THE TREND

25 Cents

August

1914

How to Read Gertrude Stein

By CARL VAN VECHTEN

The Critic and the Chorus Girl

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Some Recent American Poetry

By PITTS SANBORN

The Turn of the Blade

By GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND

A Study of Laura Jean Libby

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THE TREND

Vol. VII

AUGUST, 1914

No. 5

# How to Read Gertrude Stein

BY CARL VAN VECHTEN.

HAT is there to say for Ger-
trude Stein that she does not
say quite adequately for her-
self? Is it not clear that her
effect is made on all her readers? True,
the effect varies, but did two people ever
feel the same about Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony? Why, even at the present
moment the *Evening Globe* is being
bombarded with letters from people
who prefer "Put on Your Old Gray
Bonnet" to the masterpiece of the Bonn
composer. Yet Beethoven's Ninth Sym-
phony, even in the people that it does
not reach as a solace and a boon, stirs
a vague unrest, a feeling of reproach or
of discontent.

"There is an art that we do not un-
derstand."

It seems unnecessary to go so far
afield as Beethoven in the beginning of
an article concerning Miss Stein's "Ten-
der Buttons." Perhaps it is sufficient
to send forth at first the mere suggestion
that Miss Stein has added enormously to
the vagueness of the English language,
and vagueness is a quality that belongs
to the English language, just as buildings
on the Riviera sigh to be painted white,
so that in the glory of that Southern sun
they may reflect a thousand colors.

The English language is a language
of hypocrisy and evasion. How not to
say a thing has been the problem of our
writers from the earliest times. The ex-
traordinary fluidity and even naivete of
French makes it possible for a writer in
that language to babble like a child; de

Maupassant is only possible in French,
a language in which the phrase, "Je
t'aime" means everything. But what
does "I love you" mean in English?
Donald Evans, of our poets, has real-
ized this peculiar quality of English and
he is almost the first of the poets in Eng-
ish to say unsuspected and revolting
things, because he so cleverly avoids say-
ing them.

Miss Stein dicovered the method be-
fore Mr. Evans. In fact his Patagonian
Sonnets were an offshoot of her later
manner, just as Miss Kenton's superb
story, "Nicknames," derives its style
from Miss Stein's "Three Lives." She
has really turned language mto music,
really made its sound more important
than its sense. And she has suggested
to the reader a thousand channels for his
mind and sense to drift along, a thou-
sand, instead of a stupid only one.

Miss Stein has no explanations to offer
regarding her work. I have often ques-
tioned her, but I have met with no satis-
faction. She asks you to read. Her in-
timate connection with the studies of
William James have been commented up-
on; some say that "the fringe of
thought," so frequently referred to by
that writer, may dominate her working
consciousness. Her method of work is
unique. She usually writes in the morn-
ing, and she sets down the words as they
come from her pen; they bubble, they
flow; they surge through her brain and
she sets them down. You may regard

THE TREND

554

them as nonsense, but the fact remains
that effective imitations of her style do
not exist. John Reed tells me that,
while he finds her stimulating and inter-
esting, an entity, he feels compelled to
regard her work as an offshoot, some-
thing that will not be concluded by fol-
lowers. She lives and dies alone, a
unique example of a strange art. It may
be in place also to set down here the fact
that once in answer to a question Miss
Stein asserted that her art was for the
printed page only; she never expects peo-
ple to converse or exchange ideas in her
style.

As a personality Gertrude Stein is
unique. She is massive in physique, a
Rabelaisian woman with a splendid
thoughtful face; mind dominating her
matter. Her velvet robes, mostly brown,
and her carpet slippers associate them-
selves with her indoor appearance. To
go out she belts herself, adds a walking
staff, and a trim unmodish turban. This
garb suffices for a shopping tour or a
box party at the *Opéra*.

Paris is her abode. She settled there
after Cambridge, and association with
William James, Johns Hopkins and a
study of medicine. Her orderly mind
has captured the scientific facts of both
psychology and physiology. And in
Paris the early painters of the new era
captured her heart and purse. She pur-
chased the best of them, and now such
examples as Picasso's "Acrobats" and
early Matisses hang on her walls. There
is also the really authoritative portrait
of herself, painted by Pablo Picasso.

These two painters she lists among her
great friends. And their influence, per-
haps, decided her in her present mode of
writing. Her pictures are numerous,
and to many, who do not know of her
as a writer, she is mentioned as the Miss
Stein with the collection of post-impres-
sionists. On Saturday nights during the
winter one can secure a card of admi-
sion to the collection and people wander
in and out the studio, while Miss Stein
serves her dinner guests unconcernedly
with after-dinner coffee. And conver-
sation continues, strangely unhindered by
the picture viewers.

Leo Stein happens in, when he is not
in Florence, and I have a fancy that he
prefers Florence to Paris. He is her
brother, and their tastes in art are natu-
rally antithetical. He believes in the
painters of the "third dimension," the
painters of atmosphere, and the space be-
tween objects, for thus he describes the
impressionists, and he includes Peter
Paul Rubens in this group. And his pre-
cise manner of grouping thought is
strangely at odds with Miss Stein's
piquant love of gossip, and with her
strange undercurrents of ideas that pass
from her through and about the place.

Mr. Stein's phrase "Define what you
mean by—" is almost famous. It is
well-known wherever he appears. Last
I saw him in the Piazza Vittorio Em-
anuele. I sat at lunchen time on the
terrace of the *Giubbi Rossi* with Mabel
Dodge when he strode into view, sandles
on his feet, a bundle over his shoulder,
and carrying an alpenstock. He was on
his way to the mountains, and, if I re-
member rightly, he asked me, in response
to an invitation, to define what I meant
by "cocktail," something singularly diffi-
cult to do in Italy.

Miss Stein's presence, as I have said
before my parenthesis, is strangely dom-
inant in these evenings and her clear
deep voice, her very mellow laugh, the
adjunct of an almost abnormal sense of
humor and observation, remain very
pleasant memories. At one time I saw
her very frequently, but we talked little
of her work, although we often read it.

Of all her books only "Tender But-
tons," the latest of them to appear, is
generally procurable. Besides this I
know of "Three Lives," written in her
early manner; "The Portrait of Mabel
Dodge at the Villa Curonia," an inter-
nationally famous monograph, pub-
lished privately in Florence, and never
on sale. There is a very long autobi-
ographical work, at present, I believe,
considerably longer than "Clarissa Har-
owe," which runs through her various
changes of style. There are several
plays, one about me, which Miss Stein
very kindly entitled, "One." These are
very short and in her very late manner.

HOW TO READ GERTRUDE STEIN

Miss Florence Bradley wished to play them in America and she may have done so in Chicago. She is now on her way to China and she may play them there; but I have no record of performances. Miss Stein is most insistent that they be performed before they are printed, but she did allow Marsden Hartley to quote from a play about him as a foreword to his collection of pictures which was exhibited at that "little place" of Mr. Steiglitz's at 291 Fifth Avenue. There are several other short portraits, and some sketches, one of shop girls in the Galerie Lafayette in Paris which is particularly descriptive and amusing. These, I think, are Miss Stein's main contributions to her complete works.

In "Three Lives" Miss Stein attained at a bound an amount of literary facility which a writer might strive in vain for years to acquire. Simplicity is a quality one is born with, so far as literary style is concerned, and Miss Stein was born with that. But to it she added, in this work, a vivid note of reiteration, a fascinatingly complete sense of psychology and the workings of minds one on the other, which at least in "Melanctha: Each as She May" reaches a state of perfection which might have satisfied such masters of craft as Turgenev, or Balzac, or Henry James.

Quotation from this book is difficult. I shall quote a very short paragraph to give a sense of the style, and to show that those who are afraid of this writer in her present form need not be afraid of "Three Lives."

"Jeff did not like it very well these days, in his true feeling. He knew now very well that Melanctha was not strong enough inside her to stand any more of his slow way of doing. And yet now he knew he was not honest in his feeling. Now he always had to show more to Melanctha than he was ever feeling. Now she made him go so fast, and he knew it was not real with his feeling, and yet he could not make her suffer so any more because he was always so slow with his feeling."

The story, it may be added, is about negroes, and it is as poignant in its

material as it is in its use of it. The book was published by the Grafton Press in New York. I think it is now out of print, but stray copies may sometimes be secured from dealers in rare books.

The number of Camera Work for August, 1912, contains two articles by Miss Stein about her two friends, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. To me they seem to bridge the period between "Three Lives" and "The Portrait of Mabel Dodge."

These have been considerably quoted in derision by newspaper paragraphers, but they are admirable examples of the effect of reiteration and of the intertwining of ideas and phrases in style. Here is a quotation:

"This one was one having always something being coming out of him, something having completely a real meaning. This one was one whom some were following. This one was one who was working. This one was one who was working and he was one needing this thing needing to be working so as to be one having some way of being one having some way of working. This one was one who was working."

"The Portrait of Mabel Dodge" made a winter amusing for those who subscribed to the clipping bureaus. The redoubtable Romeike, whom Whistler mentions, was kept busy cutting out ideas of the scriveners in Oshkosh and Flatbush about Miss Stein. To those who know Mrs. Dodge the portrait may seem to be a true one; it has intention, that is even obvious to those who do not know what the intention is. There is nothing faint or pale about Miss Stein's authority. It is as complete in its way as the authority of Milton. You may not like the words, but you are forced to admit, after, perhaps, a struggle that no other words will do.

For the sake of the few benighted ones who have not had this work quoted to them I offer the following passage, which is quite as familiar, I should say, as Wordsworth's "A primrose at the river's brim."

"A bottle that has all the time to stand open is not so clearly shown when there

THE TREND

is green colour there. This is not the
only way to change it. A little raw po-
tato and then all that softer does happen
to show that there has been enough. It
changes the expression."

And now a discussion of "Tender But-
tons" seems imminent. Donald Evans,
who is responsible for its publication,
says that it is the only book ever printed
which contains absolutely no errors. I
have not Miss Stein's authority for this
statement. At any rate the effect on
printers and proofreaders was tremendous.
I believe that even yet some of
them are suffering from brain storm.
"The Portrait of Mabel Dodge" was set
up in Florence by compositors who, I
believe, did not read English. So their
trouble was less.

There are several theories extant re-
lating to "Tender Buttons." I may say
that one I upheld stoutly for a few hours,
that the entire book had a physical ap-
plication, I have since rejected, at least
in part. The three divisions which com-
prise the books in a way explain the title.
They are "Food; Objects; Rooms," all
things which fasten our lives together,
and whose complications may be said to
make them "tender."

The majestic rhythm of the prose in
this book; the virtuosity with which Miss
Stein intertwines her words, are quali-
ties which strike the ear at once. And
"Tender Buttons" benefits by reading
aloud. Onomatopœa, sound echoing
sense, is a favorite figure of speech
with Miss Stein; so is alliteration which
is fatally fascinating when mingled with
reiteration, and Miss Stein drops re-
peated words upon your brain with the
effect of Chopin's B minor prelude,
which is popularly supposed to represent
the raindrops falling on the roof at Ma-
jorka on one of those George Sand
days.

The mere sensuous effect of the words
is irresistible and often as in the section
labelled, "Eating," or "A Seltzer Bottle,"
the mere pronunciation of the words gives
the effect of the act or the article. On
the other hand, "A Little Called Pauline"
seems to me perfect in the way of a

pretty description, a Japanese print of
a charming creature. "Suppose an
Eyes" is similarly a picture, but more
postery.

It would seem to me that the inspira-
tion offered to writers in this book was
an enormous incentive to read it. What
writer after reading "Tender Buttons"
but would strive for a fresher phrase, a
more perfect rhythmic prose? Gertrude
Stein to me is one of the supreme styl-
ists.

In case one is not delighted, amused,
or appealed to in any way by the sensu-
ous charm of her art then, of course,
there is the sense to fall back on; the
ideas expressed. Here one floats about
vaguely for a key to describe how to tell
what Miss Stein means. Her vagueness
is innate and one of her most positive
qualities. I have already said how much
she adds to language by it. You may
get the idea of it if you close your eyes
and imagine yourself awaking from the
influence of ether, as you gasp to recall
some words and ideas, while new ones
surge into your brain. A certain sleepy
consciousness. Or you may read sense
through the figures as they flit rapidly—
almost word by word—through your
brain. It is worthy of note that almost
everyone tries to make sense out of Miss
Stein just as everyone insists on making
photographs out of drawings by Picabia,
when the essential of his art is that he
is getting away from the photographic.

And now for a few quotations from
"Tender Buttons":

"RED ROSES: A cool red rose and a
pink cut pink, a collapse and a solid hole,
a little less hot."

"A SOUND: Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this."

Roast beef is Miss Stein's favorite
food and she has devoted nearly seven
pages in the section labeled, Food, to its
delights, while oranges and such-like are
let off with single phrases. In the mid-
dle of the description of roast beef is a
verse, discovered for me by Neith Boyce,
which I print in verse form, although it
is not so disclosed in the book:

HOW TO READ GERTRUDE STEIN

557

"Lovely snipe and tender turn,
Excellent vapor and slender butter
All the splinter and the trunk,
All the poionous darkning drunk,
All the joy in weak success,
All the joyful tenderness,
All the section and the tea,
All the stouter symmetry."

Celery is thus described: "Celery tastes
tastes where in curled lashes and little
bits and mostly in remains,

"A green acre is so selfish and so pure
and so enlivened."

And the description of chicken has al-
ready become a byword among certain
groups of those who love bywords:

"Alas a dirty word, alas a dirty third
alas a dirty third, alas a dirty bird."

THE OLD MILL

By Witter Bynner

I had tried for a kiss and been treated with scorn,
For Julia had seemed to see sin in my wish;
But, never a fellow for staying forlorn,
I had tried to forget it and fish.

Just below the old mill, where nobody goes
But one who has need of a healing shade,
Of a leaf and a bird and the flickering flows
In a brook—and of never a maid—

I was borne like a leaf, in a mournful dream,
And was touching a shadowy bank of noon
When I started upright and I stared overstream,
For I heard a voice laughing a tune.

O sudden to see, in the water's way,
Came Julia, a twinkle of sun on her face,
And wet to the ankle uttered, "Good-day,"
With her daily composure and grace!

And under a willow that shivers and dips
I ran and we met in the midst of the brook,
And so she forgave by the touch of her lips—
And so what I wanted I took.

# The Critic and the Chorus Girl

BY WALTER PRICHARD EATON.

AURICE PHELPS was considered by the more intelligent class of readers as a scholarly, interesting, and enthusiastic critic of the drama, although certain of the New York theatrical managers somewhat contemptuously referred to him as “a high brow.” Maurice had, however, but an over-the-footlights acquaintance with actors and actresses, and a chorus girl out of the proscenium frame was a thing unknown. He had refrained often against his natural inclination from meeting actors and actresses, lest personal acquaintance should warp his critical judgments. And the same fastidiousness of habit which had characterized his New England progenitors, in their pulpits and parlors, always high bred, pure minded, and austere, kept him in his turn from manifesting the slightest interest in the personalities of the girls who tripped in tights in the theatres on Broadway. But Maurice was far from being unobservant or ignorant of the world. He knew as well as any stage manager the value of slenderness in the picture; and he was aware as well as the managers how much the charming appeal of the chorus in a musical comedy is ultimately addressed to the lowest traits in man’s nature. He had, indeed, often wondered if this fact did not react, in some subtle way, on the girls themselves, if the battery of eyes upon their persons did not eventually weaken the inner defences of character. However, his own fastidiousness had always smothered this question almost as soon as asked, and he walked the Rialto as one quite apart from the world behind the scenes.

It surprised him greatly, therefore, when he suddenly found himself taking more than a passing interest in a girl

who bore on the program the absurd name of Zenobia Clifford, and upheld the left end in a rush line of damsels who substituted for plot and music in the newest Broadway musical comedy. Something in her face, a soft, indolent innocence, had attracted his attention on the opening night, and he had watched her through the numerous changes of costume and intricate dances, slender, graceful, modest as was possible under the circumstances, with increasing interest. A day or two later, as he was walking up the Rialto, he had met her on the corner by the Metropolitan Opera House and had looked her full in the face, conscious of a thrill of interest down his spine. But she had defied tradition, looking quickly away as if his glance injured her pride. He watched her move lithely along the sidewalk, dressed in a quiet taste Boston might have approved and bearing none of the hall marks of her class. “Evidently not the usual sort,” he said to himself, regretting his stare.

That evening he dropped into the theatre where she was playing, and at the invitation of Billy Miller, the press agent, went down to a vacant stage box. The orchestra below him banged and sawed at the mechanical rhythms of the music, and the hard working players on the stage, their makeup pitifully apparent from where he sat, beaded with perspiration, went through their tasks, it seemed to him as mechanically as the musicians. Now and then roars of laughter would ascend from the great blur of faces out in the pit and aloft in the balconies, though Maurice, looking into the opposite wings, saw the machinery and wondered. Presently she came out on the stage, and again he felt the thrill of interest. At the head of a line of girls in

558

THE CRITIC AND THE CHORUS GIRL

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on the
of in-
girls in

skirts that reached barely to their knees, all bending over in impossible attitudes that were never assumed anywhere but on the stage and all looking out at that great misty sea of faces with mechanical smiles, she moved to the music across the stage to a point where he could have touched her from the front of his box. She, too, regarded the audience with that fixed, automatic smile, but now and again at the shifting moods of the dialogue her face expressed perception, and she made a byplay with her hands and body that explained to him why she had been placed on the end of the line. Evidently she was a girl of intelligence as well as good looks. He noted with painful minuteness the texture of her black stockings, and the arrangement of her hair, which was simple and unaffected, such as she might have worn anywhere. Neither was her gown cut so low as some of the others, though it was low enough to displease him. Then he laughed in vexation at his own displeasure, and started to rise and leave the box, when her eyes suddenly rested on him. Her glance lingered but an instant, yet it curiously conveyed the information that she remembered their meeting in the afternoon and accepted his presence there as a sign of his interest. He felt it suddenly to establish a bond between him and her, and instinctively he was pleased.

Presently he hunted out the press agent.

"Billy," he said, "what do you know about this Zenobia Clifford?"

"Not much," said Billy. "She's a Calvin College girl, went there a year or two, I believe, and got stage struck. Merwin, the stage manager, picked her up in Boston because he liked her style —she's slim in the legs and knows what to do with her hands. Why, want a story about her?"

"No," said Phelps. "I want to meet her."

"Well, I'll be damned!" said the press agent.

"Precisely," said Phelps, in a way that even Billy Miller understood.

Without further words he led the

critic down a side aisle, behind the boxes, and through the little iron door which divides the heliatrope-scented theatre from the world behind the scenes that smells like a musty loft. It is a strange transition, this passage from the velvet and half-darkness of the auditorium, where a thousand people sit watching the stage and living together for the hour a life of the imagination, into the calcium glare behind the proscenium, with bare floors and dim, machinery-laden spaces far above, a wilderness of pasteboard scenery set for action or stacked in corners, and players with nude shoulders shivering in the draughts waiting for their turn to go out on the space of stage before the footlights to do their part in creating the illusion you know exists for the audience, but fail entirely to comprehend from this side of the fire wall. Phelps had seldom stepped from the illusion into the machine, climbed behind the frame of the picture, and the sensation was one which he would have enjoyed to dwell on, but there was no time. He and his guide had barely penetrated to the entrance to the dressing rooms when the curtain hissed down its slides on the first act and the people began to pile off stage, some of them still humming the tune of the finale, the girls looking Phelps over in bold-eyed curiosity. "Who's Charley Ox?" one of them whispered audibly in Miller's ear. And the critic turned away from her glance, disgusted that he had allowed himself to follow his mood so far.

Then she came. Miller stopped her. "Miss Clifford," he said, "this is Mr. Phelps, critic of the *Star*. He wants to meet you."

The girl put out her hand. "That's so kind of you, Mr. Phelps," she said, "but why should you want to meet me? I'm only a chorus girl."

"—yet," said Phelps, with a differential bow.

The girl accepted this rather noncommittal reply with a blush of pleasure. "I'll change in a jiffy," she said, turning to Miller. "Bring Mr. Phelps to my dressing room in two minutes, will you?"

Miller filled in the wait by explaining

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that the girl had a room to herself because there was one left over by the principals, and she was the stage manager's pet.

"Do you need me any more?" he concluded, when the girl's "Come in now" reached their ears. He smiled knowingly as he spoke.

Phelps looked at him a moment. "Billy, you're a damn fool," he said. "Go back to the box office." Then he lifted the sheet which hung before the little closet Miss Clifford called her dressing room, and left the press agent to go his way.

The girl was sitting on the only chair the room boasted, before a low shelf that was strewn with paint, powder, makeup, and toilet paraphernalia in soiled confusion. She had changed her costume for one of different color, but no less scanty proportions and, evidently as a consequence, her feet had disappeared under the shadow of the chair. She motioned her caller with a laugh of apology to a seat on the trunk.

"It's like a bath house, isn't it?" she said.

"Do you refer to the costumes?" asked Phelps, who had by this time decided he was making a gigantic ass of himself and was bent only on getting out of an impossible situation with what personal satisfaction he might.

The girl looked at him a second sharply. "Oh, no," she replied, "I should never think of going in bathing with a suit cut so low as this gown!"

Maurice, in his turn, looked sharply at her. The indolent, innocence of her face, which had first attracted his notice, was still apparent in spite of the rouge and the pencilled eye lashes, but there was intelligence there and just now a little flush of scorn.

"Yes, it's true," he remarked, looking away toward the clothes hanging from pegs on the wall.

"What's true?" she asked.

"That you went to Calvin," said he. "They teach the retort squelching at Calvin in a way no other institution can imitate."

The girl laughed. "Why, did you

doubt that I went there before?" she inquired.

"My dear Miss Clifford," said Phelps, "I doubt everything a press agent tells me, till I've proved it for myself."

"I don't know much about press agents, yet," said the girl, "except that Mr. Miller made me go and have some pictures taken the other day. I s'pose they'll get into the papers and somebody in my class will see them and spread the news. But I should have been recognized sooner or later, anyhow. I don't care much."

"Don't you want to be recognized?" asked Phelps. "What did you go on the stage for?"

"Yes, but not in the chorus, not in these," she said, one of her feet emerging for an instant from the shadow of the chair, disclosing a well moulded length of pink stocking.

"Well, one has to begin at—at the bottom in every profession," said Phelps, with a laugh.

"What was your class at Calvin?" he continued, with commonplace soberness, when he perceived his remark told on her merely as a moral precept.

"Fourteen," she answered. "But I only went there a year and a half. My uncle was sending me through—I've no father or mother—and he lost some of his money, so I thought I'd do something for myself. I tried for a year to get on the stage, and finally I had to begin in the chorus, because I could dance and sing, but I couldn't persuade any manager that I could act. Some day I'll show them, though, you wait!"

"Bully for you," said Phelps. "I'm sure you will. May I ask your name? I have a cousin in Fourteen at Calvin, Daisy Morse."

"Oh, was Daisy your cousin?" cried the girl. "Don't tell her about me yet—please don't! My name is really Jane Price. Not much like Zenobia Clifford, is it?"

"Sec'nd act! Sec'nd act! Chorus on!" came the monotonous high voice of the call boy passing by outside. Phelps rose to go. "I'm glad to have met you, Miss Price," he said. "I wish you

561

all success, and a speedy graduation from
*these,* he concluded, glancing toward
her feet.

The girl rose, too, and put her hand
in his. Her bare shoulders gleamed
mottled through the powder in the
oblique light, and he could not fail to
see the rise and fall of her bosom, unless
he had looked away. Above the odor of
paint and powder he could detect the
faint, subtle perfume of her skin.

"So you are Daisy Morse's cousin!" she said. "I might have danced with you at Junior Prom if I'd stayed in college. You went, didn't you?"

He nodded. "I wish you had stayed," he said. It sounded very flat to him; but what else could he have said? After all, it was pleasant to be nice to her!

"Please come to see me again," she concluded, "and we'll try to make up for it."

Then he felt the warmth of her hand slip out of his palm, and presently he found himself at the rear of the auditorium. Glancing back on the stage, he saw her leading the file of the chorus out of the wings into view, all of them bent in impossible attitudes and facing the audience with automatic smiles.

"She's got a great shape, that Clifford," said the voice of Billy Miller behind him.

"Billy," said Phelps, "I told you once
you were a damn fool. But I'm much
obliged to you. Good night."

When Phelps reached the sidewalk he transferred the epithet he had applied to Billy to himself. But when he had reached his apartment he sat down and wrote a letter to his cousin Daisy. He told her that he had met a great friend of hers, Jane Price, now on the stage, and described her as a most charming girl.

"That will get a rise out of Daisy," he smiled, "if Miss Price is not a thoroughbred!"

Then he mailed the letter and sat down to the Buddhist Quarterly, for which he was a regular subscriber. But whether he pondered on Om or the contact of Miss Price's palm is, perhaps, an open question. At any rate, before

Daisy's answer came he had called again
at the theatre and sat in "the bath
house," as he laughingly insisted on call-
ing her dressing room, and looked long
at the indolently innocent face, which
both baffled and attracted him. There
was something pitifully incongruous, it
seemed to him, between that face and
the paint which at close range disfigured
it, still more between it and the pink
stockings exposed above the knee to the
gaze of a thousand people, many of them
men whose thoughts Phelps knew only
to well. Instinctively his eye followed
his reflections, and the girl drew her feet
closer under the chair.

"Please don't remind me of it," she said, blushing.

"I beg your pardon," said he, a little surprised that she should have made any comment on his act, which had been so evidently unconscious. "But I was thinking—"

"You mustn't think," she said, hastily,
with a laugh.

He looked at her sharply, a touch of
slow New England anger in his face.
But the same innocent countenance con-
fronted him. She was quite unconscious
of his anger or of any cause for it. He
decided that she was merely still very
young, and perhaps a little silly as yet.
She was guaging him by the sophomores
she had known; he remembered a few
sophomore conversations of his own
and was charitable.

"I won't," he said. "It isn't the fashion for critics, anyway. But I should like to ask you to come to the Boston Symphony concert with me tomorrow afternoon. You ought to hear some good music once in a while, to compensate you for singing every night in 'The Isle of Pepper'."

"Oh, I should love to come," cried the girl. "I just love good music! Where shall I meet you?"

"I'll call at your home," he said.

The girl thought a moment. "It isn't a nice place where I live," she said. "But I can't afford anything better. You see, I'm showing my uncle that I can earn my own living—"

"I began at the bottom, too," said

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562

Phelps, gravely, “and lived in a hall bedroom. What is the address?”

The girl gave it to him, and he rose to depart. She put her hand in his again, and stood close to him, her bosom brushing his coat. “You are a very nice man,” she said, smiling up at him. “I wish you were our stage manager, he is horrid. He’s nice to me, and that’s the horridest part.”

“I wish I were,” said Phelps, smiling down at her. “I would promote you at once—into long skirts.”

“‘Sh!” said the girl, laying her finger on his lips.

Now Phelps was not accustomed to have young women lay their fingers on his lips at a second meeting, but he was too polite to remonstrate. And when he had left the theatre the memory of her touch was so pleasant that it did not occur to him to be vexed.

