Chapter V: Part 5

While Greek women cannot vote, they take an active part in political life. During campaigns they make speeches for their husbands and brothers, and at other times traverse the country expounding the doctrines of the party they espouse. They resemble the English political woman of the style of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's "Marcella," a type scarcely to be found in any other country.

Even into slumbering Turkey, land of harems, Greek women are carrying modern ideas of education. There is a Greek girls' school in Constantinople; and, principally through Greek influence, Turkish women are studying European languages, reading foreign books, and looking toward the great world where women can be the comrades, friends, and equals of men, instead of their playthings and slaves.

All through the Orient the conditions of Turkey are practically reproduced. In spite of the abolition of the suttee, the poor widows of India have a mournful lot. It is only the most daring of Chinese mothers who would leave her little daughter's feet unbound. A few Japanese women rebel at giving up home and children simply because milord has tired of his wife; but to most the thought of opposing the customs of centuries is still remote.

Even Asiatic women, nevertheless, are progressing. Some come to America for the education their own continent cannot furnish. A Chinese woman doctor recently lectured on her country all through the United States; and Japanese women are found in our colleges.

THE LANDS OF EMANCIPATION.

In the Pacific Ocean, far beyond China and Japan, lie the only two countries in the world which fully acknowledge the equality of men and women by giving political rights to all citizens of twenty-one, regardless of sex. They are New Zealand and Australia.

New Zealand was the first by a dozen years to put her daughters on an equality with her sons. It was in 1867 that the cry was raised. "Shall our mothers, wives, and sisters be our equals or our subjects?"

The answer was given in 1893 by the full enfranchisement of women. In Australia the change came more gradually, province by province. But a few months ago the final concession was made and now Australian women, like their sisters of New Zealand, are the equals and not the subjects of their husbands, brothers, and sons.

More conservative than England's colonies of the Southern Seas is her great Northern possession, Canada. There widows and spinsters are held in high favor, for full municipal suffrage belongs to them. But the married woman is barred out. This is probably a survival of the subordination of the wife; but the Canadian woman is asking whether the acceptance of a husband should be considered unfailing proof of her inferior judgment.

PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES.

There are four States in the Union--Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah--where women have full political rights. They vote on every election from school trustee to President. They are eligible for every office from pound-keeper to Governor. They have sat in the different Legislatures and have filled many executive offices.

These four States do not, however, hold a monopoly of the women voters. Four more have some form of local suffrage, and in twenty-five women can vote on school elections. In New York, for instance, women taxpayers may vote on all propositions for the expenditure of public money. In addition, they have school suffrage and are eligible as trustees.

There are clubs and societies which enroll in this country about four million women. There are associations of different nations to forward the interests of all women regardless of country. Such is the International Council of Women, representing twenty lands. Its great congresses, meeting every five years, are the event of the year in the land where they convene.

There is the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, with its branches in every country. Indeed the boundaries of countries are disappearing before this new sisterhood of woman.

Of famous women it would be folly to attempt to speak. America is justly proud of her many clever daughters, but every nation has its brilliant women. Mme. Curie, who was awarded the Nobel prize for science, was born and reared in Poland and lives in France. This year the Nobel peace prize fell to the Austrian Baroness von Suttner.

Considering the progress of the past half-century, one can but wonder what the next one hundred years will bring.

RHYMES BY THE BARDS OF GRAFT.

SEVEN AGES OF GRAFT.

All the world is graft,
And all the men and women merely grafters.
They have their sure things and their bunco games,
And one man in his time works many grafts,
His bluffs being seven ages. At first the infant
Conning his dad until he walks the floor;
And then the whining schoolboy, poring o'er his book,
Jollying his teacher into marking him
A goodly grade. And then the lover,
Making each maiden think that she
Is but the only one. And then the soldier,
Full of strange words and bearded like a pard,
Seeking the bubble reputation,
Even in the magazines. And then the justice,
Handing out the bull con to the bench
And jollying the jury till it thinks
He knows it all. The sixth age shifts
To lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose--his is a graft!
For he is then the Old Inhabitant
And all must hear him talk. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans graft, sans pull, sans cinch, sans everything.

_Chicago Tribune._

WHATCHY GOIN' T' GIMME?

