Chapter I (6)

"I've always thought I might never have found out that I had medicle tarlunt if I'd been rich," said Dr. Pingree meditatively. The little man had "taken up doctorin' out of his own head," as he expressed it, after finding that shoemaking and tin-peddling did not satisfy his ambition, and was the inventor and sole proprietor of an infallible medicine, known as the "Universal Pain-Exterminator." The jokers dubbed it "Health-Exterminator," but almost all Welby took it,--they must take something in the spring,--and the little doctor, who had a soul far above thoughts of sordid gain, never expected to be paid for it, which made it very popular. It couldn't kill one, being made of simplest roots and herbs; and if one should be cured, how very pleasant it would be to think that it was without cost!

"Sure enough, doctor, mebbe you never would," said the captain. "And I suppose the innercent satisfaction you've got a-makin' them medicines is as great as you could 'a' got out of riches, and without the worry and care of riches, too."

"Not to mention the good done to my fellow-creturs," said the little doctor.

"Jest as you say, the good done to your fellow-creturs not bein' worth mentionin'" said Cap'n 'Kiah, with a grave simplicity that disarmed suspicion. "There ain't no denyin' that poverty is strength'nin' to the faculties."

"Don't give me nothin' more strength'nin than riches in mine," said Uncle Peter Henchman, who boasted great wisdom and experience, based mysteriously on the possession of a wooden leg. "I've been in this world up'ards of seventy years, forty-five of it a-walkin' on a wooden leg, and I hain't never seen that poverty was anything but a curse."

"You've got a terrible mistaken p'int of view, Peter, well-meanin' as you be," said Cap'n 'Kiah, "There's nothin' in nater, and, I was a-goin' to say, in grace, but what you clap your eyes fust onto the contr'y side, and then you're sure there ain't nothin' _but_ a contr'y side."

"I wish I could see something besides the contr'y side of riches; but I hain't yet," said Miranda, with a heavy sigh.

Little Dr. Pingree cast a sidelong look at her, and then adjusted his cravat and considered the effect of the blue roses on his vest. Was a vision flitting before his eyes of the wagon drawn by gayly-caparisoned steeds and bearing in gilt letters on a red ground the legend, "Dr. Pingree's Pain-Exterminator, Humanity's Friend,"--of his own face, beautified by art, adorning fences and walls above this proud inscription, "The Renowned Inventor of the Universal Pain-Exterminator"? This fame, the dream of a lifetime, might now be purchased by money. And he had always admired Miranda.

Miranda caught his glance, and, with the suspicion which wealth had already engendered, divined his thought. Was there going to be another aspirant for her hand?

"The wind's a-blowin up; and what a roarin' the sea does make!" she said hurriedly, to cover her embarrassment. "The only thing I don't like about this house is its bein' so near the sea. It's rainin' hard; and I'm glad of it," she added, in an undertone, to Mrs. Bemis,--"for _he_ won't be so likely to get round here to-night. Courtin' is real tryin'."

"The ocean is a dretful disconserlate-soundin' cretur," remarked Uncle Peter lugubriously; "and when you think of the drownded folks she's got a-rollin' round in her, 'tain't no wonder."

"The ocean's a useful work o' nater, and she's fetched and carried and aimed a livin' for a good many more'n she's swallered up," said Cap'n 'Kiah.

"I expect this world ain't a vale of tears, nohow," said Uncle Peter in an aggrieved tone. "There is folks that knows more'n the hymn-book."

"Well, it is, and then ag'in it ain't, jest accordin' to the way you look at it. There's a sight more the matter with folks's p'int o' view than there is with the Lord A'mighty's world.--Now, Jo, if you've got that cretur o' yourn into ship-shape,--it always doos seem to me jest like a human cretur that's got the right p'int o' view, that fiddle doos,--jest give it to us lively."

Jo tuned up, with modest satisfaction, and two or three couples stood up to dance. Little Dr. Pingree was about to solicit Miranda's hand for the dance, when there came a knock at the door.

Miranda stuck her knitting-needle through her back-hair in an agitated and expectant manner. But it was not the lank figure of the book-peddler, her betrothed, that darkened the door. It was a forlorn woman, dripping with rain, with two small boys clinging to her skirts.

"I suppose poor folks have a right to come in here out of the rain," she said, advancing to the fire and seating herself with a sullen and dejected aspect.

Little Dr. Pingree, who felt the arrival to be very inopportune, nevertheless gallantly hastened to replenish the fire.

The poor-mistress hospitably offered to remove the visitor's wet wrappings, but she shook her head.

"I want to find the relatives of Ephrum Spencer," she said.

"You'll have to go a good ways," said Cap'n 'Kiah.

"The graveyard is chock full of 'em," said Uncle Peter.

"They've kind of died out," explained Cap'n 'Kiah. "They seemed to be the kind that dies out easy and nateral."

"His uncle Hiram isn't dead, is he?" asked the woman, with the strain of anxiety in her voice.

"He died about a year ago."

"What's become of his money?" asked the stranger sharply.

"Well, there wa'n't so much as folks thought," said Cap'n 'Kiah. "He frittered away a good deal on new-fangled merchines and such things that wa'n't of any account,--had a reg'lar mania for 'em for a year or so before he died; and then he give some money to his housekeeper and the man that worked for him, and what was left he give to the town for a new town-hall; but, along of quarrellin' about where 'twas to set and what 'twas to be built of, and gittin' legal advice to settle the p'ints, I declare if 'tain't 'most squandered! But, la! if there wa'n't such quarrellin' amongst folks, what would become of the lawyers? They'd all be here, a-settin' us by the ears, I expect."

