Chapter XIII: Act II: The Same, August, 1907 (1)

PRES.—Mr. Secretary, it is reported that the Japanese in Hawaii are rising.

MET.—You don’t say so! Why, it is hardly six o’clock by their time. They are early risers.

PRES.—I learn from Secretary Root that Admiral Togo’s battleships are coaling. Now, what can that mean?

MET.—Let us ask Dewey. [_Enter, thoughtfully, Admiral Dewey._] Admiral, the President has learned that the Japanese battleships at Tokio are taking on coal. What, in your judgment as a sailor, are they going to do with it?

DEWEY—Burn it.

[_Enter Secretary Root._]

ROOT—Mr. President, California is about to secede—we shall lose Metcalf! The entire Pacific Coast will follow. I go to glory or the grave!

[_Exit Secretary Root. Enter Secretary Taft, with bottle._]

TAFT—In this supreme crisis of the nation let us fortify our souls (_filling glasses_) for any trial.

PRES. (_lifting glass_)—Here’s confusion to the memory of the late Commodore Matthew Perry!

[_They drink. Tumult within: “Banzai! Banzai!” Enter Loeb._]

LOEB—Mr. President——

PRES.—Where’s Root?

LOEB—In the East Room, playing draw poker with the Japanese Minister. [_Renewed tumult within_: “_Banzai Nippon!_”] The Jap seems to be winning.

A WIRELESS ANTEPENULTIMATUM

_The President._ _Hay, Secretary of State._ _Bowen, Minister to
Venezuela._

PRESIDENT:

John Hay, where are you on the great, gray sea?
I beg you will at once return to me.
This wireless business is the devil’s own,
And Castro’s playing him with me alone!
Venezuela sneering at my threat;
Santo Domingo more and more in debt;
Their foreign creditors dispatching fleets
With duns and guns and sons of guns—it beats
The Dutch, the devil and the band! I swear
From sheer distraction I could pull your hair!
’Twixt Castro and the Doctrine of Monroe,
My fears are nimble and my wits are slow.
I know not where to go nor how to stop—
Stand fast or, like old Saul of Tarsus, “flop.”
Nothing I know, and everything I doubt—
Dear John, in God’s name put your prow about!

HAY:

Though the skies fall upon the hills beneath
Be resolute. If needful show your teeth.

PRESIDENT:

Dear Bowen, go to Castro. Tell him straight
He must make up his mind to arbitrate.
Say if he won’t—here swing the big, big stick—
We’ll do a little stunt to make him sick.

BOWEN:

Your words I’ve put into his ear. Said he:
“I’m sick already—to the mountains, me.”

PRESIDENT:

Tell him again; then if he won’t, why, add
We’ll give him ninety days to wish he had.

BOWEN:

I’ve told him that, sir, and he says if you
Are pressed for time a single day will do,
For he’s a rapid wisher. What shall I
Say further, to provoke a coarse reply?

PRESIDENT:

Tell him that when the time allowed is up
We’ll press against his lips the bitter cup.
We’ll waste no further words in this. Don’t fail
To send the scalawag’s reply—by mail.

A PRESIDENTIAL PROGRESS

FIRST AMERICAN SOVEREIGN—Hurrah! Hooray! Hurroo!

SECOND AMERICAN SOVEREIGN—What’s the matter with you?

F. A. S.—What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with all of us? Don’t you see the President’s train? Don’t you hear him speaking from the rear platform?

S. A. S.—What’s to prevent?

F. A. S.—Nothing could prevent—not all the crowned heads of Europe, nor all their sycophant courtiers and servile subjects!

S. A. S.—No, nothing—just nothing at all—excepting personal self-respect and a decent sense of the dignity of American citizenship.

F. A. S.—What! You think it base and undignified to pay honor to the President’s great office?

S. A. S.—It is easy to call it “honoring his great office.” I believe we commonly do give the name of some virtue to our besetting vice. I observe that the President, too, honors our own great office by the most sickening flattery of the people every time he opens his mouth. His reasons are better than ours, for we really rank him: his great office is of our own making and bestowal. But I wish he wouldn’t lick my boots.

F. A. S.—Sir, you have no right to use such language of the ruler of the nation!

S. A. S.—It is “ruler” when you want an excuse to grovel; in your more austere moods it is “servant of the people”—and that is his own name for the thing that he has the distinction to be. I don’t cheer my butler, nor throw flowers at my coachman, nor crush the hand of my cook.

F. A. S. (_aside_)—This must be a millionaire! (_Aloud_) I see great wisdom, sir, in what you say. I’ll never again abase myself before any one. Listen to the senseless applause! (_Aside, as loud as he can bawl_) Hooray! Hooray!

S. A. S.—Ah, that was the fellow’s expiring platitude. He has finished waving the red flag and is coming this way.

[_President passes, shaking hands with both._]

F. A. S. (_gazing at his hand with deep emotion_)—God bless him!

S. A. S.—Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

MISCELLANEOUS

THE SAMPLE COUNTER

OUR HISTORICAL NOVELS

_From “The First Man in Rome.”_

No sooner had Cæsar crossed the Rubicon than all Rome was ablaze with excitement and terror. Horatius, who all by himself had held the bridge until outnumbered, retreated to the Tiber, where he was joined by the new levies, imperfectly armed and equipped, and some of the Prætorian Guards. There, behind such defenses as they could improvise, they swore to resist until all were dead. Sacrifices were offered to the gods, and the augurs, removing the hearts of the victims, consulted the auricles.

Meantime Cæsar’s leading legion, with Scipio Africanus marching proudly at its head, came into view beyond the Tarpeian Rock—the same from which the unhappy Sappho, one of the most prominent poets of her time, had cast herself—and advanced without delay in a shower of catapults.

