Chapter XXVIII: Only a Dream (4)

In these days of trades unionism and strikes an account of the germ of such associations in this country is not without interest. So far back as 1806 a remarkable trial arising out of such a combination took place before the recorder of Philadelphia and a jury. It lasted three days and excited extraordinary interest. Jared Ingersoll and Joseph Hopkinson were counsel for the prosecution, and Caesar A. Rodney and Walter Franklin for the defence.

The defendants, eight in number, were indicted for not being content to work at the usual prices, but contriving to increase and augment them, and for endeavoring to prevent by threats, menaces and other unlawful means other artificers from working at the usual rate, and uniting into a club or combination to make and ordain unlawful and arbitrary rules to govern those engaged in their trade, and unjustly exact great sums of money by means thereof.

The evidence went to show in the clearest manner that a system of frightful thralldom had been put in force. A witness named Harrison stated that when he reached the United States in 1794 he found this system of terrorism prevalent. He went to work for a Mr. Bedford, and presently got a hint that if he did not join the association of journeymen shoemakers he was liable to be "scabbed," which meant that men would not work in the same shop, nor board or lodge in the same house, nor would they work at all for the same employer. The case of this man seemed exceptionally hard. He made shoes exclusively, and when "a turn-out came to raise the wages on boots" he remonstrated, pleading that shoes did not enter into the question, and urging that he had a sick wife and a large family. But it was all to no purpose. He then resolved that he would turn a "scab" unknown to the association, and continue his work; but having a neighbor whom it was impossible for him to deceive, he went to him and said that he knew his circumstances, and that his family must perish or go to "the bettering-house" unless he continued to work. This neighbor, Swain, replied that he knew his condition was desperate, but that a man had better make any sacrifice than turn a "scab" at that time. He presently informed against him, and Mr. Bedford (his employer) was warned that he must discharge his "scabs." He refused, saying that, "Let the consequence be what it might, we should sink or swim together." However, one Saturday night, when all but Harrison and a man named Logan had left him, Bedford's resolution gave way, and he exclaimed, "I don't know what the devil I am to do: they will ruin me in the end. I wish you would go to the body and pay a fine, if not very large, in order to set the shop free once more." The fine offered was refused, and Mr. Bedford's shop remained "under scab" for a year. Still, Mr. Bedford, who must have been a very plucky fellow, would not give Harrison up, but removed in 1802 to Trenton. Harrison stated that although he could not, had Mr. Bedford given him up, have got work anywhere else, and that he might have ground him down to any terms, yet he (Bedford) very nobly always gave him full price. At length, by paying a fine, Harrison became reconciled to his persecutors, and Bedford's shop was once more free.

William Forgrave said that "the name of a 'scab' is very dangerous: men of this description have been hurt when out at night." He had been threatened, and joined the association from fear of personal injury. A vast deal more of evidence was given and eloquent speeches delivered by counsel, but the foregoing gives the sum and substance of the case.

In the course of the summing up Recorder Levy said: "To make an artificial regulation is not to regard the excellence of the work or quality of the material, but to fix a positive and arbitrary price, governed by no standard, but dependent on the will of the few who are interested.... What, then, is the operation of this kind of conduct upon the commerce of the city? It exposes it to inconveniences, if not to ruin: therefore it is against the public welfare. How does it operate upon the defendants? We see that those who are in indigent circumstances, and who have families to maintain, have declared here on oath that it was impossible for them to hold out. They were interdicted from all employment in future if they did not continue to persevere in the measures taken by the journeymen shoemakers. Does not such a regulation tend to involve necessitous men in the commission of crimes? If they are prevented working for six weeks, it might lead them to procure support for their wives and children by burglary, larceny or highway robbery."

The jury found the defendants "guilty of a combination to raise their wages," and the court sentenced them to pay a fine of eight dollars each, with costs of suit, and to stand committed till paid.

MORAL TRAINING IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

One of our popular clergymen, in a late Sunday discourse upon the Bible in the public schools, labored to show that the question was a very unimportant one. because none were much interested in it except infidels and politicians--a sufficiently absurd position for a professed teacher of the people to assume. Doubtless it is a folly to fan into flame the slumbering embers of a quarrel, but it is a greater folly to pretend, in the face of the common sense of the people, that all signs of fire are extinguished or never existed where there is so much inflammable material about and the "wind of doctrine" running high.

