Chapter XX: Love and Electioneering (3)

This is exactly true. Half the beauty of Musset's writing is its simple suggestion of youthfulness--of something fresh and fair, slim and tremulous, with a tender epidermis. This quality, with some readers, may seem to deprive him of a certain proper dignity; and it is very true that he was not a Stoic. You may even call him unmanly. He cries out when he is hurt; he resorts frequently to tears, and he talks much about his tears. (We have seen that after his return from Venice they formed, for four months, his principal occupation.) But his defence is that if he does not bear things like a man, he at least, according to Shakespeare's distinction, feels them like a man. What makes him valuable is just this gift for the expression of that sort of emotion which the conventions and proprieties of life, the dryness of ordinary utterance, the stiffness of most imaginations, leave quite in the vague, and yet which forms a part of human nature important enough to have its exponent. If the presumption is against the dignity of deeply poetic utterance, poor Musset is, in the vulgar phrase, nowhere--he is a mere grotesque sound of lamentation. But if in judging him you don't stint your sympathy, you will presently perceive him to have an extraordinarily precious quality--a quality equally rare in literature and in life. He has passion. There is in most poetry a great deal of reflection, of wisdom, of grace, of art, of genius; but (especially in English poetry) there is little of this peculiar property of Musset's. When it occurs we feel it to be extremely valuable; it touches us beyond anything else. It was the great gift of Byron, the quality by which he will live in spite of those weaknesses and imperfections which may be pointed out by the dozen. Alfred de Musset in this respect resembled the poet whom he appears most to have admired--living at a time when it had not begun to be the fashion to be ashamed to take Byron seriously. Mr. Swinburne in one of his prose essays speaks of him with violent scorn as Byron's "attendant dwarf," or something of that sort. But this is to miss the case altogether. There is nothing diminutive in generous admiration, and nothing dwarfish in being a younger brother; Mr. Swinburne's charge is too coarse a way of stating the position. Musset resembles Byron in the fact that the beauty of his verse is somehow identical with the feeling of the writer--with his immediate, sensible warmth--and not dependent upon that reflective stage into which, to produce its great effects, most English poetic expression instantly passes, and which seems to chill even while it nobly beautifies. Musset is talked of nowadays in France very much as Byron is talked of among ourselves; it is noticed that he often made bad verse, and he is accused of having but half known his trade. This sort of criticism is eminently just, and there is a weak side of the author of "Rolla" which it is easy to attack.

Alfred de Musset, like Mr. Murray's fastidious correspondent, wrote poetry as an amateur--wrote it, as they say in France, _en gentilhomme_. It is the fashion, I believe, in some circles, to be on one's guard against speaking foreign tongues too well (the precaution is perhaps superfluous) lest a marked proficiency should expose one to be taken for a teacher of languages. It was a feeling of this kind, perhaps, that led Alfred de Musset to a certain affectation of negligence and laxity; though he wrote for the magazines, he could boast a long pedigree, and he had nothing in common with the natives of Grub street. Since his death a new school of poets has sprung up--of which, indeed, his contemporary, Theophile Gautier, may be regarded as the founder. These gentlemen have taught French poetry a multitude of paces of which so sober-footed a damsel was scarcely to have been supposed capable; they have discovered a great many secrets which Musset appears never to have suspected, or (if he did suspect them) to have thought not worth finding out. They have sounded the depths of versification, and beside their refined, consummate _facture_ Musset's simple devices and good-natured prosody seem to belong to a primitive stage of art. It is the difference between a clever performer on the tight rope and a gentleman strolling along on soft turf with his hands in his pockets. If people care supremely for form, Musset will always but half satisfy them. It is very pretty, they will say; but it is confoundedly unbusinesslike. His verse is not chiselled and pondered, and in spite of an ineffable natural grace, it lacks the positive qualities of cunning workmanship--those qualities which are found in such high perfection in Theophile Gautier. To our own sense Musset's exquisite feeling more than makes up for one-half the absence of "chiselling," and the ineffable grace we spoke of just now makes up for the other half. His sweetness of passion, of which the poets who have succeeded him have so little, is a more precious property than their superior science. His grace is often something divine; it is in his grace that we must look for his style. Herr Lindau says that Heine speaks of "truth, harmony, and grace" being his salient qualities. (By the first, we take it, he meant what we have called Musset's passion.) His harmony, from the first, was often admirable; the rhythm of even some of his earliest verses makes them haunt the ear after one has murmured them aloud.

Ulric, des mers nul oeil n'a mesure l'abime,
Ni les herons plongeurs, ni les vieux matelots;
Le soleil vient briser ses rayons sur leur cime,
Comme un soldat vaincu brise ses javelots.

Musset's grace, in its suavity, freedom, and unaffectedness, is altogether peculiar; though it must be said that it is only in the poems of his middle period that it is at its best. His latest things are, according to Sainte-Beuve, _califichets_--baubles; they are too much in the rococo, the Dresden china style. But as we have said before, with his youth Musset's inspiration failed him. It failed him in his prose as well as in his verse. "Il faut qu'une Porte soit ouverte ou fermee," one of the last of his dramatic proverbs, is very charming, very perfect in its way; but compared with the tones of the "Caprices de Marianne," the "Chandelier," "Fantasio," the sentiment is thin and the style has rather a simper. It is what the French call _marivaudage_. There can, however, be no better example of the absoluteness of the poetic sentiment, of its justifying itself as it goes, of lyrical expression being as it were not only a means, but an end, than the irresistible beauty of such effusions as the "Lettre a Lamartine" and the "Nuit d'Aout."

