Act 2 — MISCELLANEOUS

THE SAMPLE COUNTER

OUR HISTORICAL NOVELS

From “The First Man in Rome.”

NO sooner had Cæsar crossed the Rubicon than all Rome was ablaze with excitement and terror. Horatius, who all by himself had held the bridge until outnumbered, retreated to the Tiber, where he was joined by the new levies, imperfectly armed and equipped, and some of the Prætorian Guards. There, behind such defenses as they could improvise, they swore to resist until all were dead. Sacrifices were offered to the gods, and the augurs, removing the hearts of the victims, consulted the auricles.

Meantime Cæsar’s leading legion, with Scipio Africanus marching proudly at its head, came into view beyond the Tarpeian Rock—the same from which the unhappy Sappho, one of the most prominent poets of her time, had cast herself—and advanced without delay in a shower of catapults.

Precisely what occurred during the next half-hour we are without the data to state with confidence: all the historical novels of the three or four centuries immediately following were destroyed in the accident at Pompeii; but at three o’clock in the afternoon of that fateful day Brutus lay dead upon the field of honor and the beaten forces of Horatius were in tumultuous retreat along the Claudian aqueduct. Then Cleopatra came forth from her place of concealment, resolved to throw herself at the feet of her conquering lover and intercede for the doomed city.

From “Court and Camp.”

Through a tangled wild as dense as death the martial forced his way, despite the wounds that the Russian forces had inflicted upon his aged frame. Suddenly he departed from the undergrowth and found himself in an open glade of inconsiderable dimensions, and before his vision stood the widely known figure of Napoleon, with folded arms and in a greatcoat falling to his heels. The king was apparently oblivious to his environment, but instinctively “the bravest of the brave,” ever considerate and genteel, drew back into cover, unwilling to interrupt the royal revery. Apparently Napoleon was immersed in meditations.

What these were we have not the temerity to conjecture. Waterloo had been fought and lost!—the last die had been cast to the winds and the dream of universal empire had gone down in gloom! Did he realize that all was over? Was he conjuring up the future and forecasting the judgment of posterity—the figure that he was destined to cut in the historical novels of a later age? Did visions of St. Helena float before his prophetic gaze? Alas, we know not!

At the sound of a breaking twig beneath the martial’s foot the king started from his revery and said in French: “Live the France!” Then, deriving a slender stiletto from his regalia, he plunged it into the left ventricle of his heart and fell dead before the martial, who was greatly embarrassed, could summon medical assistance.

Josephine was avenged!

From “The Crusader.”

It was midnight beneath the walls of the beleaguered city. Sir Guy de Chassac de Carcassonne leaned heavily upon his great two-handed sword, fatigued with slaughter. Hardly had he closed his eyes in slumber when the seven Saracens chosen by Saladin for the perilous emprise stole forth from the postern gate and stealthily surrounded him. Then at a preconcerted signal they flashed their scimitars in air and rushed upon their prey!

But it was fated to be otherwise. At the first stroke of the Toledo blades Sir Guy awoke. To pluck his long weapon from the soil was the work of a comparatively short time; then with one mighty circular sweep of the steel he clove them all asunder at the waist!

Jerusalem was delivered and remains a Christian city to this day!

From “Blood and Beer.”

The booming of the cannon awakened Bismarck with a start. Vaulting into the saddle with remarkable grace, he was soon in the thickest of the fray, and many a foeman fell beneath his genius. Yet even in the terrible din and confusion of battle his mental processes were normal, and he thought only of the countess, while absently dealing death about him. Suddenly he was roused from his revery by the impact of a battle-axe upon his helmet, and turning his eyes in the direction whence it seemed to have been delivered, he beheld the sneering visage of De Grammont on a black steed.

Here was an opportunity that might satisfy the most exacting—an opportunity to rid his country of a traitor and himself of a rival; to serve at once his ambition and his love. His noble nature forbade. Waving his enemy aside, he thoughtfully withdrew from the field, resolved to press his suit otherwise.

From “The Iron Duchess.”

As Wellington rode moodily away from the fatal field of Blenheim, meditating upon the wreck of his ambition, he encountered the seer whom he had met the day before.

“Wretch!” he exclaimed, drawing his scimitar, “it is you that have done this! But for your accursed predictions I should have won the battle and the Swiss king would now be flying before my victorious legends. Die, therefore!”

So saying, he raised his armed hand to smite, but the blow did not fall. Even while the blade was suspended in the air the seer’s long black cloak fell away, the white hair and concealing beard were flung aside, and the Iron Duke found himself gazing into the laughing eyes of Madame de Maintenon! Speechless with astonishment, he thundered: “What is the meaning of this?”

“Ah, monsieur,” she replied, with that enchanting smile which had lured Louis XIV to the guillotine, “it means that I amuse myself.”

From “The Noddle of Navarre.”

When Henry of Navarre saw the ruin he had wrought he elevated his helmet from his marble brow and stepped three paces to the rear. The priest advanced with flashing eyes and, lifting both hands to the zenith, explained that vengeance was the Lord’s—He would repay!

“It is better so,” assented the king—“I prefer it thus.”

But even as he spake a shot from the moat pierced his brain and he fell, to reign no more!

From “Louis the Luckless.”

Observing that his presence was not suspected, Richelieu remained with his eye glued to the keyhole. It was well that he did so, for the conspirators now laid off their masks, and among them he recognized the king himself! Here was a situation that he believed unique; in all his experience in court and camp there was no precedent A sovereign conspiring for his own overthrow, his assassination! Richelieu was deeply affected by so striking an instance of unselfishness. He reeled and fell to the floor in an agony of admiration.

From “The Road to Tusculum.”

No sooner did Cicero perceive his legions retreating than he spurred impetuously from the field, thundering that all was lost. Passing swiftly across the Tiber by a secret bridge, he proceeded to the Forum, and entering the senate unannounced, communicated the news of the disaster. This was Pompey’s opportunity; he rose in his place and extending his index finger in the direction of the defeated warrior exclaimed in sarcastic accents: “Romans, behold your liberator from the chains of the Volscians! Behold the orator-general to whom you owe so much! Let him hereafter (if we have a hereafter) oppose to his country’s armed invaders the power of his matchless tongue. The sword is too heavy for a hand trained in the light calisthenics of gesticulation!” Maddened by this artful arraignment, the senators rose as one Roman and, headed by Marcus Aurelius, fell upon the unfortunate commander, tearing him limb from limb!

From “The Loves of Cromwell.”

Night fell darkly over the city of Worcester.

Cromwell had marched all day to reach it by seven roads, and at nine in the evening besieged it with a hundred thousand men.

A desperate struggle ensued, at the close of which Cromwell rose from his knees victorious over the forces of his king.

“Bring that son of Belial before me!” he roared, “that I may deal with him according to his sins.”

Charles, pale and trembling, with manacled hands and bowed head, was led in.

The lord protector eyed him haughtily, then addressing a brief prayer to Heaven sprang forward and with one stroke of his blade severed the royal head from the royal shoulders.

Thus ended the War of the Roses, and England was again a republic.

OUR TALES OF SENTIMENT

From “One Woman.”

GLADYS climbed to the balustrade of the bridge and, adjusting her skirts, plunged into the gloomiest forebodings.

“Why,” she said, “should the future look so dark to one possessing all that fortune can donate?”

She added a number of profound reflections on the vanity of life, ending with a brilliant epigram. It had scarcely died upon her lips when Armitage arrived upon the tapis and took in the situation at a glance. Striding hastily forward, he bowed gracefully and signified a desire to know the cause of her abstraction. She burst into tears and complied with his wish. Then she flung herself about his neck and accorded full expression to her grief, which he delicately professed not to observe; for this noble figure had been educated in the best schools of European gentility.

From “But a Single Thought.”

Seeing her proceeding away from him, perhaps forever, Auvergne intercepted her with an expression of regret for his rudeness, coupled with a plea for pardon. For a breathless instant she stayed her progress as if uncertain as to the degree of his offense, then resumed her pace till she reached the river’s brim. With an unconscious prayer she sprang swooning into the breakers and was with difficulty prevented from meeting a watery grave.

From “A Belle of Castile.”

Josephina had progressed but a brief distance into the garden when some inner sense proclaimed that she was followed: the crunching of a gentleman’s heel upon the gravel was indisputable. Partially terrified, she sought concealment in the shrubbery that bordered the path on the one side and the other. It passed by her there in the moonlight, that dreadful sound, yet no one visible! It went on and on, growing fainter and fainter, like herself, and was lost to hearing. Then she remembered the tradition of the Invisible Knight and her heart smote her for the absence of faith with which she had so often greeted it.

“I am fitly punished,” she conceded, “for my sceptical attitude. Henceforth, so far as the constitution of my mind will permit, I will be more hospitable to the convictions of the simple.”

How she adhered to this expiational resolution we shall behold.

From “The Queen’s Chaperon.”

The duke stepped from his carriage to a neighboring hill and cast his eye athwart his ancestral domain. “All this,” he mused, “I must renounce if I comply with the queen’s royal suggestion to fly with her to Rome. Is she worth the privation? I must have time to consider a transaction of such great importance.”

Hastily entering his carriage, he haughtily bade the coachman drive him to some expensive hotel, whence he dispatched a delicately perfumed note to her Majesty, saying that he should be detained a few days by affairs of state, but assuring her of his uncommon fidelity. Then he retired to his couch and thought it all over in Italian. The next day he arose and fled rapidly.

From “The Uplifting of Lennox.”

On hearing the terrible news Myra fell supine to earth without delay!

