Chapter V · (continued 4)

Almost everywhere throughout the whole length and breadth of the plains are found, in greater or less profusion, animal remains, fossils, shells, and petrifactions. Bones are very numerous and in great variety, from the saurian and mastodon to the minutest reptile, ranging in point of time from the remotest ages to the present day.

His description of other features of this vast region is full of interest. The two remarkable belts of forest, called the cross timbers, stretching for a hundred miles through a trackless country, but not increasing their width beyond their normal eight to twelve miles; the extraordinary rivers, half sand, half water, the mazes of which confound the Indian, usually so acute in the field; the sand streams, which repeat in that material the puzzle of the cross timbers, and are even more inexplicable. While the desert does not narrow the cross timber belts, nor water widen them, the wind seems to have no effect on these sand streams, though the material that composes them is so light as to rise on every puff of air. Like the cross timbers, the sand streams pursue their way across the country, regarding neither wet nor dry, hill nor stream. Their origin lies in forces not yet known, and though they may seem to be the sport of existing conditions, they really maintain themselves indifferent to their surroundings. Things like these prove that Americans need not go to the Sahara for novel aspects of nature. Our author has a quick perception of what is striking in these scenes, and describes them in vigorous and pictorial language.

Colonel Dodge is one of the most noted hunters in our army, and his descriptions of the chase deserve to rank with those of Cummings, Baker, and other great African sportsmen. It is true our country does not afford the hunter such a slaughter field as South Africa has been. A few animals have increased on our soil to such an extent as to afford at certain seasons opportunities for unlimited slaughter. But the past five years have seen such destruction of the last of these—the buffalo—that wholesale killing is no longer possible on any ground the white man is suffered to visit. Three years more will carry us to the end of the decade, and probably of the buffalo hunt as it has been in the past. About five years ago a change came over the pursuit of this animal. He began to be killed for his hide alone, and the results are almost incredible. Colonel Dodge shows that in three years no less than 4,373,730 buffalo were killed by whites and Indians. It is evidently impossible for any animal, bringing forth but one at a birth, to maintain its increase against such heedless destruction. The present winter has witnessed what is probably the last grand attack upon these animals, as they took refuge in the sheltering mountains of northwestern Texas from the cold and snow-covered plains. Very soon the noblest prey of the sportsman on this continent will be one of his rarest prizes. Colonel Dodge does not lack the usual hunter's fund of anecdote. His own adventures are modestly told, and when "seven antelope and a fine dog" are bagged with one shot, the story is credited (with the Colonel's guarantee) to an anonymous "old hunter"! We have said that the plains do not rival the African field in quantity of game, but the dimensions of two separate "bags," shot in successive years, shows how great even in this country the rewards of the chase may be. In 1872 five gentlemen, of whom Colonel Dodge was one, bagged 1,262 head, and next year four shot 1,141 head on the same ground, and the author thinks "the whole world can be safely challenged to offer a greater variety of game."

But interesting as the chase is in our author's hands, the most important part of the book is that in which the Indians are described and discussed. To one who knows the unanimity of army opinion concerning the much debated Indian question in the West, it is almost unnecessary to say that Colonel Dodge wishes to see the tribes transferred to the sole control of the War Department, treaty-making stopped at once, discipline introduced, the vagabond whites eliminated from the tribes, and the never-ceasing stream of outrages stopped. These opinions, which the author shares with the Western community at large, are founded on a very intimate knowledge of the Indians, and while they are invaluable as the testimony of so competent an authority, they must yield in immediate interest to the very vivid picture which the author gives of Indian life and his estimate of Indian character. While what he says is not novel, and could hardly be novel after the many thousands of works on the same subject, his views are based on his own observation, and the facts are presented with so much force that we gain a new idea of the American savage. His essential moral characteristic is his love of cruelty. What the savage thinks about in the frequent and long continued seasons of idle solitude, it has long puzzled the ethnologist to discover. Colonel Dodge says that a large part of the Indian's brooding thoughts are given to the invention of modes of inflicting pain when he has the opportunity to do so, and many of the camp fire discussions are upon suggestions for cruelty. When the captive is brought in his tortures are not inflicted in mere accordance with the momentary promptings of a brutal nature. They may have been invented years before in some far distant camp, in the profoundest peace, or may be copied from some noted example of successful cruelty. They may have grown by one suggestion added to another, among men whose knowledge of natural history includes a marvellous perception of what parts of the frame are most sensitive to pain. The Indian's cruelty is his pride. He gains credit by it among his people, and he who invents a new torture is a leader. Cruelty is a merit among these savages. It has rewards which make this passion one of the most noticeable elements in their system of morality. No other author has presented this aspect of Indian character with the clearness of Colonel Dodge. His frequent illustrations show that it is no temporary impulse, but a race characteristic carefully fostered by tradition and perhaps by religion. But what position does all this give the Indian among other races of men? Clearly he stands apart. The cannibal may dance around the living victims who are soon to appear upon his table, and the prisoner may be made to grace his conqueror's triumph, or the altar of his conqueror's god, at any cost of suffering to himself, but no other race, savage or civilized, has ever been shown to cultivate cruelty for its own sake as the American Indian does. It is not from fear, revenge, hate, or any other extraneous cause that he studies so fondly and long over the means of giving pain. Cruelty is a thing to be enjoyed for itself. The author has spoken with such plainness upon the position of captive women in the hands of Indians, that we fear his book will be objected to in just those quarters where its revelations are most likely to do good. There is one thing which we wish he had made clear—whether the brutality shown toward captive women is a practice which has grown among the Cheyennes since they were driven from their old home, or whether that has always been their mode of procedure. In some quarters this particular brutality has been spoken of as the outgrowth of their sufferings at the hands of the whites.

