THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

AMBROSE BIERCE

VOLUME 1

1909

CONTENTS

ASHES OF THE BEACON

THE LAND BEYOND THE BLOW THITHER SONS OF THE FAIR STAR AN INTERVIEW WITH GNARMAG-ZOTE THE TAMTONIANS MAROONED ON UG THE DOG IN GANGEWAG A CONFLAGRATION IN GHARGAROO AN EXECUTION IN BATRUGIA THE JUMJUM OF GOKEETLE-GUK THE KINGDOM OF TORTIRRA HITHER

FOR THE AHKOOND

JOHN SMITH, LIBERATOR

BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY ON A MOUNTAIN WHAT I SAW OF SHILOH A LITTLE OF CHICKAMAUCA THE CRIME AT PICKETT'S MILL FOUR DAYS IN DIXIE WHAT OCCURRED AT FRANKLIN 'WAY DOWN IN ALABAM' WORKING FOR AN EMPRESS ACROSS THE PLAINS THE MIRAGE A SOLE SURVIVOR

ASHES OF THE BEACON

ASHES OF THE BEACON

AN HISTORICAL MONOGRAPH WRITTEN IN 4930

Of the many causes that conspired to bring about the lamentable failure of"self-government" in ancient America the most general and comprehensivewas, of course, the impracticable nature of the system itself. In thelight of modern culture, and instructed by history, we readily discern thefolly of those crude ideas upon which the ancient Americans based whatthey knew as "republican institutions, " and maintained, as long asmaintenance was possible, with something of a religious fervor, even whenthe results were visibly disastrous. To us of to-day it is clear that theword "self-government" involves a contradiction, for government meanscontrol by something other than the thing to be controlled. When the thinggoverned is the same as the thing governing there is no government, thoughfor a time there may be, as in the case under consideration there was, aconsiderable degree of forbearance, giving a misleading appearance ofpublic order. This, however, soon must, as in fact it soon did, pass awaywith the delusion that gave it birth. The habit of obedience to writtenlaw, inculcated by generations of respect for actual government able toenforce its authority, will persist for a long time, with an everlessening power upon the imagination of the people; but there comes a timewhen the tradition is forgotten and the delusion exhausted. When menperceive that nothing is restraining them but their consent to berestrained, then at last there is nothing to obstruct the free play ofthat selfishness which is the dominant characteristic and fundamentalmotive of human nature and human action respectively. Politics, which mayhave had something of the character of a contest of principles, becomes astruggle of interests, and its methods are frankly serviceable to personaland class advantage. Patriotism and respect for law pass like a tale thatis told. Anarchy, no longer disguised as "government by consent, " revealshis hidden hand, and in the words of our greatest living poet, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all!

The ancient Americans were a composite people; their blood was a blend ofall the strains known in their time. Their government, while they had one, being merely a loose and mutable expression of the desires and caprices ofthe majority--that is to say, of the ignorant, restless and reckless--gavethe freest rein and play to all the primal instincts and elementalpassions of the race. In so far and for so long as it had any restrainingforce, it was only the restraint of the present over the power of thepast--that of a new habit over an old and insistent tendency ever seekingexpression in large liberties and indulgences impatient of control. In thehistory of that unhappy people, therefore, we see unveiled the workings ofthe human will in its most lawless state, without fear of authority orcare of consequence. Nothing could be more instructive. 

Of the American form of government, although itself the greatest of evilsafflicting the victims of those that it entailed, but little needs to besaid here; it has perished from the earth, a system discredited by anunbroken record of failure in all parts of the world, from the earliesthistoric times to its final extinction. Of living students of politicalhistory not one professes to see in it anything but a mischievous creationof theorists and visionaries--persons whom our gracious sovereign hasdeigned to brand for the world's contempt as "dupes of hope purveying tosons of greed. " The political philosopher of to-day is spared the troubleof pointing out the fallacies of republican government, as themathematician is spared that of demonstrating the absurdity of theconvergence of parallel lines; yet the ancient Americans not only clung totheir error with a blind, unquestioning faith, even when groaning underits most insupportable burdens, but seem to have believed it of divineorigin. It was thought by them to have been established by the godWashington, whose worship, with that of such _dii minores_ as Gufferson, Jaxon and Lincon (identical probably with the Hebru Abrem) runs like ashining thread through all the warp and woof of the stuff that garmentedtheir moral nakedness. Some stones, very curiously inscribed in manytongues, were found by the explorer Droyhors in the wilderness borderingthe river Bhitt (supposed by him to be the ancient Potomac) as lately asthe reign of Barukam IV. These stones appear to be fragments of a monumentor temple erected to the glory of Washington in his divine character ofFounder and Preserver of republican institutions. If this tutelary deityof the ancient Americans really invented representative government theywere not the first by many to whom he imparted the malign secret of itsinauguration and denied that of its maintenance. 

Although many of the causes which finally, in combination, brought aboutthe downfall of the great American republic were in operation from thebeginning--being, as has been said, inherent in the system--it was notuntil the year 1995 (as the ancients for some reason not now knownreckoned time) that the collapse of the vast, formless fabric wascomplete. In that year the defeat and massacre of the last army of law andorder in the lava beds of California extinguished the final fires ofenlightened patriotism and quenched in blood the monarchical revival. Thenceforth armed opposition to anarchy was confined to desultory andinsignificant warfare waged by small gangs of mercenaries in the serviceof wealthy individuals and equally feeble bands of prescripts fighting fortheir lives. In that year, too, "the Three Presidents" were driven fromtheir capitals, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Duluth, their armiesdissolving by desertion and themselves meeting death at the hands of thepopulace. 

The turbulent period between 1920 and 1995, with its incalculable waste ofblood and treasure, its dreadful conflicts of armies and more dreadfulmassacres by passionate mobs, its kaleidoscopic changes of government andincessant effacement and redrawing of boundaries of states, itsinterminable tale of political assassinations and proscriptions--all thehorrors incident to intestinal wars of a naturally lawless race--had soexhausted and dispirited the surviving protagonists of legitimategovernment that they could make no further head against the inevitable, and were glad indeed and most fortunate to accept life on any terms thatthey could obtain. 

But the purpose of this sketch is not bald narration of historic fact, butexamination of antecedent germinal conditions; not to recount calamitousevents familiar to students of that faulty civilization, but to trace, aswell as the meager record will permit, the genesis and development of thecauses that brought them about. Historians in our time have left littleundone in the matter of narration of political and military phenomena. InGolpek's "Decline and Fall of the American Republics, " in Soseby's"History of Political Fallacies, " in Holobom's "Monarchical Renasence, "and notably in Gunkux's immortal work, "The Rise, Progress, Failure andExtinction of The Connected States of America" the fruits of research havebeen garnered, a considerable harvest. The events are set forth with suchconscientiousness and particularity as to have exhausted the possibilitiesof narration. It remains only to expound causes and point the awful moral. 

To a delinquent observation it may seem needless to point out the inherentdefects of a system of government which the logic of events has swept likepolitical rubbish from the face of the earth, but we must not forget thatages before the inception of the American republics and that of France andIreland this form of government had been discredited by emphatic failuresamong the most enlightened and powerful nations of antiquity: the Greeks, the Romans, and long before them (as we now know) the Egyptians and theChinese. To the lesson of these failures the founders of the eighteenthand nineteenth century republics were blind and deaf. Have we then reasonto believe that our posterity will be wiser because instructed by agreater number of examples? And is the number of examples which they willhave in memory really greater? Already the instances of China, Egypt, Greece and Rome are almost lost in the mists of antiquity; they are known, except by infrequent report, to the archæologist only, and but dimly anduncertainly to him. The brief and imperfect record of yesterdays which wecall History is like that traveling vine of India which, taking new rootas it advances, decays at one end while it grows at the other, and so isconstantly perishing and finally lost in all the spaces which it hasover-passed. 

From the few and precious writings that have descended to us from theearly period of the American republic we get a clear if fragmentary viewof the disorders and lawlessness affecting that strange and unhappynation. Leaving the historically famous "labor troubles" for more extendedconsideration, we may summarize here a few of the results of hardly morethan a century and a quarter of "self-government" as it existed on thiscontinent just previously to the awful end. At the beginning of the"twentieth century" a careful study by trustworthy contemporarystatisticians of the public records and those apparently private onesknown as "newspapers" showed that in a population of about 80, 000, 000 theannual number of homicides was not less than 10, 000; and this continuedyear after year to increase, not only absolutely, but proportionately, until, in the words of Dumbleshaw, who is thought to have written hisfamous "Memoirs of a Survivor" in the year 1908 of their era, "it wouldseem that the practice of suicide is a needless custom, for if a man buthave patience his neighbor is sure to put him out of his misery. " Of the10, 000 assassins less than three per cent. Were punished, further than byincidental imprisonment if unable to give bail while awaiting trial. Ifthe chief end of government is the citizen's security of life and hisprotection from aggression, what kind of government do these appallingfigures disclose? Yet so infatuated with their imaginary "liberty" werethese singular people that the contemplation of all this crime abatednothing of the volume and persistence of their patriotic ululations, andaffected not their faith in the perfection of their system. They were likea man standing on a rock already submerged by the rising tide, and callingto his neighbors on adjacent cliffs to observe his superior security. 

When three men engage in an undertaking in which they have an equalinterest, and in the direction of which they have equal power, itnecessarily results that any action approved by two of them, with orwithout the assent of the third, will be taken. This is called--or wascalled when it was an accepted principle in political and otheraffairs--"the rule of the majority. " Evidently, under the malignconditions supposed, it is the only practicable plan of getting anythingdone. A and B rule and overrule C, not because they ought, but becausethey can; not because they are wiser, but because they are stronger. Inorder to avoid a conflict in which he is sure to be worsted, C submits assoon as the vote is taken. C is as likely to be right as A and B; nay, that eminent ancient philosopher, Professor Richard A. Proctor (orProroctor, as the learned now spell the name), has clearly shown by thelaw of probabilities that any one of the three, all being of the sameintelligence, is far likelier to be right than the other two. 

It is thus that the "rule of the majority" as a political system isestablished. It is in essence nothing but the discredited anddiscreditable principle that "might makes right"; but early in the life ofa republic this essential character of government by majority is not seen. The habit of submitting all questions of policy to the arbitrament ofcounting noses and assenting without question to the result invests theordeal with a seeming sanctity, and what was at first obeyed as thecommand of power comes to be revered as the oracle of wisdom. Theinnumerable instances--such as the famous ones of Galileo and Keeley--inwhich one man has been right and all the rest of the race wrong, areoverlooked, or their significance missed, and "public opinion" is followedas a divine and infallible guide through every bog into which it blindlystumbles and over every precipice in its fortuitous path. Clearly, sooneror later will be encountered a bog that will smother or a precipice thatwill crush. Thoroughly to apprehend the absurdity of the ancient faith inthe wisdom of majorities let the loyal reader try to fancy our graciousSovereign by any possibility wrong, or his unanimous Ministry by anypossibility right!

During the latter half of the "nineteenth century" there arose in theConnected States a political element opposed to all government, whichfrankly declared its object to be anarchy. This astonishing heresy was notof indigenous growth: its seeds were imported from Europe by theemigration or banishment thence of criminals congenitally incapable ofunderstanding and valuing the blessings of monarchical institutions, andwhose method of protest was murder. The governments against which theyconspired in their native lands were too strong in authority and tooenlightened in policy for them to overthrow. Hundreds of them were put todeath, thousands imprisoned and sent into exile. But in America, whitherthose who escaped fled for safety, they found conditions entirelyfavorable to the prosecution of their designs. 

A revered fetish of the Americans was "freedom of speech": it was believedthat if bad men were permitted to proclaim their evil wishes they would gono further in the direction of executing them--that if they might say whatthey would like to do they would not care to do it. The close relationbetween speech and action was not understood. Because the Americansthemselves had long been accustomed, in their own political debates anddiscussions, to the use of unmeaning declamations and threats which theyhad no intention of executing, they reasoned that others were like them, and attributed to the menaces of these desperate and earnest outcasts nogreater importance than to their own. They thought also that the foreignanarchists, having exchanged the tyranny of kings for that of majorities, would be content with their new and better lot and become in time good andlaw-abiding citizens. 

The anarchist of that far day (thanks to the firm hands of our gracioussovereigns the species is now extinct) was a very different person fromwhat our infatuated ancestors imagined him. He struck at government, notbecause it was bad, but because it was government. He hated authority, notfor its tyranny, but for its power. And in order to make this plain toobservation he frequently chose his victim from amongst those whose rulewas most conspicuously benign. 

Of the seven early Presidents of the American republic who perished byassassination no fewer than four were slain by anarchists with no personalwrongs to impel them to the deed--nothing but an implacable hostility tolaw and authority. The fifth victim, indeed, was a notorious demagogue whohad pardoned the assassin of the fourth. 

The field of the anarchist's greatest activity was always a republic, notonly to emphasize his impartial hatred of all government, but because ofthe inherent feebleness of that form of government, its inability toprotect itself against any kind of aggression by any considerable numberof its people having a common malevolent purpose. In a republic the crustthat confined the fires of violence and sedition was thinnest. 

No improvement in the fortunes of the original anarchists throughimmigration to what was then called the New World would have made themgood citizens. From centuries of secret war against particular forms ofauthority in their own countries they had inherited a bitter antagonism toall authority, even the most beneficent. In their new home they were worsethan in their old. In the sunshine of opportunity the rank and sicklygrowth of their perverted natures became hardy, vigorous, bore fruit. Theysurrounded themselves with proselytes from the ranks of the idle, thevicious, the unsuccessful. They stimulated and organized discontent. Everyone of them became a center of moral and political contagion. To those asyet unprepared to accept anarchy was offered the milder dogma ofSocialism, and to those even weaker in the faith something vaguely calledReform. Each was initiated into that degree to which the induration of hisconscience and the character of his discontent made him eligible, and inwhich he could be most serviceable, the body of the people still cheatingthemselves with the false sense of security begotten of the belief thatthey were somehow exempt from the operation of all agencies inimical totheir national welfare and integrity. Human nature, they thought, wasdifferent in the West from what it was in the East: in the New World theold causes would not have the old effects: a republic had some inherentvitality of its own, entirely independent of any action intended to keepit alive. They felt that words and phrases had some talismanic power, andcharmed themselves asleep by repeating "liberty, " "all men equal beforethe law, " "dictates of conscience, " "free speech" and all manner of suchincantation to exorcise the spirits of the night. And when they could nolonger close their eyes to the dangers environing them; when they saw atlast that what they had mistaken for the magic power of their form ofgovernment and its assured security was really its radical weakness andsubjective peril--they found their laws inadequate to repression of theenemy, the enemy too strong to permit the enactment of adequate laws. Thebelief that a malcontent armed with freedom of speech, a newspaper, a voteand a rifle is less dangerous than a malcontent with a still tongue in hishead, empty hands and under police surveillance was abandoned, but all toolate. From its fatuous dream the nation was awakened by the noise of arms, the shrieks of women and the red glare of burning cities. 

Beginning with the slaughter at St. Louis on a night in the year 1920, when no fewer than twenty-two thousand citizens were slain in the streetsand half the city destroyed, massacre followed massacre with frightfulrapidity. New York fell in the month following, many thousands of itsinhabitants escaping fire and sword only to be driven into the bay anddrowned, "the roaring of the water in their ears, " says Bardeal, "augmented by the hoarse clamor of their red-handed pursuers, whoseblood-thirst was unsated by the sea. " A week later Washington wasdestroyed, with all its public buildings and archives; the President andhis Ministry were slain, Congress was dispersed, and an unknown number ofofficials and private citizens perished. Of all the principal cities onlyChicago and San Francisco escaped. The people of the former were allanarchists and the latter was valorously and successfully defended by theChinese. 

The urban anarchists were eventually subdued and some semblance of orderwas restored, but greater woes and sharper shames awaited this unhappynation, as we shall see. 

In turning from this branch of our subject to consider the causes of thefailure and bloody disruption of the great American republic other thanthose inherent in the form of government, it may not be altogetherunprofitable to glance briefly at what seems to a superficial view theinconsistent phenomenon of great material prosperity. It is not to bedenied that this unfortunate people was at one time singularly prosperous, in so far as national wealth is a measure and proof of prosperity. Amongnations it was the richest nation. But at how great a sacrifice of betterthings was its wealth obtained! By the neglect of all education exceptthat crude, elementary sort which fits men for the coarse delights ofbusiness and affairs but confers no capacity of rational enjoyment; byexalting the worth of wealth and making it the test and touchstone ofmerit; by ignoring art, scorning literature and despising science, exceptas these might contribute to the glutting of the purse; by setting up andmaintaining an artificial standard of morals which condoned all offensesagainst the property and peace of every one but the condoner; bypitilessly crushing out of their natures every sentiment and aspirationunconnected with accumulation of property, these civilized savages andcommercial barbarians attained their sordid end. Before they had roundedthe first half-century of their existence as a nation they had sunk so lowin the scale of morality that it was considered nothing discreditable totake the hand and even visit the house of a man who had grown rich bymeans notoriously corrupt and dishonorable; and Harley declares that eventhe editors and writers of newspapers, after fiercely assailing such menin their journals, would be seen "hobnobbing" with them in public places. (The nature of the social ceremony named the "hobnob" is not nowunderstood, but it is known that it was a sign of amity and favor. ) Whenmen or nations devote all the powers of their minds and bodies to theheaping up of wealth, wealth is heaped up. But what avails it? It may notbe amiss to quote here the words of one of the greatest of the ancientswhose works--fragmentary, alas--have come down to us. 

"Wealth has accumulated itself into masses; and poverty, also inaccumulation enough, lies impassably separated from it; opposed, uncommunicating, like forces in positive and negative poles. The gods ofthis lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, less happy thanEpicurus's gods, but as indolent, as impotent; while the boundless livingchaos of ignorance and hunger welters, terrific in its dark fury, undertheir feet. How much among us might be likened to a whited sepulcher:outwardly all pomp and strength, but inwardly full of horror and despairand dead men's bones! Iron highways, with their wains fire-winged, areuniting all the ends of the land; quays and moles, with their innumerablestately fleets, tame the ocean into one pliant bearer of burdens; labor'sthousand arms, of sinew and of metal, all-conquering everywhere, from thetops of the mount down to the depths of the mine and the caverns of thesea, ply unweariedly for the service of man; yet man remains unserved. Hehas subdued this planet, his habitation and inheritance, yet reaps noprofit from the victory. Sad to look upon: in the highest stage ofcivilization nine-tenths of mankind have to struggle in the lowest battleof savage or even animal man--the battle against famine. Countries arerich, prosperous in all manner of increase, beyond example; but the men ofthese countries are poor, needier than ever of all sustenance, outward andinward; of belief, of knowledge, of money, of food. "

To this somber picture of American "prosperity" in the nineteenth centurynothing of worth can be added by the most inspired artist. Let us simplyinscribe upon the gloomy canvas the memorable words of an illustrious poetof the period:

 That country speeds to an untoward fate, Where men are trivial and gold is great. 

One of the most "sacred" rights of the ancient American was the trial ofan accused person by "a jury of his peers. " This, in America, was a rightsecured to him by a written constitution. It was almost universallybelieved to have had its origin in Magna Carta, a famous document whichcertain rebellious noblemen of another country had compelled theirsovereign to sign under a threat of death. That celebrated "bill ofrights" has not all come down to us, but researches of the learned havemade it certain that it contained no mention of trial by jury, which, indeed, was unknown to its authors. The words _judicium parium_ meant tothem something entirely different--the judgment of the entire community offreemen. The words and the practice they represented antedated Magna Cartaby many centuries and were common to the Franks and other Germanicnations, amongst whom a trial "jury" consisted of persons having aknowledge of the matter to be determined--persons who in later times werecalled "witnesses" and rigorously excluded from the seats of judgment. 

It is difficult to conceive a more clumsy and ineffective machinery forascertaining truth and doing justice than a jury of twelve men of theaverage intelligence, even among ourselves. What, then, must this devicehave been among the half-civilized tribes of the Connected States ofAmerica! Nay, the case is worse than that, for it was the practice toprevent men of even the average intelligence from serving as jurors. Jurors had to be residents of the locality of the crime charged, and everycrime was made a matter of public notoriety long before the accused wasbrought to trial; yet, as a rule, he who had read or talked about thetrial was held disqualified to serve. This in a country where, when a manwho could read was not reading about local crimes he was talking aboutthem, or if doing neither was doing something worse!

To the twelve men so chosen the opposing lawyers addressed theirdisingenuous pleas and for their consideration the witnesses presentedtheir carefully rehearsed testimony, most of it false. So unintelligentwere these juries that a great part of the time in every trial wasconsumed in keeping from them certain kinds of evidence with which theycould not be trusted; yet the lawyers were permitted to submit to them anykind of misleading argument that they pleased and fortify it withinnuendoes without relevancy and logic without sense. Appeals to theirpassions, their sympathies, their prejudices, were regarded as legitimateinfluences and tolerated by the judges on the theory that each side'soffenses would about offset those of the other. In a criminal case it wasexpected that the prosecutor would declare repeatedly and in the mostsolemn manner his belief in the guilt of the person accused, and that theattorney for the defense would affirm with equal gravity his conviction ofhis client's innocence. How could they impress the jury with a beliefwhich they did not themselves venture to affirm? It is not recorded thatany lawyer ever rebelled against the iron authority of these conditionsand stood for truth and conscience. They were, indeed, the conditions ofhis existence as a lawyer, a fact which they easily persuaded themselvesmitigated the baseness of their obedience to them, or justified italtogether. 

The judges, as a rule, were no better, for before they could become judgesthey must have been advocates, with an advocate's fatal disabilities ofjudgment. Most of them depended for their office upon the favor of thepeople, which, also, was fatal to the independence, the dignity and theimpartiality to which they laid so solemn claim. In their decisions theyfavored, so far as they dared, every interest, class or person powerfulenough to help or hurt them in an election. Holding their high office byso precarious a tenure, they were under strong temptation to enrichthemselves from the serviceable purses of wealthy litigants, and indisregard of justice to cultivate the favor of the attorneys practicingbefore them, and before whom they might soon be compelled themselves topractice. 

In the higher courts of the land, where juries were unknown and appointedjudges held their seats for life, these awful conditions did not obtain, and there Justice might have been content to dwell, and there she actuallydid sometimes set her foot. Unfortunately, the great judges had theconsciences of their education. They had crept to place through the slimeof the lower courts and their robes of office bore the damnatory evidence. Unfortunately, too, the attorneys, the jury habit strong upon them, brought into the superior tribunals the moral characteristics andprofessional methods acquired in the lower. Instead of assisting thejudges to ascertain the truth and the law, they cheated in argument andtook liberties with fact, deceiving the court whenever they deemed it tothe interest of their cause to do so, and as willingly won by atechnicality or a trick as by the justice of their contention and theirability in supporting it. Altogether, the entire judicial system of theConnected States of America was inefficient, disreputable, corrupt. 

The result might easily have been foreseen and doubtless was predicted bypatriots whose admonitions have not come down to us. Denied protection ofthe law, neither property nor life was safe. Greed filled his coffers fromthe meager hoards of Thrift, private vengeance took the place of legalredress, mad multitudes rioted and slew with virtual immunity frompunishment or blame, and the land was red with crime. 

A singular phenomenon of the time was the immunity of criminal women. Among the Americans woman held a place unique in the history of nations. If not actually worshiped as a deity, as some historians, among them thegreat Sagab-Joffoy, have affirmed, she was at least regarded with feelingsof veneration which the modern mind has a difficulty in comprehending. Some degree of compassion for her mental inferiority, some degree offorbearance toward her infirmities of temper, some degree of immunity forthe offenses which these peculiarities entail--these are common to allpeoples above the grade of barbarians. In ancient America these chivalroussentiments found open and lawful expression only in relieving woman of theburden of participation in political and military service; the laws gaveher no express exemption from responsibility for crime. When she murdered, she was arrested; when arrested, brought to trial--though the origin andmeaning of those observances are not now known. Gunkux, whose researchesinto the jurisprudence of antiquity enable him to speak with commandingauthority of many things, gives us here nothing better than the conjecturethat the trial of women for murder, in the nineteenth century and a partof the twentieth, was the survival of an earlier custom of actuallyconvicting and punishing them, but it seems extremely improbable that apeople that once put its female assassins to death would ever haverelinquished the obvious advantages of the practice while retaining withpurposeless tenacity some of its costly preliminary forms. Whatever mayhave been the reason, the custom was observed with all the gravity of aserious intention. Gunkux professes knowledge of one or two instances (hedoes not name his authorities) where matters went so far as conviction andsentence, and adds that the mischievous sentimentalists who had alwayslent themselves to the solemn jest by protestations of great_vraisemblance_ against "the judicial killing of women, " became reallyalarmed and filled the land with their lamentations. Among the phenomenaof brazen effrontery he classes the fact that some of these loudprotagonists of the right of women to assassinate unpunished werethemselves women! Howbeit, the sentences, if ever pronounced, were neverexecuted, and during the first quarter of the twentieth century themeaningless custom of bringing female assassins to trial was abandoned. What the effect was of their exemption from this considerableinconvenience we have not the data to conjecture, unless we understand asan allusion to it some otherwise obscure words of the famous Edward Bok, the only writer of the period whose work has survived. In his monumentalessay on barbarous penology, entitled "Slapping the Wrist, " he couples"woman's emancipation from the trammels of law" and "man's better prospectof death" in a way that some have construed as meaning that he regardedthem as cause and effect. It must be said, however, that thisinterpretation finds no support in the general character of his writing, which is exceedingly humane, refined and womanly. 

It has been said that the writings of this great man are the onlysurviving work of his period, but of that we are not altogether sure. There exists a fragment of an anonymous essay on woman's legalresponsibility which many Americologists think belongs to the beginning ofthe twentieth century. Certainly it could not have been written later thanthe middle of it, for at that time woman had been definitely released fromany responsibility to any law but that of her own will. The essay is anargument against even such imperfect exemption as she had in its author'stime. 

"It has been urged, " the writer says, "that women, being less rational andmore emotional than men, should not be held accountable in the samedegree. To this it may be answered that punishment for crime is notintended to be retaliatory, but admonitory and deterrent. It is, therefore, peculiarly necessary to those not easily reached by other formsof warning and dissuasion. Control of the wayward is not to be sought inreduction of restraints, but in their multiplication. One who cannot becurbed by reason may be curbed by fear, a familiar truth which lies at thefoundation of all penological systems. The argument for exemption of womenis equally cogent for exemption of habitual criminals, for they too areabnormally inaccessible to reason, abnormally disposed to obedience to thesuasion of their unregulated impulses and passions. To free them from therestraints of the fear of punishment would be a bold innovation which hasas yet found no respectable proponent outside their own class. 

"Very recently this dangerous enlargement of the meaning of the phrase'emancipation of woman' has been fortified with a strange advocacy by thefemale 'champions of their sex. ' Their argument runs this way: 'We aredenied a voice in the making of the laws relating to infliction of thedeath penalty; it is unjust to hold us to an accountability to which wehave not assented. ' Of course this argument is as broad as the entire bodyof law; it amounts to nothing less than a demand for general immunity fromall laws, for to none of them has woman's assent been asked or given. Butlet us consider this amazing claim with reference only to the proposal inthe service and promotion of which it is now urged: exemption of womenfrom the death penalty for murder. In the last analysis it is seen to be asimple demand for compensation. It says: 'You owe us a _solatium_. Sinceyou deny us the right to vote, you should give us the right toassassinate. We do not appraise it at so high a valuation as the otherfranchise, but we do value it. '

"Apparently they do: without legal, but with virtual, immunity frompunishment, the women of this country take an average of one thousandlives annually, nine in ten being the lives of men. Juries of men, incitedand sustained by public opinion, have actually deprived every adult maleAmerican of the right to live. If the death of any man is desired by anywoman for any reason he is without protection. She has only to kill himand say that he wronged or insulted her. Certain almost incredible recentinstances prove that no woman is too base for immunity, no crime againstlife sufficiently rich in all the elements of depravity to compel aconviction of the assassin, or, if she is convicted and sentenced, herpunishment by the public executioner. "

In this interesting fragment, quoted by Bogul in his "History of anExtinct Civilization, " we learn something of the shame and peril ofAmerican citizenship under institutions which, not having run theirforeordained course to the unhappy end, were still in some degreesupportable. What these institutions became afterward is a familiar story. It is true that the law of trial by jury was repealed. It had broken down, but not until it had sapped the whole nation's respect for all law, forall forms of authority, for order and private virtues. The people whoserude forefathers in another land it had served roughly to protect againsttheir tyrants, it had lamentably failed to protect against themselves, andwhen in madness they swept it away, it was not as one renouncing an error, but as one impatient of the truth which the error is still believed tocontain. They flung it away, not as an ineffectual restraint, but as arestraint; not because it was no longer an instrument of justice for thedetermination of truth, but because they feared that it might again becomesuch. In brief, trial by jury was abolished only when it had provokedanarchy. 

Before turning to another phase of this ancient civilization I cannotforbear to relate, after the learned and ingenious Gunkux, the only knowninstance of a public irony expressing itself in the sculptor's noble art. In the ancient city of Hohokus once stood a monument of colossal size andimpressive dignity. It was erected by public subscription to the memory ofa man whose only distinction consisted in a single term of service as ajuror in a famous murder trial, the details of which have not come down tous. This occupied the court and held public attention for many weeks, being bitterly contested by both prosecution and defense. When at last itwas given to the jury by the judge in the most celebrated charge that hadever been delivered from the bench, a ballot was taken at once. The jurystood eleven for acquittal to one for conviction. And so it stood at everyballot of the more than fifty that were taken during the fortnight thatthe jury was locked up for deliberation. Moreover, the dissenting jurorwould not argue the matter; he would listen with patient attention whilehis eleven indignant opponents thundered their opinions into his ears, even when they supported them with threats of personal violence; but not aword would he say. At last a disagreement was formally entered, the jurydischarged and the obstinate juror chased from the city by the maddenedpopulace. Despairing of success in another trial and privately admittinghis belief in the prisoner's innocence, the public prosecutor moved forhis release, which the judge ordered with remarks plainly implying his ownbelief that the wrong man had been tried. 

Years afterward the accused person died confessing his guilt, and a littlelater one of the jurors who had been sworn to try the case admitted thathe had attended the trial on the first day only, having been personatedduring the rest of the proceedings by a twin brother, the obstinatemember, who was a deaf-mute. 

The monument to this eminent public servant was overthrown and destroyedby an earthquake in the year 2342. 

One of the causes of that popular discontent which brought about thestupendous events resulting in the disruption of the great republic, historians and archæologists are agreed in reckoning "insurance. " Of theexact nature of that factor in the problem of the national life of thatdistant day we are imperfectly informed; many of its details have perishedfrom the record, yet its outlines loom large through the mist of ages andcan be traced with greater precision than is possible in many moreimportant matters. 

In the monumental work of Professor Golunk-Dorsto ("Some Account of theInsurance Delusion in Ancient America") we have its most considerablemodern exposition; and Gakler's well-known volume, "The Follies ofAntiquity, " contains much interesting matter relating to it. From theseand other sources the student of human unreason can reconstruct thatastounding fallacy of insurance as, from three joints of its tail, thegreat naturalist Bogramus restored the ancient elephant, from hoof tohorn. 

The game of insurance, as practiced by the ancient Americans (and, asGakler conjectures, by some of the tribesmen of Europe), was gambling, pure and simple, despite the sentimental character that its proponentssought to impress upon some forms of it for the greater prosperity oftheir dealings with its dupes. Essentially, it was a bet between theinsurer and the insured. The number of ways in which the wager wasmade--all devised by the insurer--was almost infinite, but in none of themwas there a departure from the intrinsic nature of the transaction as seenin its simplest, frankest form, which we shall here expound. 

To those unlearned in the economical institutions of antiquity it isnecessary to explain that in ancient America, long prior to the disastrousJapanese war, individual ownership of property was unrestricted; everyperson was permitted to get as much as he was able, and to hold it as hisown without regard to his needs, or whether he made any good use of it ornot. By some plan of distribution not now understood even the habitablesurface of the earth, with the minerals beneath, was parceled out amongthe favored few, and there was really no place except at sea wherechildren of the others could lawfully be born. Upon a part of the dry landthat he had been able to acquire, or had leased from another for thepurpose, a man would build a house worth, say, ten thousand _drusoes_. (The ancient unit of value was the "dollar, " but nothing is now known asto its actual worth. ) Long before the building was complete the owner wasbeset by "touts" and "cappers" of the insurance game, who poured into hisears the most ingenious expositions of the advantages of betting that itwould burn down--for with incredible fatuity the people of that timecontinued, generation after generation, to build inflammable habitations. The persons whom the capper represented--they called themselves an"insurance company"--stood ready to accept the bet, a fact which seems tohave generated no suspicion in the mind of the house-owner. Theoretically, of course, if the house did burn payment of the wager would partly orwholly recoup the winner of the bet for the loss of his house, but in factthe result of the transaction was commonly very different. For theprivilege of betting that his property would be destroyed by fire theowner had to pay to the gentleman betting that it would not be, a certainpercentage of its value every year, called a "premium. " The amount of thiswas determined by the company, which employed statisticians and actuariesto fix it at such a sum that, according to the law of probabilities, longbefore the house was "due to burn, " the company would have received morethan the value of it in premiums. In other words, the owner of the housewould himself supply the money to pay his bet, and a good deal more. 

But how, it may be asked, could the company's actuary know that the man'shouse would last until he had paid in more than its insured value inpremiums--more, that is to say, than the company would have to pay back?He could not, but from his statistics he could know how many houses in tenthousand of that kind burned in their first year, how many in theirsecond, their third, and so on. That was all that he needed to know, thehouse-owners knowing nothing about it. He fixed his rates according to thefacts, and the occasional loss of a bet in an individual instance did notaffect the certainty of a general winning. Like other professionalgamblers, the company expected to lose sometimes, yet knew that in thelong run it _must_ win; which meant that in any special case it would_probably_ win. With a thousand gambling games open to him in which thechances were equal, the infatuated dupe chose to "sit into" one where theywere against him! Deceived by the cappers' fairy tales, dazed by thecomplex and incomprehensible "calculations" put forth for his undoing, andhaving ever in the ear of his imagination the crackle and roar of theimpoverishing flames, he grasped at the hope of beating--in an unwelcomeway, it is true--"the man that kept the table. " He must have known for acertainty that if the company could afford to insure him he could notafford to let it. He must have known that the whole body of the insuredpaid to the insurers more than the insurers paid to them; otherwise thebusiness could not have been conducted. This they cheerfully admitted;indeed, they proudly affirmed it. In fact, insurance companies were theonly professional gamblers that had the incredible hardihood to paradetheir enormous winnings as an inducement to play against their game. Thesewinnings ("assets, " they called them) proved their ability, they said, topay when they lost; and that was indubitably true. What they did notprove, unfortunately, was the _will_ to pay, which from the imperfectcourt records of the period that have come down to us, appears frequentlyto have been lacking. Gakler relates that in the instance of the city ofSan Francisco (somewhat doubtfully identified by Macronus as the modernfishing-village of Gharoo) the disinclination of the insurance companiesto pay their bets had the most momentous consequences. 

In the year 1906 San Francisco was totally destroyed by fire. Theconflagration was caused by the friction of a pig scratching itselfagainst an angle of a wooden building. More than one hundred thousandpersons perished, and the loss of property is estimated by Kobo-Dogarqueat one and a half million _drusoes_. On more than two-thirds of thisenormous sum the insurance companies had laid bets, and the greater partof it they refused to pay. In justification they pointed out that the deedperformed by the pig was "an act of God, " who in the analogous instance ofthe express companies had been specifically forbidden to take any actionaffecting the interests of parties to a contract, or the result of anagreed undertaking. 

In the ensuing litigation their attorneys cited two notable precedents. Afew years before the San Francisco disaster, another American city hadexperienced a similar one through the upsetting of a lamp by the kick of acow. In that case, also, the insurance companies had successfully deniedtheir liability on the ground that the cow, manifestly incited by somesupernatural power, had unlawfully influenced the result of a wager towhich she was not a party. The companies defendant had contended that therecourse of the property-owners was against, not them, but the owner ofthe cow. In his decision sustaining that view and dismissing the case, alearned judge (afterward president of one of the defendant companies) hadin the legal phraseology of the period pronounced the action of the cow anobvious and flagrant instance of unwarrantable intervention. Kobo-Dogarquebelieves that this decision was afterward reversed by an appellate courtof contrary political complexion and the companies were compelled tocompromise, but of this there is no record. It is certain that in the SanFrancisco case the precedent was urged. 

Another precedent which the companies cited with particular emphasisrelated to an unfortunate occurrence at a famous millionaires' club inLondon, the capital of the renowned king, John Bui. A gentleman passing inthe street fell in a fit and was carried into the club in convulsions. Twomembers promptly made a bet upon his life. A physician who chanced to bepresent set to work upon the patient, when one of the members who had laidthe wager came forward and restrained him, saying: "Sir, I beg that youwill attend to your own business. I have my money on that fit. "

Doubtless these two notable precedents did not constitute the entire caseof the defendants in the San Francisco insurance litigation, but theadditional pleas are lost to us. 

Of the many forms of gambling known as insurance that called lifeinsurance appears to have been the most vicious. In essence it was thesame as fire insurance, marine insurance, accident insurance and so forth, with an added offensiveness in that it was a betting on humanlives--commonly by the policy-holder on lives that should have been heldmost sacred and altogether immune from the taint of traffic. In point ofpractical operation this ghastly business was characterized by a morefierce and flagrant dishonesty than any of its kindred pursuits. To suchlengths of robbery did the managers go that at last the patience of thepublic was exhausted and a comparatively trivial occurrence fired thecombustible elements of popular indignation to a white heat in which theentire insurance business of the country was burned out of existence, together with all the gamblers who had invented and conducted it. Thepresident of one of the companies was walking one morning in a street ofNew York, when he had the bad luck to step on the tail of a dog and wasbitten in retaliation. Frenzied by the pain of the wound, he gave thecreature a savage kick and it ran howling toward a group of idlers infront of a grocery store. In ancient America the dog was a sacred animal, worshiped by all sorts and conditions of tribesmen. The idlers at onceraised a great cry, and setting upon the offender beat him so that hedied. 

Their act was infectious: men, women and children trooped out of theirdwellings by thousands to join them, brandishing whatever weapons theycould snatch, and uttering wild cries of vengeance. This formidable moboverpowered the police, and marching from one insurance office to another, successively demolished them all, slew such officers as they could layhands on, and chased the fugitive survivors into the sea, "where, " says aquaint chronicle of the time, "they were eaten by their kindred, thesharks. " This carnival of violence continued all the day, and at set ofsun not one person connected with any form of insurance remained alive. 

Ferocious and bloody as was the massacre, it was only the beginning. Asthe news of it went blazing and coruscating along the wires by whichintelligence was then conveyed across the country, city after city caughtthe contagion. Everywhere, even in the small hamlets and the agriculturaldistricts, the dupes rose against their dupers. The smoldering resentmentof years burst into flame, and within a week all that was left ofinsurance in America was the record of a monstrous and cruel delusionwritten in the blood of its promoters. 

A remarkable feature of the crude and primitive civilization of theAmericans was their religion. This was polytheistic, as is that of allbackward peoples, and among their minor deities were their own women. Thishas been disputed by respectable authorities, among them Gunkux and theyounger Kekler, but the weight of archæological testimony is against them, for, as Sagab-Joffy ingeniously points out, none of less than divine rankwould by even the lowest tribes be given unrestricted license to kill. Among the Americans woman, as already pointed out, indubitably had thatfreedom, and exercised it with terrible effect, a fact which makes thematter of their religion pertinent to the purpose of this monograph. Ifever an American woman was punished by law for murder of a man no recordof the fact is found; whereas, such American literature as we possess isfull of the most enthusiastic adulation of the impossible virtues andimaginary graces of the human female. One writer even goes to the lengthof affirming that respect for the sex is the foundation of politicalstability, the cornerstone of civil and religious liberty! After thebreak-up of the republic and the savage intertribal wars that followed, Gyneolatry was an exhausted cult and woman was relegated to her old stateof benign subjection. 

Unfortunately, we know little of the means of travel in ancient America, other than the names. It seems to have been done mainly by what werecalled "railroads, " upon which wealthy associations of men transportedtheir fellow-citizens in some kind of vehicle at a low speed, seldomexceeding fifty or sixty miles an hour, as distance and time were thenreckoned--about equal to seven _kaltabs_ a _grillog_. Notwithstanding thisslow movement of the vehicles, the number and fatality of accidents wereincredible. In the Zopetroq Museum of Archæology is preserved an officialreport (found in the excavations made by Droyhors on the supposed site ofWashington) of a Government Commission of the Connected States. From thatdocument we learn that in the year 1907 of their era the railroads of thecountry killed 5, 000 persons and wounded 72, 286--a mortality which is saidby the commissioners to be twice that of the battle of Gettysburg, concerning which we know nothing but the name. This was about the annualaverage of railroad casualties of the period, and if it provoked commentit at least led to no reform, for at a later period we find the mortalityeven greater. That it was preventable is shown by the fact that in thesame year the railroads of Great Britain, where the speed was greater andthe intervals between vehicles less, killed only one passenger. It was adifference of government: Great Britain had a government that governed;America had not. Happily for humanity, the kind of government that doesnot govern, self-government, "government of the people, by the people andfor the people" (to use a meaningless paradox of that time) has perishedfrom the face of the earth. 

An inherent weakness in republican government was that it assumed thehonesty and intelligence of the majority, "the masses, " who were neitherhonest nor intelligent. It would doubtless have been an excellentgovernment for a people so good and wise as to need none. In a countryhaving such a system the leaders, the politicians, must necessarily all bedemagogues, for they can attain to place and power by no other method thanflattery of the people and subserviency to the will of the majority. Inall the ancient American political literature we look in vain for a singleutterance of truth and reason regarding these matters. In none of it is ahint that the multitude was ignorant and vicious, as we know it to havebeen, and as it must necessarily be in any country, to whatever highaverage of intelligence and morality the people attain; for "intelligence"and "morality" are comparative terms, the standard of comparison being theintelligence and morality of the wisest and best, who must always be thefew. Whatever general advance is made, those not at the head arebehind--are ignorant and immoral according to the new standard, and unfitto control in the higher and broader policies demanded by the progressmade. Where there is true and general progress the philosopher ofyesterday would be the ignoramus of to-day, the honorable of onegeneration the vicious of another. The peasant of our time is incomparablysuperior to the statesman of ancient America, yet he is unfit to govern, for there are others more fit. 