This question of secular education for our public schools is in fact one of the most difficult of solution. Chicago has met it in a summary manner by excluding the Bible from all her free schools, but this does not settle the question, because both believers and unbelievers in the various creeds of the churches admit that there should be provision made for the training of the moral faculties of the children in our public schools. Many of them, especially in cities and large manufacturing centres, come out of the dark alleys where intemperance, poverty and ignorance tend to arrest the development of their higher sentiments. For the unfortunate children of such homes the sessions of the public school afford the only glimpse of a better life, the only chance for moral and æsthetic culture. Protestants, as a rule, honestly believe that the reading of the Bible at the opening of school tends to waken and develop the moral aspirations of the child. Just as honestly and conscientiously do Catholics disbelieve in the efficacy of Bible reading, while they boldly condemn secular education as a principle. Father Muller, priest of the congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, in his work upon public school education, published three years ago in Boston, says: "The language of the Vicar of Christ in regard to godless education is very plain and unmistakable".... "Our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., has declared that Catholics cannot approve of a system of educating youth unconnected with the Catholic faith and the power of the Church".... "The voice of common sense, the voice of sad experience, the voice of Catholic bishops, and especially the voice of the Holy Father, is raised against and condemns the public school system as a huge humbug, injuring and not promoting personal virtue and good citizenship, and as being most pernicious to the Catholic faith and life and all good morals. A pastor, therefore, cannot maintain the contrary opinion without incurring guilt before God and the Church. He cannot allow parents to send their children to such schools of infidelity. He cannot give them absolution and say, _Innocens sum_."

According to the _American Annual Cyclopædia_ for 1875, the Roman Catholic Church has in the United States 1 cardinal, 8 archbishops, 54 bishops, 4872 priests, 4731 churches, 1902 chapels, 68 colleges, 511 academies, and a lay membership numbering over 6,000,000. This shows a great and increasing prosperity of that Church in this country; yet our institutions have nothing to fear from that prosperity unless the principles of Catholicity support the "one-man power" against the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, the foundation-principle of republicanism. Patriotic Catholic citizens claim that there is no conflict. They love their Church and their country, and will labor to preserve peace and harmony. Yet how can harmony be maintained while a large and increasing number of our tax-paying citizens, accepting their Church and its head as infallible, are forced by their spiritual allegiance to send their children to Catholic schools, though at the same time paying taxes to support those "godless" public schools condemned by the infallible Church? To take the ground that these two powers, the Catholic Church and our government, do not conflict, because one is a spiritual and the other a civil power, is simply absurd. We see that they _do_ conflict. The pope interferes with the civil rights of our citizens when--as, for example, in his encyclical letter of December 8, 1874--he commands all Catholics to treat the liberty of speech, of the press, of conscience and of worship, the separation of Church and State and the secular education of youth, as "_reprobatas, proscriptas, atque damnatas_."

THE EARLIEST PRINTED BOOKS.

A recent lecture of the Rev. Dr. Storrs in New York, before the Society for the Advancement of Science and Art, must have been very interesting to an ordinary audience, but for one composed of professed promoters of learning it could hardly have been sufficiently exact to give general satisfaction if the newspaper reports of it were at all correct. They represent the lecturer as saying that an immense number of books date back to 1450. Now, the first printed book bearing a date is the _Psalter_ of Füst and Schoeffer, 1457. A _portion_ of the Bible was printed by Gutenberg and Füst in 1450, but the work was so expensive and so imperfect that it was abandoned. In 1452, after Schoeffer joined the firm, another Bible is supposed to have been printed, but no copy of it is known to exist. Of course it is well known that many of the earliest printed books are without date, but none could have been printed before 1450; and there is no proof, we believe, that the Bible said to be of 1455 bore that or any date. In that year the firm of Gutenberg, Füst and Schoeffer dissolved. L. Grégoire in his _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique_, published in Paris in 1817, says that there are only three or four copies of the Füst Bible known to exist. Dr. Storrs, however, says, without giving his authority, that there are fifteen.