Poete, je t'ecris pour te dire que j'aime!

--that is all, literally, that Musset has to say to the "amant d'Elvire"; and it would be easy to make merry at the expense of so simply candid a piece of "gush." But the confidence is made with a transparent ardor, a sublime good faith, an audible, touching tremor of voice, which, added to the enchanting harmony of the verse, make the thing one of the most splendid poems of our day.

Ce ne sont pas des chants, ce ne sont que des larmes,
Et je ne te dirai que ce que Dieu m'a dit!

Musset has never risen higher. He has, in strictness, only one idea--the idea that the passion of love and the act of loving are the divinest things in a miserable world; that love has a thousand disappointments, deceptions, and pangs, but that for its sake they are all worth enduring, and that, as Tennyson has said, more curtly and reservedly,

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

Sometimes he expresses this idea in the simple epicurean fashion, with gayety and with a more or less cynical indifference to the moral side of the divine passion. Then he is often pretty, picturesque, fanciful, but he remains essentially light. At other times he feels its relation to the other things that make up man's destiny, and the sense of aspiration meets with the sense of enjoyment or of regret. Then he is at his best; then he seems an image of universally sentient youth.

Je ne puis; malgre moi, l'infini me tourmente.
Je n'y saurais songer sans crainte et sans espoir;
Et quoiqu'on en ait dit, ma raison s'epouvante
De ne pas le comprendre, et pourtant de le voir.

While we may suspect that there is something a little over-colored in M. Paul de Musset's account of the degree to which his brother was haunted by the religious sentiment--by the impulse to grope for some philosophy of life--we may also feel that with the poet's sense of the "divineness" of love there went a conviction that ideal love implies a divine object. This is the feeling expressed in the finest lines of the "Lettre a Lamartine"--in lines at least which, if they are not the finest, are fine enough to quote:

Eh bien, bon ou mauvais, inflexible ou fragile,
Humble ou gai, triste ou fier, mais toujours gemissant,
Cet homme, tel qu'il est, cet etre fait d'argile,
Tu l'a vu, Lamartine, et son sang est ton sang.
Son bouheur est le tien; sa douleur est la tienne;
Et des maux qu'ici bas il lui faut endurer,
Pas un qui ne te touche et qui ne t'appartienne;
Puisque tu sais chanter, ami, tu sais pleurer.
Dis-moi, qu'en penses-tu dans tes jours de tristesse?
Que t'a dit le malheur quand tu l'as consulte?
Trompe par tes amis, trahi par ta maitresse,
Du ciel et de toi-meme as-tu jamais doute?
Non, Alphonse, jamais. La triste experience
Nous apporte la cendre et n'eteint pas le feu.
Tu respectes le mal fait par la Providence;
Tu le laisses passer et tu crois a ton Dieu.
Quelqu'il soit c'est le mien; il n'est pas deux croyances.
Jene sais pas son nom: j'ai regarde les cieux;
Je sais qu'ils sont a lui, je sais qu'ils sont immenses,
Et que l'immensite ne peut pas etre a deux.
J'ai connu, jeune encor, de severes souffrances;
J'ai vu verdir les bois et j'ai tente d'aimer.
Je sais ce que la terre engloutit d'esperances,
Et pour y recueillir ce qu'il y faut semer.
Mais ce que j'ai senti, ce que je veux t'ecrire,
C'est ce que m'ont appris les anges de douleur;
Je le sais mieux encor et puis mieux te le dire,
Car leur glaive, en entrant, l'a grave dans mon coeur.

And the rest of the poem is a lyrical declaration of belief in immortality.

We have called the "Lettre a Lamartine" Musset's highest flight, but the "Nuit de Mai" is almost as fine a poem--full of imaginative splendor and melancholy ecstasy. The series of the "Nuits" is altogether superb; with an exception made, perhaps, for the "Nuit de Decembre," which has a great deal of sombre beauty, but which is not, like the others, in the form of a dialogue between the Muse and the poet--the Muse striving to console the world-wounded bard for his troubles, and urging him to take refuge in hope and production:

Poete, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser;
La fleur de l'eglantier sent ses bourgeons eclore.
Le printemps nait ce soir; les vents vout s'embraser;
Et la bergeronette, en attendant l'aurore,
Au premier buissons vertes commence a se poser.
Poete, prends ton luth et me donne un baiser.

That is impregnated with the breath of a vernal night. The same poem (the "Nuit de Mai") contains the famous passage about the pelican--the passage beginning

Les plus' desesperes sont les chants les plus beaux,
Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots----

in which the legend of the pelican opening his breast to feed his starving young is made an image of what the poet does to entertain his readers:

Poete, c'est ainsi que font les grands poetes.
Ils laissent s'egayer ceux qui vivent un temps;
Mais les festins humains qu'ils servent a leurs fetes
Ressemblent la plupart a ceux des pelicans.