The next morning came a letter from his cousin Daisy. “The nerve of that Price girl! it began, “I her dear friend! I should like to catch her Daisying me! I suppose you think she’s pretty—most men do. But she’s common, just plain common. Her uncle tried to keep her in college, but the life wasn’t gay enough for her, she didn’t have men admirers enough. I suppose she has enough now, if even critics fall at her feet! Well, I hope she gets on, I’m sure. Her uncle disowned her when she went on the stage, into a chorus, I believe. Is she playing Lady Macbeth now, or Becky Sharp? You forgot to tell me that!!”

“My, but Daisy’s vitriolic, even for a Calvin senior!” said Phelps, with a smile. “Miss Jane Price must have been extraordinarily pretty, even as a Freshman.”

From which speech it may be inferred that he had passed the point where he was open to conviction.

It began to snow by noon, the first fall of the season, which melted to slush on the sidewalks as soon as it fell. Maurice called a cab and drove to the address the girl had given him. It was in a cross street west of the Tenderloin, a shabby house in a row of shabby houses, though much fine linen was being held up by girls who were passing. Here were the

homes of the chorus girls, or rather the temporary abiding places—rents were cheap here and the chorus girl’s name does not stand opposite a princely figure—not on the theatrical payroll, at any rate. Phelps knocked at the door, which was opened by a slatternly servant, who took his card and left him standing in the dingy hall, which smelled of cabbage. His memory oddly reverted to that story by Mrs. Deland in “The Wisdom of Fools,” which made symbolic use of a gilded snow shovel on the parlor wall, and it seemed to him that even gilded snow shovels were not so bad as cabbage. Moreover, his cousin Daisy would have approved of the girl in the story. But at this point in his reflections there was a rustle of skirts on the stairs, and an ungloved hand was put into his own.

She looked quite as sweet as a picture, her innocent face free from any color but the rose of health, rising out of an encircling feather boa, as she nestled beside him into the cushions of the cab, pulling on her glove under the rug. And there was no smell of cabbage now. Maurice forgot his reflections and gave himself up to the enjoyment of her presence.

“It was so good of you to come in a taxi,” she said. “It’s so sloppy to-day, and besides, we rehearsed all morning, and I am too tired to walk a step.”

She sighed contentedly and sank back with a luxurious relaxation of her whole body.

“Oh, it’s so good to ride!” she said again.

The typical audience which gathers in Carnegie Hall when the Boston Symphony Orchestra plays was gathered there on this afternoon, but Maurice noted that his companion did not seem in the least out of place among them. Several of his friends, including a classmate and the music critics, bowed to him and looked with pleased curiosity at the girl. He took his seat in the mellowest mood for music.

The program that day was blissfully old-fashioned. It included the Mozart E-flat symphony and Weber’s “Invita-

563

tion to the Dance.” Phelps was a wor-
shiper at the shrine of Mozart—his musi-
cal creed was the creed of melody and
the pure joyousness of song, the joyous-
ness which always in the greatest songs
trembles on the verge of tears. No music
is more melodious, fuller of the joy of
singing, than Mozart’s, and none at-
tains, perhaps, more fully the ultimate
sadness of beauty, for there is no jarring
note of sentimentality, of affected lachri-
mosity, of sensuality, either in his morn-
ing hymns or sunset andantes. As the
violins sang out the theme, Phelps turned
instinctively to his companion, to catch
in her face the joyous response to his
own enthusiasm and delight. But she
only looked at him questioningly; she did
not understand! The immortal minuet
came on, and still she did not understand.
When the exquisite performance was
over, she said, “How pretty—I wish
they’d play it again!”

But Maurice reflected to how many
good and noble souls a symphony is as
a book sealed seven fold, and smothered
his attitude with a smile. Then “The
Invitation to the Dance” sounded from
the platform. When the strings caught
up the throbbing melody of the waltz
movement, he was aware that his com-
panion suddenly became alive to the
music. Her eyes half closed, her lips
parted, and her whole person responded,
if almost imperceptibly, to the insidious
rhythm. But it was a natural, a sub-
conscious response, and the pretty face
lost nothing of its indolent innocence.
“How nigh is rhythm to our dust!”
thought Phelps, and he speculated on the
relation of the dance to emotion. He
didn’t dance himself.

After the concert they went to dinner
together. "It is only fitting to finish out
the day in company, isn't it?" he inquired.

"Of course," she laughed, "and I shall
be glad to escape that awful cabbage.
We have it every night. Bah, how I
hate it! I don't know how much longer
I can stand it!"

"One has to stand lots of things until
the first boost comes," said he.

"Some of the girls go out with all

sorts of horrid men just to get a square
meal,” she continued.

"Look here," said Phelps, "why don't
you chuck the whole business—you're
quite too good for it, you know—for the
best line of it—and go back to your
home?"

The girl hesitated an instant. "No,"
she said, "I won't take any more of
uncle's money now; he can't spare it.
Besides, I want to do something, amount
to something, and I've got more show
on the stage than anywhere else."

It was a brave lie, bravely told, if his
cousin Daisy was right. But why, after
all, he reflected, should she confess to
him that her uncle had thrown her over?
It was his fault for putting her in a
corner. He answered by applauding her
sentiments, and they went on with the
dinner, which she ate daintily, like an
epicure, but with an epicure's appetite
also.

Having no engagement and no work
that evening, Maurice accepted her in-
vitation to spend the time in her dressing
room, whence he was periodically ejected
when the changes of costumes occurred.
He passed these intervals in childish de-
light watching the exits and the entrance
of the players from behind the scenes, the
comedian's stage grin changing to a look
of solemn boredom as he emerged
through the wings, the soubrette's frown
of vexation melting into a dental smile
of noonday brilliance as she heard the
sounds of her cue.

Within Miss Clifford's dressing room
(he called her Miss Clifford at her re-
quest) their talk was of nothing that
he could recall later as having the
slightest importance, but it was very
pleasant to chat in the easy atmosphere
of this room where intimate garments
could not escape exposure and the con-
ventions were less inexorably apparent in
their sway. Of course a girl could not
remain long in comfort with her feet
under her chair, and his companion un-
consciously relaxed her graceful limbs,
even resting one toe on the trunk where
Maurice was seated. The odor of the
room was insidious—perfume and powder
mingling scents with the individual frag-

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564

rance of the girl herself, warm from the exertion of dancing. Phelps was conscious of these things, but conscious only as a man who experiences something apart from the habitual ways of his life, and, feeling that he is slipping into new and untried regions, enjoys even while he struggles. Phelps, intellectual sometimes to the point of austerity, yet keenly sensitive to impressions, was here immersed in new impressions, subtle sensations. Only he knew that he was slipping into spaces where the intellect has no place. But, after all, one can always return at will, can one not? So when Maurice rose at length to go, and the girl asked appealingly if he would not wait just ten minutes till the final chorus and then take her home—"Just to finish up the day!" she urged—he consented readily.

It was starlight when they emerged from the theatre, and she refused the cab he thought it polite to proffer.

"You're not a millionaire," she said, chummingly tucking her arm in his, "and you shan't squander cabs on me when it's not stormy. We'll walk."

On her doorstep he paused. But she drew him into the dimly lighted hall. "It's too cold out there," she said. "I want to thank you for a lovely, lovely day. You're the only bright spot I've had since I went on the stage—except my work, of course. Please, you're all I've had that's been like life used to be. Think of riding in a carriage and eating lovely food with a nice man! I haven't thought of this cabbage smell"—she sniffed with a comical aspect of disgust—"all day."

She put her hand into his. The pretty face looked up out of the encircling boa smiling gratefully, and it was very close to his. He did not let go her hand, and she made no effort to withdraw it. Maurice felt his nerves grow tense in the silence; it may be his grasp of her fingers tightened, for she swayed closer to him and their bodies grazed. He could feel that the mood gripped her, too. His face bent slowly over hers and their lips met.

"Good night," she said from the lower

stair. "Come to see me again soon."

"Of course I will," he answered.

Maurice swung southward through Greenwich village, silent and almost deserted, to Washington Square, and lit the lamp in his library. He forgot to light his customary before-bed pipe, however, sitting moodily in an arm chair. Presently a red bound book caught his eye on the table. He picked it up. It was a life of James Martineau, and the leaves fell open to a photogravure of Watt's portrait of that austere and beautiful soul. Phelps looked at the picture a long time. Then he rose, lit a candle, went into the bedroom and studied his own features in the glass. Presently he went back and thrust the book into the farthermost corner of the case.

But in the days that followed he found it far easier to keep Martineau out of sight than Miss Clifford out of mind. Spurred on by the painful prick of his Puritan conscience, his inherited propensity to introspection, he went over and over the ground. Of what parts was his interest in this girl propounded? How much of real feeling that he need not be ashamed of, how much of temporary excitement induced by a pretty face in close proximity to his, brought about that kiss? What construction would she put upon his act, what would she think him to be, a cheap, vulgar flirt, or a lover? What sort of girl was this to allow the liberty? Surely, with that innocent face, some not ignoble feeling lay behind her acquiescence? Where was it all to end? So he played with doubts, and at last reached the sensible conclusion he had been the victim of an unworthy and juvenile impulse of his rawer nature, and there was but one thing to do now—keep away from the girl.

Comforted by this solution of his complexities, he called at the theatre and was ushered to Miss Clifford's dressing room!

The memory of their last parting constrained him as he greeted her, but she was quite at her ease and unaffectedly glad to see him.

"I've been looking for you every night.

565

Where have you been?” she said reproachfully.

“Busy,” he replied.

“I went out to dinner last night after the theatre with three or four of the other girls and some men—friends of theirs, and horribly rich,” she continued. “We had lots of bully things to eat, and too much to drink, but—but—”

“But what?” he questioned.

She glanced at him an instant, colored, and looked down at her toe. “They were not the sort of men you are,” she said. “They—they were rather coarse.” Then she suddenly broke out vehemently. “They wouldn’t have said the things they did before the girls in their own set; what right had they to before me? What right had they?”

“Did the other girls seem to mind?” asked Phelps, gravely.

The girl shook her head, and said nothing.

“Why did you go with them, then?” asked he.

“Because I was sick of the smell of cabbage, and hungry, and tired, and— and lonely,” she replied.

Phelps looked at her face. It was almost childish now, and there was a suspicious moisture on her penciled eyelashes.

“Poor girl,” he said gently, taking her hands in his.

There was a sudden rush of tears at this, as she buried her face against his coat. He sat down on the trunk, and she nestled to him on his knee, one bare arm about his neck. She kept her face hidden on his shoulder for a few minutes, and he could feel her fragrant bosom settle slowly to composure. Presently she sat up. “Now I must fix my face again before the second act,” she said with a laugh. “I guess I’ve left half my health on your coat. Please, you’ll stay and take me home to-night?”

“Of course I will,” he reassured her, and he kissed her by way of pledge.

He took her to supper first, but not to the usual haunts of her class, and when he finally reached his own apartment it was with the satisfaction of an evening well spent.

“Poor girl,” he said, “she wants some one to love her.”

And as he climbed into bed, the memory of her kiss on his lips, of the warmth of her arm about his neck, he fancied that he was the man to do it.

But the press of several busy theatrical weeks, which came, as they have a fashion of doing, in a lump, the sudden illness of the Star's musical critic, and a run of social engagements kept Phelps from seeing her, except for the briefest calls, for some time, though she was constantly in his thoughts. The very keenness of his intellectual life during this period perhaps conspired to make him forget the disparity between their minds, even to welcome as a relief the earthly quality of his feeling for her, the thought of her innocent face smiling through its tears, the touch of her person, the fragrant femininity of her. He conceived it almost as a duty to keep her informed by note of his continued interest, and she accepted his apologies for his absence, though sometimes with rather a petulant forgiveness.

At last, one clear, cold Sunday afternoon, he went for her to take a walk. They tramped down through the older quarter of the town, then through the stretch of lower Fifth Avenue, by the two good brown churches that help to give this neighborhood a tone of peace and antiquity and aristocratic homelikeness no other section of the great city possesses, and found themselves passing his apartment.

“I live up there,” he said, pointing upward.

“Where those pretty Japanese curtails are?” she cried. “Let’s go up.”

“But we have no chaperone,” he objected.

“As if that made any difference in this big city when we’re all alone here,” said she.

He still looked dubious.

“I’m so cold,” she remarked, as if addressing the air, shivering pathetically.

The prospect of perching her on the settle before his fire was certainly alluring. After all, what could be the harm? He smiled and led the way.

566

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The light of a declining winter afternoon made a pleasant obscurity in his well stocked library. There was a lingering odor of good pipe smoke, and ease and well-bred luxury were indicated by the furniture. He lighted the kindlings under the logs on the hearth, and together they watched the flames dance up and reflect on the gold mats of his water colors. Then the girl threw aside her wraps, sank into a Morris chair, and stretched her feet out toward the blaze. "Oh, I'm so comfortable," she exclaimed. "I'm never going back again. That horrid, nasty, vulgar boarding house—ugh, how I hate it, hate it, hate it!"

"Cheer up! You've made a hit in the show that's the hit of the season. You'll have something better very soon," said Phelps, not criticising for publication now, his conscience perhaps a little relaxed.

She shook her head. "It's slow work," she said. "And all my clothes are wearing out, and I've not money enough to buy new ones, not the kind I want, anyway. I've simply *got* to have a new set of furs, and—and other things."

"They are necessary," said Maurice. "May I smoke?"

"Of course," she said.

He opened his cigarette case, took out a cigarette, and was about to close the case again, when she interrupted. "Mayn't I have one?" she said.

Phelps looked at her in surprise. "Do you—smoke?" he asked. He was curiously old fashioned when it came to the woman he loved—like most New Englanders.

"Why not?" said she. "The other girls do. One has to do some things to be sociable."

"You didn't use to?" he said.

"I didn't use to drink champagne, either," she replied; "but now I like it. It's all in the way you look at it."

"Oh, you know it isn't!" the man exclaimed.

"Now you're angry with me," she coaxed, rising from the chair and coming over to him. "Please don't be. I can't help it if you won't come to see me, and I get lonesome and homesick and go

out with the other girls. I can't live cooped up in a little dirty room that smells of cabbage, all by myself. You'd study, I suppose, and read all these books of yours. But I have to see people and be talked to and made to forget the horrid cabbage."

She sat down on his lap as she spoke, and kissed him.

"Please don't be cross with me," she said. "It's so lovely up here, just with you and the fire and all the big chairs and pictures and books. Don't spoil it."

"I won't," he answered, putting his arm around her. "Forgive me, little Iris."

The name passed his lips almost unconsciously, in response to some half suggestion her words evoked. She sat straight up in his lap.

"Don't call me that!" she cried. "Oh, don't call me that!"

She looked him hard in the face, with a pleading, frightened expression he could not understand. "You don't think me that?" she said. "Tell me you don't think me that. I don't care what any of the rest think, but you mustn't think that!"

"Of course, I don't," he said soothingly. "I don't know what made me say such a foolish thing. But tell me who 'the rest' are?"

"Oh, anybody, everybody, the chorus and the audience and the Shuberts," she said, reassured and happy, nestling into his arms.

They sat for a long time so, while the fire burned low and evening came on.

"Now play me that waltz we heard at the Symphony," she said, at length, drowsily.

He lit a candle on the piano, hunted out the score, and played the waltz. The girl moved over and curled up on the couch. When he trailed off the last notes softly into silence she sighed. He went to her, and she drew him down beside her, kissing him passionately.

"No, the rest don't matter," she whispered. "Let me go to sleep now, like this!"

Maurice felt the swell of her breast gently on his side, the warmth of her

567

breath on his cheek. Her eyes were closed, and her fingers wandered sleepily through his hair. He gathered her to him for a moment, and his own eyes closed as he kissed her hotly on the lips, hotly and yet with a passionate tenderness. Then he rose suddenly. "Come, we must go to dinner," he said in a peremptory voice.

After dinner he had an engagement, and he left her at her door. "I'm going home—to New England—for a week or more to-morrow," he said, shortly. "I shall not see you for a bit. Good-bye."

The girl faced him suddenly. "You are not going to come to see me any more!" she cried.

"Why, of course I am; how ridiculous!" he protested.

"Oh, you say that," she went on. "But I know better, and you are not coming to see me any more!"

"What makes you think that?" he questioned.

"You know what makes me," she said. "Please don't leave me now; I need you so, I need you so! Please don't go home now."

"But I must," he said. "Mother has sent for me to look after some of her business; you can't need me as much as she. How can you need me at all? I'll come to see you as soon as I get back, anyway."

"No, you won't; you'll never come to see me again," the girl repeated. "I—I'm sorry I ever met you. I'm sorry I ever let you—" Her voice broke off, and she hastily entered the house and slammed the door behind her.

Maurice walked down the street wondering if it were true that he should never see her again, wondering how she knew that he had, since he bade her rise and go to dinner, been debating this point over and over in his mind, as he began again to debate it, fiercely and without pause. But two courses were open to him now, either he must leave her altogether or ask her to become his wife. His eyes had been opened wonderfully since he awoke a few brief hours ago—opened so wide that he seemed pained by the excess of light, and dizzy.

Life was no longer what it had been; he had reached that terrible point where desire had suddenly declared itself.

To most men of gentle breeding the first revelation of their desire comes as a shock, is for a time something hideous, repellant, perhaps in part because it normally comes when they are but budding into manhood and are as yet unable to understand its significance, to reason out its cosmic rightness. Maurice Phelps was no longer a boy; he knew the full significance of the passion which now for the first time stirred him. He greeted it as a holy and a beautiful thing; and the thought of the girl's answering ardor filled him with unutterable tenderness toward her. He did not doubt her love for him; he did not question, remembering her sweet and innocent face, the purity of her passion, any more than he doubted the purity of his own. True, they were hardly more than chance acquaintances; it had all come up like a summer storm, and burst without much warning. But there was something the more delicious in it for that. So Romeo had loved Juliet, he thought, recalling a notable performance of the play but a few weeks before.

But to marry her? That was a serious step. He and she were living prose in Twentieth Century America, not languorous poetry in olden Verona. What basis had they for happiness when the daybreak of their desire should have passed into the light of common day? When the flame-winged harp player had departed would any white-winged one stand by to make her name "its voluntary" in his heart? That was what he doubted, and what he continued to doubt through coming days, doing his work mechanically (for his call home had been but a thin excuse) and spending long hours in painful introspection.

Phelps was not a cad. No questions of the girl's antecedents or of accidents in her own life troubled him, though in his veins ran the bluest blood of Puritan New England, and the thought of a chorus girl marrying into the stock would doubtless bring honest grief to numerous members of his family. It

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was the girl's lack of mental equipment, of force of character, that troubled him, for he was not blind to weakness, though it was greater than he guessed. He plumbed his emotions toward her and found nowhere the depths of feeling that his brain told him should lie below desire. Was it that there was nothing in the girl to make those depths possible? He was forced to bow in acquiescence to this question. And yet he wanted her so! He missed the sight and sound of her, and his library, where she had rested, was lonely now, so very lonely!

After a few short weeks, that seemed ages, of this self scrutiny, Phelps suddenly left town for the high hills. He would fight it out there, and abide by the decision. Winter held the White Mountains in a grip of storm when he reached Jackson, where there were steam heated rooms to be had. It was several days before he could get out, to begin the trip which had been his regular winter vacation in his undergraduate days, including a climb up the majestic snow drift at the head wall of Tuckerman's Ravine. In spite of all pleading and warnings, he set forth alone on snow-shoes. He knew those mountains, summer and winter, as well as any guide, and had no fear.

In the solemn, cathedral hush of the snow laden spruces, in the great amphitheatre of Tuckerman's Ravine, finally on the windswept heights of Washington, where he looked down on a great white sea petrified into tumultuous yet death like repose, and out across the gray world to the bright blue jewel of Casco Bay on the far horizon, Phelps fought out his battle, a battle of the spirit, like his forefathers before him. Purged of any dross in this great clarity of cold, this "everlasting wash of air," his passion for the girl still burned. A certain sense of duty he owed her, too, who loved him, filled his mind. And perhaps there was not absent the hope men always cherish to lift by their own force a woman to their level. Her feminine weaknesses, her love of luxury, her softness of character, paled before the flame of his affection, and a great resolve came to him to follow the immediate prompt-

ings of his heart, and a great faith that these promptings were the best light he had to walk by.

He arrived at Fabyans late that evening, coming down Washington on the railroad trestle, bearing his knapsack and kettle as lightly as if they had been feathers.

When Maurice reached New York, he found a note from her. It had been waiting for him a week. He tore it open.

"Please come to me," it read. "Please come! I need you so! I told you once, and you wouldn't believe me. I shouldn't tell you again if it weren't so. If you care anything for me, you will come!"

A presentiment of something evil, he could not have said what, made him sick at heart as he read this note, and saw again that it was dated a week before. If anything had happened it would be his fault. It was then almost midnight. But she would hardly have reached home from the theatre. He called a cab, and drove rapidly to her home. One of the other girls in her company was just entering the door as he arrived.

"Will you kindly ask Miss Clifford if she can see me?" he asked. "Just for a moment."

"Clifford went away this mornin', moved," said the girl, looking at him with a curious laugh.

"Where?" he asked.

"Now where did she say she was goin'? Some swell place up Fifty-seventh-st. way," the girl reflected. Oh, I know, the Dunster; that's the name—the Dunster."

"Know where it is?" Phelps asked the chauffeur.

"Yes," he replied.

"Drive there," said Phelps, climbing into the cab.

"Pretty late, sir," said the hall boy, when Maurice inquired for Miss Clifford.

"I think she'll see me," said Phelps, calmly. The hall boy glanced at the cab outside, then at Phelps. He seemed reassured.

"You Mr. Lechstone?" he asked.

Phelps gulped back something that

569

seemed to rise from his breast and choke
him.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then you’re to go right up,” he said.
“I beg pardon, but I never saw you be-
fore, and the lady was most particular in
her orders. Shall I send away the taxi?”

“Not yet,” said Phelps, finding his
voice with difficulty.

“Right down the hall,” said the boy,
stopping the elevator. “Last door at the
end of the corridor.”

Phelps heard the elevator slide down
the chute and jolt to rest at the bottom.
The gate opened, shut; then the house
was still as a tomb. He moved down
the corridor and pressed the bell in the
only door at the end. The latch gave a
little click, and he turned the knob and
entered.

Two minutes later he emerged again,
closed the door in convulsive haste, and
stood back to it, his hands grasping the
knob, his face gone white as death. In
the heavy silence, from behind the door
came the sound of a sob, muffled but
close, then another, and another. The

latch rattled as if the door were being
shaken, sharply at first, then fainter. He
gripped the knob harder, and his face
winced. Then all sounds ceased. He
waited a moment longer, released his
hold, and, staggering down the corridor,
pushed the elevator button.

The next morning Phelps walked into
the city room of the *Star* and laid two
tickets on the city editor's desk.

“Glad to see you back. What are
these?” said the city editor.

“I’ve got to go away again for a few
days; I’ve been called home,” said
Phelps. “Those are the seats for the
new musical show at the Variety to-night.
I wish you’d have it covered.”

“Sure,” the city editor answered.
“Nothing serious the matter at home, is
there?”

“No,” said Phelps. “Everything at
home is all right. That is why I am
going.”

The city editor looked perplexed. But
he used the tickets in person, and the
next morning the *Star* dwelt with par-
ticular function on the beauties of the
chorus.

# Some Recent American Poetry

BY PITTS SANBORN.

T is a coincidence that four Harvard Class Poets of reasonably recent years have emerged in the last twelve-month each with a book of verse. They are Mr. Walter Conrad Arensberg, Mr. Arthur Davison Ficke, Mr. Hermann Hagedorn, and Mr. John Hall Wheelock. Some might be tempted by this phenomenon to descant upon Harvard as a mother of poets, or to discuss the relation of Class Poets to real poets. Saint-Beuve declares that in every man there is a poet that dies young. It is perhaps more interesting to examine the survival of the poet in these four gentlemen than to take up time now with their relation to their *alma mater* or the more or less chance suffrage of the classmates of their youth. A tenor may, in the immortal phrase of Bülow, be a disease, but a poet is a poet.

It would be rather a pity to dwell at length on the latest productions of Mr. Ficke and Mr. Wheelock. In an astonishingly small number of years both gentlemen have succeeded in setting down an astonishingly large number of black marks on white paper. Mr. Wheelock, in particular, has sung of love and its ingredients with an enthusiastic copiousness that suggests a facility in rapid sketching from the model or an ability to dispense entirely with the model that most of his brother bards can only envy. But the spectacle is world-old of those who would sing more if they did sing less.

Mr. Ficke arrests the eye by reason of his title, *Mr. Faust* (Mitchell Kennerley). Like some other Fausts *Mr. Faust* is a play. “The Faust legend set in present-day American surroundings,” is the official description of the work. Of course Faust-up-to-date is no new conceit, but no one is going to deny that it

has new possibilities. Anything has new possibilities. Now, take as an example of the possibilities Mr. Ficke discovers in Faust-up-to-date this characteristic excerpt from a dialogue between Satan and Faust:

SATAN

In my day,

I have relieved far sicker men than you,
My dear friend Faust. And yet I would
not say

Even for a moment that your case is not
A grave one: not so much the case itself,
As what might spring from it. In such a
mood,

Men sometimes have done mad and selfish
things

With consequences sad to view. Some
minds,

Reaching your state, and finding life a
bane,

Decide within themselves that naught can
be

Worse than the present world, and then
set out

To revolutionize, rend, whirl, uproot

The world's foundations. And the mess
they make

Is pitiful to contemplate! Such sweet

And beautiful souls as I have seen go
wrong

Along this path: Shelley—he had your eyes;

And Christ—but I'll not talk theology.

Besides, his churches almost have made
good

His personal havoc....

FAUST

That is not my line.

SATAN

No. no, you keep your head! Now let me
see....

A temporary sedative you require

To bridge the dangerous moment. I suggest

A little course that old Saint Anthony,

Epicure though he was, would grant as
rare

And finely chosen: careless days and
nights—

Delicious gayeties—the Bacchic bowl—

Exquisite company from whom some two

Or three, with golden or with auburn hair,

570

SOME RECENT AMERICAN POETRY

571

A man of taste might choose to solace him
In sunlight or in starlight—while the lure
Of subtle secrets in those yielding breasts
Spice the preceding revelries....

FAUST

Go tell

That tale to college boys, whose lonely
dreams

Have shaped Iseult of Ireland, Helen of
Troy,

As end of heart's desire—and, lacking
these,

Clasp chorus-Aphrodites. But I know
That from the topmost peak of ecstacy

Falls a straight precipice; half-times the
foot

Misses the peak—but never mortal step
Has missed the gulf beyond it. And I see
Where, in night's gorgeous dome, to-mor-
row waits

With cold insistence. Me you cannot lure
With this poor opiate. And I beg of you
Not needlessly to tax your mental powers
By now suggesting the delights of drink:
I know them; and they give me head-
aches.