Colonel Dodge's book shows a rare combination of acute observation, long experience, and the spirit of good fellowship. It is one of the best books of hunting we know of, the best book ever written about the plains, and its pictures and anecdotes of hunting life and Indian fighting are a faithful reproduction of the peculiar conditions to be found only on our great plains, with the anomalous relations of the civilized and barbarous races that haunt them. The publishers have illustrated it liberally. The Indian portraits are worthy of especial mention for the minute accuracy which makes them ethnological examples of unusual value.

The zoölogical collections described in the fifth volume of Reports, Survey west of the Hundredth Meridian,[P] were all obtained in that zoölogical province known as the "Campestrian region," from the great plains which it includes. There the animal colors are pale and tend toward uniformity, corresponding to the low rainfall of from three to twenty inches per year. In this peculiarity, and also in comparison with the surrounding more humid regions, the district of country in which the Government surveys are now carried on sustains the general theory that coloration in animals is closely dependent on rainfall, a humid atmosphere serving to cloak the sun's rays and preserve the natural dyes (mostly organic) from bleaching out. Dr. Yarrow thinks that the entirely rainless parts of this vast Campestrian region may ultimately deserve recognition as a separate zoölogical province. The observations made as to the mimicry of color which some animals, especially reptiles, exert or suffer lead him to believe that "a law may yet be formulated in this respect which will equally apply to all classes of animals." This mimicry was especially noticed in serpents and lizards found near red sandstone deposits, the well-known little Phrynosoma, or horned toad, being greenish gray, nearly white, or deep red, as it was found on the plain, the alkali flat, or the sandstone soil. But however profound the change, the skin returned to its normal color within a day or two after removal from the determining locality. In regard to the rattlesnake, we have the welcome information that it is apparently decreasing in numbers, and the less agreeable fact that with other serpents, it principally frequents the neighborhood of settlements. The collections of all kinds made by the explorers prove to be unexpectedly perfect in spite of the rapidity with which they are forced to move, and losses by fire and railroad accident. The report upon these collections is drawn up with the care and thoroughness that are such creditable features of recent American official work. A copious bibliography and synonomy is attached to the descriptions of species. The allotment of reports is as follows: Geographical Distribution, Dr. H. C. Yarrow; Mammals, Dr. Elliott Coues and Dr. Yarrow; Birds, H. W. Henshaw; Batrachians and Reptiles, Dr. Yarrow; Fishes, Prof. E. D. Cope and Dr. Yarrow; Insects, E. T. Cresson, E. Norton, T. L. Mead, R. H. Stretch, C. R. Osten-Sacken, H. Ulke, R. P. Uhler, Cyrus Thomas, H. A. Hagen; Mollusca, Dr. Yarrow. These names show how carefully the head of the survey, Lieutenant Wheeler, has sought assistance in the important work of classification. But these are by no means all from whom he and his assistants acknowledge service. The list given in the preface numbers more than forty persons, and includes the best known specialists in this country. Forty-five plates, colored when necessary, accompany the text. In every respect the report is worthy the important survey from which it emanates.

Though it is now quite common to find the life of two or even three continents mingled in one web of fiction, few writers make so close a subjective study of the immigrant's experiences as Mr. Boyesen has done in his "Tales from Two Hemispheres."[Q] In fact he stands almost alone in this field, and for a good reason; he is a participant where others are onlookers. We are often told of the impression American ladies make on foreign gentlemen, but rarely receive an analysis of it or are offered even an attempt to analyze it. And yet this appears to be one of the most promising exhibitions of human feeling ever studied. The intercourse of the sexes, necessarily the subject of all romance, may obviously have its situations heightened in every way by the juxtaposition of two races, two diverse educations, and two opposite moral systems, conjointly with the customary incidents of love-making. Our author is fully alive to his opportunity, and, short as his tales are, they bristle with dramatic scenes, and have an element of the mythical and legendary in them, even when they are removed from such professedly mystical subjects as he has treated in "Asathor's Vengeance." Even in drawing-room scenes in New York the love-making is ideal and romantic instead of calculating or passionate, as the current novel commonly paints it. This mode of treatment implies that the tales are either pathetic or fanciful, and in Mr. Boyesen's hands they are all pathetic. He shows unusual power in this style of writing, and has the natural and quiet humor which it demands. But there is a rudeness in the construction and language of all of these stories which sometimes blinds the reader to the really delicate insight into human feeling displayed in them. The author writes like one who has the conception of what he wants to do, but not yet the full command of the means. But this is a fault that practice cures, and we trust Mr. Boyesen will continue his studies in this essentially novel and peculiarly promising field of literature.