“Is it nothing?” inquired Lennox. “Is it only a temporary indisposition?—will it soon pass?”

But Myra replied only with a significant pallor which told all too plainly what the most accomplished linguist would vainly have striven to express.

How long she lay unconscious we know not, but promptly on becoming her previous self she let fall a multitude of tears.

Lennox yielded to the requirements of etiquette and stole away.

From “Bertha of Bootha.”

As they strolled along the Riviera the setting sun was just touching the summit of the Alps and firing them with an electrical glow. Turning to her, he looked into her beautiful eyes and thus expressed himself:

“Dearest, I am about to make an important statement.”

She almost instantly divined the character of the communication that he referred to, and it affected her with perturbation. It was so sudden. “If,” she remarked, “you could postpone the statement above mentioned until a more suitable occasion I should regard your forbearance with satisfaction.”

“Very well,” he replied, with coldness, “I will wait until we are not alone.”

“Thank you, ever so much,” she blushed, and all was silence. Later in the season he explained to her the trend of his affections, and she signified the pleasure that she derived from his preference.

From “Hertha of Hootha.”

The moon rose in the east without a sound and the ripples on the bosom of the main ran silently to the beach. Hertha and Henri, having similar sensibilities, were equally overcome by the solemnity of the scene, and neither inaugurated a conversation. Their love was too true for utterance by human tongue. Thus they paced for a considerable period, when suddenly the silence was cut asunder by a woman’s scream!

“I know that voice,” cried Henri, hastily divesting himself of as many of his upper garments as, under the circumstances, he deemed it proper to do; “it is Minetta committing suicide!”

He immediately plunged into the Atlantic, while Hertha stood rooted to the sand, endeavoring to regulate her emotions. In a few moments, which seemed an age, he emerged from the deep, bearing the deceased, whom he tenderly flung at her rival’s feet.

Then the survivors knelt and prayed in both English and French.

From “Ethel Shanks.”

Ethel hastened slowly along the path leading to the cliff above the lake. The full moon was rising in the east, for the hour was midnight, and her warm radiance bathed the landscape in a blue languor.

To Ethel the sky had never seemed so blue, nor the Polyanthes tuberosa in her corsage so white. She drank joy with her every breath, and she breathed quickly from her exertion in climbing the eminence on which she stood. Hearing footprints approaching, she turned, and the baron stood before her! “I was hasty,” he explained. “I should not have disclosed my love with such abruption. Permit me to withdraw my inconsiderate declaration.”

Ethel’s heart sank within her! She could not refuse him the desired permission; that would not have been genteel: and Ethel was under all circumstances the lady. So she beat back the tears and said:

“Please, sir, dismiss it from attention.”

The cry of her broken heart was unheard by that callous ear, unaccustomed to the sad, sweet chords evoked from the harp of a dead hope. The nobleman lit his pipe and, his cruel errand performed, returned to his ancestral mansion. For one or two moments Ethel stood on the brink of eternity. Precipitating herself from the extreme edge, she awaited death with composure; she had done her full duty and had no fear of the Hereafter.... At the base of the precipice she came into violent contact with a large granite boulder and was no more.

They found her body at the feet of the cliff, and the baron was torn by conflicting emotions, for the head lay at some distance from the trunk, a truly melancholy spectacle.

“Can it be possible,” he remarked, “that she is no more?”

Assured by the physician that such was the fact, he signified a high degree of regret and strode from the spot unattended; and to this day his fate is cloaked in the impenetrable waters of oblivion.

From “A Demising Love.”

James endeavored ineffectually to ascertain the trend of her affections: her expression remained a blank. He erroneously attributed his failure to poor skill in physiognomy and inwardly bewailed his youthful neglect of the advantages of education. While so engaged he fancied he detected in her look something significant of an interest in his personality. Could he be mistaken? No, there it was again!

Arising from his sedentary attitude to the full stature of his young manhood, he crossed the intervening Persian rug and possessed himself of her hand.

“Mabel,” he inquired, “do you not experience the promptings of a dawning tenderness for one to whom you are much?”

Receiving no negative answer he kissed her simultaneously on both cheeks, and, falling rapidly upon one knee, poured out his soul in beautiful language, mostly devoted to commendation of her fine character and disposition.

Mabel did not at once respond. She was deceased.

From “March Hares.”

Mrs. Rorqual deposited her embroidery on the sofa by her side and, slightly changing color, said, “No, my ideals are not unchangeable; they have undergone memorable alteration within the last hour.”

“Let us hope,” said D’Anchovi, uncrossing his hands, and putting one forefinger into a buttonhole of his coat, “that they are still high.”

She resumed her embroidery and, looking at a painting of the martyrdom of St. Denis over the mantel, replied, “Would it matter?”

“Surely,” said he, lightly beating the carpet with the heel of his well-fitting shoe; “for ideals are more than thoughts. I sometimes think they are things—that we are their thoughts.”

She did not immediately reply. A curtain at an open window moved audibly. A sunbeam crept through the lattice of the piazza outside and fell upon the window-ledge. The fly previously mentioned now walked indolently along the top of the Japanese screen, then fearlessly descended the face of it to within an inch of the mouth of a painted frog. D’Anchovi, with a lifting of his eyebrows, maintained a determined silence.

“I should think that an uncomfortable creed,” Mrs. Rorqual said at last, withdrawing the tip of her shoe, which had been visible beneath the edge of her gown, and shifting her gaze from St. Denis to one of the crystal ornaments of the candelabrum pendent from the ceiling.

He passed the fingers of his right hand through his hair, slightly shifted his position on his chair and said: “Mrs. Rorqual, I have to thank you for a most agreeable hour. Shall I see you on the golf-links to-morrow?”

So they parted, but when he was gone she toyed thoughtfully with a spray of heliotrope growing in a jardinière and then ran her forefinger along a part of the pattern of the wallpaper.

From “A Study in Dissection.”

Captain Gerard introspected. He spread his heart, as it were, upon the dissecting-table of conscience and examined it from several points of view. It is a familiar act—we call it analysis of motive. When he had concluded he knew why he had accepted the invitation of the countess to dinner. He knew why he had insulted the count. Equally obvious were his reasons for mentioning to Iphigeneia the holy bonds of matrimony. In all his conduct since his last introspection but one act baffled him: why, alas, had he spoken to Iphigeneia of the bar-semester in his crest?

As he pondered this inexplicable problem a footfall fell upon his ear and he shuddered as if the hand of death had stepped in.

It was the countess!

From “Her Diplodocus.”

“Sir!” Miss Athylton drew herself up to her full height and looked her interlocutor squarely in the visage. For an instant he returned her scrutiny; then his eyes fell to the earth, stammering apologies. With a sweeping curtsey she passed out of the room, hand over hand.

From “L’Affaire Smith.”

As they sat there wrapping their arms about each other, she advanced the belief that they had loved in a former state of existence.

“But not as now, Irene, surely not as now.”

She was well content to let him feel so about it, and did not seek to alter the character of his emotion. To have done so would have cut her to the heart. On the contrary, a little bird perched in the passion-vine above them and sang several thrilling passages.

From “Clarisse.”

He gazed into her beautiful eyes for a considerable period, during which he did not converse; then he said, with an effort to be sociable: “It has been represented to me that you are a lady of great wealth. May I inquire if I have been rightly informed?”

Blushing energetically at the compliment, she replied in silence, and for a few minutes there was an embarrassing hiatus in the exchange of thought and feeling.

Fearing that he had offended her, the duke arose, and striding to the grand piano began to improvise diligently. At that moment there came in through the open window a sound of wheels on the gravel outside.

He ceased in the middle of a nocturne and would have left the room, but she restrained him:

“It is only my father returning from India,” smiled she; “I shall be so glad to introduce you.”

The full horror of the situation burst upon him like a thunderbolt out of a clean sky.

“Madam,” he thundered, “your father is dead! He died of the plague in Bombay, and I attended the funeral, although he had cursed me with his last breath. I cannot—cannot meet him!”

With those words falling from his white lips he flung himself out of the room. A servant entered and handed Clarisse the visiting card of Mrs. Delahanty.

From “Mary Ann & Co.”

As they neared each other on the narrow bridge Paul observed that she was profoundly agitated.

“Darling,” he said, “please to signify the cause of your perturbation. It is not impossible that I may be able to remove it. You know,” he added, “that I have studied medicine.”

She blushed deeply, then turned pale and continued to tremble. He seized her hand and laid two fingers upon her wrist.

“The pulse,” he said, “is abnormally frequent and irregular.”

With a barely audible expression of disapproval, she withdrew her hand and endeavored to pass him on the narrow footway of the bridge. A misstep precipitated her into the stream, from which with no small difficulty she was taken in a dying condition, a half-mile below. The person that drew her forth from the waters was Paul’s aged uncle.

“Tell Paul Dessard,” she said with her last breath, “that I love him, die for him! Tell him how I strove successfully to hide my love from him lest he think me unmaidenly; but it cannot matter now if he know it. Tell him all, I pray you tell him all, and add that in that Better Land whither I go my spirit will await him with impatience, prepared to explain all.”

The good old man bent over her, placed his open hand behind his ear and ejaculated:

“Hay?”

She shook her head with an infinite pathos and suspired.

From “Ideals.”

Where the grand old Hudson river rolls its floods seaward between the rugged Palisades and the agricultural country of its eastern bank Janey Sewell dwelt in a little vine-covered cottage in one of the most picturesque spots of the latter.

Janey was beautiful all day long. Her hair was as dark as the pinion of a crow, and her brown eyes rivaled in lustre the sheen of the sunlight on the bosom of the river. She was also a fine French scholar.