"And there isn't a cent for his own nephew's starving children?" said the woman bitterly.

"Ephrum's? Oh, la, no! The old man never set by Ephrum, you know: them two was always contr'y-minded. You don't say, now, that you're Ephrum's wife?" Cap'n 'Kiah surveyed her with frank curiosity.

"I'm Ephrum's widow."

"You don't say so, now! Well, there's wuss ockerpations than bein' a widow," remarked Cap'n 'Kiah consolingly.

Miranda had drawn the younger boy to her side. She was chafing his numb hands and smoothing the damp locks from his forehead.

"Why, how cold your hands have grown!" the child cried. "They're colder than mine. And how funny and white you look!"

Miranda had felt, from the moment when she first saw the forlorn little group, that Ephraim was dead, and yet the sure knowledge came as a shock. But this child was looking at her with Ephraim's eyes: they warmed her heart.

"_She_ knew me, if none of the rest of you did," said the widow, indicating Miranda by a nod of her head. "And I knew her, too, just as soon as I set eyes on her.--Well, you needn't hold any grudge against me, Miranda Daggett. I calculate you got the best of the bargain. Ephrum hadn't any faculty to get along. I've struggled and slaved till I'm all worn out; and now I haven't a roof to cover me nor my children, nor a mouthful to eat."

Miranda sprang up, her arms around both the boys.

"_I have!_ I have plenty for you all. And I've been a-wonderin' why it should have come to me, that didn't need it; but now I know. You come right home with me.--Mis' Bemis, you'll let Tready harness up?"

There were some objections made on account of the rain, but Miranda overruled them all.

She drew Mrs. Bemis aside and confided to her that she didn't want Ephrum's boys to stay even one night in the poor-house, because "it might stick to 'em afterwards." And she shouldn't really feel that they were going to belong to her until she had them in her own house.

So, through the driving rain, in the open wagon which was the most luxurious equipage that the poor-farm boasted, Miranda was driven home with her _protégés_; while Mrs. Bemis gave way to renewed anxiety about the fall tailorin' and Dr. Pingree heaved a sigh over his vanished dreams,--a very gentle one, he was so used to seeing dreams vanish; and there was consolation in having such an event to talk over.

Miranda's home was a rambling old house, and it seemed deserted and ghostly when they entered it; but Miranda kindled a fire In the kitchen stove and another in the great fireplace in the sitting-room, and the boys, warmed and fed and comforted, grew hilarious, and the ghosts were all dispersed, and it seemed to Miranda for the first time like home.

When she had seen all three cosily tucked into their beds, she went downstairs to rake over the fire and see that all was safe for the night. She found herself too full of a happy excitement to seek her own slumbers. Ephraim was dead; but he had faded out of her life long before; he had been nothing but a memory, and she had that still. He even seemed nearer to her, being in the Far Country, than he had done before. And his children were under her roof; hers to feed and clothe and care for in the happy days that were coming; hers to educate. What joy to have the means to do it with! what greater joy to work and save and manage that there should be enough!

Miranda looked into the leaping flame of her fire and saw brightest pictures of the future,--until suddenly she turned her head away and covered her face with her hands, groaning bitterly: it was only a blackened limb that, standing tall and straight in the flame, took upon itself a grotesque resemblance to a one-armed man. And Miranda remembered her affianced the book-agent. "Oh, land I how could I 'a' forgot! I've give him my promise."

To Miranda's Puritan mind a promise was to be kept, with tears and blood if need were.

"Oh, what a foolish woman I've been! If I had only waited till I found out what the Lord _did_ mean by sendin' that money to me! _He_ wouldn't stand the boys, anyhow: he's nigh and graspin': I've found that out. And I don't suppose I could buy him off with anything short of the whole property. I did think he cared a little something about me, and mebbe he does. I don't want to be too hard on him, but he was terrible put out because I wouldn't give him but three hundred dollars to pay down for that land that he's buy in' at such a bargain. I s'pose I should, only I couldn't help thinkin' he might wait till we was married before he begun to think about investin' my money. No, he won't let me off from marryin' him unless I give him all my money. Yesterday I had thoughts of doin' that; but now there's the boys."

The queer black stick had fallen, and was crumbling away, but it had crushed the last flickering flame. Miranda's fire, like her hopes, had turned to ashes.

She walked the floor restlessly, seeking vainly for a pathway out of her troubles, until she was exhausted. Then she slept a troubled sleep until daylight.

It was a little comfort to get breakfast for Ephrum's wife and boys, although she was so heavy-hearted.

She went across the field to Eben Curtis's to get a bit of fresh fish: Eben had been fishing the day before.

Eben, who was a friendly young man, looked at her pityingly as he put the' fish into her basket. As she was turning away in unwonted silence, he was moved to say, "I wouldn't take it so hard if I was you, Miss Daggett. You're well rid of such a scamp. And maybe they'll catch him and get the money back. La, now! you don't say you hain't heard?" he exclaimed at sight of Miranda's astonished face. "They most generally _do_ get the news up to the poor-house." Eben lifted his hat and ran his fingers through his hair with a mingling of sympathy and pleasure in being the first to impart important news. "He's _cleared out_, the book-agent has,--got all the money he could of folks without giving 'em any books; and folks say he got some of you. He's been in jail for playing the same trick before; and folks think he'll be caught this time."

