Chapter XIV: Introduction (12)

Other works of this author, after “Barriers Burned Away,” are “Play and Profit in my Garden” (1873); “What Can She Do?” (1873); “Opening a Chestnut Burr” (1874); “From Jest to Earnest” (1875); “Near to Nature’s Heart” (1876); “A Knight of the Nineteenth Century” (1877); “A Face Illumined” (1878); “A Day of Fate” (1880); “Success with Small Fruits” (1880); “Without a Home” (1880); “His Sombre Rivals” (1883); “A Young Girl’s Wooing” (1884); “Nature’s Serial Story” (1884); “An Original Belle” (1885); “Driven Back to Eden” (1885); “He Fell in Love with His Wife” (1886); “The Earth Trembled” (1887); “Miss Lou” (1888); “The Home Acre” (1889) and “Taken Alive” (1889), the two last mentioned being published after the death of the author.

* * * * *

CHRISTINE, AWAKE FOR YOUR LIFE!¹

¹ Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co.

FOR a block or more Dennis was passively borne along by the rushing mob. Suddenly a voice seemed to shout almost in his ear, “The north side is burning!” and he started as from a dream. The thought of Christine flashed upon him, perishing, perhaps, in the flames. He remembered that now she had no protector, and that he for the moment had forgotten her; though in truth he had never imagined that she could be imperiled by the burning of the north side.

In an agony of fear and anxiety he put forth every effort of which he was capable, and tore through the crowd as if mad. There was no way of getting across the river now save by the La Salle street tunnel. Into this dark passage he plunged with multitudes of others. It was indeed as near Pandemonium as any earthly condition could be. Driven forward by the swiftly pursuing flames, hemmed in on every side, a shrieking, frenzied, terror-stricken throng rushed into the black cavern. Every moral grade was represented there. Those who led abandoned lives were plainly recognizable, their guilty consciences finding expression in their livid faces. These jostled the refined and delicate lady, who, in the awful democracy of the hour, brushed against thief and harlot. Little children wailed for their lost parents, and many were trampled underfoot. Parents cried for their children, women shrieked for their husbands, some praying, many cursing with oaths as hot as the flames that crackled near. Multitudes were in no other costumes than those in which they had sprung from their beds. Altogether it was a strange, incongruous, writhing mass of humanity, such as the world had never looked upon, pouring into what might seem, in its horrors, the mouth of hell.

As Dennis entered the utter darkness, a confused roar smote his ear that might have appalled the stoutest heart, but he was now oblivious to everything save Christine’s danger. With set teeth he put his shoulder against the living mass and pushed with the strongest till he emerged into the glare of the north side. Here, escaping somewhat from the throng, he made his way rapidly to the Ludolph mansion, which to his joy he found was still considerably to the windward of the fire. But he saw that from the southwest another line of flame was bearing down upon it.

The front door was locked, and the house utterly dark. He rang the bell furiously, but there was no response. He walked around under the window and shouted, but the place remained as dark and silent as a tomb. He pounded on the door, but its massive thickness scarcely admitted of a reverberation.

“They must have escaped,” he said; “but merciful heaven! there must be no uncertainty in this case. What shall I do?”

The windows of the lower story were all strongly guarded and hopeless, but one opening on the balcony of Christine’s studio seemed practicable, if it could be reached. A half-grown elm swayed its graceful branches over the balcony, and Dennis knew the tough and fibrous nature of this tree. In the New England woods of his early home he had learned to climb for nuts like a squirrel, and so with no great difficulty he mounted the trunk and dropped from an overhanging branch to the point he sought. The window was down at the top, but the lower sash was fastened. He could see the catch by the light of the fire. He broke the pane of glass nearest it, hoping that the crash might awaken Christine, if she were still there. But, after the clatter died away, there was no sound. He then noisily raised the sash and stepped in....

There was no time for sentiment. He called loudly: “Miss Ludolph, awake! awake! for your life!”

There was no answer. “She must be gone,” he said. The front room, facing toward the west, he knew to be her sleeping-apartment. Going through the passage, he knocked loudly, and called again; but in the silence that followed he heard his own watch tick, and his heart beat. He pushed the door open with the feeling of one profaning a shrine, and looked timidly in....

She lay with her face toward him. Her hair of gold, unconfined, streamed over the pillow; one fair, round arm, from which her night-robe had slipped back, was clasped around her head, and a flickering ray of light, finding access at the window, played upon her face and neck with the strangest and most weird effect.

So deep was her slumber that she seemed dead, and Dennis, in his overwrought state, thought she was. For a moment his heart stood still, and his tongue was paralyzed. A distant explosion aroused him. Approaching softly he said, in an awed whisper (he seemed powerless to speak louder), “Miss Ludolph!――Christine!”

But the light of the coming fire played and flickered over the still, white face, that never before had seemed so strangely beautiful.

“Miss Ludolph!――O Christine, awake!” cried Dennis, louder.

To his wonder and unbounded perplexity, he saw the hitherto motionless lips wreathe themselves into a lovely smile, but otherwise there was no response....

A louder and nearer explosion, like a warning voice, made him wholly desperate, and he roughly seized her hand.

Christine’s blue eyes opened wide with a bewildered stare; a look of the wildest terror came into them, and she started up and shrieked, “Father! father!”

