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This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens and David WidgeR
PART IV.
CHAPTER I.
I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning, day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and purity and freshness. The youth of Nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child. I doubt if any man can be called "old" so long as he is an early riser and an early walker. And oh, youth!--take my word of it--
youth in dressing-gown and slippers, dawdling over breakfast at noon, is a very decrepit, ghastly image of that youth which sees the sun blush over the mountains, and the dews sparkle upon blossoming hedgerows.
Passing by my father's study, I was surprised to see the windows unclosed; surprised more, on looking in, to see him bending over his books,--for I had never before known him study till after the morning meal. Students are not usually early risers, for students, alas!
whatever their age, are rarely young. Yes, the Great Book must be getting on in serious earnest. It was no longer dalliance with learning; this was work.
I passed through the gates into the road. A few of the cottages were giving signs of returning life, but it was not yet the hour for labor, and no "Good morning, sir," greeted me on the road. Suddenly at a turn, which an over-hanging beech-tree had before concealed, I came full upon my Uncle Roland.
"What! you, sir? So early? Hark, the clock is striking five!"
"Not later! I have walked well for a lame man. It must be more than four miles to--and back."
"You have been to--? Not on business? No soul would be up."
"Yes, at inns there is always some one up. Hostlers never sleep! I
have been to order my humble chaise and pair. I leave you today, nephew."
"Ah, uncle, we have offended you! It was my folly, that cursed print--"
"Pooh!" said my uncle, quickly. "Offended me, boy? I defy you!" and he pressed my hand roughly.
"Yet this sudden determination! It was but yesterday, at the Roman Camp, that you planned an excursion with my father, to C------ Castle."
"Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in London tonight."
"And return to-morrow?"
"I know not when," said my uncle, gloomily; and he was silent for some moments. At length, leaning less lightly on my arm, he continued:
"Young man, you have pleased me. I love that open, saucy brow of yours, on which Nature has written 'Trust me.' I love those clear eyes, that look one manfully in the face. I must know more of you--much of you. You must come and see me some day or other in your ancestors' ruined keep."
"Come! that I will. And you shall show me the old tower--"
"And the traces of the outworks!" cried my uncle, flourishing his stick.
"And the pedigree--"
"Ay, and your great-great-grandfather's armor, which he wore at Marston Moor--"
"Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle."
"The deuce is in the boy! Come here, come here: I've three minds to break your head, sir!"
"It is a pity somebody had not broken the rascally printer's, before he had the impudence to disgrace us by having a family, uncle."
Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. "Pshaw!" said he, stopping, and taking snuff. "The world of the dead is wide; why should the ghosts jostle us?"
"We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They haunt us always. We cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before, points the way. The dead never die, especially since--"
"Since what, boy? You speak well."
"Since our great ancestor introduced printing," said I, majestically.
My uncle whistled "Malbrouk s'en va-t-en guerre."
I had not the heart to plague him further.
"Peace!" said I, creeping cautiously within the circle of the stick.
"No! I forewarn you--"
"Peace! and describe to me my little cousin, your pretty daughter,--for pretty I am sure she is."
"Peace," said my uncle, smiling. "But you must come and judge for yourself."
CHAPTER II.
Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour with my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all crowded round him as he stepped into his chaise. When the Captain was gone, I
tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a departure. But my father was impenetrable in all that related to his brother's secrets. Whether or not the Captain had ever confided to him the cause of his displeasure with his son,--a mystery which much haunted me,--my father was mute on that score both to my mother and myself. For two or three days, however, Mr. Caxton was evidently unsettled. He did not even take to his Great Work, but walked much alone, or accompanied only by the duck, and without even a book in his hand. But by degrees the scholarly habits returned to him; my mother mended his pens, and the work went on.
For my part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I began to muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful. that I was, the happiness of home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the great world, and roved impatient by the shore.
At length, one evening, my father, with some modest hums and ha's, and an unaffected blush on his fair forehead, gratified a prayer frequently urged on him, and read me some portions of the Great Work. I cannot express the feelings this lecture created,--they were something akin to awe. For the design of this book was so immense, and towards its execution a learning so vast and various had administered, that it seemed to me as if a spirit had opened to me a new world, which had always been before my feet, but which my own human blindness had hitherto concealed from me. The unspeakable patience with which all these materials had been collected, year after year; the ease with which now, by the calm power of genius, they seemed of themselves to fall into harmony and system; the unconscious humility with which the scholar exposed the stores of a laborious life,---all combined to rebuke my own restlessness and ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my father which saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one of those books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of Bayle, or the History of Gibbon, or the "Fasti Hellenici" of Clinton, it was a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to make the originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into the furnace all vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast; but from the mould came the new coin, with its single stamp. And, happily, the subject of the work did not forbid to the writer the indulgence of his naive, peculiar irony of humor, so quiet, yet so profound. My father's book was the "History of Human Error." It was, therefore, the moral history of mankind, told with truth and earnestness, yet with an arch, unmalignant smile. Sometimes, indeed, the smile drew tears. But in all true humor lies its germ, pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria, or Folly, but he was at home in his theme. He viewed man first in the savage state, preferring in this the positive accounts of voyagers and travellers to the vague myths of antiquity and the dreams of speculators on our pristine state. From Australia and Abyssinia he drew pictures of mortality unadorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and savages all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought before you the American Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into the dawn of civilization, when Friend Penn cheated him out of his birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He showed both analogy and contrast between this specimen of our kind and others equally apart from the extremes of the savage state and the cultured,--
the Arab in his tent, the Teuton in his forests, the Greenlander in his boat, the Finn in his reindeer car. Up sprang the rude gods of the North and the resuscitated Druidism, passing from its earliest templeless belief into the later corruptions of crommell and idol. Up sprang, by their side, the Saturn of the Phoenicians, the mystic Budh of India, the elementary deities of the Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the graceful Etruria. How nature and life shaped the religion; how the religion shaped the manners; how, and by what influences, some tribes were formed for progress; how others were destined to remain stationary, or be swallowed up in war and slavery by their brethren,--was told with a precision clear and strong as the voice of Fate. Not only an antiquarian and philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher, my father brought to bear on all these grave points the various speculations involved in the distinction of races. He showed how race in perfection is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture; how all mixed races have been the most intelligent; how, in proportion as local circumstance and religious faith permitted the early fusion of different tribes, races improved and quickened into the refinements of civilization. He tracked the progress and dispersion of the Hellenes from their mythical cradle in Thessaly, and showed how those who settled near the sea-
shores, and were compelled into commerce and intercourse with strangers, gave to Greece her marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters,--the flowers of the ancient world. How others, like the Spartans; dwelling evermore in a camp, on guard against their neighbors, and rigidly preserving their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of mind. He took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne, and in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteristics and purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the world. He compared the Norman, in his ancient Scandinavian home, with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry into which he grew, fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon. He compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the colonist and civilizes of the globe as he becomes when he knows not through what channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish--he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,--that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man--
viz., admixture of race--you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn. But when my father got into the marrow of his theme; when, quitting these preliminary discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom of the wise; when he dealt with civilization itself, its schools, and porticos, and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched beneath the colleges of the Egyptians and the Symposia of the Greeks; when he showed that, even in their own favorite pursuit of metaphysics, the Greeks were children, and in their own more practical region of politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers; when, following the stream of error through the Middle Ages, he quoted the puerilities of Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan, and passed, with his calin smile, into the salons of the chattering wits of Paris in the eighteenth century,--
oh! then his irony was that of Lucian, sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus. For not even here was my father's satire of the cheerless and Mephistophelian school. From this record of error he drew forth the granderas of truth. He showed how earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, age after age, the human mind marches on, like the ocean, receding here, but there advancing; how from the speculations of the Greek sprang all true philosophy; how from the institutions of the Roman rose all durable systems of government; how from the robust follies of the North came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of honor, and the sweet, harmonizing influences of woman. He tracked the ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics, and Attilas. Full of all curious and quaint anecdote, of original illustration, of those niceties of learning which spring from a taste cultivated to the last exquisite polish, the book amused and allured and charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry, now in the simplicity of Montaigne, now in the penetration of La Bruyere. He lived in each time of which he wrote, and the time lived again in him. Ah! what a writer of romances he would have been if--if what? If he had had as sad an experience of men's passions as he had the happy intuition into their humors. But he who would see the mirror of the shore must look where it is cast on the river, not the ocean. The narrow stream reflects the gnarled tree and the pausing herd and the village spire and the romance of the landscape. But the sea reflects only the vast outline of the headland and the lights of the eternal heaven.
CHAPTER III.
"It is Lombard Street to a China orange," quoth Uncle Jack.
"Are the odds in favor of fame against failure so great? You do not speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack," answered my father, as he stooped down to tickle the duck under the left ear.
"But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a scholar, a genius, a wond--"
"Stop!" cried my father.
"After all," said Mr. Squills, "though I am no flatterer, Mr. Tibbets is not so far out. That part of your book which compares the crania or skulls of the different races is superb. Lawrence or Dr. Prichard could not have done the thing more neatly. Such a book must not be lost to the world; and I agree with Mr. Tibbets that you should publish as soon as possible."
"It is one thing to write, and another to publish," said my father, irresolutely. "When one considers all the great men who have published;
when one thinks one is going to intrude one's self audaciously into the company of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of Herder, of all the grave philosophers who bend over Nature with brows weighty with thought,--one may well pause and-"
"Pooh!" interrupted Uncle Jack, "science is not a club, it is an ocean;
it is open to the cock-boat as the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings. Who can exhaust the sea, who say to Intellect, 'The deeps of philosophy are preoccupied'?"
"Admirable!" cried Squills.
"So it is really your advice, my friends," said my father, who seemed struck by Uncle Jack's eloquent illustrations, "that I should desert my household gods, remove to London, since my own library ceases to supply my wants, take lodgings near the British Museum, and finish off one volume, at least, incontinently."
"It is a duty you owe to your country," said Uncle Jack, solemnly.
"And to yourself," urged Squills. "One must attend to the natural evacuations of the brain. Ah! you may smile, sir, but I have observed that if a man has much in his head, he must give it vent, or it oppresses him; the whole system goes wrong. From being abstracted, he grows stupefied. The weight of the pressure affects the nerves. I
would not even guarantee you from a stroke of paralysis."
"Oh, Austin!" cried my mother tenderly, and throwing her arms round my father's neck.
"Come, sir, you are conquered," said I.
"And what is to become of you, Sisty?" asked my father. "Do you go with us, and unsettle your mind for the university?"
"My uncle has invited me to his castle; and in the mean while I will stay here, fag hard, and take care of the duck."
"All alone?" said my mother.
"No. All alone! Why, Uncle Jack will come here as often as ever, I
hope."
Uncle Jack shook his head.
"No, my boy, I must go to town with your father. You don't understand these things. I shall see the booksellers for him. I know how these gentlemen are to be dealt with. I shall prepare the literary circles for the appearance of the book. In short, it is a sacrifice of interest, I know; my Journal will suffer. But friendship and my country's good before all things."
"Dear Jack!" said my mother, affectionately.
"I cannot suffer it," cried my father. "You are making a good income. Yon are doing well where you are, and as to seeing the booksellers,--
why, when the work is ready, you can come to town for a week, and settle that affair."
"Poor dear Austin," said Uncle Jack, with an air of superiority and compassion. "A week! Sir, the advent of a book that is to succeed requires the preparation of months. Pshaw! I am no genius, but I am a practical man. I know what's what. Leave me alone."
But my father continued obstinate, and Uncle Jack at last ceased to urge the matter. The journey to fame and London was now settled, but my father would not hear of my staying behind.
No, Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see the world; the duck would take care of itself.
CHAPTER IV.
We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure our due complement of places--four in all, including one for Mrs. Primmins--in, or upon, the fast family coach called the "Sun," which had lately been set up for the special convenience of the neighborhood.
This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles distant from us, described at first a very erratic orbit amidst the contiguous villages before it finally struck into the high-road of enlightenment, and thence performed its journey, in the full eyes of man, at the majestic pace of six miles and a half an hour. My father with his pockets full of books, and a quarto of "Gebelin on the Primitive World," for light reading, under his arm; my mother with a little basket containing sandwiches, and biscuits of her own baking; Mrs. Primmins, with a new umbrella purchased for the occasion, and a bird-cage containing a canary endeared to her not more by song than age and a severe pip through which she had successfully nursed it; and I myself,--waited at the gates to welcome the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of boxes and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van; and the footman, who was to follow when lodgings had been found, had gone to a rising eminence to watch the dawning of the expected "Sun," and apprise us of its approach by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to a stick.
The quaint old house looked at us mournfully from all its deserted windows. The litter before its threshold and in its open hall; wisps of straw or hay that had been used for packing; baskets and boxes that had been examined and rejected; others, corded and piled, reserved to follow with the footman; and the two heated and hurried serving-women left behind, standing halfway between house and garden-gate, whispering to each other, and looking as if they had not slept for weeks,--gave to a scene, usually so trim and orderly, an aspect of pathetic abandonment and desolation. The Genius of the place seemed to reproach us. I felt the omens were against us, and turned my earnest gaze from the haunts behind with a sigh, as the coach now drew up with all its grandeur. An important personage, who, despite the heat of the day, was enveloped in a vast superfluity of belcher, in the midst of which galloped a gilt fox, and who rejoiced in the name of "guard," descended to inform us politely that only three places, two inside and one out, were at our disposal, the rest having been pre-engaged a fortnight before our orders were received.
Now, as I knew that Mrs. Primmins was indispensable to the comforts of my honored parents (the more so as she had once lived in London, and knew all its ways), I suggested that she should take the outside seat, and that I should perform the journey on foot,--a primitive mode of transport which has its charms to a young man with stout limbs and gay spirits. The guard's outstretched arm left my mother little time to oppose this proposition, to which my father assented with a silent squeeze of the hand. And having promised to join them at a family hotel near the Strand, to which Mr. Squills had recommended them as peculiarly genteel and quiet, and waved my last farewell to my poor mother, who continued to stretch her meek face out of the window till the coach was whirled off in a cloud like one of the Homeric heroes, I turned within, to put up a few necessary articles in a small knapsack which I
remembered to have seen in the lumber-room, and which had appertained to my maternal grandfather; and with that on my shoulder, and a strong staff in my hand, I set off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as if I were only bound to the next village. Accordingly, about noon I was both tired and hungry; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty inns yet peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, will soon be amongst the things before the Flood, I sat down at a table under some clipped limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and ordered my simple fare with the dignity of one who, for the first time in his life, bespeaks his own dinner and pays for it out of his own pocket.