"Oh, it's a mistake! He'll come back," said Miranda dejectedly, after a moment's thought.

"Well, he isn't very likely to, because"--here Eben turned his head aside in embarrassment--"because he's got a wife and family over to Olneyville."

Radiant delight overspread Miranda's countenance.

"I hope they'll just let him go," she said. "He's welcome to what money he's got of mine,--more'n welcome." And homeward she went with a light step.

"Women are queer," mused Eben, as he returned to his fish-cleaning. "She's lost her beau and her money, and she's tickled to death."

"I declare, you look just as fresh and young and happy as you did fifteen years ago!" said the widow, with a touch of envy, as they sat down at the cheerful breakfast-table.

Miranda touched Mrs. Bemis's arm as she came out of the meeting-house the next Sunday, Ephraim's boys, preternaturally smooth of hair and shining of face, beside her.

"If it ain't perfane to say it. Mis' Bemis, I feel as if I'd got through the eye of that needle clear into the kingdom of heaven."

The poor-mistress commented upon the saying in the midst of her numerous family that night: "She's got that selfish, tempery woman saddled onto her for life, and she'll work her fingers to the bone for them boys, that ain't anything to her, and won't be apt to amount to much,--for there never was one of them Spencers that did,--and she calls that the kingdom of heaven!"

"It's jest as I always told you," remarked Cap'n 'Kiah placidly. "It's all owin' to the p'int of view."

SOPHIE SWETT.

* * * * *

THE SECOND RANK.

A ZOOLOGICAL STUDY.

It is a suggestive sign of our naturalistic times that so many first-class towns in Europe and America contemplate the establishment of Zoological Gardens. In the United States alone five cities have successfully executed that project. Travelling menageries have taken the place of the mediæval pageants. Natural histories begin to supersede the ghost-stories of our fathers. The scientific literature of four different nations has monographs on almost every known species of beasts and birds.

With such data of information it seems rather strange that the problem of precedence in the scale of animal intelligence should still be a mooted question. The primacy of the animal kingdom remains, of course, undisputed; but the dog, the elephant, the horse, the beaver,--nay, the parrot, the bee, and the ant,--have found learned and uncompromising advocates of their claims to the honors of the second rank.

Russel Wallace and Dr. Brehm have agitated the question, but failed to settle it,--even to their own satisfaction. The reason, I believe, is that the exponents of the different theories have failed to agree on a definite standard of comparison. The mathematical principle implied in the construction of a honey-comb, we are told, can challenge comparison with the ripest results of human science. The acumen of a well-trained elk-hound, a philosophical sportsman assures us, comes nearer to human reason than any other manifestation of animal sagacity. Elephant-trainers, too, adduce instances that almost pass the line of distinction between intuitive prudence and the results of reflection. Yet if those distinctions suffice to define the difference between reason and the primitive instincts, they should reduce the scope of the question in so far as to make it clear that, instead of measuring the degree of the development of special faculties of the animal mind, we should _ascertain the direction_ of those faculties. Instinct tends to promote the interests of the species, and is limited to the more or less skilful, but monotonous, performance of a special task. Within that limited sphere its competence is perfect. Reason may be often at fault, but its capacity enlarges with practice, and the scope of its application is unlimited. It may be exerted in the interest of the species, of the tribe, of the family; it may devote itself to the service of an abstract principle or subserve the purposes of individual caprice. It differs from instinct as a piano differs from a barrel-organ. The pianist has to master his art by years of toil, but can apply it to all possible variations or extravaganzas of music. The organ-grinder can delight his audience as much by his first as by his last performance, but his _répertoire_ is limited. Reason is indefinite, free, and versatile. Instinct is exact, but circumscribed.

Tested by that standard, the difference between the intelligence of the higher _quadrumana_--the anthropoid apes, the baboons, and several species of the macaques--and that of their dumb fellow-creatures is so pronounced that it amounts to a difference of kind as well as of degree. _Borné_, literally limited, but used in French as a synonyme of short-witted, is the term that best characterizes the actions of all other animals, as compared with the graceless but amazingly versatile and well-planned pranks of our nearest relatives. The standard of _usefulness_ would, indeed, degrade the perpetrators of these pranks below the rank of the dullest donkey; but as a criterion of intelligence the application of that test should rather be reversed.

Watch a colony of house-building insects, their faithful co-operation, their steady, exact adaptation of right means to a fixed purpose, and compare their activity with that of a troop of ball-playing boys. Does not the gratuitous ingenuity of the young bipeds indicate a far higher degree of intelligence? Does it argue against the quality of that intelligence that any novel phenomenon--a funnel-shaped cloud, the appearance of a swarm of bats or unknown birds--would divert the ball-players from their immediate purpose? Monkeys alone share this gift of gratuitous curiosity. A strange object, a piece of red cloth fluttering in the grass, may excite the interest of a watch-dog or of an antelope. They may approach to investigate, but for subjective purposes. They fear the presence of an enemy. A monkey's inquisitiveness can dispense with such motives. In my collection of four-handed pets I have a young Rhesus monkey (_Macacus Rhesus_), by no means the most intelligent member of the community, but gifted with an amount of meddlesome pluck which often makes it necessary to circumscribe the freedom of his movements. One day last spring, when he joined an assembly of his fellow-boarders on a sunny porch, the shortness of his tether did not prevent him from picking a quarrel with a big raccoon. After a few sham manoauvres the old North American suddenly lost his temper and charged his tormentor with an energy of action that led to an unexpected result,--for in springing back the Rhesus snapped his wire chain, and in the next moment went flying down the lane toward the open woods. But just before he reached the gate he suddenly stopped. On a post of the picket-fence the neighbors' boys had deposited a kite, and the Rhesus paused. The phenomenon of the dangling kite-tail, with its polychromatic ribbons, eclipsed the memory of his wrongs and his mutinous projects: he snatched the tail, and with the gravity of a coroner proceeded to examine the dismembered appendage. If he had mistaken the apparatus for a trap, the result of the dissection must have reassured him; but he continued the inquest till one of his pursuers headed him off and drove him back to his favorite hiding-place under the porch, which he reached in safety, though in the interest of science he had encumbered himself with a large section of kite-paper.

