
 your sentimentalist assumes a virtue, and expects sym- 
 pathy for his immorality, which is none the less immoral 
 because, God knows, it is a delineation often only too 
 true, and perhaps only too deserving of pity His pity 
 who can see into the soul of man. Many a condemned 
 thief and hanged murderer may have done the deed 
 under most extenuating circumstances ; but theft still 
 remains theft, and murder murder. And let us not 
 mince words though modern taste may enwrap it in 
 ever such pathetic, heroic, and picturesque form, adul- 
 tery is still adultery. Never do our really great moral 
 writers deny this, or leave us in the slightest doubt be- 
 tween virtue and vice. It is the mild sentimentalists 
 who, however they may resent being classed with the 
 " fast " authors alas ! too often authoresses of mod- 
 ern fiction, are equally immoral ; because they hold the 
 balance of virtue and vice with so feeble and uncertain 
 a hand as to leave both utterly confused in the reader's 
 mind. 
 
 But, putting aside the question of morality, there is 
 another well deserving the consideration of novelists 
 viz., whether the subjects they choose are within the 
 fair limits of art. Legitimate comedy ought to be based 
 on humor and wit, free from coarseness and vulgarity ; 
 and in true tragedy the terrible becomes the heroic by 
 the elimination of every element which is merely hor-
 
 138 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEKS. 
 
 rible or disgusting. In the dying martyr we ought to 
 see, not the streaming blood or the shrivelling of the 
 burned flesh, but the gaze of ecstatic faith into an opened 
 heaven ; and the noblest battle ever represented is mis- 
 represented when the artist chooses scenes fit only for a 
 hospital operating-table or a butcher's shambles. 
 
 I cannot but think that certain modern novels, despite 
 their extreme cleverness, deal with topics beyond the 
 legitimate province of fiction. Yivid descriptions of 
 hangings, of prison whippings, of tortures inflicted on 
 sane persons in lunatic-asylums, are not fit subjects for 
 art ; at least, the art which can choose them and dilate 
 upon them is scarcely of a healthy kind, or likely to con- 
 duce to the moral health of the reader. 
 
 The answer to this objection is, that such things are ; 
 therefore why not write about them ? So must medical 
 and surgical books be written ; so must the most loath- 
 some details of crime and misery be investigated by 
 statesmen and political economists. But all these are 
 professional studies, which, however painful, require to 
 be gone through. No one would ever enter into them 
 as a matter of mere amusement. Besides, as is almost 
 inevitable in a novel " with a purpose," or one in which 
 the chief interest centres in some ghastly phase of hu- 
 manity, there is generally a certain amount of, perhaps 
 involuntary, exaggeration, against which the calm : judi- 
 cial mind instinctively rebels. " Two sides to every
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEKS. 139 
 
 subject," say we ; " and I should rather like to hear the 
 other side." 
 
 Without holding the unwise creed that ignorance is 
 innocence, and that immunity from painful sensations 
 induces strength of character, I still maintain that there 
 are topics which are best kept in shadow, especially 
 from the young. We sometimes admit to our public 
 galleries though I question if we should the magnif- 
 icently painted but gross pictures of a few old masters, 
 and the realistic horrors upon which a certain French 
 school has made its fame. But few of us would choose 
 a Potiphar's Wife, or a newly guillotined Charlotte Cor- 
 day, for the adornment of the domestic hearth. Such 
 subjects, however well manipulated, are apt, either in 
 art or literature, to do more harm than the moral drawu 
 from them is likely to do good. 
 
 Of course, the case may be argued pretty strongly 
 from the other side. Life is not all " roses and lilies 
 and daffadowndillies ;" therefore, why should fiction 
 represent it as such ? Men and women are not angels, 
 and bad people are often much more interesting than 
 good people in real life: why should we not make 
 them so in novels ? 
 
 I answer, simply because it is we who make them 
 we short-sighted mortals, who take upon us to paint life, 
 and can only do so as far as our feeble vision allows us 
 to see it ; which in some of us is scarcely an inch be-
 
 140 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKEK8. 
 
 yond our own nose. Only a few but these are always 
 the truly great can see with larger eyes, and reproduce 
 what they see with a calm, steady, and almost always 
 kindly hand, which seems like the hand of Providence, 
 because its work is done with a belief in Providence ; 
 in those "mysterious ways" by which, soon or late, 
 everything and everybody finds its own level ; vir- 
 tue its reward, and vice its retribution. Also (happy 
 those who are given to see this !) those merciful ways 
 which out of temporary evil evolve oftentimes perma- 
 nent good. To judge authors solely by their works is 
 not always fair, because most people put their best 
 selves into their books, which are the cream of their 
 life, and the residuum may be but skimmed milk for 
 daily use. But in the department of fiction, at least, 
 the individual character gives its stamp to every page. 
 Not all good novelists may be ideal men and women, 
 but I' doubt much if any really immoral man or irre- 
 ligious woman ever made a good novelist. 
 
 I wish not to malign my brethren. Most of them do 
 their best ; and I think we may fairly decline to believe 
 such stories as that of the " popular authoress " who, 
 having starved as a moral, prosy, and altogether unpop- 
 ular authoress for several seasons, was advised to try 
 " spicy " writing, and now makes her thousands a year. 
 And even after weeding from our ranks the " fast," the 
 sentimental, the ghastly, the feeble and prosy, the clap-
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 141 
 
 trap and altogether silly school, there still remain a 
 good number of moderately clever and moderately 
 wholesome writers of fiction, who redeem our literature 
 from disgrace, or could do so if they chose, if they 
 could be made to feel themselves responsible, not to 
 man only, but to God. For " every idle word that men 
 shall speak " (how much more write ?) " they shall give 
 account thereof in the day of judgment." 
 
 To us, who are old enough to have read pretty thor- 
 oughly the book of human life, it matters little what we 
 read in mere novels, which are at best a poor, imaginary 
 imitation of what we have studied as a solemn reality ; 
 but to the young it matters a great deal. Impressions 
 are made, lessons taught, and influences given, which, 
 whether for good or for evil, nothing can afterwards 
 efface. The parental yearning, which only parents can 
 understand, is to save our children from all we can 
 alas, how little ! They must enter upon the battle of 
 life ; the utmost we can do is to give them their armor 
 and show them how to fight. But what wise father or 
 mother would thrust them, unarmed, into a premature 
 conflict, putting into their pure minds sinful thoughts 
 that had never been there before, and sickening their 
 tender hearts by needless horrors which should only be 
 faced by those who deal with evil for the express pur- 
 pose of amending it ? Truly, there are certain novels 
 which I have lately read which I would no more think
 
 142 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAKERS. 
 
 of leaving about on my drawing-room table than I would 
 take my son to a casino in order to teach him morals, 
 or make my daughter compassionate-hearted by sending 
 her to see a Spanish bull-fight. 
 
 Finally, as an example in proof of many, almost all, 
 the arguments and theories here advanced, I would ad- 
 vise any one who has gone through a course of modern 
 fiction to go through another, considered a little out of 
 date, except by the old, and, I am glad to say, the very 
 young. Nothing shows more clearly the taste of the 
 uncorrupted, healthy palate for wholesome food than 
 the eagerness with which almost all children, or children 
 passing into young people, from thirteen and upwards, 
 devour the " Waverley Novels." A dozen pages, taken 
 at random this moment from a volume which a youth- 
 ful reader I might say gormandizer has just laid 
 down, will instance what I mean. 
 
 It is the story of Nanty Ewart, told by himself to 
 Alan Fairford, on board the Jumping Jenny in " Ked- 
 gauntlet." Herein the author touches deepest tragedy, 
 blackest crime, and sharpest pathos (instance the line 
 where Nanty suddenly stops short with " Poor Jess !"). 
 He deals with elements essentially human, even vicious ; 
 his hero is a " miserable sinner," no doubt of that, either 
 in the author's mind or the impression conveyed to that 
 of the reader. There is no paltering with vice, no sen- 
 timental glossing-over of sin : the man is a bad man at
 
 ON NOVELS AND NOVEL-MAEK8. 143 
 
 least he has done evil, and his sin has found him out; 
 yet we pity him. Though handling pitch, we are not 
 defiled ; however and whatever our author paints, it is 
 never with an uncertain or feeble touch. We give him 
 our hand, and are led by him fearlessly into the very 
 darkest places, knowing that he carries the light with 
 him, and that no harm will come. I think it is not too 
 much to say that we might go through the " Waverley 
 Novels" from beginning to end without finding one 
 page, perhaps not even one line, that .we would hesitate 
 to read aloud to any young people old enough to under- 
 stand that evil exists in the world, and that the truly 
 virtuous are those who deliberately refuse the evil and 
 choose the good. And I who, having written novels 
 all my life, know more than most readers how to ad- 
 mire a great novelist should esteem it a good sign of 
 any son or daughter of mine who would throw a whole 
 cart-load of modern fiction into the gutter, often its fit- 
 test place, in order to clasp a huge, wholesome armful 
 of Walter Scott.
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 As a rule, a man's life ought never to be written till 
 he is dead. Perhaps not until he has been dead some 
 years. For though, in one sense, none can know him 
 so well as he knows himself, and of external knowledge 
 gained concerning him the simplest facts are liable to 
 continual misrepresentation, still a certain amount of 
 distance is essential to the breadth and truthfulness of 
 the view of any view. Especially of that most mys- 
 terious picture, a human existence. 
 
 Why some men are what they are; the influences 
 which made them so, and how far those influences were 
 voluntary or accidental in short, whether we make our 
 own destiny or have it made for us who shall solve 
 this eternal problem ? Yet anything which elucidates 
 it a little, which nerves us under the grinding hand of 
 fate to counteract it, apparently by the power of our 
 own will that strange quality of which we know nei- 
 ther what it is nor why it is put into a man, into some 
 men and not into others anything which does this 
 must be wholesome and good.
 
 148 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 Therefore, when asked to write this biography, or 
 rather biographical study, of a life not nearly done, I 
 consented, because it seemed to ray out with especial 
 clearness that " Light in Darkness " which is so needed 
 in this often gloomy world. All the more that its sub- 
 ject is a blind man, blind from childhood, and endowed 
 with no special genius, except that marvellous quality 
 just referred to the power of will : the most myste- 
 rious power that any man can possess, and which no 
 man can absolutely say he does not possess until he 
 tries to use it. 
 
 To encourage this to give hope to the hopeless, and 
 faith and strength to those who have done with hope 
 is the aim of the present article, written at the request 
 of its " subject," though, I ought to premise, not in the 
 way he intended it. He came to me, saying that in 
 consequence of the foolish, fulsome, and altogether in- 
 correct biographies that were made about him, he had 
 been urged to write his own autobiography, but had in- 
 variably declined. Still, as it was considered that his 
 personal history would advantage his life's one work, 
 the amelioration of the condition of the blind, he would 
 consent to a biography being done of him. 
 
 " But," he added, " I want you only to do it, because 
 I believe you will do it simply and naturally, without 
 exaggeration of any kind, remembering that it is my 
 work, not myself, which I wish to have brought before
 
 LIGHT IN DAKKNESS. 149 
 
 the public. Yon shall have the materials ; use them as 
 you think advisable. I know you will do your best." 
 
 I hope I shall do my best to justify the trust of so 
 honest a man. But my way of doing it is not his way, 
 and, in fairness to him, I ought distinctly to say so. He 
 wished an article almost wholly upon his work ; I felt 
 that the portraiture of the man who has been at the 
 heart of the work was the thing necessary. That con- 
 ceded, he wanted me to write the biography in my own 
 words ; but when I came to go over the mass of mate- 
 rials sent, I found that, heterogeneous and fragmentary 
 as they were, dictated at odd times, and amid the cease- 
 less pressure of business, there was in these reminis- 
 cences a freshness, a simplicity, a power of natural and 
 graphic color, which no recoloring by my han,d could 
 ever attain to. Therefore, instead of translating his 
 language into my own, I merely condense it ; instead 
 of painting my sitter, I shall make him unconsciously 
 paint himself. He does not like it : he has even re- 
 monstrated against it, as giving the impression of ego- 
 tism the last quality of which one could ever accuse 
 him. But I keep firm to my principle that in this case 
 his own words are better than any words of mine, and 
 have conscientiously persisted in my mode of work, of 
 which 1 take the sole responsibility. 
 
 The " hero " of this biographical study is none such 
 in the ordinary sense. He has never fought a battle,
 
 150 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 nor ruled the destinies of a nation. The only destiny 
 he has ruled is his own, the only battle he has fought is 
 that which we all must fight ; but he has had to fight it 
 in darkness, not daylight, for Francis Joseph Campbell 
 is a blind man, head and originator of the Royal Normal 
 College for the Blind, Nor wood, Lori don. 
 
 My first acquaintance with him was on this wise. 
 Some years ago, a friend, Menella Smedley I give her 
 name, not an unknown one, though her sweet, noble, 
 beneficent life surpassed her books, and both are now 
 ended forever Menella said to me, " I wish you would 
 come and see a blind-school newly started in Paxton 
 Terrace, about which I am going to write an article. I 
 am sure you would be interested." 
 
 I went, and I was interested : both by the children, 
 their happy looks, and their evidently excellent educa- 
 tion, but especially by their principal teacher, the head 
 of the school, Mr. Campbell. A little man, of unimpres- 
 sive appearance, whose chief characteristic seemed to be 
 a quiet decision of speech, and an energetic way of mov- 
 ing about, as if not blind at all ; a person eminently " all 
 there," neither self-occupied nor preoccupied, but alive 
 to everything around him, putting out feelers, as it were, 
 on every side, so as to take in all that was passing and 
 make use of it. 
 
 Such was the impression made by the man himself. 
 His surroundings confirmed it. The little blind family,
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 151 
 
 for it was like a family, seemed so very happy. They 
 laughed and chattered, worked and played at all man- 
 ner of school studies and ordinary school plays, just like 
 other children ; but, it seemed, more gay and contented 
 than most children. And their principal, Mr. Camp- 
 bell, appeared to be the busiest and cheerfullest man 
 alive. 
 
 This was summer-time, for I remember we soon after 
 invited them all to a strawberry-party in our hay-field, 
 and were still more struck by the gayety, the absolute 
 happiness, of these blind children, who ran about the 
 field and tumbled in the hay with shrieks of enjoyment, 
 so that to pity them, or even to guide and help them, 
 seemed wholly unnecessary. 
 
 After that day, year by year, I watched the school 
 grow into a college. The three little houses in Paxton 
 Terrace were vacated for a large establishment close by, 
 which had for its patrons the great of the land. Instead 
 of tea-parties in our innocent hay-field, the pupils were 
 invited to noble mansions, and even the Queen herself 
 received them at Windsor, heard them sing, and spoke 
 to them in her own kindly and womanly way. In short, 
 within a very brief time, I believe less than ten years, 
 the TCoyal Normal College has grown to be one of the 
 most notable establishments for the education of the 
 blind in this or any other country. 
 
 And one man has been at the heart of it all. Does
 
 152 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 he not deserve a biography ? Or, rather, does not the 
 world require to see not only the work, which is patent 
 to all, but the man who has done it ? He, living still 
 his simple, unobtrusive life, and being so absorbed in 
 what he does that what he is never seems to occur to 
 him, ought, even in his life-time, to be thus presented, 
 almost against his will, to a world which has so few like 
 him, struggling manfully against evil until it is almost 
 converted into good. 
 
 But let him speak for himself : 
 
 " I was born in Franklin County, Tennessee, October 9th, 1834. 
 When about three and a half years old, while playing iu the yard, 
 a sharp thorn of an acacia-tree was run into iny eye. Inflamma- 
 tion ensued, which, by bad management of the doctor, was allowed 
 to continue till the sight of both eyes was utterly gone. This 
 calamity produced a great effect upon my parents. It became a 
 law of the family that I was to do exactly what I pleased and as I 
 pleased. So, naughty aud perverse as I may have been must 
 have been I only remember two punishments, and, strange to say, 
 both were unjust. The first was once when my two brothers and 
 myself were playing in the barn ; they both began fighting. I 
 begged them to stop, aud my voice brought my father to the spot. 
 He was an impulsive man, and rushed forward to punish somebody. 
 It being dark, he caught me, and punished me. My brothers 
 rushed to my rescue, crying out : ' It is Joseph poor, blind Jo- 
 seph ! ' The whole family were in tears ; my father quite incon- 
 solable. I was only six years old, but this little incident, which I 
 remember distinctly, did more than anything to prevent my becom- 
 ing altogether selfish.
 
 LIGHT m DAKKNES8. 153 
 
 " About this time my father had heavy losses ; nothing remained 
 to us but a small farm in the mountains, where father, mother, 
 and all the children had to work early and late. I was an excep- 
 tion. Nobody expected me to do anything ; indeed, I was allowed 
 nothing to work with, for fear I should hurt myself. But once, my 
 father being from home, my mother let me have some wood to cut 
 up and an axe. When my father returned, he was amazed to find 
 six cords of wood all cut and carefully packed away. He praised 
 my brothers, and they told him it was I. Next day he went to the 
 village, and returned with a beautiful new light axe for me. Ever 
 after he took the greatest pains to teach me all sorts of farm- work. 
 But there were times when I was very dull, especially during the 
 season when all the other children went to school. Oh, the an- 
 guish of those dreary, idle, lonely days ! Long before evening, I 
 would wander off on the road to the school, and sit listening for 
 the far-off voices of those happy boys and girls coming back from 
 their lessons." 
 
