Chapter XI (6)

The United States produces half the copper of the world, but both exports and imports of this metal are increasing, showing that other countries are sending copper to this country for treatment. In 1902, America imported 135,000,000 pounds of tin plates, and in 1912 only 4,500,000 pounds. The exports of tin plates increased during the same period from 3,500,000 pounds to 183,000,000 pounds. Iron and steel show a marked decline in imports and an enormous gain in exports. The American people are no longer importing automobiles to any extent, but are increasing their sales abroad, and in 1912 sold $28,000,000 worth to foreign buyers. The importations of coffee virtually hold their own, amounting in 1912 to nearly 1,000,000,000 pounds; but owing to increased prices, the value of this importation is nearly double that of 1902. The exports of the iron and steel industry of the United States, including the manufactures of these materials as well, now amount to about $1,000,000 per day. Europe takes the higher class of goods, and Canada and South America take the rails, structural iron and steel, heavy castings, and other like products that constitute the heavy tonnage of the industry.

The countries taking their largest proportionate share of their imports from the United States are: Haiti, 69 per cent.; Honduras, 68 per cent.; Canada, 62 per cent.; Santo Domingo, 61 per cent.; Panama, 56 per cent.; Mexico, 55 per cent.; Cuba, 53 per cent.; and Costa Rica 51 per cent. England takes 17.3 per cent. of her imports from the United States, Germany 13.3 per cent., and France 8.6 per cent. Of the South American countries, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru take from 20 to 30 per cent. of their imports from the United States, while others take smaller percentages, ranging from the 13.8 of Argentina and the 12.8 of Brazil to the 2.8 per cent. of Bolivia. Other countries draw very slightly upon the United States for their imports, notably China, which takes only 5 per cent.; India, 3 per cent.; Morocco, less than 1 per cent.; Servia, 1 per cent.; and about the same for Turkey and Rumania. The great markets for American products at the present, in total value of goods sold to the peoples of these countries, are England, purchasing as she does from America goods to the amount of $572,000,000; Canada, $285,000,000; Germany, $283,000,000; France, $119,000,000; the Netherlands, $117,000,000; Italy, $70,000,000; Cuba, $57,000,000; Mexico, $56,000,000; Russia, $52,000,000; Austria-Hungary, Argentina, and Belgium, between $45,000,000 and $50,000,000 each, and Australia, Brazil, and Japan, between $27,000,000 and $32,000,000 each.

Of the export trade of the United States, 60 per cent. goes to Europe, 23 per cent. to North America, 6 per cent. to South America, 5 per cent. to Asia, 4 per cent. to Oceanica, and 2 per cent. to Africa. American producers send more than 90 per cent. of their entire foreign shipments, or more than $2,000,000,000 worth of goods, to nineteen countries, and the remaining ten per cent. covers the trade with all the rest of the world. England buys about 26 per cent. of the total American export; Canada 15 per cent.; Germany 13 per cent.; France 7 per cent.; the Netherlands 4 per cent.; Italy, Cuba, and Belgium, each 3 per cent.; Mexico, Japan, Argentina, Australia, Russia, and Brazil, each 2 per cent.; and Spain, Austria-Hungary, Panama, China, and the Philippines, each about 1 per cent.

Official figures of imports and exports are useful as indications from which deductions may safely be drawn, but they are not an accurate record of the trade relations of any two countries. In some cases the indirect trade of the United States with certain countries is much larger than custom-house figures would indicate, in that American goods are purchased by other nations, who act as distributors or intermediaries in conducting the foreign trade of the world. This is very largely so in American trade with England. That country is credited with purchases of American goods far in excess of the needs of the British people. These goods are bought by English firms whose dealings are largely with other foreign countries, and by them sold to their customers on the Continent of Europe, in Asia, Oceanica, or elsewhere. A striking example of this is the American trade with Russia. It is impossible to state exactly the value of American goods which in time find their way to the Russian consumer, but it is vastly in excess of the amount of trade between the United States and Russia, or $52,380,000, as given in government statistics. In the official statement of exports of American cotton, Russia is credited by the Department of Commerce figures as receiving 64,590 bales, valued at $3,796,867.

American consuls in Russia, and the cotton experts of that country, estimate that Russia consumes annually nearly $50,000,000 worth of American raw cotton, an amount nearly equal to the total export to Russia of all American goods, according to United States government figures. That the government figures are misleading is due to the fact that they are figures of direct business only; and direct trade between the United States and Russia is, for geographical, transportation, and financial reasons, more or less hampered. American cotton is bought for Russia in London, Hamburg, Antwerp, Copenhagen, and other great European markets. The exports are credited in the United States to the ports mentioned, and while the ultimate destination does not affect the totals of American foreign trade, it does lead to wide-spread confusion as to the comparative value of the various foreign markets for American products. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of Russia, a country with which the United States has recently had some difficulty in the matter of a treaty of mutual trade and friendship. Judging from United States government statistics, American trade relations with Russia might be regarded as almost negligible; whereas in fact they are already of the greatest value and importance, to say nothing of the brilliant prospects of possible trade expansion in the near future. Even the government figures show a direct sale to Russia of nearly $50,000,000 worth of American goods, deducting the direct sales of cotton. With a known consumption of $50,000,000 worth of American cotton, this gives at least $100,000,000 as the value of American sales to Russia. Cotton, however, is not the only merchandise sold indirectly, and if other goods are handled in the same way to an equal amount, it is possible that the annual sales of American goods to Russia amount to nearly $200,000,000, or four times the amount allowed by United States official figures.

