Chapter I: Want to Go to Morrow (2)

Turning from the recluse to the men of the world, where can we find a more distinguished bachelor than Voltaire? Born in 1694, this witty Frenchman lived his memorable life among the gayest men and women of the world, and yet when his last hour came there was no wife to close his eyelids, there were no children to follow him to the tomb.

A weakling from birth, he was not baptized until he was nine months old. The Abbe de Chateauneuf, a cynical relative, gave him his first lessons in atheism and introduced him to Ninon de l'Enclos, the famous beauty. Ninon was so charmed with the boy that she left him a considerable sum of money in her will, with instructions that it be spent in furnishing his library.

The youth soon made his debut as a poet and wit, but his father, who abhorred verses, was vexed at his notoriety and sent him to Holland. There the lad got entangled in a love affair and was promptly summoned home again. His father's next move was to banish him to the country, but he was again disappointed in thinking that his son would reform. Voltaire began to write an epic poem on Henry IV, and, his talents as a satirist being known, was suddenly arrested on the charge of lampooning Louis XIV, and imprisoned in the Bastile.

When he came out he began to write for the theaters, and as a playwright and a merciless critic of creeds and other cherished beliefs his life was spent. He was a favorite in society, and the fair sex petted him to his heart's content, yet he never married.

Mme. Denis, his niece, for whom he had a great affection, looked after his house at Ferney, near Geneva, and with her he spent his last days. It was she, too, who accompanied him to Paris in 1778 and who watched by his bedside when, overcome by the fatigues of his reception in the French capital--the greatest triumph of his life--he lay calmly, waiting for the angel of death to call him.

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD (England--1717-1797).

Another distinguished man of letters who never entered the bonds of matrimony was Horace Walpole. Born in 1717, he entered Cambridge University, and there became intimately acquainted with the poet Gray. In 1741 he became a member of the House of Commons, but won little distinction there, his time and thoughts being almost wholly devoted to the study of art and literature. In 1765 he took a trip to Paris, and at this period the romance of his life began. He became attached to Mme. du Deffand, and in her society passed the pleasantest hours of his life.

Walpole was a polished gentleman, a charming conversationalist, and a letter-writer of the first rank. He wrote French as well as English, and it may be that his thorough knowledge of French aided him greatly in making his English letters the masterpieces that they are. There was in him, too, much of the Gallic temperament. Bachelor though he was, we discover in him no moroseness, and see only the gay man of the world, who knows how to enjoy life in a rational manner.

EDWARD GIBBON (England--1737-1794).

Born in 1737, Gibbon studied at Oxford, and at the age of fifteen became so zealous a student of history that he undertook to write an account of the reign of Sesostris. It was at Rome in 1764 that he conceived the idea of writing a history of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The entire work, however, was not finished until 1788. Five years previously he had gone to Lausanne, in Switzerland, and there he stayed until he was brought home to die.

A severe student, whose views about religion were the reverse of orthodox, he was by nature much of a recluse and seems never to have shone in society. Only one woman is known to have inspired a deeper feeling than friendship, and the fates were against their marriage. The lady subsequently became Mme. Necker. That Gibbon was sincerely attached to her is certain, and that had it not been for untoward circumstances she would have married him seems to be almost equally certain. Their paths in life, however, were divided; her fate was to become a shining light in the French capital and his was to spend the noon and evening of his life in solitude at Lausanne.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE (England--1540-1596).

A renowned man of action and a celibate was Francis Drake, the navigator and discoverer. The sea was his mistress, and fighting the Spaniards was his lifework. Queen Elizabeth crowned him with honors, and he repaid the compliment by capturing stores of Spanish gold and taking possession of California in her name. In 1595 he waged his last attack against the Spanish colonies in America, which proved unsuccessful, and in which both he and Sir John Hawkins died of fever.

Honored throughout England as a courtier and a seaman, Drake ever maintained his high reputation. Constantly at sea, he had really no home on land. No woman had a nest ready for him after his travels; no children looked out for his home-returning ship. For fifty years he waged a good fight against England's foes and then rested forever from his labors.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (Germany--1770-1827).

Great artists have much of the recluse in them, and Beethoven, the composer, was no exception to the rule. For art he lived, and the joys and sorrows of domestic life he never knew. Yet the story goes that he was once deeply in love and that his unconquerable shyness alone prevented him from becoming a happy lover and husband.

Indeed, his aversion to society was abnormal. Melancholy and morose, he shunned his fellows and found pleasure only in his music. Monarchs showered compliments and gifts on him, but to the imaginative eye he appears always solitary and abstracted. Seated in a reverie before his piano, in his silent, gloomy chamber, he wrote passionate love music for others, but he won no woman's love for himself.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (United States--1807-1892).

In America, also, there has been no lack of bachelors who have achieved fame. The poet Whittier is, perhaps, the best known.

The son of a Quaker farmer, his boyhood was spent mainly upon the farm, but he early displayed a talent for verse, and learned the art of slipper-making to support himself while improving his education. In 1829 he was made editor of a Boston paper, and soon, aside from his poetry, became a real force in the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts.

Yet in all his long and active life as editor, author, legislator, reformer, and poet, he had no thought--so far as we can tell--of marriage.

SAMUEL JONES TILDEN (United States--1814-1886).

There is perhaps no better example of the bachelor statesman in America than Samuel J. Tilden.