On my last visit to New York I bought a female Chacma baboon that had attracted my attention by the grotesque demonstrativeness of her motions, and took her on board of a Norfolk steamer, where she at once became an object of general enthusiasm. The next morning Sally was taking her breakfast on deck, when she suddenly dropped her apple-pie and jumped upon the railing. Through the foam of the churned brine her keen eye had espied a shoal of porpoises, and, clinging to the railing with her hind hands, she continued to gesticulate and chatter as long as our gambolling fellow-travellers remained in sight.

Menagerie monkeys, too, are sure to interrupt their occupations at the sight of a new-comer,--a clear indication that monkeys, like men, possess a surplus of intelligence above the exigencies of their individual needs. Yet these exigencies are by no means inconsiderable. Unlike the grazing deer and the deer-eating panther, the frugivorous monkeys of the tropics are the direct competitors of the intolerant lord of creation. The Chinese macaques, the Moor monkey, the West-African baboons, have to eke out a living by pillage. The Gibraltar monkey has hardly any other resources. Nor has nature been very generous in the physical equipment of the species. Most monkeys lack the sharp teeth that enable the tiger to defy the avenger of his misdeeds. Without exception they all lack the keen scent that helps the deer to elude its pursuers. But their mental faculties more than compensate for such bodily deficiencies. In the Abyssinian highlands the mornings are often cold enough to cover the grass with hoar-frost, yet the frost-dreading baboons choose that very time to raid the corn-fields of the natives. They omit no precaution, and it is almost impossible to circumvent the vigilance of their sentries. Prudence, derived from _providence_,--i.e., prevision, the gift of fore-seeing things,--is in many respects almost a synonyme of reason. Physically that gift is typified in the telescopic eyes which monkeys share with a few species of birds, but with hardly any of their mammalian relatives, except man in a state of nature. Mentally it manifests itself in a marvellous faculty for anticipating danger. Last summer Sally, the above-mentioned baboon, contrived to break loose, and took refuge on the top of the roof. I do not believe that she intended to desert, but she was bent on a romp, and had made up her mind not to be captured by force. A chain of eight or nine feet dangled from her girdle, and she persistently avoided approaching the lower tier of shingles, to keep that chain from hanging down over the edge, but was equally careful not to venture too near the extremities of the roof-ridge, for there was a skylight at each gable. She kept around the middle of the roof; and we concluded to loosen a few shingles in that neighborhood and grab her chain through the aperture, while a confederate was to divert her attention by a continuous volley of small pebbles. But somehow Sally managed to distinguish the hammer-strokes from the noise of the bombardment, and at once made up her mind that the roof had become untenable. The only question was how to get down; for by that time the house was surrounded by a cordon of sentries. As a preliminary measure she then retreated to the top of the chimney, and one of our strategists proposed to dislodge her by loading the fireplace with a mixture of pine-leaves and turpentine. But better counsel prevailed, and we contented ourselves with firing a blank cartridge through the flue. Sally at once jumped off, but regained her vantage-ground on the roof-ridge, and we had to knock out a dozen shingles before one of our fourteen or fifteen hunters at last managed to lay hold of her chain.

The naturalist Lenz describes the uncontrollable grief of a Siamang gibbon who had been taken on board of a homebound English packet, where his owner tempted him with all sorts of tidbits, in the vain hope of calming his sorrow. The gibbon kept his eye on the receding outline of his native mountains, and every now and then made a desperate attempt to break his fetters; but when the coast-line began to blend with the horizon the captive's behavior underwent a marked change. He ceased to tug at his chain, and, chattering with protruded lips, after the deprecatory manner of his species, began to fondle his owner's hand, and tried to smooth the wrinkles of his coat, with the unmistakable intention of reciprocating his friendly overtures. As soon as his native coast had faded out of view he had evidently recognized the hopelessness of an attempt at escape. He realized the fact that he had to accept the situation, and, becoming alarmed at the possible consequences of his refractory violence, he concluded that it was the safest plan to conciliate the good will of his jailer. From analogous observations I can credit the account in all its details, and I believe that the conduct of the captive four-hander can be traced to a mental process as utterly beyond the brain-scope of a horse, a dog, or an elephant as a problem in spherical trigonometry.