Precisely what occurred during the next half-hour we are without the data to state with confidence: all the historical novels of the three or four centuries immediately following were destroyed in the accident at Pompeii; but at three o’clock in the afternoon of that fateful day Brutus lay dead upon the field of honor and the beaten forces of Horatius were in tumultuous retreat along the Claudian aqueduct. Then Cleopatra came forth from her place of concealment, resolved to throw herself at the feet of her conquering lover and intercede for the doomed city.

_From “Court and Camp.”_

Through a tangled wild as dense as death the martial forced his way, despite the wounds that the Russian forces had inflicted upon his aged frame. Suddenly he departed from the undergrowth and found himself in an open glade of inconsiderable dimensions, and before his vision stood the widely known figure of Napoleon, with folded arms and in a greatcoat falling to his heels. The king was apparently oblivious to his environment, but instinctively “the bravest of the brave,” ever considerate and genteel, drew back into cover, unwilling to interrupt the royal revery. Apparently Napoleon was immersed in meditations.

What these were we have not the temerity to conjecture. Waterloo had been fought and lost!—the last die had been cast to the winds and the dream of universal empire had gone down in gloom! Did he realize that all was over? Was he conjuring up the future and forecasting the judgment of posterity—the figure that he was destined to cut in the historical novels of a later age? Did visions of St. Helena float before his prophetic gaze? Alas, we know not!

At the sound of a breaking twig beneath the martial’s foot the king started from his revery and said in French: “Live the France!” Then, deriving a slender stiletto from his regalia, he plunged it into the left ventricle of his heart and fell dead before the martial, who was greatly embarrassed, could summon medical assistance.

Josephine was avenged!

_From “The Crusader.”_

It was midnight beneath the walls of the beleaguered city. Sir Guy de Chassac de Carcassonne leaned heavily upon his great two-handed sword, fatigued with slaughter. Hardly had he closed his eyes in slumber when the seven Saracens chosen by Saladin for the perilous emprise stole forth from the postern gate and stealthily surrounded him. Then at a preconcerted signal they flashed their scimitars in air and rushed upon their prey!

But it was fated to be otherwise. At the first stroke of the Toledo blades Sir Guy awoke. To pluck his long weapon from the soil was the work of a comparatively short time; then with one mighty circular sweep of the steel he clove them all asunder at the waist!

Jerusalem was delivered and remains a Christian city to this day!

_From “Blood and Beer.”_

The booming of the cannon awakened Bismarck with a start. Vaulting into the saddle with remarkable grace, he was soon in the thickest of the fray, and many a foeman fell beneath his genius. Yet even in the terrible din and confusion of battle his mental processes were normal, and he thought only of the countess, while absently dealing death about him. Suddenly he was roused from his revery by the impact of a battle-axe upon his helmet, and turning his eyes in the direction whence it seemed to have been delivered, he beheld the sneering visage of De Grammont on a black steed.

Here was an opportunity that might satisfy the most exacting—an opportunity to rid his country of a traitor and himself of a rival; to serve at once his ambition and his love. His noble nature forbade. Waving his enemy aside, he thoughtfully withdrew from the field, resolved to press his suit otherwise.

_From “The Iron Duchess.”_

As Wellington rode moodily away from the fatal field of Blenheim, meditating upon the wreck of his ambition, he encountered the seer whom he had met the day before.

“Wretch!” he exclaimed, drawing his scimitar, “it is you that have done this! But for your accursed predictions I should have won the battle and the Swiss king would now be flying before my victorious legends. Die, therefore!”

So saying, he raised his armed hand to smite, but the blow did not fall. Even while the blade was suspended in the air the seer’s long black cloak fell away, the white hair and concealing beard were flung aside, and the Iron Duke found himself gazing into the laughing eyes of Madame de Maintenon! Speechless with astonishment, he thundered: “What is the meaning of this?”

“Ah, monsieur,” she replied, with that enchanting smile which had lured Louis XIV to the guillotine, “it means that I amuse myself.”

_From “The Noddle of Navarre.”_

When Henry of Navarre saw the ruin he had wrought he elevated his helmet from his marble brow and stepped three paces to the rear. The priest advanced with flashing eyes and, lifting both hands to the zenith, explained that vengeance was the Lord’s—He would repay!

“It is better so,” assented the king—“I prefer it thus.”

But even as he spake a shot from the moat pierced his brain and he fell, to reign no more!

_From “Louis the Luckless.”_

Observing that his presence was not suspected, Richelieu remained with his eye glued to the keyhole. It was well that he did so, for the conspirators now laid off their masks, and among them he recognized the king himself! Here was a situation that he believed unique; in all his experience in court and camp there was no precedent A sovereign conspiring for his own overthrow, his assassination! Richelieu was deeply affected by so striking an instance of unselfishness. He reeled and fell to the floor in an agony of admiration.

_From “The Road to Tusculum.”_

No sooner did Cicero perceive his legions retreating than he spurred impetuously from the field, thundering that all was lost. Passing swiftly across the Tiber by a secret bridge, he proceeded to the Forum, and entering the senate unannounced, communicated the news of the disaster. This was Pompey’s opportunity; he rose in his place and extending his index finger in the direction of the defeated warrior exclaimed in sarcastic accents: “Romans, behold your liberator from the chains of the Volscians! Behold the orator-general to whom you owe so much! Let him hereafter (if we have a hereafter) oppose to his country’s armed invaders the power of his matchless tongue. The sword is too heavy for a hand trained in the light calisthenics of gesticulation!” Maddened by this artful arraignment, the senators rose as one Roman and, headed by Marcus Aurelius, fell upon the unfortunate commander, tearing him limb from limb!

