Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

It is hardly worth while repeating in detail all that passed at this Wormley Conference, made public long ago by Congressional investigation. When I entered the apartment of Mr. Evarts at Wormley’s I found, besides Mr. Evarts, Mr. John Sherman, Mr. Garfield, Governor Dennison and Mr. Stanley Matthews, of the Republicans, and Mr. Ellis, Mr. Levy, and Mr. Burke, Democrats of Louisiana. Substantially, the terms had been agreed upon during previous conferences; that is, the promise that, if Hayes came in, the troops should be withdrawn and the people of Louisiana be left free to set their house in order to suit themselves. The actual order withdrawing the troops was issued by President Grant two or three days later, just as he was going out of office.

“Now, gentlemen,” said I, half in jest, “I am here to represent South Carolina, and if the terms given to Louisiana are not equally applied to South Carolina, I become a filibuster myself to-morrow morning.” There was some chaffing as to what right I had there and how I got in, when with great earnestness Governor Dennison, who had been the bearer of a letter from Mr. Hayes which he had read to us, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “As a matter of course, the Southern policy to which Mr. Hayes has here pledged himself embraces South Carolina as well as Louisiana.” Mr. Sherman, Mr. Garfield, and Mr. Evarts concurred warmly in this, and, immediately after we separated, I communicated the fact to General Butler.

In the acrimonious discussion which subsequently sought to make “bargain, intrigue, and corruption” of this Wormley Conference, and to involve certain Democratic members of the House who were nowise party to it, but had sympathized with the purpose of Louisiana and South Carolina to obtain some measure of relief from intolerable local conditions, I never was questioned or assailed. No one doubted my fidelity to Mr. Tilden, who had been promptly advised of all that passed and who justified what I had done. Though “conscripted,” as it were, and rather a passive agent, I could see no wrong in the proceeding. I had spoken and voted in favor of the Electoral Tribunal Bill and, losing, had no thought of repudiating its conclusions. Hayes was already as good as seated. If the States of Louisiana and South Carolina could save their local autonomy out of the general wreck, there seemed no good reason to forbid. On the other hand, the Republican leaders were glad of an opportunity to make an end of the corrupt and tragic farce of Reconstruction; to unload their party of a dead weight which had been burdensome and was growing dangerous; mayhap to punish their Southern agents who had demanded so much for doctoring the returns and making an exhibit in favor of Hayes.

VII

Mr. Tilden accepted the result with equanimity. “I was at his house,” says John Bigelow, “when his exclusion was announced to him, and also on the fourth of March when Mr. Hayes was inaugurated, and it was impossible to remark any change in his manner, except perhaps that he was less absorbed than usual and more interested in current affairs.” His was an intensely serious mind; and he had come to regard the Presidency as rather a burden to be borne--an opportunity for public usefulness--involving a life of constant toil and care, than as an occasion for personal exploitation and rejoicing.

However much of captivation the idea of the Presidency may have had for him when he was first named for the office, I cannot say, for he was as unexultant in the moment of victory as he was unsubdued in the hour of defeat; but it is certainly true that he gave no sign of disappointment to any of his friends. He lived nearly ten years longer, at Greystone, in a noble homestead he had purchased for himself overlooking the Hudson River, the same ideal life of the scholar and gentleman that he had passed in Gramercy Park.

Looking back over these untoward and sometimes mystifying events, I have often asked myself: Was it possible, with the elements what they were, and he himself what he was, to seat Mr. Tilden in the office to which he had been elected? The missing ingredient in a character intellectually and morally great, and a personality far from unimpressive, was the touch of the dramatic discoverable in most of the leaders of men: even in such leaders as William of Orange and Louis the XI, as Cromwell and Washington.

There was nothing spectacular about Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the sense of humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness of opinion and amplitude of knowledge, he was always courteous and deferential in debate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say, of Mr. Blaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either, in his place, would have carried all before him.

It would be hard to find a character farther from that of a subtle schemer--sitting behind his screen and pulling his wires--which his political and party enemies discovered him to be as soon as he began to get in the way of the Machine and obstruct the march of the self-elect. His confidences were not effusive nor their subjects numerous. His deliberation was unfailing, and sometimes it carried the idea of indecision, not to say actual love of procrastination. But in my experience with him I found that he usually ended where he began, and it was nowise difficult for those whom he trusted to divine the bias of his mind where he thought it best to reserve its conclusions. I do not think that in any great affair he ever hesitated longer than the gravity of the case required of a prudent man, or that he had a preference for delays, or that he clung over-tenaciously to both horns of the dilemma, as his professional training and instinct might lead him to do, and did certainly expose him to the accusation of doing.

He was a philosopher and took the world as he found it. He rarely complained and never inveighed. He had a discriminating way of balancing men’s good and bad qualities and of giving each the benefit of a generous accounting, and a just way of expecting no more of a man than it was in him to yield. As he got into deeper water his stature rose to its level, and, from his exclusion from the Presidency in 1877 to his renunciation of public affairs in 1884 and his death in 1886, his walks and ways might have been a study for all who would learn life’s truest lessons and know the real sources of honor, happiness, and fame.

THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

Author of “The Bread-Line,” “Elizabeth,” “Mark Twain: A Biography,” etc.

Then, it being no use to try, Carringford let the hand holding the book drop into his lap and from his lap to his side. His eyes stared grimly into the fire, which was dropping to embers.

“I suppose I’m getting old,” he said; “that’s the reason. The books are as good as ever they were--the old ones, at any rate. Only they don’t interest me any more. It’s because I don’t believe in them as I did. I see through them all. I begin taking them to pieces as soon as I begin to read, and of course romance and glamour won’t stand dissection. Yes, it’s because I’m getting old; that’s it. Those things go with youth. Why, I remember when I would give up a dinner for a new book, when a fresh magazine gave me a positive thrill. I lost that somewhere, somehow; I wonder why. It is a ghastly loss. If I had to live my life over, I would at least try not to destroy my faith in books. It seems to me now just about the one thing worth keeping for old age.”

The book slipped from the hand hanging at his side. The embers broke, and, falling together, sent up a tongue of renewed flame. Carringford’s mind was slipping into by-paths.

“If one only might live his life over!” he muttered. “If one might be young again!”

He was not thinking of books now. A procession of ifs had come filing out of the past--a sequence of opportunities where, with the privilege of choice, he had chosen the wrong, the irrevocable thing.

“If one only might try again!” he whispered. “If one only might! Good God!” Something like a soft footfall on the rug caused him to turn suddenly. “I beg your pardon,” he said, rising, “I did not hear you. I was dreaming, I suppose.”

A man stood before him, apparently a stranger.

“I came quietly,” he said. “I did not wish to break in upon your thought. It interested me, and I felt that I--might be of help.”

Carringford was trying to recall the man’s face,--a studious, clean-shaven face,--to associate it and the black-garbed, slender figure with a name. So many frequented his apartment, congenial, idle fellows who came and went, and brought their friends if they liked, that Carringford was not surprised to be confronted by one he could not place. He was about to extend his hand, confessing a lack of memory, when his visitor spoke again.

“No,” he said in a gentle, composed voice, “you would not know it if you heard it. I have never been here before. I should not have come now only that, as I was passing below, I heard you thinking you would like to be young again--to live your life over, as they say.”

Carringford stared a moment or two at the smooth, clean-cut features and slender, black figure of his visitor before replying. He was used to many curious things, and not many things surprised him.

“I beg your pardon,” he repeated, “you mentioned, I believe, that you heard me thinking as you were passing on the street below?”

The slender man in black bowed.

“Wishing that you might be young again, that you might have another try at the game of life. I believe that was the exact thought.”

“And, may I ask, is it your habit to hear persons think?”

“When their thoughts interest me, yes, as one might overhear an interesting conversation.”

Carringford had slipped back into his chair and motioned his guest to another. Wizard or unbalanced, he was likely to prove a diversion. When the cigars were pushed in his direction, he took one, lighted it, and smoked silently. Carringford smoked, too, and looked into the fire.

“You were saying,” he began presently, “that you pick up interesting thought-currents as one might overhear bits of conversation. I suppose you find the process quite as simple as hearing in the ordinary way. Only it seems a little--well, unusual. Of course that is only my opinion.”

The slender man in black assented with a slight nod.

“The faculty is not unusual; it is universal. It is only undeveloped, uncontrolled, as yet. It was the same with electricity a generation ago. Now it has become our most useful servant.”

Carringford gave his visitor an intent look. This did not seem the inconsequential phrasing of an addled brain.

“You interest me,” he said. “Of course I have heard a good deal of such things, and all of us have had manifestations; but I think I have never before met any one who was able to control--to demonstrate, if you will--this particular force. It is a sort of mental wireless, I suppose--wordless, if you will permit the term.”

“Yes, the true wireless, the thing we are approaching--speech of mind to mind. Our minds are easily attuned to waves of mutual interest. When one vibrates, another in the same wave will answer to it. We are just musical instruments: a chord struck on the piano answers on the attuned harp. Any strong mutual interest forms the key-note of mental harmonic vibration. We need only develop the mental ear to hear, the mental eye to see.”

The look of weariness returned to Carringford’s face. These were trite, familiar phrases.

“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said. Then, as his guest smoked silently, he added, “I am only wondering how it came that my thought of the past and its hopelessness should have struck a chord or key-note which would send you up my stair.”

The slender, black figure rose and took a turn across the room, pausing in front of Carringford.

“You were saying as I passed your door that you would live your life over if you could. You were thinking: ‘If one might be young again! If one only might try again! If only one might!’ That was your thought, I believe.”

Carringford nodded.

“That was my thought,” he said, “through whatever magic you came by it.”

“And may I ask if there was a genuine desire behind that thought? Did you mean that you would indeed live your life over if you could? That, if the opportunity were given to tread the backward way to a new beginning, you would accept it?”

There was an intensity of interest in the man’s quiet voice, an eager gleam in his half-closed eyes, a hovering expectancy in the attitude of the slender, black figure. Carringford had the feeling of having been swept backward into a time of sorcery and incantation. He vaguely wondered if he had not fallen asleep. Well, he would follow the dream through.