This correction would give Russia fourth instead of ninth place in the list of great buyers of American goods. This is the most striking illustration of the deceptive feature of government trade-statistics in determining the order of importance of foreign buyers of American goods, though there are other countries which suffer in the estimation of exporters for the same reason. As has been already stated, it was peculiarly unfortunate that this was so in the case of Russia, for those who, for reasons of their own, favored national retaliation against that country through mutual trade relations used United States government statistics to support their argument, and the American public naturally accepted these data at their apparent value. A final and accurate determination of the value of each foreign country as a market for American merchandise, a laborious and almost impossible task, would undoubtedly lead to interesting and unexpected results. It would not only make many changes in the list of the most important customers, but would immediately suggest possibilities of more direct trading, which would stimulate American rail, shipping, and financial interests, increase profits by cutting out the middleman, and in the end give added stimulus to American foreign trade.

One of the most serious difficulties that confront the American Government in its dealings with foreign nations is the inelasticity of the American tariff laws. The most sensible and scientific tariff law which the United States could have,--allowing that the principle of tariff for revenue and protection is to prevail,--is such rate of duty as may be deemed advisable, all things considered; an arrangement whereby a surtax could be imposed upon goods from countries discriminating against American merchandise, and a trading margin for treaty-making purposes, ranging from the normal rate of duty, as set forth in the customs laws, to absolute free trade between the treaty-making powers. There is little or no hope that such a law can prevail or will be formally advocated by any political party in power; but it is a hopeful sign that it has been seriously suggested and discussed by men prominent in the councils of the nation. That tariff laws will in time be formulated on that basis is likely, but such a statement reaches further into the domain of prophecy than is apparently warranted in the present temper of actual legislation. There is a simple truth, apparently often forgotten or ignored, and it is that to give is necessary, to be able to take, in all dealings between nations, as much as between individuals. All trading is in the end a compromise, presumably mutually beneficent and equally so. It rests with the wit and ability of the trader to see that he at least comes out even. It would be interesting to know just how far the late President McKinley intended to go in his advocacy of better foreign-trade relations for the United States had not his tragic death cut short his program. The last speech he made at Buffalo was crowded with significance of what might come later. It was in a sense as though he were only preparing the way for an important development of American fiscal policy in connection with foreign trade. Those who were in his closest confidence in the days just prior to his death have knowledge of an evolution that had taken place in his mind--a mind that had given more thorough thought and study to tariff matters than almost any other in America at that time. They firmly believe that at the moment the life of President McKinley ended, he had planned a pronunciamento in favor of concessions to American foreign-trade interests which would have startled the country, put the Republican party in line with the mass of the voters who desired tariff revision, and of which his Buffalo speech strongly advocating reciprocity in commerce was only the opening paragraph. Had he lived, this one thing might have made a vast difference in the subsequent fortunes of the Republican party; but when he died his place was taken by a man whose marvelous activities did not include an interest in the tariff. In fact, as he frankly expressed it, the subject “bored” him, as it does many others, unfortunate for the country as this may be.

The American diplomatic service has passed through some remarkable phases in the last twenty-five years. A few years ago it was quite frankly used as a means for rewarding political services to the party in power. No good could possibly come out of such a system. There were some exceptions to the general rule that American ambassadors and ministers were either indifferent to or else ignorant of the needs of the United States in international politics, but they were few and far between. More recently men have been selected for the most important places by reason of their wealth and social standing. Some of those selected made excellent representatives, but owing to the shortness of their terms of office they had no more than familiarized themselves with their surroundings than they were either recalled or found it expedient to return to their native land.

President Wilson has apparently established a new plan, or rather revived an old one. He is selecting his foreign representatives from the class known in Europe as the “intellectuals.” This policy is adopted at a highly critical time in the history of the foreign trading of the United States, and at a time when virtually all the great international questions and controversies are those of respective economic advantage, one nation over another. It comes also at a time when the great commercial and industrial rivals of the United States are pursuing a different policy, one which is perhaps worth considering. England and Germany to a notable degree, and France, Russia, and some others of the great Powers to a sufficient degree to be noticeable, are training men for all diplomatic positions, and promotions are made even to the highest places almost entirely upon the merits and suitability of the candidates. The young man who enters the foreign office service of England or Germany in a subordinate position has within his power, if he develop accordingly, to become in time an ambassador to some important country. He is thoroughly tried out, step by step, as consul and minister before the highest rank is given to him. He is moved about from one part of the world to another until he becomes in truth a cosmopolitan not only in thought and habit, but in language and knowledge. The most serious part of the education of these men is, first, the economics of their own country, and, secondly, the economics of the country to which they are to be accredited. This education is practical and not theoretical. This is true to so great an extent that, when a technical matter of trade enters into a controversy between the two state departments, the minister or ambassador is often found fully qualified to fight the battle himself in aid of the material interests of the country he represents. There are no more practical men anywhere than a majority of these who now represent the progressive industrial countries of Europe as foreign ministers or ambassadors. This particular feature of their equipment for the office is not unnecessarily paraded, however, for their social and political qualifications are more in the public eye. It is in the private talks at the State Department at Washington, in London, Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, or elsewhere, that their real fighting strength is disclosed. It is not a question of private fortune with them, for their governments remove any anxiety on that score by an adequate and even abundant allowance of funds not only for salaries, but for housing and maintenance. The British ambassador to Washington receives more in salary and expense allowance than does the President of the United States in proportion to the necessary expenditures of his office.

