Chapter XIII: Part 2: , 1896 (10)

It was in the domain of letters, however, and more especially as a novelist, that he won his most enduring laurels. In 1855 he produced 'EL Final de Norma' (The End of Norma), which was his first romance of importance. Four years later he began to publish that series of notable novels which brought him fame, both at home and abroad. The list includes 'EL Sombrero de Tres Picos' (The Three-Cornered Hat), a charming _genre_ sketch famous for its pungent wit and humor, and its clever portraiture of provincial life in Spain at the beginning of this century; 'La Alpujarra'; 'EL Escándalo' (The Scandal), a story which at once created a profound sensation because of its ultramontane cast and opposition to prevalent scientific opinion; 'El Niño de la Bola' (The Child of the Ball), thought by many to be his masterpiece; 'El Capitán Veneno' (Captain Veneno); 'Novelas Cortas' (Short Stories), 3 vols.; and 'La Pródiga' (The Prodigal). Alarcón is also favorably known as poet, dramatic critic, and an incisive and effective writer of general prose.

His other publications comprise:--'Diario de un Testigo de la Guerra de Africa' (Journal of a Witness of the African War), a work which is said to have netted the publishers a profit of three million pesetas ($600,000); 'De Madrid à Nápoles' (from Madrid to Naples); 'Poesias Serias y Humorísticas' (Serious and Humorous Poems); 'Judicios Literários y Artísticos' (Literary and Artistic Critiques); 'Viages por España' (Travels through Spain); 'El Hijo Pródigo' (The Prodigal Son), a drama for children; and 'Ultimos Escritos' (Last Writings). Alarcón was elected a member of the Spanish Academy December 15th, 1875. Many of his novels have been translated into English and French. He died July 20th, 1891.

A WOMAN VIEWED FROM WITHOUT

From 'The Three-Cornered Hat'

The last and perhaps the most powerful reason which the quality of the city--clergy as well as laymen, beginning with the bishop and the corregidor--had for visiting the mill so often in the afternoon, was to admire there at leisure one of the most beautiful, graceful, and admirable works that ever left the hands of the Creator: called Seña [Mrs.] Frasquita. Let us begin by assuring you that Seña Frasquita was the lawful spouse of Uncle Luke, and an honest woman; of which fact all the illustrious visitors of the mill were well aware. Indeed, none of them ever seemed to gaze on her with sinful eyes or doubtful purpose. They all admired her, indeed, and sometimes paid her compliments,--the friars as well as the cavaliers, the prebendaries as well as the magistrate,--as a prodigy of beauty, an honor to her Creator, and as a coquettish and mischievous sprite, who innocently enlivened the most melancholy of spirits. "She is a handsome creature," the most virtuous prelate used to say. "She looks like an ancient Greek statue," remarked a learned advocate, who was an Academician and corresponding member on history. "She is the very image of Eve," broke forth the prior of the Franciscans. "She is a fine woman," exclaimed the colonel of militia. "She is a serpent, a witch, a siren, an imp," added the corregidor. "But she is a good woman, an angel, a lovely creature, and as innocent as a child four years old," all agreed in saying on leaving the mill, crammed with grapes or nuts, on their way to their dull and methodical homes.

This four-year-old child, that is to say, Frasquita, was nearly thirty years old, and almost six feet high, strongly built in proportion, and even a little stouter than exactly corresponded to her majestic figure. She looked like a gigantic Niobe, though she never had any children; she seemed like a female Hercules, or like a Roman matron, the sort of whom there are still copies to be seen in the Rioni Trastevere. But the most striking feature was her mobility, her agility, her animation, and the grace of her rather large person.

For resemblance to a statue, to which the Academician compared her, she lacked statuesque repose. She bent her body like a reed, or spun around like a weather-vane, or danced like a top. Her features possessed even greater mobility, and in consequence were even less statuesque. They were lighted up beautifully by five dimples: two on one cheek, one on the other, another very small one near the left side of her roguish lips, and the last--and a very big one--in the cleft of her rounded chin. Add to these charms her sly or roguish glances, her pretty pouts, and the various attitudes of her head, with which she emphasized her talk, and you will have some idea of that face full of vivacity and beauty, and always radiant with health and happiness.

Neither Uncle Luke nor Seña Frasquita was Andalusian by birth: she came from Navarre, and he from Murcia. He went to the city of ---- when he was but fifteen years old, as half page, half servant of the bishop, the predecessor of the present incumbent of that diocese. He was brought up for the Church by his patron, who, perhaps on that account, so that he might not lack competent maintenance, bequeathed him the mill in his will. But Uncle Luke, who had received only the lesser orders when the bishop died, cast off his ecclesiastical garb at once and enlisted as a soldier; for he felt more anxious to see the world and to lead a life of adventure than to say mass or grind corn. He went through the campaign of the Western Provinces in 1793, as the orderly of the brave General Ventura Caro; he was present at the siege of the Castle of Piñon, and remained a long time in the Northern Provinces, when he finally quitted the service. In Estella he became acquainted with Seña Frasquita, who was then simply called Frasquita; made love to her, married her, and carried her to Andalusia to take possession of the mill, where they were to live so peaceful and happy during the rest of their pilgrimage through this vale of tears.