Then, turning toward the as yet unknown invader, she cried piteously: “Oh, spare my life! Take everything; I will give you anything you ask, only spare my life!”

She evidently thought herself addressing a ruthless robber.

Dennis retreated towards the door the moment she awakened; and this somewhat reassured her.

In the firm, quiet tone that always calms excitement, he replied, “I only ask you to give me your confidence, Miss Ludolph, and to join with me, Dennis Fleet, in my effort to save your life.”

“Dennis Fleet! Dennis Fleet! save my life! O ye gods, what does it all mean?” and she passed her hand in bewilderment across her brow, as if to brush away the wild fancies of a dream.

“Miss Ludolph, as you love your life, arouse yourself and escape! The city is burning!”

When Dennis returned, he found Christine panting helplessly on a chair.

“Oh, dress! dress!” he cried. “We have not a moment to spare.”

The sparks and cinders were falling about the house, a perfect storm of fire. The roof was already blazing, and smoke was pouring down the stairs.

At his suggestion she had at first laid out a heavy woolen dress and Scotch plaid shawl. She nervously sought to put on the dress, but her trembling fingers could not fasten it over her wildly throbbing bosom. Dennis saw that in the terrible emergency he must act the part of a brother or husband, and, springing forward, he assisted her with the dexterity he had learned in childhood.

Just then a blazing piece of roof, borne on the wings of the gale, crashed through the window, and in a moment the apartment, that had seemed like a beautiful casket for a still more exquisite jewel, was in flames.

Hastily wrapping Christine in the blanket shawl, he snatched her, crying and wringing her hands, into the street.

Holding his hand she ran two or three blocks with all the speed her wild terror prompted; then her strength began to fail, and she pantingly cried that she could run no longer. But this rapid rush carried them out of immediate peril, and brought them into the flying throng pressing their way northward and westward.

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FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.

(OUR MOST COSMOPOLITAN NOVELIST.)

ANDREW Lang has pronounced Marion Crawford “the most versatile of modern novelists.” It may also be truly said that he is the most cosmopolitan of all our American authors. One feels after reading his stories of life and society in India, Italy, England and America that the author does not belong anywhere in particular, but is rather a citizen of the world in general.

He drew from nearly every country of culture for his education, and the result is clearly apparent in his voluminous and varied works. He is one of the rare and favored few who have stumbled almost by accident upon fame and who have increased their early fame by later labors.

Marion Crawford was born in Italy in 1854. His father was a native of Ireland, a sculptor of repute, and his mother was an American, a sister of Julia Ward Howe. His father died when he was three years old, and he was put with relatives on a farm in Bordentown, N. J., where he had a French governess. At a suitable age he was sent to St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, and later he studied with a country clergyman in England. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he showed an aptitude for mathematics.

After studying in the Universities of Heidelberg, Carlesruhe and Rome, he went to India to make a thorough study of Sanscrit. Here his funds gave out and left him nearly stranded with no prospects of improvement.

Just as he was on the point of joining the Anglo-Indian army, he was offered the position of editor on the “Allahabad Herald,” in an unhealthy town a thousand miles from Bombay. The work was extremely difficult and absorbing for one who had never had previous connection with a newspaper, requiring sixteen hours of daily work in a climate of excessive heat.

After resigning this position he returned to Italy and took passage on a “tramp” steamer for America. He was wrecked, after a six weeks’ voyage, and thrown on the coast of Bermuda. With these varied experiences he had stored up in a fertile memory material for his numerous novels. It was his first intention to continue his Sanscrit studies at Harvard, but a circumstance of the simplest nature revealed to him and to the world his remarkable powers as a story-teller.

He has himself told how he came to write “Mr. Isaacs,” his first novel.

“On May 5, 1882, Uncle Sam (Samuel Ward) asked me to dine with him at the New York Club, which was then in the building on Madison Square now called the Madison Square bank building. We had dined rather early and were sitting in the smoking-room, while it was still light. As was natural we began to exchange stories while smoking, and I told him with a good deal of detail my recollections of an interesting man whom I had met in Sinila. When I finished he said to me, ‘That is a good two-part magazine story, and you must write it out immediately.’ He took me round to his apartments, and that night I began to write the story of ‘Mr. Isaacs.’ I kept at it from day to day, getting more and more interested in the work as I proceeded. I was so amused with the writing of it that it occurred to me that I might as well make Mr. Isaacs fall in love with an English girl, and then I kept on writing to see what would happen. By and by I remembered a mysterious Buddhist whom I had once met, so I introduced him to still further complicate matters.”

He was in Canada working on “Dr. Claudius” when “Mr. Isaacs” was issued by the publisher. When he reached Boston on his return he found the news-stands covered with posters announcing the famous story of “Mr. Isaacs,” and he himself was “interviewed,” and solicited by magazine publishers to give them a new story at once. “Dr. Claudius,” was soon ready and though less romantic found a host of readers. His constructive powers increased as he devoted himself to his art and books came from his pen in rapid succession. In 1883 he went to Italy and in the following year he married the daughter of General Berdan and established himself in a lovely villa at Sorrento where he has since lived, writing either in his villa or on board his yacht.

