Chapter VI (1)

Refreshments had been served, the last ear of corn was husked and thrown into the barn, and they had all risen to depart, when Hillhouse came down the path from the cottage. He was panting audibly, and had evidently been walking fast. He shook hands hurriedly with Pole and his wife, and then turned to Cynthia.

“I’m just from your house,” he said, “and I promised your mother to come over after you. I was afraid I’d be late. The distance never seemed so long before.”

“I’m afraid you _are_ too late,” said Floyd, with a cold smile. “I was lucky enough to find the first red ear of corn, and the reward was that I might take home anyone I asked. I assure you I’ll see that Miss Cynthia is well taken care of.”

“Oh! I—I see.” The preacher seemed stunned by the disappointment. “I didn’t know; I thought——”

“Yes, Floyd has won fast enough,” said Pole, “an’ he’s acted the part of the gentleman all through.” Pole explained what Floyd had done in excusing Cynthia from the principal forfeit he had won.

Hillhouse seemed unable to reply. The young people were moving toward the house, and he fell behind Floyd and his partner, walking along with the others and saying nothing.

It was a lonely, shaded road which Floyd and Cynthia traversed to reach her house.

“My luck turned just in the nick of time,” Floyd said exultantly. “I went there, little girl, especially to talk with you, and I was mad enough to fight when I saw how Pole had arranged everything. Then by good fortune and cheating I found that red ear; and—well, here we are. I never wanted to see anyone so badly in my life. Really, I——”

“Stop, don’t begin that!” Cynthia suddenly commanded, and she turned her eyes upon him steadily.

“Stop? Why do you say that?”

“Because,” retorted she, “you talk that way to all the girls, and I don’t want to hear it.”

Floyd laughed. “You know I mean what I say,” he replied. “You know it; you are just talking to hear your sweet, musical voice. Keep on; I could listen all night.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t like you when you speak that way,” the girl said seriously. “It sounds insincere—it makes me doubt you more than anything else.”

“Then some things about me don’t make you doubt me,” he said, with tentative eagerness.

She was silent for a moment, then she nodded her head. “I’ll admit that some things I hear of you make me admire you—that is, in a way.”

“Please tell me what they are,” he said, with a laugh.

“I’ve heard, for one thing, of your being very good and kind to poor people—people that Mr. Mayhew would have turned out of their homes for debt if you hadn’t interfered.”

“Oh, that was only business, little girl,” Floyd laughed. “I can simply see farther than the old man can. He thought they never would be able to pay, but I knew they would some day, and, also, that they would come up with the back interest.”

“I don’t believe it!” the girl said firmly. “Those things make me rather like you, while the others make me—they make me—afraid.”

“Afraid? Oh, how absurd—how very absurd!” They had reached a spring which flowed from a great bed of rocks in the side of a rugged hill. He pointed to a flat stone quite near it. “Do you remember the first time I ever had a talk with you? It was while we were seated on this rock.”

She recalled it, but only nodded her head.

“It was a year ago,” he went on. “You had on a pink dress and wore your hair like a little girl, in a plait down your back. Cynthia, you were the prettiest creature I had ever seen. I could hardly talk to you for wondering over your dazzling beauty. You are even more beautiful now; you have ripened physically and mentally—grown to be a wonderful woman.”

He sat down on the stone, still holding to her hand, and drawing her toward him.

She hesitated, looking back toward Baker’s cottage.

“Sit down, little girl,” he entreated her. “I’m tired. I’ve worked hard all day at the store, and that corn-shucking wasn’t the best thing to taper off on.”

She hesitated an instant longer, and then allowed him to draw her down beside him.

“There, now,” he said, “that’s more like it.” He still held her hand; it lay warm, pulsating and helpless in his strong grasp.

“Do you know why I did not kiss you back there?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know why you didn’t, but it was good of you,” she answered.

“No, it wasn’t,” he laughed. “I don’t want credit for what I don’t deserve. I simply put it off, little girl—I put it off. I knew we would be alone on our way home, and that you would not refuse me.”

“But I shall!” she said. “I’m not going to let you kiss me here in—in—this way.”

“Then you’ll not be keeping your part of the contract,” he said, tightening his grasp on her hand. “I’ve always considered you so fair in everything; and, Cynthia, you don’t know how much I want to kiss you. No, you won’t refuse me—you can’t!” His left arm was behind her, and it encircled her waist. She made an effort to draw herself erect, but he drew her closer to him. Her head sank upon his shoulder and lay there while he pressed his lips to hers.

Then she sat up, and firmly pushed his arm down from her waist.

“I’m sorry I let you do it,” she said, under her breath.

“But why, darling?”

“Because I’ve said a thousand times that I would not; but I have—I _have_, and I shall hate myself always.”

“When you have made me the happiest fellow in the state?” Floyd said. “Don’t go!” he urged.

She had risen and turned toward her home. He walked beside her, suiting his step to hers.