When Frasquita was taken from Navarre to that lonely place she had not yet acquired any Andalusian ways, and was very different from the countrywomen in that vicinity. She dressed with greater simplicity, greater freedom, grace, and elegance than they did. She bathed herself oftener; and allowed the sun and air to caress her bare arms and uncovered neck. To a certain extent she wore the style of dress worn by the gentlewomen of that period; like that of the women in Goya's pictures, and somewhat of the fashion worn by Queen Maria Louisa: if not exactly so scant, yet so short that it showed her small feet, and the commencement of her superb limbs; her bodice was low, and round in the neck, according to the style in Madrid, where she spent two months with her Luke on their way from Navarre to Andalusia. She dressed her hair high on the top of her head, displaying thus both the graceful curve of her snowy neck and the shape of her pretty head. She wore earrings in her small ears, and the taper fingers of her rough but clean hands were covered with rings. Lastly, Frasquita's voice was as sweet as a flute, and her laugh was so merry and so silvery it seemed like the ringing of bells on Saturday of Glory or Easter Eve.

HOW THE ORPHAN MANUEL GAINED HIS SOBRIQUET

From 'The Child of the Ball'

The unfortunate boy seemed to have turned to ice from the cruel and unexpected blows of fate; he contracted a death-like pallor, which he never again lost. No one paid any attention to the unhappy child in the first moments of his anguish, or noticed that he neither groaned, sighed, nor wept. When at last they went to him they found him convulsed and rigid, like a petrifaction of grief; although he walked about, heard and saw, and covered his wounded and dying father with kisses. But he shed not a single tear, either during the death agony of that beloved being, when he kissed the cold face after it was dead, or when he saw them carry the body away forever; nor when he left the house in which he had been born, and found himself sheltered by charity in the house of a stranger. Some praised his courage, others criticized his callousness. Mothers pitied him profoundly, instinctively divining the cruel tragedy that was being enacted in the orphan's heart for want of some tender and compassionate being to make him weep by weeping with him.

Nor did Manuel utter a single word from the moment he saw his beloved father brought in dying. He made no answer to the affectionate questions asked him by Don Trinidad after the latter had taken him home; and the sound of his voice was never heard during the first three years which he spent in the holy company of the priest. Everybody thought by this time that he would remain dumb forever, when one day, in the church of which his protector was the priest, the sacristan observed him standing before a beautiful image of the "Child of the Ball," and heard him saying in melancholy accents:--

"Child Jesus, why do you not speak either?"

Manuel was saved. The drowning boy had raised his head above the engulfing waters of his grief. His life was no longer in danger. So at least it was believed in the parish.

Toward strangers--from whom, whenever they came in contact with him, he always received demonstrations of pity and kindness--the orphan continued to maintain the same glacial reserve as before, rebuffing them with the phrase, stereotyped on his disdainful lips, "Let me alone, now;" having said which, in tones of moving entreaty, he would go on his way, not without awakening superstitious feelings in the minds of the persons whom he thus shunned.

Still less did he lay aside, at this saving crisis, the profound sadness and precocious austerity of his character, or the obstinate persistence with which he clung to certain habits. These were limited, thus far, to accompanying the priest to the church; gathering flowers or aromatic herbs to adorn the image of the "Child of the Ball," before which he would spend hour after hour, plunged in a species of ecstasy; and climbing the neighboring mountain in search of those herbs and flowers, when, owing to the severity of the heat or cold, they were not to be found in the fields.

This adoration, while in consonance with the religious principles instilled into him from the cradle by his father, greatly exceeded what is usual even in the most devout. It was a fraternal and submissive love, like that which he had entertained for his father; it was a confused mixture of familiarity, protection, and idolatry, very similar to the feeling which the mothers of men of genius entertain for their illustrious sons; it was the respectful and protecting tenderness which the strong warrior bestows on the youthful prince; it was an identification of himself with the image; it was pride; it was elation as for a personal good. It seemed as if this image symbolized for him his tragic fate, his noble origin, his early orphanhood, his poverty, his cares, the injustice of men, his solitary state in the world, and perhaps too some presentiment of his future sufferings.

Probably nothing of all this was clear at the time to the mind of the hapless boy, but something resembling it must have been the tumult of confused thoughts that palpitated in the depths of that childlike, unwavering, absolute, and exclusive devotion. For him there was neither God nor the Virgin, neither saints nor angels; there was only the "Child of the Ball," not with relation to any profound mystery, but in himself, in his present form, with his artistic figure, his dress of gold tissue, his crown of false stones, his blonde head, his charming countenance, and the blue-painted globe which he held in his hand, and which was surmounted by a little silver-gilt cross, in sign of the redemption of the world.

And this was the cause and reason why the acolytes of Santa María de la Cabéza first, all the boys of the town afterward, and finally the more respectable and sedate persons, bestowed on Manuel the extraordinary name of "The Child of the Ball": we know not whether by way of applause of such vehement idolatry, and to commit him, as it were, to the protection of the Christ-Child himself; or as a sarcastic antiphrasis,--seeing that this appellation is sometimes used in the place as a term of comparison for the happiness of the very fortunate; or as a prophecy of the valor for which the son of Venegas was to be one day celebrated, and the terror he was to inspire,--since the most hyperbolical expression that can be employed in that district, to extol the bravery and power of any one, is to say that "she does not fear even the 'Child of the Ball.'"

Selections used by permission of Cassell Publishing Company

ALCAEUS

(Sixth Century B.C.)

