Chapter XXXVIII (2)

A little more than half a century has passed since John Quincy Adams, unquestionably the best trained and most experienced American administrator who ever sat in the Presidency, undertook to establish in the United States almost precisely the same system as that which Great Britain now has. Admission to the places was not, it is true, by means of competitive examination, but the feature--the essential feature--of permanent tenure was present in his plan. Mr. Adams took the government from Mr. Monroe without considering any change needful: his Cabinet advisers even included three of those who had been in the Cabinet of his predecessor, and these he retained to the end, though at least one of the three, he thought, had ceased to be either friendly or faithful to him. Retaining the old officers, and reappointing them if their commissions expired, selecting new ones, in the comparatively rare cases of death, resignation or ascertained delinquency, upon considerations chiefly relating to their personal capabilities for the vacant places, Mr. Adams was patiently and faithfully engaged during the four years of his Presidency in establishing almost the precise reform of the national service which has been in recent times so strenuously urged upon us as the one great need of the nation--the administrative purification which, if effectually performed, would prove that our system of government was fit to continue in existence. Mr. Adams's plan did, indeed, seem excellent. It commanded the respect of honest but busy citizens absorbed in their private affairs and desirous that the government might be fixed, once for all, in settled grooves, so that its functions would proceed like the steady progress of the seasons. It was an attempt to run the government, as has been sometimes said, "on business principles." The President was to proceed, and did proceed, as if he had in charge some great estate which he was to manage and direct as a faithful and exact trustee. This, no one can deny, had the superficial look of most admirable administration.

But President Adams had left out of account largely what we are compelled to sedulously consider--public opinion. He had acquired most of his experience abroad, and his principal service at home, as Secretary of State, had been in a remarkably quiet time, when party movements were neither ebbing nor flowing, so that he had forgotten how strong and vigorous the democratic feeling was amongst the population of these States. This is a forgetfulness to which all men are liable who long occupy official position, and who seldom have to submit themselves to that severe and rude competitive examination which the plan of popular elections establishes. Unfortunately for him, he was not responsible to a court of chancery for the management of his trust, but to a tribunal composed of a multitude of judges. His accounts were to be passed upon not by one learned and conservative auditor guided by familiar precedents and rules of law, but a great, tumultuous popular assembly, which would approve or disapprove by a majority vote. When, therefore, it appeared to the people that he was forming a body of permanent office-holders--was recruiting a civil army to occupy in perpetuity the offices which they, the mass, had created and were taxed to pay for--the fierce, and in many respects scandalous, partisan assault which Jackson represented, if he did not direct, gathered overwhelming force. It seemed to the popular view that a narrow, an exclusive, an aristocratic system was being formed. The President appeared to be, while honestly and carefully preserving their trust from waste or loss, committing it to a control independent of them--an official body which, having a permanent tenure, would be altogether indifferent to their varying desires. Such a scheme of government was therefore no more than an attempt to stand the pyramid on its apex: Mr. Adams's administration, supported chiefly by those whose aspirations were for an honest and capable bureaucracy, and who could not or would not face the rude questionings of democracy, ended with his first four years, and went out in such a whirlwind of partisan opposition as brought in, by reaction, the infamous "spoils system" that at the end of half a century we are but partially recovered from.

To designate more particularly the great fact which had been disregarded in this notable experiment of fifty years ago, and which is apparently not sufficiently considered in the measures of reform that have been more recently pressed upon us, we may declare that the government of the United States is, as yet, the direct outcome of what may be called _the political activity of the people_. Whether or not, having read history, we must anticipate a time here when the many, weary of preserving their own liberties, will resign their power to a few, it is certain that no such inclination yet appears. The government is the product of the public mind and will when these are moved with reference to the subject. It is created freshly at short intervals, and the manner of the creation is seldom languid or careless, but usually earnest, intense and heated. Upon this point there has no doubt been much misapprehension. As it has happened--perhaps rather oddly--that those of our thoughtful patriots whose warnings and appeals have reached public notice have had their experiences mostly in city life, surrounded by the peculiar conditions which exist there, the conclusions they have drawn in some respects are applicable only to their own surroundings. They have discovered persons who had forgotten or did not believe that liberty could be bought only with the one currency of eternal vigilance, and coupled with these others who were too busy to attend to the active processes by which the government is from time to time renewed; and they have concluded, with fatal inaccuracy of judgment, that this exceptional disposition of a small number of persons was a type of the whole population. Nothing could be more absurdly untrue. Outside of a very limited circle no such political fatigue exists. The people generally are deeply interested in public affairs and willing to attend to their own public duties. Their concern in regard to measures, methods and candidates is seldom laid aside. The _political activity_ to which we have called attention thus at some length is earnest, persistent and exacting.