“Yes, I would live my life over if I could,” he said. “I have made a poor mess of it this time. I could play the game better, I know, if the Fates would but deal me a new hand. If I could start young again, with all the opportunities of youth, I would not so often choose the poorer thing.”

The long, white fingers of Carringford’s guest had slipped into his waistcoat pocket. They now drew forth a small, bright object and held it to the light. Carringford saw that it was a vial, filled with a clear, golden liquid that shimmered and quivered in the light and was never still. Its possessor regarded it for a moment through half-closed lashes, then placed it on a table under the lamp, where it continued to glint and tremble.

Carringford watched it, fascinated, half hypnotized by the marvel of its gleam. Surely there was magic in this. The man was an alchemist, a sort of reincarnation from some forgotten day.

Carringford’s guest also watched the vial. The room seemed to have grown very still. Then after a time his thin lips parted.

“If you are really willing to admit failure,” he began slowly, carefully selecting each word, “if behind your wish there lies a sincere desire to go back to youth and begin life over, if that desire is strong enough to grow into a purpose, if you are ready to make the experiment, there you will find the means. That vial contains the very essence of vitality, the true elixir of youth. It is not a magic philter, as I see by your thought you believe. There is no magic. Whatever is, belongs to science. I am not a necromancer, but a scientist. From boyhood my study has been to solve the subtler secrets of life. I have solved many such. I have solved at last the secret of life itself. It is contained in that golden vial, an elixir to renew the tissues, to repair the cells, of the wasting body. Taken as I direct, you will no longer grow old, but young. The gray in your hair will vanish, the lines will smooth out of your face, your step will become buoyant, your pulses quick, your heart will sing with youth.” The speaker paused a moment, and his gray eyes rested on Carringford and seemed probing his very soul.

“It will take a little time,” he went on; “for as the natural processes of decay are not rapid, the natural restoration may not be hurried. You can go back to where you will, even to early youth, and so begin over, if it is your wish. Are you willing to make the experiment? If you are, I will place the means in your hands.”

While his visitor had been speaking, Carringford had been completely absorbed, filled with strange emotions, too amazed, too confused for utterance.

“I see a doubt in your mind as to the genuineness, the efficacy, of my discovery,” the even voice continued. “I will relieve that.” From an inner pocket he drew a card photograph and handed it to Carringford. “That was taken three years ago. I was then approaching eighty. I am now, I should say, about forty-five. I could be younger if I chose, but forty-five is the age of achievement--the ripe age. Mankind needs me at forty-five.”

Carringford stared at the photograph, then at the face before him, then again at the photograph. Yes, they were the same, certainly they were the same, but for the difference of years. The peculiar eyes, the clean, unusual outlines were unmistakable. Even a curious cast in the eye was there.

“An inheritance,” explained his visitor. “Is the identification enough?”

Carringford nodded in a dazed way and handed back the picture. Any lingering doubt of the genuineness of this strange being or his science had vanished. His one thought now was that growing old need be no more than a fiction, after all that one might grow young instead, might lay aside the wrinkles and the gray hairs, and walk once more the way of purposes and dreams. His pulses leaped, his blood surged up and smothered him.

The acceptance of such a boon seemed too wonderful a thing to be put into words. His eyes grew wide and deep with the very bigness of it, but he could not for the moment find speech.

“You are willing to make the experiment?” the man asked. “I see many emotions in your mind. Think--think clearly, and make your decision.”

Words of acceptance rushed to Carringford’s lips. They were upon the verge of utterance when suddenly he was gripped by an old and dearly acquired habit--the habit of forethought.

“But I should want to keep my knowledge of the world,” he said, “to profit by my experience, my wisdom, such as it is. I should want to live my life over, knowing what I know now.”

The look of weariness which Carringford’s face had worn earlier had found its way to the face of the visitor.

“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said, with a faint smile.

“But shall I not remember the life I have lived, with its shortcomings, its blunders?”

“Yes, you will remember as well as you do now--better, perhaps, for your faculties will be renewed; but whether you will profit by it--that is another matter.”

“You mean that I shall make the same mistakes, commit the same sins?”

“Let us consider to a moment. You will go back to youth. You will be young again. Perhaps you have forgotten what it is to be young. Let me remind you.” The man’s lashes met; his voice seemed to come from a great distance. “It is to be filled with the very ecstasy of living,” he breathed--“its impulses, its fevers, the things that have always belonged to youth, that have always made youth beautiful. Your experience? Yes, you will have that, too; but it will not be the experience of that same youth, but of another--the youth that you were.” The gray eyes gleamed, the voice hardened a little. “Did you ever profit by the experience of another in that earlier time?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

His guest pointed to the book-shelves.

“Did you ever, in a later time, profit by the wisdom set down in those?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

“Yet the story is all there, and you knew the record to be true. Have you always profited even by your own experience? Have you always avoided the same blunder a second, even a third, time? Do you always profit by your own experience even now?”

Carringford shook his head.

“No,” he whispered.

