*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68058 ***

[Illustration:

    JANUARY       1899       10 CENTS

    DIXIE.
    A MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

    THE DIXIE
    BALTIMORE PUBLISHING CO.]

_Terms: $1.00 a Year in Advance. 10 Cents a Number._




DIXIE


                 A MONTHLY MAGAZINE.      JANUARY, 1899.

            HENRY CLAYTON HOPKINS, Editor, 326 St. Paul St., Baltimore.
            G. ALDEN PEIRSON, }
            CLINTON PETERS,   } Art Editors.
            CHAS. J. PIKE,    }
            GEORGE B. WADE, Business Manager.




CONTENTS.


       I. Cover designed by G. Alden Peirson.

      II. The New Year                                        Frontispiece.
                        Drawn by Clinton Peters.

     III. Frost (poem)—_Duncan Campbell Scott_                           1

      IV. Dan Rice’s New Year Frolic—_M. G. McClelland_                  2

       V. To —— (poem)—_Henry Clarion Hopkins_                          13
                     Illustration by Clinton Peters.

      VI. The Man He Knew—_John P. Rogers_                              15
                     With Pictures by Chas. J. Pike.

     VII. A Question (poem)—_Danske Dandridge_                          25

    VIII. Love is Blind (prose poem)—_William Theodore Peters_          26

      IX. Some Picturesque Bits of Baltimore—_G. Alden Peirson_         27
                        (Sixteen Illustrations.)

       X. The Four Fears of Our General (The First Fear)—_Adele Bacon_  43

      XI. Bouquets                                                      52

     XII. “Hydrangias”                                                  54
           Reproduction of the Painting by Philip de Boilleau.

    XIII. The Bogieman                                                  56

     XIV. Book Reviews—_E. A. U. Valentine_                             59

      XV. Exchanges                                                     63

Copyright, 1899, by DIXIE PUBLISHING COMPANY.




[Illustration: DIXIE.]

                 VOL. I.      JANUARY, 1899.      NO. 1.




FROST.


    In lofty Nepal in the sheer, refined
      Air of some frigid Himalayan vale,
      Frost-charmed in ancient ice a sorcerer pale
    Shrinks stars and frondes to things of faery-kind.
    Now in the night when cold has stilled the wind,
      When the snow shines like moonlight in the dale,
      His crystals clothe the pane with magic mail,
    Or build a legend hoar with rime outlined;
    The spoils of dreamland dwarfed to atomies:
      Incrusted gems, star-glances overborne
    With lids of sleep plucked from the moth’s bright eyes,
      And forests dense of ferns blanched and forlorn,
    Where Oberon of unimagined size
      Might in the silver silence wind his horn.

                                                —_Duncan Campbell Scott._




[Illustration: DAN RICE’S NEW YEAR FROLIC

_BY M.G. MCCLELLAND._]


Among the mountain fastnesses the snow lay fifteen inches deep in the
open, a thing without precedent in the memory of the oldest hunter in the
Humpback region. The cowled peaks uplifted themselves, wanly, and lay
against a hard distance in mysterious, alien solitude.

In the midst rose Humpback, his indented crest losing outline for days
together by reason of the snow clouds that coifed it. In the hollows,
where many of the mountaineers lived, the snow was much deeper,
wind-drifted in swaths, fit to bury a man to the middle. Many of the
trails were blocked and, when the wind changed and a slight thaw set in,
followed by a freeze, the snow packed and crusted, which made travel bad
for people who had never even heard of snow-shoes. The wild creatures
suffered most, and whole covies of game birds perished in the drifts
from cold or starvation. On the other hand, minks, otters, foxes, and
nature’s other carnivorous children fattened apace, slipping about the
white frozen world, like demons of the inner circle, and feasting upon
the bodies of the dead.

As the cold increased, big game was driven from inaccessible haunts and
wandered afield in search of food, even venturing, by night, close to the
cabins and fodder-stacks of the people. Deer trails grew plentiful, and
the big cushioned track of bear could be seen in many of the hollows.

When the cold first swooped upon them, the people curled up like touched
caterpillars, and devoted every energy not frost-bitten to keeping
themselves warm. Their cabins were built on hygienic principles, and the
very earth beneath them was unaccustomed to the rigor of a hard chill.
After a week of it, finding themselves still living, the men began to
take interest and a hunting epidemic broke out and spread.

Dan Rice, the owner of good hunting dogs, became the most popular man in
the neighborhood and had his vanity so tickled that he decided to give
a party, just to show the folks what a fellow he was and what a figure
he could make when he set his mind to it. He had a big buck swung up by
its heels in his smoke-house, and nearly two flour barrels full of small
game, besides the intimate friendship of a distiller of “moonshine,” so
that he felt himself in a position to invite his friends to make merry
with him and “damn the expense.”

“’Twill thaw we-all up, an’ start the sap runnin’,” he explained to
his wife. “Thar’s plenty to do with, so you an’ the gals buckle on an’
don’t have no sparin’ an’ pinchin’. This here shindig have got to make a
record.”

Word of the extent and elegance of the preparations went around with the
invitations, and also that Mrs. Rice and her daughters would appear in
new calicos made specially for the occasion. Immediately every female
invited felt life unendurable without similar decoration, and domestic
atmosphere grew fevered with discussions of patterns and styles.

Tom Westley’s pretty little near-sighted wife secured the sweetest thing
in rosebuds on a dark red ground, and stitched away at it energetically.
Her baby was nearly three months old now and her interest in the outside
world was returning. The grooves of her life were well defined and
narrow, so that any extraneous happening became an event charged with
unbalancing excitement.

There was to be a big deer hunt with Rice’s hounds, as a preliminary
to the ball, and every able-bodied man about the district expected to
take part in it. Westley proposed to his wife to go over to the Rice’s
early in the day and let him join her there after the hunt, but got
flouted. Mrs. Rice would be run off her legs with the preparations,
her considerate little neighbor declared, and would be justified in
regarding premature arrivals with disgust. She—Susan Westley—was a
housekeeper herself and knew about these things. Besides, her own dress
was unfinished, and she had a making of soap in the lye which must be
attended to. Then it was arranged that Tom should meet her at a specified
fence corner, a quarter of a mile from their house, just before, or on
the edge of dark. The way to the fence was through a cleared field and
perfectly open. She knew it as well as she did her own door yard.

“Don’t git so fired up huntin’ that you forgit me,” she admonished, as
she gave her husband his breakfast on the important morning. “It’s a mile
over to Rice’s an’ woods nigh all the way. The moon won’t be up, time I
want to start n’other, so I’d be feared. Aim to be at the fence fust,
will you?”

“All right,” Tom acquiesced easily. “I’ll be thar sure as shootin’, so
thar aint no call to fluster. Don’t keep me waitin’ no longer ’n you can
help for it’s tarnation cold loafin’. Wrop the youngster up tight, or
he’ll freeze. He ain’t none too fleshy.”

He had the child on his knee and was feeding it with scraps of his own
breakfast, calmly confident that as the boy is father to the man that
which is good for him at one point of his development must be beneficial
all along the line. The baby was chipper and healthy, but exceedingly
small, a fact used to shame his parents by the possessors of more
stalwart off-spring.

Breakfast despatched, Westley handed the child to his wife, and invested
himself with a shaggy overcoat and coon-skin cap, made with ear-tabs and
a droll peak in front which stuck out keenly.

“You want to keep out ’n the bushes,” laughed his wife, as she opened the
door for him, “or somebody ’ll be shootin’ you for a b’ar. That thar peak
an’ your nose, comin’ together, makes a mighty good snout an’ all the
balance looks shaggy. Folks can’t hardly tell no dif’ence, fust look.”

Westley tweaked his cap further forward. “Ev’rybody aint short-ranged
like you,” he responded. “Thar’s a chance o’ ’em down out’n the mountains
folks say but I aint seed none. Wish I could. ’Twould be somethin’ to
brag about to kill a bustin’ big b’ar. Far’well, honey, take keer o’
yo’se’f, an’ don’t keep me loafin’ out yonder ’till ’tother fellows git
the fust shot off Dan’s vittles.”

Left alone, the little woman worked busily, trying to crowd into the
short daylight hours as much as they would hold. Her soap making required
more time than she had allowed for so that twilight had deepened to
night-fall before she had everything arranged to her mind and herself and
the child made ready for the expedition.

The snow clouds had disappeared, leaving a thin, keen atmosphere through
which the starlight could penetrate. This, with the snow-shimmer, made a
pallid, mysterious lustre, exciting to the imagination, but insufficient
for guidance, except in places where the way was open and familiar. The
path across the field was a foot under cover, but a big sycamore grew
near the trysting place by which it could be identified. The accustomed
aspect of the earth had vanished and in its place was illusion and
mystery.

Sue Westley hurried forward, hugging the cocoon which contained her baby
close to her breast. She crossed the field hap-hazard, straining her
near-sighted eyes for a glimpse of the sycamore, which was her objective
point. Ice-coated weeds uplifted themselves above the snow crust on
every side, and, when her skirts brushed against them, the ice broke and
fell off with a faint metallic tinkle. The crunching of the snow under
foot made her nervous, giving her the feeling of being followed, and
involuntarily she began to work herself into a panic of fear that Tom
would not meet her.

Her relief was proportionately great when, nearing the fence, she dimly
discerned something tall and bulky leaning against it. She quickened her
pace and became explanatory.

“I’m awful sorry I ke’p you waitin’, Tom, but I couldn’t git through no
quicker,” she said eagerly. “That thar soap done meaner ’en any truck
ever biled. Look, to me, like jedgment day’d git here afore it thimbled.
That threw me late milkin’ an’ feedin’, an’ thar was baby to dress an’ me
too. You’re nigh frozen I reckon, but we-all can walk rapid the balance
o’ the way. Here, take the baby whilst I unhook my dress. It’s caught on
a scrop o’ bresh.”

Scarcely noticing, she rested the child on the top-rail, steadying it
there with one hand, while she bent down and freed her skirt. The figure
beside the fence made no answer, but reached forward and drew the bundle
from under her hand.

Sue turned to the next panel, which was unincumbered by brush, and
climbed it with the agility of a monkey. Tom had remembered, and been
before her at the tryst. A warm glow of satisfaction was generated in
her heart and sent her spirits up to mischief heat. She sped forward,
with a laugh, and then turned and began jumping backwards, chattering
like a black bird. Tom must carry the baby awhile, she declared, her arms
were tired, and besides she wanted to frolic. Then she swooped sideways
and tried to grab up a handful of snow, but the hard crust defied her.
No matter; snow balling Tom might be fun, but there was the danger of
hitting the baby. She steadied herself and called out to him to hurry up
and join her. She wanted to hear about the hunt.

In the pause in her own volubility, made for reply, she suddenly became
conscious of an absolute silence, as of a vast void wherein nothing
moved, or breathed, except herself. She shivered, and her spirits began
to fall as rapidly as they had risen. Two explanations of this singular
silence, both equally obnoxious, swept into her mind. Tom was trying to
play a foolish practical joke; or else he had been drinking too much and
leaned on the fence drowsing and unable to move.

