Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

[Transcriber's Note:
Minor spelling and typographical errors corrected without note.
Other archaic and variable spelling preserved as printed.
Editor's punctuation style preserved.
Table of Contents updated to match entries.
Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
Emphasized words within italics indicated by +pluses+.
Greek transliterations are surrounded by ~tildes~.]

LIBRARY OF THE
WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE
ANCIENT AND MODERN

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

EDITOR

HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE
GEORGE HENRY WARNER

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Connoisseur Edition

Vol. VII.

NEW YORK
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY

Connoisseur Edition

LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES IN HALF RUSSIA

_No._ 299

* * * * *

Copyright, 1896, by

R. S. Peale and J. A. Hill

_All rights reserved_

THE ADVISORY COUNCIL

CRAWFORD H. TOY, A.M., LL.D.,
Professor of Hebrew,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.

THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, LL.D., L.H.D.,
Professor of English in the Sheffield Scientific School of
YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Conn.

WILLIAM M. SLOANE, Ph.D., L.H.D.,
Professor of History and Political Science,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, Princeton, N.J.

BRANDER MATTHEWS, A.M., LL.B.,
Professor of Literature,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, New York City.

JAMES B. ANGELL, LL.D.,
President of the
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, Ann Arbor, Mich.

WILLARD FISKE, A.M., Ph.D.,
Late Professor of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages and
Literatures,
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Ithaca, N.Y.

EDWARD S. HOLDEN, A.M., LL.D.,
Director of the Lick Observatory, and Astronomer,
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Berkeley, Cal.

ALCEE FORTIER, Lit.D.,
Professor of the Romance Languages,
TULANE UNIVERSITY, New Orleans, La.

WILLIAM P. TRENT, M.A.,
Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of
English and History,
UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, Sewanee, Tenn.

PAUL SHOREY, Ph.D.,
Professor of Greek and Latin Literature,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, Chicago, Ill.

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL.D.,
United States Commissioner of Education,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D.C.

MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A.M., LL.D.,
Professor of Literature in the
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, Washington, D.C.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOL. VII

LIVED PAGE

HENRY CUYLER BUNNER 1855-1896 2731

Triolet
The Love-Letters of Smith ('Short Sixes')
The Way to Arcady
Chant-Royal
Envoy

JOHN BUNYAN 1628-1688 2747

BY EDWIN P. PARKER

The Fight with Apollyon ('Pilgrim's Progress')
The Delectable Mountains (same)
Christiana and Her Companions Enter the Celestial City (same)

GOTTFRIED AUGUST BUeRGER 1747-1794 2767

William and Helen
The Wives of Weinsberg

EDMUND BURKE 1729-1797 2779

BY E. L. GODKIN

From Speech on 'Conciliation with America'
From Speech on 'The Nabob of Arcot's Debts'
From Speech on 'The French Revolution'

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT 1849- 2809

At the Pit ('That Lass o' Lowrie's')

FRANCES BURNEY (Madame D'Arblay) 1752-1840 2817

Evelina's Letter to the Rev. Mr. Villars ('Evelina')
A Man of the Ton ('Cecilia')
Miss Burney's Friends ('Letters')

ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796 2833

BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

The Cotter's Saturday Night
John Anderson, My Jo
Man Was Made to Mourn
Green Grow the Rashes
Is There for Honest Poverty
To a Mouse
To a Mountain Daisy
Tam o' Shanter
Bruce to His Men at Bannockburn
Highland Mary
My Heart's in the Highlands
The Banks o' Doon

JOHN BURROUGHS 1837- 2867

Sharp Eyes ('Locusts and Wild Honey')
Waiting

SIR RICHARD F. BURTON 1821-1890 2883

The Preternatural in Fiction ('The Book of a Thousand Nights
and a Night')
A Journey in Disguise ('The Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage
to El Medinah and Meccah')
En Route (same)

ROBERT BURTON 1577-1640 2904

Conclusions as to Melancholy ('The Anatomy of Melancholy')

HORACE BUSHNELL 1802-1876 2909

BY THEODORE T. MUNGER

Work and Play
From 'The Age of Homespun'
The Founders ('Work and Play')
Religious Music (same)

SAMUEL BUTLER 1612-1680 2927

Hudibras Described

LORD BYRON 1788-1824 2935

BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

Maid of Athens
Translation of a Romaic Song
Greece ('The Giaour')
The Hellespont and Troy ('The Bride of Abydos')
Greece and her Heroes ('The Siege of Corinth')
The Isles of Greece ('Don Juan')
Greece and the Greeks before the Revolution ('Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage')
To Rome (same)
The Coliseum (same)
Chorus of Spirits ('The Deformed Transformed')
Venice ('Childe Harold's Pilgrimage')
Ode to Venice
The East ('The Bride of Abydos')
Oriental Royalty ('Don Juan')
A Grecian Sunset ('The Curse of Minerva')
An Italian Sunset ('Childe Harold's Pilgrimage')
Twilight ('Don Juan')
An Alpine Storm ('Childe Harold's Pilgrimage')
The Ocean (same)
The Shipwreck ('Don Juan')
Love on the Island ('Don Juan')
The Two Butterflies ('The Giaour')
To His Sister ('Childe Harold's Pilgrimage')
Ode to Napoleon
The Battle of Waterloo ('Childe Harold's Pilgrimage')
Mazeppa's Ride ('Mazeppa')
The Irish Avatar
The Dream
She Walks in Beauty ('Hebrew Melodies')
Destruction of Sennacherib ('Hebrew Melodies')
From 'The Prisoner of Chillon'
Prometheus
A Summing-Up ('Childe Harold's Pilgrimage')
On This Day I Complete my Thirty-sixth Year