That a body of men can be wiser than its wisest member seems to the modernunderstanding so obvious and puerile an error that it is inconceivablethat any people, even the most primitive, could ever have entertained it;yet we know that in America it was a fixed and steadfast political faith. The people of that day did not, apparently, attempt to explain how theadditional wisdom was acquired by merely assembling in council, as intheir "legislatures"; they seem to have assumed that it was so, and tohave based their entire governmental system upon that assumption, withnever a suspicion of its fallacy. It is like assuming that a mountainrange is higher than its highest peak. In the words of Golpek, "The earlyAmericans believed that units of intelligence were addable quantities, " oras Soseby more wittily puts it, "They thought that in a combination ofidiocies they had the secret of sanity. "

The Americans, as has been said, never learned that even among themselvesmajorities ruled, not because they ought, but because they could--notbecause they were wise, but because they were strong. The count of nosesdetermined, not the better policy, but the more powerful party. The weakersubmitted, as a rule, for it had to or risk a war in which it would be ata disadvantage. Yet in all the early years of the republic they seemhonestly to have dignified their submission as "respect for the popularverdict. " They even quoted from the Latin language the sentiment that "thevoice of the people is the voice of God. " And this hideous blasphemy wasas glib upon the lips of those who, without change of mind, were defeatedat the polls year after year as upon those of the victors. 

Of course, their government was powerless to restrain any aggression orencroachment upon the general welfare as soon as a considerable body ofvoters had banded together to undertake it. A notable instance has beenrecorded by Bamscot in his great work, "Some Evil Civilizations. " Afterthe first of America's great intestinal wars the surviving victors formedthemselves into an organization which seems at first to have been purelysocial and benevolent, but afterward fell into the hands of rapaciouspoliticians who in order to preserve their power corrupted their followersby distributing among them enormous sums of money exacted from thegovernment by threats of overturning it. In less than a half century afterthe war in which they had served, so great was the fear which theyinspired in whatever party controlled the national treasury that the totalsum of their exactions was no less annually than seventeen million_prastams_! As Dumbleshaw naïvely puts it, "having saved their country, these gallant gentlemen naturally took it for themselves. " The eventualmassacre of the remnant of this hardy and impenitent organization by thelabor unions more accustomed to the use of arms is beyond the province ofthis monograph to relate. The matter is mentioned at all only because itis a typical example of the open robbery that marked that period of therepublic's brief and inglorious existence; the Grand Army, as it calleditself, was no worse and no better than scores of other organizationshaving no purpose but plunder and no method but menace. A little laternearly all classes and callings became organized conspiracies, eachseeking an unfair advantage through laws which the party in power had notthe firmness to withhold, nor the party hoping for power the courage tooppose. The climax of absurdity in this direction was reached in 1918, when an association of barbers, known as Noblemen of the Razor, procuredfrom the parliament of the country a law giving it a representative in thePresident's Cabinet, and making it a misdemeanor to wear a beard. 

In Soseby's "History of Popular Government" he mentions "a monstrouspolitical practice known as 'Protection to American Industries. '" Modernresearch has not ascertained precisely what it was; it is known ratherfrom its effects than in its true character, but from what we can learn ofit to-day I am disposed to number it among those malefic agenciesconcerned in the destruction of the American republics, particularly theConnected States, although it appears not to have been peculiar to"popular government. " Some of the contemporary monarchies of Europe wereafflicted with it, but by the divine favor which ever guards a throne itsdisastrous effects were averted. "Protection" consisted in a number ofextraordinary expedients, the purposes of which and their relations to oneanother cannot with certainty be determined in the present state of ourknowledge. Debrethin and others agree that one feature of it was thesupport, by general taxation, of a few favored citizens in public palaces, where they passed their time in song and dance and all kinds of revelry. They were not, however, altogether idle, being required out of the sumsbestowed upon them, to employ a certain number of men each in erectinggreat piles of stone and pulling them down again, digging holes in theground and then filling them with earth, pouring water into casks and thendrawing it off, and so forth. The unhappy laborers were subject to themost cruel oppressions, but the knowledge that their wages came from thepockets of those whom their work nowise benefited was so gratifying tothem that nothing could induce them to leave the service of theirheartless employers to engage in lighter and more useful labor. 

Another characteristic of "Protection" was the maintenance at theprincipal seaports of "customs-houses, " which were strong fortificationsarmed with heavy guns for the purpose of destroying or driving away thetrading ships of foreign nations. It was this that caused the ConnectedStates to be known abroad as the "Hermit Republic, " a name of which itsinfatuated citizens were strangely proud, although they had themselvessent armed ships to open the ports of Japan and other Oriental countriesto their own commerce. In their own case, if a foreign ship came empty andsucceeded in evading the fire of the "customs-house, " as sometimesoccurred, she was permitted to take away a cargo. 

It is obvious that such a system was distinctly evil, but it must beconfessed our uncertainty regarding the whole matter of "Protection" doesnot justify us in assigning it a definite place among the causes ofnational decay. That in some way it produced an enormous revenue iscertain, and that the method was dishonest is no less so; for thisrevenue--known as a "surplus"--was so abhorred while it lay in thetreasury that all were agreed upon the expediency of getting rid of it, two great political parties existing for apparently no other purpose thanthe patriotic one of taking it out. 

But how, it may be asked, could people so misgoverned get on, even as wellas they did?

From the records that have come down to us it does not appear that theygot on very well. They were preyed upon by all sorts of politicaladventurers, whose power in most instances was limited only by thecontemporaneous power of other political adventurers equally unscrupulous. A full half of the taxes wrung from them was stolen. Their public lands, millions of square miles, were parceled out among banded conspirators. Their roads and the streets of their cities were nearly impassable. Theirpublic buildings, conceived in abominable taste and representing enormoussums of money, which never were used in their construction, began totumble about the ears of the workmen before they were completed. The mostdelicate and important functions of government were intrusted to men withneither knowledge, heart nor experience, who by their corruption imperiledthe public interest and by their blundering disgraced the national name. In short, all the train of evils inseparable from government of any kindbeset this unhappy people with tenfold power, together with hundreds ofworse ones peculiar to their own faulty and unnatural system. It wasthought that their institutions would give them peace, yet in the firstthree-quarters of a century of their existence they fought three importantwars: one of revenge, one of aggression and one--the bloodiest and mostwasteful known up to that time--among themselves. And before a century anda half had passed they had the humiliation to see many of their seaportcities destroyed by the Emperor of Japan in a quarrel which they hadthemselves provoked by their greed of Oriental dominion. 

By far the most important factor concerned in bringing about thedissolution of the republic and the incredible horrors that followed itwas what was known as "the contest between capital and labor. " Thismomentous struggle began in a rather singular way through an agitation setafoot by certain ambitious women who preached at first to inattentive andinhospitable ears, but with ever increasing acceptance, the doctrine ofequality of the sexes, and demanded the "emancipation" of woman. True, woman was already an object of worship and had, as noted before, the rightto kill. She was treated with profound and sincere deference, because ofcertain humble virtues, the product of her secluded life. Men of that timeappear to have felt for women, in addition to religious reverence, acertain sentiment known as "love. " The nature of this feeling is notclearly known to us, and has been for ages a matter of controversyevolving more heat than light. This much is plain: it was largely composedof good will, and had its root in woman's dependence. Perhaps it hadsomething of the character of the benevolence with which we regard ourslaves, our children and our domestic animals--everything, in fact, thatis weak, helpless and inoffensive. 

Woman was not satisfied; her superserviceable advocates taught her todemand the right to vote, to hold office, to own property, to enter intoemployment in competition with man. Whatever she demanded she eventuallygot. With the effect upon her we are not here concerned; the predictedgain to political purity did not ensue, nor did commercial integrityreceive any stimulus from her participation in commercial pursuits. Whatindubitably did ensue was a more sharp and bitter competition in theindustrial world through this increase of more than thirty per cent, inits wage-earning population. In no age nor country has there ever beensufficient employment for those requiring it. The effect of so enormouslyincreasing the already disproportionate number of workers in a singlegeneration could be no other than disastrous. Every woman employeddisplaced or excluded some man, who, compelled to seek a lower employment, displaced another, and so on, until the least capable or most unlucky ofthe series became a tramp--a nomadic mendicant criminal! The number ofthese dangerous vagrants in the beginning of the twentieth century oftheir era has been estimated by Holobom at no less than seven and a half_blukuks_! Of course, they were as tow to the fires of sedition, anarchyand insurrection. It does not very nearly relate to our present purpose, but it is impossible not to note in passing that this unhappy result, directly flowing from woman's invasion of the industrial field, wasunaccompanied by any material advantage to herself. Individual women, hereand there one, may themselves have earned the support that they wouldotherwise not have received, but the sex as a whole was not benefited. They provided for themselves no better than they had previously beenprovided for, and would still have been provided for, by the men whom theydisplaced. The whole somber incident is unrelieved by a single gleam oflight. 

Previously to this invasion of the industrial field by woman there hadarisen conditions that were in themselves peculiarly menacing to thesocial fabric. Some of the philosophers of the period, rummaging amongstthe dubious and misunderstood facts of commercial and industrial history, had discovered what they were pleased to term "the law of supply anddemand"; and this they expounded with so ingenious a sophistry, and socopious a wealth of illustration and example that what is at best but afaulty and imperfectly applicable principle, limited and cut into by allmanner of other considerations, came to be accepted as the soleexplanation and basis of material prosperity and an infallible rule forthe proper conduct of industrial affairs. In obedience to this "law"--for, interpreting it in its straitest sense they understood it to bemandatory--employers and employees alike regulated by its iron authorityall their dealings with one another, throwing off the immemorial relationsof mutual dependence and mutual esteem as tending to interfere withbeneficent operation. The employer came to believe conscientiously that itwas not only profitable and expedient, but under all circumstances hisduty, to obtain his labor for as little money as possible, even as he soldits product for as much. Considerations of humanity were not banished fromhis heart, but most sternly excluded from his business. Many of thesemisguided men would give large sums to various charities; would founduniversities, hospitals, libraries; would even stop on their way torelieve beggars in the street; but for their own work-people they had nocare. Straman relates in his "Memoirs" that a wealthy manufacturer oncesaid to one of his mill-hands who had asked for an increase of his wagesbecause unable to support his family on the pay that he was getting: "Yourfamily is nothing to me. I cannot afford to mix benevolence with mybusiness. " Yet this man, the author adds, had just given a thousand_drusoes_ to a "sea-man's home. " He could afford to care for other men'semployees, but not for his own. He could not see that the act which heperformed as truly, and to the same degree, cut down his margin of profitin his business as the act which he refused to perform would have done, and had not the advantage of securing him better service from a gratefulworkman. 

On their part the laborers were no better. Their relations to theiremployers being "purely commercial, " as it was called, they put no heartinto their work, seeking ever to do as little as possible for their money, precisely as their employers sought to pay as little as possible for thework they got. The interests of the two classes being thus antagonized, they grew to distrust and hate each other, and each accession of illfeeling produced acts which tended to broaden the breach more and more. There was neither cheerful service on the one side nor ungrudging paymenton the other. 

The harder industrial conditions generated by woman's irruption into a newdomain of activity produced among laboring men a feeling of blinddiscontent and concern. Like all men in apprehension, they drew togetherfor mutual protection, they knew not clearly against what. They formed"labor unions, " and believed them to be something new and effective in thebetterment of their condition; whereas, from the earliest historicaltimes, in Rome, in Greece, in Egypt, in Assyria, labor unions with theiraccepted methods of "striking" and rioting had been discredited by analmost unbroken record of failure. One of the oldest manuscripts then inexistence, preserved in a museum at Turin, but now lost, related how theworkmen employed in the necropolis at Thebes, dissatisfied with theirallowance of corn and oil, had refused to work, broken out of theirquarters and, after much rioting, been subdued by the arrows of themilitary. And such, despite the sympathies and assistance of brutal mobsof the populace, was sometimes the end of the American "strike. "Originally organized for self-protection, and for a time partlysuccessful, these leagues became great tyrannies, so reasonless in theirdemands and so unscrupulous in their methods of enforcing them that thelaws were unable to deal with them, and frequently the military forces ofthe several States were ordered out for the protection of life andproperty; but in most cases the soldiers fraternized with the leagues, ranaway, or were easily defeated. The cruel and mindless mobs had always thehypocritical sympathy and encouragement of the newspapers and thepoliticians, for both feared their power and courted their favor. Thejudges, dependent for their offices not only on "the labor vote, " but, toobtain it, on the approval of the press and the politicians, boldly setaside the laws against conspiracy and strained to the utmost tension thoserelating to riot, arson and murder. To such a pass did all this come thatin the year 1931 an inn-keeper's denial of a half-holiday to an under-cookresulted in the peremptory closing of half the factories in the country, the stoppage of all railroad travel and movement of freight by land andwater and a general paralysis of the industries of the land. Manythousands of families, including those of the "strikers" and theirfriends, suffered from famine; armed conflicts occurred in every State;hundreds were slain and incalculable amounts of property wrecked anddestroyed. 

Failure, however, was inherent in the method, for success depended uponunanimity, and the greater the membership of the unions and the moreserious their menace to the industries of the country, the higher was thepremium for defection; and at last strike-breaking became a regularemployment, organized, officered and equipped for the service required bythe wealth and intelligence that directed it. From that moment the doom oflabor unionism was decreed and inevitable. But labor unionism did not livelong enough to die that way. 

Naturally combinations of labor entailed combinations of capital. Thesewere at first purely protective. They were brought into being by thenecessity of resisting the aggressions of the others. But the trick ofcombination once learned, it was seen to have possibilities of profit indirections not dreamed of by its early promoters; its activities were notlong confined to fighting the labor unions with their own weapons and withsuperior cunning and address. The shrewd and energetic men whose capacityand commercial experience had made them rich while the laborers remainedpoor were not slow to discern the advantages of coöperation over their ownformer method of competition among themselves. They continued to fight thelabor unions, but ceased to fight one another. The result was that in thebrief period of two generations almost the entire business of the countryfell into the hands of a few gigantic corporations controlled by bold andunscrupulous men, who, by daring and ingenious methods, made the body ofthe people pay tribute to their greed. 

In a country where money was all-powerful the power of money was usedwithout stint and without scruple. Judges were bribed to do their duty, juries to convict, newspapers to support and legislators to betray theirconstituents and pass the most oppressive laws. By these corrupt means, and with the natural advantage of greater skill in affairs and largerexperience in concerted action, the capitalists soon restored theirancient reign and the state of the laborer was worse than it had ever beenbefore. Straman says that in his time two millions of unoffending workmenin the various industries were once discharged without warning andpromptly arrested as vagrants and deprived of their ears because a sulkingcanal-boatman had kicked his captain's dog into the water. And the dog wasa retriever. 

Had the people been honest and intelligent, as the politicians affirmedthem to be, the combination of capital could have worked no publicinjury--would, in truth, have been a great public benefit. It enormouslyreduced the expense of production and distribution, assured greaterpermanency of employment, opened better opportunities to general andspecial aptitude, gave an improved product, and at first supplied it at areduced price. Its crowning merit was that the industries of the country, being controlled by a few men from a central source, could themselves beeasily controlled by law if law had been honestly administered. Under theold order of scattered jurisdictions, requiring a multitude of actions atlaw, little could be done, and little was done, to put a check oncommercial greed; under the new, much was possible, and at times somethingwas accomplished. But not for long; the essential dishonesty of theAmerican character enabled these capable and consciencelessmanagers--"captains of industry" and "kings of finance"--to buy with moneyadvantages and immunities superior to those that the labor unions couldobtain by menaces and the promise of votes. The legislatures, the courts, the executive officers, all the sources of authority and springs ofcontrol, were defiled and impested until right and justice fled affrightedfrom the land, and the name of the country became a stench in the nostrilsof the world. 

Let us pause in our narrative to say here that much of the abuse of theso-called "trusts" by their victims took no account of the folly, stupidity and greed of the victims themselves. A favorite method by whichthe great corporations crushed out the competition of the smaller ones andof the "individual dealers" was by underselling them--a method madepossible by nothing but the selfishness of the purchasing consumers wholoudly complained of it. These could have stood by their neighbor, the"small dealer, " if they had wanted to, and no underselling could, havebeen done. When the trust lowered the price of its product they eagerlytook the advantage offered, then cursed the trust for ruining the smalldealer. When it raised the price they cursed it for ruining themselves. Itis not easy to see what the trust could have done that would have beenacceptable, nor is it surprising that it soon learned to ignore theirclamor altogether and impenitently plunder those whom it could not hope toappease. 

Another of the many sins justly charged against the "kings of finance" wasthis: They would buy properties worth, say, ten millions of "dollars" (thevalue of the dollar is now unknown) and issue stock upon it to the facevalue of, say, fifty millions. This their clamorous critics called"creating" for themselves forty millions of dollars. They created nothing;the stock had no dishonest value unless sold, and even at the most corruptperiod of the government nobody was compelled by law to buy. In nine casesin ten the person who bought did so in the hope and expectation of gettingmuch for little and something for nothing. The buyer was no better thanthe seller. He was a gambler. He "played against the game of the man whokept the table" (as the phrase went), and naturally he lost. Naturally, too, he cried out, but his lamentations, though echoed shrilly by thedemagogues, seem to have been unavailing. Even the rudimentaryintelligence of that primitive people discerned the impracticability oflaws forbidding the seller to set his own price on the thing he would selland declare it worth that price. Then, as now, nobody had to believe him. Of the few who bought these "watered" stocks in good faith as aninvestment in the honest hope of dividends it seems sufficient to say, inthe words of an ancient Roman, "Against stupidity the gods themselves arepowerless. " Laws that would adequately protect the foolish from theconsequence of their folly would put an end to all commerce. The sin of"over-capitalization" differed in magnitude only, not in kind, from thedaily practice of every salesman in every shop. Nevertheless, the popularfury that it aroused must be reckoned among the main causes contributoryto the savage insurrections that accomplished the downfall of therepublic. 

With the formation of powerful and unscrupulous trusts of both labor andcapital to subdue each other the possibilities of combination were notexhausted; there remained the daring plan of combining the twobelligerents! And this was actually effected. The laborer's demand for anincreased wage was always based upon an increased cost of living, whichwas itself chiefly due to increased cost of production from reluctantconcessions of his former demands. But in the first years of the twentiethcentury observers noticed on the part of capital a lessening reluctance. More frequent and more extortionate and reasonless demands encountered aless bitter and stubborn resistance; capital was apparently weakening justat the time when, with its strong organizations of trained and willingstrike-breakers, it was most secure. Not so; an ingenious malefactor, whose name has perished from history, had thought out a plan for bringingthe belligerent forces together to plunder the rest of the population. Inthe accounts that have come down to us details are wanting, but we knowthat, little by little, this amazing project was accomplished. Wages roseto incredible rates. The cost of living rose with them, foremployers--their new allies wielding in their service the weaponspreviously used against them, intimidation, the boycott, and soforth--more than recouped themselves from the general public. Theiremployees got rebates on the prices of products, but for consumers whowere neither laborers nor capitalists there was no mercy. Strikes were athing of the past; strike-breakers threw themselves gratefully into thearms of the unions; "industrial discontent" vanished, in the words of acontemporary poet, "as by the stroke of an enchanter's wand. " All waspeace, tranquillity and order! Then the storm broke. 

A man in St. Louis purchased a sheep's kidney for seven-and-a-halfdollars. In his rage at the price he exclaimed: "As a public man I havegiven twenty of the best years of my life to bringing about a friendlyunderstanding between capital and labor. I have succeeded, and may Godhave mercy on my meddlesome soul!"

The remark was resented, a riot ensued, and when the sun went down thatevening his last beams fell upon a city reeking with the blood of ahundred millionaires and twenty thousand citizens and sons of toil!

Students of the history of those troublous times need not to be told whatother and more awful events followed that bloody reprisal. Withinforty-eight hours the country was ablaze with insurrection, followed byintestinal wars which lasted three hundred and seventy years and weremarked by such hideous barbarities as the modern historian can hardlybring himself to relate. The entire stupendous edifice of populargovernment, temple and citadel of fallacies and abuses, had crashed toruin. For centuries its fallen columns and scattered stones sheltered anever diminishing number of skulking anarchists, succeeded by hordes ofskin-clad savages subsisting on offal and raw flesh--the race-remnant ofan extinct civilization. All finally vanished from history into a darknessimpenetrable to conjecture. 

 * * * * *

In concluding this hasty and imperfect sketch I cannot forbear to relatean episode of the destructive and unnatural contest between labor andcapital, which I find recorded in the almost forgotten work of Antrolius, who was an eye-witness to the incident. 

At a time when the passions of both parties were most inflamed and scenesof violence most frequent it was somehow noised about that at a certainhour of a certain day some one--none could say who--would stand upon thesteps of the Capitol and speak to the people, expounding a plan forreconciliation of all conflicting interests and pacification of thequarrel. At the appointed hour thousands had assembled to hear--gloweringcapitalists attended by hireling body-guards with firearms, sullenlaborers with dynamite bombs concealed in their clothing. All eyes weredirected to the specified spot, where suddenly appeared (none sawwhence--it seemed as if he had been there all the time, such histranquillity) a tall, pale man clad in a long robe, bare-headed, his hairfalling lightly upon his shoulders, his eyes full of compassion, and withsuch majesty of face and mien that all were awed to silence ere he spoke. Stepping slowly forward toward the throng and raising his right hand fromthe elbow, the index finger extended upward, he said, in a voice ineffablysweet and serious: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, evenso do ye also unto them. "

These strange words he repeated in the same solemn tones three times;then, as the expectant multitude waited breathless for his discourse, stepped quietly down into the midst of them, every one afterward declaringthat he passed within a pace of where himself had stood. For a moment thecrowd was speechless with surprise and disappointment, then broke intowild, fierce cries: "Lynch him, lynch him!" and some have testified thatthey heard the word "crucify. " Struggling into looser order, theinfuriated mob started in mad pursuit; but each man ran a different wayand the stranger was seen again by none of them. 

THE LAND BEYOND THE BLOW

(After the method of Swift, who followed Lucian, and was himself followedby Voltaire and many others. )

THITHER

A crowd of men were assisting at a dog-fight. The scene was one ofindescribable confusion. In the center of the tumult the dogs, obscure ina cloud of dust, rolled over and over, howling, yarring, tearing eachother with sickening ferocity. About them the hardly less ferocious menshouted, cursed and struck, encouraged the animals with sibilantutterances and threatened with awful forms of death and perdition all whotried to put an end to the combat. Caught in the thick of this pitilessmob I endeavored to make my way to a place of peace, when a burlyblackguard, needlessly obstructing me, said derisively:

"I guess you are working pockets. "

"You are a liar!" I retorted hotly. 

That is all the provocation that I remember to have given. 

SONS OF THE FAIR STAR

When consciousness returned the sun was high in the heavens, yet the lightwas dim, and had that indefinable ghastly quality that is observed duringa partial eclipse. The sun itself appeared singularly small, as if it wereat an immensely greater distance than usual. Rising with some difficultyto my feet, I looked about me. I was in an open space among some treesgrowing on the slope of a mountain range whose summit on the one hand wasobscured by a mist of a strange pinkish hue, and on the other rose intopeaks glittering with snow. Skirting the base at a distance of two orthree miles flowed a wide river, and beyond it a nearly level plainstretched away to the horizon, dotted with villages and farmhouses andapparently in a high state of cultivation. All was unfamiliar in its everyaspect. The trees were unlike any that I had ever seen or even imagined, the trunks being mostly square and the foliage consisting of slenderfilaments resembling hair, in many instances long enough to reach theearth. It was of many colors, and I could not perceive that there was anyprevailing one, as green is in the vegetation to which I was accustomed. As far as I could see there were no grass, no weeds, no flowers; the earthwas covered with a kind of lichen, uniformly blue. Instead of rocks, greatmasses of metals protruded here and there, and above me on the mountainwere high cliffs of what seemed to be bronze veined with brass. No animalswere visible, but a few birds as uncommon in appearance as theirsurroundings glided through the air or perched upon the rocks. I sayglided, for their motion was not true flight, their wings being meremembranes extended parallel to their sides, and having no movementindependent of the body. The bird was, so to say, suspended between themand moved forward by quick strokes of a pair of enormously large webbedfeet, precisely as a duck propels itself in water. All these thingsexcited in me no surprise, nor even curiosity; they were merelyunfamiliar. That which most interested me was what appeared to be a bridgeseveral miles away, up the river, and to this I directed my steps, crossing over from the barren and desolate hills to the populous plain. 

For a full history of my life and adventures in Mogon-Zwair, and adetailed description of the country, its people, their manners andcustoms, I must ask the reader to await the publication of a book, now inthe press, entitled _A Blackened Eye_; in this brief account I can giveonly a few of such particulars as seem instructive by contrast with ourown civilization. 

The inhabitants of Mogon-Zwair call themselves Golampis, a word signifyingSons of the Fair Star. Physically they closely resemble ourselves, beingin all respects the equals of the highest Caucasian type. Their hair, however, has a broader scheme of color, hair of every hue known to us, andeven of some imperceptible to my eyes but brilliant to theirs, being toocommon to excite remark. A Golampian assemblage with uncovered headsresembles, indeed, a garden of flowers, vivid and deep in color, no twoalike. They wear no clothing of any kind, excepting for adornment andprotection from the weather, resembling in this the ancient Greeks and theJapanese of yesterday; nor was I ever able to make them comprehend thatclothing could be worn for those reasons for which it is chiefly wornamong ourselves. They are destitute of those feelings of delicacy andrefinement which distinguish us from the lower animals, and which, in theopinion of our acutest and most pious thinkers, are evidences of our closerelation to the Power that made us. 

Among this people certain ideas which are current among ourselves as merebarren faiths expressed in disregarded platitudes receive a practicalapplication to the affairs of life. For example, they hold, with the best, wisest and most experienced of our own race, and one other hereafter to bedescribed, that wealth does not bring happiness and is a misfortune and anevil. None but the most ignorant and depraved, therefore, take the troubleto acquire or preserve it. A rich Golampi is naturally regarded withcontempt and suspicion, is shunned by the good and respectable andsubjected to police surveillance. Accustomed to a world where the rich manis profoundly and justly respected for his goodness and wisdom (manifestedin part by his own deprecatory protests against the wealth of which, nevertheless, he is apparently unable to rid himself) I was at firstgreatly pained to observe the contumelious manner of the Golampis towardthis class of men, carried in some instances to the length of personalviolence; a popular amusement being the pelting them with coins. These thevictims would carefully gather from the ground and carry away with them, thus increasing their hoard and making themselves all the more liable topopular indignities. 

When the cultivated and intelligent Golampi finds himself growing toowealthy he proceeds to get rid of his surplus riches by some one of manyeasy expedients. One of these I have just described; another is to givehis excess to those of his own class who have not sufficient to buyemployment and so escape leisure, which is considered the greatest evil ofall. "Idleness, " says one of their famous authors, "is the child ofpoverty and the parent of discontent"; and another great writer says: "Noone is without employment; the indolent man works for his enemies. "

In conformity to these ideas the Golampis--all but the ignorant andvicious rich--look upon labor as the highest good, and the man who is sounfortunate as not to have enough money to purchase employment in someuseful industry will rather engage in a useless one than not labor at all. It is not unusual to see hundreds of men carrying water from a river andpouring it into a natural ravine or artificial channel, through which itruns back into the stream. Frequently a man is seen conveying stones--orthe masses of metal which there correspond to stones--from one pile toanother. When all have been heaped in a single place he will convey themback again, or to a new place, and so proceed until darkness puts an endto the work. This kind of labor, however, does not confer the satisfactionderived from the consciousness of being useful, and is never performed byany person having the means to hire another to employ him in somebeneficial industry. The wages usually paid to employers are from three tosix _balukan_ a day. This statement may seem incredible, but I solemnlyassure the reader that I have known a bad workman or a feeble woman to payas high as eight; and there have been instances of men whose incomes hadoutgrown their desires paying even more. 

Labor being a luxury which only those in easy circumstances can afford, the poor are the more eager for it, not only because it is denied them, but because it is a sign of respectability. Many of them, therefore, indulge in it on credit and soon find themselves deprived of what littleproperty they had to satisfy their hardfisted employers. A poor woman oncecomplained to me that her husband spent every _rylat_ that he could get inthe purchase of the most expensive kinds of employment, while she and thechildren were compelled to content themselves with such cheap and coarseactivity as dragging an old wagon round and round in a small field which akind-hearted neighbor permitted them to use for the purpose. I afterwardsaw this improvident husband and unnatural father. He had just squanderedall the money he had been able to beg or borrow in buying six tickets, which entitled the holder to that many days' employment in pitching hayinto a barn. A week later I met him again. He was broken in health, hislimbs trembled, his walk was an uncertain shuffle. Clearly he wassuffering from overwork. As I paused by the wayside to speak to him awagon loaded with hay was passing. He fixed his eyes upon it with ahungry, wolfish glare, clutched a pitchfork and leaned eagerly forward, watching the vanishing wagon with breathless attention and heedless of mysalutation. That night he was arrested, streaming with perspiration, inthe unlawful act of unloading that hay and putting it into its owner'sbarn. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to six months' detention inthe House of Indolence. 

The whole country is infested by a class of criminal vagrants known as_strambaltis_, or, as we should say, "tramps. " These persons prowl aboutamong the farms and villages begging for work in the name of charity. Sometimes they travel in groups, as many as a dozen together, and then thefarmer dares not refuse them; and before he can notify the constabularythey will have performed a great deal of the most useful labor that theycan find to do and escaped without paying a _rylat_. One trustworthyagriculturist assured me that his losses in one year from thesedepredations amounted to no less a sum than seven hundred _balukan_! Onnearly all the larger and more isolated farms a strong force of guards ismaintained during the greater part of the year to prevent these outrages, but they are frequently overpowered, and sometimes prove unfaithful totheir trust by themselves working secretly by night. 

The Golampi priesthood has always denounced overwork as a deadly sin, anddeclared useless and apparently harmless work, such as carrying water fromthe river and letting it flow in again, a distinct violation of the divinelaw, in which, however, I could never find any reference to the matter;but there has recently risen a sect which holds that all labor beingpleasurable, each kind in its degree is immoral and wicked. This sect, which embraces many of the most holy and learned men, is rapidly spreadingand becoming a power in the state. It has, of course, no churches, forthese cannot be built without labor, and its members commonly dwell incaves and live upon such roots and berries as can be easily gathered, ofwhich the country produces a great abundance though all are exceedinglyunpalatable. These _Gropoppsu_ (as the members of this sect callthemselves) pass most of their waking hours sitting in the sunshine withfolded hands, contemplating their navels; by the practice of whichausterity they hope to obtain as reward an eternity of hard labor afterdeath. 

The Golampis are an essentially pious and religious race. There are few, indeed, who do not profess at least one religion. They are nearly all, ina certain sense, polytheists: they worship a supreme and beneficent deityby one name or another, but all believe in the existence of a subordinateand malevolent one, whom also, while solemnly execrating him in publicrites, they hold at heart in such reverence that needlessly to mention hisname or that of his dwelling is considered sin of a rank hardly inferiorto blasphemy. I am persuaded that this singular tenderness toward a beingwhom their theology represents as an abominable monster, the origin of allevil and the foe to souls, is a survival of an ancient propitiatoryadoration. Doubtless this wicked deity was once so feared that hisconciliation was one of the serious concerns of life. He is probably asgreatly feared now as at any former time, but is apparently less hated, and is by some honestly admired. 

It is interesting to observe the important place held in Golampian affairsby religious persecution. The Government is a pure theocracy, all theMinisters of State and the principal functionaries in every department ofcontrol belonging to the priesthood of the dominant church. It ispopularly believed in Mogon-Zwair that persecution, even to the extent oftaking life, is in the long run beneficial to the cause enduring it. Thisbelief has, indeed, been crystallized into a popular proverb, not capableof accurate translation into our tongue, but to the effect that martyrsfertilize religion by pouring out their blood about its roots. Acting uponthis belief with their characteristically logical and conscientiousdirectness, the sacerdotal rulers of the country mercilessly afflict thesect to which themselves belong. They arrest its leading members on falsecharges, throw them into loathsome and unwholesome dungeons, subject themto the crudest tortures and sometimes put them to death. The provinces inwhich the state religion is especially strong are occasionally raided andpillaged by government soldiery, recruited for the purpose by conscriptionamong the dissenting sects, and are sometimes actually devastated withfire and sword. The result is not altogether confirmatory of the popularbelief and does not fulfil the pious hope of the governing powers who arecruel to be kind. The vitalizing efficacy of persecution is not to bedoubted, but the persecuted of too feeble faith frequently thwart itsbeneficent intent and happy operation by apostasy. 

Having in mind the horrible torments which a Golampian general hadinflicted upon the population of a certain town I once ventured to protestto him that so dreadful a sum of suffering, seeing that it did notaccomplish its purpose, was needless and unwise. 

"Needless and unwise it may be, " said he, "and I am disposed to admit thatthe result which I expected from it has not followed; but why do you speakof the _sum_ of suffering? I tortured those people in but a single, simpleway--by skinning their legs. "

"Ah, that is very true, " said I, "but you skinned the legs of onethousand. "

"And what of that?" he asked. "Can one thousand, or ten thousand, or anynumber of persons suffer more agony than one? A man may have his legbroken, then his nails pulled out, then be seared with a hot iron. Here issuffering added to suffering, and the effect is really cumulative. In thetrue mathematical sense it is a _sum_ of suffering. A single person canexperience it. But consider, my dear sir. How can you add one man's agonyto another's? They are not addable quantities. Each is an individual pain, unaffected by the other. The limit of anguish which ingenuity can inflictis that utmost pang which one man has the vitality to endure. "

I was convinced but not silenced. 

The Golampians all believe, singularly enough, that truth possesses someinherent vitality and power that give it an assured prevalence overfalsehood; that a good name cannot be permanently defiled and irreparablyruined by detraction, but, like a star, shines all the brighter for theshadow through which it is seen; that justice cannot be stayed byinjustice; that vice is powerless against virtue. I could quote from theirgreat writers hundreds of utterances affirmative of these propositions. One of their poets, for example, has some striking and original lines, ofwhich the following is a literal but unmetrical translation:

 A man who is in the right has three arms, But he whose conscience is rotten with wrong Is stripped and confined in a metal cell. 

Imbued with these beliefs, the Golampis think it hardly worth while to betruthful, to abstain from slander, to do justice and to avoid viciousactions. "The practice, " they say, "of deceit, calumniation, oppressionand immorality cannot have any sensible and lasting injurious effect, andit is most agreeable to the mind and heart. Why should there be personalself-denial without commensurate general advantage?"

In consequence of these false views, affirmed by those whom they regard asgreat and wise, the people of Mogon-Zwair are, as far as I have observedthem, the most conscienceless liars, cheats, thieves, rakes and all-round, many-sided sinners that ever were created to be damned. It was, therefore, with inexpressible joy that I received one day legal notification that Ihad been tried in the High Court of Conviction and sentenced to banishmentto Lalugnan. My offense was that I had said that I regarded consistency asthe most detestable of all vices. 

AN INTERVIEW WITH GNARMAG-ZOTE

Mogon-Zwair and Lalugnan, having the misfortune to lie on opposite sidesof a line, naturally hate each other; so each country sends its dangerouspolitical criminals into the other, where they usually enjoy high honorsand are sometimes elevated to important office under the crown. I wastherefore received in Lalugnan with hospitality and given everyencouragement in prosecuting my researches into the history andintellectual life of the people. They are so extraordinary a people, inhabiting so marvelous a country, that everything which the travelersees, hears or experiences makes a lively and lasting impression upon hismind, and the labor of a lifetime would be required to relate theobservation of a single year. I shall notice here only one or two pointsof national character--those which differ most conspicuously from ours, and in which, consequently, they are least worthy. 

With a fatuity hardly more credible than creditable, the Lalugwumps, asthey call themselves, deny the immortality of the soul. In all my stay intheir country I found only one person who believed in a life "beyond thegrave, " as we should say, though as the Lalugwumps are cannibals theywould say "beyond the stomach. " In testimony to the consolatory value ofthe doctrine of another life, I may say that this one true believer had inthis life a comparatively unsatisfactory lot, for in early youth he hadbeen struck by a flying stone from a volcano and had lost a considerablepart of his brain. 

I cannot better set forth the nature and extent of the Lalugwumpian errorregarding this matter than by relating a conversation that occurredbetween me and one of the high officers of the King's household--a manwhose proficiency in all the vices of antiquity, together with his serviceto the realm in determining the normal radius of curvature in cats' claws, had elevated him to the highest plane of political preferment. His namewas Gnarmag-Zote. 

"You tell me, " said he, "that the soul is immaterial. Now, matter is thatof which we can have knowledge through one or more of our senses. Of whatis immaterial--not matter--we can gain no knowledge in that way. How, then, can we know anything about it?"

Perceiving that he did not rightly apprehend my position I abandoned itand shifted the argument to another ground. "Consider, " I said, "theanalogous case of a thought. You will hardly call thought material, yet weknow there are thoughts. "

"I beg your pardon, but we do not know that. Thought is not a thing, therefore cannot _be_ in any such sense, for example, as the hand _is_. Weuse the word 'thought' to designate the result of an action of the brain, precisely as we use the word 'speed' to designate the result of an actionof a horse's legs. But can it be said that speed _exists_ in the same wayas the legs which produce it exist, or in any way? Is it a thing?"

I was about to disdain to reply, when I saw an old man approaching, withbowed head, apparently in deep distress. As he drew near he saluted mydistinguished interlocutor in the manner of the country, by putting outhis tongue to its full extent and moving it slowly from side to side. Gnarmag-Zote acknowledged the civility by courteously spitting, and theold man, advancing, seated himself at the great officer's feet, saying:"Exalted Sir, I have just lost my wife by death, and am in a mostmelancholy frame of mind. He who has mastered all the vices of theancients and wrested from nature the secret of the normal curvature ofcats' claws can surely spare from his wisdom a few rays of philosophy tocheer an old man's gloom. Pray tell me what I shall do to assuage mygrief. "

The reader can, perhaps, faintly conceive my astonishment whenGnarmag-Zote gravely replied: "Kill yourself. "

"Surely, " I cried, "you would not have this honest fellow procure oblivion(since you think that death is nothing else) by so rash an act!"

"An act that Gnarmag-Zote advises, " he said, coldly, "is not rash. "

"But death, " I said, "death, whatever else it may be, is an end of life. This old man is now in sorrow almost insupportable. But a few days and itwill be supportable; a few months and it will have become no more than atender melancholy. At last it will disappear, and in the society of hisfriends, in the skill of his cook, the profits of avarice, the study ofhow to be querulous and in the pursuit of loquacity, he will againexperience the joys of age. Why for a present grief should he deprivehimself of all future happiness?"

Gnarmag-Zote looked upon me with something like compassion. "My friend, "said he, "guest of my sovereign and my country, know that in anycircumstances, even those upon which true happiness is based andconditioned, death is preferable to life. The sum of miseries in any life(here in Lalugnan at least) exceeds the sum of pleasures; but suppose thatit did not. Imagine an existence in which happiness, of whateverintensity, is the rule, and discomfort, of whatever moderation, theexception. Still there is some discomfort. There is none in death, for (asit is given to us to know) that is oblivion, annihilation. True, by dyingone loses his happiness as well as his sorrows, but he is not conscious ofthe loss. Surely, a loss of which one will never know, and which, if itoperate to make him less happy, at the same time takes from him the desireand capacity and need of happiness, cannot be an evil. That is sointelligently understood among us here in Lalugnan that suicide is common, and our word for sufferer is the same as that for fool. If this good manhad not been an idiot he would have taken his life as soon as he wasbereaved. "

"If what you say of the blessing of death is true, " I said, smilingly, forI greatly prided myself on the ingenuity of my thought, "it is unnecessaryto commit suicide through grief for the dead; for the more you love themore glad you should be that the object of your affection has passed intoso desirable a state as death. "

"So we are--those of us who have cultivated philosophy, history and logic;but this poor fellow is still under the domination of feelings inheritedfrom a million ignorant and superstitious ancestors--for Lalugnan was onceas barbarous a country as your own. The most grotesque and frightfulconceptions of death, and life after death, were current; and now many ofeven those whose understandings are emancipated wear upon their feelingsthe heavy chain of heredity. "

"But, " said I, "granting for the sake of the argument which I am about tobuild upon the concession" (I could not bring myself to use the idioticand meaningless phrase, "for the sake of argument") "that death, especially the death of a Lalugwump, is desirable, yet the act of dying, the transition state between living and being dead, may be accompanied bythe most painful physical, and most terrifying mental phenomena. Themoment of dissolution may seem to the exalted sensibilities of themoribund a century of horrors. "

The great man smiled again, with a more intolerable benignity than before. "There is no such thing as dying, " he said; "the 'transition state' is acreation of your fancy and an evidence of imperfect reason. One is at anytime either alive or dead. The one condition cannot shade off into theother. There is no gradation like that between waking and sleeping. By theway, do you recognize a certain resemblance between death and a dreamlesssleep?"

"Yes--death as you conceive it to be. "

"Well, does any one fear sleep? Do we not seek it, court it, wish that itmay be sound--that is to say, dreamless? We desire occasionalannihilation--wish to be dead for eight and ten hours at a time. True, weexpect to awake, but that expectation, while it may account for ouralacrity in embracing sleep, cannot alter the character of the state thatwe cheerfully go into. Suppose we did _not_ wake in the morning, never didwake! Would our mental and spiritual condition be in any respect differentthrough all eternity from what it was during the first few hours? After howmany hours does oblivion begin to be an evil? The man who loves to sleepyet hates to die might justly be granted everlasting life with everlastinginsomnia. "

Gnarmag-Zote paused and appeared to be lost in the profundity of histhoughts, but I could easily enough see that he was only taking breath. The old man whose grief had given this turn to the conversation had fallenasleep and was roaring in the nose like a beast. The rush of a river nearby, as it poured up a hill from the ocean, and the shrill singing ofseveral kinds of brilliant quadrupeds were the only other sounds audible. I waited deferentially for the great antiquarian, scientist and courtierto resume, amusing myself meantime by turning over the leaves of anofficial report by the Minister of War on a new and improved process ofmaking thunder from snail slime. Presently the oracle spoke. 