She started back at a keen run when the sound of a man’s whistle cleft
the stillness, arresting her steps and causing her to face about
uncertainly. Tom was crunching over the snow towards her, swinging a
lighted lantern and trilling like a mocking-bird.

Whatever shame he may have felt for his tardiness was effectually routed
by his wife’s wild demand for her child, and the sight of her excitement
when he, in his turn, inquired “what in thunder she meant?”

She threw up her hands with a cry that cut through him.

“You _were_ thar!” she wailed. “Thar by the fence, just now, waitin’ for
me. I seed you. An’ you took the baby whilst I turned myse’f loose from
the bresh. Whar is he? If you’ve hid him in the snow he’ll catch his
death. Quit foolin’, Tom, an’ git him for me! I’m skeered all to pieces
anyhow, an’ can’t stan’ no such as that. Git him for me!”

Bewildered to the verge of idiocy, Tom protested his innocence. He had
not seen the child since he left home that morning, and had no thought of
joking. He had only just gotten there. Luck had been good, which made him
late. Then he drew from her as connected an account of the occurrence as
her excitement would allow, and suggested that, owing to the imperfect
light and her own defective vision, she might have mistaken a brush heap
against the fence for a man and laid the baby in it. They went back at
once, Tom talking volubly to conceal unreasoning anxiety, and Sue frankly
terrified and moaning just above her breath.

At the place where Sue had crossed, the snow-crust was shattered in a
large circle; they scarcely looked at it, one swing of the lantern, low
to the ground, being sufficient to identify the spot. Midway of the
adjoining panel the crust was broken also, but less heavily, and Tom went
on his knees and examined the marks with the experienced eye of a hunter.
There were faint but plainly perceptible scratches on the snow, as though
claws had scraped downward as the crust sagged under weight. Tom examined
the fence, holding the lantern close and scanning the rails intently.
On several he found hairs, caught under splinters, and collected them
until he had quite a number between his forefinger and thumb. They were
something over an inch long, brown in color, and very fine and glossy—the
hairs of an animal. He laid them together in his palm, and held the light
so that his wife could see and realize the significance of the discovery.
No sound escaped either; they simply stared at each other, the face of
the father stiffening like stone, while that of the mother blanched to
the pallor of snow with the draining of blood from her heart.

The horrible truth seemed everywhere, in the earth, in the air, and to
shout itself through the spaces of the infinite.

Mistaking it for her husband, the woman had unwittingly given her baby to
a bear.

The man was the first to recover himself. His hunting experiences had
trained him to be prompt in emergency and ready in resource at all times,
but now, under this emotional stress, his brain worked with astonishing
quickness. Much time had already been wasted, and every second was
precious. The bear might still be at hand, in one of the adjacent
hollows. His lair was probably up among the heights, but he might stop
somewhere. Tom’s mind shied away from thought of that which might cause
delay, and harnessed itself to action. He must follow the trail on the
instant, going swiftly, with crest lowered and light to the ground. He
was unarmed except for a hunting knife in his belt, but, in his then mood
would not have hesitated to attack a grizzly with naked hands.

The first step of course was to rid himself of his wife. She stood as one
dazed, her eyes fixed upon him, but unseeingly. She seemed to be taking
no notice, but he knew well enough that if he should move she would
follow him. What he wanted was to prevent her from seeing, unprepared,
that which he might find: to get her away to some sheltered place where
there were other women. Knowing instinctively the value of domination to
one in her condition he laid his hand on her shoulder and ordered her as
if she were a child.

“Listen, Sue,” he said peremptorily; “I’ve got to have help, an’ have it
damned quick. You must run like a wild turkey over to Rice’s an’ rouse
up men an’ dogs an’ start ’em arter me. They kin ketch up my trail from
here. I’ve got to shove on at once. It’s the boy’s best chance.”

Hope and life sprang like a flame to Sue’s face. “Air thar _any_ chance?”
she demanded.

“Yes, if you’ll help me,” Tom answered, feeling drearily confident that
he was lying, but keeping on all the same. “B’ars have been knowed to
play with babies, like cubs, an’ never hurt a ha’r o’ ’em. Now, travel
like lightenin’!”

Sue pressed herself close to him and held his lips with a brief kiss. “If
the child’s dead ye must kill me,” she muttered, and, before he could
answer, fled away from him through the night.

How she got over to Rice’s Sue Westley could never describe. In her mind
was a confused jumble of forest and hillside which seemed to cut her off
from everywhere, and of a sinuous trail to which she held by instinct,
catching her garments on the bushes as she ran, stumbling, falling,
cutting her hands and bruising her body against broken ice and unexpected
up-juttings of granite. Her sun-bonnet caught on a low-hanging bough and
was jerked from her head, but she sped on unheeding; her abundant blond
hair shook from its coil and lay along her back like a half-twisted rope.
At last she won free of the woods and tumbled, rather than climbed,
over the rail fence surrounding Rice’s clearing, and raced in among the
revellers with her face white as chalk and her breath coming and going in
gasps.

They could make nothing of her story, at first, until Rice, a man gifted
with common sense, got her into a chair and made her swallow half a
tumbler of hot whiskey toddy. As the liquor got in its work her nerves
steadied and she was able to make them understand the situation and the
necessity there was for haste. Comment and question circulated like
lightning and excitement rose to fever heat. Bears, hunger-driven from
the heights, were known to be rambling about, so that the situation held
grim possibilities. It seemed probable that this very animal had had the
Westley pig-pen for his objective point and that he had just up-reared
himself to climb the fence when the woman appeared and thrust her baby
under his nose. All thought of jollification vanished like mist and every
able-bodied man in the crowd grabbed for his gun and whooped up the
hounds.

Tom, meanwhile, followed the dents in the snow-crust, thankful for his
own forethought in providing himself with a lantern. The moon would be
up after a little, but in the urgent present the necessity for light
was overwhelming. The trail led him through a jungly hollow and across
a long ridge into another hollow. Here some clearing for firewood had
been made and the trees were scattered at long intervals, with stumps
and brush heaps between, transformed by a mantling of snow into strange
similitudes.

As he entered the place, Tom was conscious of a soft increase of light
and glancing backward beheld a three-quarter moon disengaging herself
from the tree-tops. In a few moments she had won clear and was sailing
upward into unobstructed space, from whence she cast earthward rays which
were refracted from millions of snow crystals.

Tom held to the trail like a blood-hound, but near the centre of the
clearing he was brought up all standing by the most singular spectacle
his eyes ever beheld. Not fifty yards ahead was the bear, erect upon
his hind legs and gyrating slowly in a circle as though keeping time to
imaginary music. As Tom looked, the beast bent downward and cautiously
executed a somersault, grunting with joy in his own performance. Then he
moved backward in a straight line, as though to give himself headway,
and suddenly bounced toward the pivotal point of the circle, like a
trap-ball, landing close beside a small dark object plainly discernible
upon the snow. This he caught in his paws and rolled about softly,
playing with it as a cat plays with a kitten.

The wind, so far, had been in Tom’s favor, but, as the animal frolicked,
he veered about a bit and caught it full-tainted from the hunter’s
direction. He threw up his head uneasily and drew the scent into his
nostrils. Tom dashed forward at once, conscious that the smallest delay
would enable the bear to grab the baby and make off with it. He whipped
out his knife as he leapt and howled like a Comanche, hoping to strike
terror to the ursine soul. When he got to close quarters he dealt the
beast a crashing blow over the muzzle with his lantern, and, in the
momentary advantage so gained, contrived, with a strong shove of his foot
to send the baby skating along the snow-crust to a considerable distance.

Then the enraged animal rose on his hind legs and gripped him.

Tom lunged with his knife, but failed to strike a vital part and before
he could draw out and strike a second time, the bear had a good body grip
and was squeezing. Fortunately for Tom the bear was only medium sized,
while he, himself, was a big man and a fine wrestler. The breath was
being hugged out of him, but his right arm was free so that he was able
to match science against brute strength. Thrusting his forearm under his
adversary’s chin nearly to the elbow he made a lever of his own body and
forced the head up and backward until, to save his neck from dislocation,
the bear was compelled to loosen his grip and threw himself on his back,
with Tom uppermost. In the fall, Tom freed his other arm and got hold of
the hilt of his knife, which he began to saw about in the wound furiously.

How the battle would have ended, had the combatants been left to
themselves, is an open question. It was still undecided when the baying
of hounds came over the ridge and Dan Rice’s pack swept into the hollow
in full cry and threw themselves, _en masse_, upon the quarry.

After them came the hunters, traveling impetuously and in bunches. They
found Tom sitting on the bear’s carcass, with a small bundle hugged to
his breast and all the dogs squatting on their haunches about him in a
sympathetic semi-circle.

They bore home the bear and the baby in triumph and Sue Westley had to
stand some rough joking anent her mistake, which she minded no more than
the whistling of the wind. Why should she? Was not the baby alive and
crowing in her arms, and Tom the hero of the hour because of his prowess?
The fiddlers tuned up their instruments and the women set about restoring
to toothsomeness the belated supper, so that, despite the interruption,
the frolic came off hilariously and fulfilled Dan’s ambition by making a
record.

Two things alone blunted the edge of Tom’s satisfaction. One was that a
small iron ring was discovered in the bear’s muzzle, showing that at one
portion of his career it must have been accustomed to human dominance.
This probably accounted for its gentleness and antics with the baby, but
it also took the bloom off of boasting.

The other trouble was the publicity given the affair by the county
newspaper, which published the story in detail. This last, Tom regarded
narrow-mindedly, and denounced as an outrage.

“Its dog-goned impidence an’ meddlesomeness,” he fumed. “An’ if ’twarn’t
for makin’ bad wuss, by givin’ him another tale to yelp over, I’d
b’ar-bait that thar outdacious varmint in his own hollow. What sort
o’ trick is it to play on a fellow, to set all the state o’ Virginny
grinning like a ’possum at him bekase his own wife didn’t have enough
gumption to know him from a b’ar?”

At which protest his neighbors howled with derision and unfeelingly
reminded him that when certain adventures of _theirs_ had been made
public through the same medium he, Tom, had considered the matter vastly
amusing.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: _Drawn by Clinton Peters._]




TO ——


    Thus I had dreamed in loving thee:
      That beauty had not fitter place.
    Nor any higher destiny,
      Than in the oval of thy face.

    That faith thy eager hand had sought
      And led thy steps in open ways—
    The love-light in thine eyes I thought
      A light as honest as the day’s.

    And in my dream no other lip
      Had pressed thy forehead save mine own,
    And thou hadst held in fellowship
      No other heart, but mine alone.

    How vain a dream in waking lost!
      That leaves the dreamer in despair
    To reckon up the bitter cost
      And face the future if he dare!

    Thy love is but a love of things:
      A bit of lace, a clasp of gold,
    A silken purse with liberal strings—
      Thy heart is cast in shallow mold!

    When hast thou thought to look within
      And teach thine errant heart the way,
    With conscience shriven of its sin,
      Thine angel’s feet might tread some day?

    Hadst thou to love no faith to give?
      And knew’st thou not love’s wondrous gift—
    The things for which ’twere best to live
      To win, to weigh, to sort and sift?