Alcaeus, a contemporary of the more famous poet whom he addressed as "violet-crowned, pure, sweetly-smiling Sappho," was a native of Mitylene in Lesbos. His period of work fell probably between 610 and 580 B.C. At this time his native town was disturbed by an unceasing contention for power between the aristocracy and the people; and Alcaeus, through the vehemence of his zeal and his ambition, was among the leaders of the warring faction. By the accidents of birth and education he was an aristocrat, and in politics he was what is now called a High Tory. With his brothers, Cicis and Antimenidas, two influential young nobles as arrogant and haughty as himself, he resented and opposed the slightest concession to democracy. He was a stout soldier, but he threw away his arms at Ligetum when he saw that his side was beaten, and afterward wrote a poem on this performance, apparently not in the least mortified by the recollection. Horace speaks of the matter, and laughingly confesses his own like misadventure.

When the kindly Pittacus was chosen dictator, he was compelled to banish the swashbuckling brothers for their abuse of him. But when Alcaeus chanced to be taken prisoner, Pittacus set him free, remarking that "forgiveness is better than revenge." The irreconcilable poet spent his exile in Egypt, and there he may have seen the Greek oligarch who lent his sword to Nebuchadnezzar, and whom he greeted in a poem, a surviving fragment of which is thus paraphrased by John Addington Symonds:--

From the ends of the earth thou art come,
Back to thy home;
The ivory hilt of thy blade
With gold is embossed and inlaid;
Since for Babylon's host a great deed
Thou didst work in their need,
Slaying a warrior, an athlete of might,
Royal, whose height
Lacked of five cubits one span--
A terrible man.

Alcaeus is reputed to have been in love with Sappho, the glorious, but only a line or two survives to confirm the tale. Most of his lyrics, like those of his fellow-poets, seem to have been drinking songs, combined, says Symonds, with reflections upon life, and appropriate descriptions of the different seasons. "No time was amiss for drinking, to his mind: the heat of summer, the cold of winter, the blazing dog-star and the driving tempest, twilight with its cheerful gleam of lamps, mid-day with its sunshine--all suggest reasons for indulging in the cup. Not that we are justified in fancying Alcaeus a mere vulgar toper: he retained Aeolian sumptuousness in his pleasures, and raised the art of drinking to an aesthetic attitude."

Alcaeus composed in the Aeolic dialect; for the reason, it is said, that it was more familiar to his hearers. After his death his poems were collected and divided into ten books. Bergk has included the fragments--and one of his compositions has come down to us entire--his 'Poetae Lyrici Graeci.'

His love of political strife and military glory led him to the composition of a class of poems which the ancients called 'Stasiotica' (Songs of Sedition). To this class belong his descriptions of the furnishing of his palace, and many of the fragments preserved to us. Besides those martial poems, he composed hymns to the gods, and love and convivial songs.

His verses are subjective and impassioned. They are outbursts of the poet's own feeling, his own peculiar expression toward the world in which he lived; and it is this quality that gave them their strength and their celebrity. His metres were lively, and the care which he expended upon his strophes has led to the naming of one metre the 'Alcaic.' Horace testifies (Odes ii. 13, ii. 26, etc.), to the power of his master.

The first selection following is a fragment from his 'Stasiotica.' It is a description of the splendor of his palace before "the work of war began."

THE PALACE

From roof to roof the spacious palace halls
Glitter with war's array;
With burnished metal clad, the lofty walls
Beam like the bright noonday.
There white-plumed helmets hang from many a nail,
Above, in threatening row;
Steel-garnished tunics and broad coats of mail
Spread o'er the space below.
Chalcidian blades enow, and belts are here,
Greaves and emblazoned shields;
Well-tried protectors from the hostile spear,
On other battlefields.
With these good helps our work of war's begun,
With these our victory must be won.

Translation of Colonel Mure.

A BANQUET SONG

The rain of Zeus descends, and from high heaven
A storm is driven:
And on the running water-brooks the cold
Lays icy hold;
Then up: beat down the winter; make the fire
Blaze high and higher;
Mix wine as sweet as honey of the bee
Abundantly;
Then drink with comfortable wool around
Your temples bound.
We must not yield our hearts to woe, or wear
With wasting care;
For grief will profit us no whit, my friend,
Nor nothing mend;
But this is our best medicine, with wine fraught
To cast out thought.

Translation of J. A. Symonds.

AN INVITATION

Why wait we for the torches' lights?
Now let us drink while day invites.
In mighty flagons hither bring
The deep-red blood of many a vine,
That we may largely quaff, and sing
The praises of the god of wine,
The son of Jove and Semele,
Who gave the jocund grape to be
A sweet oblivion to our woes.
Fill, fill the goblet--one and two:
Let every brimmer, as it flows,
In sportive chase, the last pursue.

Translation of Sir William Jones.

THE STORM

Now here, now there, the wild waves sweep,
Whilst we, betwixt them o'er the deep,
In shatter'd tempest-beaten bark,
With laboring ropes are onward driven,
The billows dashing o'er our dark
Upheavèd deck--in tatters riven
Our sails--whose yawning rents between
The raging sea and sky are seen.

. . . . .

Loose from their hold our anchors burst,
And then the third, the fatal wave
Comes rolling onward like the first,
And doubles all our toil to save.

Translation of Sir William Jones.

THE POOR FISHERMAN

The fisher Diotimus had, at sea
And shore, the same abode of poverty--
His trusty boat;--and when his days were spent,
Therein self-rowed to ruthless Dis he went;
For that, which did through life his woes beguile,
Supplied the old man with a funeral pile.