The story goes that he was once deeply in love with a Southern lady, but that fate, in some form, intervened. He never married, however, nor did he allow disappointment to interfere with his career. He became governor of New York, and later was nominated for president, being defeated by one electoral vote (though he was the popular choice by a majority of two hundred and fifty thousand). At his death he left more than five million dollars, chiefly to philanthropic purposes, of which the Tilden Foundation Fund of the New York Public Library received about one half.

Little Glimpses of the 19th Century

The Great Events in the History of the Last One Hundred Years, Assembled
so as to Present a Nutshell Record.

[_Continued from page 46_.]

SECOND DECADE.

1811

The French army under Massena was finally driven from Portugal by the British under Wellington. France, the south and middle German states, and Austria formed an alliance against Russia. Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, and formerly one of Napoleon's marshals, refused aid to France. Napoleon threatened Sweden and began preparations against Russia.

The United States seized West Florida. The American ship President and the British ship Little Belt exchanged shots, and friction between the two countries increased. At Tippecanoe, General Harrison defeated the Indians under Tecumseh. Resentment against Great Britain because of her conduct on the sea, and her assertion of her right to search American ships, increased in the United States.

The Mamelukes decoyed to attend a festival in Cairo and slaughtered by Mehemet Ali. Dutch settlements in Java captured by the English. The King of Rome, son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, born on March 20. Agitation in England against flogging soldiers and sailors. Luddites smashed machinery in Nottingham. Heinrich Kleist, German poet, committed suicide. Bishop Percy, ballad compiler, died.

=POPULATION.--Washington, D.C., 8,208; New York, 96,373; London (including Metropolitan District, census 1811), 1,009,546; United States, 7,239,881; Great Britain and Ireland (census 1811), 15,547,720.=

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that the Prince of Wales became regent of Great Britain.=

1812

The English under Wellington captured Ciudad Rodrigo, and began to press hard on the French in Spain. Badajos, held by the French under General Philippon, stormed by the British after a fight in which five thousand men fell. American privateers began to prey on British commerce. June 18, war began between America and England. The first contest was between the American ship President and the British ship Blandina; the Blandina escaped. The Essex, Captain David Porter, and with Midshipman David G. Farragut, aged thirteen, on board, captured a British transport with two hundred soldiers, and forced the Alert to surrender. The United States frigate Constitution sunk the British frigate Guerriere, but the British Poictiers captured the American sloop Wasp. Other naval duels ended in favor of American ships. Decatur, commanding the frigate United States, took the Macedonian, while the Constitution captured the Java. President Madison refused the services of General Andrew Jackson; Jackson thereupon organized an independent corps, which was reluctantly accepted when reverses came. General Hull led the Americans to Canada, and was defeated at Mackinaw. Hull surrendered Detroit to Brock, British governor of Upper Canada, who had formed an alliance with the Indians. Fort Dearborn (Chicago), was burned by the Indians, and the settlers massacred. In a battle near Fort George, on October 13, General Brock was killed, but the Americans were forced to retreat. Dearborn made a fruitless attempt to invade Canada.

On June 22, Napoleon, with over six hundred thousand men, began his disastrous Russian campaign. The Russians devastated the country as they retired before his advance. At Smolensk they inflicted upon the French a loss of fifteen thousand, fired the city, and retreated. The French, stricken with disease, suffering from lack of food, and beset on all sides by the Russians, pushed on toward Moscow. At Borodino, after a desperate battle, Napoleon won a disastrous victory; nearly a hundred thousand men fell on both sides. The French entered Moscow, but within a few hours the city was in flames--fired by the Russians at the order of the governor, Rostopchin. Russian peasants slaughtered thousands of French stragglers. Napoleon's peace overtures being rejected, he was compelled to evacuate Moscow, after blowing up the Kremlin. The retreat of the French was worse than the battles, and thousands of them perished from cold or lack of food. The Russians pursued, and won battle after battle. Of the grand army that invaded Russia, only a tenth recrossed the frontier. In Spain, the French lost Cadiz and Madrid, and were defeated by Wellington at Salamanca. In December, Napoleon hurried to Paris, crushed Malet's conspiration against him, and called for a new conscription of three hundred and fifty thousand men. This year more than a million lives were lost in the Napoleonic wars.

Louisiana admitted to the Union. Iodin discovered by Dr. de Courtois, of Paris. An earthquake in Caracas killed twelve thousand persons. The English publisher of Thomas Paine's books fined and pilloried. Luddite anti-machinery agitation increased in England.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=

1813

Napoleon set Pius VII at liberty, and arranged the Concordat between church and state in France. Prussia joined Russia against Napoleon, who fought a series of battles with the allies in central Germany, the most important being those of Luetzen and Bautzen. Wellington's decisive victory over the French at Vittoria--where shrapnel shells were first used in warfare--gave renewed vitality to the combination of England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden against France and Denmark.

In America, eight hundred Americans were captured by the British at Frenchtown, in Michigan. At sea, the American Hornet, Captain Lawrence, sunk the Peacock; the Hazard captured the British frigate Albion, but the Shannon took the American frigate Chesapeake, killing Captain Lawrence, who said as he died: "Don't give up the ship!" The Enterprise captured the British brig Boxer. On Lake Erie, September 12, Commodore Perry fought the famous battle which he thus reported: "We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop." General Harrison put an end to the Creek rebellion by his victory at Fort Malden.