    Whatever act of thine did raise
      A love-thought thou allow’d’st to die
    Will wither in thine own dispraise
      With every word that held a lie!

    If ever I have caused thee pain,
      My love has seen where danger stirr’d—
    But thou hast deem’d my care in vain
      Tho’ warning struggled in my word.

    My hand was holy in thy hand,
      My love, as far as love may be,
    Was guiltless at my soul’s command—
      God keep thy woman’s purity!

    Did I in aught so fail thee, dear.
      That thou hast turned thy love aside?
    If thou would’st swell it with a tear
      I’d bend my life to bridge the tide.

    But this is weakness—born of pain!
      How soon the heart forgets its wrong
    And pleads for life and love again
      With love as patient and as strong!

    No longer will I humbly sue,
      Or ask thy languid love to bless—
    The years shall yield the good and true
      Unknown in thy unworthiness.

                                                —_Henry Clayton Hopkins._

[Illustration]




THE MAN HE KNEW

[Illustration]

    [Until he becomes an artistic star of the first magnitude
    (when he is apt to be as rich and as arrogant as the fabled
    Indian Rajah,) the world is often exceedingly ungenerous to
    the struggling young painter, however talented he may be. Even
    Paris—usually so kind to budding genius—is sometimes guilty of
    this offense. The following little narrative will prove the
    truth of my statement.]


Little Barlow was very poor indeed and, what was much more serious,
had stretched his limited credit just as far as it would go. He didn’t
like to do this at all, but there was no help for it and it grieved him
sorely. Therefore he became daily more despairing and sick at heart as
one by one his most promising schemes for money making came to naught and
the trades-people presented their bills with a machine-like promptness
and inevitability.

He possessed only one living relative in America, a millionaire uncle—who
was addicted to the pernicious habit of endowing memorial hospitals and
colleges in total oblivion of his duty towards his only nephew. Little
Barlow had timidly approached this uncle for help the year before—when
he was suffering almost as badly from a similarly acute period of
ill-chance—and had received three hundred dollars by cable in return,
but, when the American mail arrived a week afterward, it brought with
it such an unnecessarily brutal letter that he heartily regretted that
by paying his creditors nearly all the money he had rendered himself
powerless to send it flying back across the ocean, accompanied by the
very choicest anathemas in his vocabulary.

The most exasperating feature of the letter was the offensive position
his uncle took in regard to his chosen work. He advised him to give it
up “as he did not seem to be a great success at it.” Success meaning to
him—as it does to so many other business men—solely and uniquely the
possession of the special faculty for making money.

[Illustration]

“Yet,” said Little Barlow to his patient little wife, “I don’t think I
have been a total failure, and won’t admit yet awhile that—even from
his point of view—I am not a success.” “No dearest,” she joined in
indignantly, “we won’t admit that at all;” and then she added proudly,
“we will show him some day that you will be rich as well as famous, and
will prove to him that he might have acquired far more lasting honor, at
very much less expense, by giving you a few well-paid orders now—and so
helping you over some rough places in your career—than he can ever gain
with all his vain-glorious memorials put together.”

Little Barlow kissed his thanks on the lips of his loyal little wife
and resumed: “I imagine sometimes that the old gentleman means well
but doesn’t understand our case. He went into business as a boy, made
all his money himself, and considers struggling was good for him and
formed his character, so I suppose he honestly thinks that that is the
very best training for an artist also. He doesn’t comprehend that we
depend for our actual livelihood on the caprice of the public (and are
often undeservedly worried thereby) or that we cannot paint directly for
money, or that if we do so our work is tolerably certain not to sell. You
can add up a column of figures, or measure calico, or weigh out sugar,
or sweep a room, or do a lot of other useful things with the idea of
remuneration for your pains in view, but you cannot write a great poem,
or compose a great piece of music, or paint a great picture—which must
be poetic and musical as well—with an eye solely bent on the acquisition
of the almighty dollar. I never in all my life painted but one of those
horrid affairs that we so suggestively call ‘pot boilers’ and that—heaven
help me!—has been knocking around my studio as a lesson ever since. There
seems to be something in it that proclaims it a monster to the least
intelligent, something mean about it which says money was the sole object
of its being born at all.

“On the contrary, if you paint a subject because you find it beautiful,
or interesting, or because you love to do it, it is astonishing indeed if
you do not find somebody else who would ‘love’ to have it and be glad to
pay what he can afford for its possession.”

Little Barlow had followed this theory consistently and had very little
left in his studio to sell. He had found that a great many people “loved”
his pictures; the only trouble was that the ones who “loved” and wanted
them the most had very little to give in exchange for them; and that
after the expenses for frames, canvases, paints, rents, taxes, models and
commissions had been deducted, there was scarcely anything remaining for
the sweet young wife, the two wee children, and little Barlow himself.
Still he hoped for better things in the future and worked on, as he had
always done, with a great joy in his heart.

Little Barlow had had a hard life of it and had practically “made”
himself, but in spite of all the sordid shocks his artistic nature had
received in that process it still remained intact and valiant. He had
also had his share of successes as well, although they did not exactly
come within his uncle’s definition of the word. He had had two drawings
and a prize painting hung on the walls of Julian’s, the title of
“Premier” in the admission examination at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and
an Honorable Mention and a Third Class Medal at the old Salon. When he
received his “Mention” he was so proud and confident of his powers that
he rashly rushed off and proposed to a charming little girl art-student
just as poor and as ingenious as himself.

[Illustration]

It was during his honey-moon—when he was blissfully happy—that he
produced his medal picture, and then there came a halt in his affairs
for lack of money, and the bills and the babies rolled in on him till
they had threatened to drown him altogether, and in sheer desperation
he composed his little plaint to his uncle which brought him the saving
three hundred dollars and, a week later, the awful letter that made him
red with shame for months afterward.

[Illustration]

In spite of all his resolves and struggles fate had been adverse to him
once more. He was in great difficulties, and the necessity of facing
an immediate danger was again upon him. It was of course useless and
entirely out of the question to write a second letter to the uncle,
whom he felt in his anger would willingly see them all slowly die of
starvation rather than help them further, provided, of course, they could
do so decently and quietly and not make any unpleasant scandal about it.

“I shall not write to him again, whatever happens,” he said, clinching
his fists; and then he added, with an altogether ugly look on his
usually placid face, “if the worst comes to the worst and we have to
shoot ourselves, or otherwise go under, it will make a great deal of
unfavorable talk at home and that,” he continued, smiling grimly, “is
something he won’t like at all.”

Little Barlow had not been indulging in any such gloomy reflections
the month before; on the contrary he had not been so hopeful and light
hearted for a long time. He had paid his rent and a big color bill (which
threatened to become malignant) with the compensation he had received
for a remarkably living portrait of a rich and titled Englishman.
“If I receive two more orders of the kind I will be on solid rock,”
he triumphantly asserted to his beaming little wife, “and there now
seems every prospect that I’ll get them. Lord Richemont was very much
pleased with my work—as was his friend Sir Garnet Walton—and they have
practically promised me at least one more order apiece. I will probably
have to go to London soon to paint Lady Richemont, and who knows what
will come out of the connections I may make there.”

Poor little Barlow’s day dreams were short lived, for toward the end
of the following week—when he was just upon the point of starting—he
received a letter from his patron telling him that Lady Richemont found
his portrait wonderfully good and true and liked it immensely, but that
she would be unable to pose for him for some time on account of a serious
and sudden illness which had pulled her down in strength and temporarily
altered her face. Then the bread bill dropped in, and little Barlow,
wearing an exceedingly serious and abstracted air, settled it with the
money he had reserved for his ticket to England, and the next day (out of
an almost cloudless sky) fell an unkind and unexpected thunderbolt, in
the shape of a legal summons from his frame-maker to pay one hundred and
forty seven francs still due.

Now this was needlessly cruel on the frame-maker’s part, for little
Barlow had ordered from him—or recommended his friends to order—nearly
six thousand francs worth of work in the past five years. But the
frame-maker suddenly “saw red,” as they say in France, and was in
financial troubles in his turn, and decided to fall on poor little
Barlow’s back with the entire and somewhat massive machinery of the
French law.

[Illustration]

“This document,” said little Barlow, gazing with mingled awe and
curiosity at the officially stamped paper, “calls for our immediate
attention. We are coming dangerously near to the point of being seized
and sold out, and, if that were ever to take place, it would mean a
complete and definite end to us.” While he was reflecting what it was
best for him to do under the circumstances, the postman once again passed
by and handed in another letter from London which when he had torn it
open and read it, eased his mind mightily. It informed him that if he
would accept £20 instead of the catalogue price of £30 for a last year
Salon picture—then exposed at the Crystal Palace—he could dispose of it
immediately.

He was so delighted at this unexpected good fortune that he caught his
little wife by the waist—although she held a baby in each arm at the time
and was in danger of dropping and injuring them seriously—and waltzed her
round and round the studio. Then he told her all about the good news,
and sat down and wrote a reply agreeing to let his picture go somewhat
reluctantly (for the looks of the thing) provided he was paid at once;
after which he sallied out and walked way over across town and deposited
it himself in the main post office of the rue du Louvre so that there
would be a little less chance of its going astray than by simply dropping
it in a branch office letter-box in the next street. Then he went home
and patiently waited for the response.

A whole week passed and it did not come and he was at length forced by
the actual necessities of life to borrow twenty francs from a friend
named Bolton. Toward the middle of the second week he got another ten
from an acquaintance named Sidney, but still the anxiously looked for
communication did not put in its appearance. Matters were assuming a
decidedly ominous aspect now—the frame-maker’s suit having been decided
against him by default—so he wrote a rather peevish letter to the
Secretary of the Exhibition which, after some further delay, elicited a
reply. In it he was told that the gentleman who had wanted his picture
had gone away for a short cruise on his yacht and had neglected as yet to
make known his ultimate intentions in regard to it.

[Illustration]

This note rendered little Barlow well-nigh desperate. What was he to do?
He remembered a kind friend, a Dr. Galt, who had offered to loan him a
little money once before (and whom he knew had a warm heart for all the
world), so he went over to his office on the rue St. Honore to ask him if
he could help him in his emergency, but Fortune was once again against
him and he learned with a sinking heart that the doctor had gone to
Edinburg to attend a medical congress then being held there and would not
be back for at least two weeks.

Then he returned to his studio, much discouraged and cast down, and told
his brave but sad little wife about this last and crowning disappointment.

“It’s no use,” said little Barlow despairingly, “every thing is against
us and we are now certain of being sold out. The danger is immediate and
our furniture may be seized at any moment. If I had only a little more
time I think I should be able to get the money somewhere, but the hundred
and forty-seven francs—and the twenty-five extra ones for costs—might
just as well be so many thousands, for I’m as powerless to raise them as
though they were. All the fellows who are likely to have any money to
spare are out of town and I’ve borrowed all I can from Bolton and Sidney.”

His wife knit her brow and reflected a moment; then she said slowly
but bravely, “I think I have found a way of paying the bill. It’s an
unpleasant way, but it’s the only one of which I know. We have pawned
practically all our silver and jewelry but _this_, and it’s right that
_it_ should go now;” saying which, she resolutely drew off her engagement
ring—daintily set with small diamonds and pearls—and held it out toward
her husband. “I hoped, dear, when you put it on my finger to have always
kept it there, but it’s best under the present circumstances that it
should leave it.”