“Do you remember the night we sat and talked in the grape-arbor at your house?” he asked. “Well, you never knew it, but I’ve been there three nights within the last month, hoping that I’d get to see you by some chance or other. I always work late on my accounts, and when I am through and the weather is fine, I walk to your house, climb over the fence, slip through the orchard, and sit in that arbor, trying to imagine you are there with me. I often see a light in your room, and the last time I became so desperate that I actually whistled for you. This way.” He put his thumb and little finger between his lips and made an imitation of a whippoorwill’s call. “You see, no one could tell that from the real thing. If you ever hear that sound from the grape-arbor, you’ll know I need you, little girl, and you must not disappoint me.”

“I’d never respond to it,” Cynthia said firmly. “The idea of such a thing!”

“But you know I can’t go to your house often, with your mother opposing my visits as she does, and when I’m there she never leaves us alone. No, I must have you to myself once in awhile, little woman, and you must help me. Remember, if I call you, I’ll want you badly.”

He whistled again, and the echo came back on the still air from a nearby hillside. They were passing a log cabin which stood a few yards from the roadside.

“Budd Crow moved there today,” Cynthia said, as if desirous of changing the subject. “He rented twenty acres from my father. The White Caps whipped him a week ago, for being lazy and not working for his family. His wife came over and told me all about it. She said it really had brought him to his senses, but that it had broken her heart. She cried while she was talking to me. Why does God afflict some women with men of that kind, and make others the wives of governors and Presidents?”

“Ah, there you are beyond my philosophic depth, Cynthia! You mustn’t bother your pretty head about those things. I sometimes rail against my fate for giving me the ambition of a king, while I do not even know who—But I think you know what I mean!”

“Yes, I think I do,” said the girl sympathetically, “and some day I believe all that will be cleared up. Some coarse natures wouldn’t care a straw about it, but you _do_ care, and it is the things we want and can’t get that count.”

“It is strange,” he said thoughtfully, “but of late I always think of my mother as being young and beautiful. I think of her, too, as being well-bred and educated. I think all those things without any proof even as to what her maiden name was or where she came from—Are you still unhappy at home, Cynthia?”

“Nearly all the time,” the girl sighed. “As she grows older my mother seems more faultfinding and suspicious than ever. Then she has set her mind on my marrying Mr. Hillhouse. They seem to be working together to that end, and it is very tiresome to me.”

“I’m glad you don’t love him,” Floyd said. “I don’t think he could make anyone of your nature happy.”

The girl stared into his eyes. They had reached the gate of the farmhouse, and he opened it for her.

“Now, good night,” he said, pressing her hand. “Remember, if you ever hear a lonely whippoorwill calling, that he is longing for companionship.”

She leaned over the gate, drawing it toward her till the latch clicked in its catch. She was thinking of the hot kiss he had pressed upon her lips, and what he might later think about it.

“I’ll never meet you there at night,” she said firmly. “My mother does not treat me right, but I shall not do that when she is asleep. You may come to see me here once in awhile if you wish.”

“Well, I shall sit alone in the arbor,” he returned, with a low laugh, “and I hope your hard heart will keep you awake.”

She opened the front door, which was never locked, and went into her room on the right of the little hall. The night was very still, and down the road she heard Floyd’s whippoorwill call growing fainter and fainter as he strode away. She found a match and lighted the lamp on her bureau, and looked at her reflection in the little oval-shaped mirror. Instinctively she shuddered and brushed her lips with her hand as she remembered his embrace.

“He’ll despise me,” she muttered. “He’ll think I am weak like all the rest, but I am not. _I am not!_ I’ll show him that he can’t—and yet”—her head sank to her hands, which were folded on the top of the bureau—“I couldn’t help it. My God, I couldn’t help it! I must have wanted—no, I didn’t. I didn’t!”

There was a soft step in the hall. The door of her room creaked like the low scream of a cat. A figure in white stood on the threshold. It was Mrs. Porter in her nightdress, her feet bare, her iron-gray half-twisted hair hanging upon her shoulders.

“I couldn’t go to sleep, Cynthia,” she said, “till I knew you were safe at home.”

“Well, I’m here all right, mother; so go back to bed, and don’t catch your death of cold.”

The old woman moved across the room to Cynthia’s bed and sat down on it. “I heard you coming down the road and went to the front window. I had sent Brother Hillhouse for you, but it was Nelson Floyd who brought you home. Didn’t Brother Hillhouse get there before you left?”

“Yes, but I had already promised Mr. Floyd.”

The old woman met her daughter’s glance steadily. “I suppose all I’ll do or say won’t amount to anything. Cynthia, you know what I’m afraid of.”

Cynthia stood straight, her face set and white, her great dreamy eyes flashing.

“Yes, and that’s the insult of it, mother. I tell you, you will drive me too far. A girl at a certain time of her life wants a mother’s love and sympathy; she doesn’t want threats, fears and disgraceful suspicions.”

Mrs. Porter covered her face with her bony hands and groaned aloud.

“You are confessing,” she said, “that you are tied an’ bound to him by the heart, and that there isn’t anything left for you but the crumbs he lets fall from his profligate table.”

“Stop!” Cynthia sprang to her mother and laid her small hand heavily on the thin shoulder. “Stop! You know you are telling a deliberate—” She paused, turned and went slowly back to the bureau. “God forgive me! God help me remember my duty to you as my mother. You’re old; you’re out of your head!”