It will be useful for the reformer of the civil service to give some study to the manifestations of this activity. He will find it one of the most marked and characteristic features in the life of the American people. If he will take the pains to examine the civil organization of the country, he will find that its roots run to every stratum of society. The number of persons interested in politics, not as a speculative subject, but as a practical and personal one, is wonderfully great. Thus, in most of the States there exists that modification of the ancient Saxon system of local action by "hundreds"--the township organization. This alone carries a healthy political movement into the farthest nook and corner of the body politic: every citizen of common sense may well be consulted in this primary activity, and every household may be interested in the question whether its results are good or bad. But besides this, simple and slightly compensated as are the positions belonging to the township, there are in every community many willing to fill them. To be a supervisor of the roads,[1] to be township constable and collector of the taxes, to audit the township accounts, to be a member of the school board, to be a justice of the peace, is an inclination--it may be a desire--entertained by many citizens; and if the ambition may seem to be a narrow one, its modesty does not make it unworthy or discreditable. But these men alone, active in the politics of townships, form a surprising array. If we consider that in Pennsylvania there are sixty-seven counties, with an average of say forty townships in each, here are twenty-six hundred and eighty townships, having each not less than ten officials, and making nearly twenty-seven thousand persons actually on duty at one time in a single State in this fundamental branch of the service. And if we estimate that besides those who are in office at least two persons are inclined and willing, if not actually desirous, to occupy the place now filled by each one--a very moderate calculation--we multiply twenty-six thousand eight hundred by three, and have over eighty thousand persons whose minds are quick and active in local politics on this one account. But we may proceed further. There are the cities and boroughs, their official business more complex and laborious, and in most cases receiving much higher compensation. The competition for these is in many instances very great: in the case of large cities we need not waste words in elaborating the fact. It is difficult to estimate the number of persons to whom the municipal corporations give place and pay compensation in the State of Pennsylvania, but five thousand is not an extravagant surmise, while it would be equally reasonable to presume that for each place occupied at least three others would be willing to fill it, so that on this account we may make a total of twenty thousand. But there are also the county offices. Besides the judicial positions, altogether honorable, held by long terms of election and receiving liberal compensation, there are in each county an average of fifteen other officials, making in the State, in round numbers, one thousand. These, again, may be multiplied by four: there are certainly three waiting aspirants for each place. But ascend now to the State system, with its several executive departments, the legislature, the charitable and penal institutions and the appointments in the gift of the governor. Great and small, these may reach one thousand (the Legislature alone, with its officers and employés, accounts for over three hundred), and certainly there are at least five persons looking toward each of the several places.

Upon such an estimate, then, of the political activities of one State we have such a showing as this:

Citizens politically active as to townships, 80,000 Citizens politically active as to cities and boroughs, 20,000 Citizens politically active as to counties, 4,000 Citizens politically active as to the State, 5,000 Making a total of 109,000

Some allowance should be made, no doubt, for persons whose inclinations for position cover all the different fields--who may be said to be watching several holes. But we have not considered how many citizens of Pennsylvania are inclined to national positions--the Presidency, seats in Congress or some of the numerous places in the general service of the Federal government. These two classes, it is probable, would offset each other.

Subtracting, however, the odd thousands from the total stated, we may fix at one hundred thousand the number of citizens in the one State who, by reason of occupying some position of public duty or of being inclined to fill one, are actively interested in the subject of politics. This is almost exactly one-seventh of the whole number of voters in the State: it presents the fact that in every group of seven citizens there is one, presumably of more than the average in capacity and intelligence, whose mind is quick and sensitive to every question affecting political organization. We are brought thus to the same point which we reached by an observation of the township system--the fact that every part of society is permeated by the general political circulation. It is like the human organism: nerves and blood-vessels extend, with size and capacity proportioned for their work, to the most remote extremity, and the whole is alive.

Let us, however, guard strictly, at this point, against a possible misconception. It is not to be understood that these one hundred thousand citizens are simply "office-seekers," using the ordinary and offensive sense of the term. The activity in affairs which we describe is distinct from a sordid desire to grab the emoluments of office. The vast majority of the places, including all those in the townships--which, with the aspirants to them, make four-fifths of the whole--are either without any pay at all or have an amount so small as to be beneath our consideration. But a small part of the offices which we have enumerated carry emoluments sufficient to furnish a living for the most economical incumbent. The inspiration of the political interest evidenced by this one-seventh part of the citizenship is not an unworthy one at all: on the contrary, it is that essential democratic inclination without which our form of government must quickly stagnate. It would be foolish to say that no selfish motive enters into this tremendous manifestation of energy and effort (until humanity assumes a higher form the moving power of the mercenary principle must be very great), but it is fair and it is accurate to ascribe to the men in affairs a much loftier and more honorable impulse--the aspiration to share in the conduct of their own government, the unwillingness to be ignored or excluded in the administration of what is universally denominated a common trust. That they enjoy, if they do not covet, such pecuniary advantage as their places bring is reasonable, but it is true, to their credit, that they do appreciate more than this the honor that attaches to the public station and the pleasure which may be experienced in the discharge of its conspicuous duties.