This passage is perhaps--unless we except the opening verses of "Rolla"--Musset's noblest piece of poetic writing. We must place next to it--next to the three "Nuits"--the admirably passionate and genuine "Stanzas to Malibran"--a beautiful characterization of the artistic disinterestedness of the singer who suffered her genius to consume her--who sang herself to death. The closing verses of the poem have a wonderful purity; to rise so high, and yet in form, in accent, to remain so still and temperate, belongs only to great poetry; as it would be well to remind the critic who thinks the author of the "Stanzas to Malibran" dwarfish. There is another sort of verse in which violence of movement is more sensible than upwardness of direction.

So far in relation to Musset's lyric genius--though we have given but a brief and inadequate account of it. He had besides a dramatic genius of the highest beauty, to which we have left ourself space to devote only a few words. It is true that the drama with Musset has a decidedly lyrical element, and that though his persons always talk prose, they are constantly saying things which would need very little help to fall into the mould of a stanza or a sonnet. In his dramas as in his verses, his weakness is that he is amateurish; they lack construction; their merit is not in their plots, but in what, for want of a better term, one may call their sentimental perfume. The earliest of them failed upon the stage, and for many years it was supposed they could not be played. Musset supposed so himself, and took no trouble to encourage the experiment. He made no concessions to contemporary "realism." But at last they were taken up--almost by accident--and it was found that, in the hands of actors whose education enabled them to appreciate their delicacy, this delicacy might become wonderfully effective. If feeling is the great quality in his verses, the case is the same in his strange, fantastic, exquisite little _comedies_; comedies in the literal English sense of the word we can hardly call them, for they have almost always a melancholy or a tragical termination. They are thoroughly sentimental; he puts before us people who convince us that they really _feel_; the drama is simply the history of their feeling. In the emotions of Valentin and Perdican, of Fantasio and Fortunio, of Celio and Octave, of Carmosine and Bettine, there is something contagious, irresistibly touching. But the great charm is Musset's dramatic world itself, the atmosphere in which his figures move, the element they breathe.

It seems at first like a reckless thing to say, but we will risk it: in the _quality_ of his fancy Musset always reminds us of Shakespeare. His little dramas go on in the country of "As you Like It" and the "Winter's Tale"; the author is at home there, like Shakespeare himself, and he moves with something of the Shakespearian lightness and freedom. His fancy loves to play with human life, and in the tiny mirror which it holds up we find something of the depth and mystery of the object. Musset's dialogue, in its mingled gayety and melancholy, its sweetness and irony, its allusions to real things and its kinship with a romantic world, has an altogether indefinable magic. To speak it on the stage is almost to make it coarse. Once Musset attempted a larger theme than usual; in "Lorenzaccio" he wrote an historical drama on the scale of Shakespeare's histories; that is, with multitudes of figures, scenes, incidents, and illustrations. He laid his hand on an admirable subject--the story of a certain Lorenzino de' Medici, who played at being a debauchee and a poltroon in order better to put the tyrant of Florence (his own cousin) off his guard, and serve his country by ridding her of him. The play shows an extraordinary abundance and vivacity of imagination, and really, out of those same "histories" of Shakespeare, it is hard to see where one should find an equal spontaneity in dealing with the whole human furniture of a period. Alfred de Musset, in "Lorenzaccio," has the air of being as ready to handle a hundred figures as a dozen--of having imagination enough for them all. The thing has the real creative _souffle_, and if it is not the most perfect of his productions, it is probably the most vigorous.

We have not spoken of his tales; their merit is the same as of the _comedies_--that of spontaneous feeling, and of putting people before us in whose feelings we believe. Besides this, they have Musset's grace and delicacy in a perhaps excessive degree; they are the most mannered of his productions. Two or three of them, however--"Emmeline," "Les Deux Maitresses," "Frederic et Bernerette"--are masterpieces; this last epithet is especially to be bestowed upon the letter written by the heroine of the last-mentioned tale (an incorrigibly _volage_ grisette) to her former lover on the occasion of his marrying and settling. The incoherency, the garrulity, the mingled resignation and regret of an amiable flirt of the lower orders, divided between the vivacity of her emotion and the levity of her nature, are caught in the act; and yet it is not fair to say of anything represented by Musset that it is caught in the act. Just the beauty and charm of it is that it is not the exact reality, but a something seen by the imagination--a tinge of the ideal, a touch of poetry. We must try to see Musset himself in the same way; his own figure needs to a certain extent the help of our imagination. And yet, even with such help taken, we cannot but feel that he is an example of the wasteful way in which nature and history sometimes work--of their cruel indifference to our personal standards of economy--of the vast amount of material they take to produce a little result.

Alfred de Musset's exquisite organization, his exaltations and weaknesses, his pangs and tears, his passions and debaucheries, his intemperance and idleness, his years of unproductiveness, his innumerable mistresses (with whatever pangs and miseries it may seem proper to attribute to _them_), his quarrel with a woman of genius, and the scandals, exposures, and recriminations that are so ungracefully bound up with it--all this was necessary in order that we should have the two or three little volumes into which his _best_ could be compressed. It takes certainly a great deal of life to make a little art! In this case, however, we must remember, that little is exquisite.