—In "Captain Mago"[R] we have a kind of book which with proper attention may be made extremely interesting and valuable. It is an attempt to reconstruct the life of three thousand years ago, not merely among the Phœnicians, but in many other countries. Under the guise of an expedition sent by the King of Tyre to Tarshish for the purpose of collecting materials for the Jewish temple which King David was then planning, we are taken to Judæa, Egypt, Crete, Italy, Spain, France, England, and Africa. Such an expedition of course gives the author an opportunity to present a panoramic view of the civilization in those countries thirty centuries ago. We cannot say that he has performed the task well. He dwells too much upon what he imagines to be the language and conversation of the ancients and too little on those material facts in their life which can be proved or plausibly imagined from the remains of it which we have gathered. Ancient habits are but very obscurely exhibited in the rude tools, the fragments of village houses, the necklace of the Man of Mentone, the whistles and other toys of the caves, the funereal fireplaces, and similar objects, but they are much more plainly discernible than are the peculiarities of speech which must have made up the bulk of daily conversation among our ancestors. A reconstruction of ancient life based on a good knowledge of these objects is likely to be more instructive and real than one that depends for its force on a fanciful conception of their thouing and theeing, their love-making, and what oaths they swore. In fact, real service could be done to "popular" science by a book that should exhibit our remote forefathers as we really know them, and not attempting to go beyond that point. Difficult as it will necessarily be to make such an undertaking successful, we have no doubt that it will one day be accomplished. "Captain Mago," though falling far short even of excellence in this field, is nevertheless an interesting and peculiar book.

—The defect of "Captain Mago" is that its author has endeavored to reconstruct from remains of a purely literary kind the life of a time which was antecedent to the most of our oldest literature. Another author, Mr. Mahaffy, has had great success in a similar field because he chose for reconstruction a society which has left literary monuments of a very varied character and great abundance. His "Social Life in Greece" and other works about the ancient Greeks were written before he ever saw that historic country, and yet he tells us in his last work,[S] written after a personal visit and stay of some time, that his former writings were sufficiently true to the Greece of to-day to deceive living Greeks into the belief that he had been intimately acquainted with their landscapes and familiar customs. Mr. Mahaffy's "Rambles" among modern Greeks are a very interesting finish to his idealizations of their ancestors. It is comforting to know that after all her spoliations the country is still so rich in remains of ancient art as to retain more fine and pure specimens of the best work than are to be found in all the rest of the world. Very little is done toward uncovering and nothing toward restoring these sculptures, for the Greeks are jealous of foreigners and unable or not sufficiently interested to do this themselves. They are willing to allow others to do the work, but Greece must have all the profit. Still, there the works lie, and may be recovered at some future day. We may even be comforted to think they are well covered with soil, for the present inhabitants of the country, with exquisite barbarity that their ancestors could not have practised, use the standing monuments of art as a mark for pistol practice! Another point in which they show a constitutional divergence from their forefathers is in the singular barrenness that has fallen upon their women. Once their land teemed with a native-born population. Now the household remains so long childless that it is very common to find the wife's mother a permanent member of the household, being retained for companionship! Even the mature family contains but few children, and this in the best agricultural parts of the country. While these differences exist the author is not at a loss to find strange resemblances. The yellow hair and fair complexion, the forms which are even now types of the same race that stood for the old statues, the language, and a multitude of other things prove that the old race continues in purity and that Greece is not now filled with a mere mixture of Turks, Albanians, and Sclaves. Our author has a poor opinion of the Greek's capacity for government, and likens them to the Irish. He thinks that both these races are constitutionally incapable of government, and need subjugation by a foreigner. In this characteristic he finds a strong resemblance between the modern and the ancient Greek, for both have suffered personal jealousy to outweigh the strongest promptings of patriotism. Mr. Mahaffy shows himself to be as able as an observer as he is as an historian.