Translation of Sir William Jones.

THE STATE

What constitutes a State?
Not high-raised battlement, or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;
Not cities fair, with spires and turrets crown'd;
No:--Men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude:--
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain.

Translation of Sir William Jones.

POVERTY

The worst of ills, and hardest to endure,
Past hope, past cure,
Is Penury, who, with her sister-mate
Disorder, soon brings down the loftiest state,
And makes it desolate.
This truth the sage of Sparta told,
Aristodemus old,--
"Wealth makes the man." On him that's poor,
Proud worth looks down, and honor shuts the door.

Translation of Sir William Jones.

BALTÁZAR DE ALCÁZAR

(1530?-1606)

Although little may be realized now of Alcázar's shadowy personality, there is no doubt that in his own century he was widely read. Born of a very respectable family in Seville, either in 1530 or 1531, he first appears as entering the Spanish navy, and participating in several battles on the war galleys of the Marquis of Santa Cruz. It is known that for about twenty years he was alcalde or mayor at the Molares on the outskirts of Utrera,--an important local functionary, a practical man interested in public affairs.

But, on the whole, his seems to have been a strongly artistic nature; for he was a musician of repute, skillful too at painting, and above all a poet. As master and model in metrical composition he chose Martial, and in his epigrammatic turn he is akin to the great Latin poet. He was fond of experimenting in Latin lyrical forms, and wrote many madrigals and sonnets. They are full of vigorous thought and bright satire, of playful malice and epicurean joy in life, and have always won the admiration of his fellow-poets. As has been said, they show a fine taste, quite in advance of the age. Cervantes, his greater contemporary, acknowledged his power with cordial praise in the Canto de Caliope.

The "witty Andalusian" did not write voluminously. Some of his poems still remain in manuscript only. Of the rest, comprised in one small volume, perhaps the best known are 'The Jovial Supper,' 'The Echo,' and the 'Counsel to a Widow.'

SLEEP

Sleep is no servant of the will,
It has caprices of its own:
When most pursued,--'tis swiftly gone;
When courted least, it lingers still.
With its vagaries long perplext,
I turned and turned my restless sconce,
Till one bright night, I thought at once
I'd master it; so hear my text!

When sleep will tarry, I begin
My long and my accustomed prayer;
And in a twinkling sleep is there,
Through my bed-curtains peeping in.
When sleep hangs heavy on my eyes,
I think of debts I fain would pay;
And then, as flies night's shade from day,
Sleep from my heavy eyelids flies.

And thus controlled the winged one bends
Ev'n his fantastic will to me;
And, strange, yet true, both I and he
Are friends,--the very best of friends.
We are a happy wedded pair,
And I the lord and she the dame;
Our bed--our board--our hours the same,
And we're united everywhere.

I'll tell you where I learnt to school
This wayward sleep:--a whispered word
From a church-going hag I heard,
And tried it--for I was no fool.
So from that very hour I knew
That having ready prayers to pray,
And having many debts to pay,
Will serve for sleep and waking too.

From Longfellow's 'Poets of Europe': by permission of Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

THE JOVIAL SUPPER

In Jaen, where I reside,
Lives Don Lopez de Sosa;
And I will tell thee, Isabel, a thing
The most daring that thou hast heard of him.
This gentleman had
A Portuguese serving man . . .
However, if it appears well to you, Isabel,
Let us first take supper.
We have the table ready laid,
As we have to sup together;
The wine-cups at their stations
Are only wanting to begin the feast.
Let us commence with new, light wine,
And cast upon it benediction;
I consider it a matter of devotion
To sign with cross that which I drink.

* * * * *

Be it or not a modern invention,
By the living God I do not know;
But most exquisite was
The invention of the tavern.
Because, I arrive thirsty there,
I ask for new-made wine,
They mix it, give it to me, I drink,
I pay for it, and depart contented.
That, Isabel, is praise of itself,
It is not necessary to laud it.
I have only one fault to find with it,
That is--it is finished with too much haste.

* * * * *

But say, dost thou not adore and prize
The illustrious and rich black pudding?
How the rogue tickles!
It must contain spices.
How it is stuffed with pine nuts!

* * * * *

But listen to a subtle hint.
You did not put a lamp there?
How is it that I appear to see two?
But these are foolish questions,
Already know I what it must be:
It is by this black draught
That the number of lamps accumulates.

[The several courses are ended, and the jovial diner resolves to finish his story.]

And now, Isabel, as we have supped
So well, and with so much enjoyment,
It appears to be but right
To return to the promised tale.
But thou must know, Sister Isabel,
That the Portuguese fell sick . . .
Eleven o'clock strikes, I go to sleep.
Wait for the morrow.

ALCIPHRON

(Second Century A.D.)