His third book, a tragic tale of Roman society, is called “To Leeward.” His most popular novels is the trilogy, describing the fortunes of a noble Italian family, woven in with the history of Modern Rome, from 1865 to 1887. They are in their order “Saracinesca,” “Sant’ Ilario” and “Don Orsino.” This historical trilogy depicts with much power the last struggle of the papacy for temporal power.

In 1885 he issued “Zoroaster,” a story of ancient Persia, with King Darius and the prophet Daniel for characters.

“Marzio’s Crucifix” (1887) was written in ten days. Marion Crawford had studied silver carving with a skilful workman and the idea suggested itself to him to write a story of an atheist who should put his life and soul into the carving of a crucifix.

“The Lonely Parish” was written in twenty-four days. The author had promised a novel at a certain date and the imperious publisher held him to his promise. He had studied with a clergyman in the little English village of Hatfield Regis, and to make his story he simply lifted that little village bodily out of his memory and put it into his novel, even to the extent of certain real names and localities. His other chief works are: “Witch of Prague” (1892), “Greifenstein,” “Paul Patoff” (1887), “The Three Fates,” “Katherine Lauterdale,” “The Ralstones,” and “Pietro Ghisleri.”

* * * * *

HORACE BELLINGHAM.¹

(FROM “DR. CLAUDIUS.”)

¹ Copyright, MacMillan & Co.

AY, but he was a sight to do good to the souls of the hungry and thirsty, and of the poor and in misery!...

There are some people who turn gray, but who do not grow hoary, whose faces are furrowed but not wrinkled, whose hearts are sore wounded in many places, but are not dead. There is a youth that bids defiance to age, and there is a kindness which laughs at the world’s rough usage. These are they who have returned good for evil, not having learned it as a lesson of righteousness, but because they have no evil in them to return upon others. Whom the gods love die young because they never grow old. The poet, who, at the verge of death, said this, said it of and to this very man.

* * * * *

IN THE HIMALAYAS.¹

(FROM “MR. ISAACS.”)

¹ Copyright, MacMillan & Co.

THE lower Himalayas are at first extremely disappointing. The scenery is enormous but not grand, and at first hardly seems large. The lower parts are at first sight a series of gently undulating hills and wooded dells; in some places it looks as if one might almost hunt the country. It is long before you realize that it is all on a gigantic scale; that the quick-set hedges are belts of rhododendrons of full growth, the water-jumps rivers, and the stone walls mountain-ridges; that to hunt a country like that you would have to ride a horse at least two hundred feet high. You cannot see at first, or even for some time, that the gentle-looking hill is a mountain of five or six thousand feet above the level of the Rhigi Kulm in Switzerland. Persons who are familiar with the aspect of the Rocky Mountains are aware of the singular lack of dignity in those enormous elevations. They are merely big, without any superior beauty until you come to the favored spots of nature’s art, where some great contrast throws into appalling relief the gulf between the high and the low. It is so in the Himalayas. You may travel for hours and days amidst vast forests and hills without the slightest sensation of pleasure or sense of admiration for the scene, till suddenly your path leads you out on to the dizzy brink of an awful precipice――a sheer fall, so exaggerated in horror that your most stirring memories of Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, and the hideous arête of the Pitz Bernina, sink into vague insignificance. The gulf that divides you from the distant mountain seems like a huge bite taken bodily out of the world by some voracious god; far away rise snow-peaks such as were not dreamt of in your Swiss tour; the bottomless valley at your feet is misty and gloomy with blackness, streaked with mist, while the peaks above shoot gladly to the sun and catch his broadside rays like majestic white standards. Between you, as you stand leaning cautiously against the hill behind you, and the wonderful background far away in front, floats a strange vision, scarcely moving, but yet not still. A great golden shield sails steadily in vast circles, sending back the sunlight in every tint of burnished glow. The golden eagle of the Himalayas hangs in mid-air, a sheet of polished metal to the eye, pausing sometimes in the full blaze of reflection, as ages ago the sun and the moon stood still in the valley of the Ajalon; too magnificent for description, as he is too dazzling to look at. The whole scene, if no greater name can be given to it, is on a scale so Titanic in its massive length and breadth and depth, that you stand utterly trembling and weak and foolish as you look for the first time. You have never seen such masses of the world before.

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FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON.

POPULAR among the writers of lighter fiction in modern times, who have delighted the multitudes from the realms of childhood to almost every walk of life, few authors have been more prolific and generally popular than the illustrator of “Vanity Fair” and the author of “The Lady or the Tiger.”

Frank Stockton (for with the masses he is plain “Frank”) was born in Philadelphia, Pa., April 5, 1834. He had the benefit of only such educational training as the public schools and the Central High School of that city afforded. Originally, his ambition was to be an engraver, and he devoted a number of years to that calling,――engraving and designing on wood for the comic paper published in New York City, before the war, under the title of “Vanity Fair.” He also made pictures for other illustrated periodicals; and at the same time he also did literary and journalistic work, his first connection being with the Philadelphia “Post.” In 1872 he abandoned his engraving altogether to accept an editorial position on the New York “Hearthstone,” and later he joined the staff of “Scribner’s Monthly,” which has since been converted into the “Century Magazine.” He was also made assistant editor of “St. Nicholas Magazine,” when it was established in 1873, in connection with Mary Mapes Dodge, the famous child writer. In 1880 Mr. Stockton resigned his editorial position to devote himself to purely literary work. Since that time he has been before the world as a contributor to magazines on special topics and as a writer of books.