To the American manufacturer, deeply engaged with his cost of production and the filling of orders, it may appear that too much stress is laid upon the function of foreign diplomacy in the success of American business abroad; but it will not be necessary to give emphasis to its importance with those Americans who have already pioneered their business into remote parts of the world. They know, through bitter experience, how inefficiency in an American embassy or legation can hinder and even destroy the greater possibilities for American success.

At present, and for years past, the fortunes of American foreign trading depend, so far as diplomacy is concerned, upon the character, ability, common sense, and adroitness of the individual government representative abroad rather than upon the Government or the system as a whole. Within the year 1912 we had the two extremes: in one country an able, intelligent, and practical man, working persistently for weeks to bring about a commercial entente cordiale between the United States and the country in which he was stationed; and in another country American interests were forced to appeal to English or other foreign representatives to help them through a time of stress, because the American representative considered things commercial as outside of the province of his labors. Both of these men are out of office now not because one was useful and the other useless, but because of the system, or lack of system, which required their places for others.

An English minister who was stationed in an important country a few years ago failed when there to secure certain large contracts for English builders. This same minister is still in the service, but is now kicking his heels in an unimportant place, where what he does or does not is of little consequence. A certain German ambassador was recently denied the place of his choice because he had done so well where he was that his services were still needed at that point; but when the crisis has passed, he will get his reward all the more surely.

The day will come in America when it will be realized that a nation can well afford to cheapen for export by every means in its power, and that such cheapness does not necessarily mean discrimination against the home consumer. There are few signs of the dawn of this day at the moment, and it will come only when the ultimate and general overproduction of manufactures forces the attention of the whole nation upon the need of still greater markets elsewhere. There is one comfort for the people of the United States, possessed in no such degree by any other nation at the present time or for several generations to come, and that is, the abounding possibilities of the North American continent in its natural resources, and the amazing vitality and resourcefulness of its inhabitants.

NEW-MADE AMERICANS

A Few Types of Foreign Women Sketched, in New York, from the Life

By W. T. Benda]

ULANA, FROM POLAND

DOLORES, FROM SPAIN

KALINKA, FROM BULGARIA

ALICE, FROM ENGLAND

SARAH, FROM SOUTHERN RUSSIA]

THE DEVIL, HIS DUE

BY PHILIP CURTISS

Now, Furniss was a devil. I mean that exactly, and if I might, I should like to explain it, for I wish to draw a distinction between the devils and the merely devilish. If argot had not spoiled the phrase, I might have said that he was a regular devil, as distinguished from the volunteer, the territorial, the occasional, or the would-be devil.

The distinction between a regular devil and one who is merely devilish is exactly the distinction between the professional and the amateur in all occupations. The devilish do things purely for the éclat of the doing, while the devils do them because they want the things done. A professional carpenter carpenters in order that he may have a table, to be used for his varying ends; an amateur uses his tools merely for the sake of the chips. That an occasional amateur displays unusual brilliancy in the accomplishment has nothing to do with the distinction. The real devils, moreover, regard the devilish purely with a mild amusement, if they regard them at all. Their only vexation is that of professional craftsmen at the “pin-money” workers, whose spasmodic efforts cut into legitimate trade.

The most powerful proof which I can bring to the statement that Furniss was a real devil, however, is the one that he did not regard himself as a devil at all. On the contrary, he regarded himself as an industrious citizen, fairly successful in the accomplishments of his ends. As a career, devilishness did not interest him in the slightest. Its material rewards were all that he sought.

Now, at midnight, on the thirtieth of October, Furniss, with the best intentions in the world, was standing in a group in the ball-room of the Fitchly Country Club, harmlessly singing “Auld Lang Syne.” At one minute past twelve the engineer turned out all the lights, having standing instructions to do so, for Fitchly was a goodly town, and on this particular night the steward had forgotten to make an exception. The result was that which usually occurs when the lights are turned out on a perfectly respectable and usually sane gathering of grown men and women--every bit of asininity in the mob swarmed to the surface. There were cat calls, screams, and suggestive labials, while all the naturally executive began groping toward the door and the steward.

What the others did, however, did not matter. It was generally understood that they were merely devilish, and no score was to be counted against them. Furniss, on the other hand, played everything for stakes, and his tally had to meet with a reckoning. For, when the lights left their sudden wave of darkness on the mixed and rollicking group, Furniss quietly and modestly followed the promptings of his profession, turned slowly, gathered the nearest woman into his arms, and thoroughly and deliberately kissed her. Who she was he had not the slightest idea, nor did he, indeed, have any very lively curiosity. The act was purely professional, perfectly methodic, as automatic and unemotional as a response in a ritual. Thus, despite Furniss’s known make-up, the fact would have passed unnoticed had it not been for two things, first, that, owing to the deliberateness of Furniss and the quickness of the engineer, the lights went on again before he was through, and the second that the woman thus discovered in his arms was the only one in the room whom he would have had the slightest reason for wanting to kiss. It was a perfect triumph of circumstantial evidence.