Little Barlow refused to take it, with tears in his eyes at the
sacrilege, but she smiled at him cheerily and continued gently. “It is
off now and the damage is done, so don’t be gloomy, sweetheart, but take
it like a good boy. We won’t have to leave it at the _Mont de Piete_
permanently, for you are sure of getting some more money one of these
days, and then we can redeem it, and I will have another association with
it and will value it all the more on that account.”

So little Barlow was at length prevailed upon to go with it to the
_Succursale_ of the rue de Rennes, and borrowed the utmost which that
establishment would lend on it, which was only sixty francs.

“This partially solves the difficulty,” he said gloomily, on his return,
“but if we cannot raise a hundred and twelve francs more for the rest of
the bill and costs, we might just as well have nothing at all, for the
real good it will do us.”

“There is that Mrs. Harvey at the Hotel Continental,” suggested his wife
furtively; “she wrote to you last spring and asked you the price of the
little Salon picture which you had already sold. You called on her at the
time and she seemed affable and well-meaning, so why don’t you try her
now?”

“I don’t know that she’s in town, even,” little Barlow replied, “but if
she is, I’ve nothing left to sell her, and I don’t know how to beg. If it
were for anyone else, say Bolton or Sidney for instance, I might try to
do it, but for myself, or you, or the little ones—who after all are part
of me—I really couldn’t. I’m afraid I’ve too much pride left even yet!”

“Well,” said his wife, “if that is the only objection, I can suggest
an ingenious course of action for you. An idea, which is nothing short
of brilliant, has just occurred to me. _Why don’t you ask her for the
money as though it were for some one else?_ You can give her that
impression easily without telling an untruth. You can say that _you know
a man_—which you do, don’t you, you big goose?”—she rattled on, laughing
heartily—“_that you know a man who is in great trouble_—which is again
true, isn’t it? You can expatiate on the sad particulars of his case
just as much as ever you please, in fact the more you do so the better.
If this will save your pride and enable you to ask her for the money, I
don’t think, all things considered, the deceit is an unpardonable one.
We were given our wits by a kind Providence, and there’s no law that I
know of—either in Heaven or Earth—against our using them on desperate
occasions like this.”

Little Barlow, in spite of his sorry plight, joined his wife in a burst
of laughter on the conclusion of her monologue and rolled over and over
on the sofa in convulsions of irrepressible merriment.

“Yes,” continued his wife, laughing so that she could hardly speak,
“let’s save our pride and try to get out of our difficulty at the same
time. Mrs. Harvey thinks we are fairly well off, as we dress well,
have rather a swell looking studio and apartment, and appear tolerably
prosperous to the outside world, so she will never suspect she is
assisting you, whom, I am sure, however, she would much rather help
than a perfect stranger. However, to be doubly secure, we will start
a subscription book for the unhappy mortal, whose name you must not
disclose out of consideration for his sensitiveness, and I will put my
name down at the _very top of the list_ for sixty francs. You must also
make Bolton and Sidney each write down their names and the amounts they
have loaned you as if they were contributions.”

“You’re a genius,” said little Barlow admiringly, giving vent to a fresh
burst of laughter, “and I’ll take your advice. It’s too bad we’re obliged
to impose on the old lady’s credulity, but it won’t hurt her seriously,
and it will save us all from certain ruin; besides, we can pay her back
later when something lucky turns up.”

Accordingly, the next evening, little Barlow decked himself out very
carefully in his best suit, pinned a gardenia in the lapel of his coat,
and, looking exceedingly prosperous and handsome, called on Mrs. Harvey
at the hotel Continental. He was fortunate enough to find her at home,
and alone. He chatted with her pleasantly on all sorts of subjects, and
finally leading the conversation ’round with considerable tact to the
heart breaking case of THE MAN HE KNEW, surprised himself at the success
of his hypocrisy.

He told the old lady the most _navrante_ details of his situation, and so
worked on her sympathies with the probabilities of the wife and babies
becoming homeless, that she positively shed tears, and felt in her pocket
for her purse; and when—judging the moment to be opportune—he showed
her the subscription book, she tremulously wrote her name down for one
hundred francs and paid him the money then and there.

He felt rather mean and uncomfortable in taking it, but it meant life and
hope to him again, so he thanked her fervently for the MAN HE KNEW and,
promising to give her news of him in the near future, somewhat abruptly
took his departure.

His little wife was overjoyed at the success of her scheme; but they
still lacked twelve francs. This sum they finally raised by pawning a
silver belt-buckle, two broken scarf pins, and their four remaining
coffee spoons, and little Barlow was able to pay the horrid frame-maker
in full and tell him what he thought of him in perfect safety.

A fortnight later he received a check for £20 from the gentleman who
had been off on the boating expedition, and about the same time he got
word from Sir Garnet Walton that he could paint his portrait whenever
he chose. So he returned Mrs. Harvey’s contribution, with the heartfelt
gratitude of the MAN HE KNEW, and crossed the channel to a period of
great triumph and prosperity. He not only painted the portrait of Sir
Garnet Walton, but that of his mother, and his wife, and his little
daughter, and several of his friends.

He is out of the gloomy woods of poverty at last, and his feet are firmly
planted on the high road which leads to fame and fortune. Furthermore
he has learned to smile at his past misery and even to forgive his
short-sighted but benevolently inclined uncle for not alleviating it.

“I suppose, considering the trying situation, it was not inexcusably
wicked to impose, as I did, on old Mrs. Harvey’s kindness,” he remarked
one day to his wife; “but all the same it was steering rather too close
to a confidence game to suit my conscience altogether. I didn’t like the
business at all, but there are unfortunately many things in life which
border on untruthfulness of action but which one is compelled to do
nevertheless. This happened to be one of them.”

                                                       —_John P. Rogers._

[Illustration]




[Illustration: A QUESTION.

BY DANSKE DANDRIDGE.]


    _My Psyche, straying in a glimmering night,_
    _A flitting moth, o’er drenched and drowsy bloom._
    _Sees the faint radiance from thy spirit’s room_
    _And to that distant hope directs her flight._
    _Thus, in forlornest need and longing-plight,_
    _The lost bee flies to die in golden broom;_
    _Thus hies the insect to the spider’s loom,_
    _That dew-decked peril, flashing in the light._
    _What wilt thou do? Thy splendor softly shade_
    _That flies may quiver round it unafraid?_
    _Or burn and dazzle, till the wings that soar,_
    _Shrivelled and scorched, are useless evermore?_
    _Or wilt thou draw the screen and close the bars,_
    _That the poor baffled moth may seek the stars._




[Illustration: LOVE IS BLIND]


“Who knocks at the portal—so late?” whispered the little Greek maid.

“That may depend,” replied a clear voice outside, “some say I am a
friend, some a foe.”

The heart of the little Greek maid beat fast in her bosom. For three
nights she had heard this voice and for three nights a beautiful youth,
with silvery wings and his face concealed by a silver gauze, had appeared
to her in a dream.

“No, no, I have been forbidden to open the portal,” said the little Greek
maid.

“It is very cold and dark out here,” sighed the voice wistfully, “open
the portal but half way.”

“Only half way,” she replied, curiosity impelling her.

In this manner the beautiful youth, with silvery wings and his face
concealed by a silver gauze, affected an entrance.

“Oh, take the silver gauze from off thy face!” prayed the little Greek
maid.

“On a single condition,” answered the youth, “and that is, that I may
cover thy face with it. _In love, one, or the other, must always wear a
silver veil across the eyes._”

So she suffered him to bind the fillet about her forehead, but still she
could not see him.

“Oh, take the silver gauze from off my face!” prayed the little Greek
maid.

“In that case, I will be compelled to leave thee and never come again,”
he answered sadly.

But still she plead with him, whereupon he removed the silver gauze
from off her eyes and for the space of a second she gazed upon his
countenance, which shone resplendent, like the sun in his strength.

And she fell at his feet as one dead.

But when again she ventured to raise her face, he was gone!

                                              —_William Theodore Peters._




[Illustration: SOME PICTURESQUE BITS OF BALTIMORE.

BY _G. Alden Peirson_]


[Illustration: _A glimpse of Mount Vernon Place, including the Washington
Monument and the Methodist Church. This site was covered by a dense
forest at the time the erection of the Monument was begun, in 1815._]

[Illustration: _Jones’ Falls, named in honor of one David Jones, who is
said to have been the first actual settler on the tract of land on which
Baltimore is built._

_He lived in 1661 on Front Street, at that time known as Jones’ Street._]

[Illustration: _Looking from under a Bridge at the Mouth of the Falls._]

[Illustration: _In Tyson Alley._]

[Illustration: _A Bit of the Falls near Monument Street._]

[Illustration: _A mile farther down the stream, showing the Front Street
Theatre, which was built in 1838, and formerly known as the “New Theatre
and Circus.”_

_The Booths, Charlotte Cushman, Jenny Lind, and many other celebrities,
appeared in this famous old play-house. At the present time its walls are
in a state of decay, and it is no longer used._]

[Illustration: _Marsh or Centre Market, and the rear of the Maryland
Institute._]

[Illustration: _At Locust Point, below Federal Hill._]

[Illustration: _In Little Pleasant Street, near Charles Street._]

[Illustration: _In a Shadowy Side Street._]

[Illustration: _In the vicinity of Richmond Market and Grundy Row._]

[Illustration: _The Old Edward Patterson House on Winchester Street._]

[Illustration: _In a Ship-Yard at Locust Point._]

[Illustration: _The Ship-Yard’s Ancient Boiler Shop._]




[Illustration: IN THE HARBOR AT NIGHT

PAINTED BY IRVING WARD]


[Illustration]




[Illustration: THE FOUR FEARS OF OUR GENERAL

_Souvenirs of Childhood_]


The following conversation took place one evening upon one of those
points of Algeria where we Frenchmen have had to fight so desperately and
so often. We had encamped, or rather we had bivouacked, in a charming
little valley at the foot of a mountain, which, picturesque as it was,
suggested only evil things.

Our young General had gathered us together near his tent. He had been
giving us, with his habitual clearness, instructions for the battle which
was soon to begin, and which might require the greatest effort both on
the part of our men and of ourselves. It was planned that we should
start out quietly before daylight, noiselessly scale the mountain, and
force the enemy, at the point of the bayonet if possible, with powder
and shot if necessary, to cede to us the annoying position which they
occupied. Everything being arranged, and no one having a desire to sleep,
we naturally began to chat. The conversation turned to reminiscences;
not to recent memories, but recollections of childhood. This will not
astonish those who know what passes in the head of a soldier on the eve
of a battle. The words duty, conscience, fear and courage were frequently
uttered. Stories and anecdotes had been told illustrating the varied and
often contradictory ideas which these words evoked, and we had begun to
talk about our personal experiences. The General, who had listened until
then, contenting himself by letting drop an occasional opportune word,
being urged to tell us something in his turn, began as follows:

“It is not enough, at the critical hour of one’s existence,” he said,
“to be firmly resolved to do one’s entire duty, it is necessary above
all to know where and what it is. If it is one of those doubtful
cases, embarrassing the intelligence of the full-grown man, how much
more difficult must it be for the unformed mind of a child. That which
agitates the spirit of a little one, at certain trying moments, is a
subject worthy the attention of older people, and it is my opinion that
one of the surest means of knowing the man is to study him in the child.
The child contains all the essential elements of the man. Though he is
bounded by an infantile horizon his soul is none the less a human one.
Two things, although of very different nature, and although they date
back to the earliest years of my existence, have left me the remembrance
of greater perplexities than those which have assailed my spirit at any
other epoch of my life. Never has my soldier’s conscience been submitted
to more cruel tests than those to which I was twice subjected as a little
boy.