"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the youngest boy to pa;
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the youngest girl to ma;
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the maiden to her beau;
Everywhere the answer is, "Oh, sumpin, I dunno."

"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the little boy at school--
His just 'fore Christmas goodness makes him mindful of each rule;
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" sings the gamin in the street;
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" on our every hand we meet.

"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the yawning money-box
Meant to catch the coin to feed the hungry folks in flocks;
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the wretched and the poor,
Living in their penury a stone's throw from your door.

"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the great big world, of you;
"Lifetime full of usefulness, heart sincere and true?"
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" Hear it everywhere you go--
Always comes the answer, "Oh, just sumpin, I dunno."

_Baltimore American._

THE ORIGINAL GRAFTER.

"And Croesus lifted up his voice and cried, 'Solon!
Solon!' And King Cyrus ordered that the fire be extinguished
and the captive released."--_Herodotus._

There's a basis for a thesis in the history of Croesus--
Mr. Croesus, Greece's captain of finance;
It contains an exegesis on the clippings of the fleeces
Of the lambs, when Wall Street's breezes are not tempered, and the
geese's
Ravished feathers pay the piper for the dance.

"In the days of old Rameses, this here story had paresis"--
So says Kipling, and what he says goes with me,
But old or new, it pleases me at times to save the pieces
Of the stories of the glories and the grandeurs that were Greece's,
When they prophesy a modern case, you see.

The capture of old Croesus was a stunt of the police's
That for up-to-dateness seizes me with joy.
He was roasted like a cheese is, out there on the Chersonesus,
Till he hollered for his lawyer--"Solon!"
Ay, that's where the squeeze is--
"Technicality"--trial ceases--"vindication"--this release is
What the grafters count on nowadays, my boy!

_Cleveland Leader._

The Devil and Tom Walker.

BY WASHINGTON IRVING.

Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3,
1783, and died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York,
November 28, 1859. Irving is frequently spoken of as the
founder of American literature. Though fond of reading, he
had little taste for study in his youth, and did not attend
college.

Failing health caused him to go to Europe, where he traveled
for several years. His first literary work of importance was
his "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Shortly
afterward, while engaged in a commercial venture with his
brothers, he found it necessary to make a second visit to
England. The firm failed, and, while still in England,
Irving again devoted all his attention to literature.

The "Sketch Book" was the first of the young author's works
to win favor on the other side. This was followed by
"Bracebridge Hall" and "Tales of a Traveler." Irving then
went to Spain, and in the course of the several years that
he spent there he wrote "A Life of Columbus," the "Conquest
of Granada," and "The Alhambra." Subsequently he wrote his
two most celebrated biographical works--"The Life of
Washington" and "The Life of Goldsmith."

Irving was noted principally for his quaint humor and
graceful literary expression. The following story, "The
Devil and Tom Walker," is taken from "The Tales of a
Traveler."

A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size.

It was under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd the pirate buried his treasure. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be kept that no one was at hand, while the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again.

The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his wealth, being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate.

About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meager, miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common property.

They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveler stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger, and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.

The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband, and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.

One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a short cut homeward through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bullfrog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire.

Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among the deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, among the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool.

At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.

It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind.

He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his walking-staff into a mound of black mold at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mold, and lo! a cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.

"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.

"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice.

Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man, seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree.

He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard any one approach, and he was still more perplexed on observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian.

It is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body, but his face was neither black nor copper color, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair that stood out from his head in all directions, and bore an ax on his shoulder.

He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.

"What are you doing in my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.

"Your grounds?" said Tom, with a sneer; "no more your grounds than mine: they belong to Deacon Peabody."

"Deacon Peabody be d----d," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to his neighbors'. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."

Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody.

He now looked round and found most of the tall trees marked with the names of some great men of the colony, and all more or less scored by the ax. The one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who had made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.

"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter."

"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's timber?"

"The right of prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon the soil."

"And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?" said Tom.

"Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner in others. In this neighborhood I am known by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the red men devoted this spot, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and prompter of slave dealers, and the grand master of the Salem witches."

"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," said Tom sturdily, "you are he commonly called 'Old Scratch.'"

"The same at your service!" replied the black man, with a half civil nod.

Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild, lonely place would have shaken any man's nerves; but Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant wife that he did not even fear the devil.

It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest conversation together as Tom returned homeward. The black man told him of great sums of money which had been buried by Kidd the pirate, under the oak-trees on the high ridge not far from the morass. All these were under his command and protected by his power, so that none could find them but such as propitiated his favor. These he offered to place within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for him, but they were to be had only on certain conditions.

What these conditions were may easily be surmised, though Tom never disclosed them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles where money was in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp the stranger paused.

"What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?" said Tom.

"There is my signature," said the black man, pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into the earth, until he totally disappeared.

When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.

The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with the usual flourish that "a great man had fallen in Israel."

Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom; "who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was no illusion.

He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence, but as this was an uneasy secret he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply with the black man's terms and secure what would make them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject, but the more she talked the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her. At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and, if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself.

Being of the same fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort toward the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. When she came back she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke something of a black man whom she had met about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it was she forbore to say.

The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain: midnight came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the silver teapot and spoons, and every portable article of value. Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.

What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one of those facts that have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among the tangled mazes of the swamp and sunk into some pit or slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty, and made off to some other province; while others assert that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this it was said a great black man with an ax on his shoulder was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.

The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by; or the bullfrog croaked dolefully from a neighborly pool.

At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress-tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of a tree; with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.

"Let us get hold of the property," said he consolingly to himself, "and we will endeavor to do without the woman."

As he scrambled up the tree the vulture spread its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it.

Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it.

She must have died game, however: from the part that remained unconquered. Indeed, it is said, Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several handfuls of hair that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing. "Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it!"

Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property by the loss of his wife; for he was a little of a philosopher. He even felt something like gratitude toward the black woodsman, who he considered had done him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance with him, but for some time without success; the old black legs played shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for calling for; he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game.

At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual woodsman dress, with his ax on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advance with great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.

By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favors; but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it in the black traffic--that is to say, that he should fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused; he was bad enough, in all conscience, but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave-dealer.

Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar people.

To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.

"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black man.

"I'll do it to-morrow if you wish," said Tom Walker.

"You shall lend money at two per cent a month."

"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.

"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy----"

"I'll drive him to the d----l!" cried Tom Walker eagerly.

"You are the usurer for my money!" said the black legs, with delight.

"When will you want the rhino?"

"This very night."

"Done!" said the devil.

"Done!" said Tom Walker.

So they shook hands and struck a bargain.

A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting-house in Boston. His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit.

The country had been deluged with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements, for building cities in the wilderness; land jobbers went about with maps of grants and townships and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of "hard times."

At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land-jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices hurried to Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a "friend in need"--that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length, dry as a sponge, from his door.

In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon 'change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fulness of his vainglory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axletrees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.

As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent churchgoer. He prayed loudly and strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during the week, by the clamor of his Sunday devotion.

The quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly traveling Zion-ward were struck with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbors, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.

Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green spectacles on the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to drive some usurious bargain.

Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled, and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost, because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down; in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he really did take such a precaution it was totally superfluous; at least, so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following manner:

On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as a terrible black thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house in his white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator, for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months' indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another day.

"My family will be ruined and brought upon the parish," said the land-jobber.

"Charity begins at home," replied Tom. "I must take care of myself in these hard times."

"You have made so much money out of me," said the speculator.

Tom lost his patience and his piety. "The devil take me," said he, "if I have made a farthing!"

Just then there were three loud knocks at the street-door. He stepped out to see who was there.

A black man was holding a black horse which neighed and stamped with impatience.

"Tom, you're come for!" said the black fellow gruffly.

Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose. Never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse and away he galloped in the midst of a thunder-storm.

The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the street, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning-gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement. When the clerks turned to look for the black man he had disappeared.

Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp reported that in the height of the thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught sight of a figure such as I have described on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp toward the old Indian fort, and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that direction which seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.

The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected.

Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with worthless chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burnt to the ground.

Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all griping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, from whence he dug Kidd's money, is to be seen to this day, and the neighboring swamp and old Indian fort are often haunted on stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer.

In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that saying prevalent throughout New England of "The Devil and Tom Walker."

SHELLEY ON CHILDREN.

