Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Goodson laughed loudly and brutally. "A bonny sort of a night for a respectable family man like you, Jones, to be skylarking around carrying messages for typewriting maidens!"

"Oh, come now, that's a little too much!"

"Well, old man, I'll show my gratitude for your friendly intentions toward me by going round to the telephone people the first thing in the morning, and complaining of you. You've no right to be running opposition to the public telephones in this way."

"_If_ you only would!" and Jones wrung his friend's hand while tears of thankfulness welled up to his eyes.

Once in the street, he longed for a contemptuous enemy to kick him briskly to the door of the Widow Goodson. The latter was evidently about to retire, as it was a long time before she responded to his ring. When, finally, she did come, she heard him calmly through and then answered languidly: "Yes, I didn't much expect Bella home to-night, for she said if it come on to rain she thought she'd stay with her cousins. Good night. Quite drizzly, isn't it?" peering out into the darkness.

Full of bitterness, Jones turned homeward. It seemed to him that his cup was full; and so it was, for it refused to hold more. As he entered his home, chilled without but hot within, he was greeted by an unfamiliar voice coming from the regions of the telephone.

"Give me Blair's," it said. "Is that Blair's? Is that--Blair's--B-l-a-i-r-'s, do you understand? Oh, yes, it is you, is it, Mrs. Blair? Well, say I want to speak to Miss McCrea--Oh--pshaw! you must know her--she's the young lady that works for you. Oh, she's out, is she? Well, when she comes in, tell her Miss Doolan told you to say that Mr. Brennan has broke his leg--she'll know, he drives Judson's horses--and me and Mrs. Judson want to know whether he's to go to the hospital or to his friends. You can send your answer to No. 999. They'll let me know. Give Miss McCrea my love and tell her not to worry about Mr. Brennan. Good-by."

Jones confronted a stately creature as she stepped into the hall.

"Look here, young woman, who are you?"

"I'm Miss Doolan, and I'm stopping at Judson's--as housemaid," she answered, so taken aback that for the moment her self-possession failed her.

"And to whom have you been telephoning?"

"To Blair's--Judge Blair's, over on the avenue--a friend of mine stops there."

"And are you in the habit of calling up ladies in that fashion?"

"It's a very good fashion, for all _I_ can see," she retorted impudently.

"And what business have you to order an answer sent here for me to carry on a night like this?"

"Mrs. Judson and me took you for a _gentleman_, sor, and we thought you wouldn't mind obliging ladies."

"Nor do I, but I don't know either Mrs. Judson or you, and I don't propose running errands for you."

"Oh, then don't bother yourself, sor--we can hire a boy," she flung back with a scornful laugh as she bounced out.

"Now, Jane, I want you to distinctly understand that the last message has been carried from this house. I have probably to-night sown the seeds of pleurisy and pneumonia broadcast in my system; I have walked twelve squares to deliver a message to the wrong person; we have had a baggage here using our telephone as if it were her own, and we have been at the beck and call of the unpaying public for the last six months. Now, if the telephone people are not here by noon to-morrow, to threaten legal proceedings against me (Goodson has promised to complain of me) for undermining their business, I shall have that wretched instrument dragged away, body and soul, and we will try some other form of economy in the future."

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LABORATORY AT HARVARD.

BY HERBERT NICHOLS, PH.D.,

Instructor in Psychology, Harvard University.

EDITOR'S NOTE.--The illustrations of this article are from
photographs, specially taken for the Harvard University Exhibit at
the World's Fair.

What do they do there?

What do they expect to come out of it?

The notion of a mental laboratory is still a mystery to most persons. They ask themselves the above questions, and many feel as they do so an uncanny shiver. They cannot realize that the study of the mind is already an established natural science, here, at sober Harvard, in all the leading universities, and free of spooks and mediums.

Yet a psychological laboratory looks much like any other modern laboratory. Around the rooms run glass-cases filled with fine instruments. Shelves line up, row after row, of specimen-jars and bottles. Charts cover the remainder of the walls. The tables and floors are crowded with working apparatus. Two large rooms and one small one are now occupied at Harvard. Four more rooms will be added to these this summer.

Also, the spirit that reigns in these rooms is the same that is found in other laboratories of exact science. This is the important thing. The minds of these workers are not wandering in dialectics and vagrant hypotheses. Reverence has opened her eyes. Hypotheses they have, and must have. Often they hold conflicting opinions. But the referee is always present--Nature herself. To experiment, to show the fact, is always the method of debate. This is the great advantage of the modern way of studying psychology over the old.

The American public is so practical that I feel I can alone satisfy its "whats and wherefores" by explicitly describing some of the investigations being carried on here.

EFFECT OF ELEMENTARY SENSATIONS ON ONE ANOTHER.

Here is a lantern throwing a steady light through a large tube. (See illustration below, the right hand group.) By transparent slides of colored glass or gelatine, the light may be made of any color. At the end of the tube is a box, like a camera. The operator covers his head with a cloth, and observes the color of the light as it shines from the tube through, or on, a tiny hole in the dark box. The size of the hole can be varied by moving slides, worked by micrometer screws so fine that they measure the dimensions of the hole to the four-hundredth of an inch.