 No words can add to the pathos of this simple pict- 
 ure. The little blind boy, the coinpulsorily idle boy, 
 listening for the voices of the busy children what a 
 warning it is to make the blind self-dependent from the 
 very first, and to teach them from the first, as much as 
 possible ! But hope was dawning for poor blind Joseph. 
 
 " In 1844, a blind-school was opened at Nashville, and we heard 
 that on April 1st ten blind children would be received there. Day 
 after day my father went to the village, five miles off, to make 
 arrangements for me, and came back, saying, ' Melinda, I cannot do 
 it.' My mother, a brave, noble - hearted woman, would answer, 
 'James, we must do it ; it is the one thing we have been praying 
 7*
 
 154 LIGHT IN DAKKNE88. 
 
 for ; we shall lose our chance. The school may be soon full, and 
 then' 
 
 " So she and the neighbors persuaded him. He purchased the 
 things a 'sewing -bee' was held to make my clothes; and in 
 twenty-four hours I was ready to start. A kind old gentleman 
 volunteered to take me in his buggy to Nashville. My father went 
 with us part of the way, riding my own pet horse. When he said, 
 in a choked voice, ' Good-bye, Joseph, my son !' for the first time 
 my courage failed. Earnestly I hoped the school might be full. 
 When arrived there, my conductor called from the carriage, ' Is 
 this the blind-school, and is it full yet f The reply ' No,' though 
 given in a wonderfully kiud voice, sounded to me like a knell. 
 We were made welcome ; the one pupil his name was James 
 was called. I was taken to the schoolroom, and the New Testa- 
 ment, in embossed letters, was put into my hand. I was electrified, 
 and so eager to begin that the teacher sat down beside me, and in 
 three-quarters of an hour I had learned the whole alphabet." 
 
 So here was struck the key-note of that intense crav- 
 ing to learn, that marvellous persistency in learning, 
 which have characterized the whole life of this blind 
 man. He continues : 
 
 "Those were halcyon days. The school, or rather family, con- 
 sisted of the earnest teacher, Mr. Churchman, a blind gentleman, 
 his affectionate and kindly wife, and two pupils. We took all our 
 lessons in their private room. But soon more pupils came, and 
 regular school-work had to begin especially music. I shall never 
 forget my first singing-lesson. I had succeeded so well in my 
 other studies that the teacher called npon me first. He sounded 
 A. I opened my mouth, but the result must have been very funny,
 
 LIGHT IN DAKKNESS. 155 
 
 to judge by the effect produced on my listeners. I was asked to 
 'sing a tune,' in vain; then the teacher hummed one for me to 
 imitate, also in vain. It was discovered that I could not tell one 
 tune from another." 
 
 (A very curious discovery, viewed in the light of a 
 remark which Mr. Campbell cursorily made, after the 
 last annual concert of the Normal College, about a can- 
 tata which I praised. " Yes, 'but we had little time to 
 practise ; I began reading the score in the railway be- 
 tween the Crystal Palace and London only a fortnight 
 before we sang it." Also, another remark which I 
 heard from a noted tenor singer: "That blind man, 
 Mr. Campbell, teaches music better than any sighted 
 teacher I know.") 
 
 " Well, I was considered hopeless, was told I could never leavn 
 music, but must take to basket aud brush making. Piano lessons 
 were regarded as a waste of my time, and forbidden ; the other 
 boys laughed at me : I was left out in the cold. But, determined 
 not to be beaten, I hired one of the boys to give me, secretly, lessons 
 in music, and I practised whenever I could. Three mouths after, 
 the music - master (also blind), accidentally entering the room, 
 said, 'Who is that playing the new lesson so well?' 'I, sir.' 
 ' You, Josie, you cannot play ! Come here ; what have you learned ?' 
 'All that you have taught the other boys, sir.' He laughed. 
 ' Well, then, sit down and play the instruction-book through from 
 the beginning.' I did it. Fifteen months after I gained the prize 
 for pianoforte-playing a medal with the motto Musica lux in tene- 
 bris (which motto now adorns our music-hall at the college). Our 
 school being very poor, we could only afford one piano, on which
 
 156 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 there were so many to play that I had to rise early and practise 
 from four till seven A.M. This winter of 1845-46 was intensely 
 cold at Nashville. Our river was frozen over. We could get no 
 coal ; for a whole month we had to manage with a single fire ; very 
 few lessons were done, but I practised for five to six hours daily, 
 working for half an hour, and then rushing into the play-ground 
 and running round it ten times, which made a mile, and back to 
 my piano again." 
 
 Such a boy was sure to make a remarkable man. By 
 that time young Campbell's sight must have been quite 
 gone, but not without leaving some faint remembrance 
 of the visible world. 
 
 "I am often asked if I can remember how things looked. Ac- 
 cording to my philosophy, no two people ever see a thing in the 
 same way. Thus, if I wish to enjoy a beautiful sight, I try to get 
 several people to look at it and describe it to me at the same time. 
 Each sees it differently. They talk, each giving a separate idea, 
 and I catch the idea of all. In this manner I have seen Niagara, 
 the White Mountains, and even the Alps. But many beautiful 
 things, seen before I became entirely blind, are indelibly impressed 
 on my memory. Such as our grand old orchard, with its peach, 
 apple, cherry, and plum trees, and the clover-field of twenty acres 
 an expanse of brilliant red and white stretching out behind it. 
 To this day, I often go to my piano in the quiet evening and see it 
 all over again the flowery land of my birth. 
 
 "Then, the stars. I wonder if other children love the stars as I 
 did ! As my sight faded, my mother took me out every night be- 
 fore putting me to bed, and made me look up at them from the 
 piazza. Little by little the curtain, was drawn : one night I could
 
 LIGHT m DAKKNESS.. 157 
 
 see nothing. ' Why is it so dark why does not God light up the 
 stars for your little boy ?' I remember to this day the tears which 
 fell on my face as she carried me up to bed. 
 
 "One vivid recollection, just before I became quite blind, influ- 
 enced my whole life. Wheat-threshing was going on ; I sat play- 
 ing in the straw. Our old colored nurse, Aunt Maria, somehow got 
 into disgrace. I heard the stern order, ' Bring the cowhide !' and 
 saw, and shall never forget, the instrument of torture, and poor 
 Aunt Maria kneeliug before it, begging for mercy. I have been an 
 abolitionist ever since, thank God ! 
 
 " A few years later, something happened which firmly settled my 
 convictions. When I was a schoolboy and had a very severe ill- 
 ness a fever after the crisis, I remember waking up as if out of 
 a long sleep. It was the middle of the night a fire was burning ; 
 I heard sobbing in a corner of the room, and asked who was there. 
 It was Aunt Milly, one of the hired servants of our college, and the. 
 mother of ten children, nine of whom had already been sold and 
 scattered she knew not where. Mary, her last, was still a child ; 
 her master had promised to keep her ; and in hiring Milly to our 
 principal, it had been arranged she should come back home and see 
 the child regularly. The cause of her sobbing, which I insisted 
 upon her telling me, she explained thus : ' Massa Joe, I went last 
 Saturday home to see Mary. She not at the gate. Milly 'fraid she 
 very sick. No Mary in kitchen. Cook says, " Go and ask massa." 
 Milly rushed in to the massa. "Where's my Mary?" "If you 
 means the little nigger, she's on her way to Mississippi," said he ; 
 and told me not to fret and he'd give me a new gown at Christmas. 
 But I falls on my knees before him. " So, you won't be good," says 
 he, "then I'll just give you the cowhide;" and Milly got it.' Boy 
 as I was, and Southern-born after this story I was an abolitionist 
 forever."
 
 158 LIGHT IN DAEKNESS. 
 
 And in one instance, which will be told later on, Mr. 
 Campbell suffered severely for his principles. But 
 through all his life, his great aim, after the instruc- 
 tion of the blind, has been the enfranchisement of the 
 
 He has given me various " jottings of child-life " and 
 "jottings of school-life," from which I have taken these 
 extracts, of course condensed, for a practised literary 
 hand can usually put into six words exactly the same 
 thing which others express in twelve ; but it has only 
 been condensation, not alteration, and I call my readers' 
 attention to it, and have been glad to use it thus instead 
 of rewriting it just to show in what a strangely pict- 
 uresque and graphic manner a blind man can put things, 
 to say nothing of the deep pathos of his exceeding sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 His details of boy-life, given with great minuteness 
 of recollection, show that little Francis Joseph must 
 have been, and have tried hard to make himself, very 
 much the same as other boys. 
 
 " I was very fond of hunting and fishing. In company with my 
 brothers, I would ascend the most inaccessible mountain cliffs. I 
 became an expert climber. Once, far from home, we decided to 
 quit the path, and descend the steep face of the mountain, swing- 
 ing ourselves from tree to tree. I could climb any tree that I could 
 clasp with my arms. In my boy-life among the mountains, my 
 chief enemies were the snakes rattlesnakes, copperheads, cotton-
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 159 
 
 months, and vipers. Often I stepped unconsciously over them 
 sometimes on them. Once, working in the cornfield, I took up a 
 large snake in an armful of corn. It struggled to free itself; I felt 
 it, and threw it violently from me, which probably saved my life. 
 The snake was killed, and I resumed my work. I wonder if I have 
 the moral courage to face equal dangers and difficulties still ! 
 
 " To all our farm animals I was devoted, especially to the horses. 
 My father kept one specially for me. She was a fiery, wide-awake 
 little cob; but, if she had been a human being, she could not have 
 understood my blindness better. She would come to me anywhere, 
 wait patiently for me to mount, which I could do without saddle or 
 bridle; and, though on her mettle with others, with me she always 
 carefully picked her way. Even in the mountains I could trust 
 her implicitly, giviug her the rein in difficult places, sure that she 
 would carry me safely over. 
 
 " My father's farm was heavily mortgaged ; he could not afford 
 me a university education, so I determined to earn the money and 
 educate myself. Giving music-lessons was the only way. So I got 
 two pupils, daughters of a Mr. Allen. One of these young ladies 
 seated herself at the piano I sat beside her. ' What shall I do ?' 
 she said. Now, I could play brilliant pieces. As a blind pianist, I 
 had been petted and praised ; I thought myself a wonderful mu- 
 sician. But my knowledge was superficial ; I had not been trained 
 in the art of teaching. What did I really kuow ? How was the 
 music written ? How, above all, was I to teach a sighted person ? 
 And I must teach. It was my only way of getting education. 
 
 " I said to Miss Allen and her sister that they must just play to 
 me to-day ; next week we would make a regular beginning. Then 
 I walked off towards the cemetery. The man was just locking up, 
 but he let me in. I went to the monument of General Carroll, and 
 sat down on its lowest step. What was I to do ? Even to live, I
 
 160 LIGHT IN DABKNESS. 
 
 must earn money to educate myself well, considerable money. 
 And my music, which I had depended on, had crumbled away at 
 the first touch. Our teacher at the blind-school did not know his 
 business. This I now thoroughly realized. He could not help me. 
 What must I do ? The chilliness of night came on. The city bells 
 seemed to ring with a mournful sound. Suddenly I thought of 
 General Carroll, on whose tomb I sat. He once was a poor boy 
 like me, yet for twelve years he was the idolized governor of Ten- 
 nessee. I sprang to my feet, my miud made up. 
 
 " That night I went to find a Mr. Taylor, an Euglishman ; pupil 
 of Moscheles and Mendelssohn one of the best pianists in Ameri- 
 ca. But he had had an unhappy life, and was considered a sort of 
 bear. Not asking me to sit down, he inquired what I wanted. I 
 stammered out, ' Mr. Taylor, I am a fool.' ' Well, Joseph, my boy, 
 I knew that, I have always known it ; but it is less your fault than 
 that of your teachers.' Then I told him my story, and implored 
 him to let me begin music again under his guidance from the very 
 beginning. ' Do you know what you ask, boy ? Your teacher is 
 my friend. He is a good violin-player, but he cannot teach the 
 piano. Get his consent, and I will teach you.' 
 
 " The clock struck ten as he spoke ; but I went oif direct to a 
 good friend of mine, Mrs. Bell, who was one of the great influences 
 in our blind-school, and knew everybody. I told her everything. 
 She arranged the matter. The following Thursday, at seven P.M., I 
 was seated by Mr. Taylor at his piano, and did not leave it till elev- 
 en. Next day the two Miss Aliens had their first lesson from me. 
 A year later, when I was just sixteen years old, I was appointed 
 teacher of music in the very institution where I had first been told 
 I could never learn music." 
 
 These facts involve a curious and much - disputed
 
 LIGHT IN DAEKNESS. , 161 
 
 theory. Most musicians will agree that to attempt to 
 teach their beloved art to any one not a born artist, or, 
 short of that, with at least a tolerable ear, is worse than 
 useless, impossible some may say even culpable, as it 
 wastes time which might be better employed upon 
 something else. Yet I have heard it asserted, and by 
 an accomplished musician and music-teacher, that every 
 human being has an ear and a voice, if properly culti- 
 vated. And Mr. Campbell's own experience is that al- 
 most none of his pupils, when they first came to him, 
 showed special genius for music. 
 
 Therefore, in his case as in many others, we must fall 
 back upon the theory that work is genius. Also that 
 the quiet darkness in which the blind live is peculiarly 
 favorable to the development of any gift connected with 
 the two senses which they have in compensating pro- 
 portion to the one lost sense of sight viz., hearing and 
 touch. Moreover, music, and the making of it, is such 
 an exceeding happiness, a mixture of toil and pleasure, 
 in which the pleasure far surpasses the toil, that the de- 
 duction drawn is obvious. In all systems for the edu- 
 cation of the blind, with a view to lifting them to the 
 ordinary level of self-dependent, self-supporting human 
 beings, music ought to hold the primary place for in 
 this, so far from being more heavily weighted in the 
 race than their brethren, the chances are that they will 
 run lighter, being disencumbered of some hindrances
 
 162 LIGHT IN DABKNESS. 
 
 which sighted people have to contend against. For the 
 same reason, many pianoforte-tuners allege that, when 
 a blind tuner is properly taught his business, he sur- 
 passes all others, from his excessive delicacy and exacti- 
 tude of ear. 
 
 Thus we find the blind boy fairly plunged into life 
 as a young man, maintaining himself by music lessons, 
 while he found time to continue his education in other 
 branches. His college curriculum included mathemat- 
 ics, Latin, and Greek. The first he had great capacity 
 for; the two latter were "positive drudgery." 
 
 "Nevertheless, I was determined to succeed. At first I simply 
 occupied my seat in the class ; but I well remember the surprise of 
 our professor when one day I quietly asked him if the translation 
 was correct. ' Why not ?' ' For two reasons, the second being that, 
 in order to cross, the translator has made the army march down the 
 river, when it should have marched up.' ' Indeed ! give me the 
 book.' He found it was really so. Afterwards he made me recite 
 and translate, and tested me thoroughly for half an hour. Then he 
 said to the class, ' Young gentlemen, I think we have all had a les- 
 son to-day,' shook my hand cordially, and invited me to diue with 
 him." 
 
 Besides being a studious boy, young Campbell must 
 have been an extremely practical one. He tells a story, 
 funny enough, of the way he secretly led a revolution 
 not unnecessary with regard to the food of the school, 
 which was very bad.
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 163 
 
 "We were informed that the low funds of the school made rigid 
 economy necessary. But, while we lived poorly, we knew that our 
 teachers lived exceedingly well. Not that we could see the roast 
 turkeys, geese, etc., but we could smell them. Our remonstrances 
 were in vain. We called an 'indignation' meeting. After much 
 time wasted in talking, I urged that a small committee should he 
 appointed three of us. Though I was the youngest, they made 
 me one. That night, when all were asleep, I managed to get into 
 the larder, and finding there a quantity of dainty food, pies, jel- 
 lies, etc., took away specimens of it, and also of our food, the mis- 
 erable bread, butter, and sausages, given us daily. With this tell- 
 tale basket in my possession, I dared not go to sleep, but waited 
 till half-past five, when the bell summoned us to rise and go for 
 our walk. During the walk I left my basket with Aunt Sarah, a 
 colored woman I knew, who kept a shop. In the afternoon I re- 
 claimed it, and carried it to the President of the Board, a kind old 
 gentleman, to whom I told my story. He disbelieved me. ' Boys, 
 this will never do.' ' Would you see the food, sir f ' Yes, then I 
 will believe, and not till then.' I produced the basket, and he did 
 believe. He asked me, in a tremulous voice, how I got at the 
 things, and I told him the whole truth. ' Boy,' said he, ' that was 
 a very daring thing to do, but plucky, nevertheless. Leave those 
 things with me, and I will see to the matter.' He did, for we heard 
 that nest afternoon a special meeting of directors was called, and 
 within a few days it became known that the principal had re- 
 signed. Whether he ever knew the part I had had in the affair 
 I cannot tell, but certainly I myself have never regretted it." 
 
 There is, there necessarily must be, a little touch of 
 unconscious pride in these details. But it is pride, not
 
 164: LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 so much in personal gifts, which are the source of most 
 people's vanity God knows why, since it is he alone 
 who gives them as in the noble use of these gifts, such 
 as they are, whether small or great ; and it is to spur 
 others on to use theirs that Mr. Campbell tells his most 
 touching and heroic story. 
 