While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the landlord called "No mistake," two pedestrians, passing the same road which I had traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at my occupation, and induced no doubt by its allurements, seated themselves under the same lime-trees, though at the farther end of the table. I surveyed the new-
comers with the curiosity natural to my years.
The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking of fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat older than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance. He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the costume appropriate to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and padded; two enormous pins, connected by a chain, decorated a very stiff stock of blue satin dotted with yellow stars; his hands were cased in very dingy gloves which had once been straw-colored, and the said hands played with a whalebone cane surmounted by a formidable knob, which gave it the appearance of a "life-pre server." As he took off a white napless hat, which he wiped with great care and affection with the sleeve of his right arm, a profusion of stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man. Like my landlord's ale, in that wig there was "no mistake;" it was brought (after the fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George IV. in his youth), low over his fore-head, and was raised at the top. The wig had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity of dust; oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead and cheeks of the wig's proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his face was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain drollery in the corners of his eyes.
The younger man was apparently about my own age,--a year or two older, perhaps, judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than his boyish countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not fail to command the attention even of the most careless observer. It had not only the darkness, but the character of the gipsy face, with large, brilliant eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not curling; the features were aquiline, but delicate, and when he spoke he showed teeth dazzling as pearls. It was impossible not to admire the singular beauty of the countenance; and yet it had that expression, at once stealthy and fierce, which war with society has stamped upon the lineaments of the race of which it reminded me. But, withal, there was somewhat of the air of a gentleman in this young wayfarer. His dress consisted of a black velveteen shooting-jacket, or rather short frock, with a broad leathern strap at the waist, loose white trousers, and a foraging cap, which he threw carelessly on the table as he wiped his brow. Turning round impatiently, and with some haughtiness, from his companion, he surveyed me with a quick, observant flash of his piercing eyes, and then stretched himself at length on the bench, and appeared either to dose or muse, till, in obedience to his companion's orders, the board was spread with all the cold meats the larder could supply.
"Beef!" said his companion, screwing a pinchbeck glass into his right eye. "Beef,--mottled, covey; humph! Lamb,--oldish, ravish, muttony;
humph! Pie,--stalish. Veal?--no, pork. Ah! what will you have?"
"Help yourself," replied the young man peevishly, as he sat up, looked disdainfully at the viands, and, after a long pause, tasted first one, then the other, with many shrugs of the shoulders and muttered exclamations of discontent. Suddenly he looked up, and called for brandy; and to my surprise, and I fear admiration, he drank nearly half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a composure that spoke of habitual use.
"Wrong!" said his companion, drawing the bottle to himself, and mixing the alcohol in careful proportions with water. "Wrong! coats of stomach soon wear out with that kind of clothes-brush. Better stick to the 'yeasty foam,' as sweet Will says. That young gentleman sets you a good example," and therewith the speaker nodded at me familiarly. Inexperienced as I was, I surmised at once that it was his intention to make acquaintance with the neighbor thus saluted. I was not deceived. "Anything to tempt you, sir?" asked this social personage after a short pause, and describing a semicircle with the point of his knife.
"I thank you, sir, but I have dined."
"What then? 'Break out into a second course of mischief,' as the Swan recommends,--Swan of Avon, sir! No? 'Well, then, I charge you with this cup of sack.' Are you going far, if I may take the liberty to ask?"
"To London."
"Oh!" said the traveller, while his young companion lifted his eyes; and I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and brilliancy.
"London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life there,--'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?"
"I never saw one."
"Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife, and bringing up the point horizontally; "then, young man," he added solemnly, "you have,--but I won't say what you have to see. I won't say,--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and exclaim, with the generous ardor so engaging in youth, 'Mr. Peacock, these are yours if you will only say what I have to see!'"
I laughed outright. May I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew dark at the sound; he pushed back his plate and sighed.
"Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who, I suppose, is about your own age, he could tell you what a play is,--he could tell you what life is. He has viewed the mantiers of the town; 'perused the traders,' as the Swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, eh?"
Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn on his lips,--
"Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like poverty, has strange bed-fellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say a melodrama;
ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--"
"A farce?" put in his comrade.
"No, a tragedy,--or comedy as Moliere wrote it."
"And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the tone of my contemporary.
"Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend here has no chance!"
"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,' hem--yes, Hal Peacock may be witty, but he is no rogue."
"This was not exactly my meaning," said the boy, dryly.
"'A fico for your meaning,' as the Swan says.--Hallo, you sir! Bully Host, clear the table--fresh tumblers--hot water--sugar--lemon--and--The bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr. Peacock offered me a cigar.
Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting specimen of some fabulous havanna, moistened it all over, as a boa-constrictor may do the ox he prepares for deglutition, bit off one end, and lighting the other from a little machine for that purpose which he drew from his pocket, he was soon absorbed in a vigorous effort (which the damp inherent in the weed long resisted) to poison the surrounding atmosphere. Therewith the young gentleman, either from emulation or in self-defence, extracted from his own pouch a cigar-case of notable elegance,--being of velvet, embroidered apparently by some fair hand, for "From Juliet" was very legibly worked thereon,--selected a cigar of better appearance than that in favor with his comrade, and seemed quite as familiar with the tobacco as he had been with the brandy.
"Fast, sir, fast lad that," quoth Mr. Peacock, in the short gasps which his resolute struggle with his uninviting victim alone permitted;
"nothing but [puff, puff] your true [suck, suck] syl--syl--sylva--does for him. Out, by the Lord! the jaws of darkness have devoured it up;'" and again Mr. Peacock applied to his phosphoric machine. This time patience and perseverance succeeded, and the heart of the cigar responded by a dull red spark (leaving the sides wholly untouched) to the indefatigable ardor of its wooer.
This feat accomplished, Mr. Peacock exclaimed triumphantly: "And now, what say you, my lads, to a game at cards? Three of us,--whist and a dummy; nothing better, eh?" As he spoke, he produced from his coat-
pocket a red silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a nightcap, a tooth-
brush, a piece of shaving-soap, four lumps of sugar, the remains of a bun, a razor, and a pack of cards. Selecting the last, and returning its motley accompaniments to the abyss whence they had emerged, he turned up, with a jerk of his thumb and finger, the knave of clubs, and placing it on the top of the rest, slapped the cards emphatically on the table.
"You are very good, but I don't know whist," said I.
"Not know whist--not been to a play--not smoke! Then pray tell me, young man," said he majestically, and with a frown, "what on earth you do know."
Much consternated by this direct appeal, and greatly ashamed of my ignorance of the cardinal points of erudition in Mr. Peacock's estimation, I hung my head and looked down.
"That is right," renewed Mr. Peacock, more benignly; "you have the ingenuous shame of youth. It is promising, sir; 'lowliness is young ambition's ladder,' as the Swan says. Mount the first step, and learn whist,--sixpenny points to begin with."
Notwithstanding any newness in actual life, I had had the good fortune to learn a little of the way before me, by those much-slandered guides called novels,--works which are often to the inner world what maps are to the outer; and sundry recollections of "Gil Blas" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" came athwart me. I had no wish to emulate the worthy Moses, and felt that I might not have even the shagreen spectacles to boast of in my negotiations with this new Mr. Jenkinson. Accordingly, shaking my head, I called for my bill. As I took out my purse,--knit by my mother,--with one gold piece in one corner, and sundry silver ones in the other, I saw that the eyes of Mr. Peacock twinkled.
"Poor spirit, sir! poor spirit, young man! 'This avarice sticks deep,' as the Swan beautifully observes. 'Nothing venture, nothing have.'"
"Nothing have, nothing venture," I returned, plucking up spirit.
"Nothing have! Young sir, do you doubt my solidity--my capital--my
'golden joys'?"
"Sir, I spoke of myself. I am not rich enough to gamble."
"Gamble!" exclaimed Mr. Peacock, in virtuous indignation--" gamble!
what do you mean, sir? You insult me!" and he rose threateningly, and slapped his white hat on his wig. "Pshaw! let him alone, Hal," said the boy, contemptuously. "Sir, if he is impertinent, thrash him." (This was to me.) "Impertinent! thrash!" exclaimed Mr. Peacock, waxing very red; but catching the sneer on his companion's lip, he sat down, and subsided into sullen silence.
Meanwhile I paid my bill. This duty--rarely a cheerful one--performed, I looked round for my knapsack, and perceived that it was in the boy's hands. He was very coolly reading the address, which, in case of accidents, I prudently placed on it: "Pisistratus Caxton, Esq.,--
Hotel,--Street, Strand."
I took my knapsack from him, more surprised at such a breach of good manners in a young gentleman who knew life so well, than I should have been at a similar error on the part of Mr. Peacock. He made no apology, but nodded farewell, and stretched himself at full length on the bench. Mr. Peacock, now absorbed in a game of patience, vouchsafed no return to my parting salutation, and in another moment I was alone on the high-
road. My thoughts turned long upon the young man I had left; mixed with a sort of instinctive compassionate foreboding of an ill future for one with such habits and in such companionship, I felt an involuntary admiration, less even for his good looks than his ease, audacity, and the careless superiority he assumed over a comrade so much older than himself.
The day twas far gone when I saw the spires of a town at which I
intended to rest for the night. The horn of a coach behind made me turn my head, and as the vehicle passed me, I saw on the outside Mr. Peacock, still struggling with a cigar,--it could scarcely be the same,--and his young friend stretched on the roof amongst the luggage, leaning his handsome head on his hand, and apparently unobservant both of me and every one else.
CHAPTER V.
I am apt--judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own experience-to measure a young man's chance of what is termed practical success in life by what may seem at first two very vulgar qualities; viz., his inquisitiveness and his animal vivacity. A curiosity which springs forward to examine everything new to his information; a nervous activity, approaching to restlessness, which rarely allows bodily fatigue to interfere with some object in view,--constitute, in my mind, very profitable stock-in-hand to begin the world with.
Tired as I was, after I had performed my ablutions and refreshed myself in the little coffee-room of the inn at which I put up, with the pedestrian's best beverage, familiar and oft calumniated tea, I could not resist the temptation of the broad, bustling street, which, lighted with gas, shone on me through the dim windows of the coffee-room. I had never before seen a large town, and the contrast of lamp-lit, busy night in the streets, with sober, deserted night in the lanes and fields, struck me forcibly.
I sauntered out, therefore, jostling and jostled, now gazing at the windows, now hurried along the tide of life, till I found myself before a cookshop, round which clustered a small knot of housewives, citizens, and hungry-looking children. While contemplating this group, and marvelling how it comes to pass that the staple business of earth's majority is how, when, and where to eat, my ear was struck with "'In Troy there lies the scene,' as the illustrious Will remarks."
Looking round, I perceived Mr. Peacock pointing his stick towards an open doorway next to the cookshop, the hall beyond which was lighted with gas, while painted in black letters on a pane of glass over the door was the word "Billiards."
Suiting the action to the word, the speaker plunged at once into the aperture, and vanished. The boy-companion was following more slowly, when his eye caught mine. A slight blush came over his dark cheek; he stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs, gazed on me hard and long before he said: "Well met again, sir! You find it hard to amuse yourself in this dull place; the nights are long out of London."
"Oh!" said I, ingenuously, "everything here amuses me,--the lights, the shops, the crowd; but, then, to me everything is new."
The youth came from his lounging-place and moved on, as if inviting me to walk; while he answered, rather with bitter sullenness than the melancholy his words expressed,--
"One thing, at least, cannot be new to you,--it is an old truth with us before we leave the nursery: 'Whatever is worth having must be bought;' ergo, he who cannot buy, has nothing worth having."
"I don't think," said I, wisely, "that the things best worth having can be bought at all. You see that poor dropsical jeweller standing before his shop-door: his shop is the finest in the street, and I dare say he would be very glad to give it to you or me in return for our good health and strong legs. Oh, no! I think with my father: 'All that are worth having are given to all,'--that is, Nature and labor."
"Your father says that; and you go by what your father says? Of course, all fathers have preached that, and many other good doctrines, since Adam preached to Cain; but I don't see that the fathers have found their sons very credulous listeners."
"So much the worse for the sons," said I, bluntly. "Nature," continued my new acquaintance, without attending to my ejaculation,--"Nature indeed does give us much, and Nature also orders each of us how to use her gifts. If Nature give you the propensity to drudge, you will drudge; if she give me the ambition to rise, and the contempt for work, I may rise,--but I certainly shall not work."
"Oh," said I, "you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are all guided by the bumps on our foreheads?"
"And the blood in our veins, and our mothers' milk. We inherit other things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father tells you! Good boy!"
I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being taunted for goodness, I
never could understand; but certainly I felt humbled. However, I
answered sturdily: "If you had as good a father as I have, you would not think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you."
"Ah! so he is a very good father, is he? He must have a great trust in your sobriety and steadiness to let you wander about the world as he does."
"I am going to join him in London."
"In London! Oh, does he live there?"
"He is going to live there for some time."
"Then perhaps we may meet. I too am going to town."
"Oh, we shall be sure to meet there!" said I, with frank gladness; for my interest in the young man was not diminished by his conversation, however much I disliked the sentiments it expressed.
The lad laughed, and his laugh was peculiar,--it was low, musical, but hollow and artificial.
"Sure to meet! London is a large place: where shall you be found?"
I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel at which I
expected to find my father, although his deliberate inspection of my knapsack must already have apprised him of that address. He listened attentively, and repeated it twice over, as if to impress it on his memory; and we both walked on in silence, till, turning up a small passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a large churchyard,--a flagged path stretched diagonally across it towards the market-place, on which it bordered. In this churchyard, upon a gravestone, sat a young Savoyard; his hurdy-gurdy, or whatever else his instrument might be called, was on his lap; and he was gnawing his crust and feeding some poor little white mice (standing on their hind legs on the hurdy-gurdy)
as merrily as if he had chosen the gayest resting-place in the world.