"You have been born, " he said, which was true. "There was, it follows, atime when you had not been born. As we reckon time, it was probably somemillions of ages. Of this considerable period you are unable to rememberone unhappy moment, and in point of fact there was none. To a Lalugwumpthat is entirely conclusive as to the relative values of consciousness andoblivion, existence and nonexistence, life and death. This old man lyinghere at my feet is now, if not dreaming, as if he had never been born. Would not it be cruel and inhuman to wake him back to grief? Is it, then, kind to permit him to wake by the natural action of his own physicalenergies? I have given him the advice for which he asked. Believing itgood advice, and seeing him too irresolute to act, it seems my clear dutyto assist him. "

Before I could interfere, even had I dared take the liberty to do so, Gnarmag-Zote struck the old man a terrible blow upon the head with hismace of office. The victim turned upon his back, spread his fingers, shivered convulsively and was dead. 

"You need not be shocked, " said the distinguished assassin, coolly: "Ihave but performed a sacred duty and religious rite. The religion(established first in this realm by King Skanghutch, the sixty-second ofthat name) consists in the worship of Death. We have sacred books, somethree thousand thick volumes, said to be written by inspiration of Deathhimself, whom no mortal has ever seen, but who is described by our priestsas having the figure of a fat young man with a red face and wearing anaffable smile. In art he is commonly represented in the costume of ahusbandman sowing seeds. 

"The priests and sacred books teach that death is the supreme and onlygood--that the chief duties of man are, therefore, assassination andsuicide. Conviction of these cardinal truths is universal among us, but Iam sorry to say that many do not honestly live up to the faith. Most of usare commendably zealous in assassination, but slack and lukewarm insuicide. Some justify themselves in this half-hearted observance of theLaw and imperfect submission to the Spirit by arguing that if they destroythemselves their usefulness in destroying others will be greatly abridged. 'I find, ' says one of our most illustrious writers, not without a certainforce, it must be confessed, 'that I can slay many more of others than Ican of myself. '

"There are still others, more distinguished for faith than works, whoreason that if A kill B, B cannot kill C. So it happens that although manyLalugwumps die, mostly by the hands of others, though some by their own, the country is never wholly depopulated. "

"In my own country, " said I, "is a sect holding somewhat Lalugwumpianviews of the evil of life; and among the members it is considered a sin tobestow it. The philosopher Schopenhauer taught the same doctrine, and manyof our rulers have shown strong sympathetic leanings toward it byprocuring the destruction of many of their own people and those of othernations in what is called war. "

"They are greatly to be commended, " said Gnarmag-Zote, rising to intimatethat the conversation was at an end. I respectfully protruded my tonguewhile he withdrew into his palace, spitting politely and with unusualcopiousness in acknowledgment. A few minutes later, but before I had leftthe spot, two lackeys in livery emerged from the door by which he hadentered, and while one shouldered the body of the old man and carried itinto the palace kitchen the other informed me that his Highness wasgraciously pleased to desire my company at dinner that evening. With manyexpressions of regret I declined the invitation, unaware that to do so wastreason. With the circumstances of my escape to the island of Tamtonia thenewspapers have made the world already familiar. 

THE TAMTONIANS

In all my intercourse with the Tamtonians I was treated with the mostdistinguished consideration and no obstacles to a perfect understanding oftheir social and political life were thrown in my way. My enforcedresidence on the island was, however, too brief to enable me to master thewhole subject as I should have liked to do. 

The government of Tamtonia is what is known in the language of the islandas a _gilbuper_. It differs radically from any form known in other partsof the world and is supposed to have been invented by an ancient chief ofthe race, named Natas, who was for many centuries after his deathworshiped as a god, and whose memory is still held in veneration. Thegovernment is of infinite complexity, its various functions distributedamong as many officers as possible, multiplication of places beingregarded as of the greatest importance, and not so much a means as an end. The Tamtonians seem to think that the highest good to which a human beingcan attain is the possession of an office; and in order that as many aspossible may enjoy that advantage they have as many offices as the countrywill support, and make the tenure brief and in no way dependent on goodconduct and intelligent administration of official duty. In truth, itoccurs usually that a man is turned out of his office (in favor of anincompetent successor) before he has acquired sufficient experience toperform his duties with credit to himself or profit to the country. Owingto this incredible folly, the affairs of the island are badly mismanaged. Complaints are the rule, even from those who have had their way in thechoice of officers. Of course there can be no such thing as a knowledge ofthe science of government among such a people, for it is to nobody'sinterest to acquire it by study of political history. There is, indeed, aprevalent belief that nothing worth knowing is to be learned from thehistory of other nations--not even from the history of their errors--suchis this extraordinary people's national vanity! One of the most notableconsequences of this universal and voluntary ignorance is that Tamtonia isthe home of all the discreditable political and fiscal heresies from whichmany other nations, and especially our own, emancipated themselvescenturies ago. They are there in vigorous growth and full flower, andbelieved to be of purely Tamtonian origin. 

It needs hardly to be stated that in their personal affairs these peoplepursue an entirely different course, for if they did not there could be noprofitable industries and professions among them, and no property to taxfor the support of their government. In his private business a Tamtonianhas as high appreciation of fitness and experience as anybody, and havingsecured a good man keeps him in service as long as possible. 

The ruler of the nation, whom they call a _Tnediserp_, is chosen everyfive years but may be rechosen for five more. He is supposed to beselected by the people themselves, but in reality they have nothing to dowith his selection. The method of choosing a man for _Tnediserp_ is sostrange that I doubt my ability to make it clear. 

The adult male population of the island divides itself into two or more_seitrap_[1] Commonly there are three or four, but only two ever have anyconsiderable numerical strength, and none is ever strong morally orintellectually. All the members of each _ytrap_ profess the same politicalopinions, which are provided for them by their leaders every five yearsand written down on pieces of paper so that they will not be forgotten. The moment that any Tamtonian has read his piece of paper, or _mroftalp_, he unhesitatingly adopts all the opinions that he finds written on it, sometimes as many as forty or fifty, although these may be altogetherdifferent from, or even antagonistic to, those with which he was suppliedfive years before and has been advocating ever since. It will be seen fromthis that the Tamtonian mind is a thing whose processes no American canhope to respect, or even understand. It is instantaneously convincedwithout either fact or argument, and when these are afterward presentedthey only confirm it in its miraculous conviction; those which makeagainst that conviction having an even stronger confirmatory power thanthe others. I have said any Tamtonian, but that is an overstatement. A fewusually persist in thinking as they did before; or in altering theirconvictions in obedience to reason instead of authority, as our own peopledo; but they are at once assailed with the most opprobrious names, accusedof treason and all manner of crimes, pelted with mud and stones and insome instances deprived of their noses and ears by the public executioner. Yet in no country is independence of thought so vaunted as a virtue, andin none is freedom of speech considered so obvious a natural right or sonecessary to good government. 

 [1] The Tamtonian language forms its plurals most irregularly, but usually by an initial inflection. It has a certain crude and primitive grammar, but in point of orthoepy is extremely difficult. With our letters I can hardly hope to give an accurate conception of its pronunciation. As nearly as possible I write its words as they sounded to my ear when carefully spoken for my instruction by intelligent natives. It is a harsh tongue. 

At the same time that each _ytrap_ is supplied with its political opinionsfor the next five years, its leaders--who, I am told, all pursue thevocation of sharpening axes--name a man whom they wish chosen for theoffice of _Tnediserp_. He is usually an idiot from birth, the Tamtonianshaving a great veneration for such, believing them to be divinelyinspired. Although few members of the _ytrap_ have ever heard of himbefore, they at once believe him to have been long the very greatest idiotin the country; and for the next few months they do little else than quotehis words and point to his actions to prove that his idiocy is of entirelysuperior quality to that of his opponent--a view that he himself, instructed by his discoverers, does and says all that he can to confirm. His inarticulate mumblings are everywhere repeated as utterances ofprofound wisdom, and the slaver that drools from his chin is carefullycollected and shown to the people, evoking the wildest enthusiasm of hissupporters. His opponents all this time are trying to blacken hischaracter by the foulest conceivable falsehoods, some even going so far asto assert that he is not an idiot at all! It is generally agreed amongthem that if he were chosen to office the most dreadful disasters wouldensue, and that, _therefore_, he will not be chosen. 

To this last mentioned conviction, namely that the opposing candidate(_rehtot lacsar_) cannot possibly be chosen, I wish to devote a few wordshere, for it seems to me one of the most extraordinary phenomena of thehuman mind. It implies, of course, a profound belief in the wisdom ofmajorities and the error of minorities. This belief can and does in somemysterious way co-exist, in the Tamtonian understanding, with the deepestdisgust and most earnest disapproval of a decision which a majority hasmade. It is of record, indeed, that one political _ytrap_ sustained nofewer than six successive defeats without at all impairing its convictionthat the right side must win. In each recurring contest this ytrap was assure that it would succeed as it had been in all the preceding ones--andsure _because_ it believed itself in the right! It has been held by somenative observers that this conviction is not actually entertained, butonly professed for the purpose of influencing the action of others; butthis is disproved by the fact that even after the contest is decided, though the result is unknown--when nobody's action can have effect--theleaders (ax-sharpeners) continue earnestly to "claim" this province andthat, up to the very last moment of uncertainty, and the common peoplemurder one another in the streets for the crime of doubting that the manis chosen whom the assassin was pleased to prefer. When the majority of aprovince has chosen one candidate and a majority of the nation another, the mental situation of the worthy Tamtonian is not over-easy ofconception, but there can be no doubt that his faith in the wisdom ofmajorities remains unshaken. 

One of the two antagonistic idiots having been chosen as ruler, it iscustomary to speak of him as "the choice of the people, " whereas it isobvious that he is one of the few men, seldom exceeding two or three, whomit is certainly known that nearly one-half the people regard as unfit forthe position. He is less certainly "the people's choice" than any otherman in the country excepting his unsuccessful opponents; for while it isknown that a large body of his countrymen did not want him, it cannot beknown how many of his supporters really preferred some other person, buthad no opportunity to make their preference effective. 

The Tamtonians are very proud of their form of government, which givesthem so much power in selecting their rulers. This power consists in theprivilege of choosing between two men whom but a few had a voice inselecting from among many millions, any one of whom the rest might havepreferred to either. Yet every Tamtonian is as vain of possessing thisincalculably small influence as if he were a Warwick in making kings and aBismarck in using them. He gives himself as many airs and graces as wouldbe appropriate to the display of an honest pin-feather upon thepope's-nose of a mooley peacock. 

Each congenital idiot whom the ax-grinders name for the office of_Tnediserp_ has upon the "ticket" with him a dead man, who stands or fallswith his leader. There is no way of voting for the idiot without votingfor the corpse also, and _vice versa_. When one of these precious coupleshas been chosen the idiot in due time enters upon the duties of his officeand the corpse is put into an ice-chest and carefully preserved fromdecay. If the idiot should himself become a corpse he is buried at onceand the other body is then haled out of its ice to take his place. It ispropped up in the seat of authority and duly instated in power. This isthe signal for a general attack upon it. It is subjected to every kind ofsacrilegious indignity, vituperated as a usurper and an "accident, " struckwith rotten eggs and dead cats, and undergoes the meanestmisrepresentation. Its attitude in the chair, its fallen jaw, glazed eyesand degree of decomposition are caricatured and exaggerated out of allreason. Yet such as it is it must be endured for the unexpired term forwhich its predecessor was chosen. To guard against a possible interregnum, however, a law has recently been passed providing that if it should tumbleout of the chair and be too rotten to set up again its clerks(_seiraterces_) are eligible to its place in a stated order of succession. Here we have the amazing anomaly of the rulers of a "free" people actuallyappointing their potential successors!--a thing inexpressibly repugnant toall our ideas of popular government, but apparently regarded in Tamtoniaas a matter of course. 

During the few months intervening between the ax-men's selection ofcandidates and the people's choice between those selected (a period knownas the _laitnediserp ngiapmac_) the Tamtonian character is seen at itsworst. There is no infamy too great or too little for the partisans of thevarious candidates to commit and accuse their opponents of committing. While every one of them declares, and in his heart believes, that honestarguments have greater weight than dishonest; that falsehood reacts on thefalsifier's cause; that appeals to passion and prejudice are asineffectual as dishonorable, few have the strength and sense to denythemselves the luxury of all these methods and worse ones. The lawsagainst bribery, made by themselves, are set at naught and those ofcivility and good breeding are forgotten. The best of friends quarrel andopenly insult one another. The women, who know almost as little of thematters at issue as the men, take part in the abominable discussions; someeven encouraging the general demoralization by showing themselves at thepublic meetings, sometimes actually putting themselves into uniform andmarching in procession with banners, music and torchlights. 

I feel that this last statement will be hardly understood withoutexplanation. Among the agencies employed by the Tamtonians to prove thatone set of candidates is better than another, or to show that onepolitical policy is more likely than another to promote the generalprosperity, a high place is accorded to colored rags, flames of fire, noises made upon brass instruments, inarticulate shouts, explosions ofgunpowder and lines of men walking and riding through the streets in cheapand tawdry costumes more or less alike. Vast sums of money are expended toprocure these strange evidences of the personal worth of candidates andthe political sanity of ideas. It is very much as if a man should painthis nose pea-green and stand on his head to convince his neighbors thathis pigs are fed on acorns. Of course the money subscribed for thesevarious controversial devices is not all wasted; the greater part of it ispocketed by the ax-grinders by whom it is solicited, and who have inventedthe system. That they have invented it for their own benefit seems not tohave occurred to the dupes who pay for it. In the universal madnesseverybody believes whatever monstrous and obvious falsehood is told by theleaders of his own _ytrap_, and nobody listens for a moment to theexposures of their rascality. Reason has flown shrieking from the scene;Caution slumbers by the wayside with unbuttoned pocket. It is theopportunity of thieves!

With a view to abating somewhat the horrors of this recurring season ofdepravity, it has been proposed by several wise and decent Tamtonians toextend the term of office of the _Tnediserp_ to six years instead of five, but the sharpeners of axes are too powerful to be overthrown. They havemade the people believe that if the man whom the country chooses to ruleit because it thinks him wise and good were permitted to rule it too longit would be impossible to displace him in punishment for his folly andwickedness. It is, indeed, far more likely that the term of office will bereduced to four years than extended to six. The effect can be no less thanhideous!

In Tamtonia there is a current popular saying dating from many centuriesback and running this way: "_Eht eciffo dluohs kees eht nam, ton eht nameht eciffo_"--which may be translated thus: "No citizen ought to try tosecure power for himself, but should be selected by others for his fitnessto exercise it. " The sentiment which this wise and decent phrase expresseshas long ceased to have a place in the hearts of those who areeverlastingly repeating it, but with regard to the office of _Tnediserp_it has still a remnant of the vitality of habit. This, however, is fastdying out, and a few years ago one of the congenital idiots who was acandidate for the highest dignity boldly broke the inhibition and madespeeches to the people in advocacy of himself, all over the country. Evenmore recently another has uttered his preferences in much the same way, but with this difference: he did his speechmaking at his own home, theax-grinders in his interest rounding up audiences for him and herding thembefore his door. One of the two corpses, too, was galvanized into a kindof ghastly activity and became a talking automaton; but the other had beentoo long dead. In a few years more the decent tradition that a man shouldnot blow his own horn will be obsolete in its application to the highoffice, as it is to all the others, but the popular saying will lose noneof its currency for that. 

To the American mind nothing can be more shocking than the Tamtonianpractice of openly soliciting political preferment and even paying moneyto assist in securing it. With us such immodesty would be taken as proofof the offender's unfitness to exercise the power which he asks for, orbear the dignity which, in soliciting it, he belittles. Yet no Tamtonianever refused to take the hand of a man guilty of such conduct, and therehave been instances of fathers giving these greedy vulgarians the hands oftheir daughters in marriage and thereby assisting to perpetuate thespecies. The kind of government given by men who go about begging for theright to govern can be more easily imagined than endured. In short, Icannot help thinking that when, unable longer to bear with patience theevils entailed by the vices and follies of its inhabitants, I sailed awayfrom the accursed island of Tamtonia, I left behind me the most pestilentrace of rascals and ignoramuses to be found anywhere in the universe; andI never can sufficiently thank the divine Power who spared me thedisadvantage and shame of being one of them, and cast my lot in thisfavored land of goodness and right reason, the blessed abode of publicmorality and private worth--of liberty, conscience and common sense. 

I was not, however, to reach it without further detention in barbarouscountries. After being at sea four days I was seized by my mutinous crew, set ashore upon an island, and having been made insensible by a blow uponthe head was basely abandoned. 

MAROONED ON UG

When I regained my senses I found myself lying on the strand a shortremove from the margin of the sea. It was high noon and an insupportableitching pervaded my entire frame, that being the effect of sunshine inthat country, as heat is in ours. Having observed that the discomfort wasabated by the passing of a light cloud between me and the sun, I draggedmyself with some difficulty to a clump of trees near by and foundpermanent relief in their shade. As soon as I was comfortable enough toexamine my surroundings I saw that the trees were of metal, apparentlycopper, with leaves of what resembled pure silver, but may have containedalloy. Some of the trees bore burnished flowers shaped like bells, and ina breeze the tinkling as they clashed together was exceedingly sweet. Thegrass with which the open country was covered as far as I could seeamongst the patches of forest was of a bright scarlet hue, excepting alongthe water-courses, where it was white. Lazily cropping it at some littledistance away, or lying in it, indolently chewing the cud and attended bya man half-clad in skins and bearing a crook, was a flock of tigers. Mytravels in New Jersey having made me proof against surprise, Icontemplated these several visible phenomena without emotion, and with amerely expectant interest in what might be revealed by furtherobservation. 

The tigerherd having perceived me, now came striding forward, brandishinghis crook and shaking his fists with great vehemence, gestures which Isoon learned were, in that country, signs of amity and good-will. Butbefore knowing that fact I had risen to my feet and thrown myself into aposture of defense, and as he approached I led for his head with my left, following with a stiff right upon his solar plexus, which sent him rollingon the grass in great pain. After learning something of the social customsof the country I felt extreme mortification in recollecting this breach ofetiquette, and even to this day I cannot think upon it without a blush. 

Such was my first meeting with Jogogle-Zadester, Pastor-King of Ug, thewisest and best of men. Later in our acquaintance, when I had for a longtime been an honored guest at his court, where a thousand fists wereceremoniously shaken under my nose daily, he explained that my luke-warmreception of his hospitable advances gave him, for the moment, anunfavorable impression of my breeding and culture. 

The island of Ug, upon which I had been marooned, lies in the SouthernHemisphere, but has neither latitude nor longitude. It has an area ofnearly seven hundred square _samtains_ and is peculiar in shape, its widthbeing considerably greater than its length. Politically it is a limitedmonarchy, the right of succession to the throne being vested in thesovereign's father, if he have one; if not in his grandfather, and so onupward in the line of ascent. (As a matter of fact there has not withinhistoric times been a legitimate succession, even the great and goodJogogle-Zadester being a usurper chosen by popular vote. ) To assist him ingoverning, the King is given a parliament, the Uggard word for which is_gabagab_, but its usefulness is greatly circumscribed by the _Blubosh_, or Constitution, which requires that every measure, in order to become alaw, shall have an affirmative majority of the actual members, yet forbidsany member to vote who has not a distinct pecuniary interest in theresult. I was once greatly amused by a spirited contest over a matter ofharbor improvement, each of two proposed harbors having its advocates. Oneof these gentlemen, a most eloquent patriot, held the floor for hours inadvocacy of the port where he had an interest in a projected mill formaking dead kittens into cauliflower pickles; while other members werebeing vigorously persuaded by one who at the other place had a clam ranch. In a debate in the Uggard _gabagab_ no one can have a "standing" except aparty in interest; and as a consequence of this enlightened policy everybill that is passed is found to be most intelligently adapted to itspurpose. 

The original intent of this requirement was that members having nopecuniary interest in a proposed law at the time of its inception shouldnot embarrass the proceedings and pervert the result; but the inhibitionis now thought to be sufficiently observed by formal public acceptance ofa nominal bribe to vote one way or the other. It is of course understoodthat behind the nominal bribe is commonly a more substantial one of whichthere is no record. To an American accustomed to the incorrupt methods oflegislation in his own country the spectacle of every member of the Uggard_gabagab_ qualifying himself to vote by marching up, each in his turn ashis name is called, to the proponent of the bill, or to its leadingantagonist, and solemnly receiving a _tonusi_ (the smallest coin of therealm) is exceedingly novel. When I ventured to mention to the King mylack of faith in the principle upon which this custom is founded, hereplied:

"Heart of my soul, if you and your compatriots distrust the honesty andintelligence of an interested motive why is it that in your own courts oflaw, as you describe them, no private citizen can institute a civil actionto right the wrongs of anybody but himself?"

I had nothing to say and the King proceeded: "And why is it that yourjudges will listen to no argument from any one who has not acquired aselfish concern in the matter?"

"O, your Majesty, " I answered with animation, "they listen toattorneys-general, district attorneys and salaried officers of the lawgenerally, whose prosperity depends in no degree upon their success; whoprosecute none but those whom they believe to be guilty; who are carefulto present no false nor misleading testimony and argument; who aresolicitous that even the humblest accused person shall be accorded everylegal right and every advantage to which he is entitled; who, in brief, are animated by the most humane sentiments and actuated by the purest andmost unselfish motives. "

The King's discomfiture was pitiful: he retired at once from the capitaland passed a whole year pasturing his flock of tigers in the solitudesbeyond the River of Wine. Seeing that I would henceforth be _persona nongrata_ at the palace, I sought obscurity in the writing and publication ofbooks. In this vocation I was greatly assisted by a few standard worksthat had been put ashore with me in my sea-chest. 

The literature of Ug is copious and of high merit, but consists altogetherof fiction--mainly history, biography, theology and novels. Authors ofexceptional excellence receive from the state marks of signal esteem, being appointed to the positions of laborers in the Department of Highwaysand Cemeteries. Having been so fortunate as to win public favor andattract official attention by my locally famous works, "The Decline andFall of the Roman Empire, " "David Copperfield, " "Pilgrim's Progress, " and"Ben Hur, " I was myself that way distinguished and my future assured. Unhappily, through ignorance of the duties and dignities of the position Ihad the mischance to accept a gratuity for sweeping a street crossing andwas compelled to flee for my life. 

Disguising myself as a sailor I took service on a ship that sailed duesouth into the unknown Sea. 

It is now many years since my marooning on Ug, but my recollection of thecountry, its inhabitants and their wonderful manners and customs isexceedingly vivid. Some small part of what most interested me I shall hereset down. 

The Uggards are, or fancy themselves, a warlike race: nowhere in thosedistant seas are there any islanders so vain of their military power, theconsciousness of which they acquired chiefly by fighting one another. Manyyears ago, however, they had a war with the people of another islandkingdom, called Wug. The Wuggards held dominion over a third island, Scamadumclitchclitch, whose people had tried to throw off the yoke. Inorder to subdue them--at least to tears--it was decided to deprive them ofgarlic, the sole article of diet known to them and the Wuggards, and inthat country dug out of the ground like coal. So the Wuggards in therebellious island stopped up all the garlic mines, supplying their ownneeds by purchase from foreign trading proas. Having few cowrie shells, with which to purchase, the poor Scamadumclitchclitchians suffered a greatdistress, which so touched the hearts of the compassionate Uggards--a mosthumane and conscientious people--that they declared war against theWuggards and sent a fleet of proas to the relief of the sufferers. Thefleet established a strict blockade of every port in Scamadumclitchclitch, and not a clove of garlic could enter the island. That compelled theWuggard army of occupation to reopen the mines for its own subsistence. 

All this was told to me by the great and good and wise Jogogle-Zadester, King of Ug. 

"But, your Majesty, " I said, "what became of the poorScamadumclitchclitchians?"

"They all died, " he answered with royal simplicity. 

"Then your Majesty's humane intervention, " I said, "was notentirely--well, fattening?"

"The fortune of war, " said the King, gravely, looking over my head tosignify that the interview was at an end; and I retired from the Presenceon hands and feet, as is the etiquette in that country. 

As soon as I was out of hearing I threw a stone in the direction of thepalace and said: "I never in my life heard of such a cold-bloodedscoundrel!"

In conversation with the King's Prime Minister, the famous Grumsquutzy, Iasked him how it was that Ug, being a great military power, was apparentlywithout soldiers. 

"Sir, " he replied, courteously shaking his fist under my nose in sign ofamity, "know that when Ug needs soldiers she enlists them. At the end ofthe war they are put to death. "

"Visible embodiment of a great nation's wisdom, " I said, "far be it fromme to doubt the expediency of that military method; but merely as a matterof economy would it not be better to keep an army in time of peace than tobe compelled to create one in time of war?"

"Ug is rich, " he replied; "we do not have to consider matters of economy. There is among our people a strong and instinctive distrust of a standingarmy. "

"What are they afraid of, " I asked--what do they fear that it will do?"

"It is not what the army may do, " answered the great man, "but what it mayprevent others from doing. You must know that we have in this land a thingknown as Industrial Discontent. "

"Ah, I see, " I exclaimed, interrupting--"the industrial classes fear thatthe army may destroy, or at least subdue, their discontent. "

The Prime Minister reflected profoundly, standing the while, in order thathe might assist his faculties by scratching himself, even as we, whenthinking, scratch our heads. 

"No, " he said presently; "I don't think that is quite what theyapprehend--they and the writers and statesmen who speak for them. As Isaid before, what is feared in a case of industrial discontent is thearmy's preventive power. But I am myself uncertain what it is that thesegood souls dislike to have the army prevent. I shall take the customarymeans to learn. "

Having occasion on the next day to enter the great audience hall of thepalace I observed in gigantic letters running across the entire sideopposite the entrance this surprising inscription:

"In a strike, what do you fear that the army will prevent which ought tobe done?"

Facing the entrance sat Grumsquutzy, in his robes of office and surroundedby an armed guard. At a little distance stood two great black slaves, eachbearing a scourge of thongs. All about them the floor was slippery withblood. While I wondered at all this two policemen entered, having betweenthem one whom I recognized as a professional Friend of the People, a greatorator, keenly concerned for the interests of Labor. Shown the inscriptionand unable or unwilling to answer, he was given over to the two blacksand, being stripped to the skin, was beaten with the whips until he bledcopiously and his cries resounded through the palace. His ears were thenshorn away and he was thrown into the street. Another Friend of the Peoplewas brought in, and treated in the same way; and the inquiry wascontinued, day after day, until all had been interrogated. But Grumsquutzygot no answer. 

A most extraordinary and interesting custom of the Uggards is called the_Naganag_ and has existed, I was told, for centuries. Immediately afterevery war, and before the returned army is put to death, the chieftainswho have held high command and their official head, the Minister ofNational Displeasure, are conducted with much pomp to the public square ofNabootka, the capital. Here all are stripped naked, deprived of theirsight with a hot iron and armed with a club each. They are then locked inthe square, which has an inclosing wall thirty _clowgebs_ high. A signalis given and they begin to fight. At the end of three days the place isentered and searched. If any of the dead bodies has an unbroken bone in itthe survivors are boiled in wine; if not they are smothered in butter. 

Upon the advantages of this custom--which surely has not its like in thewhole world--I could get little light. One public official told me itspurpose was "peace among the victorious"; another said it was "forgratification of the military instinct in high places, " though if that isso one is disposed to ask "What was the war for?" The Prime Minister, profoundly learned in all things else, could not enlighten me, and thecommander-in-chief in the Wuggard war could only tell me, while on his wayto the public square, that it was "to vindicate the truth of history. "

In all the wars in which Ug has engaged in historic times that with Wugwas the most destructive of life. Excepting among the comparatively fewtroops that had the hygienic and preservative advantage of personalcollision with the enemy, the mortality was appalling. Regiments exposedto the fatal conditions of camp life in their own country died like fliesin a frost. So pathetic were the pleas of the sufferers to be led againstthe enemy and have a chance to live that none hearing them could forbearto weep. Finally a considerable number of them went to the seat of war, where they began an immediate attack upon a fortified city, for theirhealth; but the enemy's resistance was too brief materially to reduce thedeath rate and the men were again in the hands of their officers. On theirreturn to Ug they were so few that the public executioners charged withthe duty of reducing the army to a peace footing were themselves made illby inactivity. 

As to the navy, the war with Wug having shown the Uggard sailors to beimmortal, their government knows not how to get rid of them, and remains agreat sea power in spite of itself. I ventured to suggest mustering out, but neither the King nor any Minister of State was able to form aconception of any method of reduction and retrenchment but that of thepublic headsman. 

It is said--I do not know with how much truth--that the defeat of Wug wasmade easy by a certain malicious prevision of the Wuggards themselves:something of the nature of heroic self-sacrifice, the surrender of apresent advantage for a terrible revenge in the future. As an instance, the commander of the fortified city already mentioned is reported to haveordered his garrison to kill as few of their assailants as possible. 

"It is true, " he explained to his subordinates, who favored a defense tothe death--"it is true this will lose us the place, but there are otherplaces; you have not thought of that. "

They had not thought of that. 

"It is true, too, that we shall be taken prisoners, but"--and he smiledgrimly--"we have fairly good appetites, and we must be fed. That will costsomething, I take it. But that is not the best of it. Look at that vasthost of our enemies--each one of them a future pensioner on a fool people. If there is among us one man who would willingly deprive the Uggardtreasury of a single dependent--who would spare the Uggard pigs one_gukwam_ of expense, let the traitor stand forth. "

No traitor stood forth, and in the ensuing battles the garrison, it issaid, fired only blank cartridges, and such of the assailants as werekilled incurred that mischance by falling over their own feet. 

It is estimated by Wuggard statisticians that in twenty years from theclose of the war the annual appropriation for pensions in Ug will amountto no less than one hundred and sixty _gumdums_ to every enlisted man inthe kingdom. But they know not the Uggard customs of exterminating thearmy. 

THE DOG IN GANEGWAG

A about the end of the thirty-seventh month of our voyage due south fromUg we sighted land, and although the coast appeared wild and inhospitable, the captain decided to send a boat ashore in search of fresh water andprovisions, of which we were in sore need. I was of the boat's crew andthought myself fortunate in being able to set foot again upon the earth. There were seven others in the landing party, including the mate, whocommanded. 

Selecting a sheltered cove, which appeared to be at the mouth of a smallcreek, we beached the boat, and leaving two men to guard it started inlandtoward a grove of trees. Before we reached it an animal came out of it andadvanced confidently toward us, showing no signs of either fear orhostility. It was a hideous creature, not altogether like anything that wehad ever seen, but on its close approach we recognized it as a dog, of anunimaginably loathsome breed. As we were nearly famished one of thesailors shot it for food. Instantly a great crowd of persons, who haddoubtless been watching us from among the trees, rushed upon us withfierce exclamations and surrounded us, making the most threateninggestures and brandishing unfamiliar weapons. Unable to resist such odds wewere seized, bound with cords and dragged into the forest almost before weknew what had happened to us. Observing the nature of our reception theship's crew hastily weighed anchor and sailed away. We never again sawthem. 

Beyond the trees concealing it from the sea was a great city, and thitherwe were taken. It was Gumammam, the capital of Ganegwag, whose people aredog-worshipers. The fate of my companions I never learned, for although Iremained in the country for seven years, much of the time as a prisoner, and learned to speak its language, no answer was ever given to my manyinquiries about my unfortunate friends. 

The Ganegwagians are an ancient race with a history covering a period often thousand _supintroes_. In stature they are large, in color blue, withcrimson hair and yellow eyes. They live to a great age, sometimes as muchas twenty _supintroes_, their climate being so wholesome that even theaged have to sail to a distant island in order to die. Whenever asufficient number of them reach what they call "the age of going away"they embark on a government ship and in the midst of impressive publicrites and ceremonies set sail for "the Isle of the Happy Change. " Of theirstrange civilization, their laws, manners and customs, their copperclothing and liquid houses I have written--at perhaps too great length--inmy famous book, "Ganegwag the Incredible. " Here I shall confine myself totheir religion, certainly the most amazing form of superstition in theworld. 

Nowhere, it is believed, but in Ganegwag has so vile a creature as the dogobtained general recognition as a deity. There this filthy beast isconsidered so divine that it is freely admitted to the domestic circle andcherished as an honored guest. Scarcely a family that is able to support adog is without one, and some have as many as a half-dozen. Indeed, the dogis the special deity of the poor, those families having most that areleast able to maintain them. In some sections of the country, particularlythe southern and southwestern provinces, the number of dogs is estimatedto be greater than that of the children, as is the cost of theirmaintenance. In families of the rich they are fewer in number, but moresacredly cherished, especially by the female members, who lavish upon thema wealth of affection not always granted to the husband and children, anddistinguish them with indescribable attentions and endearments. 

Nowhere is the dog compelled to make any other return for all this honorand benefaction than a fawning and sycophantic demeanor toward those whobestow them and an insulting and injurious attitude toward strangers whohave dogs of their own, and toward other dogs. In any considerable town ofthe realm not a day passes but the public newsman relates in the mostmatter-of-fact and unsympathetic way to his circle of listless auditorspainful instances of human beings, mostly women and children, bitten andmangled by these ferocious animals without provocation. 

In addition to these ravages of the dog in his normal state are a vastlygreater number of outrages committed by the sacred animal in the fury ofinsanity, for he has an hereditary tendency to madness, and in that statehis bite is incurable, the victim awaiting in the most horrible agony thesailing of the next ship to the Isle of the Happy Change, his sufferingimperfectly medicined by expressions of public sympathy for the dog. 

A cynical citizen of Gumammam said to the writer of this narrative: "Mycountrymen have three hundred kinds of dogs, and only one way to hang athief. " Yet all the dogs are alike in this, that none is respectable. 

Withal, it must be said of this extraordinary people that their horriblereligion is free from the hollow forms and meaningless ceremonies in whichso many superstitions of the lower races find expression. It is a religionof love, practical, undemonstrative, knowing nothing of pageantry andspectacle. It is hidden in the lives and hearts of the people; a strangerwould hardly know of its existence as a distinct faith. Indeed, otherfaiths and better ones (one of them having some resemblance to a debasedform of Christianity) co-exist with it, sometimes in the same mind. Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinitywith the deities of other faiths. Nevertheless, I could not think of thepeople of Ganegwag without contempt and loathing; so it was with no smalljoy that I sailed for the contiguous island of Ghargaroo to consult, according to my custom, the renowned statesman and philosopher, Juptka-Getch, who was accounted the wisest man in all the world, and heldin so high esteem that no one dared speak to him without the sovereign'spermission, countersigned by the Minister of Morals and Manners. 

A CONFLAGRATION IN GHARGAROO

Through the happy accident of having a mole on the left side of my nose, as had also a cousin of the Prime Minister, I obtained a royal rescriptpermitting me to speak to the great Juptka-Getch, and went humbly to hisdwelling, which, to my astonishment, I found to be an unfurnished cave inthe side of a mountain. Inexpressibly surprised to observe that a favoriteof the sovereign and the people was so meanly housed, I ventured, after mysalutation, to ask how this could be so. Regarding me with an indulgentsmile, the venerable man, who was about two hundred and fifty years oldand entirely bald, explained. 

"In one of our Sacred Books, of which we have three thousand, " said he, "it is written, '_Golooloo ek wakwah betenka_, ' and in another, '_Jebeb uqseedroy im aboltraqu ocrux ti smelkit_. '"

Translated, these mean, respectively, "The poor are blessed, " and, "Heavenis not easily entered by those who are rich. "

I asked Juptka-Getch if his countrymen really gave to these texts apractical application in the affairs of life. 

"Why, surely, " he replied, "you cannot think us such fools as to disregardthe teachings of our gods! That would be madness. I cannot imagine apeople so mentally and morally depraved as that! Can you?"

Observing me blushing and stammering, he inquired the cause of myembarrassment. "The thought of so incredible a thing confuses me, " Imanaged to reply. "But tell me if in your piety and wisdom you reallystripped yourself of all your property in order to obey the gods and getthe benefit of indigence. "

"I did not have to do so, " he replied with a smile; "my King attended tothat. When he wishes to distinguish one of his subjects by a mark of hisfavor, he impoverishes him to such a degree as will attest the exactmeasure of the royal approbation. I am proud to say that he took from meall that I had. "

"But, pardon me, " I said; "how does it occur that among a people whichregards poverty as the greatest earthly good all are not poor? I observehere as much wealth and 'prosperity' as in my own country. "

Juptka-Getch smiled and after a few moments answered: "The only person inthis country that owns anything is the King; in the service of his peoplehe afflicts himself with that burden. All property, of whatsoever kind, ishis, to do with as he will. He divides it among his subjects in the ratioof their demerit, as determined by the _waguks_--local officers--whoseduty it is to know personally every one in their jurisdiction. To the mostdesperate and irreclaimable criminals is allotted the greatest wealth, which is taken from them, little by little, as they show signs ofreformation. "

"But what, " said I, "is to prevent the wicked from becoming poor at anytime? How can the King and his officers keep the unworthy, suffering thepunishment and peril of wealth, from giving it away?"

"To whom, for example?" replied the illustrious man, taking the forefingerof his right hand into his mouth, as is the fashion in Ghargaroo whenawaiting an important communication. The respectful formality of theposture imperfectly concealed the irony of the question, but I was not ofthe kind to be easily silenced. 

"One might convert one's property into money, " I persisted, "and throw themoney into the sea. "

Juptka-Getch released the finger and gravely answered: "Every person inGhargaroo is compelled by law to keep minute accounts of his income andexpenditures, and must swear to them. There is an annual appraisement bythe _waguk_, and any needless decrease in the value of an estate ispunished by breaking the offender's legs. Expenditures for luxuries andhigh living are, of course, approved, for it is universally known amongus, and attested by many popular proverbs, that the pleasures of the richare vain and disappointing. So they are considered a part of thepunishment, and not only allowed but required. A man sentenced to wealthwho lives frugally, indulging in only rational and inexpensive delights, has his ears cut off for the first offense, and for the second iscompelled to pass six months at court, participating in all the gaieties, extravagances and pleasures of the capital, and----"

"Most illustrious of mortals, " I said, turning a somersault--theGhargarese manner of interrupting a discourse without offense--"I am asthe dust upon your beard, but in my own country I am esteemed no fool, andright humbly do I perceive that you are _ecxroptug nemk puttog peleemy_. "

This expression translates, literally, "giving me a fill, " a phrasewithout meaning in our tongue, but in Ghargarese it appears to implyincredulity. 

"The gaieties of the King's court, " I continued, "must be expensive. Thecourtiers of the sovereign's entourage, the great officers of therealm--surely they are not condemned to wealth, like common criminals!"

"My son, " said Juptka-Getch, tearing out a handful of his beard to signifyhis tranquillity under accusation, "your doubt of my veracity is notedwith satisfaction, but it is not permitted to you to impeach mysovereign's infallible knowledge of character. His courtiers, the greatofficers of the realm, as you truly name them, are the richest men in thecountry because he knows them to be the greatest rascals. After eachannual reapportionment of the national wealth he settles upon them theunallotted surplus. "

Prostrating myself before the eminent philosopher, I craved his pardon formy doubt of his sovereign's wisdom and consistency, and begged him to cutoff my head. 

"Nay, " he said, "you have committed the unpardonable sin and I cannotconsent to bestow upon you the advantages of death. You shall continue tolive the thing that you are. "

"What!" I cried, remembering the Lalugwumps and Gnarmag-Zote, "is itthought in Ghargaroo that death is an advantage, a blessing?"

"Our Sacred Books, " he said, "are full of texts affirming the vanity oflife. "

"Then, " I said, "I infer that the death penalty is unknown to your laws!"

"We have the life penalty instead. Convicted criminals are not onlyenriched, as already explained, but by medical attendance kept alive aslong as possible. On the contrary, the very righteous, who have beenrewarded with poverty, are permitted to die whenever it pleases them. 

"Do not the Sacred Books of your country teach the vanity of life, theblessedness of poverty and the wickedness of wealth?"

"They do, O Most Illustrious, they do. "

"And your countrymen believe?"

"Surely--none but the foolish and depraved entertain a doubt. "

"Then I waste my breath in expounding laws and customs already known toyou. You have, of course, the same. "

At this I averted my face and blushed so furiously that the walls of thecave were illuminated with a wavering crimson like the light of a greatconflagration! Thinking that the capital city was ablaze, Juptka-Getch ranfrom the cave's mouth, crying, "Fire, fire!" and I saw him no more. 

AN EXECUTION IN BATRUGIA

My next voyage was not so prosperous. By violent storms lasting sevenweeks, during which we saw neither the sun nor the stars, our ship wasdriven so far out of its course that the captain had no knowledge of wherewe were. At the end of that period we were blown ashore and wrecked on acoast so wild and desolate that I had never seen anything so terrifying. Through a manifest interposition of Divine Providence I was spared, thoughall my companions perished miserably in the waves that had crushed theship among the rocks. 

As soon as I was sufficiently recovered from my fatigue and bruises, andhad rendered thanks to merciful Heaven for my deliverance, I set out forthe interior of the country, taking with me a cutlas for protectionagainst wild beasts and a bag of sea-biscuit for sustenance. I walkedvigorously, for the weather was then cool and pleasant, and after I hadgone a few miles from the inhospitable coast I found the country open andlevel. The earth was covered with a thick growth of crimson grass, and atwide intervals were groups of trees. These were very tall, their tops inmany instances invisible in a kind of golden mist, or haze, which provedto be, not a transient phenomenon, but a permanent one, for never in thatcountry has the sun been seen, nor is there any night. The haze seems tobe self-luminous, giving a soft, yellow light, so diffused that shadowsare unknown. The land is abundantly supplied with pools and rivulets, whose water is of a beautiful orange color and has a pleasing perfumesomewhat like attar of rose. I observed all this without surprise and withlittle apprehension, and went forward, feeling that anything, howevernovel and mysterious, was better than the familiar terrors of the sea andthe coast. 

After traveling a long time, though how long I had not the means todetermine, I arrived at the city of Momgamwo, the capital of the kingdomof Batrugia, on the mainland of the Hidden Continent, where it is alwaystwelve o'clock. 

The Batrugians are of gigantic stature, but mild and friendly disposition. They offered me no violence, seeming rather amused by my small stature. One of them, who appeared to be a person of note and consequence, took meto his house (their houses are but a single story in height and built ofbrass blocks), set food before me, and by signs manifested the utmost goodwill. A long time afterward, when I had learned the language of thecountry, he explained that he had recognized me as an American pigmy, arace of which he had some little knowledge through a letter from abrother, who had been in my country. He showed me the letter, of which thechief part is here presented in translation:

"You ask me, my dear Tgnagogu, to relate my adventures among theAmericans, as they call themselves. My adventures were very brief, lastingaltogether not more than three _gumkas_, and most of the time was passedin taking measures for my own safety. 

