NINE SHORT ESSAYS

By Charles Dudley Warner

CONTENTS:

A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIESTRUTHFULNESSTHE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESSLITERATURE AND THE STAGETHE LIFE-SAVING AND LIFE PROLONGING ART"H. H. " IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIASIMPLICITYTHE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASIONNATHAN HALE

A NIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES

It was in the time of the Second Empire. To be exact, it was the night ofthe 18th of June, 1868; I remember the date, because, contrary to theastronomical theory of short nights at this season, this was the longestnight I ever saw. It was the loveliest time of the year in Paris, whenone was tempted to lounge all day in the gardens and to give to sleepnone of the balmy nights in this gay capital, where the night wasilluminated like the day, and some new pleasure or delight always ledalong the sparkling hours. Any day the Garden of the Tuileries was amicrocosm repaying study. There idle Paris sunned itself; through it thepromenaders flowed from the Rue de Rivoli gate by the palace to theentrance on the Place de la Concorde, out to the Champs-Elysees and backagain; here in the north grove gathered thousands to hear the regimentalband in the afternoon; children chased butterflies about the flower-bedsand amid the tubs of orange-trees; travelers, guide-book in hand, stoodresolutely and incredulously before the groups of statuary, wonderingwhat that Infant was doing with, the snakes and why the recumbent figureof the Nile should have so many children climbing over him; or watchedthe long facade of the palace hour after hour, in the hope of catching atsome window the flutter of a royal robe; and swarthy, turbaned Zouaves, erect, lithe, insouciant, with the firm, springy step of the tiger, lounged along the allees. 

Napoleon was at home--a fact attested by a reversal of the hospitablerule of democracy, no visitors being admitted to the palace when he wasat home. The private garden, close to the imperial residence, was alsoclosed to the public, who in vain looked across the sunken fence to theparterres, fountains, and statues, in the hope that the mysterious manwould come out there and publicly enjoy himself. But he never came, though I have no doubt that he looked out of the windows upon thebeautiful garden and his happy Parisians, upon the groves ofhorse-chestnuts, the needle-like fountain beyond, the Column of Luxor, upthe famous and shining vista terminated by the Arch of the Star, andreflected with Christian complacency upon the greatness of a monarch whowas the lord of such splendors and the goodness of a ruler who openedthem all to his children. Especially when the western sunshine streameddown over it all, turning even the dust of the atmosphere into gold andemblazoning the windows of the Tuileries with a sort of historic glory, his heart must have swelled within him in throbs of imperial exaltation. It is the fashion nowadays not to consider him a great man, but no onepretends to measure his goodness. 

The public garden of the Tuileries was closed at dusk, no one beingpermitted to remain in it after dark. I suppose it was not safe to trustthe Parisians in the covert of its shades after nightfall, and no onecould tell what foreign fanatics and assassins might do if they werepermitted to pass the night so near the imperial residence. At any rate, everybody was drummed out before the twilight fairly began, and at themost fascinating hour for dreaming in the ancient garden. After sundownthe great door of the Pavilion de l'Horloge swung open and there issuedfrom it a drum-corps, which marched across the private garden and downthe broad allee of the public garden, drumming as if the judgment-daywere at hand, straight to the great gate of the Place de la Concorde, andreturning by a side allee, beating up every covert and filling all theair with clamor until it disappeared, still thumping, into the court ofthe palace; and all the square seemed to ache with the sound. Never wasthere such pounding since Thackeray's old Pierre, who, "just to keep uphis drumming, one day drummed down the Bastile":

 At midnight I beat the tattoo, And woke up the Pikemen of Paris To follow the bold Barbaroux. 

On the waves of this drumming the people poured out from every gate ofthe garden, until the last loiterer passed and the gendarmes closed theportals for the night. Before the lamps were lighted along the Rue deRivoli and in the great square of the Revolution, the garden was left tothe silence of its statues and its thousand memories. I often used towonder, as I looked through the iron railing at nightfall, what might goon there and whether historic shades might not flit about in the ghostlywalks. 

Late in the afternoon of the 18th of June, after a long walk through thegalleries of the Louvre, and excessively weary, I sat down to rest on asecluded bench in the southern grove of the garden; hidden from view bythe tree-trunks. Where I sat I could see the old men and children in thatsunny flower-garden, La Petite Provence, and I could see the greatfountain-basin facing the Porte du Pont-Tournant. I must have heard theevening drumming, which was the signal for me to quit the garden; for Isuppose even the dead in Paris hear that and are sensitive to the throbof the glory-calling drum. But if I did hear it, --it was only like anecho of the past, and I did not heed it any more than Napoleon in histomb at the Invalides heeds, through the drawn curtain, the chanting ofthe daily mass. Overcome with fatigue, I must have slept soundly. 

When I awoke it was dark under the trees. I started up and went into thebroad promenade. The garden was deserted; I could hear the plash of thefountains, but no other sound therein. Lights were gleaming from thewindows of the Tuileries, lights blazed along the Rue de Rivoli, dottedthe great Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs Elysees. There werethe steady roar of wheels and the tramping of feet without, but withinwas the stillness of death. 

What should I do? I am not naturally nervous, but to be caught lurking inthe Tuileries Garden in the night would involve me in the gravest peril. The simple way would have been to have gone to the gate nearest thePavillon de Marsan, and said to the policeman on duty there that I hadinadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen ofthe land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and wouldlike to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see thepoliceman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half thatexplanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners aremockingly told is the best in the world for conversation), he wouldeither have slipped his hateful rapier through my body, or have raised analarm and called out the guards of the palace to hunt me down like arabbit. 

A man in the Tuileries Garden at night! an assassin! a conspirator! oneof the Carbonari, perhaps a dozen of them--who knows?--Orsini bombs, gunpowder, Greek-fire, Polish refugees, murder, emeutes, REVOLUTION!

No, I'm not going to speak to that person in the cocked hat anddress-coat under these circumstances. Conversation with him out of thebest phrase-books would be uninteresting. Diplomatic row between the twocountries would be the least dreaded result of it. A suspectedconspirator against the life of Napoleon, without a chance forexplanation, I saw myself clubbed, gagged, bound, searched (my minutenotes of the Tuileries confiscated), and trundled off to theConciergerie, and hung up to the ceiling in an iron cage there, likeRavaillac. 

I drew back into the shade and rapidly walked to the western gate. It wasclosed, of course. On the gate-piers stand the winged steeds of Marly, never less admired than by me at that moment. They interested me lessthan a group of the Corps d'Afrique, who lounged outside, guarding theentrance from the square, and unsuspicious that any assassin was tryingto get out. I could see the gleam of the lamps on their bayonets and heartheir soft tread. Ask them to let me out? How nimbly they would havescaled the fence and transfixed me! They like to do such things. No, no--whatever I do, I must keep away from the clutches of these cats ofAfrica. 

And enough there was to do, if I had been in a mind to do it. All theseats to sit in, all the statuary to inspect, all the flowers to smell. The southern terrace overlooking the Seine was closed, or I might haveamused myself with the toy railway of the Prince Imperial that ran nearlythe whole length of it, with its switches and turnouts and houses; or Imight have passed delightful hours there watching the lights along theriver and the blazing illumination on the amusement halls. But I ascendedthe familiar northern terrace and wandered amid its bowers, in companywith Hercules, Meleager, and other worthies I knew only by sight, smelling the orange-blossoms, and trying to fix the site of the oldriding-school where the National Assembly sat in 1789. 

It must have been eleven o'clock when I found myself down by the privategarden next the palace. Many of the lights in the offices of thehousehold had been extinguished, but the private apartments of theEmperor in the wing south of the central pavilion were still illuminated. The Emperor evidently had not so much desire to go to bed as I had. Iknew the windows of his petits appartements--as what good American didnot?--and I wondered if he was just then taking a little supper, if hehad bidden good-night to Eugenie, if he was alone in his room, reflectingupon his grandeur and thinking what suit he should wear on the morrow inhis ride to the Bois. Perhaps he was dictating an editorial for theofficial journal; perhaps he was according an interview to thecorrespondent of the London Glorifier; perhaps one of the Abbotts waswith him. Or was he composing one of those important love-letters ofstate to Madame Blank which have since delighted the lovers ofliterature? I am not a spy, and I scorn to look into people's windowslate at night, but I was lonesome and hungry, and all that square roundabout swarmed with imperial guards, policemen, keen-scented Zouaves, andnobody knows what other suspicious folk. If Napoleon had known that therewas a

 MAN IN THE GARDEN!

I suppose he would have called up his family, waked the drum-corps, sentfor the Prefect of Police, put on the alert the 'sergents de ville, 'ordered under arms a regiment of the Imperial Guards, and made itunpleasant for the Man. 

All these thoughts passed through my mind, not with the rapidity oflightning, as is usual in such cases, but with the slowness ofconviction. If I should be discovered, death would only stare me in theface about a minute. If he waited five minutes, who would believe mystory of going to sleep and not hearing the drums? And if it were true, why didn't I go at once to the gate, and not lurk round there all nightlike another Clement? And then I wondered if it was not the disagreeablehabit of some night-patrol or other to beat round the garden before theSire went to bed for good, to find just such characters as I wasgradually getting to feel myself to be. 

But nobody came. Twelve o'clock, one o'clock sounded from the tower ofthe church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, from whose belfry the signal wasgiven for the beginning of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--the samebells that tolled all that dreadful night while the slaughter went on, while the effeminate Charles IX fired from the windows of the Louvre uponstray fugitives on the quay--bells the reminiscent sound of which, alegend (which I fear is not true) says, at length drove Catharine deMedici from the Tuileries. 

One o'clock! The lights were going out in the Tuileries, had nearly allgone out. I wondered if the suspicious and timid and wasteful Emperorwould keep the gas burning all night in his room. The night-roar of Parisstill went on, sounding always to foreign ears like the beginning of arevolution. As I stood there, looking at the window that interested memost, the curtains were drawn, the window was opened, and a form appearedin a white robe. I had never seen the Emperor before in a night-gown, butI should have known him among a thousand. The Man of Destiny had on awhite cotton night-cap, with a peaked top and no tassel. It was the mostnatural thing in the land; he was taking a last look over his restlessParis before he turned in. What if he should see me! I respected thatlast look and withdrew into the shadow. Tired and hungry, I sat down toreflect upon the pleasures of the gay capital. 

One o'clock and a half! I had presence of mind enough to wind my watch;indeed, I was not likely to forget that, for time hung heavily on myhands. It was a gay capital. Would it never put out its lights, and ceaseits uproar, and leave me to my reflections? In less than an hour thecountry legions would invade the city, the market-wagons would rumbledown the streets, the vegetable-man and the strawberry-woman, thefishmongers and the greens-venders would begin their melodious cries, andthere would be no repose for a man even in a public garden. It issecluded enough, with the gates locked, and there is plenty of room toturn over and change position; but it is a wakeful situation at the best, a haunting sort of place, and I was not sure it was not haunted. 

I had often wondered as I strolled about the place in the daytime orpeered through the iron fence at dusk, if strange things did not go onhere at night, with this crowd of effigies of persons historical and moreor less mythological, in this garden peopled with the representatives ofthe dead, and no doubt by the shades of kings and queens and courtiers, 'intrigantes' and panders, priests and soldiers, who live once in thisold pile--real shades, which are always invisible in the sunlight. Theyhave local attachments, I suppose. Can science tell when they departforever from the scenes of their objective intrusion into the affairs ofthis world, or how long they are permitted to revisit them? Is it truethat in certain spiritual states, say of isolation or intense nervousalertness, we can see them as they can see each other? There was I--theI catalogued in the police description--present in that garden, yet soearnestly longing to be somewhere else that would it be wonderful if my'eidolon' was somewhere else and could be seen?--though not by apoliceman, for policemen have no spiritual vision. 

There were no policemen in the garden, that I was certain of; but alittle after half-past one I saw a Man, not a man I had ever seen before, clad in doublet and hose, with a short cloak and a felt cap with a whiteplume, come out of the Pavillon de Flore and turn down the quay towardsthe house I had seen that afternoon where it stood--of the beautifulGabrielle d'Estrees. I might have been mistaken but for the fact that, just at this moment, a window opened in the wing of the same pavilion, and an effeminate, boyish face, weak and cruel, with a crown on its head, appeared and looked down into the shadow of the building as if its ownersaw what I had seen. And there was nothing remarkable in this, exceptthat nowadays kings do not wear crowns at night. It occurred to me thatthere was a masquerade going on in the Tuileries, though I heard nomusic, except the tinkle of, it might be, a harp, or "the lasciviouspleasing of a lute, " and I walked along down towards the centralpavilion. I was just in time to see two ladies emerge from it anddisappear, whispering together, in the shrubbery; the one old, tall, anddark, with the Italian complexion, in a black robe, and the other young, petite, extraordinarily handsome, and clad in light and bridal stuffs, yet both with the same wily look that set me thinking on poisons, andwith a grace and a subtle carriage of deceit that could be common only tomother and daughter. I didn't choose to walk any farther in the part ofthe garden they had chosen for a night promenade, and turned offabruptly. 