_From “The Loves of Cromwell.”_

Night fell darkly over the city of Worcester.

Cromwell had marched all day to reach it by seven roads, and at nine in the evening besieged it with a hundred thousand men.

A desperate struggle ensued, at the close of which Cromwell rose from his knees victorious over the forces of his king.

“Bring that son of Belial before me!” he roared, “that I may deal with him according to his sins.”

Charles, pale and trembling, with manacled hands and bowed head, was led in.

The lord protector eyed him haughtily, then addressing a brief prayer to Heaven sprang forward and with one stroke of his blade severed the royal head from the royal shoulders.

Thus ended the War of the Roses, and England was again a republic.

OUR TALES OF SENTIMENT

_From “One Woman.”_

Gladys climbed to the balustrade of the bridge and, adjusting her skirts, plunged into the gloomiest forebodings.

“Why,” she said, “should the future look so dark to one possessing all that fortune can donate?”

She added a number of profound reflections on the vanity of life, ending with a brilliant epigram. It had scarcely died upon her lips when Armitage arrived upon the tapis and took in the situation at a glance. Striding hastily forward, he bowed gracefully and signified a desire to know the cause of her abstraction. She burst into tears and complied with his wish. Then she flung herself about his neck and accorded full expression to her grief, which he delicately professed not to observe; for this noble figure had been educated in the best schools of European gentility.

_From “But a Single Thought.”_

Seeing her proceeding away from him, perhaps forever, Auvergne intercepted her with an expression of regret for his rudeness, coupled with a plea for pardon. For a breathless instant she stayed her progress as if uncertain as to the degree of his offense, then resumed her pace till she reached the river’s brim. With an unconscious prayer she sprang swooning into the breakers and was with difficulty prevented from meeting a watery grave.

_From “A Belle of Castile.”_

Josephina had progressed but a brief distance into the garden when some inner sense proclaimed that she was followed: the crunching of a gentleman’s heel upon the gravel was indisputable. Partially terrified, she sought concealment in the shrubbery that bordered the path on the one side and the other. It passed by her there in the moonlight, that dreadful sound, yet no one visible! It went on and on, growing fainter and fainter, like herself, and was lost to hearing. Then she remembered the tradition of the Invisible Knight and her heart smote her for the absence of faith with which she had so often greeted it.

“I am fitly punished,” she conceded, “for my sceptical attitude. Henceforth, so far as the constitution of my mind will permit, I will be more hospitable to the convictions of the simple.”

How she adhered to this expiational resolution we shall behold.

_From “The Queen’s Chaperon.”_

The duke stepped from his carriage to a neighboring hill and cast his eye athwart his ancestral domain. “All this,” he mused, “I must renounce if I comply with the queen’s royal suggestion to fly with her to Rome. Is she worth the privation? I must have time to consider a transaction of such great importance.”

Hastily entering his carriage, he haughtily bade the coachman drive him to some expensive hotel, whence he dispatched a delicately perfumed note to her Majesty, saying that he should be detained a few days by affairs of state, but assuring her of his uncommon fidelity. Then he retired to his couch and thought it all over in Italian. The next day he arose and fled rapidly.

_From “The Uplifting of Lennox.”_

On hearing the terrible news Myra fell supine to earth without delay!

“Is it nothing?” inquired Lennox. “Is it only a temporary indisposition?—will it soon pass?”

But Myra replied only with a significant pallor which told all too plainly what the most accomplished linguist would vainly have striven to express.

How long she lay unconscious we know not, but promptly on becoming her previous self she let fall a multitude of tears.

Lennox yielded to the requirements of etiquette and stole away.

_From “Bertha of Bootha.”_

As they strolled along the Riviera the setting sun was just touching the summit of the Alps and firing them with an electrical glow. Turning to her, he looked into her beautiful eyes and thus expressed himself:

“Dearest, I am about to make an important statement.”

She almost instantly divined the character of the communication that he referred to, and it affected her with perturbation. It was so sudden. “If,” she remarked, “you could postpone the statement above mentioned until a more suitable occasion I should regard your forbearance with satisfaction.”

“Very well,” he replied, with coldness, “I will wait until we are not alone.”

“Thank you, ever so much,” she blushed, and all was silence. Later in the season he explained to her the trend of his affections, and she signified the pleasure that she derived from his preference.

_From “Hertha of Hootha.”_

The moon rose in the east without a sound and the ripples on the bosom of the main ran silently to the beach. Hertha and Henri, having similar sensibilities, were equally overcome by the solemnity of the scene, and neither inaugurated a conversation. Their love was too true for utterance by human tongue. Thus they paced for a considerable period, when suddenly the silence was cut asunder by a woman’s scream!

“I know that voice,” cried Henri, hastily divesting himself of as many of his upper garments as, under the circumstances, he deemed it proper to do; “it is Minetta committing suicide!”

He immediately plunged into the Atlantic, while Hertha stood rooted to the sand, endeavoring to regulate her emotions. In a few moments, which seemed an age, he emerged from the deep, bearing the deceased, whom he tenderly flung at her rival’s feet.

Then the survivors knelt and prayed in both English and French.

_From “Ethel Shanks.”_

Ethel hastened slowly along the path leading to the cliff above the lake. The full moon was rising in the east, for the hour was midnight, and her warm radiance bathed the landscape in a blue languor.

To Ethel the sky had never seemed so blue, nor the Polyanthes tuberosa in her corsage so white. She drank joy with her every breath, and she breathed quickly from her exertion in climbing the eminence on which she stood. Hearing footprints approaching, she turned, and the baron stood before her! “I was hasty,” he explained. “I should not have disclosed my love with such abruption. Permit me to withdraw my inconsiderate declaration.”