Few authors have been more industrious than Frank Stockton. During the last thirty years his fertile imagination and busy pen have contributed at least one new book almost every year, frequently two volumes and sometimes three coming out in the course of twelve months. His first published volume was a collection of stories for children issued in 1869 under the title of “Ting-a-Ling Stories.” Then came “Round About Rambles;” “What Might Have Been Expected;” “Tales Out of School;” “A Jolly Fellowship;” “The Floating Prince;” “The Story of Viteau;” and “Personally Conducted.” The above are all for young people and were issued between 1869 and 1889. Many now grown-up men and women look back with pleasant recollections to the happy hours spent with these books when they were boys and girls.

Of the many other volumes of novels and short stories which Mr. Stockton has written, the following are, perhaps, the best known: “Rudder Grange” (1879); “Lady or the Tiger and Other Stories” (1884); “The Late Mrs. Mull” (1886); “The Christmas Wreck and Other Tales” (1887); “The Great War Syndicates” (1889); “Stories of Three Burglars” (1890); “The Merry Chanter” (1890); and following this came “Ardis ♦Claverden,” and since that several other serial novels have been published in the magazines.

♦ ‘Cloverden’ replaced with ‘Claverden’

Mr. Stockton has also written some poetry; but he is pre-eminently a story-teller, and it is to his prose writings that he is indebted for the popularity which he enjoys. His stories are direct and clear in method and style, while their humor is quiet, picturesque and quaint.

* * * * *

THE END OF A CAREER.¹

(FROM “THE MERRY CHANTER.”)

¹ The Century Co., New York. Copyright, Frank R. Stockton.

FOR two years Doris and I had been engaged to be married. The first of these years appeared to us about as long as any ordinary year, but the second seemed to stretch itself out to the length of fifteen or even eighteen months. There had been many delays and disappointments in that year.

We were both young enough to wait and both old enough to know we ought to wait; and so we waited. But, as we frequently admitted to ourselves, there was nothing particularly jolly in this condition of things. Every young man should have sufficient respect for himself to make him hesitate before entering into a matrimonial alliance in which he would have to be supported by his wife. This would have been the case had ♦Doris and I married within those two years.

♦ ‘Dorris’ replaced with ‘Doris’

I am by profession an analyzer of lava. Having been from my boyhood an enthusiastic student of mineralogy and geology, I gradually became convinced that there was no reason why precious metals and precious stones should not be found at spots on the earth where nature herself attended to the working of her own mines. That is to say, that I can see no reason why a volcano should not exist at a spot where there were valuable mineral deposits; and this being the case, there is no reason why those deposits should not be thrown out during eruptions in a melted form, or unmelted and mixed with the ordinary lava.

Hoping to find proof of the correctness of my theory, I have analyzed lava from a great many volcanoes. I have not been able to afford to travel much, but specimens have been sent to me from various parts of the world. My attention was particularly turned to extinct volcanoes; for should I find traces of precious deposits in the lava of one of these, not only could its old lava beds be worked, but by artificial means eruptions of a minor order might be produced, and fresher and possibly richer material might be thrown out.

But I had not yet received any specimen of lava which encouraged me to begin workings in the vicinity in which it was found.

My theories met with little favor from other scientists, but this did not discourage me. Should success come it would be very great.

Doris had expectations which she sometimes thought might reasonably be considered great ones, but her actual income was small. She had now no immediate family, and for some years lived with what she called “law kin.” She was of a most independent turn of mind, and being of age could do what she pleased with her own whenever it should come to her.

My own income was extremely limited, and what my actual necessities allowed me to spare from it was devoted to the collection of the specimens on the study of which I based the hopes of my fortunes.

In regard to our future alliance, Doris depended mainly upon her expectations, and she did not hesitate, upon occasion, frankly and plainly to tell me so. Naturally I objected to such dependence, and anxiously looked forward to the day when a little lump of lava might open before me a golden future which I might honorably ask any woman to share. But I do not believe that anything I said upon this subject influenced the ideas of Doris.

The lady of my love was a handsome girl, quick and active of mind and body, nearly always of a lively mood, and sometimes decidedly gay. She had seen a good deal of the world and the people in it, and was “up,” as she put it, in a great many things. Moreover, she declared that she had “a heart for any fate.” It has sometimes occurred to me that this remark would better be deferred until the heart and the fate had had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with each other.

We lived not far apart in a New England town, and calling upon her one evening I was surprised to find the lively Doris in tears. Her tears were not violent, however, and she quickly dried them; and, without waiting for any inquiries on my part, she informed me of the cause of her trouble.

“The _Merry Chanter_ has come in,” she said.

“Come in!” I ejaculated.

“Yes,” she answered, “and that is not the worst of it; it has been in a long time.”

I knew all about the _Merry Chanter_. This was a ship. It was her ship which was to come in. Years ago this ship had been freighted with the ventures of her family, and had sailed for far-off seas. The results of those ventures, together with the ship itself, now belonged to Doris. They were her expectations.

“But why does this grieve you?” I asked. “Why do you say that the coming of the ship, to which you have been looking forward with so much ardor, is not the worst of it?”