Admitting this passage as typical, does
one need further proof of the trite pedes-
trianism of the performance? The play
is saddled with a very serious introduc-
tion from the pen of Mr. Edwin Björk-
man. But in spite of prefatory pom-
posities and editorial admonishings the
impression on a rank outsider will not
down that in a hundred and fifteen pages
of verse, chiefly blank, Mr. Ficke's in-
dustrious effort has added nothing of
moment to the interpretation of the
Faust legend, nothing of moment to the
verse which is poetry.

Mr. Hermann Hagedorn has not hesi-
tated to call his volume *Poems and
Ballads* (The Macmillan Company), the
name under which Algernon Charles
Swinburne offered the world the fieriest
vintage of his early years, and which
twice later he repeated. However, there
is no monopoly of a name like *Poems
and Ballads* and Mr. Hagedorn, in choos-
ing it may have desired to set one think-
ing, as he has. What one may think
most definitely is the danger that lies in
saying over again what someone else has
said better.

There is music in my head,
By day and night it dins—
A far away, sweet, silken thread
Of ghostly violins;

is all very pretty, but it has the fatal
misfortune to make you think of Fran-
cis Thompson and Verlaine, and then
you forget it.

Such, after all, is the real difficulty
with Mr. Hagedorn's volume. A careful
reading of it shows that in versification
he has more skill and more taste than
most of his competitors, in the employ-
ment of words and images a finer sense
of fitness. Indeed, his technical accom-
plishment is so considerable that it might
well serve to nourish a more personal
passion, a hotter fire than the rather
tepid flame which burns prettily through
this volume. In writing so I am aware
that Mr. Hagedorn has come in for pur-
ple and swollen praise. If he can forget
that, he will, some of his readers feel,
have a better chance of inspiring praise
a hundred years hence.

Mr. Arensberg, the eldest, academically, of the Class Poets, I take up last in the Harvard group, and it is as truly a case of the last shall be first. Mr. Arensberg's volume (an initial volume, by the way), is entitled quite simply *Poems* (Houghton, Mifflin Company) and it is also entitled correctly. It is a slim book and not a noisy one, but each of the fourscore or so of original pieces and translations between its covers is in greater or less degree a poem. In a day when so many young verse-makers rejoicing in the glory of being quite unshackled have often let slip their minds entirely that their true purpose after all is to write poetry, Mr. Arensberg has written in harmony with the most fastidious traditions of English verse, even when he has seen fit to treat verse with the greatest freedom. His volume is for that reason of an importance out of all proportion to its quantity, and also for another reason, a quality of mind that has rarely been found in English poetry, though rather often in modern French poetry—a whimsical treatment of the things of the senses and the spirit, a fanciful juggling with thought and word, in no wise contradictory to depth of feeling. There is a high spiritual beauty in Mr. Arensberg's poems and a profound underlying sense of the things which are unending that sometimes find

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572

expression in a sort of superearthly, ben-
eficent raillery. Du Maurier in that de-
scription of Trilby's singing which the
world has not yet forgotten speaks of
the "celestial smile."

Of course Mr. Arensberg has his lit-
erary ancestors. Athena scorned the
ordinary ways of birth, but had a pro-
genitor in the brain of Jove. Mr. Arens-
berg derives (to use the ugly word) to
a considerable extent from the group of
nineteenth century French poets whom
English readers class in a general way
as symbolists, in particular Jules La-
forgue and Paul Verlaine, but those who
are bent on seeking after such things
might trace the influence of both Ros-
settis, Shelley, Shakespeare, and the
Greeks.

A pious tribute Mr. Arensberg has
paid his French forbears by including in
his volume a section given over to Eng-
lish renderings of pieces by Gérard de
Nerval, Baudelaire, Laforgue, and Ver-
laine, which, for the combination of an
almost literal closeness to the original
language with an unswerving regard for
English idiom have rarely if ever been
equalled by that accepted laureate of
translations from the modern French,
Mr. Arthur Symons. Let anyone who is
curious to observe the mechanism of
masterly translation compare the orig-
inal of Jules Laforgue's "Conceits"
with the Arensberg version, from which
I quote these delicious couplets:

Ah! the Moon, the Moon obsesses me...
Do you think there is a remedy?

Dead? But may she not be hereby numb,
Drunken with the cosmic opium?

O rose-window with thine efflorescence
Tomb-like in the Temple of Quiescence,

Thou persistent in thine attitude,
While I stifle with my lonely mood.

The whimsical originality of thought
that Mr. Arensberg shares with his
Gallic kindred stands out in a group of
his own quatrains, of which I quote two.
First there is the one "To a Goaded
Sheep":

If it had known the journey's end, the
dunce,

Limping along, the mimic of its pain,

It might have known there wasn't much to
gain—

It might have rested, and been killed at
once.

And this, “The Masterpiece”:

I think ere any early poet awed
Men with a haunted image of Mankind,
The supreme poet who imagined God
They buried in a grave gone out of mind.

This smiling, whimsical utterance of a
thought original and profound is the
most individual quality of this volume.
Applied to lighter things, and in a way
to rejoice those who insist on the some-
thing they love to call "modernity," this
same whimsicality has delightful play in
two vignettes of Paris, "Jardin du Loux-
embourg" and "Avenue de l'Opéra." It
also finds play in the modern, if you like,
and startlingly novel interpretation of an
antique myth in the poem entitled "Chry-
seis," too long for quotation here, but
remarkable not only for its daring view-
point, but for its bewitching rhythm,
dancing, as of the crossing of the Gre-
cian water.

The whimsy is dropped, but the nov-
elty is even more startlingly present in
the sonnet "Atalanta," having as subject
her who fleetly ran at Calydon. Here
is the sonnet:

I think that Atalanta turned her face
Backward along the course and saw the
mart,

Desperately defeated as he ran,
Throw down a golden apple upon a place
Where she must pass again and win the
race.

She scanned his eyes—what care had she
to scan

The shame of gold that was to break her
ban

Of girlhood?—and she faltered in her pace.
Oh then she feared the fear to be a bride,
And feared the wind that had laid bare
her thigh;

She burned to blushes, but she paused and
bowed

Above the apple till he passed her by;

She hid her burning in his dusty cloud

And heard the trailing laughter of his
pride!

No doubt the aim of all serious poetry
is to get to the quick of things, but
how often does it follow its aim? Here
is a poem that is like a knife driven into
the marrow and then turned in the

SOME RECENT AMERICAN POETRY

573

wound. There are examples aplenty of short poems that have done this very thing—Burns, Browning, Mrs. Browning,—but it is not given every day to a young American poet to attain this terrible vividness, this terrible beauty. One such poem in a first volume forges the bonds for its maker in an alliance perilously high. The other sonnets in the volume are all characterized by stateliness of measure and nobility of thought. Particularly fine are the second of the two, entitled “Time’s Losses,” that “On a Macedonian Tomb,” and “The Pietà of Michel Angelo.”

Very typical, too, of their author's talent are the pure lyrics, of which “During Music” is a lovely example. In a stanza of “Night” one discerns a disembodied beauty in the antiphonal vowel sound as of the softly echoing tones of horn, clarinet and oboe in some orchestral nocturne or serenade:

> Hollow above the hollow
> Of star-far dome,
> What way is there to follow
> Home?

In “Romanticism” definiteness of thought quite precise informs imagery fairly gorgeous—again a poem too long to quote, save one stanza, for the imagery:

> The breath of lilies on still air
> That toll like censers full of myrrh,
> The weaving of a woman's hair
> Which breathes the frankincense of her.

The fragment “Tristan and Iseult of the White Hands,” is written in a blank verse that shows a singularly sure instinct for that most difficult medium of expression. The reader will find beautifully expressed in it the patient, wistful devotion of the neglected Iseult of Brittany:

> I have no gift of comfort any more
> To bring thee quiet breathing in the night,
> For all my magic is nothing more than
> love,
> And all my love is turned from me aside
> While from my breast thou gazest to the
> sea.

and the splendid yearning of the dying Tristan, as he awaits the ship that carries to him the other Iseult:

> But all my heart hath only this desire,
> That the warm woman flower of overseas,
> Iseult of Cornwall hear my call and come,
> Crossing the seas, and hide me in her hair,
> And hold me in her fragrance till I die.

Neither Wagner nor Swinburne has made this fragment superfluous, and how it futilizes the anaemic blunderings of Matthew Arnold, save for the one ringing couplet!

> Any notice of this remarkable flight of poems without a word more concerning the brief section at the end devoted to translations would be unpardonably inadequate. As hinted above there is evidently a theory of translation underlying these samples, embracing a close fidelity to the original that is a finer thing than the Dryden-old counsel of the “metaphrase.” But this closeness, as nearly as possible a literalness, would be dangerous in any hands other than those of a master of the craft. Mr. Arensberg is not only a practicing theorist in the matter, but a poet, and he is, moreover, a poet with a special genius for translation. The couplets so happily rendered from La-forgue are an insufficient illustration of this brief but important section of the volume. The two sonnets from far older French writers, Ronsard and Du Bellay, that stand first, seem unsurpassable examples of felicity in translating poetry. Perhaps the Ronsard sonnet is the better example of an absolutely flowing English version, so natural and inevitable that if one did not know the contrary one would swear it had originally been written in English. The Du Bellay sonnet resists the translator with obstacles harder to surmount. The result in the Arensberg version, if not voicing the sextet in so smooth a music, is with its faintly dissonant notes even more fascinating to the ear and to the mind, and the deep, universal feeling of the poem is expressed in words of such unaffected beauty that it is scarcely possible to read them with eyes quite dry. Here it is:

> Happy is he who like Ulysses travels far,
> Or like the one who made the conquest of
> the Fleece,

> And then returns, laden with lore and
> memories,

> To pass the remnant of his life where kindred
> are!

574

THE TREND

Alas, when shall I see again the smoke up-
glide

Above my little town, and in what time of
year

See once again the garden of my home
austere,

Which is for me a province, and so much
beside?

Pleases me more the mansion that my
fathers knew

Than the facades of Roman courts spec-
tacular:

Pleases me more than mighty marble the
slate fine,

Than the Italian Tiber more the Gallic
Loire,

And more my little Lyré than Mount
Palatine,

And more than ocean wind the softness of
Anjou.

No one who really cares for poetry,
whether considering the original pieces
or the translations in this little volume,
can do otherwise than rejoice in the
revelation of a new poet and look for-
ward with longing to the appearance of
another volume from the pen of Mr.
Arensberg, but when that comes it is
possible to hope that it will be a little
larger. The fastidiousness of taste that
has ruled the present volume has in-
deed made of every piece in it a true
poem, but there is an unmistakable
element that quantity plays in any man's
work, heartily as some may wish to
deny the fact. By sheer force of quant-
ity the sum total of effect in Mr. Arens-
berg's case may be carried to still higher
levels.

Turning from the Harvard group,
one encounters the vociferous procla-
mations of the noisemakers—I mean
Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, Mr.
Louis Untermyer, and Mr. Arturo Gio-
vannitti. Making a noise always has
had and always will have its uses, for
making a noise attracts attention and
at times superinduces awe. Messrs.
Lindsay, Untermyer, and Giovannitti
go to it as merrily and frankly as a
brass band. Mr. Lindsay's book (Gen-
eral William Booth Enters into Heaven
and Other Poems. Mitchell Kennerley)
has been quoted from so widely, especi-
ally the title poem, that further quota-
tion is superfluous. There is a simple
directness of thought and a breeziness

of utterance about Mr. Lindsay's verse,
an open air quality, that give it an
attractiveness even to those who fail to
see in it any very considerable poetic
distinction.

"Sweet Mary, make me clean," the
poet prays, "Thou rainstorm of the soul,
Thou wine from worlds unseen." The
reader may find the first attribution de-
lightfully fresh, be forced to reject the
second emphatically.

Mr. Untermyer and Mr. Giovanitti
are revolutionaries. They are full of
thunderous intensities. Mr. Untermyer
calls his book *Challenge* (The Century
Company). There is a certain force, a
rather dense force, I admit, in the way
Mr. Untermyer carries off his title that
gives his work an impressiveness that
a versifier like Mr. Hermann Hagedorn,
for instance, with more technique and
a finer taste, misses. It is a rather pre-
tentious method—the author makes no
more bones about getting up steam than
a locomotive, but like that efficient in-
vention he does arrive somewhere. As
it happens there is a good deal more
truth than poetry in what Mr. Unter-
myer writes—truth may be beauty and
beauty truth, but truth can be very
leaden prose. Technical freedom as
well as social freedom is a part of Mr.
Untermyer's professed creed, yet tech-
nical freedom is often nothing else than
technical poverty.

I never knew the earth had so much gold—
The fields run over with it, and this hill
Hoary and old,

Is young with buoyant blooms *that flame
and thrill*.

The italics are my own, for they ex-
pose just the sort of unexpressive,
superfluous rhetoric which muddles
much of Mr. Untermyer's verse. Up
to that point the lines quoted are typical
enough of his best writing, though not
charged, of course, with his social mes-
sages.

Mr. Giovannitti in *Arrows in the
Gale* (Hillacre Bookhouse) is the
noisier writer and, I suspect, the more
interesting. The thundering hate that
his warmest admirers find seated dark-
ling on the brow of his muse and all

SOME RECENT AMERICAN POETRY

575

that sort of thing are not my present concern, for it is in his poetic style, not in his attitude toward human society, that I am for the moment interested. His rhymed verse, which is cast more or less in the accepted forms is not the stuff by which to judge his worth. It is wordy, rhetorical, and, aside from its noisiness, to tell the unvarnished truth, commonplace and rather feeble. If he had taken pains to inform himself what Rodin happened to have in mind, he would not have addressed the entirely mistaken piece to Rodin's statue "The Thinker." But he is not alone in the amiable sin of making that famous piece of sculpture the excuse for a sermon to which it is not in the least related. What Mr. Giovannitti has done well is to use with telling effect a form which strictly speaking is neither prose nor verse, but partakes of the qualities of each. Two such pieces stand out conspicuously, "The Walker" and "The Cage." I quote the opening paragraphs of the former:

> I hear footsteps over my head all night.
> They come and they go. Again they
> come and they go all night.

They come one eternity in four paces
and they go one eternity in four paces,
and between the coming and the going
there is Silence and the Night and the
Infinite.

For infinite are the nine feet of a prison cell, and endless is the march of him who walks between the yellow brick wall and the red iron gate, thinking things that cannot be chained and cannot be locked, but what wander far away in the sunlit world, each in a wild pilgrimage after a destined goal.

Mr. Giovannitti, though an Italian by
birth, came to America at the age of
seventeen and was for a time a student
of Protestant theology. An acquaint-
ance with the style of the Authorized
Version of the English Bible is obvious
in this passage. "Impassioned prose"
is, I believe, the name the professors
have favored for that sort of writing.
It is scarcely necessary to point out that
besides the Bible and various celebrated
prose writers in the periods that prece-
ded Dryden, certain eminent writers of
the nineteenth century have been held
to excel in that species of prose, notably

De Quincey, Cardinal Newman, Ruskin,
and Pater. So in employing it Mr.
Giovannitti is doing no new thing. There
is also evident in it the influence of that
least typically American (in spite of
what Europeans suppose) of conspicu-
ous American writers, Walt Whitman.

Of course Mr. Giovannitti is a social propagandist and it is to the matter not the manner that many of his readers bow down and worship in his poems. Mr. Donald Evans, the last American poet that I purpose considering here, does not occupy himself in his "Sonnets from the Patagonian" ((Claire Marie) with strikes and revolutions, but with the deeper, more extensive, if on occasion less noisy, thing that underlies both, life. Of the eighteen sonnets that make this little book I shall quote one, "Her Smile":

> Her hidden smile was full of little breasts,
> And with her two white hands she
> stroked her fears,
> The while the serpent peered at her
> pink ears,

> And night's grim hours stalked in, un-
> hidden guests.

A noise was in her eyes that sang of
scorn,

> And round her voice there gleamed a
> nameless dread,

> As though her lips were hungry for
> the dead,

> Yet knew the food of dawn would be
> forlorn.

> The cold hours ebbed, and still she held
> her throne;

> Across the sky the lightning made
> mad play,

> And then the scarlet screams stood forth
> revealed.

> She turned her back and grasped a
> monotone;

> It answered all; she lived again that
> day

> She triumphed in the tragic turnip field.

One may discourse of influences, one
may follow the trails of Jules Laforgue
and Gertrude Stein, but to what good?
There is the essential fact that in the
fantasticalness, the bizarrerie, of these
sonnets are poetry and a finely ironic, a
grimly jaunty criticism of life. At the
time the book first appeared I happened
to be present when into a room where
four or five men of reputed intelligence

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576

and education happened to be gathered
together a herald of many tidings burst,
fairly exploding with the "Sonnets from
the Patagonian." Some of the com-
ments of the four or five men of reputed
intelligence and education I would not
venture to print—no one has since Ra-
belais. The man of classical attainments
declared he could write stuff like that
by the yard. Since he has not, I assume
in the heat of the moment he exagger-
ated his ability. The diplomat poured
oil on heaving waters: "A clever jeu
d'esprit."

"What does it mean?" they challenged
me.

"Don't ask me what it means" I retorted. "You have the book to tell you."

"But what is a 'tragic turnip field?'"
he insisted who knows his Sophocles (I
insist on the possessive pronoun).

O cab wit! Why did I not turn to
our host and say, "One thing, O gener-
ous host, in furnishing this comfortable
room you have forgotten, the mirror
some of your insatiable guests now
crave." No, I missed my trick; I did
not tell them, nor did I tell them the
beauty that abides in such lines as these:

Across the rotting pads in the lily lake
Her gesture floated toward the iris bed.

Mr. George Moore in *Vale* speaks of
"that air of aloofness, of art, which we
all deem necessary, though we differ as
to how it may be obtained." It is pre-
cisely that air of aloofness, of art, which
marks the work of both Mr. Arensberg
and Mr. Evans and sets it apart from
and above that of the other poets of the
twelve-month. The words *aloofness* and
*art* Mr. Moore uses advisedly and I
quote them advisedly, though I know
perfectly well that they are exactly the

words the frantic partisans of Mr. Untermyer and Mr. Giovannitti would seize on as terms of reproach. If one will ponder a moment, one will see that the reproach is not in the words. How comes it that Tourgenieff is a novelist of the first rank and Mr. Howells is not, though there are chapters in *The Rise of Silas Lapham* and *The Landlord at Lion's Head* that suggest the first rank? It is the air of aloofness and of art that have made it possible for Tourgenieff to approach closer in his portrayal than perhaps any other novelist to life, to naked, raw life as it is. Through it he never blunders. He can always portray interestingly the uninteresting, with distinction the commonplace. Not so Mr. Howells. Mr. Arensberg and Mr. Evans have in their poetry the essential perspective. In so far as Mr. Untermyer and Mr. Giovannitti have it also, and only in so far, do their poems have the possibility of enduring life.

Another thing that Mr. Arensberg and
Mr. Evans possess in common is quite
apart from the contents of their poems.
Did Charles Lamb say something some-
where about looking on words with
the eye of a lover? It is the jealous
devotion to the integrity of the word, as
of a lover to his mistress, that gives
their writing its superior intensity and
vitality. The others that I have consid-
ered, even Mr. Hagedorn, seem to look
on words more loosely, to toss them
about a little wantonly, and the words
too often return a drudging service, a
sullen resentment of their bondage.
With Mr. Arensberg and Mr. Evans it
is not love's labor lost. The high rev-
erence of their demeanor wins its very
tangible reward; the words respond by
yielding all their treasures.

# The Vengeance of Israel

BY FRANCIS SIMMONS.

ABBI ISAACS leaned back in his chair, laid one finger impressively upon his nose, a wholly unnecessary bit of emphasis in the premises, and then deliberately expanded into deep chuckles.

"Mein friend," said he, falling into an accent which only marked the moments of intimate discourse, "Why is that there is no place in the whole world, in this great city, but this poor East Side that one must search for romance? Is it that there must be dirt, smell, these grand American streets full of filth, that there must be the tenements and my poor people—is romance nowhere else in New York?"

After this preliminary burst of eloquence the Rabbi paused for breath. Presently the chuckles began again and he continued:

"Only three days ago there came to me a young man, a very nice young man with the soul of a scientist shining through the eyes of a sheep and he says to me:

"Rabbi,' said he, 'can you give me a romance of the Ghetto?'

"Romance of the Ghetto, indeed! Why, in Russia where we were persecuted by day and by night, by fire and by sword, where there was nothing in the whole world of terrors that the Russian Christian can devise that we did not suffer, we were not persecuted by the torture of romance. I say to that young man that, and he looked at me, he with his pencil in his fingers. Is it not so that they think that we have romance in our front rooms as they have bread on the tables of the café?

"Finally, I say to the poor young man with the nice sheep eyes:

"'Young man, I have no romance today. Yesterday there came another man, a word dealer like yourself, and he took

my whole stock, I am out of romances today, but come you next week, I am expecting a new—what you call—oh, yes, consignment.' So the young man with the nice eyes bowed politely and went, but he will come back."

Rabbi Isaacs broke off, rubbed his nose fiercely, glowered at me. Then he pointed across the street, where dozens of masons were busy patching together the thin skeleton of yet another tenement house.

"There is romance for you," he said bitterly, "the only kind of romance you Americans can make yourself, that is the destruction of romance. Greenberg's café gone, gone for another tenement house!"

I looked blankly at the structure, silently accepted the indictment of my whole nation which the Rabbi had uttered, then turned back to him. He was rolling a fresh cigarette with all the deftness of art and experience alike, his fingers revealing the evidence of intimate and continued association with Turkish tobacco. Presently he resumed:

"Is it that you never drank the wine of Bessarabia? No? Never saw Greenberg's café in the old days? Oh my young friend, there was the home of romance, there was the wine of Bessarabia and there were the men who came first here, we who were the handful that lead the way that so many thousands of our people have followed to freedom—and forgetfulness, yes, and forgetfulness." He mused over this for a moment, then half to himself continued: "Nothing but tenements—which was Greenberg's." Then of a sudden his memory took a new turn and he said with sudden intensity:

"Mein friend, did you ever hear a Jew say, 'I was by Plevna. Yes, I, a Jew, fought by Plevna; fought for Rus-

577

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578

sia in the days when Russia needed all her men, even her Jews." Did never some shrivelled up, long bearded, near-sighted Jew, a push-cart peddler, maybe, what you please, did never one such say to you, 'I was by Plevna?' Ah, if one had, that was to see fire. Well, that man Greenberg, he that kept in that café, he came to America when the streets of Odessa first began to run red with Jewish blood. He came to me, who had come a little before, me, who had about me a hundred or two of Russian Jews, and he said:

"Rabbi, I was by Plevna. I, a Jew, fought for Russia, where Jewish blood was shed for Russia, and now, Rabbi, Russia has paid us, the Jew has his usual reward."

"Greenberg opened his little café there, across the street, with his little tables and benches, where the men might play cards by an evening and drink the wine of Bessarabia, yes, the good wine of Bessarabia. His daughter, he brought her from Russia with him, she used to wear the peasant dress of Bessarabia, not the dress that the Americans delight to give the Jew, but the real dress. There in his café met the Russian Jews from the South and there were written the letters that brought so many Jews here, to the land where the Jew may live—yes, live—that seemed something, then."

"You will wonder why already I am telling you so much about Greenberg. Have patience with an old man, whose mind is still of Europe, slow. It was ten years after Greenberg came. He was become what you call a successful citizen. He was well to do. His daughter dressed no more as Russian, she that was eight had become a woman and had married another Russian, from the North out of Lublin in Polon. Every Sabbath went Greenberg to the Synagogue, to the charities he was a good giver and in the time of Shabbouth there was always matzos in his house. Also he knew among the Christians many men. The inspectors of the police and the politicians of the district, they knew Greenberg."

"Ten years and then there came to my house one night, to this very house, to this room, where I am now sitting as I

was then, reading from the old books that the young Jews have forgotten, Adolph Guttman, a Roumanian, his face white with excitement, such is the Roumanian, who is as the Frenchman or the Italian—

"Oh, Rabbi Isaacs, Rabbi Isaacs,' he shouted, as if a whole army of Russian Cossacks were at his heels: 'Greenberg is ein Crist!'

"Then Guttman fell to cursing as is the way of Roumanians. Now amongst my people it is the worst thing that one man can call another, that is to name him a Crist and I looked at Guttman in amazement.

"What idle tale is this that you run about showing like a child with its first penny? What is that make you to curse like a Christian and a public officer, yourself? Does not everyone know that Greenberg is a Jew! Was he not at Plevna, where Jews fought for Russia and have not we all Jews honored him for that he, a Jew, was a soldier? Has that not been his certificate of character? Has not his daughter married with a Jew? What nonsense is this?"

"But there was no weight in my words for Guttman."

"It is no idle word that I have brought to you, Rabbi,' said he, angrily. 'Yesterday came there from Kherson one Lescovatz by name, a greenhorn, driven out by the last Pogrom, who had seen his wife dishonored by Russian soldiers, he whose younger child was slain in the old bad times, before we came. He is crazy, but with fear only. Last night somebody took him to Greenberg's, where they ordered for him some wine of Bessarabia thinking to make him forget his sorrow. But Greenberg, he brought the wine, then Lescovatz, when he saw Greenberg, jumped up in terror and ran shouting from the café. Some people go after him and try to quiet him and ask him what is it that has terrified him, but always he says: "It is a Crist, a Russian Crist, he will kill me," and always he is mad, like an animal, with terror."

"By and by when he is calm again, he tells them that Greenberg is Isovsky, the son of the mayor of Lescovatz's city, a

THE VENGEANCE OF ISRAEL

579

wild boy that his father had disowned, a persecuting Crist?' demanded the men.
the son of a persecuting mayor. 'Will
he not persecute me here,' he cried again
and again. 'Is it not that he will kill me,
a Jew, as did his father kill Jews in
Kherson?'

"So the East Side knew that Green-
berg was a Crist, Greenberg, who had
gone to our synagogue, shared in our
God, grown rich with our help, deserted
his religion and dishonored ours all for
the gold that there was in it. So, when
Guttman, still cursing, went from me, I
thought without regret that that night
there would be a rising of the young men
of Israel. Long time I sat in this room
thinking. I was a young man still then,
and my spirit turned to fire as I thought
of our wrongs. Have I not seen Jews,
men and women, little children slain in
the streets for the crime of being a Jew?
Have I not seen the bayonets of the Rus-
sian soldier thrust into the breasts of
children, have I not seen the Cossack
cavalry driving our women before them
with whips to the thing that was worse
than death?

"It is not good that the spirit of man be too far tempted. Then as I sat here thinking, always thinking of that day, of that time, of which every Jew, save the new generation, thinks and has thought since the beginning, I heard a cry across the street, there in Greenberg's café, where that tenement is building. It was a step across the street and as I ran in I saw there such a sight as never saw a Jew in this country. On the floor lay him that we called Greenberg, over him stood two men out of Odessa, men whose children and wives had suffered in the Pogrom that we all remembered then. There was broken glass on the floor and table upset. They had found Greenberg in his backroom and dragged him out and he was afraid and fought.

"On the ground as the two men out of Odessa stood over him, the man that we still thought of as Greenberg begged for his life, begged as I have heard women, children, and strong men of my own people beg, and beg in vain, in the days when the trouble was upon 'us in Europe."

