Q aS o = 5W” Tp ae?) x= o— OO z = hae Copyright 1909 hy The Edinburgh Soetety A SECOND-RATE WOMAN The Sahib Edition of Rudyard Kipling UNDER THE DEODARS AMERICAN NOTES Illustrated by SIR E. BURNE -JONES REGINALD BOLLES - KIRKPATRICK eae EA] P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY Publishers New York " @ e »* 4 . 7: % ¢ . 7 - , ‘ . $ , ’ * « ‘ f * * é r : ' - y f + * * * * 5 * ‘ ‘4 ‘< . e ] ’ « # . i ‘ ” ‘ : *- 4 vi ; ER THE DEODARS CONTENTS THE EDUCATION OF OTIs YEFRE...... I Pram ee EET SNOUT. ale ater es 0b i an 39 Pe AMSID IS COMEDY. skis de cca 'n eels 53 erat, OF LULUSTION. lisa cues ane 6b» 77 PLMEGOND-RATE WOMAN .. 0)... 0a ee eos 97 PMSA YUBALTERN 00). 0 4.0 's o-tcv seid ecatls 133 IN THE MATTER OF A PRIVATE ........ 161 THE ENLIGHTENMENTS OF PaGeEtT, M.P. 181 AMERICAN NOTES: BMP THY GOLDEN GATES esis). ses 8 227 PMMPRECAN. 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Kirkpatrick UNDER THE DEODARS THE EDUCATION OF OTIS YEERE I In the pleasant orchard-closes “God bless all our gains,” say we; But “May God bless all our losses,” Better suits with our degree. —The Lost Bower. HIS is the history of a failure; but the woman who failed said that it might be an instructive tale to put into print for the bene- fit of the younger generation. The younger generation does not want instruction, being perfectly willing to instruct if any one will listen to it. None the less, here begins the story where every right-minded story should begin, that is to say at Simla, where all things begin and many come to an evil end. The mistake was due to a very clever woman making a blunder and not retrieving it. Men are licensed to stumble, but a clever woman’s mistake is outside the regular course of Nature and Providence; since all good people know that a woman is the only infallible thing in this 2 THE EDUCATION world, except Government Paper of the ’79 issue, bearing interest at four and a half per cent. Yet, we have to remember that six con- secutive days of rehearsing the leading part of The Fallen Angel, at the New Gaiety Theatre where the plaster is not yet properly dry, might have brought about an unhingement of spirits which, again, might have led to eccentricities. Mrs. Hauksbee came to ‘““The Foundry” to tiffin with Mrs. Mallowe, her one bosom friend, for she was in no sense ‘fa woman’s woman.” And it was a woman’s tiffin, the door shut to all the world; and they both talked chiffons, which is French for Mysteries. “T’ve enjoyed an interval of sanity,’ Mrs. Hauksbee announced, after tiffin was over and the two were comfortably settied in the little writing-room that opened out of Mrs. Mal- lowe’s bedroom. “My dear girl, what has he done?’ said Mrs. Mallowe, sweetly. It is noticeable that ladies of a certain age call each “dear girl,” just as commissioners of twenty-eight years’ standing address their equals in the Civil List as “my boy.” “There’s no he in the case. Who am I that an imaginary man should be always credited to me? Am I an Apache?” OF OTIS YEERE 3 “No, dear, but somebody’s scalp is gen- erally drying at your wigwam-door. Soaking, rather.” This was an allusion to the Hawley Boy, who was in the habit of riding all across Simla in the Rains, to call on Mrs. Hauksbee. That lady laughed. “For my sins, the Aide at Tyrconnel last night told me off to The Mussuck. MHsh! Don’t laugh. One of my most devoted ad- mirers. When the duff came—some one really ought to teach them to make puddings at Tyrconnel—The Mussuck was at liberty to at- tend to me.” “Sweet soul! I know his appetite,” said Mrs. Mallowe. “Did he, oh did he, begin his woo- ing ?”’ “By a special mercy of Providence, no. He explained his importance as a Pillar of the Em- pire. I didn’t laugh.” “Lucy, I don’t believe you.” “Ask Captain Sangar; he was on the other side. Well, as I was saying, The Mussuck dilated.” “T think I can see him doing it,” said Mrs. Mallowe, pensively, scratching her fox-terrier’s ears. “I was properly impressed. Most properly. 4 THE EDUCATION I yawned openly. ‘Strict supervision, and play them off one against the other,’ said The Mus- suck, shoveling down his ice by ftureenfuls, I assure you. “That, Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government.’ ”’ Mrs. Mallowe laughed long and merrily. “And what did you say?” “Did you ever know me at loss for an answer yet? I said: ‘So I have observed in my deal- ings with you.’ The Mussuck swelled with pride. He is coming to call on me to-morrow. The Hawley Boy is coming too.” “ «Strict supervision and play them off one. against the other. That, Mrs. Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government.’ And I dare say if we could get to The Mussuck’s heart, we should find that he considers himself a man of the world.” “As he is of the other two things. I like The Mussuck, and I won’t have you call him names. He amuses me.” “He has reformed you, too, by what appears. Explain the interval of sanity, and hit Tim on the nose with the paper-cutter, please. That dog is too fond of sugar. Do you take milk in yours?” “No, thanks. Polly, I’m wearied of this life. It’s hollow.” OF OTIS YEERE g “Turn religious, then. I always said that Rome would be your fate.” “Only exchanging half a dozen attachés in red‘ for one in black, and if I fasted, the wrinkles would come, and never, never go. Has it ever struck you, dear, that I’m getting old?” “Thanks for your courtesy. I'll return it. Ye-es, we are both not exactly—how shall I put it?” “What we have been. ‘T feel it in my bones,’ as Mrs. Crossley says. Polly, I’ve wasted my life.” “As how?” “Never mind how. I feel it. I want to be a Power before I die.” “Be a Power then. You've wits enough for anything—and beauty?” Mrs. Hauksbee pointed a teaspoon straight at her hostess. ‘Polly, if you heap compliments on me like this, I shall cease to believe that: youre a woman, Tell me how I am to be a Power.” “Inform The Mussuck that he is the most fascinating and slimmest man in Asia, and he’ll tell you anything and everything you please.” “Bother The Mussuck! I mean an intel- lectual Power—not a gas-power. Polly, I’m going to start a salon.” 6 THE EDUCATION Mrs. Mallowe turned lazily on the sofa and rested her head on her hand. “Hear the words of the Preacher, the son of Baruch,” she said. “Will you talk sensibly?’ “T will, dear, for I see that you are going to make a mistake.” “T never made a mistake in my life—at least, never one that I couldn’t explain away after- ward.” “Going to make a mistake” went on Mrs. Mallowe, composedly. “It is impossible to start a salon in Simla. A bar would be much more to the point.” “Perhaps, but why? It seems so easy.” “Just what makes it so difficult. How many clever women are there in Simla?” “Myself and yourself,” said Mrs. Hauksbee, without a moment’s hesitation. “Modest woman! Mrs. Feardon would thank you for that. And how many clever men?” “Oh—er—hundreds,”’ said Mrs. Hauksbee, vaguely. “What a fatal blunder! Not one. They are all bespoke by the Government. Take my hus- band, for instance. Jack was a clever man, though I say so who shouldn’t. Government has eaten him up. All his ideas and powers of OF OTIS YEERE a, conversation—he really used to be a- good talker, even to his wife, in the old days—are taken from him by this—this kitchen-sink of a Government. That’s the case with every man up here who is at work. I don’t suppose a Russian convict under the knout is able to amuse the rest of his gang; and all our men- folk here are gilded convicts.” “But there are scores” — “I know what you’re going to say. Scores of idle men up on leave. I admit it, but they are all of two objectionable sets. The Civilian who'd be delightful if he had the military man’s knowledge of the world and style, and the military man who'd be adorable if he had the Civilian’s culture.” “Detestable word! Have Civilians culchaw ? I never studied the breed deeply.” “Don’t make fun of Jack’s service. Yes. They’re like the teapoys in the Lakka Bazar— good material but not polished. They can’t help themselves, poor dears. A Civilian only begins to be tolerable after he has knocked about the world for fifteen years.” “And a military man?” “When he has had the same amount of serv- ice. The young of both species are horrible. You would have scores of them in your salon.” 8 THE EDUCATION “I would not!” said Mrs. Hauksbee, fiercely. “T would tell the bearer to darwaza band them. I'd put their own colonels and commis- sioners at the door to turn them away. I'd give them to the Topsham girl to play with.” “The Topsham girl would be grateful for the gift. But to go back to the salon. Allowing that you had gathered all your men and women together, what would you do with them? Make them talk? They would all with one accord be- gin to flirt. Your salon would become a glori- fied Peliti’s—a ‘Scandal Point’ by lamp-light.” “There’s a certain amount of wisdom in that view.” “There’s all the wisdom in the world in it. Surely, twelve Simla seasons ought to have taught you that you can’t focus anything in India; and a salon, to be any good at all, must be permanent. In two seasons your roomful would be scattered all over Asia. We are only little bits of dirt on the hillsides—here one day and blown down the khud the next. We have lost the art of talking—at least our men have. We have no cohesion” — “George Eliot in the flesh,” interpolated Mrs. Hauksbee, wickedly. “And collectively, my dear scoffer, we, men | and women alike, have no influence. Come into the veranda and look at the Mall!’ OF OTIS YEERE 9 The two looked down on the now rapidly fill- ing road, for all Simla was abroad to steal a stroll between a shower and a fog. “How do you propose to fix that river? Look! There’s The Mussuck—head of good- ness knows what. He is a power in the land, though he does eat like a_ costertonger. There’s Colonel Blone, and General Grucher, and Sir Dugald Delane, and Sir Henry Haugh- ton, and Mr. Jellalatty. All Heads of Depart- ments, and all powerful.” “And all my fervent admirers,” said Mrs. Hauksbee, piously. “Sir Henry Haughton raves about me. But go on.” “One by one, these men are worth something. Collectively, they’re just a mob of Anglo- Indians. Who cares for what Anglo-Indians say? Your salon won't weld the Departments together and make you mistress of India, dear. And these creatures won’t talk administrative ‘shop’ in a crowd—your salon—because they are so afraid of the men in the lower ranks overhearing it. They have forgotten what of Literature and Art they ever knew, and the women’’— “Can’t talk about anything except the last Gymkhana, or the sins of their last nurse. I was calling on Mrs. Derwills this morning.” TO THE EDUCATION “Vou admit that? They can talk to the sub- alterns though, and the subalterns can talk to them. Your salon would suit their views ad- mirably, if you respected the religious preju- dices of the country and provided plenty of kala juggahs.” “Plenty of kala yuggahs. Oh my poor little idea! Kala juggahs ina salon! But who made you so awfully clever?” “Perhaps I’ve tried myself; or perhaps I know a woman who has. I have preached and expounded the whole matter and the conclusion thereof’ — “You needn’t go on. ‘Is Vanity.’ Polly, I thank you. These vermin”—Mrs. Hauksbee waved her hand from the veranda to two men in the crowd below who had raised their hats to her—“these vermin shall not rejoice in a new Scandal Point or an extra Peliti’s. I will aban- don the notion of a salon. It did seem so tempting, though. But what shall I do? I must do something.” “Why? Are not Abana and Pharphar’— “Jack has made you nearly as bad as him- self! I want to, of course. I’m tired of every- thing and everybody, from a moonlight picnic at Seepee to the blandishments of The Mus- suck.” OF OTIS YEERE IF “Ves—that comes, too, sooner or later. Have you nerve enough to make your bow yet?” _ Mrs. Hauksbee’s mouth shut grimly. Then she laughed. “I think I see myself doing it. Big pink placards on the Mall: ‘Mrs. Hauks- bee! Positively her last appearance on any stage! This is to give notice!’ No more dances; no more rides; no more luncheons; no more theatricals with supper to follow; no more sparring with one’s dearest, dearest friend; no more fencing with an inconvenient man who hasn’t wit enough to clothe what he’s pleased to call his sentiments in passable speech; no more parading of The Mussuck while Mrs. Tarkass calls all round Simla, spreading hor- rible stories about me! No more of anything that is thoroughly wearying, abominable and detestable, but, all the same, makes life worth the having. Yes! I see it all! Don’t inter- rupt, Polly, I’m inspired. A mauve and white striped ‘cloud’ round my excellent shoulders, a seat in the fifth row of the Gaiety, and both horses sold. Delightful vision! A comfortable armchair, situated in three different draughts, at every ballroom; and nice, large, sensible shoes for all the couples to stumble over as they go into the veranda! Then at supper. Can’t 12 THE EDUCATION you imagine the scene? The greedy mob gone away. Reluctant subaltern, pink all over like a newly-powdered baby,—they really ought to tan subalterns before they are exported, Polly —sent back by the hostess to do his duty. Slouches up to me across the room, tugging at a glove two sizes too large for him—lI hate a man who wears gloves like overcoats—and try- ing to look as if he’d thought of it from the first. ‘May I ah-have the pleasure ’f takin’ you *nt’ supper?’ Then I get up with a hungry smile. Just like this.” “Lucy, how can you be so absurd ?” “And sweep out on his arm. So! After supper I shall go away early, you know, be- cause I shall be afraid of catching cold. No one will look for my “rickshaw. Mine, so please you! I shall stand, always with that mauve and white ‘cloud’ over my head, while the wet soaks into my dear, old, venerable feet and Tom swears and shouts for the mem- sahib's gharri. Then home to bed at half-past eleven! Truly excellent life—helped out by the visits of the Padri, just fresh from burying somebody down below there.” She pointed through the pines, toward the Cemetery, and continued with vigorous dramatic gesture— “Listen! I see it ali—down, down even to OF OTIS YEERE 13 the stays! Such stays! Six-eight a pair, Polly, with red flannel—or list is it?—that they put into the tops of those fearful things. J can draw you a picture of them.” “Lucy, for Heaven’s sake, don’t go waving your arms about in that idiotic manner! Recol- lect, every one can see you from the Mall.” “Let them see! They'll think I am rehears- ine for The Fallen Angel. Look! ‘There’s The Mussuck. How badly he rides. There!’ She blew a kiss to the venerable Indian ad- ministrator with infinite grace. “Now, she continued, “he'll be chaffed about that at the Club in the delicate manner those brutes of men affect, and the Hawley Boy will tell me all about it—softening the de- tails for fear of shocking me. That boy is too good to live, Polly. Dve serious thoughts of recommending him to throw up his Commission and go into the Church. In his present frame of mind he would obey me. Happy, happy child!’ “Never again,” said Mrs. Mallowe, with an affectation of indignation, “shall you tiffin here! ‘Lucindy, your behavior is scand’lus.’ ” “All your fault,” retorted Mrs. Hauksbee, “for suggesting such a thing as my abdication. No! Jamais-nevaire! I will act, ride, frivol, 14 THE EDUCATION talk scandal, dine out, and appropriate the legitimate captives of any woman I choose, un- till I d-r-r-rop, or a better woman than I puts me to shame before all Simla,—and it’s dust and ashes in my mouth while I’m doing it!” She swept into the drawing-room. Mrs. Mallowe followed and put an arm round her waist. “T’m not!’ said Mrs. Hauksbee, defiantly, rummaging for her handkerchief. “I’ve been dining out the last ten nights, and rehearsing in the afternoon. You'd be tired yourself. It’s only because I’m tired.” Mrs. Mallowe did not offer Mrs. Hauksbee any pity or ask her to lie down, but gave her another cup of tea, and went on with the talk. “I’ve been through that too, dear,” she said. “I remember,” said Mrs. Hauksbee, a gleam of fun on her face. “In ’84, wasn’t it? You went out a great deal less next season.” — Mrs. Mallowe smiled in a superior and Sphinx-like fashion. “T became an Influence,”’ said she. “Good gracious, child, you didn’t join the Theosophists and kiss Buddha’s big toe, did you? I tried to get into their set once, but they cast me out for a sceptic—without a chance of improving my poor little mind, too.” OF OTIS YEERE 1s “No, I didn’t Theosophilander. Jack says — “Never mind Jack. What a husband says 1s known before. What did you do?” “T made a lasting impression.” “So have I—for four months. But that didn’t console me in the least. I hated the man. Will you stop smiling in that inscrutable way and tell me what you mean?” Mrs. Mallowe told. * * * * * x “And—you—mean—to—say that it is abso- lutely Platonic on both sides?” “Absolutely, or I should never have taken it up.” “And his last promotion was due to you?” Mrs. Mallowe nodded. “And you warned him against the Topsham girl?” Another nod. “And told him of Sir Dugald Delane’s pri- vate memo about him?” A third nod. “Why?” “What a question to ask a woman! Because it amused me at first. I am proud of my prop- erty now. If I live, he shall continue to be suc- cessful. Yes, I-will put him upon the straight road to Knighthood, and everything else that a 16 THE EDUCATION man values. The rest depends upon himself.” “Polly, you are a most extraordinary woman.” “Not in the least. I’m concentrated, that’s all. You diffuse yourself, dear; and though all Simla knows your skill in managing a team ’’— “Can’t you choose a prettier word ?” “Team, of half a dozen, from The Mussuck to the Hawley Boy, you gain nothing by it. Not even amusement.” “And your” “Try my recipe. Take a man, not a boy, mind, but an almost mature, unattached man, and be his guide, philosopher, and friend. You'll find it the most interesting occupation that you ever embarked on. It can be done— you needn’t look like that—because I’ve done i | “There’s an element of risk about it that makes the notion attractive. Ill get such a man and say to him, ‘Now, understand that there must be no flirtation. Do exactly what I tell you, profit by my instruction and counsels, and all will yet be well.’ Is that the idea?” “More or less,” said Mrs. Mallowe, with an unfathomable smile. “But be sure he under- stands.”’ II Dribble-dribble—trickle-trickle— What a lot of raw dust! My dollie’s had an accident And out came all the sawdust! Nursery Rhyme. So Mrs. Hauksbee, in “The Foundry” which overlooks Simla Mall, sat at the feet of Mrs. Mallowe and gathered wisdom. The end of the Conference was the Great Idea upon which Mrs. Hauksbee so plumed herself. “I warn you,” said Mrs. Mallowe, beginning to repent of her suggestion, “that the matter is not half so easy as it looks. Any woman— even the Topsham girl—can catch a man, but very, very few know how to manage him when caught.” “My child,” was the answer, “I’ve been a female St. Simon Stylites looking down upon men for these—these years past. Ask The Mussuck whether I can manage them.” Mrs. Hauksbee departed humming, “J’l] go to him and say to him in manner most tromical.”” Mrs. Mallowe laughed to herself. Then she grew suddenly sober. “I wonder whether I’ve done well in advising that amuse- 17 18 THE EDUCATION ment? Lucy’s a clever woman, but a thought too careless.” A week later, the two met at a Monday Pop. “Well?” said Mrs. Mallowe. “T’ve caught him!’ said Mrs. Hauksbee; her eyes were dancing with merriment. “Who is it, mad woman? I’m sorry I ever spoke to you about it.” “Look between the pillars. In the third row; fourth from the end. You can see his face now. Look!” “Otis Yeere! Of all the improbable and im- possible people! I don’t believe you.” “Hsh! Wait till Mrs. Tarkass begins mur- dering Milton Wellings; and I’ll tell you all about it. S-s-ss! That woman’s voice always reminds me of an Underground train coming into Earl’s Court with the breaks on. Now listen. It is really Otis Yeere.” “So I see, but does it follow that he is your property!” “He is! By right of trove. I found him lonely and unbefriended, the very next night after our talk, at the Dugald Delane’s burra- khana. I liked his eyes, and I talked to him. Next day he called. Next day we went for a ride together, and to-day he’s tied to my ’rick- shaw-wheels hand and foot. You'll see when OF OTIS YEERE 19 the concert’s over. He doesn’t know I’m here et.” “Thank goodness you haven’t chosen a boy. What are you going to do with him, assuming that you’ve got him?” “Assuming, indeed! Does a: woman—do J —ever make a mistake in that sort of thing? First”’—Mrs. Hauksbee ticked off the items os- tentatiously on her little gloved fingers— “First, my dear, I shall dress him properly. At present his raiment is a disgrace, and he wears a dress-shirt like a crumpled sheet of the Pioneer. Secondly, after I have made him pre- sentable, 1 shall form his manners—his morals are above reproach.” “You seem to have discovered a great deal about him considering the shortness of your acquaintance.” “Surely you ought to know that the first proof a.man gives of his interest in a woman is by talking to her about his own sweet self. If the woman listens without yawning, he be- gins to like her. If she flatters the animal’s vanity, he ends by adoring her.” “In some cases.”’ “Never mind the exceptions. I know which one you are thinking of. Thirdly, and lastly, aiter he is polished and made pretty, I shall, 20 THE EDUCATION as you said, be his guide, philosopher, and friend, and he shall become a success—as great a sticcess as your friend. I always wondered how that man got on. Did The Mussuck come to you with the Civil List and, dropping on one knee—no, two knees, a la Gibbon—hand it to you and say, ‘Adorable angel, choose your friend’s appointment’ ?” “Lucy, your long experiences of the Military Department have demoralized you. One doesn’t do that sort of thing on the Civil Side.’’ “IWo disrespect meant to Jack’s Service, my dear. I only asked for information. Give me three months, and see what changes I shall work in my prey.” “Go your own way, since you must. But ’'m sorry that I was weak enough to suggest the amusement.” “*T am all discretion, and may be trusted to an in-fin-ite extent,’”’ quoted Mrs. Hauksbee from The Fallen Angel; and the conversation ceased with Mrs. Tarkass’s last, long-drawn war-whoop. Her bitterest enemies—and she had many— could hardly accuse Mrs. Hauksbee of wasting her time. Otis Yeere was one of those wandering “dumb” characters, foredoomed OF OTIS YEERE 21 through life to be nobody’s property. Ten years in Her Majesty’s Bengal Civil Service, spent, for the most part, in undesirable Dis- tricts, had given him little to be proud of, and nothing to bring confidence. Old enough to have lost the first fine careless rapture that showers on the immature “Stunt imaginary Commissionerships and Stars, and sends him into the collar with coltish earnestness and abandon ; too young to be yet able to look baci upon the progress he had made, and thanls Providence that under the conditions of the day he had come even so far, he stood upon the dead-centre of his career. And when a man stands still, he feels the slightest impulse from without. Fortune had ruled that Otis Yeere should be, for the first part of his serv- ice, one of the rank and file who are ground up in the wheels of the Administration; losing heart and soul, and mind and strength, in the process. Until steam replaces manual power in the working of the Empire, there must al- ways be this percentase—must always be the men who are used up, expended, in the mere mechanical routine. For these promotion is far off and the mill-grind of every day very instant. The Secretariats know them only by name; they are not the picked men of the Dis- 22 THE EDUCATION tricts with Divisions and Collectorates await- ing them. They are simply the rank and file ——_the food for fever—sharing with the ryot and the plough-bullock the honor of being the plinth on which the State rests. The older ones have lost their aspirations; the younger are putting theirs aside with a sigh. Both learn to endure patiently until the end of the day. Twelve years in the rank and file, men say, will sap the hearts of the bravest and dull the wits of the most keen. Out of this life Otis Yeere had fled for a few months; drifting, in the hope of a little masculine society, into Simla. When his leave was over he would return to his swampy, sour- green, under-manned Bengal district; to the native Assistant, the native Doctor, the native Magistrate, the steaming, sweltering Station, the ill-kempt City, and the undisguised inso- lence of the Municipality that babbled away the lives of men. Life was cheap, however. The soil spawned humanity, as it bred frogs in the Rains, and the gap of the sickness of one season was filled to overflowing by the fecundity of the next. Otis was unfeignedly thankful to lay down his work for a little while and escape from the seething, whining, weakly hive, impotent to help itself, but strong in its OF OTIS YEERE 23 power to cripple, thwart, and annoy the sunken-eyed man, who, by official irony, was said to be “in charge” of it. * * * * * * “TI knew there were women-dowdies in Ben- gal. They come up here sometimes. But I didn’t know that there were men-dowds, too.” Then, for the first time, it occurred to Otis Yeere that his clothes wore the mark of the ages. It will be seen that his friendship with Mrs. Hauksbee had made great strides. As that lady truthfully says, a man is never so happy as when he is talking about himself. From Otis Yeere’s lips Mrs. Hauksbee, before long, learned everything that she wished to know about the subject of her experiment: learned what manner of life he had led in what she vaguely called “those awful cholera dis- tricts”; learned, too, but this knowledge came later, what manner of life he had purposed to lead and what dreams he had dreamed in the year of grace ’77, before the reality had knocked the heart out of him. Very pleasant are the shady bridle-paths round Prospect Hill for the telling of such confidences. “Not yet,” said Mrs. Hauksbee to Mrs. Mal- lowe. “Not yet. I must wait until the man is properly dressed, at least. Great Heavens, is it ea THE EDUCATION possible that he doesn’t know what an honor it is to be taken up by Me!” Mrs. Hauksbee did not reckon false modesty as one of her failings. “Always with Mrs. Hauksbee!” murmured Mrs. Mallowe, with her sweetest smile, to Otis. “Oh you men, you men! Here are our Pun- jabis growling because you've monopolized the nicest woman in Simla. They'll tear you to pieces on the Mall, some day, Mr. Yeere.” Mrs. Mallowe rattled down-hill, having sat- isfied herself, by a glance through the fringe of her sunshade, of the effect of her words. The shot went home. Of a surety Otis Yeere was somebody in this bewildering whirl of Simla—had monopolized the nicest woman in it and the Punjabis were growling. The notion justified a mild glow of vanity. He had never looked upon his acquaintance with Mrs. Hauksbee as a matter for general interest. The knowledge of envy was a pleasant feel- ing to the man of no account. It was intensi- fied later in the day when a luncher at the Club said, spitefully, “Well, for a debilitated Ditcher, Yeere, you are going it. Hasn’t any kind friend told you that she’s the most dan- gerous woman in Simla?” 7 Yeere chuckled and passed out. When, oh OF OTIS YEERE 25 when, would his new clothes be ready? He descended into the Mall to inquire; and Mrs. Hauksbee, coming over the Church Ridge in her ‘rickshaw, looked down upon him approv- ingly. “He’s learning to carry himself as if he were a man, instead of a piece of furniture, —and,” she screwed up her eyes to see the bet- ter through the sunlight—‘“he is a man when he holds himself like that. Oh blessed Conceit, what should we be without you?” With the new clothes came a new stock of self-confidence. Otis Yeere discovered that he could enter a room without breaking into a gentle perspiration—could cross one, even to talk to Mrs, Hauksbee, as though rooms were meant to be crossed. He was for the first time in nine years proud of himself, and contented with his life, satisfied with his new clothes, and rejoicing in the friendship of Mrs. Hauks- bee. “Conceit is what the poor fellow wants,” she said in confidence to Mrs. Mallowe. “TI believe they must use Civilians to plough the fields with in Lower Bengal. You see I have to be- gin from the very beginning—haven’t I? But you'll admit, won’t you, dear, that he is im- mensely improved since I took him in hand. Only give me a little more time and he won't know himself.” 26 THE EDUCATION Indeed, Yeere was rapidly beginning to for- get what he had been. One of his own rank and file put the matter brutally when he asked Yeere, in reference to nothing, “And who has been making you a Member of Council, lately? You carry the side of half a dozen of ’em.”’ “I—I’m awf-ly sorry. I didn’t mean it, you know,” said Yeere, apologetically. “There'll be no holding you,” continued the old stager, grimly. “Climb down, Otis—climb down, and get all that beastly affectation knocked out of you with fever! Three thou- sand a month wouldn’t support it.” Yeere repeated the incident to Mrs. Hauks- bee. He had come to look upon her as his Mother Confessor. : “And you apologized!’ she said. “Oh, shame! I hate a man who apologizes. Never apologize for what your friend called ‘side.’ Never! It’s a man’s business to be insolent and overbearing until he meets with a stronger. Now, you bad boy, listen to me.” Simply and straightforwardly, as the ’rick- shaw loitered round Jakko, Mrs. Hauksbee preached to Otis Yeere the Great Gospel of Conceit, illustrating it with living pictures en- countered during their Sunday afternoon stroll. Kip. 6A OF OTIS YEERE 27 “Good gracious!’ she ended, with the per- sonal argument, “‘you’ll apologize next for be- ing my attaché?” “Never!” said Otis Yeere. “That’s another thing altogether. I shall always be’— “What’s coming?” thought Mrs. Hauksbee. “Proud of that,” said Otis. “Safe for the present,” she said to herself, “But I’m afraid I have grown conceited. Like Jeshurun, you know. When he waxed fat, then he kicked. It’s the having no worry on one’s mind and the Hill air, I suppose.” “Hill air, indeed!’ said Mrs. Hauksbee to herself. “He'd have been hiding in the Club till the last day of his leave, if I hadn’t dis- covered him.”’ And aloud— “Why shouldn’t you be? You have every right to.” “I! Why?” “Oh, hundreds of things. I’m not going to waste this lovely afternoon by explaining; but I know you have. What was that heap of manuscript you showed me about the grammar of the aboriginal—what’s their names ?” “Gullals, A piece of nonsense. I’ve far too much work to do to bother over Gullals now. You should see my District. Come down with your husband some day and I'll show you Kip. 6—B 28 THE EDUCATION round. Such a lovely place in the Rains! A sheet of water with the railway-embankment and the snakes sticking out, and in the sum- mer, green flies and green squash. The people would die of fear if you shook a dogwhip at ‘em. But they know you're forbidden to do that, so they conspire to make your life a bur- den to you. My District’s worked by some man at Darjiling, on the strength of a native pleader’s false reports. Oh it’s a heavenly place!’’ Otis Yeere laughed bitterly. “There’s not the least necessity that you should stay in it. Why do you?” “Because I must. How’m I to get out of ha dag “How! In a hundred and fifty ways. If there weren’t so many people on the road, I’d like to box your ears. Ask, my dear boy, ask! Look! There is young Hexarly with six years’ service and half you talents. He asked for what he wanted, and he got it. See, down by the Convent! There’s McArthurson who has come to his present position by asking—sheer, downright asking—after he had pushed him- self out of the rank and file. One man is as good as another in your service—believe me. I’ve seen Simla. for more seasons than I care OF OTIS YEERE 29 to think about. Do you stppose men are chosen for appointments because of their spe- cial fitness beforehand? You have all passed a high test—what do you call it ?—in the begin- ning, and, except for the few who have gone altogether to the bad, you can all work hard. Asking does the rest. Call it cheek, call it in- solence, call it anything you like, but ask! Men argue—yes, I know what men say—that a man, by the mere audacity of his request, must have some good in him. A weak man doesn’t say: ‘Give me this and that.’ He whines: ‘Why haven’t I been given this and that?’ If you were in the Army, I should say learn to spin plates or play a tambourine with your toes. As it is—ask! You belong to a Service that ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at twenty minutes’ notice, and yet you hesitate over asking to es- cape from a squashy green district where you admit you are not master. Drop the Bengal Government altogether. Even Darjiling is a little out-of-the-way hole. I was there once, and the rents were extortionate. Assert your- self. Get the Government of India to take you over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a grand chance if he can trust him- self. Go somewhere! Do something! You 30 THE EDUCATION have twice the wits and three times the pres- ence of the men up here, and, and’’—Mrs. Hauksbee paused for breath; then continued— “and in any way you look at it, you sha 4: to. You who could go so far!” “I don’t know,” said Yeere, rather taken aback by the unexpected eloquence. “I haven’t such a good opinion of myself.” It was not strictly Platonic, but it was Policy. Mrs. Hauksbee laid her hand lightly upon the ungloved paw that rested on the turned-back ’rickshaw hood, and, looking the man full in the face, said tenderly, almost too tenderly, “Z believe in you if you mistrust your- self. Is that enough, my friend?” “It is enough,” answered Otis, very solemnly. He was silent for a long time, redreaming the dreams that he had dreamed eight years ago, but through them all ran, as sheet-light- ning through Sous cloud, the light of Mrs. Hauksbee’s icles eyes. Curious and impenetrable are the mazes of Simla life—the only existence in this desolate — land worth the living. Gradually it went abroad among men and women,’in the pauses between dance, play and Gymkhana, that Otis Yeere, the man with the newly-lit light of self- OF OTIS YEERE 31 confidence in his eyes, had “done something decent” in the wilds whence he came. He had brought an erring Municipality to reason, ap- propriated the funds on his own responsibility, and saved the lives of hundreds. He knew more about the Guilals thax any living man. Had a vast knowledge of the aboriginal tribes; was, in spite of his juniority, the greatest au- thority on the aboriginal Gullals. No one quite knew who or what the Gullals were till The Mussuck, who had been calling on Mrs, Hauksbee, and prided himself upon picking people’s brains, explained they were a tribe of ferocious hillmen, somewhere near Sikkim, whose friendship even the Great Indian Empire would find it worth her while to secure. Now we know that Otis Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee his MS. notes of six years’ standing on these same Guilals. He had told her, too, how, sick and shaken with the fever their negli- gence had bred, crippled by the loss of his pet clerk, and savagely angry at the desolation in his charge, he had once damned the collective eyes of his “intelligent local board” for a set of haramgadas. Which act of “brutal and tyrannous oppression” won him a Reprimand Royal from the Bengal Government; but in the anecdote as amended for Northern con- 32 THE EDUCATION sumption we find no record of this. Hence we are forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee edited his reminiscences before sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she well knew, to exag- gerate good or evil. And Otis Yeere bore him- self as befitted the hero of many tales. “You can talk to me when you don’t fall into a brown study. Talk now, and talk your brightest and best,” said Mrs. Hauksbee. Otis needed no spur. Look to a man who has the counsel of a woman of or above the world to back him. So long as he keeps his head, he can meet both sexes on equal ground —an advantage never intended by Providence, who fashioned Man on one day and Woman on another, in sign that neither should know more than a very little of the other’s life. Such a man goes far, or, the counsel being . withdrawn, collapses suddenly while his world seeks the reason. Generalled by Mrs. Hauksbee, who, again, had all Mrs. Mallowe’s wisdom at her disposal, proud of himself and, in the end, believing in himself because he was believed in, Otis Yeere stood ready for any fortune that might befall, certain that it would be good. He would fight for his own hand, and intended that this sec- ond struggle should lead to better issue than OF OTIS YEERE 33 the first helpless surrender of the bewildered *Stunt. What might have happened, it is impossible to say. This lamentable thing befell, bred directly by a statement of Mrs. Hauksbee that she would spend the next season in Darjiling. “Are you certain of that?” said Otis Yeere. “Quite. We're writing about a house now.” Otis Yeere “stopped dead,” as Mrs. Hauks- bee put it in discussing the relapse with Mrs. Mallowe. “He has behaved,” she said, angrily, “just like Captain Kerrington’s pony—only Otis is a donkey—at the last Gymkhana. Planted his forefeet and refused to go on another step. Polly, my man’s going to disappoint me. What shall I do?” As a rule, Mrs. Mallowe does not approve of staring, but on this occasion she opened her eyes to the utmost. “You have managed cleverly so far,’ she said. “Speak to him, and ask him what he means.” “T will—at to-night’s dance.” “No—o, not at a dance,” said Mrs. Mallowe, cautiously. ‘Men are never themselves quite at dances. Better wait till to-morrow morn- be 329 . ing 34 THE EDUCATION “Nonsense. If he’s going to ’vert in this ine sane way, there isn’t a day to lose. Are you going? No? Then sit up for me, there’s a dear. I shan’t stay longer than supper under any circumstances.” Mrs. Mallowe waited through the evening, looking long and earnestly into the fire, and sometimes smiling to herself. Xx * *k * * * “Oh! oh! oh! That man’s an idiot! A raving, positive idiot! I’m sorry I ever saw him!’ | Mrs. Hauksbee burst into Mrs. Mallowe’s house, at midnight, almost in tears. “What in the world has happened?” said Mrs. Mallowe, but her eyes showed that she had guessed an answer. “Happened! Everything has happened! He was there. I went to him and said, “Now, what does this nonsense mean?’ Don’t laugh, dear, I can’t bear it. But you know what I mean I said. Then it was a square, and I sat it out with him and wanted an explanation, and he said— Oh! I haven’t patience with such idiots! You know what I said about going to Darjiling next year? It doesn’t matter to me where I go. I’d have changed the Station and lost the rent to have saved this. He said, in OF OTIS YEERE 38 so many words, that he wasn’t going to try to work up any more, because—because he would be shifted into a province away from Daryil- ing, and his own District, where these creatures are, is within a day’s journey’— “Ah-hh!” said Mrs. Mallowe, in a tone of one who has successfully tracked an obscure word through a large dictionary. “Did you ever hear of anything so mad—so absurd? And he had the ball at his feet. He had only to kick it! I would have made him anything! Anything in the wide world. He could have gone to the world’s end. I would have helped him. I made him, didn’t I, Polly? Didn’t I create that man? Doesn’t he owe everything to me? And to reward me, just when everything was nicely arranged, by this lunacy that spoiled everything!” “Very few men understand your devotion thoroughly.” “Oh, Polly, don’t laugh at me! I give men up from this hour. I could have killed him then and there. What right had this man—this Thing I had picked out of his filthy paddy- fields—to make love to me?”’ “He did that, did he?” “He did. I don’t remember half he said, I was so angry. Oh, but such a funny thing 36 THE EDUCATION happened! I can’t help laughing at it now, though I felt nearly ready to cry with rage. He raved and I stormed—lI’m afraid we must have made an awful noise in our kala juggah. Protect my character, dear, if it’s all over Simla to-morrow—and then he bobbed for- ward in the middle of this insanity—I firmly believe the man’s demented—and kissed me!” “Morals above reproach,” purred Mrs. Mal- lowe. “So they were—so they were! It was the most absurd kiss. I don’t believe he’d ever kissed a woman in his life before. I threw my head back, and it was a sort of slidy, pecking dab, just on the end of the chin—here.” Mrs, Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin with her fan. “Then, of course, I was furiously angry, and told him that he was no gentleman, and I was sorry I'd ever met him, and so on. He was crushed so easily that I couldn’t be — very angry. ‘Then I came away straight to you.” “Was this before or after supper ?” “Oh! before—oceans before. Isn’t it per- fectly disgusting?” “Let me think. I withhold judgment till to- morrow. Morning brings counsel.” But morning brought only a servant with a OF OTIS YEERE 37 dainty bouquet of Annandale roses for Mrs. Hauksbee to wear at the dance at Viceregal Lodge that night.” “He doesn’t seem to be very penitent,” said Mrs. Mallowe. ‘“What’s the billet-doux in the centre ?”’ Mrs. Hauksbee opened the neatly folded note,—another accomplishment that she had taught Otis,—read it, and groaned tragically. “Last wreck of a feeble intellect! Poetry! Is it his own, do you think? Oh, that I ever built my hopes on such a maudlin idiot!’ “No. It’s a quotation from Mrs. Browning, and, in view of the facts of the case, as Jack says, uncommonly well chosen. Listen— “ ‘Sweet thou hast trod on a heart, Pass! There’s a world full of men; And women as fair as thou art, Must do such things now and then. “*Thou only hast stepped unaware— Malice not one can impute; And why should a heart have been there, In the way of a fair woman’s foot?’” “Tt didn’t—I didn’t—I didn’t!” said Mrs. Hauksbee, angrily, her eyes filling with tears; “there was no malice at all. Oh, it’s too vexa- tous!” “You've misunderstood the compliment,” 38 THE EDUCATION said Mrs. Mallowe. “He clears you completely and—ahem—lI should think by this, that he has cleared completely too. My experience of men is that when they begin to quote poetry, they are going to flit. Like swans singing before they die, you know.” “Polly, you take my sorrows in a most un- feeling way.” “Do I? Is it so terrible? If he’s hurt your vanity, I should say that you’ve done a certain amount of damage to his heart.” “Oh, you never can tell about a man!” said Mrs. Hauksbee, AT THE PITS MOUTH AT THE PIT’S MOUTH Men say it was a stolen tide— The Lord that sent it he knows all, But in mine ear will aye abide The message that the bells let fall, And awesome bells they were to me, That in the dark rang, “Enderby.” —Jean Ingelow. 0 pte upon a time there was a Man and his Wife and a Tertium Quid. All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest. The Man should have looked after his Wife, who should have avoided the Ter- tium Quid, who, again, should have married a wife of his own, after clean and open flirta- tions, to which nobody can possibly object, round Jakko or Observatory Hill. When you see a young man with his pony in a white lather, and his hat on the back of his head flying down-hill at fifteen miles an hour to meet a girl who will be properly surprised to meet him, you naturally approve of that young man, and wish him Staff appointments, and take an interest in his welfare, and, as the 4i 42 AT THE PIT’S MOUTH proper time comes, give them sugar-tongs or side-saddles according to your means and gen- erosity. The Tertium Quid flew down-hill on horse- back, but it was to meet the Man’s Wife; and when he flew up-hill it was for the same end. The Man was in the Plains, earning money for his Wife to spend on dresses and four- hundred-rupee bracelets, and inexpensive lux- uries of that kind. He worked very hard, and sent her a letter or a post-card daily. She also wrote to him daily, and said that she was longing for him to come up to Simla. The Tertium Quid used to lean over her shoulder and laugh as she wrote the notes. Then the two would ride to the Post Office together. Now, Simla is a strange place and its cus- toms are peculiar; nor is any man who has not spent at least ten seasons there qualified to pass judgment on circumstantial evidence, which is the most untrustworthy in the Courts. For these reasons, and for others which need not appear, I decline to state positively whether there was anything irretrievably wrong in the relations between the Man’s Wife and the Ter- tium Quid. If there was, and hereon you must form your own opinion, it was the Man’s Wife’s fault. She was kittenish in her man- “She was taken out of the saddle a limp heap.” At the Pit’s Mouth, p. 51 AT THE PIT’S MOUTH 43 ners, wearing generally an air of soft and fluffy innocence. But she was deadly learned and evil-instructed; and now and again, when the mask dropped, men saw this, shuddered and— almost drew back. Men are occasionally par- ticular, and the least particular men are always the most exacting. Simla is eccentric in its fashion of treating friendships. Certain attachments which have set and crystallized through half a dozen sea- sons acquire almost the sancity of the marriage bond, and are revered as such. Again, certain attachments equally old, and, to all appearance, equally venerable, never seem to win any recog- nized official status; while a chance-sprung ac- quaintance, not two months born, steps into the place which by right belongs to the senior. There is no law reducible to print which reg- ulates these affairs. Some people have a gift which secures them infinite toleration, and others have not. The Man’s Wife had not. If she looked over the garden wall, for instance, women taxed her with stealing their husbands. She complained pathetically that she was not allowed to choose her own friends. When she put up her big white muff to her lips, and gazed over it and under her eyebrows at you as she said this 44 AT THE PIT’S MOUTH thing, you felt that she had been infamously misjudged, and that all the other women’s in- stincts were all wrong; which was absurd. She was not allowed to own the Tertium Quid in peace; and was so strangely constructed that she would not have enjoyed peace had she been so permitted. She preferred some semblance of intrigue to cloak even her most common- place actions. After two months of riding first round Jakko, then Elysium, then Summer Hill, then Observatory Hill, then under Jutogh, and last- ly up and down the Cart Road as far as the Tara Devi gap in the dusk, she said to the Ter- tium Quid, “Frank, people say we are too much together, and people are so horrid.” The Tertium Quid pulled his moustache, and replied that horrid people were unworthy of the consideration of nice people. “But they have done more than talk—they have written—written to my hubby—I’m sure of it,” said the Man’s Wife, and she pulled a letter from her husband out of her saddle- pocket and gave it to the Tertium Quid. | It was an honest letter, written by an honest man, then stewing in the Plains on two hun- dred rupees a month (for he allowed his wife eight hundred and fifty), and in a silk banian AT THE PIT’S MOUTH 45 and cotton trousers. It is said that, perhaps, she had not thought of the unwisdom of allow- ing her name to be so generally coupled with the Tertium Quid’s; that she was too much of a child to understand the dangers of that sort of thing; that he, her husband, was the last man in the world to interfere jealously with her little amusements and interests, but that it would be better were she to drop the Tertium Quid quietly and for her husband’s sake. The letter was sweetened with many pretty little pet names, and it amused the Tertium Quid considerably. He and She laughed over it, so that you, fifty yards away, could see their shoulders shaking while the horses slouched along side by side. Their conversation was not worth reporting. The upshot of it was that, next day, no one saw the Man’s Wife and the Tertium Quid to- gether. They had both gone down to the Cemetery, which, as a rule, is only visited officially by the inhabitants of Simla. A Simla funeral with the clergyman riding, the mourners riding, and the coffin creaking as it swings between the bearers, is one of the most depressing things on this earth, particu- larly when the procession passes under the wet, dank dip beneath the Rockcliffe Hotel, where 46 AT THE PIT’S MOUTH the sun is shut out, and all the hill streams are wailing and weeping together as they go down the valleys. Occasionally, folk tend the graves, but we in India shift and are transferred so often that, at the end of the second year, the Dead have no friends—only acquaintances who are far too busy amusing themselves up the hill to attend to old partners. The idea of using a Cemetery as a rendezvous is distinctly a feminine one. A man would have said simply “Let people talk. We'll go down the Mall.” A woman is made differently, especially if she be such a woman as the Man’s Wife. She and the Ter- tium Quid enjoyed each other’s society among the graves of men and women whom they had known and danced with aforetime. | They used to take a big horse-blanket and sit on the grass a little to the left of the lower end, where there is a dip in the ground, and where the occupied graves stop short and the ready- made ones are not ready. Each well-regulated Indian Cemetery keeps half a dozen graves permanently open for contingencies and in- cidental wear and tear. In the Hills these are more usually baby’s size, because children who come up weakened and sick from the Plains often succumb to the effects of the Rains in the —— a ee ee ee AT THE PIT’S MOUTH 47 Hills or get pneumonia from their ayahs tak- ing them through damp pine-woods after the sun has set. In Cantonments, of course, the man’s size is more in request; these arrange- ments varying with the climate and popula- tion. One day when the Man’s Wife and the Ter- tium Quid had just arrived in the Cemetery, they saw some coolies breaking ground. They had marked out a full-size grave, and the Ter- tium Quid asked them whether any Sahib was sick. They said that they did not know; but it was an order that they should dig a Sahib’s grave. “Work away,” said the Tertium Quid, “and let’s see how it’s done.” The coolies worked away, and the Man’s Wife and the Tertium Quid watched and talked for a couple of hours while the grave was being deepened. Then a coolie, taking the earth in baskets as it was thrown up, jumped over the grave. “That’s queer,” said the Tertium Quid. “Where’s my ulster ?” “What’s queer ?” said the Man’s Wife. “I have got a chill down my back—just as if a goose had walked over my grave.” “Why do you look at the thing, then?” said the Man’s Wife. “Let us go.” 4s AT THE PIT’S MOUTH The Tertium Quid stood at the head of the grave, and stared without answering for a space. Then he said, dropping a pebble down, “It is nasty—and cold; horribly cold. I don’t think I shall come to the Cemetery any more. I don’t think grave-digging is cheerful.” The two talked and agreed that the Cemetery was depressing. They also arranged for a ride next day out from the Cemetery through the Mashobra Tunnel up to Fagoo and back, be- cause all the world was going to a garden-party at Viceregal Lodge, and all the people of Mashobra would go too. Coming up the Cemetery road, the Tertium Quid’s horse tried to bolt up-hill, being tired with standing so long, and managed to strain a back sinew. “T shall have to take the mare to-morrow,” said the Tertium Quid, “and she will stand nothing heavier than a snaffle.”’ They made their arrangements to meet in the Cemetery, after allowing all the Mashobra peo- ple time to pass into Simla. That night it rained heavily, and, next day, when the Ter- tium Quid came to the trysting-place, he saw that the new grave had a foot of water in it, the ground being a tough and sour clay. “Jove! That looks beastly,” said the Ter- a Oe ee - ee ee a Pe AT THE PIT’S MOUTH 49 tium Quid. ‘Fancy being boarded up and dropped into that well!” They then started off to Fagoo, the mare playing with the snaffle and picking her way as though she were shod with satin, and the sun shining divinely. The road below Mas- hobra to Fagoo is officially styled the Himalay- an-Thibet Road; but in spite of its name it is not much more than six feet wide in most places, and the drop into the valley below may be anything between one and two thousand feet. “Now we're going to Thibet,”’ said the Man’s Wife merrily, as the horses drew near to Fagoo. She was riding on the cliff-side. “Into Thibet,” said the Tertium Quid, “ever so far from people who say horrid things, and hubbies who write stupid letters. With you— to the end of the world!” A coolie carrying a log of wood came round a corner, and the mare went wide to avoid him —forefeet in and haunches out, as a sensible mare should go. “To the world’s end,” said the Man’s Wife, and looked unspeakable things over her near shoulder at the Tertium Quid. He was smiling, but, while she looked, the smile froze stiff as it were on his face, and 50 AT THE PIT’S MOUTH changed to a nervous grin—the sort of grin men wear when they are not quite easy in their saddles. The mare seemed to be sinking by the stern, and her nostrils cracked while she was trying to realize what was happening. The rain of the night before had rotted the drop- side of the Himalayan-Thibet Road, and it was giving way under her. “What are you do- ing?” said the Man’s Wife. The Tertium Quid gave no answer. He grinned nervously and set his spurs into the mare, who rapped with her forefeet on the road, and the struggle began. The Man’s Wife screamed, “Oh, Frank, get off!” But the Tertium Quid was glued to the sad- dle—his face blue and white—and he looked into the Man’s Wife’s eyes. Then the Man’s Wife clutched at the mare’s head and caught her by the nose instead of the bridle. The brute threw up her head and went down with a scream, the Tertium Quid upon her, and the nervous grin still set on his face. The Man’s Wife heard the tinkle-tinkle of little stones and loose earth falling off the road- way, and the sliding roar of the man and horse going down. Then everything was quiet, and she called on Frank to leave his mare and walk up. But Frank did not answer. He was un- AT THE PIT’S MOUTH 51 derneath the mare, nine hundred feet below, spoiling a patch of Indian corn. As the revellers came back from Viceregal Lodge in the mists of the evening, they met a temporarily insane woman, on a temporarily mad horse, swinging round the corners, with her eyes and her mouth open, and her head like the head of a Medusa. She was stopped by a man at the risk of his life, and taken out of the saddle, a limp heap, and put on the bank to explain herself. This wasted twenty min- utes, and then she was sent home in a lady’s *rickshaw, still with her mouth open and her hands picking at her riding-gloves. She was in bed through the following three days, which were rainy; so she missed attend- ing the funeral of the Tertium Quid, who was lowered into eighteen inches of water, instead of the twelve to which he had first objected. Sit res MA WavcIuE cCOMNDy © 46 i's r > f » v7 A WAYSIDE COMEDY Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him, Eccles, viii. 6. ATE and the Government of India have | turned the Station of Kashima into a prison; and, because there is no help for the poor souls who are now lying there in torment, I write this story, praying that the Govern- ment of India may be moved to scatter the Eu- ropean population to the four winds. Kashima is bounded on all sides by the rock- tipped circle of the Dosehri hills. In Spring, it is ablaze with roses; in Summer, the roses die and the hot winds blow from the hills; in Au- tumn, the white mists from the jhils cover the place as with water, and in Winter the frosts nip everything young and tender to earth- level. There is but one view in Kashima—a stretch of perfectly flat pasture and plough- land, running up to the grey-blue scrub of the Dosehri hills. There are no amusements, except snipe and tiger shooting; but the tigers have been long 20 56 A WAYSIDE COMEDY since hunted from their lairs in the rock-caves, and the snipe only come once a year. Nar- karra—one hundred and forty-three miles by road—is the nearest station to Kashima. But Kashima never goes to Narkarra, where there are at least twelve English people. It stays within the circle of the Dosehri hills. All Kashima acquits Mrs. Vansuythen of any intention to doharm; but all Kashima knows that she, and she alone, brought about their pain. Boulte, the Engineer, Mrs. Boulte, and Cap- tain Kurrell know this. They are the English population of Kashima, if we except Major Vansuythen, who is of no importance what- ever, and Mrs. Vansuythen, who is the most important of all. You must remember, though you will not understand, that all laws weaken in a small and hidden community where there is no public opinion. When a man is absolutely alone in a Station he runs a certain risk of falling into evil ways. This risk is multiplied by every ad- dition to the population up to twelve—the Jury number. After that, fear and consequent re- straint begin, and humen action becomes less grotesquely jerky. There was deep peace in Kashima till Mrs. A WAYSIDE COMEDY 57 Vansuythen arrived. She was a charming woman, every one said so everywhere; and she charmed every one. In spite of this, or, perhaps, because of this, since Fate is so per- verse, she cared only for one man, and he was Major Vansuythen. Had she been plain or stupid, this matter would have been intelligible to Kashima. But she was a fair woman, with very still grey eyes, the color of a lake just be- fore the light of the sun touches it. No man who had seen those eyes could, later on, ex- plain what fashion of woman she was to look upon. The eyes dazzled him. Her own sex said that she was “not bad looking, but spoiled by pretending to be so grave.’’ And yet her gravity was natural. It was not her habit to smile. She merely went through life, look- ing at those who passed; and the women ob- jected while the men fell down and wor- shipped. She knows and is deeply sorry for the evil she has done to Kashima; but Major Vansuy- then cannot understand why Mrs. Boulte does not drop in to afternoon tea at least three times a week. “When there are only two women in one Station they ought to see a great deal of each other,” says Major Vansuythen. Long and long before ever Mrs. Vansuythen 58 A WAYSIDE COMEDY came out of those far-away places where there is society and amusement, Kurrell had discov- ered that Mrs. Boulte was the one woman in the world for hm and—you dare not blame them. Kashima was as out of the world as Heaven or the Other Place, and the Dosehri hills kept their secret well. Boulte had no con- cern in the matter. He was in camp for a fort- night at a time. He was a hard, heavy man, and neither Mrs. Boulte nor Kurrell pitied him. They had all Kashima and each other for their very, very own; and Kashima was the Garden of Eden in those days. When Boulte returned from his wanderings he would slap Kurrell between the shoulders and call him “old fellow,” and the three would dine to- eether. Kashima was happy then when the judgment of God seemed almost as distant as Narkarra or the railway that ran down to the sea. But the Government sent Major Van- suythen to Kashima, and with him came his wife. The etiquette of Kashima is much the same as that of a desert island. When a stranger is cast away there, all hands go down to the shore to make him welcome. Kashima assem- bled at the masonry platform close to the Nar- karra Road, and spread tea for the Vansuy- A WAYSIDE COMEDY 59 thens. That ceremony was reckoned a for- mal call, and made them free of the Station, its rights and privileges. When the Vansuythens were settled down, they gave a tiny house- warming to all Kashima; and that made Ka- shima free of their house, according to the im- memorial usage of the Station. Then the Rains came, when no one could go _into camp, and the Narkarra Road was washed away by the Kasun River, and in the cup-like pastures of Kashima the cattle waded knee- deep. The clouds dropped down from the Dosehri hills and covered everything. At the end of the Rains, Boulte’s manner toward his wife changed, and became demon- stratively affectionate. They had been mar- ried twelve years, and the change startled Mrs. Boulte, who hated her husband with the hate of a woman who has met with nothing but kindness from her mate, and, in the teeth of this kindness, has done him a great wrong. Moreover, she had her own troubles to fight with—her watch to keep over her own prop- erty, Kurrell. For two months the Rains had hidden the Dosehri hills and many other things besides; but, when they lifted, they showed Mrs. Boulte that her man among men, her Ted—for she called him Ted in the old Kip. 6—C_ 60 A WAYSIDE COMEDY days when Boulte was out of earshot—was slipping the links of the allegiance. “The Vansuythen Woman has taken him,” Mrs. Boulte said to herself; and when Boulte was away, wept over her belief, in the face of the over-vehement blandishments of Ted. Sorrow in Kashima is as fortunate as Love, because there is nothing to weaken it save the flight of Time. Mrs. Boulte had never breathed her suspicion to Kurrell because she was not certain; and her nature led her to be very certain before she took steps in any di- rection. That is why she behaved as she did. Boulte came into the house one evening, and leaned against the door-posts of the drawing- room, chewing his moustache. Mrs. Boulte was putting some flowers into a vase. There is a pretence of civilization even in Kashima. “Tittle woman,” said Boulte, quietly, “do you care for me?” “TImmensely,”’ said she, with a laugh. “Can you ask me?” “But I’m serious,’ said Boulte. “Do you care for me?” Mrs. Boulte dropped the flowers, and turned round quickly. “Do you want an honest an- swer ?”’ ““Ye-es, I’ve asked for it.” A WAYSIDE COMEDY 61 Mrs. Boulte spoke in a low, even voice for five minutes, very distinctly, that there might be no misunderstanding her meaning. When Samson broke the pillars of Gaza, he did a lit- tle thing, and one not to be compared to the de- liberate pulling down of a woman’s homestead about her own ears. There was no wise fe- male friend to advise Mrs. Boulte, the singu- larly cautious wife, to hold her hand. She struck at Boulte’s heart, because her own was sick with suspicion of Kurrell, and worn out with the long strain of watching alone through the Rains. There was no plan or pur- pose in her speaking. The sentences made themselves; and Boulte listened, leaning against the door-post with his hands in his pockets. When all was over, and Mrs. Boulte began to breathe through her nose before breaking out into tears, he laughed and stared straight in front of him at the Dosehri hills. “Is that all?” he said. “Thanks, I only wanted to know, you know.” “What are you going to do?” said the woman, between her sobs. “Do! Nothing. What should I do? Kill Kurrell or send you Home, or apply for leave to get a divorce? It’s two days’ dak into Nar- karra.”” He laughed again and went on: “I'll 62 A WAYSIDE COMEDY tell you what you can do. You can ask Kur- » rell to dinner to-morrow—no, on Thursday, that will allow you time to pack—and you can bolt with him. I give you my word I won't follow.” He took up his helmet and went out of the room, and Mrs. Boulte sat till the moonlight streaked the floor, thinking and thinking and thinking. She had done her best upon the spur of the moment to pull the house down; but it would not fall. Moreover, she could not un- derstand her husband, and she was afraid. Then the folly of her useless truthfulness struck her, and she was ashamed to write to Kurrell, saying: “I have gone mad and told everything. My husband says that I am free to elope with you. Get a dak for Thursday, and we will fly after dinner.” There was a cold-bloodedness about that procedure which did not appeal to her. So she sat still in her own house and thought. At dinner-time Boulte came back from his walk, white and worn and haggard, and the woman was touched at his distress. As the evening wore on, she muttered some expres- sion of sorrow, something approaching to con- trition. Boulte came out of a brown study, and said, “Oh, that! I wasn’t thinking about A WAYSIDE COMEDY 63 that. By the way, what does Kurrell say to the elopement ?” “I haven’t seen him,” said Mrs. Boulte. “Good God! is that all?” But Boulte was not listening, and her sen- tence ended in a gulp. | The next day brought no comfort to Mrs. Boulte, for Kurrell did not appear, and the new life that she, in the five minutes’ madness of the previous evening, had hoped to build out of the ruins of the old, seemed to be no nearer. Boulte ate his breakfast, advised her to see her Arab pony fed in the veranda, and went out. The morning wore through, and at mid- day the tension became unendurable. Mrs. Boulte could not cry. She had finished crying in the night, and now she did not want to be left alone. Perhaps the Vansuythen Woman would talk to her; and, since talking opens the heart, perhaps there might be some comfort to be found in her company. She was the only other woman in the Station. In Kashima there are no regular calling- hours. Every one can drop in upon every one else at pleasure. Mrs. Boulte put on a big terai hat, and walked across to the Vansuy- then’s house to borrow last week’s Queen. The 64 A WAYSIDE COMEDY two compounds touched, and instead of going up the drive, she crossed through the gap in the cactus-hedge, entering the house from the back. As she passed through the dining-room she heard, behind the purdah that cloaked the drawing-room door, her husband’s voice, say- ing— “But on my Honor! On my Soul and Honor, I tell you she doesn’t care for me. She told me so last night. I would have told you then if Vansuythen hadn’t been with you. If it is for her sake that you'll have nothing to say to me, you can make your mind easy. It’s Kurrell”— “What?” said Mrs. Vansuythen, with an hysterical little laugh. “Kurrell! Oh, it can’t be! You two must have made some horrible mistake. Perhaps you—you lost your temper, or misunderstood, or something. Things can’t be as wrong as you say.” Mrs. Vansuythen had shifted her defence to avoid the man’s pleading, and was desperately trying to keep him to a side-issue. “There must be some mistake,” she in- sisted, “and it can be all put right again.” Boulte laughed grimly. “Tt can’t be Captain Kurrell! He told me that he had never taken the least—the least in- A WAYSIDE COMEDY 6s terest in your wife, Mr. Boulte. Oh, do listen! He said he had not. He swore he had not,” said Mrs. Vansuythen. The purdah rustled, and the speech was cut short by the entry of a little, thin woman, with big rings round her eyes. Mrs. Vansuyther stood up with a gasp. “What was that you said?” asked Mrs. Boulte. ‘Never mind that man. What did Ted say to you? What did he say to you? What did he say to you?” Mrs. Vansuythen sat down helplessly on the sofa, overborne by the trouble of her ques- tioner. “He said—I can’t remember exactly what he said—but I understood him to say-—that is —— But, really, Mrs. Boulte, isn’t it rather a strange question ?”’ “Will you tell me what he said?” repeated Mrs. Boulte. Even a tiger will fly before a bear robbed of her whelps, and Mrs. Vansuythen was only an ordinarily good woman. She be- gan in a sort of desperation: “‘Well, he said that he never cared for you at all, and, of course, there was not the least reason why he should have, and—and—that was all.” “You said he swore he had not cared for me. Was that true?’ 66 A WAYSIDE COMEDY “Yes,” said Mrs. Vansuythen, very softly. Mrs. Boulte wavered for an instant where she stood, and then fell forward fainting. “What did I tell you?’ said Boulte, as though the conversation had been unbroken. “You can see for yourself. She cares for him.” The light began to break into his dull mind, and he went on—‘‘And he—what was he say- ing to you?” But Mrs. Vansuythen, with no heart for ex- planations or impassioned protestations, was kneeling over Mrs. Boulte. “Oh, you brute!’ she cried. “Are ali men like this? Help me to get her into my room— and her face is cut against the table. Oh, will you be quiet, and help me to carry her? I hate you, and I hate Captain Kurreil. Lift her up carefully and now—go! Go away!” ._ Boulte carried his wife into Mrs. Vansuy- ' then’s bedroom and departed before the storm of that lady’s wrath and disgust, impenitent and burning with jealousy. Kurrell had been making love to Mrs. Vansuythen—would do Vansuythen as great a wrong as he had done Boulte, who caught himself considering whether Mrs. Vansuythen would faint if she discovered that the man she loved had fore- sworn her. A WAYSIDE COMEDY 67 In the middle of these meditations, Kurrell came cantering along the road and pulled up with a cheery, “Good-mornin’. Been mashing Mrs. Vansuythen as usual, eh? Bad thing for a sober, married man, that. What will Mrs. Boulte say ?” Boulte raised his head and said, slowly, “Oh, you liar!’ Kurrell’s face changed. “What’s that?’ he asked, quickly. “Nothing much,” said Boulte. “Has my wife told you that you two are free to go off whenever you please? She has been good enough to explain the situation to me. You've been a true friend to me, Kurrell—old man— haven’t you?” Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence about being willing to give “satisfaction.” But his interest in the woman was dead, had died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was abusing her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have been so easy to have broken off the thing gently and by degrees, and now he was saddled with— Boulte’s voice recalled him. “T don’t think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and I’m pretty sure you'd get none from killing me.” Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously dis- proportioned to his wrongs, Boulte added— 68 A WAYSIDE COMEDY “Seems rather. a pity that you haven’t the decency to keep to the woman, now you've got her. You've been a true friend to her too, haven’t your” Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situ- ation was getting beyond him. “What do you mean?” he said. Boulte answered, more to himself than the questioner : “My wife came over to Mrs. Van- suythen’s just now; and it seems you'd been telling Mrs. Vansuythen that you’d never cared for Emma. I suppose you lied, as usual. What had Mrs. Vansuythen to do with you, or you with her? Try to speak the truth for once in a way.” Kurrell took the double insult without winc- ing, and replied by another question: “Go on. What happened ?” “Emma fainted,” said Boulte, simply. “But, look here, what had you been saying to Mrs. Vansuythen ?”’ Kurrell laughed. Mrs. Boulte had, with un- bridled tongue, made havoc of his plans; and he could at least retaliate by hurting the man in whose. eyes he was humiliated and shown dishonorable. “Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that for? I suppose I said pretty much what A WAYSIDE COMEDY 69 you've said, unless I’m a good deal mistaken.” “T spoke the truth,” said Boulte, again more to himself than Kurrell. ‘Emma told me she hated me. She has no right in me.” “No! I suppose not. You're only her hus- band, y’ know. And what did Mrs. Vansuy- then say after you had laid your disengaged heart at her feet?” Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question. “T don’t think that. matters,” Boulte replied; “and it doesn’t concern you.”’ “But it does! I tell you it does’—began Kurrell, shamelessly. The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte’s lips. Kurrell was silent for an instant, and then he, too, laughed—laughed long and loudly, rocking in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound—the mirthless mirth of these men on the long, white line of the Nar- karra Road. There were no strangers in Ka- shima, or they might have thought that cap- tivity within the Dosehri hills had driven half the European population mad. The laughter ended abruptly, and Kurrell was the first to speak. “Well, what are you going to do?” Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills. 70 A WAYSIDE COMEDY “Nothing,” said he, quietly; “what’s the use? It’s too ghastly for anything. We must let the old life go on. I can only call you a hound and a liar, and I can’t go on calling you names for- ever. Besides which, I don’t feel that ’m much better. We can’t get out of this place. What is there to do” Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made no reply. The injured husband took up the wondrous tale. “Ride on, and speak to Emma if you want to. God knows I don’t care what you do.” He walked forward, and left Kurrell gazing blankly after him. Kurrell did not ride on either to see Mrs. Boulte or Mrs. Vansuythen. He sat in his saddle and thought, while his pony grazed by the roadside. The whir of approaching wheels roused him. Mrs. Vansuythen was driving home Mrs. Boulte, white and wan, with a cut on her fore- head. “Stop, please,” said Mrs. Boulte, “I want to speak to Ted.” Mrs. Vansuythen obeyed, but as Mrs. Boulte — leaned forward, putting her hand upon the splash-board of the dog-cart, Kurrell spoke. “T’ve seen your husband, Mrs. Boulte.” There was no necessity for any further ex- A WAYSIDE COMEDY 71 planation. The man’s eyes were fixed, not upon Mrs. Boulte, but her companion. Mrs. Boulte saw the look. “Speak to him!” she pleaded, turning to the woman at her side. ‘Oh, speak to him! Tell him what you told me just now. Tell him you hate him. Tell him you hate him!” She bent forward and wept bitterly, while the sais, impassive, went forward to hold the horse, Mrs. Vansuythen turned scarlet and dropped the reins. She wished to be no party to such unholy explanations, “T’ve nothing to do with it,” she began, coldly; but Mrs. Boulte’s sobs overcame her, and she addressed herself to the man, “I don’t know what I am to say, Captain Kurrell. T don’t know what I can call you. I think you’ve—you’ve behaved abominably, and she has cut her forehead terribly aaginst the table.” “Tt doesn’t hurt. It isn’t anything,” said Mrs. Boulte, feebly. “That doesn’t matter. Tell him what you told me. Say you don’t care for him. Oh, Ted, won’t you believe her ?” “Mrs. Boulte has made me understand that you were—that you were fond of her once upon a time,” went on Mrs. Vansuythen. “Well!” said Kurrell, brutally. “It seems te 2 A WAYSIDE COMEDY me that Mrs. Boulte had better be fond of her own husband first.” “Stop!” said Mrs. Vansuythen. “Hear me first. I don’t care—I don’t want to know any- thing about you and Mrs. Boulte; but I want you to know that I hate you, that I think you are a cur, and that I'll never, xever speak to you again. Oh, I don’t dare to say what I think of you, you—man!” “T want to speak to Ted,” moaned Mrs. Boulte, but the dog-cart rattled on, and Kur- rell was left on the road, shamed, and boiling with wrath against Mrs. Boulte. He waited till Mrs. Vansuythen was driving back to her own house, and, she being freed from the embarrassment of Mrs. Boulte’s pres- ence, learned for the second time her opinion of himself and his actions. In the evenings, it was the wont of all Ka- shima to meet at the platform on the Narkarra Road, to drink tea, and discuss the trivialities of the day. Major Vansuythen and his wife found themselves alone at the gathering-place for almost the first time in their remembrance; and the cheery Major, in the teeth of his wife’s remarkably reasonable suggestion that the rest of the Station might be sick, insisted upon driving round to the two bungalows and un- earthing the population. A WAYSIDE COMEDY 73 “Sitting in the twilight!” said he, with great indignation, to the Boultes. ‘That'll never do! Hang it all, we’re one family here! You must come out, and so must Kurrell. I'll make him bring his banjo.” So great is the power of honest simplicity and a good digestion over guilty consciences that all Kashima did turn out, even down to the banjo; and the Major embraced the com- pany in one expansive grin. As he grinned, Mrs. Vansuythen raised her eyes for an in- stant and looked at all Kashima. Her mean- ing was clear. Major Vansuythen would never know anything. He was to be the out- sider in that happy family whose cage was the Dosehri hills. “You're singing villainously out of tune, -Kurrell,” said the Major, truthfully. “Pass me that banjo.” And he sang in excruciating-wise till the stars came out and all Kashima went to dinner. * 2 « * x * That was the beginning of the New Life of Kashima—the life that Mrs. Boulte made when her tongue was loosened in the twilight. Mrs. Vansuythen has never told the Major; and since he insists upon keeping up a burden- some geniality, she has been compelled to 74 ‘A WAYSIDE COMEDY, break her vow of not speaking to Kurrell. This speech, which must of necessity preserve the semblance of politeness and interest, serves admirably to keep alight the flame of jealousy and dull hatred in Boulte’s bosom, as it awak- ens the same passions in his wife’s heart. Mrs. Boulte hates Mrs. Vansuythen because she has taken Ted from her, and, in some curious fash- ion, hates her because Mrs. Vansuythen—and here the wife’s eyes see far more clearly than the husband’s—detests Ted. And Ted—that gallant captain and honorable man—knows now that it is possible to hate a woman once loved, to the verge of wishing to silence her forever with blows. Above all, is he shocked that Mrs. Boulte cannot see the error of her ways. Boulte and he go out tiger-shooting together in all friendship. Boulte has put their rela- tionship on a most satisfactory footing. “You're a blackguard,” he says to Kurrell, “and I’ve lost any self-respect I may ever have had; but when you’re with me, I can feel cer- tain that you are not with Mrs. Vansuythen, or making Emma miserable.” Kurrell endures anything that Boulte may say to him. Sometimes they are away for three days together, and then the Major insists upon A WAYSIDE COMEDY 73 his wife going over to sit with Mrs. Boulte; although Mrs. Vansuythen has repeatedly de- clared that she prefers her husband’s company to any in the world. From the way in which she clings to him, she would certainly seem to be speaking the truth. But, of course, as the Major says, “in a lit- tle Station we must all be friendly.” ‘THE HILL OF ILLUSION Dis Jy i { mee i THE HILL OF ILLUSION. What rendered vain their deep desire? A God, a God their severance ruled, And bade between their shores to be The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea. Matthew Arnold. He. Tell your jhampanis not to hurry so, dear. They forget I’m fresh from the Plains. Sur. Sure proof that I have not been go- ing out with any one. Yes, they are an un- trained crew. Where do we go? He. As usual—to the world’s end. No, Jakko. Sue. Have your pony led after you, then. It’s a long round. He. And for the last time, thank Heaven. Sue. Do you mean that still? I didn’t dare to write to you about it—all these months. Hz. Meanit! I’ve been shaping my affairs to that end since Autumn. What makes you speak as though it had occurred to you for the first time? Suz. I! Oh!I don’t know. I’ve had long enough to think, too. 79 80 THE HILL OF ILLUSION He. And you’ve changed your mind? SHE. No. You ought to know that lama miracle of constancy. What are your—ar- rangements ? HE. Ours, Sweetheart, please. SHE. Ours, be it then. My poor boy, how the prickly heat has marked your forehead! Have you ever tried sulphate of copper in water? He. It'll go away in a day or two up here. The arrangements are simple enough. Tonga in the early morning—reach Kalka at twelve —Umballa at seven—down, straight by night train, to Bombay, and the steamer of the 21st for Rome. That’s my idea. The Cortinent and Sweden-—a ten-week honeymoon. SHE. Ssh! Don’t talk of it in that way. It makes me afraid. Guy, how long have we two been insane? He. Seven months and fourteen days, I for- get the odd hours exactly, but I’ll think. SHE. I only wanted to see if you remem- bered. Who are those two on the Blessington Road? Her. Eabrey and the Penner woman. What do they matter to us? Tell me everything that you've been doing and saying and thinking. SHE. Doing little, saying less, and thinking a great deal. I’ve hardly been out at all, THE HILL OF ILLUSION 81 He. That was wrong of you. You haven't been moping? Sue. Not very much. Can you wonder that I’m disinclined for amusement ? He. Frankly, I do. Where was the difh- culty? Sur. In this only. The more people I know and the more I’m known here, the wider spread will be the news of the crash when it comes. I don’t like that. He. Nonsense. We shall be out of it. SHE. You think so? He. I’m sure of it, if there is any power in steam or horse-flesh to carry us away. Ha! ha! Snr, And the fun of the situation comes in —where, my Lancelot? | Hr. Nowhere, Guinevere. I was only think- ing of something. Sur, They say men have a keener sense of humor than women. Now / was thinking of the scandal. Her. Don’t think of anything so ugly. We shall be beyond it. Sue. It will be there all the same—in the mouths of Simla—telegraphed over India, and talked of at the dinners—and when He goes out they will stare at Him to see how He takes it. And we shall be dead, Guy dear—dead and cast into the outer darkness where there is— 82 THE HILL OF ILLUSION He. Love at least. Isn’t that enough? SHE. I have said so. He. And you think so still? SHE. What do you think? Hr. What have I done? It means equal ruin to me, as the world reckons it—outcast- ing, the loss of my appointment, the breaking off my life’s work. I pay my price. SHE. And are you so much above the world that you can afford to pay it? Am I? Hr. My Divinity—what else? SHE. A very ordinary woman I’m afraid, but, so far, respectable. How’d you do, Mrs. Middleditch? ‘Your husband? I think he’s riding down to Annandale with Colonel Stat- ters. Yes, isn’t it divine after the rain P—Guy, how long am I to be allowed to bow to Mrs. Middleditch? Till the r7th? Hr. Frowsy Scotchwoman! What is the use of bringing her into the discussion? You were saying? SHE. Nothing. Have you ever seen a man hanged? He. Yes. Once. SHE. What was it for? He. Murder, of course. SHE. Murder. Is that so great a sin after all?. I wonder how he felt before the drop fell. THE HILL OF ILLUSION 83 Hx. I don’t think he felt much. What a gruesome little woman it is this evening. You're shivering. Put on your cape, dear. Sur. I think I will. Oh! Look at the mist coming over Sanjaoli; and I thought we should have sunshine on the Ladies’ Mile! Let’s turn back. Hr. What’s the good? There’s a cloud on Elysium Hill, and that means it’s foggy all down the Mall. We'll goon. It'll blow away before we get to the Convent, perhaps. “Jove! It is chilly. Sue, You feel it, fresh from below. Put on your ulster. What do you think of my cape? Hr. Never ask a man his opinion of a woman’s dress when he is desperately and ab- jectly in love with the wearer. Let me look. Like everything else of yours, it’s perfect. Where did you get it from? Sue. He gave it me, on Wednesday—our wedding-day, you know. He. The Deuce he did! He’s growing gen- erous in his old age. D’you like all that frilly, punchy stuff at the throat? I don’t. SHE. Don’t your Kind Sir, o’ your courtesy, As you go by the town, Sir, 84 THE HILL OF ILLUSION ’*Pray you o’ your love for me, Buy me a russet gown, Sir, He. I won’t say: “Keek into the draw-well, Janet, Janet.” Only wait a little, darling, and you shall be stocked with russet gowns and everything else. SHE. And when the frocks wear out, you'll get me new ones—and everything else? He. Assuredly. SHE. I wonder! He. Look here, Sweetheart, I didn’t spend two days and two nights in the train to hear you wonder. I thought we’d settled all that at Shaifazehat. SHE. (dreamily.) ‘At Shaifazehat? Does the Station go on still? That was ages and ages ago. It must be crumbling to pieces. All except the Amirtollah kutcha road. I don’t believe that could crumble till the Day of Judg- ment. He. You think so? What is the mood now? SHE. I can’t tell. How cold it is! Let us get on quickly. He. Better walk a little. Stop your jham- pams and get out. What’s the matter with you this evening, dear? SHE. Nothing. You must grow accustomed to my ways. If I’m boring you I can go home. THE HILL OF ILLUSION 8s Here’s Captain Congleton coming, I dare say he'll be willing to escort me. He. Goose! Between us, too! Damn Cap- tain Congleton! SHE. Chivalrous Knight. Is it your habit to swear much in talking? It jars a little, and you might swear at me. He. My angel! I didn’t know what I was saying; and you changed so quickly that I couldn’t follow. Ill apologize in dust and ashes. Sue. There'll be enough of those later on— Good-night, Captain Congleton. Going to the singing-quadrilles already? What dances am | giving you next week? No! You must have written them down wrong. Five and Seven, J said. If you’ve made a mistake, I certainly don’t intend to suffer for it. You must alter your programme. He. I thought you told me that you had not been going out much this season. SHE. Quite true, but when I do I dance with Captain Congleton. He dances very nicely. He. And sit out with him, I suppose? Sue. Yes. Have you any objection? Shall I stand under the chandelier in future? He. What does he talk to you about? Sue. What do men talk about when they sit out? 86 THE HILL OF ILLUSION He. Ugh! Don’t! Well now I’m up, you must dispense with the fascinating Congleton for a while. I don’t like him. SHE (after a pause). Do you know what you have said? He. ’Can’t say that I do exactly. I’m not _ in the best of tempers. SHE. So [ see,—and feel. My true and faithful lover, where is your “eternal con- stancy,” “unalterable trust,” and ‘reverent devotion”? I remember those phrases; you seem to have forgotten them. I mention a man’s name—— He. ” “I should hesitate to say. Better consult the merchants and chambers of commerce in Cawnpore, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. But though these bodies would like, as Reggie puts it, to make Government sit up, it is an elementary consideration in governing a coun- OF PAGETT, M.P. 225 try like India, which must be administered for the benefit of the people at large, that the counsels of those who resort to it for the sake of making money should be judiciously weighed and not allowed to overpower the rest. They are welcome guests here, as a mat- ter of course, but it has been found best to restrain their influence. Thus the rights of plantation laborers, factory operatives, and the like, have been protected, and the capital- ist, eager to get on, has not always regarded Government action with favor. It is quite con- ceivable that under an elective system the com- mercial communities of the great towns might find means to secure majorities on labor ques- tions and on financial matters.” “They would act at least with intelligence and consideration.” “Intelligence, yes; but as to consideration, who at the present moment most bitterly re- sents the tender solicitude of Lancashire for the welfare and protection of the Indian fac- tory operative? English and native capitalists running cotton mills and factories.”’ “But is the solitude of Lancashire in this matter entirely disinterested ?” “Tt is no business of mine to say. I merely indicate an example of how a powerful com- 226 THE ENLIGHTENMENTS mercial interest might hamper a Government intent in the first place on the larger interests of humanity.”’ | Orde broke off to listen a moment. “There’s Dr. Lathrop talking to my wife in the draw- ing-room,” said he. “Surely not; that’s a lady’s voice, and if my ears don’t deceive me, an American.” “Exactly, Dr. Eva McCreery Lathrop, chief of the new Women’s Hospital here, and a very good fellow forbye. Good-morning, Doctor,” he said, as a graceful figure came out on the veranda, “you seem to be in trouble. I hope Mrs. Orde was able to help you.” “Your wife is real kind and good, I always come to her when I’m in a fix, but I fear it’s more than comforting I want.” “You work too hard and wear yourself out,’ said Orde, kindly. “Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Pagett, just fresh from home, and anxious to learn his India. You could tell him something of that more important half of which a mere man knows so little.” “Perhaps I could if I’d any heart to do it, but I’m in trouble, I’ve lost a case that was doing well, through nothing in the world but inattention on the part of a nurse I had begun to trust. And when I spoke only a small piece a ee el OF PAGETT, M.P. 227 of my mind she collapsed in a whining heap on the floor. It is hopeless!” The men were silent, for the blue eyes of the lady doctor were dim. Recovering herself she looked up with a smile, half sad, half humor- ous, “And I am in a whining heap, too; but what phase of Indian life are you particularly interested in, sir?” “Mr. Pagett intends to study the political aspect of things and the possibility of bestow- ing electoral institutions on the people.” “Wouldn’t it be as much to the purpose to bestow point-lace collars on them? They need many things more urgently than votes. Why it’s like giving a bread-pill for a broken leg.” “Er—I don’t quite follow,” said Pagett, un- easily. “Well, what’s the matter with this country is not in the least political, but an all round entanglement of physical, social, and moral evils and corruptions, all more or less due to the unnatural treatment of women. You can’t gather figs from thistles, and so long as the system of infant marriage, the prohibition of the remarriage of widows, the lifelong impris- onment of wives and mothers in a worse than penal confinement, and the withholding from them of any kind of education or treatment as 228 THE ENLIGHTENMENTS rational beings continues, the country can’t advance a step. Half of it is morally dead, and worse than dead, and that’s just the half from which we have a right to look for the best impulses. It’s right here where the trouble is, and not in any political considera- tions whatsoever.” | “But do they marry so early?” said Pagett, vaguely. “The average age is seven, but thousands are married still earlier. One result is that girls of twelve and thirteen have to bear the burden of wifehood and motherhood, and, as might be expected, the rate of mortality both for mothers and children is terrible. Pauper- ism, domestic unhappiness, and a low state of health are only a few of the consequences of this. Then, when, as frequently happens, the boy-husband dies prematurely, his widow is condemned to worse than death. She may not re-marry, must live a secluded and de- spised life, a life so unnatural, that she some- times prefers suicide; more often she goes astray. You don’t know in England what such words as. ‘infant-marriage, baby-wife, girl-mother, and virgin-widow’ mean; but they mean unspeakable horrors here.” “Well, but the advanced political party here OF PAGETT, M.P. 229 will surely make it their business to advocate social reforms as well as political ones,” said Pagett. “Very surely they will do no such thing,” said the lady doctor, emphatically. “I wish I could make you understand. Why, even of the funds devoted to the Marchioness of Dui- ferin’s organization for medical aid to the women of India, it was said in print and in speech, that they would be better spent on more college scholarships for men. And in all the advanced parties’ talk—God forgive them—and in all their programmes, they care- fully avoid all such subjects. They will talk about the protection of the cow, for that’s an ancient superstition—they can all understand that; but the protection of the women is a new and dangerous idea.” She turned to Pagett impulsively : “Vou are a member of the English Parlia- ment. Can you do nothing? The founda- tions of their life are rotten—utterly and bes- tially rotten. I could tell your wife things that I couldn’t tell you. I know the life—the inner life that belongs to the native, and I know nothing else; and believe me you might as well try to grow golden-rod in a mushroom-pit as to make anything of a people that are born and 230 THE ENLIGHTENMENTS reared as these—these things are. The men talk of their rights and privileges. I have seen the women that bear these very men, and again—may God forgive the men!” Pagett’s eyes opened with a large wonder. Dr. Lathrop rose tempestuously. “I must be off to lecture,”’ said she, “and I’m sorry that I can’t show you my hospital; but you had better believe, sir, that it’s more nec- essary for India than all the elections in cre- ation.” “That’s a woman with a mission, and no mistake,” said Pagett, after a pause. “Yes; she believes in her work, and so do I,” said Orde. “I’ve a notion that in the end it will be found that the most helpful work done for India in this generation was wrought by Lady Dufferin in drawing attention—what work that was, by the way, even with her hus- band’s great name to back it !