We both stopped. The Savoyard, seeing us, put his arch head on one side, showed all his white teeth in that happy smile so peculiar to his race, and in which poverty seems to beg so blithely, and gave the handle of his instrument a turn. "Poor child!" said I.
"Aha, you pity him! but why? According to your rule, Mr. Caxton, he is not so much to be pitied; the dropsical jeweller would give him as much for his limbs and health as for ours! How is it--answer me, son of so wise a father--that no one pities the dropsical jeweller, and all pity the healthy Savoyard? It is, sir, because there is a stern truth which is stronger than all Spartan lessons,--Poverty is the master-ill of the world. Look round. Does poverty leave its signs over the graves? Look at that large tomb fenced round; read that long inscription: 'Virtue'--
'best of husbands'--'affectionate father'--'inconsolable grief'-'sleeps in the joyful hope,' etc. Do you suppose these stoneless mounds hide no dust of what were men just as good? But no epitaph tells their virtues, bespeaks their wifes' grief, or promises joyful hope to them!"
"Does it matter? Does God care for the epitaph and tombstone?"
"Datemi qualche cosa!" said the Savoyard, in his touching patois, still smiling, and holding out his little hand; therein I dropped a small coin. The boy evinced his gratitude by a new turn of the hurdy-gurdy.
"That is not labor," said my companion; "and had you found him at work, you had given him nothing. I, too, have my instrument to play upon, and my mice to see after. Adieu!"
He waved his hand, and strode irreverently over the graves back in the direction we had come.
I stood before the fine tomb with its fine epitaph: the Savoyard looked at me wistfully.
CHAPTER VI.
The Savoyard looked at me wistfully. I wished to enter into conversation with him. That was not easy. However, I began.
Pisistratus.--"You must be often hungry enough, my poor boy. Do the mice feed you?"
Savoyard puts his head on one side, shakes it, and strokes his mice.
Pisistratus.-"You are very fond of the mice; they are your only friends, I fear."
Savoyard evidently understanding Pisistratus, rubs his face gently against the mice, then puts them softly down on a grave, and gives a turn to the hurdy-gurdy. The mice play unconcernedly over the grave.
Pisistratus, pointing first to the beasts, then to the instrument.--
"Which do you like best, the mice or the hurdygurdy?"
Savoyard shows his teeth--considers--stretches himself on the grass-
plays with the mice--and answers volubly. Pisistratus, by the help of Latin comprehending that the Savoyard says that the mice are alive, and the hurdy-gurdy is not.--"Yes, a live friend is better than a dead one. Mortua est hurdy-gurda!"
Savoyard shakes his head vehemently.--"No--no, Eccellenza, non e morta!" and strikes up a lively air on the slandered instrument. The Savoyard's face brightens-he looks happy; the mice run from the grave into his bosom. Pisistratus, affected, and putting the question in Latin.--"Have you a father?"
Savoyard with his face overcast.--"No, Eccellenza!" then pausing a little, he says briskly, "Si, si!" and plays a solemn air on the hurdy-
gurdy--stops--rests one hand on the instrument, and raises the other to heaven.
Pisistratus understands: the father is like the hurdygurdy, at once dead and living. The mere form is a dead thing, but the music lives. Pisistratus drops another small piece of silver on the ground, and turns away.
God help and God bless thee, Savoyard! Thou hast done Pisistratus all the good in the world. Thou hast corrected the hard wisdom of the young gentleman in the velveteen jacket; Pisistratus is a better lad for having stopped to listen to thee.
I regained the entrance to the churchyard, I looked back; there sat the Savoyard still amidst men's graves, but under God's sky. He was still looking at me wistfully; and when he caught my eye, he pressed his hand to his heart and smiled. God help and God bless thee, young Savoyard! | clean | 0.710053 | 33143faaf7dd8f2ffb8f0e9167130b783b9f61b09fe04a7661d40616c650f6ff | 7,799 |
MINISTER, ON ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY, FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 1877***
Transcribed from the [1877] Hatchards edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
A Sermon
PREACHED IN YORK MINSTER, ON
_St. Bartholomew's Day_, _Friday_, _August_ 24, 1877,
ON THE OCCASION OF THE CONSECRATION OF
THE RIGHT REV. ROWLEY HILL, LORD BISHOP OF SODOR AND MAN.
BY
THE REV. CANON HOARE, VICAR OF TRINITY, TUNBRIDGE WELLS.
* * * * *
_PUBLISHED BY REQUEST_.
* * * * *
LONDON: HATCHARDS, PICCADILLY.
TUNBRIDGE WELLS: H. COLBRAN, CALVERLEY ROAD.
SHEFFIELD: P. D. HOPKINS.
_Price One Shilling_.
* * * * *
PREFACE.
THE Consecration of the Bishop of Sodor and Man will long be remembered, both at York and Sheffield; for no one can have been present on that occasion without having been profoundly impressed by the sight of the overwhelming congregation, and the many tokens of deep interest manifestly taken in the service. So many of the Sheffield people desired to be present that two special trains were prepared for their accommodation, by which there arrived no less than seven hundred persons. The Dean having heard that they were coming did all in his power to give them a welcome. The whole space in front of the Communion-rail was filled with seats, and in the admission of the crowds who were pressing into the Cathedral precedence was given to the visitors from Sheffield. But, notwithstanding all the efforts of the Cathedral authorities, I am sorry to say that a great many failed to get in. Before the Sermon I sat in the stalls, and to avoid the crowd in the choir I was conducted into the nave, and so outside the choir to the pulpit. In the course of that walk I saw hundreds who were unable to obtain admission. Some were standing in the nave, and others straining to see and hear through the glass screen by the side of the choir. When the door was opened to let me in I cannot say how I longed to take them all in with me. But that was impossible. The whole place was packed, and every available standing-ground in the neighbourhood of the pulpit was full.
Nor was it a mere sight-seeing crowd. I found myself surrounded by people who were manifestly there for higher ends, and who listened with as fixed an attention as any preacher could desire. But the most remarkable part of the service was the Holy Communion, with which it closed. At the end of the Prayer for the Church Militant there was a pause, in order that those who did not intend to remain for the Lord's Supper might retire; but of the great crowd near the rail very few went away. At first it seemed a doubtful question whether they understood that the time was come for them to go; but it soon became evident that they perfectly understood what they were doing, and that they were remaining to partake of the Lord's Supper. The bread and wine originally prepared was quite insufficient for such a number of communicants, and it was necessary to send out for an additional supply. When once the service began everything was done that could be done for the comfort of all that were present; but as the whole space in front of the rail was filled with seats, all of which were occupied, and there was only one narrow passage by which the communicants could both approach and retire, and as there were eight persons administering, it was impossible to secure that solemn stillness which we sometimes enjoy in our parochial churches. But nothing could possibly be more interesting. There I saw not only ladies and gentlemen, but many who appeared to me to be mechanics, and, scattered through the crowd, numbers of young men.
When I looked on that mixed body of communicants, and observed the earnestness, the seriousness, and the apparently deep devotion with which they gathered round the Table of their Lord; and when after the service was over I saw them pressing round their beloved Vicar, and many of them reaching out their rough hands once more to grasp his with a true, hearty, loving grasp, and heard them wishing him a blessing, I could not help giving thanks to the God of all grace who gave that day such a testimony to the faithful reaching of His Gospel. For what were the means employed for the attainment of such a result? Not music, not form, not the claim to priestly power, but the plain, simple, loving ministry of the Gospel of the grace of God. Between three and four years my dear friend had been preaching the great doctrines of Scripture--such as conversion to God, justification by faith, free forgiveness through the finished atonement, and, new life by the power of the Holy Ghost--and God had blessed that ministry to the ingathering of a people to His name. This was the work of which we that day witnessed the fruit, and I trust the effects on all of us who witnessed it may be that we may work on in our various spheres of labour more than ever resolved, by God's help, to stick fast to great principles, and more than ever encouraged to trust His promises, and look out for great results.
E. H.
TUNBRIDGE WELLS, _August_ 29_th_, 1877.
A SERMON.
'Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you;
and ye shall be witnesses unto Me.'--_Acts_, i. 8.
IT is said of the saints of God in the Old Testament, that 'out of weakness they were made strong,' and none of us who are called to God's ministry can think for one moment of our work and our weakness without the deepest sense of our own need of that same gift. We have a work of infinite importance. We are called to be God's instruments in making known that which God has wrought at no less a price than the most precious blood of His well-beloved Son. We have to encounter the threefold antagonism of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and we ourselves are poor weak creatures, so weak that we are quite unable to stand alone, and so utterly fallen that we cannot preserve ourselves even for an hour. It follows, therefore, that we all stand in need of power from God. And whatever be our position, whether in the ministry or out of it, whether laymen, deacons, presbyters, or bishops, we all require to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. If ever the need of this strength was felt it must be felt now, now that we are passing through the perilous times of the latter days; and if there be any office in the whole world which appears to require it more than another, it is the sacred office to which my dear friend is this day admitted, the holy office of a Bishop in the Church of God.
But, thanks to God! there is provision made in the Gospel for weakness as well as for sin; and the result is, that the promise of power was almost the last promise made by our blessed Lord before He left us, so that just before His ascension He said, 'Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me.' Now the Holy Ghost came on the Church at Pentecost, and as there has never been said one word about His being withdrawn, we are warranted in looking for that power now, and in spreading out our weakness before His throne, in full assurance that according to His promise He Himself will give power for His work. Let us study, then, two points--1st, the purpose, and 2ndly, the source of the power; and while we study, may we by God's great grace be permitted to experience the gift!
I. The purpose: 'Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.' It in clear, therefore, that the power is a power of testimony, and that its great object is to enable us to be witnesses unto the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are not, therefore, _judges_. The witness is never the judge. His business is to bear testimony as to what he has seen and heard. But he has nothing to do with the sentence. That rests with the judge alone. So the witness for Christ is not the judge over his follow-men. He cannot sit in the Confessional and pronounce the sentence of life and death. That rests with the Lord Himself, and there must be no usurpation of His sovereign right.
Then, again, the witness is not a _medium_, or connecting link, between the soul and the Saviour. He is not like a telegraph wire through which the electric current is conveyed from one point to another, for in God's salvation there is nothing intermediate between the Saviour and the sinner. There is no such thing in Scripture as the idea that the grace of God passes from the Lord Jesus through any men or body of men to the sinner. All that is human imagination, pure and simple. The witness is not a conductor or communicator, not a channel or a medium. His business is to bear such a testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ as shall bring the soul face to face with Him, and introduce the sinner into direct communication with God Himself.
Thus it is that he is a witness unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and the more plainly that he sets Him before the people the more effective is his testimony. If we wish to know the leading subject of the witness we shall find it in Luke, xxiv. In the forty-eighth verse of that chapter He told His little Church, as He did in this chapter of the Acts, that their office was to be witnesses: 'Ye are witnesses of these things.' But we may ask, What things? What were those things to which the Church were to be witnesses? The previous verse answers the question: 'That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations.' Mark, it says 'preached,' not communicated; but in His name it is to be preached fully and freely. Forgiveness through the finished atonement is the leading subject of the testimony. It is the office of the witness to proclaim the great work which the Lord Jesus Christ has completed for the propitiation of sin, and to invite men to the free and full reconciliation which He has promised as the result of that propitiation. We are to proclaim from His own word what He is, what He has done, what He has promised, and what He is doing. We are to set Him so clearly, so vividly, before the people, that they may see nothing of us, but look fixedly on Him. We are to bear such a testimony to His work, His word, His mercy, His grace, His all-sufficiency, that those who know Him not may have their hearts burn to know Him; that those who are longing after Him may find Him, and have their souls satisfied in His love; and that those who know Him may be led to such a personal experience of the unspeakable richness of His abounding mercies that they may be able to say to us, as her friends did to the woman of Samaria, 'Now we believe; not because of thy saying: for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.' The best possible result of the testimony of the Christian witness is, that those who receive it should be brought into such an independent relationship with the Lord Himself that the witness who has brought them to it disappears before the fulness of His grace. And the very last thing that such a witness would ever desire is, that people should come to him as an intermediate mediator between them and their Saviour. The one object of his life and testimony is that all eyes, and all thoughts, and all hearts, should be directed exclusively to the Lord Jesus; and if that blessed end can be accomplished, the true witness is only too happy and thankful to be himself quite out of sight.
II. But in order to this testimony there is power required. There are cases in which the testimony involves nothing short of martyrdom, as it did in the case of the first martyr, or witness, Stephen; as it did when the Huguenots were martyred for the faith on St. Bartholomew's Day, three centuries ago; and as lately done in our mission stations in West Africa and in China. But in all cases the strongest amongst us must remember St. Paul's words, descriptive of his ministry at Corinth: 'I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling.' We all want a power far beyond anything that we can discover in our own hearts. This, then, leads me to our second subject, the source of the power.
One thing is perfectly plain, viz. that the power does not come from arbitrary assumption, and high sacerdotal claims to something amounting to superhuman authority; to such claims as those put forward when the
Bishop's authority is contrasted with that which is 'merely human,' and the Bishop's voice is declared to be to the clergyman 'the voice of God.' Such assumptions being without the slightest shadow of scriptural authority are sure, in the long run, only to weaken power.
Nor does the power here promised arise from even the legitimate exercise of well-established law. In the Church of England, I am thankful to say, we are both protected and restrained by law; and the Bishop in the Church of England is armed with certain legal powers, which are of the utmost possible importance to the discipline and well-being of our Body. The only people who complain of the power of law are those who wish to break it. But this is not the power described in the text. The power here promised is something which no law can either give or take away. It is the direct gift of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself; it is nothing less than the power of the Holy Ghost.
In this gift there is accompanying power, a power which it is difficult to describe, but impossible to doubt. It is not the power of intellect or eloquence, for it is bestowed sometimes on persons that have neither one nor the other: but it is a power that cannot be mistaken; for it softens hard hearts, breaks down the most stubborn wills, and subdues those who have been previously opponents to truth. It was such a power that accompanied the preaching St. Paul at Thessalonica, of which he said, 'Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance' (1 Thess. i. 5). But if there be such a power, both promised and bestowed, shall any of us be satisfied without the enjoyment of it? Shall we be content with powerless work?