What?

There, on the bench of the marble hemicycle in the north grove, sat a rowof graybeards, old men in the costume of the first Revolution, a sort ofserene and benignant Areopagus. In the cleared space before them were acrowd of youths and maidens, spectators and participants in the FloralGames which were about to commence; behind the old men stood attendantswho bore chaplets of flowers, the prizes in the games. The young men woreshort red tunics with copper belts, formerly worn by Roman lads at theludi, and the girls tunics of white with loosened girdles, leaving theirlimbs unrestrained for dancing, leaping, or running; their hair wasconfined only by a fillet about the head. The pipers began to play andthe dancers to move in rhythmic measures, with the slow and languid graceof those full of sweet wine and the new joy of the Spring, according tothe habits of the Golden Age, which had come again by decree in Paris. This was the beginning of the classic sports, but it is not possible fora modern pen to describe particularly the Floral Games. I remember thatthe Convention ordered the placing of these hemicycles in the garden, andthey were executed from Robespierre's designs; but I suppose I am theonly person who ever saw the games played that were expected to be playedbefore them. It was a curious coincidence that the little livid-green manwas also there, leaning against a tree and looking on with a half sneer. It seemed to me an odd classic revival, but then Paris has spasms ofthat, at the old Theatre Francais and elsewhere. 

Pipes in the garden, lutes in the palace, paganism, Revolution--thesituation was becoming mixed, and I should not have been surprised at aghostly procession from the Place de la Concorde, through the westerngates, of the thousands of headless nobility, victims of the axe and thebasket; but, thank Heaven, nothing of that sort appeared to add to thewonders of the night; yet, as I turned a moment from the dancers, Ithought I saw something move in the shrubbery. The Laocoon? It could notbe. The arms moving? Yes. As I drew nearer the arms distinctly moved, putting away at length the coiling serpent, and pushing from the pedestalthe old-men boys, his comrades in agony. Laocoon shut his mouth, whichhad been stretched open for about eighteen centuries, untwisted the lastcoil of the snake, and stepped down, a free man. After this it did notsurprise me to see Spartacus also step down and approach him, and the twoancients square off for fisticuffs, as if they had done it often before, enjoying at night the release from the everlasting pillory of art. It wasthe hour of releases, and I found myself in a moment in the midst of a"classic revival, " whimsical beyond description. Aeneas hastened todeposit his aged father in a heap on the gravel and ran after the SylvanNymphs; Theseus gave the Minotaur a respite; Themistocles was bendingover the dying Spartan, who was coming to life; Venus Pudica was waltzingabout the diagonal basin with Antinous; Ascanius was playing marbles withthe infant Hercules. In this unreal phantasmagoria it was a relief to meto see walking in the area of the private garden two men: the one astately person with a kingly air, a handsome face, his head covered witha huge wig that fell upon his shoulders; the other a farmer-like man, stout and ungracious, the counterpart of the pictures of the intendantColbert. He was pointing up to the palace, and seemed to be speaking ofsome alterations, to which talk the other listened impatiently. Iwondered what Napoleon, who by this time was probably dreaming of Mexico, would have said if he had looked out and seen, not one man in the garden, but dozens of men, and all the stir that I saw; if he had known, indeed, that the Great Monarch was walking under his windows. 

I said it was a relief to me to see two real men, but I had no reason tocomplain of solitude thereafter till daybreak. That any one saw ornoticed me I doubt, and I soon became so reassured that I had moredelight than fear in watching the coming and going of personages I hadsupposed dead a hundred years and more; the appearance at windows offaces lovely, faces sad, faces terror-stricken; the opening of casementsand the dropping of billets into the garden; the flutter of disappearingrobes; the faint sounds of revels from the interior of the palace; thehurrying of feet, the flashing of lights, the clink of steel, that toldof partings and sudden armings, and the presence of a king that will bedenied at no doors. I saw through the windows of the long Galerie deDiane the roues of the Regency at supper, and at table with them a dark, semi-barbarian little man in a coat of Russian sable, the coolest head inEurope at a drinking-bout. I saw enter the south pavilion a tall lady inblack, with the air of a royal procuress; and presently crossed thegarden and disappeared in the pavilion a young Parisian girl, and thenanother and another, a flock of innocents, and I thought instantly of thedreadful Parc aux Cerfs at Versailles. 

So wrought upon was I by the sight of this infamy that I scarcely noticedthe incoming of a royal train at the southern end of the palace, andnotably in it a lady with light hair and noble mien, and the look in herface of a hunted lioness at bay. I say scarcely, for hardly had the royalcortege passed within, when there arose a great clamor in the innercourt, like the roar of an angry multitude, a scuffling of many feet, firing of guns, thrusting of pikes, followed by yells of defiance inmingled French and German, the pitching of Swiss Guards from doorways andwindows, and the flashing of flambeaux that ran hither and thither. "Oh!"I said, "Paris has come to call upon its sovereign; the pikemen of Paris, led by the bold Barbaroux. "

The tumult subsided as suddenly as it had risen, hushed, I imagined, bythe jarring of cannon from the direction of St. Roch; and in the quiet Isaw a little soldier alight at the Rue de Rivoli gate--a little man whomyou might mistake for a corporal of the guard--with a wild, coarse-featured Corsican (say, rather, Basque) face, his disorderedchestnut hair darkened to black locks by the use of pomatum--a faceselfish and false, but determined as fate. So this was the beginning ofthe Napoleon "legend"; and by-and-by this coarse head will be idealizedinto the Roman Emperor type, in which I myself might have believed butfor the revelations of the night of strange adventure. 

What is history? What is this drama and spectacle, that has been putforth as history, but a cover for petty intrigue, and deceit, andselfishness, and cruelty? A man shut into the Tuileries Garden begins tothink that it is all an illusion, the trick of a disordered fancy. Whowas Grand, who was Well-Beloved, who was Desired, who was the Idol of theFrench, who was worthy to be called a King of the Citizens? Oh, for thelight of day!

And it came, faint and tremulous, touching the terraces of the palace andthe Column of Luxor. But what procession was that moving along thesouthern terrace? A squad of the National Guard on horseback, a score orso of King's officers, a King on foot, walking with uncertain step, aQueen leaning on his arm, both habited in black, moved out of the westerngate. The King and the Queen paused a moment on the very spot where LouisXVI. Was beheaded, and then got into a carriage drawn by one horse andwere driven rapidly along the quays in the direction of St. Cloud. Andagain Revolution, on the heels of the fugitives, poured into the oldpalace and filled it with its tatterdemalions. 

Enough for me that daylight began to broaden. "Sleep on, " I said, "O realPresident, real Emperor (by the grace of coup d'etat) at last, in themidst of the most virtuous court in Europe, loved of good Americans, eternally established in the hearts of your devoted Parisians! Peace tothe palace and peace to its lovely garden, of both of which I have hadquite enough for one night!"

The sun came up, and, as I looked about, all the shades and concourse ofthe night had vanished. Day had begun in the vast city, with all its roarand tumult; but the garden gates would not open till seven, and I mustnot be seen before the early stragglers should enter and give me a chanceof escape. In my circumstances I would rather be the first to enter thanthe first to go out in the morning, past those lynx-eyed gendarmes. Frommy covert I eagerly watched for my coming deliverers. The first to appearwas a 'chiffonnier, ' who threw his sack and pick down by the basin, bathed his face, and drank from his hand. It seemed to me almost like anact of worship, and I would have embraced that rag-picker as a brother. But I knew that such a proceeding, in the name even of egalite andfraternite would have been misinterpreted; and I waited till two andthree and a dozen entered by this gate and that, and I was at fullliberty to stretch my limbs and walk out upon the quay as nonchalant asif I had been taking a morning stroll. 

I have reason to believe that the police of Paris never knew where Ispent the night of the 18th of June. It must have mystified them. 

TRUTHFULNESS

Truthfulness is as essential in literature as it is in conduct, infiction as it is in the report of an actual occurrence. Falsehoodvitiates a poem, a painting, exactly as it does a life. Truthfulness is aquality like simplicity. Simplicity in literature is mainly a matter ofclear vision and lucid expression, however complex the subject-matter maybe; exactly as in life, simplicity does not so much depend upon externalconditions as upon the spirit in which one lives. It may be moredifficult to maintain simplicity of living with a great fortune than inpoverty, but simplicity of spirit--that is, superiority of soul tocircumstance--is possible in any condition. Unfortunately the commonexpression that a certain person has wealth is not so true as it would beto say that wealth has him. The life of one with great possessions andcorresponding responsibilities may be full of complexity; the subject ofliterary art may be exceedingly complex; but we do not set complexityover against simplicity. For simplicity is a quality essential to truelife as it is to literature of the first class; it is opposed to parade, to artificiality, to obscurity. 

The quality of truthfulness is not so easily defined. It also is a matterof spirit and intuition. We have no difficulty in applying the rules ofcommon morality to certain functions of writers for the public, forinstance, the duties of the newspaper reporter, or the newspapercorrespondent, or the narrator of any event in life the relation of whichowes its value to its being absolutely true. The same may be said ofhoaxes, literary or scientific, however clear they may be. The personindulging in them not only discredits his office in the eyes of thepublic, but he injures his own moral fibre, and he contracts such a habitof unveracity that he never can hope for genuine literary success. Forthere never was yet any genuine success in letters without integrity. Theclever hoax is no better than the trick of imitation, that is, consciousimitation of another, which has unveracity to one's self at the bottom ofit. Burlesque is not the highest order of intellectual performance, butit is legitimate, and if cleverly done it may be both useful and amusing, but it is not to be confounded with forgery, that is, with a compositionwhich the author attempts to pass off as the production of somebody else. The forgery may be amazingly smart, and be even popular, and get theauthor, when he is discovered, notoriety, but it is pretty certain thatwith his ingrained lack of integrity he will never accomplish anyoriginal work of value, and he will be always personally suspected. Thereis nothing so dangerous to a young writer as to begin with hoaxing; or tobegin with the invention, either as reporter or correspondent, ofstatements put forward as facts, which are untrue. This sort of facilityand smartness may get a writer employment, unfortunately for him and thepublic, but there is no satisfaction in it to one who desires anhonorable career. It is easy to recall the names of brilliant men whosefine talents have been eaten away by this habit of unveracity. This habitis the greatest danger of the newspaper press of the United States. 

It is easy to define this sort of untruthfulness, and to study the moraldeterioration it works in personal character, and in the quality ofliterary work. It was illustrated in the forgeries of the marvelous boyChatterton. The talent he expended in deception might have made him anenviable reputation, --the deception vitiated whatever good there was inhis work. Fraud in literature is no better than fraud in archaeology, --Chatterton deserves no more credit than Shapiro who forged the Moabitepottery with its inscriptions. The reporter who invents an incident, orheightens the horror of a calamity by fictions is in the case of Shapiro. The habit of this sort of invention is certain to destroy the writer'squality, and if he attempts a legitimate work of the imagination, he willcarry the same unveracity into that. The quality of truthfulness cannotbe juggled with. Akin to this is the trick which has put under propersuspicion some very clever writers of our day, and cost them all publicconfidence in whatever they do, --the trick of posing for what they arenot. We do not mean only that the reader does not believe their storiesof personal adventure, and regards them personally as "frauds, " but thatthis quality of deception vitiates all their work, as seen from aliterary point of view. We mean that the writer who hoaxes the public, byinventions which he publishes as facts, or in regard to his ownpersonality, not only will lose the confidence of the public but he willlose the power of doing genuine work, even in the field of fiction. Goodwork is always characterized by integrity. 

These illustrations help us to understand what is meant by literaryintegrity. For the deception in the case of the correspondent who invents"news" is of the same quality as the lack of sincerity in a poem or in aprose fiction; there is a moral and probably a mental defect in both. Thestory of Robinson Crusoe is a very good illustration of veracity infiction. It is effective because it has the simple air of truth; it is anillusion that satisfies; it is possible; it is good art: but it has nomoral deception in it. In fact, looked at as literature, we can see thatit is sincere and wholesome. 