"My skyship, which had been driven for six moons before an irresistiblegale, passed over a great city just at daylight one morning, and ratherthan continue the voyage with a lost reckoning I demanded that I bepermitted to disembark. My wish was respected, and my companions soaredaway without me. Before night I had escaped from the city, by what meansyou know, and with my remarkable experiences in returning to civilizationall Batrugia is familiar. The description of the strange city I havereserved for you, by whom only could I hope to be believed. Nyork, as itsinhabitants call it, is a city of inconceivable extent--not less, I shouldjudge, than seven square _glepkeps_! Of the number of its inhabitants Ican only say that they are as the sands of the desert. They wearclothing--of a hideous kind, 'tis true--speak an apparently copious thoughharsh language, and seem to have a certain limited intelligence. They arepuny in stature, the tallest of them being hardly higher than my breast. 

"Nevertheless, Nyork is a city of giants. The magnitude of all thingsartificial there is astounding! My dear Tgnagogu, words can give you noconception of it. Many of the buildings, I assure you, are as many asfifty _sprugas_ in height, and shelter five thousand persons each. Andthese stupendous structures are so crowded together that to the spectatorin the narrow streets below they seem utterly devoid of design andsymmetry--mere monstrous aggregations of brick, stone and metal--mountainsof masonry, cliffs and crags of architecture hanging in the sky!

"A city of giants inhabited by pigmies! For you must know, oh friend of myliver, that the rearing of these mighty structures could not be the workof the puny folk that swarm in ceaseless activity about their bases. Thesefierce little savages invaded the island in numbers so overwhelming thatthe giant builders had to flee before them. Some escaped across greatbridges which, with the help of their gods, they had suspended in the airfrom bank to bank of a wide river parting the island from the mainland, but many could do no better than mount some of the buildings that they hadreared, and there, in these inaccessible altitudes, they dwell to-day, still piling stone upon stone. Whether they do this in obedience to theirinstinct as builders, or in hope to escape by way of the heavens, I hadnot the means to learn, being ignorant of the pigmy tongue and incontinual fear of the crowds that followed me. 

"You can see the giants toiling away up there in the sky, laying in placethe enormous beams and stones which none but they could handle. They lookno bigger than beetles, but you know that they are many _sprugas_ instature, and you shudder to think what would ensue if one should lose hisfooting. Fancy that great bulk whirling down to earth from so dizzy analtitude!. .. 

"May birds ever sing above your grave. 

"JOQUOLK WAK MGAPY. "

By my new friend, Tgnagogu, I was presented to the King, a mostenlightened monarch, who not only reigned over, but ruled absolutely, themost highly civilized people in the world. He received me with gracioushospitality, quartered me in the palace of his Prime Minister, gave me forwives the three daughters of his Lord Chamberlain, and provided me with anample income from the public revenues. Within a year I had made a fairacquaintance with the Batrugian language, and was appointed royalinterpreter, with a princely salary, although no one speaking any othertongue, myself and two native professors of rhetoric excepted, had everbeen seen in the kingdom. 

One day I heard a great tumult in the street, and going to a window saw, in a public square opposite, a crowd of persons surrounding some highofficials who were engaged in cutting off a man's head. Just before theexecutioner delivered the fatal stroke, the victim was asked if he hadanything to say. He explained with earnestness that the deed for which hewas about to suffer had been inspired and commanded by a brass-headed cowand four bushels of nightingales' eggs!

"Hold! hold!" I shouted in Batrugian, leaping from the window and forcinga way through the throng; "the man is obviously insane!"

"Friend, " said a man in a long blue robe, gently restraining me, "it isnot proper for you to interrupt these high proceedings with irrelevantremarks. The luckless gentleman who, in accordance with my will as LordChief Justice, has just had the happiness to part with his head was soinconsiderate as to take the life of a fellow-subject. "

"But he was insane, " I persisted, "clearly and indisputably _ptig nupyuggydug_!"--a phrase imperfectly translatable, meaning, as near as may be, having flitter-mice in his campanile. 

"Am I to infer, " said the Lord Chief Justice, "that in your own honorablecountry a person accused of murder is permitted to plead insanity as areason why he should not be put to death?"

"Yes, illustrious one, " I replied, respectfully, "we regard that as a gooddefense. "

"Well, " said he slowly, but with extreme emphasis, "I'll be _Gookswottled_!"

("_Gook_, " I may explain, is the name of the Batrugian chief deity; butfor the verb "to swottle" the English tongue has no equivalent. It seemsto signify the deepest disapproval, and by a promise to be "_swottled_" aBatrugian denotes acute astonishment. )

"Surely, " I said, "so wise and learned a person as you cannot think itjust to punish with death one who does not know right from wrong. Thegentleman who has just now renounced his future believed himself to havebeen commanded to do what he did by a brass-headed cow and four bushels ofnightingales' eggs--powers to which he acknowledged a spiritualallegiance. To have disobeyed would have been, from his point of view, aninfraction of a law higher than that of man. "

"Honorable but erring stranger, " replied the famous jurist, "if wepermitted the prisoner in a murder trial to urge such a consideration asthat--if our laws recognized any other justification than that he believedhimself in peril of immediate death or great bodily injury--nearly allassassins would make some such defense. They would plead insanity of somekind and degree, and it would be almost impossible to establish theirguilt. Murder trials would be expensive and almost interminable, defiledwith perjury and sentiment. Juries would be deluded and confused, justicebaffled, and red-handed man-killers turned loose to repeat their crimesand laugh at the law. Even as the law is, in a population of only onehundred million we have had no fewer than three homicides in less thantwenty years! With such statutes and customs as yours we should have hadat least twice as many. Believe me, I know my people; they have not theAmerican respect for human life. "

As blushing is deemed in Batrugia a sign of pride, I turned my back uponthe speaker--an act which, fortunately, signifies a desire to hear more. 

"Law, " he continued, "is for the good of the greatest number. Execution ofan actual lunatic now and then is not an evil to the community, nor, whenrightly considered, to the lunatic himself. He is better off when dead, and society is profited by his removal. We are spared the cost of exposingimposture, the humiliation of acquitting the guilty, the peril of theirfreedom, the contagion of their evil example. "

"In my country, " I said, "we have a saying to the effect that it is betterthat ninety-nine guilty escape than that one innocent be punished. "

"It is better, " said he, "for the ninety-nine guilty, but distinctly worsefor everybody else. Sir, " he concluded with chilling austerity, "I inferfrom their proverb that your countrymen are the most offensive blockheadsin existence. "

By way of refutation I mentioned the English, indignantly withdrew fromthe country and set sail for Gokeetle-guk, or, as we should translate thename, Trustland. 

THE JUMJUM OF GOKEETLE-GUK

Arriving at the capital of the country after many incredible adventures, Iwas promptly arrested by the police and taken before the Jumjum. He was anexceedingly affable person, and held office by appointment, "for life orfitness, " as their laws express it. With one necessary exception alloffices are appointive and the tenure of all except that is the same. ThePanjandrum, or, as we should call him, King, is elected for a term of tenyears, at the expiration of which he is shot. It is held that any man whohas been so long in high authority will have committed enough sins andblunders to deserve death, even if none can be specifically proved. 

Brought into the presence of the Jumjum, who graciously saluted me, I wasseated on a beautiful rug and told in broken English by an interpreter whohad escaped from Kansas that I was at liberty to ask any questions that Ichose. 

"Your Highness, " I said, addressing the Jumjum through the interpretingPopulist, "I fear that I do not understand; I expected, not to askquestions, but to have to answer them. I am ready to give such an accountof myself as will satisfy you that I am an honest man--neither a criminalnor a spy. "

"The gentleman seems to regard himself with a considerable interest, " saidthe Jumjum, aside to an officer of his suite--a remark which theinterpreter, with characteristic intelligence, duly repeated to me. Thenaddressing me the Jumjum said:

"Doubtless your personal character is an alluring topic, but it isrelevant to nothing in any proceedings that can be taken here. When aforeigner arrives in our capital he is brought before me to be instructedin whatever he may think it expedient for him to know of the manners, customs, laws, and so forth, of the country that he honors with hispresence. It matters nothing to us what he is, but much to him what weare. You are at liberty to inquire. "

I was for a moment overcome with emotion by so noble an example ofofficial civility and thoughtfulness, then, after a little reflection, Isaid: "May it please your Highness, I should greatly like to be informedof the origin of the name of your esteemed country. "

"Our country, " said the Jumjum, acknowledging the compliment by a movementof his ears, "is called Trustland because all its industries, trades andprofessions are conducted by great aggregations of capital known as'trusts. ' They do the entire business of the country. "

"Good God!" I exclaimed; "what a terrible state of affairs that is! I knowabout trusts. Why do your people not rise and throw off the yoke?"

"You are pleased to be unintelligible, " said the great man, with a smile. "Would you mind explaining what you mean by 'the yoke'?"

"I mean, " said I, surprised by his ignorance of metaphor, but reflectingthat possibly the figures of rhetoric were not used in that country--"Imean the oppression, the slavery under which your people groan, theirbond-age to the tyrannical trusts, entailing poverty, unrequited toil andloss of self-respect. "

"Why, as to that, " he replied, "our people are prosperous and happy. Thereis very little poverty and what there is is obviously the result of viceor improvidence. Our labor is light and all the necessaries of life, manyof the comforts and some of the luxuries are abundant and cheap. I hardlyknow what you mean by the tyranny of the trusts; they do not seem to careto be tyrannous, for each having the entire market for what it produces, its prosperity is assured and there is none of the strife and competitionwhich, as I can imagine, might breed hardness and cruelty. Moreover, weshould not let them be tyrannous. Why should we?"

"But, your Highness, suppose, for example, the trust that manufacturessafety pins should decide to double the price of its product. What is toprevent great injury to the consumer?"

"The courts. Having but one man--the responsible manager--to deal with, protective legislation and its enforcement would be a very simple matter. If there were a thousand manufacturers of safety pins, scattered all overthe country in as many jurisdictions, there would be no controlling themat all. They would cheat, not only one another but the consumers, withvirtual immunity. But there is no disposition among our trusts to do anysuch thing. Each has the whole market, as I said, and each has learned byexperience what the manager of a large business soon must learn, and whatthe manager of a small one probably would not learn and could not affordto apply if he knew it--namely, that low prices bring disproportionatelylarge sales and therefore profits. Prices in this country are never put upexcept when some kind of scarcity increases the cost of production. Besides, nearly all the consumers are a part of the trusts, the stock ofwhich is about the best kind of property for investment. "

"What!" I cried, --"do not the managers so manipulate the stock by'watering' it and otherwise as to fool and cheat the small investors?"

"We should not permit them. That would be dishonest. "

"So it is in my country, " I replied, rather tartly, for I believed hisapparent _naïveté_ assumed for my confusion, "but we are unable to preventit. "

He looked at me somewhat compassionately, I thought. "Perhaps, " he said, "not enough of you really wish to prevent it. Perhaps your peopleare--well, different from mine--not worse, you understand--justdifferent. "

I felt the blood go into my cheeks and hot words were upon my tongue'send, but I restrained them; the conditions for a quarrel were notfavorable to my side of it. When I had mastered my chagrin and resentmentI said:

"In my country when trusts are formed a great number of persons suffer, whether the general consumer does or not--many small dealers, middle men, drummers and general employees. The small dealer is driven out of thebusiness by underselling. The middle man is frequently ignored, the trustdealing directly, or nearly so, with the consumer. The drummer isdischarged because, competition having disappeared, custom must comewithout solicitation. Consolidation lets out swarms of employees of theindividual concerns consolidated, for it is nearly as easy to conduct onelarge concern as a dozen smaller ones. These people get great sympathyfrom the public and the newspapers and their case is obviously pitiable. Was it not so in this country during the transition stage, and did notthese poor gentlemen have to"--the right words would not come; I hardlyknew how to finish. "Were they not compelled to go to work?" I finallyasked, rather humbly. 

The great official was silent for several minutes. Then he spoke. 

"I am not sure that I understand you about our transition state. So far asour history goes matters with us have always been as they are to-day. Tosuppose them to have been otherwise would be to impugn the common sense ofour ancestors. Nor do I quite know what you mean by 'small dealers, ''middle men, ' 'drummers, ' and so forth. "

He paused and fell into meditation, when suddenly his face was suffusedwith the light of a happy thought. It so elated him that he sprang to hisfeet and with his staff of office broke the heads of his Chief Admonisherof the Inimical and his Second Assistant Audible Sycophant. Then he said:

"I think I comprehend. Some eighty-five years ago, soon after my inductioninto office, there came to the court of the Panjandrum a man of this citywho had been cast upon the island of Chicago (which I believe belongs tothe American archipelago) and had passed many years there in business withthe natives. Having learned all their customs and business methods hereturned to his own country and laid before the Panjandrum a comprehensivescheme of commercial reform. He and his scheme were referred to me, thePanjandrum being graciously pleased to be unable to make head or tail ofit. I may best explain it in its application to a single industry--themanufacture and sale of gootles. "

"What is a gootle?" I asked. 

"A metal weight for attachment to the tail of a donkey to keep him frombraying, " was the answer. "It is known in this country that a donkeycannot utter a note unless he can lift his tail. Then, as now, gootleswere made by a single concern having a great capital invested and animmense plant, and employing an army of workmen. It dealt, as it doesto-day, directly with consumers. Afflicted with a sonant donkey a manwould write to the trust and receive his gootle by return mail, or gopersonally to the factory and carry his purchase home on hisshoulder--according to where he lived. The reformer said this wasprimitive, crude and injurious to the interests of the public andespecially the poor. He proposed that the members of the gootle trustdivide their capital and each member go into the business of makinggootles for himself--I do not mean for his personal use--in differentparts of the country. But none of them was to sell to consumers, but toother men, who would sell in quantity to still other men, who would sellsingle gootles for domestic use. Each manufacturer would of course requirea full complement of officers, clerks and so forth, as would the othermen--everybody but the consumer--and each would have to support them andmake a profit himself. Competition would be so sharp that solicitors wouldhave to be employed to make sales; and they too must have a living out ofthe business. Honored stranger, am I right in my inference that theproposed system has something in common with the one which obtains in yourown happy, enlightened and prosperous country, and which you wouldapprove?"

I did not care to reply. 

"Of course, " the Jumjum continued, "all this would greatly have enhancedthe cost of gootles, thereby lessening the sales, thereby reducing theoutput, thereby throwing a number of workmen out of employment. You seethis, do you not, O guest of my country?"

"Pray tell me, " I said, "what became of the reformer who proposed all thischange?"

"All this change? Why, sir, the one-thousandth part is not told: heproposed that his system should be general: not only in the gootle trust, but every trust in the country was to be broken up in the same way! When Ihad him before me, and had stated my objections to the plan, I asked himwhat were its advantages. 

"'Sir, ' he replied, 'I speak for millions of gentlemen in uncongenialemployments, mostly manual and fatiguing. This would give them the kind ofactivity that they would like--such as their class enjoys in othercountries where my system is in full flower, and where it is deemed sosacred that any proposal for its abolition or simplification by trusts isregarded with horror, especially by the working men. '

"Having reported to the Panjandrum (whose vermiform appendix may goodangels have in charge) and received his orders, I called the reformerbefore me and addressed him thus:

"'Illustrious economist, I have the honor to inform you that in the royaljudgment your proposal is the most absurd, impudent and audacious evermade; that the system which you propose to set up is revolutionary andmischievous beyond the dreams of treason; that only in a nation of roguesand idiots could it have a moment's toleration. '

"He was about to reply, but cutting his throat to intimate that thehearing was at an end, I withdrew from the Hall of Audience, as undersimilar circumstances I am about to do now. "

I withdrew first by way of a window, and after a terrible journey of sixyears in the Dolorous Mountains and on the Desert of Despair came to thewestern coast. Here I built a ship and after a long voyage landed on oneof the islands constituting the Kingdom of Tortirra. 

THE KINGDOM OF TORTIRRA

Of this unknown country and its inhabitants I have written a large volumewhich nothing but the obstinacy of publishers has kept from the world, andwhich I trust will yet see the light. Naturally, I do not wish to publishat this time anything that will sate public curiosity, and this briefsketch will consist of such parts only of the work as I think can best bepresented in advance without abating interest in what is to follow whenHeaven shall have put it into the hearts of publishers to square theirconduct with their interests. I must, however, frankly confess that mychoice has been partly determined by other considerations. I offer herethose parts of my narrative which I conceive to be the leastcredible--those which deal with the most monstrous and astounding folliesof a strange people. Their ceremony of marriage by decapitation; theircustom of facing to the rear when riding on horseback; their practice ofwalking on their hands in all ceremonial processions; their selection ofthe blind for military command; their pig-worship--these and many othercomparatively natural particulars of their religious, political, intellectual and social life I reserve for treatment in the great work forwhich I shall soon ask public favor and acceptance. 

In Tortirran politics, as in Tamtonian, the population is always dividedinto two, and sometimes three or four "parties, " each having a "policy"and each conscientiously believing the policy of the other, or others, erroneous and destructive. In so far as these various and varying policiescan be seen to have any relation whatever to practical affairs they can beseen also to be the result of purely selfish considerations. Theself-deluded people flatter themselves that their elections are contestsof principles, whereas they are only struggles of interests. They are veryfond of the word _slagthrit_, "principle"; and when they believethemselves acting from some high moral motive they are capable of almostany monstrous injustice or stupid folly. This insane devotion to principleis craftily fostered by their political leaders who invent captivatingphrases intended to confirm them in it; and these deluding aphorisms arediligently repeated until all the people have them in memory, with noknowledge of the fallacies which they conceal. One of these phrases is"Principles, not men. " In the last analysis this is seen to mean that itis better to be governed by scoundrels professing one set of principlesthan by good men holding another. That a scoundrel will govern badly, regardless of the principles which he is supposed somehow to "represent, "is a truth which, however obvious to our own enlightened intelligence, hasnever penetrated the dark understandings of the Tortirrans. It is chieflythrough the dominance of the heresy fostered by this popular phrase thatthe political leaders are able to put base men into office to serve theirown nefarious ends. 

I have called the political contests of Tortirra struggles of interests. In nothing is this more clear (to the looker-on at the game) than in theendless disputes concerning restrictions on commerce. It must beunderstood that lying many leagues to the southeast of Tortirra are othergroups of islands, also wholly unknown to people of our race. They areknown by the general name of _Gropilla-Stron_ (a term signifying "the Landof the Day-dawn"), though it is impossible to ascertain why, and areinhabited by a powerful and hardy race, many of whom I have met in thecapital of Tanga. The Stronagu, as they are called, are bold navigatorsand traders, their proas making long and hazardous voyages in all theadjacent seas to exchange commodities with other tribes. For many yearsthey were welcomed in Tortirra with great hospitality and their goodseagerly purchased. They took back with them all manner of Tortirranproducts and nobody thought of questioning the mutual advantages of theexchange. But early in the present century a powerful Tortirran demagoguenamed Pragam began to persuade the people that commerce was piracy--thattrue prosperity consisted in consumption of domestic products andabstention from foreign. This extraordinary heresy soon gathered such headthat Pragam was appointed Regent and invested with almost dictatorialpowers. He at once distributed nearly the whole army among the seaportcities, and whenever a Stronagu trading proa attempted to land, thesoldiery, assisted by the populace, rushed down to the beach, and with aterrible din of gongs and an insupportable discharge of stink-pots--theonly offensive weapon known to Tortirran warfare--drove the laden vesselsto sea, or if they persisted in anchoring destroyed them and smotheredtheir crews in mud. The Tortirrans themselves not being a sea-goingpeople, all communication between them and the rest of their little worldsoon ceased. But with it ceased the prosperity of Tortirra. Deprived of amarket for their surplus products and compelled to forego the comforts andluxuries which they had obtained from abroad, the people began to murmurat the effect of their own folly. A reaction set in, a powerful oppositionto Pragam and his policy was organized, and he was driven from power. 

But the noxious tree that Pragam had planted in the fair garden of hiscountry's prosperity had struck root too deeply to be altogethereradicated. It threw up shoots everywhere, and no sooner was one cut downthan from roots underrunning the whole domain of political thought otherssprang up with a vigorous and baleful growth. While the dictum that tradeis piracy no longer commands universal acceptance, a majority of thepopulace still hold a modified form of it, and that "importation is theft"is to-day a cardinal political "principle" of a vast body of Tortirra'speople. The chief expounders and protagonists of this doctrine are alldirectly or indirectly engaged in making or growing such articles as wereformerly got by exchange with the Stronagu traders. The articles aregenerally inferior in quality, but consumers, not having the benefit offoreign competition, are compelled to pay extortionate prices for them, thus maintaining the unscrupulous producers in needless industries and apernicious existence. But these active and intelligent rogues are toopowerful to be driven out. They persuade their followers, among whom aremany ignorant consumers, that this vestigial remnant of the old Pragampolicy is all that keeps the nation from being desolated by small-pox andan epidemic of broken legs. It is impossible within these limits to give afull history of the strange delusion whose origin I have related. It hasundergone many modifications and changes, as it is the nature of error todo, but the present situation is about this. The trading proas of theStronagu are permitted to enter certain ports, but when one arrives shemust anchor at a little distance from shore. Here she is boarded by anofficer of the government, who ascertains the thickness of her keel, thenumber of souls on board and the amount and character of the merchandiseshe brings. From these data--the last being the main factor in theproblem--the officer computes her unworthiness and adjudges a suitablepenalty. The next day a scow manned by a certain number of soldiers pushesout and anchors within easy throw of her, and there is a frightful beatingof gongs. When this has reached its lawful limit as to time it is hushedand the soldiers throw a stated number of stink-pots on board theoffending craft. These, exploding as they strike, stifle the captain andcrew with an intolerable odor. In the case of a large proa having a cargoof such commodities as the Tortirrans particularly need, this bombardmentis continued for hours. At its conclusion the vessel is permitted to landand discharge her cargo without further molestation. Under these hardconditions importers find it impossible to do much business, theexorbitant wages demanded by seamen consuming most of the profit. Norestrictions are now placed on the export trade, and vessels arrivingempty are subjected to no penalties; but the Stronagu having othermarkets, in which they can sell as well as buy, cannot afford to go emptyhanded to Tortirra. 

It will be obvious to the reader that in all this no question of"principle" is involved. A well-informed Tortirran's mental attitude withregard to the matter may be calculated with unfailing accuracy from aknowledge of his interests. If he produces anything which his countrymenwant, and which in the absence of all restriction they could get morecheaply from the Stronagu than they can from him, he is in politics a_Gakphew_, or "Stinkpotter"; if not he is what that party derisively callsa _Shokerbom_, which signifies "Righteous Man"--for there is nothing whichthe Gakphews hold in so holy detestation as righteousness. 

Nominally, Tortirra is an hereditary monarchy; virtually it is ademocracy, for under a peculiar law of succession there is seldom anoccupant of the throne, and all public affairs are conducted by a SupremeLegislature sitting at Felduchia, the capital of Tanga, to which body eachisland of the archipelago, twenty-nine in number, elects representativesin proportion to its population, the total membership being nineteenhundred and seventeen. Each island has a Subordinate Council for themanagement of local affairs and a Head Chief charged with execution of thelaws. There is also a Great Court at Felduchia, whose function it is tointerpret the general laws of the Kingdom, passed by the Supreme Council, and a Minor Great Court at the capital of each island, with correspondingduties and powers. These powers are very loosely and vaguely defined, andare the subject of endless controversy everywhere, and nowhere more thanin the courts themselves--such is the multiplicity of laws and so many arethe contradictory decisions upon them, every decision constituting what iscalled a _lantrag_, or, as we might say, "precedent. " The peculiarity of a_lantrag_, or previous decision, is that it is, or is not, binding, at thewill of the honorable judge making a later one on a similar point. If hewishes to decide in the same way he quotes the previous decision with allthe gravity that he would give to an exposition of the law itself; if not, he either ignores it altogether, shows that it is not applicable to thecase under consideration (which, as the circumstances are never exactlythe same, he can always do), or substitutes a contradictory _lantrag_ andfortifies himself with that. There is a precedent for any decision that ajudge may wish to make, but sometimes he is too indolent to search it outand cite it. Frequently, when the letter and intent of the law under whichan action is brought are plainly hostile to the decision which it pleaseshim to render, the judge finds it easier to look up an older law, withwhich it is compatible, and which the later one, he says, does not repeal, and to base his decision on that; and there is a law for everything, justas there is a precedent. Failing to find, or not caring to look for, either precedent or statute to sustain him, he can readily show that anyother decision than the one he has in will would be _tokoli impelly_; thatis to say, contrary to public morals, and this, too, is considered alegitimate consideration, though on another occasion he may say, withpublic assent and approval, that it is his duty, not to make the lawconform to justice, but to expound and enforce it as he finds it. Inshort, such is the confusion of the law and the public conscience that thecourts of Tortirra do whatever they please, subject only to overruling byhigher courts in the exercise of _their_ pleasure; for great as is thenumber of minor and major tribunals, a case originating in the lowest isnever really settled until it has gone through all the intermediate onesand been passed upon by the highest, to which it might just as well havebeen submitted at first. The evils of this astonishing system could not beeven baldly catalogued in a lifetime. They are infinite in number andprodigious in magnitude. To the trained intelligence of the Americanobserver it is incomprehensible how any, even the most barbarous, nationcan endure them. 

An important function of the Great Court and the Minor Great Court ispassing upon the validity of all laws enacted by the Supreme Council andthe Subordinate Councils, respectively. The nation as a whole, as well aseach separate island, has a fundamental law called the _Trogodal_, or, aswe should say, the Constitution; and no law whatever that may be passed bythe Council is final and determinate until the appropriate court hasdeclared that it conforms to the Trogodal. Nevertheless every law is putin force the moment it is perfected and before it is submitted to thecourt. Indeed, not one in a thousand ever is submitted at all, thatdepending upon the possibility of some individual objecting to its actionupon his personal interests, which few, indeed, can afford to do. It notinfrequently occurs that some law which has for years been rigorouslyenforced, even by fines and imprisonment, and to which the wholecommercial and social life of the nation has adjusted itself with all itsvast property interests, is brought before the tribunal having finaljurisdiction in the matter and coolly declared no law at all. Thepernicious effect may be more easily imagined than related, but those whoby loyal obedience to the statute all those years have been injured inproperty, those who are ruined by its erasure and those who may havesuffered the severest penalties for its violation are alike withoutredress. It seems not to have occurred to the Tortirrans to require thecourt to inspect the law and determine its validity before it is put inforce. It is, indeed, the traditional practice of these strange tribunals, when a case is forced upon them, to decide, not as many points of law asthey can, but as few as they may; and this dishonest inaction is not onlytolerated but commended as the highest wisdom. The consequence is thatonly those who make a profession of the law and live by it and find theiraccount in having it as little understood by others as is possible canknow which acts and parts of acts are in force and which are not. Thehigher courts, too, have arrogated to themselves the power of declaringunconstitutional even parts of the Constitution, frequently annulling mostimportant provisions of the very instrument creating them!

A popular folly in Tortirra is the selection of representatives in theCouncils from among that class of men who live by the law, whose soleincome is derived from its uncertainties and perplexities. Obviously, itis to the interest of these men to make laws which shall be uncertain andperplexing--to confuse and darken legislation as much as they can. Yet innearly all the Councils these men are the most influential and activeelement, and it is not uncommon to find them in a numerical majority. Itis evident that the only check upon their ill-doing lies in the certaintyof their disagreement as to the particular kind of confusion which theymay think it expedient to create. Some will wish to accomplish theircommon object by one kind of verbal ambiguity, some by another; some bylaws clearly enough (to them) unconstitutional, others by contradictorystatutes, or statutes secretly repealing wholesome ones already existing. A clear, simple and just code would deprive them of their means oflivelihood and compel them to seek some honest employment. 

So great are the uncertainties of the law in Tortirra that an eminentjudge once confessed to me that it was his conscientious belief that ifall cases were decided by the impartial arbitrament of the _do-tusis_ (aprocess similar to our "throw of the dice") substantial justice would bedone far more frequently than under the present system; and there isreason to believe that in many instances cases at law are so decided--butonly at the close of tedious and costly trials which have impoverished thelitigants and correspondingly enriched the lawyers. 

Of the interminable train of shames and brutalities entailed by thispernicious system, I shall mention here only a single one--the sentencingand punishment of an accused person in the midst of the proceedingsagainst him, and while his guilt is not finally and definitivelyestablished. It frequently occurs that a man convicted of crime in one ofthe lower courts is at once hurried off to prison while he has still theright of appeal to a higher tribunal, and while that appeal is pending. After months and sometimes years of punishment his case is reached in theappellate court, his appeal found valid and a new trial granted, resultingin his acquittal. He has been imprisoned for a crime of which he iseventually declared not to have been properly convicted. But he has noredress; he is simply set free to bear through all his after life thestain of dishonor and nourish an ineffectual resentment. Imagine the stormof popular indignation that would be evoked in America by an instance ofso foul injustice!

 * * * * *

In the great public square of Itsami, the capital of Tortirra, stands agolden statue of Estari-Kumpro, a famous judge of the Civil Court. [2] Thisgreat man was celebrated throughout the kingdom for the wisdom and justiceof his decisions and the virtues of his private life. So profound were theveneration in which he was held and the awe that his presence inspired, that none of the advocates in his court ever ventured to address himexcept in formal pleas: all motions, objections, and so forth, wereaddressed to the clerk and by him disposed of without dissent: the silenceof the judge, who never was heard to utter a word, was understood assanctioning the acts of his subordinate. For thirty years, promptly atsunrise, the great hall of justice was thrown open, disclosing the judgeseated on a loftly dais beneath a black canopy, partly in shadow, andquite inaccessible. At sunset all proceedings for the day terminated, everyone left the hall and the portal closed. The decisions of this augustand learned jurist were always read aloud by the clerk, and a copysupplied to the counsel on each side. They were brief, clear andremarkable, not only for their unimpeachable justice, but for theirconformity to the fundamental principles of law. Not one of them was everset aside, and during the last fifteen years of the great judge's serviceno litigant ever took an appeal, although none ever ventured before thatinfallible tribunal unless conscientiously persuaded that his cause wasjust. 

 [2] Klikat um Delu Ovwi. 

One day it happened during the progress of an important trial that a sharpshock of earthquake occurred, throwing the whole assembly into confusion. When order had been restored a cry of horror and dismay burst from themultitude--the judge's head lay flattened upon the floor, a dozen feetbelow the bench, and from the neck of the rapidly collapsing body, whichhad pitched forward upon his desk, poured a thick stream of sawdust! Forthirty years that great and good man had been represented by a stuffedmanikin. For thirty years he had not entered his own court, nor heard aword of evidence or argument. At the moment of the accident to hissimulacrum he was in his library at his home, writing his decision of thecase on trial, and was killed by a falling chandelier. It was afterwardlearned that his clerk, twenty-five years dead, had all the time beenpersonated by a twin brother, who was an idiot from birth and knew no law. 

HITHER

Listening to the history of the golden statue in the great square, asrelated by a Tortirran storyteller, I fell asleep. On waking I foundmyself lying in a cot-bed amidst unfamiliar surroundings. A bandage wasfastened obliquely about my head, covering my left eye, in which was adull throbbing pain. Seeing an attendant near by I beckoned him to mybedside and asked: "Where am I?"

"Hospital, " he replied, tersely but not unkindly. He added: "You have abad eye. " "Yes, " I said, "I always had; but I could name more than oneTortirran who has a bad heart. "

"What is a Tortirran?" he asked. 

FOR THE AKHOOND

FOR THE AHKOOND

In the year 4591 I accepted from his gracious Majesty the Ahkoond ofCitrusia a commission to explore the unknown region lying to the eastwardof the Ultimate Hills, the range which that learned archæologist, SimeonTucker, affirms to be identical with the "Rocky Mountains" of theancients. For this proof of his Majesty's favor I was indebted, doubtless, to a certain distinction that I had been fortunate enough to acquire byexplorations in the heart of Darkest Europe. His Majesty kindly offered toraise and equip a large expeditionary force to accompany me, and I wasgiven the widest discretion in the matter of outfit; I could draw upon theroyal treasury for any sum that I might require, and upon the royaluniversity for all the scientific apparatus and assistance necessary to mypurpose. Declining these encumbrances, I took my electric rifle and aportable waterproof case containing a few simple instruments and writingmaterials and set out. Among the instruments was, of course, an aerialisochronophone which I set by the one in the Ahkoond's private dining-roomat the palace. His Majesty invariably dined alone at 18 o'clock, and satat table six hours: it was my intention to send him all my reports at thehour of 23, just as dessert would be served, and he would be in a properframe of mind to appreciate my discoveries and my services to the crown. 

At 9 o'clock on the 13th of Meijh I left Sanf Rachisco and after a tediousjourney of nearly fifty minutes arrived at Bolosson, the eastern terminusof the magnetic tube, on the summit of the Ultimate Hills. According toTucker this was anciently a station on the Central Peaceful Railway, andwas called "German, " in honor of an illustrious dancing master. Prof. Nupper, however, says it was the ancient Nevraska, the capital of Kikago, and geographers generally have accepted that view. 

Finding nothing at Bolosson to interest me except a fine view of thevolcano Carlema, then in active eruption, I shouldered my electric rifleand with my case of instruments strapped upon my back plunged at once intothe wilderness, down the eastern slope. As I descended the character ofthe vegetation altered. The pines of the higher altitudes gave place tooaks, these to ash, beech and maple. To these succeeded the tamarack andsuch trees as affect a moist and marshy habitat; and finally, when forfour months I had been steadily descending, I found myself in a primevalflora consisting mainly of giant ferns, some of them as much as twenty_surindas_ in diameter. They grew upon the margins of vast stagnant lakeswhich I was compelled to navigate by means of rude rafts made from theirtrunks lashed together with vines. 

In the fauna of the region that I had traversed I had noted changescorresponding to those in the flora. On the upper slope there was nothingbut the mountain sheep, but I passed successively through the habitats ofthe bear, the deer and the horse. This last mentioned creature, which ournaturalists have believed long extinct, and which Dorbley declares ourancestors domesticated, I found in vast numbers on high table landscovered with grass upon which it feeds. The animal answers the currentdescription of the horse very nearly, but all that I saw were destitute ofthe horns, and none had the characteristic forked tail. This member, onthe contrary, is a tassel of straight wiry hair, reaching nearly to theground--a surprising sight. Lower still I came upon the mastodon, thelion, the tiger, hippopotamus and alligator, all differing very littlefrom those infesting Central Europe, as described in my "Travels in theForgotten Continent. "

In the lake region where I now found myself, the waters abounded withichthyosauri, and along the margins the iguanodon dragged his obscene bulkin indolent immunity. Great flocks of pterodactyls, their bodies as largeas those of oxen and their necks enormously long, clamored and fought inthe air, the broad membranes of their wings making a singular musicalhumming, unlike anything that I had ever heard. Between them and theichthyosauri there was incessant battle, and I was constantly reminded ofthe ancient poet's splendid and original comparison of man to

 dragons of the prime That tare each other in their slime. 

When brought down with my electric rifle and properly roasted, thepterodactyl proved very good eating, particularly the pads of the toes. 

In urging my raft along the shore line of one of the stagnant lagoons oneday I was surprised to find a broad rock jutting out from the shore, itsupper surface some ten _coprets_ above the water. Disembarking, I ascendedit, and on examination recognized it as the remnant of an immense mountainwhich at one time must have been 5, 000 _coprets_ in height and doubtlessthe dominating peak of a long range. From the striations all over it Idiscovered that it had been worn away to its present trivial size byglacial action. Opening my case of instruments, I took out mypetrochronologue and applied it to the worn and scratched surface of therock. The indicator at once pointed to K 59 xpc œ! At this astonishingresult I was nearly overcome by excitement: the last erosions of theice-masses upon this vestige of a stupendous mountain range which they hadworn away, had been made as recently as the year 1945! Hastily applying mynymograph, I found that the name of this particular mountain at the timewhen it began to be enveloped in the mass of ice moving down upon it fromthe north, was "Pike's Peak. " Other observations with other instrumentsshowed that at that time the country circumjacent to it had been inhabitedby a partly civilized race of people known as Galoots, the name of theircapital city being Denver. 

That evening at the hour of 23 I set up my aerial isochronophone[3] andreported to his gracious Majesty the Ahkoond as follows:

 [3] This satire was published in the San Francisco _Examiner_ many years before the invention of wireless telegraphy; so I retain my own name for the instrument. --A. B. 

"_Sire:_ I have the honor to report that I have made a startlingdiscovery. The primeval region into which I have penetrated, as I informedyou yesterday--the ichthyosaurus belt--was peopled by tribes considerablyadvanced in some of the arts almost within historic times: in 1920. Theywere exterminated by a glacial period not exceeding one hundred andtwenty-five years in duration. Your Majesty can conceive the magnitude andviolence of the natural forces which overwhelmed their country with movingsheets of ice not less that 5, 000 _coprets_ in thickness, grinding downevery eminence, destroying (of course) all animal and vegetable life andleaving the region a fathomless bog of detritus. Out of this vast sea ofmud Nature has had to evolve another creation, beginning _de novo_, withher lowest forms. It has long been known, your Majesty, that the regioneast of the Ultimate Hills, betwen them and the Wintry Sea, was once theseat of an ancient civilization, some scraps and shreds of whose history, arts and literature have been wafted to us across the gulf of time; but itwas reserved for your gracious Majesty, through me, your humble andunworthy instrument, to ascertain the astonishing fact that these were apre-glacial people--that between them and us stands, as it were, a wall ofimpenetrable ice. That all local records of this unfortunate race haveperished your Majesty needs not to be told: we can supplement our presentimperfect knowledge of them by instrumental observation only. "

To this message I received the following extraordinary reply:

"All right--another bottle of--ice goes: push on--this cheese istoo--spare no effort to--hand me those nuts--learn all you can--damn you!"

His most gracious Majesty was being served with dessert, and served badly. 

I now resolved to go directly north toward the source of the ice-flow andinvestigate its cause, but examining my barometer found that I was morethan 8, 000 _coprets_ below the sea-level; the moving ice had not onlyground down the face of the country, planing off the eminences and fillingthe depressions, but its enormous weight had caused the earth's crust tosag, and with the lessening of the weight from evaporation it had notrecovered. 

I had no desire to continue in this depression, as I should in goingnorth, for I should find nothing but lakes, marshes and ferneries, infested with the same primitive and monstrous forms of life. So Icontinued my course eastward and soon had the satisfaction to find myselfmeeting the sluggish current of such streams as I encountered in my way. By vigorous use of the new double-distance telepode, which enables thewearer to step eighty _surindas_ instead of forty, as with the instrumentin popular use, I was soon again at a considerable elevation above thesea-level and nearly 200 _prastams_ from "Pike's Peak. " A little fartheralong the water courses began to flow to the eastward. The flora and faunahad again altered in character, and now began to grow sparse; the soil wasthin and arid, and in a week I found myself in a region absolutelydestitute of organic life and without a vestige of soil. All was barrenrock. The surface for hundreds of _prastams_, as I continued my advance, was nearly level, with a slight dip to the eastward. The rock wassingularly striated, the scratches arranged concentrically and inhelicoidal curves. This circumstance puzzled me and I resolved to takesome more instrumental observations, bitterly regretting my improvidencein not availing myself of the Ahkoond's permission to bring with me suchapparatus and assistants as would have given me knowledge vastly morecopious and accurate than I could acquire with my simple pocketappliances. 

I need not here go into the details of my observations with suchinstruments as I had, nor into the calculations of which theseobservations were the basic data. Suffice it that after two months' laborI reported the results to his Majesty in Sanf Rachisco in the wordsfollowing:

"_Sire:_ It is my high privilege to apprise you of my arrival on thewestern slope of a mighty depression running through the center of thecontinent north and south, formerly known as the Mississippi Valley. Itwas once the seat of a thriving and prosperous population known as thePukes, but is now a vast expanse of bare rock, from which every particleof soil and everything movable, including people, animals and vegetation, have been lifted by terrific cyclones and scattered afar, falling in otherlands and at sea in the form of what was called meteoric dust! I find thatthese terrible phenomena began to occur about the year 1860, and lasted, with increasing frequency and power, through a century, culminating aboutthe middle of that glacial period which saw the extinction of the Galootsand their neighboring tribes. There was, of course, a close connectionbetween the two malefic phenomena, both, doubtless, being due to the samecause, which I have been unable to trace. A cyclone, I venture to remindyour gracious Majesty, is a mighty whirlwind, accompanied by the moststartling meteorological phenomena, such as electrical disturbances, floods of falling water, darkness and so forth. It moves with great speed, sucking up everything and reducing it to powder. In many days' journey Ihave not found a square _copret_ of the country that did not suffer avisitation. If any human being escaped he must speedily have perished fromstarvation. For some twenty centuries the Pukes have been an extinct race, and their country a desolation in which no living thing can dwell, unless, like me, it is supplied with Dr. Blobob's Condensed Life-pills. "

The Ahkoond replied that he was pleased to feel the most poignant grieffor the fate of the unfortunate Pukes, and if I should by chance find theancient king of the country I was to do my best to revive him with thepatent resuscitator and present him the assurances of his Majesty'sdistinguished consideration; but as the politoscope showed that the nationhad been a republic I gave myself no trouble in the matter. 

My next report was made six months later and was in substance this:

"_Sire:_ I address your Majesty from a point 430 _coprets_ vertically abovethe site of the famous ancient city of Buffalo, once the capital of apowerful nation called the Smugwumps. I can approach no nearer because ofthe hardness of the snow, which is very firmly packed. For hundreds of_prastams_ in every direction, and for thousands to the north and west, theland is covered with this substance, which, as your Majesty is doubtlessaware, is extremely cold to the touch, but by application of sufficientheat can be turned into water. It falls from the heavens, and is believedby the learned among your Majesty's subjects to have a sidereal origin. 