“Smoke some of my cigars, make yourselves some grog, and I will tell you
one of these episodes of my childhood. After which we must try to get
some sleep.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“I was a very little fellow, only six years old; it was not more than two
years since I had begun to wear trousers. My father, who was captain of a
ship at that time, being almost always on the sea, I had been brought up
by two women, my mother and my aunt—Aunt Marie! I loved them equally. I
had, in fact, two mothers. Although they were sensible people, they both
spoiled me.”

‘One can only spoil that which is bad,’ said Aunt Marie.

‘And Jacques is good,’ added my mother.

“It appears that at five years of age I was angelic. You see I have
changed,” said the general, interrupting his tale an instant, and
addressing himself to one of us who had smiled a little. “What do you
expect, my dear Robert, life does not leave intact all those whom it
touches.”

“Say rather, General,” replied the young officer who had been addressed—a
good fellow, although a little audacious at times—“if you have changed,
we know well that it is almost always to our advantage.”

The General shook his head and continued: “If I had never left my two
mothers, it is very probable that I should have been as gentle as a
girl. However this may be, and whether I was good or bad, between these
two charming women, I was the happiest little being in creation, and
curiously enough, I fully realized my happiness. My aunt, who played
more of a part than my mother in this story which I am telling you, was
a tall and remarkably beautiful person. My mother alone equalled her in
beauty, and that for a very simple reason—they were twins, and resembled
one another closely. Happily, their costumes differed completely, and
prevented me from making a mistake; my mother belonged to the world, and
Aunt Marie did not. Aunt Marie was the Superior of the Sisters of Charity
of a large military hospital in the town of —— where I was born. We lived
in this town during the long absences of my father. Mamma and her sister,
whom I often called “Aunt Sister Marie,” divided between them my entire
affection. It was indeed a great joy when my mother took me to see Aunt
Marie. Although this pleasure was to be found only between the cold walls
of a hospital, it was always greatly desired, and awaited with the very
greatest impatience on my part.

“To run in the vast, long court where the convalescents were accustomed
to walk, or to sit in the sunshine, to wander around that immense
garden, which was my Place du Carrousel and my Champs de Mars, to be
caught in passing, to be stopped in my wild flight, either by one of the
convalescent soldiers who were amused by my antics, or by one of the
sisters of Aunt Marie, or above all by Aunt Marie herself, who, when
seeing me too heated, left her room, which served her also as a pharmacy,
to come and quiet me and kiss me; to gallop over the sandy grounds of
this court, riding horse-back on a cane, or on the crutch of an aged,
infirm sister, who usually sat knitting on one of the benches—all this
was for me the joy of joys.

“The day of which I speak, a beautiful summer day, I had obtained
permission to play in my dear court for a whole hour. My mother had to
make a visit in the town, which would have been tiresome for me. She had
left me in charge of her sister and Aunt Marie, from her open window, was
not to lose sight of me for a moment. The aged Sister Rose was asked to
watch me as well, and then I had her crutch, without which she was unable
to walk. You see I was well guarded.

“Aunt Marie, having mounted to her private room, saw from her window that
a door of the large building at the extremity of the court, a double
door, and one which I had always seen shut, was open. She hailed one of
the nurses and asked him to shut it; but from his answer she probably
judged that it was not possible, for it stayed open, and Aunt Marie
having called me to her, said: ‘You see that large open door, at the end
of the court, little Jacques?’ ‘Yes, Aunt Marie.’ ‘Very well! It is the
door of a large room, very dark and very cold, where even big people are
not permitted to enter. It is written over the door that entrance is
forbidden to the public! Promise me, dear, not to go there.’

“I gave the promise with the intention of keeping it, but I had not
rendered due count of the fascinations of Sister Rose’s crutch. Having
jumped about a great deal, having pranced round and round the timid
Sister Rose, having thoughtlessly knocked against, and annoyed in a
thousand ways the soldiers who were playing at _drogue_, (a game which
always makes me laugh, as pieces of wood are placed on the noses of the
losers.) I was, as you may imagine, very much excited; my horse ended
by running away with me, and, instead of stopping on the threshold of
the forbidden door, which more than once I had had the imprudence to
approach too closely, he carried me irresistibly to the extremity of the
dark room, which I ought not to have entered. I was going so rapidly that
before I had time to think I arrived with a shock against the wall at the
farther end. I knocked myself so severely that I raised a big bump upon
my forehead, which brought me effectually to my senses. My steed, Sister
Rose’s crutch, fatigued by the violence of our course, fell, out of
breath, but not without noise, at my feet. The silence of the room sent
back from its four corners the echo of the fall. Startled by this strange
sound, I turned around quickly. I was already impressed by the sense of
my disobedience. I had done wrong to come there.

“The sudden change from the light to the obscurity which surrounded
me, the cold chill of that room, following quickly the warm atmosphere
of the court which I had left all in sunshine, added to my uneasiness,
and the rest did not reassure me. A lugubrious row of large white beds,
all alike, enclosed by curtains of a most severe aspect, which I had
not seen in the rapidity of my entrance, occupied the whole length of
the room at my left. Not a breath came from behind these curtains; the
beds then were empty. I did not like to be alone among these shadows.
The blinds being shut, the daylight ended a few steps from the door by
which I had come into this redoubtable place, and did not penetrate to
my corner. For an instant I dared not stir, and yet I well knew that I
must leave this spot, forbidden to grown persons, just as quickly as I
could. Intimidated by my surroundings, and above all by the obscurity and
the silence, which are not the friends of children, even the sound of my
breathing frightened me; I heard, not without fear, the rapid beatings of
my heart. Forgetting at once both Sister Rose and my horse, I resolved
to reach the door, and I walked instinctively on the tips of my toes so
as to make as little disturbance as possible. When I had taken about
twenty steps, hesitating from time to time to regain my courage, seeing
that after all I approached the light, my presence of mind gradually came
back to me and I cast about one of those questioning regards of a child
who wishes, while he has the opportunity, to profit by the occasion and
explore the region into which he has unwittingly ventured. I found myself
particularly attracted toward a large black bench which was placed along
the wall to the left of the entrance, and which occupied more space than
a bed.

“Why was this bench, larger and a little lower than the benches in the
court, two-thirds covered by a white sheet? Was anything hidden under
this sheet? It certainly appeared so to me. While asking myself these
questions, I had already arrived three-quarters of the way; a little
more daylight reached me thereby. Light is a blessing at any age, but
for a child it is sometimes a remedy for all ills. Less anxious as to
what might happen to me in the room itself, I began to be more uneasy
in regard to what would pass when I had left it. What would Aunt Marie
think of my disobedience? Truly I was in no great hurry to regain the
court, and I said to myself that being there, it would not cost me any
more to learn why a white sheet covered that big bench. In a few steps I
drew still nearer to it. The top of the bench was uneven. Without doubt
something was hidden there; but what? My curiosity carried me on, and
without having the least idea of what I was going to discover, with a
bold movement I lifted one entire end of the sheet.

“That which there appeared to my astonished eyes I shall never forget. I
see it even yet, as I speak to you, as plainly as when I was six years
old in the room of the hospital of ——. Yes, I see it and I shall see it
all my life.

“I saw death! a dead person! for the first time.

“Since then I have seen many dead people, more than I can count; this one
has rested in my memory more clearly than them all.

“That which I had uncovered was the head, white hair, nude shoulders
and chest of a man already old, whose immobility and extraordinary
pallor seemed inexpressibly terrible to me. I felt that I stood before
a great event. Nothing can give an idea of the stupor which enveloped
me. A hundred confusing questions surged in my brain. Has a man from his
earliest years an intuition as to what will be the end of his life on
earth? I firmly believe so. In any case I was not deceived for a single
moment by the thought that I beheld a sleeping man. I understood that
it was not a simple sleep. One is never so absent, so calm, when one
only sleeps. But then what was it that I saw? What was he doing on the
bench—that impassible being?

“‘Suppose I should call Aunt Marie?’ I said to myself; ‘Aunt Marie, who
knows everything, and can do everything? Suppose, however, (but the
simple thought seemed formidable to me) I should touch him first!’ And,
in contradiction to the idea which I had that his sleep was not of that
kind which could be disturbed. I said to myself again: ‘Perhaps he will
get up. Perhaps he does not know that he is there.’

“I dared to place my hand on his shoulder. I drew it away quickly. That
sort of cold was frightful.

“A dreadful thought flashed through my brain. The very truth of truths
penetrated my inmost being. People must become like this when they are no
longer alive. But then—— I had touched a dead man! I had thereby shown
a disrespect toward him. I had troubled that which ought never to be
troubled!

“My heart ceased to beat.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“I imagined that I had done something irreparable. I tried to find a name
for my action, which I judged abominable. The idea of sacrilege, one of
those dreaded words of which a child does not comprehend the meaning,
came into my mind, and I said to myself: ‘That is it, I have committed a
sacrilege!’

“Terror took possession of me, and in my fright, instead of escaping
through the door which was now quite near me, I took refuge, trembling,
in the shadowy end of the room which had lately given me so much trouble
to leave. Perhaps I hoped to escape more surely in the darkness from that
vision, from that unexplained revelation of death which had then for the
first time greeted me.

“I stood again with my face pressed against the wall at the end of the
room prohibited to all, hardly breathing, without the power to cry, and
not daring to turn round. I fell on my knees and, with a flood of tears,
I demanded pardon of God for the great sin which I had committed, and
prayed Him to show me the means of effacing it. Did God pardon me? I
believe that he did, for I arose from my knees having formed a resolution
to repair the wrong which I had done. But it must be done immediately,
and all alone. I had uncovered the head of a dead man, and my duty was,
first of all, to go and ask his pardon, and, secondly, to render him
peaceful by recovering him as before.

“Such a resolution—the idea that he has a duty to accomplish—makes a man
of even a child, once he has decided to perform it. I gathered together
all my courage and started bravely enough. When I arrived a few steps
from the bench and saw that terribly calm visage, with those marble lids
closed forever, my heart failed me, and, taking flight, I very soon found
myself at the end of the room.

“But strength alone, not will, failed me. Three times I returned, without
being able to approach him closely—and yet, it was necessary to do so! I
invoked the memory of Aunt Marie, of my mother, who would forgive me if
I could repair my fault, of my father who was said to be so brave, and I
made an effort to start again, repeating to myself when I was about to
weaken, that the pardon of others, of myself as well, and above all, that
of the dead man whom I had offended, could be obtained only at this price.