The first step is to discover the "threshold" of each separate color. That means the smallest-sized hole through which each color can be distinguished. This varies for different colors. But now comes the interesting point. The size of the hole, for any given _color seen_, varies according to the nature of any _sound heard_ at the same time. For instance, in order to distinguish a given red, the hole must be larger or smaller, in proportion as the pitch of a musical tone is lower or higher, fainter or stronger.

The above experiment is one in a system of investigations, intended to discover the laws by which the simplest sensations modify each other under the simplest conditions. These are laws as fixed as the laws of gravity, and, once determined, we may move on to study the combination of these elements into the higher thought processes.

EFFECTS OF ATTENTION.

Another experiment will further illustrate this method of study. An apparatus is so contrived that a colored disk can be made darker or brighter by the operator, and a measure of the change be recorded. (See illustration on opposite page, rear group.) The persons operated on do not know what change is made, or whether any will be made or not. They first look at the disk for ten seconds, taking good note of its color. Next, the operator changes the shade (or not) as he sees fit. Then for another ten seconds the subject judges the shade of color, but this time performs meanwhile a sum in addition as the operator calls to him simple numbers.

The experiment is to determine how the appearance of the color changes, by reason of dividing the attention between observing the disk and performing the addition. Do the colors of a rival's bonnet really grow more glaring the harder they are looked at? To explain this is to touch on a social as well as an esthetic problem.

Diversion of attention changes the appearance of distances as well as of colors. A large frame covered with black cloth stands vertical. Two tiny white disks are held in place on the cloth by invisible threads manipulated behind the frame by the operator. When the disks are set a given distance apart they rest close upon the smooth black ground. The eye sees but two white spots in a free field, and may judge the distance between them without complication. This is done for ten seconds, as with the color disks. Then the spots are covered, and their distance apart slightly changed (or not) by the operator. Again they are shown, and now judged for ten seconds while adding figures. The mental process of addition changes the judgment of the distance.

You will say it is a familiar experience that the road seems longer or shorter as the mind is busy or not. But it is not a familiar thing to determine the law of such lengthening and shortening for definite distances, and under precise mental condition, as in the above experiment.

JUDGMENTS OF TIME.

Every woman knows that color has an effect on the apparent size of objects; that of her dress on her figure.[2] It is not as well known that color affects our judgments of time. Our next experiment examines this matter.

[2] In the diagram on the preceding page the white squares show
plainly larger than the black squares.

Upon a cylinder, slowly revolving by fine clockwork, strips of different colored cardboard are fastened, and observed through a hole in a screen. (See illustration on the preceding page.) The time of each rotation is measured precisely. By observation it is found that the period of rotation _seems_ to vary with the colors on the cylinder. By combining colors differently through a long and tedious series of investigations on many people, it is being determined what part this sort of influence plays in mental processes. "When things look gay, time seems short." Psychology seeks the laws of such happenings.

LOCALIZATION OF SOUNDS.

They are the most familiar things which in our science become the strangest. _Not_ to know where you are when seasick, still less where your mind is, is common enough. Our next experiment will trace our power to know where sounds are to the same origin as seasickness.

Seasickness starts in the ear. In its cavity are three small tubes, each bent in a circle, and filled with fluid. The three sit at right angles to each other, like the three sides at the corner of a room or a box. Consequently, in whatever direction the head is moved, the fluid in some one of the tubes is given a circular motion. Hanging out into the tubes, from their sides, are hairs or _cilia_, which connect with nerve cells and fibres that branch off from the auditory nerve. When the head moves the fluid moves, the hairs move, the cells are "fired off," a nervous current is sent up to the brain, and a feeling of the head's peculiar motion is consequent.

As for seasickness: this nerve current, on its way to the brain, at one point runs beside the spot or "centre" where the nerve governing the stomach has its origin. When the rocking of the head is abnormally violent and prolonged, the stimulus is so great that the current leaks over into this adjoining "centre," and so excites the nerve running to the stomach as to cause wretchedness and retching. Deaf mutes, whose ear "canals" are affected, are never seasick.

But normally the amount of ear-feeling which we get by reason of moving our head in a particular direction comes in a curious way to be a measure of the direction of sound. The feelings we get from our skin and muscles in turning the head play a similar _role_. We turn our ear to catch a sound. We do this so frequently for every point, that in time we learn to judge the direction of the sound by the way we would have to turn the head in order to hear the sound best. Thereafter we do not have to turn the head to get the direction, for we now remember the proper feeling and know it. This memory of the old feeling _is_ our idea of the present direction. If we never moved our heads we never could have any such notion of the location of sounds as at present--perhaps none whatever.

MENTAL ORIGIN OF NUMBERS.

Number! surely there can be nothing mysterious here; no "law" to be discovered about one, two, three? Well, the next time you shake hands, ask the man what he feels. A hand. Then ask further and he will feel five fingers. Now ask rightly and he will feel any number of distinct spots of pressure. But the real pressures were practically the same all through. Why, then, did he feel first one, then five, then eight, ten, or a dozen? So with the objects we become acquainted with through any of our senses! Why does the same bit of nature now stand before us "one tree," and now a myriad of leaves and branches? Why do the same outer groupings fall into such different inner groupings? Why does not the result of each little nerve of the millions continually played on in eye, ear, and skin stand out by itself, and we have so many million feelings?

