Chapter C: F. Birdseye Believes They Bring Undergraduates More Under Influence (2)

After looking over legal decisions in the various States, _Bench and
Bar_, a publication devoted to affairs of the law, estimates that at
ten years of age a boy of the laboring class is worth two thousand and
sixty-one dollars and forty-two cents; at fifteen, four thousand two
hundred and sixty-three dollars and forty-six cents; at twenty-five,
five thousand four hundred and eighty-eight dollars and three cents;
from which time the decline is steady, a man of seventy, by this legal
decision scale, rating at only seventeen dollars and thirteen cents.

By the same practical method of computation, one eye is worth five
thousand dollars; one leg, fifteen thousand dollars; two legs,
twenty-five thousand dollars; one arm, ten thousand dollars; one hand,
six thousand dollars; one finger, one thousand five hundred dollars;
and permanent disability, twenty-five thousand dollars. This is merely
an average as far as decisions have been examined.

One of the candidates on the Democratic State ticket, who was crippled
for life while an employee on a Missouri railroad, fought his case
through the courts for nearly ten years, gained it several times, but
finally received nothing. So practise varies as well as theory.

The estimates of the value of a man’s life are based upon an idea not of his value to himself, but of his value to others. The figures in individual cases would vary greatly with reference to whether or not the person’s death caused hardship to others who had been dependent on him. The value of a man to himself is unimportant after he is dead. His value to society at large cannot be considered in a cash estimate, since that kind of value often depends upon other than physical resources. His value to those who look to him for support can alone be estimated on the material side.

DOES HATE INCREASE EFFICIENCY OF ARMIES?

Southern Newspaper Takes Issue With an English Naval Critic Who Avers
That It Does.

E. T. Jane, the English naval critic, says the reason the Japanese defeated the Russians was that the Japanese hated the Russians and longed to kill them, whereas the Russian soldiers felt no consuming hatred against their ant-like enemies. The Columbia (South Carolina) _State_ takes issue with the theory, as follows:

Mr. Jane is wrong, both as to his facts and as to his theory. First as
to his facts:

The Japanese did not hate the Russians. They fought with tremendous
fury at times, but it was a calculated fury, never a whirlwind of
blind passion. Never for a single moment in the long struggle did they
show such fury as to lose sight of the essential principle of modern
warfare, complete self-protection. Nor did they show any passion on
the field of battle, such as slaughtering wounded men, or mutilating
the dead; yet the Russians were guilty of both atrocities.

When Russian prisoners were taken to Japan they were treated with so
much consideration and kindness that they were happier than they had
been within their own lines in Manchuria. Witness, again, the
magnanimous and truly magnificent treatment accorded Stoessel and his
garrison and Rojestvensky and his captured officers and men.

The Bravest Are the Tenderest.

Not from the beginning to the close of the war did the Japanese
exhibit any hatred of the Russians. They fought like knights, like
bushi—

The knightliest of the knightly race,
That since the days of old,
Have kept the lamp of chivalry
Alight in hearts of gold.

And considering Mr. Jane’s theory, that hate makes a good fighter, it
is as false to-day as it was in the heyday of chivalry. The poet is
right in his view that “the bravest are the tenderest, the loving are
the daring.”

The old British idea, inherited from the teachings of Nelson and his
half-corsair predecessors, that an Englishman “should hate a Frenchman
like the devil,” is a sentiment that could well have had its origin in
the place to which Nelson went for his sprightly imagery.

The best fighters of the world to-day are the men who can remain cool,
unperturbed, unblinded by passion in the midst of battle. This is
necessary in order that they may see straight and shoot straight; it
is necessary in order that they may be able to protect themselves from
the shot and shell of the enemy.

Contrary to the Scientific Theory.

It is conceivable that a warrior of the olden time might have been a
bit more effective when rushing furious with hate into the ranks of
his foe and laying about him with short-sword, or falchion, or
claymore; although even in such case the cool-headed warrior was
generally able to meet and overcome the raging brute. To maintain that
hate makes a good soldier is to challenge the scientific theory of
warfare.

Hate has never made a man more efficient in any good cause, and in
very few bad ones. Browning says of Dante that he “loved well because
he hated,” but Dante “hated wickedness that hinders loving.” No mere
hate adds anything to a man’s efficiency. It saps his real strength by
misdirecting it and spending it on the air in blind fury; it poisons
and corrodes the heart and mind.

Chaucer says that “hate is old wrath”; it is, therefore, a
demoralizing and debasing passion, weakening alike to body and the
mind. The recklessness it inspires on the battle-field or in the daily
struggles of life is ineffective against the coolness, deliberateness,
and resourcefulness of the passionless fighter.

EARLY RISERS PUT ON THE DEFENSIVE.

Philadelphia Writer Says Only the Lower Animals Go to Bed and Get Up
With the Sun.

The delightful Elia, who is the closest personal friend one may find in all literature, exposed certain fallacies once and for all to the satisfaction of those who are whimsically inclined. However, since not all minds have the whimsical turn, the fallacies continue to bob up from time to time with a vitality that is suspiciously Antæan.

Consider the proverb: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Any schoolboy will tell you that this is not so; and yet the fallacious statement persists—parents still preach it; aged money-makers explain their success by it.

Says the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_:

The very early riser is usually an opinionated individual, and it is
likely that his habit of early rising is his only claim to
distinction. More poetry has been written about eventide than the
dawn. This is quite conclusive, for poets are sensible folk and not
much given to the folly of early rising.