“I am astonished even now when I think of the amount of energy, the
superhuman efforts to surmount an insurmountable fear, paralyzing him at
each step, that was shown by the unhappy little boy that I then was. I
have been in many a trying situation in my career as a soldier, but they
have all been as nothing when compared to that one, which preceded them
by so many years. What was I saying? Feeling myself ready to fail, with a
supreme effort, I desperately finished my course. I stood before the dead
man and demanded his pardon, with a voice which probably the dead alone
could hear, because it resembled a dying breath, and my hand at last
succeeded in covering the awful visage with the sheet which I thought
necessary to his repose.

“That done, I arrived with a single bound in the middle of the court; but
I was at the end of my strength, and giving vent to a sharp cry, I fell,
deprived of all feeling, like a mortally wounded bird, at the feet of
poor Sister Rose.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“My fainting fit lasted, they say, about two hours. I recovered
consciousness in the arms of Aunt Marie, who had heard my cry of
distress. My mother had returned. On her knees before her sister and
me, she bathed my forehead and temples and made me inhale something
which burnt my nostrils a little but which smelt very good. I burst into
tears and my first word, when I was able to speak, was to ask and re-ask
pardon; and when I had to stop for want of breath, it was only to cry
again, ‘Pardon! Pardon!’ for that which was to me an irredeemable fault.

“‘Pardon for what, my poor child?’ said my mother, when I had completely
recovered consciousness. ‘Is it because you went into the big room?’ But
Aunt Marie has already forgiven you. Do you not see how she kisses you?’

“The kiss, yes, that was the pardon of Aunt Marie, but it was not only of
that which she knew that I needed forgiveness. All was not yet known. I
felt that I must make a complete confession, and, in an account, broken
by tears and sobs, I told ‘this all’ to Aunt Marie and my mother. I told
them all that it had cost me for having lacked proper respect for the
dead.

“My confession was not only complete, it was public; the surgeon of the
hospital and five or six soldiers were around us.

“‘Ah!’ said one of the latter, addressing the doctor, ‘the child must
have seen the old Marshal who was not able to recover from yesterday’s
amputation.’

“When I had finished my tale, when by kind words they had established a
relative calm in my conscience, when they had told me many times that
the dead man could never again be angry, especially as I had asked his
pardon, when Aunt Marie had made me understand besides that although
one should respect and honor the dead one should not be afraid of them,
a young sergeant who was there, and whom I had teased oftener than the
others because he most frequently wore the piece of wood on his nose from
losing at ‘drogue,’ asked permission of my mother to kiss ‘that little
one.’

“When he had availed himself of the permission, which my mother willingly
gave him, he said to her, as he placed me on his knee, ‘Madame, when one
shows such courage as that at six years of age, there is little danger of
his becoming cowardly later on. That mite will some day be a giant.’

“Whether I have become a giant or not,” said the general, relighting his
cigar,—“I cannot say, but that which I do know is that in all my military
experience I have never striven harder to be brave than I did that day
when I was brought face to face with death for the first time.”

After listening to this story, we all of us realized that courage also
consists in overcoming fear.

The general was right. This history of a child was at bottom the history
of a man. It interested its hearers, and enabled each one of them to make
use of it as a lesson for himself. It was not at all a bad preparation
for the work of the following morning, which was likely to demand of each
of us a great deal more of perseverance, of resolution and presence of
mind, than of brilliancy and dash.

_Adapted from the French by Adele Bacon._

(“The Second Fear,” of the “Four Fears of Our General,” will be published
in the February issue.)

[Illustration]




[Illustration: BOUQUETS]


That we reserve for ourselves the compliment of the first _bouquet_ we
trust will not be regarded as an impropriety. The necessity of making
a formal bow on entering for the first time the presence of the great
Public is well recognized, and in the performance of this duty, which
holds for us a rare pleasure, a little well meant selfishness is perhaps
pardonable.

DIXIE is introduced to your notice as the result of the latest attempt to
establish a Southern magazine. Despite the precedents of failure that are
ours, we believe success to be possible for such a venture under existing
conditions. It is difficult to accept as truth what has been said so
often of the Southern people, that they are in general unappreciative of
good literature and good art. That we do not concur in the belief the
appearance of DIXIE is conclusive evidence. We confidently expect the
most liberal support from the cultivated class of every state of the
South, believing a periodical of this order—a native production having at
heart the interests of the Southern people—will meet with an eager and a
sincere welcome.

We have thought it best to make a modest beginning rather than to herald
our undertaking with a brilliant first number at the cost of strength
that might better be reserved for exigencies of the struggle yet to come.
We have chosen to build, and would have our success—if success await
us—be the result of growth. Having obtained the services of a number
of the well known writers and artists of the country, we are in the
position to promise a continual improvement both in the contents and the
appearance of the magazine.

It was found necessary to make the first number somewhat local in tone,
but this is only a passing condition. We have secured for future issues
contributions of more general interest.

With this brief introductory note, DIXIE is offered to your consideration.

       *       *       *       *       *

The greatest praise is due Mr. Philip de Boilleau for his beautiful and
distinguished painting entitled “Hydrangias,” which we reproduce on the
opposite page. This picture,—an harmonious arrangement in soft grays,—was
painted in Milan during the past summer, and has only recently been
brought to Baltimore. We consider it one of Mr. Boilleau’s best works,
and pin this modest little _boutonniere_ on the lapel of his coat in
recognition of his resourceful and extremely personal talent.

[Illustration: “Hydrangias”

_Painted by Philip de Boilleau._]

       *       *       *       *       *

The presence of the Boston Symphony organization in Baltimore this fall
was thoroughly enjoyed, but it would not have been financially possible
had not ten of our wealthy and very liberal citizens formed a guarantee
fund and contributed enough money to insure the entire success of the
venture. We have not yet seen any public commendation of this very public
spirited action, and therefore feel that it would not be amiss to assure
these gentlemen (whose names are withheld at their own request) that the
professional musicians as a class, and the real music-loving Baltimoreans
as well, are deeply appreciative and grateful for the signal liberality
they have shown and the example they have set for others to follow. Such
things should not be taken as a matter of course, or be passed over in
complete silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. George N. Mackenzie’s suggestion, made public in the SUN of Dec.
13th, of placing tablets on houses that have sheltered famous persons
should commend itself to all those interested in historical work or the
improvement of the city. Southern towns are particularly rich in this
class of historic objects, as the result of a pronounced reverence for
old things and a reluctance to tear down and rebuild. However strongly
present methods of progress may demand the destruction of these ancient
piles, we cannot altogether condemn the unprogressiveness that leaves
them standing. They are a means of important instruction to the public;
and their presence in a town cannot but add to its attractiveness and
prosperity, if attention is properly directed to their existence. It
may safely be said that the solidarity of the English nation is in
great part maintained by the constant inspiration afforded by the
innumerable monuments, of all kinds, that cover English soil. They are
material evidence of past greatness. Is there a more powerful agent
than precedent? We step from the past to the present, and in proportion
to the firmness of the position of the rear foot we advance. Preserve
the monuments at any cost! The houses of great men are as sacred as
their graves; and it should be a shame to that city that negligently or
wilfully suffers them to be destroyed.

[Illustration]




[Illustration: THE BOGIE MAN.]


There is a very laudable scheme on foot just now to erect a monument,
or statue, to the memory of Maryland’s contingent of Confederate and
Federal soldiers who lost their lives on the battle-field of Antietam.
The idea of such a memorial does great credit to the magnanimity of the
American people, and offers another convincing proof to the world at
large that we are again a truly united and broadminded nation. The lofty
patriotism that suggests and makes practicable the erection of a monument
of this description is beyond all praise and cannot be commended too
highly: There is, however,—if a recent experience teaches us anything—an
unfortunate element of danger that, no matter what noble-minded motives
may have originally inspired this projected tribute to our brave dead,
its artistic side may actually leave much to be desired; and that in
the next century, when we shall have at length become a truly artistic
people, we may turn our heads aside and blush for it, as we do now for
the hideous Firemen’s Tablet and the Lord Baltimore of Cathedral street.

There is no reason but ignorance for the existence of such a state
of things. Nothing is easier than to get expert judgment on those
architectural and sculptural plans that may be submitted to the committee
in charge of the erection of this monument. There is a very common, and
most erroneous, idea that trained technical and artistic knowledge is
unnecessary in such cases, whereas no task is in reality more difficult.
To be able to choose correctly, from the many rough little wax and clay
suggestions huddled momentarily together, the project which will produce,
when it is thrown up on a large scale and carefully finished, the most
beautiful and inspiring work of art, requires an experience that is
almost invariably lacking in the persons so thoughtlessly given the power
to say which theme is to be adjudged the best.

In the recent case to which we have referred, a committee of laymen
apparently judged the sketches submitted to them solely from the point
of view of finish,—a most immaterial matter in a sketch, as every artist
knows,—and consequently one of our great national heroes, instead of
being eternally honored as was intended by many of his admirers, is
compelled to rest under a mediocre pile of stone and bronze that, while
far from being as good as it ought to be, is just good enough to insure
its remaining where it is for many years to come. Is this sort of thing
fair to the art-loving people who contribute to the building of our
public monuments, or to posterity that must receive and preserve them, or
to those heroes themselves in whose memory and to whose glory we would
like to erect enduring proofs of our love and admiration?

The Theatrical Trust has at last met with a well merited rebuke for its
peculiar methods of business. The BALTIMORE NEWS took it in hand the
other day and told it some very plain truths. It seems that the local
representative of the Trust went to the NEWS office with a proposition to
publish a half-page “ad” every Saturday providing a local “ad-writer”,
who thinks himself an authority on things theatrical, was allowed to
polish up the swell front advance notices. The NEWS not only declined the
proposition but exposed the whole affair. The Academy took its “ad” out
immediately, and published for a few days, “We do not advertise in the
News.” Foolish mistake! What is the use of flinging mud at a man who owns
a mud-machine?

We heartily commend the NEWS for the action it has taken in this
matter. It is an outrage that a few men should attempt to control this
business. They made every effort to close the doors of the very popular
Lyceum, and leave Mr. Albaugh to starve if he saw fit, but the energy
and perseverance of his son Jack were entirely successful in defeating
their purpose, and the good people of Baltimore have fully shown their
appreciation of his pluck. Now the Trust is measuring steel with the
Fords, but in spite of giving them the worst of it in the way of
attractions, the Fords are making more money than the Academy. Ford and
Albaugh are the names that represent everything theatrical in Baltimore.
Years and years ago these two men had firmly established themselves with
Baltimoreans, and it will take more than a theatrical trust to inspire
hostility where there has always existed confidence and good-will.

       *       *       *       *       *

There can be no doubt as to the precarious condition of music in
Baltimore at the beginning of the year eighteen hundred and ninety-nine;
but there is much that can be done to improve its really sad plight.
In other words, its state, while deplorable in the extreme, is not
altogether hopeless. It is deeply to be regretted that the recent manager
of the Peabody Institute, a man of great and acknowledged musical
ability, having had the chance to make Baltimore the recognized musical
centre of America, should have failed so utterly to add that distinction
to the metropolis of the South.