To explain this: the first time a child opens his eyes he sees, as Professor James says, but "one big, blooming, buzzing confusion." Not till some "whole" (knife) be broken up into parts (blade, handle) and each part be mentally perceived _in immediate succession the one after the other_ can the idea of "twoness" ever be possible to that child. The "twoness" is a feeling of distinct nature apart from the two terms (blade, handle). It rises from the "shock of succession." It is one of the "modified states" wrought by one element on another, which we studied in our first experiment. Once lodged in the mind, the feeling may be remembered and reawakened, like any other. Thereafter the two parts or terms may come before the mind, awaken this feeling of twoness, and _now_ stand side by side, simultaneously and numerically separate.

These are the primary laws of number perception. Our experiments illustrate and prove them. Though the nerves lying under a needle point are really several in number, the pressure on them is commonly felt as "one prick." The area is so small that usually, through life, all the nerves have been pressed together. They have not been split up and pressed enough times in succession among themselves for a memory of "twoness" to have been developed among them. But, by proper manipulation, not unlike some of the processes of hypnotism, yet perfectly normal, the "twoness" of some other group of nerves can be yoked to the feeling resulting from the pressure of a particular needle point. Thereupon the one needle will feel like two, as distinctly and clearly as any real two.

MENTAL ORIGIN OF DISTANCES AND SPACE.

By similar manipulations the simple needle may be made to feel like three or like four; now standing in a line, now in a triangle, and again in the corners of a square. But, since there is but one needle, what about the apparent distance _between_ these several points that are clearly _felt_? This is the most curious thing of all, and from the light it throws on the formation of our "ideas" both of number and of space, is the most important.

To explain this: our notion of distance results out of "series" of sensations, in the same way as our notions of number. To have any idea of "distance" aroused between any two points of skin, the line of nerves lying between those points must, some time during life, have been previously stimulated in a line of succession, such as would result from a pencil drawn along between them. A card edge would give no idea of "distance" until such a series had some time been previously experienced. The memory of the "series" _is_ the idea of the distance.

Within small areas of the skin, so few "series" have been experienced that no "distance memories" have been developed. Consequently pin-point areas commonly awaken no notion of distance. For some regions of the body these "limit areas" are larger than for others; at some places are quite large. On the back, spaces three inches apart may fail to give any idea of number or of distance. Every region has such a limit distance.

_Now it is this limit distance, the smallest distance for which a "series" memory has been developed for a given region, that always shoves itself in, as the apparent distance between the several fictitious points felt from the single needle in our experiment. On the back the one needle feels like two set three inches apart; on the forehead like two half an inch apart; on the tongue one-sixteenth of an inch; and so on._

The upshot, then, of this matter is to show that our whole mind--our notions of space, number, time, and all else--is but a bundle of lawful habits, formed in relation with the things and occurrences around us. Ordinarily we have right ideas, because on the whole our mind has formed right habits. We have the right idea of an inch of skin, because the proper idea of an "inch long" has become habitually joined to each inch of skin, or in so far as this has been done. When a wrong idea gets joined, then we have an illusion; that is, the stretch of skin, or, as well, the pin-point of skin, seems a fraction of an inch in length; or, again, like three inches.

"TIME REACTIONS:" METHODS OF MEASURING THE TIME REQUIRED FOR PERFORMING VARIOUS MENTAL ACTS.

A sketch like this would be incomplete without a word about time reactions--a subject that historically was almost the first in the field, and has occupied more workers than any other. A generation ago "as quick as thought" was our extreme limit of expression. It outran "quicker than lightning." The great physiologist, Johannes Mueller, wrote, in 1844:

"We shall probably never secure the means of ascertaining the
speed of nerve activities, because we lack the comparative
distances from which the speed of a movement, in this respect
analogous to light, could be calculated."

We now know that sensory processes travel along the nerves on an average only about one hundred and ten feet per second, and often less than twenty-six feet. While you are performing the commonest judgment, electricity or light would have shot from continent to continent. The time-measurement of different mental processes is now one of the chief means which the psychologist uses for getting at mental laws. When certain measures are once determined, he uses these as the chemist does his familiar reagents, to dissolve the unfamiliar and more complicated combinations.

The following table shows in decimals of a second about the average length of time which our commonest judgments occupy:

SECONDS

To recognize the direction of a ray of light .011

To recognize a color when one of two, as red and blue, .012
and expected to be seen

To recognize the direction of ordinary sounds .015

To localize mentally, when blindfolded, any place on .021
our body, touched by another person

Mentally to judge a distance when seen .022

To recognize the direction of loud sounds .062

To recognize capital letters .180

To recognize short English words .214

To recognize pictures of objects .163

To add single figures .170

Given a month, to name its season .164 to .354

To answer such questions as "Who wrote Hamlet?" .900 and over

Such then, are a few out of the many problems which have been experimented upon in the Harvard Laboratory during the last year--problems in perception, association, attention, "reaction times," psycho-physic law, kinesthetics, esthetics, memory, will, and so on, covering nearly the whole range of mental phenomena. I have selected these few for presentation here, not for their importance over others, but because they could be simply described in these pages. The general aim of all the work is, however, very simple. As in the other sciences, it seeks to establish fact after fact, in orderly manner, along the whole line of mental nature; and by unifying these to work ever to a larger knowledge of the whole.