The sole idea of the early printers was to imitate exactly the manuscript characters of the scribes. The initial letters of the Bibles and the numbers of the chapters were therefore added with a pen in blue and red ink alternately; and there is not the slightest doubt that these first books were palmed off upon an unsuspecting public as manuscripts. All the servants or employés of Füst and Schoeffer were put under solemn oath to divulge nothing of the secret concerning printing. It is to the policy which the first printers exerted to conceal their art that we owe the tradition of the Devil and Dr. Faustus. Füst having printed off quite a number of Bibles, and had the large initial letters added by hand, he took them to Paris and sold them for about fifty dollars apiece. The scribes demanded about ten times that sum, and they earned the money, for it must have been an herculean task to copy, as they did, every letter of the Bible with such exquisite care, and then draw and illuminate the heads of the chapters and the initial letters. It was a marvel how this new man could produce these ponderous books at so low a rate. And then the uniformity of the letters and the pages increased the wonder, until the cry of "sorcerer" was raised: complaints before the magistrates were made against him, his lodgings were searched and a great number of copies were found and confiscated. The populace in their ignorance and superstition declared that he was in league with the devil, and that the red ink with which the books were embellished was his blood. It is a satisfaction to know that the Parliament of Paris passed an act to discharge the sorcerer from all prosecution in consideration of _the usefulness of his art_.

M.H.

FLOWERS VS. FLIES.

An Irish clergyman is said to have discovered last autumn a charming antidote to flies, which it is only a pity he could not have lighted on rather earlier in the season. Having occasion to change his abode, he sent on his window-plants, calceolarias and geraniums, to that which he intended to occupy several days before he went himself, and immediately found that he was pestered with flies, whereas previously he had enjoyed perfect immunity from the nuisance. A more agreeable remedy cannot be conceived. Next autumn let our windows be a blaze of brilliancy, so that all visitors to the Centennial may say, at all events, "There are no flies in Philadelphia."

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Shakespeare Hermeneutics; or, The Still Lion. Being an Essay towards the Restoration of Shakespeare's Text. By C.M. Ingleby, M.A., LL.D. London: Trübner & Co.

Setting aside those who care merely to see a play on the stage, it may be said that of Shakespeare there are readers and readers; and both classes have rights and privileges which should be treated with deference. The reader who studies every line should not fleer at him who studies not at all. Have we not a right to read a play of Shakespeare's through in two short hours, surrendering ourselves, unvexed by logic or grammar, to the enchantment which scenes and phrases and words conjure up as they glide through our minds? When all the atmosphere is tremulous with airs from heaven or blasts from hell, must we, forsooth! stop and philosophically investigate what Hamlet means by a "_dram of eale"_? Must we lose a scruple of the sport by turning aside to find out what Malvolio means by the "_lady of the Strachey_"? If Timon chooses to invite _Ullorxa_ to his feast, are we to bar the door because no one ever heard the name before? No: let us have our Shakespeare (is he not as much ours as yours?) free from all notes, on a page purified from the musty cobwebs of black-letter pedants. We want no jargon of bickering critics to drown the music that sings at Heaven's gate. Give us those immortal plays just as Shakespeare wrote them, that we may read them without let or hinderance.

But, fair and softly, is not this the very point at which we are striving? With all our twistings and turnings, our patchings and piecings, have we aught else in view than to decipher just what Shakespeare wrote? Where are Shakespeare's exact words to be found? Not in the so-called Quartos; for they are said by Shakespeare's intimate and dear friends to have been "maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors," and taken down perhaps from the lips of some of the actors, bribed by stoops of liquor at _Yaughan's_ (and from the gibberish here and there set down it is to be feared that the potations were at times pottle deep). Nor can we take the Folio in which all his dramas were first collected: Shakespeare never saw a line of it; for seven years he had been hid in death's dateless night when that volume was printed. What, then, is to be done? The Quartos and Folios are all the authority we have, and none of them present what can be held to have been undeniably Shakespeare's exact words. In dealing with the text we must never for a moment forget that there stands, and will for ever stand, as interpreters between us and Shakespeare, a crew of dishonest actors or of more or less ignorant compositors. Is such a text, thus transmitted, to be held in reverence so deep that not a syllable is to be changed for fear of the cry that we are tampering with the words of Shakespeare? Is the curse in his epitaph on the mover of his bones to hang over his text? Small reverence for Shakespeare does it betoken, in our opinion, to believe this. Rather, let us regard these pages of the Folio as what they virtually are in so many cases--namely, as but little better than our modern proof-sheets. And they should be dealt with accordingly by a modern critic; but only on one condition precedent: he must be Shakespeare's peer. In default of this we can only humbly erase here, and reverently suggest there, summoning to our aid all possible knowledge, lest in plucking up the tares we pluck up the wheat also.