Shall we think it enough if our ministry is respectable and orthodox, our churches well attended, and our parochial arrangements complete, while there is no deep impression on the souls of men, no conviction of sin, no earnest inquiry, no conversions to God, no evidence of a new life, and no sign of the mighty power of the Spirit? Shall we be satisfied to live on, and to work on, just as we should be living and working if the Lord had never said, 'Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you?'
There is also indwelling power. We must not look merely at that which accompanies, for the secret of power is in most cases to be found within. We have a remarkable illustration of this in the case of Stephen. He was accompanied with power, for 'they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.' But the mystery was explained in the secret of his own soul, for in v. 8 of that same chapter we read that he was a man 'full of faith and power.' There was, therefore, a fulness of power within as well as the accompanying power without, and the secret of this fulness is explained in v. 5, where it is said he was a man 'full of faith and of the Holy Ghost.' Here, then, was the key to that marvellous and irresistible power which accompanied his work. He himself was full of faith, and being full of faith, he was full of the Holy Ghost. He was full of faith, so that he could, as it were, see his Lord at his right hand, and 'endure as seeing Him who is invisible.' And he was full of the Holy Ghost, so that he was lifted up above mere human nature. He was taught by the Holy Ghost; he was led by the Holy Ghost; his thoughts were prompted by the Holy Ghost; his wisdom was the wisdom of the Holy Ghost;
his words were the words of the Holy Ghost; his mind was governed by the mind of the Holy Ghost; and so he was full of power, for the simple reason that he was 'full of faith and of the Holy Ghost.' Thus the outward and the inward were at one. In his outward activity he was accompanied by the Holy Ghost; in his inward life he was full of the Holy Ghost; and in both one and the other he experienced the truth of the promise, 'Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me.'
And why should not we be enjoying the same? Why should not the same power be given to our brother, this day raised to the episcopate, as was given to Stephen when he laboured 1800 years ago in the diaconate? Of one thing I am perfectly sure, and that is, that it is the one desire of his heart to be the faithful witness to the Lord Jesus; to bear the same testimony as a Bishop which he has been enabled to bear as a Presbyter;
to speak from his episcopal chair with the same clear ring of Scriptural truth as he has hitherto done from his parochial pulpit, and which has so greatly endeared him to all of you who are come this day from Sheffield. And our prayer for him this day must be that he may be, in his new office, like Stephen, 'full of faith and power,' that so his ministry may be accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost, and his own soul filled by the Spirit.
But while we pray for him in the high and conspicuous office of a Bishop, let us not be unmindful of all those faithful men who, hidden from the eye of the world, and without any prospects of the honours of the world, are toiling on, some in quiet country parishes, some in the densely-peopled districts of our large towns, and some in far-distant missions, in patient perseverance witnessing for Christ. When our thoughts are directed to those who by the providence of God are brought to the top, let us not forget those who are patiently toiling at the bottom. Do not they equally need the power? Or, rather, Do not they especially need the presence of the indwelling Spirit in their own souls, and of the accompanying Spirit to give the power of patient perseverance in their work? O that God may grant that power to every branch of the Church of England! Power to her bishops, power to her presbyters, power to her deacons, power to her laity! May He grant such a measure of His Spirit to fill all our hearts, and accompany all our work, that our dear old Church may remain, true to her Reformation principles,--a faithful witness for Christ; that her testimony may never be corrupted, and her work never be powerless; that so when the Lord appears He may find her with her lamp burning, without reserve, and without compromise, maintaining His truth and giving glory to His name!
* * * * *
* * * * *
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By the same Author.
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
_The life of an anthropologist is no doubt filled much of the time with the monotonous routine of carefully assembling powdery relics of ancient races and civilizations. But
White's lone Peruvian odyssey was most unusual. A story pseudonymously penned by one of the greats in the genre._
where the world is quiet
_by ... C. H. Liddell_
Fra Rafael saw strange things, impossible things. Then there was the mystery of the seven young virginal girls of Huascan.
* * * * *
Fra Rafael drew the llama-wool blanket closer about his narrow shoulders, shivering in the cold wind that screamed down from Huascan. His face held great pain. I rose, walked to the door of the hut and peered through fog at the shadowy haunted lands that lifted toward the sky--the Cordilleras that make a rampart along Peru's eastern border.
"There's nothing," I said. "Only the fog, Fra Rafael."
He made the sign of the cross on his breast. "It is the fog that brings the--the terror," he said. "I tell you, _Senor_ White, I have seen strange things these last few months--impossible things. You are a scientist. Though we are not of the same religion, you also know that there are powers not of this earth."
I didn't answer, so he went on: "Three months ago it began, after the earthquake. A native girl disappeared. She was seen going into the mountains, toward Huascan along the Pass, and she did not come back. I
sent men out to find her. They went up the Pass, found the fog grew thicker and thicker until they were blind and could see nothing. Fear came to them and they fled back down the mountain. A week later another girl vanished. We found her footprints."
"The same canyon?"
"_Si_, and the same result. Now seven girls have gone, one after the other, all in the same way. And I, _Senor_ White--" Fra Rafael's pale, tired face was sad as he glanced down at the stumps of his legs--"I
could not follow, as you see. Four years ago an avalanche crippled me. My bishop told me to return to Lima, but I prevailed on him to let me remain here for these natives are my people, _Senor_. They know and trust me. The loss of my legs has not altered that."
I nodded. "I can see the difficulty now, though."
"Exactly. I cannot go to Huascan and find out what has happened to the girls. The natives--well, I chose four of the strongest and bravest and asked them to take me up the Pass. I thought that I could overcome their superstitions. But I was not successful."
"How far did you go?" I asked.
"A few miles, not more than that. The fog grew thicker, until we were blinded by it, and the way was dangerous. I could not make the men go on." Fra Rafael closed his eyes wearily. "They talked of old Inca gods and devils--Manco Capac and Oello Huaco, the Children of the Sun. They are very much afraid, _Senor_ White. They huddle together like sheep and believe that an ancient god has returned and is taking them away one by one. And--one by one they _are_ taken."
"Only young girls," I mused. "And no coercion is used, apparently. What's up toward Huascan?"
"Nothing but wild llamas and the condors. And snow, cold, desolation. These are the Andes, my friend."
"Okay," I said. "It sounds interesting. As an anthropologist I owe it to the Foundation to investigate. Besides, I'm curious. Superficially, there is nothing very strange about the affair. Seven girls have disappeared in the unusually heavy fogs we've had ever since the earthquake. Nothing more."
I smiled at him. "However, I think I'll take a look around and see what's so attractive about Huascan."
"I shall pray for you," he said. "Perhaps--well, _Senor_, for all the loss of my legs, I am not a weak man. I can stand much hardship. I can ride a burro."
"I don't doubt your willingness, Fra Rafael," I said. "But it's necessary to be practical. It's dangerous and it's cold up there. Your presence would only handicap me. Alone, I can go faster--remember, I
don't know how far I'll have to travel."
The priest sighed. "I suppose you are right. When--"
"Now. My burro's packed."
"Your porters?"
"They won't go," I said wryly. "They've been talking to your villagers. It doesn't matter. I'll go it alone." I put out my hand, and Fra Rafael gripped it strongly.
"_Vaya con Dios_," he said.
I went out into the bright Peruvian sunlight. The Indios were standing in straggling knots, pretending not to watch me. My porters were nowhere in evidence. I grinned, yelled a sardonic goodbye, and started to lead the burro toward the Pass.
The fog vanished as the sun rose, but it still lay in the mountain canyons toward the west. A condor circled against the sky. In the thin, sharp air the sound of a distant rock-fall was distinctly audible.
White Huascan towered far away. A shadow fell on me as I entered the Pass. The burro plodded on, patient and obedient. I felt a little chill; the fog began to thicken.
Yes, the Indios had talked to me. I knew their language, their old religion. Bastard descendants of the Incas, they still preserved a deep-rooted belief in the ancient gods of their ancient race, who had fallen with Huayna Capac, the Great Inca, a year before Pizarro came raging into Peru. I knew the Quichua--the old tongue of the mother race--and so I learned more than I might have otherwise.
Yet I had not learned much. The Indios said that _something_ had come into the mountains near Huascan. They were willing to talk about it, but they knew little. They shrugged with apathetic fatalism. _It_
called the young virgins, no doubt for a sacrifice. _Quien sabe?_
Certainly the strange, thickening fog was not of this earth. Never before in the history of mankind had there been such a fog. It was, of course, the earthquake that had brought the--the Visitant. And it was folly to seek it out.
Well, I was an anthropologist and knew the value of even such slight clues as this. Moreover, my job for the Foundation was done. My specimens had been sent through to Callao by pack-train, and my notes were safe with Fra Rafael. Also, I was young and the lure of far places and their mysteries was hot in my blood. I hoped I'd find something odd--even dangerous--at Huascan.
I was young. Therefore, somewhat of a fool....
The first night I camped in a little cave, sheltered from the wind and snug enough in my fleece-lined sleeping-bag. There were no insects at this height. It was impossible to make a fire for there was no wood. I
worried a bit about the burro freezing in the night.
But he survived, and I repacked him the next morning with rather absurd cheerfulness. The fog was thick, yes, but not impenetrable.
There were tracks in the snow where the wind had not covered them. A
girl had left the village the day before my arrival, which made my task all the easier. So I went up into that vast, desolate silence, the fog closing in steadily, getting thicker and thicker, the trail getting narrower until at last it was a mere track.
And then I was moving blind. I had to feel my way, step by step, leading the burro. Occasional tracks showed through the mist, showed that the native girl had walked swiftly--had run in places--so I
assumed that the fog was less dense when she had come by this way. As it happened, I was quite wrong about that....
We were on a narrow path above a gorge when I lost the burro. I heard a scrambling and clashing of hoofs on rock behind me. The rope jerked out of my hand and the animal cried out almost articulately as it went over. I stood frozen, pressing against the stone, listening to the sound of the burro's fall. Finally the distant noise died in a faint trickling of snow and gravel that faded into utter silence. So thick was the fog that I had seen nothing.
I felt my way back to where the path had crumbled and rotten rock had given way under the burro's weight. It was possible for me to retrace my steps, but I did not. I was sure that my destination could not be much further. A lightly clad native girl could not have gone so far as Huascan itself. No, probably that day I would reach my goal.
So I went on, feeling my way through the thick silent fog. I was able to see only a few inches ahead of me for hours. Then, abruptly the trail grew clearer. Until, at last I was moving in the shadowless, unearthly mist over hard-packed snow, following the clearly marked footprints of a girl's sandals.
Then they vanished without warning, those prints, and I stood hesitant, staring around. I could see nothing, but a brighter glow in the misty canopy overhead marked the sun's position.
I knelt and brushed away the snow with my hands, hoping to undo the wind's concealing work. But I found no more footprints. Finally I took my bearings as well as I could and ploughed ahead in the general direction the girl had been traveling.
My compass told me I was heading due north.
The fog was a living, sentient thing now, secretive, shrouding the secret that lay beyond its gray wall.
Suddenly I was conscious of a change. An electric tingle coursed through my body. Abruptly the fog-wall brightened. Dimly, as through a translucent pane, I could make out vague images ahead of me.
I began to move toward the images--and suddenly the fog was gone!
Before me lay a valley. Blue-white moss carpeted it except where reddish boulders broke the blueness. Here and there were trees--at least I assumed they were trees, despite their unfamiliar outline. They were like banyans, having dozens of trunks narrow as bamboo. Blue-leafed, they stood like immense bird-cages on the pallid moss. The fog closed in behind the valley and above it. It was like being in a huge sun-lit cavern.
I turned my head, saw a gray wall behind me. Beneath my feet the snow was melting and running in tiny, trickling rivulets among the moss. The air was warm and stimulating as wine.
A strange and abrupt change. Impossibly strange! I walked toward one of the trees, stopped at a reddish boulder to examine it. And surprise caught at my throat. It was an artifact--a crumbling ruin, the remnant of an ancient structure whose original appearance I could not fathom. The stone seemed iron-hard. There were traces of inscription on it, but eroded to illegibility. And I never did learn the history of those enigmatic ruins.... They did not originate on Earth.
There was no sign of the native girl, and the resilient moss retained no tracks. I stood there, staring around, wondering what to do now. I
was tense with excitement. But there was little to see. Just that valley covering perhaps a half-mile before the fog closed in around it.
Beyond that--I did not know what lay beyond that.
I went on, into the valley, eyeing my surroundings curiously in the shadowless light that filtered through the shifting roof of fog. Foolishly, I expected to discover Incan artifacts. The crumbled red stones should have warned me. They were, I think, harder than metal, yet they had been here long enough for the elements to erode them into featureless shards. Had they been of earthly origin they would have antedated Mankind--antedated even the Neanderthaler man.
Curious how our minds are conditioned to run in anthropomorphic lines. I was, though I did not know it, walking through a land that had its beginnings outside the known universe. The blue trees hinted at that. The crimson ruins told me that clearly. The atmospheric conditions--the fog, the warmth high up in the Cordilleras--were certainly not natural. Yet I thought the explanation lay in some geological warp, volcanic activity, subterranean gas-vents....
My vision reached a half-mile, no farther. As I went on, the misty horizon receded. The valley was larger than I had imagined. It was like Elysium, where the shades of dead men stroll in the Garden of Proserpine. Streamlets ran through the blue moss at intervals, chill as death from the snowy plains hidden in the fog. "A sleepy world of streams...."
The ruins altered in appearance as I went on. The red blocks were still present, but there were now also remnants of other structures, made by a different culture, I thought.
The blue trees grew more numerous. Leafy vines covered most of them now, saffron-tinted, making each strange tree a little room, screened by the lattice of the vines. As I passed close to one a faint clicking sounded, incongruously like the tapping of typewriter keys, but muffled. I saw movement and turned, my hand going to the pistol in my belt.
The Thing came out of a tree-hut and halted, watching me. I _felt_ it watching me--though _it had no eyes_!
It was a sphere of what seemed to be translucent plastic, glowing with shifting rainbow colors. And I sensed sentience--intelligence--in its horribly human attitude of watchful hesitation. Four feet in diameter it was, and featureless save for three ivory elastic tentacles that supported it and a fringe of long, whip-like cilia about its diameter--its waist, I thought.
It looked at me, eyeless and cryptic. The shifting colors crawled over the plastic globe. Then it began to roll forward on the three supporting tentacles with a queer, swift gliding motion. I stepped back, jerking out my gun and leveling it.