 " At this time," he proceeds, " on account of my teaching and 
 daily attendance at the college, I was obliged to work day and 
 night as well. I employed two readers ; one read for me till ten 
 P.M.; then I went to bed with an alarm-clock set at two A.M. 
 When it sounded I sprang up, dragged my second reader out of 
 bed, and as quickly as possible resumed my work." 
 
 Of course this could not last. It was the old story of 
 " burning the candle at both ends." One day young 
 Campbell suddenly fell ill. The doctor told him unless 
 he took a three months' holiday he had no chance of 
 life. At first he absolutely refused to give up work : 
 then common-sense came to his rescue, and prevented 
 his committing this moral suicide. He allowed his 
 sister to carry him off to the station, and then home, 
 simply inquiring " if his books were packed 2" " Yes," 
 answered the wise doctor, " packed where you will nev- 
 er find them." So, bookless, the student went off on 
 his long holiday to " rest," as, he says, " we so often 
 hear people talk of resting." But his father was living 
 five miles away from the beloved mountain home, in a
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 165 
 
 village, where to encamp, amidst its quiet stagnation, 
 would have been to this ardent nature "like a sen- 
 tence of three months' imprisonment." He announced 
 his intention of going on to the mountain springs, a fa- 
 vorite resort, where some families had built themselves 
 summer cottages. 
 
 " So, my brother, a friend, and myself set out on foot. The first 
 carried a rifle, the second a bag of books for me, and I an axe, bought 
 on purpose for the expedition. I was not very vigorous, so we 
 reached the springs late at night, receiving a hearty welcome. I 
 went to bed, slept for twelve hours, and was fresh again. Then I 
 determined to go on to a cabin five miles farther, which belonged 
 to iny uncle, and was sometimes occupied by his men when tend- 
 ing cattle on the hills. We took a day's food, and walked slowly, 
 reaching the hut about three P.M. It was much out of repair, but 
 I only wanted a place to sleep in at night, and shelter me when it 
 rained. Two miles below it was my uncle's ' house. There we 
 went, and my aunt promised to supply us with food, on condition 
 that we sent for or fetched it." 
 
 What a picture of life among the mountains, the glo- 
 rious, free, wild life, so delightful to the young, if only 
 they have eyes to see ! This young man had none, yet 
 he seems to have done just as well without them. 
 
 "Our first few days we spent in reconnoitring our surround- 
 ings. The hut stood within a few feet of the brow of the moun- 
 tain. If I threw a stone down, I could hear it bounding down for 
 ever so long. By-and-by I learned to clamber up and down this
 
 166 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 cliff, and found ten enormous trees growing there, one above the 
 other, the upper one being only a few feet from the hut door, the 
 lowest about two hundred feet beneath. So I planned and pro- 
 posed what backwoodsmen call a ' cataract,' and sallied forth, axe 
 in hand, to attack my first tree, about four feet in diameter. My 
 strength was below par. I got on slowly. The other two laughed 
 at me, and suggested I should ask for help. But my brother was 
 always out hunting, and he and the other lad took turns in fetch- 
 ing our food and in reading to me of evenings. The weather was 
 glorious ; I soon drank in health at every pore, and was able to cut 
 the whole ten trees, three parts through, in about a month. 
 
 " At last all was ready. The biggest tree the one next to our 
 hut was hewn through, except a very small bit, and prepared to 
 fall. We were greatly excited, for the success of my plan depended 
 upon the way the trees, beginning with the lowest, had been cut, 
 so as to fall straight. I examined all, one by one, then climbed 
 back to the topmost tree, and applied my axe vigorously. Ten 
 minutes more, and I heard my brother call out, 'Hurrah! it's go- 
 ing !' We all leaped aside, lest we should be struck by the falling 
 branches. What a turmoil! Tree after tree began to go, each 
 pressing upon each, till the whole of them went plunging down 
 the mountain-side. The topmost one finally found a resting-place 
 far below. Triumphant with success, we three boys shouted and 
 threw up our hats ; and, finally, we brought our supper and laid it 
 out on the stump of the huge tree which had completed our 'cat- 
 aract.'" 
 
 So vigorous and wholesome a life soon restored the 
 health which for once he had foolishly risked; and 
 young Campbell, after the three months' holiday which
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 167 
 
 he had faithfully promised to take, returned to his work 
 full of strength, energy, and enthusiasm. Thus early he 
 practically proved the wisdom of one of his pet theo- 
 ries in later life, that the physical education of the blind 
 should be held of equal importance with their mental 
 development. This, especially, because experience has 
 convinced him that their average standard of health is 
 many degrees below the average of sighted persons. 
 So much blindness originates in congenital and hered- 
 itary disease, that both in those born blind, and in cases 
 where some unfortunate accident has resulted in inflam- 
 mation or other weakness of the organ, we have more 
 to contend against than in ordinary healthy subjects. 
 Also, the tender trammels in which the blind are mis- 
 takenly kept by their friends, against which " poor 
 blind Joseph " struggled so successfully ; the want of 
 movement, exercise, and general sanitary life help to 
 keep them sensitive and delicate physically. As a rule, 
 the lesson we learn touching the blind nay, all who are 
 afflicted with any inevitable life-long deprivation is 
 this: Pity them not, except silently. Encourage, help 
 them ; but also teach them to help themselves. How- 
 ever little they can do, let them do it. Accustom them 
 to face their misfortune, and instead of making it an 
 excuse for helplessness, idleness, ill-humor faults which 
 we blame in others, but condone in them to use it as 
 a spur for courage and heroism. Sympathy they must
 
 168 LIGHT IN DABKNESS. 
 
 and will have ; but I think the saddest sufferer will admit 
 that it is always better to be reverenced than to be pitied. 
 
 Pity is certainly the last thing which Francis Joseph 
 Campbell seems to have expected or desired. On his 
 return to Nashville, the young man threw himself into 
 the very thick of the battle, the sore battle of life, in 
 which so many fail miserably, even when blessed with 
 all he had not. But his courage and energy were un- 
 conquerable. 
 
 The blind-school to which he belonged was now 
 wanting pupils. Parents were not alive to its advan- 
 tages, and refused to send their children. Campbell 
 was requested to make a short holiday tour through 
 Tennessee, and, having discovered by means of the cen- 
 sus how many blind children there were, to appeal to 
 their parents, and by every possible means to " compel 
 them to come in." He took a young friend with him, 
 and started on horseback from his own home in Frank- 
 lin County. 
 
 Their adventures are as good as a fairy tale ; and, to 
 any one who did not know the hero of them, would ap- 
 pear almost incredible. But this blind man had the 
 indomitable will which, like faith, can "remove moun- 
 tains," or climb over them. I shall let him tell his own 
 story : 
 
 " Knowing the census was very imperfect, I visited all schools, 
 calledupon doctors, clergymen, and even blacksmiths countryfolks
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 169 
 
 always gossip while their horses are shod and by the end of the 
 first week had found three blind children to send to Nashville. With 
 regard to the third, I have some curious recollections. His name 
 was Cornelius Foster. To get him, I had to cross the Hiawassee, a 
 mountain torrent. There were no bridges over it, but there were a 
 ferry and a ford, the former only used when the latter was impassa- 
 ble. Nobody told us of it, so we rode into the stream, and soon 
 found ourselves plunged over a steep bank into deep water. It 
 was my first experience of the kind. I called to George to let his 
 horse go as free as possible, soothed Nelly, and sat perfectly still on 
 her back. She neither returned, nor tried to climb up the bank, 
 but with true instinct swam diagonally, till we gained the opposite 
 shore. There the ferryman called out to us, and explained how we 
 had missed the ford, adding that he would not have crossed as we 
 did for a thousand dollars. We were wet through, but soon dried 
 in the July sun of Tennessee. I found ray little blind boy, arranged 
 with his parents, took him up behind me on Nelly, rode to meet the 
 other two boys at a station, and placed them all in charge of the 
 conductor of the Nashville train, while I went farther in search of 
 other children. 
 
 " I found by the census a little girl named Agnes Jones ; and she 
 lived on Flint Mountain, forty miles off. George and I started. 
 Our route was by Catawba River, then up a swift watercourse 
 called Elk Creek, which, much swollen by recent rains, wound to 
 and fro through a long gorge. We crossed it, I counted, nineteen 
 times. Late in the afternoon we left this watercourse, and followed 
 the zigzag path to the top of the Flint Mountain, which wo reached 
 at sunset, but had still four miles farther to go. George was no 
 mountaineer, but a city boy. Completely worn out with fatigue, 
 he asked if I meant to camp out all night. At that minuto we 
 heard a deep roll of thunder, mountain thunder, and at once the 
 
 8
 
 170 LIGHT IN DAEKNESS. 
 
 storm -was upon ns. Our horses became unmanageable ; we had to 
 dismount and hold them. The storm ended in total darkness. We 
 decided to go back. George declared it was impossible to find the 
 path; so I bade him hold the horses while I found it. Then I 
 went ahead, leading Nelly. I should have felt no fear, but for rat- 
 tlesnakes, of which I knew thirty had been killed during the sum- 
 mer. When the path grew smooth we mounted; but my hand 
 shook so I could scarcely hold the bridle. It rained still, and 
 George declared he could see nothing. So I kept the lead, telliug 
 him I could find the way by the sound of the waterfall, which I 
 heard. But my real trust was in Nelly. We came back to the 
 creek, which we had to cross. At first I hesitated, but Nelly did 
 not. My feet went under water, and I thought all was lost ; but 
 this proved to be the deepest part; we were soon safely over at 
 the other side." 
 
 The self-reliant blind man and his well-trained horse, 
 the courageous cleverness with which he made .use of 
 his very infirmity to guide others through the darkness 
 which was so familiar to him surely no one could read 
 this little anecdote without feeling more than astonish- 
 ment admiration. 
 
 Agnes Jones was safely " caught," put behind him 
 upon Nelly's back, and carried fifty miles, to where an- 
 other little girl, Katie Fleming, was brought to meet 
 her. A third, Lizzie Kelton, was half coaxed, half kid- 
 napped out of the possession of a drunken father, and 
 also carried upon Nelly's back, at first voluntarily, then 
 "screaming and kicking" till her adventurous captor
 
 LIGHT IN DAKKNESS. 171 
 
 soothed her, wrapped her in a sheepskin, fastened her 
 with straps to his waist, and she fell asleep. Thus bur- 
 dened, he rode many miles on the road to Knoxville. 
 Two more captures, Eebecca Smith and Nelly Ham- 
 rnondtree, did this benevolent buccaneer succeed in 
 making. In most cases, the mothers of the children 
 saw the advantages before them, and consented to their 
 going to school the fathers were more difficult to 
 persuade. Still, Mr. Campbell did persuade them all 
 at last. 
 
 " I sent George home with the horses ; and I, with my little girls, 
 went by train to Dalton, Georgia ; then through Chattanooga, on 
 to Nashville. I had spent about four times the money voted to me 
 for this tour: had it failed, I should have been severely blamed. 
 But it succeeded, and the extra sum was cheerfully paid. My little 
 girls did well. Years afterwards, when teaching in Boston, both 
 Lizzie Kelton and Nelly Hammondtree sent me tokens of remem- 
 brance. Each had prospered in life, and, moreover, each had re- 
 claimed the drunken father who tried to prevent her going to the 
 school." 
 
 In 1856, Mr. Campbell resigned his connection with 
 this school the Tennessee Institution for the Blind 
 and went North to realize the dream of his life and 
 study at Harvard University. Previously he went to 
 spend some months at Bridgewater. There he met a 
 Miss Bond. In August of the same year he married 
 her, and within a month of that day all his savings were
 
 172 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 lost by the sudden failure of a firm to which he had in- 
 trusted them. Twenty pounds, which he happened to 
 have in his pocket, alone remained to him except his 
 indomitable courage. 
 
 " Within forty-eight hours I was on my way South once more, 
 and had accepted the musical directorship of a large and flourish- 
 ing girls' school. But I had scarcely entered upon my work, when 
 a lion appeared in the path." 
 
 This was the discovery among the townsmen of his 
 abolitionist opinions. They argued with him, abused 
 him, even hinted at "lynching" him. Finally, they 
 gave notice to all the parents of his pupils that the 
 lessons must be stopped. It was vain to fight longer 
 against the stream. Next day he and his wife depart- 
 ed from their home, which he did not again revisit for 
 eighteen years. 
 
 They went first to Nashville, where the next-door 
 neighbor was a Baptist clergyman. One Monday morn- 
 ing they heard proceeding thence the most heart-rend- 
 ing screams. A servant told them that when the cler- 
 gyman's wife had gone to church she left two colored 
 girls to wash the floor, which they did badly. Being 
 Sunday, she could not whip them then, but "at four 
 o'clock on Monday morning massa came in and whipped 
 us dreadfully " whipping also a boy of thirteen, recent- 
 ly purchased in Georgia, and unaccustomed to the cold
 
 LIGHT IN DAKKNESSV 173 
 
 of Nashville, where the winter was exceptionally se- 
 vere. 
 
 "Poor Ecnben crawled over on his hands and knees to beg for 
 something to eat. He had been made to chop wood in his bare 
 feet; they were horribly frostbitten, and two of his toes had 
 dropped off. He had received five hundred lashes that after- 
 noon." 
 
 In an agony of indignation, Mr. Campbell went to 
 Dr. Winston, a benevolent and philanthropic man ; but 
 philanthropy failed here. 
 
 "'My young friend,' said he, laying his hand on my arm with 
 great feeling, ' we are all in this business. If we begin, where will 
 it end ? No, no ; we may wish for a different state of things, but 
 we are powerless to bring it about.' " 
 
 Fate, however, was not powerless, but did bring 
 about, in strange and terrible ways, the deserved end. 
 Awful as the American Civil War was, probably noth- 
 ing short of it would have accomplished the freedom of 
 the slave. 
 
 Mr. Campbell had nothing to do with that fighting, 
 his own battle of life being hard enough. He got tem- 
 porary work at the Wisconsin Institution for the Blind ; 
 then he had to leave it, and bring his wife for medical 
 help to Boston. " At this time," he says, " we were so 
 poor that my own food never cost me more than six- 
 pence a day." He was in a strange city his wife
 
 174: LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 placed as a private patient in a hospital, and himself 
 seeking everywhere for work. 
 
 " One day I resolved to visit the Perkins Institution for the Blind. 
 It was four miles off. I had to walk and find my way. Broadway 
 is a long street ; the institution was still a mile off. I knew the 
 sidewalk was broad, and the cross-streets ran at right angles. So 
 exact had been my information that when I felt the iron fence of 
 the institution I was able to walk up the stone steps and ring the 
 bell. I asked for Dr. Howe, the principal. When he came, he in- 
 quired if I was partially blind. ' No, totally so.' ' But I have been 
 watching you up Broadway. You avoided the trees and the peo- 
 ple ; you walked up and rang the bell. Surely you can see light !' 
 I replied by taking off my glasses. He was satisfied." 
 
 After a day spent in examining the institution, espe- 
 cially the musical department, Dr. Howe asked his visit- 
 or what he thought of it. Mr. Campbell's answer was 
 wholly unsatisfactory. Music had been a total failure 
 in the school he did not wonder at this and he ex- 
 plained the reasons. An experiment was proposed to 
 supersede the former teacher and give Mr. Campbell 
 his position, at half his salary ; this the spirited young 
 fellow refused. 
 
 " The doctor urged that the public would not allow him to pay a 
 blind man as much as a sighted man. 'But,' I said, 'you employ 
 me because you thiuk I should do better than a sighted man. I 
 will not be underpaid ; but, if you like, I will teach one term for 
 nothing;' which, having got some private pupils, I was now able 
 to do. So it was settled that the experiment should be tried."
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 175 
 
 It succeeded perfectly. Mr. Campbell was formally 
 established on his own terms. These included two rev- 
 olutionary movements the abolition of all the old, 
 worn-out pianos, as it was impossible " to make bricks 
 without straw ;" and permission to choose twenty boys 
 and girls to be educated, physically and intellectually, as 
 well as musically, according to his wishes. 
 
 " The 6rst one sent up to me was a musical prodigy. But he did 
 not know the multiplication-table, and, as he had been at school 
 several years, I declined him. Many others came with the same re- 
 sult. At last I said, ' Send me the best boy at mathematics ;' and 
 Thomas Roche came and gave me without hesitation a beautiful 
 demonstration of the square of the hypothenuse. ' Thomas,' said I, 
 'you will do; would you like to study music?' 'Yes, sir, but I 
 have no ear ; I have been turned out of the musical department.' 
 ' Never mind !' and I told him my own story. He became my pu- 
 pil ; and ten years after, at his death, this same Thomas Roche left 
 a good sum of money, his own earnings by teaching music, to the 
 Perkins Institution. My nineteen others were scarcely less suc- 
 cessful." 
 
 Certainly, could any mortal command success, this 
 imperious fighter against hard fortune seems to have 
 done it. Possibly he comes from the old Campbell 
 race, the Highland chieftains whose blood is so blue 
 that when their heir lately married a queen's daughter 
 there were those who considered that the royal family 
 was the one honored by the alliance ! But of his birth 
 I can say nothing; for this self-dependent, self-made
 
 176 LIGHT IN BARENESS. 
 
 man seems entirely to ignore his grandfathers and great- 
 grandfathers. It is a not ignoble pride to be proud of 
 one's ancestors ; but it is a nobler pride to make our de- 
 scendants proud of us. 
 