“Because it isn’t,” she answered. “The rest is a great deal worse. The whole affair is a doleful failure. I had a letter to-day from Mooseley, a little town on the sea-coast. The _Merry Chanter_ came back there three years ago with nothing in it. What has become of what it carried out, or what it ought to have brought back, nobody seems to know. The captain and the crew left it the day after its arrival at Mooseley. Why they went away, or what they took with them, I have not heard, but a man named Asa Cantling writes me that the _Merry Chanter_ has been lying at his wharf for three years; that he wants to be paid the wharfage that is due him; and that for a long time he has been trying to find out to whom the ship belongs. At last he has discovered that I am the sole owner, and he sends to me his bill for wharfage, stating that he believes it now amounts to more than the vessel is worth.”

“Absurd!” I cried. “Any vessel must be worth more than its wharfage rates for three years. This man must be imposing upon you.”

Doris did not answer. She was looking drearily out of the window at the moonlighted landscape. Her heart and her fate had come together, and they did not appear to suit each other.

I sat silent, also, reflecting. I looked at the bill which she had handed to me, and then I reflected again, gazing out of the window at the moonlighted landscape.

It so happened that I then had on hand a sum of money equal to the amount of this bill, which amount was made up not only of wharfage rates, but of other expenses connected with the long stay of the vessel at Asa Cantling’s wharf.

My little store of money was the result of months of savings and a good deal of personal self-denial. Every cent of it had its mission in one part of the world or another. It was intended solely to carry on the work of my life, my battle for fortune. It was to show me, in a wider and more thorough manner than had ever been possible before, what chance there was for my finding the key which should unlock for me the treasures in the storehouse of the earth.

I thought for a few minutes longer, and then I said, “Doris, if you should pay this bill and redeem the vessel, what good would you gain?”

She turned quickly towards me. “I should gain a great deal of good,” she said. “In the first place I should be relieved of a soul-chilling debt. Isn’t that a good? And of a debt, too, which grows heavier every day. Mr. Cantling writes that it will be difficult to sell the ship, for it is not the sort that the people thereabout want. And if he breaks it up he will not get half the amount of his bill. And so there it must stay, piling wharfage on wharfage, and all sorts of other expenses on those that have gone before, until I become the leading woman bankrupt of the world.”

“But if you paid the money and took the ship,” I asked, “what would you do with it?”

“I know exactly what I would do with it,” said Doris. “It is my inheritance, and I would take that ship and make our fortunes. I would begin in a humble way just as people begin in other businesses. I would carry hay, codfish, ice, anything, from one port to another. And when I had made a little money in this way I would sail away to the Orient and come back loaded with rich stuffs and spices.”

“Did the people who sailed the ship before do that?” I asked.

“I have not the slightest doubt of it,” she answered; “and they ran away with the proceeds. I do not know that you can feel as I do,” she continued. “The _Merry Chanter_ is mine. It is my all. For years I have looked forward to what it might bring me. It has brought me nothing but a debt, but I feel that it can be made to do better than that, and my soul is on fire to make it do better.”

It is not difficult to agree with a girl who looks as this one looked and who speaks as this one spoke.

“Doris,” I exclaimed, “if you go into that sort of thing I go with you. I will set the _Merry Chanter_ free.”

“How can you do it?” she cried.

“Doris,” I said, “hear me. Let us be cool and practical.”

“I think neither of us is very cool,” she said, “and perhaps not very practical. But go on.”

“I can pay this bill,” I said, “but in doing it I shall abandon all hope of continuing what I have chosen as my life work; the career which I have marked out for myself will be ended. Would you advise me to do this? And if I did it would you marry me now with nothing to rely upon but our little incomes and what we could make from your ship? Now, do not be hasty. Think seriously, and tell me what you would advise me to do.”

She answered instantly, “Take me, and the _Merry Chanter_.”

I gave up my career.

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EDWARD BELLAMY.

THE AUTHOR OF “LOOKING BACKWARD.”

THE most remarkable sensation created by any recent American author was perhaps awakened by Edward Bellamy’s famous book, “Looking Backward,” of which over a half million copies have been sold in this country alone, and more than as many more on the other side of the Atlantic. This book was issued from the press in 1887, and maintained for several years an average sale of 100,000 copies per year in America alone. In 1897 a demand for sociological literature in England called for the printing of a quarter of a million copies in that country within the space of a few months, and the work has been translated into the languages of almost every civilized country on the earth. Its entire sale throughout the world is probably beyond two million copies.

Mr. Bellamy’s ideal as expressed in this book is pure communism, and the work is no doubt the outgrowth of the influence of Emersonian teaching, originally illustrated in the Brook Farm experiment. As for Mr. Bellamy’s dream, it can never be realized until man’s heart is entirely reformed and the promised millennium shall dawn upon the earth; but that such an ideal state is ♦pleasant to contemplate is evinced by the great popularity and enormous sale of his book. In order to give his theory a touch of human sympathy and to present the matter in a manner every way appropriate, Mr. Bellamy causes his hero to go to sleep, at the hands of a mesmerist, in an underground vault and to awake, undecayed, in the perfect vigor of youth, one hundred years later, to find if not a new heaven, at least a new earth so far as its former social conditions were concerned. Selfishness was all gone from man, universal peace and ♠happiness reigned over the earth, and all things were owned in common. The story is well constructed and well written, and captivates the reader’s imagination.

