Chapter IV: Part 4

Working faithfully as he did in the office, his whole heart was in his drill room. His fame as a fencer went abroad in the town, and he was challenged to a bout by the principal teacher of the art in Chicago. Ellsworth records the combat in his diary of May 24th: "This evening the fencer of whom I have heard so much came up to the armory to fence with me. He said to his pupils and several others that if I held to the low guard he would disarm me every time I raised my foil. He is a great gymnast, and I fully expected to be beaten. The result was: I disarmed him four times, hit him thirty times. He disarmed me once and hit me five times. At the _touche-à-touche_ I touched him in two places at the same allonge, and threw his foil from him several feet. He was very angry, though he tried to conceal it."

From a photograph in the Civil War collection of Mr. Robert Coster, by whose permission it is here reproduced.]

Public interest constantly grew in the Zouaves and their young captain. Large crowds attended every drill. The newspapers began to report all their proceedings, and to comment upon them with more or less malevolence; for military companies were treated with scant respect in Western towns before the war. Ellsworth at last determined to confront hostile opinion by giving a public exhibition of the proficiency of his company on the Fourth of July. He was not without trepidation. The night before the Fourth he wrote: "To-morrow will be an eventful day to me; to-morrow I have to appear in a conspicuous position before thousands of citizens--an immense number of whom, without knowing me except by sight, are prejudiced against me. To-morrow will demonstrate the truth or falsity of my assertion that the citizens would encourage military companies if they were worthy of respect." The result was an overwhelming success; and the young soldier, after his feast of crackers the next night, wrote in exultation: "Victory! And thank God!"

The Chicago "Tribune," which had previously been unfriendly to the little company who were trying to make soldiers of themselves, gave a long and flattering account of the performance, and said: "We but express the opinion of all who saw the drill yesterday morning, when we say this company cannot be surpassed this side of West Point."

Encouraged by this public applause, he brought his company of Zouaves as near to absolute perfection of drill as was possible; and then, having tested them in as many competitive contests as were within reach, he challenged the militia companies of the United States, and set forth in the summer of 1860 on a tour of the country which was one unbroken succession of triumphs. He defeated the crack companies in all the principal Eastern cities, and went back to Chicago one of the most talked-of men in the country. Hundreds of Zouave companies started up in his wake, and a very considerable awakening of interest in military matters was the substantial result of his journey.

On his return to Illinois he made the acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln, and gained at once his friendship and esteem. He entered his office in Springfield ostensibly as a law student; but Mr. Lincoln was then a candidate for the Presidency, and Ellsworth read very little law that autumn. He made some Republican speeches in the country towns about Springfield, bright, witty, and good-natured. But his mind was full of a project which he hoped to accomplish by the aid of Mr. Lincoln--no less than the establishment in the War Department of a bureau of militia, by which the entire militia system of the United States should be concentrated, systematized, and made efficient: an enormous undertaking for a boy of twenty-three; but his plans were clear, definite, and comprehensive.

From a photograph owned by Bryan, Taylor & Co., publishers, New York, and reproduced here by their permission.]

After Mr. Lincoln's election Ellsworth accompanied him to Washington. As a preliminary step towards placing him in charge of a bureau of militia, the President gave him a commission as a lieutenant in the army. Shortly afterward he fell seriously ill with the measles; and before he was thoroughly convalescent, the guns about Sumter opened the Civil War. There had been much doubt in many minds as to the loyalty of the people in case of actual war. Ellsworth never had doubted it. He said to me as I sat by his bedside: "You know I have a great work to do, to which my life is pledged; I am the only earthly stay of my parents; there is a young woman whose happiness I regard as dearer than my own; yet I could ask no better death than to fall next week before Sumter. I am not better than other men. You will find that patriotism is not dead, even if it sleeps." When the news came that South Carolina had begun the war, he did not wait an instant. He threw up his commission in the regulars, took all the money we both had, which was not much, and thus insufficiently equipped, started for New York, and raised, with incredible celerity, the New York Zouaves, a regiment eleven hundred strong.

This unique organization filled so large a space in the public mind while Ellsworth commanded it that it seems hard to realize that its history with him is only a matter of a few weeks. He brought his regiment down to Washington early in May, arriving thin as a greyhound, his voice hoarse with drilling; but flushed and happy to know he was busy and useful at last.

There was no limit to the hopes and the confidence of his friends. We had grown to admire and respect him for his high and honorable character, his thorough knowledge of his business, ardent zeal for the flag he followed, and his extraordinary courage and energy. We fully expected, relying upon his splendid talents and the President's affectionate regard, that his first battle would make him a brigadier-general, and that his second would give him a division. There was no limit to the glory and usefulness we anticipated for him. How soon all these hopes were dust and ashes!