Janey’s parents had dwelt in Yonkers from time immemorial, and sweet to her was her native environment, whence no proffers of a marriage into the aristocracy or nobility of England could entice her. Many coroneted hearts had been flung at her feet—many were the impassionate pleas that ducal lips had poured into her ear; she remained fancy free, determined to bestow her affection upon some worthy member of an American labor union or die a maid. We shall see with what indomitable tenacity she adhered through disheartening trials to that commendable policy.

From “Oopsie Mercer.”

For a long time—it seemed an eternity—they sat there hand in hand, in the gloaming. The sheep-bells tinkled faintly in the glen, and from an adjacent thicket the whip-poor-will sang rapturously. The katydid grated out her mysterious accusation from the branch of an oak overhead; the cricket droned among the glow-worms underfoot. All these vocal efforts were conspicuously futile; in their newly found happiness the lovers heeded nothing but each other. O love!

Suddenly, on the dew-starred sward, a loud oath rang out behind them. Harold rose promptly to his own feet, the lady remaining in session on the log, her hands demurely folded in her lap. The report of a firearm illuminated the gloom, and ere Harold could intercept the deadly missile it had pierced Miss Mercer’s heart! She fell forward and died without medical assistance.

Harold mounted the log and obtained a fairly good view of the aggressor; it was James Wroth, and he was engaged in taking a second aim. With the lightning-like intuition of a brave man in an emergency Harold inferred that he was the intended victim.

“Fiend!” sprang he, and a death struggle was inaugurated without delay.

Let us go back to the time when we left James Wroth nourishing the fires of an intellectual tempest implanted by Miss Mercer’s rejection of his suit, and embarking for Europe in another tongue.

From “Lance and Lute.”

The faint booming of the distant cannon grew more and more deafening; the thunder of the charging cavalry reverberated o’er the field of battle: the enemies were evidently making a stand.

Plympton arrived at the scene of action just as the commanding general ordered an advance along the entire front. Spurring his steed to the centre of the line he rang out his voice in accents of defiance and was promoted for gallantry.

Bertram who was an eye-witness, immediately withdrew his objection to the marriage. This took place shortly afterward and was attended with the happiest results.

From “Sundry Hearts.”

When presented to the object of his devotion the earl could not suppress his sentiments. The Lady Gwendolin saw them as plainly as if they had been branded upon his brow. Her agitation was comparable to his. All the pent-up emotion of her deep, womanly nature surged to her countenance and paralyzed her so that she was unable to offer her hand. She consequently contented herself with a graceful inclination of the head. The Earl was excessively disappointed. Turning upon his heel he bowed and walked away.

Gwendolin retired to the conservatory and uttered a deep-drawn sigh, then, returning to the ballroom, flung herself into the waltz with an assumed ecstasy that elicited wide comment.

From “La Belle Damn.”

Under the harvest moon, now at its best, the corpse of Ronald showed ghastly white, the frost sparkling in its beard and hair. Clementine’s consciousness of its impulchritude was without a flaw. Had she ever really experienced an uncommon, an exceptional, tenderness for an object boasting so little charm? She was hardly able to take that view of the matter. All seemed unreal, indistinct and charged with dubiety. A sudden rustling in the circumjacent vegetation startled her from her dream, suggesting considerations of personal safety. Surveying the body for the last time, she impelled the stiletto into a contiguous tarn and left the scene with measured tread.

From “The Recrudescence of Squollander.”

“Clifford,” said Isabel, earnestly yet softly, “are you sure that you truly love me?”

Clifford presented such testimony and evidence as he could command, and requested her decision on the sufficiency of what he had advanced.

“Oh, Clifford,” she said, laying her two little hands in one of his comparatively large ones, “you have extirpated my ultimate uncertainty.”

THE GREAT STRIKE OF 1895

NEW YORK, July 2, 1895.—The strike of the American Authors’ Guild continues to hold public attention. No event in the history of trades-unionism since the great railroad strike of last year has equaled it in interest. Nothing else is talked of here. In some parts of the city all business is suspended and the excitement grows more intense hourly.

At about 10 o’clock this morning a non-union author attempting to enter the premises of D. Appleton & Co. with a roll of manuscript was set upon by a mob of strikers and beaten into insensibility. The strikers were driven from their victim by the police, but only after a fight in which both sides suffered severely.

New York, July 3.—Rioting was renewed last night in front of the boycotted publishing house of Charles Scribner’s Sons, 153–157 Fifth avenue. Though frequently driven back by charges of the police, who used their clubs freely, the striking authors succeeded in demolishing all the front windows by stone-throwing. One shot was fired into the interior, narrowly missing a young lady typewriter. Mr. William D. Howells, a member of the Guild’s board of managers, declares that he has irrefragable proof that this outrage was committed by some one connected with the Publishers’ Protective League for the purpose of creating public sympathy.

It has been learned that the non-union author so severely beaten yesterday died of his injuries last night. His name is said to have been Richard Henry (or Hengist) Stoddard, formerly a member of the Guild, but expelled for denouncing the action of President Brander Matthews in ordering the strike.

Later.—Matters look more and more threatening. A crowd of ten thousand authors, headed by Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, is reported to be marching upon the Astor Library, which is strongly guarded by police, heavily armed. Many book-stores have been wrecked and their contents destroyed.

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who was shot last night while setting fire to the establishment of Harper & Bros., cannot recover. She is delirious, and lies on her cot in the Bellevue Hospital singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Boston, July 3.—Industrial discontent has broken out here. The members of the local branch of the American Authors’ Guild threw down their pens this morning and declared that until satisfactory settlement of novelists’ percentages should be arrived at not a hero and heroine should live happily ever afterward in Boston. The publishing house of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. is guarded by a detachment of Pinkerton men armed with Winchester rifles and a Gatling gun. The publishers say that they are getting all the manuscripts that they are able to reject, and profess to have no apprehension as to the future. Mr. Joaquin Miller, a non-union poet from Nevada, visiting some Indian relatives here, was terribly beaten by a mob of strikers to-day. Mr. Miller was the aggressor; he was calling them “sea-doves”—by which he is said to have meant “gulls.”

Chicago, July 3.—The authors’ strike is assuming alarming dimensions and is almost beyond control by the police. The Mayor is strongly urged to ask for assistance from the militia, but the strikers profess to have no fear of his doing so. They say that he was once an author himself, and is in sympathy with them. He wrote “The Beautiful Snow.” In the mean time a mob of strikers numbering not fewer than one thousand men, women and children, headed by such determined labor leaders as Percival Pollard and Hamlin Garland, are parading the streets and defying the authorities. A striker named Opie Reed, arrested yesterday for complicity in the assassination of Mr. Stone, of the publishing firm of Stone & Kimball, was released by this mob from the officers that had him in custody. Mr. Pollard publishes a letter in the Herald this morning saying that Mr. Stone was assassinated by an emissary of the Publishers’ Protective League to create public sympathy, and strongly hints that the assassin is the head of the house of McClurg & Co.

New York, July 4.—All arrangements for celebrating the birthday of American independence are “off.” The city is fearfully excited, and scenes of violence occur hourly. Macmillan & Co.’s establishment was burned last night, and four lives were lost in the flames. The loss of property is variously estimated. All the publishing houses are guarded by the militia, and it is said that Government troops will land this afternoon to protect the United States mails carrying the manuscripts of strike-breaking authors, in transit to publishers. The destruction of the Astor Library and the Cooper Union and the closing of all the book-stores that escaped demolition in yesterday’s rioting have caused sharp public distress. No similar book-famine has ever been known in this city. Novel-readers particularly, their needs being so imperative, are suffering severely, and unless relieved soon will leave the metropolis. While beating a noisy person named E. W. Townsend last night, one Richard Harding Davis had the misfortune to break two of his fingers. He said Townsend was a strike-breaker and had given information to the police, but it turns out that he is a zealous striker, and was haranguing the mob at the time of the assault. His audience of rioting authors, all of whom belonged to the War Story branch of the Guild, mistook Mr. Davis for an officer of the peace and ran away. Mr. Townsend, who cannot recover and apparently does not wish to, is said to be the author of a popular book called The Chimney Fadder. Advices from Boston relate the death of a Pinkerton spy named T. B. Aldrich, who attempted to run the gauntlet of union pickets and enter the premises of The Arena Publishing Company, escorting Walter Blackburn Harte. Mr. Harte was rescued by the police and sailed at once for England.

Philadelphia, July 5.—A mob of striking authors attacked the publishing house of J. B. Lippincott & Co. this morning and were fired on by the militia. Twenty are known to have been killed outright—the largest number of writers ever immortalized at one time.

New York, July 5.—In an interview yesterday Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, treasurer of the Guild, said that notwithstanding the heavy expense of maintaining needy strikers with dependent families, there would be no lack of funds to carry on the fight. Contributions are received daily from sympathetic trades. Sixty dollars have been sent in by the Confederated Undertakers and forty-five by the Association of Opium-Workers. President Brander Matthews has telegraphed to all the Guild’s branches in other cities that they can beat the game if they will stand pat.

New York, July 6.—Sympathy strikes are the order of the day, and “risings” are reported everywhere. In this city the entire East Side is up and out. Shantytown, Ballyspalpeen, Goatville and Niggernest are in line. Among those killed in yesterday’s conflict with the United States troops at Madison-square was Mark Twain, who fell while cheering on a large force of women of the town. He was shot all to rags, so as to be hardly distinguishable from a human being.