“There, you said something.” The old woman had drawn herself erect and sat staring at her daughter, her hands on her sharp knees. “You know my sister Martha got to worryin’ when she was along about my age over her lawsuit matters, and kept it up till her brain gave way. Folks always said she and I were alike. Dr. Strong has told me time after time to guard against worry, or I’d go out and kill myself as she did. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I will now. I can’t keep down my fears and suspicions while the very air is full of that man’s doings. He’s a devil. Your pretty face has caught his fancy, and your holding him off, so far, has made him determined to crush you like a plucked flower. Why don’t he go to the Duncans, and the Prices, and lay his plans? Because the men of those families shoot at the drop of the hat. He knows your pa is not of that stamp, and that you haven’t any men kin to defend our honor. He hasn’t any of his own; nobody knows who or what he is.”

“Mother!” Cynthia’s tone had softened. Her face was filling with sudden pity for the quivering creature on the bed. “Mother, will you not have confidence in me? If I promise you faithfully to take care of myself with him, and make him understand what and who I am, won’t that satisfy you? Even men with bad reputations have a good side to their natures, and they often reach a point at which they reform. I well know there are strong women and weak women. Mother, I’m not a weak woman. As God is my judge, I’m able to take care of myself. It pains me to say this, for you ought to know it; you ought to feel it, see it in my eye and hear it in my voice. Now, go to bed and sleep. I’m really afraid you may lose your mind, since you told me about Aunt Martha.”

The face of the old woman changed; it lighted up with hope.

“Somehow, I believe what you say,” she said, with a faint smile. “Anyway, I’ll try not to worry any more.” She rose and went to the door. “Yes, I’ll try not to worry any more,” she repeated. “It may all come out right.”

When she found herself alone Cynthia turned and looked at her reflection in the glass.

“He didn’t once tell me in so many words that he loved me,” she said. “He has never used that word. He has never said that he wanted to mar—” She broke off, staring into the depths of her own great, troubled eyes. “And yet I let him kiss me—_me_!” A hot flush filled her neck and face and spread to the roots of her hair. Then suddenly she blew out the light and crept to her bed.

(_To be continued._)

_The Conservative of Today_

BY JOHN H. GIRDNER, M.D.

Ever since we have had a record of the human race it has been divided into two parties, the _conservative_ and the _radical_. These two parties have ever battled with each other for possession of the world. Strictly speaking, all history—sacred and profane—is nothing else than a record of this world-old struggle.

“That which _is_, was made by God,” cries the conservative.

“God is leaving _that_ and is entering _this other_,” replies the radical.

These have been the battle-cries of mankind all down the ages. The conservative has always been the stand-patter. He has been always on the defensive, explaining, apologizing, opposing and pleading that change would result in deterioration. The conservative must bear the vice, the sins and crimes of the society of his time, and, bending under the load, piteously pleads for delay, for compromise. He preaches the pusillanimous doctrine of “let us bear the evils we already have rather than fly to those we know not of.” Conservatism never made an invention, wrote a poem, painted a picture nor breathed a prayer that rose above the roof.

Pharaoh, King of Egypt, was a conservative. He stood pat on keeping the Hebrew nation in slavery, against the radicalism of Moses. The Roman empire was conservative. It stood pat on its pagan worship, against the radicalism of the new religion. The scientific world stood pat on the then accepted doctrine that the “sun do move,” against the radicalism of Galileo that it is the earth that does the moving. King George was a conservative. He stood pat on America’s remaining a British colony, against the radicalism of Washington and the Continental Congress. The French King, Louis XVI, was a conservative, and stood pat against the radicalism of the people of France when they demanded liberty and bread. The Czar of Russia and his titled aristocracy are conservatives. They are standing pat against progress, enlightenment and justice among the masses of the people of that unhappy country. But it is about the conservatives of our own country that I want to write. I want to say a word about our own stand-patters.

Webster’s Dictionary says that a _conservative_ is, “One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs.” A conservative in the United States today, then, is a man who wants the Beef Trust to continue to force the farmer to accept its price for his cattle, and the consumer to pay its price for dressed beef. A conservative is a man who wants the railroads to continue giving rebates to favored shippers, and to hold them from unfavored shippers. A conservative is a man who wants the United States Senate to continue to be composed of men who do not represent the masses of the people of their respective states, but who represent the corporations. For instance, a conservative in New York State is a man who wants Chauncey M. Depew and Thomas C. Platt to continue in the United States Senate.

Depew represents the Vanderbilt system of railroads, while Platt represents the United States Express Company. The two will oppose any legislation which interferes with the income of their corporations, never mind what the people of the state or nation want. The people have for years wanted a parcels post in this country. England and other countries have it, but we cannot. Why? Because Platt is in the Senate, and also in the parcel-carrying business. You, Mr. Conservative, put him in the Senate and you keep him there.

We have what is called a protective tariff in this country. It is a law which, in the name of _protecting_ the workingman, _robs_ him and every other consumer. If you are a conservative, you are in favor of maintaining this law.

The tariff schedule was drawn up by a committee of Congress _behind closed doors_. That is, the doors were closed on those who have to _pay_ the tariff, but open to those who were to be _benefited_ by it. The committee sent for the manufacturers of the various necessary articles which people use, and asked _them_ how much of a tax _they wanted_ on similar articles made abroad. And the manufacturers wrote these schedules for the committee, and they were adopted. Notice, the consumers, the people who have to pay the tariff, were not invited to appear before this committee. Only the manufacturers, who are the beneficiaries, were taken into counsel.