From a photograph taken by Colonel E.L. Brand, a member of Ellsworth's Chicago company, and reproduced by the courtesy of Mr. H.H. Miller, also a member of the company. The photograph was taken in New York City, July, 1860, on the occasion of an exhibition drill given there by Ellsworth's company. The persons shown in the picture are, beginning on the left, the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Sixth Regiment, New York Militia; E.E. Ellsworth, Captain of the United States Zouave Cadets (Ellsworth's Chicago company); Joseph C. Pinckney, Colonel of the Sixth Regiment, New York Militia; the Adjutant of the Sixth Regiment, New York Militia; H. Dwight Laflin, Second Lieutenant of the United States Zouave Cadets, and J.R. Scott, First Lieutenant of the United States Zouave Cadets. The colors shown in the picture were won by Ellsworth's company in a drill competition at the National Agricultural Fair, Chicago, September, 15, 1859, and were, by it, never lost. They are to-day in the custody of the company's color sergeant, B.B. Botteford, Chicago.]

On the evening of May 23d he received his orders to lead his regiment on the extreme left of the Union lines in the advance into Virginia. The part assigned him was the occupation of Alexandria. He worked almost all night in his tent, arranging the business of his regiment, and then wrote a touching letter of farewell to his parents. Anticipating an engagement, he said: "It may be my lot to be injured in some manner. Whatever may happen, cherish the consolation that I was engaged in the performance of a sacred duty; and to-night, thinking over the probabilities of the morrow and the occurrences of the past, I am perfectly content to accept whatever my fortune may be, confident that He who noteth even the fall of a sparrow will have some purpose even in the fate of one like me. My darling and ever-loved parents, good-by. God bless, protect, and care for you." These loving and filial words were the last that came from his pen.

The Zouaves were embarked before dawn the next morning. The celerity and order with which Ellsworth performed his work excited the admiration and surprise of Admiral Dahlgren, who commanded the navy yard.

The town of Alexandria was occupied without resistance; and Ellsworth, with a squad of Zouaves, hurried off to take possession of the telegraph office. On his way he caught sight of a Confederate flag floating from the summit of the Marshall House. He had often seen, from the window of the Executive Mansion in Washington, this self-same banner flaunting defiance; and the temptation to tear it down with his own hands was too much for his boyish patriotism. Accompanied by four soldiers only and several civilians, he ran into the hotel, up the stairs to the roof, and tore down the flag; but coming down was met on the stairs by the hotel-keeper and shot dead. His assassin perished at the same moment, killed by Frank E. Brownell.

Ellsworth was buried from the East Room of the White House by the special order of the President, who mourned him as a son. Many brave and able officers were to perish in the four years that followed that mournful day; but there was not one whose death was more sincerely lamented than that of this young soldier who had never seen a battle; and it is the belief of his friends that he had not his superior in natural capacity among all the most eminent heroes of the war. But who will care to hear this said? If Napoleon Bonaparte had been killed at the siege of Toulon, who would have listened to some grief-stricken comrade's assertion that this young Corsican was the greatest soldier since Cæsar? I have written these lines merely to show how simple, kindly, and heroic a heart Colonel Ellsworth had--and not to claim for him what can never be proved.

CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

Author of "The Gates Ajar," "The Madonna of the Tubs," etc.

ANDOVER GIRLS AS STUDENTS OF THEOLOGY.--THE DARK DAYS OF THE WAR.--WRITING MAGAZINE STORIES AND SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS.--THE DIFFICULTY AND UNCERTAINTY OF WRITING FOR A LIVING.

One study in our curriculum at the Andover School I have omitted to mention in its place; but, of them all, it was the most characteristic, and would be most interesting to an outsider. Where else but in Andover would a group of a dozen and a half girls be put to studying theology? Yet this is precisely what we did. Not that we called our short hour with Professor Park on Tuesday evenings by that long word; nor did he. It was understood that we had Bible lessons.

But the gist of the matter was, that we were taught Professor Park's theology.

We had our note-books, like the students in the chapel lecture-rooms, and we took docile notes of the great man's views on the attributes of the Deity, on election and probation, on atonement and sanctification, on eschatology, and the rest.

Girls' with pink ribbons at white throats, and girls with blue silk nets on their pretty hair, fluttered in like bees and butterflies, and settled about the long dining-room table, at whose end, with a shade over his eyes to shield them from the light, the professor sat in a dark corner.

Thence he promulgated stately doctrines to those soft and dreaming woman-creatures, who did not care a maple-leaf whether we sinned in Adam, or whether the Trinity were separate as persons or as attributes; but who drew little portraits of their dearest Academy boys on the margins of their lecture-books, and passed these to their particular intimates in surreptitious interludes between doctrines.

What must have been the professor's private speculations on those Tuesday evenings? I had a certain sense of their probable nature, even then; and glanced furtively into the dark corner for glimpses of the distant, sarcastic smile which I felt must be carving itself upon the lines of his strong face. But I never caught him at it; not once. With the gravity befitting his awful topics, and with the dignity belonging to his Chair and to his fame, the professor taught the butterflies, to the best of my knowledge and belief, as conscientiously as he did those black-coated beetles yonder, the theologues on the Seminary benches.