What is this quality of truthfulness which we all recognize when itexists in fiction? There is much fiction, and some of it, for variousreasons, that we like and find interesting which is neverthelessinsincere if not artificial. We see that the writer has not been honestwith himself or with us in his views of human life. There may be just asmuch lying in novels as anywhere else. The novelist who offers us what hedeclares to be a figment of his own brain may be just as untrue as thereporter who sets forth a figment of his own brain which he declares tobe a real occurrence. That is, just as much faithfulness to life isrequired of the novelist as of the reporter, and in a much higher degree. The novelist must not only tell the truth about life as he sees it, material and spiritual, but he must be faithful to his own conceptions. If fortunately he has genius enough to create a character that hasreality to himself and to others, he must be faithful to that character. He must have conscience about it, and not misrepresent it, any more thanhe would misrepresent the sayings and doings of a person in real life. Ofcourse if his own conception is not clear, he will be as unjust as inwriting about a person in real life whose character he knew only byrumor. The novelist may be mistaken about his own creations and in hisviews of life, but if he have truthfulness in himself, sincerity willshow in his work. 

Truthfulness is a quality that needs to be as strongly insisted on inliterature as simplicity. But when we carry the matter a step further, wesee that there cannot be truthfulness about life without knowledge. Theworld is full of novels, and their number daily increases, writtenwithout any sense of responsibility, and with very little experience, which are full of false views of human nature and of society. We canalmost always tell in a fiction when the writer passes the boundary ofhis own experience and observation--he becomes unreal, which is anothername for untruthful. And there is an absence of sincerity in such work. There seems to be a prevailing impression that any one can write a story. But it scarcely need be said that literature is an art, like painting andmusic, and that one may have knowledge of life and perfect sincerity, andyet be unable to produce a good, truthful piece of literature, or tocompose a piece of music, or to paint a picture. 

Truthfulness is in no way opposed to invention or to the exercise of theimagination. When we say that the writer needs experience, we do not meanto intimate that his invention of character or plot should be literallylimited to a person he has known, or to an incident that has occurred, but that they should be true to his experience. The writer may create anideally perfect character, or an ideally bad character, and he may tryhim by a set of circumstances and events never before combined, and thiscreation may be so romantic as to go beyond the experience of any reader, that is to say, wholly imaginary (like a composed landscape which has nocounterpart in any one view of a natural landscape), and yet it may be soconsistent in itself, so true to an idea or an aspiration or a hope, thatit will have the element of truthfulness and subserve a very highpurpose. It may actually be truer to our sense of verity to life than anarray of undeniable, naked facts set down without art and withoutimagination. 

The difficulty of telling the truth in literature is about as great as itis in real life. We know how nearly impossible it is for one person toconvey to another a correct impression of a third person. He may describethe features, the manner, mention certain traits and sayings, allliterally true, but absolutely misleading as to the total impression. Andthis is the reason why extreme, unrelieved realism is apt to give a falseimpression of persons and scenes. One can hardly help having a whimsicalnotion occasionally, seeing the miscarriages even in our own attempts attruthfulness, that it absolutely exists only in the imagination. 

In a piece of fiction, especially romantic fiction, an author isabsolutely free to be truthful, and he will be if he has personal andliterary integrity. He moves freely amid his own creations andconceptions, and is not subject to the peril of the writer who admittedlyuses facts, but uses them so clumsily or with so little conscience, soout of their real relations, as to convey a false impression and anuntrue view of life. This quality of truthfulness is equally evident in"The Three Guardsmen" and in "Midsummer Night's Dream. " Dumas is asconscientious about his world of adventure as Shakespeare is in hissemi-supernatural region. If Shakespeare did not respect the laws of hisimaginary country, and the creatures of his fancy, if Dumas were not trueto the characters he conceived, and the achievements possible to them, such works would fall into confusion. A recent story called "TheRefugees" set out with a certain promise of veracity, although the readerunderstood of course that it was to be a purely romantic invention. Butvery soon the author recklessly violated his own conception, and when hegot his "real" characters upon an iceberg, the fantastic position becameludicrous without being funny, and the performances of the samecharacters in the wilderness of the New World showed such lack ofknowledge in the writer that the story became an insult to theintelligence of the reader. Whereas such a romance as that of "The MS. Found in a Copper Cylinder, " although it is humanly impossible andvisibly a figment of the imagination, is satisfactory to the readerbecause the author is true to his conception, and it is interesting as acurious allegorical and humorous illustration of the ruinous character inhuman affairs of extreme unselfishness. There is the same sort oftruthfulness in Hawthorne's allegory of "The Celestial Railway, " inFroude's "On a Siding at a Railway Station, " and in Bunyan's "Pilgrim'sProgress. "

The habit of lying carried into fiction vitiates the best work, andperhaps it is easier to avoid it in pure romance than in the so-callednovels of "every-day life. " And this is probably the reason why so manyof the novels of "real life" are so much more offensively untruthful tous than the wildest romances. In the former the author could perhaps"prove" every incident he narrates, and produce living every character hehas attempted to describe. But the effect is that of a lie, eitherbecause he is not a master of his art, or because he has no literaryconscience. He is like an artist who is more anxious to produce ameretricious effect than he is to be true to himself or to nature. Anauthor who creates a character assumes a great responsibility, and if hehas not integrity or knowledge enough to respect his own creation, no oneelse will respect it, and, worse than this, he will tell a falsehood tohosts of undiscriminating readers. 

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Perhaps the most curious and interesting phrase ever put into a publicdocument is "the pursuit of happiness. " It is declared to be aninalienable right. It cannot be sold. It cannot be given away. It isdoubtful if it could be left by will. 

The right of every man to be six feet high, and of every woman to be fivefeet four, was regarded as self-evident until women asserted theirundoubted right to be six feet high also, when some confusion wasintroduced into the interpretation of this rhetorical fragment of theeighteenth century. 

But the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness has never beenquestioned since it was proclaimed as a new gospel for the New World. TheAmerican people accepted it with enthusiasm, as if it had been thediscovery of a gold-prospector, and started out in the pursuit as if thedevil were after them. 

If the proclamation had been that happiness is a common right of therace, alienable or otherwise, that all men are or may be happy, historyand tradition might have interfered to raise a doubt whether even the newform of government could so change the ethical condition. But the rightto make a pursuit of happiness, given in a fundamental bill of rights, had quite a different aspect. Men had been engaged in many pursuits, mostof them disastrous, some of them highly commendable. A sect in Galileehad set up the pursuit of righteousness as the only or the highest objectof man's immortal powers. The rewards of it, however, were not alwaysimmediate. Here was a political sanction of a pursuit that everybodyacknowledged to be of a good thing. 

Given a heart-aching longing in every human being for happiness, here washigh warrant for going in pursuit of it. And the curious effect of this'mot d'ordre' was that the pursuit arrested the attention as the mostessential, and the happiness was postponed, almost invariably, to somefuture season, when leisure or plethora, that is, relaxation or gorgeddesire, should induce that physical and moral glow which is commonlyaccepted as happiness. This glow of well-being is sometimes calledcontentment, but contentment was not in the programme. If it came at all, it was only to come after strenuous pursuit, that being the inalienableright. 

People, to be sure, have different conceptions of happiness, but whateverthey are, it is the custom, almost universal, to postpone the thingitself. This, of course, is specially true in our American system, wherewe have a chartered right to the thing itself. Other nations who have nosuch right may take it out in occasional driblets, odd moments that come, no doubt, to men and races who have no privilege of voting, or to suchfavored places as New York city, whose government is always the same, however they vote. 

We are all authorized to pursue happiness, and we do as a general thingmake a pursuit of it. Instead of simply being happy in the conditionwhere we are, getting the sweets of life in human intercourse, hour byhour, as the bees take honey from every flower that opens in the summerair, finding happiness in the well-filled and orderly mind, in the saneand enlightened spirit, in the self that has become what the self shouldbe, we say that tomorrow, next year, in ten or twenty or thirty years, when we have arrived at certain coveted possessions or situation, we willbe happy. Some philosophers dignify this postponement with the name ofhope. 

Sometimes wandering in a primeval forest, in all the witchery of thewoods, besought by the kindliest solicitations of nature, wild flowers inthe trail, the call of the squirrel, the flutter of birds, the greatworld-music of the wind in the pine-tops, the flecks of sunlight on thebrown carpet and on the rough bark of immemorial trees, I find myselfunconsciously postponing my enjoyment until I shall reach a hoped-foropen place of full sun and boundless prospect. 

The analogy cannot be pushed, for it is the common experience that theseopen spots in life, where leisure and space and contentment await us, areusually grown up with thickets, fuller of obstacles, to say nothing oflabors and duties and difficulties, than any part of the weary path wehave trod. 

Why add the pursuit of happiness to our other inalienable worries?Perhaps there is something wrong in ourselves when we hear the complaintso often that men are pursued by disaster instead of being pursued byhappiness. 

We all believe in happiness as something desirable and attainable, and Itake it that this is the underlying desire when we speak of the pursuitof wealth, the pursuit of learning, the pursuit of power in office or ininfluence, that is, that we shall come into happiness when the objectslast named are attained. No amount of failure seems to lessen thisbelief. It is matter of experience that wealth and learning and power areas likely to bring unhappiness as happiness, and yet this constant lessonof experience makes not the least impression upon human conduct. Isuppose that the reason of this unheeding of experience is that everyperson born into the world is the only one exactly of that kind that everwas or ever will be created, so that he thinks he may be exempt from thegeneral rules. At any rate, he goes at the pursuit of happiness inexactly the old way, as if it were an original undertaking. Perhaps themost melancholy spectacle offered to us in our short sojourn in thispilgrimage, where the roads are so dusty and the caravansaries so illprovided, is the credulity of this pursuit. Mind, I am not objecting tothe pursuit of wealth, or of learning, or of power, they are allexplainable, if not justifiable, --but to the blindness that does notperceive their futility as a means of attaining the end sought, which ishappiness, an end that can only be compassed by the right adjustment ofeach soul to this and to any coming state of existence. For whether thegreat scholar who is stuffed with knowledge is happier than the greatmoney-getter who is gorged with riches, or the wily politician who is aWarwick in his realm, depends entirely upon what sort of a man thispursuit has made him. There is a kind of fallacy current nowadays that avery rich man, no matter by what unscrupulous means he has gathered anundue proportion of the world into his possession, can be happy if he canturn round and make a generous and lavish distribution of it for worthypurposes. If he has preserved a remnant of conscience, this distributionmay give him much satisfaction, and justly increase his good opinion ofhis own deserts; but the fallacy is in leaving out of account the sort ofman he has become in this sort of pursuit. Has he escaped that hardeningof the nature, that drying up of the sweet springs of sympathy, whichusually attend a long-continued selfish undertaking? Has either he or thegreat politician or the great scholar cultivated the real sources ofenjoyment?

The pursuit of happiness! It is not strange that men call it an illusion. But I am well satisfied that it is not the thing itself, but the pursuit, that is an illusion. Instead of thinking of the pursuit, why not fix ourthoughts upon the moments, the hours, perhaps the days, of this divinepeace, this merriment of body and mind, that can be repeated and perhapsindefinitely extended by the simplest of all means, namely, a dispositionto make the best of whatever comes to us? Perhaps the Latin poet wasright in saying that no man can count himself happy while in this life, that is, in a continuous state of happiness; but as there is for the soulno time save the conscious moment called "now, " it is quite possible tomake that "now" a happy state of existence. The point I make is that weshould not habitually postpone that season of happiness to the future. 

No one, I trust, wishes to cloud the dreams of youth, or to dispel byexcess of light what are called the illusions of hope. But why should theboy be nurtured in the current notion that he is to be really happy onlywhen he has finished school, when he has got a business or profession bywhich money can be made, when he has come to manhood? The girl alsodreams that for her happiness lies ahead, in that springtime when she iscrossing the line of womanhood, --all the poets make much of this, --whenshe is married and learns the supreme lesson how to rule by obeying. Itis only when the girl and the boy look back upon the years of adolescencethat they realize how happy they might have been then if they had onlyknown they were happy, and did not need to go in pursuit of happiness. 

The pitiful part of this inalienable right to the pursuit of happinessis, however, that most men interpret it to mean the pursuit of wealth, and strive for that always, postponing being happy until they get afortune, and if they are lucky in that, find at the end that thehappiness has somehow eluded them, that; in short, they have notcultivated that in themselves that alone can bring happiness. More thanthat, they have lost the power of the enjoyment of the essentialpleasures of life. I think that the woman in the Scriptures who out ofher poverty put her mite into the contribution-box got more happiness outof that driblet of generosity and self-sacrifice than some men in our dayhave experienced in founding a university. 