BY HARRY THURSTON PECK

In the history of Greek prose fiction the possibilities of the epistolary form were first developed by the Athenian teacher of rhetoric, Alciphron, of whose life and personality nothing is known except that he lived in the second century A.D.,--a contemporary of the great satirical genius Lucian. Of his writings we now possess only a collection of imaginary letters, one hundred and eighteen in number, arranged in three books. Their value depends partly upon the curious and interesting pictures given in them of the life of the post-Alexandrine period, especially of the low life, and partly upon the fact that they are the first successful attempts at character-drawing to be found in the history of Greek prose fiction. They form a connecting link between the novel of pure incident and adventure, and the more fully developed novel which combines incident and adventure with the delineation of character and the study of motive. The use of the epistolary form in fictitious composition did not, to be sure, originate with Alciphron; for we find earlier instances in the imaginary love-letters composed in verse by the Roman poet, Ovid, under the names of famous women of early legend, such as those of Oenone to Paris (which suggested a beautiful poem of Tennyson's), Medea to Jason, and many others. In these one finds keen insight into character, especially feminine character, together with much that is exquisite in fancy and tender in expression. But it is to Alciphron that we owe the adaptation of this form of composition to prose fiction, and its employment in a far wider range of psychological and social observation.

The life whose details are given us by Alciphron is the life of contemporary Athens in the persons of its easy-going population. The writers whose letters we are supposed to read in reading Alciphron are peasants, fishermen, parasites, men-about-town, and courtesans. The language of the letters is neat, pointed, and appropriate to the person who in each case is supposed to be the writer; and the details are managed with considerable art. Alciphron effaces all impression of his own personality, and is lost in the characters who for the time being occupy his pages. One reads the letters as he would read a genuine correspondence. The illusion is perfect, and we feel that we are for the moment in the Athens of the third century before Christ; that we are strolling in its streets, visiting its shops, its courts, and its temples, and that we are getting a whiff of the Aegean, mingled with the less savory odors of the markets and of the wine-shops. We stroll about the city elbowing our way through the throng of boatmen, merchants, and hucksters. Here a barber stands outside his shop and solicits custom; there an old usurer with pimply face sits bending over his accounts in a dingy little office; at the corner of the street a crowd encircles some Cheap Jack who is showing off his juggling tricks at a small three-legged table, making sea-shells vanish out of sight and then taking them from his mouth. Drunken soldiers pass and repass, talking boisterously of their bouts and brawls, of their drills and punishments, and the latest news of their barracks, and forming a striking contrast to the philosopher, who, in coarse robes, moves with supercilious look and an affectation of deep thought, in silence amid the crowd that jostles him. The scene is vivid, striking, realistic.

Many of the letters are from women; and in these, especially, Alciphron reveals the daily life of the Athenians. We see the demimonde at their toilet, with their mirrors, their powders, their enamels and rouge-pots, their brushes and pincers, and all the thousand and one accessories. Acquaintances come in to make a morning call, and we hear their chatter,--Thaïs and Megara and Bacchis, Hermione and Myrrha. They nibble cakes, drink sweet wine, gossip about their respective lovers, hum the latest songs, and enjoy themselves with perfect abandon. Again we see them at their evening rendezvous, at the banquets where philosophers, poets, sophists, painters, artists of every sort,--in fact, the whole Bohemia of Athens,--gather round them. We get hints of all the stages of the revel, from the sparkling wit and the jolly good-fellowship of the early evening, to the sodden disgust that comes with daybreak when the lamps are poisoning the fetid air and the remnants of the feast are stale.

We are not to look upon the letters of Alciphron as embodying a literary unity. He did not attempt to write one single symmetrical epistolary romance; but the individual letters are usually slight sketches of character carelessly gathered together, and deriving their greatest charm from their apparent spontaneity and artlessness. Many of them are, to be sure, unpleasantly cynical, and depict the baser side of human nature; others, in their realism, are essentially commonplace; but some are very prettily expressed, and show a brighter side to the picture of contemporary life. Those especially which are supposed to pass between Menander, the famous comic poet, and his mistress Glycera, form a pleasing contrast to the greed and cynicism of much that one finds in the first book of the epistles; they are true love-letters, and are untainted by the slightest suggestion of the mercenary spirit or the veiled coarseness that makes so many of the others unpleasant reading. One letter (i. 6) is interesting as containing the first allusion found in literature to the familiar story of Phryne before the judges, which is more fully told in Athenaeus.

The imaginary letter was destined to play an important part in the subsequent history of literature. Alciphron was copied by Aristaenetus, who lived in the fifth century of our era, and whose letters have been often imitated in modern times, and by Theophylactus, who lived in the seventh century. In modern English fiction the epistolary form has been most successfully employed by Richardson, Fanny Burney, and, in another _genre_, by Wilkie Collins.

The standard editions of Alciphron are those of Seiler (Leipzig, 1856) and of Hercher (Paris, 1873), the latter containing the Greek text with a parallel version in Latin. The letters have not yet been translated into English. The reader may refer to the chapter on Alciphron in the recently published work of Salverte, 'Le Roman dans la Grèce Ancienne' (The Novel in Ancient Greece: Paris, 1893). The following selections are translated by the present writer.