Let us presume that even this imperfect study of the political activities of a single State may present some conception of the tremendous force and energy that go to the making, year by year, of the various branches of our government. Certainly, any student of this field may accept with respect the admonition that there is no languor, no fatigue, no feeling of genteel disgust with politics, in what has thus been presented him. If, then, his plan of reorganization for the civil service is intended to be set up without consulting the popular inclination, or possibly even in opposition to it, he may well stand hesitant as to his likelihood of success. The question may confront him at once: Is the organization of a permanent official class in the administration of the general government likely to accord with the desires of the people? And we may add, Is it consistent with the general character of our form of government? Is it not attended by conclusive objections?

It is not the purpose of this article to attempt answering these questions fully. We do not propose to throw ourselves across the path of those undoubtedly sincere, and probably wise, students of this subject who have arrived at the positive conclusion that to establish a permanent tenure for the great body of the national office-holders, and to appoint to vacancies among them upon the tests of a competitive or other examination, is the panacea for all our public disorders, the regenerative process which will lift our whole system into a higher and purer atmosphere. We do not say that these gentlemen may not be right, but we are willing to examine the subject.

Upon viewing, then, the tremendous popular activity in local and State affairs--and we must reflect that there is "more politics to the square foot" in some of the newer States than there is in Pennsylvania--the inquiry is natural whether this stops short of all national politics. Certainly it does not. The offices in the general government, though their importance and their influence are usually overestimated, are a great object of attention with the whole country. The vehement democratic movement toward them that marked the time of Jackson is still apparent, though it proceeds with diminished force and is regulated and tempered by the strong protest which has been made against the scandals of the "spoils system," and against the theory that government by parties must be a continual struggle for plunder. It is noticeable that no administration has ever really attempted the formation of an irremovable body of officials. No party has ever yet explicitly declared itself in favor of such a policy. No actual leader of any party, bearing the responsibility of its success or failure in the elections, has ever yet sincerely and persistently advocated the measure. None wish to undertake so tremendous a task. He would indeed be a powerful orator who could carry a popular gathering with him in favor of the proposition that hereafter the holding of office was to be made more exclusive--that the people were to put away from themselves, by a renunciation of their own powers, the expectancy of occupying a great part of the public places. Rare as may be the persuasive ability of the true stump-orator, and serene as his confidence may be in his powers, there would be but few volunteers to enter a campaign upon such a platform as that. It would be a forlorn hope indeed.

The view of the people undoubtedly is (1) that the public places are common property; (2) that any one may aspire to fill them; and (3) that the elevation to them is properly the direct or nearly direct result of election. The elective principle is democratic. It has been, since the beginning of the government, steadily consuming all other methods of making public officers. In most States the appointing power of the governor, which years ago was usually large, has been stripped to the uttermost. It is thirty years in Pennsylvania since even the judiciary became elective by the people. And in those States--of which Delaware furnishes an example--where most of the county officers are still the appointees of the governor, the tendency to control his action by a display of the popular wish--such an array of petitions, etc. as amounts to a polling of votes--is unmistakable. The governor is moved, obviously, by the people. And if to some this general tendency toward the elective idea seems dangerous, it must be answered that it is not really so if the people are in fact capable of self-government. Conceding this as the foundation of our system, we cannot, at this point and that, expect to interpose a guardianship over their expression.

To the permanency of tenure it is that we have given, and expect will generally be given, most attention. This is the essence of the proposed "reform." The manner of selecting new appointees is of no great consequence if the vacancies are to occur so seldom as must be the case where incumbents hold for life. Whether the new recruits come in upon the certificates of a board of examiners, such as the British Civil-Service Commission, or upon the scrutiny of the Executive and his advisers, as now, is a consideration of minor importance. It is the idea of an official class, an order of office-holders, which appears to throw itself across the path of the democratic activity which we have attempted to describe. This is the point of conflict--if any. We might, it is true, take many measures to ensure the colorless and harmless character of the system. Up to a recent time the government clerks in England were deprived of the suffrage, in order that they might be perfectly indifferent to politics. It is probable that in time our own officials would lose the ordinary instincts of a democratic citizenship, and would regard with coldness, if not contempt, the activities that lead to a renewal of the government. But however smoothly they might move in the pursuance of their clerical routine, however faultless they might become in their round of prescribed duties, would they not still obstruct the public purpose? Would not even this emasculate order of placemen, standing apart a sacrificed though favored class, still present themselves as unpardonable offenders? When it should be discovered that they claimed the possession in perpetuity of the offices in the national government, and had organized themselves as a standing army of placemen, can it be believed that they would not be swept aside by the same iconoclastic onset which ended the Adams administration?

We do not pause here to represent the apparent inconsistency of desiring to de-citizenize a large number of intelligent members of the community, or the risk of creating a class in the republic forbidden to take any active interest in the renewals of its organization, or the impolicy of diminishing the force and courage of the popular will in its grapple with the problem of self-government; but all these comments may suggest themselves.