If you are a conservative—that is, if you are a stand-patter, you are in favor of continuing and “maintaining” this “mother of trusts.”

Sometimes laboring-men become dissatisfied with their wages, or the number of hours they are made to work, and they exercise their God-given right to cease work, or go on strike. Then the corporations rush to the courts and secure injunctions, restraining the strikers from doing all sorts of things. In some instances these injunctions are obtained and served on the strikers before any of the acts from which the injunctions restrain them have been committed or attempted. Special deputy sheriffs and Pinkerton men are hurried to the scene of the strike. The state militia is ordered out, and in one instance Federal troops were sent to Chicago. At Homestead the hired deputy-sheriff-Cossacks shot down peaceable workmen, just as real Cossacks shot down the peaceable workmen who marched with Father Gapon in the streets of St. Petersburg recently—and for no better reason. Martial law has been declared, court-martial has been substituted for trial by jury. The right of habeas corpus has been suspended. Members of labor unions have been thrown into prison without trial; others have been torn from their homes and deported to other states without process of law, and bull pens established for guarding prisoners. These things have been happening in the United States for years. In each instance it was claimed that such arbitrary measures were necessary to preserve order, keep the peace, protect the property of the corporations, and to enforce the injunctions issued by the courts—_when these injunctions were directed against the laboring or producing class_. Now see how differently things work when a corporation is at the dangerous end of an injunction gun.

The United States Federal Court, through Judge Grosscup, of Chicago, issued on February 18, 1903, an injunction restraining the Beef Trust from continuing to do certain things. The Beef Trust paid _no_ attention to this injunction. It went right on doing these same things, just as if Judge Grosscup had not issued his injunction. It went right on despoiling the bank accounts of the consumers of beef and the raisers of cattle. No special deputy sheriffs were sworn in, no state militia was ordered out, no Federal troops were sent to Chicago or anywhere else to enforce obedience to _this_ injunction. Armour, Swift and Morris, the men said to be at the head of the Beef Trust, were not arrested. No bull pen was established. Nobody was deported.

This is the existing custom of enforcing and _not_ enforcing Federal Court injunctions. Now if you are a conservative, you are, according to Webster, one who desires to “maintain” this custom.

At the present time the lighting corporation, the railroad corporation, the telephone corporation and the city or municipal corporation are all exploiting the people of New York City as they have never been exploited before.

Never in the history of New York have its public servants been so absolutely and completely _owned_ by so-called public service corporations as at present. These corporations have literally taken over the people’s municipal corporation, merged it with their own and impressed their management upon it. For instance, Dr. Darlington, President of the Health Department, goes to Washington to urge Congress to pass a law to destroy dirty money, because it is a means of conveying disease germs. But he does not destroy or clean the filthy disease-bearing car straps in New York. Why? Because August Belmont and H. H. Vreeland won’t let him. Darlington is in the position of the Irishman who would free Ireland but for the police. The people want the signs, slot machines, etc., put out of their Subway stations, but they can’t get it done. Why? Because the Interborough Corporation is stronger than the municipal corporation. The people’s public servants in New York City have become the servants of the public service corporations.

It does seem that even men who call themselves conservatives in New York would rise up next fall and stamp the life out of this condition.

_Casus Belli_

“Now, the trusts—” began the patent-churn man, addressing the washing-machine agent. “The trusts, let me tell you, are——”

“Here, now, gentlemen!” remonstrated the landlord of the tavern at Polkville, Ark. “That’s what the fight here yesterday started about; and it’s goin’ to cost me three or four dollars for new window glass, alone!”

_A Character Study of Byron and Burns_

BY ELIZABETH BAILEY TRAYLOR

These names are live wires in the lands of the Scotch heather and the English rose, and equally so here by the red hearts of the watermelons and the snow showers of the cotton-fields of the Southern States. One often hears it said of those devoted brotherhoods—the Burns Clubs and the Scotch Societies—“Their Bible is Robbie Burns.” Frank Stanton has a large hearing when he sings:

We’ll slip away from our today
Of wonder and of worry,
To where, in meadows of the may,
He whistled “Annie Laurie.”
To meet him in some gabled inn,
And pass the rare decanter,
Or in some ingle nook begin
A race with “Tam o’Shanter.”

To a large coterie of kindred spirits the name of Byron evokes a pageant of ideas pulsating with life’s strongest emotions. It is told of a pleasure club that they recently abandoned the books of the day and read the poet exhaustively and with great enthusiasm—no slight tribute to his genius in a time of unremitting demand for that which is palpitant with the breath of today’s life. A learned minister from his pulpit says: “‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’ is a marvel of diction and technique, and no divine has approached the narrative in its exact correspondence to Holy Writ.”

A bare sketch of these two philosophers may suggest to book-lovers in general the particular period of the culture-epochs dominating each career, and discover some of the forces of heredity and environment which produced these characters, vibrant with full, fresh, free life, or reveal to readers equipped by psychical research for judgment how it was that these natures furnished the battleground for so fierce a conflict of good and evil forces.