FERNAN CABALLERO (Cecilia Boehl de Faber) 1796-1877 3001

The Bull-Fight ('La Gaviota')
In the Home Circle (same)

GEORGE W. CABLE 1844- 3017

"Posson Jone'" ('Old Creole Days')

CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR 100-44 B.C. 3037

BY J. H. WESTCOTT

Defeat of Ariovistus and the Germans ('The Gallic Wars')
On the Manners and Customs of Ancient Gauls and Germans (same)
The Two Lieutenants (same)
Epigram on Terentius

THOMAS HENRY HALL CAINE 1853- 3067

Pete Quilliam's First-Born ('The Manxman')

PEDRO CALDERON 1600-1681 3071

BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN

The Lovers ('The Secret in Words')
Cyprian's Bargain ('The Wonderful Magician')
Dreams and Realities ('Such Stuff as Dreams are Made Of')
The Dream Called Life (same)

JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 1782-1850 3087

BY W. P. TRENT

Remarks on the Right of Petition (Speech in the Senate, 1840)
State Rights (Speech on the Admission of Michigan, 1837)
On the Government of Poland ('A Disquisition on Government')
Urging Repeal of the Missouri Compromise (Speech in the
Senate, 1850)

CALLIMACHUS Third Century B.C. 3101

Hymn to Jupiter
Epitaph
Epigram
Epitaph on Heracleitus
Epitaph
The Misanthrope
Epitaph upon Himself
Epitaph upon Cleombrotus

CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY 1831-1884 3107

From 'An Examination Paper,' 'The Posthumous Papers of the
Pickwick Club'
Ballad (Imitation of Jean Ingelow)
Lovers, and a Reflection (Imitation of Jean Ingelow)
Visions
Changed
Thoughts at a Railway Station
"Forever"

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME VII

PAGE

Persian Manuscript (Colored Plate) Frontispiece
John Bunyan (Portrait) 2748
Edmund Burke (Portrait) 2780
Robert Burns (Portrait) 2834
Burns Manuscript (Facsimile) 2844
"Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon" (Etching) 2866
Lord Byron (Portrait) 2936
"Newstead Abbey" (Etching) 2942
"The Bull-Fight" (Photogravure) 3004
Julius Caesar (Portrait) 3038
Calderon (Portrait) 3072
John Caldwell Calhoun (Portrait) 3088

VIGNETTE PORTRAITS

Henry Cuyler Bunner
Gottfried August Buerger
Frances Burney
Sir Richard F. Burton
Robert Burton
John Burroughs
Horace Bushnell
Samuel Butler
George W. Cable
Thomas Henry Hall Caine

HENRY CUYLER BUNNER

(1855-1896)

The position which Henry Cuyler Bunner has come to occupy in the literary annals of our time strengthens as the days pass. If the stream of his genius flowed in gentle rivulets, it traveled as far and spread its fruitful influence as wide as many a statelier river. He was above all things a poet. In his prose as in his verse he has revealed the essential qualities of a poet's nature: he dealt with the life which he saw about him in a spirit of broad humanity and with genial sympathy. When he fashioned the tender triolet on the pitcher of mignonette, or sang of the little red box at Vesey Street, he wrote of what he knew; and his stories, even when embroidered with quaint fancies, tread firmly the American soil of the nineteenth century. But Bunner's realism never concerned itself with the record of trivialities for their own sake. When he portrayed the lower phases of city life, it was the humor of that life he caught, and not its sordidness; its kindliness, and not its brutality. His mind was healthy, and since it was a poet's mind, the point upon which it was so nicely balanced was love: love of the trees and flowers, love of his little brothers in wood and field, love of his country home, love of the vast city in its innumerable aspects; above all, love of his wife, his family, and his friends; and all these outgoings of his heart have found touching expression in his verse. Indeed, this attitude of affectionate kinship with the world has colored all his work; it has made his satire sweet-tempered, given his tales their winning grace, and lent to his poetry its abiding power.

The work upon which Bunner's fame must rest was all produced within a period of less than fifteen years. He was born in 1855 at Oswego, New York. He came to the city of New York when very young, and received his education there. A brief experience of business life sufficed to make his true vocation clear, and at the age of eighteen he began his literary apprenticeship on the Arcadian. When that periodical passed away, Puck was just struggling into existence, and for the English edition, which was started in 1877, Bunner's services were secured. Half of his short life was spent in editorial connection with that paper. To his wisdom and literary abilities is due in large measure the success which has always attended the enterprise. Bunner had an intimate knowledge of American character and understood the foibles of his countrymen; but he was never cynical, and his satire was without hostility. He despised opportune journalism. His editorials were clear and vigorous; free not from partisanship, but from partisan rancor, and they made for honesty and independence. His firm stand against political corruption, socialistic vagaries, the misguided and often criminal efforts of labor agitators, and all the visionary schemes of diseased minds, has contributed to the stability of sound and self-respecting American citizenship.