Some good literary work has been done in the early hours, but this is
exceptional. Sir Walter Scott, it is said, wrote the most of his
romances before breakfast; but a multitude of authors have produced
immortal works by the light of the midnight oil without smelling of
it.

Wilson Denounced Them.

Early risers descant rapturously upon the delicious freshness of the
morning air and other delights which it is reported can be enjoyed
about sunrise, against which may be offset the loveliness of the dying
day, the deepening shadows of the twilight, and the charm of
moonlight. The glories of the dawn rest in rumor only to the most of
us, and must be taken on faith. The suffrages of the majority are for
the sunset, and the majority rules in the Republic.

John Wesley wrote an excellent sermon on early rising. Doddridge took
pride in the fact that he was at work at five in the morning; but the
famous Doctor Wilson (Christopher North) scouted the whole brood of
sunrise workers in a lengthy essay, which is the comfort and solace of
all lazy and normal people.

Wilson refused to take it for granted that early rising is a virtuous
habit, or that early risers are a particularly meritorious set.

“I object to both clauses of the bill,” says the courageous dissenter.
“Early risers are generally milksop spoonies, ninnies with broad,
unmeaning faces and groset eyes, cheeks odiously rosy, and with great
calves to their legs.”

One of Primitive Man’s Habits.

This indictment was written in Scotland. Matters may not be quite so
disgraceful here. Wilson questioned the motives of his fellow
countrymen who sally forth at an impossibly early hour, and suggested
that their ambition is merely to get an omnivorous appetite for
breakfast.

“Let no knavish prig purse up his mouth and erect his head when he
meets an acquaintance who goes to bed and rises at a gentlemanly
hour.”

The lower orders of creation go to bed and rise with the sun.
Primitive man probably had this vicious habit. Civilization has
gradually reduced the ranks of early risers to the healthy and
vigorous persons who purvey ice and milk with much clatter when they
ought to be abed. The length of human life is increasing, and this is
due to late rising. There can be no doubt about it. The sun rises
hereabouts at this season [July] at 4:30 A.M., and few there be who
have the nerve to witness the phenomenon.

MANUAL LABOR IS MAKING NEW CONVERTS.

Men Who Have Won Their Way With Their Brains Now Give Their Hands a
Chance.

Men of standing are more willing to work with their hands than they used to be. The new love for outdoor life may be in part responsible; as also the growing interest in art-craft, and a steady reaction against the “machine-made.” In any event manual work has been acquiring new dignity.

The Saint Paul _Dispatch_ says that until within a few years we were so bent on emphasizing the intellectual that the manual had no honor.

To a certain appreciable extent this is changing. Men are interested
to-day in seeing how much they can do for themselves. It is not alone
that the art-craft movement has been inaugurated. We speak of a very
much more intimate and amateurish thing than that.

It is that men are resuming the ax and hammer for the little common
duties. They are making things for the house instead of calling in the
casual carpenter. Younger men still in school are employing their
vacation with carpenter work.

It is no longer quite so respectable to spend a college long-vacation
canvassing for books. It is now entirely respectable to offer one’s
services to a carpenter and be employed in some concrete service which
shall at the summer’s end have a visible aspect.

This is a genuine triumph, and will work toward the accomplishment of
that balancing of functions which has been much disturbed of late.

Now that men have reformed, we wonder if a similar development can be
expected of women. There has been the drift in woman work away from
the work of the hand to that of the mind.

School teaching has been a pervading ambition, and housework has been
an evil from which only the most skilled failed of escape. In essence,
one is no less worthy an employment than the other; each has certain
philanthropic aspects which should appeal equally to women. But one
has been exalted and the other debased because of the manual work, the
esteem of the work of the hands.

There is a slightly detectable drift back toward manual labor,
although much less apparent than in men’s work. But at least there has
been discovered a science of household economics, and concrete
exemplification of this science may secure recognition.

It will probably be long before women of colleges during the summer
vacations may with impunity, social impunity, go into the hotels or
the private kitchens, to work, as college men are going into the
carpenter shop.

Why there should be this invidious distinction we do not know, since,
so far as we can judge, it is quite as noble to feed mankind as to
provide shelter. But the evolution will be worth watching and
assisting.

A SHINING MODEL FOR PHILANTHROPISTS.

Farsightedness of Stephen Girard Made His Bequests the Most Valuable in
the Country.

The death of Russell Sage and the problem of the distribution of his millions were the subject of much comment, some of which led naturally to editorial reminiscence. The Saint Louis _Globe-Democrat_ reverts to the case of Stephen Girard, who, proportionately to the amount of his possessions, was probably his country’s greatest benefactor in the way of public bequests.

When Stephen Girard died in Philadelphia, in 1831, he was easily the
richest man in the United States, the estate he disposed of amounting
to seven million dollars. By will, he gave one hundred and forty
thousand dollars to relatives (he was a childless widower), a number
of bequests to employees, ninety-six thousand dollars to organized
charities, three hundred thousand dollars to the State of Pennsylvania
for internal improvements, and certain property in Louisiana to the
city of New Orleans for public improvements.

The residue, amounting to over six million dollars, was bestowed on
the city of Philadelphia, chiefly for the erection and maintenance of
a college to accommodate not fewer than three hundred white male
orphans, and the courts have construed a fatherless boy to be an
orphan.

Put City in Charge of Work.

Mr. Girard put the city in charge of this work, and since 1869 it has
been managed by a board of trustees appointed by the courts. Under its
care the value of the Girard estate has increased to thirty-two
million five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, three-fourths of
which is productive real estate, with the remainder in choice cash
assets.