Austria joined the allies against France, and Moreau, hero of Hohenlinden, and Bernadotte sided against their old leader, Napoleon. At Dresden (August 26, 27) Napoleon won his last great victory; Moreau was killed. At Wahlstatt, Bluecher routed the French, and Ney met disaster at Dennewitz. King Jerome Bonaparte was forced to flee from Westphalia. Bavaria refused longer to support Napoleon. The campaign in Germany culminated in the great battle of Leipzig, fought October 16 to 19, in which four hundred thousand Germans and Russians totally defeated two hundred thousand Frenchmen, killing or capturing nearly half of them, and sweeping Germany free of invaders. Meanwhile Wellington invaded France from the south, and Napoleon's empire began to crumble fast. Spain was forever lost to him. Napoleon dissolved the Corps Legislatif, determined to carry out his plans for prosecuting the war, and called for a new conscription of three hundred thousand men.

Cape of Good Hope ceded to the British by the Dutch. George Stephenson built his first locomotive. The Jesuit order restored by Pius VII.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=

1814

On January 1 Bluecher crossed the Rhine to begin the invasion of France. He was defeated at Brienne, but won at Rothiere, and with the aid of the Russians pressed Napoleon hard in a series of battles. In March the allies won decisive victories at Laon and Arcis-sur-Aube. England, Russia, Prussia, and Austria bound themselves together for twenty years more, England agreeing to pay each of the other powers two million pounds; France was to be reduced to its original boundaries. Napoleon refused the terms offered him. Marie Louise fled from Paris. The allied armies entered Paris on March 31, and on April 11, after trying to poison himself, Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau. He retired to Elba, which was assigned to him as a mimic kingdom. Talleyrand now became dominant in Paris, and the Bourbons were restored, Louis XVIII being crowned King of France. Ferdinand VII resumed power in Spain. By the Treaty of Paris, France retained her old territory, received back the colonies captured by England, kept Alsace-Lorraine, and much of the plunder gathered by Napoleon. Russia held Poland and Finland.

In June the Americans, under Brown, seized Fort Erie and fought indecisive actions with the British at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. In August a British force, under Ross and Cockburn, landed in Maryland, defeated the Americans at Bladensburg, and advanced to Washington. Madison and his cabinet fled. The defenseless city was entered by the enemy; the White House and uncompleted Capitol were burned, and the government stores and buildings at Alexandria were destroyed. An attack on Baltimore was repulsed, inspiring Key's "Star-Spangled Banner." On Lake Champlain, McDonough captured four vessels of a British squadron and put the rest to flight. Two hundred men from a British fleet on its way to New Orleans attempted to board the privateer General Armstrong (Samuel Reid, captain), in the neutral harbor of Fayal. They were repulsed. Three British vessels closed in, and after a plucky fight Reid and his ninety men scuttled the General Armstrong, and escaped, having seriously damaged the British fleet. Jackson took Pensacola, in Florida, from the British; he also killed eight hundred Creeks for their massacre of the inhabitants of Fort Mims, and finally broke the power of the Indians in Alabama and Georgia by his victory at Horseshoe Bend. During all this time New England had held practically aloof from the war with the British, giving little assistance to the other States. On Christmas Day a treaty of peace between England and the United States was signed at Ghent.

Norway accepted the King of Sweden as ruler--an arrangement only recently abandoned. The Bourbons entered on reprisals in France and Spain, having "learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Jesuits permitted to return to France. Despotism renewed in the German states. The Prince Regent of England excluded his wife, Caroline, from court. Count Rumford, scientist, and the ex-Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, died.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that the Bourbons were restored in France and Spain; Louis XVIII King of France, and Ferdinand VII King of Spain.=

1815

On January 8, the news of the peace not having reached America, Jackson won the battle of New Orleans, inflicting a loss of two thousand on the British, and losing only twenty-one men. At Mobile, the Americans captured another British force, but off New York Commodore Decatur had to surrender, with his ship, the President, to the British blockading squadron.

England restored Java to Holland, but retained Demerara and the Cape of Good Hope. The Papal States were reestablished, and the Swiss Federation formed. On February 26 Napoleon slipped out of Elba; on March 1 he landed in France, where he was received with joy by his old soldiers, and on March 20 he entered Paris, beginning the Hundred Days. Ney deserted Louis XVIII to join Napoleon, and practically the whole army followed. Louis fled to Ghent.

England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia at once united against Napoleon. In a few days he mobilized and equipped an army of one hundred and twenty thousand veterans, and in June he was ready to attack the British and Prussian forces in Belgium. At Quatre-Bras, on June 16, Ney fought an indecisive engagement with the former, while at Ligny, on the same day, Napoleon defeated the Prussians under Bluecher. On the 18th, Napoleon's army confronted that of Wellington before Waterloo. Before noon the fight began. Ney made repeated and gallant charges against the solid British squares, but his cavalry was slaughtered. Late in the day Bluecher, after a forced march, arrived with part of his army, and, joining the British, sent the French forces flying. Napoleon barely escaped, and the allies pursued the shattered remnants of his army. The Napoleonic wars, which had cost nine million lives and untold treasure, and had remade the map of the world, were ended.