Bunner's first decided success in story-telling was 'The Midge,' which appeared in 1886. It is a tale of New York life in the interesting old French quarter of South Fifth Avenue. Again, in 'The Story of a New York House,' he displayed the same quick feeling for the spirit of the place, as it was and is. This tale first appeared in the newly founded Scribner's Magazine, to which he has since been a constant contributor. Here some of his best short stories have been published, including the excellent 'Zadoc Pine,' with its healthy presentation of independent manhood in contest with the oppressive exactions of labor organizations. But Bunner was no believer in stories with a tendency; the conditions which lie at the root of great sociological questions he used as artistic material, never as texts. His stories are distinguished by simplicity of motive; each is related with fine unobtrusive humor and with an underlying pathos, never unduly emphasized. The most popular of his collections of tales is that entitled 'Short Sixes,' which, having first appeared in Puck, were published in book form in 1891. A second volume came out three years later. When the shadow of death had already fallen upon Bunner, a new collection of his sketches was in process of publication: 'Jersey Street and Jersey Lane.' In these, as in the still more recent 'Suburban Sage,' is revealed the same fineness of sympathetic observation in town and country that we have come to associate with Bunner's name. Among his prose writings there remains to be mentioned the series from Puck entitled 'Made in France.' These are an application of the methods of Maupassant to American subjects; they display that wonderful facility in reproducing the flavor of another's style which is exhibited in Bunner's verse in a still more eminent degree. His prose style never attained the perfection of literary finish, but it is easy and direct, free from sentimentality and rhetoric; in the simplicity of his conceptions and the delicacy of his treatment lies its chief charm.

Bunner's verse, on the other hand, shows a complete mastery of form. He was a close student of Horace; he tried successfully the most exacting of exotic verse-forms, and enjoyed the distinction of having written the only English example of the difficult Chant-Royal. Graceful _vers de societe_ and bits of witty epigram flowed from him without effort. But it was not to this often dangerous facility that Bunner owed his poetic fame. His tenderness, his quick sympathy with nature, his insight into the human heart, above all, the love and longing that filled his soul, have infused into his perfected rhythms the spirit of universal brotherhood that underlies all genuine poetry. His 'Airs from Arcady' (1884) achieved a success unusual for a volume of poems; and the love lyrics and patriotic songs of his later volume, 'Rowen,' maintain the high level of the earlier book. The great mass of his poems is still buried in the back numbers of the magazines, from which the best are to be rescued in a new volume. If his place is not among the greatest of our time, he has produced a sufficient body of fine verse to rescue his name from oblivion and render his memory dear to all who value the legacy of a sincere and genuine poet. He died on May 11th, 1896, at the age of forty-one.

TRIOLET

A pitcher of mignonette,
In a tenement's highest casement:
Queer sort of flower-pot--yet
That pitcher of mignonette
Is a garden in heaven set,
To the little sick child in the basement--
The pitcher of mignonette,
In the tenement's highest casement.

Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.

THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH

From 'Short Sixes'

When the little seamstress had climbed to her room in the story over the top story of the great brick tenement house in which she lived, she was quite tired out. If you do not understand what a story over a top story is, you must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man who owned that seven-story tenement found that he could rent another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof, like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived. You could just see the top of her window from the street--the huge cornice that had capped the original front, and that served as her window-sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the story on top of the top story.

The little seamstress was scarcely thirty years old, but she was such an old-fashioned little body in so many of her looks and ways that I had almost spelled her "sempstress," after the fashion of our grandmothers. She had been a comely body, too; and would have been still, if she had not been thin and pale and anxious-eyed.

She was tired out to-night, because she had been working hard all day for a lady who lived far up in the "New Wards" beyond Harlem River, and after the long journey home she had to climb seven flights of tenement-house stairs. She was too tired, both in body and in mind, to cook the two little chops she had brought home. She would save them for breakfast, she thought. So she made herself a cup of tea on the miniature stove, and ate a slice of dry bread with it. It was too much trouble to make toast.

But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too tired for that, and the six pots of geraniums that caught the south sun on the top of the cornice did their best to repay her. Then she sat down in her rocking-chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings, and she could look across some low roofs opposite and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country girl; and although she had lived for ten years in New York, she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night she felt the languor of the new season, as well as the heaviness of physical exhaustion. She was almost too tired to go to bed.

She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be begun after the night spent on the hard little bed. She thought of the peaceful days in the country, when she taught school in the Massachusetts village where she was born. She thought of a hundred small slights that she had to bear from people better fed than bred. She thought of the sweet green fields that she rarely saw nowadays. She thought of the long journey forth and back that must begin and end her morrow's work, and she wondered if her employer would think to offer to pay her fare. Then she pulled herself together. She must think of more agreeable things or she could not sleep. And as the only agreeable things she had to think about were her flowers, she looked at the garden on top of the cornice.