Popular expectancy, it may fairly be declared, follows all the stations of public life with a jealous if not an eager eye. There is abundant evidence of this in the county and township systems. Taking, for example, the administration of county affairs in any of the States, it will be found that the officers, by a rule that seems generally satisfactory, hold during short terms, and are seldom re-elected immediately to the same place. The rule is rotation--giving a large number of persons their "turn"--and changes are regularly made. A man disappointed this year for a particular place waits until the time comes to fill it again, and in many counties, other things being about equal, the fact that he has waited patiently and now presents the oldest claim governs the selection. The antipathy to one who seeks to hold on to his place beyond the ordinary term--the dislike for a grabber who desires more than is usually assigned--is a perfectly well-known feature in politics. The county system of Pennsylvania will afford abundant proof of the statements here made: the terms of the officers, who are all elective, do not average more than four years, even including such court-officials as the clerks and prothonotaries, whose duties are in some particulars technical and difficult, requiring an acquaintance with the forms of legal procedure. But it is further true that in the States where county officers are appointed by the governor no protracted tenure results. On the contrary, the pressure upon him of the public expectation seldom permits the reappointment of an officer whose commission is expiring.

With this rule of change, primary as its application is, and within the direct comprehension and control of the people, there does not appear to be any general discontent. It is accepted, so far as we can discover, as a just and proper system by which an equality of claims upon the common favor is maintained. It is reasonable to presume, therefore, that amongst a people fairly acquainted with their own business, and possessing a fair education both of the schools and of experience in life, many persons in every community are competent to serve as its officials. At any rate, in the midst of these usages we discover no demand that the terms of office be made permanent, and that the place-holders be put beyond the reach of a removal. There is no apparent realization that such a "reform" is demanded; and if it be difficult, as has been stated, to awaken popular enthusiasm in behalf of a permanent tenure in the national civil service, there seems to be nothing in the rules of primary politics to help smooth the way.

It may be asked now whether it is not almost certainly true that some sound principle lies in the methods which an intelligent community, unrestrained by ancient conventional ideas or repressive systems of law, applies to its own political organization. Is not this instinctive democratic plan an essential principle of a government founded upon equal rights? _Is it not a law of Change which characterizes the civil service of a democracy, and not a law of Permanence?_

We can hardly doubt that the facts which have been stated concerning the disposition of the people toward the offices in their government are capable of a philosophical explanation; and as they proceed with evident freedom and naturalness from the very bosom of communities accustomed to independent thought and action, the conclusion is irresistible that this is the temper and the tendency of a free government. Startling as it may be to propose change rather than permanency in the civil service, that may prove to be best adapted to our wants. Consciously or not, such a rule has been established by the people themselves; and while it has scarcely found a formal presentation, much less had careful examination and argument, there can be little doubt that such a principle, substantially as we have described, lies close to the hearts of the people. The right of election, the idea that public officers should be elective, and the expectation that there will be a rotation of duties and honors, are popular principles which are unmistakable.

Apart from the consideration that whatever is fundamental in popular government, whatever tends to the preservation of individual freedom and equality of rights, must be a safe principle, there could be much said from the most practical stand-point in favor of rotation in office. All human experience proves the usefulness of change. Rest is the next thing to rust. In physics things without motion are usually things without life; and in government it is the bureaus least disturbed by change that are most stagnated and most circumlocutory. The apparent misfortune of having men experienced in public affairs make way, at intervals, for others of less experience is itself greatly exaggerated. There are facts so important in compensation that the assumed evil becomes one of very moderate proportions. For it will be seen upon careful observation that no important function of the government, not even in the national service, calls for a character or qualification--sometimes, but rarely, for any sort of special or technical skill--which is not being continually formed and trained either in the movements of private life and business experience or in the political schools which are furnished by the State, the county and the township. The functions of the government are substantially the guardianship of the same interests for which the State, the county, the township and the individual exercise concern. Government has lost its mystery: even diplomacy has somewhat changed from lying and chicanery to common-sense dealing. The qualities that are required in the government--industry, economy, integrity, knowledge of men and affairs--are precisely those which are of value to every individual citizen, and which are taught day by day everywhere--to the lads in school and college and to the men in their occupations of life. Such qualities a community fit to govern itself must abundantly possess. There is nothing occult in the science of government. The administration in behalf of the people of the organization which they have ordered is nothing foreign to their own knowledge. They have ceased to consider themselves unfit for self-rule: they no longer think of calling in from other worlds a different order of beings to govern them.

We may accept without fear principles which seem startling, but which are proved to be rooted in democratic ground, so long as we have faith in the democratic system itself. There is no road open for the doubter and questioner of popular rights but that which leads back to abandoned ground. We may proceed, then, with an attempt to explain the philosophy of the rule of Change. Shall it not be stated thus:

_That, due regard being had to the preservation of simplicity and economy--forbidding thus the needless increase of offices and expenses--it is then true that the active participation by the largest number of persons in the practical administration of their own government is an object highly to be desired in every democratic republic._

The government must be the highest school of affairs. Shall it be declared that to study there and to have its diploma is not desirable for all? Is it not perfectly evident that the more who can learn to actually discharge the duties belonging to their own social organization, the better for them and the better for it?