On June 20 Napoleon reached Paris, and on June 22 he abdicated, the House of Representatives having adopted by acclamation Lafayette's motion that the chamber should sit permanently, and that any attempt to dissolve it should be high treason. On July 7 the allies again entered Paris; on the 15th Napoleon surrendered to Captain Maitland of the British ship Bellerophon, at Rochefort. He was taken to England, and thence sent as a prisoner to the island of St. Helena, where he arrived October 15.

Madison reelected President of the United States. Philadelphia began construction of waterworks system. United States victorious in the war with Algiers. The Holy Alliance formed, including all the rulers of Europe excepting the Sultan of Turkey, the Pope, and the King of England. Davy invented the safety lamp. Wollaston, English scientist, by means of electricity, brought platinum to incandescence--the forerunner of the incandescent electric light. Daniel O'Connell killed D'Esterre in a duel. Anti-corn-law riots in England. Robert Fulton died. Financial depression throughout the United States.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that for a hundred days (March to June) Napoleon was in power in France, Louis XVIII having fled from Paris.=

1816

Twenty years of continual warfare had left England with a debt of eight hundred million pounds, with business at a standstill, riots general throughout the country, and hundreds of thousands of discharged sailors and soldiers added to the unemployed. Fouche was expelled from France by the Bourbons, and Talleyrand replaced in the ministry by the Duc de Richelieu. The Inquisition was reestablished in Spain, and stringent measures employed in the effort to put down the revolts in the American colonies. Bolivar, in Venezuela, inflicted serious losses on the Spaniards. Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay, declared themselves independent of Spain.

The United States still suffered from a general commercial and industrial depression. First tariff imposed; New England, with Daniel Webster as its leading orator, was at that time for free trade; the South, led by Calhoun, was for protection. New England's shipping trade was practically suspended as a result of the new tariff. Seminole Indian uprising in Florida quelled. First savings-bank in the country opened in Philadelphia. Indiana admitted to the Union. Freemasons expelled from Italy. Goods of English manufacture excluded from Russia. Rebuilding of Moscow begun. First form of the stethoscope invented by Laennec, of Paris.

Gouverneur Morris, American statesman, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, English dramatist and statesman, died.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=

1817

The United States entered upon the prosperous period known as the Era of Good Feeling. Government land rapidly taken up by settlers, and people began to push westward. Resumption of the trouble with the Seminoles on the border of Florida. Jackson took command of the troops after many white settlers had been massacred. First line of steamships between New York and Liverpool opened. On July 4 ground was broken for the Erie Canal. First school for deaf-mutes opened at Hartford. First insane asylum in America opened by the Friends in Philadelphia. Mississippi admitted to the Union.

Depression continued in England; several Luddites executed for smashing machinery; eighteen persons hanged for forging Bank of England notes; habeas corpus suspended. Pindaree and Mahratta wars in India; Lord Hastings, the English governor-general, won a series of victories and greatly extended the British power. The Prince Regent of England hooted by mobs because of his conduct to his wife.

Eleven persons in Philadelphia and seven in Norwich, England, killed by steamboat boiler explosions, resulting in violent public opposition to steam vessels. Cholera epidemic started in Bengal, spread over Asia and Europe, crossed the Atlantic, and caused a million deaths before it was checked some years later. Beranger, French poet, imprisoned for blasphemy.

Mme. de Stael, French writer, and Thaddeus Kosciusko, Polish patriot and soldier in the American Revolution, died.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that James Monroe became President of the United States on March 4.=

1818

The army of occupation withdrawn from France. King Frederick William III of Prussia, at the instigation of Metternich and the Russian Czar Alexander, having become an implacable opponent of liberalism and popular education, began to suppress schools and colleges. General discontent in Spain, and several abortive uprisings occurred against Ferdinand VII, whose misgovernment had left an empty treasury and an unpaid army. Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, and Congress refused to rebuke him; negotiations with Spain for the purchase of Florida. Illinois admitted to the Union, and the contest over the admission of Missouri commenced in Congress. Pensions granted to needy Revolutionary soldiers, and to the widows and children of Revolutionary soldiers--the beginning of the pension system. The number of stripes in the United States flag reduced to thirteen, the number of stars to be equal to the total number of States in the Union.

Polar expeditions sent out both from America and from England. In the latter country, Abraham Thornton, accused of murder, claimed the right to prove his innocence by meeting his accuser in battle; under an ancient statute this was possible, and as Thornton's accuser declined the proposed combat, the prisoner was set free. The obsolete law was thereupon repealed. Patent leather and strychnia discovered. Steam first used for heating purposes.

Independence of Chile finally declared, after eight years of fighting, on February 12.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that Charles XIV (formerly Marshal Bernadotte) succeeded Charles XIII as King of Sweden and Norway.=

1819

Most of the Cherokee Indians removed from Georgia to lands west of the Mississippi. Congress agitated by the Missouri discussion; bill to prohibit slavery in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, excepting in Missouri, introduced, and passed the following year. Opposition to slavery increased in the Northern States. Yellow fever in New York. Alabama admitted to the Union. Wuertemberg abolished serfdom. August Kotzebue, German playwright and leader of the opposition to liberal ideas and education, assassinated by Sand, a Jena student; severe measures of repression, under the influence of Metternich, the great Austrian minister, followed. Throughout the German States censorship of the press was established, wholesale arrests of liberals occurred, student societies were forbidden, and ninety-four students were executed for wearing black, red, and yellow ribbons, the emblems of liberalism.