The sudden hush which fell on the group when the lights were restored at once displayed the awfulness of Furniss’s depravity, as viewed by the Fitchly Country Club, in riot assembled. Had any other man been caught in the same act, with any other woman, there would have been merely a triumphant outcry of self-acknowledged devilishness. The man would have bought at the bar below, and the women would have screamed themselves to their motors; but, by some unusual instinct that was positively primitive, every man and woman in the room realized that Furniss was a professional and his act took a much more vital aspect. By the same perfect precision of instinct not a single iota of blame was attached to the lady in question, for the accurate conception of Furniss on the part of the Country Club demonstrated also that she was only an instrument in a tragedy of the elements. One does not accuse a person of being an accessory to a cyclone.

At the vivid and not wholly beautiful picture thus presented by the electrics, the whole room foolishly and utterly unsuccessfully attempted to give an imitation of a gathering which knows that nothing has happened. After the awful hush of the first moment, the women began quietly conversing in tones unusually subdued; the men began skylarking and shouting on subjects unusually hollow. The object of instructing the engineer to turn on the lights again, after midnight, had been to allow the dance to continue until two in the morning. At one there was not a single person left in the ball-room, and the waiters were already sweeping up the fragments. Some fragments, however, they could not sweep, and these make the following prelude:

Ten years before, at the age of twenty-five, Furniss had had one chance in a million of being decent; that is to say, he had nearly married a good woman, and that woman, needless to explain, was the one whom by sheer accident he kissed just ten years later. Furthermore, it was the nearest that he had ever come to marrying anybody, or ever would come, and it was a hollow victory for the law of chances.

Furniss was a devil because he came of that stock. It bred true to type, merely with refinements in each succeeding generation. His father was a stout, red-faced man of the kind that, thirty years ago, drove trotting-horses to a red-wheeled run-about, with wooden knobs on the reins, and loops to hold to--a true example of the days when it took absolute defiance to be a sporting-man. Furniss himself drove the best-looking motor-car in Fitchly, and his effect was esthetically better than his father’s, for, owing to the rigidity of the thing, it is much easier to have a good taste in motor-cars than in horses. His mother was a blonde, expensively-dressed woman of the type which goes through life in the hideous belief that tight-lacing will make feminine obesity anything but revolting.

Yet at twenty-five Furniss had had his chances. He went to college and played foot-ball. He played it well. It is frequently the noblest thing that men of his stamp ever do, except one. They sometimes get into the army, and into the cavalry; less frequently into the infantry, but never, absolutely never, into the engineers. It was, moreover, the heyday of the college athlete, those golden years of the nineties when men wore huge white Y’s and H’s on high-necked sweaters at mountain resorts all summer, and when reputations lasted more than a year. With one of these reputations Furniss had come out of college, and tentatively, against its judgment, Fitchly had received him. It was one of those inconceivable cases when reason and instinct battle. Everybody knew old man Furniss and had not the slightest illusions about him; yet here was young Furniss a half-back at Yale! Time has helped us to understand these things nowadays, but they troubled us then.

In Furniss’s case reason won over instinct, and Fitchly received him with open arms which wavered slightly. The only return he made was to fall mildly in love with Helen Witherspoon. It would be nice to think that something in the sweet, old-fashioned manner of this dainty, refined girl, whose ancestors had been immigrants two hundred years before Furniss’s, appealed to the brute and barbaric in the foot-ball hero, and perhaps it did, but a more plausible reason for his falling in love with her was that every one else was doing it. It was the temptation of the desired, the invitation of a contest, and of all things this appealed most to Furniss. Every one was doing it; but in a very short time it narrowed down to Furniss and Butley Smith, of the well-known legal firm of Smith, Smith & Smith, which drew up the city charter and refused to accept criminal practice. She married Smith. You could hardly call it a disappointed love-affair. It was rather precision by elimination, and Furniss was eliminated. Furnisses were all right as half-backs, but we didn’t marry them in Fitchly; at least Father and Mother Witherspoon didn’t marry them, and in Fitchly they did the marrying.

From Furniss’s point of view it was unfortunate, but it was natural. As an economic system, marriage did not wholly persuade him, anyway.

So Furniss reverted to type, and did well at it. He lost little of his athletic good looks, and he was certainly invaluable as a club-man. Thirty-five found him stocky, but not fat, with a face rather round, but not repellent; a tiny, trim mustache; the inevitable blue serge and that almost offensively white linen which one associates with the broker type--that whiteness which threatens to, but does not quite, suggest scented soap. It would have been extremely difficult to say whether or not he had brains. His achievements rather pointed to the fact that he had, and his tastes to the fact that he had not; but, in any case, he made money, and whatever might be his misdeeds, he never bothered any one by telling about them. He manufactured in quantity the best off-set drill in America, and furthermore, as he held the patents, the wholesale jobbers who bought the drill troubled not one whit with his morals. The society of Fitchly shook its head occasionally, but on the whole kept him along. It would be extremely difficult to drop a man who had nowhere to drop to; and as he asked nothing of Fitchly, there was nothing to refuse. This occasion at the Country Club, then, was the first real instance in which the elements had come in conflict.