Chicago, July 7.—John Vance Cheney was arrested at 3 o’clock this morning while placing a dynamite bomb on the Clark-street bridge. He is believed to have entertained the design, also, of setting the river on fire. Two publishers were shot this morning by General Lew Wallace, who escaped in the confusion of the incident. The victims were employed as accountants in the Methodist Book Concern.

New York, July 8.—The authors’ strike has collapsed, and the strikers are seeking employment as waiters in the places made vacant by the lockout of the Restaurant Trust. The Publishers’ Protective League declares that no author concerned in the strike will ever again see his name upon a title-page. The American Authors’ Guild is a thing of the past. Arrests are being made every hour. As soon as he can procure bail, President Brander Matthews will go upon the vaudeville stage.

1894.

A THUMB-NAIL SKETCH

MANY years ago I lived in Oakland, California. One day as I lounged in my lodging there was a gentle, hesitating rap at the door and, opening it, I found a young man, the youngest young man, it seemed to me, that I had ever confronted. His appearance, his attitude, his manner, his entire personality suggested extreme diffidence. I did not ask him in, instate him in my better chair (I had two) and inquire how we could serve each other. If my memory is not at fault I merely said: “Well,” and awaited the result.

“I am from the San Francisco Examiner,” he explained in a voice like the fragrance of violets made audible, and backed a little away.

“O,” I said, “you come from Mr. Hearst.”

Then that unearthly child lifted its blue eyes and cooed: “I am Mr. Hearst.”

His father had given him a daily newspaper and he had come to hire me to write for it. Twenty years of what his newspapers call “wage slavery” ensued, and although I had many a fight with his editors for my right to my self-respect, I cannot say that I ever found Mr. Hearst’s chain a very heavy burden, though indubitably I suffered somewhat in social repute for wearing it.

If ever two men were born to be enemies he and I are they. Each stands for everything that is most disagreeable to the other, yet we never clashed. I never had the honor of his friendship and confidence, never was “employed about his person,” and seldom entered the editorial offices of his newspapers. He did not once direct nor request me to write an opinion that I did not hold, and only two or three times suggested that I refrain for a season from expressing opinions that I did hold, when they were antagonistic to the policy of the paper, as they commonly were. During several weeks of a great labor strike in California, when mobs of ruffians stopped all railway trains, held the state capital and burned, plundered and murdered at will, he “laid me off,” continuing, of course, my salary; and some years later, when striking employees of street railways were devastating St. Louis, pursuing women through the street and stripping them naked, he suggested that I “let up on that labor crowd.” No other instances of “capitalistic arrogance” occur to memory. I do not know that any of his other writers enjoyed a similar liberty, or would have enjoyed it if they had had it. Most of them, indeed, seemed to think it honorable to write anything that they were expected to.

As to Mr. Hearst’s own public writings, I fancy there are none: he could not write an advertisement for a lost dog. The articles that he signs and the speeches that he makes—well, if a man of brains is one who knows how to use the brains of others this amusing demagogue is nobody’s dunce.

If asked to justify my long service to journals with whose policies I was not in agreement and whose character I loathed I should confess that possibly the easy nature of the service had something to do with it. As to the point of honor (as that is understood in the profession) the editors and managers always assured me that there was commercial profit in employing my rebellious pen; and I—O well, I persuaded myself that I could do most good by addressing those who had greatest need of me—the millions of readers to whom Mr. Hearst was a misleading light. Perhaps this was an erroneous view of the matter; anyhow I am not sorry that, discovering no preservative allowable under the pure food law that would enable him to keep his word overnight, I withdrew, and can now, without impropriety, speak my mind of him as freely as his generosity, sagacity or indifference once enabled me to do of his political and industrial doctrines, in his own papers.

In illustration of some of the better features of this man’s strange and complex character let this incident suffice. Soon after the assassination of Governor Goebel of Kentucky—which seemed to me a particularly perilous “precedent” if unpunished—I wrote for one of Mr. Hearst’s New York newspapers the following prophetic lines:

The lines took no attention, naturally, but twenty months afterward the President was shot by Czolgosz. Every one remembers what happened then to Mr. Hearst and his newspapers. His political enemies and business competitors were alert to their opportunity. The verses, variously garbled but mostly made into an editorial, or a news dispatch with a Washington date-line but usually no date, were published all over the country as evidence of Mr. Hearst’s complicity in the crime. As such they adorned the editorial columns of the New York Sun and blazed upon a bill-board in front of Tammany Hall. So fierce was the popular flame to which they were the main fuel that thousands of copies of the Hearst papers were torn from the hands of newsboys and burned in the streets. Much of their advertising was withdrawn from them. Emissaries of the Sun overran the entire country persuading clubs, libraries and other patriotic bodies to exclude them from the files. There was even an attempt made to induce Czolgosz to testify that he had been incited to his crime by reading them—ten thousand dollars for his family to be his reward; but this cheerful scheme was blocked by the trial judge, who had been informed of it. During all this carnival of sin I lay ill in Washington, unaware of it; and my name, although appended to all that I wrote, including the verses, was not, I am told, once mentioned. As to Mr. Hearst, I dare say he first saw the lines when all this hullabaloo directed his attention to them.

With the occurrences here related the incident was not exhausted. When Mr. Hearst was making his grotesque canvass for the Governorship of New York the Roosevelt Administration sent Secretary Root into the state to beat him. This high-minded gentleman incorporated one of the garbled prose versions of my prophecy into his speeches with notable effect and great satisfaction to his conscience. Still, I am steadfast in the conviction that God sees him; and if any one thinks that Mr. Root will not go to the devil it must be the devil himself, in whom, doubtless, the wish is father to the thought.

Hearst’s newspapers had always been so unjust that no injustice could be done to them, and had been incredibly rancorous toward McKinley, but no doubt it was my luckless prophecy that cost him tens of thousands of dollars and a growing political prestige. For anything that I know (or care) they may have cost him his election. I have never mentioned the matter to him, nor—and this is what I have been coming to—has he ever mentioned it to me. I fancy there must be a human side to a man like that, even if he is a mischievous demagogue.

In matters of “industrial discontent” it has always been a standing order in the editorial offices of the Hearst newspapers to “take the side of the strikers” without inquiry or delay. Until the great publicist was bitten by political ambition and began to figure as a crazy candidate for office not a word of warning or rebuke to murderous mobs ever appeared in any column of his papers, except my own. A typical instance of the falsification of news to serve a foul purpose may be cited here. In Pennsylvania, a ferocious mob of foreign miners armed with bludgeons marched upon the property of their employers, to destroy it, incidentally chasing out of their houses all the English-speaking residents along the way and clubbing all that they could catch. Arriving at the “works,” they were confronted by a squad of deputy marshals, and while engaged in murdering the sheriff, who had stepped forward to read the riot act, were fired on and a couple of dozen of them killed. Naturally, the deputy marshals were put on trial for their lives. Mr. Hearst sent my good friend Julius Chambers to report the court proceedings. Day after day he reported at great length the testimony (translated) of the saints and angels who had suffered the mischance “while peacefully parading on a public road.” Then Mr. Chambers was ordered away and not a word of testimony for the defence (all in English), ever appeared in the paper. Instances of such fair-mindedness as this could be multiplied by the thousand, but all, I charitably trust, have been recorded Elsewhere in a more notable Book than mine.

Never just, Mr. Hearst is always generous. He is not swift to redress a grievance of one of his employees against another, but he is likely to give the complainant a cottage, a steam launch, or a roll of bank notes, if that person happens to be the kind of man to accept it, and he commonly is. As to discharging anybody for inefficiency or dishonesty—no, indeed, not so long as there is a higher place for him. His notion of removal is promotion.

He once really did dismiss a managing editor, but in a few months the fellow was back in his old place. I ventured to express surprise. “Oh, that’s all right,” Mr. Hearst explained. “I have a new understanding with him. He is to steal only small sums hereafter; the large ones are to come to me.”

In that incident we observe two dominant features in his character—his indifference to money and his marvelous sense of humor. He who should apprehend danger to public property from Mr. Hearst’s elevation to high office would err. The money to which he is indifferent includes that of others, and he smiles at his own expense.

If there is a capable working newspaper man in this country who has not, malgre lui, a kindly feeling for Mr. Hearst, he needs the light. I do not know how it is elsewhere, but in San Francisco and New York Mr. Hearst’s habit of having the cleverest (not, alas the most conscientious) obtainable men, no matter what he had to pay them, advanced the salaries of all such men more than fifty per cent. Possibly these have receded, and possibly the high average ability of his men has receded too—I don’t know; but indubitably he did get the brightest men.

Some of them, I grieve to say, were imperfectly appreciative of their employer’s gentle sway. At one time on the Examiner it was customary, when a reporter had a disagreeable assignment, for him to go away for a few days, then return and plead intoxication. That excused him. They used to tell of one clever fellow in whose behalf this plea was entered while he was still absent from duty. An hour afterward Mr. Hearst met him and, seeing that he was cold sober, reproved him for deceit. On the scamp’s assurance that he had honestly intended to be drunk, but lacked the price, Mr. Hearst gave him enough money to re-establish his character for veracity and passed on.

I fancy things have changed a bit now, and that Mr. Hearst has changed with them. He is older and graver, is no longer immune to ambition, and may have discovered that good-fellowship with his subordinates and gratification of his lone humor are not profitable in business and politics. Doubtless too, he has learned from observation of his entourage of sycophants and self-seekers that generosity and gratitude are virtues that have not a speaking acquaintance. It is worth something to learn that, and it costs something.