HENRY JAMES, JR.

REFLECTED LIGHT.

Your eyes say, "Sweet, I love--I love you, sweet."
Where is the blame
If, when their mute significance I meet,
Mine say the same?

Nay, thank me not, nor deem your triumph near.
The message bright
My glance conveys--'tis but--believe, me, dear--
Reflected light!

MARY AINGE DE VERE.

LIFE INSURANCE.--II.

The companies organized under the general law of the State of New York are the mere creatures of that statute. Their organization, management, powers for good or evil, opportunities for mismanagement and corruption, are all to be traced directly to the law to which they owe their being. It will be necessary, therefore, for an intelligent understanding of the condition to which the business has come, to examine the act particularly. It is chapter 463 of the laws of 1853. It provides that any number of persons not less than thirteen may form a corporation for the purpose of making insurance on the lives of individuals, or against accidents, or on the health of persons, or on live stock. Such corporators are allowed to draw their own charter, and upon its approval by the Attorney General, that document has all the force of positive law. It is of course subject to the provisions of the act itself, but those provisions are so few and meagre that it is practically left to the promoters of the scheme to draw their own charter of incorporation. The capital stock is to be not less than $100,000, and no provision is made for the incorporating of any company without a capital. The rate of dividends to the stockholders, the proportion of profits to be paid the policy-holders, and the time of payment, are not provided for in the law, and are left to be settled by the associates. The consequence is that no two companies are alike in this respect. In some of them the stockholder receives an interest of seven per cent. upon his stock, and is entitled to no more under any circumstances, the whole surplus or profits being divided among the policy-holders. In others, in addition to interest, the stock is entitled to participate with the policies in the surplus. The extent of this participation varies; in some it is fixed at ten per cent. of the whole profits, to the stock-holders, in others twenty, and in others thirty per cent. In all of them, however, with one exception, participation by the policy-holders in the profits of the business is a rule. To a greater or lesser extent, in some to the whole profits, it is the recognized rule that the holders of policies are to receive dividends or bonuses from the companies out of the profits. In effect, therefore, so far as participation in the profits of the business goes, all our companies, with the one exception before mentioned, are mutual companies.

The act makes no provision for the government of the corporations it allows to be created. It leaves it to the promoters to state the mode and manner in which the corporate powers shall be exercised, and the manner of electing trustees, or directors, and officers. The natural consequence of this provision is, that the manner of electing trustees and directors varies in different companies. In some of them the stock-holders alone have any voice or vote, in others the policy-holders are allowed, under certain restrictions, to vote, but it is safe to say that in all of them the power is kept in the hands of the stock-holders as far as it possibly can be; and the policy-holders are allowed as little voice in the management of the company as the stock-holders can permit.

The result of this vice in the formation of the company is shown in corporations which have amassed a large reserve. There it will be seen that the owners of one hundred thousand dollars of stock absolutely control the entire management and disposition of twenty, thirty, or forty millions of accumulations, as the case may be; and the real owners of this fund--the policy-holders--have no voice in its management and no vote for the body or board which exercises the powers of the corporation.

It is contended by very prominent gentlemen in the life insurance business, that this plan is the only safe one; that interference in the management of the company by uninstructed policy-holders, not versed in the business, would be productive of nothing but evil. They contend that the necessary unity of management required for a business, covering as this does long periods of time, and requiring carefully laid plans extending into the distant future, would be greatly endangered by the existence of a right to participate in the management by representation on the part of so numerous and so widely scattered a constituency. In other words, the managers of companies which have retained in the hands of the stock-holders all the powers of the corporation think that those powers are more safely exercised by that small body than they would be if participated in by all the holders of policies. It may be doubted, however, whether a constituency small in number and capable of manipulation, and their votes of concentration into the hands of a few men, is the safest body to manage a corporation whose chief business is the care of the accumulations arising from the trust imposed upon the corporation by the contract of life insurance. The power of wielding a mass of capital amounting to many millions of dollars is an enormous power, and it should be reposed only in a body which should be responsible for the careful, honest administration of the trust, at stated intervals, to the persons most interested--that is, to the policy-holders--the owners of the trust fund. One of the chief characteristics of English companies is, that at the annual meeting of the interested persons a full statement of the affairs of the company is laid before the meeting, and an opportunity offered of critical examination and comment. Discontent is thus allowed a safety valve to express itself through, and the managers an opportunity of explaining their action and accounting for their conduct. Public opinion--the public opinion of the persons interested--is allowed a chance of expression, and all misunderstandings and misconceptions an opportunity for examination and refutation. The right to interrogate the managers, and ask and obtain information as to the business at such regularly recurring intervals, is an inestimable one. It can hardly be conceived possible that great abuses could grow up if such a right existed; but at any rate it is apparent that the probability of such abuses is lessened to a great extent.

But this English practice is not known among us. In life insurance affairs we have nothing remotely approaching it. It seems to have been the policy of our companies to restrict participation in their management to the smallest possible number, to avoid opportunities for questioning or explanation, and to shroud the business in the deepest mystery.