Girard College, with its seventeen buildings, occupies forty acres.
Its pupils at present number one thousand four hundred and
eighty-three, and up to the present time it has fed, clothed, and
educated seven thousand seven hundred boys, fitting them to step at
once into active pursuits. This work will go on through the centuries
with increasing resources.

Girard had a striking version of what wealth is for. He was a natural
money-maker from his first commercial venture. He enjoyed the shaping
of business and making it pay. He was no easy mark, but, giving others
their due, exacted his own. His public spirit was highly developed, an
inborn trait.

As a banker in the period of the second war with England, Girard
personally saved the credit of the national credit more than once. He
served Philadelphia many years in various official capacities,
including that of councilman. Large internal improvements appealed to
him strongly, and he was among the foremost in advocating and
subscribing to them.

Set No Value on Wealth.

Girard set no value upon wealth, except as a means to accomplish
worthy ends, and these were more to him than his money, or even his
life.

In the year 1793, when Philadelphia lost a sixth of its population by
yellow fever, and most of its citizens had fled, Girard personally
took the inside management of a pest-house, ignoring all other
business for two months. In one hundred days of that autumn the
burials in the city exceeded four thousand.

At forty years of age Girard had only a competence, and wrote to a
friend: “I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my highest
ambition. I observe with pleasure that you have a numerous family and
that you are in possession of an honest fortune. This is all a wise
man has a right to wish for.”

Yet in the next forty years, largely through the fluctuations of
values caused by war, he honestly and usefully accumulated seven
million dollars, and devoted it to an everlasting mission of
beneficence to his fellow men. He wrote that “Labor is the price of
life, its happiness, its everything. To rest is to rust.”

Long-Headed In His Views.

He was long-headed in his views. More than a century ago his advice
for a large city was: “Build high, as there is only one ground rent.”
He would have none but solid construction.

A farm near the city was his place of recreation. On his journeys
there his lunch was under the seat, and on his return the space was
occupied with milk and butter for his domestic use. But he spent a
great deal of money on the introduction of rare plants and fine
cattle. He steadily declared that no man should be an idler on his
money, and he kept his word.

It is well said of him that “The spirit of work made him active; the
spirit of justice made him exact; the spirit of trade made him rich;
the spirit of duty made him brave; the spirit of patriotism made him
generous; and the spirit of love made him great.”

As a credit mark on the side of a vast fortune Girard is conspicuous,
and he fully succeeded in not dying rich, for he gave all to his
fellow citizens, making sure that it would be safeguarded for that
purpose forever.

Girard was a strange character. Penurious about small things, disagreeable in his personality, he was generous, beneficent, and public-spirited in a large way.

WHEN THE RICH MAN MARRIES A POOR GIRL

A Writer Asserts That Wealth’s Marriage Into the “Working Classes” Will
Benefit the Race.

It is not altogether increasing newspaper sensationalism that indicates a larger number of marriages between rich men and poor girls. There are, it seems safe to say, more and more such marriages.

The judge does not always ride sadly away and leave Maud Müller raking hay. Frequently he departs only to get a marriage license and return post-haste. And Maud drops her rake right gladly and directs the way to the nearest justice of the peace.

Says the New York _Medical Journal_:

Marriages are constantly occurring in the United States between young
men of great wealth and young women engaged in earning their own
living; but, despite the familiarity of the phenomenon, no such
marriage ever fails to cause apparently astonished comment, and, above
all, copious newspaper gossip.

In Europe, where those who have inherited wealth are taught and really
believe that they are of superior clay to the class of inherited
poverty, and the latter assent to the teaching, such alliances may
well cause a slight shock, diluted perhaps with some pleasure at the
condescension of the man.

In our country, however, where one family can hardly have the pas of
another by a single century, astonishment is ridiculous and out of
place. Few of our richest men are idle, and their work differs only in
magnitude from that of the poor.

If we grant that a century of idleness can enervate a family, a
marriage into the “working classes” can only be beneficial. Stock must
be enriched from time to time from near the soil.

Advocates of highly restricted interbreeding are fond of pointing to
the race-horse as a superior product of their principles. A
race-horse, however, is a poor creature from the point of view of
usefulness; he is a beautiful specialized bundle of nerves, and
requires more coddling than a healthy human baby.

Interbreeding does not work out well in the human species; the haughty
Austrian aristocracy, which considers the nobility of France and
England as upstarts, and ostracizes any member who marries into a
family much younger than the Cæsars, is not as a class strong and
healthy.

It is from Austria in great measure that our circuses secure their
giants and midgets, and many other of the various “freaks,” objects of
interest certainly, but hardly of pride.

Intellectually, we do not think that the statesmen of Austria, Spain,
and Russia are the equals of those of France and the United States,
while the English commoners have given a remarkable account of
themselves.

We should be disposed to applaud the good sense of any rich young
American who married a beautiful girl of poor but decent antecedents,
in spite of the fact that such marriages depend upon unreasoning
sexual attraction, like the great majority of marriages. As it is, we
can only note the care Nature takes of a race, however heedless she
may be of the individual.

DOES A STEPMOTHER MAKE A GOOD MOTHER?

Considerable Discussion Is Provoked by Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s
Assertion That She Does Not.

Vice-chancellor Pitney, of New Jersey, passing on an application to have two children taken from their divorced mother and placed in charge of their stepmother, is reported to have said:

I never knew of a stepmother who was a good mother. There may be such
instances on record, but I know of none, and I have had some
experience.