♦ ‘pleasent’ replaced with ‘pleasant’

♠ ‘happines’ replaced with ‘happiness’

Edward Bellamy was born in Boston, ♦Massachusetts, on March 26th, 1850. He attended Union College, but did not graduate. After studying in Germany he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1871 and has since practiced his profession, at the same time doing journalistic and literary work. For several years he was assistant editor of the “Springfield (Mass.) Union” and an editorial writer for the New York “Evening Post.” He has also contributed a number of articles to the magazines. His books are “Six to One, a Nantucket Idyl” (1877); “Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process” (1879); “Miss ♠Ludington’s Sister: a romance of Immortality” (1884); “Looking Backward” (1887); “Equality: a Romance of the future” (1897). The last named is a continuation of the same theme as “Looking Backward,” being more argumentative and entering into the recent conditions of society and new phases of politics and industrial questions. It is a larger book and a deeper study than its predecessor. The work was issued simultaneously in the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, and other countries. Owing to the recent interest in sociological literature it is believed by Mr. Bellamy and his publishers that this book will attain as wide a popularity as his other work on the subject. Mr. Bellamy’s writings have caused the founding of nationalist and communistic clubs throughout the United States, and his influence for the last few years has been powerfully felt in European countries. If this movement should continue to grow there is little doubt but Mr. Bellamy will be honored in the future for the impetus his books have given to communistic doctrines.

♦ ‘Massachsetts’ replaced with ‘Massachusetts’

♠ “Luddington’s” replaced with “Ludington’s”

The home of this author, near Boston, is said to be an ideal one, presided over by a most amiable wife, who is in hearty sympathy with her literary husband, both in his ideals and in his work. They have several bright children, and their home has been pointed out by reviewers as a remarkably happy one, constituting within itself something of a miniature illustration of the ideal community which his theory portrays, if, indeed, it may not be said to heartily advocate.

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MUSIC IN THE YEAR 2000.

(FROM “LOOKING BACKWARD.”)

_By Permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co._

WHEN we arrived home, Dr. Leete had not yet returned, and Mrs. Leete was not visible. “Are you fond of music, Mr. West?” Edith asked.

I assured her that it was half of life, according to my notion. “I ought to apologize for inquiring,” she said. “It is not a question we ask one another nowadays; but I have read that in your day, even among the cultured class, there were some who did not care for music.”

“You must remember, in excuse,” I said, “that we had some rather absurd kinds of music.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know that; I am afraid I should not have fancied it all myself. Would you like to hear some of ours now, Mr. West?”

“Nothing would delight me so much as to listen to you,” I said.

“To me!” she exclaimed, laughing. “Did you think I was going to play or sing to you?”

“I hoped so, certainly,” I replied.

Seeing that I was a little abashed, she subdued her merriment and explained. “Of course, we all sing nowadays as a matter of course in the training of the voice, and some learn to play instruments for their private amusement; but the professional music is so much grander and more perfect than any performance of ours, and so easily commanded when we wish to hear it, that we don’t think of calling our singing or playing music at all. All the really fine singers and players are in the musical service, and the rest of us hold our peace for the main part. But would you really like to hear some music?”

I assured her once more that I would.

“Come, then, into the music-room,” she said, and I followed her into an apartment finished, without hangings, in wood, with a floor of polished wood. I was prepared for new devices in musical instruments, but I saw nothing in the room which by any stretch of imagination could be conceived as such. It was evident that my puzzled appearance was affording intense amusement to Edith.

“Please look at to-day’s music,” she said, handing me a card, “and tell me what you would prefer. It is now five o’clock, you will remember.”

The card bore the date “September 12, 2000,” and contained the longest programme of music I had ever seen. It was as various as it was long, including a most extraordinary range of vocal and instrumental solos, duets, quartettes, and various orchestral combinations. I remained bewildered by the prodigious list until Edith’s pink finger-tip indicated a peculiar section of it, where several selections were bracketed, with the words “5 P. M.” against them; then I observed that this prodigious programme was an all-day one, divided into twenty-four sections answering to the hours. There were but a few pieces of music in the “5 P. M.” section, and I indicated an organ piece as my preference.

“I am so glad you like the organ,” said she.

“I think there is scarcely any music that suits my mood oftener.”

She made me sit down comfortably, and, crossing the room, so far as I could see, merely touched one or two screws, and at once the room was filled with the music of a grand organ anthem; filled, not flooded, for, by some means, the volume of melody had been perfectly graduated to the size of the department. I listened, scarcely breathing, to the close. Such music, so perfectly rendered, I had never expected to hear.

“Grand!” I cried, as the last great wave of the sound broke and ebbed away into silence. “Bach must be at the keys of that organ; but where is the organ?”