The officers of companies responsible for this policy justify themselves upon the broad ground that they know better what is good for the policy-holders than they do themselves. In the light of the evidence given before the Committee of the Assembly by life insurance officers, and in the light of the affairs of the Continental, Security, and Popular, it may be doubted whether this assertion proves itself. It has the merit, however, that every honest avowal has, and it is entitled to examination.

Why should a self-electing, self-perpetuating proprietary board, resting upon a constituency composed solely of owners of the capital stock, be a safer or better management than one elected by the votes of the policy-holders at large? The only answer you can get to that query is this: The board elected by the stock-holders are sure of their position, and it is not in the power of a few malcontents to get up a secret movement to oust them at the election. The more stable management is to be preferred to one which is dependent on the popularity of the officers with the policy-holders. It is in the nature of things that the officers should become more or less unpopular. The business depends for success upon the enforcement of strict rules in dealing with the policy-holders, and the enforcement of these strict rules, although absolutely necessary for the success of the business, naturally tends to give fancied grievances to the persons against whom they are enforced. If, therefore, the tenure of office of the management depends upon the policy-holders, there is the constant danger of frequent attempts at revolution arising from this cause, and the consequent weakness of the officers in enforcing rules the enforcement of which may tend to shorten their tenure of office.

I think I have fairly stated the argument. Is there anything in it? Is the reason given any reason at all? Is it not rather a positive argument against the system. Perhaps the best government for men and companies is an absolute monarchy, without accountability or restraint; there are large masses of the human race who are so governed; and it is an open question yet whether government by the people be or be not the best government. But certainly one thing is assured. In this day and in this country the monarchical and the oligarchical systems are out of date and out of place; and all attempts to introduce them or the principles which underlie them into our system of free government by the representatives of the governed will be failures. The doctrine of paternal government is "played out" in affairs of nations, and it is not to be supposed that the principle has in it any greater efficacy when applied to the affairs of corporations. The fact is, we have too much of this thing in all our relations political and social. The idea that there is a class who are in their own estimation better able to govern than the rest of mankind has been exploded by the experience of the people of this country, and it is intolerable that we should be forced to do homage in our private affairs to a principle which we have, as regards public business, exploded long ago as a traditional fallacy.

Most of the evil practices which have made the whole system of life insurance a by-word and the scorn of the people, have arisen under this irresponsible management. Investments in extravagant buildings, the enormous expenditures for payments of salaries to officers and to agents, are all the result of the secret plan of management. Does any one suppose that if the affairs of the companies were fully and completely exposed to the public, such payments would be permitted or tolerated? Men are entitled to be paid for services rendered the full equivalent of those services, but they ought not to be allowed to be the sole judges of the value of those services, and they ought to be at all times ready and willing to come before the persons interested, and submit a full, fair, and clear account of their stewardship. Human nature is of the same quality in the managers of life insurance companies as in other men. Responsibility to some power, accountability to some persons or body, is absolutely essential to honest management. Men who know that they cannot or will not be called to account will fall into loose and unbusinesslike methods and practices. Nothing can be more dangerous to the honesty of a man than to place him in charge of immense interests without a system of periodical accountability. A man may be ever so honest, yet he will, if this accountability be absent, be led to do things which he never would do if he were sure that at a fixed period his doings would become known and he would be required to justify them.

From these considerations and on these grounds, I come to the conclusion that the management of a life insurance company by a board of directors elected solely by the stock-holders is a management which contains within itself the germs of a fatal disease, which will sooner or later develop itself. In this respect legislation is needed. Such a management ought to be forbidden, and a provision made for the election of trustees by the policy-holders as well as the stock-holders, upon a basis as to the vote and the amount of interest it should represent which would be equitable and just.

Complaints have been made against the use of proxies in elections. Notably these complaints have been made respecting elections in the Mutual Life Insurance Company, a corporation which has no stock-holders, but which consists in a membership of its policy-holders. These policy-holders have the supreme control of the corporation in their own hands. Its government is by them delegated to a board of trustees thirty-six in number, divided into four classes of nine in each class. The term of office is four years, so that nine trustees go out of office in each year. This classification prevents the possibility of any sudden change of management, while it leaves all needed control in the hands of the policy-holders. If, for instance, dissatisfaction with the management exists, and nine new trustees are elected, it is not to be doubted but that the warning would be listened to and the necessary change of policy effected to satisfy the constituency. On the other hand, should the change of trustees be the result of a combination to seize the management of the company for any improper purpose, the first election would unmask the design and insure its defeat by an appeal to the voters.

The objections to the use of proxies come entirely from those policy-holders who have been defeated by their use, or fear they will be defeated by their use, in an attempt to change the management. Does not this prove that the great body of policy-holders believe in the management and are determined to sustain it. In a free company based upon the liberal principles upon which the Mutual Life is established, any attempt to limit the franchise would be an unparalleled wrong. The policy-holder in Chicago or in San Francisco has the same right to exercise his right to a voice in the election of trustees as the policy-holder who resides in New York, and there can be no reason why he should not cast his vote by proxy, since it would result in his disfranchisement to require him to do it in person. Be sure that if real trouble arose, and there was an abuse to rectify, if there were officers unmindful of their duties to rebuke, or trustees regardless of their trust to set aside, the votes cast by proxy would be as intelligently given as those of the residents immediately near the office who could attend in person. Every effort to limit the right to vote by proxy is an attempt to perpetuate power in the hands of the policy-holders resident here, which would be quite as obnoxious to sound principles as the government of companies solely by the stockholders.