 Mr. Campbell was now fairly established at Boston. 
 
 "My greatest difficulty there," he writes, "as it has been in all 
 my experience, was the low physical condition of the blind. In 
 their education every effort should be made to supply this deficien- 
 cy, else their ambition and confidence will always be much below . 
 that of the average student. It is useless to say to the blind, ' Go !' 
 the word must be, 'Cornel' Therefore I used to take my boys 
 daily to swim in the open sea; also we went long rowing expedi- 
 tions. Once we chartered a schooner, and went far out to sea, fish- 
 ing. I led a party of them up Mount Mansfield, and another up 
 Mount Washington. A Southerner myself, I had never been on the 
 ice. In my first winter at Boston I learned to skate, and insisted 
 on my boys learning too. But in the winter of 1861 my lungs be- 
 came affected. Dr. Howe urged a sea-voyage to South America, 
 telling me that otherwise I should not live a year. This news had 
 the contrary effect from what my advisers anticipated. If my life 
 was to be short, I felt I must do as much in it as possible. I re- 
 sumed, and even increased, my out-door sports. I took the precau- 
 tion of having an open fire, avoiding the hot air of the Boston 
 stoves, and that was all. Praise be to God ! instead of a year of 
 life, he has given me twenty and may give me twenty more, to 
 work in behalf of the blind." 
 
 In this spirit, no wonder the man worked, and worked 
 well. His eleven years' connection with the Perkins
 
 LIGHT IN DAKKNES&. 177 
 
 Institution was an entire success. His energy and ac- 
 tivity never failed. But the history and working of this 
 noted institution are well known in America, and to 
 repeat the details in England is unnecessary. 
 
 During the winter of 1868-9, Mr. Campbell's health 
 again broke down. Added to his incessant labors were 
 domestic trials of the severest kind. His wife had be- 
 come a confirmed invalid. Often he had to work all 
 day, come home and sit up all night, fulfilling the duties 
 of sick-nurse. But of these sorrows he seldom speaks, 
 nor is there any need to speak. Dr. Howe and the trus- 
 tees urged him to go to Europe for a year, promising 
 to continue his salary the while. The Harvard Musi- 
 cal Association of Boston gave a grand concert, and 
 presented him with the proceeds. Every one seemed 
 glad to help in his need a man who had helped himself, 
 and many others, to the utmost of his power. 
 
 So in August, 1869, Mr. Campbell, with his wife and 
 son, sailed from New York to Liverpool. Though only 
 in that town a few hours, he contrived to visit the In- 
 stitution for the Blind there ; and noticed, with perhaps 
 pardonable pride, that the amount of intelligence among 
 the pupils seemed less than in America. His travels, 
 ostensibly for health, were continually used for pur- 
 poses of study every kind of study that could help on 
 the great work of his life, the amelioration of the condi- 
 tion of the blind. 
 
 8*
 
 178 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 "I arrived at Leipzig about the middle of October, where, by the 
 kindness of Professor Mosclieles and others, I was allowed the free- 
 dom of the Conservatoire, and could spend as much time as I chose 
 in the classes of any or all of the professors. After six months I 
 went on to Berlin, and became a private pupil of Professor Theo- 
 dor Kullak, whose Conservatoire, and that of Karl Tausig, I also 
 attended. My object was to study thoroughly the method of teach- 
 ing pursued in these various establishments." 
 
 To teach music being, as Mr. Campbell explained 
 when he chose his class of twenty at the Perkins Insti- 
 tution, a very different thing, and requiring different 
 qualifications, from being a musical genius, composer, 
 or performer, for this part of the profession the exceed- 
 jng thoroughness necessary in the education of the blind, 
 when properly educated, is a great advantage. At first 
 sight, the idea that a capacity for understanding the 
 square of the hypothenuse should help a man in teach- 
 ing music seems ridiculous. But real musicians, who 
 know what an exact science their beloved art is, or 
 ought to be made, will think differently. And it is 
 noticeable in how many persons, as in Mr. Campbell, 
 the faculty for mathematics and music, as well as the 
 love of both, is combined. Many admirable organists, 
 and one composer, Dr. G. A. Macfarren, have proved 
 that it is possible for the blind to master the utmost 
 difficulties of musical science. But they must do it by 
 an amount of patience, perseverance, and sound instruc-
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 179 
 
 tion, both on their own side and their teachers', double 
 what is required from sighted persons. 
 
 Also their education is much more expensive. Raised 
 maps, raised books everything that must necessarily be 
 acquired by the sense of touch only cost money, and a 
 great deal of money. Mr. Campbell travelled from city 
 to city, informing himself on all these points ; studying 
 all the various systems, so as to be able, when he re- 
 turned, to carry on his work not only on satisfactory 
 but economical principles. Having learned everywhere 
 as much as he possibly could, and regained a fair amount 
 of health with which to put his experience to use, he 
 turned his thoughts homewards, and began, as he sup- 
 posed, his journey back to America ; reaching London 
 on the 21st January, 1871, exactly ten years from this 
 day on which I am writing. Looking back, it seems as 
 marvellous a ten years' work as any man ever accom- 
 plished. It has been not the work which he had pro- 
 posed to do. but another work in another land. Thus 
 it came about, by that which some call chance and oth- 
 ers Providence : 
 
 " On the first day of our arrival in London, a gentleman at the 
 hotel happened to say he was going to a blind tea-meeting. I 
 accompanied him. Till then I never felt the overpowering sadness 
 of blindness helpless, not helpful, blindness. There must have 
 been between three and four hundred persons present, led by their 
 wives, their children, hired guides, or dogs. The food was good ;
 
 180 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 the kindness great. But the whole thing seemed unreal. I heard 
 the blind recipients express their gratitude for their blessings, but 
 there seemed an uudercurreut of feeling which, could it have been 
 put into words, would have implied, ' Why am I thus ?' On talking 
 with many of them, I satisfied myself that, by proper training, these 
 miserable objects of charity might have been made self-sustaining, 
 useful members of society. I went home and spent a sleepless 
 night. Next morning I told my wife that we should not sail as 
 planned, and arranged with the Iiiraau Line to extend our tickets." 
 
 His next step was to deliver one of his two letters of 
 introduction. This was to Dr. Armitage, well known 
 for his interest in the blind, and his devotion of life and 
 fortune to the amelioration of their condition. For 
 some months the two gave their combined energies to 
 the investigation of blind-institutions, hoping to intro- 
 duce new methods of instruction. Being unsuccessful, 
 they boldly started an experimental school, taking for it 
 three small houses in Paxton Terrace, opposite the Low 
 Level station of the Crystal Palace the same where I 
 first found Mr. Campbell and his little flock. 
 
 " This was in February, 1872. On March 1st we received two 
 pupils, little boys from Leeds, and began our school as a private 
 family. But by the middle of May we had received so many that 
 we had to organize regular school- work, under two lady teachers, 
 Miss Green and Miss Faulkner, and a piano-tuner, Mr. J. W. Smith. 
 Besides all iny other work, I managed to give the musical instruc- 
 tion myself." 
 
 Single-handed, as indeed his whole life has been, Mr.
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 181 
 
 Campbell carried out his system, and with such marvel- 
 TouTsuccess that at the two years' end he felt justified 
 in trying for a much larger house, on the top of the 
 hill. In the midst of these plans, his wife's long suffer- 
 ings were ended. She died in August, 1873, leaving 
 him a son, now a fine young fellow, who from child- 
 hood has been to his father everything that the poor 
 mother could not be. But private sorrows should never 
 hinder public work, and did not. 
 
 " I was resolved," says Mr. Campbell, " that, before tbetwo years 
 experiment was ended, broad foundations should be laid for perma- 
 nent usefulness. The Duke (then Marquis) of Westminster came 
 down to me one afternoon to look over the Mount and hear all rea- 
 sons for and against it. When he left he offered to give 1000 
 towards the purchase of it." 
 
 From such a generous beginning other help followed, 
 and by October in the same year Mr. Campbell had mi- 
 grated, with all his pupils, to the house which formed 
 the nucleus of what is now the Eoyal Normal College 
 for the Blind, Westow Street, Upper Norwood. 
 
 Its history is public property, and its advantages can 
 be investigated by all who choose to visit it. A most 
 pleasant, comfortable, and picturesque building ; with 
 excellent class-rooms, a fine music-hall, a garden, a play- 
 ground, and gymnasium ; a lake, used for swimming in 
 summer and skating in winter; workshops of several 
 kinds, especially for the tuning and even making of
 
 182 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 pianos all this has grown out of the small school in 
 Paxton Terrace, and through the indomitable perse- 
 verance, energy, and " pluck " of one man, the little 
 Tennessee lad who was mourned over as " poor, blind 
 Joseph." 
 
 Lastly and I am glad to add this, since, however he- 
 roic and successful a man's work in the world may be, 
 a lonely man, or a man who "carries a stone in his 
 heart," must always be a rather sad picture within the 
 grounds of the college is a separate little house, where 
 a very different picture may be seen. In the summer 
 of 1874, Mr. Campbell, revisiting his native land, again 
 met Miss Faulkner, an American young lady who had 
 been one of the two teachers at the beginning of the 
 Paxton Terrace School, having joined in the work with 
 all her heart, and only left it when recalled home by 
 the illness of her father. They once more took counsel 
 together upon the question which had been the great 
 interest of both their lives, went over various blind-in- 
 stitutions, and compared experiences. After a pleasant 
 sojourn, during which he revisited many familiar places, 
 including his old home, from which he had been absent 
 so many years, Mr. Campbell returned to England, and 
 recommenced his work. But he soon found, as he sim- 
 ply and touchingly puts it, " that he could not work 
 alone." He once more sailed to America, and brought 
 back Miss Faulkner as his wife.
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS, 183 
 
 Since then all has prospered with hirn and his work, 
 in which he and his helpmate go hand-in-hand. She 
 still teaches as well as he, and, self-reliant as he is, her 
 bright, active, intelligent aid, as well as that of his eld- 
 est son by his first marriage, is not unwelcome to this 
 happy and independent blind man, who goes about 
 among his sighted family as capable as any of them all. 
 Capable not only of work, but enjoyment, for with his 
 son, his constant companion, he has done no end of 
 travelling, in Switzerland especially. He has even 
 climbed Mont Blanc, being the first blind man who 
 ever accomplished that feat. How far it was a wise or 
 desirable feat, opinions differ ; but it served the one 
 great purpose of his life, the "light in darkness" which 
 he has carried everywhere about with him, passing it on 
 like a beacon-fire from hill to hill, with the watchword, 
 not so much " Help us !" as " Help us to help ourselves." 
 
 The extent to which he has taught his pupils to help 
 themselves is incredible except to those who witness it. 
 Starting on the principle that the blind should be en- 
 couraged from the very first to do as much as they can 
 for themselves, to consider themselves not as aliens from 
 ordinary life and education, but able to acquire though, 
 of course, with greater difficulty almost everything 
 that other children can acquire, to work as they work, 
 and play as they play, he has succeeded in making his 
 school not merely a blind-school, where every thing must
 
 184: LIGHT IN DAKKNESS. 
 
 be regarded with pitying reservations, but one where 
 the standard of education can compete with that of any 
 similar establishment in the country. 
 
 In music especially. I lately sat and listened to a 
 lesson he gave his choir, a five-part chorus out of " The 
 Woman of Samaria," which they tried for the first time. 
 He read it to them bar by bar ; they wrote it down by 
 the Braille system of notation, and sang it " at sight," 
 as we say each separate part, and then the whole, with 
 scarcely an error. Afterwards, just for my pleasure 
 and their own, he made them sing another chorus out 
 of the same work, newly learned, which they gave with 
 a purity of intonation and accuracy of musical reading 
 quite remarkable. Also, with such an evident pleasure 
 in this, the greatest gift that blind people can use, for 
 themselves and the world the power of making music. 
 Watching those rows of sightless faces of all ages, and 
 listening to the exquisitely beautiful voices of some of 
 them, the words they sang, which happen to be "In 
 thy light shall we see light," became less a despair than 
 a hope, even in this world. 
 
 Hope and courage are, indeed, the ruling elements in 
 the Normal College. It is not a charity : everybody 
 pays, or is paid for, a fair and fixed sum, like any ordi- 
 nary boarding-school. Nevertheless, the history of the 
 institution contains many a sealed page, which its prin- 
 cipal will not allow me to open : stories of forlorn chil-
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. , 185 
 
 dren rescued some even from the workhouse and 
 educated gratis into useful independence; of young 
 women made capable of maintaining not only them- 
 selves, but their parents ; of young men helped to emi- 
 grate, and carrying out a happy and successful life in 
 the colonies. As vocalists, music-teachers, and piano- 
 tuners, the pupils year by year go out into the world, 
 and earn their honest, independent bread. " In fact," 
 said Mr. Campbell to me, " in all these ten years we 
 have only had four failures : two because they came to 
 us too old to learn, and two because they" with a hes- 
 itating smile " began going to the public-house." 
 
 This is one of Mr. Campbell's "crotchets," as one 
 half the world might consider it, but the other half 
 know that it is one of the strongest guarantees for the 
 success of his work. He allows no drink of any sort to 
 enter the college. Tobacco also is forbidden. There- 
 fore, all smokers and wine-bibbers are kept safely out of 
 that peaceful domain. 
 
 Besides his American temperance, he carries out the 
 principle of American democracy. No class -distinc- 
 tions are allowed. All ranks work together; play to- 
 gether subject to the same regulations. But, to obvi- 
 ate many difficulties that might arise from this plan, 
 he never takes any pupil without a three months' trial, 
 and remorselessly refuses any " black sheep," who mor- 
 ally or socially might corrupt the rest.
 
 186 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 The system pursued in his large, busy, happy family 
 still a family I shall not attempt to enter into. It 
 is explained in reports, and visitors can go and see its 
 working for themselves. "Busy," "happy" those 
 two essential necessities he tries to make them all. 
 " If we work," one of his pupils said to me, " we are 
 all right with Mr. Campbell. But if we don't work" 
 an ominous pause. Yes, I could imagine the rest. 
 Unlucky position ! to be drone in that hive. 
 
 It reminds one of a hive, with its " murmur of innu- 
 merable bees." The piano-tuning ; the practising, vo- 
 cal and instrumental, which goes on incessantly ; the 
 hum of the class-rooms ; the chattering, shouting, and 
 laughing of the play-grounds verily, these blind young 
 people are neither deaf nor dumb. Their frolics last 
 Christmas were wonderful. There was a grand "Christ- 
 mas-tree, and afterwards all sighted visitors were blind- 
 folded " to make things equal," as Mr. Campbell said, 
 with a smile. " And didn't we have fun !" 
 
 Besides fun, he gives to his pupils the blessing of 
 usefulness. An earnestly religious man, though with no 
 sectarian bias, Mr. Campbell opens his fine music-hall 
 every Sunday evening after church service is over, and 
 admits to it by tickets all the poor of the neighbor- 
 hood. Cabmen, mechanics, laborers, of whom there are 
 so many connected with the Crystal Palace close by, 
 come regularly, with their wives and families, to have
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 187 
 
 an hour of sacred music, ending with the Lord's Prayer 
 and a very short address on some sacred subject. Noth- 
 ing prosy, nothing doctrinal, yet something which all 
 can listen to, and a hymn in which all are bid to join 
 "singing with melody in their hearts to the Lord." 
 The good that this may do the numbers who may be 
 kept out of the public-houses of a Sunday night by 
 "going to hear the blind folks sing" there is no need 
 to enlarge upon. 
 
 Nor, indeed, have I space to say any more. My 
 " subject " has, let us hope, a long life before him yet. 
 A happy life, with his wife at his side, and his children 
 growing up around him. I will not break the sancti- 
 ties of private life by describing his home, or his life 
 therein, except by one word, in which was put briefly 
 the substance of all I have written here, and the pur- 
 pose of all I meant to write. 
 
 " Mrs. Campbell," I said to her one day, " your hus- 
 band is an exceedingly clever man." 
 
 "No," she answered, "he is not cleverer than many 
 other men. But the difference between him and all 
 other people I ever knew is this he makes use of all 
 his opportunities" 
 
 If only we all did the same !
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 " Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow ; 
 Nor ever wind blows loudly : but it lies 
 Deep-meadowed, happy ; fair with orchard-lawns, 
 And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea." 
 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 " YEDERE Napoli e poi morir." And I truly believe 
 I should have died, had we stayed many days longer in 
 that most abominable of cities, which, despite its lovely 
 position, seated queen-like, with head on the hill-tops 
 and feet in the blue Mediterranean, and blessed with a 
 climate the most heavenly in Europe, will always rest 
 upon my mind as a place to be fled from, almost as Lot 
 fled from the Cities of the Plain. 
 
 Imagine the worst population of the worst dens in 
 Paris, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, degraded to the 
 lowest depth that misery and vice, acting and reacting 
 upon one another, can degrade. A race ugly, stunted, 
 diseased, deformed, not pent up within its own quar- 
 ters, but sweeping like a flood through all the streets 
 streets where everybody drives ; no decent person ever
 
 192 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 attempts to walk : picture this, and you have a faint 
 conception of the miserable, beautiful, diabolical city 
 of which a friend who had long known it said to me, 
 sorrowfully, the other day, " that the best wish he could 
 have for Naples was to become a second Pompeii in a 
 new eruption of Vesuvius." 
 