H.T. Peck

FROM A MERCENARY GIRL

PETALA TO SIMALION

Well, if a girl could live on tears, what a wealthy girl I should be; for you are generous enough with _them_, any-how! Unfortunately, however, that isn't quite enough for me. I need money; I must have jewels, clothes, servants, and all that sort of thing. Nobody has left me a fortune, I should like you to know, or any mining stock; and so I am obliged to depend on the little presents that gentlemen happen to make me. Now that I've known you a year, how much better off am I for it, I should like to ask? My head looks like a fright because I haven't had anything to rig it out with, all that time; and as to clothes,--why, the only dress I've got in the world is in rags that make me ashamed to be seen with my friends: and yet you imagine that I can go on in this way without having any other means of living! Oh, yes, of course, you cry; but you'll stop presently. I'm really surprised at the number of your tears; but really, unless somebody gives me something pretty soon I shall die of starvation. Of course, you pretend you're just crazy for me, and that you can't live without me. Well, then, isn't there any family silver in your house? Hasn't your mother any jewelry that you can get hold of? Hasn't your father any valuables? Other girls are luckier than I am; for I have a mourner rather than a lover. He sends me crowns, and he sends me garlands and roses, as if I were dead and buried before my time, and he says that he cries all night. Now, if you can manage to scrape up something for me, you can come here without having to cry your eyes out; but if you can't, why, keep your tears to yourself, and don't bother me!

From the 'Epistolae,' i. 36.

THE PLEASURES OF ATHENS

EUTHYDICUS TO EPIPHANIO

By all the gods and demons, I beg you, dear mother, to leave your rocks and fields in the country, and before you die, discover what beautiful things there are in town. Just think what you are losing,--the Haloan Festival and the Apaturian Festival, and the Great Festival of Bacchus, and especially the Thesmophorian Festival, which is now going on. If you would only hurry up, and get here to-morrow morning before it is daylight, you would be able to take part in the affair with the other Athenian women. Do come, and don't put it off, if you have any regard for my happiness and my brothers'; for it's an awful thing to die without having any knowledge of the city. That's the life of an ox; and one that is altogether unreasonable. Please excuse me, mother, for speaking so freely for your own good. After all, one ought to speak plainly with everybody, and especially with those who are themselves plain speakers.

From the 'Epistolae,' iii. 39.

FROM AN ANXIOUS MOTHER

PHYLLIS TO THRASONIDES

If you only would put up with the country and be sensible, and do as the rest of us do, my dear Thrasonides, you would offer ivy and laurel and myrtle and flowers to the gods at the proper time; and to us, your parents, you would give wheat and wine and a milk-pail full of the new goat's-milk. But as things are, you despise the country and farming, and are fond only of the helmet-plumes and the shield, just as if you were an Acarnanian or a Malian soldier. Don't keep on in this way, my son; but come back to us and take up this peaceful life of ours again (for farming is perfectly safe and free from any danger, and doesn't require bands of soldiers and strategy and squadrons), and be the stay of our old age, preferring a safe life to a risky one.

From the 'Epistolae,' iii. 16.

FROM A CURIOUS YOUTH

PHILOCOMUS TO THESTYLUS

Since I have never yet been to town, and really don't know at all what the thing is that they call a city, I am awfully anxious to see this strange sight,--men living all in one place,--and to learn about the other points in which a city differs from the country. Consequently, if you have any reason for going to town, do come and take me with you. As a matter of fact, I am sure there are lots of things I ought to know, now that my beard is beginning to sprout; and who is so able to show me the city as yourself, who are all the time going back and forth to the town?

From the 'Epistolae' iii. 31.

FROM A PROFESSIONAL DINER-OUT

CAPNOSPHRANTES TO ARISTOMACHUS

I should like to ask my evil genius, who drew me by lot as his own particular charge, why he is so malignant and so cruel as to keep me in everlasting poverty; for if no one happens to invite me to dinner I have to live on greens, and to eat acorns and to fill my stomach with water from the hydrant. Now, as long as my body was able to put up with this sort of thing, and my time of life was such as made it proper for me to bear it, I could get along with them fairly well; but now that my hair is growing gray, and the only outlook I have is in the direction of old age, what on earth am I going to do? I shall really have to get a rope and hang myself unless my luck changes. However, even if fortune remains as it is, I shan't string myself up before I have at least one square meal; for before very long, the wedding of Charitus and Leocritis, which is going to be a famous affair, will come off, to which there isn't a doubt that I shall be invited,--either to the wedding itself or to the banquet afterward. It's lucky that weddings need the jokes of brisk fellows like myself, and that without us they would be as dull as gatherings of pigs rather than of human beings!

From the 'Epistolae,' iii. 49.

UNLUCKY LUCK

CHYTROLICTES TO PATELLOCHARON

Perhaps you would like to know why I am complaining so, and how I got my head broken, and why I'm going around with my clothes in tatters. The fact is I swept the board at gambling: but I wish I hadn't; for what's the sense in a feeble fellow like me running up against a lot of stout young men? You see, after I scooped in all the money they put up, and they hadn't a cent left, they all jumped on my neck, and some of them punched me, and some of them stoned me, and some of them tore my clothes off my back. All the same, I hung on to the money as hard as I could, because I would rather die than give up anything of theirs I had got hold of; and so I held out bravely for quite a while, not giving in when they struck me, or even when they bent my fingers back. In fact, I was like some Spartan who lets himself be whipped as a test of his endurance: but unfortunately it wasn't at Sparta that I was doing this thing, but at Athens, and with the toughest sort of an Athenian gambling crowd; and so at last, when actually fainting, I had to let the ruffians rob me. They went through my pockets, and after they had taken everything they could find, they skipped. After all, I've come to the conclusion that it's better to live without money than to die with a pocket full of it.

From the 'Epistolae,' iii. 54.

ALCMAN

(Seventh Century B.C.)