It would appear, on every principle of fairness and justice, that the more full and perfect the right of the policy-holder to participate in the election of trustees, the more stable and conservative will be the management. On the other hand, it is quite as apparent that the limitation of such right is attended with consequences the reverse of those just stated, and those consequences attained in proportion to the limitation of the right.

With the broad superstructure of a body of voting policy-holders, the selling out of the control of a company is impossible, because no one will be willing to pay for the possession which the next election may deprive him of. Of all the mean and contemptible methods of robbery as yet discovered, the selling out of a life insurance company is the meanest and most contemptible. Too cowardly to wreck it themselves and personally rob the widows and orphans, the trustees, who quietly receive a bonus for their stock and retire from the management, sell the opportunity of robbery to others. This they do too in the full knowledge of the purpose for which they are asked to retire. When the crash comes they may say they did not know the purpose of the purchasers, but they did know they were to receive for their stock two or three times its value, and that no man could afford to pay such a price to obtain control of the company except for the purpose of making money by irregular and questionable means. It will not do for men entrusted with positions of a fiduciary character to make the holding of such positions the lever for obtaining a large price for their stock, and then claim exemption from responsibility for the misdeeds of their successors. They were there in charge of a sacred trust, and they have sold and betrayed that trust--for what? Why, for the enhanced price which they got for their stock. This is the great evil of the close corporation system. It enables one or more men to own complete control of a company and to sell it to the highest bidder. Of course the highly respectable gentlemen who sell, and those also who buy, will be shocked at having imputed to them any crime or breach of trust. But how can such sums of money be lawfully made out of life insurance stock as to justify the price the records of the Committee on Insurance show have been paid for it? Life insurance is or ought to be a benevolent institution. Its management is or ought to be a trust, and every trustee who makes use of his position to make money for himself is false to his trust, and should never be appointed to another. Life insurance is not to be made the sport of speculators, and the only reliance of the unfortunate made the football of gambling operations. Most if not all of the troubles which have arisen in the business are to be traced to this attempt to make money out of it, honestly if possible, but to make money at all hazards. The way to end this for ever is to allow the policy-holders to vote, not for a minority of the trustees, but for all of them. Representation should be equal, or it is worthless. The representation which would leave the power to elect a majority still in the hands of the stock-holders is not equal or just. Money paid for premiums is as good as money paid for stock, and should have equal voice in the management. But when you have given the policy-holders votes, you should also see that the opportunity was afforded to them of voting. Most of the elections are held without any other notice than an advertisement in the corner of a crowded column of one or two newspapers. Every policy should have printed on it the date of the annual election, and all the information necessary to enable the holder to be present and vote, or to be represented by proxy. Under the present practice, few holders of policies know whether they have votes or not, and hardly any of them ever heard of the time of holding the election. If the present discussion of life insurance affairs does no other good than to awaken the policy-holders to a sense of their own responsibility for abuses of management, it will not have been in vain. It is safe to say that watchfulness on their part would have prevented the lavish expenditures, the unwise real estate investments, the enormous salaries, which the investigation of the Assembly committee has discovered. The same conservative power held over managers would be a constant check upon any tendency to depart from the safe and regular open pathway of honorable dealings. Under its influence there would be few if any cases of commissions in addition to salary of officers, less tendency to make loans to the trustees and their friends, and a general adhesion to business rules and traditions. But above and beyond all other reforms, the control of the company by the policy-holders would make it impossible for greedy and scoundrel officers to gather into their hands the entire control of the company, and then sell it out to a rival company for four or five times what the stock cost, and an annuity for life to the traitor who had betrayed his trust. This has been, is now, and will be, if not prevented, the fruitful mother of all the ills of life insurance. Just as soon as any clique get possession of the majority of the stock, there is danger. Nay, there is always danger; any clique may, at any time, get possession of the stock by paying enough for it. If one price will not bring it, another will, and the value to the wrecker depends upon the amount of assets. It is the assets which are to pay the profit of the transaction. The money of the policy-holders is what is sold, not the mere pittance which belongs to the stock-holders, and it is the money of the policy-holders which is stolen to pay the purchase money. Honorable gentlemen, prominent in social life, elders, deacons, and vestrymen who in the past few years have quietly pocketed two hundred for your stock and retired from the management of life insurance companies, how are you pleased with your own conduct? In the light of recent disclosures, does not the ill-gotten money burn in your pockets? Truly you would not wreck a company yourselves by transferring it to any man or number of men; but you accomplish the same purpose by retiring. A captain who will not himself surrender to the enemy, but who retires from the command of his fortification knowing that the subaltern who will succeed him intends to strike his flag, may deceive himself, but he does not long succeed in deceiving any one else.