—to the needs of women here. In effect, native habits and be- liefs are an organized conspiracy against the laws of health and happy life—but there is some dawning of hope now.” “How d’ you account for the general indif- ference, then?” | “I suppose it’s due in part to their fatalism and their utter indifference to all human suf- OF PAGETT, MP. 231 fering. How much do you imagine the great province of the Punjab with over twenty mil- lion people and half a score rich towns has contributed to the maintenance of civil dispen- saries last year? About seven thousand ru- _ pees.” “That’s seven hundred pounds,” said Pa- gett, quickly. _ “I wish it was,” replied Orde; “but anyway, it’s an absurdly inadequate sum, and shows one of the blank sides of Oriental character.” Pagett was silent for a long time. The question of direct and personal pain did not lie within his researches. He preferred to dis- cuss the weightier matters of the law, and con- tented himself with murmuring: ‘‘They’ll do better later on.” Then, with a rush, returning to his first thought: “But, my dear Orde, if it’s merely a class movement of a local and temporary character, how d’ you account for Bradlaugh, who is at least a man of sense, taking it up?” “I know nothing of the champion of the New Brahmins but what I see in the papers. I suppose there is something tempting in being hailed by a large assemblage as the representa- tive of the aspirations of two hundred and fifty millions of people. Such a man looks 232 THE ENLIGHTENMENTS ‘through all the roaring and the wreaths,’ and does not reflect that it is a false perspective, which, as a matter of fact, hides the real com- plex and manifold India from his gaze. He can scarcely be expected to distinguish between the ambitions of a new oligarchy and the real wants of the people of whom he knows noth- ing. But it’s strange that a professed Radical should come to be the chosen advocate of a movement which has for its aim the revival of an ancient tyranny. Shows how even Radi- calism can fall into academic grooves and miss the essential truths of its own creed. Believe me, Pagett, to deal with India you want first- hand knowledge and experience. I wish he would come anc live here for a couple of years or so.” “Is not this rather an ad hominem style of argument ?”’ “Can't help it in a case like this. Indeed, I am not sure you ought not to go further and weigh the whole character and quality and up- bringing of the man. You must admit that the monumental complacency with which he trotted out his ingenious little Constitution for India showed a strange want of imagination and the sense of humor.” “No, I don’t quite admit it,” said Pagett. it ntl al ee s OF PAGETT, M.-P. 233 | “Well, you know him and I don’t, but that’s how it strikes a stranger.” He turned on his heel and paced the veranda thoughtfully. ‘And, after all, the burden of the actual, daily unromantic toil falls on the shoulders of the men out here, and not on his own. He enjoys all the privileges of recommendation without responsibility, and we—well, perhaps, when you've seen a little more of India you'll under- stand. To begin with, our death rate’s five times higher than yours—lI speak now for the brutal bureaucrat—and we work on the refuse of worked-out cities and exhausted civiliza- tions, among the bones of the dead.” Pagett laughed. ‘‘That’s an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde.” “Ts it? Let’s see,” said the Deputy Com- missioner of Amara, striding into the sun- shine toward a half-naked gardener potting roses. He took the man’s hoe, and went to a tain-scarped bank at the bottom of the garden. “Come here, Pagett,” he said, and cut at the sun-baked soil. After three strokes there rolled from under the blade of the hoe the half of a clanking skeleton that settled at Pagett’s feet in an unseemly jumble of bones. The M.P. drew back. “Our houses are built on cemeteries,” said 234 THE ENLIGHTENMENTS Orde. “There are scores of thousands of graves within ten miles.” Pagett was contemplating the skull with the awed fascination of a man who has but little to do with the dead. “India’s a very curious place,” said he, after a pause. “Ah? You'll know all about it in three months. Come in to lunch,” said Orde. _ AMERICAN NOTES trp tend 1 Po HE GOLDEN, GATE) 3), i AT THE GOLDEN GATE “Serene, indifferent to fate, Thou sittest at the Western Gate; Thou seest the white seas fold their tents, Oh, warder of two continents; Thou drawest all things, small and great, To thee, beside the Western Gate.” HIS is what Bret Harte has written of the great city of San Francisco, and for the past fortnight I have been wondering what made him do it. 3 There is neither serenity nor indifference to be found in these parts; and evil would it be for the continents whose wardship were in- trusted to so reckless a guardian. Behold me pitched neck-and-crop from twenty days of the high seas into the whirl of California, deprived of any guidance, and left to draw my own conclusions. Protect me from the wrath of an outraged community if these letters be ever read by American eyes! San Francisco is a mad city—inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people, whose women are of a remarkable beauty. 239 240 AT THE GOLDEN GATE When the “City of Pekin” steamed through the Golden Gate, I saw with great joy that the blockhouse which guarded the mouth of the “finest harbor in the world, sir,’ could be si- lenced by two gunboats from Hong Kong with safety, comfort, and despatch. Also, there was not a single American vessel of war in the harbor. This may sound bloodthirsty; but remem- ber, I had come with a grievance upon me— the grievance of the pirated English books. Then a reporter leaped aboard, and ere I could gasp held me in his toils. He pumped me exhaustively while I was getting ashore, demanding of all things in the world news about Indian journalism. It is an awful thing to enter a new land with a new lie on your lips. I spoke the truth to the evil-minded Custom House man who turned my most sacred rai- ment on a floor composed of stable refuse and pine splinters; but the reporter overwhelmed me not so much by his poignant audacity as his beautiful ignorance. [I am sorry now that IT did not tell him more lies as I passed into a city of three hundred thousand white men. Think of it! Three hundred thousand white men and women gathered in one spot, walking upon real pavements in front of plate-glass- AT THE GOLDEN GATE 241 windowed shops, and talking something that at first hearing was not very different from English. It was only when I had tangled my- self up in a hopeless maze of small wooden houses, dust, street refuse, and children who played with empty kerosene tins, that I dis- covered the difference of speech. “You want to go to the Palace Hotel?” said an affable youth on a dray. “What in hell are you doing here, then? This is about the low- est ward in the city. Go six blocks north to corner of Geary and Markey, then walk around till you strike corner of Gutter and Sixteenth, and that brings you there.” I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of these directions, quoting but from a disordered memory. “Amen,” I said. ‘But who am I that I should strike the corners of such as you name? Peradventure they be gentlemen of repute, and might hit back. Bring it down to dots, my son.” I thought he would have smitten me, but he didn’t. He explained that no one ever used the word “street,” and that every one was sup- posed to know how the streets ran, for some- times the names were upon the lamps and sometimes they weren’t. Fortified with these 242 AT THE GOLDEN GATE directions, I proceeded till I found a mighty street, full of sumptuous buildings four and five stories high, but paved with rude cobble- stones, after the fashion of the year 1. Here a tram-car, without any visible means of support, slid stealthily behind me and nearly struck me in the back. This was the famous cable car of San Francisco, which runs by gripping an endless wire rope sunk in the ground, and of which IJ will tell you more anon. A hundred yards further there was a slight commotion in the street, a gathering to- gether of three or four, something that glit- tered as it moved very swiftly. A ponderous Irish gentleman, with priest’s cords in his hat and a small nickel-plated badge on his fat bosom, emerged from the knot supporting a Chinaman who had been stabbed in the eye and was bleeding like a pig. The bystanders went their ways, and the Chinaman, assisted by the policeman, his own. Of course this was none of my business, but J rather wanted to know what had happened to the gentleman who had dealt the stab. It said a great deal for the excellence of the municipal arrange- ment of the town that a surging crowd did not at once block the street to see what was going forward. I was the sixth man and the last AT THE GOLDEN GATE 243 who assisted at the performance, and my curi- osity was six times the gréatest. Indeed, I felt ashamed of showing it. _ There were no more incidents till I reached the Palace Hotel, a seven-storied warren of humanity with a thousand rooms in it. All the travel books will tell you about hotel ar- rangements in this country. They should be seen to be appreciated. Understand clearly— and this letter is written after a thousand miles of experiences—that money will not buy you service in the West. When the hotel clerk— the man who awards your room to you and who is supposed to give you information— when that resplendent individual stoops to at- tend to your wants, he does so whistling or humming or picking his teeth, or pauses to converse with some one he knows. These per- formances, I gather, are to impress upon you that he is a free man and your equal. From his general appearance and the size of his dia- monds he ought to be your superior. There is no necessity for this swaggering self-con- sciousness of freedom. Business is business, and the man who is paid to attend to a man might reasonably devote his whole attention to the job. Out of office hours he can take his coach and four and pervade society if he pleases. 244 AT THE GOLDEN GATE Ina vast marble-paved hall, under the glare of an electric light, sat forty or fifty men, and for their use and amusement were provided spittoons of infinite capacity and generous gape. Most of the men wore frock-coats and top-hats—the things that we in India put on at a wedding-breakfast, if we possess them—but they all spat. They spat on principle. The - spittoons were on the staircases, in each bed- room—yea, and in chambers even more sa- cred than these. They chased one into retire- ment, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor round the bar, and they were all used, every reeking one of them. Just before I began to feel deathly sick an- other reporter grappled me. What he wanted to know was the precise area of India in square miles. I referred him to Whitaker. He had never heard of Whitaker. He wanted it from my own mouth, and I would not tell him. Then he swerved off, just like the other man, to details of journalism in our own country. T ventured to suggest that the interior econ- omy of a paper most concerned the people who worked it. “That’s the very thing that interests us,” he said. “Have you got reporters anything like our reporters on Indian newspapers?” AT THE GOLDEN GATE 245 “We have not,” I said, and suppressed the “thank God” rising to my lips. “Why haven’t you?” said he. “Because they would die,” I said. It was exactly like talking to a child—a very rude little child. He would begin almost every sentence with, “Now tell me something about India,” and would turn aimlessly from one question to the other without the least contin- uity. I was not angry, but keenly interested. The man was a revelation to me. To his ques- tions I returned answers mendacious and eva- sive. After all, it really did not matter what I said. He could not understand. I can only hope and pray that none of the readers of the Pioneer will ever see that portentous inter- view. The man made me out to be an idiot several sizes more driveling than my destiny intended, and the rankness of his ignorance managed to distort the few poor facts with which I supplied him into large and elaborate lies. “Then,” thought I, “the matter of Amer- ican journalism shall be looked into later on. At present I will enjoy myself.” No man rose to tell me what were the lions of the place. No one volunteered any sort of conveyance. I was absolutely alone in this big city of white folk. By instinct I sought re- 246 AT THE GOLDEN GATE freshment, and came upon a bar-room full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the “free lunch” I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Fran- cisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remem- ber this if ever you are stranded in these parts. Later I began a vast but unsystematic ex- ploration of the streets. I asked for no names. It was enough that the pavements were full of white men and women, the streets clanging with traffic, and that the restful roar of a great city rang in my ears. The cable cars glided to all points of the compass at once. I took them one by one till I could go no further. San Francisco has been pitched down on the sand bunkers of the Bikaneer desert. About one-fourth of it is ground reclaimed from the sea—any old-timers will tell you all about that. The remainder is just ragged, unthrifty sand hills, to-day pegged down by houses. From an English point of view there has not been the least attempt at grading those hills, and indeed you might as well try to grade the hillocks of Sind. The cabie cars have for AT THE GOLDEN GATE 247, all practical purposes made San Francisco a dead level. They take no count of rise or fall, but slide equably on their appointed courses from one end to the other of a six-mile street. They turn corners almost at right angles, cross other lines, and for aught [ know may run up the sides of houses. There is no visible agency of their flight, but once in a while you shall pass a five-storied building humming with machin- ery that winds up an everlasting wire cable, and the initiated will tell you that here is the mechanism. I gave up asking questions. If it pleases Providence to make a car run up and down a slit in the ground for many miles, and if for twopence halfpenny I can ride in that car, why shall I seek the reasons of the miracle? Rather let me look out of the win- dows till the shops give place to thousands and thousands of little houses made of wood (to imitate stone), each house just big enough for aman and his family. Let me watch the peo- ple in the cars and try to find out in what man- ner they differ from us, their ancestors. It grieves me now that I cursed them (in the matter of book piracy), because I perceived that my curse is working and that their speech is becoming a horror already. They delude themselves into the belief that they talk Eng- 248 AT THE GOLDEN GATE lish—the English—and I have already been pitied for speaking with “an English accent.” The man who pitied me spoke, so far as I was concerned, the language of thieves. And they all do. Where we put the accent forward they throw it back, and vice versa; where we give the long “a” they use the short, and words so simple as to be past mistaking they pronounce somewhere up in the dome of their heads. How do these things happen? Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yan- kee school-marm, the cider and the salt cod- fish of the Eastern States, are responsible for what he calls a nasal accent. I know better. They stole books from across the water with- out paying for ’em, and the snort of delight was fixed in their nostrils forever by a just Providence. That is why they talk a foreign tongue to-day. “Cats is dogs, and rabbits is dogs, and so’s parrots. But this ’ere tortoise is an insect, so there ain’t no charge,” as the old porter said. A Hindoo is a Hindoo and a brother to the man who knows his vernacular. And a Frenchman is French because he speaks his own language. But the American has no lan- guage. He is dialect, slang, provincialism, ac- cent, and so forth. Now that I have heard — : AT THE GOLDEN GATE 249 their voices, all the beauty of Bret Harte is being ruined for me, because I find myself catching through the roll of his rhythmical prose the cadence of his peculiar fatherland. Get an American lady to read to you “How Santa Clause Came to Simpson’s Bar,” and see how much is, under her tongue, left of the beauty of the original. But Iam sorry for Bret Harte. It happened this way. A reporter asked me what I thought of the city, and I made answer suavely that it was hallowed ground to me, because of Bret Harte. That was true. “Well,” said the reporter, “Bret Harte claims California, but California don’t claim Bret Harte. He’s been so long in England that he’s quite English. Have you seen our cracker factories or the new offices of the Ex- aminer. He could not understand that to the out- side world the city was worth a great deal less than the man. I never intended to curse the - people with a provincialism so vast as this. But let us return to our sheep—which means the sea-lions of the Cliff House. They are the great show of San Francisco. You take a train which pulls up the middle of the street (it killed two people the day before yes- 250 AT THE GOLDEN GATE terday, being unbraked and driven absolutely regardless of consequences), and you pull up somewhere at the back of the city on the Pa- cific beach. Originally the cliffs and their ap- proaches must have been pretty, but they have been so carefully defiled with advertisements that they are now one big blistered abomina- tion. A hundred yards from the shore stood a big rock covered with the carcasses of the sleek sea-beasts, who roared and rolled and walloped in the spouting surges. No bold man had painted the creatures sky-blue or advertised newspapers on their backs, wherefore they did not match the landscape, which was chiefly hoarding. Some day, perhaps, whatever sort of government may obtain in this country will make a restoration of the place and keep it clean and neat. At present the sovereign peo- ple, of whom I have heard so much already, are vending cherries and painting the virtues of “Little Bile Beans” all over it. Night fell over the Pacific, and the white sea-fog whipped through the streets, dimming the splendors of the electric lights. It is the use of this city, her men and women folk, to parade between the hours of eight and ten a certain street called Kearney Street, where the finest shops are situated. Here the click of _ se _ = > AT THE GOLDEN GATE 251 high heels on the pavement is loudest, here the lights are brightest, and here the thunder of the traffic is most overwhelming. I watched Young California, and saw that it was, at least, expensively dressed, cheerful in manner, and self-asserting in conversation. Also the women were very fair. Perhaps eighteen days aboard ship had something to do with my un- reserved admiration. The maidens were of generous build, large, well groomed, and at- tired in raiment that even to my inexperienced _ eyes must have cost much. Kearney Street at nine o'clock levels all distinctions of rank as impartially as the grave. Again and again I loitered at the heels of a couple of resplendent beings, only to overhear, when I expected the level voice of culture, the staccato “Sez he,” Sez I” that is the mark of the white servant- girl all the world over. This was depressing because, in spite of all that goes to the contrary, fine feathers ought to make fine birds. There was wealth—un- limited wealth—in the streets, but not an ac- cent that would not have been dear at fifty cents. Wherefore, revolving in my mind that these folk were barbarians, I was presently en- lightened and made aware that they also were the heirs of all the ages, and civilized after Kip. 6—I 252 AT THE GOLDEN GATE all. There appeared before me an affable stranger of prepossessing appearance, with a blue and an innocent eye. Addressing me by name, he claimed to have met me in New York, at the Windsor, and to this claim I gave qualified assent. JI did not remember the fact, but since he was so certain of it, why, then—I waited developments. “And what did you think of Indiana when you came through?’ was the next question. It revealed the mystery of previous acquaint- ance and one or two other things. With re- prehensible carelessness my friend of the light- blue eye had looked up the name of his victim in the hotel register, and read “Indiana” for India. The provincialism with which I had cursed his people extended to himself. He could not imagine an Englishman coming through the States from west to east instead of by the reg- ularly ordained route. My fear was that in his delight in finding me so responsive he would make remarks about New York and the Wind- sor which I could not understand. And, in- deed, he adventured in this direction once or twice, asking me what I thought of such and such streets, which from his tone I gathered to be anything but respectable. It is trying te — a AT THE GOLDEN GATE 253 talk unknown New York in almost unknown San Francisco. But my friend was merciful. He protested that I was one after his own heart, and pressed upon me rare and curious drinks at more than one bar. These drinks | accepted with gratitude, as also the cigars with which his pockets were stored. He would show me the life of the city. Having no de- sire to watch a weary old play again, I evaded the offer and received in lieu of the devil’s in- struction much coarse flattery. Curiously con- stituted is the soul of man. Knowing how and where this man lied, waiting idly for the finale, I was distinctly conscious, as he bubbled com- pliments in my ear, of soft thrills of gratified pride stealing from hat-rim to boot-heels. I was wise, quoth he—any body could see that with half an eye; sagacious, versed in the ways of the world, an acquaintance to be desired; one who had tasted the cup of life with dis- cretion. All this pleased me, and in a measure numbed the suspicion that was thoroughly aroused. Eventually the blue-eyed one dis- covered, nay, insisted, that I had a taste for cards (this was clumsily worked in, but it was my fault, for in that I met him half-way and allowed him no chance of good acting). 254 AT THE GOLDEN GATE Hereupon I laid my head upon one side and simulated unholy wisdom quoting odds and ends of poker talk, all ludicrously misapplied. My friend kept his countenance admirably, and well he might, for five minutes later we ar- rived, always by the purest of chance, at a place where we could play cards and also frivol with Louisiana State Lottery tickets. Would I play? ) “Nay,” said I, “for to me cards have neither meaning nor continuity ; but let us assume that I am going to play. How would you and your friends get to work? Would you play a straight game, or make me drunk, or—well, the fact is, I’m a newspaper man, and I’d be much obliged if you’d let me know something about bunco steering.” My blue-eyed friend erected himself into an obelisk of profanity. He cursed me by his gods—the right and left bower; he even cursed the very good cigars he had given me. But, the storm over, he quieted down an@ explained. I apologized for causing him to waste an even- ing, and we spent a very pleasant time to- gether. Inaccuracy, provincialism, and a too hasty rushing to conclusions, were the rocks that he had split on, but he got his revenge when he said: AT THE GOLDEN GATE 255 “How would I play with you? From all the poppy-cock (Anglice bosh) you talked about poker, I’d ha’ played a straight game, and skinned you. I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to make you drunk. You never knew anything of the game, but how I was mistaken in going to work on you, makes me sick.” He glared at me as though I had done him an injury. To-day I know how it is that year after year, week after week, the bunco steerer, who is the confidence trick and the card- sharper man of other climes, secures his prey. He clavers them over with flattery as the snake clavers the rabbit. The incident depressed me because it showed I had left the innocent East far behind and was come to a country where a man must look out for himself. The very hotels bristled with notices about keeping my door locked and depositing my valuables in a safe. The white man ina lump is bad. Weep- ing softly for O-Toyo (little I knew that my heart was to be torn afresh from my bosom) I fell asleep in the clanging hotel. Next morning I had entered upon the de- ferred inheritance. There are no princes in America—at least with crowns on their heads —but a generous-minded member of some royal family received my letter of introduction, 256 AT THE GOLDEN GATE Ere the day closed I was a member of the two clubs, and booked for many engagements to dinner and party. Now, this prince, upon whose financial operations be continual in- crease, had no reason, nor had the others, his friends, to put himself out for the sake of one Briton more or Jess, but he rested not till he had accomplished all in my behalf that a mother could think of for her débutante daughter. Do you know the Bohemian Club of San Francisco? They say its fame extends over the world. It was created, somewhat on the lines of the Savage, by men who wrote or drew things, and has blossomed into most un- republican luxury. The ruler of the place is an owl—an owl standing upon a skull and cross- bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the man of letters and the end of his hopes for im- mortality. The owl stands on the staircase, a statue four feet high; is carved in the wood- work, flutters on the frescoed ceiling; is stamped on the note-paper, and hangs on the walls. He is an ancient and honorable bird. Under his wing *twas my privilege to meet with white men whose lives were not chained down to routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of reading them hurriedly in _— AT THE GOLDEN GATE 257 the pauses of office-work, who painted pictures instead of contenting themselves with cheap etchings picked up at another man’s sale of effects. Mine were all the rights of social in- tercourse, craft by craft, that India, stony- hearted stepmother of collectors, has swindled us out of. Treading soft carpets and breath- ing the incense of superior cigars, I wandered from room to room studying the paintings in which the members of the club had caricatured themselves, their associates, and their aims. There was a slick French audacity about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that went straight to the heart of the beholder. And yet it was not altogether French. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch, marked the difference. The men painted as they spoke —with certainty. The club indulges in revel- ries which it calls “jinks’—high and low, at intervals—and each of these gatherings is faithfully portrayed in oils by hands that know their business. In this club were no amateurs spoiling canyas, because they fancied they could handle oils without knowledge of shadows or anatomy—no gentleman of leisure ruining the temper of publishers and an al- ready ruined market with attempts to write, “Necause everybody writes something these days.” 258 AT THE GOLDEN GATE My hosts were working, or had worked for their daily bread with pen or paint, and their talk for the most part was of the shop—shoppy —that is to say, delightful. They extended a large hand of welcome, and were as brethren, and I did homage to the owl and listened to their talk. An Indian club about Christmas- time will yield, if properly worked, an abund- ant harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering of Americans from the uttermost ends of their own continent, the tales are larger, thicker, more spinous, and even more azure than any Indian variety. Tales of the war I heard told by an ex-officer of the South over his evening drink to a colonel of the Northern army, my introducer, who had served as a trooper in the Northern Horse, throwing in emendations from time to time. “Tales of the Law,” which in this country is an amazingly elastic affair, followed from the lips of a judge. Forgive me for recording one tale that struck me as new. It may interest the up-country Bar in India. Once upon a time there was Samuelson, a young lawyer, who feared not God, neither re- garded the Bench. (Name, age, and town of the man were given at great length.) To him no case had ever come as a client, partly be-~ AT THE GOLDEN GATE 259 cause he lived in a district where lynch law prevailed, and partly because the most desper- ate prisoner shrunk from intrusting himself to the mercies of a phenomenal stammerer. But in time there happened an aggravated murder —so bad, indeed, that by common consent the citizens decided, as a prelude to lynching, to give the real law a chance. They could, in fact, gambol round that murder. They met— the court in its shirt-sleeves—and against the raw square of the Court House window a temptingly suggestive branch of a tree fretted the sky. No one appeared for the prisoner, and, partly in jest, the court advised young Samuelson to take up the case. “The prisoner is undefended, Sam,” said the court. “The square thing to do would be for you to take him aside and do the best you can for him.” Court, jury, and witness then adourned to the veranda, while Samuelson led his client aside to the Court House cells, An hour passed ere the lawyer returned alone. Mutely the audience questioned. “May it p-p-please the c-court,” said Sam- uelson, “my client’s case is a b-b-b-bad one—a d-d-amn bad one. You told me to do the b-b-best I c-could for him, judge, so I’ve jest 1 sas fi Me 260 AT THE GOLDEN GATE given him y-your b-b-bay gelding, an’ told him to light out for healthier c-climes, my p-p-pro- fessional opinion being he’d be hanged quicker’n h-h-hades if he dallied here. B-by this time my client’s ‘bout fifteen mile out yon- der somewheres. That was the b-b-best I could do for him, may it p-p-please the court.” The young man, escaping punishment in lieu of the prisoner, made his fortune ere five years. | Other voices followed, with equaily won- drous tales of riata-throwing in Mexico and Arizona, of gambling at army posts in Texas, of newspaper wars waged in godless Chicago (I could not heip being interested, but they were not pretty tricks), of deaths sudden and violent in Montana and Dakota, of the loves of half-breed maidens in the South, and fan- tastic huntings for gold in mysterious Alaska. Above all, they told the story of the building of old San Francisco, when the “finest collec- tion of humanity on God’s earth, sir, started this town, and the water came up to the foot of Market Street.” Very terrible were some of the tales, grimly humorous the others, and the men in broadcloth and fine linen who told them had played their parts in them. “And now and again when things got too TN, a ee ee ee ee Sa ee rn, AT THE GOLDEN GATE 261 bad they would toll the city bell, and the Vigs- lance Committee turned out and hanged the suspicious characters. A man didn’t begin to be suspected in those days till he had com- mitted at least one unprovoked murder,” said a calm-eyed, portly old gentleman. I looked at the pictures around me, the noiseless, neat-uniformed waiter behind me, the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvet carpet beneath. It was hard to realize that even twenty years ago you could see a man hanged with great pomp. Later on I found reason to change my opinion. The tales gave me a head- ache and set me thinking. How in the world was it possible to take in even one thousandth of this huge, roaring, many-sided continent? In the tobacco-scented silence of the sumptu- ous library lay Professor Bryce’s book on the American Republic. “It is an omen,” said I. ‘He has done all things in all seriousness, and he may be pur- chased for half a guinea. Those who desire information of the most undoubted, must refer to his pages. For me is the daily round of vagabondage, the recording of the incidents of the hour and intercourse with the traveling- companion of the day. I will not ‘do’ this country at all.” 262 AT THE GOLDEN GATE And I forgot all about India for fen days while I went out to dinners and watched the social customs of the people, which are entirely different from our customs, and was intro- duced to men of many millions. These per- sons are harmless in their earlier stages— that is to say, a man worth three or four mil- lion dollars may be a good talker, clever, amusing, and of the world; a man with twice that amount is to be avoided, and a twenty million man is—just twenty millions. Take an instance. I was speaking to a newspaper man about seeing the proprietor of his journal, as in my innocence [ supposed newspaper men occasionally did. My friend snorted indig- nantly: “See him! Great Scott! No. If he hap- pens to appear in the office, I have to associate with him; but, thank Heaven! outside of that I move in circles where he cannot come.” And yet the first thing I have been taught to believe is that money was everything in Amer- ica! a a Ir AMERICAN POLITICS ] HAVE been watching machinery in repose after reading about machinery in action. An excellent gentleman, who bears a name honored in the magazine, writes, much as Disraeli orated, of “‘the sublime instincts of an ancient people,” the certainty with which they can be trusted to manage their own affairs in their own way, and the speed with which they are making for all sorts of desirable goals. This he called a statement or purview of Amer- ican politics. I went almost directly afterward to a saloon where gentlemen interested in ward politics nightly congregate. They were not pretty per- sons. Some of them were bloated, and they all swore cheerfully till the heavy gold watch- chains on their fat stomachs rose and fell again; but they talked over their liquor as men who had power and unquestioned access to places of trust and profit. The magazine See discussed theories of 205 266 AMERICAN POLITICS government; these men the practice./ They had been there. They knew all about it. They banged their fists on the table and spoke of political “pulls,” the vending of votes, and so. forth. Theirs was not the talk of village bab- blers reconstructing the affairs of the nation, but of strong, coarse, lustful men fighting for spoil, and thoroughly understanding the best methods of reaching it. I listened long and intently to speech I could not understand—or but in spots. It was the speech of business, however. I had sense enough to know that, and to do my laughing outside the door. Then I began to understand why my pleas- ant and well-educated hosts in San Francisco spoke with a bitter scorn of such duties of — citizenship as voting and taking an interest in the distribution of offices. Scores of men have told me, without false pride, that they would as soon concern themselves with the public affairs of the city or state as rake muck with a steam-shovel. It may be that their lofty dis- dain covers selfishness, but I should be very sorry habitually to meet the fat gentlemen with shiny top-hats and plump cigars in whose so- ciety I have been spending the evening. Read about politics as the cultured writer of AMERICAN POLITICS 267 the magazine regards ’em, and then, and not till then, pay your respects to the gentlemen who run the grimy reality. I’m sick of interviewing night editors who lean their chair against the wall, and, in re- sponse to my demand-for the record of a prominent citizen, answer: “Well, you see, he began by keeping a saloon,” etc. I prefer to believe that my informants are treating me as in the old sinful days in India I was used to treat the wondering globe-trotter. They de- clare that they speak the truth, and the news of dog politics lately vouchsafed to me in grog- geries inclines me to believe, but I won’t. The people are much too nice to slangander as reck- lessly as I have been doing. Besides, I am hopelessly in love with about eight American maidens—all perfectly delight- ful till the next one comes into the room. O-Toyo was a darling, but she lacked sev- eral things—conversation for one. You can- not live on giggles. She shall remain unmar- ried at Nagasaki, while I roast a battered heart before the shrine of a big Kentucky blonde, who had for a nurse when she was little a negro “mammy.” By consequence she has welded on Califor- nia beauty, Paris dresses, Eastern culture, Eu- 268 AMERICAN POLITICS | | rope trips, and wild Western originality, the queer, dreamy superstitions of the quarters, and the result is soul-shattering, And she is but one of many stars. Item, a maiden, who believes in education and possesses it, with a few hundred thousand dollars to boot and a taste for slumming. Item, the leader of a sort of informal salon where girls congregate, read papers, and dar- ingly discuss metaphysical problems and candy —a sloe-eyed, black-browed, imperious maiden she. Item, a very small maiden, absolutely with- out reverence, who can in one swift sentence trample upon and leave gasping half a dozen young men. Item, a millionairess, burdened with her money, lonely, caustic, with a tongue keen as a sword, yearning for a sphere, but chained up to the rock of her vast possessions. Item, a typewriter maiden earning her own bread in this big city, because she doesn’t think a girl ought to be a burden on her parents, who quotes Théophile Gautier and moves through the world manfully, much respected for all her twenty inexperienced summers. ltem, a woman from cloud-land who has no history in the past or future, but is discreetly 7 x } "i D 4 ? * iv AMERICAN POLITICS 269 of the present, and strives for the confidences of male humanity on the grounds of “sym- pathy” (methinks this is not altogether 2 new type). Item, a girl in a “dive,” blessed with a Greek head and eyes, that seem to speak all that is best and sweetest in the world. But woe is me! She has no ideas in this world or the next beyond the consumption of beer (a com- mission on each bottle), and protests that she sings the songs allotted to her nightly without more than the vaguest notion of their meaning. Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire; delicate and of gracious seeming those who live in the pleasant places of Lon- don; fascinating for all their demureness the damsels of France, clinging closely to their mothers, with large eyes wondering at the wicked world; excellent in her own place and to those who understand her is the Anglo-In- dian “spin” in her second season; but the girls of America are above and beyond them all. They are clever, they can talk—yea, it is said that they think. Certainly they have an ap- pearance of so doing which is delightfully de- ceptive. They are original, and regard you between the brows with unabashed eyes as a sistet a7 -AMERICAN POLITICS might look at her brother. They are in- structed, tco, in the folly and vanity of the male mind, for they have associated with “the boys” from babyhood, and can discerningly — minister to both vices or pleasantly snub the possessor. They possess, moreover, a life among themselves, independent of any mascu- line associations. They have societies and clubs and unlimited tea-fights where all the guests are girls. They are self-possessed, without parting with any tenderness that is their sex-right ; they understand; they can take care of themselves; they are superbly inde- pendent. When you ask them what makes them so charming, they say: | “It 1s because we are better educated than your girls, and—and we are more sensible in regard to men. We have good times all round, but we aren’t taught to regard every man as a possible husband. Nor is he expected to marry the first girl he calls on regularly.” Yes, they have good times, their freedom is large, and they do not abuse it. They can go driving with young men and receive visits from young men to an extent that would make an English mother wink with horror, and neither driver nor drivee has a thought beyond © the enjoyment of a good time. As certain, also, of their own poets have said: AMERICAN POLITICS 20% “Man is fire and woman is tow, And the devil he comes and begins to blow.” In America the tow is soaked in a solution that makes it fire-proof, in absolute liberty and large knowledge; consequently, accidents do not exceed the regular percentage arranged by the devil for each class and climate under the skies. But the freedom of the young girl has its drawbacks. She is—TI say it with all reluctance —irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to the buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She talks flippantly to her parents and men old enough to be her grandfather. She has a pre- Scriptive right to the society of the man who arrives. The parents admit it. This is sometimes embarrassing, especially when you call on a man and his wife for the sake of information—the one being a merchant of varied knowledge, the other a woman of the world. In five minutes your host has vanished. In another five his wife has followed him, and you are left alone with a very charming maiden, doubtless, but certainly not the person you came to see. She chatters, and you grin, but you leave with the very strong impression of a wasted morning. This has been my ex- perience once or twice. I have even said as pointedly as I dared to a man: 272 AMERICAN POLITICS “T came to see you.” “You'd better see me in my office, then. The house belongs to my women folk—to my daughter, that is to say.” He spoke the truth. The American of wealth is owned by his family. They exploit him for bullion. The women get the ha’pence, the kicks are all his own. Nothing is too good for an American’s daughter (I speak here of the moneyed classes). | The girls take every gift as a matter of course, and yet they develop greatly when a catastrophe arrives and the man of many mil- lions goes up or goes down, and his daughters take to stenography or typewriting. I have heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted the principals among their friends. The crash came, Mamie, or Hattie, or Sadie, gave up their maid, their carriages and candy, and with a No. 2 Remington and a stout heart set about earning their daily bread. “And did I drop her from the list of my friends? No, sir,” said a scarlet-lipped vision in white lace; “that might happen to us any day.” It may be this sense of possible disaster in the air that makes San Francisco society go with so captivating a rush and whirl. Reck- ——— AMERICAN POLITICS 273 lessness is in the air. I can’t explain where it comes from, but there it is. The roaring winds of the Pacific make you drunk to begin with. The aggressive luxury on all sides helps out the intoxication, and you spin forever “down the ringing grooves of change” (there is no small change, by the way, west of the Rockies) as long as money lasts. They make greatly and they spend lavishly ; not only the rich, but the artisans, who pay nearly five pounds for a suit of clothes, and for other luxuries in pro- portion. _ The young men rejoice in the days of their youth. They gamble, yacht, race, enjoy prize- fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the other in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves over horse-flesh and other things, and they are instant in a quarrel. At twenty they are experienced in business, em- bark in vast enterprises, take partners as ex- perienced as themselves, and go to pieces with as much splendor as their neighbors. Remem- ber that the men who stocked California in the fifties were physically, and, as far as regards certain tough virtues, the pick of the earth. The inept and the weakly died en route, or - went under in the days of construction. To this nucleus were added all the races of the 274 AMERICAN POLITICS Continent—French, Italian, German, and, of course, the Jew. | The result you can see in the large-boned, © deep-chested, delicate-handed women, and long, elastic, well-built boys. It needs no little golden badge swinging from the watch-chain to mark the native son of the golden West, the countrybred of California. Him I loved because he is devoid of fear, carries himself like a man, and has a heart as big as his boots. I fancy, too, he knows how to enjoy the blessings of life that his province so abundantly bestows upon him. At least, I heard a little rat of a creature with hock-bottle shoulders explaining that a man from Chicago could pull the eyeteeth of a Californian in business. Well, if I lived in fairyland, where cherries were as big as plums, plums as big as apples, and strawberries of no account, where the pro- cession of the fruits of the seasons was like a pageant in a Drury Lane pantomime and the dry air was wine, I should let business slide — once in a way and kick up my heels with my fellows. The tale of the resources of Cali- fornia—vegetable and mineral—is a fairy-tale. You can read it in books. You would never believe me. AMERICAN POLITICS 278 All manner of nourishing food, from sea-fish to beef, may be bought at the lowest prices, and the people are consequently well-developed and of a high stomach., They demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock of a trunk; they _ Teceive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters ; they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars, which the poorest of them smoke, and they go mad over a prize-fight. When _ they disagree they do so fatally, with fire-arms in their hands, and on the public streets. I _ was just clear of Mission Street when the trouble began between two gentlemen, one of whom perforated the other. When a policeman, whose name I do not recollect, “fatally shot Ed Hearney” for at- tempting to escape arrest, I was in the next street. For these things I am.thankful. It is enough to travel with a policeman in a tram- car, and, while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down, to catch sight of a loaded revolver. It is enough to know that fifty per cent. of the ' men in the public saloons carry pistols about them. The Chinamen waylays his adversary, and methodically chops him to pieces with his hat- chet. Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of the pagan. 270 AMERICAN POLITICS The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. The press complains of the way- wardness of the alien. The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of discontent use the revolver, not once, but six times. The press records the fact, and asks in the next column whether the world can parallel the progress of San Francisco. The American who loves his country will tell you that this sort of thing is confined to the lower classes. Just at present an ex-judge who was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannot tell whether these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot vengeance against his enemy. The papers have inter- viewed both parties, and confidently expect a fatal issue. | Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through him the negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen with a vote, consequently both political parties — play with him. But that is neither here nor there. He will commit in one meal every bétise that a senllion fresh from the plow-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeat those faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, un comprehending, bungle-fisted fool as any mem- sahib in the East ever took into her establish< St ees AMERICAN POLITICS 277 ment. But he is according to law a free and independent citizen—consequently above re- proof or criticism. He, and he alone, in this insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman doesn’t count). He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the pay. Now, God and his father’s fate made him intellectually inferior to the Oriental. He insists on pretending that he serves tables by accident—as a sort of amuse- ment. He wishes you to understand this little fact. You wish to eat your meals, and, if pos- sible, to have them properly served. He is a big, black, vain baby and a man rolled into one. A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wanted something else, demand- ed information about India. I gave him some facts about wages. “Oh, hell!’ said he, cheerfully, “that wouldn’t keep me in cigars for a month.” Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon himself to pity the na- tives of India. “Heathens,” he called them— this woolly one, whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stage since the beginning. And I turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders that he was a Yoruba man 278 AMERICAN POLITICS if there be any truth in ethnological castes. He did his thinking in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race type had remained the same throughout his generations. And the room was full of other races—some that looked exactly like Gallas (but the trade was never recruited from that side of Africa), some duplicates of Cameroon heads, and some Kroo- men, if ever Kroomen wore evening dress. The American does not consider little mat- ters of descent, though by this time he ought to know all about “damnable heredity.” As a general rule he keeps himself very far from the negro, and says things about him that are not pretty. There are six million negroes, more or less, in the States, and they are increasing. The American, once having made them citi- zens, cannot unmake them. He says, in his newspapers, they ought to be elevated by ed- ucation. He is trying this, but it is likely to be a long job, because black blood is much more adhesive than white, and throws back with annoying persistence. When the negro gets religion he returns directly as a hiving bee to the first instincts of his people. Just now a wave of religion is sweeping over some of the Southern States. Up to the present two Messiahs and a Daniel ee ee AMERICAN POLITICS 270 have appeared, and several human sacrifices have been offered up to these incarnations. The Daniel managed to get three young men, who he insisted were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to walk into a blast furnace, guaranteeing non-combustion. They did not return. I have seen nothing of this kind, but I have attended a negro church. They pray, or are caused to pray by themselves in this. coun- try. The congregation were moved by the spirit to groans and tears, and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners’ bench. The motive may have been genuine. The movements of the shaken body were those of _a Zanzibar stick dance, such as you see at Aden on the coal-boats, and even as I watched the people, the links that bound them to the white man snapped one by one, and I saw before me the hubsht (woolly hair) praying to a God he did not understand. Those neatly dressed folk on the benches, and the grey-headed elder by the window, were savages, neither more nor less. What will the American do with the negro? The South will not consort with him. In some States miscegenation is a penal offence. _ The North is every year less and less in need of his services, 280 AMERICAN POLITICS And he will not disappear. He will con- © tinue as a problem. His friends will urge that — he is as good as the white man. His enemies — —well, you can guess what his enemies will do — from a little incident that followed on a recent — appointment by the President. He made a ~ negro an assistant in a post office where—think — of it!—he had to work at the next desk to a © white girl, the daughter of a Colonel, one of — the first families of Georgia’s modern chivalry, — and all the weary, weary rest of it. The Southern chivalry howled, and hanged or burned some one in effigy. Perhaps it was the © President, and perhaps it was the negro—but — the principal remains the same. They said it © was an insult. It is not good to be a negro in © the land of the free and the home of the brave. — But this is nothing to do with San Fran- — cisco and her merry maidens, her strong, — swaggering men, and her wealth of gold and © pride. They bore me to a banquet in honor of a brave lieutenant—Carlin, of the “Vandalia” — —who stuck by his ship in the great cyclone © at Apia and comported himself as an officer — should. On that occasion—’twas at the © Bohemian Club—I heard oratory with the © roundest of o’s, and devoured a dinner the © memory of which will descend wifi me into the ; hungry grave. | AMERICAN POLITICS 281 There were about forty speeches delivered, and not one of them was average or ordinary. It was my first introduction to the American eagle screaming for all it was worth. The lieutenant’s heroism served as a peg from which the silver-tongued ones turned them- selves loose and kicked. They ransacked the clouds of sunset, the thunderbolts of heaven, the deeps of hell, and the splendor of the resurrection for tropes and metaphors, and hurled the result at the head of the guest of the evening. Never since the morning stars sung together for joy, I learned, had an amazed creation wit- nessed such superhuman bravery as that dis- played by the American navy in the Samoa cyclone. Till earth rotted in the phosphores- cent star-and-stripe slime of a decayed uni- verse, that godlike gallantry would not be for- gotten. I grieve that I cannot give the exact words. My attempt at reproducing their spirit is pale and inadequate. I sat bewildered on a coruscating Niagara of blatherumskite. It was magnificent—it was stupendous—and I was conscious of a wicked desire to hide my face in a napkin and grin. Then according to rule, they produced their dead, and across the snowy table-cloths dragged the corpse of every man 282 AMERICAN POLITICS slain in the Civil War, and hurled defiance at “our natural enemy” (England, so please you), “with her chain of fortresses across the world.” Thereafter they glorified their na- tion afresh from the beginning, in case any detail should have been overlooked, and that made me uncomfortable for their sakes. How in the world can a white man, a sahib, of our blood, stand up and plaster praise on his own country? He can think as highly as he likes, but this open-mouthed vehemence of adoration struck me almost as indelicate. My hosts talked for rather more than three hours, and at the end seemed ready for three hours more. But when the lieutenant—such a big, brave, gentle giant—rose to his feet, he delivered what seemed to me as the speech of the even- ing. I remember nearly the whole of it, and it ran something in this way: “Gentlemen—lIt’s very good of you to give me this dinner and tell me all these pretty things, but what I want you to understand— the fact is, what we want and what we ought to get at once, is a navy—more ships—lots of tain pe Then we howled the top of the roof off, and I for one fell in love with Carlin on the spot. Wallah! He was a man. AMERICAN POLITICS 283 The prince among merchants bid me take no heed to the warlike sentiments of some of the old generals. “The sky-rockets are thrown in for effect,”’ quoth he, “and whenever we get on our hind legs we always express a desire to chaw up England. It’s a sort of family affair.” And, indeed, when you come to think of it, there is no other country for the American public speaker to trample upon. | France has Germany; we have Russia: for Italy Austria is provided; and the humblest Pathan possesses an ancestral enemy. Only America stands out of the racket, and therefore to be in fashion makes a sand-bag of the mother country, and hangs her when Occasion requires. “The chain of fortresses” man, a fascinating talker, explained to me after the affair that he was compelled to blow off steam. Everybody expected it. When we had chanted “The Star Spangled Banner” not more than eight times, we ad- journed. America is a very great country, but it is not yet heaven, with electric lights and _ plush fittings, as the speakers professed to be- lieve. My listening mind went back to the politicians in the saloon, who wasted no time Kip. 6—J 284 AMERICAN POLITICS in talking about freedom, but quietly made ar- rangements to impose their will on the citizens. “The judge is a great man, but give thy presents to the clerk,” as the proverb saith. And what more remains to tell? I cannot write connectedly, because I am in love with all those girls aforesaid, and some others who do not appear in the invoice. The typewriter is an institution of which the comic papers make much capital, but she is vastly con- venient. She and a companion rent a room in a business quarter, and, aided by a typewriting machine, copy MSS. at the rate of six annas a page. Only a woman can operate a typewrit- ing machine, because she has served apprentice- ship to the sewing machine. She can earn as much as one hundred dollars a month, and, pro- fesses to regard this form of bread-winning as her natural destiny. But, oh! how she hates it in her heart of hearts! WhenI had got over © the surprise of doing business with and trying — to give orders to a young woman of coldly, clerkly aspect intrenched behind gold-rimmed spectacles, I made inquiries concerning the pleasures of this independence. They liked it —indeed they did. ’Twas the natural fate of — almost all girls—the recognized custom in — ‘America—and I was a barbarian not to see it in that light. AMERICAN POLITICS 285 “Well, and after?” said I. “What hap- pens?” “We work for our bread.” ‘And then what do you expect?” “Then we shall work for our bread.” “Till you die?’ *“Y e-es—unless”— “Unless what? This is your business, yots know. A man works until he dies.” “So shall we’—this without enthusiasm— “T suppose.” Said the partner in the firm audaciously: “Sometimes we marry our employers—at least, that’s what the newspapers say.” The hand banged on half a dozen of the keys _ of the machine at once. “Yet I don’t care. I hate it—I hate it—I hate it—and you needn’t look so!” The senior partner was regarding the rebel with grave-eyed reproach. “T thought you did,” said I. “I don’t sup- pose American girls are much different from English ones in instinct.” “Tsn’t it Théophile Gautier who says that the only differences between country and coun- try lie in the slang and the uniform of the police ?”’ Now, in the name of all the gods at once, 286 AMERICAN POLITICS what is one to say to a young lady (who in England would be a person) who earns her own bread, and very naturally hates the em- ploy, and slings out-of-the-way quotations at your head? That one falls in love with her goes without saying, but that is not enough, A mission should be established, III AMERICAN SALMON The race is neither to the swift nor the battle to the strong; but time and chance cometh to all. HAVE lived! The American Continent may now sink under the sea, for I have taken the best that it yields, and the best was neither dollars, love, nor real estate. Hear now, gentlemen of the Punjab Fishing Club, who whip the reaches of the Tavi, and you who painfully import trout to Octamund, and I will tell you how old man California and I went fishing, and you shall envy. We returned from The Dalles to Portland by the way we had come, the steamer stopping en route to pick up a night’s catch of one of the salmon wheels on the river, and to deliver it at a cannery down-stream. When the proprietor of the wheel announced that his take was two thousand two hundred - 289 290 AMERICAN SALMON and thirty pounds weight of fish, “and not a heavy catch neither,” I thought he lied. But he sent the boxes aboard, and I counted the salmon by the hundred—huge fifty-pounders hardly dead, scores of twenty and thirty pounders, and a host of smaller fish. They were all Chenook salmon, as distinguished from the “steel head” and the “silver side.” That is to say, they were royal salmon, and California and [ dropped a tear over them, as monarchs who deserved a better fate; but the lust of slaughter entered into our souls, and we talked fish and forgot the mountain scenery that had so moved us a day before. The steamer halted at a rude wooden ware- house built on piles in a lonely reach of the river, and sent in the fish. I followed them up a scale-strewn, fishy incline that led to the can- nery. The crazy building was quivering with the machinery on its floors, and a glittering bank of tin scraps twenty feet high showed where the waste was thrown after the cans had been punched. Only Chinamen were employed on the work, | and they looked like blood-besmeared yellow devils as they crossed the rifts of sunlight that lay upon the floor. When our consignment ar- rived, the rough wvuoden boxes broke of them- — AMERICAN SALMON 291 selves as they were dumped down under a jet of water, and the salmon burst out in a stream of quicksilver. A Chinaman jerked up a twenty-pounder, beheaded and detailed it with two swift strokes of a knife, flicked out its in- ternal arrangements with a third, and cast it into a blood-dyed tank. The headless fish leaped from under his hands as though they were facing a rapid. Other Chinamen pulled them from the vat and thrust them under a thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, hewed them into unseemly red gobbets fit for the can. More Chinamen, with yellow, crooked fin- gers, jammed the stuff into the cans, which slid down some marvelous machine forthwith, soldering their own tops as they passed. Each can was hastily tested for flaws, and then sunk with a hundred companions into a vat of boil- ing water, there to be half cooked for a few minutes. The cans bulged slightly after the Operation, and were therefore slidden along by the trolleyful to men with needles and solder- ing-irons who vented them and soldered the aperture. Except for the label, the “Finest Columbia Salmon” was ready for the market. I was impressed not so much with the speed of the manufacture as the character of the fac- 292 AMERICAN SALMON tory. Inside, on a floor ninety by forty, the most civilized and murderous of machinery. Outside, three footsteps, the thick-growing pines and the immense solitude of the hills. Our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at that place, but I counted two hundred and forty finished cans made from the catch of the previous night ere I left the slippery, blood- stained, scale-spangled, oily floors and the offal-smeared Chinamen, We reached Portland, California and I ery- ing for salmon, and a real-estate man, to whom we had been intrusted by an insurance man, met us in the street, saying that fifteen miles away, across country, we should come upon a place called Clackamas, where we might per- chance find what we desired. And California, his coat-tails flying in the wind, ran to a livery- stable and chartered a wagon and team forth- with. I could push the wagon about with one hand, so light was its structure. The team was purely American—that is to say, almost human in its intelligence and docility. Some one said that the roads were not good on the way to Clackamas, and warned us against smashing the springs. “Portland,’’ who had watched the preparations, finally reckoned “He’d come along, too; and under heavenly skies we AMERICAN SALMON 293 three companions of a day set forth, California carefully lashing our rods into the carriage, and the bystanders overwhelming us with directions as to the saw-mills we were to pass, the ferries we were to cross, and the sign-posts we were to seek signs from. Half a mile from this city of fifty thousand souls we struck (and this must be taken literally) a plank road that would have been a disgrace to an Irish village. Then six miles of macadamized road showed us that the team could move. A railway ran between us and the banks of the Willamette, and another above us through the mountains All the land was dotted with small townships, and the roads were full of farmers in their town wagons, bunches of tow-haired, boggle- eyed urchins sitting in the hay behind. The men generally looked like loafers, but their women were all well dressed. Brown braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not, however, consort with hay-wagons. Then we struck into the woods along what California called a camina reale—a good road —and Portland a “fair track.” It wound in and out among fire-blackened stumps under pine-trees, along the corners of log fences, through hollows, which must be hopeless marsh in the winter, and up absurd gradients. n 204 AMERICAN SALMON But nowhere throughout its length did I see any evidence of road-making. There was a track—you couldn’t get off it, and it was all you could do to stay on it. The dust lay a foot thick in the blind ruts, and under the dust we found bits of planking and bundles of brushwood that sent the wagon bounding into the air. The journey in itself was a delight. Sometimes we crashed through bracken; anon, where the blackberries grew rankest, we found a lonely little cemetery, the wooden rails all awry and the pitiful, stumpy head-stones nod- ding drunkenly at the soft green mullions. Then, with oaths and the sound of rent under- wood, a yoke of mighty bulls would swing down a “skid” road, hauling a forty-foot log along a rudely made slide. A valley full of wheat and cherry-trees suc- ceeded, and halting at a house, we bought ten- pound weight of lucious black cherries for something less than a rupee, and got a drink of icy-cold water for nothing, while the un- tended team browsed sagaciously by the road- side. Once we found a wayside camp of horse- dealers lounging by a pool, ready for a sale or a swap, and once two sun-tanned youngsters shot down a hill on Indian ponies, their full creels banging from the high-pommeled saddle. AMERICAN SALMON 295 _ They had been fishing, and were our brethren, therefore. We shouted aloud in chorus to scare a wild cat; we squabbled over the reasons that had led a snake to cross a road; we heaved bits of bark at a venturesome chipmunk, who was really the little grey squirrel of India, and had come to call on me; we lost our way, and got the wagon so beautifully fixed on a khud- bound road that we had to tie the two hind wheels to get it down. Above all, California told tales of Nevada and Arizona, of lonely nights spent out pros- pecting, the slaughter of deer and the chase of men, of woman—lovely woman—who is a fire- brand in a Western city and leads to the pop- ping of pistols, and of the sudden changes and chances of Fortune, who delights in making the miner or the lumberman a quadruplicate millionaire and in “busting” the railroad king. That was a day to be remembered, and it had only begun when we drew rein at a tiny farmhouse on the banks of the Clackamas and sought horse feed and lodging, ere we hastened to the river that broke over a weir not a quar- ter of a mile away. Imagine a stream seventy yards broad divided by a pebbly island, run- ning over seductive “riffles” and swirling into deep, quiet pools, where the good salmon goes 206 AMERICAN SALMON to smoke his pipe after meals. Get such a stream amid fields of breast-high crops sur- rounded by hills of pines, throw in where you please quiet water, long-fenced meadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from growing too monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the Clackamas. The weir had been erected to pen the Chenook sal- mon from going further upstream. We could see them, twenty or thirty pounds, by the score in the deep pools, or flying madly against the weir and foolishly skinning their noses. They were not our prey, for they would not rise at a fly, and we knew it. All the same, when one made his leap against the weir, and landed on the foot-plank with a jar that shook the board I was standing on, I would fain have claimed him for my own capture. Portland had no rod. He held the gaff and the whiskey. California sniffed up-stream and down-stream, across the racing water, chose his ground, and let the gaudy fly drop in the tail of a riffle. I was getting my rod together when I heard the joyous shriek of the reel and the yells of California, and three feet of living silver leaped into the air far across the water. The forces were engaged. The salmon tore up-stream, the tense line AMERICAN SALMON 297 cutting the water like a tide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking. What happened thereafter I cannot tell. Cali- fornia swore and prayed, and Portland shout- ed advice, and I did all three for what appeared to be half a day, but was in reality a little over a quarter of an hour, and sullenly our fish came home with spurts of temper, dashes head on and sarabands in the air, but home to the bank came he, and the remorseless reel gathered up the thread of his life inch by inch. We landed him in a little bay, and the spring weight in his gorgeous gills checked at eleven and one half pounds. Eleven and one half pounds of fighting salmon! We danced a war-dance on the pebbles, and California caught me round the waist in a hug that went near to breaking my ribs, while he shouted: “Partner! Partner! This is glory! Now you catch your fish! Twenty-four years I’ve waited for this!’ Cunt I went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just above the weir, and all but foul- hooked a blue-and-black water-snake with a coral mouth who coiled herself on a stone and hissed maledictions. The next cast—ah, the pride of it, the regal _ splendor of it! the thrill that ran down from e° Se ' 7 298 AMERICAN SALMON finger-tip to toe! Then the water boiled. He broke for the fly and got it. There remained enough sense in me to give him all he wanted when he jumped not once, but twenty times, before the up-stream flight that ran my line out to the last half-dozen turns, and I saw the nickeled reel-bar glitter under the thinning green coils. My thumb was burned deep when I strove to stopper the line. I did not feel it till later, for my soul was out in the dancing weir, praying for him to turn ere he took my tackle away. And the prayer was heard. As I bowed back, the butt of the rod on my left hip-bone and the top joint dipping like unto a weeping willow, he turned and accepted each inch of slack that I could by any means get in as a favor from on high. There lie several sorts of success in this world that taste well in the moment of enjoy- ment, but I question whether the stealthy theft of line from an able-bodied salmon who knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it is not sweeter than any other victory within human scope. Like California’s fish, he ran at me head on, and leaped against the line, but the Lord gave me two hundred and fifty pairs of fingers in that hour. The banks and the pine-trees danced dizzily round me, but I ea ee eo a oe ae Kerkpalinek vey “He ran at me, head on.” American Salmon, p. 298 AMERICAN SALMON 299 only reeled—reeled as for life—reeled for hours, and at the end of the reeling continued to give him the butt while he sulked in a pool. California was further up the reach, and with the corner of my eye I could see him casting with long casts and much skill. Then he struck, and my fish broke for the weir in the same instant, and down the reach we came, California and I, reel answering reel even as the morning stars sing together. The first wild enthusiasm of capture had died away. We were both at work now in deadly earnest to prevent the lines fouling, to stall off a down-stream rush for shaggy water just above the weir, and at the same time to get the fish into the shallow bay down-stream that gave the best practicable landing. Port- land bid us both be of good heart, and volun- teered to take the rod from my hands. I would rather have died among the pebbles than surrender my right to play and land a salmon, weight unknown, with an eight-ounce rod. I heard California, at my ear, it seemed, gasping: “He’s a fighter from Fightersville, sure!” as his fish made a fresh break across the stream. I saw Portland fall off a log fence, break the overhanging bank, and clatter down to the pebbles, all sand and landing-net, and 300 AMERICAN SALMON I dropped on a log to rest for a moment. As I drew breath the weary hands slackened their hold, and I forgot to give him the butt. A wild scutter in the water, a plunge, and a break for the head-waters of the Clackamas was my reward, and the weary toil of reeling in with one eye under the water and the other on the top joint of the rod was renewed. Worst of all, I was blocking California’s path to the little landing bay aforesaid, and he had to halt and tire his prize where he was. “The father of all the salmon!” he shouted. “For the love of Heaven, get your trout to bank, Johnny Bull!’ But I could do no more. Even the insult failed to move me. The rest of the game was with the salmon. He suffered himself to be drawn, skipping with pretended delight at getting to the haven where I would fain bring him. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly than he backed like a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told me that my labor was in vain. A dozen times, at least, this happened ere the line hinted he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was towed. The landing-net was use- less for one of his size, and I would not have him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows and mht AMERICAN SALMON 301 heaved him out with respectful hand under the gill, for which kindness he battered me about the legs with his tail, and I felt the strength of him and was proud. California had taken my place in the shallows, his fish hard held. I was up the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass and gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding, I was dripping with sweat, spangled like a harlequin with scales, - water from my waist down, nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately happy. The beauty, the darling, the daisy, my Sal- mon Bahadur, weighed twelve pounds, and [I had been seven-and-thirty minutes bringing him to bank! He had been lightly hooked on the angle of the right jaw, and the hook had not wearied him. That hour I sat among princes and crowned heads greater than them all. Below the bank we heard California scuffling with his salmon and swearing Spanish oaths. Portland and I assisted at the capture, and the fish dragged the spring balance out by the roots. It was only constructed to weigh up to fifteen pounds. We stretched the three fish on the grass—the eleven and a half, the 302 AMERICAN SALMON twelve and fifteen pounder—and we gave an oath that all who came after should merely be weighed and put back again. How shall I tell the glories of that day so that you may be interested? Again and again did California and I prance down that reach to the little bay, each with a salmon in tow, and land him in the shallows. Then Portland took my rod and caught some ten-pounders, and my spoon was carried away by an unknown levia- than. Each fish, for the merits of the three that had died so gamely, was hastily hooked on the balance and flung back. Portland re- corded the weight in a pocket-book, for he was a real-estate man. Each fish fought for all he was worth, and none more savagely than the smallest, a game little six-pounder. At the end of six hours we added up the list. Read it. Total: Sixteen fish; aggregate weight, one hundred and forty pounds. The score in detail runs something like this—it is only interesting to those concerned: fifteen, eleven and a half, twelve, ten, nine and three quarters, eight, and so forth; as I have said, nothing under six pounds, and three ten-pounders. Very solemnly and thankfully we put up our rods—it was glory enough for all time—and returned weeping in each other’s arms, weep- a AMERICAN SALMON 303 ing tears of pure joy, to that simple, bare- legged family in the packing-case house by the waterside. The old farmer recollected days and nights of fierce warfare with the Indians “way back in the fifties,” when every ripple of the Colum- bia River and her tributaries hid covert dan- ger. God had dowered him with a queer, crooked gift of expression and a fierce anxiety for the welfare of his two little sons—tanned and reserved children, who attended school daily and spoke good English in a strange tongue. His wife was an austere woman, who had once been kindly, and perhaps handsome. Very many years of toil had taken the elas- ticity out of step and voice. She looked for nothing better than everlasting work—the chafing detail of housework—and then a grave somewhere up the hill among the blackberries and the pines. But in her grim way she sym- pathized with her eldest daughter, a small and silent maiden of eighteen, who had thoughts very far from the meals she tended and the pans she scoured. We stumbled into the household at a crisis, and there was a deal of downright humanity in that same. A bad, wicked dressmaker had 3204 AMERICAN SALMON promised the maiden a dress in time for a to- morrow’s railway journey, and though the barefooted Gregory, who stood in very whole- some awe of his sister, had scoured the woods on a pony in search, that dress never arrived. So, with sorrow in her heart and a hundred Sister-Anne glances up the road, she waited upon the strangers and, I doubt not, cursed them for the wants that stood between her and her need for tears. It was a genuine little tragedy. The mother, in a heavy, passionless voice, rebuked her impatience, yet sat up far into the night, bowed over a heap of sewing for the daughter’s benefit. These things I beheld in the long marigold- scented twilight and whispering night, loafing round the little house with California, who un- folded himself like a lotus to the moon, or in the little boarded bunk that was our bedroom, swapping tales with Portland and the old man. Most of the yarns began in this way: “Red Larry was a bull-puncher back of Lone County, Montana,” or “There was a man rid- ing the trail met a jack-rabbit sitting in a cac- tus,”’ or “ "Bout the time of the San Diego land boom, a woman from Monterey,” etc. You can try to piece out for yourselves what sort of stories they were. a rhe * : ‘ i, ieee ' YELLOWSTONE * ' : 7 ' " : ; . ‘ 4 i s t j Fi k mY i t ’ % } ; . Ms i ‘ : my wn ye, . MS yy NL d " y 7 { IV THE YELLOWSTONE hha upon a time there was a carter who brought his team and a friend into the Yellowstone Park without due thought. Pres- ently they came upon a few of the natural beauties of the place, and that carter turned his team into his friend’s team, howling: “Get out o’ this, Jim. All hell’s alight under our noses!” And they called the place Hell’s Half-Acre to this day to witness if the carter lied. We, too, the old lady from Chicago, her husband, Tom, and the good little mares, came to Hell’s Half-Acre, which is about sixty acres in extent, and when Tow said: “Would you like to drive over it?” We said: “Certainly not, and if you do we shall re- port you to the park authorities.” There was a plain, blistered, peeled, and abominable, and it was given over to the sport- 397 308: THE YELLOWSTONE ings and spoutings of devils who threw mud, and steam, and dirt at each other with whoops, and halloos, and bellowing curses. The places smelled of the refuse of the pit, and that odor mixed with the clean, whole- some aroma of the pines in our nostrils throughout the day. This Yellowstone Park is laid out like Ollen- dorf, in exercises of progressive difficulty. Hell’s Half-Acre was a prelude to ten or twelve miles of geyser formation. We passed hot streams boiling in the forest; saw whiffs of steam beyond these, and yet other whiffs breaking through the misty green hills in the far distance; we trampled on sul- phur in crystals, and sniffed things much worse than any sulphur which is known to the upper world; and so journeying, bewildered with the novelty, came upon a really park-like place where Tom suggested we should get out and play with the geysers on foot. Imagine mighty green fields splattered with lime-beds, all the flowers of the summer grow- ing up to the very edge of the lime. That was our first glimpse of the geyser basins. The buggy had pulled up close to a rough, broken, blistered cone of spelter stuff between ten and twenty feet high. There was trouble Steg EEE THE YELLOWSTONE 309 in that place—moaning, splashing, gurgling, and the clank of machinery. A spurt of boiling water jumped into the air, and a wash of water followed. I removed swiftly. The old lady from Chi- cago shrieked. ‘‘What a wicked waste!’ said her husband. I think they call it the Riverside Geyser. Its spout was torn and ragged like the mouth of a gun when a shell has burst there. It grumbled madly for a moment or two, and then was still. I crept over the steaming lime—it was the burning marl on which Satan lay—and looked fearfully down its mouth. You should never look a gift geyser in the mouth. I beheld a horrible, slippery, slimy funnel with water rising and falling ten feet at a time. Then the water rose to lip level with a rush, and an infernal bubbling troubled this _ Devil’s Bethesda before the sullen heave of the crest of a wave lapped over the edge and made me run. Mark the nature of the human soul! I had begun with awe, not to say terror, for this was my first experience of such things. I stepped back from the banks of the Riverside Geyser, saying : “Pooh! Is that all it can do?” 310 THE YELLOWSTONE Yet for aught I knew, the whole thing might have blown up at a minute’s notice, she, he, or it being an arrangement of uncertain temper. We drifted on, up that miraculous valley. On either side of us were hills from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet high, wooded from crest to heel. As far as the eye could range forward were the columns of steam in the air, misshapen lumps of lime, mist-like preadamite monsters, still pools of turquoise-blue, stretches of blue corn-flowers, a river that coiled on it- self twenty times, pointed bowlders of strange colors, and ridges of glaring, staring white. A moon-faced trooper of German extraction —never was park so carefully patrolled—came up to inform us that as yet we had not seen any of the real geysers; that they were all a mile or so up the valley, and tastefully scattered round the hotel in which we would rest for the night. America is a free country, but the citizens look down on the soldier. I had to entertain that trooper. The old lady from Chicago would have none of him; so we loafed along together, now across half-rotten pine logs sunk in swampy ground, anon over the ringing geyser formation, then pounding through river-sand or brushing knee-deep through long grass. Se ee ee THE YELLOWSTONE 311 “And why did you enlist?” said I. The moon-faced one’s face began to work. I thought he would have a fit, but he told me a story instead—such a nice tale of a naughty little girl who wrote pretty love letters to two men at once. She was a simple village wife, but a wicked “family novelette’ countess couldn’t have accomplished her ends better. She drove one man nearly wild with the pretty little treachery, and the other man abandoned her and came West to forget the trickery. Moon-face was that man. We rounded and limped over a low spur of hill, and came out upon a field of aching, snowy lime rolled in sheets, twisted into knots, riven with rents, and diamonds, and stars, stretching for more than half a mile in every direction. On this place of despair lay most of the big, bad geysers who know when there is trouble in Krakatoa, who tell the pines when there is a cyclone on the Atlantic seaboard, and who are exhibited to visitors under pretty and fanciful names. The first mound that I encountered belonged to a goblin who was splashing in his tub. I heard him kick, pull a shower-bath on his shoulders, gasp, crack his joints, and rub him- aie THE YELLOWSTONE self down with a towel; then he let the water out of the bath, as a thoughtful man should, and it all sunk down out of sight till another goblin arrived. So we looked and we wondered at the Bee- kive, whose mouth is built up exactly like a hive, at the Turban (which is not in the least like a turban), and at many, many other gey- sers, hot holes, and springs. Some of them rumbled, some hissed, some went off spasmod- ically, and others lay dead still in sheets of Sapphire and beryl. Would you believe that even these terrible creatures have to be guarded by the troopers to prevent the irreverent Americans from chip- ping the cones to pieces, or, worse still, making the geyser sick? If you take a small barrel full of soft soap and drop it down a geyser’s mouth, that geyser will presently be forced to lay all before you, and for days afterward will be of an irritated and inconstant stomach. When they told me the tale I was filled with sympathy. Now I wish that I had had soft- soap and tried the experiment on some lonely little beast far away in the woods. It sounds so probable and so human. Yet he would be a bold man who would ad- minister emetics to the Giantess. She is flat- bs, i THE YELLOWSTONE 313 lipped, having no mouth; she looks like a pool, fifty feet long and thirty wide, and there is no ornamentation about her. At irregular inter- vals she speaks and sends up a volume of water over two hundred feet high to begin with, then she is angry for a day and a half— sometimes for two days. Owing to her peculiarity of going mad in the night, not many people have seen the Giantess at her finest; but the clamor of her unrest, men say, shakes the wooden hotel, and echoes like thunder among the hills. The congregation returned to the hotel to put down their impressions in diaries and note- books, which they wrote up ostentatiously in the verandas. It was a sweltering hot day, albeit we stood somewhat higher than the level of Simla, and I left that raw pine creaking caravansary for the cool shade of a clump of pines between whose trunks glimmered tents. A batch of United States troopers came down the road and flung themselves across the country into their rough lines. The Melican cavalryman can ride, though he keeps his ac- coutrements pig-fashion and his horse cow- fashion. I was free of that camp in five minutes—free to play with the heavy, lumpy carbines, have 214 THE YELLOWSTONE the saddles stripped, and punch the horses knowingly in the ribs. One of the men had been in the fight with “Wrap-up-his-Tail,” and he told me how that great chief, his horse’s tail tied up in red calico, swaggered in front of the United States Cavalry, challenging all to a single combat. But he was slain, and a few of his tribe with him. “There’s no use in an Indian, anyway,” con- cluded my friend. A couple of cowboys—real cowboys— jingled through the camp amid a shower of mild chaff. They were on their way to Cook City, I fancy, and I know that they never washed. But they were picturesque ruffians exceedingly, with long spurs, hooded stirrups, slouch hats, fur weather-cloth over their knees, and pistol-butts just easy to hand. “The cowboy’s goin’ under before long,” said my friend. “Soon as the country’s set- tled up he’ll have to go. But he’s mighty use- ful now. What would we do without the cowboy ?” “As how?” said I, and the camp laughed. “He has the money. We have the skill. He comes in winter to play poker at the military posts. We play poker—a few. When he’s lost his money we make him drunk and let him go. Sometimes we get the wrong man.” THE YELLOWSTONE 315 And he told me a tale of an innocent. cow- boy who turned up, cleaned out, at an army post, and played poker for thirty-six hours. But it was the post that was cleaned out when that long-haired Caucasian removed himself, heavy with everybody’s pay and declining the proffered liquor. *“Noaw,’’ said the historian, “I don’t play with no cowboy unless he’s a little bit drunk first.” Ere I departed I gathered from more than one man the significant fact that up to one hundred yards he felt absolutely secure behind his revolver. “In England, 1 understand,” quoth the limber youth from the South,—“in England a man isn’t allowed to play with no firearms. He’s got to be taught all that when he enlists. I didn’t want much teaching how to shoot straight ’fore I served Uncle Sam. And that’s just where it is. But you was talking about your Horse Guards now?” I explained briefly some peculiarities of equipment connected with our crackest crack cavalry. I grieve to say the camp roared. “Take ’em over swampy ground. Let ’em run around a bit an’ work the starch out of ’em, an’ then, Almighty, if we wouldn’t plug "em at ease I’d eat their horses.”’ Kip. 6—K 316 THE YELLOWSTONE There was a maiden—a very little maiden— who had just stepped out of one of James’s novels. She owned a delightful mother and an equally delightful father—a heavy-eyed, slow- voiced man of finance. The parents thought that their daughter wanted change. She lived in New Hampshire. Accordingly, she had dragged them up to Alaska and to the Yosemite Valley, and was now returning leisurely, via the Yellowstone, just in time for the tail-end of the summer season at Saratoga. We had met once or twice before in the park, and I had been amazed and amused at her critical commendation of the wonders that she saw. From that very resolute little mouth I received a lecture on American literature, the nature and inwardness of Washington society, the precise value of Cable’s works as compared with Uncle Remus Harris, and a few other things that had nothing whatever to do with geysers, but were altogether pleasant. Now, an English maiden who had stumbled on a dust-grimed, lime-washed, sun-peeled, collarless wanderer come from and going to goodness knows where, would, her mother in- citing her and her father brandishing his um- brella, have regarded him as a dissolute ad- venturer—a person to be disregarded. THE YELLOWSTONE 317 Not so those delightful people from New Hampshire. They were good enough to treat him—it sounds almost incredible—as a human being, possibly respectable, probably not in im- mediate need of financial assistance. Papa talked pleasantly and to the point. The little maiden strove valiantly with the accent of her birth and that of her rearing, and mamma smiled benignly in the background. Balance this with a story of a young English idiot I met mooning about inside his high col- lar, attended by a valet. He condescended to tell me that “‘you can’t be too careful who you talk to in these parts.”’ And stalked on, fear- ing, I suppose, every minute for his social chastity. That man wasabarbarian (I took occasion to tell him so), for he comported himself after the manner of the head-hunters and hunted of Assam who are at perpetual feud one with an- other. You will understand that these foolish stories are introduced in order to cover the fact that this pen cannot describe the glories of the Upper Geyser Basin. ‘The evening I spent under the lee of the Castle Geyser, sit- ting on a log with some troopers and watch- ing a baronial keep forty feet high spouting 318 THE YELLOWSTONE hot water. If the Castle went off first, they said the Giantess would be quiet, and vice versa, and then they told tales till the moon got up and a party of campers in the woods gave us all something to eat. Then came soft, turfy forest that deadened the wheels, and two troopers on detachment duty stole noiselessly behind us. One was the Wrap-up-his-Tail man, and they talked merrily while the half-broken horses bucked about among the trees. And so a cavalry escort was with us for a mile, till we got to a mighty hill all strewn with moss agates, and everybody had to jump out and pant in that thin air. But how intoxicating it was! The old lady from Chicago ducked like an emancipated hen as she scuttled about the road, cramming pieces of rock into her reticule. She sent me fifty yards down the hillside to pick up a piece of broken bottle which she insisted was moss agate. “T’ve some o’ that at home, an’ they shine. Yes, you go gét it, young man.” As we climbed the long path the road grew viler and viler till it became, without disguise, the bed of a torrent; and just when things were at their rockiest we nearly fell into a little sapphire lake—but never sapphire was so blue —called Mary’s Lake; and that between eight and nine thousand feet above the sea. THE YELLOWSTONE 319 Afterward, grass downs, all on a vehement slope, so that the buggy, following the new- made road, ran on the two off-wheels mostly till we dipped head-first into a ford, climbed up a cliff, raced along down, dipped again, and pulled up disheveled at “Larry’s” for lunch and an hour’s rest. Then we lay on the grass and laughed with sheer bliss of being alive. This have I known once in Japan, once on the banks of the Colum- bia, what time the salmon came in and Califor- nia howled, and once again in the Yellowstone by the light of the eyes of the maiden from New Hampshire. Four little pools lay at my elbow, one was of black water (tepid), one clear water (cold), one clear water (hot), one red water (boiling). My newly washed handkerchief covered them all, and we two marveled as children marvel. “This evening we shall do the Grand Can- yon of the Yellowstone,” said the maiden. “Together ?” said I; and she said, “Yes.” The sun was beginning to sink when we heard the roar of falling waters and came to a broad river along whose banks we ran. And then—I might at a pinch describe the infernal regions, but not the other place. The Yellow- stone River has occasion to run through a 320 THE YELLOWSTONE gorge about eight miles long. To get to the bottom of the gorge it makes two leaps, one of about one hundred and twenty and the other of three hundred feet. I investigated the upper or lesser fall, which is close to the hotel. Up to that time nothing particular happens to the Yellowstone—its banks being only rocky, rather steep, and plentifully adorned with pines. At the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid, ribbed with a little foam, and not more than thirty yards wide. Then it goes over, still green, and rather more solid than before. After a minute or two, you, sitting upon a rock directly above the drop, begin to under- stand that something has occurred; that the river has jumped between solid cliff walls, and that the gentle froth of water lapping the sides of the gorge below is really the outcome of great waves. And the river yells aloud; but the cliffs do not allow the yells to escape. That inspection began with curiosity and finished in terror, for it seemed that the whole world was sliding in chrysolite from under my feet. I followed withthe others round the cor- ner to arrive at the brink of the canyon. We had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent THE YELLOWSTONE 321 to begin with, for the ground rises more than the river drops. Stately pine woods fringe either lip of the gorge, which is the gorge of the Yellowstone. You'll find all about it in the guide books. All that I can say is that without warning or preparation I looked into a gulf seventeen hun- dred feet deep, with eagles and fish-hawks circling far below. And the sides of that gulf were one wild welter of color—crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed with port wine, snow white, vermilion, lemon, and silver grey in wide washes. The sides did not fall sheer, but were graven by time, and water, and air into monstrous head of kings, dead chiefs—men and women of the old time. So far below that no sound of its strife could reach us, the Yellowstone River ran a finger- wide strip of jade green. The sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to those that nature had al- ready laid there. _ Evening crept through the pines that shad- owed us, but the full glory of the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very cautiously to a jutting piece of rock—blood-red or pink it was—that overhung the deepest deeps of all. Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid 2322 THE YELLOWSTONE the clouds of sunset as the spirits sit in Blake’s pictures. Giddiness took away all sensation of touch or form, but the sense of blinding color remained. When I reached the mainland again I had sworn that I had been floating. The maid from New Hampshire said no word for a very long time. Then she quoted poetry, which was perhaps the best thing she could have done. “And to think that this show-place has been going on all these days an’ none of we ever saw it,’’ said the old lady from Chicago, with an acid glance at her husband. “No, only the Injians,”’ said he, unmoved; and the maiden and I laughed. Inspiration is fleeting, beauty is vain, and the power of the mind for wonder limited. Though the shining hosts themselves had risen choiring from the bottom of the gorge, they would not have prevented her papa and one baser than he from rolling stones down those stupendous rainbow-washed slides. Seventeen hundred feet of steepest pitch and rather more than seventeen hundred colors for log or bowlder to whirl through! So we heaved things and saw them gather way and bound from white rock to red or yel- wes ae THE YELLOWSTONE 323 low, dragging behind them torrents of color, till the noise of their descent ceased and they bounded a hundred yards clear at the last into the Yellowstone. “‘T’ve been down there,” said Tom, that even- ing. “It’s easy to get down if your’re careful —just sit an’ slide; but getting up is worse. An’ I found down below there two stones just marked with a picture of the canyon. I wouldn’t sell these rocks not for fifteen dol- lars.” And papa and I crawled down to the Yellow- stone—just above the first little fall—to wet a line for good luck. The round moon came up and turned the cliffs and pines into silver; and a two-pound trout came up also, and we slew him among the rocks, nearly tumbling into that wild river. *K * * * * * Then out and away to Livingstone once more. The maiden from New Hampshire dis- appeared, papa and mamma with her. Dis- appeared, too, the old lady from Chicago, and the others. oid ¥ CHICAGO “T know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard high lust and wilful deed, And all thy glory loves to tell Of specious gifts material.” HAVE struck a city—a real city—and they call it Chicago. The other places do not count. San Fran- cisco was a pleasure-resort as well as a city, and Salt Lake was a phenomenon. This place is the first American city I have encountered. It holds rather more than a million of people with bodies, and stands on the same sort of soil as Calcutta. Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages. Its water is the water of the Hooghly, and its air is dirt. Also it says that it is the “boss” town of America. I do not believe that it has anything to do with this country. They told me to go to the Palmer House, which is overmuch gilded and mirrored, and there I found a huge hall of tes- sellated marble crammed with people talking 327 328 CHICAGO about money, and spitting about everywhere. Other barbarians charged in and out of this inferno with letters and telegrams in their hands, and yet others shouted at each other. A man who had drunk quite as much as was good for him told me that this was “the finest hotel in the finest city on God Almighty’s earth.” By the way, when an American wishes to indicate the next country or state, he says, “God A’mighty’s earth.” This prevents dis- cussion and flatters his vanity. Then I went out into the streets, which are long and flat and without end. And verily it is not a good thing to live in the East for any length of time. Your ideas grow to clash with those held by every right-thinking man. I looked down interminable vistas flanked with nine, ten, and fifteen-storied houses, and crowded with men and women, and the show impressed me with a great horror. Except in London—and I have forgotten what London was like—I had never seen so many white people together, and never such a collection of miserables. There was no color in the street and no beauty—only a maze of wire ropes overhead and dirty stone flagging under foot. A cab-driver volunteered to show me the CHICAGO 329 gloty of the town for so much an hour, and with him I wandered far. He conceived that all this turmoil and squash was a thing to be reverently admired, that it was good to hud- | dle men together in fifteen layers, one atop of the other, and to dig holes in the ground for offices. He said that Chicago was a live town, and that all the creatures hurrying by me were engaged in business. That is to say they were trying to make some money that they might not die through lack of food to put into their bellies. He took me to canals as black as ink, and filled with untold abominations, and bid me watch the stream of traffic across the bridges. He then took me into a saloon, and while I drank made me note that the floor was cov- ered with coins sunk in cement. A Hottentot would not have been guilty of this sort of barbarism. The coins made an effect pretty enough, but the man who put them there had no thought of beauty, and, therefore, he was a savage. Then my cab-driver showed me business blocks gay with signs and studded with fan- tastic and absurd advertisements of goods, and looking down the long street so adorned, it 330 CHICAGO was as though each vender stood at his door, howling: “For the sake of money, employ or buy of me, and me only!” Have you ever seen a crowd at a famine- relief distribution? You know then how the men leap into the air, stretching out their arms above the crowd in the hope of being seen, while the women dolorously slap the stomachs of their children and whimper. I had sooner watch famine relief than the white man en- gaged in what he calls legitimate competition. The one I understand. The other makes me ill. And the cabman said that these things were the proof of progress, and by that I knew he had been reading his newspaper, as every in- telligent American should. The papers tell their clientéle in language fitted to their com- prehension that the snarling together of tele- graph-wires, the heaving up of houses, and the making of money is progress. I spent ten hours in that huge wilderness, wandering through scores of miles of these terrible streets and jostling some few hundred thousand of these terrible people who talked paisa bat through their noses. The cabman left me; but after awhile I - CHICAGO 331 picked up another man, who was full of fig- ures, and into my ears he poured them as oc- casion required or the big blank factories sug- gested. Here they turned out so many hun- dred thousand dollars’ worth of such and such an article; there so many million other things; this house was worth so many million dollars; that one so many million, more or less. It was like listening to a child babbling of its hoard of shells. It was like watching a fool playing with buttons. But I was expected to do more than listen or watch. He demanded that I should admire; and the utmost that I could say was: “Are these things so? Then I am very sorry for you.” That made him angry, and he said that in- sular envy made me unresponsive. So, you see, I could not make him understand. About four-and-a-half hours after Adam was turned out of the Garden of Eden he felt hungry, and so, bidding Eve take care that her head was not broken by the descending fruit, shinned up a cocoanut-palm. That hurt his legs, cut his breast, and made him breathe heavily, and Eve was tormented with fear lest her lord should miss his footing, and so bring the tragedy of this world to an end ere the 33? CHICAGO curtain had fairly risen. Had I met Adam then, I should have been sorry for him. To- day I find eleven hundred thousand of his sons just as far advanced as their father in the art of getting food, and immeasurably inferior to him in that they think that their palm-trees lead straight to the skies. Consequently, 1 am sorry in rather more than a million different ways. In the East bread comes naturally, even to the poorest, by a little scratching or the gift of a friend not quite so poor. In less favored countries one is apt to forget. Then I went to bed. And that was on a Saturday night. Sunday brought me the queerest experietices of all—a revelation of barbarism complete. I found a place that was officially described as a church. It was a circus really, but that the worshippers did not know. There were flowers all about the building, which was fitted up with plush and stained oak and much lux- ury, including twisted brass candlesticks of se- verest Gothic design. To these things and a congregation of sav- ages entered suddenly a wonderful man, com- pletely in the confidence of their God, whom he treated colloquially and exploited very much as a newspaper reporter would exploit a for- CHICAGO 333 eign potentate. But, unlike the newspaper re- porter, he never allowed his listeners to forget that he, and not He, was the centre of attrac- tion. With a voice of silver and with imagery borrowed from the auction-room, he built up for his hearers a heaven on the lines of the Palmer House (but with all the gilding real gold, and all the plate-glass diamond), and set in the centre of it a loud-voiced, argumentative, very shrewd creation that he called God. One sentence at this point caught my delighted ear. It was apropos of some question of the Judg- ment, and ran: “No! I tell you God doesn’t do business that way.” He was giving them a deity whom they could comprehend, and a gold and jeweled heaven in which they could take a natural in- terest. He interlarded his performance with the slang of the streets, the counter, and the exchange, and he said that religion ought to enter into daily life. Consequently, I presume he introduced it as daily life—his own and the life of his friends. Then I escaped before the blessing, desiring no benediction at such hands. But the persons who listened seemed to enjoy themselves, and I understood that I had met with a popular preacher. 334 CHICAGO Later on, when I had perused the sermons of a gentleman called Talmage and some others, I perceived that I had been listening to a very mild specimen. Yet that man, with his brutal gold and silver idols, his hands-in-pocket, cigar-in-mouth, and _hat-on-the-back-of-the- head style of dealing with the sacred vessels, would count himself, spirituaily, quite compe- tent to send a mission to convert the Indians. All that Sunday I listened to people who said that the mere fact of spiking down strips of iron to wood, and getting a steam and iron thing to run along them was progress, that the telephone was progress, and the net-work of wires overhead was progress. They repeated their statements again and again. One of them took me to their City Hall and Board of Trade works, and pointed it out with pride. It was very ugly, but very big, and the streets in front of it were narrow and unclean. When I saw the faces of the men who did business in that building, I felt that there had been a mistake in their billeting. | By the way, ’tis a consolation to feel that I am not writing to an English audience. Then I should have to fall into feigned ecstasies over the marvelous progress of Chicago since the days of the great fire, to allude casually to CHICAGO 335 _ the raising of the entire city so many feet above the level of the lake which it faces, and gen- erally to grovel before the golden calf. But you, who are desperately poor, and therefore by these standards of no account, know things, will understand when I write that they have managed to get a million of men together on flat land, and that the bulk of these men to- gether appear to be lower than Mahajans and not so companionable as a Punjabi Jat after harvest. But I don’t think it was the blind hurry of the people, their argot, and their grand ig- norance of things beyond their immediate in- terests that displeased me so much as a study of the daily papers of Chicago. Imprimis, there was some sort of a dispute between New York and Chicago as to which town should give an exhibition of products to be hereafter holden, and through the medium of their more dignified journals the two cities were yahooing and hi-yi-ing at each other like opposition newsboys. They called it humor, but it sounded like something quite different. That was only the first trouble. The second lay in the tone of the productions. Leading articles which include gems such as “Back of such and such a place,” or, “We noticed, Tues- 336 - CHICAGO day, such an event,” or, “don’t” for “does not,’’ are things to be accepted with thankful- ness. All that made me want to cry was that in these papers were faithfully reproduced all the war-cries and “back-talk” of the Palmer House bar, the slang of the barber-shops, the mental elevation and integrity of the Pullman car porter, the dignity of the dime museum, and the accuracy of the excited fish-wife. I am sternly forbidden to believe that the paper educates the public. Then I am compelled to believe that the public educate the paper; yet suicides on the press are rare. Just when the sense of unreality and oppres- sion was strongest upon me, and when I most wanted help, a man sat at my side and began to talk what he called politics. I had chanced to pay about six shillings for a traveling-cap worth eighteen-pence, and he made of the fact a text fora sermon. He said that this was a rich country, and that the peo- ple liked to pay two hundred per cent. on the value of a thing. They could afford it. He said that the government imposed a protective duty of from ten to seventy per cent. on for- eign-made articles, and that the American manufacturer consequently could sell his goods for a healthy sum. Thus an imported hat CHICAGO © 337 would, with duty, cost two guineas. The American manufacturer would make a hat for seventeen shillings, and sell it for one pound fifteen. In these things, he said, lay the great- ness of America and the effeteness of England. Competition between factory and factory kept the prices down to decent limits, but I was never to forget that this people were a rich people, not like the pauper Continentals, and that they enjoyed paying duties. To my weak intellect this seemed rather like juggling with counters. Everything that I have yet purchased costs about twice as much as it would in England, and when native made is of inferior quality. Moreover, since these lines were first thought of, I have visited a gentleman who owned a factory which used to produce things. He owned the factory still. Not a man was in it, but he was drawing a handsome income from a syndicate of firms for keeping it closed in order that it might not produce things. This man said that if protection were aban- doned, a tide of pauper labor would flood the country, and as I looked at his factory I thought how entirely better it was to have no labor of any kind whatever rather than face so horrible a future. 338 CHICAGO Meantime, do you remember that this pe- culiar country enjoys paying money for value not received? J am an alien, and for the life of me I cannot see why six shillings should be paid for eighteen-penny caps, or eight shillings for half-crown cigar-cases. When the country fills up to a decently populated level a few mil- lion people who are not aliens will be smitten with the same sort of blindness. But my friend’s assertion somehow thor- oughly suited the grotesque ferocity of Chi- cago. See now and judge! In the village of Isser Jang, on the road to Montgoiery, there be four Changar women who winnow corn—some seventy bushels a year. Beyond their hut lives Purun Dass, the money-lender, who on good security lends as much as five thousand rupees ina year. Jowala Singh, the smith, mends the village plows—some thirty, broken at the share, in three hundred and sixty-five days; and Hukm Chund, who is letter-writer and head of the little club under the travelers’ tree, generally keeps the village posted in such gos- sip as the barber and the midwife have not yet made public property. Chicago husks and winnows her wheat by the million bushels, a hundred banks lend hune CHICAGO 339 dreds of millions of dollars in the year, and scores of factories turn out plow-gear and ma- chinery by steam. Scores of daily papers do work which Hukm Chund and the barber and the midwife perform, with due regard for pub- lic opinion, in the village of Isser Jang. So far as manufactories go, the difference be- tween Chicago on the lake, and Isser Jang on the Montgomery road, is one of degree only, and not of kind. As far as the understanding of the users of life goes, Isser Jang, for all its seasonal cholers, has the advantage over Chi- cago. Jowala Singh knows and takes care to avoid the three or four ghoul-haunted fields on the outskirts of the village; but he is not urged by millions of devils to run about all day in the sun and swear that his plowshares are the best in the Punjab; nor does Purun Dass fly in an ekka more than once or twice a year, and he knows, on a pinch, how to use the railway and the telegraph as well as any son of Israel in Chicago. But this is absurd. The East is not the West, and these men must continue to deal with the machinery of life, and to call it progress. Their very preach- ers dare not rebuke them. They gloss over the hunting for money and the thrice-sharp- 340. CHICAGO ened bitterness of Adam’s curse, by saying that such things dower a man with a larger range of thoughts and higher aspirations. They do not say, “Free yourselves from your own slav- ery,” but rather, “If you can possibly manage it, do not set quite so much store on the things of this world.” And they do not know what the things of this world are! I went off to see cattle killed, by way of clearing my head, which, as you will perceive was getting muddled. They say every Eng- lishman goes to the Chicago stock-yards. You shall find them about six miles from the city; and once having seen them, you will never for- get the sight. As far as the eye can reach stretches a township of cattle-pens, cunningly divided in- to blocks, so that the animals of any pen can be speedily driven out close to an inclined tim- ber path which leads to an elevated covered way straddling high above the pens. These via- ducts are two-storied. On the upper story tramp the doomed cattle, stolidly for the most part. On the lower, with a scuffling of sharp hoofs and multitudinous yells, run the pigs, the same end being appointed for each. Thus you will see the gangs of cattle waiting their turn—as CHICAGO 34T they wait sometimes for days; and they need not be distressed by the sight of their fellows running about in the fear of death. All they know is that a man on horseback causes their next-door neighbors to move by means of a whip. Certain bars and fences are unshipped and behold! that crowd have gone up the mouth of a sloping tunnel and return no more. It is different with the pigs. They shriek back the news of the exodus to their friends, and a hundred pens skirl responsive. It was to the pigs I first addressed myself. Selecting a viaduct which was full of them, as I could hear, though I could not see, I marked a sombre building whereto it ran, and went there, not unalarmed by stray cattle who had managed to escape from their proper quarters. A pleasant smell of brine warned me of what was coming. I entered the factory and found it full of pork in barrels, and on another story more pork unbarrelled, and in a huge room the halves of swine, for whose behoof great lumps of ice were being pitched in at the window, That room was the mor- tuary chamber where the pigs lay for a little while in state ere they began their progress through such passages as kings may some- times travel. 242 CHICAGO Turning a corner, and not noting an over- head arrangement of greased rail, wheel, and pulley, I ran into the arms of four eviscerated carcasses, all pure white and of a human as- pect, pushed by a man clad in vehement red. When I leaped aside, the floor was slippery under me. Also there was a flavor of farm- yard in my nostrils and the shouting of a mul- titude in my ears. But there was no joy in that shouting. Twelve men stood in two lines, six a side. Between them and overhead ran the railway of death that had nearly shunted me through the window. Each man carried a knife, the sleeves of his shirt were cut off at the elbows, and from bosom to heel he was blood-red. Beyond this perspective was a column of steam, and beyond that was where I worked my awe-struck way, unwilling to touch beam or wall. The atmosphere was stifling as a night in the rains by reason of the steam and the crowd. I climbed to the beginning of things and, perched upon a narrow beam, over- looked very nearly all the pigs ever bred in Wisconsin. They had just been shot out of the mouth of the viaduct and huddled together in a large pen. Thence they were flicked per- suasively, a few at a time, into a smaller cham- CHICAGO 343 ber, and there a man fixed tackle on their hind- er legs, so that they rose in the air, suspended from the railway of death. Oh! it was then they shrieked and called on their mothers, and made promises of amend- ment, till the tackle-man punted them in their backs and they slid head down into a brick- floored passage, very like a big kitchen sink, that was blood-red. There awaited them a red man with a knife, which he passed jauntily through their throats, and the full-voiced shriek became a splutter, and then a fall as of heavy tropical rain, and the red man, who was backed against the passage-wall, you will understand, stood clear of the wildly kicking hoofs and passed his hand over his eyes, not from any feeling of compassion, but because the spurted blood was in his eyes, and he had barely time to stick the next arrival. Then that first stuck swine dropped, still kicking, into a ‘great vat of boiling water, and spoke no more words, but wallowed in obedience to some unseen ma- chinery, and presently came forth at the lower end of the vat, and was heaved on the blades of a blunt paddle-wheel, things which said “Hough, hough, hough!” and skelped all the hair off him, except what little a couple of men _ with knives could remove. 344 CHICAGO Then he was again hitched by the heels to that said railway, and passed down the line of the twelve men, each man with a knife— losing with each man a certain amount of his individuality, which was taken away in a wheelbarrow, and when he reached the last man he was very beautiful to behold, but ex- cessively unstuffed and limp. Preponderance of individuality was ever a bar to foreign trav- el. That pig could have been in case to visit you in India had he not parted with some of his most cherished notions. The dissecting part impressed me not so much as the slaying. They were so exces- sively alive, these pigs. And then, they were so excessively dead, and the man in the drip- ping, clammy, hot passage did not seem to care, and ere the blood of such a one had ceased to foam on the floor, such another and four friends with him had shrieked and died. But a pig is only the unclean animal—the forbid- den of the prophet, ee ii Pyrane Aol RA THE AMERICAN ARMY I SHOULD very much like to deliver a dis- sertation on the American army and the possibilities of its extension. You see, it is such a beautiful little army, and the dear people don’t quite understand what to do with it. The theory is that it is an instructional nucleus round which the militia of the country will rally, and from which they will get a stiffening in time of danger. Yet other people considcr that the army should be built, like a pair of lazy tongs—on the principle of elasticity and extension—so that in time of need it may fill up its skeleton battalions and empty saddle troops. This is real wisdom, because the American army, as at present constituted, is made up of: Twenty-five regiments infantry, ten com- panies each. Ten regiments cavalry, twelve companies each. Five regiments artillery, twelve companies each. wt Kip. 6—L 348 THE AMERICAN ARMY, Now. there is a notion in the air to reorgan- ize the service on these lines: Eighteen regiments infantry at four bat- talions, four companies each; third battalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. Eight regiments cavalry at four battalions, four troops each; third battalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. Five regiments artillery at four battalions, four companies each; third battalion, skeleton; fourth on paper. | Observe the beauty of this business. The third battalion will have its officers, but no men; the fourth will probably have a rendez- vous and some equipment. It is not contemplated to give it anything more definite at present. Assuming the regi- ments to be made up to full complement, we get an army of fifty thousand men, which after the need passes away must be cut down fifty per cent., to the huge delight of the officers. The military needs of the States be three: (a) Frontier warfare, an employment well within the grip of the present army of twenty- five thousand, and in the nature of things grow- ing less arduous year by year; (b) internal riots and commotions which rise up like a dust devil, whirl furiously, and die out long before THE AMERICAN ARMY 349 the authorities at Washington could begin to fill up even the third skeleton battalions, much less hunt about for material for the fourth; (c) civil war, in which, as the case in the af- fair of the North and South, the regular army would be swamped in the mass of militia and armed volunteers that would turn the land in- to a hell. Yet the authorities persist in regarding an external war as a thing to be seriously con- sidered. The Power that would disembark troops on American soil would be capable of heaving a shovelful of mud into the Atlantic in the hope of filling it up. Consequently, the authorities are fascinated with the idea of the sliding scale or concertina army. This is an heredi- tary instinct, for you know that when we Eng- lish have got together two companies, one ma- chine gun, a sick bullock, forty generals, and a mass of W. O. forms, we say we possess “an army corps capable of indefinite extension.” The American army is a beautiful little army. Some day, when all the Indians are happily dead or drunk, it ought to make the finest scientific and survey corps that the world has ever seen; it does excellent work now, but there is this defect in its nature: It is officered, as you know, from West Point. 