“Is it not that you are a Crist, a Crist,

"And because the fear of death was upon him and the lie was scared out of his heart Greenberg, he that had been Greenberg, whispered his 'yes.'

"Let us kill him, then," said those that were in that room, Roumanians from Moedavia and Bessarabia alike, for rage was in their hearts and the madness of the mob. 'Let us kill him, even as he and his father have slain our women and children by Kherson.'

"It may be they would have killed Greenberg that night,—I think perhaps the fury that had entered all our souls would have brought us to the point of murder,—when, of a sudden, wonderful like, what you call it—a miracle? An old man, bent and white, his beard reaching almost to the floor, only his eyes still bright with undiminished life came into the room and Rabbi Gotteswill stood before us.

"What madness, what wickedness is this that you are about to do, my children?' he demanded. And in an instant all the voices that were shouting murder were still, all the hearts that were filled with the red desire for blood were calmed. Then some one told him, told Rabbi Gotteswill who to us, to all the East Side, was as Moses, the lawgiver.

"When they had finished the story, Rabbi Gotteswill stood silently looking out upon the multitude, over the hundreds that had come now, for seconds that seemed hours. Then, with the sadness that was in his heart showing in his old face, he walked slowly to the side of the prostrate Greenberg, and as he approached, the men who stood over him stepped back, and trembling and half crazed with fear, Greenberg, the exposed Crist, the renegade rose to his feet and looked fearfully at the hostile faces before him, then, as if exhausted, he sank into a chair, buried his hands in his face, and waited.

"Again there was silence, while Rabbi Gotteswill looked into our faces, searching them with a glance that seemed to send shame, red hot shame, into every heart, then, his old voice shaken by emotion, he said sorrowfully:

“Oh, my children, my children, what

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of a wrong is this? Have I been spared, when my time is come, that I should see, before my eyes close forever, you that I have loved transformed into wild beasts, into murderer, yes, become as Christians, who persecute the weak and and torture the helpless?

"You have suffered much, I know that you and your wives and children, all have shared the toll of death and dishonor that the Christian levies on the Jew. Have I not known it? Look!" Swiftly the Rabbi brushed back his white hair and showed a deep scar across his forehead.

"There struck a Russian bayonet, when my mother, pierced by yet another bayonet, flung her poor dying body across me to protect me, a helpless child, whose weakness invited the sport of a Russian soldier. So my mother died. Was not that a Christian deed?

"Yet did God spare my life then. Was it perhaps that I might be with you, my children to-night, that my voice might be heard by you, when your feet have entered the pathway of the Christian? Here, here in this new land, you have become as men; here in this new land have you turned your back forever upon all the ancient wrongs? Is it at the very gate of a Promised Land, as welcome as the first, that you would betray the ancient faith?

"My children, I do not too much condemn you, it was not too great a fault that for a moment, for one moment, the example of the Christian should prove too strong for you, it is for you to seek forgiveness from the God, who knows his people."

"Rabbi Gotteswill paused for a moment, then, very slowly he turned to Greenberg, who had raised his head, when he began to realize that he was safe and said:

"Greenberg, for I know not how else to name you, my people ask your forgiveness, I ask it for them. Between your race and theirs there is blood, but it is our blood, not yours. Even now, we who were strong have spared you, rather we seek your pardon that we

should in the day of our deliverance have fallen into the fashion of the Christian. Go in peace, no Jew now or hereafter will harm you.

"For us this is vengeance, the only vengeance, that it shall go forth through all the world, that it shall be heard in the Ghettos of Europe and told in the Russian pale, that it shall be known that a Christian, a scornful, persecuting Crist, has sought protection in the name and religion of the Jew, and not in vain. What will it mean to our brethren to know that there is a land in which the Jew is strong enough to persecute, yes, strong enough to stay the hand of persecution?"

"In his vision the Rabbi had quite forgotten the poor trembling Greenberg, and at last, when his speech was done, he said again to Greenberg:

"Go, in peace, neither now nor hereafter shall a Jew harm you."

"And as Greenberg slunk away, so we too, abashed, ashamed, and, withal something exalted by the thing we had seen, went too. Then and forever died in the new land all thought of revenge. But for me, it was still a living memory, when, a few years ago, Rabbi Gotteswill went to his grave and the Christians, from the stores and factories about the Bridge, stoned the mourning procession of Jews, jeered at them and their dead. Even then, in that time, there were men in the line who remembered the night in Greenberg's cafe, remembered, and in their memory heard his voice again bidding them pardon. So is the new land like the old for the Jew—yet it is better than the old."

Rabbi Isaacs leaned back in the old arm chair, in his dim eyes there was a sign of tears, the memory of distant days had plainly moved him deeply and it was clear that he was still engrossed in them. But as I rose to go, he bowed, and waved his hand, the friendly smile again visible, as he said,

"Ah, forgive me, mein friend, it is romance that you asked for and I have given you the truth, but is it not that they two are the same?"

AN UNDISCOVERED LAND

583

Your best and wisest plan will be to avoid trains and trolleys. Ride, if you will, from the ferry to Clifton. Then walk. From the landing at St. George and for some miles the landscape is dreary. Grim chimneys, and sordid buildings line the railroad, distress one by their ugliness. The scintillant waters of the Narrows alone rest the eye.

At Stapleton they are almost hidden by antediluvian studies for painters.

Skirting Arrochar and avoiding Midland Beach, you soon come to Grasmere. A name, a misleading name, coined to catch some of those who have dreamed of Wordsworth's country. And then, striking off by the high Richmond road, or choosing a lower way, you cross open fields, and follow the shaded hills, till, after passing the County Fair Grounds (think of a county fair within ten miles of New York), very soon you will see Grant City. There you may eat close to the station in the Italian or French way, before tramping westward, in the direction of New Dorp. Grant City is too suburban to be picturesque, so do not linger. At New Dorp, however, close to modern villas, you will find old and decaying homesteads, like that of the Vanderbilts, venerable avenues, majestic elms and historic inns.

Talking of inns, I am with Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. Few pleasures mean so much as the discovery of an unknown hostelry. There are many, good and bad, on Staten Island; some new, some ancient, several quite well kept. It gave me a mild thrill, one warm May day, to stumble near New Dorp on a "hotel" which might have been an *albergo* in Lombardy. The fare, the speech, the wine, the hosts, the tricolor fluttering from the roof, all spoke of Italy. Moreover, to complete the likeness, the hotel (which stands nowhere in particular, on a lonely road, within half a mile or so of New Dorp beach) is framed in vineyards. Yes, vineyards, within sight of Coney Island. And the vines were trained in the way preferred in parts of Northern Italy. I own the fruit was only Concord grapes. But the wine they make of them at the *albergo* and sell at a fair price to customers, is palatable.

Should you visit that hotel be sure you try it. Not because it surpasses other wines; but because, when it is pressed on you with the urbanity of Italian hosts, it sustains an illusion.

Romantic? Well—that is better than being too sensibly prosaic, now and then; above all when one seeks adventure—on Staten Island.

It will repay you to make the pilgrimage to my *albergo*, if only to get a glimpse of the hostess, a plump beauty with dark eyes and a sweet smile. But maybe you do not care for Southern charms?

A forty minutes' walk, by a pleasing route, will take you from the plains of Lombardy to the hills of Richmond. As you approach the little village which still serves as the capital of the island, you will read signs which hardly fit the United States. "Kew Gardens," "Hampton Court," and "Richmond Park," suggest haunts of Londoners. But so do the

584

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red Georgian cottages and the two village
spires; one rising from St. Patrick's
Catholic church, one from the Protestant
St. Andrew's. There is nothing in St.
Patrick's worth remark, except the dis-
proportion between its size and that of
the vast mansions tenanted by its rector.
But in the churchyard of St. Andrew's
you will find poetry and history. The
body of the building (but not the steeple)
was given to the colonists three cen-
turies ago by "good Queen Anne."
Where it nestles among stately elms and
oaks, amid ancient tombs, it is typically
English. While I stood wondering at
the church one afternoon I was accosted,
in soft English tones, by the curator or
sexton (he may have been both); an
Oxfordshire farmer, who had had ill
luck in trade. Inside the church, to
right and left of a marble tablet, he
showed me a Union Jack and a small
Stars and Stripes. How long they had
hung there, I forgot to ask. The hushed
feeling in the building, the twittering of
birds heard in the trees, the low, cul-
tured speech of the man who was acting
as my guide, recalled Sabbaths I had
known in the Old Country. It really
shocked me, when I turned from St. An-
drew's to the inn near the red Georgian

court house, to hear German, of the most
grating kind, talked by the innkeepers.
The Richmondites some years since were
largely English. Now they are German
in part and partly Irish-American. The
Italians on the island are chiefly scat-
tered between Grant City and St. George.
They muster thick about South Beach
and Rosebank and Clifton—spots once
hallowed by the presence of Garibaldi,
the red-shirted Liberator. You will meet
a few, but only a few, Italians here and
there after leaving Richmond for Great
Kills. Of the three inns at what is now
called Great Kills Beach (or Gifford's
Beach) the largest and on the whole the
most comfortable is now managed by an
Italian, Signor Carlo, once of the New
York Italian Club. If he likes you (as
I am sure he will) some night, as you sit
at dinner he will tell you mysteriously of
the *fiaschi* of Chianti which he unearthed
in the inn cellar, where they had lain
hidden till the straw that enveloped them
had almost rotted. Such Chianti! Fit
for poets. I have tasted it.

Great Kills, however, at least the
shore end of it, is strangely Dutch in
appearance. As you face the bay (a
horseshoe inlet with sandy wastes
stretching into the wider bay called

AN UNDISCOVERED LAND

585

Raritan) and watch the procession of oyster sloops sail in, at sunset, and slowly group themselves amid countless smaller craft, in certain lights you may be reminded of Mesdag's seascapes. At night again, as you look landward from the long, rickety piers that jut out into the bay, the soft glowing windows of the inns, the plantations of trees in front, the benches and tables dotted about beneath the boughs, and the marshy foreground, will set you thinking of towns and hamlets on the Zuydersee. To the painter groaning over the lack of subjects in the neighborhood of New York, the fishing and pleasure sloops, houseboats, and the rowboats on the Great Kills shore, with the crowded bay and yellow sands beyond, should be perfect godsends. Here is one place which has not as yet been ruined, even by the excursionists. Till the advent of Signor Carlo the cooking and the appointments of that inn (I will not name it) were rather primitive. Nor would they now, I fear, command respect from those who are accustomed to the Ritz-Astor or the Biltmore-Regis. Que voulez-vous? One does the best one can.

The sea, at times, converts the long sandspit forming the breakwater at Great Kills into a desert isle. A No Man's Land, on which you may squat at ease, dig clams, catch fish, and bathe as nature made you. On one side you may plunge into the real ocean waves. On the other you may float or swim in the bay. When dusk falls, you can see the bright Highland lights and the warm glow of all the lamps on Coney Island. In the morning the Staten Island coast line, from Huguenot to Fort Wadsworth, is spread out for you with the Dongans and other hills as a fair background.

If you crave luxury, you can have that also on Staten Island. A French cuisine, string bands, a dancing hall; rooms fitted up in the most faultless taste. To get that you will have to walk on to Huguenot. A lovely walk; by way of Eltingville. There, at a roadhouse kept by an obliging Jew, you may bide a wee and refresh yourself. Then, if you take my advice, you will branch off from the Amboy Road (the main thoroughfare on

the Southwest of Staten Island) to the long bridge which spans the sluggish streams and marshes between the hinterland of Eltingville and the heights of Richmond.

And here, should you have known some parts of Kent, the county which proudly calls itself the "Garden of England," you will be startled. For in all England you could see no more English landscape than is unfolded about Fresh Kills. The winding rivers, the broad swamps, the hills; the tiny spires, the trees and houses of distant Richmond; the scent, the delicious scent, of the salt marshes; the formation, color, aspect, of the country—all are English.

But the people who live in the bosky settlements of Eltingville and Annadale two miles away are largely French. Outside the roadhouse I met a milkman at Eltingville who carried pails like a peasant fresh from a Norman farm. I addressed him, in the chance of being right, in his own tongue, and learned from him that in some parts of Annadale, almost everyone was French. At all events at Annadale and Huguenot Park there are several inns close to the sea, at which French is spoken. One, the most inland of them, is only half-French; another, perched on a low cliff is Belgian; the last, and grandest (which also means the most costly) place is entirely French, though when I dined in it some time ago, it was thronged with Germans. There are pretty woods and fields on the way from Annadale to the seashore. And at the end, you will see a charming lake, bordered with foliage and backed by a great mansion formerly owned by Charles M. Schwab, the wealthy steel king.

From Clifton to Huguenot, by the Amboy Road, is at most two leagues. Throw in another league for the tramp to Richmond and Great Kills Beach. You will still have walked not more than twelve short miles. In that distance you will have passed from matter-of-fact America to romantic England, Italy, France and had peeps at Holland. You may have breakfasted à l'Américaine, lunched à la Française and dined à l'

# The Turn of the Blade

BY GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND

Wherein Life and Worse than
Death Hang in the Balance, and
a Man's Soul is Tried . . .

THE flicker of Dr. Alden Deering's lamp, rudely flared by the November night-wind, silhouetted strange lights and shadows over the frightened little group there on the Doctor's front porch.

Blinking, hardly more than half-awakened yet from his lethargic sleep—for the Doctor had read till past midnight and now the cracked village church bell had just doled out three strokes—Deering shivered in his worn dressing-gown and shabby slippers as he shielded the lamp with a lean, corded hand.

The gleam fell on his rumpled hair, thin at the crown and gray beyond his years. It accentuated his deep wrinkles and glinted on his prominent eyes, which seemed to stare unnaturally, without their accustomed spectacles. Its weirdly dancing shadow-play touched, beside, four or five villagers crowded there at the door. And dimly, lugubriously, it fell upon a grim, motionless figure wrapped in an automobile rug, its head swathed in a hastily-torn shirt which, even in the gloom, showed a black, slowly-spreading stain.

"It happened right here, front o' the postoffice!" one of the men panted incoherently, with an unsteady gesture. "Liz, she woke me up, an' she says, says she ——"

"We brung him as quick's we could!" broke in another. "But we had fer to git the machine off'n him, first, so ——"

"Is he dead, Doc?" quavered a third. "The roads ain't good, fer a fact—an' an' ef they's any damages fer the town to pay ——"

"Drop that!" snapped Deering, his voice incisive as a lancet. Wide open he flung the door. "Here, Bowker, hold the lamp! Now you and you, take his feet. I'll manage the head. Come! Lively, there! In with him!"

Hard, now, was the country Doctor's face. Its weariness had vanished, weariness more of the spirit than of the flesh. Sleep, weakness, relaxation had all disappeared. And in their place tautened almost the expression of those other days before Deering had hidden himself, crushed and beaten, in that obscure New England hilltop village of Greenwood.

Almost the old expression; almost, not quite. For that false accusation which he had never yet been able to disprove and which had wrenched away name and place and future, had racked the springs of life beyond all real re-tempering. Yet as Deering stooped and with an unsuspected strength raised the grewsome figure by the shoulders, something of his old self shone from the no-longer vacillant eyes. —

"Mind the step, there!" commanded he. "The lamp, here! So—that's right—now, Andrews, open the office door. Now then!"

Stumbling, panting a little with the weight of the wounded man—for he was bulky, gross and overfed—they bungled down the narrow hallway, turned into the office, and got him onto the cheap, old-fashioned operating table. And again the farmers' voices babbled nasally, with stupid and futile questionings. But Deering silenced them.

"Shhh! None of that, now! You, Bowker," he directed, "you've got to help me give the ether, if it comes to an operation. You've got more head than the others. No, no, you can't get

587

588

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out of it—no use begging! Just do as I tell you, that's all. You, Hawkins, go shut the outside door. Think I want the whole infernal town in here?” For already on the front porch clumped many feet; and the sound of voices, awed yet eager, percolated down the passage.

As the Doctor spoke, he fumbled for matches on his desk. He struck one. The slow flame burned blue and choking, then reddened as the sulphur cleared. A moment later the hanging lamp with its tin reflector was sputtering into light over the table.

Deering turned and with an imperative gesture banished Cummings from the room. As the door closed, he shot the squeaking bolt.

"Now, Bowker," said he, reaching for his spectacles, "now we'll get down to business. How's your nerve? Good? Shouldn't wonder if you'd need all you've got. This certainly looks like a mess." He nodded at the swathed figure on the table.

Silence fell, a moment, save for the crepitation of the charred wick and the stertorous breathing of the wounded man. The light strengthened, showing all the petty makeshifts and meannesses of the country office—the few well-worn books in their home-made rack, the rows of depleted bottles, the swivel desk chair (one broken arm mended with lashings of twine), the ragged carpet. No sign of woman's hand appeared there, no softening influence of wifely care. By contrast with the melancholy decadence, the crinkled sheepskin of the Johns Hopkins diploma in its oaken frame made the one point of contact with that other, that better time, before the Doctor's life had gone to wreck upon the shoals of jealousy and hate and malice incredible.

A brief instant Deering stood there, gazing down. Then he bent over the figure on the table: and, a tall, gaunt, grotesque form in his shabby dressing-gown began to take off the slumsvy wrap-pings that enveloped the man's head.

Bowker, pale and nervous, swallowed hard, clasping and unclasping his blunt

fingers, panting slightly he strove to hide his fear.

"Get down the ether," directed Deering. He nodded at the shelf. "It's the big bottle, third from the end. Bring the cone, too—it stands back of the bottle."

As he spoke, he finished removing the blood-soaked cloth.

The lamp-light, now glaring brightly, shone full upon the ghastly, mangled face.

Deering stared at it a moment, his eyes slowly widening behind their thick-lensed glasses. Then a sort of leaden pallor overspread his face; even his lips went gray-blue. With his left hand he clutched the edge of the operating table, to steady himself. The right, with an uncertain gesture, sought his forehead.

"You?" he stammered in a thick, choked voice. "You? Oh—my God! You?"

II.

Bowker turned, uncomprehending, from the shelf.

"Huh?" grunted he. "Want anythin' else?"

But Deering did not answer. Instead, biting his lip until the sluggish blood oozed, hands clenched, eyes staring, he had begun to walk up and down the office. Four steps one way, four the other—just the old and never yet forgotten prison walk—just the length of a cell. Before his eyes a number seemed to burn, to dazzle—4862—4862—4862—Bowker stared.

"Anythin' else?" repeated he, with wonder. "I call'late I'm ready, ef you be!"

"Oh! What?" ejaculated the Doctor. He stopped short in his caged stride. Then a strong and sudden chill seized him. Bowker gaped in astonishment.

"Well, what's th' matter?" he demanded. "You sick, hey?"

"Nothing—nothing! Just a nervous chill. It's cold here, I mean. Nothing, I tell you! I'll be all right in a minute, just a minute now!"

The Doctor's voice was thick and dull, as though his tongue were par-

THE TURN OF THE BLADE

589

alyzed. To hide his face, he turned away. Then, moving almost like a drunken man, he groped his way toward the wash-stand in the corner.

Mechanically he poured out water. The act of washing his hands with the green liquid soap started his professional reflexes going again. The touch of the scrubbing-brush revived him. Carefully he washed, then emptied the water and turned in fresh. Into this he shook four HgC₂ tablets from a little flash. He stirred these round and round. And, as he stirred, he glanced furtively over his shoulder at Bowker, at the table, at the unconscious man who lay there—lay there, now at last in his full power.

In the antiseptic he rinsed his hands. From the case he choose instruments, which he dropped into the liquid. Then he brought the bowl and set it on a stand beside the table. Cotton and bandages he undid.

A long, deep breath he drew, tremulous, fevered, pregnant with agony and strife.

“Now!” breathed he.

Yet for a moment he could not bring himself to touch that head, that face. He shrank from contact with the man; a violent repulsion seized him. What? Frazer there, there on his table? He?

A vision rolled before the Doctor's eyes, scroll-like and vivid. He saw again the courtroom. Judge, jurymen, spectators all were clear. And in the dock, himself. And on the witness-stand—Frazer.

He heard the slow, precise, scientific perjury and felt again the death-pang in his heart as he beheld the jurors' faces harden. "Exhibit B, Exhibit H" he saw, those bits of evidence submitted in cold blood by Frazer, Frazer who now lay senseless on the table—exhibits which had sealed the judgment, exhibits forged and false, yet overwhelming in their nicely-timed effect.

Another face the Doctor saw—hers.

"Oh, God!" he groaned, with a strange whining tone as of some wounded animal.

Then, steeling his muscles and his raw nerves, which quivered in spite of all

that he could do, he laid hold on a pledget of cotton, dabbled it in the solution, and began his task.

### III.

As he worked, he whispered to himself, whispered tensely, while Bowker, the ether-bottle and cone clutched in hand, stood staring.

"Contusion here," murmured the Doctor. "Flesh-wound here. Right eye can possibly be saved." Little by little the clotting blood dissolved and came away. "Ah!" His skilled fingers detected graver damage to the skull. "Fracture! Depression over the left inferior frontal convolution. Must operate. Trehine. Speech-centres possible affected."

A thought stabbed him. He grew suddenly weak, and had for a moment to hold fast to the table. But with a strong effort he recovered himself. He stood up, took the ether-bottle and the cone from Bowker, and made ready to begin the process of anesthetization.

As the cone cut off Frazer's groaning, bubbling breath and the stinging fumes began to bite him, the man—all unconscious as he was—struggled convulsively.

"Hold him, you!" commanded the Doctor, in a cracked voice. "Nothing to be afraid of. Grab hold—tight!"

Under this compulsion and the deadening effects of the ether, Frazer grew quiet. The Doctor drew up the man's left lid, to judge the degree of unconsciousness. He nodded.

"All right—he'll do. Now, Bowker, you stand here and keep this cone right over his mouth and nose, so. And drop in the ether slowly, very slowly. Just a little, every time I tell you. Keep the forehead exposed; that's right. I've got to trephine the skull."

"All—all right," faltered the other, himself sick and shaken with terror of blood an the fumes of ether. "But I—I don't think I can stand to see—"

"Rubbish! You've got to! There's not another soul in this village I can count on. That's right, so—. Now, a little—hold on—steady!"

Bright glinted the lancets and the scal-

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590

pels under that flaring lamp-flame. Bowker, in a haze of shuddering horror, half-beheld the work, as Deering—his face a shrivelled mask—cut and laid back the ragged skin, then with a periosteum elevator exposed the crushed skull itself. He sickened when the Doctor applied the trephine; its low, gritting, grinding sound nigh brought him to fainting. But Deering held him with now a word of appeal, now some quick sarcasm. And in a few minutes the button of bone was clear.

"No more ether, now," directed Deering. "You go sit down! There's some whiskey on the shelf. It's labelled Spiritus Frumenti, but it's good rye, just the same. Take about five fingers, on my prescription, and repeat dose if necessary. Then wait, in case I need you again."

As he spoke, his trained eye was examining the dura mater.

"Hmmm!" he grunted. "Frontal lobe of the cerebrum certainly is damaged. And—ah!—splinter of bone, what?"

Through a wound in the dura mater he could distinguish the arachnoid. Underneath it, who could tell what injury might not have been wrought to the pia mater and the cortex itself? In those delicate sulci where lurks the mystery of human speech, those wondrous tiny storehouses of the one great faculty that makes man truly human, what irreparable destruction might not already have been wrought? The thought stung into Deering's consciousness like white-hot brands.

And again the devil of temptation grappled for dominance. Deering remembered, how well! one of the very last cases he had studied at Bellevue before this man had robbed him of love, of life, of future, of everything. He recalled in minute detail how Professor Irving Chandler of Columbia—only thirty-nine yet already known through the whole philosophical world—had through a parallel accident been in one second deprived of every means of human communication.

From that man, a master of so many languages, all speech, writing and reading had been wiped clean away, "as a

mother wipes the milky lips of her babe." And though his mind had in other ways remained lucid enough, yet he had been reduced to the cultural status of a babbling infant.

 Painfully, slowly, he had been obliged to begin at the bottom of the ladder again, learning a few simple, easy words as a child learns—taught by a nurse—playing with objects—bit by bit piecing back the shattered function as the uninjured side of the brain was forced to take up the interrupted life-current of expression.

A matter of months, of years! And never, while life lasted, could Chandler hope to win back to his former status. He was *done*!

Now, as this memory fought its way into the Doctor's mind, his ears began to buzz and roar as though with cataclysms and deluges of sound. A heavy lassitude gripped hold on him; his legs grew weak as water, his hand, flaccid. Though the room was chill, sweat beaded his face. He gulped and gasped for breath, breath that his stifling lungs refused. A creeping sickness invaded his heart. He heard his pulses hammering; and, like a man in the clutch of nightmare, he fought the intangible.

Dream-like, too, all this had taken but the fraction of a moment. The Doctor had barely paused in his work. Now, with a savage effort, he picked up his forceps from the bowl of solution. What did he intend to do? He knew not; but the instinct of work still drove him. And, half-automatically, he introduced the metal into the wound.

The touch of the forceps on the intruded splinter of bone gave him a shock galvanic in its intensity. To his mind penetrated the certain knowledge that, whatever might happen, nothing ever could be blamed to him. Nothing could by any possibility be proved!

The wound, the bone-splinter, the shock, all could account for aphasia of any type. Whatever happened, he, Deering, would go scot free.

And a sudden madness, a burning rage for vengeance, for the paying off with horrible interest of this debt, this hellish

THE TURN OF THE BLADE

591

wrong, possessed the Doctor. His jaw set hard. A gleam of brutal triumph burned in his blood-shot eyes. His breath quickened. Bowker, watching open-mouthed from the shadows, wondered but could not understand.

"Worse than death—more horrible!" thought Deering. "Just a turn of the scalpel, right here—one little cut, not over half an inch long, and for Frazer reverts to babyhood, to babbling infancy! One cut —oh God!"

Already the scalpel was turning. Deering's hand steeled itself for the incision which should annihilate a human personality. Ashen his face was, and in his shrunken throat the leaping of the fevered pulses plainly showed. Racked on his Calvary of temptation, he raised his eyes a moment, staring horribly.

A ray from the lamp fell fair upon the Oath of Hippocrates, which hung against the wall. Deering saw the tremendous words of eld; as in a mirage they danced and flickered—"I do swear never by any means to injure—" and then the rest of it, the oft-read, well-known oaths of service and fidelity.

What? Her face? Dancing and dazzling there before him? The Doctor gasped, dry-throated.

"Oh, God!" he groaned, once more.

Then the blade stopped. It turned again. The forceps closed upon the splinter. Steadily, firmly, knife and forceps loosened the bit of bone. Deering was cool, now—cold as ice. Steady and rigid and chill.

"Ah!" breathed he.

The splinter was out.

Fighting off the weakness that sought to master him, he carefully inspected the brain-surface.

No, nothing else appeared. He knew the injury would not prove vital.

With a wordless sob he dropped the forceps. They rolled, jangling, on the floor.

He closed the wound, stitched and dressed it, all as though sunk in a trance. His work was mechanical, automatic. It seemed as though he himself, the real personality, stood aside and watched another man—a man of the same name and form—finishing the operation.