His successor, a young man of education, of refinement, and of apparent
ambition, although undoubtedly handicapped by the legacy of sterile
contentions and discouragements left him by his predecessor, has still a
very brilliant opportunity before him. Will he succeed ultimately where
his master has so conspicuously failed? We sincerely hope so, and trust
that some few of our misgivings, arising from what we fear is a tendency
to cultivate the noisy and pretentious few at the expense of the more
modest, but by far the more musical, majority may prove after all to be
groundless.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nothing so forcibly illustrates the inability of even educated persons
to distinguish between the good and the bad as the family portrait.
How seldom one sees in houses otherwise marked by refinement and good
taste this really necessary and, to future generations, valuable
object characterized by sufficient artistic merit to insure to it one’s
attention for five minutes. And how often it is a mere caricature of the
person whose portrayal has been attempted. What man dare call himself
educated who has not sufficiently acquainted himself with the elements of
drawing and color to know when he, or some member of his family, is being
transferred to canvas for no better purpose than to afford amusement for
persons of greater knowledge and judgment. It is true all of us cannot
spare the time to acquire even the elements of an art education, but
then it is equally true that the upper class of Americans is not truly
a cultivated class, is not possessed of the culture of the same class
in Europe. This is lamentable; but sadder still is the knowledge that
the egotism (widely known as the American spirit) of the average man of
refinement will preclude for a long time to come a betterment of the
situation.

Baltimore, among other cities noted for their educated class, has
been, and still is, an easy victim to the artist of the solar-print.
Nothing more thoroughly delights the heart of a Baltimorean of average
development than to come into possession of one of those family portraits
that exhibit all the rotundity of objects turned on a lathe, the burnish
(in the high lights) of excessively polished metal-ware, and the finish
of a miniature done under the glass of a microscope. In such work the
ideal of portrait painting is reached—for the Baltimorean of average
development. The revered canvas is given the place of honor in the most
prominent room of the house and there left for the adoration of all who
enter—no one daring to call down upon his head, for adverse criticism,
the pitying scorn of the deluded family. “It is a speaking likeness
rendered with unusual technical skill.” One often wishes, as a relief
for tortured eyes, that painters could do without technique altogether,
and might be allowed to indulge the wildest flights of imagination
conceivable in depicting the features of beloved relatives and friends.

But little can be said in defense of the “artist” who produces this
class of work. It is the result of either a base commercial spirit or of
untalented affrontery that trades on the ignorance of those who should
blush for their little knowledge. In many instances these painters
have had every opportunity for study at home and abroad, and yet seek
to degrade a profession they can in no wise benefit. Have the patrons
of these men concluded that honesty has lost its worth, and that a bad
painter is more useful that a good photographer? An almost hopeless
ignorance of art is, in these cases, the true explanation of why this
phase of brush-work has not long since disappeared from among intelligent
people. As long as men are found willing to pay for a bad thing the
parodists of art will continue to flourish. That it is not the ignorant,
or unscrupulous, painter who needs to be educated is easily seen.

Baltimore, with its unusually large number of thinking people, is not
altogether hopeless of improvement in its ideas of art. Fortunately
there are here a few families that have true judgment in such matters,
and whose influence, although at present but little felt, has a tendency
to create a future favorable to good work. May that happy epoch not be
synchronous with the Millennium.

       *       *       *       *       *




[Illustration: BOOK REVIEWS]


MR. JAMES TURNS THE SCREW.

Mr. Henry James is perhaps the one anomaly of American art. True, we
have Howells at his heels, some people may say at his head, but Howells
is by no means an inexplicable product, and he is as far from being like
James as James is far from being the counterpart of Turgeneff, the master
inspiration of them both. One may not like Mr. James—and there are many
who will simply not face his difficulties—but one must concede that he
is literature. He is indeed so emphatically literature that he is not
always life as well. It is not a little to say of an author on the shady
side of his prime that he still reserves for his public the quality of
continual surprise. Long ere this, one is minded to assert, judging
on general principles, Mr. James must have declared his reach. Such
utterances are, however, always contradicted by his latest book. And his
latest books, especially in the last few years, have been a succession
of surprises—shocks would be a better word, it may be—that uproot
presumptions. “What Maizie Knew,” for example, was a glance of Mr. James’
brilliancy from quite a new angle. It was such an extraordinary ray of
his art that it has not yet ceased to leave a green spot of bewilderment
on the vision of the critic. With the cry caused by “In a Cage” still in
the air, comes his very newest volume, “The Two Magics” (New York: The
Macmillan Co.,) as unprecedented a composition as any of his repertory.
To say that “The Turn of the Screw” dashes one with amazement is not to
be in the least hyperbolic. It does amaze—it simply takes one’s breath
and keeps it until one has finished the tale. One is amazed at the art,
one is amazed at the substance—and one is amazed at Mr. James himself,
and that, perhaps, most of all. It is an incredible production for a
Bostonian, no matter though he be long acclimated to foreign heaths as
in the instances of the author. We know of no other case where Bostonian
blood has failed so signally to tell.

One is saved from the supreme shock, however, by one thing—the matter of
Maizie. Maizie in “What Maizie knew” was at least an intimation of the
terrible facts of Miles and Flora. These angelic visions of eight and
ten are a twin-birth of horror before which the hideous perspicacity of
Maizie pales to insignificance. They are veritable limbs of Satan not
in any human forgivable sense, but astounding monsters of precocious
sinfulness that give one a positive chill to consider as within the
bounds of possibility. Their portrayal is a slaughter of the innocents
equal to that of Herod. One arraigns Mr. James’ inhumanity in thus
stooping to cast so cruel a stain on the character of childhood. Maizie
was surely enough—much more than enough.

Can the treatment of such abomination be within the pales of art? One
is obliged to admit that it can be, because Mr. James has demonstrated
it—demonstrated it as we hope it will not be demonstrated often. It has,
however, required all the resources of his skill. The marvel is that he
never even falters—makes one false stroke with his brush. As it stands,
“The Turn of the Screw” is a masterpiece; one fails to see how it could
be improved. Its art gives the envelopment to the subject that saves it
superbly. It is the kind of envelopment one finds in the portraits of
Whistler, for instance, and that is perfect.

Far from blurting out the business he may have in hand, Mr. James can
scarcely be said, at least in these latter days of his art, to tell it
at all. Most readers of “What Maizie Knew” must have been struck in
the perusal with the fact that never once did the story for all its
plotless volume state in cold type what the child really did know. And
yet that Maizie knew what she shouldn’t have known was as obvious as
though she had drawn naughty pictures on her slate. The reader knew
what Maizie knew by a more subtle means of intelligence—by a kind of
telepathic communication. The book was a supreme piece of insinuation.
Perfectly proper, indeed, as far as the print was concerned, but what
scandal between the lines! One finds oneself subject to this same sort
of telepathic play in “The Turn of the Screw.” It is all secretive
enough—superficially. The nightmare of children’s little obsessed
souls is not dragged into the light of day, but the horror is there,
nevertheless, patent to the eye and palpable to the touch. Mr. James
turns the screw, indeed! To set down the details of the story would be to
mar its subtle relation of style and substance. It is for the reader to
take or to leave, as he finds it in Mr. James’ volume.

“Covering End,” the other tale, included under the title of “The Two
Magics,” is quite in Mr. James’ usual manner. The “magic” of this
charming comedy is a very white magic, being no more than the brisk spell
exerted by the heroine—a Daisy Miller of later growth—upon the hero, the
owner of an old English “show” country house. “It was magnificent and
shabby, and the eyes of the dozen dark old portraits seemed, in their
eternal attention, to count the cracks in the pavement, the rents in
the seats of the chairs and the missing tones in the Flemish tapestry.”
We have again all the sentiment of “old things” as found in “The Spoils
of Poynton.” The story is the kind of comedy that would “scream” in
the hands of ordinary art. Mr. James’ material is, however, never so
ill-bred. Mrs. Gracedew, widow, “from Missouri Top,” bursts upon all
this faded splendor and question of mortgages with a perfect whirl
of Americanism. Her conversation is a kind of metal skirt-dancing—a
perpetual flash of pink fleshings. She is everywhere in the house at
the same time—“an apparition, a presence requiring announcement and
explanation,” indeed. She covets the house, she covets “the good and
faithful servant”—poor Chivers, whom she calls “Rembrant van Rhyn, with
three stars”; she covets the mortgaged owner, Clement Yule. They are all
“types.” Even Cora Prodmore is a type—“the ‘awfully nice girl’ of all
the English novels, the ‘simple maiden in her flower’ of—who is it?—your
great poet.” It is Daisy Miller with additional assurance of widowhood.
She “grabs” the whole situation with all the prompt enterprise of
Missouri Top. “I’m here,” she announces to “the lawful heir,” “for an act
of salvation—I’m here to avert a sacrifice!” That she will avert it the
reader never questions. It is all delightfully spirited and worthy of Mr.
James. It is quite as much a masterpiece of subtlety and finished style
as “The Turn of the Screw,” if not so new a note in conception. After the
horror of this latter tale it is more than a matter of refreshment—it has
the virtue of salvation.


A GERMAN MASTERPIECE.

The interest of the Anglo-Saxon public in German fiction has always been
languid compared with the avidity with which it devours the works, good,
bad and indifferent, of French authors. Mrs. Wister, Clara Bell, and a
few other translators, suffice to supply the English-speaking market with
all it demands in literature from the land of Goethe and Schiller, while,
on the other hand, hundreds can scarcely fill the publishers’ orders
for translations from the French. It may be that German novels are too
limited in their appeal—too intrinsically German and hearth-centered—too
largely lacking in that modern “finish” for which English authors so
frantically strive and French authors so frequently attain; too deficient
in what we are pleased to regard as the saving sense of “smartness.”
German novels as a rule have more soul than smartness, and that is almost
unforgivable in an age when genius like the reformed pirate is expected
to do fancy work.

It is perhaps because of this characteristic “high seriousness,” to use a
favorite phrase of Matthew Arnold’s, of Hermann Sudermann’s pen that he
has remained so little known to us in spite of his rare force. He belongs
to the brainy band of modern novelists which can almost be told off on
the fingers; of which in England Geo. Meredith is the lone Pompey’s
Pillar; Balzac, in France, the pyramid; and in Russia Turgeneff, the
sardonic sphinx. Sudermannn first reached our transatlantic consciousness
through the success of Duse’s portrayal of Magda in “Home”, a tragedy
full of fierce psychic value and human pathos.

In “Regina or The Sins of Fathers,” translated by Beatrice Marshall
(London and New York, John Lane) Sudermann has given us in the heroine a
character of such stuff as Magdas are made of—a Magda in the raw, a Magda
unintellectualized. The story treats of man’s honor and truth to himself
as in “Home” the author treats of woman’s. The main difference is that in
“Regina,” Boleslav’s self-trust comes too late for happiness. It is only
as the story closes he echoes Arnold’s

              “Ah! love, let us be true
    To one another—”

in a burst of passionate insight; but the chance had passed, Regina’s
lifeless, blood-smeared body lay under the Cats’ Bridge, where her
imbecile father had hurled it. Her fate is not unlike Ophelia’s. She
is piteously involved in the misfortunes of a hero burdened with a
performance as harsh as it was akin to that of Hamlet’s. The novel is a
virile work, deep-voiced, full of dramatic color and agitating some vital
moral questions. Acrid to the taste it is in many respects, but absorbing
throughout in its appeal.