And how fares it with the intellectual man? To be a selfish miner oflearning, for self-gratification only, is no nobler in reality than to bea miser of money. And even when the scholar is lavish of his knowledge inhelping an ignorant world, he may find that if he has made his studies asa pursuit of happiness he has missed his object. Much knowledge increasesthe possibility of enjoyment, but also the possibility of sorrow. Ifintellectual pursuits contribute to an enlightened and altogetheradmirable character, then indeed has the student found the inner springsof happiness. Otherwise one cannot say that the wise man is happier thanthe ignorant man. 

In fine, and in spite of the political injunction, we need to considerthat happiness is an inner condition, not to be raced after. And what anadvance in our situation it would be if we could get it into our headshere in this land of inalienable rights that the world would turn roundjust the same if we stood still and waited for the daily coming of ourLord!

LITERATURE AND THE STAGE

Is the divorce of Literature and the Stage complete, or is it still onlypartial? As the lawyers say, is it a 'vinculo', or only a 'mensa etthoro?' And if this divorce is permanent, is it a good thing forliterature or the stage? Is the present condition of the stage adegeneration, as some say, or is it a natural evolution of an artindependent of literature?

How long is it since a play has been written and accepted and playedwhich has in it any so-called literary quality or is an addition toliterature? And what is dramatic art as at present understood andpracticed by the purveyors of plays for the public? If any one can answerthese questions, he will contribute something to the discussion about thetendency of the modern stage. 

Every one recognizes in the "good old plays" which are occasionally"revived" both a quality and an intention different from anything in mostcontemporary productions. They are real dramas, the interest of whichdepends upon sentiment, upon an exhibition of human nature, upon theinteraction of varied character, and upon plot, and we recognize in thema certain literary art. They can be read with pleasure. Scenery andmechanical contrivance may heighten the effects, but they are notabsolute essentials. 

In the contemporary play instead of character we have "characters, "usually exaggerations of some trait, so pushed forward as to becomecaricatures. Consistency to human nature is not insisted on in plot, butthere must be startling and unexpected incidents, mechanical devices, anda great deal of what is called "business, " which clearly has as muchrelation to literature as have the steps of a farceur in a clog-dance. The composition of such plays demands literary ability in the leastdegree, but ingenuity in inventing situations and surprises; the text isnothing, the action is everything; but the text is considerably improvedif it have brightness of repartee and a lively apprehension ofcontemporary events, including the slang of the hour. These plays appearto be made up by the writer, the manager, the carpenter, the costumer. Ifthey are successful with the modern audiences, their success is probablydue to other things than any literary quality they may have, or any truthto life or to human nature. 

We see how this is in the great number of plays adapted from popularnovels. In the "dramatization" of these stories, pretty much everythingis left out of the higher sort that the reader has valued in the story. The romance of "Monte Cristo" is an illustration of this. The play isvulgar melodrama, out of which has escaped altogether the refinement andthe romantic idealism of the stirring romance of Dumas. Now and then, tobe sure, we get a different result, as in "Olivia, " where all the pathosand character of the "Vicar of Wakefield" are preserved, and the effectof the play depends upon passion and sentiment. But as a rule, we getonly the more obvious saliencies, the bones of the novel, fitted in orclothed with stage "business. "

Of course it is true that literary men, even dramatic authors, may writeand always have written dramas not suited to actors, that could not wellbe put upon the stage. But it remains true that the greatest dramas, those that have endured from the Greek times down, have been (for theaudiences of their times) both good reading and good acting plays. 

I am not competent to criticise the stage or its tendency. But I aminterested in noticing the increasing non-literary character of modernplays. It may be explained as a necessary and justifiable evolution ofthe stage. The managers may know what the audience wants, just as theeditors of some of the most sensational newspapers say that they make anewspaper to suit the public. The newspaper need not be well written, butit must startle with incident and surprise, found or invented. Anobserver must notice that the usual theatre-audience in New York orBoston today laughs at and applauds costumes, situations, innuendoes, doubtful suggestions, that it would have blushed at a few years ago. Hasthe audience been creating a theatre to suit its taste, or have themanagers been educating an audience? Has the divorce of literary art fromthe mimic art of the stage anything to do with this condition?

The stage can be amusing, but can it show life as it is without the aidof idealizing literary art? And if the stage goes on in thismaterialistic way, how long will it be before it ceases to amuseintelligent, not to say intellectual people?

THE LIFE-SAVING AND LIFE PROLONGING ART

In the minds of the public there is a mystery about the practice ofmedicine. It deals more or less with the unknown, with the occult, itappeals to the imagination. Doubtless confidence in its practitioners isstill somewhat due to the belief that they are familiar with the secretprocesses of nature, if they are not in actual alliance with thesupernatural. Investigation of the ground of the popular faith in thedoctor would lead us into metaphysics. And yet our physical condition hasmuch to do with this faith. It is apt to be weak when one is in perfecthealth; but when one is sick it grows strong. Saint and sinner both warmup to the doctor when the judgment Day heaves in view. 

In the popular apprehension the doctor is still the Medicine Man. Wesmile when we hear about his antics in barbarous tribes; he dressesfantastically, he puts horns on his head, he draws circles on the ground, he dances about the patient, shaking his rattle and utteringincantations. There is nothing to laugh at. He is making an appeal to theimagination. And sometimes he cures, and sometimes he kills; in eithercase he gets his fee. What right have we to laugh? We live in anenlightened age, and yet a great proportion of the people, perhaps not amajority, still believe in incantations, have faith in ignorantpractitioners who advertise a "natural gift, " or a secret process orremedy, and prefer the charlatan who is exactly on the level of theIndian Medicine Man, to the regular practitioner, and to the scientificstudent of mind and body and of the properties of the materia medica. Why, even here in Connecticut, it is impossible to get a law to protectthe community from the imposition of knavish or ignorant quacks, and torequire of a man some evidence of capacity and training and skill, beforehe is let loose to experiment upon suffering humanity. Our teachers mustpass an examination--though the examiner sometimes does not know as muchas the candidate, --for misguiding the youthful mind; the lawyer cannotpractice without study and a formal admission to the bar; and even theclergyman is not accepted in any responsible charge until he has givenevidence of some moral and intellectual fitness. But the professionaffecting directly the health and life of every human body, which needsto avail itself of the accumulated experience, knowledge, and science ofall the ages, is open to every ignorant and stupid practitioner on thecredulity of the public. Why cannot we get a law regulating theprofession which is of most vital interest to all of us, excludingignorance and quackery? Because the majority of our legislature, representing, I suppose, the majority of the public, believe in the"natural bone-setter, " the herb doctor, the root doctor, the old womanwho brews a decoction of swamp medicine, the "natural gift" of somedabbler in diseases, the magnetic healer, the faith cure, the mind cure, the Christian Science cure, the efficacy of a prescription rapped out ona table by some hysterical medium, --in anything but sound knowledge, education in scientific methods, steadied by a sense of publicresponsibility. Not long ago, on a cross-country road, I came across awoman in a farmhouse, where I am sure the barn-yard drained into thewell, who was sick; she had taken a shop-full of patent medicines. Iadvised her to send for a doctor. She had no confidence in doctors, butsaid she reckoned she would get along now, for she had sent for theseventh son of a seventh son, and didn't I think he could certainly cureher? I said that combination ought to fetch any disease exceptagnosticism. That woman probably influenced a vote in the legislature. The legislature believes in incantations; it ought to have in attendancean Indian Medicine Man. 

We think the world is progressing in enlightenment; I suppose it is--inchby inch. But it is not easy to name an age that has cherished moredelusions than ours, or been more superstitious, or more credulous, moreeager to run after quackery. Especially is this true in regard toremedies for diseases, and the faith in healers and quacks outside of theregular, educated professors of the medical art. Is this an exaggeration?Consider the quantity of proprietary medicines taken in this country, some of them harmless, some of them good in some cases, some of theminjurious, but generally taken without advice and in absolute ignoranceof the nature of the disease or the specific action of the remedy. Thedrug-shops are full of them, especially in country towns; and in the farWest and on the Pacific coast I have been astonished at the quantity andvariety displayed. They are found in almost every house; the country isliterally dosed to death with these manufactured nostrums andpanaceas--and that is the most popular medicine which can be used for thegreatest number of internal and external diseases and injuries. Manynewspapers are half supported by advertising them, and millions andmillions of dollars are invested in this popular industry. Needless tosay that the patented remedies most in request are those that profess asecret and unscientific origin. Those most "purely vegetable" seem mostsuitable to the wooden-heads who believe in them, but if one weresufficiently advertised as not containing a single trace of vegetablematter, avoiding thus all possible conflict of one organic life withanother organic life, it would be just as popular. The favorites arethose that have been secretly used by an East Indian fakir, oraccidentally discovered as the natural remedy, dug out of the ground byan American Indian tribe, or steeped in a kettle by an ancient coloredperson in a southern plantation, or washed ashore on the person of asailor from the South Seas, or invented by a very aged man in New Jersey, who could not read, but had spent his life roaming in the woods, andwhose capacity for discovering a "universal panacea, " besides hisignorance and isolation, lay in the fact that his sands of life hadnearly run. It is the supposed secrecy or low origin of the remedy thatis its attraction. The basis of the vast proprietary medicine business ispopular ignorance and credulity. And it needs to be pretty broad tosupport a traffic of such enormous proportions. 

During this generation certain branches of the life-saving andlife-prolonging art have made great advances out of empiricism onto thesolid ground of scientific knowledge. Of course I refer to surgery, andto the discovery of the causes and improvement in the treatment ofcontagious and epidemic diseases. The general practice has shared in thisscientific advance, but it is limited and always will be limited withinexperimental bounds, by the infinite variations in individualconstitutions, and the almost incalculable element of the interference ofmental with physical conditions. When we get an exact science of man, wemay expect an exact science of medicine. How far we are from this, we seewhen we attempt to make criminal anthropology the basis of criminallegislation. Man is so complex that if we were to eliminate one of hisapparently worse qualities, we might develop others still worse, or throwthe whole machine into inefficiency. By taking away what thephrenologists call combativeness, we could doubtless stop prize-fight, but we might have a springless society. The only safe way is that taughtby horticulture, to feed a fruit-tree generously, so that it has vigorenough to throw off its degenerate tendencies and its enemies, or, as thedoctors say in medical practice, bring up the general system. That is tosay, there is more hope for humanity in stimulating the good, than indirectly suppressing the evil. It is on something like this line that thegreatest advance has been made in medical practice; I mean in thedirection of prevention. This involves, of course, the exclusion of theevil, that is, of suppressing the causes that produce disease, as well asin cultivating the resistant power of the human system. In sanitation, diet, and exercise are the great fields of medical enterprise andadvance. I need not say that the physician who, in the case of thoseunder his charge, or who may possibly require his aid, contents himselfwith waiting for developed disease, is like the soldier in a besiegedcity who opens the gates and then attempts to repel the invader who haseffected a lodgment. I hope the time will come when the chief practice ofthe physician will be, first, in oversight of the sanitary condition ofhis neighborhood, and, next, in preventive attendance on people who thinkthey are well, and are all unconscious of the insidious approach of someconcealed malady. 

Another great change in modern practice is specialization. Perhaps it hasnot yet reached the delicate particularity of the practice in ancientEgypt, where every minute part of the human economy had its exclusivedoctor. This is inevitable in a scientific age, and the result has beenon the whole an advance of knowledge, and improved treatment of specificailments. The danger is apparent. It is that of the moral specialist, whohas only one hobby and traces every human ill to strong liquor ortobacco, or the corset, or taxation of personal property, or denial ofuniversal suffrage, or the eating of meat, or the want of thecentralization of nearly all initiative and interest and property in thestate. The tendency of the accomplished specialist in medicine is torefer all physical trouble to the ill conduct of the organ he presidesover. He can often trace every disease to want of width in the nostrils, to a defective eye, to a sensitive throat, to shut-up pores, to anirritated stomach, to auricular defect. I suppose he is generally right, but I have a perhaps natural fear that if I happened to consult anamputationist about catarrh he would want to cut off my leg. I confess toan affection for the old-fashioned, all-round country doctor, who took ageneral view of his patient, knew his family, his constitution, all thegossip about his mental or business troubles, his affairs of the heart, disappointments in love, incompatibilities of temper, and treated thepatient, as the phrase is, for all he was worth, and gave him visiblemedicine out of good old saddle-bags--how much faith we used to have inthose saddle-bags--and not a prescription in a dead language to be put upby a dead-head clerk who occasionally mistakes arsenic for carbonate ofsoda. I do not mean, however, to say there is no sense in the retentionof the hieroglyphics which the doctors use to communicate their ideas toa druggist, for I had a prescription made in Hartford put up in Naples, and that could not have happened if it had been written in English. And Iam not sure but the mysterious symbols have some effect on the patient. 