Richard Carlisle, of London, arrested for reprinting Paine's "Age of Reason." Velocipedes, hobby-horses, and other forerunners of the bicycle became popular. Oersted, of Copenhagen, made important discoveries in electromagnetism.

Queen Victoria born; James Watt, Scottish inventor; General Bluecher, Prussian soldier; and Warren Hastings, first governor-general of India, died.

=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=

1820

Riego's revolt in Spain failed, but was followed by other movements in favor of liberalism. In Madrid, the prison of the Inquisition was stormed, and the political prisoners it contained set at liberty. King Ferdinand was forced to convoke the Cortes and agree to restore the comparatively liberal constitution of 1812. Divorce suit of George IV of England before the House of Lords; when the prosecutor had just started his opening address, the peers rose suddenly and rushed out in a body to witness an eclipse of the sun; the suit failed. Sir Walter Scott was the first baronet created by George IV.

The Duc de Berry, heir presumptive to the French throne, assassinated by Louvel, February 13. The Carbonari, or charcoal burners, forced Ferdinand I, King of Naples, to grant a constitution, which he swore to uphold, but almost immediately repudiated. The people of Portugal also rebelled and obtained a constitution. Russia sold to Spain a fleet of fighting vessels, which proved later to consist of rotting hulks.

In the United States, the Missouri Compromise Bill was passed and signed by Monroe, who was reelected to a second term in the Presidency. Maine was admitted as a State, and Spain agreed to cede her title to Florida for the sum of five million dollars.

Hydropathy introduced by Priessnitz. Ampere discovered the galvanometer. Caffeine separated by Oudry, and quinin by Pelletier and Caventou.

George III, King of England; Benjamin West, American artist; Henry Grattan, Irish statesman; and Arthur Young, political economist, died.

=POPULATION.--Washington, D.C., 13,247; New York, 123,706; London (Metropolitan District), 1,225,694; United States, 9,638,453; Great Britain and Ireland (1821), 22,566,755.=

=RULERS--United States, James Monroe; Great Britain, George III, died January 29, George IV succeeded; France, Louis XVIII; Spain, Ferdinand VII; Prussia, Frederick William III; Russia, Alexander I; Austria, Francis I; Pope Pius VII.=

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young
ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making
cages.--=Jonathan Swift.=

POE AND LONGFELLOW

ON THEIR LOST LOVES.

Though the love of man for woman has been one of the most fruitful sources of inspiration to the poets, verses in which famous authors have sung the praises of women who have become their wives are comparatively rare. The belief is common that the natures of poets are more sensitive than those of other persons. If this is true, it is only reasonable to infer that a poet possesses the power of giving more forceful expression to his sense of bereavement than any other person would be capable of doing.

In the case of Poe, the poem "Annabel Lee," written shortly after the death of his beautiful young wife, is said to have been inspired by the writer's loss. Mrs. Poe, Virginia Clemm, a first cousin of the poet, became his wife before she was fifteen years old. Her wedded life was one of sorrow and hardship, and eleven years later she died of consumption.

The wife of Longfellow died in 1861. Shortly afterward the poem "Via Solitaria" was written. It was not intended for publication, and during Longfellow's lifetime it was not included in any collection of his poems, for the reason that its author regarded it as being too distinctively personal for the public eye.

ANNABEL LEE.

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE.

It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee,
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee,
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me.
Yes, that was the reason (as all men know),
In this kingdom by the sea,
That the wind came out of the cloud by night
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we,
Of many far wiser than we,
And neither the angels in heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
And so all the nighttide I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
In her sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

VIA SOLITARIA.

BY HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

Alone, I walked the peopled city,
Where each seems happy with his own;
Oh! friends, I ask not for your pity--
I walk alone.

No more for me yon lake rejoices,
Though moved by loving airs of June.
Oh! birds, your sweet and piping voices
Are out of tune.

In vain for me the elm tree arches
Its plumes in many a feathery spray,
In vain the evening's starry marches
And sunlit day.

In vain your beauty, Summer flowers;
Ye cannot greet these cordial eyes;
They gaze on other fields than ours--
On other skies.

The gold is rifled from the coffer,
The blade is stolen from the sheath;
Life has but one more boon to offer,
And that is--Death.

Yet well I know the voice of Duty,
And, therefore, life and health must crave,
Though she who gave the world its beauty
Is in her grave.

I live, O lost one! for the living
Who drew their earliest life from thee,
And wait, until with glad thanksgiving
I shall be free.

For life to me is as a station
Wherein apart a traveler stands--
One absent long from home and nation,
In other lands;

And I, as he who stands and listens,
Amid the twilight's chill and gloom,
To hear, approaching in the distance,
The train for home.

For death shall bring another mating,
Beyond the shadows of the tomb,
On yonder shore a bride is waiting
Until I come.

In yonder field are children playing,
And there--oh, vision of delight!--
I see the child and mother straying
In robes of white.

Thou, then, the longing heart that breakest,
Stealing the treasures one by one,
I'll call Thee blessed when Thou makest
The parted--one.

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr.

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

BLANCHE BATES BALKED.

As a School Marm She Got Behind Footlights
to Dodge Promotion from
Kindergarten to Primary Grade.