 Yet there she sits, as sat Neapolis of old, in view of 
 the same magnificent bay, the same gracefully curved 
 mountain, with its slender spiral of white smoke curl- 
 ing innocently into the intense blue sky ; and the easy- 
 minded folk who travel en prince and see all things in 
 Naples, mundane or moral, from the point of view of 
 the Hotel Bristol, go away saying that it is the most 
 charming place in the world. But to any one who pos- 
 sesses what has been called " the enthusiasm of human- 
 ity," who has a keen sense of the humanness of travel 
 of the pleasure of observing, meditating upon, and 
 taking an interest in one's fellow-creatures, noting the 
 points of difference as well as of unity, and coming to 
 the tender conclusion that they are our fellow-creatures 
 after all to such a -one this lovely city is one of the 
 saddest cities under God's sun. 
 
 We fled from it, even though it was into a mist al- 
 most as dense as that into which historians tell us the 
 wretched Pompeians fled when the burning mountain 
 drove them into the sea, and the heaving sea threw 
 them back upon the land. On the quay alas! I
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 193 
 
 shall never hear that exquisite song "Santa Lucia" 
 without catching in memory a whiff of the abominable 
 odor of the Chiaja on the quay one could scarcely see 
 ten yards ahead. The Bay of Naples, with all its mag- 
 nificent views, had totally disappeared. The little 
 steamer bound for Capri was half invisible. Beyond 
 it stretched an impenetrable, not blackness, but white- 
 ness, shrouding the entire sea-world, and extending a 
 good way up into the clouds. Such a fog, the Neapoli- 
 tans told us, had not been seen here for more than 
 twenty years. 
 
 Still, since the Capri boat was starting, a friend ad- 
 vised us to risk everything, and start with her. For, 
 though she was advertised to sail daily, she very sel- 
 dom did. The slightest hindrance such as a not suf- 
 ficient complement of passengers, or an unpropitious 
 wind, which would hinder the said passengers from en- 
 tering the Blue Grotto, or even a slight breeze, so as to 
 make their voyage unpleasant is always enough to de- 
 tain these fair-weather sailors. What would they think 
 of our sailors and our steamboats, which go ploughing 
 in any weather through our stormy northern seas? 
 
 This sea was calm, at any rate; a perfect duck-pond. 
 We traversed it blindly, not seeing more than a few 
 yards before us, yet with the aggravating knowledge 
 that on every side was the wonderful scenery of that 
 wonderful bay. We had to imagine everything, for 
 9
 
 194 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 nothing could we behold. However, we had our dis- 
 tractions, in the shape of some more than ordinarily 
 queer tourists, and a wandering vocalist who sang 
 "Santa Lucia" and various other Neapolitan ballads 
 in a sweet tenor voice, and with skill and expression 
 that would have done credit to many finished singers. 
 Truly, Italians seem born to sing, like their own night- 
 ingales. But they cannot work as we can. The dolce 
 far niente penetrates their inmost souls; even if they 
 do contrive to do something, it is done slowly, lazily, 
 desultorily. An English or Scotch steamboat would 
 have made the voyage in an hour. We started, or were 
 supposed to start, at half-past eight, yet it was nearly 
 noon and we had not reached our "Island of the Blest," 
 the name enthusiastic travellers give to Capri. 
 
 But had I not better say a word about that island ? 
 for it is astonishing how little many people know of it 
 till they actually go there. 
 
 Capri is an enormous rock, probably of volcanic ori- 
 gin, dropped in the middle of the Bay of Naples. Be- 
 tween it and the nearest point of the mainland, Sorren- 
 to, is a bocca, or mouth, narrow enough to row across 
 that is, in calm weather. But when the sea is rough 
 and the smiling Mediterranean is subject to sudden and 
 fearful storms the little island is as completely shut 
 off from communication with its continent as was the 
 fabled Atlantis, the real " Island of the Blest." You
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLUEST. 195 
 
 can go and return in a single day as I said, the Nea- 
 politan navigators always choose the finest of fine days, 
 and will not sail on any other ; but if you stay longer 
 than a day, you may chance to stay a good deal longer 
 still. Close as it looks to Naples, and easy as the pas- 
 sage seems, it is a difficult place to get to, and a still 
 more difficult place to get away from if anybody ever 
 could wish to get away from Capri ! 
 
 Tiberius did not. Its most prominent peak, Tim- 
 berio (a corruption of his name) is still covered with 
 the remains of the largest of the twelve villas which he 
 is said to have built here. And as, the mist melting 
 away, we see the island rising like a flower out of the 
 smooth expanse of sea. we wonder not that the luxu- 
 rious old emperor loved it so in his latter days, or that 
 his predecessor, Augustus, who exchanged Ischia for it, 
 and only enjoyed it two years, was equally devoted to 
 this insular Paradise. There surely peace might be 
 found, if it could ever be found in this world, by either 
 bad men or good men. Which these old Romans were, 
 whether better or worse than their descendants, who 
 can decide? The stories told us of King Bomba at 
 Naples parallel the traditions left by Tiberius in Capri. 
 
 Both are alike indifferent to us now, as we sit on 
 deck, penetrated through and through by the brightest 
 of sunshine, though it is only the first week of March, 
 and watch the boat stop, and a few enterprising tourists
 
 196 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 descend to the Blue Grotto, called by some " one of the 
 wonders of the world." 
 
 On seeing it some days afterwards, we rather doubted 
 that fact. It is merely a huge vaulted chamber, floored 
 with heaving sea-water of an intense blue, and lit by 
 daylight which enters through a low arch, under which 
 you can only pass by lying down flat in your boat, when 
 the sea is calm. A true mermaid's cave, very curious 
 and beautiful, if it could be seen in solitude ; but when 
 boat-load after boat-load of vociferous tourists enters, 
 filling it with a confused jabber of French, German, 
 English, and American (there is a difference), mingled 
 with the shrill Italian of the small boy, who persists in 
 wanting to dive that you may see the color of the blue 
 water upon flesh then all the imaginary mermaids flee 
 away, and the Blue Grotto becomes a very ordinary 
 " wonder of the world " indeed. 
 
 There is a green grotto on the other side of the island 
 indeed, there are grottos and caves without number 
 all round it, and, ag we now clearly see, its perpendicu- 
 lar cliffs rise sheer out of the sea to the height of sev- 
 eral hundred feet. Nowhere, save in the northwest 
 coast of Ireland it is strange how far we travel, leav- 
 ing unseen grander beauty close at home nowhere 
 else have I ever beheld such rocks. Except for its two 
 landing-places, the Marina Grande and the Piccola Ma- 
 rina, the lovely island stands absolutely inaccessible,
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 197 
 
 protected by natural fortresses against the whole out- 
 side world. 
 
 The Capri " world " into which we are now coming 
 seems wholly composed of women and donkeys. The 
 tiny quay is thronged by them, shouting, screaming, 
 gesticulating I mean the women their four-footed 
 companions standing meekly beside. They are of all 
 ages, from the wrinkled crone, so familiar a sight in 
 Italy yellow, skinny, toothless, yet with much regular- 
 ity of features, and a ghostly gleam of long-faded beauty 
 glittering in her dark eyes down to the young girl of 
 thirteen, just budding into what her grandmother once 
 was. 
 
 Capri women are renowned for their good looks, and 
 truly. It is said that Tiberius's thousand slaves, chosen 
 mostly for their beauty, have left behind in the island 
 distinct types thereof Greek, Koman, and even Egyp- 
 tian. I saw more than one face which might have 
 made a study for a Cleopatra or a sphinx; and the 
 coloring, pure warm brown, almost olive, with the 
 wholesome blood coursing under it, was something 
 marvellous. All beauty is delightful; but human 
 beauty, and of a kind so rare, is the best of all. We 
 forgot everything in the mere pleasure of gazing, till 
 reminded that we had still a mile and more to reach 
 our hotel, and there were no carriages, no roads noth- 
 ing but a steep path, and one's own two feet, or the
 
 198 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 four feet of some equally patient but much stronger 
 animal. 
 
 But the journey has to be done, and so we do it; at 
 first walking, then thankfully condescending or as- 
 cending to the back of a donkey, which, led by an old 
 woman and driven from behind by a small boy, suc- 
 ceeds in mounting what looked at first like climbing 
 the side of a house. Soon a long procession follows, 
 chiefly composed of women, each carrying on her head 
 a passenger's luggage portmanteau, bag, or box 
 sometimes of size and weight quite startling* But 
 there is, apparently, no other form of porterage, and 
 these girls, accustomed to it from earliest youth, seern 
 to hesitate at nothing. However, their occupation has 
 stunted their growth and spoiled their figures. Beauti- 
 ful as their faces are, we could not find one tall or grace- 
 ful woman among them. 
 
 Yet they seem so happy, so merry ; laughing and 
 chattering in that absolutely unintelligible Caprese, in- 
 termixed with a few words of Italian or French for the 
 benefit of the forestieri. By the time we arrive at 
 what seems the hill-top a small town, with a tiny 
 piazza, and two or three narrow passages, politely called 
 streets, which constitute the great metropolis of Capri 
 we feel quite friendly with them all. 
 
 We have our choice between two hotels Pagano, 
 German and artistic ; and Quisisana, mostly chosen by
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 199 
 
 families, especially those who come to winter here. 
 We prefer the latter, where we shortly find ourselves 
 "at home." Strange, how one gets to use the word, 
 even for a hotel which has anything of comfort in it. 
 
 This one had. We determined not to die, but to 
 live, only too glad we had come alive out of Naples. 
 From the window of our bright and pleasant room we 
 could look upon such a landscape and seascape ! Old 
 Tiberius, with his jaded eyes and sick heart if he ever 
 had a heart must have been refreshed by it. 
 
 But why attempt to describe an Island of the Blest, 
 which is so easy to behold being only five days' jour- 
 ney from this dear old foggy, rainy, chilly island of 
 ours? Yet what a change! From sunless skies and 
 leafless trees to a .climate warm, clear, and bright the 
 blue heavens above and the blue sea below rivalling 
 each other in their intensity of color. Vegetation, new 
 and strange, is already waking up into spring beauty. 
 There are whole gardens of peach-blossom decking the 
 southern slopes, and all up the hillside, to the little 
 chapel which crowns the height they call Timberio, rise 
 terrace after terrace of gray-green olives. Below, in the 
 hotel garden, are great acanthus plants and newly bud- 
 ded vines, ready to cover the trellised walls,. which in 
 summer will be so cool and lovely. And, they say, the 
 wild flowers are everywhere abundant, and as beautiful 
 as those of Switzerland.
 
 200 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 It is I 'embarras de richesses ; but finally we decide, 
 like Ulysses, to follow the sunset, which hides itself be- 
 hind Anacapri, on the other side of the island. So, af- 
 ter an hour's rest, off we start again. 
 
 This village of Anacapri is a curious place. Though 
 only a few miles distant from the landing-place and 
 town of Capri, there was till lately no road, and almost 
 no communication, between the two. It is said also 
 there were almost no intermarriages the Anacapri folk 
 being a distinct and much rougher race, from whom the 
 Capri fishers and Capri girls shrank even as they now 
 shrink from the Neapolitans. To go to Naples! to 
 marry a Neapolitan ! more than one Capri damsel said 
 to us, with an unmistakable shudder " she would never 
 think of such a thing." 
 
 Nature is delightful ; but still more so is human nat- 
 ure. Lovely as the view was a succession of perfect 
 pictures, as we mounted in zigzags up the newly made 
 road, catching at each turn something fresh to look at 
 still, I own, my attention was divided between this 
 and the girl who led my donkey, with her bright, frank, 
 handsome face, her dark eyes, and her masses of blue- 
 black hair, fastened with a bodkin of coral. Great was 
 her anxiety that la signora should sit comfortably a 
 difficult matter, as the steep gradients gave the possi- 
 bility of alternately slipping over the animal's head or 
 his tail ; and many were her assurances as to what an
 
 AN ISLAM) OF THE BLEST. 201 
 
 excellent animal he was, this poor " Giacomo " I think 
 that was his name how sure-footed, patient, and intel- 
 ligent. 
 
 From discourse about the donkey, we passed on to 
 more confidential conversation ; though Italian was evi- 
 dently an effort to her, and the best Tuscan scholar 
 alive could not have made out her Caprese ! Still we 
 managed to exchange much information. She told me 
 her name, how old she was, and how she had been long 
 " promessa " to a coral-fisher, who was now away with 
 the coral-boats off Algiers, but would come back in the 
 autumn and marry her. In return, she questioned me 
 categorically as to where my house was, how big a 
 house I had, and how many children, showing the same 
 vivid interest in my affairs that she evidently expected 
 me to take in hers. 
 
 So did another woman, less handsome and young, but 
 comely still, who next day led my donkey up the steep 
 heights to Timberio, enlivening the way by ceaseless 
 conversation about her husband, who was also absent at 
 the coral-fishing, and her three children, the youngest 
 of whom was only twenty days old. 
 
 "But we must work, we women, while all our men 
 are away. They go off in spring, after the padre has 
 blessed the boats, and they seldom come back till au- 
 tumn. Then the young men marry, if they have made 
 money enough, and the husbands settle down for the 
 9*
 
 202 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 winter. That woman there," nodding to one who sat 
 at the roadside, " has got no husband and no children, so 
 she can afford to be idle." 
 
 I noticed that this exceptional person looked rather 
 less healthy and strong than her neighbors. 
 
 " Oh ! she is getting old, that is all. We grow old 
 and die, of course ; but we are never ill. Nobody is 
 ever ill at Capri." 
 
 Which fact and I afterwards found it really was 
 such, so far as regarded the natives is corroborated, or 
 else accounted for, by another fact, that there is only 
 one doctor on the island. 
 
 An " Island of the Blest " truly, where disease finds it 
 hard to enter, and death comes softly and kindly as the 
 fitting close of life. Still he does come, for we saw the 
 little Protestant cemetery, II cimiterio degli animali," 
 as the islanders call it. But if called " animals " when 
 dead, their heretic visitors are kindly regarded while 
 alive. My young donkey-driver seemed to know and 
 sympathize with every invalid among the little knot of 
 English who had wintered that year at Capri. 
 
 For Capri is, as might be expected, a favorite health 
 resort. Such places have always a certain melancholy 
 about them ; a sad arrive pensee running through all 
 their external beauty and social pleasantness. Even in 
 our agreeable table d'hote pathetic little remarks fell 
 occasionally. "Oh yes! I have been here since No-
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 203 
 
 vember. I was ordered to do nothing for several months ; 
 but it is rather hard work." (Alas ! no wonder.) Or, 
 " I have been so disappointed to-day ; I got a letter 
 from my husband at home, and the doctor will not 
 allow me to go back to London before June," etc., etc. 
 
 Nevertheless, ours was a merry table, surrounded by 
 faces anything but sickly or discontented ; for in this 
 heavenly climate there is scarcely a day when the most 
 delicate invalid need fear to go out. Now and then 
 comes one of those sudden, brief Mediterranean storms, 
 and snow is seen, afar off, on the hill-tops of the main- 
 land ; but at Capri, all winter, it had been permanent, 
 delicious sunshine. And on this side of the island 
 neither east nor north winds are ever known. Shel- 
 tered in safe, sunshiny places, one may creep about from 
 November to March as happy as a fly on a south wall. 
 
 Those who have known what it is to look forward to 
 winter, feeling that for months at a time the mere 
 breath of life will be a pain to draw, and the slightest 
 change of temperature will become a permanent dread, 
 can understand why it is that I call Capri an Island of 
 the Blest. 
 
 Several of us forestieri, who started next day, half on 
 donkeys, half on foot, to mount the steep ascent of Tim- 
 berio, would, had we been in England at the same date, 
 never have stirred out of doors, or at best have taken a 
 ten minutes' crawl on the sunny side of the street, sup-
 
 204 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 posing there was any sunshine to be found. But here 
 it blazed about us and around us, warming us through 
 and through ; even a little too warm, as the younger 
 ones protested they were being " baked alive." But to 
 the elders that delicious Italian air, dry and soft, yet 
 mingled with a bracing, salt-sea freshness, felt as near 
 the airs of Paradise as anything could be in this world. 
 
 It cheered us on, talking and laughing none of us 
 thinking about ourselves at all, which is the utmost 
 blessing for invalids mounting step by step the very 
 serious ascent or we should have thought it such in 
 England through narrow-walled lanes, probably built 
 of the debris of old Tiberian houses, and past vineyards, 
 where the trellis-work was set upon stone columns with 
 capitals of rare beauty, which may have adorned some 
 one of the twelve villas said to have existed on the 
 island. 
 
 In truth, for people of artistic, historic, or archseologi- 
 cal tendencies, Capri oilers a field of endless interest and 
 research. Every inch of ground hides relics of its an- 
 cient inhabitants Greek, Roman, and mediaeval. The 
 Hellenic colonists, who have left both here and along 
 the mainland so many fragments of a most perfect civ- 
 ilization, of which the temples of Psestum are examples ; 
 the luxurious emperors, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula ; 
 the pirates of the Middle Ages, who made their strong- 
 hold here, and were a terror to the whole Mediterranean
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 205 
 
 coast all these have planted their feet on dainty little 
 Capri with an impress never to be obliterated. The 
 traditions concerning them and their marvellous handi- 
 works are a ceaseless curiosity and delight, especially to 
 those who feel that the past has a certain charm in it 
 which nothing modern ever possesses. 
 