The evidence taken before the referee in the Continental case fully describes and explains the methods of wrecking. A company is sold out or reinsured in another; that is, the stock has been bought up at two or three hundred per centum, the officers have been promised good places, or paid in cash for their silence. Immediately the operations of the wreckers begin. The agents of both companies go into the work with a single aim, and that aim is to obtain the surrender of the policies in the old company in exchange for new policies in the purchasing corporation. The old policies represent an actual liability; the company which has issued them is obliged to hold a certain sum against each of them. The aggregate of these sums makes up the "reserve" or reinsurance fund. As fast as the old policies are cancelled this reserve is released, and when all the policies are cancelled there is no liability at all. The new policies of course have no liability. This is in short the whole operation of wrecking. By such means a million or two of assets will be distributed, and in the process the policy-holders will receive a little--a very little--and the agents a good deal, and the officers composing the ring all that is left. The arts, the deceptions, the false representations made in the course of the proceeding to induce the policy-holder to give up his policy have been fully disclosed by the evidence in question. Of course it is suggested that the company is in a bad way, and that there is probably no other way of securing anything unless an opportunity now offered of changing is embraced.

Reinsurance was abandoned as a means of wrecking because it was found the policy-holders preferred to keep the old policy and the new guarantee together. So in the later transactions they are told that if they do not change, they will get nothing.

The lesson of all this to the policy-holder may be written in large letters and kept as a maxim:

DO NOT SURRENDER YOUR POLICY.

You will never make a mistake by keeping to this motto. And particularly the more should it be kept to when you are urged by agents to a contrary action. You never get one-third its value even in companies honestly managed; what you get in companies dishonestly managed no one can tell.

FALLEN AMONG THIEVES.

BRUSSELS!

Is it not written that good Americans, when they die, go to Paris? So Elysium to all righteous sons of Cockayne is Brussels. And yet I was weary of it. No charms for me had the perpetual sabots and blouses, the _braves Belges_ in jaunty uniform, the bejewelled saunterers in the Galerie St. Hubert, the _gauche_ tourists desecrating the sombre stillness of the St. Gudule, _la belle Anglaise_ seeing for the first time the outrageous little manikin, the homely phaeton of good old King Leopold with its pair of very unroyal plugs, the tirailleurs in Lincoln green, the Parc with its music, fountains and maitrank, the Jardin des Plantes, the boulevard, and the Ecole d'Equitation.

All lost on me. I stood at a window of the Hotel de Flandres gazing on the ever-moving panorama of the Grande Place with as little interest as though my eye rested on a vacant lot in Pumpkinville.

Was it bile? No. Was it love? Yes.

Another scene was ever before my eyes: An old red-brick house on the cliffs of Devonshire, half hid by giant oaks and elms, fragrant with honeysuckle and jessamine, stately with avenue, lawn, and rookery; and I saw leaning on the rustic gate beneath the chestnut trees Gwendoline Grey: her straw hat dangling by her side, her fresh young face set in a glory of light brown hair, her---- But it had all passed away now. The light was gone out of my life, for but three days ago I had received a letter from her mother deploring my altered prospects, returning my billets and love tokens, and assuring me that Gwendoline acquiesced in this painful decision.

My altered prospects--_hinc illae lacrymae_. Nine months ago I was heir to a wealthy man, and now I was but bear-leader to the son of the Earl of Tottenbridge. Upon the loss of my father's property, which had come like an avalanche on us, I had left college and assumed the tutorship of the Hon. Nigel Fairleigh, as good a lad as ever handled a cricket bat.

After a brief run through southern Europe, I had just delivered him up to his aunt, my lady Milton, who was to take him to Scotland, while I was free, according to compact, to enjoy a couple of months' vacation.

How I had longed for this vacation--and now, where to go, what to do, I knew not. For three days I had stayed with a dull uncertainty on the spot where the blow had fallen on me.

My meditations were broken by the entrance of a garcon announcing,

"A gentleman for monsieur."

"Ah, M. Danneris, I am glad to see you. Be seated."

To say how I became acquainted with the chatty little Frenchman who sat before me would be a difficult matter. The offer of a cigar, an exchange of newspapers at the reading room, a passing _bon jour_ on the stairs, had ripened under his friendly gayety into a familiarity which had extended so far as to my passing more than one evening at his snug office in the Rue des Allumettes, where Francois Danneris, advocate, spun toils for litigious Flemish _bourgeoises_.

"My friend," he said, "you look _ennuye_, _triste_, dull; you need change. What do you say to a scamper over the continent?"

"I have done scampering enough lately," I replied, "and moreover my funds----"

"_Tiens, mon ami._ Do not talk of money. It is my great happiness to offer you an opportunity to combine business with pleasure, and take a most delightful trip without the expenditure of a sou."

"You surprise me--and where?"

"To a beautiful manorial residence at the village of Kioske, twenty miles beyond Buda, on the banks of the Danube--one of the most romantic spots of eastern Europe."

"And the object?"

"To take temporary charge of the only son of the wealthy Baron von Dressdorf. Jules von Dressdorf," added the advocate in his bland, pleasant way, "is a boy of fifteen, who, after spending a year in an academy in England, has been placed in a _pension_ in Brussels; but, _helas!_ an hereditary disease, which has developed itself more strongly of late, has determined his father to recall him immediately. Pericardiac, my dear sir--pericardiac; and it is most important that he should without delay seek the quiet of his native valley."

"The terms?"