A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a cylindrical object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an irregular and uncertain manner toward her flower-pots. Looking closer, she saw that it was a pewter beer-mug, which somebody in the next apartment was pushing with a two-foot rule. On top of the beer-mug was a piece of paper, and on this paper was written, in a sprawling, half-formed hand:--

_porter
pleas excuse the libberty And
drink it_

The seamstress started up in terror and shut the window. She remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She had seen him on the stairs on Sundays. He seemed a grave, decent person; but--he must be drunk. She sat down on her bed all a tremble. Then she reasoned with herself. The man was drunk, that was all. He probably would not annoy her further. And if he did, she had only to retreat to Mrs. Mulvaney's apartment in the rear, and Mr. Mulvaney, who was a highly respectable man and worked in a boiler-shop, would protect her. So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse--and refuse--two or three "libberties" of like sort, she made up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see in the moonlight that the two-foot rule appeared again with one joint bent back, hitched itself into the mug-handle, and withdrew the mug.

The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and she hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the same hour had come around again, and she sat once more by her window. Then she smiled at the remembrance. "Poor fellow," she said in her charitable heart, "I've no doubt he's _awfully_ ashamed of it now. Perhaps he was never tipsy before. Perhaps he didn't know there was a lone woman in here to be frightened."

Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The pewter pot was in front of her, and the two-foot rule was slowly retiring. On the pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper was--

_porter
good for the helth
it makes meet_

This time the little seamstress shut her window with a bang of indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought that she would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she remembered the seven flights of stairs; and she resolved to see the janitor in the morning. Then she went to bed, and saw the mug drawn back just as it had been drawn back the night before.

The morning came, but somehow the seamstress did not care to complain to the janitor. She hated to make trouble--and the janitor might think--and--and--well, if the wretch did it again she would speak to him herself, and that would settle it. And so on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little seamstress sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And she had not sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking-chair which she had brought with her from her old home, when the pewter pot hove in sight, with a piece of paper on the top. This time the legend read:--

_Perhaps you are afrade i will
adress you
i am not that kind_

The seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to cry. But she felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned out of her window and addressed the twilight heaven.

"Mr.--Mr.--sir--I--will you _please_ put your head out of the window so that I can speak to you?"

The silence of the other room was undisturbed. The seamstress drew back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself for another attack, a piece of paper appeared on the end of the two-foot rule.

_when i Say a thing i
mene it
i have Sed i would not
Adress you and i
Will not_

What was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the window and thought hard about it. Should she complain to the janitor? But the creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he meant to be kind. He certainly was kind, to waste these pots of porter on her. She remembered the last time--and the first--that she had drunk porter. It was at home, when she was a young girl, after she had the diphtheria. She remembered how good it was, and how it had given her back her strength. And without one thought of what she was doing, she lifted the pot of porter and took one little reminiscent sip--two little reminiscent sips--and became aware of her utter fall and defeat. She blushed now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down, closed the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.

And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the simple appeal--

_Dont be afrade of it
drink it all_

the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle, and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her hands.

"Now," she said to herself, "you've done it! And you're just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as--as pusley!" And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. "He will never give me a chance to say 'I am sorry,'" she thought. And really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really must not ask her to drink porter with him.

"But it's all over and done now," she said to herself as she sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot traveling slowly toward her.

She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper,

_porter is good for Flours
but better for Fokes_

and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.

She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view. On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote in a tremulous hand--she _could_ write a very neat hand--

_Thanks._

This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-foot rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still, enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the spring damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her eyes.

_fine groing weather
Smith_

Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced the seamstress to continue the exchange of communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her country heart. What did "groing weather" matter to the toilers in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the new green and the upturned brown mold of the country fields. She took up the paper, and wrote under the first message:--

_Fine_

But that seemed curt: "for--" she added; "for" what? She did not know. At last in desperation she put down "potatoes." The piece of paper was withdrawn, and came back with an addition:--

_Too mist for potatos_

And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact that "m-i-s-t" represented the writer's pronunciation of "moist," she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind at such a time was seriously bent upon potatoes was not a man to be feared. She found a half-sheet of note-paper, and wrote:--

_I lived in a small village before I came to New York, but I am
afraid I do not know much about farming. Are you a farmer?_

The answer came:--

_have ben most Every thing
farmed a Spel in Maine
Smith_

As she read this, the seamstress heard the church clock strike nine.

"Bless me, is it so late?" she cried, and she hurriedly penciled _Good Night_, thrust the paper out, and closed the window. But a few minutes later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of paper on the cornice, fluttering in the evening breeze. It said only _good nite_, and after a moment's hesitation, the little seamstress took it in and gave it shelter.

* * * * *

After this they were the best of friends. Every evening the pot appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her window, Mr. Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were exchanged as rapidly as Mr. Smith's early education permitted. They told each other their histories, and Mr. Smith's was one of travel and variety, which he seemed to consider quite a matter of course. He had followed the sea, he had farmed, he had been a logger and a hunter in the Maine woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber-yard, and he was prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence, in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections moral and philosophical.