“And yet you think that if you could only live your life over, you would avoid the pitfalls and the temptations, remembering what they had cost you before. No, oh, no; I am not here to promise you that. I am not a magician; I am only a scientist, and I have not yet discovered the elixir of wisdom or of morals. I am not superhuman; I am only human, like yourself. I am not a god, and I cannot make you one. Going back to youth means that you will be young again--young! Don’t you see? It does not mean that you will drag back with you the strength and the wisdom and the sobered impulses of middle age. That would not be youth. Youth cares nothing for such things, and profits by no experience, not even its own.”

Carringford’s eyes had wandered to the yellow vial under the lamp--to the quivering, shimmering fascination of its dancing gold. His gaze rested there a moment, then again sought the face of his guest--that inscrutable face where seemed mingled the look of middle age with the wisdom of the centuries.

“You do not care to go back further?” Carringford said.

The man’s eyes closed for a moment, and something that was akin to fierce human emotion swept his features.

“Yes, oh, yes, I care,” he said quickly. “It is the temptation I fight always. Oh, you do not know what it means to feel that you are growing young! To feel your body renew, your heart beat stronger, to feel your blood take on a swifter flow, like the sap of a tree in spring! You have known the false stimulus of wine. Ah, it is a feeble thing compared with this! For this is not false, but true. This is the substance of renewal, not the fire of waste. To wake in the morning feeling that you are not older than yesterday, but younger, better able to cope and to enjoy; to travel back from fourscore to forty-five--I have done that. Do you realize what that means? It means treading the flowery way, lighted by eternal radiance, cheered by the songs of birds. And then to stop--you cannot know what it means to stop! Oh, yes, it was hard to stop; but I must stop now, or not at all this side of youth. Only at forty-five would one have the strength to stop--the age of reason and will, the age of achievement. And I need to achieve, for I still have much to do. So I stopped when I had the strength and had reached the fullness of my power. While I have work to do I shall not go further back. I shall remain as I am, and as you are, at middle age--the age of work.”

He had been pacing up and down in front of Carringford as he spoke. He now halted, facing him, gazing down.

“I must not linger,” he said. “These are my hours for labor, and I have so much to do, so much, it will keep me busy for a thousand years. I have only begun. Perhaps some day I may discover the elixir of wisdom. Perhaps I may yet solve the secret of genius. Perhaps”--His voice lowered--“I shall one day unveil the secret of the soul. The vial I leave with you, for I see in your mind that you cannot reach a conclusion now. On the attached label you will find instructions for its use. Think, ponder, and be sure before you set out on that flowery backward way. Be sure that you want youth again, with all that youth means, before you start back to find it.” He laid his hand in Carringford’s for an instant, and was gone.

“HE BALANCED THE PRECIOUS VIAL MORE QUICKLY”]

For a while Carringford did not move, but sat as one in a dream, staring at the dancing fluid gold in the bottle beneath the lamp.

Youth--youth, how he had longed for that vanished gold, which he had so prodigally wasted when it was in his grasp! How often he had said, as he had said to-night, “Oh, to have one more chance, to be able to begin the game anew!” He reached out and grasped the vial, and held it up to the light. The glinting radiance in it began a wild, new dance at his touch.

Youth, life renewed, yes, that is what it was, its very essence; to taste of that elixir, and start back along the flowery, sunlit way of which his guest had spoken; to feel the blood start more quickly in his veins, a new spring in his muscles; to know that a new bloom had come into his cheek, a new light into his eye.

But, then, the other things, they would come, too. Along that fair backward way lurked all the temptations, the dangers, the heartbreaks--all the efforts and the failures he had once left behind. Did he want to face them again? Did he want to endure again all those years of the struggle of human wisdom with human weakness? He knew it would mean that, and that the same old fights and failures would be his share. He had never thought of it before, but he knew now that it must be so.

Yet, to tread that flowery way, to begin to-night!

He wheeled around to the dying fire, and sat staring into the deep coals and flickering blaze, balancing the golden vial in his hand, as one weighing a decision.

To tread that flowery way, with its blue skies and its singing birds, to feel one’s heart bursting with a new ecstasy, to reach again the land of hope and love, and to linger there with some one--some one with a heart full of love and life! He had always been so lonely!

The age of work, his own age, his guest had chosen to linger there; had resisted all other temptations for that. With the wisdom of fourscore years and all his subtle gift for detecting and avoiding dangers, he had chosen the middle age of life for his abiding-place. The age of work, yes, it was that, if one only made it his vantage-ground.

But, oh, the glory of the flowery way, with all its dangers and all its heartbreaks! His decision was swinging to and fro, like a pendulum: the age of work, the flowery way, the age of work?

And he had been so idle. Perhaps that had been the trouble all along.

“The age of work,” he whispered, “the age of achievement!”

He balanced the precious vial more quickly. It caught the flicker of a waning blaze and became a great, throbbing ruby in his hand.

“To live life over! To go back and begin the game anew! Good God!”

Then--he did not know how it happened--the little bottle toppled, fell, and struck the stone hearth, splashing its contents into the dying embers. There was a leap of yellow flame, which an instant later had become vivid scarlet, changing as quickly to crimson, deep purple, then to a flare of blinding white, and was gone.