"Two hundred and fifty francs a week, and all expenses paid. When could you start?"

"To-morrow--to-day--when you will."

"_Bien!_ There is a little difficulty I would mention; the journey is not without small perils. Hungary, as you are aware, is now under the ban of an Austrian tyranny."

I assured him of my sympathy.

"Hold," he cried. "It is exactly that you have no sympathy that I select you. The Baron is already _suspect_, and the son, inheriting his father's sentiments, has small discretion of speech. Keep Austria in the background, I implore you."

"And are you sure that the Baron will approve of your choice of an escort?"

"The mere fact, Monsieur Mortimer, that you were in the service--I beg your pardon--in the family of the Earl of Tottenbridge would be sufficient, but I am proud to say that the recommendation of Francois Danneris would be a _carte blanche_ to any one to the confidence of Baron Dressdorf. He is a noble man," he added with emotion, "and to him I owe all I have in the world."

And then for half an hour the advocate poured into my ear the glories of the house of Dressdorf and stories of Austrian oppression that made me eager to serve his _protege_. Nay, I was so interested in his case that I believe I would have seen the youth home, if I had had to bear all the expenses of the journey myself.

"Have you a passport?"

"It is here," I said, handing it to him--"a Foreign Office passport that protects me all over the continent."

"Ah, I see. And this permit?"

"Ah, that belongs to my pupil, Nigel Fairleigh. We can cut that off. Lady Milton should have had it with her, but they are not very strict at Ostend, and I suppose her rank proved an open sesame."

"Black eyes," he read, "black hair, sharp features, high forehead, height, five feet three. My dear Monsieur Mortimer," and he turned eagerly toward me, "you would do me a real service, you would lay the noble Dressdorf under the greatest obligation, if you would permit our young charge to use this passport. It describes him to a T. The critical nature of events, the necessity for caution, the delicate health of the boy--nay, do not look shocked; such things are done every day--will excuse the trifling impropriety----"

"Impossible!"

Taking no notice of the interruption, he continued. "And to tell the truth, it was just this that bothered me. A Belgian passport is looked upon with much suspicion, and is likely to lead to inquiry; but armed with this, you may go from here to the Oural mountains without a question."

At first I refused point-blank, but at last resigned myself to his sophistry, and the bargain was closed.

"When can I see the youth?" I asked.

"Now, monsieur. I will at once escort you to the _pension_ of the Porte de Schaerbeck, and introduce him to you."

Fifty boys of Belgian, French, American, and English extraction, seated at a long table enjoying their afternoon's "goute"--a post-meridian lunch of weak brandy-and-water and grapes; a bald _maitre d'ecole_ periodically crying, "Si-i-i-lence, messieurs. Restez-vous tranquilles!" like a sheriff in a court of law. Such a scene met my view. I recognized my youth in a moment; there was no mistaking the clear, well-defined features, raven hair, and black eyes of the gentle lad who rose to greet my companion with a grace and assurance that checked remonstrance on the part of the half-offended usher, who simply solaced himself with a shrug of the shoulders and a more than usually prolonged "Si-i-i-i-i-lence, messieurs. Restez-vous tranquilles!"

"This is the gentleman, Jules, who has kindly consented to take you home, and it is arranged that you start to-morrow," said the advocate.

The boy's big eyes looked into mine with an inquiring gaze, and then, taking my hand, he quaintly said:

"I like you."

There was nothing impertinent in the tone or manner; it was the hearty expression of his unsophisticated thought.

"He is an Englishman," continued M. Danneris, "and will be very kind to you. Remember that you owe him respect and implicit obedience."

"Then he hates the Austrians--he whose country is free knows how to give sympathy to a poor Hungarian. This good Englishman shall see for himself how our noble people suffer at the hands of tyrants."

"Hush, hush, Jules! You must not talk like this. Is it not extraordinary," said M. Danneris, turning to me, "that even the very children of this oppressed race fill their minds with a sense of wrong?"

"No wonder," I replied, "if but half you have told me is true."

"When I am a man," flashed Jules, "I will kill the Austrians--they are not worthy to live."

"Jules," I said soothingly, "I am just going for a stroll over the fields toward Louvain. Ask permission from monsieur, your professor, to join me."

Danneris smiled. "That was well done," he said. "You cannot too soon become acquainted. Call here for the boy to-morrow midday. I will see that he is prepared."

When I said adieu to Jules that evening, after a long ramble over the endless corn fields that bordered the "road to Waterloo," I saw with pleasure that I had awakened in him a generous confidence. He too had, by his artless manner, inspired in me no common interest.

We started. Six days' journey to reach Vienna, a hundred-mile trip up the Danube to Buda, seven leagues in a _caleche_, and we should be at Dressdorf Castle.

Uneventful the days were. Poor Jules, weary with travel, talked but little, for which I was appropriately thankful. It was painful to see how he shrank from the gaze of any official who might question us a little closely as to our destination, and to watch his quivering lips as he muttered in response to my assurances of safety, "I trust all to the good Englishman."

As we neared the Austrian frontier he harped more on the subject of his Austrian wrongs, and I was frequently obliged to check him. A fire seemed consuming the boy, a burning vengeance toward the oppressor.