With many amiable and alluring qualities, among which is, or used to be, a personal modesty amounting to bashfulness, the man has not a friend in the world. Nor does he merit one, for, either congenitally or by induced perversity, he is inaccessible to the conception of an unselfish attachment or a disinterested motive. Silent and smiling, he moves among men, the loneliest man. Nobody but God loves him and he knows it; and God’s love he values only in so far as he fancies that it may promote his amusing ambition to darken the door of the White House. As to that, I think that he would be about the kind of President that the country—daft with democracy and sick with sin—is beginning to deserve.

MORTALITY IN THE FOOT-HILLS[*]

A LITTLE bit of romance has just transpired to relieve the monotony of our metropolitan life. Old Sam Choggins, whom the editor of this paper has so often publicly thrashed, has returned from Mud Springs with a young wife. He is said to be very fond of her, and the way he came to get her was this:

Some time ago we courted her, but finding she was “on the make” we threw off on her after shooting her brother. She vowed revenge and promised to marry any man who would horse-whip us. This Sam agreed to undertake, and she married him on that promise.

We shall call on Sam to-morrow with our new shotgun and present our congratulations in the usual form.—Hangtown “Gibbet.”

•••••

The purposeless old party with a boiled shirt who has for some days been loafing about the town peddling hymn-books at a merely nominal price (a clear proof that he stole them) has been disposed of in a cheap and satisfactory manner. His lode petered out about six o’clock yesterday afternoon, our evening edition being delayed until that time by request. The cause of his death, as nearly as could be ascertained by a single physician—Dr. Duffer being too drunk to attend—was Whisky Sam, who, it will be remembered, delivered a lecture some weeks ago, entitled “Dan’l in the Lions’ Den; and How They’d a-Et Him If He’d Ever Been Thar”—in which he overthrew revealed religion.

His course yesterday proves that he can act, as well as talk.—Devil Gully “Expositor.”

•••••

There was considerable excitement in the street yesterday, owing to the arrival of Bust-Head Dave, formerly of this place, who came over from Pudding Springs. He was met at the hotel by Sheriff Knogg, who leaves a large family. Dave walked down to the bridge, and it reminded one of old times to see the people go away as he heaved in view, for he had made a threat (first published in this paper) to clean out the town. Before leaving the place Dave called at our office to settle for a year’s subscription (invariably in advance) and was informed through a chink in the logs, that he might leave his dust in the tin cup at the well. Dave is looking much larger than at his last visit, just previous to the funeral of Judge Dawson. He left for Injun Hill at five o’clock amidst a good deal of shooting at rather long range. There will be an election for Sheriff as soon as a stranger can be found who will accept the honor.—Yankee Flat “Advertiser.”

•••••

It is to be hoped the people will turn out to-morrow, according to advertisement in another column. The men deserve hanging, no end, but at the same time they are human and entitled to some respect; and we shall print the name of every adult male who does not grace the occasion with his presence. We make this announcement simply because there have been some indications of apathy; and any man who will stay away when Bob Bolton and Sam Buxter are to be hanged is probably either an accomplice or a relation. Old Blanket-Mouth Dick was not the only blood relation these fellows had in this vicinity; and the fate that befell him when they could not be found ought to be a warning to the rest.

The bar is just in rear of the gibbet and will be run by a brother of ours. Gentlemen who shrink from publicity will patronize that bar.—San Louis Jones “Gazette.”

•••••

A painful accident occurred in Frog Gulch yesterday which has cast a good deal of gloom over a hitherto joyous community. Dan Spigger—or, as he was familiarly called, Murderer Dan—got drunk at his usual hour and, as is his custom, took down his gun and started after the fellow who went home with Dan’s girl the night before. He found him at breakfast with his wife and children. After dispersing them he started out to return, but, being weary, stumbled and broke his leg. Dr. Bill Croft found him in that condition and, having no wagon at hand to convey him to town, shot him to put him out of his misery. His loss is a Democratic gain. He seldom disagreed with any but Democrats and would have materially reduced the vote of that party had he not been so untimely cut off.—Jackass Gap “Bulletin.”

•••••

The dance-house at the corner of Moll Duncan street and Fish-Trap avenue has been broken up. Our friend the editor of The Jamboree succeeded in getting his cock-eyed sister in there as a beer-slinger and the hurdy-gurdy girls all swore they would not stand her society. They got up and got. The light fantastic toe is not tripped there any more, except when the Jamboree man sneaks in and dances a jig for his morning pizen.—Murderburg “Herald.”

•••••

The superintendent of the Mag Davis mine requests us to state that the custom of pitching Chinamen and Injins down the shaft will have to be stopped, as he has resumed work in the mine. The old well back of Jo Bowman’s is just as good, and more centrally located.—New Jerusalem “Courier.”

•••••

There is a fellow in town who claims to be the man that killed Sheriff White some months ago. We consider him an impostor seeking admission into society above his level, and hope people will stop inviting him to their houses.—Nigger Hill “Patriot.”

•••••

A stranger wearing a stovepipe hat arrived in town yesterday, putting up at the Nugget House. The boys are having a good time with that hat this morning. The funeral will take place at two o’clock.—Spanish Camp “Flag.”

•••••

The scoundrel who upset our office last month will be hung to-morrow and no paper will be issued the next day.—“Sierra Firecracker.”

•••••

The old gray-headed party who lost his life last Friday at the jeweled hands of our wife deserves more than a passing notice at ours. He came to this city last summer and started a weekly Methodist prayer-meeting, but being warned by the police, who was formerly a Presbyterian, gave up the swindle. He afterward undertook to introduce Bibles and, it is said, on one occasion attempted to preach. This was a little too much and at our suggestion he was tarred and feathered.

For a time this treatment seemed to work a reform, but the heart of a Methodist is above all things deceitful and desperately wicked: he was soon after caught in the very act of presenting a hymnbook to old Ben Spoffer’s youngest daughter, Ragged Moll. The vigilance committee pro tem. waited on him, when he was decently shot and left for dead, as was recorded in this paper, with an obituary notice for which we have never received a cent. Last Friday, however, he was discovered sneaking into the potato patch connected with this paper and our wife, God bless her! got an axe and finished him then and there.

His name was John Bucknor and it is reported (we do not know with how much truth) that at one time there was an improper intimacy between him and the lady who despatched him. If so, we pity Sal.—Coyote “Trapper.”

•••••

Our readers may have noticed in yesterday’s issue an editorial article in which we charged Judge Black with having murdered his father, beaten his wife and stolen seven mules from Jo Gorman. The facts are substantially as stated, but somewhat different. The killing was done by a Dutchman named Moriarty and the bruises that we happened to see on the face of the Judge’s wife were caused by a fall, she being, doubtless, drunk at the time. The mules had only strayed into the mountains and have returned all right.

We consider the Judge’s anger at so trifling an error very ridiculous and insulting and if he comes to town he will not come again. An independent press is not to be muzzled by any absurd old duffer with a crooked nose and a sister who is considerably more mother than wife. Not so long as we have our usual success in thinning out the judiciary.—Lone Tree “Sockdologer.”

•••••

Yesterday as Job Wheeler was returning from a clean-up at the Buttermilk Flume he stopped at Hell Tunnel to have a chat with the boys. John Tooley took a fancy to Job’s watch and asked for it. Being refused, he slipped away, and going to Job’s shanty, killed his three half-breed children and a valuable pig. This is the third time John has played some scurvy trick, and it is about time the superintendent discharged him. There is entirely too much of this practical joking amongst the boys. It will lead to trouble yet.—Nugget Hill “Pickaxe of Freedom.”

•••••

The stranger from Frisco, with the clawhammer coat, who put up at the Gage House last Thursday, and was looking for a chance to invest, was robbed of three hundred ounces of clean dust. We know who did it, but don’t be frightened, John Lowry; we’ll never tell, though we are awful hard up, owing to our subscribers going back on us.—Choketown “Rocker.”

•••••

The railroad from this city northwest will be commenced as soon as the citizens get tired of admonishing the Chinamen brought up to do the work, which will probably be within three or four weeks. The carcasses are accumulating about town and begin to be unpleasant.—Gravel Hill “Thunderbolt.”

•••••

The man who was shot last week at the Gulch will be buried next Thursday. He is not dead yet, but his physician wishes to visit a mother-in-law at Lard Springs and is therefore very anxious to get the case off his hands. The undertaker describes the patient as the longest cuss in that section.—Santa Peggy “Times.”

•••••

There is some dispute about land titles at Little Bilk Bar. About half a dozen cases were temporarily decided on Wednesday, but it is supposed the widows will renew the litigation. The only proper way to prevent these vexatious lawsuits is to hang the judge of the county court.—Cow-County “Outcropper.”

THE A. L. C. B.

A SOCIETY of which I am the proud and happy founder is the American League for the Circumvention of Bores. With a view to enlisting the reader’s interest and favor and obtaining his initiation fee, I beg leave to expound the ends and methods of the order.

The League purposes to work within the law: Bores can be circumvented by killing; which may be called the circumvention direct; but for every Bore that is killed arises a swarm of Bores (reporters, lawyers, jurors, etc.) whom one is unable to kill. The League plan is humane, simple, ingenious and effective. It leaves the Bore alive, to suffer the lasting torments of his own esteem.

The American League for the Circumvention of Bores has the customary machinery of grips, pass-words, signs, a goat, solemn ceremonials and mystic hoodooing; but for practical use it employs only the Signal of Eminent Distress, to preservation of the secret whereof members are bound by the most horrible oath known to the annals of juration. It is a law that any member duly convicted in the secret tribunals of the League of failing promptly to respond to the Signal of Eminent Distress shall suffer evisceration through the nose.