According to Carlyle, the father of Burns was a “man of thoughtful, intense character, possessing some knowledge and open-minded for more, of keen insight and devout heart, friendly and fearless; a fully unfolded man seldom found in any rank of society.” Of his ancestry we know nothing. The father of Byron was an Englishman, from a line of illustrious ancestors reaching back to the days of William the Conqueror.

The mother of Burns, devout of heart and calm of mind, brightened the lives of her children with the ballads of her beloved Scotland. The mother of Byron would smother him with kisses one moment, and the next call him a lame brat.

Both poets spent their early youth in Scotland, where the record of their school days is still preserved in their respective parishes. Burns read with equal avidity Taylor’s devotional works, Locke, Pope, Milton, Thomson and Young. He never minded work, if knowledge was the reward. Byron was devoted to the reading of history and poetry, and was at the head of many college rows. When, in conformity to the custom of the school, the order was so inverted as to make the boy of highest rank change places with the lowest, the teacher would call out to Byron: “Now, George, let us see how quick you will be foot again.”

Each had a favorite family servant. Byron wrote often to his old nurse of his triumphs in London. Burns says many of his songs were inspired by an old servant, Jenny Wilson, as she repeated her endless collection of songs and stories of devils, ghosts, fairies, witches, warlocks, kelpies, elf-candles and enchanted dragons.

Lady Blessington wrote of Byron’s appearance: “He is not tall, as I had fancied him. His appearance is, however, highly prepossessing; his head is finely shaped and the forehead open, high and noble, his eyes are gray and full of expression, his mouth is the most remarkable feature, the upper lip of Grecian shortness and the corners descending, the lips full and finely cut. In speaking, he shows his teeth very much, and they are white and even, but I observed that even in his smile—he smiles frequently—there is something of a scornful expression that is evidently natural. His countenance is full of expression and changes with the subject of conversation; it gains on the beholder the more it is seen, and leaves an agreeable impression. His voice and accent are peculiarly agreeable, clear, harmonious and so distinct that, though his general tone in speaking is rather low than high, not a word is lost.”

Burns, tall, well formed and graceful, was always a charming presence. The beautiful and all-accomplished Duchess of Gordon said that Burns was the most fascinating guest she ever saw entertained.

Speaking of the portrait by Alexander Nasmyth, Sir Walter Scott says: “This is the best likeness of Burns, but his features, as I remember them, were still more massive and imposing than they are represented in this picture. There was a strong expression of shrewdness in his lineaments, the eyes alone indicating the poetic character and temperament. They were large and dark and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such eyes in any other head.”

Attired always in the tip of the fashion, Byron was a drawing-room dude in the smart set of London. The dress of Burns was coarse and homely, made from his own sheep, carded by his own fire. His plaid was red and white, woven with great pride by his mother and sister. His home and the homes of his friends, were low-thatched cottages, consisting of kitchen and bedrooms, with floors of kneaded clay.

If the former set a fashion for collars which lasts to this good day, the latter has left us the Tam-o’-Shanter hat.

Burns was essentially musical, having begun his career by setting music to the verses of another.

Byron, in a luxurious salon, wooed and won a woman of fashion. Burns gives this account of his courtship with Highland Mary,

Who was snatched away in beauty’s bloom:

“We plighted our troth on the Sabbath to make it more sacred, seated by a running brook, that Nature might be a witness, over an open Bible, to show we remembered God in the compact.”

After a second edition of “Poems by an Ayrshire Plowman,” Burns spent the winter in Edinburgh, where he was the lion of the elegant coteries of the city.

Lords, ladies, men of letters, all with manners highly polished by attrition, found in him a barbarian who was not barbarous. As the poet met in at least one lord feelings as natural as those of a plowman, so they met in a plowman manners worthy of a lord.

Dugald Stewart writes: “His manner was easy and unperplexed; his address was perfectly well-bred and elegant in its simplicity; he felt neither eclipsed by the titled nor embarrassed before the learned and eloquent, but took his station with the ease of one born to it.”

Each poet had a brief political career. As exciseman for several years it was necessary for Burns to ride over two hundred miles per week, thus coming constantly in contact with the people. In this public service he made a record for being thorough, correct and at the same time humane.

Byron made as serious an effort in politics as was possible to his impetuous and headlong nature. After many hindrances he was granted a seat in the House of Lords. He traveled awhile, and, returning, made two or three speeches before the House. Between times he would correct the proof-sheets of “Childe Harold.” The publication of this poem put an end to his parliamentary ambitions. “When ‘Childe Harold’ was published,” he says, “no one ever afterward thought of my prose, nor indeed did I.” However, he also says, “I would not for the world be like my hero.”

Each spent much time alone with Nature, drinking from the exhaustless fountain of her varied life. Each loved her most in her wildest, fiercest moods. Power—they loved it, worshiped it; they felt it in them and all around them. It was the necessary food for their strenuous, tempest-tossed souls. Burns loved to walk on the sheltered side of a forest and listen to a storm rave among the trees. Better still, he loved to ascend some eminence and stride along its summit amid the flashes of the lightning and howls of the tempest: “Rapt in enthusiasm, I seemed to ascend to Him who walks on the wings of the wind.” Byron

Made him friends of mountains, stars;
But the Quick Spirit of the universe

spoke to him best through Nature’s most stupendous form, the turbulent, merciless ocean.