The inarticulate language of our Darwinian relatives has one considerable advantage over the articulate speech of a trained parrot: it has a definite meaning. Mumbling with protruded lips is an appeal for pity and affection; a coughing grunt denotes indignation; surprise is expressed by a very peculiar, _sotto voce_ guttural; _crescendo_ the same sound is a danger-signal which the little Capuchin-monkey of the American tropics understands as well as the African chimpanzee. My Chacma baboon defies an adversary by contracting her eyebrows and slapping the floor with her hands. The vocabulary of a talking bird is no doubt more extensive, but it is used entirely at random. A first-class parrot can repeat seventy different phrases; but an English philosopher offered a hundred pounds sterling to any "mind-reader" who should succeed in guessing the seven figures in the number of a hundred-pound bank-note, and It would be as safe to offer the same sum to any bird that could furnish evidence of attaching a definite meaning to any seven of his seventy sentences. On close investigation, the stories of conversational parrots prove as apocryphal as Katy-King legends and planchette miracles.

Causality--i.e., the gift of tracing a recondite connection of cause and effect--is another faculty which many varieties of monkeys possess in a decidedly ultra-instinctive degree. I remember the surprise of a picnic-party who had borrowed my young Rhesus and on their return tied him up on the porch of a garden-house. During the trip the little scamp had behaved with the decorum of a well-bred youth, but, finding himself unobserved, he at once made a vicious attempt to tear his rope with his teeth. Whenever his boon companions approached the porch he would resume his attitude of innocence, but as soon as they turned away, which they often did on purpose to try him, he promptly recommenced his work of destruction. Their giggling, however, excited his suspicions, and, seeing them peep around the corner, he suddenly became a model of virtuous inactivity. One of the picnickers then entered the garden-house by a rear door, to watch the little hypocrite through a crack in the board wall, while his companions ostensibly walked away and out of sight. As soon as everything was quiet. Master Rhesus went to work again, but at the same time kept his eye on the corner till he was interrupted by a tap on the wall and a mysterious voice from within, "Stop that, Tommy!" Tommy started, peeped around the corner, and looked puzzled. He was sure there was nobody in sight. How could an invisible spy have witnessed his transgression? He then scrutinized the wall more closely, discovered the crack, and dropped the rope with a curious grin, as he squinted through the tell-tale aperture. He had traced the effect to its cause.

Unlike dogs, raccoons, or squirrels, chained monkeys rarely entangle themselves: they at once notice the shortening of their tether, and never rest till they have discovered the clue of the phenomenon. A dog in the same predicament has to content himself with tugging at his chain or gnawing his rope; and the reason is that the wisdom of the wisest dog is limited to business qualifications. He is a hunter, and nature has endowed him with the requisite faculties, just as she has endowed the constructive spider and the bee. Bees and dogs share the faculty of direction, enabling them to find their way home, a talent implying a very miracle of infallible and yet unconscious intuition, and in the strictest sense a one-sided business qualification. The goose, the sturgeon, and the almost brainless tortoise possess the same gift in a transcendent degree; the oriole builds her first nest as skilfully as the last; the young bee constructs her hexagons with an ease and a uniform success that leave no possible doubt that the exercise of her talent is generically different from a function of reason. Instincts may be far-reaching enough to defy the rivalry of human science, but they resemble loophole-guns, that can be fired only in a single direction. The intuition that guides the turkey-hen to her nest does not enable her to find her way out of a half-open log trap. The instinct by which a dog retraces his trail across broad rivers and through woods does not enable him to retrace the coils of a tangled rope. A monkey's talents, like our own, are less infallible, but more versatile, and at the possessor's discretion can be applied and perverted to all possible purposes. Hence also that peculiar interest which the pranks of our mischievous relatives excite even in spectators not apt to appreciate the comic features of the spectacle. In the monkey-house of the Philadelphia Zoo I have seen saturnine burghers stand motionless for hours together, and contemplative children rapt in reveries that had little to do with the hope of witnessing a beast-fight. They seemed to feel the spell of a secret veiled in grotesque symbols, but disclosing occasional revelations of its significance, like glimpses into the fore-world of the human race.

In the fairy-tales of the old Hindoo scriptures monkeys figure as counsellors of nonplussed heroes, and in the crisis of the Titan war the Devas themselves condescend to seek the advice of the monkey Honuman, who contrives to outwit the prince of the night-spirits. In the international fable of "Reynard the Fox," a she-monkey on the eve of the trial by battle suggests the stratagem that turns the scales against the superior strength of the wolf Isegrim. The _mens æqua in arduis_ is, indeed, a simian characteristic. Monkeys never have their wits more completely about them than in the moment of a sudden danger, and a higher development of the same faculty distinguishes the Caucasian from all rival races, even from the sharp-witted Semites. After the conquest of Algiers the French tried to conciliate the native element by educating a number of young Arabs and giving them a chance to compete with the cadets of St.-Cyr. They made excellent routine-officers, but even their patron, General Clausel, admitted that they "could not be trusted in a panic."