Ethel’s heart sank within her! She could not refuse him the desired permission; that would not have been genteel: and Ethel was under all circumstances the lady. So she beat back the tears and said:

“Please, sir, dismiss it from attention.”

The cry of her broken heart was unheard by that callous ear, unaccustomed to the sad, sweet chords evoked from the harp of a dead hope. The nobleman lit his pipe and, his cruel errand performed, returned to his ancestral mansion. For one or two moments Ethel stood on the brink of eternity. Precipitating herself from the extreme edge, she awaited death with composure; she had done her full duty and had no fear of the Hereafter.... At the base of the precipice she came into violent contact with a large granite boulder and was no more.

They found her body at the feet of the cliff, and the baron was torn by conflicting emotions, for the head lay at some distance from the trunk, a truly melancholy spectacle.

“Can it be possible,” he remarked, “that she is no more?”

Assured by the physician that such was the fact, he signified a high degree of regret and strode from the spot unattended; and to this day his fate is cloaked in the impenetrable waters of oblivion.

_From “A Demising Love.”_

James endeavored ineffectually to ascertain the trend of her affections: her expression remained a blank. He erroneously attributed his failure to poor skill in physiognomy and inwardly bewailed his youthful neglect of the advantages of education. While so engaged he fancied he detected in her look something significant of an interest in his personality. Could he be mistaken? No, there it was again!

Arising from his sedentary attitude to the full stature of his young manhood, he crossed the intervening Persian rug and possessed himself of her hand.

“Mabel,” he inquired, “do you not experience the promptings of a dawning tenderness for one to whom you are much?”

Receiving no negative answer he kissed her simultaneously on both cheeks, and, falling rapidly upon one knee, poured out his soul in beautiful language, mostly devoted to commendation of her fine character and disposition.

Mabel did not at once respond. She was deceased.

_From “March Hares.”_

Mrs. Rorqual deposited her embroidery on the sofa by her side and, slightly changing color, said, “No, my ideals are not unchangeable; they have undergone memorable alteration within the last hour.”

“Let us hope,” said D’Anchovi, uncrossing his hands, and putting one forefinger into a buttonhole of his coat, “that they are still high.”

She resumed her embroidery and, looking at a painting of the martyrdom of St. Denis over the mantel, replied, “Would it matter?”

“Surely,” said he, lightly beating the carpet with the heel of his well-fitting shoe; “for ideals are more than thoughts. I sometimes think they are things—that _we_ are _their_ thoughts.”

She did not immediately reply. A curtain at an open window moved audibly. A sunbeam crept through the lattice of the piazza outside and fell upon the window-ledge. The fly previously mentioned now walked indolently along the top of the Japanese screen, then fearlessly descended the face of it to within an inch of the mouth of a painted frog. D’Anchovi, with a lifting of his eyebrows, maintained a determined silence.

“I should think that an uncomfortable creed,” Mrs. Rorqual said at last, withdrawing the tip of her shoe, which had been visible beneath the edge of her gown, and shifting her gaze from St. Denis to one of the crystal ornaments of the candelabrum pendent from the ceiling.

He passed the fingers of his right hand through his hair, slightly shifted his position on his chair and said: “Mrs. Rorqual, I have to thank you for a most agreeable hour. Shall I see you on the golf-links to-morrow?”

So they parted, but when he was gone she toyed thoughtfully with a spray of heliotrope growing in a jardinière and then ran her forefinger along a part of the pattern of the wallpaper.

_From “A Study in Dissection.”_

Captain Gerard introspected. He spread his heart, as it were, upon the dissecting-table of conscience and examined it from several points of view. It is a familiar act—we call it analysis of motive. When he had concluded he knew why he had accepted the invitation of the countess to dinner. He knew why he had insulted the count. Equally obvious were his reasons for mentioning to Iphigeneia the holy bonds of matrimony. In all his conduct since his last introspection but one act baffled him: why, alas, had he spoken to Iphigeneia of the bar-semester in his crest?

As he pondered this inexplicable problem a footfall fell upon his ear and he shuddered as if the hand of death had stepped in.

It was the countess!

_From “Her Diplodocus.”_

“Sir!” Miss Athylton drew herself up to her full height and looked her interlocutor squarely in the visage. For an instant he returned her scrutiny; then his eyes fell to the earth, stammering apologies. With a sweeping curtsey she passed out of the room, hand over hand.

_From “L’Affaire Smith.”_

As they sat there wrapping their arms about each other, she advanced the belief that they had loved in a former state of existence.

“But not as now, Irene, surely not as now.”

She was well content to let him feel so about it, and did not seek to alter the character of his emotion. To have done so would have cut her to the heart. On the contrary, a little bird perched in the passion-vine above them and sang several thrilling passages.

_From “Clarisse.”_

He gazed into her beautiful eyes for a considerable period, during which he did not converse; then he said, with an effort to be sociable: “It has been represented to me that you are a lady of great wealth. May I inquire if I have been rightly informed?”

Blushing energetically at the compliment, she replied in silence, and for a few minutes there was an embarrassing hiatus in the exchange of thought and feeling.

Fearing that he had offended her, the duke arose, and striding to the grand piano began to improvise diligently. At that moment there came in through the open window a sound of wheels on the gravel outside.

He ceased in the middle of a nocturne and would have left the room, but she restrained him:

“It is only my father returning from India,” smiled she; “I shall be so glad to introduce you.”

The full horror of the situation burst upon him like a thunderbolt out of a clean sky.