"Stop," I said, my voice shrill. "Stop!"
It stopped, quite as though it understood my words or the gesture of menace. The cilia fluttered about its spherical body. Bands of lambent color flashed. I could not rid myself of the curious certainty, that it was trying to communicate with me.
Abruptly it came forward again purposefully. I tensed and stepped back, holding the gun aimed. My finger was tightening on the trigger when the Thing stopped.
I backed off, nervously tense, but the creature did not follow. After I had got about fifty yards away it turned back and retreated into the hut-like structure in the banyan tree. After that I watched the trees warily as I passed them, but there were no other visitations of that nature.
Scientists are reluctant to relinquish their so-called logic. As I
walked I tried to rationalize the creature, to explain it in the light of current knowledge. That it had been alive was certain. Yet it was not protoplasmic in nature. A plant, developed by mutation? Perhaps. But that theory did not satisfy me for the Thing had possessed intelligence, though of what order I did not know.
But there were the seven native girls, I reminded myself. My job was to find them, and quickly, too.
I did, at last, find them. Six of them, anyway. They were sitting in a row on the blue moss, facing one of the red blocks of stone, their backs toward me. As I mounted a little rise I saw them, motionless as bronze statues, and as rigid.
I went down toward them, tense with excitement, expectancy. Odd that six native girls, sitting in a row, should fill me with such feeling. They were so motionless that I wondered as I approached them, if they were dead....
But they were not. Nor were they--in the true sense of the word--alive.
I gripped one by the bare shoulder, found the flesh surprisingly cold and the girl seemed not to feel my touch. I swung her around to face me, and her black, empty eyes looked off into the far distance. Her lips were tightly compressed, slightly cyanosed. The pupils of her eyes were inordinately dilated, as if she was drugged.
Indian style, she squatted cross-legged, like the others. As I pulled her around, she toppled down on the moss, making no effort to stop herself. For a moment she lay there. Then with slow, puppet-like motions, she returned to her former position and resumed that blank staring into space.
I looked at the others. They were alike in their sleep-like withdrawal. It seemed as if their minds had been sucked out of them, that their very selves were elsewhere. It was a fantastic diagnosis, of course. But the trouble with those girls was nothing a physician could understand. It was psychic in nature, obviously.
I turned to the first one and slapped her cheeks. "Wake up!" I
commanded. "You must obey me! Waken--"
But she gave no sign of feeling, of seeing. I lit a match, and her eyes focused on the flame. But the size of her pupils did not alter....
A shudder racked me. Then, abruptly I sensed movement behind me. I
turned....
Over the blue moss the seventh Indio girl was coming toward us. "Miranda!" I said. "Can you hear me?" Fra Rafael had told me her name. Her feet, I saw, were bare and white frost-bite blotches marked them. But she did not seem to feel any pain as she walked.
Then I became aware that this was not a simple Indio girl. Something deep within my soul suddenly shrank back with instinctive revulsion. My skin seemed to crawl with a sort of terror. I began to shake so that it was difficult to draw my gun from its holster.
There was just this young native girl walking slowly toward me, her face quite expressionless, her black eyes fixed on emptiness. Yet she was not like other Indios, not like the six other girls sitting behind me. I can only liken her to a lamp in which a hot flame burned. The others were lamps that were dead, unlit.
The flame in her was not one that had been kindled on this earth, or in this universe, or in this space-time continuum, either. There was life in the girl who had been Miranda Valle--but it was not _human_
life!
Some distant, skeptical corner of my brain told me that this was pure insanity, that I was deluded, hallucinated. Yes, I knew that. But it did not seem to matter. The girl who was walking so quietly across the blue yielding moss had wrapped about her, like an invisible, intangible veil, something of the alienage that men, through the eons, have called divinity. No mere human, I thought, could touch her.
* * * * *
But I felt fear, loathing--emotions not associated with divinity. I
watched, knowing that presently she would look at me, would realize my presence. Then--well, my mind would not go beyond that point....
She came forward and quietly seated herself with the others, at the end of the line. Her body stiffened rigidly. Then, the veil of terror seemed to leave her, like a cloak falling away. Abruptly she was just an Indio girl, empty and drained as the others, mindless and motionless.
The girl beside her rose suddenly with a slow, fluid motion. And the crawling horror hit me again.... The Alien Power had not left! It had merely transferred itself to another body!
And this second body was as dreadful to my senses as the first had been. In some subtly monstrous way its terror impressed itself on my brain, though all the while there was nothing overt, nothing _visibly_
wrong. The strange landscape, bounded by fog, was not actually abnormal, considering its location, high in the Andes. The blue moss, the weird trees; they were strange, but possible. Even the seven native girls were a normal part of the scene. It was the sense of an alien presence that caused my terror--a fear of the unknown....
As the newly "possessed" girl rose, I turned and fled, deathly sick, feeling caught in the grip of nightmare. Once I stumbled and fell. As I scrambled wildly to my feet I looked back.
The girl was watching me, her face tiny and far away. Then, suddenly, abruptly it was close. She stood within a few feet of me! I had not moved nor seen her move, but we were all close together again--the seven girls and I....
Hypnosis? Something of that sort. She had drawn me back to her, my mind blacked out and unresisting. I could not move. I could only stand motionless while that Alien being dwelling within human flesh reached out and thrust frigid fingers into my soul. I could feel my mind laid open, spread out like a map before the inhuman gaze that scanned it. It was blasphemous and shameful, and I could not move or resist!
I was flung aside as the psychic grip that held me relaxed. I could not think clearly. That remote delving into my brain had made me blind, sick, frantic. I remember running....
But I remember very little of what followed. There are vague pictures of blue moss and twisted trees, of coiling fog that wrapped itself about me, trying futilely to hold me back. And always there was the sense of a dark and nameless horror just beyond vision, hidden from me--though I was not hidden from its eyeless gaze!
I remember reaching the wall of fog, saw it loomed before me, plunged into it, raced through cold grayness, snow crunching beneath my boots. I recall emerging again into that misty valley of Abaddon....
When I regained complete consciousness I was with Lhar.
A coolness as of limpid water moved through my mind, cleansing it, washing away the horror, soothing and comforting me. I was lying on my back looking up at an arabesque pattern of blue and saffron;
gray-silver light filtered through a lacy, filigree. I was still weak but the blind terror no longer gripped me.
I was inside a hut formed by the trunks of one of the banyan-like trees. Slowly, weakly I rose on one elbow. The room was empty except for a curious flower that grew from the dirt floor beside me. I looked at it dazedly.
And so I met Lhar.... She was of purest white, the white of alabaster, but with a texture and warmth that stone does not have. In shape--well, she seemed to be a great flower, an unopened tulip-like blossom five feet or so tall. The petals were closely enfolded, concealing whatever sort of body lay hidden beneath, and at the base was a convoluted pedestal that gave the odd impression of a ruffled, tiny skirt. Even now I cannot describe Lhar coherently. A flower, yes--but very much more than that. Even in that first glimpse I knew that Lhar was more than just a flower....
I was not afraid of her. She had saved me, I knew, and I felt complete trust in her. I lay back as she spoke to me telepathically, her words and thoughts forming within my brain....
"You are well now, though still weak. But it is useless for you to try to escape from this valley. No one can escape. The Other has powers I
do not know, and those powers will keep you here."
I said, "You are--?"
A name formed within my mind. "Lhar. I am not of your world."
A shudder shook her. And her distress forced itself on me. I stood up, swaying with weakness. Lhar drew back, moving with a swaying, bobbing gait oddly like a curtsey.
Behind me a clicking sounded. I turned, saw the many-colored sphere force itself through the banyan-trunks. Instinctively my hand went to my gun. But a thought from Lhar halted me.
"It will not harm you. It is my servant." She hesitated, groping for a word. "A machine. A robot. It will not harm you."
I said, "Is it intelligent?"
"Yes. But it is not alive. Our people made it. We have many such machines."
The robot swayed toward me, the rim of cilia flashing and twisting. Lhar said, "It speaks thus, without words or thought...." She paused, watching the sphere, and I sensed dejection in her manner.
The robot turned to me. The cilia twisted lightly about my arm, tugging me toward Lhar. I said, "What does it want?"
"It knows that I am dying," Lhar said.
That shocked me. "Dying? No!"
"It is true. Here in this alien world I do not have my usual food. So I will die. To survive I need the blood of mammals. But there are none here save those seven the Other has taken. And I cannot use them for they are now spoiled."
I didn't ask Lhar what sort of mammals she had in her own world. "That's what the robot wanted when it tried to stop me before, isn't it?"
"He wanted you to help me, yes. But you are weak from the shock you have had. I cannot ask you--"
I said, "How much blood do you need?"
At her answer, I said, "All right. You saved my life; I must do the same for you. I can spare that much blood easily. Go ahead."
She bowed toward me, a fluttering white flame in the dimness of the tree-room. A tendril flicked out from among her petals, wrapped itself about my arm. It felt cool, gentle as a woman's hand. I felt no pain.
"You must rest now," Lhar said. "I will go away but I shall not be long."
The robot clicked and chattered, shifting on its tentacle legs. I
watched it, saying, "Lhar, this can't be true. Why am I--believing impossible things?"
"I have given you peace," she told me. "Your mind was dangerously close to madness. I have drugged you a little, physically; so your emotions will not be strong for a while. It was necessary to save your sanity."
It was true that my mind felt--was drugged the word? My thoughts were clear enough, but I felt as if I were submerged in transparent but dark water. There was an odd sense of existing in a dream. I
remembered Swinburne's lines:
_Here, where the world is quiet, Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams...._
"What is this place?" I asked.
Lhar bent toward me. "I do not know if I can explain. It is not quite clear to me. The robot knows. He is a reasoning machine. Wait...." She turned to the sphere. Its cilia fluttered in quick, complicated signals.
Lhar turned back to me. "Do you know much of the nature of Time? That it is curved, moves in a spiral...."
She went on to explain, but much of her explanation I did not understand. Yet I gathered enough to realize that this valley was not of Earth. Or, rather, it was not of the earth I knew.
"You have geological disturbances, I know. The strata are tumbled about, mixed one with another--"
I remembered what Fra Rafael had said about an earthquake, three months before. Lhar nodded toward me.
"But this was a time-slip. The space-time continuum is also subject to great strains and stresses. It buckled, and strata--Time-sectors--were thrust up to mingle with others. This valley belongs to another age, as do I and the machine, and also--the Other."
She told me what had happened.... There had been no warning. One moment she had been in her own World, her own Time. The next, she was here, with her robot. And with the Other....
"I do not know the origin of the Other. I may have lived in either your future or your past. This valley, with its ruined stone structures, is probably part of your future. I had never heard of such a place before. The Other may be of the future also. Its shape I do not know...."
* * * * *
She told me more, much more. The Other, as she called it--giving the entity a thought-form that implied complete alienage--had a strangely chameleon-like method of feeding. It lived on life-force, as well as I
could understand, draining the vital powers of a mammal vampirically. And it assumed the shape of its prey as it fed. It was not possession, in the strict sense of the word. It was a sort of merging....
Humanity is inclined to invest all things with its own attributes, forgetting that outside the limitations of time and space and size, familiar laws of nature do not apply.
So, even now I do not know all that lay behind the terror in that Peruvian valley. This much I learned: the Other, like Lhar and her robot, had been cast adrift by a time-slip, and thus marooned here. There was no way for it to return to its normal Time-sector. It had created the fog-wall to protect itself from the direct rays of the sun, which threatened its existence.
Sitting there in the filigreed, silver twilight beside Lhar, I had a concept of teeming universes of space-time, of an immense spiral of lives and civilizations, races and cultures, covering an infinite cosmos. And yet--what had happened? Very little, in that inconceivable infinity. A rift in time, a dimensional slip--and a sector of land and three beings on it had been wrenched from their place in time and transported to _our_ time-stratum.
A robot, a flower that was alive and intelligent--and feminine--and the Other....
"The native girls," I said. "What will happen to them?"
"They are no longer alive," Lhar told me. "They still move and breathe, but they are dead, sustained only by the life-force of the Other. I do not think it will harm me. Apparently it prefers other food."
"That's why you've stayed here?" I asked.
The shining velvety calyx swayed. "I shall die soon. For a little while I thought that I might manage to survive in this alien world, this alien time. Your blood has helped." The cool tentacle withdrew from my arm. "But I lived in a younger time, where space was filled with--with certain energizing vibratory principles.
"They have faded now almost to nothing, to what you call cosmic rays. And these are too weak to maintain my life. No, I must die. And then my poor robot will be alone." I sensed elfin amusement in that last thought. "It seems absurd to you that I should think affectionately of a machine. But in our world there is a rapport--a mental symbiosis--between robot and living beings."
There was a silence. After a while I said, "I'd better get out of here. Get help--to end the menace of the other...." What sort of help I did not know. Was the Other vulnerable?
Lhar caught my thought. "In its own shape it is vulnerable, but what that shape is I do not know. As for your escaping from this valley--you cannot. The fog will bring you back."
"I've got my compass." I glanced at it, saw that the needle was spinning at random.
Lhar said: "The Other has many powers. Whenever you go into the fog, you will always return here."
"How do you know all this?" I asked.
"My robot tells me. A machine can reason logically, better than a colloid brain."
I closed my eyes, trying to think. Surely it should not be difficult for me to retrace my steps, to find a path out of this valley. Yet I
hesitated, feeling a strange impotence.
"Can't your robot guide me?" I persisted.
"He will not leave my side. Perhaps--" Lhar turned to the sphere, and the cilia fluttered excitedly. "No," she said, turning back to me. "Built into his mind is one rule--never to leave me. He cannot disobey that."
* * * * *
I couldn't ask Lhar to go with me. Somehow I sensed that the frigid cold of the surrounding mountains would destroy her swiftly. I said, "It must be possible for me to get out of here. I'm going to try, anyway."
"I will be waiting," she said, and did not move as I slipped out between two trunks of the banyan-like tree.
It was daylight and the silvery grayness overhead was palely luminous. I headed for the nearest rampart of fog.
Lhar was right. Each time I went into that cloudy fog barrier I was blinded. I crept forward step by step, glancing behind me at my footprints in the snow, trying to keep in a straight line. And presently I would find myself back in the valley....