—The peculiar character of De Quincey's work gives unusual opportunity for such a volume of selections as this, published under the untasteful name of "Beauties."[T] He had all the mental power required for sustained efforts in composition, though his plans for such works were always defeated by physical weakness. His productions, therefore, though incomplete, are not those of a literary trifler. His genius and methods seem to be especially suited to the tastes of the present day, for he excelled in the qualities that make the professional magazinist: great learning, research, and acuteness, combined with a humor that sports most waywardly through everything he wrote, a vivid fancy, a wonderful use of words, and a style which even in its faults exhibits the needs of periodical literature. He was, perhaps, more exactly fitted to serve the world in its chosen field of current publications than any other man who has written for it. Were he living now he would be acknowledged the prince of the nebulous gentlemen who occupy easy chairs, gather in contributors' clubs, and fill up "editors' baskets" with their effusions. We have additional respect for the somewhat chopped up productions of these gentlemen, after reading the numerous volumes that bear his name, for there we find how much of every sort of literary good they can contain. The editor of these selections is a lucky man, for his work has the merit, rare among such books, of being thoroughly good in itself. He has with excellent judgment given us somewhat of autobiography, somewhat of the rare and indescribable dream life of De Quincey, and somewhat of his tales, essays, and critiques. The character of his author's writings relieves these morsels from the air of incompleteness and decapitation which so often attaches to selections. What he has given us is not all of De Quincey, but each chapter is complete in itself. Selections usually repel us. We cannot join in the argument so often found in prefaces to such works, that the reading of them may lead to the reading of the author's whole works. On the contrary, we are of that class to whom the cutting up of a good author is apt to seem like vivisection—necessary, perhaps, but revolting. This book, however, does not leave such an impression. On laying it down we wonder why we are not constantly reading the great essayist, the precursor of the literary spirit of our own times, probably a better example than any now living of the many virtues demanded from the popular writer.

Under the editorship of Mr. John Austin Stevens we may look for a valuable and permanent publication in the "Magazine of American History, with Notes and Queries," of which A. S. Barnes & Co. are the publishers. The position of the editor as librarian of the New York Historical Society will, or at all events should, be an additional source of strength to the publication. Experience shows that literary undertakings which possess more merit than popularity can derive great advantages from the official countenance of societies pursuing allied subjects of investigation. Properly managed, the two modes of obtaining union in action can be made to help each other materially. This hint will perhaps be considered not amiss since the pamphlet, printed with the neatness characteristic of such works, which lies before us, is but a specimen and preliminary number, which is to be followed by monthly issues in quarto form, at $5 yearly, if sufficient support is obtained. The editor says: "Each number will contain: I. An original article on some point of American history from a recognized and authoritative pen. II. A biographical sketch of some character of historic interest. III. Original documents, diaries, and letters. IV. Reprints of rare documents. V. Notes and queries in the well-known English form. VI. Reports of the proceedings of the New York Historical Society. VII. Notices of historical publications." He also promises to keep it free from sectional prejudices and "from personality and controversy in any form." He has ready for publication a large number of interesting old manuscripts contributed by historians and collectors, and it is to be hoped his attempt to establish a periodical for historical literature will be sustained.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

"Materialism and Theology." James Martineau, LL.D. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

"Waverley Novels," Riverside Edition, "Heart of Midlothian." Hurd & Houghton.

The Same. "Bride of Lammermoor."

The Same. "The Monastery."

"Footsteps of the Master." Harriet B. Stowe. J. B. Ford & Co.

"Functions of the Brain." Illustrated. D. Ferrier, M.D. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

"The Plains of the Great West." Illustrated. Lieutenant Colonel Richard I. Dodge. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

"The Sons of Godwin." A Tragedy. William Leighton, Jr. J. B. Lippincott & Co.

"Personal Relations Between Librarian and Readers." Sam. S. Green. Chas. Hamilton, Worcester, Mass.

"Special Report on Worcester Free Library." The same.

"Tales from Two Hemispheres." H. H. Boyesen. Jas. R. Osgood & Co.

"The Problems of Problems." Clark Braden. Chase & Hall, Cincinnati.

"Archology; or, The Science of Government." V. Blakeslee. A. Roman & Co.

"Woman as a Musician." Fanny Raymond Ritter. Ed. Schuberth & Co.

"Vivisection." Copp Clark & Co., Toronto.

"Cholera Facts of the Last Year." E. McClellan, M.D. Richmond & Louisville Medical Journal office.

"Art Journal." Photo-Engraving Co., New York.

"History of the City of New York." Parts 5 to 10. Mrs. M. J. Lamb. A. S. Barnes & Co.

"The Magazine of American History." Jno. Austin Stevens, editor. A. S. Barnes & Co.

"National Quarterly Review." D. A. Gorton, editor.

"National Survey West of 100th Meridian." Vol. 5, Zoölogy. Dr. H. C. Yarrow and others. Government Printing Office.

"Catalogue Siamese Exhibit International Exhibition." J. B. Lippincott & Co.

"Planetary Meteorology, Mansill's Almanac of." R. Mansill. R. Crampton, Rock Island.

"Notes on Assaying." R. De P. Ricketts. Art Printing Establishment.

"Mental Powers of Insects." A. S. Packard, Jr. Estes & Lauriat.

"Beauties of De Quincey." Hurd & Houghton.

"The Convicts." B. Auerbach. H. Holt & Co.

"Philosophical Discussions." C. Wright. H. Holt & Co.

"The Sons of Goodwin." W. Leighton. J. B. Lippincott & Co.

"Rambles and Studies in Greece." J. P. Mahaffy. Macmillan & Co.