Carringford, startled for a moment, sat gazing dumbly at the ashes of his dying fire.

“The question has decided itself,” he said.

A LAST MESSAGE

BY GRACE DENIO LITCHFIELD

Dear, I lie dying, and thou dost not know--
Thou whom of all the world I love the best,
And wilt not know until I lie at rest,
With lips forever closed and lids dropped low.
O Love, O Love, I cannot leave thee so!
Cannot, still undivined, still unexpressed,
Unheeding to the last my heart’s behest,
Dumb into the eternal silence go!
What reck I in this moment of disgrace?
Albeit the whole world hear what my heart saith,
I cry aloud to thee across all space,
To thee--to thee--I call with my last breath!
O Love, lean forth from out thy dwelling-place!
Listen, and learn I loved thee, Love, till death.

FROM THE STATUE BY KARL BITTER, FOR THE JEFFERSON MEMORIAL IN ST. LOUIS

This statue will be unveiled in the presence of a congressional committee on April 30, 1913, the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.]

TO A SCARLET TANAGER

BY GRACE HAZARD CONKLING

My tanager, what crescent coast,
Curving beyond what seas of air,
Invites your elfin commerce most?
For I would fain inhabit there.
Is it a corner of Cathay,
That I could reach by caravan,
Or do you traffic far away
Beyond the mountains of Japan?

If, where some iridescent isle
Wears like a rose its calm lagoon,
You plan to spend a little while,--
An April or a fervid June,--
Deign to direct my wanderings,
And I shall be the one who sees
Your scarlet pinnace furl its wings
And come to anchor in the trees.

Do you collect for merchandise
Ribbons of weed and jeweled shells,
And dazzle color-hungry eyes
With rainbows from the coral wells?
But when your freight is asphodels,
You must be fresh from Enna’s lawn.
Who buys, when such a merchant sells,
And in what market roofed with dawn?

Much would it ease my spirit if
To-day I might embark with you,
Low-drifting like the milkweed-skiff,
Or voyaging against the blue,
To learn who speeds your ebon sails,
And what you do in Ispahan.
Do you convey to nightingales
Strange honey-dew from Hindustan?

With you for master mariner,
I yet might travel very far;
Discover whence your cargoes were,
And whither tending, by a star;
Or what ineffable bazaar
You most frequent in Samarkand;
Or even where those harbors are
Keats found forlorn in fairy-land.

THE SCARLET TANAGER

FROM THE PAINTING, IN WATER-COLORS, BY ALFRED BRENNAN]

A WAR WORTH WAGING

THE SUCCESSFUL FIGHT TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF NEW YORK CITY

(AVERAGE LIFE IN 1866, THIRTY YEARS; IN 1912, SIXTY-SIX YEARS. DEATH-RATE IN 1866, 34 PER THOUSAND; IN 1912, 14.11 PER THOUSAND)

BY RICHARD BARRY

Professor Fisher, of the Committee of One Hundred appointed to consider the problem of the national health, was laboring with Senator Works of California, the official representative in Washington of the Christian Scientists.

“Your approval, Senator,” he said, “of such measures as clean streets and playgrounds is really an indorsement of preventive medicine.”

“But,” exclaimed Senator Works, “I did not know you meant those things as being preventive medicine. I thought preventive medicine meant serums.”

“No,” said Professor Fisher, laughing; “it means mosquito-bars and bath-tubs.”

It is not only serums and bacteriology, but mosquito-bars and bath-tubs, clean streets and plenty of sewers, together with an efficient organization to perfect the operation of such things, that have revolutionized the conditions of health in New York City.

Consider what has been done for poor children alone. Recently I stood in one of the fifty-five diet-kitchens maintained by the city. A poor woman of the neighborhood entered, carrying in her arms a sickly baby. Evidently familiar with the proper course of procedure, she said to the nurse in charge, “I have given him castor-oil and barley gruel; now what shall I do?” This incident is remarkable because the woman never before had come within the reach of the Health Department. In the danger that menaced the child, she had learned to take the first essential steps not through experience or instruction, but merely through neighborhood gossip.

CONDITION OF NEW YORK HALF A CENTURY AGO

Ten years ago such a thing would have been impossible in New York or in any other large city. The tremendous agencies that now exist for the medical enlightenment of the masses were then unheard of. A generation ago New York was in a condition of almost primeval darkness concerning questions of public health. Canton or Constantinople is to-day little worse off than was America’s chief city then.

In 1866 the public health conditions of New York were in so low a state that the average length of life of the inhabitants was thirty years. In 1912 these conditions had been improved so that the average length of life was sixty-six years. Thus the value of human life, reckoned in terms of time alone, had more than doubled in less than half a century.

Let us go back to the year following the Civil War. The only paving in New York then was of cobblestones, and many streets were unpaved. All were in filthy condition, being irregularly cleaned by contractors, who shirked their work. There was no general system for the removal of ashes and garbage, and these were thrown loosely upon the streets. In three quarters of the city, cellars were in foul condition, often flooded with water and undrained. At that time, incredible as it may seem to the modern New Yorker, few houses were connected with sewers. Offensive trades, such as the boiling of bones, offal, and fat, were carried on without hindrance. There were numerous cesspools and cisterns overflowing with filth. Much of the city’s milk was obtained from cows kept in dark, crowded, ill-ventilated stables and fed upon swill from distilleries. The animals were diseased, and the milk was unclean, unwholesome, and frequently was watered.