"The Smugwumps were a hardy and intelligent race, but they entertained thevain delusion that they could subdue Nature. Their year was divided intotwo seasons--summer and winter, the former warm, the latter cold. Aboutthe beginning of the nineteenth century according to my archæthermograph, the summers began to grow shorter and hotter, the winters longer andcolder. At every point in their country, and every day in the year, whenthey had not the hottest weather ever known in that place, they had thecoldest. When they were not dying by hundreds from sunstroke they weredying by thousands from frost. But these heroic and devoted peoplestruggled on, believing that they were becoming acclimated faster than theclimate was becoming insupportable. Those called away on business wereeven afflicted with nostalgia, and with a fatal infatuation returned togrill or freeze, according to the season of their arrival. Finally therewas no summer at all, though the last flash of heat slew several millionsand set most of their cities afire, and winter reigned eternal. 

"The Smugwumps were now keenly sensible of the perils environing them, and, abandoning their homes, endeavored to reach their kindred, theCalifornians, on the western side of the continent in what is now yourMajesty's ever-blessed realm. But it was too late: the snow growing deeperand deeper day by day, besieged them in their towns and dwellings, andthey were unable to escape. The last one of them perished about the year1943, and may God have mercy on his fool soul!"

To this dispatch the Ahkoond replied that it was the royal opinion thatthe Smugwumps were served very well right. 

Some weeks later I reported thus:

"_Sire:_ The country which your Majesty's munificence is enabling yourdevoted servant to explore extends southward and southwestward fromSmugwumpia many hundreds of _prastams_, its eastern and southern bordersbeing the Wintry Sea and the Fiery Gulf, respectively. The population inancient times was composed of Whites and Blacks in about equal numbers andof about equal moral worth--at least that is the record on the dial of myethnograph when set for the twentieth century and given a southernexposure. The Whites were called Crackers and the Blacks known as Coons. 

"I find here none of the barrenness and desolation characterizing the landof the ancient Pukes, and the climate is not so rigorous and thrilling asthat of the country of the late Smugwumps. It is, indeed, rather agreeablein point of temperature, and the soil being fertile exceedingly, the wholeland is covered with a dense and rank vegetation. I have yet to find asquare _smig_ of it that is open ground, or one that is not the lair ofsome savage beast, the haunt of some venomous reptile, or the roost ofsome offensive bird. Crackers and Coons alike are long extinct, and theseare their successors. 

"Nothing could be more forbidding and unwholesome than these interminablejungles, with their horrible wealth of organic life in its mostobjectionable forms. By repeated observations with the necrohistoriographI find that the inhabitants of this country, who had always been more orless dead, were wholly extirpated contemporaneously with the disastrousevents which swept away the Galoots, the Pukes and the Smugwumps. Theagency of their effacement was an endemic disorder known as yellow fever. The ravages of this frightful disease were of frequent recurrence, everypoint of the country being a center of infection; but in some seasons itwas worse than in others. Once in every half century at first, andafterward every year[4] it broke out somewhere and swept over wide areaswith such fatal effect that there were not enough of the living to plunderthe dead; but at the first frost it would subside. During the ensuing twoor three months of immunity the stupid survivors returned to the infectedhomes from which they had fled and were ready for the next outbreak. Emigration would have saved them all, but although the Californians (overwhose happy and prosperous descendants your Majesty has the goodness toreign) invited them again and again to their beautiful land, wheresickness and death were hardly known, they would not go, and by the year1946 the last one of them, may it please your gracious Majesty, was deadand damned. "

 [4] At one time it was foolishly believed that the disease had been eradicated by slapping the mosquitoes which were thought to produce it; but a few years later it broke out with greater violence than ever before, although the mosquitoes had left the country. 

Having spoken this into the transmitter of the aerial isochronophone atthe usual hour of 23 o'clock I applied the receiver to my ear, confidentlyexpecting the customary commendation. Imagine my astonishment and dismaywhen my master's well-remembered voice was heard in utterance of the mostawful imprecations on me and my work, followed by appalling threatsagainst my life!

The Ahkoond had changed his dinner-time to five hours later and I had beenspeaking into the ears of an empty stomach!

JOHN SMITH, LIBERATOR

JOHN SMITH, LIBERATOR

(FROM A NEWSPAPER OF THE FAR FUTURE)

At the quiet little village of Smithcester, which certain archæologistshave professed to "identify" as the ancient London, will be celebratedto-day the thirtieth centennial anniversary of the birth of thisremarkable man, the foremost figure of antiquity. The recurrence of whatno more than six centuries ago was a popular _fête_ day and even now isseldom permitted to pass without recognition by those to whom libertymeans something more precious than opportunity for gain, excites apeculiar emotion. It matters little whether or no tradition has correctlyfixed the time and place of Smith's birth. That he was born; that beingborn he wrought nobly at the work that his hand found to do; that by themere force of his powerful intellect he established and perfected ourpresent benign form of government, under which civilization has attainedits highest and ripest development--these are facts beside which merequestions of chronology and geography are trivial and withoutsignificance. 

That this extraordinary man originated the Smithocratic form of governmentis, perhaps, open to intelligent doubt; possibly it had a _de facto_existence in crude and uncertain shapes as early as the time of EdwardXVII, --an existence local, unorganized and intermittent. But that hecleared it of its overlying errors and superstitions, gave it definiteform and shaped it into a coherent and practical scheme there isunquestionable evidence in fragments of ancestral literature that havecome down to us, disfigured though they are with amazingly contradictorystatements regarding his birth, parentage and manner of life before hestrode out upon the political stage as the Liberator of Mankind. It issaid that Shakspar, a poet whose works had in their day a considerablevogue, though it is difficult to say why, alludes to him as "the noblestRoman of them all, " our forefathers of the period being known as Romans orEnglishmen, indifferently. In the only authentic fragment of Shaksparextant, however, this passage is not included. 

Smith's military power is amply attested in an ancient manuscript ofundoubted authenticity which has recently been translated from theSiamese. It is an account of the water battle of Loo, by an eye-witnesswhose name, unfortunately, has not reached us. It is stated that in thisfamous engagement Smith overthrew the great Neapolitan general, whom hecaptured and conveyed in chains to the island of Chickenhurst. 

In his "Political History of Europe" the late Professor Mimble has thisluminous sentence: "With the single exception of Ecuador there was noEuropean government that the Liberator did not transform into a pureSmithocracy, and although some of them relapsed transiently into theprimitive forms, and others grew into extravagant and fanciful systemsbegotten of the intellectual activity to which he had stirred the wholeworld, yet so firmly did he establish the principle that in thethirty-second century the civilized world had become, and has remained, virtually Smithocratic. "

It may be noted here as a singular coincidence that the year which isbelieved to have seen the birth of him who founded rational governmentwitnessed the death of him who perfected literature: Martin FarquharTupper (after Smith the most noted name in history) starved to death inthe streets of London. Like that of Smith his origin is wrapped inobscurity. No fewer than seven British cities claim the honor of hisnativity. Meager indeed is our knowledge of this only British bard whoseworks have endured through thirty centuries. All that is certain is thathe was once arrested for deer-stealing; that, although blind, he fought aduel with a person named Salmasius, for which he was thrown into Bedfordgaol, whence he escaped to the Tower of London; that the manuscript of his"Proverbial Philosophy" was for many years hidden in a hollow oak tree, where it was found by his grandmother, Ella Wheeler Tupper, who fled withit to America and published many brilliant passages from it over her ownname. Had Smith and Tupper been contemporaries the iron deeds of theformer would doubtless have been recorded in the golden pages of thelatter, to the incalculable enrichment of Roman history. 

Strangely unimpressible indeed must be the mind which, looking backwardthrough the mists of the centuries upon the primitive race from which weare believed to have sprung, can repress a feeling of sympatheticinterest. The names of John Smith and Martin Farquhar Tupper, blazonedupon the page of that dim past and surrounded by the lesser names ofShakspar, the first Neapolitan, Oliver Cornwell, that Mynheer Baloon whowas known as the Flying Dutchman, Julia Cæsar, commonly known as theSerpent of the Nile--all these are richly suggestive. They call to mindthe odd custom of wearing "clothes"; the incredible error of Copernicusand other wide and wild guesses of ancient "science"; the lost arts oftelegramy, steam locomotion, printing, and the tempering of iron. They setus thinking of the zealous idolatry that led men on pious pilgrimages tothe accessible regions about the north pole and into the then savageinterior of Africa in search of the fountain of youth. They conjure upvisions of bloodthirsty "Emperors, " tyrannical "Kings, " vampire"Presidents, " and robber "Parliaments"--grotesque and horrible shapes interrible contrast with the serene and benign figures and features of ourmodern Smithocracy. 

Let us to-day rejoice and give thanks to Bungoot that the old order ofthings has passed forever away. Let us praise Him that our lot has beencast in more wholesome days than those in which Smith wrought and Tuppersang. And yet let us not forget whatever there was of good, if any, in thepre-Smithian period, when men cherished quaint superstitions and rode onthe backs of beasts--when they settled questions of right and expediencyby counting noses--when cows were enslaved and women free--when sciencehad not dawned to chase away the shadows of imagination and the fear ofimmortality--and when the cabalistic letters "A. D. , " which from habit westill affix to numerals designating the date, had perhaps a knownsignification. It is indeed well to live in this golden age, under thebenign sway of that supreme and culminating product of Smithocracy, ourgracious sovereign, his Majesty John CLXXVIII. 

BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

ON A MOUNTAIN

They say that the lumberman has looked upon the Cheat Mountain country andseen that it is good, and I hear that some wealthy gentlemen have beenthere and made a game preserve. There must be lumber and, I suppose, sport, but some things one could wish were ordered otherwise. Looking backupon it through the haze of near half a century, I see that region as averitable realm of enchantment; the Alleghanies as the DelectableMountains. I note again their dim, blue billows, ridge after ridgeinterminable, beyond purple valleys full of sleep, "in which it seemedalways afternoon. " Miles and miles away, where the lift of earth meets thestoop of sky, I discern an imperfection in the tint, a faint graying ofthe blue above the main range--the smoke of an enemy's camp. 

It was in the autumn of that "most immemorial year, " the 1861st of ourLord, and of our Heroic Age the first, that a small brigade of rawtroops--troops were all raw in those days--had been pushed in across theOhio border and after various vicissitudes of fortune and mismanagementfound itself, greatly to its own surprise, at Cheat Mountain Pass, holdinga road that ran from Nowhere to the southeast. Some of us had servedthrough the summer in the "three-months' regiments, " which responded tothe President's first call for troops. We were regarded by the others withprofound respect as "old soldiers. " (Our ages, if equalized, would, Ifancy, have given about twenty years to each man. ) We gave ourselves, thisaristocracy of service, no end of military airs; some of us even going tothe extreme of keeping our jackets buttoned and our hair combed. We hadbeen in action, too; had shot off a Confederate leg at Philippi, "thefirst battle of the war, " and had lost as many as a dozen men at LaurelHill and Carrick's Ford, whither the enemy had fled in trying, Heavenknows why, to get away from us. We now "brought to the task" of subduingthe Rebellion a patriotism which never for a moment doubted that a rebelwas a fiend accursed of God and the angels--one for whose extirpation byforce and arms each youth of us considered himself specially "raised up. "

It was a strange country. Nine in ten of us had never seen a mountain, nora hill as high as a church spire, until we had crossed the Ohio River. Inpower upon the emotions nothing, I think, is comparable to a first sightof mountains. To a member of a plains-tribe, born and reared on the flatsof Ohio or Indiana, a mountain region was a perpetual miracle. Spaceseemed to have taken on a new dimension; areas to have not only length andbreadth, but thickness. 

Modern literature is full of evidence that our great grandfathers lookedupon mountains with aversion and horror. The poets of even the seventeenthcentury never tire of damning them in good, set terms. If they had had theunhappiness to read the opening lines of "The Pleasures of Hope, " theywould assuredly have thought Master Campbell had gone funny and should beshut up lest he do himself an injury. 

The flatlanders who invaded the Cheat Mountain country had been suckled inanother creed, and to them western Virginia--there was, as yet, no WestVirginia--was an enchanted land. How we reveled in its savage beauties!With what pure delight we inhaled its fragrances of spruce and pine! Howwe stared with something like awe at its clumps of laurel!--real laurel, as we understood the matter, whose foliage had been once accountedexcellent for the heads of illustrious Romans and such--mayhap to reducethe swelling. We carved its roots into fingerrings and pipes. We gatheredspruce-gum and sent it to our sweethearts in letters. We ascended everyhill within our picket-lines and called it a "peak. "

And, by the way, during those halcyon days (the halcyon was there, too, chattering above every creek, as he is all over the world) we foughtanother battle. It has not got into history, but it had a real objectiveexistence although by a felicitous afterthought called by us who weredefeated a "reconnaissance in force. " Its short and simple annals are hatwe marched a long way and lay down before a fortified camp of the enemy atthe farther edge of a valley. Our commander had the forethought to seethat we lay well out of range of the small-arms of the period. Adisadvantage of this arrangement was that the enemy was out of reach of usas well, for our rifles were no better than his. Unfortunately--one mightalmost say unfairly--he had a few pieces of artillery very well protected, and with those he mauled us to the eminent satisfaction of his mind andheart. So we parted from him in anger and returned to our own place, leaving our dead--not many. 

Among them was a chap belonging to my company, named Abbott; it is not oddthat I recollect it, for there was something unusual in the manner ofAbbott's taking off. He was lying flat upon his stomach and was killed bybeing struck in the side by a nearly spent cannon-shot that came rollingin among us. The shot remained in him until removed. It was a solidround-shot, evidently cast in some private foundry, whose proprietor, setting the laws of thrift above those of ballistics, had put his"imprint" upon it: it bore, in slightly sunken letters, the name "Abbott. "That is what I was told--I was not present. 

It was after this, when the nights had acquired a trick of biting and themorning sun appeared to shiver with cold, that we moved up to the summitof Cheat Mountain to guard the pass through which nobody wanted to go. Here we slew the forest and builded us giant habitations (astride the roadfrom Nowhere to the southeast) commodious to lodge an army and fitlyloopholed for discomfiture of the adversary. The long logs that it was ourpride to cut and carry! The accuracy with which we laid them one uponanother, hewn to the line and bullet-proof! The Cyclopean doors that wehung, with sliding bolts fit to be "the mast of some great admiral"! Andwhen we had "made the pile complete" some marplot of the Regular Army camethat way and chatted a few moments with our commander, and we made anearthwork away off on one side of the road (leaving the other side to takecare of itself) and camped outside it in tents! But the Regular Armyfellow had not the heart to suggest the demolition of our Towers of Babel, and the foundations remain to this day to attest the genius of theAmerican volunteer soldiery. 

We were the original game-preservers of the Cheat Mountain region, foralthough we hunted in season and out of season over as wide an area as wedared to cover we took less game, probably, than would have been taken bya certain single hunter of disloyal views whom we scared away. There werebear galore and deer in quantity, and many a winter day, in snow up to hisknees, did the writer of this pass in tracking bruin to his den, where, Iam bound to say, I commonly left him. I agreed with my lamented friend, the late Robert Weeks, poet:

 Pursuit may be, it seems to me, Perfect without possession. 

There can be no doubt that the wealthy sportsmen who have made a preserveof the Cheat Mountain region will find plenty of game if it has not diedsince 1861. We left it there. 

Yet hunting and idling were not the whole of life's programme up there onthat wild ridge with its shaggy pelt of spruce and firs, and in theriparian lowlands that it parted. We had a bit of war now and again. Therewas an occasional "affair of outposts"; sometimes a hazardous scout intothe enemy's country, ordered, I fear, more to keep up the appearance ofdoing something than with a hope of accomplishing a military result. Butone day it was bruited about that a movement in force was to be made onthe enemy's position miles away, at the summit of the main ridge of theAlleghanies--the camp whose faint blue smoke we had watched for wearydays. The movement was made, as was the fashion in those 'prentice days ofwarfare, in two columns, which were to pounce upon the foeman fromopposite sides at the same moment. Led over unknown roads by untrustyguides, encountering obstacles not foreseen--miles apart and withoutcommunication, the two columns invariably failed to execute the movementwith requisite secrecy and precision. The enemy, in enjoyment of thatinestimable military advantage known in civilian speech as being"surrounded, " always beat the attacking columns one at a time or, turningred-handed from the wreck of the first, frightened the other away. 

All one bright wintry day we marched down from our eyrie; all one brightwintry night we climbed the great wooded ridge opposite. How romantic itall was; the sunset valleys full of visible sleep; the glades suffused andinterpenetrated with moonlight; the long valley of the Greenbrierstretching away to we knew not what silent cities; the river itself unseenunder its "astral body" of mist! Then there was the "spice of danger. "

Once we heard shots in front; then there was a long wait. As we trudged onwe passed something--some things--lying by the wayside. During anotherwait we examined them, curiously lifting the blankets from theiryellow-clay faces. How repulsive they looked with their blood-smears, their blank, staring eyes, their teeth uncovered by contraction of thelips! The frost had begun already to whiten their deranged clothing. Wewere as patriotic as ever, but we did not wish to be that way. For an hourafterward the injunction of silence in the ranks was needless. 

 * * * * *

Repassing the spot the next day, a beaten, dispirited and exhausted force, feeble from fatigue and savage from defeat, some of us had life enoughleft, such as it was, to observe that these bodies had altered theirposition. They appeared also to have thrown off some of their clothing, which lay near by, in disorder. Their expression, too, had an addedblankness--they had no faces. 

As soon as the head of our straggling column had reached the spot adesultory firing had begun. One might have thought the living paid honorsto the dead. No; the firing was a military execution; the condemned, aherd of galloping swine. They had eaten our fallen, but--touchingmagnanimity!--we did not eat theirs. 

The shooting of several kinds was very good in the Cheat Mountain country, even in 1861. 

WHAT I SAW OF SHILOH

I

This is a simple story of a battle; such a tale as may be told by asoldier who is no writer to a reader who is no soldier. 

The morning of Sunday, the sixth day of April, 1862, was bright and warm. Reveille had been sounded rather late, for the troops, wearied with longmarching, were to have a day of rest. The men were idling about the embersof their bivouac fires; some preparing breakfast, others lookingcarelessly to the condition of their arms and accoutrements, against theinevitable inspection; still others were chatting with indolent dogmatismon that never-failing theme, the end and object of the campaign. Sentinelspaced up and down the confused front with a lounging freedom of mien andstride that would not have been tolerated at another time. A few of themlimped unsoldierly in deference to blistered feet. At a little distance inrear of the stacked arms were a few tents out of which frowsy-headedofficers occasionally peered, languidly calling to their servants to fetcha basin of water, dust a coat or polish a scabbard. Trim young mountedorderlies, bearing dispatches obviously unimportant, urged their lazy nagsby devious ways amongst the men, enduring with unconcern theirgood-humored raillery, the penalty of superior station. Little negroes ofnot very clearly defined status and function lolled on their stomachs, kicking their long, bare heels in the sunshine, or slumbered peacefully, unaware of the practical waggery prepared by white hands for theirundoing. 

Presently the flag hanging limp and lifeless at headquarters was seen tolift itself spiritedly from the staff. At the same instant was heard adull, distant sound like the heavy breathing of some great animal belowthe horizon. The flag had lifted its head to listen. There was a momentarylull in the hum of the human swarm; then, as the flag drooped the hushpassed away. But there were some hundreds more men on their feet thanbefore; some thousands of hearts beating with a quicker pulse. 

Again the flag made a warning sign, and again the breeze bore to our earsthe long, deep sighing of iron lungs. The division, as if it had receivedthe sharp word of command, sprang to its feet, and stood in groups at"attention. " Even the little blacks got up. I have since seen similareffects produced by earthquakes; I am not sure but the ground wastrembling then. The mess-cooks, wise in their generation, lifted thesteaming camp-kettles off the fire and stood by to cast out. The mountedorderlies had somehow disappeared. Officers came ducking from beneaththeir tents and gathered in groups. Headquarters had become a swarminghive. 

The sound of the great guns now came in regular throbbings--the strong, full pulse of the fever of battle. The flag flapped excitedly, shaking outits blazonry of stars and stripes with a sort of fierce delight. Towardthe knot of officers in its shadow dashed from somewhere--he seemed tohave burst out of the ground in a cloud of dust--a mounted aide-de-camp, and on the instant rose the sharp, clear notes of a bugle, caught up andrepeated, and passed on by other bugles, until the level reaches of brownfields, the line of woods trending away to far hills, and the unseenvalleys beyond were "telling of the sound, " the farther, fainter strainshalf drowned in ringing cheers as the men ran to range themselves behindthe stacks of arms. For this call was not the wearisome "general" beforewhich the tents go down; it was the exhilarating "assembly, " which goes tothe heart as wine and stirs the blood like the kisses of a beautifulwoman. Who that has heard it calling to him above the grumble of greatguns can forget the wild intoxication of its music?

II

The Confederate forces in Kentucky and Tennessee had suffered a series ofreverses, culminating in the loss of Nashville. The blow was severe:immense quantities of war material had fallen to the victor, together withall the important strategic points. General Johnston withdrew Beauregard'sarmy to Corinth, in northern Mississippi, where he hoped so to recruit andequip it as to enable it to assume the offensive and retake the lostterritory. 

The town of Corinth was a wretched place--the capital of a swamp. It is atwo days' march west of the Tennessee River, which here and for a hundredand fifty miles farther, to where it falls into the Ohio at Paducah, runsnearly north. It is navigable to this point--that is to say, to PittsburgLanding, where Corinth got to it by a road worn through a thickly woodedcountry seamed with ravines and bayous, rising nobody knows where andrunning into the river under sylvan arches heavily draped with Spanishmoss. In some places they were obstructed by fallen trees. The Corinthroad was at certain seasons a branch of the Tennessee River. Its mouth wasPittsburg Landing. Here in 1862 were some fields and a house or two; nowthere are a national cemetery and other improvements. 

It was at Pittsburg Landing that Grant established his army, with a riverin his rear and two toy steamboats as a means of communication with theeast side, whither General Buell with thirty thousand men was moving fromNashville to join him. The question has been asked, Why did General Grantoccupy the enemy's side of the river in the face of a superior forcebefore the arrival of Buell? Buell had a long way to come; perhaps Grantwas weary of waiting. Certainly Johnston was, for in the gray of themorning of April 6th, when Buell's leading division was _en bivouac_ nearthe little town of Savannah, eight or ten miles below, the Confederateforces, having moved out of Corinth two days before, fell upon Grant'sadvance brigades and destroyed them. Grant was at Savannah, but hastenedto the Landing in time to find his camps in the hands of the enemy and theremnants of his beaten army cooped up with an impassable river at theirbacks for moral support. I have related how the news of this affair cameto us at Savannah. It came on the wind--a messenger that does not bearcopious details. 

III

On the side of the Tennessee River, over against Pittsburg Landing, aresome low bare hills, partly inclosed by a forest. In the dusk of theevening of April 6 this open space, as seen from the other side of thestream--whence, indeed, it was anxiously watched by thousands of eyes, tomany of which it grew dark long before the sun went down--would haveappeared to have been ruled in long, dark lines, with new lines beingconstantly drawn across. These lines were the regiments of Buell's leadingdivision, which having moved up from Savannah through a country presentingnothing but interminable swamps and pathless "bottom lands, " with rankovergrowths of jungle, was arriving at the scene of action breathless, footsore and faint with hunger. It had been a terrible race; someregiments had lost a third of their number from fatigue, the men droppingfrom the ranks as if shot, and left to recover or die at their leisure. Nor was the scene to which they had been invited likely to inspire themoral confidence that medicines physical fatigue. True, the air was fullof thunder and the earth was trembling beneath their feet; and if there istruth in the theory of the conversion of force, these men were storing upenergy from every shock that burst its waves upon their bodies. Perhapsthis theory may better than another explain the tremendous endurance ofmen in battle. But the eyes reported only matter for despair. 

Before us ran the turbulent river, vexed with plunging shells and obscuredin spots by blue sheets of low-lying smoke. The two little steamers weredoing their duty well. They came over to us empty and went back crowded, sitting very low in the water, apparently on the point of capsizing. Thefarther edge of the water could not be seen; the boats came out of theobscurity, took on their passengers and vanished in the darkness. But onthe heights above, the battle was burning brightly enough; a thousandlights kindled and expired in every second of time. There were broadflushings in the sky, against which the branches of the trees showedblack. Sudden flames burst out here and there, singly and in dozens. Fleeting streaks of fire crossed over to us by way of welcome. Theseexpired in blinding flashes and fierce little rolls of smoke, attendedwith the peculiar metallic ring of bursting shells, and followed by themusical humming of the fragments as they struck into the ground on everyside, making us wince, but doing little harm. The air was full of noises. To the right and the left the musketry rattled smartly and petulantly;directly in front it sighed and growled. To the experienced ear this meantthat the death-line was an arc of which the river was the chord. Therewere deep, shaking explosions and smart shocks; the whisper of straybullets and the hurtle of conical shells; the rush of round shot. Therewere faint, desultory cheers, such as announce a momentary or partialtriumph. Occasionally, against the glare behind the trees, could be seenmoving black figures, singularly distinct but apparently no longer than athumb. They seemed to me ludicrously like the figures of demons in oldallegorical prints of hell. To destroy these and all their belongings theenemy needed but another hour of daylight; the steamers in that case wouldhave been doing him fine service by bringing more fish to his net. Thoseof us who had the good fortune to arrive late could then have eaten ourteeth in impotent rage. Nay, to make his victory sure it did not need thatthe sun should pause in the heavens; one of the many random shots fallinginto the river would have done the business had chance directed it intothe engine-room of a steamer. You can perhaps fancy the anxiety with whichwe watched them leaping down. 

But we had two other allies besides the night. Just where the enemy hadpushed his right flank to the river was the mouth of a wide bayou, andhere two gunboats had taken station. They too were of the toy sort, platedperhaps with railway metals, perhaps with boiler-iron. They staggeredunder a heavy gun or two each. The bayou made an opening in the high bankof the river. The bank was a parapet, behind which the gunboats crouched, firing up the bayou as through an embrasure. The enemy was at thisdisadvantage: he could not get at the gunboats, and he could advance onlyby exposing his flank to their ponderous missiles, one of which would havebroken a half-mile of his bones and made nothing of it. Very annoying thismust have been--these twenty gunners beating back an army because asluggish creek had been pleased to fall into a river at one point ratherthan another. Such is the part that accident may play in the game of war. 

As a spectacle this was rather fine. We could just discern the blackbodies of these boats, looking very much like turtles. But when they letoff their big guns there was a conflagration. The river shuddered in itsbanks, and hurried on, bloody, wounded, terrified! Objects a mile awaysprang toward our eyes as a snake strikes at the face of its victim. Thereport stung us to the brain, but we blessed it audibly. Then we couldhear the great shell tearing away through the air until the sound died outin the distance; then, a surprisingly long time afterward, a dull, distantexplosion and a sudden silence of small-arms told their own tale. 

IV

There was, I remember, no elephant on the boat that passed us across thatevening, nor, I think, any hippopotamus. These would have been out ofplace. We had, however, a woman. Whether the baby was somewhere on board Idid not learn. She was a fine creature, this woman; somebody's wife. Hermission, as she understood it, was to inspire the failing heart withcourage; and when she selected mine I felt less flattered by herpreference than astonished by her penetration. How did she learn? Shestood on the upper deck with the red blaze of battle bathing her beautifulface, the twinkle of a thousand rifles mirrored in her eyes; anddisplaying a small ivory-handled pistol, she told me in a sentencepunctuated by the thunder of great guns that if it came to the worst shewould do her duty like a man! I am proud to remember that I took off myhat to this little fool. 

V

Along the sheltered strip of beach between the river bank and the waterwas a confused mass of humanity--several thousands of men. They weremostly unarmed; many were wounded; some dead. All the camp-followingtribes were there; all the cowards; a few officers. Not one of them knewwhere his regiment was, nor if he had a regiment. Many had not. These menwere defeated, beaten, cowed. They were deaf to duty and dead to shame. Amore demented crew never drifted to the rear of broken battalions. Theywould have stood in their tracks and been shot down to a man by aprovost-marshal's guard, but they could not have been urged up that bank. An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meetat the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching. 

Whenever a steamboat would land, this abominable mob had to be kept offher with bayonets; when she pulled away, they sprang on her and werepushed by scores into the water, where they were suffered to drown oneanother in their own way. The men disembarking insulted them, shoved them, struck them. In return they expressed their unholy delight in thecertainty of our destruction by the enemy. 

By the time my regiment had reached the plateau night had put an end tothe struggle. A sputter of rifles would break out now and then, followedperhaps by a spiritless hurrah. Occasionally a shell from a far-awaybattery would come pitching down somewhere near, with a whir crescendo, orflit above our heads with a whisper like that made by the wings of a nightbird, to smother itself in the river. But there was no more fighting. Thegunboats, however, blazed away at set intervals all night long, just tomake the enemy uncomfortable and break him of his rest. 

For us there was no rest. Foot by foot we moved through the dusky fields, we knew not whither. There were men all about us, but no camp-fires; tohave made a blaze would have been madness. The men were of strangeregiments; they mentioned the names of unknown generals. They gathered ingroups by the wayside, asking eagerly our numbers. They recounted thedepressing incidents of the day. A thoughtful officer shut their mouthswith a sharp word as he passed; a wise one coming after encouraged them torepeat their doleful tale all along the line. 

Hidden in hollows and behind clumps of rank brambles were large tents, dimly lighted with candles, but looking comfortable. The kind of comfortthey supplied was indicated by pairs of men entering and reappearing, bearing litters; by low moans from within and by long rows of dead withcovered faces outside. These tents were constantly receiving the wounded, yet were never full; they were continually ejecting the dead, yet werenever empty. It was as if the helpless had been carried in and murdered, that they might not hamper those whose business it was to fall to-morrow. 

The night was now black-dark; as is usual after a battle, it had begun torain. Still we moved; we were being put into position by somebody. Inch byinch we crept along, treading on one another's heels by way of keepingtogether. Commands were passed along the line in whispers; more commonlynone were given. When the men had pressed so closely together that theycould advance no farther they stood stock-still, sheltering the locks oftheir rifles with their ponchos. In this position many fell asleep. Whenthose in front suddenly stepped away those in the rear, roused by thetramping, hastened after with such zeal that the line was soon chokedagain. Evidently the head of the division was being piloted at a snail'space by some one who did not feel sure of his ground. Very often we struckour feet against the dead; more frequently against those who still hadspirit enough to resent it with a moan. These were lifted carefully to oneside and abandoned. Some had sense enough to ask in their weak way forwater. Absurd! Their clothes were soaken, their hair dank; their whitefaces, dimly discernible, were clammy and cold. Besides, none of us hadany water. There was plenty coming, though, for before midnight athunderstorm broke upon us with great violence. The rain, which had forhours been a dull drizzle, fell with a copiousness that stifled us; wemoved in running water up to our ankles. Happily, we were in a forest ofgreat trees heavily "decorated" with Spanish moss, or with an enemystanding to his guns the disclosures of the lightning might have beeninconvenient. As it was, the incessant blaze enabled us to consult ourwatches and encouraged us by displaying our numbers; our black, sinuousline, creeping like a giant serpent beneath the trees, was apparentlyinterminable. I am almost ashamed to say how sweet I found thecompanionship of those coarse men. 

So the long night wore away, and as the glimmer of morning crept inthrough the forest we found ourselves in a more open country. But where?Not a sign of battle was here. The trees were neither splintered norscarred, the underbrush was unmown, the ground had no footprints but ourown. It was as if we had broken into glades sacred to eternal silence. Ishould not have been surprised to see sleek leopards come fawning aboutour feet, and milk-white deer confront us with human eyes. 

A few inaudible commands from an invisible leader had placed us in orderof battle. But where was the enemy? Where, too, were the riddled regimentsthat we had come to save? Had our other divisions arrived during the nightand passed the river to assist us? or were we to oppose our paltry fivethousand breasts to an army flushed with victory? What protected ourright? Who lay upon our left? Was there really anything in our front?

There came, borne to us on the raw morning air, the long, weird note of abugle. It was directly before us. It rose with a low, clear, deliberatewarble, and seemed to float in the gray sky like the note of a lark. Thebugle calls of the Federal and the Confederate armies were the same: itwas the "assembly"! As it died away I observed that the atmosphere hadsuffered a change; despite the equilibrium established by the storm, itwas electric. Wings were growing on blistered feet. Bruised muscles andjolted bones, shoulders pounded by the cruel knapsack, eyelids leaden fromlack of sleep--all were pervaded by the subtle fluid, all were unconsciousof their clay. The men thrust forward their heads, expanded their eyes andclenched their teeth. They breathed hard, as if throttled by tugging atthe leash. If you had laid your hand in the beard or hair of one of thesemen it would have crackled and shot sparks. 

VI

I suppose the country lying between Corinth and Pittsburg Landing couldboast a few inhabitants other than alligators. What manner of people theywere it is impossible to say, inasmuch as the fighting dispersed, orpossibly exterminated them; perhaps in merely classing them as non-saurianI shall describe them with sufficient particularity and at the same timeavert from myself the natural suspicion attaching to a writer who pointsout to persons who do not know him the peculiarities of persons whom hedoes not know. One thing, however, I hope I may without offense affirm ofthese swamp-dwellers--they were pious. To what deity their veneration wasgiven--whether, like the Egyptians, they worshiped the crocodile, or, likeother Americans, adored themselves, I do not presume to guess. Butwhoever, or whatever, may have been the divinity whose ends they shaped, unto Him, or It, they had builded a temple. This humble edifice, centrallysituated in the heart of a solitude, and conveniently accessible to thesupersylvan crow, had been christened Shiloh Chapel, whence the name ofthe battle. The fact of a Christian church--assuming it to have been aChristian church--giving name to a wholesale cutting of Christian throatsby Christian hands need not be dwelt on here; the frequency of itsrecurrence in the history of our species has somewhat abated the moralinterest that would otherwise attach to it. 

VII

Owing to the darkness, the storm and the absence of a road, it had beenimpossible to move the artillery from the open ground about the Landing. The privation was much greater in a moral than in a material sense. Theinfantry soldier feels a confidence in this cumbrous arm quite unwarrantedby its actual achievements in thinning out the opposition. There issomething that inspires confidence in the way a gun dashes up to thefront, shoving fifty or a hundred men to one side as if it said, "_Permitme!_" Then it squares its shoulders, calmly dislocates a joint in itsback, sends away its twenty-four legs and settles down with a quietrattle which says as plainly as possible, "I've come to stay. " There is asuperb scorn in its grimly defiant attitude, with its nose in the air; itappears not so much to threaten the enemy as deride him. 

Our batteries were probably toiling after us somewhere; we could only hopethe enemy might delay his attack until they should arrive. "He may delayhis defense if he like, " said a sententious young officer to whom I hadimparted this natural wish. He had read the signs aright; the words werehardly spoken when a group of staff officers about the brigade commandershot away in divergent lines as if scattered by a whirlwind, and gallopingeach to the commander of a regiment gave the word. There was a momentaryconfusion of tongues, a thin line of skirmishers detached itself from thecompact front and pushed forward, followed by its diminutive reserves ofhalf a company each--one of which platoons it was my fortune to command. When the straggling line of skirmishers had swept four or five hundredyards ahead, "See, " said one of my comrades, "she moves!" She did indeed, and in fine style, her front as straight as a string, her reserveregiments in columns doubled on the center, following in truesubordination; no braying of brass to apprise the enemy, no fifing anddrumming to amuse him; no ostentation of gaudy flags; no nonsense. Thiswas a matter of business. 

In a few moments we had passed out of the singular oasis that had somarvelously escaped the desolation of battle, and now the evidences of theprevious day's struggle were present in profusion. The ground wastolerably level here, the forest less dense, mostly clear of undergrowth, and occasionally opening out into small natural meadows. Here and therewere small pools--mere discs of rainwater with a tinge of blood. Riven andtorn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches ofsplinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with thosebelow. Large branches had been lopped, and hung their green heads to theground, or swung critically in their netting of vines, as in a hammock. Many had been cut clean off and their masses of foliage seriously impededthe progress of the troops. The bark of these trees, from the root upwardto a height of ten or twenty feet, was so thickly pierced with bullets andgrape that one could not have laid a hand on it without covering severalpunctures. None had escaped. How the human body survives a storm like thismust be explained by the fact that it is exposed to it but a few momentsat a time, whereas these grand old trees had had no one to take theirplaces, from the rising to the going down of the sun. Angular bits ofiron, concavo-convex, sticking in the sides of muddy depressions, showedwhere shells had exploded in their furrows. Knapsacks, canteens, haversacks distended with soaken and swollen biscuits, gaping to disgorge, blankets beaten into the soil by the rain, rifles with bent barrels orsplintered stocks, waist-belts, hats and the omnipresent sardine-box--allthe wretched debris of the battle still littered the spongy earth as faras one could see, in every direction. Dead horses were everywhere; a fewdisabled caissons, or limbers, reclining on one elbow, as it were;ammunition wagons standing disconsolate behind four or six sprawlingmules. Men? There were men enough; all dead, apparently, except one, wholay near where I had halted my platoon to await the slower movement of theline--a Federal sergeant, variously hurt, who had been a fine giant in histime. He lay face upward, taking in his breath in convulsive, rattlingsnorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamilydown his cheeks, piling itself alongside his neck and ears. A bullet hadclipped a groove in his skull, above the temple; from this the brainprotruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings. I had notpreviously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion, with so little brain. One of my men, whom I knew for a womanish fellow, asked if he should put his bayonet through him. Inexpressibly shocked bythe cold-blooded proposal, I told him I thought not; it was unusual, andtoo many were looking. 

VIII

It was plain that the enemy had retreated to Corinth. The arrival of ourfresh troops and their successful passage of the river had disheartenedhim. Three or four of his gray cavalry videttes moving amongst the treeson the crest of a hill in our front, and galloping out of sight at thecrack of our skirmishers' rifles, confirmed us in the belief; an army faceto face with its enemy does not employ cavalry to watch its front. True, they might be a general and his staff. Crowning this rise we found a levelfield, a quarter of a mile in width; beyond it a gentle acclivity, coveredwith an undergrowth of young oaks, impervious to sight. We pushed on intothe open, but the division halted at the edge. Having orders to conform toits movements, we halted too; but that did not suit; we received anintimation to proceed. I had performed this sort of service before, and inthe exercise of my discretion deployed my platoon, pushing it forward at arun, with trailed arms, to strengthen the skirmish line, which I overtooksome thirty or forty yards from the wood. Then--I can't describe it--theforest seemed all at once to flame up and disappear with a crash like thatof a great wave upon the beach--a crash that expired in hot hissings, andthe sickening "spat" of lead against flesh. A dozen of my brave fellowstumbled over like ten-pins. Some struggled to their feet, only to go downagain, and yet again. Those who stood fired into the smoking brush anddoggedly retired. We had expected to find, at most, a line of skirmisherssimilar to our own; it was with a view to overcoming them by a sudden_coup_ at the moment of collision that I had thrown forward my littlereserve. What we had found was a line of battle, coolly holding its firetill it could count our teeth. There was no more to be done but get backacross the open ground, every superficial yard of which was throwing upits little jet of mud provoked by an impinging bullet. We got back, mostof us, and I shall never forget the ludicrous incident of a young officerwho had taken part in the affair walking up to his colonel, who had been acalm and apparently impartial spectator, and gravely reporting: "The enemyis in force just beyond this field, sir. "

IX

In subordination to the design of this narrative, as defined by its title, the incidents related necessarily group themselves about my ownpersonality as a center; and, as this center, during the few terriblehours of the engagement, maintained a variably constant relation to theopen field already mentioned, it is important that the reader should bearin mind the topographical and tactical features of the local situation. The hither side of the field was occupied by the front of my brigade--alength of two regiments in line, with proper intervals for fieldbatteries. During the entire fight the enemy held the slight woodedacclivity beyond. The debatable ground to the right and left of the openwas broken and thickly wooded for miles, in some places quite inaccessibleto artillery and at very few points offering opportunities for itssuccessful employment. As a consequence of this the two sides of the fieldwere soon studded thickly with confronting guns, which flamed away at oneanother with amazing zeal and rather startling effect. Of course, aninfantry attack delivered from either side was not to be thought of whenthe covered flanks offered inducements so unquestionably superior; and Ibelieve the riddled bodies of my poor skirmishers were the only ones lefton this "neutral ground" that day. But there was a very pretty line ofdead continually growing in our rear, and doubtless the enemy had at hisback a similar encouragement. 

The configuration of the ground offered us no protection. By lying flat onour faces between the guns we were screened from view by a straggling rowof brambles, which marked the course of an obsolete fence; but the enemy'sgrape was sharper than his eyes, and it was poor consolation to know thathis gunners could not see what they were doing, so long as they did it. The shock of our own pieces nearly deafened us, but in the brief intervalswe could hear the battle roaring and stammering in the dark reaches of theforest to the right and left, where our other divisions were dashingthemselves again and again into the smoking jungle. What would we not havegiven to join them in their brave, hopeless task! But to lie ingloriousbeneath showers of shrapnel darting divergent from the unassailablesky--meekly to be blown out of life by level gusts of grape--to clench ourteeth and shrink helpless before big shot pushing noisily through theconsenting air--this was horrible! "Lie down, there!" a captain wouldshout, and then get up himself to see that his order was obeyed. "Captain, take cover, sir!" the lieutenant-colonel would shriek, pacing up and downin the most exposed position that he could find. 

O those cursed guns!--not the enemy's, but our own. Had it not been forthem, we might have died like men. They must be supported, forsooth, thefeeble, boasting bullies! It was impossible to conceive that these pieceswere doing the enemy as excellent a mischief as his were doing us; theyseemed to raise their "cloud by day" solely to direct aright the streamingprocession of Confederate missiles. They no longer inspired confidence, but begot apprehension; and it was with grim satisfaction that I saw thecarriage of one and another smashed into matchwood by a whooping shot andbundled out of the line. 

X

The dense forests wholly or partly in which were fought so many battles ofthe Civil War, lay upon the earth in each autumn a thick deposit of deadleaves and stems, the decay of which forms a soil of surprising depth andrichness. In dry weather the upper stratum is as inflammable as tinder. Afire once kindled in it will spread with a slow, persistent advance as faras local conditions permit, leaving a bed of light ashes beneath which theless combustible accretions of previous years will smolder untilextinguished by rains. In many of the engagements of the war the fallenleaves took fire and roasted the fallen men. At Shiloh, during the firstday's fighting, wide tracts of woodland were burned over in this way andscores of wounded who might have recovered perished in slow torture. Iremember a deep ravine a little to the left and rear of the field I havedescribed, in which, by some mad freak of heroic incompetence, a part ofan Illinois regiment had been surrounded, and refusing to surrender wasdestroyed, as it very well deserved. My regiment having at last beenrelieved at the guns and moved over to the heights above this ravine forno obvious purpose, I obtained leave to go down into the valley of deathand gratify a reprehensible curiosity. 