"Mother and Daughter." F. S. Verdi, M. D. J. B. Ford & Co.

"Marie. A Story of Russian Lore." Marie H. de Zielinski. Jansen, McClurg & Co.

"The Barton Experiment." By the author of "Helen's Babies." G. P. Putnam's Sons.

NEBULÆ.

—It would seem that we must return to the old fashion of strong boxes, old stockings, and cracked pipkins as the receptacles of our savings. As to savings banks and trust companies, and life insurance companies, the revelations of the last few months go to show that they do anything but save; that they are no longer to be trusted, and that they ensure nothing but total loss to those who put their money into them. Ere long it will be said of a young man that he was poor but honest, although he had the misfortune to have a father who was a director in several important financial institutions. The state of affairs in this respect is frightful; and it frightens. The financial panic has been followed by a moral panic which is really as much more deplorable than its predecessor as moral causes are more radical in their operation and more enduring than those which are merely material. Confidence is gone. How it is to be restored is a problem far more perplexing than how to revive drooping trade. For that the real wealth of the country, never greater than it is now and constantly increasing, must bring about sooner or later. But if men of wealth and of fair reputation are no longer to be trusted, what is the use of saving, to put money into a box where it gains nothing and where thieves break through and steal? Robbery seems to be the fashion; on the one hand masked burglars with pistols at your heads and gags in the mouths of your wife and children, and on the other hypocritical, lying, false-swearing, thieving scoundrels who get your money under fair pretences, and because of your trust in their characters and good faith, and then waste it in speculations and in luxurious living. Of the two, the burglars seem to be rather the more respectable. It is said, on good authority, that the West India slaves of a past generation could be trusted to carry bags of gold from one part of the Spanish Main to another, and that they were constantly so trusted with entire impunity. They would kidnap, and on occasion stab or cut a throat; but if they were trusted, they would not break their faith. The honesty of the Turkish porters is so well known that it has become almost proverbial. Does not the honesty of these pirates and pagans put to shame the Christians who with the professions and the faces of Pharisees "devour widows' houses"?

—For as to the business of life insurance, savings banks, and trust companies, it is somewhat more, or surely somewhat other, than mere business. And so those who practise it and profit by it profess that it is. A life insurance company is a grand combination philanthropico-financial corporation whose motto is, "Cast thy bread upon the waters, and after many days thou shalt receive it again." But the truth of the matter turns out to be that if you cast your bread upon the waters, the chances are that you will see it devoured before your eyes by financial sharks. One case in point has come directly to our knowledge. A gentleman, a Government officer, who has a moderate salary, with little or no hope of acquiring property, insured his life twenty years or more ago in what was thought a good company. His premium was always promptly paid even in the flush times of the war and afterward, when the fixed salaries of public officers lost more than half their purchasing power. Within the last few months he has suddenly found that his policy is not worth the paper on which it is magnificently printed. But worse than this: within the last few years, as age has crept upon him, there has come with it a disease which is incurable although he may live for some time longer. Now, however, he cannot get his life insured at all; no company will take his life; (it is a rueful jest to say that the company in question did take his life); and he has the prospect before him of a widow left entirely without provision, although for nearly a quarter of a century he and she stinted themselves to provide against such a contingency. Meantime the officers of the company lived luxuriously, and used the money in their hands for speculation, and in living which if not riotous, was at least shameless and dishonest. And they were all men of reputation, were selected for their positions because it was thought that men of their position and habits of life and outward bearing were incorruptible. Have they not devoured that prospective widow's house? If He who condemned the hypocritical Pharisees of old were on the earth now, would he not pronounce Woe upon them? And much would they care about His condemnation if they could get their commissions, and their pickings and stealings, and live in splendid houses, and be known as the managers of an institution that handled millions of dollars yearly, and whose offices were gorgeous with many-colored marbles, and gilding, and inlaid wood, and rich carpets!

And like their predecessors in the devouring of widows' houses for a pretence, they make long prayers. They, we say; but of course we do not mean all; for there are honest officers of life insurance companies, and even sound companies; but the number of both is shown day after day to be less and less; and when we think that those that we hear about are only they which have reached the end of their tether in fraud, perjury, and swindling, the prospect before us is one of the most disheartening that could be presented to a reflecting people. For remember, these defaulting, false-swearing life insurance and savings bank officers are picked men, and that their dishonest practices are from their very nature deliberate, slow of execution, and that in fact they have gone on for years. It is no clutch of drowning men at financial straws that we have here; it is the regular "confidence game" played on an enormous scale by men who are regarded as the most respectable that can be found in the whole community. They are vestrymen, and deacons, and elders, and grave and reverend signors, and these men have deliberately used and abused the confidence not only of the community in general, but of their friends and acquaintance, to "convey" in Nym's phrase, to steal in plain English, money which was brought within their reach because of their pretended high principle and their philanthropic motives. For, we repeat, it must constantly be kept in mind as an aggravation of these wrongs, that life insurance companies and savings banks are essentially and professedly benevolent institutions. They are, and they openly profess to be, chiefly for the benefit of widows and children. The man who takes to himself the money of a life insurance company or of a savings bank is not a mere thief and swindler; he robs the widow and the fatherless; he takes his place among those who are accursed of all men; and moreover, in all these cases he is a hypocrite of the deepest dye.