All these propositions necessarily imply the existence of an intelligent and patriotic people, at least of such a majority. So always does every plan of popular government. Whatever of disappointment presents itself to the author of any scheme of "reform," upon finding that he has constructed a system which is ridden down by the political activity of the people, he must blame the plan upon which our fabric is built. If he is chagrined to find that his _imperium in imperio_ is not practicable, and that nothing can make here a power stronger than the source of power, he must solace his hurt feelings with the reflection that the system was never adapted to his contrivance, and that our fathers, when in the beginning they resolved to establish a government by the people, gave consent thereby to all the apparent risks and inconveniences of having the people continually minding their own affairs.

With a just comprehension of the democratic forces that give motion and life to the governmental system of the United States, and of the manner in which they affect the public service in all its departments, the wise advocate of reform must approach his work. His patriotism and thoughtfulness are both necessary. To proceed against the democratic law is not practicable: to establish a new system which is inconsistent with the abundant vitality and conscious strength of that already established is a futile proposition indeed.

THE PRICE OF SAFETY.

Thirty-three years ago--that is, shortly before Christmas, 1847--I went over to Paris to pass a few weeks with my family. The great railway schemes of the two previous years in England had broken down a good many men in our office--draughtsmen, surveyors and so on. I wonder if the present public recollects those days, when the _Times_ brought out double supplements to accommodate the advertisements of railroads, when King Hudson was as much a potentate as Queen Victoria, when Brunel and Stephenson were autocrats, and when everybody saw a sudden chance of getting rich by shares or damages? Those days were the beginning of that period of prosperity of which the recent "hard times" were the reaction. _Then_ twenty guineas a night for office-work was sometimes paid to youngsters not yet out of their teens. In the great offices the young men worked all day and the alternate nights to get plans ready for Parliament, sustained by strong coffee always on the tap, till some of them went mad with the excitement and the strain.

I had worked hard both in the field and office during the closing months of 1847, but I broke down at last, and was sent to recover my health under the care of my family. That family consisted of my father--a half-pay English officer--my mother and three sisters, then living _au troisième_ in the Rue Neuve de Berri, not far from the newly-erected Russian church, and the windows of the _appartement_ commanded a side view down the Champs Élysées. I only needed rest and recreation, both of which my adoring family eagerly provided me. My sisters were three lively, simple-hearted, honest English girls, who had a large acquaintance in Paris, and took great pride and pleasure in introducing to it their only brother. We were not only invited to our embassy and on visiting terms with all the English Colony (that colony whose annals at that period are written in _The Adventures of Philip_, and to which Thackeray's mother and nearest relatives, like ourselves, belonged), but we were, in virtue of some American connections, admitted to the American embassy on the footing of semi-Americans.

We enjoyed our American friends greatly. I formed the opinion then, which I retain now, that cultivated Americans, the top-skimming of the social cream, are some of the most charming people to be met with in cultivated society. To all that constitutes "nice people" everywhere they join a _soupçon_ of wild flavor which gives them individuality. They are to society what their own wild turkeys and canvasbacks are to the _menu_.

One of my sisters, Amy, the eldest, had been ill that winter, and was not equal to joining in the gayeties that the others enjoyed. Her principal amusement was walking in the Gardens of Monceaux, a private domain of King Louis Philippe in the Batignolles, a quiet, humdrum spot, where she could set her foot upon green turf and gravel. The streets of Paris, the Boulevards, and the Champs Élysées were too attractive to a pleasure-seeker like myself to allow me to content myself with the pale attractions of Monceaux, but I went there with my sister once or twice, because French etiquette forbade her walking even in these quiet garden-paths alone.

One day it was proposed by her that we should go again. I could not, in common humanity, refuse, and so consented. Poor Amy "put on her things," as our girls called it, and we descended to the porte-cochère, intending to engage the first passing citadine. As we stepped into the street, however, a gay carriage with high-stepping gray horses, a chasseur with knife and feathers, and a coachman in a modest livery on a hammer-cloth resplendent with yellow fringes and embroideries, drew up at our door: a pretty hand was laid upon the portière and a voice cried, "Amy! Amy! I was coming for you."

"My brother--Miss Leare," said Amy.

Miss Leare bowed to me gracefully and motioned to her chasseur to open the carriage-door. "Get in," she said. "_I_ have the carriage for two hours: what shall we do with it? Mamma is at the dentist's.--Amy, I thought you would enjoy a drive, and so I came for you."

I helped Amy in, and was making my bow when Miss Leare stopped me. "Come too," she said cordially: "Amy's brother surely need not be taboo. Shall we drive to the Bois?"

"I was going to Monceaux," said Amy. "Would it be quite the thing for us to drive alone to the Bois?"

"Oh-h-h!" said Miss Leare, prolonging her breath upon the vocative.--"You see," she added, turning to me, "I am so unprepared by previous training that I shall never become _au fait_ in French proprieties. Indeed, I hold them in great reverence, but they seem to be for ever hedging me in; nor can I understand the meaning of half of them. In America I was guided by plain right and wrong.--Why shall we not outrage etiquette, Amy, by 'going alone,' as you call it, to Monceaux? Is it that the place is so stiff and solemn and out of the way that we may walk there without a chaperon? I should have thought seclusion made a place more dangerous, allowing that there be any danger at all.--In America, Mr. Farquhar, your escort would be enough for us, and the fact that Amy is your sister would give a sort of double security to your protection."