A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith's style:--

_i was one trip to van demens
land_

To which the seamstress replied:--

_It must have been very interesting._

But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:--

_it wornt_

Further he vouchsafed:--

_i seen a Chinese cook in
hong kong could cook flapjacks
like your mother_

_a mishnery that sells Rum
is the menest of Gods crechers_

_a bulfite is not what it is
cract up to Be_

_the dagos are wussen the
brutes_

_i am 6 1-3/4
but my Father was 6 foot 4_

The seamstress had taught school one winter, and she could not refrain from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith's orthography. One evening, in answer to this communication,--

_i killd a Bare in Maine 600
lbs waight_

she wrote:--

_Isn't it generally spelled Bear?_

but she gave up the attempt when he responded:--

_a bare is a mene animle any
way you spel him_

The spring wore on, and the summer came, and still the evening drink and the evening correspondence brightened the close of each day for the little seamstress. And the draught of porter put her to sleep each night, giving her a calmer rest than she had ever known during her stay in the noisy city; and it began, moreover, to make a little "meet" for her. And then the thought that she was going to have an hour of pleasant companionship somehow gave her courage to cook and eat her little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress's cheeks began to blossom with the June roses.

And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken, though the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejaculations and exclamations to which he might have responded. He was silent and invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the clink of his mug as he set it down on the cornice, told her that a living, material Smith was her correspondent. They never met on the stairs, for their hours of coming and going did not coincide. Once or twice they passed each other in the street--but Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him about a foot over her head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine-looking man, with his six feet one and three-quarters and his thick brown beard. Most people would have called him plain.

Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one summer evening, and a gang of corner-loafers stopped her and demanded money to buy beer, as is their custom. Before she had time to be frightened, Mr. Smith appeared,--whence, she knew not,--scattered the gang like chaff, and collaring two of the human hyenas, kicked them, with deliberate, ponderous, alternate kicks, until they writhed in ineffable agony. When he let them crawl away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly, looking very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on a rotund Teuton passing by.

"Say, Dutchy!" he roared. The German stood aghast. "I ain't got nothing to write with!" thundered Mr. Smith, looking him in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his way.

And so the summer went on, and the two correspondents chatted silently from window to window, hid from sight of all the world below by the friendly cornice. And they looked out over the roof and saw the green of Tompkins Square grow darker and dustier as the months went on.

Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and he never came back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed Susans or, later, asters or golden-rod for the little seamstress. Sometimes, with a sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a whole plant, with fresh loam for potting.

He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had "maid" himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish that was something fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its hollow eyes. At first she could not go to sleep with that flying-fish hanging on the wall.

But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool September evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:--

Respected and Honored Madam:

Having long and vainly sought an opportunity to convey to you
the expression of my sentiments, I now avail myself of the
privilege of epistolary communication to acquaint you with the
fact that the Emotions, which you have raised in my breast, are
those which should point to Connubial Love and Affection rather
than to simple Friendship. In short, Madam, I have the Honor to
approach you with a Proposal, the acceptance of which will fill
me with ecstatic Gratitude, and enable me to extend to you those
Protecting Cares, which the Matrimonial Bond makes at once the
Duty and the Privilege of him, who would, at no distant date,
lead to the Hymeneal Altar one whose charms and virtues should
suffice to kindle its Flames, without extraneous Aid

I remain, Dear Madam,
Your Humble Servant and
Ardent Adorer, J. Smith.

The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time. Perhaps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last century Mr. Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amused at the results of his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she was thinking of something else, for there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her small mouth.

But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have grown nervous, for presently another communication came along the line where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:

_If not understood will you
mary me_

The little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:--

_If I say Yes, will you speak to me?_

Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the window, and their faces met.

Copyright of Keppler and Schwarzmann.

THE WAY TO ARCADY

Oh, what's the way to Arcady,
To Arcady, to Arcady;
Oh, what's the way to Arcady,
Where all the leaves are merry?

Oh, what's the way to Arcady?
The spring is rustling in the tree--
The tree the wind is blowing through--
It sets the blossoms flickering white.
I knew not skies could burn so blue
Nor any breezes blow so light.
They blow an old-time way for me,
Across the world to Arcady.

Oh, what's the way to Arcady?
Sir Poet, with the rusty coat,
Quit mocking of the song-bird's note.
How have you heart for any tune,
You with the wayworn russet shoon?
Your scrip, a-swinging by your side,
Gapes with a gaunt mouth hungry-wide.
I'll brim it well with pieces red,
If you will tell the way to tread.

Oh, I am bound for Arcady,
And if you but keep pace with me
You tread the way to Arcady.

And where away lies Arcady,
And how long yet may the journey be?

Ah, that (quoth he) I do not know:
Across the clover and the snow--
Across the forest, across the flowers--
Through summer seconds and winter hours.
I've trod the way my whole life long,
And know not now where it may be;
My guide is but the stir to song,
That tells me I cannot go wrong,
Or clear or dark the pathway be
Upon the road to Arcady.

But how shall I do who cannot sing?
I was wont to sing, once on a time--
There is never an echo now to ring
Remembrance back to the trick of rhyme.

'Tis strange you cannot sing (quoth he),
The folk all sing in Arcady.

But how may he find Arcady
Who hath nor youth nor melody?