—In any case, however, there is reason for fearing that the business of life insurance has in the main long been rotten, even when it has not been deliberately corrupt. Professedly and originally a benevolent contrivance by which men of moderate incomes could year by year make provision for wives and children who might otherwise be left destitute, it was reasonable and right to expect that the business of life insurance would be conducted upon the most economical principles and in the simplest and most unpretending fashion; that there would have been only as much expenditure as was absolutely necessary for the proper conduct of the business; and that safety for the insured would have been the first if not the only ruling motive with the insurers. And such indeed was life insurance in the beginning. But by and by it was found that there was "money in it," and the sleek, snug hypocrites that prey upon society under the guise of philanthropy and religion began to swarm around it. Life insurance companies began to have a host of officers; they had "actuaries," whatever they may be, who, by whatever motives they were actuated, contrived and put forth statements which to the common mind were equally plausible and bewildering; they entered into bitter rivalry with each other in their philanthropic careers; they had agents who went abroad over the land in swarms, smooth-speaking, shameless creatures who would say anything, promise anything so long as they got their commissions; they published gorgeous pamphlets, tumid and splendid with self-praise, and filled with tabular statements that justified and illustrated the denying that there is nothing so untrustworthy as facts, except figures; they contrived the "mutual" plan, by which they made it appear to some men that they could insure their own lives—which is much like a man's trying to hoist himself over a fence by the straps of his boots—and yet these mutual officers, benevolent creatures, were as eager to get business and as ready to pay large commissions as if, poor, simple-minded souls, they had expected to get rich by life insuring; and then they put up huge and enormously expensive buildings, more like palaces than any others known to our country. And all this came out of the pockets of those who are, with cruel mockery, called the insured. It is the old story: ten cents to the beneficiary and ninety cents to the agent through whose hands the money passes. Is it not plain, merely from the grand scale and the large pretence on which this life insurance business has been carried on of late years, that it is rotten? It is a scheme for making money. Now, making money is right enough; but when it is carried on under philanthropic and benevolent pretences its tendency must naturally be, as we have seen that it has been, to gross corruption and the most heartless fraud.

* * * * *

So wrote Cowper in his "Conversation," nearly a century ago, when duelling was beginning to go out of fashion, even among men who did not look upon it from a religious point of view. There is no doubt that the passage which these lines introduce did much to bring the custom of settling personal quarrels by single combat into disrepute. Cowper, the moral poet par excellence of the English language, attained this eminence chiefly because he wrote, not like a fanatic, or a canting pietist, but like a Christian gentleman and a man of sense. A man of family, he thought and felt as a gentleman, and addressed himself to gentlemen; and indeed, in his day poetry, at least of the quality that he produced, had very few readers outside the pale of gentry. His view of duelling is the one which now prevails in most communities of English blood in all parts of the world. Germans and Frenchmen and the Latin races generally still fight upon personal provocation, and in our late slave States and among the rude and fierce men who guard and extend our western borders, "misunderstandings" are settled by the bullet or the knife, and if not on the spot, with the weapon at hand, then in a regularly arranged duel in which the forms are entirely subordinate to the essentials of a bloody and vindictive contest. With these exceptions, however, duelling among the English-speaking people has come to be regarded as both folly and crime. Nothing could evince more strongly the change that has taken place in the moral sense of the world; for to resent an insult by a challenge to fight, and to accept such a challenge without a moment's hesitation, were once the highest duties of a gentleman. There was a reason for this; and without advocating or defending the practice of duelling, it may be questioned whether that reason has entirely disappeared.

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—Our readers need not fear that we are about to defend or to palliate the conduct of either of the parties to the recent affair which began in Fifth Avenue in New York and ended on the Maryland border; but the fact that that occurrence or series of occurrences has attracted the attention of the whole country, makes it a proper occasion of remark upon the questions involved in such encounters. And first we must set aside the Cowper view of the subject, not in its conclusion, but in its reasoning. For however Christian in sentiment and sound in its final judgment the passage in the "Conversation" may be, its author's position is not logically impregnable. For it rests upon the assumption embodied in the couplet—