Of the many mixed emotions which accompanied the premature withdrawal from the Country Club that night, only two will suffice for illustration, as they marked the extremes--those of Furniss himself and of Butley Smith, the Menelaus of the ravished Helen. Those of Furniss, indeed, were no doubt very similar to the emotions of the son of Priam himself on the occasion of the original Hellenic uprising--an amusing incident and an unfortunate one, but why this unseemly outcry? His kissing some one when the lights went out had been a perfectly consistent act. It was not an emotional impulse; it was, in a way, a duty to the conventions, and how was he to know that the recipient was a former sweetheart? He had no desire to repeat the crime. The attitude of the Country Club had made osculation rather nauseous. It would seem better breeding not to notice it; and yet, and yet, it was rather funny that it should have been Helen. It was the first personal illustration which Furniss had ever had of the dramatic, and he began to ponder. If you ever wish to reclaim a devil, just try him on the dramatic. It is the only uplifting influence which sleeps in the souls of most of them.

The emotions of Butley Smith were less happily chosen. He also felt the impulse of the drama, but his was the stiff and unnatural drama of the classic schools, for his cue directed him to punch in the face of the offending Furniss. It was a glowing idea, but it wasn’t practical, as associates of Butley brutally pointed out when they drew attention to the fact that the face of the ex-half-back, and the present associate of half the prize-fighters in the East, would be an extremely hard one to pummel, and their logic suggests an admirable course of action for one who would play a dramatic part in such histories. If you must be an outraged husband, be one in a novel or a play, where you will always be able to thrash or horsewhip or shoot the villain within an inch of his life. The physical incapacity of villains in these circles is admirable. In real life, unfortunately, they are quite apt to be fully the equals of the outraged husband, or otherwise the husbands would be less frequently outraged.

The probabilities of this situation were easily comprehended by a legal mind which spurned a criminal practice, and Butley Smith had to take his satisfaction in biding his time, reserving, however, the privilege of biting his lip, to which extent he lived up to the unities. Meantime the situation in Fitchly did not improve.

Just how bad the situation was growing, just how fitfully the pot was boiling, how it was even fanned by his own disregard of it, was utterly aside from the observation of Furniss. He never knew, for example, and probably would not have cared if he did, that there had been a proposition to expel him from the Fitchly Country Club. But, then, as was pointed out by Carter of the firm of Carter, Pills & Carter, who did take an occasional criminal case, if an action were instituted against Furniss, it must necessarily involve the guileless Helen, and, whatever might be the popular verdict, just how much she could be called an accomplice would be a decision extremely delicate for the trained legal mind. It was certain that Furniss’s face had borne no scratches when the lights went on again.

So Butley boiled and chafed under his natural injunction against punching Furniss, and bit his lip, and bided his time, until ultimately it began to react on Helen, whose original emotions had been as simple as those of the criminal. He boiled and chafed and bided his time until the desperate Helen resolved on a terrible step--no less than an actual move to the walls of Ilium. She wrote a note, and invited Furniss to meet her in the private dining-room of the Fitchly Inn.

He went. We will not flatter Furniss. Any note in a feminine handwriting would have brought him just the same, and his mood was not of the most elevated. His dim, uncertain stirrings of the dramatic on the morning of the thirty-first had gone permanently back to sleep, and on this particular day he had reasons to be distinctly savage, for he had just lost a forty-thousand-dollar order for the off-set drill, and he had no active inclinations toward mushrooms. Still, business was business, and one had to buy luncheon for two, anyway.

So Helen met him, and Helen pleaded. Aside from the boiling of Butley, her feminine sense of the just had told her that wrong must be righted and happy endings must prevail. She had not the rude melodrama of her consort, which saw a trouncing as the only fit remedy for non-patrons of husbandry; but she had, nevertheless, an Emersonian theory of compensation, which perceived that the apparent impunity of the outrager was contrary to the ultimate laws of existence. So Helen pleaded, and Paris got mad. He didn’t like Butley, anyway. He would apologize to Helen, but he wouldn’t to Menelaus. He couldn’t see that the affair was international, anyway. It seemed to him distinctly Parisian. But Helen wore a tailored gown with a fringe of lace at her neck, so Paris surrendered, and the entente cordiale was restored. He promised to apologize at the Quoits Club that very day, and that evening, at a prearranged dinner, the nations would banquet in harmony. Seven stalwart oxen would be killed, a libation poured to the gods, and for seven hours--

But just then the waiter brought the bill.

The bill, with tips, was twenty-four dollars and sixty cents, and with a sudden recollection of the forty-thousand-dollar order, Furniss reverted to type. With the usual inconsistency of a man who can lose large sums with apparent indifference, he raved and fumed at the loss of a penny. He raved and fumed all the afternoon at his office, and it was not until well after five that he made an unaccustomed appearance at the Quoits Club, still raging and fuming, with the only horror that a man of his type can ever know--the horror of losing money.