Naturally, the Vice-Chancellor has been strongly controverted. Thus the New York _World_ says:

The stepmother of fiction has a sharp face and a sharp tongue, and
rarely misses an opportunity to wound sensitive young souls.

But the stepmother of fact is usually quite a different person.
Certain individuals of scientific habits who have dabbled in the
domestic relations believe that it would be better for most children
if they could be brought up by stepmothers instead of mothers.

The stepmother generally has all the maternal instinct that any
healthy child needs, while she is not likely to be a victim of the
delusion that her stepchildren are so much better than other people’s
children that it is an impenetrable mystery why they do not die young.

But, of course, there are stepmothers and stepmothers, and doubtless
the woman who makes a poor stepmother would make a poor mother if she
had children of her own.

As a popular prejudice the aversions to stepmothers has little more
basis in fact than the aversion to mothers-in-law. Most men, in spite
of the professional humorists, are on excellent terms with their
mothers-in-law, and most women who have married daughters are
excessively fond of their sons-in-law. At its best the mother-in-law
joke was never a very good joke. Its humor consists largely in its not
being true.

Vice-Chancellor Pitney may know a good deal about the kind of
stepmothers who get into court, but the opinion of Abraham Lincoln
about stepmothers is more valuable, because he was brought up by one.

The Macon (Georgia) _Telegraph_ indicates why stepmothers may do better for children than a mother can.

The one defect in the God-like mother love is the inability to view
her offspring with an impartial eye, and see them as others see them.
And it would be far from a bold estimate to venture that the majority
of men who get into trouble in later life turn their thoughts back at
such times to an irresponsible childhood when a devoted and indulgent
mother’s love stood between them and the penalties of all childish
misdeeds.

The stepmother, on the other hand, endowed, as a rule, with the
maternal affection that springs eternal in the woman’s breast, but
unblinded by the other’s bias for the children of her flesh, more
frequently approaches her often thankless task, governed by a sense of
duty, rather than by affection merely, and many have there been as a
result, both men and women, Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s dictum to the
contrary notwithstanding, to rise up and call the stepmother blessed.

AMERICAN STOMACHS AS STRONG AS OF OLD.

Refutation of Statement That Our Ancestors Were Wont to Dine on Pork and
Doughnuts.

One English historian began to write a history of the United States, from the adoption of the Constitution to the fall of the Republic. The battle of Gettysburg stopped him.

Professor John Mason Tyler, of Amherst, lecturing at the University of Chicago, said that climate had been the principal cause of America’s phenomenal development, and that climate ultimately would cause its degeneracy.

The Baltimore _American_ argues against Professor Tyler, as follows:

Says the frenzied prophet: “Americans one hundred years ago lived on
pork and doughnuts to a great extent. Before going to bed they were
not satisfied unless they ate a large piece of mince-pie. We say
to-day, ‘What a barbarous bill of fare!’ We, who can’t stand anything
stronger than tea and crackers.”

In this lively sketch that, in a breath, spans a century and grasps
unerringly the social and culinary philosophy of a people, the learned
professor has done credit to the environment of his lecture. The
doughnut philosophy here propounded is worthy to rank with the potato
philosophy of an economic school that has long gone into extinction,
while the dire predictions it made are embalmed in the history of
intellectual errors.

The notion of a doughnut and salt pork diet, with a hunk of mince-pie
as a nightcap, is a gentle evolution in social fiction. The American
palate of a hundred years ago was as susceptible to the temptation of
fried chicken and apple cider as it is to-day.

If the Amherst teacher could sit down to the cuisine upon which the
Americans of a hundred years ago dined, he would be apt to revise his
estimate of it as a “barbarous diet.” If he does not believe this, let
him peruse a colonial cook-book, but with the warning that thereafter
the diet of the present day will appear flaccid and unprofitable.

As to the charge that we of this age coddle our palates with tea and
crackers, let the anemic professor speak for himself. The healthy
American digestion tackles fearlessly canvasback duck, diamondback
terrapin, and Welsh rarebit, highly condimented and in complemental
relation with beverages more exhilarating, though, perhaps, less
deadly, than tea, and his slumber makes no record of a wrecking of the
American constitution by nightmares or disturbing physical emotions.

The breakdown of the American nation is conditional upon the collapse
of the American constitution, then long after Macaulay’s solitary New
Zealander seats himself on a broken span of London Bridge to view the
débris of the English nation, the Stars and Stripes will still be
waving over the American “constitution.”

In the meanwhile, some consolation may be derived from the fact that
the American type of soldier is the finest the world affords. Darwin
drew attention to the fact that the European in the American army
tended to conform to the American type in stature and vigor under the
influence of the American climate.

LOVE IN A COTTAGE.

Just a century ago, in 1806, was born Nathaniel Parker Willis, in
Portland, Maine. Willis was a fellow townsman of Longfellow, but while
the latter finally made his way to Boston and Cambridge, Willis found
New York the most congenial residence. There he was successively
editor of the _Mirror_, the _Corsair_, and the _Home Journal_,
enlivening their pages with an inexhaustible supply of witty,
well-timed, and sometimes brilliant prose and verse. He was the first
American to write _vers de société_ that deserved preservation, and
that were at once light, amusing, and in good taste.