Byron reveled in the glories of more climes; Burns saw the marvels of more kingdoms, for he understood the language of the daisy and the mouse. The self-negating love, the exultant pride the Peasant Poet felt for his own bonnie Scotland, the English Peer lavished upon a foreign land. Burns said if he ever reached heaven, he would ask nothing better than just a Highland welcome.

Burns, in his innate appreciation of the dignity of humanity, is something of a Siegfried, with the fearless spirit of the forest vocal with the song of birds, the aroma of blossoming shrubs, the play of the waterfall and the restful stretch of meadows with their daisies and heather.

Byron, in the desolation of his youth, in his extremes of laughter and tears, in his yearning for sympathy, in his broodings over the mysteries of life, played the character of Hamlet with the world for a stage, leaving a kindred problem for the wonder of mankind.

Many of Byron’s shorter poems are from Bible stories and characters, and it is wonderful how his brilliant genius caught and reproduced both spirit and story. Burns gives us his thought of a religious life in that sweetest pastoral poem in all literature, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.”

In the last few months of his life he did much to reproduce it in his own life, holding family prayer with such earnestness as to bring his hearers to tears over the penitence for sins and hope in the mercy of God.

In these poets the perceptive faculties roamed at will over a wide field of human activities, and voiced their impressions with a witchery of language which has hardly a parallel. The work of both men was revolutionizing in its effects. Burns found his countrymen in bondage to the fear of wraiths, hobgoblins and kindred spirits, and he was a mighty power in their deliverance. Taine estimates that he was as great a force in Scotland as the Revolution in France.

Byron is believed largely to have influenced the revolutionary movement in Germany. He gave a direct stimulus to the liberators of Italy, and ended his life in a heroic struggle for the liberties of Greece.

If Byron’s literary work is more resplendent and daring, Burns’s seems fresher from the varied living forces about us. If Byron’s is a circlet of sapphires, Burns’s is that same circlet transmuted by the alchemy of human sympathy to a wreath of never-fading violets.

When we remember that these colossal figures passed off the stage of life after thirty-seven short years, when we get a suggestion of the difficult circumstances and terrible temptations that encompassed their stormy young lives, we may well leave their failings to God, who alone is their moral Judge. It may be His compassion for them is commensurate with the powers with which He endowed them.

_The Man With White Nails_

BY CAPTAIN W. E. P. FRENCH, U.S.A.

My wife brought me the case and the client, and, strict candor compels me to say, I was not particularly grateful for either. The case was a curiously involved combination of an over-indulgent, invalid mother; a shrewd, selfish and unscrupulous son; a trained nurse, rather worse than she should have been; a cleverly drawn but very unjust will; an exceedingly large estate mostly in investment securities; a husband-deserted daughter with two small children and “an annual income of nothing to keep ’em on”; a witness who would undoubtedly be “agin the government,” and one other person whose testimony might, or might not, be favorable to the prosecution, but who had apparently vanished bodily from the face of the earth. The client was a pretty, gentle little creature, crushed under a load of trouble much too big for her, quite pathetic in her helplessness, and shrinking and rather indifferent about her own claims, but with an almost fierce mother-instinct over the rights of her babies.

How the partner of my joys and sorrows discovered these wronged mites of humanity is immaterial—she has a keen scent for injustice or oppression of any kind—but she rounded them up, brought them to my office, and said I was to take the case. I never appeal from the decision of my supreme court, so I said, “Certainly.”

First she took me aside and gave me an _ex parte_ and rather highly colored statement of the facts in the affair, explaining that her protégée was diffident and reticent, unless stirred up about the children, and perorating with the remark, “You will find, John, that my meek-looking lamb is quite a ferocious animal when roused.” Then she went over to the other woman, kissed her, gave the boy a pile of my cherished law-books to use as building-blocks, took the tiny girl on her lap, hitched her chair a bit closer to the mother and said, “Now, my dear, you tell John everything, just as you told it to me, and he will fix it all up for you.”

A tolerable portion of my fairly large practice has consisted, and, I fancy, will continue to consist, of charity cases brought to me by my wife. They have, of course, seldom or never been profitable; they have cost time, work, worry and money, have occasionally been paid in the base coin of ingratitude, and without them we should have had a much larger bank account. But the warmest-hearted and most generous woman I have ever known likes me to help those she thinks are wronged, and it is little enough for me to do for her dear sake.

My small, scared client attracted me from the first, and my dusty legal heart ached over her sad story. Her mother had never cared much for her and had lavished love and money on her brother. She had married unfortunately, while scarcely more than a child. The estrangement with her mother had increased, and her brother had craftily widened the breach. This last fact I had much trouble to elicit, and wormed it out of her piecemeal.

After three years of neglect and ill-treatment, her husband had deserted her and run away with another woman—incidentally, her best friend—leaving her almost destitute. When she recovered from an attack of brain fever she found a letter from her brother awaiting her, in which he announced the death of their mother, his marriage to the trained nurse who had taken care of the mother in her last illness, and their exodus to Europe. He inclosed a copy of the will, which left everything unreservedly to him, and said that his attorney would communicate with her. The man-of-the-law came in person, and stated that he was empowered to pay her a hundred dollars a month, so long as she did not attempt litigation.