Butley Smith was already at the Quoits Club, as Helen well knew he would be; but Furniss was an unaccustomed presence. He usually preferred the Racquets, where the stakes were worth playing, and his advent in this, the stronghold of strictly civil practice, made a commotion. The commotion, moreover, soon attracted the attention of Butley, who was straying through the tables looking for a partner.

Now, Butley Smith was rated a magnificent card-player, which meant that he played auction like a stop-watch, and poker like a two-year-old child. The exact opposite was true, by reputation, of Furniss, and at sight of him in the stronghold of his own followers, who demanded his redemption, Butley had a sudden golden inspiration. He ceased biting his lip, and his time was bid. He would beard the lion in his den, and beard him he did.

“Furniss,” he said, “are you busy?”

Furniss looked up in perplexity.

“Suppose,” continued Butley, “that we throw a few hands of poker.”

Butley was right. With Furniss of Fitchly that was indeed an audacious suggestion to give, but, brooding on the circumstances of the last two months, in the minds of the Quoits Club it instantly assumed Homeric proportions. The turn of a card, the fall of a die, a woman’s honor--there was a romance about it that struck clear home to their devilishness; a veritable thrill went among them. Only Furniss was mystified; but, then, he was a devil, and naturally did not know how it felt to be devilish. But he saw light--his own light, a light that is not on land or sea, only in the waters under the earth.

“I’m on,” he said, and Butley dealt.

In a crowded club-room at five o’clock in the afternoon a two-handed game would ordinarily have been a monstrosity, but this was no ordinary contest. It was a fight to the very death, and without a word the spectators gathered at the only points where it is proper for spectators to gather in a poker-game--without a word and without a suggestion to join.

I want to do justice to that game, but the truth is that Butley did not win a single hand--or just one in the early part.

“I raise you four,” said Furniss as the clock struck six.

Butley glanced at his hand.

“It’s yours,” he said sadly, and regretfully laid down three jacks, while Furniss rapidly shuffled an ace high into the pack and looked at his watch.

Six o’clock had been fixed as the hour for stopping, as both had confessed the common engagement for dinner, and Butley rose with the sad, sweet air of one defeated, but still game. Knowing Furniss of Fitchly, the onlookers applauded. But Furniss was busily counting his chips.

“Twenty--twenty-two--twenty-four--twenty-four-fifty”--the last chip! A sudden warm triumph came over him. Like a flash, he drew ten cents from his pocket.

“Butley,” he exclaimed, “I’ll match you for a dime.”

Was it a challenge to game on all fields? Was it a contemptuous fling at the triviality of the winnings? Or was it really the recognition of the instincts of one sportsman by another? Butley did not know; but if Furniss was flinging down the glove, he would still pick it up again. Any one would die game for ten cents, and with the debonair air of the devilish, Butley drew forth a coin and slapped it down on the table. Two heads. Furniss had won, and Butley had paid for the luncheon.

Nevertheless, most astounding of all, the unities were suddenly restored, for across the table, with a genial, companionable smile, Furniss was extending the right hand of fellowship.

“Butley,” he said, and honestly, with the thought of twenty-four-sixty, “if there is anything that I have to apologize for, you can take this for my apology.”

Now at this point there settles down a despondency like a pall. Oh, how one might wish that one could leave them there with that happy scene as a curtain, and that devils were not, and that they were all merely devilish. But this is the story of Furniss.

For after the prearranged dinner that evening, while Furniss and Butley were making a four at bridge with the hosts, fair Helen, who played bridge not at all, was strumming faint chords in the music-room. And during his partner’s play, while Butley was racking his mathematical memory to recall every card that had ever been played in the world, this Furniss pushed in through the curtains, and Helen looked up.

“You apologized?” she asked him, softly, still playing the bass.

He nodded.

She looked down, then up again wistfully.

“For my sake?”

“For your sake,” lied Furniss, his eyes like a babe’s.

She took both hands from the keyboard and faced him, while Furniss leaned over. She did not move back, and a slow, gentle smile reflected his own while Furniss deliberately kissed her.

In the card-room Menelaus was recalling the bid.

“One lily,” he said with elation.

PADEREWSKI AT HOME

BY ABBIE H. C. FINCK

WITH A PORTRAIT BY EMIL FUCHS

Riond-Bosson, Paderewski’s beautiful place at Morges, on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva, has become one of the show-places of Europe not only on account of its famous owner, but also for its orchards, greenhouses, and the chicken farm, which is one of Mme. Paderewska’s chief cares. Better still, it is a charming home, where the world’s greatest pianist and his wife spend the happiest part of their lives, the time when he is free to compose, to practise, and to surround himself with friends, to whom in gracious hospitality both manage to devote much time. Neither appears officially before luncheon; but Mme. Paderewska, shaded by a sunbonnet, accompanied by several dogs, and followed by a retinue of workmen, is one of the frequent morning sights about the premises. She oversees everything, the house,--notably the kitchen, in which both she and Paderewski are greatly interested,--the chickens, and the growing of the fruit and vegetables. Besides this, she attends to her husband’s enormous correspondence, and is always ready with help and advice to smooth difficulties out of his way.

The Paderewskis are very fond of animals, especially dogs and parrots. The wild birds, too, receive Mme. Paderewska’s care, and by her special orders birdhouses have been placed on every tree on the place. She has her reward, for the air is filled with the melody of their songs. With all the other demands on her time, she finds leisure for collecting material for a cook-book, which promises to be a valuable work, many of its recipes being the result of her personal experience.