 Travelling invalids who rejoice in grand hotels, in 
 dressing and dining and promenading, had certainly 
 better not come to Capri. Nice, Mentone, and Monaco 
 are much more after their pattern. But wanderers who 
 are sufficient to themselves, who can settle down in a 
 place, do their own work, and find their own amuse- 
 ments, without being dependent on any external enter- 
 tainment, might spend here week after week, and month 
 after month, and always find something new. 
 
 A whole week instead of half a day might have been 
 occupied in examining this villa of Tiberius. It must 
 have extended all over the hill, now terraced with olives, 
 almost every terrace being formed upon what was once 
 a house-roof ; doubtless some habitation of the numer- 
 ous slaves. On the hill-top dwelt the luxurious master. 
 Portions of his domestic chambers, the stables, the large 
 reservoirs for water, the theatre, still remain, easily rec- 
 ognizable by those acquainted with ancient Eoman ar- 
 chitecture. 
 
 How grand and solid this must have been, and "how 
 different from our own, no one can travel in Italy with-
 
 206 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 out perceiving. We bnild for a lease of ninety-nine 
 years ; but they built for ever, both outside the earth 
 and under it. The mosaic pavement of the sloping 
 road, down which the slaves used to carry in litters the 
 emperor and his guests to the sea-baths, of which the 
 huge fragments of masonry still remain ; the arches of 
 an underground chamber, discovered by a proprietor 
 lately in building his house, and built into it with the 
 cool appropriation and amalgamation of old and new, 
 which is in Italy so amusing and so sad ; everything 
 is solid, large, substantial, indicating a degree of civiliza- 
 tion equal or superior to our own. 
 
 Chambers underground, and long passages, are said 
 to exist everywhere, honeycombing the hill, and com- 
 municating between the villa of Tiberius and other 
 points of the island. And below the whole town of 
 Capri which needs it sorely ! there is supposed to be 
 a complete system of Koman drainage, on the principle 
 of the Cloaca Maxima, which, if any enterprising en- 
 gineer would find and make use of, he would confer a 
 lasting benefit on the little community. 
 
 The dread of fever, which had haunted us every step 
 in Naples, fled away like a shadow as we stood on the 
 breezy top of Timberio, looking down on the bocca be- 
 tween it and Sorrento, as Augustus must often have 
 look'ed, watching the wheat ships sailing in from Alex- 
 andria. And here, too, Tiberius sat and gazed, in an
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 207 
 
 agony of suspense, upon that tiny dot on the blue sea, 
 the galley which he knew bore to him the news of the 
 result of his letter, suggesting the deposition of Sejanus. 
 From this solitary island-peak the cruel, clever emperor 
 governed, or fancied he governed, the whole world. 
 
 If a highly civilized, it was at heart a wholly demoral- 
 ized and brutal world. That precipice, several hundred 
 feet of sheer perpendicular rock, with foaming, boiling 
 sea at the bottom we look down it shuddering, and 
 wonder whether Tiberius did really cast thence his 
 offending slaves, as tradition says. And what was the 
 truth about the human sacrifices in that Temple of Mi- 
 nerva, or the other one of Neptune, of which, scanning 
 intently the mainland, we can still see some fragmen- 
 tary columns ? As we gaze upon the same view that 
 must have met all these long-dead eyes, centuries of 
 history seem to pass before us centuries wherein this 
 tiny island was the heart of the civilized world. The 
 past grows strangely real, and the present dwindles 
 down, till one's own generation seems a span as short as 
 that of the flowers violets, anemones, cyclamen, that 
 deck the hillside, as they have decked it for hundreds 
 of years just springing up and perishing in a day. 
 Yet, while they last, how sweet they are ! 
 
 And how sweet was existence at this minute, in spite 
 of the ghost of old Tiberius arid the story of his cruel- 
 ties!
 
 208 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 " Would the signora like to see a tarantella danced ?" 
 asked the girl who had shown us the fatal rock, duly 
 throwing a stone down and counting the seconds oh, 
 so many ! till it plunged into the water below. Her 
 black eyes glittered as if she were glad of any possible 
 excuse for dancing, as the signora certainly was for en- 
 joying the sight of it, or anything else that was pleas- 
 ant in this most delectable country. 
 
 So, within five minutes 'there was collected a joyous 
 quartet two girls, a boy of twelve, and an old man, 
 whom they fetched from his work in the vineyard be- 
 low. He threw down his spade and pruning-knife, and 
 began to foot it as lightly and cleverly as any of the 
 young ones. 
 
 Most tourists know the tarantella that most pictu- 
 resque and dramatic dance the delight of the Italian 
 peasants, and for which they seem ready at all times, 
 as the Irish are for a jig and the Highlanders for a reel. 
 It is danced, I believe, especially well at Capri. Here, 
 accompanied by the so-called " music" of an old woman 
 on the tambourine, it was very effective, and great was 
 the enjoyment of the performers. 
 
 " Oh yes ; I like dancing. I have danced all my 
 life," said the old man, sitting down, hot and breath- 
 less, but not by any means exhausted. " I was sixty- 
 eight last May, and I have had eleven children. Four 
 of them are dead, but seven are alive still. And I am
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 209 
 
 strong ; I can work among the vines still, and I can 
 dance, too, as the signora may observe." 
 
 Then, wiping his brow and rearranging his shirt- 
 sleeves, the honest old fellow made us his adieus with 
 that sweet Italian courtesy so pleasant and so universal, 
 and descended again to his vines. 
 
 Innocent as gay seems to be life in Capri. But it was 
 not always so. In the time of King Bomba, many of the 
 political sospetti of Naples used to be exiled here ; " re- 
 quested " to spend a few months or years at Capri, where 
 they were under as careful surveillance as Napoleon at 
 Elba. Many stories are still current of that reign of 
 terror, so little distant from our own times, yet record- 
 ing tyrannies as black as those of the Roman emperors. 
 
 Two true stories were told us while leaning on the 
 low wall of the piazza, watching the lilac glow of the 
 unseen sunset, which colored the lovely curving coast 
 Sorrento, Castellamare, Pompeii, Torre del Greco, up 
 to Naples itself. Naples looking so beautiful in the 
 distance, the Palace and the Castle of St. Elmo crowning 
 its heights. 
 
 Yet in Bomba's time curious things used to happen in 
 that said palace. Once his Majesty entertained at din- 
 ner a particular friend i. e., a suspected enemy ; bade 
 him an affectionate addio, and courteously accompanied 
 him to the very door. There, just outside it, he found 
 himself seized by the police.
 
 210 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 "Impossible!" cried the unfortunate. "I have just 
 dined with the king; have only this instant parted 
 from his Majesty." 
 
 " Nevertheless, here is his Majesty's warrant for the 
 Castle of St. Elmo." Which the prisoner entered that 
 night, and never quitted more. 
 
 There was another story, which I shall always think 
 of in remembering that pretty little piazza and its inno- 
 cent shops, where one never could get anything one 
 waited, and where the extraordinary muddle of lan- 
 guages English and German, Italian and French 
 over doors and in windows, was rather bewildering. 
 
 Two sospetti honorable, ' respectable, professional 
 men received orders to quit Naples for Capri. There 
 they remained for many months, living the simplest of 
 lives, and apparently not even acquainted with one an- 
 other, though supposed to be friends and political con- 
 spirators. At last, when suspicion had almost ceased, 
 one more plan was tried against them. An old woman 
 
 came rushing in to Signer A , imploring him to 
 
 come at once, secretly, to his friend Signor B , who 
 
 was dying. Signor A went, to find it all a ruse, 
 
 and himself seized and imprisoned. The two gentle- 
 men were afterwards publicly whipped in this little, 
 quiet piazza one so severely that he very soon died. 
 
 Besides these tragedies, the memory of which even 
 the wholesome sway of the " Re Galantuomo " and the
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 211 
 
 hopes of " Italia unita " cannot yet take away, there is 
 many a romantic story current in this romantic island. 
 Love stories, of course, principally. The extreme beau- 
 ty of the women, and their high character for purity 
 and faithfulness alas ! in the few cases when the devil 
 has entered this Eden, he has come in the shape of a 
 " foreign " gentleman also the isolation of the place, 
 removed from the bad influences of the mainland, make 
 Capri a spot which, until quite lately, was as primitive 
 and patriarchal as could be desired. One scarcely won- 
 dered to hear that more than one stranger Englishmen 
 especially had taken to himself a Capri wife, and set- 
 tled down, like ./Eneas in Latium, safe from the storms 
 of the world. And when we looked at the fine faces 
 of the wives gradually waking up into intelligence, 
 helped by the natural grace and refinement which seem 
 inherent in Italian blood; or watched the "dusky 
 brood," brown-skinned, active, healthy, ready for any 
 amount of wholesome English culture in years to come, 
 we were tempted to believe that, after all, these rash 
 forestieri might have done worse even for themselves. 
 Mixed marriages are always a certain risk; but I 
 have known many between Italians and English turn 
 out very happy. There seems a natural affinity, or a 
 harmony in contrariety, between the two races, which 
 often works well, and the combined qualities result in a 
 most satisfactory third generation. Capri, by-and-by,
 
 212 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 may owe much to its immigrants who bring English 
 influence, beneficial English influence would that it 
 were always such ! to this simple people, and gradu- 
 ally put into their affectionate, passionate natures the 
 quiet perseverance, the stern truthfulness, and the ab- 
 solute probity of the North. Then, too, will come a 
 sense of dignity and necessity of education, so that fut- 
 ure visitors may not receive such an answer as I got, 
 when asking whether I should write out the list of 
 clothes for the wash in French or Italian. " Oh, which- 
 ever the signora pleases. It is only for her own amuse- 
 ment. Nobody here can read or write; it is not our 
 habit at Capri." 
 
 This novel "habit" is, however, in the course of be- 
 ing acquired. Our padrone^ for instance, besides his 
 native Caprese, could both speak and write English, 
 French, and Italian ; but then he had spent two years 
 in England, and had gained some English ideas which 
 very much added to the comfort of his guests. If he 
 has the sense and firmness to keep to them ; to manage 
 his hotel with order, cleanliness, and punctuality; to 
 institute and maintain that conscientious exactitude in 
 all things which it is so difficult to find abroad, espe- 
 cially in hotel life, where you get no end of useless lux- 
 uries, but scarcely any comforts I can imagine no more 
 delightful and sanitary resting-place than the Quisisana 
 Hotel, Capri.
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 213 
 
 Especially for that only too numerous and too pa- 
 thetic class of health-seekers, who, their brains being 
 their sole capital, cannot afford to waste money after the 
 fashion of the ordinary tourist, but even while resting 
 must work, and while idling require to find some intel- 
 ligent companionship, or some sufficiently vivid inter- 
 est to make life tolerable for the time being. To such 
 I would say, Go to Capri. It will never be a fashiona- 
 ble resort; the difficulty of going and coming is too 
 great ; but for those who go, and stay there, its ad- 
 vantages are many. 
 
 First, its expenses are not ruinous. Life at Capri is, 
 and may easily be kept, simple to a degree. Secondly, 
 it is interesting. The archaeologist, the painter, the stu- 
 dent of human nature, may find endless subjects of 
 investigation ; and the student of any sort will find the 
 one great requisite for brain-work, quiet mixed with 
 amusement. Then, too, the climate is perfection. Even 
 in summer the height of the little island, and its con- 
 stant exposure to sea-breezes, make it never too hot ; but 
 from November till May it is truly " an Island of the 
 Blest," a sort of Avallon, 
 
 " Where never wind blows loudly." 
 
 No, I retract ; for once I stood, or rather crawled on 
 all fours for safety, along a rocky path, for fear of be- 
 ing blown quite away. But it was a soft, and not un- 
 kindly, wind. That cruel east and scathing north which
 
 214 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 wither you up like grass, and pierce arrow-like to the 
 very marrow of your bones, never come here, no more 
 than the continuous drizzly rain, damp, and fog which 
 make life a burden to so many of as for six months of 
 an English year. 
 
 True, Paradise has its weak points. That exquisite 
 greenness which our humid climate produces is certainly 
 not found here. Arran, and many of the Scottish isl- 
 ands and Highlands, are, for general effects of color, far 
 more beautiful than Capri, where vegetation withers 
 under the long droughts, which are not uncommon, and 
 against which the only resort of the islanders is to take 
 their patron saint out of his cupboard and institute a 
 special festa in his honor. They did so this year, after 
 which ensued such a violent storm that the saint was 
 hurriedly put back again into his cupboard and told 
 " he was not wanted." And next Sunday the priest 
 preached a special sermon on the occasion, explaining 
 that it had lately been supposed bad weather came from 
 America ; it might do so to the English heretics, but 
 all good Catholics must see clearly that the Capri rain 
 came direct from San Costanzo. 
 
 However, the good saint never gave us one single 
 drop all the time we stayed there. From early dawn, 
 breaking over the smooth seas, to silent starlight, when, 
 crossing the deserted piazza all Capri seems asleep by 
 nine P.M. we used to lean on the low wall and watch
 
 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 215 
 
 the red glow which at night succeeded the white spiral 
 smoke of the beautiful Enemy opposite; hour after 
 hour of the delicious day the island took a new aspect, 
 each lovelier than the last. 
 
 Now, as I look out, shivering, and hear the howl of 
 the wild June wind, fierce as any equinoctial gale ; as I 
 see the mist creeping oyer the mowing-grass and the 
 rain dropping from the full-leaved trees, I am forced to 
 own that this dear old England of ours has its faults. 
 To certain delicate people, living in it all the year 
 round is something like being married to a very excel- 
 lent but acrid wife : we admire all her good qualities, 
 we would not part from her for the world but if 
 only she were a trifle more even-tempered ! 
 
 Nor am I faithless to my own land the land I am 
 glad to live in and hope to die in if, on this terribly 
 wet day, I think (with an involuntary constriction of 
 the throat, and a sigh that I vainly try to suppress) of 
 that lovely, sunshiny March day when, renouncing my 
 donkey, I descended on foot the familiar path to the 
 Marina, and for the last time looked up to the heights 
 of Timberio, and down to the shining waters of the 
 little bay below. Between were the olive-terraces ; the 
 vineyards, scarcely budding yet ; the peach-gardens, one 
 mass of blossom ; and the quaint little town. Above, on 
 the top of the hill, wound the road to Anacapri. Beyond 
 were the various peaks, each surmounted with some
 
 216 AN ISLAND OF THE BLEST. 
 
 relic of a Roman emperor or mediaeval pirate, who had 
 left here his mark or his name. Stormy times has the 
 little island passed through ; yet it looked so sweet, so 
 sunny, the abode of pleasantness and peace ! 
 
 Our friends, Italian and English, young and old, poor 
 and rich, had either accompanied us down to the beach, 
 or were gathered on the little quay to bid us good-bye 
 "Addio, mia bella Capri addio, addio, 
 
 Dolce memorie d' vm tempo felice." 
 
 So sang the wandering vocalist as the boat glided away. 
 (I must confess that he had before sung the same song, 
 with an equally tender expression, only altering the 
 words to " Addio, mia bella Napoli" which was a de- 
 cided mistake.) His voice was very touching, and the 
 scene very sweet a scene that (who knows ?) we may 
 never behold again. 
 
 It was weak-minded, but I own that in my last look 
 at Capri I did not see the beautiful island too clearly.
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE 
 
 10
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 THE three travellers kind Cousin Eva, with her 
 young charges Cherry and Ruth were standing on 
 the staircase of the curious old Hotel de Bourgthe'roude, 
 by the Place de la Pucelle, Rouen. That narrow, 
 gloomy little square looked still narrower and gloomier 
 in the drizzle of the dull November day ; and the ugly 
 pump in the middle of it, with a still uglier statue on 
 the top, marking the place where Jeanne d'Arc was 
 burned, had been a sore disappointment to the children. 
 They had come, as enthusiastic little pilgrims, to see 
 the spot where their favorite heroine died ; and Cousin 
 Eva could hardly get them to believe that it was the 
 spot ; that the common-looking market-place, where a 
 few ordinary modern market-people were passing and 
 repassing, had actually been the scene of the cruel deed ; 
 that from the very identical windows of those very 
 identical houses brutal eyes had watched the maid, 
 standing, with the flames curling round her, clasping 
 the rude cross which some charitable soul pushed tow- 
 ards her.
 
 220 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 " Do you remember," Cousin Eva said, " how, at the 
 last moment, she retracted all the false confession of 
 heresy and witchcraft which torture had wrung from 
 her, and exclaimed, ' Yes, my voices were of God ?' And 
 how, when she saw the flames approaching her, she shut 
 her eyes, called out once * Jesus !' dropped her head 
 upon her breast, and that was all until they raked up 
 a handful of charred bones out of the embers, and threw 
 them into the Seine ?" 
 
 The children looked grave. At last they did realize 
 it all. 
 