Willis affected an extreme elegance in dress, manner, and
surroundings. He pretended to write amid rare flowers, with old vines
beside him, and to use an amber penholder in the summer to cool his
palm. Those who disliked this display of foppery were wont to explain
the initials of his name as representing “Namby-Pamby.” But with all
his superficial frivolity, Willis was a man of genuine talent. His
early poems were quite as popular as Longfellow’s. He was the first
American author to make a good living wholly by his pen. He discovered
and gave substantial aid to many younger men of genius, among them
James Russell Lowell and Bayard Taylor, and he first drew the
attention of his countrymen to the great gifts of Thackeray, long
before “Vanity Fair” had been written, and while the future novelist
was still known only as a writer for the English magazines. He even
engaged Thackeray to contribute a series of papers from Paris to the
New York _Corsair_—this as far back as 1838. Willis also, in his own
letters from Europe, created a model for all foreign correspondents
since that time; and his collected epistles, “Pencilings by the Way,”
still remain the most vivid sketches in existence of the men and women
who were famous when Victoria first became queen.

The little poem here reprinted is one of the light, half-mocking
productions, which its author wrote to amuse his urban public. It
voices the sentiment of the young-man-about-town in the New York of
the early fifties. Perhaps the best comment upon it is the fact that
Willis himself, whenever he could possibly do so, was accustomed to
leave the city and enjoy the rustic pleasures of his own country-house
at Idlewild on the Hudson.

BY NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

They may talk of love in a cottage,
And bowers of trellised vine,
Of nature bewitchingly simple,
And milkmaids half divine;
They may talk of the pleasure of sleeping
In the shade of a spreading tree,
And a walk in the fields at morning,
By the side of a footstep free!

But give me a sly flirtation
By the light of a chandelier—
With music to play in the pauses,
And nobody very near;
Or a seat on a silken sofa,
With a glass of pure old wine,
And mama too blind to discover
The small white hand in mine.

Your love in a cottage is hungry;
Your vine is a nest for flies;
Your milkmaid shocks the Graces,
And simplicity talks of pies!
You lie down to your shady slumber
And wake with a bug in your ear,
And your damsel that walks in the morning
Is shod like a mountaineer.

True love is at home on a carpet,
And mightily likes his ease;
And true love has an eye for a dinner,
And starves beneath shady trees.
His wing is the fan of a lady;
His foot’s an invisible thing;
And his arrow is tipped with a jewel,
And shot from a silver string.

Exhumations of Noted Persons.

BY E. B. MITCHELL.

Curiosity and a Frenzied Spirit of Vengeance the Principal Causes for the Desecration of the Tombs of the Great—Dead Pope Placed on Trial—A Skeleton Crowned as Queen.

_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

Good Frend for Jesus sake forbeare,
To digg the Dust enclosed Heare:
Blest be ye Man yt spares thes stones
And Curst be he yt moves my bones.
_Epitaph on Shakespeare’s Tomb._

Possibly, on account of this epitaph which Shakespeare had inscribed above his grave in the church of Stratford-on-Avon and which it would need a bold man to disregard now, the ashes of the great dramatist have been more fortunate than those of many distinguished men. Despite our inherent horror of disturbing the dead and our respect for the grave as consecrated ground, changed conditions, and, in some cases, mere curiosity, have made the list of celebrities whose bones have been moved a long one.

History shows that in securing immunity for one’s grave, neither the lapse of centuries nor past greatness is of any avail. It is on record that in the chaos of the end of the ninth century a pope had the body of his predecessor dug from the tomb, dressed it in its pontifical vestments, and had it tried and condemned by a synod. The hideous mockery terminated only when the mutilated body was thrown into the Tiber.

Dead Pope on Trial.

This scene, which marks the lowest point to which civil war and anarchy in Rome reduced the papacy, took place in February or March of 897. About eleven months before, Pope Formosus had died after a stormy pontificate of five years. He was followed to the grave in fifteen days by his successor. Then Stephen VI seated himself in the chair of St. Peter. Stephen belonged to the faction opposed to Formosus’s ally, Arnulf of Germany. Party feeling and party hatred ran high. The men temporarily in power had injuries to avenge, and Stephen, in a fit of almost insane fury, determined to try his predecessor.

On what charge the dead Formosus was actually tried is not now very clear—probably this detail was never considered of much importance. Stephen summoned a synod, dragged the corpse out of the grave, dressed it in its full pontifical robes and himself presided over the court. He made no pretence of being an impartial judge, however. Paying no attention to the trembling deacon to whom had been assigned the hopeless task of defending the dead Pope, Stephen turned savagely on the corpse.

“Why hast thou in thy ambition usurped the Apostolic Seat, who wast previously only Bishop of Portus?” he demanded.

The synod played out its part in the wretched farce. Formosus was convicted and solemnly deposed. The vestments were torn from the body of the dead pontiff, the three fingers of the right hand used in bestowing the benediction were cut off and the mummy, hauled through the streets by the mob, was thrown into the Tiber. A few months later Stephen was strangled in his palace.

Equally brutal was the treatment given to Cromwell’s body when the Restoration brought Charles II back to England and the cavaliers to power. Cromwell had directed that his interment be in Westminster Abbey, and every effort was made to have his funeral as impressive as that of any crowned king. The attempt, however, was not altogether successful. In his famous diary John Evelyn notes:

Cromwell’s Body Hanged.

“It was the joyfullest funeral that ever I saw, for there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with as barbarous noise, drinking, and taking tobacco in the streets.”