But if this be true, it follows that a man cannot be insulted, which is an absurdity; for men are insulted, as we all know—and we are happy if we do not know it by experience. Moreover, men are insulted more frequently where the "code of honor" does not prevail than where it does; for that code is of use; and if it does not teach good manners, it certainly does curb abuse. The question to be decided is whether in the teaching of manners and the curbing of abuse by the alternative and arbitrament of bloody combat we are not paying too high a price for what we gain. To consider the example which is the occasion of our remark. A man is met in the street by another with whom he has been upon terms of social intercourse, and is there publicly whipped. He faces his assailant, resists, but is overcome because the assailant is the stronger and the more dexterous. What shall he do? Submit quietly? That may be Christian conduct; but whether it is good public policy, to say nothing more, may at least be questioned; for it would place the greater part of the community at the mercy of the strong brawling bullies. Two courses are open to a person so assailed—either to place the matter in the hands of the law, in a civil or a criminal suit, or to challenge the assailant. In most cases it may be admitted that the former course is the wiser and the better course. Where mere protection against personal injury is sought a police justice and a police officer are the effective as well as the lawful means. But there is something else to be considered. The mere personal injury may be slight, and there may be no fear of its repetition, and yet there is a wrong done that may rankle deeper than a wound. Personal indignity is something that most men of character and spirit feel more than bodily pain or than loss of money or of property. It is a sentimental grievance, and therefore one which the law cannot provide against or punish. It cannot be estimated in damages; none the less, therefore, but rather the more, does the man who suffers it take it to heart; none the less, therefore, but rather the more, do gentlemen set up barriers against it which, although invisible, and not even expressed, if indeed they are expressible in words, are more forbidding in their frown, more difficult of assault than the regular bulwarks of the law. It must be repeated that this wrong is not to be measured by the bodily injury or the bodily pain that is inflicted. Two men may be boxing or fencing, and one may severely injure the other; but no sense of wrong accompanies the injury, and that not because no injury was intended, but because no offence was meant; whereas the flirt of a kid glove across the face, or a word, may inflict a wrong that if not atoned for or expiated, may rankle through a man's whole life. To attempt to set aside or to do away with this feeling is quite useless: as well attempt to set aside or to do away with human nature. It is this feeling that has been at the bottom of most duels since duels passed out of use as a mode of determining guilt or innocence, or of deciding questions as to property, or position, or title. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries duels were chiefly the remedy for wounded honor, as they are when they are rarely fought nowadays. True there was the duel fought between two gentlemen "to prevent the inconvenience of their both addressing the same lady"; but the duel for that reason pure and simple was always comparatively rare, as, owing to the infirmity of human nature, the agreement in opinion of the lady and the disagreement as to the disposition to be made of her were almost sure to take the form of a more reasonable if not more deadly cause of quarrel.

—But society—that is, society in which Anglo-Saxon modes of thought and feeling prevail—says that no matter what the provocation, or how great the sense of wrong, the duel shall not be; it has been made a crime in some if not in most of such communities even to send a challenge. This is done on grounds of public policy and of morality, and not, as some persons seem to think, because killing in a duel is murder. Murder is more than a mere killing, and is in its essence entirely inconsistent with the fact that the person killed voluntarily placed himself, and generally with much trouble and at great inconvenience, in the way of his death. The duel is in fact a sort of hari-kari, or happy release, as our Japanese friends have well phrased it, but it is with the coöperation of a second party who voluntarily places himself in similar peril, the happy release being in both cases from the stigma of dishonor. This is shown very clearly by the distinction which is drawn in general estimation between the man who challenges because he has suffered an insult or an injury to his family honor, and one who does so from a feeling of revenge and with the intent to rid himself of a hated opponent, as for example in the case of Aaron Burr in his duel with Alexander Hamilton. That was more than half a century ago, when there were no such laws against duelling as now exist; but Burr, although he rid himself of his hated rival on what was called the field of honor, was from that day a degraded, detested, ruined man. If Hamilton had offered him a personal indignity, or had injured him in his family relations, the result of the duel would have added nothing to the weight of disrepute under which Burr was already suffering. The whole world recognizes this distinction, and there is hardly a man whose breeding and habits make him what is rightly called a gentleman in the full sense of the term, who, however his judgment may condemn the duellist who fights because of an insult or an injury to family honor, does not feel a certain sympathy with him. Notwithstanding the teachings of Christianity, and the example of its founder as to the patient suffering of indignity, notwithstanding the law, we all, or most of us, have the feeling that Barclay of Wry's battle-tried comrade had when he saw his old friend and heroic commander openly insulted by a throng of swashbucklers in the streets of Aberdeen, because he had become a Quaker, and which Whittier has expressed with such spirit in his poem on the subject, which is one of the few truly admirable ballads of modern days (although its author does not so class it), and which is, we are inclined to think, the most admirable of them all:

—What then is to be done? for the question is a serious one. We all feel that personal indignity is of all wrongs the hardest one to bear; we know that it is a wrong of a kind that cannot be redressed by law; and yet we restrain men from the only redress, "satisfaction," as it is called, that human ingenuity has bean able to devise, and with which human nature, of the unregenerate sort, is satisfied. We cannot expect all men to behave like members of the Society of Friends. All men have not proved their courage and high spirit like Barclay of Wry, who