The mention of the intimate knowledge of family and constitutionalconditions possessed by the old-fashioned country doctor, whose mainstrength lay in this and in his common-sense, reminds me of another greatadvance in the modern practice, in the attempt to understand naturebetter by the scientific study of psychology and the occult relations ofmind and body. It is in the study of temper, temperament, hereditarypredispositions, that we may expect the most brilliant results inpreventive medicine. 

As a layman, I cannot but notice another great advance in the medicalprofession. It is not alone in it. It is rather expected that the lawyerswill divide the oyster between them and leave the shell to thecontestants. I suppose that doctors, almost without exception, give moreof their time and skill in the way of charity than almost any otherprofession. But somebody must pay, and fees have increased with thegeneral cost of living and dying. If fees continue to increase as theyhave done in the past ten years in the great cities, like New York, nobody not a millionaire can afford to be sick. The fees will soon be aprohibitive tax. I cannot say that this will be altogether an evil, forthe cost of calling medical aid may force people to take better care ofthemselves. Still, the excessive charges are rather hard on people inmoderate circumstances who are compelled to seek surgical aid. And herewe touch one of the regrettable symptoms of the times, which is not byany means most conspicuous in the medical profession. I mean the tendencyto subordinate the old notion of professional duty to the greed formoney. The lawyers are almost universally accused of it; even theclergymen are often suspected of being influenced by it. The young man isapt to choose a profession on calculation of its profit. It will be a badday for science and for the progress of the usefulness of the medicalprofession when the love of money in its practice becomes stronger thanprofessional enthusiasm, than the noble ambition of distinction foradvancing the science, and the devotion to human welfare. 

I do not prophesy it. Rather I expect interest in humanity, love ofscience for itself, sympathy with suffering, self-sacrifice for others, to increase in the world, and be stronger in the end than sordid love ofgain and the low ambition of rivalry in materialistic display. To thishigher life the physician is called. I often wonder that there are somany men, brilliant men, able men, with so many talents for success inany calling, willing to devote their lives to a profession which demandsso much self-sacrifice, so much hardship, so much contact with suffering, subject to the call of all the world at any hour of the day or night, involving so much personal risk, carrying so much heart-breakingresponsibility, responded to by so much constant heroism, a heroismrequiring the risk of life in a service the only glory of which is a goodname and the approval of one's conscience. 

To the members of such a profession, in spite of their human infirmitiesand limitations and unworthy hangers-on, I bow with admiration and therespect which we feel for that which is best in this world. 

"H. H. " IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

It seems somehow more nearly an irreparable loss to us than to "H. H. "that she did not live to taste her very substantial fame in SouthernCalifornia. We should have had such delight in her unaffected pleasure init, and it would have been one of those satisfactions somewhat adequateto our sense of fitness that are so seldom experienced. It was my goodfortune to see Mrs. Jackson frequently in the days in New York when shewas writing "Ramona, " which was begun and perhaps finished in theBerkeley House. The theme had complete possession of her, and chapterafter chapter flowed from her pen as easily as one would write a letterto a friend; and she had an ever fresh and vigorous delight in it. I haveoften thought that no one enjoyed the sensation of living more than Mrs. Jackson, or was more alive to all the influences of nature and thecontact of mind with mind, more responsive to all that was exquisite andnoble either in nature or in society, or more sensitive to thedisagreeable. This is merely saying that she was a poet; but when shebecame interested in the Indians, and especially in the harsh fate of theMission Indians in California, all her nature was fused for the time in alofty enthusiasm of pity and indignation, and all her powers seemed to beconsecrated to one purpose. Enthusiasm and sympathy will not make anovel, but all the same they are necessary to the production of a workthat has in it real vital quality, and in this case all previousexperience and artistic training became the unconscious servants of Mrs. Jackson's heart. I know she had very little conceit about herperformance, but she had a simple consciousness that she was doing herbest work, and that if the world should care much for anything she haddone, after she was gone, it would be for "Ramona. " She had put herselfinto it. 

And yet I am certain that she could have had no idea what the novel wouldbe to the people of Southern California, or how it would identify hername with all that region, and make so many scenes in it places ofpilgrimage and romantic interest for her sake. I do not mean to say thatthe people in California knew personally Ramona and Alessandro, oraltogether believe in them, but that in their idealizations theyrecognize a verity and the ultimate truth of human nature, while in thescenery, in the fading sentiment of the old Spanish life, and the romanceand faith of the Missions, the author has done for the region very muchwhat Scott did for the Highlands. I hope she knows now, I presume shedoes, that more than one Indian school in the Territories is called theRamona School; that at least two villages in California are contendingfor the priority of using the name Ramona; that all the travelers andtourists (at least in the time they can spare from real-estatespeculations) go about under her guidance, are pilgrims to the shrinesshe has described, and eager searchers for the scenes she has made famousin her novel; that more than one city and more than one town claims thehonor of connection with the story; that the tourist has pointed out tohim in more than one village the very house where Ramona lived, where shewas married--indeed, that a little crop of legends has already grown upabout the story itself. I was myself shown the house in Los Angeles wherethe story was written, and so strong is the local impression that Iconfess to looking at the rose-embowered cottage with a good deal ofinterest, though I had seen the romance growing day by day in theBerkeley in New York. 

The undoubted scene of the loves of Ramona and Alessandro is the Comulosrancho, on the railway from Newhall to Santa Paula, the route that onetakes now (unless he wants to have a lifelong remembrance of the groundswells of the Pacific in an uneasy little steamer) to go from Los Angelesto Santa Barbara. It is almost the only one remaining of theold-fashioned Spanish haciendas, where the old administration prevails. The new railway passes it now, and the hospitable owners have beenobliged to yield to the public curiosity and provide entertainment for acontinual stream of visitors. The place is so perfectly described in"Ramona" that I do not need to draw it over again, and I violate noconfidence and only certify to the extraordinary powers of delineation ofthe novelist, when I say that she only spent a few hours there, --not aquarter of the time we spent in identifying her picture. We knew thesituation before the train stopped by the crosses erected on theconspicuous peaks of the serrated ashy--or shall I say purple--hills thatenfold the fertile valley. It is a great domain, watered by a swiftriver, and sheltered by wonderfully picturesque mountains. The house isstrictly in the old Spanish style, of one story about a large court, withflowers and a fountain, in which are the most noisy if not musical frogsin the world, and all the interior rooms opening upon a gallery. The realfront is towards the garden, and here at the end of the gallery is theelevated room where Father Salvierderra slept when he passed a night atthe hacienda, --a pretty room which has a case of Spanish books, mostlyreligious and legal, and some quaint and cheap holy pictures. We had aletter to Signora Del Valle, the mistress, and were welcomed with a sortof formal extension of hospitality that put us back into the courtlymanners of a hundred years ago. The Signora, who is in no sense theoriginal of the mistress whom "H. H. " describes, is a widow now for sevenyears, and is the vigilant administrator of all her large domain, of thestock, the grazing lands, the vineyard, the sheep ranch, and all thepeople. Rising very early in the morning, she visits every department, and no detail is too minute to escape her inspection, and no one in thegreat household but feels her authority. 

It was a very lovely day on the 17th of March (indeed, I suppose it hadbeen preceded by 364 days exactly like it) as we sat upon the gallerylooking on the garden, a garden of oranges, roses, citrons, lemons, peaches--what fruit and flower was not growing there?--acres and acres ofvineyard beyond, with the tall cane and willows by the stream, and thepurple mountains against the sapphire sky. Was there ever anything moreexquisite than the peach-blossoms against that blue sky! Such a place ofpeace. A soft south wind was blowing, and all the air was drowsy with thehum of bees. In the garden is a vine-covered arbor, with seats andtables, and at the end of it is the opening into a little chapel, adomestic chapel, carpeted like a parlor, and bearing all the emblems of aloving devotion. By the garden gate hang three small bells, from some oldmission, all cracked, but serving (each has its office) to summon theworkmen or to call to prayer. 

Perfect system reigns in Signora Del Valle's establishment, and even theleast child in it has its duty. At sundown a little slip of a girl wentout to the gate and struck one of the bells. "What is that for?" I askedas she returned. "It is the Angelus, " she said simply. I do not know whatwould happen to her if she should neglect to strike it at the hour. Ateight o'clock the largest bell was struck, and the Signora and all herhousehold, including the house servants, went out to the little chapel inthe garden, which was suddenly lighted with candles, gleaming brilliantlythrough the orange groves. The Signora read the service, the householdresponding--a twenty minutes' service, which is as much a part of theadministration of the establishment as visiting the granaries andpresses, and the bringing home of the goats. The Signora's apartments, which she permitted us to see, were quite in the nature of an oratory, with shrines and sacred pictures and relics of the faith. By the shrineat the head of her bed hung the rosary carried by Father Junipero, --apriceless possession. From her presses and armoires, the Signora, seeingwe had a taste for such things, brought out the feminine treasures ofthree generations, the silk and embroidered dresses of last century, theribosas, the jewelry, the brilliant stuffs of China and Mexico, eacharticle with a memory and a flavor. 

But I must not be betrayed into writing about Ramona's house. Howcharming indeed it was the next morning, --though the birds in the gardenwere astir a little too early, --with the thermometer set to the exactdegree of warmth without languor, the sky blue, the wind soft, the airscented with orange and jessamine. The Signora had already visited allher premises before we were up. We had seen the evening before anenclosure near the house full of cashmere goats and kids, whose anticswere sufficiently amusing--most of them had now gone afield; workmen werecoming for their orders, plowing was going on in the barley fields, traders were driving to the plantation store, the fierce eagle in a bigcage by the olive press was raging at his detention. Within the houseenclosure are an olive mill and press, a wine-press and a greatstorehouse of wine, containing now little but empty casks, --a dusky, interesting place, with pomegranates and dried bunches of grapes andoranges and pieces of jerked meat hanging from the rafters. Near by is acornhouse and a small distillery, and the corrals for sheep shearing arenot far off. The ranches for cattle and sheep are on the other side ofthe mountain. 

Peace be with Comulos. It must please the author of "Ramona" to know thatit continues in the old ways; and I trust she is undisturbed by theknowledge that the rage for change will not long let it be what it nowis. 

SIMPLICITY

No doubt one of the most charming creations in all poetry is Nausicaa, the white-armed daughter of King Alcinous. There is no scene, no picture, in the heroic times more pleasing than the meeting of Ulysses with thisdamsel on the wild seashore of Scheria, where the Wanderer had beentossed ashore by the tempest. The place of this classic meeting wasprobably on the west coast of Corfu, that incomparable island, to whosebeauty the legend of the exquisite maidenhood of the daughter of the kingof the Phaeacians has added an immortal bloom. 

We have no difficulty in recalling it in all its distinctness: the brightmorning on which Nausicaa came forth from the palace, where her mothersat and turned the distaff loaded with a fleece dyed in sea-purple, mounted the car piled with the robes to be cleansed in the stream, and, attended by her bright-haired, laughing handmaidens, drove to the banksof the river, where out of its sweet grasses it flowed over clean sandinto the Adriatic. The team is loosed to browse the grass; the garmentsare flung into the dark water, then trampled with hasty feet in frolicrivalry, and spread upon the gravel to dry. Then the maidens bathe, givetheir limbs the delicate oil from the cruse of gold, sit by the streamand eat their meal, and, refreshed, mistress and maidens lay aside theirveils and play at ball, and Nausicaa begins a song. Though all were fair, like Diana was this spotless virgin midst her maids. A missed ball andmaidenly screams waken Ulysses from his sleep in the thicket. At theapparition of the unclad, shipwrecked sailor the maidens flee right andleft. Nausicaa alone keeps her place, secure in her unconscious modesty. To the astonished Sport of Fortune the vision of this radiant girl, inshape and stature and in noble air, is more than mortal, yet scarcelymore than woman:

 "Like thee, I saw of late, In Delos, a young palm-tree growing up Beside Apollo's altar. "

When the Wanderer has bathed, and been clad in robes from the pile on thesand, and refreshed with food and wine which the hospitable maidens putbefore him, the train sets out for the town, Ulysses following thechariot among the bright-haired women. But before that Nausicaa, in thecandor of those early days, says to her attendants:

 "I would that I might call A man like him my husband, dwelling here And here content to dwell. "

Is there any woman in history more to be desired than this sweet, pure-minded, honest-hearted girl, as she is depicted with a few swifttouches by the great poet?--the dutiful daughter in her father's house, the joyous companion of girls, the beautiful woman whose modest bearingcommands the instant homage of man. Nothing is more enduring inliterature than this girl and the scene on the--Corfu sands. 