 "I wonder what sort of a day it was," whispered 
 Cherry ; " dull and gloomy, like to-day, or with a bright, 
 blue, sunshiny sky ? Perhaps she looked up at it be- 
 fore the fire touched her. And perhaps he stood here 
 just where we stand the English soldier who cried 
 out, ' We have burned a saint !' " 
 
 " And so she was," said Ruth, with a quiver passing 
 over the eager little face ; " a real saint." 
 
 " But, Cousin Eva," added Cherry, " why did she ever 
 own to being a witch ? and how could she say her 
 voices were not true when she believed they were true ? 
 One way or other, she must have told a lie." 
 
 Miss Cherry was of an argumentative, rather than a 
 sentimental, turn. She thought a good deal herself, and 
 liked to make other people think too, so as to enable 
 her to get to the bottom of things. She could never
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 221 
 
 overlook the slightest break in a chain of practical rea- 
 soning ; and, if she had a contempt in this world, it was 
 for a weak person, or a person who told a lie. This 
 flaw, even in her favorite Maid of Orleans, otherwise so 
 strong and brave, was too much for Cherry to pass over. 
 
 " Do you not think," said Cousin Eva, " that it would 
 be possible, under stress of circumstances, to tell a lie 
 to confess to something one had never done ? Bishop 
 Cranmer, for instance. Have you forgotten how he 
 signed a recantation, and then thrust into the flames 
 ' that unworthy right hand ?' And Galileo, when forced 
 by the Inquisition to declare the earth stood still, but 
 muttered afterwards, * E pur si muwe? Yes, yes," con- 
 tinued she, " one never knows what one may be driven 
 to do till the time comes. The force of torture is very 
 strong. Once upon a time, I remember, I told a lie." 
 
 " You told a lie !" echoed Cherry, looking with amaze- 
 ment into the bright, sweet, honest face rosy-cheeked, 
 blue-eyed, her little cousins themselves had not more 
 innocent eyes as clear and as round as a baby's. 
 
 " But nobody ever tortured you ?" added tender- 
 hearted Kuth, clinging to the kindly hand, which, in- 
 deed, she never went far away from in these alarming 
 " foreign parts." 
 
 "No, my little girl; the thumb-screws, the rack, and 
 the maiden belong, luckily, to that room in the Tower 
 where we saw them one day ; and we are in the nine-
 
 222 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 teenth, and not the fifteenth, century. Still, even now- 
 adays a good deal of moral torture can be brought to 
 bear upon one occasionally, especially when one is only 
 a child, as I was then ; and I was tried sharply enough 
 to make me remember it even now and feel quite sure 
 that if I had been Jeanne d'Arc I should very likely 
 have done exactly as she did ! Also I learned, what I 
 have tried to put into practice ever since, that nothing 
 makes people liars like disbelieving them." 
 
 Ruth gave a little tender pressure to the hand she 
 held, while Cherry said, proudly, "You never disbelieved 
 us, and you never need do it ! But tell us, Cousin Eva, 
 about the lie you told. Was it denying something you 
 had done, or owning to something you were innocent 
 of, like poor Jeanne d'Arc? Do tell ! You know how 
 we like a story." 
 
 " What, here, in this pelting rain ?" answered Cousin 
 Eva, as she proceeded to investigate from under her um- 
 brella the curious bass-reliefs of the Field of the Cloth 
 of Gold, which still remain in the court of the Hotel du 
 Bourgthe'roude. " No, children ; you must wait a more 
 desirable opportunity." 
 
 Which, however, was not long in coming. The day 
 brightened grew into one of those exquisite days 
 which French people call " Pe'te de St. Martin " and 
 truly I know nothing like it, except what it most re- 
 sembles a sweet, peaceful, contented old-age. So Cousin
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 223 
 
 Eva decided to take the children to a place which she 
 had herself once seen and never forgotten, the little 
 church on a hill-top, called Notre Dame de Bon Secours. 
 "Is that the same which Alice sings about in the 
 opera of Kobert le Diable'2" said Cherry, and struck 
 up, in her clear, young voice, 
 
 " Quand je quittais ma Normandie." 
 
 " Kouen is in Normandy, so of course it was the same 
 
 " ' Daigne protgger nos amours, 
 Notre Dame de Bon Secoure.'" 
 
 " Very likely it was the same, though yon need not 
 sing so loud, Cherry, or the hotel people will hear you," 
 said timid Ruth. 
 
 They went. Exceedingly the children enjoyed the 
 stiff climb up the hill, and admired the lovely building, 
 all ablaze with brilliant but harmonious coloring, and 
 the little side-chapels, filled with innumerable votive 
 inscriptions, " A Marie," "Graces a Marie," "Elle a ex- 
 auce' mes voaux," etc. Curious, simple, almost childish 
 it all was, yet touching to those who feel, as Cousin Eva 
 did, that to believe earnestly in anything is better than 
 believing in nothing. 
 
 Afterwards they all sat and rested in one of the pret- 
 tiest resting-places I know, for those that live and move, 
 or for " them that sleep " the graveyard on the hill-
 
 224: HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 top, close behind the Church of Notre Dame de Bon 
 Secours. From this high point they could see the 
 whole country for miles and miles, the Seine winding 
 through it in picturesque curves. Eouen, with its 
 bridges and streets, distinct as in a map, lay at their 
 right hand, and rising out of the mass of houses, ethe- 
 realized by the yellow sunset light, were the two spires 
 of the Cathedral and the Church of St. Ouen. 
 
 " Can you see the market-place, Cousin Eva ? If so, 
 poor Jeanne d'Arc, when she was brought out to die, 
 must have seen this hill, with the church on the top of 
 it that is, supposing there was a church." 
 
 " There might have been, though not this one, which 
 is modern, you see." 
 
 "I wonder," continued Cherry, who was always won- 
 dering, " if she looked up at it, and thought it hard 
 that Notre Dame de Bon Secours should not have suc- 
 cored her ; perhaps, because, to escape from the heretic 
 English, she had told a lie." 
 
 " And that reminds me," added Ruth, who was not 
 given to ethical questions, " that while we sit and rest, 
 we might hear from Cousin Eva about the lie she told." 
 
 " Yes, yes. Please say, Cousin Eva, was it a big or 
 a little one? Why did you tell it? And was it ever 
 found out ?" 
 
 "I don't see the difference between big and little 
 falsehoods, my child. A lie is a lie, though sometimes
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 225 
 
 there are extenuating circumstances in the reason for 
 telling it. And once told, the question whether or not 
 it is ever found out does not matter. My lie never was 
 found out, but it grieved me all the same." 
 
 " "Will it grieve you to tell about it ? I should not 
 like that," said Euth, softly. 
 
 "No, dear, because I have long since forgiven my- 
 self. I was such a small child, much younger than 
 either of you, and, unlike you, I had no parents, only 
 an aunt and uncle and a lot of rough cousins, who dom- 
 ineered over me and made me afraid. That was the 
 cause. The sure way to make a child untruthful is to 
 make it afraid. I remember, as if it were yesterday, 
 the shudder of terror that came over me when my 
 eldest cousin clutched me by the shoulder, saying, ' Did 
 you do that ?' " 
 
 "And what had you done?" asked Cherry. 
 
 " Nothing, but Will thought I had. We were all 
 digging in our gardens, and he had just found his 
 favorite jessamine plant lying uprooted on the ground. 
 It had been my favorite, too ; but Will took it from me 
 and planted it in his own garden, where I watched it 
 anxiously, for I was afraid it would die. 
 
 " She did it on purpose,' Will insisted ; or if not 
 out of revenge, out of pure silliness. Girls are always 
 so silly. Didn't she propose yesterday to dig it up just 
 to see if it had got a root ?' 
 
 10*
 
 226 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 " Which was quite true. I was a very silly little girl, 
 but I meant no harm ; I wouldn't for the world have 
 harmed either Will or his jessamine. I told him so, but 
 he would not believe me, nor would any of them. They 
 all stood round, and declared I must have done it. No- 
 body else had been in the garden, except, indeed, a dog, 
 who was in the habit of burying his bones there. He 
 was the sinner ; but they never thought of him, only of 
 me. And when I denied doing it, they were only the 
 more angry. 
 
 " ' You know you are telling a lie. And where do 
 little girls go to that tell lies?' cried Will, who some- 
 times told them himself ; but then he was a boy, and 
 it was a rule in that family a terribly mistaken one 
 that the boys might do anything, and the girls must al- 
 ways give in to the boys. So when Will looked fierce- 
 ly at me, repeating, ' You know you did it,' I almost 
 felt as if I really had done it. Unable to find another 
 word, I began to cry. 
 
 " ' Look here, you children ' he called all the rest 
 children ' Eva has gone and pulled up my jessa- 
 mine, out of spite, or mischief, or pure silliness. I don't 
 know which, and I don't care. I'd forgive her, if she 
 would confess, but she won't. She keeps on telling lie 
 after lie, and we won't stand children that tell lies. If 
 we punish her, she'll howl, so I propose that until she 
 confesses we all send her to Coventry.'
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 227 
 
 " ' It's a very nice town, but I don't want to go there,' 
 said I, at which I remember they all burst out laughing, 
 and I cried only the more. 
 
 " I had no idea what ' sending to Coventry ' meant, 
 unless it was like sending to Siberia, which I had late- 
 ly been reading of, or to the quicksilver-mines, where 
 condemned convicts were taken, and where nobody ever 
 lived more than two years. Perhaps there were quick- 
 silver-mines at Coventry ! A cold shudder of fear ran 
 through me, but I was utterly powerless. I could but 
 die. 
 
 "Soon I discovered what my punishment was; and, 
 though not death, it was hard enough. Fancy, children, 
 being treated day after day, and all day long, just as if 
 you were a chair or a table never taken the least no- 
 tice of, never answered if you spoke, never spoken to 
 on any account ; never played with, petted, or scolded. 
 Completely and absolutely ignored. This was being 
 'sent to Coventry,' and it was as cruel a punishment as 
 could have been inflicted upon any little girl, especially 
 a sensitive little girl who liked her playfellows, rough 
 as they were, and was very fond of one of them, who 
 was never rough, but always kind and good. 
 
 "This was a little boy who lived next door. His 
 parents, like mine, were out in India ; nor had he any 
 brothers or sisters. He was just my age, and younger 
 than any of my cousins. So we were the best of friends,
 
 228 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 Tommy and I. His surname I have forgotten, but I 
 know we always called him Tommy, and that I loved 
 him dearly. The bitterest pang of all this bitter time 
 was that even Tommy went over to the enemy. 
 
 "At first he had been very sorry for me had tried, 
 all through that holiday Saturday when my punishment 
 began, to persuade me to confess and escape it ; and 
 when he failed for how could I confess to what I had 
 never done ? to an action so mean that I would have 
 been ashamed even to have thought of doing? then 
 Tommy also sent me to Coventry. On the Sunday, 
 when all 'us children ' we didn't mind grammar much 
 in those days walked to church together across the 
 fields, and Tommy always walked with me, chattering 
 the whole way, we walked in total silence, for Will's 
 eye was upon him, and even Tommy was afraid. 
 Whatever I said, he never answered a single word. 
 
 " Then I felt as if all the world were against me as 
 if it were no use trying to be good, or telling the truth, 
 since even the truth was regarded as a lie. In short, in 
 my small, childish way, I suffered much as poor Jeanne 
 d'Arc must have suffered when she was shut up in her 
 prison at Rouen, called a witch, a deceiver forsaken of 
 all, and yet promised pardon if she would only confess 
 and own she was a wicked woman, which she knew she 
 was not. 
 
 " I was quite innocent, but after three days of being
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 229 
 
 supposed guilty I ceased to care whether I was guilty 
 or not. I seemed not to care for anything. Since they 
 supposed I was capable of such a mean thing as pulling 
 up a harmless jessamine-root out of spite, what did it 
 matter whether they thought I had told a lie or not ? 
 or, indeed, whether I did tell one? which evidently 
 would be much easier than telling the truth; and every 
 day my ' sticking it out,' and persisting in the truth, be- 
 came more difficult. 
 
 "This state of things continued till Wednesday, 
 which was our half-holiday, when my cousins usually 
 went a long walk or played cricket, and I was sent in to 
 spend the afternoon with Tommy. They were the de- 
 light of my life, those long, quiet "Wednesdays, when 
 Tommy and I went ' mooning about,' dug in our gar- 
 den, watched our tadpoles we had a hand-basin full of 
 them, which we kept in the arbor till they developed 
 into myriads of frogs and went hopping about every- 
 where. But even tadpoles could not charm me now, 
 and I dreaded, rather than longed for, my half-holi- 
 day. 
 
 " School had been difficult enough, for Tommy and I 
 had the same daily governess ; but if, when we played 
 together, he was never to speak to me, what should I 
 do? And his grandmother would be sure to find it 
 out ; and she was a prim and rather strict old lady, to 
 whom a child who had been sent to Coventry for tell-
 
 230 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 ing a lie would be a perfect abhorrence. What could I 
 do ? Would it not be better to hide away somewhere, 
 so as to escape going into Tommy's house at all ? In- 
 deed, I almost think some vague thought of running 
 away and hiding myself forever crossed my mind, when 
 I heard Will calling me. 
 
 " He and two of the others were standing at the front 
 door a terrible Council of Three (like that which used 
 to sentence to death the victims in the Prigioni, which 
 we saw last month at Venice). I felt not unlike a con- 
 demned prisoner one who had been shut up so long 
 that death came almost as a relief which it must often 
 have been to those poor souls. These three big boys 
 stood over me like judges over a criminal, and Tommy 
 stood beside them looking very sad. 
 
 " 'Little girl,' said Will, in quite a judicial tone, ' we 
 think you have been punished enough to make you thor- 
 oughly ashamed of yourself. We wish you to go and 
 play with Tommy as usual ; but Tommy could not pos- 
 sibly have you unless you were out of Coventry. We 
 will give you one chance more. Confess that you 
 pulled up the jessamine, and we'll forgive you, and tell 
 nobody about you ; and you shall go and have tea with 
 Tommy just as if nothing had happened. Think you 
 have only to say one word.' 
 
 "'And if I don't say it?' 
 
 " * Then,' answered Will, with a solemn and awful ex-
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 231 
 
 pression, ' I shall be obliged immediately to tell every- 
 body everything.' 
 
 " That terrible threat, all the more formidable be- 
 cause of its vagueness, quite overcame me. To be set 
 down as a liar or to become one ; to be punished as I 
 knew my aunt would punish me, on her son's mere 
 statement, for a wrong thing I had never done ; or to 
 do a wrong thing, and, escaping punishment, go back to 
 my old happy life with my dear Tommy, who stood, the 
 tears in his eyes, awaiting my decision. 
 
 "It was a hard strait too hard for one so young. 
 And Will stood over me, with his remorseless eyes. 
 
 " * "Well, now ; say once for all, did you pull up my 
 jessamine ?' 
 
 "It was too much. Sullenly slowly I made up 
 my mind to the inevitable, and answered, ' Since you 
 will have it so Yes.' But the instant I had said it, I 
 fell into such a fit of sobbing almost hysterical scream- 
 ing that they were all frightened and ran away. 
 
 " Tommy stayed, terrified. He got me away into 
 the arbor as fast as he could. I felt his arms round my 
 neck, and his comforting was very tender, very sweet. 
 But I was long before I stopped crying, and still longer 
 before anything like cheerfulness came into my poor 
 little heart. We played together all the afternoon very 
 affectionately, but in a rather melancholy sort of way, 
 as if we had something on our minds, to which we never
 
 232 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 made the smallest reference. "Tommy was a timid boy, 
 and Will had cowed him into unkindness ; but he loved 
 me. I knew he loved me ; only, as is often the case, if 
 his love had had a little more courage it would have 
 been all the better for me perhaps for him, too. 
 
 " We spent a peaceful but rather dull afternoon, and 
 then were summoned in-doors to tea. 
 
 " Now, tea at Tommy's house was a serious thing. 
 Tommy's grandmother always sat at the table, and 
 looked at us through her spectacles, and talked to us in 
 a formal and dignified manner, asking if we had been 
 good children, had learned our lessons well, had played 
 together without quarrelling, etc., etc. She was a kind 
 old lady, but she always made us feel that she was an 
 old lady, years upon years older than we, and unable to 
 understand us at all. Consequently, we never did more 
 than answer her questions and hold our tongues. As 
 for telling her anything our troubles especially we 
 would as soon have thought of confiding in the Queen, 
 or the Emperor of all the Russias. 
 
 " I never opened my lips all tea-time, and at last she 
 noticed it. Also that my eyes were rather red. 
 
 " ' This little girl looks as if she had been crying. I 
 hope you have not made her cry, Tommy, my dear?' 
 
 "Tommy was silent. But I eagerly declared that 
 Tommy had not made me cry. Tommy was never un- 
 kind to me.
 
 HOW SUE TOLD A LIE. 233 
 
 " 'I am glad to hear it, Evangeline' (she always gave 
 me my full name) ; ' and I hope you, too, are a good 
 child, who is never in mischief, and, above all, never 
 tells lies. If I were not quite sure of that, I could not 
 allow Tommy to play with you.' 
 
 " She looked us full in the face as if she saw through 
 and through us which she did not> being very short- 
 sighted yet I felt myself tremble in every limb. As 
 for Tommy, he just glanced at me, and glanced away 
 again, turning crimson to the very roots of his hair, but 
 he said nothing. 
 