“Wait a moment, please,” said Edith; “I want to have you listen to this waltz before you ask any questions. I think it is perfectly charming;” and as she spoke the sound of violins filled the room with the witchery of a summer night. When this also ceased, she said: “There is nothing in the least mysterious about the music, as you seem to imagine. It is not made by fairies or genii, but by good, honest, and exceedingly clever good hands. We have simply carried the idea of labor-saving by co-operation into our musical service as into everything else. There are a number of music rooms in the city, perfectly adapted acoustically to the different sorts of music. These halls are connected by telephone with all the houses of the city whose people care to pay the small fee, and there are none, you may be sure, who do not. The corps of musicians attached to each hall is so large that, although no individual performer, or group of performers, has more than a brief part, each day’s programme lasts through the twenty-four hours. There are on that card for to-day, as you will see if you observe closely, distinct programmes of four of these concerts, each of a different order of music from the others, being now simultaneously performed, and any one of the four pieces now going on that you prefer, you can hear by merely pressing the button which will connect your house-wire with the hall where it is being rendered. The programmes are so co-ordinated that the pieces at any one time simultaneously proceeding in the different halls usually offer a choice, not only between instrumental and vocal, and between different sorts of instruments; but also between different motives from grave to gay, so that all tastes and moods can be suited.”

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Illustration: (‡ decoration)

GEORGE W. CABLE.

“THE DEPICTOR OF CREOLE LIFE IN THE SOUTH.”

IT is said “Circumstances make the man;” and, again, “Seeming misfortunes are often blessings in disguise.” Whether this is generally true or not, at least in the case of George W. Cable, it has so turned out; for it was poverty and necessity that drove him through a vicissitude of circumstances which stored his mind with observations and facts that enabled him to open a new field of fiction, introducing to the outside world a phase of American life hitherto unsuspected save by those who have seen it. His rendering of the Creole dialect with its French and Spanish variations and mixtures is full of originality. He has depicted the social life of the Louisiana lowlands, with its Creole and negro population, so vividly that many whose portraits he has drawn have taken serious offence at his books. But it is no doubt _the truth that hurts_, and if so, it should be borne for the sake of history, and it is to the credit of Mr. Cable’s integrity as an author that he has not sacrificed the truth to please his friends. His books have also been the means of effecting wholesome changes in the contract system of convict labor in several Southern States.

George W. Cable was born October 12, 1844, in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was a Virginian and his mother a New Englander. They removed to New Orleans in 1837. In 1859 Mr. Cable failed in business and died soon after, leaving the family in a straightened condition, and the son――then fifteen years of age――was compelled to leave school and take a clerkship in a store. This he retained until, at the age of nineteen, he volunteered in the service of the Confederate Army, joining the Fourth Mississippi Cavalry, and followed the fortunes of the Southern cause until it was lost. He was said to have been a gallant soldier, was once wounded and narrowly escaped with his life. All his spare moments in camp were given to study.

After the surrender of General Lee, Cable――a young man of twenty-one――returned to New Orleans, penniless, and took employment as an errand boy in a store. From there he drifted to Kosciusko, Mississippi, where he studied civil engineering, and joined a surveying party on bayous Têche and Atchafalaya――the native heath of the Creole――and it was here that his keen observation gathered the material which has since done him so much service.

Cable first began writing to the “New Orleans Picayune” under the _nom-de-plume_ of “Drop Shot,” and his articles evinced a power which soon opened the way to a regular place on the editorial staff of the paper. This position he retained until he was asked to write a theatrical criticism. Cable had rigid religious scruples――piety being one of his marked characteristics――always avoided attendance of the theatre, and he now refused to go, and resigned his position rather than violate his conscience.

Leaving the editorial rooms of the “Picayune,” Cable secured a position as accountant in a cotton-dealer’s office, which he retained until 1879, when the death of his employer threw him out of position. Meantime his sketches of Creole life had been appearing in “Scribner’s Monthly,” and were received with so much favor that he determined to leave business and devote his life to literature. Accordingly, in 1885, he removed North, living at Simsbury, Connecticut, Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York, which he has since made his headquarters, with a continual growing popularity, his books bringing him an ample competency.

Among the published works of this author we mention as the most prominent: “Old Creole Days” (1879–1883); “The Grandissimes” (1880); “Madame Delphine” (1881); “Dr. Sevier” (1883); “The Creoles of Louisiana” (1884); “The Silent South” (1885); “Bonaventure” (1888); “Strange True Stories of Louisiana” (1889); “The Negro Question” and “Life of William Gilmore Sims” (1890); “John March Southerner,” and some later works which the author continues to add at the rate of one book a year.

Mr. Cable has also successfully entered the lecture field, in common with other modern authors, and never fails to interest Northern audiences with his readings or recitations, from his writings or the strange wild melodies and peculiar habits of life current among the French speaking negroes of the lower Mississippi.

* * * * *

THE DOCTOR.¹

(FROM “DR. SEVIER.”)

¹ Copyright, George W. Cable.

THE main road to wealth in New Orleans has long been Carondelet Street. There you see the most alert faces; noses――it seems to one――with more and sharper edge, and eyes smaller and brighter and with less distance between them than one notices in other streets. It is there that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and run together promiscuously――the cunning and the simple, the headlong and the wary――at the four clanging strokes of the Stock Exchange gong. There rises the tall façade of the Cotton Exchange. Looking in from the sidewalk as you pass, you see its main hall, thronged but decorous, the quiet engine-room of the surrounding city’s most far-reaching occupation, and at the hall’s farther end you descry the “Future Room,” and hear the unearthly ramping and bellowing of the bulls and bears. Up and down the street, on either hand, are the ship-brokers and insurers, and in the upper stories foreign consuls among a multitude of lawyers and notaries.