Paderewski spends most of the morning and afternoon hours in his own study. He finds some time for exercise during the day, grass-cutting on lawn and fields being his favorite outdoor work; and although his priceless hands have to be protected by gloves, he gets a good deal of fun as well as benefit from being a “farm-hand.” At luncheon-time he appears, after a hard morning’s work, looking well, happy, and boyish, dressed, like Mark Twain, in pure white, and ready to chat delightfully on any subject, whether it be gastronomy, American politics, his own interesting South-American experiences, or other topics.

Paderewski’s love of the picturesque made him long to own one of the splendid old châteaux that abound in that part of Switzerland; but the more practical counsels of his wife prevailed, and their home is simply a comfortable modern house, standing at the top of a large, sloping, green field. It is built somewhat in the chalet type, of red brick, with many balconies, and a stately front terrace, and it commands a magnificent prospect, first of the rose-garden, then of the wide sweep of green, bordered by huge trees--lindens, chestnuts, and evergreens. Farther on is the lake, with a splendid view of Mont Blanc for a background. Flowers abound: orange-trees in tubs, geraniums, heliotrope, mignonette, and chiefly roses, which not only fill the formal rose-garden, but scramble over the fences of the chicken-yards, a mass of pink-and-red bloom; while in the orchard, between the espalier-grown fruit-trees, there is almost an equal number of tall rose-bushes, all in bloom in July.

IGNACE PADEREWSKI

FROM A CHARCOAL SKETCH BY EMIL FUCHS]

There are many portraits of Paderewski at Riond-Bosson, but none except the pencil-sketch by Burne-Jones has represented both the strength and the spirituality of his head. This portrait hangs in the salon, surrounded by old prints, which are one of the master’s hobbies. Fragonard’s pictures are evidently among his favorites, as they also occupy a place of honor in the drawing-room. Autographed engravings by Alma-Tadema, caricatures of Paderewski by well-known artists, and photographs of famous friends--Modjeska, Saint-Saëns, and Sembrich, among others--adorn the house from top to bottom; and Paderewski is the possessor of a remarkable collection of old Swiss prints of towns and scenery. A few very interesting family photographs hang in the library, a whole group being of Mme. Paderewska in her childhood and girlhood, a maiden with beautiful dreamy eyes and a delicate face, framed in dusky hair.

There are seven pianos in the house, two being in the drawing-room; but it is in his own study that Paderewski does all his practising and composing. His practising would be both an encouragement and a discouragement to students. Hour after hour he works, with the patience that none but the greatest possess, polishing and repolishing phrases that sound perfect even to a practised ear, but which do not satisfy his critical judgment. Only occasionally does he allow himself the relaxation of playing even a page of music; after this he returns relentlessly to octave work, to staccato finger-passages, to separate phrases from Liszt’s sonatas, to the more difficult portions of his own magnificent “Variations et fugue,” to snatches of Chopin, or to bits of Debussy, whose piano-music he likes.

Paderewski has much admiration for the greatest masters of the French school: Gounod, Bizet, and especially Saint-Saëns, whom he considers the greatest living musician. With enthusiasm he tells of Saint-Saëns’s achievement in playing four Mozart concertos from memory at the age of seventy-six. He also admires Massenet, particularly his “Jongleur,” which he calls the French composer’s masterpiece. He feels that Gounod’s “Faust,” even more than his “Roméo et Juliette,” is immortal, and that “Carmen” is one of the works which can never grow old, and of which one cannot tire. He finds Gounod’s influence in Bizet’s compositions, and still more in those of Tschaikovsky, who in all his work was dominated by the great Frenchman, the “Faust” waltz even having colored Tschaikovsky’s symphonic ideas, coming into them either in conventional waltz time or in the unusual rhythm of five beats, as in the second movement of the “Symphonie Pathétique.” Still more pronounced is Tschaikovsky’s debt to Gounod in “Eugen Onegin,” where, in the love-scene, this same waltz phrase appears reversed, though almost identical with that in “Faust.” “But I prefer the father,” Paderewski adds. To him, as to many other lovers of “Faust,” the “Soldiers’ Chorus” is uninteresting; but he singles out for special admiration _Mefisto’s_ striking song of the “Veau d’or,” his serenade, and the “immortally beautiful” love-music.

Acquaintance with Tschaikovsky’s music means knowing the whole Russian school, Paderewski says, although the younger Russian musicians repudiate him and Rubinstein, just as Russian writers turn against their greatest representative, and call Turgenieff a foreigner, expatriated, and untrue to Russian characteristics. The first and last movements of Tschaikovsky’s best-loved symphony, the “Pathétique,” Paderewski considers sublime; but he regards the other two as rather commonplace.

His opinion of the modern French school has not changed since his talk with Mr. Daniel Gregory Mason, which was published in ~The Century~ for November, 1908. Some of the Debussy piano-music appeals to him; but he still considers “Pelléas” little more than color, and rather monotonous color.

“I think I must be very old-fashioned,” he once said, “for I know many persons no younger than I who like it.” His own “Variations,” in which some listeners found a surface resemblance to the modern French school, have no more real relation to it than has the music of Chopin or of Liszt.