FACILITIES FOR TEACHING.

But the university laboratory is for teaching as well as for discovering. It is equipped for the undergraduate, as well as for the advanced investigator. The elementary or demonstrational courses are designed to impress upon the student the facts, the methods, and the spirit of his science. There is now furnished for these, at Harvard, nearly every kind of apparatus commonly used in physical and physiological laboratories, for the study of neurology, optics, acoustics, kinesthetics, esthetics, anthropology, and so on. The electrical department is a miniature laboratory in itself. And the various models in wax, wire, and plaster--of eyes, ears, brains, fishes, reptiles, monkeys, children, adults, idiots, insane people, and people of genius--is a veritable museum.[3]

[3] How interesting these things are to a thoughtful man may be told
to the readers of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE in an anecdote which they
have a peculiar right to hear. Its founder, a few months ago,
stood before a shelf full of the very pedagogic images which his
illustrations now present to you. I pointed out a series of
dainty models, showing, comparatively, the various evolutionary
stages of brain development in the animal kingdom. His eyes
fastened on them and--there they stayed.

The same part of each brain was tinted in the same color. I
showed him the olfactory lobes; in man, two little insignificant
yellow streaks; in the shark, two big bulbs larger than all the
rest of the brain together. I thus made visible to him how small
a sphere "smell" plays in our mental life, while pretty nearly
the whole life of the shark must be a world of smells. I showed
him the optic lobes in the brain of a blind mole, and then in
that of a carrier pigeon, which sees its way over dizzy leagues
to familiar places. I showed him the cerebellum of the rabbit
that hops, the fish that swims, and the alligator that crawls. I
say, he stood still, almost. I could get him to look at nothing
else. He seemed to see, projecting down future volumes of
MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, pages after pages of comparative mental
menageries--pink infundibula swimming in blue Gulf Streams;
green cerebra flying through gorgeous sunsets; oceans of
terrific shark-smells diagrammatically printed in blood red; and
Kipling poems of adventure sent to press in surprising
variegations of color, the more scientifically to express their
psychological emotions. He stood till he murmured, "We must have
an article on this," and rushed to the train or to the telegraph
office, and secured, I suspect, from Professor Drummond, his now
famous article, "Where Man Got His Ears."--H. N.

The laboratory workshop is provided with the common implements and facilities required for working in wood, glass, and metal. Both for original research and for demonstration, this laboratory is the most unique, the richest, and the most complete in any country; and in witness of the fame and genius of its present director, and of the rapidly spreading interest in experimental psychology, particularly in America, there are already gathered here, under Professor Muensterberg's administration, a larger number of students specially devoted to mental science than ever previously studied together in any one place.

THE FUTURE AND INFLUENCE OF THE NEW SCIENCE.

So much for the place and what is done there. Now, what is expected to come from this new psychology? "Do you fellows expect to invent patent ways of thinking?" was once asked me. Who can tell? Who, before Galileo, would have prophesied that man should weigh the stars or know their chemistry? Yet there is much ground for comparison between the position of physical science then and that of mental science now. The popular opinion of to-day is perhaps even less awake to the fact that the world of mental phenomena is a world of laws, susceptible to scientific experimentation, than was the day of Galileo to the similar conception regarding physical phenomena. Have the physical sciences changed aught for man since the sixteenth century? Then we must not forget how slow was the growth, and how long it took to arrive at the laws of gravity and of conservation, not to mention those of evolution. Experimental psychology, as a systematic science, is almost younger than its youngest students. The mental laws are as fixed and as determinable as the laws of physics. Who then shall say what man shall come to know of mental composition, of the great mental universe, and of ourselves, its wandering planets, since minds _may_ be known as well as stars!

But psychology will not have to wait till its greater laws shall be wholly established before she becomes of practical influence in common affairs. He who reads most thoughtfully to-day will most appreciate this truth. He who reads at all, reads of "individualism" as opposed to "socialism." The Pope of Rome has declared that the "preoccupying" problem for active Christianity must now be the industrial problem. Every important treatise on the subject, appearing at present, admits that the crucial question of the industrial problem is an ethical problem, and every ethical treatise, that every ethical problem is a psychological problem. Two years ago the Roman Catholic Church established a psychological laboratory in its leading American college.

The Presbyterians the coming year will follow with a laboratory at Princeton. Psychology is no longer feared by religion, but is accepted, though in places yet too timidly, as a source of its further and unending revelation.