I knew that Blanche Bates came of a theatrical family, and that, therefore, she had an open sesame to the stage, but I did not know just when she made her first appearance, and to learn this for THE SCRAP BOOK I sought her out in the brief interval of rest she has, without a costume change, between the first and second acts of "The Girl of the Golden West."

"How did I make my start?" she repeated in answer to my question. "Well, I rather think it was because I balked at the idea of being known as a 'school marm.' I'll tell you about it. Although both my father and mother were on the stage, I didn't care for the life in the least. In fact, in my small young mind, I set up to being a very grand lady.

"'An actress? No, indeed,' I told myself. 'Something much better than that for me.' I was interested in young children and became a kindergarten teacher in San Francisco, where my mother was playing with L.R. Stockwell. But it was my very success with the youngsters that brought about the close of my career as a teacher. If I could do so well in the kindergarten, the committee argued, I was worth promoting, so one day they came to me with the announcement that I had been advanced to the charge of a grade in the primary department.

To Teach or Not to Teach.

"I suppose I should have felt duly honored, but I didn't. I sat down and began to look ahead, through the vista of years to come. A teacher, a schoolmistress! That somehow didn't agree with the ideas of the grand lady my fancy had conjured up. And, at that psychological moment mother came home with a proposition from Mr. Stockwell.

"It seemed that they were to give him a benefit, and he suggested to her, by way of novelty in the bill, that I should appear in a one-act play. Coming as it did just as I was wavering in my mind about my prospects in the teaching business, the idea caught me, and I said: 'Yes, I'd like to do it.'

"The play was 'The Picture,' by Brander Matthews, and I was the only woman in it, with the gamut of all the passions to run in the portrayal of the part. But I was too young and inexperienced to be frightened at the notion. I went on, and got through, and with the smell of the footlights possessing me I became thoroughly set upon a New York appearance."

After her experience with the Stockwell forces, Miss Bates secured an opening with the Frawley stock as utility woman at twenty dollars a week, which led to the realization of her hopes in the way of a chance on Broadway. And this came in the shape of an engagement with no less famous a company than Augustin Daly's. She made her debut in February, 1899, but lasted only two nights.

Too Good for Daly's.

"The resignation of Blanche Bates from Augustin Daly's theatrical company will give a good many persons the chance to say 'I told you so,' the dramatic critic of the New York _Sun_ observed at the time. "A short career for Miss Bates on that stage was predicted on the opening night of 'The Great Ruby; or, The Kiss of Blood.'

"She was called before the curtain four times after her best scene, and the applause was enthusiastic and genuine. That would have been enough to base the belief on. But there was a second and bigger reason, said the prophets, why her stay would be brief.

"The curtain later fell in silence on what should have been an impressive climax for Ada Rehan, and was lifted a single time after the ushers had incited a mild demonstration of personal regard for that favorite.

"It has never been customary to have at Daly's any other actress of dramatic strength than Miss Rehan. The roles secondary in serious importance have been played by charming but weak young women. As soon as rivalry began, as in the case of Maxine Elliott, it was removed.

"In the sensational melodrama from Drury Lane, with the singularly felicitous title or sub-title of 'The Kiss of Blood,' is a Russian adventuress, who has an honest love affair, though she is a thief, and who is the only female character to figure in the heroics of the play. Miss Bates was assigned to it.

"She had come from California, and was unknown here. She proved to be handsome, fiery, forceful, and very talented. She was a revelation to the first audience, and it was disposed to go wild over her.

"Maybe it would have been better for Miss Rehan if the part had been given to her. Perhaps she had disliked to enact a wicked woman. Anyway, she had chosen instead to appear as a vain, frivolous, but clean and cheerful, wife of a London tradesman.

"This had been written as an eccentric character, and at the Drury Lane it had been played with irresistible drollery by Mrs. John Wood. But Miss Rehan had no mind to look grotesque, and as to low comedy, it is clear out of her line.

"In a serio-comic scene of somnambulism, where Mrs. Wood had been a fright in curl papers and a funny nightgown, Miss Rehan sacrificed nothing to the comic requirements. She was as dignified and stately as any _Lady Macbeth_. For those reasons the sleep-walking episode, which had been very valuable in London, counted for nothing here, and at its end the actress had good reason to know that it had failed with the audience.

"It was then that experts foretold the withdrawal of the California actress. She appeared at Daly's only one more night. She had not found Daly's Theater comfortable."

Naturally, Miss Bates did not long remain without an engagement. She was snapped up by the Lieblers for _Miladi_ in "The Musketeers," and soon caught the eye of Belasco, who featured her in "Under Two Flags." Her real arrival, however, was with "The Darling of the Gods," which brought her seven hundred and fifty dollars a week salary and a percentage of the receipts, not a mean advance from the twenty dollars she had been getting from Frawley less than five years before.

MILLER'S STAR OF DESTINY.

It Led Him from His Native London,
Through Canada, and Finally to the
Old Lyceum Stock Company.

Henry Miller was born in London, but brought up in Canada. He was only a schoolboy when he chanced to read a magazine article about Henry Irving. This fired him with the ambition to act, but he set about realizing it in a most matter-of-fact and sensible way.

Instead of running off to join some theatrical troupe as a super, he began the study of elocution under the late W.C. Couldock, best remembered perhaps as the worthy miller, father of _Hazel Kirke_. This was at Miller's home, in Toronto, and here he had four years of grounding in the text of Shakespeare.