I must have tried a dozen times before giving up. There were no landmarks in that all-concealing grayness, and only by sheerest chance would anyone blunder into this valley--unless hypnotically summoned, like the Indio girls.
I realized that I was trapped. Finally I went back to Lhar. She hadn't moved an inch since I had left, nor had the robot, apparently.
"Lhar," I said. "Lhar, can't you help me?"
The white flame of the flower was motionless, but the robot's cilia moved in quick signals. Lhar moved at last.
"Perhaps," her thought came. "Unless both induction and deduction fail, my robot has discovered a chance for you. The Other can control your mind through emotions. But I, too, have some power over your mind. If I give you strength, wall you with a psychic shield against intrusion, you may be able to face the Other. But you cannot destroy it unless it is in its normal shape. The Indio girls must be killed first...."
"Killed?" I felt a sense of horror at the thought of killing those poor simple native girls.
"They are not actually alive now. They are now a part of the Other. They can never be restored to their former life."
"How will--destroying them--help me?" I asked.
Again Lhar consulted the robot. "The Other will be driven from their bodies. It will then have no hiding-place and must resume its own form. Then it can be slain."
Lhar swayed and curtseyed away. "Come," she said. "It is in my mind that the Other must die. It is evil, ruthlessly selfish, which is the same thing. Until now I have not realized the solution to this evil being. But seeing into your thoughts has clarified my own. And my robot tells me that unless I aid you, the Other will continue ravening into your world. If that happens, the time-pattern will be broken....
I do not quite understand, but my robot makes no mistakes. The Other must die...."
She was outside of the banyan now, the sphere gliding after her. I
followed. The three of us moved swiftly across the blue moss, guided by the robot.
In a little while we came to where the six Indio girls were squatting. They had apparently not moved since I had left them.
"The Other is not here," Lhar said.
The robot held me back as Lhar advanced toward the girls, the skirt-like frill at her base convoluting as she moved. She paused beside them and her petals trembled and began to unfold.
From the tip of that great blossom a fountain of white dust spurted up. Spores or pollen, it seemed to be. The air was cloudy with the whiteness.
The robot drew me back, back again. I sensed danger....
The pollen seemed to be drawn toward the Indios, spun toward them in dancing mist-motes. It settled on their bronzed bodies, their limbs and faces. It covered them like a veil until they appeared to be six statues, white as cold marble, there on the blue moss.
Lhar's petals lifted and closed again. She swayed toward me, her mind sending a message into mine.
"The Other has no refuge now," she told me. "I have slain the--the girls."
"They're dead?" My lips were dry.
"What semblance of life they had left is now gone. The Other cannot use them again."
Lhar swayed toward me. A cool tentacle swept out, pressing lightly on my forehead. Another touched my breast, above the heart.
"I give you of my strength," Lhar said. "It will be as shield and buckler to you. The rest of the way you must go alone...."
Into me tide of power flowed. I sank into cool depths, passionless and calm. Something was entering my body, my mind and soul, drowning my fears, stiffening my resolve.
Strength of Lhar was now my strength!
The tentacles dropped away, their work done. The robot's cilia signalled and Lhar said, "Your way lies there. That temple--do you see it?"
I saw it. Far in the distance, half shrouded by the fog, a scarlet structure, not ruined like the others, was visible.
"You will find the Other there. Slay the last Indio, then destroy the Other."
I had no doubt now of my ability to do that. A new power seemed to lift me from my feet, send me running across the moss. Once I glanced back, to see Lhar and her robot standing motionless, watching me.
The temple enlarged as I came nearer. It was built of the same reddish stone as the other ruined blocks I had seen. But erosion had weathered its harsh angles till nothing now remained but a rounded, smoothly sculptured monolith, twenty feet tall, shaped like a rifle shell.
A doorway gaped in the crimson wall. I paused for a moment on the threshold. In the dimness within a shadow stirred. I stepped forward, finding myself in a room that was tall and narrow, the ceiling hidden in gloom. Along the walls were carvings I could not clearly see. They gave a suggestion of inhuman beings that watched.
It was dark but I could see the Indio girl who had been Miranda Valle. Her eyes were on me, and, even through the protecting armor of Lhar strength; I could feel their terrible power.
The life in the girl was certainly not human!
"Destroy her!" my mind warned. "Destroy her! Quickly!"
But as I hesitated a veil of darkness seemed to fall upon me. Utter cold, a frigidity as of outer space, lanced into my brain. My senses reeled under the assault. Desperately, blind and sick and giddy, I called on the reserve strength Lhar had given me. Then I blacked out....
When I awoke I saw smoke coiling up from the muzzle of the pistol in my hand. At my feet lay the Indio girl, dead. My bullet had crashed into her brain, driving out the terrible dweller there.
My eyes were drawn to the farther wall. An archway gaped there. I
walked across the room, passed under the archway. Instantly I was in complete, stygian darkness. But I was not alone!
The power of the Other struck me like a tangible blow. I have no words to tell of an experience so completely disassociated from human memories. I remember only this: my mind and soul were sucked down into a black abyss where I had no volition or consciousness. It was another dimension of the mind where my senses were altered....
Nothing existed there but the intense blackness beyond time and space. I could not see the Other nor conceive of it. It was pure intelligence, stripped of flesh. It was alive and it had power--power that was god-like.
There in the great darkness I stood alone, unaided, sensing the approach of an entity from some horribly remote place where all values were altered.
I sensed Lhar's nearness. "Hurry!" her thought came to me. "Before it wakens!"
Warmth flowed into me. The blackness receded....
Against the farther wall something lay, a thing bafflingly human.... a great-headed thing with a tiny pallid body coiled beneath it. It was squirming toward me....
"Destroy it!" Lhar communicated.
The pistol in my hand thundered, bucking against my palm. Echoes roared against the walls. I fired and fired again until the gun was empty....
"It is dead," Lhar's thought entered my mind.
I stumbled, dropped the pistol.
"It was the child of an old super-race--a child not yet born."
Can you conceive of such a race? Where even the unborn had power beyond human understanding? My mind wondered what the adult Alien must be.
I shivered, suddenly cold. An icy wind gusted through the temple. Lhar's thought was clear in my mind.
"Now the valley is no longer a barrier to the elements. The Other created fog and warmth to protect itself. Now it is dead and your world reclaims its own."
From the outer door of the temple I could see the fog being driven away by a swift wind. Snow was falling slowly, great white flakes that blanketed the blue moss and lay like caps on the red shards that dotted the valley.
"I shall die swiftly and easily now, instead of slowly, by starvation," Lhar said.
A moment later a thought crossed my mind, faint and intangible as a snowflake and I knew Lhar was saying goodbye.
I left the valley. Once I looked back, but there was only a veil of snow behind me.
And out of the greatest adventure the cosmic gods ever conceived--only this: For a little while the eternal veil of time was ripped away and the door to the unknown was held ajar.
But now the door is closed once more. Below Huascan a robot guards a tomb, that is all.
The snow fell faster. Shivering, I ploughed through the deepening drifts. My compass needle pointed north. The spell that had enthralled the valley was gone.
Half an hour later I found the trail, and the road to safety lay open before me. Fra Rafael would be waiting to hear my story.
But I did not think that he would believe it....
* * * * * | clean | 0.848555 | 81714c5c7c817a3e759d9aef3bea406ab11cad81125aae74b77c98b1fd06099d | 7,151 |
THE VOTE
THAT
MADE THE PRESIDENT.
BY
DAVID DUDLEY FIELD.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 549 & 551 BROADWAY.
1877.
COPYRIGHT BY DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 1877.
THE VOTE THAT MADE THE PRESIDENT.
At ten minutes past four o'clock on the second morning of the present month (March, 1877), the President of the Senate of the United States, in the presence of the two Houses of Congress, made this announcement:
"The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for President and Vice-President of the United States is 369, of which a majority is 185.
The state of the vote for President of the United States, as delivered by the tellers, and as determined under the act of Congress, approved January 29, 1877, on this subject, is: for Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, 185 votes; for Samuel J. Tilden, of New York, 184 votes;" and then, after mentioning the votes for Vice-President, he proceeded: "Wherefore I do declare, that Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, having received a majority of the whole number of electoral votes, is duly elected President of the United States for four years, commencing on the fourth day of March, 1877."
Mr. Hayes was thus declared elected by a majority of one. If any vote counted for him had been counted on the other side, Mr. Tilden, instead of Mr. Hayes, would have had the 185 votes; if it had been rejected altogether, each would have had 184 votes, and the House of Representatives would immediately have elected Mr. Tilden. One vote, therefore, put Mr. Hayes into the presidential office.
To make up the 185 votes counted for him, 8 came from Louisiana and 4 from Florida. Whether they should have been thus counted is a question that affects the honor, the conscience, and the interests of the American people. There is not a person living in this country who has not a direct concern in a just answer. Not one will ever live in it whose respect for this generation will not depend in some degree upon that answer.
The 12 votes were not all alike. Some had one distinction, some another. But, not to distract attention by the discussion of several transactions instead of one, and because one in the present instance actually determined the result, I will confine my observations to a single vote. For this purpose let us take one of the votes from Louisiana, that, for instance, of Orlando H. Brewster.
Brewster was not appointed an elector, inasmuch as he did not receive a majority of the votes cast by the people of Louisiana, and inasmuch also as he could not have been appointed if he had received them all.
HE DID NOT RECEIVE A MAJORITY OF THE VOTES.
It would be a waste of time and patience to go through the testimony taken by the two Houses of Congress for their own information, before they consented to call in the advice of the Electoral Commission. The evidence of wrongs on both sides, and the irreconcilable contradictions of witnesses, made President Seelye and Mr. Pierce, of Massachusetts, declare it to be impossible for them to reach a satisfactory conclusion upon the facts, and compelled them to break away from their party, and refuse to abide by the advice of the Commission. There are certain things, however, which we know beyond dispute, or about which there is and can be no controversy, and these only will I mention. We know that the number of votes cast in Louisiana for the Tilden electors, taking the first name on the list as representing all, was 83,723, but that the
certificate of the Returning Board put them at 70,508, turning Mr.
Tilden's majority of more than 6,000 into a majority for Mr. Hayes; and we know that the reduction was made by throwing out more than 13,000 votes of legal voters voting legally for Mr. Tilden, and that more than
10,000 of these were thrown out upon the assumed authority of a statute of Louisiana, which in terms gave the board power to throw out votes, upon examination and deliberation, "whenever, from any poll or voting-place, there shall be received the _statement of any supervisor_
of registration _or commissioner_ of election, in form as required by section 26 of this act, _on affidavit of three or more citizens_, of any riot, tumult, acts of violence, intimidation, armed disturbance, bribery, or corrupt influences, which prevented, or tended to prevent, a fair, free, and peaceable vote of all qualified electors entitled to vote at such poll or voting-place."
Whether the statute itself has its warrant in the Constitution is a question not necessary now to be considered. For my part, I cannot see the authority for taking out of the ballot-boxes the ballots of lawful voters and throwing them away because other voters did not vote, whatever may have been the cause of their not voting, whether they were frightened, foolish, or perverse. I cannot for the life of me perceive that the State can be held to have elected persons whom it did not in fact elect, because it is conjectured, or even made probable, that if voters who kept away from the polls had in fact attended and voted, they would have made a majority for these persons.
Without going into that question, however, and assuming for the sake of the argument that the statute had all the authority of the most clearly valid statute that was ever passed, it is certain that the only ground upon which a vote could have been thrown out, for intimidation or other corrupt influence, was the statement of a supervisor of registration or commissioner of election, founded upon the affidavits of three citizens. When, however, the vote of Louisiana was before the Electoral Commission, the following offer was made by counsel:
"We offer to prove that _the statements and affidavits_ purporting to have been made and forwarded to said Returning Board in pursuance of the provisions of section 26, of the election law of
1872, alleging riot, tumult, intimidation, and violence, at or near certain polls, and in certain parishes, _were_ falsely fabricated and _forged_ by certain disreputable persons _under the direction_, and with the knowledge, _of said Returning Board_, and that said Returning Board, knowing said statements and affidavits to be false and forged, and that none of the said statements or affidavits were made in the manner or form or within the time required by law, did knowingly, willfully, and fraudulently, fail and refuse to canvass or compile more than 10,000 votes lawfully cast, as is shown by the statements of votes of the Commissioners of Election."
This offer the Commission rejected by a vote of 8 to 7.
In the Commission Mr. Abbott moved the following:
"_Resolved_, That testimony tending to show that the so-called Returning Board of Louisiana had no jurisdiction to canvass the votes for electors of President and Vice-President is admissible."
This was rejected by the same vote.
In explaining the reason of their decision in the case, the Commission used the following language:
"And the Commission has, by a majority of votes, decided, and does hereby decide, that it is not competent, under the Constitution and the law as it existed at the date of the passage of said act, to go into evidence _aliunde_, the papers opened by the President of the Senate, in the presence of the two Houses, to prove that other persons than those regularly certified to by the Governor of the State of Louisiana, on and according to the determination and declaration of their appointment by the returning officers for elections in the said State prior to the time required for the performance of their duties, had been appointed electors, or by counter-proof to show that they had not; or that the determination of the said returning officers was not in accordance with the truth and the fact, the Commission, by a majority of votes, being of opinion that it is not within the jurisdiction of the two Houses of Congress, assembled to count the votes for President and Vice-President, to enter upon a trial of such questions."
Whether, therefore, the decisions of the Commission or the reasons given for them be sound or unsound, it may be assumed, that _Brewster did not receive a majority of the votes cast by the people of Louisiana, and that the action of the Returning Board_ in cutting down the majority of his competitor, so as to reduce it below his, _was taken without jurisdiction, and upon the pretense of statements and affidavits which they themselves had caused to be forged_.
BREWSTER COULD NOT HAVE BEEN APPOINTED ELECTOR IF HE HAD RECEIVED THE
VOTES OF ALL THE PEOPLE OF LOUISIANA.
He had been made Surveyor-General of the United States, for the District of Louisiana, on the 2d of February, 1874; was recommissioned by President Grant on the 11th of February, 1875, and is at present exercising the office. Whether he has ever been out of the office depends upon the facts now to be mentioned. Eight or nine days after the election of November 7, 1876, at which he was a candidate on the Republican electoral ticket, there was received at the Department of the Interior, from the hands of the President, this letter:
MONROE, _November 4, 1876_.