“Madam,” he thundered, “your father is dead! He died of the plague in Bombay, and I attended the funeral, although he had cursed me with his last breath. I cannot—cannot meet him!”

With those words falling from his white lips he flung himself out of the room. A servant entered and handed Clarisse the visiting card of Mrs. Delahanty.

_From “Mary Ann & Co.”_

As they neared each other on the narrow bridge Paul observed that she was profoundly agitated.

“Darling,” he said, “please to signify the cause of your perturbation. It is not impossible that I may be able to remove it. You know,” he added, “that I have studied medicine.”

She blushed deeply, then turned pale and continued to tremble. He seized her hand and laid two fingers upon her wrist.

“The pulse,” he said, “is abnormally frequent and irregular.”

With a barely audible expression of disapproval, she withdrew her hand and endeavored to pass him on the narrow footway of the bridge. A misstep precipitated her into the stream, from which with no small difficulty she was taken in a dying condition, a half-mile below. The person that drew her forth from the waters was Paul’s aged uncle.

“Tell Paul Dessard,” she said with her last breath, “that I love him, die for him! Tell him how I strove successfully to hide my love from him lest he think me unmaidenly; but it cannot matter now if he know it. Tell him all, I pray you tell him all, and add that in that Better Land whither I go my spirit will await him with impatience, prepared to explain all.”

The good old man bent over her, placed his open hand behind his ear and ejaculated:

“Hay?”

She shook her head with an infinite pathos and suspired.

_From “Ideals.”_

Where the grand old Hudson river rolls its floods seaward between the rugged Palisades and the agricultural country of its eastern bank Janey Sewell dwelt in a little vine-covered cottage in one of the most picturesque spots of the latter.

Janey was beautiful all day long. Her hair was as dark as the pinion of a crow, and her brown eyes rivaled in lustre the sheen of the sunlight on the bosom of the river. She was also a fine French scholar.

Janey’s parents had dwelt in Yonkers from time immemorial, and sweet to her was her native environment, whence no proffers of a marriage into the aristocracy or nobility of England could entice her. Many coroneted hearts had been flung at her feet—many were the impassionate pleas that ducal lips had poured into her ear; she remained fancy free, determined to bestow her affection upon some worthy member of an American labor union or die a maid. We shall see with what indomitable tenacity she adhered through disheartening trials to that commendable policy.

_From “Oopsie Mercer.”_

For a long time—it seemed an eternity—they sat there hand in hand, in the gloaming. The sheep-bells tinkled faintly in the glen, and from an adjacent thicket the whip-poor-will sang rapturously. The katydid grated out her mysterious accusation from the branch of an oak overhead; the cricket droned among the glow-worms underfoot. All these vocal efforts were conspicuously futile; in their newly found happiness the lovers heeded nothing but each other. O love!

Suddenly, on the dew-starred sward, a loud oath rang out behind them. Harold rose promptly to his own feet, the lady remaining in session on the log, her hands demurely folded in her lap. The report of a firearm illuminated the gloom, and ere Harold could intercept the deadly missile it had pierced Miss Mercer’s heart! She fell forward and died without medical assistance.

Harold mounted the log and obtained a fairly good view of the aggressor; it was James Wroth, and he was engaged in taking a second aim. With the lightning-like intuition of a brave man in an emergency Harold inferred that he was the intended victim.

“Fiend!” sprang he, and a death struggle was inaugurated without delay.

Let us go back to the time when we left James Wroth nourishing the fires of an intellectual tempest implanted by Miss Mercer’s rejection of his suit, and embarking for Europe in another tongue.

_From “Lance and Lute.”_

The faint booming of the distant cannon grew more and more deafening; the thunder of the charging cavalry reverberated o’er the field of battle: the enemies were evidently making a stand.

Plympton arrived at the scene of action just as the commanding general ordered an advance along the entire front. Spurring his steed to the centre of the line he rang out his voice in accents of defiance and was promoted for gallantry.

Bertram who was an eye-witness, immediately withdrew his objection to the marriage. This took place shortly afterward and was attended with the happiest results.

_From “Sundry Hearts.”_

When presented to the object of his devotion the earl could not suppress his sentiments. The Lady Gwendolin saw them as plainly as if they had been branded upon his brow. Her agitation was comparable to his. All the pent-up emotion of her deep, womanly nature surged to her countenance and paralyzed her so that she was unable to offer her hand. She consequently contented herself with a graceful inclination of the head. The Earl was excessively disappointed. Turning upon his heel he bowed and walked away.

Gwendolin retired to the conservatory and uttered a deep-drawn sigh, then, returning to the ballroom, flung herself into the waltz with an assumed ecstasy that elicited wide comment.

_From “La Belle Damn.”_

Under the harvest moon, now at its best, the corpse of Ronald showed ghastly white, the frost sparkling in its beard and hair. Clementine’s consciousness of its impulchritude was without a flaw. Had she ever really experienced an uncommon, an exceptional, tenderness for an object boasting so little charm? She was hardly able to take that view of the matter. All seemed unreal, indistinct and charged with dubiety. A sudden rustling in the circumjacent vegetation startled her from her dream, suggesting considerations of personal safety. Surveying the body for the last time, she impelled the stiletto into a contiguous tarn and left the scene with measured tread.

_From “The Recrudescence of Squollander.”_

“Clifford,” said Isabel, earnestly yet softly, “are you sure that you truly love me?”

Clifford presented such testimony and evidence as he could command, and requested her decision on the sufficiency of what he had advanced.

“Oh, Clifford,” she said, laying her two little hands in one of his comparatively large ones, “you have extirpated my ultimate uncertainty.”