But psychology is coming close to affairs of church and state in more than one way. One of the greatest crimes of modern society is its conception of criminal jurisprudence. Between the foetal period and adult life man passes through, in abridged series, all the degrees of evolution that have led up through the lower animal stages to his own. In early infancy, and even in childhood, he is not yet wholly man; not yet safely over the brute period of his lineal development. If the domestic calf and chicken spend their first days wild in the woods, this pre-domestic environment will seize upon and develop their pre-domestic traits; and these once set, no amount of domestic training will, thereafter, make calf or chicken anything else than a wild, untamable creature. The early instinctive periods of man's progeny are more prolonged, more delicate, and more susceptible than those of lower animals, yet are of the same nature. If left to evil environment in early years the latent brute within him will surely lay hold of its own, and ripen the yet innocent child to a creature bearing the same relation to the moral and civilized man that the wild wolf does to the house-dog.

On the other hand, the wolf whose first lair is the hunter's hearth, grows to share it lovingly with the hunter's children. The government that ignores the hordes of children which crowd to-day the criminal quarters of its great cities, and abandons them to ripen their pre-civilized propensities under such evil influences, becomes itself the foster-father of its own crimes; nurses its own children to fill its poorhouses, and raises its own youths to fill its prisons. Psychology, if on mere ground of financial economy alone, will yet force criminal jurisprudence to begin its work before, rather than after, this early period of "unalterable penalty."

The benefits of a psychological training to the medical man are now so obvious as to make a knowledge of psychology imperative for every first-class physician. The nervous activities are the regulating activities of every part of the body; and the brain embodies an ever-meddling three-fourths of the body's whole neural energy. The mind is a play-house wherein the skilful physician now looks to observe the condition of the general system, and with growing precision even to read the working of such specific organs as the heart, the stomach, the bladder, and the liver.

The relation of our science to modern education has long passed from novelty to a recognized principle. A chair of psychology and a chair of pedagogy, side by side and hand in hand, is now the requisite of every institution of advanced learning. "To get up more 'fads'? More patent methods?" It is only the ignorant now who ask these questions. Galton has shown that some men do their thinking in visual pictures--in memories of what they see; others, in memories of what they hear; others, in the memories of their own speaking. There is reason to suspect that the lightning-calculator's speed is largely due to peculiar "image processes" used in his thinking, and that these could be taught if science could but catch his unconscious secrets. This in time will be done, and is but an instance of innumerable things that are sure to be accomplished. In the face of all present pedagogical fads and blunders we may yet say with confidence, of the mind, the instincts, the emotions, the conduct of man, individual and social, all is lawful; and the laws may be discovered. They are difficult--more difficult than all the physical laws achieved from Ptolemy to Darwin. But they can be scientifically determined and mastered, and modern methods, swift with gathering impetus, shall make of this no lingering matter.

HISTORY OF MENTAL LABORATORIES.

The psychological laboratory sprang first from no single mind; not wholly from science nor yet from philosophy, but from an age. In 1860 Gustave Theodore Fechner, the godfather of experimental psychology, published his famous Law. Fechner was as much a mystic as a scientist. His Law was, perhaps, the first great impetus to active psycho-physical experimentation. The prospects now are, however, that this Law will stand, a halfway truth, beside Newton's erroneous theory of light, rather than, as was at first claimed for it, beside the Law of Gravity, a great primary law of nature.

The spirit of Fechner, of evolution, and of our times joined to fall upon Wilhelm Wundt, who founded at Leipsic, in 1878, the first laboratory in the world for regular scientific mental experimentation. Professor Wundt is the greatest psychologist now living in Europe, and a majority of the noted psychological experts, both of Germany and of America, have been his pupils.

One of these pupils, G. Stanley Hall, now President of Clark University, opened the first American laboratory at Johns Hopkins in 1883, and the larger laboratory at Worcester in 1889. To him must be credited the founding of experimental psychology in this country, and an eminent share of its present successful growth.

A foremost figure in modern psychology is Professor William James, of Harvard, whose great text-book, the product of twelve years of labor, appeared in 1890. In 1891 he opened the present Harvard Laboratory, or, at least, expanded a previously slow growth to important dimensions.

In 1892 Harvard established a new chair of Experimental Psychology, and elected to the same, and to direct its new laboratory, Professor Hugo Muensterberg, previously Professor of Philosophy at Freyburg, Germany. Professor Muensterberg was at one time a pupil of Wundt, but is much more a man of original inspiration; and in his genius the hopes and destiny of experimental psychology at Harvard are now centred.

Some twenty laboratories are now actively at work in America, and about half that number in Europe. The twentieth century will be to mental what the sixteenth century was to physical science, and the central field of its development is likely to be America.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, _July, 1893_.

THE SPIRE OF ST. STEPHEN'S.

BY EMMA W. DEMERITT.

"It needs but a steady head and a clear conscience and the thing is done." Those were old Jacob's words.

"The clear conscience is not lacking, thank God! but all these weeks of watching by a sick bed, and the scanty meals, have made the head anything but steady. If it were but three months ago, my courage would not fail me, but now----"

The boy broke off abruptly, and, stepping back several feet, stood looking up at the stately spire that towered above him. Fair and shapely it rose, with gradually receding buttress and arch, until it terminated at a point over four hundred feet from the pavement.