His head felt vast and roomy. In it burned a clear white light of consciousness, while all outside was dark. He heard the gasping breath of the patient; he heard his own. The lamp-light seemed to narrow. He beheld now only two hands that sewed. With an impersonal interest he seemed to be watching those hands as they pushed the thick, curved needle through, knotted the catgut stitches, sopped away the blood, applied the dressings and the bandages.

Then, all at once, he knew the work was done.

It was over. Frazer was saved.

Deering turned to Bowker. He tried to speak, but for a moment could frame no words. His lips, dry and cold, twitched in vain to make a sound. At last, in a voice he failed to recognize, he spoke.

"I—I'm tired now," said he. "I can't do any more. You go—get somebody else. Put—him to bed, up-stairs. In my room—you know the way. Careful with him. I'll—I'll see him again, later. Now, go!"

When Frazer, still unconscious yet resting easily, had been carried away with all the tenderness whereof the rough yet compassionate countrymen were capable, Deering stood for a moment, a moment pregnant with racking emotions, beside the operating-table.

"The altar of my sacrifice," he murmured, hoarsely. "'He who conquereth himself—'"

The wondrous, noble quotation of eld remained unfinished. For suddenly the doctor turned away. He stooped, and, opening the bottom drawer of his desk, took out a little packet. Only too well his trembling hand knew where to find it.

He stood a moment undecided.

"I swore to myself this never should be opened again," thought he. "Never, till I knew my time was on me; till I knew that I must die!"

His fevered eyes fell on the Oath of Hippocrates, there against the wall. He smiled.

"I've earned the right, I guess," whispered he. "The right, just this once. I think she—even she—wouldn't deny it to me, now!"

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Already he had slipped off the rubber band that held the packet. Several wrap-pings of paper and oiled silk he undid. Then, a moment later, he was gazing at a photograph, a trifle faded yet still wonderfully beautiful and dear to him— his inmost treasure.

The light that shone from his dulled eyes, as he pressed it to lips that for so many weary years had known no wo-

man's kiss—none since he had lost her —was not of this earth.

"In your name and for your sake," he reverently murmured. "Oh, for your ever-blessed sake!"

And tears of joy in this supremest sacrifice, tears in his eyes that for so very long had felt no such relief, washed from his soul all bitterness away.

TO ONE DEFENDING NEW YORK

BY WALTER PRICHARD EATON.

Your voice was loudest in the counter plea
That urged us, Atlas like, to bear our load,
And cease our whining since the choice was ours;
Yours was the chide; "Du hast es ja gewollt"—
The poet's pity, but the poet's scorn.

Perhaps I thought your chide unjust; perhaps
The word was on my tongue of hot reply—
I know not, for a sudden vision came,

And all your speech, the rumblings of the town
You would defend, the hated streets, the heat
And dirt and turmoil were as not. Your face
Alone remained out of the misty dream

That had a moment gone been what we were—
Six men and women on a dusty stoop,
Worn thin with heat and toil and poisoned air.

And on that face no frown of contest sat,
And from your lips no word of chiding came;
For we two were alone among the hills,

Where all our little speeches are as froth
Upon the ocean of God's stillness visible.

And while I wondered why words ever were,
And watched the hours passing in your eyes,
Your lips were parted without sound to greet
The silence and the sky space and the stars!

1913
Alaska

White—Full Suffrage

Shaded—Partial Suffrage

Black—No Suffrage

# Woman's Suffrage

BY DR. ANNA HOWARD SHAW

## Woman Suffrage Triumphant in the
Eternal City

As the time when the International Council of Women convened in the city of Washington in 1888, guest of the National Suffrage Association of the United States, there was put into effect the most progressive ideal in organization which had ever been attempted. People working in the interest of a common cause had met together for conference, but an association, formed of women of different nations and different races, working along many lines of reform, was a new idea in organization.

It was predicted that women were not yet ready for such a step—that the radicals would seek to press their claims upon the conservative people and thus destroy the central idea of unity, which was the incentive which inspired Miss Susan B. Anthony, whose far-seeing vision and world spirit had promulgated the idea of unity of interest among all women in their service for the common good.

This fear proved unfounded for, from the first, Miss Anthony refused to hold any official position and advised

suffragists to refrain from any effort to press their reform upon the Council, believing, that the logic of events would be the best arguments, and that experience would be the wisest teacher, to convince women that, in affairs controlled by Governments, a disfranchised class is powerless.

Without any undue effort on the part of suffragists at the Quinquennial meeting in Berlin in 1904, the Departments of Suffrage and Rights of Citizenship was established and Rev. Anna Howard Shaw was elected chairman of the committee, a position to which she has been elected at each succeeding quinquennial.

At this period of the Council's history, nearly all of the National Councils auxiliary were from the progressive countries, but since that time several of the more conservative nations have joined and, while it would be impossible to abandon a department already accepted, it might be imposible for the backward countries to prevent the more progressive movements from holding an adequate position upon the agenda of the Quinquennial meetings.

593

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

595

DR. PROF. TERESA LABRIOLA,
Professor of Philosophy of Law, University of Rome.

It was, therefore, with mingled fear and hope that I, as Convenor of the Department of Suffrage, looked forward to the Quinquennial in Rome, as it was a well known fact that several of the most influential leaders of the Italian Council were opposed to suffrage. I was determined, however, to escape from all thoughts of this absorbing subject until the time for the meeting in Rome.

On April 16th. in company with Mrs. Kate Waller Barrett, the President of the National Council of the United States, and several delegates, I turned my back upon all the anxieties of the suffrage work and looked forward to fourteen days of escape from the ever present topic. En route we stopped for a day at Algiers. Here, at least, was little danger from the intrusion of any

subject which implied justice to women, but scarcely had I stepped on shore, before a cheerful voice, in evident surprise, called out in broken English, "How do? Me know you, Miss Shaw. Me saw you in parade New York votes for women," and, bounding on the step of the motor was a young lad of about sixteen, his beautiful black eyes sparkling and his face wreathed in smiles as he pointed me out to a multitude of post-card vendors, saying over and over again, "Me know her. New York parade Votes for Women. Buy package post cards, one franc." As I rode through that beautiful and picturesque city, with the cry of my New York friend sounding in my ears, and saw that beturbaned and befrocked men and the veiled women, the slavery and degradation of the women of old, and the cry for freedom of the women of the new time, I longed to get back again into the midst of the struggle which would never end until no one human being would be subject to the will of another without her consent.

We reached Rome on May 2nd, the day when, at the call of the National Suffrage Association, from one end of the United States to the other, men and women held demonstratinos calling upon Congress to enact legislation to enfranchise the women of the nation. Desiring to unite our request with our countrywomen at home, the Americans who had already arrived for the Council, met in the Hotel Quirinal and, after I, as the National President of the Suffrage Association, read the Call and delivered the address, Miss Lucy E. Anthony, a niece of Susan B. Anthony, moved the resolution, sent out by the National Association, which was seconded by Mrs. Elizabeth Grannis and Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, and carried unanimously. It made the world seem very small, but the bond of union very strong, which warmed our hearts as we realized that, at that very hour, hundreds of thousands

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of our country women were reading the
same address and passing the same res-
olution, in the same spirit which inspired
their sires in 1776.

The first day of the Council was de-
voted to an Executive Committee meet-
ing. This committee is composed of the
International officers, Presidents of
Auxiliary National Councils and Con-
venors of the various departments of
work, of which there are nine—Finance,
Press, Peace and Arbitration; Laws con-
cerning the Legal Position of Women;
Suffrage and Rights of Citizenship;
Equal Moral Standards and Traffic in
Women; Public Health; Education, and
Emigration and Immigration, to which
was added, at this Quinquennial—Pro-
fessions and Trades for Women.

The following three days were devoted
to the work of these departments and
executive meetings.

During all these days there was evi-
dence of suppressed excitement, which
seemed to center about the suffrage com-
mittee, as by this time it was well known
that the officers of the Italian Council
were doing everything in their power,
with the press, to belittle, as much as
possible, the relation of suffrage to the
International Council.

The morning of May 7th was set for
the meeting of the suffrage committee.
The largest committee room of the
Council had been assigned to it, and
long before nine o'clock, the hour for
the meeting to begin, the room was
filled and, when the time for opening
came, every inch of space was packed
and even the outside halls filled.

Intense interest and enthusiasm was
manifested from the beginning and,
when in response to the roll call, repre-
sentatives from *nineteen different Na-
tional Councils* responded, a cheer arose
from all present; Servia and Russia
being applauded most enthusiastically.
As the members of the International
committees from the different nations
gave their reports, not one of them spoke
of a backward step, or of discourage-
ment, and many of them recorded gains
of partial suffrage, with Norway at the
head, as the one entire nation in which

full suffrage had been won since the last
Quinquennial. When, however, I gave
the report from the United States, and
gave the gains made in the various
States, and the legislative action in 1913
and 1914, no one could doubt the earnest
desire of that audience for political
equality for the women of all nations,
nor could there be any question of the
unity of sympathy which led these self-
sacrificing women, in the most backward
nations, who had little hope of ever en-
joying the privilege of political freedom,
to rejoice over the victories which had
been won in the enfranchised States of
our country. Each representative from
these far away nations asked that she
might take the report to her own country
women, to inspire and cheer them in
their seemingly hopeless struggle.

The meeting lasted, with growing in-
terest, for more than three hours, dur-
ing which time it was discovered that
a resolution framed by the Suffrage
Committee at the Executive meeting at
the Hague in 1913, and unanimously
passed by the Executive, was not in-
cluded in the list of resolutions upon
the program to be passed by the Quin-
quennial, to be given to the world as the
declaration of principle, upon the subject
of suffrage, by the International Coun-
cil. This failure caused consternation
among the suffragists because, accord-
ing to the rules of the Council, no reso-
lution could be brought before the
Quinquennial which had not been passed
upon by the preceding Executive meet-
ing. I immediately laid the matter
before the International Secretary and
learned that the omission was wholly
a mistake and that it would, doubtless,
be rectified. When the matter was
brought to the attention of the Inter-
national President, Lady Aberdeen, from
the chair at the Executive meeting,
permission to propose the resolution, and
Miss Salomon, the Corresponding Sec-
retary, wished to second it. This favor-
able action on the part of the Countess
of Aberdeen and Miss Salomon, and the
unanimous action of the Executive
Committee, silenced all reports that they
were in sympathy with any movement

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

597

FROKEN GINA KROG,
President of Norwegian Council of Women.

on the part of the Italian Council to ignore suffrage.

On the morning of the fourth day the Council came together in executive session, to decide the plans of work and to transact official business. During the discussion of all other propositions, many of which were of vital interest for future success, there was evidently an undercurrent of anxious expectancy of some thing which no one could quite explain. Two resolutions were evidently the center about which interest seemed to revolve, one was a resolution which gave to the National Council, in whose country the Quenquennial meeting of the International Council was held, the veto power in regard to the subjects placed upon the program of the International Council meetings. This resolution was introduced, it was claimed, in the interest of the more conservative nations, which could not accept the theories of the more progressive people. This resolution was the test of the strength of the progressive and conservative wings of the Council. The debate waxed warm and interesting, all the dreariness of the routine of business

was forgotten, each debator spoke in her own language, which gave her a fluency to which she was incapable in a foreign tongue. It was soon evident that the progressive element was, by far, the stronger. Then the closing speaker in favor of the resolution, a titled lady from the Italian Council, made a most passionate and eloquent address, pleading in behalf of the conservationism to backward nations. Her eloquence and fervor were most fascinating and seemed to weigh with the delegates. I asked the privilege o fa question, which was, "Is it the duty of the International Council to lay aside the principles to which it stands pledged and bring itself to the standards of the the most backward nations, or is it its duty to bring the backward nations up to its level?" This was the thought in the minds of all the progressive delegates, and when the President announced that so important a question demanded a roll call of the nations, the feeling was very tense. But when the roll was called, beginning with the United States, which voted solidly against the resolution; as nation after nation was called, and one after another voted against, with only now and then a feeble affirmative, there was perfect quiet, until Italy was called, and the response came one for and four against, then there was applause. The speaker alone, of the Italian delegates, voted in favor. So overwhelming was the vote by nations against the resolution that, greatly to the disappointment of some of us, who desired to register our votes, the President decided it was unnecessary to call the roll of the officers.

The one resolution, around which centered the greatest interest, still remained, but finally, on the last day of the Council, it was reached. Every delegation was filled, eager to be present at the discussion. As Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, which presented the resolution, it was my right to propose it, but I preferred to have one of the prominent leaders of Europe propose it,

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598

and asked Madame Jules Seigfried, the President of the National Council of France. She gladly accepted and, in an eloquent address, declared the growing need of the ballot for women to carry out the reforms for which the Council stands. The resolution was seconded by Frau Hainisch, President of the Austrian Council, and the great favourite of the International Council. I supported the resolution. No one arose to speak against it and, when the vote was put, from all parts of the Council Hall arose an enthusiastic and unanimous Aye, and the International Council stood for absolute equality in the following restatement.

> "Realizing the rapidly changing character of the problems that have to be considered by the governments of the present time, and seeing that these problems increasingly affect the moral, educational and industrial life of the people, it grows more and more important that women should recognize their responsibility in national life. The International Council of Women, therefore, re-affirms its earnest belief that the right of voting in parliamentary and local elections should be given to women in all countries where representative governments exist."

At no other time in all the Council meetings was such enthusiasm manifested, and delegation after delegation stood up, in order to emphasize their joy. Congratulations poured in on every side, as the delegates grasped the hand of the chairman of the Suffrage Committee.

On the previous night, at the last public meeting of the Council, I was given the last place on the evening's program, to speak on the subject of suffrage and economics. After nine consecutive days of routine work, interspersed with luncheons, teas, receptions, garden parties and banquets, the audience at 10.30 o'clock at night was in no mood to inspire a speaker and, as I looked over the tired audience, I knew that nothing short of the intense interest in the subject could arouse them. Much to my surprise,

no subject presented at any of the public meetings was received with so much enthusiasm. This evidence of the public sympathy, and the unanimous adoption of the suffrage resolution on the following day, convinced me that Votes for Women had scored a victory in Rome, such as it had never attained before in the International Council.

The great day for suffrage, however, had not yet arrived. It is usual, at the close of what is known as the International Council meetings, at which all the business pertaining to the Council is transacted, for the entertaining National Council to hold a week of congresses, which include public addresses and discussions along the lines of work adopted by the National Council, and such other subjects as will be of interest. At the Quinquennial in Rome, the meeting of the International Council closed on the 14th of May, and the congresses were to begin on the 16th. When it was learned that the Italian Council had excluded suffrage from the congress program, the Italian Suffrage Association decided to use the intervening day, between the Council and Congresses, to hold a public mass meeting for suffrage. The International Suffrage Alliance, of which Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt is President, co-operating with the full consent of the Italian Council, arranged a splendid program, including speakers from several countries. Long before the time for the meeting, the Teatro Nationale, the most beautiful theatre in Rome, was packed from pit to dome and hundreds were turned away. Such an audience, for such a cause, had never before been gathered in that city. Everyone present felt the inspiration of the hour, and knew instinctively that the climax of the meetings was at hand.

Professor Anita Dobelli-Zantelli, Secretary of the Italian Suffrage Association, opened the meeting with a short but brilliant address, which brought forth great applause, showing the friendly attitude of the great assembly. Madame de Schlumberger of France, one of the Vice-Presidents of the International Suffrage Alliance presided, and introduced

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

599

me. The fact that I was a clergyman had created a great deal of curiosity and interest in regard to me, added to the fact that I was the leader of the suffrage movement in the Council which had passed, without a dissenting vote, so strong a resolution in the Council, prepared the audience to receive my speech enthusiastically. The next speaker was Fraulein Vilma Glucklich, President of the Hungarian Suffrage Association, who delivered her address in admirable Italian, a compliment greatly appreciated by the audience. Then followed Mrs. Creighton, President of the British Council and wife of the former Lord Bishop of London. Mrs. Creighton is one of the ablest women in the Council, and won great credit for the clear and direct manner in which she helped to carry the Council over several difficulties which arose from different languages and methods of thought. Mrs. Creighton had not proceeded far in her address, when, in a most mild and kindly spirit, she criticized the militant movement in Great Britian. She was justified by the fact that in Italy, as in the United States and elsewhere, the militant movement is the only one heralded by the press and few people know that there is any other movement for suffrage in Great Britian. She had not finished her first sentence when an English militant in the audience interrupted her. When she began to explain she was again interrupted. The audience began to show evidence of disapproval and, fearing a disturbance, the timekeeper called time on Mrs. Creighton. Those who sympathized with her, knowing she had no intention of criticizing the militant unduly, regretted that she had not been given time to explain her reasons. The result, however, was not to the advantage of the militants. It simply showed their lack of tolerance with anyone who differs from them and is in the line of their utter lack of democratic methods in their work and organization. While claiming to work for equality and democracy, a more intolerant or absolute autocracy than that of the militant movement could not exist at the present time. Utterly lacking in the

first principles of democracy, this autocratic group of self-appointed officers, whose absolute and unquestioned control of the association and its funds, being responsible to no one, makes it an autocracy pure and simple, in every step of its practice, violating the democratic ideal for which it apparently is striving. What is true of the British militant movement is equally true of the American organizations formed along similar lines, they are intolerant of all criticism, no matter how detrimental to the cause its conduct may be.

The next speaker was the representative of the French Suffrage Association, Madame Veroné, a brilliant young lawyer and an orator of remarkable power. The enthusiasm increased as she proceeded and, when she tried to show the effect of war and the suffering it entailed upon women, there was evidence of great excitement among the entire audience, for war was the one prohibited topic at all the public meetings. Italy had recently participated in a war, which added great prestige to the army, nothing must be said which did not extol war and add glory to the descendants of the Caesars. Madame Veroné had not spoken many words upon the subject when, from the back of the hall, there arose a shout of protest. The little French lawyer held her ground and proceeded without retracting a word. Again, in more angry tones, the protest came, and again she proceeded, saying "Shall we mothers give our lives for sons or, living, toil for them until they grow to manhood and see them sent forth to be killed?" "No," came the angry response "not to be killed but to kill." Taking a step forward Madame Veroné waited until the cheers, hisses and applause died down then, pointing toward the military group who had interrupted her, exclaimed "To kill, to kill! Have not the men you kill mothers too?" Immediately those on the platform arose. The Secretary of the Italian Suffragists took her place by the side of Madame Veroné and led the applause, in which we all joined. The audience, catching the spirit of it, arose in sympathy, and

THE TREND

600

hisses, shouts "put him out," all blended
together and, for a moment, it seemed
as if a riot were imminent. The leader
of the interruption was put out and
Madame Veroné finished her address
amid a thunder of applause. Fortun-
ately the next speaker, Madame Anker
of Norway, delivered her address in
Italian and, in a voice full of pathos, but
with an earnestness which carried con-
viction, and a quiet, such as follows a
storm, took possession of the audience,
which seemed to enter still more sym-
pathetically into the purpose of the meet-
ing.

The last speaker was Dr. Teresa Labriola, a Professor of the Philosophy of Law in the University of Rome. She is a great favourite with the students and it is said that the lecture hall is always crowded when she delivers her lectures before them.

The great day of suffrage was over.
The greatest day, by far, of the whole
Council, and suffragists were, naturally,
jubilant. Then the climax came. We
had heard that several Government Dep-
uties were present. At the close of the
meeting one of the Deputies called seven
others together and organized a group
to present a measure for woman suffrage
in Parliament, and they also decided to

organize a Men's League for Women
Suffrage. Without doubt, this meeting,
and the effort of the Italian Council to
ignore suffrage had, by emphasizing the
fact, made it the most prominent feature
of the gathering in Rome, and laid the
foundation for the political enfranchise-
ment of women in Italy. It did more
than this. It silenced any future at-
tempts to eliminate suffrage from the
program at any succeeding Quinquennial
meeting.

Why do not the opponents of Justice
see the handwriting on the wall. The
old régime of the subjection of one half
of the human race to the other half must
end. The only hope for the future of
democracy lies in the acknowledgement
of the failure of partial justice, the in-
adequacy of partial freedom,—that what-
ever is right must, in the long run, be-
come the expedient. There are tasks
waiting to be performed in world service,
which can never be accomplished until
the whole people have the opportunity
to understand their need and share in
solving their problems. To accomplish
these ends, the ballot, the weapon of
democracy, must be accessible to all who
are able to yield it.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW.

Women in the Colorado War

N
EVER again can an American
anti-suffragist, who knows
anything of the conditions in
Colorado, deceive himself with
the specious claim that a woman
shouldn't vote because she can't fight.

The Colorado women have shown that
they can fight, both physically and poli-
tically. They have shown a dauntless
courage that is unsurpassed by any
deeds of the men, on either side in the
industrial battle. They have shown an
indomitable persistence in demanding
that political machinery be utilized im-
mediately to protect human life.

Whatever the Colorado women, as
mere women or as voters, may have
left undone in the past, they have de-
monstrated beyond the shadow of a
doubt that they can be brave in the face
of terrible danger, and that when
roused, they can make their citizenship
intensely practical.

It is the miners' wives who have
faced bullets without flinching, who
have, in the last resort, even loaded the
rifles for their men, to help them fight
for freedom, who have made sand-
wiches, lugged water, nursed their
babies, and even borne them, midst the

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

601

hail from the machine guns, fired at them by the militia of their own state.

It is Senator Helen Ring Robinson, Representative Alma Lafferty, and a thousand of the rank and file of Denver's women, who forced Governor Ammons out of his pusillanimous lethargy and made him, after a vigil of twelve hours at the State Capitol, telegraph President Wilson for the federal troops, in order that the slaughter of innocent men, women, and children should be stopped.

It was the Women's Peace Association which forced the Governor to appoint Mrs. Lafferty on the commission to investigate the Ludlow massacre, a commission whose chairman, Chief Justice Musser, confessed that they had done nothing, had not even been to the strike district, and had no program. No sooner did the women of the Peace Association realize that the commission was a farce, than they appointed a commission of their own and compelled Governor Ammons to recognize them and to give them authority.

It was these same women who sent a deputation to the President of the United States, after the Legislature had met in special session and had done nothing but vote at the Governor's request to raise a million dollars to pay for the services of the state militia, so they could return to the strike zone, and this in face of the proven fact that the militia included in its ranks many of the mine guards and gunmen previously hired by the operators to harass the strikers, and that the militia had wantonly fired on the tent-colony containing hundreds of women and children, and that finally the militia had themselves set fire to the tents, under which the women and babies had suffocated and burned.

By their own words, the character and temper of the Colorado women in this crisis can best be shown. Their words, like their deeds, have been but scantily reported in the newspapers, especially in the Eastern press, which with significant instinct, prints, for the most part, just the sort of reports on

Colorado that are best liked by Wall street and lower Broadway.

This was the call of the Women's Peace Association for the great meeting at the Capitol:

> "Women of Colorado:

> "For the sake of your slain sisters and their wounded children, for the sake of your sisters whose humble homes have been ruthlessly destroyed, for the sake of the earnest men who are being wounded and killed every hour because they tried to better their conditions of life, we summon you to a meeting at the Capitol at ten o'clock Saturday morning.

> "In the name of the womanhood of Colorado we demand that another hideous holocaust be prevented by the intervention of federal troops, we will demand the establishment of law, and we will take steps to initiate the repeal of the infamous decision by which Mother Jones was imprisoned shamelessly. Your help is needed."

They responded a thousand strong, and as one of the Denver papers said:

> "Never was there anything like it. These women who ordered the State's chief executive to do their bidding and were obeyed, accomplished a great thing, and accomplished it in perfect peace and dignity. There were no threats, no hisses, no jeers. It was an assemblage that gave equal suffrage a new meaning."

All day long the women waited, while a committee of their number argued with the Governor at intervals, pushing him unwillingly along, till he telegraphed first to inquire of the President if federal troops could be sent if needed, then, on receipt of an affirmative reply, he was finally forced to telegraph the appeal for the troops.

During their long wait, the women, some with sandwiches and oranges, some with no food at all, sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "John Brown's Body," "Onward, Christian Soldiers," "Nearer My God, To Thee," and at

602

THE TREND

JUDGE BEN LINDSEY AND A DELEGATION OF COLORADO WOMEN IN WASHINGTON.

last, when the news came that the Gov-
erntr had capitulated and was sending
the appeal for the troops, they sang
“Praise God From Whom All Bless-
ings Flow.”

Beside the federal troops, the women
demanded that Mrs. Lafferty be ap-
pointed on the investigation commission
and that Major Hamrock and Lieut.
Linderfelt of the militia be arrested and
tried on the charge of murder.

Of that day's work, the Denver Ex-
press wrote as follows:

"Thank God the women of Colorado are alive to their wonderful privilege of restoring human rights and justice to their throne of glory in this greed-ridden state.

"Over 1000 of them—bless their

tender, motherly, wifely, maidently
hearts—sounded the battle cry of the
new revolution in Colorado when
they rose en masse in the house
chamber and sang ‘America.’

"Their revolution is to be a Christian one—a revolution of ballots to put down the necessity for the present revolution of bullets!

"Nothing is impossible to aroused womanhood—when she has the ballot! Not even the driving of Rockfellerism and all the inhuman warfare on women and children out of the state forever!

"And that is exactly what that
glorious gathering of aroused moth-
ers proposed to do."

The women's investigation commit-

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

603

tee, consisting beside Mrs. Lafferty, of
Mrs. Lee Champion and Mrs. Evange-
line Heartz, made a report of all the
harrowing, disgraceful facts in the Lud-
low massacre, and then made the fol-
lowing recommendations to the Gov-
ernor:

"That you order an instant in-
vestigation of all happenings con-
ected with the presence of the mil-
itia in the strike district, to the end
that a distinction may be established
between rightful exercise of the
military power and the crimes of
individuals, turning the latter cases
over to the civil authorities for
prompt prosecution.

"That the extra session make no
provision for the payment of the
debt incurred by the militia until the
military rolls have been purged of
the mine operators' gunmen and
thugs, and until an auditing com-
mittee has made a report that will
permit the people to decide between
just obligations and fraudulent
claims.

"That you withdraw your request for a State constabulary, as such an organization could not help becoming a powerful adjunct to the labor-crushing despotism of the coal companies. (The constabulary bill has since been killed.)

"That you excercise your police
power and take over the mines for
operation by the State, pending an
agreement between the strikers and
the operators.

"That you lend your aid to the
movement in favor of a constitu-
tional amendment allowing the State
to develop its own natural resources,
so that we may be freed from the
menace of such absentee landlords
as Rockefeller."

When it became evident that the only
real accomplishment of the special ses-
sion of the legislature would be Governor
Ammon's bill for the payment of the
militia, Senator Helen Ring Robinson
spoke to her fellow senators in the
Democratic caucus in no uncertain
words. She said:

"If you gentlemen think you can
pass the appropriation bill and then
quickly adjourn without hearing
from the people later, you have as
much perspicuity as little black kit-
tens. There is important work to be
done before this special session
ends. We have a vastly more seri-
ous duty to perform than to consider
whether this appropriation bill
should be paid or whether it should
not be. And the quicker you under-
stand it the better it will be for
Colorado."