Forbidding enough it was in every way. The fire had swept everysuperficial foot of it, and at every step I sank into ashes to the ankle. It had contained a thick undergrowth of young saplings, every one of whichhad been severed by a bullet, the foliage of the prostrate tops beingafterward burnt and the stumps charred. Death had put his sickle into thisthicket and fire had gleaned the field. Along a line which was not that ofextreme depression, but was at every point significantly equidistant fromthe heights on either hand, lay the bodies, half buried in ashes; some inthe unlovely looseness of attitude denoting sudden death by the bullet, but by far the greater number in postures of agony that told of thetormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt away--their hair and beardentirely; the rain had come too late to save their nails. Some wereswollen to double girth; others shriveled to manikins. According to degreeof exposure, their faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursedeach countenance with a hideous grin. Faugh! I cannot catalogue the charmsof these gallant gentlemen who had got what they enlisted for. 

XI

It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and raining. For fifteen hourswe had been wet to the skin. Chilled, sleepy, hungry anddisappointed--profoundly disgusted with the inglorious part to which theyhad been condemned--the men of my regiment did everything doggedly. Thespirit had gone quite out of them. Blue sheets of powder smoke, driftingamongst the trees, settling against the hillsides and beaten intonothingness by the falling rain, filled the air with their peculiarpungent odor, but it no longer stimulated. For miles on either hand couldbe heard the hoarse murmur of the battle, breaking out near by withfrightful distinctness, or sinking to a murmur in the distance; and theone sound aroused no more attention than the other. 

We had been placed again in rear of those guns, but even they and theiriron antagonists seemed to have tired of their feud, pounding away at oneanother with amiable infrequency. The right of the regiment extended alittle beyond the field. On the prolongation of the line in that directionwere some regiments of another division, with one in reserve. A third of amile back lay the remnant of somebody's brigade looking to its wounds. Theline of forest bounding this end of the field stretched as straight as awall from the right of my regiment to Heaven knows what regiment of theenemy. There suddenly appeared, marching down along this wall, not morethan two hundred yards in our front, a dozen files of gray-clad men withrifles on the right shoulder. At an interval of fifty yards they werefollowed by perhaps half as many more; and in fair supporting distance ofthese stalked with confident mien a single man! There seemed to mesomething indescribably ludicrous in the advance of this handful of menupon an army, albeit with their left flank protected by a forest. It doesnot so impress me now. They were the exposed flanks of three lines ofinfantry, each half a mile in length. In a moment our gunners had grappledwith the nearest pieces, swung them half round, and were pouring streamsof canister into the invaded wood. The infantry rose in masses, springinginto line. Our threatened regiments stood like a wall, their loaded riflesat "ready, " their bayonets hanging quietly in the scabbards. The rightwing of my own regiment was thrown slightly backward to threaten the flankof the assault. The battered brigade away to the rear pulled itselftogether. 

Then the storm burst. A great gray cloud seemed to spring out of theforest into the faces of the waiting battalions. It was received with acrash that made the very trees turn up their leaves. For one instant theassailants paused above their dead, then struggled forward, their bayonetsglittering in the eyes that shone behind the smoke. One moment, and thoseunmoved men in blue would be impaled. What were they about? Why did theynot fix bayonets? Were they stunned by their own volley? Their inactionwas maddening! Another tremendous crash!--the rear rank had fired!Humanity, thank Heaven! is not made for this, and the shattered gray massdrew back a score of paces, opening a feeble fire. Lead had scored itsold-time victory over steel; the heroic had broken its great heart againstthe commonplace. There are those who say that it is sometimes otherwise. 

All this had taken but a minute of time, and now the second Confederateline swept down and poured in its fire. The line of blue staggered andgave way; in those two terrific volleys it seemed to have quite poured outits spirit. To this deadly work our reserve regiment now came up with arun. It was surprising to see it spitting fire with never a sound, forsuch was the infernal din that the ear could take in no more. This fearfulscene was enacted within fifty paces of our toes, but we were rooted tothe ground as if we had grown there. But now our commanding officer rodefrom behind us to the front, waved his hand with the courteous gesturethat says _apres vous_, and with a barely audible cheer we sprang into thefight. Again the smoking front of gray receded, and again, as the enemy'sthird line emerged from its leafy covert, it pushed forward across thepiles of dead and wounded to threaten with protruded steel. Never was seenso striking a proof of the paramount importance of numbers. Within an areaof three hundred yards by fifty there struggled for front places no fewerthan six regiments; and the accession of each, after the first collision, had it not been immediately counterpoised, would have turned the scale. 

As matters stood, we were now very evenly matched, and how long we mighthave held out God only knows. But all at once something appeared to havegone wrong with the enemy's left; our men had somewhere pierced his line. A moment later his whole front gave way, and springing forward with fixedbayonets we pushed him in utter confusion back to his original line. Here, among the tents from which Grant's people had been expelled the daybefore, our broken and disordered regiments inextricably intermingled, anddrunken with the wine of triumph, dashed confidently against a pair oftrim battalions, provoking a tempest of hissing lead that made us staggerunder its very weight. The sharp onset of another against our flank sentus whirling back with fire at our heels and fresh foes in mercilesspursuit--who in their turn were broken upon the front of the invalidedbrigade previously mentioned, which had moved up from the rear to assistin this lively work. 

As we rallied to reform behind our beloved guns and noted the ridiculousbrevity of our line--as we sank from sheer fatigue, and tried to moderatethe terrific thumping of our hearts--as we caught our breath to ask whohad seen such-and-such a comrade, and laughed hysterically at thereply--there swept past us and over us into the open field a long regimentwith fixed bayonets and rifles on the right shoulder. Another followed, and another; two--three--four! Heavens! where do all these men come from, and why did they not come before? How grandly and confidently they gosweeping on like long blue waves of ocean chasing one another to the cruelrocks! Involuntarily we draw in our weary feet beneath us as we sit, readyto spring up and interpose our breasts when these gallant lines shall comeback to us across the terrible field, and sift brokenly through among thetrees with spouting fires at their backs. We still our breathing to catchthe full grandeur of the volleys that are to tear them to shreds. Minuteafter minute passes and the sound does not come. Then for the first timewe note that the silence of the whole region is not comparative, butabsolute. Have we become stone deaf? See; here comes a stretcher-bearer, and there a surgeon! Good heavens! a chaplain!

The battle was indeed at an end. 

XII

And this was, O so long ago! How they come back to me--dimly and brokenly, but with what a magic spell--those years of youth when I was soldiering!Again I hear the far warble of blown bugles. Again I see the tall, bluesmoke of camp-fires ascending from the dim valleys of Wonderland. Theresteals upon my sense the ghost of an odor from pines that canopy theambuscade. I feel upon my cheek the morning mist that shrouds the hostilecamp unaware of its doom, and my blood stirs at the ringing rifle-shot ofthe solitary sentinel. Unfamiliar landscapes, glittering with sunshine orsullen with rain, come to me demanding recognition, pass, vanish and giveplace to others. Here in the night stretches a wide and blasted fieldstudded with half-extinct fires burning redly with I know not what presageof evil. Again I shudder as I note its desolation and its awful silence. Where was it? To what monstrous inharmony of death was it the visibleprelude?

O days when all the world was beautiful and strange; when unfamiliarconstellations burned in the Southern midnights, and the mocking-birdpoured out his heart in the moon-gilded magnolia; when there was somethingnew under a new sun; will your fine, far memories ever cease to laycontrasting pictures athwart the harsher features of this later world, accentuating the ugliness of the longer and tamer life? Is it not strangethat the phantoms of a blood-stained period have so airy a grace and lookwith so tender eyes?--that I recall with difficulty the danger and deathand horrors of the time, and without effort all that was gracious andpicturesque? Ah, Youth, there is no such wizard as thou! Give me but onetouch of thine artist hand upon the dull canvas of the Present; gild forbut one moment the drear and somber scenes of to-day, and I will willinglysurrender an other life than the one that I should have thrown away atShiloh. 

A LITTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA

The history of that awful struggle is well known--I have not the intentionto record it here, but only to relate some part of what I saw of it; mypurpose not instruction, but entertainment. 

I was an officer of the staff of a Federal brigade. Chickamauga was not myfirst battle by many, for although hardly more than a boy in years, I hadserved at the front from the beginning of the trouble, and had seen enoughof war to give me a fair understanding of it. We knew well enough thatthere was to be a fight: the fact that we did not want one would have toldus that, for Bragg always retired when we wanted to fight and fought whenwe most desired peace. We had manoeuvred him out of Chattanooga, but hadnot manoeuvred our entire army into it, and he fell back so sullenly thatthose of us who followed, keeping him actually in sight, were a good dealmore concerned about effecting a junction with the rest of our army thanto push the pursuit. By the time that Rosecrans had got his threescattered corps together we were a long way from Chattanooga, with ourline of communication with it so exposed that Bragg turned to seize it. Chickamauga was a fight for possession of a road. 

Back along this road raced Crittenden's corps, with those of Thomas andMcCook, which had not before traversed it. The whole army was moving byits left. 

There was sharp fighting all along and all day, for the forest was sodense that the hostile lines came almost into contact before fighting waspossible. One instance was particularly horrible. After some hours ofclose engagement my brigade, with foul pieces and exhausted cartridgeboxes, was relieved and withdrawn to the road to protect several batteriesof artillery--probably two dozen pieces--which commanded an open field inthe rear of our line. Before our weary and virtually disarmed men hadactually reached the guns the line in front gave way, fell back behind theguns and went on, the Lord knows whither. A moment later the field wasgray with Confederates in pursuit. Then the guns opened fire with grapeand canister and for perhaps five minutes--it seemed an hour--nothingcould be heard but the infernal din of their discharge and nothing seenthrough the smoke but a great ascension of dust from the smitten soil. When all was over, and the dust cloud had lifted, the spectacle was toodreadful to describe. The Confederates were still there--all of them, itseemed--some almost under the muzzles of the guns. But not a man of allthese brave fellows was on his feet, and so thickly were all covered withdust that they looked as if they had been reclothed in yellow. 

"We bury our dead, " said a gunner, grimly, though doubtless all wereafterward dug out, for some were partly alive. 

To a "day of danger" succeeded a "night of waking. " The enemy, everywhereheld back from the road, continued to stretch his line northward in thehope to overlap us and put himself between us and Chattanooga. We neithersaw nor heard his movement, but any man with half a head would have knownthat he was making it, and we met it by a parallel movement to our left. By morning we had edged along a good way and thrown up rude intrenchmentsat a little distance from the road, on the threatened side. The day wasnot very far advanced when we were attacked furiously all along the line, beginning at the left. When repulsed, the enemy came again and again--hispersistence was dispiriting. He seemed to be using against us the law ofprobabilities: of so many efforts one would eventually succeed. 

One did, and it was my luck to see it win. I had been sent by my chief, General Hazen, to order up some artillery ammunition and rode away to theright and rear in search of it. Finding an ordnance train I obtained fromthe officer in charge a few wagons loaded with what I wanted, but heseemed in doubt as to our occupancy of the region across which I proposedto guide them. Although assured that I had just traversed it, and that itlay immediately behind Wood's division, he insisted on riding to the topof the ridge behind which his train lay and overlooking the ground. We didso, when to my astonishment I saw the entire country in front swarmingwith Confederates; the very earth seemed to be moving toward us! They cameon in thousands, and so rapidly that we had barely time to turn tail andgallop down the hill and away, leaving them in possession of the train, many of the wagons being upset by frantic efforts to put them about. Bywhat miracle that officer had sensed the situation I did not learn, for weparted company then and there and I never again saw him. 

By a misunderstanding Wood's division had been withdrawn from our line ofbattle just as the enemy was making an assault. Through the gap of half amile the Confederates charged without opposition, cutting our army cleanin two. The right divisions were broken up and with General Rosecrans intheir midst fled how they could across the country, eventually bringing upin Chattanooga, whence Rosecrans telegraphed to Washington the destructionof the rest of his army. The rest of his army was standing its ground. 

A good deal of nonsense used to be talked about the heroism of GeneralGarfield, who, caught in the rout of the right, nevertheless went back andjoined the undefeated left under General Thomas. There was no greatheroism in it; that is what every man should have done, including thecommander of the army. We could hear Thomas's guns going--those of us whohad ears for them--and all that was needful was to make a sufficientlywide detour and then move toward the sound. I did so myself, and havenever felt that it ought to make me President. Moreover, on my way I metGeneral Negley, and my duties as topographical engineer having given mesome knowledge of the lay of the land offered to pilot him back to gloryor the grave. I am sorry to say my good offices were rejected a littleuncivilly, which I charitably attributed to the general's obvious absenceof mind. His mind, I think, was in Nashville, behind a breastwork. 

Unable to find my brigade, I reported to General Thomas, who directed meto remain with him. He had assumed command of all the forces still intactand was pretty closely beset. The battle was fierce and continuous, theenemy extending his lines farther and farther around our right, toward ourline of retreat. We could not meet the extension otherwise than by"refusing" our right flank and letting him inclose us; which but forgallant Gordon Granger he would inevitably have done. 

This was the way of it. Looking across the fields in our rear (ratherlongingly) I had the happy distinction of a discoverer. What I saw was theshimmer of sunlight on metal: lines of troops were coming in behind us!The distance was too great, the atmosphere too hazy to distinguish thecolor of their uniform, even with a glass. Reporting my momentous "find" Iwas directed by the general to go and see who they were. Galloping towardthem until near enough to see that they were of our kidney I hastened backwith the glad tidings and was sent again, to guide them to the general'sposition. 

It was General Granger with two strong brigades of the reserve, movingsoldier-like toward the sound of heavy firing. Meeting him and his staff Idirected him to Thomas, and unable to think of anything better to dodecided to go visiting. I knew I had a brother in that gang--an officer ofan Ohio battery. I soon found him near the head of a column, and as wemoved forward we had a comfortable chat amongst such of the enemy'sbullets as had inconsiderately been fired too high. The incident was atrifle marred by one of them unhorsing another officer of the battery, whom we propped against a tree and left. A few moments later Granger'sforce was put in on the right and the fighting was terrific!

By accident I now found Hazen's brigade--or what remained of it--which hadmade a half-mile march to add itself to the unrouted at the memorableSnodgrass Hill. Hazen's first remark to me was an inquiry about thatartillery ammunition that he had sent me for. 

It was needed badly enough, as were other kinds: for the last hour or twoof that interminable day Granger's were the only men that had enoughammunition to make a five minutes' fight. Had the Confederates made onemore general attack we should have had to meet them with the bayonetalone. I don't know why they did not; probably they were short ofammunition. I know, though, that while the sun was taking its own time toset we lived through the agony of at least one death each, waiting forthem to come on. 

At last it grew too dark to fight. Then away to our left and rear some ofBragg's people set up "the rebel yell. " It was taken up successively andpassed round to our front, along our right and in behind us again, untilit seemed almost to have got to the point whence it started. It was theugliest sound that any mortal ever heard--even a mortal exhausted andunnerved by two days of hard fighting, without sleep, without rest, without food and without hope. There was, however, a space somewhere atthe back of us across which that horrible yell did not prolong itself; andthrough that we finally retired in profound silence and dejection, unmolested. 

To those of us who have survived the attacks of both Bragg and Time, andwho keep in memory the dear dead comrades whom we left upon that fatefulfield, the place means much. May it mean something less to the younger menwhose tents are now pitched where, with bended heads and clasped hands, God's great angels stood invisible among the heroes in blue and the heroesin gray, sleeping their last sleep in the woods of Chickamauga. 

_1898_. 

THE CRIME AT PICKETT'S MILL

There is a class of events which by their very nature, and despite anyintrinsic interest that they may possess, are foredoomed to oblivion. Theyare merged in the general story of those greater events of which they werea part, as the thunder of a billow breaking on a distant beach is unnotedin the continuous roar. To how many having knowledge of the battles of ourCivil War does the name Pickett's Mill suggest acts of heroism anddevotion performed in scenes of awful carnage to accomplish theimpossible? Buried in the official reports of the victors there are indeedimperfect accounts of the engagement: the vanquished have not thought itexpedient to relate it. It is ignored by General Sherman in his memoirs, yet Sherman ordered it. General Howard wrote an account of the campaign ofwhich it was an incident, and dismissed it in a single sentence; yetGeneral Howard planned it, and it was fought as an isolated andindependent action under his eye. Whether it was so trifling an affair asto justify this inattention let the reader judge. 

The fight occurred on the 27th of May, 1864, while the armies of GeneralsSherman and Johnston confronted each other near Dallas, Georgia, duringthe memorable "Atlanta campaign. " For three weeks we had been pushing theConfederates southward, partly by manoeuvring, partly by fighting, out ofDalton, out of Resaca, through Adairsville, Kingston and Cassville. Eacharmy offered battle everywhere, but would accept it only on its own terms. At Dallas Johnston made another stand and Sherman, facing the hostileline, began his customary manoeuvring for an advantage. General Wood'sdivision of Howard's corps occupied a position opposite the Confederateright. Johnston finding himself on the 26th overlapped by Schofield, stillfarther to Wood's left, retired his right (Polk) across a creek, whitherwe followed him into the woods with a deal of desultory bickering, and atnightfall had established the new lines at nearly a right angle with theold--Schofield reaching well around and threatening the Confederate rear. 

The civilian reader must not suppose when he reads accounts of militaryoperations in which relative positions of the forces are defined, as inthe foregoing passages, that these were matters of general knowledge tothose engaged. Such statements are commonly made, even by those high incommand, in the light of later disclosures, such as the enemy's officialreports. It is seldom, indeed, that a subordinate officer knows anythingabout the disposition of the enemy's forces--except that it isunaimable--or precisely whom he is fighting. As to the rank and file, theycan know nothing more of the matter than the arms they carry. They hardlyknow what troops are upon their own right or left the length of a regimentaway. If it is a cloudy day they are ignorant even of the points of thecompass. It may be said, generally, that a soldier's knowledge of what isgoing on about him is coterminous with his official relation to it and hispersonal connection with it; what is going on in front of him he does notknow at all until he learns it afterward. 

At nine o'clock on the morning of the 27th Wood's division was withdrawnand replaced by Stanley's. Supported by Johnson's division, it moved atten o'clock to the left, in the rear of Schofield, a distance of fourmiles through a forest, and at two o'clock in the afternoon had reached aposition where General Howard believed himself free to move in behind theenemy's forces and attack them in the rear, or at least, striking them inthe flank, crush his way along their line in the direction of its length, throw them into confusion and prepare an easy victory for a supportingattack in front. In selecting General Howard for this bold adventureGeneral Sherman was doubtless not unmindful of Chancellorsville, whereStonewall Jackson had executed a similar manoeuvre for Howard'sinstruction. Experience is a normal school: it teaches how to teach. 

There are some differences to be noted. At Chancellorsville it was Jacksonwho attacked; at Pickett's Mill, Howard. At Chancellorsville it was Howardwho was assailed; at Pickett's Mill, Hood. The significance of the firstdistinction is doubled by that of the second. 

The attack, it was understood, was to be made in column of brigades, Hazen's brigade of Wood's division leading. That such was at least Hazen'sunderstanding I learned from his own lips during the movement, as I was anofficer of his staff. But after a march of less than a mile an hour and afurther delay of three hours at the end of it to acquaint the enemy of ourintention to surprise him, our single shrunken brigade of fifteen hundredmen was sent forward without support to double up the army of GeneralJohnston. "We will put in Hazen and see what success he has. " In thesewords of General Wood to General Howard we were first apprised of the truenature of the distinction about to be conferred upon us. 

General W. B. Hazen, a born fighter, an educated soldier, after the warChief Signal Officer of the Army and now long dead, was the best hated manthat I ever knew, and his very memory is a terror to every unworthy soulin the service. His was a stormy life: he was in trouble all round. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and a countless multitude of the less eminent lucklesshad the misfortune, at one time and another, to incur his disfavor, and hetried to punish them all. He was always--after the war--the central figureof a court-martial or a Congressional inquiry, was accused of everything, from stealing to cowardice, was banished to obscure posts, "jumped on" bythe press, traduced in public and in private, and always emergedtriumphant. While Signal Officer, he went up against the Secretary of Warand put him to the controversial sword. He convicted Sheridan offalsehood, Sherman of barbarism, Grant of inefficiency. He was aggressive, arrogant, tyrannical, honorable, truthful, courageous--skillful soldier, afaithful friend and one of the most exasperating of men Duty was hisreligion, and like the Moslem he proselyted with the sword. His missionaryefforts were directed chiefly against the spiritual darkness of hissuperiors in rank, though he would turn aside from pursuit of his erringcommander to set a chicken-thieving orderly astride a wooden horse, with aheavy stone attached to each foot. "Hazen, " said a brother brigadier, "isa synonym of insubordination. " For my commander and my friend, my masterin the art of war, now unable to answer for himself, let this fact answer:when he heard Wood say they would put him in and see what success he wouldhave in defeating an army--when he saw Howard assent--he uttered never aword, rode to the head of his feeble brigade and patiently awaited thecommand to go. Only by a look which I knew how to read did he betray hissense of the criminal blunder. 

The enemy had now had seven hours in which to learn of the movement andprepare to meet it. General Johnston says:

"The Federal troops extended their intrenched line [we did not intrench]so rapidly to their left that it was found necessary to transferCleburne's division to Hardee's corps to our right, where it was formed onthe prolongation of Polk's line. "

General Hood, commanding the enemy's right corps, says:

"On the morning of the 27th the enemy were known to be rapidly extendingtheir left, attempting to turn my right as they extended. Cleburne wasdeployed to meet them, and at half-past five P. M. A very stubborn attackwas made on this division, extending to the right, where Major-GeneralWheeler with his cavalry division was engaging them. The assault wascontinued with great determination upon both Cleburne and Wheeler. "

That, then, was the situation: a weak brigade of fifteen hundred men, withmasses of idle troops behind in the character of audience, waiting for theword to march a quarter-mile up hill through almost impassable tangles ofunderwood, along and across precipitous ravines, and attack breastworksconstructed at leisure and manned with two divisions of troops as good asthemselves. True, we did not know all this, but if any man on that groundbesides Wood and Howard expected a "walkover" his must have been asingularly hopeful disposition. As topographical engineer it had been myduty to make a hasty examination of the ground in front. In doing so I hadpushed far enough forward through the forest to hear distinctly the murmurof the enemy awaiting us, and this had been duly reported; but from ourlines nothing could be heard but the wind among the trees and the songs ofbirds. Some one said it was a pity to frighten them, but there wouldnecessarily be more or less noise. We laughed at that: men awaiting deathon the battlefield laugh easily, though not infectiously. 

The brigade was formed in four battalions, two in front and two in rear. This gave us a front of about two hundred yards. The right front battalionwas commanded by Colonel R. L. Kimberly of the 41st Ohio, the left byColonel O. H. Payne of the 124th Ohio, the rear battalions by Colonel J. C. Foy, 23d Kentucky, and Colonel W. W. Berry, 5th Kentucky--all brave andskillful officers, tested by experience on many fields. The whole command(known as the Second Brigade, Third Division, Fourth Corps) consisted ofno fewer than nine regiments, reduced by long service to an average ofless than two hundred men each. With full ranks and only the necessarydetails for special duty we should have had some eight thousand rifles inline. 

We moved forward. In less than one minute the trim battalions had becomesimply a swarm of men struggling through the undergrowth of the forest, pushing and crowding. The front was irregularly serrated, the strongestand bravest in advance, the others following in fan-like formations, variable and inconstant, ever defining themselves anew. For the first twohundred yards our course lay along the left bank of a small creek in adeep ravine, our left battalions sweeping along its steep slope. Then wecame to the fork of the ravine. A part of us crossed below, the restabove, passing over both branches, the regiments inextricablyintermingled, rendering all military formation impossible. Thecolor-bearers kept well to the front with their flags, closely furled, aslant backward over their shoulders. Displayed, they would have been tornto rags by the boughs of the trees. Horses were all sent to the rear; thegeneral and staff and all the field officers toiled along on foot as bestthey could. "We shall halt and form when we get out of this, " said anaide-de-camp. 

Suddenly there were a ringing rattle of musketry, the familiar hissing ofbullets, and before us the interspaces of the forest were all blue withsmoke. Hoarse, fierce yells broke out of a thousand throats. The forwardfringe of brave and hardy assailants was arrested in its mutableextensions; the edge of our swarm grew dense and clearly defined as theforemost halted, and the rest pressed forward to align themselves besidethem, all firing. The uproar was deafening; the air was sibilant withstreams and sheets of missiles. In the steady, unvarying roar ofsmall-arms the frequent shock of the cannon was rather felt than heard, but the gusts of grape which they blew into that populous wood wereaudible enough, screaming among the trees and cracking against their stemsand branches. We had, of course, no artillery to reply. 

Our brave color-bearers were now all in the forefront of battle in theopen, for the enemy had cleared a space in front of his breastworks. Theyheld the colors erect, shook out their glories, waved them forward andback to keep them spread, for there was no wind. From where I stood, atthe right of the line--we had "halted and formed, " indeed--I could see sixof our flags at one time. Occasionally one would go down, only to beinstantly lifted by other hands. 

I must here quote again from General Johnston's account of thisengagement, for nothing could more truly indicate the resolute nature ofthe attack than the Confederate belief that it was made by the wholeFourth Corps, instead of one weak brigade:

"The Fourth Corps came on in deep order and assailed the Texans with greatvigor, receiving their close and accurate fire with the fortitude alwaysexhibited by General Sherman's troops in the actions of this campaign. .. . The Federal troops approached within a few yards of the Confederates, butat last were forced to give way by their storm of well-directed bullets, and fell back to the shelter of a hollow near and behind them. They lefthundreds of corpses within twenty paces of the Confederate line. When theUnited States troops paused in their advance within fifteen paces of theTexan front rank one of their color-bearers planted his colors eight orten feet in front of his regiment, and was instantly shot dead. A soldiersprang forward to his place and fell also as he grasped the color-staff. Asecond and third followed successively, and each received death asspeedily as his predecessors. A fourth, however, seized and bore back theobject of soldierly devotion. "

Such incidents have occurred in battle from time to time since men beganto venerate the symbols of their cause, but they are not commonly relatedby the enemy. If General Johnston had known that his veteran divisionswere throwing their successive lines against fewer than fifteen hundredmen his glowing tribute to his enemy's valor could hardly have been moregenerously expressed. I can attest the truth of his soldierly praise: Isaw the occurrence that he relates and regret that I am unable to recalleven the name of the regiment whose colors were so gallantly saved. 

Early in my military experience I used to ask myself how it was that bravetroops could retreat while still their courage was high. As long as a manis not disabled he can go forward; can it be anything but fear that makeshim stop and finally retire? Are there signs by which he can infalliblyknow the struggle to be hopeless? In this engagement, as in others, mydoubts were answered as to the fact; the explanation is still obscure. Inmany instances which have come under my observation, when hostile lines ofinfantry engage at close range and the assailants afterward retire, therewas a "dead-line" beyond which no man advanced but to fall. Not a soul ofthem ever reached the enemy's front to be bayoneted or captured. It was amatter of the difference of three or four paces--too small a distance toaffect the accuracy of aim. In these affairs no aim is taken at individualantagonists; the soldier delivers his fire at the thickest mass in hisfront. The fire is, of course, as deadly at twenty paces as at fifteen; atfifteen as at ten. Nevertheless, there is the "dead-line, " with itswell-defined edge of corpses--those of the bravest. Where both lines arefighting without cover--as in a charge met by a counter-charge--each hasits "dead-line, " and between the two is a clear space--neutral ground, devoid of dead, for the living cannot reach it to fall there. 

I observed this phenomenon at Pickett's Mill. Standing at the right of theline I had an unobstructed view of the narrow, open space across which thetwo lines fought. It was dim with smoke, but not greatly obscured: thesmoke rose and spread in sheets among the branches of the trees. Most ofour men fought kneeling as they fired, many of them behind trees, stonesand whatever cover they could get, but there were considerable groups thatstood. Occasionally one of these groups, which had endured the storm ofmissiles for moments without perceptible reduction, would push forward, moved by a common despair, and wholly detach itself from the line. In asecond every man of the group would be down. There had been no visiblemovement of the enemy, no audible change in the awful, even roar of thefiring--yet all were down. Frequently the dim figure of an individualsoldier would be seen to spring away from his comrades, advancing alonetoward that fateful interspace, with leveled bayonet. He got no fartherthan the farthest of his predecessors. Of the "hundreds of corpses withintwenty paces of the Confederate line, " I venture to say that a third werewithin fifteen paces, and not one within ten. 

It is the perception--perhaps unconscious--of this inexplicable phenomenonthat causes the still unharmed, still vigorous and still courageoussoldier to retire without having come into actual contact with his foe. Hesees, or feels, that he _cannot_. His bayonet is a useless weapon forslaughter; its purpose is a moral one. Its mandate exhausted, he sheathesit and trusts to the bullet. That failing, he retreats. He has done allthat he could do with such appliances as he has. 

No command to fall back was given, none could have been heard. Man by man, the survivors withdrew at will, sifting through the trees into the coverof the ravines, among the wounded who could drag themselves back; amongthe skulkers whom nothing could have dragged forward. The left of ourshort line had fought at the corner of a cornfield, the fence along theright side of which was parallel to the direction of our retreat. As thedisorganized groups fell back along this fence on the wooded side, theywere attacked by a flanking force of the enemy moving through the field ina direction nearly parallel with what had been our front. This force, Iinfer from General Johnston's account, consisted of the brigade of GeneralLowry, or two Arkansas regiments under Colonel Baucum. I had been sent byGeneral Hazen to that point and arrived in time to witness this formidablemovement. But already our retreating men, in obedience to their officers, their courage and their instinct of self-preservation, had formed alongthe fence and opened fire. The apparently slight advantage of theimperfect cover and the open range worked its customary miracle: theassault, a singularly spiritless one, considering the advantages itpromised and that it was made by an organized and victorious force againsta broken and retreating one, was checked. The assailants actually retired, and if they afterward renewed the movement they encountered none but ourdead and wounded. 

The battle, as a battle, was at an end, but there was still someslaughtering that it was possible to incur before nightfall; and as thewreck of our brigade drifted back through the forest we met the brigade(Gibson's) which, had the attack been made in column, as it should havebeen, would have been but five minutes behind our heels, with another fiveminutes behind its own. As it was, just forty-five minutes had elapsed, during which the enemy had destroyed us and was now ready to perform thesame kindly office for our successors. Neither Gibson nor the brigadewhich was sent to his "relief" as tardily as he to ours accomplished, orcould have hoped to accomplish, anything whatever. I did not note theirmovements, having other duties, but Hazen in his "Narrative of MilitaryService" says:

"I witnessed the attack of the two brigades following my own, and none ofthese (troops) advanced nearer than one hundred yards of the enemy'sworks. They went in at a run, and as organizations were broken in lessthan a minute. "

Nevertheless their losses were considerable, including several hundredprisoners taken from a sheltered place whence they did not care to riseand run. The entire loss was about fourteen hundred men, of whom nearlyone-half fell killed and wounded in Hazen's brigade in less than thirtyminutes of actual fighting. 

General Johnston says:

"The Federal dead lying near our line were counted by many persons, officers and soldiers. According to these counts there were seven hundredof them. "

This is obviously erroneous, though I have not the means at hand toascertain the true number. I remember that we were all astonished at theuncommonly large proportion of dead to wounded--a consequence of theuncommonly close range at which most of the fighting was done. 

The action took its name from a water-power mill near by. This was on abranch of a stream having, I am sorry to say, the prosaic name of PumpkinVine Creek. I have my own reasons for suggesting that the name of thatwater-course be altered to Sunday-School Run. 

FOUR DAYS IN DIXIE

During a part of the month of October, 1864, the Federal and Confederatearmies of Sherman and Hood respectively, having performed a surprising andresultless series of marches and countermarches since the fall of Atlanta, confronted each other along the separating line of the Coosa River in thevicinity of Gaylesville, Alabama. Here for several days they remained atrest--at least most of the infantry and artillery did; what the cavalrywas doing nobody but itself ever knew or greatly cared. It was aninterregnum of expectancy between two régimes of activity. 

I was on the staff of Colonel McConnell, who commanded an infantry brigadein the absence of its regular commander. McConnell was a good man, but hedid not keep a very tight rein upon the half dozen restless and recklessyoung fellows who (for his sins) constituted his "military family. " Inmost matters we followed the trend of our desires, which commonly ran inthe direction of adventure--it did not greatly matter what kind. Inpursuance of this policy of escapades, one bright Sunday morningLieutenant Cobb, an aide-de-camp, and I mounted and set out to "seek ourfortunes, " as the story books have it. Striking into a road of which weknew nothing except that it led toward the river, we followed it for amile or such a matter, when we found our advance interrupted by aconsiderable creek, which we must ford or go back. We consulted a momentand then rode at it as hard as we could, possibly in the belief that ahigh momentum would act as it does in the instance of a skater passingover thin ice. Cobb was fortunate enough to get across comparatively dry, but his hapless companion was utterly submerged. The disaster was all thegreater from my having on a resplendent new uniform, of which I had beenpardonably vain. Ah, what a gorgeous new uniform it never was again!

A half-hour devoted to wringing my clothing and dry-charging my revolver, and we were away. A brisk canter of a half-hour under the arches of thetrees brought us to the river, where it was our ill luck to find a boatand three soldiers of our brigade. These men had been for several hoursconcealed in the brush patiently watching the opposite bank in the amiablehope of getting a shot at some unwary Confederate, but had seen none. Fora great distance up and down the stream on the other side, and for atleast a mile back from it, extended cornfields. Beyond the cornfields, onslightly higher ground, was a thin forest, with breaks here and there inits continuity, denoting plantations, probably. No houses were in sight, and no camps. We knew that it was the enemy's ground, but whether hisforces were disposed along the slightly higher country bordering thebottom lands, or at strategic points miles back, as ours were, we knew nomore than the least curious private in our army. In any case the riverline would naturally be picketed or patrolled. But the charm of theunknown was upon us: the mysterious exerted its old-time fascination, beckoning to us from that silent shore so peaceful and dreamy in thebeauty of the quiet Sunday morning. The temptation was strong and we fell. The soldiers were as eager for the hazard as we, and readily volunteeredfor the madmen's enterprise. Concealing our horses in a cane-brake, weunmoored the boat and rowed across unmolested. 

Arrived at a kind of "landing" on the other side, our first care was so tosecure the boat under the bank as to favor a hasty re-embarking in case weshould be so unfortunate as to incur the natural consequence of our act;then, following an old road through the ranks of standing corn, we movedin force upon the Confederate position, five strong, with an armament ofthree Springfield rifles and two Colt's revolvers. We had not the furtheradvantage of music and banners. One thing favored the expedition, givingit an apparent assurance of success: it was well officered--an officer toeach man and a half. 

After marching about a mile we came into a neck of woods and crossed anintersecting road which showed no wheel-tracks, but was rich inhoof-prints. We observed them and kept right on about our business, whatever that may have been. A few hundred yards farther brought us to aplantation bordering our road upon the right. The fields, as was theSouthern fashion at that period of the war, were uncultivated andovergrown with brambles. A large white house stood at some little distancefrom the road; we saw women and children and a few negroes there. On ourleft ran the thin forest, pervious to cavalry. Directly ahead an ascent inthe road formed a crest beyond which we could see nothing. 

On this crest suddenly appeared two horsemen in gray, sharply outlinedagainst the sky--men and animals looking gigantic. At the same instant ajingling and tramping were audible behind us, and turning in thatdirection I saw a score of mounted men moving forward at a trot. In themeantime the giants on the crest had multiplied surprisingly. Our invasionof the Gulf States had apparently failed. 

There was lively work in the next few seconds. The shots were thick andfast--and uncommonly loud; none, I think, from our side. Cobb was on theextreme left of our advance, I on the right--about two paces apart. Heinstantly dived into the wood. The three men and I climbed across thefence somehow and struck out across the field--actuated, doubtless, by anintelligent forethought: men on horseback could not immediately follow. Passing near the house, now swarming like a hive of bees, we made for aswamp two or three hundred yards away, where I concealed myself in ajungle, the others continuing--as a defeated commander would put it--tofall back. In my cover, where I lay panting like a hare, I could hear adeal of shouting and hard riding and an occasional shot. I heard some onecalling dogs, and the thought of bloodhounds added its fine suggestivenessto the other fancies appropriate to the occasion. 

Finding myself unpursued after the lapse of what seemed an hour, but wasprobably a few minutes, I cautiously sought a place where, stillconcealed, I could obtain a view of the field of glory. The only enemy insight was a group of horsemen on a hill a quarter of a mile away. Towardthis group a woman was running, followed by the eyes of everybody aboutthe house. I thought she had discovered my hiding-place and was going to"give me away. " Taking to my hands and knees I crept as rapidly aspossible among the clumps of brambles directly back toward the point inthe road where we had met the enemy and failed to make him ours. There Idragged myself into a patch of briars within ten feet of the road, where Ilay undiscovered during the remainder of the day, listening to a varietyof disparaging remarks upon Yankee valor and to dispiriting declarationsof intention conditional on my capture, as members of the Oppositionpassed and repassed and paused in the road to discuss the morning'sevents. In this way I learned that the three privates had been headed offand caught within ten minutes. Their destination would naturally beAndersonville; what further became of them God knows. Their captors passedthe day making a careful canvass of the swamp for me. 

When night had fallen I cautiously left my place of concealment, dodgedacross the road into the woods and made for the river through the mile ofcorn. Such corn! It towered above me like a forest, shutting out all thestarlight except what came from directly overhead. Many of the ears were ayard out of reach. One who has never seen an Alabama river-bottomcornfield has not exhausted nature's surprises; nor will he know whatsolitude is until he explores one in a moonless night. 

I came at last to the river bank with its fringe of trees and willows andcanes. My intention was to swim across, but the current was swift, thewater forbiddingly dark and cold. A mist obscured the other bank. I couldnot, indeed, see the water more than a few yards out. It was a hazardousand horrible undertaking, and I gave it up, following cautiously along thebank in search of the spot where we had moored the boat. True, it washardly likely that the landing was now unguarded, or, if so, that the boatwas still there. Cobb had undoubtedly made for it, having an even moreurgent need than I; but hope springs eternal in the human breast, andthere was a chance that he had been killed before reaching it. I came atlast into the road that we had taken and consumed half the night incautiously approaching the landing, pistol in hand and heart in mouth. Theboat was gone! I continued my journey along the stream--in search ofanother. 

My clothing was still damp from my morning bath, my teeth rattled withcold, but I kept on along the stream until I reached the limit of thecornfields and entered a dense wood. Through this I groped my way, inch byinch, when, suddenly emerging from a thicket into a space slightly moreopen, I came upon a smoldering camp-fire surrounded by prostrate figuresof men, upon one of whom I had almost trodden. A sentinel, who ought tohave been shot, sat by the embers, his carbine across his lap, his chinupon his breast. Just beyond was a group of unsaddled horses. The men wereasleep; the sentinel was asleep; the horses were asleep. There wassomething indescribably uncanny about it all. For a moment I believed themall lifeless, and O'Hara's familiar line, "The bivouac of the dead, "quoted itself in my consciousness. The emotion that I felt was thatinspired by a sense of the supernatural; of the actual and imminent perilof my position I had no thought. When at last it occurred to me I felt itas a welcome relief, and stepping silently back into the shadow retracedmy course without having awakened a soul. The vividness with which I cannow recall that scene is to me one of the marvels of memory. 

Getting my bearings again with some difficulty, I now made a wide detourto the left, in the hope of passing around this outpost and striking theriver beyond. In this mad attempt I ran upon a more vigilant sentinel, posted in the heart of a thicket, who fired at me without challenge. To asoldier an unexpected shot ringing out at dead of night is fraught with anawful significance. In my circumstances--cut off from my comrades, gropingabout an unknown country, surrounded by invisible perils which such asignal would call into eager activity--the flash and shock of that firearmwere unspeakably dreadful! In any case I should and ought to have fled, and did so; but how much or little of conscious prudence there was in theprompting I do not care to discover by analysis of memory. I went backinto the corn, found the river, followed it back a long way and mountedinto the fork of a low tree. There I perched until the dawn, a mostuncomfortable bird. 

In the gray light of the morning I discovered that I was opposite anisland of considerable length, separated from the mainland by a narrow andshallow channel, which I promptly waded. The island was low and flat, covered with an almost impenetrable cane-brake interlaced with vines. Working my way through these to the other side, I obtained another look atGod's country--Shermany, so to speak. There were no visible inhabitants. The forest and the water met. This did not deter me. For the chill of thewater I had no further care, and laying off my boots and outer clothing Iprepared to swim. A strange thing now occurred--more accurately, afamiliar thing occurred at a strange moment. A black cloud seemed to passbefore my eyes--the water, the trees, the sky, all vanished in a profounddarkness. I heard the roaring of a great cataract, felt the earth sinkingfrom beneath my feet. Then I heard and felt no more. 

At the battle of Kennesaw Mountain in the previous June I had been badlywounded in the head, and for three months was incapacitated for service. In truth, I had done no actual duty since, being then, as for many yearsafterward, subject to fits of fainting, sometimes without assignableimmediate cause, but mostly when suffering from exposure, excitement orexcessive fatigue. This combination of them all had broken me down--mostopportunely, it would seem. 

When I regained my consciousness the sun was high. I was still giddy andhalf blind. To have taken to the water would have been madness; I musthave a raft. Exploring my island, I found a pen of slender logs: an oldstructure without roof or rafters, built for what purpose I do not know. Several of these logs I managed with patient toil to detach and convey tothe water, where I floated them, lashing them together with vines. Justbefore sunset my raft was complete and freighted with my outer clothing, boots and pistol. Having shipped the last article, I returned into thebrake, seeking something from which to improvise a paddle. While peeringabout I heard a sharp metallic click--the cocking of a rifle! I was aprisoner. 

The history of this great disaster to the Union arms is brief and simple. A Confederate "home guard, " hearing something going on upon the island, rode across, concealed his horse and still-hunted me. And, reader, whenyou are "held up" in the same way may it be by as fine a fellow. He notonly spared my life, but even overlooked a feeble and ungratefulafter-attempt upon his own (the particulars of which I shall not relate), merely exacting my word of honor that I would not again try to escapewhile in his custody. Escape! I could not have escaped a new-born babe. 