All day long little groups of men had straggled across the Platz and gathered in front of the great cathedral, elbowing one another, and stretching upon tiptoe to read the notice nailed to the massive door. Many were the jests passed around.

"Does the old sexton think men are flies, to creep along yonder dizzy height?" asked one.

"The prize is indeed worth winning," said another, "but"--he turned away with an expressive shrug of the shoulder--"life is sweet."

"When I try to reach heaven 'twill be by some less steep and dangerous way," laughed a third, with an upward glance at the spire.

"It makes a strong man feel a bit queer to go up inside as far as the great bell and look up at the network of crossing ladders; but to stand _outside_ and wave a flag!--why, the mere thought of it is enough to make one's head swim," said the first speaker.

"Jacob Wirtig is the only man in all Vienna who has the nerve for such a part."

"But he served a good apprenticeship! He learned the knack of keeping a steady head during his early days of chamois-hunting in the Tyrol. But why does he seek to draw others into danger? For so much gold many a man would risk his life."

"I can understand it, Caspar. Twice before, on some grand occasion, has old Jacob stood on the spire and waved a flag as the emperor passed in the streets below. And now, after all the fighting and the victory, when there is to be a triumphal entry into the city and a grand review, and such rejoicing as was never known before, he feels in honor bound to supply the customary salute from the cathedral. And since this miserable fever, which has stricken down so many in the city, has left him too weak to attempt it, he is trying, as you see by this notice, to get some one to take his place. He offers all the money which the emperor never fails to send as a reward, to say nothing of the glory. I'll wager a florin that he'll offer in vain! But come, let us be going. There's too much work to be done, to be loitering here."

Twice before on that day, once in the early morning, and again at noon, had the boy stood as if spellbound, with his eyes riveted on the beautiful spire. And now the setting of the sun had found him a third time at his post. The Platz was deserted, but the streets beyond were thronged with people hurrying to their homes. Was it fear, or the chill of the night air, that sent a shiver over the slender figure of the boy as he stood, letting his eyes slowly wander from the top of the spire to the base of the tower beneath, as if measuring the frightful distance? But as he turned away with a little gesture of despair, there rose before him the vision of a wan and weary face, as white as the pillow against which it rested, and he heard the physician's voice as he gently replaced the wasted hand on the coverlet: "The fever has gone, my boy, and all that your mother needs now to make her well and strong is good care and plenty of nourishing food." The money offered by old Jacob would do all that, and much more. It would mean comfort for two or three years for both mother and son, with their simple way of living.

When the lad again faced the cathedral it was with an involuntary straightening of the shrinking figure. "With God's help I will try," he said aloud, with a determined ring to his voice, "and I must go at once to let Master Wirtig know. Now that I have finally decided, it is strange how the fear has flown. It is the hesitating that takes the courage out of one. After all"--he paced back, back, back, until he was far enough from the cathedral to get a good view of the noble structure--"who knows? It may look more difficult than it really is. 'Tis but a foothold of a few inches, but 'tis enough. If it were near the ground I should feel as safe as if I were on the floor of the great hall in the Stadt Haus. Why, then, should I fear up yonder?"

The flush in the western sky suddenly deepened to a vivid crimson. The clouds above the horizon, which a moment before had shone like waves of gold, became a sea of flame. The ruddy glow illumined the old cathedral, touching rich carving and lace-like tracery with a new splendor, while far over sculptured dome and stately tower rose the lofty spire, bathed from finial to base in the radiant light.

The boy made a step forward, and, slipping back the little cap from his locks, stretched out his clasped hands toward the sky. "O Mary, tender mother!" he cried, "plead thou for me in my time of need to-morrow! O Jesu! be near to help and save!"

He replaced the cap, and hurried across the Platz to the crowded thoroughfare beyond. At the end of three blocks he turned into a narrow street, and stopped in front of a high house with steep, tiled roof. The lamp in the swinging iron bracket above the door gave such a feeble light that he was obliged to grope his way through the hall to the stairs.

At the second landing he paused for a moment, fancying that he heard a light footfall behind him, but all was still, and he hastened on to the next floor. Again he stopped, thinking that he caught the sound of a stealthy, cat-like tread on the steps below. "Who's there?" he called out boldly, but the lingering echo of his own voice was the only answer.

"How foolish I am!" he exclaimed. "It is but the clatter of my shoes on the stone stairs." Up another flight and down the long, narrow entry he went, and still he could not shake off the feeling that he was being followed.

At that moment a door opened and a woman peered out, holding a candle high above her head. "Is that you, Franz?" she said. "My brother has been expecting you this half hour." By the flickering light of the candle Franz could see that there was no one in the entry. He turned, impelled by a strong desire to search the tall cupboard near the stairs and see if any one had concealed himself within, but the dread of being laughed at kept him back, and he followed the woman into a room where a gray-haired man sat, leaning wearily against the back of his chair.

"You may go now, Katrina," said the man, motioning to an adjoining room; and when the door closed he turned to Franz, trembling with eagerness. "Well, have you decided?"

"I will try, Master Wirtig."

The old sexton wrung his thin hands nervously. "But if you should fail?"