They were earth's purest children, young and fair,
With eyes the shrines of unawaken'd thought,
And brows as bright as spring or morning.

VICTOR HUGO ON WOMAN.

=You gaze at a star for two motives: because it is luminous
and because it is beyond your reach and comprehension. You
have by your side a sweeter radiance and greater
mystery--woman.=

_Les Miserables._

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr.

A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued From Month to Month
and Include All Players of Note.

How did he start? How did she manage to get the chance to show what she could do? Was it "pull," persistence, or the fact of being born in the profession?

These are the things playgoers--and who is not a playgoer these days?--want to know about the players who have "arrived." There is a good deal of variety in the answers herewith set down. In some cases it is rather difficult to state just when the real start was made; in others, baby-day debuts can scarcely be considered to "count."

But of one thing the reader may be certain: in no instance has permanent success been won without work, be the actor a recruit from the business world, the society drawing-room, or the ranks of the Thespians themselves.

MANSFIELD'S OPPORTUNITY.

He Failed to Earn a Livelihood as a
Painter, and Was Graduated from
Comic Opera to the Drama.

Although Richard Mansfield's mother was Mme. Rudersdorf, the prima donna, he was in no sense cradled in the theater. His infant eyes first looked on the light in Heligoland, an island in the North Sea that then belonged to England. This was in the year 1857, and he was brought up with the idea that one day he should become a painter. It was while he was a schoolboy at Derby, England, that he received the first lift toward the career which has placed him at the head of his fellows on the American boards.

The boys arranged to act "The Merchant of Venice" on a certain grand occasion known as "Speech Day," and young Mansfield was cast for _Shylock_. So well did he acquit himself then that no less exalted a personage than a bishop shook him by the hand with the words that must still ring in the now mighty Richard's ears: "Heaven forbid that I should encourage you to become an actor; but should you, if I mistake not, you will be a great one."

Preparatory schooling over, his art studies at South Kensington were broken in upon by failing family fortunes, and the necessity of earning money in the present rather than waiting to gather in perhaps greater amounts in the future. So, through the agency of friends of his father, he set sail for Boston, where an opening had been made for him in the big dry-goods house of Jordan, Marsh & Co.

But business was not his forte. He spent all his leisure time in painting pictures, which he found, moreover, he could sell very readily. He burned for the more artistic atmosphere of the city by the Thames, and, encouraged by his success in disposing of his paintings, he threw up his mercantile job and departed for London.

And now began for him seven memorable years--years of keen disappointment, of deep bitterness, of hope deferred, of actual suffering in body as well as mind. The kind of pictures he had been able to sell with ease in Boston found no buyers in England, and matters went speedily with him from bad to worse.

The incident he had used in his play "Monsieur," of his hero's engagement to play the piano and toppling from the stool through weakness induced by hunger, is drawn from his own experience. The episode occurred at a concert-hall, when he was possessed of only one suit of clothes and no home.

Mansfield Meets W.S. Gilbert.

It was his ability to play and sing that really kept his body and soul together in these awful days and nights, for once in a while, by a clutch at the fringe of friendships left him from the old days, he could obtain an engagement to entertain a company of literary or stage folk. He fell in with W.S. Gilbert on one of these occasions. "Pinafore" had just taken the public by storm, and the makers thereof were hastening to utilize the wave of popular favor by thrusting all of their available wares to a ride upon its crest.

"I think that young man will do for _Wellington Wells_ in 'The Sorcerer,'" Gilbert remarked to his manager, R. D'Oyly Carte.

It was to be a company for the provinces, and as Mr. Carte thought that the rather shabbily attired young person who officiated at the piano would not be exorbitant in his demands for salary, he decided that he would do, and offered Mansfield three pounds, or fifteen dollars, a week.

To the out-at-elbows, fate-buffeted artist, this seemed a princely sum, and he accepted the position with an eagerness he hoped was not as apparent as his necessities demanded it should be. But his spine stiffened a little later on when, having made good with _Wellington Wells_ and one or two other impersonations in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire, he asked for a raise of salary amounting to two dollars a week. Mr. Carte declined to grant it, and Mansfield quit.