According to legend, this illustrious Grecian lyric poet was born in Lydia, and taken to Sparta as a slave when very young, but emancipated by his master on the discovery of his poetic genius. He flourished probably between 670 and 630, during the peace following the Second Messenian War. It was that remarkable period in which the Spartans were gathering poets and musicians from the outer world of liberal accomplishment to educate their children; for the Dorians thought it beneath the dignity of a Dorian citizen to practice these things themselves.

His poetic remains indicate a social freedom at this period hardly in keeping with the Spartan rigor alleged to have been practiced without break from the ancient time of Lycurgus; perhaps this communal asceticism was really a later growth, when the camp of militant slave-holders saw their fibre weakening under the art and luxury they had introduced. He boasts of his epicurean appetite; with evident truthfulness, as a considerable number of his extant fragments are descriptions of dishes. He would have echoed Sydney Smith's--

"Fate cannot harm me--I have dined to-day."

In a poem descriptive of spring, he laments that the season affords but a scanty stock of his favorite viands.

The Alexandrian grammarians put Alcman at the head of the lyric canon; perhaps partly because they thought him the most ancient, but he was certainly much esteemed in classic times. _Aelian_ says his songs were sung at the first performance of the gymnopaedia at Sparta in 665 B.C., and often afterward. Much of his poetry was erotic; but he wrote also hymns to the gods, and ethical and philosophic pieces. His 'Parthenia,' which form a distinct division of his writings, were songs sung at public festivals by, and in honor of, the performing chorus of virgins. The subjects were either religious or erotic. His proverbial wisdom, and the forms of verse which he often chose, are reputed to have been like Pindar's. He said of himself that he sang like the birds,--that is, was self-taught.

He wrote in the broad Spartan dialect with a mixture of the Aeolic, and in various metres. One form of hexameter which he invented was called Alcmanic after him. His poems were comprehended in six books. The scanty fragments which have survived are included in Bergk's 'Poetae Lyrici Graeci' (1878). The longest was found in 1855 by M. Mariette, in a tomb near the second pyramid. It is a papyrus fragment of three pages, containing a part of his hymn to the Dioscuri, much mutilated and difficult to decipher.

His descriptive passages are believed to have been his best. The best known and most admired of his fragments is his beautiful description of night, which has been often imitated and paraphrased.

NIGHT

Over the drowsy earth still night prevails;
Calm sleep the mountain tops and shady vales,
The rugged cliffs and hollow glens;
The cattle on the hill. Deep in the sea,
The countless finny race and monster brood
Tranquil repose. Even the busy bee
Forgets her daily toil. The silent wood
No more with noisy hum of insect rings;
And all the feathered tribes, by gentle sleep subdued,
Roost in the glade, and hang their drooping wings.

Translation by Colonel Mure.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

(1832-1888)

Louisa May Alcott, daughter of Amos Bronson and Abigail (May) Alcott, and the second of the four sisters whom she was afterward to make famous in 'Little Women,' was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, November 29th, 1832, her father's thirty-third birthday. On his side, she was descended from good Connecticut stock; and on her mother's, from the Mays and Quincys of Massachusetts, and from Judge Samuel Sewall, who has left in his diary as graphic a picture of the New England home-life of two hundred years ago, as his granddaughter of the fifth generation did of that of her own time.

At the time of Louisa Alcott's birth her father had charge of a school in Germantown; but within two years he moved to Boston with his family, and put into practice methods of teaching so far in advance of his time that they were unsuccessful. From 1840, the home of the Alcott family was in Concord, Massachusetts, with the exception of a short time spent in a community on a farm in a neighboring town, and the years from 1848 to 1857 in Boston. At seventeen, Louisa's struggle with life began. She wrote a play, contributed sensational stories to weekly papers, tried teaching, sewing,--even going out to service,--and would have become an actress but for an accident. What she wrote of her mother is as true of herself, "She always did what came to her in the way of duty or charity, and let pride, taste, and comfort suffer for love's sake." Her first book, 'Flower Fables,' a collection of fairy tales which she had written at sixteen for the children of Ralph Waldo Emerson, some other little friends, and her younger sisters, was printed in 1855 and was well received. From this time until 1863 she wrote many stories, but few that she afterward thought worthy of being reprinted. Her best work from 1860 to 1863 is in the Atlantic Monthly, indexed under her name; and the most carefully finished of her few poems, 'Thoreau's Flute,' appeared in that magazine in September, 1863. After six weeks' experience in the winter of 1862-63 as a hospital nurse in Washington, she wrote for the Commonwealth, a Boston weekly paper, a series of letters which soon appeared in book form as 'Hospital Sketches,' Miss Alcott says of them, "The 'Sketches' never made much money, but showed me 'my style.'" In 1864 she published a novel, 'Moods'; and in 1866, after a year abroad as companion to an invalid, she became editor of Merry's Museum, a magazine for children.