"In God is my trust," answered the boy, calmly. "But one 'if' is as good as another. Why not say, if you succeed? It sounds more cheery."

"God grant it!" answered the man, sinking back in his chair. "I had thought that it would be some hardy young sprig who should accept my offer--some sailor or stone-mason, whose calling had taught him to carry a steady head. I never dreamed that it would be a mere lad like thyself, and worn out, too, with the care of thy sick mother! Even now I feel I do thee a grievous wrong to listen to thy entreaties."

"Think not of _me_, Master Wirtig; think rather of my mother. Shall we let her die, when a few moments on yonder spire would furnish the means to make her well? The kind physician who would have helped me was smitten with the fever yesterday, and there is no one to whom I can go."

"Had I been as prudent as I ought, I could have aided thee. But this lingering illness has used up what I had put aside. Here is a little for thy present need--some broth for thy mother, and a bite for thyself, for thy cheeks look as pinched as if thou hadst not eaten a good meal for a fortnight." He pulled out a covered basket from under the table, and continued: "I shall arrange with Nicholas--for he has worked with me so long that he is as familiar with the ladders as myself--to go with thee up to the little sliding window, and pass out the flag. Thou must let thyself down _outside_ the window until thy toes touch the ledge below. Then thou must creep cautiously around to the opposite side of the spire, and wave the flag. Look always straight before thee or up at the sky. _Thy safety lies in not glancing below._ I believe in my heart thou wilt succeed. How I wish that this graceless Nicholas, this unruly nephew of mine, were such an one as thou! Then should I have some comfort. But with his evil companions and bad ways, he brings me naught but sorrow. Listen, Franz; if all goes well, thou shalt have his place in helping me with the care of the cathedral. There is no longer any dependence to be placed on him."

In his excitement old Jacob's voice rang through the room. "What is it?" he asked, as he saw Franz start and look toward the door.

"I thought I heard a rattling of the latch--as if some one were outside."

"It's nothing but the wind drawing through the entry."

Franz took up his basket and bade the old sexton good-night. After he had passed into the street a figure crept out from the cupboard, and stole softly down stairs. The light by the door showed a boy about seventeen years old, with an evil scowl on his face. "And so thou art to take my place, Franz Halle," he sneered. "That is nothing new. Twice this year has our master, the goldsmith, preferred thy work to mine, and has set thee over me. Truly, I wish thou mayst fall to-morrow and break thy neck."

When Franz reached home the kind neighbor who was watching by his mother's bed motioned for him to be quiet. "The sick one is sleeping well," she said. "If I had but some good broth to give her when she wakes." Franz pointed to the basket, and the delighted woman began the preparations for the evening meal. When the invalid awoke they gave her a few spoonfuls of the broth, and had the satisfaction of seeing a faint color come into the white cheeks as she sank into a peaceful slumber.

"Do thou go to bed, Franz! I will stay with thy mother to-night, and to-morrow too, for that matter, so that thou canst have the whole day to thyself. Thou needest it after all thy care and watching. I like not these parades and these marches of triumph. They remind me too much of my boy, whose young life helped to purchase the victory," and the good frau wiped away a tear.

The morning dawned with a bright blue sky and a crisp breeze, which shook out the folds of the triumphal banners floating from every tower and turret. The city was one blaze of color. The gorgeous festoons on column and arch and facade were matched by the rich tints of the splendid costumes in the streets below. On every side the black eagles of Austria stood out distinctly from their gleaming orange background. The procession was due at the cathedral by the middle of the afternoon, but owing to some delay it was nearly sunset when the salute from the "Fort" told of the approach of the troops. To Franz, the hours had dragged wearily on, and he sprang up joyfully when Nicholas finally appeared in the little room in the tower, with the furled flag under his arm. "Come," he said gruffly, "you have just time to climb up and take your stand on the spire." Up the boys went, as far as the great bell, Franz close behind Nicholas. Thus far the ascent had been easy, but from this point the steps dwindled to long, frail ladders terminating in small platforms, and steadied by iron bars.

Still they toiled upward, more slowly and cautiously now, for the danger increased with every turn. At last they halted, side by side, on the little platform under the sliding window. To Nicholas's surprise Franz stood there, surveying it all without flinching. The younger boy turned to his burly companion: "Somehow, we've never been very good friends. I don't think the fault was all on my side, because you wouldn't let me be your friend. And we have had a good many quarrels. Won't you shake hands with me now and wish me good luck? If--if"--and there was just the suspicion of a tremor in the winning voice--"I should never see you again, I should like to feel that we were friends at the last. You're very good to come up here with me."

To his dying day Nicholas never forgot the slight, almost girlish, figure, standing there, with the wistful little smile, and the pleading tenderness shining in the blue eyes. He touched the slender outstretched hand with his own, but dropped it suddenly, as if he had received an electric shock. He tried to say "Good luck," but his tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth.

"Look you, Franz," he murmured hoarsely, "when you are safe outside I'll hand out the flag. I'll wait till you reach the opposite side of the spire and call out, 'All's well,' and then I'll go down and leave you to make your way back. And glad I shall be to leave this miserable trap in mid air."