THE GREAT STRIKE OF 1895

NEW YORK, July 2, 1895.—The strike of the American Authors’ Guild continues to hold public attention. No event in the history of trades-unionism since the great railroad strike of last year has equaled it in interest. Nothing else is talked of here. In some parts of the city all business is suspended and the excitement grows more intense hourly.

At about 10 o’clock this morning a non-union author attempting to enter the premises of D. Appleton & Co. with a roll of manuscript was set upon by a mob of strikers and beaten into insensibility. The strikers were driven from their victim by the police, but only after a fight in which both sides suffered severely.

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NEW YORK, July 3.—Rioting was renewed last night in front of the boycotted publishing house of Charles Scribner’s Sons, 153–157 Fifth avenue. Though frequently driven back by charges of the police, who used their clubs freely, the striking authors succeeded in demolishing all the front windows by stone-throwing. One shot was fired into the interior, narrowly missing a young lady typewriter. Mr. William D. Howells, a member of the Guild’s board of managers, declares that he has irrefragable proof that this outrage was committed by some one connected with the Publishers’ Protective League for the purpose of creating public sympathy.

It has been learned that the non-union author so severely beaten yesterday died of his injuries last night. His name is said to have been Richard Henry (or Hengist) Stoddard, formerly a member of the Guild, but expelled for denouncing the action of President Brander Matthews in ordering the strike.

LATER.—Matters look more and more threatening. A crowd of ten thousand authors, headed by Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, is reported to be marching upon the Astor Library, which is strongly guarded by police, heavily armed. Many book-stores have been wrecked and their contents destroyed.

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who was shot last night while setting fire to the establishment of Harper & Bros., cannot recover. She is delirious, and lies on her cot in the Bellevue Hospital singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

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BOSTON, July 3.—Industrial discontent has broken out here. The members of the local branch of the American Authors’ Guild threw down their pens this morning and declared that until satisfactory settlement of novelists’ percentages should be arrived at not a hero and heroine should live happily ever afterward in Boston. The publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. is guarded by a detachment of Pinkerton men armed with Winchester rifles and a Gatling gun. The publishers say that they are getting all the manuscripts that they are able to reject, and profess to have no apprehension as to the future. Mr. Joaquin Miller, a non-union poet from Nevada, visiting some Indian relatives here, was terribly beaten by a mob of strikers to-day. Mr. Miller was the aggressor; he was calling them “sea-doves”—by which he is said to have meant “gulls.”

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CHICAGO, July 3.—The authors’ strike is assuming alarming dimensions and is almost beyond control by the police. The Mayor is strongly urged to ask for assistance from the militia, but the strikers profess to have no fear of his doing so. They say that he was once an author himself, and is in sympathy with them. He wrote “The Beautiful Snow.” In the mean time a mob of strikers numbering not fewer than one thousand men, women and children, headed by such determined labor leaders as Percival Pollard and Hamlin Garland, are parading the streets and defying the authorities. A striker named Opie Reed, arrested yesterday for complicity in the assassination of Mr. Stone, of the publishing firm of Stone & Kimball, was released by this mob from the officers that had him in custody. Mr. Pollard publishes a letter in the _Herald_ this morning saying that Mr. Stone was assassinated by an emissary of the Publishers’ Protective League to create public sympathy, and strongly hints that the assassin is the head of the house of McClurg & Co.

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NEW YORK, July 4.—All arrangements for celebrating the birthday of American independence are “off.” The city is fearfully excited, and scenes of violence occur hourly. Macmillan & Co.’s establishment was burned last night, and four lives were lost in the flames. The loss of property is variously estimated. All the publishing houses are guarded by the militia, and it is said that Government troops will land this afternoon to protect the United States mails carrying the manuscripts of strike-breaking authors, in transit to publishers. The destruction of the Astor Library and the Cooper Union and the closing of all the book-stores that escaped demolition in yesterday’s rioting have caused sharp public distress. No similar book-famine has ever been known in this city. Novel-readers particularly, their needs being so imperative, are suffering severely, and unless relieved soon will leave the metropolis. While beating a noisy person named E. W. Townsend last night, one Richard Harding Davis had the misfortune to break two of his fingers. He said Townsend was a strike-breaker and had given information to the police, but it turns out that he is a zealous striker, and was haranguing the mob at the time of the assault. His audience of rioting authors, all of whom belonged to the War Story branch of the Guild, mistook Mr. Davis for an officer of the peace and ran away. Mr. Townsend, who cannot recover and apparently does not wish to, is said to be the author of a popular book called _The Chimney Fadder_. Advices from Boston relate the death of a Pinkerton spy named T. B. Aldrich, who attempted to run the gauntlet of union pickets and enter the premises of The Arena Publishing Company, escorting Walter Blackburn Harte. Mr. Harte was rescued by the police and sailed at once for England.

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PHILADELPHIA, July 5.—A mob of striking authors attacked the publishing house of J. B. Lippincott & Co. this morning and were fired on by the militia. Twenty are known to have been killed outright—the largest number of writers ever immortalized at one time.

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NEW YORK, July 5.—In an interview yesterday Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, treasurer of the Guild, said that notwithstanding the heavy expense of maintaining needy strikers with dependent families, there would be no lack of funds to carry on the fight. Contributions are received daily from sympathetic trades. Sixty dollars have been sent in by the Confederated Undertakers and forty-five by the Association of Opium-Workers. President Brander Matthews has telegraphed to all the Guild’s branches in other cities that they can beat the game if they will stand pat.