"Oh, dear Miss Leare--" began Amy.

"Hermie, Amy--Hermione, which is English and American for Tasso's Erminia.--Do you like my name, Mr. Farquhar? We have strange names in America, English people are pleased to say.--Victor!" she went on, calling to the chasseur without pausing for any reply, "stop at some place where they sell candy. Mr. Farquhar will get out and buy us some."

Obediently to her order, we stopped at a confectioner's. I was directed to put my hand into the carriage-pocket, where I should find some "loose change," kept there for candy and the hurdy-gurdy boys. Then I was directed to go into the "store" and choose a pound of all sorts of "mixed candy."

I had not more than made myself intelligible to a young person behind the counter when the carriage-door was opened and both the girls came in, Miss Hermione declaring that she knew I should be embarrassed by the multitude of "sweeties," and that I should need their experience to know what I was about.

With dawdling, laughing and good-comradeship we chose our bonbons, and getting back into the barouche we proceeded to crunch them as we drove on to Monceaux. It was like being children over again, with a slight sense of being out of bounds. I had never seen confectionery eaten wholesale in that fashion. Such bonbons were expensive, too. Trained in the personal economy of English middle-class life, it would never have occurred to me to buy several francs' worth of sugar-plums and to eat them by the handful. But as the fair American sat before me, smiling, laughing, petting Amy and saying fascinating impertinences to myself, I thought I had never seen so bewitching a creature. Her frame, though _svelte_ and admirably proportioned, gave me an idea of vigor and strength not commonly associated at that time with the girls of America. Her complexion, too, was healthy: she was not so highly colored as an English country girl, but her skin was bright and clear. Her face was a perfect oval, her hair glossy and dark, her eyes expressive hazel. Her points were all good: her ears, her hands, her feet, her upper lip and nostrils showed blood, and the daintiness and taste of her rich dress seemed to denote her good taste and fine breeding. My sisters, could not tie their bonnet-strings as she tied hers, nor were their dresses anything like hers in freshness, fit or daintiness of trimming.

We alighted at last at old Monceaux, and walked about its solemn alleys. Sometimes Miss Leare talked sense, and talked it well. Those were exciting days in Paris. It was February, 1848, and a great crisis was nearer at hand in politics than we suspected; besides which there had been several events in private life which had increased the general excitement of the period--notably the murder of Marshal Sebastiani's daughter, the poor duchesse de Praslin. Hermione could talk of these things with great spirit, but sometimes relapsed into her grown-up childishness. She talked, too, with animation of the freedom and happiness of her American girlhood. My sister Amy had always taken life _au grand sérieux_; Ellen was a little too prompt to flirt with officers and gay young men, and needed repression; Lætitia went in for book-learning, and measured every one by what she called their "educational opportunities." My sisters were as different as possible from this butterfly creature, who seemed to sip interest and amusement out of everything.

At the end of two hours we drove back to Mrs. Leare's hôtel, which was opposite our own apartment in the Rue Neuve de Berri, the hôtel that a few weeks later was occupied by Prince Jerome. Here Hermione insisted upon our coming in while the carriage drove to the dentist's for her mother.

The reception-rooms in Mrs. Leare's hôtel were very showy. They were filled with buhl and knick-knacks gathered on all parts of the Continent, and lavishly displayed, not always in good keeping. A little sister, Claribel, came running up to us when we entered, and clung fondly to Hermione, who sat down at the Erard grand piano and sang to us, without suggestion, a gay little French song. She was taking lessons, Amy afterward told me, of the master most in vogue in Paris and of all others the most expensive. Amy, who could sing well herself, disparaged Hermione's voice to me, and sighed as she thought of the waste of those inestimable lessons.

Then Miss Hermione lifted the top of an ormolu box on the chimney-piece of a boudoir and showed Amy and me, under the rose as it were, some cigarettes, with a laugh. "Mamma's," she said: "she has a _faiblesse_ that way."

"Oh, Hermione! you don't?" cried Amy.

"No, _I_ don't," said Hermione more gravely.

I was so amused by her, so fascinated, so completely at my ease with her, that I could have stayed on without taking note of time had not Amy remembered that it was our dinner-hour. We took our leave, and met Mrs. Leare on the staircase ascending to her apartment. She greeted Amy with as much effusion as was compatible with her ideas of fashion, and said she was "right glad" to hear we had been passing the morning with Hermione.

"I wish you would come very often. I like her to see English girls: you do her so much good, Amy.--Mr. Farquhar, we shall hope to see you often too. I have a little reception here every Sunday evening."

With that she continued her course up stairs, and we descended to the porte-cochère.

She was a faded woman, "dressed to death," as Amy phrased it, and none of my people had a good word for her.