What, know you not, old man (quoth he)--
Your hair is white, your face is wise--
That Love must kiss that Mortal's eyes
Who hopes to see fair Arcady?
No gold can buy you entrance, there,
But beggared Love may go all bare;
No wisdom won with weariness,
But Love goes in with Folly's dress;
No fame that wit could ever win,
But only Love, may lead Love in
To Arcady, to Arcady.

Ah, woe is me, through all my days
Wisdom and wealth I both have got,
And fame and name, and great men's praise;
But Love, ah Love! I have it not.
There was a time, when life was new--
But far away, and half forgot--
I only know her eyes were blue;
But Love--I fear I knew it not.
We did not wed, for lack of gold,
And she is dead, and I am old.
All things have come since then to me,
Save Love, ah Love! and Arcady.

Ah, then I fear we part (quoth he),
My way's for Love and Arcady.

But you, you fare alone like me;
The gray is likewise in your hair.
What love have you to lead you there.
To Arcady, to Arcady?

Ah, no, not lonely do I fare:
My true companion's Memory.
With Love he fills the Spring-time air;
With Love he clothes the Winter tree.
Oh, past this poor horizon's bound
My song goes straight to one who stands--
Her face all gladdening at the sound--
To lead me to the Spring-green lands,
To wander with enlacing hands.
The songs within my breast that stir
Are all of her, are all of her.
My maid is dead long years (quoth he),
She waits for me in Arcady.

Oh, yon's the way to Arcady,
To Arcady, to Arcady;
Oh, yon's the way to Arcady,
Where all the leaves are merry.

Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.

CHANT-ROYAL

I would that all men my hard case might know;
How grievously I suffer for no sin:
I, Adolphe Culpepper Ferguson, for lo!
I of my landlady am locked in,
For being short on this sad Saturday,
Nor having shekels of silver wherewith to pay:
She has turned and is departed with my key;
Wherefore, not even as other boarders free,
I sing (as prisoners to their dungeon stones
When for ten days they expiate a spree):
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!

One night and one day have I wept my woe;
Nor wot I, when the morrow doth begin,
If I shall have to write to Briggs & Co.,
To pray them to advance the requisite tin
For ransom of their salesman, that he may
Go forth as other boarders go alway--
As those I hear now flocking from their tea,
Led by the daughter of my landlady
Piano-ward. This day, for all my moans,
Dry bread and water have been served me.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!

Miss Amabel Jones is musical, and so
The heart of the young he-boarder doth win,
Playing 'The Maiden's Prayer' _adagio_--
That fetcheth him, as fetcheth the banco skin
The innocent rustic. For my part, I pray
That Badarjewska maid may wait for aye
Ere sits she with a lover, as did we
Once sit together, Amabel! Can it be
That all that arduous wooing not atones
For Saturday shortness of trade dollars three?
_Behold_ the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!

Yea! she forgets the arm was wont to go
Around her waist. She wears a buckle, whose pin
Galleth the crook of the young man's elbow.
_I_ forget not, for I that youth have been.
Smith was aforetime the Lothario gay.
Yet once, I mind me, Smith was forced to stay
Close in his room. Not calm, as I, was he;
But his noise brought no pleasaunce, verily.
Small ease he got of playing on the bones
Or hammering on his stove-pipe, that I see.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!

Thou, for whose fear the figurative crow
I eat, accursed be thou and all thy kin!
Thee will I show up--yea, up will I show
Thy too thick buckwheats, and thy tea too thin.
Ay! here I dare thee, ready for the fray:
Thou dost _not_ "keep a first-class house," I say!
It does not with the advertisements agree.
Thou lodgest a Briton with a puggaree,
And thou hast harbored Jacobses and Cohns,
Also a Mulligan. Thus denounce I thee!
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!

ENVOY

Boarders! the worst I have not told to ye:
She hath stolen my trousers, that I may not flee
Privily by the window. Hence these groans.
There is no fleeing in a _robe de nuit_.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!

Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.

JOHN BUNYAN

(1628-1688)

BY REV. EDWIN P. PARKER

John Bunyan, son of Thomas Bunnionn Junior and Margaret Bentley, was born 1628, in the quaint old village of Elstow, one mile southwest of Bedford, near the spot where, three hundred years before, his ancestor William Boynon resided. His father was a poor tinker or "braseyer," and his mother's lineage is unknown. He says,--"I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up at my father's house in a very mean condition, among a company of poor countrymen."

He learned to read and write "according to the rate of other poor men's children"; but soon lost "almost utterly" the little he had learned. Shortly after his mother's death, when he was about seventeen years of age, he served as a soldier for several months, probably in the Parliamentary army. Not long afterward he married a woman as poor as himself, by whose gentle influence he was gradually led into the way of those severe spiritual conflicts and "painful exercises of mind" from which he finally came forth, at great cost, victorious. These religious experiences, vividly described in his 'Grace Abounding,' traceable in the course of his chief Pilgrim, and frequently referred to in his discourses, have been too literally interpreted by some, and too much explained away as unreal by others; but present no special difficulty to those who will but consider Bunyan's own explanations.