The sketch, though distinct, is slight, little more than outlines; noelaboration, no analysis; just an incident, as real as the blue sky ofScheria and the waves on the yellow sand. All the elements of the pictureare simple, human, natural, standing in as unconfused relations as anyevents in common life. I am not recalling it because it is a conspicuousinstance of the true realism that is touched with the ideality of genius, which is the immortal element in literature, but as an illustration ofthe other necessary quality in all productions of the human mind thatremain age after age, and that is simplicity. This is the stamp of allenduring work; this is what appeals to the universal understanding fromgeneration to generation. All the masterpieces that endure and become apart of our lives are characterized by it. The eye, like the mind, hatesconfusion and overcrowding. All the elements in beauty, grandeur, pathos, are simple--as simple as the lines in a Nile picture: the strong river, the yellow desert, the palms, the pyramids; hardly more than a horizontalline and a perpendicular line; only there is the sky, the atmosphere, thecolor-those need genius. 

We may test contemporary literature by its confortuity to the canon ofsimplicity--that is, if it has not that, we may conclude that it lacksone essential lasting quality. It may please;--it may be ingenious--brilliant, even; it may be the fashion of the day, and a fashion thatwill hold its power of pleasing for half a century, but it will be afashion. Mannerisms of course will not deceive us, nor extravagances, eccentricities, affectations, nor the straining after effect by the useof coined or far-fetched words and prodigality in adjectives. But, style?Yes, there is such a thing as style, good and bad; and the style shouldbe the writer's own and characteristic of him, as his speech is. But themoment I admire a style for its own sake, a style that attracts myattention so constantly that I say, How good that is! I begin to besuspicious. If it is too good, too pronouncedly good, I fear I shall notlike it so well on a second reading. If it comes to stand between me andthe thought, or the personality behind the thought, I grow more and moresuspicious. Is the book a window, through which I am to see life? Then Icannot have the glass too clear. Is it to affect me like a strain ofmusic? Then I am still more disturbed by any affectations. Is it toproduce the effect of a picture? Then I know I want the simplest harmonyof color. And I have learned that the most effective word-painting, as itis called, is the simplest. This is true if it is a question only ofpresent enjoyment. But we may be sure that any piece of literature whichattracts only by some trick of style, however it may blaze up for a dayand startle the world with its flash, lacks the element of endurance. Wedo not need much experience to tell us the difference between a lamp anda Roman candle. Even in our day we have seen many reputations flare up, illuminate the sky, and then go out in utter darkness. When we take aproper historical perspective, we see that it is the universal, thesimple, that lasts. 

I am not sure whether simplicity is a matter of nature or of cultivation. Barbarous nature likes display, excessive ornament; and when we havearrived at the nobly simple, the perfect proportion, we are always likelyto relapse into the confused and the complicated. The most cultivatedmen, we know, are the simplest in manners, in taste, in their style. Itis a note of some of the purest modern writers that they avoidcomparisons, similes, and even too much use of metaphor. But the mass ofmen are always relapsing into the tawdry and the over-ornamented. It is acharacteristic of youth, and it seems also to be a characteristic ofover-development. Literature, in any language, has no sooner arrived atthe highest vigor of simple expression than it begins to run intoprettiness, conceits, over-elaboration. This is a fact which may beverified by studying different periods, from classic literature to ourown day. 

It is the same with architecture. The classic Greek runs into theexcessive elaboration of the Roman period, the Gothic into theflamboyant, and so on. We, have had several attacks of architecturalmeasles in this country, which have left the land spotted all over withhouses in bad taste. Instead of developing the colonial simplicity onlines of dignity and harmony to modern use, we stuck on thepseudo-classic, we broke out in the Mansard, we broke all up into thewhimsicalities of the so-called Queen Anne, without regard to climate orcomfort. The eye speedily tires of all these things. It is a positiverelief to look at an old colonial mansion, even if it is as plain as abarn. What the eye demands is simple lines, proportion, harmony in mass, dignity; above all, adaptation to use. And what we must have also isindividuality in house and in furniture; that makes the city, thevillage, picturesque and interesting. The highest thing in architecture, as in literature, is the development of individuality in simplicity. 

Dress is a dangerous topic to meddle with. I myself like the attire ofthe maidens of Scheria, though Nausicaa, we must note, was "cladroyally. " But climate cannot be disregarded, and the vestment that was sofitting on a Greek girl whom I saw at the Second Cataract of the Nilewould scarcely be appropriate in New York. If the maidens of one of ourcolleges for girls, say Vassar for illustration, habited like thePhaeacian girls of Scheria, went down to the Hudson to cleanse the richrobes of the house, and were surprised by the advent of a stranger fromthe city, landing from a steamboat--a wandering broker, let us say, cladin wide trousers, long topcoat, and a tall hat--I fancy that he would bemore astonished than Ulysses was at the bevy of girls that scattered athis approach. It is not that women must be all things to all men, butthat their simplicity must conform to time and circumstance. What I donot understand is that simplicity gets banished altogether, and thatfashion, on a dictation that no one can trace the origin of, makes thatlovely in the eyes of women today which will seem utterly abhorrent tothem tomorrow. There appears to be no line of taste running through thechanges. The only consolation to you, the woman of the moment, is thatwhile the costume your grandmother wore makes her, in the painting, a guyin your eyes, the costume you wear will give your grandchildren the sameimpression of you. And the satisfaction for you is the thought that thelatter raiment will be worse than the other two--that is to say, lesswell suited to display the shape, station, and noble air which broughtUlysses to his knees on the sands of Corfu. 

Another reason why I say that I do not know whether simplicity belongs tonature or art is that fashion is as strong to pervert and disfigure insavage nations as it is in civilized. It runs to as much eccentricity inhair-dressing and ornament in the costume of the jingling belles ofNootka and the maidens of Nubia as in any court or coterie which weaspire to imitate. The only difference is that remote and unsophisticatedcommunities are more constant to a style they once adopt. There areisolated peasant communities in Europe who have kept for centuries themost uncouth and inconvenient attire, while we have run through a dozenvariations in the art of attraction by dress, from the most puffed andbulbous ballooning to the extreme of limpness and lankness. I can onlyconclude that the civilized human being is a restless creature, whosemotives in regard to costumes are utterly unfathomable. 

We need, however, to go a little further in this question of simplicity. Nausicaa was "clad royally. " There was a distinction, then, between herand her handmaidens. She was clad simply, according to her condition. Taste does not by any means lead to uniformity. I have read of a communein which all the women dressed alike and unbecomingly, so as todiscourage all attempt to please or attract, or to give value to thedifferent accents of beauty. The end of those women was worse than thebeginning. Simplicity is not ugliness, nor poverty, nor barrenness, nornecessarily plainness. What is simplicity for another may not be for you, for your condition, your tastes, especially for your wants. It is apersonal question. You go beyond simplicity when you attempt toappropriate more than your wants, your aspirations, whatever they are, demand--that is, to appropriate for show, for ostentation, more than yourlife can assimilate, can make thoroughly yours. There is no limit to whatyou may have, if it is necessary for you, if it is not a superfluity toyou. What would be simplicity to you may be superfluity to another. Therich robes that Nausicaa wore she wore like a goddess. The moment yourdress, your house, your house-grounds, your furniture, your scale ofliving, are beyond the rational satisfaction of your own desires--thatis, are for ostentation, for imposition upon the public--they aresuperfluous, the line of simplicity is passed. Every human being has aright to whatever can best feed his life, satisfy his legitimate desires, contribute to the growth of his soul. It is not for me to judge whetherthis is luxury or want. There is no merit in riches nor in poverty. Thereis merit in that simplicity of life which seeks to grasp no more than isnecessary for the development and enjoyment of the individual. Most ofus, in all conditions; are weighted down with superfluities or worried toacquire them. Simplicity is making the journey of this life with justbaggage enough. 

The needs of every person differ from the needs of every other; we canmake no standard for wants or possessions. But the world would be greatlytransformed and much more easy to live in if everybody limited hisacquisitions to his ability to assimilate them to his life. Thedestruction of simplicity is a craving for things, not because we needthem, but because others have them. Because one man who lives in a plainlittle house, in all the restrictions of mean surroundings, would behappier in a mansion suited to his taste and his wants, is no argumentthat another man, living in a palace, in useless ostentation, would notbe better off in a dwelling which conforms to his cultivation and habits. It is so hard to learn the lesson that there is no satisfaction ingaining more than we personally want. 

The matter of simplicity, then, comes into literary style, into building, into dress, into life, individualized always by one's personality. Ineach we aim at the expression of the best that is in us, not at imitationor ostentation. 

The women in history, in legend, in poetry, whom we love, we do not lovebecause they are "clad royally. " In our day, to be clad royally isscarcely a distinction. To have a superfluity is not a distinction. Butin those moments when we have a clear vision of life, that which seems tous most admirable and desirable is the simplicity that endears to us theidyl of Nausicaa. 

THE ENGLISH VOLUNTEERS DURING THE LATE INVASION

The most painful event since the bombardment of Alexandria has been whatis called by an English writer the "invasion" of "American Literature inEngland. " The hostile forces, with an advanced guard of what was regardedas an "awkward squad, " had been gradually effecting a landing and alodgment not unwelcome to the unsuspicious natives. No alarm was takenwhen they threw out a skirmish-line of magazines and began to deploy anoccasional wild poet, who advanced in buckskin leggings, revolver inhand, or a stray sharp-shooting sketcher clad in the picturesque robes ofthe sunset. Put when the main body of American novelists got fairlyashore and into position the literary militia of the island rose up asone man, with the strength of a thousand, to repel the invaders and sweepthem back across the Atlantic. The spectacle had a dramatic interest. Theinvaders were not numerous, did not carry their native tomahawks, theyhad been careful to wash off the frightful paint with which they usuallygo into action, they did not utter the defiant whoop of Pogram, and eventhe militia regarded them as on the whole "amusin' young 'possums" andyet all the resources of modern and ancient warfare were brought to bearupon them. There was a crack of revolvers from the daily press, a livelyfusillade of small-arms in the astonished weeklies, a discharge ofpoint-blank blunderbusses from the monthlies; and some of the heavyquarterlies loaded up the old pieces of ordnance, that had not beencharged in forty years, with slugs and brickbats and junk-bottles, andpoured in raking broadsides. The effect on the island was somethingtremendous: it shook and trembled, and was almost hidden in the smoke ofthe conflict. What the effect is upon the invaders it is too soon todetermine. If any of them survive, it will be God's mercy to his weak andinnocent children. 

It must be said that the American people--such of them as were aware ofthis uprising--took the punishment of their presumption in a sweet andforgiving spirit. If they did not feel that they deserved it, theyregarded it as a valuable contribution to the study of sociology and racecharacteristics, in which they have taken a lively interest of late. Weknow how it is ourselves, they said; we used to be thin-skinned andself-conscious and sensitive. We used to wince and cringe under Englishcriticism, and try to strike back in a blind fury. We have learned thatcriticism is good for us, and we are grateful for it from any source. Wehave learned that English criticism is dictated by love for us, by a warminterest in our intellectual development, just as English anxiety aboutour revenue laws is based upon a yearning that our down-trodden millionsshall enjoy the benefits of free-trade. We did not understand why acountry that admits our beef and grain and cheese should seem to seekprotection against a literary product which is brought into competitionwith one of the great British staples, the modern novel. It seemedinconsistent. But we are no more consistent ourselves. We cannotunderstand the action of our own Congress, which protects the Americanauthor by a round duty on foreign books and refuses to protect him bygranting a foreign copyright; or, to put it in another way, is willing tosteal the brains of the foreign author under the plea of free knowledge, but taxes free knowledge in another form. We have no defense to make ofthe state of international copyright, though we appreciate thecomplication of the matter in the conflicting interests of English andAmerican publishers. 