Dr. Langenbeck mentions a family of Silesian peasants who seemed to have an hereditary predisposition to the abnormity known as microcephalism, or small-headedness. They were not absolute idiots, but remarkably slow-spoken and all extremely _averse to active occupations_. An active disposition is generally a pretty safe gauge of mental capacity. Intellectual vigor leads to action. To a person of mental resources inactivity is more irksome than the hardest work, and sluggishness is justly used as a synonyme of imbecility. Exertion under the pressure of want is, however, not incompatible with an inert disposition, and spontaneous activity, the love of busy-ness for its own sake, can be ascribed only to men and monkeys; monkeys, at least, are the only animals in whom repletion and old age cannot dampen that passion. After a full meal an elephant will stand for hours in a sort of piggish torpor; a gorged bird seeks the tree-shade; an overfed dog and nearly every old dog becomes a picture of laziness. Monkeys rest only during sleep. Old age does not affect their nimbleness; they can be fattened, for I have seen baboons as sleek as seals, but, like Gibbon, Henry Buckle, and Marshal Vendôme, they prove that the energy of a strong will can bear up under such burdens. Madame de Staël, too, managed to combine a progressive _embonpoint_ with the undiminished brilliancy of her genius, though it is certain that adipose tissue does not feed the flame of every mind. Charles Dickens in his "American Notes" expresses the opinion that no vigor of mental constitution could be proof against the influence of solitary confinement; but the narrow monkey-cages of our zoological prisons show that the minds of the little captives can stand the test of even that ordeal. They play with their shadows, if the nakedness of their four walls does not afford any other pastime.

Docility, on the other hand, is a rather ambiguous test of intelligence. The willingness and the ability to learn may supplement their mutual deficiencies, but differ as radically as patience and genius. Dogs master the tasks of their education by their earnest endeavor to please their master; Jacko excels them in spite of his waywardness. Some boys win college-prizes by memorizing their lessons in conformity with the wishes of a dreaded or beloved preceptor, others by dint of natural aptitude and a love of knowledge based on spontaneous inquisitiveness; and every circus-trainer knows that teachers who understand to avail themselves of that gift can teach a monkey tricks which can neither be coaxed nor kicked into the skull of the most docile dog. Besides, the domestic dog is a considerably modified variety of the family to which he belongs, and in order to appreciate the difference between the _natural_ intelligence of the canines and the quadrumana we should compare the docility of the monkey with that of the wolf or the jackal. In the submissiveness of the dog the hereditary influence of several thousand generations has developed a sort of artificial instinct that qualifies him for the exigencies of his servitude; but submissiveness _per se_, however valuable for plastic purposes, is certainly not a characteristic concomitant of superior intelligence. In the soul of the Hindoo, the Chinese, and the Eastern Slav, the long-inculcated duty of subordination has become almost a second nature, while the most intelligent tribes of the ancient Greeks were famous--or, from a Chinese point of view, perhaps infamous--for a strong tendency in the opposite direction.

Patience is not a prominent gift of our four-handed relatives, but compensating nature has endowed them with the genius of self-help and its adjuvant talents,--observation, causality, imitativeness, covetousness, and self-asserting pluck. They also possess a fair share of such faculties as inquisitiveness, vigilance, and perseverance, all rudiments, indeed, but the rudiments of supremacy.

FELIX L. OSWALD.

* * * * *

ELUSIVE

Just out of reach she lightly swings, My Psyche with the rainbowed wings, A floating flower, by winds impelled, The honeyed spray has caught and held. Now circling low, with grace divine, She sips the tulip's chaliced wine. Why should I seek to bring her nigh And find--a simple butterfly?

O isles in ocean's azure set, Like sculptured dome and minaret Your purpled cliffs and headlands rise Against the far-off, misty skies. Yet, thither borne by helpful breeze, As lifts the veil from circling seas, Well know I your enchanted land Would prove but rugged rock and sand.

O friend whose words of wisdom rare Inspire my soul to do and dare, Across the distance wide and drear I will not reach to bring you near. Why cast ideal grace away To find you only common clay? The best of life and thought and speech Is that which lies--just out of reach.

SARAH D. HOBART.

* * * * *

THE PARISIAN COUTURIER.

The _couturier_--the bearded dressmaker, the masculine artist in silk and satin--is an essentially modern and Parisian phenomenon. It is true that the elegant and capricious Madame de Pompadour owed most of her toilets and elegant accoutrements to the genius of Supplis, the famous _tailleur pour dames_ or ladies' tailor, of the epoch. But Supplis was an exception, and he never assumed the name of _couturier_, the masculine form of _couturière_, "dress-maker." That appellation was reserved for the great artists of the Second Empire, Worth, Aurelly, Pingat, and their rivals, who utterly revolutionized feminine costume and endeavored to direct it in the paths of art, good taste, and comfort. Enthusiasts of grace and beauty, these artists set themselves the task of preventing the inconstant goddess of fashion from continuing to wander off into ugliness, deformity, and absurdity. In their devotion to art, beauty, and luxury, they determined never to forget fitness and comfort, and since their initiative has regulated the vagaries of fashion we must admit that our women have never been the victims of such inconvenient, ugly, and absurd inventions as crinoline, leg-o'-mutton sleeves, the _coiffure à la frégate_, and the various other monstrosities of the Republic, the Directory, and the Restoration, which, thanks to the traditional supremacy of France in matters of fashion, made their way, more or less modified, all over the world. The modern artists in dress consider justly that what is most important in a dress is the woman who wears it, and that their object should be to set her off to the best advantage, and not to make her remarked,--in short, to make a toilet which will be to the wearer what the frame is to the portrait. The _rôle_ which the _couturier_ plays, not only in Parisian life but in the life of the whole civilized world, is so important and so curious that I have thought it might interest the reader to see the great artist at home, surrounded by his customers and his assistants, and to catch a brief glimpse of the nature and peculiarities of the creature. My description of the type will be in general, of course, but founded on exact observation of individuals.