And this is really all that textual criticism for the last hundred and forty years has aimed at--merely to get at what Shakespeare really wrote. We know that he could not write sheer nonsense, and yet at times sheer nonsense mows at us from his printed page. Those who clamor for Shakespeare's text, pure and simple, divested of all notes and annotations, have no idea how much thought and time have been expended on every line,--nay, on every word, on every comma,--in the text of any good modern edition of his dramas, and with the single aim, be it remembered, of revealing exactly what the poet wrote.

It must not, however, be thought that since the original texts of Shakespeare's plays are so corrupt, any criticaster has good leave to expunge or expand at will, under a roving commission to hack and hew wheresoever and howsoever it may please him, under the plea of restoring the text. On the contrary, since we cannot fulfill the condition precedent of being Shakespeare's peers, we must exercise the greatest caution in changing a reading of the Quartos or Folios, lest in condemning the text as corrupt we pass judgment on our own wit.

He who the sword of Heaven would bear
Must be as holy as severe.

And we must be very sure that the passage is corrupt before we set about amending it. First and last, we must remember that primal elder law, that of two readings the more difficult is to be preferred. _Durior lectio preferenda 'st_ should be a frontlet between our brows. The weaker reading or the plainer meaning is more likely to be a printer's interpretation of what he failed to comprehend.

But to understand Shakespeare's meaning in a degree that will authorize us to amend the text, we must understand Shakespeare's speech; that is, we must be thoroughly familiar with the words and usages of Elizabethan English; and not only with Elizabethan words and phrases, but also, as far as possible, with the very pronunciation.

This fundamental principle is well enforced and illustrated in Dr. Ingleby's book, which was originally published in one of the Annuals of the German Shakespeare Society under the title of _The Still Lion_, a title suggested by a passage in De Quincey, where the danger of meddling with Milton's text is compared to that of meddling with a still lion, which may be neither dead nor sleeping, but merely shamming. Dr. Ingleby substitutes Shakespeare for Milton, and maintains that the mass of Shakespearian emendations that have been proposed during the last twenty years are needless; and that corruptions have been assumed where none exist, owing to the limited knowledge possessed by the critics. Thus, for instance, in the _Comedy of Errors_ (I. i. 152) the Duke bids Aegeon to "seek thy _help_ by beneficial _help_." At once there is a chorus from all of us, sciolists, of "Corruption!" "Sophistication!" "Cacophonous repetition!" etc. etc. "But gently, friends," says Dr. Ingleby: "may not 'help' have borne a different or a special meaning in Elizabethan English?" and turning to medical writers and books on medicine of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (among them Dr. John Hall, Shakespeare's own son-in-law), he proves that _heal_ and _help_ having a common origin, _help_ was used by Shakespeare's contemporaries as a synonym for _cure, deliverance_. The text, then, is perfectly correct, Ægeon being bid to seek his _deliverance_ from the doom of death by the _help_ of what friends he can find. The lion's slumbers were here of the lightest, and happy men be our dole to have escaped with whole skins. Thus Dr. Ingleby takes up passage after passage of Shakespeare that has been pronounced corrupt, and shows that the fault imputed to it lies not in the text, but in the lack of requisite knowledge, be it of language, of usage, of manners and customs, or even of Elizabethan spelling and grammar, on the part of the critic. The mischief that ignorance has done in the past is irrevocable, but such impressive warnings as Dr. Ingleby gives us may help, in both senses of the word, in the future. We may be spared, hereafter, the infliction of numberless "felicitous" conjectures, on which the following is scarcely a parody. It was proposed many years ago in sport by the late deeply-lamented Chauncey Wright, and, as far as we know, has never yet appeared in print, though it may live to be gravely noted down in some future Variorum, being a genuine echo of many a note by Zachary Jackson or Andrew Beckett. In _As You Like It_ occur the familiar lines, "And thus our life ... finds ... books in the running brooks, sermons in stones," etc. "This is stark nonsense, and must be remedied. Who ever found a _book_ in a _rivulet_ or a _sermon_ in a _rock?_ It is clearly an error of a most ignorant or careless compositor, who has transposed the nouns. Read, '_stones in the running brooks and sermons in books_.' Sense is vindicated. Stones are frequently found in brooks. David chose smooth _pebbles from the brook_, and sermons are quite frequently printed and sold in a book-form. By this restoration Shakespeare's wonderful observation is," etc., etc., etc.