From boyhood he had lived a roving and non-religious life, although possessing no little tenderness of conscience. He was neither intemperate nor dishonest; he was not a law-breaker; he explicitly and indignantly declares:--"If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were hanged by the neck till they be dead, John Bunyan would still be alive and well!" The particular sins of which he was guilty, so far as he specifies them, were profane swearing, from which he suddenly ceased at a woman's reproof, and certain sports, innocent enough in themselves, which the prevailing Puritan rigor severely condemned. What, then, of that vague and exceeding sinfulness of which he so bitterly accuses and repents himself? It was that vision of sin, however disproportionate, which a deeply wounded and graciously healed spirit often has, in looking back upon the past from that theological standpoint whence all want of conformity to the perfect law of God seems heinous and dreadful.

"A sinner may be comparatively a little sinner, and sensibly a
great one. There are two sorts of greatness in sin: greatness by
reason of number; greatness by reason of the horrible nature of
sin. In the last sense, he that has but one sin, if such an one
could be found, may in his own eyes find himself the biggest
sinner in the world."

"Visions of God break the heart, because, by the sight the soul
then has of His perfections, it sees its own infinite and
unspeakable disproportion."

"The best saints are most sensible of their sins, and most apt
to make mountains of their molehills."

Such sentences from Bunyan's own writings--and many like them might be quoted--shed more light upon the much-debated question of his "wickedness" than all that his biographers have written.

In John Gifford, pastor of a little Free Church in Bedford, Bunyan found a wise friend, and in 1653 he joined that church. He soon discovered his gifts among the brethren, and in due time was appointed to the office of a gospel minister, in which he labored with indefatigable industry and zeal, and with ever-increasing fame and success, until his death. His hard personal fortunes between the Restoration of 1660 and the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672, including his imprisonment for twelve years in Bedford Gaol; his subsequent imprisonment in 1675-6, when the first part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' was probably written; and the arduous engagements of his later and comparatively peaceful years,--must be sought in biographies, the latest and perhaps the best of which is that by Rev. John Brown, minister of the Bunyan Church at Bedford. The statute under which Bunyan suffered is the 35th Eliz., Cap. 1, re-enacted with rigor in the 16th Charles II., Cap. 4, 1662; and the spirit of it appears in the indictment preferred against him:--"that he hath devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to Church to hear Divine service, and is a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this Kingdom," etc., etc.

The story of Bunyan's life up to the time of his imprisonment, and particularly that of his arrests and examinations before the justices, and also the account of his experiences in prison, should be read in his own most graphic narrative, in the 'Grace Abounding,' which is one of the most precious portions of all autobiographic literature. Bunyan was born and bred, he lived and labored, among the common people, with whom his sympathies were strong and tender, and by whom he was regarded with the utmost veneration and affection. He understood them, and they him. For nearly a century they were almost the only readers of his published writings. They came to call him Bishop Bunyan. His native genius, his great human-heartedness and loving-kindness, his burning zeal and indomitable courage, his racy humor and kindling imagination, all vitalized by the spiritual force which came upon him through the encompassing atmosphere of devout Puritanism, were consecrated to the welfare of his fellow-men. His personal friend, Mr. Doe, describes him as "tall in stature, strong-boned, of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes, nose well set, mouth moderately large, forehead something high, and his habit always plain and modest." His portrait, painted in 1685, shows a vigorous, kindly face, with mustachios and imperial, and abundance of hair falling in long wavy masses about the neck and shoulders,--more Cavalier-like than Roundhead.

Bunyan was a voluminous writer, and his works, many of them posthumous, are said to equal in number the sixty years of his life. But even the devout and sympathetic critic is compelled to acknowledge the justice of that verdict of time which has consigned most of them to a virtual oblivion. The controversial tracts possess no elements of enduring interest. The doctrinal and spiritual discourses are elaborations of a system of religious thought which long ago "had its day and ceased to be." Yet they contain pithy sentences, homely and pat illustrations, and many a paragraph, rugged or tender, in which one recognizes the stamp of his genius, and an intimation of his remarkable power as a preacher. The best of these discourses, 'The Jerusalem Sinner Saved,' 'Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ,' and 'Light for Them that Sit in Darkness,' while they sparkle here and there with things unique and precious to the Bunyan-curious student, would seem dull and tedious to the general though devout reader. In many a passage we feel, to use his phrase, his "heart-pulling power," no less than the force and felicity of his most original images and analogies; but these passages are little oases in a dry and thirsty land. The 'Life and Death of Mr. Badman' vividly presents certain aspects of English provincial life in that day; but they are repulsive, and the entire work is marred by flat moralizings and coarse, often incredible stories.

The 'Holy War,' which Macaulay said would have been our greatest religious allegory if the 'Pilgrim's Progress' had not been written, has ceased to be much read. The conception of the conquest of the human soul by the irresistible operation of divine force is so foreign to modern thought and faith that Bunyan's similitude no longer seems a verisimilitude. The pages abound with quaint, humorous, and lifelike touches;--as where Diabolus stations at Ear-Gate a guard of deaf men under old Mr. Prejudice, and Unbelief is described as "a nimble jack whom they could never lay hold of";--but as compared with the 'Pilgrim's Progress' the allegory is artificial, its elaboration of analogies is ponderous and tedious, and its characters lack solidity and reality.