The will was witnessed by the doctor and the trained nurse, and the doctor was, to all intents, beyond discovery.

It was, on its face, a probable case of undue influence and, perhaps, mental aberration. But how prove either, without the doubly expert testimony of the missing physician, who, it appeared, was the only person, except the son and the nurse, that had seen the invalid during the last year of her life?

It was a significant fact that the daughter’s name was not mentioned in the instrument; and I suspected collusion on the part of the medical gentleman with the beneficiary and the woman who would share the profits of the criminal enterprise. My poor little client had seen the doctor once only when she was vainly endeavoring to gain access to her mother, and described him as a very fine-looking man on the sunny slope of forty, with wavy blond hair and pointed beard, a suave and kindly manner, a charming voice and singularly handsome hands.

The bill of items would have fitted tolerably a dozen men of my acquaintance, and I said as much, asking her, as an afterthought, how she came to notice his hands. Someone has said that the gist of a woman’s letter is in the postscript, and the large majority of women that have employed me as counsel have invariably reserved the leading and important facts of their cases until the last. This client was no exception to the rule; but when the dramatic little body had finished personating the missing man, I would have known him as far as I could see him among ten thousand, unless he were asleep or quite still; for she had cleverly imitated a man whose restless hands were ever in motion as he talked, and who glanced at them with covert satisfaction every few seconds. This singular trick, the descriptive factors in his personal equation, and the name he had signed—which, she assured me, was undoubtedly his own—as witness to the signature of the testatrix were about all the additional information I could extract from her, except that she had refused her brother’s proposition and was ready to fight to the bitter end for her children’s rights, though she had to beg or steal the money to pay court and counsel.

I waived retainer and took the case on contingent fee, which, after the little grass widow had left, I told my wife, in gentle irony, I would divide with her; but that she must not squander it on yachts and four-in-hands, because these big paying cases are pretty rare—fortunately.

That good woman received my ironic suggestion with her usual placidity, and said: “Very well, my dear; I shall certainly hold you to your promise of division, and I have a premonition that we shall win the suit. Mark my words! I don’t want a yacht, but I shall buy that lovely Goldsborough place and spend my declining years looking at the river-view from that glorious, wide piazza.”

I had not the slightest hope of success, for even if the witness could be found, I had no doubt that he was a scamp and in the brother’s pay.

A letter to a friend and fellow-attorney in the city where the mother had died brought this reply: The man I wanted to find had been a general practitioner there for some years; he had had a very large practice and the liking and respect of the community; but both had fallen away from him from two very odd causes; one, that he had suddenly become exceedingly untrustworthy and unreliable, in fact, a phenomenal and outrageous liar; and the other, that he had unaccountably taken to the habitual wearing on every possible or impossible occasion, professional or social, of white kid gloves or long white gauntlets, bringing these ghostly hands to the bedside of patients, or hovering with them over the operating-table. It began to be noised abroad that Dr. Bently, which was his name, was unsound in his mind, was suffering from some dreadful, contagious disease which had broken out in his hands, and that the truth was not in him. My informant added that shortly after the death of Mrs. Johnstone, my small client’s mother, the doctor had taken himself, his gauntlets and his marvelous mendacity to New York, but that his present whereabouts were unknown to the writer.

The detective agency in New York, of which I next inquired, sent me word that there was no such name as Bernard Brice Bently in the directory or in any way on record as a physician or surgeon in that city. All this took time, and, meanwhile, I had advertised vainly in prominent papers all over the country and had had an agent interview many of the doctor’s old acquaintances. The man had disappeared, and within a very narrow limit of time the will would be admitted to probate.

Just at this time another legal matter required my presence in New York, and, when I reached there, the engrossing nature of my business drove most other matters out of my head. After several days of close and confining work, I finished taking the depositions I needed, and purposed to return home that evening. It occurred to me that a pleasant way of spending my remaining hours in town would be to take a stroll through Central Park, which I had not seen in years—not, in fact, since I had been a student in Columbia Law School.

I walked from the Fifty-ninth Street entrance as far as the Museum, which is about opposite Eighty-second Street, and had sat down to rest near the obelisk. It was a magnificent late spring day, and I was lazily enjoying the beauty of the place and watching the passing show, when a man on the next bench attracted my attention by springing to his feet and gazing eagerly and fiercely beyond me and up the drive. If ever ferocious desire and intent to kill were written on a human face it was on his.

Instinctively I glanced in the direction he was looking and saw a steam runabout, with one man in it, approaching smoothly and not very rapidly. I turned back instantly and sprang at the would-be assassin, whose pistol was out and pointed, but I was too late. There was a flash and a report, and I could see the hammer of the self-cocker rising for a second shot, when I struck him a left-hander. I do not often have occasion to hit a man, but when I do he usually falls. As he went down the weapon spoke again, but I knew that that bullet went wide. The fellow was game, though, and determined, for his back had scarcely touched the ground before he rolled on his side and fired twice at the man in the locomobile. The fifth chamber of the revolver he let me have, as I flung myself down on him, and the subsequent proceedings were blank, the ball having grazed my temple and stunned me.