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NEW YORK, July 6.—Sympathy strikes are the order of the day, and “risings” are reported everywhere. In this city the entire East Side is up and out. Shantytown, Ballyspalpeen, Goatville and Niggernest are in line. Among those killed in yesterday’s conflict with the United States troops at Madison-square was Mark Twain, who fell while cheering on a large force of women of the town. He was shot all to rags, so as to be hardly distinguishable from a human being.

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CHICAGO, July 7.—John Vance Cheney was arrested at 3 o’clock this morning while placing a dynamite bomb on the Clark-street bridge. He is believed to have entertained the design, also, of setting the river on fire. Two publishers were shot this morning by General Lew Wallace, who escaped in the confusion of the incident. The victims were employed as accountants in the Methodist Book Concern.

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NEW YORK, July 8.—The authors’ strike has collapsed, and the strikers are seeking employment as waiters in the places made vacant by the lockout of the Restaurant Trust. The Publishers’ Protective League declares that no author concerned in the strike will ever again see his name upon a title-page. The American Authors’ Guild is a thing of the past. Arrests are being made every hour. As soon as he can procure bail, President Brander Matthews will go upon the vaudeville stage.

1894.

A THUMB-NAIL SKETCH

Many years ago I lived in Oakland, California. One day as I lounged in my lodging there was a gentle, hesitating rap at the door and, opening it, I found a young man, the youngest young man, it seemed to me, that I had ever confronted. His appearance, his attitude, his manner, his entire personality suggested extreme diffidence. I did not ask him in, instate him in my better chair (I had two) and inquire how we could serve each other. If my memory is not at fault I merely said: “Well,” and awaited the result.

“I am from the San Francisco _Examiner_,” he explained in a voice like the fragrance of violets made audible, and backed a little away.

“O,” I said, “you come from Mr. Hearst.”

Then that unearthly child lifted its blue eyes and cooed: “I am Mr. Hearst.”

His father had given him a daily newspaper and he had come to hire me to write for it. Twenty years of what his newspapers call “wage slavery” ensued, and although I had many a fight with his editors for my right to my self-respect, I cannot say that I ever found Mr. Hearst’s chain a very heavy burden, though indubitably I suffered somewhat in social repute for wearing it.

If ever two men were born to be enemies he and I are they. Each stands for everything that is most disagreeable to the other, yet we never clashed. I never had the honor of his friendship and confidence, never was “employed about his person,” and seldom entered the editorial offices of his newspapers. He did not once direct nor request me to write an opinion that I did not hold, and only two or three times suggested that I refrain for a season from expressing opinions that I did hold, when they were antagonistic to the policy of the paper, as they commonly were. During several weeks of a great labor strike in California, when mobs of ruffians stopped all railway trains, held the state capital and burned, plundered and murdered at will, he “laid me off,” continuing, of course, my salary; and some years later, when striking employees of street railways were devastating St. Louis, pursuing women through the street and stripping them naked, he suggested that I “let up on that labor crowd.” No other instances of “capitalistic arrogance” occur to memory. I do not know that any of his other writers enjoyed a similar liberty, or would have enjoyed it if they had had it. Most of them, indeed, seemed to think it honorable to write anything that they were expected to.

As to Mr. Hearst’s own public writings, I fancy there are none: he could not write an advertisement for a lost dog. The articles that he signs and the speeches that he makes—well, if a man of brains is one who knows how to use the brains of others this amusing demagogue is nobody’s dunce.

If asked to justify my long service to journals with whose policies I was not in agreement and whose character I loathed I should confess that possibly the easy nature of the service had something to do with it. As to the point of honor (as that is understood in the profession) the editors and managers always assured me that there was commercial profit in employing my rebellious pen; and I—O well, I persuaded myself that I could do most good by addressing those who had greatest need of me—the millions of readers to whom Mr. Hearst was a misleading light. Perhaps this was an erroneous view of the matter; anyhow I am not sorry that, discovering no preservative allowable under the pure food law that would enable him to keep his word overnight, I withdrew, and can now, without impropriety, speak my mind of him as freely as his generosity, sagacity or indifference once enabled me to do of his political and industrial doctrines, in his own papers.

In illustration of some of the better features of this man’s strange and complex character let this incident suffice. Soon after the assassination of Governor Goebel of Kentucky—which seemed to me a particularly perilous “precedent” if unpunished—I wrote for one of Mr. Hearst’s New York newspapers the following prophetic lines:

The bullet that pierced Goebel’s breast
Can not be found in all the West.
Good reason: it is speeding here
To stretch McKinley on the bier.

The lines took no attention, naturally, but twenty months afterward the President was shot by Czolgosz. Every one remembers what happened then to Mr. Hearst and his newspapers. His political enemies and business competitors were alert to their opportunity. The verses, variously garbled but mostly made into an editorial, or a news dispatch with a Washington date-line but usually no date, were published all over the country as evidence of Mr. Hearst’s complicity in the crime. As such they adorned the editorial columns of the New York _Sun_ and blazed upon a bill-board in front of Tammany Hall. So fierce was the popular flame to which they were the main fuel that thousands of copies of the Hearst papers were torn from the hands of newsboys and burned in the streets. Much of their advertising was withdrawn from them. Emissaries of the _Sun_ overran the entire country persuading clubs, libraries and other patriotic bodies to exclude them from the files. There was even an attempt made to induce Czolgosz to testify that he had been incited to his crime by reading them—ten thousand dollars for his family to be his reward; but this cheerful scheme was blocked by the trial judge, who had been informed of it. During all this carnival of sin I lay ill in Washington, unaware of it; and my name, although appended to all that I wrote, including the verses, was not, I am told, once mentioned. As to Mr. Hearst, I dare say he first saw the lines when all this hullabaloo directed his attention to them.