He was barely nineteen when the chance came, at a Toronto theater, for him to show what his studying had taught him. He was assigned to the part of the bleeding _Sergeant_ in "Macbeth," and the very fact that the company was merely a scratch affair, not far removed from the barnstorming category, really worked to young Miller's advantage.

He was the first leading man with the old Lyceum stock, in "The Wife," and the second at the Empire. In 1899, he expressed his greatest ambition as being the management of a New York theater. This he has realized the past winter at the Princess, where he organized and produced "Zira" for Miss Anglin.

STORM FOR MISS RUSSELL.

As a Child of Ten She Excited Rose
Eytinge's Anger Because She
Lacked Experience.

Annie Russell, like Miss Bates, comes of theatrical stock, so the door to the stage was on the latch for her.

Miss Russell's first appearance took place in Montreal when she was ten years old, and was preceded by a heart-breaking episode. Rose Eytinge was playing "Miss Multon" against Clara Morris. Two children are needed in the piece, and when Miss Eytinge ascertained that one of them--_Jeanne_, assigned to Annie Russell--had never been on before, she was furious.

"Do you want to queer the show when so much depends on it?" she demanded of E.A. McDowell, her manager.

The girl, Annie, chanced to overhear her, and fell to weeping bitterly. Miss Eytinge noticed her, had her heart touched by the spectacle, soothed the child, and allowed her to play the part. Later on she appeared in the chorus of a juvenile "Pinafore" company, and was soon promoted to be _Josephine_.

Then she made a big jump--to the West Indies, to look out for her small brother Tommy, the "child actor" of the company, later one of the two famous _Fauntleroys_ and now a dramatic critic on a New York paper. While with this troupe she was pressed into service to fill a big variety of parts, giving her a good foundation on which to build her big hit in the sun-bonnet of "Esmeralda."

She followed this with another success, in an altogether different line--the poetical one of "Elaine," and then fell ill. For some years she remained off the boards, close to death's door, and returned to them finally in a weakling play by Sydney Grundy, "The New Woman."

She took the taste of this out of the public's mouth by a triumph both here and in London with "Sue," and then went into the background once more with "Catherine," from the French.

Her real arrival as a popular star was made in the autumn of '99, at the Lyceum, in "Miss Hobbs."

MEDAL SET MANTELL GOING.

He Was Encouraged to Become an Actor
by a Prize Which, as a Boy, He Won
for Proficiency in Declamation.

Mantell, now in Shakespeare, made his professional start as a sergeant. This was in 1874, in the Rochdale Theater, Lancashire, England, under the stage name of Hudson. The play was "Arrah-na Pogue." He was born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, on the 7th of February, 1854, but was brought up in Ireland, where he won a medal at school for his proficiency in declamation. This turned his attention to the amateur stage, where his first appearance was made as _De Mauprat_ in "Richelieu."

He came to America in the same year that he began to act professionally, and he procured an engagement with the Museum stock company in Boston. But he soon returned to England, where he remained for four years, acting in the provinces, and when the States saw him again it was in 1878, when he and Miller were with Modjeska.

His first real lift into popularity arrived when Fanny Davenport engaged him for _Loris_ in "Fedora." In this part he was accounted one of the best-looking men who had trod the American boards, and he established a vogue for himself that paved the way for his stellar career of several years in the one play "Monbars."

GILLETTE DESERTED LAW.

Abetted by Mark Twain, the Future Playwright
and Star Took to "The Road,"
Which He Found a Thorny One.

William Gillette may be said to have reached the stage on the run, for he ran away from home in order to gratify his ambition to become an actor. His family were staid citizens of Hartford, Connecticut, where his father once ran for Governor of the State.

The idea was to make a lawyer of William, but after he got over a taste for mechanics, which led him to construct secretly a steam-engine in his bedroom, he conceived for the stage a craze that refused to be snuffed out by parental opposition.

Mark Twain, a neighbor in Hartford, was on the boy's side. His "Gilded Age" was being dramatized, and the author lent his influence to get young Gillette a place in the cast as foreman of the jury in the company of which John T. Raymond was the head. In this role he was entrusted with the onerous task of saying these four words in response to the question of the judge: "We have. Not guilty."

Gillette was barely nineteen at the time, and after the run of "The Gilded Age" was over he found himself in New Orleans without another engagement or the chance of obtaining one. Finally he secured an opening on these magnificent terms--agreeing to play without salary and to furnish his own costumes.

The post was that of leading utility man for a New Orleans stock company, and when, after serving for a while under these humiliating conditions for the sake of the experience it would bring, Gillette mildly suggested that he be paid a small honorarium, he was told there was one alternative that was always open to him--he could leave, which he did.

Thereupon ensued a rough and tumble period of existence for the young actor, who did not arrive at pleasant pastures again until he took to writing plays himself. And yet his first production to reach the footlights was by no means an overwhelming success. This was "The Professor," produced at the Madison Square Theater, with himself in the leading part, when that house was managed by an Episcopal clergyman and his brother.

Success Follows Failure.

It is such a superhuman task to secure a manager's attention for a play that the new playwright is prone to feel that the Rubicon has been passed once the manuscript has been accepted. But in reality this is only a halting-place on the roadside where he may tarry to obtain his second wind. And young Gillette needed all the recuperative powers possible, for when "The Professor" was brought to public attention the critics hurled at it their keenest shafts.