The high-priests of Parisian fashion have their shrines up-stairs. Where the highest perfection is aimed at, shops are nowhere. The _grand couturier_ makes no outside show. You will find him occupying two or three floors in one of those plain, flat-fronted Restoration houses which line the Rue de la Paix, the Rue Taitbout, the Rue Louis-le-Grand, or the Faubourg St.-Honoré. Passing through a square _porte-cochère_ as broad as it is high, you find on the right or left hand a glass door opening on a staircase covered with a thick red carpet. On the landings are divans, and sometimes a palm of a dracæna. Through an open door on the ground-floor you see the packing-room, where marvels of silk and lace are being enveloped in mountains of tissue-paper to be sent to the four quarters of the globe; on the first floor, or _entresol_, are workrooms full of girls seated at long tables and sewing under the directing eye of a severe-looking matron; on the second floor are generally situated the show- and reception-rooms. The first saloon is sombre: the ceiling appears, in the daytime, blackened by gas; the walls are wainscoted in imitation ebony with gold fillets, and large panels above the chair-rail are filled with verdure tapestries of the most dismal green, chosen expressly to throw into relief the freshness and gayety of the dresses; on the chimney-piece, and reflected in the glass, is a clock surmounted by a monumental statue of Diana in nickeled imitation bronze and flanked by two immense candelabra; along the walls are two or three large wardrobes with looking-glass doors; in the middle of the room is a table for displaying materials, with a few chairs, and in one corner a desk, where is seated M. Cyprien or M. Alexandre, the bookkeeper. In this room the customers are received by a tall and very elegant young lady, invariably dressed in black satin in winter and black silk in summer. Through this soft-spoken person, who bears the title _of première vendeuse_, or first saleswoman, the customers are put into communication either with the great artist himself or simply with one of the _premières_, or heads of departments, if their orders are not of sufficient importance to justify an interruption of the great man in his innumerable and absorbing occupations. Opening out of this first saloon are a number of smaller saloons, all equally sombre, colorless, and shabby-looking, especially by daylight. There are extra show-rooms and trying-on-rooms, besides which there is a special room for trying on riding-habits, and another for the chief of the corsage department, to say nothing of little rooms draped with blue, brown, or red for special purposes. Over these dingy carpets and among these old tapestries and sombre furniture glide noiselessly from room to room young women on whose sloping shoulders and lissome figures the "creations" of Messieurs les Couturiers show to the best advantage. These are the _demoiselles-mannequins_, or _essayeuses_,--mute but breathing models, who seem to have lost all human animation in their occupation of mere clothes-wearers, automata with weary faces, whose sole business is to carry on their backs from morning until night luminous vesture. The ordinary pay of the _demoiselle-mannequin_ in the grand establishments is from sixty to eighty dollars a month, with half board; but some of them who have exceptionally elegant figures and perfect bearing are paid fancy prices, reaching as much in rare cases as two thousand dollars a year.

Imagine the appearance of these saloons between two and five o'clock in the afternoon during the season, filled as they are with chattering and finely-dressed ladies,--Parisiennes, Russians with their lazy accent, English and Americans talking in their own tongue, princesses of the Almanach de Gotha and princesses of the footlights, and even of the _demi-monde_, all united in adoration of the idol of fashion. A confused murmur of musical voices rises in an atmosphere impregnated with the perfumes of ylang-ylang, heliotrope, peau d'Espagne, jonquil, iris, poudre de riz, and odor di femina. The heads of the different departments are seen passing to and fro with fragments of a dress or a corsage in their arms, and amid the buzzing assembly the models move incessantly, like animated statues, silent and majestic. From time to time the voice of the great artist is heard giving brief and imperious orders, or scolding plaintively because a ruche has been substituted for a flounce on the dress of Madame X----, or a light fur for a dark fur on the mantle of the Baronne de V----,--"a pale blonde! The whole thing will have to be made over again. What can I do if I am not seconded?" he asks irritably. "Truly, _mesdemoiselles, c'est à se donner au diable_!" With these words flung at a little group of employees, the great man appears. He is a short man, dressed in light-gray trousers, a blue coat with a broad velvet collar and silk lappels in which are stuck a few pins for use in sudden inspirations, a flowered waistcoat, and a heavy watch-chain. His head is bald and surrounded by a fringe of dust-colored gray hair, frizzled so finely that it looks like swans'-down. His whiskers and moustache have the same fine and woolly appearance. His blue eyes look worn and faded; his face has flushed red patches on a pale anaemic ground; his expression is one of subdued suffering, due to the continual neuralgia by which he is tormented, thanks to the strong perfumes which his elegant customers force him to inhale all day long. Epinglard, for so we will call him for convenience' sake, rarely dines during the busy season: he is the martyr of his profession. He has a house exquisitely decorated and arranged, but he lives alone, his daily commerce with women having disinclined him to risk the lottery of marriage. Nevertheless, he is much effeminized; and his employees will assure you that he wears cambric nightcaps bordered with lace, and a lace _jabot_ on his night-shirts. His life is entirely devoted to his art, and he conscientiously goes on Tuesdays to the Comédie Française, on Fridays to the Opera, and on Saturdays to the Italians or the Circus, because those are the nights selected by rank and fashion, and therefore excellent occasions for observing the work of his rivals. For the same reason Epinglard will be seen on fashionable days at the races, and at first performances at the fashionable theatres, but always alone. In confidence, Epinglard will tell you that he adores solitude and loves his art with undivided and disinterested passion. "It gives me pleasure," he will say, "to see a woman well dressed, whoever may have dressed her. For my own part, I do not care to get myself talked about. I mind my own business and I make my own creations, but I am perfectly ready to admire the creations of others. It is not the mere creation that I find difficult: it is to get my creations executed."