With the occurrences here related the incident was not exhausted. When Mr. Hearst was making his grotesque canvass for the Governorship of New York the Roosevelt Administration sent Secretary Root into the state to beat him. This high-minded gentleman incorporated one of the garbled prose versions of my prophecy into his speeches with notable effect and great satisfaction to his conscience. Still, I am steadfast in the conviction that God sees him; and if any one thinks that Mr. Root will not go to the devil it must be the devil himself, in whom, doubtless, the wish is father to the thought.

Hearst’s newspapers had always been so unjust that no injustice could be done to them, and had been incredibly rancorous toward McKinley, but no doubt it was my luckless prophecy that cost him tens of thousands of dollars and a growing political prestige. For anything that I know (or care) they may have cost him his election. I have never mentioned the matter to him, nor—and this is what I have been coming to—has he ever mentioned it to me. I fancy there must be a human side to a man like that, even if he is a mischievous demagogue.

In matters of “industrial discontent” it has always been a standing order in the editorial offices of the Hearst newspapers to “take the side of the strikers” without inquiry or delay. Until the great publicist was bitten by political ambition and began to figure as a crazy candidate for office not a word of warning or rebuke to murderous mobs ever appeared in any column of his papers, except my own. A typical instance of the falsification of news to serve a foul purpose may be cited here. In Pennsylvania, a ferocious mob of foreign miners armed with bludgeons marched upon the property of their employers, to destroy it, incidentally chasing out of their houses all the English-speaking residents along the way and clubbing all that they could catch. Arriving at the “works,” they were confronted by a squad of deputy marshals, and while engaged in murdering the sheriff, who had stepped forward to read the riot act, were fired on and a couple of dozen of them killed. Naturally, the deputy marshals were put on trial for their lives. Mr. Hearst sent my good friend Julius Chambers to report the court proceedings. Day after day he reported at great length the testimony (translated) of the saints and angels who had suffered the mischance “while peacefully parading on a public road.” Then Mr. Chambers was ordered away and not a word of testimony for the defence (all in English), ever appeared in the paper. Instances of such fair-mindedness as this could be multiplied by the thousand, but all, I charitably trust, have been recorded Elsewhere in a more notable Book than mine.

Never just, Mr. Hearst is always generous. He is not swift to redress a grievance of one of his employees against another, but he is likely to give the complainant a cottage, a steam launch, or a roll of bank notes, if that person happens to be the kind of man to accept it, and he commonly is. As to discharging anybody for inefficiency or dishonesty—no, indeed, not so long as there is a higher place for him. His notion of removal is promotion.

He once really did dismiss a managing editor, but in a few months the fellow was back in his old place. I ventured to express surprise. “Oh, that’s all right,” Mr. Hearst explained. “I have a new understanding with him. He is to steal only small sums hereafter; the large ones are to come to me.”

In that incident we observe two dominant features in his character—his indifference to money and his marvelous sense of humor. He who should apprehend danger to public property from Mr. Hearst’s elevation to high office would err. The money to which he is indifferent includes that of others, and he smiles at his own expense.

If there is a capable working newspaper man in this country who has not, _malgre lui_, a kindly feeling for Mr. Hearst, he needs the light. I do not know how it is elsewhere, but in San Francisco and New York Mr. Hearst’s habit of having the cleverest (not, alas the most conscientious) obtainable men, no matter what he had to pay them, advanced the salaries of all such men more than fifty per cent. Possibly these have receded, and possibly the high average ability of his men has receded too—I don’t know; but indubitably he did get the brightest men.

Some of them, I grieve to say, were imperfectly appreciative of their employer’s gentle sway. At one time on the _Examiner_ it was customary, when a reporter had a disagreeable assignment, for him to go away for a few days, then return and plead intoxication. That excused him. They used to tell of one clever fellow in whose behalf this plea was entered while he was still absent from duty. An hour afterward Mr. Hearst met him and, seeing that he was cold sober, reproved him for deceit. On the scamp’s assurance that he had honestly intended to be drunk, but lacked the price, Mr. Hearst gave him enough money to re-establish his character for veracity and passed on.

I fancy things have changed a bit now, and that Mr. Hearst has changed with them. He is older and graver, is no longer immune to ambition, and may have discovered that good-fellowship with his subordinates and gratification of his lone humor are not profitable in business and politics. Doubtless too, he has learned from observation of his entourage of sycophants and self-seekers that generosity and gratitude are virtues that have not a speaking acquaintance. It is worth something to learn that, and it costs something.

With many amiable and alluring qualities, among which is, or used to be, a personal modesty amounting to bashfulness, the man has not a friend in the world. Nor does he merit one, for, either congenitally or by induced perversity, he is inaccessible to the conception of an unselfish attachment or a disinterested motive. Silent and smiling, he moves among men, the loneliest man. Nobody but God loves him and he knows it; and God’s love he values only in so far as he fancies that it may promote his amusing ambition to darken the door of the White House. As to that, I think that he would be about the kind of President that the country—daft with democracy and sick with sin—is beginning to deserve.

MORTALITY IN THE FOOT-HILLS[*]

A little bit of romance has just transpired to relieve the monotony of our metropolitan life. Old Sam Choggins, whom the editor of this paper has so often publicly thrashed, has returned from Mud Springs with a young wife. He is said to be very fond of her, and the way he came to get her was this:

Some time ago we courted her, but finding she was “on the make” we threw off on her after shooting her brother. She vowed revenge and promised to marry any man who would horse-whip us. This Sam agreed to undertake, and she married him on that promise.

We shall call on Sam to-morrow with our new shotgun and present our congratulations in the usual form.—_Hangtown “Gibbet.”_