The actor-playwright managed to survive, although his play didn't, and, failing to be discouraged, he went ahead with his work on "Esmeralda." This was a story written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in which the Mallorys of the theater had become interested, and the dramatization of which, in association with the author, they had entrusted to Gillette. This proved to be a big hit, with Annie Russell in the name-part, and ran to over three hundred performances.

Another adaptation success quickly followed--that of "The Private Secretary," in which Gillette also played. Meantime he was at work on another original piece, "Held by the Enemy," a war drama which almost beat "Shenandoah" on its own ground in the race for popularity.

Inspired by the success he had achieved, Gillette was not content to go ahead on the same lines. He ached to branch out, to astonish folks, to do something big, and with his record behind him he had little difficulty in persuading Charles Frohman to go halves in the production of "Ninety Days."

This was a melodrama of the most lurid type, but the Third Avenue edge of it was supposed to be taken off by the elaborate fashion in which it was staged and the care with which the mechanical effects were looked after. It failed completely, running a bare month, and carrying down all Gillette's savings in its collapse. The disappointment shattered his health, and he retired to a cabin in South Carolina, where, after a time, he set to work on some more adaptations--"Too Much Johnson," "All the Comforts of Home," and "Mr. Wilkinson's Widows."

These were all produced successfully, which could not be said of what eventually turned out to be his most famous work; for "Secret Service," called originally "The Secret Service," was looked upon coldly when it was launched in Philadelphia, with Maurice Barrymore in the lead.

Gillette gave the piece a thorough overhauling, and it was put on in the new form, and with the author as the hero, at the Garrick, New York, in 1896, and made the hit that was really the beginning of Gillette's career of fame as actor-playwright.

BELLEW WAS A SAILOR.

He Studied for the Ministry and Ran
Away to Sea Before He Got Into
the Spot-light.

Kyrle Bellew, soon to follow "Raffles" with "The Right of Way," is the son of an actor who bore the reputation of being the handsomest man in England. He married the daughter of a commodore, and left the stage to enter the church, becoming Bishop of Calcutta. Harold Kyrle (by which name Bellew was then known), being the eldest son, was destined to follow in his father's footsteps, and studied for holy orders at Oxford.

But he soon found that he had made a mistake. His flesh constantly warred against the confining life of the scholar, and at nineteen he ran away to sea, in the old-fashioned way of the story-books.

After five years on salt water he found himself back in England, no further advanced in this world's goods than when he cut stick from Oxford. He wandered about London, not daring to go home, and without money in his pockets. It was at this crisis that he chanced to read an advertisement calling for a light comedian to join a company for the provinces, the salary to be two pounds (ten dollars) a week.

The blood that had come from his actor-father stirred in his veins, and he went at once to apply for the post. His good looks and pleasing address outweighed his lack of experience, and he was transported with joy at being engaged.

While playing in Dublin as _George de Lesparre_ in Boucicault's "Led Astray" his work and appearance so impressed a critic that he wrote to Boucicault, in London, about him. The dramatist at once sent for the unknown actor, and gave him a position in the company at the Haymarket, where in three years' time he rose to be leading man. From there he went to the Lyceum, under Henry Irving, where he first used the name "Kyrle Bellew."

TRIBUTES TO DEAD BROTHERS.

EULOGIES PRONOUNCED AT THE GRAVE BY SIR
ECTOR ON SIR LAUNCELOT, AND BY ROBERT
G. INGERSOLL ON E.C. INGERSOLL.

However unemotional man may be, his deepest sentiments are stirred when he stands face to face with death. The sense of loss; the uncertainty; the vastness of the mystery, which can be solved only by conjecture or the intuitions of faith--all these solemn elements call out the most interior thought and feeling.

Among the recorded utterances of grief we have selected two for our readers. Each is a funeral oration over the body of a brother. In literature we go back to old Sir Thomas Malory for the "doleful complaints" of Sir Ector de Moris over the dead Sir Launcelot, his brother. It will be remembered that after the death of Queen Guinevere, as recorded in the "Morte d'Arthur," Sir Launcelot "ever after eat but little meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead." They bore him to Joyous Gard, where he had desired to be buried, and thither came Sir Ector, who for seven years had been vainly seeking his brother.

The second utterance is the eulogy which was pronounced by the late Robert G. Ingersoll at the funeral of his brother, E.C. Ingersoll. Under similar conditions of grief no deeper note has been so eloquently sounded. Colonel Ingersoll touched the meanings of life, and, infidel though he was, ventured a noble hope in death.

SIR ECTOR TO SIR LAUNCELOT.

And then Sir Ector threw his shield, his sword, and his helm
from him; and when he beheld Sir Launcelot's visage, he fell
down in a swoon; and when he awoke, it were hard for any
tongue to tell the doleful complaints that he made for his
brother. "Ah! Sir Launcelot," said he, "thou wert head of
all Christian knights. And now, I dare say," said Sir Ector,
"that Sir Launcelot, there thou liest, thou wert never
matched of none earthly knight's hands; and thou wert the
courtliest knight that ever bear shield; and thou wert the
truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse; and
thou wert the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved
woman; and thou wert the kindest man that ever struck with
sword; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came
among press of knights; and thou wert the meekest man, and
the gentlest, that ever eat in hall among ladies; and thou
wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put
spear in the rest."

INGERSOLL'S EULOGY.