And although the opposition to Governor Ammons' bill was from only ten Senators, and those all Republicans and Progressives, Senator Robinson, herself a Democrat, fought it nobly, and declared that:

"A vote for Governor Ammons'
million-dollar appropriation bill
would be a vote for another Ludlow
and Forbes. If the clause barring
gunmen from the militia had been
left in the bill I could have voted
for it without having blood on my
hands. I shall vote against it."

When Governor Ammons, having pas-
sed his appropriation bill, announced
that the militia would be sent back to
the scene of the strike, it looked as if
that would mean the withdrawal of the
federal troops. The women, well aware
that a renewal of the horrors would be
certain in that case, rose to the occasion
once more, called a mass meeting, and
appointed a committee to go to Washing-
ton, see the President and give him some
first hand information on the strike situ-
ation, and urge him to keep the troops in
Colorado until the mines could be taken
over by the government and held until
the operators were compelled to arbi-
trate.

The Committee consisted of Judge and
Mrs. Lindsay, Mrs. Lee Champion, and
three of the miners' wives—Mrs. Pearl
Jolly, Mrs. M. H. Thomas, and Mrs.
Mary Petrucci, who had endured unut-
terable torment in the cellar of one of the
tents at Ludlow where three of her four
little children were suffocated. The poor
soul's sanity is now wavering in the

INGTON.

naidenly
ry of the
do when
e house
a.'

a Chris-
allots to
the pre-

aroused
the bal-
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an war-
out of

that
moth-
commit-

604

THE TREND

balance, and after one day in Washington, her companions decided that it would not be safe to let her tell her awful story again. So she was sent back to Colorado, where some loving friends will try to tide her over to a normal mental condition.

Beside seeing the President in Washington, the Colorado messengers gave their evidence before an enormous audience, called together on short notice by the Washington Woman Suffrage Council, a body newly organized to assist the work of the National Congressional Committee and to maintain an open forum for the discussion of vital public issues.

An accurate stenographic report was made of the speeches of the miners' wives, which is given here almost in full. Nothing that an outsider could say of the Colorado situation could possibly give so convincing an idea of the conditions as the simple, almost child-like recitation of events as given by these true-hearted, brave women, who are now homeless and destitute, but whose spirit is still uncrushed.

Mrs. Pearl Jolly was introduced by Judge Lindsay as a trained nurse who had first gotten her knowledge of the mine operators from her connection with their welfare work. She subsequently married a miner. Her speech was as follows:

> "I am a citizen of Colorado, born and raised in Colorado in the southern coal fields, and I will try to tell you, as near as I can, the terrible story of our terrible massacre in Ludlow. April 19th was Sunday. We had a baseball game. The militia attended, which they had done before, but never with rifles. They attended with rifles which they had drawn as though they intended to shoot the players. They were standing so close around first base that it was impossible for a man to get there. One of our players asked them if they would please get out of the diamond. They would not move. Another man told them if they wanted to watch the ball game to

put their guns at their sides. They refused. One of the ladies in the crowd made the remark that if a bunch of ladies would start towards them with beebee guns they would run. At this they turned to her and said, 'That's all right, girlie. Have your big Sunday today, but tomorrow you will have the ropes,' and the man in the lead said, 'It will only take me and my four men to clean out the whole bunch of you,' which he and his four men, with help, did the following day. They had tried to start trouble before, but failed.

> "On Sunday night they rode through the camp and we thought that they were planning on blowing up the camp, but nothing happened. On the following morning they sent to my tent for Louis Tikas, who was one of our leaders. When he went out, a few of us ladies followed him. There were four militiamen—the same four who had been at the baseball game. They handed him a piece of paper with the name of some man who was not in the tent-colony, and told Louis they wanted to take this man out. Mr. Tikas asked them if they had a warrant or if they had been sent by the civil authority. They said 'No.' They said they had been sent by the military authority, and he told them he understood the military authority was out of commission, but he would like to see who had given him orders for this man. The last remark that was made was that they would be back again. When they left, Mr. Tikas went to the telephone and asked Major Hamrock to talk to him. He told him he would meet him half way between the military post and the colony. Mr. Tikas went half way but he did not meet him there and he came back to the tent-colony. When he came back, he telephoned again. Major Hamrock told him to go to the depot, which he did.

> "After ten or fifteen minutes he

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

605

started coming towards our camp on
the dead run, waving a white hand-
kerchief. They fired two bullets
and continued firing at him until he
hit our tent colony. When they
started firing at the tent colony,
our men decided that if they would
take their rifles and leave that they
would cease firing on the tent-
colony and that would protect the
women and children, and they left.
The women and children that could
get out, did, but women that were
expecting to become mothers and
women who could not possibly get
out remained in places which we had
which we called dug-outs or pits.
They were dug there just immedi-
ately after we went to Ludlow.
There had been two previous battles
in Ludlow. At the time of the first
battle, it was not possible for the
women and children to get out and
they dug these pits. After the first
battle, they were left there in order
that they could be a protection. And
the military authorities now claim
that they were dug two days before
the massacre. But they were not.
What women and children could go
into these pits got in, but they
didn't cease to fire on the tents.

"They started firing on us between
nine and ten on Monday morning.
They fired on us continuously, and
at three o'clock they set two ma-
chine guns right on the tent colony
and started to riddling the tents.
Between five and six o'clock the
tents were set afire. After they had
fired on us so much, it was decided
that if I would dress in white and
put a red cross emblem on that they
would quit shooting. I did that, but
when I went out to the front they
took the red cross for a target. I
turned around and went back. Shots
were flying all around me and a bul-
let hit the heel of my shoe and shot
it off. I thought at first my foot
had been shot off, but I didn't have
time to stop and see whether it was
or not, I had to keep on the run.

"We then decided,—this Louis
Tikas and I—that we would go

from tent to tent and make the
women and children in these tents
as comfortable as they could be. We
went about dodging bullets all day.
At one time I went to my tent,
which was right in the front. And
we found two of our leaders lay-
ing in back of the office tent trying
to send a message. They asked me
if I would stay there long enough to
make some sandwiches. I went into
the tent and I left my door open.
Standing just opposite the door, I
had a dresser with a large mirror.
I think they could see my reflection
in this mirror, as they opened fire
on my tent. They riddled the
dresser. I didn't stay very long, be-
cause I dropped on the floor. They
shot on the tent for half an hour
and I guess they came to the con-
clusion that anything in there was
dead. I finished making the sand-
wiches and went around the corner
to give them to the men, and they
started shooting at me again, and
one of the men said, 'For God's
sake, girl, stay away from here.
You are a hoodoo.'

"At another time that day there
was a wounded man in a tent and I
tried to go and get some dressing to
use. The first time I made the ef-
fort, I couldn't get there at all. They
shot at me so strong I had to get
back. So we then decided that if
Louis would go on ahead of me and
open the tent door, then I could get
in. But he didn't succeed. He
started out ahead of me and I lost
him. And he went around one tent
and I was following and he turned
around and said to me, 'Drop and
drop quick.' He was behind a coal
pile that wasn't big enough for one
person to get behind. I dropped
there with him behind that coal pile.
They shot at us a bit and then they
quit, but they had just quit long
enough to set the machine gun on
us. It got so hot for three men that
were following that they thought
they would try and get behind the
coal pile, too--and that was five of
us behind this little coal pile. They

606

THE TREND

kept the machine gun on us there
but did not hit us, although the shots
were hitting within a foot or so
around us.

"In the meantime, one of the chil-
dren had the top of his head blown
off in the tent. His father came out
to tell us about it and they turned
the machine gun on him, to chase
him back home, and that is how we
got away. This boy that was killed
was Frank Snyder, a boy twelve
years old. They had been in the
cave all day. Mrs. Snyder has seven
children and he was the eldest, and
at about four or five o'clock they got
hungry, and as they were not shoot-
ing on the camp they decided that
they could go into the tent and get
something to eat. She said they had
been in the tent about three minutes.
The little boy was sitting in her bed
room in a rocking chair. He had
just made an effort to caress his sis-
ter when the top of his head was
blown off and his brains were scat-
tered over his sisters. His mother
had to keep them there until twelve
that night. She could not even stop
to see if the boy was dead. She
had to get the other children out of
the way.

"And at about five or six o'clock
that night, when a fire broke out,
we were trying get the women and
children together as nice as we
could. We were going around from
tent to tent and from the light of
the fire they could see us and they
would shoot at us but they could not
hit us. We got most of the women
and children out, but we had got the
report that one of Mrs. Petrucci's—
she lost three of her children—one
of her children had been shot.
Louis Tikas could not understand
how she could get out with these
three children and one being dead.
He said that if I would lead a band
there of fifty out of there, he would
go back to Mrs. Petrucci and get
her and her children. That was be-
tween eight and nine that night. He
started back to the cave to get them
but they captured him and murdered

him. They didn't try to save these
women and children, and I know
that they could not have murdered
him quick enough for him not to
have told. They first hit him over
the head—I didn't see him after they
captured him—with a gun. They
broke the butt of a gun over his
head, and it fractured his skull.
The man that broke his gun made
the remark that he had spoiled a
new gun. When he had fallen, they
shot him four times in the back, but
he was shot after he was dead.
They also turned him over and
stepped in his face. The print of
the boot is very plain to be seen on
his chin. His nose was broken and
his cheek bone was broken. We have
a picture of it, if any of you would
like to see it. They did not go to
this cave, but this woman and her
children happened to be in another
cave, where there were eleven chil-
dren and two men taken out dead,
on the following Wednesday.

"On this Monday, we went to
Frank Bayes' Ranch, about one mile
below. They didn't fire on us be-
cause they were too busy looting
and stealing, but at five o'clock
Tuesday morning, there was an
automobile came with two doctors
in it, who came there to care for an
injured man. When this automobile
came, I suppose they thought it was
some of the men—they immediately
opened fire on the farm house. We
couldn't in no way get to the cellar,
only through a side window. They
kept us in the cave Tuesday all day,
that is, most of the day. At this
farm house we had a telephone. We
couldn't find out anything about
what was going on, only that they
were trying to kill all of us; so we
decided that we would eavesdrop on
the telephone—not a very nice thing
to do, but at the time of war any-
thing is all right. We took down
the receiver and listened. One of
the ladies in the Hasting Canyon
was speaking to the Superintendent.
She says: 'Well, what do you think
of yesterday's work? That was

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

607

fine, wasn't it? They killed that old Jim Fowler and Louis the Greek. Wasn't that fine? They burned down the Ludlow tents and we won't be bothered any more, and we know of twenty-eight of the dirty brutes that were roasted alive in the tent colony.' But we never got any twenty-eight back. They have evidently got rid of them some other way. We took down the receiver again, and in a few minutes there was some men talking. 'Well, we have all the important ones we want to get now, except John Lawson and the two Winber boys and we know where they are.' But they didn't get them, we moved them.

"We didn't have anything to eat in this farm house. Everything was gone. This Frank Bayes decided that if he would take the Continental Oil Tank out that they wou'dn't fire on us. So he went to a place by the name of Augusta, to get us something to eat. When he went out they didn't fire. When he started back, he got about a quarter of a mile from his home when they opened fire. The shots hit all around but didn't hit him, but they did hit one of the mules. But he got into the house. That made them that much more furious. They simply started to shooting that place up right. Most of the shots were hitting in the chicken yard and back of us, but we thought they were going to hit us every minute and Mrs. Bayes didn't know what to do. Finally she decided she would call on the men for protection. She called up the Sheriff at Trinidad. He said he didn't have nothing to do with those men, but to call up a captain of the militia. She called up one of the captains of the militia. She asked him if he would not try to protect the women and children. He told her that it was not his men, that it was the strikers. But she told him that she knew better, that they were in uniform. He told her then that he would see what he could do, but the best advice he could give

would be not to move, because anything that was seen moving would be shot at.

"So we decided that as soon as it was dark we would get out. After we left the farm house they went there. They took everything that they could carry away with them. They took boxes of corn starch and scattered it all over everything. 'This is what you get for harboring strikers. Cut it out, or we will call again.' This little note was left there, signed by the Baldwin-Phelps Detective Agency and the National Guard. That night we went about five or eight miles below there. We had two or three sick people in our party. We decided that we would take them the next day to a hospital. We went to a hospital in Trinidad.

"I found out that the bodies hadn't been rescued yet. They wouldn't even let the dead wagon in. So we got permission from Denver, from Governor Ammons, to go. He said that if we went out with the red cross emblem on we could get into camp. We made up a party of two automobiles. We went there and they let us go into the camp but we were under guard and there were only certain places we were allowed to get. All of the bodies were in one cave. We found eleven children and two women. One of the women in this cave was in labor at the time she died. Her baby was born two days later, in the undertaking department, dead. While we were doing it they would sneer at us. I never in my life heard so much slander. They said everything they could think of to us. They tried in every way to get us to say something to them. When we were taking these bodies out, they would come to us and they would shoot a dog or a chicken. Sometimes I think they were shooting at nothing, just to frighten us, but by that time we weren't a bit afraid of them. Finally, we got the bodies all out and started back. They held us

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up at the depot and searched our automobiles, but they were just simply trying to cause trouble. They held us up there for a good while and then told us that they would not take any chance on any red cross or white flag and gave us to understand that everything that came through there was to be shot at, until the Federals came in the field. I think I have told you now most of the facts of things that happened, but there are lots and lots I couldn't possibly tell you, and it is not possible to make it clear."

Mrs. Jolly told her story in a high, strained, somewhat monotonous voice, her emotion showing only by her dry lips, which she occasionally moistened, and by a frequent little catch in her breath.

She was followed by Mrs. Thomas, an exceedingly pretty, pale little woman, with a most melodious voice and charming personality, showing an occasional faint smile, with a little touch of drollery at the recollection of some of the grimly humorous parts of her experience. She alluded to herself as "one of those ignorant foreigners," but Judge Lindsay mentioned, in introducing her that she had entertained in her Welsh home, Lloyd George, "the great champion of human liberty in Wales." Mrs. Thomas spoke as follows:

"I would like to tell you that it is only ten months since I came from Wales, and I have never seen anything like what I have seen in Colorado before. I was raised in one small town, which was a very, very small place, but now a very, very large town. Everyone knew me in this town, and I was very much respected there. I got married there eight years ago and I had two hundred wedding presents given to me. One hundred and fifty-six of these I brought to Colorado with me and fifteen hundred dollars, and today I haven't got a thing to show, but the clothes which have been donated to me.

"When we came to this country first, my husband went to a mining

camp to work. When we were going up, someone asked him where he came from and he said he came from Wales. They asked him did he belong to a Union. He said, "Oh, yes," and he took great pride in drawing out his union card. 'For God's sake hide it, or else you go down sooner than you came up,' the fellow said. So he had to put that back. I found conditions there intolerable. They were terrible. I had to live in a pig sty, as we call them in Wales. They were worse than that. I found the conditions so different there to the mines in which my husband had worked in Wales. He had only worked in Union mines before, so we decided that we would not stay there very long.

"It was just like this. When we see our husbands go out through the door in the morning, every miner's wife goes to the door and thinks it is the last she is going to see of her husband, and if we hear of anyone hurt, everyone thinks it is their own, and to think that our men have to work under conditions like that! If the boss told a man 'You go there to work,' and if that man knew the top would come down on him, he would get fired if he refused. He should not have a say in anything. And another thing they would do. One man maybe would say, 'I will have eighty dollars next pay day.' If he had sixty he would have to be satisfied, and if he complained about it he would be fired. They say it was short weight, but no miners ever had a check weighman of their own, so that they could cheat them just as they had a mind to.

"Well, after I had been there for two months, we came out on strike. I was right with them, because I have been taught ever since I was a very little girl what unionism meant. When I came over to this country, I didn't come a pauper. I sold the business I had, which was doing fine, and I brought fifteen hundred dollars over here, and I had everything comfortable. Now I haven't

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

609

got a thing. That is what Colorado
has done for me. My husband was
born in America and we thought we
would like to come back to the place
to see it once more.

"Well, when he did come out on strike, there were gunmen placed on each side of the camp, just a few yards from one another, pointing guns at one another, pointing guns at anybody, if he looked like a union man. That is the first time in my life I ever saw a gun. I have seen so many now that not one would scare me. And we were driven down this canyon just like dogs. They knew that there was not enough chance there, but that was not the United Mine Workers' fault, who had ordered three hundred tents two weeks before this strike came on, and the C. F. & I. railway pretended that they couldn't find them and they were only to come from Denver to Ludlow. And that is what they did, just to keep us out in the rain and snow for a whole week. There were as many as thirty under one tent and all our furniture, bedding and everything else left out in the weather. Well, they were against us so much we determined to stick together more than ever. And when the gunmen came, they were there ready for us. They had three hundred of these gunmen there.

"Well, the operators wanted us to fight with these gunmen, so that they would be able to have the militia in there, so they could put the expense on the State. We could see these things. We were not as crazy as they thought we were. We had meetings to this effect, showing that if we were to fight with these gunmen that they would have the militia out so that they would be able to carry on a strike. When these gunmen came down to shoot into the women and children and our men couldn't stand it any longer, they had to take to their guns.

"But when the militia came in we
were determined to treat them as

society should be treated. We went
to meet them. We invited them to
our dances. We danced with them.
We invited them to our homes. We
gave them suppers. But in a very
short time the operators saw that
that didn't pay. They wanted to cut
off the friendship that existed be-
tween us. They had these militia-
men to take up the strikebreakers in
the day time, so that we would be
able to see them. They knew it
would make us mad, and it did.
When they came to our dances we
refused to dance with them. One of
their officers asked me, 'How is it
you don't dance with us?' I said,
'Because you can't be on two sides.
If you are going to take up there we
would much prefer you to respect us
and keep away,' and he said, 'We
will not be down again.' And that is
just what he wanted and from that
on, the militia started against us and
did everything that was mean. They
were continually wanting to search
the tents. They would fix their ma-
chine guns right around the colony,
and place soldiers with fixed bayo-
nets ready to shoot the men. We
were pushed about like dogs. Wo-
men that were pregnant were
knocked around just as if they were
beasts and they continually came
there to search and they would take
everything they wanted. The would
look into little drawers that were
just a few inches long for guns.
We asked them would they please
divide up if they found any money.
They kept all the money they found,
and several things they stole. And
one time their captain searched them
because the complaint was made that
they had stolen things, and they
found things on them.

"I guess I have to tell you about
my being in jail. I am going to
Trinidad the day we were protesting
about Mother Jones, and I wanted
to go down so bad that I was hurry-
ing to catch the train. But they
made me lose the train. I deter-
mined to go anyhow, because I had
other important business to attend

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THE TREND

to there. An automobile was passing down at two-fifteen. There was the driver and two passengers in it, so I asked them if they would give me a ride to Trinidad and they said yes. I got in. Immediately I got in they started asking me questions about Ludlow. 'Isn't it too bad about these poor miners there just listening to a few agitators?' one of them turned to me and asked. I said, 'You needn't feel sorry. They are doing just fine.' So he said, 'But there are lots of people going to work, isn't there?' and I said, 'No.' He said, 'Why, there were twenty of them that went this morning,' and I said, 'There is only four gone altogether.' Se he saw he couldn't get out of me what he wanted, and he didn't take any more notice of me and I didn't take any more notice of him. I didn't care, as long as I got to Trinidad.

"When we reached Trinidad I noticed he looked sort of funny. We stopped opposite the Colonial Hotel. He rushed right away. And so I got out and I looked down the street and the parade was over, and everybody was coming back. I was going up to the house of a friend to wash my face. I got there in about ten minutes. I went up four of the steps when one of the militiamen pushed me to the floor and the lady friend said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'Walk on.' I said, 'I don't have to.' And he said, 'Your business is to walk on.' And he knocked me down three times, just as if he was piking Jack Johnson. So finally one other fellow, there were two six-footers, jumped up and he said, 'Arrest that woman.' And they took me right up to the Post Office with about fifty militiamen standing around me and they kept me there for about ten minutes, when General Chase came along and one of them said, 'This is Mrs. Thomas, from Ludlow.' 'Oh,' he said, 'that is her. Well, you keep her until I give you further orders,' and they kept me on that road with fifty militiamen, for

two hours—they kept watching me for two hours. When then, they marched me up in front of this fifty to jail and when I went there they took my size, my weight, the color of my eyes, and color of my complexion, when I was born, and things of that sort, and he couldn't decide what color hair I had. He said, 'What color do you call that?' I said, 'Pale blue.'

"And then he put me into the cell, and it was beastly. There were two other women that were arrested, but that night they let them out. So I thought it was going to be my turn next, but it didn't come my turn. I had my hat on, so that if it came my turn I would be ready to go. I got into the dirty bed that was there and the rats, they were around there something terrible. That place had been condemned years ago, but they kept me there and I told them that I wanted to bring my children, but I dropped a note out through the bars, so somebody would find it, and somebody did, and sent it to my husband and I told him they were going to send the militia men for my children, and I would not trust my children in the hands of any dirty militiamen, as I found them. And I told my husband that he wasn't to give these children out of his hands until they came right into mine and he was not supposed to see me. So he came down to jail and he said that he wanted to take the children up. They told him, 'She is a military prisoner.' And my husband said, 'Those children are not going out of my hands until they are in hers.' So finally, when my husband was going out, he said, 'I guess I'd better let you go.' When he brought them to the door the jailer said, with his arms folded, 'Mrs. Thomas, I shall have to listen to what you and your husband say.' I said, 'All right, listen.' But we spoke Welsh and he couldn't understand it. So he got so mad, and he let me talk about three to five minutes, but I could tell him a lot in that time.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

611

"When my children came they got so depressed with that place. One of them said, 'Mama, why do those bars be on the windows?' and they put their little hats and coats on and tried to drag my hand, and asked me to come out, and when he would bring food he would throw it right to the floor, as if I was a dog, and he would click that door. Every time the key clicked it would go through my heart.

"I sent a letter to General Chase, and I asked him what charge did he have against me and what did he have me in there for, that if he would give me a trial I could prove that I had not done anything, and he never answered my letter. He kept me in there for eleven days, until he felt like letting me out, and without any trial at all, and I don't know yet what I have been in for.

"Then they got so mean with our men by now, that every man that would dare go outside the boundary of that tent colony would come back with black eyes. There isn't a man in or tent colony they haven't beaten up like that. But you don't hear about it. Now you hear, after we have had to make such a sacrifice. These people were dear to us. We were brothers and sisters. We clung together just like the ivy.

"And referring to the battle which Mrs. Jolly has explained to you, I just want to tell you that a few days before this battle they pulled down the American flag and fixed up a red flag there instead of it. So that showed they wanted to fight and the morning that this fight started no one had any idea of a fight. Everybody was in bed. Do you think that they would have stayed in bed until the first shot were fired? We would have saved our most precious things. I ran to a well with seventy people when the fighting started. I was afraid the staging would break. The well was one hundred and fifty feet deep. But I put about fifty people in there and went with the other twenty up into a stable. The shots

were firing through all day and I was going out to see how things were going on. There were about fifty of these men there and they knew very well that women and children were there and only four of these Greeks kept them at bay, and I filled their rifles for them and I don't care who knows it. We hadn't even had breakfast that morning. We weren't even dressed. Our children didn't have shoes and stockings on their feet. We were there until seven o'clock that night, when there was a freight came along and somebody suggested that would be the only means of escape. The freight train was coming up this way (indicating) and the militia was over there shooting this way (indicating), so I was about fifteen yards away from this well, so I said I would go to this well and tell these people to get out. They were down so deep that they could not hear the freight train coming. They said not to go, but I decided I would go and I went, and when I went to this well these people were so excited that they could hardly get up, but they got up and I was the last woman to leave that well and one Greek helped me with one of my little girls and I took the other one. And when this man that was driving this freight train through got opposite the well, one of these militiamen went up and said, 'If you don't move out and damn quick, we will shoot you, too,' and he had to move out, and when he did move out they could see me, when I was standing up, and they were shooting at me and they shot a piece of my hair off, but I am not dead yet. And when I was running to this arroyo, I fell over a man that was shot. And they told me that when he died 'Union Forever' was on his lips.

"There were pregnant women with us and seven other children, and it was the most pitiful sight you ever saw, and these women were lying on the side of the arroyo fainting. I tried to throw some

612

THE TREND

water at one and I took her running as fast as I could to the first ranch, which was about two miles. If we could have crossed right across, it would only have been a mile. We could see the tent colony ablaze and we knew we had not a place to lie our heads. We were just like Jesus Christ was born into the world.

"When we reached this ranch we could see these soldiers—I won't call them soldiers—I could see these men on horseback as if they were coming in that direction. Fighting the women and children—that's what they were fighting. They didn't want to fight men. They were too cowardly to fight men. And I could see them heading for this ranch. There was a man there with a big wagon, so we had the oldest women and children put in this wagon and we walked behind it and we walked for another eight miles—from fifteen after seven until twelve-thirty, in the dark, and you couldn't see your hand before you, and the little children were so afraid they wouldn't make a sound, and the women held their hands over the babies' mouths so they would not make any noise, so they wouldn't know where we were and could follow us. And one man had to get out of bed with pleurisy that morning. We were feeling the road. We had lamps, but we daren't light them, and we had to travel in the dark and we got four miles further than we ought to, owing to no light. When we reached the second ranch we put the children in bed—fifteen in one bed, and we had to lie down on the floor ourselves and was very glad to have that place that night. We got up that morning and heard that our men on the hills didn't have any water. We took a bucket up to these hills, which was another five miles that morning, and when we were reaching the hills the shooting was terrible. When we got to the foot some men were coming down and said, 'For God's sake go back. You needn't take that now, they

have a barrel of water.' And we left the buckets there at the foot of the hills so they could get it if they wanted it. And that night we went to Trinidad. We had to go on a road that had never been used before and had to take five miles more, just because we had to go on a road so that we wouldn't be caught. We found the people there very kind and we thank everybody for what they have done for us, but even more so than charity, we want justice.

"There is one thing I forgot to tell you. It is the insults we have had to take in Ludlow, from these gunmen. There was no law to protect us. We had no place to take our cases to. One night two militiamen came down drunk, and there was a woman there, and they told her to drink some whiskey and she wouldn't, and they were going to arrest her and take her to jail, because she wouldn't, and she called me and she said that they were going to arrest her. I said 'You will not take that woman out tonight, or you will take me, too. If you want that woman come down in the morning.' And it was twelve o'clock, but they never came. But the insults we had! We will never do it again. We would rather be shot. Although we are ignorant foreigners, we would rather die than take what we have taken. Our honor is more to us. And they say all kinds of things about Louis the Greek. That was the most intelligent man I ever met. He was the hero of Ludlow, a man who knew the Bible—not like John D. Rockefeller. It always reminds me of a society lady that thought she would like to see the miners. She went near the mine to watch them come home, and when she saw them she said, "Well, but aren't they like men."