Epinglard talks slowly, precisely, and in a sing-song and hypocritical voice, while his fingers, laden with heavy rings, caress voluptuously some piece of surah or silk. He is in serious consultation with one of the leaders of fashion, the Baronne de P----. Suddenly changing his tone, he calls out to a model who is passing, "You there, mademoiselle, put on this skirt to show to madame," And, turning the model round, he shows the skirt in all its aspects, passing his fingers amorously over the _batiste_ and seeming to give it life and beauty by his mere touch. "And you, Mademoiselle Ernestine, come here, too," calling to another model; who is walking about gloomily with a mantle on her shoulders: "put on Madame A----'s mantle." Then, changing back to his hypocritical tone, Epinglard continues his sing-song monologue to the Baronne de P----, and tells her that Madame A---- is a "great English lady who has deserted her husband and is now living in Paris. She spends about sixteen thousand dollars a year on her toilets. It is a good deal, yes. But, imagine, last month I made a mantle for the Countess Z---- which cost five thousand dollars. Look at that line" (caressing the mantle on the model's shoulders) "and the slope of the hips. It is perfect. And the embroidery and the trimming, all made on the material of the mantle itself by my own embroiderers."

This afternoon Epinglard is in a theorizing mood, and, after having sent for Bamboula, as he calls her familiarly, a dark-skinned model, he drapes her in a pale-yellow tulle dress, and proceeds to lament that so few Frenchwomen will wear yellow, owing to a silly popular prejudice. "Ah, madame la baronne," he continues, "you cannot conceive what lovely combinations of rose and yellow I have made. Why not? There are roses with yellow pistils. Why should not we do in stuffs what nature does in flowers? For us _couturiers_, as for the painter and the sculptor, the great source of inspiration is nature. There are many of my colleagues who fill their portfolios with the engravings of Eisen, Debucourt, Moreau, and the masters of the eighteenth century. But this is not sufficient: we must go back to nature. I pass my summer in the country, and in the rich combinations of floral color I find the gamut of tones for my toilets. But I am allowing myself to theorize too much. If madame la baronne will be good enough to come to-morrow, I will compose something for her in the mean time. This afternoon I am scarcely in the humor for a creation of such importance." And, with a grave salute, Epinglard passes into a saloon where two ladies are waiting impatiently, particularly the younger of the two, who has come, under the wing of her fashionable relative, to be introduced to the _grand couturier_.

"_Bonjour_, Monsieur Epinglard," begins the elder. "I have come to ask you to create a masterpiece. It will not be the first time, will it? My niece is going to her first ball next month, and I wish her to have a dress on which your signature will be visible."

Epinglard falls into a meditative pose, his elbow in one hand, his chin in the other, and looks long at the young girl, scrutinizing not only the line and modelling of the body, but the expression of the face, the eyes, the shade and nature of the hair, reading her temperament with the lucidity of a phrenologist aided by the divination of a plastic artist who has had great experience of feminine humanity. The examination lasts many minutes, and finally, as if under the inspiring influence of the god of taste, Epinglard, in broken phrases, composes the dress: "Toilette entirely of tulle ... corsage plaited diagonally ... around the _décolletage_ four ruches ... the skirt relieved with drapery of white satin falling behind like a peplum ... on the shoulder--the left shoulder--a bouquet of myosotis or violets ... that is how I see mademoiselle dressed." And Epinglard salutes gravely, while an assistant, who has noted down the prophetic utterances of the master, conducts the subject to a room in the centre of which is an articulated model of a feminine torso, with movable breasts, flattened rag arms hanging at the sides, and a combination of straps and springs to adjust the _taille_ or waist,--a most sinister and grotesque object, all crumpled and shrivelled up and covered with shiny, glazed calico. This is the studio of one of the most important of the secondary artists in dress-making, the _corsagère_. The chief of this department takes the subject in hand, and, with the aid of pieces of coarse canvas, such as the tailors use to line coats, she takes a complete mould of the body, cutting and pinning and smoothing with her hand until the mould is perfect. This is the first step toward the execution of the master's plan. At the next _séance_ of trying-on, the subject passes simultaneously through the hands of several heads of departments,--the _corsagère_, the _jupière_, who drapes the skirts and arranges the train, and the second _jupière_, who mounts and constructs the skirt. The corsage is brought all sewn and whaleboned, but only basted below the arms and at the shoulder, and as soon as it is in place--"_crac! crac!_"--the _corsagère_, with angry fingers, breaks the threads, and then calmly and patiently rejoins the seams and pins them together so that the joinings may lie perfectly flat and even. On her knees, turning patiently round and round, the _jupière_ drapes the skirt on a lining of silk, seeking to perfect the roundness, sparing no pains, and displaying in all she does the artist's _amour-propre_, the desire to achieve a masterpiece in the detail which the masculine designer has allotted to her care. These women who lend their light-fingered collaboration to the imagination of the bearded dress-maker are really admirable in their sentiment of their work, in their artist's ambition, which thinks not merely of the week's salary, but of the perfection of the masterpiece. They seem to find intense personal satisfaction in producing a beautiful toilet, in fashioning a delicate thing which almost has the qualities of a work of art; and when the subject is naturally well formed,--_tout faite_, as they say,--and not artificially made up with what is called the _taille de couturière_, their painstaking knows no bounds.