On the eve of January 30, 1661, the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and the regicide Bradshaw were dug from their graves. The next day they were dragged to Tyburn and hanged with their faces to Westminster Hall, where they had sentenced Charles to death. The corpses were buried at the foot of the gallows, where Connaught Square is now, and the heads, impaled on pikes, remained for years above the entrance of Westminster Hall.

After many years a high wind carried the head of the Lord Protector down. A soldier made off with it, and in 1779 it was on exhibition in Old Bond Street. A private family is now in possession of the ghastly relic—the features so well preserved that the large wart over one eye which was so noticeable in life is still plainly visible.

Wyclif’s Bones Burned.

The bones of Wyclif were treated in much the same way by the Council of Constance, in 1414, though there was, in his case, more of ceremony and less of mere hatred. The remains of the English reformer were burned and the ashes thrown into a brook, which, of course, ultimately emptied into the ocean.

“Thus,” says one writer, “the ashes of Wyclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.”

But it is not always the enemies of the dead who disturb their bones. There is no more remarkable tradition than the crowning of the dead Queen Inez de Castro when her lord, young Pedro, ascended the throne of Portugal in the fourteenth century. The death of Inez, murdered by the command of her father-in-law, Alfonso XII, had been avenged by Don Pedro, but the torture of the assassins did not satisfy the prince.

Queen’s Skeleton Crowned.

The tradition is to the effect, it is said, that when Pedro came to the throne a few years later, he had the bones of Inez taken from the grave, placed upon a magnificent throne, robed in royal purple, and crowned queen of Portugal. To the skeleton the courtiers did homage, one after another kissing the fleshless hand in which the scepter had been thrust. Then, lying in her rich robes, her crown upon her grinning skull, in a chariot drawn by twenty coal-black mules and with a funeral cortège which extended several miles, the skeleton of Inez was driven to the royal abbey of Alcobaca, where the bones were reinterred.

Even then, however, the dead queen was not to be left in peace. In 1810 the French troops broke into the abbey of Alcobaca, destroyed the magnificent monument which Pedro had erected, and tore open the coffin. The yellow hair of the queen was cut from the skull and preserved in reliquaries.

Reburial of Napoleon.

Like those of Inez, the bones of Napoleon were buried a second time with all the pomp and ceremony that a great nation could devise. The body of the great emperor was originally buried under a weeping willow in a secluded hollow among the rocks of Saint Helena. With the Revolution of 1830, however, came a change in the political situation, and this made it possible for the remains of the conqueror to be removed from the lonely island-grave to the magnificent tomb under the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides.

The body was exhumed at midnight on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Napoleon’s arrival at Saint Helena. For nine hours the engineers labored to dig away the earth from the vault, to remove the solid masonry and to lift the heavy slab which covered the sarcophagus. Within a triple coffin of tin, lead, and mahogany lay the emperor, dressed in white waistcoat and breeches, black cravat, long boots and cocked hat, with the cloak he wore at Marengo spread over his feet.

Body of André Disinterred.

The year that Napoleon died the body of Major John André was taken back to England. André had been buried in a field close to the spot where he had been hanged as a spy, and the grave was marked by two small cedars and by a peach-tree planted at its head. Some of the newspapers had declared that “any honor paid Major André’s remains was casting an imputation on General Washington and the officers who tried him.” Such logic as this had so stirred some ultra-patriotic citizens of Tappan that when Mr. Buchanan, the British consul in New York, arrived there to exhume the body quite a crowd was prepared to express its emphatic disapproval.

Argument being obviously of no avail, Buchanan told the little mob that it was an Irish custom to drink spirits before visiting a grave and that this custom he always observed. In a few minutes the crowd was too much occupied with the Irish custom to annoy Buchanan and the consul proceeded with his task.

The lid of the coffin was found to be broken and the roots of the peach-tree had entwined themselves completely around the skull. The bones were taken to a house near by, whence warned of rumors that the body would be flung into the river, Buchanan was obliged to carry off the coffin like a thief in the night, driving twenty-four miles to New York.

Corpse of Paul Jones Identified.

The recovery of the body of John Paul Jones is still fresh in the public mind. Unearthed after a protracted search in an abandoned Paris cemetery, the features and body were so well preserved that there could be no doubt of the identity. Once this was established, the transfer of the body from French to American soil was made the occasion of a solemn ceremony, in the course of which five hundred. American bluejackets marched through the streets of Paris.

The remains of Jones, André, and Napoleon were exhumed in order that they might be buried again with greater honor. In Westminster Abbey mere accident or curiosity has several times disturbed the rest of the famous dead.

The body of Ben Jonson has been especially unfortunate. Having obtained a grant of “eighteen inches of square ground” in the Abbey, the poet was said to have been buried there in an upright position with the famous epitaph, “O Rare Ben Jonson,” over his head. In 1849 a new grave was being dug close by when loose sand poured in and the clerk saw:

“The two leg-bones of Jonson fixed bolt upright in the sand as though the body had been buried in the upright position, and the skull came rolling down among the sand, from a position above the leg-bones, to the bottom of the newly made grave. There was still hair upon it and it was of a red color.”

Pope’s Skull in Museum.

Another poet has suffered in much the same manner. The skull of Alexander Pope is now in a private museum. On some occasion the coffin was opened and a phrenologist gave two hundred and fifty dollars to the sexton to be allowed to take the skull home overnight. In the morning another skull was substituted and the poet’s deposited in the phrenologist’s museum.