At my captor's house that evening there was a reception, attended by theélite of the whole vicinity. A Yankee officer in full fig--minus only theboots, which could not be got on to his swollen feet--was something worthseeing, and those who came to scoff remained to stare. What mostinterested them, I think, was my eating--an entertainment that wasprolonged to a late hour. They were a trifle disappointed by the absenceof horns, hoof and tail, but bore their chagrin with good-naturedfortitude. Among my visitors was a charming young woman from theplantation where we had met the foe the day before--the same lady whom Ihad suspected of an intention to reveal my hiding-place. She had had nosuch design; she had run over to the group of horsemen to learn if herfather had been hurt--by whom, I should like to know. No restraint was putupon me; my captor even left me with the women and children and went offfor instructions as to what disposition he should make of me. Altogetherthe reception was "a pronounced success, " though it is to be regrettedthat the guest of the evening had the incivility to fall dead asleep inthe midst of the festivities, and was put to bed by sympathetic and, hehas reason to believe, fair hands. 

The next morning I was started off to the rear in custody of two mountedmen, heavily armed. They had another prisoner, picked up in some raidbeyond the river. He was a most offensive brute--a foreigner of somemongrel sort, with just sufficient command of our tongue to show that hecould not control his own. We traveled all day, meeting occasional smallbodies of cavalrymen, by whom, with one exception--a Texan officer--wascivilly treated. My guards said, however, that if we should chance to meetJeff Gatewood he would probably take me from them and hang me to thenearest tree; and once or twice, hearing horsemen approach, they directedme to stand aside, concealed in the brush, one of them remaining near byto keep an eye on me, the other going forward with my fellow-prisoner, forwhose neck they seemed to have less tenderness, and whom I heartily wishedwell hanged. 

Jeff Gatewood was a "guerrilla" chief of local notoriety, who was agreater terror to his friends than to his other foes. My guards relatedalmost incredible tales of his cruelties and infamies. By their account itwas into his camp that I had blundered on Sunday night. 

We put up for the night at a farmhouse, having gone not more than fifteenmiles, owing to the condition of my feet. Here we got a bite of supper andwere permitted to lie before the fire. My fellow-prisoner took off hisboots and was soon sound asleep. I took off nothing and, despiteexhaustion, remained equally sound awake. One of the guards also removedhis footgear and outer clothing, placed his weapons under his neck andslept the sleep of innocence; the other sat in the chimney corner onwatch. The house was a double log cabin, with an open space between thetwo parts, roofed over--a common type of habitation in that region. Theroom we were in had its entrance in this open space, the fireplaceopposite, at the end. Beside the door was a bed, occupied by the old manof the house and his wife. It was partly curtained off from the room. 

In an hour or two the chap on watch began to yawn, then to nod. Prettysoon he stretched himself on the floor, facing us, pistol in hand. For awhile he supported himself on his elbow, then laid his head on his arm, blinking like an owl. I performed an occasional snore, watching himnarrowly between my eyelashes from the shadow of my arm. The inevitableoccurred--he slept audibly. 

A half-hour later I rose quietly to my feet, particularly careful not todisturb the blackguard at my side, and moved as silently as possible tothe door. Despite my care the latch clicked. The old lady sat bolt uprightin bed and stared at me. She was too late. I sprang through the door andstruck out for the nearest point of woods, in a direction previouslyselected, vaulting fences like an accomplished gymnast and followed by amultitude of dogs. It is said that the State of Alabama has more dogs thanschool-children, and that they cost more for their keep. The estimate ofcost is probably too high. 

Looking backward as I ran, I saw and heard the place in a turmoil anduproar; and to my joy the old man, evidently oblivious to the facts of thesituation, was lifting up his voice and calling his dogs. They were gooddogs: they went back; otherwise the malicious old rascal would have had myskeleton. Again the traditional bloodhound did not materialize. Otherpursuit there was no reason to fear; my foreign gentleman would occupy theattention of one of the soldiers, and in the darkness of the forest Icould easily elude the other, or, if need be, get him at a disadvantage. In point of fact there was no pursuit. 

I now took my course by the north star (which I can never sufficientlybless), avoiding all roads and open places about houses, laboriouslyboring my way through forests, driving myself like a wedge into brush andbramble, swimming every stream I came to (some of them more than once, probably), and pulling myself out of the water by boughs andbriars--whatever could be grasped. Let any one try to go a little wayacross even the most familiar country on a moonless night, and he willhave an experience to remember. By dawn I had probably not made threemiles. My clothing and skin were alike in rags. 

During the day I was compelled to make wide detours to avoid even thefields, unless they were of corn; but in other respects the going wasdistinctly better. A light breakfast of raw sweet potatoes and persimmonscheered the inner man; a good part of the outer was decorating the severalthorns, boughs and sharp rocks along my sylvan wake. 

Late in the afternoon I found the river, at what point it was impossibleto say. After a half-hour's rest, concluding with a fervent prayer that Imight go to the bottom, I swam across. Creeping up the bank and holding mycourse still northward through a dense undergrowth, I suddenly reeled intoa dusty highway and saw a more heavenly vision than ever the eyes of adying saint were blessed withal--two patriots in blue carrying a stolenpig slung upon a pole!

Late that evening Colonel McConnell and his staff were chatting by acamp-fire in front of his headquarters. They were in a pleasant humor:some one had just finished a funny story about a man cut in two by acannon-shot. Suddenly something staggered in among them from the outerdarkness and fell into the fire. Somebody dragged it out by what seemed tobe a leg. They turned the animal on its back and examined it--they were nocowards. 

"What is it, Cobb?" said the chief, who had not taken the trouble to rise. 

"I don't know, Colonel, but thank God it is dead!"

It was not. 

WHAT OCCURRED AT FRANKLIN

For several days, in snow and rain, General Schofield's little army hadcrouched in its hastily constructed defenses at Columbia, Tennessee. Ithad retreated in hot haste from Pulaski, thirty miles to the south, arriving just in time to foil Hood, who, marching from Florence, Alabama, by another road, with a force of more than double our strength, had hopedto intercept us. Had he succeeded, he would indubitably have bagged thewhole bunch of us. As it was, he simply took position in front of us andgave us plenty of employment, but did not attack; he knew a trick worthtwo of that. 

Duck River was directly in our rear; I suppose both our flanks rested onit. The town was between them. One night--that of November 27, 1864--wepulled up stakes and crossed to the north bank to continue our retreat toNashville, where Thomas and safety lay--such safety as is known in war. Itwas high time too, for before noon of the next day Forrest's cavalryforded the river a few miles above us and began pushing back our own horsetoward Spring Hill, ten miles in our rear, on our only road. Why ourinfantry was not immediately put in motion toward the threatened point, sovital to our safety, General Schofield could have told better than I. Howbeit, we lay there inactive all day. 

The next morning--a bright and beautiful one--the brigade of Colonel P. Sidney Post was thrown out, up the river four or five miles, to see whatit could see. What it saw was Hood's head-of-column coming over on apontoon bridge, and a right pretty spectacle it would have been to onewhom it did not concern. It concerned us rather keenly. 

As a member of Colonel Post's staff, I was naturally favored with a goodview of the performance. We formed in line of battle at a distance ofperhaps a half-mile from the bridge-head, but that unending column of grayand steel gave us no more attention than if we had been a crowd offarmer-folk. Why should it? It had only to face to the left to be itself aline of battle. Meantime it had more urgent business on hand than brushingaway a small brigade whose only offense was curiosity; it was making forSpring Hill with all its legs and wheels. Hour after hour we watched thatunceasing flow of infantry and artillery toward the rear of our army. Itwas an unnerving spectacle, yet we never for a moment doubted that, actingon the intelligence supplied by our succession of couriers, our entireforce was moving rapidly to the point of contact. The battle of SpringHill was obviously decreed. Obviously, too, our brigade of observationwould be among the last to have a hand in it. The thought annoyed us, madeus restless and resentful. Our mounted men rode forward and back behindthe line, nervous and distressed; the men in the ranks sought relief infrequent changes of posture, in shifting their weight from one leg to theother, in needless inspection of their weapons and in that unfailingresource of the discontented soldier, audible damning of those in thesaddles of authority. But never for more than a moment at a time did anyone remove his eyes from that fascinating and portentous pageant. 

Toward evening we were recalled, to learn that of our five divisions ofinfantry, with their batteries, numbering twenty-three thousand men, onlyone--Stanley's, four thousand weak--had been sent to Spring Hill to meetthat formidable movement of Hood's three veteran corps! Why Stanley wasnot immediately effaced is still a matter of controversy. Hood, who wasearly on the ground, declared that he gave the needful orders and triedvainly to enforce them; Cheatham, in command of his leading corps, that hedid not. Doubtless the dispute is still being carried on between thesechieftains from their beds of asphodel and moly in Elysium. So much iscertain: Stanley drove away Forrest and successfully held the junction ofthe roads against Cleburne's division, the only infantry that attackedhim. 

That night the entire Confederate army lay within a half mile of our road, while we all sneaked by, infantry, artillery, and trains. The enemy'scamp-fires shone redly--miles of them--seemingly only a stone's throw fromour hurrying column. His men were plainly visible about them, cookingtheir suppers--a sight so incredible that many of our own, thinking themfriends, strayed over to them and did not return. At intervals of a fewhundred yards we passed dim figures on horseback by the roadside, enjoining silence. Needless precaution; we could not have spoken if we hadtried, for our hearts were in our throats. But fools are God's peculiarcare, arid one of his protective methods is the stupidity of other fools. By daybreak our last man and last wagon had passed the fateful spotunchallenged, and our first were entering Franklin, ten miles away. Despite spirited cavalry attacks on trains and rear-guard, all were inFranklin by noon and such of the men as could be kept awake were throwingup a slight line of defense, inclosing the town. 

Franklin lies--or at that time did lie; I know not what exploration mightnow disclose--on the south bank of a small river, the Harpeth by name. Fortwo miles southward was a nearly flat, open plain, extending to a range oflow hills through which passed the turnpike by which we had come. Fromsome bluffs on the precipitous north bank of the river was a commandingoverlook of all this open ground, which, although more than a mile away, seemed almost at one's feet. On this elevated ground the wagon-train hadbeen parked and General Schofield had stationed himself--the former forsecurity, the latter for outlook. Both were guarded by General Wood'sinfantry division, of which my brigade was a part. "We are in beautifulluck, " said a member of the division staff. With some prevision of whatwas to come and a lively recollection of the nervous strain of helplessobservation, I did not think it luck. In the activity of battle one doesnot feel one's hair going gray with vicissitudes of emotion. 

For some reason to the writer unknown General Schofield had brought alongwith him General D. S. Stanley, who commanded two of his divisions--oursand another, which was not "in luck. " In the ensuing battle, when thisexcellent officer could stand the strain no longer, he bolted across thebridge like a shot and found relief in the hell below, where he waspromptly tumbled out of the saddle by a bullet. 

Our line, with its reserve brigades, was about a mile and a half long, both flanks on the river, above and below the town--a mere bridge-head. Itdid not look a very formidable obstacle to the march of an army of morethan forty thousand men. In a more tranquil temper than his failure atSpring Hill had put him into Hood would probably have passed around ourleft and turned us out with ease--which would justly have entitled him tothe Humane Society's great gold medal. Apparently that was not his day forsaving life. 

About the middle of the afternoon our field-glasses picked up theConfederate head-of-column emerging from the range of hills previouslymentioned, where it is cut by the Columbia road. But--ominouscircumstance!--it did not come on. It turned to its left, at a rightangle, moving along the base of the hills, parallel to our line. Otherheads-of-column came through other gaps and over the crests farther along, impudently deploying on the level ground with a spectacular display offlags and glitter of arms. I do not remember that they were molested, evenby the guns of General Wagner, who had been foolishly posted with twosmall brigades across the turnpike, a half-mile in our front, where he wasneedless for apprisal and powerless for resistance. My recollection isthat our fellows down there in their shallow trenches noted theseportentous dispositions without the least manifestation of incivility. Asa matter of fact, many of them were permitted by their compassionateofficers to sleep. And truly it was good weather for that: sleep was inthe very atmosphere. The sun burned crimson in a gray-blue sky through adelicate Indian-summer haze, as beautiful as a day-dream in paradise. Ifone had been given to moralizing one might have found material a-plentyfor homilies in the contrast between that peaceful autumn afternoon andthe bloody business that it had in hand. If any good chaplain failed to"improve the occasion" let us hope that he lived to lament insack-cloth-of-gold and ashes-of-roses his intellectual unthrift. 

The putting of that army into battle shape--its change from columns intolines--could not have occupied more than an hour or two, yet it seemed aneternity. Its leisurely evolutions were irritating, but at last it movedforward with atoning rapidity and the fight was on. First, the stormstruck Wagner's isolated brigades, which, vanishing in fire and smoke, instantly reappeared as a confused mass of fugitives inextricablyintermingled with their pursuers. They had not stayed the advance amoment, and as might have been foreseen were now a peril to the main line, which could protect itself only by the slaughter of its friends. To theright and left, however, our guns got into play, and simultaneously afurious infantry fire broke out along the entire front, the paralyzedcenter excepted. But nothing could stay those gallant rebels from ahand-to-hand encounter with bayonet and butt, and it was accorded to themwith hearty good-will. 

Meantime Wagner's conquerors were pouring across the breastwork like waterover a dam. The guns that had spared the fugitives had now no time tofire; their infantry supports gave way and for a space of more than twohundred yards in the very center of our line the assailants, mad withexultation, had everything their own way. From the right and the lefttheir gray masses converged into the gap, pushed through, and then, spreading, turned our men out of the works so hardly held against theattack in their front. From our viewpoint on the bluff we could mark theconstant widening of the gap, the steady encroachment of that blazing andsmoking mass against its disordered opposition. 

"It is all up with us, " said Captain Dawson, of Wood's staff; "I am goingto have a quiet smoke. "

I do not doubt that he supposed himself to have borne the heat and burdenof the strife. In the midst of his preparations for a smoke he paused andlooked again--a new tumult of musketry had broken loose. Colonel EmersonOpdycke had rushed his reserve brigade into the _mêlée_ and was bitterlydisputing the Confederate advantage. Other fresh regiments joined in thecountercharge, commanderless groups of retreating men returned to theirwork, and there ensued a hand-to-hand contest of incredible fury. Twolong, irregular, mutable, and tumultuous blurs of color were consumingeach other's edge along the line of contact. Such devil's work does notlast long, and we had the great joy to see it ending, not as it began, but"more nearly to the heart's desire. " Slowly the mobile blur moved awayfrom the town, and presently the gray half of it dissolved into itselemental units, all in slow recession. The retaken guns in the embrasurespushed up towering clouds of white smoke; to east and to west along thereoccupied parapet ran a line of misty red till the spitfire crest waswithout a break from flank to flank. Probably there was some Yankeecheering, as doubtless there had been the "rebel yell, " but my memoryrecalls neither. There are many battles in a war, and many incidents in abattle: one does not recollect everything. Possibly I have not a retentiveear. 

While this lively work had been doing in the center, there had been nolack of diligence elsewhere, and now all were as busy as bees. I have readof many "successive attacks"--"charge after charge"--but I think the onlyassaults after the first were those of the second Confederate lines andpossibly some of the reserves; certainly there were no visible abatementand renewal of effort anywhere except where the men who had been pushedout of the works backward tried to reenter. And all the time there wasfighting. 

After resetting their line the victors could not clear their front, forthe baffled assailants would not desist. All over the open country intheir rear, clear back to the base of the hills, drifted the wreck ofbattle, the wounded that were able to walk; and through the recedingthrong pushed forward, here and there, horsemen with orders and footmenwhom we knew to be bearing ammunition. There were no wagons, no caissons:the enemy was not using, and could not use, his artillery. Along the lineof fire we could see, dimly in the smoke, mounted officers, singly and insmall groups, attempting to force their horses across the slight parapet, but all went down. Of this devoted band was the gallant General Adams, whose body was found upon the slope, and whose animal's forefeet wereactually inside the crest. General Cleburne lay a few paces farther out, and five or six other general officers sprawled elsewhere. It was a greatday for Confederates in the line of promotion. 

For many minutes at a time broad spaces of battle were veiled in smoke. Ofwhat might be occurring there conjecture gave a terrifying report. In avisible peril observation is a kind of defense; against the unseen we lifta trembling hand. Always from these regions of obscurity we expected theworst, but always the lifted cloud revealed an unaltered situation. 

The assailants began to give way. There was no general retreat; at manypoints the fight continued, with lessening ferocity and lengthening range, well into the night. It became an affair of twinkling musketry and broadflares of artillery; then it sank to silence in the dark. 

Under orders to continue his retreat, Schofield could now do sounmolested: Hood had suffered so terrible a loss in life and _morale_ thathe was in no condition for effective pursuit. As at Spring Hill, daybreakfound us on the road with all our impedimenta except some of our wounded, and that night we encamped under the protecting guns of Thomas, atNashville. Our gallant enemy audaciously followed, and fortified himselfwithin rifle-reach, where he remained for two weeks without firing a gunand was then destroyed. 

'WAY DOWN IN ALABAM'

At the break-up of the great Rebellion I found myself at Selma, Alabama, still in the service of the United States, and although my duties were nowpurely civil my treatment was not uniformly so, and I am not surprisedthat it was not. I was a minor official in the Treasury Department, engaged in performance of duties exceedingly disagreeable not only to thepeople of the vicinity, but to myself as well. They consisted in thecollection and custody of "captured and abandoned property. " The Treasuryhad covered pretty nearly the entire area of "the States lately inrebellion" with a hierarchy of officials, consisting, as nearly as memoryserves, of one supervising agent and a multitude of special agents. Eachspecial agent held dominion over a collection district and was allowed an"agency aide" to assist him in his purposeful activity, besides suchclerks, laborers and so forth as he could persuade himself to need. Myhumble position was that of agency aide. When the special agent waspresent for duty I was his chief executive officer; in his absence Irepresented him (with greater or less fidelity to the original and to myconscience) and was invested with his powers. In the Selma agency theproperty that we were expected to seize and defend as best we might wasmostly plantations (whose owners had disappeared; some were dead, othersin hiding) and cotton. The country was full of cotton which had been soldto the Confederate Government, but not removed from the plantations totake its chance of export through the blockade. It had been decided thatit now belonged to the United States. It was worth about five hundreddollars a bale--say one dollar a pound. The world agreed that that was apretty good price for cotton. 

Naturally the original owners, having received nothing for their productbut Confederate money which the result of the war had made worthless, manifested an unamiable reluctance to give it up, for if they could marketit for themselves it would more than recoup them for all their losses inthe war. They had therefore exercised a considerable ingenuity in effacingall record of its transfer to the Confederate Government, obliterating themarks on the bales, and hiding these away in swamps and otherinconspicuous places, fortifying their claims to private ownership withappalling affidavits and "covering their tracks" in an infinite variety ofways generally. 

In effecting their purpose they encountered many difficulties. Cotton inbales is not very portable property; it requires for movement andconcealment a good deal of coöperation by persons having no interest inkeeping the secret and easily accessible to the blandishments of thoseinterested in tracing it. The negroes, by whom the work was necessarilydone, were zealous to pay for emancipation by fidelity to the new_régime_, and many poor devils among them forfeited their lives byservices performed with more loyalty than discretion. Railways--even thosehaving a more than nominal equipment of rails and rolling stock--wereunavailable for secret conveyance of the cotton. Navigating the Alabamaand Tombigbee rivers were a few small steamboats, the half-dozen pilotsfamiliar with these streams exacting one hundred dollars a day for theirservices; but our agents, backed by military authority, were at all theprincipal shipping points and no boat could leave without their consent. The port of Mobile was in our hands and the lower waters were patrolled bygunboats. Cotton might, indeed, be dumped down a "slide" by night at someprivate landing and fall upon the deck of a steamer idling innocentlybelow. It might even arrive at Mobile, but secretly to transfer it to adeep-water vessel and get it out of the country--that was a dream. 

On the movement of private cotton we put no restrictions; and such werethe freight rates that it was possible to purchase a steamboat at Mobile, go up the river in ballast, bring down a cargo of cotton and make ahandsome profit, after deducting the cost of the boat and all expenses ofthe venture, including the wage of the pilot. With no great knowledge of"business" I venture to think that in Alabama in the latter part of theyear of grace 1865 commercial conditions were hardly normal. 

Nor were social conditions what I trust they have now become. There was nolaw in the country except of the unsatisfactory sort known as "martial, "and that was effective only within areas covered by the guns of isolatedforts and the physical activities of their small garrisons. True, therewere the immemorial laws of self-preservation and retaliation, both ofwhich were liberally interpreted. The latter was faithfully administered, mostly against straggling Federal soldiers and too zealous governmentofficials. When my chief had been ordered to Selma he had arrived just intime to act as sole mourner at the funeral of his predecessor--who had hadthe bad luck to interpret his instructions in a sense that wasdisagreeable to a gentleman whose interests were affected by theinterpretation. Early one pleasant morning shortly afterward two UnitedStates marshals were observed by the roadside in a suburb of the town. They looked comfortable enough there in the sunshine, but each

 had that across his throat Which you had hardly cared to see. 

When dispatched on business of a delicate nature men in the service of theagency had a significant trick of disappearing--they were of "theunreturning brave. " Really the mortality among the unacclimated in theSelma district at that time was excessive. When my chief and I parted atdinner time (our palates were not in harmony) we commonly shook hands andtried to say something memorable that was worthy to serve as "last words. "We had been in the army together and had many a time gone into battlewithout having taken that precaution in the interest of history. 

Of course the better class of the people were not accountable for thisstate of affairs, and I do not remember that I greatly blamed the others. The country was full of the "elements of combustion. " The people wereimpoverished and smarting with a sense of defeat. Organized resistance wasno longer possible, but many men trained to the use of arms did notconsider themselves included in the surrender and conscientiously believedit both right and expedient to prolong the struggle by private enterprise. Many, no doubt, made the easy and natural transition from soldiering toassassination by insensible degrees, unconscious of the moral difference, such as it is. Selma was little better than a ruin; in the concludingperiod of the war General Wilson's cavalry had raided it and nearlydestroyed it, and the work begun by the battery had been completed by thetorch. The conflagration was generally attributed to the negroes, whocertainly augmented it, for a number of those suspected of the crime wereflung into the flames by the maddened populace. None the less were theYankee invaders held responsible. 

Every Northern man represented some form or phase of an authority whichthese luckless people horribly hated, and to which they submitted onlybecause, and in so far as, they had to. Fancy such a community, utterlywithout the restraints of law and with no means of ascertaining publicopinion--for newspapers were not--denied even the moral advantage of thepulpit! Considering what human nature has the misfortune to be, it iswonderful that there was so little of violence and crime. 

As the carcass invites the vulture, this prostrate land drew adventurersfrom all points of the compass. Many, I am sorry to say, were in theservice of the United States Government. Truth to tell, the special agentsof the Treasury were themselves, as a body, not altogether spotless. Icould name some of them, and some of their assistants, who made largefortunes by their opportunities. The special agents were allowedone-fourth of the value of the confiscated cotton for expenses ofcollection--none too much, considering the arduous and perilous characterof the service; but the plan opened up such possibilities of fraud as haveseldom been accorded by any system of conducting the public business, andnever without disastrous results to official morality. Against bribery noprovision could have provided an adequate safeguard; the magnitude of theinterests involved was too great, the administration of the trust tooloose and irresponsible. The system as it was, hastily devised in thestorm and stress of a closing war, broke down in the end, and it isdoubtful if the Government might not more profitably have let the"captured and abandoned property" alone. 

As an instance of the temptations to which we were exposed, and of ourtactical dispositions in resistance, I venture to relate a singleexperience of my own. During an absence of my chief I got upon the trailof a lot of cotton--seven hundred bales, as nearly as I nowrecollect--which had been hidden with so exceptional ingenuity that I wasunable to trace it. One day there came to my office two well-dressed andmannerly fellows who suffered me to infer that they knew all about thiscotton and controlled it. When our conference on the subject ended it waspast dinner time and they civilly invited me to dine with them, which, inhope of eliciting information over the wine, I did. I knew well enoughthat they indulged a similar selfish hope, so I had no scruples aboutusing their hospitality to their disadvantage if I could. The subject, however, was not mentioned at table, and we were all singularly abstemiousin the matter of champagne--so much so that as we rose from a rather longsession at the board we disclosed our sense of the ludicrousness of thesituation by laughing outright. Nevertheless, neither party would acceptdefeat, and for the next few weeks the war of hospitality was fast andfurious. We dined together nearly every day, sometimes at my expense, sometimes at theirs. We drove, rode, walked, played at billiards and mademany a night of it; but youth and temperance (in drink) pulled me throughwithout serious inroads on my health. We had early come to anunderstanding and a deadlock. Failing to get the slenderest clew to thelocation of the cotton I offered them one-fourth if they would surrenderit or disclose its hiding-place; they offered me one-fourth if I wouldsign a permit for its shipment as private property. 

All things have an end, and this amusing contest finally closed. Over theremains of a farewell dinner, unusually luxurious, as befitted theoccasion, we parted with expressions of mutual esteem--not, I hope, altogether insincere, and the ultimate fate of the cotton is to meunknown. Up to the date of my departure from the agency not a bale of ithad either come into possession of the Government or found an outlet. I amsometimes disloyal enough to indulge myself in the hope that they baffledmy successors as skilfully as they did me. One cannot help feeling acertain tenderness for men who know and value a good dinner. 

Another corrupt proposal that I had the good fortune to be afraid toentertain came, as it were, from within. There was a dare-devil fellowwhom, as I know him to be dead, I feel justified in naming Jack Harris. Hewas engaged in all manner of speculative ventures on his own account, butthe special agent had so frequently employed him in "enterprises of greatpith and moment" that he was in a certain sense and to a certain extentone of us. He seemed to me at the time unique, but shortly afterward I hadlearned to classify him as a type of the Californian adventurer with whosepeculiarities of manner, speech and disposition most of us are to-dayfamiliar enough. He never spoke of his past, having doubtless good reasonsfor reticence, but any one learned in Western slang--a knowledge thendenied me--would have catalogued him with infallible accuracy. He was arather large, strong fellow, swarthy, black-bearded, black-eyed, black-hearted and entertaining, no end; ignorant with an ignorance whosefrankness redeemed it from offensiveness, vulgar with a vulgarity thatexpressed itself in such metaphors and similes as would have made itspeace with the most implacable refinement. He drank hard, gambled high, swore like a parrot, scoffed at everything, was openly and proudly arascal, did not know the meaning of fear, borrowed money abundantly, andsquandered it with royal disregard. Desiring one day to go to Mobile, butreluctant to leave Montgomery and its pleasures--unwilling to quitcertainty for hope--he persuaded the captain of a loaded steamboat to waitfour days for him at an expense of $400 a day; and lest time should hangtoo heavy on the obliging skipper's hands, Jack permitted him to share theorgies gratis. But that is not my story. 

One day Jack came to me with a rather more sinful proposal than he hadheretofore done me the honor to submit. He knew of about a thousand balesof cotton, some of it private property, some of it confiscable, stored atvarious points on the banks of the Alabama. He had a steamboat inreadiness, "with a gallant, gallant crew, " and he proposed to drop quietlydown to the various landings by night, seize the cotton, load it on hisboat and make off down the river. What he wanted from me, and was willingto pay for, was only my official signature to some blank shipping permits;or if I would accompany the expedition and share its fortunes no paperswould be necessary. In declining this truly generous offer I felt that Iowed it to Jack to give him a reason that he was capable of understanding, so I explained to him the arrangements at Mobile, which would prevent himfrom transferring his cargo to a ship and getting the necessary paperspermitting her to sail. He was astonished and, I think, pained by mysimplicity. Did I think him a fool? He did not purpose--not he--totranship at all: the perfected plan was to dispense with all hamperingformality by slipping through Mobile Bay in the black of the night andnavigating his laden river craft across the Gulf to Havana! The rascal wasin dead earnest, and that natural timidity of disposition which compelledme to withhold my coöperation greatly lowered me in his esteem, I fear. 

It was in Cuba, by the way, that Jack came to grief some years later. Hewas one of the crew of the filibustering vessel _Virginius_, and wascaptured and shot along with the others. Something in his demeanor as heknelt in the line to receive the fatal fusillade prompted a priest toinquire his religion. "I am an atheist, by God!" said Jack, and with thisquiet profession of faith that gentle spirit winged its way to othertropics. 

Having expounded with some particularity the precarious tenure by which Iheld my office and my life in those "thrilling regions" where my dutieslay, I ought to explain by what unhappy chance I am still able to afflictthe reader. There lived in Selma a certain once wealthy and stillinfluential citizen, whose two sons, of about my own age, had served asofficers in the Confederate Army. I will designate them simply as Charlesand Frank. They were types of a class now, I fear, almost extinct. Bornand bred in luxury and knowing nothing of the seamy side of life--except, indeed, what they had learned in the war--well educated, brave, generous, sensitive to points of honor, and of engaging manners, these brothers wereby all respected, by many loved and by some feared. For they had quickfingers upon the pistol-trigger withal, and would rather fight a duel thaneat--nay, drink. Nor were they over-particular about the combat taking theform of a duel--almost any form was good enough. I made their acquaintanceby chance and cultivated it for the pleasure it gave me. It was longafterward that I gave a thought to its advantages; but from the time thatI became generally known as their friend my safety was assured through allthat region; an army with banners could not have given me the sameimmunity from danger, obstruction or even insult in the performance of mydisagreeable duties. What glorious fellows they were, to be sure--these mylate antagonists of the dark days when, God forgive us, we were trying tocut one another's throat. To this day I feel a sense of regret when Ithink of my instrumentality, however small, in depriving the world of manysuch men in the criminal insanity that we call battle. 

Life in Selma became worth living even as the chance of living itaugmented. With my new friends and a friend of theirs, whose name--themore shame to me--I cannot now recall, but should not write here if Icould, I passed most of my leisure hours. At the houses of themselves andtheir friends I did most of my dining; and, heaven be praised! there wasno necessity for moderation in wine. In their society I committed my sins, and together beneath that noble orb unknown to colder skies, the Southernmoon, we atoned for them by acts of devotion performed with song and lutebeneath the shrine window of many a local divinity. 

One night we had an adventure. We were out late--so late that it was nightonly astronomically. The streets were "deserted and drear, " and, ofcourse, unlighted--the late Confederacy had no gas and no oil. Nevertheless, we saw that we were followed. A man keeping at a fixeddistance behind turned as we turned, paused as we paused, and pursued aswe moved on. We stopped, went back and remonstrated; asked his intentionsin, I dare say, no gentle words. He gave us no reply, but as we left himhe followed. Again we stopped, and I felt my pistol plucked out of mypocket. Frank had unceremoniously possessed himself of it and wasadvancing on the enemy. I do not remember if I had any wish to interpose aprotest--anyhow there was no time. Frank fired and the man fell. In amoment all the chamber-windows in the street were thrown open with a headvisible (and audible) in each. We told Frank to go home, which to oursurprise he did; the rest of us, assisted by somebody's privatepoliceman--who afterward apprised us that we were in arrest--carried theman to a hotel. It was found that his leg was broken above the knee, andthe next day it was amputated. We paid his surgeon and his hotel bill, andwhen he had sufficiently recovered sent him to an address which he gave usin Mobile; but not a word could anybody get out of him as to who he hadthe misfortune to be, or why he had persisted, against the light, infollowing a quartet of stray revelers. 

On the morning of the shooting, when everything possible had been done forthe comfort of the victim, we three accomplices were released on our ownrecognizance by an old gentleman of severe aspect, who had resumed hisfunction of justice of the peace where he had laid it down during the war. I did not then know that he had no more legal authority than I had myself, and I was somewhat disturbed in mind as I reflected on the possibilitiesof the situation. The opportunity to get rid of an offensive Federalofficial must of course be very tempting, and after all the shooting was atrifle hasty and not altogether justifiable. 

On the day appointed for our preliminary examination, all of us exceptFrank were released and put on the witness-stand. We gave a true andcongruent history of the affair. The holdover justice listened to it allvery patiently and then, with commendable brevity and directness ofaction, fined Frank five dollars and costs for disorderly conduct. Therewas no appeal. 

There were queer characters in Alabama in those days, as you shall see. Once upon a time the special agent and I started down the Tombigbee Riverwith a steamboat load of government cotton--some six hundred bales. At oneof the military stations we took on a guard of a dozen or fifteen soldiersunder command of a non-commissioned officer. One evening, just beforedusk, as we were rounding a bend where the current set strongly againstthe left bank of the stream and the channel lay close to that shore, wewere suddenly saluted with a volley of bullets and buckshot from thatdirection. The din of the firing, the rattle and crash of the missilessplintering the woodwork and the jingle of broken glass made a very rudearousing from the tranquil indolence of a warm afternoon on the sluggishTombigbee. The left bank, which at this point was a trifle higher than thehurricane deck of a steamer, was now swarming with men who, almost nearenough to jump aboard, looked unreasonably large and active as they sprangabout from cover to cover, pouring in their fire. At the first volley thepilot had deserted his wheel, as well he might, and the boat, drifting into the bank under the boughs of a tree, was helpless. Her jackstaff andyawl were carried away, her guards broken in, and her deck-load of cottonwas tumbling into the stream a dozen bales at once. The captain wasnowhere to be seen, the engineer had evidently abandoned his post and thespecial agent had gone to hunt up the soldiers. I happened to be on thehurricane deck, armed with a revolver, which I fired as rapidly as Icould, listening all the time for the fire of the soldiers--and listeningin vain. It transpired later that they had not a cartridge among them; andof all helpless mortals a soldier without a cartridge is the mostimbecile. But all this time the continuous rattle of the enemy's guns andthe petulant pop of my own pocket firearm were punctuated, as it were, bypretty regularly recurring loud explosions, as of a small cannon. Theycame from somewhere forward--I supposed from the opposition, as I knew wehad no artillery on board. 

The failure of our military guard made the situation somewhat grave. Fortwo of us, at least, capture meant hanging out of hand. I had never beenhanged in all my life and was not enamored of the prospect. Fortunatelyfor us the bandits had selected their point of attack without militaryforesight. Immediately below them a bayou, impassable to them, let intothe river. The moment we had drifted below it we were safe from boardingand capture. The captain was found in hiding and an empty pistol at hisear persuaded him to resume command of his vessel; the engineer and pilotwere encouraged to go back to their posts and after some remarkably longminutes, during which we were under an increasingly long-range fire, wegot under way. A few cotton bales piled about the pilot-house made ustolerably safe from that sort of thing in the future and then we tookaccount of our damages. Nobody had been killed and only a few werewounded. This gratifying result was attributable to the fact that, beingunarmed, nearly everybody had dived below at the first fire and takencover among the cotton bales. While issuing a multitude of needlesscommands from the front of the hurricane-deck I looked below, and there, stretched out at full length on his stomach, lay a long, ungainly person, clad in faded butternut, bare-headed, his long, lank hair falling downeach side of his neck, his coat-tails similarly parted, and his enormousfeet spreading their soles to the blue sky. He had an old-fashionedhorse-pistol, some two feet long, which he was in the act of sightingacross his left palm for a parting shot at the now distant assailants. Amore ludicrous figure I never saw; I laughed outright; but when his weaponwent off it was matter for gratitude to be above it instead of before it. It was the "cannon" whose note I had marked all through the unequal fray. 

The fellow was a returned Confederate whom we had taken on at one of theupper landings as our only passenger; we were dead-heading him to Mobile. He was undoubtedly in hearty sympathy with the enemy, and I at firstsuspected him of collusion, but circumstances not necessary to detail hererendered this impossible. Moreover, I had distinctly seen one of the"guerrillas" fall and remain down after my own weapon was empty, and noman else on board except the passenger had fired a shot or had a shot tofire. When everything had been made snug again, and we were gliding alongunder the stars, without apprehension; when I had counted fifty-odd bulletholes through the pilot-house (which had not received the attention thatby its prominence and importance it was justly entitled to) and everybodywas variously boasting his prowess, I approached my butternutcomrade-in-arms and thanked him for his kindly aid. "But, " said I, "howthe devil does it happen that _you_ fight _that_ crowd?"

"Wal, Cap, " he drawled, as he rubbed the powder grime from his antiqueartillery, "I allowed it was mouty clever in you-all to take me on, seein'I hadn't ary cent, so I thought I'd jist kinder work my passage. "

WORKING FOR AN EMPRESS

In the spring of 1874 I was living in the pretty English town ofLeamington, a place that will be remembered by most Americans who havevisited the grave of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon, or by personalinspection of the ruins of Kenilworth Castle have verified their knowledgeof English history derived from Scott's incomparable romance. I was atthat time connected with several London newspapers, among them the_Figaro_, a small weekly publication, semi-humorous, semi-theatrical, witha remarkable aptitude for managing the political affairs of France in theinterest of the Imperialists. This last peculiarity it owed to thepersonal sympathies of its editor and proprietor, Mr. James Mortimer, agentleman who for some twenty years before the overthrow of the Empire hadlived in Paris. Mr. Mortimer had been a personal friend of the Emperor andEmpress, and on the flight of the latter to England had rendered herimportant service; and after the release of the Emperor from captivityamong the Germans Mr. Mortimer was a frequent visitor to the imperialexiles at Chiselhurst. 

One day at Leamington my London mail brought a letter from Mr. Mortimer, informing me that he intended to publish a new satirical journal, which hewished me to write. I was to do all the writing, he the editing; and itwould not be necessary for me to come up to London; I could sendmanuscript by mail. The new journal was not to appear at stated periods, but "occasionally. " Would I submit to him a list of suitable titles forit, from which he could make a selection?

With some surprise at what seemed to me the singularly whimsical andunbusiness-like features of the enterprise I wrote him earnestly advisinghim either to abandon it or materially to modify his plan. I representedto him that such a journal, so conducted, could not in my judgmentsucceed; but he was obdurate and after a good deal of correspondence Iconsented to do all the writing if he was willing to do all the losingmoney. I submitted a number of names which I thought suitable for thepaper, but all were rejected, and he finally wrote that he had decided tocall the new journal _The Lantern_. This decision elicited from me anotherenergetic protest. The title was not original, but obviously borrowed fromM. Rochefort's famous journal, _La Lanterne_. True, that publication wasdead, and its audacious editor deported to New Caledonia with hisCommunistic following; but the name could hardly be agreeable to Mr. Mortimer's Imperialist friends, particularly the Empress--the Emperor wasthen dead. To my surprise Mr. Mortimer not only adhered to his resolutionbut suggested the propriety of my taking M. Rochefort's late lamentedjournal as a model for our own. This I flatly declined to do and carriedmy point; I was delighted to promise, however, that the new paper shouldresemble the old in one particular: it should be irritatinglydisrespectful of existing institutions and exalted personages. 

On the 18th of May, 1874, there was published at the corner of St. BrideStreet and Shoe Lane, E. C. , London, the first number of "_TheLantern_--Appearing Occasionally. Illuminated by Faustin. Price, sixpence. " It was a twelve-page paper with four pages of superbillustrations in six colors. I winced when I contemplated its artistic andmechanical excellence, for I knew at what a price that quality had beenobtained. A gold mine would be required to maintain that journal, and thatjournal could by no means ever be itself a gold mine. A copy lies beforeme as I write and noting it critically I cannot help thinking that theilluminated title-page of this pioneer in the field of chromaticjournalism is the finest thing of the kind that ever came from a press. 

Of the literary contents I am less qualified for judgment, inasmuch as Iwrote every line in the paper. It may perhaps be said without immodestythat the new "candidate for popular favor" was not distinguished byservile flattery of the British character and meek subservience to theBritish Government, as might perhaps be inferred from the followingextract from an article on General Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had justreceived the thanks of his Sovereign and a munificent reward fromParliament for his successful plundering expedition through Ashantee:

"We feel a comfortable sense of satisfaction in the thought that _TheLantern_ will never fail to shed the light of its loyal approval upon anyunworthy act by which our country shall secure an adequate and permanentadvantage. When the great heart of England is stirred by quick cupidity toprofitable crime, far be it from us to lift our palms in deprecation. Inthe wrangle for existence nations, equally with individuals, work bydiverse means to a common end--the spoiling of the weak; and when bywhatever of outrage we have pushed a feeble competitor to the wall, inHeaven's name let us pin him fast and relieve his pockets of the materialgood to which, in bestowing it upon him, the bountiful Lord has invitedour thieving hand. But these Ashantee women were not worth garroting. Their fal-lals, precious to them, are worthless to us; the entire lootfetched only £11, 000--of which sum the man who brought home the trinketstook a little more than four halves. We submit that with practiced agentsin every corner of the world and a watchful government at home this greatcommercial nation might dispose of its honor to better advantage. "

With the candor of repentance it may now be confessed that, howeverunscrupulous it may be abroad, a government which tolerates this kind ofcriticism cannot rightly be charged with tyranny at home. 

By way (as I supposed) of gratitude to M. Rochefort for the use of thetitle of his defunct journal it had been suggested by Mr. Mortimer that hebe given a little wholesome admonition here and there in the paper and Ihad cheerfully complied. M. Rochefort had escaped from New Caledonia somemonths before. A disagreeable cartoon was devised for his discomfort andhe received a number of such delicate attentions as that following, whichin the issue of July 15th greeted him on his arrival in England along withhis distinguished compatriot, M. Pascal Grousset:

"M. Rochefort is a gentleman who has lost his standing. There have beengreater falls than his. Kings before now have become servitors, honest menbandits, thieves communists. Insignificant in his fortunes as in hisabilities, M. Rochefort, who was never very high, is not now very low--hehas avoided the falsehood of extremes: never quite a count, he is now buthalf a convict. Having missed the eminence that would have given himcalumniation, he is also denied the obscurity that would bringmisconstruction. He is not even a _miserable_; he is a person. It iscurious to note how persistently this man has perverted his gifts. Withtalents that might have corrupted panegyric, he preferred to refinedetraction; fitted to disgrace the _salon_, he has elected to adorn thecell; the qualities that would have endeared him to a blackguard he haswasted upon Pascal Grousset. 

"As we write, it is reported that this person is in England. It is furtheraffirmed that it is his intention to proceed to Belgium or Switzerland tofight certain journalists who have not had the courtesy to suppress thetruth about him, though he never told it of them. We presume, however, this rumor is false; M. Rochefort must retain enough of the knowledge heacquired when he was esteemed a gentleman to be aware that a meetingbetween him and a journalist is now impossible. This is the more to beregretted, because M. Paul de Cassagnac would have much pleasure in takingM. Rochefort's life and we in lamenting his fall. 