Paderewski is as great in gastronomy as in music, and he believes the subject of food is “the most important question” in our country. Of Americans he says: “They are rich--rich enough to spoil French cooking,” meaning their frequent indifference to quality, a fact which he deeply deplores; for in this art, to him as to other connoisseurs, the French are supreme. “You have good fruits, good meats, but nothing else is good except the scallops, which are the best thing you have. The fish is abominable.” In saying this he probably had in mind the cold-storage fish served in our hotels. “You have destroyed your lobsters, your salmon, your terrapin, your forests. You never think that another generation is coming.”

America is not the only country he censures thus sharply. The English are still more blameworthy, for their food-stuffs are perfection, and yet nothing tastes good; though he admitted that one could get excellent dinners in some London restaurants and private houses.

The sour cherry, which Europe owes to Lucullus, is Paderewski’s favorite fruit. Following the Roman’s example, he has imported the choicest varieties for his Swiss home. These trees came from Poland, and those who ate of the fruit agreed with Paderewski’s statement that they are “the aristocrats among cherries.”

Perhaps the most vital subject to the great Pole is his own beloved country. He is considered an important factor in the Polish-European politics of the day. Considerable apprehension was felt as to the possible effect of his speech on his inflammable compatriots at the Chopin centenary, in 1910, and at the presentation of the magnificent monument which Paderewski had caused to be erected at Cracow in commemoration of the Polish victory over the order of Teutonic Knights at Grunewald, in 1410. One of his countrymen was the sculptor of the splendid equestrian statue of Wladislaus II. The mere description of the scenes that followed, of the acclamations of the Poles, the cheers of thousands for their beloved Paderewski, moves the hearer deeply; what it must have meant to the man in whose honor those thousands gathered from all Poland--a man ready to give his heart’s blood for his country--can be known only to himself and to his wife. Among the interesting souvenirs of this occasion are autographs of many distinguished Poles who gathered to do honor to Poland and to Paderewski. It is hardly strange that the Powers that hold Poland should have felt that very serious consequences might arise from this one man’s magnetism, enthusiasm, and patriotism.

In the speech he made at the Chopin centenary, he advanced an interesting theory to explain the genius of his country and the unrest and moodiness of the Poles. He believes that, as a nation, they are like their music, and live in a perpetual state of _tempo rubato_, caused by a physical defect--arrhythmia, or unevenness of heartbeat. He was not in the best of health; and being unable to play at this festival, he offered that honor to his American pupil and friend Ernest Schelling, who passed through the ordeal triumphantly, satisfying not only his Polish audience, but his sponsor by his interpretation of the works of Poland’s idol, Chopin.

Paderewski is not addicted to talking much about himself; but occasionally he gives his friends a glimpse of the real man. One autobiographic incident concerns his own playing. Berlin has always been unjust to Paderewski, not for artistic reasons, but on political grounds. One well-known critic, after hearing Paderewski play, went to the artist’s room, his eyes filled with tears of joy, to congratulate the master; but later, obeying the official _mot d’ordre_ which is frequently used in the attempt to kill great artists, he wrote most disagreeably about Paderewski, who, in relating the experience, added half deprecatingly: “He spoiled me by his call. It is easy to be spoiled; and he was so pleased the first time that I thought he would come again.”

The remarkable songs to the poems of Catulle Mendès, which Paderewski published a few years ago, were written, he told us, in three weeks; and in that year, produced in an incredibly short space of time, the piano sonata and the sketch of the symphony also saw the light. The scoring of the latter he could not finish until three years later. The composer is very particular about his manuscript, and if he makes an error, he rewrites the whole page. At times he could score only one page; at others, as many as five; and he smilingly says, “I was so proud of my five pages, even if they were all rests.” He himself has to study the piano accompaniments to his later songs, and he says that “it is foolish to make them so difficult.”

His South-American experiences had been of great interest to him both from the point of view of the artist and that of the observer. He had played ten times in Buenos Aires to growing houses and increasing enthusiasm, the last of the series being to a $12,000 audience; he had tasted barbecued beef at a great plantation feast, and found it very unpalatable; he had studied the agricultural conditions of the South-American countries, and had been amazed at the natural wealth of the Argentine Republic, at its forests of trees unknown to us, and still more at its humus, forty meters deep, which makes a soil so fertile that it will last for centuries with no enriching. Being a practical farmer himself, and deeply interested in the good of his own land and forests, every detail of this extraordinary wealth fascinated the great pianist.

Like many other famous artists of to-day, Paderewski finds the making of records for a phonograph far more trying and fatiguing than playing in public. He says he would “rather play at twenty concerts than once for a phonograph.” One of these records was so difficult to make, and needed so many repetitions to insure perfection in every note, not only artistically, but acoustically, that he almost dislikes to hear it. It is safe to predict that his admirers will not share this feeling, and that his own “Cracovienne,” Mendelssohn’s “Hunting-Song,” and Liszt’s “Campanella,” to mention only three, will become popular additions to their collections of records. He has a large number of Oriental records, in which he is greatly interested. Years ago, when he first went to San Francisco, he spent much of his spare time at the Chinese theater listening to their music; so the study of Oriental tunes is no new thing, although, thanks to the recording machines, it has taken a new form.