The plan works this way: I am, say, on a ferry-boat. Carelessly glancing about, I see—yes, it must have been—ah! again: the Signal of Eminent Distress! A Brother of the League is in articulo mortis—the demon hath him—the beak of the Bore is crimson in his heart! I go to the rescue, choosing, according to my judgment and tact, one of the Ten Thousand Forms of Benign Relief which I have memorized from the Ritual.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” I perhaps say to the victim, whom I may never have seen before, “I have been looking all over the boat for you. I must have a word with you on a most important matter if your friend”—looking at the baffled Bore who has been talking into him—“will have the goodness to excuse you.”

Possibly, though, I say to the signaling victim: “Sir, pardon me, but is not your name—?”

“Jonesmith,” he replies, coldly; “may I ask—?”

“Ah, yes; I hope you will not think me intrusive, but a gentleman on the lower deck, who says he is your uncle, has fallen and broken his neck.”

As Mr. Jonesmith with a grateful look moves off, the Bore, full of solicitude, starts to follow for assistance and condolence. I lay my hand on his arm. “Pardon, sir; the physician prescribes absolute quiet: the splendor, charm and vivacity of your conversation would unduly excite the patient.”

Before the wretch can round-up his faculties the Brother in Distress has escaped and I am walking away with the 368th Aspect of Superb Unconcern, as laid down in the Ritual.

The League has been in existence in New York city for about six months. There is a younger branch at Hohokus, and another is forming at Podunk. I am the Supreme Imperial Inimitable, though every member has high rank and office. Applications for membership must be made personally to the Grand Dictatorial Caboodle, which will judge whether the applicant is himself a Bore.

TWO CONVERSATIONS

I

CANDID PUBLISHER.—Sir, I am proud to meet you. Your book is admirable; it is exquisitely touching and beautiful.

Reasonable Author.—Your commendation is most pleasing to me. I was at no time in doubt of your favorable action in the matter.

C. P.—You did not hear me out. Publication of a book entails a considerable expense.

R. A.—Naturally.

C. P.—The money does not always come back.

R. A.—I have been so informed. Publishers sometimes accept work that is very bad literature.

C. P.—Yes, we try to.

R. A.—Try to? You cannot mean that you prefer such work.

C. P.—We must publish what will sell. Do you read the most popular books of the year—the “best-selling” novels?—nearly all “best sellers” are novels.

R. A.—God forbid! I sometimes look at them.

C. P.—Do you ever find one that has any literary merit?

R. A.—Certainly not. I did not expect my book to be popular, but hoped that it might have a steady and perhaps increasing sale and eventually become famous. You sometimes publish new editions of the great works in our language—“the English classics.” Do you lose money by them?

C. P.—Not usually. They have had the advantage of generations of advertising by scholars and by critics whose words had weight in their time and have in ours. If your excellent book finds a publisher pretty soon and is kept going until the year 2100, we shall be glad to put it on our list. You see it is very simple: you have only to conform to the conditions of success.

R. A.—I see. But are these the only conditions? Some great work succeeds in its author’s time—that of Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Carlyle, and so forth, in England; and in America that of—m, er, huh.

C. P.—Is it surely great work? The ink is hardly dry. The literary fashions determining its form and substance are still with us. Posterity will have to pass judgment upon it, which posterity will indubitably do without reference to our view of the matter. Then, if you and I happen to be in communication with this vale of tears we shall know if these noted authors were mining the great mother-lode of human interest, or, occasionally touching some of its dips, spurs and angles, taking out barren rock. It looks to us like a rich enough ore, but it is a long journey to where there is an assaying-plant capable of dealing with that particular product. When it is “heard from” we shall not be here. Those who mined it are gone already.

R. A.—Then there can be no valuable contemporary criticism?

C. P.—None that any one can know to be valuable.

R. A.—And no man can live long enough to know if he is a good writer?

C. P.—The trade of writing has that disadvantage.

R. A.—We are getting a long way from business. Am I to understand that you reject my book because, as you say, “it is exquisitely touching and beautiful”?

C. P.—You outline the painful situation with accuracy.

R. A.—Well, I’ll be damned!

C. P.—Sure!—if you find a sentimentalist who will publish your book. He will do the damning.

II

Editor.—Glad to see you, sir. Take a chair.

Visitor.—I am the proprietor of The Prosperous Monthly.

Ed.—Take two chairs.

Vis.—I called to congratulate you on the extraordinary success of The Waste Basket. I should not have thought it possible for you to break into our field and play this game as well as we. And with so fantastic a title!

Ed.—For my success I am greatly indebted to yourself.

Vis.—Not if I know it: we have fought you, tooth and nail.

Ed.—Oh, that is all right; if it had been expedient we should have fought back. Our prosperity depended on yours.

Vis.—Heaven has withheld from me the intelligence to understand.

Ed.—Have any of the contents of this magazine ever seemed familiar to you?

Vis.—I am not much of a reader; my editor has fancied that some of your articles lacked originality, but has confessed that he could not quite identify their authors.

Ed.—Just so; I accept nothing for my magazine that has not been first submitted to yours. If it has not been when offered, I require that to be done.

Vis.—That is monstrous nice of you. Such knightly courtesy to a senior competitor is most unusual. I thank you—come and dine with me to-morrow at seven (handing card).

Ed.—With pleasure. Good day.

Vis.—Good day. (Exit Visitor.)

Ed. (solus).—If he thinks it out, I shall miss a dinner.

A STORY AT THE CLUB

“DO you believe that?” said Dr. Dutton, passing a newspaper across the table to Will Brady and taking needless pains to point out “that” with his thumb. Brady read the discredited paragraph. It was as follows:

Mr. John Doane, of Peequeegan, Maine, has received seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars from the estate of an old man whom he protected from the abuse of a rowdy fifteen years ago, and whom he never afterward saw nor heard from. In the will the old man apologized for the smallness of the bequest, explaining that it was all that he had.

“Believe it?” said Brady; “I know it to be true. I was myself the—”

He paused to think.

“Now, how the devil,” said Dutton, “can you ring yourself into that story? You are not John Doane, and you certainly are not the late old man.”

“I was about to say,” resumed Brady, composedly, “that I was myself the legatee in a somewhat similar case. In the year—”

“Waiter,” said Dutton, “bring me twelve cigars, three bottles of champagne and, at daylight, a cup of powerful coffee. When the fellows come in from the theater ask them not to come into this room—say there’s a man in here who is engaged in being murdered.”

“In the year 1892,” Mr. Brady went on to say, “I was living in Peoria, Illinois. One night while walking along the railroad track just outside of town I saw a man making the most violent exertions to release himself from the 'frog’ of a switch, into which he had incautiously wedged the heel of his shoe. He was steaming with perspiration and the look of agony on his face was worth a long walk to see. You have probably seen such a look on the countenance of many a patient undergoing the operation of receiving your bill. The express train was due in two minutes, and we had not so much as a match to signal it with—the night was tar-dark.”

“The look of agony, I suppose, shone by its own inherent light.”

“The man was facing away from the approaching train—the thunder of which was now audible between his groans and cries. Just in the nick of time I stepped up to him and introducing myself begged pardon for the intrusion and suggested that he unlace his shoe and remove his foot from it, which he did. When the train had passed he thanked me and handed me his card. I have carried it with me ever since—here it is.”

Taking out a bit of pasteboard he handed it across the table without looking at it. It read:

Oopsie.Dearie,—I could not come: I was watched. To-morrow—same time, at the other place.

The Doctor read the card and quietly handed it back. The story proceeded:

“A moment later the man had disappeared, but in a week or two I received a letter from him, dated at Chicago. He said he owed his life to me and should devote it to my service. Being childless, friendless and heretofore without an aim or ambition, he should pass the rest of his days in acquiring wealth, in order to testify his gratitude. It would be a labor of love to trace me wherever I might wander—I need not apprise him of my address, nor in any way bother myself about him. If I survived him I would be a very rich man.

“Well, sir, you may believe it or not, but if there is any name which deserves to be held by me in high honor for truth and simple good faith it is the name of—”

“Oopsie.”

Mr. Brady was visibly affected. For a moment he was fitly comparable to nothing warmer and livelier than a snow bank under the bleak stars of a polar midnight. The Doctor toyed absently with the ash-holder. It was a supreme crisis. It passed.

“That man died in 1901 and left me, by will, an estate valued at more than nine hundred thousand dollars. The will was properly probated and never contested.”

“But, my dear fellow,” said Dutton, taking at last a genuine interest in the narrative, “you never told us—nobody has ever heard of this, and you certainly do not pass for a very rich man. Did you really get the property?”

“Alas, no,” said Brady, with a solemn shake of the head, as he rose from the table and glanced at his watch. “It is true, just as I have told you—on my honor: the man left me that property and all was square, regular and legal, but I did not get a cent. The fact is, I died first.”

THE WIZARD OF BUMBASSA

MR. GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE, the air-brake man, did a cruel and needless thing in going out of his way to try to destroy humanity’s hope of being shot along the ground at a speed of one hundred miles an hour. There is no trouble, it appears, in building locomotives able to snatch a small village of us through space at the required speed; the difficulty lies in making, with sufficient promptness, those unschedulary stops necessitated by open switches, missing bridges, and various obstacles that industrial discontent is wont to grace the track withal. Even on a straight line—what the civil engineers find a pleasure in calling a tangent—the prosperous industrian at the throttle-valve cannot reasonably be expected to discern these hindrances at a greater distance than one thousand feet; and Mr. Westinghouse sadly confessed that in that distance his most effective appliance could not do more than reduce the rate from one hundred miles an hour to fifty—an obviously inadequate reduction. He held out no hope of being able to evolve from his inner consciousness either a brake of superior effectiveness or a pair of spectacles that would enable the engine driver to discover a more distant danger on a tangent, or to see round a curve.