350 THE AMERICAN ARMY The mischief of it is that West Point seems to be created for the purpose of spreading a general knowledge of military matters among the people. A boy goes up to that institution, gets his pass, and returns to civil life, so they tell me, with a dangerous knowledge that he is a suckling Von Moltke, and may apply his learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, that man will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously versatile American, to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a man can be, and with all the racial disregard for human life to back him through any demi-semi-profes- sional generalship. In a country where, as the records of the daily papers show, men engaged in a conflict with police or jails are all too ready to adopt. a military formation and get heavily shot in a sort of cheap, half-constructed warfare, in- stead of being decently scared by the appear- ance of the military, this sort of arrangement does not seem wise. The bond between the States is of an amaz- ing tenuity. So long as they do not absolute- ly march into the District of Columbia, sit on the Washington statues, and invent a flag of their own, they can legislate, lynch, hunt ne- groes through swamps, divorce, railroad, and THE AMERICAN ARMY 351 rampage as much as ever they choose. They do not need knowledge of their own military strength to back their genial lawlessness. That regular army, which is a dear little army, should be kept to itself, blooded on de- tachment duty, turned into the paths of science, and now and again assembled at feasts of Free Masons, and so forth. It is too tiny to be a political power. The immortal wreck of the Grand Army of the Re- public is a political power of the largest and most unblushing description. It ought not to help to lay the foundations of an amateur military power that is blind and irresponsible. By great good luck the evil-minded train, already delayed twelve hours by a _ burned bridge, brought me to the city on a Saturday by way of that valley which the Mormons, over their efforts, had caused to blossom like the rose. Twelve hours previously I had en- tered into a new world where, in conversation, every one was either a Mormon or a Gentile. It is not seemly for a free and independent citizen to dub himself a Gentile, but the Mayor of Ogden—which is the Gentile city of the val- ley—told me that there must be some distinc- tion between the two flocks. Long before the fruit orchards of Logan or 352 THE AMERICAN ARMY _ the shining levels of the Salt Lake had been reached, that mayor—himself a Gentile, and one renowned for his dealings with the Mor- mons—told me that the great question of the existence of the power within the power was being gradually solved by the ballot and by education. | All the beauty of the valley could not make me forget it. And the valley is very fair. Bench after bench of land, flat as a table against the flanks of the ringing hills, marks where the Salt Lake rested for awhile in its collapse from an inland sea to a lake fifty miles long and thirty broad. There are the makings of a very fine creed about Mormonism. To begin with, the Church is rather more absolute than that of Rome. Drop the polygamy plank in the platform, but on the other hand deal lightly with certain forms of excess; keep the quality of the recruit down to the low mental level, and see that the best of all the agricultural science available is in the hands of the elders, and there you have a first-class engine for pioneer work. The tawdry mysticism and the borrowing from Freemasonry serve the low caste Swede and Dane, the Welshman and the Cornish cotter, just as well as a highly organized heaven. _—— nf — ‘ ‘ ” ee ee ee ee ee se Se ee ee a —_ THE AMERICAN ARMY, 353 Then I went about the streets and peeped into people’s front windows, and the decora- tions upon the tables were after the manner of the year 1850. Main Street was full of coun- try folk from the desert, come in to trade with the Zion Mercantile Codperative Institute. The Church, I fancy, looks after the finances of this thing, and it consequently pays good dividends. The faces of the women were not lovely. In- deed, but for the certainty that ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter of undi- vided love as the beautiful, it seems that poly- gamy was a blessed institution for the women, and that only the dread threats of the spiritual power could drive the hulking, board-faced men into it. The women wore hideous gar- ments, and the men appeared to be tied up with strings. They would market all that afternoon, and on Sunday go to the praying-place. I tried to talk to a few of them, but they spoke strange tongues, and stared and behaved like cows. Yet one woman, and not an altogether ugly one, confided to me that she hated the idea of Salt Lake City being turned into a show-place for the amusement of the Gentiles. “Tf we ’ave our own institutions, that ain’t no reason why people should come ’ere and stare at us, his it?” 354 THE AMERICAN, ARMY; The dropped “‘h’’ betrayed her. “And when did you leave England?” I said. “Summer of ’84. I am Dorset,” she said. “The Mormon agent was very good to us, and we was very poor. Now we're better off—my father, an’ mother, an’ me.” “Then you like the State?’ She misunderstood at first. “Qh, I ain’t livin’ in the state of polygamy. Not me, yet. I ain’t married. I like where I am. I’ve got things 0’ my own—and some land.” “But I suppose you will”— “Not me. I ain’t like them Swedes an’ Danes. I ain’t got nothin’ to say for or against polygamy. It’s the elders’ business, an’ be- tween you an’ me, I don’t think it’s going on much longer. You'll ’ear them in the ’ouse to-morrer talkin’ as if it was spreadin’ all over America. The Swedes, they think it his. I know it hisn’t.” “But you’ve got your land all right?” “Oh, yes; we’ve got our land, an’ we never say aught against polygamy, o’ course—father, an’ mother, an’ me.” On a table-land overlooking all the city Stands the United States garrison of infantry and artillery. The State of Utah can do near- OTE at ae a a ee ET gee oe ie ae THE AMERICAN ARMY 3s ly anything it pleases until that much-to-be-de- sired hour when the Gentile vote shall quietly swamp out Mormonism; but the garrison is kept there in case of accidents. The big, shark- mouthed, pig-eared, heavy-boned farmers sometimes take to their creed with wildest fa- naticism, and in past years have made life ex- cessively unpleasant for the Gentile when he was few in the land. But today, so far from killing openly or secretly, or burning Gentile farms, it is all the Mormon dare do to feebly try to boycott the interloper. His journals preach defiance to the United States Govern- ment, and in the Tabernacle on a Sunday the preachers follow suit. When I went there, the place was full of people who would have been much better for a washing. A man rose up and told them that they were the chosen of God, the elect of Israel ; that they were to obey their priests, and that there was a good time coming. I fancy that they had heard all this before so many times it produced no impression whatever, even as the sublimest mysteries of another faith lose salt through constant iteration. They breathed heavily through their noses, and stared straight in front of them—impassive as flat fish. * A’S DEFENCELESS COASTS | f > %. 4 — axe >) & > “ A aes 5 7 « * 4 : ’ . " : x ‘ ‘ 4 ‘ ~ ) A i : * p . a ’ ve b - ' . .. 2, 4 mos t : ‘ ~ } +> ; : 4 . i‘ > yj s ‘ Vit AMERICA’S DEFENCELESS COASTS UST suppose that America were twenty days distant from England. Then a man could study its customs with undivided soul; but being so very near next door, he goes about the land with one eye on the smoke of the flesh- pots of the old country across the seas, while with the other he squints biliously and preju- dicially at the alien. I can lay my hand upon my sacred heart and affirm that up to to-day I have never taken three consecutive trips by rail without being delayed by an accident. That it was am acci- dent to another train makes no difference. My own turn may come next. A few miles from peaceful, pleasure-loving Lakewood they had managed to upset an ex- press goods train to the detriment of the flim- sy permanent way; and thus the train which should have left at three departed at seven in the evening. I was not angry. I was scarcely even interested. When an American train 359 360 AMERICA’S starts on time I begin to anticipate disaster—a visitation for such good luck, you understand. Buffalo is a large village of a quarter of a million inhabitants, situated on the seashore, which is falsely called Lake Erie. It is a peace- ful place, and more like an English county town than most of its friends. Once clear of the main business streets, you launch upon miles and miles of asphalted roads running between cottages and cut-stone resi- dences of those who have money and peace. All the Eastern cities own this fringe of ele- gance, but except in Chicago nowhere is the fringe deeper or more heavily widened than in Buffalo. The American will go to a bad place be- cause he cannot speak English, and is proud of it; but he knows how to niake a home for himself and his mate, knows how to keep the grass green in front of his veranda, and how to fullest use the mechanism of life—hot water, gas, good bell-ropes, telephones, etc. His shops sell him delightful household fitments at very moderate rates, and he is encompassed with all manner of labor-saving appliances. This does not prevent his wife and his daugh- ter working themselves to death over house- hold drudgery ; but the intention is good. DEFENCELESS COASTS 361 When you have seen the outside of a few hundred thousand of these homes and the in- sides of a few score, you begin to understand why the American (the respectable one) does not take a deep interest in what they call “poli- tics,’ and why he is so vaguely and generally proud of the country that enables him to be so comfortable. How can the owner of a dainty chalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imi- tation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and holly- hocks, a baby crawling down the veranda, and a self-acting twirly-whirly hose gently hissing over the grass in the balmy dusk of an August evening—how can such a man despair of the Republic, or descend into the streets on voting days and mix cheerfully with “the boys’? No, it is the stranger—the homeless jackal of a stranger—whose interest in the country is limited to his hotel-bill and a railway-ticket, that can run from Dan to Beersheba, crying: “Allis barren!” Every good American wants a home—a pretty house and a little piece of land of his very own; and every other good American seems to get it. It was when my gigantic intellect was grap- pling with this question that I confirmed a dis- 362 AMERICA’S covery half made in the West. The natives of most classes marry young—absurdly young. One of my informants—not the twenty-two- year-old husband I met on Lake Chautauqua— said that from twenty to twenty-four was about the usual time for this folly. And when I asked whether the practice was confined to the constitutionally improvident classes, he said “No” very quickly. He said it was a general custom, and nobody saw anything wrong with it. “I guess, perhaps, very early marriage may account for a good deal of the divorce,” said he, reflectively. Whereat I was silent. Their marriages and their divorces only concern these people; and neither I traveling, nor you, who may come after, have any right to make rude remarks about them. Only—only coming from a land where a man begins to lightly turn to thoughts of love not before he is thirty, I own that play- ing at house-keeping before that age rather surprised me. Out in the West, though, they marry, boys and girls, from sixteen upward, and I have met more than one bride of fif- teen—husband aged twenty. “When man and woman are agreed, what can the Kazi do?” DEFENCELESS COASTS 363 From those peaceful homes, and the envy they inspire (two trunks and a walking-stick and a bit of pine forest in British Columbia are not satisfactory, any way you look at them), I turned me to the lake front of Buffalo, where the steamers bellow to the grain elevators, and the locomotives yell to the coal-shutes, and the canal barges jostle the lumber-raft half a mile long as it snakes across the water in tow of a launch, and earth, and sky, and sea alike are thick with smoke. — In the old days, before the railway ran into the city, all the business quarters fringed the lake-shore where the traffic was largest. To- day the business quarters have gone up-town to meet the railroad; the lake traffic still ex- ists, but you shall find a narrow belt of red- brick desolation, broken windows, gap-toothed doors, and streets where the grass grows be- tween the crowded wharves and the bustling city. To the lake front comes wheat from Chicago, lumber, coal, and ore, and a large trade in cheap excursionists. It was my felicity to catch a grain steamer and an elevator emptying that same steamer. The steamer might have been two thousand tons burden. She was laden with wheat in bulk; from stem to stern, thirteen feet deep, 364 AMERICA’S lay the clean, red wheat. There was no twen- ty-five per cent. dirt admixture about it at all. It was wheat, fit for the grindstones as it lay. They manceuvred the fore-hatch of that steam- er directly under an elevator—a house of red tin a hundred and fifty feet high. Then they let down into that fore-hatch a trunk as if it had been the trunk of an elephant, but stiff, because it was a pipe of iron-champed wood. And the trunk had a steel-shod nose to it, and contained an endless chain of steel buckets. Then the captain swore, raising his eyes to heaven, and a gruff voice answered him from the place he swore at, and certain machinery, also in the firmament, began to clack, and the glittering, steel-shod nose of that trunk bur- rowed into the wheat, and the wheat quivered and sunk upon the instant as water sinks when the siphon sucks, because the steel buckets with- in the trunk were flying upon their endless round, carrying away each its appointed mor- sel of wheat. The elevator was a Persian well wheel—a wheel squashed out thin and cased in a pipe, a wheel driven not by bullocks, but by much horse-power, licking up the grain at the rate of thousands of bushels the hour. And the wheat sunk in the fore-hatch while a man DEFENCELESS COASTS _—_36 looked—sunk till the brown timbers of the bulkheads showed bare, and men leaped down through clouds of golden dust and shoveled the wheat furiously round the nose of the trunk, and got a steam-shovel of glittering steel and made that shovel also, till there remained of the grain not more than a horse leaves in the fold of his nose-bag. In this manner do they handle wheat at Buf- falo. On one side of the elevator is the steam- er, on the other the railway track; and the wheat is loaded into the cars in bulk. Wah! wah! God is great, and I do not think He ever intended Gar Sahai or Luckman Narain to sup- ply England with her wheat. India can cut in not without profit to herself when her har- vest is good and the American yield poor; but this very big country can, upon the average, supply the earth with all the beef and bread that is required. A man in the train said to me: “We kin feed all the earth, jest as easily as we kin whip all the earth.” Now the second statement 1s as false as the first is true. One of these days the respectable Republic will find this out. Unfortunately we, the English, will never be the people to teach her; because she is a 366 AMERICA’S chartered libertine allowed to say and do arty- thing she likes, from demanding the head of the empress in an editorial waste-basket, to chevying Canadian schooners up and down the Alaska Seas. It is perfectly impossible to go to war with these people, whatever they may do. | They are much too nice, in the first place, and in the second, it would throw out all the passenger traffic of the Atlantic, and upset the financial arrangements of the English syndi- cates who have invested their money in brew- eries, railways, and the like, and in the third, it’s not to be done. Everybody knows that, no one better than the American. Yet there are other powers who are not “ohai band” (of the brotherhood )—China, for instance. Try to believe an irresponsible writer when he assures you that China’s fleet to-day, if properly manned, could waft the entire American navy out of the water and into the blue. The big, fat Republic that is afraid of nothing, because nothing up to the present date has happened to make her afraid, is as unpro- tected as a jelly-fish. Not internally, of course —it would be madness for any Power to throw men into America; they would die—but as far as regards coast defence. DEFENCELESS COASTS 367 From five miles out at sea (I have seen a test of her “fortified” ports) a ship of the pow- er of H. M. S. “Collingwood” (they haven’t run her on a rock yet) would wipe out any or every town from San Francisco to Long Branch; and three first-class ironclads would account for New York, Bartholdi’s Statue and all. Reflect on this. ’Twould be “Pay up or go up’ round the entire coast of the United States. To this furiously answers the patriotic Ameri- can: “We should not pay. We should invent a Columbiad in Pittsburg or—or anywhere else, and blow any outsider into h—I.” _ They might invent. They might lay waste their cities and retire inland, for they can sub- sist entirely on their own produce. Meantime, in a war waged the only way it could be waged by an unscrupulous Power, their coast cities and their dock-yards would be ashes. They could construct their navy inland if they liked, but you could never bring a ship down to the water-ways, as they stand now. They could not, with an ordinary water patrol, despatch one regiment of men six miles _ across the seas. There would be about five million excessively angry, armed men pent up 368 AMERICA’S within American limits. These men would require ships to get themselves afloat. The country has no such ships, and until the ships were built New York need not be allowed a single-wheeled carriage within her limits. Behold now the glorious condition of this Republic which has no fear. There is ransom and loot past the counting of man on her sea- board alone—plunder that would enrich a na- tion—and she has neither a navy nor half a dozen first-class ports to guard the whole. No man catches a snake by the tail, because the creature will sting; but you can build a fire around a snake that will make it squirm. The country is supposed to be building a navy now. When the ships are completed her alliance will be worth having—if the alliance of any republic can be relied upon. For the next three years she can be hurt, and badly hurt. Pity it is that she is of our own blood, looking at the matter from a Pindarris point of view. Dog cannot eat dog. These sinful reflections were prompted by the sight of the beautifully unprotected con- dition of Buffalo—a city that could be made to pay up five million dollars without feeling it. There are her companies of infantry in a sort of port there. A gun-boat brought over Se ee ea ee Oe ca ae DEFENCELESS COASTS 369 in pieces from Niagara could get the money and get away before she could be caught, while an unarmored gun-boat guarding Toronto could ravage the towns on the lakes. When one hears so much of the nation that can whip the earth, it is, to say the least of it, surprising to find her so temptingly spankable. The average American citizen seems to have a notion that any Power engaged in strife with the Star Spangled Banner will disem- bark men from flat-bottomed boats on a con- venient beach for the purpose of being shot down by local militia. In his own simple phraseology : “Not by a darned sight. No, sir.” Ransom at long range will be about the size of it—cash or crash. Let us revisit calmer scenes. In the heart of Buffalo there stands a mag- nificent building which the population do in- nocently style a music-hall. Everybody comes here of evenings to sit around little tables and listen to a first-class orchestra. The place is something like the Gaiety Theatre at Simla, enlarged twenty times. The “Light Brigade” of Buffalo occupy the boxes and the stage, “as it was at Simla in the days of old,” and the others sit in the parquet. Here I went with 379 AMERICA’S a friend—poor or boor is the man who cannot pick up a friend for a season in America—and here was shown the really smart folk of the city. I grieve to say I laughed, because when an American wishes to be correct he sets him- self to imitate the Englishman. ‘This he does vilely, and earns not only the contempt of his brethren, but the amused scorn of the Briton. I saw one man who was pointed out to me as being the glass of fashion hereabouts. He was aggressively English in his get-up. From eye-glass to trouser-hem the illusion was per- fect, but—he wore with evening-dress but- toned boots with brown cloth tops! Not till I wandered about this land did I understand why the comic papers belabor the Angloma- niac. Certain young men of the more idiotic sort launch into dog-carts and raiment of English cut, and here in Buffalo they play polo at four in the afternoon. I saw three youths come down to the polo-ground faultlessly attired for the game and mounted on their best ponies. Expecting a game, I lingered; but I was mis- taken. These three shining ones with the very new yellow hide boots and the red silk sashes had assembled themselves for the purpose of DEFENCELESS COASTS 371 knocking the ball about. They smote with great solemnity up and down the grounds, while the little boys looked on. When they trotted, which was not seldom, they rose and sunk in their stirrups with a conscientiousness that cried out “Riding-school!”’ from afar. Other young men in the park were riding _after the English manner, in neatly cut riding- trousers and light saddles. Fate in derision had made each youth bedizen his animal with a checkered enameled leather brow-band visi- ble half a mile away—a black-and-white check- erea brow-band! They can’t do it, any more than an Englishman, by taking cold, can add that indescribable nasal twang to his orches- tra. The other sight of the evening was a horror. The little tragedy played itself out at a neigh- boring table where two very young men and two very young women were sitting. It did not strike me till far into the evening that the pimply young reprobates were making the girls drunk. They gave them red wine and then white, and the voices rose slightly with the maidens’ cheek flushes. I watched, wishing to stay, and the youths drank till their speech thickened and their eye-balls grew watery. It was sickening to see, because I knew what was 372 AMERICA’S going to happen. My friend eyed the group, and said: “Maybe they’re children of respectable peo- ple. I hardly think, though, they’d be allowed out without any better escort than these boys. And yet the place is a place where every one comes, as you see. They may be Little Im- moralities—in which case they wouldn’t be so hopelessly overcome with two glasses of wine. They may be”— Whatever they were they got indubitably drunk—there in that lovely hall, surrounded by the best of Buffalo society. One could do nothing except invoke the judgment of Heaven on the two boys, themselves half sick with liquor. At the close of the performance the quieter maiden laughed vacantly and protested she couldn’t keep her feet. The four linked arms, and staggering, flickered out into the street——drunk, gentlemen and ladies, as Davy’s swine, drunk as lords! They disappeared down a side avenue, but I could hear their laugh- ter long after they were out of sight. And they were all four children of sixteen and seventeen. Then, recanting previous opin- ions, | became a prohibitionist. Better it is that a man should go without his beer in pub- lic places, and content himself with swearing ag ee _—, a a a DEFENCELESS COASTS 373 at the narrow-mindedness of the majority; better it is to poison the inside with very vile temperance drinks, and to buy lager furtively at back-doors, than to bring temptation to the lips of young fools such as the four I had seen. I understand now why the preachers rage against drink. I have said: “There is no harm in it, taken moderately;” and yet my own demand for beer helped directly to send those two girls reeling down the dark street to —God alone knows what end. If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth tak- ing a little trouble to come at—such trouble as a man will undergo to compass his own de- sires. It is not good that we should let it lie before the eyes of children, and I have been a fool in writing to the contrary. Very sorry for myself, I sought a hotel, and found in the hall a reporter who wished to know what I thought of the country. Him I lured into con- versation about his own profession, and from him gained much that confirmed me in my views of the grinding tyranny of that thing which they call the Press here. Thus: I—But you talk about interviewing people whether they like it or not. Have you no bounds beyond which even your indecent curi- osity must not go? 374 AMERICA’S HE—I haven’t struck ’em yet. What do you think of interviewing a widow two hours after her husband’s death, to get her version of his life? I—I think that is the work of a ghoul. Must the people have no privacy? Hr—There is no domestic privacy in Ameri- ea. If there was, what the deuce would the papers do? See here. Some time ago I had an assignment to write up the floral tributes when a prominent citizen had died. I—Translate, please; I do not understand your pagan rites and ceremonies. Hr—lI was ordered by the office to describe the flowers, and wreaths, and so on, that had been sent to a dead man’s funeral. Well, I went to the house. There was no one there to stop me, so I yanked the tinkler—pulled the beli—and drifted into the room where the corpse lay all among the roses and smilax. I whipped out my notebook and pawed around among the floral tributes, turning up the tick- ets on the wreaths and seeing who had sent them. In the middle of this I heard some one saying: “Please, oh, please!’ behind me, and there stood the daughter of the house, just bathed in tears— I—You unmitigated brute! DEFENCELESS COASTS 375 He—Pretty much what I felt myself. “I’m very sorry, miss,” I said, “to intrude on the privacy of your grief. Trust me, I shall make it as little painful as possible.”’ -I—But by what conceivable right did you outrage— He—Hold your horses. I’m telling you. Well, she didn’t want me in the house at all, and between her sobs fairly waved me away. I had half the tributes described, though, and the balance I did partly on the steps when the stiff un came out, and partly in the church. The preacher gave the sermon. That wasn’t my assignment. I skipped about among the floral tributes while he was talking. I could have made no excuse if I had gone back to the office and said that a pretty girl’s sobs had stopped me obeying orders. I had to do it. What do you think of it all? I (slowly)—Do you want to know? He (with his notebook ready )—Of course. How do you regard it? I—It makes me regard your interesting na- tion with the same shuddering curiosity that I should bestow on a Pappan cannibal chewing the scalp off his mother’s skull. Does that convey any idea to your mind? It makes me regard the whole pack of you as heathens—~ 376 AMERICA’S DEFENCELESS COASTS real heathens—not the sort you send missions to—creatures of another flesh and blood. You ought to have been shot, not dead, but through the stomach, for your share in the scandalous business, and the thing you call your newspa- per ought to have been sacked by the mob, and the managing proprietor hanged. Hr—From which, I suppose you have noth- ing of that kind in your country? Oh! Pioneer, venerable Pioneer, and you, not less honest press of India, who are oc- casionally dull but never blackguardly, what could I say? A mere “No,” shouted never so loudly, would not have met the needs of the case. I said no word. The reporter went away, and I took a train for Niagara Falls, which are twenty-two miles distant from this bad town, where girls get drunk of nights and reporters trample on corpses in the drawing-rooms of the brave and the free! 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