Yes; we must insist that, under the circumstances, the American peoplehave borne this outburst of English criticism in an admirable spirit. Itwas as unexpected as it was sudden. Now, for many years our internationalrelations have been uncommonly smooth, oiled every few days bycomplimentary banquet speeches, and sweetened by abundance of magazineand newspaper "taffy. " Something too much of "taffy" we have thought wasgiven us at times for, in getting bigger in various ways, we have grownmore modest. Though our English admirers may not believe it, we see ourown faults more clearly than we once did--thanks, partly, to the faithfulcastigations of our friends--and we sometimes find it difficult toconceal our blushes when we are over-praised. We fancied that we weregoing on, as an English writer on "Down-Easters" used to say, as "slickas ile, " when this miniature tempest suddenly burst out in a revival ofthe language and methods used in the redoubtable old English periodicalsforty years ago. We were interested in seeing how exactly this sort ofcriticism that slew our literary fathers was revived now for theexecution of their degenerate children. And yet it was not exactly thesame. We used to call it "slang-whanging. " One form of it was a blanksurprise at the pretensions of American authors, and a dismissal with theformula of previous ignorance of their existence. This is modified now bya modest expression of "discomfiture" on reading of American authors"whose very names, much less peculiarities, we never heard of before. "This is a tribunal from which there is no appeal. Not to have been heardof by an Englishman is next door to annihilation. It is at leastdiscouraging to an author who may think he has gained some reputationover what is now conceded to be a considerable portion of the earth'ssurface, to be cast into total obscurity by the negative damnation ofEnglish ignorance. There is to us something pathetic in this and in thesurprise of the English critic, that there can be any standard ofrespectable achievement outside of a seven-miles radius turning onCharing Cross. 

The pathetic aspect of the case has not, however, we are sorry to say, struck the American press, which has too often treated with unbecominglevity this unaccountable exhibition of English sensitiveness. There hasbeen little reply to it; at most, generally only an amused report of thewar, and now and then a discriminating acceptance of some of thecriticism as just, with a friendly recognition of the fact that on thewhole the critic had done very well considering the limitation of hisknowledge of the subject on which he wrote. What is certainly noticeableis an entire absence of the irritation that used to be caused by similarcomments on America thirty years ago. Perhaps the Americans are reservingtheir fire as their ancestors did at Bunker Hill, conscious, maybe, thatin the end they will be driven out of their slight literaryentrenchments. Perhaps they were disarmed by the fact that the acridcriticism in the London Quarterly Review was accompanied by a cordialappreciation of the novels that seemed to the reviewer characteristicallyAmerican. The interest in the tatter's review of our poor field must belanguid, however, for nobody has taken the trouble to remind its authorthat Brockden Brown--who is cited as a typical American writer, true tolocal character, scenery, and color--put no more flavor of American lifeand soil in his books than is to be found in "Frankenstein. "

It does not, I should suppose, lie in the way of The Century, whosegeneral audience on both sides of the Atlantic takes only an amusedinterest in this singular revival of a traditional literary animosity--ananachronism in these tolerant days when the reading world cares less andless about the origin of literature that pleases it--it does not lie inthe way of The Century to do more than report this phenomenal literaryeffervescence. And yet it cannot escape a certain responsibility as animmediate though innocent occasion of this exhibition of internationalcourtesy, because its last November number contained some papers thatseem to have been irritating. In one of them Mr. Howells let fall somechance remarks on the tendency of modern fiction, without adequatelydeveloping his theory, which were largely dissented from in this country, and were like the uncorking of six vials in England. The other was anessay on England, dictated by admiration for the achievements of theforemost nation of our time, which, from the awkwardness of the eulogist, was unfortunately the uncorking of the seventh vial--an uncorking which, as we happen to know, so prostrated the writer that he resolved never toattempt to praise England again. His panic was somewhat allayed by thesoothing remark in a kindly paper in Blackwood's Magazine for January, that the writer had discussed his theme "by no means unfairly ordisrespectfully. " But with a shudder he recognized what a peril he hadescaped. Great Scott!--the reference is to a local American deity who isinvoked in war, and not to the Biblical commentator--what would havehappened to him if he had spoken of England "disrespectfully"!

We gratefully acknowledge also the remark of the Blackwood writer inregard-to the claims of America in literature. "These claims, " he says, "we have hitherto been very charitable to. " How our life depends upon acontinual exhibition by the critics of this divine attribute of charityit would perhaps be unwise in us to confess. We can at least takecourage that it exists--who does not need it in this world ofmisunderstandings?--since we know that charity is not puffed up, vauntethnot itself, hopeth all things, endureth all things, is not easilyprovoked; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there beknowledge, it shall vanish; but charity never faileth. And when all our"dialects" on both sides of the water shall vanish, and we shall speak nomore Yorkshire or Cape Cod, or London cockney or "Pike" or "Cracker"vowel flatness, nor write them any more, but all use the noble simplicityof the ideal English, and not indulge in such odd-sounding phrases asthis of our critic that "the combatants on both sides were by way ofdetesting each other, " though we speak with the tongues of men and ofangels--we shall still need charity. 

It will occur to the charitable that the Americans are at a disadvantagein this little international "tiff. " For while the offenders haveinconsiderately written over their own names, the others preserve aprivileged anonymity. Any attempt to reply to these voices out of thedark reminds one of the famous duel between the Englishman and theFrenchman which took place in a pitch-dark chamber, with the frightfulresult that when the tender-hearted Englishman discharged his revolver upthe chimney he brought down his man. One never can tell in a case of thiskind but a charitable shot might bring down a valued friend or even apeer of the realm. 

In all soberness, however, and setting aside the open question, whichcountry has most diverged from the English as it was at the time of theseparation of the colonies from the motherland, we may be permitted aword or two in the hope of a better understanding. The offense in TheCentury paper on "England" seems to have been in phrases such as these:"When we began to produce something that was the product of our own soiland of our own social conditions, it was still judged by the oldstandards;" and, we are no longer irritated by "the snobbishness ofEnglish critics of a certain school, " "for we see that its criticism isonly the result of ignorance simply of inability to understand. "

Upon this the reviewer affects to lose his respiration, and with "a gaspof incredulity" wants to know what the writer means, "and what standardshe proposes to himself when he has given up the English ones?" Thereviewer makes a more serious case than the writer intended, or than afair construction of the context of his phrases warrants. It is thecriticism of "a certain school" only that was said to be the result ofignorance. It is not the English language nor its body of enduringliterature--the noblest monument of our common civilization--that thewriter objected to as a standard of our performances. The standardobjected to is the narrow insular one (the term "insular" is used purelyas a geographical one) that measures life, social conditions, feeling, temperament, and national idiosyncrasies expressed in our literature bycertain fixed notions prevalent in England. Probably also the expressionof national peculiarities would diverge somewhat from the "oldstandards. " All we thought of asking was that allowance should be madefor this expression and these peculiarities, as it would be made in caseof other literatures and peoples. It might have occurred to our critics, we used to think, to ask themselves whether the English literature is notelastic enough to permit the play of forces in it which are foreign totheir experience. Genuine literature is the expression, we take it, oflife-and truth to that is the standard of its success. Reference wasintended to this, and not to the common canons of literary art. But wehave given up the expectation that the English critic "of a certainschool" will take this view of it, and this is the plain reason--notintended to be offensive--why much of the English criticism has ceased tobe highly valued in this country, and why it has ceased to annoy. At thesame time, it ought to be added, English opinion, when it is seen to bebased upon knowledge, is as highly respected as ever. And nobody inAmerica, so far as we know, entertains, or ever entertained, the idea ofsetting aside as standards the master-minds in British literature. Inregard to the "inability to understand, " we can, perhaps, make ourselvesmore clearly understood, for the Blackwood's reviewer has kindlyfurnished us an illustration in this very paper, when he passes inpatronizing review the novels of Mr. Howells. In discussing the characterof Lydia Blood, in "The Lady of the Aroostook, " he is exceedingly puzzledby the fact that a girl from rural New England, brought up amidsurroundings homely in the extreme, should have been considered a lady. He says:

"The really 'American thing' in it is, we think, quite undiscoveredeither by the author or his heroes, and that is the curious confusion ofclasses which attributes to a girl brought up on the humblest level allthe prejudices and necessities of the highest society. Granting thatthere was anything dreadful in it, the daughter of a homely small farmerin England is not guarded and accompanied like a young lady on herjourneys from one place to another. Probably her mother at home would bedisturbed, like Lydia's aunt, at the thought that there was no woman onboard, in case her child should be ill or lonely; but, as for anyimpropriety, would never think twice on that subject. The difference isthat the English girl would not be a young lady. She would find hersweetheart among the sailors, and would have nothing to say to thegentlemen. This difference is far more curious than the misadventure, which might have happened anywhere, and far more remarkable than the factthat the gentlemen did behave to her like gentlemen, and did their bestto set her at ease, which we hope would have happened anywhere else. Butit is, we think, exclusively American, and very curious and interesting, that this young woman, with her antecedents so distinctly set before us, should be represented as a lady, not at all out of place among hercultivated companions, and 'ready to become an ornament of society themoment she lands in Venice. "

Reams of writing could not more clearly explain what is meant by"inability to understand" American conditions and to judge fairly theliterature growing out of them; and reams of writing would be wasted inthe attempt to make our curious critic comprehend the situation. There isnothing in his experience of "farmers' daughters" to give him the key toit. We might tell him that his notion of a farmer's daughters in Englanddoes not apply to New England. We might tell him of a sort of society ofwhich he has no conception and can have none, of farmers' daughters andfarmers' wives in New England--more numerous, let us confess, thirty orforty years ago than now--who lived in homely conditions, dressed withplainness, and followed the fashions afar off; did their own householdwork, even the menial parts of it; cooked the meals for the "men folks"and the "hired help, " made the butter and cheese, and performed theirhalf of the labor that wrung an honest but not luxurious living from thereluctant soil. And yet those women--the sweet and gracious ornaments ofa self-respecting society--were full of spirit, of modest pride in theirposition, were familiar with much good literature, could converse withpiquancy and understanding on subjects of general interest, were trainedin the subtleties of a solid theology, and bore themselves in any companywith that traditional breeding which we associate with the name of lady. Such strong native sense had they, such innate refinement and courtesytheproduct, it used to be said, of plain living and high thinking--that, ignorant as they might be of civic ways, they would, upon beingintroduced to them, need only a brief space of time to "orient"themselves to the new circumstances. Much more of this sort might be saidwithout exaggeration. To us there is nothing incongruous in thesupposition that Lydia Blood was "ready to become an ornament to societythe moment she lands in Venice. "

But we lack the missionary spirit necessary to the exertion to make ourinterested critic comprehend such a social condition, and we prefer toleave ourselves to his charity, in the hope of the continuance of whichwe rest in serenity. 

NATHAN HALE--1887

In a Memorial Day address at New Haven in 1881, the Hon. Richard D. Hubbard suggested the erection of a statue to Nathan Hale in the StateCapitol. With the exception of the monument in Coventry no memorial ofthe young hero existed. The suggestion was acted on by the Hon. E. S. Cleveland, who introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives inthe session of 1883, appropriating money for the purpose. The proprietyof this was urged before a committee of the Legislature by GovernorHubbard, in a speech of characteristic grace and eloquence, seconded bythe Hon. Henry C. Robinson and the Hon. Stephen W. Kellogg. TheLegislature appropriated the sum of five thousand dollars for a statue inbronze, and a committee was appointed to procure it. They opened a publiccompetition, and, after considerable delay, during which the commissionwas changed by death and by absence, --indeed four successive governors, Hubbard, Waller, Harrison, and Lounsbury have served on it, --the workwas awarded to Karl Gerhardt, a young sculptor who began his career inthis city. It was finished in clay, and accepted in October, 1886, put inplaster, and immediately sent to the foundry of Melzar Masman inChicopee, Massachusetts. 

Today in all its artistic perfection and beauty it stands here to berevealed to the public gaze. It is proper that the citizens ofConnecticut should know how much of this result they owe to theintelligent zeal of Mr. Cleveland, the mover of the resolution in theLegislature, who in the commission, and before he became a member of it, has spared neither time nor effort to procure a memorial worthy of thehero and of the State. And I am sure that I speak the unanimous sentimentof the commission in the regret that the originator of this statue couldnot have seen the consummation of his idea, and could not have crowned itwith the one thing lacking on this occasion, the silver words ofeloquence we always heard from his lips, that compact, nervous speech, the perfect union of strength and grace; for who so fitly as the lamentedHubbard could have portrayed the moral heroism of the Martyr-Spy?