But, on the strength of his first engagement, it was not a heaven and earth raising matter to secure a second, and, like all the rest of his ambitious British brother actors, he steered his course across the Atlantic. He found a chance to appear as _Dromez_ in the comic opera "Les Manteaux Noirs," which was done in New York at the Standard Theater, now known as the Manhattan.

This was in the early eighties. His next venture was _Nick Vedder_ in a musical setting of "Rip Van Winkle," after which he returned to the Gilbert and Sullivan line and appeared as the _Lord Chancellor_ in "Iolanthe."

A Lucky Misfortune.

And right here steps in one of the luckiest misfortunes that ever befell a man. For had Mansfield not turned his ankle while dancing as the _Chancellor_ in Baltimore he _might_ have remained in comic opera until he disputed twentieth century honors in the field with De Wolf Hopper and Jeff De Angelis.

The accident put him out of the cast and sent him back to New York, right in the path of A.M. Palmer, who happened to be looking for somebody to do _Tirandel_ in "A Parisian Romance." This was a small part, but, being in straight drama rather than comic opera, was regarded by Mansfield as a step upward, and he did not hesitate about accepting the engagement.

What followed has been told so often from the Mansfield side that the reader may be glad to get the story in the words of the man who made it possible for a fellow actor to lift himself in a night from obscurity to fame. I quote from "Recollections of a Player," by James H. Stoddart, whose last creation on the boards was _Lachlan_, in "The Bonnie Brier Bush," and who is now living in retirement at his home in Sewaren, New Jersey.

From the Memoirs of James H. Stoddart.

"After the reading of the play the company were unanimous in their opinion that 'A Parisian Romance' was a _one-part piece_, and that part the _Baron_, and all the principals had their eye on him. After some delay and much expectancy, the role was given to me. Miss Minnie Conway, who was a member of the company and had seen the play in Paris, said that she thought the _Baron_ a strange part to give me.

"'It's a Lester Wallack part,' she said.

"This information rather disconcerted me, but I rehearsed the part for about a week, and then, being convinced that it did not suit me, I went to Mr. Palmer and told him I felt very doubtful as to whether I could do him or myself justice in it.

"He would not hear of my giving it up, saying that he knew me better than I did myself; that I was always doubtful; but that he was willing to take the risk. He also read a letter which he had received from some one in Paris giving advice regarding the production, in which, among other things, it was said that _Baron Chevrial_ was the principal part, that everything depended on him, and that 'if you can get Stoddart to look well in full dress he is the man you must have to play it.'

"I left Mr. Palmer, resolved to try again, and do my best. Mr. Mansfield was in the play for a small part, and, I discovered, was watching me like a cat during rehearsals.

"A lot of fashion-plates were sent to my dressing-room, with instructions to select my costume. As I had hitherto been, for some time, associated with vagabonds, villains, etc., I think these fashion-plates had a tendency to unnerve me more than anything else. So I again went to Mr. Palmer and told him I could not play the _Baron_.

Young Mansfield's Triumph.

"'You must,' said Mr. Palmer. 'I rather think Mr. Mansfield must have suspected something of the sort, for he has been to me, asking, in the event of your not playing it, that I give it to him. I have never seen Mr. Mansfield act; he has not had much experience, and might ruin the production.'

"At Mr. Palmer's earnest solicitation I promised to try it again. I had by this time worked myself into such a state of nervousness that my wife interfered.

"'All the theaters in the world,' said she, 'are not worth what you are suffering. Go and tell Mr. Palmer you positively cannot play the part.'

"Fearing the outcome, I did not risk another interview with my manager, but sought out Mr. Cazauran, and returned the part to him with a message to Mr. Palmer that I positively declined to play it.

"The result was that Mr. Mansfield was put in my place. The result is well known.

"Mr. Palmer was delighted, and _I_ consoled myself with the thought that my refusal of the part had proved not only far better for the interests of the production, but was also the immediate cause of giving an early opportunity to one who has since done much for the stage."

Back To Comic Opera.

Oddly enough, in spite of his sensational success as the senile _Baron_, Mansfield's next engagement after "A Parisian Romance" had run its course at the Union Square Theater, was as _Koko_ in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado." But the halt of this company in Boston brought the young actor a chance to connect himself with the famous Museum stock there, and he bade good-by to comic opera for good when he first trod the Museum boards as _Chevrial_, following this up with the title role in "Prince Karl."

A dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson's powerful story, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," followed, also at the Museum. It was in New York, in the summer of 1886, twenty years ago, that saw Mansfield's practical start as a star, with "Prince Karl," at the Madison Square Theater, where he submitted "Beau Brummel" four years later.

Meanwhile he had been invited by Henry Irving to play in London, where he made his first Shakespeare production in the shape of "King Richard III."

RISE OF MISS ANGLIN.

The Clever Canadian Woman, in the Role
of Roxane, Leaped from Obscurity
in a Single Night.

From Mr. Mansfield it is but natural to pass to Margaret Anglin, who, from practical obscurity, leaped to distinction in a night as _Roxane_, the heroine of "Cyrano de Bergerac." This was produced at the Garden Theater, New York, on the 2d of October, 1898, and the next morning readers of the papers were asking themselves why they had never heard before of this young woman, who had almost shared equal honors with the redoubtable Richard himself.

The first meager information about her was furnished by Acton Davies, in his _Evening Sun_ notice of the play, from which it may prove interesting to quote a couple of paragraphs:

"It rarely happens that an actress scores a success so unostentatiously as Miss Margaret Anglin. All that had previously been known of her were the facts that she was a Canadian, and that last season, while understudy in the Sothern company, she played _Lady Ursula_ in Hope's play with such amazing success that it compelled Miss Virginia Harned to recover from a somewhat serious illness and resume her role after missing one performance. When Miss Anglin first appeared as _Roxane_ last night, a sigh went up from all parts of the house: 'Here's another blond and simpering ingenue.'

"But as soon as she spoke Miss Anglin arrested attention. Her voice was charming, and she moved about the stage with an ease which showed that, however short her training may have been, she was in every sense an experienced actress. As the play progressed, this young girl, who has neither beauty nor a fine stage presence to assist her, fairly captivated the audience by the grace and tenderness with which she invested a most thankless and trying role."

Thus was Miss Anglin started on a career in which she has taken no backward step. On the night before the twentieth century came in, when, as leading woman of the Empire stock, she came forward in "Mrs. Dane's Defense," she justified every prediction that had ever been made regarding the trend of her attainments, which she had varied since the _Roxane_ days, by proving herself an exquisitely pathetic _Mimi_ with Henry Miller in "The Only Way." And during the present season as the star _Zira_ in Wilkie Collins's revamped "New Magdalen" she kept people coming to the Princess from September until the middle of January.

How did she obtain her opening in the first instance, you ask? I had the reply to this from her own lips for the benefit of THE SCRAP BOOK audience.

"I had the ambition to become a professional reader. Rather an absurd one, wasn't it? The stage itself seemed to hold no special lure for me. Well, after some opposition on the part of my family, I came to New York at seventeen, with money enough to pay for a season's tuition at a school of acting, which had just been opened in connection with the Empire Theater.

"I was one of the very first pupils to be enrolled, and in spite of my indifference to the theatrical side of elocution I could not but be dazzled by the bait which Charles Frohman dangled before the eyes of the students. This was the promise of an engagement to four of the pupils who should acquit themselves with the most credit at the public performances of the school.

"The crucial afternoon arrived, and I went through my part. I dare say Mr. Wheatcroft, our principal, was more excited than I, as it was the initial performance of his pupils, and I knew that I had several other opportunities in which to make good in case my part did not show me up to the best advantage on the present occasion. Judge of my amazement, then, when word came from Mr. Frohman that he stood ready to give me the part of _Mildred West_ in 'Shenandoah' right away.

"To be sure, it was only a tiny role, but in my recollection now it bulks big, as it proved the gateway to a career which I had no idea of following when I paid down my four hundred dollars for a year's tuition in the dramatic school."

MRS. CARTER'S HARD FIGHT.

Compelled to Earn Her Own Living, She
Had Difficulty in Persuading Managers
to Give Her a Hearing.

The speed with which theatrical fame is made and lost is startlingly demonstrated by a glance through a book on celebrated actors of the day, published only ten years ago. Out of thirty players, only five are now as much in the center of the limelight as they were then. The others are either dead or have sunk back into obscurity.