In 1856 this street was just assuming its present character. The cotton merchants were making it their favorite place of commercial domicile. The open thoroughfare served in lieu of the present exchanges; men made fortunes standing on the curbstone, and during bank hours the sidewalks were perpetually crowded with cotton factors, buyers, brokers, weighers, reweighers, classers, pickers, pressers, and samplers, and the air was laden with cotton quotations and prognostications.

Number 3½, second floor, front, was the office of Dr. Sevier. This office was convenient to everything. Immediately under its windows lay the sidewalks where congregated the men who, of all in New Orleans, could best afford to pay for being sick, and least desired to die. Canal Street, the city’s leading artery, was just below, at the near left-hand corner. Beyond it lay the older town, not yet impoverished in those days,――the French quarter. A single square and a half off at the right, and in plain view from the front windows, shone the dazzling white walls of the St. Charles Hotel, where the nabobs of the river plantations came and dwelt with their fair-handed wives in seasons of peculiar anticipation, when it is well to be near the highest medical skill. In the opposite direction a three minutes’ quick drive around the upper corner and down Common Street carried the Doctor to his ward in the great Charity Hospital, and to the school of medicine, where he filled the chair set apart to the holy ailments of maternity. Thus, as it were, he laid his left hand on the rich and his right on the poor; and he was not left-handed.

Not that his usual attitude was one of benediction. He stood straight up in his austere pure-mindedness, tall, slender, pale, sharp of voice, keen of glance, stern in judgment, aggressive in debate, and fixedly untender everywhere, except――but always except――in the sick chamber. His inner heart was all of flesh; but his demands for the rectitude of mankind pointed out like the muzzles of cannon through the embrasures of his virtues. To demolish evil!――that seemed the finest of aims; and even as a physician, that was, most likely, his motive until later years and a better self-knowledge had taught him that to do good was still finer and better. He waged war――against malady. To fight; to stifle; to cut down; to uproot; to overwhelm,――these were his springs of action. That their results were good proved that his sentiment of benevolence was strong and high; but it was well-nigh shut out of sight by that impatience of evil which is very fine and knightly in youngest manhood, but which we like to see give way to kindlier moods as the earlier heat of the blood begins to pass.

He changed in later years; this was in 1856. To “resist not evil” seemed to him then only a rather feeble sort of knavery. To face it in its nakedness, and to inveigh against it in high places and low, seemed the consummation of all manliness; and manliness was the key-note of his creed. There was no other necessity in this life.

“But a man must live,” said one of his kindred, to whom, truth to tell, he had refused assistance.

“No, sir; that is just what he can’t do. A man must die! So, while he lives, let him be a man!”

How inharmonious a setting, then, for Dr. Sevier, was 3½ Carondelet Street! As he drove each morning, down to that point, he had to pass through long, irregular files of fellow-beings thronging either sidewalk――a sadly unchivalric grouping of men whose daily and yearly life was subordinated only and entirely to the getting of wealth, and whose every eager motion was a repetition of the sinister old maxim that “Time is money.”

“It’s a great deal more, sir, it’s life!” the Doctor always retorted.

Among these groups, moreover, were many who were all too well famed for illegitimate fortune. Many occupations connected with the handling of cotton yielded big harvests in perquisites. At every jog of the Doctor’s horse, men came to view whose riches were the outcome of semi-respectable larceny. It was a day of reckless operation; much of the commerce that came to New Orleans was simply, as one might say, beached in Carondelet Street. The sight used to keep the long, thin, keen-eyed doctor in perpetual indignation.

“Look at the wreckers!” he would say.

It was breakfast at eight, indignation at nine, dyspepsia at ten.

So his setting was not merely inharmonious; it was damaging. He grew sore on the whole matter of money-getting.

“Yes, I have money. But I don’t go after it. It comes to me, because I seek and render service for the service’s sake. It will come to anybody else the same way; and why should it come any other way?”

He not only had a low regard for the motives of most seekers of wealth, he went further, and fell into much disbelief of poor men’s needs. For instance, he looked upon a man’s inability to find employment, or upon a poor fellow’s run of bad luck, as upon the placarded woes of a hurdy-gurdy beggar.

“If he wants work he will find it. As for begging, it ought to be easier for any true man to starve than to beg.”

The sentiment was ungentle, but it came from the bottom of his belief concerning himself, and a longing for moral greatness in all men.

“However,” he would add, thrusting his hand into his pocket and bringing out his purse, “I’ll help any man to make himself useful. And the sick――well, the sick, as a matter of course. Only I must know what I’m doing.”

Have some of us known want? To have known her――though to love her was impossible――is “a liberal education.” The Doctor was learned; but this acquaintanceship, this education, he had never got. Hence his untenderness. Shall we condemn the fault? Yes. And the man? We have not the face. To be _just_, which he never knowingly failed to be, and at the same time to feel tenderly for the unworthy, to deal kindly with the erring――it is a double grace that hangs not always in easy reach even of the tallest. The Doctor attained to it――but in later years; meantime, this story――which, I believe, had he ever been poor would never have been written.