All this begets an intelligent dejection. If we must renounce our golden dream of cannonading ourselves from place to place with a celerity suitable to our rank in the world’s fauna—comprising the shark, the hummingbird, the hornet and the jackass rabbit—civilization is indeed a failure. But it is forbidden to the wicked pessimist to rejoice, for there is a greater than Mr. Westinghouse and he has demonstrated his ability to bring to a dead stop within its own length any railway train, however short and whatever its rate of speed. It were unwise though, to indulge too high a hope in this matter, even if the gloomy vaticinations of the Westinghouse person are fallacious. Approaching an evidence of social unrest at a speed of one and two-thirds mile a minute on a down grade, even in a train equipped by a greater than Mr. Westinghouse, may not be an altogether pleasing performance.

This possibility can be best illustrated by recalling to the reader’s memory the history of the Ghargaroo and Gallywest Railway in Bumbassa. As is well known, the trains on that road attained a speed that had not theretofore been dreamed of except by the illustrious projector of the road. But the King of Bumbassa was not content: with an indifference to the laws of dynamics which in the retrospect seems almost imperial, he insisted upon instantaneous stoppage. To the royal demand the clever and prudent gentleman who had devised and carried out the enterprise responded with an invention which he assured his Majesty would accomplish the desired end. A trial was made in the sovereign’s presence, the coaches being loaded with his chief officers of state and other courtiers, and it was eminently successful. The train, going at a speed of ninety miles an hour, was brought to a dead stop within the length of the rhinoceros-catcher and directly in front of the blue cotton umbrella beneath which his Majesty sat to observe the result of the test. The passengers, unfortunately, did not stop so promptly, and were afterward scraped off the woodwork at the forward ends of the cars and decently interred. The train-hands had all escaped by the ingenious plan of absenting themselves from the proceedings, with the exception of the engineer, who had thoughtfully been selected for the occasion from among the relatives of the projector’s wife, and instructed how to shut off the steam and apply the brake. When hosed off the several parts of the engine he was found to have incurred a serious dispersal of the viscera.

The King’s delight at the success of the experiment was somewhat mitigated by the reflection that if the train had been freighted with bona fide travelers instead of dignitaries whom he could replace by appointment the military resources of the state would have suffered a considerable loss; so he commanded the projector to invent a method of stopping the passengers and the trains simultaneously. This, after much experiment, was done by fixing the passengers to the seats by clamps extending across the abdomen and chest; but no provision being made for the head, a general decapitation ensued at each stop; and people who valued their heads preferred thereafter to travel afoot or ostrichback, as before. It was found, moreover, that, as arrested motion is converted into heat, the royal requirement frequently resulted in igniting and consuming the trains—which was expensive.

These various hard conditions of railroading in Bumbassa eventually subdued the spirits of the stockholders, drove the projector to drink and led at last to withdrawal of the concession—whereby one of the most promising projects for civilizing the Dark Continent was, in the words of the Ghargaroo Palladium “knocked perfectly cold.”

I have thought it well to recall this melancholy incident here for its general usefulness in pointing a moral, and for its particular application to the fascinating enterprise of a one-hundred-miles-an-hour electric road from New York to Chicago—a road whose trains, intending passengers are assured, will be under absolute control of the engineers and “can be stopped at a moment’s notice.” If I have said anything to discourage the enterprise I am sorry, but really it is not easy to understand why anybody should wish to go from New York to Chicago.

THE FUTURE HISTORIAN

I—The Dispersal

SO sombre a phenomenon as the effacement of an ancient and brilliant civilization within the lifetime of a single generation is, fortunately, known to have occurred only once in the history of the world. The catastrophe is not only unique in history, but all the more notable for having befallen, not a single state overrun by powerful barbarians, but a half of the world; and for having been effected by a seemingly trivial agency that sprang from the civilization itself. Indeed, it was the work of one man.

Hiram Perry (or Percy) Maximus was born in the latter part of the nineteenth century of “the Christian Era,” in Podunk, the capital of America. Little is known of his ancestry, although Dumbleshaw affirms on evidence not cited by him that he came of a family of pirates that infested the waters of Lake Erie (now the desert of Gobol) as early as “1813”—whenever that may have been.

The precise nature of Hiram Perry’s invention, with its successive improvements, is not known—probably could not now be understood. It was called “the silent firearm”—so much we learn from fragmentary chronicles of the period; also that it was of so small size that it could be put into the “pocket.” (In his Dictionary of Antiquities the learned Pantin-Gwocx defines “pocket” as, first, “the main temple of the American deity;” second, “a small receptacle worn on the person.” The latter definition is the one, doubtless, that concerns us if the two things are not the same.) Regarding the work of “the silent firearm” we have light in abundance. Indeed, the entire history of the brief but bloody period between its invention and the extinction of the Christian civilization is an unbroken record of its fateful employment.

Of course the immense armies of the time were at once supplied with the new weapon, with results that none had foreseen. Soldiers were thenceforth as formidable to their officers as to their enemies. It was no longer possible to maintain discipline, for no officer dared offend, by punishment or reprimand, one who could fatally retaliate as secretly and securely, in the repose of camp as in the tumult of battle. In civic affairs the deadly device was malignly active. Statesmen in disfavor (and all were hateful to men of contrary politics) fell dead in the forum by means invisible and inaudible. Anarchy, discarding her noisy and imperfectly effective methods, gladly embraced the new and safe one.

In other walks of life matters were no better. Armed with the sinister power of life and death, any evil-minded person (and most of the ancient Caucasians appear to have been evil-minded) could gratify a private revenge or wanton malevolence by slaying whom he would, and nothing cried aloud the lamentable deed.

So horrible was the mortality, so futile all preventive legislation, that society was stricken with a universal panic. Cities were plundered and abandoned; villages without villagers fell to decay; homes were given up to bats and owls, and farms became jungles infested with wild beasts. The people fled to the mountains, the forests, the marshes, concealing themselves from one another in caves and thickets, and dying from privation and exposure and diseases more dreadful than the perils from which they had fled. When every human being distrusted and feared every other human being solitude was esteemed the only good; and solitude spells death. In one generation Americans and Europeans had slunk back into the night of barbarism.

II—Rise and Fall of the Aeroplane

The craze for flying appears to have culminated in the year 369 Before Smith. In that year the aëroplane (a word of unknown derivation) was almost the sole means of travel. These flying-machines were so simple and cheap that one who had not a spare half-hour in which to make one could afford to purchase. The price for a one-man machine was about two dollars—one-tenth of a gooble. Double-seated ones were of course a little more costly. No other kinds were allowed by law, for, as was quaintly explained by a chronicle of the period, “a man has a right to break his own neck, and that of his wife, but not those of his children and friends.” It had been learned by experiment that for transportation of goods and for use in war the aëroplane was without utility. (Of balloons, dirigible and indirigible, we hear nothing after 348 B. S; the price of gas, controlled by a single corporation, made them impossible.)

From extant fragments of Jobblecopper’s History of Invention it appears that in America alone there were at one time no fewer than ten million aëroplanes in use. In and about the great cities the air was so crowded with them and collisions resulting in falls were so frequent that prudent persons neither ventured to use them nor dared to go out of cover. As a poet of the time expressed it:

The reaction from this disagreeable state of affairs seems to have been brought about by a combination of causes.

First, the fierce animosities engendered by the perils to pedestrians and “motorists”—a word of disputed meaning. So savage did this hostility become that firing at aëroplanes in flight, with the newly invented silent rifle, grew to the character of a national custom. Dimshouck has found authority for the statement that in a single day thirty-one aëronauts fell from the heavens into the streets of Nebraska, the capital of Chocago, victims of popular disfavor; and a writer of that time relates, not altogether lucidly, the finding in a park in Ohio of the bodies of “the Wright brothers, each pierced with bullets from hip to shoulder, the ears cut off, and without other marks of identification.”

Second in importance of these adverse conditions was the natural disposition of the ancients to tire of whatever had engaged their enthusiasm—the fickleness that had led to abandonment of the bicycle, of republican government, of baseball, and of respect for women. In the instance of the aëroplane this reaction was probably somewhat hastened by the rifle practice mentioned.

Third, invention of the electric leg. As a means of going from place to place the ancients had from the earliest ages of history relied largely on the wheel. Just how they applied it, not in stationary machinery, as we do ourselves, but as an aid to locomotion, we cannot now hope to know, for all the literature of the subject has perished; but it was evidently a crude and clumsy device, giving a speed of less than two hundred miles (four and a half sikliks) an hour, even on roadways specially provided with rails for its rapid revolution. We know, too, that wheels produced an intolerable jolting of the body, whereby many died of a disease known as “therapeutics.” Indeed, a certain class of persons who probably traveled faster than others came to be called “rough riders,” and for their sufferings were compensated by appointment to the most lucrative offices in the gift of the sovereign. Small wonder that the men of that day hailed the aëroplane with intemperate enthusiasm and used it with insupportable immoderation!

But when the younger Eddy invented that supreme space-conquering device, the electric leg, and within six months perfected it to virtually what it is to-day, the necessity for flight no longer existed. The aëroplane, ending its brief and bloody reign a discredited and discarded toy, was “sent to the scrap-heap,” as one of our brightest and most original modern wits has expressed it. The wheel followed it into oblivion, whither the horse had preceded it, and Civilization lifted her virgin fires as a dawn in Eden, and like Cytherea leading her moonrise troop of nymphs and graces, literally legged it o’er the land!