"The Leares are rolling in riches, I believe," remarked my father, "and an American who is rich has no hereditary obligations to absorb his wealth, so that it becomes all 'spending-money,' as Miss Hermione says. The head of the family--King Leare I call him--stays at home in some sort of a counting-room in New York and makes money, giving Mrs. Leare and Miss Hermione _carte blanche_ to spend it on any follies they please. I never heard anything exactly wrong concerning Mrs. Leare, but she does not seem to me the woman to be trusted with that very nice young daughter. I feel great pity for Miss Leare."

"Miss Leare has plenty of sense and character," said my mother: "I do not think her mother's queer surroundings seem to affect her in any way. She moves among the Frenchmen, Poles and Italians of her mother's court like that lady Shakespeare--or was it Spenser?--wrote about among the fauns and satyrs. With all her American freedom she avoids improprieties by instinct. I have no fears for her future if she marries the right man."

"Indeed, mamma," said Amy, "I wish she would keep more strictly within the limit of the proprieties. She makes me nervous all the time we are together."

"My dear, you never heard her breathe a really unbecoming word or saw her do an immodest thing?" said my mother interrogatively.

"Oh no, of course not," said Amy.

"They say Mrs. Leare wants to marry her to that Neapolitan marquis who is so often there," put in Ellen. "_On dit_, she will have a _dot_ of two millions of francs, or, as they call it, half a million of dollars."

"Such a rumor," I broke in, rather annoyed by this turn in the conversation, "may well buy her the right to be a marchioness if she will."

"Indeed it won't, then," said Ellen sharply, "for she thinks Americans should not 'fix' themselves permanently abroad. She says she means to marry one of her own folks, as she calls her countrymen."

"She knows an infinite variety of things, and has had all kinds of masters," sighed Lætitia: "she speaks all the languages in Europe. I believe Americans have a peculiar facility for pronunciation, like the Russians, and she learned at her school in America philosophy, rhetoric, logic, Latin, algebra, chemistry."

"I wonder she should be so sweet a woman," said my father. "She seems a good girl--I never took her for a learned one--but her mother is a fool, and I should think her father must be that or worse. I wonder what he can be like? It seems to an Englishman so strange that a man should stay at home alone for years, and suffer his wife and family to travel all over the Continent without protection."

Though my father, mother and sisters declined the Sunday invitation of Mrs. Leare, I went to her reception. The guests were nearly all Italians, Poles, Spaniards or Frenchmen. There was no Englishman present, but myself, and only one or two Americans. I felt at once how out of place my mother, the country matron, and my father, _ce respectable viellard,_ would have been in such a circle. But Mrs. Leare's guests were not the _jeunesse dorée_ nor the dubious nobility I had expected to meet in her _salon_. The Frenchmen among them were all men whose names were familiar in French political circles--men of revolutionary tendencies and of advanced opinions. I afterward discovered they had taken advantage of Mrs. Leare's desire to be the head of a salon to use her rooms as a convenient rendezvous. It was safe ground on which to simmer their revolutionary cauldron. It was seething and bubbling that night, although neither the Leares nor myself were aware of what was brewing. The talk was all about the Banquets, especially the impending reform banquet in the Rue Chaillot. The gentlemen present were not exactly conspirators: they were for the most part political reformers, who, being cut off from the usual modes of expressing themselves through a recognized parliamentary opposition or by the medium of petition, had devised a system of political banquets, some fifty of which had already been held in the departments, and they were now engaged in getting one up in Paris in the Twelfth arrondissement.

At that time, in a population of thirty-five millions, there were but a quarter of a million of French voters, and as in France all places (from that of a railroad guard to a seat on the bench) were disposed of by the government, it was very easy for ministers to control the legislature. A reform, really needed in the franchise, was the object proposed to themselves by the original heads of the Revolution of 1848, though when they had set their ball in motion they could neither control it nor keep up with it as it rolled downward.

The prevalent idea in Mrs. Leare's salon was that the banquet of the Rue Chaillot would go off quietly, that the prefect of police would protest, and that the affair would then pass into the law-courts, where it would remain until all interest in the subject had passed away. One was sensible, however, that there was a general feeling of excitement in the atmosphere. Paris swarmed with troops, evidently under stricter discipline than usual. People looked into each other's faces interrogatively and read the daily papers with an anxious air.

Though I did not at the time fully appreciate what I saw, I was struck by the business-like character of the men about me. The guests, I thought, took very little notice of the lady of the house. I did not then suspect that they were using her hospitality for their own purposes, and that they felt secure in her total incapacity to understand what they were doing. She, meantime, intent on filling her reception-rooms with celebrities and titled persons, was charmed to have collected so many distinguished men around her.

Hermione appeared bewildered, uncomfortable and restless, like a spectator on the edge of a great crowd. "There are too many strangers here to-night," she said: "mamma and I do not know one half of them. They have been brought here by their friends. To have a salon is mamma's ambition, but this is not my idea of it. I feel as if we were out of place among these men, who talk to each other and hardly notice us at all."