Of the class of 1861 over twenty went into the war, and several died in battle or in war prisons. Lieutenant S.H. Thompson, son of the late Professor William Thompson of East Windsor Seminary, was among this number. Also, Sergeant J.H. Thompson, son of the late Dr. Joseph P. Thompson of New York City. President Ward of Franklin College, the Rev. Dr. Dougherty of Kansas City, and the Rev. Dr. Brand of Oberlin College, were members of the class, and their portraits appear in the picture. The valedictorian was Carlos F. Carter, brother of President Carter of Williams College. He was drowned in the Jordan a few months after graduation.]

I ought to say, just here, that, in a recent correspondence with Professor Park upon this matter, I found him more or less unconscious of having been so generous with his theology to the girls. I am giving the pupil's impressions, not the teacher's recollections, of that Bible-class; and I can give no other. Of course, I may be mistaken, and am liable to correction; but my impressions are, that he gave us his system of theology pretty straight and very faithfully.

I cannot deny that I enjoyed those stern lessons. Not that I had any marked predilections towards theology, but I liked the psychology of it. I experienced my first appreciation of the nature and value of logic in that class-room, and it did me good, and not evil altogether. There I learned to reason with more patience than a school-girl may always care to suffer; and there I observed that the mysteries of time and eternity, whatever one might personally conclude about them, were material of reason.

In many a mental upheaval of later life, the basis of that theological training has made itself felt to me, as one feels rocks or stumps or solid things underfoot in the sickly swaying of wet sands. I may not always believe all I was taught, but what I was taught has helped me to what I believe. I certainly think of those theological lectures with unqualified gratitude.

The Tuesday evenings grow warm and warmer. The butterflies hover about in white muslins, and pretty little bows of summer colors glisten on bright heads as they bend over the doctrines, around the long table. On the screens of the open windows the June beetles knock their heads, like theologues who wish they could get in. There is a moon without. Visions of possible forbidden ecstasies of strolls under the arches of the Seminary elms with the bravest boy in the Academy melt before the gentle minds, through which depravity, election, predestination, and justification are filing sternly. The professor's voice arises:

"A sin is a wrong committed against God. God is an Infinite Being; therefore sin against Him is an infinite wrong. An infinite wrong against an Infinite Being deserves an infinite punishment--"

Now, the professor says that he has no recollection of ever having said this in the Bible-class; but there is the note-book of the girl's brain, stamped with the sentence for these thirty years!

"I have sometimes quoted it at the Seminary," he writes, "for the purpose of exposing the impropriety of it. I do not think any professor ever quoted the statement, without adding that it is untenable. The Andover argument was ----"[5] He adds the proper controversial language, which, it seems, went solidly out of my head. Tenable or untenable, my memory has clutched the stately syllogism.

Sharp upon the doctrines there falls across the silence and the sweetness of the moonlit Hill a strange and sudden sound. It is louder than theology. It is more solemn than the professor's system. Insistent, urging everything before it--the toil of strenuous study, the fret of little trouble, and the dreams of dawning love--the call stirs on. It is the beat of a drum.

The boys of old Phillips, with the down on their faces, and that eternal fire in their hearts which has burned upon the youth of all the ages when their country has commanded: "Die for me!" are drilling by moonlight.

The Academy Company is out in force, passing up and down the quiet, studious streets. The marching of their feet beats solemnly at the meeting of the paths where (like the gardens of the professors) the long walks of the Seminary lawns form the shape of a mighty cross.

"An infinite wrong deserves an infinite punishment--" The theologian's voice falls solemnly. The girls turn their grave faces to the open windows. Silence helps the drum-beat, which lifts its cry to Heaven unimpeded; and the awful questions which it asks, what system of theology can answer?

* * * * *

Andover was no more loyal, probably, than other New England villages; but perhaps the presence of so many young men helped to make her seem so to those who passed the years from 1861 to 1865 upon the Hill.

Theology and church history and exegesis and sacred rhetoric retreated from the foreground of that scholastic drama. The great Presence that is called War swept up and filled the scene.

Gray-haired men went to their lecture-rooms with bowed heads, the morning papers shaking in their hands. The accuracy of the Hebrew verb did not matter so much as it did last term. The homiletic uses or abuses of an applied text, the soundness of the new school doctrine of free will, seemed less important to the universe than they were before the Flag went down on Sumter. Young eyes looked up at their instructors mistily, for the dawn of utter sacrifice was in them. He was only an Academy boy yesterday, or a theologue; unknown, unnoticed, saying his lesson in Xenophon, taking his notes on the Nicene Creed; blamed a little, possibly, by his teacher or by his professor, for inattention.

To-day he comes proudly to the desk. His step rings on the old, bare floors that he will never tread again. "Sir, my father gives his permission. I enlist at once."

To-day he is a hero, and the hero's light is glorious on his face. To-day _he_ is the teacher, and the professor learns lessons in his turn now. The boy whom he has lectured and scolded towers above him suddenly, a sacred thing to see. The old man stands uncovered before his pupil as they clasp hands and part.

The drum calls on, and the boys drill bravely--no boys' parade this, but awful earnest now. The ladies of Andover sew red braid upon blue flannel shirts, with which the Academy Company make simple uniform.