III—An Ancient Hunter

In the nineteenth century of what, in honor of Christopher Columbum, a mythical hero, the ancients called the “Christian era,” Africa was an unknown land of deserts, jungles, fierce wild beasts, and degraded savages. It is believed that no white man had ever penetrated it to a distance of one league from the coast. All the literature of that time relating to African exploration, conquest, and settlement is now known to be purely imaginative—what the ancients admired as “fiction” and we punish as felony.

Authentic African history begins in the early years of the twentieth century of the “era” mentioned, and its most stupendous events are the first recorded, the record being made, chiefly, by the hand that wrought the work—that of Tudor Rosenfelt, the most illustrious figure of antiquity. Of this astonishing man’s parentage and early life nothing is certainly known: legend is loquacious, but history is silent. There are traditions affirming his connection with a disastrous explosion at Bronco, a city of the Chinese province of Wyo Ming, his subjugation of the usurper Tammano in the American city of N’yorx (now known to have had no existence outside the imagination of the poets) and his conquest of the island of Cubebs; but from all this bushel of fable we get no grain of authenticated fact. The tales appear to be merely hero-myths, such as belong to the legendary age of every people of the ancient world except the Greeks and Romans. Further than that he was an American Indian nothing can be positively affirmed of Tudor Rosenfelt before the year “1909” of the “Christian [Columbian] era.” In that year we glimpse him disembarking from two ships on the African coast near Bumbassa, and, with one foot in the sea and the other on dry land, swearing through clenched teeth that other forms of life than Man shall be no more. He then strides, unarmed and unattended, into the jungle, and is lost to view for ten years!

Legend and myth now reassert their ancient reign. In that memorable decade, as we know from the ancient author of “Who’s Whoest in Africa,” the most incredible tales were told and believed by those who, knowing the man and his mission, suffered insupportable alternations of hope and despair. It was said that the Dark Continent into which he had vanished was frequently shaken from coast to coast as by the trampling and wrestling of titanic energies in combat and the fall of colossal bulks on the yielding crust of the earth; that mariners in adjacent waters heard recurrent growls and roars of rage and shouts of triumph—an enormous uproar that smote their ships like a gale from the land and swept them affrighted out to sea; that so loud were these terrible sounds as to be simultaneously audible in the Indian and Atlantic oceans, as was proved by comparing the logs of vessels arriving from both seas at the port of Berlin. As is quaintly related in one of these marine diaries, “The noise was so strenuous that our ears was nigh to busting with the wolume of the sound.” Through all this monstrous opulence of the primitive rhetorical figure known as the Lie we easily discern a nucleus of truth: something uncommon was going on in Africa.

At the close of the memorable decade (circa “1919”) authentic history again appears in the fragmentary work of Antrolius: Rosenfelt walks out of the jungle at Mbongwa on the side of the continent opposite Bumbassa. He is now attended by a caravan of twenty thousand camels and ten thousand native porters, all bearing trophies of the chase. A complete list of these would require more pages than Homer Wheeler Wilcox’s catalogue of ships, but among them were heads of elephants with antlers attached; pelts of the checkered lion and the spiny hippopotentot, respectively the most ferocious and the most venomous of their species; a skeleton of the missing lynx (Pithecanthropos erectus compilatus); entire bodies of pterodactyls and broncosauruses; a slithy tove mounted on a fine specimen of the weeping wanderoo; the downy electrical whacknasty (Ananias flabbergastor); the carnivorous mastodon; ten specimens of the skinless tiger (Felis decorticata); a saber-toothed python, whose bite produced the weeping sickness; three ribnosed gazzadoodles; a pair of blood-sweating bandicoots; a night-blooming jeewhillikins; three and a half varieties of the crested skynoceros; a purring crocodile, or buzz-saurian; two Stymphalian linnets; a skeleton of the three footed swammigolsis—afterwards catalogued at the Podunk Museum of Defective Types as Talpa unopede noninvento; a hydra from Lerna; the ring-tail mollycoddle and the fawning polecat (Civis nondesiderabilis).

These terrible monsters, which from the dawning of time had ravaged all Africa, baffling every attempt at exploration and settlement, the Exterminator, as he came to be called, had strangled or captured with his bare hands; and the few remaining were so cowed that they gave milk. Indeed, such was their terror of his red right arm that all forsook their evil ways, offered themselves as beasts of burden to the whites that came afterward, and in domestication and servitude sought the security that he denied to their ferocity and power. Within a single generation prosperous colonies of Caucasians sprang up all along the coasts, and the silk hat and pink shirt, immemorial pioneers and promoters of civilization, penetrated the remotest fastnesses, spreading peace and plenty o’er a smiling land!

The later history of this remarkable man is clouded in obscurity. Much of his own account of his exploits, curiously intertangled with those of an earlier hero named Hercules, is extant, but it closes with his re-embarkation for America. Some hold that on returning to his native land he was assailed with opprobrium, loaded with chains, and cast into Chicago; others contend that he was enriched by gifts from the sovereigns of the world, received with acclamation by his grateful countrymen, and even mentioned for the presidency to succeed Samuel Gompers—an honor that he modestly declined on the ground of inexperience and unfitness. Whatever may be the truth of these matters, he doubtless did not long suffer affliction nor enjoy prosperity, for in the great catastrophe of the year 254 B. S. the entire continent of North America and the contiguous island of Omaha were swallowed up by the sea. Fortunately his narrative is preserved in the Royal Library of Timbuktu, in which capital of civilization stands his colossal statue of ivory and gold. In the shadow of that renowned memorial I write this imperfect tribute to his worth.

OBJECTIVE IDEAS

WE all remember that the sound of a trumpet has been described as scarlet. The fact that we do remember it is evidence that the incident of a physical sensation masquerading in a garment appropriate to the guest of another sense than the one entertaining it is a general, not an individual, experience. Not, of course, that a trumpet-call impresses us all with a sense of color, but the odd description would long ago have been forgotten had not each mind recognized it as the statement of a fact belonging to a class of facts of which itself has had knowledge. For myself, I never hear good music without wishing to paint it—which I should certainly do with divine success if I understood music and could paint. The hackneyed and tiresome fashion of calling certain pictures “symphonies” in this or that color has a basis of reason—which will somewhat discredit it in the esteem of those whom it has enslaved. I never hear a man talking of “symphonies” in gray, green, pepper-and-salt, crushed banana, ashes-of-heretic or toper’s-nose without thinking with satisfaction of the time when he will himself be a symphony in flame-color, lighting up the landscape of the underworld like a flamingo in the dun expanse of a marsh in the gloaming.

I have in mind a notable instance of a sensation taking on three dimensions—one for which I am not indebted, probably, to the courtesy of some forgotten experience producing an association of ideas. It will be conceded that it is at least unlikely that one should ever enjoy simultaneously the double gratification of eating a pine-apple and seeing a man hanged; such felicity is reserved, I fancy, for creatures more meritorious than poor sinful human beings. Nevertheless, I never taste pine-apple without a lively sense of a man with his head in a black bag, depending from his beam. It is not that I am at the same time conscious of the fruit and of that solemn spectacle; it simply seems to me that a man hanging is the taste of that fruit. It is needless to add that when thinking of those unworthy persons, my enemies, I derive a holy delight from consuming generous slices of pine-apple.

There is a class of mental phenomena which, so far as my knowledge goes, has never been “spread upon the record.” Possibly they are peculiar to my own imperfect understanding, and a saner consciousness is innocent of them. If so it will gratify my pride of monopoly to admit the public to a view of my intellectual chattels. The mental process of enumeration is with me a gliding upward in various directions from 1 to 100; not along a column of successive figures, like a cat scampering up a staircase, but along a smooth, pale-bluish, angular streak, with the hither-and-yon motion of a soaring snipe. From 1 to 10 the line runs upward, and to the right at an angle with the horizon of about sixty degrees. There it turns sharply back to the left and the grade to 20 is nearly flat. Thence to 30 the ascent is vertical. From 30 to 50 there is an ascent of 10 degrees to the right and slightly away from me. The course to 60 is to the left again, the angle, say 10 degrees. From 60 to 90 there is no break, the course, too, is almost level and directly away; thence to 100 nearly vertical. It will be observed that the angles are all at 10 and its multiples, but there is no angle at 40, none at 70, nor at 80. I may explain that the interval between 10 and 20 is greatly longer than it ought to be, and I venture to protest against the exceptional and unwarrantable brevity of that between 90 and 100.

Every time I count I am compelled to ascend some part of this reasonless and ridiculous Jacob’s-ladder, with a “hitchety, hatchety, up I go” movement, like Jack mounting his bean-stalk; and it is ludicrously true that I feel a sense of relief on arriving at the more nearly level stages, and on them am conscious of an augmented speed. I can count from 60 to 70 twice as quickly as I can from 90 to 100. Investigation and comparison of such conceptions as these can but result in unspeakable advancement of knowledge. If any gentleman has similar ones and a little leisure for their discussion I hope he will consent to meet me in Heaven.

MY CREDENTIALS

MY death occurred on the 17th day of June, 1879—I shall never forget it. The day had been uncommonly hot, and the doctor kept telling me that unless it grew cooler he would hardly be able to pull me through. He said he was willing to do his best and prolong my life to the latest possible moment if I wished him to, but in any case I should have to die in a few days. I directed him to keep on prolonging, but the heat grew greater and finally overcame him, and I died. That is to say, while he was absent at an adjacent saloon after a sherry cobbler one of my “bad spells” came on and I fell a victim to inattention. Things turned out exactly as medical science had foretold.