Against the curiosity of science there is no safeguard. Recently Kaiser Wilhelm had the grave of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle opened again, this time for the purpose of photographing the fabrics in which the hero was wrapped. Against this violation of the sepulcher Jules Claretie, in an article written for the Paris _Figaro_ and translated for the Boston _Transcript_, has protested vigorously. Claretie says:

After such combats, labors, and mighty thoughts, he dreamed of repose,
like the poet Moses. Repose! There is none in this world for the
illustrious dead. We waken them through mere curiosity.

At Charlemagne’s Tomb.

Charlemagne’s grandsons believed that they were heirs to his glory
because for a moment they looked upon his skeleton or exposed his
remains to view.

Otho first opened the sepulcher. Cornélius has depicted that fantastic
scene in a celebrated fresco. Frederick Barbarossa followed Otho’s
example. He stood alive before the corpse. On his stone throne, he
contemplated the emperor, with huge hand grasping the scepter and the
globe.

Then the dead Charlemagne was torn from his marble resting-place; his
skull and the bones of his arms went to enrich the treasure of the
cathedral crypt. The throne became sacred in the eyes of emperors, and
Charlemagne—mutilated and dismembered—was partially restored to his
marble vault.

Barbarossa was more fortunate; he was drowned in the Cydnus, and no
one could profane his body.

Another emperor—Napoleon, in 1804—wanted in his turn to behold the
fantom. Bareheaded and preceded by Duroc, the emperor contemplated the
sacred bones.

“So this is he who was master of the world!”

And Napoleon, deeply moved, turned toward Canon Camus.

“Pray, Monsieur l’Abbé; pray for France, whose greatness Charlemagne
founded.”

Then, when the stone had been replaced, Napoleon vouchsafed the
“fantom emperor” a renewal of slumber.

Removed Emperor’s Shrouds.

Victor Hugo, while walking through Aix-la-Chapelle, complained even
then of the innumerable violations to which the great Charlemagne’s
tomb had been subjected.

“Some day,” said he, “I suppose that a pious and holy thought will
enter the mind of some king or emperor. Charlemagne’s remains will be
taken from the chest where the sacristans put them and again laid in
his tomb.

“What is left of his bones will be religiously reassembled. He will
regain his Byzantine vault, his bronze doors, and his marble armchair
with its fourteen plates of gold, and the kneeling visitor will be
enabled to behold, gleaming vaguely in the darkness, that fantom—crown
on head and orb in hand—that once was Charlemagne.”

Well, no such thing was accomplished. Once more the dignitaries of the
empire have assembled to open a coffin. The two shrouds that enveloped
Charlemagne have been removed—those Oriental fabrics that some calif
had sent to the emperor—and since, as the telegraphic despatches say,
“the light was not sufficient to operate,” they have been sent to a
Friedrichstrasse photographer, who will find light enough, egad!

Voltaire and Rousseau.

We have dug up Richelieu, opened Bossuet’s tomb, disturbed the great
Napoleon’s coffin. A few years ago I saw the sarcophagi of Voltaire
and Rousseau opened at the Panthéon. I saw the skull of the author of
“Candide” passed from hand to hand; I saw men’s finger-nails scratch
away its reddish coating (probably due, as Monsieur Berthelot told us,
to the sublimate that had preserved the corpse).

In his leaden coffin, with arms crossed upon his breast, I saw the man
who had written “The Social Contract”; I saw the onlookers—indifferent
or curious—poke their fingers into the empty sockets now bereft of
those eyes that had once gazed upon Madame de Warrens, or try to
snatch from a jaw-bone—“as a souvenir, monsieur!”—one of those teeth
that had touched cherries picked In Madame Gallet’s company.

I was present at that Dance of Death which men call “an historical
exhumation.” And the inevitable photographer was there at the
Panthéon, just as at Aix-la-Chapelle. Great men’s bones are hustled
about, their skulls are pried into and weighed, as if, forsooth, some
sparkle of genius could be got out of them!

Edward the Confessor.

Other kings than Charlemagne have had their slumbers broken. Since the coffin of Edward the Confessor was placed, on January 6, 1066, before the high altar of Westminster Abbey it has been opened for one purpose or another three times. Venerated as the last lineal descendant of Cedric, Edward was buried in his full regalia, the crown on his head, the gold crucifix in his hand, and the pilgrim’s ring, said to have belonged to St. John, on his finger.

It was thus that the body was found when Bishop Gundulf opened the coffin thirty years later and plucked a hair from the dead king’s long white beard. The coffin was opened again when Edward was canonized in 1163, and the body of the saint was then found to be in complete preservation.

Abbot Laurence, however, was harder to satisfy than Gundulf. From the dead man’s finger he took the ring of St. John, depositing it in the abbey treasury as a relic, and the vestments in which the corpse was wrapped were made into three magnificent copes. Another century passed and then Henry III had the coffin opened, when he removed it to the east of the high altar, where it has since remained.

Identifying Dead Kings.

Equally troubled has been the repose of Edward I, “The Hammer of the Scots.” When the old warrior died in 1307, he ordered that his flesh should be boiled and his bones carried at the head of an English army until Scotland should be conquered. Though this wish was calmly disregarded, one custom which antiquarians have been at a loss to explain, may be in some way connected with it. Until the overthrow of Richard III on Bosworth Field ended the Plantagenet rule, the tomb of Edward I was opened every two years and the cerecloth renewed. With the Tudors this strange rite fell into disuse.

For three hundred years the body of Edward was left in the tomb in peace. Then the Society of Antiquarians opened the coffin in 1771. The king was lying in his royal robes, the “long shanks” from which he derived his nickname, covered with a cloth of gold. Six feet two inches was the dead man’s height. Lean and straight as he was, Edward I must have been an imposing figure.