All these works, however, exhibit a remarkable command of the mother tongue, a shrewd common-sense and mother wit, a fervid spiritual life, and a wonderful knowledge of the English Bible. They may be likened to more or less submerged wrecks kept from sinking into utter neglect by the bond of authorship which connects them with the one incomparable work which floats, unimpaired by time, on the sea of universal appreciation and favor. Bunyan's unique and secure position in English literature was gained by the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' the first part of which was published in 1678, and the second in 1685.

The broader, freer conception of the pilgrimage--as old in literature as the ninetieth Psalm, apt and fond, as innumerable books show, from De Guileville's 'Le Pelerinage de l'Homme' in the fourteenth century to Patrick's 'Parable' three hundred years later--took sudden possession of Bunyan's imagination while he was in prison, and kindled all his finest powers. Then he undertook, poet-wise, to work out this conception, capable of such diversity of illustration, in a form of literature that has ever been especially congenial to the human mind. Unguided save by his own consecrated genius, unaided by other books than his English Bible and Fox's 'Book of Martyrs,' he proceeded with a simplicity of purpose and felicity of expression, and with a fidelity to nature and life, which gave to his unconsciously artistic story the charm of perfect artlessness as well as the semblance of reality. When Bunyan's lack of learning and culture are considered, and also the comparative dryness of his controversial and didactic writings, this efflorescence of a vital spirit of beauty and of an essentially poetic genius in him seems quite inexplicable. The author's rhymed 'Apology for His Book,' which usually prefaces the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' contains many significant hints as to the way in which he was led to

"Make truth spangle, and its rays to shine."

He had no thought of producing a work of literary excellence; but on the other hand he had not, in writing this book, his customary purpose of spiritual edification. Indeed, he put his multiplying thoughts and fancies aside, lest they should interfere with a more _serious_ and _important_ book which he had in hand!

"I only thought to make
I knew not what: nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my neighbor; no, not I:
I did it mine own self to gratify.

. . . . . . .

Thus I set pen to paper with delight,
And quickly had my thoughts in black and white."

The words are exceedingly suggestive. In writing so aimlessly--"I knew not what"--to gratify himself by permitting the allegory into which he had suddenly fallen to take possession of him and carry him whithersoever it would, while he wrote out with delight his teeming fancies, was not Bunyan for the first time exercising his genius in a freedom from all theological and other restraint, and so in a surpassing range and power? The dreamer and poet supplanted the preacher and teacher. He yielded to the simple impulse of his genius, gave his imagination full sweep, and so, as never before or elsewhere, soared and sang in what seemed to many of his Puritan friends a questionable freedom and profane inspiration. And yet his song, or story, was not a creation of mere fancy,--

"It came from my own heart, so to my head,
And thence into my fingers trickled;"--

and therefore, we add, it finds its way to the heart of mankind.

Hence the spontaneity of the allegory, its ease and freedom of movement, its unlabored development, its natural and vital enfolding of that old pilgrim idea of human life which had so often bloomed in the literature of all climes and ages, but whose consummate flower appeared in the book of this inspired Puritan tinker-preacher. Hence also the dramatic unity and methodic perfectness of the story. Its byways all lead to its highway; its episodes are as vitally related to the main theme as are the ramifications of a tree to its central stem. The great diversities of experience in the true pilgrims are dominated by one supreme motive. As for the others, they appear incidentally to complete the scenes, and make the world and its life manifold and real. The Pilgrim is a most substantial person, and once well on the way, the characters he meets, the difficulties he encounters, the succor he receives, the scenes in which he mingles, are all, however surprising, most natural. The names, and one might almost say the forms and faces, of Pliable, Obstinate, Faithful, Hopeful, Talkative, Mercy, Great-heart, old Honest, Valiant-for-truth, Feeble-mind, Ready-to-halt, Miss Much-afraid, and many another, are familiar to us all. Indeed, the pilgrimage is our own--in many of its phases at least,--and we have met the people whom Bunyan saw in his dream, and are ourselves they whom he describes. When Dean Stanley began his course of lectures on Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, his opening words were those of the passage where the Pilgrim is taken to the House Beautiful to see "the rarities and histories of that place, both ancient and modern"; and at the end of the same course, wishing to sketch the prospects of Christendom, he quoted the words in which, on leaving the House Beautiful, Christian was shown the distant view of the Delectable Mountains.

But for one glance at Pope and Pagan, there is almost nothing to indicate the writer's ecclesiastical standing. But for here and there a marking of time in prosaic passages which have nothing to do with the story, there is nothing to mar the catholicity of its spirit. Romanists and Protestants, Anglicans and Puritans, Calvinists and Arminians,--all communions and sects have edited and circulated it. It is the completest triumph of truth by fiction in all literature. More than any other human book, it is "a religious bond to the whole of English Christendom." The second part is perhaps inferior to the first, but is richer in incident, and some of its characters--Mercy, old Honest, Valiant-for-truth, and Great-heart, for instance--are exquisitely conceived and presented. Here again the reader will do well to carefully peruse the author's rhymed introduction:--

"What Christian left locked up, and went his way,
Sweet Christiana opens with her key."