Franz's face was deathly pale, but his eyes shone like two stars. He climbed up nimbly through the opening, let himself carefully down to the stone ledge outside, and reached up for the flag. A few moments passed, which seemed like ages to the waiting Nicholas. Then a cheery "All's well" rang out, without a quiver in the steady voice. The older boy's face grew black with rage. "What nerve the pale, sickly little thing has!" he muttered between his set teeth. "I believe he'll do it after all! And so this baby gets not only the prizes at the goldsmith's, but the money and the glory of this thing, to say nothing of his taking my place in the cathedral."

He raised his hand to the window, and stood in front of it for a moment. Then he began the descent as if some demon were after him. The frail ladders vibrated and swayed with the dangerous strain, but down he went, with reckless haste, until he reached the second platform, when he raised his hands with an agonized gesture to his ears as if he was trying to shut out the voice of conscience, that kept calling to him, "Back! back! before it is too late! Stain not thy young soul with such a crime!"

Still he hurried down with flying step to the landing near the great bell, where he paused, and stood leaning breathless against one of the cross-beams of the tower. Into the fierce, turbulent passions of the troubled face stole a softened expression, lighting up the swarthy lineaments like a gleam of sunshine. "I will go back and undo the horrid deed," he cried, as if in answer to the good angel pleading within his breast. "I am coming, Franz! God forgive me!"

He had turned to make the ascent, and his hand was stretched out to grasp the side of the ladder, when his toe caught in a coil of rope on the platform, and, missing his hold, he plunged down, down, into the space beneath.

In the meantime Franz had made his way safely around the spire, and stood quietly, with the end of the flagstaff on the ledge beneath, waiting for the signal. It came in a few moments; the thunder of the great gun on the Platz, and, bracing his feet firmly, he unfurled the flag and slowly waved it back and forth. From the answering roar of artillery, and the cheer upon cheer that floated up through the air, he knew that his salute had been seen.

With a light heart he began to retrace his steps, edging himself cautiously, inch by inch, to the window. To his surprise, the sliding wooden panel was closed! With one hand he grasped the iron ring fastened to the wall beneath the window, and with the other pushed, first gently, and then with all his might, but the panel remained fast. He tried to batter it with the flagstaff, but soon found that, in his cramped position, it only increased his danger. Again and again he endeavored to force it open, breaking his nails and bruising his finger-tips in his frenzy, but to no purpose. Suddenly the conviction dawned upon him that the window was bolted from the inside. With a despairing sob he tottered backward, but his grasp on the ring held, and with a supreme effort he pulled himself up close to the wall, and tried to collect his scattered wits.

"It is no use to shout," he said aloud. "It is more than folly to attempt to make myself heard from this height, I might as well save my strength. All that remains for me to do is to wait patiently. Some one will be sure to miss me and come to my relief. In God is my trust!" and his courage rose with the words.

The troops disbanded, and the people hurried off to the brilliantly lighted cafes and theatres, all unconscious of the pale, silent boy clinging with desperate grip to the spire, with but a narrow shelf of stone between him and a horrible death.

The sunset faded into the twilight, and with a sudden wave darkness drifted over the earth. The noise in the streets grew fainter and fainter. The minutes lengthened into hours, and still the boy stood there, as the night wore on, occasionally shifting his position to ease his cramped and aching limbs. The night wind pierced his thin clothing, and his hands were benumbed with the cold. One by one the bright constellations rose and glittered and dipped in the sky, and the boy still managed to keep his foothold, as rigid as the stone statues on the dome below.

"Two, three, four," pealed the bells in their hoarse, deep tones, and when the first glimmer of dawn tinged the eastern horizon with pale yellow, the haggard face lighted with expectancy, and from the ashen lips, which had been moving all night in prayer, came the words, "In God is my trust."

* * * * *

"What is the meaning of yonder crowd?" asked one of two artisans, who had met while hurrying across the Platz to their work.

"What! have you not heard? All Vienna is ringing with the news! It was young Franz, the goldsmith's apprentice, who climbed out on the spire yesterday and waved the flag. In some way, the little window near the top was fastened on the inside, and the poor boy was forced to stay out all night clinging to the spire. It is only a short time ago that he was discovered and brought fainting down the ladders. After working over him a little while he seemed all right, and was carried to his home. And there's another strange thing. Nicholas, old Jacob Wirtig's nephew, was picked up, mangled and bleeding, at the foot of the tower stairs this morning. He has just been taken to the hospital."

The next day Franz received a summons from the emperor. As he followed the officer who had been sent to conduct him to the palace, to his surprise the marble steps and the corridor beyond were lined on either sides with the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, and as the slender, boyish figure, with its crown of golden hair, passed between the files, each mailed and bearded warrior reverently saluted.

On he went, through another chamber, and into a spacious hall with marble floors and hangings of rich tapestry. On both sides were rows of courtiers and officers, the rich costumes and nodding plumes and splendid uniforms, with their jewelled orders, contrasting strangely with the lad's plain, homespun garments. "It is the emperor," whispered the guide as they drew near a canopied throne, and Franz dropped on one knee.