Only two other kings of England—James I and Charles I—have been exhumed. Their coffins were opened for the purpose of identification. James had the body of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, taken from Fotheringay to Westminster but, on the whole, the royal family of England has been little disturbed.

French Royal Tombs Robbed.

Not so the French. For three days in the Reign of Terror a Paris mob raged in the abbey church of St. Denis, which for centuries was the chosen burying-place of the French kings. In this sanctuary of the Old Régime the mob respected nothing. The silk robes were torn from the bodies of Hugues Capet, Philip the Hardy, and Philip the Fair.

A handful of gray dust, all that was left of Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, was flung to the wind, and one after another, Capetians, Valois, and Bourbons were dragged from the tomb and tumbled into a trench. On the pavement, one eye-witness says, rolled the heads of Louis XII and Francis I, of Marshal Turenne and of the great Constable Duguesclin.

For a short time the corpse of Henry IV, the most popular of all the long line of French kings, was respected. Embalmed with the best Italian skill, and so well preserved that the two fatal dagger wounds in the chest were still plainly visible, the body lay untouched for two days. Then some one shouted that Henry, like all the rest, had deceived the people, and his body, too, was flung into the trench.

After the Restoration an attempt was made to return the royal bodies to their tombs, but it was not altogether successful.

St. Swithin’s Troubled Rest.

If one passes from secular history to the legends of the saints, the exhumations become innumerable. It is, tradition asserts, on account of an attempt to remove the body of St. Swithin that we owe the prediction:

St. Swithun’s day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain:
St. Swithun’s day, if thou be fair,
For forty days ’twill rain na mair.

St. Swithin, chiefly notable for his mildness and humility, ordered that he should not be buried in his cathedral of Winchester, but in a “vile and unworthy place” among the common people in the churchyard. This the monks could not bring themselves to consider right, and on one July 15, they attempted to move the body of the bishop into the cathedral. But on that day and for forty days thereafter it rained so hard that they finally recognized in the weather the anger of the saint and abandoned their idea.

Apparently, however, the good saint changed his mind half a century or so later, for his remains were then brought into the cathedral and, instead of manifesting any displeasure, two hundred miraculous cures were credited to him in ten days.

THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD.

Despite All the Advantages That Have Resulted from Modern Invention,
Artists, Architects, and Engineers of the Present Time Are Dwarfed by
Those Who Wrought the Marvels of Ancient and Medieval Days.

There are two groups of “wonders of the world,” the first belonging to the period which we distinguish by the term antiquity, and the second to the Middle Ages. Considering the lack of facilities for building in the earlier period, it seems that the wonders of antiquity are much more remarkable than those of the medieval age; but these are stupendous marvels also, and deserve their fame, every one.

The Pyramids of Egypt rank first, being the oldest as well as the most
permanent things which man has ever built. They are situated in middle
Egypt, and there are now in existence some seventy-five; of this
number there are some which are crumbling into shapeless masses, but
the group of Ghizeh, which is the most important, stands in sturdy and
unyielding strength.

The Pyramids are the tombs of Egypt’s dead kings, and date back to the
Fourth Dynasty—about three thousand years before Christ. The largest
covers an area of nearly thirteen acres, was originally four hundred
and eighty-one feet high, and had a length on each side, at the base,
of seven hundred and fifty-five feet.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built by Nebuchadnezzar for his
queen, Amytis, and their site has been located at the northern end of
the city. They consisted of a series of terraces rising to a
considerable height, and laid out as a park; it is probable that such
gardens would have been near to or adjoining the king’s palace, but
whether or not they were has not as yet been discovered. The reign of
Nebuchadnezzar was about 600 B.C.

The Tomb of Mausolus, King of Caria, at Halicarnassus, was built about
352 B.C. From this great monument, built by the king’s widow,
Artemisia, as a memorial to him, the word mausoleum of our common
speech is derived. The tomb seems to have been preserved up to the
twelfth century, but earthquakes probably started its ruin soon after
this, and the stones from it have been used in many other buildings,
so that now even its general appearance can only be guessed at.

The Temple of Diana, at Ephesus, was built at the public charge,
though King Crœsus is believed to have contributed largely to it. It
was one hundred and sixty-four by three hundred and forty-two and a
half feet, and the height of its columns was fifty-five feet. It was
begun in the sixth century before Christ, and one hundred and twenty
years are said to have elapsed before it was completed. It was the
seat of the worship of the goddess Diana.

The Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of Helios, the sun-god, which was
made from the spoils left by Demetrius when the city was successfully
defended against him, after a long siege. Its construction occupied
the artist twelve years. It stood near the harbor, but not across the
entrance, as was at one time supposed. It was erected about 280 B.C.,
and thrown down by an earthquake some sixty-six years later. Its
height was something over one hundred feet.

The Statue of Jupiter at Olympia was the work of the greatest sculptor
of ancient Greece, Phidias by name, who was born about 490 B.C. This
heroic figure was about forty-two feet high, and represented the god
seated on a throne. It was made of ivory and gold.

The Pharos of Egypt was begun under Ptolemy I, and was finished by his
son about 282 B.C. It was a lofty tower, built on the eastern
extremity of the rocky island from which it took its name, and was the
great lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor of Alexandria. The
light was furnished by a beacon-fire on its summit. Its height was
four hundred and fifty feet, and the light could be seen at a distance
of one hundred miles.