DEAR SIR: I hereby tender my resignation of the office of Surveyor-General of the State of Louisiana, with the request that it be accepted immediately. With many thanks for your kindness,
I remain, yours respectfully, O. H. BREWSTER.
U. S. GRANT, _President United States_.
When the letter was written does not appear. It is certain that Brewster was acting as Surveyor-General on the 10th of November.
On the 16th of November a letter was addressed to the Commissioner of the General Land-Office, as follows:
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,}
WASHINGTON, _November 16, 1876_.}
SIR: I have received the resignation of Mr. Orlando H. Brewster, Surveyor-General of Louisiana, which he has requested may take effect immediately. Please inform Mr. Brewster that his resignation has been accepted by the President, to take effect November 4th instant, that being the date of his letter of resignation to this Department.
Very respectfully, Z. CHANDLER, _Secretary_.
At what time, if ever, the Commissioner informed Brewster of the acceptance of his resignation we do not know, but it could not have been earlier than the 20th of November.
On the morning of the 6th of December, the four men who assumed to act as the Returning Board of Louisiana filed in the office of the Secretary of that State a certificate that Brewster, with seven other persons, had been appointed presidential electors. There was then on the statute-book of Louisiana this enactment:
"If any one or more of the electors chosen by the people shall fail from any cause whatever to attend at the appointed place at the hour of 4 P.M. of the day prescribed for their meeting, it shall be the duty of the other electors immediately to proceed by ballot to fill such vacancy or vacancies."
What Brewster did is thus told by Kellogg, one of the Hayes electors, on his examination at Washington in January:
"_Q._ Did Levissee and Brewster vote at the meeting of electors?
_A._ I believe they did.
_Q._ Was not an appointment made for somebody to fill Brewster's place?
_A._ I believe that that is the case.
_Q._ Who was appointed to fill Brewster's place?
_A._ Brewster himself.
_Q._ The same man?
_A._ The same man.
_Q._ Were you also instructed by these committees (National and Congressional Republican Committees) how to dispose of Brewster and Levissee?
_A._ My recollection is that some one of the electors had received a letter suggesting that in case of a vacancy or in case of the absence of Levissee and Brewster, they should be chosen in their own places. That is my recollection.
_Q._ And yet they absented themselves from the electoral college, and you filled their vacancies with themselves?
_A._ They were absent from the college when the college met, and we filled their vacancies by themselves."
Being thus installed, they voted for Mr. Hayes within an hour after they were chosen to fill their own vacancies; and three days afterward Brewster addressed the following letter to the President:
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, _December 9, 1876._
SIR: I respectfully apply to be appointed Surveyor-General for the District of Louisiana. Commendations from prominent gentlemen will be submitted to your Excellency to justify the appointment.
I have the honor to remain Your very obedient servant, ORLANDO H. BREWSTER.
U. S. GRANT, _President United States, Washington, D. C._
The reappointment was made on the 5th of January, 1877. The Chief of the Appointment Division in the Interior Department was asked and testified about it as follows:
"_Q._ Who recommended his appointment in January?
_A._ I think the probability is (although there is no evidence of it) that there was no recommendation, further than his own application to the President.
_Q._ You do not know of any recommendation?
_A._ I do not know of any.
_Q._ There is none on file?
_A._ There is none on file to the best of my knowledge. There is none on file in the Interior Department."
Who does not perceive the shallow trick by which Brewster pretended to have divested himself of his Federal office that he might vote; only to be reinvested as soon as he had voted?
The letter of resignation, with its false date, and its pretended acceptance, to take effect as of a time past, were evident shams to make it appear that he was not holder of a Federal office when he was elected; his affecting to be absent on the 6th of December, and coming in immediately to fill the vacancy occasioned by his own absence, in order to make it appear that his appointment was made on that 6th of December, instead of the 7th of November, and his barefaced application on the third day thereafter to be reappointed to the Federal office, from which he could not possibly have perfected his resignation before the 20th of November--all these were but so many contrivances to evade the highest enactment known to our civil polity. In the eye of reason and of law, he acted during the whole period under that influence of office which it was the design of the Constitution to prevent, and he must have entered more thoroughly into the work of his Federal master than if he had not gone through the form of resigning, inasmuch as that placed him, more than before, in his master's power.
Let us now place side by side the commandment of the Constitution and the resolution of the Electoral Commission:
COMMANDMENT. | RESOLUTION.
|
"_No_ Senator or Representative, | "The Commission, by a majority or _person holding an office of | of votes, is also of the opinion trust or profit under the United | that _it is not competent to prove States, shall be appointed an | that any of said persons, so elector._" | appointed electors_ as aforesaid, | _held an office of trust or | profit under the United States
| at the time when they were
| appointed_, or that they were
| ineligible under the laws of the
| State, or any other matter
| offered to be proved _aliunde_
| the said certificates and | papers."
It would be unjust to cast upon the Electoral Commission the blame of all the wrong that has been practised in this presidential count. The Commission was but a council of advice, which Congress might have taken or not, as it pleased, the only condition being that, in order to reject it, both Houses must have agreed. The responsibility of the final decision lay, after all, upon Congress, or rather, upon the Senate, which voted throughout to follow the Commission.
* * * * *
The facts thus briefly recited present certain questions--moral, political, and legal--which cannot be considered too soon for our good repute and our self-respect.
THE MORAL QUESTION.
Whatever differences of opinion there may be about the political and legal questions involved, there can be none about the moral. The presidential office is the gift of the people of the several States, of their own free-will, expressed according to the laws. A falsification of that will is an offense against the State where it is committed, and against all the States. If the falsification is beyond the reach of the law, it is not beyond the reach of the conscience. A robbery is none the less a robbery because it is beyond the range of vision or the arm of justice. If the possessor of an estate has entered through the forgery of a record or the spoliation of a will, which although believed by every neighbor is beyond judicial proof, all the world pronounces his possession fraudulent, even though he scatters his wealth in charities and gathers many companions around his luxurious table. The example is corrupting, but it is against the eternal law of justice that the act should be respected or the actors continue forever to prosper.
It is no answer to these observations to say that frauds have been practised on the other side. Unhappily there is too much reason to believe that neither party is free from practices which are at once a scourge and a dishonor. Neither has the disgraceful monopoly of such practices, whichever may have the bad preeminence. But this is certain:
one wrong neither justifies nor palliates another.
There is no set-off known to the moral law. Because A has defrauded B, that is no reason why B should defraud A. If it were so, society would go on forever in a compound ratio of crime. The first breach of the law would furnish excuse for the second, and their progeny would follow in sad progression to the end of time. This is not, however, the moral condition of the world. The _lex talionis_ has been abolished by the law of civilization and the higher law of the gospel.
In this case of Louisiana there can be neither excuse nor palliation for the misconduct of the Returning Board.
On the 10th of November, President Grant telegraphed to the General of the Army instructions about troops in Louisiana and Florida, and added that "_no man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud_. Either party can afford to be disappointed in the result. _The country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns._" And again: "The presence of citizens from other States, I understand, is requested in Louisiana, to see that the Board of Canvassers makes _a fair count of the vote actually cast_. It is to be hoped that representative and fair men of both parties will go."
Did the President of that day misrepresent his party, or his successor, or has the party changed and the successor also? Had the virtuous impulses of November faded away in February? Was there a change of heart or a change of opportunity? Neither Congress nor the Electoral Commission could give an _honest_ title, without investigating the honesty of the transactions on which the title was founded; and yet a President has been installed, in the face of rejected offers to prove frauds, the grossest, the most shameless, and the most corrupting, in all our history.
Then what was the object of the committees of each House of Congress, sent into the disputed States? Was it to blind the people? Was it to conceal a meditated fraud? On the very first day of the session, December 4th, Mr. Edmunds, in the Senate, moved certain resolutions, of which this was one:
"_Resolved further_, That the said committee" (the Committee on Privileges and Elections) "be, and is hereby, instructed to inquire into the eligibility to office under the Constitution of the United States of any persons alleged to have been ineligible on the 7th day of November last, or to be ineligible as electors of President and Vice-President of the United States, to whom certificates of election have been, or shall be, issued by the Executive authority of any State, as such electors, and _whether the appointment of electors_, or those claiming to be such, in any of the States, _has been made either by force, fraud, or other means otherwise than in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the laws of the respective States_; and whether any such appointment or action of any such elector has been in any wise unconstitutionally or unlawfully interfered with; and to inquire and report whether Congress has any constitutional power, and, if so, what and the extent thereof, in respect of the appointment of or action of electors of President and Vice-President of the United States, or over returns or certificates of votes of such electors," etc.
Was all this parade of committees sent hither and thither, summoning witnesses from far and near, committing the recusant to prison, and looking into State archives; was all this a mock show, a piece of pantomime, for the amusement of the lookers-on, while conspirators were plotting how to conceal what they pretended to be wishing to discover?
Taken all in all, the sounding profession, the bustling search, and the studied concealment, make a drama, half comedy and half tragedy, the like of which this generation has not seen till now, but the like of which it and its successors may see many times, if the audience does not hiss the play, and remit the actors to the streets.
It has been objected, as a reason for not receiving offered evidence, that there was not time to take it before the 4th of March. How was that known? Perhaps it could have been taken in an hour. Why was not the question asked, how much time the evidence would take, before it was excluded? If the certificate was false, and the falsehood was susceptible of proof, every effort possible should have been made to receive it, and receive it all. It is not commonly accepted as good reason for not searching after the truth, that the search may be difficult. Nor is it an unusual occurrence to require an argument or decision to be made within a period limited. Ten minutes' speeches in Congress, two hours' argument in the Supreme Court, a jury shut in a room until they agree upon a verdict, a court required by statute to render its decision by a day fixed, are not so strange as to be remarkable, or found in practice so embarrassing as to cause the practice to be abandoned.
Nor is it any answer to say that, if the offer of evidence had been accepted, the proof would have fallen short of the offer. That does not lie in the mouth of any one to say, who excluded the evidence, or justified its exclusion. The characters of the counsel who made the offer, and of the commissioner who moved its acceptance, are a guarantee not only of their good faith, but of a reason for their belief. No man has any right to deny that the proof offered would have been made good, who refused the opportunity. They who closed their ears should in decency keep their mouths shut. But it was not the counsel and the commissioner alone who believed that the proof offered would be made good. Every one who witnessed the examinations in Washington, every one who read the testimony taken by the Congressional Committees in Louisiana, must have been satisfied that the conduct of the Returning Board was throughout unlawful, wicked, and shocking, to the last degree.
The title of the acting President, however valid in law, if valid at all, is tainted with fraud in fact. There was fraud in certifying that Brewster had received a majority of the votes of Louisiana, and fraud in attempting to evade that part of the Constitution which pronounced his disqualification. When the Electoral Commission advised Congress, and Congress accepted, by not rejecting, the advice, that fraud could not be proved, that advice being but the equivalent of saying that fraud was of no consequence; when it advised that the incompetency of the Returning Board, for want of jurisdiction, could not be proved, such proof being but the equivalent of proof that the pretended board was not a board at all; when it advised that the forgery, by direction of the board, of the statements and affidavits on which it pretended to act as true could not be proved, that proof being but the equivalent of proof that the pretended statements and affidavits were not statements and affidavits at all; when it advised that the barrier raised by the Constitution against the appointment of a Federal officer to choose a Federal President, was not a barrier at all--the moral sense of the whole American people was shocked. No form of words can cover up the falsehood; no sophistry can hide it; no lapse of time wash it out. It will follow its contrivers wherever they go, confront them whenever they turn, and as often as one of them asks the suffrages of his countrymen, he may expect to hear them reply, "Why do you reason with us, why seek to persuade us into giving you our votes, you that have taught us such a contempt for votes, that one fraudulent certificate is better than ten thousand of them?"
THE POLITICAL QUESTION.
The advice of the Commission, with the consequent action of Congress, was a virtual affirmation of this proposition, that if on the morning of the 6th of December the Federal general commanding in Louisiana had surrounded the State-House with soldiers, and marching in eight of his captains, had compelled the Returning Board to certify their appointment as electors, and the Governor to add his certificate, Congress and the country would have been obliged to accept the votes of these captains as the constitutional and lawful votes of Louisiana electors. Whoever supposes that the union of these States can endure under such an interpretation of their fundamental law, must be endowed with credulity beyond the simplicity of childhood. The doctrine is an open invitation to transgression and usurpation. The judicious disposition of a few troops in the capitals of disputed States, on the day of the electoral vote, will perpetuate an Administration just so long as the audacity of a President, or the cupidity of his office-holders, may find it desirable; unless, indeed, it be found, as is most likely, that the ways of fraud are cheaper, easier, and less palpable than the ways of force.
THE LEGAL QUESTION.
_As to the conclusiveness of the Governor's and canvassers' certificates._ The doctrine of the majority of the Commission, and of the Senate, is, that the certificate of the Governor "_on and according to the determination and declaration_" of the State canvassers, cannot be shown to be false, though it may have been obtained by force or fraud. This doctrine admits that the truth of the _Governor's_
certificate can be inquired into, else why the qualification that it must be "_on and according to_" the canvasser's certificate. It is said to be good only when in such accord; therefore, when not in accord, it is good for nothing. We may, then, dismiss the Governor's certificate as of no account, and to be left therefore out of further discussion. The substance of the doctrine is, that the _certificate of the State canvassers_ cannot be contradicted.
This language must, of course, be understood, as used in reference to the question at that time depending; that is to say, whether evidence to contradict or annul the certificate was then and there admissible. It had already been decided in the Florida case that no action of the State authorities, after the electors had voted, could affect the validity of the vote. Whether such action before the vote would have been of any avail was not decided, and will never be decided, unless a radical change is made in the laws, since, according to present legislation, the vote of the electors treads fast on the heels of their appointment. In Florida, they were declared appointed at three o'clock in the morning, and they voted at twelve, just nine hours afterward. In Louisiana the interval was even less. To suppose that any State action would or could be had in such an interval, or in any interval possible under present laws, would be as wild as to suppose that counting in a President by fraud will not be followed by imitators at future elections.