Then comes a morning when the professors cannot read the papers for the news they bring; but cover streaming eyes with trembling hands, and turn their faces. For the black day of the defeat at Bull Run has darkened the summer sky.

Andover does not sew for the missionaries now. Her poor married theologues must wait a little for their babies' dresses. Even the blue flannel shirts for the drill are forgotten. The chapel is turned into sudden, awful uses, of which the "pious founders" in their comfortable graves did never dream. For there the women of the Hill, staying for no prayer-meeting, and delaying to sing no hymns, pick lint and roll bandages and pack supplies for the field; and there they sacrifice and suffer, like women who knew no theology at all; and since it was not theirs to offer life to the teeth of shot and shell, they "gave their happiness instead."

* * * * *

The first thing which I wrote, marking in any sense the beginning of what authors are accustomed to call their "literary career"--I dislike the phrase and wish we had a better--was a war story.

As nearly as I can recall the facts, up to this time I had shown no literary tendency whatever, since the receipt of that check for two dollars and a half. Possibly the munificence of that honorarium seemed to me to satiate mortal ambition for years. It is true that, during my schooldays, I did perpetrate three full-grown novels in manuscript. My dearest particular intimate and I shared in this exploit, and read our chapters to each other on Saturday afternoons.

I remember that the title of one of these "books" was "The Shadow of a Lifetime." It was a double title with a heroine to it, but I forget the lady's name, or even the nature of her particular shadow. The only thing that can be said about these three volumes is, that their youthful author had the saving sense not to try the Christian temper of a publisher with their perusal.

Yet, in truth, I have never regretted the precious portion of human existence spent in their creation; for I must have written off in that way a certain amount of apprenticeship which does, in some cases, find its way into type, and devastate the endurance of a patient public.

The war story of which I speak was distinctly the beginning of anything like genuine work for me. Mr. Alden tells me that it was published in January, 1864; but I think it must have been written a while before that, though not long, for its appearance quickly followed the receipt of the manuscript. The name of the story was "A Sacrifice Consumed." It was a very little story, not covering more than four or five pages in print. I sent it to "Harper's Magazine," without introduction or what young writers are accustomed to call "influence;" it was sent quite privately, without the knowledge of any friend. It was immediately accepted, and a prompt check for twenty-five dollars accompanied the acceptance. Even my father knew nothing of the venture until I carried the letter and enclosure to him. The pleasure on his expressive face was only equalled by its frank and unqualified astonishment. He read the story when it came out, and, I think, was touched by it--it was a story of a poor and plain little dressmaker who lost her lover in the army--and his genuine emotion gave me a kind of awed elation which has never been repeated in my experience. Ten hundred thousand unknown voices could not move me to the pride and pleasure which my father's first gentle word of approval gave to a girl who cared much to be loved, and little to be praised; and the plaudits of a "career" were the last things in earth or heaven then occupying her mind.

From a photograph by Geo. H. Leek, Lawrence, Massachusetts, taken in 1864.]

Afterwards, I wrote with a distinct purpose, and, I think, quite steadily. I know that longer stories went, soon and often, to the old magazine, which never sent them back; and to which I am glad to pay the tribute of a gratitude that I have never outgrown. There was nothing of the stuff that heroines and geniuses are made of in a shy and self-distrustful girl who had no faith in her own capabilities, and, indeed, at that time, the smallest possible amount of interest in the subject.

It may be a humiliating fact, but it is the truth, that had my first story been refused, or even the second or the third, I should have written no more.

For the opinion of important editors, and for the sacredness of market value in literary wares, as well as in professorships or cotton cloth, I had a kind of respect at which I sometimes wonder; for I do not recall that it was ever distinctly taught me. But, assuredly, if nobody had cared for my stories enough to print them, I should have been the last person to differ from the ruling opinion, and should have bought at Warren Draper's old Andover book-store no more cheap printer's paper on which to inscribe the girlish handwriting (with the pointed letters and the big capitals) which my father, with patient pains, had caused to be taught me by a queer old travelling-master with an idea. Professor Phelps, by the way, had an exquisite chirography, which none of his children, to his evident disappointment, inherited.

This building was burned in 1864 or 1865.]

But the editor of "Harper's" took everything I sent him; so the pointed letters and the large capitals continued to flow towards his desk.

Long after I had achieved whatever success has been given me, this magazine returned me one of my stories--it was the only one in a lifetime. I think the Editor then in power called it too tragic, or too something; it came out forthwith in the columns of another magazine that did not agree with him, and was afterwards issued, I think, in some sort of "classic" series of little books.

I was a little sorry, I know, at the time, for I had the most superstitious attachment for the magazine that, when "I was a stranger, took me in;" but it was probably necessary to break the record in this, as in all other forms of human happiness.

Other magazines took their turn--the "Atlantic," I remember--in due course; but I shared the general awe of this magazine at that time prevailing in New England, and, having, possibly, more than my share of personal pride, did not very early venture to intrude my little risk upon that fearful lottery.