"M. Rochefort, we believe, is already suffering from an unhealed wound. Itis his mouth. "

There was a good deal of such "scurril jesting" in the paper, especiallyin a department called "Prattle. " There were verses on all manner ofsubjects--mostly the nobility and their works and ways, from the viewpointof disapproval--and epigrams, generally ill-humorous, like the following, headed "_Novum Organum_":

 "In Bacon see the culminating prime Of British intellect and British crime. He died, and Nature, settling his affairs, Parted his powers among us, his heirs: To each a pinch of common-sense, for seed, And, to develop it, a pinch of greed. Each frugal heir, to make the gift suffice, Buries the talent to manure the vice. "

When the first issue of _The Lantern_ appeared I wrote to Mr. Mortimer, again urging him to modify his plans and alter the character of thejournal. He replied that it suited him as it was and he would let me knowwhen to prepare "copy" for the second number. That eventually appeared onJuly 15th. I never was instructed to prepare any more copy, and there hasbeen, I believe, no further issue of that interesting sheet as yet. 

Taking a retrospective view of this singular venture in journalism, oneday, the explanation of the whole matter came to my understanding in thelight of a revelation, and was confirmed later by Mr. Mortimer. 

In the days when Napoleon III was at the zenith of his glory and powerthere was a thorn in his side. It was the pen of M. Henri Rochefort, leComte de Luçay, journalist and communard. Despite fines, "suppressions, "and imprisonments, this gifted writer and unscrupulous blackguard had, asevery one knows, made incessant war upon the Empire and all its_personnel_. The bitter and unfair attacks of his paper, _La Lanterne_, made life at the Tuilleries exceedingly uncomfortable. His rancor againstthe Empress was something horrible, and went to the length of denying thelegitimacy of the Prince Imperial. His existence was a menace and a terrorto the illustrious lady, even when she was in exile at Chiselhurst and hein confinement on the distant island of New Caledonia. When the news ofhis escape from that penal colony arrived at Chiselhurst the widowedEmpress was in despair; and when, on his way to England, he announced hisintention of reviving _La Lanterne_ in London (of course he dared notcross the borders of France) she was utterly prostrated by the fear of hispitiless animosity. But what could she do? Not prevent the revival of hisdreadful newspaper, certainly, but--well, she could send for Mr. Mortimer. That ingenious gentleman was not long at a loss for an expedient thatwould accomplish what was possible. He shut Rochefort out of London byforestalling him. At the very time when Mortimer was asking me to suggesta suitable name for the new satirical journal he had already registered atStationers' Hall--that is to say, copyrighted--the title of _The Lantern_, a precaution which M. Rochefort's French friends had neglected to take, although they had expended thousands of pounds in a plant for theirventure. Mr. Mortimer cruelly permitted them to go on with their costlypreparations, and the first intimation they had that the field wasoccupied came from the newsdealers selling _The Lantern_. After somefutile attempts at relief and redress, M. Rochefort took himself off andset up his paper in Belgium. 

The expenses of _The Lantern_--including a generous _douceur_ tomyself--were all defrayed by the Empress. She was the sole owner of itand, I was gratified to learn, took so lively an interest in her venturethat a special French edition was printed for her private reading. I wastold that she especially enjoyed the articles on M. Le Comte de Luçay, though I dare say some of the delicate subtleties of their literary stylewere lost in translation. 

Being in London later in the year, I received through Mortimer aninvitation to visit the poor lady, _en famille_, at Chiselhurst; but asthe iron rules of imperial etiquette, even in exile, required that thehospitable request be made in the form of a "command, " my republicanindependence took alarm and I had the incivility to disobey; and I stillthink it a sufficient distinction to be probably the only Americanjournalist who was ever employed by an Empress in so congenial a pursuitas the pursuit of another journalist. 

ACROSS THE PLAINS

That noted pioneer, General John Bidwell, of California, once made alongish step up the western slope of our American Parnassus by an accountof his journey "across the plains" seven years before the lamented Mr. Marshall had found the least and worst of all possible reasons for makingthe "trek. " General Bidwell had not the distinction to be a great writer, but in order to command admiration and respect in that province of theRepublic of Letters which lies in the Sacramento Valley above the mouth ofthe Yuba the gift of writing greatly is a needless endowment. NeverthelessI read his narrative with an interest which on analysis turns out to be aby-product of personal experience: among my youthful indiscretions was ajourney over much of the same ground, which I took in much the sameway--as did many thousands before and after. 

It was a far cry from 1841 to 1866, yet the country between the MissouriRiver and the Sierra Nevada had not greatly improved: civilization hadhalted at the river, awaiting transportation. A railroad had set out fromOmaha westward, and another at Sacramento was solemnly considering theimpossible suggestion of going eastward to meet it. There were lunatics inthose days, as there are in these. I left the one road a few miles out ofthe Nebraskan village and met the other at Dutch Flat, in California. 

Waste no compassion on the loneliness of my journey: a thriving colony ofMormons had planted itself in the valley of Salt Lake and there were"forts" at a few points along the way, where ambitious young army officerspassed the best years of their lives guarding live stock and teaching themysteries of Hardee's tactics to that alien patriot, the American regular. There was a dusty wagon road, bordered with bones--not always those ofanimals--with an occasional mound, sometimes dignified with a warped androtting head-board bearing an illegible inscription. (One inscription notentirely illegible is said to have concluded with this touching tribute tothe worth of the departed: "He was a good egg. " Another was: "He done hisdamnedest") In other particulars the "Great American Desert" of ourfathers was very like what it was when General Bidwell's party traversedit with that hereditary instinct, that delicacy of spiritual nose whichserved the Western man of that day in place of a map and guide-book. Westward the course of empire had taken its way, but excepting these poorvestiges it had for some fifteen hundred miles left no trace of its march. The Indian of the plains had as yet seen little to unsettle his assuranceof everlasting dominion. Of the slender lines of metal creeping slowlytoward him from East and West he knew little; and had he known more, howcould he have foreseen their momentous effect upon his "ancient solitaryreign"?

I remember very well, as so many must, some of the marked features of theroute that General Bidwell mentions. One of the most imposing of these isCourt House Rock, near the North Platte. Surely no object of such dignityever had a more belittling name--given it in good faith no doubt by someuntraveled wight whose county court-house was the most "reverend pile" ofwhich he had any conception. It should have been called the Titan'sCastle. What a gracious memory I have of the pomp and splendor of itsaspect, with the crimson glories of the setting sun fringing its outlines, illuminating its western walls like the glow of Mammon's fires for thewitches' revel in the Hartz, and flung like banners from its crest!

I suppose Court House Rock is familiar enough and commonplace enough tothe dwellers in that land (riparian tribes once infesting the low lands ofOhio and Indiana and the flats of Iowa), but to me, tipsy with youth, full-fed on Mayne Reid's romances, and now first entering the enchantedregion that he so charmingly lied about, it was a revelation and a dream. I wish that anything in the heavens, on the earth, or in the waters underthe earth would give me now such an emotion as I experienced in the shadowof that "great rock in a weary land. "

I was not a pilgrim, but an engineer _attaché_ to an expedition throughDakota and Montana, to inspect some new military posts. The expeditionconsisted, where the Indians preserved the peace, of the late General W. B. Hazen, myself, a cook and a teamster; elsewhere we had an escort ofcavalry. My duty, as I was given to understand it, was to amuse thegeneral and other large game, make myself as comfortable as possiblewithout too much discomfort to others, and when in an unknown countrysurvey and map our route for the benefit of those who might come after. The posts which the general was to inspect had recently been establishedalong a military road, one end of which was at the North Platte and theother--there was no other end; up about Fort C. F. Smith at the foot of theBig-Horn Mountains the road became a buffalo trail and was lost in theweeds. But it was a useful road, for by leaving it before going too farone could reach a place near the headwaters of the Yellowstone, where theNational Park is now. 

By a master stroke of military humor we were ordered to return (toWashington) via Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Panama. I obeyed until Igot as far as San Francisco, where, finding myself appointed to a secondlieutenancy in the Regular Army, ingratitude, more strong than traitors'arms, quite vanquished me: I resigned, parted from Hazen more in sorrowthan in anger and remained in California. 

I have thought since that this may have been a youthful error: theGovernment probably meant no harm, and if I had served long enough I mighthave become a captain. In time, if I lived, I should naturally have becomethe senior captain of the Army; and then if there were another war and anyof the field officers did me the favor to paunch a bullet I should becomethe junior major, certain of another step upward as soon as a number of mysuperiors equal to the whole number of majors should be killed, resign ordie of old age--enchanting prospect! But I am getting a long way off thetrail. 

It was near Fort C. F. Smith that we found our first buffaloes, andabundant they were. We had to guard our camp at night with fire and swordto keep them from biting us as they grazed. Actually one of themhalf-scalped a teamster as he lay dreaming of home with his long fair haircommingled with the toothsome grass. His utterances as the well-meaningbeast lifted him from the ground and tried to shake the earth from hisroots were neither wise nor sweet, but they made a profound impression onthe herd, which, arching its multitude of tails, absented itself topastures new like an army with banners. 

At Fort C. F. Smith we parted with our _impedimenta_, and with an escort ofabout two dozen cavalrymen and a few pack animals struck out on horsebackthrough an unexplored country northwest for old Fort Benton, on the upperMissouri. The journey was not without its perils. Our only guide was mycompass; we knew nothing of the natural obstacles that we must encounter;the Indians were on the warpath, and our course led us through the veryheart of their country. Luckily for us they were gathering their clansinto one great army for a descent upon the posts that we had left behind;a little later some three thousand of them moved upon Fort Phil Kearney, lured a force of ninety men and officers outside and slaughtered them tothe last man. This was one of the posts that we had inspected, and theofficers killed had hospitably entertained us. 

In that lively and interesting book, "Indian Fights and Fighters, " Dr. Cyrus Townsend Brady says of this "outpost of civilization":

"The most careful watchfulness was necessary at all hours of the day andnight. The wood trains to fetch logs to the sawmills were heavily guarded. There was fighting all the time. Casualties among the men were by no meansrare. At first it was difficult to keep men within the limits of the camp;but stragglers who failed to return, and some who had been cut off, scalped and left for dead, but who had crawled back to die, convincedevery one of the wisdom of the commanding officer's repeated orders andcautions. To chronicle the constant succession of petty skirmishes wouldbe wearisome; yet they often resulted in torture and loss of life on thepart of the soldiers, although the Indians in most instances suffered themore severely. "

In a footnote the author relates this characteristic instance of theGovernment's inability to understand: "Just when the alarms were mostfrequent a messenger came to the headquarters, announcing that a train _enroute_ from Fort Laramie, with special messengers from that post, wascorraled by Indians, and demanded immediate help. An entire company ofinfantry in wagons, with a mountain howitzer and several rounds ofgrapeshot, was hastened to their relief. It proved to be a train with mailfrom the Laramie Commission, announcing the confirmation of a'satisfactory treaty of peace with all the Indians of the Northwest, ' andassuring the district commander of the fact. The messenger was brought inin safety, and _peace_ lasted until his message was delivered. So much wasgained--that the messenger did not lose his scalp. "

Through this interesting environment our expeditionary force of four menhad moved to the relief of the beleaguered post, but finding it impossibleto "raise the siege" had--with a score of troopers--pushed on to Fort C. F. Smith, and thence into the Unknown. 

The first part of this new journey was well enough; there were game andwater. Where we swam the Yellowstone we had an abundance of both, for theentire river valley, two or three miles wide, was dotted with elk. Therewere hundreds. As we advanced they became scarce; buffalo became scarce;bear, deer, rabbits, sage-hens, even prairie dogs gave out, and we werenear starving. Water gave out too, and starvation was a welcome state: ourhunger was so much less disagreeable than our thirst that it was a realtreat. 

However, we got to Benton, Heaven knows how and why, but we were asorry-looking lot, though our scalps were intact. If in all that regionthere is a mountain that I have not climbed, a river that I have not swum, an alkali pool that I have not thrust my muzzle into, or an Indian that Ihave not shuddered to think about, I am ready to go back in a Pullmansleeper and do my duty. 

From Fort Benton we came down through Helena and Virginia City, Montana--then new mining camps--to Salt Lake, thence westward toCalifornia. Our last bivouac was on the old camp of the Donner party, where, in the flickering lights and dancing shadows made by our camp-fire, I first heard the story of that awful winter, and in the fragrance of themeat upon the coals fancied I could detect something significantlyuncanny. The meat which the Donner party had cooked at that spot was notquite like ours. Pardon: I mean it was not like that which we cooked. 

THE MIRAGE

Since the overland railways have long been carrying many thousands ofpersons across the elevated plateaus of the continent the mirage in manyof its customary aspects has become pretty well known to great numbers ofpersons all over the Union, and the tales of early observers who came "derblains agross" are received with a less frigid inhospitality than theyformerly were by incredulous pioneers who had come "der Horn aroundt, " asthe illustrious Hans Breitmann phrases it; but in its rarer and moremarvelous manifestations, the mirage is still a rock upon which many areputation for veracity is wrecked remediless. With an ambition intrepidlyto brave this disaster, and possibly share it with the hundreds of devotedsouls whose disregard of the injunction never to tell an incredible truthhas branded them as hardy and impenitent liars, I purpose to note here afew of the more remarkable illusions by which my own sense of sight hasbeen befooled by the freaks of the enchanter. 

It is apart from my purpose to explain the mirage scientifically, and notaltogether in my power. Every schoolboy can do so, I suppose, to thesatisfaction of his teacher if the teacher has not himself seen thephenomenon, or has seen it only in the broken, feeble and evanescentphases familiar to the overland passenger; but for my part I am unable tounderstand how the simple causes affirmed in the text-books sufficientlyaccount for the infinite variety and complexity of some of the effectssaid to be produced by them. But of this the reader shall judge forhimself. 

One summer morning in the upper North Platte country I rose from myblankets, performed the pious acts of sun-worship by yawning toward theeast, kicked together the parted embers of my camp-fire, and bethought meof water for my ablutions. We had gone into bivouac late in the night onthe open plain, and without any clear notion of where we were. There werea half-dozen of us, our chief on a tour of inspection of the new militaryposts in Wyoming. I accompanied the expedition as surveyor. Having anaspiration for water I naturally looked about to see what might be theprospect of obtaining it, and to my surprise and delight saw a long lineof willows, apparently some three hundred yards away. Willows impliedwater, and snatching up a camp-kettle I started forward without taking thetrouble to put on my coat and hat. For the first mile or two I preserved acertain cheerful hopefulness; but when the sun had risen farther towardthe meridian and began to affect my bare head most uncomfortably, and thepicketed horses at the camp were hull down on the horizon in the rear, andthe willows in front increased their pace out of all proportion to mine, Ibegan to grow discouraged and sat down on a stone to wish myself back. Perceiving that the willows also had halted for breath I determined tomake a dash at them, leaving the camp-kettle behind to make its way backto camp as best it could. I was now traveling "flying light, " and had nodoubt of my ability to overtake the enemy, which had, however, disappearedover the crest of a low sandhill. Ascending this I was treated to asurprise. Right ahead of me lay a barren waste of sand extending to theright and left as far as I could see. Its width in the direction that Iwas going I judged to be about twenty miles. On its farther border thecactus plain began again, sloping gradually upward to the horizon, alongwhich was a fringe of cedar trees--the willows of my vision! In thatcountry a cedar will not grow within thirty miles of water if it knows it. 

On my return journey I coldly ignored the appeals of the camp-kettle, andwhen I met the rescuing party which had been for some hours trailing memade no allusion to the real purpose of my excursion. When the chief askedif I purposed to enter a plea of temporary insanity I replied that I wouldreserve my defense for the present; and in fact I never did disclose ituntil now. 

I had afterward the satisfaction of seeing the chief, an experiencedplainsman, consume a full hour, rifle in hand, working round to theleeward of a dead coyote in the sure and certain hope of bagging asleeping buffalo. Mirage or no mirage, you must not too implicitly trustyour eyes in the fantastic atmosphere of the high plains. 

I remember that one forenoon I looked forward to the base of the Big HornMountains and selected a most engaging nook for the night's camp. My goodopinion of it was confirmed when we reached it three days later. Thedeception in this instance was due to nothing but the marvelous lucidityof the atmosphere and the absence of objects of known dimensions, andthese sources of error are sometimes sufficient of themselves to producethe most incredible illusions. When they are in alliance with the miragethe combination's pranks are bewildering. 

One of the most grotesque and least comfortable of my experiences with themagicians of the air occurred near the forks of the Platte. There had beena tremendous thunder-storm, lasting all night. In the morning my party setforward over the soaken prairie under a cloudless sky intensely blue. Iwas riding in advance, absorbed in thought, when I was suddenly roused toa sense of material things by exclamations of astonishment andapprehension from the men behind. Looking forward, I beheld a trulyterrifying spectacle. Immediately in front, at a distance, apparently, ofnot more than a quarter-mile, was a long line of the most formidablelooking monsters that the imagination ever conceived. They were tallerthan trees. In them the elements of nature seemed so fantastically anddiscordantly confused and blended, compounded, too, with architectural andmechanical details, that they partook of the triple character of animals, houses and machines. Legs they had, that an army of elephants could havemarched among; bodies that ships might have sailed beneath; heads aboutwhich eagles might have delighted to soar, and ears--they were singularlywell gifted with ears. But wheels also they were endowed with, and vastsides of blank wall; the wheels as large as the ring of a circus, thewalls white and high as cliffs of chalk along an English coast. Amongthem, on them, beneath, in and a part of them, were figures and fragmentsof figures of gigantic men. All were inextricably interblended andsuperposed--a man's head and shoulders blazoned on the side of an animal;a wheel with legs for spokes rolling along the creature's back; a vastsection of wall, having no contact with the earth, but (with a tailhanging from its rear, like a note of admiration) moving along the line, obscuring here an anatomical horror and disclosing there a mechanicalnightmare. In short, this appalling procession, which was crossing ourroad with astonishing rapidity, seemed made up of unassigned andunassorted units, out of which some imaginative god might be about tocreate a world of giants, ready supplied with some of the appliances of ahigh civilization. Yet the whole apparition had so shadowy and spectral alook that the terror it inspired was itself vague and indefinite, like theterror of a dream. It affected our horses as well as ourselves; theyextended their necks and threw forward their ears. For some moments we satin our saddles surveying the hideous and extravagant spectacle without aword, and our tongues were loosened only when it began rapidly to diminishand recede, and at last was resolved into a train of mules and wagons, barely visible on the horizon. They were miles away and outlined againstthe blue sky. 

I then remembered what my astonishment had not permitted me closely tonote--that this pageant had appeared to move along parallel to the foot ofa slope extending upward and backward to an immense height, intersectedwith rivers and presenting all the features of a prairie landscape. Themirage had in effect contracted the entire space between us and the trainto a pistol-shot in breadth, and had made a background for its horriblepicture by lifting into view Heaven knows how great an extent of countrybelow our horizon. Does refraction account for all this? To this day Icannot without vexation remember the childish astonishment that preventedme from observing the really interesting features of the spectacle andkept my eyes fixed with a foolish distension on a lot of distorted mules, teamsters and wagons. 

One of the commonest and best known tricks of the mirage is that ofoverlaying a dry landscape with ponds and lakes, and by a trulyinteresting and appropriate coincidence one or more travelers perishing ofthirst seem always to be present, properly to appreciate the humor of thedeception; but when a gentleman whose narrative suggested this articleaverred that he had seen these illusory lakes navigated by phantom boatsfilled with visionary persons he was, I daresay, thought to be drawing thelong bow, even by many miragists in good standing. For aught I know he mayhave been. I can only attest the entirely credible character of thestatement. 

Away up at the headwaters of the Missouri, near the British possessions, Ifound myself one afternoon rather unexpectedly on the shore of an ocean. At less than a gunshot from where I stood was as plainly defined aseabeach as one could wish to see. The eye could follow it in eitherdirection, with all its bays, inlets and promontories, to the horizon. Thesea was studded with islands, and these with tall trees of many kinds, both islands and trees being reflected in the water with absolutefidelity. On many of the islands were houses, showing white beneath thetrees, and on one which lay farthest out seaward was a considerable city, with towers, domes and clusters of steeples. There were ships in theoffing whose sails glistened in the sunlight and, closer in, several boatsof novel but graceful design, crowded with human figures, moved smoothlyamong the lesser islands, impelled by some power invisible from my pointof view, each boat attended by its inverted reflection "crowding upbeneath the keel. " It must be admitted that the voyagers were habitedafter a somewhat uncommon fashion--almost unearthly, I may say--and wereso grouped that at my distance I could not clearly distinguish theirindividual limbs and attitudes. Their features were, of course, entirelyinvisible. None the less, they were plainly human beings--what othercreatures would be boating? Of the other features of the scene--the coast, islands, trees, houses, city and ships hull-down in the offing--Idistinctly affirm an absolute identity of visible aspect with those towhich we are accustomed in the realm of reality; imagination had simplynothing to do with the matter. True, I had not recently had the advantageof seeing any such objects, except trees, and these had been mighty poorspecimens, but, like Macduff, I "could not but remember such things were, "nor had I forgotten how they looked. 

Of course I was not for an instant deceived by all this: I knew that underit all lay a particularly forbidding and inhospitable expanse of sagebrushand cactus, peopled with nothing more nearly akin to me than prairie dogs, ground owls and jackass rabbits--that with these exceptions the desert wasas desolate as the environment of Ozymandias' "vast and trunkless legs ofstone. " But as a show it was surely the most enchanting that human eyeshad ever looked on, and after more years than I care to count it remainsone of memory's most precious possessions. The one thing which alwayssomewhat impairs the illusion in such instances--the absence of thehorizon water-line--did not greatly abate the _vraisemblance_ in this, forthe large island in the distance nearly closed the view seaward, and theships occupied most of the remaining space. I had but to fancy a slighthaze on the farther water, and all was right and regular. For more than ahalf-hour this charming picture remained intact; then ugly patches ofplain began to show through, the islands with their palms and templesslowly dissolved, the boats foundered with every soul on board, the seadrifted over the headlands in a most unwaterlike way, and inside the hoursince, like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise, Silent upon a peak in Darien, I had discovered this unknown sea all this insubstantial pageant had fadedlike the baseless fabric of the vision that it was and left not a rackbehind. 

In some of its minor manifestations the mirage is sometimes seen on thewestern coast of our continent, in the bay of San Francisco, for example, causing no small surprise to the untraveled and unread observer, and nosmall pain to the spirits of purer fire who are fated to be caught withinearshot and hear him pronounce it a "mirridge. " I have seen Goat Islandwithout visible means of support and Red Rock suspended in mid-air likethe coffin of the Prophet. Looking up toward Mare Island one mostungracious morning when a barbarous norther had purged the air of everystain and the human soul of every virtue, I saw San Pablo Bay marginedwith cliffs whose altitude must have exceeded considerably that from whosedizzy verge old eyeless Gloster, falling in a heap at his own feet, supposed himself to have sailed like a stone. 

One more instance and "I've done, i' faith. " Gliding along down the HudsonRiver one hot summer afternoon in a steamboat, I went out on theafterguard for a breath of fresh air, but there was none to be had. Thesurface of the river was like oil and the steamer's hull slipped throughit with surprisingly little disturbance. Her tremor was for once hardlyperceptible; the beating of her paddles was subdued to an almost inaudiblerhythm. The air seemed what we call "hollow" and had apparently hardlyenough tenuity to convey sounds. Everywhere on the surface of the glassystream were visible undulations of heat, and the light steam ofevaporation lay along the sluggish water and hung like a veil between theeye and the bank. Seated in an armchair and overcome by the heat and thedroning of some prosy passengers near by, I fell asleep. When I awoke theguards were crowded with passengers in a high state of excitement, pointing and craning shoreward. Looking in the same direction I saw, through the haze, the sharp outlines of a city in gray silhouette. Roofs, spires, pinnacles, chimneys, angles of wall--all were there, cleanly cutout against the air. 

"What is it?" I cried, springing to my feet. 

"That, sir, " replied a passenger stolidly, "is Poughkeepsie. "

It was. 

A SOLE SURVIVOR

Among the arts and sciences, the art of Sole Surviving is one of the mostinteresting, as (to the artist) it is by far the most important. It is notaltogether an art, perhaps, for success in it is largely due to accident. One may study how solely to survive, yet, having an imperfect naturalaptitude, may fail of proficiency and be early cut off. To the contrary, one little skilled in its methods, and not even well grounded in itsfundamental principles, may, by taking the trouble to have been born witha suitable constitution, attain to a considerable eminence in the art. Without undue immodesty, I think I may fairly claim some distinction in itmyself, although I have not regularly acquired it as one acquiresknowledge and skill in writing, painting and playing the flute. O yes, Iam a notable Sole Survivor, and some of my work in that way attracts greatattention, mostly my own. 

You would naturally expect, then, to find in me one who has experiencedall manner of disaster at sea and the several kinds of calamity incidentto a life on dry land. It would seem a just inference from my SoleSurvivorship that I am familiar with railroad wrecks, inundations (thoughthese are hardly dry-land phenomena), pestilences, earthquakes, conflagrations and other forms of what the reporters delight to call "aholocaust. " This is not entirely true; I have never been shipwrecked, never assisted as "unfortunate sufferer" at a fire or railway collision, and know of the ravages of epidemics only by hearsay. The most destructive_temblor_ of which I have had a personal experience decreased thepopulation of San Francisco by fewer, probably, than ten thousand persons, of whom not more than a dozen were killed; the others moved out of town. It is true that I once followed the perilous trade of a soldier, but myeminence in Sole Surviving is of a later growth and not specially theproduct of the sword. 

Opening the portfolio of memory, I draw out picture afterpicture--"figure-pieces"--groups of forms and faces whereof mine only nowremains, somewhat the worse for wear. 

Here are three young men lolling at ease on a grassy bank. One, ahandsome, dark-eyed chap, with a forehead like that of a Grecian god, raises his body on his elbow, looks straight away to the horizon, wheresome black trees hold captive certain vestiges of sunset as if they hadtorn away the plumage of a flight of flamingoes, and says: "Fellows, Imean to be rich. I shall see every country worth seeing. I shall tasteevery pleasure worth having. When old, I shall become a hermit. "

Said another slender youth, fair-haired: "I shall become President andexecute a _coup d'etat_ making myself an absolute monarch. I shall thenissue a decree requiring that all hermits be put to death. "

The third said nothing. Was he restrained by some prescient sense of theperishable nature of the material upon which he was expected to inscribethe record of his hopes? However it may have been, he flicked his shoewith a hazel switch and kept his own counsel. For twenty years he has beenthe Sole Survivor of the group. 

 * * * * *

The scene changes. Six men are on horseback on a hill--a general and hisstaff. Below, in the gray fog of a winter morning, an army, which has leftits intrenchments, is moving upon those of the enemy--creeping silentlyinto position. In an hour the whole wide valley for miles to left andright will be all aroar with musketry stricken to seeming silence now andagain by thunder claps of big guns. In the meantime the risen sun hasburned a way through the fog, splendoring a part of the beleaguered city. 

"Look at that, General, " says an aide; "it is like enchantment. "

"Go and enchant Colonel Post, " said the general, without taking hisfield-glass from his eyes, "and tell him to pitch in as soon as he hearsSmith's guns. "

All laughed. But to-day I laugh alone. I am the Sole Survivor. 

 * * * * *

It would be easy to fill many pages with instances of Sole Survival, frommy own experience. I could mention extinct groups composed wholly (myselfexcepted) of the opposing sex, all of whom, with the same exception, havelong ceased their opposition, their warfare accomplished, their prettynoses blue and chill under the daisies. They were good girls, too, mostly, Heaven rest them! There were Maud and Lizzie and Nanette (ah, Nanette, indeed; she is the deadest of the whole bright band) and Emeline and--butreally this is not discreet; one should not survive and tell. 

The flame of a camp-fire stands up tall and straight toward the black sky. We feed it constantly with sage brush. A circling wall of darkness closesus in; but turn your back to the fire and walk a little away and you shallsee the serrated summit-line of snow-capped mountains, ghastly cold in themoonlight. They are in all directions; everywhere they efface the greatgold stars near the horizon, leaving the little green ones of themid-heaven trembling viciously, as bleak as steel. At irregular intervalswe hear the distant howling of a wolf--now on this side and again on that. We check our talk to listen; we cast quick glances toward our weapons, oursaddles, our picketed horses: the wolves may be of the variety known asSioux, and there are but four of us. 

"What would you do, Jim, " said Hazen, "if we were surrounded by Indians?"

Jim Beckwourth was our guide--a life-long frontiersman, an old man "beatedand chopped with tanned antiquity. " He had at one time been a chief of theCrows. 

"I'd spit on that fire, " said Jim Beckwourth. 

The old man has gone, I hope, where there is no fire to be quenched. AndHazen, and the chap with whom I shared my blanket that winter night on theplains--both gone. One might suppose that I would feel something of thenatural exultation of a Sole Survivor; but as Byron found that

 our thoughts take wildest flight Even at the moment when they should array Themselves in pensive order, so I find that they sometimes array themselves in pensive order, even atthe moment when they ought to be most hilarious. 

 * * * * *

Of reminiscences there is no end. I have a vast store of them laid up, wherewith to wile away the tedious years of my anecdotage--whenever itshall please Heaven to make me old. Some years that I passed in London asa working journalist are particularly rich in them. Ah! "we were a gallantcompany" in those days. 

I am told that the English are heavy thinkers and dull talkers. Myrecollection is different; speaking from that, I should say they are noend clever with their tongues. Certainly I have not elsewhere heard suchbrilliant talk as among the artists and writers of London. Of course theywere a picked lot; some of them had attained to some eminence in the worldof intellect; others have achieved it since. But they were not all Englishby many. London draws the best brains of Ireland and Scotland, and thereis always a small American contingent, mostly correspondents of the bigNew York journals. 

The typical London journalist is a gentleman. He is usually a graduate ofone or the other of the great universities. He is well paid and holds hisposition, whatever it may be, by a less precarious tenure than hisAmerican congener. He rather moves than "dabbles" in literature, and notuncommonly takes a hand at some of the many forms of art. On the whole, heis a good fellow, too, with a skeptical mind, a cynical tongue, and a warmheart. I found these men agreeable, hospitable, intelligent, amusing. Weworked too hard, dined too well, frequented too many clubs, and went tobed too late in the forenoon. We were overmuch addicted to shedding theblood of the grape. In short, we diligently, conscientiously, and with aperverse satisfaction burned the candle of life at both ends and in themiddle. 

This was many a year ago. To-day a list of these men's names with a crossagainst that of each one whom I know to be dead would look like a RomanCatholic cemetery. I could dine all the survivors at the table on which Iwrite, and I should like to do so. But the dead ones, I must say, were thebest diners. 

But about Sole Surviving. There was a London publisher named John CamdenHotten. Among American writers he had a pretty dark reputation as a"pirate. " They accused him of republishing their books without theirassent, which, in absence of international copyright, he had a legal, andit seems to me (a "sufferer") a moral right to do. Through sympathy withtheir foreign confrères British writers also held him in high disesteem. 

I knew Hotten very well, and one day I stood by what purported to be hisbody, which afterward I assisted to bury in the cemetery at Highgate. I amsure that it was his body, for I was uncommonly careful in the matter ofidentification, for a very good reason, which you shall know. 

Aside from his "piracy, " Hotten had a wide renown as "a hard man to dealwith. " For several months before his death he had owed me one hundredpounds sterling, and he could not possibly have been more reluctant topart with anything but a larger sum. Even to this day in reviewing theintelligent methods--ranging from delicate finesse to frank effrontery--bywhich that good man kept me out of mine own I am prostrated withadmiration and consumed with envy. Finally by a lucky chance I got him ata disadvantage and seeing my power he sent his manager--a fellow namedChatto, who as a member of the firm of Chatto & Windus afterward succeededto his business and methods--to negotiate. I was the most implacablecreditor in the United Kingdom, and after two mortal hours of me in mymost acidulated mood Chatto pulled out a check for the full amount, readysigned by Hotten in anticipation of defeat. Before handing it to me Chattosaid: "This check is dated next Saturday. Of course you will not presentit until then. "

To this I cheerfully consented. 

"And now, " said Chatto, rising to go, "as everything is satisfactory Ihope you will go out to Hotten's house and have a friendly talk. It is hiswish. "

On Saturday morning I went. In pursuance, doubtless, of his design when heantedated that check he had died of a pork pie promptly on the stroke oftwelve o'clock the night before--which invalidated the check! I have metAmerican publishers who thought they knew something about the business ofdrinking champagne out of writers' skulls. If this narrative--which, uponmy soul, is every word true--teaches them humility by showing that genuinecommercial sagacity is not bounded by geographical lines it will haveserved its purpose. 

Having assured myself that Mr. Hotten was really no more, I drovefuriously bank-ward, hoping that the sad tidings had not preceded me--andthey had not. 

Alas! on the route was a certain tap-room greatly frequented by authors, artists, newspaper men and "gentlemen of wit and pleasure about town. "

Sitting about the customary table were a half-dozen or more choicespirits--George Augustus Sala, Henry Sampson, Tom Hood the younger, Captain Mayne Reid, and others less known to fame. I am sorry to say mysomber news affected these sinners in a way that was shocking. Theirlevity was a thing to shudder at. As Sir Boyle Roche might have said, itgrated harshly upon an ear that had a dubious check in its pocket. Havinguttered their hilarious minds by word of mouth all they knew how, thesehardy and impenitent offenders set about writing "appropriate epitaphs. "Thank Heaven, all but one of these have escaped my memory, one that Iwrote myself. At the close of the rites, several hours later, I resumed mymovement against the bank. Too late--the old, old story of the hare andthe tortoise was told again. The "heavy news" had overtaken and passed meas I loitered by the wayside. 

All attended the funeral--Sala, Sampson, Hood, Reid, and theundistinguished others, including this present Sole Survivor of the group. As each cast his handful of earth upon the coffin I am very sure that, like Lord Brougham on a somewhat similar occasion, we all felt more thanwe cared to express. On the death of a political antagonist whom he hadnot treated with much consideration his lordship was asked, rather rudely, "Have you no regrets now that he is gone?"

After a moment of thoughtful silence he replied, with gravity, "Yes; Ifavor his return. "

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One night in the summer of 1880 I was driving in a light wagon through thewildest part of the Black Hills in South Dakota. I had left Deadwood andwas well on my way to Rockerville with thirty thousand dollars on myperson, belonging to a mining company of which I was the general manager. Naturally, I had taken the precaution to telegraph my secretary atRockerville to meet me at Rapid City, then a small town, on another route;the telegram was intended to mislead the "gentlemen of the road" whom Iknew to be watching my movements, and who might possibly have aconfederate in the telegraph office. Beside me on the seat of the wagonsat Boone May. 

Permit me to explain the situation. Several months before, it had been thecustom to send a "treasure-coach" twice a week from Deadwood to Sidney, Nebraska. Also, it had been the custom to have this coach captured andplundered by "road agents. " So intolerable had this practice become--eveniron-clad coaches loopholed for rifles proving a vain device--that themine owners had adopted the more practicable plan of importing fromCalifornia a half-dozen of the most famous "shotgun messengers" of Wells, Fargo & Co. --fearless and trusty fellows with an instinct for killing, areadiness of resource that was an intuition, and a sense of direction thatput a shot where it would do the most good more accurately than the mostcareful aim. Their feats of marksmanship were so incredible that seeingwas scarcely believing. 

In a few weeks these chaps had put the road agents out of business and outof life, for they attacked them wherever found. One sunny Sunday morningtwo of them strolling down a street of Deadwood recognized five or six ofthe rascals, ran back to their hotel for their rifles, and returningkilled them all!

Boone May was one of these avengers. When I employed him, as a messenger, he was under indictment for murder. He had trailed a "road agent" across, the Bad Lands for hundreds of miles, brought him back to within a fewmiles of Deadwood and picketed him out for the night. The desperate man, tied as he was, had attempted to escape, and May found it expedient toshoot and bury him. The grave by the roadside is perhaps still pointed outto the curious. May gave himself up, was formally charged with murder, released on his own recognizance, and I had to give him leave of absenceto go to court and be acquitted. Some of the New York directors of mycompany having been good enough to signify their disapproval of my actionin employing "such a man, " I could do no less than make some recognitionof their dissent, and thenceforth he was borne upon the pay-rolls as"Boone May, Murderer. " Now let me get back to my story. 

I knew the road fairly well, for I had previously traveled it by night, onhorseback, my pockets bulging with currency and my free hand holding acocked revolver the entire distance of fifty miles. To make the journey bywagon with a companion was luxury. Still, the drizzle of rain wasuncomfortable. May sat hunched up beside me, a rubber poncho over hisshoulders and a Winchester rifle in its leathern case between his knees. Ithought him a trifle off his guard, but said nothing. The road, barelyvisible, was rocky, the wagon rattled, and alongside ran a roaring stream. Suddenly we heard through it all the clinking of a horse's shoes directlybehind, and simultaneously the short, sharp words of authority: "Throw upyour hands!"

With an involuntary jerk at the reins I brought my team to its haunchesand reached for my revolver. Quite needless: with the quickest movementthat I had ever seen in anything but a cat--almost before the words wereout of the horseman's mouth--May had thrown himself backward across theback of the seat, face upward, and the muzzle of his rifle was within ayard of the fellow's breast! What further occurred among the three of usthere in the gloom of the forest has, I fancy, never been accuratelyrelated. 

Boone May is long dead of yellow fever in Brazil, and I am the SoleSurvivor. 

 * * * * *

There was a famous _prima donna_ with whom it was my good fortune to crossthe Atlantic to New York. In truth I was charged by a friend of both withthe agreeable duty of caring for her safety and comfort. Madame wasgracious, clever, altogether charming, and before the voyage was two daysold a half-dozen of the men aboard, whom she had permitted me to present, were heels over head in love with her, as I was myself. 

Our competition for her favor did not make us enemies; on the contrary wewere drawn together into something like an offensive and defensivealliance by a common sorrow--the successful rivalry of a singularlyhandsome Italian who sat next her at table. So assiduous was he in hisattentions that my office as the lady's guide, philosopher and friend wasnearly a sinecure, and as to the others, they had hardly one chance a dayto prove their devotion: that enterprising son of Italy dominated theentire situation. By some diabolical prevision he anticipated Madame'severy need and wish--placed her reclining-chair in the most shelteredspots on deck, smothered her in layer upon layer of wraps, and conductedhimself, generally, in the most inconsiderate way. Worse still, Madameaccepted his good offices with a shameless grace "which said as plain aswhisper in the ear" that there was a perfect understanding between them. What made it harder to bear was the fellow's faulty civility to the restof us; he seemed hardly aware of our existence. 

Our indignation was not loud, but deep. Every day in the smoking-room wecontrived the most ingenious and monstrous, plans for his undoing in thisworld and the next; the least cruel being a project to lure him to theupper deck on a dark night and send him unshriven to his account by way ofthe lee rail; but as none of us knew enough Italian to tell him theneedful falsehood that scheme of justice came to nothing, as did all theothers. At the wharf in New York we parted from Madame more in sorrow thanin anger, and from her conquering cavalier with polite manifestations ofthe contempt we did not feel. 

That evening I called on her at her hotel, facing Union Square. Soon aftermy arrival there was an audible commotion out in front: the populace, headed by a brass band and incited, doubtless, by pure love of art, hadarrived to do honor to the great singer. There was music--aserenade--followed by shoutings of the lady's name. She seemed a triflenervous, but I led her to the balcony, where she made a very pretty littlespeech, piquant with her most charming accent. When the tumult andshouting had died we re-entered her apartment to resume our conversation. Would it please monsieur to have a glass, of wine? It would. She left theroom for a moment; then came the wine and glasses on a tray, borne by thatimpossible Italian! He had a napkin across his arm--he was a servant. 

Barring some of the band and the populace, I am doubtless the SoleSurvivor, for Madame has for a number of years had a permanent engagementAbove, and my faith in Divine Justice does not permit me to think that theservile wretch who cast down the mighty from their seat among the Sons ofHope was suffered to live out the other half of his days. 

 * * * * *

A dinner of seven in an old London tavern--a good dinner, the memorywhereof is not yet effaced from the tablets of the palate. A soup, a plateof white-bait be-lemoned and red-peppered with exactness, a huge joint ofroast beef, from which we sliced at will, flanked by various bottles ofold dry Sherry and crusty Port--such Port! (And we are expected to bepatriots in a country where it cannot be procured! And the Portuguese areexpected to love the country which, having it, sends it away!) That wasthe dinner--there was Stilton cheese; it were shameful not to mention theStilton. Good, wholesome, and toothsome it was, rich and nutty. TheStilton that we get here, clouted in tin-foil, is monstrous poor stuff, hardly better than our American sort. After dinner there were walnuts andcoffee and cigars. I cannot say much for the cigars; they are notover-good in England: too long at sea, I suppose. 

On the whole, it was a memorable dinner. Even its non-essential featureswere satisfactory. The waiter was fascinatingly solemn, the floor snowilysanded, the company sufficiently distinguished in literature and art forme to keep track of them through the newspapers. They are dead--as dead asQueen Anne, every mother's son of them! I am in my favorite rôle of SoleSurvivor. It has become habitual to me; I rather like it. 

Of the company were two eminent gastronomes--call them Messrs. Guttle andSwig--who so acridly hated each other that nothing but a good dinner couldbring them under the same roof. (They had had a quarrel, I think, aboutthe merit of a certain Amontillado--which, by the way, one insisted, despite Edgar Allan Poe, who certainly knew too much of whiskey to knowmuch of wine, _is_ a Sherry. ) After the cloth had been removed and thecoffee, walnuts and cigars brought in, the company stood, and to an airextemporaneously composed by Guttle, sang the following shocking andreprehensible song, which had been written during the proceedings by thispresent Sole Survivor. It will serve as fitly to conclude this feast ofunreason as it did that:

THE SONG

 Jack Satan's the greatest of gods, And Hell is the best of abodes. 'Tis reached through the Valley of Clods By seventy beautiful roads. Hurrah for the Seventy Roads! Hurrah for the clods that resound With a hollow, thundering sound! Hurrah for the Best of Abodes!

 We'll serve him as long as we've breath-- Jack Satan, the greatest of gods. To all of his enemies, death!-- A home in the Valley of Clods. Hurrah for the thunder of clods That smother the souls of his foes! Hurrah for the spirit that goes To dwell with the Greatest of Gods!