Her 'Little Women,' founded on her own family life, was written in 1867-68, in answer to a request from the publishing house of Roberts Brothers for a story for girls, and its success was so great that she soon finished a second part. The two volumes were translated into French, German, and Dutch, and became favorite books in England. While editing Merry's Museum, she had written the first part of 'The Old-Fashioned Girl' as a serial for the magazine. After the success of 'Little Women,' she carried the 'Old-Fashioned Girl' and her friends forward several years, and ended the story with two happy marriages. In 1870 she went abroad a second time, and from her return the next year until her death in Boston from overwork on March 6th, 1888, the day of her father's funeral, she published twenty volumes, including two novels: one anonymous, 'A Modern Mephistopheles,' in the 'No Name' series; the other, 'Work,' largely a record of her own experience. She rewrote 'Moods,' and changed the sad ending of the first version to a more cheerful one; followed the fortunes of her 'Little Women' and their children in 'Little Men' and 'Jo's Boys,' and published ten volumes of short stories, many of them reprinted pieces. She wrote also 'Eight Cousins,' its sequel 'Rose in Bloom,' 'Under the Lilacs,' and 'Jack and Jill,'

The charm of her books lies in their freshness, naturalness, and sympathy with the feelings and pursuits of boys and girls. She says of herself, "I was born with a boy's spirit under my bib and tucker," and she never lost it. Her style is often careless, never elegant, for she wrote hurriedly, and never revised or even read over her manuscript; yet her books are full of humor and pathos, and preach the gospel of work and simple, wholesome living. She has been a help and inspiration to many young girls, who have learned from her Jo in 'Little Women,' or Polly in the 'Old-Fashioned Girl,' or Christie in 'Work,' that a woman can support herself and her family without losing caste or self-respect. Her stories of the comradeship of New England boys and girls in school or play have made her a popular author in countries where even brothers and sisters see little of each other. The haste and lack of care in her books are the result of writing under pressure for money to support the family, to whom she gave the best years of her life. As a little girl once said of her in a school essay, "I like all Miss Alcott's books; but what I like best in them is the author herself."

The reader is referred to 'Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals,' edited by Ednah D. Cheney, published in 1889.

THE NIGHT WARD

From 'Hospital Sketches'

Being fond of the night side of nature, I was soon promoted to the post of night nurse, with every facility for indulging in my favorite pastime of "owling." My colleague, a black-eyed widow, relieved me at dawn, we two taking care of the ward between us, like regular nurses, turn and turn about. I usually found my boys in the jolliest state of mind their condition allowed; for it was a known fact that Nurse Periwinkle objected to blue devils, and entertained a belief that he who laughed most was surest of recovery. At the beginning of my reign, dumps and dismals prevailed; the nurses looked anxious and tired, the men gloomy or sad; and a general "Hark-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound" style of conversation seemed to be the fashion: a state of things which caused one coming from a merry, social New England town, to feel as if she had got into an exhausted receiver; and the instinct of self-preservation, to say nothing of a philanthropic desire to serve the race, caused a speedy change in Ward No. 1.

More flattering than the most gracefully turned compliment, more grateful than the most admiring glance, was the sight of those rows of faces, all strange to me a little while ago, now lighting up with smiles of welcome as I came among them, enjoying that moment heartily, with a womanly pride in their regard, a motherly affection for them all. The evenings were spent in reading aloud, writing letters, waiting on and amusing the men, going the rounds with Dr. P---- as he made his second daily survey, dressing my dozen wounds afresh, giving last doses, and making them cozy for the long hours to come, till the nine o'clock bell rang, the gas was turned down, the day nurses went off duty, the night watch came on, and my nocturnal adventures began.

My ward was now divided into three rooms; and under favor of the matron, I had managed to sort out the patients in such a way that I had what I called my "duty room," my "pleasure room," and my "pathetic room," and worked for each in a different way. One I visited armed with a dressing-tray full of rollers, plasters, and pins; another, with books, flowers, games, and gossip; a third, with teapots, lullabies, consolation, and sometimes a shroud.

Wherever the sickest or most helpless man chanced to be, there I held my watch, often visiting the other rooms to see that the general watchman of the ward did his duty by the fires and the wounds, the latter needing constant wetting. Not only on this account did I meander, but also to get fresher air than the close rooms afforded; for owing to the stupidity of that mysterious "somebody" who does all the damage in the world, the windows had been carefully nailed down above, and the lower sashes could only be raised in the mildest weather, for the men lay just below. I had suggested a summary smashing of a few panes here and there, when frequent appeals to headquarters had proved unavailing and daily orders to lazy attendants had come to nothing. No one seconded the motion, however, and the nails were far beyond my reach; for though belonging to the sisterhood of "ministering angels," I had no wings, and might as well have asked for a suspension bridge as a pair of steps in that charitable chaos.

One of the harmless ghosts who bore me company during the haunted hours was Dan, the watchman, whom I regarded with a certain awe; for though so much together, I never fairly saw his face, and but for his legs should never have recognized him, as we seldom met by day. These legs were remarkable, as was his whole figure: for his body was short, rotund, and done up in a big jacket and muffler; his beard hid the lower part of his face, his hat-brim the upper, and all I ever discovered was a pair of sleepy eyes and a very mild voice. But the legs!--very long, very thin, very crooked and feeble, looking like gray sausages in their tight coverings, and finished off with a pair of expansive green cloth shoes, very like Chinese junks with the sails down. This figure, gliding noiselessly about the dimly lighted rooms, was strongly suggestive of the spirit of a beer-barrel mounted on corkscrews, haunting the old hotel in search of its lost mates, emptied and staved in long ago.

Another goblin who frequently appeared to me was the attendant of "the pathetic room," who, being a faithful soul, was often up to tend two or three men, weak and wandering as babies, after the fever had gone. The amiable creature beguiled the watches of the night by brewing jorums of a fearful beverage which he called coffee, and insisted on sharing with me; coming in with a great bowl of something like mud soup, scalding hot, guiltless of cream, rich in an all-pervading flavor of molasses, scorch, and tin pot.