Great as is the service done in particular cases, the most valuable part of _The Still Lion_ is the moral which it points, that "successful emendation is the fruit of severe study and research on the one hand, and of rare sensibility and sense on the other." And in our opinion Dr. Ingleby might have gone even farther, and demanded for it a spark of that creative power which is genius. But it must not be inferred that all the difficult passages in Shakespeare can be thus explained away. Despite all learning, or acuteness, or genius, there remains a considerable number that have never yet been solved, and never will be, in general acceptation, till the crack of doom. These, however, bear so small a proportion to the vast mass of perplexing riddles that have been satisfactorily settled that, like an infinitely small quantity in mathematics, they may be neglected. Therefore, let not him who wishes to read his Shakespeare unalloyed by notes and textual comment, despise the painful critic or accuse him of playing at loggats with the words of Shakespeare. It is through the labors of critics that the text is in such a shape that the work-a-day reader can read it at all. In the Folios and Quartos we see Shakespeare as through a glass darkly, but, thanks to those drudges, the commentators, in numberless places we can now see him face to face.

The Orphan of Pimlico, and other Sketches, Fragments and Drawings. By William Makepeace Thackeray. With some notes by Anne Isabella Thackeray. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

The artistic sense--the vivid conception of things and persons in their external aspects and with a constant regard to their groupings and the effect upon the spectator--made itself peculiarly prominent in all that Thackeray wrote. It is not that he gives us elaborate descriptions: this, indeed, is the resource of writers who are lacking in the faculty mentioned, and are consequently obliged to reach the result, if at all, by inferior means. His power lay in the selection of traits which were strictly characteristic, in making every act or phrase indicative of individuality. An astute critic, therefore--one gifted with that keenness of vision to which the exercise of the office unhappily implies a claim--should have been able to infer Thackeray's dexterity with the pencil from the methods of his literary work. There was, however, no room for conjecture on this point, as the fact was early a matter of notoriety, and many of the illustrations in his books were known to be from his own sketches. Recently, too, a publication containing some of his earliest and slightest work in this way attracted considerable attention, with the fortunate result of calling out the volume before us, which embodies the best specimens of his skill reproduced by a method that renders every line an exact transcript, and accompanied by facsimiles of whatever written text or comment appeared on the same page. Many of them partake more or less of the nature of caricature, and if the execution alone be considered, they show that Thackeray might, in default of talents of a different order, have pursued this line with as much success as some of its cleverest cultivators. But what distinguishes the drolleries in this book is the inventiveness shown in the conception and the characteristic ingenuity of the details. The designs for "Playing Cards," in which the tray of spades is represented by the figures of Johnson, Boswell and Gibbon, and a scene at "Dr. Birch's School" does duty for the seven of hearts, are especially felicitous in this way; while a different but not less familiar trait is exhibited in some carefully-drawn "Initial Letters," embodying charming bits of child-life and quaint allusions to well-known scenes in history and romance. "Othello" in the form of "Dandy Jim of Souf Caroline," and "The Little Assessor of Tübingen"--a mysterious personage of whom the author refused to reveal the secret--are equally amusing and suggestive. There are some half hundred subjects of the same or other kinds in the volume, which, as a mere picture-book, is full of entertainment for readers of all ages, while for those with whom the name of Thackeray is a dear household word it will have a still higher charm, calling up as it does so many associations connected with the author and the man, and seeming like a fragment of the biography which has been vainly looked for.

_BOOKS RECEIVED_.

The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs for 1876. By J.J. Thomas. Albany: Luther Tucker & Son.

The Chevalier Casse-Cou: The Red Camellia. By Fortuné Du Boisgobey. Translated from the French by Thos. Picton. New York: Robert M. De Witt.

Household Elegancies. By Mrs. C.S. Jones and Henry T. Williams. New York: Henry T. Williams.

The Children's Treasury of English Song. By Francis Turner Palgrave. New York: Macmillan & Co.

Stories from the Lips of the Teacher. By O.B. Frothingham. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Songs of Three Centuries. Edited by J.G. Whittier. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

Roddy's Reality. By Helen Kendrick Johnson. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.