When I came to I was lying on a leather couch in a very handsomely appointed doctor’s office. My head was bound up, and I was a bit sick and dizzy. I suppose I had half swooned again, when I was roused by a soft touch on my wrist, and looking down I saw the most beautiful and the whitest man’s hand I have ever seen. But, white as it was, the fine, filbert-shaped nails were whiter still. They were absolutely milky, and the half-moons had the ghostly whiteness and lustre of pearls. I was both startled and fascinated. Surely no living flesh was ever that color, and no human being with blood in him ever had such nails. Was it the hand of a corpse? No, it was warm, and, as I looked, the fingers bent and sought my pulse. A deep, musical voice broke the silence:

“Ah, we are all right now, thank God! How do you feel, friend? Drink this.” The speaker, holding a tumbler, came in front of me, and I saw a handsome man with clean-shaven face, black, wavy hair and beautiful but rather wild-looking eyes.

“Thank you,” I said as I took the glass and obediently drained it; “I feel somewhat as though I had been trifling with a steam-hammer. But I shall be all right presently.”

“Of course you will,” he assured me heartily. “You were struck a glancing blow on the head by the bullet of that poor, half-crazed Pole, who, the police say, thought I was a Russian duke. The only ill consequence of your noble act will be an honorable scar, to remind you how gallantly you risked your life to save a total stranger’s. My dear friend—if you will allow a friendless man to call you so”—here the charming voice grew as sweet and vibrant as an organ note—“it was the bravest and most generous act I ever knew. I cannot thank you adequately, but I hope it may be given me to serve you some time, and should you ever need a friend’s purse, his hand or his life, mine are yours.”

I endeavored to deprecate the value of my interference and to moderate his expressions of gratitude; but he would have none of it, and, leaping to his feet, began to pace to and fro, expatiating upon what he extravagantly termed my bravery and unselfishness, and insisting upon his tremendous obligation to me. He was manifestly in earnest; but all at once habit asserted itself, the ruling passion came to the fore, and a trifle “light as air” made “confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ.” When he first began to move a memory flashed over me, but, as those beautiful, restless white hands added their evidence, assurance became doubly sure. I could see my demure, pretty little client impersonating this man, and I knew, despite the dyed hair and the shaven beard, that I had found the missing witness. But I had found something else. I had found a man suffering from a chronic dementia. Whether his derangement was general or merely monomania, I was at a loss to determine. If the former, he was not competent as a witness for either side. If the latter, the special form and degree of alienation might or might not militate against his testimony.

I was impelled to take him unawares, and so I said suddenly: “Dr. Bently, do you remember Mrs. Abbott, the daughter of your former patient, Mrs. Johnstone, of Laneville?”

If he started or showed surprise or annoyance, it was imperceptible; but he glanced with smiling complaisance at his nails as he came over to me, and, touching my forehead, remarked, with most irritating suavity: “My dear fellow, I fear you are feverish. My name is Charles Chester Chickering. I never was in Laneville, I never had a patient named Johnstone, and I have no recollection whatever of anyone by the name of Abbott.”

He looked straight at me as he uttered these falsehoods, and his tone was like velvet. There was the flicker of an amused smile on his mouth, but his eyes were hard and cold as blued steel, the contracted pupils shining like black pinheads. I stared back at him, and presently he shifted his gaze from my face to his own right hand, which he was holding out in front of him, and again that abominable, self-satisfied smirk appeared. I was filled with boundless contempt for this man I had almost begun to pity, and as I rose from the couch and began to speak I could fairly taste the bitterness of the words I flung at him:

“Dr. or Mr. Bernard Brice Bently, Charles Chester Chickering—or whatever your infernal, alliterative _alias_ may be—I deeply regret that I should have saved you from the death I have no doubt you richly deserved, and I earnestly hope that you may be punished for your crime of helping to ruin a poor little woman and two innocent children. And, by the living God! I will do all in my power to bring you to——”

He interrupted me eagerly, wonderingly, protestingly. “What is that you say? Mrs. Abbott and her children living? Why, that scoundrel Johnstone and that she-devil of a nurse swore to Mrs. Johnstone and me that all three of them were dead and buried!”

Hope came to life again in my heart. It was a mistake, after all, and this man could and would rectify it. He had been deceived and had witnessed the document in good faith. I had commenced an apology when he uttered a violent exclamation, and, holding the backs of his hands in front of his face, scrutinized his nails with rapt intensity.

His very lips grew livid, the eyes he turned on me were those of a madman, and, snarling like a wolf, he screamed: “See what you have done! Look at my nails!” and thrust his pallid fingers forward for my inspection.

On the polished, snowy surface of every nail was a bright pink fleck or spot of about the bigness and shape of a ladybug; but I was barely conscious of these rosy marks on the intense whiteness of the uncanny things, for I suppose the smart rap of that pistol bullet and this man’s extraordinary sayings and doings had upset my fairly choleric temper, and I was literally beside myself with uncontrollable rage and indignation.

“Damn you and your dead nails!” I shouted back at him. “You cowardly liar and thief, you are Johnstone’s accomplice, and I will tear the truth out of you if I have to kill you to do it.”