Judge Lindsay, perhaps more than any other man in the public eye, has the woman's—the mother's—point of view in regard to social disorders and injustices. It was therefore peculiarly fit-

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

613

ting that he should have gone to Washington with the miner's wives. His red-blooded, practical, parental, social conscience was characteristically revealed in what he said at the opening of the Washington mass-meeting, a part of which was as follows:

> "I have learned in fifteen years' experience in dealing with the welfare of the children of this nation, that there is no child problem that isn't a parent problem and there is no parent problem that isn't at bottom more or less a social, industrial, and economic problem. For example, before the State Conference of Charity and Correction that met in Denver last December, I was presented with a report by the secretary of that Board that only one newspaper in the town would print. It was a copy of the record of the coal mine inspector's office, showing that within a period of about four years, in practically two counties in the State where coal mines exist, nearly seven hundred little children had been orphaned, made fatherless, or made dependents, because of explosions in these mines, two-thirds of which, according to government reports, might have been avoided had the ordinary safety appliances and precautions been used that are used and have been used in other sections of the country, where such accidents, as a rule, are one, to three and a half in that section. And how is a man on the bench going to stop the increase of orphan children, according to his courts, unless he can stop the lawlessness in mines taking away the parents of those children? There are one hundred and fifty thousand fathers, it is estimated by some, dying of occupational disease every year, and one hundred and fifty thousand mothers being forced into the double burden of home-maker and bread-winner, because of certain conditions, with the result that over one hundred thousand children are hurled up into our

courts every year in this country. Do you think we are going to stop this condition by sitting behind the table and looking across into the faces of tear-stained children? We are not going to do it.

> "It is the thing for the doctor to do, when a patient is brought to the hospital with typhoid, to go behind that hospital and find the cause of the typhoid. And that is what some of us have dared to do in Colorado.

The controlling financial power in Colorado is not local. It covers a good deal of United States territory in various localities, and just so, the problems in Colorado are not local problems. They concern the whole country. Some of them can be partially corrected by State legislation, some can only be touched by federal legislation. To the extent that state measures can affect them, to that extent the voters of Colorado are responsible—the men and the women voters alike. There are carping critics of equal suffrage who have been inclined to hold woman suffrage responsible for the failures of the state government in Colorado.

To be honest, they should hold all the voters responsible—not the women alone, remembering, too, that the men out-number the women, also that the state government, even if it had been clean and efficient, could not make an industrial heaven, alone and unaided. Other states and the federal government would have to co-operate to accomplish that.

But, in any case, without deciding to just what degree the Colorado voters have been responsible for the reign of terror, there can be no doubt that they are doubly responsible now, for they know more. Facts heretofore hidden have been revealed. Bitter but salutary lessons must be learned from the experience. There is a mountainous task ahead of them. And at least one of the assets for the struggle will be the aroused women, who with Judge Lindsay are determined that human life shall not be so warped or wasted in the future, if vigilance and fair-play can prevent.

MARY WARE DENNETT.

# Parted on Her Bridal Tour and Other Novels

## An Attempt at a Critical Study of Miss Laura Jean Libbey.

BY EDNA KENTON.

In the preface to one of her best known novels, *Lovers Once But Strangers Now*, Miss Laura Jean Libbey strikes out with full arm technic a few of her many, many chords plucked raw from out the human heart:

"To those" (she says) "whose threads of life have been woven into a bright and glowing warp, this volume will possess cherished attractions of beauty interspersed with real life, its lights and shadows; while those isolated ones, who have found no tender, sympathetic chord to reverberate to their lonely, joyless existence, to whom pitiless fate has never granted the sweet boon of noble woman's influence and society to elevate, ennoble and to influence their better nature, it is to be hoped this book will awaken their latent interests, and to reveal the sacred contentment and beauty which the gentler sex ever sway over wayward mankind, kindling in his nature all that is good and promising.

"I love to compare my herome portrayals of women to a bright and shining star that illumines the heavens, lighting up the life paths of many a lone wanderer who, guided by the clear, beauteous light, takes heart once more and struggles forth from the darkness into the radiance he has sought for so long.... The garnered golden prize is woman's unfathomed devotion. That has ever been since the beginning of the world, and will be to the end of time, the noblest gift, the hallowed, crowning joy our Creator happily allotted to noble and appreciative mankind."

Chapter I of this remarkable tour de force is entitled:

"So perish all my hopes and my brief dream of love," said the handsome young lawyer, bowing his head on his hands. "Ah, what is fame or wealth worth without the one we love to share it?"

Follows then this brief but beautiful little poem, striking Miss Libbey's chiefest chord:

"What is love, that all the world
Talks so much about it?

What is love that neither you
Nor I can do without it?

"Love is a pearl of purest hue,
But stormy waves are round it,
And dearly may a woman rue
The hour that first she found it."

Not until then does the teeming tale begin—with an eager lover-lawyer guarding a client's cash, a heavily bearded, green-spectacled robber, "the ringing report of a revolver, a deafening hiss and whir, a flash of light, and terrible heat, and black, blinding smoke," the theft, the false friend, clean-shaven (black and bushy whiskers as false as he were found later in some ash bin), who bids young Merrick "Fly from here." Upon his noble refusal thus to brand himself, Orin Brice addresses him in the following realistic manner:

"You speak in the heat of excitement and passion now, but the hour will come when you will thank me from the bottom of your heart for the suggestion. There is another consideration that should urge you

614

PARTED ON HER BRIDAL TOUR AND OTHER NOVELS

615

to save yourself while it is yet in
your power—Beatrice Reamer loves
you. Think of her grief and horror
if you were unable to prove your
innocence and were sent up for long
years. Escape while yet it is time
from the abyss which yawns to en-
gulf you, I entreat you."

Unable to resist these eloquent words,
Merrick flies to an outgoing steamer,
and, what with ocean flights that lead
from sea to sea and the deepest depths of
ocean (with our noble hero in a diver's
suit whose air tube is cut off from above
by Brice's boot that is not so black as
his heart) must remain to be told. But
it must suffice to quote the last para-
graph of this novel, a part of Brice's
letter to the lovely Beatrice, written
from a dank prison cell:

"My love for you has been my
curse. Had I met you and gained
your love earlier, I might have led
a better life through your sweet and
noble influence.... On my prison
walls I have printed these words
which greet my eyes the first thing
in the morning, and they rest upon
them till the light of the dying day
fades and the gloaming hides them
from my sight; they mean the whole
story of my hapless love for you
compressed in these few bitter,
bitter words:

"Lovers Once but Strangers Now."

From the several million qualities that
render Miss Libbey's novels supreme in
their class may be snatched her flawless
flaire for chapter heads. "Stop, Good
Minister, Stop! For the Love of Heaven!
I Forbid the Marriage!"; "A Night in
a Faro Palace: My God, I am Ruined!";
"He Looked Through a Keyhole and
Saw With a Horror Too Great for
Words, the Maniac Bending Over the
Girl."; "It was Well Her Face was
Heavily Veiled!"; "Judge Her Not
Harshly—Remember She was Scarcely
More Than a Child—This Hapless
Young Girl, Thrown on the Wicked
World's Mercy"; "The Far-Off Shriek
of the Express Fell on Her Terrified

Ear"; "No Young Girl Should Love a
Man Who Eminces Only Friendship For
Her"; "When Honorable Men Speak
of Love to a Young Girl They Always
Mention Marriage in the Same Breath,"
said Merrick"; "The Toboggan With the
Terrified Girl Clinging to It Crashed
Over the Bluff and Into the River Be-
low"; what are these but blinding
glimpses at the very essences of life!

"Captain Stafford," falters Coralie timidly; "I have something to say to you —that is why I am here!" Here, imbedded in "*A Master Workman's Oath, or, Coralie the Unfortunate,*" lies the long-sought original of a long-familiar line. Follows her tale, a simple story, but oh, so sad, so sad! "I am sorry that I promised to marry you this morning—it would be an irksome tie to me. I ask you to give me back my freedom." But the maddened young captain refuses, and preparations for the wedding go on apace until on the very morning of the day that the wedding was to be when Capt. Stafford seeks his bride in the rose garden:

"One glance—then a wild, horri-
fied cry—it was Coralie's wedding
veil and the wreath of orange bloss-
soms crushed and torn in a shape-
less mass. Beautiful Coralie, who
was to have been a bride within an
hour, was gone...

"Oh, if Annie had but followed
and saved her!

"Ah, if the night wind or sighing
trees could have but warned the
fair, young bride of the fatal trag-
edy that was to follow! but it did
not."

Ah, those old wells, dry at the bottom,
with wide ledges of rock near the top
that catch and hold the unconscious
forms of slender young brides who step
backward into the unsuspecting nothing-
ness behind them! Or that hold the last
wills and testaments hurled by a plot-
ting hand into nothing but mildew! And
ah, those cunning hands which with but
an hour's casual practice imitate the old
uncles' signatures, or the young lovers'
chiroographies, so that courts and sweet-

THE TREND

hearts are alike deceived! Those strange
illnesses that obliterate from the minds
of the persecuted heroines all memories
of the fatal nights! Those sneering,
handsome, devilish men who say, "I
have you in my power, my beautiful
Beatrice. You cannot play fast and loose
with me. I am not a man to stand that
sort of thing!" Those letters that come
too soon or too late:—"But a few days
more and I should have been safe, safe!"
mutter the beauties, tearing the em-
bossed notepapers in thousands of frag-
ments and grinding them into the lilies
of the velvet carpets with the heels of
bronze satin slippers! Those hurricanes
that blow, sweeping strong men from
rear platforms into bushes as the New
York Expresses whirl into murky dark-
nesses; and those swoons into which
fair and innocent young girls fall while
black-eyed beauties pluck silver daggers
from fair hairs and slay the false ones,
leaving the dead men and the fainting
girls on the floors together, with her
dagger through his heart! And those
dying bad men, muttering to the wronged
and innocent: "You have suffered, but
I should not tell you my secret now but
that I am dying. I have done many bad
actions and few good ones. I have
cheated the scaffold and the law, but I
will offset all this by one good deed re-
uniting you, on the eve you were to wed
another, to Rosalie, your lost bride!"

And ah, those deaf and dumb keepers
of abducted heiresses; those confessions
interrupted at the crucial word by light-
ning, wrecks, fire alarms, dynamite, or
earthquakes; those fatal resemblances
that make Allan seem his coarse twin
Alf; those drugs that stupify instantly,
and, in double doses, take away the
minds of men; those faces peering from
whirling cabs, those decoy notes sent by
dastardly rivals; those bouquets per-
fumed with subtle narcotics; those heav-
ily veiled women stealthily creeping past;
those old mills with the heiresses and
the mouldy crusts of bread; those
swollen veins that stand out like whip-
cords on noble foreheads, and strong
hands that tremble like leaves in winds;
the weddings at dead of nights, the gold-

washed wedding rings, and the marriage
certificates that never were!

*Miss Middleton's Lover, or, Parted on Her Bridal Tour*, opens with "A Cry, in the Night," and ends with the well-sustained conclusion from many premises, "Without Love the World is a Weary Waste, A Desert." It is the well-known history of Miss Irene Middleton, niece of Banker Middleton, and cousin of Karl Heathcliffe, the most consummate villian ever hissed on any stage. Hero Frederick Esmond is discovered coatless and minus a collar—it was ten p. m. of an August London night, and did not prevent Mrs. Grey from shuddering the day after murder when she read Karl Heathcliffe's telegram announcing his impending arrival. For a few months before she had seen this man, handsome but not good, hurl a luckless spaniel to death with one efficient blow from his polished bootheel as he passed haughtily up a paved walk. "He is not a man to be trusted," said Mrs. Grey, and never saw reason to change that first impression. It is this fellow, distrusted from the first by all, whom Irene, by the terms of her slaughtered uncle's will, must marry. She does, secretly, little wotting—here resemblance plays its fatal part—that the real Karl Heathcliffe lies in a soldier's grave; a secret that the double discloses in an auspicious moment which he believes to be a dying one. Ten drops of something instead of four—as prescribed by a well-meaning physician—save his life instead of lose it, and he goes to a convict's cell, from his bridal tour. And Irene determines to keep her fatal secret, little surmising

"Ah, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive."

Poetry and Miss Libbey may not be
one, but they are far from two. In her
thousands of pages may be found poems
—and poems. As, for instance, above!
that rounding, gliding, pertinent touch to
a throbbing, culminating sentence! Here
may be found not only Byron, Poe,
Whittier, Shakespeare and other well-
known—and deservedly so—poets, but

also citations from what we must believe
are the unpublished works of some of
Miss Libbey's dearest friends and rela-
tives. Mrs. Elizabeth Libbey, for in-
stance—Miss Libbey's mother—has a
signed quatrain at the head of one of
her daughter's chapters of passion warm
but pure, that foots it as follows:

> "The stars will cease to shine,
> The sun will cease to set,
> If ever I cese to love thee
> My sweet Mignonette."

Another of Miss Libbey's best tales
of the New York working girl's dreams
and sorrows has its first chapter pre-
ceeded by:

> "To love and be beloved
> Is the one grand dream of a
> maiden's life.

—F. N. Crouch.

L. J. L. (these modest initials can be-
long to but one!) signs this tiny little
thing:

> "If I could quaff the nectared cup
> Love holds to other lips,
> I'd drain it slowly to the dregs,
> As bees the honey sip."

An unsigned stanza remarks metric-
ally:

> "I swear 'tis better to be lowly born
> And range with humble lovers in content,
> Than to be perked up in a glistening grief
> And wear a golden sorrow."

And another unsigned little gem, sad-
ly foretelling the content of another
chapter, lilts along:

> "She is an heiress of untold wealth,
> And fame has laureled her woman's
> brow,
> While I am a workman, with nothing
> but health,
> And a heartful of love to offer now."

One of Miss Libbey's lovers woos by
means of "love poems from Warder's
beautiful 'Utopian Dreams,' a line here
and there, where the poet from the west
breathes out so passionately." Eviden-
ly "Utopian Dreams" may be had, bound
and for a price, and it is with pleasure

that Miss Libbey's efforts to make this
poet from the west better known north,
south, and east, are here augmented.
Sighs Mr. Warder:

> "Why do I love? I'm not so wise—
> Because she had such glorious eyes,
> That glowed like twin stars in the skies;
> Because her face to me was fair,
> Because she wore a queenly air,
> Because her equals were so rare,
> Because the deer will sniff the air,
> Because the birds and beasts will pair,
> Because the dove will seek a mate,
> Because—because such things are fate.

> "O sweet! my love comes like the ocean
> grand,
> To bow at thy feet and kiss thy hand
> With devotion broad and deep as the sea,
> For thy smile is all the world to me.

> I would feel the soft thrill of thy bosom,
> love,

> As it glowed like a star in its heaven
> of charms,

> And thy spirit would rush like the coo
> of a dove

> And fold me so fondly in two lily
> arms;

> I would kiss thee so softly thy spirit
> would think

> It touched but the down on an angel's
> fair wing.

> And my arm in the arm of thy spirit
> I'd link,

> And love is the song I would teach
> thee to sing."

The liquid rhymes of the last four
lines, doubtless owing to the over-boiling
of the poet's soul, seem to thicken slight-
ly overmuch, but at that, one would not
choose to miss them.

It might be bathos—but it is not!—to
follow this with the closing lines of an-
other poem by another poet whose name
is affixed and who is parenthetically de-
scribed by his enthusiastic friend, Miss
Libbey:

* * * * * *

> "And throbbing stars
> Rejoice to hear the mingling of our
> vows;

> And happy moons reel with delight
> As our souls meet.

—Abram Lent Smith,

THE TREND

*(The Byron of America).*

"She was of scarce sixteen summers,"
says Miss Libbey of almost any one of
her all but countless heroines, "beautiful
as a dream, yet she knew as little of
her marvellous beauty as the robin, twit-
tering among the apple blossoms, of its
crimson breast, or the purple hearted
violets beneath her feet of their perfect
hue."

Of her wicked, not-to-be-trusted men
—and there are many of them in her
books—and—as Miss Libbey would have
all working girls believe—in the world,
she writes usually: "His face was hand-
some but not good. The eyes are dark,
the brows are arched, but the mouth, the
key to the whole face, is a bad one; but
it is not visible, being concealed by a
thick, curling, black moustache. It is
the face of a man who lives entirely for
himself and knows no restraint. Earl
Vancliff was a master in the art of mak-
ing love. His sighs were the poetry of
passion; his glances were as fatal as
arrows, and his breath like a scorching
flame, that withered all it touched.... At
one time in his past life he had been a
drug clerk, and from the first moment
he had known the use of this particular
drug and its action, it had changed him
into a fiend."

But not only men are treacherous.
Fair young girls are beset in this life by
cruel, beautiful women who hiss: "It is
well that the girl is to wed another! If
she had come between me and Allan
Ashton her life would have paid the for-
feit!" These cruel beauties love "with
all the strength of their passionate nat-
ures—and the strains of French blood
that course through their veins!" Now
and then they will enunciate "Monsieur,
beware incurring the hatred of one who
never forgets!" in what Miss Libbey de-
scribes as "a decidedly French tone of
voice." For their own evil ends they
play fast and loose with the wicked, arch-
browed men who later turn upon them
and force them, desperate women, to
mutter: "My God, how I tremble when
I think how completely that wretch has
me in his power. If he should reveal
all I would be ruined for life!" Sleep-

less nights ensue until: "It has come at
last to this," they say with reckless
laughs. "I must be drugged to sleep,"
and with nervous hands they raise vials
to ashen lips and swallow portions of
contents. Their wedding days set in
glooms and heavy falls of rain, and as
the eventful hours draw nigh the furies
of the storms increase rather than abate.
When confronted with "all" by their
forewarned bridegrooms, while the or-
gans peal and the clergymen wait, they
merely smile coldly as the defiant males
who will never wed them say: "She was
traced here, Vashti. She was last seen
alive within these doors. The butler tells
me he admitted her. No one saw her de-
part. I ask you again, what have you
done with my poor, beautiful, hapless
Doris?" and they reply: "If I do know
I will carry the secret down with me to
my grave. That will be Vashti St. Bea-
ton's vengeance against you. I cry this
out to you on the night you come to me
telling me our marriage cannot be. You
shall never know her fate!" When these
desperate dark ones are arrested, they
drink deeply of poisons from inconspic-
uous onyx rings and writhe in bitter
agonies—usually an overdose. If they
survive they throw themselves, in last
chapters, bodies and souls into dissipa-
tions, gaining for themselves the names
of "Bohemian Queens" until smallpox
carries them off. Then the happy bridal
couples gather and bury them not only
decently but elaborately, placing white
shafts over their final resting places and
planting crimson passion roses over their
graves.

Of climax — that elusive rhetorical
trick—Miss Libbey is past master. May
*Little Romp Edda* be quoted from almost
at length? The *mise en scene* in a ham-
let ten miles from Chicago in the sum-
mer of the Columbian Exposition. Sim-
ple Grandma Lee has rented a cottage
room to a prince of sin—Earle Van-
cliffe himself. He has eloped with little
Edda and the noble young farmer Tom
learns of it—on page 22:

"They were going on the 8 o'clock
train. Great Heavens! Would he
have time to stop them? Was the

619

white dove he loved so well even now in the clutches of the vulture. The depot was nearly a mile away. He looked at his watch.

"Oh, the anguish of it. He was too late: it wanted but five minutes to eight. Ere he could have covered half the distance the train would have thundered by.

"Even the telegraph station lay four miles beyond. Suddenly he wheeled about and dashed madly down the road.

"A neighbor's horse, who had come whinnying up to the fence on hearing the clatter of footsteps dashing past, was eagerly seized by Tom in his wild desperation. He leaped upon his back, and laying well up on the noble animal's neck seized his long mane and urged him forward.

"In an instant he had cleared the low rail fence and was galloping wildly over the fields, leaping ditches, clearing rocks and boulders. In the distance the shriek of the oncoming train smote Tom's ears like a death knell.

"Merciful heavens! could he make it! He dug the heels of his boots in the horse's sides until the poor beast was fairly maddened with pain.

"Half of the distance was covered and now for the finish which meant more than life to poor Tom.

"On, on rushed the iron monster, puffing and shrieking like a thing of life! On, on, dashed the noble horse! Would he make it?

"Tom raised his eyes to the blue-gemmed sky overhead and murmured, "God in heaven, let me save Edda!"...

"On thundered the lightning express! On came the sturdy horseman!

"But the train won the race by a good margin, came to a stop quickly, and Vancliff grasped Edda in his arms, thrust her up the steps, and in another instant of time the train moved out of the station, just as

poor Tom dashed across the platform.

"He tried to give one mighty lurch forward and grasp the railing and swing himself forward, but missed it by a hair's breadth.

"Earle Vancliff, who stood in the doorway looking back breathlessly, laughed mockingly.

"A miss is as good as a mile!" he shouted. "Ta, ta, my dear fellow, till we meet again!"

This on page 27. The next day little Edda, not yet wed, is taken by Vancliff to the great Exposition whose Machinery Hall entranced her, and where Vancliff on page 31 at 5:40 p. m. leaves her for a brief respite from rustic simplicity: ah, already has he begun to tire of the simple child! On page 32, at eight p. m., after little Edda has become terrified, he is making his tardy way toward her, when:

"'Look!' someone shouted, 'a girl has stepped too near the machinery, and her clothes have become entangled in it. For God's sake, look!'

"Vancliff's eyes nearly burst from their sockets. With one revolution of its great wheel the leather belt which reached up to the very dome of the building whirled its hapless victim upward as though she had been but a feather's weight and held her suspended there. It was but a question of a few seconds ere those frail skirts would give way, and the girl would be precipitated to the floor below; or, worse still, the terrible wheels would crush her to death.... Some one shouted:

"'There is a network of wheels lining the wall in the rear, there! Any one who dares could climb them, reach the girl, and cut her down. It is the only chance.'

"Earle Vancliff heard the appeal, but his own precious life was too dear to him to make the attempt.... dear to him to make such a sacrifice.... Suddenly a clarion voice cried out:

"'Stand back! I will save the girl or die in the attempt!'...

620

THE TREND

"He passed so near Vancliffe that they touched each other and to his amazement, Vancliffe recognized Tom, but he knew Tom had not recognized him.

"Up, up, up, with the agility of an athlete, Tom clambered through the network of wheels and belts—up, up, so high that he seemed but a boy to the spectators below.... Women fainted and strong men held their breath. They saw him reach out his hand to grasp her. He was not an instant too soon, for at that very moment the skirts gave way, and the girl would have been precipitated to the floor a hundred feet below.

"She was evidently a slight creature; but they could not see her distinctly, the draperies of her skirts having been completely enveloped about her."

And honest, blind Tom, having rescued her, retreats modestly from the plaudits of the crowd, without recognizing her, leaving, by that fatal move, little Edda once again and thereby many times again, in the ruthless power of Earle Vancliffe.

This necessarily brief study of Miss Libbey's works must not close without a word for that high ethical and moral code that she holds up before her readers. "Any girl," says Miss Libbey time and again, through the lips of her many characters or by way of comment, "who consents to fly with a man before the nuptial knot has been tied stands a slim chance of his marrying her afterwards."

"I would have had a happy enough time of it," mused Ruby Trevanyan wistfully, "if I had married Gordon in the first place and never allowed that fair, handsome stranger to captivate my girlish fancy because he was better dressed and a trifle more polished." "My dear," said Mrs. Ravenheath Haye to her niece, "do you mean that this young gentleman discussed love with you without prefacing it by asking your hand in marriage?" And again and repeatedly, "When honorable men speak of love to a young girl they always mention marriage in the same breath." And yet again: "Remember you are only a working girl, and he will be heir to three millions of money. Eagles never mate with sparrows. Keep out of the young heir's way."

Nonetheless, however much Miss Libbey may seem to over emphasize the immorality of murder and abduction, she is in some ways far from conventional. What boots it to her that Harold St. Mayne, an English banker all his adult life computing interest in pounds, shillings and pence, leaves behind him an English will that bequeaths in honest American dollars. Why may not Miss Libbey, roaming over foolscap in simple narration, say—as she does say: "Pauline had just arose from the breakfast table"; or, "The world and its ways was a sealed book to her"; or, of marriage, "Its golden links joins fond hearts"; or, of an approaching figure, "If it is not him, it is his brother." It is a narrow mind that dares to call these un-conventions spots upon the sun. Rather are they parts of that solar system whose sun—that "shall never cease to set"—is Miss Laura Jean Libbey.

Stage Decoration as a Fine Art

By CARL VAN VECHTEN

THE question of the use of “scenery” on the stage is perpetually bobbing up and as perpetually it remains an unsolved question. Specific instances of the dire harm that scenery can do to a play can be observed in our theatres almost any week during the active season. To take an example let us mention one of Mr. Sothern’s Shakespearean productions, which had already been cut to run within the time limit, but which played from eight in the evening until midnight because the “elaborate” settings had to be changed frequently. The intermissions, as a result, occupied more of the spectators’ patience than the play. In another instance a musical comedy went to pot on the first night because the stage hands could not handle the setting of the second act with enough expedition. As a result they kept the curtain down for thirty minutes, a fatal length of time in a playhouse devoted to frivolity.

John Palmer, in that book, quotation from which is sheer delight, “The Future of the Theatre,” says that this is the age of the “naturalist” drama, and that a result when anyone tries to produce a “romantic” or “poetic” play there is an attempt made to wrap up the shortcomings of the performance in elaborate upholstery.

"Why does the electrician or the costumer become so much more important in poetic than in naturalist drama? The electrician and costumier become more important as the author and actor become less competent of themselves to assert their intention. Naturalist authors and naturalist players are masters of their method. The poetic dramatist and players are not. Poetic drama has fallen upon evil times. The dramatist, being unequal to his burden, the artificers in light and hair and turpentine are invoked to help him sustain it. In the mid-twentieth-century outburst of poetic splendor, which will

follow the foundation of our national theatre, it will soon be realized how the former degradation of the poetic drama was directly measured by the importance yielded thereby to the subordinate crafts. The quaint superstition of to-day that the limelight man is an important person in the raising of Caesar's ghost will disappear when poetic drama of the future is lifted to the level of naturalist drama of to-day.

"Even to-day when there comes an actor of genius who can present Shakespeare in the solid flesh it is possible for the least reflective playgoer to realise how little it matters that the limelight is not of the latest and best quality, or that paint upon the scene is spread too thick. We have lately had opportunities, within a single year, of measuring Shakespeare as produced by Mr. Granville Barker against Shakespeare as acted by Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson. Compare for a moment Mr. Barker's 'Twelfth Night' with Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson's 'Hamlet.' Mr. Barker's 'Twelfth Night' had every advantage that a producer can bestow. Beautiful costumes against a decorative background, excellent music, an intelligent revival of the necessary apron, a very fair quality of acting, rising in a few instances to an extremely high level of accomplishment—all that the producer as fine-artist has been able to discover was tested and adapted for the occasion.

"'Look here upon this picture, and on this.'

"Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson in his 'Hamlet' of 1913 seemed bent upon showing once for all that production matters not at all when great acting is toward. The Drury Lane 'Hamlet' of 1913 showed, not only that the actor and his author require no artistic aid of theatrical haberdashers to make their effect, but also that the actor and his author, if they have as much genius between them as will cover a penny piece, can unite and play clean out of existence the ugliest daubs of the false cardboard naturalism of the late 'nineties.' In Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson's 'Hamlet' was no borrowed grace of the producing fine-artist. Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson had not even

STAGE DECORATION AS A FINE ART

the advantage of the poetic conventions
to which his play was originally fit.
He made his dramatic appeal in spite
of his conditions, rather than with their
assistance. Yet everyone open to the
appeal of Shakespeare had to declare
that the total aesthetic effect of Sir
Johnston Forbes-Robertson's 'Hamlet'
infinitely outweighed the total aesthetic
effect of Mr. Barker's 'Hamlet.'

Now, this is the most specious kind
of argument. Of course genius, even
unclothed genius, is at all times prefer-
able to mediocrity decked in gauds, but
genius, properly caparisoned is only
added to. If Forbes-Robertson's inter-
esting study of Hamlet had been properly
set its effect would have been even more
vivid.

Let us take, for instance, the case of
the Russian dancers. Anna Pavlowa is
generally regarded as the greatest of
living women dancers. A similar place
is assigned Waslav Nijinsky among the
male dancers. And yet it cannot be said
that Mlle. Pavlowa with her mediocre
(in most instances) scenic accompani-
ments makes the effect that Nijinsky
does surrounded by the Baskt scenery
and the elemental sponteneity of the
superb Russian ballet. Mlle. Pavlowa's
genius creates the utmost enthusiasm; it
awakens admiration on every hand, but
it would be more compelling were it en-
cased in the beauty which it suggests.

To take another example let us regard
the production of "Boris Gudunow" at
the Metropolitan Opera House. Seldom
have more dramatic splendors been re-
vealed than Adamo Didur showed us
in the title part; and never has such
adequate staging been seen at this theatre.
The scenery and costumes, in fact, were
all a part of the Russian equipment
used in Paris a few seasons ago. Mme.
Fremstad's Brunnhilde in "Die Gotter-
dammerung is an even more indisputable
proof of genius than Mr. Didur's Boris
(taking into account the Russian's close
following of his model, Feodor Chalia-
pine) but the setting of "Die Gotter-
dammerung" at the Opera is so unim-
aginative, so unappealing, so unsugges-
tive, that one has to forget that before
one can focus one's attention on the com-
pelling art of the singing actress.

Of late years the item of scenery has

become more and more costly, more and
more elaborate. What does it mean,
after all, the kind of scenery we see?
Who cares about the painted stumps of
trees, the ridiculous apple blossoms and
the pink drawing rooms? A little simple
staging would effect a much needed re-
form in the American Theatre, especially
if it were coupled with a good play.

It is in Europe that attempts have
been made at reform. Some of them
have been successful. Gordon Craig may
be accounted the inventor of many of
the ideas that are prevalent at present,
but like many other inventors, he neither
had the practical ability, nor perhaps the
desire, to put them into effect himself.
Stanislawsky, Reinhardt, and even Bakst
have all learned something from him,
and have turned his ideas to practical
account.

At present Gordon Craig, esconced in
the Arena Goldoni in Florence, is said
to be at the head of a great school which
shall teach the art of the theatre. He is,
to be sure, surrounded by a pack of
boys with soulful eyes, who wear dirty-
greens and call him "Master." These
he takes driving occasionally over the
hills near Florence in no other vehicle
than a coach and four. When this monu-
mental anachronism passes through the
Piazza Vittorio Emmanuel, or down
the Via Tornabuoni with its crowd from
"Patience" seated aloft, the effect on the
populace of Firenze La Bella can only be
faintly imagined.

Occasionally someone tries to effect an
entrance into the school over which
this eccentric genius presides and for
which he issues pronunciamentos and
catalogues without number, to say noth-
ing of advertisements and articles in
"The Mask" and affiches which are
pasted on the high walls of the Italian
and English towns. If the youth who is
hardy enough to make the trial succeeds
in reaching the great presence he may
be deemed a lucky mortal. Mr. Craig
observes each newcomer from carefully
prepared peep holes. One look con-
vinces him whether the prospective stu-
dent has talent for the arts or not; one
look alone suffices. Once having made
up his mind nothing changes it.

FLORENCE

623

THE TREND

DETAIL FROM "THE MARRIAGE OF BOCCACIO ADMARI," IN THE ANCIENT AND MODERN GALLERY, FLORENCE.

Robert Jones tried to invade the domain of the Craig school last summer, but not once could he get near the Master, not once could he get any more information than that very vague sort which is included in the catalogue. Jones, sick of trying to get on in Florence, went to Germany and now is one of Reinhardt's props and aids.

Another friend of mine who did not care to enter the school had more success. He attained the Craig presence.

"But how," he asked, "do you intend to teach music without teachers?"

"Oh," answered Mr. Craig quite simply, "We shall work away, driving nails into boards, or walking in the country, and when we feel like it we shall sing!"

And so the possessor of the best ideas that have come to the theatre in recent years ingeniously steps aside while others with a view to their more practical use apply them to their own purposes.

In the first paragraph of this article I have emphasized the practical value of simpler scenery for plays which require frequent or sudden changes, but, of

course, the artistic side, far outweighs that. The kind of scenery we see so much of in New York really deceives nobody. The moment a human being of three dimensions steps on the stage you have that human being posing against badly painted pictures. It is as if one should combine statuary and painting.

The intention in current stage decoration seems to be to intensify the lack of imagination on the part of the spectator. Each part of what is called the scenery of a play is so clearly defined that there is no opportunity for the communication of suggested feeling. The spectator sees at once that he is looking at an imitation of the place, scenery painted to look as much like the place as possible. As a consequence he has the feeling, after the first five minutes, if he has imagination, that he is not in the place at all. When the photographic accuracy wears away the lack of suggestion becomes appalling. The commonplace is scaled.

This is said taking into account scenery which has scarcely any plastic features; such scenery, for instance, as is used to a

625

PICTURE BY AN UNKNOWN TUSCAN PAINTER IN THE UFFIZI, FLORENCE.

great extent at the Metropolitan Opera House, where rocks and rills, woods, templed hills and marble halls are painted on flimsy drops. In palaces the architectural features are depicted in the same naive way, using the word naive in its worst sense. I believe that scenery like this is intended to represent the real thing just as much as a paper mache mill which crushes the villain in a melodrama, and it succeeds just as much.

This art, I think, came from Italy. At least most of the scenery that is painted in this fashion, or the inspiration for it, comes from there nowadays. May it not be possible that it is suggested to the scene painter by the houses one sees in the small Italian town where windows with shutters often are painted on the facade? The fantasy of some of these windows is sublime. Occasionally persons are painted looking out of them. Dogs sit on the sills; I have seen peacocks. In some instances the whole architecture is painted on the outside of

the house columns, balconies, and all. This is a familiar enough device in Italian churches, and I fancy many Catholic churches in America may show traces of the style.

Carl Hagemann of Germany tries to get away from this sort of thing, just as David Belasco has tried to in New York, by making his whole scene plastic, every object built separately inside of a sky drop which runs around from one proscenium arch to the other. If he uses a house or a tree or a bench, it is not painted on the drop. It is built. In the case of interiors his task is easier, of course.

This method of procedure has two distinct disadvantages. In the first place it takes away all the charm of suggestion, which I think should play an important part in theatrical entertainment, and in the second place it does away with the possibility of producing a play with more than one scene in each act, unless the producer happens to have a revolving

626

THE TREND

BAKST'S DESIGN FOR THE BACK DROP FOR ACT I OF "LA PISANELLE."

stage in his theatre, an equipment, by
the way, which every playhouse in New
York should possess. Hagemann gave
Goethe's "Faust" which has countless
scenes, by means of a revolving stage.
He has produced Shakespearean plays in
this manner.

Mr. Belasco has followed Hagemann's
method pretty closely in his more recent
productions. "The Auctioneer" is a
play, it seems to me, which needs this
kind of scenery, if anything does. "A
Good Little Devil," on the other hand,
would have benefited greatly by more
imaginative treatment.

Gordon Craig, of course, would sub-
stitute suggestion for realism. He uses
a combination of screens, occasional
draperies, and little else to gain his ends.
The lighting is all from above; the natu-
ral lighting in this world. If your floors
were made of glass under which were
concealed hundreds of glaring electric

lights you would get the effect that foot-
lights give on the stage.

It seems to me there are few romantic
or poetic plays which would not be im-
proved by Craig's method of staging;
and yet he has had little practical expe-
rience in putting on pieces. Sets of
model scenes for "Hamlet" and "Mac-
beth" have been exhibited in London. I
think Beerbohm Tree used adaptations
of one of these at one time. Certainly
Craig's "Hamlet" was seen at Stanis-
lawsky's Theatre des Arts in Moscow.
It is highly probable that Isadora Dun-
can's dancing background is a fancy of
Gordon Craig's. However, little of the
practical work of this man has reached
the public, except through his books,
which are verbose and vague to the most
utter degree; and through his conversa-
tion, which is usually said to be unillum-
ined even by flashes.

Craig worked at Moscow for consid-
erable time, however, and it is prob-

627

able that from the point of view of stag-
ing Stanislawsky now leads the world.
He has adopted some of Craig's ideas
and fitted them to others until he has
obtained a formula for staging every
play from "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme"
to "Hedda Gabler." This theatre is the
direct antithesis of the Opera Comique
in Paris, which has obtained such a false
reputation for good staging.

The Opera Comique clings stolidly to
the Italian method of using flimsy drops,
with every detail carefully painted there-
on, combined with plastic objects, the
whole painted in pastel or primary col-
ors in a manner to suggest a St. Valen-
tine's gift of the 1850 period. The light-
ing is usually excellent. There are no
innovations to be looked for at the Opera
Comique at present, which holds as fast
to its traditions as if the Russian ballet
had never been seen in Paris.

Max Reinhardt and Leon Bakst have
utilized Craig's ideas in a measure, but
they have adapted them to a degree
where they have become unrecognizable.
Reinhardt is known in New York by
"Sumurun," one of his slightest produc-
tions. Still, it gives a good idea of his
impressionistic use of flat surfaces to
create atmosphere and a colorful back-
ground to his picture.

Leon Bakst, who has designed many
of the famous ballets which the Russians
give in Paris and other Continental cities
from time to time, proceeds on a more
lavish scale. There are no plastic fea-
tures in a scene by Bakst. Everything
is painted on flat canvas, but the bar-
baric gorgeousness, the impressionistic
and suggestive qualities appeal to the
eye as no attempted copy of a real scene
could ever do. The number of colors
he uses in one scene is almost countless
and yet the combination is always thrill-
ing and effective.

Bakst is better known for his "Sche-
herazade" than for any other of his bal-
lets, but he also designed the scenery
for "Carneval," "Thamar," "Jeux,"
"Daphnis et Chloe," "Narcisse,"
"L'Après-Midi d'un Faune," and "Le
Spectre de la Rose."

He further has utilized his supreme

talent for decoration in staging the
dramas in which that Russian mime Ida
Rubinstein has appeared at the Chatelet
in Paris during recent seasons: Oscar
Wilde's "Salome," "Helene de Sparte,"
d'Annunzio's "Le Martyre de Saint Se-
bastian," and "La Pisanelle, ou la Mort
Parfumée."

It was in this last play, produced in
Paris in the Spring of 1913 for ten spec-
ial performances, that Bakst expressed
himself perhaps more forcibly than he
has hitherto been able to do. Unlimited
means were placed at his disposal. He
had all the money he wanted and an ex-
actitude in color, in scene and costume,
was aimed at which required the dyeing
and redyeing of many stuffs, and the
searching through countless shops for
others.

The scene in the port (reproduced
with this article) with the ship of the
blood-red sails painted against a sky of
blood red clouds, in front of which fig-
ures garbed in scarlet, vermillion, ma-
roon, rose, mulberry, carnation, and
other shades of this brilliant color, car-
ried on the drama will not soon be for-
gotten by those who saw it. In the final
scene Bakst combined black, white,
green, orange, rose, and magenta in the
most extraordinary manner. In this
play too he utilized a series of curtains
of different colors, according to the
scene, which hung half the depth of the
stage on either side. And back of the
proscenium arch, also on either side, was
builded a column of gold, each column
divided into numberless small pillars,
like the mass which supports the ribs of
a vaulted roof of a great Gothic cathe-
dral.

This season Bakst has staged two new
ballets for the Russians, Richard
Strauss's "The Legend of Joseph," in
which Paolo Veronese is suggested in the
superb Venetian robes, and Steinberg's
"Midas," a legendary subject which calls
into play the same qualities which Bakst
had already exhibited in "Daphnis and
Chloe," "Narcisse," and "L'Après-Midi
d'un Faune."

The new school of scene painting in
Russia is said to have been the fancy of
the painter Wronbel, who, however, did

628

THE TREND

not do much of the actual work himself, as he died before his ideas were fully accepted. Bakst, Alexandre Benois and N. Roerich took up the work. To Roerich we owe the *decors* of the ballet "Sacre du Printemps," devised by Nijinsky to carry out the ideas of the cubists, and which aroused storms of hisses whenever it was given in Paris. Alexandre Benois painted the scenes for "Petrouchka" and also those for the dances from "Prince Igor." Serge Soudeikine is responsible for the scenes used in "La Tragedie of Salome," one of the novelties of last summer, and Theodore Fedorowsky painted the extraordinary scenes for Moussorgsky's music drama "La Kovanchina." The costumes of the Persian ballet in this opera, of orange, with vivid patches of green and blue, rest in the memory.

The art of the Russians, it seems to me, has found nearly complete expression. It is impossible for them to go much further in their violent riots of color, their barbaric impressionism. It is a style particularly suited to the Russian ballet performances; the effect makes a complete whole which those who have seen it can never forget.

Its practical application to other branches of theatrical entertainment is

more difficult. Certain plays of Shakespeare could be dressed in this manner. Certainly "The Pirates of Penzance" and "Patience" would be superbly filled by it; so would the music dramas of Gluck, Wagner and Richard Strauss.

But there is still another source from which one might set the plays of Shakespeare, leaving aside the best way, which would be to give them in front of screens and draperies in the simplest manner possible.

It often has occurred to me while wandering through various European galleries that the work of the early Italian painters might be easily adapted to the uses of stage decoration. Florence is full of this sort of thing, but three pictures I remember especially—three pictures of the fifteenth century, by an unknown painter. They are small and they hang, with other pictures between them, in one of the long galleries of the Uffizi. Two of them represent feasts. The simplicity and coloring of the architecture and the costumes would be joyously in keeping with certain plays of Shakespeare.

The famous "Marriage of Boccaccio Adimari with Lisa Ricasoli," in the Ancient and Modern Gallery in Florence, is another example. This train of splendid

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631

# The Story of a Singing Soubrette

## CHAPTER III

On the way from Gainsville to Galveston I hardly spoke to old man Evanston. I was not sulky or angry, but simply crushed and lifeless. When we reached our destination I was not surprised to learn from Evanston that the manager had decided not to open the stock company, and that therefore there was no job for me. I had supposed I was engaged for the season, but deceit on his part did not surprise me, even at that time.

We went to a boarding house in Galveston and the people in the town thought I was the old man's daughter. There was a piano in the place, and sometimes, when Evanston was out, I used to sing and play. One day the woman who kept the house, listened to me while I sang and then said: "There are tears in your voice, my child. What is the matter?" I abruptly stopped, and went to my room with dry eyes and a dry throat.

When I was a little girl my mother used to sing a song—"Put me in my little bed"—which made me quiet and melancholy. From the time of my childhood I liked these sad and plaintive songs. I sing best when I am unhappy, as I have said, and in Galveston old man Evanston used to say that my voice had improved wonderfully.

Even if I had had the strength to run away, there was no place to go to. Soon after arriving in Galveston I received a letter from my mother saying she had given up her home. Her furniture and piano were gone. They had been mortgaged by the old man and were never redeemed. Mother was living on money borrowed from poor friends and relatives, and I felt I had to look out for myself and help my mother if I could. For none of my relatives had any money. Indeed, everybody I have ever known really well was poor. But I have liked poor people so much that I don't believe

I would like the rich. I think money makes people hard-hearted and unnatural. And whenever I got hold of a bunch of it I always got rid of it. I always found plenty of chances to give it away, and there is no greater luxury than that.

During the time that I lived at the Galveston boarding house, old Evanston took me on a series of what he called "larks." To me they were dreary affairs. We went to the beach, to dances and beer saloons, and I learned to smoke cigarettes. He introduced me as his learned daugther everywhere, but seldom let me out of his sight. I longed for gay, light-hearted talks with the young fellows I saw around me, but could do nothing but make googoo eyes at them. The old fiend never gave me a chance at them. I think he had an inkling of how I felt about him, but it did not seem to trouble him. Indeed, on the contrary, it seemed to give him unnatural pleasure.

One fine day, Charley, old Evanston's son, turned up in Galveston and got a position there as night clerk in a hotel. The old man, who had a wonderful influence on everybody, had induced him to come, no doubt in order that he might more easily make use of the boy's salary. I always liked Charley, for he was about my own age, and was a pretty boy with an affectionate disposition, and when he came to Galveston I was delighted. It was a great relief to have a boy I could talk to near me. Sometimes I even got an opportunity to kiss him, and become very fond of him, and he of me. Of course he did not know in what relation I stood to his father.

I tell these things in a matter of fact way. But I realize now, and felt then, how horrible they are. I know they must be painful to the reader, and I shall hurry past this part of my story. If I dwell upon it at all, it is because I know that the experience had a great effect on my life and character, and I want to

Brewer.

633

THE TREND

634

make clear what came after. So I will go on with this part of my story, although I must relate still more horrible and sordid things, in comparison with which my life in Galveston when alone with the old man seems almost pleasant.

During these weeks in Galveston Evanston had not only done a little business for McN & Co, but was trying to arrange for another theatrical tour. At last he succeeded and telegraphed his wife and daughters. They came on, Charley gave up his position as night clerk, and we all went off together on the road.

Imagine my position now! I was terribly sorry for his wife, who suspected and finally knew how matters were. I was the most intimate friend of the eldest daughter, with whom I used to smoke cigarettes. She was a charming girl and finally, several years later, when she was sixteen, she married a charming fellow, a gambler of thirty-seven years of age, who is now dead leaving her with two beautiful children. She did not love him, but wanted to get away from home. No wonder! To complete the horrid complexity of my position, I was in love with the son, and he was in love with me! Was there ever anything like it! I think not.

Of course, Mrs. Evanston was jealous. What woman would not be? I don't think she realized how unhappy I was, or she would have helped me to get away. But she was as much under her husband's influence as I was. She played the part of a watch-dog for him, and used to tell him she thought I was flirting with other men! That was partly in order to be revenged on me, and partly to get favor with him.

How that man used to treat her! Whenever he had made arrangements to meet me after the show, he used to be particularly nice to her. I got to recognize that as a sign, and it always made my heart sink. And she, poor woman, never realized it, and it always made her happy! My heart bled for her as well as myself, but she hated me, and don't blame her. I think I would never have formed so high an ideal of the marriage state and what it ought to be, if I had not seen that woman suffer. In all my

after life I have been particularly careful not to interfere between husband and wife. It is such a rare and beautiful thing for two people to love and be true to one another that it is everybody's business to give a couple the benefit of the doubt and help them to be happy together.

For some months we played small towns in Texas, and did a pretty good business with all sorts of patched up shows, making attempts at plays and working in vaudeville numbers and acts. And yet we were always hard up, for the old man never could hold on to his money. He did not drink, but was a determined and passionate gambler. The result was that we frequently had to leave our trunks as security for our board bills. Once, I remember, we had been playing a very small town, and couldn't get out of it without trunks. So before going away without them, Mrs. Evanston, her daughters, and I put on three dresses a piece and stuffed the bosoms of our corsets full of handkerchiefs, stockings, trinkets, and a few books. When we left, the boardinghouse people examined our grips only, and we escaped with many of our best things.

Old Evanston was never able to send for his trunks, but I secured mine, but not till a year had passed. At that time I was no longer with that unfortunate family. I was traveling with a company and met a gentleman who seemed to like me. I told him my trunks were at Waco, in for $97. My courteous acquaintance sent the money and had my trunks forwarded to me. Many gentlemen from time to time have helped me in this way on the road, and always for little or nothing in exchange. A kiss did the business with him, and a smile with many others. I have always noticed that very small things will move the masculine heart when it is constituted as it ought to be.

After we had lost our trunks we went back to Galveston, where the stock company had finally got organized, and in this theatre we played for many weeks. Here life became so intolerable to me that I finally mustered up courage, or rather desperation, enough to make an

THE STORY OF A SINGING SOUBRETTE

attempt at escape. We were living at
a boarding house, all of us in three
rooms. There was a vacant room down-
stairs where Evanston used to consult me
"on business," as he told the family.
Right before them at dinner he used to
tell me that he wanted to speak to me. I
could not refuse, for otherwise the fam-
ily would suspect, as they came to any-
way. But it would take away my appe-
tite, not only for food, but for life. On
such occasions he was always sweet with
his wife.

One day he was particularly nice to her, and my loathing was particularly strong. It gave me resolution enough to send word to a young fellow in the city who had professed friendship for me. I asked him in this note to meet me with a carriage at midnight, at a place near the boarding house; for I intended to run away and go home to my mother in Kansas. He was to whistle three times.

That night, when old Evanston and I
were in the vacant room, I heard the
whistles and so did he, and he asked
me what they were. I said I didn't
know, but he seemed suspicious, as I
was so anxious to go to bed. But finally
we went up stairs and I was delighted to
find that the old man's daughter, with
whom I roomed, was asleep. I lay down
fully dressed in the bed by her side, and
waited until I thought the old man and
his wife and other daughter were asleep.
I then got up, put a few of my things in
a small grip, went out the back window,
down the back stairs, over back fences,
down an alley into a back street, where
I was to meet my rescuer.

But he was not there! I was very late
to the appointment and he probably
thought I had changed my mind. I de-
termined, however, never to return to
that boarding house and I began to wan-
der at random through the streets. Al-
though I had no idea what I was going
to do, I was filled with a kind of excited
joy, for I had escaped!

Finally, I saw a cab and I aroused the
driver, who was asleep inside. I told
him I was running away from my father,
who treated me very badly, and I was
tired of it. He asked me to go inside

the cab, and at first I was afraid, for he
was an old man, but he talked to me in a
fatherly way and I saw he was really
kind. When he saw I was determined
not to return "home," as he called it, he
asked me where he could take me.

I knew the manager of a box-house (a
kind of music-hall, with closed boxes in
the galleries and behind the stage where
the "lady" performers drank and ate
with the men in the audience) who had
been kind to me, and I reflected that as
it was four o'clock in the morning he
would be just about going home from
the music-hall. Sure enough, he had
just reached home and had not gone to
bed, and he opened the door when the
driver rang.

Clayton—that was the manager's name
—was greatly surprised when he found
me in the cab. I told him I had ran
away from the Evanstons. He asked no
questions, but aroused his wife and told
her to get a room ready for me. At
first she was suspicious and jealous, and
thought, no doubt, that it was a trick on
her husband's part to get me into the
house. But I soon persuaded her that
I was on the level, and she was very
kind to me. I told her only part of
my story, only as much as I had to, for
old man Evanston had often told me that
sin was not in doing, but in being found
out.

My old man of the sea had, among
his other vices, a violent temper. He
used to go into a fit whenever he was
crossed. Whenever he thought a man
paid attention to me he had a spell. I
remember once a young fellow told Mrs.
Evanston he was fond of me and would
like to call and pay his addresses. Mrs.
Evanston, however, as usual, told the
old man about it and he went into one
of his fits right before the whole family.
He rolled on the floor and seemed to be
going crazy. A veterinary surgeon was
called in and he said the old man had
delirium tremens. I couldn't help laugh-
ing for I knew the old man never drank,
and I knew it was all brought on by him-
self. When old Evanston was jealous he
was a horrible looking monster. His
small, grey-green eyes were like the eyes
of serpents and his sneer was something

636

THE TREND

awful. He knew that after such an ex-
hibition I would be altogether too fright-
ened to receive any visits from the young
fellow.

With such a temper, his rage when he
found the bird had flown must have been
something terrible. I shiver whenever I
think of the spell he probably had. But
he had the cunning, as well as the ven-
omous disposition of the snake, and he
immediately took steps to find me; but
for several days he discovered no traces
of me.

One day after my escape I sent a note
to the young fellow who was to have
met me. He came to see me, and proved
himself a real friend. He made no offer
to drive with me across the country, but
offered to pay my railway fare to Kan-
sas, where I could join my mother. The
scheme would probably have been car-
ried out, had not old Evanston discovered
my hiding place by following the negro
who carried notes between me and the
young fellow, whom Evanston had sus-
pected and shadowed.

The old man had a double motive in
moving heaven and earth to find me. He
not only wanted me for himself, but he
knew that I was his theatrical stock in
trade and that he and his family could
do very little without me.

On the third day of my freedom, I
had just finished dinner with Clayton
and his wife, when there came a violent
ringing at the front door. "That's Evan-
ston!" I shrieked, and rising hastily from
the table I fled into a back room. Mrs.
Clayton went to the door and there found
the old man and his entire family. She
began to say that I was not there, but
Evanston, without a word, pushed her
aside, and went directly to the room
where I was, without turning to the right
or to the left. He seemed to know by
the instinct of the serpent where to find
his prey.

He found me in a different mood than
he had ever known in me before. He
found me rebellious and hysterical; and
it was a long time before I would con-
sent to listen to anything he said. Char-
ley and Mrs. Evanston also tried to quiet
me and to persuade me to return with
them. I was still very fond of Charley,

and he now had more influence with me
than his father. After an hour or two
the old man, Charley and I had a long
talk together, and the old man finally
proposed that Charley and I should get
married. He probably saw that that was
the only way to keep me in the family.
I resisted for a long time, but when
Charley told me in a whisper that after
we were married we would not live with
the family, I consented, for I was really
very fond of him, and I thought that
might be a way to escape the old man.

The ceremony took place the next
morning. I had been ill for several days,
and on my return from the minister's
house, I went directly to bed. I had a
high fever and chills and when the doc-
tor came he said I was very ill. The
next day they had to carry me to the
boarding-house where Charley and I
were to live. There I was very low with
typhoid malaria for eight weeks, and
came very near dying. In the early part
of my illness I often prayed that my life
might end, but when delirium and hallu-
cinations came I went over in my imag-
ation the horrors of my past existence.
Those dreams are vivid to me now, and
they mix themselves in a curious way
with the reality.

My recovery was very slow, partly, I
think, because I was indifferent at that
time to life. When I got stronger I
found that our boarding-house was right
opposite the one in which the old man
and his remaining family lived. They
were particularly poor at the time, for
the show could not run without me and
had closed. They worked some Sunday
places alone, but even these were rare,
and they had no luck. It was I who had
really sustained the family for about a
year. It was a thought which gave me
no satisfaction.

What did please me, however, was the
feeling of my increased strength, I mean
in a moral way. God knows, I was weak
enough, then and afterwards, but I was
no longer putty in the old man's hands.
It has always made me stronger to feel
that I have a duty to perform to some-
body. But whenever I have felt myself
bound to a man I have been absolutely