Boleslav is pursued by the curse of his father’s treason with a good deal
of that grimness with which a hero of the Greek tragedies is harrowed
by the Eumenides. One lash of the furies’ whip provokes another until
life seems a madness scarcely to be borne. His friends and sweetheart
forsake him; the false name under which he enters the German Array fails
to protect him from the ignominy of the paternal crime; he is ostracised
by the whole world. We find him as the story opens returning to the
ruined home of his ancestors, where lies the dead body of his traitor
sire, denied the last offices of the church. It is there he meets Regina,
the mistress of the deceased, a wild and beautiful peasant girl, to
the portraiture of whom the story owes its chief interest. Regina is a
magnificent, unforgettable creature—one of those rich chords that nature
but rarely strikes upon the harp of being; she reverberates through one’s
senses with a rough sweetness that represents a real experience. Her
mould is Homeric; she is a creation of primal days and primal passions.
To blame her is to quarrel with nature itself. Regina becomes the refuge
of the stricken man whose noble motive of life is to redeem his father’s
name from shame, to rebuild the homestead of his race, to face unmerited
dishonor with manly dignity.

His heart still harbors the image of his early love, and for long he
cannot overcome the repugnance he feels for the sturdy pariah who with
pathetic self-denial and endurance becomes his slave in the maintenance
of the dreary rat’s hole in the ruined castle where the two live. His
ideal of womanhood is the simpering Helene who obeys her papa. It takes
him a long time to realize that dangerous maxim of Nietzche’s: “Passions
become evil when they are held to be evil.” And Regina’s passions are as
clear-eyed as were the children of Eden before they picked the apple of
Original Sin. As he realizes the fact, the girl’s character gradually
usurps his soul. A powerful scene is where they struggle together—the
master and the slave—for domination; the man’s strength against the
peasant’s Boadicean sinew. It is like the contest of sex in the African
jungle. There is no sense of masculine meanness in the contest. One
recognizes some deep inner justification in it: that this fierce strife
is the materialization of what is really heart warfare. It is a spiritual
imbroglio. In the midst of the contest, as they pant together defiantly,
Boleslav suddenly kisses the girl on the mouth; and a moment after he is
fleeing from himself into the snowy night. The scene is infinitely human.
In it Sudermann bares the strange mystery of the human heart as only
genius can.

In spite of this flash of soul-knowledge of Boleslav’s, the pair do
not become lovers. The man’s self-restraint still worships at Helene’s
shrine. He finds that altar clay at last. In the agony of disillusion he
lets his soul fly toward its true magnet, but the fortunes of the two
have reached a tragic pass. It is Regina’s dead lips that fate now alone
offers Boleslav. Under the charred rafters of his ancestral home that the
peasants had burned in their patriotic fury, clasping the girl’s cold
body, his mind shivers amidst the phantasmagoria of human existence. The
world’s conventions seem to shrivel like a consuming scroll. Nothing
remains but ashes and the conviction that Regina was “one of those
perfect, developed individuals such as nature created before a herding
social system, with its paralyzing ordinances, bungled her handiwork,
when every youthful creature was allowed to bloom, unhindered, into the
fullness of its power, and to remain, in good and in evil, part and
parcel of the natural life.”

Sudermann does not set his seal to the sophistries that Boleslav’s
despair formulates in these gloomy moments as he scoops out the frozen
ground nearby the pedestal of a broken statue of Diana, as a resting
place for his drowned Ophelia,—buried “with pagan rites.” His point of
view is that of the philosophic spectator of the world’s strifes and
follies, who sees in bold-browed convention its justifications, but
also its flaws, its misreadings of nature, its littleness, its lack of
large mercifulness. Over Regina, as over Margaret, the voice of higher
reason pronounces the verdict of exoneration, Boleslav in his struggles
with fell destiny offers a strengthening exemplar of manliness. He is
portrayed by the author with a discriminating realism that couples
weakness with might in a human way which wins for the hero our sympathy,
as the character of Regina compels our admiration.

                                        —_Edward A. Uffington Valentine._




[Illustration: EXCHANGES]


THE LE-O-PARD.

[Illustration]

    This is the Le-o-pard, my child;
    His tem-per’s anything but mild.
    The Le-o-pard can’t change his spots,
    And that—so say the Hot-ten-tots—
    Is why he is so wild.

    Year in, year out, he may not change,
    No mat-ter how the wea-ther range,
    From cold to hot. No won-der, child,
    We hear the Le-o-pard is wild.

             —_“A Child’s Primer of Natural History,” by Oliver Herford._


TURNING A NEW LEAF.

    Twelve months again have rolled around,
      The time has come, in brief,
    When chaps like me are duty bound
      To turn another leaf.
    So, meditating thus, I find
      ’Tis needful that I stop
    And designate within my mind
      What habits I shall drop.

    I will not smoke. Won’t I? Let’s see.
      This surely’s not the worst
    Of all my faults. Accordingly
      I’ll take the others first.
    I couldn’t stop it anyhow—
      I’ve failed to times galore.
    Perhaps I’d better tackle now
      A job not tried before.

    I don’t drink much—a special brew—
      A glass when with a friend.
    I reckon I’m not called on to
      So slight a folly end.
    And cards—oh, pshaw, I never lose!
      I have such luck, you know.
    And therefore why should I refuse
      To play a hand or so?

    I win my bets—a habit I
      Would be a chump to quit.
    My slang would not annoy a fly;
      I hardly swear a bit.
    What else—yes, what? Well, you can smile,
      But I am free to say
    I think of nothing that’s worth while
      To drop on New Year’s Day.

                   _Edwin L. Sabin, in Munsey’s Magazine, January, 1899._


THE WINKTUM FAMILY AND THEIR FRIENDS.

[The Winktum Family and Their Friends are introduced to our little
readers as persons who are likely to prove unusually interesting. We
shall try to give each month some new idea of their manners and customs.]

[Illustration]

    Here is the Winktum Family, rather queer as families go,
    But, if you’ll take my word for it, they’re jolly folks to know;
    Just where they live we cannot say, but will, we think, as soon
    As some bright fellow finds the way to travel to the moon.

[Illustration]

    “Good morning, Mrs. Winktum! my name is Tinky-tee;
    I’m a person of distinction, and my home is in the sea.
    The day is such a fine one, I’m sure you’d like to walk,
    And, if I’m not mistaken, enjoy a pleasant talk.”

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: “The Club”

S. W. CORNER CHARLES AND SARATOGA STREETS.

C. Bennett, Proprietor.

Mr. Bennett presents his compliments to the Baltimore public, and begs to
announce that he has recently added a Rathskeller to his establishment,
and has now every facility for serving his patrons with the best that may
be had in the way of meat and drink.]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: Hotel Rennert...

_BALTIMORE._

An Up-to-date fire-proof ... European Hotel.

_EDWARD RENNERT, MANAGER._]

       *       *       *       *       *

AN ECHO OF CHRISTMAS.

HOW LITTLE IKEY FOOLED SANTA CLAUS.

[Illustration: I.]

[Illustration: II.]

[Illustration: III.]

[Illustration: IV.]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration:

    “A GOLDEN THOUGHT,
    IN SILVER WROUGHT,
    I, IN HIS SHOP, DID SEE.”

JACOBI AND JENKINS

DESIGNERS AND MAKERS

OF

_Sterling Silverware_...

EXCLUSIVELY.

_No. 216 Charles Street, North, Baltimore._]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: —_What’s the matter with your brother, Mandie?_

—_He hurt hisself. We was a-playing who could lean fartherest out of the
window—en he won._]

[Illustration: _Weary Willie—I want work, leddy._

_The Lady—There is very little to do around here._

_Weary Willie—Well er very little will do fer me._]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: The Artists’ Photographer,

Recommended and Employed by Leading Baltimore Artists.

_G. de J. Mesny_

PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST

226 Charles St., North.

“I consider Mr. Mesny possessed of a most unusual amount of real
judgment, both in the posing and the lighting of his sitters.”—_Clinton
Peters._

“O. K.”—_Chas. J. Pike._

“An artist as well as a photographer. The only photographer for people of
artistic tastes.”—_Philip de Boilleau._

“The best in town. I employ no other.”—_Hugh Nicholson._]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: —_How did your last story end?_

—_Unhappily. The editor rejected it._]

[Illustration: _He—If a good looking desperado should confront you and
demand a kiss—how would you meet the emergency?_

_She (promptly)—Face to face._]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: _THE NEW ST. JAMES HOTEL_

_North Charles and Centre Streets, BALTIMORE._

_J. G. ROHR, Manager._]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: —_How’s your brother?_

—_Oh! He’s holding his own._

—_Yes and he’s holding ten of mine too._]

[Illustration: _Miss Manhattan—I received another beautiful new
engagement ring yesterday._

_Miss Lakeside—Which reminds me. I just got another divorce. It’s lovely.
All tied with white ribbon and a seal on it._]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: For all things Musical, go to

H. R. EISENBRANDT’S SONS,

N. E. Cor. Charles and Lexington Streets.

ESTABLISHED, 1811.

The Oldest Musical House In the U. S.

The experience gained in this great length of time assures to our patrons
that our methods, our goods, and our prices, are right. Pianos and Organs
at reasonable prices, and on easy terms.

Sole Agents for “Washburn” Mandolins, Guitars, Banjos, and Zithers.
Regina Music Boxes, Musical Novelties and Toys.

Beautiful Catalogue Free.

       *       *       *       *       *

_We are the People_...

_WHO PRINT “DIXIE MAGAZINE.” IF YOU DESIRE CLEAN AND EFFECTIVE PRINTING,
CONSULT US BEFORE PLACING YOUR NEXT ORDER, OUR PRICES ARE RIGHT._

“Up-to-date Print Shop.”

H. L. Washburn & Co.

9 S. Charles Street, Baltimore.]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: —_I’ll pay you that five I owe you next week._

—_That’s all right, old man. I belong to the “Don’t Worry Club.”_]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: THE ALPHA PHOTO-ENGRAVING CO.

DESIGNERS HALF-TONE ENGRAVERS & ZINC-ETCHERS

BALTO. 217 E. GERMAN ST. MD.]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: MARYLAND CEMENT CO

PORTLAND CEMENT

NOS. 2 & 4 E. LEXINGTON ST. BALTIMORE. MD.

TOLTEC PATAPSCO]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: The GLOBE BEER

_THE GLOBE BEERS ARE UNEXCELLED._

Gold Brau, Light. Munich, Dark.

_TELEPHONE CALL. 1425._]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: HURLBUTT AND HURLBUTT

MAKERS OF DRAPERIES CURTAINS PORTIERES & FURNITURE

ARTISTIC & ORIGINAL IDEAS

BEST WORKMANSHIP

403 NORTH CHARLES STREET AT MULBERRY STREET

BALTIMORE]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: BORST’S RATHSKELLER

UNDER THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC.

Meals at all Hours. Attendance First-Class.

DELICACIES IN SEASON.]

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68058 ***