Perhaps this reserve was more natural because "Harper's" published as fast as I could write; which is not saying much, to be sure, for I have always been a slow worker. The first story of mine which appeared in the "Atlantic" was a fictitious narrative of certain psychical phenomena occurring in Connecticut, and known to me, at first hand, to be authentic. I have yet to learn that the story attracted any attention from anybody more disinterested than those few friends of the sort who, in such cases, are wont to inquire, in tones more freighted with wonder than admiration: "What! Has she got into the '_Atlantic_'?"

The "Century" came in turn, when it came into being. To this delightful magazine I have always been, and always hope to be, a contributor.

From a photograph taken in 1864 by Geo. H. Leek, Lawrence, Massachusetts.]

I read, with a kind of hopeless envy, histories and legends of people of our craft who "do not write for money." It must be a pleasant experience to be able to cultivate so delicate a class of motives for the privilege of doing one's best to express one's thoughts to people who care for them. Personally, I have yet to breathe the ether of such a transcendent sphere. I am proud to say that I have always been a working-woman, and always had to be; though I ought to add that I am sure the proposal that my father's allowance to his daughter should cease, did not come from the father.

When the first little story appeared in "Harper's Magazine," it occurred to me, with a throb of pleasure greater than I supposed then that life could hold, that I could take care of myself, and from that day to this I have done so.

One hesitates a little, even in autobiography, about saying precisely this. But when I remember the thousands of women who find it too easy to be dependent on too heavily-weighted and too generous men, one hesitates no longer to say anything that may help those other thousands of women who stand on their own feet, and their own pluck, to understand how good a thing it is to be there.

Of all the methods of making a living open to educated people to-day, the profession of literature is, probably, the poorest in point of monetary returns. A couple of authors, counted successful as the world and the word go, said once:

"We have earned less this year than the fisherman in the dory before the door of our summer home." Perhaps it had been a good year for Jack; possibly a poor one for those other fishers, who spread their brains and hearts--a piteous net--into the seas of life in quest of thought and feeling that the idlers on the banks may take a summer's fancy to. But the truth remains. A successful teacher, a clever manufacturer, a steady mechanic, may depend upon a better income in this country than the writer whose supposed wealth he envies, and whose books he reads on Sunday afternoons, if he is not too sleepy, or does not prefer his bicycle.

When we see (as we have actually done) our market-man driving by our old buggy and cheap horse on holidays, with a barouche and span, we enjoy the sight very much; and when I say (for the other occupant of the buggy has a little taste for two horses, which I am so plebeian as not to share, having never been able to understand why one is not enough for anybody): "But would you _be_ the span-owner--for the span?" we see the end of the subject, and grow ravenously contented.

One cannot live by bread or magazine stories alone, as the young daughter of toil too soon found out. Like other writers I did hack work. My main dependence was on that venerable and useful form of it which consists in making Sunday-school books. Of these I must have written over a dozen; I wince, sometimes, when I see their forgotten dates and titles in encyclopædias; but a better judgment tells me that one should not be ashamed of doing hard work honestly. I was not an artist at Sunday-school literature (there are such), and have often wondered why the religious publishing societies kept me at it so steadily and so long.

There were tales of piety and of mischief, of war and of home, of babies and of army nurses, of Tom-boys, and of girls who did their mending and obeyed their mothers.

The variety was the only thing I can recall that was commendable about these little books, unless one except a considerable dash of fun.

One of them came back to me--it happened to be the only book I ever wrote that did--and when the Andover expressman brought in the square package, just before tea, I felt my heart stand still with mortification. Fortunately nobody saw the expressman. I always kept my ventures to myself, and did not, that I can remember, read any manuscript of mine to suffering relatives or friends, before publication. Indeed, I carried on the writer's profession for many years as if it had been a burglar's.

At the earliest moment possible I got myself into my little room, and turned both keys upon myself and my rejected manuscript. But when I came to read the publisher's letter, I learned that hope still remained, a flickering torch, upon a darkened universe. That excellent man did not refuse the story, but raised objections to certain points or forms therein, to which he summoned my attention. The criticism called substantially for the rewriting of the book. I lighted my lamp, and, with the June beetles butting at my head, I wrote all night. At three o'clock in the morning I put the last sentence to the remodelled story--the whole was a matter of some three hundred and fifty pages of manuscript--and crawled to bed. At six, I stole out and found the expressman, that innocent and ignorant messenger of joy or woe. The revised manuscript reached the publisher by ten o'clock, and his letter of unconditional acceptance was in my hands before another tea-time.

I have never been in the habit of writing at night, having been early warned against this practice by the wisest of fathers (who notably failed to follow his own advice); and this almost solitary experience of the midnight oil remains as vivid as yesterday's sunset to me. My present opinion of that night's exploit is, that it signified an abnormal pride which might as well have received its due humiliation. But, at the time, it seemed to be the inevitable or even the creditable thing.

From a photograph by G.C. Cox, New York.]