In alleyways and back yards great quantities of manure were allowed to accumulate. Farmers sometimes bought it and carted it off for fertilizing; but if no farmer happened to come along, the stuff stayed there indefinitely. Outhouses were neglected, and never were properly cared for by the scavengers, who worked for grafting contractors. The practice of keeping swine in the built-up portions of the city was common. The slaughterhouses were in horrible condition, and the offal from these could not be properly cared for because of defective sewers.

Tenement-house conditions were as bad as they have ever been anywhere. No space was left unoccupied. Sheds, basements, and even cellars were rented to families and lodgers. The vast numbers of immigrants pouring in, and the constricted space on Manhattan Island, made rents so high that even a corner in a cellar brought an exorbitant price. Single rooms were divided by partitions, and whole families occupied each section.

In 1866 it was estimated that 20,000 People were then living in cellars in New York. Ten years before that period many of the city houses had been shaky from quick building; after the war, figuratively speaking, they had fallen into the cellars. At that time New York could hardly claim distinction as a great city. Travelers referred to it as an overgrown village, into which had been shoveled slovenly hordes of European immigrants. The annual death-rate was thirty-four per thousand, while that of London was about twenty-three per thousand. And it must be remembered that New York’s new population was composed of vigorous men and women, the cream of other localities, with what should have been healthy offspring, who had quickly centered here, ambitious and active; whereas London was an ancient city, bearing the ills of its own age. It must be remembered also that at that time the medical profession knew little of bacteriology; antitoxins were unknown; people lived like ostriches, with their heads in the sand concerning questions of sex hygiene and child hygiene; and the science of sociology had yet to be discovered.

Cities had always existed, it is true, but they had to be constantly replenished by fresh blood from the country, and most of them had space to spread out into the country, and thus absorb naturally some of the health that comes from fresh air. But here was a city that had little chance to spread. It was confined to a narrow, rocky island, and was growing more rapidly than any other city in the history of the world. “Bounded on one side by a bluff and on the other side by a sound,” it was burrowing into the earth and climbing constantly into the air to make room for its fast-growing population. It was the center of the fiercest contest for money and power, yet it failed to hold long those who came there. The men that made money went to Europe to spend it, and those that fell in the fight went to the West to recuperate. Immigrants that arrived there with money went on to the West or the South; those without money stayed.

The result was that New York did not primarily become a city of residence, but the resort of those who either through the necessity of poverty or the necessity of ambition sojourned there. Of all American cities it became the most artificial; there life came to be lived at its highest tension; there the struggle for existence became fiercest.

It is apparent that in such a city Nature cannot be left to her own devices. When man deserts Nature, she promptly retaliates by deserting man. And, in substitution of so-called “natural” living, there has been developed the present-day mode, built up of scientific analysis, skilful treatment, and thorough organization.

A NEW DEPARTURE

The health campaigns of the last forty-five years divide themselves naturally into two groups, those that came before 1900 and those that came after that year. The early campaigns were the more obvious; the later campaigns are the more subtle in their tactics, but none the less effective. Before 1900 the death-rate had been reduced by more than one third. In 1866 it was 34 per thousand; in 1900 it was 20.57 per thousand. During this period of thirty-four years wells had been gradually eliminated as sources of drinking-water, until not one was left in the principal parts of the city. Young children who never had been in the country were brought to the well in Central Park and they gazed into it as a curiosity, just as they looked at the bears and the greenhouses. At the same time the general water-supply was vastly improved. To live in cellars was made illegal, and there was a general improvement in the condition of dwellings. Street-cleaning became well organized; sewers were laid in almost all the streets, and refuse was cared for scientifically. The public supervision of contagious diseases became effective; good use was made of new medical discoveries, such as diphtheria antitoxin, and the public hospitals were improved.

Yet the advances in sanitary safeguarding since 1900 are more wonderful than those that came before. In the last twelve years the death-rate has been reduced by a quarter from its comparatively high rate at the beginning of the century. In 1911 it was 15.13 per thousand. For 1912 it was 14.11 per thousand. However, this reduction of more than six per thousand has been won with over twice the effort that was necessary to make the first fourteen per thousand. The city budget for 1912 carried an appropriation for the Department of Health of more than $3,000,000. As much more was spent the same year by the seventy-odd organizations, private or semi-public, the purpose of which is the betterment of health conditions. Besides, there has been the devoted labor of more than seven thousand physicians.

In all this vast field of effort, as diversified as the entire scope of modern science, as complex as civilization itself, two main lines stand out conspicuously. New York was a pioneer among cities in both. These concerned the treatment of tuberculosis and children’s diseases. The organized fight against tuberculosis in New York, under the latest approved scientific methods, dates only from 1904. Before that time there was no successful effort on the part of the authorities to diagnose the disease properly, nor any attempt to deal with it intelligently when it was discovered accidentally. Yet New York is as great a sufferer from the white plague as any other locality. Its congested living, its large Negro population, and its indigent foreigners, ignorant of our language and customs, make it a fertile breeding-ground for the tubercle bacillus.