We cannot compel all men to be Christians; and yet we would compel them by law to bear insult as if they were Christians and great captains turned Quakers. We can do this, which thus far society has neglected to do: we can put a social ban upon the man who deliberately offers a personal indignity to another. This should be a social duty. Let it be understood, according to one of those silent social laws which are the most binding of all laws because the sheriff cannot enforce them, that the man who flourishes a horsewhip over another's head, or who uses his tongue as a scourge with like purpose, or who offers personal indignity of any kind, insults society as well as his victim, and is not to be pardoned until he has made the amend to the injured party, and there would soon be an end of provocation to duelling, except that which touches the family, and that cannot be done away with until men have so developed morally and intellectually that they see that a man's honor is not in the keeping of a woman, not in that of any other person than himself, not even his wife. Her conduct may indeed involve his dishonor, if he is what used to be called a wittol, but even then his dishonor is because of his own disgrace. Only then can we reconcile the making of a challenge a felony with the feeling that a man who has had a personal indignity put upon him has suffered the deepest wrong he could be called upon to bear, yet a wrong which society fails to right while it forbids him to seek the only reparation.

—That reparation is defined, if not prescribed, by the code of honor, as to which code there seems to be a very general misapprehension. The purpose of the code is this, that no gentleman shall offer a personal indignity to another except with the certainty of its being at the risk of his life. If society would provide a remedy or preventive that would operate like this risk, the code would soon pass absolutely out of practice and into oblivion. It is generally supposed that the code is a very bloodthirsty law, and that those who acknowledge it and act upon it are "sudden and quick in quarrel," lovers of fighting, revengeful and implacable, and that the code gives them the means of gratifying their murderous or combative propensities. No notion of it could be more erroneous; the misconception is like that which supposes military men to be desirous of using arms on slight provocation; whereas the contrary is the case. No men are so reluctant to begin fighting as thoroughbred soldiers; for they know what it means and to what end it must be carried if it is once begun. The code has been reduced to writing, and by a "fire-eating" South Carolinian, so that we can see just how bloodthirsty it is. It provides first that if an insult be received in public it should not be resented or noticed there, out of respect to those present, except in case of a blow or the like, because this is insult to the company which did not originate with the person receiving it; that a challenge should never be sent in the first instance because "that precludes all negotiation," and that in the note asking explanation and reparation the writer should "cautiously avoid attributing to the adverse party any improper motive"; that the aggrieved party's second should manage the whole affair even before a challenge is sent, because he "is supposed to be cool and collected, and his friends' feelings are more or less irritated" ["more or less" here is excellent good as expressive of the state of mind of a man so aggrieved that he is ready to risk his life]; the second is to "use every effort to soothe and tranquillize his principal," not to "see things in the aggravated light in which he views them, but to extenuate the conduct of his adversary whenever he sees clearly an opportunity to do so"; to "endeavor to persuade him that there has been some misunderstanding in the matter," and to "check him if he uses opprobrious epithets toward his adversary"; "when an accommodation is tendered," the code says in a paragraph worthy of the most respectful consideration, "never require too much; and if the party offering the amende honorable wishes to give a reason for his conduct in the matter, do not, unless it is offensive to your friend, refuse to receive it. By doing so you heal the breach more effectively." Strangers may call upon you for your offices as second, "for strangers are entitled to redress for wrongs as well as others, and the rules of honor and of hospitality should protect them." The second of the party challenged is also told, "Use your utmost efforts to allay the excitement which your principal may labor under," to search diligently into the origin of the misunderstanding, "for gentlemen seldom insult each other unless they labor under some misapprehension or mistake," and if the matter be investigated in the right spirit, it is probable that "harmony will be restored." The other parts of the code refer to the arrangements for and the etiquette of the hostile meeting, of which we shall only notice the censure passed upon the seconds if after either party is hit the fight is allowed to go on. The last section implies, although it does not positively assert, that "every insult may be compromised" without a hostile meeting, and it is directly said that "the old opinion that a blow must require blood is of no force; blows may be compromised in many cases." We do by no means advocate the fighting of duels; but we must say that we cannot see in this code the blood-thirstiness and the quarrel-seeking generally attributed to it. On the contrary, all its instructions seem to tend toward peacemaking, the restoration of harmony, the restraining of even expressions of ill feeling. It does recognize as indisputable that an insult must be atoned for, and if necessary, at the risk of life. That necessity society can do away with by placing its ban upon the man who insults another.

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—It is generally supposed that the "average American" beats the world in his love of big titles, and in his use of them; but the freed southern negro beats his white fellow citizen all hollow. We hear from Texas of one who is Head Centre of a Lodge—exactly of what sort we don't know, but we suppose that it must be a lodge in the wilderness or perhaps, in Solomon's phrase, a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. This cullud pusson will spend two months' wages to "report" at a grand junction "jamboree" of his "lodge." The titles of the officers of these associations are something wonderful. A negro office boy down there asked leave of absence for a day to attend a meeting. "Why," said his master, "Scip, I didn't know you belonged to a lodge." "Oh, yes, boss," replied Africanus, "Ise Supreme Grand King, an' Ise nowhar near de top nuther." Who shall say that the abolition of slavery was not worth all that it cost?