We sat together and exchanged our thoughts in whispers. It was one of those crowds that create a solitude for lovers. Not that we talked sentiment or that we were lovers. We conversed about the excitements of the day--of the Leste affair, in which the king and the king's ministry were accused of protecting dishonesty; of the Beauvallon and D'Equivilley duel and the Praslin murder, in connection with both of which the royal family and the ministry were popularly accused of protecting criminals--and at last the conversation strayed away from France to Hermione's own girlhood. She told me of her happy country home in Maryland with her grandmother, and sighed. I asked her if she was going to the English ball to be given on Wednesday night at the beautiful Jardin d'Hiver in the Champs Élysées.

"I suppose so," she replied, "but I don't care for large assemblies: I feel afraid of the men I meet. I wish your mother could chaperon me: it would be much nicer to be with her than with my own. Mamma understands nothing about looking after me; she wants to have a good time herself, and I am only in her way. Do you know, Mr. Farquhar, I have a theory that when women have missed anything they ought to have enjoyed in early life, they always want to go back and pick it up. Mamma had no pleasures in her youth, no attentions, no gayety. If I am to be chaperoned, I like the real thing. If I were at home in Maryland, where my father came from, I should need no one to protect me: _you_ could take me to the ball."

"I, Miss Hermione?"

"Yes, you. You would call for me, and wait till I was ready to come down. Then you and I would go _alone_," she added, enjoying my look of incredulity. "It is the custom: no harm could come of it," she added. "We would walk to our ball."

"No harm in the case that you have supposed, but in some other cases--"

"You suppose a good deal," she interrupted. "You suppose a girl without self-respect or good sense, and perhaps a man without honor. Here, of course, things cannot be like that. Society seems founded upon different ideas from those prevalent with us about men and women. _Here_, I admit, a girl finds comfort and protection and ease of mind in a good chaperon. Yet it seemed strange to me to put on leading-strings when I came out here: I had been used to take care of myself for so many years."

"Why, Miss Leare," I said, laughing, "you cannot have been many years in society."

"I am twenty," she said frankly, "and we came to Europe about three years ago. But before that time I had been in company a good deal. Not in the city, for I was not 'out,' but in the hotels at Newport, at the Springs and in the country. In America one has but to do what one knows is kind and right, and no one will think evil: here one may do, without suspecting it, so many compromising things."

"Does the instinct that you speak of to be kind and right always guide the young American lady?"

"I suppose so--so far as I know. It _must_. She walks by it, and sets her feet down firmly. Here I feel all the time as if I were walking among traps blindfolded."

The ball of the Jardin d'Hiver in the Champs Élysées was a superb success. The immense glass-house was fitted up for dancing, and all went merry as a marriage-bell, with a crater about to open under our feet, as at the duchess of Richmond's ball at Brussels.

Miss Leare was there, but quiet and dignified. There was not the smallest touch of vulgarity about her. The coarse readiness to accept publicity which distinguishes the underbred woman, whether in England or America, the desire to show off a foreign emancipation from what appear ridiculous French rules, were not in her.

Yet she might have amused herself as she liked with complete impunity, for Mrs. Leare appeared to leave her entirely alone. I danced with her as often as she would permit me, and my heart was no longer in my own possession when I put-her into her carriage about dawn.

Two or three days after I called, but the ladies were not in, so that except at church at the Hôtel Marboeuf on Sunday morning I saw nothing of Miss Hermione. Monday, February 21st, was sunny and bright. The public excitement was such that an unusual number of working-men were keeping their St. Crispin. The soldiers, however, were confined to their quarters: not a uniform was to be seen abroad. Our night had been disturbed by the continuous rumble of carts and carriages.

"Is it a fine day for the banquet?" I heard Amy say as our maid opened her windows on Tuesday morning.

"There is to be no banquet," was the answer. "_Voyez done_ the proclamation posted on the door of the barrack at the corner of the Rue Chaillot."

I sprang from my bed and looked out of my window. A strange change had taken place in the teeming little caserne at the corner. Instead of the usual groups of well-behaved boy-soldiers in rough uniforms, the barrack looked deserted, and its lower windows had been closed up to their top panes with bags of hay and mattresses. Not a soldier, not even a sentry, was to be seen.

I dressed myself and went out to collect news. The carts that had disturbed us during the night had been not only employed in removing all preparations for the banquet, but in taking every loose paving-stone out of the way. I found the Place de la Madeleine full of people, all looking up at the house of Odillon Barrot, asking "What next?" and "What shall we do?" Odillon Barrot was the hero of the moment--literally _of the moment_. In forty-eight hours from that time his name had faded from the page of history. In the Place de la Concorde there was more excitement, for threats were being made to cross the bridge and to insult the Chambers. The Pont de l'Institut, notwithstanding the efforts of the garde municipale or mounted police, was greatly crowded. A party of dragoons, on sorrel ponies barely fourteen hands high, rode up and began to clear the bridge, but gently and gradually. The crowd was retiring as fast as its numbers would permit, when some of the municipal guard rode through the ranks of the dragoons and set themselves, with ill-judged roughness, to accelerate the operation. The crowd grew angry, and stones began to be thrown at the guard and soldiers.