Within eight years, twenty-nine tuberculosis clinics have been established, and several day camps have been built where sufferers can recuperate without expense and without leaving the city. In all these thorough blood and sputum tests are made with modern scientific apparatus. At the same time, it has been widely made known that to recover from the dread disease it is not necessary to leave the city, which, situated between two bodies of water, is swept constantly by fresh air, the chief necessity in the treatment of tuberculosis.

SAVING THE BABIES

But the really remarkable work in the reduction of the death-rate within the last few years has been done among the children. It is here that the war worth waging has been carried on most effectively. If, as Ellen Key says, this is the century of the child, New York proved it in its first decade by concentrating the health battalions on infant mortality.

“A baby that comes into the world has less chance to live one week than an old man of ninety, and less chance to live a year than a man of eighty,” Bergeron, the French authority on children’s diseases, said ten years ago. Within five years those chances have been increased by a third in New York. In 1911, throughout the United States one death in every five was that of a child under one year of age, while in New York only one death in every eight was that of a child under one year of age. Yet five years before that time New York’s average of infant mortality had been equal to that of the rest of the country. And in 1912 the infant mortality was further decreased by six per cent., a greater decrease than that of any other city.

WEIGHING THE BABIES AT AN INFANTS’ MILK STATION IN NEW YORK]

What has accomplished this result? Primarily, two causes: first, the attention of the Board of Health, whose department of child hygiene now receives a larger annual appropriation than any other (in 1913 it will have more than $600,000, a fifth of the entire budget); and, second, the work of the New York Milk Committee, a semi-public organization composed of many of the chief physicians and philanthropists of the city.

Eight years ago there was not one infants’ milk station in New York. The babies of the poor were obliged to live on what milk could be found easily for them. Few could afford and still fewer could find what is known as “Grade A” milk, which sells in the commercial market for from fifteen to twenty-five cents a quart, and which is thoroughly inspected and certified. At the close of 1912 there were seventy-nine such stations in the city. At every one Grade A milk was sold at the nominal price of eight cents a quart, so as to be in easy competition with ordinary commercial milk. Every day thousands of mothers with their babies throng these stations. However, their chief purpose is not the mere selling of pure, rich milk. They serve principally as dispensaries. The milk is used by the city as a lure by means of which ignorant mothers are brought within the reach of the physicians of the Health Department. With the milk, thorough instruction and advice as to the care of infants is given gratis. The old idea that mothers know entirely how best to care for their own children has been proved erroneous. Not all mothers in a large city know how to care for their children. Many of them are virtually as helpless as the children themselves. They have to be taken in hand, trained, and taught in the care of their offspring as completely as the children themselves are taken in hand a few years later in the public schools.

In addition to the seventy-nine dispensaries of milk and medical knowledge, the city maintains a large corps of trained nurses who make visits, especially during the summer, to the homes to complete the instruction. In the poorer districts, every child under a year old is visited by a city nurse at least once in ten days. The average cost is fifty cents a month for each child. At the same time the inspection of the general milk-supply has become thorough. The city’s inspectors now cover all farms within two hundred miles from the city hall, and the sources of supply are thus kept in proper sanitary condition.

The city also gives ice in summer to those families (with children) that are unable to buy it. In the summer of 1912, 900,000 pounds were thus distributed. This is in addition to the accepted efforts to secure better playgrounds, better ventilated schools, etc.

A decade ago the summer death-rate among children in New York was from two to three times as high as the winter death-rate. For the last four years it has been steadily decreasing, and in 1912 it was almost as low as the winter death-rate. Deaths from diarrheal diseases among children have been reduced to a minimum through the concentrated efforts of a few years. The next work to be taken up will be the winter deaths from respiratory diseases. This is a more difficult problem.

Yet the greatest problem in infant mortality has still to be solved. This is the care of the “institution” baby. As in England and in France, the largest number of deaths among New York children occur among the illegitimate and those lacking a mother’s care during the early months of life. In 1911 more than forty per cent. of the deaths of infants under one year in Manhattan occurred in institutions.

The institutions that receive foundlings are too few and too poorly equipped. One day Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan saw in the street, within a block of his home, a poor woman hugging despairingly to her breast a new-born infant. In consequence, he caused to be built the million-dollar lying-in hospital on Stuyvesant Square, which has already been the means of saving many an innocent life. But that superb hospital, large as it is, has not the facilities for taking care of more than a small number of the infants that require such an institution.

The material agencies, efficient and marvelous as they have become, have not been the chief aid in the reduction of the death-rate, especially among children. Public education has really had more to do with it. Even those in direct charge of the work in infant mortality do not assert that the entire credit for the satisfactory progress should be given to the milk stations, the dispensaries, and the hospitals. Pamphlets, lectures, newspaper articles, and school-room instruction are at the base of the advance. Publicity has proved to be a greater force than milk inspection. Certain popular newspapers in New York have the power to achieve definite radical reforms in modes of living whenever they choose to prosecute a vigorous campaign. Just as the newspapers can expose corruption in any of the city’s departments, so almost as readily they can uproot or at least substantially lessen certain sanitary evils. A case in point is their campaign against the fly last summer. By means of wide-spread and vigorous news articles and editorials they succeeded in so rousing the mass of the people that the fly pest was visibly reduced. Health Department officials testify readily to this.