 "What would have happened next, I cannot tell; we 
 waited in terror, holding one another's hands under the 
 table-cloth. But, mercifully, at that very instant the 
 old lady was fetched to speak with some one, and we 
 two children had to finish our tea alone. 
 
 "It almost choked us me, at any rate. But soon as 
 ever it was over, and Tommy and I found ourselves 
 safe out in the garden, I flung my arms round his neck 
 and told him all. 
 
 " And Tommy believed me. No matter whether the 
 others did or not, Tommy believed me at last. Tom- 
 my sympathized with me, comforted me, thought I was 
 not so very wicked even though I had told a lie, but not 
 the one I was accused of telling. Tommy wept with me 
 over all I had suffered, and promised that, though per- 
 haps it was better to let the matter rest now, if such a
 
 234: HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 
 
 thing were to happen again he would not be afraid of 
 Will or of anybody, but would stand up for me ' like a 
 man.' " 
 
 " And did he do it 2" asked Cherry, with slight in- 
 credulity in her tone. 
 
 " He had not the opportunity. A week after this he 
 was suddenly sent -for to join his parents abroad, and I 
 never saw my friend Tommy any more." 
 
 " But did you never hear of him ? Is he alive still ? 
 He must be a very old gentleman by this time." 
 
 " Very. No doubt a father ; possibly even a grand- 
 father," replied Cousin Eva, smiling. 
 
 Cherry blushed. " I didn't mean that, since he was 
 barely as old as you, and you are certainly not a grand- 
 mother. But I want to hear more of Tommy. Is he 
 married ? 
 
 " I really cannot say. The last time I heard of him 
 was ten years ago, when he was living somewhere abroad. 
 I rather think at Shanghai. He was not married then." 
 
 "I wish," whispered Euth, solemnly "I wish he 
 would come back to England and marry you." 
 
 Cousin Eva laughed. " There might be two opinions 
 on that question, you know. But, oh, my children ! 
 when you are married and have children of your own, 
 remember my story. If ever a poor little thing looks 
 up in your face, saying, ' I didn't do that,' believe it. If 
 it sobs out, ' I'm not naughty,' don't call it naughty.
 
 HOW SHE TOLD A LIE. 235 
 
 Give it the benefit of the doubt. Have patience, take 
 time, and, whatever you do, don't make it afraid. Cow- 
 ards are always liars; and, of the two evils, it is less 
 harmful to believe a lie than to doubt a person who is 
 speaking the truth." 
 
 " I think so, too," said Cherry, sagely. " Eemember 
 poor Jeanne d'Arc." 
 
 " And poor Cousin Eva," added Kuth, kissing her 
 hand. 
 
 And so, in the fading twilight, the three rose up to- 
 gether, and went down the hill from Notre Dame de 
 Bon Secours.
 
 A RUINED PALACE
 
 A RUINED PALACE. 
 
 WE had decided on a " day out " out of Paris, with 
 its noise and confusion ; which, for the first time, we 
 had found endurable. It reached only as a distant mur- 
 mur our pleasant City of Refuge; where the nights 
 were as quiet as the days, and every morning we could 
 actually see a bit of sunrise, pink or lilac clouds floating 
 over the chimney-tops (ah ! happily innocent of the 
 abominable coal-smoke of London) of the Rue Boissy 
 d'Anglas and the Faubourg St. Honore. 
 
 A tranquil nook, though in the very heart of Paris. 
 Still, we already sighed for the country : a breath of 
 fresh air, and the sight of the fading leaves, before they 
 had all dropped off. So we crossed to the Place de la 
 Concorde and waited for a "tram" (how funny the 
 word looks, " tramways," both in France and Italy !), 
 determining to take that simple route to Sevres and St. 
 Cloud. 
 
 "We English make, I think, many mistakes in travel- 
 ling. In the first place, some of us are too shy, and a 
 good many more too self-conceited, to attempt foreign
 
 240 A RUINED PALACE. 
 
 tongues ; forgetting that to be in a country where you 
 cannot or will not speak the language is as foolish as 
 going to see views with your eyes bandaged up. You 
 may pass easily from hotel to hotel, pleased that every- 
 body pays you the attention of addressing you in your 
 own good English tongue ; but of the real life of the 
 country you are in, you remain as utterly ignorant as if 
 you were blind. To enjoy travelling, you must put 
 your prejudices in your pocket your dignity, too, 
 sometimes and place yourself in sympathy with the 
 people. Depend upon it, they will seldom fail, in France 
 and Italy almost never, to show sympathy with you. 
 
 This I say, remembering the amount of politeness 
 and really valuable information that we got out of a 
 young ouvrier (we guessed his trade from his rough 
 hands, but should never have done it from his manner), 
 who sat beside us on the top of the tram, as we took 
 the long, cold drive by the banks of the Seine, the direct 
 road to Versailles a commonplace, ugly road, evident- 
 ly full of busy prosperity. How strange to think of the 
 days, so few winters back, when all trade was at a stand- 
 still, and along this road from Versailles to Paris was 
 incessant marching and fighting between French and 
 Germans, and, worse, between French and French ! 
 How terrible must have been those winter mornings 
 when the men of a household started off to their awful 
 day's work, knowing for certain that many of them
 
 A RUINED PALACE. 2-il 
 
 would not -come back at night ! These little white 
 crosses which, for the first year or two after the siege, 
 could be traced everywhere, in by-roads, market-gar- 
 dens, open spaces of green, marking where soldiers had 
 fallen and been buried as they fell, have they all been 
 removed? We almost hoped so; but it will be long 
 years before Paris ceases to remember them. 
 
 Nevertheless, the extent to which the city has revived 
 is perfectly wonderful. Passing along this road, so late- 
 ly full of fighting armies, everything looked bright and 
 neat, as if after centuries of prosperity and peace. And 
 when we stopped at Sevres, and went over the cele- 
 brated china-manufactory, there was no evidence of any- 
 thing but luxury, on the one hand, and, on the other, 
 the intelligent industry which provides for and benefits 
 by it. Not a trace of aught painful of those revolu- 
 tions which we have almost come to believe the normal 
 condition of France except, indeed, a magnificent 
 milk-pail, once at Le Petit Trianon, and used there by 
 the hapless royal " shepherdess," Marie Antoinette ; also 
 a statuette or two of the first Napoleon. Of the later 
 Bonapartes emperor, empress, prince imperial all 
 traces seemed to be as completely swept away as if they 
 belonged to the time of Charlemagne. France has cer- 
 tainly a grand talent pour oublier. 
 
 Yet how clever she is! how prudent, economical, in- 
 dustrious ! and how gay through it all innocently gay ! 
 11
 
 242 A KUINED PALACE. 
 
 Especially her bourgeois class, whom one meets in omni- 
 buses, second-class railway-carriages, and country streets. 
 A more respectable class does not exist. Monsieur and 
 madame only I ought to put madame first, for she evi- 
 dently manages the family how domestic they look out 
 arm-in-arm on a fe^te day, in their best clothes, with their 
 children beside them ! How pleasantly satisfied they are 
 with themselves ! how polite to all the world, even to 
 foreigners ! The trouble they will take to understand 
 you to answer your questions ; to put you on your 
 right road, often going half a street's length to do it ! 
 I wish some of our saturnine Britons would take a les- 
 son in good things, not bad from the much-abused 
 Frenchman. 
 
 But we did not come to Sevres to moralize, especially 
 on this lovely day, so warm that we might have thought 
 it June, save for the heap of dead November leaves un- 
 der our feet, and the brilliant tints that mingled with 
 the still vivid green of the forest of St. Cloud. In Eng- 
 land one would call it a wood, but here it is a forest, 
 though of the most civilized kind a sort of Kosherville 
 Gardens, evidently where the bourgeoisie of Paris had 
 been accustomed to spend many a happy day. Dotted 
 here and there, we noticed closed refreshment-booths 
 and piles of rickety chairs, which on Sundays and 
 fe"te days had, no doubt, been well filled all through the 
 summer.
 
 A RUINED PALACE. 243 
 
 But it was winter now. The pleasure-seekers had 
 vanished like flies. Only one group, playing quoits 
 or bowls, or something, were heard enjoying themselves 
 on a bit of level green opposite the dried-up waterfall. 
 The sad point of that day was that everything seemed 
 dried up or shut up or pulled down. All the way from 
 Sevres to St. Cloud we scarcely met a creature ; and, ar- 
 rived there, we could find not a soul about even to show 
 us our way to the palace. 
 
 "We must see it," said the only one of our party who 
 had been here before, who dilated on its exceeding 
 beauty and the fine view from its terrace, though she 
 had had great difficulty in getting admission. " But 
 that was in the Second Empire. St. Cloud had just been 
 rebuilt at great expense ; the empress liked it, and the lit- 
 tle prince imperial was constantly here. I remember 
 seeing the model railway his father had made for him 
 in the garden, where he used to play for hours, like any 
 other good little boy. Then almost nobody was allowed 
 into the palace, but I hear it is all open now." 
 
 Alas ! only too open. "When we came upon it face 
 to face, this ancient, remodernized Palace of St. Cloud, 
 what a piteous sight it was! Through its rows of 
 empty windows eyeless sockets the daylight peered ; 
 its one remaining pair of shutters persistently flapped 
 in the wind. Inside, half-destroyed staircases clung to 
 the walls, where fragments of blackened paper and gilt
 
 244 A KTJINED PALACE. 
 
 decorations still hung. But not a roof remained, not a 
 chamber, not a floor. Fire and fighting had done their 
 work. The outside walls remained; the interior was a 
 total wreck. A slight wooden barrier, which any one 
 could have stepped over, alone kept out the adventurous 
 and intrusive public from this palace a ruined palace ; 
 but the ruin was that of destruction, without the beauty 
 of age or the sanctity of natural decay. 
 
 We ascended the terrace, obeying a strict injunction 
 "not to pluck the flowers," the half-dozen stunted 
 chrysanthemums, which were all that remained of what 
 must once have been a carefully kept garden. Now it 
 was totally neglected. Sitting down on a half-rotten 
 bench, we looked upon the view. 
 
 What a view ! All Paris lay spread out below like 
 a map. We could distinctly trace the long lines of 
 streets, with the Arc de Triomphe crowning all. Above 
 were the two towers of Notre Dame, the Trocadero, 
 and the gilded dome of the Invalides glittering in the 
 sun. 
 
 Paris is scarcely a picturesque city ; not to be com- 
 pared with Rouen, Edinburgh, Florence, Rome, or even 
 London, if one could see that immense area in a bird's- 
 eye view. But it looked well to-day, even to its com- 
 monplace environs. There was a wooded hill on our 
 right, with a large building on its summit : we almost 
 doubted if this were not Versailles, and put the qiies-
 
 A RUINED PALACE. 245 
 
 tion to two wandering youths in clerical dress the only 
 living creatures here besides ourselves. The elder, a 
 big lad of about nineteen, with a pleasant, intelligent 
 face, stopped to explain that the building we had seen 
 was an orphanage, managed by a religious order, to 
 which, I think, he said he belonged. He gave us the 
 fullest information, statistical and otherwise, about it, 
 and then talked of St. Cloud, lamenting bitterly that it 
 was not Prussians, but Frenchmen, who had caused this 
 cruel ruin. He talked so pleasantly and so long that 
 his companion had to remind him how their three hours' 
 leave of absence was fast slipping away, whereupon the 
 two took off their caps, right off their heads, gathered 
 their black gowns round them, and departed. Poor 
 young priests ! with their air of honest cheerfulness 
 like boys out for a holiday we wondered what their 
 future would be, especially considering the religious 
 crisis which France is now going through, and the end 
 of which who can foresee? 
 
 For, some days after, we saw a curious sight. The 
 streets of a country town in Normandy were crowded 
 with people, escorting half a dozen Capuchins, who, af- 
 ter barricading themselves for two days against the sec- 
 ular power, were at last forced to quit their monastery. 
 Each monk was supported by two of the towns-people, 
 carrying enormous bouquets ; women threw other bou- 
 quets out of the windows. The worldly goods of the
 
 246 A RUINED PALACE. 
 
 monastery a few canvas bags piled on a handcart and 
 a forlorn -looking pony were viewed with deep inter- 
 est, and the three gendarmes who rode gloomily after 
 were assailed with deep groans. As for the victims, 
 poor souls, they looked dazed and stupid, or smiled 
 blankly at the sympathetic throng. 
 
 "It is all the government's doing; but what could 
 you expect from such canaille?" muttered a stander-by. 
 " To turn the brethren out when they never harmed 
 anybody, and sometimes did a deal of good ! And see 
 how old they are !" 
 
 Yes, " old and foolish," like King Lear or Eip Yan 
 Winkle ; for they had a look of having been buried for 
 half a century or so, and dug up again to be turned 
 adrift in abject helplessness upon this unknown mod- 
 ern world. One could not help being sorry for them, 
 but less sorry than for those two young fellows at St. 
 Cloud, whose merry faces belied their priest's dress, as 
 they went sturdily on their way. What excellent citi- 
 zens, husbands, and fathers of families were here lost to 
 France and to the world ! Perhaps the crise religieuse 
 may have its advantages, after all. 
 
 The sun-gleams began to melt away from the brilliant 
 dome of the Invalides, and a chill wind crept upwards 
 from the forest of St. Cloud. 
 
 "We ought to be going homewards, but there used 
 to be a finer view still ; and there was a curious place
 
 A KDINED PALACE. 247 
 
 called the Lantern of Diogenes.' I wonder if this old 
 woman knows anything about it !" 
 
 She was a poor old creature, carrying a heavy bundle 
 of fagots yellow, wrinkled, toothless with a skin 
 like leather, and a cavernous voice. But she answered, 
 with the politeness that is never wanting in a French 
 peasant, " Plait-il?" and curved her hand over her deaf 
 ear, so as to catch what madame was saying. No ; she 
 knew nothing of the Lantern of Diogenes of any sort 
 of view. " There is the palace " pointing to it with a 
 skinny finger " but I do not know anything else. All 
 is so changed so changed !" And, feebly shaking her 
 old head, she took up her bundle and tottered away. 
 
 Yet she must have seen it all. The old palace, as it 
 looked in the days of the First Empire ; then the splen- 
 dors of the Second Empire, and its downfall ; more 
 revolutions; foreign and internecine war; fire, bom- 
 bardment, and the ruined palace as it looked now; 
 destroyed, as the young priests had indignantly told 
 us, not by the Germans, but by the French themselves. 
 Change, indeed ! nothing but change ! 
 
 " We are the laughing-stock of Europe," said a French 
 gentleman to me, some days after, with great bitterness. 
 Not exactly so, while so many noble hearts remain in 
 France ; but most truly she is the puzzle and the pity 
 of Europe. 
 
 The entrance of St. Cloud is really beautiful. We
 
 5i48 A RUINED PALACE. 
 
 stood admiring the fine fagade, reflected into the water 
 artificially made which comes to the very palace 
 doors. This part of it had suffered least. The great 
 gates, shutting up nothing, were firmly closed, as if it 
 were an inhabited palace still. But it looked so dreary, 
 so unutterably desolate ! 
 
 At this moment we caught the tramp of feet and the 
 shrill notes of that horrible, ear-piercing noise which the 
 French call " military music." We watched the regi- 
 ment pass mere lads many of them, with dull, phleg- 
 matic faces, as if each had tire son sort and submitted to 
 a conscript's destiny, but without the slightest military 
 ardor or enthusiasm. Is it really so? Yet French- 
 men can fight, and have proved it. Has la gloire be- 
 come now a mere name ? It seemed almost so, as they 
 marched lazily by rough, untidy-looking fellows, with- 
 out any of the briskness and smartness of our British 
 " line." Not one of them glanced up at the ruined pal- 
 ace, so lately made a ruin by men like themselves, who, 
 doubtless, are ready for the same work again, did they 
 get the same chance. Kevolution ; nothing but revolu- 
 tion. As they say, any week anything may happen in 
 France, except what is expected to happen. 
 
 It was all so sad so infinitely sad that almost the 
 brightest bit of it was the recollection of that poor boy 
 who used to play with his mock railway in the pal- 
 ace gardens, but who, exiled and homeless, managed to
 
 A RUINED PALACE. 249 
 
 make himself a home in English hearts, and died with 
 Englishmen in Zululand died like a hero, with all his 
 wounds in front, so that the last of the Bonapartes 
 was not unworthy the first. 
 
 As the soldiers marched away the sun set, a heavy 
 black cloud rose up behind the ruined palace, and large 
 thunder-drops began to fall. But higher up the sky 
 was still intensely bright and clear, and the last swal- 
 lows of the year went skimming through it, almost out 
 of sight, like freed souls, far above all the bitterness 
 and turmoil of this world. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, it was better for that poor boy that 
 he died in his youth, beloved, honored, and mourned, 
 than lived to be the curse of France, as, however unwit- 
 tingly, he might have been. 
 
 So, adieu to the ruined Palace of St. Cloud, with all 
 its historical memories, and its infinite suggestions of 
 lost lives, lost hopes, lost dynasties. It must be so. 
 In this world, and especially in France, there is noth- 
 ing immutable but mutability. 
 
 THE END.
 
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 That tender pathos, which could sink so deep that gentle humor, which 
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 MRS. OLIPIANT'S WORKS. 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 Form L9-Series 444