Sunday-school writers did books by sets in those days; perhaps they do still. And at least two such sets I provided to order, each of four volumes. Both of these, it so happens, have survived their day and generation--the Tiny books, we called them, and the Gypsy books. Only last year I was called upon to renew the copyright for Gypsy, a young person now thirty years old in type.

There is a certain poetic justice in this little circumstance, owing to the fact that I never _worked_ harder in my life at anything than I did upon those little books; for I had, madly enough, contracted to supply four within a year.

We had no vacations in those days; I knew nothing of hills or shore; but "spoke straight on" through the terrible Andover weather. Our July and August thermometers used to stand up hard at over ninety degrees, day and night, for nearly a week at a time. The large white mansion was as comfortable as ceiled walls and back plaster could be in that furnace; but my own small room, on the sunny side of the house, was heated seven times hotter than endurance. Sometimes I got over an open register in a lower room, and wrote in the faint puffs of damp air that played with my misery. Sometimes I sat in the cellar itself; but it was rather dark, and one cherished a consciousness of mice. In the orchard, or the grove, one's brains fricasseed quickly; in fact, all out-of-doors was a scene of bottomless torment worthy of a theology older and severer than Andover's.

When the last chapter of the last book was done, it occurred to me to wonder whether I might ever be able to afford to get for a week or two where the thermometer went below ninety degrees in summer. But this was a wild and baseless dream, whose irrationality I quickly recognized. For such books as those into which I had been coining a year of my young strength and heart, I received the sum of one hundred dollars apiece. The "Gypsy" publisher was more munificent. He offered one hundred and fifty; a price which I accepted with incredible gratitude.

I mention these figures distinctly, with the cold-blooded view of dimming the rosy dreams of those young ladies and gentlemen with whom, if I may judge by their letters, our country seems to be brimming over.

"Will you read my poem?" "Won't you criticize my manuscript?" "I would like to forward my novel for your perusal." "I have sent you the copy of a rejected article of mine, on which I venture to ask--," etc., etc. "I have been told that all I need is Influence." "My friends think my book shows genius; but I have no Influence." "Will it trouble you too much to get this published for me?"

"Your Influence--" and so on, and so on, run the piteous appeals which every successful author receives from the great unknown world of discouraged and perplexed young people who are mistaking the stir of youth or vanity, or the _ennui_ of idleness, or the sting of poverty, for the solemn throes of power.

What can one do for them, whom no one but themselves can help? What can one say to them, when anything one says is sure to give pain, or dishearten courage?

Write, if you _must_; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living. Do anything honest, but do not write, unless God calls you, and publishers want you, and people read you, and editors claim you. Respect the market laws. Lean on nobody. Trust the common sense of an experienced publisher to know whether your manuscript is worth something or nothing. Do not depend on influence. Editors do not care a drop of ink for influence. What they want is good material, and the fresher it is, the better. An editor will pass by an old writer, any day, for an unknown and gifted new one, with power to say a good thing in a fresh way. Make your calling and election sure. Do not flirt with your pen. Emerson's phrase was, "toiling terribly." Nothing less will hint at the grinding drudgery of a life spent in living "by your brains."

Inspiration is all very well; but "genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains."

Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand.

Unless you are prepared to work like a slave at his galley, for the toss-up chance of a freedom which may be denied him when his work is done, do not write. There are some pleasant things about this way of spending a lifetime, but there are no easy ones.

There are privileges in it, but there are heart-ache, mortification, discouragement, and an eternal doubt.

Had one not better have made bread or picture-frames, run a motor, or invented a bicycle tire?

Time alone--perhaps one might say, eternity--can answer.

* * * * *

[Footnote 5: "A sin once committed, always _deserves_ punishment; and, as long as strict _Justice_ is administered, the sin _must_ be punished. Unless there be an Atonement, strict Justice _must_ be administered; that is, Sin must be punished forever; but, on the ground of the Atonement, _Grace_ may be administered, instead of _Justice_, and then the sinner may be pardoned."]

From a photograph by Fradelle & Young, London.]

LOST YOUTH.

BY R.L. STEVENSON.

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.

Mull was astern, Egg on the port,
Rum on the starboard bow;
Glory of youth glowed in his soul:
Where is that glory now?

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.

Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone!
Give me the eyes, give me soul,
Give me the lad that's gone!

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.

Billows and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun,
All that was good, all that was fair,
All that was me is gone.

Originally published in the "Pall Mall Gazette."

THE DIVIDED HOUSE

BY JULIA D. WHITING,

Author of "The Story of Myra," "Brother Sesostris," "A special Providence," and other stories.

When Selucius Huxter had arrived at his last illness, he proved himself more than ever in his life troublesome and wearing. Having a suspicion that his condition was worse than his doctor or children allowed, he gave them no peace until he had extracted an admission that such was the case. Left alone with the doctor at his request, he reproached him.

"Ye might as well told me before as let me lay here thinkin' and stewin' about it. I've lost a sight of strength tryin' to git the truth from ye, and there wa'n't no need. Wall--I suppose I ain't reely dyin' naow, while I'm a-talkin', be I?"