Taking the doctrine, however, precisely as it was applied in the instance of Louisiana, it is this: that the certificate of State canvassers cannot be impeached by evidence showing either that they had no jurisdiction to canvass the electoral vote at all, or that they had no jurisdiction to throw away votes that were actually cast, inasmuch as the power to throw away came into existence only when affidavits were laid before them, and there were no affidavits except such as they had caused to be forged, which, in the eye of the law, were not affidavits at all.
One would say that such a doctrine, held up in its nakedness, need hardly be attacked, for no man, not maddened by the fanaticism of party, would be found willing to defend it; yet if not defended, the disposition of the Louisiana case must be pronounced as unsound in law as it was injurious in policy and offensive in morals. But I go further, and deny the conclusiveness of the canvassers' certificate under any circumstances. Suppose the question to be put thus: Can the certificate of State canvassers, acting within the scope of their authority, be questioned by evidence of mistake, fraud, or duress; what should be the answer? Most certainly it can, should be answered.
The statutes of the State may or may not have declared the effect of the certificate. In the case of Louisiana, this was the only statute relevant:
"The returns of the elections thus made and promulgated shall be
_prima-facie_ evidence in all courts of justice and before all civil officers, until set aside after a contest according to law, of the right of any person named therein to hold and exercise the office to which he shall by such return be declared elected."
Whatever doubt may have been expressed or felt whether this statute applied to the canvassers of a presidential election, or whether the words _prima facie_ really meant _prima facie_, or whether "courts of justice," and "civil officers," included the Electoral Commission and the two Houses of Congress, there can be no doubt that "the returns of the elections thus made and promulgated" do not include returns canvassed without jurisdiction, or made under cover of pretended affidavits which the returning officers themselves caused to be forged.
But, passing from this view of the subject, although this is sufficient to dispose of Brewster's pretensions, let us suppose a stronger case--the strongest supposable--that of a State Legislature directing not only the manner in which electors shall be appointed, but directing also that the certificate of the State canvassers shall be conclusive evidence that the State has appointed in the manner directed.
Because the Constitution provides that electors shall be appointed by the State, in the manner directed by its Legislature, it is thence inferred that the State must furnish the evidence of the appointment, and of course that none can be received except that which the State has furnished. And this is said to be the true States-rights doctrine. It is a strange sight, that of gentlemen clamoring for State rights who will not allow the people of Louisiana and South Carolina to take care of themselves; who are even now debating at Washington whether they shall not order new elections in those States, or which of two State governments they shall put up and which put down, and who since the war have treated the South as if no States were there, parceling it into military districts, and denying recognition until constitutional amendments were ratified. Their assertion of the conclusiveness of false and fraudulent canvassers' certificates, on the pretense of upholding State rights, should seem to be thrown in our faces by way of bravado, unless it be meant, indeed, for burlesque masking hypocrisy. But if the sight were not strange, and those gentlemen had been all along as careful of the rights of the States as they are of their own places, there is nothing in the claim for the conclusiveness of canvassers' certificates which receives support from the doctrine of State rights. On the contrary, the rights of the States are best preserved by fencing them against force or fraud, by leaving them untrammeled in their own action, and leaving us untrammeled in finding out what that action has been. No rights are ever lost by letting in the light.
A certificate can be conclusive evidence of the States' action, only when the act and the certificate are identical. If the Constitution had provided that there should be sent from each State a certificate signed by such persons as the Legislature might designate, declaring who should cast the electoral votes, then the only inquiry that could have been made at Washington would have been, whether the certificate sent up was so signed and the persons therein mentioned had voted; but the Constitution has provided nothing of the kind. It has provided that the State shall appoint in the manner directed by its Legislature, and the inquiry thereupon to be made at the Capitol is, "Whom has the State appointed in the manner directed?"
We agree that the State has complete power, within certain limits regarding the persons who may be appointed, to appoint its electors in any manner its Legislature may direct, but whether the State has done so is open to inquiry. Canvassers of votes are not the State, or the Legislature of the State, and their certificate is nothing but evidence. Two facts are to be shown: one that the State has acted, and the other that the act has been in conformity to the directions of the Legislature. There is nothing in positive law, or in the reason of things, which, if the fact certified do not exist, requires that its falsity should not be open to proof.
The Electoral Commission and the Senate read the Constitution as if the words following in italics were part of it:
"Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector." _And the certificate of such officers as the Legislature of the State may designate shall be conclusive evidence, not only that the persons certified were appointed by the State, but that they were appointed in the manner directed by its Legislature, any mistake, fraud, or duress, of the certifying officers to the contrary notwithstanding_.
But the words of the Constitution as they stand do not carry with them the words in italics, or their substance; and if it had been proposed to add them when the Constitution was presented to the people, I do not believe that they would have been accepted.
Had it been suggested to the freemen of Massachusetts or Connecticut that they should give to the Legislature of another State not only the right of designating how the electors should be chosen, whose voices might make a President for them, but also the right to designate a permanent board, with power to say, in the face of the truth, who had or had not been chosen, the voices of John Hancock and Oliver Ellsworth would surely have warned the good people of their native Commonwealths against so dangerous a proposition.
There is no necessary connection between an appointment and the certificate of it, unless the two acts are performed by the same persons. If the appointment of electors for Louisiana had been committed to the Returning Board, then there might be reason for saying that the certificate was conclusive, because they appointed when they certified. But the board had not the power of appointment. That power could not have been given to them, if the Legislature of Louisiana had so intended, and it did not so intend.
The power to give a conclusive certificate of appointment--that is, a certificate that precludes further inquiry--is virtually a power to appoint, since no one is then permitted to go behind the certificate to show that there was neither valid appointment nor form of appointment. Unless, therefore, the Legislature of Louisiana could, under the Constitution, confer upon the Returning Board power to appoint presidential electors for Louisiana, it could not confer upon it power to give a conclusive certificate of appointment. The constitution of this Returning Board is known to us all. It was a permanent body, holding for an undefined period, or for life, consisting of four persons of one party, when there should have been five, of different parties; and the four had persistently refused for years to select a fifth. To pretend that such a body was, or could lawfully be, empowered to appoint eight electors for the people of Louisiana, to match the eight who were appointed by the people of Maryland, would be simple effrontery; and most certainly, as I have said, if they could not appoint, they could not give an incontrovertible certificate of appointment. The certificate is one thing; the appointment another. The State appoints and the Legislature directs the manner of appointment, but neither can make true that which is false.
_Now as to the person appointed._ Brewster was one of the very persons sought to be excluded by these words of the Constitution: "No Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector." He was, nevertheless, appointed, and he voted, and his vote made the President. How was this brought about? The Commission answer, "That it is not competent to prove that any of said persons so appointed electors as aforesaid held an office of trust or profit under the United States at the time when they were appointed." Of course, if it was not competent to prove it, the fact itself must have been of no importance.
Bentham's "Book of Fallacies" may be enriched, in another edition, with another fallacy, as remarkable as any he has recorded, to wit, that prohibition in the American Constitution means prohibition! Talleyrand was once asked the meaning of non-intervention. "Non-intervention," he replied, "non-intervention means about the same thing as intervention." So, in our new constitutional vocabulary, prohibition means about the same thing as permission.
It was, indeed, mentioned in the course of the argument, though the Commission does not appear to have thought much of it, that Brewster, having resigned his Federal office, and come in upon a new appointment, to fill his own vacant place on the 6th of December, being then both present and absent, the question of eligibility did not arise. But enough has been said about this resignation sham. If such a trick had been played in respect to a note-of-hand of five dollars, there is not a justice of the peace who would not have denounced the trick, as conferring no right and affording no protection.
The people of New York were amused, three or four years ago, with the feats of a juggler, who dressed one side of him as a man, and the other as a woman, and who turned about so quickly that he showed himself as two persons of different sexes in the same instant. Brewster's feat was not less remarkable: he was at once absent and present; absent that he might be appointed, and present that he might vote; went through the whole performance in less than an hour, absenting himself that he might be called in to be present, presenting himself though absent, voting ballots and signing certificates, showing himself to be as versatile and as agile as that master of jugglery.
Upon what theory the Commission held that evidence could not be received of Brewster's Federal office at the time of his appointment does not appear. He certainly was in the prohibited category. A marriage between persons within prohibited degrees is not good, even if consummated. The prohibited union of two offices in the same person should not be thought a legal union, simply because it is practised. It has been said, though the Commission did not say it, that Brewster was at least elector _de facto_, and his vote was good, whatever may have been his title. Then why should we trouble ourselves about the returning officer's certificate? If, as elector _de facto_, his vote was good, then it was good without the certificate, and all that the Commission should have looked into was the _fact of voting_, without troubling themselves about the certificate of anybody or any other evidence of title. But, in truth, the distinctions between officers _de facto_ and officers _de jure_ have no application to the present case, and for this reason, among others, that two persons cannot hold the same office _de facto_. It is of the essence of a _de facto_ possession of office that it should be exclusive. The Chancellor of New York said, in a judicial opinion, more than thirty years ago: "When there is but one office there cannot be an officer _de jure_ and an officer _de facto_ both in possession of the office at the same time." This is true even when the office is a continuing one. Who, for instance, can say which of the rival Governors in Louisiana or South Carolina at this moment is the Governor _de facto_? In deciding between them, would not all the world pronounce this the only question, which is Governor _de jure_? Much more is it true when the office is temporary, existing but for a moment, even if the doctrine of a _de facto_ officer can be applied to such an office at all. In the present case, Brewster went into the State-House and voted for Mr. Hayes; at the same instant his rival went into the same State-House and voted for Mr. Tilden. It is absurd to pronounce Brewster, under such circumstances, an elector _de facto_, so as to make his vote for that reason good against his rival in the Tilden college, who was as much an elector _de facto_ as was Brewster, and had this difference in his favor, that he was elected, and was eligible, while Brewster, the intruder, was not eligible, and was not elected. The only returns which went to the Electoral Commission were the double ones, where rival colleges of electors had acted at the same time in the same State. In those cases, as already observed, the question of a _de facto_
elector could not arise. There was but one case, that of Wisconsin, where it could have arisen, and in that there was but a single return, which, of course, did not go to the Commission.
CONCLUSION.
Although these pages have been occupied with the vote of Brewster in the electoral college, it should not be understood, that the other seven votes which were counted from that State, and the four votes counted from Florida, were any better than his. The one here considered had its peculiarities; the others had theirs. All of them were tainted, and the counting in of the President _de facto_ was twelve times fraudulent. What may be the outcome I do not know. That will depend upon the spirit of this generation and the spirit of those to follow. It is a consolation to know that the questions will be reviewed by a tribunal higher than the Electoral Commission, higher even than the two Houses of
Congress-the American people--from whose judgment there is no appeal but to the final judgment of history.
NEW YORK, _March 28, 1877_.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note
The following changes have been made to the text:
Page 4: "contine" changed to "confine".
Page 7: "recived" changed to "received".
Page 22: "de-facto" changed to "de facto".
All other inconsistencies are as in the original. | clean | 0.834548 | 4c834deac04853470735e63c86b9a296c5d915d94283a2dce14a187d51c202e9 | 7,520 |
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"MEMOIRS OF GENERAL W. T. SHERMAN\n\nBy William T. Sherman\n\nVolume I., Part 1\n\nGENERAL W. T. SHE(...TRUNCATED) | clean | 0.680479 | a77f9b68d9ef177c10c1a42883967fa71d910f2d5dc0baa8eff238c736c9f175 | 76,353 |
"BERTHA'S\n\nVISIT TO HER UNCLE\n\nIN\n\nENGLAND.\n\nIN THREE VOLUMES.\n\nVOL. III.\n\nLONDON:\nJOHN(...TRUNCATED) | clean | 0.531647 | e8881dbdccc911613d8e7c3bfea50ce2d21d5750390ec877797dce175de15d59 | 58,097 |
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"[Illustration: CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL\n\nOF\n\nPOPULAR\n\nLITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.\n\nFourth Serie(...TRUNCATED) | clean | 0.523255 | 48e4d87e3b3327885524a63be1b2346356231e9c1103bc0dd75d4be77beb9938 | 17,946 |
"produced from images available at The Internet Archive)\n\nDAVID LIVINGSTONE\n\n[Illustration: DAVI(...TRUNCATED) | clean | 0.604277 | 84634a5e052f17cef65c5e5dc3a039d76becaa3c3ee43a906b426acdc8bad583 | 43,800 |
End of preview. Expand
in Dataset Viewer.
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default config
has (mostly) fixed newlines vs. v1.0
TODO: more words
v1.0
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A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING
By Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1876, by James R. Osgood & Co
I
Ralph Grimm was born a gentleman, He had the misfortune of coming into
the world some ten years later than might reasonably have been expected.
Colonel Grim and his lady had celebrated twelve anniversaries of their
wedding-day, and had given up all hopes of ever having a son and heir,
when this late comer startled them by his unexpected appearance. The
only previous addition to the family had been a daughter, and she was
then ten summers old.
Ralph was a very feeble child, and could only with great difficulty be
persuaded to retain his hold of the slender thread which bound him to
existence. He was rubbed with whiskey, and wrapped in cotton, and given
mare's milk to drink, and God knows what not, and the Colonel swore a
round oath of paternal delight when at last the infant stopped gasping
in that distressing way and began to breathe like other human b
in the above, you may notice that all lines are actually hard-wrapped (it is not just for display). this is now mostly fixed in the default
'raw' config
some examples will look like:
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'sha256': '02da96e0ca0beae1a3bd8919f04a775849393d730a307b451a8a82a9c012e086',
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Hutchinson and PG Distributed Proofreaders
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. V.--JUNE, 1860. NO. XXXII.
THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN RAILWAYS.
The condition of our railways, and their financial prospects, should
interest all of us. It has become a common remark, that railways have
benefited everybody but their projectors. There is a strong doubt in the
minds of many intelligent persons, whether _any_ railways have actually
paid a return on the capital invested in them. It is believed that one of
two results inevitably takes place: in the one case, there is not business
enough to earn a dividend; in the other, although the apparent net earnings
are large enough to pay from six to eight per cent. on the cost, yet in a
few years it is discovered that the machine has been wearing itself out so
fast that the cost of renewal has absorbed more than the earnings, and the
deficiency has been made up by creating new capital or running in debt, to
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