This is not a portrait statue. There is no likeness of Nathan Haleextant. The only known miniature of his face, in the possession of thelady to whom he was betrothed at the time of his death, disappeared manyyears ago. The artist was obliged, therefore, to create an ideal figure, aided by a few fragmentary descriptions of Hale's personal appearance. His object has been to represent an American youth of the period, anAmerican patriot and scholar, whose manly beauty and grace traditionloves to recall, to represent in face and in bearing the moral elevationof character that made him conspicuous among his fellows, and to showforth, if possible, the deed that made him immortal. For it is the deedand the memorable last words we think of when we think of Hale. I knowthat by one of the canons of art it is held that sculpture should rarelyfix a momentary action; but if this can be pardoned in the Laocoon, wheresuffering could not otherwise be depicted to excite the sympathy of thespectator, surely it can be justified in this case, where, as one maysay, the immortality of the subject rests upon a single act, upon aphrase, upon the attitude of the moment. For all the man's life, all hischaracter, flowered and blossomed into immortal beauty in this onesupreme moment of self-sacrifice, triumph, defiance. The ladder of thegallows-tree on which the deserted boy stood, amidst the enemies of hiscountry, when he uttered those last words which all human annals do notparallel in simple patriotism, --the ladder I am sure ran up to heaven, and if angels were not seen ascending and descending it in that graymorning, there stood the embodiment of American courage, unconquerable, American faith, invincible, American love of country, unquenchable, a newdemocratic manhood in the world, visible there for all men to take noteof, crowned already with the halo of victory in the Revolutionary dawn. Oh, my Lord Howe! it seemed a trifling incident to you and to yourbloodhound, Provost Marshal Cunningham, but those winged last words wereworth ten thousand men to the drooping patriot army. Oh, your Majesty, King George the Third! here was a spirit, could you but have known it, that would cost you an empire, here was an ignominious death that wouldgrow in the estimation of mankind, increasing in nobility above thefading pageantry of kings. 

On the 21st of April, 1775, a messenger, riding express from Boston toNew York with the tidings of Lexington and Concord, reached New London. The news created intense excitement. A public meeting was called in thecourt-house at twilight, and among the speakers who exhorted the peopleto take up arms at once, was one, a youth not yet twenty years of age, who said, "Let us march immediately, and never lay down our arms until wehave obtained our independence, "--one of the first, perhaps the first, ofthe public declarations of the purpose of independence. It was NathanHale, already a person of some note in the colony, of a family then notunknown and destined in various ways to distinction in the Republic. Akinsman of the same name lost his life in the Louisburg fight. He hadbeen for a year the preceptor of the Union Grammar School at New London. The morning after the meeting he was enrolled as a volunteer, and soonmarched away with his company to Cambridge. 

Nathan Hale, descended from Robert Hale who settled in Charlestown in1632, a scion of the Hales of Kent, England, was born in Coventry, Connecticut, on the 6th of June, 1755, the sixth child of Richard Haleand his wife Elizabeth Strong, persons of strong intellect and thehighest moral character, and Puritans of the strictest observances. Brought up in this atmosphere, in which duty and moral rectitude were theunquestioned obligations in life, he came to manhood with a characterthat enabled him to face death or obloquy without flinching, when dutycalled, so that his behavior at the last was not an excitement of themoment, but the result of ancestry, training, and principle. Feeblephysically in infancy, he developed into a robust boy, strong in mind andbody, a lively, sweet-tempered, beautiful youth, and into a young manhoodendowed with every admirable quality. In feats of strength and agility herecalls the traditions of Washington; he early showed a remarkableavidity for knowledge, which was so sought that he became before he wasof age one of the best educated young men of his time in the colonies. Hewas not only a classical scholar, with the limitations of those days;but, what was then rare, he made scientific attainments which greatlyimpressed those capable of judging, and he had a taste for art and aremarkable talent as an artist. His father intended him for the ministry. He received his preparatory education from Dr. Joseph Huntington, aclassical scholar and the pastor of the church in Coventry, entered YaleCollege at the age of sixteen, and graduated with high honors in a classof sixty, in September, 1773. At the time of his graduation his personalappearance was notable. Dr. Enos Monro of New Haven, who knew him well inthe last year at Yale, said of him, "He was almost six feet in height, perfectly proportioned, and in figure and deportment he was the most manly man I have ever met. His chest was broad; his muscles were firm; his face wore a most benign expression; his complexion was roseate; his eyes were light blue and beamed with intelligence; his hair was soft and light brown in color, and his speech was rather low, sweet, and musical. His personal beauty and grace of manner were most charming. Why, all the girls in New Haven fell in love with him, " said Dr. Munro, "and wept tears of real sorrow when they heard of his sad fate. In dress he was always neat; he was quick to lend a hand to a being in distress, brute or human; was overflowing with good humor, and was the idol of all his acquaintances. "

Dr. Jared Sparks, who knew several of Hale's intimate friends, writes ofhim:

 "Possessing genius, taste, and order, he became distinguished as a scholar; and endowed in an eminent degree with those graces and gifts of Nature which add a charm to youthful excellence, he gained universal esteem and confidence. To high moral worth and irreproachable habits were joined gentleness of manner, an ingenuous disposition, and vigor of understanding. No young man of his years put forth a fairer promise of future usefulness and celebrity; the fortunes of none were fostered more sincerely by the generous good wishes of his superiors. "

It was remembered at Yale that he was a brilliant debater as well asscholar. At his graduation he engaged in a debate on the question, "Whether the education of daughters be not, without any just reason, moreneglected than that of the sons. " "In this debate, " wrote JamesHillhouse, one of his classmates, "he was the champion of the daughters, and most ably advocated their cause. You may be sure that he received theplaudits of the ladies present. "

Hale seems to have had an irresistible charm for everybody. He was afavorite in society; he had the manners and the qualities that made him aleader among men and gained him the admiration of women. He was alwaysintelligently busy, and had the Yankee ingenuity, --he "could do anythingbut spin, " he used to say to the girls of Coventry, laughing over thespinning wheel. There is a universal testimony to his alert intelligence, vivacity, manliness, sincerity, and winningness. 

It is probable that while still an under-graduate at Yale, he was engagedto Alice Adams, who was born in Canterbury, a young lady distinguishedthen as she was afterwards for great beauty and intelligence. AfterHale's death she married Mr. Eleazer Ripley, and was left a widow at theage of eighteen, with one child, who survived its father only one year. She married, the second time, William Lawrence, Esq. , of Hartford, anddied in this city, greatly respected and admired, in 1845, agedeighty-eight. It is a touching note of the hold the memory of her younghero had upon her admiration that her last words, murmured as life wasebbing, were, "Write to Nathan. "

Hale's short career in the American army need not detain us. After hisflying visit as a volunteer to Cambridge, he returned to New London, joined a company with the rank of lieutenant, participated in the siegeof Boston, was commissioned a captain in the Nineteenth ConnecticutRegiment in January, 1776, performed the duties of a soldier withvigilance, bravery, and patience, and was noted for the discipline of hiscompany. In the last dispiriting days of 1775, when the terms of his menhad expired, he offered to give them his month's pay if they would remaina month longer. He accompanied the army to New York, and shared itsfortunes in that discouraging spring and summer. Shortly after hisarrival Captain Hale distinguished himself by the brilliant exploit ofcutting out a British sloop, laden with provisions, from under the gunsof the man-of-war "Asia, " sixty-four, lying in the East River, andbringing her triumphantly into slip. During the summer he suffered asevere illness. 

The condition of the American army and cause on the 1st of September, 1776, after the retreat from Long Island, was critical. The army wasdemoralized, clamoring in vain for pay, and deserting by companies andregiments; one-third of the men were without tents, one-fourth of themwere on the sick list. On the 7th, Washington called a council of war, and anxiously inquired what should be done. On the 12th it was determinedto abandon the city and take possession of Harlem Heights. The Britisharmy, twenty-five thousand strong, admirably equipped, and supported by apowerful naval force, threatened to envelop our poor force, and finishthe war in a stroke. Washington was unable to penetrate the designs ofthe British commander, or to obtain any trusty information of theintentions or the movements of the British army. Information wasimperatively necessary to save us from destruction, and it could only beobtained by one skilled in military and scientific knowledge and a gooddraughtsman, a man of quick eye, cool head, tact, sagacity, and courage, and one whose judgment and fidelity could be trusted. Washington appliedto Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton, who summoned a conference of officers inthe name of the commander-in-chief, and laid the matter before them. Noone was willing to undertake the dangerous and ignominious mission. Knowlton was in despair, and late in the conference was repeating thenecessity, when a young officer, pale from recent illness, entered theroom and said, "I will undertake it. " It was Captain Nathan Hale. Everybody was astonished. His friends besought him not to attempt it. Invain. Hale was under no illusion. He silenced all remonstrances by sayingthat he thought he owed his country the accomplishment of an object soimportant and so much desired by the commander-in-chief, and he knew noway to obtain the information except by going into the enemy's camp indisguise. "I wish to be useful, " he said; "and every kind of servicenecessary for the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. Ifthe exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to theperformance of that service are imperious. "

The tale is well known. Hale crossed over from Norwalk to Huntington Coveon Long Island. In the disguise of a schoolmaster, he penetrated theBritish lines and the city, made accurate drawings of the fortifications, and memoranda in Latin of all that he observed, which he concealedbetween the soles of his shoes, and returned to the point on the shorewhere he had first landed. He expected to be met by a boat and to crossthe Sound to Norwalk the next morning. The next morning he was captured, no doubt by Tory treachery, and taken to Howe's headquarters, the mansionof James Beekman, situated at (the present) Fiftieth Street and FirstAvenue. That was on the 21st of September. Without trial and upon theevidence found on his person, Howe condemned him to be hanged as a spyearly next morning. Indeed Hale made no attempt at defense. He franklyowned his mission, and expressed regret that he could not serve hiscountry better. His open, manly bearing and high spirit commanded therespect of his captors. Mercy he did not expect, and pity was not shownhim. The British were irritated by a conflagration which had that morninglaid almost a third of the city in ashes, and which they attributed toincendiary efforts to deprive them of agreeable winter quarters. Hale wasat first locked up in the Beekman greenhouse. Whether he remained thereall night is not known, and the place of his execution has been disputed;but the best evidence seems to be that it took place on the farm ofColonel Rutger, on the west side, in the orchard in the vicinity of thepresent East Broadway and Market Street, and that he was hanged to thelimb of an apple-tree. 

It was a lovely Sunday morning, before the break of day, that he wasmarched to the place of execution, September 22d. While awaiting thenecessary preparations, a courteous young officer permitted him to sit inhis tent. He asked for the presence of a chaplain; the request wasrefused. He asked for a Bible; it was denied. But at the solicitation ofthe young officer he was furnished with writing materials, and wrotebriefly to his mother, his sister, and his betrothed. When the infamousCunningham, to whom Howe had delivered him, read what was written, he wasfurious at the noble and dauntless spirit shown, and with foul oaths torethe letters into shreds, saying afterwards "that the rebels should neverknow that they had a man who could die with such firmness. " As Hale stoodupon the fatal ladder, Cunningham taunted him, and tauntingly demandedhis "last dying speech and confession. " The hero did not heed the wordsof the brute, but, looking calmly upon the spectators, said in a clearvoice, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. "And the ladder was snatched from under him. 

My friends, we are not honoring today a lad who appears for a moment in aheroic light, but one of the most worthy of the citizens of Connecticut, who has by his lofty character long honored her, wherever patriotism isnot a mere name, and where Christian manhood is respected. We have hadmany heroes, many youths of promise, and men of note, whose names are ouronly great and enduring riches; but no one of them all betterillustrated, short as was his career, the virtues we desire for all oursons. We have long delayed this tribute to his character and his deeds, but in spite of our neglect his fame has grown year by year, as war andpolitics have taught us what is really admirable in a human being; and weare now sure that we are not erecting a monument to an ephemeralreputation. It is fit that it should stand here, one of the chiefdistinctions of our splendid Capitol, here in the political centre of theState, here in the city where first in all the world was proclaimed andput into a political charter the fundamental idea of democracy, that"government rests upon the consent of the people, " here in the city whereby the action of these self existing towns was formed the model, the townand the commonwealth, the bi-cameral legislature, of our constitutionalfederal union. If the soul of Nathan Hale, immortal in youth in the airof heaven, can behold today this scene, as doubtless it can, in the midstof a State whose prosperity the young colonist could not have imagined inhis wildest dreams for his country, he must feel anew the truth thatthere is nothing too sacred for a man to give for his native land. 

Governor Lounsbury, the labor of the commission is finished. On theirbehalf I present this work of art to the State of Connecticut. 

Let the statue speak for itself.