The work of the social settlements, of the mothers’ clubs, of the neighborhood nursing associations, of the diet-kitchens, all contribute to the general education that is bringing about a condition of excellent public sanitation. This work is necessarily of slow growth. Its effect is not nearly so evident as that of vaccination, of smallpox segregation, or of typhoid diagnosis. It is not so simple as establishing proper sewers or purifying the water-supply; but it is no less important.

THE STUDY OF SEX HYGIENE

In all this tremendous volume of public sanitary education, no one feature stands out more clearly than the work being done in sex hygiene. Prudery is passing; there can be no doubt of that. Within the last five years every public school in New York has introduced a course of teaching in its physiology or biology department the aim of which is to acquaint the growing boy and girl with the essential facts of sex life, to open their eyes to sexual evils, and to prepare them to treat with sexual diseases intelligently. Ignorant mothers, both foreign-born and native, or those whose false modesty is worse than their ignorance, are day by day being taught by their daughters of twelve and fourteen, who have learned their lessons in school or in neighborhood classes, certain essential facts of sex life, ignorance of which has brought about pitiful conditions of disease and death.

The effect of this is not yet fully apparent in a decreased death-rate, but there can be little doubt that within a very few years it will have its result. For instance, one third of the infant mortality is due to prenatal conditions, congenital diseases which afflict the child at birth, and which mean either speedy death or a lingering, crippled life. The larger part of these untoward prenatal conditions are due to sexual diseases. To eliminate them will require two sustained efforts: the further abolishing of prudery, with consequent rigorous sex hygiene, and the enactment and enforcement of laws that will require proper medical examination before marriage.

A physician told me recently that in his opinion within a decade laws will be enacted providing that every man and woman desiring to marry can do so only with a doctor’s certificate that shall carry with it a clean bill of health. Once that is done, it is confidently believed that the death-rate among infants will fall off perhaps by a quarter, and surely by a fifth or a sixth. The educational work in this field is being done for the future. With present adults there is little hope; but the fathers and mothers of the next generation will be much better equipped.

THE FIGHT AGAINST TYPHOID GERMS

In one more campaign the immediate future seems likely to yield great results perhaps almost as important as those resulting from the discovery of antitoxin. This will be from the use of the new anti-typhoid serum, which the Department of Health in December, 1912, decided to use as extensively as possible in New York. This decision followed close on the War Department’s public declaration that the anti-typhoid serum had proved a success, virtually eliminating the disease from the army. In 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in the United States than of the plague in India, despite the fact that India’s population is two and a half times that of the United States. In 1907 there were more cases of typhoid in New York than of pellagra in Italy, though Italy’s population is six times that of New York. In this work, as in children’s diseases and in tuberculosis, New York is a pioneer, and yet New York is better off regarding typhoid than many other American cities, for it has a lower typhoid death-rate than Boston, Chicago, Washington, or Philadelphia; yet its typhoid death-rate is higher than that of London, Paris, Berlin, or Hamburg.

Last spring when Wilbur Wright, the aviator, died of typhoid fever at the age of forty-five, several newspapers were honest enough to speak of it as a murder--a murder by the American people, through neglect and ignorance, of a genius who, had he been allowed, might have lived to be of still more distinguished service to the world.

In the last two years the New York Department of Health has been able to trace definitely several typhoid-fever outbreaks. In nearly every instance it was found that the disease could be traced to a “carrier.” A carrier is a person who has recovered from an attack of typhoid, but who remains infected. One outbreak of four hundred cases was traced to the infection of a milk-supply by a typhoid carrier who had had the disease forty-seven years before. In another outbreak of fifty cases the contamination was traced to a man who had the disease seven years before.

Within the last few months the case of “Typhoid Mary” has received much attention. This woman has recently brought suit against the Department of Health for damaging her career as a cook. For more than six months she was kept in a sort of exile by the department. Before that time she had been a cook in many households, and wherever she went typhoid fever followed her. Although she had suffered with the disease many years before she was apprehended, the germs were said to be still very lively in her system. The authorities asserted that her blood tests revealed that she was likely to communicate typhoid to any one at any time; and therefore Mary did no more cooking.

There is no telling how many carriers are loose in New York at present, and the only known way of averting the danger is by the use of the serum which the army has found efficacious. It is estimated that about three per cent. of those recovering from typhoid become bacillus-carriers. As yet typhoid vaccination is not compulsory among the public at large, as in the army; but a strong movement is felt in the city to make it so. When typhoid-fever becomes as thoroughly controlled as smallpox, or even as diphtheria, the death-rate will drop another point or two. It will be the last of the filth diseases to go. It is asserted by competent authorities that eighty-five per cent. of the cases are preventable.

OPINIONS OF AN EXPERT