Assured as to that point, he added: "The reason I wanted to know is because I've got to fix my concerns so as to leave 'em as well as I can; and all I want of you is that when you think I'm--wall--if you see there's goin' to be a change, I want you should tell me, so's't I can straighten things right out and git their consent to it." Having promised, the doctor apprised him as the last moments drew near.

"Sho! I want to know! Why, I feel full as well as I did yes'dy and a leetle grain easier, if anythin'."

"I hope this notice does not find you unprepared," observed the doctor.

"Wall, no; I'm prepared as much as I can be, as you may say. I've been a member in good and regular standin' this fifty-five year--and I hain't arrived at my age without seeing there's somethin' in life beside livin'." He paused, then added with an accent of pride, "I don't owe any man a cent, nor never cheated a man of one. Wall, I've had quite a spell to think of things in, durin' my sickness, and I don't know but what I've enjoyed it considerable. Thought of things all along back to when I was a boy. Events come up that I'd clean forgot."

The doctor gone, he called his children in.

"Wall, Armidy, wall, Lucas, the doctor don't seem to think I shall tucker it out much longer. Wall, naow," he exclaimed, quite vexed, "I vow for't if I didn't forgit to ask him how long! Wall, too late naow. He's got out of sight, I s'pose."

Armida stepped to the window, and assured him of the fact.

"Wall, no gret matter. I jist thought if I could git him to fix the time I'd like to see how nigh he'd hit it.

"Naow, I want to fix the property so's't you won't have no trouble with it. No use wastin' money gittin' lawyers here. There ain't no cheatin' nor double-dealin' anywhere to be found amongst the Huxters nor the Lucases; and when you give me your promises to abide by my last will and testament I shall expect you to hold to it jist the same as if it was writ out.

"Naow, about the farm and house. The house, as you know, stands in the middle line of the farm; that is, the north side has a leetle the advantage in hevin' the Jabez Norcross paster tacked unto it, over and above the south half, but it's near enough. That paster don't count for much. Pooty thick with sheep laurel. Wall, seein' the land lies jist as it does, and the house is jist as it is, I propose to divide it even. Lucas, you can have the north half, and Armidy the south, beginnin' right to the front door, and runnin' right through the house and right along down to the river, straight as you can fetch it. Do you agree to my plan?"

Armida and Lucas exchanged glances. "You speak," said Lucas in a low tone.

"No, you," said Armida.

"What you whisperin' about? P'raps you think I can't hear because I'm dyin', but I'd have you to know my hearin' ain't affected a grain. Speak up naow! What is it, Lucas?"

"We were thinkin' of Theodore," said Lucas. "You're leavin' him out, seems so."

"'Tain't 'cause I forgot him; but I give him all I cal'lated to when he quit home five year ago--money; and so I sha'n't leave him anythin'. Wouldn't do him no good, if I did," he said to himself.

"Well, we should feel better if you did," said Armida. "I don't want he should be left out. Neither would mother if she was livin'; she'd feel bad."

"I'll settle it with your ma when I see her. Come, now, what do you say?"

There was a long silence, which Armida broke by saying, "S'posin' him or me was to want to leave the place, I mean for good--get tired of stayin' here to home?"

"Wall," said her father with a chuckle, "if either of you feels like _givin_ your share to the other, you may. I ain't goin' to leave my old place for either of you to sell to each other nor nobody else. I expect you to live on't."

"Well," now objected Lucas; "s'posin' one of us should git married, then how would it be?"

"Why, live along. Put in and work a leetle harder, maybe. This farm carried a pooty fair number when I was younger. If you should git too numerous you could build on either side. I guess there ain't no gret danger," he added.

As neither offered further objections, Mr. Huxter said: "There's been talk enough, I s'pose. Do you agree to 't?" He waited while each gave an audible "yes." "Naow," said he, "I hain't an earthly thing to hamper me."

The father dead, for the brother and sister no new life began. Armida still skimmed all the milk and made the butter, looked after Lucas as she had before, and Lucas attended impartially to the whole of the farm, and Armida sometimes wondered what difference it made. To be sure the profits were divided with the most rigid exactness; but everything went tranquilly on until more than a year after their father's death, when Armida had a suspicion, confirmed by appearances, that Lucas was becoming interested in a young girl in a neighborhood a few miles away. The spirit of jealousy surely animated poor Armida, for nothing else could have prompted her action. Having ascertained the girl's name, she caused to be conveyed to her the facts, colored for the occasion, relating to the partition of the house and land; and the young woman, having a shrewd eye to the main chance, bluntly told Lucas when next she saw him that she didn't wish the half of a house nor the half of a farm.

Lucas had thought all might go on smoothly with a wife, and had counted on her accepting the situation. Inquiring as to who had meddled in his affairs, he traced the matter back to Armida, and coming home mortified and angry, reproached her in unsparing terms, ending his recital of wrongs with: "I don't know what you did it for, unless you was afraid your half was going to be invaded; and if you feel that way you'd better keep to your side and take care of your own property. I ain't going to interfere."

Armida was powerless to protect herself except with tears, which did not avail with Lucas. She made overtures of peace, such as offering to cook her brother's meals and look after his share of the milk; but was warned to attend to her own business.

Lucas had a new pipe-hole made in the kitchen chimney, and bought a new stove, and hunted up a kitchen table, telling Armida she was welcome to the stove and table they had previously used in common, but he'd thank her to stay on her own side of the room. The situation would have been ludicrous if it had not been grim earnest to the brother and sister. Lucas had a hard side to his character, and he could not forgive his sister's interference. He would not even give Armida advice, but allowed her cows to break into her cornfield and her sheep to stray away, without warning her, though all the while his heart pricked him at sight of her distress. Still all he would do was to suggest that she get a hired man.

Accordingly Armida, in despair, hired an easy-going, good-natured creature that offered his services. He did very well, and Armida got on better, and took courage.

But there was a dreadful blow in store for her. Lucas brought a gang of carpenters to the farm, who instituted repairs on his half of the house. He even went so far as to commit the extravagance of having blinds hung for his sitting-room and front chamber windows, and his half of the front porch was trimmed with brackets, and then the whole of his half of the house painted white, so that his neighbors rallied him on being proud. "Only," as one said, "why don't you extend your improvements right along acrost the house, Lucas? It looks sorter queer to see one-half so fine and the other so slack."

"Armida's free to do she's a mind to," said Lucas. "If she wants to fix up her side, she can. I don't hinder her--"

"Nor you don't help her neither, as I see," said the other.

"I believe in 'tendin' to your own affairs and not interferin' with other folks," Lucas rejoined.

Armida was made very unhappy by these changes and the comments of the neighbors, and would gladly have beautified her half also, but had no money to spend. The farm had fallen behind, and she was pinched for means. She did what she could, taking more care than usual of vines and flowers, and even had an extra bed dug under her front windows, where she had many bright-hued flowers; but as she rose from digging around her plants and surveyed the house--Lucas's side with the new green blinds and the clapboards shining with paint, hers with its stained, weather-beaten appearance and its staring windows--she felt ashamed and discouraged.

She feared her hired man was slack and neglected his work; yet when he threatened to go, and afterward compromised the matter by offering to stay if she'd marry him, at a loss what to do, and partly because she was lonely, she married him. He was a respectable man, whose only fault was laziness, and she hoped that now he would take an interest. When Armida and her husband came back from the minister's and announced to Lucas that they were married, his only comment was, "Well, a slack help will make a shif'less husband."

Years went by, and Armida's side of the house fell more and more into ruin; while Lucas, with what Armida considered cruel carefulness, kept his in excellent repair and occasionally renewed the paint. The contrast was so great that passers-by stopped their horses that they might look and wonder at their leisure. Every glance was like a blow to Armida, so that she avoided her sitting-room and kept herself in the uncomfortable kitchen that was divided by an imaginary line directly through the middle, a line never crossed by her brother, her husband, or herself.

It would have looked absurd enough to a stranger to see this divided room, with the brother clumsily carrying on his household affairs on the one side and the sister doing her work on the other, with often not a word exchanged between them for days together. Absurd it might be, but it was certainly wretched. Armida grew old rapidly. Her husband was a poor stick, and when, as years passed, a touch of rheumatism gave him a real excuse for laziness, he did little more than sit by the fire and smoke.

As Armida sat on the bench under the old russet apple-tree by the back door one day, regretting her evil fate, she heard footsteps approaching, and, pushing back her old sun-bonnet, looked up to see a shabby, shambling, oldish man coming around the side of the house and gazing in at the windows, "What ye doin' there?" said Armida sharply.

The man turned, surveyed her with a smile, then said with a drawl she remembered: "I hain't been gone so long but that I know ye, Armidy. Don't you remember me?"

"Theodore Huxter! Is that you? Well!" and she hurried up to him, and shook hands violently.

"I heard only last week that father was dead," he explained. "I seen a man from this way, and he said he was gone. How long since?"

"More than ten years ago."

"Well, I thought I'd come and see ye."

"I'm glad you did," she said. "But come right in;" and she led the way into the kitchen.

He leaned up against the door and surveyed the room. "I should 'a' s'posed I'd have remembered this room, but what ye done to it? What hev you got two stoves and two tables and all that for, Armidy?"

Armida told him all, winding up her story with a few tears.

"That accounts for the looks of the outside, I s'pose," was his only comment. "I thought it was about the queerest I ever see. It's ridiculous! Why haven't you and Lucas straightened out affairs before this?"

"I can't, and he can't, I s'pose," she said hopelessly; "and everything makes it worse. I wouldn't care so much if he hadn't fixed up the outside the way he did."

"Oh, well now, don't you fret. If I had money--but then I haven't."

"How have you lived sence you left home?" Armida inquired.

"Why, I've had a still, and made essence and peddled it out; but I sold the still to git money to come here, and it took all I had."

"Well now, Theodore, I wish you'd stay here now you've got round again," said Armida with great earnestness. "I've worried about you a sight. I'd be glad to have you, and Lucas would, I know."